Epistemic Status: 13 years working as a therapist for a wide variety of populations, 5 of them working with rationalists and EA clients. 7 years teaching and directing at over 20 rationality camps and workshops. This is an extremely short and colloquially written form of points that could be expanded on to fill a book, and there is plenty of nuance to practically everything here, but I am extremely confident of the core points in this frame, and have used it to help many people break out of or avoid manipulative practices.

TL;DR: Your wants and preferences are not invalidated by smarter or more “rational” people's preferences. What feels good or bad to someone is not a monocausal result of how smart or stupid they are.

Alternative titles to this post are "Two people are enough to form a cult" and "Red flags if dating rationalists," but this [...]

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Outline:

(02:53) 1) You are not too stupid to know what you want.

(07:34) 2) Feeling hurt is not a sign of irrationality.

(13:15) 3) Illegible preferences are not invalid.

(17:22) 4) Your preferences do not need to fully match your communitys.

(21:43) Final Thoughts

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 2 images which were described by AI.

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