John writes:
Uh oh, I think I may be a one-noter…or two-noter. I tend to comment only on intelligence (anything health/biology related) and pick-up blogs, though I do read all of them. I don’t know much about languages or some of the anthropology discussed here. And this blog is my source of news, so it is the only viewpoint I really see on current events, foreign leaders, etc. I read here because I love the wide variety of topics and wide variety of smart commenters.
A one-noter or a two-noter is not someone who only comments on a few areas, it is someone who has a one-note view of the world, that is, whose comments typically revolve around reiterating the same worldview over and over and applying to many different situations. I think you can probably think of some folks who fit into that category.
However, though John only comment in a few areas, his comments seem to be all over the place, that is, he says all sorts of different things about PUA and intelligence – he is not just reiterating the same worldview over and over.
Now suppose all of John’s comments on intelligence were wrapped up in one particular worldview – maybe that IQ is nonsense, intelligence cannot be defined and it certainly cannot be measured. Now, I don’t think he believes that anyway, but suppose he did, and suppose all of his intelligence comments were variations on that theme. This is what I mean by a one-noter.
And suppose all of John’s comments on Game were centered around some particular Game theory, maybe that looks, money, status, fame or power don’t matter, and all that matters is Game. Give a man Game, and you gave him the world.
Suppose in response to every Game post, you said something like, “Hey, just go buy Roosh’s book. Or better yet, buy all of them! Because then Roosh gets more money! Read Roosh’s books, and the world will hand itself over to you on a silver platter.”
Then he would be a one-noter. But I see his PUA comments are sort of all over the place too, which is a good thing.
I suppose that is what I am getting at here.
Even in prescribed areas, there typically is not One View to Rule Them All. But human beings always want to take mental shortcuts. The world is a bafflingly confusing place, and a lot of it doesn’t even seem to make much sense. When you adopt one single worldview and then try to plug it into as many situations as possible, the world seems to make a lot more sense, and that is comforting and relaxing and reducing your anxiety about what boils down to a senseless, confounding and frightening if not terrifying world in which most things don’t seem to add up and a lot of things seem to happen for no apparent reason at all.
The problems here is you end up with a monochromatic view of the world. One-noter types see most of the world as variations of a shade of a certain color. To this one-noter, the world is all sort of a variation of purple. Everything’s purple, most many things are a different shade of purple than the other things. Nevertheless, the whole world is pretty much purple, varying only in different shades of that color.
Another one-noter may see the world as variations on a shade of gray.
Please note that these colors are shorthand for the one-noter’s view of life and they have no meaning in and of themselves.
Sure, this person feels good. They are relaxed and their anxiety goes down. They may even be pretty adaptable. They may be able to go all sorts of different place, do all sorts of different things and meet all sorts of different people. After all, no matter where you, who you are with or what you are doing, it’s all just another shade of purple, right?
I am not saying a one-note view of the world is not adaptive. It may well be quite adaptive. But you’re not seeing the world for what it really is. Your one-note view of the world is a lie in a sense because so many things in life contradict your view or the view does not even apply to them at all. Mostly you are just being a lazy thinker. I would also say that your view of the world is quite impoverished.
If everything you see is just another shade of purple, you’re missing 95% of life. You’re not even seeing it in the first place. It might as well not even be there. In order to get a cheap anti-anxiety hit and so you don’t have to think too much (God forbid!) you have adopted a lame, impoverished, lazy, simplistic and essentially false view of the world around you. So what if it works? I don’t know about you all, but I don’t want to live my life that way.
