Abel Abelson, a neurodivergent writer and YouTuber, has navigated the unique challenges of being distinct from the majority, on which our conversation focuses mainly. He was recognized by Mensa with an IQ of 133, which places him in the 98th percentile in terms of cognitive ability. Today we talked about whether every problem can be solved through further understanding, how one can be content with the fact that one will be discontent, the apparent incompatibility of acceptance and performance, how to define happiness, the need for enough similarities between two people to have a successful relationship, the pursuit of transcendent threads of logic, how the reason you like football has nothing to do with football and all to do with the fact that you are an ape, the huge variance among people in curiosity and intelligence and the best way to approach it, disgustingness of the anti-egalitarian nature of the massive differences in intelligence across the population, the leverage of your actions as a measure of your intelligence, the nature of trauma, the power of mindfulness, the self-fulfilling effect of believing that you have a problem, progressive voluntary exposure as a solution to fear and trauma, the incoherence of free will as uncaused behavior, the need for immediate regulation of our emotions after a dramatically negative event to avoid trauma, the need to update our knowledge faster than every 1000 years, the perpetual ability to establish dialogue if you criticize the antibodies of the incendiary ideas, and the incoherence of the Naturalistic fallacy. You can find Abel on YouTube Buy Abel’s books on Amazon 0:00 Can everything be solved through understanding? 7:54 Suffering, acceptance, and via negativa 14:48 Happiness: wholeness vs. progress toward a goal 23:46 Curiosity, parochialism, and knowledge that travels 34:03 Intelligence, moral value, and the research on IQ 54:58 The mind is flat: perception, brains in jars, Feynman 1:21:08 Trauma, implicit memory, and the silent treatment 1:41:15 Pain, self-inflicted affliction, and the psychiatric industry 1:52:51 Evil, sadism, and the child who makes sense of abuse 2:14:50 The limits of rationality: always after the fact 2:29:57 The scientific method, religion, and the pork taboo 2:44:15 Peterson, atheism, and how to arrange society 2:51:52 The Nazi with the gun: dogmatism, fear, and dialogue
