What's Up With A-holes?

Science has been weirdly silent about aholes and aholery, a real and common kind of behavior not covered by psych diagnosis or criminology. Here's an overview of how we'll think scientifically about the aholes in your life in the context of aholes overall. 

They'll say calling people aholes is mean, name-calling, a waste of time, counterproductive, and dehumanizing. They'll say no one's an ahole or everyone's an ahole. They'll say just ignore them. Here's why we're going to study them anyway. 

You can't tell an ahole by their causes, rhetorical style, personal histories, motivations, demographics, power, impact, the range of their aholery, their exploitation of cheap rhetorical tricks, or how they make us feel. So what does distinguish an ahole?

People categorize things intuitively and often get it wrong. What's the best way to categorize? Here we explore logic and science and conclude that the best way to diagnose aholery is to explain how they evolved. There are plenty of animal predators but no aholes. Being an ahole is a human thing. In the next session, we'll explore what's different about humans that makes aholery an option and temptation for us. 

A cradle (origins of life) to grave (current situation) overview of the evolution of aholes. All organisms have to keep out toxins and let in nutrients. Human language turns this kind of "selective interaction" into confirmation bias, preventing discouragement, absorbing encouragement. Confirmation bias is a problem we all have to manage. For aholes, it the solution to all of their problems.

It's easier playing God than being human. All aholes have to do is ignore what words mean and focus only on whether they sound flattering or insulting. Here we explore how aholes get the last word by weaponizing words. 

Aholes don't just fight with weaponized  (spun) words; they play judge or umpire, deciding who wins the fight and it's always them. They have a bag of easy tricks (listed here) they use to disqualify anyone who challenges them. 

All of life's paths have detours to aholia. In this class, we explore how people can become Aholes with a cause, of whatever kind, religious, spiritual, political, philosophical, etc. It's a two-step process: Embrace the belief because it makes us feel like know-it-alls, and then stop caring about the belief as anything more than an excuse for being a know-it-all.

In a pinch, or when we can get away with it, we can become aholes with no ideological cover story to rationalize it other than that we want what we want. Here we explore some of the many ways that happens. 

Based on our explanation for them, we're finally ready for a more descriptive term, based on their behavior, not our response to them. We're also ready to suggest some formulas for guessing whether you're dealing with one. We can also begin to make sense of the Dark Triad in the context of our natural history and the absolute qualities of Gods as people imagine them. 

The alternative to being an ahole (trumpbot) is being a fallibilist, confident in your bets but still more confident that they are bets, not certainties. Here we explore fallibilism and how it frees us to be fierce in combat with someone robotically playing God.

Aholes act like they can't lose which may seem a power-advantage against fallibilists who know they could be wrong. Here we show how to rob them of that advantage with a technique called obverse psychology. 

Most responses to aholes don't work. Not even the recommended strategies about helping them discover their inconsistencies so they'll want to change. This technique will work and it's simple. Whether aholes go high-horse or low, playing prude or punk, you stay doggedly focused on exposing their overall formula. Everything they do in response will confirm your accusation.

Escapism is inescapable, so the trick is to kid ourselves where it helps rather than harms. In this last podclass session we explore how to Play God right, taking flights of fancy but always with a return ticket to reality secure in our heart pockets. It's not about how far out you go but whether you remember to come back to reality since it always bats last.