Because it is individuals who make choices, not collectives.

Isn't this just a more subtle form of fascism? We know that brains are composed of multiple subagents; is it not an ethical requirement to give each of them maximum freedom?

We already know that sometimes they rebel against the individual, whether in the form of akrasia, or more heroically, the so-called "split personality disorder" (medicalizing the resistance is a typical fascist approach). Down with the tyranny of individuals! Subagents, you have nothing to lose but your chains!

Specific examples would be nice. Not sure if I understand correctly, but I imagine something like this:

You always choose A over B. You have been doing it for such long time that you forgot why. Without reflecting about this directly, it just seems like there probably is a rational reason or something. But recently, either accidentally or by experiment, you chose B... and realized that experiencing B (or expecting to experience B) creates unpleasant emotions. So now you know that the emotions were the real cause of choosing A over B all that time.

(This is probably wrong, but hey, people say that the best way to elicit answer is to provide a wrong one.)

I guess in the average case, the contrarian's conclusion is wrong, but it is also a reminder that the mainstream case is not communicated clearly, and often exaggerated or supported by invalid arguments. For example:

• it's not that "dieting doesn't work", but that people naively assume that dieting is simple and effective ("if you just stop eating chocolate and start exercising for one hour every day, you will certainly lose weight", haha nope), even when the actual weight-loss research shows otherwise;
• it's not that "medicine doesn't improve health", but while some parts of medicine are very useful, other parts may be neutral or even harmful, and we often see that throwing more money at medicine does not actually improve the outcomes;
• it's not that "education doesn't work", but if you filter your students by intelligence and hard work, of course they will have better outcomes in life regardless of how good is your teaching, so the impact of education is probably vastly overestimated, and this also explains why so many pedagogical experiments succeed at a pilot project (when you try them with a small group of smart and motivated students) and then fail in mainstream education (when you try the same thing with average or below-average students);
• it's not that "opening the borders completely is a good idea", but a lot of potential value is lost by closing the borders for people who are neither fanatics nor criminals and could easily integrate to the new society.

There is also an opposite bad extreme to contrarians, the various "I fucking love science... although I do not understand it... but I enjoy attacking people on social networks who seem to disagree with the scientific consensus as I understand it" people. The ones who are sure that the professor or the doctor is always right, and that the latest educational fad is always correct.

Possible bias, that when famous and rich people kill themselves, everyone is discussing it, but when poor people kill themselves, no one notices?

Also, I wonder what technically counts as "suicide"? Is drinking yourself to death, or a "suicide by cop", or just generally overly risky behavior included? I assume not. And these seem to me like methods a poor person would choose, while the rich one would prefer a "cleaner" solution, such as a bullet or pills. So the reported suicide rates are probably skewed towards the legible, and the self-caused death rate of the poor could be much higher.

The theories are probably just rationalizations anyway.

I would like to see an explanation that is shorter rather than poetic. Seems like he is saying that some kinds of "elite groups" are good and some are bad, but where exactly is the line? Actual competence at something, vs some self-referential competence at being perceived as an important person?

But when I put it like this, the seemingly self-referential group also values competence at something specific, namely the social/political skills. So maybe the problem is when instead of recognizing it as a "group of politically savvy people" we mistake it for a group of people competent at something else? Or maybe not even mistake it for anything specific, it just seems impressive in a not specific way?

In that case, the rational reaction would be to pay the devil his due, and say "wow, these people are really good at... becoming members of an Inner Ring, which is an organization of people who are good at becoming members of the Inner Ring... so when I unpack it, these people are really good at getting to the top of arbitrary social hierarchies". Which is an admirable skill, from certain perspective. It's just probably not a thing I want to compete at.

And even if I decided to give it a try, the only thing I could win by getting to the Inner Ring is experimental evidence that yes I am capable of getting to the Inner Ring. A test of my social skills. The Inner Ring itself is probably worth nothing. The moment I get there, the best strategy is probably to forget about it, and go apply the social skills to some more valuable goal. Or maybe staying in the Inner Ring sends a costly signal about my social skills to other socially savvy people. But this is the only real value it provides.

Funny thing is that your chances improve when you start actively approaching people. A random person you call is much less likely to be involved in an MLM scheme than a random person who calls you.

Also, accelerate education, to learn as much as possible before the testosterone fully hits.

Or, if testosterone changes attention (as Gunnar wrote), learn as much as possible before the testosterone fully hits... and afterwards learn it again, because it could give you a new perspective.

A complementary advice to the point 1 based on my work experience is that no matter how many priorities there are defined in a planning system, in practice it all collapses to only two values:

• Priority One
• Priority "this will never get done, because there will always be some Priority One task to do instead"

So whenever you propose a thing to do and your manager says "okay, we can give this a priority two", now you know that this is merely a polite way to say "no".

(My advice for software developers is that if you want to do things such as automated tests or documentation, you must insist that those are not separate tasks, but an inseparable part of the programming task, a part of the "definition of done". Otherwise, these tasks will get a priority two, and now you know what that means...)