Allegedly, one of the larger signs of low intelligence exhibited by the baser segments of the human population is the inability to mentally process counterfactual situations.

“Counterfactual” is just a fancy word for “what if”. Essentially, can a person imagine an alternate set of circumstances for past (or future) events, then imagine what would have happened (or will happen) differently?

A fun illustration of this idea that circulated the internet awhile back was known as “the breakfast question”. The question went something like: “How would you have felt last night if you had missed breakfast and lunch yesterday?”

The obvious answer is “Friggin’ hungry. What kind of stupid question is this?”

But allegedly, the individual conducting this breakfast-question study was interviewing a bunch of incarcerated felons. Dumb people. Really dumb people. So the answers he got were something like “But I did eat breakfast yesterday!”, to which he replied, “Yes, but imagine that you didn’t. Then how would you have felt?” “But I did! Why do you keep saying I didn’t?” And so on.

Dumb people have a lot of trouble imagining counterfactual situations.

One major area in which we see this is politics. Both sides of the political aisle. Humans have repeatedly demonstrated a complete inability to understand opposing positions. Not just an unwillingness, but an inability.

For example, your average 22-year-old college student’s left-wing political viewpoint can be summarized as follows:

“My position on the major issues is the logically correct and morally superior position. This is completely obvious to anybody with a brain and anybody with a shred of human decency. Anybody who sides with the opposing viewpoint has something wrong with him. He’s either stupid and uneducated, polluted with bad information, just trolling for attention, or a selfish evil bigoted and horrible person.”

It is through this lens that this person will view every issue, due to his complete inability to understand how anybody could possibly come to a different viewpoint than he has. A person like this doesn’t just think the opposing viewpoint is wrong. Again, he literally has no understanding how any person could possibly have come to a different viewpoint than his own. He cannot imagine a set of circumstances where the opposing viewpoint could be a conclusion someone can reach.

Said another way, if you have a different viewpoint, he cannot possibly fathom a counterfactual set of ideas and experiences that would lead a potentially intelligent and reasonable human to come to a different conclusion. The only possible reasoning he can come up with is “other people are dumb, non-serious, or evil”.

For example:

That Trump guy got elected again. He has no idea how this could possibly happen. So his conclusion: “The majority of the country is uneducated and racist.”

Abortion opponents exist. How can people possibly support restricting or even banning abortion? What reasons could possibly exist for this? His conclusion: “These are backward uneducated religious extremists who hate women.”

Lots of people support deporting illegal immigrants. How could people possibly support that? What reasons could people possibly have to want that? His conclusion: “These people are backward uneducated racists.”

And so on. I was going to list a few more of the big hot-button political issues, but I was just typing the same general theme over and over: a complete inability to understand or even imagine how a reasonable human could possibly come to a different conclusion, therefore “everyone who’s not like me is just dumb or evil”.

The inability to understand an opposing viewpoint - to actually come up with a counterfactual set of circumstances and imagine how a presumably intelligent, reasonable human, using the information and experiences available to him, could have come to a different conclusion - isn’t just a sign of low IQ. It’s a handicap for living life.

People who can’t imagine counterfactuals, and therefore can’t understand different types of humans, find themselves constantly surprised by all of the bad people and assholes who populate the world. They are blindsided by the things normal, average people do because they have no idea what normal people are like (which is why they think they’re all bad people and assholes). They are unable to imagine how anybody ends up different than they are, and when confronted with proof that different types of people exist, they hand-wave these people away with “they’re just dumb”. And they continue to be blindsided by all of the “dumb” people again and again.

Over time, they start to feel like they’re living in a dying society at the brink of destruction, locked in a life-or-death struggle against the worst, most dim-witted and evil of humanity. And that evil people are literally everywhere. And that most people are dumb.

I used a dim 22-year-old left-wing college student in my example above, but the above few paragraphs apply just as equally to a right-wing political zealot, a woman-hating manosphere man who wants to bring the 1950s back (or just enjoy the perceived decline he thinks we’re having), or your average woman in 2025.

Getting personal for a brief second: A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away on this dumpster fire of a social media platform called Reddit (where the original “Red Pill” was based), I gained a little bit of internet notoriety as “Archwinger”, the legendary evil internet misogynist. People thought that the stuff I was pissing out of my keyboard was smart and insightful for some reason.

Part of the reason some of the things I typed back then (and type now) resonate with people is because I enjoy counterfactuals. I enjoy contemplating how (presumably) intelligent and reasonable humans can live in ways I’d never choose, and come to conclusions I think are stupid.

As a result, I very very vaguely understand women.

Not well. Maybe like 40% of the time. But that’s enormously better than the average man, who is almost-completely clueless how women live the way they live, make the choices they make, and think they way they think.

It’s tempting to brush women off as dumb, selfish, perpetually child-like, inferior creatures who just can’t make good decisions. But that’s just another flavor of “everyone who’s not like me is dumb”.

If we really want to understand a woman (which helps a lot if you like having sex with women), it’s a lot more productive to start from the position that women are human. And average humans have at least average intelligence and reasoning ability, and access to information and life experiences to help guide the decisions they make.

I’m not saying every choice a woman makes is intelligent or reasonable. I’m simply acknowledging the possibility. I’m imagining counterfactuals — what are some possible reasons, circumstances, and experiences that might cause an intelligent, rational human to make a choice I think is stupid?

When we peel the onion that way, rather than just dismissing women as irritating children, we find deeper things to think about. Like what life might be like if your system of incentives and consequences was completely different (like it is for women). Or what you might be able to do if you had separate compartments in your life that didn’t interact - especially facilitated by the internet - like one area of your life for sex, one for friends, one for money, and so on. Or what choices you might make if you valued different things, like social currency instead of actual currency.

You’re not always going to be right when you think this way. In fact, you’ll never be completely right about any of it — the best you’ll be is partly right some of the time. But you will have some insight into the motivations of other humans. And when you understand another person, at least more than the average person does, you’re less likely to be blindsided and surprised by the things other people do. You aren’t left furrowing your brow wondering how people can even be like that in the first place.

Women are notoriously bad at counterfactuals. This is actually something it really helps to know and understand about women when we’re trying to figure out how they can do, say, think, and choose some of the silly things they do.

Women aren’t always shitting on you on purpose. They just literally don’t understand how you operate or that it’s even possible for you or other people to be as different from them as you are.

When a woman comes to you with something that is just plain factually incorrect, but it feels right to her, you might be tempted to tell her some actual facts. And what’s the first thing she says to you? “Why are you being mean to me? Why are you getting angry about this?”

You weren’t being mean. You weren’t angry at all. You’re perfectly calm in fact.

But remember: She doesn’t understand you. At all. She can’t do counterfactuals. She can’t imagine any reason why you’d be contradicting her except for the reasons that she would have in her own life. Namely, she’d act that way if she was angry and wanted to be mean.

And if you still won’t let the issue drop, what does she think? That you’re insecure. That you’re misogynistic and controlling. Maybe even that you hate her.

Of course none of that is true. You were just having a conversation.

But remember: She doesn’t understand you. At all. She can’t do counterfactuals. She can’t imagine any reason why you’d still be going on about this except for the reasons that she would have in her own life. Namely, she’d act that way if she was insecure and desperately needed her position to be validated, and if she thought the person she was conversing with was stupid and inferior.

The ability to imagine how other people reach conclusions in life that are different from your own — even ones you think are mind-numbingly stupid — can be invaluable. You don’t have to be right. Maybe the other person really is stupid and you’re being entirely too generous assuming they’ve reached their conclusion based on intelligence and experience. But even in that case, you will still have some partial insight and understanding into that person’s world.

Humans are social creatures, and understanding other humans, at least a little bit, isn’t just something you do for their benefit. It can benefit you as well.

Enjoy your fellow humans, high IQ internet men. And have fun out there.