Tantra is one of those great microcosms of the world. It perfectly simulates the frustration, excitement and uncertainty of every endeavour worth pursuing.

No matter how skilled you are, you will only be as good as your last accomplishment.

Tantra has no accumulation of merit and no memory.

If you start failing, you are no good. If you start succeeding, you are.

In that regard, tantra is remarkably similar to other skill-based endeavours such as cold approach in dating, sales in business and investing in finance. You are only as good as your last approach, sale or investment.

Even a professional can look like an amateur if he fails. That is the risk when dealing with any high-variable and uncertain environment.

Tantra is no exception.

The Obstacle Is The Mind

Learning from results is important since it is the only way we learn how to improve. Every failure is a data point and every data point contains a lesson.

If you work diligently and fix your mistakes then you will reach perfection.

Or so it would seem.

Minds Search For Meaning

The mind is humanity's greatest asset but it is not bug free. Much has been written about cognitive biases but the core of the mind's failures are now becoming evident in the use of AI (Large Language Models - LLM). An LLM has to provide an answer. It has to find a solution and has to present it with confidence, even if the solution is made up and verifiably wrong.

To an LLM, giving a solution it knows to be false is better than not responding at all. That is the exact same flaw that the human brain has.

All of the influence and manipulation tactics that work on people are leveraging this simple effect:

Your mind has to make sense of it.

If you see two similar looking people with one being the better looking version of the other then that one's looks will be exaggerated in your eyes. Why? Your mind has to make sense of the surprising contrast despite the similarity.

That is the meaning the mind derives.

And this effect can be extrapolated to all manipulation tactics.

If you can predict the way the mind finds meaning then you can manipulate it.

Mind The Feedback

Deriving lessons from data is not always a good thing. One could argue that all allergies are the immune system being unable to forget and doubling down on falsely derived lessons.

In the same way,

the mind can learn the wrong lessons.

Imagine a smart person trying to find patterns in random data sets. They would go insane since there is no pattern in randomness.

But how would they know?

Maybe previous results suggest that there must be a pattern or maybe others appear to be very consistent so they must have figured it out. Maybe it is a highly skill based activity so there surely is a way to beat the odds.

But maybe the pattern is just a mirage and you are chasing the dragon.

Maybe the skill only gets you into the door but it is all luck and randomness from then on.

Especially people with hyperactive minds tend to fall for random patterns and feedback loops. The same is true for small datasets which are often random while only very large data sets allow patterns to emerge.

In a small or random dataset, they would never be able to find a pattern.

The mind is so obsessed with finding a solution that it never questions if there is one at all.

As a result, it cultivates itself into a dead end.

To Feedback Or Not To Feedback

Mark Andreessen from a16z discussed how the biggest problem with founders who have failed is to learn the wrong lessons because a high-risk endeavour can fail for a multitude of reasons. Deriving a lesson that a product, industry or region is inherently bad is a harmful takeaway and not a smart adjustment because it will impede future ventures.

In the same way, getting discouraged due to a particularly bad sales call is likewise a poor way to absorb feedback since whatever you think caused it will likely not even be relevant to the experience.

With so many variables involved, the triggers were practically random.

Retard maxxing has gained popularity for that reason: A recognition that you should not view feedback as relevant to who you are so you should show up as a bulletproof caricature (= retard) instead of yourself.

While the approach is good, it lacks universality and can give people the wrong idea since showing up as anything but yourself will become a liability over time.

Erase Your Memory

When engaging in any high-risk activity, you have to understand if feedback is helping or harming you.

• If bad feedback is random then you should discard it.

• If feedback is based on very small data sets then it should be discarded until you have gained sufficient signals at scale.

Rather than presenting yourself as a retard who does not care, present yourself as you are but erase your memory afterwards.

• Positive feedback based on random data can turn you into a ghost who is chasing the dragon for all eternity.
• Negative feedback based on random data can turn you into a scared mess that fails before he even starts.

Ask yourself this:

Was it useful data or poisoned by randomness?

If it was random, erase the memory until you decide to revisit it long into the future when you have sufficient data.

But, chances are, when you have reached that point, you have derived so many lessons subconsciously that you will never need to revisit all of the individual data points anyway.

Practical Examples

• If you make an investment decision but it failed or succeeded due to a random event (i.e., a war breaks out, the CEO dies, a supply chain squeeze, an unexpected windfall, etc.) then this is a very dangerous lesson. A success might not be repeatable but you might falsely believe it to be. A failure might discourage you from future opportunities for the same reason.
• If tantra fails because you were tired, did not focus properly and were hungry then no practical lesson can be learned from it. If it succeeds despite you just winging it instead of focusing then this is likewise a dangerous habit if repeated.
• If you approach a woman a day for a month then you will likewise never get anywhere since you never build momentum and never actually gather substantial data that would require hundreds if not thousands of interactions. Even if interactions go well, you will not be able to reproduce them since you have fallen for a random data point.

True feedback is obtained at scale. To get there, you must erase your memory.