In my views there are only 2 "sins": insensitivity and cowardice.
In contrast, I don't view stupidity as being that big of a deal. If someone is kind of dumb but they have a good heart, they will overall do the right things, or at least they will course correct over time, and if they care about learning, they will do so.
Contrast that with the opposite case, a heartless but intelligent man (pretty much always men). What will they end up using their intelligence for? Probably their own benefit if they are ambitious, or at least creating a prison

Things the mind struggles with (or is straightup unable to deal with? idk)
1) Loopiness (that's why science tries to remain "objective", so that loopiness, for instance how your social theories affect society *and* how people think of society, can be put aside) 2) The Unknown. Death is the greatest unknown of course, since we never experience it per se. But even on a mundane level, there is the unknown unknown of the future. Relying on data isn't a magical bullet, because you can run into black swans at Taleb shows again and again

Bad communication is obviously a huge and frequent problem in relationships, but I feel like that diagnosis ignores 2 important components:
1) What exactly is "bad" communication anyway? Vague words mean that the path to fit the problem is vague too, so better be precise 2) What leads to bad communication in the first place? No one intends to be a bad communicator, but clearly a lot of people are

I think 2nd one is usually what I would start with. With bad communicators, there is a sense where they don't even care about how what they said

It's interesting how people's ability to self-narrate is better than their willingness to change, which creates this situation where they maintain a narrative that doesn't serve them at all, and isn't even remotely true.

Like 1) Someone who is terrible at asking for help, would rather believe that they live in a cruel world where you cannot trust anyone but yourself, and showing any vulnerability whatsoever is a threat, instead of just ... getting better at interacting with others.

Or 2) someone who is a perpetual people pleaser would rather

It's pretty crazy the extent to which people's lives is literally bottleneck by their imagination of what their life can be.
Like there was tweet floating around about "what hobbies are there past 25 besides cooking and exercising" and someone quote-posting, saying how they started oil painting at 35. Like a lot of people genuinely don't internalize the fact that they could literally start making art at any point in their life, especially right now. Art has taken up the status of the thing that only "talented" people do, and it's something you