The Praxeology of the Red Pill

Everything you read on Twitter is not advice.

The Red Pill, in terms of intersexual dynamics, is, and will always be, a praxeology. Ideally, it is unconcerned with value judgments, conscientiousness, or morality. This approach is a hard sell in the age of 45-second TikTok buzz-clips that make the study of “human action, based on the notion that humans engage in purposeful behavior” another cartoon to watch. Sex sells, and intersexual dynamics really sell today. But you must be a student of many interrelated sub-fields to understand how the red pill guy you just watched on some unrelated channel came to “his” opinion of men and women.

I started referring to the Red Pill as a Praxeology around 2014. A commenter on The Rational Male explained how the study of intersexual dynamics neatly fits the definition. Around this time, the Red Pill study/theory of intersexual dynamics became distinct from the practice of pickup artistry and Game. Red Pill was the theory, and Game (really the social skills in relating to women) was the practice. Each is incomplete without the other. However, both are dependent upon accurate and actionable information. The Red Pill as a praxeology is that information. It doesn’t concern itself with best practices. That’s left up to the individual man per his own circumstances.

Nonetheless, developing prescriptions from that data is inevitably where men want to go. Issues of how one interprets the data presented by Red Pill praxeology as right or wrong is an exercise in subjectivity and adapting it to personal beliefs. The Red Pill praxeology should always be about what is – not what should be, not what seems moral, immoral, amoral, or personally expedient.

And that’s where the problems start online today. You cannot relate facts to people without telling them how to feel about them. People come to social media to be told how to live. You simply cannot relate data to people without telling them how to feel about it. If you don’t, they’ll hate you for it. They’re like special needs children with no capacity for abstract thinking. They need a shepherd, and in his absence, they’ll tell you you’re a bastard for not being him.

The Cardinal Rule of Social Media: Never use metaphor, sarcasm, or hyperbole in relating data or wisdom. Twitter abounds with functional autists who can only think in literalism. You can copy and paste a quote from Confucius and plagiarize it as your own pithy wisdom, but if you don’t explain it in such a way that a 3rd grader could understand it, people will readily explain what you mean for you. Truth is the first casualty of the war of Empiricism vs. Emotionalism.

In fact, you can’t relate data or post a link to some interesting research without your intent in posting it being a judgment call. Everyone on social media is an Influencer by default. The bigger your following, the more responsibility you have in telling people how they should feel about what you post.

Adding ideology to the Red Pill distorts the intent of staying as objective as possible.  Praxeology is the study of those aspects of human action that can be grasped a priori; in other words, it is concerned with the conceptual analysis and logical implications of preference, choice, means-end schemes, and so forth. In a praxeological context, the Red Pill is a ‘loose science’ concerned with understanding the underlying motivators of why we do what we do as men and women. It doesn’t get everything right, but it asks the right questions. It’s these questions that make believers uncomfortable. The beauty of The Red Pill as a praxeology is that we get to write those questions and conclusions down in pencil, not ink, to be erased and edited as new information changes them. The Red Pill is not an ideology. Despite what many moralist critics would like to redefine, a Red Pill awareness is an obligation to understand the objective truth about men’s and women’s natures.

What does one do with the data the Red Pill praxeology aggregates? How one interprets that information is up to the individual. The prescriptions we create with this knowledge are always a value call. The real question for men new to the Red Pill is whether they are beginning from a position of value judgment and then seeking to find the Red Pill data that best aligns with that preconception. Or are they starting from a neutral, objective position of interpreting Red Pill data and then forming well-thought, rational prescriptions of best practices for themselves based on that objectivity? Factual truth isn’t always defined by what benefits humanity. It’s often not. 

How we make this information useful is just as important as how we conclude that it should be useful to us. After having written in this sphere for over 20 years, I’ve seen how men use Red Pill awareness to better serve their lives by implementing it or using that awareness to validate their preconceived belief sets. Usually, they do this by cherrypicking the parts that align with those beliefs and discarding or disqualifying the data that conflicts with them.

Rian Stone and I have jokingly referred to ourselves and the research and development department of the Manosphere for over a decade. When the latest red pill pretender makes a loud noise on social media, Rian and I are the ones who have to clean up their mess. It’s been said that the amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude greater than to produce it. To date, Rian and I have been the only praxeologists with the consistent energy to refute the bullshit. 

Rian once called the Red Pill praxeology the Chilton Manual for intersexual dynamics. Chilton Manuals were model and make-specific handbooks that auto mechanics used to identify parts and processes to repair cars. We’ve forgotten about them in the digital age, but everything about that car, from the smallest lug nut to the biggest engine block, would be detailed in that manual. The Chilton Manual doesn’t care what you think about the car’s design. Nor does it bother debating how best to repair or drive the vehicle. It only details what that car is. The Chilton Manual is a perfect praxeology. It’s up to the mechanic to use this manual to the best effect.

The problem with the praxeology that is the Red Pill is that the manual is still incomplete. It gets better and more accurate every year, but portions of the manual are still fuzzy. Some systems could be better defined, but the manual is still complete enough to form predictive frameworks. You can actually use it to your own best effect. Perhaps there are better ways to repair the car, but the mechanic can reliably improve it and drive it, far better than trying to guess what the parts are and where they go without the Chilton Manual.