Irrationality in sailboats, drinking coffee and dealing with women

The return of Manly Thor's Day
Sailboats
Sailing dinghies move faster when they are sailed upright; sailors say when they are "sailed flat". The odd thing is that when you let them heel over they make more noise and a bigger wake going through the water and the whole enterprise feels riskier. Sailing flat feels calm and controlled, sailing with the boat over on its ear feels exciting. As a consequence, it can be very hard to convince people who are learning to race to sail their boats flat.

And people continue to resist the lesson even in the face of strong evidence. That is, even when other boats that are being sailed flat keep passing them on the race course they will continue to allow their boats to heel. When I used to be a racing coach this was a curse. You could tell someone and show them over and over again and they would stubbornly resist.

But you can understand it because their senses, as I say, seem to be telling them different. When you are on a boat and a gust hits and it heels it feels fast. And the boat does, in fact, accelerate when this happens. But boats that are kept flat accelerate even faster. But it isn't irrational to like to sail heeled over or, rather, it is an understandable kind of irrationality.

Coffee
Something that is the mirror image of that happens with coffee. People's seemingly rational sense overcomes their immediate experience. 

Over the years I've had constant compliments on my coffee. This is odd because I don't deserve any of them. My secret? Assuming it's worthy of the name secret, it is that I buy coffee I like and don't buy coffee I don't like.

The secret as any coffee aficionado in the world will unhesitatingly tell you—so you don't have to take just my word for it—is that dark roast coffee tastes better than medium or light roast. This difference is amplified because only the best beans will stand for a darker roast so any good coffee company will save the best beans for the dark roasts and use the average to mediocre beans on the lighter roasts. But even if a conscientious roaster were to use only the best beans for all types of roasts, the dark roast coffees would still taste better. That isn't all there is to it. You have to buy good quality coffee from a reliable supplier and you have to make it right but neither of these tricks are difficult.

So when people are over drink the coffee here and say things like, 'Your coffee is so good, what's your secret?' answering their question ought to be a matter of simply telling them to buy better, which is to say, darker roast, coffee. But telling them that never does any good.

The problem is they just don't see themselves as a dark roast people. They define themselves as fine, discerning people who could appreciate a milder things. To them a dark roast drinker is someone who needs a heavy hit just to notice. And their experience seems to confirm this because they tell themselves they don't like dark roast and any time they knowingly drink dark roast, their "experience" seems to confirm this. 'Tastes burnt,' they say derisively.

But when they come to my house, they are just handed a cup of they-know-not-what and they take a sip and love it. I had a dear friend who would repeat this experience every year and every time I showed her the bag, she say, "That's strange, I usually don't like dark roast."

How does this apply to a man's life?
Let me hit you with something rather incorrect: Women want you to take the lead in social interactions.  Print that out and paste it to your shaving mirror or whatever. It's irrational in both the above senses to pretend otherwise.

Again, it's so easy to let your immediate experience or your sense of self overcome this. It feels more daring to let her take the lead. It's like being in a heeled over boat; it feels slightly out of control.

But see it from her perspective.  All you are giving her is uncertainty. She knows you find her attractive. Or at least she knows that you have told her this and tried to show her this. But you haven't acted. That's the proof in the pudding.

But there is a double irrationality here because it is also like drinking mild coffee. It fits our sense of ourselves as sensitive caring guys to not take the lead. In real life this tells the woman that we have no idea how to read her. Usually, on the odd occasions when we do acknowledge our weakness, we prefer instead to describe what is happening as a fear of rejection. But rejection isn't that bad (I'll say more about this next week). It's actually quite easy to deal with. What scares the crap out of us is to realize that we can't read the signals she is sending us.

I wish I could tell you I wasn't guilty of exactly the irrationality I describe here myself. What I can tell you is that every time I've shaken myself out of it, the results have been positive.

You don't have to take just my word for it. Read this too.