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Talk/discussion goncharenko centre 2025-4-6: Making the best choices in life + small party and choice of topic to talk about

This talk will be in 2 parts:
Part 1: I want to go over a few things that we didn't have time for the previous talk.Last time we did a full translation for everything which meant a lot of time was needed for that. This time I will hand out a machine translation, it will be like watching a film with subtitles :) There will be only occasional translation, when it is really needed (ask if something is not clear).
Part 2: we will have a little party + talk about any topic that you find interesting. This means part 2 is not organised, it will be mostly about those attending talking and giving their views, and then we can translate everything when needed as we will simply see how far we will come with the topics given, or just 1 topic, and then next time another topic from the list.

I and Vlad are still experimenting with what works well, also related to the English level of attendees.

Part 1: Continuing the talk from 2025-3-30: Making the best choices in life

I want to go over a few things in more detail from last time, so I will reiterate some important matters first:

• Know what you want: If you don't know what you really want, then you can't make yourself happy! Ask yourself: "What do I want? What is important to me?".
• Be aware of your personality: What behaviour in others is unacceptable, how do you respond?
• Become more self-aware by analysing your own thoughts: You can start by thinking about everything you see: A car in the street, is it going left, straight ahead, or right? You can deduce this from small movements, placement on the road, and of course once indicators are used you get a confirmation. You can also try to predict what people are going to say at some points, in a film or a documentary. The more self awareness you have, the better you can choose what makes you happy in life.
• Know other people: Everything that stands out is an indicator of personality.
• Know other people: Are they trustworthy? Are they anti-social? These are very important factors in deciding how to deal with them.
• You need to take action if you want change in your life! Try to use the method I gave in talk 1 to eliminate worrying, anger, regrets.
  [ Method: (1) repeat that all of those are not useful, each time you worry or have regrets or feel that something is a 'problem', then (2) this becomes an automatism and after that (3) your feeling starts to change). If you don't try that then there will be no change or only very slowly. ]
• Making decisions: Decisions should be made based on the situation, on your personality + what you want to achieve, the personality of other people or businesses involved, then by thinking ahead what the consequences would be of your choice. See also "non-violent discussions" (based on empathy) vs my method of "trying to get to the truth and thinking ahead" in the previous talk (sections 5.1 - 7).

Recognising the personality of people: A few examples of essentials

As to recognising people, someone questioned whether my view of the guy whose wife was using birth control pills (previous talk/discussion), was correct. Well, yes, I am sure about that. I am usually quite quick about seeing the essential points but not everything, it can take a bit longer to realise some essential parts but the basic personality is usually clear pretty quickly.

Example 1: Interview with 'kitboga'

Example 1 is a video in which a guy interviews 'kitboga', that is the nickname a guy uses on youtube for his anti-scam videos. These deal with a phenomenon that goes on especially in the USA with people from India pretending to call from Microsoft for computer security or something like that, but who want to get money, and they pretend to fix something, using remote access, on your computer. I knew what this interviewer was like, well, the most important part, almost immediately.

Video: "Talking about Sociopathy ft. Kitboga", channel: "HealthyGamerGG": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv-gxF7qoOI, the text in red is the interviewer:

1. Facial expressions by the interviewer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv-gxF7qoOI&t=35s (00:35) up to 1:40 facial expressions

0:35: [ 'Kitboga' ]: "I play a grandma character, or I do all the characters, I try to be like a grandfather and they would say something like "if you don't go to the store and buy me a gift card I will come to your house and shoot you"
0:50 There is a death threat against 'kitboga' but there is no facial expression from the interviewer about this!
1:18 - 1:20 The interviewer is mirroring smiling by 'Kitboga' (mirroring = copying the expression on the face of the person to whom they talk)
1:25-1:40 The interviewer shows facial expressions that are meaningless. Probably a result of trying to show some facial expressions instead of an expressionless face, but they are not appropriate.

2. Section in which 'kitboga' tries to keep the talk going himself, to not have any 'awkward' pauses, interviewer then asks meaningless question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv-gxF7qoOI&t=1608s (26:48) up to 29:14

26:48 'kitboga' talks about lying. He lies to scammers, and is that bad? Of course not.
[ 27:55 here the interviewer could have jumped in with some thoughts/feedback, he didn't do that ]
Interjection: 28:11 [-Interviewer ] "hm hm"
Interjection: 28:43 [-Interviewer ] "sure"
From 26:48 up to 29:12 those are the only comments, which is not normal in conversation. The interviewer essentially lets kitboga talk a short monologue in this section...
Now to the end of this section which is also interesting:
29:06 [ 'Kitboga' ] "I don't want to say for the greater good" [ so the purpose of 'lying' ]
29:12 [-Interviewer ] "why don't you want to use that?", - 29:14 This is a pointless superficial question. This shows that he doesn't think along because of no empathy... All of the interviewer's questions are emotionally detached...

3. About manipulation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv-gxF7qoOI&t=1940s (32:20)

32:20: [ 'Kitboga' ]: It feels wrong.
[-Interviewer ]: "I disagree but let's talk about that for a second. why does it make you feel uncomfortable."
[ 'Kitboga' ]: "maybe it feels wrong. it feels like a bad, like, oh yeah, I can control people like it feels er, like a bad guy in a movie would be saying."
[-Interviewer ]: "yeah"
[ 'Kitboga' ]: "I can control people"
[-Interviewer ]: "You know kit, who else can control, can control people?" - 32:43

STOP. What is he going to say?

At this point I knew what he was going to say: That he can manipulate people. And from watching some earlier parts of the video (I skip-watched) I already thought that he is a psychopath because of no real facial expression (all his facial expressions are fake or 'mirrored') and that the conversation doesn't flow, Kitboga has to keep talking in some places to keep the conversation going, otherwise there would have been silence which he obviously realised and thus continued talking...

32:44: there's a lot of jokes that I want to say but, uh,
me,
no, ok,
so I can do that. so a lot of times you know on stream, I'm capable of bringing people in a particular way and I I choose to use my power for good instead of evil but like I'm I can I mean so I have a skill to essentially like shape the behavior and perceptions of other human beings.

Yeah, no! He has no skill. He can only abuse people's nature, he cannot actually control people because he doesn't have the emotional intelligence. And yes, that is a real thing. When I was 15 or so in school I thought that that was BS, something not important, something that people who don't have a high IQ, stated as being important to feel better about themselves or for others (the latter is what I call 'narcissism by proxy'). Actually I am still sure that one of the latter 2 is mostly what goes on, but at the same time 'emotional intelligence' is actually also very important, and not just in interactions with people. I realised that much later when I started analysing people's thinking and to analyse in particular why people don't reason logically, especially autists.

Such people I recognize almost instantly from their face.

Example 2: A plumber in the Netherlands

Example 2: A plumber in the Netherlands: In December 2021 I asked a plumber to come have a look and give an estimate to replace some heating pipes + to connect to 3 radiators.

QUESTION: When he came in I saw his half smile. Do you know what this means?

Answer: It is typical one for manipulators, or of anti-social people who want to try to hide their personality (which is typically a near blank face, no facial expressions)...

Here is a good example of a half smile, from a psychopath Patric Gagne: Duckduckgo image search: Patric Gagne she looks a lot like an actress I dated years ago in Kiev, same face, same fixed facial expression, and the most selfish and anti-social woman I ever met...

I estimated that a fair price would be ca. 400-500 euros. He came with a 'helper' and said they would both do it and it would take 1 day, and cost more than 1000 euros + VAT. Internally I said "I am not going to pay that.". He then wanted to see my heating system and said something was not up to specification. I said "It was installed by professionals, it is their responsibility". He was trying to make me agree to let him do more work.
Instead of paying him a lot, I loaned a tool to bend pipes, I practised that on the old pipes, installed new pipes. It took me quite a few days, but I was only busy with finishing house renovations, so I could add that. The only reason I wanted to hire a plumber was because I was tired of the whole renovation process.

Knowing from where come differences in people: From society, upbringing, built-in?

The obvious big difference is men-women but you can also look at interests, hobbies, education level etc. I will go over a few factors and then look at women and men:

Factors:

• Genetics: group, man or woman, intelligence etc.
• Built-in personality
• Family (personalities of parents, their education level, how they raise their children),
• school (level, types such as religious or public without religion), background of people),
• area in which you live (low vs higher income is usually low vs higher education which means different language level etc. and that influences how you talk, language errors that you make).
• country

Interest in sports: Who of the women are interested in sports? Does anyone think the difference in interest of men and women in sports comes from upbringing?

Who is interested in cosmetics, make up? I suppose none of the men? :) Does anyone think this difference in interest comes from upbringing?

Who is interested in cars? I suppose many men are interested, but I am not. Interest in cars is related to interest in technology and performance, speed. I am very competitive, but I have zero interest in cars because they are noisy and not very useful for my life style. I never needed one in the Netherlands (though it could have been useful now and then to transport things).

Women are generally not interested in sports which was clear to me in primary and secondary school. But still there is professional women's sports. You could ask: Why? What do you think?

Example of something from built-in factors: Men looking beside the person to whom they talk

I watched a video about a month or 2 ago about a woman having written/researched about sexuality, psychology etc., and she told her view on what is the reason that men tend to look beside their wives or girlfriends about deep topics (and with other men too) and still they consider it a good talk. For women they want to look into your eyes and want that you look to them, not beside them. She thought this was from evolution: The need to keep looking out of the steppes or savannah for say a zebra to kill for food. What do you think?

It is nonsense, I know this from 1) thinking about it, so to determine what factors there could be, and using a "what if" method: What if that theory is true, what would be the consequences? And then 2) I thought back to an experience of mine.

How people sabotage their own happiness

I was influenced a bit in sadness though not in being unhappy, from writing down and using the experiences in my past as examples. They are good examples, but I feel "Why did it all need to go this way?". But that is not like really being unhappy which can be caused by people getting stuck in feelings of 'defeatism', 'sadness', or even the feeling of not wanting to do things in a certain way as I suggested with the following friends:

Examples:

• 'L' from Zhytomyr: I offered her the opportunity to start a business with me, I would put up all the money, we can decide on how to share any profits, she would have to deal with certain issues because I don't speak Ukrainian and I didn't have a residence permit... At first she thought it was a great opportunity. The a week or so later she thought that I was using her... How? If you have concerns about money and work splitting, discuss them! The result is that she threw away a friendship and an opportunity to start a business together where all the initial capital would be put in by me. She will likely never get such an opportunity again...
• 'M' from Kharkov: I offered her a similar opportunity. Instead of accepting and stating her terms, she insulted me...

Why not cooperate and accept help? Trying to do everything your own way is not useful in many cases.

Part 2: Party! ;-)

Some Dutch candies, Ukrainian sosnovy kvas, tea, targun, Zhvichik apple, Ukrainian candies.

There was no part 2 in talk as I prepared a little, instead talk about other topics.

Copyright W.H.Scholten, 2025. To contact me you can email or send a message via telegram (via phone +31648816383), viber, or via vk.com (https://vk.com/w.h.scholten, which I don't really use but I will get notified of messages from there). I don't use: facebook, linkedin, twitter.