The Simple Robotic Formula That All Total Jerks Use

When asked what he found most astonishing in the universe, Einstein supposedly said “compound interest,” in other words, recursion, returning output as input, folding interest back into capital.

Recursion is my obsession. Everything I write relates to recursion one way or another.

Jerks are my obsession, too, and not just because they ruin everything, but because they thrive on the manipulation of recursion.

The jerk mantra is “I know you are, but what am I?” Jerks automatically fold your criticism back into you. They’re like recursion rubber by making you recursion glue. If you say they’re arrogant, they’ll turn the tables and say, “no, you’re arrogant.”

That’s how they maintain their pose as infallible moral authorities. It’s what makes them Teflon: Whatever you throw at them bounces off them and sticks to you. They achieve this by the simple exploitation of one-way recursion. They get to fold your criticism back on you; you don’t get to fold criticism back on them. They do it automatically, based not on what words mean but on their connotation. If a word sounds negative (e.g. arrogant), it’s about others, not them.

They reverse their unidirectional recursion for terms with positive connotations. If someone says they should be humbler, they’ll automatically declare themselves the most humble person ever. This is self-reported self-flattery, recursion toggled the opposite way. “I’m a good person” is recursion, folding your flattering impression of yourself back into yourself.

Jerks thus use recursion selectively, toggling automatically to demote others and elevate themselves.

And if you call them on it, they’ll just re-exploit recursion again: “I’m a hypocrite? No you are!” “I should be more fair and balanced? I’m the most fair and balanced person ever! No, you should be more fair and balanced!”

People make a vague distinction between jerks and total jerks, often using “total jerk” to mean simply that someone is especially frustrating.

I think there’s more to the distinction than that. Total means absolute. We’re all jerks sometimes. Sometimes it’s actually good to be a jerk to someone.

That’s recursion, too. Though some people say that kindness and generosity solve everything, fold that back in on itself and you get “be kind and generous to unkind and ungenerous people,” which is at odds with imposing consequences on total jerks.

Being a total jerk corrupts absolutely. Absolute means impervious, impenetrable, and incorrigible in the original sense—absolutely uncorrectable.

Tolstoy famously wrote that “All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Applied to total jerks, I’d reverse it: All decent people are decent in their own way, but all total jerks are alike.

Look around the world. Apparently, there are many ways to be a decent person. Total jerks all the same, no matter what they brand their moral authority to.

Why are they all the same? Because once you’ve become a total jerk you never have to care about anything ever again. You can run on automatic, and your mind is free to atrophy.

With total jerks, it’s always the same BS, just different branding. It’s the same BS because it’s this selectively toggled application of recursion: “What you say negatively about me is about you. What I say positively about me is about me.”

To understand this simple recipe is a first step toward dealing with total jerks. It will immunize you against taking their criticism of you to heart and defending your honor to them. They only pretend to care about honor.

Understanding what’s going on with them will increase your skill and swiftness in diagnosing total jerks and increase your skill in deciding when to walk away from them and when to get up in their face, making them pay the consequences for being total jerks.

Understanding their formula also suggests ways for making them pay the consequences for being total jerks: Ignore their moralizing attacks and focus only on their robotic formula. The formula is all they need and all they’ve got. Their powers of introspection have atrophied. They don’t need it.

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Of course, when you expose their formula, they’ll robotically reply, “I know you are but what am I?” to which you can simply reply, “There they go again.” You need a formula to counter their formula. Your formula is to expose their formula again and again. Since their minds have atrophied, they’ll keep exploiting their simpleton formula, which you can continue to expose until they walk away or give up disappointed that their formula didn’t work on you. That’s how to impose consequences on total jerks.

Exploiting the total jerk, recursion-toggling formula is so easy anyone can do it. And it’s fun. If one can get away with it, playing God is so much easier than being a decent human. It’s our civic duty to keep total jerks from getting away with it.

Here’s a four-minute video on the formula: