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Why Intelligent Men Struggle with Women | The Curse of Intelligence

Channel: Chris Canwell
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZpH6fNB1hs

Intelligent men struggle with women because they treat attraction as a logical problem to solve, but it is emotional, fluid, and reactive - and their intelligence makes them overthink and avoid the risk-taking that dating requires.

Key points

  • Pursuing women is not an intelligent, analytical pursuit - it is emotional, fluid, reactive, and organic. Smart men fail by trying to "figure out the technicals" of game and reverse-engineer women's emotions.
  • The "curse of intelligence" is overthinking: smart men can generate a million reasons a woman will reject them, find them creepy, or not want to sleep with them - so they freeze instead of acting.
  • Successful men with women do the opposite: they do not dwell on rejection reasons, they "shoot their shot," and if it does not work out they move on to the next.
  • The same trait handicaps other areas. The speaker's very intelligent Oxford friend struggles with money because he can imagine every reason an investment will fail (gold, Bitcoin, stocks, the economy collapsing), so he never invests - while the "average Joe" mindlessly dumps money into the market and watches it grow.
  • Humans lean negative, and intelligence amplifies it. He cites loss aversion - a study finding that losing $100 hurts far more than gaining $100 feels good - as why smart people fixate on reasons not to act.
  • Intelligence "destroys risk-taking ability," even for calculated risks. True wisdom, he argues, is being able to take wise, calculated risks and accepting that risk is the nature of life, rather than letting a million objections paralyze you.

Reception

  • Comment volume is low (28 comments); overall the room broadly agrees with the overthinking thesis, often summed up as "life becomes easier when you don't care" (top comment, 44 likes).
  • Recurring framing: perfectionism and analysis-paralysis - "Perfectionism is the reason," "Be perfect on paper = get folded as one," and jokes like "error 404 logic not found."
  • Some push back on whether these men are actually intelligent: "Maybe they just have a narrow set of abilities that works well in academic/career area but nowhere else," and notes that intelligence is generally attractive to women unless paired with social detachment or condescension.
  • The investing claim drew disagreement - commenters said plenty of unintelligent people also lose money in stocks, and that "balls beats brains" in investing.
  • A minority reframe: it is not overthinking but caution - smart men see real risks (untrustworthy partners, ulterior motives, high cost of choosing wrong) and are deliberately picky; one adds high-functioning autism can mean missing social cues.