The Tally.
We keep track of everything.
The Last Psychiatrist
The Last Psychiatrist (TLP) is the eponymous writer of the blog thelastpsychiatrist.com and of the book Sadly, Porn (under the name Edward Teach).
I do not have nearly enough culture to relate to most of it. However, I found some valuable concepts in the blog and the book.
Here, I discuss The Tally. TLP mentioned it quite a bit in his book and quickly so in this post. I think he never actually defined it, and for good reason; this concept is far-reaching.
I don’t care to do it justice here fully; I will only focus on one aspect of it.
Without further ado, let me introduce the Tally.
The Tally.
Definition
There is a core insight behind the Tally.
We can not explicitly keep track of all of our interactions with everything and everyone. Recording and reflecting on all of that would require an intractable amount of time.
Instead, a part of us does it for us—our brain, our subconscious, our emotional regulation system. I am not a neurobiologist or a psychoanalyst, so I am not sure what it is exactly, but there is a part of us that sure tries to keep track of how we feel about everything.
Small stresses, non-confronted, unnoticed even, have a tendency to add up regardless. Long before we establish that things are wrong, they start feeling bad.
When we face an internal contradiction, we start feeling cognitive dissonance, which escalates to monumental cope, breakdowns, or even multiple personas.
We feel some way toward every person we interact with. Every concept, every place, every dish.
We maintain a Tally for each of them. The Tally is the feeling summarising our history of interactions with a person or a thing.
Think of a dish you have eaten more than a couple of times; you know if you like it. Think of someone you have interacted with more than a couple of times; you feel something. Think of your job, of your time before sleeping, of talking to the closest person in your family. You feel some valence.
Observations
The Tally is a feeling.
As a result, like the perception of sound in decibels, the Tally is logarithmic by virtue of the Weber-Fechner law. Something twice as big in real life will have a bigger emotional impact on the Tally, but not twice as big.
The Tally is irrational.
It has many blind spots. It is myopic: it does not take into account the future. It cares too much about what is salient and at the top of our attention. It gives a lot of weight to coincidences.
By default, it is disconnected from our reasoning. Reconciliating it with reasoning requires reflection and introspection. Without such effort, nothing will prevent feeling good about something rationally, obviously bad, and vice versa.
However, for what it’s worth, the Tally is here.
We can not keep explicit track of what everyone around us has been doing and its implications. We are fortunate to have a Tally for free.
Thanks to it, we have a quick summary of how good or bad each person we interact with has been to us, in the form of how we feel about them. This applies to each of our family members, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances.
It just happens, effortlessly. It keeps track of everything that happened and that we have been aware of. That is crazy.
The Nature of the Tally
It is easy to think of the Tally as some strange, unreliable and biased system. A system that must be coerced, tamed and corrected through reason.
But I prefer imagining it as an advanced assistant that always works with us. It constantly feeds us a stream of rich and diverse information, summarising data spanning our entire lives. Not only does it give us a lot of information, but it does it seamlessly.
Of course, no single piece of information is perfect. One should not trust the Tally without thinking about it, without trying to understand its biases, or without reflection.
Still, imagine how life would be without The Tally?
What about TLP?
Ok. I lied.
What I described above is how I, Gabe, understand the Tally.
Let’s be clear, though, that this is certainly not how I remember TLP describing it.
TLP’s writings are very cynical, sad, depressed and accusatory. They feature very little compassion.
It makes sense; he writes about tough topics we lack a good understanding of. Our best attempts are moralising. The Tally is one of them: of course, people will lie to others and themselves about their Tallies. Of course, this will lead to perverse dynamics. Of course, this will feel morally wrong.
Stare at the abyss, and the abyss stares back at you. And TLP has been staring for too long.
Now, let’s talk about TLP’s version of the Tally.
Onto the Dark Side.
TLP’s Tally
Setup
Everything is transactional. In every interaction, there is a winner and a loser, a giver and a taker, a caretaker and a leech, a strong and a weak, a reacher and a settler, a dominant and a submissive, an exploiter and an exploited.
A relationship is but the sum of its interactions. This means that every relationship is transactional, too. People maintain their Tally, and they try to win.
Everyone knows about the Tally and keeps track of it. In a typical psycho-analytic manner, depending on what’s more convenient, people keep track of it either subconsciously or explicitly.
Everyone is afraid of the Tally. Though thinking about it can be useful, it always feels bad. It is deeply anxiety-inducing and self-hate-inducing. Judging people is high stakes, and being judged is even higher stakes.
Observations
Morals say it is better to be the giver. But this is stupid. It is obviously better to be the taker: you extract value from the other party. The dog thinks, “The human feeds me; thus it is my God”. The cat knows, “The human feeds me; thus I am its God”.
Fairness Morality says that the strong should give to the weak.
Morality sucks at describing what is. But it is really good at imposing what it thinks ought. Ergo, in the Fairness Morality game, the optimal strategy is to play the weakest role possible to extract value from the strong.
This might seem far-fetched. But people are very strategic about the Tally. Assholes will do something nice for you, and when you try to thank them or repay them, they say, “Oh no, please don’t worry, it’s no big deal, I don’t think much of it”. Fucking liars. Of course, they keep track of their niceness, if only because everyone keeps track of everything constantly.
If the same person is always doing something nice for others, it is kept track of and adds to the Tally. They directly benefit from it. And if they benefit from it, it makes them more of a winner! By Fairness Morality, it means they should redistribute those benefits to everyone else. This is why they don’t want their good act to be tracked. That way, the act can contribute to their Tally without paying for it. By preventing you from thanking them and stating it’s nothing, they are maintaining their advantage by making it impossible for you to repay the debt.
People are deceitful about the Tally. They constantly lie about what counts and what does not.
When their lies can shape reality, they will shoot down things that others are good at and promote what others suck at.
Else, they will misdirect you. “Of course, beauty is not important; it’s what’s inside that counts.”
People are incredibly deceitful about the Tally. They optimise hard for plausible deniability.
Within their lies, they will sprinkle some tactical self-hurting truths. Those truths are present only so they can later say, “See, I’m not completely selfish! Thus, you can’t expect me to lie solely based on the lie being in my interests.”
People are self-deceitful about the Tally. The best way to deceive someone else starts by deceiving oneself.
Be the taker, and then convince yourself that you are the giver. That way, on top of taking, you can use Equality Morality to pressure the other party into giving you even more because they should not be a leech.
People dislike thinking of themselves as the taker. One strategy is to lie to oneself about it.
Another strategy is to cope. “I am weak, so Fairness Morality says I deserve it!” “They are strong, so they must share.” “They are an asshole, so they deserve to be taken from.” “I will make better use of it than them.” “Giving is being a sucker. I am not a sucker.”
If someone gives too much, they will blow up. One can’t keep on giving and giving. They will feel (and be) abused.
Not only will they pay the price, but also the people close to them, the system that supports them, and everything on their side.
The Tally is always here, always counting.
Conclusion
I like the concept of the Tally.
Unfortunately, discussing its applications is brutal and laden with value judgements.
Regardless, it is a pervasive social dynamic, and there should be some way to discuss it. My trade-off was to start with a more compassionate and mechanistic approach before digging into the psycho-analysis. I’ll try it more and see if I like it.
Cheers, and have a nice day!