Depending on your definition, this actually is not peak performance.

Subways are.

Obviously, the tunnels are absurdly expensive, but nothing moves as many people as quickly around a city as a subway.

They’re also extremely reliable, meaning people are even more likely to actually use them, and their above-ground footprint is essentially zero.

This isn’t about guys’n’gals.

This is simpky about how people work:

If your peers (friends, colleagues, family) have an opinion (any opinion), their default expectation is that you share that opinion - this is what being a peer is mostly about.

You can demonstrate solidarity by agreeing - this is virtually always the safe option.

You can demonstrate backbone by disagreeing - this can generate respect or animosity.

You can refuse to weigh in - this is mostly a middle ground between the two above.

How it actual shakes out in reality will depend on a myriad of factors, many of which you’re not even consciously aware of.

Thus, this random internet stranger can give you only three pieces of advice:

• Trust your instincts on how to handle this. Your subconscious is very well wired to navigate social situations as best as possible.

• If you ever change your opinion or “change your opinion”, announce it clearly and give/make up a reason. People disrespect people who are inconsistent, but they respect people who can admit to mistakes / learn.

• Sometimes, you can’t win. Sometimes, someone will be pissed off, no matter what you do. It’s no fault of yours, some situations are just not salvageable to begin with.

The ability to extrapolate what something would taste/feel like from mere looks is a learned one.

Toddlers don’t have it yet, which is why they’re stuffing everything into their mouths.

You might not consciously remember licking a carpet, but the part of you that’s holding up the “dusty”, “textured” and “CRUMBS!!” signs does.

I had something vaguely similar happen to me.

We got called out of the line for a manual luggage inspection because, as a surprisingly bored security agent informed us, X-ray showed a knife of about a foot length in our luggage.

We had no idea what they were talking about.

We were half-way through unpacking the whole pack when my SO lit up and asked “could it be my ice skates?”

Agent took a look at the X-ray, nods, and lets us pack it back up without any further checking.

Overall, turned out harmlessly, but the sheer confusion of where that supposed knife had come from, combined with how blasé that security person was about the whole affair from start to finish stuck in my mind.

Alien intelligence is not required to follow human reasoning.

The Lords of Alpha Centauri could run a long-term social engineering program on Earth because they believe capitalism, conflict and social darwinism are objectively Good for You and we need to be purged of the folly of humanistic ideology before we can be allowed to join the galactic civilization market.

Or because they find our struggles entertaining.

What I can tell you is that no rational spacefaring civilization would need to resort to social engineering if they just want to kill us. Just toss a bit (or a lot) of spare delta v on a sufficiently large asteroid (or five) and humanity goes the way of the dinosaur.

(Different story if they want us dead, but want to make it look like suicide because of the space police.)

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/happiness-spigot

Best summary to this topic I’ve ever seen.

Hypothesis: what matters here is a social toolbox for engaging with “attractive”/compatible women in a non-romantic/sexual way.

I.e. someone who, even as a teenager, had lots of female friends, is likely to have a learned how to deal with them as persons, beyond “I’d like to hit that”.

(Paradoxically, such a person is more likely to find a romantic partner, because they might have lots of M-F acquaintances/friendships that can potentially become something more.)

Someone who never learned that, can only interact with (to them) attractive women through the lens of “I’d like to hit that”, which has a much higher risk of ending in failure.

If someone in the second category was always raised on the values of romantic success being a requirement for a non-failed life, and possibly with a touch of chauvinism/misogyny, they might wind up caught up in a frustrating loop of failure.

This is how incels can happen.