If the math-centric metaphor of factoring your goals (like factoring out primes) doesn't land for you, may I suggest my personal replacement metaphor: "The Alambic of Desires." An alambic is one of the complicated glass devices you envision in a lab, used to distill liquids, in other words, to split into the parts that make it up. I have a (MidJourney created) painting with a heart shaped alambic on my wall to remind me that this technique is available to me.

I was behind the curve on COVID, but the Seattle Rationalists are my tribe, so the social cognition I got from them had me leading the pack with the other groups I interact with (ie. pushing my company to start work-from-home earlier, and getting extended family to cancel large family events).

This feels like a bad faith nit-pick. If we taboo the word "society", you and Scott obviously agree on the sorts of structures that used to exist -- the kinds that exist among most/all primates -- in which the people today who struggle may have easily found a place and a role and acceptance, and you both agree that the kinds of social structures that don't do a good job of making life feel meaningful for these people are pretty new compared to the timeline of modern humans.

Taboo the word, replace it with the idea, and see if you still disagree.

Now for me to exercise good faith and strong-man your argument.

"Hey Scott, I like your idea overall, but worry that using the word "Society" may be too general of a term, and may cause confusion -- since most primates and even ants have societies -- so what you're talking about here is narrower than that. I don't know if there's a better word or term you could use throughout, or if one clarifying remark could avoid that pitfall, but I think it may be worth a small edit. Thank you."

The latest data I read was that it averages 1 mutation every other transmission. I don't know how this compares to other viruses, but with 7 and a half million confirmed cases, that's a lot of mutations (running in parallel).

I'm curious if you'd reprimand both friends if two of your friends kissed, escalated, and then had sex, both enthusiastically, but without any verbal consent in either direction. (Obvious conclusion I'm jumping to: that we generally mean that men must get consent, even if we state that it goes both ways.)

Now I want to play a game where every card has at least one weak option, or I can let my opponent choose which strong effect I get. This would probably work best where only one card (or other action, such as in a worker placement game) is played per turn.