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Episode 117: Cost-benefit of displays, directing esteem cues, evo psych of economics, internet trolls, and
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all right good evening everybody it's Neji here live along with dr. Doug Lyall dr. Weil how you doing today good guy let yourself fall as well yeah as well all right today we've got a pretty extensive topic about morality a little bit about altruism and if we can get to it some thing about free will and so we're going to try to run through this as quick as possible but the big question came up you know a lot of my friends have been asking the picked the the fans of the beat your jeans podcast phase of the group have asked a few times here and there but people want to know the story the evolutionary psychology scoop the Doug download on altruism and the question is as follows dr. Lisle what makes certain people do more for others than they would for themselves there's some people who are so willing to help friends and extended family members but yet aren't as willing to go out of the way to help their own family some of these people are married and have children and it always seems that they were more concerned with how other people are raising their children how sad children are being treated instead of focusing on what's going on at home it's like a really great a giving advice to others and just are more interested in having them live a better life but can't utilize and apply that same life advice to themselves does this actually occur am i miss perceiving it and if so why do people do this this is great okay I just glad this question before we started that I didn't I didn't read all the way through this is a thing of beauty yes you are witnessing a real phenomenon and it's a it's got a much wider application than just the situation that you're looking at it's what we're seeing is that each individual has their own personal cost-benefit analysis that they're running on on their life's two genders and so each individual is in fundamentally in conflict with all other individuals so parents are fundamentally in conflict with their children so let's let's look and see why that would be let's suppose the husband and wife have a couple kids so we would think that oh well isn't it wouldn't a good parent be one that would you know be giving everything they could to their two kids no because the parent is actually designed by nature the the wiring of that parent is designed to optimize their survival reproductive success which is to say that you know a certain amount of time and attention goes to those two kids and then we want to do so have some sex so because we're going to want to continue to reproduce so the kids would just say hey look we just and you guys never have sex again so guess what we don't want the the door shut on the bedroom and we don't want you know we want to be able to crawl in bed with you and that's how it we want it okay so even though these individuals have reviewed the two children share 50% of their DNA with each of those parents the truth is is that all parties in this are in disagreement as to what would be the optimal behavioral outcomes for the group so literally all four parties are in disagreement and the thing is is that if they're in disagreement why don't they fly apart well people's relationships do fly apart when they believe they've got better alternatives with other people to to have a cooperative action and that they can get better deals so the parents will split up if they think they can get a sexier fancier more accommodating or more resourceful and less conflictual partner that will take place the children will leave home and never come back if they feel like that they that they have a lousy deal in the relationship with the parents the the two the two brothers can enable one of them will kill the other way if the cost/benefit is such that they perceive that to be of their best interest in other words everything is being analyzed through cost-benefit analysis and everybody's in conflict now the question is is the just because we're in conflict doesn't mean we're fighting or arguing it just means that there are inherent conflicts because from my perspective my DNA is the mode important thing on earth okay and even if you're my very best friend that makes your DNA the second most important DNA on earth not the first and there's going to be conflicts of interest with you know resource management allocation decisions that are going to get us into conflict and essentially what we're going to find out is that we're going to need to cooperate so we are going to be making essentially you know we're going to have a rhythm and a process of cooperation and anticipated cooperation that over time we're going to try to reach an equilibrium where where it's as stable as possible where people feel like they're getting it you know as good a deal as they can get and yet the deal is secured so that the other person is still willing to stay so that's what's going on so so now we're going to go into a family and we're let's suppose we've got I don't know a boyfriend and a girlfriend and then this guy you know it's not like he's made of money but he goes into a bar and and you know at the end of the night you know he's got a habit of buying everybody around two drinks and it infuriates the girlfriend okay so and the reason is he doesn't have enough disposable income to get her a nice pair of shoes but he's got enough disposable income to buy you know to take care of a $700 bar bill so what's going on there what's going on is that they have a conflict of interest over what's what's in everybody's best interest for her she wants a nice pair of shoes because she wants to display her sexual attractiveness may be mostly directed at him plus a course of a couple of Plan B strategies that she's not tell him about and she would like those resources and she thinks it's reasonable given the fact that she's given him access to her sexuality and meanwhile he's thinking you know what I want to kind of advertise to the bar that I've got excess resources that I would spend on females to see what other females I could dredge up okay so we see that they have a conflict of interest so in the same way that a person who is the great the great family man or or women that you can see that they could essentially be grandstanding to the village about how wise and patient and what a great parent or partner or teller etcetera they would be and how concerned they are with other people and how altruistic they are with their time and energy basically grandstanding what a great mate or friend or trading partner that they are and they are willing to take resources that could be used in the relationships in their close relationships and extend those out to other relationships in order to increase their personal esteem holding that's what they're doing okay so we've all seen situations like this and and that they all have a certain degree of discomfort but understanding let's suppose that you you've got a family and you've invited another family over for dinner and there's it turns out that you know mom actually cut it a little thin on making the roast beef okay you know I'm a vegetarian so but it doesn't matter I'm Erin's weren't okay so mom mom cut it a little thin so when I go into the kitchen my big sister tells me hey don't take any more roast beef because we got to make sure there's enough for the guests okay so there's a conflict of interest like I'm thinking well what do I care about those guests or no friends of mine like I don't even like those people a guy they're not they're not being nice particularly nice to me they're their son as brat like what do I care I want another piece of roast beef okay but I'm reading the signals and I'm feeling the social pressure that that dad and mom are trying to maintain their status with these other people okay or and mom might very be very direct and give me a look okay so incidentally this never happened and I think like to be Karen Cator my my dad didn't have any friends dad was a lot like that wood gold ever like yeah you know what what do I need a friend for I've got one or two so anyway the bottom line is is that that this is the situation that the person observing so each individual is running their own cost-benefit analysis on their own personal best interest that best interest most definitely has conflicts within their own family and within their closest romantic relationships and their closest friendships okay how it is that those conflicts are are adjudicated depends on a variety of factors depends upon the nature of the cost-benefit analysis that they run which which means not only you know their own confidence in replacing those existing relationships but also their personality etc etc so you can imagine and this is why people are sensitive in relationships to signals like this so this is why in fact one of my favorite romantic puzzles that people heard me talk about is the love triangle in Casablanca which you know if nobody's ever seen it this this movie is a masterpiece in my judgment not that I'm some film critic but it I just think it's magnificent and I've seen it now probably six or seven times and every time I see it I just it takes my breath away about the ingenuity of these artists and pulling this thing off we I'm Casablanca before we see I feel pretty the reason you go that's right or after or whatever I'm not sure which but the bottom line is is that the love triangle is the great you know your European hero Victor Laszlo is leading the resistance against the Nazis Rick is is the is the bar owner that is sitting on the sidelines and an Ilsa is the the great beauty who is married to Laszlo but it's a secret marriage and the underground keep her safer and she believes that he has he is dead and and she takes up a romance with with Rick and so as this plays out you know it's it's one of the greatest performances of a love triangle you're that you will ever see and as it plays out we see that that down in her gut Rick played by Bogart is sexier than Lazlo now Lazlo is taller he's handsome he's charismatic as hell he's a wonderful human being but he's not as sexy as Rick and of course we could chalk this up to animal instincts pheromones and everything else into the Sun but I believe that you know through brilliant artistry the people that wrote directed and acted this came up with a big reason why this is true even though they don't put their finger on it and they may not have be likely did not consciously identify it but they feel it and they play it and that is you get from Rick's signaling to Ilsa is that she's the most important thing in the world and that the whole damn world could burn down around them and he would save her and everybody else could go to help whereas Laszlo is clearly showing the world that that he is out to spend his energies in saving the world and he although he loves Ilsa that is second okay so this is the person that wrote this question is if we look deeply into this conflict we are seeing Victor Laszlo no Victor Laszlo is an extraordinarily admirable character we actually admire the sacrifices that he's doing but at home Ilsa is like damn I'm not that happy okay I can't object to what a magnificent man this is but it's it's not directed at me it's not in my des interest he is grandstanding his magnificent to bolt the men and the women of the world and that doesn't do me a lot of good okay whereas rick is all about Ilsa and so that that is uh that's the nature of the conflict that that is captured beautifully in Casablanca and it's the con flicked about how it's playing out of the question it plays out in all all relationships all the time and so we are unconsciously taking the temperature of the esteemed dynamic how much do they value me how high am I in their hierarchy and therefore what signals are they sending in terms of the cost-benefit analysis that they are running with respect to what my needs and interests are versus what needs an interest for other third parties that they could serve in order to win a steam with them so that is the that is the long analysis of what's taking place and you we are right to smell a rat and be upset and have our feelings hurt when we hear when we start seeing energies directed at parties and not us and we're feeling it you know in an insecure deficiency situation that that is that is not an accident and it is not it is not likely to be a distortion all right fantastic would you would you would you think that there is a measurable correlation between personality characteristics that tend to do this more than others for example if somebody out more disagreeable would they want to be displaying more often than someone who's agreeable probably yeah because III it's interesting that's good it's good thinking I would assume that that would be true because the disagreeable person would be willing to put up with the conflict of interest close to home that they would be they would be getting signals from their partner that would be saying hey how come how come you're directing resources outside and their attitude would be I'm going to do it okay I'm going to do it anyway and so there's now it isn't that I haven't seen very agreeable people do that I have but I think statistically we're going to find that that would be likely to be the case fantastic all right all right is there a dog download on altruism further than this discussion well certainly certainly there there is item we could we could go further but let's let's not wind it out tonight this goal goes to monkeys scratching each other's back and picking picking worms out of each other side and how this essentially evolved out of delayed reciprocal agreements in animal grooming behavior and so will will I don't feel like winding that out tonight will wind it out another night all right fantastic well we actually have two callers online now so okay why don't we get to first one then the second one and then we can go on down with questions if we need so when I welcome Kate from Seattle Kate welcome to the show thank you okay hi dr. Lyle I'll just tell you the situation and then maybe you can address whatever points you think you can then I have two sons one a 17 and one is 14 my 17 year old was was a tough kid to raise he was oppositional defiant and hyperactive and I stayed home for 13 years I gave up my career to raise him and then my younger said son had different health issues and my 17 year old in the last four years he's totally turned around and is just a dream he's just a magnificent young man and I feel just super impressed with him my 14 year old he had trouble hearing until he was like four and a half and he has different allergies and constitutional growth delays so he'll reach puberty and his maximum height a little later than other kid and he has were were moving out of a private school and going into public mostly because were out of money but who knows maybe it'll be better for him anyways because they do have special lid and so one of the one of the things we're trying to figure out is should we have him or p-8 grade because that would give him help with the basics and help them give him more time to mature and some some have said yes you know whatever you can do to help him be ready for high school and then but the stronger voice is saying no especially if he doesn't want to which he doesn't - he definitely wants to go with the rest of his class into high school let the IET do that work with the academics and then if he needs to take an extra year to graduate given that extra year and because that shadow that shadow of having been held back will make him feel stupid and be a cloud over his head and he'll never change his mind but you know he'll always feel bad about that and and so we're trying to sort that out and and I'm trying to figure out what will really help him because I've always tutored him in math and then we have other tutors for different subjects and and then at the same time I'm panicky because we didn't contribute to our retirement the whole time that I was a stay at home mom and I'm back in the workforce but it's I really had to start at the bottom and and so I'm at a point where I could take a different job that is a little bit higher pressure but it but it would be less stress on the financial side because I'd be making more money and and so I'm trying to just kind of figure out the best strategy going forward and then I'm also emotionally sometimes when there's parents that are around and they've got super high achiever kids I'm always I feel guilty that I feel bad that my kid is struggling so much and so I don't know what are some of your thoughts well my first thought is that so he's coming from a private school he finished eighth grade in the private school yeah okay and how is he now he and it sounds to me like he's he's headed for given where his what his issues have been he's headed for a special ed kind of a situation definitely in special ed yeah okay like easier classes math there's going to be no language arts yeah there's going to be a bunch of accommodating okay the and and so I guess another question that I want to make clear on so I'm not sure how you were financial issues and job stuff concerns factored into this at all to explain that to me again because I'm not clear yeah partly because I feel like my focus needs to be on making money and getting my career on track I feel like I'm 50 and it's getting harder and harder to compete with the younger younger generation and if I don't put my sole efforts into it I'm I won't be able to make up for all that time that I was you know didn't wasn't putting away in savings and right stop investing so much time in his and tutoring him at night you know all my energy goes into that and right but then I feel guilty but then I feel like well is it going to help him is it really going to help him succeed in life and we got it what's the best thing to do got it got it okay now I think I get the picture okay so here are my thoughts about this the my thoughts are that you're your child's success in life does not depend upon at what moment he hits a given milestone okay so it makes no difference at all so the point is and the little official milestones like when you graduated from high school and etc these are meaningless they don't have any impact at all the only thing that matters is what what is the the value of his abilities at some point in the game okay so that's all that counts so my feeling is is that he's in special ed so he's clearly identified as having special needs and therefore it doesn't really matter what on earth he does in school these next few years it's not relevant his essentially school is not teaching anybody anything of any significance it's a placeholder for the maturation of the brain that's actually what's taking place so I you know Paul Simon's beautiful first line to Kodachrome is when I look back on all crap I learned in high school so wonder I can think at all you know heaven it's like it doesn't make any difference he's not learning any skills or knowledge of any marketable significance so I I don't take seriously scholastic achievement all scholastic achievement is is a fitness indicator for people at the top to fight their way into fancier colleges okay that oops I lose you are you still with us yeah I'm still there okay okay so so my thinking is he goes to special ed and if he doesn't want to go to the eighth grade again I wouldn't send him to the eighth grade again we're not trying to put this kid in a position to compete better so that somehow he looks better relative to his peers for what purpose okay the he's in a special ed he's going to struggle they will accommodate and accommodate and accommodate and pass him through and as long as he shows up and doesn't hit anybody and doesn't isn't a major behavioral problem he'll wind up with a high school diploma which is fine and in Hill and but all as well and so all that's really happening is we are watching and waiting and feeding him healthy food and and watching this embryo continue to grow that's what's taking place now the then when he's done with high school and he's essentially no longer a ward of the state for six or seven hours a day then it's the issue of okay well now that we've got this 18 year old with XYZ capabilities and strengths and weaknesses what do we do from here okay and if it turns out he's still growing and increasing his capabilities and let's suppose that he winds up to have some level of scholastic capability that would make him potential to pursue higher education then we can and maybe he's not ready because maybe he needs to go back and he's gaining English and math skills and maybe he spends you know a year or two continuing to get old or gathering a few more of those skills on the side and the two years later he's able to go to college okay maybe so maybe not if not then it didn't make any difference anyway when he graduated from high school under what circumstances so I are the thinking and planning and assisting and helping is not really necessary now it's going to be necessary when he's 18 as we try to figure out how he's going to find his niche in the world given his strengths and weaknesses that we'll worry about that later because we don't even know what those are going to be okay so yeah my thinking is if the young man does not want to repeat the eighth grade hey it's not like if we repeat the eighth grade then he's going to sail through brilliantly and then just going to be fine 4 9 10 11 to 12 this is going to be a struggle the whole way through and you know I wouldn't invest a great deal of time and energy in it you do a modest amount we assist him to some degree he does the best he can and we move on that's how I would do it and otherwise don't worry about it this is a I would I would not be worrying about his failures in school nor would I be cheering his successes I would have a very matter-of-fact attitude that what I'm really doing is is watching a tree grow okay and that's all that's happening here and we will aid and abet it by watering it and taking care of it and keeping the CAF's from scratching it and just let him grow up and we'll we'll see what we've got when he's a young man and we will help him as he needs help at that point okay okay okay all right very good Kate very good call and thank you for calling it's a good question okay thank you very much for the phone call really appreciate it all right our next caller Rob welcome to show again hey Nate remember that time you said you went on the date with the girl and you were disappointed how she looked so you you uh give me what too walked away I was ever solution that's all you gonna do is Skype or FaceTime with them before you meet up in person yep again there's no one I can Bob Lee with me I just want to know oh the up for the audience I have nothing to do with this yeah all right the problem is I want to come on the day with me if I show my face so it's kind of a gesture all right hey dr. Lyle yes sir are you beating your jeans by not adopting identity politics and what I mean by that is you can assume back in the village mindset everyone looked the same and all that but I'm curious dr. Lyle if in your upcoming book if you feel the need to include anything that relates to this because what I mean is since the modern left wants to make everything about identity politics do you feel the need to include anything from a biological male perspective in your upcoming book versus a female perspective and I what I mean is I don't think I don't think males or superior to females or the other way around to me it's a stupid question it's like asking protons are superior to electrons we all need each other and no one's superior to anyone and I treat people as individuals but I'm just curious if someone as brilliant as you sees the need because of everything has become so political now and filled with identity politics and you again you're mostly talking to a Western audience in the US UK Australia etc presumably because it's you're living the West and it's an English is going to be written in English do you feel the need to include any of that in your upcoming book well you got a lot of things that you said there and I can't even I don't even want to get get started it asking you to repeat it so I did it clear I'm just going to give you some impressions about my thinking about politics in general the I'm I am basically amused by politics and I'm not really very interested and I don't consider it very important and by that I mean I don't consider it very important to my personal existence maybe incredibly important if you're in a given company somewhere and you and your company is about to get a bunch of graft because your guy is going to get election okay this could be an incredibly big deal for you all right but for me it's not since I don't have any friends in Washington and and essentially the the United States government the way it's set up is more or less got a set of rules that's more or less very stable over time and essentially to quote Jim Rohn the major future to my the major key to my better future is me okay so government cuts the taxes a little bit or raise the taxes a little bit none of this really has any substantial influence on me so I really I mean even though I can get caught in the the cheering and the angst just like everybody else does of my team that says the but the truth is is that I maintain a very detached and quite disinterested perspective on the whole show so I can I can criticize the left and the right with equal fervor from my theoretical perspective about how I think human beings ought to set up their existence but I forget who said it there was a famous quote says two cheers for democracy and that means that you know three cheers would be if it was really good to cheers is like well it's kind of what we have and it's halfway decent and it's kind of like a meal that you paid eight bucks for a kind of a cheap restaurant you walk away it's like well it wasn't too bad but it wasn't too good but it wasn't too bad and that's kind of how I always view the state of American politics okay all right thank you very much for the good question thank you sir this actually pros goes perfectly into our to another question that we've had in the queue for a little bit with regards to politics so you want to take that one or do you want to say there are a different day yeah why not okay all right so this is from a listener who says dr. Lyle what's wrong with socialism I thought we were trying to beat our genes and it seems to me that unregulated capitalism capitalism is abject surrender to our selfish buggers I'm all for democratic socialism says the listener and with up to here dr. Lau's rant against it oh this is a sweetheart okay so democratic socialism I think is the new phrase out of the Bernie Sanders era and I have no doubt that if I had met Bernie Sanders I'd want to kiss him on his forehead I actually believe he's a very sweet guy I could be wrong you could be some freakin killer when you get close to them and maybe he is but I don't think so I think the guy is what I see there I think he's sweet and and most people that talk like this listener and what they're saying here are sweet this is a the dynamic tension between socialism and capitalism is the ancient Stone Age tension between share and not share and and so the the when we see when you're viewing the world from a perspective of where it looks like like there's extraordinary differences in in how people are living then it will it will hit the little circuits inside of many people and they will say this is extremely uneven landscape we should share more so I understand this now the that's why even though my my philosophical center is libertarianism libertarians themselves will will disagree quite a bit about what what a you know a society ought to look like and I'm a laid-back libertarian who would believe in some degree of social welfare I think I think it makes sense my purest friends will squeal but I think I could defend it to anybody that would want to argue with me about this now however that doesn't mean that I'm not a libertarian it doesn't mean that I I know for a fact that socialism is ridiculous totally absurd way for people to run run a society the the reasons are deep and varied but the most important thing to understand is that socialism cannot accomplish the fundamental problem of economics so the fundamental problem of economics is how to transform atoms with human energy into products and services that serve human interests that is the economic problem and so how to go about that like what should the energy do should it be turning things into turning all the material of that is now built Los Angeles and turn it into a bunch of compacted bricks that build pyramids out of the Mojave Desert is that what it should be socialism has no answer for this none there's no way for them to know whether or not that is the correct thing for human beings to be doing to optimally serve human interests so it turns out that the only way to accomplish how to organize human action in order to optimize the way of labor and resources of humanity to serve human interest optimally is to use a market economy it's the only way to do it and within that market economy you cannot have a tax structure that disincentivizes efficiency in human action because you will then disincentivize innovation and excellence and so this the the concept of what is necessary is freely fluctuating prices and freely fluctuating profit margins in the in the solution of the economic problem was I believe first identified by vilfredo pareto in the early 20th century and to students of economics they are all aware of vilfredo pareto and they they understand is his vision and how he he arrived at this a little bit later on maybe a decade later after Pareto worked hid from his logic a different economists working from a different angle arrived at essentially the same solution and that was the austrian ludwig von mises so in the decades to follow there would be of course many battles about this and etc but in the end there's no question that this is how it works that you must have freely fluctuating prices you this is the only way for you to actually optimize resource allocation across industries across you know essentially vendors other words you have to use the profit motive in order for people to find out that when there is a cost of doing something if it turns out that there is a tremendous amount of people willing to trade a high amount of resources in order to get that thing and it's a lot less costly than than what it is that they're giving you then the profit is very very high and what happens then is that this is a signal to humanity that the resources have been previously misallocated and that not enough resources have been allocated to this widget that is obviously highly profitable okay so now the question is how many resources should we allocate to that widget and the answer is enough resources to the where the profit margins now reach the same type of profit margins that are being seen across all other industries so under socialism you would have never had a computer industry okay not unless somebody said well I think those computers that's pretty fancy with von Neumann and these guys to figure it out so let's go ahead and now make some computers well how many okay how many relative to how many high high-heel reg is that we're going to have of size five there's no way that socialism can possibly figure out how many high-heeled red shoes you should have versus how many rolling luggages that you should have of given size versus how many false eyelashes you should manufacture versus how many how many tires you should manufacture for your cars this is impossible okay and so this is precisely what von Mises and Friedman and Hayek were screaming for 50 that when you use any kind of disturbance you know price controls wage controls or god forbid the ultimate of absurdity is a socialistic top-down government who decides what's going to be manufactured you do that and you condemn human beings to massive miss allocation of resources in such a way that you guarantee that you will have a huge degree of poverty and and deprivation relative to what you would have had so socialism although it yet tickles the share circuits inside of many nice people and it tickles the authoritarian vicious circuits inside of a bunch of socialistic dust BOTS like Adolf Hitler it's always amusing that people think that fascism and socialism are different they're the same thing ok this is collective collectivism top-down government dictating the allocation of resources it depends on how many guns you you know use that's a matter of fashion but the point is is that you are forcing the allocation of resources away from what people really want to do a libertarian view says the following and it's the only really morally defensive position and that is that human beings should be free to do what it is that they want to do so long as they don't forcibly interfere with the rights of others to do the same that means that we can take advantage of trade and therefore profit to signal to us what to other people really want that is the the beauty of free-market economics that has been taking place for tens of thousands of years but it our understanding of why it is the right way to do it was not actually achieved until the 20th century so we now understand this so the person who asked the question I would actually send you to some books so that you can understand this more fully one of the there's a couple three books that I would highly recommend for anyone who's trying to actually find their way and under and what a reasonable position is in terms of humans and their government the I would say for for a more global perspective I would recommend free to choose by Milton Friedman he covers many different issues trying to explain these principles from the standpoint of a of a sort of meticulous understanding of how economics works and how the profit motive leads to and a free-market process leads to the optimum allocation of resources and it doesn't mean that it reaches an equilibrium ever in other words this will explain that it is always a dynamic as soon as somebody has had a chunk of chocolate cake now there the demand for chocolate Jake just got reduced by some infinitesimally mount and only the free market can figure out how what on earth we're going to do about this allocation of resource problem the the best presentation that I ever saw that is extremely readable and easy to read and easy to understand is in a book that's long since out of print by Harry Brown and the book is called you can profit from a monetary crisis and the first hundred pages of that book are the finest presentation of free-market logic that I've ever seen the another book that I would recommend that will pound over the skull it's very difficult for people to understand this they look at the government and they see all the wonderful things that the government does whether it's a socialistic government or or a mixed economy government like the United States they point to the Tennessee Valley Authority and they say look at what the government did that is a mistake and and this is what with a mistake is is that the government cannot create anything all the government can do is allocate resources and whenever the government allocates resources they are allocating them away from where the free market would have put them which means they are creating a actually they are reducing the standard of living of everybody who is actually involved in that process unless they're a person that doesn't pay their fair share of taxes at which point they they are you know essentially benefiting the free writer now the best book that I've ever seen on this it was called economics in one lesson from Henry Hazlitt and so I'm sure it's going to be found by in Amazon again very readable very easy to see how slit is going after a single principle over and over again showing you that all the government does is transferring resources from one location to another location and when you see the government is achieved something you have not seen what the free market would have achieved with those resources and so you mistakenly say look what the government accomplished rather than what did the free market not accomplish because of what the government took from it okay so that is that is economics in one lesson so this is a long explanation with a lot of detail about why I think the way I think but the truth of the matter is for this person asking this question is asking a very heartfelt question and really believes in their position and I understand this but what I'm telling you is that you don't understand economics and so your your position that you have is coming from a sort of a Stone Age moral feeling about fairness that I I appreciate but you are actually not understanding the fundamentals of how economics works and how economic problems are solved and what is the source of human poverty and misery and what is the source of human prosperity and and only by understanding free market under free-market principles of economics can you achieve that understanding and once you do there is no way anyone that is it has such understanding could possibly defend socialism so I am sure Bernie Sanders has really no understanding of this and a great many politicians I don't believe do it so anyway that's that's the answer that question is probably we have a we have another short question Nate let's see we have one about internet trolls what do you think ah yeah go ahead hit me up with it we'll call it a night okay dear doctor mile why are people so mean on the Internet or when it's anonymous what do they get out of it most people would not come up to you in person and say rude comments but they have no problem saying it on social media like on Facebook or YouTube comments how does that exactly foster their gene survival really great question and it's a it makes the internet sort of a dicey place for this sort of thing the reason that remember let's go back and try to understand why anybody does anything they do anything that they do because they're running a cost-benefit analysis so they're going criticizing other people is a strategic behavior designed by nature to lower the status of competitors or or in other words alter the status relationship between you and your competitors either raising your own relative to them or lowering theirs relative to yours so therefore criticism is a ubiquitous characteristic of the species so this people are constantly trying to figure out how to either blatantly or cleverly criticize their competitors that's what it is they would do and so it would pay for them to do that however when you criticize your competitors you also set yourself up for being identified as a costly social you know vector and so therefore it could pay for them to kill you for example or otherwise undermine your status so whether they would eliminate you and your old family ie the ultimate gene cost to you or or they would merely criticize you back one way or the other it would be in their best interest to impose costs on you so the ideal situation would for from our standpoint would be to how we could effectively and brutally criticize our competitors without having any retribution in return so the Internet provides that possibility and that's why it is that you get what you get they are running cost-benefit analysis on that equation and if they consider that someone on the Internet is someone that they could that it would benefit them enough to go to some trouble to criticize them and get away with it and hopefully have that criticism be effective then that's what they would do and so no surprise at all it's actually no mystery whatsoever all right yeah and so there's a I mean I've seen different comments that are critical and some of them can get really mean and where they're actually you can seem like they're getting a lot of pleasure out of this and yeah with this just lead us to believe that these are just SEO Pathak tendencies of people highly disagreeable and they just you know they see this as someone's out competing them and they're living at home at mama's basement and you know they're just yet it'd have to crap criticize you basically could get really bad I wouldn't have to be sociopathic it could simply be just very very disagreeable very feeling like the other person is then fairly getting a bunch of status and that they are not getting it so but as you as you say as we get more unstable personalities more disagreeable personalities and less conscientious personalities this would become increasingly dangerous and so my my brother-in-law was a very successful attorney and in in meant much of his career I would listen to his cases and at times I was disgusted with you know what the whole case was about and I can remember that a psychiatrist was being sued by some nutcase over an agreement that he had with them to sell a piano and this was some person who there's some transaction involved here and the and I remember listening to this and I and and I hearing the trials and tribulations of everything that went on in this case and I said to him all that over an effing piano like I was disgusted of this whole thing seemed to me amounted to me as nothing other than a complete and total waste of time and he looked at me and he said no it was about a career he was being accused of using his great psychiatric powers to manipulate blah blah blah and literally the attack on him was after his career and my brother-in-law brilliantly defended him and the so this is you know that the problem is is that there's people out there that are that have some loose wiring screw a wiring and can be very very dangerous to us and that's why even though I don't follow my own advice often it is a good strategy to be very judicious about being critical you know about anybody and in fact I have in my mind's eye a mafia chieftain speaking to his young nephew about how on earth you live in this business which is he pulls a cigar out of his mouth he says never criticize nobody and that's when you get into hot water with disagreeable people that could be dangerous it's usually a good strategy move very quickly to an area of ground where we're not we're not engaged in an esteemed dynamic of mutual criticism get out of it as fast as you can
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