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Episode 136: Why we feel unhappy sometimes, The meaning of life, What is intuition
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all right well last week we had a really interesting on-air session dr. Lyle with you and Amy and we got to learn a little bit about your techniques for uncovering the mysteries of depression and this particular case Amy was depressed and we found out why and kind of helped her out of this and now she knows what she can do this leads me to this article I was reading last couple of weeks ago and it said that people with autism are three times as likely as the general population to have depression and that the higher functioning a person with autism is the more likely they are to be depressed and so I'm thinking well you know someone with autism I'm not an expert and I've heard I've assumed that perhaps there's something going on with the internal audience where people may be treating them a little bit differently and not giving them as the same esteem signals that that they otherwise would if they didn't have autism and I figured the higher functioning a person with Optimas is the more likely they are to be able to read these cues from other people and so that's why they're more likely to be depressed but I figured I'd ask the expert and see what you have to say about this actually that's really interesting this is a curious pattern of results so the more autistic you are the the less likely you are to be depressed but if you're mildly autistic then you're very likely to be depressed that were much more likely so that's very interesting I would I would modify your your the your understanding of my of my understanding of how the mine is constructed you've got an internal audience which is really a device for watching your own rehearsals and then giving you feedback on rehearsals to the esteem meter the esteem mater's device for essentially deciphering communication from the outside world in terms of esteem signals or also cues from the internal audience which actually acts as a facsimile of the outside world as if it's separate consciousnesses the so I think that I don't think it's the internal audience here that you're talking about I think you've got it right as you kept talking I think you got it straight that what you have is you've got a steam meter that is picking up cues of rejection and and so the person and they are picking up two cues of rejection because they do odd things and they don't compete very effectively for a steam and they I mean they me could be brilliant and they could be kind or they could be difficult people or whatever else is that they are but the truth of the matter is on average they're going to be acting odd and they're not going to be send sending very good as steam signals to other people very often because they just don't have these chips very they're not very smooth here so as a result they're not going to stoke these reciprocal esteem dynamics which as the the heart of you know the what's good in human life so as a result they should be winding up with greater periods of deprivation for having for getting an adequate or threshold level of signals to keep people from getting depressed and therefore they're more likely to be depressed so that's actually really interesting now that I hear you explain what that said he found I I would I would speculate that that's what's happening they're just aware enough and just got enough ability to read the cues that they are actually seeing that they are that they are esteemed efficient and and they're puzzled and they don't know what to do to fix it and and so they they do you know sounds like a fair amount more suffering than the average bear so yeah I think that's what's going on and could also be just neuro chemical differences but and that may be in there too but but I think that that you're on to something I think that's probably a significant part of the problem fantastic all right so this leads us into our next question from one of our listeners ranch's dr. Lyle I recently read that 13% of Americans are taking some sort of antidepressant what do you think is the reason behind so many people not feeling happy could it be the sedentary modern lifestyle is so out of tune with the environment in which we evolved or have we always been as unhappy but antidepressants simply weren't an option I would say that that the following is true that there's always going to be and probably always has been fair amount of unhappiness but remember that unhappiness is is a condition that is conditional so the brain is signaling unhappiness or depression because the person is picking up cues mostly from mostly social cues rather like you could be depressed because you know you're you're in a lot of physical pain where you're hungry and there's your cold etc so in other words you can have problems visa vu and nature and your biology that will make you depressed but mostly what human beings are depressed about what depression is a signal for is it's a signal it's a failure feedback signal and so it's a signal and almost all of the success or failure issues have to do with with competitive esteem processes so the most depression most depressive feelings I always don't like this notion of calling something depression like it's some freaking disease that visits people like a plague no that's not what it is it's a condition under which the person is now operating about what what the circumstances of their life are and when the conditions change the depression will change so depression is a feedback mechanism and so the so now the question is has there always been a lot of depression well sure people you have to have depression is a fig signal of failure feedback so when when Fang was was trying to find you know Fanny you know back in the Stone Age and trying to mate with her and she first was kind of interested and then talked to me live longer than rejected him he's depressed okay and so so this is this is he's designed this way that's he's designed by nature to to experience that depression in the face of failure feedback he was you know trying to ascend a little hierarchy and have his head on a totem pole or whatever and the elder said no okay you're not ready you're not good enough you disappointed us with this or that and he gets failure feedback and he's depressed so the depression is the mirror image of happiness and happiness is the result of evidence that we are included and invited and valued by the group at a level that we would consider to be appropriate with what it is that that we would that we think that we have to trade depression is the is the result of getting feedback from the world or esteem signals that signal that our value is less than we would have expected or hoped for and therefore the system is frustrated and at first its frustrated and irritated and motivated and then with eventually enough negative feedback despite person's little tiny permutations on how they do things to try to do things a little bit differently to get more successful so you keep trying to bring you know fanny you know flowers and then a fish and some other things something else that starts with F I don't know what it is but the point is is that he tries to bring it in nothing works okay so now now what finally happens is he gets depressed so depression is a signal to for the organism to read that it's time to stop investing time and energy in that strategy that that is a dead strategy it's not likely to yield appropriate cost-benefit residuals and so therefore don't do it and the feeling is bummed out that's what the fig signal is it's not energetic and happy and investing a bunch of energy and a continued failed behavioral trajectory it's a signal that says stop okay now question is do we have more of it in the modern life than we've had before it cetera hard to say probably it wouldn't be super dissimilar I would expect people would always be you know some people are headed bitterly down a dominance hierarchy or in bitter rejection situation etc or unhealthy worried about this or that in other words there's always trouble in life so I don't know that there's statistically more today than there's ever been but let's look at some situations that we know that are probably exacerbating the problem pretty substantially so the person mentions discrepancies between the modern in the Stone Age environment I have no doubt that these are a major issue so for example the food that people is eating is pretty lousy and so they probably don't feel that good and when you don't feel that good you're more likely to be depressed they also are staying up too late and they're short of sleep and they're drugged in the sales of coffee and other things and so they've got drugs cigarettes alcohol coffee and everything else into the Sun and this is beating up the nervous system disrupting restorative processes and therefore the nervous system is not under ideal conditions the so that's going to be an issue there's going to be discrepancies in what we could be able to do in terms of competitive presentation and in particularly sexual dynamics versus probably where we are as a result of the modern pleasure drop so a lot of people are overweight and they're or they are not very fit and very good condition relative to what it is that they know that they could be and so therefore there the discrepancy between their potential and what is is to a disturbing problem and this causes them to be non-competitive with people that they would want to compete for or that their brands analyze that it would be potentially legitimately within their reach and because of the pleasure trap they they are not there and so that probably causes a lot of loneliness and frustration and and you know lack of happiness and depression as a result of that additionally the modern environment is sedentary is the person mentions here so I have no doubt that a lack of exercise is a major issue in essentially depressogenic moods that that you are designed by nature to have certain neurochemical systems be be invoked put into place then put to rest etc and so and so I have no doubt that and I know there's evidence for this but just forget about the evidence for a minute just think about animals in a zoo sitting around getting fed this is not conducive to happiness the animals are designed by nature to have to execute exacting behavioral programs under under stressful choice you know choice environments in order to get enough food to survive and to also survive and not get eaten if they do those things they're doing what that animal is designed to do okay and if they're not doing those things and they're not doing what the animal is designed to do so you've got muscles for a reason and you're you're designed by nature to be contracting those muscles fairly vigorously on a daily basis and so when you do that that will dissipate a bunch of stress have a person be healthier how the person sleep more deeply and completely at night etc so now this is all coming full circle into everything now it's also true that the modern environment has the capacity to have people live without real deep connections now a lot of people have a lot of deep connections and that's fine but a lot of people don't or they feel a paucity deep connection so I just had a wonderful young lady called me today and asked me this specific question of how do you foster deep connections it was a great great question I don't need a glee considered it to being cosmides wrote on this you know 20 years got my attention on this issue the deep connections are are forged out of circ particular circumstances so the circumstances are generally two things they are repaid exposure environments and they are also environments that require risk vulnerability and an effort and an intermittent sacrifice so what are we looking at we're looking at what happened in the Stone Age village that that people had to go out of their way to help each other because people got into trouble and so they would form that this is the way you know that somebody has your back is because some shit happened and then they were there okay if your life is very smooth and you have all state insurance and everything's cool and you belong to the Union and you're your all your all buffered in then you don't necessarily have significant vulnerabilities and that's actually fundamentally a good thing so of course the modern world has been marching towards us having being more and more and more and more secure which is which is actually objectively a good thing but one of the problems that this faces is that is that there's no glory in it with respect to the individual relationships so if a person never has anybody they never have stretched themselves gotten vulnerable taken and taken a risk that got them that had the potential to be vulnerable and in trouble and and therefore never had anybody have to step in and help then they never know if anybody cares enough to step in and help and if they've never in parallel done that for anybody else then they've never proven that they would be the stand-up guy or girl that would help that individual so you might say well what am I supposed to do go look for people in trouble not necessarily but here's the issue the is is that you can't force deep connection there there the formula is that this is the this is the natural formulas how this has to work this is why people you know have this feeling that you know I don't know because I've got I've heard some absurd marital counselors talk about how you just tough it out and this is what love is it's just grinding through the hell and all that well the thing is is if you have hmm a conscientious partner that's pretty darn decent human being and you you slug through your complete sexually dead below the waist relationship for 25 years but the purse is a damn good stand-up person and so are you and you raise a couple of kids then you do love the person in your deeply connected to them and the two of you have earned something there the now if you don't actually like who they are as a person not all the repeat exposure in the world or those were sacrifice etcetera is going to do it you have to like who the heck they are but the the the best situations have to do with when you are struggling in some way in your life for some kind of growth and what's happening is that you in that struggle you're having to reach a little bit and the reaching causes you to be vulnerable and when that happens this could be for example in a myriad of ways so in a psychotherapy office a guy comes in and he's got a big problem but he doesn't he's not going to trust that therapist right away so he throws him a little problem and sees what happens and then he throws him another little problem and sees what happens and then he throws him another little problem and sees what happens and then if the therapist earns the trust then he throws in the big one that would make sense repeat exposure effects testing to see where the who the other person really is on the other side of this equation and then we may call service full nerble it's in the making of ourselves vulnerable where we can make we can make substantial improvements in our lives but that vulnerability you know that comes at a price we have exposed ourselves in some fashion so this is where where people can prove to us that they're valuable and that they that they care about us and this is where deep connections are formed so I met a guy last year really interesting really smart guy knows a bunch of stuff about human natural history that I don't know and we kind of both would like to be friends and I he's a very interesting character to say the least and we actually enjoy talking to each other but the thing is is that we don't have anything that either one of us is doing that is that it's making where the other one is really helpful in helping guard vulnerability and so this is where Aristotle said you know you may want to be friends and you may see it but you can't force it it just happens naturally in the Stone Age it happened naturally people were in vulnerable circumstances they did have deep connections there was you know the prove themselves or didn't prove themselves and they wound up in these village atmospheres knowing that they were deeply connected to some number of people that is something that can be and often is missing in the modern environment and that is going to be a source of depression because that a fundamental level you feel insecure and you feel like you're not in you're not in the group so that's another thing another issue in the modern environment is the SDX that I'm talking about are are things that can happen in the modern environment that cause us to get our lives out of balance with human nature so whether it's food sleep you know physical fitness exercise lack a deep connection okay and another one is the over investment in pseudo esteem so this is you know you've got three levels of the scheme you've got self esteem the internal audience signaling is it watches your efforts you've got actual esteem from people that really know what value proposition you bring to their given market and they give you signals back on how much they value value.you and then finally you have pseudo esteem which is just sheer reputation and people are looking for cues of who it is that you are rather than knowing for sure what is that you're about and the pseudo esteem because of its extraordinary potential efficiency as because it's reputational rather than earned sort of the hard way in real live human interchange pseudo esteem is very seductive and so this is this is where we get luxury fever of human beings seeking luxury flashy you know whether it's degrees or whether it's cars or whether it's your wives hair or or whether it's the fancy vacations or the kids in the private school I'm not knocking any of these potentially useful values for people what I'm saying is is that it's very easy for there is a seductive quality to pseudo esteem that is a is a very close pleasure parallel to the pleasure trap and in other words it's a supernormal stimuli and as a result it can get people's lives out of balance just the way junk food to get it out of balance so the person asking this question saying you know what's the deal and the answer is you're absolutely right there's a lot of stuff going on in the modern environment that is that there are things that are pulling people's happiness you know away from from where it could be there's also fantastic things in the modern environment that make it better ok so I think that when we you know the modern environment has many things I'm glad I'm not worried about predators every time I go to sleep so I'm not worried about hunger so there are there are things about the modern environment that are enormous li+ but if we if we're not careful we can essentially squander the opportunity that the modern environment gives us bye-bye we'll be allowing our life to get out of balance and when it gets out of balance there's a nice little signal there waiting there to tell us that it's out of balance and it's called depression and then of course what happens is that we go to the shrink and what they put 13% of modern America on antidepressants so now what they're going to do is they're going to put the chemistry the brain out of balance for God's sakes so that's the move that they make they don't know any better you know they they know not what they do and and so that's that's not obviously not the solution to the problem so the solution the problem is to intelligently get back to the basics food sleep exercise physical fitness deep connection through earning a steam in the right way from the people that matter and also examining where our life circumstances and our life histories have walked us into the ego trap and the ego trap you know is easy enough to spring on people and can be a very intimidating thing and in the modern environment it can effectively be permanent which is something that the Stone Age Stone Age environment it could never be the ego trap is a is a biological adaptation for human beings to protect their status as long as they can hold on to it the running is simply a derivative of cost-benefit analysis of whether or not to take the risk to expose the fact that other people think more highly of us then then is true and they think we're fancier than we are and in the Stone Age we could hold on to it for a little while by being by essentially avoiding challenge and engagement in that display but in the modern environment you can do it indefinitely so people are unwittingly by others well-meaning others very often walked into the ego trap with you know I don't know the John Denver ward or the Emily Dickinson award or or you know you're going to be so great or you can do this and blah blah no end to the ego trap signaling that goes on and as a result people can can spend a lifetime or at least a significant portion of their lifetime battling ego trap problems that lead to you know depression and in personal frustration so this is sort of a I didn't expect to take this question out this far but this is a you know this is actually a big comprehensive sweeping question that was asked and when we actually when we look at the whole cinema scope of the problem I I would say once again the moderate environment has spectacular opportunities but it also has very very seductive traps and so this this podcast is about helping people be aware of those traps and attempting to act against those in order to be able to forge the best possible existence all right yeah that's all right I think that was great dr. Lao and you know I was thinking with your friend who you guys are having trouble kind of finding a common well not not a common ground but I was thinking what if you go play basketball too yeah what did you go play basketball two on two and then show them that you can sacrifice take one for the team and vice versa would that connect you together even though it's not you know yeah intellectually related I thought about that alright but alright but okay yeah yeah I know it's a joke but I figured you know people are swirling with this can't they just join a sports team I mean it's not the same thing as hunting and sacrificing your life but you know you do a team sport maybe you might get something close you could in other words you could get something little you could get facsimile siddhis particularly particularly sports which which have within them the the potential for self-sacrifice so and there would be sports would have that in differing degrees so yeah no I I hear you there's a I'm sure I'm just so much better at him no I just I like this alright up to him to prove you wrong that's right there you go see if like our uncle okay all right are we going a next question what's the Doug download on Victor Frankl who wrote a book called man's search for meaning what's cool is Frankel part of and do you agree with his conclusion that meaning was the variable in those who had the will to survive and also related small question what is the meaning of life Victor Frankl was one of a number of sort of mid century I don't know what you would call them Blas for psychologists humanists etc that what was kind of his thinking was not was not constrained by by the sort of duel Giants in the field of psychology at that point which were which were psychoanalysis and in behaviorism so I I don't know a lot about how Franco went about doing this thing I read man's search for meaning a long time ago the I've always been frustrated with that with that phrase and the first of all the concept that you know he first half of the book is really writing about I'm not sure which half of the book is which I actually don't remember but half of the book he writes about his experiences in the concentration camps and the Sandin and then the other half of the book he's writing about his personal philosophy and the way he some ways he tries to psychotherapy in the way we look at life etc so I think the first half of the book is about the concentration camp and the second half of the book is about his personal philosophy but I'm actually not sure but I think that that's how it works the and the notion that that the people that sort of did well I don't know had some what he call it was their outlook and their it's a power of mind that they survived and the other ones didn't this this has sort of been held up and hallow does you this deep grey fought Viktor Frankl or people like that and which is ridiculous the truth of the matter is is that this is this is the notion that that you're first of all there's no evidence that that's true second of all the we also have to understand that that that people's personalities are are genetic and therefore the quote attitude that they're going to have about this situation is going to be essentially overwhelmingly determined by the the inherited personality characteristics that they have so the so the notion that that there's some there's choice here an Outlook etc is naive and that that's okay I mean I it there may be obviously someone who is more emotionally stable okay yeah and more conscientious or not too conscientious you could put together a perfect personality for being in a concentration camp and out of the big five plus IQ and those are the individuals who are going to wind up psychologically not as disturbed okay obviously so the idea that the latent idea that sits under this is that the philosophical outlook of the person could maneuver them into that ideal spot is naive and in no surprise obviously Viktor Frankl wouldn't have known anything about behavior genetics and so he's writing yeah in in in ignorance of that and doing the best he can and he made some observations and so on and so forth now I've always had you know this guy and a lot of these guys I enjoy reading and did enjoy reading these guys back in the day whether it was Carl Rogers and even fritz perls and and these sort of innovative thinkers that had some unusual experiences and told some good stories and and had some nice you know philosophical distillation that I'm sure have been very useful for many people I remember one specific technique out of Frankel's logotherapy that that i've used a few times and I've actually probably used it more times on myself than I ever used in psychotherapy it was a nice little nice little mental technique which is that right about the time you're about to screw up and do something that you know is not the right thing to do what you want to do is you want to like think through that you did this screwed up thing you've now done it okay and you now have a big mess because of it so go ahead and think about that mess and then think about the fact that you get a chance to do a do-over and now you're going to do it the second time only this time you're going to do it right okay and so this this kind of mental mindset has been useful for me on on a few occasions and I've used it a few times clinically with other folks so I think that if people look through Viktor Frankl and they and they sort of I'm sure he's got many nuggets in there that are can be useful for people but the notion is sort of notion about speculating about the meaning of life etc let's get clear life has no meaning that is an incorrect way of using the language it's it's beautifully mysterious to use that phrase and that that phrase you know man's search for meaning has a has a beautiful artistic you know tickling that goes on but let's let's get let's use the language properly there's no such thing as the meaning to life life has purpose okay so now we're going to change the question a little bit what is the purpose of life or man's search for purpose well when you start talking about man's search for purpose man or woman's search man in quotes meaning the species and the individual of the species what is the purpose okay well if we're a philosopher writing before Richard Dawkins we don't know which is what Frankel was okay that makes him a you know very smart guy insightful kind probably very fine psychotherapist but it makes him ignorant of what the purpose of life was so the purpose of life clear its gene replication okay so now we know the purpose of life we can skip over the did lofty ideas of the meaning of life for the man searching for the meaning of life man found what that was okay his name was Charles Darwin he figured it out okay so the purpose of life is gene replication and now we're going to look at the purpose of your life so the purpose of your life is not gene replication the purpose of your life is actually to coop the machinery that is in there for gene replication and to try to optimize this thing that we call your life experience ie your happiness so what we're trying to do is we're trying to hack the system trying to game it okay we're trying to not get sucked into how the thing is actually built which is to optimize gene reproduction and instead what we're going to try to do is we just want the little scorekeeping device to go off in our head that goes off when we've done things that the system thinks are great for gene reproduction but actually we're just trying to ring up a big score of the scorekeeping system ie this happiness we're just trying to activate two happiness circuits because we want the best possible ride of this time-limited thing that we call life okay so now we can answer this deep question that everybody's trying to answer what's the meaning of life there is no meaning of life okay well Doug what's the purpose of life well the reasonable purpose of your life is to activate your happiness circuits in any way that you can do it and if you can sit there and act evade those happiness circuits optimally by watching a video game then have at it okay the what we're going to find is or I don't know string of causal mating strategy experiences okay or I don't know trying to win a Super Bowl like the there's a all kinds of different ways to activate the happiness circuits what we're trying to do is to get the best possible ride ultimately what this is going to mean is it's going to mean that you're going to need to understand your own machine and this is the concept of identity so your identity is is more complete and all-encompassing than your personality so your personality is this sort of scores that we use to describe the differences between you and everybody else but your identity is far more complex and more subtle so your identity my identity is one of the pieces of my identity is I hate cilantro okay sorry I just hate it Hey alright so that's that okay and I like asparagus a lot better than I like broccoli that's part of my identity and people a lot of times like broccoli they like cauliflower but I don't like cauliflower okay so I like cauliflower my favorite vegetable there you go okay so you and I have different identities and it wouldn't be measured in the big five because the big five wouldn't predict us that this goes all the way down into a tremendous degree of subtlety as to the individual differences that we have so for example I'm going to take a wild guess Nate I don't know we're just going to have some fun here have you ever read a romance novel oh yeah yeah oh my god okay all right why let me let me push further how many if you read 5 10 20 how many you think you've read ah let's see I read a lot of them when I was younger so they're probably like yeah not that many maybe like one or two maybe three your sir okay one or two all right well I've read easily I've read a couple hundred Wow okay so this is this is an individual probably an individual difference it could be that I just found a few authors were really good and if you read them you'd read them too but probably not okay so the it's probably this is probably individual difference III would know for sure that Alan Goldhamer has never read one and never will okay but if somebody that's listening to the show has actually has an outstanding one that they have a lot of confidence and they emailed me I look at I'd be very interested all right so yeah one of them reading yeah you would one of the reading thrills of my life was to read Pride and Prejudice okay and another two of the great reading thrills of my life was to read captain from Castile and the prince of Fox's bison Samuel Shellabarger all right so the thing is is that you know the so these are individual differences this is part of my identity there's people that I know that would never read fiction okay until wasted time to them so these are there's people who like adventure movies and other people who want to hear stories about cats so this is identity and our job is to learn about our identity and try to put ourselves under circumstances to by using our available resources or time or energy or intelligence or social resources and our money and our ability to make it to essentially take all the resources that we have and to give ourselves a string of experiences that we think will optimize this light path and activate the moods have happiness most consistently that's what it is it turns out that there's a thread through this matrix that is very interesting and important to pay attention to and one of those is going to be what we call earning esteem and you will find echoes of vermin earning esteem they'll find it in Viktor Frankl and you'll find it everywhere because you know people can't miss it for god sakes it's too central to human life and that's the notion that happiness is going to reliably come from earning a steam and the right way from the people of matter that's my phrase but you know everybody would resonate to this now you'll get people saying well therefore that's really the purpose of life there is to serve others no it's not ok that's one purpose the truth is there's a whole lot of other things that you can find exciting like watching the 49ers come back and actually have a decent quarterback maybe win some games that's fun too that will activate the happiness circuits so our job is not to be selflessly trying to figure out how to serve the village most effectively and get the most esteem this way that's not what it is it's there there's a myriad of activities that we can do and our job is to try to keep this thing in balance and the way we're going to keep it in balance is paying attention to the cues from our identity to tell us when we're happy and how often we're happy and what the what the circumstances look like and whether or not we're feeling that internal frustration that we're not using our time and energy that wisely because we're not that happy ok so man's search for meaning is actually search for purpose and the search for purpose goes through gene replication but then we're going to hack that very intentionally and realize that it's actually through attempting to optimize our life experience through the activation the moods of happiness in order to optimally activate the midst of happiness we need to get we need to do the I own self be true it means trying to figure out who who and what is our identity and you don't necessarily know ok I didn't know I didn't like cilantro till I tried it and then somebody told me that it had a name ok now I know and so the process of living in the process of experimenting and the process of paying attention pay attention to sometimes the loud voices which are often there as well as the subtle voices that will tell us when the system believes that our life could be better and that's the direct those are the directions that we need to go and with courage and luck good attention to fundamentals and some effort we can have a substantially better life experience than if we don't pay attention to those things wonderful dr. Lappe I have time for one caller who's been on hold for a bit mmm all right let's give it a shot all right see what happens okay Rakesh Thomas ah Rakesh he's got actually calling from from Santa Rosa welcome red yes oh I was there for the last lecture of dr. Lila and I thought I would do a little bit of a survey because I was completely bowled over I thought that was his best lecture ever in fact one of the best lectures that I've ever heard from anyone so I did the kind of survey and what is frustrating to not that oh well maybe people don't seem to buy it so I wanted to know is there a evolutionary basis for people not understanding evolution of what you are saying but on the other hand it would be very rewarding as well because this there was a couple which Benjamin told me bought into this there's a girl over there called Gabriella she's completely adores you and in fact she gave me the name of the book the if that understood the universe which I'm going to get it for you because I love the book and she wants to be an evolutionary psychologist so there are rewards even if 15 people don't get it the people who do get it must be must be rewarding is there a evolutionary basis for that the second question is women seem to outnumber men two to one that's what dr. Gould Lama told me at true north is it the same at the fast exist retreat is it the same for people who come to see you dr. line and is there evolutionary basis for that as well okay all right I will do my best with these and I think I think ricochets question was that is there an evolutionary reason why these ideas are sort of difficult for people to grasp and somehow accept and the answer is yes there are there is quite a host of reasons why this would be true evolutionary psychology epps on one sacred cow after the next and exposes a lot of it's pretty raw this is nature red in tooth and claw it's it's its status and esteem red in tooth and claw it it's uncomfortable and the discomfort with with having competitive processes put it in our faces and described in having objectivity as a major component of status and esteem competitions and and therefore having it not all that everybody is equal but different as evolutionary psychology says no that's not true there are there are there are brands and there are beauties and there are behaviors and talent and skill that are inherently better in in some respects than others and as a result those are rewarded by success in evolution and and that's how nature actually works the Jeffrey Miller writing in I believe it's the mating mind has age has a couple of pages where I believe that this is maybe 35% of the way through the book and I hope I've identified the right book but I think I think it is I don't think it's spent where he says our fitness indicators immoral and that's the notion that the the ways that we that that that Fitness is demonstrated and evaluated are we like Beauty athleticism intelligence etc all these things are we essentially is morality a kind of a part of a system to try to possibly maintain a bit of social cohesion in the face of the competitive brutality that goes on as fitness indicators and displays clash and so is it essentially goes to show off too much and goes for some people to be so superior to others as in other words disruptive potentially disrupting cohesion etc so people may be inherently uncomfortable with these ideas and notions and they made that there may be an evolutionary basis to that and so and I think that he is probably right so that that that's why we find some attractiveness towards humility and humility being sort of a feeling that says hey I don't want that much credit I don't want to take that much partly because I know it's going to be uncomfortable for other people to lose so the so I think that you're onto something rakesh I believe that that there is an evolutionary reason why some of the raw rough-and-tumble ideas of evolutionary psychology are pretty abhorrent to a lot of people and and I think that's probably going to remain so for a long time indefinitely second of all rather question was about true north which is a fastening facility in hyper nutrition hyper and Nate's facility as well at fasting estate calm these are places where we're very interested in human health and the connection between health and nutrition etc women are inherently more interested in nutrition than men I don't know exactly why but I believe there's probably an evolutionary reason for this I think I think they're inherently more concerned that their children be fed and they're more concerned about that they be fed safely and well I think those are so I think these are these these run along feminine lines so I think that that's true and so when you see now I don't know or maybe it's just more pleasant hanging around food and thinking about food than it is thinking about plumbing and etc so and the men know that their way to the eggs to get as many resources that they can so go do unpleasant things the women don't i cannot cannot do probably anymore to get to a man's heart other than their sexual attractiveness other than putting food together nice ways so what do I know but I believe that there's evolutionary reasons for for females to be more attracted and interested in the nuances of food just in general than men are let me think I had some follow-up to that but I've lost it yeah yeah yeah I did are women more likely to come to you as well oh yeah no but no Komachi the ratio it is again yeah the ratio nationally statistics in psychotherapy is that four out of five psychotherapy clients are women and yes it's a huge effect and my guess is is that essentially it is uh not a good fitness display for males to look like they need to ask for help so I think that I think that that does have a genetic basis and I would be I would be shocked if it didn't and I find the same thing myself but my version of this is is the following that I won't listen to other people give speech I just have not interested in listen to anybody else give a speech ad this is clearly I'm sitting back if I have to I'm sitting in the back like yes but yes but yes but I've got enough sort of natural competitiveness and enough disagreeableness do I my snap now now not interested so this is a I've listened to very very few speeches in my time by anybody and that and I'm always amazed that people are willing to sit and listen to us talk but they are I'm glad they do because I'm trying my best to give good things to say but I wouldn't listen to me that's the truth [Laughter] okay thank you very much for calling in Rakesh it's a pleasure to hear you thank you very much all right camera angle I would have oh no I think this is this yeah okay but they're all right thanks Ron Cashman yeah doctor lever seven started the podcast I can't bring myself to have the patience to listen to very much of other people's ideas on health and happiness and everything like that just because like you said you know I can see the holes I may not have the IQ to kind of like create these new ideas but I can kind of see the holes and it's like it's just uncomfortable I go I want to hear some like dr. Lyle take on this or others so yeah energy conservation the this is this is exactly why my my personal education last 40 years has gone down little tributaries where where essentially you find a main artery and then you branch off so from from you know Richard Dawkins I find Hamilton and then I also find Steven Pinker and I find Robert rivers and in Tribune cosmides and then David buss and so essentially I'm walking down branches because I knew that the main artery was you know outstanding and and so in the same way that that's how that's how I've approached everything it's uh you know some of its luck I did did I I was completely lost in psychology as I entered my final year of my ph.d program and so I'd been formally studying the field for ten years and I had I was just as lost as any psychologist as today and I think the difference was I hadn't bought into any system because I'm disagreeable enough and an alert enough and and committed to the truth enough that I just was not going to swallow something and just do it and just just to be a member of a gang and I didn't and so I just sent out just enough openness and just enough confusion and frustration and something else that has driven the human search for in this arena forever which is a an intuitive knowledge that there's a system like we all know their system we see patterns of behavior everywhere we're not surprised when when the cute girl walks in the room that all the heads go up a turn you know the male heads we don't we're not surprised if you know by the things that Mark Twain wrote about in Tom Sawyer they all make sense us so we see patterns and everybody's been attempting to try to figure out those patterns and they've had little tiny bits of the truth little places but as Jeffrey Miller says nothing will blow your mind like being introduced to evolutionary psychology because suddenly you see the patterns everywhere and suddenly you start to find out that the patterns are that they are they are finite in other words there's only so many of these patterns you see that they have all kinds of permutations and combinations and that you can reason through an amazing amount of of observations that you can figure out just about anything and you should be able to in principle because there shouldn't be anything in human behavior or animal behavior that inherently doesn't line up to something that makes a hell of a lot of sense so this is a you know this is a special time to finally be alive and have the opportunity to understand this and it's a there's there's no intellectual joy like this joy and it's a it's great fun to share it
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