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Episode 175: Ben Franklin effect, Burying feelings, Bottling up emotions, Internet trolls
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dr. Lisle it's often said that a good way to make friends is to ask people for small favors because people will like others more if they've done favors for them from the cognitive dissonance perspective this makes perfect sense but from the evolutionary perspective it looks like exploitation is this actually a good way to initiate relationships this is a this goes under the heading of of this is a okay you're just asking for a wider ranging answer here the there's nothing wrong with this little trick it's not it's not the worst thing in the world it's also it's also pretty small potatoes it's got very very small effect sizes so what's going to happen very often in science is that that we what you get published are things that are in particularly in psychology and social psychology are things that are kind of cute and interesting and so the everybody's will try to look useful and creative this is a this is a minor league effect I haven't I can't say that I've got to check the data on it just that I know I already know I don't have to look which is pretty arrogant but I actually already know the effect size is on this we're going to be very small and they're going to be ephemeral so the so it's it's no big deal it's not it's actually not the worst thing to do to you know if you're if there's some girl you're interested in you might just pull that stud just to get a little interaction going on and that that may be a way to essentially initiate a little bit of contact but it's not it's not going to be like oh wow for her percentile rating of you just went up six percent not a chance okay so this is all this is sort of much ado about nothing by a bunch of social psychologists that don't have anything better to do now so yeah so I actually was discussing this with a with a friend a couple weeks ago and I guess this is called the Benjamin Franklin effect with the roots a psychological phenomenon supposedly if you ask someone to perform a favor they're more likely to do another another favor from you and so we actually went down the rabbit hole of looking where exactly this came from and it turns out Ben Franklin thought that this was an effect because he had some rival legislature in I forgot what state he was he was running for but but he he he decided that he was going to ask the guy to borrow a certain book and after he got lent the book then their friendship continued all the way through and so we kind of looked and looked to see what actually happened it turns out them in writing him a letter requesting to borrow the book he Ben Franklin was flooding the guy circuits like you wouldn't believe like it was like Roger smart person would have such a great book and so I would love to just look at that book and gain the knowledge that you had you know I mean it was just it was really laid on thick and I'm so we Brian he postulated that of course the guy would would want to be this guy's friend because he's going to want to tell everyone that he's got good judgment right there you go that good that what I can't believe you dug down through that today hey good for you yeah so uh yeah so meanwhile social psychologists don't know the backstory somebody comes up with a study turns out there's a there's a very small little effect size behind it and somebody gets published good for them but it's it's uh it's pretty close to to about as trivial as you can get mm-hmm I guess we should ask people for small favors but flood their circuits then we'll see yeah there you go all right life all right will some more what's that yeah go ahead it will some more psych psychology pop-culture tricks dr. Lyle yeah in mainstream psychology there's a lot of talk about burying feelings not wanting to face feelings and not wanting to be alone with one's thoughts and hiding sadness behind anger and so on and so forth is the true for example do some people really drink to forget do people refuse to acknowledge problems for reasons other than stone-age status calculations purely just to spare their own feelings a good very good question here and I'm going to back it up and say we're going to take a look at the opening phrase the question in mainstream psychology we should say mainstream uneducated psychodynamic oriented pop psychology or even professional psychology among people who are not paying any attention to the scientific literature and aren't integrating their practice with anything that's ever been established in science you won't find scientists talking about barring feelings that's not that's not in it's just not in there the you won't hear cognitive psychologists talk about burying memories either so the this is not the minds architecture so you can you can do certain little things with your feelings you can if they're if you're under a lot of your sort of flooded your girlfriend just broke up with you you can get yourself distracted for a period of time which can bring you some relief you can go play basketball and for a couple hours there you will be thinking about it because you'll be fully engaged in some other process and undoubtedly you can you can change your mood state with drugs and get some temporary relief from a mood state that's very unpleasant but the but you're not going to bury the feelings for godsakes you can forget about that they're going to reemerge as soon as the distraction or the drug wears off instantaneously in other words they're going to be as soon as by taking yourself and going to go play I know a guy that was going through divorce you went played volleyball every night for like six weeks and in doing so he was giving himself a respite from all of the thinking that was going on in his head and because it's a it's what we're going to call a flow activity in other words you're it's requiring full engagement of the mind and so but then as soon as it's over you take a shower and then you're immune to sushi in no time your mind is back working on the problem is your mind is designed by nature to be grinding through the most important problems to the faces and but when you're out there with the team the most important problem that you face is how are we going to win and so you're you're capturing the stone-age problem there and it's giving you full engagement the if you don't have something like that to do then yes somebody may may open a bottle of whiskey and and essentially distract their minds ability to compute anything and give themselves a buzz and yeah that gives them a little bit of relief but not much and so the notion of the thing being buried is ludicrous it's not it's not being buried by anything it can be temporarily distracted so we think what else do people refuse to acknowledge problems there is no refusal to acknowledge problems inside your own mind your your eye you essentially you don't that I mean let me formulate this as best I can beyond its kind understand that where the Freudians we're coming from when they talked about ego defenses the the reason why some of this makes sense and if you read them if you read them from a slightly altered perspective if you instead of the word egos substitute the word status and realize that people will do a lot of things in the name of status defense so that the notion of an alcoholic quote in denial they aren't in denial to themselves for God's sakes they're in denial to everybody else that that's a Status defense the the notion that somehow the mind can't handle its own pain and therefore it needs to hide from its own generated pain of its acknowledgment of its horrendous circumstances is ludicrous let me explain that this is where the psychodynamic kind of thinking essentially is unintegrated with biology and therefore bad biology makes bad psychology and this is this is actually a fundamental in key point to understand the difference between evolutionary psychology and other views in psychology including dynamic views dynamic folks across history haven't been stupid at all they've been subtle and often brilliant but they they did not you know a lot of their thinking has crashed on the rocks of greater analysis and also what irritates me is the current practitioners you know aren't sort of up with the times and they are very defensive about the status loss of psychoanalysis and psychodynamic thinking in the current age when we have turn the halogen light on them on the mistakes and nobody's interested in looking at it the and one of those things is the notion that the quote ego can't handle it or the person can't handle it therefore they're going to bury their feelings to repress their thoughts etc as if the mine has to hide from itself ok let's let's point something out here the purpose of the mind isn't to not be in pain yeah another some of us explaining to me there's a notion that that I've read at times and by various various thinkers and I almost didn't know what they were coming from but somebody told me this is a union there's a threat of Union thinking in this is the notion that if you you know don't keep your mind organized or something that's going to fly out into chaos this is the course ridiculous and then nothing of the kind is going to take place the mind is organized relentlessly about your present and future survival and reproductive prospects that is what the mind is for that is its design the heart's job isn't to keep your secret feelings your hearts job is to run your circulatory system that's what it does okay your lymph nodes do what they do your kidney does what your kidney does your big toe does what it does and your mind does what it does and if it turned out that you know if people had feelings of loss or feelings of overwhelm they quote overwhelmed the system and it would go into some kind of terrible feelings that were overwhelming and therefore dysfunctional for the organism then those then organisms with the characteristics where that could happen would not have devolved the feelings that you have are calibrated in order to signal for you it would be like for example if you if you had feelings of the feeling hot and so finally if you were so hot that you couldn't stand it and you would go crazy because you it's just too hot no that isn't what's gonna happen you're just going to suffer okay and you'll suffer and be miserable and you may pass out that you may pass out because that's a different that's a mechanical device for getting you flat and getting some other things that increases your likelihood of survival that's not you know that that isn't analogous to what people do with their feelings or their thoughts so the the notion that that there's some there's some reason why human being can't handle their feelings and that they would reply for repress them that their internal process would quote refused to acknowledge them or anything else into the Sun makes no sense in terms of biology and doesn't make any sense in terms of any reserved processes in psychology the it's a it's a story and there's many many fanciful stories like this like for example the story of great story I may have said this great story that I read it was from the mid-century America was a random harvest they made a movie out of it I think it was JJ Hilton was the author I can't believe that's correct and beautiful story about a guy who you know is magnesia and his wife sticks with him for like I don't know 20 or 30 years and then one day it just all comes back to him okay not happening okay not how that's going to work okay I thought that that's how things could work and there's been many stories and in literature and many stories in the movies of that sort of thing happening now it's not how the it's not how the mind works that's not how memory function works it doesn't have an on and off switch where it all stays together or all goes away and there's no such thing as something was too painful and therefore I can't remember it ah not a chance that is a super common thing in Hollywood and why shouldn't it be that's what their strengths are telling them as if this has any reality it has no reality that's not how the mind works and however people will they will do some distractions to give them short-term relief just just their short-term amnesia if you have a head injury you can get short-term relief from your feelings if you get yourself fully engaged or alter the brain chemistry for a short period of time but but none of that stuff is going anywhere whatever is bothering you that the mind will instantly go back to working on those problems and in fact it's working on those problems silently even when you're playing basketball and so when right when people people say Nate you can't bottle up your feelings otherwise it's going to come out later oh yeah that more it's a life psychology that's absolutely exactly that's kissing cousin with everything we're just talking about that is totally ludicrous and and the notion that if you quote bottle up your feelings that it's going to come out in some kind of psychosomatic damage it's like absolutely ludicrous this is just fanciful stuff that goes on with you know just with with people that don't know anything about the minds architecture how it works I mean it could have been true in theory in other words somewhere an alternative universe things could work that way but they don't work that way in the universe that we live in that's not how things work yeah I remember when maybe a earlier in the show earlier in the podcast a few episodes back way back way back you had said that agreeable people will sometimes lash out when they've taken the proton the stick enough times and then they just finally I pad it and it reminded me of the times when people say oh you don't bottle up your feelings otherwise you're gonna lash out and do that it's actually that just very good let let's talk about that just is just for a point of clarity what's happening is that the agreeable person or even not so agreeable person it could be a not so agreeable person who is inhibiting the expression of their anger there because what they have the mind is has competing agendas and one of the agendas is I'm not in a position of power with this individual and therefore I you know I am I'm being exploited here but I have to just take it okay that's my best negotiating position and so the organism is under tension because it feels like things are unfair and so it wants to speak up but it's actually not in its best interest okay now then we have successive iterations of the same kind of situation with the same individual and we feel like that they are drawing the line again in their favorite or expensive it's all you know it's once again it's it's not fair and now what's happening is we have sent little signals quiet little signals not you know non heavy agreement signals we don't laughs of what is that they're saying we send little bitty signals telling them that we don't feel like it's that fair but it doesn't do anything they exploit us anyway and once again from our relative to position of weakness we we actually choke it down again and then it happens again and then it happens again and then happens again now at this point the the psychodynamics shrink comes along and says social worker psychologist comes along and says oh you're bottling up your feelings they're going to explode okay you're not bottling up anything you're running a cost-benefit analysis that is strategic in terms of trying to figure out how to get your best interest serve in terms of survival and reproductive success that's what you're doing now what you may do is you may there may be a moment where you feel like okay the cost but now we've gone over the one if this continues it looks like this exploitation is going to continue indefinitely so so what I'm going to need to do is I already feel like I've sent 42 silent signals that this is out of line and they have disregarded those signals so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to blow up okay so what the blowing up is is it's actually a huge wake-up call to the person on the other side the reason why it's going to be a blow up it's not going to be a slight little sniffle a disagreement it's going to be actually a signal but I'm about ready to walk okay I know I'm in a position of weakness in this relationship otherwise I would have been speaking up a long time ago about having been exploited and what I've been doing is as the exploitation has continued I have been contemplating how it is that I can survive without this relationship and so every time I send you a little signal and you blow right past it like ignoring a stop sign and you keep doing this I am getting closer and closer to the realization is that that this exploitation is going to continue indefinitely and I'm now running the CB on whether or not I even want to be in the relationship and what I'm now going to do is I'm now going to put all my cards on the table when you won't know if I'm bluffing or not because with my anger at a high enough pitch I am going to explode and basically what I'm going to tell you is we have to renegotiate and it's going to go my direction a hell of a long ways from where it is right now because you've been totally unfair this kind of explosive anger is a way is an attempt to recalibrate the person on the other side of this negotiation and to cause them to feel guilt if they if they feel guilt then they're likely to concede and now everything can settle down and the relationship can continue okay if however you can see how this would go it's quite possible that the person on the other side will say screw you pipsqueak I'm in a position of power here and I am NOT out of line and you can have to choke it down and deal with it well our person who's exploded has essentially come very close to crossing the Rubicon there they basically the only reason they gave the signal is because they are just about they have computed that they're just about out of this relationship unless he gets renegotiated okay so that's what it is you didn't bottle up your feelings your your feelings are our strategic and your mind is working brilliantly to try to figure out what's in your best interest and if you have a reasonably level constant a reasonably well configured nervous system when you explode there's usually a hell of a good reason and there's a good reason we explode then as opposed to some other time ah we didn't you know this is not this is not some out-of-control or this is a deeply brilliant manipulative organism with trillions of dendritic connections computing what's in the organisms best interest at that moment it may win or it may lose but there's a reason why it did what it did and it wasn't for some pop psych reason that you suppress your feelings and then they blew up not a chance mm-hmm yeah that's fascinating because I've I did that that whole bottle up explanation really interests me because I've heard for for many many from many people that you have to learn how to express yourself before that happened you have to learn out of this and that it's just you know it's interesting because the agreeable people that I've met who have quote bottled it up and you know they explode yeah yeah what happens exactly what you just described and when they expressed me their frustration these are some patients of mine that I've talked to you yeah when they expressed to me that oh yeah this person psychologist says they have to learn how to catch it before it starts nice they say it's bullshit yeah yeah yeah yeah you're not gonna catch it before it starts you're you're running a strategy okay now the probably the way around this you know can you can you do better than your genetic code at this probably so let me tell you mm-hmm let me tell you one way to do better than the genetic code it things like this that mmm if you're not starving and you're not hungry and you don't have hungry little children with Wiggly teeth that needs fixed by the dentist then you probably are reasonably comfortable and when you're reasonably comfortable mm-hmm you're not in a crisis and when you're not in a crisis you just as soon not have a bunch of upheaval and troubles and have to like hustle around and change things in your life just energy conservation says hey it's not too bad the way it is so behind this we are very it's not uncommon particularly for agreeable people to be choking down some relationships in their life that are exploitative exploitative I don't mean like Karl Marx and you know that we're dealing with you know 1793 and the French Revolution exploitative I'm talking about you know something is like 6535 the other person's direction and there for some reason they're in a position of power in the relationship and they're exploiting that and you're in position of weakness and so you're kind of getting the short straw a lot that's what I'm talking about and along the way what's happening is that your anger excuse me anger and frustration are starting to bubble up and get a little bit more intense from time to time and there starts to be little little tiny cues that we leak to the other individuals that were not that happy and that we think that this is unfair so we start leaking that it doesn't never the case the people are pleasant Pleasant Pleasant Pleasant Pleasant Pleasant and then explode that isn't what happens they are pleasant people and they leak okay so they leak their frustrations very freaking quietly I'll often passive-aggressively in other words they don't actually do anything for negative signal it's what they don't do for the positive signals that is they're very quiet well way of telling the exploitative partner in a trade that this is not right okay so beyond where was I I'm lost hey you're talking about how to get out of how to get out of it or how to how to be a change with regard to bottling up yeah thank good somebody's paying attention hahaha so know the thing is that very often people in these relationships can sit right there like a dog laying on a nail and don't do what it takes to get out of it and so a lot of times what it takes to get out of it is work harder reduce your expenditures find out you know get competent to to leave that firm get confident financially and socially to leave that marriage to leave that friendship to leave that parent-child relationship and alter its character substantially if needed in other words what you need to get to is a position of power and a position of power is that if things don't you know go the way that you would like them to go then you're fine you're fine with the alternative pathway that's a position of power so that's how you stop exploitation exploitation ends where a position of power begins because the position of power is the the concept that whatever it is that you want you can live without it okay whatever you want out of this relationship you figured out how you can live without it you don't need the job you don't need the marriage you don't need the good goodwill of your adult children so that you can see your grandchildren you don't need the goodwill of your parents for this or that or other reason you know you're not feeling beholden to that relationship that relationship only need exist if it turns out that it's joyful Pleasant you know etc supported that it's a good relationship when it's an exploitative relationship and you're quietly choking down your frustration the reason you're quietly choking it down head into a blow-up is because you're in a position of weakness okay you've not yet figured out how it is that you're going to live without it and you haven't made peace with that and so that's I see many people in positions of weakness that could be cured by some hustle and some courage and then they don't have to put up with the exploitation that they're putting up with and and so that that's the fundamental assertiveness training strategy is not to you know express your feelings earlier in the dynamic you know etc I know it isn't expressing your feelings because the jerk on the other side isn't interested anyway if they're an exploitive pattern and they're not reading your subtle cues what makes you think they're going to renegotiate the situation if your cues get to be more open and direct not likely okay so instead put yourself in a position of power before you renegotiate and then when you renegotiate do you renegotiate from the position of strength not weakness it's like a listen this is what it is that I think I'm worth this is what this is what the race that I'm seeking well I don't think so chief that's not what I'm gonna do fine okay that's what I needed to know right then you-you-you ask for that raise because you know you've got alternatives or you're you have a high probability that you've got alternatives that you could get and a raise could be is a you know a placeholder for anything for I have this amazing thing that I see happen I see people complaining quite bitterly and in frustration and hurt over the fact that their spouses just don't show them the respect and the love and the affection that they want and I look at this and it's I look at it in some degree in amazement it's like hmm that's willing nothing to be done about this that's not their fault if they don't feel those things toward you that's just the way it is okay so your your job is to get yourself in a position of power where you understand that you don't you don't have to have those things you can live without it how are you going to now make your life fine you know assuming that you're not going to get those things what are you going to do you're going to stay in the relationship for the other values that it affords or are you going to leave okay so that this is this is the notion rather than you know being chronically frustrated with the fact that somebody else is and giving us something what we want the job is to just pay terminate the search inside that other person's nervous system and move on this is the this is explained not with the terminated term terminology of positions of power but this is explained by Harry Brown and how I found freedom and then free world and this is what he calls the difference between a direct and an indirect alternative and this is a very important principle of just you know essentially the the search for happiness and that is that if you are if you are attempting to if someone else has to do something and they have to change in order for you to be happy you are working on an indirect alternative if if you can just make a change and it doesn't matter what it is that they do then you're working on a direct alternative direct alternatives are way better than indirect alternatives okay so whenever you catch yourself in a frustrating situation like for example somebody frustrated that their spouse isn't giving them the love and affection and support or whatever it is that is that they feel like they they are that they want and that they feel like somehow they're entitled to that what they're working on is an indirect alternative the direct alternative is to look at the situation and say hey if those are the things that I seek out looks like I'm going to need to seek them elsewhere okay and sometimes there needs to be frank discussion or a frank realization that that's what we needs to happen so if you've got a boss that doesn't seem to appreciate your work and doesn't you know isn't paying you what it is that you think that you're worth go calibrate and find out find out what your options are and then if you think those options are legitimate but you can't afford to be out of work for six days then you're not a position of power yet but if you've figured out how you could finance a period of time that you needed to make a transition or better yet just go get another job offer okay and then leave or with that job offer in hand renegotiate okay so or attempt to renegotiate first get shut down and then go get a job offer and leave so there's sequences of operations here you know there's some flexibility with what how it is to handle this but then but the main message is that when people when people are quote bottling up their feelings all you're really seeing is a frustrated person who has not yet reached a position our and isn't ready to try a renegotiation tactic when they lose their cool they're losing their cool because they've come to to come to a point where they feel like they need to renegotiate this deal because it's it's so lousy and they're so frustrated that they're willing to blow the whole thing up now are they right or wrong answer well let's let's find out how much intelligence conscientious it's an emotional stability they have if they have all three of those things in decent quantities then they're there then their computation is probably accurate okay if it turns out that they don't then their computation is probably inaccurate and what we're just looking at is a wing that has just gone off because they've got a misguided view of what their values in a relationship and they feel like they've been exploited but they were they weren't okay fine they're going to find out the world's you know they're going to get recalibrated the hard way that's okay that's that that's the price of being dealt those genetic cards you know at conception but most people most of the nice people who are pretty conscientious that are getting exploited yeah you're sick quote sitting on your feelings because those feelings are are slowly the computations that are driving those are slowly driving you towards increased signaling and dissatisfaction and it will be subtle or dramatic depending upon the positions of power that you wind up achieving through through the the preparations or mental work that you need in order to achieve that at fascinating so yeah this is uh it's really interesting that what you just said because I have friends who have YouTube channels and they're they're always on social media and when we talk and catch up a couple of times they say that it really stresses them out that that people write and respond to their videos with all kinds of harsh things and it really does not like I've made posts before and I've you know I have a business that has it you know that had a Yelp page and all these other things and so it does stress you out when things are don't go the way you expected right and just recently somebody asked dr. John hog who you talked about last week why she doesn't enable YouTube comments on her feet on her YouTube channel and a response was Brett Jed she said it doesn't match up you know there's no need for random people I can read it she does now need to to do that not supportive yeah of a happiness environment so on one end she decided to turn off the comments section that deal with whole thing I think I was really smart oh yeah yeah that's that's the first of 17,000 smart things you're going to hear Jenna talks a bi yeah really exactly yeah the exactly this is a this is a bizarre environment you live in now that if you're sort of semi public and you've got out of a Facebook page or you know Instagram or whatever these things are and people can be commenting on what you look like what you said whether they disagree with you etc keep in mind that most of the time anybody that's troubling to listen to you 90 plus percent of those people like you and they are supportive and so if they ever say anything it's it's a it's great you would like to see that because it's beautiful positive feedback it's it's dinging your pseudo esteem seeking chip so it's like hey they don't really know me that well and I don't know them but I'm getting a steam cue and it seems to be for about the right reasons so it's pretty good now the problem is in the same said communication environment we have 10% of the people who are shitheads just how they are they're born that way folks they can't help themselves it's not their fault we can't correct them if we snarl with them and get angry and tell them they're unfair they're just going to look at us like what are you talking about I'm totally reasonable there they can't help it somebody has to be at the 90th percentile for disagreeable and so it's no support I mean they just are so those people exist and it isn't that they had a bad childhood and it isn't that they're that they're just going through a tough time they're just shithead they can't help it you know I have obviously more negative feelings towards these people than I do towards people in the bottom 10 percentile for intelligence the bottom 10 percentile for people and intelligence you have many sort of negative names for them pejorative names for them but you know what I have no such feelings negative for these people other than they can occasionally frustrate you when they do something that's inconvenient in you and then you don't realize until you talk to them for a couple seconds but they did the best they could say and it's like oh I see that's that's what that's what we're dealing with there well you know what you just you thank God that they've got a nice little life in a nice free country that's pretty well-to-do so that they're not starving because they're pretty and competent okay so that's fine so we don't we don't have particularly negative feelings about people like that we try to help them but in another dimension and you know 90th percentile introvert it's like hey they're not bothering anybody they're just giving you a quiet there moving away from you in the library when you're in there which bring your friend because you're causing too much noise yeah okay so however disagreeable people are the the cause of the vast majority of problems in civilization they're the cause of almost all of the litigation there's a cause of almost all the criminal activity it's like they're just nothing but trouble now there's a use form so if they're really smart conscientious they make good lawyers fine God knows you don't want to hang out with them but if you need to hire one of them either useful but the point is is that when they're on your social media page and they're making comments about you that are negative for God's sake that they can't help themselves it's like the little guy at the restaurant that can it they can't make you change you know $10 - $5 it's the same kind of thing like their that's just what you're dealing with they can't help it they're just disagreeable and it's annoying as all get-out and we would like to recalibrate them and make them civil but you can't genetic so my advice is anybody like I've never looked at feedback on any my stuff never happened probably not going to I mean I've been out there for a number of years I mean you know so I've had different feedback sometimes people send me feedback but I'll tell you what when people write to me and they give me feedback that's Pleasant because now these people are jumping over some hoops and they're going to write to me and they're going to say hey I really like this I really like that thanks for putting yourself out there great you know I've almost never received a negative in email I have about three people in 10 years have sent me argumentative emails and you know I think you know one of them may come from a few years ago yeah in a foreign country we had some character that that fancies himself ingenious and needs to explain to us how we're all wrong so they show themselves and then they get deleted okay beautiful gone so yeah this is a yeah what we would try to do is surround the input you are you're sort of that you're kind of a piano and the music that's played on that piano what it sounds like that's your emotional life and what counts is to what that's going to sound like is what energetic inputs hit the piano keyboard the piano is your nervous system it has just like the the sounds of the piano the tones and the chords and what these things could sound like in combination those are the feelings of your existence they there represent and the way the piano is set up the feelings represent just as the piano tones are mathematically interrelated to each other in an exacting way so are your feelings exacting ly related to each other and they're related to the underlying computations of values that that the Machine computes according to stone age algorithms inherited you know into your DNA so the sound of your particular piano ie the emotional tone of your existence is going to be the result of the energies that hit the piano keys that is your environment the piano in its configuration how it works that's your genetic structure that's you your environment sits outside of that and you know somebody comes along you know cat and jumps on the piano and you know causes a your lousy sound that's like something unpleasant happen in your environment that wasn't supposed to happen that way not a good thing so you get well you can also have sad sounds when things happen and happy sounds etc our job is to try to have happy positive interactions with other people in the world that that is the energy that hits the circuits and then that creates the moods of happiness so what dr. Bach was saying is for goodness sakes don't leave yourself open to a bunch of critics that we know are out there because they can't help themselves because it's in their genes and so they're going to squawk and complain and criticize etc and if you're a conscientious individual who would be understandably be looking for feedback from your work the problem is you'll get 9 positives and then you'll get one nasty negative and that's a bad thing in a stone-age village you could have not you know 18 people saying good things about you but if you have two people saying really bad things about you that's an insecure situation and that's going to be unpleasant you're gonna have to keep your eye on it and you're going to why to sequester them and you're going to try to essentially deactivate their political power etc you're in a war if somebody with somebody in that village that's after to undermine your status so when you read these things if you're a producer of anything that the world is responding to that if you read those things your mind is going to get busy about what it is that they're saying what you you know how you're supposed to fix it how you're supposed to neutralize them etc what a tremendous waste of time and energy much better move don't bother okay do what you do let the world do whatever it does with it and ignore it that's a and and you know people will find a way that like you they'll find a way to get to you if they want to and say positive things and your world is surrounded by beautiful music and that's what we want fascinating all right dr. Lau one last one for tonight it has to do with yeah that's a comment so probably to see exactly the same same vein dr. Lyle I'm not easily appalled but the internet got me when I read about a porn star recently committing suicide and some top comments on this internet articles were along the lines of quote nothing of value was lost etc this isn't the first time I heard something like this who would have this lack of empathy towards sex workers and how common do you think it is do you think it comes from quote slut-shaming I also recall that from the blank slate that when people feel something like disgust I'm assuming from potential STDs and paternal uncertainty in this case they tend to blindly craft morals from it yeah this is sophisticated thinking anybody that read the blank slate for God's sakes got a big IQ the yeah I'd have to think through some of what it is that they're saying there and I don't I don't want to give a you know a quick and dirty answer the obviously I think they've hit the nail on the head there that depth we have discussed reactions towards other people for various reasons that so for example the there could be many people that would be offended by people that do porn work and that would it would threaten you could potentially threaten them in various and sundry ways and so therefore the implication would be that those people have essentially been costly to me and therefore one of them dies all is but you know that's good that's a good thing for me that's a but if I'm in a war with the Russians and I hear that some Russian got sick and died that's a good thing for me okay so that's why obviously people's reactions are emanating from Stone Age algorithms as they run cost-benefit analysis on on what it is that they see and so anybody that would have that reaction you know my reaction about anybody dying pretty much it's pretty neutral because most of it doesn't have anything to do with me if it has anything even remotely to do with me it's going to be you know it's generally in all most ways it's going to be negative there would be people in principle that but I might feel some significant conflicts with I don't know who they are but if I found out that they died I don't I don't know that I would wish an untimely death on anybody because and that makes me feel like you know that just reminds me of the capriciousness existence and that it could happen to me but if it turns out that some some old nemesis that I couldn't stand that you know twenty-five years older than I am and I couldn't stand the person I felt like they didn't have any integrity and that they undermined that the pursuit of knowledge and honest helping of other people to solve the us serve their own interests that's what I feel like they did with their life and if they die I get some satisfaction out of it so that's uh so I'm not you know I've no think they're so this is why this is this way and I think that's why similarly somebody that would feel like their best interests are threatened by the fact that some people choose to porn for a living those individuals could have a decided not just lack of empathy but actually and essentially a satisfied aggression in feeling like one of the the bad evil people on the other side mm-hmm you know was lost and that's a game for the good guys so I think that that's why that happens that way
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