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Episode 247: Govt and Pleasure trap, Ego trap, Evo psych over 60, Social needs of seniors
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all right dear doctors on your episode about the 2020 election i was very surprised to hear very surprised to hear that i was very surprised to hear the two of you lionized the sturdiness of american government when one of the central problems in american life diet-related disease is so largely attributable to lobbying if government can be bought how am i supposed to buy the idea of a reliable government well i could say plenty but jen you're our your harvard phd in political science so what say you the irony of course anytime we get a political question like this is that i always have to just say i i i every day i'm a little more kind of withdrawn from the fray you know i have been paying some attention today we're recording this on the uh much anticipated january 6th for people who are listening and uh i mean i i it's a heck of a day to not be on twitter i will say that so i i have i i've been totally white knuckling it because i'm aware that there's um you know some significant uh excitement it looks like it looks like these photos coming out look like scenes of you know when when uh yeltsin fired on his own parliament you know sort of like the smoke and people climbing the walls and people getting shot and killed i mean this is the stuff of uh of not the united states so it's pretty exciting um to to say the least pro or bad choice of words but it's really something to behold um but i do think that at the end of the day it it really makes our point for us when we were talking about the overall stability of of the government and of checks and balances and sort of the the ship writing itself over the long haul um where you know you have you have this mob descend on the capital and force evacuations and and you know create absolute chaos for a day um but the the wheel will continue to turn and the process will continue to work and you i mean you've got mcconnell looking like a an absolute statesman today so you've got people being thrown into these roles that we couldn't have anticipated uh just because the the center does hold at the at the end um so you know for the question about lobbying of course lobbying is uh a huge uh it's part of the system it's it's just kind of part of how the system operates and and there's of course you know the the degree to which any particular lobby has influence at any particular time is going to be uh more significant than their opponent and it's going to matter who's in power and it's it's going to matter who has their ear and it just it it moves back and forth there's no the government is not bought in in the sense that you're talking about it where you have an oligarchy that is serving very particular corporate interests that you have an oligarchy that is serving vacillating corporate interests you have you have an oligarchy that at any given time is in the pocket of one interest or another interest and that interest is changing all the time depending who's in power and who's in power is still subject to a fundamentally fairly competitive democratic process so so yes of course you have you have a an intersection between money and power in washington but that's nothing new that's been the case from the very beginning and and no one has a unilateral uh indefinite hold on that connection between money and power and so it's it's not it's it's not comparable to what you see in other countries that are dealing with problems where you know those two things are fused in a much more significant and permanent way so it doesn't mean that it's no big deal and that we shouldn't worry about it and then we shouldn't try to you know protect you know create create protections and defenses against it as much as is reasonable but it's not something that i'm going to use to to dismiss the entire system as uh you know not serving the interests of the american people and only serving the corporations i just don't think that that's the case yeah dr hawk do you think um if there was a perfect system and there was no sort of corruption or you know lobbying sorts of problems that people wouldn't get into the pleasure trap anyway oh no i mean that's no of course people are gonna people are gonna find their way into the pleasure trap as long as the food is available so i mean you could make an argument about uh you know commodity subsidies and how inexpensive the pleasure trap food is um how how widely available it is compared to where it used to be but i think we would we would have seen an explosion in that uh i mean look at look at other uh sort of well-consolidated democracies across the world are we gonna are we gonna accuse them of being just as much bought and paid for when they have very comparable levels of obesity i mean this is this is just a function of wealth more than anything else it's just general wealth general abundance the fact that nobody in the developed world is starving to death anymore for the most part not not the way that it used to be um and so yes you you've got you've got some issues that make it more readily available even cheaper but i think that that is all part of the broader system that's made everybody richer and given them more access to more food in general wonderful dr lyle would say you yeah well again just to put put it simply the the the the fiasco of the american diet has nothing to do with the united states government yet that that is a that's a sideshow about what specific producers happen to be connected to power at any given one time but it's as jen talks about it's a shifting process all you know all over the place the uh and it had it has actually nothing to do with it if the government did not uh play one dollar in that game at all if there was no usda or nothing of the kind it would look very much like it looks now so uh it would be indistinguishable in terms of its in terms of its health outcomes so uh i know that uh people like to think that somehow i know i know i got a good friend of mine colin campbell is you know very thinking as if the government has any influence because when you get down in the weeds it looks like it does because you can see oh well big bunch of money is going to the dairy farmers that so therefore we get more of that but that is not what's happening it's just making it more lucrative for those people to produce it's not it's not uh it's not making it uh it that isn't the cause of the reason for the for the dietary choices of this species so the uh that just means that a specific set of producers or companies winds up benefiting so yes when you get down to the weeds it it you can you can see that at close range that there's all kinds of graft and corruption and and completely uninterested government with respect to public health outcomes of course that's true the uh but it wouldn't make any difference if it weren't in other words if the government were incredibly interested in health outcomes they wouldn't have any influence try it you know give it a shot for yourself in other words see see if you can figure out how it uh to incentivize your 19 year old with every allowance that you can you know your your 19 year old that each [ __ ] with both hands works at dunkin donuts and is 40 pounds overweight and you desperately want them to get their act together see what you can do to incentivize them to not do that good luck okay you won't have any influence so the uh the notion that the governments could influence people away from the pleasure trap is a joke now the uh so that with that being said wait go ahead jen i agency i was just going to bring up the to the um the cigarette example you know i think a lot of people have the intuition that it's the you know tibet taxes on tobacco were the thing that made people stop smoking instead of the fact that it just became progressively banned everywhere right and increased the channel factors for people to light up on their on their you know their break at work oh i'm not going to go all the way downstairs and go to all the trouble i mean that's really the the driver of the the you know the diminish the diminished smoking rate in this country much more than taxation is so i think people have that story in mind when they're thinking about oh well maybe we couldn't incentivize you know healthier outcomes but we could we could use the stick we could we could just increase taxes soda taxes whatever else um so it tends to usually go that direction but i think that that is not very well uh based on the evidence that we have from the tobacco example right plus plus they subsidize tobacco farmers with that same money don't they yeah the um let me see so anyway that's that's what i think in terms of the general robustness of the government i think i think the united states government is an incredible creation and i think that the uh i think we're designed by nature to to be uh very sensitive to in-group out-group dynamics with respect to this and to also believe that our inputs into the situation are significant and important uh that's because you were designed by nature for a stone age troupe with 30 people in it 30 adults and between you and your sister and your brother-in-law and your best friend and his wife that was like five of those people so that means you had a lot of say in whether what we go east or west for the winter and uh and so if you want to go east because you think that's the best idea and some other people want to go west your political vocalizations and your political machinations are important to an outcome that's important for you that your notice how heated it can get at your own you know thanksgiving dinner because you're trying to influence people close to you and it can be very frustrating if they don't see the things the way you see them and it feels quote important that that is a delusion and a misunderstanding a derivative of stone age psychology the uh the truth is is that you're one in you know 330 million people and nobody really cares one way or another your vote makes absolutely no difference i mean you can you can say well you get to vote which is cool but you know all of your political influence is adding up to almost nothing with respect to any outcome with respect to your life so the um so that uh that fact that that's true and that we have as good a system as we do is an incredible blessing so that the the major key to your better future is you and it's got nothing to do with anything that goes down in politics so the uh so that's the that is the beauty of of the united states government is literally the the greatest beauty is that it functions quite well at all the things it's supposed to do of course it's corrupt and overly expensive that goes without saying but the beauty of it is is that you really don't have to worry about it because it's hardly relevant at all to your existence that's fantastic and that that's always been true when i sit down at any month at any month of the year since i was an adult for the last 40 years at some restaurant if we ever get to go again with friends of mine we are not talking about gee in washington today this is what happened in the congress and oh my god what's so-and-so going to do about this and then oh my god what if that happens only around election time are people interested the rest of the time if i'm talking to my friends we're talking about our lives we're talking about people we know people that we like people that we're trying to get to know things that we're trying to accomplish in other words we're not like maybe somebody in hong kong right now that's to be unbelievably worried about governmental processes we don't in this this is that's the thing i mean that's why i beat this drum all the time is people love to talk about oh how terrible american government is and how corrupt and how bought and paid for and how you know you can't it's it's not a fair fight to get your interests represented in washington or whatever okay well yeah go anywhere else in the world where it really it really is uh you know often a matter of life and death as to who's in power and who has control and whether they are your in-group or not um and and just to make your way around you have to you have to bribe petty little officials at every little random border check on some mountain road when you're taking the you know the bus from one end of guatemala to the other you know just anywhere i mean i've i've been in so many places where you were confronted with the absolute just you know non-functional institutional environment of a government that is incredibly corrupt that is incredibly in service to one set of entrenched interests and is highly militarized and you have to walk that line or you were out and it's it's a whole different game it's a it's a really it's a very different existence and you bet those people sit around in cafes and talk about politics because it's incredibly relevant to their existence into their life um and we we have the same little circuit because again yeah it was same same in the stone age i mean stone age politics were not exactly democratic either they were they were strong men and bullies and thugs who were trying to uh seize power and and oppress the people they didn't like that is kind of the situation normal for political life and so the fact that we have managed to create this system that is as as you know neutral as it is in and that really does most of the time in general act on the the behalf of the greater good and you know one one one nation under the flag like it's remarkable it's a remarkable experiment there's there are uh some imitators but nothing nothing quite like it and so i yeah i just always want people to stand back and realize that it's a really really precious thing yeah uh oh grand gen by the way try to speak a little more directly into your mic because you're kind of it's kind of uh highly variant how clear you are oh okay i'm trying to fix the problem where it's been too direct into my mic before so okay yeah right that's really good right there okay yeah i just moved it good good okay all right all right nathan dare i say amen and maybe a women to that [Music] [Laughter] all right our next one there you go let's go on oh wait doctor hawk did i trigger you what happened what happened super triggered triggered yeah gonna have to process it in blank slate therapy this week all right what do we got nathan our next question dear doctors how do people like the esselstyns dr campbell and others not fall into the ego trap regarding plant-based eating well the the ego trap is a situation where the expectations of either yourself either from yourself from an internal audience or the external environment has set the expectations above your level of abilities and uh and then then you can feel intimidated by that and then you can go against that in a self-destructive way in order to demonstrate that you are not trying the um these people uh this is not impossible to to to uh escape the the pleasure trap and its force lots of people do it and so it's not trivial and most people won't but the these people are all in very intelligent people and they're very conscientious individuals and so uh as a result it it you know i'm sure it wasn't trivial for them but it uh to to get out of the pleasure trap but neither was it some draconian impossible dream uh and so they did it big deal there's nothing there's nothing ego trap about it uh it's not ego trapping for michael jordan to go out there and get get 20 points on an average night in his career it's a a remarkable performance for an average nba player and it's a noteworthy performance in their careers the night that they got 20. but for michael it was no big deal and it's no big deal for these people uh they're this is uh they understand deeply the importance for their own lives and and they've made the changes they've gone up the learning curves they have tremendous family support and it's no big deal yeah i think that you do see ego trap behavior um you know maybe not at that at that uh status tier that we're talking about with this question but with people who have just discovered the good word and they're they're trying it out and maybe they've had some initial success and they decide that they're they are going to now be the you know the the great ambassador in the face of how to lose weight through plant-based eating and everything and they start a youtube channel or they um you know they start to build some kind of following on social media that that basically puts them into the ego trap i think that happens quite often um and so you know they they will build up these high expectations in the village of their success and then they run into some trouble after that initial momentum that they have which is very normal which almost everybody has so there's there's a tendency to have that that very enthusiastic you know beginning to the process uh put people into the ego trap it's one of the reasons that we tell people to cool it on the evangelism um just within their own kind of social circle because a lot of people find plant-based living and they and they want to you know spread the good word to everybody they know and they can be pretty pushy about it um yeah hold on a second just you know give it give it six months give it a year give it two years and and watch as you uh you you can't imagine it now in the the pink cloud of your early success but you're going to struggle most likely unless you're a conscientious freakazoid like alan goldhamer um but you're you're gonna struggle you're gonna you're gonna backtrack you're gonna you're gonna go through this process that almost everybody does which is that sometimes you're doing really well and sometimes you're not doing so well and you're feeling a little embarrassed and a little ashamed of your process and if you've set it up like you were the expert and you know everything um and and you know everybody check me out and look at me as i tell you how to do this that can be a very ego trap initiating kind of sequence for people and if they've linked career expectations to it that gets that gets pretty gnarly in a hurry yeah that's great jen i was taking the question at face value but i'm sure that that the underlying question was at you know uh one notch of fame down yeah there it's real there it's real it's super real yeah all right good nathan now what do we got thank you all right our next question dear doctors would you do a show addressing dating between men and women who are past their baby making years those in their 50s and 60s are older who are widowed or divorced as a 62 year old widow it seems that most men just want something casual with no commitment i want a committed partner any advice that's a doug question the um i guess i the reason i get a roar out of that is how classic is that uh the woman wants committed relationship and the guy just wants something casual of course the um answer guess what it's been that this way since you were 16. yeah so nothing has changed the uh so you're you're up against the same exactly the same process as you've always been which is the the men are going to be interested in things casual unless unless it turns out to be an offer so good that the match is so good for him that he quote wants a commitment okay because he feels like it's special and he wants to officially or unofficially uh get rid of all the competition and so that's what a committed relationship isn't a decision of commitment it's a realization that it's in one's best interest and it's run by an unconscious stone age built algorithm that's what it is it's the cost-benefit analysis saying i'm willing to go all in and make long-term plans with this girl because this is a a screaming deal for me and that's what i want to do that's a male committing a male male committing isn't gee you know i really like things casual but if i was a good guy you know in a way i'm supposed to do it about what what people say i'm supposed to do and what the cosmopolitan front you know cover said that i'm supposed to do or she's doing this or that to get a commitment out of me and taking me to therapy or whatever that's a joke okay you're you are committed to anything a career a friend a concept idea project or or romantic partner you're committed to the extent that your cost-benefit analysis uh arrives at the conclusion that that's the right frame of mind to have towards it so yeah nothing has changed you got the same problem that you always had and we got the same uh competitive problems that you always have except that the people that we're looking at now aren't aren't 22 32 42 or 52 or even 62. if you're 62 yeah there'll be some people what did she say she was 62 62 year old widow mm-hmm yes 16 uh your your market is late 50s into the 60s etc maybe even a uh a handsome competent healthy 72 year old that's probably in the game but that's the marketplace and and most of those people are going to be looking for quote casual non-committed relationships and my attitude would be uh you know you can advertise easily that it's not a new ad for males to hear that women are interested in long-term relationships like that every guy knows this so you're going to go through your process 10 paid dates and let's see who's there standing at the end that's how we're going to find out you know what's available in terms of committed partners jen doctor yeah i don't think i have anything new to add to that i mean it's it's really you see it at every every stage i mean i remember my um my dear grandmother talking about the sort of romantic politics at the senior center in anchorage with you know the sort of all all the ladies had their eye on some you know 91 year old and he he had a little flirtation with the the frisky 79 year old and he wasn't ready to commit to the the 85 year olds it was like it was like this jealousy there was even there was even discussion about how the younger woman who was she was at least in her late 70s she may have been in her early 80s because my grandmother would have been you know mid mid 80s at this point that she was flashy you know she was flashy she was she was a little a little bit you know she was showing some cleavage she had some you know she was bedazzled um and it's exactly the same story it's like you could have transplanted it to a high school environment and it would have been right at home so yeah the the you know the animal does not change its stripes no matter what phase of life it happens to be you know what mabel's wearing too much red lipstick and it's not fair totally that was it well and then because it's not fair i guess i better wear more red lipstick too so i can be more competitive i love it i love it my mother who's who's 87 uh yep where i was watching tv and some some uh match.com derivative came on it was i don't know was our time or some older thing totally aiming at my market by the way and and uh my uh my mother looks at the thing and says i think i should do that [Laughter] first we got to decide whether or not you could walk around the block that's first we're gonna we're gonna see if we're gonna figure that out when the weather gets warmer then we'll see you need to walk around the block to flirt i guess not you can just sit there and wear your lipstick and and be charming and look pretty which your mom is very good at your mom is a really interesting example because you know she's as she as she progresses in her alzheimer's you see like the the actual algorithm of that brain is consistently obsessed with how attractive she is yes she's sort of like she always returns to do i look okay you know oh i can't go out without my lipstick on like she can't she can't keep track of a conversation from you know 20 seconds ago but she always goes back to these questions of and you know asks if her husband was handsome and all these kinds of things like that that are very like you just really see what's actually the the core motivational algorithm in that brain um always concerned about what she's wearing always concerned about whether they're going to be attractive men there she i've i've heard her be sort of dismissive of of the of the men of her age that are available at the senior center where she's like oh no not those guys you know those guys are a boar yeah yeah it actually is an amazing thing to watch as jen says you yeah you you see the personality coming out and then you see it's stripping everything down to these core motivations and and it was ironic about it is that my mother to the best of my knowledge was was absolutely not particularly at all uh concerned about her appearance you know in her i i knew her well from the time i was what 12 or so so she would have been you know 40ish 40 50 60 70 you don't see it you see a very dismissive attitude and you know very uh just basically conservative and completely unshowy and now you know 85 different story it's a you're we're seeing that that concern is very prominent unbelievably important it's a core motivational problem uh of the organism and there it is it's revealed on a daily basis hourly amazing it's amazing my my yeah i oh go ahead my my sisters and their girlfriends they they like to joke around they said that when they're when they're of age uh and and in the in in in those social circles they're gonna get themselves a life alert button so they can just summon the hot firefighter whenever they want oh my god my strategy very crafty that's good i mean as as we have this conversation i can anticipate you know getting pushback from you know i very frequently hear from women who are you know over generally over 50 who basically say this doesn't apply you know they don't they're they're not that they're not in this competitive uh mode and that they're not interested in what men think of them and that they're living for other reasons and they're interested in other things and um and so you know of course that that is is often true i mean this is this is a relative moving target depending on who you are kind of how you know were were you a a boy crazy high schooler then you're probably going to be a boy crazy 85 year old you know like your your personality is a reflection of your priority matrix and so it's probably going to be very consistent over the course of your life you're you're not likely to shift or if or if other circumstances change and um you just find yourself in a different situation so um all of that said you know if you're if you're hanging out with your girlfriends having your your red hat lunch like my like my grandma did this is the when i am an old woman i shall wear purple poem for people who are familiar with that it's kind of a little social group for senior ladies um you know if robert redford had walked in they you know even even those most hardened among them to uh into the possibility of flirtation they may have found themselves a little interested in that so it's it's always a dynamic response to your available opportunities and and the perceived constraints it's it's a dynamic um moving target and it's going to reflect both your personality and your environmental context at any given moment in time so people can be in all sorts of different parts of that bell curve throughout their life well well in light of what you just said dr hawk it was only half of the girlfriends and sisters that that that said that with the life alert button the other half just to preserve their reputations yeah right there you go yeah it's just it's it's worth it's worth saying because i think sometimes people feel that we're being kind of dismissive of you know having other interests outside of this very narrow kind of like oh i only exist to get the most exciting possible mate and there's no other purpose to my life and that's that's really not what we're saying we're just saying that that's kind of the that's at the center of the the animalistic drive inside of all of us but the way that it it it is manifest in any particular individual is obviously a very individual and specific process well wonderful oh good thank you dr hawk and dr lyle okay so the next question is similar topic last week i was or last episode in an earlier episode excuse me i was crushed to hear dr law say he is dead from an evolutionary perspective as an avid follower of dr lyle dr hawk in the podcast this active 75 year old woman is finished with reproduction but still desiring social contact and certainly not ready to retreat from the village i would love to hear you address the social needs of seniors who are open extroverts hmm well the truth is is that i think jen just put this that that the the creature stays remarkably consistent throughout its lifespan and so the uh and one of the things that our world is not too great at is for various interesting reasons you you see how how sort of socially isolated the world is so we you know we retreat to our houses in our suburbs and you're you're watching uh you're watching an interesting cost benefit analysis that so much of the world is more comfortable there than it is you know in closer living in a commune in the middle of a big city so there obviously we have competing demands inside the human nervous system and literally the physical architecture of how it is that we do live when we have the opportunity to live the way we want um is expressing some very you know interesting uh values dynamics um that that sit inside of humans and an awful lot of humans want an awful lot of privacy which is really interesting the uh if they don't need uh the value that they have of being in groups if you're out in the suburbs and you've you've got a police force and a fire thing down the street and everybody's orderly and there's plenty of food around so if you have a famine in your backyard garden that goes south you know it's no problem you got safeway two miles away in other words all of these tremendous blessings of civilization you don't feel like you need to be going to sleep around a big campfire with 30 other people the way you always did in your stone age in the stone age village so what's interesting about that though is in in the pursuit of that privacy we we also can feel like we've we've overshot it sometimes and uh and so people can get a lot of connection in their lives from being in the workplace for example um if they have large families they're still connected but you could also have things change on you uh to where suddenly you're not in the workplace you're not part of some group that's doing something and now you don't have a place to go every day and you're 75 and and you are living in a suburban type situation and now you can feel a coalition deficiency and a made opportunity deficiency uh and a productive activity deficiency and so you we can see that uh a lot of those natural sort of social needs uh are are not being served well by the physical architecture of our existence and so you know that's why they've that's why i forget what they call it there's a there's a dell webb is a a developer a brand that has these del webb communities you know particularly in in a lot of areas in the united states they tend to be in southern areas where it's warmer where people want to retire and some of these things are huge uh you know there might be i think there's one in south carolina i think it is i think uh must be i don't know 15 000 people living in one of these things uh all with their nice intermediate sized houses so nobody has to compete with a bunch of money that they've got the biggest house on the block and they have a tremendous amount of social opportunity and people feel very comfortable uh there because they can they can live inside of larger coalitions that are mimicking uh the processes that would have been uh in the stone age so yeah i think that the world has some social psychological needs that are uh that people struggle with because of the competing demands uh that people have had across the lifespan have led to a physical architecture of the environment that isn't necessarily ideal for everybody at every age group and so uh as the as the market responds to that and people figure out how to make it look different and better you know we'll we'll find we'll find solutions uh that you know that may serve us better but for now you know you can uh this is jen's potted plant you know find find a place like that for example that serves your particular interests well because there probably is somewhere dr lyle thank you so much um if our listeners have not um heard already dr lyle has a end-of-year show with uh with jeff aj as well it's worth checking out i recommend that oh i want to hear jen doctor hawking just sometimes she just turns out on this oh i'm sorry yeah i was i was working on my knitting again no i think all of that all of that is great i mean it's it's definitely you become more aware of your um your lack of a social insurance policy as you get older as well so i think it's an interesting it's an interesting two-way trap because as people get older they actually get more discerning about who they want to spend time with of course they would you know they have more they have more um data on how how people are likely how relationships are likely to develop based on on who people are so this is you know i i am not super introverted i'm really kind of middle of the bell curve with extraversion introversion but i i get more introverted with age because i'm just much more discerning about who i'm going to spend time with because i've i've built more correlations over time where i see certain kinds of personality traits and behavior early in a potential coalition member and i'm like not worth it not not i have enough examples of where this goes that this is not somebody that is going to be a very good cb in the long term so it pushes me into looking like a more introverted individual and i think that happens for everybody including even you know high extroverts like this this person is identifying but then at the same time you're feeling the pressure uh you know it's 75 of of a diminished coalition just in general and particularly if you're in comparably very good health then you're active um that's an interesting set of pressures so you you're kind of like looking for people who qualify as an insurance policy to to be there for when you might need them and if they're going to qualify for an insurance policy they have to be basically as good as you are or ideally a little better in terms of their kind of value to the village otherwise why are you going to pay the premium if they're if they're not as good as you are it's not worth paying the friendship premium to to call them in in a time of trouble so so it's tough it it's always tough and it gets tougher as you go through life and particularly in that age group so i think definitely the the more you can you know as as we say in a very non-vegan example fish where the fish are and create that environment where you're most likely to stumble across people who qualify for coalition members and friendship and and mating opportunities if you're interested the better off you're going to be wow jen that that was fantastic that you you put your you put your finger right on an interesting problem that we know is there but doesn't quite get articulated which is this issue of two 40-year-olds that meet they're both competent enough to drag the other one out of a ditch and if you get into a ditch it's unlikely but now you're in trouble but your odds of recovering are tremendously high so if i go to the trouble to drag you out of a ditch then i've proved my coalition value to you and um so it's worth pla paying that premium you're going to you're going to feel how valuable i am you're going to be a very good coalition remember to me in the future and it was a short-term cost whereas that and so i don't have to be looking for people that are better than me uh when i'm 40 because everybody's in pretty good shape in other words they don't have to be they don't have to be a better survival specimen but boy at 75 that consideration gets this is fascinating jen the trade gets harder not just physically but also you know intellectually problem-solving-wise like you know people should think about this in terms of like i'm looking at you and evaluating you as a potential friend like yeah can you drag me out of a ditch but also can you help me figure out how to get out of the ditch like if we're both there and we're both sort of not able to do it i need some iq i need some some creativity i need all of those things that people value and friendship and so yeah it gets more and more scarce these are scarce commodities to begin with and they get more and more scarce as you narrow the pool wow this is actually i'm going to be thinking about this for a while that's actually and because i've watched it with my mother who her whole life was an extremely competent person and very agreeable person and highly conscientious and therefore valuable and was you know basically had no problem always had more people that wanted to be her friend than she had any interest in so zero friendship deficiency basically avoided people because she was inherently attractive uh not i'm not saying physically attractive but inherently attractive as a coalition member very pleasant capable easy going willing to give you status in other words and competent was not going to bring costs okay and i look at her situation now of course where she is in a position where she's really not good anything good to anybody so she's she's good to me for me to just because i have the memories of her and i and it's it's a joy to watch her laugh or watch her happy okay but i mean this is a but boy i i'm a unique person she could not now honestly go out there and earn a friendship through her ability to trade as an insurance partner could not do so so uh she could activate somebody's you know maternalistic chips by childlike behavior and needy behavior that could that could serve as a is a recipient of somebody else's grandstanding of their abilities to the village more broadly that is true okay but that's not much of a position of power and so this is this is a really interesting analysis of the the problems of the elderly that we sort of know is there but we can't quite put our finger on it and i i think you've you've done a great job here we're gonna we're gonna be talking more about this it's important you
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