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Episode 93: Relocating, Sexual Harassment current events, Dating on a diet, and more
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all right good evening everybody dr. Lyle how are you doing good hear your voice again excellent it's Nate G dr. Lyle beat your jeans podcast we took a week off last week for Thanksgiving but we are back full steam ahead today we've got a lot of questions today we got 10 and we're going to try to get to as many as we can and the ones we don't get to we are going to go with next week so dr. Lyle let's power through this are you ready I'm ready let's just do it all right let's just about ok so last week the future episode we had a couple of follow-up questions from that but the one that so we're going to read is dear dr. Lyle you talked about how we are all going to be wealthy and everyone's going to be cheap everything is going to be cheap thanks to technology advancements it all makes sense but I want to understand the future of our actual society if as you say dr. Lyle will have robots doing everything such as paving our roads what happens to the jobs and earning a living for the humans even if things are cheap we have to earn some money right will it be a service based economy where each person only needs to do about 5 hours of work per week to earn our equivalent of 40 hours today so what a restaurant have like 10 different managers and 100 different search servers that rotate shifts all I'm really trying to ask is what happens when we don't need 150 million Americans working anymore yes it's good it's a good question just because the persons sort of imagining the future as I'm seeing that it would unfold the however this kind of question it's a type of question that has often been raised and and and there's been worry about it's the same kind of question that took place when when they got computerized welders inside of the automobile factories so suddenly there's a bunch of guys that used to make a really good union wage welding cars and they no longer and weld there's no work for them to be done so the question is oh my god well what are the welders going to do answer they're going to do something else and so-and-so job after job after job has been eliminated for example a lot of accountants or bookkeepers are are no longer employed in the same capacity doing the same things that they might have been doing thirty years ago because you've got QuickBooks and TurboTax and things of that nature so the there's no end of innovation and so innovation will continue to take people's jobs away you remember they used to dial uh for one one and an operator would say you know Pacific Bell can I help you and then you're going to ask them to look up a number and so the that was a hugely expensive process that the phone companies had to provide for for us back and I mean we got a young a lot of young listeners that they don't know that that's that's that even existed sturla but the point is that that was a huge national job was to be an operator for the phone company so of course as technology continues to take over those jobs there they're going to go away and then people do something else now the people that are looking at this and saying yes but what else could they do and here's the issue the issue is that human desires are infinite and that's something that that the night naive folks and I'm not saying stupid I'm saying naive because the question here was naive it's it's a naive concept that people only want X amount of whatever it is because today it would be suffice in whatever it is so today it surprises us to have X number of square feet ourselves but we can see already that that is not the case we can see that when people can afford it bump it up to you know a family of four sorts looking at a thousand square foot a human is kind of where it is that they are looks like they're landing we don't know if that's going to go to 8,000 square or 2,000 square feet of human maybe maybe not probably not the ATS etc etc so now let's can we imagine what people are going to do not really we couldn't have imagined 50 years ago 60 years ago that so many people would be involved in making computers and servicing computers were writing software we wouldn't have had a dream that the software industry would be the industry that it is today so it's very difficult to imagine what the market what human desires will emerge as important even though we know in principle what they are but we don't know how a friend of mine is all interested by the way friend of mine is quite interested in sex robots and so I come by this information honestly just for everybody who's listening and so it turns out he keeps explaining to me that sex robots are on the verge of an extraordinary boom and rut and revolution now that would surprise me at all so there will probably be can you say that its kind of reaching a climax is that how you put it on ha ha ha very good the but the point is here is that there's there's no end to what it is that people are going to want I expect that we may very well I mean just a as I look into the future I can see a tremendous amount more exquisite Beach property being developed around the world in a way that it isn't just because airplane flights will be much much cheaper they'll be faster and not only will they be cheaper and faster but it will also be the case that people will have the time and money to to lie on the beach and so I expect that there's going to be a lot more regions of the world that look like Cancun etc but the question is a good question but it comes from this naive notion that there would be limited human desires and therefore limited demand and the demand the demand is infinite so there's there's no end to what it is that human might might continue to want and therefore people even though they will be spectacularly wealthy by today's standards as the people are today spectacularly wealthy by the standards of 1850 they even though they will be spectacularly wealthy they will still be wanting to satisfy a lot of their their infinite material desires and so therefore they will still be willing to work now I think we're going to see that they're not going to be willing to work not very many people are going to be willing to work as hard as most people work today just as most people today do not work nearly as hard as their as their grandparents were working in the factories of 1950 so people today there are people today that work very hard but there are not very many of them and most people are hanging around the water cooler there they're typing stuff on it on a computer they're in an air-conditioned in heat controlled office they got a nice break for lunch they hop in their beautiful car that is reliable I mean this is like unthinkable you know in by 1940 standards and their biggest problem is not getting making sure they try to not eat too many rich calories that that's insane relative to human history so the the problems of today are a joke compared to the problems of 50 or 100 years ago and the problems of a hundred years from now will be comical compared to the problems of today people will so people will not be working very hard they will they we'll have a lot of time off they will consider it a real annoyance tap to work 32 hours a week in order to have their 8,000 square foot house where the gorgeous pool with a robot that keeps it all perfectly clean etc etc etc so there will be there will be problems and resource constraints and decisions about how to spend one's life in the future but there won't be there won't be any lack of demand so there there also won't be any lack of supply of labour there will be supply and demand curves intersecting at various wage rates for various problems of various pleasantness would be a lot of people trying to make livings as dancers and movie producers and actors and singers just like there's a heck of a lot more people today trying to make their living in music then there were 50 years ago it's not even close so you can imagine in the world of tomorrow with increasing amount of ability to market to the entire world that everybody that can maybe find a way in the genre to sell 30,000 copies of their little tune will be in their cool personal little studio with their little highschool friends in their big fancy house and they'll be pumping out music and trying to build their little their little coalition of little few fans and try to sell those things for quote a lot of money so this is this is the ideas of tomorrow but there won't be there won't be any lack of things for people to do in order to try to make some money and so circle back around these sex robots I really want to hear about that well there just be like a part of society that will just be all about the pleasure trap sex you know salt sugar oil drugs alcohol tobacco I actually think that's true I think that uh and my friends not not a fool he's very sophisticated thinker really quite a visionary in terms of his he anticipated in a paper that he wrote twenty more than 20 years ago but the exact type of internet process that you see now he imagined millions of little movie producers producing very short kinds of things etc it turned out he was absolutely right and he was a lone voice or pretty close to it speaking along those lines so now that he's looking at the sex robot trade he says this that this thing is going to become phenomenal and and he very well could be right so if there's some company out there that might need my attention from a few dollars Mike sounds reasonable safer safer for all parties involved you know there are no human trafficking problems no would be right yes well all sorts of things and the ability of androids to to learn to be responsive to a specific individuals desires this is this is could could be really quite something it's it's essentially the 21st century version of pornography pornography actually has been at the cutting edge of all media whether was you know print media whether it was photography whether it was telephone there's phone sex clear back in the early nineteen hundred's and now pornography drove tremendous amount of innovation on the internet and so that this is this is now now it's coming to a culmination here if with Android robots it's going to be don't think that I mean robotics has an awful lot of applications you have robots do all kinds of things that are going to be potentially useful but you can only imagine the dollar signs inside entrepreneurial eyes in in the robot industry thinking about the extraordinary massive market behind sex robots this is going to drive tremendous innovation this field just like it always has hopefully doing all right something better than just cold metal okay so next question okay dear dr. Lyle I'm divorced almost two years fifty-five years old not currently working and I'm considering relocating somewhere with a more reasonable cost of living I currently live in Southern California by myself which is expensive most of my family lives in upstate New York and I have a few friends scattered around Northern California Washington and Oregon which have also considered I'm also considering somewhere warm with the low cost of living like New Mexico and Arizona so my question is this do I move back to New York where I have lots of extended family but not super crazy about the weather the drama graphics or the area or do I move somewhere where I feel the demographics whether an area are more appealing but I'll be alone I've also dreamed of other scenarios like just selling everything and moving to a tropical country but I'm not sure that I have the risk tolerance for that yeah a good question so let's let's look at the way I try to solve problems as I try to solve them in principle so there's a principled way to try to solve a problem like this and that is right now this individual doesn't it's not clear to them in their imagination what is the optimal solution so when that's not clear what we want to do is we want to do things that could give us more information so that we can evaluate the problem so in this case there are certain problems different types of problems if this person were telling me they couldn't figure out you know which Kleenex they should buy I would tell them buy a box of each and then you can compare them side-by-side and then you could you decide made that decision forever obviously you when you're trying to decide whether or not to have a child you don't get to do that you don't get to have a cheap and easy method for determining whether or not this is something that you want to do so in this case we have an intermediate level decision we don't have a decision about a career on the horizon we don't have a decision that that we have a huge amount of stake so in in my judgment what we do is we we actually want to take a run at the unknown where there's a potential major upside so this person already knows the cost benefit of what it's like to quote go home to upstate New York they know about the cold misery in the freezing and thank you I've got it looking like it's right outside of Buffalo so I will have it go stop it right but but the point is is that this they already know what the score is there and the the cost benefit hanging over the head of those parameters is not a huge draw it's a moderate draw so there's the the unknown up side that sits in Tucson or wherever else the the person is considering and my attitude would be look at look at a place that looks appealing looks like it has some some excitement to it that it could fit pretty well and go there and the and run the least expensive experiment that you can and so that experiment might take you a year it might take you three or four months to get a job you might be on the job for a while etc and maybe you have to stay maybe you have to stay a year or two in order to not wreck your resume I'm not sure what the person situation is the point is is that the at 55 years old if you're taking reasonable care of yourself you have 30 years left to live and so the notion here is explore the landscape a little bit and to see whether or not we can make an optimal decision so if you go to a place that you think has the biggest upside you go there for a year and you really dislike it and you're lonely and miserable and you really miss the freezing sleet then then by all means you can always fall back on a a decision where you already know the parameters the whole point here is to run experiments to learn to get new information and so that's that's the way that I would go about solving that problem fantastic cocaine mmm all right and dr. Lao can you tell us a little bit why you decided to live in California versus anywhere else okay where you try to step me into alienating much people well I'm sorry no I realized I wasn't I picked up pick up on know the I've actually lived many different places and and so I can understand the appeal of a lot of different places notice how smooth and politically correct that was I've lived in Idaho I've lived in Oregon lived in northern and southern California I've lived in Texas I've lived in Virginia I've lived in Maryland so I've lived you know a fair amount of places and I like the I dislike the humidity of the of the eastern seaboard and I disliked the cold of the north so that leaves the Southwest I dislike that the dryness and heat of the the desert and the look of the desert so that that puts me starts crowding me into northern South I think early models and various article logical reasons I was just curious about that right right so I know you're in LA and I know that seven or eight million people up there like Los Angeles but I grew up there and and I like a little more rain and a little more change of the seasons and a few more trees it meaning even three trees which Oh anyway that's why I'm where I am okay all right so our next question we actually have a caller on hold right now so we're going to get to that color I've got a couple of emails from a lot of the listeners asking you to comment on the in the sexual allegations on the current news so looks like the collar man will do that question so work color what's your name were you calling from a Jala and my question actually is on the sexual harassment in the news living in LA I'm wondering what is going on with Hollywood you know the casting couch has been going on forever and this kind of behavior occurs in other professions but first with Bill Cosby and then you know Harvey Weinstein and then who is next Kevin Spacey Charlie Rose Matt Lauer why is it taking so much longer for people to come forward it and it seems to reach a precipice now where everybody's coming forward from abuse this happened years ago so is this a good thing why is it happening and why does it happen in all professions why just Hollywood well I think that that's a great questions AJ by the way I know you are I know I know where you live to welcome back all this let's see I would say one reason why this is now rolling downhill in Hollywood is because remember remember what you're watching now you're watching news and the news is driven by money so the news is all about how many eyeballs you can get on a station and so news decisions are being run by analytics so if it turned out the most exciting thing was you know what frisky the cat was eating today that's what we'd be watching so it's going to turn out that what's exciting for people are are things that are that are deeply evolutionarily significant so there are things that for example somebody's child was abducted in I don't know Prairie View Texas and there's a manhunt for some horrible human that did this now everybody's eyeballs are wanting to be on that and that gets tremendous attention because because that that's striking the primal fears of parents that their child could be abducted and because the human mind cannot grasp the number 300 million it wasn't designed by nature to be able to actually catalog what that means statistically people tend to think of the size of of their world in terms of the village of you know they certainly are aware of what a few thousand people would look like because that's what's in their town but they don't really see that many people in a given day they might see a few hundred people in a day so if a child is abducted anywhere it makes it increases their perceived probability that this could happen to their child even though child's being abducted you know after school are like incredibly rare and so this is uh but it but you wouldn't think so so if you talk to the average mom or average 50 year-old or six-year-old they will think that this is happening vastly more than it was happening in the 1970s the exact opposite is true okay these things were crime was much worse in the 1950s and 60s in this country than it is now so crime is far less and that's because for there's many reasons for that but one reason is cell phones and cameras and scrutiny etc etc so people are under much more monitoring than they ever were before and therefore there's there's that that is a significant reason why there's less crime the so you know people don't have it don't have that under their fingernails they think that it's a lot worse why because the analytics a news news decision-making has been driven now by intelligent monetary analysis which says put the most sensationalistic terrifying and disturbing information in front of people as often as you can that's how that's the only way we're going to survive as a news show because we've got competitors that if we don't do it they well and so this is now what's going on is that who really cares if some schoolteacher in Des Moines Iowa you know harassed some of the secretaries in the school nobody cares but who do we all know we know Hollywood figures and so so now now this is this is a new a new phenomenon now another thing that is happening is there's a there's a little cultural dam that is being broken here and so now suddenly if you are someone that's going to report on somebody that they did to you 20 years ago people are going to believe it suddenly it's like we're getting the idea that of course this behavior is not super uncommon and so and particularly in Hollywood in a situation like that where there's people that have a lot of power over other people for those lower people's goals they they want to be fancy themselves they want to be in the movies they want to be somebody and here is somebody that's feeling them up and you know what should they do about it and maybe they should let it go maybe they should accommodate etc etc so the point is is that that would have been a situation and also the people that are that are in positions of power that we're pointing to these are people that there's a reason why they were climbing dominance hierarchies there's a reason why they were trying to be rich and famous is because they had a lot of Drive and behind that drive they a lot of that drive was sexual drive and so there's a reason you know I think it's hilarious like oh my god that wealthy businessman is trying to hit on all these people it's like of course he is why on earth do you think he was attempting to be so wealthy that that was the very thing that was driving the behavior and so we're going to find out as as we obviously well that over and over again the perpetrators in these situations are going to be male and and those males will be essentially attempting to execute short-term mating strategy and they're trying to get it cheap and they're trying to to get it with the least possible fuss with the most tract people they can now I wouldn't want to paint all of this behavior with the same brush as the news media is now doing so Bill Cosby is one thing and somebody else that is hitting has been now been found to build up some some of the secretaries on the staff and inappropriately iced out and pressure them with their jobs that's a pretty different thing folks you know my understanding is that unless things are vastly different than they're being told Bill Cosby is a many many many multiple times rapists and he has drugged people not pressured them not threatening that with their jobs he is drugged women and and then raped them when they're under the influence of date rape drugs that's incredible and that if if that is true anybody that ever pulled a stunt like that should be you know in bars role for many many years on one count and for life on multiple counts so in in my personal judgment that's completely different than somebody just said you either sleep with me or you lose my job are you going to lose your job in that case that that son of a bitch you know is breaking law it's he he deserves to be penalized etc and there need there needs to be both civil and I guess possibly because you know I'm not sure what criminal charges would be involved there I don't even know if that's as much a criminal I probably as criminal act but I'm not sure how serious it would be but certainly leave that person wide open to major civil litigation but it's it a completely different level there now this is this trend is going to go on for a while in my judgment and that's because we we now have seen enough of it we know that people believe it we also know that people are inherently fascinated and disturbed by it and it's going to and it's going to draw eyeballs so I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing I think that a lack of understanding about the differences of how abhorrent these these relative behaviors are I think that's a problem the in my judgment a lot of the women of the world and probably some of the men too are extraordinarily naive about the male casual mating strategy they don't they don't really understand it they don't really have a feel for it they don't really quite understand men's motives the way we'd talk about here on this show they don't really they're not really in touch with it so for example I think a great example of the world's outrage was about Tiger Woods so here's Tiger Woods the number one golfer in the world rich young handsome strong and it turns out oh he's cheating on his wife he's got 13 13 women that he slept with and last year this is like a course monumental scandal this uh and I can I can understand people being like disturbed they thought they knew him and they thought he was a family man with a beautiful wife and a couple of kids no it turns out he's a dominance hierarchy climbing alpha who is looking to spill his seed as far and wide as he could this is totally legitimate it may not be admirable and it may be uncomfortable when people might say oh no that he's married he's not supposed to do that well that's ludicrous the truth of the matter is that this is all this is all fair game in male-female relationships and in no way there's certainly nothing even remotely criminal about this and so the whole thing to me is I think I can't remember who who said this some famous athlete said God you know that's just what we did back in the day I think it was Wilt Chamberlain when he was late in his life when he was being cross-examined and shamed or something those kind of athletes that's just what we did we went out and played and then there was really great looking women in the audience and they would they would find a way to get in contact with us and we go sleep with him like that was the point yeah that's why we were there okay and so that is why Tiger was there and so he was simply doing what what that male would do so the the female of mind and like I said not just female mind looks at that behavior and says ooh that's horrible that's immoral really cheated it's such a bad thing it's like hmm that's why we understand where you're coming from but you're not understanding the male brain the male brain is that that human being was doing this was executing a reproductive program that is the resident program inside the Machine and in no way directly harming anybody else doing it and it's making people uncomfortable and disturbing relationships and consequences to his family and of course the thing that I think he upset him the most obviously was losing endorsement money haha you lost a lot of endorsement money but but yet so there's going to so I think that there's going to be continue to be a lack of differentiation in understanding that there is a 50,000 light years difference between Tiger Woods and Bill Cosby and the sort of media outrage and and lack of understanding of that distinction I think is problematic you know and I think it's going to continue to be a muddy mess do you think that there's a reason why everybody's coming out now is it maybe because television shows are getting less ratings because the internet and all the all the free content or is there some other reason no I have a feeling that I have a feeling that I think you're seeing that I think this is victims that are basically saying hey if I speak up it's going to be believed because it's not like there's been radio silence on this issue before the last scandal that was four or five months ago no there's scandal last week three days ago six days ago etc it's like oh my god if it turns out that this is actually extremely common behavior to have been victimized in some sort of way then if I join my voice to it I'm not out here by myself trying to say I'm a victim there's going to be a lot of support so I think that that's that's a significant reason why that's true I also think that there's undoubtedly there's going to be some profiteering some of the things I've heard have been kind of ridiculous whining I can't I I'm not going to I'm not going to speculate I'm not going to repeat what I've heard because I could have it wrong and I wouldn't want to I would be want to be dead wrong about this but some of the things that I've heard people so so-called complaining about some of these actors and people have been completely normal run-of-the-mill pretty reasonable behavior that might just be a little disturbing to somebody and but in no way would constitute any kind of an abusive situation so unfortunately anything that sensational is there's going to be some profiteering and whining and and grandstanding on the part of victims and that's sort of unfortunate because there's going to be some legitimate victims out there and some pretty shitty people that it doesn't hurt them at all to be outed and I think fundamentally this kind of process is probably a good thing because it puts celebrities on notice that you're not going to be protected by the press and you're not going to be protected necessarily by governments and by the police or district attorneys turning the blind eye because your fancy that that by God you know what I mean if you did something wrong you're going to have to answer to it so you better not abuse your position what do you guys okay like like when Guan Arnold nagar was governor he impregnated a nanny while in office do you think like that's okay totally fine come really oh god yes what what are we really looking at here arnold schwarzenegger decides to unless it was forcible which of course my understanding wasn't even remotely so the so arnold schwarzenegger decides to nail nail the one of his maids when his wife's not looking okay is this a crime of course not it's not even remotely close to a crime is it is it a disturbing conflict of interest that is uncomfortable but for people closely associated with his marriage including his wife yes of course it is okay the that there we have it so he makes his choice and there are there are emotional consequences to people but when you ask me is it okay of course it's okay it's a it's a personal choice that he makes and there's there's it's between him his conscience and the and the woman on the other side of this is is the maid who decides whether or not she wants to sleep with arnold and the answer apparently was yes oh my gosh does it i got a question does it make him like a liar or a cheater somebody that like what i hear these things to run around is what is what's your take on that well i mean these are these are conflicts of interests between men and women so the let's let's so these are this is this is yeah we're getting this interesting discussion that we want to do yeah the issue here is that that there people have sometimes too difficult time grasping the notion of conflicts of interest so we would like to live in a world in principle where there are no conflicts of interest so therefore if there aren't conflicts of interest then nobody's feelings are going to get hurt nobody's are going to feel like their rights are being trumped on nobody's going to bloody anybody else's nose or or take their property or kill them or fire them or anything else under the Sun okay but in fact the world you live in is nothing but conflicts of interest that every every entity on earth has it stamped on their forehead my DNA is the most important thing on earth okay so in fact any relationship is loaded with conflicts of interest the only question is how we negotiate those conflicts of interest and how much how much cooperation we can have so that our that our best interest can be served pretty well in a marriage there are absolutely conflicts of interest who's going to feed the baby who's going to change the diapers who's going to go to work who's going to clean up the mess of the spilled milk almond milk who's going to you know who's going to do this and who's going to do that and wait a second when are we going to have sex and how are we going to do it who's going to do what and even then in the movie Pulp Fiction you know dick Bruce Willis character and his wife they're talking about who's gonna who's going to do oral sex and she says you first so the point is conflicts of interest stir everywhere and so how people negotiate those conflicts of interests and the consequences to those negotiations are you know are going to be to varying degrees there's going to be varying degrees of discomfort so Arnold had a conflict of interest with whom with his wife and the conflict of interest was Arnold by being an absolute epitome of an alpha male by the way who I have to tell you Maria Shriver would have been difficult for her to have missed that fact in case anybody was paying attention now let me see when I select Arnold Schwarzenegger as my husband what do I think some of the consequences of this are do any other women find him sexually attractive gee no I think it's just me I don't think I have any competition now so maria shriver selects Arnold Schwarzenegger to be her husband okay and Arnold because he's in love with the girl ostensibly and not just a dominance hierarchy climbing alpha that wanted to be part of the Kennedy clan Arnold and principle was in love with Maria Shriver so he's willing to stand between God and everybody and say y'all love this one forever would be faithful you got to be Helen he was biting his lip okay Maria had to be knowing that she was biting his lip but he did it and so they're married they got a couple of kids but what's going to happen what's going to happen is that the default programming of an alpha with phenomenal resources in the mating world and so what's going to happen I assure you that that hot little maid wasn't the only person that Arnold nailed over that 25-year marriage or whatever it was and you have of course Maria wouldn't have dreamed that this was the only person so the only thing embarrassing about it was he impregnated the woman and kept the maid right there in the house now that I gotta tell you it's one thing to nail the maid knock her up and then send her to live in Santa Maria you know in her own nice place and nobody has to know anything about it but to have her right there and have the kid raised right there where the kid starts evidencing cues they look like our I mean that is pretty incredible that guy I don't even know what to call that but all I call it fundamentally stupid but I know the man isn't stupid so I kind of don't know what to call that lower conscientiousness maybe yeah there's a there's a screw loose in there somewhere and I don't know what it is okay if that undid me that made would have been living in Miami but but that's how that goes all right that is all helpful AJ yeah I just googled her she doesn't seem all that hot who he impregnated well that's 20 years ago dear okay maybe she was there okay yeah there you go very much Nicole we always appreciate you okay I'll talk to you soon all right interesting tangent you know this brings up a lot of different questions so I'm glad we got we got some of them in and thank you all for setting all the emails sorry we can read all those regarding the sexual harassment allegations coming out in the news we tried to do the best that we can with the ones that we have okay so next question is we're going to turn the ship completely around and start talking about anxiety transitioning to a healthy diet oh okay okay all right all right so dear dr. Lyle what can I do with a high anxiety that comes with knowing it's time to get with the program and eat and drink healthy there's been times in my past when I acknowledge what I need to do but just that acknowledgement leaves me to go overboard knowing that I won't be able to have something anymore what's the best approach to this situation okay first of all yeah the person is feeling trapped like they're about to be shoved into a steel cage and and and that they're never going to be able to get out so they better grab every bit of pepperoni pizza that they can get before they before they you know face the music now the right way to do this is quite different the right way to do this is to to look at a healthy change in your life as for example a say a sixty-day experiment so not some cheesy little 30-day experiment that isn't going to accomplish very much but a 60-day experiment is going to accomplish quite a bit and so in six you know in six weeks in a rocky trained for fighting Apollo Creed for goodness sakes so in 60 days you can you can get an awful lot done in terms of your health and fitness now the and the other thing that I want people to be doing is to be to be focusing on a little bit different part of this process than they might then they might act and normally even be thinking about what I'm concerned about is I'm concerned about the self esteem mechanism I want people to to to understand that the self esteem mechanism does not work the way human beings into it that it works people's intuition people are very confused about how self esteem works and what it is and what its purpose is in other words you're not going to get this story straight out of psychologists or the media or anybody else under the Sun the the self-esteem mechanism is a very specialized device for an internal audience to be observing your behavior and actually sending signals to you or what I'm going to call the self it's as if they are people outside of you watching you and then sending you esteem signals just as real people would send them to you if they were watching you and in fact when real people are watching you if they watch you work very hard they will send you esteem signals and they will say wow you're really working hard okay that's that's a heck of a job you're doing there and yourself will like that because your self is designed by nature with a with an esteem meter and the self is actually sensitive to cues from from other people that are signaling that they esteem us as they observe our abilities accomplishments etc now with respect to healthy living other people aren't watching the only person that's watching is the internal audience the internal audience is effectively not you it's effectively an outside entity now it resides inside your rain it's dedicated neural tissue to providing a virtual reality experience that other people are watching you and so and it will send you esteem signals just as other people would send the steam signals and so it's actually there to guide your behavior in a way to make your behavior more competent so that when you it's giving you feedback so that when you become more competent at being able to display successful behaviors competitive behaviors then other people will applaud you and want to mate with you or be your friend or hire you or whatever it is so the in you can you into it when you're headed to try to do things more healthfully and try to maybe lose weight get more fit but if you start to put out some effort you know you're not going to have any major metamorphosis in a week and so if you're not very motivated and you're realizing I'm not going to have a major mode of metamorphosis in three weeks so I'm not very motivated and you aren't in other words you're not going to have esteem signals coming from other people anytime soon and otherwise and people also Intuit that the self esteem mechanism is essentially what other people think of them in other words sort of and it's sort of something that was implanted into me by my parents and my whole upbringing and all these negative thoughts I have about myself but all that sort of jobs it's an ocean it's a sort of a hybridized unclear notion but self-esteem is a result of your entire track record and history and all the little bumps and bruises and defeats and rejections that you've had all piled in and wounding your soul as well as how it could all turn around that if if you did something great and then other people suddenly gave you heaps heaps of adulation and then you'd be vector victorious and then it would be fantastic and that's the only way to you know really resurrect your life and make it a great experience is to do something tastico where where you have this great victory this isn't this is just simply not the way it works at all and yet this this I'm describing the intuition that people have about this the truly the the biggest insight of my career is that the self-esteem mechanism is dynamic that's why my website is called esteem dynamics and that's why that's going to be a major component of the title my book is that of what I'm really interested in is esteem dynamics because team dynamics is in fact the core of human happiness the vast majority of human happiness is all about esteem signals from other people and so understanding how to shift those signals is central to understanding the mechanics of how happiness works the the most fundamental component of human happiness is not actually esteem from other people but it is the process of earning the esteem from other people and the process that of earning the esteem from other people means the skill development and accomplishment that takes place outside of their vision and the skill development accomplishment that takes place outside of their vision will be observed by exactly one entity and that will be your own internal audience the problem is is that when you begin the audience is not impressed and when you start and even you put in some repetitive efforts it is not impressed you have to actually work fairly diligently for several days on end for the internal audience to start to believe that you are not just going to flake out and quit and the internal audience is vaguely aware of how much motivation you have it can feel how much energy the self is putting into this thing and therefore if it turns out you're doing a half-ass job the internal audience will say hey I think you're doing a half-ass job I don't think that your accomplishments are going to amount to much and it doesn't feed you any esteem ie pride what I want people to realize is that when you start to try to get your act together for example about diet fitness anything in this dimension the goal that you are imagining is what it is that you're going to look like four five six seven months from now after the job is done and you're bowing naked you know on the beach you're almost naked on the beach and everybody's saying wow you look really great okay of course that's what we are seeking of course that's what our imaginations are for is to imagine that victory and to try to get to get excited and motivated to try to pursue that victory that's what we're attempting to accomplish that's true if we're trying to become a great pianist well we're not saying wow I'm really going to be able to do that hand and really well I just can't wait to be able to run those scales up and up no that's not what we're imagining we're imagining playing March militare in front of an audience in front of 4,000 people screaming you know our name afterwards that's why we become a concert pianist okay so the issue here is that of course we are our imagination is transfixed on the esteem signals that will come from real people once they see what we've accomplished but the most important thing that we have to understand is that the core and central feature of our happiness will take place when the self-esteem mechanism observes us start to earn it so the answer to the question is gee how do I deal with the fact that when I start to contemplate whether I'm going to get healthy I feel like going the other way I need a bunch of pizza the answer is hey there will always be pizza but for the next 60 days we're going to say screw the pizza what we're going to do is we're going to run an interesting experiment to find out what it feels like to earn a bunch of self-esteem and realize that that self-esteem mechanism will not cop it up in two or three or four days it won't do it it's not how it's built okay but folks you give me a week or most two and it will and when you see the pride start to signal to you that you start feeling better quote about yourself that is not an accident and not only is there not an accident there's no limit to it it'll go on forever as long as you earn it and so the most important thing that you can do in trying to turn your life around and turn turn away from a self-indulgent period into a period of self-discipline is to understand what we're really after we're really after is a deep experience and conceptual understanding of the self-esteem mechanism one that you can turn to again and again in circumstances where you are feeling irritated or defeated or or a little bit lost and real and feeling like things aren't fair and you've got a tough break or whatever it is about anything out of the Sun and realize wait a second there's a fundamental method for finding my way home and that method is to look at whatever problem I have whatever competitive enterprise it is that I need to get better at in order to achieve what it is that I want to get and then I need to break that problem into small steps and I need to start fighting my own my own lethargy and work at this and diligently for the next several days and watch my self-esteem mechanisms start to come to life and that's what it is that we need to do because that ends that feeling of self-pity and it ends the feeling of of a desire for reckless self-indulgence this is this is the way home this is the the fundamental solution to the vast majority of human problems in this arena and most other arenas Wow all right yeah every time I'm in a tough spot I always just turn on the podcast and listen to your voice talking about these motivational things we do have a caller on hold right now so do you want to take a call before we end for the evening yeah let's take a quick one just in case is quick if it's long then we'll have them call back another time go ahead okay try it okay sir caller what's your name where you calling from and welcome to the beat your genes show with Nate and dr. Lyle hi my name is Michele and I didn't know I was perfect question I was just listening but pretty funny because it's exactly what our last caller just said is that I just turn this on I never listened to you before and I have a fax acabo man right to say to a bunch of four beautiful and al qaida issues with my mom having dementia and I've been taking out work to take care of her and I'm stressed out from it and so I I turned to food and then I turn you on and then that's where I'm at got it got it sure yeah they say I do want to say one thing I've so thank you for calling that people will believe that the reason that they that they struggle a lot of times with with food is that they've got emotional issues yeah and this is what the shrinks think is what the psychologists think and this is this is not really accurate this is a this is a this is a misconception as to what it is that the problem is problem is is that you are instinctually built to eat the richest food in the environment that is a that is a chip that is built inside of animals and so it's going to turn out that that chip is unbelievably useful in evolution so human beings have the chip as do aardvarks as do bees as do camels as do everything else everything has that chip and so the problem there's nothing wrong with the chip chip is is perfect but we've now transformed the environment because that bit could because it's so exciting to eat rich food we've now transformed the food environment to pretty much that's what there is is rich food and it's artificially rich so we've turned the food into what we're going to call supernormal stimuli so human beings are going to eat supernormal stimuli they like supernormal stimuli supernormal stimuli are being are activating instincts in a way that feels like it's absolutely the right decision and the way it feels like it's the right decision is that it feels really good now so this is not and now we've learned that that's going to make you fat and kind of you know not very fit in a lot of ways and eventually my truncate your life so there's problems associated with with the with letting our instincts go in an environment that that was is not built for the instincts so people struggling with this issue with their instincts pulling them into what I call the pleasure trap where they follow their pleasure instincts pleasure-seeking instincts and it leads them into a trap and it undermines their health and it undermines their happiness it erodes their self-esteem because of their appearance and erodes their confidence and their ability to survive it erodes their physical fitness it roat's how it is that they feel physically there they've got inflammation and their joints they wake up there they're hurting they don't want to exercise their sleeps disrupted all kinds of problems and so then if they find out that actually they should be eating a diet that's much healthier that diet turns out to be much less exciting side by side with a richer diet of course and so you have to go against your instincts to do it and then it turns out that very often don't go against their instincts and then they say why on earth aren't I not going against my instincts and some guru says it's because you've got emotional problems or you're abused as a child or anything else under the Sun that is not the reason the reason is is that it takes remarkable energy focus organization determination in order to consistently go against your instincts and even if you have the personality and the motivation and the circumstances that would enable that to be possible then it turns out that if you get a little bit stressed and you don't have as much time and you've got extra burdens that have been thrust upon you or some things have changed in your life you've got a new relationship so you've got a new boyfriend or new girlfriend or new boss and and a new but set of demands suddenly this will kick you out of the groove that is necessary to make this happen consistently okay so the quote emotional reasons that will drive people into this are the kinds that our caller talked about like she's got a lot of stress because she's dealing with a lot of stuff so that makes it extra difficult she's not eating crap to deal with the stress she's eating crap because as soon as you let your guard down the pleasure trap is going to get you so that's the correct way to to conceptualize the the association between emotional stress and the pleasure trap is not that we have underlying problems from our deep past or internal conflicts that lead us to a chocolate bar the issue is we have instincts leading us to the chocolate bar it takes tremendous organization and discipline in order to not eat the chocolate bar and as soon as some of our our resolve is is attenuated by our by our life circumstances and our energies decreased then we get we will often fall into the pressure trap so that's actually the situation
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