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Beat Your Genes Podcast & More

Living Wisdom Library Q&A
2020-09-25
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foreign there you are I had on my ridiculous background because I was uh not in such a pleasant place last time I zoomed so all right I think we and we actually have working technology how are you across the ocean yeah um awesome we'll give it we'll actually wait until 11 on the dot this time because I've had a couple of people squawk that we've been starting a couple minutes early so they're missing I see a lot of people joining as we speak yeah we got a question did you get that question the other day that uh somebody who said they couldn't get a question through awesome I mean we've we've got we've got a huge list of questions so I don't know which one yeah I think they sent an email to you and me so I think got it okay I don't remember I don't remember which one we've had we've had so many technical troubles a lot of people who were uh listening may have gotten an email from me if you're an installment if you're on the installment payment for the lifetime membership um if you signed up in June it's possible that you got charged an extra time so I sent all of those people an email that if you missed the email from me um and you signed up early for the three payment installment we have a little glitch with the with the processor where it looks like some people are getting charged a fourth time so right that's that's been that's been my inbox this week is that's a good thing if they get charged we're really not trying to extort more money from you guys we just we we're new to this system and it's like the the payment processor and the um the membership site are not talking nicely to each other so it's just it's a couple couple of accounts that have been affected but if yours is one I rest assured I will get to it I'm I'm refunding people and trying to sort through the many many emails I have about it so um and so I may have missed a q a question God this question was this one about are human beings by Nature monogamous oh I don't I didn't see that one but uh uh a lot of women and they find themselves in relationships with narcissists blah blah so we'll read that question that looks somewhere yeah if that was sent directly to me I didn't get it so maybe I'm also in the process of divorcing myself from Google so if somebody sent it to my Google address it may not have forwarded I've become I've become incredibly paranoid of the data overlords after a while after watching one too many documentaries including the social dilemma which everybody should watch that's on Netflix right now and I've I've been trying to kind of part ways with big data for a while at least as much as is reasonable without becoming a total hermit um and that that documentary and I believe the sort of the featured uh voice of that documentary Tristan Harris is on um Sam Harris this week and I'm looking forward to listening to that too because I think that'll be another conversation that should convince people to delete their Facebook and uh and and leave Uncle Google for good so we can talk more about that if it comes up we actually there's a question that might touch on some of that that I I did get so all right so we're gonna get officially started we've got uh yes Reeves I did it for you Reeves requested the dinosaur necklace specifically so I'm I'm I I you know I give the people what they want all right so I don't see I don't let's see what we got in the chat here okay okay so Enoki says she has a question that's sort of related to that does that mean my email from Gmail will be disappearing it shouldn't it's supposed to be forwarding to my new more secure Swiss email um but there may be in the transition period there may be some things lost in the shuffle but I've also just gotten probably like up close to 500 messages this week that I'm starting through so I'm just I'm I'm catching up Okay so we've got some questions do you want to read the one that you you got sent just because we know that that one is they're waiting and then I've got a few that have been submitted with urgency as well and then we can see what comes up in the chat okay first part of the question is are human beings by Nature monogamous okay well some of them yeah that's the correct answer yeah we I think we've probably talked about this in the podcast of some juncture now and then the uh that this is the uh you can tell how monogamous a primate is by measuring the size of the testicles against the body weight of the male my absolute favorite evolutionary psychology factoid I like every time people don't know that I'm like just so you know look at the balls okay it's like it's like a it's a magic ball this is how you tell literally pun unintended yeah so um yeah that's how that's how you tell because you can tell uh essentially what you're observing there is you're observing how many sperm are being produced uh and and the reason why that's important is that you can imagine in principle a monogamous uh creature uh the male would produce very little sperm because he's just going to be impregnating one female once in a while and yet if he's uh if he's attempting to compete with other males and impregnate as many females as he can get his hands on than you would expect him to produce a great deal of sperm and so that's exactly what you're going to find you're going to find the size of the testicles are predicting that and so in species where the males are are are not at all invested in any and females all they do is attempt to go from female to female as fast as they can they have very large testicles uh male humans are somewhere in between the monogamous and the and the whatever you would call them what would you call that promiscuous or yeah monogamous Etc and so for example a typical chimpanzee I believe a male chimpanzee will have sex eight times a day and he doesn't really care what to do um and so it could be many you know obviously several Partners a day that's typical for for a male chimp the whereas uh that other other animals might have sex you know a number of times a year with the same female and that's how that goes and so human beings are obviously somewhere in the middle we can tell that that's true and of course this is give us rise to the great monogamy dilemmas of human life and the monogamy dilemmas are that uh in in in generally speaking uh these are of course broad Strokes the the female is essentially designed to attempt to get the the most resources per population that she can get that's effectively the design of a female regardless of species and that is certainly true of human females the uh so by resources we're going to mean two things I.E Gene quality and then then literally resources protection and provision so the human female is designed with a calculus in there on running along those lines and generally the best deals she can make generally is going to be a monogamous parabolic situation with a very high quality male the only problem is hard to get [Laughter] yeah you don't say this is why people really need to tune in for this kind of hard-hitting Cutting Edge insight into human nature previously undiscovered or undiscussed by by anyone in the world so the uh the high quality mail in principle is attempting to get as many populations for as little possible payment so these two this is basically like the conflict between you and your insurance company they want as high premium as they can get and they want to pay out as little as possible so this is you and your insurance guy you want to pay the least amount possible to get full benefits and so the two of you have are totally in conflict of interest and so is the human male and human female in a heterosexual dynamic they are in conflict of interest and so are they monogamous well they can be for for periods of time even a very long periods of time under conditions where where those conditions are ideally serving both parties okay you can imagine that those those conditions are happen periodically in a person's life and but if people are asking gee are they are they monogamous for life no they're not just look at the species this is absolutely not characteristic of the human species the human species uh I mean if you are fortunate and all then the penny drops for you you may be in a happy monogamous relationship for 40 years that would be a typical for the species okay the species typically people both males and females seek this uh this place where they feel like they're getting having an exceptional process and they feel pair bonded and they are generally interested in being monogamous incidentally not all people depends upon how Wild their sexuality happens to be some people will never get there but a normal member of the species will get there or that's where they want to be okay so they want to be in a situation both male and female where they are they're completely absorbed with one partner and that that may last for months or years but it typically doesn't last for a decade okay and when I say typically that doesn't mean it's not it's not uncommon for that to be true it's just not typical it is typical for the species to be more Restless than that and that restlessness we can go right back to the the amount of the size of the balls on the male that that looks like a species that gets restless and it is okay so that's the answer to your question all right so that's the first uh somebody I can see little pieces of chats coming up and I yeah I'm not going to be able to read them they're they're also I mean the the personality I always said like we never want to neglect personality in this kind of kind of question because it is I mean you're wired a certain way so you're somewhere on the bell curve of ball size and promiscuity and pair bondedness and all of that but I think there's also an interaction effect with conscientiousness um there's uh interaction effect with stability um and there's also uh it's it's it's a dynamic relationship with with how your your degree of over rewardedness so we've talked on the podcast at length about how it the the sort of it's not an either or casual mating parabond qualification game with any kind of relationship people are on a on a Continuum so someone who uh is very casual mating oriented particularly a male if they find themselves sufficiently over rewarded and they can't believe the deal that they've gotten in their relationship they're going to move suddenly they become more parabond minded and more monogamous you know so it's this is a this is a state of the of the animal that can change given its its interaction with other people and its situation in life and its other personality factors so all of those things come into this equation with somebody outstanding absolutely is now uh she works with a lot of women who find themselves in relationships with narcissists do I think there's a link or do we think there's a link between the personality trait of agreeableness and a woman's sense of herself work okay yeah yeah if not um let's see what we think let's just stop there first of all the sense of self-worth that's an interesting description of a of a characteristic okay so I'm so let's talk about that so the agreeableness in principle would probably be related to what what the person is describing there is they're describing a um self-worth would be uh would be actually I I think the only way to describe what she's attempting to describe is a a [Music] where do you find yourself emotionally with respect to trade processes a person of very low self-worth believes that they are a beggar on their knees and they are happy to get anything that comes their way in terms of a job a friend or mates so that would be low self-worth uh it isn't so much self-worth it is actually an estimation of your work so a person who has a low estimation of their social work relative to the truth is a person who is um there's a good chance that person is very agreeable so the uh a person is very that's because by by Nature what agreeable and disagreeably the underlying uh mechanics of that are going to be literally if we translate those words directly agreeable means wow somebody offers you a value proposition that is fairly one-sided in their favor and you agree okay that means you're agreeable no matter what the offering is you're taking it well why would you do that the uh the reason would isn't because you're nice it's because you you feel like it's reasonable okay well why would you feel like it's reasonable because you're probably undervaluing yourself relative to the market so uh so that's what I believe the underlying Dynamics are of agreeableness generally speaking the uh so therefore yeah I I do believe that what you're asking that the answer is yes I believe there's a direct relationship and someone who is highly disagreeable believes they are being shortchanged by the marketplace uh and has a quote high estimation of self-worth it would be relative to what other people think your work that's the the concept of self-worth independently of anything doesn't make any sense uh except in a moral sense of what we would call self-esteem but that's not what what this person is referring to when people generally talk about self-worth we're really talking about self-confidence with respect to how well you think you're going to be able to trade four things that you think you would be reasonably entitled to low self-work people are actually just people who are are underestimating their worth relative to what the market actually thinks they're worth that that is not typical of humans but but very low self-worth people are very ripe for being exploited and they will be I hope I've got that straight is that I mean does that all sound right Jen yeah that's I I basically when I think about the agreeableness dimension I I really I always explain it to people as you know you're either systematically undervaluing yourself and your contribution or you're systematically over evaluating yourself in your contribution so if you're walking around life thinking that you're just God's gift to whatever Marketplace you're trying to do business in you're probably a little disagreeable um and if you always feel this kind of you know what we might call imposter syndrome or it goes by many different names there are lots of different ways that you can kind of feel like oh I don't belong here I can't believe they're even talking to me I shouldn't the admissions committee made a mistake you know all of that kind of thing that is going to inflate the more agreeable nervous system um and then of course again it it all has to do with your your particular situation and the Dynamics of that situation and if you're a very agreeable person dealing with a very disagreeable person which is more likely to happen especially in romantic relationships because the disagreement person that's the only kind of romantic relationship that's stable for a disagreeable person they can't pair up with another disagreeable person they will just like chisel each other away until there's nothing left so the disagreeable person has to pray upon like a Grable person because no one else will stick with them and then they have to walk this very fragile line of keeping that balance where they're not trying to move in on too much territory for the agreeable person or the agreeable person is finally saying look I was happy with five percent but not four percent okay so you've gone too far um and so you if you're super agreeable you're going to kind of be systematically undervaluating yourself in a relationship anyway you're more likely to wind up with a disagreeable I.E narcissistic individual who is going to they they don't they don't take territory and stop they continue to push and push and push and take territory until they reach the point where you complain about it which is usually for an agreeable person way past where you started feeling uncomfortable um so by the time you actually speak up with a narcissist or agreeable person you're feeling really cornered as an agreeable person and like really over it you can't believe that they haven't picked up all your little Paths of aggressive signs and every all the ways that you've tried to communicate that you were feeling way too pressed by this relationship but by the time they register your complaint they're like oh oh okay okay well that I wasn't asking for that much I was just asking for like one one percent more they're not taking account of the fact that they've already been in the in the yellow and orange zone for you know 10 percentage points before you've complained so why do I have this feeling that you've been in that situation yeah I wouldn't know anything personally about this wall therapist called codependence you know particularly when you've got the whole sucker Triad personality uh phenomenon where you're you're also very conscientious and you're agreeable you're going to be cleaning up the messes of the disagreeable people in your life and you know allowing them the space to be more disagreeable and pushy and narcissistic and you're taking on all of that yourself um and that is what a lot of therapists will call sort of a you know oh you need to get over your codependent patterns you need to set better boundaries like all of this kind of language that is meaningless without understanding the behavioral genetics of it and the fact that you were just going to magnetize these kinds of individuals because you're walking around with a big for sale cheap sign on your forehead that makes you a very easy target to exploit whether it's a disagreeable boyfriend or girlfriend or boss or uh you know just a shitty friend who's taking advantage of you all of those situations are much more likely and and then once you're in it once you're dealing with a disagreeable [ __ ] um you're your self-worth is it's getting feedback that you do deserve less you do you it's like oh well you know what I was thinking I just I thought I deserved five percent but I'm only getting three percent but I'm still feeling pretty over rewarded and so I guess that is what I deserve and so that can be a dynamic interaction as well so yeah right on target rule number one in our book and well not maybe not rule number one but one of the central rules in our book that we we talk about is um if you're super agreeable you need to be very careful about getting getting into business and romance and friendship with uh super disagreeable people because they're it's not their faults you know I this is not this is no no I have some of my best friends are disagreeable people but you've got to be you got to know what you're getting into you need to it's it's uh you know you've gotta you gotta expect certain types of behavior and you have to be prepared to set those boundaries through a rehearsal process and through talking to us or anything else that can help you gear up because they're not going to change for you they are who they are yeah it's sort of classic way for me to uh think about this is that I've actually had this case in my practice and that is there'll be some sweet gal who's a secretary and she may even be single okay or maybe a single mom is one that I'm remembering and working for some jerk forever and they're there 15 years 18 years 20 years and they're they're being exploited the whole time it's just assumed that they're going to work 50 hours and be paid 40. it's uh it's a it's an extraordinary thing to watch and observe and then to listen to and to actually crystal clear that person's thinking and usually at the bottom of it is a is a distortion of vulnerability or a distortion of of not understanding their their own market value and a lack of openness to test the market so there's interesting sort of uh as you would say in a romance there's a there's a a sort of a combination of characteristics of both the situation and the individuals that give rise to an exploitative situation and but I mean I I've actually watched it I can't even believe it I can't believe that somebody can be sitting in a job being paid 80 of what there were for 20 years and intimidated by the boss's anger or that the boss would be all upset if they made a defection signal and ask for a raise and we can't do that and uh you know this is this is the the curse of the of the highly agreeable individual and if they get put in just the wrong spot they can they can get a lot less than they had coming to them yeah I've been saved many times by my you know my my middling high conscientiousness it's not so conscientious that I will sit there in that job forever I will I will get to the point and my high openness those things both save me from that situation so right just because you're super agreeable doesn't mean that that is a likely scenario for you it's a perfect storm of those three things it's actually interesting yes you can look at you I know you now we've known each other for three or four years and literally a gene here and a gene there oh yeah very slang and you're working for 20 of what you're worth in in some non-profit somewhere led by some narcissist who is just enough Charisma to be admirable just uh yeah and there you sat for 30 years yeah very close but that that Gene that usually the openness team and for for a good chunk of my life the alcoholic Jean that's that's where my kid out of jail cards like ah [ __ ] this okay I'm gonna go find something else um so yeah you can be you can be saved by the Skittles in your own nervous system but it's yeah this is why you just have to know who you are and what what kind of traps you're most prone to getting yourself into and and your your history and your repeated patterns are the biggest clue that you have as to like where those big distortions are and how you can start to dismantle well can't you can't dismantle them but you can navigate around them yes got it all right what else we got all right we had uh uh well there was one follow-up on the monogamy question which was interesting asking if it was um if age factors in are people later in life more monogamous um you know that that could be just because people are perceiving less Market opportunities so that that would be my first thought there is sort of if people you know they they sewed their Wild Oats there there's you know there's a particular kind of male fail that I'm thinking of who kind of has a you know wild wild 20s wild 30s maybe even wild 40s but at some point he goes into a bar and he can't get the hottest girl in the bar anymore you know she's like oh you know whatever dude and she goes and flirts with some other guy and and you can see you can almost watch the little gears in his head sure and be like oh crap you know maybe maybe it's time that I settled down and maybe maybe I can't I can't get the same kind of opportunity that I used to be able to get and so maybe it's time to you know next best deal that that comes my way I'm going to go ahead and take it so not that that can't happen with women as well but I think it's a little more common to play out that particular way with men it's also true that testosterone bubbles drop considerably yeah not for a while though I mean maybe if you're dealing with with somebody really much later in life but I don't think unless well but that's interactive with with health too so if you're sort of an unhealthy guy in your 40s or 50s um you are going to have much lower testosterone where if you're in good in good shape that's not going to be true yeah yeah okay so there's that so we had we had also a related question through speaking of wild sexuality is what anoki primed us with so let me go back and see if I can find it here uh risque question oh my gosh there's just so many ports I may oh here it is on last week's podcast you you discussed reasons women use baby talk and how that disrupts the sexual Dynamic I'd like to flip the question around to what I find untasteful about male Behavior equally disruptive in the dynamic in my experience I noticed significant bedroom aggression verbal and physical and I wonder how much of this is fueled by the porn industry I don't subscribe to the theory that there is a fine line between Pleasure and Pain and this Behavior can come off as misogynistic even if the male in question does not exhibit it outside of the bedroom evolutionarily speaking I have to admit that this is likely natural oh I just lost it and not a result of hypernormal stimuli from porn seemingly because the likelihood of males passing on their genes was higher when they were aggressive she's got some Genghis Khan references what is to be said about this preference and is there an inherent compatibility issue with these types of Partners or could this be subject to an open dialogue uh recalibration toward more vanilla experiences I think that's the is there a correct compromise referring to what we were talking about on the podcast away from this Behavior or is this incompatibility doomed for pair bonding um does my attraction for disagreeable males have to do with the scrambled egg theory oh so she's she's attracted to disagreeable males but she but the aggressive behavior in the bedroom doesn't work for her so that's a that's a difficult situation to be him here you're looking for a unicorn because it's a it's a testosterone yeah it's this is you're you're totally seeing that sort of aggressive behavior it's going to be highly correlated with the disagreeable males that you're attracted to the highly testosteronized males that you're physically energetically attracted to and that's gonna that's gonna be how most of them are operating uh I think the porn sort of there there's some of that um particularly with with a certain generation of men where they're you know enacting certain little fantasies and certain scenes that they've they've watched um and they yeah there's that's that's a piece of it but I think mostly this is this is in the system it's it's built in um and you've got a little paradoxical situation with what you're you're your scrambled eggs are attracted to and um and what's what circuits it's hitting for you yeah yeah yeah this is uh has to do with what I call thresholds so uh people have uh they have thresholds with all kinds of things how much pepper you put on your potatoes okay so you have individual differences in essentially spice combinations uh and the intensity of experiences Oh I thought of another uh thing that I talked about the the correct compromise I had another one run through my head I had I had hadn't used it I hadn't thought it through in this way but there's uh another thing would be music so somebody who's a head banger and wants to listen to Led Zeppelin at 110 decibels uh in your apartment and you might like it quiet the correct compromise is quiet okay the head banger can put on their earphones and bang away but it's let's not wreck the environment so this is so they're they're the correct compromise obviously sometimes there's compromises but sometimes it goes all all One Direction and not the other and that is actually that is actually the intelligent way to do things the uh in this case uh but in this case we have sort of compromised processes going on we have to discover whether or not there is a that there's a compromise that works okay there there may not be maybe there is this is where this is where you have to have communication and experimentation uh and when it comes to everything I would also I want to uh I want to point out something a concept that I think is a very important in problem solving particularly in most importantly in negotiation between two people and that is the notion of experimentation uh the reason why experimentation is unbelievably important is that we actually don't know the parameters of the situation we don't know what we can handle and what we can't handle we don't know what's acceptable and what isn't acceptable so when we have like a list of who's going to do what chores we that list should be an experiment for two weeks okay then we find out I had a situation where one partner has all been out of shape about the other partner didn't seem to be pulling their weight and I said okay well it's time now instead of having a bunch of passive aggressive signals and snarling uh what we really need is we actually have to have an explicit an explicit agreement about what it is that we're going to do who's going to do you what and the important thing about it is to have an experiment because you you're going to be very difficult to negotiate with if you feel like this is going to be written in stone okay now you're gonna you're gonna object to that no no no I can't have that can't have that in other words your your nervous system is going to be seeking that feeling where you're like okay that's a deal I'm willing to live with well that's probably in your imagination a way better deal than the one that you're actually willing to take okay so the uh so the the latitude that we have for making an agreement is probably much wider than what we think it is if we try to get to negotiate for permanence so instead when it comes to things like this a sexuality processes we we have to have a Frank discussion about experimenting for a week or two with some with a changing some parameters and seeing how that works and then be willing to do a postmortem on that and essentially figure out hey you know what was that like that's how we're going to find out and if through experimentation you find out that it won't fly then it doesn't fly okay uh one of the things that just another side commentary that runs parallel to this uh to this discussion and and many others in relationships is that people um people will it also comes with personal issues about dieting and how come I can't get myself to eat this amount of the other thing and how can I make myself more assertive and push back against my uncle who's pushy or whatever the one of the things that that we want to understand is that just because something would be convenient and we would really like it and it makes sense that we either we or somebody else should be able to modify themselves seven percent and that would all be fine doesn't mean that it's going to happen okay and so all we can do is we can through experimentation discover what is uh what is already in the system but we can't see it okay we effectively play out the card hand and see if we have a winning hand you know if you if you don't have a winning hand then you don't but at least we're going to try to find out okay and the way we're going to do that the best chance we have is through experimentation but if it doesn't work out it doesn't work out okay and that it doesn't mean that well what about Dr Phil Dr Phil would tell me how to work it out of course he would he's going to tell you of course you can sit in relationships for 40 years and basically intermediate level frustrated and half-assed miserable and be married have three children and go to your grave and everybody says nice things about you right okay what kind of score came up up on your nervous system is an average score of your happiness for that life mediocre which is exactly what we deserved when we had evidence that it was not working okay so the the high prices in in this Arena come for those who are honest with themselves and honest in the relationship and we we do our best to make something promising work and when it doesn't work it doesn't work and we face it okay and that's uh you know that's people people get tired and they get essentially uh somewhat lazy and they get they get almost entitled and their life's just frustrated and they want it done and if their partner would just modify themselves 10 in this one dimension we'd be fine too bad okay too bad there's too much pepper in the soup and you don't like it okay and we have to be willing to face that that many times when we are close that's actually what's going to happen Okay I would expect that people would have three or four or five or six really close relationships that were damn near outstanding okay before they find one that is in other words it would be unusual for your very first excellent almost perfect uh per individual to actually be somebody that for whom you could have a 25-year 40-year outstanding relationship probably not okay so I just spoke with somebody today uh all kinds of cards in the person's hand you know mid-30s wants to find somebody found one that was close no cigar okay fair enough it's not not easy uh to move on from that situation but moving on is what you need to do if you want your the average level of happiness in your nervous system over this lifetime to be very hot romantic uh success in that domain is the highest correlate of happiness in human life as you would expect okay it is the variable that is the most related to human happiness so if we wanna we want a high score in this life we want a high score in that domain and getting a high score in that domain means being experimentative when we're close and honest when when we're short fair enough ah I don't even know that was in the system yeah big big rant yeah hahaha yeah I uh yeah no that's great that's that's the full answer to that question the um the experimentation I think people uh sometimes neglect and I yeah I don't know if this is possible for you but you know it it can be that you can just revisit the the nature of the relationship itself so you know there's somebody mentioned polyamory in the chat this is where things like that come into into the experimental calculus as well so if that's not something if that's something that you might be open to and haven't haven't played around with um you know maybe if if he if the the sort of aggressive sexual Dynamic that's not working for you if he's able to pursue that in other relationships there could be an equilibrium that works out with with multiple romantic engagements at once that's possible for a lot of people that haven't considered it before so it's only only this job puts me in the position of being a Paulie advocate or it's like something I've tried that doesn't particularly work very well for me although it's like it's all about the specifics and the people involved and the and the different relationships I found that it's uh you often have a lot of emotionally unstable very dramatic people who are involved in these kinds of things that you know if it's in the if that's something that you wouldn't be appalled by that's worth kind of thinking about in in the experimentation process it's not just about can you change your behavior x amount with me specifically it's about can we can we create other opportunities for you to explore what you need that I can't give you and vice versa see that's the beauty of Dr Jen Hawk so the truth is my I've explored my little acre like very they even scored three acres by three is like nine times bigger than it's a big world full of crazy people it takes it takes a lot of acreage to develop some good correlations around polyamory but I've got them that's right that's right hashtag openness y'all all right let's see what else we got let's see what else we have we had um a couple of versions of a question about uh what the religion and belief systems and sort of where where you know what is the um evolutionary purpose and do other animals have belief systems or is that just a human thing um so there's there's a couple of different people asking that in a couple of different ways so we can just kind of Traverse that territory a little bit if if we want what are you thinking sort of the question is or just start talking and then I'll respond to whatever you say yeah I think usually when people are asking about religion you know like specifically organized religion um the the easiest I mean there's a lot of different ways to talk about where belief and and sort of imagination and the need to feel like you're part of something bigger like those are all sort of their own separate category when we're talking about the human mind and evolutionary processes there's there's organized religion in terms of the sort of management of people living collectively with each other I think that that often what's really going on with religion is that it's a big Louie it's sort of a way to ensure compliance and obedience across a population that you can't have surveillance of at all times yeah yeah government yeah the Leviathan um and that that that does it's it's usually in the religious context it inner acts with this sort of imaginative the the feeling of divine presence that a lot of humans have that there they want to be something that is you know mean more meaningful than the the sort of little vicissitudes of their lives um but yeah without a more specific question I'm not really sure what direction to take that uh when we think of you know um imagining God and imagining um you know what what happens after this life and all of those things we're mostly just talking about what is consciousness what does it mean to sort of Imagine things and project yourself into the experience of someone else and those are just all these are sexually selected characteristics that come as a result of our our very large Brain that we have developed to be more successful as a mating device and so the The Mating Mind by Jeffrey Miller is a wonderful wonderful textbook to kind of walk you through all of this but as far as organized religion I don't think that any other animal species has got gotten to this point of sort of managing through the Specter of of a big Louie in the sky um I think that is a feature of the big human brain that evolved through really complex sexual selection strategies um but if there's a follow-up question on that that's more specific we could try to tackle that all makes perfect sense yeah Let's see we got belief systems um the comment about the gut biome all right I had a couple of other questions that were set I want to make sure that we touch on some of those so we're not just yeah you know I know people are always asking what other rules is it live chat or should I send it ahead and it's sort of like no we just we're just kind of freeform there was this very general question that again is representative of a lot of things that were sent in um but I like the way that this is just pithy I'm in a funk any tips on how to get through 2020. I would say uh I would say several things the if I get enough Funk it usually lasts about 10 minutes and that's because I can I can feel it now I might last 20 but probably no longer than that and uh and that's because I I recognize that all feelings are nothing other than signals so therefore I would say conceptually understand okay what's this trying to say what's what's this sending me why is it trying to send it to me what's the point and the point is I'm kind of bored or I've made some effort in some area towards to move towards the goal I've got some negative feedback and I'm not sure how to get around it so now I'm temporarily defeated okay and therefore demotivated uh or my uh my environment doesn't have anything exciting in it and it's going to take some effort to go find something uh that's exciting now the truth of the matter is is that understanding that excitement comes about when you uh what this is all your feelings that you're feeling are essentially the uh as a result of the relationship between you and some goal you've got to imagine State your imagination is designed by nature to generate images of future situations uh including wait a second would it be nice let's go get a pizza right now oh that's right they're close and you can't be inside in other words your imagination is simply a constant generator of images as it manufactures either from from memory or it puts composite possibilities together for memory okay so in other words you can imagine being on a beach in in Mallorca and never have been there but you've heard something about it and you know what a beach would be like in in the Mediterranean sort of and so you've got you you piecemeal in your imagination what that would be like you listen to Madonna sing you know about the kid people on pretty people on the island whatever I thought that would be what she was singing about my haircut so uh anyway but uh the point is is that your imagination is here you are here and motivation is the is the feeling that it is that we're going to spend energy to try to close the distance now you can be in a moment in your life where you're feeling like well it's too remote I don't know how it is that I could get there I don't see what reasonable amount of energy I could expend it would get any closer I don't even know if I qualify or could could accomplish it so that's what will put you in a fund okay is that feeling so uh generally uh what's necessary is to uh I back up and and realize I check myself with realizing wait a minute what are you doing you know you've only got a hundred thousand hours left you're you you can't you can't turn in a I didn't feel good slip to the Creator you know for me 27 years from now and say I want you know 37 of those days back when I was still young and I could still play and I could Goof Off and play tennis and go to the beach and do all that stuff but I just did I was in a funk so I didn't do anything whoa I'm not going to get this signed back okay so that that realization for me the realization of life's that it's finite actually is a is a little shock to my nervous system it's a little cattle prod right on my knee telling me get busy don't waste this day okay uh a beautiful phrase from John wooden's father when he was a child he said make today your masterpiece okay this is what you have today if you're in a funk that's your fault go find something interesting there the the world is full of information in the world for you to learn things about there are goals that you have that that information would be a useful method to get you a little bit closer so go get a little bit closer okay maybe you're like well I'll never be able to get a decent date unless I change how it is that I look and I can't afford plastic surgery well go find out how much it is if you get it done in Panama there is no end to what you can do oh my God people to go get plastic surgery and Panama here's what I'm trying to explain there's a there's a famous uh story about Gandhi about you know about some people had their their children killed and then you know or he some guy from The Village killed some other Village's son okay and he felt terribly guilty about it because he shouldn't have done it Etc and he felt like there was nothing he could do and Gandhi said what you need to do is you need to go find an orphan from that other Village and raise it as your own son okay and the the lesson was oh there's always something you can do okay so no matter how how uh blight the landscape appears or how difficult the the hill it is that you're frustrated that it's unfair that you have to climb there's always something you can do so if you're on a funk realize wait a second there's something that I can do okay and get busy that's what that's what's to be done yeah to 2020 I would admired and uh a very go like Alan goldhammer's never spent more than 18 seconds in a fight if that was any opportunity if it's one door closes he's opening another door and we you see this around the country but there are entrepreneurs where it's like oh if my if my my my shop is is shut right now fine now it's the time we're going to do the Reconstruction and Rehab okay in other words just that fast they are now going to use this opportunity and make the most of it rather than sitting around and waiting for things to change so don't sit and wait for things to change go out and change your understanding and knowledge of the landscape that will get you out of your funk very quickly yeah yeah I uh I think people you know one of the things that we say most often is can't change yourself change your environment um and so a lot of people are in a 20 20 Funk because they they are they need to change their environment so you're Funk you're 20 20 Funk like oh life is just so terrible and covid and the election and the fires and it's just I mean there's a there's a lot of [ __ ] going on but you need to recognize and this is where I'm just going to go on my my rant my my sort of Big Brother Big Data rant your funk has been monetized okay your funk your funk is being used against you the the more in a funk you are and just scrolling through your feeds and and looking at Twitter and have a terrible life is the more advertising you're seeing the more money you're making these companies like this is this is very you got to follow the money of your funk because your funk is is paying somebody's bills so there's a lot of different things going on that can kind of keep you there and obviously this is sort of an unusual year there is a lot going on um but I think the number one thing that you you need to do first is to take yourself out of the constant information the distorted information environment that is telling you how terrible the world is and actually take a take a second and look at what's going on in your life and where you are and what kind of as Doug is saying what what is the opportunity today to make your life your day your masterpiece like what what can you do today to improve um improve your actual State and what you're up to and there's always there's always something that you can do to bring yourself joy and there's this there's this trap there's this human nature vigilance trap of feeling like you're you're letting down the village because you're off Twitter for a few hours you know you're not getting all this information you're you're not going to be of use in the crisis when really you're not of any use anyway you're you're just you're punishing yourself by bringing yourself in this into this lower and lower state of of unresponsive malaise um because it is it is benefiting other actors who who want you in that state so and the more you do it the more the more likely you are to be trapped so that's a big part of the story as well uh the the one of the things that came out of um the great the movie The Great hack which is about Cambridge analytica and its relationship to Facebook and then also this new documentary on Netflix which everybody needs to watch called the social dilemma um is that these companies are not trying to get big changes out of you they're trying to move you one percent they're just trying they're all very data driven so they're just trying to they're trying to make you one percent less likely to even feel like it's meaningful to vote and that's that's what this big money is being sent for and this is what all of your your behavior is being analyzed to guarantee and the the end results on your side of the experience is that you can feel really powerless and really helpless and you don't know how to make inferences about the most beneficial use of your time and energy because you don't know what the situation looks like but all of that is part of a larger game so that's just my little My Little Big Brother rant for the day but it's really important yeah I always did about that just because I'm not sort of an Internet human and so I forget about that and when you say that it's like it's obvious that of course that that that's a very big deal the um there's a few other little sayings that that I reach for and that is that um uh John Wooden one of his sayings was don't let what you can't do get in the way of what you can do like just because you can't do one thing doesn't mean you can't do something else there's plenty of productive activity to do and uh and another saying was for from Jim Rohn which is that the major key to your better future is you get your key to your better future isn't that oh when the cold virus is over and the government does this or Trump gets Not Elected or Trump gets elected none of this is any big deal to you folks okay you may think it's a big deal but that's BS the truth is the major key to your better future is you you are actually in charge and this world right now in 2020 has vastly more opportunity for everything that could create happiness in a human nervous system than has ever been seen before on the history of the planet you have a better existence than the Louise of France okay so for goodness sakes don't don't let what we can't do right now very temporarily get in the way of what you can do uh to take advantage of all of the productive action uh that's available in front of you all the learning that you can do uh believe me that I did not I I wasn't bored for two minutes this year plenty of new things to learn okay so good God uh what's our name Charles Murray came out came up with a magnificent book no no better bunch of hours that I've ever spent than reading his book work on human adversity um I I can't believe I can't remember what else I've read this year but that one's so uh Plumbing yeah I mean those two I mean that's phenomenal education comes from us and so the uh I went back and read uh parts of the Adapted Mind and I of course was overwhelmed by the Brilliance of tubing Cosmetics it starts to get too harsh but keep in mind as they layer nine nine sentences deep of high concept and so they could be hard to follow but uh but the point is academic writing are plenty of productive to do plenty of things that you can do to March you closer towards your goals uh so uh the funk is a wake-up call that that we're fiddling around and that we're we're not seizing control of where we have it okay yeah that's great uh let's see we've got uh one more yes this is uh well I'm torn I'm torn because there's one that's sort of like a red meat question that I just want to throw you because it'll so irritate you [Laughter] let's let's uh all right let's just go let's just do it because it got sent and it's fun Anthony Robbins the popular self-help speaker has been saying for years that 80 of success is psychology and 20 is mechanics or strategy by psychology he means one's mindset beliefs and emotional state he spends a lot of time in his seminars encouraging people to dance jump cheer clap in order to put themselves on what he calls a peak State at other times he has his audience focus on their limiting beliefs so they can change them is there any truth to any of us um there is a there's there's some there's a little bit of legitimacy here and I can tell you exactly where it is and that is that um your self-confidence is partly determined socially in other words it's partially determined by feedback other people give you about what they think you're capable of doing if they I want you to imagine that if let's suppose that you think you can get 70 on a test and it takes 95 to pass it and you've got three friends saying oh George you could do it no freaking problem man you'll be fine all that is is the ego trap so now we put the bar too high and you don't want to take that test and you're intimidated and so all that positive feedback is self-destructive okay but you can imagine that um that you know you you think that you can get 70 on the test it requires 75 and you are hesitating whether or not you take that test or not and you've got three friends to say Hey listen man you can do it just study hard you know put some more effort in and then yeah I think you can do it okay now that can make a difference so uh the reason why is that your self-confidence uh is dependent upon your prior experience with the given domain in other words have you jumped over four foot on the high foot high jump before okay did you do it last week if you did it last week three times then you probably think you could do it this week okay so it's partially your personal experience with the specific domain it is also observing others that are uh so in other words if you've got a best friend that you're similar athletically and your best friend clears four foot four then you're thinking you know what I can probably clear four feet because he and I are similar so you also you compare uh what the problem is and then then also um uh the third major component of feedback is um is what other people tell you they think you can do so that's not any small thing so in a Tony Robbins seminar what's happening is that you're getting um people are feeding each other the notion that they can do these big things people that go there are highly open and extroverted uh typically they're sales people and so the whole the whole game is sales is a use usually and I'm not not speaking definitively about every aspect of sales there's aspects of sales that are highly technical very very intelligent and everything else Under the Sun but a lot of sales is extra work hype it's about how many people you get in front of and how enthusiastic you talk to those people uh and that that makes an impact on whether or not you make the sale so you can imagine a thousand of these people in the room that have forked up two grand here Tony Robbins tell them how they're going to make a whole bunch of money well that's the same kind of talk they hear in their sales office about how they can make a whole bunch of money there is one or two people in that sales office that are making a whole bunch of money and so they can see that it's theoretically possible and they can't really see the difference between them and George who's knocking down 250 000 a year meanwhile our guy's making 47 and so the truth is he's feeling like you know you know this is the secret sauce and so uh so now what's what's the legitimacy of this the legitimacy is that you can if you're inspired I.E motivated by the fact that you just got feedback that seemed credible that you can actually accomplish something and it turns out that you really can accomplish it then that will increase your motivation all right uh the concept of Tony Robbins throwing something around saying it's 80 psychological and 20 mechanical those I I don't know anywhere in the world where anybody has analyzed what is quote 80 psychological and 20 mechanical to anything okay so those that is a concept that doesn't make any sense uh as we break that down we would have to ask Tony the genius what exactly he means by that so that we can operationalize it and actually test his great Theory okay now the uh the truth of the matter is uh we we Jen and I and Charles Murray and Robert plummen we know so we don't need Tony Robbins Theory and we don't need to test it because we actually know that the vast majority of the of the variants with respect to anybody's success has to do with their genetics okay you can see this we could test it we can predict people's success very well by the time they're seven years old we've seen enough data uh we we can we can analyze their genetic structure okay so uh certain characteristics are going to be I.E Intelligence being the the the the alpha characteristic of success generally that is huge okay so is certain degrees of conscientiousness extroversion okay emotional stability uh certain degrees of disagreeability uh certain degrees of openness all these things we can put them in a hat and we can look very carefully at what we're going to expect to see in the modern world for Success modern world you don't need any athleticism what you need is high IQ high conscientiousness low low openness relative introversion and emotional stability what does that cause you to be Silicon Valley gazillionaire the dermatologist okay you're smart you're not open so you're going to go to school and you're going to study computer science law or medicine or accounting that's who it's going to be okay and so if we were to look into the world and find out who's making the most money right now I.E who's the most successful if we however Tony wants to measure it we're gonna we already know those characteristics okay so we already know the Lion's Share of the variance was passed out at conception now what are we talking about now what does he want to discuss okay what we want to discuss uh with with our people is uh your you have goals that are probably quite reasonable the nervous system doesn't generate [ __ ] and any goals it generates very realistic goals those realistic goals are designed by nature to be different from where you are now here's where you are now with respect to a given life challenge here's where it is that your nervous system realizes it's likely that you could be it recognizes that that's a better situation than the one you're in that causes you to invest time and energy into close that distance if you are overly conscientious and not very open uh and quite agreeable those characteristics and possibly introverted those characteristics may lead you to not actually make the effort even though the underlying otherwise Talent exists okay so that's what Jen and I look for in consultations where we we can we can hear the frustration but we can also analyze and assess the talent and that's when we say okay one of the things we need to do for you is we need to find ways to reassure you that you've got the chops and this is a reasonable energy for you to spend we're not going to send you to Tony Robbins because you're an introvert you're conscientious and I don't want you wasting two thousand dollars unless you like going to such things but what we need to do instead is to break down the problem and find out where what what uh what fundamental stepping stone between where you are now and where you're going has you intimidated okay let's put that piece under the microscope because your right brain or your holistic brain is actually assessing that it feels like you probably have the chops to get there or it would be a goal okay so what part of it has got you intimidated and has you stopped let's break that down let's try to identify it and then let's learn what we can about how people like you get around that obstacle okay and that's so once and very often that that will involve Jenner myself or any other skilled counselor giving you positive feedback about what we reasonably think that you can do and that I.E that's the psychological component that can be the difference between success and failure okay and so that so as far as I'm concerned it's a hundred percent psychological at that point but the truth is is that it wouldn't it that wouldn't be any good at all all the hype in the world is worthless unless the underlying Dynamics are true doesn't do any good for me to tell you that you can be the greatest thing in the world when you can't okay you can't make a world-class Sprinter out of a second class Sprinter you can't do it okay what you can do is make a world-class Sprinter out of a world-class Sprinter who's not yet trying and working hard enough at the fundamentals to get there that's what you can do okay so that's how I would respond to that notion but the Tony Robbins the Tony Robbins seminar is is the pleasure trap of success it is it is causing super normal stimuli signaling that there are great success is possible uh and that you that you just need the trick rather than you just need the hardcore fundamentals of finding out where you are personally Limited huge difference and uh that that's why uh there's a there's a tiny bit of Truth there but not much yeah yeah no it's we've all been in a situation where we've kind of had a little um microcosm of that experience that you get in a seminar like that where it's uh if if there are enough people who were credible telling you that you can do something this is we've gotten questions before about sort of the reversity [Music] encouragement is ever beneficial it's an interesting leader like grounded by you don't think you could do something but you've got 50 people who you seriously respect who are like no got this you've absolutely got this and they're cheering you on and it's a whole thing it's like that that can almost override the ego trap in the moment short term um and he has figured that out and he has you know add a lot of lights and music and sharing and stomping and it's a very infectious very exciting atmosphere for people um and then they feel that they've they've changed their state but so much of what he talks about that's that's psychological like you know he's he goes He dives into his freezing cold pool every morning and he does his burpees and he does this whole like he changes his State and it's it's very much like you you've actually created a mechanical process around your cost benefit analysis where it's like okay now we're going to sit down and work on this project if you've closed off your other options you've given yourself this little contained space to pursue your goals and then you've conditioned it with the with the state change and wearing a little uniform and like all these things that he recommends to sort of get in the right mindset but really you're just excluding all the other stuff that's competing for your attention because you're communicating to your nervous system this is what we're doing right now we're doing it we're really serious about it and we're going to do it and we have some incredible evidence that we can do it so all of these things he's he just has built an Empire around so it's very yeah I'm not even aware of all things so you've done I listened to a set of his tapes 20 years ago yeah yeah it was just chatter the uh chatter with some natural hygiene at the end right yeah which has moved away from yeah it's not not yes so the uh uh but you know as any as any uh motivational person they're gonna have little little bits of of clearly obvious Truth uh dressed up with some a bunch of excitement and salesmanship right he's a Salesman folks mm-hmm he's a Salesman he's a Salesman talking to salesman yeah we would want to see some long-term outcome data of some of our participants and like how well they've met their goals and it's not you're not going to see that much variation from where those people would have wound up anyway some selection bias with people who are successful enough to get themselves there there is uh I would be uh there's no way Tony Robbins wants this data collected no no way give me a thousand people that went to the seminar see what their income what their tax return income was for 2018 then they went to the seminar let's see what their tax return is for 2000. I don't even need to know that I just need to know whether they put the seminar on a credit card or not they put it on a credit card they're not no they're not in much of a position so yeah he's any sort of prospective long-term analysis of Tony Robbins Special Sauce is going to amount to absolutely zero sure as we would expect you know we uh we that that that's all fine but we we understand the in the same way that uh you can be temporarily inspired by music uh absolutely it bangs the nervous system very hard is very exciting uh you can also be you know you can be excited by all kinds of stimuli and be excited by pornography you can be excited by junk food you can be excited by drugs uh you can be excited by tremendous music and you can be excited by uh super normal success feedback that's that's what it is it's super normal confidence feedback is what is what it is that you get at any kind of seminar like that and we would expect that to be selling on the nervous system it's essentially the the pleasure trap of personal success but it is all good well that was much gentler than I expected it to be we've written a nice mood today we've got some nice food everything's cool all right well I'm sorry I know there's a ton of stuff that we didn't get to both today and stuff that's been sent in ahead it all goes in the same big bucket for the these q and A's and for the podcast and we will get to everything eventually um and sometimes we get to something that's sort of similar and so then we don't get to the specific questions so you got to listen to make sure that we didn't kind of touch on your categories so yeah all right I think all right all right in two weeks you guys yeah it was great to see you say hello to the mainland for me I sure will all right I'll see you especially the cats see everybody soon have a good one bye
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