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Beat Your Genes Podcast & More

Living Wisdom Library Q&A
2020-10-08
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so we have um we have several questions submitted ahead of time as always there's a few that it's just been weeks and we haven't gotten to them so we may may get to those today um yeah I see you inoki uh all right okay um so we can we can start with sort of a couple of those if you want or if you I don't know if you got any emails this time um with anybody with burning questions or we can just kind of okay all right there's there's a few um I had I had someone rewrite personally to me it was something that they were asking about weeks ago that we hadn't gotten to and it's sort of an unusual question but it's interesting so um yeah okay so could you please give some advice on buying a new car I am a 50 year old woman who is highly intelligent highly conscientious stable and introverted I need to buy a new car in the very near term and I really dislike this process with the Waiting Games the time wasting and occasional insults from sales people which is my favorite from several years ago oh are you sure it's okay for you to be here alone without your husband I mean this is a really big decision about a car uh et cetera et cetera finally Doug has talked about how cars are signaling device and that men should drive the nicest car they can afford and keep it clean how important is that as a signaling device for women should we also be buying the night car we can comfortably afford I have typically purchased cars significantly below what I can afford so lots of questions about just buying a car particularly as a female so sort of an unusual topic but I thought we'd just throw it out there so and you you have more more experience with this than I do my my general answer is that you just go I go for a no-haggle kind of situation there are various places in the world these days that you can do a no-haggle deal because I am also a terrible like I hate everything about haggling and bartering and when I even when I've traveled all over the world I've avoided that whole situation because it's so incompatible with my personality so I would go buy from like like a former rental car for some no-haggle kind of situations that would be my general approach that I know Doug has more he's more of a a tactical Haggler on this kind of thing so he may have other insights into it no I think that's probably a very good strategy particularly about now uh now if you're gonna buy a new car obviously that's a different story we talked about that in a second the issue about how nice a car is a completely different signaling device for women than it is for men men are are essentially being pushed to display Financial excess in other words it's a it's an opportunity to express waste and waste is a critical feature of the demonstration of financial capability so this is the the same thing as the the waste of safety and the waste of energy involved in a peacock's tail this is the whole heart and soul of sexual selection this was uh actually really figured out by Amit sahabi in Israel in the 1970s uh in with what he calls the handicap principle so the the fact is is I mean this has been noted for a long time uh as early as uh you know certainly dar Darwin that was the person who figured out sexual selection and figured out that that this was an independent means by which Evolution worked um in other words uh Evolution can work by national selection uh which is increase your odds of survival can also work by sexual selection I.E it increases your odds of being chosen by the opposite sex to mate with and so uh it's going to turn out that the kinds of adaptations that are involved in those two things are very different so if you're uh if you're a hen of some kind uh generally you don't want to be having a bunch of showy feathers because you don't want to waste any opportunity to survive and so therefore uh a great high percentage of animals are well camouflaged and they're not attempting to advertise that they can afford to waste that camouflage whereas a peacock is advertising that so these advertising genetic greatness uh just by his ability to survive the same thing is true with the guy that is driving a Lexus and he can't really quite afford it this is exactly what he's doing he's basically saying I make a hundred thousand a year when he really makes sixty two thousand a year and so he's he's being pushed into that by other Lexi owners that either have a hundred thousand a year or have 62 000 a year and are doing it anyway so the uh so therefore the this is a very important issue because in our species men provision women uh very substantially uh in principle yeah yeah and so so so uh at any rate so it's important to display that you can do it and that means wasting as much money as you can right in everybody's face biggest house that you can afford biggest shiniest car you can afford uh if you can't afford those maybe it's gold jewelry these are these are other ways to display waste if you can't actually afford a house so for our 50 year old uh female no you don't need to display waste at all you wouldn't want to uh you would actually want to display conscientiousness and emotional stability in all probability and so as a result with you know your your intuition about what to pick or a car is probably very good I would raised one issue with you and that is that if you can in any way reasonably afford it I would suggest an SUV uh because they are substantially safer than conventional cars uh this is amazing this wasn't true 20 25 years ago when the laws were basically that they were converted trucks and they actually weren't very safe uh but it turns out that in the last decade or so that has changed dramatically and now SUVs are extremely safe uh as compared to Conventional automobiles just being up higher and above The Fray when the metal hits the metal turns out to be very advantageous also you don't want to be in a small car small cars are far more dangerous than mid-size cars mid-sized cars are not far more dangerous than large cars but they are somewhat more dangerous but the big issue is you don't want to be in a small car so if there's a line of Toyotas that you're looking at uh it's the smallest thing you should reasonably consider would be a camera uh they they do some interesting lying uh uh basically for fraudulently reporting in when it comes to crash tests uh statistics uh what they do is they they have small cars get a five-star rating uh when but they're always compared to other small cars so the Toyota Corolla is compared against the Mazda 3 or whatever it is it's not compared against anything else with respect to life and death or injury statistics so it turns out that they completely sail past any rational analysis so people have been deep uh have been defrauded into believing that a small car with a five-star crash rating is is it would be a safer safer than a mid-sized car with a four-star crash ready that is absolutely not true and so it's not even close to the truth the small car is far more dangerous than a mid-sized car so anyway so uh again we're here to try to analyze the data and keep have you make a very good decision uh the best decision needs you can make if you can afford it is get yourself into a mid-size SUV uh that that would be a an extremely good decision to defend I have to say also there's a tremendous amount of people walking around with serious injuries as a result of auto accidents those auto accidents don't have to be that severe uh in order to cause a problem they can be a 10 mile an hour fender bender at a parking lot and yet that can cause very serious damage for the rest of your life your neck and back Etc so you want to be in a big strong you know car uh if it guzzles gas so much the better so now when it comes to negotiating um you no longer have to guess about what would be a reasonable deal all you have to do is to go to Kelly Blue Book and look up what is a the only I actually tell you for your ZIP code what is a very reasonable deal for the car that you seek uh uh these days I'll just simply walk in there and I'll say you know what are you what are you going to charge me for this don't throw out a number and I'll just show the phone and I'll say well that's not what the con says okay and add all what I'm willing to pay is 24.5 okay and uh actually the last two or three cars I bought I ended up buying a lot of cars there's a reason this if people don't need it but the point is that uh um I I think the last couple cars I just basically went into dictated terms I just said it's going to be 24.5 that's what it is I need to take it or lose it and um they don't leave it so they uh that they will bite on that would you go unfair I go in on the low end of the range so if the range says a reasonable thing would be would be 24 you know 24 000 to 25 five in my area I walk in and I tell them hey I'm going to pay 24 5. okay I'm not going to get the very bottom of the range I'm not asking for it I want this deal done I had a guy recently say um okay uh I'll tell you what if you can get that deal somewhere else then you come come back and I said no I'm not coming back yeah why would you come back if you could get the deal somewhere else okay let me take it or leave it okay so he went and talked to his manager and 10 minutes later they limped out and they said we'll take it okay so this way you're not Flying Blind if he had to come out and said no I would have said to you later okay I'm not bluffing and so that that's uh you no longer have to Bluff and you not no longer have to wonder if you're being taken advantage of you can tell I I aim at about the 33rd percentile of the Kelly Blue Book range for my area I know that they're going to take that deal if they're not taking that deal there's a reason and the reason is that that particular dealership with its particular incentive structure at that particular time of the month on that particular car it's not worth it okay so you you can't it's just not the right dealership to be buying that car from on that day that could change four days later for them depending on how their sales figures go but at that moment they're unreasonable and believe me when they're going to be unreasonable there's no budgeting them okay so the uh so that's why I it's no hard feelings you know it's not personal it's not personal it's just twenty four thousand five hundred dollars okay that's yeah see you later so that's how I would do it and you can uh you can also do this by phone and by email uh but oh yeah yeah you can be honorable with them and you can say listen um I'm I'm very straight I'm going to tell you exactly what I'm gonna do and uh you're the first dealership since you're the closest one this is the this is if you have this car you know then this is what it is that I'm willing to to pay and that's that and end of story okay so that's that's another way you can do this you can also just enlist a disagreeable friend and have them do it I've done that enlist the disagreeable friend and have them on the phone so they don't need to be there with you in person necessarily but you can you can big Louie all over the place when you're if you're at the dealership then you can I mean I'm totally sympathetic to this idea that it's I mean you can go in thinking okay I've got my number I've got my my Kelly Blue Book I'm going to stay firm to this but it's very difficult when you're on that side of the bell curve with with someone pushy and disagreeable who's skilled in salesmanship and manipulation who's trying to like oh well you know this is a really unusual situation and you know we've got this detail in that detail um so that's when you just you just have your disagreeable friend on auto dial and you know you can say it's your husband or even if it's not or whatever um and they can they can take the take the fall for you um and I think yeah take advantage of of covid and basically set the terms up ahead of actually going in there all by email all written and so you can go in with your little stack of papers and be like no this is what you said you said you're gonna do this so but yeah my sister my sister's very disagreeable yeah yeah more much more than you are what she did was she contacted uh five agencies that I think she was looking for uh Volvo sedan and she knew what it was she wanted some gray Volvo sedan she knew exactly what it was and she said okay you know it's my sister so she's a bit of a bully so it's like pay cash I'm gonna buy this car on Thursday okay and I've been contacting five dealers and you guys have this car uh whoever gives me the best deal gets the deal and you've got two hours laughs oh man oh yeah like a bunch of chickens that are in a coop all fluttering around clucking and then at the end of two hours says somebody gave her the very best feel and that was the end of it so uh it's all this is these people aren't magic they're just scrambling little people that happen to be generally be a little low and conscientious and high in extraversion and they're they're reasonably verbally facile they're not particularly smart and and so they don't have any magic to to wave a um to hypnotize you or convince you of anything so it's pretty straightforward um and you're we're not going to lose status with them if we disagree with them it's not personal it's just business okay if you're not in a position to make this deal that's not a problem the um now the oh but the other thing that you commented on uh if you're looking for a used vehicle then I think the uh at this time in history right now is a really good time to buy and from rental agencies yeah uh rental agencies are often no haggle I just bought a rental agency vehicle in the last two months on a no-haggle deal this exceptionally good deal there's probably fifteen hundred dollars below Kelley Blue Book or so um because of the situation now where nobody's flying and nobody's running cars so yeah particularly now they're trying to dump them yeah if you're up for having a used vehicle uh then this is a good time to do it that way and that'll save you a bunch of hassle yeah and that's I mean that's what I did for my last car too and that was years ago even pre-covet I think it just it it eliminates a lot of the the uncertainty and the sales targets and the the point about not knowing what day of the month you're going in there and and what position that sales person is in and how how close they are to getting fired and all of that I mean I think it's it is the tendency of agreeable women in particular to take their behavior very personally like oh you know he's being you know he's he's directing his behavior toward me in response to my cues and there is that feeling that you're losing status and you don't want him to lose status and there's all of that so having awareness that they are subject to pressures beyond your understanding um that are not going to apply in the situation of just a direct a direct sale of a of a used rental or something something like that um just eliminates all that craziness so yeah I was uh I was instructed Alan gold never sold cars of course of course foreign [Music] my attitude is I'm straight with him but I am ruthless and uh and I'm not I'm not particularly there to be friendly I'm not there to be unfriendly I'm very matter of fact um it's yeah that's it's simply if I was hiring someone to oh I don't know you know dig a couple of cubic yards out of my yard uh for something and dig a hole in my yard it'd be like hey it's just going to be you know 500 or what is it and all in all I think it's gonna have to be more well too bad okay in other words no no hard feelings it's just it's just business all right let's go on something else all right sounds good so we have a couple of questions that disagreeableness so uh how can a couple where both parties are disagreeable get along and work together is it is that possible for two days yeah so we're often talking about um how there's a you know sort of a balance in a relationship particularly a partnership or a romantic partnership where it's very difficult if you are if you've got a big um if you if you're essentially trying to claim more than a hundred percent of the pie that is that is available so a disagreeable person is going in there asking for 60 70 80 percent feeling very much entitled to that and when both parties are feeling entitled to more than is available then you've got problems so I think that this is all very context dependent on those individuals and and sort of how that disagreeableness is being mediated by other personality characteristics as well as IQ so we love to use Alan as an exam example you know it's just like Alan Alan's kind of our go-to disagreeable Avatar um and Alan Allen is able to have relationships with other people who are not necessarily agreeable pushovers he is so disagreeable he's 99 percentile disagreeable he's bad as disagreeable as it gets you know when we have him take the test and so we would you know just looking at that number be like oh you you can only have long-term stable relationships business Partnerships friendships romances with people who are 99 agreeable otherwise there's not going to be a stable equilibrium but he is able to have you know friendships business Partnerships romantic relationships because he's able to sort of like uh that his incredible stability and his incredible conscientiousness are mitigating that disagreeableness he's not he's not flying off the handle he's not going into rages he's not sulking he's not he's not being really shitty with his disagreeableness um and his IQ is part of that too he's able to kind of take a larger view of the whole relationship and and steer him yourself in a more productive Direction when the when the expediency calls for it so he keeps himself in shut that way and so I think if you have personalities that are able to do that then two disagreeable people there's no reason that they couldn't be in a relationship but you can't you can't really create those mediating characteristics if they don't exist so that would be my my sort of General take on that um in general I would say it's a bad idea it's generally a bad idea you should go find a pushover doormat yeah it's a bad idea for for uh romantic relationships to be business Partnerships it's just it's an inherently bad idea it doesn't mean that it can't be done it has been done forever that every dentist's office has the wife working the computers out front um so it's not like it can't be done I think personally it's a bad idea so if it turns out that if you're like winds up just the role of the dice and the way things work out it works out that way that's one thing but I wouldn't I I would that would be my last resort uh the reason is is that that the um you want your romantic relationship partner to be your romantic relationship partner you want to do this little trading with that person as possible uh you you essentially if you can make other trades with other people trades inherently have conflicts of interest in them every employer employee relationship has a conflict of interest in it the um uh business Partnerships are inherently conflicted the the that doesn't mean they can't be done they are done but there are a lot of times done not well and you know so two people you know get together in a business and they we're going to work equally hard we're going to split the profits that's a problem right away a lot of people are going to wind up uh with a lot of hard feelings and a lot of trouble behind that concept all it's going to take is one of those two people to be at the 60th percentile for disagreeable and suddenly we've got a problem uh just because their interpretation of what's fair and what's even and how it ought to go is going to differ from reality just that just easily for that to happen can people make it work of course they can uh they can particularly make it work when things are going well okay then it seems like hey it's not a problem okay it's when things aren't going so well that that will really come to the floor um and so in general what you a concept for for me for romantic relationships is you want to be trading with your partners little as possible you may need to you may need to have Financial issues where one of you you know you guys need to do the laundry and you need to clean the house and you need to mow the lawn and and somebody needs to fix the Leaky Roof I mean if that's true it's true and then you pull together and you do it as well as you can but if you can actually make those inherently conflicted trades with other people so the conflict between with you is between you and the maid becomes twice a month now you may the maid understands that they don't have any leverage over the situation they understand that they have to respond to Market Crushers so they're under pressure to do a really good job and you and you are you know in a reasonable trading situation you're respecting the fact that you want to be a good customer and it all is nice and clean and easy and there's no problems in this and it sails along but when we have a um an amorphous trading situation where there's a bunch of ships flowing both ways like oh will you helped me with this and then but then you didn't get do this and I did this Etc you start getting this calculus behind a complex trading situation and and and also your partner generally isn't as good at things that you could hire other people to do it or if they are it's because they're so damn talented it's a waste of their time to come down and do those things okay you know I don't want a neurosurgeon cleaning the toilets that's a mistake you should be trading with other people so the notion is as much as possible uh you don't you know ideally you don't want to be in business with a partner if you are you are but if you are you know we have to uh uh then it's wise when troubles come up to actually figure out how on Earth we're going to set boundaries where are we going to set the rules to where where where the business has its limits and then there's real live personal time in his real life personal money you know I mean so so that it's not all just one big you know uh giant mess which is very often is yeah the uh the questionnaire is clarifying that he didn't mean work together at a job just work together in the marriage but um I think a lot of a lot of times people do work together in both capacities and so it's a that does apply even if it's not in this particular this particular case so yeah yeah I think it's very just generally generally good life advice oh you got another Point yeah so there's questions about working together in the marriage what do we think he means by this does he mean does he mean the tasks and duties of household processes or I think so okay yeah I don't think I don't think he necessarily means working on the marriage which would be a snowman but yeah I think he's just sort of daily life you know sort of um but the same sort of thing that we're talking about with us swapping back and forth of of household duties and all of that so yeah I think if you are if you're too disagreeables it's even more important to kind of um preserve that idea that you're you're taking those sorts of Trades out of the context of the relationship as much as is reasonable to do that's that's just a general and you want to have a lot of those agreements like agreed upon and effectively formalized yeah you do XYZ I do ABC okay so we don't we don't have an amorphous process going on the uh sometimes people uh when they're when it's conflicted and they're edgy and they don't want to make a deal and they can dig their heels and that's when you have to have the concept of experiments on negotiations super important idea and that is that this is also true if you're really trying to decide whether you want to do it this new diet or something it's like hey don't try to to decide that this is what the decision forever try to decide the decision for three weeks okay just hey it's a three week experiment you're going to see whether or not it feels like it's worth it it's a three-week experiment or two-week experiment we're going to find out that if I do ABC you do you know XYZ we're gonna see what if it doesn't feel Fair does it feel reasonable are we happy with that uh and that that's a way to take some of the the background Paul of negotiation frizzled uh frazzled emotional edges about why I cleaned it up last time how come you're not cleaning it up this time in other words it is we want to essentially have it have nice solid boundaries and and duties so that we're not happy to negotiate that's the idea yeah it reveals a principle that is unappreciated um in sort of all relationships but particularly romantic relationships where I don't know how long um this questioner has been with their partner but this the sort of uh set point of the agreeableness that people come in with is likely to change as they become as they they move into a greater position of power in a relationship so it's it's probably just a general Axiom of nature that people become more disagreeable over the course of the they don't become more agreeable it's to have a better deviation you know it is 15 20 percentile oh yeah I think it's it's probably it's probably true and certainly for disagreeable people who are working very hard to Bluff that they are more agreeable than they actually are in the courting phase so that's that's going to be like a universal situation but I think agreeable people also are likely to if not I mean overall they're going to move a little a notch over but they're also much more likely to get specifically sort of the the squawk point is more readily accessible over things like these transactional household duties and these things so so over the course of relationship you'll hear people say like oh well you know they've changed and it's just that it's not you know it's not how it used to be and a lot of that is that they had it's just that point of sort of the where the conflicts become where where people what we were talking about earlier with you know Alan sort of keeping his disagreeableness in check that's all a CB process like it's you know he's not going to verbalize discontent if it if it suits his needs in that moment um and that changes with the the nature of a person's position of power in the relationship and just Time marching on so um so uh yeah I think Doug just ran out on us um so this is uh this is something that's gonna shift in every relationship that I think it's more visible with two disagreeables because with an agreeable the agreeable suppressing a lot of it until the point where they're so chiseled that they feel they have to speak up which is another thing that's unappreciated by disagreeables in general by the time the agreeable squawks the the disagreeable who's so prone to squawk for any any misdeed whatsoever assumes that that's the first slight and so oh I barely did anything like what's the problem like that we I barely moved the needle not appreciating that the agreeable person is has gotten to the point where they really just can't take it anymore and they finally say something um so with two disagreeables who are ready to complain really much more readily all the time um you're going to you're going to hit that point over the course of the relation so it's actually what you're watching is an uh an energy loss leader this is clearly a human instinct that that if only I can get this person into a long-term committed relationship it's so worth it to me that I would give up this and I would give up that you know that this is a human instinct it's a it's a it's a actually we had not ever identified this before so this is actually very interesting this is a program delusion yeah just in the same way as the guy thinking oh man I just love you so much you know that that yeah I'm off the market forever six weeks later sorry it was casual mating I just didn't know it at the time the uh but this is also an energetic lost leader is where it's a it's a clearly an organized illusion uh in order to Bluff the other party that that you are you know that you're just a screaming deal that's that's clearly how it works yeah yeah that's really interesting I'm going to jot that down because that is the concept that it's an instinct but it's actually organized illusion is really interesting I don't know that anyone has ever has ever written that in evolutionary psychology but that's clear that that's what it is yeah and it's an instinct uh delusion of uh energy expenditure willingness so sure you're just you're just going to lower your cost you know if it's if it's worthwhile and that's a very that's a the most common way that people will try to lower their cost is hey I'm I'm easy to deal with so you sell shiz yeah look I'm I'm all all benefit no cost yeah yeah you guys are you guys are watching a new chapter of the book be born as we speak here so um all right so we've got some other stuff and this is this is a comment oh no I work with my spouse and I drive a Corolla I'm screwed hahaha uh oh well you can now you know what to do um so this question is can the thoughts of a neurotic individual be controlled um yeah so that those are I mean that's the same it's the same sort of principle the there's the two separate questions of the thoughts that are emerging and the you know acting on the thoughts and what what do what do these you know the the bubble the bubbling stew in your in your head what does it actually mean for how you're going to act in the real world and so we go back to the Allen example I mean it's it's not like he's not having disagreeable thoughts all the time about how people are cheating him and how it's ridiculous that he has to put up with this and it's ridiculous that he has to pay taxes and whatever else is going going through his mind at any given point um and and like when he's selling used cars you know having contempt for the people who are buying cars like all of that is being generated by the disagreeable Distortion like that is just a Relentless process that's going on behind the scenes but he's not taking action on all of but he's not letting it completely control his behavior because of that ability to sort of modulate in the context of a powerful cost-benefit analysis um so I would say the same the same is true for a highly neurotic mind that is just kind of very stirred up and very reactive and we talk a lot about how meditation can be a useful tool for that to just kind of like be more aware of you know what some people will call the monkey mind the sort of the you're having this reactivity you're having a lot of response to all of the changing circumstances of your life but you don't have to get carried away with every single thought it doesn't have to take you on this you know Mr Toad's Wild Ride every time you you have reactive thought but that again it comes down to the other personality circumstances and the context of the CV like how you know the the neurotic mind is going to perceive danger before an average Neurosis is going to perceive the danger and it's going to be driving you to take action on it um and so the the feeling of how urgent that is and how are you truly in danger is it important to take action that's all a very context-specific cost benefit analysis so it's kind of in impossible thing to answer on principle really depends on who you are what else is going on in your personality and what kind of situation you're facing that's giving rise to the neurotic thoughts to begin with I would say what just Jen just said I want to underscore principle so that we get the best answers because she said all of this but I want to put some of it in cats and that is the control is not going to come from a uh intra-psychic process if that's not going to happen the control is going to come with a premeditated alteration of your environment okay so if you if you can alter your environment generally it's social ecology but it might be your physical ecology in other words if you can change your the situations that you're in that's going to that's your best bet for dialing down you know all these anxious upset unstable reactions so that's that's what we're talking about so we're not going to be trying to fix your mind uh and get you some internal tricks that are going to reduce your reactivity I don't think so you may go meditate and settle it down a while and they calm it down a little bit part of your day but by and large that's not going to have any any potent blasting effects and you're never going to change so what are we going to do potted plant Theory okay we're gonna you should be seeking uh an analysis of situations that repeatedly give rise to these reactions that are unpleasant and remove ourselves from the relationships and circumstances that give rise to that and that that oftentimes means you know finding a new job finding a new place to live moving 50 miles from your mother-in-law whatever it is in other words there are there are literal I call the structural was the term that I've used for 20 years making structural changes in your environment where you literally change the how it is that you're spending your life and who you're spending and live with and what you're doing those those things can have potent effects on the quality of your existence so pay attention to suffering when it's repetitive and consistent and then we're going to try to engineer our way around that as elegantly as we can yeah that speaks to extend a question often and we we've answered it on the podcast recently so it's not in the queue for today but you know how how do I know what my distortions are like how you know what what test will tell me but that that paying attention to the sort of where you're getting tripped up and where problems in your life are recurring persistently um that is your guide that really is like letting you know sort of there's there's something going on here to dive into and investigate um so the the big five tests are only going to get you so far and people get very attached to those numbers on those scores like I'm 76 percentile whatever um and it's really just it's a starting point for this investigation into uh what kind of what kind of pitfalls you're most likely to experience and and but you don't the the test itself even if you're extremely distorted even if the the goldhammer rule is in play and your 99th percentile low conscientiousness or disagreeable or whatever it is it's not it's not just a function of that particular personality characteristic it's the whole personality um and how it's how it is responding to its environment and its particular CB in any given moment um all right question about bipolar is this more of a personality extreme where the individual is highly unstable as opposed to being a chemical imbalance um yeah short answer yes yeah the the idea of a chemical imbalance is that there's this sort of dichotomous normal abnormal uh rule that we can impose on any particular kind of pathology and Robert Plowman is it has this beautiful treatment of this question in Blueprint where he talks about that the abnormal is normal but really nothing that we think of as a as a dichotomous variable even even a heart attack it's not a yes or no kind of question that everything exists on a Continuum and so something like bipolar is somewhere on that Continuum of stability and maybe some other things but we could kind of generally talk about it being on the Continuum of emotional stability um and so is something like schizophrenia there are different different points on this generally the same Continuum um and it's not it's not a one gene it's not one gene that's affecting this it's thousands of genes that are that are interacting um and so there is no abnormal there's there's just some place on the Continuum where people find themselves on on these particular traits and so the idea that you could medicate something for being unbalanced or abnormal is very friendly to the pharmaceutical industry but it doesn't have anything to do with a real human being and their real experience on that bell curve um so yeah you've just got somebody who has those particular Skittles that that is that manifesting in their life in a general constellation of behaviors that we're going to put a label on and call bipolar um but that that is not a you are bipolar or you're not there's no way to actually assign that or observe it yeah bipolar isn't HIV right you don't no it's a it's a it you've probably got 10 000 genes involved and and if you've got if you've got 7 800 of the white ones then you are Oddball enough and unstable enough that somebody somewhere is going to diagnose you as bipolar okay uh but but that you are the you know if you've got 7 200 it made me only one in three of strengths diagnosed you that way and if you only got five thousand of the ten thousand nobody does okay so uh this is a Continuum uh kind of phenomenon now that being a side the concept of uh obviously something is odd when you get out there and you have you're out there in the tail end of a bell curve on something like this and you get some unusual uh you know bizarre behavior so we know that that brain is doing some some strange things uh that the gas is being pushed and the brakes being pushed at the same time in other words the functioning is not uh working the way it works in a better brain a brain that doesn't have those those particular characteristics just in the same way in race cars uh it's it's well known and in race cars or race car that functions perfectly at 160 miles an hour since now you take it up to 178 and there's something about that the way the tail is built it's catching the wind around the corner of Daytona and it's very dangerous okay and so in other words there's the same thing is happening this so a person with bipolar disorder can be functioning very well High percentages of the time not a problem some of that instability actually can contribute to tremendous energy expenditure and uh can can create works of Genius okay so that that is that has been shown to be true however that uh again we catch the wrong wind at Daytona and all hell breaks loose okay and the same thing is going to go on there so uh we is something odd going on with neurotransmitter concentrations Etc and the way the genes have of those neurons are are regulating things yes there is what is it who the hell knows it's ten thousand genes okay we are probably 10 000 years away from having a really good understanding of what on Earth that interplay is uh the the notion that we've got a drug to fix it now because we've identified a neurotransmitter that's under or over produced it's science fiction all right yep all right uh so kind of on the same point can you please explain the difference between being a narcissist and just being conceited and full of themselves yeah I mean generally a matter of degree um I really think of narcissism when I hear narcissism my mind immediately just replaces that with disagreeable like it really it's it's sort of um you know do you have somebody who's kind of walking through life assuming that they are God's gift to everybody on every Dimension and that we're lucky to even be you know dealing with them and working with them and dating them and anything else like that is that is disagreeableness but it's also what we're going to call narcissism sort of colloquially um so I think yeah there's there's a there's a Continuum between somebody being sort of you know overconfident a little conceited a little full of themselves and somebody who's is just a complete [ __ ] and is impossible to deal with but it's the same it's the same general genetic pattern that is just Amplified in that personality and and probably being Amplified by their position of power and other other factors going on in their life but I've seen people who have the capacity to be a completely uh tyrannical narcissistic [ __ ] who under certain circumstances where they've been a little humbled by life and and by a certain relationship or a certain type of work relationship they've they've managed to be you know a little more manageable a little easier to deal with so same human same personality same genes very different circumstances so this is why it's why it matters so much oh yeah all Grand all right so uh let's see we've got a couple of different questions we have a we have a covid question you want to take that on here hey can you comment on how a HC nut case with instability can better handle fear of covid and the USA election emotions from others I don't watch the news I understand intellectually how the media baits but I'm so sick and tired of feel of fearing health concerns for fear of covid and or social unrest after the election for years need to hear from a all caps stable person well I'm a little I'm a little concerned about social unrest for years after the election so maybe I should I should give this question to Doug yeah um first of all covet is probably 95 uh through the United States population at this point so when I actually analyzed the the curves on covid uh we are probably down to our last uh at most 15 000 fatalities uh something like something in that nature so uh it could be a little bit more it could be a little bit less but we're about done so the the media isn't going to tell you this uh the media is not interested in this the media is uh very interested in keeping everybody afraid and have their eyeballs riveted uh and you know Etc there's good reasons for that many many different agendas involved uh but but the but the truth of the matter is it is about pushed its way through the United States population so you this is what happened in Europe we're just a bigger country so as a result it took longer and with our lockdowns and our social distancing uh it took longer for the buyers to eventually work its way through the population it is basically about work this way through the population so uh as an hcnc you're not going to be convinced of that for a while so a month from now there will be very little covert left um two months from now there will be a likely almost no fatalities remaining in the United States three months from now which would be what uh or in the middle of January uh by the middle of January it would be patently obvious that the covet is a minor issue by the way all kinds of people will be taking credit for this like I I it's entertaining for me to hear about uh the left claiming that Trump did a terrible job and the white claiming the Trump did a great job you know that he did anything okay no this is like this is like your kid grows to be six foot four and handsome you're like wow did I do a great job I did a great job of raising my chance that's like you didn't do anything of a kind that just happened okay so covet just happened the big thing that we needed to do as civilized societies was to try to slow the spread so we didn't overwhelm Hospital systems that was accomplished in the United States it was accomplished in quite a few places the uh reducing the amount of deaths is probably a joke those places that that have relatively low death counts now haven't paid the price yet so places like Germany that lock down real tight and haven't had the same number of fatalities will probably see those number of fatalities unless they the wild card comes and there's actually a legitimate vaccine right it would be possible okay so that was a way to play this game now the uh the United States didn't play the game that way United States did what everybody else did half-ass one way or the other and uh and as a result the virus got everywhere and it went through its process and it's pretty well done so the um so that's where that's where coronavirus is at you will have that the obviousness of that mathematics will hit you over the head so hard by January there won't be any escaping it and pretty soon this is going to be in the rear view mirror the uh this is this has been a super amped up political electrical football you know for for six months now it will remain true uh for the next few weeks uh but but after that you know reason is going to rain uh as it turns out there's no longer political agendas being served by by any particular perspective and we're going to also find out that uh that that the Danger's gone so that's where that's where I believe this is going to happen unless I'm much mistaken about the nature of this particular virus which I think is exceedingly unlikely that that's true I think that you're going to have essentially a population that has now had a high amount of exposure uh coronavirus will stick around and will be a new since uh probably Forever at some level but it won't look anything like it did hitting a novel population for the first time so that that's where I think we are and um I can't remember what other what other parts of the question uh the other part of the question is just about the political instability after the election um okay I will before we move on to that I just just to throw out there the um the quants at the University of Washington uh who have been sort of tracking this they're they are projecting a fair number of deaths before January another another 140 deaths or so 140 000. range there's no yeah support this so yeah these guys are um I think uh making some very strange assumptions and I I have a I believe that they're in bed with Bill Gates oh yeah and they're probably funded they're probably literally funded by him but you know to what extent their influence is a different question but I'm sure in vaccine processes so I I I I don't think that that is true I don't think there's any uh if that were true Jen then we would not see basically no deaths in Italy no deaths in France no deaths in Spain no death England even though they've had Resurgence of the virus it looks like a terrifying Resurgence because there's so much more testing than there was when the first wave went through so when you look at cases new cases it looks terrifying you'll see 50 000 new cases in the United States but the truth is it's nothing compared to what was taking place in March and April and May okay so you can tell that by the amount of deaths so right now we're averaging probably 500 deaths a day we were averaging 2500 deaths a day in the heart of the epidemic we've been on a very uh very steady slope line that you can you can see it pretty clearly what it is will probably be at 300 a day by the end of October we're probably going to be in the 100 to 200 range by the end of November and we'll probably be about done which is where they are now all across Europe they're basically done so even though they got resurgences when you see how many new cases of debt there are in Spain it's like 12 people okay so your it is now down to the level of a nuisance so what the University of Washington people are thinking I have the famous clue and I am sure that they cannot defend their logic if that uh what Europe did not somehow figure out how to get rid of Coronavirus that that did not happen okay you could only make assumptions that it's going to get cold everybody's going to go inside and now everybody's going to get sick again because we're going to have you know Etc maybe I don't think so uh I I think there's plenty of evidence for not just looking at the the behavior of the virus across those countries but also looking at the behavior of the virus across the United States okay and also look at the behavioral virus in Sweden uh where they're not doing anything to try to hold this thing back now and you're not getting any resurgences at all so I think it's just you'd have to be a screaming pessimist to believe that you have anything like what it is that they're that they're inferring um they can they can defend it with any model just like Niles Ferguson you know defended his model but those models were wrong yeah his model was wrong by a by an order of magnitude yeah nobody did anything to stop this virus folks I mean it didn't happen so except you know the lockdown countries but Western Europe United States we did not do anything to stop this virus this virus got its way through the population at exactly the same fatality ratios within uh within uh what do you call it normal normal statistical fluctuation we didn't do any better job than England we didn't do a better job than France we did do a better job than spam we didn't do a better job in Italy we didn't do a better job in Sweden our fatality ratios are totally in line with 500 million people in Europe and it's going to be true all around the world so yeah so I don't know what they're thinking yeah it's curious but I I don't trust those thoughts they have a huge I mean it's a big confidence interval that is you know ranging from Universal masks to Total easing of any kind of distancing or mask mandates I mean the difference is over a hundred thousand so the their lower their lower parameters in other fifty thousand deaths or so wow so yeah yeah so it's a lot higher than I see in the chart that I'm looking at so yeah we will we'll find out yeah they've been they've been pretty good so it gave me some pause when I saw that this week um but I would yeah we can dive further into their models we run those computations against uh Sweden for example right we've had 5 800 guests and 10 million people and and we we take 5800 and multiply it by 325 million so 32 and a half times 5800 we're not going to wind up with an additional 50 000 deaths in the United States they're they're looking at a big climb starting in December so I think I think they're projecting the indoor you know sort of like typical flu season situation and they're the the sort of the curve starts another climb around that point and basically does another sweep on the most vulnerable who were left possible yeah yeah I'm not saying that they're wrong I'm just saying they don't have a single shred of evidence to support that that's a that's a fantasy see that that's a that's a that's a that's a uh what do you call it what do you call it a vaccine makers fantasy yeah and so we'll find out we'll learn as we go yeah it is the contrast though I mean I I was talking to another client the other day who lives in Melbourne um which is you know like New Zealand it's a part of Australia that has just been completely you know we've we've used the metaphor before of holding a beach ball underwater with this thing which Hawaii has done as well and these these policy makers are in a terrible situation because you know if you are the the governor or the the you know the the president of that country or some sort of regional Authority um and you've seen your numbers really suppressed by this like intense lockdown you haven't you haven't eliminated the threat you haven't I mean you're still just at risk as you were in March the same people who are going to be you know taken out by this thing are still waiting for it to get them so the only logical political conclusion that you have left is to maintain this level of of um you know aversion to the outside world in this incredible lockdown we're in Melbourne they're only allowed to leave their house once a day for you know amount of time between certain hours and that is a it's a massive trade that the United States would just never tolerate you know we just as a population even even if we had done that and we got those numbers down at that sort of level the the sort of the political intolerance of this plot this Liberty loving population um and uh not even the most disagreeable among them but certainly the most disagreeable among them you just could never do that in the United States it would it would be tantamount to a you know an authoritarian power grab that the majority of the population just would not tolerate so the the counterfactual of what we could have done or what Trump should have done I think goes to the point that Doug is making that you know we didn't really do anything and that's really the only way that it could have gone in uh you know the federal republic that we have with the states having a lot of autonomy over how they're managing their situation like this and um just the lack of capacity at the federal level unless you deploy a military presence and have curfews and have things that just are not just would not would not play in this kind of atmosphere unless you were dealing with something um like you know like Ebola something something super virulent super scary super like you know tapping into these visceral fears that people have um and covet is not that so um but yeah the the promise of um social unrest after the election I I don't I I think you're going to uh see some social unrest not because of any specific trajectory that this thing takes but just because that is kind of that is that is the direction that the population is going um with you know this is my rant about social media again I will I will continue making this constantly because it's I really feel that this is a huge part of American political life right now that we are getting increasingly siled into these little little tribal bands that feel that they have everything you know nothing to lose and everything to gain by taking very extreme positions and are in a a little uh Echo chamber with people who are sharing those sentiments so I think you have an election looming where you know for all the talk of trump signaling that he's not going to accept the outcome I don't think that if the Democrats lose they're going to accept that outcome either um and it's it's going to be it's going to be continually contested and you are going to have people uh in the streets and social unrest to the degree that is incentivized by the the internal signaling that's going on and that's just that's going to continue and intensify for the foreseeable future from what I can see yeah hard to know it's like uh when I sort of game this out of my own head if uh if Joe Biden wins then then I think there's there might be some party you know party unrest but I don't think there'll be um I I don't think that there's any reason to think that there would be a significant you know vicious on us I don't think so I'll think that the that the the lap which has been at the epicenter of violence for the last six months is pretty well mollified yeah we have Joe Biden Alliance uh if Trump wins it's a different story and so if Trump wins there's no telling uh what could happen I don't know that there would be any major civil unrest um but there might be you know it's uh it's a little different situation too in that it's uh it's not our long hot summer you know what I mean uh some nobody's been shot uh nobody's had a knee on their neck so you you have you have a different issue and so it's a little different so I have no idea what will happen but I don't see I've heard people talking like they like if uh if Joe Biden uh if Trump loses there's gonna be all this civil in us I I can't see that at all that doesn't make any sense to me um I could be wrong but I just don't think that that's the direction that this would go I think the other direction could go that way I I think it would be probably relatively limited and I think it would be short term the uh so I don't think I don't believe that we're gonna we're in for any long-term civil unrest in the United States but I can see a week is some shitty Behavior like I can see that the uh uh but I don't as far as your own anybody else anybody that's listening to this you know the uh uh the motivational speaker Jim run told the story and uh it's one you know it's one of these graphic stories that he told that that I've never forgotten or just when I was 16. he said you know there's a there's a guy that goes out wanders out in the middle of this field and there's this huge big you know thing that they they ratchet up in the middle up in the sky and then they let it down and it crashes the ground and it shakes the ground you know for miles around and then they ratchet all up there again and then they do it again they ratchet up there and they do it again and he says you know it doesn't make any sense why are you doing that okay he says somebody should stop this and the comment from Ron is you can complain all you want about it but don't stand under it okay don't stand under it don't be smart enough of course it's ridiculous okay of course the civil unrest is ridiculous of course it shouldn't be happening but all you need to do is sit down stand under it for God's sakes just make sure that you're safe there's you know 99 of the places you can go in the United States will be safe completely safe on Election Day and after election day don't go to the one percent of places where it's going to be troubled everything will be fine that's how I look at it yeah yeah it is an interesting situation to be going into the selection we're almost almost by definition we're not going to know the answer right away just with all the mail and voting and the the sort of the fact that this is it's just a such a different moment and so it opens up and and with this Supreme Court nomination you know in limbo um I it's the sort of the likelihood of the result going to the court and the general uncertainties surrounding the election at least for several weeks if not several months it is it's an unusual moment um and it's all with this covet overlay so I think people uh can be forgiven for having a little anxiety about that definitely everything that that is um it's you know suggested by that question to sort of insulate yourself from the news uh try not to you know get too far into it get off of Twitter um get off of social media yourself not not just because of the influx of information that you're getting and how that's affecting you but um the the data that you were giving um these companies about how they can more effectively manipulate you all of that is bad news um and then yeah yes stay um you know I wouldn't want to be in downtown Portland uh for on Election night that's probably not an advisable thing to do um so all of the ways that you can control your environment you definitely should be doing that yeah I can remember uh one of my one of my favorite characters this is before your time Jen uh was a character by the name of Louis rukeyser and um he was the host for many years of a show called Wall Street week and uh Louis rukeyser uh in responding to to uh somebody somebody's consternation about somebody getting elected I I can't I literally can't remember because he was such a he was such a fixture for so many years it could have been that he was lamenting you know uh Bush senior being elected or it could have been Clinton or it could have been Carter God knows who it was and the but the um I remember his response was relax this country is going to muddle through so whatever happens whoever gets elected this country just muddles through that's the that's that's the beauty of our our political uh our political system is that it's messy and it's conflicted and there's some corruption just as you would expect uh in any political system there would be no way for that not to be true uh but at the end at the end of the day uh we will respect the transfer of power uh I you know that's just how how it works and that that will happen and we will have a process and and we will meddle for it that's how it'll work on that optimistic note uh yeah it's been been an hour I have a consult coming up so unless there's any anything else you want to throw in or add we can just shut it down for the week no that's good yeah all right all right thanks everybody for coming and we will uh we'll see you in two weeks most likely all right see you soon all right all right bye
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