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Beat Your Genes Podcast & More

Living Wisdom Library Q&A
2020-12-17
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foreign hello I am waiting to see Doug in the attendee list so I can promote him it's always tricky I hope I sent him the right link you're just calling me yeah yeah I was all right yes there you go you got it got it all right we're in business looks like there's already stuff in the Q and A cool um all right oh yeah interesting okay um I did I promised somebody who their question was in the queue last week and I had promised her last week we would try to get to it we just didn't um and so she she really wants to make sure we get to it this week so I'm gonna lead with that and then we'll see what else so this is um she's she's wondering if gloat therapy is applicable to her situation so I don't know if we've ever actually talked about that on one of these and I figured it'd be a good chance for you to kind of run through what gloat therapy is for people who are unfamiliar but the uh the question just the context um my son is five years old and he's basically failing kindergarten um haha but seriously he is a contrarian he has his good moments but more often than not he contradicts and argues with everyone about anything and everything he also tends to blame other people for his behavior and the consequences of that behavior he's been singling out and picking on hitting kicking name calling one kid after another in class to the point where he's now going to be sent to the admin office um principal's office as soon as he has another outburst I really do don't blame them for doing this he's hard to handle when he was a toddler and started having Tantrums I had to crawl around on the floor following him around so I could remove hard project hard objects or put my hand in the way of furniture to stop him from deliberately bashing his head into things he's intensely disagreeable and emotionally reactive I call him my nitroglycerin because if you bump him the wrong way he blows up in your face so is this something that gloat therapy could help her with or what what should she do she's at her wit's end um yeah so I guess what we'll do is we will uh we'll talk about we're going to talk about what gloat therapy is so people know what it is and right actually get get under the the hood as to what it is so actually what this is Jen is sharp Angling right this is yeah but I figured it was a good uh good reason to get a good good pretext to talk about glow therapy too totally so the um hold on let me make sure my phone's not gonna ring okay so um all right so uh what what this is is that what Globe therapy is is that we um we take a list of things that that we want some kid to change so a five-year-old is going to be pretty minimal uh because there's not there's not a lot of things that are sort of repetitive that are we can make agreements on because it's not it's not too legitimate to be trying to make agreements with five-year-olds the um the agreements could be much shorter term uh like in the next 15 minutes or half an hour but blood therapy was originally designed for you know a 12 year old or older 10 year old so if you had a 10 year old but out of messy room then you would uh and and you didn't like that messy room it bothered you um then Globe therapy would be about how we're going to get that room clean and so the way we would do it is we the first thing we have to consider is everything that we do for the kid that the kid likes us to do but that we don't like to do or that we can make a plausible case that we don't like to do so for example their laundry take them to school things like that okay or their allowance for that matter so we can we can get leverage over them with an allowance if we need to it's essentially something if we take away their electronics that doesn't do us any good so therefore that that is not a good lever for globe therapy bloat therapy is is that that we we are if they don't do what we want them to do we're going to take away something that that's valuable to them only it's not just valuable to them it's good for us that we don't have to do it so uh a you can sell the concept of their five dollar a week allowance uh to you know a seven-year-old who may not quite be smart enough to quite figure out that we don't really care about that five dollars but we could sell them on the notion that we do care about it so um so we could say for a seven-year-old for example well you either clean your room and it's super clean on Saturday morning inspection at 10 o'clock uh we're gonna do that every morning every Saturday morning at 10 I'm going to come in and look at that room and if it's uh if it's not clean no allowance okay and so what will typically happen is that at 9 55 they'll start scurrying around okay now I I encourage parents to not remind the child once don't remind them okay uh it's better if you don't and if they completely forget about it that's fine because then you're going to say at 9 59 okay it's time for the 10 o'clock inspection and then if they literally did forget then they're going to be like oh my God oh my God no I was going to get to it okay and then it's a perfect setup for globe therapy Globe therapy as we go into the room and we say oh look at that there look at that there nope you failed inspection how great is that for me no five dollars for you I'm going to take this down to Starbucks and I'm gonna get my favorite latte okay and you and you go get that latte and you bring it home and you're like oh boy this is so good so I got this latte that I didn't have to spend that money on your allowance okay that we I expect to see anger and tears out of his kids okay that's good I want them angry so they're feeling like it's so unfair and then that doesn't work a very key component of this is what Gemini call Sharp angling which is that essentially their claims on us through either anger or through tears which are both um the standard two manipulative tactics of humans uh in other words trying to get what it is that they want out of a situation the uh by by manipulating in particular anger is a threatening communication tears are a pathetic communication that is essentially saying I'm going belly up and I need your help okay tears are very effective way for children to use towards parents because they will activate uh parental instincts which are inherently altruistic okay and so that can also happen in romantic relationships but but uh but think about how quickly it would happen with Mo with Moe's whimpering at you it's like in one second you're gonna feel an in tremendously paternal or not paternal but uh parental and therefore altruistic is all get out to try to figure out how to mitigate that pain it's actually just a very short anecdote to illustrate that right after I adopted him I he was just a puppy you know he was like three months old and I was I needed to fly him from Detroit back to Seattle and um I'm at the airport and I've got my stuff and I'm dragging this puppy and all this stuff and I was feeling angry I was like irritated with myself what did I get myself into what you know this is ridiculous um and then I'm like pulling like he you know he's trotting along behind me and I realize he's like stuck so I look back and he's stuck on the curb in the in the sort of the the parking lot because he can't clear it because he's too little and he's looking at me and he gives his pathetic little whimper in this chirp and I'm like oh God like that was the moment it was like tell everybody that's the moment I fell in love with Mo was this sort of like this this beseeching vulnerability that he had yeah anyway from anger to to parental compassion in a second that's right there you go yeah so that's what your kids will do to you and so uh what we're gonna do is the sharp angle is they bring that manipulation and we just boom it bounces right off of us like like we're made of steel it's like nope this is not going to work okay and so it comes right back and the out and it comes right back with I don't care about your pain okay now that that's gonna freak him out and they find out oh that's a problem which means that they can't help but make the inference that you have decided that the situation is fair okay and that their pain isn't isn't enough you know they aren't in enough distress that you know this is actually we're starting to coach them about what the limits of their power is in other words what what can they reasonably demand in terms of Parental altruism and so the sharp angle is a signal that tells the kid whoa there's limits and yet we're not having to get angry at them and expend a bunch of energy in that way to try to Sheen them into you know finding the limits now it's much more clever than that and much easier on us we identify something that we do that's a value to them we make an extremely reasonable request we don't harp on it we don't guilt on it we don't do anything it's better if we don't never remind them then on that Saturday when we when we gloat they're all then out of shape we come are impervious to their tears and unsettedness we actually we can laugh and make fun of them even oh my God this is like Warfare now okay now they'll choke it down and guess what and you say oh next Saturday you'll get another chance okay so next Saturday comes and now if we've got a real tough negotiator they'll start doing it you'll start getting up there rear-ended about 10 minutes to 10. and when we walk in there at 10 o'clock it'll be 70 done and they'll say oh I'm almost I'm almost and you're like nope failed inspection again oh my God I can't wait for my latte okay and now it's like oh now they're really upset you're being so unfair they just needed another 15 minutes and you're like oh no you'll find out the real world you're late for work you're fired well too bad for you good for me okay so the bloating is about how it's good for you so we we uh that's that's the key component of this so uh there's things that you can use the doing your laundry if they're if they're old enough to do it themselves an eight-year-old can work and work a laundry machine uh probably a reasonably competent one um certainly uh packing their own lunch and making their own sandwiches these are things that you could do a lot of times parents are taking their kids to school because the parents everywhere seem to be afraid that boogeyman are going to reach out the behind the bushes and kidnap people which they don't and so there there's massive uh self-righteous overprotection of children by driving them to school and protecting them these days which is absurd you know they can you know if they're in a reasonable neighborhood and they're not having to go seven miles and by God they can walk to school or ride their bicycle okay and so if it's cold oh well okay obviously if it's 20 below in Michigan we're not going to do that but if it's anywhere reasonable it's like oh well so it's a little uncomfortable not a problem you know there's no no reason in the world some eight-year-old can't ride their bicycle to school for half a mile so the the point of this is that we say oh well great now I don't have to take you to school this next week oh boy I'm just gonna sit right here and have my that have my tea and have a great time you know while you have to do that ah thank goodness I don't have to take you to school okay now they'll know that you're it's over the top uh so in other words because you're not bitching about taking them to school at other times the uh but this is a way to this this concept is how it is that we get leverage so with this particular five-year-old you would the the steps to Glow therapy are number one you have to identify very clearly what it is that you want them to change and here's what's not on the list quote I want that to be more respectful or quote I want them to have a better attitude those aren't on the list those are two diffused it has to be specific behavior like the room has to be [ __ ] and spam or their teeth have to be brushed every night or they have to have their homework done Etc these are in other words it has to be specific behaviors that bother you that you want them to be doing it differently okay with with a five-year-old it could the deals might have to be very short in terms of their duration in other words in the next 15 minutes you need to do this and not do that okay when they don't do it you're like oh good that means I'm not going to give you I'm going to eat these these cool vegan cookies I'm gonna get them all you're not getting any okay whatever in other words these kind the concept is we are unapologizingly um reducing our own burdens and and essentially not being altruistic with them that is the the process of gloat therapy a five-year-old is a little different animal uh this five-year-old is obviously nitroglycerin and so we don't uh we don't need to be running around Molly coddling this person we can we can let them take the social consequences of the reaction it doesn't seem like they're they're hurting too much it seems like they're they're not getting any ulcers they're giving them so let let the let the social structure and the power structures uh push back that's fine uh uh but anyway that that's the the notion of globe therapy and you may be able to engineer short-term uh strategies with this individual as he gets older there will be longer term strategies that you can use one-week contracts and things of that nature uh that you can get some power over some very specific behaviors that you want to get power over that's what we need to do all right yeah awesome so yeah hopefully that is helpful anoki is clarified in the chat she says she understands glute therapy but what is the sharp angle so Globe therapy is sort of a subset of of sharp angling Behavior which is a sharp angle is just not buying into the pity bid that the the child has made or or anybody is making on you but the sort of the manipulative tactic um with either anger or tears I I suppose that you use sort of your your oak tree that is non-responsive to the manipulative uh efforts that that person is making and you just stick into your guns so that's a that's a sharp angle and then gloat therapy is kind of a variety that you use in these particular situations yeah I love that so to describe the just describe the I actually learned sharp angling uh from Alan goldhammer yeah this who is this impervious very disagreeable he's the perfect person to start angle because he's he's very disagreeable but he doesn't come across as particularly disagreeable that's because he's very stable okay if he were literally he's probably close to 99 percentile for emotional stability so uh so if he were 80th percentile emotional stability uh he would be much more irritable uh than he is and much more volatile I mean even if he was down to 80th but he's not Idiot he's he's way way high in terms of disability he's freakish like stable and so because of that his very high disagreeability is closed okay but you'll run into it because any time you're going to use any manipulative tactic you're very you're either going to get deceived by some deep slick maneuver or you're going to get sharp angled okay what you're not going to get is any of your boys are not going to come cause any sympathetic reaction because that's not in the machine so Alan I watched angle uh Allen's sharp angle people probably five thousand times in my life uh and before I figured out kind of what was happening and then I came up I started to mimic it and it started to work beautifully uh under times when I could snip this manipulative process taking place and so so the sharp angle stance is oh well okay so the I I would have I would hear people on the other end of the phone saying well I'd like to come to faster but you know uh you know my dog and any of these problems and I just don't know if I can do this or and Alan's would be like well you'll work it out you'll work it out is sharp angling so what that uh if we watched uh what a lot of sharp angling is doing is it's moving the nature of the conversation from a parent-child communication where there's an altruistic underlying demand and it's moving it to adult to adult where nothing such that the kind exists so the when the person starts whining that they want to come but they can't do it and they need this or that accommodation that's a childlike Ploy and you actually listen to their voices and their voices have this little pleading whimper as a paralinguistic hue that's going along with their speech okay and that so you can hear it it's like well please take pity on him because it's a little hard and then like literally the noises that they make are are childlike noise is looking for a paternalistic response which will be accommodating and altruistic I.E will let me now make myself available to you to help you solve your problem because I'm the adult here okay and I'm the parent no it doesn't work without it bounces right back on you that says you'll work it out I.E you're not getting five seconds of my brain to help you accommodate your problem you have an adult problem solve it okay it's it's not just a shift from parent parent to child communication from parent child to adult to adult but it's also sort of from a from a feminine sort of Paradigm to a masculine one it's like wait until your father gets home your father's gonna sharp angle you right or the sort of feminine communication is much more kind of attentive to these kind of oh well you know if there are if there are things that we need to consider you know we need to like let's work around all of these certain so let's accommodate accommodate accommodate where the the sort of these are archetypal ways of thinking about it my um my sweet wonderful dear beloved grandmother you know rest in peace who died a couple of years ago she she's this lovely little human but she much like your mom had um this kind of verbal tick where she she would get that whiny pleedy she there's a particular kind of way if she wanted me to reach up to something high or to lift something heavy for her she would literally be like Danny could you do this for me and it drove me nuts from an early age because you know I'm half I'm half Robert Hawk of of handle it Fame you know if you complained to my father he would sugar be like handle it it's like famous for this phrase which drove us all nuts so I'm half I'm half my father and so there was that that sort of whininess with my grandmother would really get under my skin especially if it was like over a period of time when I was staying at her house and I was running into it often and one day I couldn't have been older than like 15 or 16. I sort of snapped at her and I said I'd be happy to do it for you but not if you ask me like that and she was like super taken aback she was like well then and then it was a whole issue in our relation ship ever after because it was the first probably the first time in her life that hadn't worked so right yeah right yeah yeah very very interesting so yeah sharp angling is uh definitely if if not invented by Alan goldhammer he is a master of The Craft you listen to him on the screening calls and he's like well yeah if you want to make it happen we'll see you we'll see you when we see you you know like good luck yeah let's say that that that is nothing that is in my natural repertoire that that sharp angle does doesn't exist inside my nervous system so this is a learned Skillet to this day I feel like whenever I do it I feel like I'm taking a little bit of a chance but now I'm extremely comfortable with it and I've taken a little bit of a chance and I'm always surprised that it just backs everybody right down it's like it's kind of like I don't know having a little discount card that everywhere you go you get 30 off and you're like how did I get this discount card like you know nobody else has it I just keep putting that 30 right keep getting 30 off and that's what sharp anglings like like no no actually no you're fine you'll handle it and and it's when I right in before having identified this any any such move on the other on a person's part uh it's not like people are doing it all the time for no reason they they've got needs they're they're they're feeling boxed in they feel like they don't have as much resources they see that you have more resources whether it's mental physical psychological Financial or whatever Hair It Is the point is is that and you can feel your your uh chips and their altruistic chips and uh looking to be the hero okay and go in and fix it okay and then you get credit so there's an esteemed Dynamic that's sitting under there and so you got this sacrifice the notion that you're this incredibly good person that would do anything uh for them and you have to put you you put the fire out on what I call the spectacular altuous which is the the meditation to demonstrate your Greatness by being in-house spectacular altruistic you can be so you can you have have that little chip firing up that dynamic in the system and yet many of us do have that uh they have been burned so often by the time you're 30 you know you are you you feel the burden of that kind of noise coming out of somebody whether they're five years old or they're 50 years old you can feel like you're about to get suckered in and checkmated into investing 10 times more energy in this situation than you want to or 100 times more and so sharp angle is the solution and it's uh this is this is the wet dream uh assertiveness training except that assert in this training did not identify the underlying Dynamics at all so it asks people to change their personalities in ways that are incompatible sharp angle is an unbelievably simple and clear understanding and Method and so it doesn't involve you memorizing anything or getting you know articulate arguments or standing up for yourself no it's actually unbelievably elegant the answer is like no and you know what you just have to deal with it that that it's like whoa you do that about 15 times and get away with it 15 times and you'll you're you're a convert for life so that's the uh there there you go you can you're gonna be doing plenty of it with this five-year-old that uh we've got a long history of the next 15 years until that kid leaves home uh this kid's gonna get hit should get hit thousands of times with sharp angles and uh yeah make your life easier definitely early and often because if you if you start giving ground now you know you're in the you're just gonna continue giving ground forever and it's like the this this creature exists to push the limits of how much it can demand from you um and so the the earlier and more rigid you can set those boundaries the the better off you're gonna be as are other people as a recipe as everybody is we have adults that are that are well designed by both nurture and nature to use pathetic cues to manipulate you into being a spectacular altruist you um they are also extremely well designed that includes your very confident boss that just looks at you and say oh Marianne I could really use your help you know after hours I've got this deadline it's like whoa that you you are just about watched your Wednesday evening go on the tubes all right and right there is when it needs to be sharp angled I wish I could can't do it you know it's just too bad yeah I wish I could yeah I mean I think it's it's it's uh you know striking deep into tribal source code where it's you know the buck stops with the sharp angle that's like that's where it's like all all strategies don't apply here you it's it's you nope I am I am the end of the road and so there's the sort of inherent Authority in stating near the end of the road and that you can't be manipulated and it's like the the humans have they're sort of powerless in the face of that they're sort of like oh you must be Alpha then so okay our uh do all do sort of obedience to you because that's the signal that's what I've been looking for that's I've been I've been going around seeing who's who's gonna fold until I find the person who wants so I think that's that's probably a lot of what's going on with the sort of respect for it yeah yeah and irritation yeah yeah sometimes you know I'll watch like they like little confusion on the other side and and this sort of dawning realization that it's not going to work it's not gonna work man rarely any significant any real pushback it's it's a it's instead it's like huh and suddenly the the the self-responsibility chip has to awaken which was a more expensive Pathway to the goal but they can handle it I.E Robert Hawk handle it oh God it's terrible it was terrible that was that was something he brought out of one of his stints in uh in recovery you know he was sort of in and out of 12-step and he he came out of one of those treatment centers which is sort of like this with this sort of Stony resolve is like hey if I've got to be responsible for my actions so do you life sucks um all right all right we got we got various things being asked too there's a couple of uh dovetailing questions so let's see we've got um uh where did it go so this is this is opening the Pandora's Box uh is the repeat exposure effect possible for men or do they work in the reverse where once they've accessed the eggs they are less attracted to the female um that's actually it's actually a really good question because um a lot of the times when when myself or undoubtedly Jan and anywhere anybody else in EP when we when we State uh a principle sometimes what we're talking about is a main effect rather than an absolute rule over every instance of everything okay so the uh so the main effect and main effect is the concept of Statistics in other words what's your what's the main process of how these variables interact that's that's what we mean by that sorry about that but that's that's how that's how get nerdy they're getting nerdy that's what but the words and what it means statistically are pretty much the same thing so the main the main process is going to be that uh males have the opportunity to become more attractive over time to female brain for the specific reason that the female brand is designed to analyze the to analyze the sexual trade optimize protection and provision and genetic contributions so they're trying to get they and every other thing on earth is trying to get the best possible deal in exchanges now you don't do that consciously uh but the point is is that's the unconscious algorithm that's running the show therefore if a male appears to be for example more reliable than you thought he was then he's going to become more valuable as you learn that over time if it if he's more intelligent than you thought he was then he's going to become more valuable over time if he likes you more than you thought he'd like to he is going to become more valuable over time if he's more ambitious you know Etc ever if he's better connected politically and socially then you thought he was just going to become more attractive over time in other words attractive enough to be interested in sleeping with him I don't know there's a threshold but the point is is that your overall assessment of him will change over time as you get more data and your your understanding of who that individual is starts to be reduced in its distortions and so that that is why it is that his make value uh estimation that you have which drives your feelings towards him will absolutely change over time and so it isn't that repeat exposure will necessarily increase his make value it could decrease his make value okay think about you know Hugh Grant and uh what is it it's uh Bridget Jones Diary okay as she's getting as she knows him and he worked okay he's attractive as hell and Charming as hell but if you go long enough I I don't remember what happens in the end you could call him first less showy cool becomes worth more and more and more uh as the Darcy uh plays Mr Darcy he's a steady adoring force in her life who's always there when she needs them and he you know he's he's not uh he's not lying to her and double timing her and all the [ __ ] that Hugh Grant's doing even though she's more breaking the knees first it is better than you thought better than yes exactly because when she first first meets him he's wearing the Dopey Christmas sweater and she's really underrating him and doesn't doesn't think much and he's he has to sort of yours doesn't have reindeer on it I almost wore that next one next live show we gotta do it um but yeah even though she's initially much more weak in the knees for Hugh Grant's character I haven't seen it in a decade but the my recollection is that yeah she just can't she like you know babbles around him and can't handle it and she's got this huge crush on him at work and she's worried about looking stupid in front of him and you know worried about her mate value relative to him but meanwhile the steady presence of of Darcy is growing on her right so that's the so that's how that would work so the question is would it work the other way and the answer is in main effect you wouldn't expect it to because the the female's characterological processes are not as important to the male when it comes to reproduction the the male's character logical process has already extreme High importance to the female when it comes to her successful reproduction will this kid survive okay will she survive through the pregnancy you know Etc the this is uh the the male contribution is going to be tremendously variable depending upon his character uh and his abilities whereas the female contribution to uh that Offspring is going to be much less variable because even flaky mothers are pretty damn invested in their children because so that that's you know so could it happen the other way of course it could happen but I would expect that the main effect uh would be attempt in other words uh a fit at most in other words we're not going to see nearly the the frequency or the upside that could take place uh I believe that you will see out here in nature uh you will see a 10 female who doesn't happen to be narcissistic despite the fact that she's gotten extraordinary feedback in her life you could see a 10 female literally fall legitimately for a five male of extraordinary character by her judgment okay that would be unusual as hell but you could see it okay that's because inside that female if it happens to be uh sitting on all kinds of deep hair bonding genes on both sides on both male and dad and mom's chromosomes you could wind up with a situation where she's an extremely conservative in the way she's going about the reproductive process and therefore steadiness stability conscientiousness intelligence uh Etc all of those things could weigh very heavily on her nervous system and and therefore you can see a 10 bite on a five okay the uh it would be I think almost impossible for that to go the other direction the uh I mean obviously it could and we might find some bizarre exceptions that it's vastly more likely that the female that we go upside down that direction than the other direction so I think that at any stage of the bell curve we're going to find that the effect size of uh could so could a female become more attractive over time as you get to know who she is um undoubtedly to some degree but probably not a lot probably the biggest thing that would impact the male in this regard would not being his overall assessment that it would be her assessment of him so uh as the female in other words he may consider her moderately attractive but as long as he gets the notion that she's kind of not that attainable he's got competition et cetera et cetera but now she starts to warm up to him possibly behind the repeat exposure now suddenly wow it's a bird in the hand and now that becomes he's far more sexually and psychologically motivated than he would have been before so I think that is probably the most common way where that actually looks like it's happening but it's not happening in the same way that it happens the other direction so that's that's what I'm thinking yeah yeah it's interesting yeah I had so much egocentric bias around this question because I've been I've you know I've watched the repeat exposure effect in myself so many times like really profoundly like many many many points being compensated right by someone's character right um and so I just was like there's no way that this doesn't work for men obviously they they get to know you and they value you more and it's like it just has to be it has to be just a equivalent process um and you know I have I have extensively highly scientifically canvassed all of my male friends and Associates and it's just it's not true it's sort of like yeah they can value you more as a coalition member um you know if they if they see you really are great in a in a pinch and you really you know you you did the right thing in a crisis you kept your cool whatever like all these kinds of things that would make a female's heart go pitter patter if you if you watch your mail like you know handle a situation very effectively um it's uh it just but it doesn't make you a more desire terrible romantic partner it's like oh well yeah I'm going to keep you in the in the close Circle for sure because you're too useful to let go but it's not um it doesn't make you more attractive like the same way that it does for a female for a female literally it just it's like you get little hearts in your eyes when when you when this happens and and this is always I always like to make this point too when I talk about this that it can this is not a unilateral unidirectional process so repeat exposure is a really powerful drug and but it's not um impervious to the the male's signals driving that that admiration and that respect back down so you know if he's if he um find some stuff you get together with all this repeat exposure and then he's out of work and he shows no interest in finding another job and he's got no hustle and he's just sitting on the couch playing the Xbox and he's he's uh you know there's all of those cues of provision and protection start to fall away your the repeat exposure effect will work in reverse and it will start to drive contempt um and as you as contempt starts to to enter the equation it poisons the whole thing um and so it's it's not impossible to get it back it just becomes very unlikely at that point so just because you've developed repeat exposure it's no guarantee that that is going to remain in that direction forever just always always worth pointing out yeah Doug is timing me out we've just tripped over an extremely important principle that now re-re organizes the thinking that led to the repeat exposure Concept in the first place okay so the uh Robert Zions was the individual that came up with this concept and and and discovered in his experiments that it has legitimacy um however I now can understand what it is it's just the removal of distortion that's all it is okay so that that's why you can you can go from attraction to disgust uh and that you can go from from essentially non-interested to very interested it's all about the removal of distortion so that is what the repeater exposure effect is we just got it Jim there you go see this is why we do these q and A's it's really just workshopping the book and we're just we're using you I hope that's okay with everybody that is actually a thing of beauty because without that understanding it's just some magical process okay right but once you once you realize oh no everything is not nothing other than CDs so what would be the CV so I've prepped around this knowing that that the female would be for example more reticent sexually generally and also more worried about males in general because they're dangerous Etc so of course and males would be this way about other males too so that's why after you've been in the class with some guy for six or seven weeks there's a good chance you start to like him why because your nervous system began with an X Factor of how dangerous and problematic the individual would be and now what's happening is that that's reducing down okay and notice it doesn't happen uniformly across all kinds there could be some stick in the mud that's a pain in the ass and irritable from the first day of class in your chemistry class and after a year you still don't like him okay in other words the repeat exposure didn't have any effect at all or I mean it didn't have any big valence One Way One Direction or the other because it turns out that your initial impression turned out to be what your oppression is 12 months later so but very often that won't be true because very often the the upside versus the downside of a stranger in their behavior is heavily loaded in the worst case scenario so therefore you're you should have a a little bit of a disturbing I'm not quite sure I could trust you and I don't want to be vulnerable to you but by the time I've met you half a dozen times and we've chit chatted that concept is now is that that low probability of you being a big disaster is now dropping away and so the nervous system is now able to remove that Distortion from that early darwinian estimate and now it started to like you okay and if you have a normal personality with a normal uh moral structure then you're going to have guilt feelings so you're not going to be stealing tools from my garage and you would be helpful because you're a normal steam seeking mechanism that if I look like I'm in trouble that you're going to rush over and help me if I'm rolling around on my front yard grasping my knee I.E you're a member of the pack and in the insurance policy so as long as you're halfway decent neighbor you wind up being climbing into terms of my esteem rather than just staying even from day one okay I.E the repeat exposure effect is nothing other than a derivative of the removal of distortion I don't see how it could be anything else now that we think about it so the um the removal of distortion around the most Salient mate value characteristic that's on the table so in this case because when women are you're not distorted about how beautiful she is unless she's like shellacked with makeup when you first meet her and then it's it's you know you suddenly realize that you've been catfished so that's yeah everyone should hear Larry gatlin's story I'm getting to tell that story once you just have it on tape it's just Priceless well vote for women because become a Salient value is in capacity of this male she starts off with an estimate but that's subject to a lot more Distortion than his estimate of her beauty his estimate of her beauty is more or less like it is what it is I'm looking at you she needs to get to know him to actually know what he has to offer in terms of protection and provision and so he can certainly bring his stock down by by failing to you know being even lower than she thought which is like she's never going to have any attraction to him at that point but if he if he surprises her and has more value than she thought on those Dimensions she's going to find that attraction growing so there you go yeah God I'm really happy about this yeah that's a nice little piece of the puzzle just got filled in in psychology we we were just talking last night um about uh how really this it's like this we're trying to write this book but it's it's the more we talk about it the more the section on relationship Dynamics threatens to take over the entire thing is there's just so much there's so much to talk about and it's so un uh explored in typical um psychology circles so we we'll just do our best people are demanding people want to hear the Larry story we couldn't do it justice we couldn't no is I think I think it involved you know my friend Larry was a rock and roll drummer in his 20s and and a total man about town and so we're not going to talk about what the score was but it was a big number he'd be happy to tell you but we're not going to out him here you know yeah it is is that uh so but of course with a big number comes a certain lack of discrimination he's not that fancy right right so that's right right no he's not Mick Jagger so the point is is that apparently this uh he was very proud telling the story at a at some corporate uh meeting somewhere where the where the half a dozen guys were telling their War stories about their their most horrific experience and one of them had some big story that was supposedly the big winner and then when Larry told sir everybody just bowed down said no that's it we we can't top that so apparently there was some ginseng borrowing room Queen in Phoenix had to be Phoenix yeah and uh and so the middle of the night or actually at some point he saw I think I don't I think there might have been a phony eye I don't know if there was certainly there was the hair was completely phony uh a lot of Hope the teeth the teeth were phony and then ultimately a leg was founded won the game and nobody is ever going to be able to beat that score yeah teeth eyeball hair and finally a wooden leg so there you go he took it yeah it's uh this this is a story that would not be possible without the Distortion of the Libations that he had consumed that night and this we can only give this poor woman so much credit for this this catfish fluff I mean a lot of most of the story is Larry's sort of beer goggles yes yeah yeah but I don't I don't think she was on a path to qualify for parabond anyway right right people are saying that Larry should uh make a guest appearance on our next Zoom call that would be hilarious actually we could we could patch him in I'm sure I'm sure he'd be honored he'd probably win he probably would um all right so there's a there's another interesting little this is a hypothetical scenario a woman is trying since we've been talking about relationships and manipulation why not put them together in this question so a woman's trying to break up with her manipulative boyfriend who then buys her an expensive watch he acknowledges that the relationship is over but insists she accept the watch anyway it's just a gift is it better to accept the watch to please him get out of the situation and away from him or does the acceptance of the gift create some quid pro quo pretext in his mind like with the mafia and make it more likely that he won't go away for good interesting yeah I think it's uh the first thing that comes to mind for me is like you know how um dangerous is he so I I think my strategies would vary depending on this kind the nature of the sort of physical danger of the relationship or his retaliatory capacitory like is he gonna put naked photos of you up on the Internet is he gonna beat you up is he gonna boil a bunny in your kitchen you know like how unstable is he and and therefore how much does he kind of need to be managed in this transition versus um if he's if he's stable and he's just you know not happy about this and he's trying to kind of win you back with some gifts that's a that's a different kind of scenario so that's the first thing that I would kind of want to know about that before advising accordingly beautiful yeah and variable is expensive means a lot different to somebody that has a ton of money to somebody right yeah right what the value of the gift and the and the and what it really means um and therefore how loaded the dice are depends upon whether this is one month's salary or this is a a very small fraction of his net worth okay so that's a big deal uh because that behind that um is also then the anger and the instability so if you if you take this and then you don't let me come back in the door and you knew that it was three months of my salary then you [ __ ] okay so this is a another component of the same thing that we're talking about um I believe that my first thought on this gen is that um the problem is what we see is that that we're trying to give him bad news and this is troublesome so whenever we're going to try to give anybody bad news we have to blame somebody else so this is what we call Blaine big Louie okay so this is uh the standard procedure for uh right on the little audios of of the website the the free the free side of the website is all about you know crazy boy great Crazy Girlfriend crazy boyfriend okay how do we get get away from them whether they're crazy or not the good strategy is you know it's I wish I could but I can't and I've got issues that I have to work through so this is the this is the standard uh uh what I would be feeding this guy I would love to take this watch it's unbelievably beautiful I really understand what you what you're saying doing here uh this is a wonderfully Noble of you I wish I could but I can't okay I will love this it's beautiful and I can't do it you know I just feel like I you know I have my own issues I got troubles that I have to work on and this sort of clouds my judgment is you know maybe a year from now okay maybe a year from now I could accept this gift but right now I'm too turbulent and and kind of have too much swirling around in my mind I just I can't I can't do this it's just too wonderful and and beautiful thing and it would mean too much okay in other words we're we're throwing ink all over the water it's confusing he can't quite put his hand on what it is that you're saying you're you're and and that's how in other words there's a big difference between somebody that that uh think about this that you that you that you're damn sure that they you know you know hit your hit your dog with their car okay and then your dog lived but the point is is that God thank you for clarifying that I was about to just go after you for such a metaphor like unacceptable sorry it wasn't I'm just thinking I'm in my feeder okay yeah I noticed it wasn't a cat let alone the fact that you live with three of them right to the dog all right so let's try something else I was trying to think about I was actually trying to think about some other a property issue okay so we we we think somebody did something or were sure they did and then it turns out oh maybe they didn't okay so now we think they did but we're not sure they did so we're still irritated with them but we don't have the full level of righteous anger okay so I can remember I thought that I had identified a criminal action uh uh at one point on on an employee where I was working and I was feeling really irritated about it because I thought it was sleazy behavior and I uh cross-examined this person and I was I was sitting right on top of my irritation that I but I was but I wasn't sure and they were acting so unbelievably innocent that I was both irritated as well as taken back I walked into that interview thinking I was going to pin him to the wall because I was I was almost positive that this this guy was the perpetrator and I walked out of that interview glad that I had uh that I had been careful in my process because he never knew that I suspected him and but I walked in really pissed off and I walked out of there confused okay and and it turned out two or three weeks later we found the perpetrator was completely outside of our where we were looking there was it was a complete outside entity that was actually responsible it was really quite a mystery story so I thought thank God I didn't go all in and accuse and put my chips in the middle of the table because that would have been a horrendous process that that would have you know been been a social disaster uh so anyway that's what we want to do we want to go from them being sure that we are being you know that we're uh rejecting using manipulative [ __ ] that they were going to be pissed off at and then righteously come after you with you know hammer and toms instead we want to put ink in the water and the difference between them being sure that they're right and they're being not quite sure that they're right is the difference between a lot of times them being very dangerous and then in fact not doing you any measurable harm so uh they're not all the way to be your friends don't get greedy you know it's not all going to be pleasant so when we use an ink in the water strategy like that we don't expect them to say oh well okay now not if they're manipulative and irritated and they're wanting to get some leverage they're not going to be all Pleasant about it but the point is is there's a big difference between rage and piss okay I'd much rather have somebody pissed and irritated than enraged and that's where we use these strategies of oh I would love to have this it's beautiful I just can't it wouldn't uh it would cause me to I I would orchestrate the big Louie process of some amorphous moral processes is taking place in me rather than no I can't accept that for you right now because I I'm smelling the quid pro quo or taking it and then setting yourself up on a moral low ground for for him to have an incited uh rage so that's why that's why we wanted does that make sense Jen yeah no totally I think I think all things equal the ideal situation is you don't want to be accepting this if you if you can I think the only conditions under which you should accept it are is if he's you know really vulnerable um and and he's uh and you've really basically got to show some belly and take it and then immediately change your locks change your number you know somehow disappear from his life but this is to buy you some time if that's the situation um I was in that situation once with a guy I went on one date with an Okay Cupid guy in Boston who uh catfished the hell out of me by the way like lied about his age was just the whole thing was just a disaster um and he I was trying to extract myself and this was this was in Harvard Square and he he pulled from his sweaty little pocket this um this necklace that he had brought to the date right the sort of like the cheap crystally kind of crappy necklace and he uh he's like I bought this for you I gave this to you and I at that point recognized that I was dealing with this highly unstable like this whole story is has many layers but I could tell that this guy was dangerous um and I initially didn't want to take it and he followed me he if people are familiar with Cambridge she followed me across Mass Ave into the Harvard Yard into like he was chasing me um and so finally in the middle it's dark in the middle of Harvard Yard there's no one around I'm like okay well thank you very much this this is really meaningful this means a lot to me my heart's like pounding but I'm like this is the only way I can get rid of this guy um and uh immediately went to my office and I I put it on a table of free stuff for other people because I didn't want the energetic imprint of the evil necklace to haunt me um and uh and then you know he continued to like try to find me and stalk me and send me messages and everything but that was that was the only reason to do it so and I think it's it's not it's not ink in the water or big excessively big louisque to to tell this guy if he's reasonable you know sort of along the lines of what Doug is saying like I you know I it's it's a beautiful gift but it's going to remind me of you every day and and I don't want this on my wrist to remind me of you every day while you know we're trying to go our separate ways like that's an honest but also you know a little bit like it's not it's not this kind of personal it's it's a little bit out of remove sort of thing um and so it's really just up to you to kind of assess what you're dealing with here in terms of his volatility and and how safe you are yeah all good yeah all right there's a very quick question about starch targets which I can just I just want to answer that quickly because someone's asking for uh more information about it and it's actually on the website so it's under the resources tab there's a PDF that you can download so um if you if you are interested in the storage targets and want to know more about it um Doug has talked about it on many you could probably Google it on YouTube and find an explanation but the actual document itself is is on the website what's that well fast way right it's in the slow fast way videos explaining the whole process yeah yeah yes I just wanted to clear that up and then um oh lots of good questions but they're all like long involved questions so does anybody have like a somebody that's got a short one we'll take it yes short one let's see if we had um the longest the longest question is somebody uh submitted via the website um what do you think about the hard problem of consciousness it's like a that's a whole other episode 10 minutes that's too long well yeah I I you know I think we I have I have my mystical commitments and I'm I'm fascinated by Don Hoffman's work and all of that so I would direct people in that direction if they're interested there but the sort of yes the our general take on that would be too long yeah I don't have any short questions I don't see any in the queue there's oh someone's saying here's a quickie all right make with make make with the question I'm I'm watching the chat type fast see anything else um while she's typing I think this one's a fairly quick question Jim is saying what's the what's the what do you envision folks should use understanding of the steam Dynamics and fixed personality to improve their lives and happiness I mean the the quick answer to that is is that it's the it's the find your right terrain the right soil for the kind of plant that you are kind of kind of idea so the better you understand yourself and you the better you understand how your personality characteristics are influencing the Dynamics between you and other people the better you can find the right environment for the person that you are so that's that's where real happiness is going to come from yeah there you go okay I'll try to be an engineer if you're an artist or vice versa right right um in other words uh respect respect the nature of what we're going to call your identity in other words what the hell you really are and understand um the implication of what Jen's saying is is that you're what I'm going to call your social ecology in other words the actual social and interactions between you and your environment as opposed to environmental ecology I.E it makes a difference whether you're in Northern Canada or whether you're in the Bahamas that's true but it also makes an enormous difference to your happiness who you're interacting with and what the nature of those interactions are that's going to be uh so the a great example of the difference between the way I think about life and the way standard Psychotherapy we think about life because you you bring in a couple that's in marital conflict it's been in a lot of conflict for the last 10 years uh the therapy conventional therapist is thinking we're going to work on the relationship and undo the conflicts my attitude is no you're not no we've had 10 years to establish that these two people uh the nature of who it is that they are emerges in this conflictual process so if you want to improve your life you're gonna you have to find a new relationship okay that's what I would say yeah I would say it's exceedingly unlikely that we are going to quote figure something out that's going to fix this okay the uh that it isn't that there might not be exceptions but I those exceptions are so rare so that that is the difference that that winds it in other words what is your social ecology I'm in a relationship with somebody that frustrates the [ __ ] out of me and blah blah blah blah blah well we're not going to succeed by trying to change them and how they behave by what we're going to do and what we're going to behave is going to cause this to wind up being wonderful that's not going to take place and so the uh that that is where we are different we are essentially have enormous understanding and respect for the fact that you are who and what it is that you are and your relationships with other people naturally emerge out of who you are and who they are okay and so as a result if those what's naturally emerging is a lot of unpleasantness and conflict that will likely continue and definitely there isn't anything wrong with the relationship that needs to be fixed it's just a relationship that that's what happens okay so that's that's where uh that's where our view of the world is so different than conventional Psychotherapy and that that uh that's the that's the essence of esteemed Dynamics is to understand that these sustained processes between people uh are wise a wise spontaneously I tried to give a quick answer and there you go back in the camera up again and I just can't I I'm trying to Signal 30 second answer Doug oh well it is it is it's um kind of Harkens back to what we were talking about earlier with Distortion and the removal of distortions like there there is there definitely could be a scenario in that 10 years of conflict where there's some Distortion that that is animating that conflict that it's not emanating from the essence of those two individuals much more likely it's emanating from the essence of the two individuals and this is like a personality incompatibility that you're just watching play out again and again and again but there could be there could be something there could be like the um uh you know this this really volatile five-year-old that is living with you know with a with a couple over that amount of time is going to cause a lot of conflict that's going to be a lot of noise to the marital Dynamics I don't I don't actually know if the mother of that kid is married but it's it's a you know that is a type of distortion where there's this sort of external factor that is overshadowing the actual dynamics of the humans that it's this is what you have to tease out to discover if the if there's something that can be saved or not essentially so yeah I wanted this person who was asking the super quick question I think this can be a very quick question then we'll we'll end with that she says um do you think there was a chronological pattern to eating in the Stone Age on The Logical pattern I don't know what she is for them how how much did people eat at what times a day I think is what she means yeah were they having sort of bigger meals early or different types of food over the course of the day yeah they eat most of their food at night that's because most of most of their calories were being eaten by through cooked food and their cooked food required a fire and the fire was a pain in the ass to build so they would build one fire at night also the men are going to come home at night or at the end of the day with whatever kill they've made or haven't made so we're so most of the calories will be eaten in the evening that is a appears to be a it's not a necessary condition for human life and I don't think we're biologically programmed you need that to be the way it is but it is in fact the uh I I actually wouldn't I don't know that anybody knows the answer to the question about whether or not that's deep instinctual programming at this point it's actually a very interesting question for evolutionary psychology in the future I tend to suspect that it is okay so uh I I have a feeling that human beings are inherently ridden to where it is that they would want to eat a majority of their calories between four and eight pm the um the I think that that's likely to be true but I I don't I have no proof for it and nor am I or whatever I know I always feel you can somewhat triangulate deep instinctual uh drives in human nature with a really stable religious Traditions I always kind of like to look at where those two things meet and there's a very stable religious tradition that crosses a lot of different faiths where you fast during the day and eat at night so there's there's sort of you wait until the sun goes down and then you eat so the fact that that is that is sort of a very uh regular fixture of the big religious Traditions um is further evidence that there's something to that that is is deep within us so um but it may not be that just because that is deep within us and that's the sort of the historical pattern it's actually at odds with what it looks like the evidence might be for the most sort of weight loss promoting way to eat which is to eat your calories earlier in the day so there is there's sort of this evidence around chronobiology to front load the calories to it's you know the effect sizes debatable but there is there is some evidence that um Dr Greger talks about in his how not to diet book and there's other sources of it so there's um it's just because we're sort of hardwired to do something one way that could be I think people often ask that question because they're looking for like what's the way I should eat to best lose weight and those two answers might actually be different in this case got it all right good all right all right so we wrap it up all right well good to see you all and uh we will we'll see you in a couple of weeks and I will see folks um on Saturday in moments of Zen of those of you who are signed up um and uh yeah do we have any other housekeeping or announcements or anything yeah yeah all right all right we'll uh we'll see you all soon all right have a good day bye
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