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Beat Your Genes Podcast & More

Living Wisdom Library Q&A
2021-01-16
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okay all right I have to promote Dr Lyle if I can find him okay I think that worked foreign hey you look fantastic that's right thank you yeah it's trying to find some spot in this space so uh it would be prettier with the background like I've got this nice Seattle sound background out there but the light isn't as good so hey black looks great on you oh that's sweet I don't I don't think I've ever seen you in Black that that's a great really yeah oh thank you I appreciate that well I'm feeling very gothy here in the in the in the rain and the coffee brings out brings out my inner Goss I was a total for people this is this is the kind of quality content you get on members only chat I was a major goth in high school and into my 20s like you know dark in my hair and wore the chokers and like just had black nails and was very morose so I had I had deep I was a tortured Soul yeah yeah that's good so just getting back to my like art student days how is everything and may for those of you who are already hanging out who don't know uh Doug's back in Maui I'm on the mainland we swapped for this week but we'll both be back in Maui next week finally for you know we're trying to we're ships in the night but uh yeah how's it all going how are the puppies good they're fine good uh they drink copious amounts of water copious yes they're thirsty thirsty dogs they come back and then do it all over again that's pretty much how it well they're sleeping in there too and then there's you know food mooching yeah yeah it's a very busy existence oh well I miss them yeah I hope you're I'm sure you're giving them lots of like kisses on their snouts for me so that that's like yeah that's like I know you're drawn to that sort of behavior innately all right so we have let's see what's going on in the uh in the chat nothing official in the QA we have a couple of questions that were sent in so we can we can start with those find out do you see any I see hellos in the chat I don't know why it's not scrolling for me um I don't think there's any business before we get started uh uh ah hi hi yay yeah no Seattle I lived in Seattle um for a really long time this is sort of my I consider it home so it's um I actually have a Space Needle tattoo I'm that hardcore yeah um I I my brother is here a lot of very good friends are here I went to the University of Washington it's very um yeah it's home so it's really it's always nice to be here really great vegan food too like um fully on the spectrum of of uh what I on on Instagram I always use the hashtag Allen approved I went from Allen approved to not so um yes definitely lots of great options so it's very vegan friendly town for those that's interest of interest to people all right so um yeah just kind of a couple of interesting um thought-provoking questions so we'll we can start off like with the grandest most philosophical one um and kind of see where that takes us this is this is sort of a implied in a lot of the behavioral genetics um kind of the the idea of the determinism that underpins some of the assumptions that go with that so if personality is inherited then we can't get mad at people for their behavior right like consider that my sisters are unkind to my mom they are self-centered and angry selfish humans like their father is that just who they are and what about people who hurt other people are they really responsible so you know we're wandering into this kind of major moral uh ethical terrain that I don't remember us kind of tackling directly before but it's it's interesting because it is sort of implied in discussions of what is free will like how much control do people really have over their actions um so I thought maybe we could just jump into that so we'll see what you have to to throw at it and then I can yeah tag along behavior is always taking place in context so it's a the person's personality is personality the uh so they're going to but that doesn't mean that anything about their behavior is genetically determined the uh the G the genes are simply giving that individual a um a way of interpreting the cost benefit analyzes that are in front of them so I I can I can make uh the most disagreeable Mafia Chieftain murdering bastard cry and lick my foot all I have to do is put an Izzy in his forehead say you cry and look my foot and you pluck like a chicken and he'll do it okay uh you might say well no he would need stand up to you and defy you uh not if he saw me take the uzi out on three of the other Chieftains right in front of him okay because they didn't do it he started with George and then we went to Leo and then after that we went to you know I'm trying to come up with a tough Mafia name Antonio okay and then we came to you okay so you've just seen me take the Izzy out the squad of their brains all over the floor uh because they wouldn't they wouldn't cry like a puppy dog and look my toe and now guess what he's gonna do it okay because the CB now is very indicative that that is the only reasonable option so can can we be mad at people productively yes we can be mad at people that are [ __ ] and are unlikely to change their behavior productively just because it might change their behavior okay so anger is a mechanism to signal to other people that you're being treated unfairly and that you're going to impose costs on them so in the case of the the mafia Chieftain the cost has to be extremely hot The credibility has to be extremely high and so the um I don't care if he was innocent of what it is that I'm accusing about if he sees me splatter three brains in front of him he's going to cluck like a chicken and he's going to look my foot okay so this is how it goes so that means that your two sisters uh are what they are they are selfish self-serving uh you know Etc disagreeable unfair people they inherited those genes from their father and they're not going to change and in any given instance uh one of the one of the traps that exists inside of human nature that we opt to we have to essentially look through is the fact that that we are um that we can operate under it's a semi delusion that are that our anger is going to potentially fix this that there that we are going to educate them about the error of their ways of being unfair and now they will act better okay so that's a uh that's a mistake in circumstances where we see that that the quote mistake that the other person is making the unfairness judgment is clearly emanating from an unusual uh location in the genetic code for disagreeable you will never change those people okay and so that that's why in any given instance you could alter their behavior with enough force uh with enough cost benefit analysis uh computation on their part where you you level a big enough penalty uh an example of a misunderstanding of this is to have a society where we have massively High penalties for trivial behaviors uh so you know it's bragged that in the days of Genghis Khan you could leave a card of gold on the street because if you you stole a nickel they'd cut your hand off okay uh it turns out that doesn't work and it doesn't work because you can't police it okay and it also goes against some some deep structures that are embedded into humans as to what is moral uh and what is moral uh in other words what is moral would be that which would work uh as an ethical system uh in a in a in an animal that's designed by nature to try to be evolved to be able to take the advantage advantage of group living uh processes and not uh and have a minimal amount of costs so that that moral mechanism was discovered by no other than William Hamilton the greatest genius in in biology in the 20th century so it was Hamilton an Axelrod uh worked uh worked at the mathematics uh looking for what is known as an evolutionarily stable strategy uh in other words where where can the genes get to where they can't get any better so an evolutionarily stable strategy for humans for example is to have two eyes you know in the middle of your forehead uh that I mean right here that's that's an evolutionarily stable strategy Evolution attempted to put things elsewhere move them around a little bit uh have little modifications but no this winds up being an evolutionarily stable strategy and you can't improve on that and that's that the um it turns out that an evolutionarily stable strategy is what they call Tit for Tat okay it's not surprisingly apparently this was carved into some tablets okay an eye for an eye a tooth for tooth Etc uh it's not you know two eyes for an eye or two teeth for for one tooth it's an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth so it turns out that a Genghis khanian concept uh we're gonna cut your hand off if you steal a nickel doesn't work they won't enforce it okay it's going against the the innate moral code of the species and so um I forget where this goes so the point is is that with your difficult people uh you can penalize them Tit for Tat uh and you can try to give it a ten and a half for a tap if you if you need up up it a little bit to try to make an impact But ultimately it's going to be a waste of time uh the reason why you're having the repetitive conflicts is because they've got a distorted view of what's fair that is not correctable so the best move for you and your wife is to keep your distance from disagreeable people to the degree that you pull that distance all the way to zero and then you find out if a one percent overlap helps you you know all things considered in other words is it a better deal uh is it a better deal for you do they bring assets to the table just because they're disagreeable doesn't mean that they're not useful I think there was an interesting scene in the movie on Steve Jobs Steve Jobs is an incredibly disagreeable human being and uh there's a there's a moment uh where one of his chief lieutenants they have this interchange where there's a coming to Jesus about how they feel about each other and the guy says you know you've made me Rich but I really don't like you and I really don't like working for you and job says really you know I like working with you like yeah it was fine for you [ __ ] [Laughter] yeah yeah you didn't have a problem because I didn't impose any costs on you all right but that was a it was a telling moment where that executive was making so much money and it was probably intellectually fascinating to be there but he was living a life of quiet hell working under a tyrant okay and so of your standpoint there better be a lot of money in it or a lot of something in it uh for you to put up with it or the answer is reduce the overlap between your lives all the way down to possibly zero okay good that was a nice little rant to wake up with that famous and translated different ways sometimes it's Revenge sometimes it's resentment it's various things but that sort of experience you know that sort of energy devoted to somebody else and the wrong that they are doing um that is like drinking poison and waiting for your enemy to die it's like that's the that's the equivalent energetically of what you're engaging in um because yeah these are people operating under uh incentive and constraint situation that is enabling certain types of behavior and um as as you pointed out you can you can shift the behavior at the barrel of a gun for sure um and we've all seen ourselves be more or less disagreeable depending on our environmental situation we've seen our choice the sort of menu of choices that seems available to us is different depending on on what sort of horses are working against us or working in our favor so um yeah everybody's going to be subject to those those laws as well but it all comes down to this kind of you know it's your life it's you're you're this Sovereign entity um and so you know whether we should hold people responsible for their choices or not or or how much kind of latitude we're giving them it's really like what is your day-to-day existence look like and how are you improving it so which is always what we come back to on that on that reminded of Susan in the Q a is saying that her Facebook experiment is working and she's so happy to be off social media I'm telling people like you've got to do this I getting off social media at least you know 95 has done wonderful things for my sort of General well-being and feeling of groundedness in the world and not feeling agitated and and all of the status deficiency that comes with the social media existence and it's the same it's the same kind of forces that are working on your working against your happiness to be playing little status reindeer games on Facebook and on on Twitter or anywhere else instead of like you know how can I how can I really enjoy this day in front of me so yeah awesome all right we've got uh um someone is asking a follow-up is is what Doug just said does that apply to why all of Trump's minions are fleeing I I don't know what's happening there so uh I don't I'm not paying any attention so I can't I can't comment on it yeah I'm barely paying attention um as a like it'd be trained Advanced political scientists like barely paying attention but my sense is that this is very Shakespearean this is like you know sort of the lieutenants are seeing the writing on the wall and they are anticipating um a likely impeachment um after after he leaves office and a lifelong ban from holding office again and so they're sort of re there's a there's a realignment happening in the Republican party and so the lieutenants are fleeing from one faction to the other faction they're sort of at the last possible minute changing their allegiance and this is very typical political behavior when you see sort of that this kind of um you know division uh unfolding inside of a party so I think they're taking their bets that it's going to be better for their skins and their careers um to go back to the sort of the the Republican party that is not the party of trump and that you've got a few sort of holdouts but not as many as you had a few weeks ago he um you know just this is totally a detour but it's a it's a living wisdom Library q a so anything goes um but I saw today that his approval rating is lower than it has been at any point in his presidency so you would expect the highest degree of defection um from his inner circle with literally the least amount to lose I mean the guys you know out in a couple of days so um yeah I think anybody who is sort of on the on you know this is the CB this is a this is a cost benefit analysis with a changed environmental incentive structure I mean it's one thing to defect when he's riding high or reasonably high and has some amount of time left in office and you're projecting your affiliation to produce certain dividends in the future versus what you're what you're inferring your affiliation with and means now so same guy same same relationship you know same person same human making that decision about what to signal to the Village in terms of who which Alpha which which team they're on um but the environmental situations can totally change a CB like profoundly uh so that's when when personality changes that's all that's going on all right nice good perfect um yeah how do you get past Gina is asking how do you get past a few negative spots on your resume I have trouble with upper management but I'm excellent with skills patients and staff I'm an RN have many many years in management that's an interesting question what's the what's the question how do you get past a few negative spots on your resume so yeah do you mean like um negative on your resume like I could see negative negative marks sort of in letters or in recommendations is that what really what you mean or are you meaning like periods of no job history or sort of different different dilemmas there if you're having bad like bad reviews or yeah she says recommendations to clarify so yeah I would try to get the recommendations from someone else um if possible I mean that that would be my first line of defense um and I'm yeah this is this is something that you can do your best to contextualize in the interview process um usually you don't people are not calling references um until you've gotten pretty far in the process and they've gotten to know you to some degree so you can warn them ahead of time you could sort of content like not overly dramatically like just so you know when you call my old boss can talk all kinds of [ __ ] about me but um you know take ownership of of the things that are like likely to be critiqued in a reference and probably your your references are not if you're if you're a highly conscientious individual you're probably anticipating a worse reference from a former employer than you're going to get most employers are pretty uh unless they're really vindictive and unless you really really cause some major problems the the they're not gonna they're not gonna totally throw you under the bus they're not going to completely damn you with faint praise they're just going to give sort of a average like you know it's it's not going to be as bad as you think it's going to be I've been in that situation I've dreaded the sort of reference I was going to get because I had clashes in in management or some sort of issue and it was just fine it was not a not an issue at all so I would get ahead of it by you know sending as many signals about what a conscientious human I am and any anything that I would be vulnerable on I would I would put I would like build a huge wall of context around that with a lot of personal responsibility and a lot of lessons learned and here we are now and I'm a better employee for it and blah blah blah so there's no surprises that would be my general approach to it that um Doug's Doug's more of a schemer than I am so he might have other ideas there's a few things that you don't do so you don't criticize the former reporter at all no that's very true yeah don't do that yeah and the uh the other thing you do is we're going to ignore it until it hits you in the face more than once so the truth of that is that um that you're you essentially approach any interview that they wouldn't be interviewing you if they didn't already have read the whole context so that you weren't still under consideration totally whatever it is that they said is not Checkmate against you so uh if they do push you on it you say well you know I I could have done some things better the uh sometimes my conscientiousness gets the best best of me I'm a little perfectionistic and and so unfortunately sometimes if I if I if I'm a stickler then I've had a few conflicts man that's really my fault okay so the remember the one the one thing the the one place to hide in a job interview your fault is that you're overly conscientious so this is a this is a perfect uh that that is the way we paint our way out of that problem and otherwise we leave everything alone yeah yeah and and most jobs I you know one of the sort of best uh writing pieces of academic writing advice I ever got um in this you know this is for very dry sort of you're writing a journal article or something not not for the kind of high art that our book is but yeah that that every you don't waste a sentence unless it's feeding back to to provide evidence for the thesis statement so you've got the strong thesis statement and everything that you say you're not you're not there's there's no Artistry you're not dancing around there's a purpose to every single following sentence that follows the thesis statement and it's in it's in defense of that initial cause um and so I would sort of go into any job interview basically your thesis statement is look at how conscientious I am I am the most conscientious employee that you could possibly consider for this job and we know that that that's that's a strength I mean that's that's probably what is causing you to feel agitated about this um and so everything just kind of coheres around that theme and so even your even your flaws even your missteps you have become even more conscientious as a result you have you have integrated them they have made you a better employee you are you are here to to be even more diligent and of Greater service to this employer than than the past um and I think if you paint it in that light in a really persuasive way then you it could even be you know sort of a reverse asset in that in that way so but absolutely you're not getting that far in the in the process unless you're under serious consideration um and and references can make or break you but um unless something happened that was so horrendous that you you really you wouldn't even you would expect like absolutely a terrible reference in that case I would look to try to get it from somebody else even a job before that job or something some way of dancing around it if you really anticipate like there's real real bad blood and um things went terribly personally awry uh but short of that I think most most employers are you know pretty professional when it comes to this kind of thing so yeah all good yeah remember their energy conservation machines yeah on the other side of the table and so uh there's more to this we could talk about interviews I don't know if I think I've I may have recorded a discussion about this sooner uh at some point the um but um remember the the most important thing the out care we're going to just get deep for a couple minutes are we gonna back the camera up yeah we're gonna die I was gonna say that yeah the thing is is that the the person on the other side of the table what you don't understand is that they are in a in a status deficiency you would never see that because after after all they're working they're the solid one they're in potential power over you uh in this situation so you don't know that they are living their lives in a state of chronic status deficiency which is the state of the being for the human uh the human is uh always just slightly hungry so even if they're pretty well stated at the moment the truth is they're still a little bit higher so that's just how they are so your job is to um to uh at a high level in an interview is to figure out how to feed them status okay the um we don't do that by slobbering craze all over the company because they may not be feeling that great about the company they um and we don't so we may never get the opportunity to find a way to cleverly flatter them uh that is certainly what it is that I'm looking for in other words I'm going to come in there uh knowing that the genetic code tells me to show off and tell how great I am okay but the truth of the matter is that's not what's in their best interests they're actually attempting to figure out whether you will become a vessel to assist their status okay so they don't want anybody that's going to embarrass them they want somebody that's going to make them look good okay is what it what it's about and so we want to be sort of reassuring them down those various and Sundry angles is kind of what it is that we're trying to do God forbid the guy's got a little uh paint by the Numbers picture on the wall don't think I'm not gonna wow how'd you do that oh God my four-year-old did it I feel horribly wrong obviously obviously whatever opportunities there are in uh we're looking for commonality ground with respect to anything uh the San Francisco 49ers you know Good Earth T doesn't make any difference we're looking for anything that that marks us says in group now uh you may not get a chance but you're simply scanning the environment in the conversation looking for that you get better your 10th interview if you understand what it is that you're doing you'll get better at it because you'll find out that there were opportunities that you lost in interview number seven that you recognize half an hour later okay no problem it's a it's a process you can get better at it but the most important thing that we're going to do is we're there to make them look good so that's why we're we're not gonna We also know that they're they have energy economy in their decision making they want to feel comfortable with their decision they want to be safe and they don't want to have to think about it so that's why we're not going to be giving them alternative explanations for the conflict that we had with our former boss if we do that we open up a can of worms what we want is we want their inherent um inference mechanisms about your big five which is what they have in nature they they naturally uh we find out through factor analysis that's what's inside of people's heads but the truth is it's in their heads that's why we use the adjectives that we do describe personalities so they are looking to try to figure out any reason not to hire you that would embarrass them if they see something in a in a review it's going to raise that little open loop they're probably going to find a way to cross-examine you about it or they may not because your performance and the rest of what it is that you have may simply be it may be too much trouble to dig over there because they want to just hire you and get out of the problem okay the uh so we're not exactly sure what their situation is but if they are feeling the anxiety which is what it is about whatever that flaw is on your resume what they are feeling is they're feeling the anxiety that would be a threat to their status that if they made a decision on you that you're going to turn around and act out and then they look bad so that is actually fundamentally what this problem is the uh unless they're the owner of a company then it's about money it's about oh you're going to be some litigious brat that when I try to fire I'm going to wind up with a wonderful termination suit so there they are that you know 99 of the time you're not being hired by the owner of a not being hired by the entrepreneur you're being hired by a hiring manager that just wants to make sure that you make them that you don't embarrass them it's the most important thing so you don't have to be so much a star what you want to be is not a goat you don't want to be anybody that's going to be a problem so if they do cross-examine you about that we simply say exactly as we said yeah you know sometimes my you know I'm following directions and and sometimes uh I follow directions sometimes maybe too close to the one or the law and I wound up with a few conflicts that way uh but I'm learning to be more flexible and to understand that that uh to not to not be too to be too anxious about that uh and because that that has caused a few issues with me and other staff members uh sometimes and now but I know you know I know the difference uh between things that that I ought to let go a little bit and things that I I need to I need to be tough on so uh I you know I I know better how to manage this now that's all I.E I'm so perfect that I've had to learn to put up with other people's sloppy [ __ ] that's the story that we give them so that they know that we're not going to embarrass them all right yeah she's she's clarifying that the the question the issue in question is she took a director to court for horrible staff patient environment and I'm generally disagreeable so this I mean this that's how I mean everything that we're saying it's you're such a stickler you're so you care so much about the patient environment that yes it generated some conflict but it was it was worth it for the greater cause that you were pursuing in the name of your conscientiousness so um yeah and you do you just as a self-described disagreeable person you know that the the sort of fact that a lot of the interview process as Doug is saying is about um it's about giving them status I think that is a sort of uh a lot of people make that mistake they think it's the sales job of themselves and it's all about them and like they're they're being evaluated at this level where really it's yeah it's how how do you make them feel about themselves and their status in the world and how successful the whole thing is going to be are you improving their station in Life or not and that is is less intuitive for disagreeable people than it is for agreeable people agreeable people find Common Ground all over the place that's part of what being agreeable is disagreeable people kind of have to learn that skill um a little more it's a little it's a little rougher of a of a learning curve um but you can absolutely practice it you can absolutely sort of get better at scanning the environment for okay that's a thing that I have a personal thing to say about that I could find in common with this person and we can we can you know share a fondness for the same baseball team or whatever it is um but for agreeable person that's it's agreeable people it's just more of an intuitive skill I think and there's some bias around that so I would respect to her history if she got cross-examined on that particular issue the way I would say it the way I would frame it would be this I would say well you know there there was a problem that a former supervisor was actually uh unfortunately he was in quite a long ways out of line and really I really felt it was my responsibility to stand up for the people under him uh that were being treated very unfairly so this it got unfortunately all attempts to try to to negotiate this and to try to fix it uh failed and it wound up in a legal mess and I've told myself once in a lifetime you're entitled to enter a mess like that foreign you know it was way way more trouble than it was ultimately work I did my very best I felt like I was uh I felt I felt like it was my responsibility and uh to participate in that but um you know one time you know I felt like it's okay to uh to to to to to raise that flag once uh I can't imagine being in a situation like that again if I was ever in a situation like that again I'd find other ways some other way to deal with it that way we've just signaled that yes we got a lot of freaking guts and we went to the mat when we felt like we didn't have any other choice but we can't imagine ever being in that situation again that that was a once in a lifetime situation that's how I would paint that yeah no it's good it's good yeah all right awesome all right so let's uh we'll change to uh it's just completely change to this one just popped up so a whole new topic um I've been eating SOS uh fa sofas oh it's sofas that's AJ's like yeah flower alcohol free a year ago and got to goal weight in six months and maintained beautifully but I seem to have an oral fixation with putting things in my mouth I either will shoe sugarless gum to the tune of 45 pieces a day or sip on decaf or herbal tea all day long I seem to need to continue to put things in my in my mouth what the hell is wrong with me is there a problem here I don't think there's maybe 45 pieces of gum a day is a little bit of a problem though yeah that's probably not not ideal for a lot of different like your your overworking muscles yeah yeah the process there that brain is is tickling around the the sweetener yeah it's a sweetener so uh yeah maybe same decaf or herbal tea um or with a gum yeah yeah but the tea I don't see them I don't see any issue with the tea at all yeah yeah I don't know that's a problem I I'm I'm wondering if the the person is uh having a low-grade process where they're eating under the hunger Drive and and through through a bunch of conscientiousness and a bunch of chewing action that they are keeping that a little bit quiet so that's a that's a possibility to look at so um it also I don't know how it is that you've eaten but a lot of times that when people uh go pretty ruthless uh the the diet that they're eating is unusually low in terms of calorie density and so a lot of times that they're managing the hunger drive through they're leaning on the stretch receptors with a very high volume of low calorie density food and I think that creates a chronic low-grade um deprivation feeling and and food Obsession uh because the the organism is looking for aiming a more normal punctuated uh equilibrium of of intermittent low density high density low density high density foods and so uh and and is fundamentally in a more normal and comfortable state with respect to the amount of food that it's eating so I think like Chef achie I think eats about eight pounds of food a day normal would be four or five okay so I don't need anywhere near a pounds of food event so the uh so anyway this doesn't mean that she's doing anything wrong it just means that it's an unusual pattern and and I wouldn't be shocked if this kind of obsession with keeping things in your mouth was somehow um that you were having a low-grade hunger drive it was percolating up and that you were doing something to soothe it down okay that's that's what I'm wondering about so you may consider uh doing the things that I recommend for some people in this regard is to punctuate your diet with some some with some foods of higher calorie density in the way that you're not doing now that are perfectly healthy uh things like raw nuts things like avocado things like tofu those are three higher calorie density Foods uh and specifically what was the first one that I said nuts avocado and avocado they're all high fat okay and so you know people that are in the weight loss game are terrified of high fat you shouldn't be you should uh your diet when it gets to be extremely lean uh I think that remember just because you eat a calorie of fat doesn't mean that the body isn't cataloging it it's cataloging it just as excellently as a catalog a calorie carbohydrate or a calorie of fructose and so you wouldn't be you wouldn't be overeating it just because it's higher calorie density you you start to overeat foods and get fat it's oil yeah that's when it's oil it's completely out of bounds it's not it's not coming in its natural state and uh and obviously we're finding carbohydrates and dry carbohydrates are also not coming in their natural States so there's different aspects of the food environment that will give rise to excess intake um but if you're if you're obsessing over some kind of an oral process like this it's possible that the diet is overly lean and it's driving that and you may want to experiment by putting you know if you if you're not doing a half full avocado a day or something equivalent now you might want to do that and see whether or not that starts to soothe any of this down Yeah well yeah and if you have gone up some conditioning curve with that with the gum in particular you just need to go cold cold tofu on the gum which would be a good idea for on a number a number of levels because the artificial sweeteners are a nightmare um the the unnatural movement of that much chewing is not great um it's really this is not not an ideal thing to be consuming at that at that level a couple pieces a day is probably that's definitely uh you know I I would I would be it was yes there's a little the little hit from the artificial sugar has taken you right up that learning curve and yours suck so uh yeah the only way out of that is to just stop and stop and notice yourself time chewing at nothing yeah yeah Bob Newhart's solution stop it stop it my favorite uh well kind of our approach to church just stop it what's the what's the problem um yeah this is I mean I really just to get into this a little more it's such a common thing I you know I really I think people um don't either they're so worried about the macros they're so worried about you know eating super low fat and eating all of the salad first these really super low calorie density things first um and you they get this from from all of our friends you know all of these friends who are trying to help people lose weight when they're stuck and it's great advice it's like bring down the calorie density we want to do that but what I generally recommend people do is that they start by um you know plan out your three starch-based squares a day you know plan these really satiating meals like a nice oatmeal for breakfast some sort of like rice and bean thing for lunch some sort of potato thing for dinner and then if you're snacky then if you're extra hungry have some brothy soup have some roasted veggies as a snack have a salad on top of that like just I think people get a little backwards sometimes when they start with the super low calorie density and they have that sort of stretch receptor satiety but they still feel not satiated and it's because they're not getting enough calories they they're sort of like hacking the system in this way that works beautifully for short-term or medium-term weight loss but can really create this long-term calorie deficiency for folks so yeah make sure you're getting enough calories and I think most of the time most humans on planet Earth even if those are high fat plant plant fats coming in their whole natural form uh not roasted and salted nuts but raw nuts you know so like this this gets really like is it something that your ancestor your ancestral lineage would recognize it or not um that your satiety mechanism mechanisms are going to work just fine they're going to work just fine if you're eating 10 fat 20 fat 45 fat whatever it is so whatever works best for you and you feel best and you have the best energy and you feel that you enjoy your food the most there are no rule schools around like oh God if I go over 15 fat with my macros I'm going to gain weight that is true for some people because it that's the way that it interacts with their satiety mechanisms and their enjoyment of their food it's not necessarily true for you so you might find a much better equilibrium as far as the volume of food that feels good to you and the density of that food that is those two factors that they they lead to many different equilibria points for every individual so you really have to play around and find out what that is for you so this is my little rant on that for the day it comes up very very frequently um and I see a lot of I see a lot of uh pleasure trapped folks in the audience today so don't want to totally neglect that domain but swapping again back to sort of standard EP um if the mind is and this is uh I I don't know how to pronounce your name so I'm sorry if I totally mess it up but it my I speak a little Russian and so I would say yes but that's probably way too uh it's probably just ball Dev um if the mind is analyzing for constant improvements in the major domains in life is the oscillation between depression and happiness inevitable how about between frustration and contentment okay um your your your feelings are essentially an analog or the or the analog output to the cost benefit analysis so your your mind is simply running CBS every second and so your your feelings are also going to be oscillating constantly uh so is is there an oscillation we're from like what depression to happiness Etc uh well there isn't a there isn't a rhythm rhythmic oscillation there is a necessary constant adjustment in the same way that your your brain is constructed in a way for you to be essentially constantly updating data on your oxygen requirements and adjusting your breathing okay and you're and you're adjusting the contraction of the muscles in your chest and everything else in the Sun so in other words this is super sophisticated it's a um it's going to be a flow of information ultimately the brain is a digital computer because the neurons uh don't have a state that is either firing or not firing they are either firing or not firing and so it's a it's a digital computer the because it's so fine-grained with trillions of connections it's it's for all intents and purposes it's everything's on a continuum so you are so you are you are you find yourself having your mood shift uh as as your mind turns its head and takes in new data because your now Vision has changed 30 degrees and so your analysis of the CV of your situation relative to the environmental opportunities and threats has now changed a little bit so as I move over here and take a look I'm looking at ocean and pretty in a pretty picture Etc oh I just brought it actually slightly increased and brought back to me what my context was and brightened my mood infinitesimally yeah I could I could actually notice it inside my nervous system only because I'm looking because it's unbelievably small from that sort of a thing however if uh if a good friend pulled up and I saw him or her get out of the car right there that would be a bigger move because the relative cost benefit analysis uh uh change in my environment has now been substantive enough that the emotional response is significantly more intense okay the uh I I hope I'm not completely wandering off course here you tell me if I am Jen no you're good right your feelings are simply a constant adjustment to what it is that your nervous system is pulling in as it pulls in sensory data it's analyzing that sensory data and and essentially putting it in context of what it is that you know about the environment so one of the biggest things you know about the environment is the direct sensory inputs that you have but the second thing that you know about the environment is everything that's in your memory okay so the sensory data is being compiled along with your memory structures about everything else that you know about your location and time and space in the universe and that all of that now comes together and you now analyze all kinds of different alternative courses of action and and each of those alternative courses of action has an efficiency um an efficiency index as to how efficient that that alternative number one for example versus alternative two three four five six each of the top six things that you could be doing in the next minute or the next hour however you want to conceptualize a given goal the um each of those has an opportunity to improve your existence over not doing it okay so sometimes that sometimes it's not an improvement of your circumstances say it's a mitigation of it of a pending loss any doesn't make any difference how we run the algebra your job of your brain is to figure out how to use your your time and energy in order to seize opportunities that optimize your Gene survival Effectiveness that is what the brain's job is whether you're a lizard or you're a mosquito or you're a human or a baboon it doesn't make any difference that is the underlying algorithm uh the underlying uh system that sits inside of all animal brains and therefore is the core of all motivation so your feelings are obviously then going to be totally dynamic they're going to change from second to Second so literally if I tripped over something right now that was inherently funny and said it and Jen laughed her nervous system would have would have now hit something too bad I couldn't do that no I did it now the point is is that that's not cool that's the patriarchy [ __ ] all right the point is that that um your your mind is simply tracking tracking tracking tracking looking for uh opportunity threat opportunity threat opportunity threat and your feelings are this analog animalistic guidance system so just because we have extraordinary cerebral capacities and we have the ability to actually articulate a lot of what's going on inside of what we're thinking uh and we could actually mathematize it in some fashion potentially the truth is that's not how we're designed we're actually designed to have a thing called Felix okay feelings are the the or what happens when you take the digital information off a compact disc and put it in a stereo system and then you hear the music okay it's just digital information on it it's just pits in a disc that is what it is but when you play it it has a feeling to it and that's what your feelings are your feelings are the analog result of the cost benefit analyzes that your nervous system is constantly running therefore they have to be dynamic because your circumstances with respect to the universe are changing constantly by the second okay and so your feelings are inherently therefore for your whole lifetime you do their Dynamic you're almost certainly going to be depressed uh it would be it would be essentially impossible for you not to have depressive feelings because sooner or later you will try to reach for a goal that is important to you that will take a great deal of time and energy in order for you to to properly put yourself in a position to compete for it and you will fail okay you will seek the esteem of someone a romantic partner trade partner friendship uh you will you will seek some outcome uh or it may not even be an esteem even though esteem dominates the human landscape it's not the only thing you may seek to cure your own cancer okay and so therefore you will you know you eat I don't know split pea soup and and sprouted ginseng okay and you think that that's going to do it and you put a great deal of energy in uh to that process and then it turns out it fails sooner or later you will invest considerable energy uh in the pursuit of something that you think is achievable and would be an important Improvement in your existence and you will fail at which point you will have depressive feedback okay the nature of that Progressive feedback will depend upon all of the circumstances and information processing that you have about that loss if you're at the end of your career and you're an NFL player and you got to the Super Bowl and you lost and there will never be any opportunity for you to be back that will be and you know that that's true that will be a bitter day and it will be a worse day than if it was on the first year of your very promising career so the um so anyway that that's how that works and I hope that hope that clarifies some things about uh the nature of how the human mind looks yeah yeah it's um you know I always just I always bring personality in too I mean it's it this is not the same set of circumstances does not lead to the same set of inferences and therefore the same emotional response with every individual it's different so you know I'm thinking of your um your friend the happiest man in the world you know like there are this guy has it takes more for that much more for that guy to have depressive feelings than it does for somebody who's average bell curve you know and it's his it's just this unique genetic circumstance we could call it his agreeableness um but it's a lot of different things you know agreeableness is a big part of it um but you know people are some people are more depressive than other people some people are more optimistic than other people some people are more resilient than other people we just talked about this on AJ yesterday so we're we are always in this Dynamic relationship with the environment and we are making these inferences that are that are translating into our emotional state but that is not a there's no law all like principle that that moves across every individual because everybody is filtering it slightly differently through their personality Distortion um so uh you know it's actually this Enoki was asking earlier somewhere I saw I've lost it now but um was asking are there certain is there any personality type that is not as susceptible to Distortion um and everybody's got some you know unless you've got an absolute middle of the bell curve personality uh on every single Dimension not just the big five but just everything that we could think about you're like absolutely average attractiveness average and and you've received an absolute average amount of feedback you've never had an unusual sort of uh probabilistically unlikely event happen in your life to to give you um systematically skewed inferences about what's likely to happen if that happens again like you would have to this doesn't exist this is not the the undistorted human does not exist so usually so good just stop that this is a fantastic explanation Jen the undistorted Mind does not exist it has to exist because your environmental history has good luck and bad luck you have feedback that is unrepresentative of the entire Market not every sample is perfectly representative of the population of of people or the population of events okay so yes exactly every mind is distorted it just is a matter of what degree totally my genetics and it's distorted by life history totally I mean and sometimes massively so usually when we get we get that question I mean the main thing that D distorts you is IQ like the the more IQ you have the better your chance of of tackling any given problem and peeling away the layers of distortion but you have to have other personality characteristics too you can have a huge amount of IQ and no openness and so you're not willing to to uh investigate the additional data to overwrite whatever you got wrong to begin with so um it's it's there's so many ways that our environmental experience can send us on the wrong inferential path and you can have a lot of horsepower and a lot of ability to uh rewrite those those grooves so that you have to have the openness to be willing to do it to have those experiences you have to have enough extroversion to encounter other humans who can teach you great more more finely calibrated truths about the world you have to be emotionally stable enough to to be able to survive those emotional vicissitudes and to integrate them in a more complete way I mean they're just like there's so many different moving parts that they're we just can't say oh yeah this kind of person is more resilient or or less you know less distorted than another kind of person um but people are very different and people people experience trauma they experience uh Good Fortune they experience um you know dramatic job histories all of these things are sell adults and experience completely differently by individuals so grant that was a really really good principle yeah it's a beautiful example that we we may want to use in the book uh and mad to imagine an individual that has never had any good luck and never had any bad luck and and that has a gene system that is literally sitting at the 50th percentile with respect to all of these you know value uh cost benefit analytic uh dilemmas amazing concept that's really good yeah you would almost have to be the only way that would happen is if everybody else also had 50th percentile like everybody else around you nobody was treating you out of their own Distortion you know because like you could be this this middle of the bell curve intelligent human but your parents treated you like you were an idiot you know because they had their own Distortion or they treated you like a genius and so this like that built your inferences in a distorted way so it's Distortion all the way down folks like life is just about I mean it's it's incredible I mean we Doug and I talk about this non-stop this is sort of like the uh it all comes down to Distortion and and how are we letting it run our lives and how much how much of our energy are we devoting to um you know inspecting what is beneath the Distortion and the ways in which we're distorted that we don't even know it's the unknown unknowns that really get you um and it's incredible how how you can make bad inferences and mistakes and bad decisions and uh you know create sub-optimal outcomes or disastrous outcomes in your life behind Distortion so this is the only thing that matters clinically it's the only thing that that really improves one's life experience as far as concerns all Psychotherapy is just the removal of distortion yeah yeah at least good Psychotherapy there's no you're right the only effective Psychotherapy is psychotherapy is only effective to the extent that it removes distortion the um the even if it does something to cause a greater Distortion which then ultimately causes a motivation for an experience which then removes Distortion the only reason why it was ultimately effective is because it wound up removing Distortion okay right so it told the little doofus it was actually a loser the bot itself is a 99th percentile loser uh but it's told that no you're actually a 25th percentile loser you know Susie will like you and he goes over there and he bangs into and turns out says he's just heard a sermon on the Good Samaritan and therefore gives this guy good feedback and dances with them at the at the junior high school dance and now he's elated and then so things change and so now he's more likely to ask somebody else and so it turns out he's not as bad as he thought okay and he wouldn't have done it had he not gotten false feedback from an idiot therapist so the the truth is is that you know uh a a terrible advice could wind up with good outcomes by accident okay but if we're talking about principled wisdom we're actually trying to be as smart as an effective and efficient as possible about removing human suffering and increasing human life satisfaction it's all about the systematic removal of distortion uh cognitive therapy when it was invented in the 1950s by Aaron Beck uh was a very crude and remains to this day an extremely crude philosophy around the removal of distortion so to just help people appreciate I mean we are fundamentally not in conflict with cognitive therapists the uh they are they are like our ancient ancestors that that believed in all kinds of hokey [ __ ] but they at least were they were like Democritus or something who believed that the Earth was made of little stuff and it turned out I'll tell you that's right okay the uh more or less four elements it turns out there's 112 whatever the hell it is but the point is is that that cognitive therapists the notion is that you're distorted now they have very simplistic versions of this that they pound over everybody's head and Aaron Beck said well the person is distorted about themselves the future in the world wow talk about broad bizarre abstractions he didn't know we can't poke fun in him at all no the truth is is that they're distorted about all kinds of things almost all of which are around esteem Dynamics okay so it's not the world and it's not the future uh obviously people are thinking about the future because the future is where their survival and reproductive dramas of their existence will play out okay so of course that's true uh so when you look at what cognitive therapy is very simple little set of tools looking for obviously outrageously self-negatively or whatever else distortions it's not a bad idea for a hack therapist I mean if you've got to have if you've got to have a boil cut off your leg and we're in the you know we're in the early 17th century then at least have a guy that's got a sharp knife you know and knows how to do it it's not laser moonshine yeah what we're attempting to do here is having have a very complicated understanding of how the motivational system works which we have achieved okay and now we can see down through where these distortions take place so nowhere in cognitive therapy is anybody talking about integrating the big five they don't have any idea where personality comes from they have no clue okay so uh so we see that and we also see what are in fact the the issues that are involved the issues that are involved are are genetically driven motivational systems of course completely cognitive therapy knows nothing about this but the concept of distortion is Right On Target that that and so now it's it's from that perspective that we now look down through listen to a person's recurrent suffering remember the only reason a person comes to us is that they're suffering well why are they suffering okay they're suffering it's not necessarily a distortion they may be getting absolutely real live accurate feedback from their performance Etc but there is a discrepancy between what they believe they should be getting and what they are getting that discrepancy is what drives the human feeling of frustration uh if they have tried repeatedly in answer to baldock's question if the try repeatedly as hard as they can and they can cannot close the distance then it can shift from frustration to depression and depression is the signal that says quit trying we are wasting valuable time and energy on a strategy that is sure to fail okay so the feelings will change as the signaling device attempts to coach the individual uh to to try to to take the most effective path I'm a little lost where just Distortion ranting that's right yeah Distortion and uh so what what we are doing is we are uh we are attempting to figure out where the biggest baddest most expensive distortions are my first book was about that it was about the what I consider to be probably the biggest uh the pleasure trap is the biggest cause of the most trouble in the world okay you if you if you've added it up I mean I don't know somebody could say communism probably is and that's probably true the uh but in the in the Free World the biggest mistake is the pleasure truck the biggest mistake that underlines more health and more happiness and therefore causes more unnecessary negative life outcomes is the pleasure trial okay there are other things that are also distorted so we have now given y eyes to the Distortion of esteem process through social media that is again causing massive disruption and a misallocation of resources and a waste of life and a bunch of unnecessary uh unpleasantness except that's a new one okay if you're genetically susceptible gambling is a very carefully planned Distortion that will cause tremendous pain and suffering to many many people the um any of these things obviously are tickling circuits which if you ride and walk the line and you have the genetics to do it you can wind up better off so I'm better off in this world because there's such things as chocolate chip cookies and once in a blue and I'm gonna have one but I'm not susceptible to the pleasure trap particularly so I'm not going to wind up in some mess okay I don't drink alcohol but if I did I'm pretty sure that I don't have the addictive gene so if I really like some fine wine once a week I would prop I could tease that system for that enjoyment and probably wind up better off you could also have the process stimulation obviously of music and film these are fantastic uh in other words they're beautifully Blended artificially constructed values uh that are that are hammering on the system and create an Exquisite experience not not a problem so it isn't that all distorted processes are in fact problematic they can be Exquisite okay but they carry with them a two-edged sword and the two-edged sword is watch out process stimulation uh by its very nature is out to to tease the cost benefit analytic engine and it can draw a person into mistakes and so that's uh what we're out here to do is to try to figure out where do you need to be going against the instinctual pole uh that is being that is being essentially intensified by a pleasure trap Distortion and when can you let the system have its head for a while and and essentially bask in in a natural uh unnaturally but but beautiful stimulating process that's that's what we're here to figure out or that that's a major issue that that we are attempting to address with intelligence that's in addition to all the struggling goal directed problems that a person uh has Distortion get between them and where we caught where their behavior would cause them optimal watch satisfaction I think I got it set yeah yeah no it's great I see some some little notes in the chat and elsewhere that you know this is It's I think because we're talking like what you just covered covers a couple of different types of distortions so I think this can get um it's it's uh tricky to ground it in concrete examples because we're talking about both inherent personality Distortion Like I'm a I'm a quite an agreeable person and so I see the world through the goggles of an agreeable person it's a friendlier world to me um I I have more optimism I find more in common with other people um than somebody who's super disagreeable that's one kind of distortion but then something like the pleasure trap is an environmental Distortion it's it's it's uh it's giving you um I guess the you know if you wanted to sort of give give an overarching quality of what is Distortion it's a departure from truth it's it's some sort of either it's like it's like grease on the camera lens where you can't quite see the nature of what you're looking at which would be personality Distortion or it's a it's a a full-fledged illusion that is you know it's it's a trick it's it's trying to pull you away from the truth so something like the pleasure trap is the sort of distortion that has a lot of you know money behind it and a lot of you know a lot of other forces that um is actually taking you away from the correct thing that you should be doing for your your physical self um and convincing you that something else is better and it's it's hijacking pleasure Pathways and everything else that it does as part of that so those are two very distinct you know we use the same word and I think that can be a little confusing to people um but anytime we're talking about Distortion it's really you can kind of replace it in your mind with true with uh you know we're trying to get away from falsity we're trying to get to the truth or what is the truth what is actually underneath all of the BS all of the confusion all of the assumptions um all of the all of the lies that we tell each other and Bluff each other and everything that we do out of our little reindeer status games and everything else there's some truth in there and that's what the distorting is really about so there's so much more to say about that but we can just like throw that God she's smart that's so good right behind book mode you guys really and we're we're thinking very high concept uh all this book stuff so this will all be in the book which we are working feverishly on Doug more so than myself at this particular moment that's all right work it in your own way I'm cracking the whip from afar yes and uh yeah we're turning we're turning along so yeah um but yeah we should probably wrap up we've got we've gone over the hour want to be respectful of people's time including our own but yeah so good so we'll just we'll see everybody next time thanks everybody for coming and do we have anything else to throw in there all fabulous all good all right all right go go kiss the doggies for me all right all right we'll see you guys next time bye everybody all right bye everybody
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