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Beat Your Genes Podcast & More

Living Wisdom Library Q&A
2021-09-04
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so yeah do we have anything to kick us off any any burning questions burning issues the major background drum beat that we'll we'll save for Hawk blocked [Music] yeah I think people have kind of stopped using the question tool on the website um so they I didn't see anything that has floated to the top there so we'll just wait uh I yeah it's a this is a question dealing with storm trauma um yeah you're in the Gulf Coast yeah big yeah do you mean practically speaking storm trauma or sort of uh emotional trauma related to it or this maybe this is not a question for us or a question it's a question for the chat so well it's a first mover Advantage for anybody who wants to get in here otherwise Doug can tell more of his Judo stories that he started telling on Hawk block this week foreign update well there you go I mean we could have stopped it but uh that's actually that's getting asked in the Q a too what's the latest on the coveted rundown so all right well we we diligently avoided it last week so we could talk about it this week yeah yeah the uh yeah I see I see it uh you know I'm sort of watching as a spectator that that that isn't isn't directly impacted uh but obviously I talk to people every day that are impacted and that they are feeling uh pressures on this and we're we're watching something that I I some some way to describe this like I don't know what I have is a is a temporary acute miserable illness or whether or not I've got a terminal diagnosis like I don't know uh that's kind of what covet the covid messes like the uh with respect to the virus itself and how things work uh it's definitely not a terminal illness in the sense that that it's it's it's not that bad and it's morphing to something that's much more manageable and human beings are getting increasingly intelligent about how to manage it so left to its own devices this thing is a problem of a very manageable proportions the uh but it's not being left to its devices and so we were winding up with vociferous conflict uh and and very very nasty conflict in um multiple societies uh it hasn't reached the Netherlands the Netherlands has declared the very very cool neutrality and everything is cool uh but here in the United States we we are now having many people facing vaccine mandates uh for for very interesting reasons and from my standpoint the reason is is that people are under the the the uh they've been miseducated and and deluded into holding the delusion that that the vaccine uh is a socially responsible thing to do it's understandable that they would think so vaccines historically uh a uh what do you call a sterilizing vaccine or some nasty disease is in fact a socially responsible uh part of contributing to society and a lot of people want to opt out of those because they don't trust those that we we can understand that a sterilizing vaccine has a legitimate claim to be a a component of social responsibility uh I.E if I take the vaccine that seals me off from getting the virus and passing it on or whatever the disease process is so that makes sense these are not sterilizing vaccines they never were they were claimed to be but there was no reason to make that claim that claim was made by the CDC as as early as April it has now been completely and utterly reversed by the end of July uh very quietly and slyly in order to hide the fact that there has been a a 180 degree reversal of that claim so uh with it the fact that the vaccines are not sterilizing vaccines in other words if you have the vaccine you can get the virus and you can pass on the virus that completely obliterates the moral High Ground of getting the vaccine as a socially responsible uh procedure so it is still being touted that way and it's being forced that way onto people as they have to sacrifice possibly jobs and other things associated with that and that is a that the fact that is happening is running into the scientific evidence that is irrefutable that the vaccines are not sterilizing and therefore you are just as much risk from somebody on your left who is vaccinated as you are from somebody sitting on your right who is not vaccinated there's no difference and so therefore having any kind of legal difference between those two groups of individuals is absolutely and totally absurd so the absurdity of that is what we are now watching okay we're now watching this process uh unfold in the United States in municipality Group by group basically governmental structure or business by governmental structure or business as as we're watching we're going to be now watching a a fascinating process um it's like watching a dam break and a flood flood of Valley you know which parts are going to be saved and which parts are not what's going to be destroyed and what isn't and you know whose lives are going to be wrecked by this and whose lives will not be wrecked by this and so it's a but the the ultimate contradiction between the apartheid position and reality uh the actual uh scientific realities are going to be an amazing thing for me as a bystander to sit back and watch so I don't know what's going to happen many different things may happen in very very many different locations what happens to the United States of America as an integrated governmental unit as a result of this I uh maybe nothing but I don't know all I know is is that we are watching a very uh very highly uh uh very powerful uh concept with a tremendous amount of legal and financial momentum is running its way attempting to run right over the top of logic reason and science what that does and I.E and human freedoms what that winds up doing and how it all shakes out I sit back uh with personal Fascination to say I have no idea what's going to happen so that's that's my update on what I now see there are there are I I think that I am making that case accurately I believe there's irrefutable evidence from multiple scientific sources multiple major hot you know totally credible uh universities Oxford University of Wisconsin uh UC San Francisco UCSF in other words multiple sources indicate without a doubt vaccinated people are spreading the virus and they are spreading it easily and widely so this is a so taking the vaccine or not taking the vaccine to me and to anybody reasonable is a personal health decision that does not have social consequences to it so that is that is the appropriate position based on the scientific evidence that is in front of us uh that is different than maybe most people were thinking um even maybe scientists were thinking as a result that the cdc's proclamations in April that now turn out to be false so what we do now at this point and what happens legally and socially at this point it's anybody's guess but that's how I see it right now we we are watching um a concept that is incorrect uh battery bam up against data and what happens to that is going to be a very interesting thing to say all right all right well we can we can come back if people are interested in other facets um we do have uh just to kind of specifically follow up on that the other covid question we have then we can move on to other stuff we'll just follow wherever you guys want to go uh I'm 55 healthy vegan male history of heart valve replacement but totally healthy feeling the walls closing in with external pressure to get vaccinated what would your CB analysis be for my situation well um that that's it yeah I can't I can't run that for you yeah we we can't we're not in your shoes We're not an MD that knows enough about heart valve replacement uh I would talk to somebody really smart uh that has a that has a reasonable and not Doctrine or position on the vaccine for or against in other words I don't I think it's likely that the vaccines are helping a subset of people uh you might be one of those and some doc might be knowledgeable enough to be able to tell you whether you're in that group or not uh right now based on what you're saying I wouldn't have any idea yep yeah I don't know if Joel Khan responds to sort of unsolicited I here's my issue what do you think but I know that he is has a very measured approach to um sort of targeted uh you know protecting people who have vulnerabilities but um is you know generally opposed to full-scale mass you know widespread vaccination just to throw in spaghetti at the wall but it very much in favor of selective vaccination of vulnerable populations including seniors and people with um comorbidities so and he's he's a cardiologist so he might I don't know if he's open to it or if he if he does any kind of consults but he might be worth reaching out to just comes to mind yeah or the the doctor said True North uh you're the true north Ducks yeah and then you can get a phone consult with a doctor of train Arc and MD and those people are not inductioneer one way or the other they are they're going to look at each individual patient as an individual and attempt to take a Nuance uh uh essentially what's the what's the what's the word of the day that everybody uses I can't remember I can't get it in my evidence base I don't even like to remember it because it's been so utterly adulterated as a concept it really happens is that we try to get some data uh on our side so that we can use the data to reduce error yeah I think the docs of True North uh don't don't have an agenda there they would do exactly that so that would be a place that you could go mm-hmm yeah I'm glad that Sarah is appreciating my giant mug I do so many Zoom sessions with Doug and it was the first time last week he noticed for the first time how ridiculously large the [ __ ] is there you go I'm a big fan of you know you don't have to get refills you gotta like I'm I'm on Zoom for at least an hour I gotta get a lot of tea in there so it's important um all right so this is a friendship question this is this is kind of a common variation of a question we get a lot so uh how do you know when it's time to let a friendship die I've been breadcrumbing a few long distance friends for some time now and it's getting to a point where I can't be bothered to engage anymore the problem is I don't have any other friends but I'm too busy with work to nurture my friendships yeah that's that's the fact that you're too busy with work to nurture the Friendship is telling you something about the the quality of the friendship in your general CB on it um if it was a really just like any other relationship if if you were if you had a really positive CB you were getting a lot out of it you were thinking that these people were really going to be there for you when you needed them which is what friendship is it's a stone age insurance policy um you would just more you would feel a more natural inclination to invest in that relationship and you're not feeling that because you're you're you're not so sure that they're going to be there for you um when you need them or they're not going to be there in a way that you couldn't be there for yourself or replace them with other friends the fact that you don't have other friends is a little bit of pressure saying it's better to have the a life a leaky Lifeboat the no Lifeboat um but it's not that great so I think this is just your your nervous system is getting feedback from the actual reality of the situation and you you know that it's kind of throwing good money after an insurance policy that's not likely to pay out in a way that's going to be very beneficial to you yeah so I would I would uh turn your attention and your time and energy toward cultivating new friendships to the degree that that makes sense and is possible if because it sounds to me like you've more or less given up on these long distance friends I know what do you think Doug all sounds totally reasonable yeah all you really do in this life is you have uh the Adaptive unconscious is running cost benefit analyzes and what your life is is actually a series of nothing other than experiments uh they may be consciously designed experiments or they are unconsciously being run experiments but the whole point is we we make little bitty Investments and then we see what the what the returns are so we're you've made a bunch of those little bitty Investments and your your look your your adaptive unconscious is simply running the tally sheet and and extrapolating whether or not you know it's kind of like Insurance on your iPhone if you've been paying it for four years and you've never dropped it or been able to claim or you made a claim and then they denied it it's like okay well maybe I'm going to cancel that 9.47 a month or whatever it is so that that's all that's happening here and and there's uh the way to I mean probably the way to do things things is to is to look at these as experimental processes you might even want to invest a little bit more short term and then see what it seems to be the payback and if it turns out that it's as mediocre as we thought it would uh was was probably going to be and that's just maybe going to get us some confirmatory evidence that we're going to continue to you know basically dilute this thing down so yeah experimental process that experimental process is either conscious and deliberate or it is unconscious and so uh what Jen and I do as as counselors is we are we are making those processes uh if if we can figure out how to do it we're making those experiments systematic measurable and premeditated that that is the idea in other words we are turning a natural process into a scientific process people have always done quote science in other words they've done and observations and they've made inferences uh what what changed with it with the whole set of procedures called science is we get more systematic about it more careful more more essentially mathematical uh we do better cleaner experiments allowing for better uh more confident inferences so that's what Psychotherapy is a Psychotherapy is the process of getting new information in a way that may that may either confirm or change the inferences about the nature of our situation with respect to reality into the Adaptive unconscious when that happens in other words the information is convincing in some way and something changes about how it is that we evaluate things then our feelings change okay so the whole idea is to get get our our our thought feeling and action on you in other words our our Behavior a changing in a more adaptive fashion by aiming at where there's uncertainty in the cost of benefit analysis and attempting to get clarity that's what we do yeah right all right all right um so this one's this is a straightforward one any advice for children starting a new high school with some anxiety about not knowing anybody uh I don't know be quiet and pleasant and don't wear any weird loud clothes and don't try to show off in history class and you know everything in other words not uh your you go through a natural process of repeat exposure and and these little these little primates that you're hanging out with will will have their own reaction to you depending upon your physical and behavioral attributes and um so if you we've got any anxiety about that the idea is to be quite be quiet by the time you have been seen or 20 times you will be liked more even though nobody may say anything otherwise just your just the repeat exposure that you have on the village environment is a is a natural you're going to be walking through a natural improving process with respect to your village cachet so things are likely in other words be patient you know the thing things are likely to get get better than they are on day one day one isn't necessarily going to be bad but you're going to have anxiety because you're going to not be necessarily getting any acceptance cues that's fine the uh don't worry about it be patient the little bits of the village will find you eventually I would say join some little goofy groups yeah that's always my my main piece of advice go find your little niche you know your little uh whether it's the drama club or the you know I did all the nerdy stuff when I was a kid so I was I was always drawn to the the sort of the the I wasn't a gamer but I was I hung out with the gamer crowd I hung out with the theater kids I hung out with the the you know the the rejects and they find each other and it's like we all had that same sort of angst coming in um and uh you just it sorts itself out so part of I think a lot of times this question comes from parents who you know want to spare their children any amount of discomfort not recognizing that this is a total Universal process that's just on a bell curve so every every kid going into high school for the first time has some anxiety about belonging no matter how solid their little friendship Network especially after being out of school with the pandemic and um I've talked to quite a few people who kids are going back after a year and a half out and they feel like they're too different or they're not different enough or um you know people have expectations of them that weren't there before and so there's all this renewed angst and everybody is feeling this way and it's all going to sort itself out over time and it's it's not going to do any permanent damage to um to any young person who is going through this social transition that everybody goes through so um they'll they'll be able to find some sort of little little group as Doug says a goofy group where they fit in whether it's yeah some sort of after school sports or something whatever it is there's there's this is what high school is for is to kind of sort people into those types of things so yeah all good if I could find weirdos to hang out with and Wasilla Alaska then everyone can all right this is an interesting one this one has never come up and as you are a left-handed person so this one's definitely for you what is the point of left-handedness from an evolutionary perspective why isn't it 50 50. um do you believe there are personality trait correlations with being left or right-handed I'm a lefty and it's probably in my head but I feel like I can often pick out other lefties without seeing them pick up a pen yeah yeah um I actually don't know much about it it's uh there's I I think there's a I think there's more than one way to be left-handed so there's uh I think there's there's more than one biological reason that happens um I I believe that there's probably it's probably been an evolutionarily stable strategy to uh particularly men uh in combat uh going at it with their going at it with their right hands uh with weapons and clubs you're going to be in trouble if you're going out of there with your with the left hand in other words there are um you can be awkward they can also put you at a decided disadvantage so it turns out in in uh skull fractures that we've seen in Stone Age peoples we find that the men were killed by blows from a club coming from a right-handed person who would say there it's on this Temple that we see people's skulls cracked so the um so I don't know that that would have been the selection pressure in other words men hand-to-hand combat fighting would have been the selection pressure that would have driven right-handedness I don't know but but you can see uh probably if you put this into a computer with a really smart person Allah William Hamilton and Richard Axelrod as they did this with the Tit for Tat strategies in the 1970s they were trying to figure out you know if somebody hits you what should you do should you not hit him back or hit him back once or hit him back twice whether it's trying to figure out essentially the evolution of social behavior and how it would have worked they found that uh Tit for Tat strategy in other words keeping things even wound up being evolutionarily stable and other strategies were not in other words if you they somebody hit you once and then you hit him back twice it turns out that you get selected against without overreaction for some reason so I can I can see the possibility of an evolutionarily stable strategy particularly with respect to combat now the reason why that would be important is because something that could could um cause death would have a pretty profound impact on on selection and so it's going to turn out that that one of the greatest dangers in human life is other humans uh so we we know this from extensive anthropological studies on us so particularly other men so um and so probably genetically the right move is to just have right-handedness be the right move and and so that's going to be true whether you're a male or a female just in general the genetic code needs to be probably passing on whiteheadness so some of this are some of this I believe uh the left-handedness is actually has resulted some kind of info superiority in the in the in the way the brain is developed or genetically Etc I think that that's true I don't think that all of it's true in other words I think there's a hybrid I'd actually don't know that much about it but I but I do that you're you're thinking that it would be 50 50 you know has some superficial sense but I think in this case it actually doesn't I think Evolution probably trapped human beings into evolving uh white-headedness for to make sure you're not put at a disadvantage um you know with respect to that problem that's what I think is probably true but I I can't confirm it and I don't know for sure mm-hmm yeah it's uh I had heard I was just looking around to see if I could confirm this with some kind of vaguely reliable source that it has increased quite a bit over time even in the United States but in the last couple of generations just as you know there's less social pressure to for a natural Lefty to be forced to you know adapt and to to learn to write with their right hand um and so we've gone from you know five to six percent of the population to 12 or 15 of the population um just some you know 100 years 150 years um and so there's that and then there's also it looks like and again all of this would have this is you know I don't I don't even know where I'm sourcing this from but I have no reason to think it's that that far out there it looks like numbers of left-handedness percentages of left-handedness way way low and sort of more formal countries that's a you know sort of authoritarian leaning um Korea China Japan Taiwan um these sort of like more rigid societies some speculation it might have something to do with the style of writing characters and Asian languages might also lend itself to you know sort of it has to be done in a certain way so yeah lots of lots of interesting questions some speculation about higher testosterone exposure in the womb um linked to certain other like you're saying kind of uh other issues that uh might be might be deficits might be you know something going wrong um in in the coding um but yeah yeah very interesting I definitely I you know it's uh I've got um our family was half and half um and uh it it's it's it's interesting to speculate about personality characteristics and and uh I don't know more more orderliness with the lefties [Laughter] it's fun to think about though um all right but our resident Virgo wouldn't know anything about that um speaking of Personality Doug has mentioned that Ellen goldhammer has a personality that's one in a hundred thousand how can someone that different help regular folk I think perhaps you balance them by bringing understanding and compassion to those less gifted with struggles um yeah he's a rare bird yeah so yeah he presents an ideal you know he presents he's a very pure ideal yeah desire to have no friends have no new experiences okay and desire to do uh exactly the same thing over and over again the same in the same way every day and uh basically one week there's nothing special about any given week because it's just like any of the other 52 weeks of the year so yeah the uh how can you help regular folks well he's proof that that uh if you do these same uh that his his prescription about diet and healthy living is likely to be a hell of a lot better than your average doctor because he's a living embodiment of what it is that he believes in and he's in a hell of a lot better shape than the average 62 year old by a vast margin so there you go that's that's what that's how he can help us he can help us by by uh being an Exemplar after that you'll just snarl at you and if you say well I hardly have any of that stuff he'll say great you'll hardly miss it then and that's that's what you get I think yeah yeah I think in this space there's a lot of people struggle with um you know being kind of left to wing it this kind of uh you know here's here's some general rules and just do your best like a lot of people don't they don't do well with that they want really structured like what's in what's out what does it look like and Ellen is so structured and it's so dogmatic that you absolutely cannot do this and you absolutely must do this um that I think that's very helpful to kind of guide you know uh some population of people who are trying to change their lives or really attracted to that and really inspired by it and really helped by it um but it is it's it's less helpful if you're somebody who really can't manage that or or doesn't like that much structure kind of wants to rebel against it there are a lot of different things that come up for people so he's you know providing an important service yes laughs all right this one got upvoted so I'm gonna follow the crowd and go with this one so how do people who are intellectual and question everything like people who follow evolutionary psychology stay happy I want to know painful truths but it seems like those who live in ignorance do feel more bliss um no I think that's a mistaken inference I don't think that's true at all so that that's that's just uh you you probably got a few little exemplars in your head of not very smart not very questioning people that are nice looking have a great relationship have a pretty good job get along with their boss uh you know and inherited some money early so they don't have a lot of financial stress but they're not a spend threat it's like you've just got somebody in your head that you're measuring this against you don't actually have any systematic evidence that what you're saying is true uh ignorance is not less ignorance results in people making mistakes that are painful and expensive okay so the uh you know adiq people are not as happy as 120 IP people at ignorant 120 IQ people are not happier than than a better informed 120 IQ people so so that's a mistake um evolutionary psychology is I I think that particularly with respect to certain issues like men and women Dynamics and this and the inherent nature of conflict uh over casual mating and Parable strategy and the the Dynamics and and deceptive and self-deceptive uh processes and conflicts of interest between between people um I think that that one thing that is disconcerting uh particularly to a lot of bright females who are going to you know have the guts to follow this logic down and listen to it in other words you got enough IQ to understand that there are deep biological processes driving these things I think when you come up against that you you you have to confront the fact that you're you're stamping your foot at reality and complaining and bitching about the human male is actually not going to get you anywhere that you're not going to get any social change change that's going to upend this because although there was a time and a place and very good reason for the women's movement that reason is now passed okay and you know depend pending once subtle individual issues like the court case in Texas or whatever it is that we might be talking about but that's not what we're talking about we're talking about the conflicts in romantic Dynamics between male and female and the the changes that you might hope for uh the in some fantasy land are are not going to happen you have uh real live individual differences that are that are fairly significantly sexually categorized or gender categorized about how people go about this Dynamic reproductive conflicting Dynamic how it works out who's left holding what bag and how unpleasant it is and when we strip down the fact that that this is endemic to the species it strips away the the notion that I've just been treated badly and wronged and that I could just get the right people and things are so long and off and men don't do this right or that light or the other right Etc no this is just the nature of the Beast okay so this is the fact that if you're playing Major League Baseball every now and then a pitcher is going to throw it inside on you and it's going to scare the hell out of you okay because you're leaning over the plate a little too much and he's going to say no that's my plate and you better watch out for your head okay and it's like damn get some people pretty upset but it's part of the game okay and so I think that when uh particularly women confront that Dynamic and they're learning a VP and they see it uh I think that that can cause them some unhappiness it's a a strategy that they were sort of planning to maybe rescue the situation or they were going to intimidate some docile males out of that uh out of their position uh which was certainly my ex-wife's attitude that if we basically ignore this and say it's bad and mean and that is how it is then somehow it's all going to go away well it didn't go away uh those conflicts Exist by nature and we are going to confront those conflicts in our life if we confront them being knowledgeable about them we are less likely to be burned as often and as badly as if we put our head in the Senate so uh but it it can be uh a a somewhat challenging and disconcerting process to learn these facts and to learn that shaming the male from the moral High Ground of the female Paragon strategy is actually no way to uh that happiness is actually going to transpire okay so yeah we evolutionary psychology sits firmly rooted within a philosophical um school and that is what we call tragedy in other words life is inherently tragic that doesn't mean it's terrible it means it has some really nasty conflicts of interest and those things can be very wasn't and this is opposed to a utopian school which is that if we all just learned the right thing in the right order from the white teachers then we wouldn't have any of these conflicts well this is just pure BS okay now that that that runs an awful lot of uh political philosophy throughout the world but that is a that is an untruth okay so it might feel nice and pleasant and happy to believe in such things but when the realities of the of the falsehoods that sit underneath those as assumptions confront you uh that and and you're speaking German you know I mean or you're being executed then you find out that all those good feelings about how things could be and should be that actually can't be and won't be uh when you find that all out you're not happy at all so no I don't think ignorance is bliss at all I think ignorance may be temporarily Bliss but it is statistically increasing your likelihood of tragic so the uh the fact that when we learn things sometimes those things are unpleasant uh is a is a necessary reality of being informed and therefore better prepared to have the best life possible all right so yeah yeah there's sort of the there's the side of it where if the learning the unpleasant things you know subtracts from your from your happiness I.E ignorance is bliss if you don't know the bad things about human nature but I think there's also uh you know something I hear from a lot of people and I've experienced myself is the kind of the loss of the mystery the loss of the sense of meaning this sort of like um I'm part of something bigger and more mysterious and uh mystical um and so if you've got a Mystic chip and evolutionary psychology comes along and poops all over it that can be a really depressing process of course I don't even consider this that loss was never in my equation okay yeah yeah no it's uh it's definitely something I struggle with and I hear it from a lot of people and and so you know this is an individual uh journey and so for me I keep the the I keep the hatch open a little bit to to mystery into the to the unknown to the bizarre are to the things that don't add up to to the notion that this you know there's a high likelihood mathematically speaking that we all just live in a simulation anyway um there's all this weird [ __ ] going on and I think of it as sort of this division between Newtonian physics describing the laws of gravity I.E the Dynamics between males and females the the you know the Dynamics of of status that we talk about esteem processes all of these fundamental units of human life that that and motivation that we talk about all the time I think of that as like describing the physical world but then there's also quantum physics which doesn't add up doesn't make any sense there's you know something can be a particle and a wave at the same time you have you know it's it's the signaling across time and space and it disappears into black holes and all the all the weird [ __ ] so so there's space for weirdness there's space for the unknown unknowns in my sort of ontology and so um I I find that that is necessary for me to keep that hatch just a little bit open um otherwise I I get this kind of depressed what's it all for what's the meaning of life like why even bother like that I have to have some sense that there's something more significant um to maximize my personal Utopia my personal happiness because I I came out of the factory with a pretty substantial Mystic chip so that's a way that I sort of exercise self-care around my Mystic ship I don't I don't try to beat it into submission and pretend that it doesn't exist and that there's something pathologically wrong with it I accommodate it in a in a reasonable way that allows me to continue to enjoy my life and keep one foot in each world so I don't know if she's coming from that perspective but I know that that's gonna it's been a big thing for me um for sure so right so yeah I can see that yeah and I I would have never thought of it you wouldn't this would not be part of your attorney [Laughter] never occurred to me any more than it would occurred to Alan to leave 20 tip that's that's true that's true true Ellen who you you have to go into the restaurant after he's left to go tip the wait staff because he's he's gonna undertip them not that any of us go to restaurants anymore maybe 14.5 if you know it was really they really went out of their way yeah there we go oh my God amazing amazing character all right uh so that's that's that one we can we can come back if it comes back up but uh this one is the next in the queue so this is a complicated one I'm a 95th percentile openness so another very open person bisexual female who is married to a man I'm getting to a point in the relationship where I'm wondering whether my sexuality and peculiar personality is compatible with a happy and flourishing monogamous life how do I honor my marriage vows and my bisexuality I've never felt this tension before but I'm getting to a point where I feel I need to tell my husband about my sexuality he believes I'm straight because I didn't know whether it was worth disclosing and I'm generally in the closet about it I'm worried there will be a huge cost to disclosing my true colors does he deserve to know this and what determines how happily monogamous a bisexual person can be a lot of individual variables that we we don't know and can only speculate on here yeah yeah well one one of the the core conflict is deception and conflict of interest because so this is um so that that's the we begin looking at a problem and once again we're back to the tragic view of existence tragic view of existence is that there are predators and prey okay project of view of existence is inside the heads of humans they have the possibility for error bonding uh being an extraordinary unique in an island of psychological experience where we feel like we are both totally in parallel with what it is that our goals are and in principle that feeling is designed to let both of them know that they are the uh that they have a minimum of conflict of interest in this sphere and that they are out to reproduce children together now they don't know that consciously but other that it's designed that feeling of oh my God I found quote the one is is part of the design of this particular species it's extremely unusual in the animal kingdom the uh but it's uh uh it's you know it's less than three percent of mammals so this is so but it is a it it's there for a reason uh it's there for the female to feel uh both excited about the genetic prospects of the male as well as excited about his utility in terms of protection and provision partner um not only his abilities but his willingness because of the esteem signaling he gives to her and so that puts her in idealized set of circumstances for mating the male feels like he's getting some kind of exceptional deal uh relative to his Alternatives relative to his self-calibration about what it is that he could be trading for and therefore he is feeling no cognitive dissonance about signaling that he's all in that particular experience is its own unique set of neural circuits that are firing under those conditions most normal people have that have those circuits intact uh some people are they're funny different or looking different but it's basically a species typical characteristic but it will only fire under idealized conditions in the same way that if you've never had a right Bartlett pair you've never had those neurons fire in that pattern okay if you have you can imagine what that tastes like right now uh Conjuring up a fixed simile in your imagination out of memory circuits okay so the so now the but the but the quote tragedy is in in addition to that possibility for the organism there are all kinds of other possibilities and those possibilities every the other possibilities open the door or are starting to Signal conflicts of interest between those two individuals okay so this woman wanted the male to be feel fully connected and therefore all in on a marriage process where he felt like he was getting the signal from her that he was it and she he was giving her the signal that she was it but in fact she had a significant little open look there that she wasn't disclosing okay and well now what well now we're facing the conflict that was always there but was actually being she was using deception and I'm not making this doesn't make her a bad person for God's sakes people are deceptive as hell and if everybody doesn't want anybody else to be accepted of course not because when they're deceptive they're attempting to get you to engage in trades that she wouldn't otherwise make under those conditions okay so deception is rampant in Roman relationships precisely because the stakes are very high these are very expensive relationships in terms of time and energy not only in the real world even today but in the theoretical Stone Age world where there was the outcomes of the meeting it was extremely expensive and so as a result these are high stakes uh processes that are going on here and so of course people are going to be using deception the problem is deception itself takes you away from the maximum Exquisite feeling of not having a conflict of interest with your partner so you don't get to have it both ways you don't get to have the most Exquisite thing possible if you've got conflicts whether you're disclosing those conflicts or not the closest thing that you can possibly do to optimize your experience is to actually disclose enough of the conflicts and see just how bad the conflict is okay that's what you can do so you can once you disclose the conflict you have a possibility that doesn't mean we're going to act on the conflict but now you your partner now knows oh the situation that they actually traded in is different than they thought it was now they have to wrap their head around that okay we don't know what that's going to do to do a psychology at all we don't know how they look at it in in the worst case scenario they might say well in that case if that's how you feel and I have a competitor from that quarter or any quarter I'm done and I'm the hell out of here oh well that's how they valued you in total for disclosing that and attempting to actually reduce uh the conflicts of interest between you because by being secret about the conflict of interest we actually have an interesting problem it stops you from optimizing the relationship in principle okay so I would look at this as you know if I had sort of a so-so relationship that was you know and I was roped into it behind Financial familial and you know all kinds of other reasons and I was in that thing then how how motivated am I to disclose a lot of things that where we're in Conflict not very that it's like listen if my experience in this relationship is going to be a 5 out of 10 anyway why the hell reach for five and a half by trying to get honest about something that's going to be unpleasant it may not be I may not rate that as worthy this questioner is looking like she's in actually a much better relationship than that it's one that she she may be thinking or feeling um that she that she is missing that feeling of being clean and actually therefore being more psychologically close and the so that that that process looks like it may be causing some significant turbulence and at which point that's when we have to seriously consider getting getting more open and honest about things uh and but there are risks involved in other words you we we are gambling that we can actually improve the situation uh rather than than do damage so in me being a big time Gambler in the Serene I'm willing to gamble my whole life trying to find something Exquisite okay and if it's in if it's two knots you're short of that to hell with it in other words off but that's me that's my personality and I'm totally willing to be alone uh rather than being something that is inherently conflicted and filled with deception that doesn't that is an admirable that's actually odd okay that's just how I happen to be built now the um so Jen weigh in on this and tell me kind of what you're thinking and what some of your feelings are yeah I think it's it's hard to tell from the question whether this is as you're framing it sort of this feeling that you're not you're fully yourself um and and that you're withholding some key aspect of of who you are from your partner um which is going to lead to all of this dissonance and this feeling of distance from them um and so is are you asking this because you're yearning to disclose so you can be closer to them or are you asking this because you're yearning to disclose so you you can pursue other relationships outside of the marriage um and that is a that distinction is not going to be lost on him he's going to want to know okay now that you've told me this now what you know so I I don't get the impression from the question this is a big leap and maybe this is not true but I don't get the impression that it would it would just knowing that you're bisexual is game over for him it's really like what are the practical consequences of this what does this mean for us what does this mean for the relationship does this mean that you need to to be do we need to to open the marriage up to women do you want to have threesomes what does this mean just to be a gender essentialist here for a second you know it's very uh difficult for most men to be confronted with new information that is sort of like here's the new situation um but there's no there's no solution there's no you're not proposing um uh you know let's do this differently they they will feel very um out of balance and confused if you're just saying uh well here's here's a bunch of new stuff and there's no they can't fix it they can't they can't locate it in time and space they can't fit it into the blueprint of the relationship so so are you asking him for an open relationship are you saying you need to leave the relationship to pursue other relationships are you just saying um this is who I am and I've been hiding it from you and that's been killing me like those are very different scenarios as far as what it means for the two of you and what it means to his ability to receive this from you so so I would get really clear on what that is and that's going to inform your strategy a little bit too yeah beautiful this is uh winds us back to begin with the end in mind so the notion is what end is it that we're actually seeking and so uh a in my little lecture series that I did called how to solve a problem uh that's still that's on our website uh a key issue is to understand that um that you often have more than one agenda and when you're attempting to solve a problem the most important thing that you have to get clear in your mind is which is the most important value that we are seeking because the entire strategy then gets built around seeking the most important value okay because very often you cannot pursue to a lot of times they are they are logically inconsistent uh and logically compromised so that's where we begin that's exactly sort of what Jen's talking about we have to think that we have to understand what the situation is and we have to understand you know um what is the most important value to you values uh are inherently hierarchical so they can they can be dynamic in other words you could be thirstier than you are hungry and then you have a glass of water and now you're hungrier than you are thirsty but you are not equally hungry and thirsty at the same time in other words your your motivational system will absolutely slot these things because you are designed by nature to be Computing what is the next most what is the the next thing that I can be doing that will maximize the biological efficiency of this action that is in fact how it is that your nervous system is constructed um even if you're doing two things at once you are dividing your attention towards the accuracy of two different problems and therefore you are actually making a decision at any nanosecond which has got your attention and which doesn't Etc so the uh so this is yeah a key variable and this whole thing is what what is the most important feature that we are seeking and um and that depends upon what what the relationship is now what it could turn into you know I mean what the and what the probabilities of the various options are Etc and so that that's where the soul searching uh that gen's talking about comes in we orchestrate strategy around what the end that we see yeah yeah and then too so if the end that you seek right now is just to come clean um and then that's what it is that could allow other possibilities to emerge as you sort of settle into that new equilibrium now he knows who you are now you can talk about your fantasies about other women now you can have like like that will shift the whole relationship um into a place where maybe in a few months or a year you do want to pursue another relationship or you you are interested in at least you know flirting with other women when you go out whatever that is um you kind of can't get to point a until you get to point B until you get to point a so that that you don't know where that's gonna head but you you need to at least know where your first destination is yeah I.E this is the the concept is we are running experiments in order to get parametric estimations this is all that's all therapy is and that's all life is all it is is so we're talking about triangulating as intelligently as possible on what is the most important information we are seeking and the most important information that we're seeking is how flipped out and completely devastated would my husband need to find this out then a good way to do this is to introduce the concept of oh I heard a friend of mine at work that you know blah blah I heard that she was bi you know I mean it's like and that seems to be I saw I met her and her husband and she they seemed to be a very happy couple but she also has that running around your skull what do you think of that okay in other words get a little you could get a little crafty and fishing Expedition absolutely yeah yeah get some information uh without having to Bear your soul you could probably get a lot of information that would tell you a lot about what may be behind that curtain yeah but don't let that totally distort the the stage either because sometimes you know if it's not personal and it's not you he might react like oh well that's [ __ ] up you know like I I would never be able to to stand that but it would be different if if it were coming from you because of the the love between you and the history between you and everything else so so that's a there's a danger and kind of like doing the fishing Expedition and getting information in one context that that is has limited applicability to your situation but it is still I mean that's why you triangulate you kind of do a few little fishing Expeditions you get a few pieces of information you you mention uh oh yeah I just talked to a friend of mine uh from college who you know she was a little flirty with me sometimes you know sort of like these little little things that are less less costly than the full story um but that are gonna give you a hint so yeah there you go yeah yep uh yeah complicated situations all right this one we'll close with this one this is a fun one what's the evolutionary point of Storytelling what's not the evolutionary point of Storytelling a storytelling serves so many goals I mean it's just showing off it's showing it's a fitness display for the person telling the story first and foremost it's it's uh look how creative I am listen to me exaggerate my exploits and and so now you can you can picture me uh you know being masterful in some domain as I tell you or let me weave a tail that allows us to put ourselves in the shoes of our enemy which makes us more efficient at Battle there are so many different things that storytelling can do for for the individual for the group um I think it serves a lot of different purposes but mostly the main primary purpose of Storytelling is is uh the Storyteller themselves is getting a social payoff for being a good Storyteller there's no real evolutionary point to it's a bad storytelling the person sitting around the the fire who nobody wants to listen to and nobody's mesmerized by and um is you know isn't does not spin an enchanting yarn that person does not get the evolutionary Advantage so so the person who gets the advantage is the person who really um puts a lot of Glitz and glitter on the story ideally in a self-serving way to make themselves more more attractive more desirable as a hunting partner as a mate as as a coalition member of any number of coalitions um yeah am I forgetting anything no I uh it's actually it's actually um one of the things once you put uh what I call the the Chucky Darwin glasses on once you start to see Humanity through the lens of Darwin you start to get kind of inherently fascinated at the some of the extraordinary neural circuits that you'll sometimes see so I remember watching uh Eight Mile you know the the score what's the guy's name Eminem Eminem right so uh yeah I don't know a single Eminem song but I saw I saw the story and um and the the fact that you know birth out of out of the African-American Community 25 years ago or whenever ever this really arose maybe 30. uh you just started to barely see it maybe by 1980. you you start to see hey guess what we have a new fitness indicator okay and you find that some individuals are extraordinarily at it and maybe maybe some some practice effects are there but it's also like jumping and dunking a basketball and and and doing quantum physics it's like hey you can practice all you want but it but if but if you're Joe average you're not going to be doing quantum physics and you can practice all you want but you know the name of the movie was White Men Can't Jump ha ha ha and so there's so you you get to see it so storytelling is one of these actually extraordinary characteristics of humans which definitely require huge amounts of integrated neurons to be able to pull it off and you know uh verbally you can see people that are tremendously different from one another with this uh in writing I don't know that I've ever seen a Storyteller like JK Rowling I I don't know that the world has ever seen anybody like that you know the uh she had incredible imagination I finally didn't read the last couple of books like I can't enough already the uh but the but the but that kind of imagination and integration and weeding it and if you if you've read the Harry Potter books you know they are beautifully woven around uh around personality and philosophy in other words it's it's she's in there telling morals to the story and you don't see it coming you know what I mean but but she had to be aiming at it and she always was because you know five thousand other little tidbits of this story integrated down to that moment so you know that that you don't you don't learn that one you know that that's that's embedded in there so yeah storytelling is uh clearly just like talking is an unbelievable thing yeah do a little bit of practice to learn how to do it storytelling I'm sure JK Rowling wasn't that great with her first you know her first 50 pages but by God it didn't take long before we saw the emergence of a one in a billion type of character and so yeah clearly though the what a set of neural circuits and as you say has been selected from probably several different directions in evolution in order to wind up with such a complicated and Rich capability yeah what a thing it's very costly I mean the brain power is costly that that sort of ability to project ideas and and to and to weave a tail I mean this takes a lot of a lot of bandwidth um and so it serves great purposes um so I I mean people should read if they haven't already the The Mating Mind by Jeffrey Miller um to as really kind of the the go-to analysis of of all of the wonderful things about human life that we think are kind of spiritual and and uh you know beyond the the hubsy and nasty Brutus short survive and reproduce kind of World um everything from storytelling imagination religion art music all of these things they're all Fitness displays um and they're all you know they've all been highly highly evolved and highly highly sexually selected because they're they they work they're attractive yeah they're cool they make you cool so um the as a species we just really are are fond of that just like just like female peacocks like a very costly display of feathers and have selected for it through female mate choice so um yeah it's it's a really it's a it's a great book and and he very self-consciously uh realizes that the book itself is a display so he takes great great care and great pains um in the Artistry of it um and it is very artistic and very beautifully written and um it's his great offering so and it worked it's it's it makes it makes him you know I don't 30 percent more attractive to read that book at least and it paid off he got he got his uh got his Target so um yeah so yeah it's uh if you're interested in these things and you just want to read some really beautiful writing in AP it's it's highly recommended so yeah yeah all right well we actually got through all the questions that time that's amazing I don't know how we manage that so um yeah we got kind of a small crowd this week so that helped so all right well we'll see you next time okay same same that time same that place I'll send out a note so it's great great to see everybody and uh yeah we'll see in a couple of weeks all right see you soon all right bye
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