Home 🏠 🔎 Search


Bad Transcripts
for the
Beat Your Genes Podcast & More

Living Wisdom Library Q&A
2021-12-12
an auto-generated transcript


To get a shareable link to a certain place in the audio,
hover your mouse over the relevent text,
right click, and "copy link address"
(mobile: long press & copy link address)
 


all right well we're back at the living wisdom Library yes there you go in my library full of full of wisdom nothing no it doesn't look any better organized than it was last time it looks just like it should all good libraries projects that's right they're supposed to be supposed to be messy yes I'm hoping uh in my in my uh adventures with Seattle crime this weekend that none of my books were stolen that's mostly what I care about yeah those bastards took my books they ended up coming after them trust me they took that yes yeah they grabbed everything they could I think it was pretty much like everything within reach so I had my um for those who don't know my my moving pod was broken into um and the criminals made off with all sorts of stuff and left everything else out in the rain so that was exciting so yeah people are awesome yes that's true that's two crimes in Seattle for you uh yeah yeah yeah so it's uh well yeah and hilariously as I was commiserating with my neighbor uh after everything happened and we we repacked everything um this this car pulls up our very quiet street and you know it's like creeping along and she and I were both in no mood we were like what do you want State your business like what are you doing here and this car creeps up sees us kind of chatting on the porch throws it into reverse backs up and and skedaddles away and she's like oh I know who that is those are the guys who come in and strip the wires over here I'm like yeah there's so it is known that there are just dudes who come in strip wires so yeah it's time to it's time to go yeah time to go time to go that's that's the wisdom of the day that's the wisdom of the day yeah the the uh the the get out of City's wisdom no awesome all right well we got some questions rolling in here um so just a reminder to everybody watching these are uh I have it set so you can up vote um and you can also comment on questions if you have something to add or to chime in or um I don't think you can down vote but you can definitely move things up in the queue So currently I think just our first one here um oh it just it just shifted on me so okay uh I'm having trouble with my marriage every time we talk about problems both parties raise their voice a talk slash conversation always ends badly in a big blowout there's a lot at stake to keep the marriage live can you give me some advice to not yell at each other during a discussion um well it it's going to begin with uh with maybe uh it might be useful for you to have a fairly deep understanding of why it is that we've got uh the conflict in the first place so uh not both of you don't have to understand this only one of you needs to understand it in order to change your behavior because if you change your behavior uh then you're going to alter this Dynamic so the good thing about an argument is only takes one person to change it you don't actually have to have two people changing so uh what's going on is that um there's a most fundamentally what there is is that one or both parties feel like they are not sufficiently valued so that that you know if we're arguing about money that's we're actually arguing about the fact that somebody thinks that somebody isn't valuable enough to spend the money okay so you know almost no matter what what argument there is in a in a marriage if it's I mean if it's testy if it isn't some minor league argument about who you know wait a second you're supposed to wash your hands after you took out the trash because I'm OCD and now you didn't do it and I'm pretty sure you didn't do it not nothing not that you've ever had that argument you were back to Larry again Larry haunts every q a whether he's here in the flesh or not he's here with us in spirit oh man I had I had a client the other day mentioned cpsa to me so it has now entered the Lexicon so we God damn it yo uh but the point is is that if there's a if there's an enduring argumentative theme then it means that someone is feeling status deficient or in deficient uh I use the we use the word esteem starting about 10 years ago because the word status threatens everybody's status so instead ironically enough yeah we can't do it there's steam an hour but it can have a rational discussion about it so that's actually what the fundamental roots are even though it can be three layers deep in detail so you can't see the detail because it's really seems to be our argument about you know which house we're going to for Thanksgiving or how how come I always have to remind you to do this or do that in other words but each of those things is fundamentally rooted in if you valued me more we wouldn't be having this discussion okay and so that of course is an upsetting uh realization one is sending that signal out of uncertainty and essentially is this carelessness do you not understand how this or about is not important to me because if you did you wouldn't you wouldn't be treating me this way uh because the signal I'm getting is that you don't value me as much as I as I value you or as much as I value this relationship and therefore I'm feeling uh essentially defection cues whether or not anybody's making any moves to do anything or not that's effectively the underlying uh deal is that the person is chiseling us because they're they're not uh they're essentially the trade doesn't feel good enough and so they're going to Chisel that's why they don't you know they don't pick up after themselves that's why it is that they don't bring you flowers anymore that's why this and that's why that it's because they're chiseling their their energy conservation circuits are are actually optimizing their uh relationship to reality and that means giving you less because they don't feel like it's worth protecting it so we've threatened them uh by criticizing them or sending our own low grade rats uh and in doing so we we hope to orient them the fact that the relationship isn't to be taken for granted and they could lose it uh that's what the other side of the argument is and so the uh so anyway so understanding that that that's what's going on is is is the that's the fundamental problem so if you're inside of this thing the the first place that I would tell you to be looking is to be quietly thinking to yourself what you know what who who is in what side of this site because these relationships they can be very funny looking situations but usually one person is more invested than the other person okay and the person that's more invested feels a little frantic they feel a little touchier they're a little bit more defensive and very anxious attachment style ain't quote anxious attachment style what they really are which will magically shift to avoid an attachment style if they're the person who's less invested in the relationship amazing how that happened well that's the last I finally have a colleague who sees a reality it's so obvious to be the kids we've all been there we've all been chasing a relationship and therefore a bit anxious we've all been been moving away from a relationship because we're we're not as impressed and we're ready to move on and therefore we're avoidant it's like it's so obvious that that's true the um now uh God knows where I was Jack oh sorry yeah I interrupted any of the general no it's absolutely interrupting yeah but the so what where we begin this where I begin when I'm doing therapy with a couple lists I'm trying to figure out who's backing away and who's chasing that's what I'm trying to figure out okay and the one that squawk and the loudest about how it is that they're not getting enough esteem is the one who is chasing and they are feeling uh they're feeling like they're in trouble they're in an abandonment type of a situation and so the um uh so as a result so we we begin the story there it's not like oh we have a problem with the marriage how can we fix the marriage no one person has a problem they're being rejected the other person's having a problem that it's too expensive to leave but they want to that's the fundamental problem okay now so if you're going to say well how do we fix that problem that problem then becomes a competitive problem for the person who is not sufficiently attractive in the situation uh in other words and maybe it's an impossible problem so now you can see how we wandered into this because the person sort of sets this up and God knows whether it fits their situation or not but writ large as Jen Hawk would say which I've now learned to stay in the last year or two if we're talking about marriage writ large or conflicted marriage with writ large what we're talking about is uh several scenarios do you have a situation where it's unhappy enough that somebody really wants to leave that there's reasons why they're not going to or that they are plotting to and they're waiting for a time when it's more appropriate is it a situation where uh we have a situation where they're they're not going to leave because the price is too high but nobody's happy uh or are we in a situation where people are reasonably happy with the mediocre situation because that's kind of where they are in life and what their risk tolerancer is they're perfectly willing to live with that situation and it's okay or do we have a situation that is where there's deep Rumblings where uh or or we have one more situation in here which is that maybe there's something that's fixable okay guess how guess what the truth is the there's a good there's a chance that it's fixable is the least statistical likelihood of the group so now if if the question becomes well how do we fix our marriage the answer is it's probably not fixable there are occasionally times when the the crisis so of the esteemed situation is such that there's they're in an exacerbation cycle where essentially one person has been put in an anxious situation where they felt threatened God Knows Why um there there could be any number of reasons why and then they essentially attack the second party who unwittingly had stepped on the other person's Toes or possibly not unwittingly but did it anyway and the point is is that now they feel less valued because they're getting essentially snarling negative nagging or otherwise uh negative feedback and now they don't feel particularly guilty because what that is is anger by the way which is designed by nature to cause somebody to feel guilt which is supposed to cause them to then essentially compensate you okay but what if the second individual does not compensate in fact they feel unfairly attacked they feel like the situation they were they were completely reasonable and now they snarl back at which point this person has now been attacked and now they're more anxious and now this sets up an exacerbation cycle where you can get a cycle of negativity that is what I call the chiseling chip and you can have a relationship that is in fact deteriorated over time uh as a result of a steady disagreeable Mutual chiseling uh processes that had taken place and that in principle in the most extraordinary circumstances that is fundamentally due to a misunderstanding and so the only times when I've seen anything where I get anything miraculous for a marriage is when we were in a relatively acute situation based on a series of things that happened where what got kicked off was a a chiseling chip negativity a spiral of a vicious cycle and uh that can happen I had one that that had been going on for quite a while as a result of a blended marriage they had both broken up with spouses and then come together and it was supposed to be so great and then it turned out it's full of conflict uh and the wife was actually quietly pissed off that the man wasn't as wasn't as well financially off as it seemed like he should have been and so she was actually feeling chiseled by all the payments that he had to make to his ex and how hard he had to work and that they didn't have that much money financially and it seemed like the exes were better off financially and there was a there was a a whiny pissed off female uh at the root of this thing and the male was of course feeling very threatened by this he was completely invested in the relationship uh the female was feeling like she had somehow about been chiseled as a result of the outcome of this that was a situation where I felt like the fundamentals between the two people were not cancerous but it was close and I said I don't remember this was 20 years ago but I remember essentially trying to push that agenda hard on the on the female the trying to get clear but the guy was doing everything reasonable that he could that there was nothing about the lack of resources or the they weren't in that bad of shape by the way but the truth is this was all had to do with her expectations and uh and essentially whether or not she could hear the fact that everything that he was doing with this time and energy was signaling that she was extremely valuable and uh one way or the other it didn't look good and I I don't remember if you even had a decent outcome but I remember thinking this one's a shame uh and maybe what sinks it is the fact that she's got a personality that is not willing to tolerate the situation at which point they're dead anyway but it sure as heck wouldn't have seem like that they would have to be dead um anyway where are we getting to so what am I going to tell you your step one if you're trying to save your marriage is to try to figure out what's the dynamic who's chasing okay what what are the payoffs yeah who how invested is everybody and then if there has been um if we are in essentially when we hear that there's arguments that rile up what we're seeing is is that people are feeling chiseled both of them and they are as soon as the quote discussion starts somebody is defending the chiseling that they're doing and it's re uh that they're defending if in fact that that the status quo is that their position and it is reasonable now your your hope for this is that there's more underlying uh uh we've all seen a situation where two people were arguing and then one person essentially took a deep breath backed up apologized for things that they said and acknowledge that the other person had a point and then the other person becomes instantly much more reasonable okay we've all seen that happen we've all hopefully been a party to it this is exactly what it is that you need to do in a situation like this that essentially you have to come in asking questions behind Crystal clearish kind of a theory or concept and that you let them talk and you don't interrupt and you let them say their whole piece and then you question them about anything to make sure that you can now accurately feed back to them what it is that they are saying so you can tell them that this is what you want to do you want to make sure that you completely hear them because you feel like any any discussion starts to wind up in a bunch of hurt feelings and a bunch of argumentation you want to change the frame on this so the way you're going to change it is you have you've got a lot of upset in this inside of you you know that they have it inside of them here's how you want to do it you want to hear from them everything and ever anything and everything that they're upset and unhappy about okay and your job is going to be to ask them questions so that you understand it completely now that could take half an hour okay and you can you have a notepad side of you so the person is not going to think linearly they're not going to lay it out like a brilliant prosecutor it's going to be impressionistic and they're going to circle back around and then they're going to um embellish some point again that they think isn't strongly buffered enough with evidence and they're going to go around it again and again and then your job is to jot down a few things like that and keep asking questions until to the plan you can have interim summaries so it is okay so let me get this straight you're thinking this and you're thinking that and that's because of this and that's because of that because I did this you think that and then then you did this because of that and this is what you think is reasonable you feel it because of this in other words your job is to be able to uh say it back to them so clearly and so accurately and to the point where they say well no no that's not quite what I meant that's not quite what I said let me explain it's a little bit more now if you can then do that what you are seeking is you are seeking a remarkable psychological event that will take place inside of their nervous system you have to be interested enough and motivated enough to get there that uh event in their nervous system is a sense of relaxation and relief that they have finally been understood okay so like you said it all so this is the reason you did that and that's the reason you did this and this is how you feel about this and then this is why you did that and then that's why that happened and then this happened and then you thought this and then I did that and then you got this about it and this is what you feel it's right It's like got it you got it I'll be damned I didn't know it was within you to understand me okay now once you have a total full accounting and two meeting of the minds about what it is that they think and why it is that they think it Etc then you have asked them completely now you can now look at all the entire picture and you can say okay now I wanted to say a few things okay and before you get started what you're going to do is you're going to flood their circuit and you're going to give them every reasonable positive feedback about attributes about them that there is okay before we then begin and we say okay on this point here okay I'm having a problem with this because this is what I think okay and we we then do the same thing the other direction now this seems very mechanical seems like it's impossible okay but it's only impossible if two people both decide that it's not going to happen because if one person decides that it's going to happen then it will happen because all you got to do is keep your mouth shut the Rey's voices are are I believe I think that's a human instinct uh because we believe that our argument is being heard by Third parties who are going to take a cursory vote and side with the winner of the argument which is why human beings are so brilliant in their ability to go for the jugular and to essentially win arguments by making dramatic points and making them with vehements at which point three people that are listening like well Jeb she's got a point okay and that's and suddenly there's costs in the village to being the person that's in the wrong in in a dispute okay it hurts your reputation so I think that's why voices get raised in arguments is because major decisions and major conflict about about anything winds up being adjudicated within it within a village to some to some significant extent and uh and so as a result of that I think that's why voices are raised you are not going to be arguing with anybody because you're going to be asking questions your job is to give them the space to actually fully articulate so that you fully understand okay so that's uh that's how it is that I would uh do this and I would grit your teeth and experiment with it notice your urgency when they say something that you believe that you can Checkmate so easily yeah that doesn't consider this and that and the other okay that takes considered the time when I only did that because the time when you did like you could just feel your anxiety that third parties are listening to their side of the story and they're only hearing one side and that they're winning the argument you've got to relax there is no third party it's just the two of you okay and the fundamental issue is do we have a misunderstanding about how much how valued everybody is because we are in a vicious cycle a swirling cauldron of insults and threats and defection cues okay if that's where we are you're the only one that could possibly stop it okay if it turns out that we're actually in a muddy Mass where we don't have that much uh that much value on either side of the equation then there's no fixing it through quote better communication this is the only better communication that there is any therapist that says we're going to fix the pharmacy relationship by approving your communication is ignoring the possibility that the communication is being heard loud and clearly Not That Into You I'm thinking about leaving that's why I'm late with my secretary every damn night okay as Magic Johnson said the hardest thing about going on the road is not smiling when you kiss your wife goodbye there are there are legitimate conflicts of interest and the notion that marriages can be fixed under this conflicts of interests are sort of you know that's an inevitable like this but it's inevitable that if people are proper and good that they could fix it is utterly ludicrous okay nowhere in this species anywhere in time is it ever the case the two people got together 24 got married were happy I had five kids and then that the standard operating procedure was that they were happy 50 years later nobody looked at another possible mate and seriously considered effective that is zero not a single culture okay so I think we know that people are trying to make 50-year decisions with a five-year chip okay and so you know in this particular situation I don't know what the whole cost benefit picture is but um it's unlikely that there's actually a quote good and happy one it might be okay and if it is your best Pathway to try to underwind a vicious cycle that sits between you guys in a better happier equilibrium is crystal clear and flooding circuits and that's what we do wow all right hopefully that's enough not much yet to add after 25 minutes I the only thing that I would add is that the you know Notch there is a personality Dimension to raising voices and shouting um and there is a little bit of probably extra disagreeableness in in both parties um or or one party that is bringing it out in the other just because that is setting the Threshold at which you start to feel chiseled um and so it would be you know you could be sort of a a little Anthropologist of your own relationship was this always the case did did conflicts always escalate or is there a particular conflict that's happening now that seems to escalate because the stakes are so high that would give you a little bit of a clue but there are certainly couples out there who can have very big conflicts of interest and they they're they're working through it as best they can but nobody's yelling at each other um because they're that's just not in the personality in the nervous system so um they might get passive aggressive they might you know just sort of display to the other person um the the Fiend The the sort of hey this is unfair I'm being chiseled you need to change your behavior the signal is it has the same intent as the yelling but not everybody has yelling as part of their kind of personality repertoire I guess is what I would add to that um so and then the the other thing is that I always the there's there's one communication technique that you can kind of uh improve and and if you're both sort of being reactive and you can't get into this without getting into the like my blood pressure went up when you started to model the back and forth like the oh but you don't yeah yeah you gotta you gotta understand you don't know how I've been wronged so like standing back and realizing that you were answering from a position of this person does not understand that I am the more wronged party here if that is actually what is underlying your desire to communicate that is a sort of check yourself before you wreck yourself moment and you you can step out of the discussion and go write that down instead of instead of speaking it or shouting it you know you can take more time and you can kind of vet your thoughts as you as you sort them out and you communicate them in a different way okay um and so kind of taking the time like saying hey I'm too hot under the collar right now to keep having this conversation like let me gather my thoughts and let me process the points that you've made and really think about them rather than feeling really self-defensive and I know that I'm going to be more reactive in the moment because maybe I'm a little more disagreeable maybe I have a little higher degree of emotional instability whatever it is so so you can play with how like the actual mode of communication um to a point where it might help you communicate more effectively so that that is one change you can make yeah there's um I will I learned this from Nathaniel Brandon you know 30 years ago that um he made a point once and and I I'm glad he made it somewhere in some book that he wrote Because I wouldn't have thought of it and and since that time I've used it many times when there are tough situations I'll have people write to each other and uh and that's that's you know write emails or whatever it is the point is is that uh depending upon what the thing is and who they are I might have them actually write you know paper and pencil and cards or whatever it is but the point is is that most definitely emails very often if we've got tough things to say it's way better to say I'm in an email where where we can really carefully think through what it is that we want to say uh and they don't have to react in the moment they can they can look at that thing get be all pissed off as it activates a bunch of defensive argumentativeness and then they get to come back if you've done a really good job being solemn and attempt to be fair they can go and look at it again and suddenly we get that you know creeping realization that the other person had a point okay when we're in the heat of it we don't acknowledge anything this is like uh this is this is total denial you know I mean that's the that's the that's the modus operandi for winning most arguments so the uh as we get away from winning arguments and trying to instead optimize the possibilities for happiness in a relationship that's a different outcome goal than winning the argument uh and as a result a lot of times the willingness to be reasonable will seep in if we write to people reasonably but honestly about what it is that weird things going on and it's then better uh it if it's potentially gives rise to a better process than than having it verbal so anyway these are just some ideas all right all right so we have one just comment here it says the that you and I might enjoy going to the Darwin Research Center on the nha's Galapagos Island Cruise in 2023. yeah that sounds pretty cool uh yeah we'll look into that I don't know what what international travel will look like in 2023 I'm I'm not optimistic right so wear a mask outside counting Turtles that's right that's right but yeah I did hear about that it looks very very cool um so this is a this is an interesting question I know I saw some references to this I don't know much about it um are you familiar with the theory of mass formation psychosis that Dr Malone has frequently cited recently he's noted a large portion of the population is seemingly actually blind to any facts and data that do not support their intervention as sars2 vaccine approach he concludes that they have gone insane akin to being in a hypnotized state that prevents them from thinking rationally are there elements of this theory that you think have Merit if so would you mind rephrasing in an EPA I've seen references to this I saw the little video with Malone's voiceover I know Chris Martinson is very Enchanted by it um some other people that I I really respect to me I haven't looked deeply into it because it just reeks of kind of sociological um you know I I always get skeptical as I as I've talked about before when the unit of analysis is the collective you know if you're sort of like oh these social changes happen because there is this blob of the collective and it is subject to something like Mass hypnosis that just doesn't check out with me as someone who subjects who subjects every analysis and is very much biased toward methodological individualism so the unit of analysis is the individual and they're they're subjective rationality that's my partner just bring this complete total beautiful whole people uh generally don't appreciate um how incredibly valuable it is to you know it's probably not so great for chemists to be working with a sociologist but to have a political scientist and a psychologist working together we are we're 15 degrees rotated apart and that gives us two different perspectives that are very close but we have we're looking at very similar types of problems and so that your conceptualization of this Collective versus the if it is so is so it's something it's not a way that I have thought although it gets down to group selection versus individuals right same same problem it's it's got this in it's intuitively exciting it's sexy it sounds fun it's like it looks like that's what happens because you see different groups kind of adopt similar Behavior across cultures and all these things but it's um it just does not ring true to me as a as a methodological technique and um and I think it's uh it gets it gets promoted and picked up by people who don't have um you know I I wouldn't even say don't have social science training because it does get picked up by a lot of social science strange folks um and just a lot of people are biased in that direction but I I am not so I don't know deeply what the theory says my familiarity is super passing just that it is some kind of I know it's founded on people feeling the sense of on we which is also this kind of very sociological you know this this kind of restlessness this this uh rootlessness feeling like oh there's no meaning in the world and so they're more susceptible to something like Mass hypnosis right is is there a process in which individuals are um you know undergoing all kinds of confirmation bias and tribalism and um all of these other things that that are part and parcel with something that looks like Mass hypnosis tone totally but we could talk about that in very different ways and still ground it in the the individual making rational decisions for their personal welfare and their their evolutionary success and that's exactly what this is everybody so yeah I when we when we've looked at uh Robert Malone who we we have great respect for um we we see the the lack of understanding so what uh what's going on the only thing that happens in Psychology happens inside an individual nervous system there's nothing out in the either okay uh so it's just it's just whatever that whatever neurons are firing in there and the purpose of all the neurons that are firing in there is exactly One Singular purpose which is to optimize the gene survival of that particular genotype so that is why it is that individual is thinking what it's thinking that's why it's therefore feeling what it's feeling and therefore that's why it's behaving in the way it's behaving so there is no such thing as a mass hypnosis or psychosis that doesn't make any sense at all so what we see instead is simply individuals we do see something fascinating which is uh there there might be things like this somewhere in nature there might be some uh extraordinary zoologists somewhere that can give up with give us a similar example of what I'm about to describe but really nothing nothing that other uh nothing really resembles what happens in human beings and let me explain why so well what happens is is that if we were to look at um the the features of a human being's life which have uh which contribute to the threats or or prom or opportunities in terms of increasing or decreasing a likelihood of Gene survival we're going to find certain it's all about themselves versus their environment okay the um and so they have a relationship to the environment and the relationship to the environment one of the relationships you have to the environment is um is just the physical parameters of the environment that you're in how cold it is how hot it is how much water is there how much fruit how many predators how many little bugs uh etc etc there's we could we could parse that out and we could choose to call that your physical environment and it's a pretty damn big deal when it gets really shitty it's bad when it gets really good it's pretty good it's not that great uh I can tell you that if you take super depressed people a suicidal miserable heart heart broken you know Etc and that you say oh listen not a problem I'm going to put you on a really nice beach in Maui okay and I'm going to stick a virgin pina colada in your hand that's the best virgin pina colada you ever had and you're going to sit right there and watch the legs waves lap up and it's going to be 80 four degrees sunny and pleasant with a light Breeze and you're going to hear sea birds chirping and pleasant happy people walking around how happy will you be miserable you may be miserable minus two percent okay but the bottom line is whatever it is that caused your misery hasn't gone anywhere we've just changed your location and it didn't make that much difference so the truth of the matter is on the negative side it could be extremely negative could be incredibly negative if the environment is bad enough but once we reach a threshold of half-assed decent relationship between self and environment I.E I'm living somewhere seven thousand feet up you know with a bunch of villagers in Peru and it's tight and there's not that many calories but there's enough and I'm working all day long and it's tough on my hands but I'm getting adapted to it and you know it's all right it's like okay I got enough to eat I I'm safe with sleep the bugs aren't eating me this is not that bad okay now so now we can see what could change this to bat bad could be hey there's three guys in this Village that you know hate Caucasian people and I just got dropped off here for some reason I'm in trouble okay that's bad another good thing would be hey everybody's cool and there's a really you know great gorgeous gal there smiling at me and thinks I'm cool for some reason my environmental circumstances with respect to my survival aren't that great but they are for reproduction they're better than they've ever been at which point how happy am I super happy okay so now what we're going to see is that when it comes to humans the most important part of your environment isn't the physical parameters of you versus nature it's actually your esteem it has to do with your your status okay so it has to do with you know what mating prospects do you have what friends do you have and whether or not you have a good trade situation with respect to Market processes that's it there now so as a result of that uh this is all about your standing vis-a-vis the tribe and you know the different relationships within the tribe and so it's going to turn out that the uh therefore the most important thing um is going to be what other people in the tribe think of you that's going to turn out to be actually the most important variable in your ability to survive and reproduce Therefore your Gene survival is more more centered more of the variance In human gene survival has depended upon how popular you were than any other variable in human Natural History so therefore it makes sense then that what counts is what they think is unbelievably important so if they are all wrong about something they are all wrong down to the last four-year-old in the village they all believe in something that isn't true they all believe that there's some night out there where the star crosses this star and that thing goes there where we're all going to die we're all we're going to be bathed in gold or whatever the hell it is that they believe the point is you're designed by nature to actually believe what they believe even if you've got logical Aristotelian logic buried into your Stone Age brain that is used for every other problem that there is which is Gee you know you know if I drop a rock will it will it go up to the sky or hit my foot that's not a matter of debate you have a tremendous amount of understanding of Nature and you Reason by by the use of the law of non-contradiction so you have reasoning mechanisms inside of you that cannot be fooled uh in terms of how this how things work however if it turns out that everybody else has a mistake about what it is that there if there's a if there's a popular epicenter of an error then it's going to turn out that there that epicenter can gather essentially Gather in brain by brain every single brain says wait a second I'm better off believing that and the thing is this gets to be this interesting discussion that a guy like Sam Harris can do very well basically saying there's these fuzzy areas where you're not sure if you believe it or not you sort of do believe something in other words your brain is not a unitary digital computer that is linear and goes through a linear set of operations it's a it's a it's a holistic multiple computer system where it has different conclusions that it has about the same thing when it turns out all it's going to take for something that's a little unclear about what the truth is and that you your logical operation mechanism sees all kinds of problems with the other the arguments of the village but if you sniff yours uh notice the win and realize I'm more likely to survive and Reaper it is if I seem to believe what the village believes I'm better off and that is what this is it's not mass psychosis this is the fact that the the individual actually has an Adaptive unconscious that will cause them to believe things that are not logical because what's logical folks it just happens to be most of the time the most useful thing to identify but if the most useful thing to identify is the only reason that's true is it aids in your survival and reproductive success okay it's why you don't try to swim in a tree the uh because it's not logical however if it turns out that the hot chick in the group think such and such suddenly I'm going to start to my mind start fading over and considering whether or not that's possible she she just did some mushrooms she's off swimming in a tree suddenly you can swim in trees it's like I just acquired the skill set yeah this is one of the most extraordinary characteristics uh of all of the many extraordinary characteristics about the human mind this is one of them and that is that a human being will think when it is biologically programmed to think because that's what that process is it's a you know how do we put together a uh a coordination of integration of information I.E thinking and part of that is what conclusion can I come to that will optimize my Gene survival okay well in this case I have to compute in what all the idiots around me think and so as a result of that now it's like okay well I find myself believing something that is actually other parts of my brain are saying that's irrational that that violates a lot you know the law of contradiction oh well okay and now I actually feel it why because the thoughts are the feelings or derivatives of these computations okay and you can even feel the anxiety and irritation with those that disagree with you okay even though you've got the IQ and The Logical operation centers to know that this is full of [ __ ] but the truth is that's quiet it's a lot quieter than the louder voice that says survive and reproduce survive and reproduce survive and reproduce survive and reproduce you go right ahead and Nod and you say yeah that's right everybody should get backs because we need to protect ourselves it needs to be we need to be safe day it's like yeah there you go and then how you you you feel and then you behave thought feeling Behavior that's what this is it's not a psychosis okay this is a cleverly engineered roofs inside the nervous system this is not much different uh than what goes on with males who have evidence inside there that the female does not qualify for long-term care bonding strategy but they are miraculously obtuse in identifying that truth until they've impregnated her three months later at which point they suddenly come out of the either now if you think that they know that they're full of [ __ ] I'm telling you as somebody when who's been there with my incredibly lackluster and minimalistic history I've actually been there a few times where my nervous system had knowledge that it wasn't going to fly but it was in sort of a muddy Gray area hopeful you know what I'm saying but not knowing and then it becomes clearer later Okay so Dr Jed Hawk has has labeled this brilliantly which will be a chapter title called True Lies so the the individuals designed by nature to lie to themselves which has been well explored by Robert rivers and even better by George Orwell okay so if you're going to lie you can't hide it from yourself you you I mean you have to hide it from yourself first so that you don't know so the people that are this is amazing that high highly intelligent people can look at the evidence of this situation and somehow infer that everybody needs to be vaxxed in order to protect us because why because it makes no sense that once you've established that the virus does not that the vaccines don't stop the spread at that moment that entire argument became 100 illogical okay but because there was tremendous motivation on the part of many individuals to have this continue and we don't even need to talk about the phenomenal amount of accumulation of capital that is driving uh this position that what happens is is that it it has created essentially a swirling cauldron that Robert Malone looks at and other commentators and they call it a math psychosis it's nothing psychotic at all it's a very intelligently derived inference about when it is time to have a true life and that is what this is the individual is operating on their own best interest this is the best way as one always does one always does yeah it's it's we we wouldn't call it Mass hypnosis or mass psychosis when the same thing is happening in a more sort of righteous Direction so there is a lot of political science work in what's called political opportunity structure to describe social movements or revolutions right so um it's never subjectively individually particularly rational to stick your neck out and go to the protest against the authoritarian regime that has tanks out that that are going to run you over um most people are individually making the decision hey other people can go to that protest other people can try to overthrow the authoritarian state I'm not going to but sometimes you have this effervescence of social social behavior where where there's this Tipping Point where the collective suddenly surges and and this is like one of political science's favorite puzzles like what is this what happens like why do revolutions sometimes happen and the most convincing argument I believe is is this political opportunity structure argument which is that people are looking at um they're sniffing which way the wind is blowing they're looking at their position they start to look at the likelihood of you know well I'm picking up that certain people like looks like things are kind of moving in this direction it looks like it has a chance you know and obviously there are pioneers who are irrational they have very unusual personalities that they're getting this thing started but it does it can become um more powerful over time as as people shift their understanding of reality to see themselves in a future that is created by this behavior that they couldn't see before um and and you're seeing exactly the same thing happening now where people are like oh this is the way that it should be this is the this is the truth of the situation so we we call it when we don't like it Mass hypnosis or mass psychosis and when we like it and we feel it's very righteous and and Progressive and exciting we we call that like you know a social movement or a revolution um but it's it's really the same sort of thing right just these are just little bowl Weebles with a cost benefit mechanism inside their head behaving in a way that's in the best interest of their genes that's fundamentally what's happening and if there's one thing to underline is that when you don't understand something about a human a human being look for status because status can be the most confusing variable for you to sniff out yeah like you can't understand you know why would someone put an experimental vaccine into their four-year-old's arm where the four-year-old has zero chance of death or disability from this disease but there is a known risk for doing this yeah it seems incredible that anybody would do this particularly I mean it's one thing if you're a feeble-minded 75 IQ individual that's fairly literate and you're just doing what the authorities tell you it's something else again when you're 130 IQ and you got a degree in English from Swarthmore and that's who's doing it and that's who's pushing it okay yeah and so when you see that what could it possibly be and the answer is status okay that's the currency that sits underneath this thing so the status is the cause of the so-called Mass psychosis and of course status is obviously there was uh is what's sitting at the root of a revolution okay so the same thing is beautiful yeah better better to be a low-level apparatic in the in the new Vanguard than in a prison camp it's like so my my undergraduate advisor you know this has been his life's work is sort of making this argument that if you have political chaos the the party that emerges triumphant it does not matter what the ideology of that party is there's there's no sort of you know oh things were chaotic in this direction and the economy looked like this so therefore the more Progressive no none of that matters the the party that triumphs is the one that has the most Clarity the most ideological certainty the the the one that can tell you that where you'll have a position in in the future in their vision of how the future should be so if you feel secure as you hit yourself to that wagon um that then you're like okay well they come to power and I can keep doing this little job and I can keep I I can still make enough money to provide for my family and I'm not going to be in the gulag and that's I'm going with Joe no no pun intended Joe Joe is a general name not as our president um but uh but that is what that's how people operate they're looking for certainty they're looking for clarity they're looking for um the the term of art as ontological security um and so that's that's how the most people the the mass psychosis drifts in that direction and right now that that certainty is is in the direction of following State mandates doing what the government says is is best and safe for everybody very interesting what that is is that that is a the clarity of the message uh and its believability is influencing the the coefficients the probability coefficients about how things are going to come out right totally missing it's reducing variance and he even talks about that the sort of um yeah the the discounting the the future discounting and all of the he makes a very economic argument about this so yeah that's totally what's going on it becomes more rational as you have more evidence of the probability of success totally just think uh for for people that are uh trying to follow the argument so you can imagine a very common nervous system if you tell them okay listen we've got an investment here it's going to make you 10 a year okay and it's a good chance it's going to happen there's a 70 chance if you stick it in here you're gonna just you're gonna chunk away at 70 uh 10 another one you could lose it all and more or you could get twice as much what are you going to do you can just feel the human being say I want that thing that I can see what it's going to be and like it makes sense to me and it seems reasonable so I need to clear most people some some people have higher risk tolerance that are going to behave differently but we're talking about the middle of the bell curve here this is like the drift of humanity follows this sort of like the the clear rationality yeah it makes sense all right well what else we got Jen oh well Patrick I'm gonna punt your question to next time because I think it's going to take longer than a few minutes to answer and I I have to go at four today so um or shortly thereafter so it's about the kind of the limits of behavioral genetics and I think it deserves more than uh six minutes so um I apologize Patrick I know but I know you'll be here next time and we can talk about it in the in the village Makeup Session too um so we can I think the next one in the queue here very quick one um are either of you showing up in person anywhere these days like true north or the fasting Escape we we used to give talks there but with covet is that all in the past yeah yeah I don't think we're talking I don't know I I'm given some talks this year um a few yeah you went to you went to like uh the engine two and I was at NHA um yeah we've we've done a couple of things it's it's muted yeah I think the next thing scheduled is March or something yeah so it's just I guess we'll let you know uh when things are happening but not much going yeah people are just canceling left and right you know things that were supposed to happen but uh I don't know maybe the Galapagos um and then this one's pretty quick too so in a past q a I heard you describe men seeing themselves as night Prince and King as they age will you please explain so um I think I've I've talked about that because that's Allison Armstrong's um archetypal framework that other people have kind of danced around this or used something similar but she specifically kind of talks about those stages and I don't think it's so much that they see themselves that way but that these are archetypes to ex to sort of uh characterize what's most valuable to them um and and what's most motivating them at different stages in life so they're sort of speaking to display different qualities and and attract different different qualities in a mate um and prioritize different things in life throughout time so the the Knight who uh is is trying to prove himself and to you know as highly adrenalized and is out there fighting Wars and and fighting for honors very different than the king who is won his Wars and now is like consolidating his kingdom and is and is ready to focus on his legacy the Knight doesn't care about his legacy he just cares about looking cool and being fancy and you know killing some people on the battlefield that he can brag about back at the pub so this is they're they're archetypes they're not they're not literally how um every guy is gonna gonna see himself um but they help make sense of the passages of the masculine Journey yeah um yeah yes the the Clint Eastwood said something interesting um which it would be required of a Movie Maker because it's an unbelievably difficult and chancy process uh to to work in Hollywood and he said when you're a young man you take a bunch of chances in the middle of your life you don't take any chances and then as as you age maybe you take chances again it's like interesting yeah it's very interesting to hear him say that and I could really see that you know there'd be a point to harvest your abilities and success by doing things that you knew that you could do and that would be successful you know once you manage to fight to the top of a pack and actually get yourself an audience then you better Harvest it for a while you might spend 20 25 years just harvesting you know making you know Cannonball Run five or whatever the hell it is not I mean whatever works and then Sunday again get out there be willing to go out on the limb and uh and and seeing what what you still have any uh that made sense to me yeah yeah so so yeah if you're interested in that that's the um the specific framework Allison Armstrong she has a couple of books but uh keys to the kingdom is like this kind of uh Fable it's a it's a quasi what's a fictional sort of as a as a older woman to a younger woman this is this is how the world Works kind of fable so it's a very interesting book and she's a um she's lovely as a as a teacher and just as a human so she's all over YouTube if you're interested too so I highly highly recommend Alison um see what other quick ones we have that I can knock out here oh you guys so many questions um this one comes up a lot how do I get Dr Lyle esteem Dynamics certified like Justina thank you there is no certification I don't know how this rumor got started but I get emails about this all the time um so that's not a thing it might be a thing in the future um but it is not a thing now so sorry about that um that was uh that's a specific individual that did a very long drawn out laborious process uh that was absolutely determined to get confident uh at a uh assisting people with their eating and did so that's a person that we we now gladly refer to as a result of a lot of effort on her partner yeah but as we say maybe in the future we'll we'll do something like that but that was a unique situation yeah all right well one minute how would we explain the monk that set himself on fire in the Vietnam war protest um yeah that's interesting the uh any kind of suicidal type behavior um is likely engineered um that you know this is going to be engineered in different ways so the you could imagine for example in the same way that a suicide bomber you know how would you explain that the the answer is um that in that case they took nerdy Wells and then they recruited them and then they paid their families a fortune and had enormous parties for them about what great people they were and what in other words they reversed their Fortune uh of what their what their importance was to their tribe from being a cost to their tribe to a tremendous benefit to their tribe and then the person can't back out okay so you you mousetrap the genetic codes uh survival instincts in that way in the same way something Akin happens uh in suicide where there's a way for me to be more valuable in my genes dead than alive okay and um and so that happens that's what is happening in suicide writ large and it's going to happen with any bizarre thing like that in other words uh uh so that that's what's happening the yeah what's usually sitting under that question I'm not accusing this person of that is that there's usually somebody's frustrated with the notion and with the basic underlying ruthless logic of the self-esteem okay and that's because they have felt altruistic they believe they see altruism the selfish Gene once you understand it is very is completely acknowledging that altruism is that is the problem that Richard Dawkins was writing about right was how on Earth is their altruistic behavior in the world when we know that that we have to be engineered for self-interest as an organism and the answer is oh the organism isn't interested in the organism the organism's interested in its genes and there's going to be individualized uh locations in motivation where it's going to be worth you sacrificing yourself because you've got genes out there that will benefit if you do so so that's the answer to any and all Mysteries uh with respect to what looks to be spectacularly altruistic behavior is it could absolutely be altruistic at the level of the individual but it is not altruistic at the level of the gene and so that individual May is making some kind of calculation or what's in the Gene's best interest they may be wrong but they may be right and in a particularly distorted nervous system like someone that would set themselves on fire that computation is what the Adaptive unconscious came to was that the best thing that I could do for my gene pool is to be a hero that did something incredible because guess what otherwise I'm a total freaking nut loser that isn't having any success in life at all so if I do this maybe my genes are better off and that's a bizarre computation to make but that's the competition that's gonna once in a blue moon we're going to see that competition okay yeah and that specific case I know historians have actually there is a story you know so I I don't know it offhand but you know the you could you could dig into who that monk was and what the backstory is and the the story of the photo and people trying to stop him and everything I've I've read bits here and there and I just don't remember the details but I know that quite a bit is known about him um and uh about the plan to do that and um so yeah that would be interesting trust me yeah well no pun intended geez oh total accident good pretty bad all right with that we all cut the stream okay before it gets worse all right everybody we will see you next time have a have a good night all right bye bye
Back to the top
🏃     👖




Artist