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Beat Your Genes Podcast & More

Living Wisdom Library Q&A
2022-03-25
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okay okay all right all right I'm just fixing settings um all right so now that we've we've explained the uh the apocalypse and gone through all of that now we can focus on other stuff no problems that's right that's right sounds good okay so uh for anybody who is new or doesn't know the drill there's a q a section so you can uh pose your questions there and people can um upvote and also comment on those questions if they are so inclined to kind of help us get a sense of what you want us to most answers so um looks like people have already jumped in here uh please help I am a 32 year old man that has recently joined a department of all women there are nine of us in total after a few months of exposure I'm not much better off knowing how to navigate the landscape of female hierarchies just treading water in a sea of passive aggressive emails yeah that's that's pretty much how it's gonna go I have two Brothers No Sisters and have either been involved in exclusively male or co-ed activities like sports marching band previous jobs never exclusively in a female grouping of some sort what has become apparent to me is my strategy for building relationships is centered around a lot of ball busting and con and for conflict resolution I've done best with being direct without mincing words now I worry that I have to use kid gloves in every situation but fear I might be over correcting at the same time please comment looking at you Dr Hawk on the structure nature of female group dynamics in any Do's don'ts for someone in my situation oh man yeah I would actually give somebody uh my here's my first pass and then you you have at it sure go ahead this house is that uh essentially if you're if you're in a new situation uh particularly or or a new aspect of a situation but so your your uh what you want to do is to not criticize anybody so you wanna you wanna be careful to put yourself in a position where so here here's what's going to happen in group dynamics so it doesn't matter whether it's male or female the uh the the males are probably going to be more aggressive at trying to essentially figure out where your fealties might be and try to drag you onto their team and you might make statements that are more inherently aggressive because you'll be shadowing very aggressive statements okay the females are going to be doing the same things except it's going to be a hell of a lot more subtle just generally so the um but what you want to do is you want to realize that that is what's going to be taking place is that uh essentially that that what people do is they try to consolidate coalitions and so they're trying to uh people are trying to put you in their Coalition one way or the other or determine if you're in somebody else's Coalition Etc your your job when you're not sure what the landscape is or how to navigate it is what I call never criticize nobody okay uh if you do anything uh the it was it became Infamous in sports broadcasting uh the the most successful sports broadcasters were those that never criticized anybody all they said over and over again he's one of the best in the league it's like everybody that touched the ball everybody that they put one of the best everybody that had a penalty called on him well he's just such an unsung hero about offensive line he's one of the best in the league that's how guys like Pat Summerall had 40-year careers in broadcasting and always had very you know good ratings Pleasant management like them no controversy okay the uh Tiger Woods finally wised up after being early in his career he they would say what do you think of the course well he thinks this he thinks that he finally realized it came through three three answers uh course looks good I feel good I like my chances are you gonna win are you going to beat so and so what do you think about Nicholson Bubba course looks good I feel good I like my chances that's it so that's the uh when you're in political trouble uh which you know this smells like potential political trouble that's the right move oh it is anybody yeah yeah that's the idea that's how an old Mafia Chieftain winds up not getting killed if there's an old Mafia guys 70 years old what did he do he was super careful okay super careful never criticize nobody the uh obviously there's going to be exceptions to that role but you they should be extremely carefully considered well it's interesting about that um I believe that so human nature generally that has not been true because we're incredibly uh critical of our competitors and we're looking to drag them down in hierarchies while we Ascend and we're looking to test who would be a DLT members of our Coalition so clearly uh criticism uh talk to mind people's backs Etc this is a totally natural process of human uh uh Power consolidation subcoalition development within groups Etc clearly that's how it is the um that doesn't mean this is a great example of what this is about beating your chains beating your genes just having the self-discipline to realize whoa I am being lured into something that looks like I'm being offered an entree into a subcoalition here okay and they're they're putting a cookie right in front of me to try to get me to bite out of it and then thereby getting me partially committed to this path of action in a subcoalition that's a mistake you signal early and immediately that you are Switzerland okay and you just have that attitude about that that means they're gonna quit hitting you up for that pretty soon because they found out that it didn't work okay Ai and that you're a little bit dangerous in that regard because they are essentially showing their hand uh and giving you information but you're not giving them anything back that's useful yeah so that this is this is the strategy for tricky political situations uh I myself have violated this consistently in my life good though you're better than most yeah it's interesting because this person is in a very uh interesting and somewhat unique uh situation and that you can do this you can be Switzerland because you're the only male um it's actually going to be easier for you to pull that off than if you were another female if you're another female and you're trying to be Switzerland with nine other women like good [ __ ] luck you're you're actually going to make things worse for yourself because you're very suspicious and it's like well she must be if she's beating Switzerland with me that means she's totally in League with those guys over there who I hate because they're terrible and and I I have some evidence for that and it's just going to be a total mess but you can absolutely as the sole male in this block of hens you can you can uh carve out that position and be really neutral and channel your inner Tiger Woods and and get away with it um and and just you're just gonna have to be incredibly consistent which is which which brings me to my next question which is are you single um do they know it um and is there anybody that you're attracted to um uh you know or are there several people that you're attracted to um and are you thinking about signaling that in any kind of way God forbid um because that is if you're single or or even if you're not married I mean even it's there are all kinds of things that could go on but but you if you if you're perceived as eligible yeah um that adds a whole layer of complexity to the dynamic here and and so every perceived flirtation that's going on is it's it's going to complicate your whole situation so the the only way you can get out of that is if you are uh if they don't know if you're single and you're not attracted to anybody to the point of like really wanting to like risk your job to move on that person then tell them you're married and have kids and and get little stock photos to have photos that you can show like basically completely remove yourself from that that whole equation because you start building social relationships with any of these people the truth is going to come out you're going to start you know bonding with them if there's somebody who is is such a potential uh high value pair bond mate that you're willing to throw the whole job away to go after it then that's a whole that's a different conversation um but uh yeah I think it's it's important to have that in mind from the start to in addition to signaling that your Switzerland politically your Switzerland as romantically as well because if you're if you're giving different signals to different women in that group they will sniff it out and figure it out and there will be hell to pay all right fun question yep okay let's see what else we have yes I've got yes there's a third dog this is uh the little one back there who's hanging out she's head to head with Melly they're bonding the little sister over here um she has yet to have her her official name uh her shelter name is Princess um and so I intermittently call her that but if you've seen the Grinch there's the the little girl in Whoville who wins over the Grinch's heart is named Cindy Lou and she has big round Cindy Lou eyes and so I've been kind of uh intermittently calling her Cindy Lou as well so just kind of she's in the process of telling me her name but yeah she's she obviously loves her big sister back there so all right moving on to official questions um uh myself and other beat your jeans fans understanding from quite extensive reading of books and studies on personality is that one one of the properties of extraversion that correlates with other properties of an extrovert is that they are high in positive affect the behavior of an extrovert is a cause or effect of that positive emotion conscientious to conscientiousness is not correlated with negative affects being fearful and anxious but with happiness apparently because conscientious people reach their goals more often according to studies referenced by metal three neuroticism is not principally about excitability but about negative affect can you point us to some evidence of what seems to be your alternative point of view if you read sample questions that are used in personality tests to determine your traits they alone support the above I think a fair reading of any of the better personality literature from Netherland Miller also supports the above similar to a question we had last time where we were talking about sort of the the vicissitudes of neuroticism and how much of that is negative emotional effect and versus versus just kind of volatility we covered a little bit of this in the last q a but um yeah let me take a uh uh let me take a little sword through the gordian knot the the uh this is a uh this is a problem with anybody that's actually uh you're if they're trying to synthesize uh principle out of the empirical literature the uh building that and that empirical literature is building itself out of the big five we start walking into making inferences that are in trouble okay so they could be useful uh so for example the notion that that conscientiousness is associated with positive affect because of better life outcomes that's not true at the 99 percentile folks to that level and that is you get hyper conscientious people that are chronically anxious swearing by the only relief they ever get is from their meditation and and that they try to do as much as they possibly can uh this is the the the the the the root generating personality characteristic of anorexia nervosa in other words there are all kinds of problems associated with being in the tail end about belker but if you do that research obviously you're going to find that people from the you know from the 50th to the 90th percentile and conscientiousness are going to be better off than the people from the 10th to the 50th because of exactly the same kind of thing that is involved in IQ okay so uh IQ also is helping people avoid shitty outcomes uh and as a result and so is higher conscientiousness so but that doesn't that that isn't detracting from that isn't that evidence isn't contradicting what is that we're seeing so the there everything doesn't move in main effects on in in a general living or statistical model where you know 10 is good 20 is better 30 is better 40 is better and then 50 is better it's like no you can get too far and now we wind up with funny looking characteristics taking place all right now second of all so first of all we we're going to set that aside not not that it isn't interesting to look at somebody's empirical collection of evidence in a given sample it can be interesting we have to look at what they measured how they measured it how they operationalize things this starts to get um you know may be useful to do the um however there there we start to lose a very important uh truth about even looking at personality uh when we start looking down the the lines as if these are these ingredients that are not vastly finer than this it isn't the big five it's 25 000 genes okay right 25 000 genes that actually act often in concert with each other in completely you know combinations that will never be figured out by any computer program in the future history of all thought and and knowledge okay so effectively this is uh uh so for example the way this is going to work is you're going to have uh you will see things like in monozygotic twins um this is this type of thing by the way is very common seeing in monopsychotic twins you'll you'll see to my my monozygotic twins that both walk into the ocean backwards right that's always my favorite example that's such a specific circuit there are very many other examples of that the spousal name I always love that one too like you know they wind up marrying somebody with exactly the same name and and I think most people have an intuition for that they're you like some names better than other names there are some names that just sound more pleasing to you and you know if you date a guy with a name that is not pleasing to you there's a little there's something in there that's sort of you don't you don't like it as much and so you're less likely all things equal to marry that guy always wanted to meet a girl named Michelle oh interesting I always did okay very very feminine sounding yeah very yes yes Valentina okay we're two to two names so like uh you know until I ran into a Christina that I didn't have a lot of okay but uh ruined for life it's actually really interesting but then uh anyway the point of all this is that the the these uh big five uh things are useful generally because they're obviously we're able to look at a real world problem uh what we what we're looking at when you're looking at behaviors you're looking at the the analysis of the cost benefit of a set of of uh threats and opportunities in an environment so the uh the the uh what do you call it extrovert they're going to say okay that's more optimistic are we sure we measured that properly is it it's optimistic about social relationships now social relationships are a big part of human nature but they're not a part of everything okay so did were they smart enough to realize we need to look at that optimism vis-a-vis something other some other uh you know thing okay so for example how about you know the optimism about a new stock offering is that you know but maybe that's a little too social but maybe we could look at something else the uh your your optimism about whether or not you can oh I don't know solve a math problem okay so uh so once we we uh once we give you a certain amount of experience with the new math problem and we uh and we've controlled for your IQ for example map IQ is it true that extroverts uh a 75th percentile extrovert versus a 25th percentile extrovert are actually in any way measurably different at their perceived probability of success you know with respect to solving this new category of math problems so I guarantee you that research didn't look at that so yeah that research probably looked at a bunch of things that are involved social relationship issues and didn't specifically pull that out of the equation to say to see and of course what extraversion would be almost by definition is a more optimistic view of whether or not it's worth talking to somebody sure so in other words why go to the trouble of expending the time and energy taking that away from my carving that I'm doing you know if I'm Michelangelo okay so it was Michelangelo on extrovert I don't know I don't think so but the point is is that he was pretty damn optimistic about his ability to do big things but he might not have been so optimistic you know about chit chatting with the you know with everybody else Etc so why did he do something that was solitary well it wasn't because he wasn't optimistic now this is this is where this gets tricky and that can move that can move over time like I've become less extroverted because my CB and whether it's useful to talk to that person has gotten more narrow as I meet more people and I'm like oh your variety number 72 of human I've run into you before and I have a I have a sense of how this is going to go because I have experience it's not that I'm I am less optimistic overall but I'm less optimistic about that particular interaction because I have a lot of data that I'm bringing to bear on the question and so that's a that's a life figure that's a personality change um that is informed by life experience so that can happen too yeah just to get really nasty it's it's effective personality change that's not a personality change that's why I did the scare quotes but yeah yeah yeah anyway so it's a very good question and occasionally it's what uh it's worth looking at the literature to try to sniff out what might be being some some truth that may be being distilled out of there um but I think that that if we get if we if we um if we move away from the notion that these things are very good broad heuristics but they are not finely grained uh formulas that you can that you can be making derivatives out of uh too well it gets to it's going to get messy like I said it's going to get Messier what was something else that they said or they said that neuroticism is just uh oh that stability is uh excitability inside oh there is no instability I can't remember it sounded like they were saying that criticism is not principally about excitability but about negative affects but that's in somebody else somebody's particular factor analysis that's true okay so the truth is somebody somebody's running a factor analysis uh you can't tell me there aren't extraordinary differences in people with respect to their emotional volatility and that it doesn't just go to the negative there is no way it's very clear to me that volatility goes both ways you know like uh I mean it's obvious to me so if they aren't finding that if I'm understanding that correctly if they're not finding that they're not looking in the right way okay so so very often in in my career as a academic psychologist and student you would see people with a data set making inferences that looked looked good and solid and were publishable but it was very easy to see it from another perspective and see how they would measure it from a different angle that they would have come up with something very different uh so anyway that's uh I think that I think actually I somewhere um I'm not it may have been Miller or it may have been myself that I I can't really remember it may have been Miller out of spent and I looked at stability maybe for the first time not as neuroticism that I had classically looked at it but actually as a more generalized issue of how Dynamic the emotional reactions were okay that actually made a lot of sense to me uh and so the reason why I I'm thinking about these things the way I'm thinking about them is because of the way that they dovetail um they dovetail into a theory of cost benefit uh as personality um uh uh the the the big five or any way that you can see broad Strokes in human personality that it would seem to me that those things those characteristic differences you're looking at characteristic differences in running CDs on iterative problems of human survival and reproduction so so therefore it's uh uh what was I going to say so it would make sense that those things would have bell curves associated with optimization that in a given population for example in northern Europe that there's going to be a certain amount in that gene pool that the amount of for example emotional stability the bell curve the most successful is going to be in the middle it's going to get less successful the more if you get overly stable because you're not excitable enough it's going to be less successful if you were too volatile because your behavior is going to involve either as you get to the far ends of the barrel curve you should start getting characteristics that are by empirical demonstration less successful genetically that's why they're lower in the bell curve okay so the um so it would be it would surprise me to find something that that was unidirectional in the way the curve worked um so I would expect to see deleterious effects for survival reproductive problems on either side of the belt curve that includes conscientiousness okay so so as we go back to the comment on conscientiousness remember how the bell curve is formed it's formed you know over evolutionary time with respect to Gene survival so it is obvious to me for example that um that less conscientious people are likely to be very successful in terms of reproduction okay but you can see that if you get too irresponsible you're going to start paying prices so the question is what is the optimal and in any given population base non uh non-related to uh uh prior to uh birth control it's going to be a valkyrie okay so so what would be you know what would be their what characteristics would we expect when we get to extremely high conscientiousness at some level you're getting too freaking paranoid about the about this that and the other problem or you're getting too picky or you're getting too you're getting too careful uh and it's and it's being costly the uh anyway I don't know I don't know if this is all adding up to anything that makes sense because I'm talking to Jen and Jen's sort of nodding I don't know if anybody's listening is making any sense out of this that the but the the thing that I look at with these things is I don't I don't get too careful uh trying to make you know look in an empirical data and getting too concerned about how these Dynamics work because I'm not so confident that I can that I can uh that I can formulate the Dynamics of these things in my head anyway because they would be broad population uh characteristics or Dynamics at best because the truth of the matter is is that the big five is a considerable oversimplification of what's actually happening the gene variances are vastly wider than that it's the equivalent of saying IQ the truth is is that every 140 IQR is not the same as every other 140 IQ those people are vastly different in their abilities okay so the uh there and you know that so are they is it useful of course it's a useful term but does it tell you the story it doesn't even remotely tell you the story okay so my IQ and the IQ of Francis Ford Coppola's are probably pretty similar okay the Francis Ford Coppola had talents that I couldn't I couldn't approximate in a thousand years and I and the odds are that uh that is probably not true the other direction Francis could probably approximate me a hell of a lot better than I could approximate him but we we have we have abilities that are out to the tale of the bell curve but the honest untest they wind up looking similar but actually you have very different brains and so the same thing that happens when you start talking about conscientiousness extroversion optimism you know emotional stability you're got you got one hell of a soup mix and I think the best we can do is to have some fairly broad generalizations that are useful that's that's what I'm thinking that all makes sense yeah yeah that makes it the question I don't even know yeah I think so yeah you can look in the chat I think the the questionnaire is uh come back with a couple of things so um yeah so that's but yeah it's um I I think that is well covered um anything anything to add but it isn't that I'm not interested in observations we're interested in hearing and learning some some trends that may come out of empirical observations uh but that uh but that doesn't that's not going to stop me from understanding that a whole hell of a lot of Personality uh issues are going to be so damn idiosyncratic uh that it's yeah I think I already said it I'm just going to say it all over again so I'll just stop now I um trying to make derivations of research and personality is going to suffer from exactly how that research was done what they were looking to find when they looked how they operationalized it that is going to miss a tremendous amount of of uh it's probably going to miss a hell of a lot with the investigation of personality that's what I'm trying to tell you so the uh so that's all right that doesn't mean that we don't keep our eyes open and and try to to see if there's something new and exciting that might alter how it is that we think but how it is that I think about things is already very different than the big fight it's already acknowledging that the gene interplay and the gene variation here is vastly more complex than the big five the big five is a useful um synthetic the way IQ is IQs is extremely useful uh shorthand but it misses a massive amount of detail yeah yeah okay great all right very different question here uh what can be done to help with the loss of libido in a middle-aged man who already has good natural hygiene practices and diet sleep and fasting um but room for improvement in the exercise domain have you had any experience with clients or know if it can be uh if it tends to be irreversible yeah I don't I I don't have much I don't know I wouldn't know um now I know that let me just mention one little sideline uh piece of data floating around in the outside of my head you know way out in the either and that is that I believe there's evidence that um that people who are that who eat very low calorie density diets get very thin you know males for example um they uh when they when people get uh and possibly it's it's even it's it's not out of bounds but it could be as uh potentially as a result of the difference in how anabolic uh animal protein is versus vegetable protein that you you could wind up in a situation I know that when when people go on essentially very minimalist caloric diets where they can be eating Society but they're actually getting very thin um you will find that that males libido drops so that's a uh I think this has been found in several databases so that's interesting and so I guess what I'm telling you is I don't know the evidence uh on this topic but if it wouldn't shock me if we found out that a very low fat content mail um that has already had its testosterone dropping as a result of Aging naturally uh is eating a a low anabolic diet I.E a vegan diet which incidentally folks is not natural so I I'm sure I've said this before and probably everybody listening to this has heard it the vegan diet is not a natural diet for our species that doesn't mean that it isn't a healthy diet right but this could be in some specific individuals a this could be a linchpin to for example particularly low and troublesomely low Olivia okay um now that that's a hell of a statement to make and I only have a certain amount of knowledge uh about that but but I I think that I think I could support that and so the so what am I telling you start eating animal food no I'm telling you that if you're such an individual that's suffering from that you may want to look into this question a lot deeper than I'm reporting it here okay and um and that so that may be you know that may not be ethically consistent with you and um Etc but anyway so just just for the record as we're here on living with some Library I would say that that is a uh that if you're experiencing that I don't I don't think most people do but but you you could have a specific individual uh under those conditions if it may be that that uh such a diet with you could be responsible so could other things probably right that's not completely out of bounds and off the table by the way so anyway that's what I know about that yeah I would uh maybe I feel like this question has been more explicitly addressed by the the sort of manly men in the in the plant-based world the the rip vessel stems and the rituals um you know I think they talk about this um in the sort of aging process and testosterone and all this kind of stuff so I would dig deep into those podcasts and see if it's been explicitly addressed because I would be surprised if it wasn't I would be surprised though if those guys would know okay yeah maybe not uh I I doubt that they do because they're they're both coming from uh you know a theoretical World bio perspective Etc in other words they they've got vested interest in their position uh not the people not great guys they are but uh that I don't think and I'm sure rip isn't suffering from any lack of testosterone and neither is uh yeah but I think that this is real and ought to be considerate if you're suffering in some way yeah yeah yeah but there could be a million different reasons like that diet is just one of them so you know but I know that that has been an identified characteristic but it's identified yeah yeah well certainly certainly is for women as well I mean uh loss of the menstrual period and all kinds of things at a certain body fat percentage so yes correct um yeah big hormonal changes oh absolutely yeah I mean it's it's the the point being that it's there are hormonal changes that are happening as a result of your of your body fat percentage essentially um and so if that's true for women we would expect it to be true for men but yeah I just don't know the specifics of it so yeah I think it and and I think it may be it's not just body fat percentage it could also be the anabolic nature of the food yeah yeah that's that's work uh worth looking at now for myself the I mean they men get less aggressive over time Etc so it's already moving down unless you're me like I'm getting more more aggressive I have more to be upset about that's right that's right collapse of you know Western Civilization Etc little problems got it all right we have we have kind of two two very similar questions that are jumping around in the queue here um uh one is how does evolutionary psychology explain the proliferation of religion our religions our species way of building coalitions for insurance and showing displays of Fitness to further our procreation and survival um and then there's also I'd like to hear your thoughts on Shamanism as it seems to have existed ever since human beings appeared um so we can kind of win those questions yeah I think religion is a I think it's a complicated question because I think that you're you're flying it's kind of like personality you're you're calling something conscientiousness there's a whole heck of a lot of different processes that we would call religion that is religion is a multi-faceted um thing it's a catchment of a whole bunch of different things so the um uh so you could see for example that the religion uh could be a derivative of a of uh you can see for example uh that this is a way that I'm thinking about it these days as a potential important um feature of how you know how it is that this all came about that it's essentially very much associated with the concept of a conscience and a conscience is going to be um the the animal world is immoral as hell like if I can get it I'm going to get it if I can take it if I can take it if I could kill you I can kill you but human beings are group living animals that do a tremendous amount of exchanges within a system of rules so that essentially property rights are negotiated understood followed Etc the uh this this would mean that there's opportunities for uh there's there's conflicts between the self and the group or between the self and another individual in the group of which a rule could be bent and ignored in order for me to take advantage of it okay so uh as a result the if you if you had an amoral animal they could never derive group living in the way and exchanging the way that human beings do so you had to have an animal that had a morality to it and that morality is going to be um it's going to involve essentially some kind of a mechanism for feeling guilt for example when you when you do something against the group rules the something that is actually guiding your behavior when you are not being actually observed so somebody has already some some you know Sarah has collected a bunch of acorns and spent four hours doing that and then she left her little soccer acorns by the tree and you know that that's her tree and that's where she puts her acorns uh but you walk by and suddenly there's nobody around in the village uh everybody's busy and you're looking at those acorns and you're thinking boy I could sell my save myself an hour's worth of acorn picking by taking one fourth of those out of her sack she might not miss it or my my too big of us or I mean she may [ __ ] about it but people don't believe it because they're still most of the acorns there and you can see yourself running a cost benefit analysis on that but you can also see the the feeling that you could be being observed okay so it makes sense for you to have in your head the concept that you're being observed even when you're not being observed okay and so it's not too far from there to to see the genetic selection for individuals that believe that they are being observed that would make them more moral less likely to get kicked out of villages and therefore more likely to survive and reproduce you could also then see that the display of the belief that I believe we're being observed why is that being an important sexual or basically a signal for Coalition membership and so how are you being observed if nobody's observing you because there's some higher Consciousness that's observing us okay and so this is how it is that I could see notice how entwined religiosity is with moral prescription anyway in other words every sermon what the hell is a sermon it's a it's a thing to tell the little group you know in some in Far Away England in some little Hamlet that we should all be good to each other and realize that God's watching you just like Santa Claus and that this is all going to be there's a system of social credits that's being tabulated even though you know only you know you know what's in your real heart and what you're doing because we can't observe you every second so it's essentially a surveillance system for Morality that makes possible um the the negotiation of conflicts of interest where we can we can still wind up with tremendous benefits of group living in exchange but but then but not have it be eaten Away by amoral people that we now call sociopaths okay so that's that's what I think about uh Evolution uh the evolution of religious processes and why it is that they that they remain in people solidly and strongly uh even though the the evidence for the religious you know how how uh these all-knowingers or capable beings would be managing things you know has been being pushed back you know dramatically ever since oh I don't know Galileo and his telescope okay so clearly people are drifting towards less and less literal belief of of major religious tenets uh but but still what remains is a conscience and and a notion that there may be some tabulation somewhere taking place anyway so that's that's what I how I think EP and religion intersect yeah that there's like there's different I mean it's sort of a Define your terms kind of question because you know this the the parallel question on Shamanism is interesting because it's a very different sort of question it's like we're we're you know the the incentives the sort of sexual selection process for somebody of moral caliber and their desirability is Coalition in the village is a a separate thing to the attraction to someone who seems to have the sexual selection process to the around somebody who seems to have special powers or who who knows things that other people don't or who can tell a story about The Mystery of the of the night sky or who can appear to heal people the the sort of characteristic of just having better intuition about people and picking up on little cues and fortune telling them um so this is something that some people have more than others and so that you know you've always had a certain population in every every community that has those individuals but that's a different that's a separate track to this kind of um Acorn ceiling Lane problem and they they emerged together and then there is also the kind of um you know the Primitive state of human life and the Mystery of it all and you know the blind watchmaker problem and how did we get here and people die and then they're not there anymore and and then weird things happen in the forest sometimes and and eclipses happen and how do we explain all of this so there is kind of this you know the world is weird and there are forces we don't understand and coincidences happen and and strange so there's kind of a an inherent mysticism um that sits inside of humans more so in open humans there's attraction to people who can kind of capture that and tell us a convincing story around the campfire about it um there's attraction to people who can who seem to have greater healing abilities than others and and can collect certain leaves in the forest and give you a tincture and all of this stuff and then there's also this kind of um we are a better Community we are more likely to survive individually and collectively if we have some kind of moral code Among Us that that unites us and that we can give structure to so I think yeah this is this is why it's such a conflict when people are like what does EP say about religion it's like well it says a lot of things and and you know some of that is the display of sexual selection some of it is uh evolutionary advantages of community life that like all of this matters yeah like for example Shamanism um I don't know anything about it but the point is is that the just as you just said I mean look at the energy conservation system conservation this is a market economy in a village that's right I'm doing nothing different than a shaman did that's what I did for a living in other words right right exactly of course a little judgment about how it is to handle your problem with nine women in a dominance hierarchy well so is so is the Instagram influencer who says the the solution is to drink celery juice you know it's like that's the same it's the same thing it's the it's still this yearning for Solutions yes in other words that looks like they know more than me to help me yeah uh essentially be more successful okay okay right now particularly when it comes to a lot of mysterious uh issues and when people are gonna have to make Gamble and make decisions you know the it's it's kind of like uh uh you know you're looking for an edge and so uh if you're gonna if you have to bet 50 50 on red or black for your life it would sure be nice to talk to somebody who says well you know I think that that particular roulette wheel leans to the black it's like give me anything you know so the uh so this is anyway so the point is is that that that's that's not to and as you say those would wed together because once you start to get sexual selection for Magical thinking that surrounds the whole problem of the development of a moral code uh now now it turns out that some people have little quote better lying to God than others you know what I mean you can interpret what messages God is giving you and therefore tell you of what decisions you ought to make well if they're particularly wise or if they're reason if they're just wiser than you then it's going to turn out that over time there's going to be people that are going to get reputations for that in the village of being able to make better calls you know the uh and that's that's Shamanism along with all the accoutrements that might be developing in any local culture all right what else do we got all right so any suggestions on how to deal with my disagreeable daughter-in-law I want to remain close as a family and see my grandchildren but it's very difficult and I feel our family growing apart I do my best to remain in contact with my son but he's caught in the middle um and sort of obligated to choose her I'll add usually kind of the situation when this happens I know personality doesn't change so I have a feeling that I'm doomed to live with the disagreeable distance and do the best I can to minimize contact with her in order to keep the peace and remain as close as I can with my son and his children help should be yeah this is uh this is what you you call uh we need a different name for it because it's so Politically Incorrect but Chinese water torture is kind of the solution to this sort of problem where you just continue to act as if you know not not inserting yourself into their lives but you're maintaining the disagreeable distance but you were still signaling constantly to those kids um and and to him and to her um that you're here that you're that you're sending birthday cards that you're you're available if they ever want to come stay with you that you you'd love to spend more time with them you just kind of take the high road essentially is is what that's really about um and don't get embroiled in the conflict with her because it probably is you know going to be with you in one form or another forever um and uh and he is caught in the middle and he is sort of obligated genetically and socially to to stick with her primarily and choose her over you if there's a conflict of interest um and so I think you've got a good sense of what you're dealing with and you know staying the course with the high road water torture is probably the way to go yeah like so so those kids when they're older they've got shoe boxes full of cards from you and and they can pursue a relationship with you when they're you know 15 maybe they can't win their four or five but but when they're older and they they are aware of your existence and and uh can have a little more Independence and make those choices then they can do that yeah yeah I think uh it can be it could be a frustrating thing to to have uh either a triangle like that or just a two two people where the um were if they were only quote more reasonable than this this aspect of my life would be better very often we're in situations like this where the disagreeable person um would no way qualify to be a friend the uh and the scanning they're essentially standing right in the middle between us and another relationship so this is the this is a classic uh conflicted triangle and so the um and all that I can say about this and it's a uh it's a it's a hard one to deal with or for anybody that's in this situation and that is that you know it just is what it is you're it's kind of one of those things like G Sophia Loren is just my dream Pro if only I could get had got in front of her and she had fallen in love with me or my life would be perfect it's like not too bad you know what I mean that that is just not the way that this goes down so yes it would be nice if we didn't have the person in the middle because they're right in the middle between us and another relationship that would be very important to us but it turns out that they are they are in the middle of it and and that that is the that are the facts of reality that are are our social situation and it's not changing in in most cases anytime soon so the the person on the other side of that has a CB that's involved here that is the reason why that person's in the middle uh and and so you know if we've already signaled our irritation and tried to build coalitions against them trying to oust them whatever in other words there's already been all kinds of subterranean you know termite work uh that's been going on but essentially once you realize oh no that we're not taking that house down then you're back to the disagreeable distance and realize that that you know you you get that overlap at whatever level it is that you can sometimes all it is is that it's is as bad as this can get it can get to well it was maybe the smart money for you to do is to send a card about every two months something nice and once in a while always having something nice to say and then some little Starbucks card in it or something this is uh I had this situation uh with a with one of my guys in prison who had a had a riff being paused you know through no fault the Zone basically uh with a daughter and he um I.E you can see where the ex-wife or the wife or something would say would essentially plant themselves between the convict and his daughter the uh you could see why that would be a common Dynamic that he's bad news he's no good he abandoned family we've moved on whatever and so and the daughter was an adult person and um these were all bright people involved and she was being you know had been his best friend and now rejecting and cold but it was all behind a whole complicated Dynamic and this is that's the the day I came up with that term you know it's the only thing that came to mind to me when I was dealing with this was that notion of drip drip drip water on top of his forehead until they tell each other crazy and the I the other thing is you keep dripping water down on a rock and you'll eventually wear the rock down and so I told him to do that and I I worked long enough about prison I think he came to me two and a half or three years later and he said something like he said 20 like 28 letters oh wow yeah once a month for two and a half years and then his daughter wrote him back and it was a big you know an enormous relief to him so we we followed a little strategy we had him not process any of his issues not trying to argue his case nothing all he did was white letters and in those he would write entertaining little things about prison life just briefly like a paragraph about some butt goofy thing with a guard that out of pigeon crap on its head that's when we used a lot in other words to tell their teenage daughter or son that this is what happened and we tell funny little stories and then clip out little cartoons so the funniest little cartoon that he could find that month he put it in there with his little note sent it to his daughter okay so this was uh just trying to wear down her the propaganda intention she was dealing with on the other side dad's a bad person can't say well he's bad for your life stay away from them I.E if you if you connect with him and give him any any positive human warmth at all you are against the Coalition okay so this is so we had to prove to her you're not out of control you're not argumentative you're not trying to you're not trying to defend yourself by attacking the other side of the family no you have to make you have to be all benefit no cost as much as you possibly be right right and that I remember that specific case working I think it worked in others I just can't remember that one was the big one that was a big test case uh and and that was uh man worked like a charm I had a guy who's super high conscientiousness yeah I had other guys that Bale bad opportunity sure well it's not worth it no response you know it's just into the void yeah if you're if you're not gonna come running to me then right right yeah well disagreeable [Music] interesting oh since that time by non-incarcerated people and and usually not too long to break through relationships that would otherwise have a lot of promise I think it's the only way to go with the with the Mother-in-law daughter-in-law situation which is very common I mean people find themselves and it's it's interesting as you're sort of going through this I realized we're sort of taking that question at face value like um oh my daughter-in-law is disagreeable there's tension but the this it sort of reminds me of what we talked about on the podcast this week which is about the sort of um moving closer to the truth you know the the getting D distorting your way to truth and it's possible that something happened here that she thinks is true that is not true so there could have been some you know perceived insults at some reception or you you said something at the wedding that pissed her off or there you know there could be some [ __ ] um that could be surfaced by some some um intentional conversation then some circuit flooding and some you know just basically openness around that uh and and finding out that you know you've been laboring under this misunderstanding um that has created unnecessary tension it's always a possibility we're sort of taking the question as phrase like that's not it it's just a personality issue um and it might be and it probably is but on the off chance that you have a feeling that there could be something going on you can you can use your son as a mole to kind of suss that out a little bit um and if there is an opportunity to give her a lot of status and do some circuit flooding and I just really admire what a great mother you are and um I just you know I just I just I ha I don't often say that to you and I just really wanted to go like lighten that up a little bit by giving her a little of that status that you feel very withholding about because this is a tense relationship and that might soften her into a just a better equilibrium you know what Jen this is a it's great that you you brought this up because I I had a thought the other day uh in the last two or three days that and I I mentioned something like this I think in hot hawk walk uh that we just did one and that is that or maybe you know it might have been just even today in this discussion that you know it's all blur you're on to something that's there there's a critical principle in here that's really interesting and that is that our position vis-a-vis social conflict our our DNA makes us very defensive and argumentative and and aggressive by Nature it's super interesting that this is true okay and it's um it's clearly the case that it was the right strategy in evolution so we're not the right strategy in evolution it would not be an absolute panhuman characteristic so the um so the thing is is that uh bidding your genes uh like you can think about this that in a Stone Age Village under a bunch of little iterative conflicts that take place you know somebody attacks your status about you you did a cheap job you didn't do that well in the hunt you were dogging it you were this you were that you were you know you shortchanged them on you know you said you were going to get them five coconuts but you got it you know for the carving but you gave them five lousy coconuts one of them was rotten in other words somebody attacks you somehow and the clearly the first reaction is I'm hitting you back okay that is the that is natural it was so the the interesting thing about that is particularly I was thinking about this in men and women relationships in serious relationships that is also our first reaction within those relationships in other words there's not a lot of differentiation to how human beings respond to attacks on their status it's a fairly uniform set of strategies and so you know a wife you know complains about the husband the husband's first response is is not hey where are you coming from gee I'm sorry about that let's make sure I understand how did I get off the rail no first reaction is what the hell are you talking about you did this and I did it that for a reason there in other words the scoreboard is very egocentrically biased highly defensive conditionally aggressive Etc the uh I forget uh anyway the point is this is this is also going to your trying to unpack this questioner's question I.E it's yes the daughter-in-law maybe just a constant unbelievable [ __ ] but it could also be a dynamic situation that yes she's disagreeable but we are particularly in a conflict now and we're in a conflict that we are seeing that action from our own perspective and it could be that there's a hell of a lot of uh forget this situation in principle people there's a oftentimes a way better situation at the end of us backing up and going around the edge questioning and flattering or and and apologizing first and seeing where it is that that takes us uh and believe me that absolutely that goes against the genes it goes against my genes just oftentimes what happens with me is I'm able to catch myself after I've already hit him back once and you know what catching yeah you're already hit him back once it's a hell of a lot better than not catching yourself at all well and that's I mean that is often the best you can do I mean if that's and and so it's it's related to uh people particularly women who tend to be just really sort of reactive in an emotional situation and and whether they're lashing back out or whether the you know however that's however that's coming up um catching it and being like can we just back up my my inner five-year-old was driving the bus and I just I I was that was my lizard brain like phrase it however you need to but get that distance back to let's just start that again because that was not uh how I would mindfully like this interaction to go like that can be as 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