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Beat Your Genes Podcast & More

Living Wisdom Library Q&A
2022-07-31
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all right how you doing good how are you good what what's that what am I seeing in the background boiling green you I can't believe you still haven't seen it this is this is the Scoops that they bring out to to for crowd management during the food riots Tuesday is silent Green Day all right very good all right it's it's it's an absolute must-see in our current moment particularly because it's set in 2022 so we were warned oh wow all right okay yeah I will uh I will definitely that's that's on the agenda for this this evening that's good it's it's a classic I might have a uh um a uh like a living wisdom Library viewing party where we can do kind of a an mst3k style commentary running commentary through the whole thing we could all watch it together I'll see if I can figure out how to do that so that'd be fun all right all right well I think we're all set up the Q a is set up um I finally fixed the chat so people can talk to each other and not feel like they're in a in a little solitary bubble um and uh so yeah we can if I can get the questions open here so this one's actually a holdover from last week um which I had I my I conscientiously uh cut and pasted it and I was going to bring this up if you didn't know ask it again Patrick but we'll go ahead and lead with this so what is the relationship between conscientiousness and the internal audience I'd like you to shed some light on the intricate relationship between conscientiousness and the internal audience does lower C imply having a more relaxed internal audience and why does my low C make me feel just fine in the short term where my internal audience will give me hell at the end of the day on the face of it it appears Evolution has equipped me with checks and balances but it often feels more like the US in 2022 I.E Civil War nice nice aside there okay yeah it is Civil War um it is you're you're self-deception in the in the moment in the situation um around taking the low C path is is completely at odds with what the internal audience would actually value um I mean this is the this is the pleasure trap in action right this is why we are trying to tell people to attune themselves to the very subtle signals from the internal audience and the the feedback that it gives you that is completely at odds with what feels like the right thing to do at the time which is very often the lower conscientious path um so yeah what are your thoughts on this this is totally your you you you're all around the space all the time seems like there's there's a lot said there so let me uh let me let me try to get some clarity and that might answer some of the questions uh uh because there was a lot said the at the end of the day what's happening is that your nervous system is is running cost benefit analysis and as you as the person is suspecting there's checks and balances what that that is the checks and balances are the the fact that there there's an automated decision-making apparatus that is essentially budgeting a certain amount of uh time and energy to the process of making a decision so that's why for example you don't um even though it gets it gets almost impossibly complicated to figure out what the brand is doing but we can actually describe it I think I think very well in not not too many words and that is that every decision that you're making uh to to take the time and energy and a focus of attention and muscular contractions resulting from the calculus that tells you what it is that you're going to be doing next that that is always taking place in context of all possible actions that you could be taking literally with respect to all opportunities and threats that you're aware of in the environment so right now Jen and I could be talking to you folks and asking your questions Etc but we could also be saying oh you know put it this way if somebody uh uh somebody flashed on the screen oh a nuclear bomb just landed in in North Dakota yeah we would all be off of here sure and feed and transmission yeah everything doesn't matter how tasty your Snickers bar was that you were chewing on you would literally drop it right now if it turned out that we got that news so literally all and that's also true for example if I heard my cat screaming at the door yeah it doesn't have to be a nuclear war it can be the example I'll always use is you're out on a hike and you're stewing about your terrible boss and you know the the expectations on a work project and then you tear your leg open on you know you've got a oozing wound and you're not sure you can get back to the car it's like you're no longer thinking it's you just completely shift gears um and you're focused on the more emergent more more important use of your time and energy always and that can change instantly instantly and so what that includes a little something in your eye okay and it can change back so I'm on the trail oil and I see a snake in the trail and I suddenly freak out and I and then I realize oh it's not a snake it's a it's a piece of rope from somebody's hiking gear that they drive so it's like I mean it's just constantly this is why it's esteem Dynamics you know these things are constantly in flux right your so your cost benefit analyzes are are actually taking place uh I'm not sure I have this map exactly right uh I I I I heard one thing yeah you told me that I think I got I think I had it it's either that a human being is doing 12 more than a trillion calculations a second or that there's more than a trillion bits of data which would be a little bit would be significantly less complicated but does it matter it's a hell of a lot either way yeah and it and it's a apparently the the brain is doing uh has a calculating total calculating capacity and speed more than a thousand times faster than the fastest supercomputer on Earth so this tells you that obviously what's going on in human psychology has been underestimated by learning theory and all Psychology by many many many orders of magnitude okay so so now when we start talking about you know these decisions and why they waver around realize that what's actually happening is is that at every nanosecond your brain is actually running multiple simulations on what would be the optimal course of action to take place in the next couple of seconds and it is then selecting the one that the computation comes out as the most biologically valuable option that's extraordinary what it's doing and uh you actually don't even know till after it happens but there's these are unconscious processes so I have no idea what it is that I'm going to say three sentences for now but it's already being formulated in the adopted one okay and so uh you I will find out when you find out that's actually what's unless it's a canned speech but if we're in a conversation over T about whether or not to you know to put new carpet in my house I have no idea what it is that I'm going to be saying to you two sentences from now but I'll find out when you find out that that didn't happen by accident the only reason we're having that conversation is because that was the best use of my possible time at that instant in life literally with respect to all other possible opportunities and threats on the table and when it's not the best use of my time I'm being signaled by being bored irritated feeling trapped and I want the hell out of this conversation or I want it out of this relationship I went out of this job I went out of this swimming pool water polo game in other words I want to change my circumstances because my Adapted Mind is computed that this is not the best use of my time and energy okay so your internal audience is is a is a whole complicated set of neurological apparatus that is essentially observing your actions and your efforts and its rating and judging as if other people were looking at this uh to to give you a a virtual reality program on you know what other people would think of you if they were to be seeing what it is that you're doing okay and uh there's all kinds of interesting reasons for that and that is that that's how we improve rehearsals that's how we that's how we uh essentially stabilize reputations uh in other words that all these are a very interesting components it's a very extraordinary component of a mind that would have this okay it leaks its way into morality and moral structures uh which are a critical feature of this particular organism as opposed to other organisms um uh because of the the value of repetitive trades and therefore if we do somebody wrong on a trade you know if one hyena does another hyena wrong on a steals their bone from them when they aren't looking really no grudge it's like hey it just happens in the instant and that's just how that's how life is among hyenas but not so with humans because we have iterative trade processes that involve trust so that we can build longer term opportunities that would take multiple sequences of actions and agreements uh and therefore that's how we invaded the niches of traded insurance that no other animal has and if we double cross each other on those things we remember it believe me I remember every time Jen double crossed me [Laughter] zero times okay zero times the point is and of course that that would then be computed in my nervous system as willing to take bigger and bigger risks and be more and more vulnerable as she says hey let's do this trade but because you're you and your circumstances are you you're gonna have to go in way deeper than me on this deal and I would say yeah and the critical element will be once you get that done Doug then I will do this the thing that I can do and then we both profit from it and I say yes I'm willing to go in that deep because I know your reputation but I wouldn't have done that had I not had a rep with you okay so this is so the the long wide answer to this question is and the reason why we're doing this is to to help people understand and appreciate the extraordinary uh complexity of the cost benefit process your your uh personality all all it actually really is is the subtle difference in uh I don't know most you people are probably too young I don't know Jen do you know what a dip switch is I heard the word from my dad so bad that was like a new important idea in my life and now it's already obsolete we managed to get a printer it turns out there'd be like a little panel at the back of your printer it would have these 10 10 10 little a dozen or so little little uh they're like light little tiny light switches that could either be up or down and so the configuration it's you know helping the electronic circuitry there's the switches and they would come preset like first two down next one up the third one down yeah it's like oh that's what it should be well God forbid you get your dip switches something bangs up against them that'd be terrible I can't have that yeah you get off the manual it's like oh the dim switches are wrong I always thought it was a sort of a vague insult you know like oh that guy's a dip switch I don't know I never heard that but the point it makes sense that there would be but the point is is that that's why your personality is your personality everybody has the same Universal value system exactly it just depends upon how your dip switches are set that's all in other words how and we see that what all of those are is simply subtleties and how people are running a risk reward analysis on on opportunities and threats and so that that's all that is so of course you know we're going to go through believe me if you're hyper conscientious nut you know how valuable would be to go to the psychiatrist's office and take a Valium that was supposedly going to help you or or I don't know celebrax or whatever the hell it is supposed to fix the dip switch it won't okay it's way too complicated the genius is a modern Psychiatry think that you're you've got 14 seen chemicals in you and they balance them right it's right they don't have any idea you're doing a trillion calculations a second according to a cost benefit analytic engine it's the most complicated thing in the known universe and there's no way in God's green earth they have any idea what they're doing oh by the way as an aside I don't know if you saw this but the telegraph published a uh a popular piece that said oh yeah well I don't know some big big shots in the UK have said oh well guess what we now have definitive yeah there's no such thing as serotonin having anything to do with depression what is so incredible about that is that it's been making its way through like you know major podcasts have been talking about this and it's just it's now it's now like oh yeah we now know that anti-depressants don't have any effect under pressure and so there has been a little side conversation happening with some people being like we didn't just find this out you know this has been this has been really clear for a long time I'm glad you're you're joining the party welcome yeah we're glad there's there's cupcake over here and beverages over there but it's not like there's some new groundbreaking study that just revealed this truth to us and so there are obviously many analogs to this in our modern scientific moment but um it's incredible to see how it becomes what you know Chris Martinson would call like normal normalized knowledge or common knowledge that it's like well now we can all just agree that obviously we know that antidepressants don't do anything for depression you know and so we've been it's it's it's happened almost overnight that that has it's trickled into the culture in such a way that now it's not it's you're not a crazy person for saying that um where last year you would be even though the science has not changed actually you still are because you don't realize there's a little there's a little subtlety to this this is this oh well it's still I it's your childhood is still [ __ ] you up it's more complicated this is this is the uh this is the example of the kid getting you know getting caught and having to bring home a note from school and then it's like well yeah I actually did get into trouble and no but it was because Johnny was doing this and now I really didn't have anything to it's they're leaking the truth out a little at a time they're not admitting that antidepressants are useless they're just saying that they now know that serotonin doesn't have anything to do with depression oh is that all okay and then the second thing that they're admitting is Gee all the research evidence says the negative life events are what's responsible so you've just cut the heart out of a whole antidepressant Enterprise but they say well it doesn't matter that's why the antidepressants work yeah yeah well that's because the kid hasn't admitted the third part of the LIE yet right so first we admit the first two parts the last part we hope that everybody goes unconscious of it and we can ignore it and continue to have 40 million Americans addicted to the [ __ ] and and of course we can continue to to ride the trauma train for you know a few more decades and it's like well we don't know why they work but they clearly do clinical evidence says that they do and you know maybe it's it's something to do with all of this childhood damage that you sustain that rewired your brain and so there's a mechanism that we don't fully understand but you know we're so yeah it's actually probably Obama's serotonin connection the trauma serotonin connection we wrote a paper on that it would be published oh of course even if it was just full of absolute made up you know gobbledygook we could just we we it would be one of those experiments events where we could get it published by you know with absolute bogus case studies and made up neurotransmitters yeah I always wanted to be on the front page of the New York yeah it's the new the new Circle yeah yeah so um that but there has there's definitely been a shift among people who among among the kind of high IQ podcast set who you know this is this is the Sam Harris litmus test this is like you know are there are there people who would have been one or two years ago very knee-jerk like oh well we can't go after psych meds because you know they they make a huge difference to people and it's really you know they they're very they're really important to some subset of people and we don't want to be anti-science about this because clearly the evidence says that they're very helpful so there's been a shift among that group to renormalize the knowledge and people are making the connection of course to the vaccines um and they're making it explicitly um and so it's kind of interesting to to query how this moment would be unfolding without a lot of people being primed by being lied to for two years about the vaccines um and uh and where they're landing on that so it's a very it's an interesting moment in our cultural relationship with the science yes yeah anyway so I forget where how we got there a lot of content I don't know if we actually did that personally probably not that's how we are but yeah yeah yeah I think the the takeaway is that you can be your your cost benefit analysis can change in an instant and so the in the internal audience and the the the the low conscientious desire to to do to get the excited get the pleasure avoid the pain conserve the energy um they they are not it's not like they're in a bargaining process at any given moment it's just one of them is screaming more loudly and and gets what it wants um it's the it's the skin me on the hike yeah the uh fundamentally the the agent of any significant positive change for Behavior pattern in an individual or Society uh which is just a bunch of individuals is new information and and so it's the Precision of estimating and understanding reality so all animals all brains at all times are making decisions based on hypotheses rather than certainty so including you know the ultimate you know I think therefore I am like well are you really sure you know what I mean the the obviously the validity of the senses is high but we we know from illusions that it is that uh that it is it is less than 100 reliable um the so you're always making judgments under uncertainty so the ques uh so uh and the uncertainties in as you estimate parameters try to make decisions you have a sort of uh slop around those estimations what we would call confidence intervals where your brain is estimating uh you know by by if I buy a new pizza place how much is it going to cost me to run it how hard will it be to deal with the employees and how much money am I going to make you're estimating parameters on everything if I go looking for the toenail Clipper right now you know what I mean am I going to find it is it in the drawer where I think it is and and will it you know will it take care of the the uncomfortable can I can I dig out the little corn or whatever it is that I embedded thing that I that I do content people are really here for is to learn about Doug's toenails foreign thing is is that your everything that you do is parameter estimation it's parameter estimation reached the conclusion that you have based on the budget that your brain is literally allowing for this problem as it contemplates your entire existence that's why you can stand in front of a a a a a freezer and look at two different kinds of of orange juice and you're like well that one's 3.99 and that was 429 and I like this one better what do I think did I hear some bad news about a Tropicana I can't remember like but you're not going to be there for five minutes but you might be there for 18 seconds as the brain budgets a very quick scan of what is the variance that could be associated with the variables that are in play here and how much should I trip through the thing and then before we it is time to come to a conclusion and accept that the risks that we have with respect actually one of those two decisions if you're trying to decide whether or not get your prostate removed because of an uncomfortable PSA Exam and you know what it could do your penile function it's like wait a minute this might be a four-month investigation I might spend four fifteen thousand dollars on seven experts before I take make that decision so your so your the decisions that you make are happening as a result of all of these estimates sometimes you make it too quickly and you found out that you left yourself exposed because there was a parameter that you did not not appreciate what the downside would be and you made a mistake it was expensive the uh anyway but the point is when we come to patterns of behavior where we're trying to improve ourselves uh in some fashion that will puzzle by what what pays is to dig through the understanding that there's a cost benefit analysis that's causing the behavior pattern that you may recognize as problematic and try to identify where it is what are we underestimating and why are we underestimating it why is the mistake taking place and usually somewhere in that mess we find a funny looking juxtaposition between the Stone Age environment and the modern uh the Stone Age brand in the modern environment that will Dairy off and cause little glitches in the ability to cost benefit analysis to actually run a an appropriately comprehensive and accurate uh parameter estimation and that's where the pleasure trap lives is exactly that that and other things like that uh that's that's where most mistakes will uh most habitual mistakes will get boiled down to Any Given mistake could be anything but but most habitual mistakes that you see that are recurrent and problematic that's often coming behind a an inability for the brain to learn and update because it's running a stone age algorithm against modern evidence modern data and it's confused I.E everybody says we should get married and then we get married it doesn't work out we can't figure out why and you know we have to go to therapy and we've been to a bunch of marital therapy and it isn't helping our relationship maybe you weren't designed to be married possible hypothesis yeah started square one we go back to Stone Age Villages Stone Age not agrarian Villages like ancient Hawaii that that use you know that actually have land and property rights Etc and therefore they had Dow reasons so we all thought that marriage was Universal no it's not you got to go into stone age Villages and then you find out it is not a human Universal so it's a derivative of property a rising 10 000 years ago uh with uh farming so there you go so no surprise that we have a lot of problems with that uh uh with that construct yeah I just used I just use the modern liberal education word what construct do we need to do we need to uh to problematize the construct do we need to interrogate it um all right let's see what else we have here um my question is related to mating success I'm conflicted on how to spend my time and effort I'm a resident physician in my mid to late 30s I've spent the last 10 years working studiously to get to where I am I have another three to four years left I'm about 40 pounds overweight I'm a brown man of slightly less than average height zero success on the dating apps I've been operating under the assumption that maximizing my physical looks and paying attention to my medical career um would be a benefit I think there's a little disconnect here however the more I do this the more months and years pass when do I put myself on the market and how I have no success on the dating apps uh Brown and short in the midwest if I want an attractive mate physically first then emotionally intellectually Etc which should I be doing on a day-to-day week to week month to month basis my lack of success in this Arena causes a lot of sad feelings which I understand is a feedback mechanism but I'm pretty much tied to this location and work situation until my training is over in three years it feels like I'm wasting my life being unhappy um and then he he's on call and so he actually has to go and isn't here for the answer but we'll watch later okay um well I I would what we do with respect to any competitive problem is uh we look at all the aspects of it and we find out where it is that our competitors are doing better than we are and try to figure out why that is and then what we do is we start working at the things that we can do in other words uh let's uh there there are two possibilities here a diametric ends of the probability continuum uh possibility number one is you're so short and brown and in the wrong place and trapped by your career and unattractive that we can't possibly have any success at all where you are now currently located okay that's possibility number one possibility number two is oh you you could you could lose some weight get a new haircut and uh uh go a few thousand dollars into debt more than you already are now and might as well in for three hundred thousand dollars might as well be in for 307. oh okay the inflation will take care of that problem anyway let's just gonna take your house anyway the next five years so relax chief and now it turns out that we can we can uh buy some nice clothes you know uh uh uh the uh make sure we have a passable car and make sure we look as good as we can look and then we go fishing where any any place that you know is intelligently as cleverly as possible so and it turns out that in three months we've got three good options and we've got three women ready to kill us okay that's the other side of the Continuum or no seven four that want to own them two that want to stun and when one says she's her friend oh my God all right you get a point for that [Laughter] reality is somewhere in between right so I feel like uh there's some famous uh story from Gandhi which is that that uh I don't know the guy accidentally or got into some tribal Warfare and killed one of the other people's Sons you know what I'm saying and yet there's no way to he couldn't figure out how to make up for and he felt terribly guilty and Gandhi said go find a uh an orphan from those people and adopted and and in other words there was always something you could do um is the lesson so there are probably in this person's case many things that he could do and uh and so certainly the the note the person has invested tremendously in his career and uh and that's outstanding you will get credit for that for the rest of your life uh in the mating uh Market however your your feeling you're feeling the time you know all the cost benefit analysis of human mind is being run against the time clock you have a hypothetical time clock in your head put in there by your nature about how long you have to live about how long you have to make the moves to get to get nates and reproduce is sort of my clock's broken I seem to think I've got another 100 years I'm just going to solve that mortality problem you're you're it's it's all in Silicon Valley then Schwab's hands so don't worry about it you you share that sentiment with a lot of nerds plenty of time plenty of time if our guy here is feeling the urgency at 37 which is good yeah and his uh he is his brain is calculating that he may be in trouble in terms of investment his investment balance and the answer is that you know there there may be a number of things that we ought to be doing to uh something else that's important when you make some changes and make some Investments about doing things differently I.E it's not having any luck on the apps well have we been on uh what's that one that the one that's totally the chick one oh Bumble no not bumble bumble is still casual mating strategy casual but it's female driven what's this the real nerdy one where where you can't even see the pictures you know that's uh oh I don't know I'm too far out of the big ones are match the Paramount strategies are matched and then there's another one oh uh uh yeah I know which I know which one you're talking about it's been so long I can't I can't summon the name people will know in the comments um it's been around no no no no no no no no it's um this is it not it's not the intimate connection absolutely no it's e-harmony there you go Harmony yep yep someone someone had it yeah totally um for him to go I think the absolute worst strategy for this guy is to be trying to find someone on the apps and especially the swipey apps so the the very first step is to get on the paid sites um and something like eHarmony in particular because that's parabon Central I it used to be very religious like everyone on eHarmony was super religious I think that's no longer the case it's more just like where people are serious about finding mates um uh and match to some degree um although matches a little bit of a hybrid um and uh and there are probably others that we don't know about too because we're out of touch but it's uh they're they're definitely these are options and then the the other sort of the absolute other end of the spectrum of what you're doing is you need to be putting yourself in repeat exposure situations um because you know you're you're at work most of the time and if there are no if there are no candidates that work with you um then you need to go join a hike club or a pottery class or a Habitat for Humanity project or something or a cooking class yeah exactly yeah um these or you know yoga class or whatever yeah it's class if you can dance yeah if you can or not you'll be a lot better four months from now when the new karapa women comes in you're gonna be looking cool yeah there you go there you go all right so yeah anything like this where you can have something resembling repeat exposure which even if you only see them for two or three classes in a little module that is better than a swipey app where you're just showing up for a quick lunch date or a dinner date and you know she's ruling you out immediately and and basically is not even present for most of the date because she's ruled you out in the first five minutes and so she's not even giving you a chance you need to be in a situation where she's forced to give you a chance because you're taking a class with her um or you're you're in some kind of recurring group with her so I would I would do that strategy combined with the more serious dating apps and see if that yields somewhat better returns in addition to the things that Doug's talking about here and investing in your wardrobe and maybe losing a few pounds and whatever else you can do to improve your competitive um status essentially and there's one other thing oh God embracing myself for impact here that you and I have actually solved the problem oh well yeah we have we're just yeah we've totally solved the problem that it's not it's not in the world yet but it will be and this one unlike the book is actually not completely under our control so it's not our faults that it's not in the world yet that's all right so just so you know the problem's been solved so you can relax that particular guy absolutely we have the problem solved yes we do yeah yes all right that's true all right let's take another question all right let's see all right and I like this one I relate to this one a lot dear doctors I have a frenemy who I've long lost touch with but whom I still irresistibly stuck on social media she was very competitive with me in college although I drastically outperformed her at the time um she went on to similar Feats getting her PhD from Oxford same as me I see her sub tweeting things about me occasionally that's like a passive aggressive little comment that's clearly directed at some specific person even though you're totally covered with plausible deniability on it um I wonder why after not being friends for so long we still Harbor this malevolent Obsession about each other what is the evolutionary good of this neither of us stands to gain anything we've both achieved what we wanted it's not the zero-sum game we might have thought it was during our early years um we're both successful why do we ruminate like this and how can we finally move on yeah well it's it's very you you sort of suggested as much with your answer to the previous question where you know when you're trying to solve a problem you look around at your competition and see what sort of edge they have that you have not fully developed that might be available to you and so when you run into a frenemy um and I can really only speak personally from the female experience here but there's there's a there's a particular type of female Frenemy ship where you've found sort of a worthy adversary it's like okay we're very comparable on on the basics you know and I'm pretty competent and I'm pretty good on most things um and so I don't often feel challenged by you know that somebody could be getting a lot more chips than I than I can and so there are enough differences between us that I'm going to zero in on those differences and gather as much data as I possibly can about them and that's you know you keep your enemies closer keep your friends close and your enemies closer and in front of me is closest of all even to the point of of continuing to stalk them years after you've actually had a conversation with them so I think this is very common certainly among women um I I feel the Dynamics with men might be a little different a little more overt um women are very covert with this sort of thing and you're absolutely smiling the whole time that you're on a data mining Mission um but it's all about this is somebody who is pretty close to my market share so even though you're you're not in a zero-sum situation now you can intellectually tell yourself that but in principle she could change career directions she could quit her lectureship and decide to get into a business that's competitive with your business and she's bringing all of her IQ and all of her beauty and all of her Coalition and everything else that she has and so she remains a Potential Threat out there both for your success and and for a potential mates so it's um it would never be evolutionarily sound to to you know let that happen fall asleep on that watch because she's she's a potent threat and always will be so yes yeah I I always see it you you paint it more broadly which is I think legit but I I I'm always thinking this in terms of mating yeah right die okay so much all of it it really translates to Maiden but the thing is ultimately it does if you if you peel the onion enough that's where you land and as you say it's not zero-sum right now but ultimately what you're both aiming at is the fanciest mate that each of you could possibly ever qualify for if he arrives on the scene at the campsite and there's you and her on other sides of the campsite and he questions everyone and both of you about who you are and what you've done and looks at you from 360 Degrees who's he going to choose okay and he's the and he's the the fanciest thing that either one of you could potentially qualify for so anything above him is out of your range anyway anything below him that's actually below what your potential would be so he's a mythical creature but the truth of the matter is that's what you're feeling the competitive process there is what that is yeah and it because at that moment it becomes entirely zero-sum yes yeah and it becomes big a lot of chips you know on the line now so yeah and and exactly as Doug's pointing out in the in the chat here um it's we we live in a tiny village in our minds you're you're in this is the Stone Age stickiness which you always have to filter everything it's not just through the Stone Age lens it's through the stickiness lens where this is like a very small community um and your options are pretty limited and you you are going to be in that situation where that potential mate is you know Wayne Weighing all of the pros and cons and you know who's who's the better mother and who got more raspberries and all of these things um and uh yeah even after menopause the the signals the the sort of the things that would make you successful at mating it's all about the it's all about the signals on the way to the active reproduction not the active reproduction itself um and uh so that it might quiet down a little bit after menopause but it's still it's still there yep yeah yeah we call that's the chapter we call that beat the [ __ ] we might not call it that offline yeah no I I I was just talking to my uh my Saturday group last night about my Elementary School Nemesis you know who I it's like I will still think I'll still Google her from time to time it's it's you know she just will come to mind and it's sort of like I wonder I I want proof that she's not doing very well laughs I just want to be sure she's been neutralized as potential competition and and it was I mean it's always the person who is just you know we were we were neck and neck for who was going to win The District spelling bee um yeah she I I screwed up I I misspelled a word she she won the district level um and so it's a haunts me childhood trauma that haunts me to this day um so so yeah yeah well yes yeah she didn't that's true that was that that was comforting calm down my nervous system a little bit but the experience that Harvard was interesting because there the we all sized each other up immediately like the the women um we we were put through this humiliating ritual at the beginning our first year of of the program called math camp where we had to we had to get there a little early so we could all be um instructed by incompetent autistic men about how to do calculus um so we could do the right kind of models to be good political scientists in these it was just terrible Parable pedagogy but um so we I I remember clear as day the women in that room were you know every conversation was so loaded because you're you're all now Harvard PhD candidates you know you're all you're all there you're all on this even playing field and so you were probing for liabilities and weaknesses in those conversation it's like well what is my competitive advantage and I remember being really irritated by the one who sort of played um like she was so over overwhelmed all the time and everything's just so hard and you knew it was a ruse you knew that she was going to be actually completely competent but she was picky it was there was I mean it got to like it wasn't until midnight exactly she was probably the hardest working person in the cohort um but you know every time you talked to her she was just this Damsel in Distress and it was very it was irritating because he knew that was a successful strategy with the faculty um who were giving her more latitude when you knew she didn't need it and so this was like some very high level you know um uh gamesmanship um and and you know we were not consciously competing for the men in the program we I don't think there was a lot of interest in the men in the program at all but we were competing for this mythical creature yeah yeah for us yeah boy when you even talk about this folks just listening to us talk about this this helps you understand how extraordinarily complex the human mind is that this this thing has in it I I don't know how many instincts it has but if you this is where previous models of psychology were just so incredibly poor Union or Freudian psychology they're thinking there's just a few instincts they're not understanding oh no no there's like 18 000 and they're highly interactive and context dependent yeah and the and then which Suite of those that you use when is dependent upon not only your your learning history but more importantly your personality so this this this this notion of Damsel in Distress I am overwhelmed I need a break what a sophisticated oh and and you just it was so frustrating that you could see people buying into that and and recognize and even I fell for it initially but very quickly realized what a facade it was um and then but then you still have to maintain appearances so like the the multi-level game here it's like I know what you're doing but I can't explicitly signal you that I know because then then I lose a little Advantage because I've let you know that I'm on to your game so what I need to do is let you think that I am actually buying into this so I can get more information from you so I can potentially use it in a competitive way against you and she's doing the same thing to me of course um and so it's really if you if you're psychologically minded it into tuned to these Dynamics you see them everywhere but that was that was a game of very high achieving Apes who were were just trying to outsmart each other at the at the highest social level that they could manage um and and all humans are doing that all the time it was just it was kind of fascinating in those quarters yes and the the extent of self-deception going on was immense yeah yeah yeah so yes we're complicated machine yeah all right I'm gonna there's one these all have the same number of votes I'm gonna skip around so we can ask you a real estate question just to cheer you up hahaha your favorite kind of real estate question because it's real estate and it's Public Storage so we're gonna we're gonna blend them together so I came into some money about 10 years ago I've been working long exhausting hours doing real estate fix and flips to grow the money you've mentioned in the past that you consider investment to be Public Public Storage reach shares is potentially a good idea I compared my returns with what they would have been had I just put the money into public storage shares and Public Storage would have been a better investment but if I invest in public storage I will just sit on my hands and have no esteem from the doing and completing of the fix and flips is the lower return the price for esteem of the accomplishment I feel what should I do ask the real estate expert I think the achievement is essential to your happiness yeah I would say that the following is true that just because I mean what what a what a person with a with a pencil behind their ear and a calculator that even go and do that calculation it's the calculation I'm sure you have done the thing is is that it's not fair when I'm touting something that I already knew was a winner okay so the um and you can and we can now see what an extraordinary opportunity that was not as good an opportunity now because a bunch of people figured it out but the but it still is a very good investment because um provided we still have Western Civilization I wouldn't I couldn't Bet On It I'd be I'd be betting betting against uh I'd be doing I'd be doing more you know a little more strategic technique than just uh betting on Blue Chip companies at this point yeah but if we're betting on Western Civilization we would we would say that a long-term low interest debt on income producing real estate is an unbelievably good bet and so I would bet that Public Storage would continue to do very well because they're positioned super well with a bunch of long-term low interest debt on a bunch of real estate that is income producing and those incomes are going to go up substantially with the inflation that is going to be hitting over the next five years where their costs are going to be fixed largely fixed but their income is going to grow so think of all the the masses that are that are going to be you know relocated uh in into their into their Urban pods with their with their Cricket powder courtesy of the world economic forums and they're going to have to put their possession somewhere so you know Public Storage to the rescue yes that's it so in fact it says it's actually civilization collapse proof to some degree yeah so the uh anyway so but the the interesting question is I think that that what lures any entrepreneur into any opportunity is their own parameter estimates that that they they smell uh High rates of return for the time and energy so I think in some ways this is a mythical question because I think you're going to continue to do what you think is in your best interest so even though you've now you now learned something that's useful by looking at this computation you learn that hey guess what I I may have missed a bet because I was I I wasn't thinking about an alternative strategy uh if I if I'm someone who intuitively feels like real estate has good potential there was more than one way to go about it okay and you saw that if you use that logic and go backwards it does have a logic to it of course it does the logic is the logic that sits under real state that gives it an advantage over other investment uh opportunities is the fact that the government is fundamentally corrupt and dishonest uh this is not news okay this is you know this has been known for centuries that governments are corrupt and dishonest this is goes all the way back to you know chipping the edges of Roman coins okay this uh it still says you know there's there's four Caesars in this coin but you chipped a half the gold out of it okay this is uh so now the the modern chicanery and unbelievably bulk face lying on the part of your government right now uh by the way the whole the whole reason they were so sure that inflation was going to be uh transient last summer that was not a bunch of stupid people as stupid as Janet Yellen is um not stupid I mean Janet Yellen believe me you know doesn't doesn't want to play against my niece when it comes to you know tic-tac-toe because she could get beat but not even an idiot like that could possibly have thought that that inflation was transient they knew it wasn't transient but they're wanting to stop you from knowing that it's transient so that you personally don't start taking action because they're still looking to fleece you of course of course so they are unbelievably dishonest and corrupt right down to their core and they will continue they have absolutely no intention of being being anything other than the than the den of Thieves that they are and so as a result you can count on the fact that they will continue to make money as Loose as possible because that is how it is that they that they skin the cat and they will rob fortunes it's very small fortunes from every little pensioner in the world that they can get their hands on so they are so just so that you keep in mind you you have a flavor for my irritation do my little mother worked very hard in this life get her you know eleven hundred dollars a month Social Security check and she's 89 years old about eleven hundred dollars a month should have been a very decent standard of living based on the money that was invested in its create that eleven hundred dollars a month about eleven hundred dollars a month is worth half of what it was 15 years ago as a result of the government debasing the currency so now you start thinking about that what what you really should have had through years you know 74 through 89 was effectively twenty two hundred dollars a month not eleven hundred dollars a month she's got eleven hundred dollars a month because they stole that net worth from her by virtue of debasing the currency and they just did it in a rash unbelievably aggressive fashion recently I mean think about if you're if your salary has been uniform they've taken a month salary from you approximately they they have you don't get paid for your July wages you have to work but you're you're not getting paid for it you're working for free for a month of the year uh compared to last year that's that's what we're actually talking about at this level and that's just one year so yeah and call them the criminals that they are or we can do something about it and there's something we can do about it is get ourselves in long-term low interest debt on income producing projects like real estate uh don't go buy a bunch of raw land not unless you got a lot of money because it doesn't return there's no way for it to pay for itself just gambling on the future but if you have something like public storage or a little rental unit somewhere then you have something that the rents have to go up because they're going to be subject to inflationary pressure but the costs you paid for it is fixed okay the interest rates that you're paying are less than the inflation rate so this is all basically part of the scheme to rob people from my mother that should have had Investments that were earning a legitimate five to six percent rate of return on Capital that they can't uh Investments done to this you have to go gamble them on what the Securities that these people control so this is a infuriating unbelievable transfer of wealth they they know exactly what they're doing between Social Security liabilities at 100 trillion dollars which is an unbelievable fortune and the 30 trillion dollars worth of actually admitted to national debt the United States government is Awash and a phenomenal amount of debt and they will do something about it they will debase that debt by 30 or 40 or 50 percent over the next three or four or five years because that's how they do it that's how they steal the money and they basically repudiate the debt okay so if I owe you a thousand dollars and then suddenly that thousand dollars becomes worth five hundred dollars in the next five years and I just stole 500 bucks back and that is exactly what they're going to do so the long answer to this one this person's question is the following split the difference exactly totally yeah you don't have to choose here no you don't have to choose come up with some weighted average of how it is to play this thing and so uh if you're you're probably better at real estate investment than you were 10 or 15 years ago you've learned a bunch of stuff you had projects didn't go so well you you realized oh you know there's there's Foundation problems and there's paint problems and those two things are quite different okay so uh yeah but I would say the right move is is to look at look at your understanding now of the position that that a Reit like that has and realize okay that's a stabilizing thing to basically diversify my portfolio that's the right way to do it yeah yeah because I think the other half of that being that the it is a very important your your Stone Age brain does not recognize Financial Security um to the extent even if it can sort of recognize Financial Security with dollars in the bank it's much more important to have the security of the achievement process that you you feel for flipping that house and doing a good job and um I I just took this thing and made it better and it was successful and I I made a profit on it that's speaking to the architecture in a much more powerful way so I think you are leaving a lot of potential satisfaction and happiness behind if you were to go all in on the public storage bed so or any other similar you know but betting against California or whatever whatever sort of things you want to do right yeah yeah there are people that that are inherent gamblers and like the idea of using their brain against the market and that's their productive activity uh but this person knows the satisfaction of actually seeing the project through uh to something that a consumer values and so there's no talking your nervous system out of that but if your Carl icon you see it differently you're just trying to figure out how to beat everybody to an opportunity in the marketplace good for you that's a different that's a different animal thank you as as I always say it's it's the stock market is astrology for men rational all right all right let's take a couple more jokes all right what else do we have here um if is you can do it I Believe In You cheerleading more likely to be helpful or ego trapping affiliation signaling and under what circumstances for Dr Lyle's pleasure does the larger number of fans explain the Home Advantage in sports yeah fourth question after real estate question it's just totally your lucky day here let me see if I understand this does the cheerleading like like if you're if you're a participant in a sporting contest benefit or do you do you get ego trapped which is more likely from from having a crowd rooting for you very interesting um analysis of this thing is as follows and that is that there there's um there's I'd have to look at the data but I believe that this is what it shows that that um it's turned out they've looked very very hard at home team versus away team I'm trying to understand how how this works and it turned out that the home team Advantage historically has been fairly substantial and the reason why particularly and they've actually figured out where that Advantage was and the advantage had to do with very close games only that came down to very uh very uh moments where there was a refereeing decision that was close and it turned out that historically the referees went about two to one in the home team favor so the Stone Age brands of the referees that don't want to get murdered in the streets afterwards basically causes them under questionable circumstances to vote for the home team now that has changed it's changed with instant replay and and the extent to which they now use you know basically very sophisticated video review and that has caused the referees to be able to make extremely unpopular calls but now they've got big Louie back in New York that says that there's no question that this is this and this is that okay and now the fans can even see it on the Jumbotron you can see exactly what's going on and there is no murderous anger that the referee got along okay so and the referees they also got safety in numbers they got three of them on an NBA floor they all consult they look at the thing they talk to the guy in New York now that's how it is like don't blame me on just the messenger this is the truth and you can all just suffer okay so that has actually evaporated largely hunting events interesting so it's very interesting that at the level of certainly these Elite professional athletes that I don't believe that this is happening okay so uh the ego trap uh I certainly watch different players in their own decision making uh there there are players that that in just by virtue of who they are their quote they don't want the big moment okay they're gonna pass the ball okay and uh that's personality and they they can see that early by the way in other words that doesn't tend to change because those are personality characteristics Kobe Bryant never saw a shot that he didn't want didn't matter what it looked like okay so uh Lebron is very judicious and so is Michael so their their performances in the clutch moments actually were at or better than they were for the rest of their careers generally Kobe's was far worse in other words he was seeking high risk opportunities and he should have deferred and didn't okay that is because he had an extras uh Slash of narcissism inside his personality and but it also made it made him fearless and in in many ways so there was undoubtedly times when it was an advantage to be Fearless but statistically over the long run he he mismanaged opportunities uh more he was not a good manager of those opportunities the uh somebody else would also be a poor manager in those opportunities because they were ego trapped okay they're I'm sure there are guys that were like that um but mostly we find that over the over the population and the problem that you're asking it's a wash and we can we can tell it's a wash because now that we've gotten the referee variance out of the equation home team versus versus uh uh away team turns out to be not much worth of anything so that tells you that that it's the fan process is actually remarkably irrelevant uh and what's taking place out on the floor is just the competitive ability against competitive ability so that that's what the truth looks like great question yeah um it could certainly feel like it like there's a there's a process involved and if you put yourself in those shoes you you could feel it but I think that we're looking for something that isn't there you know the uh so I think that's I think that's what the truth is some truth about basketball all right all right um Dr L mentioned novavax a year ago as when he might consider now that it's finally approved I have my first scheduled for Tuesday so I can travel any updates on your novavax info yeah I I don't know enough about it now I heard somebody uh signaling a warning that these the new things could be worse well they're still based on the spike is the is the concern that now that we know how toxic the spike is um that that yes it's different technology but it's still introducing this this protein um and that's probably not ideal um so that's the main concern I've heard about it yeah it's good unless you have to travel for work and it's essentially Drew your career I would tell you right now don't do it in other words there's no way in hell if that's a good decision there's there's two there's creeping evidence from all over the world about how bad these vaccines are so I know that there's going to be we're going to have many listeners that are going to you know gonna cringe at that statement but the truth of this is that the evidence is creeping and it's seeping in like a flood yeah really cannot be denied at this point you do not want to be taking that novavax is an experimental vaccine that we do not have long-term evidence on this at all the fact that it's a year late and 28 billion dollars short is irrelevant it's still out there on The Cutting Edge of experimentation it's getting way too wide a Latitude uh that that is a method by which they are aiming to try to mouse trap uh soldiers who are who are are trying to use a religious exemption and they're going to get supported publicly by the Supreme Court behind that but the problem with that is that it's based on their objection about fetus use and now it's like oh well now we don't have theaters use so now you don't have that okay so the the truth is is that I'm extremely suspicious of all of these products including their their their treatment uh which isn't working with the damn the uh their magic pill that they thought they had the truth is is that this is all nasty trouble and we are 10 years out probably from having anything if ever to deal with this problem we certainly don't have the technology now and I don't have one ounce of faith in novabax so my hope at the time was oh they have some other platform that isn't as risky and stuff then that's a whole different animal my attitude now is I don't trust anybody the last year is a total indictment of this space you should have no confidence in the CDC no confidence in the NIH no confidence in the FDA this has been a a massive inspiratorial Nightmare and I don't trust anybody so if I had to do something for an extremely high benefit versus cost ratio of course I would be balanced but if I didn't have a gun to my head uh in that way there's no way in hell that I need to see Italy this year just wait that's what I would tell you to do yeah you might be back soon be completely fine and probably most people will be man what a chance based on the safety record that this thing is now showing so no my answer to that is no deal yeah you still can that seemed reasonable to you Jen oh totally reasonable yeah I mean I and as someone's pointing out here in the chat too there are there is some novel technology it's not a total classic dead virus vaccine um because yeah there's it's just not possible to manufacture that with covid so um so yeah there might be the also the lipid nanoparticles which are their own that might be part of the delivery mechanism um in which case you've got you've got problems from that as well which you know it's just I I am completely with you on your analysis of this I think it's if you if you're okay with continuing to put your life on hold um it's it's a trade that you both you and I are making so yes yeah hey go go visit Glacier Bay go look go to the Florida Keys you know yeah yeah on this scuba dive whatever but you know I would I would definitely you know I don't think you need a vaccine travel anyway depends some airlines are requiring it um and so I think there are certain destinations that require it and yeah it's it's a little bit of a mixed bag but a lot of places are you testing testing certainly required you don't have to go if you go to Cancun what do you we care yeah all right just you know just watch out for that monkey pox I think I'm safe there yeah yeah did you did you hear that Tucker Carlson has has you know there's been all this all this discussion about we need to have a less stigmatizing name for monkey pox um and so people have been trying Tucker Carlson came up with schlong kovid he could just retire unbelievably good unbelievably good um somebody was asking in the chat uh on the topic of long covid not not necessarily schlong kovid but is there any evidence for fasting um to clear up the spike um yes we talked about that on Hawk blocks last week that true north has good anecdotal evidence and looks like there's some other other sort of suggestive evidence out there that um fasting and certainly the kind of diet that we recommend are both um very helpful for that process yeah you need some help talk to Nathan gershfeld uh Dawson Escape if you if you want somebody to step you through that uh et cetera there are people that are struggling with this and um and that that may be what is is required for you to turn the corner now I've seen it be pretty damn tenacious which is disturbing Critical Care has protocols as well for long covet and for um vaccine injury and you know I don't I don't know that they recommend fasting per se but this sort of unusual battery of everything from corset into zinc to be to possible Ivermectin and there's kind of a prophylactic sequence and then there's a treatment sequence now the evidence is starting to indicate that we that they did exactly what they should have never done obviously which is to vaccinate into the teeth of the pandemic right never should have done that some of the variants that they are now getting are going to be nasty and difficult for the immune system to handle even if you've had covered before this is this is shitty that they did it exactly the way where all the textbooks told them not to do and they did it behind a conspiratorial breed okay and so this is now what we all have to deal with uh fortunately it's not the Raging thing that it was but you know we are going to be dealing with the constant you know you know I don't I I don't know I don't have a good analogy for it that we we've got some ugly bog in the middle of our backyard and you can't wander around in the middle of the night you know what I mean safely anymore weird things live in it yeah yeah totally yeah all right well now now that we've gotten all warmed up to rant we will we'll end this and we've got a hot block to record so we'll we'll just go in hot laughs all right all right everybody we'll talk to you next time we'll ought to see this movie tonight it's essential viewing and it's Charlton Heston just being so Charlton hestony it's like so like you know just all angst and sexual aggression it's very it's it's a must-see perfect all right I hope they'll see you soon bye all
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