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Beat Your Genes Podcast & More

Living Wisdom Library Q&A
2022-08-30
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top of the morning how are you yeah good where it's this weird time and so my desk is that the sun is just coming straight into my eyes and so I had to kind of come over here where now I have this weird Halo so I'm feeling very Angelic today yes yeah yeah we're at this uh where I when I sent out the email I said we're at a very hostile time to um Australia and to the west coast of the US but we're very friendly toward Europe today so hopefully we have some Europeans joining us live who normally can't make it because it's past their bedtime so um so yeah I enabled the chat for everybody um so you should be able to talk to each other and not just shout into the void which is never fun um and I don't think we have any other big housekeeping unless you can think of anything good good yeah okay all right so I'm just tweaking with the Q a here so people can um you can vote you can comment Etc um yeah I never keep saying how did you wake up for this it is it's available early for your time even though you're on East Coast time and it's 10 o'clock so it's business hours you got it technically yeah yeah yeah all right all right let us oh wow uh this is an interesting question I have not heard these priors before so maybe you're you know the straight poop on this I don't um in a q a with Gustavo where Gustavo asked what mcdougall's Dr mcdougall's favorite book is McDougall apparently answered Battlefield Earth by L Ron Hubbard he said he read it three times I understand this may be a secret but what is Dr mcdougall's connection to Scientology if any are you are you aware of any I've never heard anything about that no I I don't think so I've never even heard one word about that so it sounds like he might have been trolling him like it might have been a joke I I've never read that book so I do I mean God knows you've read everything I think I owned a copy at some point just because I found it at a Goodwill or something but I don't remember reading it I mean it's the Scientology Manifesto essentially yeah well is it uh does it have anything to do with the earth and its fragility and its future and do you know anything about it not Beyond uh I I do yeah my my knowledge of Scientology is very sketchy so I do think there is a little bit of an apocalyptic Dimension and you know that the I don't know everyone's being escorted by supernatural beings to another planet or something maybe people can educate Us in the comments if they know a little more but I mean John's apocalyptic about the Earth's future it's apocalyptic that's true yeah and pretty urgently so yeah so uh so that's so that's why that's the only thing that Rings true there I I but literally there's nothing in the McDougall organization or or any commentary that I've ever seen that would indicate that they have anything to do with Scientology right yeah but the but if that was his first uh connection to apocalyptic thinking that that may be what you know rang a chime somewhere interesting all right well yeah we're we're learning right along with you here so um yeah she gives us a link if we want to verify so fascinating all right sorry we don't have more insight all right let's see uh if a low mutation load is responsible for number one high physical attractiveness is it then also responsible for number two high intelligence and three average scores in the Big Five in other words does mutation load lower Fitness assuming a stable Stone Age environment yeah things Cluster together there's sort of like clusters of of good genes and bad genes that correlate very strongly with you know High Intelligence Beauty uh conscientiousness Etc so but it's not it's not a straight strict causal relationship for sure I think the woman talks about this yeah it's just yeah yeah so I think it's uh to two people who are at the 30th percentile permutation loads in other words you know a chunk above average there's no real telling what that above average is going to look like it's probably they're probably an eight with 115 IQ but they could be a nine with a hundred IQ I mean who the hell knows now you're that's actually a great question that that I don't think you know anybody really knows the answer to at this point uh but that's the kind of thing that they might they might know an awful lot more about in 10 years so yeah stay tuned because exactly those kind of questions are the kind of questions that we might actually be able to answer that's something so I think right now the notion of um mutation loads per se with respect to physical attractiveness or anything else I think it's um I think that what it is is a really good idea that looks like it's probably uh true but I I don't know that they have definitive evidence but they they may have funny looking evidence for example um in the animal kingdom you know what I'm saying so uh so special attractiveness low mutation loads Etc so obviously if it's there it follows but we couldn't pinpoint anything yeah this is also the sort of thing that is exceedingly difficult to talk about you know openly so it's the it's the this is the double-edged sword of the behavioral genetics literature is it tends to be very very good because it's so difficult to get things published that they have to be really you know well replicated and airtight by the time they actually go to press on anything so even though most people have sort of interpersonal intuitions of course and and those are built both from experiential correlations um and from just some some sort of deeper communication that is coming to you from that individual on the other side of the exchange um but you start trying to have these conversations and saying you know attractiveness correlates with intelligence Etc and you start getting accused of literally Eugenics as meanwhile the handsome affable intelligent Robert Plowman who's six foot five Lumbers through your conference it is totally the dude of course of course yeah yeah I heard um I I've talked in a couple of other contexts about uh Brett Weinstein just interviewed Peter bagassian or bagosian I'm not sure how we pronounce his name uh Exile professor in Exile also in Portland um and bogosian makes an interesting he he actually puts it out there he says I'm gonna get slaughtered for this but he's talking about sort of uh the woke activists for lack of a better word and says that there is a he uses the word habitus that accompanies them there is a there's a certain way that they they look and and there's a certain level of conscientiousness around their sort of personal uh attire and hygiene and self-presentation that is a strong correlate with their politics um and so he's he's putting it out there and he's saying hey you know uh I I am going to call a stay to spade and point this out that there may be people who are struggling with competitive problems who are turning toward a certain political strategy which is something of course what we've been observing I just I just texted you did you get my text 15 minutes ago I texted you back unless you sent me another one yes I sent you a couple of other pieces of literature that are in this realm um definitely people are yeah thinking about this about is a hobby in handicaps yeah people are definitely they call it different things but they're they're rooted in this literature so both The evolutionary strategy of playing essentially but also the correlation with um that strategy and other big five characteristics including the dark Triads so some people who are you know dark Triad are much more likely to under equal conditions employ something like of vulnerable narcissism or um The Virtuous victim it goes by many names um so incredible yeah yes I mean literally I had never put that together yeah but I didn't know there was a literature on it so I woke up today for uh unbelievably unknown reasons and I suddenly occurred to me that the trauma monitoring could have been selected as a hobby in handicapped uh or essentially some social something some social strategy like it you know what I'm saying so yeah and of course and I thought I was going to tell you that it's a far out idea but it could be more than just disagreeable and therefore angry and completely yeah yeah totally totally more than that there's a there's an entitlement and a manipulation that goes along with yes exactly because if you're just just disagreeable you're just gonna take stuff you know right you're not you're not good about it and whine about it yeah right yeah and and basically you know sort of make the other person feel guilty yes in addition in addition to handing over the stuff rather than just demanding the stuff and that comes from a position fundamentally of weakness disagreeable disagreeableness and weakness whether that's from your lack of competitive chops and other domains you know that you're not as attractive you know that you're not as intelligent you know that you're not as conscientious you can't win fairly yeah so you're you're gonna employ this different strategy that is not just you can't rely on your might because your might is not competitive within that context you've got to add in this sort of like you know long term I've been wronged handed over I'm entitled to it and I think we freaking unbelievable God some people have already got there people are all over the space yeah I was going to say that if it was nothing else it was going to be an incredible metaphor for you to use yeah sure well this is I think this literature has emerged really since I started you know when I when I started looking into this in like 2010 or something there was hardly anything there and so I've I've watched I think the last couple of years have forced social science to pull its head out of its ass realize okay there are clearly genetic components to all of this there there's clearly an opportunity structure socially that's selecting for it um you know so yeah it's been catching up I don't know are is zahavi have I have we talked about as a hobby not that I recall the handicapped stuff right this is something that's it's worth you reading yeah okay this is the guy that started it yeah okay when this is so hottie uh it's a hobby is in the mid-1970s uh actually he um he's Israeli Professor I think he was alive even five years ago he might still be alive he's a real old man now but he uh this actually caught the huge imagination of Richard Dawkins at as as a hobby basically said um that this is actually super interesting because it this is the reason for the peacock's tale okay peacock's tale um is is a hobby in handicap it makes it harder for you to succeed and therefore indicates that you're better okay and so literally uh this is costly signals are good signals that's probably signals are good signals yeah so this is so to then we get all the way to hmm you know what the fact that human beings insure each other they're not just selecting mates on on goodness of genes but they're also ensuring each other in in essentially a village level social contract and so now the human beings could I was thinking this morning now wait a second they could be exploited through you know this could be this could be a zahavian-esque kind of a situation and that's exactly where everybody's going with the stuff that you're talking about yeah but I think if we but to explain it and we back up where it comes from that Evolution's selected for displays that indicate that you're handicapped look out yeah very interesting all right oh good I mean the truth is I feel it you you feel the advantage of it all the time like uh I could have been but I could have been but it's like could have been somebody every could have been a contender could have been a contender that's actually that's a great chapter title almost unbelievable chapter title you guys you guys are basically here for a book meeting today this is what Doug and I we're just using this time to scheme um yeah yeah that's it that is a if nothing else that's a lecture where one of us will give one day that we'll wind out on all of us God that's a good title of course this generation doesn't know where that comes from so that's true that's true but we have other other chapter titles that come from movies they haven't seen either so oh well we can just catch up these are important films for them to see yeah I've never seen it that's all I've seen he's got uh that clip by the famous clip Brando in on the waterfront I I never saw uh the movie oh man but we all know that even in one line we know what he's saying you know what I mean and we know the story uh you know it could have been somebody I could have been a contender yeah yeah there that's this is a hobby and story right there oh man we'll have a whole a whole film curriculum that goes along with them yes oh gosh that's including including movies we need to see so yes yes all right let's see what else we have here uh my in-laws several of them have disrespected me due to some incident that happened five years ago I think about it every day playing Loops in my head and now I'm going to and and how I'm going to get in verbal fights with them one day on also thinking of not going to my in-laws funeral or attending family gatherings with my husband anymore um I'm a high conscientious in that case successful in my life and have been very generous in sharing my wealth with them before this incident how do I stop playing these Loops in my life and move on um I'm not I'm not exactly sure but let me uh I don't know what the details would be that would be in this person's life in this situation but let me at least give you this is a concept and you just may reject it out of hand or you may reject that out of hand for a month and then a month from now your mind might run through all these simulations in your head and you might come to a slightly different conclusion um a lot of time that there's been some dispute or ultimately over what is fair and then there's been hurt feelings it's uh what's what's sitting at the middle of this is a hey wire esteem dynamic in other words the somebody somebody did something and somebody signaled a lowered esteem estimation and then that seemed unfair to the receiving party of that you know a a does something B signals their displeasure and lower esteem a then feels like no what I did was in line and your estimation of me and your signaling is now out of line so I'm going to Signal back to you and we Stoke a vicious cycle okay and the um what what sometimes there is in there that can be hard to admit uh when they are actually fundamentally in the wrong it's very hard to admit that they had a point okay so whenever Jen's right you know I mean it takes years for you to mention it offhandedly hahaha and never never directly no no it's always always shaded around the edges so uh so the notion is is that one of the things that we we may want to do is because sometimes we will find the following thing will happen if we can find a way to signal to them that they had a point okay and that the and that we take some responsibility for the social mess Etc we um we can do this the uh and this is what we're flooding the circuit uh or what I call you know what used to be called an old family dynamics therapy is stroke kicking in other words don't yell the kid until you stroke him first uh and then then it became in my in my uh lexicon it became stroke stroke stroke kick like before you criticize somebody you better stroke them three times and then somebody did some uh actually research on this thing in some [ __ ] and Mimi fashion and it came out that five compliments to one criticism was actually the best uh way of doing things you know at least for coaching kids in baseball or whatever the heck that was so like hey that's interesting uh to get them to change their ways you better load on a lot of positive before you give them the negative and then incredibly I think they even went past that and went to seven or something and then it turned out people wouldn't change anything because it's like hey if I'm so bright why do I need to change anything oh that's amazing there's actually a bit of an amazing sweet spot on motivation with respect to praise versus criticism and so that's why we would uh uh I I have something happening like this that actually I actually did something like this and it worked uh with a long-standing very long-standing uh mess uh in a family system we just did this where the person uh shot a video of themselves that they had they had actually written out and carefully edited a a short essay where and and they spoke it into their iPhone and they um uh and they basically said you know said the story made sure they took everybody's status super carefully and then they made their point okay about how it is that they saw it in other words so they they had a a story but it was super carefully done so that it's it's not an argument and it wasn't argumentative it was a like this like here's here's what's on my plate now when people do something like that the people on the other side first of all um were not in an argument because we're not uh there there's not an urgency that goes on in argumentation I I believe that human arguments are are actually they're obviously disagreements about what's fair in Stone Age Villages they evolved there and I believe that they are mostly for audiences so it's mostly there's people walking by that are in the village that know you both and when they hear the dispute they may pause for 15 or 20 seconds to listen to it and then chirp in and say no John you're out of line okay something like that in other words so people I believe that's why people raise their voices it's also possible that there's a latent aggressive threat that they're also signaling that that they could be getting aggressive with you um but I have a feeling that the voices raised is more than a latent aggressive threat I think it's also a a righteous signal to the village that I'm being wronged come listen to me and then what we're going to see afterwards or or during the process is we're going to be seeing an extraordinary rhetoric Instinct that goes for the jugular of the other person's weakness rather than a crystal clear analysis of the dispute in other words it's it's shamanship to try to get the four people that are passing by by listening to the Village to say yeah and he's got a point bill you know what I mean and like whoa just that quick you have lost this argument and you better back down and concede in some way pretty fast because it looks like the village is going to vote against you and so um I I think that when I look at people in argumentation and I look at the 90 IQ people that I've seen argue in my office and look at the genius that they have about going for the other person's most vulnerable part calling up little files out of their memory and stringing things together it's extraordinarily how intelligent they are at forming an argument with no brands that tells me this is deeply instinctual okay so and they're really good on the Fly too it's not like they have to plot it so I'm convinced that that's in there now whatever took place here you've now everybody's dugging into their trenches over over this essentially nasty esteem Dynamic and they've not conceded for years and you're replaying and rehearsing Etc however this went down our best uh our most likelihood of getting you some inner peace would be to find the following process and that is that you find a way to stroke stroke stroke stroke stroke and then gently kick and then show on a platter your vision of this thing which exonerates them largely but also exonerates yourself and essentially looks for essentially a reset of this dispute now the um that may enable you to get some inner peace um we had a situation where we're still waiting on that there was two people on the other side of the table one of them one of the two came over to our party side after an extremely long-term dispute we're not we we're the more difficult one may not come over we don't know I don't expect it to that person too uh but the one person that did come over was actually the most important one so we we ran a Gambit you know on exactly this strategy uh and this you know we he the our person Crystal cleared went through the crystal clear process of of the dispute why their position was what it was being understanding about everybody else's position uh and communicating that Etc so that whole thing I mean it took some hours to figure it out but it only took you know it's only a 10 minute you know Soliloquy or less maybe maybe 10 12 minutes and you can tell the people Hey listen this is only 12 minutes long so I'm asking you to set aside 12 minutes to listen Etc so anyway that's keep that as an idea of something and roll that around in your mind because that that is probably your best opportunity to get inner peace out of this uh other than burying those people and then having these memories slowly fade uh Etc anyway that's what I'm thinking Jen thoughts about that yeah I mean I think there's value in going through that process for quote unquote closure to give you inner peace even if there's no hope of moving the other side I think there can also depending on the situation and you know the specifics here if it's if it's really like you you've written these people off and you don't wish to repair the relationship at all um and you know they're the this is a permanent estrangement um and it might not be reasonable to go through this and and re-engage them because it's just going to lead to more pain you know then it's sort of a um uh it's an inside job with with just letting it go right you know it's an easier said than done yeah um but uh yeah I think the the recognition that some personalities are just going to have a harder time with that and you you self-identify as a high conscientious net case and so you're gonna continue running open Loops for a lot longer and and more intensely than someone in the middle of the bell curve is going to do um and so just kind of coming to terms with the fact that this is what it is they're never going to see your side of the dispute there's really no way that you could ever persuade them to you have some sort of intractable personality conflict and you know just the slow process of acceptance there's no magic process for that there's no we we can't accelerate that or teach you how to let things go faster or better it's just a process of time and and your mind will go through it some number of times and revisit it periodically and um you you are probably a little bit in a even a little self-reinforcing conditioning loop with thinking of it and getting yourself all adrenalized and worked up about it so every time it occurs to you you you get a little bit of a uh you know excitement charge from that um and so it's just those things have to fade with time and it's going to be tougher for some people than other people but if there is a possibility of you know going going through exactly what Doug's outlined here this is this is very much like doing a night step in 12-step the immense step with somebody who it's not there's no hope of repair there's no hope of um you know changing the Status Quo but it's still worth it to some degree to go through it um yourself just to have the closure for yourself um as long as the caveat and 12 step is always if it doesn't make it you don't increase the suffering for the other people you don't make things worse for the other people so I would say one other thing and that is that your brain may have open Loops as to whether or not you're really On Solid Ground and that your position would be defensible at a village tribunal yes very much why you might want to call one of the two of us while you're rehearsing the argument in your mind yeah yeah I want to say very um uh a high a really high status person really high like me yeah the truth is okay it's like the Raiders of the Lost Ark blinding status can't even look directly at the source of the status it will it will destroy you the thing is is that essentially talking this through and processing it with somebody whose mind that you respect and you respect is likely to be impartial can be a way for you to essentially have had a proxy trial and and that that may also give you some closure because part of what could be what can be going on is the rehearsals can be about getting ready for that tribunal and not really being that sure of your ground so that's that's why it's you know it just might be worth 75 bucks to call Jen don't call me I don't know he doesn't have the status to you know he's gotta keep it all for himself yeah and yeah I think that's why in 12-step if you if it's not not possible for you to confront the other party directly not not confront but to you know to to go through this with them because it is going to make just everything worse for everybody then you go through it with your sponsor essentially you have a you have a witness to your case and it's not your sponsor's job to rubber stamp your case by any means it's your it's your sponsor's job to to kind of point out inconsistencies and um the personality defects and language of 12 step in your your vision of this whole how this whole thing went down and so the sponsor is not totally on your side it's it's you know in theory supposed to be an objective party who says well actually I think you know you're out of line here and this is because you're uh you know have this entitlement in this way et cetera et cetera et cetera so we can very much play that same sort of role we're not necessarily going to be like yeah you go you were wronged that was that was um because you probably have some doubt about that yourself if you if you're running the open Loops so um we or someone else could be something resembling a active check for that yeah that tribunal rehearsal exactly so all right good good question okay things have moved around here let me see what's floated to the top um is it true that some people are dopamine deficient and if so is it true that those people are more prone to addictions um some people are more prone to addictions uh I I don't know to what degree that it has a causal relationship with their measurable dopamine receptor activity um I think there's probably a strong correlate I know people have written books about this there's the the new dopamine book I can't remember this person's been on Chef AJ Etc um I think that's probably an overly simplistic way of thinking about it because you have these Suites of genes that are priming you for certain addictive processes but they're interacting with environmental exposure as well so the story I've told many times is I you know I come from alcoholic jeans both sides of the family very very strong alcoholic genes but really my my environmental trigger which was something that was not part of my systematic childhood environment but was with this total historical contingency was a was a university therapist who told me that there's no genetic role for alcoholism at all and that I had nothing to worry about and it's just a disease of disconnection Etc and so I was like okay well nothing to worry about and then I happen to have an open personality an open extroverted personality that got me um you know in a lot of kind of peer pressure environments trying to keep up with boys I was trying to impress Etc and I essentially drank myself into an alcoholic process having having the predisposition so there's there are I don't know that you could look at my brain and say oh you know she's dopamine deficient and that's what led to this because it's a much more complicated story than that I have these you know polygenic predispositions and then I also had historical environmental contingencies that you can't really control for or prepare for or insulate anybody from that provided opportunities for those genes to express themselves in the way that they did so um and those those have just as much to do with my my big five as they do with my genetic predisposition to to alcohol on the dopamine level so without my openness without my extraversion without without being attracted to to a certain type of guy who was going to you know want to go out and drink a bunch of beer with me if I'd been more of a you know a Horus a what an agreeable yeah and agreeable and agreeable for sure yeah so all of these things you know Corner me in that in that um set of circumstances into a situation that I then had a lot of trouble getting out of so um it's not completely reducible to any one of those factors yeah I would this is what I heard from uh a shrink but I I've not confirmed it or if I did I don't remember where I read it but first of all the concept that uh people drug addiction or dopamine deficient is utterly and totally absurd that that is it that is an insane way of looking at what you're looking at here is actually the accurate way of looking at it if it's true which it probably is uh like I said I've heard evidence of this I didn't see the papers myself but I heard a competent person report this and that is that that um or an alcoholic person likely has a greater positive dopamine reaction to alcohol okay that is different than saying that that human is dopamine efficient yeah okay so that is a uh that that just doesn't make any sense to make the entrance that way it makes it it makes it interesting to say okay so person number one has a 20 increase in dopamine signaling for 15 minutes after they've had a beer person number two has a 50 increase in dopamine signaling at the same beer look out person number two is getting a bigger kick bigger High out of that same drug and so that appears to be what that is that isn't to say that that oh they're walking around chronically dopamine experience deprived and therefore they chase alcohol to get to where other people are now that that wouldn't be the correct way would be would be thinking in terms of it is relative responsiveness and therefore what is the subjected feeling as a result of being under the influence into that drug the the quote alcohol person isn't walking around unhappy you know pleasureless etc etc you know in this life no excitement and then the only thing that does it for them because they're so low on dopamine is that they drink alcohol and then suddenly they feel up to normal no that's absolutely ludicrous and doesn't match up with any subjective reports or any behavioral patterns that you're ever going to see it's different than that it's instead my interesting my very first client very first day in the chair as a psychologist was a girl named joy and she came into the Counseling Center at UVA and said I got a problem with alcohol which of course my my response is Oh no you're probably fine you know you know I'm denying things don't want to face whatever it is don't understand it and all I'm wanting to say is oh no girl you're fine and she says no I'm not fine if I if there is a river of drinks I'd be there all day and then told me that she knew from her first beer at 16. it was like boom not having a you know you can imagine the Endorphin and dopamine reaction of somebody who would be an extremely high signal around one of those things and you know I have since had that same conversation with people around a lot of different drugs my guy's in the prison you know some of those characters they used it all and they mixed them all I mean they've done it all and they'll sit there and tell you yeah amphetamine didn't do anything now cocaine didn't do anything but you know you know whatever's percocet or whatever the hell it was like oh that was really good that's where I got into trouble I had highly individual brain chemistries yeah yeah all right yep yeah I think it's these are just completely but they do correlate so you know that people have in this intuition that you know you swap one addiction for another this is like you'll hear this all the time you quit quit why you know the people in the rooms in AAA oh I quit drinking so now I'm smoking cigarettes all day or I'm addicted to coffee or you know what whatever um and so they correlate in a polygenic sense um yeah that they they correlate just the same way that attractiveness and intelligence correlate like there this is going to explain a lot of variation in the population but any one person could be you know on at any given point in that map and not have any relationship between their addiction to cigarettes in there I mean I try I definitely I tried cigarettes I didn't try I wasn't that open to try everything but I definitely tried you know I tried smoking my dad's cigarettes I tried pot a couple of times I tried you know Etc and nothing nothing did it for me like alcohol did it for me um and I just really wasn't interested in anything else and it was a similar experience the first time I got you know actually buzzed it was sort of like oh whoa this is this is good stuff you know where most people um you know if they're not predisposed they have sort of a an ill at ease it doesn't feel right it feels weird I don't like it I feel sick um and and I was just like oh more of this you know how can I how can I have more of this so yeah but you're not in trouble with alcohol until you rewire your brain up with that stuff which requires certain it's a dose-dependent thing it's not it's not as if you take your first Swig of a beer and you're just done um you definitely have a you know a sense that oh this is good stuff I want more of it but you you could quit at that point with more ease than you're going to be able to quit a few years later when it has you know yes magic with your brain chemistry yes yeah yep all right all right let's see um is depressing can you speak to whether a man's character is built or innate based on jeans she's thinking of the the way of the superior man qualities here which I doubt you've read but this is just sort of a you know the the idea that the male can um you know uh with great conscientiousness and effort sort of move himself into a better greater mate value with um specific effort toward what he's bringing to the relationship though is a man's pursuit of female admiration something that is hard to discover in the modern environment because sex is so much more readily available or just some personalities genuinely not care for such admiration and are therefore therefore acting without decency is acceptable to their internal audience I think we may have lost you you're Frozen um or maybe yeah dream is suck we'll see if he kind of goes out and comes back here [Music] okay he probably just quit and came back I mean I think the general answer on this is going to be that it is um it's both you know I think there's there's definitely I think it would be ridiculous to declare that there are not uh structural incentives in the current environment that has it's I mean it's obviously a really different dating environment for men now than it ever has been in our ancestral history where they they're they're not having to prove themselves worthy of female admiration in the way that they has always been the Baseline for them um it is you know they they have much more ready access to the eggs with much less trouble and effort so if he does come back I'm gonna have to we promote him so okay don't see him yet um but I think there are also you know certain individuals who are are just prone to trying to get more for Less trying to get something for nothing um are only going to to play along with the game of earning female admiration to the degree that it is required to get them some access to the eggs and so some of them are going to find that process more intrinsically fulfilling than others um and some of them are in an environment like we're in uh where it's just a matter of swiping to the next casual mating encounter uh it's it's really not there's there's no cost benefit analysis for them there all right I've lost Doug let me text him he is not in the attendees list all right um he probably did he has a phone I doubt he has zoom on his phone um or could get it effectively installed in time to rejoin us I think he's having he's having trouble and maybe abandoning us for good so okay I think I've been left I think I've been left alone he's he's working on it but it says it's not looking good so um so that is my general Sense on that question um I think it's it's a very depressing State of Affairs for both men and women for different reasons as I've as I've said before so it is a bummer um all right vilma's question I think is next so I definitely see things I do not like in my boyfriend and his mother I'm pointing them out to him because he also doesn't like those personality characteristics in her but he cannot admit that he inherited them from her and of course he does not really see them in himself he's very smart and educated and he believes more in behavioral psychology um I've tried many times to talk about evolutionary psychology with him but he thinks that it's pseudoscience likewise he's his mother is quite disagree yes likewise his mother he is quite disagreeable and likewise most Germans very inflexible and afraid to see New Perspectives I live in Germany and I love the people but most of them have they they think that new ideas are dangerous because once a guy with the platform and some crazy statements said horrible things to humanity how can I expose him more to evolutionary psychology without being annoying um maybe giving him our book when it is published um yeah I think there was also a follow-up on this in the chat uh oh yeah somebody said if it does not get addressed it's my understanding that based on studies on identical twins separated at Birth and reunited in middle age religiousness appears to be genetic if someone is more inclined to dismiss evolutionary psychology it is likely to be a genetic genetic innate personality trait I personally would attempt to introduce basic concepts going back to the development of humans any documentaries on Evolution would probably be better introductory knowledge before going into personality science yeah I there's a huge uh genetic component of of just resistance and acceptance of of new ways of understanding the world um and I think even what we might call intellectual honesty or or comfort with uncomfortable subjects or topics including your own personality liabilities which you know if you have traits that you don't like about a parent and you see them in yourself because of course he must you know even if it seems to you that he doesn't acknowledge that he shares those traits he he has some awareness of them and he has some awareness that they are costly to other people around him and that they are not attractive qualities in himself and he feels that he would like to change them but also has some sense that uh you know lack of self-efficacy about the ability to change them so that is a a set of circumstances that is very ego trapped like that is going to contribute to him um turning away from those those traits uh minimizing them dismissing them and certainly uh you know not not wanting to be open to an interpretation of Personality that fixes them as somewhat immutable um and hey you see them in your mom for a reason because you've inherited them honestly here so I think that that level of resistance to uh behavioral genetics view of of his own psychology or anybody else's is probably you know something that's going to be that that resistance is going to be stable with him and I don't think you're likely to make a lot of ground trying to introduce him to the concepts trying to educate him trying to push literature on him anything like that I think this is one of those things that other people you know they they there are exceptions to this and I I was a bit of an exception because when I first encountered evolutionary psychology I I found it um very plausible and fascinating but also highly problematic and disturbing and it was much more comfortable for me to look at it from a distance and say that's a bunch of you know misogynistic justification for for Men Behaving Badly and I don't want anything to do with this and people are making um inferences about Stone Age behavior that don't apply to the modern world and it minimizes free will et cetera Etc but that that coexisted with my awareness that uh an evolutionary psychology worldview had some source code had strong source code in it my first encounter with it was probably the moral animal when I read the moral animal in high school or read through my grandma's copy of it um and then encountered it in a few other contexts and it really wasn't until I came across um I don't know if it was Jordan Peterson it was somebody of that ilk who was writing about makeup and why women wear makeup and they wear makeup to mimic the symptoms of sexual arousal and I came across this you know bigger eyes redder cheeks redder lips and I was like oh of course that's true of course that's what they're doing um those are those are you know kind of cues of Youth and and Beauty but also fertility primarily um and that's going to be much more attractive to the opposite sex and any woman who tells you she's wearing makeup for herself is you know delusional she's wearing it to be more attractive to other people and specifically the the other other people she might be interested in mating with um and so I I had to start looking at it at that point when I came across that and thinking okay even though this is a dangerous way of thinking about the world and we know that it's pseudoscience because that's what all of the academics around me tell me to think um there's there's clearly something here that's deeply true about base basic human nature and I'm sort of curious what they actually what you know what are they what are they what are other claims that they're making and how how deep does this Rabbit Hole go so that's that whole story is just to say that I think people um have a relationship to the source code or the the basic truth of something like evolutionary psychology or behavioral genetics that it's either there or it's not they're either resonating with it or it's not if they're permanently defensive and um you know self-defensive and protective against this stuff and they don't want to engage with it because it's just their curiosity and their intellectual honesty is not getting lit up by it there's not much you can do to facilitate that process you just wait for them to continue to be exposed to things that might bring them bring them onto the side of righteousness or you just you know keep your own side of the street clean so that's generally how I would handle that um but having sensitivity to the fact that his a lot of his resistance is almost certainly rooted in the fact that he dislikes these things about himself just as much as you dislike them um and that he feels some oh some uh you know hopelessness or sadness or just lack of efficacy about changing them and that is going to contribute to wanting to see them in a different light and and feeling like he could change them if he really wanted to that's a more empowered place for people to sit a lot of times than to you know this somewhat sometimes fatalistic idea of well it's it's my genes and I'm stuck with this and that sucks and I I'm doomed to dislike myself in all of the same ways I dislike my parents that's a that's a tough pill to swallow um and of course I don't think people are Beyond self-improvement they can't fundamentally change their personalities but you can take quote unquote bad personality traits and shine a big bright light on them um and confront them and accept them and look at ways that you can build structures in your life that minimize the damage that they're doing to yourself and to your relationships but that's a whole other whole other question um all right let's just check on Doug again here see if there's any help of return I think he's abandoned me for good I wonder if that means he's also abandoning me for our next thing uh I think he's had victoriously bad internet in that hotel so all right [Music] um yeah I've also heard that women use makeup to mimic fruits I don't think that he's making the claim that they're actually trying to mimic fruits that it's just the same process of ripeness um that they're not trying to be mistaken for a ripe Apple but they are attractive in the same way that a ripe apple is attractive but maybe I maybe if I went back and it would not it would not be out of the realm of possibility for Peterson to make such a claim um there was something in here that I had seen it has been that someone is texting me but it's not Doug okay there was a question that I know has been asked before I wanted to see if I could get to and now I can't find it sorry there's a lot here this week okay so since I can't find it I'll just kind of keep going down what's voted here so any advice for an hcnc who has chronic realistic nightmares death of spouse family pets house burning down losing job getting robbed Etc it's traumatic enough that it makes it hard to go back to sleep and even causes emotional responses such as crying yeah um I mean the only possible solution to that is to just work on the quality of your sleep there's obviously nothing we can do to change the content of your dreams at least nothing that I'm aware of there's there's some of that in the more woo-woo literature the jungian literature um the uh idea that dreams are trying to help you work through some things which I think Doug and I are both sympathetic to that idea that as a high conscientious in that case of course you're running the worst case scenario amped up all the time and your dreams are helping you in that process they're saying hey you're not you're not thinking through these things properly in daylight hours so we're just going to have you we're going to run some simulations at night to to help you dwell in the worst case scenario um I don't think there's too much that you can do about that it's possible sort of similar to the the question about the family conflict that if you were to go into that that territory that emotional territory in waking hours and allow yourself to um kind of mimic the emotional response of an exposure therapy process so this is this is there's a version of exposure therapy that is going it's it's meant mentally and emotionally taking yourself through the thing that you're afraid of rather than actually going through it and and having the physical cues and the experiential cues you can mentally take yourself through it and go into that scenario that you're probably actually avoiding because you're thinking about it stresses you out so um you know if for example you're afraid of flying you you go through this mental scenario where you imagine the worst case scenario in in detail um and you let yourself go into that space and I I don't know how uh how great an idea this is for any particular individual I just know that this is a modality that has been used to some effect and has been successful with people at the same level that certain kinds of exposure therapy have been used so there may be an element to if you journaled through an exercise like this where you you thought about like all of the things that you worry about happening to your family in your home and your pets Etc and you allowed your brain to kind of process those things and waking hours even though it would be very disturbing and uncomfortable to do so if you might not your your your your brain might not have to do it at night in dream time um there's no guarantee that that's true it might just bring it higher to Consciousness and give you more dreams so I I offer this with many caveats that you can look into this as a therapeutic modality that people have definitely used and had success with around around phobias and um kind of irrational fears like the sort that you're describing so um and then improving Sleep Quality just at the level of you know what can you do that is more ancestrally integrated in terms of sleeping as deeply and as solidly and as well as you possibly can um that might also be helpful uh Larry's question here about we're hunting humans just as efficient or even more efficient at getting calories as gatherers I don't know the answer to that I don't know um if anybody knows the answer to that but we can save that for um when Doug rejoins us probably next time he might be familiar with some literature on that but I haven't I don't know I think the again the answer is probably going to be it varies quite a lot from time to time and place to place where diets can be so different um seasonally and geographically so it can be a little tough to compare Apples to Apples more texts oh he's back um hey the tech genius has figured it out your Tech genius is on call at the hotel at this hour yes um there was a there was an interesting question about nightmares High conscientious in that case having very bad nightmares about you know terrible things happening to the family and pets Etc and is there anything that we could recommend for that I I was thinking of the um the exposure therapy modality that sort of takes people through going through the worst case scenario consciously um so you're not necessarily doing it but you're the thing that you're afraid of happening like a plane crash you're actually visualizing it and letting yourself sort of have all of the emotional reactions um that there could be something in the daylight hours if she were to journal or think about doing that um that might make it so she her her nervous system doesn't feel the need to dream about it um but apart from that I don't know what other bag what other tricks we have up our sleeves for changing the contents of Dreams um I think strangely enough I think my guess is some of that has to do with the just general uh sympathetic tone of the nervous system uh more broadly so the so for example it might be interesting for you to watch the following correlations if you if you can afford it or and your imaginative enough doing this similar the same this type of thing go get yourself a massage that day and then we're going to find out whether or not you have a nightmare that night okay so see if you can see if you can connect the dots between essentially your general stress level um and and make a concerted effort on on certain days to not try to push you know the last two hours for you to bed to get all these things done but instead you're going to deliberately and maliciously flake and you know go in a hot tub or take a long bath and and you know Listen to Enya in other words we're going to do things that are extremely Pleasant and try to really allow that nervous system to wind itself down for a more extended period of time and then we're going to see you know if we still get nightmares so the um that that is uh that's that's just a guess um I you know I'm aware of of hyper conscientious people having recurrent nightmares uh and they kind of never get rid of them so but I've never attacked the problem uh in this way as as a as a concept of just generally heightened anxiety that we want to generally dial everything down um I think that I I notice for example uh that I add an OCD friend of mine that you know that actually told me something interesting that he noticed about his OCD which is obviously just constant free-floating anxiety uh always a little bit edgy and that is it that's one of the reasons he drove a Lexus is because he noticed when he was in it it because of the strength of the windows and the body of the car it's made with different materials than the Camry so even though it's this on made on the same platform they literally have different gauge of Steel to reduce all the vibrations and better insulation so it's quieter and he said he feels less anxious and actually I noticed it myself not that it is a big deal to me you know it's not worth the extra twenty thousand dollars or whatever the heck it was but it's worth it to him uh it's like calms his nervous system down and certainly I notice the big difference you know if I'm in a place that's quiet with the trees and not a lot of car noise versus I'm you know in a City hotel and there's a bunch of noise it's not that much but I know it's there and you hear it every little evidence of it so these are if we think about our hcncs as how having amped up General level of anxiety Then you can imagine a threshold of signaling the nervous system saying we're not safe we're not safe and then that's kicking off into nightmares uh as the organism is worried and overwhelmed with too many threats and so uh the idea is to see if you can generally calm the nervous system down and whether you notice that that actually works if it works then you have to put obviously more time and energy and investment into insulating yourself from the noises and the and the time pressures as well as the threats that Jen's talking about Jen's talking about looking for what that nightmare might be signaling it's also possible that it really doesn't have a purpose to its particular signal uh it might it might though my mom when I was in a depressed state in my early 20s because I couldn't get a girlfriend dropped out of school didn't know what the hell I was doing my mom dreamed constantly that I it was was dead and that went on for a couple of years and so she was clearly picking up a signal and her worst case scenario was something terrible was wrong with me and uh you know probably I.E warning her of a possible suicide which at that point I did have some suicidal ideation as as you would expect when you're getting defeated and you don't know what to do so the um anyway that that's the idea so it may be specific or maybe General the general is more is is easier to approach and so we approach that and see if effectively insulation uh better better anxiety insulation makes your life better and calms it down yeah good okay all right uh yeah she was dreaming about her genetic dead end yeah it's not going to give me grandchildren [Laughter] um all right I think we have maybe one more before we wrap up here oh I I punted on this one because I actually didn't know the answer we're hunting humans just as efficient or even more efficient at getting calories as gatherers um only less consistent or did men go on Hunting despite its lower efficiency because of the social and display benefits and then somebody's following up saying McDougall said men go hunting and failed most of the time um and ate the food gathered by women but I think there's such variation from place to place and time to time some some communities being much more you know much more successful with hunting or fishing or acquiring other animal food and others that are predominantly you know roots and shoots based so it's kind of hard to answer on in an average sort of way um yeah I think that I think that what you can answer is that it was sufficiently a a fitness indicator for males that it evolved as a human characteristic and so clearly females were using this as a and obviously the guy no matter what the habitat is the guy that brings home twice as many uh kills as the guy that doesn't is a guy who's more fit and we're paying attention so they're not just out there singing and dancing they're actually doing something useful okay so the uh so it'd be interesting probably as you're saying Jen the uh probably depending upon if it's too risky and the males actually can't pull it off very very often and it's very likely that for significant stretches of time in those habitats the men gathered as well okay in other words well it's going to be flexible strategies all the way down so the uh so that that's how we would look at that and and I think you're absolutely right you cannot encapsulate uh that into worldwide all habitats how this went down but we can tell that worldwide all habitats the the human nature brought along hunting as a critical component of what it is how is it that they go about the business of life yeah yeah yeah this whole discussion is a bit of a segue or a bit of a totally different topic but in which we may not have time to get into today but there's been this discussion that nature and human behavior this uh Journal just issued have you heard about this these new standards um we can we'll probably actually wind up talking about this on hot blocks I just brought it up here so this is this is like the requirements for submissions for article submissions um so regardless of content type content that is premised upon the Assumption of inherent biological social or cultural superiority or inferiority of one human group over another based on race ethnicity National or social origin sex gender identity sexual orientation religious political or other beliefs age disease disability or any other socially constructed or socially relevant human groupings um here Hereafter referred to as socially constructed or socially relevant human groupings uh Etc et cetera et cetera so this is like not not acceptable for publication and so this whole thing is just insane and ridiculous on its face to say that there's there's no way that you can make assumptions of superiority or inferiority about any socially or or socially constructed or socially relevant human grouping including first and foremost sex differences the fact that men are better than women at certain things women are better than men at other things um and Brett and Heather were having a conversation about this on their most recent podcast which I thought was such a beautiful point because they made the point that if you this cannot be true because humans clearly have selected for sex sex sex sexually selected characteristics of superiority over many many thousands of generations among other things so all of the things that make us such a successful species and such a unique species are clearly they're selected for because of their superiority which some people had and other people didn't have so the whole idea of natural and sexual selection is you know it casts out with these sort of standards for publication in ironically nature and human behavior Journal um so it's just this incredible moment in time that that is absolutely spectacular yeah you basically couldn't get it anymore wrong yeah right literally yeah because you're not that is by definition you're wrong yeah yeah that is fabulous we we're you're looking at essentially what you're looking at is singularity yes yeah literally The Singularity of ignorance that that is literally what just took place there how hats off to them in their purity of total ignorance let's completely eliminate any comparison of socially constructed or socially relevant human groupings socially hell with constructed I.E noticed why is it talked about it's talked about because the things that people talk about are survival and reproductive relevant for God's sakes of course that's all it is all your life is is nothing other than noticing superiority and inferiority in every aspect of your landscape in order to have those preferences direct your actions and therefore wind up with Superior outcomes these that this is that is spectacular that's like IQ test what do you see on the page nothing okay everybody got the same score and everybody's got got the same intelligence right wow right right at least that says it all those guidelines they go on to say that the editors reserve the right to after your piece is published they can go back and change it you know to be in accordance with the ever-changing standards I mean it's really it's the it's the death of science it and they're they're all Brett and Heather's conversation about this is really a must listen because they they cover this and they they cover the um you know all of the implications of uh you know what this means for the science and so when you know how can you publish something that makes observations for example about the correlation between attractiveness and intelligence you can't so that literature goes extinct it just it fails to exist and so there as as experts are made on the basis of the existing literature they're only made on literature that is artificially skewed in the direction of compliance with the narrative whatever the narrative is at any given moment and so they're actually not exposed to the truth and they are they are making decisions and prescribing policy and everything else based on an intellectually bankrupt literature that only becomes more so with time because those experts create more experts create more experts and say something this is where we are what you're watching is the uh you're watching the most destructive human mind in world history was Karl Marx this this is this is right down the line here of of and and the thing is there you go cod so I read that that that is what you're watching so we start with on the Jewish question where shall we begin with Karl Marx there's so there's so much uh valuable social science contribution here yeah that you're you're watching that that you're watching the absolute determination to avoid competitive reality yeah yeah this is and all the way to this absolutely amazing stunning well there you have it like in in spite of literally all of the evidence from every direction is completely contradicting you you're you are uh this is what happens for those of you that don't don't understand and don't appreciate libertarianism this is what happens when you have state funding of Science and education because what's going to happen is exactly this kind of anti-reality horseshit that can actually get traction and actually weave its way into your culture if you did not have state funding of education and state funding of science none of this happens impossible there's no way that the free market would ever support such absurdity this is only possible because of uh because not only does the state funded it dominates it oh completely well and because it dominates it you've all also had International including our geopolitical enemies incursion into those institutions and those journals yes you know the ccp's influence on most scientific journals right now is profound and they're censorious hand is is felt across um you know every every Department in every publicly funded university in the United States that they they're they're indebted and obligated to the requirements of the CCP and that has been a progress has been a process that has been unfolding for decades um and now we have reached a point where it's like complete it's rotted them from the inside out um and so you you really are in I mean there are I forget where it's happening if it's in the UK or if it's in the states that there are major universities that are suspending they're not teaching the classics anymore they're not teaching Shakespeare anymore they're not teaching Schlosser anymore because this is colonial literature this is reinforcing in white supremacy so we're really like abandoning Western education and that you know the sort of highlights of Western Civilization um because it is rooted in white supremacy and so you know the the idea that you're not just hollowing out your institutions at that point and impoverishing them and replacing them with some sort of you know much more harmful propaganda than anything white supremacy could achieve um anti-reality yeah it's it's bad anti-anti-reality is the realities that we don't want to acknowledge and that we don't want to exist we don't want competition we don't want a meritocracy you know and because we are whoever it is that we are we are better off without it right right yeah that's exactly that's precisely what's going on wow you know Jen never ends if I if I if we talk for an hour I there's at least one or two words that come out of your mouth that I've never heard before so what did I say the uh what did you say censorious oh it's fantastic it's like wow let's just go through the dictionary and hear it in context perfectly is it's what it is but I that was the most appropriate word for the idea it's just beautiful it's fantastic all right well all right we'll wrap up and uh release our our captive audience here um and uh yeah we'll all right get back together in a couple of weeks and do this again so fantastic everybody all right all right sorry for the technical troubles everyone all right we'll see you soon bye
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