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Beat Your Genes Podcast & More

Living Wisdom Library Q&A
2022-09-15
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great scene from Planet of the Apes I feel like it's a good cut ground seemed seemed appropriate oh my goodness I'll tell you what there's uh I think my sister had me watch that movie and did not made sure she didn't tell me you know so I didn't know what was coming oh God that is a that's one of the grand grand moments of American Cinema right there yeah yeah it's uh it's quite something yeah yeah all right well tell me what's uh so we got oh yeah this is not this is not our other show this is we're supposed to be civil here what is this chat about just wondering if that's a technical thing I need to deal with um hoping I didn't we have there aren't too many people here so hopefully it's not a uh not a technical spirit all right well I don't see any questions yet so we can just talk about whatever we want to talk about yeah no no questions no questions no questions means you're visible in audible I see something got it like 10-4 okay so all right so what's going on what do we want to talk about without any quote something came in to save us from ourselves thank God God knows where things would go if left entirely to our own devices it's probably not a good idea oh if if you had a baby how would you use everything as you now know about EP and esteem Dynamics to raise that child and give them the best chance at a happy and successful life um the way I treat my cat yeah you've got and you've adult you have adult children yeah no the uh the the correct way to look at child raising is to look at them as uh they're they're they're essentially like pets with your genes in them so you would you would want your pets to be happy but at the same time if your pets started making life difficult on you then there's trade-offs you know like hey go outside you know what I mean so uh so we aren't uh it's not incumbent upon parents to be to be absurdly self-sacrificial for their children's uh life experience and in other words these things should be appropriately looked at as trade-offs um I I watch parents uh do and invest in and be frustrated by all kinds of processes that would not frustrate me so they're like they want their kids to go to this thing and we're going to go as a family and you're going to enjoy it it's like well the kid doesn't want to go then don't take them for God's sakes okay so like they're who what well it's important for them important for what the well for their future what future you know what are you trying to accomplish here well you're trying to shape them and the answer is that's a total waste of time okay so the uh now I would kick some kid that's that's you know playing all day long in video games all day long and be like you know what I don't think that's good for you so I'm gonna just exercise a little dictatorial control here over the uh over the super normal stimuli in the same way that I will with your food okay and uh you're not gonna be smoking pot in my house either by the way so in other words I'm gonna impose some what I consider to be things in their best interest and what I consider to be big in their best interest is going to be different than someone who thinks that they're going to shape a kid's personality okay because I will not shape their personality but I will alter their environment to the point where uh I believe that I'm gonna help you know basically weave my way around the drug-like effect of supernormal stimuli that I think is not in their best interest in terms of their life experience I think they're better off going out there and throwing a baseball around than they are staring at a screen all day long and so I'm going to say like no you're not going to stare a screen all day long that's not how it's going to be I'm going to go out and build forts and do stuff like that okay so that's how I would raise kids but I would not drag my kid to a museum that they didn't want to go okay I just wouldn't do it the uh the you know I I I might I might do it once for half an hour when it was convenient when I was driving by the museum and if the kid's like oh geez whatever be like okay we're out of here no problem uh what What's the idea enjoyment of life that that is the goal the goal is not quote to try to have them be successful in the future because I'm not in charge of that okay their personality and life circumstances are in charge of that maybe I cannot walk them down a successful path um I want to I would like to have the resources to make it possible for them to pursue things um that they might not otherwise be able to pursue if they really wanted to pursue it so if I had some kid who was a gymnastics freak and wanted to go to the Olympic Games and burn for it and it took money and time to do it then I would hope that I would have the resources if I didn't have the resources oh well you don't get to do that it's not a tragedy okay the uh in other words I'm not and I'm not gonna bankrupt myself to make that thing to help them pursue their dreams plenty of dreams okay you don't need to have any specific dream you just need to have a life with opportunity and there are there's always opportunity in life and there are always limits to opportunity unless you happen to be you know born super rich or some such thing so uh which is unnecessarily unnecessarily and not particularly useful so uh what would I take from EP and and um not just EP but also Behavior genetics I would take take the the lessons that these are little people that are going to become who they're going to become my job is not to shape them my job is to have them enjoy their life experience to the extent that their enjoyment their life experience doesn't impinge on my own uh it is not kid number one okay this is an even Street and so uh I I will be obviously because I'm very attached to them and I have resonant uh mirror neurons I'm going to get enjoyment when they're happy okay so there's a there's a golden resonance there but it's not always true and so you know if they're being loud noisy with the messy room that stinks uh then there's going to be some penalties and some prices they have to learn to be a good roommate and then they get to be just as shitty a roommate and live however they want to live after they're self-supporting when they leave okay that's all that's how I would raise my kids and or when they've gotten to be the the the age that Sam is now and you basically just let him stay in his room and play video games all day yeah totally that doesn't bother me now now the trade-off is like oh no well we have an understanding seen as roommates yes exactly so Sam doesn't bother me in the slightest and it doesn't bother me that he does what he does um my cat uh that that would like to stay in and sometimes sneaks her way in or or cons her way into staying in my bedroom overnight I always live to regret it you know and uh and therefore then she gets banned again for another three or four months because she want the head at 5 5 30 in the morning so the uh so that's how that's one time would love to be in my uh bedroom every single night that's where she wants to be and she she'll lie at the door and so in the morning when I open up my bedroom door there she is just she's been leaning against the door all night too bad okay can't manage to make the connection that you don't wake me up at 5 30 in the morning so so that's not how that works she gets plenty of love when it's convenient for me that's how that works Parenthood in a nutshell that's it yeah I think all of that I think just in a more more specific level I would I you know given that actual set of circumstances in this particular historical moment at this particular time I I would I would be raising kids in a very kind of um Stone Age analogous way as much as possible right so I could I could see myself with my openness and and my personality and my priority Matrix um heading off into some intentional community in in the woods somewhere yeah yeah where I'm living essentially commune style uh in a group of like-minded people um not maybe entirely off-grid maybe partly off grid but giving the kid you know so yes you want you want that kid building forts more than playing video games so I'm I'm creating a situation where you know you you have many more opportunities to build for it and all of your friends are building Forts and um you know if you if you're gonna find your way to video games it's just a way higher bar if if even possible living in this environment and you know there's campfires and there's stories and there's multi-generational learning and there's you know I'd be doing all of that kind of stuff so yeah there would be some more specific things that I would uh put in place but it's all an abstract question because I just have the doggies right now I have FaceTime ringing sorry about that which I can't seem to silence there that's all right yeah at least through the Bluetooth get back to Mayberry North Carolina at least you know what I mean yeah if not if not out in the woods in West Virginia I would at least be in a small town you know a small small town um where everybody knows your name yeah there you go I think that's a great great place to be maybe not taking them to the little are where everybody knows their name that would be the idea yeah all good yeah all right what else we got all right someone in the chat saying they don't have a picture of it uh five by five suggests just okay all right I've noticed that I find very disagreeable people funny like Gold Hammer and Hyper conscientious people funny does the content that people find funny reflect their own personality I.E I'm disagreeable and conscientious yeah I mean I don't find disagree I find disagreeable people alarming and intimidating and I I as an agreeable person I'm worried about oh my god what have I done wrong how can I fix it how can I how can I be more of a golden retriever in this situation to smooth over the conflict um so I don't it's not it's it's a more high cost exchange to me um than somebody who would be disagreeable at the same level at like yeah mono we model yeah that makes sense sure all all stimuli are being filtered through those individual differences in personality so that that I'm always uh one of the more astonishing things in life is to find out what other people think is funny and like I've seen so one of the things that is is the more more disturbing to me when they show you know these sort of uh Kamikaze crazy [ __ ] with pets or people and people think these things are funny on the internet and I look at all of them and they're extremely dangerous I never find uh I would say of a hundred of those things that somebody could show me I might find one in a hundred funny if that like literally I'll stare there'll be a person right next to me cracking up and I won't have it won't even be slightly amusing because uh I I'm so aware of of um of the danger of of uh basically being from and uh Etc and having your head hit and probably very few people have had that that because I was a judo player from a young boy uh I I know what it's like to be out of control and be sailing through the air uh and have some yeah and you know have contact with another body or contact with the ground at a high speed and um yeah I can remember uh in a judo tournament I was thrown very very hard by a by Elite player and it was I was in over my head in that competition it was actually the U.S you know Master's Division National Championships in Houston and I I didn't belong there I arrogance you know I went out I decided I was going to go out and compete and uh and then then my my best move was to Bluff because I knew the guy was a big time player so I bluffed him with a dominant move which actually left me wide open I was just hoping to kind of bluff him uh into a little bit of uh into some caution uh-uh he he literally as soon as I made myself vulnerable he instantly attacked and as he should have he attacked ferociously not knowing how good I was and uh had he known how pathetic I was relative to him he wouldn't have done what he did so uh you know a thousand people took a big a big ugly sigh that my father like oh [ __ ] that guy just got crushed and uh I saw stars for many many seconds and the rep came over and asked me if I was okay I said yeah it's gonna be a minute you know what I mean and uh so I I know what it's like to to be you know have your head hit something it shouldn't be hitting at the speed that it's hitting it and so whenever I see any of these things I've also been badly injured in sports and so I know that something that looks even like a half normal somewhat somewhat uh awkward process can lead to a lifetime injury to make you a [ __ ] and so none of those things are funny to be they're never funny to me and um and so this is an example of individual differences and what is it that we find funny um I'm astonished at that kind of uh comedy and but that's that's based on you know probably not only my personality in general but also my personal life experience all that feeds into completely like I would not find a car crash uh to be slightly even remotely funny either you know like ooh look at that turn over it's like oh [ __ ] that's a dead person okay that's a [ __ ] that's a tragedy is what that is so yeah individual differences yeah it's an interesting kind of distortions and other people's personalities that mirror your own distortions more likely to be amusing I think I could I could ship that I I would find somebody who is highly open funny maybe funnier than somebody who's not open who would just be sort of confused like but I because I can kind of see how they got there and I'm not necessarily there but I can I can understand the process by which they got to their insane conclusions about the world I can kind of stand back and Find humor in that maybe more than somebody who doesn't have the openness so there might be something to this Insight that this questioner has like if you're very disagreeable you find other disagreeable people who are not a threat to you just kind of funny just like little little angry men yeah it's uh yeah it's actually sort of an interesting hypothesis has to do with uh this is some some possible degree of self-deprecation you know what I mean uh that that was there's this resident in there I don't know you know it's who the hell knows interesting all right what else we got client after one or more uh clinical sessions also how many other clinicians are adopting an uh evolutionary psychology paradigm who are also uh you know pursuing this as a life path right we got some young people we got a few people that have caught on to us and they're they're getting trained and we've got a few we've got a few uh practicing psychologists out there that are that are adopting uh some ideas that they listen to um but you know it's less than two hands probably worldwide the uh uh let's see what was the question I forgot dramatic Improvement definitely I've had like really see their past in a totally new way and and be very very you know excited about that and we've talked about this particularly in the context of um very you know gently explaining kind of the trauma trap to people and and people seeing that they've been you know uh really having a profound misunderstanding of how childhood events have been affecting their life into adulthood and in one conversation if somebody's ready for that conversation and willing to look at things in a different way they can come out of that feeling more empowered and more excited about their life moving forward than they have at any point up until then so that that has happened a couple of times and that can be very rewarding and dramatic um I think you've had similar examples I've had a thousand yeah okay so let me uh it's actually a really good question because it allows us to eliminate a principle that is not not really very well understood and that is that the the um the root of all change is just new information and the reason why is that your motivation um is uh your your life goes like this you have sensation comes in through your sensory nervous system that that informs you about your relationship to the environment then then what you have is you have calculations that are that are essentially calculating your best interests and those calculations are going to bring in relevant information to your environmental circumstances that are stored in your memory so that's a second database so two databases of information are interacting with the third structure which is the calculus system which is the cost benefit analysis uh uh what what you could or should be doing based on the opportunities and threats that are facing in the environment the the result of that is going to be feelings so feelings are the result of calculations um now interestingly enough sensory sensory inputs can result in feelings I.E Sensations that are positive or negative as a result of direct um uh direct evolutionary calculus of what those Sensations mean in other words so the those calculations also exist but there there isn't a bunch of typically higher higher uh information memory systems interpretations from what etc those things can actually be involved uh interestingly enough even in the experience of as a sensation they can be but sometimes they're not in other words you bite your tongue and it hurts period and it hurts x amount depending upon how much tissue damage is being done so the um now so what's going to happen is is that you know when a person comes in for any therapeutic process uh what that means is that they're frustrated okay they're having they're having unpleasant emotional responses those uh that's going to run a gamut depending upon what the calculus is that's involved its driving map so for example romantic angst is going to be different than financial anxiety which is going to be different than anxiety about my recent cancer diagnosis which is going to be different then I'm worried about my kid and being unpopular and then having doing something embarrassing at school and now if we're not doing very well socially uh versus you know all kinds of other things so in other words you you've got a a whole bunch of different ways that a person can win or lose genetics uh probability points uh in life and so you're going to have different feelings depending upon what what the opportunities or threats are that we're observing now when the person comes in for help because they are getting failure feedback in one of these specific Pursuits yeah and the failure feedback is puzzling so they're they're not sure why it is that they're getting this failure feedback uh they're not sure why they're such an anxious nut case why they're always so worried and panicky about their future or what other people think of them or whatever okay they're having unpleasant emotional processes uh as a result of things that are transpiring and they are seeking to improve those as they should be but they have failed to improve those based on their best effort so now there is a confusion about what to do and they are they are seeking new information in order to see whether or not they can improve their life circumstances that's that is a patient presenting for a therapy that's a best friend that's a friend asking for advice that that is uh you know that's your that's your mother-in-law asking you know what she can do for you for your birthday in other words these are human beings seeking information in order to improve their circumstance census now so the question is what can we tell them the answer is sometimes I can tell them exactly what they need to know to be successful and they immediately recognize that that's true and their entire life changes on the dime okay and um that is that has happened many times so the therapy process doesn't have to look anything remotely like quote traditional therapy which is somehow the notion of how we're going to go back in time to the womb and figure out where your personality went awry to make you the anxious neurotic disagreeable unstable nut case that you are or the doormat that you are in other words or the the impulsive open drug addicted person that you are in other words we're gonna the traditional therapy is going to go back and try to figure out where it all went wrong and who's to blame you know and I mean what I've heard we can do now that's a total waste of time okay so we can expect that they're going to have like no success with that which they don't so the only question is is the failure feedback that you're experiencing the result of causal forces that we can understand and correct okay is the reason why you're filing up falling off your bicycle you not know how to you don't have an intuition about how to wiggle your steering wheel back and forth to maintain balance okay so in other words is there something that I can assist you with so that we can actually understand the causal pathway this very often happens so very often a person can be having trouble with the relationship with a significant other figure in their life and they're not seeing and understanding the esteemed Dynamic that's involved uh they are somehow they're they're somehow unable to have enough insight into understanding where things went sideways and why and so uh By Me explaining it then I can explain to them okay so now you're do you see why they would work that way yes okay then this is what we're going to do about it okay so you're going to say this and then they're going to say that and then you're going to say this so very often when we script that out the person can see logically that this is exactly how it works that's because we're talking to source code the the this is this is how the system is configured they understand that I understand that other person's personality and their motivation and I understand the dynamic of the situation so when I lay it out it's like oh my God that's gonna work I've had people say that to me a thousand times oh that's gonna work it's like yeah it's gonna work okay it's exactly how it's going to work and so yeah many many of my sessions are one-offs my sessions uh at my psychotherapeutic practice for 30 years has not been the following let's come in and work on your issues and figure out how what went wrong and where and who's to blame for it and then eventually we'll somehow you know guide you to re-parent you into a better future no no this is all about me trying to figure out what is it that you're misunderstanding about reality is causing you to be surprised by the failure feedback that you're getting that's it okay and so yeah a hell of a lot of my sessions are one-offs I had a one-off session six years ago with Jen Hawk about her doctoral dissertation [Laughter] that was a good conversation it was a good conversation there was no therapy that was holy [ __ ] I'm overwhelmed you know what I mean I'm not sure what I'm doing I I'm not sure I could do it it seems to it's like yeah I we had a young Superstar you know ego Trapped By by legitimately phenomenal expectations as they should have been phenomenal there's no way to talk her out of the fact that the expectation should have been phenomenal because she had phenomenal insights but that doesn't mean that you're not intimidated [Laughter] so we we had to we had to find a way to somehow back down a daunting you know uh you know Cliff of granite of expectation and we were just you know working together over an hour so we we got you feeling like oh son of a [ __ ] maybe I could do it might be possible might be possible I might need to get a job but it was partly that was about part of us um also adopting the attitude of [ __ ] it you know we're about getting you know what kid if if it succeeds it succeeds if it doesn't succeed it doesn't succeed but it's no shame in going to the mat and trying okay and you you just needed somebody to say that to you uh because probably anybody else would have seen your Brilliance and said oh you can do it you can do it and my attitude was hey what you're trying to do is exceedingly difficult and but it's worth a shot it's worth a hell of a shot let's Die Trying [ __ ] it yeah that was kind of the attitude and that just enough of that feedback which is legitimate that is the legitimate of the legitimate exploration of the fact that something that you may be very very capable of doing you may not actually succeed because certain of the success factors are outside of your control okay so that that was what that was and and that's what you know you and many people that are high achieving a lot of capability and are reaching even even if you're not high capability you're just reaching for something that's right at the limits of your ability and that can absolutely put people so easily in ego traps and so that we don't need a a an incredibly complex analysis of that we need a therapist that understands that dynamic that's what you need you need a therapist that understands that and can can frame that in a feedback way to get us into what I call Attack Mode which is a what the hell I've got nothing to lose and some of the some of that comes from the therapists understanding that the last thing you need to do is be reassuring the client that they can succeed that is such the wrong move as a psychotherapist okay or as a parent or as a coach that is the last thing that they need what they need instead is the attitude of hey maybe you win maybe you lose and you are no less awesome to me if you lose that's what has to be communicated okay and you have to mean it okay because and and I do mean it okay so my I honestly my feeling is hey win or lose screw it we're here to play the game and we're going to take our gloves off and we're going to go in there and we're going to walk on that mat and damn near get killed okay if that's what happens that's what happens see I had a little too much of that attitude when I was 42 that I should have had a little less okay damn near paid a hell of a price for it okay but that that attitude is a critical attitude in in some with respect to so many clinical problems and so many many many times uh I in my career in the last you know 30 years thousands of people I've talked to I have had one-offs where literally getting that communicated to the individual was The crucial thing that needed to happen okay so so in answer your question do you have a lot of one one note one you know one hit wonders absolutely lots of them yeah I'm not the only one so my my colleague Dr Rick Seidel that I started uh coaching in this way of doing things by the by probably about the year 2000 Rick used to uh Rick was a classically trained cognitive behavioral and eclectic psychotherapist you know first line School University of Virginia I mean it's not Harvard but Harvard didn't have a program so the point is Rick Rick had the same experience and was really delighted by you know what we would consider these sort of you know one hit wonders like you know you they they walk in and 30 minutes later you are you have honed in on the critical issue and you are able to settle it and you know sometimes sometimes it isn't that every issue works that way sometimes there is you know an ongoing problem that is sort of inherently chronic wrapped up in situations and personalities uh and that you're managing other times it's a process where it may be a dozen sessions as a person goes through a process over a year where they they're slowly testing and learning and getting better information and better understanding of themselves and their and the challenges but the beauty of this is that when you're right on Target and it's a one-off that then there is no evidence like that in the world that we know what we're doing okay so and so yeah uh many many times I'm I know Jen's had it happen many times I've had it happen many times when it does it's cool but the biggest the biggest cool part is oh that's the end of that problem and we have reaffirmation that the mind works exactly the way that we think it works yep all right yeah yeah you you I think I I knew that I was in the ego trap yes um but you you had a practicality that was incredibly helpful yeah and and um yeah I think you I think that at the end of the conversation you said something like all right great talking to you get off your ass and I wanted to like make that my ringtone it was very useful yeah there you go [Laughter] all right all right we got a few here uh we got some loud dogs rolling around over there the Melly just was doing a little contentment role on the on the rug she's just feeling very pleased she ate some food and everything's good in her life and she rolled over the tiny dog and the tiny dogs like God damn it so there's a very amusing shenanigans that are yeah you're missing all this on the green screen um all right can you walk us through how you would advise a young person in their 20s to go about running more intelligent experiments to find a good career fit yeah this used to be called internships yeah yeah back in the day you know you didn't you you would you would go kind of do a low-cost experiment but a but a high commitment enough experiment to really understand what it would be like to work in that field or in that particular firm or you know around those people and so you would commit to some amount of time at a at a pittance um or for free to to get the full experience of what that was like and I did a bunch of internships and they were very educational it's the reason that I'm not working in politics is mostly down to the fact that I was a I was an intern in the U.S Senate when I was 18. um and there were parts of that that I found exhilarating but there were parts of it that I realized were not going to be a good fit for my personality and it was creepy that the uh the Deep State came recruiting every other day that they were they're trying to bring us over to all of the alphabet agencies um and I just found DC too weird it just wasn't it just wasn't for me so that was the reason that I didn't track myself in that direction or one one of the very important reasons if I hadn't done that internship that summer I you know I I may well have taken a higher commitment job and been stuck in it under conscientiousness and who knows so um I think these are it's important to give yourself an actual experience and something that you think might be a good fit yeah all good yeah I look at uh mm-hmm I kind of look at your 20s as one great big experiment and uh you know we still have time to meet mates and have children and all that kind of stuff but that's a that's a rich thing for I sometimes sometimes to me you know I hear people's stories and and not everybody has has a wide array of options or they uh and they have they have to play carefully but but um but being pigeonholed early into some you know I'm I'm astonished at how many lives wind up getting very narrow very fast um and that that's exactly what generous referring to that she didn't do that and um I can remember all through grad school um and even early career I was uh but mostly let's say in grad school you'd have these little jobs and and you're and I'm thinking I'm not sure I want to be a psychologist you know the one little thing after the next nothing I was seeing was inspiring at all and I remember going to internship thinking uh there's no way in hell I'm going to be doing what these psychologists are doing and um the and I had bumped up it into people Private Practice who would roll their eyes and and basically uh talk uh disparagingly about private practice and the clients and the the uh the uh I.E the the the sort of chronic net cases and Etc that they're saying and I didn't really see any example of a a happy successful psychologist no no surprise since none of them had read the selfish Gene had formulated psychotherapeutic sex code so uh the closest thing I saw was sort of Teflon cognitive behavioral people who didn't really give a [ __ ] whether you were happy or not all he cared about was whether or not they told you what their theory was okay that was more or less what cognitive therapy was uh ye uh Albert Elvis's ret and so you know it can be done more kindly or be done more breastfly but more or less it was a a very superficial level of quote education that is not integrated in with human source code even close so um I didn't know that I was actually all in and committed to psychology until I read the selfish change okay so I I was um 29 years old my 29th summer damn near uh no no I was 30. it was uh yeah I I had actually I was 30 years old and and halfway through my uh pre-doctoral internship at a statement institution before I read the self-esteem and then thank God you know then the rest is history it's like ah well hell there's some real live information and you could actually integrate we could actually understand what the hell we're doing now you've got my attention now you've got my full attention and uh and I'm extremely interested up to that point I was puzzled and the whole damn thing was one great big internship and uh and I used to say well I can always bail out and go to law school you know what I mean that was always in the back of my mind that I might just abandon the entire Enterprise because I wasn't seeing anything that impressed me uh up to that juncture right but you know search and search and search has spent my 20s searching and you know got rewarded you know a few months after my 30th birthday thank goodness yeah yeah so yeah search yeah yeah definitely be willing to be willing to be wrong you know you're willing to be wrong and be willing to not be stuck especially if you've got sucker Triad personality characteristics oh yeah like signed a contract you know or I'm I'm they need me or they can't they they the place won't run without me like all of these things that will keep people in jobs or in careers that they hate or that are not a great fit for them um and it's much more likely to happen if you have a sucker Triad personality so yeah um that's that's part of why I think it's so important when you are in your 20s to Just Bounce Around and you know experiment and I mean I did everything I did everything from direct action non-profits to political campaigns to um bartending to I mean I had every every job under the Sun at one point or another so you get quite an education that way and then when you do start to kind of hone in on where you're supposed to be and what you're supposed to be doing you have all that drop on because you've you've um I tell people when they're sort of figuring out when I have the I don't know what I want to be when I grow up conversation with people which happens sometimes sometimes I talk to people and either their kids are grown up and they don't know what they're going to do or where they kind of have never found what it is that they're passionate about in life one of the things I always tell them is that this process is as much about ruling things out as it is about ruling things in so you you know if there's kind of an open loop about something that you think maybe you would enjoy doing it's going to sit there and suck up bandwidth in your life until you actually go find out whether you would enjoy it or not um I think I'm going to leave you for a second while I go rescue the food bag from the dog so you can here you can answer get on the next question I think we this pretty much we we got this one right yeah yeah that's good enough um what are some best of the newer evolutionary psychology books like the last five years so I'll let you start that one I'll be right back okay um let me think about that uh the the uh I haven't read a lot in the last five years so the the new CBT I I did not get all the way through it so I uh but I read most of it it turns out I thought I hadn't read that much today um pretty good I mean I I get give him a lot of credit this is Mike Abrams and um so this is essentially his uh he calls it clinical evolutionary psychology so you know that that that was uh very very potentially hopeful he he's an exhaustive kind of a scholar he really work hard at this yeah he's he's considering this a revolution in other words the bringing in of evolutionary psychology with behavior genetics into cognitive behavioral therapy uh when I first heard about this a little shock wave went through my nervous system thinking holy [ __ ] I've been I've been fiddling around for 25 years with this and finally somebody got off their ass and did it and now now somebody else gets to capture the flag oh well you know what I mean that's what I get for being so lazy and then I read it and it's like now he he is he has accomplished some things but he has not gone anywhere actually near where it is that that my thinking is gone so and that's good that that's how that's kind of cool in other words this is uh like a a bunch of a bunch of young guys trying to figure out how to put an airplane together and a lot of people with a lot of different ideas kind of working from different angles so he has some interesting ideas in there and some more more interesting than his ideas are some disparate facts uh that are kind of interesting to know that are there that I you know some little things that I took notes on that I didn't know um anyway so that's pretty good um but I think that the most striking books that that I've read in the last few years have been actually along the line science of behavior genetics so it's been plumbing and it's been also human diversity by Charles Murray and it's been uh Troublesome inheritance by Nick Wade these are those three books have been three of the more you know startling and I mean I was so startled since I sort of knew what was in them but still outstanding comprehensive um uh and really sort of putting Behavior genetics on on unassailable empirical grounds uh so that way you really know what it is that you're dealing with when you when you understand that you're not going to be changing anybody's personality so that's that's all a good thing um an EP I don't actually know I I don't know that I've read anything in EP in the last few years well David David Buss has his new the why men behave badly book I haven't read it yet um there's uh Breton Heather's book which I've read little dribs and drabs of a human what is it a guide to the 21st 100 gatherers Guide to the 21st century um so like I read the intro and I have it somewhere around here but I'm just always behind on reading and I'm always behind on and plus I've been I've been reading a lot of evolutionarily informed or I guess behavioral genetics informed um political sciency kind of stuff so um you know that that has been claiming most of my reading attention so things like Douglas Murray's books um the uh I don't know I don't I don't really read too much of Jordan Peterson's books um definitely everything that you've mentioned a Troublesome inheritance gets to the um the same questioner here I wonder if he's new to our community because he's asking some Classics um including do personality traits tend to Cluster geographically um so the answer to that is yes and the the main book that you want to read on that is a Troublesome inheritance um also the 10 000 year explosion those those both kind of cover the same territory um yeah gosh I mean there's so many great books it's it's hard to keep up there's so many good Classics um yeah we we do have a reading list for the website I don't know that it's been updated in a minute um but if you go to beat your genes.org I believe um there's a there's a reading list posted there and I have a reading list on my website jenhawk.com that has um kind of more politically tilted stuff as well so yeah it's not all evolutionary psychology but it is there's a lot of behavioral genetics or at least Easter an understanding of the genetic foundations of human personality and behavior explaining social and political outcomes yeah yeah all good imagine that Jeffrey Miller as Jeffrey Miller come up with anything remarkable recently he's he put out a little compilation of old essays he's been he's been busy getting married and making babies yes got it which he'll lecture you about on Twitter is the most important thing to be doing anyway so if you're not if you're not getting married and making babies you're wasting your life there you go there you go all right fair enough all right so that's if I think that's hilarious as is now turned into an angry old conservative man oh totally totally Ingrid yeah oh he's he's yeah that is the role that he plays for certain yeah all good just a delight yeah I'm trying to think if there's anything else over there uh yeah I mean there's a lot of good stuff people are putting out a lot of great yeah let me just go quickly see if there's anything there uh no I'm not seeing anything so if you don't know you know the mating Minds spent wrote a book called mate with Tucker Max said uh it doesn't strike me um I think they worked really really hard at it but I don't I don't recall anything particularly particularly great about it but it wasn't bad um but it wasn't a revolutionary Masterpiece the way his first two books were Blank Slate is obviously Blank Slate said it's a master is that is a is a Encyclopedia of its own of ideas and um and the um the the even though the the core concept is under assault now uh the rational Optimist is a brilliant work and uh even though the core concept of uh it's actually the core concept is not under assault it's the it's it's uh it's extraordinary confidence and belief in human ability under Freedom uh is is the thesis that human beings are very capable of solving all the problems that we Face uh and yet he in that book he's worried about uh dictatorship and the the curtailing of human freedom but he is confident in 2010 when he's writing it that it's not going to be a problem I don't think he has the same confidence today I think he has every every reason for being concerned uh about Humanity's future not because human beings are running into human limitations of our ability to solve problems Quite Contrary we're running into human interference with solving those problems so that's uh but but the rational Optimist is a brilliant book and well worth your reading yeah all right all right what else we got see there was a mass murderer in my area who was described by the parole board as being a quote different person I when he drank why would there be such a supposed personality difference for the same person when Silver versus intoxicated well because you're damaging your brain yeah um I think that um a mass murderer that is uh you know one of the things to keep in mind is that when you hear something like that you're talking about an extremely bizarre personality so don't be thinking that it only came out when the guy was drunk okay that that nervous system is a it you know is a one in forty thousand freak and so one in 40 000 freaks can be unbelievably dangerous so that's that's what that is don't don't try to pin that or think that alcohol was the reason alcohol was not the reason that guys this is this is not a guy who is never having violent thoughts or or you know is prone to fits of violence or anything else when sober but I do think as a as a former drunk person um that there can be a huge difference between you know your your Jekyll and Hyde personality when you're drinking so um you know just in just with lowered inhibition and with um I mean particularly when blacked out you know if if you're if you're actually functional in a blackout you can do some really weird stuff um not murder probably unless you've got a murdery sort of personality but I would you know I would scream at people and throw things and you know I would I would definitely move to a level of aggression that is nowhere in my sober conscious nervous system so I would I would access levels of Personality that are not normally there sure I.E well it's not even accessing your disinhibiting normal inhibiting function and therefore you're behaving in a way that's not consistent with you yeah yeah but that that's a long way between that and a long way between that especially yeah mass murder yeah one or two murders maybe but you know other extenuating circumstances yeah exactly but uh interesting all right um okay question about uh G personality traits clustering geographically I can imagine more open people might have been more likely to travel West similarly our personalities in very traditional cultures like China less diverse um yes yes yes uh go read a Troublesome inheritance yes yeah yeah or or the 10 000 year explosion which is an even more sort of um aggressive version of a Troublesome inheritance and a little uh less politically correct even um as publicly incorrect as Troublesome inheritance is ten thousand year explosion takes that further yes so if you're if you're really interested I'd go for that nice thing about Nicholas Wade is that we have the measured the measured discussion of a British scientist he's very much very measured and yeah degree is impeccable yes but what he what is being said is pretty obviously completely non-pc enough to get him canceled and uh and supposedly horrific and terrible and racist and everything else under the sun which of course it is not so if you read Nick Wade's prose you realize oh this is a very measured highly intelligent supremely educated Brit is telling you at the end of his scientific career how it all is that it's very interesting it was like he was later to tell us about lab leak exactly and then also a very messy way very pleasured way yes and also dismissed as a heretic um at the time yeah yeah uh poor Nicholas Wade history will exonerate him oh yeah um okay what do you think Jordan Peterson's influence uh what do we I guess think about Jordan Peterson's influence in the field of psychology I find him speaking my mind on different issues but other times I feel his words are too abstract and quite difficult to understand yes that's that is the Jordan Peterson problem in a nutshell is he's got one foot in esoterica uh he's he's got very mystical uh um charismatic religious ideology living in his head jungian psychology archetypal psychology and he is prone to speaking about that in in very metaphorical abstract weird ways um but you know the other 72 percent of the time he's very grounded and classic evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics and can be really useful yeah oh good yeah I I don't I have very little exposure to him so um yeah I can't really say too much the uh but I I understand is that that is is thinking about personality as heavily young and influenced which is instantly gets a total eye roll out of me but uh but that but I've also heard him say things that were intelligent and terrific and so uh what the help yeah I think he's he's totally on board with the big five um and you know has his own Big Five test on his website which I actually like a lot um and direct people too often it's worth the 10 bucks um because he does divide all the big five characteristics into sort of their their mirrors so conscientiousness becomes orderliness and industriousness which are two very different expressions of conscientiousness uh agreeableness is divided into compassion and politeness so those are very different you can be very high in one and very low in the other or very lower high in both so he's I think he's he understands the big five he understands where he fits he's he's very good he his blind spot is um really believing that you can just absolutely pull your socks up and transform yourself with enough attention and force um and and that this is sort of a mandate upon um a conscious a person who who seeks sort of full articulation as a conscious being in the shadow of God it's kind of like it's it's part of his spiritual journey to become this full version of yourself which includes overcoming your personality distortions so you have to you have to look squarely at who you are in order to have this kind of religious transmutation happen um so you know I disagree with him there but I do find him entertaining and lovely and uh a great addition to public discourse poor guy certainly takes a lot of bullets for all the rest of us yeah yeah all right um see I want to get to a couple of these have a vote each but there was one that has been here for um I've seen this one before so what is charisma in terms of the big five Can it can it be located in the big five hell of a lot of it is good looks so you're gonna find so uh you're you're gonna find oh that person's very charismatic yeah they're handsome are beautiful for God's sakes so um yeah the Charisma is a flattering term for the fact that someone is interpersonally attractive right so what what do you particularly find attractive about that individual depends upon what needs they might serve serve for you Etc so the uh that charisma good so essentially Charisma is a Rorschach test for what it is that you particularly find attractive that's all that word means if we're trying to find some other meaning behind that word we're going to be chasing our tail so we can kind of drop it and just say what what is it that that is that people find interpersonally attractive and the answer is physical and psychological characteristics that are very useful for survival and reproductive process that's what people might have so that's how that works so Charisma has underneath it also the there's a substrate of uh leadership uh so yeah the certainty Factor right that that yes they're they're leading you with certainty into a future that is able to you can you can line up yourself with their Vision more clearly yeah there you go yeah my my undergraduate advisor um wrote this really interesting book about political turmoils places that are in sort of he focused on post-imperial democracies that you gotta gotta pick your niche in political science but in post-imperial democracies that are experiencing sort of party competition to see who's gonna who's gonna win in the next generation of political control um what he finds in the examples that he looks at is it doesn't particularly matter the content of the policies whether they're conservative or liberal or populist or globalist or whatever they are it's that they have certainty that they have they have this Clarity that creates a a certainty around what he calls the time Horizon so people people are able to look at themselves out in the future in League with that leader and see a future for themselves that they can Define with Clarity that is intrinsically more attractive than the guy over here that says I don't know it's all pretty chaotic but we're going to do our best and get through it this guy over here who says no there's a there's a future for us as a chosen people that's that's the guy that's going to win especially if he has these interpersonally attractive um uh characteristics that you're talking about so yeah makes sense if he's tall if he has an expensive suit if he has a deep voice and he has a clear view for the future is guaranteed Charisma yes there you go and I think men tend to be more charismatic than women I don't I don't think you have a lot of examples of truly charismatic women in in world history um obviously there are a couple we could talk about but it tends to be this tends to be a male characteristic I.E the the when Alpha says we're this is where we're going right that's what it is right right all right what else we got walking around just our person that was asking uh interesting question the about that very question around around men women care Charisma politics there's a incredibly entertaining book called King of the mountain oh yeah King of the mountain is very good yeah I've only read about 60 70 pages of it the the guy is Arthur Ludwig uh a psychiatrist professor at the University of Kentucky this guy is maybe the funniest writer that you will ever read in your life a really hilarious book yeah I can't quite reach it it's on the other side of the room but it's um even the cover oh let me let me go get it because yeah it's absolutely it's so good King of the matter yeah but but Ludwig is uh surprisingly enough he is not informed by evolutionary psychology but he he had a deep uh some deep real education and interest in anthropology and uh and actually even I think primates and so you can imagine there that thing is absolutely Priceless the green screen here it's so good yeah the nature of political leadership but yeah Arnold Ludwig yes yeah and that uh yeah that that is a that's a treat for anybody if you've got some time to burn we got we got chimps and dominance contests in here yeah there's one there's one juxtaposition as you're reading through there Jen and about I don't know page 40 or so and it shows this Silverback chimp like this and then he's describing all this about uh and then then you and he's then he starts leaking into humans and you turn the page and it shows some some European guy that looks just like the just like the silver oh I remember that I don't I don't remember where that I don't have that marked but like it's just so I just opened to a random page and this is like the guy's writing is just a joy it's just not only is he funny but his just the the verbal dexterity and the and the in the I mean it's very charismatic writing so yes just open to this paragraph given the libidness predilections of world leaders it is intriguing to note all the hoopla about the sexual escapades of Bill Clinton the last of the 20th century U.S presidents who simply seem to be carrying on the hallowed Traditions set by as many predecessors of the 18 presidents of the United States who ruled from 1900 through 2000 at least eight 45 percent of them had sexual Affairs while married and as far as I am concerned the complete story is not in on two others Warren G Harding perhaps the most incompetent of those presidents whose only qualification for office according to a close associate was that he quote looked like a president had an affinity for Scandal not only while alive but also while Dead when he was alive his administration was racked with the Teapot Dome scandal and Corruption I mean it just yeah it's just perhaps the most egregious flaunting of conventional morality took place by the greatest of the 20th century American presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt aside from an affair with his wife's personal social secretary as well as sexual encounters with many other women over the the years this moral Exemplar who inspired an entire nation with his televised Fireside Chats set an amazing example that few Pastor future presidents are ever likely to match he arranged from Missy lahand his mistress and private secretary for many years to sleep in the room next door to his in the executive mansion it's just I mean yeah it's it's a must-have yes [Laughter] all right all right do you want to do one more question mushrooms one oh yeah magic mushrooms yeah some research on psilocybin mushrooms demonstrate increased scores on openness to experience compared to Placebo long term how is this explained yeah you do some brain damage and therefore uh reduce some inhibition that's that's that would seem to be the that would be the next hypothesis yeah the uh yeah if you think about openness as being um reduced inhibition relative to a normal brain so so now if you're if we're going to move from where it is that your Baseline was and we're going to move towards openness we're going to be essentially inherently more optimistic which means we have less inhibitory anxiety okay so uh if you've got any drug that is causing that to happen it's very likely that that drug is working its magic by damaging uh inhibitory circuits like the anxiety circuits but I'm sure that's what's going on and good luck to you you know what I mean you could you could actually see a future potentially where some hcncs might might actually be better off by damaging some of their inhibitory circuits through some you know chemical mechanism uh right now I would consider that to be you know 500 years in the future in other words uh but but it is not a theoretical impossibility and people that think that they're doing it now like I think you know this well didn't Michael pollen write a book like a pollen is big on it yeah right yeah but this these are all people that that are this is the openness of those individuals who are um there there's people generally underestimate the danger of messing around with the homeostatic mechanisms inside your own body so you know whether it's a vaccine uh that everybody thinks is such a great thing or it's some some you know uh anti-diabetes drug orostatin or high blood pressure medication or you know or metaformin or this or that in other words usually there are substantial prices on the other side of the Ledger it is very very difficult to beat the genetic code at The Game of Life it is exceedingly difficult to do that can it be done of course it can in narrow circumstances where the cost benefit analysis may be well worth it uh in other words the chances that you take of the damage that you're going to do with whatever it is that you're you're going to uh do medically you know some you know you can make profits uh so you know they go in and remove a hot uh appendix you know you're you're you undoubted you very likely won that risk reward ratio so it's not that it can't be done it's that it usually can't be done and the history of Psychiatry is one great big colossal total failure so since we can sit here and look at Psychiatry and pronounce its obituary right now on the you know certainly on the basis of the latest evidence that just rolled in and crushed them with respect to their serotonin hypothesis their dopamine hypothesis we can expect psychosis is no better okay so essentially a biological Psychiatry is a total Fiasco now if we think that reaching out around into a magic mushrooms is going to be better than what Psychiatry has worked its tail off for the last 80 years to try to accomplish um I think you have to be a screaming Optimist to believe that that has been accomplished okay now that doesn't mean it's impossible it just means that I think you're screaming up in us okay and I think you're screening off this based on the fact that Psychiatry has not been attempting to dupe everybody for the last 80 years they've been working their ass off trying to figure this thing out they thought that it would be doable it seemed to them that it absolutely should be doable they certainly have found out drugs that have effects that they like they just weren't paying Too Close of attention to all the effects that they didn't like okay so and and how short-term and useless their positive effects were so that's how I see magic mushrooms or anything else like that you know you got one brain careful don't damage it because you're not going to be able to go backwards you're not going to be able to reverse the process once you do it this is like the same thing I tell people that are desperate to have bariatric surgery it's like careful about that that's a god-given organ system that you're messing with okay that that took 2.8 billion years of evolution to create that architecture let's make sure that there isn't another way that is better and safer for you to accomplish what it is that you're trying to accomplish that's how I would look at all psychiatric problems surely there is a safer more responsible way to not mess with you know essentially precious tissue that you can never give out so that's how I look at it yeah and when it comes to psychedelics I always I always think of the same story I think of ram das's story of of going to visit his Guru in India and bringing him a bunch of LSD and uh you know he presents his Guru with several tabs of LSD and his Guru takes a bunch at once um and later reports well that was that was interesting I understand why you do it um in other words like oh these tremendous spiritual insights that you have as a result of this drug are available to me because of my exalted spiritual status and and the fact that I live up here in this ashram and I I meditate all day and so even if you want to take the kind of open to experience perspective on psychedelics which I do is yeah maybe there is something transformative in terms of how you see the universe that happens here that you know you you see you see the face of God and you're changed forever right so okay even if that's true you don't need the drugs to do that there are other ways to to have that experience you could Trek to the ashram and hang out with Baba and and do you know sing kirtan for a couple of months and and like devote yourself to having that experience um and without without doing damage to your brain in the process if it's good enough for for the guru Baba it's probably good enough for you so all good yep all right is that good enough for one day Jen I think so certainly Melly thinks so she's ready to party so she has gotten so good at knowing when I'm on zoom and figuring out how to open the closet and get to the food and tear a hole in the side of the bag and create a little funnel of food yeah there you go get on the right side of gravity and everything this is all your fault for for giving her too much watermelon yeah you created this problem yeah all right everybody well have a good night and we will talk next time very good I'll see you soon bye
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