Speaker 1: That's a great question, and unfortunately the answer seems to
Speaker 1: be we don't know yet. Welcome to the one you feed.
Speaker 1: Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think ring true, and yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is
Speaker 1: David Reddish, professor of neuroscience at the University of Minnesota.
Speaker 1: David's laboratory studies learning, memory and how animals, including humans,
Speaker 1: make decisions. His latest book is called The Mind Within
Speaker 1: the Brain, How we make decisions and how those decisions
Speaker 1: go wrong. Here's the interview. Hi David, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you. It's good to be here. Yeah, I'm excited
Speaker 1: to get you on. Your book is called The Mind
Speaker 1: Within the Brain, How we make decisions and how those
Speaker 1: decisions go wrong, which is a very uh, this is
Speaker 1: a pretty It straddles the line between what I would
Speaker 1: call sort of a popular science treatment and a pretty
Speaker 1: deep exploration of a lot of these things. So I
Speaker 1: found it kind of Uh, it was. It was certainly
Speaker 1: deeper in a lot of categories than then I'm used
Speaker 1: to going into some of this stuff. But it was very,
Speaker 1: very interesting, Thank you. The goal was to make a
Speaker 1: book that was both readable by you know, by everybody,
Speaker 1: but also wouldn't take my colleagues off. That's a tough
Speaker 1: line to walk in the academic world, isn't it It is.
Speaker 1: I I hope that it it succeeded. I think you
Speaker 1: did a good job of it. I think it is readable,
Speaker 1: and yet it's not you know, you're you're definitely going
Speaker 1: into a lot of depth. So, um, we'll start off
Speaker 1: with the parable and then we'll jump more into the book.
Speaker 1: So there is a an old parable parable two Wolves,
Speaker 1: where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and
Speaker 1: he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. I think this is a
Speaker 1: fascinating parable, beak is it speaks to the human social interaction.
Speaker 1: You notice that all of the the wolves, uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know, um, you know, their their accouchments, they're they're
Speaker 1: what they're about, are all the things about interacting with
Speaker 1: other people. And one of the things that we now
Speaker 1: really know in neuroscience is that this is a part
Speaker 1: of us, these kind of social interactions, and they come
Speaker 1: not from the very cognitive kind of perspective, but rather
Speaker 1: from those deep emotional relationships and what we now call
Speaker 1: the Pavlovian system, which I'm sure we'll get into eventually, UM,
Speaker 1: but the system that is the um species specific things
Speaker 1: that make us human. So I find this this probably
Speaker 1: is very interesting because of course one of the big
Speaker 1: issues is how do you connect up with that part
Speaker 1: of yourself? How do you how do you feed the
Speaker 1: parts of yourself that you want to be in these
Speaker 1: kind of less I don't want to say conscious, but
Speaker 1: less deliberative, less cognitive kind of components. Right in your
Speaker 1: book you talk about that UM. You talk about that
Speaker 1: there are multiple decision making systems within each of us, UM,
Speaker 1: and that the actions that we end up taking are
Speaker 1: are are a consequence of the interaction of those systems.
Speaker 1: Can you explain what what some of those different decision
Speaker 1: making systems are? Sure, So we can start with the
Speaker 1: idea that what a decision is is it's taking kind
Speaker 1: of things from your past, things that you're seeing around you,
Speaker 1: that the sensory signals that you're seeing now, and your
Speaker 1: goals and kind of driving to create an appropriate action.
Speaker 1: But there are lots of we would say, computations that
Speaker 1: you conduce, lots of ways to solve that question. And
Speaker 1: it turns out there at least four different systems in
Speaker 1: the human system, in fact, in all mammals that UH
Speaker 1: solve that task. UM, do you want me to go
Speaker 1: through them. Now do you want to? Sure? Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: just let's dive into them. Let's dive into the interesting
Speaker 1: thing is that they are. You know. Obviously, there is
Speaker 1: the big what we would call the deliberative system. This
Speaker 1: is a system that allows you to imagine a future,
Speaker 1: put yourself into that future, and then make a decision
Speaker 1: between those two choices. This deliberative system is very slow.
Speaker 1: It takes a lot of effort. Think of it as
Speaker 1: what job am I going to take? What college am
Speaker 1: I going to go to. It's good for big decisions
Speaker 1: like that, but if you're going to do something fast,
Speaker 1: for example, hitting a baseball, you really don't have time
Speaker 1: to plan through all the possibilities. You've got a few
Speaker 1: hundred milliseconds to decide whether or not to swing. And
Speaker 1: so there's a second system, we call it the procedural
Speaker 1: system that basically has learned over time to categorize the
Speaker 1: world very quickly and then decide what's the right action
Speaker 1: to take. And this is expertise. So a sports star,
Speaker 1: a musician, a um firefighter for example, deciding, you know,
Speaker 1: is that building safe or not. So those are kind
Speaker 1: of two of the four. The third one is kind
Speaker 1: of interesting because we call it the Pavlovian system because
Speaker 1: this is what Pavlov's famous dogs were doing. And what
Speaker 1: it is is it's a species specific behavior, behavior that
Speaker 1: you have evolved for your species, that you learn the
Speaker 1: right situation to release. So, for example, Pavlov's dogs learned
Speaker 1: that when the bell rang, they would get food, so
Speaker 1: they salivated. But it turns out that this is used
Speaker 1: for lots not only of survival circuits running away from
Speaker 1: a lion, but also social interact actions, particularly among social
Speaker 1: creatures like humans. So all of those behaviors that those dogs,
Speaker 1: those wolves were talking about, anger, jealousy, kindness, um, shame,
Speaker 1: all of these internal you know, these social interactions turn
Speaker 1: out to be part of that third system, and very
Speaker 1: interesting we can talk about it. The trends out that
Speaker 1: actually a lot of human morality comes from that third system,
Speaker 1: which is absolutely fascinating to me. The fourth system we
Speaker 1: have to include for completeness is reflexes. What reflexes have
Speaker 1: done is learned over a very long evolutionary time. They've
Speaker 1: learned at this moment, you've got to react quickly, You've
Speaker 1: got to do this. It's the stimulus and the response
Speaker 1: are all already essentially built in, and we include them
Speaker 1: because then we can talk about conflicts like preventing a reflex.
Speaker 1: Isn't a deliberative system in conflict with your reflex system? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you say there are irrationality tends to come when these
Speaker 1: different systems are in inflict with each other. I think
Speaker 1: we have to be careful with the word rationality. UM.
Speaker 1: I think that the word irrationality suggests that we know
Speaker 1: what the right answer is in lots of these um cases. Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of what we see is what I would
Speaker 1: say is that each of these systems is kind of
Speaker 1: really good for certain situations. Right, if you're hitting a baseball,
Speaker 1: you want your procedural system, but if you're deciding between colleges,
Speaker 1: you want your deliberative system. And that means that in situations,
Speaker 1: these different systems can come up with different answers, and
Speaker 1: so you can find them into conflict in very interesting ways.
Speaker 1: And so let's go back to the Pavlovian system a
Speaker 1: little bit. Can you give me an example of how
Speaker 1: that that does affect social interaction? Yeah, my favorite example
Speaker 1: is the ultimatum game, and I probably should explain it
Speaker 1: for the listeners. So the ultimatum game is think of
Speaker 1: it as an experiment, a morality game. You have two players.
Speaker 1: The first player has given some amount of money, say
Speaker 1: twenty dollars, and this first player decides how to split
Speaker 1: the money between the two players. So player A keeps,
Speaker 1: you know, ten dollars and player B gets ten dollars.
Speaker 1: Nice fair split. Or player A gets nineteen dollars and
Speaker 1: player B only gets one dollar. And then in the game,
Speaker 1: player B gets to decide whether they take the deal
Speaker 1: or not. And if they take the deal, they walk
Speaker 1: away with that money. If player A said I get
Speaker 1: nineteen and player visa and if player A says I
Speaker 1: get nineteen and player B gets one, then they walk
Speaker 1: away with nineteen dollars and one dollar. But if player
Speaker 1: B says no, I don't like that deal, nobody gets anything.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting about this is that you know, from
Speaker 1: a simple how do you make more money situation, player
Speaker 1: B should take anything right. Player A says I get nineteen,
Speaker 1: you get one. Player B as a dollar richer than
Speaker 1: player B was before. But most people don't react that way.
Speaker 1: Most people react with anger, They react with um what
Speaker 1: we call to forget you response, and they basically throw
Speaker 1: the money back and player's based if player A hasn't
Speaker 1: give them a decent deal. And in practice people end
Speaker 1: up being about And that's the Pavlovian system. That's that
Speaker 1: emotional system coming back and saying, this is not a
Speaker 1: situation that I'm going to accept. So that decision to
Speaker 1: accept or not accept. That is the way that the
Speaker 1: Pavlovian system works. Is that intrinsically built into me? Or
Speaker 1: is that something that I learn over time how I
Speaker 1: react in that situation? So for example, could I, um,
Speaker 1: could I be trained to think about it very differently?
Speaker 1: And then yet it come from that level of the
Speaker 1: decision making system. It depends on the one you feed. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: it depends on you can be trained and in act
Speaker 1: you can learn to be you know, to take any deal.
Speaker 1: You can learn what the social culture is right that
Speaker 1: you're within, and you very much learn when is it
Speaker 1: appropriate to to make a pass at somebody? For example, right,
Speaker 1: so uh, an emotional statement of that's an attractive person, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to make a pass at that person?
Speaker 1: There are um that's very much part of that have
Speaker 1: lo v and social structure. In fact, how a person
Speaker 1: makes that pass is very um, I won't say completely
Speaker 1: built in, but if you were to watch, you know,
Speaker 1: people making passes at other people, they're pretty similar across
Speaker 1: many cultures. But when that's appropriate or not is something
Speaker 1: that we definitely learn, absolutely, and these are cultural definitions
Speaker 1: that we learn and in exactly the same way that
Speaker 1: we learned the right situations for those responses. One of
Speaker 1: the things that you talked about in the book, and
Speaker 1: there's you know, more and more studies seem you know,
Speaker 1: I just keep kind of stumbling upon them, which is
Speaker 1: that a lot of the conscious decisions, or what we
Speaker 1: think our conscious decisions, are actually rationalizations after the fact. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's that's very true, But I want to be careful
Speaker 1: with that because a lot of people take that to
Speaker 1: mean that they are somehow not making the decision, and
Speaker 1: I think that's a mistake. I think that the fact
Speaker 1: that we recognize consciously when that decision occurs does not
Speaker 1: mean that it wasn't us who made that decision. You
Speaker 1: talk about an analogy in the book that is an
Speaker 1: analogy I've always really liked, which is Jonathan hates analogy
Speaker 1: of the writer and the elephant. And you said that
Speaker 1: you don't completely agree with that analogy because it makes
Speaker 1: it sound like they're these different, um, different selves, where
Speaker 1: in reality, all these different decision making uh systems compromise
Speaker 1: who we are, and so we might be exercising one
Speaker 1: or the other of them, but that's still us exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wouldn't want to say that some you know,
Speaker 1: sports star and musician who's practiced ten thousand hours in
Speaker 1: order to get to that skill level. You know, that's
Speaker 1: part of who they are, being able to make those decisions. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, when when I fall in love, you know,
Speaker 1: that's me falling in love. And likewise, when you fall
Speaker 1: in love, that's you falling in love. It's not some
Speaker 1: some horse that you're riding. And actually the Jonathan Hype
Speaker 1: book actually ends by saying, actually you are both the
Speaker 1: writer and the horse. And my problem is that it
Speaker 1: ends there instead of beginning there. Yeah. Well, I think
Speaker 1: what gets tricky there is we think of ourselves as
Speaker 1: or we are conscious. Right, there's the there's the you know,
Speaker 1: the deliberative system that you talked about, or the consciousness
Speaker 1: that's aware that we're conscious, and yet all these other
Speaker 1: things are happening at a level that feels unconscious and
Speaker 1: so even though those are part of us, it feels
Speaker 1: very difficult to have any acts us to those parts
Speaker 1: or to change or to affect how those parts work,
Speaker 1: at least with the conscious brain. I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: they're unconscious. It's harder to describe that consciousness, but I
Speaker 1: think it's there. So, you know, a a I keep
Speaker 1: coming back to the sports star, a sports star or
Speaker 1: a musician who's you know, in the zone. You know,
Speaker 1: a jazz musician will often talk about kind of coming
Speaker 1: into themselves at the moment when they're playing a you know,
Speaker 1: an improv and it's working and everything is kind of working.
Speaker 1: That's not them. They don't feel out of body. They
Speaker 1: feel in their body. And so I think that that
Speaker 1: is a form of consciousness. Um, you know, the it's not.
Speaker 1: It's just that it's hard to linguistically describe it. But
Speaker 1: it's still very much, you know, part of who we
Speaker 1: are and how we we can learn to control those things.
Speaker 1: You know, we do control those things and we practice
Speaker 1: for example, right, Well, I think they are. They're hard
Speaker 1: to linguistically name. Their also hard to summon on demand,
Speaker 1: seems to me, I'm not so sure they're They're hard
Speaker 1: for the deliberative system just on demand, Yes, exactly. And
Speaker 1: I guess I think so what I'm sort of saying
Speaker 1: is that maybe, or maybe the other way of saying
Speaker 1: is that I am viewing all that from the lens
Speaker 1: of the deliberative system. Yes, And I think that's a
Speaker 1: common perspective, but it's one I actually am trying to
Speaker 1: argue against the book. Do you have any means or
Speaker 1: methods that you think is helpful to access those other
Speaker 1: systems or to switch between those systems? So, for example,
Speaker 1: you could say, well, you know, if this person is
Speaker 1: always stuck in their head, they're always in the deliberative
Speaker 1: everything is liberative. Um. And you might say with another person,
Speaker 1: what it seems like they're you know, they're they're very Pavlovian,
Speaker 1: they're driven by all these other things. Is there ways
Speaker 1: to switch between these different systems to make our decision
Speaker 1: making better? Because you kind of argue that that is
Speaker 1: one way to make better decisions is to um, make
Speaker 1: sure you're applying the right system to the right situation.
Speaker 1: That's a great question, and unfortunately the answer seems to
Speaker 1: be we don't know yet. Um. One of my favorite
Speaker 1: news science books is a book called Ignorance by Stuart Fierstein,
Speaker 1: and he argues in it that the goal of science
Speaker 1: is to open questions. You didn't know we're questions until
Speaker 1: you did the science. And we're kind of at that
Speaker 1: right now now that we know that there are these
Speaker 1: multiple decision systems, that these multiple decision systems are kind
Speaker 1: of individualized, right that that your Pavlovian system is a
Speaker 1: little different from mine in part because of your experiences,
Speaker 1: and that means that we have that is us, but
Speaker 1: how do we switch between them? And we don't actually
Speaker 1: know that right now? This is I mean, this is
Speaker 1: one of the things I love about this this field
Speaker 1: right now is that we can, in the course of
Speaker 1: you know, twenty minute conversation, come to the limits of
Speaker 1: our current knowledge. And this is where the science is
Speaker 1: right now. We know that there's a number of possibilities
Speaker 1: about how this could work, and people are doing experiments
Speaker 1: and looking at these questions right now, but we don't
Speaker 1: actually know what mediates these decisions, how these these different
Speaker 1: systems mediate each other right now. That's actually just not
Speaker 1: known right because on the show lately we've had a
Speaker 1: bunch of conversations a little bit between and it's sort
Speaker 1: of a simplification. But with that idea of the thinking
Speaker 1: fast and slow brain, right, you've got your you've got
Speaker 1: your conscious brain that is a lot slower, but it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's very deliberative. It can think logically and rationally.
Speaker 1: And then you've got again that that faster, more instinctive,
Speaker 1: and you sort of break that apart into different categories.
Speaker 1: And I think it's very important to break that apart
Speaker 1: to the different categories because that the categories that there's
Speaker 1: an old theory. I mean, it goes all the way
Speaker 1: back to Augustine and Plato that um, you know that
Speaker 1: you have this this this rational brain that is is
Speaker 1: this deliberative which isn't really rational. We have to be
Speaker 1: careful with that word. But and then you have this
Speaker 1: kind of animal brain instead that underneath it. I think
Speaker 1: that that's a misnomer. I think that I'd like to
Speaker 1: try to to undercut that, um that theory with this
Speaker 1: more specific one that looks at these multiple systems because
Speaker 1: the fast component, there's a big difference between a fast
Speaker 1: component that you've practiced for ten thou hours and now
Speaker 1: you are an expert in commanding a you know, a
Speaker 1: tank or commanding a group of um, you know, fireman,
Speaker 1: deciding what to do with the building. Right, that you
Speaker 1: have to make these fast decisions that you've practiced on,
Speaker 1: and that's very very different from the emotional statement of Oh,
Speaker 1: that person is cute, I want to go, I'm attracted
Speaker 1: to that person. Right, those are very different systems that
Speaker 1: work very differently, and we've got to be careful not
Speaker 1: to mix them up. And see what you're saying is
Speaker 1: we tend to lump both those things into this animal
Speaker 1: brain or faster brain. That's concept and and really there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of different things going on under the covers there,
Speaker 1: that's right. And I think that it's it's dangerous and
Speaker 1: and oversimple to lump them into that that one, that
Speaker 1: one fast brain, because they are very very different, and
Speaker 1: in fact, I think part of the issue is controlling
Speaker 1: them requires very different processes. So I like the example, actually,
Speaker 1: I love that parable that you bring up at the
Speaker 1: beginning about you feeding the wolf, right. A lot of
Speaker 1: the way one interacts with this Pavlovian system is by
Speaker 1: feeding it. Right, do you allow yourself to become angry
Speaker 1: sometimes that's important. Do you allow yourself to encompass joy.
Speaker 1: That's important, right, But that's a very different control of
Speaker 1: how do you get yourself into the mindset for the
Speaker 1: big football game where you don't want to be thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, with your deliberative system, but you also really
Speaker 1: don't want to be thinking with that Pavlovian system because
Speaker 1: people are yelling at you and taunting you, and you
Speaker 1: have to be under very tight control. So one of
Speaker 1: the things that you talk about is you say that
Speaker 1: the decision making in our brain arises from physical processes
Speaker 1: that occur in the brain, because our brain is a
Speaker 1: physical thing, and so it has vulnerabilities what we might
Speaker 1: call a failure mode in the engineering world, and that's
Speaker 1: where when we have you know, for lack of a
Speaker 1: better word, breakdowns in the system. It's it's understanding that
Speaker 1: these are physical processes that that have the ability to
Speaker 1: fail or breakdown. Can you expound on that, um, sure?
Speaker 1: Or so? I think the first thing that we have
Speaker 1: to start with is this this point about the physical brain,
Speaker 1: and that the fact that we are a physical brain
Speaker 1: doesn't mean we're not with the mind. It's not denying
Speaker 1: the mind. The mind exists, it's just instantiated in a
Speaker 1: physical brain. That's kind of that's the medium in which
Speaker 1: it exists, but that means that it has It is
Speaker 1: a system. And like any engineering system, whether it be
Speaker 1: a bridge or a car or you know, a computer,
Speaker 1: it has or a brain um which is different from
Speaker 1: all three of those things. Uh, it has ways, It
Speaker 1: has weak links in the chain. And I always I
Speaker 1: really kind of go back and forth between these various modes,
Speaker 1: you know words, you know, vulnerabilities or failure modes. The
Speaker 1: the engineers called them failure modes, but I don't want
Speaker 1: to say this means you're a failure if you have
Speaker 1: one of these things. It's kind of really a statement
Speaker 1: of how does the system break down? And that's really
Speaker 1: the the the kind of the the issue here. And
Speaker 1: it turns out that a lot of the it's a
Speaker 1: new perspective on kind of issues like psychiatry and a
Speaker 1: lot of psychology and what is this breakdown? What is
Speaker 1: break going down? How is this breakdown happening? And what's
Speaker 1: interesting is that a lot of these breakdowns can separate
Speaker 1: very very different um psychiatric phenomenon and it's likely that
Speaker 1: in fact, if we could get the right treatment to
Speaker 1: the right breakdown, then we can actually fix things better. Well,
Speaker 1: you talk about addiction as so I'll just I'll jump
Speaker 1: to that addiction as being a symptom of a breakdown
Speaker 1: in the system. And it could be those different systems
Speaker 1: could be failing in different ways that it's not this,
Speaker 1: you know, to call it addiction is is a bit
Speaker 1: of a too broad of a term. And you're saying
Speaker 1: that if you can find out where the failure in
Speaker 1: the system is or which system is failing, you can
Speaker 1: try and address that more directly. Can you maybe give
Speaker 1: a couple of examples of that in relation to addiction? Sure,
Speaker 1: I mean, um, so for example, we know that, UM,
Speaker 1: what would be a good kind of example, Well, you
Speaker 1: could imagine a case where you have practiced the habit
Speaker 1: too much, right, so you have you've you've smoked that
Speaker 1: cigarette just too many times, and what happens is your
Speaker 1: your habit system is now kind of hooked on that.
Speaker 1: It's built in that habit into its procedural components. So
Speaker 1: we um. On the other hand, you could have a
Speaker 1: system which has recognized that if you were to take
Speaker 1: this drug, you feel extreme pleasure, and so now you
Speaker 1: want to get to that pleasure again by thinking about it.
Speaker 1: So you could actually have a deliberative mode that says
Speaker 1: I want to go and find that thing, or you
Speaker 1: can say, oh, I'm just kind of picking up my habit.
Speaker 1: And in fact, if you say does this make you
Speaker 1: take you know, I don't say make it? Does this?
Speaker 1: Does this explain why you take drugs? Let's phrase it
Speaker 1: that way. Does this explain why you take drugs? That
Speaker 1: both both of those explain why, and they have that
Speaker 1: they have very different reasons and they would require very
Speaker 1: different treatments. What I find interesting about that is I
Speaker 1: think that actually that's absolutely true, that it is a
Speaker 1: there are different breakdowns. But I think often, at least
Speaker 1: in my experience, and I'm a recovering alcoholic and addict
Speaker 1: and I know a lot of people, is that you
Speaker 1: have those breakdowns across multiple systems. It's kind of all
Speaker 1: those things you describe, you know, it can be all
Speaker 1: of those things kind of layered on top of each other,
Speaker 1: you know. The other one that you talk about that
Speaker 1: I think is really interesting as you talk about the
Speaker 1: concept of value um, which you do you define is
Speaker 1: how much one is willing to pay trade or work, um,
Speaker 1: you know, for a reward or to avoid punishment. And
Speaker 1: the thing that you say is that value is not
Speaker 1: intrinsic to any object, but we have to recalculate it
Speaker 1: every time. And one of the things about addiction, clearly
Speaker 1: is at least for me and my experience at different points,
Speaker 1: is that valuing these different parts of our lives, the
Speaker 1: different things that our lives, gets way out of whack
Speaker 1: um in how you assign value to say a drink
Speaker 1: versus a family. You know, your your family, those kind
Speaker 1: of things that happen. But I thought that was really
Speaker 1: interesting in that that value we have to calculate every
Speaker 1: time with an object, and that that changes over time,
Speaker 1: and I just thought that was a really interesting idea.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that's very interesting about value
Speaker 1: is each of these decision making systems in a sense,
Speaker 1: has its own way of calculating value. Right, So the
Speaker 1: deliberative system is imagining if I were to go do this,
Speaker 1: how good would it be? Whereas the um procedural or
Speaker 1: habit system has record learned I'm in this situation. In
Speaker 1: this situation, the best thing is to do this, and
Speaker 1: you can actually construct and and you can find that
Speaker 1: they can go into conflict because one value could in
Speaker 1: fact say oh, I'm in a situation where I'm going
Speaker 1: to do this, and another like you go to the bar,
Speaker 1: you're gonna drink, right. Whereas so what you find is
Speaker 1: you can actually find cases where you can say I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go to the bar because if I
Speaker 1: went to the bar, I would drink. And so it's
Speaker 1: called pre commitment, and it's in some sense a conflict
Speaker 1: between you and yourself. Right, So you have the the
Speaker 1: you at sitting at home does not want to go
Speaker 1: drink because that you sitting at home knows that if
Speaker 1: you go drink, you'll have the drink, you'll embarrassed, or
Speaker 1: you'll hate yourself or whatever. Right, you don't want that.
Speaker 1: And yet if you were to go to the bar
Speaker 1: because your friend convinces you or whatever, now the you
Speaker 1: at the bar has a different decision and changes takes
Speaker 1: a different choice. Yep. I well, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: speaking from personal experience, I think that is one of
Speaker 1: the most painful parts of addiction, is that that warring
Speaker 1: you know within your brain, those different you know, like
Speaker 1: you said, you call it being in conflict with yourself,
Speaker 1: which is exactly what it feels like. I think one
Speaker 1: of the important points here is that we can you
Speaker 1: is this actually if we know ah, it's you know,
Speaker 1: this situation or this aspect that is UM the problem.
Speaker 1: We could use that by trying to push you into
Speaker 1: using one of the other systems. So, for example, can
Speaker 1: we force you to UM always you know, deliberate over
Speaker 1: your choices, right, so there's um or, or could we,
Speaker 1: for example, UM make it easy for you to sign
Speaker 1: step that choice. I think that there's a lot of
Speaker 1: processes by a number of things where you know, this
Speaker 1: for example, is where a suicide hotline really works or UM.
Speaker 1: You know, my high school friends actually had kind of
Speaker 1: very specific kind of setups for these kinds of things
Speaker 1: where you can call somebody anytime, any day, right, and
Speaker 1: it becomes it's very easy, and in fact, you can
Speaker 1: convince yourself I'll call them and then I'll go do
Speaker 1: whatever I'm want to do, right, knowing full well that
Speaker 1: that call is going to cut off the UM the
Speaker 1: action plan that you don't want to do but do
Speaker 1: want to do, right. So I think if we if
Speaker 1: we know where these vulnerability, these breakdowns, these failure modes
Speaker 1: are happening in a given individual, we can guide the
Speaker 1: treatment to that individual to essentially use the other systems
Speaker 1: to to help it and to help kind of correct
Speaker 1: for it. Use the term contingency management in the book
Speaker 1: What Does That Mean? Continguency management is a fascinating treatment
Speaker 1: for a number of things, including addiction, where basically you're
Speaker 1: paying people not to take drugs. And at this point
Speaker 1: it's not no known why contingency management works. It works
Speaker 1: surprisingly well. Um, we have been working in my lab
Speaker 1: right now and a theory and we're kind of working
Speaker 1: through what we would call the theoretical neuroscience of this.
Speaker 1: That what contingency management does is um shifts you into
Speaker 1: this deliberative mode because it forces you into a choice
Speaker 1: of not should I take drugs or not, but should
Speaker 1: I take drugs or not? Or get this this prize
Speaker 1: or this money or this even this you know, good
Speaker 1: job from my you know, from the treatment person, from
Speaker 1: the person you know providing a treatment. And I want
Speaker 1: to emphasize this is still, you know, we don't know
Speaker 1: why continuency management works. We're still we're working on this.
Speaker 1: This is the current theory that we're working on. But
Speaker 1: that's a very if we're right about why it works.
Speaker 1: That's a very interesting example where providing these very small
Speaker 1: rewards can allow somebody to actually reject very expensive things. Certainly,
Speaker 1: you say it could be that it switches you into
Speaker 1: the deliberative mode. What I think is interesting is that
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of addicts or alcoholics, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of deliberation going on, but it's between good
Speaker 1: and bad, and what what you're positing there is between
Speaker 1: um every reason not to do it is always framed
Speaker 1: as a negative, and what you're sort of doing is
Speaker 1: changing it and framing the reason, uh, not to do
Speaker 1: it is for a positive reason, or you're you're substituting
Speaker 1: some other reward in there, And I just think that's
Speaker 1: you're you're right. It's interesting to see why that would
Speaker 1: work the way it does. It's also much more concrete.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that we've seen in you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things about this is each of these
Speaker 1: systems has its own you know, mechanism, and the deliberative
Speaker 1: mechanism entails imagining the actual future, and that means that
Speaker 1: the more concrete that future is, the easier it is
Speaker 1: to imagine. And in fact, you can make people more
Speaker 1: likely to pick a future by making that future more
Speaker 1: concrete to them saying, imagine this specific example. So one
Speaker 1: possibility is that part of what contingency management is doing
Speaker 1: is making the don't be an addict, that don't take
Speaker 1: drugs future into a more concrete future, because a lot
Speaker 1: of the take drugs are not situation is well, I
Speaker 1: know exactly what that drug is going to feel like,
Speaker 1: but not doing it. What am I gonna do? I'm
Speaker 1: gonna water around the house, I'm gonna you know, by
Speaker 1: finding this alternative concrete things, in some sense mentally grab
Speaker 1: ahold of, it becomes easier to pick that choice. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: because those consequences, because if you're if you're approaching it
Speaker 1: from a consequence perspective, I'm not going to do this
Speaker 1: because of potential future consequences. The further off those consequences
Speaker 1: are the far harder it gets, um at least in
Speaker 1: my experience, to connect those two things together. Right, And
Speaker 1: and I think it's important to think about in terms
Speaker 1: of also it's very abstract that that not consequence, Right,
Speaker 1: When that not consequence becomes less abstract and more concrete,
Speaker 1: of you know, my wife's really going to leave me? Now,
Speaker 1: that's when people go for treatment. It's those kind of
Speaker 1: those moments when those things the alternative becomes so concrete
Speaker 1: that they have to they kind of it. It helps
Speaker 1: force them to respond. Do you have any data on
Speaker 1: whether contingency management continues to work over time? Because the
Speaker 1: other classic addiction problem, right is, while you know, my
Speaker 1: feet are on the fire, I do, I go get treatment,
Speaker 1: I get better, and then as time goes on, the
Speaker 1: remembrance of what that pain was, like, the membrance of
Speaker 1: the trouble fades, and it's easy to drift back into
Speaker 1: that previous circumstance. We do not have that data. I
Speaker 1: believe that data exists, and I don't really I'm not
Speaker 1: qualified at this point to state what it would be. Um.
Speaker 1: But of course it's certainly possible to continue doing things
Speaker 1: like continuity management, you know, and continue to provide rewards
Speaker 1: for such things, um, you know, and and actually the
Speaker 1: cost of those rewards is much much cheaper than the
Speaker 1: cost of the addiction to society. Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: I'm not um, as I should point out, I'm a
Speaker 1: I'm a PhD, not in empty and I don't actually
Speaker 1: do clinical practice. Um. My main research is in the laboratory,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what the current status is on
Speaker 1: continuity management, specific success long term. Well, I think we
Speaker 1: are near the end of our time. But I guess
Speaker 1: I would just ask you, is there any one thing
Speaker 1: that you would you know, if we wanted to give
Speaker 1: to the listeners one thing that could help them make
Speaker 1: better decisions in their life. Is there anything you could
Speaker 1: boil it down to a point or two that would
Speaker 1: be easy to take away? Wow? Um, not to put
Speaker 1: you on the spot with anything difficult. I guess I
Speaker 1: haven't really thought of it that way, but I think
Speaker 1: that you could, you know, if I were to try
Speaker 1: to boil it down to kind of one point. It's
Speaker 1: too to realize that all of these systems are you, right,
Speaker 1: and that the fact that there are there is, you know,
Speaker 1: an angry wolf and a kind wolf inside of you,
Speaker 1: and that the things you have practiced long term that
Speaker 1: have made you who you are, those are all part
Speaker 1: of what makes a person a person, and it does
Speaker 1: not diminish them in any sense to say that those
Speaker 1: are also part of the person you know. In some sense,
Speaker 1: I think that the recognition of all of these systems
Speaker 1: and trying not to just say, oh, I'm this thin
Speaker 1: shell of deliberation or this thin shell of linguistic explanations
Speaker 1: sitting on top of everything else. I think that that
Speaker 1: you have to kind of accept the whole and be
Speaker 1: the whole person that that would be if I could,
Speaker 1: I would say that would be closest to a single
Speaker 1: point that I could try to make. As you say
Speaker 1: in the book The Walt Whitman, I contain multitudes. Yes,
Speaker 1: are some of those systems more a default for some
Speaker 1: of us than others, that we rely on them more
Speaker 1: or less? Are they really situationally called upon? I'm sure
Speaker 1: that they are certainly more for some people than others.
Speaker 1: Some people are certainly going to be more deliberative or
Speaker 1: more you know, Pavlovian or better at you know, learning
Speaker 1: procedural systems. I mean, this is personality. We all have personalities,
Speaker 1: but I think we also all have these systems. It's
Speaker 1: not that you know, there is you know, person A
Speaker 1: is deliberative and person B is procedural. It's that is
Speaker 1: an A tends to use the deliberative system a little
Speaker 1: more when they're in a conflict situation. Right. Well, David,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for taking the time. It was a
Speaker 1: it's a fascinating book. And as you said, the whole
Speaker 1: the whole field right now of decision making theory is
Speaker 1: just there's so many different aspects of it that are
Speaker 1: really interesting. Thank you for having me. This was a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. Okay, take care, Thank you bye. All right.
Speaker 1: You can learn more about David Reddish and this podcast
Speaker 1: at one you feed dot net slash Reddish. That's r. E.
Speaker 1: D I. S H.