Speaker 1: It's because you think that that's saying I don't know
Speaker 1: makes you not enough, like you're missing something, you're not adequate.
Speaker 1: But that's because there's this kind of this dogma that
Speaker 1: you've fallen for that makes you think that, you know,
Speaker 1: if I don't know what I think, you know, I
Speaker 1: have to have all the right opinions on Ukraine and
Speaker 1: Russia or else like I'm stupid or I'm like it's
Speaker 1: like it's just so misguided. Hello, and welcome to the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast. Today, I have an eclectic chat with the
Speaker 1: great Tim Urban. Tim is the writer and illustrator of
Speaker 1: one of my favorite blogs called weight but Why, which
Speaker 1: he co founded with Andrew Finn in twenty thirteen. With
Speaker 1: Rye stick figure illustrations and occasionally epic prose, Weight but
Speaker 1: Why has guardered millions of unique page views, thousands of patrons,
Speaker 1: and famous fans like Elon Musk. His long form blog
Speaker 1: covers a range of subjects, including artificial intelligence, outer space,
Speaker 1: and procrastination. Tim earned his ab from Harvard University, graduating
Speaker 1: kum laude with a MA in government. In this episode,
Speaker 1: I talked to Tim about the complex relationship between identity
Speaker 1: and critical thinking. Tim cautions against blind loyalty to specific ideologies,
Speaker 1: for it can lead to an echo chamber of tribal minds.
Speaker 1: Instead of dogmatic maxims, Tim suggests we uphold basic core
Speaker 1: principles that guide our thoughts and behavior. In this way,
Speaker 1: Tim believes we engage in high wrong thinking all the
Speaker 1: while cultivating ideal abs within our culture. We also touch
Speaker 1: on the topics of dating, education, politics, writing, morality, and tech.
Speaker 1: So that further ado, I bring you Tim Urban just
Speaker 1: chewing nicotine gum so I can get some energy. Does
Speaker 1: nicotine gum give you energy? Is that? Does that work?
Speaker 1: I know that? Uh, it's great. Biohackers love it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've never smoked a cigarette. But nicotine gum when used
Speaker 1: like in moderation, if you used it a lot, you know,
Speaker 1: you get addicted. And also it loses this potency you
Speaker 1: have to take more and more. What if you take
Speaker 1: you know, the half dose two milligrams and you maybe
Speaker 1: like two or three of those max on a day
Speaker 1: and take a day off, you know, a couple of
Speaker 1: days a week. It's great. It's a little boost like
Speaker 1: a Sharper. It's like a Sharper caffeine boost. It's like
Speaker 1: a caffeine boost but like sharper better focus and it
Speaker 1: doesn't last as long. Slow sure, half light. I want
Speaker 1: to ask you a question, tim Uh. Someone told me
Speaker 1: that you you said that you have ADHD. Is that true?
Speaker 1: I don't know if or if you've been diagnosed. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I have ADHD. I've never been diagnosed.
Speaker 1: It's hard to know, like what ADSG exactly is. I
Speaker 1: was like, it's like, is it one of those things
Speaker 1: where it's just a label for what a lot of
Speaker 1: people have with or is it like a specific condition
Speaker 1: where people can't like sit still, except I never like
Speaker 1: have problems like taking an exam in school. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like unable to focus. So I don't know whether it's
Speaker 1: like it's like a specific diagnosis of people who like
Speaker 1: literally can't focus when they need to, in which case
Speaker 1: I don't have that, or if it's like, yeah, kind
Speaker 1: of personality profile of mine is what we call ADHD,
Speaker 1: and like, yes, then I probably have that. So I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, No, I hear you. I mean I
Speaker 1: I often say I have intellectual ADHD, you know, but
Speaker 1: you know, I love lots of different tops. I feel
Speaker 1: like I get a sense you do too, like in
Speaker 1: the sense you you if if I told you you
Speaker 1: had to write all your articles about one specific topic
Speaker 1: the rest of your life, wouldn't you feel a significant
Speaker 1: limiting of your freedoms? Yeah, I would hate that. I
Speaker 1: would hate that. I'm all about aj Jacobs said it best.
Speaker 1: He said, if you could take college again, he would
Speaker 1: do thirty two one oh one classes. And that's how
Speaker 1: I feel about life. Okay. I love my job because
Speaker 1: I basically get to do a one oh one, you know,
Speaker 1: dive and then come out, you know, explain it. So
Speaker 1: then you know, explain it, you really understand least a
Speaker 1: certain amount of it. Obviously there's expertise you have to
Speaker 1: put a lot more time in for, and then it's
Speaker 1: so fun to move on to the next topic, Like
Speaker 1: I yeah, I feel like at that point starts to
Speaker 1: get more, you know, after the one oh one level
Speaker 1: of starts to get more rigorous and and more technical.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure it's satisfying to get to that level,
Speaker 1: but it's like, ooh, or I could just move on
Speaker 1: to like, you know, I'm like, I'm like intellectually promiscuous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh well, that's that's even the sexier phrase. Than intellectual ADHD.
Speaker 1: I like that phrase. By the way, A. J. Jacobs
Speaker 1: is my brother man, so big shout out to him.
Speaker 1: He's one of my best friends. Yeah, I love him.
Speaker 1: I love him too. I love him too. I love
Speaker 1: him to And I'm gonna make sure you hear you
Speaker 1: that he thinks. He I just love the way he thinks,
Speaker 1: like he's thinking about It's like he's over there having
Speaker 1: a lot of the same thoughts and same like kind
Speaker 1: of thing that that that I haven't. So as soon
Speaker 1: as we talked, we get connected. We were like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: you're also like this, Well me too, and and well
Speaker 1: look it's all those grand grand VN diagram That's why
Speaker 1: I resonate with your writings a lot too. You know.
Speaker 1: AJ has a new book coming out on puzzles. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you saw that, And I actually have
Speaker 1: a galley of that, I think or it's on the
Speaker 1: way and it's the exact book I want in life.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited. Yeah, treating like what would it be
Speaker 1: like if to treat all of life like one big puzzle,
Speaker 1: like the meaning of life as a puzzle. Like you know,
Speaker 1: you zoom out because I know you're a big fan
Speaker 1: of zooming out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So I love
Speaker 1: that idea of like, you know, building scaling up the
Speaker 1: puzzle idea to to solve not just your life, but
Speaker 1: human human existence and more generally. Yeah, totally, it's I
Speaker 1: think it's great to approach complex things that way, and
Speaker 1: which is the opposite way of approaching things like dogmatically, right,
Speaker 1: which is the you know, it's the exact opposite mindset.
Speaker 1: It's like, when you're puzzling, you're not attached to anything,
Speaker 1: You're like exploring, you're looking for stuff, You're you're and
Speaker 1: your solution oriented, as opposed to dogmatic, when you're like
Speaker 1: attached to a certain idea and you're not exploring and
Speaker 1: you're trying to protect that idea, it's like the polar
Speaker 1: opposite of puzzle solving. Yeah, it sounds like you're describing
Speaker 1: ideology or like firm commitment to an ideology, yeah, which
Speaker 1: which I think like shuts down puzz Yeah, it shuts
Speaker 1: down truth seeking. I've noticed some common themes on your
Speaker 1: your own social media page of your frustration with a
Speaker 1: lot of the with a lot of well quite frankly
Speaker 1: ideologies going around. Is this is this something that's increasingly
Speaker 1: frustrating you or is there a steady you know, what's
Speaker 1: what's the rate of change in your feelings about this? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So the way I like to think about it is
Speaker 1: like thinking like a scientist, which is puzzling, you know,
Speaker 1: truth truth seeking, you know, humble truth seeking, and like
Speaker 1: not attaching yourself or others to ideas, like ideas are
Speaker 1: just science experiments. If that's one type of thinking. I like,
Speaker 1: I have a lens. I use like a vertical ladder,
Speaker 1: and so that to me is high wrung thinking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then if you could, as you move down to
Speaker 1: the low rungs, you become more attached to ideas, more dogmatic,
Speaker 1: more group thinking. More. It becomes the ideas you believe
Speaker 1: become become deeply intertwined with both your identity and your group.
Speaker 1: You know who you want to be friends with, and
Speaker 1: it defines the whole group. The groups you're in are
Speaker 1: defined by the ideas that everyone has to believe. So
Speaker 1: this is a different way of thinking. All of us
Speaker 1: to both live up and down this ladder. Like, I
Speaker 1: don't believe anyone is pure high rung. My goal is
Speaker 1: to increase the ratio of times I'm on the high
Speaker 1: wrungs to the times, I'm in the low rungs. But
Speaker 1: what I'm frustrated by is that I think whether it's
Speaker 1: social media or maybe the kind of broadcast media turning
Speaker 1: into narrowcast tribal media, or whatever whatever it is, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know. It's hard to know the exact
Speaker 1: inputs that are causing this, but it seems to me
Speaker 1: that low rung thinking is on the rise. Their low
Speaker 1: rung thinking is spreading, going viral, and little kids are
Speaker 1: being taught to be low rung thinkers by people who
Speaker 1: you know. And I think that so that, yes, I
Speaker 1: think that's very It both just kind of like sad,
Speaker 1: and I think it's bad for people to be low
Speaker 1: rung thinkers. I think it's bad for society. But it
Speaker 1: also kind of it's kind of scary. It's like this
Speaker 1: is you know, look at look at history. A lot
Speaker 1: of society, these that we're doing fine, like devolved into
Speaker 1: something really really bad because low rung thinking kind of
Speaker 1: it was like an epidemic of it took hold and
Speaker 1: it can becomes you know, it's that's once that starts
Speaker 1: to take hold, it's it's like contagious and it like
Speaker 1: switches on a switch in people's brains and kind of
Speaker 1: turns us into kind of crazy tribal monsters. Yeah, can
Speaker 1: you give me like a specific example of well run
Speaker 1: thinking idea that kids are being exposed to that? Like? What? What?
Speaker 1: What is an example? So? I was just reading an
Speaker 1: article by Connor Friedersdorff on The Atlantic from twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one where he was talking about this Ebudenston, Illinois, there
Speaker 1: was a school district that did a you know, three
Speaker 1: three action weeks. It was to basically learn about Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter, And the way that it was being taught
Speaker 1: was that it's you know, it's like learning about like
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter is necessary and that anyone who criticizes
Speaker 1: it is being is essentially a terrible person as being
Speaker 1: a racist. So the point is that there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with kids learning it's an important movement of our time, right,
Speaker 1: and there's it's incredibly complex, and there's there's all this
Speaker 1: historical reasons behind it and all these different goals and
Speaker 1: then but there's different players calling themselves b LM, and
Speaker 1: there's and so learning about that is Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: schools should be teaching kids about an important movement of
Speaker 1: their time, but they should be taught about all different
Speaker 1: kinds of civil rights movements and comparing contrast, Black Lives
Speaker 1: Matter today is similar to other civil rights movements, and
Speaker 1: it's different in these ways. And there are people there
Speaker 1: are anti racists, people who are into anti racism and
Speaker 1: they like Black Lives Matter and they think it's the
Speaker 1: right set of strategies and philosophies and world views. And
Speaker 1: there's other people who are anti racists who actually think
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter is not the right approach. Right, that's
Speaker 1: a good education that leaves the kids thinking, okay, well,
Speaker 1: I know, round things out and it encourages Yeah, of
Speaker 1: course these are there's different views, and like you have
Speaker 1: different views, and you know, but Connor's point, he quoted
Speaker 1: a parent. You know, these kids were being taught this
Speaker 1: is the one way to think, and it is kind
Speaker 1: of religious moralistically, this is what good people think. Anyone
Speaker 1: who disagrees with the activists that were coming into the
Speaker 1: classroom to teach are are bad, bad people, including your
Speaker 1: parents if they don't agree with it, you know, And
Speaker 1: so then kids are going home. There's a quote from
Speaker 1: a parent where she says something like, I can't even
Speaker 1: read it because I just was just looking at it
Speaker 1: where she says that this mother says, I believe in
Speaker 1: the importance of every school district, including my own, moving
Speaker 1: away from a traditionally wide centric voice to a broader
Speaker 1: and more thoughtful view of history that acknowlogists the wrongs
Speaker 1: in both the past and president recognized its white privilege
Speaker 1: and honors black experience and the experience of other minority groups.
Speaker 1: I think we've come to the point, however, where our
Speaker 1: children are being used as ponds. I feel like we
Speaker 1: should can and should work together for a more just,
Speaker 1: equitable world. But don't believe that one political organization, with
Speaker 1: its own idea of how to get there, should be
Speaker 1: the our border of progress. There's no room in that.
Speaker 1: And then so then she tells the story of her
Speaker 1: her student. Her kid came home and basically was thinking,
Speaker 1: like acting like a real zealot about it, and was
Speaker 1: telling what they learned. And when the parents, like, you know,
Speaker 1: the parents challenge it at all, you know, the kid
Speaker 1: was had been taught to be a low rung thinker,
Speaker 1: that this is the only way. Anyone who disagrees is bad.
Speaker 1: And that's so forget the fact that it's BLM. It
Speaker 1: could be anything. It could be someone coming and teaching
Speaker 1: about Christian values or American nationalism, or someone coming and
Speaker 1: teaching in about whatever it is, capitalism, communism. But teaching
Speaker 1: one lens doesn't just deprive the student of a full
Speaker 1: education of understand It doesn't just deprive the student of
Speaker 1: understanding all the different crevices and nuances of a certain situation.
Speaker 1: It also teaches them to think in that way, teaches
Speaker 1: them to think, I'm right. There's only listen to the authority.
Speaker 1: The authority knows, don't question it. Anyone who questioned it's
Speaker 1: a bad person. And that the way to handle someone
Speaker 1: who disagreed with you is to tell them they're they're
Speaker 1: a terrible person. That's training kids to think and the
Speaker 1: low runs, which is awful. I mean, that's that's a
Speaker 1: great way to be. It's a great way to not
Speaker 1: learn and not grow and to end up siphoning off
Speaker 1: for any friends that disagree with you and form echo
Speaker 1: chambers and you and your groups of friends and so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's I don't like it. It's interesting because the
Speaker 1: political organization is usually like when people say that phrase,
Speaker 1: they're not thinking about this specific organization that it's called. Right,
Speaker 1: there's it's very smart move on the part of the
Speaker 1: organization to call it Black Lives Matter. It's like you
Speaker 1: start an organization and you have a whole set of
Speaker 1: methodology and everything you call it like don't kill the children?
Speaker 1: Right Like anyone who says I don't believe what don't
Speaker 1: kill the children will be banished, cause I mean everything
Speaker 1: does this. And I mean the Nazis were like the
Speaker 1: National Socialist Workers. You know, it's like the most right
Speaker 1: wing caucus is the Freedom Caucus. Well, who wouldn't like that?
Speaker 1: The Patreon Act, which was a surveillance program. Who oh,
Speaker 1: if you don't like that, you must be unpatriotic. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is classic, classic trickery. It's yeah, it's coercion. I
Speaker 1: share with you a deep desire to instill artical thinking
Speaker 1: in schools and more of like a scholarly mindset to it.
Speaker 1: And that's something I've made the cases that we've really
Speaker 1: lost the scholary mindset in our society. Very few people
Speaker 1: do on the one hand. On the other hand, thing
Speaker 1: that I love to do, you know, and every time
Speaker 1: I try to do that, people start to glaze their eyes,
Speaker 1: going over, glaze over. I'm like, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, they're like, they're like, what you're boring.
Speaker 1: Something I wait to think about is how to separate
Speaker 1: those sets of skills key skills in school from IQ
Speaker 1: type thinking, because I think there's a lot of very
Speaker 1: smart people from an IQ point of view that have
Speaker 1: well wrung thinking. So that's just something I wanted to
Speaker 1: riff with you a little bit about, because I think
Speaker 1: that those are two different kinds of smarts. Maybe they're correlated,
Speaker 1: but they're not. They're far from perfectly correlated. I frets
Speaker 1: from research that in some ways, higher IQ makes you
Speaker 1: more prone to lower on thinking, because lower onthinking emerges
Speaker 1: from this convincing yourself that you're one hundred percent right
Speaker 1: and you it disagrees with you is an idiot or
Speaker 1: an asshole or both. And high IQ people have a
Speaker 1: very clever lawyer in their head who builds a case,
Speaker 1: builds a very effective case, and you can convince your
Speaker 1: talk yourself, you know, such a good case that you
Speaker 1: really believe your own bullshit. And I see that a lot.
Speaker 1: I see I see a lot of the people who
Speaker 1: I think are really kind of caught because again, I
Speaker 1: don't want to say they are low wrong thinkers, because
Speaker 1: we all can be and they will I'm sure at
Speaker 1: some point in some way, and they're thinking they're they're
Speaker 1: less I'm more low rung than they are. Who knows.
Speaker 1: But I see some people who are really caught in
Speaker 1: it who seems like it, and these are some of
Speaker 1: the smartest people. I mean often often these people are
Speaker 1: clearly extremely intelligent. There's also just you know, there's another
Speaker 1: kind of vector, which is a higher education level, which
Speaker 1: does not necessarily have to do with IQ, but higher
Speaker 1: education level correlates with more political just because there could
Speaker 1: be a lot of reasons. But I think a lot
Speaker 1: of the time it's the people who can afford, you know,
Speaker 1: who are in that elite position to get higher education,
Speaker 1: have time on their hands and can can into these
Speaker 1: ideologies and as opposed to I think people trying to
Speaker 1: make ends meet are less political, They're less they're less
Speaker 1: tuned in. I think some of the there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different factors, but if anything, I think the kind
Speaker 1: of elite echelons of society, whether it's whether it's an
Speaker 1: education or in IQ or whatever you want to say,
Speaker 1: or often some of the biggest kind of low rung pitfalls. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's an It's a truly excellent point. Were you
Speaker 1: in gifted education as a kid. I was like a
Speaker 1: higher math class for a couple of years. Like I
Speaker 1: was always in like the high groups for like reading
Speaker 1: groups and math groups. But I don't, I don't think
Speaker 1: we had gifted education programs, So I don't. I don't public.
Speaker 1: I was just in a pub public. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: just in a public school system. And were you, I mean,
Speaker 1: what were you like as a kid, Like did you
Speaker 1: were you shy? Introverted? Were you like the class president?
Speaker 1: You know what? I was the class president. Actually I
Speaker 1: was not shy or introverted. I was a class clown,
Speaker 1: and I was I was in trouble a lot, like
Speaker 1: for you know, talking in class or you know, being
Speaker 1: whatever silly. I got like calls home a lot and
Speaker 1: got in trouble. I also was the class president in
Speaker 1: high school. I Uh, it's part partially because like I'm
Speaker 1: like a very marginal athlete and it was like sports
Speaker 1: everything there and I was on very mediocre on the
Speaker 1: ski team and like playing with my friends. But like
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to go you know, into my high school,
Speaker 1: like the varsity athletes there often like college athletes, just
Speaker 1: like the next level. I wasn't going to do that.
Speaker 1: And then there was like the theater crowd, and like
Speaker 1: I did a little of that, but like I wasn't
Speaker 1: really into like you know, theater either, and so I
Speaker 1: was like, all right, well there's this other thing I'll
Speaker 1: I'll like drive myself towards. And I just like went
Speaker 1: for the class office, which is it's a pretty inane
Speaker 1: like looking back, it's just like so like I don't
Speaker 1: even know what we were doing, but it was fun.
Speaker 1: It was fun like running a campaign. It was like
Speaker 1: it was like a game, you know. But anyway, I
Speaker 1: was like but I was very like thinky, like I
Speaker 1: was like I was in camp. I was, you know,
Speaker 1: when I was five six seven. The there would be
Speaker 1: kids like in the group walking with the counselor heading
Speaker 1: from one thing to another, and I would always be
Speaker 1: always like tim and I'd be way behind, like kicking rocks.
Speaker 1: In my own world. That was very common, like in
Speaker 1: my own world just very much like a lot of
Speaker 1: time was kind of just like buried in my own world,
Speaker 1: like thinking and you know, in my own so I
Speaker 1: did a lot of that. Do any teachers comment on
Speaker 1: you being a good writer, like, did they see your potentially?
Speaker 1: I'm always interested in this because I'm very interested in
Speaker 1: how we can activate children's potential, and you are a
Speaker 1: very accomplished writer, and I'm just curious did anyone identify that? No,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Because I was very good at math.
Speaker 1: I was always like, you know, like met math was.
Speaker 1: I was always getting told you're you know, you're very
Speaker 1: good at math, you're in whatever. With writing, I feel
Speaker 1: like I didn't have a chance to do any kind
Speaker 1: of like fun writing, which is when I like actually
Speaker 1: tried to write like something fun, like you have to
Speaker 1: do you know, you have to do your thesis statement
Speaker 1: and your topic sentences, and I was just trying to
Speaker 1: get through it, probably on the morning before it was due,
Speaker 1: like frantically. You know, I don't think like the school
Speaker 1: I was in, I didn't even realize that writing was
Speaker 1: like even something I like could do or like that
Speaker 1: I would want to pursue until I started just for fun,
Speaker 1: like blogging and writing in a totally colloquial voice, and
Speaker 1: then I was like, oh, this is fun, and like
Speaker 1: so yeah, I actually thought of writing as like something
Speaker 1: I kind of like didn't like at all until I
Speaker 1: was like twenty three or so. What about drawing stick figures?
Speaker 1: Drawing is something I always it was like the thing
Speaker 1: I was one of the things I was always least
Speaker 1: talented that, you know, like some people can just like
Speaker 1: draw up face and it looks kind of like a
Speaker 1: real face, or they can draw like a horse and
Speaker 1: it just looks like I don't want to put the
Speaker 1: It's like I still if you asked me to draw
Speaker 1: a face or a horse, it would look like a
Speaker 1: second grader did. And so again this is interesting that, like,
Speaker 1: because there were things I was good at that I
Speaker 1: knew I was good at, like math, like music. You know,
Speaker 1: I was composed music. I can hear something and I
Speaker 1: can play it, like I always thought I was going
Speaker 1: into music, you know, but writing kind of came out
Speaker 1: of nowhere. I was blogging for fun, and it turned
Speaker 1: out that like blogging with that voice like colloquial was
Speaker 1: something I liked. And then I thought one day I
Speaker 1: just crossed my mind. I was like, maybe I'll like
Speaker 1: draw a little stick comic in an old blog I had,
Speaker 1: and I did, and I had fun doing it, and
Speaker 1: then people really liked it and I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this is so fun. I became like and
Speaker 1: then I wrote like five comic posts in a row
Speaker 1: and I was so fun. And then I stopped that
Speaker 1: blog because I got tied up with some other projects.
Speaker 1: And then two years later I was when I came
Speaker 1: back to writing and startweight. But why I I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm obvious definitely bringing drawings into this. It was a
Speaker 1: good match, like silly bad stick figure drawings. I think
Speaker 1: it was like it was a good match for my
Speaker 1: writing tone. I was like, oh, these fit together, and
Speaker 1: so I was like, all right. It's like that's why
Speaker 1: I think people should always try a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: because you never know when you're going to stumble upon something.
Speaker 1: You don't know what you're good at or what you
Speaker 1: know you actually like until you try a bunch of things.
Speaker 1: It's you're not giving yourself a chance to stumble upon
Speaker 1: something that you're like, oh, man, I'm good at this
Speaker 1: unless you try a lot of stuff. Did you ever
Speaker 1: try that strategy with women or men? Whatever you're into women?
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean, honestly, I do think that By
Speaker 1: the time I met my wife, when I was twenty nine.
Speaker 1: It is like a ski you get good at. And
Speaker 1: I don't mean in like the pickup artist way. I
Speaker 1: mean because I mean like there's a whole language that
Speaker 1: a romantic language that is that the people speak, and
Speaker 1: if you don't know how to speak it and you're
Speaker 1: just being your normal self, you're gonna fall in your
Speaker 1: face a lot, which I certainly did. And it's like
Speaker 1: you start to understand that language as you get older.
Speaker 1: And like for me, if if I was you know,
Speaker 1: I was this. I've never done the app swiping thing
Speaker 1: because I met my wife right before it started, which
Speaker 1: is too bad. It seems like it would have been fun,
Speaker 1: although people seem to hate it, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm not but it's not fun. But if I
Speaker 1: can verify, yeah, I can verify are you? Are you
Speaker 1: on the apps as we say I am I am,
Speaker 1: it seems like it would be fun. Man. I seem like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I feel like I procress in all day,
Speaker 1: like trying to find days. But if I went up
Speaker 1: to it, just say I was in a bar and
Speaker 1: I was my friends and I saw a girl who
Speaker 1: I wanted to go talk to. Early on when I
Speaker 1: don't know. Seventeen eighteen nineteen, I would have probably not
Speaker 1: done very well. But when I was older, like in
Speaker 1: my mid twenties, I would have done much better in
Speaker 1: that situation because I there's a few things I started
Speaker 1: to realize is that, Well, the biggest thing I can say,
Speaker 1: like the advice I would give anyone is I used
Speaker 1: to think of it as like the game Grand Theft
Speaker 1: Auto right, you like could just you know run over
Speaker 1: people on the sidewalk and like and it's part of
Speaker 1: the fun, is like you can kind of like be
Speaker 1: in a non consequence land and like do whatever you
Speaker 1: want right now. If you apply that to the romantic world,
Speaker 1: what I mean is I'm not saying you should go
Speaker 1: and like be you know, like growt people. I'm saying
Speaker 1: you should go up and like talk to someone and
Speaker 1: think of it as a video game and you still
Speaker 1: be a nice, good person. But like if it were
Speaker 1: a video game, you might just go up and like
Speaker 1: start a random comment. You might go up and like
Speaker 1: point at the bartender's hat and say like something a
Speaker 1: joke about that hat, and just like you would you
Speaker 1: wouldn't you would just try stuff and you wouldn't care.
Speaker 1: And that's a superpower because there's a part of our brains,
Speaker 1: male and female, who if you in a small tribe,
Speaker 1: which is when our brains were developed, if you try
Speaker 1: to hit on someone and it didn't work and you
Speaker 1: got rejected, that was going to make you know the other.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're a guy, that the girls are
Speaker 1: going to go talk about how much of a loser
Speaker 1: you are and you're done. That's it. You're not gonna
Speaker 1: mate because like all the you're now a pariah forever
Speaker 1: and that and on that you're you're Our brains still
Speaker 1: think that way. So it's a terrifying to approach a
Speaker 1: girl or a guy in a bar and and so
Speaker 1: we but but that, But it's a superpower when you're
Speaker 1: like there's literally a million people I can approach in
Speaker 1: this one city and they'll I'll never see this person again.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna go up and be myself and
Speaker 1: be silly and whatever, and like she might not be
Speaker 1: into it, but then I'll go up to someone else
Speaker 1: and and who I think is interesting and and it's
Speaker 1: like so often that's like magnetic because it's just like
Speaker 1: someone with confidence being themselves and not trying so hard
Speaker 1: and not no fear. So I think we're moving the
Speaker 1: fear and just being like this is silly, it's a game.
Speaker 1: Dating is silly, Like it's it's we're all in a
Speaker 1: silly situation trying to figure out who to date here.
Speaker 1: Just have on be silly and like be yourself and
Speaker 1: don't worry so much. And I think, like once I
Speaker 1: started to absorb that, it's a superpower, because what you
Speaker 1: really want is you want to end up on first
Speaker 1: dates with people who actually might be a good match
Speaker 1: for you. And if you can go, if you can
Speaker 1: go on a hundred of those, you're probably going to
Speaker 1: find like an amazing life partner somewhere. The problem is,
Speaker 1: so that's that was always the goal for me, is
Speaker 1: like it's like I just want to figure if someone
Speaker 1: I see someone in the bar. You know, attraction is
Speaker 1: the first kind of hook at that point, I want
Speaker 1: to go and talk to this person and if it
Speaker 1: would be a good match for me, I want to
Speaker 1: end up on a first date with her. And the
Speaker 1: problem is and the problem is if what's what's sad
Speaker 1: is when that person would have been a good match
Speaker 1: for you, but you can't pull off that bar interaction,
Speaker 1: so she does. She never even realizes that she'd be
Speaker 1: a good match. She just thinks of you as a
Speaker 1: weirdo or creepy or whatever, and you're out. And so
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, the key the skill is getting
Speaker 1: getting good at actually ending up on first dates with
Speaker 1: people who really would have been a good match for
Speaker 1: you if, like, if you had that chance. Brilliant things
Speaker 1: are saying, but what if you're like me and you're
Speaker 1: attracted to what's not good for you? The kind of
Speaker 1: the kind of women that I'm attracted to are like
Speaker 1: dangerous women, and it never it's not good for me.
Speaker 1: I the ones that I probably should be approaching because
Speaker 1: because you made a point, like the ideal is to
Speaker 1: go on first dates with people who are good for you.
Speaker 1: So you just made me think of that. I'm being
Speaker 1: a little cheeky, but I'm also being a little vulnerable
Speaker 1: with you. Yeah, okay, so get into this more dangerous
Speaker 1: meaning what what is it on? You know when you're
Speaker 1: now like, do you end up in a relationship and
Speaker 1: then you keep realizing this is not the right person
Speaker 1: or is it like what's actually happened? No? No, more
Speaker 1: on dates, more on dates with people that I realized
Speaker 1: are not the right people. I'm good enough not to
Speaker 1: get into a full relationship. And why are they not
Speaker 1: the right people? Because it usually doesn't go past a
Speaker 1: couple of dates. So it's probably they're not because because
Speaker 1: because you because you don't you lose interest. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean suddenly became all the spot, like god on me,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious, I'm sweating, I'm figure out out what
Speaker 1: just happened? What happened in this interview? Well we might
Speaker 1: as well explore. I'm actually curious because to me, it's
Speaker 1: like it's such a tragedy when like, yeah, people like
Speaker 1: it's like there's there's so many good matches out there
Speaker 1: for everyone, and it's like it's like so it's such
Speaker 1: a it's so sad when it's like it's like these yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some like block in the way. Here's something I
Speaker 1: would say that this is another thing I learned. This
Speaker 1: is a huge piece of wisdom that I learned from
Speaker 1: being safe. Basic. I was single basically for ten straight
Speaker 1: years most of my you know, most of my twenties.
Speaker 1: It's a hack to be your This is more like
Speaker 1: once you're even in the bar, but especially you know,
Speaker 1: because that's like it takes. It's like an actual game
Speaker 1: in the bar, and like you have to get good
Speaker 1: at that specific game to be able to get that
Speaker 1: first date. Once you're on a first date, I think
Speaker 1: it becomes simple, which is be your exact self for
Speaker 1: being yourself on a great day. I mean you don't
Speaker 1: want to, you know, you know, yeah, be a be
Speaker 1: a true version of yourself that is one of the
Speaker 1: best versions of yourself. But be you because it's a
Speaker 1: perfect filter. And it can also take anxiety away. If
Speaker 1: you're trying to get someone to like you and you're saying,
Speaker 1: my goal is to get her to want to date me. A.
Speaker 1: Now you might fail at that, and it's really upsetting
Speaker 1: when you feel you think, what did I do wrong?
Speaker 1: I messed up right? And b if you win that
Speaker 1: game and now you're actually on date five with this person,
Speaker 1: she's on date five with some version of you that
Speaker 1: you've been putting on and that's who she is. You know,
Speaker 1: you found someone who was interested in this version of you,
Speaker 1: which is not maybe not really you because you're trying
Speaker 1: to manipulate. So if I would just go and be
Speaker 1: my full self, my full nerdy self, my full excited, energetic,
Speaker 1: super talkative, interruptive self, my curious self. And that's a
Speaker 1: lot of females would find that annoying or unappealing or whatever.
Speaker 1: And that's and so if she ghosted me after that
Speaker 1: first date, I would never get upset. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: just learned she's not right for me because she But
Speaker 1: and then the people you end up attracting are the
Speaker 1: people who happen to like you. Yeah, And so it's
Speaker 1: really advice, I mean, and it's so simple in a way.
Speaker 1: It's like a lot of this pickup artistry game, the
Speaker 1: game stuff is like so complicated, so much extra extra,
Speaker 1: So much of that is just trying to get. If
Speaker 1: your goal is just to to sleep around, that's a
Speaker 1: whole different that's a whole it's a whole different story.
Speaker 1: That's a different story. Yeah. Yeah, Like what always excited
Speaker 1: me was trying to like it was like having a
Speaker 1: crush on someone and like, uh, you know, going in
Speaker 1: a first date. You know, my dream first date was like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're hitting it off so well, and we're like we're
Speaker 1: having so much fun and like we are super into
Speaker 1: each other. So if you that's a that game I
Speaker 1: think is easier because you just you just just yeah,
Speaker 1: you just be yourself and drink. I mean, alcohol is
Speaker 1: so helpful in these situations, like it's it's it's because
Speaker 1: if the point is the output alcohol can do, is
Speaker 1: it can actually calm that part of the brain that
Speaker 1: thinks you're in fifty thousand BC and this is a
Speaker 1: dire situation. Alcohol can make you shrug and say, it's
Speaker 1: a date, doesn't it's not the beginning or the end
Speaker 1: of the world, Like, it's a date, let's have fun
Speaker 1: and it doesn't work, I'll laugh at myself. That's a
Speaker 1: great zone to be in, and alcohol like helps get
Speaker 1: you in that moune. Yeah, can we unpack the physics
Speaker 1: here of why when you sleep with people is a
Speaker 1: different game? Is it? Because like lit's enern how on
Speaker 1: this intellectually? Is it? Because when you get right down
Speaker 1: to it, what you're trying to do in essence is
Speaker 1: manipulate people into finding you physically attractive who don't actually
Speaker 1: find you physically attractive. So that's like a harder game,
Speaker 1: is that? Is that? Along the lines of why yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, there's a whole level. So it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, you can go to really kind of predatory
Speaker 1: mode where you know, a guy is actually manipulating women
Speaker 1: and like telling them like like making them think he
Speaker 1: loves her, you know, so that he can you know,
Speaker 1: and then or like you know what to toutch tinder swindler,
Speaker 1: like making her think she's he's rich or that's the
Speaker 1: full manipulative like. But but you can also just like
Speaker 1: I feel like if the goal is to sleep with
Speaker 1: them and you don't have goals beyond that, like you
Speaker 1: don't actually want a relationship, then then yeah, like probably
Speaker 1: what you're gonna end up doing is you're not trying
Speaker 1: to like you don't need her or him to know
Speaker 1: the real you, Like, that's not the point you are
Speaker 1: trying to make. You're trying to be someone they want
Speaker 1: to sleep with. It's seduction. Seduction, yes, yeah, which is
Speaker 1: which is you know, but it's also we're like animals.
Speaker 1: That's fun. There's nothing wrong with like playing that game.
Speaker 1: Is again, I think what's wrong is when you go
Speaker 1: to the next level, you're actually hurting people. You're you're
Speaker 1: you're really manipulating, you know, saying I love you and
Speaker 1: you're just and you don't. That's that's that's pretty evil.
Speaker 1: But like I think, like if you're being upfront about
Speaker 1: what you want and you're just in full like flirty
Speaker 1: mode trying to sleep around, I think like everyone's it's
Speaker 1: within everyone guy or girl's right to like have a
Speaker 1: phase like that and like want that. There's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with that if but just just don't. You don't want
Speaker 1: to hurt people along the way. There's ways to do
Speaker 1: it that hurt every you know, you're a chain of victims,
Speaker 1: and there's ways to do it where no one gets hurt. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So it's like you're playing a video game, but there
Speaker 1: are consequences, but the consequences aren't so bad. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to like integrate all the stuff because you said it's
Speaker 1: like a video game, like Grand Theft audio. When you
Speaker 1: approach an audio listen to me auto auto. When you
Speaker 1: approach a one, there are consequences if you lie to them,
Speaker 1: but there are no consequences if you're just being yourself
Speaker 1: and you're being leading with a kindness. We need nuance here,
Speaker 1: we need more nuance. Yeah, yeah, it's an important disclaimer
Speaker 1: like that, like the Grand Theft Auto thing, you want
Speaker 1: to divide because hurting other people is real consequences, So
Speaker 1: you're not in grand theft Auto. Correct, you're in the
Speaker 1: real world. Then you shouldn't forget that you're in grand
Speaker 1: theft Auto about getting rejected, Like if you approach someone
Speaker 1: and you're yourself and you go and you start to
Speaker 1: try to play a silly game with them in the bar,
Speaker 1: which again sometimes it's so much better than just going
Speaker 1: up and being awkward or going up and doing like
Speaker 1: a cheesy pickup line, just to go up and be
Speaker 1: yourself and just like make some comment about something and
Speaker 1: start making a joke or play a game with them
Speaker 1: and like try to you know, I don't know whatever.
Speaker 1: It is. Like if you're just going up and experimenting
Speaker 1: and you get rejected, there's no consequence there. That's you
Speaker 1: can pretend that that was an avatar that rejected your
Speaker 1: avatar and okay and on to the next which is
Speaker 1: actually true. You're never going to see them again. They're
Speaker 1: a figment of your imagination as far as it matters,
Speaker 1: but they're actually a real person. So when it comes
Speaker 1: to hurting them, you're in the real world. So when
Speaker 1: I say grand theft thought, I'm talking entirely about like
Speaker 1: you getting rejected does not matter. It is not a
Speaker 1: bad thing, it's irrelevant. You just get an experiment and
Speaker 1: you learn something cool, take that information, move on. But
Speaker 1: what happens if you don't have this mindset, It's our
Speaker 1: nature is to incorrectly think that getting rejected by a
Speaker 1: stranger is mortifying and crushes your confidence. And it's like
Speaker 1: this awful, awkward, hideous life experience and you're going to
Speaker 1: be rattled for the rest of the night and the
Speaker 1: rest of the week. And that is a complete delusion
Speaker 1: based on a world that our brain was built for
Speaker 1: them we don't actually live in. And so shedding that
Speaker 1: is a super And there's just so many there's so
Speaker 1: many people, So like if you can just you know,
Speaker 1: try a bunch of different things when you're trying to
Speaker 1: get that first date again, I'm probably sound like an
Speaker 1: old man talking about how to meet someone at a bar,
Speaker 1: because this is all my world, where I was talking
Speaker 1: about meeting someone at a wedding or a bar or
Speaker 1: like a party. I don't understand the app world exactly,
Speaker 1: and what's how that works. I imagine it's similar, though
Speaker 1: it's a If I were doing it right now, my
Speaker 1: goal would be again This is if I were trying
Speaker 1: to find a girlfriend, my goal would be there's a
Speaker 1: game that has to do you have to get good at.
Speaker 1: But the goal of the game is to get the
Speaker 1: right people to go on first dates with you. When
Speaker 1: you know, to find people that would be a good
Speaker 1: match for you, identify that, and then charm them enough
Speaker 1: that they're interested in going on a first date with you,
Speaker 1: and the texting phase, and then once you're in the
Speaker 1: first date, then I just think it's easy to just
Speaker 1: go be yourself and see what happens. But I think
Speaker 1: that that's it seems like it's a game now of
Speaker 1: like trying to get the right first dates. But I
Speaker 1: just I don't know. Yeah, now, Tim, are you you?
Speaker 1: Are you married? Did you say you're married? Yeah? Are
Speaker 1: you too? Personal question? Let me know. Are you hoping
Speaker 1: for children? Is that on their horizon? Yeah? So both
Speaker 1: both me and my wife. If one quarter of us
Speaker 1: wants to not have kids and three quarters does so,
Speaker 1: we probably will. But like there's definitely a very solid
Speaker 1: chunk of each of us. It's like we really like
Speaker 1: each other, we really like our lives, we both like
Speaker 1: our jobs. Like it's just like we're not we're not
Speaker 1: in it. We're not like, oh there's a missing hole here.
Speaker 1: If we have kids now, we'd be a family. And
Speaker 1: it's like we're a perfectly fine family, just the two
Speaker 1: of us. And it saddles you. It takes away your
Speaker 1: attention off yourself, which maybe is probably good for most
Speaker 1: people and probably for us too. But you know, there's
Speaker 1: something nice about being able to be selfish and really
Speaker 1: just focus on your pursuits and your friends and your fun.
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with that. And it's like having kids,
Speaker 1: you are intentionally saying I am going to divert a
Speaker 1: lot of that forever, and but three quarters of us
Speaker 1: have reasons of you know, it just seems really fun
Speaker 1: to have raised kid kid together. I look at like
Speaker 1: my parents now, we just I was just with my
Speaker 1: two sisters and my parents for the weekend, and like
Speaker 1: it was so fun. It's like a big group of friends,
Speaker 1: and like it's hard to imagine being being seventy and
Speaker 1: not being happy about having like three twenty somethings, you know, kids.
Speaker 1: So I so, yeah, I think we will. But it's
Speaker 1: a hard one. I think I think more people should
Speaker 1: think about it. I don't think it should be an
Speaker 1: automatic people think it's an you know people, I think
Speaker 1: couples often think getting married is an automatic thing, and
Speaker 1: maybe we should, you know, be a little more open
Speaker 1: minded and same with like couples who are married or
Speaker 1: whatever are staying together, Like think having kids is just
Speaker 1: like that's what you have to do. Like it's like
Speaker 1: you go to school and you have your job and
Speaker 1: you have to eat, and you have kids. Like it's like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think. On the other hand, like
Speaker 1: this is like an Elon Musk thing. He would be
Speaker 1: furious and maybe heard this because he thinks that like
Speaker 1: people not having kids is an absolute catask forphere for
Speaker 1: fushure community, which is probably correct. But you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of things that I could that, like, in
Speaker 1: a collective sense, are probably a bad for humanity that
Speaker 1: I would still I still do. So I'm not like
Speaker 1: he thinks having kids is bad for him many he's
Speaker 1: a natalist. No, No, he's the opposite. He's the opposite
Speaker 1: of natalist. I gotcha. He wants people having lots of kids,
Speaker 1: and he thinks in the Western world there's this this
Speaker 1: this kind of this this trend towards people having fewer
Speaker 1: and fewer kids, and you end up with this, you know,
Speaker 1: an inverted pyramid society where the weight of supporting the
Speaker 1: retired generation just crushes the productivity of the younger generation
Speaker 1: and is and the shrink population shrinks, and he thinks
Speaker 1: that's a disaster. So he's he wishes that everyone would
Speaker 1: have three or more kids. I think, well, he wants
Speaker 1: to populate Mars. He wants he wants a whole He's
Speaker 1: got ulterior motive there. Yeah, but maybe so. You know,
Speaker 1: you've written about ego, and that's another topic very interesting
Speaker 1: to me. You wrote, if your ego is a backpack,
Speaker 1: each opinion you tie to your identity is like a
Speaker 1: rock in that backpack. Cool life act toss some of
Speaker 1: the rock out of the bag to feel lighter and freer.
Speaker 1: Has that Is that a process you've worked on personally
Speaker 1: over the years. Do you feel like, did you ever
Speaker 1: have a big eo? And like now it's notably different? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I get Actually I probably should have said identity seat
Speaker 1: of ego there, because I get a little confused about
Speaker 1: what's a little bit of a confusing Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: little confusing concept for me, Like I'm not really I
Speaker 1: guess I don't really know what an ego is, Like
Speaker 1: I have an ideas of it. The self is a
Speaker 1: large representation of all of our self ideas about ourself,
Speaker 1: like our self concepts, like our values are who we are,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of reflecting the consciousness back on ourselves,
Speaker 1: a mirror that's our self. The ego is the certain
Speaker 1: subset of the self, which includes the representations of the
Speaker 1: defense mechanisms that constantly make sure that we have a
Speaker 1: positive evaluation of ourself. So it's really like defending the
Speaker 1: fort of that positive evaluation. The slightest criticism, the slightest
Speaker 1: anything that might not that make us think that we're
Speaker 1: not great. You know, we have to fight that. Does
Speaker 1: that help it all? Yeah? So it's like it's like
Speaker 1: the string that holds yourself a steam up. It's like
Speaker 1: when there's a gravity pulling it down. This is like
Speaker 1: the force that's trying to hold it up. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: yeah or something. Yeah. And you can have positive identity
Speaker 1: that's latched on the ego, or that's not latched on
Speaker 1: the ego, or you can have you can have a
Speaker 1: very defensive identity. So you can distinguishwen defensive identity versus
Speaker 1: positive constructive identity. So defensive identity is what it's like.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like one that will at all costs,
Speaker 1: like even at this even at the cost of self
Speaker 1: self delusion will and at the cost of like of
Speaker 1: like lashing out at people have in about collective narcissism.
Speaker 1: So even just the person within the group that does
Speaker 1: the slightest criticism of something, you band, you banish them
Speaker 1: from the kingdom, you know, interesting, you're out of the
Speaker 1: group because you know, we can't take our identity, you know,
Speaker 1: the slightest chrism for growth. But I think a positive
Speaker 1: identity is one where you want to grow, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like that then that the defensive identity is
Speaker 1: is is a complete impediment to any form of growth,
Speaker 1: just like it is with a self. I tweeted something
Speaker 1: today that I think is kind of trying to get
Speaker 1: at this where I said that like insecurity causes people
Speaker 1: to build like an arrogance bunker that they hide in.
Speaker 1: Like to me, arrogance is well, sometimes arrogance is just
Speaker 1: like you literally are like too naive to realize that
Speaker 1: you don't know stuff and that you're you know, so
Speaker 1: we all probably have that phase at some point. But
Speaker 1: there's a lot of grown ups who are like kind
Speaker 1: of still you know, you know, they're building themselves bunkers
Speaker 1: of some kinds of shield themselves to you know, protect themselves,
Speaker 1: and I think like that that's an impediment to growth. Well,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, like I think humility actually emerges
Speaker 1: from confidence because like, if you're confident, you can like
Speaker 1: relax all of those defense mechanisms and just be like,
Speaker 1: I don't need to build a shield because I'm safe anyway.
Speaker 1: I'm safe just being here, right, So there doesn't need
Speaker 1: to be a bunker. I don't need to hide in
Speaker 1: a bunker. I don't need a shield, I don't need
Speaker 1: a wall. And therefore I can acknowledge that of course
Speaker 1: there's a lot I don't know. Of course I might
Speaker 1: be wrong, Like of course I can self improve and
Speaker 1: I'm flawed because you know, you're not relying on perfection
Speaker 1: of any kind to feel worthy. And so confidence then
Speaker 1: yields humility, which then yields growth and learning and improving,
Speaker 1: which then yields more confidence. And so I think I
Speaker 1: think we can both we can all fall into both
Speaker 1: of these. But but your but what you quoted was
Speaker 1: a tweet that I think I probably used the wrong
Speaker 1: word there. I think what I meant is identity. You know,
Speaker 1: Paul Graham wrote, you know, keep your identity small, and
Speaker 1: I think that's a great goal for everyone, Like I
Speaker 1: think I think of it. It is like a backpack
Speaker 1: where if I'm like I am, I am a Democrat, okay,
Speaker 1: and that's who I am. I just put a big
Speaker 1: old rock in that backpack. Where now, when the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party is acting a way that my principles would normally
Speaker 1: disagree with, I have to do so much work, mental work,
Speaker 1: and I have to you know, arguments, and I forget
Speaker 1: pursuing truth. I can't do that anymore. I can't afford to.
Speaker 1: I have to support this thing in my backpack. I
Speaker 1: have to make sure that it's always good to be
Speaker 1: a Democrat and that smart people are always you know
Speaker 1: the concept of smart equals democrat and good equals democrat
Speaker 1: have to be true or else I'm bad and I'm stupid. Right,
Speaker 1: Why you get drop that drop that thing and say
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party resonates with me now? It might not later,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't resonate with me in every way. And
Speaker 1: if it goes down the sewer, I'm not going down
Speaker 1: with it. I'm gonna attached to it. It's it's I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'll drop it. Basically, don't be so you know,
Speaker 1: don't be loyal to your ideas like be you know,
Speaker 1: be flaky, drop your ideas, if drop your your associations
Speaker 1: and stuff if it doesn't if it doesn't fit with you.
Speaker 1: You know, be loyal to your principles. Latch onto your
Speaker 1: principles and attach those to your identity. You know, core
Speaker 1: basic principles. Don't get too specific and you start getting specific.
Speaker 1: What I mean by that is like core principle can
Speaker 1: be kindness. But if you start saying, well, kindness equals
Speaker 1: anti racist for example, or something like that, right now, well,
Speaker 1: because anti racists can become you know, can get attached
Speaker 1: to a bunch of different kinds of ideas and now
Speaker 1: you have to suddenly, you know, take on all those ideas. So,
Speaker 1: you know, very core kind of basic principles I think
Speaker 1: are great. You know, you can you know, and I
Speaker 1: think that most of us could list them and they're
Speaker 1: not that hard on your truth and kindness and like
Speaker 1: loyalty to people, you know, are something that like almost
Speaker 1: all of us, would you know, some people would would say,
Speaker 1: you know, self reliance, whatever it is. You know, there's
Speaker 1: certain basic things I think are great, and even those
Speaker 1: I think you should always reevaluate. Go back to the
Speaker 1: drawing board and say, do I still care about this?
Speaker 1: Is this still a value of mine? You know, those
Speaker 1: should be reevaluated. But the point is those can stay
Speaker 1: in your backpack, but nothing else. That's how I now.
Speaker 1: I say this as the advice. Of course I do it.
Speaker 1: I have stuff in my backpack, and all the time
Speaker 1: we all do. But yeah, I love it, No, I
Speaker 1: love it, And that just how far do you take that?
Speaker 1: You know, politics is the obvious one, in religion is
Speaker 1: the obvious one. But like, how many things can you
Speaker 1: throw out of your backpack and still feel a sense
Speaker 1: of self? You know what I mean? Like, like, just
Speaker 1: I'm doing the thought experiment here, Like just how many
Speaker 1: how a dentity lists can you really be so you
Speaker 1: throw out? Did you throw out the male one? You
Speaker 1: know you're no longer see yourself as having any gender identity?
Speaker 1: Do you throw out the you know, think of all
Speaker 1: the things we take for granted if we start throwing
Speaker 1: them out, you know what what what are we left
Speaker 1: with in terms of our self concept. I think like
Speaker 1: a Buddhist or some high philosophical person would probably say, yes,
Speaker 1: throw it all out and maybe one day I'll decide
Speaker 1: that's a goal of mine. But I don't go that extreme,
Speaker 1: I think because I feel like at some point you
Speaker 1: lose a personality, right, Like it's okay to I mean,
Speaker 1: I think who you really are is like there's some
Speaker 1: very inner awareness that's like the actual spectator looking at
Speaker 1: and everything else and it it's it's always learning things
Speaker 1: and it's getting like wiser and lenar. I think that
Speaker 1: is you. But I think it's okay to like attach something.
Speaker 1: I like, curiosity is always a driver of mine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's also something it's also like it's also a
Speaker 1: it's a virtue in my head. So I always so
Speaker 1: it's something I want to nurture in myself, that part
Speaker 1: of me and the times that I'm you know, feeling uncurious,
Speaker 1: like I want to see what's going on and like
Speaker 1: try to fix that because I think that's so I
Speaker 1: think I don't know to me, I think that's why
Speaker 1: I said, like principles can be you know, are good
Speaker 1: to attach to. But nothing too specific. There's some spectrum here,
Speaker 1: and I think somewhere, there's somewhere along the line is
Speaker 1: the right place to be, at least in my head.
Speaker 1: But it's not all the way to the Buddhist side
Speaker 1: for me. Again, maybe I can imagine someone wiser than
Speaker 1: me looking at me and saying, yes, you're almost there,
Speaker 1: but the fact that you don't want to go all
Speaker 1: the way there shows that you're still whatever. And maybe
Speaker 1: that's true. But at the moment, I'm like three quarters
Speaker 1: of the way. I think down the spectrum is my goal,
Speaker 1: where some core things about yourself and kind of some
Speaker 1: conception of yourself is okay, and some kind of personality
Speaker 1: and certain quirks of yours and certain you know, interests
Speaker 1: of yours and I think are okay to kind of
Speaker 1: be like that's me, that's who I am. But you
Speaker 1: can still reevaluate those things. But then but then all
Speaker 1: the much more specific you know, political movements and you
Speaker 1: know national identities, and I think, like ethnic identities, I
Speaker 1: think these things are just just cause trouble. I don't
Speaker 1: think that, and I don't think they give a person
Speaker 1: enough credit. People are so deeply complex individuals, and like
Speaker 1: being like you know, I'm Jewish, being like I am
Speaker 1: a Jew, it's like who I'm Like, I'm so different
Speaker 1: than like so many Jews, I know, like we have
Speaker 1: nothing in common, like and then sometimes we do. Like
Speaker 1: it's just like why would I allow that to define me?
Speaker 1: Like it's especially since like ethnically, like you go back
Speaker 1: and we're all MutS like so it's like it's not
Speaker 1: like it's like an actual pure bloodline or anything. And
Speaker 1: then I'm not religious, so like I'm not like political
Speaker 1: Jewishness whatever that would be, like Israel or whatever, Like
Speaker 1: I'm just not attached to any of those things. So
Speaker 1: I just don't know why I would ever allow that
Speaker 1: to become like an important part of my That's it's
Speaker 1: just how I feel. I absolutely hear you, and I
Speaker 1: think this is a really important point that is causing
Speaker 1: so much strife. But the solution out is not obvious
Speaker 1: to me. And I'm a psychologist. Try nderstand psychology. Try
Speaker 1: to be like, well, how can we tempt people to
Speaker 1: see people as human first? And it's almost like I
Speaker 1: have to fight to do that. I have to fight
Speaker 1: to do that. It's not that it's not the centricrophal
Speaker 1: force whatever the word is, do you have any ideas
Speaker 1: on what we can do? Well? I mean, I think
Speaker 1: we can think about what is causing people, what causes
Speaker 1: people to Again, I think this is a sheet. What
Speaker 1: causes people to build a costume around themselves that hides
Speaker 1: themselves inside. And the costume might say Republican, you know Christian,
Speaker 1: it might say you know that lawyer or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: And it's like they're building that thing around themselves for
Speaker 1: a reason because they don't feel like it's a They
Speaker 1: take that away and it's just them, and somehow it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like it's enough, right. And it's this notion
Speaker 1: that like you are defined by these things and if
Speaker 1: you don't know what you believe and you don't know
Speaker 1: what groups you know you're in, then you don't know
Speaker 1: who you are. That I think is not true. It's
Speaker 1: just as not true. It doesn't make sense. Every humans
Speaker 1: are so complex. Every human. Talk to any human and
Speaker 1: get in their brain and really get it. Talked about
Speaker 1: their childhood and talk about what they really interest them,
Speaker 1: talk about what movies they like in wat what parts
Speaker 1: to you like? What senms? What actually did You're gonna find?
Speaker 1: Like a totally unique point of view in there somewhere,
Speaker 1: and a totally unique sense of humor, right, and like
Speaker 1: and what are you scared of? And why? And like
Speaker 1: how does it feel if you really got into these things,
Speaker 1: you find like a completely unique situation. And so that's enough.
Speaker 1: That's it, that's all. It's just like, you know, you
Speaker 1: are a complete unique set of like traits and and
Speaker 1: internal thinking. Your plastic brain spaghetti in the plant. You know,
Speaker 1: the spaghetti of the neurons in the brain is like
Speaker 1: no other brain before and no other brain that will
Speaker 1: ever come. And why do you need more than that?
Speaker 1: That is awesome? Like just go and like be that person,
Speaker 1: because the world is different with that, with you in
Speaker 1: it and with you out. If you're not here, that's
Speaker 1: a particular brain is no longer in the world. We
Speaker 1: don't have that. So you're adding something just by being
Speaker 1: like as uniquely you as you can. Right. So this
Speaker 1: all sounds so cheesy, but it's also like to me,
Speaker 1: it's the thing that I think is missing from I
Speaker 1: think people are. There's a lot of dogma that makes
Speaker 1: people feel like you are just your race, your religion,
Speaker 1: your you know, your nationalism, your nationality, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: like and your profession and how much money you make
Speaker 1: and you know your marital situation, that these are the
Speaker 1: things that define you, the kind of the on paper version,
Speaker 1: And to me that is like so much more boring
Speaker 1: and less unique because there's a lot of people that
Speaker 1: have those things. You can check those boxes, like you know,
Speaker 1: but there's no one that has your particular brain chemistry
Speaker 1: going on and your particular worldview and your life experiences.
Speaker 1: So I think, yeah, I think just getting people to
Speaker 1: kind of feel like and it's it's such a relief
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, I don't have to be and I
Speaker 1: don't even not to know what I think. I can
Speaker 1: admit that I don't know. I don't know what I
Speaker 1: think about politics maybe or maybe I do, but like
Speaker 1: I'm not sure where I got those views, and like
Speaker 1: I need to maybe reevaluate, and like maybe I don't
Speaker 1: know what I think about Ukraine and Russia. That's okay,
Speaker 1: because that's really you, the real spaghetti brain in there
Speaker 1: doesn't know and and trying to hide that is why.
Speaker 1: It's because you think that that's saying I don't know
Speaker 1: makes you not enough, like you're missing something, you're not adequate.
Speaker 1: But that's because there's this kind of this dogma that
Speaker 1: you've fallen for that that makes you think that, you know,
Speaker 1: if I don't know what I think, you know, I
Speaker 1: have to really have all the right opinions on Ukraine
Speaker 1: and Russia or else like I'm stupid or I'm like
Speaker 1: it's like it's just so misguided it will preach. I
Speaker 1: completely agree, And I think that the self actualization, the
Speaker 1: creative self actuization potential of each human is the most
Speaker 1: important thing, you know. And that's a lot of what
Speaker 1: you're saying. You distinguish between two kinds of intellectual culture,
Speaker 1: idea lab versus echo chamber. You say, ideal lab is
Speaker 1: a safe space for people, a dangerous space for ideas.
Speaker 1: Echo chamber is a safe space for a sacred set
Speaker 1: of ideas and people who express them, in a dangerous
Speaker 1: space for opposing ideas and people who express them. Do
Speaker 1: you think we're seeing a lot more echo chamber these
Speaker 1: days an ideal lab? Yeah. I think like one of
Speaker 1: the things that can be helpful to understand if you're
Speaker 1: in an echo chamber, or if you're enforcing an echo chamber,
Speaker 1: or is to define it and also to define its opposite.
Speaker 1: So I think of an echo chamber, not as a
Speaker 1: not as a physical place or even a metaphorical place,
Speaker 1: but as an intellectual culture. It's an intellectual culture where
Speaker 1: the truth might matter somewhat, but it doesn't matter as
Speaker 1: much as upholding a certain set of sacred ideas. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's one sacred idea, maybe if it's a certain set,
Speaker 1: and those ideas being true matters more than finding out
Speaker 1: whether they're true or finding out the truth. And so
Speaker 1: we all do this in our heads when we're kind
Speaker 1: of what I would call low wrong thinking, when we
Speaker 1: are when we are kind of out to confirm our
Speaker 1: beliefs deep down more than we're out to find the
Speaker 1: truth and question our beliefs. But as a group, then
Speaker 1: we kind of collaborate in low wrong thinking. And it's
Speaker 1: like there'll be this kind of group enforcement mechanism that
Speaker 1: you know, Sometimes it's one person in the group is
Speaker 1: kind of the bully, and everyone knows that, like, oh
Speaker 1: they're around, like don't challenge their politics, you know, don't
Speaker 1: say anything about you know, God or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: And that means that one person is kind of enforcing
Speaker 1: echo chamber culture on everyone. Sometimes it's the whole group
Speaker 1: kind of agrees. Yes, obviously we're all in this group
Speaker 1: because we're good people who believe this, and those are
Speaker 1: bad people who believe who don't, who think other things.
Speaker 1: And that's classic echo chamber culture, because now if we're
Speaker 1: good people who believe this, they're tying this belief to
Speaker 1: good people. They don't want to think they're not good people.
Speaker 1: So whatever it is, this, this thing has to be true.
Speaker 1: And now all of the discussions, all of the intellectual
Speaker 1: effort in the group will be actually working towards having
Speaker 1: people continue to believe that thing, rather than working on
Speaker 1: finding true. So we all are part of this. We
Speaker 1: all have been someone who's enforcing it. You know, it
Speaker 1: can be you know, you and your spouse, you and
Speaker 1: your friend, your parent. It can be a bigger group
Speaker 1: your family, can be a much bigger group of classroom.
Speaker 1: But at any point, you know, one of us has
Speaker 1: been the person where it's like, you know, we've all
Speaker 1: been the person who we're super sensitive some reason and
Speaker 1: we're our egos involved and we get really angry about
Speaker 1: some certain viewpoint. But even more so, probably we've all
Speaker 1: been part of a situation where we're having an echo
Speaker 1: chamber enforced upon us. Or we're just complicit in it.
Speaker 1: It's just human nature to do this because a long
Speaker 1: time ago, when we evolved, like, it makes sense that
Speaker 1: probably all thinking the same stuff and believing in the
Speaker 1: same gods and whatever, it was helpful, that's my guess.
Speaker 1: At least you probably know a lot more about the
Speaker 1: origins than I do. But anyway, I think we talk
Speaker 1: about echo chambers and it really helps to define them
Speaker 1: in relation to their opposite, which would I call an
Speaker 1: ideal ab which is also an intellectual culture, but it's
Speaker 1: the opposite kind where no idea is that sacred. So
Speaker 1: in an echo chamber, in an idea lab culture, it's
Speaker 1: kind of fun to disagree. Disagreement isn't awkward or like ooh,
Speaker 1: now we can't be friends because we disagree. It's like,
Speaker 1: disagreement is what friends do. It's like it's almost like
Speaker 1: a sport to try to poke holes in people's arguments
Speaker 1: and say, are you being biased? Are you being hypocritical?
Speaker 1: Or like, are you know how don't you have a
Speaker 1: blind spot here? Are you missing this thing? I think
Speaker 1: that's not a good analogy, that's not a good comparison.
Speaker 1: That's apples to oranges, you know, Devil's advocate playing with
Speaker 1: each other, Like this is idea lab and it's much
Speaker 1: less stressful. You can throw out any idea and you're safe.
Speaker 1: No one's going to, you know, be angry at you.
Speaker 1: But you also can kind of disagree and it's not awkward,
Speaker 1: and so it ends up like ideas are like science
Speaker 1: experiments that the group is kind of kicking around together
Speaker 1: and playing with and no one's taking it to personally.
Speaker 1: It's like the science experience being kicked was mine in
Speaker 1: the first place. No one's like, oh, you're all being
Speaker 1: so mean to my idea. It's like, it's not my idea.
Speaker 1: I just threw it out there for all all to examine,
Speaker 1: and like, oh you all hate it, Like maybe I
Speaker 1: was wrong now It's that sounds idyllic. Of course, there's
Speaker 1: usually somewhere in between where when your idea is getting
Speaker 1: kicked in an idea lab, it doesn't feel good. You
Speaker 1: probably have some instinct to be echo chamber about it
Speaker 1: and like get angry and like say that, you know.
Speaker 1: But the thing that defines an idea lab is and
Speaker 1: that people don't have those urges. It's that the overriding
Speaker 1: culture polices those urges. So if in an idea lab
Speaker 1: I did say something I did start kind of getting
Speaker 1: really offended, the other people in the group are going
Speaker 1: to kind of make fun of me and be like,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with you? Why are you being so sensitive?
Speaker 1: Like it's just just criticizing your idea, And I'm going
Speaker 1: to get put back in my place. In an echo
Speaker 1: chamber culture, that wouldn't happen a sensitive person is you know,
Speaker 1: the group seeds itself to the sensitive person or to
Speaker 1: the offended person, and there goes there goes a discussion,
Speaker 1: there goes the ability to grow as a thinker in
Speaker 1: this group. It actually makes you a worse thinker to
Speaker 1: be in an echo chamber, while being in an idea
Speaker 1: lab makes everyone a better thinker and the group itself
Speaker 1: can really like accomplish great things. So funny, I just
Speaker 1: tweeted something out this morning that said, I'm so sensitive
Speaker 1: to people telling me I'm too sensitive. Yeah, I can't
Speaker 1: stand and what people say. That's funny. That's some good,
Speaker 1: some good meta sensitivity. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: you're saying, it makes so much sense, and it's but
Speaker 1: it's so tied to what we talked about earlier about
Speaker 1: identity and ego, and if your idea is tied to
Speaker 1: your identity, then you're going to be much more likely
Speaker 1: to take it personally and to not just be okay
Speaker 1: just being told you're too sensitive, or if it's tied
Speaker 1: to your self esteem, if you know, if this idea
Speaker 1: is not true, then I'm not so smart, or then
Speaker 1: I'm not so good, or all these things that I'm
Speaker 1: trying to that I'm clinging on to. You know, these
Speaker 1: notions that I'm clinging onto about myself all fall apart.
Speaker 1: And that only happens if you allow an idea to
Speaker 1: define you in the first place. Well, I very much
Speaker 1: agree with that. I think that it does get legitimately
Speaker 1: tricky when we talk about like marginalized groups, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: there are people who feel their ideas are some ideas
Speaker 1: could be dangerous. They see some ideas as dangerous to
Speaker 1: their existence, to their It's an existential like extent existential ideas,
Speaker 1: we can call it. We can coin something here and
Speaker 1: you can obviously you know, with empathy, see how that
Speaker 1: would be very upsetting to people when they see an
Speaker 1: opposing point of view that, as they perceive it, is
Speaker 1: dehumanizing them. Right, So, how do you how do you
Speaker 1: have really productive to me that I have no core answer,
Speaker 1: by the way, but I would love to get your thoughts.
Speaker 1: How do you open up a space for opposing points
Speaker 1: of view and things to talk about things an abstract
Speaker 1: level without making clear that you're discrimining whatsoever the person
Speaker 1: in front of you. Yeah, I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's a spectrum. Like on one end of the spectrum,
Speaker 1: you know, you're saying racial slurs, you're saying genocidal ideas,
Speaker 1: and you're trying to and that is genuinely like very
Speaker 1: harmful stuff to be doing. And so the way I
Speaker 1: look at it is like ninety nine percent of the
Speaker 1: populace would want to police those two things I just said,
Speaker 1: especially genocidal but also racial slurs today are like almost
Speaker 1: almost no one, you know, a very tiny percentage of
Speaker 1: the US is like, you know things, it's fine to
Speaker 1: just kind of like, you know, be an open bigot.
Speaker 1: And so if nineteen eight percent of people are kind
Speaker 1: of find something to be kind of reprehensible to say,
Speaker 1: then I don't think that's echo chamber policing. I think
Speaker 1: that is actually like the general marketplace of kind of
Speaker 1: humanity that the marketplace of of you know, kind of
Speaker 1: decency policing, you know, and so so you know, if
Speaker 1: you went into the I you know, us an example,
Speaker 1: if you went into like a coffee shop and you
Speaker 1: made like a leude comment to the barista, like not
Speaker 1: just are you probably gonna get kicked out of coffee shop,
Speaker 1: but everyone in the line is gonna be like, dude,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with you? Right, Like you're gonna get policed
Speaker 1: by the general public, right because almost everyone thinks that's
Speaker 1: an awful thing to do. And so there is a
Speaker 1: part of the spectrum where I think you get to
Speaker 1: the higher and higher percentage of the population agrees this
Speaker 1: is bad. I mean, you get to these up in
Speaker 1: the nineties, I think it's actually not echo chamber. It's
Speaker 1: you know, you'd say it is an echo chamber about
Speaker 1: those things. But that's okay. That's like, you know that
Speaker 1: society has decided as a much broader group that like
Speaker 1: this is this is something that that we we don't want. Now.
Speaker 1: The problem I have is when things weighed down on
Speaker 1: the other side of the spectrum were maybe twenty percent
Speaker 1: or ten percent or five percent of you know, broader
Speaker 1: people in society would think this thing is not okay
Speaker 1: to say, or even just like in a college campus,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe fifteen percent deep down think this is
Speaker 1: a not a thing okay thing to say, and eighty
Speaker 1: five percent might disagree, but they think you can say
Speaker 1: it right. And the fifteen percent is imposed their preferred
Speaker 1: echo chamber, which they're allowed to go and form a
Speaker 1: group of friends amongst their own fifteen percent of people.
Speaker 1: They can find all those other people and they can
Speaker 1: form a little echo chamber and say you're not you
Speaker 1: can't be friends with us if you say these things.
Speaker 1: That's totally fine, that's that's not not violating any liberal principles.
Speaker 1: Problem is when they are saying no, no, no, not
Speaker 1: whether you're friends with us or not. We have the
Speaker 1: cultural power at the moment where no one here is
Speaker 1: allowed to say things that in our little group of
Speaker 1: friends we don't like. Right. And so even if you
Speaker 1: know so, there's a lot now you're talking specifically about
Speaker 1: like a marginalized person feeling personally attacked, and and I
Speaker 1: can even elaborate a little more, so we can talk
Speaker 1: specifics because I know that it was such an abstract question,
Speaker 1: and I'm very interested in conflicts between scientific findings and ideology.
Speaker 1: And I know that's something you're very interested in as well,
Speaker 1: So that's something we kind of bond over, you know,
Speaker 1: I know that you're interested in sex differences, for instance,
Speaker 1: and sex differences of personality and in the brain and
Speaker 1: things like that. There are some people some ideologies that
Speaker 1: are claiming these is that there is no such thing
Speaker 1: as biological sex, right, that's not even a doesn't exist,
Speaker 1: and it's all gender. It's one hundred percent gender identity.
Speaker 1: And and then and that there's no sex differences whatsoever.
Speaker 1: And the science doesn't bear that out right. The science
Speaker 1: bears out that they're especially on the people versus things dimension.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's pretty large the sex difference there,
Speaker 1: and interest in people versus things, And and then when
Speaker 1: you do look at this whole brain approach, you find
Speaker 1: there there are there are significant differences. Now none of
Speaker 1: those scientific findings, and no scientific finding in my view,
Speaker 1: justifies discrimination. No matter what you find, it doesn't disc
Speaker 1: justifying individual discrimination, and that that should be obvious. But
Speaker 1: some of these debates, people don't even want to hear
Speaker 1: the science because they feel like it threatens their existence.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of what I'm referring to. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that makes sense. Why did why did Galileo
Speaker 1: get how House arrested? Because people didn't want to hear
Speaker 1: the science because it threatened their worldview? Right, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is this is all news. This is that's true.
Speaker 1: And if you're if you, if you think you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have you you prefer the Galileo side of that instead
Speaker 1: of the Catholic Church side of that. You should prefer
Speaker 1: science here too, especially since I mean with this topic,
Speaker 1: I dug in and the science isn't even saying anything bad,
Speaker 1: Like really, the more I read about women and men brains,
Speaker 1: the first of all, the big thing that you come
Speaker 1: out with if you look at the stats is that
Speaker 1: judging an individual based on these broad averages is makes
Speaker 1: absolutely no sense. It's it's someone who doesn't understand statistics
Speaker 1: would do that. If you understand statistics, like, it tells
Speaker 1: you nothing about any person. I use. I use an
Speaker 1: example like I was in a class at Harvard, you know,
Speaker 1: full of you know, crazy, kind of psychotically ambitious kids,
Speaker 1: and it was Sandel, you know, Michael Sandel's class. Justice
Speaker 1: is that famous class, and he eight hundred people and
Speaker 1: he says, you know, raise your hand. If you were
Speaker 1: burned first in your family, your first child, eighty percent
Speaker 1: may maybe even more raise their hand, right, because so
Speaker 1: you could up sure those all kinds of stats about
Speaker 1: first children tend to be more ambitious, more conscientious, something, right,
Speaker 1: you know, probably less cools, less, so, you know, apt
Speaker 1: whatever whatever it is. Now, imagine a company hears that
Speaker 1: and they say, oh, okay, so we're gonna interview, but
Speaker 1: let's ask on the application what order you're born. We're
Speaker 1: not going to interview any middle children or youngest children.
Speaker 1: We all agree that would be a ridiculous policy because like,
Speaker 1: clearly this is not actually interesting informative at all for
Speaker 1: any So I say the same thing. You can learn
Speaker 1: all you want about broad averages, and they're important for
Speaker 1: other things, but it literally makes no sense to judge
Speaker 1: a single person because there's so much more variation within
Speaker 1: all groups than between them. Now, when you get to
Speaker 1: sex differences, the more I dug in also, the more
Speaker 1: I just kind of thought, Wow, the male brain on
Speaker 1: average and the female brain on average are two like
Speaker 1: like super magical power machines, and they each are strong,
Speaker 1: like you know, you know, they overlap a lot, and
Speaker 1: then they each have some extra strengths that the others doesn't.
Speaker 1: And like, man, it made me like want if I'm
Speaker 1: starting a company, I'm going to be like, I want
Speaker 1: a lot of smart women and a lot of smart
Speaker 1: men here because I want, like all the strengths. I
Speaker 1: want all the tools, you know, and to make sure
Speaker 1: we so like it just made me care more about
Speaker 1: gender diversity. It made me more impressed with both the
Speaker 1: male and the female brain. It didn't make me think
Speaker 1: any anything negative about women. And so this is what's
Speaker 1: being repressed is information that just is kind of fascinating
Speaker 1: and not bad at all. And what happens is like
Speaker 1: what there were. When something is repressed, people assume there
Speaker 1: must be some bad story here. So you know that
Speaker 1: what people are worried about is like these you know,
Speaker 1: old misogynistic myths about women. You know, women are bad
Speaker 1: at math, women or whatever, and they're worried about them.
Speaker 1: But actually, when you learn about real science, you become
Speaker 1: less likely to believe those things, and when you repress them,
Speaker 1: you actually allowed you know, bad myths to become much
Speaker 1: more widespread. I think. So in general, it's hard to
Speaker 1: find that many I mean, maybe there's some instances, but
Speaker 1: it's hard to find many instances when repressing science is
Speaker 1: a net positive, you know, or even a positive for anyone,
Speaker 1: for anyone. I mean, it's also just think about all
Speaker 1: the like all of the medical things that people learn,
Speaker 1: you know, the male and female bodies are just different machines,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, and there's different medical implications like
Speaker 1: you know. It's just I don't know, I just think
Speaker 1: we're pressing, you know, knowledge discovery is just not something
Speaker 1: that has ever look in history. How many times was
Speaker 1: it was it with the people were pressing knowledge discovery
Speaker 1: on the right side of history. That's my thoughts. And
Speaker 1: by the way, I'll say, I learned a lot of
Speaker 1: this from you. I mean I thought you wrote some
Speaker 1: amazing articles on this and and and just measured and
Speaker 1: nuanced and yeah, I thought it was great. Well, thank you.
Speaker 1: That means a lot to me. I managed to write
Speaker 1: an article pointing out the sex differences in a way
Speaker 1: that didn't really piss off anyone. And I think that
Speaker 1: we need to figure out more of that. We need
Speaker 1: to figure out how can we frame these things in ways.
Speaker 1: I think you're a great example of that with what
Speaker 1: you just said, and you're not framing it in a
Speaker 1: zero some way. I really like the way way you
Speaker 1: framed it in a zero positive way on teams, and
Speaker 1: I like that way of thinking, and maybe if we
Speaker 1: can get at the truth more in that kind of
Speaker 1: way as opposed to a because we see a lot
Speaker 1: of provocateurs these days, you know, we see a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are like, this is the truth you write?
Speaker 1: Stupid liberals, do you know what I mean? Totally no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's the same way I would argue that like
Speaker 1: hardcore kind of woke ideologues are actually really bad for
Speaker 1: social justice. They're really bad for progressive activism, which you know,
Speaker 1: we need progressive activism, and this thing that's masquerading as
Speaker 1: it is, I think that for it, I think underminds it.
Speaker 1: And likewise, I think that the people who are trying
Speaker 1: to push back against that and who are trying to
Speaker 1: you know, not you know, make sure that science isn't
Speaker 1: getting repressed, are not being helped by like you know,
Speaker 1: provocative right wingers, you know, jumping in. And I think that,
Speaker 1: like it's it's the job of some people like us
Speaker 1: to push back against that. Just like I would say
Speaker 1: it's the job of like a hardcore feminist to push
Speaker 1: back against I agree, I agree. I really like John
Speaker 1: McWhorter's writings on this. I don't know if you read
Speaker 1: his most recent book, We Love All the Stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's yeah, yeah, he's. He was on this podcast recently
Speaker 1: and we had a delightful chat. So I direct the
Speaker 1: listeners to that, to that chat if they want to
Speaker 1: follow up on some of his really nuanced ideas and
Speaker 1: and and compassionate and nuanced and truthful those I like
Speaker 1: the interceptive and diagram of those three things. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: And it's like if if you're gonna come at something
Speaker 1: with compassion, nuance and truth, and you're not like you
Speaker 1: don't have some secret motivation, some secret like you know,
Speaker 1: you're just trying to find the truth and and you
Speaker 1: and you have a lot of compassion as you're doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And anyone who still wants, you know, to cancel you
Speaker 1: or to you know, to slander you after that, like
Speaker 1: that's a them problem. Like it's like and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's easy for me to say, I don't work it
Speaker 1: as an institution where I can get fired for you know,
Speaker 1: I mean if for some people, like it's not a
Speaker 1: them problem, it's it's but for for you job privileged. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's I'm just not I mean, I know, like
Speaker 1: I could just avoid all this stuff and talk about
Speaker 1: aliens in space and talk about you know, tech and
Speaker 1: and procrastination forever and not have any you know, haters.
Speaker 1: But it's like this stuff is really important. None of
Speaker 1: those other things matter. If, like the political situation just
Speaker 1: going down to tubes, like we're just gonna we can't
Speaker 1: get to any of that awesome future. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think like if I'm not, if I'm not going to
Speaker 1: approach hard things like this because I'm worried about the
Speaker 1: two percent of crazy people who will like you know,
Speaker 1: try to ruin me because I'm like, you know, talking
Speaker 1: about something like it's just I don't I don't think
Speaker 1: we should. Yeah, I wanted to move on to the
Speaker 1: topic of life and death. When you were a last
Speaker 1: Do you remember the last time my podcast? It was
Speaker 1: almost like seven years ago. It was a while back.
Speaker 1: You were You were one of my first ever psychology
Speaker 1: podcast guests, and I must thank you for for believing me,
Speaker 1: believing me, because that show was I didn't have that
Speaker 1: many listeners back then, and you were so kind to
Speaker 1: be on the show. Now we're the number one psychology
Speaker 1: podcast in the world. That's awesome. Congrats, but but thanks
Speaker 1: for being in the early early adopter of the show.
Speaker 1: And and I don't know if you remember in that
Speaker 1: discussion we talked about how you were thinking about getting
Speaker 1: chirogenically what's the word, I preserved, we're cryonics. And we
Speaker 1: had talked about like you're like, I'm waiting for the bracelet.
Speaker 1: I might get the bracelet soon, and I was just wondering,
Speaker 1: did you ever get the bracelet? Are you wearing one? No,
Speaker 1: I'm like nine ninety five percent of the way there.
Speaker 1: I have the life insurance policy, I have I fill
Speaker 1: out all the applications. I have to get something notarized,
Speaker 1: and I'm very close. And I think my procrastination is
Speaker 1: a just because I procrastinated on stuff like this paperwork,
Speaker 1: and you know, notarizing is always going to be like
Speaker 1: a six month delay for me if I have to
Speaker 1: get it, and really know what I don't really know
Speaker 1: what that means to get something notor I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't like it at all. I was very upset. But
Speaker 1: isn't that funny though You're You're like, that's like the
Speaker 1: ultimate procrastination, like in the cosmics sense. Yeah, I'll procrastinate
Speaker 1: on like saving my mortal soul because I don't want
Speaker 1: to get something notorized. But there's there's another factor, which is, like,
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to do it, Like I'm leaning
Speaker 1: if I had to just press a button right now,
Speaker 1: you're going to either do it or not, and you
Speaker 1: have to make a permanent choice, I would say yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing that gives me a little pause is that
Speaker 1: there is a downside. You know, when I wrote about it,
Speaker 1: I didn't really think that hard about this, and I said, like,
Speaker 1: right now you have three, you know, three broad options.
Speaker 1: You can get buried zero percent chance of waking up
Speaker 1: in the future. This is as an atheist. Obviously, religios
Speaker 1: peple would feel diferently about this. You can be cremated
Speaker 1: zero percent chance of waking up in the future, or
Speaker 1: you could throw your brain to the future with cryonics
Speaker 1: and say, hey, here it is and probably pretty primitive
Speaker 1: twenty first century, you know, level vitrified form. Maybe the
Speaker 1: future is as shocking to us as our time would
Speaker 1: be to Thomas Jefferson, in which case, I imagine the
Speaker 1: future can probably do a lot with a pretty like
Speaker 1: crudely vitrified brain. I could probably say, yeah, we can.
Speaker 1: You know, I've just read enough sci fi that I
Speaker 1: feel like we are probably heading towards a world where
Speaker 1: like that's no problem. And like I think Elias or
Speaker 1: your Kowski talks about, you know, if you want to
Speaker 1: really erase a hard drive, you need to basically set
Speaker 1: it on fire, because otherwise, like, you know, could any
Speaker 1: tech in the future or cover the info that was
Speaker 1: in this hard drive? And the answers almost always yes,
Speaker 1: unless you basically set it on fire. So that's the
Speaker 1: only way to securely erase a hard drive, to truly
Speaker 1: make sure that no one can recover what was in it.
Speaker 1: And then he you know, talks about brains. How do
Speaker 1: you truly securely erase a brain so that it cannot
Speaker 1: be recovered, Well, you have to let it like fully decay,
Speaker 1: you know, or cremate it or whatever. And so basically
Speaker 1: the point is that even a primitive, even vitrified brain
Speaker 1: with vitrified is like their word for freezing. It's not
Speaker 1: actually freezing or else the water word expands, so it's
Speaker 1: actually just you know, it's cooled using you know, with
Speaker 1: anti freeze to a super called temperature where it's like
Speaker 1: glass or the molecules just in our fluid state, but
Speaker 1: they can't move. Yeah, and so the future probably would
Speaker 1: be able to do something with that. And so the
Speaker 1: other two a zero percent throwing my brain to the future.
Speaker 1: With cryonics is some percent, maybe it's only one percent,
Speaker 1: maybe it's five percent, maybe it's twenty percent. I don't
Speaker 1: really know. But you don't have to be like, you know,
Speaker 1: the people are like this is unlikely, or like this
Speaker 1: is this is very hard to we're far away from it.
Speaker 1: A I would say, don't underestimate exponential tech, Like a
Speaker 1: lot of things that seemed impossible became very possible very quick. Secondly,
Speaker 1: even if it's just a small chance, why not, like
Speaker 1: why not have a change, you know, even just for
Speaker 1: the hope aspect. Like I'm always jealous of people who
Speaker 1: believe in afterlife. They can you know, be on their
Speaker 1: deathbed and think I might be heading somewhere awesome right now,
Speaker 1: and like even if they're even if that's not true,
Speaker 1: it's nice to think that. So the same thing, you know,
Speaker 1: with cryonics, if you know this is about to happen.
Speaker 1: Your brain's going to be preserved. You're about to you know,
Speaker 1: close your eyes and maybe blink and wake up and
Speaker 1: in two hundred and fifty years in a robot body.
Speaker 1: So for all these reasons, it was like a no brainer,
Speaker 1: why not, you know. And it's not that I want
Speaker 1: to live forever. I don't think I want to live forever.
Speaker 1: It's like I like life, and i'd like to live
Speaker 1: a lot more than one century. I mean, like thanks,
Speaker 1: but like I'll let you know when I'm done, Like
Speaker 1: I'm not. One century is not you know, it's not
Speaker 1: very much. So so so for all these reasons it
Speaker 1: was a no brainer. Now then I started just thinking,
Speaker 1: I think also probably from watching too much Black Mirror,
Speaker 1: like if you are buried or if you are cremated,
Speaker 1: you have a zero percent chance. But there's also a
Speaker 1: zero percent chance if you get buried or cremated that
Speaker 1: nothing awful happens, Like death is death is seems awful
Speaker 1: to us, but it's actually pretty like neutral. You know,
Speaker 1: death isn't good or bad. Once you're in it. There
Speaker 1: is a non zero chance, probably a very tiny chance,
Speaker 1: much less than the good opportunity possibility, but there is
Speaker 1: a nonzero chance that throw your brain to the future.
Speaker 1: You know, there's some horrible war and some you know,
Speaker 1: some some nuclear war, and then there's this you know
Speaker 1: where where we have warlords running where what the US
Speaker 1: used to be, and you know, and but they have
Speaker 1: their high tech and some you know, some sick fuck
Speaker 1: gets a hold of a chronic slab and it's like, ooh,
Speaker 1: let's like test like torture on like these brains, but
Speaker 1: they know how to actually upload it and like keep
Speaker 1: the keep it conscious and like let's put it through
Speaker 1: like a billion years of torture just to see like
Speaker 1: what it does and how long it takes for the
Speaker 1: thing to go crazy, god knows. But this is like
Speaker 1: a late night I thought I started having and I
Speaker 1: was like, ah, like like I want to just just
Speaker 1: bury me, cremate me, like I don't want to take
Speaker 1: any chance of that, and then another and then in
Speaker 1: another mood, I'm like what, no, come on, Like the
Speaker 1: future is almost anything with that much tech is almost
Speaker 1: definitely going to be altruistic. This is kind of like
Speaker 1: a I think it's a Carl Sagan point, but like
Speaker 1: it's it's like you know that things more advanced are
Speaker 1: more likely to be altruistic. And then I also have
Speaker 1: talked to people in the industry and they say that
Speaker 1: they think about this and they have all these protocols
Speaker 1: where if there's a certain level of like instability and
Speaker 1: government like, they can just shut down that lab, which
Speaker 1: is sad, but it's better than you know, risking, you know,
Speaker 1: so that you have all these protocols to kind of
Speaker 1: protect you in that situation. So it's not perfect, and
Speaker 1: it's it's still non zero. You always have to acknowledge
Speaker 1: like you are taking a risk that you're not taking
Speaker 1: if you or you just you know, something less bad.
Speaker 1: You just wake up and you're like a slave in
Speaker 1: a society, you know, and they want to you know,
Speaker 1: they want human brains. Is so who knows. But I'm
Speaker 1: just like you. I have a rich sci fi imagination
Speaker 1: and I think, if I run the stimulation, this is
Speaker 1: what I see. You tell me what you think I see.
Speaker 1: The most probable thing is that those bodies that that
Speaker 1: hold the whole, that you and the that it's going
Speaker 1: to get lost. And it's good. It's almost like you know,
Speaker 1: how we discover dinosaur like figments now you know, we're like,
Speaker 1: oh god, we found this, like we're gonna it's it's
Speaker 1: going to be like like you may be revived, but
Speaker 1: we're I think it wouldn't be till like a billion
Speaker 1: years for now like that or a millionaires. Well the
Speaker 1: thing is that, but but but it requires electricity. If
Speaker 1: the power goes out, the brain will decay. Then it's
Speaker 1: as if you're just buried because it it needs to
Speaker 1: keep the liquid at a negative one hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: six degrees. So it requires I mean, that's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of things that requires for this to come out, right,
Speaker 1: it requires a generation after generation of workers. Right, well,
Speaker 1: but but here, okay, but you think about it this
Speaker 1: way exponential tech. You know, it could be two generations
Speaker 1: and suddenly it's very easy to revive chronics people, and
Speaker 1: it's very easy to upload your consciousness to robot bodies
Speaker 1: or to just regrow human body or or you know,
Speaker 1: give you an artificial body whatever whatever reason. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: one generation, maybe it's six generations from now, but like
Speaker 1: we're talking maybe just a century or two. And all
Speaker 1: that needs to happen is someonod needs to keep the
Speaker 1: power on. Once you're in that VAT is not much maintenance.
Speaker 1: So like, if this is a thriving future that we're
Speaker 1: going towards that, Like if the same thing that happened
Speaker 1: in the last two hundred years continues, which is an if,
Speaker 1: but if the future keeps getting more fancy and more
Speaker 1: advanced and probably more humane, then you're going towards the
Speaker 1: future that probably will be able to revive you and
Speaker 1: we will have no problem like keeping the power on
Speaker 1: and keeping like it'll probably become like once there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people in chronics and it's a big thing,
Speaker 1: it'll become this extreme like moral issue where it's like
Speaker 1: those are like souls over there, and like it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, unbelievable, like you know, genocide if you unplug
Speaker 1: the power there or something. So it's so people would
Speaker 1: take it really seriously. These are patients and long term
Speaker 1: care is how I think it'll be seen eventually, and
Speaker 1: like imagine you know, you know you would It's it's
Speaker 1: it's a doctor's obligation to do the best they can
Speaker 1: for a patient in the long term care. So I
Speaker 1: don't think it's like a crazy unlikelyhood that like if
Speaker 1: you just yeah, I don't know, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: crazy either. For the record, and I loved I loved
Speaker 1: seven years ago riffing, and we've talked about all sorts
Speaker 1: of possibilities. Are you signed up? So I'm seriously contemplating it.
Speaker 1: I've had the conversation with them. I haven't signed up yet.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of things you have to do,
Speaker 1: Like I like life insurance and all this stuff. It
Speaker 1: sounds worse than it is, Like it's just like I
Speaker 1: just got like some term insurance policy for twenty years.
Speaker 1: We're basically like, I probably should just get a normal one.
Speaker 1: I don't know because I think that when that ends,
Speaker 1: I'll be like it'll be much more expensive. But either way,
Speaker 1: I was like, look for the next twenty years, if
Speaker 1: I die unexpectedly, like, then this thing is paid for
Speaker 1: forever by this insurance policy. That's just how that's how,
Speaker 1: that's how everyone does it. So anyway, it's just it's
Speaker 1: an insurance policy. Basically, you can just it's like a
Speaker 1: few phone calls you have to make. I'm saying this
Speaker 1: as someone who's still procrastinating from finishing the job. It's like,
Speaker 1: but it's like two good days, one good day of
Speaker 1: like phone calls and paperwork and you could you could
Speaker 1: be all set. Yeah. One thing I will say, because
Speaker 1: I had a little bit of a conversation with Antonio
Speaker 1: Demasio about this on the podcast, is that it would
Speaker 1: have to be the whole body that's preserved, not just
Speaker 1: the brain. Because according to his theory of consciousness, consciousness,
Speaker 1: our consciousness very much draws on the body. So for
Speaker 1: those people that think you can just you can just
Speaker 1: recover the brain and your recover consciousness, according to his theory,
Speaker 1: that's not going to be possible. How about when people
Speaker 1: lose their limbs. There's people know limbs who have perfectly consciousness.
Speaker 1: They didn't lose anything there. Why would the torso be
Speaker 1: so different. No, it's the it's the stuff that relates
Speaker 1: to feelings, like this brain was specifically designed to work
Speaker 1: with this body and like in relation to this body.
Speaker 1: So obviously, but I kind of feel like, you have
Speaker 1: the brain, you have what's needed for a much fancier
Speaker 1: future tech to be able to be able to now
Speaker 1: mimic whatever the body's connection to that brain was doing.
Speaker 1: It'll have the info it needs to bring you back.
Speaker 1: That's that's my guess. But I would bring the consciousness.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Well, yeah, Antony seems to to really
Speaker 1: think that, but again we don't know one hundred percent. Well,
Speaker 1: so then let's do the whole body. Why not they
Speaker 1: give that option? Yeah? Good, So that's why I said
Speaker 1: I'm adding into some caveats. I'm doing is give the
Speaker 1: caveats there because I'm It's also like, if you don't
Speaker 1: have to get your head cut off, let's like not,
Speaker 1: let's not get beheaded if we can. Yes, But also
Speaker 1: there's just so much we don't freaking know about about
Speaker 1: are we in a simulation? So, like David, there's so
Speaker 1: much stuff we could bring here, Like David Chalmers doesn't
Speaker 1: splsitic greater than probably belt fittyer probably that we are
Speaker 1: in a simulation. Like what do you do if you
Speaker 1: start fucking with with the gods? You know, start playing
Speaker 1: god in a way it deserves you. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: where are you right now? Are you sitting outside in
Speaker 1: a cave? You know, so you're fucking with the gods
Speaker 1: inside is an invention that we made, right Like you
Speaker 1: know where we're double, we're living double our live span,
Speaker 1: we're canceling all these diseases. We fly, We're not supposed
Speaker 1: to fly right, you know, so so this is just
Speaker 1: the latest step. It's like, I feel like the simulators
Speaker 1: didn't like us playing god. They would have gotten rid
Speaker 1: of us a long time ago. They're probably amused by it.
Speaker 1: They're saying, Oh, let's see how far they can go.
Speaker 1: Like let's like, if I'm watching the simulation, I'm super
Speaker 1: excited about a species like this, I'm like, Oh, let's
Speaker 1: see if they kill themselves off or like if they yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's get the popcorn for humanity right now,
Speaker 1: Like they're either going to definitely get the technology is exploding,
Speaker 1: all their weapons are getting fancier, but they're also they're
Speaker 1: getting like wiser, but also they're getting stupider because of
Speaker 1: social media, and like the population's exploding, Like what's going
Speaker 1: to happen? It sounds like a great reality show. Yes,
Speaker 1: And then the third thing I wanted to bring up
Speaker 1: because these are just interesting potential complications in this or
Speaker 1: just additional nuance. I had a great chat with Jim
Speaker 1: Tucker on my podcast. He's the world's leading scientist of
Speaker 1: reincarnation and the science suggests when he when he listens
Speaker 1: to you know, these kids two to five years old
Speaker 1: who have passed life memories and things. He really does
Speaker 1: believe that our consciousness lives on beyond the body in
Speaker 1: some really and he's trying to like figure out some
Speaker 1: mechanisms for this. But he's a legit scientist, and all
Speaker 1: the evidence taken together suggests there's there's something going on
Speaker 1: here where we can get some form of reincarnation can exist.
Speaker 1: So you're you're putting at zero percent probability that when
Speaker 1: you die, even not not going to the religious level,
Speaker 1: but there might be some actually legit scientific, scientific mechanism
Speaker 1: that allow that. So don't put that at zero percent yet,
Speaker 1: I'd have to learn more. I mean, it's it seems
Speaker 1: like the big, big, big picture is that I've I've like,
Speaker 1: between a twenty year old me and today me, I
Speaker 1: have stopped being someone who's like scoffed at something like that.
Speaker 1: And it is like that's, you know, because there's just
Speaker 1: clearly a lot we don't know and like not very
Speaker 1: wise to scoff at like very mysterious things like that,
Speaker 1: especially since we could be in a simulation in which
Speaker 1: case any rule could be true, right, like like anything
Speaker 1: could be true, right, So so I don't know and
Speaker 1: maybe there's you know, you look at how like other animals,
Speaker 1: like they have these senses for stuff that like you're like,
Speaker 1: it just seems almost magical, but it's just different, you know.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. I would I just have to
Speaker 1: learn more because right now, like a brain buried that
Speaker 1: slowly decays and all the atoms are separated, like, it's
Speaker 1: hard for me to see how whatever arrangement of synapses
Speaker 1: was forming that person and their consciousness and their memories.
Speaker 1: It's hard to see how that is some in any
Speaker 1: way preserved in any way transfer. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I just don't even know what's what's his like what
Speaker 1: what does he say? Happens as he does? He know? Well,
Speaker 1: so there's all these different camps in the science of consciousness.
Speaker 1: It's a very fractionated feel. So you have the panpsychic people,
Speaker 1: what'd see a mechanism for it, because in their view,
Speaker 1: consciousness is not it's something that's that's out there and
Speaker 1: you know, and it's something we kind of tap into
Speaker 1: in some way. Whereas anti demandsia absolutely not antio demands,
Speaker 1: Like when you're dead, you know your when your brain
Speaker 1: is dead, your consciousness, there's no way there's no mechanism
Speaker 1: for that. But there are people that disagree with Antonio Demandsias.
Speaker 1: So there's like these vibrant debates, you know, in the field.
Speaker 1: So I definitely would would encourage you to look into
Speaker 1: p I mean, it makes me happy just hearing this
Speaker 1: because like it's not suffering fun being an atheist, Like
Speaker 1: I much prefer to believe one of these things, Like
Speaker 1: it's even even just like a little doubt that like,
Speaker 1: oh maybe there's like consciousness so this part of this
Speaker 1: other thing and the spiritual realm, and you're like, that's
Speaker 1: sounds great, Like I would love to like even think
Speaker 1: one percent that might be true, Like it makes it
Speaker 1: would make me happy plus dark. Yeah, I think that'd
Speaker 1: be a great blog post. I'll send you the podcast
Speaker 1: chat I have with with Jim Tucker, doctor Jim Tucker
Speaker 1: when that comes out, because I think you'll be fascinated
Speaker 1: by it and it might even be an interesting blog
Speaker 1: post on the science of reincarnation. Yeah yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I'm open, who knows. Look, it's we're definitely above this
Speaker 1: point in which I said we would stop, and I
Speaker 1: knew this is always gonna happen because every time I
Speaker 1: talk to you, we mean it can go. We could
Speaker 1: spend the whole day, right I'm going to be one
Speaker 1: hundred percent respectful. We didn't have any time for the
Speaker 1: Twitter Q and A. Should we just call it a day?
Speaker 1: Right now? I can do twit and did not go
Speaker 1: on to the fifteenth minutes. Okay, So Paula Get says
Speaker 1: how does he process information and structure in the way
Speaker 1: he does blog question? I mean I use some metaphors
Speaker 1: or how I learn, And I think probably a lot
Speaker 1: of people are like this, which is just like this
Speaker 1: this this tree where if if I don't have a
Speaker 1: foundation of knowledge, which is the tree trunk, I don't learn,
Speaker 1: I can't learn Like I can read as many articles
Speaker 1: right now about you know, some geopolitical thing that I
Speaker 1: don't know much about, or some fancy finance thing that
Speaker 1: I haven't learned about, or whatever it is, you know,
Speaker 1: some element of crypto that I don't fully get, and
Speaker 1: I can read articles about it and try to like memorize,
Speaker 1: you know, understand the jargon and start to feel like
Speaker 1: I can almost say smart sentences about it. I don't
Speaker 1: actually understand. And because I'm taking leaves and branches and
Speaker 1: fruits and they have nothing to hang on to. They
Speaker 1: all fall down to nothing, right, And so for me
Speaker 1: it's all it's very binary. It's like once there's something
Speaker 1: that that foundation is there, now I A all those
Speaker 1: articles become interesting. They're actually pretty boring when you don't
Speaker 1: understand them. You can sometimes get satisfaction from reading them
Speaker 1: because you feel like I'm learning something, or you like
Speaker 1: proud of yourself for reading something you know that's actually interesting.
Speaker 1: It's hard for it to be interesting you don't fully
Speaker 1: get it. Once the tree trunk is there, a topic
Speaker 1: becomes endlessly interesting to me. And because now I read something,
Speaker 1: and it's like so satisfying. You're sticking something new onto
Speaker 1: this thing. And also it makes sense to you, and
Speaker 1: and and so all these thoughts are coming up and
Speaker 1: all these original thoughts can come out now because when
Speaker 1: you get it and you hear something and it has
Speaker 1: a clear structure in your head, you can now like
Speaker 1: extrapolate your own thoughts from that that are original. So
Speaker 1: so for me, it's it's all about the tree trunk.
Speaker 1: And and but it's not like I'm like a you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not like a great learner where I'm like always
Speaker 1: out there seeking new tree trunks, Like I'd like to
Speaker 1: think of myself that way, and sometimes I am. That's
Speaker 1: part of why I like writing blog posts, because it
Speaker 1: forces me to do that once I'm there. I like it.
Speaker 1: But like I often will procrastinate on like just doing
Speaker 1: the full deep dive on a topic because I can
Speaker 1: just go turn into other topics I already know about
Speaker 1: right now and do that one later. So I think
Speaker 1: that that's one way that I think about I always like,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I also like I think a lot
Speaker 1: in analogies and metaphors, which I put a lot in
Speaker 1: my writing because I think the reason that that's helpful
Speaker 1: is because what you're doing is you're taking something in
Speaker 1: relationship or a concept that already exists clearly in your head,
Speaker 1: and when you realize that this has that same thing
Speaker 1: going on all of this, you can kind of steal
Speaker 1: from all this clarity and apply it to this and
Speaker 1: you can like cut that corner and like you have to,
Speaker 1: you know, So there's you know, there's there's so many
Speaker 1: I don't know. Like when I first wrote about reasoning
Speaker 1: from first principles and reasoning by analogy, I started off
Speaker 1: with like that post with two kinds of geology, you know.
Speaker 1: There there was the sixteen hundreds that were the flood
Speaker 1: geologists that looked at the Grand Canyon and said, well,
Speaker 1: we know for sure that this thing that the Earth
Speaker 1: is no more than six thousand years old, So we
Speaker 1: have to work around that fact, and we have to
Speaker 1: basically allow our figure out a way for our observations
Speaker 1: about the Green King to prove to continue to confirm
Speaker 1: that fact. And then there were the science geologists who said, well,
Speaker 1: we don't know. You know, maybe some of them thought
Speaker 1: maybe it's six thousand years weld. We don't know unless
Speaker 1: we observe it. So they had suddenly they didn't have
Speaker 1: that that straight jacket on, and they could just explore
Speaker 1: and they learn so much and they just propelled learning. Right,
Speaker 1: So I already had that in my head, like this
Speaker 1: concept you know of, like you know, being of. And
Speaker 1: then so then I learned about reasoning from first principles
Speaker 1: reasoning by analogy. I realized that this other thing I
Speaker 1: had in my head was actually part of a bigger category,
Speaker 1: which is this thing these two kinds of reasoning. And
Speaker 1: so I then to put it in the post because
Speaker 1: I figured if if that was something that clicked made
Speaker 1: it helped it click for me, it would probably help
Speaker 1: it click for other people too. So when I put
Speaker 1: something in a post an analogy or metaphors, because I
Speaker 1: think probably my readers are going to also get the
Speaker 1: same benefit from this, this relationship connection. How do you
Speaker 1: know that the ideas that you're gathering for your articles
Speaker 1: are high quality and are true if you're not an
Speaker 1: expert in the field, What is were some of the
Speaker 1: methods you used to try to ascertain that high quality
Speaker 1: aspect of the ideas? Well? First, I'm never sure. I
Speaker 1: guarantee I have some stuff and some articles that I
Speaker 1: would look back on now and be like that's trash.
Speaker 1: Like it's just like, you know, you're not perfect as
Speaker 1: a blogger. I'm getting better and more rigorous as I go. Sure,
Speaker 1: early on, especially early on, like you know, I just
Speaker 1: I didn't even know how to like source things correctly.
Speaker 1: I'm just I've gotten a lot more professional about it.
Speaker 1: But but I think basically the real key to that
Speaker 1: is to just like vigorously not pretend to be something
Speaker 1: you're not. So like that, Yeah, like I always try
Speaker 1: to think of knowledge as you know, one through ten
Speaker 1: ten is more leading expert, and my goal is to
Speaker 1: like get myself from like a two or three layman
Speaker 1: level to like a six, five or six, and then
Speaker 1: bring readers up to a five or six while fully
Speaker 1: making it clear that I am a five or six
Speaker 1: trying to bring you to a five or six, Like,
Speaker 1: if that's the game we're playing, well, then I can, genuinely,
Speaker 1: you know, with a straight face, on get myself up
Speaker 1: to a five or six on cryonics or AI or
Speaker 1: on politics or whatever. And then I can, I can, again,
Speaker 1: you know, without feeling like a fraud or an imposter,
Speaker 1: genuinely say no, I really am going to help people
Speaker 1: get from a three to or a five or six.
Speaker 1: There's nothing fake about this because I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: do more than I can do. If I wanted to
Speaker 1: get people to an eight or nine, I would have
Speaker 1: to put in a lot of years, put in a
Speaker 1: lot of study and and fully understand the entire you know, uh,
Speaker 1: spectrum of the topic, the entire context and and and
Speaker 1: all the different theories and and and have them all
Speaker 1: of a place in my head. And like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to do that, and so so so I think
Speaker 1: that when people get into trouble is if they're just
Speaker 1: trying to write like the authoritative thing, but they don't
Speaker 1: they haven't done the work for that. So and the
Speaker 1: key insight there is, like I think some people try
Speaker 1: to do that because they think that's what's needed. But
Speaker 1: like getting people up, you know, if you put effort
Speaker 1: in and then you can apply that effort like that's
Speaker 1: someone's gonna want that that exact effort, not more than that.
Speaker 1: So just just admit the effort you're putting in and
Speaker 1: find the people who want that effort, and there you go,
Speaker 1: like that's that's kind of the general philosophy. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know there's a key insight there because there's something different
Speaker 1: between the way you write and the way quite frantly
Speaker 1: I try to write where you have a certain sense
Speaker 1: of epistemic humility while still having the spirit of wanting
Speaker 1: to educate people and thinking that you have the confidence
Speaker 1: that you can at least educate them in some way.
Speaker 1: That's different than some people who are on Twitter, who
Speaker 1: they act as other profits like they're like this is
Speaker 1: the truth, you know, and then they get like fifty
Speaker 1: thousand likes and now the followers are like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you're so brilliant. You're so brilliant, you don't kind of
Speaker 1: get those kind of people following us, right, I mean
Speaker 1: we do get people saying we're brilliant sometimes, but you
Speaker 1: see what I'm saying, Yeah, but very specifically, like what
Speaker 1: you're saying is so true, And I do feel like
Speaker 1: it's a low wrong, high wrong thing. Like I feel
Speaker 1: like there's people who their whole game is to appeal
Speaker 1: to low wrong thinking. So in a low wrong thinking world,
Speaker 1: the more conviction you speak with, the smarter you sound,
Speaker 1: and you never show any doubt and you never admit
Speaker 1: you were wrong because then in the low wrung psychology
Speaker 1: that makes you seem stupid and wishy washy and weak.
Speaker 1: So you're seeing as you're seeing someone who is appealing
Speaker 1: to people who are in that where they think conviction
Speaker 1: means you must be smart, you know, go to like
Speaker 1: a you know, I've watched a bunch of flat earther
Speaker 1: podcast or videos. You know, people are dead serious about it,
Speaker 1: and I mean they are so certain and so and so.
Speaker 1: So the game we're playing is super different where it's
Speaker 1: the exact op and the high wrong world. And I know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure we're sometimes not high wrongers because no one's perfect,
Speaker 1: but I think we're both pretty good at trying to
Speaker 1: be up there, at least in our professional work. And
Speaker 1: in the higher world it's the opposite. If you speak
Speaker 1: with conviction, you're giving a promise. I really know this
Speaker 1: for sure, And if you get caught wrong, you're going
Speaker 1: to be met with skepticism. And if it turns out
Speaker 1: like you're wrong, you just lost all your trust. And
Speaker 1: so what's respected in the high wrong world is humility
Speaker 1: is over is like using conviction sparsely and and and
Speaker 1: admitting you don't know, I mean, look like you think
Speaker 1: of like Scott Alexander, This dude knows a ton about
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, right, super clear thinker, super rigorous
Speaker 1: reads a time, super curious like and yet he's he
Speaker 1: constantly admits his own degree of certainty and probably underestimates
Speaker 1: it and loves calling his old self out for being
Speaker 1: wrong right like it's there's there's an and and so
Speaker 1: he's like to me like a very very like excellent
Speaker 1: hi wrong thinker. Right, and so he's Now what happens
Speaker 1: is now he acquires he attracts high wrong thinker readers
Speaker 1: who are the you know who, because because who is
Speaker 1: that going to attract right, it's the kind of person
Speaker 1: that thinks conviction equals smart, conviction equals knowledge. They're not
Speaker 1: gonna like him, They're gonna think he's this this like
Speaker 1: you know, long winded, you know, wishy washy thinker. They're
Speaker 1: gonna but he's gonna attract people who like nuance and
Speaker 1: who appreciate humility, and you know, so anyway, I hope
Speaker 1: that we both are attracting that same crowd. I think
Speaker 1: I do. I think that like you do. I think
Speaker 1: if I the things I get called out on, you know,
Speaker 1: for are are are you know, if I'm acting low
Speaker 1: wrong in some way, I'm gonna get called out on it,
Speaker 1: I think more than if I'm I'm not gonna you know,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I absolutely know. And I really quite
Speaker 1: like my audio. I'm very fond of my audience. Yeah, Meana,
Speaker 1: they're great. And I'm the kind of person that if
Speaker 1: I got to a point in my life where I
Speaker 1: didn't like my audience, I would I would have some
Speaker 1: serious questions about myself. Whereas you don't see that in
Speaker 1: other people there because what are you doing that? Then
Speaker 1: you're just like a grift. Then you're just a grift
Speaker 1: of manipulating people you don't like for money or fame
Speaker 1: or something, right like, but you don't. But there are
Speaker 1: people that as long as their audience is feeding their ego,
Speaker 1: they could be the worst people in the world, and
Speaker 1: they'd be like, thank you, audience or or their wallet
Speaker 1: or whatever. Right. I think a lot of people have
Speaker 1: disdain for their audience and they think, you know, of
Speaker 1: course these idiots are like, it's just I have no
Speaker 1: interest in it just sounds really dark and yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I if anything. Like what drives me is like I
Speaker 1: feel like I have to do like a really good
Speaker 1: job and like be really nuanced and like teach my
Speaker 1: audience something new because they've already thought about a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff and they already know a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: and like, you know, I'm always like trying to like
Speaker 1: rise up to that level. As how I think of it,
Speaker 1: beautiful Heidi Webers is, how do you choose what you
Speaker 1: what filters do you use? Not are not a great reader.
Speaker 1: I wish I were such a better reader, But like
Speaker 1: basically I'm like a childish reader. And what I mean
Speaker 1: by that is like I'm a perfectionist. So I'll start
Speaker 1: like a sci fi series, and then I will like
Speaker 1: suddenly become addicted and like be an avid reader and
Speaker 1: read the entire thing. And then I just like I
Speaker 1: won't read anything for like six months, and then I
Speaker 1: start a lot of books, read a third of it,
Speaker 1: and then it's not that I don't like it, but
Speaker 1: I just like it becomes less. I don't read it
Speaker 1: for like a month, and now it becomes like ikeygas,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't I don't have to go back
Speaker 1: to the beginning, and I'm gonna forget it. So I
Speaker 1: just put it aside. And I have a lot of
Speaker 1: books where I've read a third, So I don't think
Speaker 1: I uh, I think I have a lot of growth
Speaker 1: to do as a reader that that could help me
Speaker 1: kind of. But I will say, right, I had been
Speaker 1: on a sci fi kick. I basically I used to
Speaker 1: just read only nonfiction because I was like, oh, like,
Speaker 1: I know, once you're getting to that zone, it feels
Speaker 1: like wasting time to read fiction, Like what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Like you know, you can learn so much from nonfiction,
Speaker 1: and I love I love good nonfiction. Obviously, I mean
Speaker 1: I write nonfiction, but but I've really been on a
Speaker 1: fiction kick over basically I started I read The Three
Speaker 1: Body Problem and that whole see that whole trilogy, and
Speaker 1: I was like, just I felt I fell re in
Speaker 1: love with something I loved when I was like eleven,
Speaker 1: which is like reading you know, The Giver and reading
Speaker 1: like these sci fi kind of futuristic, dystopian or utopian novels,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh my god, I forgot how much.
Speaker 1: It's that feeling of like you get in a giddy
Speaker 1: mood when you realize like, oh, I'm about to be
Speaker 1: home and I can read, like or like I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go I'm gonna go up to bed now. And then
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh I can get in bed and read,
Speaker 1: and it's that feeling of like this like it's almost
Speaker 1: like having like a new relationship. It's like this excitement
Speaker 1: setting thing on in your life. So but I so
Speaker 1: so so then I started reading the Culture series. I'm
Speaker 1: three books in now love it. I'm going to try
Speaker 1: to keep reading those. So I don't know, I just
Speaker 1: I mean I feel that that reading. I just read
Speaker 1: a lot of nonfiction for work, you know, and then
Speaker 1: it's really fun to just dive into a fiction universe.
Speaker 1: Plus I feel like it's good fertilizer for any writer,
Speaker 1: fiction or nonfiction, just to read really good. I think
Speaker 1: it's just it just it just I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: like another really smart, interesting voice is just in your
Speaker 1: head being artful, like that's good for you. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I mean. Neuroscientific speaking, it cultivates the default mode brain network,
Speaker 1: which associated with imagination, which that can atrophy. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you're developed, You're literally developing your imagination neurons strengthening them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels like that, like your social imagination, especially if
Speaker 1: I want to write about the future, even if from
Speaker 1: a nonfiction perspective, no one knows what's going to happen
Speaker 1: in the future, and sometimes the sci fi authors are
Speaker 1: the best predictors. That's actually historically often been true. They're
Speaker 1: usually science nuts and they really understand the actual science
Speaker 1: and then they're but unlike other scientists, they're in the
Speaker 1: business of imagination and a prediction. So I do feel
Speaker 1: like it really does help me kind of make I
Speaker 1: think better educated guesses about what's coming. Totally now. The
Speaker 1: Best of Live Audio asked, taking a queue from Mark manson,
Speaker 1: what is an idea that fundamentally altered nearly everything else?
Speaker 1: You believe to be true. Sometimes it's like an idea
Speaker 1: that you kind of know intuitively, but then someone like
Speaker 1: gives it a label and you realize that it's not
Speaker 1: just you kind of subconsciously thinking about this, but it's
Speaker 1: a real thing that other people think about and there's
Speaker 1: a label for it. And then like it suddenly it
Speaker 1: crystallizes and it becomes like a mantra for you. So
Speaker 1: I think reasoning from first principles was like one of
Speaker 1: those for me, Like it's not novel idea when I
Speaker 1: learned about it, but it was like suddenly instead of
Speaker 1: just like having an intuitive sense that that was a
Speaker 1: good way to reason, I had like a very conscious
Speaker 1: sense that there's how much of my reasoning from first
Speaker 1: principles right now versus reasoning by analogy? And it's a spectrum,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not binary. Where am I on that spectrum?
Speaker 1: And also where should I be on that spectrum? Like
Speaker 1: sometimes it makes a lot more sense, you know, it's
Speaker 1: Reasoning by from first principles takes a huge amount of
Speaker 1: energy if you don't need to be doing it. If
Speaker 1: you can copy. In this case, it's like think about
Speaker 1: it is like if you're a CEO of a company.
Speaker 1: You want to be doing only the work that you
Speaker 1: absolutely the only you can do. So reasoning by analogy,
Speaker 1: in a way is delegating the reasoning to someone else,
Speaker 1: to either your past self or to this conventional wisdom,
Speaker 1: or to your parents, or to your friends, or to whatever,
Speaker 1: and saying, you know, they think this is good or right,
Speaker 1: and so it must be good or right. They this
Speaker 1: is how it seems cool to be, or what the
Speaker 1: best place to travel is. They say that's I'm rather
Speaker 1: than having to like step back and be like, but
Speaker 1: what really is travel and what is the best place?
Speaker 1: Just to say this, these people say this place is good,
Speaker 1: So I'm just going to go there on my vacation.
Speaker 1: And I spent ten seconds thinking about it instead of
Speaker 1: two days digging into the meaning of travel. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's it. It became a whole framework in
Speaker 1: my head that I think is super useful and and
Speaker 1: also it's a superpower when you realize that reason, even
Speaker 1: first principles, does not require a genius, It doesn't require
Speaker 1: a crazy amount of talent, It requires a certain it
Speaker 1: requires a certain kind of epiphany about the unimpressiveness of
Speaker 1: conventional wisdom and the wrongness and the oldness of conventional wisdom,
Speaker 1: and to realize that you're a smart person kind of
Speaker 1: individually reasoning based on what they see is almost is
Speaker 1: more often than not going to actually be smarter than
Speaker 1: conventional wisdom. And it's that that's this epiphany. You know,
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs has talked about this epiphany that changed his life.
Speaker 1: You never saw. Yeah, it's like, it's not an epiphany
Speaker 1: about how smart you are, it's an epiphany that, like
Speaker 1: these things that we assume are so much smarter than
Speaker 1: us are actually kind of dumb. So therefore anyone can
Speaker 1: just kind of go and change the world if you
Speaker 1: want to think that way. So it's it's a long topic,
Speaker 1: but like this one is that was a big one
Speaker 1: I think for me creatively and just how I live
Speaker 1: my life. Yeah, yeah, that is a very mind changing idea.
Speaker 1: Because Ebahanda said, I'm a longtime supporter of weight about
Speaker 1: why and loved him, But I was disappointed that Lex
Speaker 1: Friedman didn't push back harder on bad outcomes. What could
Speaker 1: go wrong with NBIS? Is it a good idea to
Speaker 1: have mars be settled by corporations? Money incentives always find
Speaker 1: a way to ruin things. I thought that was an
Speaker 1: interesting yeah sort of question. Yeah, I know, there's certainly
Speaker 1: lots of poss bad outcomes with any any future tech.
Speaker 1: I mean, the good outcomes are mind blowingly awesome, and
Speaker 1: the bad outcomes are like existentially awful. I mean that
Speaker 1: that's how it works. Like, That's why it's kind of
Speaker 1: This is why I'm writing about politics right now, is
Speaker 1: because I'm like, we need to have our wits about
Speaker 1: us as a society. We can't be like devolving right now.
Speaker 1: Like the stakes are getting higher and higher every decade
Speaker 1: that goes by, as our tech gets better and better.
Speaker 1: The stakes are getting both the good what we could lose,
Speaker 1: and also like how bad things could get. Like people,
Speaker 1: we get cocky when we've only lived and our parents
Speaker 1: have only lived in a nice world without you know,
Speaker 1: too much hardship, and a lot of societies before us
Speaker 1: have been just as cocky and and you know, and
Speaker 1: and and no one ever predict you know, it's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine a dystopian future really being true other than
Speaker 1: you know anything, I'm out of sci fi when you're
Speaker 1: in a very you know, long time piece and general
Speaker 1: well being. So I think I think there's definitely a
Speaker 1: lot of bad outcomes. The you know MBIs, rain machine
Speaker 1: or ray machine interfaces are yeah, I mean yeah, neuralink
Speaker 1: like if you're putting the device in your head so
Speaker 1: a we can maybe think together, which is incredible. You know,
Speaker 1: I've talked a lot about all the great things that
Speaker 1: could come from this, written about it. Meanwhile, your brain
Speaker 1: can be hacked potentially, you know, there's gonna have to
Speaker 1: be crazy cybersecurity industry. You know, that is even bigger
Speaker 1: than it is now, because you could hack into someone's memories.
Speaker 1: Like that's real and even maybe scarier, probably scarier. You
Speaker 1: can actually, right not just read out of their brain,
Speaker 1: but you could write into it, meaning you could actually
Speaker 1: make them feel feelings, or make them feel opinions, or
Speaker 1: make them, you know, act a certain way. You know,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's a pretty scary sci fi book right there.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, look, if it's you think about
Speaker 1: how much you know the world's gotten both better and
Speaker 1: also scarier because of smartphones and the internet. Like, wow,
Speaker 1: there's so much like so many things were nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: you just weren't in nearly as much. There's certain things
Speaker 1: that are just much privacy and cyber attacks, and like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's all the kinds of you know, and
Speaker 1: and and like addiction to this thing, and you know
Speaker 1: how it's kind of creating political division in a way
Speaker 1: that that that that hasn't been around in one hundred years.
Speaker 1: Like so it's also made us a lot more vulnerable.
Speaker 1: It's mad, it's it's it's has some pretty scary consequences,
Speaker 1: and brainish interfaces is next level. It's it's even more
Speaker 1: awesome than smartphones. But it also so yeah, I definitely
Speaker 1: think I think about bad outcomes. It's it's my nature
Speaker 1: more to get excited about good outcomes. That's just how
Speaker 1: I am. Like, I'm, I'm and it's kind of like
Speaker 1: this thing is coming anyway, And I think there's so
Speaker 1: much focus on dystopian you know, what can happen with
Speaker 1: AI goes wrong? What could happen? And that I think
Speaker 1: that and that's good. I mean, I'm happy as a
Speaker 1: motivator to create, you know, for AI safety and stuff,
Speaker 1: for example, but I think it's just as good as
Speaker 1: motivator to think about what could we have if we
Speaker 1: get this right, and what do we have to lose
Speaker 1: if we don't like, so, I think painting utopia is
Speaker 1: also an awesome motivator that as opposed to just you know,
Speaker 1: fear so I like to focus on the more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I thought that his point. I don't know their
Speaker 1: persons gender, sorry, because Honda's point about money incentives always
Speaker 1: find a way to ruin things, so that was a
Speaker 1: that was also kind of a good point. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I agree with that necessarily. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think money incentives is part of why we're all like
Speaker 1: living in you know, have to go to the grocery
Speaker 1: store and there's every possible food you could ever want
Speaker 1: to eat ell sitting there, fresh and in nice rows
Speaker 1: like money. And you know, money incentives has done a
Speaker 1: lot of good things, and it's just you know, obviously
Speaker 1: also can do a lot of bad things. But I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't Yeah, maybe I have to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would hear this person, I would change the word always, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would, yeah, place always with can can. Finally, so
Speaker 1: it's important to consider at least yeah, when you kind
Speaker 1: of think about these things. Yeah, I have a little section.
Speaker 1: This will be the end of our interview to day,
Speaker 1: like we'll do like a fast lightning round. I thought
Speaker 1: I put together just on the spot, just not like
Speaker 1: put together. I group together some questions I thought would
Speaker 1: be fun. It's like the first things that come to
Speaker 1: your head, you know, don't You don't have to think,
Speaker 1: you know deeply about these questions. Okay, France. What does
Speaker 1: he think about the French? I kind of assume. I
Speaker 1: kind of assume that they hate me because I think
Speaker 1: of French people is hating Americans. But that's probably not
Speaker 1: really fair, and I think that, Yeah, I think they're
Speaker 1: judging me. That's what I think. Okay, favorite song when
Speaker 1: he was ten years old piano man? Maybe, yes, some
Speaker 1: Beatles song. I don't know. If you were to write
Speaker 1: a children's book, what message? What do you want to share?
Speaker 1: That the really hard things in life is managing what's
Speaker 1: going on in your own head and that and that
Speaker 1: that's okay because everyone has that challenge, but that the
Speaker 1: outside world is actually not is a breeze. If you
Speaker 1: can get really good at managing what's going on in
Speaker 1: your own head, maybe you should write a children's book
Speaker 1: someday that can be fun. Yeah, mental health book? What
Speaker 1: is so important? I mean that would be super important.
Speaker 1: What is his favorite marvel superhero who is his favorite villain,
Speaker 1: not too much of a Marvel guy. I like this
Speaker 1: the magical ones, Like Superman's magical, spider Man's kind of
Speaker 1: like a one trick pony. Batman's not magical. He just
Speaker 1: like has ropes and stuff. And same with like iron Man,
Speaker 1: like he's just has like a suit. So I'd go
Speaker 1: Superman villain. I mean, I guess Penguin's kind of funny.
Speaker 1: He's like an old short jew who's like who's like devious.
Speaker 1: I kind of like him like a net. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: like kind of like a hilarious I kind of want
Speaker 1: to like hang with him and like star start like
Speaker 1: a devious company with him. Thoughts on psychedelics. I love psychedelics.
Speaker 1: I love I love Mike Grodosing. I think it's like
Speaker 1: a little a little spruce to your creativity and without
Speaker 1: without you being high at all or trip at all,
Speaker 1: because then you're not microdosing. And I like macrodosing. I
Speaker 1: think it's not not not very often, but I think
Speaker 1: it's uh incredibly powerful, super fun and actually change your life,
Speaker 1: like and you know, I I uh tripped over a
Speaker 1: New Year's one time and had like a deeper insight
Speaker 1: into like what it's going to feel like to be
Speaker 1: like an old, like hobbling person and got a train
Speaker 1: in the next day and have been far more physically
Speaker 1: active ever since. That was like three years ago, and
Speaker 1: that's life changing, right like, And it's because, like I could,
Speaker 1: you know, we get in these this is not the
Speaker 1: lightning answer, sorry, but we get in these like grooves
Speaker 1: where we see everything through this kind of you know,
Speaker 1: one way and and and sometimes it's not very we're
Speaker 1: we're in some kind of delusion, but we're stuck in it,
Speaker 1: and you know you can and and this helps you
Speaker 1: kind of just like brush away a bunch of fogger
Speaker 1: look at to the side and see things from a
Speaker 1: different angle. And like I was like, I feel like
Speaker 1: I just like really, I was like, oh, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be like seventy eight and like limping around and
Speaker 1: and I could like feel it, and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh god, I have to, like I have to take
Speaker 1: care of my body. And it sounds obvious, but to me,
Speaker 1: it like it like became crystal clear in a much
Speaker 1: deeper way. So I have a lot of examples like that.
Speaker 1: I think it's great. I wouldn't like brashly advise people
Speaker 1: to all just do it. I think it's, you know,
Speaker 1: something you learn a lot about and that you should
Speaker 1: make sure you're doing in the right setting, and that
Speaker 1: you make sure you're doing with the right people and
Speaker 1: in the right time in your life. But I do
Speaker 1: think it's something that probably more people should explore than
Speaker 1: currently are. What's the craziest perception you ever had? I'm
Speaker 1: or hallucination, Like, what's the crazy Do you have something
Speaker 1: that you're like, Oh my god, So I haven't gone,
Speaker 1: like I haven't gone like a crazy level where I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, people go to the no heroic dose, no
Speaker 1: heroic dose, Well, i'd like to. I would like to.
Speaker 1: I just like it's kind of scary, but I know
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that once I do it,
Speaker 1: I'll be like, I can't believe I waited so long
Speaker 1: to do that. But you know, that's the level where
Speaker 1: so the real, you know, the level I've heard people
Speaker 1: talk about is where you don't know that you've ever
Speaker 1: not been in this state or that you ever will
Speaker 1: not be in the state in the future, So you're
Speaker 1: truly psychosis, like you don't you don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: You don't realize you're in a tripping this is this
Speaker 1: is just that that's next level. I've always been very
Speaker 1: like rational and sane and like I know who I am,
Speaker 1: I know what's going on, and I know it's okay.
Speaker 1: And that's said you can get to some you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just I mean, it's been. It's
Speaker 1: also been great for my marriage. We've you know, done
Speaker 1: this and then have these really like just these this
Speaker 1: like communication that we like, you know, you think you're
Speaker 1: communicating and then you don't realize like there's other stuff
Speaker 1: that you really you know that it wasn't being community
Speaker 1: and it's just like things come out in a really
Speaker 1: healthy way. I think. So it's it's been. It's been
Speaker 1: great in that regarding. It's also just fun, like people
Speaker 1: talk about it. It's so much talk right now about
Speaker 1: because I think it's more less taboo to talk about
Speaker 1: it as in a medical sensor, a mental health sense.
Speaker 1: But it's just a great recreational and like it's like giggly,
Speaker 1: it's so giggly, and then it's like so every the
Speaker 1: colors are so beautiful. Everything you're looking at is so
Speaker 1: like gorgeous you're I feel like you actually have heard
Speaker 1: that your eyesight is actually better, and you know, music
Speaker 1: sounds so much better and nature is so much more
Speaker 1: gorgeous and like fascinating and like. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's a pretty magical thing that that
Speaker 1: we've discovered in the world. I agree. And it's also
Speaker 1: a great bonding experience. I don't know if you have
Speaker 1: done it with you with your wife, Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, we've communicated together. Yeah, it's just really
Speaker 1: a true bonding experience of the person you've done it with. Okay,
Speaker 1: last question, last question, which is that was actually the
Speaker 1: most asked question. But why wait? What does that mean?
Speaker 1: That's the most I think people trying to be clever
Speaker 1: because the name of your blog is wait. But why
Speaker 1: they're asking but why wait? Yeah, well I get a
Speaker 1: lot of I get if you're going to start a blog,
Speaker 1: all wait, but why you're going to deal with a
Speaker 1: whole lot of puns and like plays on words. So
Speaker 1: I'm very used to that and it always tickles me
Speaker 1: a little bit. I think, But why wait? Because because
Speaker 1: sometimes it's only when you wait that you can process
Speaker 1: what's going on in a way that helps you then
Speaker 1: figure out what you want to do next. Nice they're
Speaker 1: going to ask a question like that, they're gonna get
Speaker 1: a yeah, I like it. It wasn't silly, it's it's
Speaker 1: so important for people to hear that message actually these days. Tim,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming back on my Psychology
Speaker 1: Podcast all these years later and for another epic interview.
Speaker 1: Yeah man, anytime. Thanks for listening to this episode of
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some
Speaker 1: way to something you heard, I encourage you to join
Speaker 1: in the discussion at thus Psychology podcast dot com or
Speaker 1: on our YouTube page The Psychology Podcast. We also put
Speaker 1: up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page
Speaker 1: as well, so you'll want to check that out. Thanks
Speaker 1: for being such a great supporter of the show, and
Speaker 1: tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Eight