Speaker 1: Are you feeling stressed about the holidays? The pressure to
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Speaker 1: the way you experience the holidays.
Speaker 2: It turns out that addiction is a symptom, not a disease,
Speaker 2: that it's more like fever. There are many, many things
Speaker 2: that will lead you to addiction. And yes, your description
Speaker 2: of a Pavlovian system that gets over associated and connected
Speaker 2: is one of.
Speaker 3: Those Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great
Speaker 3: thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 3: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 3: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 3: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 3: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 3: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 3: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 3: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 3: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 3: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 3: the right direction, how they feed their good woalth. Thanks
Speaker 3: for joining us back on the show after many years.
Speaker 3: Is David Reddish, a professor of neuroscience at the University
Speaker 3: of Minnesota. His laboratory studies learning, memory and how animals,
Speaker 3: including humans, make decisions. David has worked extensively on the
Speaker 3: consequences of understanding those decision processes in the world we
Speaker 3: live in, including consequences for psychiatry, sociology, economics, and morality. Today,
Speaker 3: David and Eric discuss his new book, Changing How We
Speaker 3: Choose the New Science of Morality.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. It's good to be back. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, we had you on a long time ago.
Speaker 1: When was it twenty fifteen?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I looked it up recently. It was twenty fifteen. Wow.
Speaker 1: Okay, well that would have been in our second year,
Speaker 1: and we're creeping up on our tenth year. So yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. You've got a new book out
Speaker 1: called Changing How We Choose the New Science of Morality,
Speaker 1: and we're going to discuss that in a moment. But
Speaker 1: we'll start like we always do, with the parable. In
Speaker 1: the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild
Speaker 1: and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside
Speaker 1: of us that are always at battle. One is a
Speaker 1: good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 1: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops
Speaker 1: and they think about it for a second, and they
Speaker 1: look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandparent says the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do.
Speaker 2: It's a great parable. I have to admit that the
Speaker 2: first time I heard it was on the show in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, and I see it everywhere now. It became
Speaker 2: very interesting to me. I think the parables really about
Speaker 2: the kind of person you want to be, and importantly,
Speaker 2: how the kind of person you want to be changes
Speaker 2: the decisions you make, which is really interesting to me
Speaker 2: because one of the things that we now know is
Speaker 2: a lot of the decisions we make, a lot of
Speaker 2: the actions we take are done very quickly. That is
Speaker 2: that in the moment, there isn't a lot of processing
Speaker 2: going on. And what that means is what really matters
Speaker 2: is how did you build up the learning to that moment.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that's very interesting, and I
Speaker 2: think is underappreciated by many people, is that when we
Speaker 2: talk about learning that leads to decision making, it's not
Speaker 2: just learning like the facts of the world, but you
Speaker 2: learn your own motivations and you learn your own goals,
Speaker 2: and you know, we can talk about learning for ourselves
Speaker 2: what to do in this moment. And I think a
Speaker 2: lot of that parable is really about changing the information
Speaker 2: process that's going to happen in that moment so that
Speaker 2: you take the action for the kind of person you
Speaker 2: want to be. And I think it's a wonderful parable
Speaker 2: for really understanding that kind of complexity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a great way of phrasing it.
Speaker 1: And I'm really interested in getting into these questions about
Speaker 1: how do we decide and like you said, what is
Speaker 1: the accumulation of things that have brought me to this
Speaker 1: point where that's the decision. You know, in Buddhism we
Speaker 1: would call it conditioning, and we are all the result
Speaker 1: of countless causes and conditions, right absolutely, And so trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what I you know, I'm putting, I'm
Speaker 1: doing air quotes, what I want is a very complicated thing.
Speaker 1: Is we're going to get into some of your work
Speaker 1: that's going to show us. So in order to get
Speaker 1: where I want to get, we're going to have to
Speaker 1: go through a couple of slightly technical areas here. So
Speaker 1: listeners just hang in there, because I think where we're
Speaker 1: headed is a big payoff. But we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking some theory here for a minute, and so I
Speaker 1: think that the first thing we need to do is layout.
Speaker 2: Can I respond to one thing you said that actually sure,
Speaker 2: I think is really interesting is the eye point that
Speaker 2: you made with the air quotes, because one of the
Speaker 2: things that's really come to the fore honestly since twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: which is interesting, is that a lot of current theories
Speaker 2: of consciousness are based on your observation of yourself. So
Speaker 2: humans are social creatures. It's one of the things that
Speaker 2: makes humans particularly unique is just how social we are.
Speaker 2: I mean, other animals are social, but they're social in
Speaker 2: other ways. And we evolved ways to understand each other
Speaker 2: in terms of this kind of complexity and agency, and
Speaker 2: then we observe ourselves taking action, some of which may
Speaker 2: or may not always be the obvious one we thought
Speaker 2: we wanted. And current theories of consciousness are that we
Speaker 2: have applied that social understanding of others to an observation
Speaker 2: of ourselves. And so there's a really interesting Oh I'm
Speaker 2: the one that did that is part of our definition
Speaker 2: of who we are. I think that's a very interesting
Speaker 2: perspective on that idea.
Speaker 1: Right, And I think the other thing that more modern
Speaker 1: ideas of consciousness seem to be positive and they're talked
Speaker 1: about in different ways and referenced in differentfferent styles. Is
Speaker 1: that there's really not a coherent me that's in here.
Speaker 1: It's not one thing. We're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: three ways that you believe decisions get made, so that
Speaker 1: points to there's these three different deciding systems. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a psychology internal family systems, which posits that we
Speaker 1: have all these different parts and that there is one
Speaker 1: part that is sort of the core self. But there's
Speaker 1: lots of different theories of this that strike to the
Speaker 1: heart of what Buddhism has been saying for a long
Speaker 1: long time, which is that if you really look closely,
Speaker 1: you can't find you as a discrete thing. What you
Speaker 1: find is lots of different processes running and happening, and
Speaker 1: competing priorities and goals and different feelings and just a
Speaker 1: lot going on in there. And yet there is some
Speaker 1: thing that appears to be observing that. So it's interesting
Speaker 1: to me because I think the modern psychology neuroscience is
Speaker 1: coming together and echoing some of those more ancient ideas
Speaker 1: about you know, what's going on inside of us. So
Speaker 1: maybe we should head from here into talking about how
Speaker 1: people make decisions, and you talk about three possibly a
Speaker 1: fourth way that humans decide. So before we go into that,
Speaker 1: give me an example of the type of decision we
Speaker 1: might be talking about here.
Speaker 2: So, for me, and I think for neuroscience in general,
Speaker 2: the question of what is a decision becomes such an
Speaker 2: ugly philosophical, you know, rabbit hole that I want to
Speaker 2: punt on the whole question of what is a decision?
Speaker 2: And I'm going to simply say, if you've taken an action,
Speaker 2: then I'm going to call that a decision. Okay. Any action, okay,
Speaker 2: So that could be lifting your arm, that could be
Speaker 2: hitting a baseball, that could be diving into the river
Speaker 2: to save a drowning child. You know, any action is going.
Speaker 1: To solitaire versus writing your book, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And big actions, right, big actions like where did
Speaker 2: you go to college? It includes emotional actions like falling
Speaker 2: in love? Right. And the key is that if we
Speaker 2: really ask the question in terms of why did you
Speaker 2: take that action? How did you take that action, it
Speaker 2: actually becomes a very measurable scientific question that almost unasks
Speaker 2: all that decision making stuff. Okay, So what we find
Speaker 2: is that there are at least three. I guess four
Speaker 2: if you include reflexes. There's some evidence there may be
Speaker 2: some some other ones that are more complicated, but three
Speaker 2: big ones that really speak to most of humanity. And
Speaker 2: those three are, first of all, what we call deliberative
Speaker 2: or planning systems. And these are literally imagining a future
Speaker 2: and then evaluating it. It's like running a little wargame
Speaker 2: in your head, or simulation. Right, if you don't want
Speaker 2: to do it wargame, we can do simulation right, a
Speaker 2: little Oh what would it be like if I went
Speaker 2: to this college? What would my life be like? What
Speaker 2: if I took this job? Right? And you run that simulation,
Speaker 2: you imagine yourself into that future a mentally time travel
Speaker 2: the term is actually called mental time travel into that future,
Speaker 2: and then you run that simulation.
Speaker 1: So say I'm trying to make a decision, I would
Speaker 1: create a pro and con list. Would that be the
Speaker 1: deliberative system at work?
Speaker 2: Exactly? Okay, exactly? And people often think it's logical. I
Speaker 2: don't want to suggest it's logical because a lot of
Speaker 2: what it is is actually emotional of oh that sounds
Speaker 2: like a lot of fun, or oh that sounds really boring, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, yes, pro and con lists are definitely part
Speaker 2: of that deliberative system. But the key is that it's
Speaker 2: an actual, imagined future.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: It is of course therefore very slow, but it's very flexible. Right.
Speaker 2: I can imagine, you know, doing something stupid and then
Speaker 2: not do it, right, I don't have to actually take
Speaker 2: the action to imagine it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The problem with that is it's very slow. If you're
Speaker 2: going to do something that's quick, like hitting a baseball
Speaker 2: or responding in the moment to a you know, playing
Speaker 2: a jazz concert. Right, if you're doing you know, back
Speaker 2: and forth with somebody else in trading fors or something,
Speaker 2: you know, you don't have time to go and think
Speaker 2: through that imagined scenario. Right, you say, Okay, if I
Speaker 2: put my arm in just this way and I swing
Speaker 2: just this way, you struck out. You know, you just
Speaker 2: you literally don't have the time. So that's a second system.
Speaker 2: That system we call procedural. People I've talked to like
Speaker 2: to say you should think of it as muscle memory.
Speaker 2: I'm not so fond of that term, because it's not
Speaker 2: in the muscles. It's a different part of the brain.
Speaker 2: But I think colloquially, it captures some of what people
Speaker 2: think of that it can be quite complicated, like driving
Speaker 2: to If you drive to work the same way every day,
Speaker 2: then you're using that memory system, that decision system, that
Speaker 2: procedural system.
Speaker 1: So that procedural system isn't necessarily just incredibly fast things.
Speaker 1: It's also once something becomes what we would think of
Speaker 1: as a true habit, meaning we do it without thinking
Speaker 1: about it exactly.
Speaker 2: And in fact, port stars often talk about being quote
Speaker 2: in the zone right, and what that means is that
Speaker 2: their procedural system is running really smoothly. So what the
Speaker 2: procedural system is doing is recognizing situations in the world
Speaker 2: and then responding to them with well practiced actions. So
Speaker 2: this is very importantly a completely different set of neural circuits.
Speaker 2: So if we use something like the functional magnetic resonance imaging,
Speaker 2: which is a technology that can look inside your brain
Speaker 2: and see which parts of your brain are active, a
Speaker 2: completely different set of circuits will be active if you're
Speaker 2: doing something procedural than if you're doing something deliberative.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you a question about fMRI, because I
Speaker 1: hear criticisms of fMRI from time to time, saying like
Speaker 1: it's not really telling you anything. And the criticism is
Speaker 1: often leveled at spiritual teachers who are trying to talk
Speaker 1: about something they don't understand. Guilty of that from time
Speaker 1: to time. But as somebody who's actually in the science
Speaker 1: works in this world, how accurate a picture do you
Speaker 1: think fMRI is giving us of what's going on?
Speaker 2: So you have to think of fMRI as a tool,
Speaker 2: and as a tool, it's an excellent and very powerful tool,
Speaker 2: but it's not a magic item, and part of the
Speaker 2: problem is that it gets over sold. What fMRI is
Speaker 2: actually measuring is how active, how much work that part
Speaker 2: of the brain is doing. So when your brain is
Speaker 2: doing certain amounts of work, and different parts of your
Speaker 2: brain work for different things. Right you have a visual
Speaker 2: cortex in the back of your head, So if you're
Speaker 2: looking at something that's changing very quickly, your visual cortex
Speaker 2: in the back of your head is going to do
Speaker 2: a lot of work, whereas your auditory cortex, as we're
Speaker 2: talking to each other, is also doing a lot of
Speaker 2: work right now. But honestly, your somatosensory, your touch cortices
Speaker 2: are not doing that much work right now. They would
Speaker 2: be if you were, say you know, reading braille or
Speaker 2: something if you were, you know, feeling something trying to
Speaker 2: understand a certain texture. Right, So what happens with fMRI
Speaker 2: is you can measure that, and so you can say, ah,
Speaker 2: this part of the brain is active, is doing a
Speaker 2: lot of work. Now, it turns out, particularly in cortical areas,
Speaker 2: that that level of work can get pretty fine tuned.
Speaker 2: It's different in different brains, but the kind of reading
Speaker 2: minds stuff is real to a limited extent. So for example,
Speaker 2: I can tell if you're thinking about faces or houses,
Speaker 2: because your visualization of faces and your visualization of houses
Speaker 2: is happens to be in pretty different parts of your brain. Right.
Speaker 2: It would be like, think about it this way. You're
Speaker 2: measuring the electricity going to a building. And if one
Speaker 2: building in New York City is made of Jets fans,
Speaker 2: and another building is made of you know, Giants fans, right,
Speaker 2: and the Giants are playing that day, the building that
Speaker 2: is almost all Giants fans will have a lot more electricity, right,
Speaker 2: because all their TVs will be on. They'll all be
Speaker 2: watching the game on the fly. So I don't know
Speaker 2: how good analogy this is works. What fMRI is measuring
Speaker 2: is the amount of electricity that's going through in this
Speaker 2: case blood. In this case, actually it's not blood. It's
Speaker 2: technically the parts of the brain. When it works harder,
Speaker 2: it asks for more blood and so more blood goes
Speaker 2: to that part of the brain, but it doesn't need
Speaker 2: any more oxygen. The parts that it needs from the
Speaker 2: blood is something else. Honestly, it's not my field. I
Speaker 2: don't actually know what it is. I don't even know
Speaker 2: if it's known. But what means is you get more blood,
Speaker 2: but it uses less oxygen. So there's more oxygen in
Speaker 2: the blood and that's what's detectable by fMRI got it.
Speaker 2: So think of it as like there's more something being
Speaker 2: supplied to that part of the brain. And what that means, though,
Speaker 2: is that I can ask somebody to do something procedurally
Speaker 2: or deliberatively, and what I find is different parts of
Speaker 2: the brain are working at different times.
Speaker 1: And when you say different parts of the brain, you
Speaker 1: use the word circuits earlier, and I've heard people start
Speaker 1: to talk about networks, meaning it may not be just
Speaker 1: one part of the brain. It may be parts of
Speaker 1: the brain that are linking together in a certain way,
Speaker 1: or it's a little bit more than just like this
Speaker 1: teensy little part of your brain is the one that's
Speaker 1: doing everything. Is that an accurate way to think of it?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? The way I like to say it is if
Speaker 2: I took that piece of your brain out and put
Speaker 2: it in a little dish, it wouldn't do anything right.
Speaker 2: It's like taking the steering mill out of the car
Speaker 2: and putting it in the street. Got it right, It's
Speaker 2: not gonna steer. That doesn't mean that the steering wheel
Speaker 2: is the same as the tires.
Speaker 1: Yep, Okay, we had gotten through. I believe the deliberative
Speaker 1: and the procedural, and you know, basically different parts of
Speaker 1: the brain are working depending on what's going on there.
Speaker 1: So what's the next type?
Speaker 2: There's a third system, and it's really important because a
Speaker 2: lot of the old psychology theories we'll talk about two
Speaker 2: processes and there's actually three. It's really important because the
Speaker 2: third one is as different from either of the other
Speaker 2: two as they are from each other. And this third
Speaker 2: one I like to call instinctual now, but is within
Speaker 2: the field called Pavlovian because it's what Pavlov's dogs were doing.
Speaker 2: The problem is that it confuses everybody when they think
Speaker 2: about it, because we all have this psychology one oh one.
Speaker 2: We heard about Pavlov and stuff, and so I'm going
Speaker 2: to call it instinctual to separate it from that. Again,
Speaker 2: colloquially people talk about it as like going with the guy.
Speaker 2: But again, it's not your gut. It's a different part
Speaker 2: of the brain, and it is a third circuit in
Speaker 2: the brain that is completely different from the other two.
Speaker 2: And what this one is, which turns out to be
Speaker 2: much more important than people used to think. This third
Speaker 2: one is a set of species important behaviors, some of
Speaker 2: them very complicated that are available immediately, but you learn
Speaker 2: when to release, so classically fight or flight, right, but
Speaker 2: also going out to help somebody diving into the river
Speaker 2: to save a drowning child turns out to be this
Speaker 2: instinctual system. Running away from a fire, right, running away
Speaker 2: from the lion, right. But it turns out it's also
Speaker 2: complicated things like posture and submit. Right. If you have
Speaker 2: two people, one kind of you know, yelling at the other.
Speaker 2: I always love that scene in the Black Panther movie,
Speaker 2: the first one, where they're in this big battle. The
Speaker 2: guy looks over and sees that his girlfriend and all
Speaker 2: the women are fighting with all the guys, and he's like,
Speaker 2: this is horrible, and he throws his sword down and
Speaker 2: kneels in front of her, and there's this absolute iconic
Speaker 2: moment of her with her spear, and you know, in
Speaker 2: that instant the complete relationship that's completely instinctual systems. And
Speaker 2: the reason we can recognize that is because those two
Speaker 2: behaviors are instinctual human behaviors that we are learning when
Speaker 2: to release. And in fact, the whole mating dance if
Speaker 2: you look at two people going back and forth in
Speaker 2: a bar, right, that is also part of this instinctual system.
Speaker 1: So this instinctual system, might I have instinctual responses that
Speaker 1: you don't have. Yeah, okay, so when we say species specific,
Speaker 1: we mean they are human, but we don't all have
Speaker 1: them in the same way into the same degree and
Speaker 1: to what degree are those back to the term we
Speaker 1: used earlier, learned or conditioned.
Speaker 2: So it's complicated, and to be honest, it's still a
Speaker 2: lot of science work being done here. Some of the
Speaker 2: simpler ones are pretty straightforward, like run away or throw
Speaker 2: a punch or laughing with your friends, for example. These
Speaker 2: seem to be pretty universal. I personally am convinced that
Speaker 2: Cursing is this system as compared to a conversation, which
Speaker 2: is not. And what's interesting about cursing is, of course
Speaker 2: we all curse in our own language, right that the
Speaker 2: actual curse, right, the bad word we say, we learn right.
Speaker 2: In fact, one of my kids, at one point, when
Speaker 2: you know, we're trying to get him not to curse,
Speaker 2: he started saying sicily as his angry word.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, there's lots of people say freaking you know,
Speaker 1: so yeah exactly. So there's some process in which we
Speaker 1: train that system then.
Speaker 2: Right, But usually the output is relatively consistent. Like I
Speaker 2: can tell a smile on any person, and yes, a
Speaker 2: European smile is slightly different from an American smile. Americans
Speaker 2: tend to really smile with their mouths and Europeans think
Speaker 2: we're crazy, you know. European will often smile primarily with
Speaker 2: their eyes. It's a cultural difference, particularly in parts of Europe.
Speaker 2: But the basic idea of laughing or smiling or whatever
Speaker 2: will be consistent. Right. The real learning that happens in
Speaker 2: this system, and this is kind of where, honestly, the
Speaker 2: one you feed turns out to be really important is
Speaker 2: what is the condition under which you're going to release
Speaker 2: that behavior, right. So I like to joke swinging a
Speaker 2: bat in a baseball game and in a bar are
Speaker 2: very different. Or in a situation, right, if you hear
Speaker 2: a crying child next door to you, right, do you
Speaker 2: react by saying, oh no, what's wrong? Or do you
Speaker 2: react with shut that thing up right? Those are both
Speaker 2: Pavlovian reactions. Those are both instinctual reactions. But which one
Speaker 2: you release at that moment right emotionally is going to
Speaker 2: depend on the learning you've done over time.
Speaker 1: That's a really interesting example of how you respond to
Speaker 1: a baby crying and that sound. And I think the
Speaker 1: other thing that's interesting about that is that it seems
Speaker 1: to me that the way I respond to that sound
Speaker 1: has something to do with my physiological and emotional state
Speaker 1: at the time. Absolutely, when I'm well slept and feeling
Speaker 1: pretty good and not hungry, I might be like, I
Speaker 1: wonder what's wrong with that baby? Somebody should give it
Speaker 1: a bottle? And if I got two hours of sleep
Speaker 1: and I haven't eaten in several hours, I'm probably going
Speaker 1: to be more towards shut that thing up right. And
Speaker 1: so even that is going to be dependent on factors
Speaker 1: within my physiology.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, But part of the situation you're in depends on
Speaker 2: not just on the physical surroundings, but your cultural moment.
Speaker 2: Are you hungry, are you well fed? Are you comfortable?
Speaker 2: Are you at the end of your rope? Do you
Speaker 2: have a big exam the next day? You know? Are
Speaker 2: you anxious? All of these components feed into that situation,
Speaker 2: and the truth is that they feed into a lot
Speaker 2: of these other situations. These decision systems interact in complex ways. Right, So,
Speaker 2: playing sports, you want to be active and I want
Speaker 2: to say aggressive without being aggressive, right, right, You want
Speaker 2: to be aggressive within the game without being aggressive in
Speaker 2: a violent you know, interaction. Right, you still want to
Speaker 2: be friends at the end of the game.
Speaker 1: So let's take jumping into the lake to save a
Speaker 1: drowning child. Not everybody's going to do that, but some
Speaker 1: people will. We would consider that a moral choice, like
Speaker 1: it's good to do that, like you should do that,
Speaker 1: versus if you don't do that, maybe that's bad. And
Speaker 1: again maybe different people are going to have different moralities
Speaker 1: around that, but most of us would view something like
Speaker 1: that as a moral choice. Right, So where I wanted
Speaker 1: to go is you know, if you read about morality,
Speaker 1: and I'm interested in morality. I want to talk about
Speaker 1: that term before a bunch of people just turn off
Speaker 1: their brain. You know, I'm interested in morality in the
Speaker 1: sense of how do I think I should live my life?
Speaker 1: How do I decide what's important and who's the person
Speaker 1: I want to be? So for me it becomes a
Speaker 1: very personal thing. I'm not very interested. Well, to say
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in others' morality is not correct, but
Speaker 1: i just want to be clear. I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: the moral majority here or enforcing my morality on others,
Speaker 1: but that's why I'm interested in it. Jonathan Hate is
Speaker 1: the person that I most have read this from, but
Speaker 1: I'm sure he's borrowed it from lots of different places.
Speaker 1: Is this idea that our morals are actually feelings?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: You ask me a moral question, I respond that feeling
Speaker 1: is there, and then I'm going to layer reasons on
Speaker 1: top of that. I'm going to try and this is
Speaker 1: what I believe to be true. Now, I'm believing that
Speaker 1: for reasons that are entirely emotional. Now I'm going to
Speaker 1: try and construct an argument around that instead of the
Speaker 1: other way around.
Speaker 2: This is one of those things where I really disagree
Speaker 2: with Jonathan on these things. I think that he is,
Speaker 2: which is surprising given his knowledge base. He's taking a
Speaker 2: very simple view of decision making. And so I would
Speaker 2: turn it around and say, there's a moral question of
Speaker 2: what do we do in this situation? Two questions that
Speaker 2: we want to separate. One is what is the prescriptive
Speaker 2: goal that we, either as an individual or as a
Speaker 2: society want to do? And I agree with you that
Speaker 2: I don't want to talk about imposing moral codes on anybody.
Speaker 2: What I want to understand is how do those moral
Speaker 2: codes interact with us. The other thing, though, is that
Speaker 2: there are many situations where each of those decision systems
Speaker 2: might be more appropriate and might be the thing to do. So,
Speaker 2: for example, in a lot of these moral questions, I
Speaker 2: can change which of these systems is taking control by
Speaker 2: changing how I phrase the question. An interesting story, this
Speaker 2: diving into the river is a very interesting thing. I
Speaker 2: was on a trip with I was at some conference
Speaker 2: and they had an afternoon thing where we got to
Speaker 2: go fishing in streams in Colorado, which I was really
Speaker 2: quite wonderful, and was with this guy who was this
Speaker 2: wonderful talkative guide who clearly was name dropping every five
Speaker 2: minutes of all the famous people he had, you know, guided,
Speaker 2: But he was a character. He was a wonderful, you know,
Speaker 2: really wonderful guy. But he told this story about he
Speaker 2: pointed out that these little streams actually run super fast
Speaker 2: and you can be shockingly pulled under and what looks like,
Speaker 2: you know, two feet of water, turns out it's eight
Speaker 2: feet of water and you're underneath. And he described the
Speaker 2: story where he was driving by with somebody and they
Speaker 2: saw somebody drawn underneath, and the two of them stop
Speaker 2: the car. The two of them got out, and he
Speaker 2: told the other person don't go, don't move, because he
Speaker 2: had been trained on how to go save somebody in
Speaker 2: this situation, and the other person, who, of course, in
Speaker 2: this instinctual I'm going to go dive in the river
Speaker 2: and be the hero and save the person, would only
Speaker 2: have made things worse. So he had been trained procedurally
Speaker 2: how to respond in this moment, and the other person
Speaker 2: was responding instinctually. So in fact, you could create. And
Speaker 2: I would argue that the discussion we are having right
Speaker 2: now about do you dive into the river to save
Speaker 2: the child is actually a deliberative one not an instinctual one.
Speaker 2: We're having a deliberative conversation about it. And so I
Speaker 2: really disagree with Jonathan that these moral things start from feelings.
Speaker 2: If you ask the question in very specific ways, which
Speaker 2: is what he tends to do, he tends to create
Speaker 2: these very charged emotional moments in his examples, they will
Speaker 2: activate that instinctual system, whereas if you ask the question
Speaker 2: in a different way, then you get a different answer.
Speaker 2: The famous story is the trolley problem.
Speaker 1: On this one, yeah, I think that's really interesting and
Speaker 1: makes more sense to me because while I do believe
Speaker 1: there is is a huge emotional component to what we
Speaker 1: think is right or wrong, we are capable of deliberating
Speaker 1: and changing that. You know, if you're open minded enough,
Speaker 1: your moral views can shift, and I would almost argue
Speaker 1: should shift if you're actually a very thoughtful person. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: say more so.
Speaker 2: There are many, many cases where the instinctual is the
Speaker 2: right choice, and there are other cases where the deliberative
Speaker 2: is the right choice. A lot of the thing I
Speaker 2: think is kind of what I like to think of,
Speaker 2: as you know, the learning I'm trying to do and
Speaker 2: I think people should try to do, is figure out
Speaker 2: when is each of these systems best right, Each of
Speaker 2: these systems is not that one is better than the other.
Speaker 2: They've each evolved for conditions, And like, if you're deciding
Speaker 2: who to fall in love with, making a list of
Speaker 2: pros and cons isn't really great. You kind of want
Speaker 2: to let the chemistry happen and see what happens.
Speaker 1: Well, as somebody who's been led us stray by his
Speaker 1: chemistry a few times, I'm not sure I agree. I
Speaker 1: get your point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the truth is would you have been more
Speaker 2: led astray by your deliberative system?
Speaker 1: Well, that's a whole other conversation. So you've talked about
Speaker 1: how we ask the question changes the result that we get.
Speaker 1: So part of what you and I talked about before
Speaker 1: this interview is I'm trying to take your work about
Speaker 1: moral systems as a whole applied to societies and groups,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to sort of extract that and take
Speaker 1: it down to how do I make decisions in my
Speaker 1: life about what matters to me and what's important. So
Speaker 1: occasionally I'm sort of running aground in attempting to do that.
Speaker 1: But if I'm trying to make a decision, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think of what's a common moral type decision that
Speaker 1: a human being makes.
Speaker 2: Let me see if I can be an action for
Speaker 2: you please. So one of the things that Jonathan's work,
Speaker 2: and in fact all of the other science that's tried
Speaker 2: to do a science of morality before, they have essentially
Speaker 2: punted on the question of what is the goal right?
Speaker 2: What is your moral goal? So we said saving babies
Speaker 2: is good. I think we all generally agree on that,
Speaker 2: but where does that come from? Why is saving babies good? Right?
Speaker 2: If we all accept what those moral rules are, then yes,
Speaker 2: we can talk about how do we as an individual
Speaker 2: find the best one for ourselves? Or maybe we say
Speaker 2: they're all relative and there are no rules, at which
Speaker 2: point you run into some really nastiness that I'll be honest,
Speaker 2: I'm not comfortable with. And I think one of the
Speaker 2: things that makes that connection is what I argue in
Speaker 2: this book is that there is actually a moral rule,
Speaker 2: a very general one that ends up having kind of consequences,
Speaker 2: and all the other things kind of fall from those consequences.
Speaker 2: And I'm kind of dancing in a circle. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure if I'm getting to the right spot. So if
Speaker 2: I wander too much, stop me and we can come back.
Speaker 2: But I wonder if some of that connection of these
Speaker 2: examples comes to recognizing what the individual large term goal is,
Speaker 2: which is to align our work together, to find ways
Speaker 2: to work together, to create so that what's best for
Speaker 2: you is best for me, and what's best for me
Speaker 2: is best for you. And I actually have been very intrigued.
Speaker 2: Once I kind of see that, and we can talk
Speaker 2: kind of about as you said about the fMRI and
Speaker 2: that about the actual science of it, that might be useful.
Speaker 2: But once I saw that, it change is how I
Speaker 2: interact in those decisions with other people, right. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'll be explicit about it. I'll say, oh, you know, look,
Speaker 2: I want you to understand I'm doing this because if
Speaker 2: you succeed, I do better. I say this to my students, right.
Speaker 2: I'm a professor. A lot of my life is teaching students.
Speaker 2: And you know, I was talking to I just my
Speaker 2: class just ended this, you know, a week ago, and
Speaker 2: I was really pleased. This year. I got a lot
Speaker 2: of positive feedback from the students, and I wonder how
Speaker 2: much of it is because I started off by saying,
Speaker 2: my goal is for you to succeed, because if you
Speaker 2: succeed and go do well, and go say to everybody, Wow,
Speaker 2: I learned all this in this class. Right, that's better
Speaker 2: for me. Right that our goals are aligned is maybe
Speaker 2: the way to say it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because in the book, here's what I think you're saying,
Speaker 1: and you can correct me. I think you're saying that
Speaker 1: morality is a tool that humans use use to move
Speaker 1: us from There's lots of different ways to call it,
Speaker 1: but we might say a game where I might win
Speaker 1: and you might lose to move us collectively to games
Speaker 1: where when we cooperate we both win bigger and better,
Speaker 1: and that that's the purpose of a moral code, is
Speaker 1: to get more of us to play that kind of
Speaker 1: game than more of a game in which selfishness is prioritized. Now,
Speaker 1: I've oversimplified dramatically there, But is that close.
Speaker 2: I don't think you've oversimplified at all. I think that's
Speaker 2: actually exactly it. People always talk of morality is do
Speaker 2: the right thing, even though we know you really want
Speaker 2: to cheat. And honestly, that's not my lived experience. I
Speaker 2: don't know about you, but my experience is most of
Speaker 2: the time I do the moral thing because I want
Speaker 2: to do the moral thing. And what I realized is
Speaker 2: exact exactly that these moral codes are tools. They're sociological,
Speaker 2: and they're personal tools. Actually, an interesting thing is to
Speaker 2: think of them as personal tools. The one you feed
Speaker 2: is a great example of a personal tool that helps
Speaker 2: you achieve behaviors that are more likely to be in
Speaker 2: that connection. So I don't think you've oversimplified at all.
Speaker 2: I think you're exactly right.
Speaker 1: So if I then take that idea and say, all right,
Speaker 1: I want to apply it to myself and how I decide,
Speaker 1: let's talk about this idea that how I ask the
Speaker 1: question changes the answer. Can you give me an example
Speaker 1: that perhaps in our individual life?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so is your goal as a student to learn?
Speaker 2: Or is your goal as a student to get the
Speaker 2: most points? Right? And if your goal is to get
Speaker 2: the most points, then you're going to do a whole
Speaker 2: set of behaviors, right. And if your goal is I'm
Speaker 2: going to learn the most I can, then you're going
Speaker 2: to do a different set of behaviors. Some people will argue, oh,
Speaker 2: in order to get into med school, you have to
Speaker 2: get an A and you have to do this and
Speaker 2: you have to succeed, right, And the question is are
Speaker 2: they correct? And when you talk to the people who
Speaker 2: actually know, and the people who actually you know make
Speaker 2: those decisions, they're often wrong. And it's often the people
Speaker 2: who are helping the other people that are doing better. Right.
Speaker 2: So a good example is convincing all my students that
Speaker 2: study groups getting the most points while everybody else gets
Speaker 2: less points means that, yes, on the ratio of point scales,
Speaker 2: you did better. But if you can create a study
Speaker 2: group where you all can work together, you can all
Speaker 2: get a's. Right. So they started doing study groups. So
Speaker 2: by changing the question of saying, look, what's my goal?
Speaker 2: Is my goal to get I want to get a
Speaker 2: hundred points and everybody gets zero? Or is my goal
Speaker 2: I want everybody to get a hundred points? Because we've
Speaker 2: all then learned, that changes it.
Speaker 1: That goal though the underlying goal itself. Right, you asked
Speaker 1: two people, one of them might say I'm here to
Speaker 1: get a's because I'm here to then go on to
Speaker 1: grad school and you know you can learn if you want.
Speaker 1: I don't much care, not my thing. Someone else very
Speaker 1: much saying, hey, look, you know I really want to learn.
Speaker 1: I mean I just had a conversation with a guy
Speaker 1: who is a book called The pathless path. He was
Speaker 1: like a very successful I don't know if he went
Speaker 1: to Harvard, it doesn't matter. He went through the whole
Speaker 1: IVY League track, was working with the biggest, the best
Speaker 1: business consultancy group, McKenzie. He was on that track. And
Speaker 1: he used a phrase there called was a world class
Speaker 1: hoop jumper, meaning his job was just to jump through
Speaker 1: these series of hoops, never thinking about why except that
Speaker 1: it's because that's the next hoop to get through to
Speaker 1: get to this place over here. And we could say
Speaker 1: we've got a hoop jumper on one hand, and we've
Speaker 1: got a person who wants to learn on the other hand.
Speaker 1: The question does become where is that goal coming from?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Even the question I ask is informed by my moral
Speaker 1: approach or my values.
Speaker 2: That's right. One issue is, of course what is the
Speaker 2: individual goal? Right yep. But also there is how do
Speaker 2: you achieve that kind of greatness? And by changing the
Speaker 2: question you actually find that the people who are doing
Speaker 2: the most of those greatnesses are actually the people who
Speaker 2: are working together with groups and are not the people
Speaker 2: who've elbowed everybody out of the way. But there are
Speaker 2: other examples where we can talk about these decision systems,
Speaker 2: you know, concretely, like so for example, oh, here's a
Speaker 2: good one. If I'm asking you to pick a picture
Speaker 2: to put on your wall, I could ask you to say,
Speaker 2: find the one you like, or I could say, find
Speaker 2: the one you like and then explain it to me.
Speaker 2: If I tell you to explain it to me, you
Speaker 2: end up coming up with a very different answer. And
Speaker 2: there's a great experiment that did this with you know,
Speaker 2: college kids. As you know, psychoology experiments used to do.
Speaker 2: We do less of that now, but you know, classically
Speaker 2: it was this great experiment of you know, college kids.
Speaker 2: Some of them they said, pick a picture, take it home,
Speaker 2: and some of them they said, pick a picture and
Speaker 2: come back and explain to me why you picked this
Speaker 2: picture for your wall. And you know, they told each
Speaker 2: of them that they were measuring all these things. Then
Speaker 2: of course, what they actually measured was who has their
Speaker 2: picture on the wall a week later? Right, And the
Speaker 2: ones who explained it, none of them had their picture
Speaker 2: on the wall. The ones who just said I like
Speaker 2: I like this and put it up. Right, they used
Speaker 2: a different decision system to pick the picture by changing
Speaker 2: the question of are we a team, right, are we individuals?
Speaker 2: Are we you know, are we a community? I was
Speaker 2: trying to think of, you know, community construction examples, things
Speaker 2: like barn building or block parties change the definition of
Speaker 2: who we think we are. I have a no where.
Speaker 2: I started thinking about empathy as a technology that creating
Speaker 2: empathy with other people, which we can do through stories.
Speaker 2: And these are ways for us to understand and change
Speaker 2: our view of people. You think of for example, the
Speaker 2: famous napalm picture from the Vietnam War, right of the
Speaker 2: girl of Kim Fuch, the young girl who you know
Speaker 2: was very famously got the picture of her, you know,
Speaker 2: running from her village. You know, with nap you know,
Speaker 2: being burned changed everybody's view. It changed the question. It
Speaker 2: was no longer a question of are we you know,
Speaker 2: stopping this you know, communist menace coming back and forth?
Speaker 2: It was are we killing kids? It suddenly changes the question.
Speaker 2: That technology of a photograph changes the empathy. There are
Speaker 2: all of these examples where we can shift these decision
Speaker 2: questions by changing the questions we ask. And I love
Speaker 2: this example of the one you feed is changing the
Speaker 2: questions you ask yourself. That's the whole point of the parable,
Speaker 2: right it change is the decisions you make by pulling
Speaker 2: up different answers in different crises.
Speaker 1: I'm a firm believer that one of the paths to
Speaker 1: a good life is to ask yourself questions very often
Speaker 1: about what am I doing?
Speaker 3: And why? You know?
Speaker 1: What am I doing?
Speaker 3: Why?
Speaker 1: What do I want to be doing? What matters? I mean,
Speaker 1: these are not fun questions to ask, necessarily, because we
Speaker 1: often find ourselves in I don't know, you know, or no,
Speaker 1: I'm not living the way I wanted. But the question
Speaker 1: itself is the important thing. You know, the question is
Speaker 1: what in of itself? Kind of what you're saying, even
Speaker 1: asking the question starts to nudge you in a certain direction.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like if you start tracking calories right,
Speaker 1: just the very active tracking calories will shift how you eat. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it'll get you all the way where
Speaker 1: you need to go, But over and over again we've
Speaker 1: seen studies that show just that action is going to
Speaker 1: nudge you towards better eating, and so asking questions I
Speaker 1: think regularly nudges us towards being the version of ourselves
Speaker 1: that we want to be.
Speaker 2: Yes. But also tracking calories is a great example of
Speaker 2: am I eating because I'm hungry. Am I eating because
Speaker 2: I'm social? Right? Am I eating because I'm trying to
Speaker 2: get the right nutrition?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And partially there's asking questions of yourself, but partially every
Speaker 2: moment in your life you are answering a question. Right,
Speaker 2: at every moment, you are taking an action in response
Speaker 2: to some question in the world. And one of the
Speaker 2: points that I'm making is what that question in the
Speaker 2: world is, Like, is this food or not? Is a
Speaker 2: different question from should I throw these mashed potatoes or not?
Speaker 2: Like if you're in a food fight. Right, These are
Speaker 2: two very different questions, and they're going to come up
Speaker 2: with very different answers. And the argument in the book
Speaker 2: is that because we have multiple decision systems, because these
Speaker 2: decision systems learn, because these decision systems interact with the world,
Speaker 2: if we change the world, we can change those decision systems,
Speaker 2: and so we can change our behavior by changing the world,
Speaker 2: not just by changing ourselves.
Speaker 1: Let me pivot off there. I'm tempted to go big,
Speaker 1: and then I'm also tempted to go small. Here. I'm
Speaker 1: going to go small for a second, and then maybe
Speaker 1: we zoom back out and the small is this, Let's
Speaker 1: say that, well, let's just stick with eating and I
Speaker 1: decide that I want to lose weight. Now, I think
Speaker 1: what you're saying is that a the very question we
Speaker 1: need to be asking ourselves is why, right, because that
Speaker 1: informs an awful lot. Right. It's because I want to
Speaker 1: look good in a bathing suit, or it's because I
Speaker 1: want to keep my cholesterol low because my dad died
Speaker 1: of a heart attack at sixty. And I know for me,
Speaker 1: as I've reframed exercise and diet and all that in
Speaker 1: terms of well being, not even future wellbeing, but current
Speaker 1: well being, that changed my relationship to those things dramatically.
Speaker 1: So I think that's one example of the question.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: But let's say that I say my deliberative self I'm
Speaker 1: assuming this would be my deliberative self says I want
Speaker 1: to lose weight, and I want to do it because
Speaker 1: I want to be healthier. So there's the deliberative self.
Speaker 1: It's made its little decision, right, and then I just
Speaker 1: don't do it again and again and again. Right, This
Speaker 1: is common stuff. It seems to me then that my
Speaker 1: PAVLO and my procedural systems are overriding my deliberative system.
Speaker 1: Is that a way to think of it.
Speaker 2: It is and one of the languages this is, of course,
Speaker 2: the language of the previous book that we talked about
Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen, which was called The Mind within the
Speaker 2: Brain is. One of my view is that it's not
Speaker 2: that you are succumbing to your Pavlovian and procedural self.
Speaker 2: It's that all three of those are yourself, and you
Speaker 2: have a conflict within yourself. Yes, and that seeing that
Speaker 2: conflict within yourself as a conflict within yourself allows you
Speaker 2: to talk about controlling it. So one is you could
Speaker 2: try to change your Pavlovian system or your procedural system.
Speaker 2: You could learn new things. So, for example, you could
Speaker 2: learn to cook differently. This actually happened to be my
Speaker 2: doctor said I need to change my diet, and so
Speaker 2: I started buying different foods and I learned a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of new recipes because I like to cook. And
Speaker 2: so I'm cooking very differently from myself. And it's not
Speaker 2: that I'm like at every moment saying, oh, am I
Speaker 2: eating too much sugar? Am I eating too much of this?
Speaker 2: It's more, Oh, that sounds like a good dinner. I'm
Speaker 2: going to make this dinner tonight, And what I've done
Speaker 2: is I've changed my procedural process of cooking. And yes,
Speaker 2: I've had to learn those new recipes to retrain my
Speaker 2: Pavlovian sense of like ooh that smells tasty, you know,
Speaker 2: I like that flavor combination or I don't. Right, I've
Speaker 2: had a few that I was like, I'm not making
Speaker 2: that one again. You know. By thinking of this as
Speaker 2: how do I change my world that interacts with all
Speaker 2: of these systems, I don't have to be white knuckling
Speaker 2: it through saying I'm going to do this even though
Speaker 2: I keep finding myself not right, And so by thinking
Speaker 2: about changing my environment that allows me to change those
Speaker 2: actions basically so that the systems come into alignment rather
Speaker 2: than that they're always in conflict.
Speaker 1: I really like this sort of discussion because I think
Speaker 1: you're right. Recognizing the internal conflicts is really important because
Speaker 1: until you find some way of sort of resolving those,
Speaker 1: it's one step forward, one step back, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just you just you're just kind of stuck in stasis.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: The question almost in many cases, I think becomes how
Speaker 1: do I change what I want? Or how do I
Speaker 1: change what parts of me want?
Speaker 2: Or how do I change the environment so that those
Speaker 2: parts of me make the right choices.
Speaker 1: Yes, let me say something about that, and then let's
Speaker 1: go a different level. So retraining or changing the procedural
Speaker 1: system seems pretty straightforward right in that, Like you said,
Speaker 1: I've got a habitual way of cooking and habitual things
Speaker 1: that I buy, and habitual you know, reach for the
Speaker 1: cookies in the cabinet, all these habitual procedural systems, and
Speaker 1: so I'm going to change those. I'm going to learn
Speaker 1: new procedures that are going to move me in that direction.
Speaker 1: It seems like the Pavlovian one is the harder one
Speaker 1: to work with to change, but it does seem possible
Speaker 1: because once upon a time I had an extraordinarily Pavlovian
Speaker 1: response to drugs and alcohol, you know, in that like
Speaker 1: it felt instinctual, and now I don't, I don't at all,
Speaker 1: and so it is possible to do that. It wasn't
Speaker 1: as simple as like I just decided one day with
Speaker 1: my deliberative system drugs are bad and no.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, that was part of it, and there
Speaker 1: was some white knuckling, but over time, some of it
Speaker 1: was environmental changes, but some of it feels deeper than that.
Speaker 1: In this example, what are ways that we can if
Speaker 1: we've got a sort of a conflict between our deliberative
Speaker 1: system and our Pavlovian system, and we've decided that our
Speaker 1: deliberative system is the one we want to go with,
Speaker 1: what are ways of sort of retraining that Pavlovian system,
Speaker 1: or even if we don't want to use that word,
Speaker 1: teaching it some new dance steps.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I think think it's really important because although
Speaker 2: we call it instinctual, we call it Pavlovian. It is
Speaker 2: highly learning. It is a learning system, and it absolutely learns.
Speaker 2: It learns whether you could release the friendly dog or
Speaker 2: the angry dog. Right, you can release the I'm going
Speaker 2: to binge ice cream or I'm going to have, you know,
Speaker 2: a bowl of blueberries. And part of it is creating
Speaker 2: situations where that instinctual system recognizes the approach to in
Speaker 2: we're talking about approach to food, but approach to food
Speaker 2: that is good for you rather than bad. Right, so
Speaker 2: you get to the point where you know, I've found
Speaker 2: combinations of foods that I find really enjoyable that actually,
Speaker 2: I'll be honest, I like better than some of those
Speaker 2: super sweet things I had a thing at the lab
Speaker 2: where I bought donuts. There was an extra donut and
Speaker 2: I ate the extra donut afterwards, and I was like,
Speaker 2: I didn't really that didn't That wasn't so good, right,
Speaker 2: And I realized that I have shifted my Pavlovian drive
Speaker 2: to like, there's only so much of this high sugar
Speaker 2: that I really want. I mean, I like the first donut.
Speaker 2: It was the second one that was doing.
Speaker 1: Yes, of course, always the second donut is a mistake.
Speaker 2: But you can teach your Pavlovian system and you can
Speaker 2: think of it, you know. Yeah, you're talking about changing
Speaker 2: the foods. Also, you can change what's available, right. You
Speaker 2: can pre commit by saying, I mean people, you know,
Speaker 2: people who have alcohol problems, pour the alcohol down the drain, right.
Speaker 1: Yep. Door dash has been a disaster for this, by
Speaker 1: the way, because you used to be like, well, I
Speaker 1: just don't keep it in the house, and now you
Speaker 1: know door dash there's even alcohol delivery services. It's like
Speaker 1: you don't even I mean, I'm just happy to be
Speaker 1: where I am in life and not fighting some of
Speaker 1: those battles today because I'm like, oh my goodness, it's
Speaker 1: just like, you know, those pre commitment devices aren't as effective.
Speaker 2: Well, you need different ones. Yeah, And one of the
Speaker 2: things that you can do is you can create other
Speaker 2: pre commitment devices.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: One of my favorites is suicide hotlines and alcohol sponsors,
Speaker 2: and the line is you can go drinking after you've
Speaker 2: called your sponsor. Right. And so I knew people who
Speaker 2: had alcohol problems. What they taught themselves to say is
Speaker 2: and they would literally say this. They'd say, I'm going
Speaker 2: to the bar. I'm going to call my sponsor and
Speaker 2: tell them I'm going to the bar. Now. To be honest,
Speaker 2: at the moment, did they really believe that the sponsor would,
Speaker 2: you know, deliberatively, maybe they knew the sponsor would stop them.
Speaker 2: Maybe instinctually they didn't think they could talk the sponsor
Speaker 2: out of it.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But a line that I have to be honest, I
Speaker 2: never would have believed was okay. But again, I'm not
Speaker 2: a clinician. I want to be real clear on this.
Speaker 2: I'm a computer jock who does basic neuroscience fundamental science
Speaker 2: questions and you know, but I've been hanging out with
Speaker 2: a lot of clinicians recently, and my understanding is sometimes
Speaker 2: the right line is call the suicide hotline. After you
Speaker 2: talk to them, you can kill yourself. Yeah, And I
Speaker 2: mean I would not have imagined that was the thing
Speaker 2: for it, saying, but it turns out that can get
Speaker 2: people to call the hotline, right, That can get people
Speaker 2: over that line, whereas saying, oh my god, you really
Speaker 2: do not kill yourself because you know then you get
Speaker 2: the fight back yep. Right. So there are these other procedures,
Speaker 2: and sometimes the answer is the procedural system. Sometimes what
Speaker 2: you want to do is give yourself one of these
Speaker 2: other systems and let your procedural system beat your deliberative system. Right.
Speaker 2: So this is why I don't like the old like, oh,
Speaker 2: deliberative is in control of everything, right, Because sometimes the
Speaker 2: best answer is to create a situation, a process where
Speaker 2: other things happen. I heard a thing where it turns
Speaker 2: out that blister packs are less dangerous than screw top
Speaker 2: bottles of pills because by the time some people have
Speaker 2: popped out enough bubbles to be dangerous. You're like, this
Speaker 2: is dumb, what am I doing?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean, delay is a tremendously effective strategy. There's
Speaker 1: a rule in behavioralism, fairly simple one which is very
Speaker 1: much procedural to some degree, but it's you know, if
Speaker 1: you want to do something, make it as easy as
Speaker 1: possible to do it right, And if you don't want
Speaker 1: to do something, make it as hard as possible to
Speaker 1: do it. Just give yourself that time for your deliberative
Speaker 1: system to sort of get its wits about it and
Speaker 1: go hold on a second here.
Speaker 2: And to recognize that the instinctual system is a very
Speaker 2: in the moment immediate system. Yes, so if you can
Speaker 2: move things away from it, you can make it harder
Speaker 2: for that system. You know, if you're fighting your instinctual
Speaker 2: system about you know, highly sugared foods, put the sugar
Speaker 2: foods under.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, you know. The other thing that's interesting
Speaker 1: about this is there are some theories out there around
Speaker 1: alcohol and around addiction in general, and one of the
Speaker 1: theories is that it's a learning disorder, meaning that for
Speaker 1: most of us, you know, if you were to drink
Speaker 1: like I used to drink, you have some amount of
Speaker 1: consequence that your Pavlovian system would very quickly be like,
Speaker 1: wait a second, this doesn't make sense, Like, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was nice, but holy mackerel, this really feels terrible, And
Speaker 1: that in addicts for some reason that mechanism isn't working well,
Speaker 1: meaning the Pavlovian system is not getting the message that
Speaker 1: this is a bad deal somehow, it's just simply not internalizing, Oh,
Speaker 1: this isn't good anymore. Until it's so far past the point,
Speaker 1: you know, the deliberative system can be very clear. It's
Speaker 1: like you're killing yourself. This is insane, but your Pavlovian
Speaker 1: system still thinks this is a good thing.
Speaker 2: Actually, I've done a lot of work on addiction. Is
Speaker 2: actually how I got started on this whole process was
Speaker 2: actually looking at addiction from new theoretical perspectives, and it
Speaker 2: turns out that addiction is a symptom, not a disease,
Speaker 2: that it's more like fever. There are many, many things
Speaker 2: that will lead you to addiction, and yes, your description
Speaker 2: of a Pavlovian system that gets over associated and connected
Speaker 2: is one of those, but there are other ones. For example,
Speaker 2: it turns out for a lot of people smoking is
Speaker 2: a procedural mistake, and it is that the nicotine turns
Speaker 2: out to activate procedural systems even when they're unpleasant, and
Speaker 2: that just has to do with the neurophysiology of human brains,
Speaker 2: and other ones can occur through relief of anxiety questions
Speaker 2: or one of my favorites was the deliberative idea that
Speaker 2: if I did this, I would be cool and therefore,
Speaker 2: you know, I would do well. Right. In fact, I've
Speaker 2: been doing a lot of work with anorexia, which is
Speaker 2: kind of different from an addiction. Again, I'm not a clinician,
Speaker 2: but I've been working with a lot of clinicians on this,
Speaker 2: and it looks like a lot of that problem is
Speaker 2: actually a deliberative problem of knowing exactly what you want
Speaker 2: and being wrong about your goals. And so people who
Speaker 2: think that if they are particularly thin, they will be
Speaker 2: more socially popular, or they will you know, be able
Speaker 2: to avoid something, and then they do these really deliberative,
Speaker 2: dangerous plans that they stick to. And the problem isn't
Speaker 2: that the deliberative system is weak or it's too strong.
Speaker 2: It's that there understanding of the goal of the structure
Speaker 2: of the world. It turns out actually being thin doesn't
Speaker 2: affect the popularity at all in this situation. You know,
Speaker 2: many of them if you actually look at the data,
Speaker 2: right that they just misunderstanding. You know, I always think
Speaker 2: of the you know, smoking was cool when I was
Speaker 2: a kid, and it doesn't make you cool anymore now,
Speaker 2: which has actually been a very nice change because now
Speaker 2: people don't try to be cool by starting to take
Speaker 2: up cigarettes.
Speaker 1: It is a very good change. Well, David, we are
Speaker 1: at the end of our time. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming back on the show and for a really
Speaker 1: interesting conversation about how we decide and how we choose
Speaker 1: how to act in the world.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. It's been a tremendous fun.
Speaker 2: It's great to be back. I really love these conversations.
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