Speaker 1: You give a cave man of sleeve of oreos, they're
Speaker 1: going to eat the whole thing. And that makes sense
Speaker 1: because they're never going to see that again. Right. But
Speaker 1: today we're just surrounded in food, and we still have
Speaker 1: a brain that goes like, hey, if you have a
Speaker 1: chance to overeat or eat food that is more calorie dense,
Speaker 1: like junk food, like do that. And you see this
Speaker 1: kind of manifests itself in people's waistlines today. You know,
Speaker 1: people are obviously, on average, a lot heavier than they
Speaker 1: were in the past.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen.
Speaker 1: Or empower us.
Speaker 2: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 2: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 2: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 2: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 2: takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 2: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 2: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 2: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 2: episode is Michael Easter, a writer and speaker who focuses
Speaker 2: on how humans can leverage modern science and evolutionary wisdom
Speaker 2: to perform better and live healthier lives. Michael's work has
Speaker 2: been implemented by professional sports teams, elite military units, fortune
Speaker 2: five hundred companies, and leading universities. Today, Michael and Eric
Speaker 2: discuss his book, The Scarcity Brain.
Speaker 3: Hi, Michael, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, glad to be here.
Speaker 3: I am really excited to have you on. We're going
Speaker 3: to be discussing your book, Scared City Brain. But before
Speaker 3: we get into that, let's start like we always do
Speaker 3: with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's
Speaker 3: talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there
Speaker 3: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 3: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 3: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 3: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 3: the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second.
Speaker 3: They look up at their grandparents. They say, well, which
Speaker 3: one wins? And the grandparent says the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: I mean, a lot of my work focuses on the
Speaker 1: general theme that in order to improve your life, you
Speaker 1: often have to do things that are challenging in the
Speaker 1: short term to get a long term benefit and reward
Speaker 1: in your life. And you know, I think the world
Speaker 1: is increasingly set up that it's harder to feed the
Speaker 1: good wolf if you will, It's so much easier to
Speaker 1: feed the bad wolf, right, Like, that's an easy thing
Speaker 1: to do. But I do think that, you know, we
Speaker 1: all know that the reward of feeding the good wolf
Speaker 1: is better for our long term health, well being, mindset,
Speaker 1: all those things.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so I'm going to ask you a question.
Speaker 3: I've asked a lot of people and gotten generally unsatisfactory answers,
Speaker 3: but I believe you are going to give me a
Speaker 3: satisfactory answer.
Speaker 1: No, no pressure.
Speaker 3: But it's this. You know, I've exercised for a long time.
Speaker 3: I'm not a young man. You know, I've got thousands
Speaker 3: of reps of exercise under my belt. Every single time
Speaker 3: I've done it, when I'm done, I'm like, that was great,
Speaker 3: I'm glad I did that, And yet with that much
Speaker 3: positive reinforcement, I still find it hard to do sometimes.
Speaker 3: Why is that.
Speaker 1: Humans evolved to avoid physical activity. We invented exercise basically
Speaker 1: after the Industrial Revolution. So if you think about the
Speaker 1: grant sweep of humanity, right, what we needed to survive
Speaker 1: was always scarce and it was hard to find. So
Speaker 1: energy was one of those things. Energy in the form
Speaker 1: of food. So if you were the type of person
Speaker 1: that wanted to burn energy for the sake of it,
Speaker 1: that is to say, exercise, you would have died off
Speaker 1: because there just wasn't enough food to do that. So
Speaker 1: over time, humans basically evolved to be lazy and avoid
Speaker 1: any extra activity that wasn't going to getting resources to
Speaker 1: Like this larger point, right, A stat that I love
Speaker 1: that highlights this, which I'm sure we'll talk about later
Speaker 1: the podcast, is that two percent of people take the
Speaker 1: stairs when there's also an escalator available. So what that
Speaker 1: tells me and shows me is that we really are
Speaker 1: wired to do the next easiest, most comfortable thing and
Speaker 1: avoid extra movement. Right. We just do that unconsciously. So
Speaker 1: long story short, It's like for two and a half
Speaker 1: million years of time of generations, avoiding exercise or any
Speaker 1: extra movement, it kept you alive. And we have all
Speaker 1: these discomforts. Our body throws at us psychologically physically to
Speaker 1: keep us away from moving any more than we have to,
Speaker 1: and exercise is a form of that. So, like if
Speaker 1: you went into every workout being like I absolutely want
Speaker 1: to do this every single time, and you just kept
Speaker 1: going and going like still today, that you'd probably incur
Speaker 1: some downside's like you want some sort of resistance going
Speaker 1: into that, or else the human species would not have
Speaker 1: lived on.
Speaker 3: So is it safe to say that things that take
Speaker 3: that much energy expenditure don't end up becoming what we
Speaker 3: would truly consider a habit, meaning it happens automatically every time.
Speaker 3: Is it really a sense of these things that you
Speaker 3: really have to summon a lot of energy for there's
Speaker 3: always going to be some degree of resistance there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there probably will be some degree of resistance, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if something is challenging. Exercise is a great example. Healthy
Speaker 1: eating is harder than unhealthy eating because we're also wired
Speaker 1: to value and crave foods that are more calorie dense
Speaker 1: than those that are less calorie dense. Right, kind of
Speaker 1: back like the exercise thing. For two and a half
Speaker 1: million years of time, it always made sense to overread
Speaker 1: if you had the opportunity, Right, you give a cave
Speaker 1: man of sleeve of oreos, they're going to eat the
Speaker 1: whole thing, And that makes sense because they're never going
Speaker 1: to see that again. Right. But today we're just surrounded
Speaker 1: in food, and we still have a brain that goes like, hey,
Speaker 1: if you have a chance to overeat or eat food
Speaker 1: that is more calorie dense, like junk food, like, do that.
Speaker 1: And you see this kind of manifests itself in people's
Speaker 1: waistlines today. You know, people are obviously, on average a
Speaker 1: lot heavier than they were in the past.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Listener,
Speaker 3: while you were listening to that, what resonated with you?
Speaker 3: What one thing to feed your good wolf comes to mind?
Speaker 3: If the thing that came to your mind was more
Speaker 3: time for stillness, or you've tried meditation before and you
Speaker 3: really haven't liked it, then I want to give you
Speaker 3: a quick tip that might make it better for you.
Speaker 3: And it's simply to stop expecting that you're not going
Speaker 3: to have thoughts. Nearly everyone has this expectation that they're
Speaker 3: going to sit down and meditate and they're going to
Speaker 3: stop having thoughts. And when they stop having thoughts, that
Speaker 3: means they're doing it well. But no one does that,
Speaker 3: and so we end up feeling like we're failing all
Speaker 3: of the time. Every three seconds, failed again, failed again.
Speaker 3: We develop a relationship with meditation that is aversive. So
Speaker 3: if you want to stop dreading meditation and actually find
Speaker 3: it relaxing, check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf
Speaker 3: dot me slash calm. In it, I walk you through
Speaker 3: my process to engage with meditation in a new way,
Speaker 3: and a lot of people have found it really helpful.
Speaker 3: That's Goodwolf dot me slash calm. So you mentioned the
Speaker 3: two percent stat You're wearing a hat that says two
Speaker 3: percent that orients towards a way of approaching the world
Speaker 3: that you call being a two percenter, And you say
Speaker 3: this in your substack about this, You say, you know,
Speaker 3: we all tend to think of the big things that
Speaker 3: we do as being important, but you say what we
Speaker 3: do in all our other moments is the most powerful.
Speaker 3: The littlest choices make the biggest impact. I mean my
Speaker 3: favorite phrase is little by little, a little becomes a lot,
Speaker 3: both positively and negatively. Right, And so talk about other
Speaker 3: ways besides taking this versus the escalator. What are other
Speaker 3: sort of small choices that we can make that over
Speaker 3: time are going to be very beneficial for us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. So, yeah, the substack is
Speaker 1: called two percent after that stat which totally changed my
Speaker 1: thinking about humans and behavior. Ye. I actually have a
Speaker 1: whole written piece that's called the two percent Manifesto up
Speaker 1: on the site that'll dive into a ton of this,
Speaker 1: and the site is twopct dot com. But to answer
Speaker 1: your question, I think it manifests itself relationship wise. Right,
Speaker 1: think of how many people text today instead of call
Speaker 1: because a call is more intimate. Right, you have to
Speaker 1: be more open. It might take a little bit more time.
Speaker 1: You don't know what to expect. You can't control all
Speaker 1: the variables. But there's plenty of research that says the
Speaker 1: simple act of picking up the phone and calling someone
Speaker 1: it creates better social bonds, more intimate connections. And when
Speaker 1: you put that in the context of the fact that
Speaker 1: we're facing a loneliness crisis, like pick up the phone
Speaker 1: it'll be totally worth it, not to mention, you'll honestly
Speaker 1: save time in the long run, especially if you're like
Speaker 1: asking the person the question. So socially it affects us.
Speaker 1: I would also say it affects us food wise. So
Speaker 1: when you look at a lot of the research, most
Speaker 1: eating decisions today are not actually driven by true physiological hunger.
Speaker 1: So more than eighty percent of eating is not because
Speaker 1: of real hunger. It's because it's a certain time at
Speaker 1: a clock, and we always eat at that time. It's
Speaker 1: because we're stressed out, like stress eating is a huge thing,
Speaker 1: and it's because we're bored something like that. Right, So
Speaker 1: I think that learning to be okay with hunger can
Speaker 1: teach you something about physiological hunger and how much food
Speaker 1: you actually need to feel well and perform well. I
Speaker 1: think it extends to how we spend our time and attention.
Speaker 1: So when you look at why people pick up their phone,
Speaker 1: more than ninety percent of pickups things ninety six percent
Speaker 1: are not because a person got a notification. They're because
Speaker 1: they felt something internal, usually boredom. We've just become totally
Speaker 1: boredom resistant today and we just have this easy, effortless
Speaker 1: escape from it in our phone. But if you can
Speaker 1: just sit with that boredom, if you can be like
Speaker 1: the two percent mentality, right, I'm going to choose this
Speaker 1: short term discomfort to get a long term benefit. There's
Speaker 1: all this crazy research that shows that boredom is one
Speaker 1: of the best ways to increase creativity. Some of the
Speaker 1: best ideas come out of being bored. Not to mention
Speaker 1: it gives your brain a break from all the screens
Speaker 1: that we spend our time on. We spend more than
Speaker 1: thirteen hours a day engage with digital media. This is
Speaker 1: all new stuff in the grand scheme of time and space.
Speaker 1: People spend ninety three percent of their time indoors, and
Speaker 1: it's like, well, why the hell's that. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: because the outdoors is cold or it's too hot, or
Speaker 1: it might be raining or it's windy, and it's less
Speaker 1: predictable than my you know, sanitary box that I live in.
Speaker 1: And so even something as simple as going outside is
Speaker 1: one of the best hacks for mental health and can
Speaker 1: prove mental health. But we just don't do it all
Speaker 1: that often. So it's like, how can I take this idea,
Speaker 1: this two percent idea, like being the two percent of
Speaker 1: people that's going to select that thing that's going to
Speaker 1: be a little more uncomfortable in the short term, but
Speaker 1: it's going to give me a long term reward. How
Speaker 1: can I apply that just across the board, and you
Speaker 1: can find tons of ways. I've written a lot about this,
Speaker 1: so and then to answer your call up quest to that,
Speaker 1: how do these things add up? And I'll give you
Speaker 1: a really interesting stat So, when you look at how
Speaker 1: people burn calories across the day, we think of exercises
Speaker 1: like the big thing that's burning our calories. Right, if
Speaker 1: you count out the calorie burn from just keeping your
Speaker 1: body alive, which is called BMR, you find that actually
Speaker 1: just the everyday movement you do in daily life actually
Speaker 1: burns significantly more calories than workouts, like two to three times.
Speaker 1: And so there's research from the Mail Clinic that basically
Speaker 1: found that people who just move more throughout the day,
Speaker 1: that's like taking the stairs, that's like parking the farthest
Speaker 1: spot away every time it's like, oh, I need to
Speaker 1: go down to get a coffee and the coffee shop
Speaker 1: is a half mile away, Like I'm just gonna walk,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to drive or whatever it is, Right,
Speaker 1: they burn more than eight hundred extra calories across a day.
Speaker 1: Let's equivalent to like an eight mile run. I mean,
Speaker 1: how many people just go out for an eight mile run?
Speaker 1: We don't, right, We go to the gym for like
Speaker 1: thirty minutes, and we think that like that's going to
Speaker 1: be enough. And it's like I'm not saying don't go
Speaker 1: to the gym at all. I am saying go to
Speaker 1: the gym, but I am also saying, how can you
Speaker 1: weave in more incidental movement into your day because that's
Speaker 1: going to have a larger effect on your health span
Speaker 1: and lifespan and general fitness than just doing your whatever
Speaker 1: amount of time in the gym and then sitting. It's
Speaker 1: like we really just kind of have partioned off, like
Speaker 1: we do this weird thing where we have like this
Speaker 1: is the healthy part of my day and life and
Speaker 1: then the rest of it is like sedentary or kind
Speaker 1: of unhealthy, and or it's like January is my healthy month,
Speaker 1: and then I fell off the wagon in February whatever
Speaker 1: it is, right, And so I think we just need
Speaker 1: to start thinking, like how can I find little wins
Speaker 1: throughout the day rather than trying to take on these
Speaker 1: heroics Because heroics don't seem to last.
Speaker 3: Right, Right, Heroics don't last, and heroics aren't available for
Speaker 3: a lot of people, right. A lot of people don't
Speaker 3: have ninety minutes a day to say, go exercise, but
Speaker 3: they do have lots of little five minutes and lots
Speaker 3: of little on the way to places. It's interesting how
Speaker 3: much environment plays a role too, because I was in
Speaker 3: New York City recently and it was cold out and
Speaker 3: we were outside walking all day every day, and then
Speaker 3: I get home to and it's cold, and all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, I'm like, it's a little bit too cold
Speaker 3: out there, and I suddenly don't want to go out.
Speaker 3: It's so interesting to me how, like you said, we
Speaker 3: get into these sort of ways of being that need interrupted.
Speaker 3: The other thing that you were saying there also is
Speaker 3: you know, we had an exercise scientist on years ago.
Speaker 3: I mean it's been probably seven years ago, but I
Speaker 3: remember it clear as day because she basically said the
Speaker 3: rule is move as often as you can in any
Speaker 3: way that you can. I mean, that was it. That
Speaker 3: was the whole sum of her overall research and everything,
Speaker 3: was that that's the best way to go. Just move
Speaker 3: when you can. However you can and ideally in ways
Speaker 3: you like to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. In the comfort crisis, I talk a lot
Speaker 1: about with environments changing. It's just our environments have changed
Speaker 1: so much, so fast in the grand scheme of time
Speaker 1: and space. It's like we've really engineered movement out of
Speaker 1: our days. We've engineered more hyperchloric food into our days.
Speaker 1: We've engineered connection out of our days. Like we've engineered
Speaker 1: all the good stuff out of our days and engineered
Speaker 1: in stuff that isn't necessarily good for us. And I mean,
Speaker 1: if you just take a look at how much people
Speaker 1: moved in the past compared to today. Since we're on the
Speaker 1: topic of exercise, people used to walk at least twenty
Speaker 1: thousand steps a day and about ten miles a day.
Speaker 1: Now the average person is taken, you know, anywhere from
Speaker 1: four thousand to seven thousand steps per day. And the
Speaker 1: average person in the past used to do what the
Speaker 1: government classifies as moderate exercise, and they gauge this using
Speaker 1: accelerometers and all these different things. On Hunter gathers for
Speaker 1: about three hours and twenty minutes three hours and twenty
Speaker 1: minutes of exercise a day. Right now, the average person
Speaker 1: is like thirty minutes three times a week, right, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just crazy how much less we move.
Speaker 1: And it's not like you know, I think people sometimes
Speaker 1: think of these people in the past and be like, man,
Speaker 1: these are just like these heroic people. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: you would do the same damn thing. It's just you
Speaker 1: live in a built environment now, and so you don't do.
Speaker 3: That, right. Yeah, environment is so hugely important in the
Speaker 3: choices that we make. All right, let's change direction here
Speaker 3: and talk about your latest book, Scarcity Brain. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: you say that you've come across this concept of something
Speaker 3: called the scarcity loop, and you say it's the serial
Speaker 3: killer of moderation. Yes, I'm a big believer in moderation,
Speaker 3: I guess, even though having been an addict, maybe I
Speaker 3: recognize the importance of moderation. But I just loved that line,
Speaker 3: the serial killer of moderation. Tell me about the scarcity loop.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I learned about it interestingly enough, because I live
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas and watching people play slot machines for
Speaker 1: hours and hours and hours at a time and going
Speaker 1: why would you keep doing that when everyone knows the
Speaker 1: house always wins, Like, what the hell is going on? Right? So,
Speaker 1: because I'm a journalist. When I ask a question like that,
Speaker 1: I don't just go you know, and then move on,
Speaker 1: like I actually try and figure out the answer. And
Speaker 1: so I start talking all these different gaming researchers and
Speaker 1: people in casino industry and blah blah blah. Long story short,
Speaker 1: this leads me to this place on the edge of
Speaker 1: town that is a fully working, brand new cutting edge
Speaker 1: because you know, but it's used entirely for human behavior research.
Speaker 1: So it is like a living, working casino laboratory, and
Speaker 1: it's funded by the casino industry and a lot of
Speaker 1: big tech companies. I think seventy two different companies are
Speaker 1: on board providing all sorts of funding to this place.
Speaker 1: And so this is where I talk to a slot
Speaker 1: machine designer who explains to me basically how a slot
Speaker 1: machine works, why it's so good at hooking people, and
Speaker 1: by the way, they really are. Slot machines make more
Speaker 1: money than books, movies, and music combined, those three industries
Speaker 1: combined every single year.
Speaker 3: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's amazing, and it's horrifying. So a slot machine
Speaker 1: works by having these three parts, which is what I
Speaker 1: call a scarcity loop. It's got opportunity unpredictable rewards and
Speaker 1: quick repeatability. Think of it as a looping behavior. Okay, so opportunity,
Speaker 1: you have an opportunity to get something of value. With
Speaker 1: slot machines it's money, right, unpredictable rewards. You know you'll
Speaker 1: get that thing of value at some point if you
Speaker 1: keep doing the behavior, but you don't know when you're
Speaker 1: going to get the thing of value, and you don't
Speaker 1: know how valuable it's going to be. So with a
Speaker 1: slot machine, you play a game and you could lose,
Speaker 1: you could win some money, you could win a ton
Speaker 1: of money, right, crazy range of outcomes, and then three
Speaker 1: quick repeatability. You can just repeat the behavior immediately. There's
Speaker 1: like zero pause in between repeating the behavior. So with
Speaker 1: slot machines, people play about nine hundred games an hour. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason that this is important and why the book
Speaker 1: starts in the casino lab and learning this is because
Speaker 1: once you understand this behavior loop, you start to see
Speaker 1: why people get hooked on all sorts of stuff that
Speaker 1: seems counterproductive and dumb. All these bad habits we have
Speaker 1: a lot of them have elements of the scarcity loop. So,
Speaker 1: for example, this is what makes social media work. Right,
Speaker 1: It's got those same three parts. You got an opportunity
Speaker 1: for some social likes, a boost to find something entertaining.
Speaker 1: You don't know how many likes you're gonna get. You
Speaker 1: don't know when you're gonna find the real that's gonna
Speaker 1: make you crack up. And then you just keep scrolling
Speaker 1: and scrolling and scrolling because of infinite scroll. Right. That's
Speaker 1: in Instagram, It's in Twitter, it's in TikTok, and name
Speaker 1: any social media app. The loop is being put in
Speaker 1: personal finance apps so people will do more trading faster.
Speaker 1: It explains the rise of sports betting and how that's
Speaker 1: really just taken off. It was like this combination of
Speaker 1: legality and then putting it in cell phones and leveraging
Speaker 1: the loop, the mided tick off. It's what makes dating
Speaker 1: apps work, right, opportunity to find a mate, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I just matched with someone being jack
Speaker 1: pot swipe swipe, swipe, swipespe Right. And so when you
Speaker 1: start to look at how the world is constructed, like
Speaker 1: it's even in elements of our food system. I talk
Speaker 1: to a guy who's a executive for junk food companies,
Speaker 1: and he talked about how Yeah, we totally use the
Speaker 1: quick repeatability thing in our food. I mean it just
Speaker 1: starts to show up everywhere and it is unparallel but
Speaker 1: pushing people into these quick repeat behaviors that are usually
Speaker 1: engaging in the short term or at least distracting in
Speaker 1: the short term, but that can often lead to long
Speaker 1: term regrets or long term problems. Yeah.
Speaker 3: You quote one of the people in the snack food
Speaker 3: industry saying there's three v's in the snacking world, value, variety,
Speaker 3: in velocity, which is exactly the three things of the
Speaker 3: scarcity loop. So you're talking about all the modern applications
Speaker 3: of this scarcity loop, but this is something that is
Speaker 3: built into us right from evolutionary history. So explain the
Speaker 3: origins of why we get so lost in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's funny because after I talk to the
Speaker 1: slot machine designer, like he's showing me how the slot
Speaker 1: machine works and blah blah blah, and then I asked him,
Speaker 1: I'm like, why do people find this so captivating? And
Speaker 1: he just looks at me and he goes, Dude, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I just make machines that make a lot
Speaker 1: of money, Like, I don't know why people play him right.
Speaker 1: So I end up talking to this guy who's a
Speaker 1: behavioral psychologist at the University of Kentucky. His name is
Speaker 1: Thomas Entl. He's like eighty something years old. He's been
Speaker 1: doing research since the late nineteen sixties, and he like
Speaker 1: knows everything. And he told me it's basically a piece
Speaker 1: of evolutionary hardware in our brain that helped us find
Speaker 1: food every day when we were hunter gatherers on the savannah.
Speaker 1: So I want you to picture us looking for food, right,
Speaker 1: every single day you had to find food. You either
Speaker 1: had to find it in the form of gathering you
Speaker 1: were like walking out looking for trees that have food,
Speaker 1: or you have to find it from hunting. Right, you
Speaker 1: have to find an animal that it's on the move.
Speaker 1: So you go to one place you think is going
Speaker 1: to have food, doesn't have food. So you go to
Speaker 1: another place you think it's going to have food. No
Speaker 1: food there. You go to another place, jackpot place has
Speaker 1: all kinds of food. So yay, everyone's fat and happy
Speaker 1: for only a moment, though, because then you got to
Speaker 1: repeat that behavior, maybe the same day for lunch or dinner,
Speaker 1: definitely the next day for food again. The next day, right,
Speaker 1: so like literally our life finding food every single day,
Speaker 1: we fell into this scarcity loop of finding food and
Speaker 1: so our sort of attraction to it and these random
Speaker 1: rewards embedded in it, and this like quickly repeating the behavior.
Speaker 1: It kept us alive for all of time. And now
Speaker 1: that architecture simply gets applied to all these different places
Speaker 1: in our life and is really unparallel at capturing our attention,
Speaker 1: and it works in every single animal. All wild animals
Speaker 1: still have to find food scarcely loop style, and so
Speaker 1: like this guy Thomas and Tal, I mean he can
Speaker 1: get pigeons to fall into it with like these slot
Speaker 1: machine games he makes them. I mean, you see it
Speaker 1: in all animals. It's really fascinating. I think really the
Speaker 1: key is that it's always been a part of us,
Speaker 1: but Las Vegas really figured out how it works and
Speaker 1: how to work it and how to just really optimize
Speaker 1: it starting in about nineteen eighty, and other industries took
Speaker 1: notice and they went, why are people playing those slot
Speaker 1: machines so often all the time now, and why are
Speaker 1: they making so much money? What the hell is going
Speaker 1: on there? And they just pulled elements of it.
Speaker 3: So we've got this scarcity loop that's sort of embedded
Speaker 3: in US, but has some certain limits on it evolutionarily,
Speaker 3: right as in like there isn't like crazy amounts of food. Yes,
Speaker 3: there is repeatability, but you don't repeat it two seconds later,
Speaker 3: right right. Whereas these modern scarcity loops, we know, for example,
Speaker 3: that our food is designed to be super satiating and stimulating.
Speaker 3: We know that we can repeat these things really really fast.
Speaker 3: And so this scarcity loop, if I understand you, is
Speaker 3: built into us evolutionarily. But our modern world has figured
Speaker 3: out how to essentially soup it up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great word to describe it. A modern
Speaker 1: world has really figuredigured out the optimal schedule of unpredictable rewards.
Speaker 1: So about forty five to fifty five percent of the
Speaker 1: time getting something is optimal in slot machines, for example,
Speaker 1: But they've also found ways to tweak it. So, for example,
Speaker 1: slot machines really started taking off when they started being
Speaker 1: embedded with this thing called a win disguised as a loss.
Speaker 1: So this is when you say you bet a dollar
Speaker 1: and you play a slot machine game, And when you
Speaker 1: play a slot machine game, it's no longer just a
Speaker 1: single line of symbols that you're trying to line up,
Speaker 1: Like it's all these different combinations of symbols you can get.
Speaker 3: It could be like I don't even understand them. I
Speaker 3: see one and I'm like, I don't know what's happening
Speaker 3: here at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're crazy now. But the long story short is
Speaker 1: that by doing this, they can do what are called
Speaker 1: losses disguised as wins, and that basically just means you
Speaker 1: quote unquote, win less money than you bet. So you
Speaker 1: might bet, say a dollar, but you quote unquote win
Speaker 1: fifty cents. But here's the thing. It sounds ridiculous, but
Speaker 1: when you actually play the game, the machine cues you
Speaker 1: to show you that something good has happened. You still
Speaker 1: get the lights, you still see the money go up.
Speaker 1: And scientists will study this. They'll do fMRI neuroscience stuff
Speaker 1: and find that people's brain reacts the exact same to
Speaker 1: a loss, discusses a win as they do a real win,
Speaker 1: and it compels people to play the game for longer
Speaker 1: and makes it more entertaining. And you see this, for
Speaker 1: example in social media. So when you go on to
Speaker 1: social media, usually there's like this delay, right, you wait
Speaker 1: to see if you've got an update, like they could
Speaker 1: tell you immediately. The delay is programmed in to tell
Speaker 1: you how many, say notifications you got on Twitter or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, right, and then when you open that up,
Speaker 1: you're like, well, how many is it going to actually be?
Speaker 1: Is it one? Is it one million? Did I get
Speaker 1: two likes? Did I get two million likes? Right, there's
Speaker 1: this kind of like there's losses disguise of wins. There's
Speaker 1: real wins. I mean, it's really just like a taking
Speaker 1: of the casino tactics. Yeah. And then also the speed.
Speaker 1: A good example from slot machines is that when they
Speaker 1: removed the handles on them, people could gain faster, and
Speaker 1: they went from playing four hundred games an hour to
Speaker 1: nine hundred games an hour. Similar thing happened when social
Speaker 1: media started using infinite scroll. Screen time just went through
Speaker 1: the roof and people's sessions lengthened. All these different things happen.
Speaker 1: So generally, the faster you can get a person to
Speaker 1: repeat a behavior, the faster they will repeat a behavior.
Speaker 1: So engineers now know this, and so they go, Okay,
Speaker 1: how can we get someone to do this quicker? Even
Speaker 1: a lot of online shopping places, for example, are trying
Speaker 1: to really push people into one click buying, because what
Speaker 1: happens when you go kart. Yes, i'd like to check out,
Speaker 1: here's my address information, here's how i'd like it shipped.
Speaker 1: By the time you hit the shipping thing, you're like,
Speaker 1: do I really want a new pair of running shoes?
Speaker 1: Do I really need this? But if you have one
Speaker 1: click buying, it's just you have like no time to
Speaker 1: think about whether this is a good decision or not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny as you're saying that, I was thinking
Speaker 3: back to when Amazon really sort of got going, and
Speaker 3: this is early two thousands, and I remember how just
Speaker 3: the fact that I could buy books that easily, and
Speaker 3: again there was no one click buying then, right, but
Speaker 3: I didn't have to go to a bookstore. It nearly
Speaker 3: ruined me the fact that in three minutes I could
Speaker 3: have another book on its way to me. Right. But
Speaker 3: it shows how we sort of keep up in the
Speaker 3: game because now they think that's too slow. Right In
Speaker 3: the same way with delivery times, like you know, before
Speaker 3: i'd be like, oh, we're going to get this thing
Speaker 3: in like three days. That's amazing. Now it's like it's
Speaker 3: not here in an hour, right, Like what's the problem totally.
Speaker 1: And there's even a lot of sites that are using
Speaker 1: unpredictable rewards within shopping, so putting like the slot machine
Speaker 1: features or a spinning wheel for bargains and m hm though,
Speaker 1: like Tamu is a great example of the casino vacation
Speaker 1: of shopping. It's all these type of random rewards and
Speaker 1: bargains and discounts, and I mean those spinning wheels. Some
Speaker 1: people are like, oh, this stupid. Those increase conversion rates
Speaker 1: by sevenfold.
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: If you give someone a spinning wheel and they think
Speaker 1: they've won like the whatever jackpot bargain, they're seven times
Speaker 1: more likely to make a purchase. Crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a huge number.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 3: Now let's pause for a quick good Wolf reminder, and
Speaker 3: this one is on meditation. If while you're meditating your
Speaker 3: mind wanders, you probably, like most people, treat that as
Speaker 3: a moment of failure, like, ugh, my mind wandered again.
Speaker 3: But let's flip that and instead treat that as a
Speaker 3: moment of celebration because in that moment, your mind actually
Speaker 3: woke up and you were mindful of the fact that
Speaker 3: your mind wandered. So it's a win. So if we
Speaker 3: can flip that right on its head and say, oh,
Speaker 3: good job, brain. We actually make it more likely that
Speaker 3: a our brain is going to do it more often
Speaker 3: because we're training it, and b that we're going to
Speaker 3: enjoy it more. And specifically, it's about how to make
Speaker 3: you not dread meditation so much and actually find it relaxing.
Speaker 3: Check out my free meditation guide at goodwolf dot me
Speaker 3: slash calm. So I want to get to how we
Speaker 3: can work against this scarcity loop here shortly, but before
Speaker 3: we do, I'd like to explore it from a couple
Speaker 3: different angles, like you do in your book. And the
Speaker 3: first place I'd like to spend a little bit of
Speaker 3: time is you say, at the extreme end of scarcity
Speaker 3: brain lies addiction, and listeners of the show know that
Speaker 3: I have an addiction in alcoholism history, I was a
Speaker 3: homeless heroin addict at twenty four. But you have a
Speaker 3: similar background at least struggles with alcohol. So talk to
Speaker 3: me about scarcity brain in the context of addiction.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I've been sober for nine years and my
Speaker 1: thing was alcohol. And when you think about how most
Speaker 1: of what we needed to survive in the past was
Speaker 1: scarce and hard to find, and we now, how have
Speaker 1: an abundance of all these things were built to crave.
Speaker 1: I think that addictive substances absolutely fall into kind of
Speaker 1: what we were just talking about, how everything has been
Speaker 1: strained and then distilled. So when you think about the
Speaker 1: past and addictive substances, we would usually use the substances
Speaker 1: that we now consider addictive and drugs as tools. So
Speaker 1: I'll give you an example of alcohol. So humans evolved
Speaker 1: to have sort of a taste for alcohol because it
Speaker 1: helped us find food. So fruit would fall from trees
Speaker 1: and it would begin to ferment, right, and it would
Speaker 1: give us this scent and be like, oh, yeah, we
Speaker 1: can smell it better because it's fermenting, and then we
Speaker 1: would go eat it and it would have these low
Speaker 1: levels of alcohol, right, But we would find food and
Speaker 1: we would get a ton of sugar from that. By
Speaker 1: the way, the alcohol even killed some of the germs
Speaker 1: that would be on the food. And at the same time, though,
Speaker 1: it's not like this fruit that was rotting was like
Speaker 1: Jack Daniels, right, It's like a very very low level
Speaker 1: of alcohol in the fruit. Same thing goes for say,
Speaker 1: coca leaves, which is what cocaine is made for. Right,
Speaker 1: So coca leaves have this very very low level of
Speaker 1: the compound cocaine, and still in countries in the Andes
Speaker 1: will chew it because it helps with focus, it helps
Speaker 1: ward off altitude sickness, for example. But it's like you
Speaker 1: don't really feel anything from it, right, But we've managed
Speaker 1: to and this is a story with all substances, We've
Speaker 1: managed to sort of take the psychoactive compound whatever it
Speaker 1: might be, and really distill it down into its strongest form,
Speaker 1: and so we can get just the like high from that. Right,
Speaker 1: it's just this super concentrated high. So it's like this
Speaker 1: thing that we used to use as a tool for
Speaker 1: all the time, we now have an ability to have
Speaker 1: it be this thing that allows us to escape. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think there's plenty of people obviously that
Speaker 1: can use alcohol and even drugs to some extent, illegal
Speaker 1: drugs without repercussion, right, they don't have a problem with it.
Speaker 1: But I think that you find some people I can
Speaker 1: I can speak for myself, who use it as a
Speaker 1: way to just totally escape and deal with their problems.
Speaker 1: And obviously that you know, comes with some downsides, Like
Speaker 1: it came with some downsides to me personally, and I
Speaker 1: can tell you that I've found that addiction definitely falls
Speaker 1: into the loop as well. So for me, when I
Speaker 1: would drink, it was like I had an opportunity to
Speaker 1: improve my life in the short term because nothing would
Speaker 1: fix my problem, Like the first drink right, doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what kind of problem I have. If I just have
Speaker 1: a drink, I'm good to go. Obviously, I could never
Speaker 1: have one drink right. My favorite drink was always the
Speaker 1: next one right, right, And then there's unpredictable rewards. I
Speaker 1: didn't know what the hell was gonna happen. I just
Speaker 1: know that if I start drinking, I'm gonna have a
Speaker 1: more interesting night, could be in a good way, could
Speaker 1: be in a bad way than I would if I
Speaker 1: was sober, right, and then repeatability. It's like after that,
Speaker 1: I'm just waiting until I can have the next drink again.
Speaker 1: And I think you also see it in illegal drugs too,
Speaker 1: with like even getting the drugs, it's like you don't
Speaker 1: know where you're gonna get it. You don't know who
Speaker 1: you're gonna get it from, you don't know how strong
Speaker 1: it's gonna be, you don't know how much it's gonna cost.
Speaker 1: You know if you're gonna get in trouble along the way. Like,
Speaker 1: there's all these unpredictable things about drug use, and you
Speaker 1: do tend to find that when certain drugs are legalized
Speaker 1: or at least controlled and put in doses that are predictable,
Speaker 1: addiction rates do seem to fall.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a ton of ways I would love to
Speaker 3: follow that particular question, because we're seeing interesting things, you know,
Speaker 3: with marijuana being legalized and Oregon decriminalizing and headed back
Speaker 3: towards criminalization, and black markets in California for marijuana. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of interesting things happening in that space. But
Speaker 3: that's not really where I want to go. What I
Speaker 3: would love to talk a little bit about is you
Speaker 3: talk about you know, over the last century, we've sort
Speaker 3: of ended up with two dominant schools of thought of addiction. Right.
Speaker 3: The one is sort of the very classic one, meaning
Speaker 3: you're an alcoholic or an addict because you're a bad person,
Speaker 3: you're weak, you're of lower moral character, the classics, right,
Speaker 3: And then the more recent is this idea of it
Speaker 3: being a disease, and they call it lots of different things, right,
Speaker 3: but it's there's something in your brain that gets broken
Speaker 3: as a result of this, and I think the disease
Speaker 3: model was actually a really good step away from the
Speaker 3: more failing model, Like it moved us a certain direction,
Speaker 3: and then there's a direction that I think has been
Speaker 3: hugely beneficial. And like any model, it has its own
Speaker 3: limitations to it. Right, you go on to say something
Speaker 3: that I think is really important about the broken brain idea. Right,
Speaker 3: Because the broken brain idea, the disease model says you
Speaker 3: don't have a choice, right in alcoholics, anonymous right, twelve
Speaker 3: step programs. You know I'm powerless over alcohol, Right, I
Speaker 3: have no ability. But you say something about the broken
Speaker 3: brain model. You say that, in essence, the broken brain
Speaker 3: model is right. Addiction is not a choice. Instead, it's
Speaker 3: a summation of repeated choices that make a different choice
Speaker 3: harder to make for environmental, biological, and historical reasons. It's
Speaker 3: deep learning. And I just loved that idea. I've talked
Speaker 3: to some of the same people on the show that
Speaker 3: you've had in your book. But say a little bit
Speaker 3: more about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think the first things versus that
Speaker 1: I agree with you about the disease model and the
Speaker 1: intent behind it. Right, it came up in a time
Speaker 1: where we're throwing all these people in jail because they're
Speaker 1: bad people, because they are addicted to drugs, and we
Speaker 1: think that that's going to like solve their problems. It's
Speaker 1: like no, right, And so I think it's well intentioned.
Speaker 1: I think that it's downside, though, is that there's plenty
Speaker 1: of examples where people are able to make choices. So
Speaker 1: a classic example is the soldiers in Vietnam. There's this
Speaker 1: huge spike in addiction rates to heroin in Vietnam in
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War, and so President Nixon he launches this
Speaker 1: program called Operation Golden Flow. And the deal is pretty simple.
Speaker 1: It's that if people who are addicted, our soldiers who
Speaker 1: are addicted to heroin want to come back to the
Speaker 1: United States and leave war, they have to pass a
Speaker 1: urine test. So something like fifteen to twenty percent of
Speaker 1: our soldiers in Vietnam we're addicted to heroin. So you
Speaker 1: would think, okay, like if people can't make a choice here,
Speaker 1: and it's one hundred percent of choice, we would have
Speaker 1: left fifteen to twenty percent of our soldiers in Vietnam, right. Well,
Speaker 1: what ended up happening was complete opposite. Every single soldier
Speaker 1: passed the dr in test and when they got home,
Speaker 1: the relapse rates among the people who were addicted were
Speaker 1: exceedingly low. They were like five percent, and the five
Speaker 1: percent who relapse tended to be drug users before the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War. So what this suggests is that one people
Speaker 1: have a choice, and that two elements of addiction may
Speaker 1: also be driven by our environment. Back to the environment, right,
Speaker 1: And so then it's like, Okay, what was Vietnam like
Speaker 1: during the war, Well, that sounds like hell. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if I was in that hell, I might be wanted
Speaker 1: to do some drugs too to escape. And so I
Speaker 1: think that you see, addiction rates tend to rise and
Speaker 1: fall based on people's external and internal conditions. So I
Speaker 1: really see addiction as a solution for people who are
Speaker 1: experiencing problems. Unfortunately, using a substance provides a solution in
Speaker 1: the short term, like I said, with my drinking, right,
Speaker 1: that'll solve a problem faster than anything. But the problem
Speaker 1: is that it creates long term issues. Right. So unfortunately,
Speaker 1: when I drank, it's not like I would go, you know,
Speaker 1: donate my time to charities and also donate my money
Speaker 1: and read great books like I did stupid shit that
Speaker 1: ended up half ruin in my life, right, not tends
Speaker 1: to be the story for most people. But I do
Speaker 1: think that knowing that there is an element of choice
Speaker 1: is helpful for people. It's not like people will say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a choice. It's like, well, that really really simplifies it,
Speaker 1: you know. Yes, it's like in a way, yes, but
Speaker 1: like that is ninety nine percent right, one hundred percent wrong.
Speaker 1: It's like feels a choice. No one would make the choice.
Speaker 1: It's like, why is the person doing the behavior in
Speaker 1: the first place, And it's usually because it's solving a
Speaker 1: short term problem. That is this massive problem that's going
Speaker 1: to have to take all these different means of solving
Speaker 1: and by the way, it's really going to suck as
Speaker 1: you solve it in the long term, right, And so
Speaker 1: it's super complicated. But I do think that that also
Speaker 1: gives people a little bit of hope. So when you
Speaker 1: look at this really interesting study out if I think
Speaker 1: the University of New Mexico, and it basically found that
Speaker 1: the top reason people relapsed it was a study of
Speaker 1: alcoholics for about a year, it was because they believed
Speaker 1: wholeheartedly in the disease model, and they went, well, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, if I have a disease, and I asked
Speaker 1: my doctor, how do I cure this thing? And my
Speaker 1: doctor goes, well, there's no cure for it. Why would
Speaker 1: I even try? Like it's a foregone conclusion that I'm
Speaker 1: going to relax, right, And so I do think the
Speaker 1: message that you know, there is a little bit of hope.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of hope actually, and there's also some
Speaker 1: personal agency, but also realizing like it's going to be hard,
Speaker 1: and it's going to take work, and it's going to
Speaker 1: take asking for help. You're going to have to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: I need help from people. You know, it's not always
Speaker 1: going to be easy. But I do think you see
Speaker 1: a much brighter outlook too. For addiction.
Speaker 3: I agree with you. I mean, the great mystery to
Speaker 3: me is why some people recover and others don't. Right.
Speaker 3: We can point to things, we can look at people's environments, right,
Speaker 3: we can look at the social capital that they have.
Speaker 3: There's lots of explanations, right, But at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, there does seem to me to be something
Speaker 3: mysterious about it. Because you'll see some people who have
Speaker 3: all the trauma in the world, none of the social capital,
Speaker 3: none of the support, and they get sober. And then
Speaker 3: you'll see other people who have all the support in
Speaker 3: the world, all the social capital, their trauma load isn't
Speaker 3: that high, and they don't. Right, And so there is
Speaker 3: an element of choice in it. But the question is
Speaker 3: always how much choice right? And I know in my
Speaker 3: own life the amount of choice I feel about picking
Speaker 3: up a drink or doing drugs is completely different than
Speaker 3: it was fifteen years ago. Right, fifteen years ago, it
Speaker 3: felt like I had this sliver of choice. It was there,
Speaker 3: was always there, but it didn't feel like it feels today.
Speaker 3: And that's why I loved your line about addiction is
Speaker 3: not a choice. Instead, it's a summation of repeated choices
Speaker 3: that make a different choice harder to make. For all
Speaker 3: the reasons we've talked about, environmental, biological, and historical, right,
Speaker 3: I think that really speaks to it. I mean, that's
Speaker 3: my understanding to bring a spiritual word into this of karma. Right.
Speaker 3: Karma to me is simply that a behavior that I
Speaker 3: do makes it easier to repeat again and again, hence
Speaker 3: the scarcity loop aspect of this. Right. The more repeatable
Speaker 3: behavior is, the more I repeat it, the more likely
Speaker 3: it is I'm going to do the same thing in
Speaker 3: the future. It starts to cut a groove in the record,
Speaker 3: so to speak.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that too, in the sense that
Speaker 1: it's kind of a mystery. I mean, I don't think
Speaker 1: that's unlike any behavior though too. You know, It's like,
Speaker 1: why are some people really good with money and some
Speaker 1: people really bad with money, whether or not they're rich
Speaker 1: or poor?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Why are some people into ex food and not into
Speaker 1: why food? It's like it's kind of these great mysteries
Speaker 1: of being the human And when you apply addiction onto it,
Speaker 1: I think it a murky because it is something we study,
Speaker 1: but there's all these things about life that we just
Speaker 1: don't study that are equally vexing, you know, totally. And
Speaker 1: I do think too, like I want to kind of
Speaker 1: put a pin in the fact that it's important to
Speaker 1: have empathy because people think that like, if an addict
Speaker 1: is using a drug or drinking, it's an irrational decision.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, it's not, because if you're an addict
Speaker 1: or an alcoholic using your substance of choice, it always
Speaker 1: improves your life in the short term every single time, right, Right,
Speaker 1: so you're going to get an immediate benefit. That is
Speaker 1: not an irrational decision in the short term, right, and
Speaker 1: the long term it is. Yeah, but you can't see that, right,
Speaker 1: And not to mention, I think most people who have
Speaker 1: an addiction, they don't start using a substance and their
Speaker 1: life immediately goes to shit. It never happens that way.
Speaker 1: No things are good for years and you get all
Speaker 1: these positive experiences from this thing, or else you wouldn't
Speaker 1: do it. People don't do things that don't benefit them somehow, right,
Speaker 1: Like I had years of drinking where drinking enhance my life.
Speaker 1: Maybe we have more interesting experiences. I was more open
Speaker 1: with people and fun at parties. I would think funnier things.
Speaker 1: I'm a writer. If I sat down on the keyboard,
Speaker 1: I'd probably write something different. A lot of times it
Speaker 1: was something more interesting than I normally write. And so
Speaker 1: I have all this evidence that alcohol does good things
Speaker 1: for me, right years of it. But then that starts
Speaker 1: to tip and I start to have repercussion some nights,
Speaker 1: and then over time I have a greater ratio of
Speaker 1: bad nights to good nights. But still in the back
Speaker 1: of my mind, I'm going I got like a decade
Speaker 1: of evidence that this is a good thing, and if
Speaker 1: I can just get back there, things are gonna be fine.
Speaker 1: But you can't get back there.
Speaker 3: Or you only get back there temporarily, Like if it
Speaker 3: didn't work at all, it's back to unpredictable rewards to
Speaker 3: some degree, right, Like if I drank and I didn't
Speaker 3: feel better, Ever, it would be easy to be like, well,
Speaker 3: that doesn't make any sense, right, right, But the fact
Speaker 3: is that it still does a little bit sometimes right now, again,
Speaker 3: if the same person would see like, okay, it's not
Speaker 3: worth the trade off, and that's why I love I
Speaker 3: think it may have been Miasavolets who proposes the idea
Speaker 3: of you know, it being in essence of learning disorder,
Speaker 3: right that a brain that's working fully correctly would be like, Okay,
Speaker 3: that used to be good, but now it's really bad,
Speaker 3: and the downside is out weigh the pros, and I'm
Speaker 3: going to update my mental models around this thing, and
Speaker 3: I'm gonna learn and I'm gonna stop doing it. But
Speaker 3: that doesn't seem to happen, at least not quickly and
Speaker 3: without great downside in the average addict or alcoholic.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, exactly she's great one. Let me say that.
Speaker 1: The second part is that I think that happens with
Speaker 1: all sorts of things every day that you do, I do,
Speaker 1: everyone does. When you eat really unhealthy food, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: that was really enjoyable in the short term, yeah, even
Speaker 1: though you know it's not gonna be good for you
Speaker 1: in the long run. When people play slot machines in town,
Speaker 1: anytime you gamble, you're like, you know you're probably gonna lose,
Speaker 1: but it's like, well, that was still fun, right, right.
Speaker 1: It only becomes a problem when all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you're like, oh my god, I don't have any money
Speaker 1: to cover my bills because I've I've gambled so much, right, right,
Speaker 1: And so there's all these kind of behaviors that just like,
Speaker 1: at a certain point they tip for people, and that's
Speaker 1: when it becomes problematic. But that doesn't mean the behavior
Speaker 1: is problematic in general for most people most of the time.
Speaker 3: Right. Well, if we go back to the two percent idea, right,
Speaker 3: we all know that taking the stairs is a good idea, yeah,
Speaker 3: and two percent of us are doing it, right, So
Speaker 3: you know, that's why I think thinking of addiction along
Speaker 3: the spectrum is a very helpful concept, right, because we
Speaker 3: all have, depending on the activity of the behavior, you know,
Speaker 3: varying degrees of making good choices.
Speaker 1: Right, right. DSM five they don't use the word addiction.
Speaker 1: The DSM five, if people don't know, is like the
Speaker 1: Bible that psychiatrists use for diagnoses, but doesn't use the
Speaker 1: word addiction. It does use substance use disorder, and in
Speaker 1: order to figure out if a person has a substance
Speaker 1: use disorder, it basically outlines eleven criteria eleven questions more
Speaker 1: or less and if you have, say, you know, one
Speaker 1: to four, you've got a mild case. If you've got
Speaker 1: five to whatever, seven you got a medium case, and
Speaker 1: eight or more you got an extreme case or whatever
Speaker 1: they language they use. But what's fascinating about that is
Speaker 1: you can look at that and you can plug in
Speaker 1: all sorts of things that you do that you're like,
Speaker 1: I wish I did this a little less, and we'll
Speaker 1: probably fall on some spectrum of that what they consider
Speaker 1: use disorder, like pop in your cell phone, habit, your
Speaker 1: relationship to your favorite drunk food, whatever it might be. Right,
Speaker 1: And so I really do think that reinforces the idea
Speaker 1: that there's all these things we do, we're on the
Speaker 1: sort of spectrum of giving us benefits in the short
Speaker 1: term and harming us in the long run.
Speaker 3: Yep. So I would love to explore this scarcity loop
Speaker 3: from different angles. I think there's some really fun things
Speaker 3: about games, in the ways that we can use games
Speaker 3: for positive and negative. We've touched on food. You have
Speaker 3: some great things about stuff and information. But what I'd
Speaker 3: like to get to now. We may get to some
Speaker 3: of those things in the post show conversation. What I'd
Speaker 3: like to talk about now is given, now that we
Speaker 3: know this scarcity, what are ways that we start to
Speaker 3: bring ourselves out of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, if it's a bad behavior that falls into
Speaker 1: the scarcity loop, there's three big ways that I see,
Speaker 1: starting from easiest to hardest. So the first way is
Speaker 1: just becoming aware of it. So once you become aware
Speaker 1: of a behavior and that it sort of falls into
Speaker 1: this ancient loop, I think that oftentimes will reduce the
Speaker 1: frequency of it. So this is called the observer effect
Speaker 1: in science. Just by observing something, it tends to change.
Speaker 1: This is bad for scientists conducting studies. This is good
Speaker 1: for us when we want to change our own behaviors.
Speaker 1: So if you can identify something you're doing, you're going like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is falling into the scarcity loop. And by the way,
Speaker 1: it's not your fault because it's just your ancient brain
Speaker 1: like falling into this system that it's naturally attracted to.
Speaker 1: But it is your problem to solve, right, So I
Speaker 1: think observing can be super helpful for people. It usually
Speaker 1: will reduce some frequency. And then number two is that
Speaker 1: you can change any three of the parts and that'll
Speaker 1: usually reduce the frequency of the behavior. So you can
Speaker 1: alter the opportunity, you can alter the unpredictable rewards, or
Speaker 1: you can slow down the frequency of the behavior, slow
Speaker 1: down how fast you can do the behavior basically, So,
Speaker 1: for example, with opportunity, something as simple as like if
Speaker 1: you've got a problem with, say, eating oreos at night,
Speaker 1: taking away the opportunity to eat oreos, i e. Getting
Speaker 1: them out of your house, Like you're gonna do that
Speaker 1: less Like it's so simple, but like it works.
Speaker 3: Door Dash has ruined that though, and these meal delivery services,
Speaker 3: like it used to be so much simpler, like you
Speaker 3: had to leave the house and now it's like, let
Speaker 3: me just bring up this thing on my phone and
Speaker 3: click click, click, and three ice cream sundays arise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean even something like Okay, so let's take
Speaker 1: an example of inserting pause. How can we make that
Speaker 1: more of a pain in the butt. Delete the app? Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: just deleting not having the app right there, and you go,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I gotta reinstall it, and I have
Speaker 1: to remember my password. I don't remember my password. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to create a new password. Like you're putting
Speaker 1: all these layers that that just reduces I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that that's a guarantee you're not going to get those
Speaker 1: ice creams, but I am saying it'll reduce the probability
Speaker 1: that you will get those ice creams.
Speaker 3: Right, That basic rule of you know, if you want
Speaker 3: to do more of something, decrease all the steps in
Speaker 3: between doing it, And if you want to do less
Speaker 3: of something, make it harder and harder in whatever creative
Speaker 3: ways you can come up with to make it difficult.
Speaker 1: To do exactly exactly. Changing unpredictable rewards helps too. So
Speaker 1: for example, one of the reasons that our phones are
Speaker 1: so rewarding as all the colors are really stimulating, Like
Speaker 1: colors stimulate behavior, right, green means go red means slow down.
Speaker 1: So putting your phone in gray scale, for example, one
Speaker 1: study showed reduces screen time by about forty minutes just
Speaker 1: making that boring right, you don't get as much unpredictable
Speaker 1: rewards basically from the phone and then slowing behaviors down.
Speaker 1: I think this is probably the most powerful and that
Speaker 1: comes in you know, with shopping. It could be I'm
Speaker 1: only buying stuff in person, or if I'm going to
Speaker 1: buy something online, I got a seventy two hour holding
Speaker 1: period where I'm like, it's got to sit in the
Speaker 1: car for seventy two hours, and I guarantee by the
Speaker 1: time you go back, you'll be like, wait, what did
Speaker 1: I put in the cart the other day? You won't
Speaker 1: need the item. Right. When it comes to food, I
Speaker 1: think eating food that is less processed reduces how many
Speaker 1: calories you'll eat simply because the food is much slower
Speaker 1: to eat than junk food. So, as we talked about
Speaker 1: with that executive, the third V and what makes a
Speaker 1: junk food successful is velocity. The faster a food is
Speaker 1: to eat, the more a person will eat of the food.
Speaker 1: That's good for the wallets of the junk food industry.
Speaker 1: It's not good for our wastelines. So eating less junk
Speaker 1: food and switching over to a whole in sort of
Speaker 1: less processed foods. People eat fewer calories with cell phones
Speaker 1: and pause. There's an app I love called clear Space.
Speaker 1: What it does is like you choose the apps that
Speaker 1: you have a problem opening, the ones where you're in
Speaker 1: like the grocery store line and you just find yourself
Speaker 1: on and you're like, wait, how did that happen? Right?
Speaker 1: The ones you reflexively take out. What it does is
Speaker 1: you choose the apps you want kind of restricted. When
Speaker 1: you go to open them, it basically makes you pause.
Speaker 1: It goes, hey, did you actually want to open this app?
Speaker 1: And you go yes, and then it goes okay, let's
Speaker 1: like wait for a minute, makes you breathe for like
Speaker 1: says like breathe, it's fifteen seconds. Then it shows you
Speaker 1: this nice quote about how like you know your life
Speaker 1: is going by as you're on your phone or something,
Speaker 1: and then you have to select how much time you
Speaker 1: actually want to spend in the app so you can't
Speaker 1: just fall down the rabbit hole of it. And that
Speaker 1: has been a great one for people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I downloaded that app after reading the book and
Speaker 3: it's great my remaining phone vice. Such it is. I'm
Speaker 3: pretty much completely off social media. You know, I don't
Speaker 3: play games very much. I mean a little bit is
Speaker 3: just compulsively, for no reason at all, checking my email
Speaker 3: every time i'm bored, just again and again and again.
Speaker 3: It's the scarcity loop one hundred percent, right, because every
Speaker 3: once in a while when I open my email, I'm like, oh, wow,
Speaker 3: there's this really great thing in here. You know, somebody
Speaker 3: said something really nice, or I found out that I've
Speaker 3: been asked to do this thing or whatever.
Speaker 1: Right awards, Yeah, man.
Speaker 3: Unpredictable reward, and I can do it again and again
Speaker 3: and again and again. It seems to be the one
Speaker 3: sort of digital thing that I tame it back. You know.
Speaker 3: I get to the point where I'm like, okay, I've
Speaker 3: gotten to the point now where I've like, I take
Speaker 3: time off. I can be without it for a week,
Speaker 3: two weeks, but the minute I have it back, it
Speaker 3: creeps its way back up to this sort of almost
Speaker 3: like a tick, you know. So I found that app
Speaker 3: to be really really helpful in a causing me to pause,
Speaker 3: be being able to say how many times a day
Speaker 3: I want to open it? So then I'm like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: I said, I'm only going to do it two more
Speaker 3: times today and it's ten am. I'm probably going to
Speaker 3: want to check email again, you know. And then like
Speaker 3: you said that it limits the time that I'm in it,
Speaker 3: so which is not for email that important because I'm
Speaker 3: usually in it for like thirty seconds because i checked it,
Speaker 3: you know, eight minutes ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah. For people, it's called ClearSpace, and it's awesome. Here's
Speaker 1: a great example, you telling me about how you'd kind
Speaker 1: of reduced all these other apps and like, but you
Speaker 1: still had the one. I have a great story. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to use his name because we have competitions
Speaker 1: in giving each other shit. Is my friend Jason McCarthy
Speaker 1: who runs go Rock. He founded the company go Rock.
Speaker 1: It was like, so I deleted Instagram from my phone
Speaker 1: because I was using it too much, and he's like
Speaker 1: it was good for you know a handful of days.
Speaker 1: Like and then I freaking found myself like compulsively checking LinkedIn.
Speaker 1: It's like, I haven't been on LinkedIn for years, and
Speaker 1: I'm like going into LinkedIn cause it's given me that
Speaker 1: unpredictable like what if someone said, what is someone can
Speaker 1: I find on LinkedIn, I gotta scroll something for those
Speaker 1: unpredictable rewards, And so I think it's like being conscious
Speaker 1: that once you trade one you probably are going to
Speaker 1: go looking for another, and then you gotta kind of
Speaker 1: find a way to put rails on that. That's where
Speaker 1: I think clear space is nice, because you just have
Speaker 1: to be more intentional with the ones you do want.
Speaker 3: You know, that's great. So listener and thinking about all
Speaker 3: of that and the other great wisdom from today's episode.
Speaker 3: If you are going to isolate just one top insight
Speaker 3: or thing to do that you're taking away, what would
Speaker 3: it be. Remember that, little by little, a little becomes
Speaker 3: a lot, and a habit for me that has accrude
Speaker 3: and benefit over time is meditation. However, one of the
Speaker 3: things that gets in our way of building a steady
Speaker 3: meditation practice is that very striving.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Of course, we're doing it because we want certain benefits,
Speaker 3: but in the moment of actually meditating, we need to
Speaker 3: let striving go and focus on just being there and
Speaker 3: experiencing it. No matter what's happening. It becomes not enjoyable
Speaker 3: because I'm trying to make something happen some special moment
Speaker 3: we want to let go of that. So if you
Speaker 3: want to stop dreading meditation and action find it enjoyable.
Speaker 3: Check out my free meditation guide at goodwolf dot me
Speaker 3: slash calm. You know, I've found for me that that pause,
Speaker 3: and I've used other apps that do it right, you know,
Speaker 3: some of them completely shut the thing off. But for me, generally,
Speaker 3: if I have to stop and go do I really
Speaker 3: want to do this? And I usually am able to
Speaker 3: be like no, I don't and set it aside. You know,
Speaker 3: But I like clear spaces because it's not binary, right,
Speaker 3: It's not like completely locked out. It's just be more
Speaker 3: intentional about when you choose to use it and why
Speaker 3: and for how long?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So the third to land the plane here
Speaker 1: on the question. The third and top level thing with
Speaker 1: kind of getting out of the scarcity loop is so
Speaker 1: I told you about the Thomas Senthal guy. Now, he
Speaker 1: does this research on pigeons and he can basically get
Speaker 1: these pigeons to play this slot machine pigeon gambling game.
Speaker 1: What he does is he gives them a choice between
Speaker 1: two games. Okay, and the first game it's predictable, so
Speaker 1: it gives them food every other time they peck a
Speaker 1: life gives them like fifteen units of food. The second
Speaker 1: game is like a slot machine, so about every fifth
Speaker 1: pack they get twenty units of food. So they get
Speaker 1: a little bit more food, but not by much. And
Speaker 1: it's also random, like they don't know. It's about every
Speaker 1: fifth one. Totally unpredictable. And you would think that because
Speaker 1: animals they want to find the most resources they can,
Speaker 1: right for the least amount of effort. This is called
Speaker 1: optimal foraging theory, you'd think they would all play this
Speaker 1: predictable game because if you play that, you're gonna get
Speaker 1: more food over time, like a lot more over time, right,
Speaker 1: But what he finds is that ninety seven percent of
Speaker 1: these pigeons they end up playing the slot machine game.
Speaker 1: Sit there and they play the game. So he keeps
Speaker 1: these pigeons generally in standard lab cages. They're relatively small,
Speaker 1: they're alone in there, and he decides that they're going
Speaker 1: to put the pigeons together in this giant cage that's
Speaker 1: more like the wild, right, Like they can kind of
Speaker 1: live a wild pigeon life in there. They're with some
Speaker 1: other pigeons. They can build nests, they can go on cliffs.
Speaker 1: They got like trees, they got like all this stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, So they're living like a pigeon is evolved
Speaker 1: to live more or less. Then he puts them back
Speaker 1: in the game and lets them choose between the smart
Speaker 1: game or the gambling game. Every single pigeon chooses the
Speaker 1: smart game after that, and I'm like, okay, well, why
Speaker 1: the hell is that? And he tells me there's this
Speaker 1: theory called the optimal stimulation theory, and it basically says
Speaker 1: that no matter the species, from humans to pigeons, to
Speaker 1: rats to whatever, we need a certain amount of stimulation
Speaker 1: in our life. And if we don't get that stimulation
Speaker 1: from somewhere, we go searching for it. And so when
Speaker 1: you think about a creature, whether it's a human or
Speaker 1: a pigeon, living the life they evolved to live, which
Speaker 1: for humans we were for all the time we were mostly outside.
Speaker 1: We were in these bands together where we had to
Speaker 1: like really be social and work together. We had to
Speaker 1: put in physical effort every day. Like we talked about
Speaker 1: an early part of the podcast, things weren't always easy, right.
Speaker 1: We were always kind of doing something, We were looking
Speaker 1: for food, doing all this stuff. We live much differently now,
Speaker 1: and so his argument was like, when you think of
Speaker 1: humans today, we're a little bit like the pigeons and
Speaker 1: the small cages, you know, and we go searching for
Speaker 1: stimulation from bad behaviors, from things that fall into the
Speaker 1: scarcity loop. Be it drugs and alcohol, be it gambling,
Speaker 1: be it spending way too much time on our phones
Speaker 1: and other digital media, insert all these different other bad behaviors.
Speaker 1: So his point was like, if you can find ways
Speaker 1: to insert stimulation into your life and find like kind
Speaker 1: of greater meaning beyond the behaviors that we tend to
Speaker 1: fall into, that can usually reduce a lot of the
Speaker 1: bad stuff. So mine was alcohol, and it's like, when
Speaker 1: I quit alcohol, it's like if nothing changes, nothing changes.
Speaker 1: I had to make massive life changes, right, right, And
Speaker 1: so I started exercising more, spent more time with friends,
Speaker 1: I started spending way more time outside. I also, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I drank is that I've just
Speaker 1: been always drawn to extreme experiences, and so it's like, well,
Speaker 1: I got to find that from somewhere now. So I
Speaker 1: like to do stuff outdoors for extended periods of time.
Speaker 1: I like to travel to kind of interesting places in
Speaker 1: order to scratch that edge in a way that is
Speaker 1: enhancing my life and not hurting my life.
Speaker 3: I think that is a great place to wrap up, right,
Speaker 3: because it speaks to all the way back to the
Speaker 3: wolf parable, Right. It speaks to the choices that we make,
Speaker 3: and my experience is the more good choices I make,
Speaker 3: it just naturally becomes easier not to make bad choices.
Speaker 3: It's just a natural sort of law. When I'm doing
Speaker 3: things that, like you said, enhance my life in general,
Speaker 3: all the sort of difficult things tend to sort of
Speaker 3: fade to the background, and it's far easier to be
Speaker 3: the person I want to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: You and I are going to continue in the post
Speaker 3: show conversation. I think we're going to talk a little
Speaker 3: bit about how to have a sane relationship with stuff
Speaker 3: and the pros and cons of sort of gamifying life.
Speaker 3: We've all heard you should be gamifying your life. It
Speaker 3: makes things better. Well maybe not. And listeners, if you'd
Speaker 3: like access to that post show conversation, you'd like to
Speaker 3: get some ad free episode special community meetings we do
Speaker 3: and the chance to support something that's valuable to you,
Speaker 3: go to one you feed dot net slash Join Michael,
Speaker 3: Thanks so much, I've really enjoyed this conversation. I really
Speaker 3: enjoyed your book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me.
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