Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening and enjoy the podcast right now, We're really excited
Speaker 1: to be speaking with our guest, Tim Urban. Tim has
Speaker 1: become one of the Internet's most popular writers, with rye
Speaker 1: stick figure illustrations and occasionally epic prose, and everything from
Speaker 1: procrastination to artificial intelligence. Urban's blog weight but Why has
Speaker 1: gardered millions of unique page views, thousands of patrons, and
Speaker 1: famous fans like Elon, who he's actually written about. Fas
Speaker 1: Kopany has said that quote, wait but Why has captured
Speaker 1: a level of reader engagement that even the new media
Speaker 1: giants would be envious of. Hey Man, thanks for being
Speaker 1: on the show today. Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Did you write that bio? No? I did not. Actually,
Speaker 1: I think that was written by the ten people. They
Speaker 1: are good. It was way too They are good at that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: are good at that. I feel like they're professionals at that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like, it was very exciting seeing a professional
Speaker 1: bio writer trying to blame what you do. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: but it well deserved. I'm a huge fan. I would
Speaker 1: use the word fan. I very rarely use that word,
Speaker 1: by the way, but I will say thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a fan of your thinking and your blog. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to start with like understanding a little more
Speaker 1: who Tim Urban is. I'm not going to like psychoanalyze here,
Speaker 1: don't worry. But yeah, no, no, that's fine. I could
Speaker 1: use some therapy. Yeah. I'm from Boston, Boston area, and
Speaker 1: I basically spent most of my twenties after college kind
Speaker 1: of like doing five different things at once. And I had,
Speaker 1: you know, I wanted to you know, I had all
Speaker 1: these things I wanted to do, and I kind of
Speaker 1: made the mistake and I think kind of spreading myself
Speaker 1: like pretty thin. And that was I think a frustrating experience. So,
Speaker 1: you know, three four years ago, I decided to take
Speaker 1: one of those things I had been doing, blogging and
Speaker 1: try to do that, you know, full time with all
Speaker 1: my attention. And so that's how way why I started,
Speaker 1: and that's what I've been doing ever since. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: were a government major, is that right? In college? Yes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was a government major. So there was a time
Speaker 1: when you were potentially thinking about got into politics or
Speaker 1: definitely not. I think if I had ever had an
Speaker 1: interest in anything like that, it would have been like
Speaker 1: that probably would have been before the age of about eighteen.
Speaker 1: Once I was in college, I decided I wanted to
Speaker 1: go and do you know something creative music or writing,
Speaker 1: and maybe something in entrepreneur entrepreneurial land, but I definitely
Speaker 1: didn't want to go into politics. I majored in government
Speaker 1: because it was I had to decide my major ex
Speaker 1: freshman year, and I had no idea what I wanted
Speaker 1: to learn. And at the time, I if I could
Speaker 1: go back, I would have said, look, this is like
Speaker 1: my opportunity to learn here, and I have this great
Speaker 1: opportunity to dive into something, Right, what do I really
Speaker 1: care about? And I probably would have majored in something
Speaker 1: with music or history, something I was really interested in,
Speaker 1: and or you know, some kind of delicious science topic
Speaker 1: astronomy or something. But at the time I just did
Speaker 1: what seemed broad and you know, I could do a
Speaker 1: million things under government, So I did that kind of
Speaker 1: you know, didn't really have the confidence you tould just
Speaker 1: trust my instinct there at the time. So I yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually learned a lot because you can do a
Speaker 1: bunch of broad things, but political science political theory is
Speaker 1: incredibly boring. So those classes, which was a lot of them,
Speaker 1: were forward me after the first kind of basic one,
Speaker 1: which was interesting, but then you know, you do a
Speaker 1: lot of other things, and it was okay, man, So
Speaker 1: what instrument do you play? I played the piano. Oh wow.
Speaker 1: So I moved to la after college to write movie scores,
Speaker 1: so I was using the piano, but I was writing
Speaker 1: for all kinds of instruments, you know, strength and everything
Speaker 1: else you have to write for. Yeah. I mean I
Speaker 1: get from your writing that you're voraciously curious about everything. Yes,
Speaker 1: actually except maybe political theory. No, that's not true. You
Speaker 1: finally wrote that are we going to be okay post? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I'm actually in the middle right now about what would
Speaker 1: be a two hundred page book on but it's going
Speaker 1: to be a blog post. But it's going to be
Speaker 1: a very long one on a lot of political topics. Actually, unfortunately, well,
Speaker 1: do you think we're going to be okay. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we're going to be okay. I think it's actually
Speaker 1: like a ninety percent that we're going to be okay.
Speaker 1: I think normally it would be like more like ninety nine.
Speaker 1: And I think that ninety percent includes a bunch of
Speaker 1: bad things, a bunch of bad policies, or a bunch
Speaker 1: of kind of upsetting moments in the decade. But in
Speaker 1: twenty thirty years, you know, you won't look back on
Speaker 1: this as like the dark period of American because it'll
Speaker 1: be like another, you know, another tumultuous period in American history.
Speaker 1: We've had a bunch of those. That's the ninety percent.
Speaker 1: Ten percent, you know, is something more more upsetting, like
Speaker 1: a big, big war or a big big like upsetting,
Speaker 1: you know, an attack on us, or something completely unrelated
Speaker 1: to Trumpet in the administration, and just you know, something
Speaker 1: with some upsetting things with technology or you know, terrorism
Speaker 1: and technology or something. You know, there's somethings that are
Speaker 1: very you know, there's that ten percent that I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, actually, we really don't know, we're gonna be okay.
Speaker 1: But the other ninety percent is the kind of the
Speaker 1: old man saying, Oh, it's always been fine in the past,
Speaker 1: it'll always you know, it'll be fine now too. So
Speaker 1: that's what that's kind of how I break it down. No,
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. I'll keep my fingers crossed. A lot
Speaker 1: of your writing tends to have these deep existential themes.
Speaker 1: It seems like you find it useful in your thinking
Speaker 1: to take the very long term approach not to This
Speaker 1: is just my read from reading most of your articles,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just you know, freaking out in the moment.
Speaker 1: You sort of like to like stretch the perspective out
Speaker 1: as as far as possible into infinity in one of
Speaker 1: your posts or is that accurate? Yeah? I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: I just think that if you look, if you compare
Speaker 1: someone in eighteen seventy seven writing about that decade or
Speaker 1: writing about you know whatever and what they think irrelevance is,
Speaker 1: and then you take someone today writing about that same decade.
Speaker 1: We're going to better out of tickets. We can see
Speaker 1: the whole picture. We can see the zoomed out view.
Speaker 1: When you zoom out, you can always see what's going
Speaker 1: on a lot better. If you want to understand, I
Speaker 1: always trying to figure ot how they made Matt back
Speaker 1: in the fifteen hundreds, and they're just sailing around coastlines. Basically,
Speaker 1: they're just on a boat, and the coastline just looks
Speaker 1: so big and amorphous from when you're next to it.
Speaker 1: How can you possibly like sketch out a real picture
Speaker 1: what the whole thing looks like. And if you can
Speaker 1: just take a satellite picture, it would be a lot easier.
Speaker 1: So I'm always trying to take a satellite picture, even
Speaker 1: though the challenge is the things you're often taking a
Speaker 1: picture of you aren't on the satellite view. You're next
Speaker 1: to the coast with your own psychology and things that
Speaker 1: happen in your life. You know, the perspective that you'll
Speaker 1: have in twenty years. You don't have that right now,
Speaker 1: but you want to still try to imagine what that
Speaker 1: perspective will be. So I'm always trying to like imagine
Speaker 1: what this looks like from above, and what this would
Speaker 1: looks like from someone in the future looking back in history,
Speaker 1: or what this would look like for me looking back
Speaker 1: in my life, et cetera. You know, I certainly I
Speaker 1: try to do that too in my own life, and
Speaker 1: I think that's why I resonate a lot with your writing.
Speaker 1: But I find and I don't know, I want to
Speaker 1: know if this happens with you at all in your
Speaker 1: in your daily life, Like you still have to live life.
Speaker 1: I mean you you write it, you write about it
Speaker 1: at this higher level, and you can kind of like
Speaker 1: in those moments kind of look down or take this perpective.
Speaker 1: You also have to live your life on a day
Speaker 1: to day basis. And I find that if I start
Speaker 1: in my day to day life thinking too much about
Speaker 1: like you know, like, oh really, what's the point I
Speaker 1: mean of this moment? Like like it's like if I'm
Speaker 1: a following in love, It's like, yeah, well, okay, well
Speaker 1: you know all this is going to be gone. Like
Speaker 1: if you start thinking too much about that, if you like,
Speaker 1: what would it be like to walk around it every day,
Speaker 1: every second of life, taking kind of like this very
Speaker 1: very like long term existential perspective. Will that be conducive
Speaker 1: to well being? Well, it depends. I think it's actually
Speaker 1: kind of funny where you like, as you zoom out,
Speaker 1: you go on a roller coaster. So I don't think
Speaker 1: it's a good place to be, is well. Look, I
Speaker 1: actually I think there's an argument for every level. So
Speaker 1: being completely zoomed in, sometimes that's a very present place
Speaker 1: to be, and sometimes that's a very peaceful place to be.
Speaker 1: Don't just think about anything. Kids are always zoomed in.
Speaker 1: You know, it's really nice being seven. You're just unbelievably
Speaker 1: excited that it's Friday and you get to go to
Speaker 1: a movie with your friend and you know all these
Speaker 1: like you know, you're just so incredibly excited about like
Speaker 1: Friday night sleepover with this other seven year old like,
Speaker 1: and so that's like there's something blissful about that. It's
Speaker 1: very hard for adults to get there. So I think
Speaker 1: if we can actually be there, that's a nice place
Speaker 1: to be. A lot of the time, I don't think
Speaker 1: adults are very good at that. I think we are
Speaker 1: at least one big notch zoomed out from that at
Speaker 1: all times as adults, And I don't think that's a
Speaker 1: very happy place to be because you don't have the
Speaker 1: bliss of being totally present, but you don't have the
Speaker 1: big picture really either, So you sweat the small stuff
Speaker 1: a lot, and I think then when you go another
Speaker 1: level out, you can get to a wiser place of
Speaker 1: like you know that don't sweat the small stuff level
Speaker 1: where it's like, you know, this is all part of life,
Speaker 1: it's okay, and you know it's all going to be fine,
Speaker 1: and we just try to focus on what matters in life,
Speaker 1: your relationship and you know, the things you really like
Speaker 1: to do, and taking care of your health and let
Speaker 1: me just enjoy yourself. That's a very wise place. But
Speaker 1: then you go to the level beyond that, and like
Speaker 1: you said, you're like, oh my god, none of this
Speaker 1: really matters. It's all We're all going to die, it's all,
Speaker 1: and this is this is all I disappear. And then
Speaker 1: you get to like an upsetting place. But then I
Speaker 1: think you can go even one level more zoomed now
Speaker 1: to like the Buddhist place, which is a hard place
Speaker 1: to get to, you know, to really and that's the
Speaker 1: place where you're like, well, none of even that doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Death is just an object of my consciousness. It's just
Speaker 1: the fear of death as an object of my consciousness.
Speaker 1: Death itself isn't scary, and I'm just a bunch of
Speaker 1: vibrating atoms in this energy field that we live, you know,
Speaker 1: so you can keep going. I think the Buddhist Muslim
Speaker 1: is the highest zoom out you can get to I think,
Speaker 1: and that to me is a very peaceful place too.
Speaker 1: And the times when I can actually feel that, it
Speaker 1: is absolutely And I don't know, do you meditate at all?
Speaker 1: I do sometimes, and then I'm obsessed with it, and
Speaker 1: then I'm like, I'm gonna do this every day. This
Speaker 1: is obviously a great and I do it. The next
Speaker 1: day I'm like, oh my god, this is amazing, and
Speaker 1: then I'll do it for forty two days. Then in general,
Speaker 1: how you live your life because I can totally relate
Speaker 1: to that. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of that going on.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of I get in a real honeymoon
Speaker 1: phase of something I'm sure I want to do it forever,
Speaker 1: and then I don't. Even though it really was a
Speaker 1: good thing, it really was making me happy to do it.
Speaker 1: It's just hard for me to build new habits and
Speaker 1: break old ones, very very hard. But then I've done
Speaker 1: it hard. That also makes your career perfect, that you're
Speaker 1: perfectly suited to what you do because you can get
Speaker 1: these bursts of inspiration, put your all into it, write
Speaker 1: a post, get it out there and millions of people
Speaker 1: will read it, and then you can move on to
Speaker 1: another topic. Yeah, yeah, blogging works for me in that
Speaker 1: regard nicely in that well. It also the point is
Speaker 1: it's not that I don't like committing to something. It's
Speaker 1: just that I'm not good at committing to something. And
Speaker 1: so it's not just a bloggings which topics is good
Speaker 1: because that is I do like that component, but it's
Speaker 1: also just having readers having an expectation that I'm going
Speaker 1: to be writing allows me to have to quit blogging
Speaker 1: in generally, you know. I mean it's like, but if
Speaker 1: there were no readers and now we're just sitting here
Speaker 1: working on a huge epic book and everything I'd written
Speaker 1: for wait, but why I was all part of this
Speaker 1: book that was going to come out. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I would have written as much as I had
Speaker 1: in the last three years. I might I might have
Speaker 1: stopped after a month, you know. So that's another reason
Speaker 1: that's good for me. Oh wait, that's really interesting. Is
Speaker 1: it because of the feedback process, the like the sort
Speaker 1: of immediate gratification of getting one thousand comments and shares
Speaker 1: and things. No, I mean, that's that's very motivating, But
Speaker 1: it's the it's that there's external pressure, there's some other factor. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see as opposed to It's just it's opposed to,
Speaker 1: you know, just coming from within. So it's not that
Speaker 1: there's not internal motivation. I'm incredibly internally motivated, but I'm
Speaker 1: not internally disciplined. So the external kind of pressure is
Speaker 1: what pushes me to be disciplined, which is the thing
Speaker 1: I lack. What is the external pressure there? So how
Speaker 1: is it the peoples are expecting a new post? Is
Speaker 1: that it? Yeah, it's it's well, it's also that, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I've decided this is now my job. So
Speaker 1: I have a business partner who is expecting me to
Speaker 1: be doing this be I have readers that start emailing
Speaker 1: me when I haven't written in too long, which currently
Speaker 1: is what's happening. Okay, once it's my thing, then friends
Speaker 1: and family are saying, where's your next post? What's going up?
Speaker 1: You know, and it's I can't just hide from it.
Speaker 1: I can't just procrastinate for a year and then come
Speaker 1: back to writing. I can't do that. Everyone will just
Speaker 1: be asking what the hell I'm doing. And as a blogger,
Speaker 1: you never feel secure you have you know, attention is
Speaker 1: a very very very hard thing to get. And when
Speaker 1: you have some you're always assuming and worry that it's
Speaker 1: just going to disappear, that people are going to get
Speaker 1: sick of you, so and then you have to go
Speaker 1: to something else. So there's a lot of pressure on
Speaker 1: a blogger to stay productive and that creates, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: creates that helps you discipline yourself. Yeah, it seems like
Speaker 1: your kind of stresses are very aligned with the stress
Speaker 1: of those for like freelance journalists for instance. There's that, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but there's also some guilt aspect in that, you know,
Speaker 1: you really love your readers and you're a blogger because
Speaker 1: you know there are the people who really get what
Speaker 1: you're doing and like it and they agree with you
Speaker 1: on a lot of the topics. So and when those
Speaker 1: people are checking the site, and I've been there, I
Speaker 1: know what it's like to check something that you really
Speaker 1: like and just waiting and it's nothing and it's just disappointing,
Speaker 1: and eventually you get kind of angry and you just
Speaker 1: say through it, and you really don't want that to
Speaker 1: happen to them. You really don't want to let them down.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of factors, tim Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: there's So it goes in both directions. It's such a
Speaker 1: you've hit a magic spot of this balancing actor. There's
Speaker 1: also if you post too much, you kind of some
Speaker 1: of the quality gets diluted. Potentially. It's kind of I
Speaker 1: feel like you've kind of mastered the art of minimalism
Speaker 1: in a way. And I bet it's not minimalism on
Speaker 1: your side, Like you work so hard, Like there's so
Speaker 1: much production going on on your end that we don't see.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's something I think kind of beautiful about,
Speaker 1: Like my life is comprised around doing like like, so,
Speaker 1: how often do you post, for instance, like once a
Speaker 1: month or so? Well, that depends on year you're asking me.
Speaker 1: So twenty fourteen I posted about once a week. Twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen posted about once every two or three weeks. Twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen I posted even less, but the things got longer.
Speaker 1: So I'm right and like, right now, I've been three
Speaker 1: months since I posted something new. But the thing I'm
Speaker 1: working on is that like it would be about a
Speaker 1: two hundred page illustrated book if I made it a
Speaker 1: book exactly. Oh yeah, I've been drifting in this direction
Speaker 1: of more thorough and fewer posts. I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: like that. I think there's something to it. I think
Speaker 1: sometimes that's the right move, but I do miss, and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of readers miss also, just to
Speaker 1: you know, a good twenty five hundred word weekly post
Speaker 1: can be really great just one crack at one idea.
Speaker 1: You don't have to get that deep into it and
Speaker 1: you move on. There's something really fun about that, and
Speaker 1: I miss that a little. So I think, after I
Speaker 1: do this big post, I'm going to be doing a
Speaker 1: book next year, and so that's going to be even
Speaker 1: a bigger one. And I think then I can see
Speaker 1: really enjoying just all the pressure off any given topic.
Speaker 1: We'll kind of coming back and just just writing about
Speaker 1: a bunch of things. Again, do you think you'll be
Speaker 1: able to because you just said you had some concerns
Speaker 1: about having to write a book and the sort of
Speaker 1: the it makes it lends to procrastination easier than blogging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a little a little borious. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, again, the thing that it would be dangerous
Speaker 1: would be if if I were just on my own,
Speaker 1: like on the side, working on a personal project. Good
Speaker 1: book is different because there's a publishing company involved, an
Speaker 1: agent involved, and they are not amused by dropping the project,
Speaker 1: and and there's also readers to get back to as
Speaker 1: a blogger, and you don't want the book to just stop,
Speaker 1: you know, just just make you disappear from the world
Speaker 1: for a decade. So there is a lot of external
Speaker 1: pressure and other people involved in expectations, and that's the key. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I totally hear you. Now, do you think a big
Speaker 1: part of your success is this kind of minimalism? You know,
Speaker 1: you had a lot of things you're doing in your life.
Speaker 1: You decide oka I'm going to pick one, I'm really
Speaker 1: going to commit to. I'm going to focus on it.
Speaker 1: You have really been improving your quality for a quantity
Speaker 1: and you're getting increasingly popular with that approach. You know.
Speaker 1: Do you think that like a big part of this
Speaker 1: is kind of mastering, Like there's a beautiful simplicity to
Speaker 1: what you're doing in a way that is obviously complex,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's still simplistic at the same time.
Speaker 1: I think it depends. I think you know, there's I
Speaker 1: love deeth God's blog and it's kind of the opposite.
Speaker 1: It's it's high quality, but it's also high quantity. It's
Speaker 1: one little thought every day, So I wouldn't want him
Speaker 1: to be doing a long article every three weeks instead
Speaker 1: of bags. I like that, So I think it's just
Speaker 1: different formats with the quantity the volume versus minimalism can
Speaker 1: all work for me. I like it this way because
Speaker 1: kind of a perfectionists, I like to really dig in
Speaker 1: when I do it. I'm not I don't think I'm
Speaker 1: like reliably productive enough to put out something every day.
Speaker 1: I think I would just I think I actually tried
Speaker 1: that one week. So I'm gonna do ani week. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do a little mini post every day, and a
Speaker 1: mini post would take me an hour, but of course
Speaker 1: I put once I announced that it was a mini
Speaker 1: post and I started working on it, and it was
Speaker 1: and then I made it a back round book and
Speaker 1: there were five pretty long posts and it was like
Speaker 1: it almost killed me that week. So I think I'm
Speaker 1: very not satisfied by writing something really really small. I
Speaker 1: don't get a chance to dive in and really analyze it.
Speaker 1: So for me, it's better this way. But I don't
Speaker 1: think it's a rule for everyone. Yeah, it's it's sort
Speaker 1: of like the evolutionary process like has went it down
Speaker 1: to your like you've like eventually, over for three years,
Speaker 1: I figured out the exactly the amount of words like
Speaker 1: piece that works best for you. Yeah, and it depends
Speaker 1: on the post. As I said, you know, I'm running
Speaker 1: without SpaceX. I wanted to be forty thousand works because
Speaker 1: there's I need to explain the entire story of space
Speaker 1: that you're going to really get it, and the entire
Speaker 1: story of if you have the human you know, the
Speaker 1: human future. If I'm writing about you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know cool things about your family tree, like, then that's
Speaker 1: a good three thousand word posts. And so I think
Speaker 1: I'm starting to get better at figuring out the length
Speaker 1: each topic should be, you know. So yeah, awesome, Now
Speaker 1: this is this is a great great nuance here. So
Speaker 1: let me just dive in the rest of the scenerio.
Speaker 1: Let me dive into just I picked out some topics
Speaker 1: of thing that you've written about before. I want to
Speaker 1: discuss with you. One I thought was a really cool post.
Speaker 1: You had people choose iq eq or grit, and I
Speaker 1: posted this on my Facebook wall, and I have lots
Speaker 1: of psychologists on my friends list, and it got into
Speaker 1: a huge discussion about well, how do we know in
Speaker 1: that year two? That and forty five that the reliability
Speaker 1: and validity of the GRIT scales and EQ scales will
Speaker 1: match the validity and reliability the i Q scales. That's
Speaker 1: one thing that came up. And I mean, look, this
Speaker 1: is so nerdy, like you should see all maybe I'll
Speaker 1: even city of the linked I made a public so
Speaker 1: you could see all the comments. But it's really I mean,
Speaker 1: I had like people were experts in the psychometrics of
Speaker 1: these topics, like having a whole discussion. You set off
Speaker 1: with this question what are some what are some other things?
Speaker 1: Other things are like well, he assumes that what the
Speaker 1: heritability coefficients are the same among these three that like,
Speaker 1: you know, my god, what else deep water is there?
Speaker 1: You did also you put it on a zero one
Speaker 1: hundred percent of it confused a lot of people because
Speaker 1: they're used to like IQ seventy is usually considered below average,
Speaker 1: where you said it was above average. And then I
Speaker 1: had a keep reminding people, yes, but in his thoughtic,
Speaker 1: but that's what happens when you post something like that too. Well,
Speaker 1: this wasn't even so. So if this were that were
Speaker 1: full posts, I would have you know, I would have
Speaker 1: interviewed a couple of you know psychologists. I would have
Speaker 1: read a couple of books, and I would have really
Speaker 1: you know, I'm probably would have speaking the right lingo
Speaker 1: more and talking about a lot of these things. So
Speaker 1: this was a dinner table, which is literally just a
Speaker 1: conversation I had had on text with two friends and
Speaker 1: then I said, Okay, this is interesting. Only pose it
Speaker 1: to this week on Sunday. And so I just kind
Speaker 1: of like threw something out there. And I don't think
Speaker 1: it was ready for prime time on the psychology boards yet, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And it's just it's it is an interesting question, for sure.
Speaker 1: I want to ask why, just those three, why didn't
Speaker 1: you include creativity for instance, Like why is yeah part
Speaker 1: of that. I think creativity is a factor, for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean it's probably maybe the most important factor. But
Speaker 1: I think creativity is more like how your reason than
Speaker 1: it is in anate talent. Actually, I really think that
Speaker 1: like a lot of us who feel not creative just
Speaker 1: the fact that we are. We stopped exercising that muscle
Speaker 1: when we were like five, because we have the creativity
Speaker 1: essentially trained out of us by school and by everyone
Speaker 1: telling us to obey and not to you know, not
Speaker 1: to create, the to obey and I think creativity is
Speaker 1: just getting that kind of what like people like Elon
Speaker 1: Musk call like reasoning from first principles, like always assuming
Speaker 1: that conventional wisdom or your initial assumptions and thoughts about
Speaker 1: something may not be the best way, and that you
Speaker 1: think about everything from a blank slate that you care
Speaker 1: a lot about. You can't do that all the time.
Speaker 1: It's not efficient. But like so I think creativity is
Speaker 1: thinking you can be thinking like that, like kind of
Speaker 1: thinking like an original. I think that all this creativity
Speaker 1: burst out. So to me, I feel like, although you know,
Speaker 1: the problem with that is a grit is also kind
Speaker 1: of like a nurture learned thing, probably much more than nature.
Speaker 1: While I feel like, well that's not true. But a
Speaker 1: lot of people think that. You know, so Angel Duckworth,
Speaker 1: who you know, I guess you read her book Grit.
Speaker 1: I actually haven't, but I saw her Ted talk and
Speaker 1: I've seen her new other talks, and so I've learned
Speaker 1: about a group. Awesome. Yeah, she's like a close colleague
Speaker 1: of her office is right next door to mine, and
Speaker 1: you know, I hear that how they talk about this
Speaker 1: stuff all the time. I mean, the research actually shows
Speaker 1: that grit we're conscientiousness, which is it's correlated with the
Speaker 1: very highly with the personality trait. Consciousness has the same
Speaker 1: heritability coefficient as IQ. Both IQ and GRIT are about
Speaker 1: equally environmentally determined and genetically influenced. I think people think
Speaker 1: it's just another personality trait. In fact, all the personality
Speaker 1: traits probably have the same heritability coefficients or exact mix
Speaker 1: of both nature and nurture. But you do see that
Speaker 1: a lot. You see people saying that IQ is in
Speaker 1: need whereas grit is learned. And that is such an oversimplification,
Speaker 1: but you see that a lot. Yeah, I didn't really
Speaker 1: think about it that way, but I the nature. The
Speaker 1: more I learned, the more I understand, I realize that
Speaker 1: I don't really understand nature nurture. It's not into it
Speaker 1: what you think, right. Nature nurture is just not It's
Speaker 1: just not intuitive. And I think people attribute way more
Speaker 1: to nurture than they should, Like nurture is really a
Speaker 1: big deal. But I just continue to hear about all
Speaker 1: this stuff that is that goes back to your nature
Speaker 1: and in other ways people could contribute too much the
Speaker 1: other way, you know, I think there are other times
Speaker 1: when things are assumed to be just who you are,
Speaker 1: when actually it was based on formative experience. So I
Speaker 1: would need to study a lot more, read a bunch more,
Speaker 1: I think to understand that that would make a great
Speaker 1: weight But why posting I think it would also. I
Speaker 1: got in big trouble from him, Adam Grant, for writing
Speaker 1: that post, because he's a big IQ over EQ proponent,
Speaker 1: so he was he thought I was overrating EQ and
Speaker 1: sent me some articles to show me that too. So
Speaker 1: that's so funny. I was going to send you some
Speaker 1: articles too about that too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think.
Speaker 1: I think I also do a little bit more research
Speaker 1: next time before I get into those and maybe we
Speaker 1: can talk then. Sounds good. No, but it was a
Speaker 1: really interesting thought experiment, and so yeah, I'm just basically
Speaker 1: in this conversation, I'm just bringing up things that you
Speaker 1: really stimulated my thinking and I want to just discuss
Speaker 1: with you. So another thing, I'm wondering how you reconcile
Speaker 1: these two posts with each other. You wrote Teaming the Mammoth,
Speaker 1: why you should stop caring what other people think of you,
Speaker 1: and then you also wrote seven ways to be insufferable
Speaker 1: on Facebook, basically like people who were in my view
Speaker 1: being authentic, you kind of make fun of them in
Speaker 1: a way. So I'm wondering, you know how those two
Speaker 1: are reconcilble with each other. I mean, the seven ways
Speaker 1: to be insufferable on Facebook post. I'm sure you read
Speaker 1: some of the comments, like you upset a lot of
Speaker 1: people with that post, and what do you think was
Speaker 1: going on? Maybe what did you trigger in them? And
Speaker 1: also maybe you could just tell me some of the
Speaker 1: seven ways that you mentioned, right, Okay, So what I'll
Speaker 1: say about it is I wrote the Facebook post six
Speaker 1: months before weight but Why started and it was the
Speaker 1: first weaightit why post and a time when I was
Speaker 1: anonymous and it was an unknown blog trying to get attention,
Speaker 1: and so there's an element there of like trying to
Speaker 1: go viral that I think made it significantly less empathetic
Speaker 1: and more kind of dickish than I normally would be.
Speaker 1: That said, there's also I think there's a combo. I
Speaker 1: think the heart of the post. I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of truth in the post, and I think there's
Speaker 1: also an overly harsh and underly empathetic take on the issue.
Speaker 1: So I demandmoth post, I believe fully with my heart
Speaker 1: is way that we should be thinking that the mammoth,
Speaker 1: which is the little character I assigned to the part
Speaker 1: of our brains that thinks it's in a tribe in
Speaker 1: fifty thousand BC where it absolutely must get along with people.
Speaker 1: It must fit in, It must be liked. It can't
Speaker 1: be rejected, you know. It wants approval from It wants
Speaker 1: to please the authorities. Wants approval, and it can't stand
Speaker 1: the concept of a little clique forming and talking bad,
Speaker 1: you know, talking trash about you behind your back. That's
Speaker 1: like the worst thought you can have. And it feels great,
Speaker 1: on the other hand to be on the other side
Speaker 1: of that place. So that makes sense to fifty thousand BC,
Speaker 1: because your tribe was everything. It was your life, systant
Speaker 1: support system. You needed to be in good if you
Speaker 1: wanted to ever have a mate, you wanted to survive,
Speaker 1: you wanted to have you need to have status in
Speaker 1: this tribe. Today that's not the case. But the mammoth
Speaker 1: is still there, and the maymoths still thinks of fifty
Speaker 1: thousand BC, and we're all kind of living with the
Speaker 1: We're all just kind of yeah, we're all kind of
Speaker 1: living with this influence in our head. That is not
Speaker 1: actually very rational today in the world that we currently live,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make much sense. But he doesn't know that.
Speaker 1: So Facebook, I would say that part of that post
Speaker 1: was criticizing, like you said, authenticity because it's unknowing or whatever,
Speaker 1: and that that is not fair. And I don't think
Speaker 1: today I would have had that take. I might have
Speaker 1: made fun of it, might have made fun of those
Speaker 1: people a little. I've been those people, we all have,
Speaker 1: but it's more like making fun of them, So I
Speaker 1: think I might have made fun of those people. But
Speaker 1: in terms of what I would have focused on if
Speaker 1: I wrote it today, is still the concept that in
Speaker 1: the real world, in an interaction in social life, we
Speaker 1: have a lot of etiquette. You know, we have a
Speaker 1: lot of norms, and some of it is unnecessary, but
Speaker 1: a lot of it is there for a pretty good reason.
Speaker 1: You know, politeness is there for a good reason, and
Speaker 1: other things we don't. You know, we don't just openly
Speaker 1: kind of brag and talk about ourselves for an hour
Speaker 1: straight to someone without ask any questions. That's etiquette there
Speaker 1: for a good reason. It makes us people that people
Speaker 1: want to spend time with, and makes you consider it
Speaker 1: and thoughtful on the Internet. I feel like it's the
Speaker 1: wild West of social life back. It's back to that.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no etiquette yet, and at least in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, and all these traits and qualities
Speaker 1: and people that would be appalling if they happened in
Speaker 1: person just kind of come out, you know. You see.
Speaker 1: Obviously there's the cliche kind of YouTube comment that are
Speaker 1: just super nasty and insulting and personal. But then some
Speaker 1: of the stuff I'm criticizing on Facebook, you know, is
Speaker 1: stuff like unself aware, just kind of very self absorbed,
Speaker 1: kind of narcissistic, And to me, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of it is the Mammoth at his work. So I
Speaker 1: think in some ways, yes, yes, yes, I'm criticizing, like
Speaker 1: in some ways, I think the thing that it is
Speaker 1: hard about the post is when I'm just saying, oh,
Speaker 1: your manmos should care more about that, you know, okay, right,
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't written today. But a lot of that
Speaker 1: post is that the mammoths is totally in charge of
Speaker 1: you when you're on Facebook obsessing over this public image crafting.
Speaker 1: You know, this incredible image crafting that happens on Facebook.
Speaker 1: People if you look at their photos their profile photos.
Speaker 1: It's just like this, you know, they's spend all this
Speaker 1: time like trying to craft this thing. Is if they're
Speaker 1: like kind of a movie star within their friends, and
Speaker 1: it's just to me it is very managed, controlled. Well,
Speaker 1: where is the image crafting? There? Couldn't one make the
Speaker 1: case that you're actually arguing for more image crafting? You know,
Speaker 1: Let's say I read your post and I think, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, that is all one hundred percent of what
Speaker 1: I do on Facebook. Now I'm going to start overthinking
Speaker 1: every post I do. Isn't that image crafting? Though? Well? No, okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah, again, this post is a jecul and high situation.
Speaker 1: So there's some some parts of this post where I'm
Speaker 1: criticizing perfectly fair, innocent human behavior and I'm just kind
Speaker 1: of being like a mean person about it. And then
Speaker 1: there's other parts of this post where I would say
Speaker 1: where it's no different than it if if you have
Speaker 1: a friend who shows up at a party and just
Speaker 1: again spend twenty minutes talking about himself and then dragging
Speaker 1: and then just kind of like walks away, and afterwards
Speaker 1: you had to talk with that friend and said, you know,
Speaker 1: you might want to like you know, have a radar
Speaker 1: in your head that you know, maybe you should ask
Speaker 1: other people questions, so you know, not that you people
Speaker 1: should asking questions on Facebook, but it's the same idea
Speaker 1: of there's just some people that really rubbed me the
Speaker 1: wrong way. And I don't think it's because I'm being
Speaker 1: a mean person in those moments. I think sometimes it's
Speaker 1: because I'm just like, you know, you're better than this,
Speaker 1: and we should all remember that, like we're just still
Speaker 1: human interaction. So I don't know. Again, I don't really
Speaker 1: defend that boat very hard because that one was written
Speaker 1: before I was trying to really be my most authentic
Speaker 1: self as a writer, and I think, you know, it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be funny and provocative and make some
Speaker 1: good points and also kind of make some controversial points. Well,
Speaker 1: we could absolutely move on. No, I appreciate that very much,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate that you respond at these points and
Speaker 1: we can move on from it. What I just think
Speaker 1: it's just just really interesting. There's like a deeper question
Speaker 1: here that I guess I'm trying to bring up it
Speaker 1: between authenticity versus image crafting, and like what is the
Speaker 1: like optimal level of authenticity? It does seem you know,
Speaker 1: I just feel like, even know, Facebook seems to be
Speaker 1: a place to be to act narcissistic, although I do
Speaker 1: think we overused the word narcissm has a very clinical
Speaker 1: term to it, right, So what you're really saying is
Speaker 1: that we're acting selfish or we're not being narcissists, because
Speaker 1: that that is a very clinical All of us have
Speaker 1: those needs. It seems like, yeah, how can we get
Speaker 1: those needs? Where in the world can we get those needs?
Speaker 1: It seems like Facebook is a good way and hopefully
Speaker 1: a safe space two amongst your friends to get that out. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: like it's what it is is a lot of people
Speaker 1: treating Facebook like a safe So again, the part of
Speaker 1: the post I wouldn't defend at all is the part
Speaker 1: that just kind of rails on people for treating it
Speaker 1: like too much of a safe space, when like that's
Speaker 1: totally a fair thing to do and to make everyone
Speaker 1: like more self conscious about just like kind of you know,
Speaker 1: the parts of people that are mammoth free on Facebook,
Speaker 1: like blispally mammoth free for once and just kind of
Speaker 1: doing their things and that someone's like, you're so annoying,
Speaker 1: Why are you being like that's like horrible. So yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely the safe space regard. I think Facebook is a
Speaker 1: good thing, and I don't agree with my own post
Speaker 1: on you know, being critical of people for that. No,
Speaker 1: that's cool, that's totally cool. I think of theuals who
Speaker 1: are like unapologetically assholes, for instance, and they are authentically
Speaker 1: themselves and there are a lot of people in their
Speaker 1: life they're like, you know what, you really should tone
Speaker 1: that down or dial it down, and they seem to
Speaker 1: be like it doesn't seem to bother them at all.
Speaker 1: I find that a fascinating phenomenon as well. It quick
Speaker 1: essentially like annoying, and I don't feel bad about credit,
Speaker 1: I think, which is like the humble bragging, you know
Speaker 1: that kind of social media you know what humble brag?
Speaker 1: Oh I do. I've been guilty of it for sure.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, as soon as I saw I said, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I totally I mean, and I still sometimes
Speaker 1: catch myself and even now a friend that we really
Speaker 1: send each other humble brag and we see them and
Speaker 1: he sometimes sends me my own. I'm like, damn it,
Speaker 1: and you know, like you know, it's like like I was, like,
Speaker 1: I interviewed Elon musk, you know, and I like, instead
Speaker 1: of just being like, hey, I how cool is that?
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, you know, I essentially kind
Speaker 1: of humble brag basically just like that. I was like
Speaker 1: in my pajamas walking around, I can't believe talking to
Speaker 1: this guy. And I was like, oh God, was that
Speaker 1: right I did? It? Was that a humble brag right there?
Speaker 1: By even telling me that story the way you did
Speaker 1: it might have been, Yeah, it might have been so
Speaker 1: just one time I was talking to him, I mean,
Speaker 1: a humble brag like exception. Right now, this is a disaster.
Speaker 1: But the point is that's the exact kind of thing
Speaker 1: that happens on social media that happens less in the
Speaker 1: real world. And it's just it doesn't happen in the
Speaker 1: real world too, but it's like rampant on social media
Speaker 1: because we're just sometimes like a less kind of self
Speaker 1: aware versions of ourselves like that, and that I'm apologetically criticized.
Speaker 1: I hear you, man, and I think like, probably it's
Speaker 1: all about tone. I think, like, you know, if you
Speaker 1: wrote the post in a way that was like more
Speaker 1: like can we all just laugh at each other? Like
Speaker 1: can we all just like we're all human, you know,
Speaker 1: can we all just sort of like, you know, like,
Speaker 1: I think that probably wouldn't have pissed off so many
Speaker 1: people in the comments, but I did it today. Not
Speaker 1: only would I have been more empathetic, yeah, but I
Speaker 1: also would have fully At the time, as I was anonymous,
Speaker 1: I didn't want people to know whether I was a
Speaker 1: guy or all fifty years old or twenty years old,
Speaker 1: so I also didn't talk and no one knew me.
Speaker 1: Now people who read the blog know me, so I
Speaker 1: would fully, I'd be center character. I'd be giving examples
Speaker 1: from my own Facebook feed for each of them, and
Speaker 1: I think that would stop people because then I'm kind
Speaker 1: of like making fun of all of us on it,
Speaker 1: versus being like, you're a loser. Why are you being
Speaker 1: like that, like acting like some like critical dick. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's also something that would have been different. Awesome, Okay,
Speaker 1: we could move on for this topic. I appreciate I
Speaker 1: appreciate that. I appreciate that a lot. So wow, you
Speaker 1: covered what makes you you? I mean, you really do
Speaker 1: like the big questions. This question is something I'm utterally
Speaker 1: fascinated with too, and doing neuroscience studies and things. You
Speaker 1: left with a profound like, well, is that all there
Speaker 1: is to us? You know? When I look at a
Speaker 1: brain scan, you know, and it's like in my hand,
Speaker 1: I look at them, I'm like that is this the person?
Speaker 1: You know? Is there something else about this person? And
Speaker 1: I think it really is a profound question. And you
Speaker 1: covered it from various angles, you know, the body theory,
Speaker 1: the brain theory, and then you did all these thought
Speaker 1: experiment and you talked about all these thought experiments that
Speaker 1: so let's talk about one of the thought experiments. Let's
Speaker 1: just pick one. How about the body scattering test? What
Speaker 1: is the body scattering test? Yeah? So I think there
Speaker 1: are a lot of this from Shelley k a professor
Speaker 1: at Yale who just does this unbelievably interesting cource online.
Speaker 1: I linked to it in the post. You can just
Speaker 1: go watch it from your computer, and it just could
Speaker 1: not have been more interesting. And so I think what
Speaker 1: you're referring to is the concept of if you actually
Speaker 1: look at what a human is, it's just a large
Speaker 1: collection a collection of atoms and a certain arrangement. That's
Speaker 1: all it is, with a certain amount of velocity I
Speaker 1: guess energy levels of each atom, and that's it. That
Speaker 1: together is forming you and all of your actions and
Speaker 1: behavior and thoughts right or supposedly. And so the body
Speaker 1: scattering tests, I think essentially says, you know what if
Speaker 1: you had a thing that could take all those atoms
Speaker 1: and suddenly scatter them into a space. So suddenly you
Speaker 1: just like vaporize into a you know, just puff into
Speaker 1: a bunch of gas that's in the room, and you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to see you This is all the
Speaker 1: same atom. And then you know a wizard who does
Speaker 1: that whatever, And then the wizard comes back with magic
Speaker 1: wands and okay, and tells the atoms back to where
Speaker 1: you were, and they come back. So when you're poofed out,
Speaker 1: are you dead? Are you alive? Like you know? Are you?
Speaker 1: Do you exist in that moment? And then when when
Speaker 1: the atoms come back and form you again, is that
Speaker 1: still you? That person probably would act like you. That
Speaker 1: person probably would have all your memory because memories are
Speaker 1: just you know what, your arrangement of atoms in your brain.
Speaker 1: So all that's back, and you would say, wow, that
Speaker 1: was weird, and you'd walk out and you'd head on
Speaker 1: with your day. The question is did someone die and
Speaker 1: now there's this new being that thinks it's you as
Speaker 1: clone or is that still you? And you start to
Speaker 1: just every one of these thought experience experiments makes you
Speaker 1: realize that it's kind of an illusion the self in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, and that a lot of it
Speaker 1: we think, we think it's obvious, and then when you
Speaker 1: do these thought experiments, you start to realize that this
Speaker 1: is not obvious what the self actually is, and maybe
Speaker 1: this whole thing is kind of an illusion. So I
Speaker 1: find it endlessly fascinating. And that's I just don't feel
Speaker 1: like I have the answer to this question. Oh man,
Speaker 1: let me know if you do. It is a very
Speaker 1: fascinating question. And I found that post really did a
Speaker 1: nice summary of all all the different perspectives. And you know,
Speaker 1: I had this podcast chat. Do you know David Chalmers,
Speaker 1: the philosopher of mind. Yeah, yeah, I had a chance
Speaker 1: to meet him once briefly. Yeah, great, this whole we
Speaker 1: talked about whether or not we're living in a simulation.
Speaker 1: He thinks that it's there's like forty percent probable that
Speaker 1: we are potentially that living in a simulation. But also
Speaker 1: you know that like once you start uploading yourself to computer,
Speaker 1: and let's say you start uploading your entire memories, everything
Speaker 1: to the computer, and you lose everything you have as
Speaker 1: soon as it gets onto the computer. At what point,
Speaker 1: where is that demarcation put where you're no longer you anymore?
Speaker 1: You know, what is it we're talking, we're doing, Like
Speaker 1: what is it when it's if it's fifty to fifty?
Speaker 1: You know, like in the computer, you know, like which
Speaker 1: one is you and right? Or like if you replace
Speaker 1: you know, each part of your body one by one,
Speaker 1: you know, when you hit the point where you're now
Speaker 1: just not you anymore? You replace every brain cell one
Speaker 1: by one with someone else's. You know, when does it
Speaker 1: change over? The thing that is the most crazy of
Speaker 1: all of these things is the fact that someone can
Speaker 1: damage their brain and lose half of their brain and
Speaker 1: still be themselves and living and okay that there are
Speaker 1: examples of this when the other half of your brain
Speaker 1: compensates and starts doing a lot of the functions of
Speaker 1: the other half and the missing half, and that the
Speaker 1: person is still them, they have their memories, still the personality,
Speaker 1: and they are living in okay life. This happens. So
Speaker 1: now that makes me think, okay, so what if you
Speaker 1: removed someone half of someone's brain, they were still themselves.
Speaker 1: And somehow you can remove an entire person's brain, a
Speaker 1: person's entire brain, and put the other half of person
Speaker 1: a's brain into person B. So now they both have
Speaker 1: you know, person A has the left half of his
Speaker 1: original brain and person being now has the right half
Speaker 1: a person A's brain as his only brain. Are they clones? Like?
Speaker 1: And so if that were my friends who suddenly had
Speaker 1: the other half of my brain, I'm like, oh no,
Speaker 1: he would like know everything I think about him and
Speaker 1: about everything else. And I'm like, but it's not him,
Speaker 1: He's me. He is me. Now it's super weird to me.
Speaker 1: I could see how that could be super weird, for sure.
Speaker 1: This is how I like to think of it. You
Speaker 1: know that the self is an illusion. I mean it's
Speaker 1: all an illusion. Really, Like technically, if you look at like,
Speaker 1: I have no atoms in common when I was six
Speaker 1: years old, right, I actually am like, there is a
Speaker 1: version of me that is actually dead forever, you know, right,
Speaker 1: And I'm not mourning that six year old. You're you're
Speaker 1: a lot closer to being me than you are to
Speaker 1: being your five year old. Absolutely, and so really all
Speaker 1: I mean, our whole sense and construction of self is
Speaker 1: all an illusion so that we don't go crazy, that
Speaker 1: we keep some sort of continuity there, and you do
Speaker 1: talk about continuity there at the end, So that is
Speaker 1: a really neat way of tiding it. But it seems like,
Speaker 1: you know, all the research and I can send you
Speaker 1: some papers on this showing that the thing that seems
Speaker 1: to most make us feel like ourselves when we even
Speaker 1: when we get dementia, even when we start losing our memories,
Speaker 1: even if we lose our IQ, you know, our IQ lowers.
Speaker 1: The one thing that seems if we lose that we
Speaker 1: seem to lose our sense stuff is our morality. Oh interesting,
Speaker 1: And yeah, they've done this, you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've heard of the group. They're experimental philosophers, so
Speaker 1: they try to actually test philosophical theories experimentally. And they
Speaker 1: did this study on people's you know, whole list of
Speaker 1: all the things that yeah, it'd be okay to lose this,
Speaker 1: it'd be okay to like, if I lost this, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't lose my sense of stuff. It really was the
Speaker 1: sense of rin. Once we start losing and doing things
Speaker 1: like let's say we impulsively start doing things that go
Speaker 1: against our value system. That cuts the core to us
Speaker 1: of what it means to feel like we're unique in
Speaker 1: this world? Is really our value? Really our values? Yeah,
Speaker 1: i'd love to value. Sure. I feel like sense of humor,
Speaker 1: like some core personality things that you know, kind of
Speaker 1: without that, you're just not you. I think there's other
Speaker 1: things that strike me as candidates, but I'm sure you
Speaker 1: get people who thought a lot more about this and
Speaker 1: that's when they come to that's really interesting. Yeah, I'd
Speaker 1: love to send you the paper. Yeah, so I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about this really interesting idea that you just proposed about
Speaker 1: the left and so on in the different in right hemisphere.
Speaker 1: I mean, in a lot of ways, we do have
Speaker 1: lots of different people in our body competing with each other.
Speaker 1: I mean, we do have sizes of ourselves that eat
Speaker 1: the ice cream, and then we have the other side
Speaker 1: that like, doesn't you know that's like, oh, I hate
Speaker 1: the person who just ate that ice cream. That's true,
Speaker 1: that's true, But there still seems to be some inner
Speaker 1: sense consciousness behind all of those things that is the
Speaker 1: real you. And that's the thing that I can't pin down,
Speaker 1: you know, to any physical system or you know, I
Speaker 1: can't figure out where that is and how you lose
Speaker 1: it or how you preserve it. Yeah, and it is
Speaker 1: for example, Yeah, you know the teletransport experiment. Okay, I
Speaker 1: won't get into it now, but like the end of
Speaker 1: the experiment, you know, it's like again, it's or with
Speaker 1: a scatter experiment, like the person walks out to your
Speaker 1: friends and family, nothing that happen. You're still there, You're fine.
Speaker 1: They don't care. You're still you in every way that
Speaker 1: you can be you as far as they're concerned. But
Speaker 1: if you but if I'm about to be the one
Speaker 1: who's vaporized and then back to together, it's critically important
Speaker 1: to me to know whether the first person actually just
Speaker 1: disappears and now there's just a new person, because that
Speaker 1: means I die and there's essentially someone made a clone
Speaker 1: that is going on. Who cares? I'm dead? Who cares?
Speaker 1: And it's like it's suddenly it's like wait, I need
Speaker 1: to know that. And your friends and family they just see,
Speaker 1: you know, you walk out, You're like, wow, that was
Speaker 1: super weird. Yeah I don't know that, and they just
Speaker 1: think that you're still there. So what's the difference for them?
Speaker 1: Versus for you, you know, what is that inner like
Speaker 1: I need There's like this eye that needs to be
Speaker 1: behind the eyes looking out of the new person. I
Speaker 1: need to have access to the consciousness of the new person.
Speaker 1: And that's this thing that I can't pin down. I
Speaker 1: can't figure out why that would or would not be there,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, absolutely, and and and they're really there
Speaker 1: is no one in this world has like the answer.
Speaker 1: But I feel like a smarter species, you know, even
Speaker 1: us in fifty years you might like that doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like it seems like something that It's like Aristotle, you know,
Speaker 1: thought that your intelligence is located in your heart. Like
Speaker 1: it seems so crazy, but like, we just don't know
Speaker 1: stuff till we know it. And so I can see
Speaker 1: them looking back and say, wow, they really didn't get
Speaker 1: what consciousness was back in the the twenty first century.
Speaker 1: Well this is the you know, hard for solve problem distinction.
Speaker 1: People are quite confident in my field that in fifty
Speaker 1: years we will have mapped out the brain, you know,
Speaker 1: and we will have so even if we find out
Speaker 1: in fifty years exactly what the neurocurrelits of consciousness are,
Speaker 1: some people are skeptical that we'll ever wearn the hard problem.
Speaker 1: So that was the easy problem. You know, the hard
Speaker 1: problem is knowing, you know, what is explaining quality, explaining
Speaker 1: where does your own unique experience of being tim urban
Speaker 1: you know, what gives rise to that? I mean, man,
Speaker 1: but maybe you're right, Maybe you're right, Maybe we will
Speaker 1: figure it out someday. And you start thinking about like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like what does it mean? Like what dies when we die?
Speaker 1: You know, like what die is? Like, well, what dies
Speaker 1: is the construction of our sense of self? You know
Speaker 1: a lot of things that are very selfish, and if
Speaker 1: you get to the highest Buddhist level you start to
Speaker 1: get that. You're like, oh no, you know this is
Speaker 1: not something to be like upset about it. It just
Speaker 1: is That's okay, really cool. It's a pretty hard place
Speaker 1: to get. Yeah, really cool conversation. I really want to
Speaker 1: be respectful of your time. I thought I would done
Speaker 1: this conversation talking about I know you've thought about a
Speaker 1: lot about cryonics, and it's something I've thought a lot
Speaker 1: about too, And when I read your article was like,
Speaker 1: it really helped consolidate a lot of things for me.
Speaker 1: And so, first of all, thank you for writing that article,
Speaker 1: being so brave. I know it's a bit of a
Speaker 1: controversial topic. I know that Alco probably loves you after right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they did say they got a bunch of sign ups.
Speaker 1: This is awesome. Now have you so? Are you signed?
Speaker 1: Do you have the bracelet? Now? No, I'm actually I'm
Speaker 1: one out of New York state blood test short of
Speaker 1: getting the insurance in place that will officially sign me up.
Speaker 1: But I'm as close as I can be right now.
Speaker 1: I'm all ready to go. So don't die, don't die. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll be good to die in about two months. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm almost there. Yeah. So David Chalmers and I on
Speaker 1: the podcast, we were joking about how we want to
Speaker 1: get chirogetically preserved in the same cubicle. I was thinking
Speaker 1: that too. You want people to the right kind of
Speaker 1: people to hang out and it could be a long
Speaker 1: time exactly exactly, and also are It's something that I
Speaker 1: would definitely considering. It makes Your article argues, it makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. But your article does have one
Speaker 1: really big assumption, and that there's no afterlife, no spiritual
Speaker 1: religious afterlife. Now let's do the thought experiment here for
Speaker 1: a second. What if your atheist inclinations are wrong and
Speaker 1: there actually is an afterlife, and then so you die
Speaker 1: and you go to this amazing afterlife, and then they
Speaker 1: resurrect you thirty thousand years and you leave into this
Speaker 1: horrible world. Wouldn't you be like start it? That really sucks.
Speaker 1: But then you just jump off a bridge and go back. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see, because you know the truth, so you could
Speaker 1: just go back. But yes, okay, okay, that's good. Good,
Speaker 1: that's actually a good answer. I mean the truth is
Speaker 1: a world with an afterlife is so magical and different
Speaker 1: than the world that I think it is. Yes, that
Speaker 1: at that point I feel like, yeah, you can just
Speaker 1: use magic to get back there. I mean that, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: what if it confuses the afterlife system in a way
Speaker 1: that like what if there was something like I'm totally
Speaker 1: just being out there right now. I'm not, but I'm
Speaker 1: just trying. I want to think this all through. Let's
Speaker 1: just think this through, like really think this through. Like
Speaker 1: what if like things are meant to be, like things
Speaker 1: have been have happened a certain way for the whole
Speaker 1: existence of organic species, and we're kind of playing messing
Speaker 1: with that a little bit. What if we are to simulation,
Speaker 1: like Dave Chalmer said, it's forty percent probability, or so
Speaker 1: what if, like you know that, really, isn't that really
Speaker 1: going to piss off the programmers or something? Would they
Speaker 1: be pissed off? If you want? If someone if right now,
Speaker 1: if someone went into a coma and instead of just
Speaker 1: having the do not rescitate order, they bought through and
Speaker 1: then the two years later the doctors revived them and
Speaker 1: they were back with that something that mess up their
Speaker 1: after life with that meant because the idea with the
Speaker 1: crowded is that you're not even dead yet, that you're
Speaker 1: actually just they're going to basically preserve you in a
Speaker 1: you know, something you can compare to a coma intentionally
Speaker 1: keep you alive until a future hospital can cure you.
Speaker 1: All that's doing is just it's the same thing as
Speaker 1: fighting through cancer. It's fighting through disease to try to
Speaker 1: preserve your life. If you think about it that way,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really conflict with anything. It's it's no different
Speaker 1: than long term patient care, long term patient care. I
Speaker 1: love that point in the article. Actually, I absolutely love
Speaker 1: that article. I'm thinking of like free will here, like
Speaker 1: if it was in our destiny, you know, when the
Speaker 1: Big Bang happened that we would get into a coma. Okay,
Speaker 1: so maybe even figure out chiogenically preserve yourself. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: part of free will that maybe that's just part of it.
Speaker 1: That's no different than it might be. It might be
Speaker 1: determined from the big Bang that you were going to
Speaker 1: get cancer, and it's also determined that you were going
Speaker 1: to fight through it, just like determined you're going to
Speaker 1: fight through It's all about your definition of death, you know.
Speaker 1: Cryonicists say, well, what is death? If life is just
Speaker 1: this arrangement of atoms that makes you in your brain,
Speaker 1: that makes you you, then death is when those atoms
Speaker 1: are so irreparably scattered that there's no way for any
Speaker 1: future technology or any future intelligence to figure out how
Speaker 1: they want to work. And once and I call that
Speaker 1: info death, and that's when you're really truly gone. There's
Speaker 1: nothing they can ever get you back. Until then they
Speaker 1: see you as a hard drive, which are really smart
Speaker 1: species or a smart AI could recover and if they
Speaker 1: can recover you, they don't consider you dead in the
Speaker 1: first place. So that's when you get to get to Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: if there's afterlife, what is the moment that the afterlife
Speaker 1: considers you debt, right, that's a good question, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not. You look fifty years ago, that answer was,
Speaker 1: oh your heart stops beating and you stop breathing. That
Speaker 1: was someone was this clear debt on that moment. Actually,
Speaker 1: now they're not. They're resuscitated. Often it was within five
Speaker 1: minutes of that they're fine or they can be fine.
Speaker 1: And so someone fifty years ago would say, don't resuscitate me,
Speaker 1: it's going to mess with my aster life. But now
Speaker 1: no one thinks that we redefine death. So when you
Speaker 1: start thinking about what death actually means and how it's
Speaker 1: shifted over the years, and how this is just another shift,
Speaker 1: it becomes a lot less controversial. I think. I think
Speaker 1: it becomes no different than rushing you across the town
Speaker 1: to a hospital that has the tools to save you.
Speaker 1: This is rushing you, rushing you to the future to
Speaker 1: a hospital that can save you. And I think that
Speaker 1: you know, right now, it's still in the zone where
Speaker 1: people think of it as vain and you know, to
Speaker 1: and kind of selfish to want to live forever, you
Speaker 1: know this kind of but it's not wanting to live forever,
Speaker 1: it's wanting to live want Yeah, It's no different than
Speaker 1: when people had a lifespan of forty on average, you know,
Speaker 1: fighting to try to make it eighty. Well, chronics just
Speaker 1: try fighting to make it even longer and preserve people.
Speaker 1: It just there's nothing vain about that anymore than fighting cancer.
Speaker 1: I think it's reframing to understand that. But once you're
Speaker 1: getting it doesn't really make sense to not I think
Speaker 1: be favorable. I completely agree. And the things I'm putting
Speaker 1: forward are not vanity issues. They're like, let's just really
Speaker 1: think this through, right, Like what if I did think
Speaker 1: you really thought it through. But I'm just adding additional
Speaker 1: things like because this is just fun to talk about.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're taking the risk as well that you're
Speaker 1: going to actually prefer the world you wake up into death.
Speaker 1: I mean, who knows, like this could be, like we
Speaker 1: could wake up in a just terrible torture like in
Speaker 1: a zoo or something. Right, Yeah, Okay, So on one
Speaker 1: hand of people like oh you wake up and you
Speaker 1: knowing you know there and just hopeing in future. Okay,
Speaker 1: well then I just kill myself. So that doesn't work.
Speaker 1: What you got to at the end there, it is
Speaker 1: a little worrisomewhere yeah, they can't. Well, they won't let
Speaker 1: you kill yourself. Or it's even more because I don't
Speaker 1: think a moregant species is going to be more medieval
Speaker 1: than we are. I think they're gonna have anything going
Speaker 1: to be even you know, more based on human rights
Speaker 1: and all of that. So I'm not really about the
Speaker 1: species so much. Is more of like some sick fuck
Speaker 1: buys one of these facilities and is like, right, these
Speaker 1: are gonna be I'm going to see how much suffering
Speaker 1: and pain human consciousness can endure by bringing in how
Speaker 1: much fear, what can happen? They're going to use it
Speaker 1: as tests. That is an unfortunate possibility that if you
Speaker 1: just die normally, no way that's going to happen someone else.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know Julia Galiff, but she
Speaker 1: talked about it, and she said that, you know what
Speaker 1: if somehow we don't understand consciousness and once you get
Speaker 1: you know, you get preserved, you're actually your consciousness revives
Speaker 1: and you're just stuck in it for a thousand years
Speaker 1: in this nitrogen, not able to say anything. And that
Speaker 1: to me, now we get the same question as the act,
Speaker 1: like we're now I'm saying, well, that's now we're in
Speaker 1: magic land. Because consciousness requires biological activity, right, I mean
Speaker 1: it has to, it can't. Thinking can't occur without biological life.
Speaker 1: So that answer in the afterlife thing don't bother me
Speaker 1: is nearly as much as you know, and nor does
Speaker 1: waking up and not knowing anyone. Well, okay, I can
Speaker 1: always die. But like if people lose their family now,
Speaker 1: they don't want to. They might want it, but they
Speaker 1: don't usually kill themselves day. They try to get back
Speaker 1: in the feat then they make new friends, and then
Speaker 1: they get married, and then suddenly they love their life again.
Speaker 1: So that doesn't work for me. It's really just this
Speaker 1: loan sick fuck idea that I really don't think that
Speaker 1: I'm not in good good We've really narrowed it down
Speaker 1: to our biggest concern. This is why these kinds of
Speaker 1: thought experiments are good. They'll probably do it though, because yeah,
Speaker 1: look the upside. I mean, if you just revived, I
Speaker 1: don't bet against the future. You know, the past would
Speaker 1: never have imagined the kind of things we could do now,
Speaker 1: so the future might really be able to bring that
Speaker 1: that consciousnes say, yeah, that's not even hard, Like we
Speaker 1: we very much understand human brain, human consciousness. We can
Speaker 1: look at this chronically preserved brain and we can very
Speaker 1: easily bring back this person with a new fresh body,
Speaker 1: and they can live for hundreds of years and enjoy things.
Speaker 1: That's not that insane when you think about what The
Speaker 1: brain is just a physical object, and the future is
Speaker 1: going to be very very very impressive, probably to us
Speaker 1: shockingly mind bogglingly impressive. So I'm like, yeah, I'll roll
Speaker 1: my bitchrified brain to those people and say see what
Speaker 1: you can do. Yeah, even Elon Musk, I know, I
Speaker 1: know how much you admire him. I saw him give
Speaker 1: a talk to the World Government summit last couple of
Speaker 1: weeks ago, and they were like kept asking him, what
Speaker 1: do you think the future is gonna be? With it?
Speaker 1: You know, He's like, well, the immediate, you know future,
Speaker 1: I see, like self driving cars is going to be
Speaker 1: a big thing, blah blah. But he said, honestly, I
Speaker 1: got no idea. Like you know, He's like, He's like,
Speaker 1: if you asked them a hundred years ago to predict
Speaker 1: any of the shit we're having now, like even the
Speaker 1: stoutest people of that generation would have been like not
Speaker 1: have got nailed this. Stuff. So he said, the only
Speaker 1: thing I could predict this is going to be something
Speaker 1: we have no idea. Yeah, that's right. I thought that
Speaker 1: was a really cool answer. It's exciting. Yeah, it's really exciting,
Speaker 1: and I found this conversation exciting as well. Tim, thanks
Speaker 1: a lot for chatting with me and for the great
Speaker 1: work you do. Oh, thanks so much. Great talking to you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to The Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: barrk Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as
Speaker 1: thought for booking and interesting as I did. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to read the show notes for this episode or
Speaker 1: hear past episodes, you can visit the Psychology Podcast dot com.