0:00

What's happening, people? Welcome back to

0:02

the show. My guest today is

0:04

Gwyndebogel. He's a programmer and a

0:06

writer. He also happens to be

0:08

one of my favorite Twitter followers.

0:10

He's written yet another mega thread

0:12

exploring human nature, cognitive biases, mental

0:14

models, status games, crowd behavior and

0:16

social media. And it's fantastic.

0:19

So today we get to go

0:21

through a ton of my favorites.

0:23

Expect to learn whether cynical people

0:25

are actually smarter, why people tend

0:27

to find certain outcomes so intolerable,

0:29

whether you would rather lie than say

0:31

what you really think, why people would rather

0:33

be hated than unknown, why appearing to do

0:35

good has become more important than actually doing

0:38

good and much more.

0:41

This guy is so great. This

0:44

must be his sixth or seventh episode I think he's

0:46

had on the show now. And he's just so incisive

0:49

and interesting and unique with the way that he

0:52

goes about things. You should check out his sub

0:54

stack. His sub stack's great, phenomenal writer, great speaker.

0:56

And yeah, I can't get enough of these ones.

0:58

I hope that you take tons away from this

1:01

because I had an awful

1:03

lot of fun recording it. Also this

1:05

Monday, Dr. Mike Isretel, one of the

1:07

best, if not the best evidence-based training

1:09

coaches on the planet, Doctor of Exercise

1:11

Science. He is a professor at Lehman

1:14

College in the Bronx. And

1:16

he's gonna teach us over the space of two

1:18

hours how to build muscle using science and

1:20

research. And none of that is bro science.

1:23

So yeah, huge few weeks coming

1:25

up, including some massive, massive guests

1:27

next month as well. So get

1:30

ready for those ones. This episode

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That's drinklmnt.com slash

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modern wisdom. But now

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ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Gwynnde

4:45

Bogle. Oh,

4:48

oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

4:50

oh, oh, oh, oh, every

5:05

single time, dude, you keep releasing these mega threads

5:07

with cool ideas. I keep loving going through them.

5:09

So today we're gonna go through as many of

5:11

your ideas and some of mine that I've already

5:13

made from home. And we'll see what we can

5:15

get to. First one, cynical

5:17

genius illusion. Cynical people

5:20

are seen as smarter, but sizable

5:22

research suggests they actually tend to be

5:24

dumber. Cynicism is not a

5:26

sign of intelligence, but a substitute

5:28

for it, a way to shield

5:30

oneself from betrayal and disappointment without

5:32

having to actually think. Yeah,

5:36

so this is actually based on

5:39

a pretty large study, which was conducted in 2018

5:41

by Stavrova et al. And

5:47

it's basically what they did was they did a

5:49

series of surveys to test the

5:52

hypothesis that cynical people are

5:55

more intelligent because a lot

5:57

of sort of TV

5:59

popular culture, portrays cynical people

6:01

as intelligent. So you see characters like

6:04

Dr. House, played by Hugh Laurie in

6:06

that show, Sheldon from

6:08

Big Bang Theory. A lot of these

6:10

characters tend to be very cynical, very

6:12

pessimistic, but also geniuses. So it's become

6:14

a bit of a stereotype. So these

6:17

researchers decided to test this by

6:19

actually doing a massive study, which

6:22

involved about 200,000 people in 30 different

6:25

countries. And it was a

6:27

series of surveys, firstly,

6:29

to test the

6:32

cynicism, and secondly, to test

6:34

their competence, essentially their IQ.

6:37

And it was interesting because they actually found the

6:39

opposite of what a lot of people believe, which

6:42

is that cynical people actually tend to be lower

6:45

IQ, or at least lower in

6:47

their performance of cognitive tests. And

6:50

it's actually very interesting because they

6:54

sort of posit the as an explanation for this,

6:56

the idea that cynicism

6:59

is basically a evolutionary

7:02

heuristic to basically save

7:05

people from having to think. It's

7:08

basically a way

7:10

to protect

7:13

yourself against betrayal, to protect yourself

7:16

against any form of

7:18

kind of treachery, including treachery of your

7:20

own expectations. And

7:22

I can see how this would have probably been

7:25

a useful heuristic, say about 100,000 years

7:27

ago. They in

7:29

the study, they describe it as the better,

7:32

safe than sorry heuristic. So

7:34

it's this idea that, for instance, if

7:36

you're out there, and you're in a low information environment,

7:38

so let's go, let's go 100,000 years

7:41

back into the past, right? So we don't

7:43

have the internet, we don't have TV,

7:45

we don't have books, we don't have

7:47

real knowledge, we're in a low information environment, we're in

7:49

the middle of a forest, and

7:51

we see this alien looking fruit on

7:54

a tree. And we have

7:56

the choice whether we can eat it or not eat

7:58

it. And we don't know what this is

8:00

we've never got no books, we've got no understanding of

8:02

it, we've never seen it before. So

8:04

in that situation, the best thing

8:06

to do is to default to

8:09

believing that it's dangerous. Because

8:11

obviously, one fruit, if you eat it,

8:13

and it turns out to be harmless, is not going to

8:16

benefit you that much. But if you eat

8:18

that fruit, and it turns out to be poisonous, that's

8:20

the end. So obviously, from

8:22

that point of view, it makes sense to

8:24

have this kind of pessimistic, risk averse sort

8:28

of approach to life. Now, the

8:30

thing is, is obviously the world now is very,

8:32

very different from the world that we had. And

8:35

yet we retain the same basic psychology,

8:37

the same kind of biology, we

8:40

are averse to risk. And that

8:42

involves being very sort

8:44

of distrusting of other human beings. You

8:47

know, because we don't know these are the one

8:49

thing that I'm trying to bifurcate

8:51

here, what's the difference between cynicism

8:53

and conservatism or risk aversion, or

8:56

something like that? So cynicism

8:58

is a kind of

9:00

pessimism, but it's a pessimism with

9:03

respect to other people's intentions. So

9:05

it's believing that people are always doing things

9:08

for the worst possible reasons. It's usually you

9:10

can summarize it as saying that people are

9:12

only in it for themselves. You

9:14

know, so basically, you can't trust people,

9:17

basically. So obviously, could

9:19

some conservatism

9:22

could be a function of cynicism.

9:25

But I think that obviously, conservatives are much broader

9:27

than that. And it

9:29

takes into account many other different heuristics.

9:31

So the thing with

9:33

cynicism is, it's

9:36

very low cognitive effort. It

9:39

doesn't require you to really expend

9:41

much mental effort to do anything. All you've got to do

9:43

is not trust something, you know, and

9:45

to basically just say to yourself,

9:48

Oh, wow, you know, I

9:50

don't, I shouldn't do this, because something

9:52

bad might happen. And our

9:54

brains are very, very good at finding reasons

9:56

not to do something. So there's, you know,

9:58

there's, there's a idea where if

10:01

you have a hole in your roof, you could reason

10:03

to yourself on

10:06

a sunny day, you don't need to

10:08

repair that hole in your roof. So you just not do

10:10

it. It'd be like, Oh, what's the point? I don't need

10:12

to do it. It's sunny outside. It's just letting sunshine into

10:14

my house. It's actually a good thing. On

10:16

the other hand, if it's raining, you could also say,

10:18

Oh, wow, it's raining. So I

10:21

don't want to get wet. So I won't go

10:23

out. I might slip from the ladder and fall,

10:25

you know, so your brain is very good at

10:27

inventing reasons not to do things. And so we

10:29

have this natural kind of cynicism. And it actually

10:31

takes mental effort to overcome that. It

10:34

actually takes mental effort. In the study, they

10:36

actually found that people with higher IQs actually

10:38

tend to be more trusting, which

10:40

is quite an unusual thing, you would expect it to

10:43

be the other way around, you'd expect high intelligent people

10:45

to be less trusting, but they're

10:47

actually more trusting. And this is because

10:49

they tend to be, they're not necessarily

10:51

better at determining whether they should trust

10:53

someone or not. But they're better at

10:55

determining whether cynicism is

10:57

warranted or not, which is slightly different.

10:59

Right. But there's this sort of a presumption

11:03

that hoping

11:05

for the best or that believing in

11:08

people is naive. And smart

11:10

people would never be naive. One of the

11:12

worst things that you could do is have

11:14

the wall pulled over your eyes. It's seen

11:16

as kind of juvenile or innocent or unsophisticated.

11:19

And the converse of that

11:21

is, you know, cynicism or skepticism

11:24

is more mature intellectually in

11:26

some way. Yeah,

11:28

I mean, this is sort of like

11:30

a very popular misconception, I think. And

11:32

that's why cynicism is very popular, because

11:34

it has the illusion. Because obviously,

11:37

if you're if you take no risks in life,

11:39

then you're not gonna fail ever, anything,

11:41

because you put yourself

11:43

out there. You have this idea that

11:46

I've heard you speak about called the

11:48

Cynicism Safety Blanket, which I think really

11:50

sort of jives with this very well,

11:52

because obviously,

11:55

cynicism is a form of protection.

11:57

It's sort of like this front.

12:00

that you put up, which protects you

12:02

from any risk taking. If

12:05

you don't take any risks, if you don't go out

12:07

there, and if you don't try to succeed anything, then

12:09

you won't fail at anything. So, you know, it's basically

12:11

like a way to guard yourself

12:13

against any form of failure. And

12:15

that's why I think people who

12:18

maybe don't want to expend mental effort or

12:20

emotional effort, because there's an emotional aspect of

12:22

this as well, they will

12:24

instead just choose not to take the risk

12:26

is much easier to just say, Oh, I'm

12:30

not going to take the risk because everything's gone

12:32

to share, everybody's out for themselves. I'm not going

12:34

to trust this person, I'm not going to love

12:36

this person, because you know, they might betray me,

12:38

they might, they might not return

12:40

the affection, I'm not going to go out and try

12:42

this new thing because I might fail. It's

12:45

much easier just to not do any of that

12:47

stuff. And then you can just say to yourself,

12:49

Oh, well, I've never failed. You know,

12:51

it's like a kind of ego trick that you

12:53

put yourself on big, but the thing is, is

12:57

the truly sort of intelligent people will say

12:59

to themselves, well, look, yeah, I might

13:01

fail. But at the end of the day, it's

13:03

worth, it's worth trying.

13:05

Because at the end

13:07

of the day, if you don't try, you'll never

13:09

achieve anything, you're not actually going to better yourself,

13:12

you're just going to remain in the same situation

13:14

whatsoever. And even failure can be good. If you're

13:16

intelligent, failure can be good, because you learn from

13:18

failure. In fact, failure is pretty much the

13:20

only thing we learn from, you know, it's the only

13:22

lesson that we learn from, we don't learn when we

13:24

succeed, we don't learn when we're happy. So

13:27

intelligent people will tend to put themselves

13:29

out there, they will risk engaging

13:32

in ambitious endeavors,

13:35

because they know that at the end of the day, even

13:38

if they fail at that endeavor, they're actually

13:40

still improving their station, because they're improving their

13:42

knowledge, they're learning from it. I

13:45

think that's ultimately what it comes down to is, if

13:48

you're not, if you don't have a high

13:51

IQ, you can feign a high

13:53

IQ by criticizing other people, their

13:56

efforts and saying, Oh, look at this fool,

13:58

he failed, you know, whereas you'll never fail

14:00

to say, Oh, you always have that,

14:02

you know, I've never failed, but then you've

14:04

never actually succeeded either. So I think

14:08

it's, it's a guard, it's an emotional guard,

14:10

and it's an intellectual guard. Seagull's

14:13

Law. A man with a watch

14:16

knows what time it is. A man

14:18

with two watches is never sure. Ancient

14:20

societies followed a single narrative. Modern

14:23

societies are cacophonies of competing

14:25

narratives. Without trust, more data

14:27

doesn't make us more informed,

14:30

but more confused. Yeah,

14:33

so if you talk

14:36

to a lot of

14:38

these sort of disinformation academics,

14:40

people who study disinformation and stuff,

14:43

they'll often say that there's a

14:45

problem of people not

14:47

getting enough information, you know,

14:49

there's this whole idea of low information

14:51

voters and stuff, you know, that's what

14:53

people tend to call euphemistically call people

14:56

that they regard as stupid as low

14:58

information. But the

15:00

thing is, is the problem

15:02

in society at the moment is not actually a

15:04

lack of information. It's a lack

15:06

of trust. That's the bottleneck that is stopping

15:09

progress. Because look, we have, we

15:12

have more information than we've ever had in

15:14

whole of human history. I

15:17

think I read somewhere that sort of, every

15:19

year, more information is produced than in

15:21

all of the preceding years of

15:23

human history. That's how much

15:25

information is exploding. So most exponential

15:27

of exponentials. Yeah, yeah.

15:30

And so information is

15:32

not the problem. We have more than enough

15:34

information. The thing that's holding people back is

15:36

a lack of trust. And I

15:39

think it's got particularly bad since sort of

15:41

the pandemic. Because, you know,

15:43

obviously, our mainstream institutions, which we sort of

15:45

rely on to navigate the world for us,

15:48

they showed that they were flawed during the

15:50

pandemic, you know, for instance, at

15:52

the beginning of the pandemic, the World Health Organization said

15:54

that COVID is not airborne. And if you go on

15:56

Twitter, and you look at that page, the

15:59

tweets still up. which says that

16:01

COVID is not airborne, but we very quickly found that

16:03

COVID was airborne, and it was actually

16:05

disastrous because people obviously were lulled into

16:07

a false sense of security. So that

16:10

was obviously a big problem. And then we also had

16:12

the problem with the masks, how

16:14

efficacious are they? Then

16:16

there was a problem of vaccines,

16:18

how efficacious are vaccines, what

16:21

are the side effects? And then of course,

16:23

there was the lab leak hypothesis. That

16:26

was instantly dismissed as a conspiracy theory, despite

16:28

the fact that there is at

16:30

least as good an argument

16:33

that COVID escaped from a lab as that it

16:35

was naturally, it was all

16:37

the natural spillover. So these

16:40

events, I think really destroyed trust

16:42

in institutions. But I mean, obviously, this

16:45

problem began before COVID, it just

16:47

COVID exacerbated it a lot. And

16:50

obviously, things have not gotten any better since then,

16:52

you know, we've seen, for instance,

16:55

the whole Harvard scandal, the plagiarism scandal. This

16:58

year, we've seen many big academic

17:00

studies, which have been shown to

17:02

be completely bunk. There's a famous

17:05

sense of his name escapes me,

17:07

but he did a series

17:09

of studies about systemic racism in

17:11

which he basically showed that systemic racism is a

17:13

thing. And this was picked up

17:15

by the New York Times, the Washington Post to

17:17

basically say, hey, look, systemic racism is a real

17:19

thing. Look at these disparities in treatment of white

17:21

people and black people. That was

17:24

all shown to be complete nonsense. It was all

17:26

fabricated, all data was fabricated. And Dan

17:29

Ariely, who's a famous psychologist, his work was

17:31

also found to be fabricated. And ironically,

17:34

there was a Harvard professor who was studying faking

17:37

of information who ended up her

17:40

own work with fake. You

17:44

know, so this year has been really bad

17:46

for academia. There's been a lot of there's

17:48

been a massive drop interest. And if you

17:50

look at any poll regarding trust in the

17:52

media, you see a gradual slope,

17:54

you see people, you see decline

17:56

on both sides of the

17:59

aisle, but particularly amongst people on the right because

18:01

obviously there's this idea that most of

18:04

the mainstream institutions in the West lean

18:06

left. But even

18:08

the left have less trust over

18:10

time in institutions

18:12

and obviously this has gotten a lot

18:15

worse over the past few years. So

18:20

the problem with trust is it's

18:22

like a tree where

18:25

it takes a long period of time of nourishment

18:28

and light, seeing what's going on, to

18:31

actually grow it. But it can be

18:33

chopped down in like a day. It takes years for

18:35

a tree to grow but it could be chopped down

18:37

in a single day. Institutions

18:42

over many years, they try to build trust with

18:44

the public but a few real bad

18:48

instances of betrayal

18:50

of that trust have now caused

18:52

the trust to nosedive. What's

18:55

interesting here is this dovetails with what we

18:57

were talking about previously about the cynical genius

18:59

illusion because a lack

19:02

of trust leads to more cynicism.

19:05

And the cynicism stops people

19:07

from doing

19:10

things. People become more risk averse.

19:13

They become less likely to form

19:15

partnerships with people, even to form

19:17

relationships with people. And

19:20

so there's a lot less innovation

19:23

in a sense because people distrust a

19:26

lot of things. You see it in

19:28

our daily lives with

19:30

the ways... Again, I'm not saying

19:33

that this distrust is unwarranted. A lot of it

19:35

is warranted. I mean, if you look at

19:37

what's going on in America and San Francisco and

19:39

places like that, where you see the

19:43

government in San Francisco had an opportunity

19:45

to clean up the streets, to take

19:47

the fentanyl users off the streets, to

19:49

house them in a decent place and

19:52

to try and give them help and to clean

19:55

up the streets generally. And they didn't do it.

19:57

They only did it when the premier of China,

19:59

Xi Jinping, came out, you know, they thought, okay,

20:01

now we've definitely got to do something about it.

20:03

So they that just showed that they just didn't

20:05

care. Obviously, you know, when when there's

20:07

a foreign leader coming to visit, then they suddenly cleaned up

20:09

the streets. So this is obviously, you

20:12

know, this is this distrust isn't

20:14

necessarily unwarranted. But what's

20:17

happened is the result of this is that people

20:20

tend to no matter how much information

20:22

you give them, no matter how much

20:24

information, the World Health Organization or,

20:26

you know, governments

20:28

or corporations even try to give people,

20:31

the fact is, is that there's this paucity of trust.

20:35

And I don't to be honest, I don't

20:37

think that this trust is ever going to be fully

20:39

restored. I personally don't

20:42

trust institutions

20:44

anymore. I find that

20:46

it's easier to trust individuals. Now, that's

20:49

what I do. I don't really trust institutions.

20:51

And the reason for this is although there

20:53

are a lot of low integrity individuals, there

20:55

are also a lot of extremely high integrity

20:57

individuals. And it's much

21:00

easier to gauge whether an individual is

21:02

high integrity than whether an institution is

21:04

high integrity. In fact, most institutions tend

21:06

to fall to the level of their

21:08

lowest integrity members. This

21:11

is because corrupt people obviously

21:13

tend to rise high in institutions because they tend

21:15

to be more ruthless, they tend to be more

21:17

dishonest, they tend to play the game. And

21:20

so they, the dishonest people

21:22

rise to the top in institutions.

21:24

People who are trustworthy on their

21:26

own in solitude also

21:28

become untrustworthy due to negligence or

21:30

fear or compliance or the Abilene

21:32

paradox. All of that, all of

21:35

those things happen. So you get

21:37

honest individuals and untrustworthy,

21:41

highly falsified groups,

21:43

even if they're made up, even if

21:45

the constituent parts are trustworthy. Yeah,

21:48

that's it. Yeah, it all comes down

21:50

to the sort of perverse incentive structures that

21:52

institutions have, you know, they tend to be

21:54

these sort of closed systems of status games.

21:57

They also tend to be chasing money. And

22:00

a lot of the time, these people are

22:02

playing against each other for status.

22:05

So it leads to purity spirals, for

22:07

instance. And a

22:09

lot of these perverse incentives ensure that

22:11

institutions can never really rise above their

22:14

worst members. Whereas individuals,

22:17

they are a lot more variable. Not

22:20

every individual is more trustworthy than

22:22

every institution. But of the high-integrity

22:24

individuals, they're a lot more trustworthy

22:27

than high-integrity institutions. And

22:30

so I tend to trust individuals a lot more in

22:32

the ways that I learn whether I can trust someone

22:34

or not. I have a few heuristics, but for

22:37

instance, one of them would be, are

22:40

they willing to publicly admit when they get

22:42

things wrong? Because

22:44

it takes integrity to admit when you're wrong, but

22:46

it takes a huge amount of integrity to do

22:48

it publicly. And if you can

22:50

do that, and that's a very rare skill, it

22:53

takes a huge amount of strength to be

22:55

able to go out there and say, okay, I was wrong.

22:58

And so that, for me, is a very good indicator

23:00

that somebody's high-integrity. It shows that they value the truth

23:03

more than their own ego. Do you know what? One

23:06

of my favorite heuristics for this is, when

23:08

was the last time that the person you're

23:10

thinking about surprised you with one of their

23:13

takes? If they

23:15

are very predictable with the things that

23:17

they do, if you know one of

23:19

their views and from it, you can

23:21

accurately predict everything else that they believe,

23:23

they're probably not a serious thinker. They've

23:25

just absorbed some ideology wholesale. What you

23:27

want is someone who you don't always

23:29

necessarily agree with, but definitely you can't

23:31

predict. Like, obviously, most people do fall

23:33

in some sort of grouping of ideologies.

23:36

That's why we tend to have people that, birds

23:38

of a feather. But yeah,

23:40

when was the last time that this person surprised

23:42

you with something that they commented about? Yeah,

23:45

that's definitely one of mine as well, because it

23:47

shows that somebody's willing to sort of think for

23:49

themselves rather than sort of subscribe to a

23:52

total package ideology, which just gives you everything.

23:55

It tells you what to think about abortion, it

23:57

tells you what to think about gun control, it tells you what to think

23:59

about freeze in speech. All of these

24:01

things are generally unrelated, but if somebody's got all

24:03

of these predictable opinions it shows you that they're

24:05

kind of getting it all wholesale

24:07

from someone else. There's something that I

24:09

think is associated with this,

24:11

another one of yours, ambiguity aversion. People

24:14

tend to find uncertain outcomes less tolerable

24:17

than bad outcomes. De Burcaretterl 2016

24:19

found that test participants who were

24:21

told they had a small chance

24:24

of receiving an electric shock exhibited

24:26

much higher stress levels than those

24:28

who knew they'd certainly received an

24:30

electric shock. Yeah,

24:32

I mean this explains so much, I

24:34

mean everything from sort of the world of

24:36

investing. It explains market

24:38

volatility, but

24:40

it also explains things at a personal level where

24:44

one thing I've found in my personal life is that

24:47

things are never as bad as I think that they're going to be

24:49

pretty much. It's

24:52

a very simple thing, but I

24:54

find that the sort of the anxiety

24:56

of expecting what trying

24:59

to expect what's going to happen is often worse

25:01

than the actual, even the worst eventuality.

25:05

For instance, if I were one

25:07

of my old selves from say 10 years

25:10

ago I might be nervous having this conversation with you right

25:12

now knowing that a lot of people are listening. I

25:15

would probably be playing in my head a lot of

25:17

times where it could go wrong. I might say the

25:19

wrong word, I might say something really bad, I might

25:21

say the N word or something I certainly, and then

25:24

that's it. I

25:27

think about the worst possible scenario, right? That

25:31

would really like give me nightmares, but then I would

25:34

find that even if the worst did happen

25:36

it probably wouldn't actually be that, not that

25:38

I'm actually going to say the N word,

25:40

but things are

25:42

always worse in your mind because your mind

25:45

is more terrifying than reality. Your imagination

25:47

is more terrifying than reality. It's

25:49

a more skilled sort of

25:52

scaremonger than reality because it

25:55

knows your worst fears. I think

25:58

when you're uncertain... You

26:00

can often imagine extremely

26:02

bad outcomes because

26:05

in that uncertainty, that's where your

26:08

imagination runs riot. That's one

26:10

aspect of it. With regards to

26:15

the ambiguity aversion that you talk about

26:17

with the electric shocks, again,

26:19

it's managing the anxiety of

26:22

uncertainty that takes a bigger toll on

26:25

somebody than actually just resigning themselves

26:27

to the worst outcome. I

26:30

found that this is again, if I

26:32

know that something is going to happen,

26:35

something bad is going to happen, it gives me a

26:37

sense of peace of mind. Because I

26:40

know what to predict, I know what to expect. And

26:43

so I don't need to expend

26:45

stress and mental effort in

26:48

trying to find

26:50

a way out of it, trying to sort of predict

26:55

what's going to happen. Because trying to predict what's

26:57

going to happen is a very stressful sort

27:01

of thing to do. It basically requires

27:03

you to consider an extremely

27:06

wide swathe of possibilities.

27:09

And our minds are just not very good at doing

27:11

that. If we have just one path ahead of us,

27:14

even if that's a bad path, even

27:17

if it's got a ditch at the end of it, it's much

27:19

easier to just continue along that path and say, okay, so

27:21

when it happens, I'll deal with it, than

27:23

it is to say, okay, which of

27:25

these paths has got a ditch at the end? How

27:30

many steps away is

27:32

it? Every step you take,

27:34

you have to be worried that you might fall

27:36

down that ditch. So it's the stress of

27:39

having to navigate possibility, which

27:41

ends up causing more mental discomfort

27:43

than the actual bad outcome itself.

27:46

Do you think that ambiguity aversion

27:48

explains some of the Conspiratorial

27:51

thinking,: doomsday cultish like

27:53

fads that we've seen,

27:56

that it actually closes

27:58

down the potential. The

28:00

analogy of the world to one thing. One

28:02

bad thing, but it gives you a sense

28:04

of certainty as opposed to leaving you open

28:06

to ambiguity. Yeah. Absolutely

28:09

one hundred percent. And because I

28:11

think. There is one

28:13

thing that's scary at Dime A

28:15

conspiracy of people plotting everything. And.

28:18

That is. No conspiracy of people

28:20

playing everything. The everything is just

28:22

rudderless, that societies borderless basically and

28:25

nobody knows what they're doing. You

28:27

know? Everybody used his kind

28:29

of trying to navigate the world as

28:31

best as they can earn. There.

28:33

Is no overarching plot that's scary.

28:36

Also. And so. It.

28:39

Leads to uncertainty when you don't know what to

28:41

expect, when you can't blame your problems on a

28:43

single thing, when you know that leaves again at

28:45

least so many paths ahead of you that you

28:47

just become overwhelmed and you just kind of like.

28:51

The. Stress of of trying to work out which

28:53

passes the true three one that is. An.

28:56

Underrated form of stress whereas the

28:58

stress of knowing. That. There

29:00

is a bad as a group but people

29:02

out there who are playing everything's actually isn't

29:04

really stressful. How. Is. That is actually quite

29:06

interesting. Because. Then you want to go

29:08

online and you will have an ordinary uncertainty about

29:10

it. Yeah I can have this idea called anxiety

29:12

Cost So in the same way as you have

29:15

opportunity cost, the amount of time do you spend

29:17

thinking about the thing that you could have gotten

29:19

rid of had you have just done nothing. When

29:21

you wake up in the morning you need to

29:23

meditate, walk the dog, go to work. The longer

29:25

that it takes to meditate, the more times you

29:27

have to have the thought, I still need to

29:29

meditate today. That is a very helpful thing to

29:32

do and this is like a protracted version of

29:34

that. Those this for Matty Side in the times

29:36

is back in two thousand and twenty. At

29:38

Psychologists have conducted experiments to shed light

29:40

on why people lose or at least

29:42

suspend rationality. One experiment ask people to

29:44

imagine going to a doctor to human

29:46

uncertain medical diagnosis. Such people with significantly

29:48

more likely to express the belief that

29:50

God within control of the live another

29:52

as participants to imagine the time a

29:54

deep uncertainty when they feared for their

29:57

jobs or the health of the children's

29:59

they were fall more likely to see

30:01

a pattern in meaningless static or to

30:03

infer the two random events were connected.

30:05

This is such a common finding the

30:07

psychologists have given it a name. Compensate.

30:10

Three control. When. We

30:12

feel uncertain When randomness improved upon our

30:14

lives. We respond by reintroducing order in

30:16

some other way. Superstitions and conspiracy theory

30:18

speak to this need. It is not

30:21

easy to accept the important events are

30:23

shaped by random forces. This is why,

30:25

for some it makes more sense to

30:27

believe that we are threatened by the

30:29

grand plans of maligned scientists than the

30:32

chance mutations of a silly little microbe.

30:35

Yeah. Absolutely. I think it

30:37

explains so much about why we

30:40

dramatize reality. We tend to sort

30:42

of. Ten. Events.

30:44

Into Stories because it's

30:46

much. More. Ordinary. Am

30:49

your if you try to comprehend

30:51

the world as it actually is.

30:55

You might be overwhelmed. you know that's just

30:57

the so many variables going on or all

30:59

over the world like that we have to

31:01

reduce things down to simple patterns which we

31:03

call stories. In which

31:06

we basically. We. Have simply

31:08

we We collapse the sort of web of causality

31:10

down for single thread. And.

31:13

That makes mice a much easier to sort

31:15

of comprehend. even if it's it's not sort

31:17

of. It's. Not completely true

31:19

what would leave, but it's soon enough

31:21

that we can get on with our

31:23

lives and just kind of. You

31:25

know not have to worry about it. So many of

31:27

our brains. What you're looking

31:29

for with with any kind of sort of. Sense.

31:32

Making truth making system is I

31:34

want to be able to move

31:36

through the world with reliable, predictive

31:38

accuracy of what's gonna happen, but

31:40

really wants deeper than that is.

31:42

I just don't want to expand

31:44

that much mental effort trying to

31:46

work out what's going to happen.

31:48

And the difference between those two

31:50

allows this to slip in. Which

31:52

is what mano thinking. It's right.

31:54

If if every single problem in

31:56

the world is because of capitalism,

31:58

all the climate change or a

32:00

dilemma, Todd's all the whatever. Every

32:02

single problem is due to the

32:04

same solution. That's because the demand

32:06

for answers outstrips your ability to

32:08

supply them, so you just retrofit

32:10

one answer to all questions. Yeah.

32:13

Absolutely Again, is is a cognitive

32:15

sort of a it's it's energy

32:17

saving, a mechanism that that would

32:20

people and gauge and and. I

32:22

think yeah it. It. Does

32:24

explains so much of the

32:26

current. Landscapes. Occurrence of

32:29

online landscape and particularly explains and

32:31

tribalism. There is much easier just

32:33

to sprint since I saw this

32:35

really good them tweet and by

32:37

Michael, Malice and or it has

32:39

been on the show On Your

32:41

Shiny many times unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah.

32:44

He said damn feet I've been good in

32:46

front be but he went something like an

32:48

intense is it's people don't see the world.

32:51

And include it in Pittsburgh. Most people

32:53

don't navigate the world. Boy. A

32:55

true and false filter, but by an

32:57

awesome them filter. And

32:59

and so slightest. True

33:01

and false is too much of a cognitive. Demand.

33:04

You're trying to work out what's true and

33:06

false. It's just way too much effort for

33:08

most people on it. It, it requires. Statistical

33:12

analysis. It requires looking

33:14

at hard data he

33:16

requires at. Sort. Of

33:18

suppressing your own emotions, it the so much

33:21

that you need to do in order to

33:23

actually work out what's true. Whereas if you

33:25

just and adopt a very simple especially stem

33:27

the rustic it so much easier and you

33:29

can still get on and your life because

33:31

if you have an Us versus them and

33:34

Sir strategy then you're going to be in

33:36

the same boat with a group of the

33:38

people who will help you you know sort

33:40

of not get world and they'll become your

33:42

allies so it's just so less cognitively demanding

33:44

to do that and. Pretty. Much

33:47

everything about our sort of mental architecture.

33:50

Is. Configured. To

33:52

this. Sort. Of system because

33:54

that's how we evolved in a we have will

33:56

be one hunter gatherer as we we lived in

33:58

tribes and week. We should

34:00

have engaged to tribal warfare. So everything that

34:02

we've just been talking about. This.

34:05

Pattern matching and everything is all

34:07

in the service of tribalism. Ultimately

34:10

am so we will see the

34:12

best in what. Our. Allies

34:14

Sambou see the worst him our enemy

34:16

sites at will it yet will tip

34:18

for and worst possible way we will.

34:21

See. Signs in the clouds that sort

34:23

of portend that Godzilla on our side or

34:25

whatever he had a he's on our side

34:27

and he get a he hates of the

34:30

enemies you know, whatever it's get it at

34:32

will find patterns that justify an Us versus

34:34

them sort of attitude. Not funny. you know

34:36

that's what comes naturally to us and. He

34:39

also explains why we see things in

34:41

terms of drama rather than data. And

34:44

dead at things was one of my

34:46

that sort of concepts. Does it talk

34:48

about Compassion? St and. This

34:50

idea. That sort of. Those

34:54

experiments conducted am. In

34:56

which. People. From.

34:59

Database. It engaged in sort of. Bed.

35:02

These appeals for charity. So ah, what

35:04

I did is is like a sort

35:06

of a campaign for an for funding

35:09

for charity and they had two different

35:11

ways of doing it. One way was

35:13

based on am presenting simon statistics and

35:15

hard data. And the other

35:17

was based on presenting the story of Single

35:19

Stop and Go. And the

35:21

people tended to deny a lot more to

35:23

the girl. And.

35:26

The reason for this is.the hard data

35:28

is alien to the human brain and

35:30

statistics is something that we're not. It's

35:33

not a brains are not format it

35:35

for. That kind of data

35:37

analysis, which is not, You know it

35:39

is too much ss it requires too

35:41

many calories and too much time. So

35:43

what our brains do is we, again,

35:45

we not, We collapse the web of

35:47

cause, unseemly, class all the variables into

35:49

a single. Thread a

35:51

single line, single linear. Sort. of

35:53

and veta which does has a beginning a

35:56

middle and then so you'd have to get

35:58

his starbucks need your help you give her

36:00

your help, she is no longer starving

36:02

and therefore you've saved, you know, you saved a girl,

36:04

and then that's it, and then you're a good person,

36:06

you know. So that's how we sort of,

36:09

we've collapsed the whole world down to these

36:12

single narrative threads and it just makes, because

36:15

obviously we think in the language of story, if

36:18

you want to convince people, that's how you've got

36:20

to appeal to people, you've got to, statistics

36:23

aren't going to help. You can rattle off all the

36:25

numbers you want, you know, and the bigger they are,

36:27

the more alien they are, and the less they'll be

36:29

believed, the less they'll be really comprehended. You

36:32

get the story of a single girl and

36:34

you present her story in a narrative sequence,

36:37

in the way that people tell

36:39

stories, you know. You

36:41

could use the three act structure, you could use

36:43

the hero's journey, whatever system you want, but as

36:45

long as it's a narrative thread, a single narrative

36:48

thread, you'll reach a lot more people. So,

36:51

yeah, we're not donating a million

36:53

times more money or feeling a

36:55

million times worse when we

36:57

hear the story of a million kids compared with

36:59

the one of the single kid. In fact, it's

37:02

probably the opposite, that that pulls on our heartstrings.

37:04

Yeah, the personification of data and

37:06

stories, and you can see this, the charity

37:08

example is perfectly right. They are

37:10

split testing into

37:12

oblivion what the most effective way to

37:14

pull on people's heartstrings is. Like they

37:17

know. So if you want to find

37:19

out how to motivate people's behavior, just

37:21

watch a charity advert, because they're not

37:23

doing the thing that doesn't motivate behavior,

37:25

they're doing precisely the thing that motivates

37:28

behavior, and they'll have had behavioral scientists,

37:30

behavioral economics guys, they'll have had Rory

37:32

Sutherland will be in there, and the

37:34

copywriters and all the rest of it,

37:36

split testing, everything, and that's what they've

37:39

arrived at. Right, next one. Preference falsification.

37:41

If people are afraid to say what they

37:43

really think, they will instead

37:45

lie. Therefore, punishing speech, whether

37:47

by taking offense or by

37:49

threatening censorship, is ultimately a

37:51

request to be deceived. Yeah,

37:55

I mean, so this, I

37:58

think is another reason why. there's actually a

38:00

distrust in institutions because

38:03

they've tended to react to

38:06

criticism by essentially censoring

38:09

people. But

38:13

censorship is based on a very outdated way

38:16

of operating. It's based on

38:18

a very outdated information architecture.

38:22

So censorship would have worked very well 100 years

38:25

ago when there was a centralized

38:28

authority which passed information

38:30

down to everybody, whether

38:32

it was via printed

38:34

leaflets or television screens.

38:37

Information was very centralized. But

38:42

that system no longer works because the

38:44

reason it worked in the past was

38:46

because since the authorities provided a single

38:49

system of information. So for instance, think about the TV.

38:52

In the UK, the TV tended to only have four

38:55

channels originally when I

38:57

was young, very young. And

39:00

those four channels all tended to have the same sort of narrative.

39:02

So if you wanted to censor certain

39:04

information, you could just basically pass a

39:07

law because this

39:09

was broadcast media. So they were beholden to

39:11

government intervention. So you could pass

39:13

a law saying that, oh, the four

39:15

channels are not allowed to talk about this. So

39:18

therefore, now none of that information is going to get

39:20

beamed into people's homes. So now

39:22

nobody can ever know what that information was.

39:26

But that kind

39:28

of sort of centralized information structure

39:30

no longer exists.

39:32

All information in the West, at

39:34

least, is decentralized or

39:37

it's decentralizable in the

39:40

sense that somebody can pick up on

39:42

anything now and make it go viral. So

39:46

now censorship doesn't work. Now what happens is

39:48

people are well aware of what's being censored.

39:51

And you have this thing, obviously, the Streisand

39:53

effect, where when people learn what's

39:56

being censored, then they

39:58

want to know what that thing is even more. you

40:00

know, in the past, like, the further back into the

40:02

past we go, the less

40:04

likely this the Streisand effect was

40:07

because people wouldn't even know what was

40:09

being censored since information was centralized. But

40:12

now because information is

40:15

everywhere, that information is going

40:17

to leak leak out people are going to know what's

40:19

being censored people are going to know, even if they

40:21

don't know the precise thing that's being censored, they're going

40:23

to know what kind of information

40:25

is being censored from them, because somebody's going

40:27

to spill the beans somewhere because of how

40:29

interconnected everything is. You know, all it takes

40:31

is just one person to spill the beans,

40:34

and then that's going to go viral,

40:36

everybody's going to find out about it. And we see

40:38

this repeatedly, you know, like, for instance, with

40:40

a lovely, lovely, going back to the lovely hypothesis. Immediately,

40:43

as soon as Facebook

40:46

and Twitter and everybody else tried to stifle

40:48

that story, it went

40:50

viral when everybody was talking about it

40:52

because it's a Biden. Yeah,

40:54

that's another perfect example. There's many

40:57

other examples, as soon as one

40:59

organization tries to censor something, other

41:03

individuals will immediately raise the

41:05

alarm. And as soon

41:07

as that happens, everybody now wants to know what that

41:09

thing was censored, they want to know why it was

41:11

withheld from them. This is,

41:14

you know, this thing called reactance, sometimes

41:16

called the backfire effect, where when you

41:18

withhold what he says, people can't have

41:20

something, they become even more adamant

41:22

that they want they want it even more, you

41:24

know. And so this

41:28

leads to essentially

41:30

a backfire, you know, that's what's called the backfire effect.

41:33

And what happens is

41:35

that people then decide

41:38

that hang on a second, if this is

41:40

being withheld from me, then it's gonna obviously I

41:42

mean, I'm kind of I'm going a little bit,

41:44

I'm veering off a little bit from the original

41:46

thing. But so that's, that's one aspect of it.

41:49

But like, yeah, another aspect of

41:51

this whole censorship thing is that when

41:54

people realize that they can't say certain things,

41:57

they instead will lie. And

42:00

they will then they're not going to

42:03

change their beliefs. Like I said, the backfire effect

42:05

means that people don't become if you

42:07

censor people, they're not going to become less

42:09

likely to believe that thing, they're going to become more

42:12

likely to believe that thing, you know. And

42:14

the only thing that's going to change is that if, if

42:16

they know that they're going to get banned for saying

42:18

something, they'll just lie. But they're

42:20

not it's not going to change their thoughts.

42:23

In fact, the opposite is happening. And so

42:25

it's a counterproductive thing to do in the

42:27

digital age. That's why censorship just doesn't work

42:29

in the digital age. Because although people you

42:31

can control what people say online, you can't

42:33

control what they think. In fact, what you

42:35

do is you make people more adamant to

42:38

think what they want to think. So they

42:40

become more entrenched in their beliefs. Well, you

42:42

taught me a couple of episodes ago about

42:44

the chilling effect. When punishment for what people

42:46

say becomes widespread, people stop saying what they

42:48

really think and instead say whatever is needed

42:50

to thrive in the social environment, thus limits

42:52

on speech, become limits on sincerity. It seems

42:54

very similar to preference falsification. Yeah, is there

42:56

is there a distinction between the two? Is

42:58

that what where is the difference? Yeah,

43:01

so I mean, they are essentially the same thing. I

43:03

mean, maybe the difference would be something of scale, where

43:06

preference falsification really refers more to

43:08

the individual actions. You

43:11

know, and then you have things like the spiral of silence,

43:13

which is another way of saying the same thing, spiral of

43:15

silences is the cumulative effect

43:17

of preference falsification. So what happens

43:20

is that certain

43:22

ideas become more and more verboten over

43:24

time. And, and when they become verboten,

43:26

then people don't want to want to

43:28

be the first person. It's

43:31

just a fancy way of saying forbidden. Okay,

43:33

that's cool. Verboten. Yeah, German.

43:35

For some reason, I don't know why I said verboten when

43:37

I could have just said forbidden. It's nice. I like I

43:39

prefer it. Yeah. But

43:41

like, yeah, what happens

43:44

is that it leads to a spiral

43:46

of silence. So the

43:48

more that an idea becomes unsayable,

43:52

the less likely people are to say it. And

43:54

so the more it becomes insane. Yeah.

43:58

So it's kind of like a cycle. Yeah,

44:00

reinforcing system. Yeah. Yeah.

44:03

So yeah, I mean, I just don't

44:05

know what people are thinking like these organizations when

44:07

they think that they can censor information in the

44:09

digital age, it just it just very, very rarely

44:12

works. It might work in a place like China.

44:14

But even in China, right, where the

44:17

government has absolute control, you know, they've got

44:19

the sort of the Great Fire War, what

44:21

they call the Great Firewall. But

44:23

even that is not enough. Now, they've been

44:25

cases now where information has gone viral, but

44:27

the CCP didn't want to go viral because

44:29

they were trying to stifle it. And

44:32

in the age of, you know, even

44:34

though they they do all they

44:36

can, it just isn't possible because of the number,

44:39

because of how fast information travels in the digital

44:42

age, and because of the number of connections between

44:45

nodes, it's just not

44:47

possible to use censorship anymore. So any

44:49

any organization that's trying to use censorship,

44:51

they're using 20th century tactics against

44:54

21st century information systems, it just doesn't

44:56

work. And again, it

44:58

leads to more distrust of institutions. So this

45:00

goes back to this whole thing that

45:03

we're talking about with, you know, the

45:05

the problem of trust in society, and

45:07

it leads to more cynicism. So

45:09

all of it, you know, so going so between

45:11

the backfire effect and the cynical, the

45:13

whole cynical thing, you know, it just makes

45:15

things worse. And I don't know when institutions

45:18

are going to learn this, but eventually

45:21

they will, hopefully, you end up

45:23

you end up with this kind of

45:25

game where they chase their own tail in a little

45:27

bit. So for instance, you see this with YouTube

45:30

channels. So a YouTube channel will begin

45:32

to struggle with plays. And

45:34

they won't be too sure why. And everybody

45:36

has on YouTube, when it comes to the

45:38

way that they frame their episodes and what

45:40

they do both content and framing, they have

45:42

an overton window that they exist within. And

45:44

they're not prepared usually to go beyond a

45:47

particular level of boring, because people aren't going

45:49

to click. And there's usually an upper bound

45:51

of clickbaitness that they're also not prepared to

45:53

go past, because that seems kind of hacky.

45:55

And what will happen is they will begin

45:57

to skew more and more towards clickbait

46:00

side. They will use more

46:02

limbic hijack words, war, battle,

46:04

imagery, the whole Mr. Beastification

46:10

faces. They'll lean more down that, but

46:12

the problem that you have, as you

46:14

begin to pull that lever more and

46:16

more to chase ever-declining plays, your

46:19

audience becomes increasingly desensitized to the subtlety

46:21

that you want them to come back

46:23

to. So it's a one-way street. When

46:25

you start to pull that record, like

46:27

Russell Brand's channel, regardless of what you

46:29

think about Russell Brand, what he says,

46:31

his content is, I would

46:33

challenge anybody to say that the framing

46:35

around his YouTube channel is fair

46:39

and gentle and reassuring. As someone that

46:41

talks a lot about love

46:44

and you awakening wonders and all this

46:46

sort of stuff, it's like, they are

46:48

coming for your kids. You won't believe

46:50

they did what? It's the most limbic

46:52

hijack. I'm pretty sure it was his

46:54

channel that did that image

46:56

of the Hawaiian laser beam hitting the

46:58

roof of a thing. I'm pretty sure

47:01

that he either created or his team

47:03

created or used like this. Anyway,

47:06

my point being that you chase that

47:08

sort of limbic hijack game and

47:11

it makes people become increasingly desensitized

47:13

to the things that you can say in

47:16

the same way as institutions that

47:18

feel like they're losing control increasingly

47:20

apply more rigorous high

47:22

levels of scrutiny, high levels of control. What

47:25

happens? It drives the trust

47:27

down ever more. You can't

47:29

dictate trust top down.

47:31

It has to be emergent. It has to come out

47:33

bottom up. But they're chasing it more

47:36

and more. Oh my God, we need to do more

47:38

because the trust is declining and that means that we

47:40

need to use ever more totalitarian techniques to do this.

47:43

It doesn't work.

47:46

And the fact that they think that it's going to

47:48

work actually makes it even harder to trust them because

47:51

they're just so wrong about that. So you ask yourself

47:53

what else are they wrong about? They got to be

47:55

wrong about so many things. If they don't understand this

47:57

basic facet of human psychology, then they're wrong.

48:00

they're pretty much hard to trust on anything else.

48:02

Yeah. Uh, hero-stratic

48:05

fame. Many

48:07

people would rather be hated than

48:09

unknown. In ancient Greece, Herostratus

48:12

burned down the temple of

48:14

Artemis purely so he'd be

48:16

remembered. Now we have

48:18

nuisance influences who stream themselves committing

48:20

crimes and harassing people purely

48:22

for clout. Yeah,

48:26

so this has become a serious problem now, I

48:28

think. So, I don't know

48:30

if you know who Jack

48:32

Docherty is. I do. This

48:34

sort of world of IRL

48:37

streamers and Jack Docherty tell

48:39

me when I get this wrong. There are

48:41

a few of them. He appears to kind

48:43

of start fights in person

48:46

and has massive bouncers slash

48:49

security guys with him, most of

48:51

whom seem to be black, and

48:53

then they will sort

48:55

out whatever the issue is by punching

48:57

or choking out the person that Jack

49:00

just started some beef with and then

49:02

the internet goes completely crazy by saying,

49:04

dude, started on somebody then got

49:06

his six foot seven behemoth of a security

49:08

guy to step in and smash some kid

49:10

in the face. And now

49:13

he's getting paid millions of dollars and has a

49:15

Lambo and lives in LA or something. Exactly,

49:18

yeah. And he's not

49:20

the only one. I mean, this is a whole

49:22

trend, you know, there's people like Mizzie, for instance,

49:25

you probably know about Mizzie as well, who was

49:27

the guy who was going into libraries and ripping

49:29

up the books, what's filming the librarians

49:31

to see what they would do. And

49:34

then you have like, Johnny Somali,

49:36

who would go out and start harassing

49:39

people in streets and recording their reactions.

49:42

And he actually went to Japan and it's quite interesting because he

49:44

first he got knocked out. He got hit

49:46

in the face and knocked out because in Japan, they don't screw around, right?

49:49

And then he got arrested and now he's in jail. At least

49:51

he's in jail. He's

49:53

in jail in Japan, right? So

49:55

there is occasionally there is comeuppance, but I mean, most

49:57

of the time there is no comeuppance for these influences.

50:00

And they just go out there and they harass

50:02

people in the streets and they record it because

50:04

they know again This is limbic hijacking right? They

50:06

know that they're just by appealing

50:08

to the worst most closest impulses of the

50:11

human brain They can get a lot

50:13

of eyeballs and so they just

50:15

basically they would there's a

50:17

lot of pressure on young people to Be

50:20

to have a lot of followers on social media for instance

50:22

You know and they want to they want to be popular

50:24

everybody wants to be the cool kids and and

50:26

one way to get a large following Online if

50:29

you don't have other talents is

50:31

to just be an asshole, you know Just

50:33

be an asshole and film people around you

50:35

and the people will get hate followers They'll

50:37

get hate audiences who watch them simply to

50:39

hate on them And

50:41

I think you know people like Mizzie and

50:43

Jack Docherty have fallen to this this kind

50:45

of strategy I think I think

50:48

Jack Docherty originally he was just some he

50:50

just did some other lifestyle stuff But

50:53

he obviously found this niche and he thought

50:55

wow making way more when he doing this

50:57

And now he's a millionaire. I mean, he's

50:59

got a lot of money and you know

51:01

He's he's got a very glamorous lifestyle. At

51:03

least it appears glamorous if you look at

51:05

his Instagram account, you know He's surrounded by

51:07

fancy cars and beautiful women and

51:10

all this stuff, you know And he portrays

51:12

this kind of lifestyle of you know,

51:14

I'm success But really when you look at what he

51:16

does to earn that success now He

51:19

just goes out there and he just makes

51:21

life miserable for everybody and this is bad because

51:23

this is creating again This is creating a

51:25

very perverse incentive structure Fueled

51:27

by tick tock again and the Chinese government probably

51:30

knows that they're doing this and that they're allowing

51:32

that these These nuisance

51:34

influences to get a lot of views

51:36

on tick tock because they know that it's been for

51:39

America And it's bad for the

51:41

UK and it's bad for West in general But

51:44

yeah, I mean so it's a race to the

51:46

bottom now where you've got a lot of people competing to

51:48

be the most nuisance To

51:51

be the biggest nuisance to be the worst Possible

51:54

human being people who formerly were pranksters

51:56

people like fousey tube. So

51:58

you'd probably never Well, yeah, he

52:01

basically had a full-on psychological

52:03

break on camera, got it

52:06

arrested by Miami police, called

52:08

the cops on

52:10

himself, pretended that he was someone who had

52:12

a knife or a gun or something. Yeah,

52:15

wild, wild. Exactly. And the

52:17

crazy thing is that we don't even know if

52:19

this was genuine or not. This could have all

52:21

been part of, again, just being a nuisance. It

52:24

might be real, it might not. We don't

52:26

know because the line between real

52:29

and fiction is blurring now.

52:32

And for instance, Mizzie said that all of his pranks

52:35

were planned and stuff. But it's hard to

52:37

believe that he would go into, say, Azdai,

52:40

go into a superstore and

52:42

he would start riding on the

52:44

disabled trolley things that they have

52:47

and just smashing shelves and stuff and that the

52:49

supermarkets would actually allow him to do that. It's

52:52

just not, I don't believe that. A

52:55

lot of them will face the flood act to defend themselves if they

52:57

get into a lot of hot water. And

52:59

ultimately, what this does is that this creates

53:01

really bad incentives for kids. Because if you

53:03

think about in the past, in order to

53:05

be at the dawn of

53:08

YouTube, for instance, in order to

53:10

get a big following on YouTube, you tended to have to

53:12

do something that was extraordinary in some way

53:14

and extraordinary in a positive sense. You

53:17

tend to have to be

53:19

talented at something. The first big YouTubers

53:21

tended to be musicians or

53:25

athletes of some kind of people who had some kind

53:27

of skill. But very

53:29

soon, people realized that you could actually

53:31

develop just as big of a following

53:34

by having zero talent and just being a

53:36

nuisance, just being an asshole to people. And

53:39

once that happened, this kind of nuisance influencing

53:41

went viral. And it's essentially a race to

53:44

the bottom now where people are competing now

53:46

to be the worst possible human being, which

53:49

really sets a bad precedent. It sets

53:51

bad incentives for other young kids watching

53:53

this. Because when the kids watch it, they

53:56

say, oh, I want to be like Mizzi. I want to be

53:58

like Jack Doppity. I want to have all these photos. fancy girls,

54:00

all these fancy cars, I

54:02

want to be like that, so I'm

54:05

going to learn how to be an

54:07

insufferable human being. That

54:11

person is bringing no value to life and they're

54:13

getting rewarded for it. They respond to incentives. Yeah,

54:16

they respond to incentives. If

54:19

you say, rather than working really hard

54:21

at a thing consistently for a long

54:23

period of time and accumulating skills and

54:25

making yourself worthwhile, the bottom of the

54:27

brain is that it's the reason, I

54:29

think, in part, that there is some

54:32

distaste against silver

54:35

spoon dynasty children and only

54:37

fans' influences. That

54:39

there's something unfair. It

54:43

feels like, well, hang on, you've got that, but you didn't

54:45

work for it. In an Americanocratic system,

54:47

which is what we've got, that's always

54:49

going to get people's backs up. I have to

54:52

work harder than this person to get less. How

54:54

can that be fair? Oh, well, it's

54:56

because they were given a privilege that

54:58

I didn't get. That seems unfair. It's

55:00

because they're prepared to compromise their morals

55:03

in some way that I see as

55:05

I wouldn't do, therefore I am somehow

55:07

superior to them. There's this puritan nobility

55:09

that gets associated with it. When

55:12

we're talking about nuisance influences, which I think

55:14

is a phenomenal term I've never heard of

55:16

before, and do that first sentence that you

55:18

put, many people would rather

55:20

be hated than unknown. Just brilliant.

55:23

I know that you've got two books in the works, one of which

55:25

you may have submitted, but I can't

55:27

wait for both of them, man. All

55:29

of the times I watch very similar stuff to

55:31

what you watch, and yet what you're able to

55:33

pull out of it is significantly more in depth

55:36

than me. I'm very, very excited for what you've

55:38

got coming up. Thank

55:41

you. Here's one that I made earlier.

55:46

Toxic compassion. In a world where

55:48

our opinions have been separated from our deeds,

55:50

appearing to do good has become more

55:53

important than actually doing good. The

55:55

prioritization of short-term emotional comfort

55:57

over actual long-term flourishing motivates

56:00

people to say the things which make

56:02

them appear caring and empathetic, even if

56:05

they result in negative outcomes over time.

56:07

And this is seen most obviously in

56:10

support for the body positivity movement. Rather

56:12

than make someone feel uncomfortable about their

56:15

weight, you would say that weight has

56:17

no bearing on health, even

56:19

if that encourages people or discourages

56:21

them from losing weight, which results

56:23

in worse outcomes over the long

56:25

term. And that pointing could have

56:27

been seen for defund the police, that rather

56:30

than talk about some of

56:32

the challenges that are faced by different

56:34

groups, when it comes to policing,

56:36

you say that all police are

56:38

mistreating minorities, therefore the police

56:40

should be withdrawn, even if

56:42

the actual outcome over the

56:44

long term is more poor

56:48

policing and more negative outcomes for those precise

56:50

minorities that you were looking to protect in

56:52

the first place. Yeah, absolutely.

56:55

Yeah, so this brings together quite

56:57

a few very, very

56:59

interesting and informative ideas, one

57:03

of which would be luxury beliefs, which

57:05

I think you kind of alluded to at the end there. And

57:08

also my idea of the opinion pageant, where

57:12

the whole thing about the social media has

57:15

caused us to sort of overvalue opinions as

57:18

a gauge of character, we're sort of judged more by

57:21

what we say than by what we do. And

57:23

so this goes to what you were saying initially about

57:25

how it's all about looking

57:27

good rather than doing good, which again echoes

57:29

what Elon Musk said, I think

57:31

in a talk, I think with the New York

57:34

Times, a couple of weeks ago, you

57:36

know, where he just expressed a

57:38

bit of outrage at how corporations are trying

57:40

to look good, but not actually doing good.

57:42

And yeah, I think this is one of

57:44

the key concepts to understand the digital age,

57:47

where because we now have an

57:50

image oriented sort of

57:53

economy where everything that your success

57:55

in life is based on how

57:58

you appear to others now more than ever

58:00

because we're all because social media is where

58:02

people come to promote their stuff whether you're

58:04

a corporation whether you're a politician whether

58:07

you're an influencer you know everybody's

58:10

on social media trying to promote themselves

58:12

trying to show why their brand is

58:14

the brand that you should you know sort

58:17

of buy into and

58:20

part of this is this whole social game this

58:22

new social game I mean obviously there's always been

58:24

a social game as long as there's been a

58:26

society but it's been sort

58:28

of pushed to the forefront by the

58:30

fact that the vast majority of our

58:32

lives now are spent trying

58:35

to appear a certain way to people

58:37

in terms of you know just on social

58:39

media it

58:41

really explains so much of

58:44

everything from sort of cancellation to

58:49

the kinds of politics that we have now

58:51

polarization and even disinformation you know all of

58:54

these things really ultimately come down to people

58:56

trying to look as good as they can

58:58

rather than trying to do as good as

59:00

they can so people are you

59:03

know for peddling theories that

59:06

again the peddling theories that they're going to

59:08

hijack people's brains and you

59:10

know scare monger them or they're

59:12

trying to convince people

59:14

that they're morally superior so they'll

59:17

you know they'll

59:20

sort of post their luxury

59:22

beliefs online and

59:26

I think that it's

59:28

hard to really work out how

59:30

we go from here where everything is image

59:32

oriented and things are becoming more so um

59:37

I think that ultimately

59:39

I think there may be some kind of I

59:43

mean we're kind of seeing it already where we've seen

59:45

it with there's a kind of backlash to people just

59:48

going against looking good trying to

59:51

people counter signaling there's

59:53

been a rise of counter signaling I

59:55

think that Trump's election in 2016 was a

59:57

form of counter signaling where people

1:00:00

elected the most obnoxious

1:00:02

outwardly, you know, like kind of somebody

1:00:04

who just made no effort to even

1:00:06

appear good, or at least they

1:00:09

did it in a really, really obnoxious and

1:00:11

sort of overbearing cartoonish way, almost

1:00:13

as a parody of the society that we're

1:00:15

living in. I think that

1:00:18

was a kind of counter-signal, but I think that,

1:00:20

yeah, there's also, there's been the rise of vice-signaling

1:00:25

as a response to the sort of prevalence of

1:00:28

virtue-signaling. But even like

1:00:30

vice-signaling is where people will outwardly

1:00:33

just say things that they know are going

1:00:35

to upset people. You

1:00:37

could even say that this nuisance-influencing is a kind

1:00:39

of vice-signaling, where people are like, I don't care.

1:00:42

I'm over and above the

1:00:44

morality game. I don't have to appear good.

1:00:47

I can just be the worst person possible.

1:00:49

People like Andrew Tate, for instance, who have

1:00:52

developed massive followings by saying the opposite of

1:00:54

what is considered good by the majority of

1:00:56

society, you know, you see, with

1:00:59

Elon Musk, Elon Musk is counter-signaling very, very strongly

1:01:01

on Twitter a lot of the time, where he

1:01:03

will say things that are the complete opposite of

1:01:05

what we've been taught, we should say,

1:01:07

by the New York Times, by the Washington

1:01:10

Post, by the World Health Organization, all these

1:01:12

other mainstream organizations. They tell us that we

1:01:14

should be saying these kinds of

1:01:16

beliefs. We should be portraying this kind of person.

1:01:18

We should be, you know, this is how we

1:01:20

should be to be a good person. And then

1:01:23

you've got these rogues like Elon, like Donald Trump,

1:01:25

like Andrew Tate, who are basically saying, no, screw

1:01:28

that. Let's do the opposite of what they say. So

1:01:30

that's the kind of backlash. But in a

1:01:32

strange sense, this vice signaling is itself a

1:01:34

kind of virtue signaling, because it

1:01:37

is signaling to others that you

1:01:39

are way above all

1:01:41

of this silly sort of,

1:01:44

you know, bickering that people are engaging in.

1:01:46

It's the same reason why Yeezys have got

1:01:48

progressively more ugly over time. And if you

1:01:50

actually look at what counts for a lot

1:01:53

of super fashionable streetwear at the moment, it's

1:01:55

almost like hobo chic. Well,

1:01:57

that's because you're saying, look, I have

1:01:59

so surplus cool in

1:02:02

me that I can basically dress what

1:02:05

is so orthogonal to what other

1:02:08

people think is cool and still be cool,

1:02:10

that's how cool I am. Which oddly because

1:02:12

of how cool is kind of,

1:02:14

it's just so subjective, if

1:02:16

you call something cool and if enough people agree it kind of

1:02:18

is and no one can falsify whether

1:02:21

it is or not. But yeah, this toxic

1:02:23

compassion thing I've been playing around with for

1:02:25

ages and it's the interesting bit is that

1:02:27

second part is the prioritization of short term

1:02:29

emotional comfort over long term flourishing. Saying

1:02:31

things, you know, you're totally correct. Living

1:02:34

life online has caused us to flatten

1:02:37

down how we are

1:02:39

judged to be about proclamations rather

1:02:41

than actions. And it's the

1:02:43

reason that people were bullied about whether they did

1:02:45

or didn't post a black square, it's about whether

1:02:48

you do or don't have Ukraine in your bio,

1:02:50

it's about whether you do or don't have pronouns

1:02:52

in your email signature, all of

1:02:54

those things. And yeah, that the

1:02:57

additional again, it's perverse

1:02:59

incentives, you know, I think that's probably the running theme

1:03:02

of today's discussion is we're

1:03:05

creating all these perverse incentives for

1:03:07

people to follow. And

1:03:10

that's essentially what's driving these behaviors is that

1:03:12

we're rewarding, we're rewarding, like you said, we're

1:03:14

rewarding the short term gains over

1:03:16

the long term, the actual proper gains, which are

1:03:18

the long term gains, we're sort

1:03:20

of trapping ourselves in these, in

1:03:23

these compulsion loops. So compulsion loops are

1:03:26

this idea from gaming

1:03:28

and gamification, where you

1:03:30

trap people in these short term cycles

1:03:32

of effort and reward, that

1:03:35

can often lead them away from what they

1:03:37

should really be doing. And

1:03:39

we're all getting trapped in these compulsion loops, whether

1:03:42

it's being, you know, being

1:03:44

a nuisance being an asshole online, or

1:03:47

whether it's being virtue single or online, you know, we're

1:03:49

kind of all chasing these short term rewards at the

1:03:51

expense, well, not all of us, but I mean, many

1:03:53

of us are, you know, I like to think that

1:03:55

you and I are a little bit better. But

1:03:57

I mean, we're not we're not completely, we're not completely.

1:04:00

I mean, think about how many times anyone

1:04:03

that's ever been on a plane, knowing that

1:04:05

they don't have connection, gets their phone out,

1:04:07

swipes up, cycles through a bunch of apps,

1:04:10

even knowing that nothing can have happened. It's

1:04:12

a compulsion. It's just a, it's ingrained in

1:04:14

there. Right. Next one.

1:04:16

Tazwell's razor. Emotion

1:04:19

causes bias, but it also causes

1:04:21

motivation. As such, we're most likely

1:04:23

to act when our judgment can

1:04:25

be trusted least. Emotion,

1:04:28

don't trust thoughts you have while emotional,

1:04:30

instead pause and wait for the feeling

1:04:32

to pass before acting. Yeah.

1:04:36

So I think

1:04:38

everybody is not

1:04:40

a single person, but it's a collection

1:04:42

of selves. And

1:04:45

some of these selves are much

1:04:47

more representative of who we are

1:04:50

at our core than others. And I

1:04:52

think emotion can bring

1:04:55

out a side of us that is not really us. And

1:04:58

it can cause us to act in ways that we

1:05:00

would later regret. And

1:05:03

I've found this myself, like I don't really do it

1:05:05

anymore, but back in the early days, you know, like

1:05:07

10 years ago, I would

1:05:10

get sometimes I'd get angry online. If

1:05:13

somebody said something nasty to me, and I

1:05:15

would be spiteful and I would say something nasty back.

1:05:18

And I would later read back what I'd written

1:05:20

and I'd just be like, wow,

1:05:23

you know, I can't believe I actually said that, you

1:05:25

know, why not? So I was, I basically was just

1:05:27

as bad as them. Like, you know, I should be,

1:05:29

I should be better. And

1:05:31

I just realized that that person that is saying those

1:05:33

things was not actually me. Because if

1:05:35

I'm later regretting when I'm calm, I'm right,

1:05:37

I'm later regretting what I actually said when

1:05:39

I was angry, then I'm not,

1:05:42

it's not really me. I'm, one

1:05:44

of the things I say is that, you know, when you act, when

1:05:46

you're emotional, you are an ambassador for your

1:05:49

most primitive self. You're

1:05:51

basically acting for your most animals up because you're

1:05:53

engaging your reptilian brain. And

1:05:57

any decision that I've made when I've been emotional has

1:05:59

pretty much turned out to be a bad decision. I

1:06:01

mean, or at least it's been suboptimal.

1:06:04

I always make better decisions when I'm

1:06:07

mentally sort of balanced. And I think that's true

1:06:10

of pretty much anybody. But if you send that

1:06:12

email in the spirit of the moment, more

1:06:15

often than not, you're going to think I could

1:06:17

have waited that better, you know, I could have waited that a lot better. So

1:06:21

what I do now is

1:06:23

it's not like I'm a robot, I do feel emotions,

1:06:26

if somebody says something nasty to me online, I get an

1:06:28

urge to just be nasty back, you know, I get it

1:06:30

like we all do, we're all humans. But I don't I

1:06:32

never, I never do it now. I never, you know,

1:06:35

I never like just, I'm never spread for the phone.

1:06:37

If I replace somebody and sometimes I'm snarky, I am

1:06:39

snarky. But I tend to do it in a way

1:06:41

that I think is more productive. But what I always

1:06:44

do is I if I'm feeling particularly emotional, I'll

1:06:46

always wait for

1:06:48

that emotion to pass because it will pass. And

1:06:51

it's amazing how often when

1:06:54

you let that emotion pass. And then

1:06:56

you consider what you were would have done when

1:06:58

you're emotional, you realize how idiotic it would have

1:07:00

been, you know, that's happened to me

1:07:02

so many times that it's I actually am afraid

1:07:04

of acting when I'm emotional. Because I

1:07:07

just realize how, how demented

1:07:09

I am, right? And I think

1:07:11

this is true of everybody. Yeah,

1:07:13

it is deranging because I mean,

1:07:16

emotions ultimately are the

1:07:18

opposite of rationality. They are a

1:07:20

shortcut. There's a thing called the effect

1:07:22

heuristic, which is this idea that

1:07:25

emotions evolve. I

1:07:28

mean, I would say emotions evolve for two purposes. One

1:07:30

of them is they evolve for

1:07:32

motivation. And the other is

1:07:34

that they evolved for decision making and low information

1:07:36

environments. And, you know,

1:07:39

your feeling, for instance, your gut feeling

1:07:41

is how you make decisions when you don't have enough

1:07:43

information. And

1:07:46

the thing with gut feeling is it's actually often wrong people will

1:07:48

say, Oh, I swear by you know, I've got a really good

1:07:50

gut, I've got a really good gut feeling. I'm always, you know,

1:07:52

I always trust my gut. But what they're doing

1:07:54

is they're engaging in confirmation bias. Though

1:07:57

we usually remember when they've got feelings right, but they won't

1:07:59

remember when their gut feeling is wrong. And

1:08:02

so they're obviously going to naturally be skewed towards

1:08:04

believing that their gut feeling is more accurate than

1:08:06

it actually is. And that's

1:08:08

why I don't really trust it so

1:08:10

much. I mean, there's something called intuition,

1:08:12

which is a little bit more than gut

1:08:14

feeling, which is more something that you've learned

1:08:17

to trust over time. It's something that you set

1:08:20

and cues that you just

1:08:22

see. And then from that, you can build it

1:08:24

before picture. But just relying on emotion alone is

1:08:26

usually not a good strategy for decision making. Because

1:08:29

again, emotion favors short

1:08:31

term compulsion loops over long

1:08:33

term compulsion loops. And so this

1:08:40

is why I think you

1:08:42

should always, if you're

1:08:44

going to make an important decision, just

1:08:47

wait for the emotion to pass. It

1:08:49

will pass. Most emotions don't last very

1:08:51

long. Most emotions last a

1:08:54

few minutes. And then they're

1:08:56

usually, they weaken and they fade. And

1:08:58

that's all you've got to do. Just wait a couple of minutes, and

1:09:01

then see, compare your actions when you're

1:09:03

not emotional to how you were going

1:09:05

to act when you're emotional. And

1:09:07

you will realize there's a massive difference. And

1:09:10

that way you will prevent

1:09:12

yourself from many regrets, I think. Yeah,

1:09:27

so we see this online a lot again

1:09:29

with people calling other people names in order to

1:09:46

dismiss anything that they've said. So an

1:09:50

example of this might be calling somebody a bigger,

1:09:53

you know, saying, oh, you're a bigger and

1:09:56

stuff and basically saying, oh, why did he, Why

1:09:58

does he feel this? Why does he. The all because he's

1:10:01

a faggot. And for

1:10:03

many people, that's enough. Oh okay, he's a big it

1:10:05

so I don't need to listen to what you say

1:10:07

anymore. But. Really more

1:10:09

is. A lot more is bigotry.

1:10:11

Bigotry is not an explanation for behavior.

1:10:14

It's a description of behavior. right?

1:10:16

It's a it's a description by cities.

1:10:18

It's a statement that somebody is prejudiced

1:10:21

towards somebody. right? So

1:10:23

that's it's. not really. I mean you could

1:10:25

use it as a very shallow explanation for

1:10:27

it. Doesn't really explain much if you really

1:10:29

want to know. If you

1:10:32

really want explanation that you've gotta delve a little

1:10:34

bit deeper, you gotta. You gotta go a bit

1:10:36

further back. And you got to say okay, so

1:10:38

this presents a bigot. so that's that's a description.

1:10:40

So now we need explanation for why is up

1:10:42

hasn't bigots? Why would they say that thing. And.

1:10:46

Then you would say okay the it could be

1:10:48

many things Like Princes Listeners is an example of.

1:10:50

That classical. Bigotry. So

1:10:52

and somebody might, for

1:10:54

instance, Hey immigrants!

1:10:58

You know they might. They might say all your hey

1:11:00

immigrants I I just i once had a want these

1:11:02

boats to keep coming to our shores. Whatever. And

1:11:04

the standard response from many people in

1:11:07

positions of power is a sale. Dust

1:11:09

is bigoted. Move. On

1:11:11

next next questions you know. But if you

1:11:13

really want to understand you could ask yourself

1:11:15

why. Suspicion: Bigoted. And. It

1:11:18

may be a pretty. Enlightening

1:11:21

answer They might. it might be that they

1:11:23

had their jobs taken away Them I have

1:11:25

that that that jump taken away by it's

1:11:27

a immigrants and now they're out of work

1:11:29

and that's you know on the dole the

1:11:31

whatever that there are well Sarah, whatever and

1:11:33

that their life is Know that plans have

1:11:35

been get destroyed by the fact that they're

1:11:37

just that been superseded by somebody from you

1:11:39

don't have a country. Or

1:11:43

it might be that their dad's. Family.

1:11:45

member was a victim of crime by

1:11:47

an immigrant you know so if you

1:11:49

can actually go past the instinct to

1:11:51

dismiss somebody by disguising it a description

1:11:54

as an explanation spend you can actually

1:11:56

get to the real explanation and then

1:11:58

you can start to actually resolve the

1:12:00

question. You can actually say, okay, well, so

1:12:02

if this is the case, then I can

1:12:05

go out there and I can convince this

1:12:07

person that hang on a

1:12:09

second, immigration necessarily might

1:12:11

have taken your job, but some immigrants also create

1:12:14

jobs or whatever. I mean, I'm not going to

1:12:16

go into the hole, whether immigration is good or

1:12:18

not, or bad or not. But this is just

1:12:20

an example of what somebody could do. You

1:12:22

know, so you could maybe if

1:12:25

you were interested in getting people

1:12:27

to accept immigrants, if you were one of these people, you

1:12:30

could basically that's what you could do. And you could actually, instead

1:12:32

of dismissing them and making them even

1:12:34

more and hate immigrants even more, which

1:12:36

is going to happen, you know, if

1:12:39

you dismiss somebody's concerns, they're only going

1:12:41

to react again, what we

1:12:43

talked about earlier reactants backfire effect, if

1:12:45

you tell people that their opinions are bigoted, it's

1:12:47

not going to stop them from being bigoted, it's going to

1:12:49

make them more bigoted. And it's going to, you

1:12:51

know, they're going to start thinking, Oh, there's a conspiracy now, to stop,

1:12:54

you know, there's a conspiracy by

1:12:56

the Jews to, you know, flood

1:12:59

the West with immigrants, and

1:13:01

all this. And these people are calling me a

1:13:03

bigger because they're trying to destroy my life, because

1:13:05

they don't want the truth to come out. So

1:13:07

it's going to create always going to basically just

1:13:09

have a negative effect for everybody, it's just going

1:13:11

to make things worse for everybody. And that's why

1:13:13

these semantic stop signs are bad, because they don't

1:13:15

resolve the question. They don't really, they don't solve

1:13:17

anything, they just make the problem worse. And

1:13:20

that's why I don't call people racist, I don't

1:13:22

call people bigoted, I don't call people transphobic. What

1:13:25

I do is I might, I

1:13:27

might call something they've said bigoted. I

1:13:31

don't really even do that. But if I were if I

1:13:33

were going to use the word bigoted, because I don't like

1:13:35

the word bigoted, I feel it's overused. I don't like the

1:13:37

race where racist, I feel it's overused. I don't think that

1:13:39

is these words really mean anything anymore. But if I were

1:13:41

going to use those words, I

1:13:44

wouldn't call people racist, I wouldn't call

1:13:46

people bigoted, I would call their actions

1:13:48

bigoted, I'd call their actions racist. Because

1:13:50

I think that's much more helpful. Because

1:13:53

if you call somebody bigoted, or call them racist,

1:13:55

or call them transphobic, or sexist, or misogynistic, or

1:13:57

fascist, or any of these other words that thrown

1:14:00

around so casually these days. If you use

1:14:03

those terms to describe a person,

1:14:05

you're essentially implying that that person

1:14:07

is irredeemable, that you can't help

1:14:09

that person because they're a

1:14:11

lost cause because they're just a bigot.

1:14:14

Whereas if you call their actions bigoted, if

1:14:16

you call their actions racist or transphobic, and

1:14:18

I'm not advocating this, but I'm just saying

1:14:20

it's better than calling them a bigot. Because

1:14:23

if you call their actions bigoted, that actually

1:14:25

allows you to still see them as a

1:14:27

human. Because I feel that calling somebody a

1:14:29

racist is actually dehumanizing in a sense. Especially

1:14:32

when you consider that

1:14:35

terms like fascist, Nazi, a lot of

1:14:37

these terms are used to

1:14:41

paint people as the worst possible human beings. Because when

1:14:43

you think of the term fascist, when you think of

1:14:45

the term Nazi,

1:14:48

racist, when you think of these terms, you think of

1:14:50

pretty much the worst human beings. You think of the

1:14:52

Nazis, the

1:14:55

Nazis of Germany in the 1930s. You

1:14:58

think of the Ku Klux Klan, you think of really

1:15:00

bad human beings, you think of people who lynched black

1:15:03

people, you think of the worst

1:15:05

human beings. So it's dehumanizing in a sense

1:15:07

because you're portraying people as villains. You're saying

1:15:09

this person is a villain, so

1:15:12

I can just discount everything that they say. Whereas

1:15:15

when you call their actions bigoted

1:15:17

or whatever, then you can say, okay, well, we

1:15:19

can actually convince this person to behave differently. So

1:15:23

I think these semantic stop signs are a very

1:15:27

harmful aspect of our society.

1:15:30

And that's just one example that

1:15:32

I just gave you. We have many other examples in

1:15:34

which these kinds of questions

1:15:36

that people have are just dismissed

1:15:40

by disguising descriptions as

1:15:42

descriptions. Yes.

1:15:49

Mac's Content Razor. So this is from

1:15:51

mutual friend George Mac. Would

1:15:53

you consume your own content? If

1:15:55

not, don't post it. And

1:15:57

it's just the easiest... The

1:16:00

way to work out whether or not what

1:16:02

you're producing is actually something the he should

1:16:04

continue producing and I had a similar idea.

1:16:07

A tangential ideas post content Clarity: If we

1:16:09

presume that your body is made up of

1:16:11

what you put in your mouth, your mind

1:16:13

is made up of what you put in

1:16:16

your eyes and ears, your content diet should

1:16:18

be spiral enough for your soul, not fast

1:16:20

food for your amygdala. Yeah.

1:16:24

One hundred percent agree. I'm.

1:16:27

I'm very selective now about the kind

1:16:29

of concept. of

1:16:31

content I consume. I used to be

1:16:33

very careless ice to just. Mindlessly.

1:16:35

Browse my twitter feed and just whatever got my

1:16:37

attention know I would follow it. But.

1:16:40

The thing is a found that just leads

1:16:42

to a lot of wasted time and very low

1:16:44

information as a large social media is not

1:16:46

very information tend to meet your your speed is

1:16:48

probably a lot of the mind because you

1:16:50

really fun. I like about hundred people were going

1:16:53

on m I six hundred stuff so I

1:16:55

never thought I'd never brought mafia usually sees

1:16:57

lists but and yeah I mean. Yeah.

1:16:59

I do absolutely go by that

1:17:01

at.razor because I find that. It's.

1:17:04

A good Harris The to use. One of the

1:17:06

reasons why I originally wrote those mega thread side

1:17:08

right in. This mega threads on on Twitter was

1:17:10

because they were the kinds of things I want

1:17:13

to read and. I wanted to

1:17:15

lead about the world. My thoughts will

1:17:17

disappear. good exercise some a universal if

1:17:19

I can get like forty concepts the

1:17:21

are very useful the I think and

1:17:23

out people understandable better. Basques,

1:17:25

Actually the kind of content I would love but

1:17:27

nobody was doing at the time and the i

1:17:29

the I was were off so I thought okay

1:17:31

alderman at all be the person to do it.

1:17:34

And m it was interesting because.

1:17:37

You. Know for it. So Twenty Twenty A Sick

1:17:39

as as bright as beginning of Twenty Twenty

1:17:41

the I I posted that defense mega thread

1:17:43

and. It went viral and I've

1:17:45

realized it was so many people that actually wanted

1:17:47

to see that kind of thing, but nobody had

1:17:49

thought of him school even know to add be

1:17:51

rough quite a while. as far as I can

1:17:54

tell anyone of the it's all it's four am.

1:17:56

But. What was quite interesting was there in the

1:17:58

aftermath of that, though. The number of people

1:18:00

who did exactly the same to the I was

1:18:02

doing a wanted to kind of replicate the success.

1:18:05

I have enough a mega thread and those are

1:18:07

just or like a sort of all over the

1:18:09

place of the people doing the right resin and

1:18:11

I've got nothing not a got nothing against people

1:18:13

do that. I think I've got like a so

1:18:15

rights to do everything been like him. it was

1:18:17

interesting because it I think it just made something

1:18:19

click in people's minds with a full. While.

1:18:21

This is a great idea and I wouldn't I think this

1:18:23

in the name with they did it dissolves and it showed

1:18:25

that. If you. Do.

1:18:28

The kinds of things, That. You

1:18:30

want to see if you could you treat the

1:18:32

kinds of clinton that you want to see. and

1:18:34

then because you're a human being and you've got.

1:18:36

You. Share like ninety nine percent of your dna

1:18:39

with every of the human being that is

1:18:41

gonna be a large number of the people

1:18:43

that will have similar enough interests that they

1:18:45

will actually and you know what to do,

1:18:47

what you what you want to do such

1:18:49

as this, this actually. Fits.

1:18:51

In quite nicely with one of the other

1:18:53

concepts are in that in in one of

1:18:55

my recent make us red switches italics know.

1:18:58

And. Which is basically this idea

1:19:00

that. And. People.

1:19:03

Will tend to copy. Whatever.

1:19:05

Successful. Where. They

1:19:07

were talking about business in politics,

1:19:09

in or art or whatever. and

1:19:11

as a result of that. Content.

1:19:15

Tends. To converge it tends to become

1:19:18

more similar overtime and you see

1:19:20

it with Tic Toc that were

1:19:22

very small number of people like

1:19:24

Teleports and Charlie to Mallya who

1:19:26

became extremely popular Tic Toc and

1:19:28

they debated that the the most

1:19:30

viewed people on Tic Toc and

1:19:32

at all they did was flipped

1:19:34

singing and dancing. Now I I

1:19:36

have no interest in watching that kind of stuff,

1:19:38

but evidently they thought it was fun. Maybe that's

1:19:41

the kind of content they wanted to see, but

1:19:43

somehow that stuff blew up. And as

1:19:45

a result of that, Epic. It's

1:19:47

not a whole new genre of ticked

1:19:49

off video where you just people if

1:19:51

singing and dancing and everybody was doing

1:19:53

it now and he caught it. Decreased

1:19:55

value of doing that. And is

1:19:58

to say with politics not you know if you look at. France's.

1:20:00

In the Uk and. Your.

1:20:03

Their political pies Labor conservative if

1:20:05

you look at st postwar period

1:20:07

or yet Clement Attlee versus with

1:20:09

check your criminality was he was

1:20:11

a socialist, he was so on

1:20:13

and the Labour party was phone

1:20:15

socialists. My at Winston Churchill's conservatives

1:20:17

were proper conservatives, they weren't like

1:20:20

a becky and concept is and

1:20:22

over time the two. Parties.

1:20:24

Have moved towards the center so it's labor's

1:20:26

become more right wing and conservatives to become

1:20:28

more left wing and is interesting because the

1:20:31

right wing party of the Uk Conservatives and

1:20:33

now to the list of the Left wing

1:20:35

party in the U S hits and the

1:20:37

reason is. The reasons has happened

1:20:39

is because of how telling law because and

1:20:42

what happened is that. When

1:20:44

at certain politicians it does, these parties appeal

1:20:46

to the center. They had a huge amounts

1:20:48

success and the other people saw this and

1:20:50

thought wow we've we've been to capture the

1:20:52

center at get some of these people's that

1:20:55

audiences from them And so these two parties

1:20:57

gradually began to try to. Eat.

1:20:59

The center. He is much of the center

1:21:02

before the the pile up center so they

1:21:04

move closer to tennis and the conversion is

1:21:06

same concentrated stick that they tend to converge

1:21:08

of the time. And the great thing about

1:21:10

the max razor that you just stem. Spoke.

1:21:13

About. When. You create content that you

1:21:15

yourself would want to see is that you

1:21:17

can avoid her telling law because you're creating

1:21:19

content that want to see a look you

1:21:21

not chasing and what everybody else is doing.

1:21:23

You're doing the opposite because the interesting thing

1:21:25

about how telling noise at the more it

1:21:27

happens the more these content creators of these

1:21:29

politicians what are we talking us the more

1:21:31

that content. Converges, The

1:21:34

more value there isn't being different. I

1:21:36

didn't. Actually, you know trying to say to see

1:21:38

to do something that you want to see. Yeah,

1:21:42

like for instance, a Getting Back To

1:21:44

My Magistrates I saw a lot of.

1:21:47

Stuff. About mental models of but

1:21:49

it was not. It. Was not portrayed in

1:21:51

the way that. Are I'd sedatives. It

1:21:53

was more about getting a single but mental model that

1:21:55

do the thread about and loads of people were doing

1:21:57

that and I honestly was gonna do that for them.

1:22:01

I'm just doing the same thing everybody else is doing if I

1:22:03

do that. Now. Because that was that form

1:22:05

was originally popularized by the people like Tim

1:22:07

Ferris. you know, they popularizer stuff and they

1:22:09

became very successful with it. and it was

1:22:11

such a good formula the a lot of

1:22:13

other people try to do the a little

1:22:15

while. why did I do something different instead.

1:22:17

Because. The decided to just go against and the thought.

1:22:20

I. Don't want to see this on a one

1:22:22

actually consume this kind of contents because I've already

1:22:24

consumed it because so many other people are doing

1:22:26

it. So thought let me do something a little

1:22:28

bit different and let me just cracks threat of

1:22:31

various different concepts and so that was different enough

1:22:33

that actually allowed me to go viral. And

1:22:36

when I did it. so it's a very good

1:22:38

strategy to to chase not what other people are

1:22:40

doing, but what you want to see. A

1:22:42

thing I agree I he needs.

1:22:45

I understand some people would say

1:22:47

that I'm. A

1:22:49

few copies Successful contents,

1:22:52

You. Avoid making stuff

1:22:54

which is absolutely atrocious. like your

1:22:56

instincts could just be completely off

1:22:58

kilter like you're aiming at. The

1:23:01

targets are the north and issued

1:23:03

south. Basically so the. A

1:23:06

base laid the foundation of understanding writing. For instance,

1:23:08

if you're going to do that, the think: if

1:23:10

you couldn't write, it doesn't matter how good your

1:23:12

idea is, it's not going to work if you

1:23:14

don't understand how Twitter works, if you don't understand

1:23:16

the concept, if he can't betray them and an

1:23:18

interesting way does. Like a lot of things that

1:23:21

you need to get in place, but once you've

1:23:23

got basically the rules of the game, you can

1:23:25

then start to maybe. Step. Outside

1:23:27

and completely break them. So for instance with these lists

1:23:29

decal style episodes the I do in the some of

1:23:31

my favorites on I think that they keep the episode

1:23:34

moving really quickly and I know that mean you when

1:23:36

we finish these episodes feel like we've been in a

1:23:38

fucking see between the two hours of my how's it

1:23:40

been two hours already I'm at I did them with

1:23:43

whole mosey upton them with Sean puri up and them

1:23:45

with your Mac have done them with yourself you know

1:23:47

going through a list of things to thoughts that would

1:23:49

be fun to me if I left this like. Pressure.

1:23:53

Hose to copy of. Sight. insights

1:23:55

about his behavior i would have i would

1:23:57

have left an episode guy wow that's cool

1:23:59

and Yeah, it was something that was

1:24:01

my instinct. Now that being said, it's framed in

1:24:03

a way that we know works for the algorithm.

1:24:06

It's presented from a

1:24:08

tech perspective in a way that we think is

1:24:10

engaging. Dean edits these things in a way that

1:24:12

keeps stuff engaging. So again, we're playing within the

1:24:15

physics of the system in some regard,

1:24:17

but we're also trying to give our

1:24:19

own spin on something with something new. And

1:24:22

Douglas Murray has said this as well, like

1:24:24

follow your instincts. Your instincts are a pretty

1:24:26

good guide. It allows you to be unbelievably

1:24:28

unique and it allows, like if you were

1:24:30

interested in something, there is a

1:24:32

pretty good likelihood that some non insignificant minority

1:24:34

of other people are also interested in it.

1:24:37

And given how broad the access that you

1:24:39

have on the internet is now, you only

1:24:41

need some non insignificant minority

1:24:43

of other people to have a massive

1:24:45

audience. Like millions of people. Absolutely. Yeah.

1:24:47

That's one aspect of it. And another

1:24:49

aspect is that if you are

1:24:52

genuinely passionate about something, if you're genuinely interested

1:24:54

in something, you will make it interesting to

1:24:56

other people, you know, because you'll be

1:24:58

passionate about it. If you're just chasing, you know, metrics,

1:25:00

if you're just looking at what other people are doing

1:25:02

and you're, then you just copy them, your passion is

1:25:05

not going to be in it. You're not going to

1:25:07

be interested in it. You're just going to be interested

1:25:09

in getting as many views or whatever. You'll be chasing

1:25:11

the wrong metrics. The right metric is interesting. That's interesting

1:25:13

to you. Because if you make it,

1:25:15

if it's interesting to you, you'll make it interesting

1:25:17

to other people because you, your passion is contagious.

1:25:20

And I think that's the best sort of advice

1:25:22

I'd give to somebody who wants to sort of

1:25:25

make a start in sort of, you know,

1:25:28

just being an influencer or whatever, you know,

1:25:30

is just to, to just find what interests

1:25:32

you. Right. Don't try to find what you

1:25:34

think other people are going to find interesting

1:25:36

because no matter what it is, even if

1:25:38

it's something like stamp collecting or whatever, right?

1:25:40

If you are passionate about, about it enough,

1:25:42

you will make it interesting to

1:25:44

other people. Dude. So me

1:25:46

and, me and my housemate Zach love

1:25:48

these videos of guys that watch, uh,

1:25:50

rally cross. So it's like Colin McRae,

1:25:52

you know, four wheel

1:25:55

drive cars going through a dirt road. And

1:25:57

these blokes will have gone up to fucking.

1:26:00

In Scotland or the Quebec or something

1:26:02

and the stood in a poncho under

1:26:05

a a a umbrella in the pacing

1:26:07

rain in the middle basically the middle

1:26:09

of a forest to see. Them.

1:26:13

To. See valid point three of a second

1:26:15

and then when these cars go past

1:26:17

they will turn to each other and

1:26:19

co us and we love watching the

1:26:21

watching anyone get fired up about anything.

1:26:23

Makes. You feel fight up as well. He just

1:26:26

a lotta people that love things and yeah yeah,

1:26:28

if you follow your passions in that regard, you're

1:26:30

always going to remain a. On.

1:26:32

The right and you'll also be motivated

1:26:35

as well. Yeah, thanks. Another thing is

1:26:37

getting more motivated? Yeah, yeah. Snacks or

1:26:39

up next month at this ten o'clock.

1:26:41

You. Know that if you'd lived in

1:26:44

a different place or time, read different

1:26:46

books, had different friends, you'd have different

1:26:48

beliefs, and yet you're convinced that your

1:26:51

current beliefs are correct. So.

1:26:53

Are you wrong? Or. The

1:26:55

luckiest person Ever. Yeah.

1:26:58

I. This is one that gets me

1:27:00

a lot because I I find that

1:27:02

a lot of my opinions are in

1:27:04

sync with the society in which I

1:27:06

live, So in our i have broadly

1:27:08

sort of kind of i'm quite. Sort.

1:27:11

Of. Liberal in sense, you know me. I

1:27:13

wouldn't say that I'm actually a liberal, but I

1:27:15

have very liberal. Views and we

1:27:18

live in a liberal society. And

1:27:20

and. I find that

1:27:23

it. It's hard to

1:27:25

extricate my police from.

1:27:27

The time and place in which I'm

1:27:30

living always wonder what what I believe

1:27:32

if I'd lived if I'd say been

1:27:34

born in in sort of India for

1:27:36

instance, where be born in India? What?

1:27:38

What I believe there is had been

1:27:40

born in the nineteenth century? What I

1:27:42

believe. If I'd

1:27:44

you know, if I was born into a

1:27:46

rich family, lives in a poor family, what

1:27:48

would I believe and. All of

1:27:50

these things. Make. Me question

1:27:52

my police because I think to myself.

1:27:55

Or my. billie seem to be quite local

1:27:57

to where i'm living in in time and space

1:28:01

I think this is very true of religious people

1:28:03

in particular. So if you think about

1:28:05

say a Muslim person, a

1:28:08

Muslim obviously believes things

1:28:10

that were originally sort

1:28:13

of a belief system that was invented

1:28:15

in the 7th century Arabia. But

1:28:18

what would happen if that person was born

1:28:20

before the creation of Islam? So

1:28:23

if they had been born sort of

1:28:25

in the 2nd century, would

1:28:28

they still be a Muslim? Obviously

1:28:30

not. Would they still have Muslim principles?

1:28:32

Obviously not. And this is interesting because

1:28:34

Islam is supposed to be a religion

1:28:37

for all times and all places. That's

1:28:40

its sort of main claim to fame. And

1:28:43

so although there's this

1:28:45

concept in Islam called Jahili'a, which

1:28:48

is about basically this idea that before

1:28:50

the coming of Islam there was ignorance, still

1:28:53

you've got to ask yourself, surely

1:28:57

that means then that being born before

1:28:59

the creation of Islam means that you're

1:29:01

not going to have the advantage in

1:29:04

God's eyes of somebody who's born

1:29:06

after the creation of Islam. Because the person who's

1:29:08

born after the creation of Islam is going to

1:29:10

be more likely to follow Islam than the person

1:29:12

before. So there's this weird sort of disparity there.

1:29:14

And I think you could extend this to any

1:29:16

belief system. Communism for instance as

1:29:19

well. If you're born before

1:29:21

the creation of communism, you're

1:29:23

not going to be a communist. And

1:29:25

so would a communist be different

1:29:27

if they were born before the creation

1:29:29

of communism? Of

1:29:32

course they would. And so how can

1:29:34

they be sure that their belief is right? It just happened

1:29:36

to be born at the right time in history to have

1:29:38

the right beliefs. And

1:29:42

that's why my solution to this

1:29:44

problem is to

1:29:46

try to find beliefs that are as universal

1:29:48

as possible. So one way that I

1:29:51

can gauge whether a belief is a good one is

1:29:53

whether I can view myself

1:29:55

as having believed that no matter what time or place

1:29:57

I was living in. perfect

1:30:00

system because obviously knowledge is constantly

1:30:02

growing. And obviously I

1:30:04

wouldn't know the germ theory of disease a

1:30:07

thousand years ago, but I do believe it

1:30:09

now. And I think I'm pretty justified in believing in

1:30:11

the germ theory of disease, given the evidence for it.

1:30:15

But as a general rule, I think it's

1:30:17

a pretty good one where you think about that is

1:30:19

this belief a product of the society in which I'm

1:30:21

living or is it one that can be applied to

1:30:23

any time in any place? And the thing with the

1:30:25

germ theory of disease is even though it didn't exist

1:30:27

a thousand years ago, it would still have

1:30:29

helped me a thousand years ago. It

1:30:32

would still have been beneficial to believe in it a

1:30:34

thousand years ago. So I think that's a good heuristic

1:30:36

to use in order to determine whether your beliefs are

1:30:39

real. It doesn't matter if they're a product

1:30:41

of your time. What it matters is will

1:30:43

they be useful in any time and

1:30:45

any place? That's the kind

1:30:47

of universality of a belief. So

1:30:50

if your beliefs wouldn't work very well a

1:30:53

thousand years ago, then that's a good sign that you're probably

1:30:55

just imbibing what you're learning

1:30:57

from the present day. You're kind of, you

1:31:00

know, you're myopically sort of trapped in the

1:31:02

present moment and in the present place. So

1:31:05

yeah, I think universality of

1:31:08

applicability is what you want

1:31:10

to look at. So can you apply

1:31:12

it universally? And if you can, then that's a sign that

1:31:15

it's a good belief. So

1:31:17

Rob Henderson put something in his newsletter a

1:31:19

couple of weeks ago and I gave it

1:31:21

a name. So I've come in at the

1:31:23

end and thrown like a pretty bow on

1:31:25

top of something which I really like as

1:31:27

an idea. So I called this the intellectuals

1:31:29

treadmill. Some thinkers, as they

1:31:32

rise in prominence as a result of

1:31:34

their interesting ideas, gradually devote less time

1:31:36

to reading and more time to lucrative

1:31:38

opportunities. This is a mistake. They are

1:31:40

neglecting one of the core habits that

1:31:42

made them so interesting in the first

1:31:44

place. I

1:31:48

think I'm guilty of this. I

1:31:50

tend to read less than I used to. But

1:31:53

I think

1:31:55

I definitely agree with it in general.

1:31:57

I think one

1:31:59

of the problems. with a lot of thinkers

1:32:02

is that they tend to just resort to the

1:32:04

same set of tools that got them famous. So

1:32:07

a classic example of this would be somebody

1:32:09

like Nassim Taleb. He

1:32:11

became famous through a handful

1:32:14

of concepts like anti-fragility, the

1:32:16

Lindy effect, skin in the

1:32:18

game. And these obviously are

1:32:20

great ideas. They're really good ideas. And

1:32:23

that's why they became popular. But

1:32:25

since then, what I've noticed in him

1:32:28

is that he tends to sort of try to

1:32:30

apply these concepts to pretty much anything that happens.

1:32:32

This is the golden hammer, isn't it? The golden

1:32:34

hammer. Yeah, we've spoken about this before, the golden

1:32:36

hammer. And it also sort of links

1:32:39

in with another thing called the toothbrush problem,

1:32:42

where the toothbrush problem is basically

1:32:45

where intellectuals treat

1:32:48

theories like toothbrushes. They

1:32:50

don't want to use anybody else's, you know, they just

1:32:52

want to use their own. And

1:32:54

that's the opposite of

1:32:56

me who just shamelessly repurposes everybody else's.

1:33:00

Well, I think that's the healthiest way to

1:33:02

be. I think oftentimes, you know, it's when

1:33:05

you just rely on your own theories, you're

1:33:07

just closing yourself off from so

1:33:09

much learning and so much knowledge. And

1:33:12

that's why I try not to do these things, you know. But

1:33:15

I mean, it's hard because when you

1:33:18

do become famous for a certain idea, you develop

1:33:20

a certain brand and you want to sort of

1:33:22

you want to you want to overstate the kind

1:33:24

of importance of your ideas. So

1:33:26

obviously, Taleb got very famous from his

1:33:29

three major ideas, and, you

1:33:31

know, tail risk and all the other ideas that he's come out with.

1:33:33

And so he's gotten

1:33:35

he's incentivized to, instead

1:33:37

of learning new ideas by reading books, to

1:33:40

just double down on his own ideas, by

1:33:42

just constantly writing about them. And

1:33:44

so he's that's obviously going to get him more clout,

1:33:47

because the more important his ideas seem, the

1:33:49

more important he seems. And the

1:33:51

more opportunities he's going to get to sort

1:33:53

of expound upon

1:33:55

various social issues and apply them

1:33:57

to, you know, applies it. his

1:34:00

golden hammers to those. Well, I

1:34:03

remember hearing Peterson a while

1:34:05

ago, it's probably five years ago, he was

1:34:07

on Rogan and he was really at

1:34:10

the crest of this huge growth curve that he

1:34:12

was on, maybe just after the Kathy Newman interview,

1:34:14

something like that. And he said

1:34:17

something along the lines of, I need to

1:34:19

take some time to go away because if

1:34:21

you are outputting more than you are inputting,

1:34:23

all that you're doing is just saying the

1:34:25

same things over and over again and you

1:34:27

end up becoming a caricature of yourself, which

1:34:29

is dangerous. I learned from Critical

1:34:31

Drinker, do you follow that guy? Yeah,

1:34:34

I watch him in videos, yeah, he's funny. So

1:34:38

I learned from him that there's four

1:34:40

stages to most media movements.

1:34:42

So let's say like the superhero genre

1:34:44

that we've seen since sort of the

1:34:46

mid-naughts. There is like

1:34:48

the introduction phase, the growth phase, the maturity

1:34:51

phase and then the parody phase. What's

1:34:53

interesting about that is you can track it

1:34:55

perfectly with Thor. So you have this kind

1:34:57

of groundbreaking or maybe less so

1:34:59

Iron Man because he died, I guess, before he

1:35:02

could get into parody. But certainly with

1:35:04

Thor, you get this groundbreaking one and everyone's like, oh my

1:35:06

God, Chris Hamsworth's so ripped and then he get into growth

1:35:08

and it's sort of still developing. Then you get into maturity

1:35:10

where it's a little bit more predictable and you've kind of

1:35:12

got an idea. Then you get into Love

1:35:15

and Thunder, which was the most recent one. And you even saw

1:35:17

bits of parody earlier on in it, but where

1:35:19

he's the butt of a joke. He's

1:35:22

the butt of all of the jokes. He's doing a

1:35:24

set of splits on the top of like a pair

1:35:26

of dragons like Jean-Claude Van Damme. Even

1:35:29

Doctor Strange, I guess he featured

1:35:31

as a sort

1:35:33

of ancillary character in lots of other

1:35:35

things, but he only got two. So

1:35:38

he had the first Doctor Strange with

1:35:40

Benedict Cumberbatch. He's a phenomenal actor. First

1:35:42

one, super like sincere

1:35:46

in the way that they did it. And it was very meaningful

1:35:48

about him. The second one, a zombie

1:35:51

version of Benedict Cumberbatch goes back

1:35:53

in time to a different universe

1:35:55

to tell the Central American daughter

1:35:57

of a lesbian couple called America.

1:36:00

that she just needs to believe in herself. Like

1:36:03

it's just the most parody of the most parody

1:36:05

that you can think. So

1:36:07

yeah, and I think that one of the problems

1:36:09

that you get is what Peterson

1:36:12

identified, if you are outputting

1:36:14

more than you're inputting, you end

1:36:16

up just regurgitating ideas, you bastardize them,

1:36:18

you don't have anything fresh, you become

1:36:20

a caricature of yourself, you become easy

1:36:23

to be parodied, and that's dangerous.

1:36:25

And he was saying, you know, you have to take some time away. Someone

1:36:27

that we can say absolutely has adhered to that.

1:36:29

And there's all, dude, how are you gonna say

1:36:32

no to another speaking geek? How are you gonna

1:36:34

say no to another Joe Rogan experience episode?

1:36:36

How are you gonna say no to all these things? I get it, right?

1:36:39

But someone that definitely has done this was

1:36:41

Naval, who just said, I did

1:36:43

my Rogan episode, and I'm now away on sabbatical

1:36:45

because I never want to say the same thing

1:36:47

twice, and I won't be doing any more podcasts

1:36:50

until I have three hours worth

1:36:52

of new things to talk about. Fat

1:36:55

blade. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

1:36:57

I mean, I think Naval's

1:37:00

very wise in that he's done this, I think,

1:37:02

to avoid audience capture. I

1:37:04

think that's ultimately what we're

1:37:06

talking about, because when you

1:37:08

have the same set of ideas, there's a pressure on

1:37:11

you to continue to talk about those ideas, again,

1:37:14

to sort of emphasize

1:37:16

their importance. And I think

1:37:18

Tlaib is a very good example of this, going back to

1:37:20

him, because I feel he has kind

1:37:22

of been audience capture in a sense, where it's

1:37:24

now expected that he's gonna try to explain

1:37:27

things in terms of tail risk

1:37:29

or whatever. And it's because it's

1:37:31

what he knows, and I understand why he

1:37:33

does it, because it's kind of wise to a certain

1:37:36

extent to just stick to what you know. But

1:37:38

he's clearly a very intelligent man, and he's a

1:37:40

man who could learn a lot

1:37:42

more about many other things, but he instead

1:37:44

just chooses to pretty much talk about

1:37:47

the same sort of things again and

1:37:49

again. He's doing what Jordan Peterson

1:37:51

essentially warned about, where

1:37:53

instead of learning, because he's

1:37:56

Tlaib, he's a smart guy, but

1:37:58

he's arrogant as hell. And

1:38:00

he thinks that he sort of has the final

1:38:02

answer. He thinks he understands things

1:38:05

even when he doesn't really have a grounding in it.

1:38:07

He thinks he understands IQ, but he

1:38:09

makes very elementary mistakes about IQ. But

1:38:13

yeah, he tends to just

1:38:15

sort of focus on

1:38:19

a very narrow field of maths, statistical

1:38:22

kind of tail risk analysis,

1:38:24

risk analysis, that kind of

1:38:26

stuff. So

1:38:29

he uses a very narrow set of tools,

1:38:32

very useful tools, but they're very narrow. And

1:38:34

he uses that very narrow system

1:38:36

of tools to explain everything

1:38:39

from like COVID to

1:38:42

polarization to Israel

1:38:45

and Palestine. He talks about

1:38:47

a lot of these things often just using

1:38:49

very narrow set of tools. And it's

1:38:52

weird because he's otherwise he's quite an

1:38:54

erudite guy, but he just chooses not

1:38:56

to sort

1:38:58

of progress beyond what

1:39:00

made him successful. And

1:39:03

I see this with a lot of other

1:39:05

influences, a lot of other intellectuals, where they

1:39:07

just stick to the thing that made them

1:39:09

successful over and over again, as if they're

1:39:12

just sort of scared of venturing into new territory.

1:39:15

You see it with a lot of sort

1:39:17

of anti-woke accounts online now as well, where

1:39:19

the same thing is always the case. It's

1:39:21

always about wokeness. Everything's wokeness. Everything

1:39:24

can be explained in terms of wokeness. So you see

1:39:26

it in the opposite side with everything's racist. You know,

1:39:28

racism is the explanation for everything. Oh,

1:39:30

it's because of systemic racism. It's because of whiteness, it's

1:39:32

because of white fragility, all

1:39:35