Joe Rogan Experience #1564 - Adam Alter

1. 0:02 – 3:17

   Screens as lifelines vs. distractions during the pandemic

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:02

      (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. AAAdam Alter0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music) Hello, Adam.

   4. AAAdam Alter0:14

      Hey, Joe.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      How are you? What's going on?

   6. AAAdam Alter0:16

      Yeah, not too bad, thanks. Not much happening, just the pandemic.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:20

      Uh, I really enjoyed your book, man. It's, uh, terrifying and accurate and, uh, irresistable. (laughs)

   8. AAAdam Alter0:29

      Thank you. I appreciate that.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:31

      Um, when you write a book like that, I mean, first of all, the irony is not lost on me that we're doing, uh, an electronic show about avoiding electronics. Like, it's so much-

   10. AAAdam Alter0:43

       Right.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:44

       ... of a part of our life, the- the- our- our addiction to all these devices and games and applications and all these different things, but yet, we use them constantly. It's, uh, it's such a weird balancing act, isn't it?

   12. AAAdam Alter0:57

       Yeah, it is a weird balancing act. I think a lot of people who write about this stuff and think about it, uh, really just, uh, focus on all the negatives. There are obviously massive positives. Right? This is a time when we're being forced to- to physically distance ourselves from other people and yet, we are incredibly lucky to be able to carry on conversations like this, to be able to connect to other people through screens. And so, so screens are in many ways great, but obviously, there are- there are downsides as well.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:22

       Yeah, the good thing is that people can work remotely and I think there's a lot of people that are recognizing that. That there's- it's not really necessary to be in a cooped up office all the time and many people are finding that they're even more productive from home. But then, you've got distractions while you're at home that you, you know, you- you could just look at whatever you want on your computer if no one's looking over your shoulder, and therein lies the problem with being connected to the internet really, right?

   14. AAAdam Alter1:48

       Yeah, I think that's a really big part of it is that the- the good stuff, the stuff that brings us value, that, uh, makes it possible to connect to people, you know, there are huge values that come from being on a screen. There's a lot of- a lot of great stuff there, but it's- it's so close in proximity to all the stuff that takes us away from what we should be doing. And so, you're constantly trying to balance these two issues.

   15. JRJoe Rogan2:07

       Yeah. Um, I know several, uh, comics who write, uh, on a computer that doesn't have wifi. They've disabled the wifi on their computer just so specifically they- they can never get on the internet while they're writing because it is- it's such a pull. Like, there- there's such a- it's so difficult to imagine that people lived without it and that now that we have it, it's so difficult to ignore it, so difficult to get away.

   16. AAAdam Alter2:37

       Yeah, it's true. I- there's this- this big push in the last few decades, um, especially in the last decade called retro mania, which is this kind of falling in love with things that are past, that are from the past, things that people didn't really like at the time that much. And so now, we've got all these capacities and capabilities on screens that make them phenomenal and they can do so many more things than they used to be able to do. But like a writer who's trying to get work done, the only way to really do it sometimes is to- to roll back time 10 or 20 years. And so, there are a lot of people who do that. They'll- they'll disable the most kind of advanced features on the screens they're using because it's the only way to get past that- that hurdle of trying to- trying to do the right thing, but have the wrong thing be right there at your fingertips.

2. 3:17 – 5:19

   Why Adam wrote the book: a Flappy Bird wake-up call

   1. JRJoe Rogan3:17

      When- when you're writing a book like yours, which is, uh, warning people about technology, um, what was your motivation for doing this? Is this something that you've struggled with personally? Is this something that you've just seen other people struggle with? Like, what- what was the reason?

   2. AAAdam Alter3:34

      Yeah, it's, uh, it's definitely something I've struggled with a lot. Um, and I think a lot of us in- in academia who end up writing about topics like this focus on the things that are most- most prominent for us. Um, I remember being on a flight once, um, between New York and LA, so a good six-hour flight. And a friend had texted me and said, "You should check out a game." It was this game that he told me to check out, a game called Flappy Bird. And I downloaded this game on the runway and I remember as we took off, I started playing. And I had- I had grand designs of- of doing work, having a good nap, having some food, and I- I spent six hours playing this game, so that by the time we landed, I had done absolutely none of the stuff I was planning to do. And, um, I remember landing and- and the guy next to me actually turned to me and said, "Are you okay?" 'Cause I kind of sat there just tapping the screen like a maniac for six hours.

   3. JRJoe Rogan4:22

      (laughs)

   4. AAAdam Alter4:22

      (laughs) And I remember thinking, this is not good. If I- you know, I'm a reasonably high functioning individual and six hours just melted away. Now, you blow that up to a- a lifetime, we're spending like 15 or 20 years behind these screens. And so the question is, are we doing it in a way that's good for us or is it not good for us? And so that's what inspired me to- to research this and to write about it, to- to try to get a sense of, you know, what I think of as the biggest- the single biggest change in the way we live as a- as a planet in the last 20 years, um, and trying to get a sense of- of whether that's been mostly good, mostly bad, somewhere in the middle, or at least, you know, pushing the peop- people to think more about this thing that's occupying so much of their time, um, because that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to understand better. You know, it's fine if you're gonna spend one flight doing the wrong thing for six hours if you have other plans, but expand that to the life- the lifespan, talking about 80 years or so, I think it's gonna have a huge effect on the way we live. And so, I wanted to- to understand it more deeply.

3. 5:19 – 8:44

   Flappy Bird’s design tricks: removing “stopping cues”

   1. JRJoe Rogan5:19

      There was, uh, what- which was the game that you wrote about where the- the maker of the game, even though it was hugely successful, decided to delete it?

   2. AAAdam Alter5:28

      Yeah, that's the one that I started playing.

   3. JRJoe Rogan5:29

      That was Flappy Bird? Yeah.

   4. AAAdam Alter5:31

      Flappy- yeah, Flappy Bird. It's- it's- uh, he- he removed it from the market. It was an incredible thing. This guy was making an absolute killing, you know? At its peak, he was making, I think it was something like tens or hund- even hundreds of thousands of dollars a day in ad revenue, which, you know, for an indie game developer, um, you create this game, it's kind of a- a move of passion more than anything. You just enjoy pouring your- your, uh, artistic talents into making this game. You don't expect to make tons of money, but the guy was making a killing.And, um, you know, rare in this industry, and I think rare in any commercial industry, he, he had a conscience and he basically said, "I feel terrible about this." And removed it from the market. And people reached out. It was almost like he'd taken a drug away from drug users-

   5. JRJoe Rogan6:13

      Hmm.

   6. AAAdam Alter6:13

      ... because he removed it from the market, and a lot of them responded and said, "Can you just, like, give me a copy on the side?"

   7. JRJoe Rogan6:19

      Wow.

   8. AAAdam Alter6:19

      And he was pretty firm about it. He said no.

   9. JRJoe Rogan6:22

      Wow. Wow. So, what is so uniquely addictive about that one game? I know there's games like Candy Crush that you- are uniquely addictive, and, um, Subway Surfers, my wife's addicted to that game.

   10. AAAdam Alter6:35

       (laughs)

   11. JRJoe Rogan6:36

       Like, w- what, what is it about Flappy Bird that's uniquely addictive?

   12. AAAdam Alter6:41

       I'd say the thing for me that was addictive, it was incredibly simple to play. Everything about it was incredibly straightforward. Um, there was a clear objective and you could see the little points tick upwards. So what you have to do, for anyone who hasn't played the game, it's so simple, it's just a bird who has to fly through obstacles. It's, it's just mindless. Um, but, but one of the things that I think made it so hard for me to stop playing was that, you know, if you think about games in the '80s, the '90s, you'd, you'd, you'd end a game and you'd get this little game over screen, and then you'd have to push a button to keep playing. And so each time that happened, there was a little prompt that maybe you want to get on with your life, go do something else. The thing about Flappy Bird is, the bird, when he crashes, he just automatically reanimates and he starts flying again, and it almost feels rude to the bird at that point to say, "I'm not gonna keep playing."

   13. JRJoe Rogan7:28

       (laughs)

   14. AAAdam Alter7:29

       So, (laughs) so I felt, I felt like, you know, look, we're two hours into the flight, three hours into the flight, but that bird just never stops flying, and I don't want to be the guy who just says, "It's, it's game over bird." And, and that's how... You know, I mean, it's, it's an exaggeration, it's a bit silly, but it's, it's really how it felt in the moment. Um, and I think this is something that a lot of the, the screen experiences we have, uh, have as a feature now, that the, the companies that have produced the products that we're using have systematically gone through their products to remove those little cues that would have said to us it's time to move on. So the, the maker of video games now doesn't have a big game over screen.

   15. JRJoe Rogan8:05

       Hmm.

   16. AAAdam Alter8:05

       The, the game just kind of keeps rolling on. And if you do that, you short circuit one of the things that pushes people away from what they're doing onto the next thing, and we, we call these stopping cues. And if you think about the bottomlessness of social media feeds, they were not bottomless when they were first designed and released. So when Facebook first came out, you had to click a little button at the bottom of the, the page that said load more, and that's not true anymore. Things just spool and spool and spool, and so there's, there's no bottom to them. And as a result of that, we've short-circuited that little nudge that used to say, okay, move on. And that was true of Flappy Bird, and that's what made it so hard for me to resist it at the time.

4. 8:44 – 11:45

   From TikTok autoplay to slot machines: engineering trance states

   1. JRJoe Rogan8:44

      The, uh, stopping cues or starting cues, that's one of the features that people find uniquely addictive, uh, about TikTok because TikTok videos play immediately apparently. I don't... I've never used TikTok, but, um, when I was talking to, uh, Tristan Harris, he was saying that that's one of the things about it that really hooks people right away. You open up the app and it just starts playing. You don't have to click on anything, you don't have to touch it, it just immediately starts playing videos for you.

   2. AAAdam Alter9:12

      Yeah, it's true on most of the video playing platforms now. TikTok's certainly true. Uh, it's true about Netflix. They're, they're all just designed to autoplay and so that's removing one of the decision points that might have stopped people from engaging, and, uh, as a result, we, we're just kind of automatically right in there. You know, you, you basically want to take people from, from not being in an experience to being deeply immersed in it as quickly as possible. And the more quickly you can do that, the more likely they are to, to just find themselves kind of entranced by that process. So a lot like playing a slot machine, if you, if you gamble and you sit in front of that machine, I mean, it takes only a couple of minutes for the well-designed ones to hook you and suddenly you're in a trance and you're, you're losing... Gen- generally losing a lot of money, and, and suddenly an hour's gone by, or two hours. There are no clocks. They don't tell you that it's time to move on. There's no sense of daylight. You know, it could be the third sunrise, you wouldn't have any idea that's happening. And that's all by design.

   3. JRJoe Rogan10:05

      Um, Jamie just pulled up a statistic about Flappy Bird and the phones that still have it now are on sale on eBay. Flappy Bird, uh, equipped iPhones are listed for $1,000 to $10,000 on eBay with a few priced above $50,000. An iPhone 5S with the app sold for $10,100. An iPad Air listed at over $80,000 has received multiple bids. eBay nixed the auc- the auction of a Flappy Bird equipped iPhone as it neared $100,000, the LA Times reports.

   4. AAAdam Alter10:43

      Yeah, it's insane.

   5. JRJoe Rogan10:44

      $100,000. $100,000 for a regular phone or a regular iPad that has this stupid game on it. That's how addicted people are.

   6. AAAdam Alter10:55

      Yeah, you, you should read... Uh, check out some of the reviews of it. It's really... It's pretty entertaining actually, 'cause these people, they have such a love-hate relationship with it. There's, uh, these are reviews written around the time it was released in 2014. You'll see these, these reviews that give it a five star rating, and then they say next to it, "This, this game will be the death of me."

   7. JRJoe Rogan11:12

      (laughs)

   8. AAAdam Alter11:12

      Like, they have this perfect kind of addictive relationship with it. And they, they talk about, um... You know, this one guy was like, "I've lost all my friends." And it's so dumb because it's this bird who's flying arou- I mean, it's the most-

   9. JRJoe Rogan11:24

      Yeah.

   10. AAAdam Alter11:24

       ... trivial, silly thing, and yet the experience is compelling enough that it, it has that effect on people, you know? It's, it's, uh... Uh, until you've played it, it also sounds silly. That's the thing. When I was playing it, I, I... When I landed, uh, uh, after six hours of playing it straight, I remember just being like, "What just happened? That makes no sense at all."

   11. JRJoe Rogan11:43

       Hmm.

   12. AAAdam Alter11:43

       Um, it's a very powerful experience.

5. 11:45 – 14:34

   Gaming addiction stories: Quake, WoW, Fortnite—and who gamers are now

   1. JRJoe Rogan11:45

      I had a serious addiction to, uh, a game called Quake for years.

   2. AAAdam Alter11:50

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan11:51

      A first person shooter.

   4. AAAdam Alter11:53

      I know it.

   5. JRJoe Rogan11:53

      I had a real problem, like eight to 10 hours every day. I had a T1 line installed in my house so that I could play it.

   6. AAAdam Alter12:00

      (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan12:00

      I wasn't...... y- I mean, I was gone. And one day, I just shut it off. I just stopped playing. I couldn't do it. I realized what was going on. I was tired all the time. I was playing til like four or five o'clock in the morning, and then sleeping til like noon, and then playing it again. It was really bad. And it's-

   8. AAAdam Alter12:17

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan12:18

      ... and it's a game that is uniquely addictive 'cause it's so immersive. It's a 3D experience. The sound is 3D, and it's very competitive too. So you're, you're- you could hop online and you're constantly playing with these other people all over the world, really, in these servers. And there's a lot of people that lose their life to these games. And that's not as addictive as apparently World of Warcraft. Is that one of the things that you were saying is the most addictive game?

   10. AAAdam Alter12:46

       Yeah, I mean, it's been labeled the most ad- addictive experience we can have or we have had that doesn't involve a substance. Um, and-

   11. JRJoe Rogan12:53

       Really?

   12. AAAdam Alter12:53

       ... based on the numbers ... Yeah, based on just the numbers of players, it's- it's- it's not at its peak anymore. It's- it's been eclipsed by some other experiences. Um, but at its peak, I mean, it had tens of millions of users and they were playing for hours and hours and hours a day, people just foregoing sleep to play in the middle of the night, all day. Um, sometimes, you know, there are stories of people who played so much that they would sit in diapers because they didn't want to have to go to the bathroom.

   13. JRJoe Rogan13:19

       Oh my God.

   14. AAAdam Alter13:19

       It's just incredibly powerful stuff. Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan13:22

       And what has eclipsed it?

   16. AAAdam Alter13:25

       Um, I think there are just newer experiences like Fortnite. Fortnite's the really big one, um, that- that- uh, that's- I don't know if it's surpassed World of Warcraft. I think World of Warcraft was a more kind of colossal experience, disrupted the- the world of video game playing more profoundly. Um, but there's also been a big shift in the- in the way we play and who plays video games. You know, historically video games were ... You know, I was like you. For me, it was Doom. I would play Doom-

   17. JRJoe Rogan13:48

       Oh, yeah.

   18. AAAdam Alter13:48

       ... for hours and hours and hours a day.

   19. JRJoe Rogan13:50

       Same developer?

   20. AAAdam Alter13:51

       The same developer, yeah-

   21. JRJoe Rogan13:53

       Yeah.

   22. AAAdam Alter13:53

       ... which has preceded Quake. Um, and I- you know, that's- that was typical of gamers. You know, they were often kind of young males, teenaged or adolescent aged or in their early 20s. And- and that's really shifted with the advent of the iPhone in particular. So because most games now are being played on- on iPhone screens or on smartphone screens, um, the biggest demographic of gamers from I think it was about 2014 or '15 on became middle-aged women. So it's a big shift in who plays games-

   23. JRJoe Rogan14:22

       That's hilarious.

   24. AAAdam Alter14:23

       ... and spends the most time. It's a big, big change.

   25. JRJoe Rogan14:25

       'Cause those- those are the ones that were yelling at their sons just a couple of decades ago. It was middle-aged women. You know, "Get something going with your life. What are you doing?"

   26. AAAdam Alter14:33

       (laughs)

6. 14:34 – 16:14

   Virtual reality and “the Matrix” trajectory

   1. JRJoe Rogan14:34

      And now they're doing it. Um, when you see these games and you see this massive addiction that human beings have to them, and then you see the technology increasing rapidly, does- I mean, d- do you anticipate us being in The Matrix in your lifetime?

   2. AAAdam Alter14:54

      Uh, yeah, some version of that, I think. Um, you know, what's- what's really smart about the devices we use now, at least from the developer's perspective, is we- most of us resist the idea of- of having an im- implanted tech device. You know, like, we don't want something implanted in our brains yet. We're still pretty queasy about that idea. But if you ask people, 80% of adults will say that they can reach their phones 24 hours a day without moving their feet. So that's- they're- they're not physically implanted devices, but they're already basically there.

   3. JRJoe Rogan15:24

      Right.

   4. AAAdam Alter15:25

      Um, and then down the road, if you speak to people who work in virtual and augmented reality industries, they'll tell you, "You know, it's- we're only a couple of years away from this being a huge commercial success," where just as we now almost all universally from quite a young age walk around with our own s- personal iPhones and- and smartphones, we're gonna be doing the same, but they're gonna be virtual reality glasses. And so you'll be going somewhere, and at any moment in time, instead of deciding whether to live in the moment or pick up your phone, it'll be, do I want to live in this moment or live in an alternate reality where, you know, I can go exactly where I want to go, do the thing I want to do, spend time in a virtual space with exactly who I want to spend time with? I think it's going to be incredibly hard for us to- to resist the temptation to- to do that. And that's gonna create a literal physical barrier between human beings. I think we're all gonna be living in our own little universes eventually if- if things go the way they've been going.

7. 16:14 – 30:54

   COVID as accelerator—and the emotional need for soothing

   1. JRJoe Rogan16:14

      Well, if I was conspiratorially minded, and I kind of am, but only for fun, uh, I would think that someone has probably set that ball in motion with COVID. With COVID and the lockdown of all- it's almost like if you wanted to make a movie where, uh, artificial intelligence wanted to figure out a way to hook us deeper, artificial intelligence would release a virus.

   2. AAAdam Alter16:40

      (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan16:41

      And they would force us to stay inside. It doesn't kill everybody, but it makes people scared so you stay inside and it connects you even deeper to computers, and maybe more importantly, separates you even more from the human experience of touching and being around each other and social cues and social gathering. And it makes it even more compelling to do things virtually, more compelling to be on your computer all the time and messing with applications. And then while this is all going on, something far more immersive is released when you're already-

   4. AAAdam Alter17:14

      I- I-

   5. JRJoe Rogan17:14

      ... accustomed to it.

   6. AAAdam Alter17:16

      Yeah, I've got to say, I mean, life in the last decade in particular has- has got way stranger than fiction.

   7. JRJoe Rogan17:23

      Yeah.

   8. AAAdam Alter17:23

      The real world right now, there is so much about it that just seems like it can't be real. You know, if anyone wrote a movie with the script of the last five to 10 years, people would-

   9. JRJoe Rogan17:31

      How about the last four here? (laughs)

   10. AAAdam Alter17:32

       Oh, the last four, let's pick the last four.

   11. JRJoe Rogan17:34

       Just that.

   12. AAAdam Alter17:34

       People would say, "This is- this is ..." Yeah, it's not- it's nonsense.

   13. JRJoe Rogan17:37

       Yeah.

   14. AAAdam Alter17:37

       Like what- what ever- it's- it's kind of B-grade Hollywood stuff that we're looking at here.

   15. JRJoe Rogan17:41

       Right.

   16. AAAdam Alter17:41

       Um, but, you know, the interesting thing about this pandemic period for me is I think it might have a weird backlash effect where we've all been forced to- to spend time on screens. Um, it's- instead of going to the screen because we- we love it and we're attracted to social media and whatever other things we're doing on screens, a lot of us are being forced to use them. And one thing that's changed is s- sentiment towards screens. I think a lot of people are just over it. And so when we are past all of this, I think there's a chance that's gonna be the catalyst to push people away from screens a bit. 'Cause if you- you know, before this, if you were- you speak to especially younger people, they'll say, and this is true for me too-I would rather just use the most remote form of communication possible, whatever's easiest. I don't wanna have to speak on the phone. I don't wanna have to see people. Let me just send a quick text or an email or a WhatsApp or whatever. And I think there's a shift now where people are, like, craving that- that true face-to-face time, where you're actually sitting in front of a person having a real conversation. And- and that's- that's been, I think, a shift in the last roughly eight or nine months.

   17. JRJoe Rogan18:45

       I think there's people like you that are craving the experience of being around other folks, 'cause I think you're aware of the repercussions of this virtual experience that we're all engaging in, and the addiction to screens and screen time and phones and games and applications. But I think there's plenty of folks that are happy to just get lulled to sleep and sucked into it, and I think that's my real concern. My real concern is mindful, thoughtful people like yourself that are, you know, s- that are saying, "Listen, we need, you know, just a real experience with human beings, and we're revolting and- and leaving the..." But if you look at the numbers in terms of human beings, like what, like, uh, the average screen time, all that stuff's going up. Y- use of these things is all going up, and I think there's folks like you that would like to think that we're rejecting it, but I think it's a, it's a minority that's rejecting it. I think the minor- the majority are embracing it, unfortunately.

   18. AAAdam Alter19:45

       Yeah, I think... I- I think that- that may be true. I mean, I think one of the big drivers of screen time, uh, is, you know, if you take psychological needs away from people, the things that are really important to them to function psychologically, that's when they turn to screens. That's when they turn to drugs. That's when they turn to alcohol. That's when they turn to all the things that soothe us. And screens do that. They are a kind of a non-substance way to- to be soothed. Um, that's what happened with me on that flight for six hours. It's what happens when you're on social media scrolling mindlessly, when you're watching tons and tons of videos online. All that sort of stuff is- is- is a way of soothing you. And I think people need to be soothed more than ever right now, because this is a, this is a hard time for a lot of people. It's hard financially. It's hard because you're socially distant from people. Um, it's- it's just, it just creates this kind of pall of uncertainty that sits above everything we do, and humans hate that. We don't like uncertainty. We don't like not knowing what's coming around the corner. And not just about the pandemic. I mean, politically, in a lot of different ways, there's a lot of uncertainty right now, and for- for the last while. And when you put people in that state, they're gonna turn to screens. Uh, I don't know if that's an- an enduring thing, but any time you rob people of- of well-being, of- of some sort of psychological need, they're gonna try to find it elsewhere, and one of the ways they do that is... now the easiest way to do it is to turn to a screen.

   19. JRJoe Rogan21:02

       Have you spent any time at all playing virtual reality games?

   20. AAAdam Alter21:08

       I... It's funny. I... When I was doing the research for this book, I spoke to a game designer, um, brilliant guy at NYU. He's at the NYU Game Center, named Bennet Foddy, and, um, he teaches, he teaches game design. He's designed a number of- of phenomenal games himself. And he told me something that I found fascinating and I took it on board. He- he said to me... Uh, I asked him about World of Warcraft and I said, "You know, do you enjoy it? What do you think about it?" And he said to me, "I know that if I start playing that game, I- I either don't play it at all or I'm gonna basically be giving up years of my life, and I don't have the time to do that, so I just have never even opened the game to- to play it. It's just not something I wanna do." And that's- that's how I, um, have felt about most of those experiences. I did play one virtual reality game. Um, it was with a haptic suit, so it basically fits over you. It was this Ghostbusters game. And I- I grew up watching Ghostbusters and loved it. So- so the- the ghosts fly through you and you can feel the suit compresses, and so it feels like they're actually kind of butting into you, which maybe doesn't make much sense 'cause they're ghosts. But you- you fly around with one of the little Ghostbusters guns and you're in New York City and you're running around. This was a 10-minute experience, but if you had told me that I could give up the next 48 hours of my life, put on the suit, run around, no food, just- just do this for 48 hours, it was so incredibly immersive and engaging and interesting, I would've done it. It was, it was amazing. And it wasn't even like... That's not even where we're going with this stuff. This was, you know, step one out of step 10 in terms-

   21. JRJoe Rogan22:43

       Yeah.

   22. AAAdam Alter22:43

       ... of sophistication. This is the early days. It's only gonna get more compelling.

   23. JRJoe Rogan22:47

       D- are you aware of Sandbox? Have you ever heard of the company Sandbox?

   24. AAAdam Alter22:51

       No.

   25. JRJoe Rogan22:51

       Sandbox is, uh, it's a virtual reality game destination. So you go to this place and it's essentially a warehouse, and inside of it, they have these arenas set up for games and a series of games that you play, and I playing with my whole family. We put the haptic feedback suits on, virtual reality-

   26. AAAdam Alter23:08

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan23:08

       ... helmets, and you kill zombies, you fight off skeletons on a pirate ship. There's a bunch of games, and it- it is wild. And you- you see it and you go, "I see where this is going." Like this is, right now, pretty immersive, pretty immersive, really, really fun, very engaging, exciting to do, but you know for a fact that it's just gonna keep getting better and keep getting better. And right now, it's insanely addictive. Like I get so pumped up to do it. When we d- like, I'll go with my family like every couple weeks or so, and we get so excited when we're on our way over there. Luckily, it's got a set time. It's o- it's a one-hour experience, and when it's over, it's over. But my God, you know, you're- you're in it. Like y- there's one of them where you're in a haunted house and you're fighting off zombies and they're just running at you, like hundreds of them, and you're gunning them down. It's so exciting. When they get ahold of you, you feel their touch like in- in the haptic feedback suit-

   28. AAAdam Alter23:59

       (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan23:59

       ... and you see red in front of your face like you're getting torn apart. It's wild. And you know that this is essentially like Doom, right? If you play Doom today it's... The pixels are enormous. It's just like... It looks clunky and square-ish and block-ish and... I mean, it's fun still, but it's so...... it, it, it's so c- crude in comparison to a modern game. You know, where the modern games have ... Like, there's a new Unreal Engine and we were playing a video of it the other day, because it's so hard to believe that this is just a video game. And in this, this video game, the lighting and the textures and the shadows are so exact. It's so incredible. And y- you just have this feeling of inevit- inevitability, like, there's just gonna come a time where you're going to be in this virtual reality thing and you're gonna have a, a whole haptic feedback outfit from your fingers to your toes, all over your face, and it's going to ... It's going to be better than real life, and that's what everyone's terrified of.

   30. AAAdam Alter25:03

       Yeah. And I mean, it's, it's hard to, it's hard to avoid that, right? That, uh, that feeling, that excitement that you have as you're about to play. I- imagine if that were always available to you-
8. 30:54 – 37:38

   Human isolation, child development, and becoming “obsolete” with AI/Neuralink

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:54

      Do you worry when you're researching this and you're spending all this time working on this subject, and you accumulate all this data, and you, you look at the big picture, and you look at where this is going, do you think that we are on our way to being obsolete, that human beings are going to be either replaced or we're going to have some sort of a very bizarre symbiotic relationship with electronics, where we're not, w- like, we're not what we think of as people right now?

   2. AAAdam Alter31:25

      I, I don't worry about humans being replaced as much as I worry about humans becoming just isolated entities. Like, I think humans, for all of evolutionary history, have always been in groups, in tribes. They've had to come together. They've relied on each other. They've formed coalitions. I, I worry that the way we get most of the psychological needs met, the psychological nourishment, it used to require getting together as a species, coming together in certain ways. And I think when you can get so much of what you need from a device that you strap onto your face, that basically separates you from everyone else around you, um, I, I do worry about that. And, uh, I, I also think there are certain critical periods in, in maturation and development for kids when they learn how to interact with other people. They learn how to, you know, work out the difference between someone being angry and someone being afraid. They work out, you know, if you take another kid's toy, the kid's gonna bop you on the head and say, "That's not okay." You've gotta learn that stuff through trial and error. And I think because kids are placed in front of screens at such a young age, many of them, and because these devices are gonna remove us from the, the contact with other people, I, I just think we're becoming m- a much more isolated species. We used to call humans the social animal. That's still true, for sure, but it's a, it's kind of an impoverished, stripped-down version of what it means to be social if you compare it to even 20 years ago.

   3. JRJoe Rogan32:47

      Yeah, that's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about us being almost obsolete, is that, uh, I worry about the advent of AI, and I worry about things like Neuralink, where you're increasing the bandwidth that human beings have to access information. And I'm not exactly sure what kind of an effect that's gonna have on human beings, but I'm positive that whatever effect it initially has is gonna exponentially increase over the next few decades. And then, I'm, I'm worried that, like you said, most people's phone is n- never more than, uh, a hand, like a arm's reach away.

   4. AAAdam Alter33:25

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan33:25

      You wake up in the morning. It's right there by your bedside. People are always constantly checking their pockets when they get up from the dinner table. They always wanna have their phone. How long before we let them stick that thing in us? How long before you have a chip that, that sits in your arm or something real simple that'll just, you know, goes under your skin in a very easy way and doesn't... it's not very painful, but you have some access to everything that you want, and then slowly but surely, we start replacing body parts? (laughs) I mean, I'm-

   6. AAAdam Alter33:54

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan33:54

      ... I'm ge- genuine, genuine... I know it sounds science-fictiony and ridiculous, but I'm genuinely worried that what we think of as human beings now, this is like a legacy version of human beings, and that 20, 30 years from now, it's gonna be obsolete.

   8. AAAdam Alter34:10

      Right. I mean, just go back 20 years. Go... Imagine you could, you could go back to the year 2000 and speak to people and say, "Hey, you're gonna go to the restaurant, and everyone's gonna be sitting isolated, looking at a small device, and then they're gonna go home, and they're gonna spend four hours looking at that device, and then they're gonna wake up in the morning and look at that device." I've, I've been asking this question of thousands of people. Um, I, I basically asked them from age 13 up to people in their 90s, "Would you rather now have your phone broken, so you can have your phone shattered in front of you, or would you rather have a broken bone in your finger?" And older adults say, "I would rather have a broken phone." But if you ask teens and adolescents, about half of them say, well, they want to bargain with you first. They're like, "When I've broken my hand, can I still swipe my phone?" But a lot of them will say, "I, I would rather have a broken bone in my hand than a broken phone." Now, imagine going back 20 years and saying to people, "There's gonna be this little device, and people are gonna be willing to have body parts broken to preserve the integrity of that device, and it's gonna be worth only a few hundred bucks." People are gonna say that... people would say, "That's crazy." And I think this has been, like, a long, 20-year process of desensitization.

   9. JRJoe Rogan35:17

      Yeah.

   10. AAAdam Alter35:18

       You know, the, the stuff that we're willing to do now, we're willing to give up four, five, six, 10 hours of our days to screen experiences that, at the end of the day, we look back and say, "Man, I didn't really want some of those experiences. That wasn't good for me. I don't feel happy or better off." So you, you extrapolate. You look forward. I mean, this is the beginning of an incredibly long road or a tall mountain. We're just at the very base, and we're moving upward. And that's why talking about VR and AR and Neuralink and all of the kind of, um, you know, augmented reality, uh, uh, artificial intelligence that's around the corner, all of that stuff, we're gonna look back at this, and this is gonna look quaint in the same way that looking at people watching TVs in the '50s, looking at that little square wooden box looks quaint. We're there. We... it feels like we're at some destination, but we're on the road, and it's still very early on that road. And this is one of the really important reasons I think for thinking so carefully about this stuff, because if we don't, if we don't think about it now, if we don't think about how to manage it in our own lives, it's gonna affect us as individuals and in our small communities, but I think it's gonna affect the, the whole planet o- on some level. So it's really important to, to at least be mindful about the choices we're making.

   11. JRJoe Rogan36:28

       I agree with you every step of the way. But my, my concern is that it doesn't matter what we're saying here-... that this is, uh, like, we are, like, holding a thousand bison as they run towards the cliff. We're like, "Guys, this is a cliff. Guys, behind me." And they, they're just pushing us back and we can't stop it. That's what it seems like to me. I, I, I un- I agree with everything you're saying, and I bet this is gonna resonate with all the people that are listening and watching this right now. They're gonna go, "Yeah, he makes a good point." And then they're gonna grab their phone and go, "Huh, who's calling me? Who's texting me? What's this? What's that?" And they're gonna get-

   12. AAAdam Alter37:02

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan37:02

       ... sucked right back into it.

   14. AAAdam Alter37:05

       Yeah. I, I, They will. And, um, and this is the, this is the kind of eternal problem with this, um, that, uh, we, we, we are up again... I'm sure Tristan Harris said this to you the other day, um, that we're up against very powerful, impressive foes, and they know all the right bu- buttons to push. And if they don't know, they'll collect data to be able to answer that question, and then they'll, they'll institute those practices in their products, and they'll, they'll put those features into their products that seem most capable of, of, uh, you know, bypassing our resistance.

   15. JRJoe Rogan37:37

       Yeah.

9. 37:38 – 43:54

   Can anything stop it? Grassroots awareness vs. regulation, and protected classes

   1. AAAdam Alter37:38

      Um, I, but I, I do think... I'm, I'm a little bit hopeful. I'm hopeful because a lot of this is gonna depend on, on, uh, I think two things. You know, there are kind of top-down influences and bottom-up influences. The bottom-up is grassroots. The fact that we're talking about this is a big step forward from where we were just three or four years ago. So in 2014, I was preparing to write this book, and some of the people I spoke to about it said, "This is a storm in a teacup. No one cares about screens. They're all good. There's nothing to worry about." They were already doing a lot of the same things they're doing now. We just weren't really sensitive to those issues. Now, between 2014 and 2017, when the book actually came out, sentiment sh- swung dramatically. Suddenly, just, I'd say millions and millions of people started to care about this issue. And now it's many, many millions, maybe even billions of people who are really paying attention to it. So it's good that at least awareness is there. That's something, that's the first step. And then the top-down influence is can you shape how, how companies use email? You know, like, if you can get, uh, a lot of the biggest companies to start saying, "Hey, you know what? Email is kind of destroying the lives of our workers, maybe we're gonna try to institute a policy where when they go on vacation, they absolutely don't have to check email." There are these, these, uh, companies in, in Germany, in particular, and other parts of Europe that, that have this vacation policy where when you go on vacation, every email that comes into your inbox is automatically deleted. So your inbox, the way it looked the day you went on vacation does not change until you get back from your vacation. So you don't need to check it while you're away. And so that's the top-down influence. And then, you know, the question about whether... You know, it's a really, really hot button issue. Should, should governments intervene? Should they start changing, uh, the way tech companies operate? Should they legislate how we use these products? For, for very understandable reasons, I think a lot of people bristle at the idea that government should get involved. Um, but these are questions, they're open questions, and some of the countries around the world have said, "Yeah, government should probably get involved. We should s- I- it's not gonna fix itself, and it's not gonna be fixed by grassroots pressure, by consumer pressure, so we're gonna have to do something from the top down," which is how a lot of governments deal with drug issues. They go to the source.

   2. JRJoe Rogan39:46

      I think it's a real problem if you let the government intervene in something just because you think it's addictive. I think if, if you're dealing with s- issues of censorship on social media and things along those lines, I think yes. I think the government should probably... they should probably figure out some sort of revision to the First Amendment, because it seems like these platforms, it's not as simple as this is a private company, b- because this is a private company that has immense influence over the way the world communicates. It's just too big of a pipeline to say, "This is just a private company, and we can decide who's on our platform and who isn't." Because you're seeing things censored by ideology, and you're seeing this polarizing effect that that has between Democrats and Republicans in the United States and the right and the left and... But that's one subject. That's just about free expression and free speech, which is a cornerstone of our democracy, a cornerstone of our culture. But addiction? Like, here's the thing. If you want... if you wanna be competitive, there's no way you're going to allow emails that come into your inbox to be deleted when you go on vacation. If you're one of those people that's all about kicking ass and taking names and our company's going to the top, you're not gonna allow that. Because what if that email gets deleted and that email could have critical information that could help your company, and that could be the next level, and you can get that promotion you've been, uh, working towards? And people are not gonna go for that in America. They might go for it in Germany, and good luck to you. But in America, in competitive business practices, I just, I can't imagine that people are gonna agree to something like that. And the idea that... uh, I don't think that you're suggesting this necessarily, but that the government should step in and say, "Hey, you know, when you're on vacation, you get two weeks of vacation every year. And when you're on vacation, all your emails get deleted." People are gonna go, "Fuck you. I need those emails."

   3. AAAdam Alter41:38

      Yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan41:38

      "What are you, crazy?"

   5. AAAdam Alter41:40

      Yeah. I, I, I don't believe they should do that. I think that's absolutely absurd. Um-

   6. JRJoe Rogan41:44

      What do you think they should do?

   7. AAAdam Alter41:46

      But I-

   8. JRJoe Rogan41:46

      When, when you say the government, like, w- w- what-

   9. AAAdam Alter41:48

      Yeah. It's a-

   10. JRJoe Rogan41:48

       Intervie-

   11. AAAdam Alter41:50

       Y- uh, one, one thing they could do is they could intervene with protected classes, like kids.

   12. JRJoe Rogan41:54

       Okay.

   13. AAAdam Alter41:54

       Right? So kids are incredibly vulnerable on screens. A friend of mine who writes about these issues, Nir Eyal, talks a lot about, um, protected classes and that we have, we have to have separate laws for, for people who... like if, if they wanna sign u- if, if a- an adult wants to sign up and say, "Look, I need help. I'm addicted to screens. I'm spending 12 hours a day on them. I, I want some help. Can you help me?" Or, or for kids who are also a protected class, perhaps the government could intervene and say, "We need ways to ensure that we're protecting these, these classes of people who basically e- either they've identified as needing help or they are kids and by definition need some help." So the government might intervene there. I, I mean, this is, this is the thing about this issue.I've been thinking about it for six years. There is no magic silver bullet.

   14. JRJoe Rogan42:39

       Right.

   15. AAAdam Alter42:39

       It is one of the- it is an incredibly difficult thing to solve, because as you say, if you are telling people, especially in the US, "We have found a way to make you happier and healthier, but it's gonna make you w- much less competitive, and there's a chance you're going to miss out on opportunities," no one's gonna bite on that. They're not, they're not going to say, "That's fine." Um, and different co- countries and cultures will have a different balance that they strike, um, but that's what makes this so difficult, is that, um, in the moment, a lot of us want to be doing these things. We don't want to be deprived. We don't want our, our, like, immediate liberties to be deprived, our ability to scroll mindlessly. If a government intervened and said, "You're not allowed to scroll on your screen," I'd bristle at that, and I think most people would.

   16. JRJoe Rogan43:18

       Yeah.

   17. AAAdam Alter43:19

       Um, even if we know that maybe that'll make us more productive and happier in the long run, it's just not what we're looking for from, from governments. Um, so y- you ask what I think we should do. I think it's incredibly difficult. It's a really difficult problem. Uh, I don't know that there's a, a very obvious set of solutions, although I think we should be very, very mindful, especially f- with respect to kids, because I think they, they are unbelievably vulnerable, and sometimes their parents don't really know what to do. It's a, it's a difficult problem, um, and so there I think we should be open to, to more, um, I don't know if extreme is the right word, but more intense interventions.

10. 43:54 – 48:59

    Practical behavior changes: dinner phones-away, bedrooms screen-free, and auditing use

    1. JRJoe Rogan43:54

       So when you're writing a book like yours, do you get this... 'Cause y- we, we both have the sort of same conclusions, that it's really difficult, this is an enormously difficult problem, and there's no clear cut solution, do you have a feeling-

    2. AAAdam Alter44:06

       Yeah.

    3. JRJoe Rogan44:06

       ... a sense of almost, uh, just, just futility? Just, like, what is the point of all this? This is li- this is moving in a direction that I can't sto- I mean, maybe you can give out advice that a scant few individuals will act upon, that a small percentage of the people who read your book are gonna go, "You know what? Adam makes a good point. I am, uh, I'm gonna cut back. I'm gonna delete all my apps. I'm gonna, I'm gonna get to- get a flip phone. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do something." But how many, what percentage are gonna do that?

    4. AAAdam Alter44:40

       It's a weird thing when you write a book like this, 'cause the book for me was... it was, it was supposed to be con- not an expose, but it was supposed to be a, "Hey, there's this thing that you haven't been thinking enough about, and it's an issue, and we should probably focus on it more than we have been." That was my intention. So it's, it's not written as a self-help manual. It's written as a "Let me uncover what's going on here."

    5. JRJoe Rogan45:01

       Right.

    6. AAAdam Alter45:01

       And so you can understand the psy- psychological hooks that are embedded. But as I've been speaking about this to, you know, audiences for the last three or four years, everyone wants a solution. Um, and, uh, you're right. M- there are gonna be a lot of people who are just like, "I don't care about this. I'm fine. I'm happy. I- just leave me alone," and that's fine, but when I'm in front of audiences, and they can be anything from, you know, t- p- people who work in the tech industry to the parents of kids, to school districts, to big companies. I mean, it just, it varies pretty dramatically, but one of the things I always say is, "Tell me, all of you, from one to ten, how big an issue is this for you, and how much do you want it to change?" And most people fall at the top half of the scale. They're at, like, a six or a seven or an eight. Now, they're in front of me, right? So it's possible that that's just what they're saying in that moment, and in fact they... w- when it comes to- push comes to shove, they're not gonna do that much about it. But the, the solutions that I'll share, or the suggestions that I'll share, they're incredibly straightforward. They're things like cultivate a habit where you don't have your phone at dinnertime. This is not a high-tech solution to a high-tech problem. It works. You know, like, I've, I've managed to do this. A lot of the people I know have managed to do it. And even these small interventions, they're very analog. They're just like, "Put your phone in a drawer for a couple of hours a day. Don't put your phone in the bedroom."

    7. JRJoe Rogan46:20

       Yeah.

    8. AAAdam Alter46:21

       Um, that stuff matters, and I think the best we can do, the best I feel that I can do right now, is to talk to the end consumers of tech, and if they want to hear the message and they want to hear that this is a concern and what you could possibly do about it, that's great. If they don't, I'm not a proselytizer. I'm not, I'm not trying to convert every- anyone to my view. I just wanted to put this out there and to have people say, "Oh. Yeah. This is a thing." And it seems like people are on board with at least that part of it. They... but like you and I, they're not sure what to do about it.

    9. JRJoe Rogan46:49

       One of the things that's helped me immensely is doing this podcast, because while I'm talking to people like you for hours, there's no phone. There's no, no distractions. And it's one of the things that I love about wearing the headphones and just sitting across from someone, uh, y- in this case virtually, but most of the time in person, talking to someone. It's just a conversation. That's, that's all it is. There's no, there's no checking the phone, and that is so rare. It's, it's such a strange time where checking a phone becomes, like, one of the most common activities that a person does throughout the day. If you- if- j- if you just looked at how many times a person checks their phone throughout the day versus all the other things they do, have a glass of water, go to the bathroom, the- all the- the various things that people do every day, that's at the top of the list. And again, like you're saying, 10 years ago, no one would have ever imagined that was the case.

    10. AAAdam Alter47:47

        No. Yeah. Y- I mean, I can't imagine there are too many people in the- on the planet who spend more time in conversation than you do. Um, and, you know, there's incredible benefit to that, and most people, when they have th- uh, those deep conversations with other people, they recognize that benefit. They enjoy it. Um, and so, you know, one of the, the pieces of hope is that... You know, if you tell people, "Try to try this for a while. Try this for a week. Don't have your phone at the table when you're having dinner," it's hard at first for people who are always used to just kind of s- mindlessly scrolling through dinner, but most people end up finding that there's quite a lot of benefit to it, and they enjoy it. So part of this is to get people to have the experience of what the other side could be. Um, but, but yeah. I- y- you're right. These, uh, these conversations are rare, and, and, uh, for most people, and picking up the phone is, is one of the most common things we do. We spend, on average... the average American adult spends four, four or more hours a day on, on a, a cell phone screen.It's a huge amount of time, and most people don't... can't believe it.

    11. JRJoe Rogan48:46

        Yeah. It's, it's hard to imagine when you look down at that number and you go, "What?" 'Cause you, you just think of it in these little tiny chunks, like, "Oh, a few minutes here or there."

    12. AAAdam Alter48:54

        Yeah.

    13. JRJoe Rogan48:54

        But those few minutes, you know, there's 60 minutes in an hour, they add up quick. And, uh-

    14. AAAdam Alter48:58

        Yeah.

11. 48:59 – 53:40

    The most disturbing findings: extreme gaming addiction and relapse cycles

    1. JRJoe Rogan48:59

       ... uh, mo- D- w- d- when you were... What was the most disturbing thi- when you were researching this and you're looking at all these trends, what was the mor- most disturbing aspect of it for you, if there was a most?

    2. AAAdam Alter49:11

       There were two. Um, the one was the... you know, there are people who play video games more than they would like, but then there are people at the very top end of that spectrum who are just absolutely helplessly addicted, you know? They'll, they'll play, they'll play games for five weeks straight, put on 50 pounds, lose their hair, sit in diapers, have... pay someone to bring pizza boxes to their room till the- there are just piles and piles of pizza boxes.

    3. JRJoe Rogan49:40

       (laughs) .

    4. AAAdam Alter49:40

       I met some of these people and spoke to some of them, and those stories I just found completely shocking. You know, I was sitting-

    5. JRJoe Rogan49:47

       Well, tell the story about the football player, if you would.

    6. AAAdam Alter49:50

       Yeah. I mean, he's the, he's the one I'm thinking about now. This, this guy who just, um... he basically told me... he was a, he was a very strong student. He was, uh, in college. He was a straight A student, and, uh, was on the football team, so he was a student athlete. Very bright, very capable, and slightly lonely. Felt a little bit distant from other people and started playing World of Warcraft, formed a guild, played with some other players, and just found that experience just incredibly immersive and rewarding. Uh, he loved the social aspect of it more than anything, and he felt a sense of, of, uh, obligation, I guess, that, you know, there were people playing at different parts of the world. He was playing with people around the world. And so when it was nighttime where he was, other people would be playing because it was daytime where they were, and so he started to stay up later and later and later. His, his sleeping hours shrank, um, and he ended up flunking out of college. This happened twice, actually, because he relapsed after he got treatment. But he flunked out of college. Um, he put on... h- he told me, I think he said he put on 40 pounds of fat in a period of five weeks.

    7. JRJoe Rogan50:58

       (laughs) .

    8. AAAdam Alter50:58

       Spent five weeks straight sitting at the screen, playing the game 23 hours a day, he said. Between 23 and 24 hours a day. Um, he told me he didn't use a diaper and that that accounts for the hour a day (laughs) , but he didn't bathe. Um, and he had... he paid this doorman to bring up boxes of pizza, so that's what he was eating. He was eating, eating basically pizza three times a day, and he was unrecognizable by the end of it. Uh, looked different, failed out of school. That, that to me was... that was the... one of the two most shocking things, was hearing these stories from people face-to-face explaining what they'd gone through. It's just... a- and there's no substance involved, you know? You hear these kinds of stories from, from substance abuse, um, but, but the idea that an experience can be compelling enough to have the same effect on some people, I found that really shocking.

    9. JRJoe Rogan51:44

       Yeah, and the, the fact that he relapsed too. Like, he, he got over it, recognized that there was a giant issue, and then the lure of it drew him right back to the computer.

    10. AAAdam Alter51:55

        Yeah. He, uh, he went for treatment. He went for a dose of treatment. It was expensive. Um, he was lucky that his family could afford it. Um, he went to this, um, facility, uh, just outside of Seattle called reSTART. Um, and they, they take in mostly young males, and they, they teach them how to cook and clean and, you know, all these things that, uh, seem to kind of pass by a lot of people and being self-sufficient and not, not just being stuck in front of the game. Um, they expose them to nature. They get them outdoors. They teach them how to play sports. They get them to exercise a little bit. They feed them healthy meals, all this sort of stuff. So he went and he did this for a few weeks, and at the end of it he thought, "Okay, I'm gonna go back to the life I had before, and I'm, I'm not gonna play this game. I'm not gonna play World of Warcraft." And for a while, it worked. But one of the things... one of the mistakes he made is that he basically went back to the exact context he had been in when he had that a- addiction in the first place. And so soon enough, you know, a period of loneliness, he was inspired to just fire up the game, and he said, "You know, I was just gonna play one more time." Suddenly it happens all over again, which is what you hear from people who are... uh, have, have drug abuse issues as well. Um, you, you can't... you obviously can't just do it one more time, and so he had to go back to the facility. Now this time when he finished his treatment, instead of going back to college, he, uh, he actually stayed out there. He, he lives and s- stayed out in, uh, in Washington State.

    11. JRJoe Rogan53:17

        So, he's clean now. Do you... are you still in touch with this guy?

    12. AAAdam Alter53:22

        He is. He's clean. He's a tremendously successful guy. He's a businessman. Uh, he's doing very well. Um, and yeah, he, he's doing well, and I think a big part of what helped him was just completely removing himself from the context that was problematic for him. That seemed to be a huge part of, of what allowed him to get past it.

12. 53:40 – 1:47:07

    Why it works: evolutionary ‘completion’ drives, fitness gamification, and ethical incentives

    1. JRJoe Rogan53:40

       There's a certain aspect of, of, of people when they get addicted to things that w- I've, I've heard people try to figure out what that is or why people get obsessed with certain activities, and they think that it's some- th- that it's... you're hijacking or the games are hijacking some, uh, positive evolutionary trait where you get obsessed at trying to get good at things that will help your survival. Like, be a better hunter, learning how to fish, learning how to fight off your enemies, and becoming obsessed with these things has allowed people to thrive and survive and procreate. And that-

    2. AAAdam Alter54:24

       (clears throat)

    3. JRJoe Rogan54:24

       ... somehow or another these games hijacked. Is that accurate? Am I...

    4. AAAdam Alter54:28

       I, I find that explanation really compelling. I, I mean, if you think about it, if you are driven towards mastery, towards completing goals rather than leaving them incomplete, that's gonna predispose you for a lot of the right kind of traits to succeed, especially going back thousands of years. You know, if you are on a hunt-... and you decided, "Oh, no, I'm good. I'm done. It's not gonna-"

    5. JRJoe Rogan54:49

       Yeah.

    6. AAAdam Alter54:49

       "... work out today." You know, if you were that person and you didn't succeed and your ancestors don't ex- your, your, um, your, uh, progeny don't exist. There's no one here to speak for you. But if we exist today, that's because our ancestors were the ones who said, "Actually, no, I'm tired, I'm done, but I can't be done because I need to complete the goal. The mission's gotta be complete." And so there's, there's this overhang of this now, which is, as you say, the, the unproductive part of that, is that we, we are really bad at letting things go as a species. You open up a loop for me and you don't tie the loop off, I hate it. Don't tell me half a story. Don't teach me half a skill. Don't tell me to read half a book or watch half a movie. Humans hate that. We all hate that.

    7. JRJoe Rogan55:32

       Yeah.

    8. AAAdam Alter55:32

       And it, it's productive in some contexts when it's good for us to finish what we start, um, but we're not in evolu- pre- you know, prehistoric times anymore. We're not hunter-gatherers in the same way. And so when you get these experiences on a screen, suddenly you're playing Candy Crush, and the old hunter-gatherer in you who says, "I can't give up on this experience till it's done because otherwise I'm not gonna survive," kicks in. And suddenly you're playing 14 hours of Candy Crush or six hours of Flappy Bird. So I think it is a hijacking of some of the, the traits that were incredibly adaptive and beneficial in, in those evolutionary contexts, but don't make a lot of sense in the modern world in some contexts.

    9. JRJoe Rogan56:08

       It's so strange that these traits would translate to Flappy Bird. I mean, it is-

    10. AAAdam Alter56:13

        (laughs)

    11. JRJoe Rogan56:13

        ... r- right? It's really weird. It's really weird that these things that would've helped our ancestors survive, they can be hijacked.

    12. AAAdam Alter56:22

        Yeah, I mean, loo- look at, uh ... So I'm a runner. Um, I don't run ... I'm not extremely fast. Um, and I don't run insane distances, but, but I find ultra-running absolutely fascinating, and I find, um, elite marathon running fascinating. There's, there's no good reason to do a- an ultra. There's- I mean, there are a lot of good reasons that are kind of intrinsic, like the reward. I would love to do one one day. Um, but that is a hijacking in the same way. I mean, th- this is, this is just kind of a ... It's a chip that is in there and it works for us, and it worked for us in prehistoric times, but it, it doesn't distinguish between the, the occasions when it's gonna work well for us and when it's gonna work badly. I mean, it's the same with food, right? That, that desire for sugar, that craving for sugar, for salt, for fat. If you were running the Savannah and you were looking for, for something that was calorie-rich, calorie-dense that was gonna be good for you, that was gonna sustain you, high s- high sugar, high salt, high fat, great mix. But give people the situation they're in today, they're still operating on those same principles. Their brains are still operating the same way. They're just as attracted to those things, but they have an endless font of, of foods that are gonna give them those things in an- in massive surplus, and that's hugely problematic. It's exactly the same with the brain responding to rewards, to mastery, why we do crosswords, why we play games that get progressively more difficult that suck up more and more of our time. It's a huge part of it.

    13. JRJoe Rogan57:45

        The ultra-marathon running thing is particularly interesting to me 'cause, uh, one of my very good friends does it. His name's Cameron Hanes and he runs these three-hour or three-day races where they run 240 miles. He does, like ... He did the Moab 240, he's done-

    14. AAAdam Alter58:01

        Right.

    15. JRJoe Rogan58:01

        ... the Bigfoot Race, which is 200 miles. You're going through the mountain and I think there's ... And he- i- interestingly enough, he got involved in that because he is a hunter and he wanted to be- have better endurance to hunt in the mountains, and so he started getting obsessed with running marathons then ultra-marathons and these crazy multiple day endurance races. But he l- it's literally for him that thing that we're talking about, these ancient traits that allowed persistence, allow you-

    16. AAAdam Alter58:32

        Mm-hmm.

    17. JRJoe Rogan58:32

        ... to be a successful hunter through that persistence and through that dedication and focus and discipline. He's sort of got stuck in this where he's just insane with it. Like he'll run a marathon a day-

    18. AAAdam Alter58:44

        (laughs)

    19. JRJoe Rogan58:44

        ... mul- multiple days in a row, to prepare for these things. Where they used to tell you you have to have six months off when you run a marathon, right? That was the ancient wisdom. Like, your body's-

    20. AAAdam Alter58:54

        Yeah.

    21. JRJoe Rogan58:54

        ... so broken down after running 26 miles on ... No, he runs a marathon every day.

    22. AAAdam Alter58:59

        Have you seen the Sri Chinmoy Challenge? This is, this is a cr- I wrote a piece about ultra-marathons at one point.

    23. JRJoe Rogan59:04

        What is it? Say it again? What is it called?

    24. AAAdam Alter59:06

        It's S- Sri Chinmoy. S-R-I and then Chinmoy. C-H-I-N-M-O-Y.

    25. JRJoe Rogan59:12

        I've heard that return.

    26. AAAdam Alter59:14

        Sri Chinmoy.

    27. JRJoe Rogan59:14

        I've heard that term.

    28. AAAdam Alter59:15

        It's (laughs) , it's this insane (laughs) uh ... So what you do is you go to Brooklyn. Uh, I think it starts in May or June. You go to Brooklyn and there's this little block around a school. It's a nondescript block, there's nothing special about it. And you run 3,100 miles-

    29. JRJoe Rogan59:31

        Oh, that's right.

    30. AAAdam Alter59:31

        ... over, over about 60 days.

Episode duration: 2:02:19