Modern Wisdom14 Uncomfortable Truths About Human Psychology - Gurwinder Bhogal
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,003 words- 0:00 – 4:47
False Consensus Effect
- CWChris Williamson
You write these amazing mega threads. I love them. We're gonna go through as many of the concepts that we can get through today. The first one, false consensus effect. "Everyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and everyone driving faster than you is a maniac." George Carlin. Our model of the world assumes people are like us. We don't just do whatever we consider normal. We also consider normal whatever we do.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, so I think this is a very important point because we only know ourselves, and we kind of, because we're so familiar with ourselves, we tend to use ourselves as the baseline by which we judge everything else. And this can cause problems, because let's say, um, if you're somebody who is around somebody else, uh, you're- and you're inclined to find this person annoying because they're not like you. There's two ways you can look at this. Either you can look at it as, "That person is annoying," or, "I am easily annoyed." And what people tend to do is they almost always err on the side of considering the other person annoying. You know, so this is just one example, but this is pretty much what we do in our, in our lives, up and down, everywhere, like we do it all over the shop. And the reason why I think it's important is because if we start asking ourselves, "Well, hang on a second, maybe I'm the issue, maybe I'm seeing things differently because of my experiences," we can actually get a more grounded understanding of actually what's going on. I've started doing this in my life a lot more, where if I feel a certain way about someone, I ask myself, "Is it me or is it them?" You know, it's something that a lot of people don't do. They just assume that it's the other person that's the problem, or they assume that something in the world is wrong rather than their perception. So that's the reason I include it. I think it always helps, it's a good heuristic to just double-check, just to ask yourself if there's something askew in the world, is it really askew or is it your perception? Is it your experiences that have put you askew from the world?
- CWChris Williamson
Is this related to the fundamental attribution error?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, to an extent. I mean, so with the fundamental attribution error, people have a tendency to attribute the sort of, uh, the failures of an ally to external circumstances, and the failures of an, uh, an enemy or opponent, uh, to their character. So you know, if, if, if your friend is late, "Oh, you know, they just got held up by the bus. The bus was the problem." But if an opponent is late, "Oh, they're just a horrible person. They're lazy," you know, all this stuff. So it does tend to... That's more of a tribal thing, but it- it does have an element of this false consensus effect to it, because we tend to see things relative to ourselves in that sense. So-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... you know, obviously if we, we judge ourselves, you know, we say, "Oh, you know, I, I lost control because I was under pressure. Uh, they lost control because that's just who they are." You know?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. There's a, a Gen Z girl equivalent of this. I saw a meme that said, uh, "Any guy who likes girls who have got smaller titties than me is a pedophile, and any guy who likes girls that have got bigger titties than me is a fatty chaser." (laughs)
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yes, it is. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
It's basically like a, a remix of the George Carlin quote, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That's so funny. (laughs)
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
But yeah, man, I think, uh, you know, this... It's like a sort of a relativistic view of morals and motivations, right, that I am the thing that's in stasis. I am the foundation. It's me, and everything sort of comes out from me. Everything else is done in relativity to me.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Mm. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. We have to bear in mind that we, we have a flawed baseline, because, you know, what we're seeing is not objective. We're all seeing the world through, um, the filter of our own experiences, and also our character, our personality. These are all filters through which we look at the world, and it's very easy to forget that those filters exist. It's like if you're looking through a window long enough, you forget that you're actually looking through a window, you know, because that window becomes invisible-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... um, 'cause you're so focused on what's beyond the window that you forget to see through the window. And so this is why this, I think, is quite a useful heuristic. You can... If you can just bear in mind that you're seeing things through these filters, it can help you to judge things more accurately, uh, and to also take responsibility as well, uh, for what may be a problem within yourself rather than a problem in the external world.
- 4:47 – 14:35
Freudian’s Paradox
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
- CWChris Williamson
Freydkin's paradox, the more similar two choices seem, the less the decision should matter. Yet, the harder it is to choose between them. As a result, we often spend the most time on the decisions that matter least.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, so we live in an age of abundance, where pretty much everybody is trying to get our attention, and they're trying to do it by offering us choice. They're offering us more and more choices. So uh, we're flooded with choices in, in this day and age, and that's why it's become so important to be able to decide between choices. And most of the time, these decisions are actually not even important. They're actually quite trivial, things like, you know, "What am I gonna eat for dinner?" Or, uh, you know um, "Should I buy, uh, should I buy Colgate or should I buy another brand of too- toothpaste?" You know, it's like these are a lot of sort of trivial decisions, and they exert a cost, not just a time cost but also an energy cost. And if you're making hundreds of these decisions in a day, that's wearing you out without you even knowing half the time, and it's, it's, it's costing you time as well. And what I do is I use certain decision-making heuristics. Um, I, I list quite a few, I think, on my Substack. But um, you know, so one of them is, um, for instance, to always choose the decision that is, um...... more painful in the short term, because we have a natural bias to, um, avoid pain in the short term. We'd rather have the pain in the long term, because it's so far away, you know, so it doesn't seem as bad. So there's a little, you know, that's one, one sort of heuristic. Um, another heuristic, and this is actually a really useful one, and specific to Fried- Friedkin's paradox, which is if you can't decide, the answer is no.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
And the reason why this is a good heuristic is because of the very fact that we are flooded with decisions, and so we need to actually err on the side of denying rather than approving decisions. Because if we approve all these decisions, and if we go ahead, like if, you know, if you, your friends are asking you, "Oh, can you do this? Can you do that? Can you do this?" If you say yes to all of that, you're gonna be led astray and you'll have no time left to do actually what you want to do. And so it actually helps to just as a default say no to all decisions. If you can't decide, that is. So as a last resort.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. The, uh, that kind of relates to that anxiety cost idea I've got, which is the longer that you spend thinking about doing a thing, the more valuable it would've been to have just done the thing in the first place.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
But doing the thing with regards to decision-making is the same as categorically saying no to it. You can either say yes to it and do it, or say no to it. And that, uh, it just closes off the loop of, "Should I still be doing this thing? Am I gonna make the deci- Well, this is good, but that's good." There was a, a really interesting workbook from Tony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within, that a friend sent to me about three months ago, and I had a, a bunch of decisions that I was really, really struggling with, and I'd been vacillating about for ages. And, uh, it's one of those classic sort of mid-2000s American self-help, hardcore self-helpy style, you know, it's got a, a real sort of uplifting music in between each of the chapters. It was really funny. But he has this great idea where he says that you cannot say that you have made a decision until you have taken an action in the world that moves yourself toward it.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And I think that that's just such a lovely frame, like people talk about, "Yeah, I've decided that I'm going to start a business, leave my job, uh, go and talk to that girl over there, uh, change my relationship to alcohol or whatever." It's like, okay, well, what, what, what does that mean? What does making a decision mean? Uh, I have created some sort of mental contract with myself, it's some kind of internal commitment. Okay, well, is that the end goal of it? Well, no, it's the sort of lead measure before the first action I take. Okay, well, the first action is when you've started to make a decision toward doing something. And that just, the, that reframe, uh, really helped, and I think raising the bar for what constitutes making a decision, uh, and committing to something i- is a pretty good idea, 'cause it stops us from wallowing, and it also helps to neuter that anxiety cost that we pay.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, that's a, a great sort of heuristic to use. Um, I'm kind of reminded also (clears throat) of, uh, there's this kind of idea where, you know, uh, Steve Jobs and Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg, they've basically all said that, uh, on the average day, they actually just wear a single outfit. They just choose a single outfit for the week, and then they just basically wear that throughout the week, like just various versions of that outfit. And that just helps them to pare down decisions, because they don't really care about how they dress. Obviously, if you're in charge of the country or if you're, you know, in charge of a, a multi-billion dollar company, the last thing you really care about is, is how you look, really, on, on the average day. And so they just basically pare down the decisions by choosing the same thing over and over again. So in that, what they're essentially doing is they're turning decision-making into routine, and by doing that, they're eliminating the cost of actually having to make the decisions. Um, routine is really good for that, that, because you can just, um... I mean, I kind of do it with, with meals, for instance, you know, I'll have a certain thing that I eat on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and just do just enough variety that I don't get bored, but, like, not so much variety that I have to actually choose every day, you know, like a new recipe or whatever. So, um, you know, it's very important, I think, to be able to pare down decisions, because most of the decisions we make on the day just don't really matter that much. They're not gonna impact our lives in the long term very much. Um, and these decisions, it's better to just make the decision quick, because if you don't make the decision quick, you're actually exerting more of a cost than if you had chosen either of the options. And again, I go back to the thing about, you know, what are you gonna have for lunch. Um, really, it doesn't matter that much, and as long as you can eat it, um, it's not gonna impact your life if you choose one or the other. But if you spend a whole hour trying to choose, now you've lost an hour, so now it is gonna impact your, your life, you know? So it's always good to have these things planned in ad- in advance to prevent the kind of... Essentially to free up time and to prevent that anxiety cost and the energy cost.
- CWChris Williamson
It's not just the time either. It's the sort of fatigue that you have when you make lots of-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... meaningless decisions. And I think that we know deep down... I'll never forget, dude. When I started making a little bit of money through nightlife events, and I was in ASDA in Gosforth, near Newcastle, and I was there, and I must have spent, I'm not kidding, two full minutes vacillating between the Tesco Own brand or the Finest range or whatever it was, the ASDA Finest range of yogurts. And I was like, the difference was, you know, 50 pence per yogurt, and it was a pack of four, so maybe it was two pounds, and I was back and forth and back and forth, and I sort of came out of this fever dream and thought, "You're, that's, this is... If anything is wasting time, this is wasting time. It doesn't matter. Just grab whatever yogurts you want and throw them in." But, um, just that, the, the-... s- energy-sapping nature of tiny, pointless decisions. I think this is the reason why-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... asynchronous communication is, is such a sap on people as well, that it just chips away all the time, this endless sort of Japanese water torture, drip, drip, drip of email and Slack and WhatsApp and Telegram and Signal and iMessage.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. Yeah, it's true. And that's another thing is that if you don't make the decisions, then the decisions become harder to make in a sense, and they, they take more of a cost because, um, certain problems grow. So, you know, if you, for instance, if you dither on answering an email, um, what happens is now you're gonna e- you're gonna email that person late, and now you have to add an apology to the email. And you know, (laughs) so you, you're now doing, making more work for yourself. And so a lot of the time, it's actually better just to make the decisions quicker and to do the things that you need to do quicker, because that actually prevents the problems from growing. Um, the way I like to look at it is, the more, like the less time you spend making decisions, the more time you spend making decisions work.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
So, you know, you can use that extra time to just whatever decision you made, you can make it work. So with your example of choosing different yogurts, um-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... if you had spent less time choosing between those yogurts, you could have used the extra time to maybe create a fancy fruit salad to go with the yogurt, you know. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I und- I und- yeah, that's a-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
You know, that's a s- that's a very silly example, but you, you know, it's just-
- CWChris Williamson
No, no. I-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... you can move forward and you can make, you know, you, you can, you can make hay with the extra time that you save, basically.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, there is a small number of decisions that are very, very important and probably is worth an awful lot of work being spent on them. You know, am I going to-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, absolutely.
- CWChris Williamson
... leave this job? Am I going to marry this person? What am I going to do about my finances? Invest in this company or don't? Whatever. Uh, do you go to this university or not? Um, but we are so sapped by all of the yogurt decisions that the university-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
(laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
... decisions, uh, feel ju- they get lumped into the same category of effort and s- s- sort of banal gray sludge of just, "Oh, here's another task on the fucking to-do list for today."
- 14:35 – 20:34
The Narcissist’s Bedpost
- CWChris Williamson
All right, next one. This is one of mine, the narcissist's bedpost. Notice how many times a person uses the words me and I when speaking about a non-personal topic as a good gauge of how self-centered they are. The narcissist can't resist injecting themselves into every story and example, no matter how unrelated or tenuous because they can't imagine a story that doesn't have them at the center.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, this is a good one. This is actually one that I wrote down because I, I was planning on adding this to a, a future megathread. Um, yeah, I think it's a great heuristic because I know that the word narcissist is probably overused, um, but I think it's overused for a reason. And I think the reason is, is that social media has kind of privileged this I culture and this me culture, where people are trying to present themselves as a product almost. Uh, you know, it's... Social media kind of encourages this, particularly Instagram, where you try to present the best self possible. And I think that this has led to a kind of me culture. I think, um, a lot of people now focus on trying to... instead of getting to know other people, they try to present themself, g- get other people to know them rather.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
And they try to do this in a sense where, you know, they're obviously trying to present their best self, and so they'll see things like a normal conversation as an opportunity to advertise themselves, uh, to... I've seen this happen so much. I mean, this, you know, this happens on social media, on, it happens on X or Twitter, it happens on Substack, uh, and I suppose it happens on probably other ones as well, where you'll, you'll talk about something and then the replies will get filled with people talking about how it applies to them and how, you know, how they manage to use it to better themselves or whatever you like. You know, so it'd be something like, um, you know, you'll, you'll, you'll basically present some kind of, uh, heuristic and then they'll basically say something about how they used it in their life. And I suppose it's natural for people to do that, to, to relate how it, you know, how it applies to their life. But a lot of the time, it's not just that. A lot of the time, it's actually advertising. People are trying to appear clever, they're trying to appear, um, sort of charismatic. And I think you can actually gauge the degree to which somebody is doing this in a conversation by the number of times that they use the terms I and me and we, or, you know, all those sorts of things, because it just shows that they are... Either one of two things are happening. Either they don't really have much else to talk about apart from themselves, or they're trying to draw the conversation to themselves. In, in either case, this is a very solipsist- solipsistic person, um, that somebody who is really focused on themselves, either one way or another. So, it might not necessarily be narcissism.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Uh, it, it could be just natural, um, solipsism, you know, it could be s- just selfishness, um-
- CWChris Williamson
It's a degree of self-centeredness, right?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
But there's... (clears throat) It's so interesting, man, like thinking about what people actually want in conversations. And I always thought, especially coming from an nightlife background, that the best people in the room were the ones with the most impressive stories, with the ones who... They were the ones that seemed the most cool or charismatic or outgoing or whatever it might be. There's that famous example. Was it Winston Churchill's wife who met the two presidential candidates and she said that when she sat down with one of them, she left the me- the dinner feeling like he was the smartest person in the world? And when she sat down with the other one, she left the dinner feeling like she was the smartest person in the world?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Hmm. Yeah, I think, I think at that-
- CWChris Williamson
And the point-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, yeah. Carry on. Yeah. I recognize that quite a bit.
- CWChris Williamson
Just the, the po-Yeah, the point there being that it's so important, and, and what people actually want is to feel like they are interesting. They don't really care about how interesting you are, and it's bizarre that you can make yourself very interesting by doing nothing interesting, by just pointing it toward them, and, uh, yeah. I, I had this other idea which is kind of related to this, inverse charisma. Some people feel interesting, some people make you feel interesting.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And what we think is that we want to be charismatic. And I actually, upon real closer inspection, I'm not sure if I like people that are that charismatic because a lot of the time, the charisma kind of comes along with... How many people do you know that have got actually well-balanced, integrated, sort of holistic, good vibe, chill guy charisma? Very few. How many people do you love spending time around where you just leave and you go, "Oh, man, that was so cool. I got to talk about stuff I never talk about with anybody else," and it was, uh, uh, very generative, you know? It, it, it... New things came out of that conversation, even if it was about bo- even if it was about UFC knockouts or whatever it was, it was, it was generative for both of us, and I was made to feel like my opinions were valued, and I feel like I asked them interesting questions. At no point in that exchange did anybody really use charisma.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So yeah, that sort of inverse charisma idea I think is a, a good hack, especially if you think that, "Ah, man, like I'm not that outgoing, I'm not that gregarious, I don't do the funny things." I... Bro, that doesn't matter. If you can ask good questions and make the other person that you're with feel interesting, I, I, I think that that's actually better than charisma.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, I mean, an argument could be made that, that true charisma is the ability to make other people feel charismatic, uh, you know. (laughs) So like, yeah, I think that's probably one kind of charisma anyway. I suppose there are probably different kinds, but, but that's definitely one kind of charisma, uh, yeah. So yeah, it's-
- CWChris Williamson
Next one.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... interesting.
- 20:34 – 30:09
Enthymeme
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
- CWChris Williamson
Enthymeme? Enthymeme? Enthymeme?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Enthymeme.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Enthymeme. Enthymeme, yep.
- CWChris Williamson
"The best propagandists convince people of a lie not by stating the lie directly, but by making statements that tacitly assume the lie as a premise. A mistruth deduced in one's own mind is much harder to guard against than one that enters fully formed from elsewhere."
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, so I think one of the biggest obstacles to propaganda is when people feel that they're being propagandized against, you know, when... And so, people put up their guard, and one of the ways to let down that guard and to sneak past it is to make a point that doesn't seem like it's propaganda, but which has propaganda as a sort of crucial part of it. And I see this being done with politicians quite a lot. Uh, you'll, you'll see that they will, um, talk about certain issues that are imp- that they know are important to the people, and what they do is they use that as a Trojan horse by which to disseminate their propaganda. So, um, you know, so some people may, uh, feel that the economy is very important. I mean, most people think that the economy is very important, and so what a demagogue could do is that they would talk about the economy, um, but then they could, if they wanted to, let's say if they were, um, let's say if they were a left-wing politician, then what they could do is, while they were talking about the economy, they could talk about, um, banks and the rig system, uh, you know, like Bernie Sanders often does, you know, um, and how the problem is the banks. He could sneak in a point about how, uh, the banks are not paying their fair share of taxes, but he would use it, but he would do it in such a way that he's not making the point about the banks. He would have the bank point as a sort of peripheral point, because if it's as a peripheral point, it's more effective because then people, they let their guard down. They're like, "Okay, this guy is not trying to convince us that banks are evil. He's just making a point about the banks." And so this kind of indirect propaganda I think is a lot more powerful than him just straight out saying, "Oh, the banks are the evil, they are not paying their fair share of taxes," 'cause if he just says that straight-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... then people are automatically putting their guard up. They're like, "Okay, this guy is a left-wing politician. He's, he's trying to convince us that it's all the banks' fault." Whereas if he does it as a peripheral point, then it kind of sneaks into the mind while people are looking at something else.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I wonder whether the sort of widespread conspiracism, uh, that has been pretty rampant over the last few years... I, I think an awful lot of that, you know, this usage of they, the sort of never defined sort of new world order, deep states, the military-industrial complex... You know, like pick your shadowy, hooded, goat head skull-wearing figure of choice. And those, like a lot of that tacitly assumes some part of a much more tenuous, uh, uh, uh, presupposition about the world. It just bakes it in as give... Well, of course, of course we know that the military-industrial complex is X, Y, and Z, but what we're talking about is how they started fires in Kauai or whatever, um-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That I, that I see a lot, and I, I suppose that it's a little bit like, like out of sight, out of mind. Another part of this is that who wants to be the person that seems so stupid as to question one of the premises when... This is like starting to watch, uh, Game of Thrones season five and asking, "What's that Stark guy? Like what's he do and why is he there?" And it's like, oh, well, I just assume that everybody else is on board with all of this because it's been baked in. It's part of the lore, the mythology. Well, I, I'm not gonna question that thing. It's obviously part... But what we're really talking about is Fauci or whatever.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, there's a very, um, interesting point here. I mean, there's this, uh-So, there were some experiments, um, the Asch conformity experiments, in which, um... Uh, you're probably familiar with. This is quite a famous experiment. So basically, the purpose of the experiment was to see the degree to which people conform to, um, information that is blatantly wrong. And what they did is they had, uh, a group of participants. Most of these participants were stooges, so they were working for the researchers, and only some of these people were actually the test subjects. And, um, what happened was basically, they were asked to measure the length of, like, measure which of these two lines was, was bigger, and one of the lines was blatantly bigger than the other line. And all of the stooges basically said that the smaller line was bigger than the big one. And what this did is thi- this actually caused many of the participants in the, the study to agree with everybody else, because they just didn't want to be the odd one out. Even though it was obvious which line was bigger, they thought, "Hang on a second. Maybe I'm the problem." And so this is weird because it actually... This is sort of like an inversion of the false consensus effect, where they actually realize, "Okay, so it's me who's the problem," even though they weren't the problem. It was actually the external world-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... that was a problem. So it was an aversion of that. Um, and it was interesting. I mean, this was... There was a gender difference here, so, um, women were more likely to conform than men, uh, and this is, uh, this is a finding that's been replicated as well. Um, so that was, was quite interesting. But yeah, I mean, if something is- seems obvious or if something is- appears to be obvious to everybody, then you don't want to look stupid by questioning it, because then, you know, people are like, "How could you question something so obvious," you know? And so that's why this, this enthymeme tends to work a- a lot of the time, is that if somebody's making a point and they assume a certain propaganda point is a premise of the point, then it seems obvious. It seems so obvious-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... because if it wasn't obvious-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... it wouldn't be the premise. And so people feel that, "Oh, okay, nobody else is questioning it, so I'd better not question it-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... 'cause I would just look stupid."
- CWChris Williamson
That's cool. That makes-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That makes this make a lot more sense. What is enthymeme? What's enthe-? Wh- why is it called that?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Uh, so it's actually from Greek. It's actually a Greek term. Um, so enthymeme, I can't actually remember what the enthi means. Uh, obviously, we know what the, the meme means. Um, but like, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
It's even... This is even in... I didn't even know that this is... This is just straight up. This isn't from, like, the annals of the- of your weird mental models thing. I've just triple-clicked on it on Mac, and it's come up in the English language. "An argument in which one premise is not explicitly stated. Mid-16th century via Latin from Greek enthymema-"
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
"... from enthymemetai, consider from en, within, and thumos, mind. Within the mind consider." Interesting.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. Uh, that's an odd one. Yeah. So I wasn't aware of that one. But yeah, I mean, it's, um... I think it's a very important point for today, because a lot of politicians seem to be quite savvy to it. Uh, a lot of these politicians are actually quite sort of well-versed in rhetoric.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- 30:09 – 41:20
Post-Journalism
- CWChris Williamson
this. Post-journalism. The press lost its monopoly on news when the internet democratized info. To save its business model, it pivoted from journalism into tribalism. The new role of the press is not to inform its readers, but to confirm what they already believe.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. So, you know, I originally wasn't sure whether the media used to be less biased. Um, but I, I stumbled across this really great YouTube video by a guy called Ryan Chapman who actually analyzed whether the media used to be less biased, uh, or whether, you know, it was just a sort of, uh, cherry-... uh, cherry, sort of cherry picking, uh, rose-tinted glasses sort of thing. But like, um, yeah, it, it actually turns out that the media were less biased back in the day, and this was prior to the internet. This was when the media essentially had a lot of power and they had a lot of money, uh, because nobody else could provide the news. And so, they didn't have to be, uh, partisan, as partisan as they are now. They actually could afford to just tell the news because the news was actually a valuable thing back then.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
But that changed with the internet. Uh, what happened with the internet was suddenly anybody could tell the news and in fact some people could tell the news faster than the big press organizations because there would be local people reporting on things going on in their, in their vicinity. Um, and this obviously took a lot of the wind out of the sails of the media. Uh, they no longer had this monopoly and so they had to find a new way to sort of... A new business model basically, and that really ended up becoming less about telling the news and more about, uh, confirming what people wanted to believe. And we see it with the New York Times. The New York Times, if you look at some of the New York Times articles prior to the internet, so in the 19... Early 1990s, 1980s, you see that it's actually a lot more factual and there's... Even the opinion pieces tend to be a lot more fact- factual in their sort of presentation. Um, whereas now, even not just the opinion columns, but also the actual news itself is, it's slanted towards a certain angle and that's because... Since people can get news anywhere, they have to do something different. They have to do something new and a lot of these people who are supposed journalists and commentators, one thing that they're very skilled at is, again, rhetoric. And so they use their rhetorical skills to essentially tell stories, um, you know, very powerful and interesting stories-
- CWChris Williamson
Construct narratives with persona-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Construct narratives. Yeah. And it's al- it's almost like a kind of TV serial. I mean, y- we saw this a lot during the, the Trump years, um, you know, after 2016. We saw the ways that this changed the New York Times. The New York Times became like a kind of, uh, a TV serial in which, um, Trump was like this kind of Saturday morning cartoon villain, and it was like, you know, every article should have... It, it may as well have just, at the end of the article, it might have well j- may well, may have well just said, um, you know, "Tune in next week to see what-"
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... "you know (laughs) Donald Trump is gonna do," you know? (laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
So, it was like an ongoing narrative about-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... like Donald Trump and what is he gonna do next? You know, find out in the next issue of the New York Times. Um-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Yeah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... and so, you know, it, it's-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... it, it, it's why I, I don't really read the, the, the sort of press too much. I mean, I, I don't wanna demean it too much 'cause I do feel that the press is a little bit probably over demeaned. Um, I think that (laughs) pretty much everybody hates the press, you know? And I think that, yeah, they are, they are of course they're biased. Every, you know, every, every human being is biased. And yes, I think, you know, if you look at, if you do read the, the New York Times for news then God help you, but I think it's valuable anyway because it, it allows you to see what they're doing. It allows you to see what they're trying to convince people of, and that's why I, I do still read the New York Times. And look, I don't wanna be completely unfair to the New York Times, it still does break important stories and it does still, um, it does still matter. It's still an important voice, you know, it's very easy to just dismiss it and just say, "Oh, they're all just biased, you know, and they're just trying to, uh, you know, convince you of things that are not true." I don't think that's the, that's the case. I think there are some good journalists working at the New York Times, so I don't wanna, I don't wanna demean it too much, but I think, yeah, we need to be careful when we, um... We need to ask ourselves what they're trying to convince us of, I think.
- CWChris Williamson
The sort of narrative element and this, um, constructing of, uh, personification of both events, of countries, of regimes, of ideologies, that kind of takes stories out of the realm of fact and into the realm of fiction. It means that people that are reading it don't need to, uh, uh, they don't need to actually understand the first principles or the foundations of what's going on. It's an easy story between good and bad, between fair and unfair, between plight and justice, and, uh-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... there's this guy, Craig Jones, who I had on the show a couple of weeks ago talking about he's created this new grappling tournament which is, um, going head to head with essentially the Olympics of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. And I mentioned to him, I was like, "Look, dude. I don't... The sport of BJJ is kind of confusing if you don't really know what's going on and you don't understand the intricacies of his foot position and what this side control means and all of this." But I'll tell you what I can get on board with, a huge amount of drama between two big organizations and athletes having to make the decision between prestige that's old and money that's new. Like I... Anybody can understand that. Anybody can. And I have this thing (laughs) I was talking to the, the guys by the pool yesterday and I was like, uh, "Much of the time I want to talk about ideas and like your, um, decision making heuristic, a conversational heuristic that I try to catch myself on is if I start talking too much about people, their motivations, what they're like, uh, I'm like, ah, I'm creating this sort of personified narrative thing." And I'm like, "Look, dude. The Trump versus Biden is just... Or, or Jordan Peterson versus some lefty person, it's just the Kardashians for people with three figure IQs."
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Like, that's all it is. It's just-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yes. (laughs) It's reality TV for the Substack generation. And- Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... you're, you're trying to... You're, you're still doing the same thing, don't... Yeah, maybe the ideas are a little bit more highfalutin, maybe the people that are involved are a little bit smarter or intellectual or academic or something, but the f- (laughs) the fundamental foundation of this is gossip. You're gossiping about people.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And that's...That idea of, of, of Craig and also sort of what's going on here with this post-journalism idea, um, it brings new stories into a realm everybody can understand, which is the most fundamental-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
... human, human th- which is who's hot, who's not, who's playing fair, who isn't, who's in, who's out. That's what it's focused on at the moment.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. I mean, I've actually noticed this in the ways in which the sort of stories, the sort of, uh, press stories are constructed. Like, they actually often use a lot of the same, uh, devices as actual literature. So a lot of these, you know, these news stories, they will actually have fictional tropes. They'll have twists, they'll have, uh, poetic justice, they'll have irony, like dramatic irony, um-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... and all of this stuff, you know. Uh, uh, and so it's... It, it, it shows that the writers are, are not telling you the facts, but th- they're presenting a narrative, which they're basically... Probably what's happened is it might be that they've just watched too many Netflix shows and that they're unconsciously projecting this onto the world when they report. But it does seem that, you know, a lot of the time, if, if a new story does have some of these literary devices, you know, where you have, like, a dramatic, uh, reversal of events and, you know, then there's a happy ending or something-
- 41:20 – 51:58
Fiction Lag
- CWChris Williamson
recent thread, which was Fiction Lag, AKA Experience Taking. "When people are captivated by a work of fiction, they unconsciously adopt the traits of their favorite characters. We develop our identities by copying others, and perhaps one reason we enjoy fiction is that it gives us ideas on who to be."
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, so this is, uh, quite interesting. This is from... So there's basically experiments actually which kind of show that this is the case, uh, where what they did is they basically, um, got people to, uh, sort of consume various forms of fiction. Um, and in one of the, uh, forms, there was basically, I think there was a political figure who was a really endearing, uh, figure and they were like a... They were basically like a activist. And, uh, this character was... I think they were, might have been a suffragette or something, but they basically campaigned for, uh, some kind of voting rights and they, you know, wanted to change the world or whatever. And, um, the people that were... Had consumed this fiction, they then became more likely to vote afterwards, uh, within the, the, the... I think what happened was that there was an election a few days afterwards, and the, the ones that have, had bonded with this fictional character, they actually began to identify almost to this, with this character and began to vote. They actually went out in the real world and voted. And another, in another example, um, there... A group of people, uh, they browsed fiction featuring a, a person of an ethnic minority, and they were a very endearing, sympathetic character. And once this person, uh, was identified with, the people that had identified with this character became more sort of open and more, uh, sort of sympathetic towards people of that ethnicity.So, you know, these, these are qu- quite small scale experiments, and they're not, I mean, I, I don't know if they're replicated, so I'm gonna put a caveat there, but the reason I included it was because I noticed it happening in my own life and in the sort of lives of the people around me. So, I feel that it probably would replicate if, if it, if they attempt it. And, um, you know, when I was young, for instance, you know (laughs) , like, I, um, I, I got attached to certain characters, you know, and I would sort of start acting like them in a way and use them as a model, you know, use them as a model. Like, for instance, uh (laughs) , one of, one of, uh, my favorite characters when I was young was, um, was Michael Corleone in, uh, The Godfather. And (laughs) , and I kinda-
- CWChris Williamson
I could imagine, I could imagine you as an Italian mobster.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
(laughs) Well, I mean, uh, you know, that's, that's basically what I tried to do. But it was more when I was drunk, weirdly enough.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
I noticed it, it, it was more when I was drunk. It wasn't, it wasn't so much when I was sober, it was when I was drunk, I found myself so- sort of acting and saying, saying lines from the movie, you know (laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
Be careful what you read. If you read too much Harry Potter, you're gonna try and cast spells on people once you've had-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... one too many.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
But this is, this, there's three really that are, that are very, very interesting here that I think link, link together. So, po- post-journalism, um, looking at using tribalism, creating a sort of us versus them mentality, they're utilizing narrative to drag people together. You've got fiction lag, this experience taking thing. Um, very rarely were you exposed to the inner workings of anybody else's mind with the level of resolution that you get when reading a 500 or 1,000 page book. Uh, anyone that's read The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, you know, you become unbelievably familiar. It's like pedestrianally slow for chapters and chapters and chapters. You learn about this guy's walk to the bar that he plays his lute at, and the sound of his shoes on the cobblestones and all of this. So you become really, really f- sort of familiar with him. So, of course, you, if it's a well-written character, you start to have this sort of sense of affinity with them, and you think, "Well, y- he has done well by design," especially outright fiction, not just, uh, like, new, uh, news masquerading, or fiction masquerading as news, should I say. Um, and then-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
I think, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... this is shown up e-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Sorry, yeah, uh, do you wanna finish what you're saying?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, just that it, it relates to compassion fade, you know-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... which is that...
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Sorry (laughs) . Sorry, there's
- CWChris Williamson
All right.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... a bit of a lag. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
One, one, one death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic. When presented with two appeals for charity, one based on famine statistics and one based on a single starving girl, people tend to donate much more to the girl. Our minds can't grasp big numbers, so we navigate the world through stories, not statistics. We are moved by drama, not by data. Why? Because we can... It's narrative, it's being personified, we understand the emotion of this individual person. That-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... you know, compassion fade explains fiction lag and post-journalism, like it's-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... one of the reasons as to why this occurs.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, and I think, uh, basically, I think that the, the sort of reason why we enjoy films and literature and fiction generally, um, is because it presents us with certain ch- character archetypes, and then it presents us with scenarios, and it allows us to see what that archetype, how that archetype would perform in that scenario. And so, it gives us ideas on who to be basically.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Because we are, we are kind of mimetic beings, you know. We, we, we take bits and pieces from other people and we assemble them, we cobble them together into this kind of character that we choose to become. And I think that we get ideas of who to be when we watch films and we, we sort of identify with certain characters that have certain similarities to us but are different enough that they're interesting. And we, we, it's like an experiment. We see what will this set of traits, um, do in this scenario and, and how will that, and what will be the consequences of that? And so it allows us to essentially, um, see how, how certain types of people perform and-
- CWChris Williamson
It's like split testing, sp-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... whether
- 51:58 – 1:05:55
The Golden Mean
- CWChris Williamson
mean. Good character is not about maximizing virtues, but moderating them. To be sensitive without being fragile, confident without being cocky, steadfast without being stubborn, driven without being reckless, focused without being obsessed.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. So I think trying to be a good person is kind of being the opposite of a movie character. So movie characters tend to be very exaggerated. They tend to have very sort of almost... They, they tend to be caricatures, you know, because they have to be larger than life in order to be interesting. And I think that, in fact, what we were just saying is actually quite interesting, because really if you want to be somebody who's successful and charismatic and all that kind of stuff, it's not to actually emulate the movie characters. It's not to do what the movies are designed to do. It's actually to do the opposite. So fiction like can actually be a bad thing in that sense. It's better to actually have a low... A, a smaller than life personality in a sense. Not to be too much of anything, but to have moderation in, in all things, because that prevents... 'Cause all of these character traits can be a weakness if they're taken to excess, even the best character trait. You know, even if you're... If you're extremely compassionate, for instance. Like, if you have a little bit of compassion, you'll be a nice person, you'll, you'll be a good person. You'll also be well-liked, 'cause people like compassion. But if you have too much compassion, then you will end up giving everything you own to other people and you'll be left with nothing, you know, for instance. Or you'll spend your whole da- You, you'll spend your whole day on social media crying about all the suffering in the world. And so that every single good attribute that a person can possess, it's possible for them to have too much of it. And-
- CWChris Williamson
The original, the original golden mean is, uh, Aristotle, right? Neither a vice of excess nor a vice of scarcity.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. Yeah, that's true, yeah. And I think it's a... it's a very powerful idea, because it's very easy to just get one trait or a couple of traits and just to run with it and try and maximize it. You know, we live in a world where everybody's trying to max things now, you know. (laughs) You've got, like, looks maxing and health maxing and all this different maxing thing, you know. There's, there's a culture of maxing. And I think that really we should focus less on maxing and more on moderating. I think that's more important, because, you know, even health maxing is, is I don't think a very healthy thing, ironically enough. Because if you spend all of your energy on trying to be super healthy, uh... And I, I think of Bryan Johnson here. I actually respect Bryan Johnson. I think he's doing a great thing. He's... You know, he's obviously a guinea pig. He's, he's a self-confessed guinea pig who's trying out these new things. Um, so I can, you know, I can understand why he's doing what he's doing. But if you try to live that kind of lifestyle just to be healthy, you actually lose out on so many things that make life good and worth living. And, you know, like, he has, like, I think a two-hour skin routine, um, every morning, you know. And I've seen his, uh, his daily routine where he just spends like, you know, five hours just going through the rounds and doing all this stuff, and I'm just wondering to myself, like, you know-... he's, he's obviously trying to live long enough. You know, he's trying, he's trying to maximise his longevity. But he's actually, in a sense, reducing his longevity because he's actually... although he's living longer, his life is shorter because he's not actually doing the things he wants to do. He's spending so much of that time doing banal, arduous sort of things, you know. And again, you know, I- I'm not gonna knock him 'cause I think he's, he's fantastic. I think he's, he's contributing to the knowledge of the human race with the things that he's doing. He's contributing to lon- longevity science. But if you were to do that just purely for longevity, for your own longevity and nothing else, it would be bad because you'd be missing out on your life. You wouldn't be living. And so you're actually shortening your life. And so-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. He's, uh... (clears throat) He's, he's a sweetie man. He's in town, uh, this week actually. He's in Austin this week, so I've got a nut pudding dinner, uh, with him, I think, tomorrow or Thursday.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
(laughs) Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And, um, he's, he's a real sweetie. I met him in Roatan a couple of weeks ago. He's been on the show, and he's nice.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That being said, the way that I see Bryan, the way I've kind of, sort of conceptual- I've told him this, um, I think he's kind of like a scout in an army.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yes. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And I am more than happy for him to go behind enemy lines, put himself, uh, h- his, his time, his money, his effort, all of that out there in an attempt to try and find out all of this stuff, and then come back and tell us. Tell us what you found-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... when you looked over that ridge and, you know, you saw all of the army and what, w- what, where were they moving and what was going on. But it wouldn't do to have an army full of scouts.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. Yeah, that's it.
- CWChris Williamson
You don't need that, and, and you, you also don't want to necessarily be a scout yourself. It's an extreme position to be in.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And what you want to do is then get that and integrate the pieces, the highest value pieces, into your, uh, value set. The same thing goes, you know, in many ways, for Alex Hormozi. Like, Hormozi is an absolute outlier when it comes to work ethic.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
The guy is unrelenting, and that's great. I want him to push as hard as he can and come back and tell us what he found. Tell me what it's like to do 12, 16-hour days, seven days a week, for years at a time, and, and let me know what you've come up with." That's very, very important. But both Bryan and Alex are outliers with their particular psychological makeup and their desire and their passion and the enjoyment that they get from doing those things. Inherent. We, we spoke last time about, uh, telic and exotelic, um, uh, pursuits.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yep. Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
And for them, something which for many other people would be exotelic, for them is telic.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And I think that just realizing, "Okay, so what gives me pleasure? Well, I want to live longer. Right, okay, yeah, but is the dopamine that you get from finding out some slightly different methylated version of cobalamin B12, is that really where you get your sort of greatest sense of pleasure from?" 'Cause that might be for Bryan. Or is really locking yourself in a large cupboard with no (laughs) no windows, wearing a nose strip, pumping yourself full of nicotine, and writing for six hours from 6:00 AM every single morning, is that really what you want to do? Or do you want to work out how to be able to get, you know, two really great hours of writing done once a week? And, you know-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... that's using the extremes, using those people. But (clears throat) going back to the, the sort of obsession, this difficulty with the, the golden mean, and I remember where I was when I first heard it. I was driving again through Newcastle on the way to the gym, and, uh, it made me think about dieting. So throughout a lot of my 20s, as a gym bro, I would, you know, hard cut for Ibiza this summer, and I'm gonna get shredded. And it was very easy to be in full-on degenerate bulk birthday cake for dinner mode, bro, or to be in absolute obsession, tracking the calories on MyFitnessPal mode. Like, those two worlds are very easy to be in. If I put a packet of biscuits in front of you and say, "You can eat none of them, or you can eat all of them," both of those are kind of easy decisions. But if I say, "You're allowed to have two," it's like, "Ah, that's impossible. I can't have two. If you let me have two, I'm gonna have half the packet. If you let me have none, you let me have all of them," both of those are quite easy. But there is something about... And I think, you know, the way... the story that we tell ourselves about the identity that we have, "Who am I in this moment? What am I, what am I, uh, uh, f- sort of contributing to?" A solution, and I find myself in this throu- I'm saying it, like, largely to myself, I'm quite an absolutist creature and have a lot of obsession about things that I want to do, and I want to dedicate myself to them. One of the ways I've found that I can, um, toggle this a little bit is to try and periodize. So to say, "Okay, I am going to be super, super focused on dialing in my diet and the nutrition and the calories and all the rest of it, but I'm gonna do it for three months. And then at the end of those three months, I'm maybe gonna have a reset, maybe I'm gonna do something else." And if you actually aggregate that out across a year or a decade or a life, you end up with something that does approximate a pretty well-balanced life, whilst not having to use this insane amount of willpower to always be, like, in fourth gear, uh, sort of your foot half-pressed to the floor, which is really, really difficult to do.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, I think, um, it helps to just sort of set limits in advance on things that you're gonna do, I think, because I think when people are left to their own devices, they have a tendency to go to extremes. Um, you know, uh, we- we all have our obsessions. Everybody's obsessed about something. And this is why I think planning is, is very important to, um... You know, like, I, for instance, when I do research, for instance, when I'm, when I'm writing, I am obsessive when it comes to research. Like, I literally have to know everything about something before I start writing about it. You know, and I (laughs) will take just so long to do it. But what I've done is I've decided to, uh... Because I know this about myself, I create cutoff points.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
So I will say, you know, "I'm, I'm gonna go online, and I'm gonna find one thing out, right, just this one thing. And once I've found it out..."... I'm gonna cut the internet, that's it, and then I'm just gonna start writing, you know. So, and this is also good for social media addiction, where instead of going online and just browsing, because a lot of people have this obsession where they just have a habit of just taking their phone out and just scrolling through social media. Instead of doing that, only allow yourself to take your phone out of your pocket for a very specific reason. So if you are, like, if you wanna check social media, for instance, have an idea of what you actually wanna see before you open your phone, before you open Twitter or whatever. And then when you've seen the thing that you wanted to see, put your phone back in, you know. And so if you have this deliberate nature, then it allows you to just cut off that point and prevent yourself from becoming obsessed. You can apply this to anything, you know. When you do a certain amount of things, then you stop basically.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Uh, it's a good way to moderate.
- 1:05:55 – 1:09:32
Tarswell’s Razor
- CWChris Williamson
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, tilted wind- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, this is s- this is super similar to Tarswell's razor. Emotion causes bias, but it also causes motivation. As such, when we're most likely to act is when our judgment can be trusted least. Solution, don't trust thoughts you have while emotional. Instead, pause and wait for the feeling to pass before acting.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. Well, there you go. Um, I think that's an extremely important... and, uh, uh, this is probably a theme in a lot of my ideas, is this idea that the, the thoughts that enter your head are essentially a decision that you make, and you have the power to not think about certain things. You, you could choose to see things in a different way. And what I do is I like to look at my emotions not as, uh, masters that I have to obey, but as advisors, because really what are emotions? Emotions are alarm systems. They're, they're things that exist to alert you to something. So for example, anger exists to alert you that a, um, a line has cross- has been crossed. Uh, you know, some kind of, uh, moral line, ethical line has been crossed, and somebody has violated something that you hold dear. That's what anger is. Um, but the thing is, is that anger is somewhat obsolete, as a... it's an obsolete instinct in a sense.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Because it existed-Really because, um, this was prior to there being a legal system, prior to there being a police force, and there needed to be a way to police tribes. And the way that we policed it was through anger. So if somebody were to cross a line, if somebody were to, um, sleep with your wife, for instance or whatever, that would anger you and then you would probably do something pretty horrendous to that person. And so that kept order in the tribe. Um, so anger was like a kind of, a police force in a sense. (laughs) But now we actually have a real police force, we have a real legal system, so that can take care of people crossing lines. So we don't actually need to get upset about it too much, we don't need to get angry- angry as much because we get the- the dispassionate police to sort that out for us. And so it's somewhat of an obsolete instinct. I'm not saying it's completely obsolete. There is still a use to anger but- but it's not as useful as it used to be. And so when you understand this, when you understand why anger exists, it allows you to create that distance between yourself and the feeling of anger. And you can do this with love, you could do it with, um, sadness, you could do it with, um, with anything. I mean, humor, everything, you know. So you understand why that emotion exists and then that allows you to see it more as a construct, as something that evolution has programmed rather than as something that you must obey. Um, and so I think that's- that's a good way to create that- that- that pause, that distance between stimulus and response.
- CWChris Williamson
Taleb's got this interesting quote where he says, "The world is broken up into two groups of people. Those who don't know how to make money and those who don't know when to stop." And that little bifurcation about... I was thinking as you were talking there, the world sort of being split up into people who can't stop listening to their emotions and those who don't know how to or don't respect them. You know, you've got the sort of cognitive cerebral horsepower preying at the rationality people for whom they probably need to actually allow more of that emotion to come through. They don't use instinct or gut particularly well. Everything has to go through a multiple checklist before- spreadsheet before they can do it. And then the other side, the people who need a little bit more mindfulness gap. The people who need to not just act on impulse quite so much. And, um, you know, i- this is again, it's that golden mean, it's finding this balance, not a- a vice of excess nor a vice of, uh, o- of
- 1:09:32 – 1:17:44
Package-Deal Ethics
- CWChris Williamson
scarcity. All right, next one. Package deal ethics. If I can predict all of your beliefs from one of your beliefs, you're not a serious thinker. Being pro-choice and being pro-gun control don't necessarily follow from each other, yet those who believe one usually also believe the other. This is because most people don't choose beliefs individually but subscribe to packages of beliefs offered by a tribe.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, so you'll be quite familiar with this one because that was actually a quote by yourself that you read there. Um, and, uh, yeah, I mean, it's, uh, this is also, uh, I think, uh, it explains a lot about the current political landscape. Um, so again, right, this goes down to this idea that time is limited, uh, energy is limited, and this cognitive horsepower is finite, and so people have to take shortcuts in their beliefs. And one of the ways in which they take shortcuts is they... instead of analyzing every belief that they have and trying to make a decision on whether they- they're pro- pro-gun control or anti-gun control, whether they're pro-life or pro-choice or, you know, whether they're sort of, uh, pro-tax, anti-tax, all of these different separate things, instead of analyzing them all which would take a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of, um, anxiety, they instead decide to just adopt packages. Just whole packages of beliefs, like a ready-made, oven-ready, uh, belief system, you know, where all they've gotta do is just cr- you know, take it out of the packaging and then just crack it in the oven and there you go, you know? (laughs) And there's no real effort required, so, you know, that's the one thing. But it also comes with another- another advantage which is that it also gives people tribal belonging. So if you have the same package as- as everybody else, it makes you feel like you belong to that group and you feel a kinship with- with other people who have the same package as you. And so it allows people to form identity groups around these packages. And so these two advantages, the fact that it- it's much less costly to have a packaged belief than to have an individually analyzed belief system, um, and also that it gives people a sense of belonging is why you will find that i- people's beliefs are very, very easy to predict. Uh, if you know their beliefs about gun control, you'll be very likely to predict their beliefs about healthcare, uh, about abortion, about economics, about immigration. Um, all of these things which are not really related. I mean, some of them are loosely related but a lot of them are not. Um, for instance, you know, right-wingers tend to be against immigration and yet right-wingers are also pro-freedom. So, you know, there's a contradiction there. Uh, and also, you know, uh, right-wingers tend to be against a- abortion and yet they're pro-freedom o- on the whole. And so, you know, there's a lot of these kinds of contradictions that you see, um, and this shows that, you know, there's, these people aren't reasoning themselves into these individual beliefs. They're just adopting these umbrella sort of beliefs.
- CWChris Williamson
One of the s- most well, uh, remembered insights, I think it may be even the first ever episode that me and you did, was that, uh, an absurd ideological belief is as much a show of fealty to your own side and a threat display to the other as it is a ideology that you imbue or some sort of philosophy that you live by. And I- I keep coming back to this term I think that we came up with which was an unreliable ally. So if I know that you're with me on gun control but I know that you're not with me on abortion-... the next time that something appears when Donald Trump gets convicted, or there's this debate that occurs about COVID masks or about lockdown or about immigration or whatever, I think, "Well, I'm not really too sure what Gwinda's gonna say here 'cause, you know, he was with us on that one point, but on the other one, he, he really wasn't. Uh, I'm a little bit, I'm a bit unsure about that guy." So the idea of an unreliable ally, that sort of person, it, it is likely that you're going to be ostracized from the group. It's likely that there's going to be pressure placed on you by members of that group to no longer be as, uh, uh, sartorially bespoke in your ideology, and instead just put the onesie on, zip it up and, you know, "We know where you stand. You don't need to worry about Gwinda. He's a good guy. We've got him. He's like... Don't worry, he's locked in. He's always there, always with us, always sort of toes the line." And, uh, yeah, the-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... just the pressures, the pressures are so huge to, to do this, especially in a atomized world where everybody wears their opi- the opinion pageant, where everyone wears their opinions on their sleeve. It is-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... so compelling for people to do that. And, um, I think one, one other element is I had a, as a bunch of heuristics to work out whether or not your favorite content creator, uh, is actually telling the truth. When was the last time that they surprised you with one of their takes?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And this is why, love him or hate him, I think Sam Harris is an interesting, uh, person to follow because I don't always know what his take's going to be.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Something occ- he, he can quite happily be, uh, like pro-vaccine but anti-lockdown. He can be anti-woke but anti-Trump. He can... You know, i- i- it's a odd sort of ugly shape that his-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... belief structure has. It's not a smooth round ball. And given that he p- pays, and anybody else, doesn't have to be Sam Harris, anybody who pays a relatively high price for not having package deal ethics, for, um, not necessarily being a reliable ally, they pay such a h- a high price for holding those non-typical constellation of beliefs, you have to assume that they believe, they at least, they at least believe what they believe, or they think that they believe what they believe, because otherwise, they would just do the easier route, they would get the backing of either the left or the right or the, the gun people or the abortion people or whatever, uh, but they don't. So yeah, that's... The, the last time that someone you follow-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. Yeah, there's-
- CWChris Williamson
... surprised you is a, a good heuristic.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, I mean, in your recent, um, conversation with Sam Harris, actually, you used this brilliant term here, but I'll, I'll get onto that in a moment, but like, um, it was this idea that basically, so Sam is kind of, like he angers the left and the right. Like, you know, the left are really angry with him, and the right are too. And, um, you used this term called ideological spit roasting (laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Which I think is a, is a brilliant, a brilliant term. It just perfectly describes what's happening. But like, um, yeah, I mean, anybody who is being ideologically spit roasted, it shows that they are not, uh, they're, they're paying a heavy cost for their, for their beliefs. And when somebody's paying a heavy cost for their beliefs, this is a signal that their beliefs are genuine. Because why would you pay such a heavy cost if your beliefs were not real? Or like, why would you, what, what are you gonna gain from that?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
And so when you see people who are attacked by both the left and the right, um, this is usually a sign that you're dealing with someone who's sincere. Unless they've, unless they've done something completely egregious, you know. Um, but you know, if they're being canceled by the left and the right for something that's not illegal, uh, and it's just something that they've said or some, you know, some opinion that they hold, this is usually a good sign that they have some integrity. Because it takes a lot of integrity to not, to basically go against either tribe, you know, knowing that the amount of flak you're gonna get from the left and from the right.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Um, you know, so this is, uh, sort of one thing that I look out for in people. Uh, I see it with, uh, Sam Harris, you see it with Claire Lehmann, uh, the editor of Quillette. The, uh, she- she's also somebody who's pissed off the left and the right. Um-
- CWChris Williamson
Bill, Bill Maher, Scott Galloway.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, yeah. And- and also I suppose you and I also to a certain extent, you know, we'll... You know, if you look at our reply section on Twitter, you'll usually see both left-wingers and right-wingers who are angry with-
- CWChris Williamson
Not very complimentary all the time.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... uh,
Episode duration: 1:44:37
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