16 Surprising Psychology Truths - Gurwinder Bhogal

1. 0:00 – 1:20

   Intro

   1. GBGurwinder Bhogal0:00

      A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance if the need for illusion is high. And so, if you really need to believe something, no matter how absurd it is, if you have the intelligence, you can make yourself believe it through your own arguments. And that's the danger of, of intelligent people, is that they can convince themselves of stupid arguments. (wind blows)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:19

      Gwinder Bogle, welcome to the show.

   3. GBGurwinder Bhogal0:20

      Thanks, Chris. Nice to be here.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:22

      Dude, you're crushing it at the moment. That audience capture, uh, article that you wrote on Substack has gone absolutely everywhere. When someone posts something that's one of my friends' work in a group chat, b- but I don't post it, there's this weird sense of, uh, like ownership or jealousy. I'm like, "No, that's my friend. That's..."

   5. GBGurwinder Bhogal0:40

      (laughs)

   6. CWChris Williamson0:40

      "No, that's supposed to be me that's posting that." But dude, I'm so happy to see how everything's blowing up for you at the moment.

   7. GBGurwinder Bhogal0:45

      Thanks, man. Yeah, it's appreciated. I think a lot of it's probably due to you as well, like spreading word about me, you know, so thanks for that. It's, uh...

   8. CWChris Williamson0:51

      That's part of the Bogle cult. Uh, but so-

   9. GBGurwinder Bhogal0:54

      (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson0:54

       ... for people that aren't familiar with these episodes, you do these huge mega threads on Twitter. You talk about cognitive biases, human nature, psychological effects, group think, all this stuff. Uh, I fall in love with them and then we go through them today. I've got some, I actually brought some from home. I've got some that I've made already, uh, so I'll bring some of mine into it as well. We just need-

   11. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:13

       Awesome.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:13

       ... to go through them and we'll break some down. So the first one, and this is my favorite one from your most recent mega thread, which will be linked in the show notes below.

2. 1:20 – 6:35

   Bespoke Bullshit

   1. CWChris Williamson1:20

      "Gwinder's Theory of Bespoke Bullshit. Many don't have an opinion until they're asked for it, at which point they cobble together a viewpoint from whim and half-remembered hearsay before deciding that this two-minute old makeshift opinion will be their hill to die on."

   2. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:37

      Yeah, so I think the last time I was on, uh, this show, we talked about how social media has made, uh, opinions more important than deeds, and people are judged by their opinions. And I think one of the sort of side effects of that is that now everybody feels the need to have an opinion on everything. But obviously the problem with this is that, you know, people can't really, um, do the research to actually back up all the opinions that they have. And so what do they do? Uh, they just make shit up, you know? (laughs) And I've seen this on social media since I joined Twitter in 2014. I've seen this happen with regular occurrence, with regular consistency, and it's kind of... I think it's something that really is just, it comes naturally to people to feel the need to opine on subjects, because it makes them feel connected and it makes them feel like they're part of the conversation. And it also, obviously, because of the opinion economy, it's something that people feel the need to do in order to bolster their own status. And so people just end up just talking and, um, you know, it, it, it's, it's remarkable how often this happens. It happens with pretty much everything. I mean, if you look at, for instance, uh, let's take a, a subject like fracking, for instance. Um, most people have probably read like one or two articles on fracking, right? Maybe from the BBC or from New York Times, right? (laughs) And suddenly everybody becomes an expert on fracking. You know, it's just after reading one article on fracking, everybody has a strong opinion on this, you know, "Oh yeah, it's great, you know, for the, uh, energy effici- efficiency," or, "It's really bad for the environment." And none of these people really know what they're talking about, you know? And I think this is one of the dangerous things about this, is that the need to have an opinion sort of compels people to take a stance on things that they don't know anything about. And what that does is it just pollutes the sort of conversation, it pollutes the national conversation or the global conversation, (coughs) excuse me, it pollutes the global conversation with garbage basically, you know, people just, ill thought out, um, opinions, things that people don't really, um, understand. They're just sort of talking. And I think-

   3. CWChris Williamson3:49

      Well, I-

   4. GBGurwinder Bhogal3:49

      ... it's one of the... Sorry?

   5. CWChris Williamson3:50

      What I find, what I find interesting here is the fact that it's their new hill to die on. So not only-

   6. GBGurwinder Bhogal3:55

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson3:55

      ... is the opinion brand new, but for some reason people feel, uh, existentially connected to it, that letting go of the opinion would be tantamount to their own destruction.

   8. GBGurwinder Bhogal4:06

      Yeah, I mean, so one of the things with this is that once people f- utter an opinion in public, even if it's a really, really poorly thought out opinion, they feel the need to defend that opinion, because if they don't, then they're going to look inconsistent. You know, if they, if they go back on that opinion, if they change their mind, they have this perception that they're gonna be, they're gonna sort of be perceived as weak or stupid. And so their egos compel them to defend even the worst opinions, you know, because the fact is they want to remain consistent. Uh, and-

   9. CWChris Williamson4:40

      Do you think that part of this is to do with the fact that typically our opinions wouldn't have been set in stone and referenceable for almost all of human history, whereas our entire lives now are there to be linked-

   10. GBGurwinder Bhogal4:54

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson4:54

       ... and screenshotted until the day we die?

   12. GBGurwinder Bhogal4:57

       Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think what people would have done in the past, because human ego is as old as humans, so people always want to be right. They've always wanted to be right throughout history. But I think the way that people did this before the internet was that they quietly changed their opinions and hoped that nobody would notice, you know? Um, but now people can't do that because there's a public record of everything, you know? (laughs) So people are compelled by the record, by the public ledger to just defend the worst opinions that they've ever had, you know? They can't-

   13. CWChris Williamson5:28

       The blockchain of opinion errors. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   14. GBGurwinder Bhogal5:31

       Yeah. And this is, I think, a very dangerous thing because it means that people are stifled, they- they're not al- allowed to grow, they're not allowed to develop, they're not allowed to change. People sort of remain static in their, in their lives because of this. You know, they think, "Oh my God, you know, if I change my opinion, you know, everybody's gonna know. They're gonna see this, this post from like 2014 and they're gonna see this post from 2020." (laughs)

   15. CWChris Williamson5:52

       (laughs)

   16. GBGurwinder Bhogal5:52

       And then they're gon-... And that's, that fear, I think, is responsible for a lot of people being very pigheaded and stubborn, I think, in their...... in their beliefs. They double down on, on their worst beliefs.

   17. CWChris Williamson6:04

       Yeah. This links-

   18. GBGurwinder Bhogal6:04

       So it's very-

   19. CWChris Williamson6:05

       ... in with so many of the previous ones that we've spoken about. One of my favorites from all of our conversations was, uh, an absurd ideological belief is a show of fealty and-

   20. GBGurwinder Bhogal6:12

       Mm-hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson6:13

       ... a threat display. Uh, so this kind of explains why people might choose, uh, group ideology or groupthink over rationality and reason itself. Then the fact that our opinions are significantly more visible than our deeds adds another layer on top of that because we are our opinions rather than our actions now. And then-

   22. GBGurwinder Bhogal6:30

       Mm-hmm.

   23. CWChris Williamson6:30

       ... you know, you continue to roll this a little bit further forward. Dude, I, I love that. Um, right. Next

3. 6:35 – 10:46

   Ideology Makes Wise People Stupid

   1. CWChris Williamson6:35

      one, next one. When intelligent people affiliate themselves to ideology, their intellect ceases to guard against wishful thinking and instead begins to fortify it, causing them to inadvertently mastermind their own delusion and to very cleverly become stupid.

   2. GBGurwinder Bhogal6:50

      Yeah, so this is actually a very robust finding in psychology. This is one that's been f- sort of replicated many, many times, so it's a very reliable finding. And, um, there's so much evidence for it. I mean, you know, there was one experiment, I've forgotten the name of the, uh, the researcher, but what they did was, um, they basically, they got people to, um, sort of post their opinions. And then what they did is they, they rearranged the opinions. They sort of reworded the opinions so that they were disguised as other people's opinions. And then they asked these people like, "What do you think of this opinion?" And they would suddenly be like, "Oh, you know, this is wrong. Um, th- I don't believe this at all. You know, this is... Whoever wrote this is stupid," you know? (laughs) Even though it was their own opinion. And so, you know, when people were asked, "Why, why do you object with this?" they had a whole list of, like, reasons. They would be like, "Oh, well this part is wrong. That part's wrong." So they were actually critically analyzing their own opinions and they were dissecting them. They were, they were finding what's wrong with their own opinions but they were doing this unwittingly, which showed that they actually possessed mental faculties, um, but that these mental faculties were being misdirected in a way to sort of essentially destroy their own opinions. And, um, this, I mean, this is something that you see every day on Twitter as well. You see people using, um, logic and, you know, things like syllogisms and, um-

   3. CWChris Williamson8:09

      What's a syllogism?

   4. GBGurwinder Bhogal8:11

      So a syllogism is like a, a logical argument where you say like if A, um, if A then B, if B then C, therefore, um, A then C. So it's, it's like just a way of making a simple argument. And, um, you know, people will use logic and things like... They'll, they'll use sometimes very sophisticated arguments and they'll often, they'll mention cognitive biases. This is the irony of it. They'll mention cognitive biases, but they'll always apply these cognitive biases to other people, never to themselves. And I'm guilty of this as well. I mean, I'm sure, you know, I've made many, many errors as a result of my own cognitive biases, but I'm much... it's much easier for me to see them in other people than it is for me to see it in myself. And so all of our knowledge of mental models, cognitive biases, all of these things, you know, we can be the most knowledgeable people in the world. We can have all of this knowledge of all the biases that other people, uh, that, well, that human beings, um, you know, suffer from, and we will only really see these in other people because of that blindness. And that blindness is why intelligent people, when they affiliate themselves to ideology, they become more dangerous than stupid people who are affiliated to ideology. Because the intelligent people can come out with rationalizations and they can come out with very clever arguments that support stupid positions, you know? And so, I mean, like Thomas Sowell, he had this great line which he said that, you know, he, he spoke of this idea, said it was an idea so absurd only an academic could believe it, you know? (laughs) And, uh, that really sums it up because you can spend your whole life, you know, sort of just coming out with the best arguments, but if you are... if your mind is blinded by ideology or by tribalism, then you will put your great intellect to, uh, the service of stupid ends, idiotic ends basically. You know, like-

   5. CWChris Williamson9:57

      It's a very, a very fast powerful car being driven in the wrong direction.

   6. GBGurwinder Bhogal10:01

      Yeah. Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson10:01

      Oddly, a slower car would do less destruction.

   8. GBGurwinder Bhogal10:04

      That's it. It's like this, this other saying, I think it was, um, Saul Bellow, uh, who said that, uh, uh, a great deal of ignorance can be invested in... No, sorry, a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance if the need for illusion is high. And so if you, if you really need to believe something, no matter how absurd it is, if you have the intelligence you can make yourself believe it through your own arguments. You know, you can convince yourself. And that's the danger of, of intelligent people is that they can convince themselves of stupid arguments.

   9. CWChris Williamson10:38

      (laughs) Dude, I love it. All right. Next one. This is one of, this is one of mine. So I found a guy, uh, Adam

4. 10:46 – 16:58

   The Fading Affect Bias

   1. CWChris Williamson10:46

      Mastro, Stroyoni. Uh, butchering his surname, but he's got a Substack as well that people should go and check out. So this is the fading affect bias, the goodness and badness of memories fade over time, but the badness faced, fades faster. Some bad memories even become good memories, while good memories rarely become bad memories. It makes sense that both joy and pain fade with time. Stuff just feels less intense when it's farther away. But why does pain fade faster? It's because when bad stuff happens to us, our psychological immune systems turn on. We start to rationalize. "Why would I want to be in a relationship with someone who doesn't want to be with me?" We downplay. "Breakups happen all the time in high school, it's no big deal." We distance. "I never liked her that much anyway." And we distract. "I'm gonna go and play video games." These emotional processes function like emotional antibodies, taking the sting out of bad memories. We don't use them on good memories, so good memories keep their luster longer. Everything is temporary, bad stuff especially. Tragedy plus time equals comedy is the closest thing psychology has to a chemical equation.

   2. GBGurwinder Bhogal11:45

      Beautiful. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, um, yeah, 'cause I've heard about this, this bias and I have a theory about it actually, um, which is that... I think we, we covered negativity bias, didn't we? We did it in the first, uh, episode that we did. And, um, so just for your audience, just a refresher. So negativity bias is the tendency for people to focus on and remember...... bad news over good news. And the reason for this is because bad news constituted an existential threat, whereas good news didn't, so you had to pay it more attention in order to survive, to bad news. So, one of the side effects of the negativity bias is that it fills your head up with a lot of bad memories, a lot of really, really horrific and sort of, um, traumatic, uh, events. And you need a kind of safety valve against this, you need some way of being able to continue to live your life without, you know, wanting to commit suicide, um, from all these negative emotions as a result of the negativity bias. And so, I think that this fading affect bias acts as a kind of safety valve, in that it allows us to release all of that sort of pent-up negative energy as a result of all of these negative memories that we have, so that we can re- retain a sense of hope and retain a sense of motivation and, you know, feeling that we can actually do things in life. Um, so I think it's, it's like a psychological defense mechanism, I think, uh, which is pretty much what, what Adam seems to have said, yeah <|agent|><|en|> in his work.

   3. CWChris Williamson13:08

      Yeah, for sure. I, I also think it, it... That makes a lot of sense. Imagine if you didn't have the fading affect bias and you just accumulated this ever-increasing intensity of negative experiences throughout your life, every caveman would have been an nihilist, right?

   4. GBGurwinder Bhogal13:21

      Yeah. (laughs) Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson13:21

      No one would have ever got anything done because they would have been bowed under the weight of their brother that died 55 years ago or something.

   6. GBGurwinder Bhogal13:28

      Exactly.

   7. CWChris Williamson13:29

      Um, uh, i- it's a nice thing to remember here, though, that not only can bad things fade and become less bad, but sometimes can actually become a perverse source of joy, that-

   8. GBGurwinder Bhogal13:41

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson13:42

      ... the tragedy plus time equals comedy is true. I look back on some of the things that I thought were kind of close to destruction back in the day and it's now almost got a humorous quality to it because you've come out the other side.

   10. GBGurwinder Bhogal13:53

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson13:53

       And the same doesn't happen... Which really should give us reason to discount how bad bad things feel.

   12. GBGurwinder Bhogal14:00

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson14:00

       If you're going through something, not only do you know that this isn't going to last forever, not only will you know that the memories are going to fade over time and won't feel as intense, but maybe even in five years' time, genuinely be a source of something that's, I don't know, valuable or at least funny to you.

   14. GBGurwinder Bhogal14:16

       Yeah. I, I think, um... Like, I did, I posted a tweet, um, about how regret is a sign of progress, and I think that that, that basically applies to this. Because if you, if you have a bad event in your life, if you have a bad sort of, uh, incident and you learn from it, then the, then the sort of, there's no more need to feel any pain because you've learned from it, you're a different person, you've grown since that, that occurred.Uh, you know, there's been so many times in my life where I've just done something, you know, just god-awfully embarrassing and I've just like, it's made me cringe, you know, and burn up just thinking about it, but then after time, you change your behaviors and you realize that that wasn't... that's no longer you, the person that did that is no longer you, you're a different person now.

   15. CWChris Williamson14:57

       Oh.

   16. GBGurwinder Bhogal14:57

       And it kind of allows you to grow, and once you've grown, you no longer need to feel that negative sort of feeling in a sense. So, you know, it kind of just gets ejected as, as a sort of ne- unnecessary waste product.

   17. CWChris Williamson15:10

       That's a very interesting way to think about regrets, that the fact that you still regret doing something may be a little bit of an indicator that you haven't transcended it or fixed the thing that it's based on anymore. I had, um... fuck, who wrote the book? Daniel Pink, uh, The Power of Regret, he wrote that book at the start of this year, I spoke to him while I was in New York, uh, and h- he used the same thing, he basically said that regret is the opportunity to remind yourself that you're genuinely invested in something, it gives you a direction that you're supposed to look at when you move forward, but he never mentioned that it's kind of a canary in the coal mine to remind you whether or not this is still something that you probably need to work on.

   18. GBGurwinder Bhogal15:47

       Mm-hmm.

   19. CWChris Williamson15:48

       Because if you get yourself to the stage where you've completely ameliorated whatever the regret situation was and you've just, you know, brought it, imbibed it into your life, the regret would, by design, would start to fall away. Maybe there would sort of be some- something that lingered, but it wouldn't be visceral and emotional in the same way, I don't think.

   20. GBGurwinder Bhogal16:05

       Mm-hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson16:05

       So, yeah, that's... that's an interesting one.

   22. GBGurwinder Bhogal16:08

       Yeah. I think pain only really exists as a sort of warning system to prevent you from, you know, doing stupid things, um, like, you know, for instance, burning yourself, you know, that's obviously... your body's trying to tell you, "Don't put your hand in fire," (laughs) you know? And it's the same with psychological pain as well. If you, if you suffer as a result of something, it's your body's, your way of telling you not to do that, "Don't do that because this is going to be the effect." And I think that the kind of fading affect bias is your body's way of telling you that this pain is nothing personal, you know? (laughs) It's just, it's just there as a lesson sort of thing, you know, don't take it personally. And, uh, that's why we can kind of try and see through it after a while and just be like, "Oh, okay, it just needed to teach us a lesson." It was our boss in a way just telling us, "Look, that's not the right way to do it, this is the way to do it, now let's go out for a drink and have a pint," you know? (laughs) So it's like, it's- it's- it's- it's just a kind of way of just teaching us without, you know, any, any sort of hard feelings, as it were,

5. 16:58 – 21:42

   Naval’s Razor

   1. GBGurwinder Bhogal16:58

      I think.

   2. CWChris Williamson16:58

      Naval razor: if you can't decide between two choices, take the path that's more difficult or painful in the short term. Doing this will counteract the hyperbolic discounting, the brain's tendency to overestimate short-term pain and underestimate long-term pain.

   3. GBGurwinder Bhogal17:14

      Yeah. So, we, um, we perceive objects in time similarly to how we, uh, perceive them through space. So, the further something away is in space, the smaller it appears, and the same is also true of time as well. The further something into the future something is, the less it really registers in our, in our lives, and it's the same thing with further into the past. Um, this, you know, obviously is a necessary thing, we have to focus on the present moment because if we're too focused on what's happening 10 years in the future, we're not gonna be able to live our lives. But it comes with side effects in that we tend to underestimate, uh, problems in the future or even rewards in the future and we tend to overestimate problems and rewards in the present. And this is why, you know, we tend to have this kind of short-termist view of things where it makes... This is why we procrastinate essentially, because we just pass the buck to, you know, we're like, "Oh, my future self will deal with it," you know? Because your future self seems like he can solve every problem in the world because he seems like a superhero, do you know what I mean? (laughs) Because you don't think too far ahead, you don't have to think about h- your future self very much, you just be like, "Oh, yeah, he'll sort it out, I'm just gonna focus on just eating some ice cream and watching TV or whatever," you know? (laughs) Um-... but th- the, yeah, this is, I think this is one of the things that really screws people over, is this sort of belief that, um, what's happening now is more important always than what's happening in the future. And it, you know, yeah, to a certain extent it is. You've got to obviously be aware of what's going on in the present. But you've got to always remember that your brain is configured to make you believe this, and so you have to take the sort of opposite view. I mean, all biases now, that we have now, they're all a result of heuristics. Like they're all mental shortcuts that we once had in a different environment, and now they've become biases because we're in a completely different environment. But we can use heuristics, we can use a new set of heuristics to overcome the present bi- biases that we have. And one of these is Naval's, uh, razor. Naval Ravikant, he's a, he's a great thinker. I'm sure you know who he is, and probably most of the audience know, but he, yeah, he's an investor and he's a philosopher as well. And, um, this is just a, I think a great sort of, uh, mental model to use when you want to consider whether you should pursue a certain action. You'll always underestimate the things that are gonna be happening further out in the future than you will the things that are happening closer to the present. So therefore, always take this into account when you're making decisions, you know, because it, your brain is very good at- at making you believe that the only thing that matters is the present.

   4. CWChris Williamson19:45

      There's a thing that I bro scientist called anxiety cost, which is the longer that you take to complete an action, the more time that is taken up thinking about having not completed the action.

   5. GBGurwinder Bhogal19:56

      Yeah. Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson19:56

      So you, you wake up every morning-

   7. GBGurwinder Bhogal19:58

      You're making... yes.

   8. CWChris Williamson19:58

      ... you've got to meditate, you've got to go to the gym, you've got to do whatever. If you do it in the morning, then you've got the rest of the day to en- enjoy it. If you wait until the evening time, then you've spent all of that time, every single second that your mind was taken up thinking about the fact that you haven't meditated or gone to the gym yet, could have got, been gotten rid of had you have done it in the morning. That's the anxiety cost, and you can ameliorate that in a similar way by getting things done. And I think if you can't decide between two equal choices, take the path that's more difficult or painful in the short term, is basically you trying to start to front load against that hyperbolic discounting, right?

   9. GBGurwinder Bhogal20:29

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson20:29

       It's- it's reverse procrastination.

   11. GBGurwinder Bhogal20:32

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson20:32

       Okay, if- if I try and find something that seems overly difficult short term, that probably will maybe end up being about equal to what it should be rationally over the long term.

   13. GBGurwinder Bhogal20:43

       Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, I think, um, it's- it's hard to really, because you can't quantify value in- in very sort of accurate ways when it comes to whether I should do a certain action or another one. You can't put numbers on it. But as a sort of just general rule of thumb, it's always worth considering that you're always going to overestimate, um, the short term, um, over the long term, you know, what- what you have to do in the short term over the long term, because the long term is something that you don't want to think about most of the time, you know. And so, um, yeah, absolutely, it's a, it's an important, um, it's an important way to sort of, uh, defeat procrastination, I think, because at the end of the day, postponing a problem extends it, as you said, you know. So the best thing to do is just to get it done as quick as possible, and then you have more time to just do whatever you want- want to do, you know, there's more time for that.

   14. CWChris Williamson21:35

       Dude, that's fucking lovely. Postponing a problem extends it. That is absolutely lovely. Right, next one. So Poe's law,

6. 21:42 – 26:48

   Poe’s Law

   1. CWChris Williamson21:42

      I got told about it by my housemate a couple of weeks ago, uh, but I- I'd seen it written online and people had said it, but I never actually bothered to look at the definition of it, which I guess is probably most people with most things. Um, Poe's law, it's now impossible to distinguish trolling from sincerity online, partly because shit posts have become so lifelike, and partly because life has become so shit post like.

   2. GBGurwinder Bhogal22:06

      Yeah. (laughs) I mean, what else is there to say? I mean, yeah, I've, I think everybody knows this, you know, when you, when you go on social media, um, it's just impossible to tell whether somebody's serious, whether somebody's actually saying, whether somebody actually believes what they're saying. Um, and I think, you know, this is, largely I think this is a result of the sort of short format of, um, of social media in that, you know, you never really get context in- in, on social media. You just kind of just get a short snippet of what somebody's saying, but you don't understand sort of what led to that thought process. You don't understand the- the motivations or the intent behind it. You can always gauge, if you look at a book, if you read a book, within a few pages you'll be able to understand what the author is trying to convince you of and, you know, you'll understand a bit more about the author's background and things like that, just without them telling you directly, just from what they- they write. You can't really do that with social media. You can only see just an isolated, just a couple of sentences, or just a meme that somebody's posted, you know, and that... So basically all the information you're getting on- on social media, most of it at least, is anonymous. It's- it's coming from people who you have absolutely no idea what their intentions are, what their motivations are. And this problem is compounded by the fact that we have now massive amounts of, um, manipulators online. We've got troll farms, we've got marketers, we've got, um, culture warriors, we've got all these different people who are all, you know, just trying to manipulate the information space and so they're putting out stuff sometimes that they think is false, you know, they're- they're, they'll create a, um, an account, you know, of like MAGA Mike or something, and then they'll start posting, you know, like loads of pro-Trump stuff, you know? (laughs) And there's loads of these sort of fake accounts, um, that are kind of just flooding social media and a lot of it's just really outrageous stuff, you know, like Trump is the- the son of God and he's gonna, you know, bring about the second coming and stuff. And you know that there are people on this earth who are crazy enough to believe shit like that. So you can't discount it as just- just satire or parody or just some attempt to, you know, um, to just screw with people's heads. (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson24:11

      But the place that these people have to retreat to, if they do say something which is beyond the pale or outside the Overton window or completely un- unacceptable or whatever is, "It was just a joke, bro." That's the- the defense mechanism that most people fall back on. This has always been the, um...... a, a point of envy that I've had over comedian podcasters because they can always say anything and use the "I'm just a comedian"-

   4. GBGurwinder Bhogal24:40

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson24:40

      ... as an excuse. It's the get out of jail free card. You said something that was-

   6. GBGurwinder Bhogal24:43

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson24:43

      I mean, if anyone's listened to Andrew Schulz's intros recently, he does... I don't know whether he's done it on his most recent episodes, but certainly when he first started his new studio, he does kind of a, a bit, maybe a 30-second to a one-minute bit, which is a little bit like the old Saturday night style, "So tonight, we've got coming up, it's a this thing and then this thing," except for the fact that it is the most ruthless, cutting jokes that you can think of about anyone that they're maybe gonna bring up or stuff that's happened in the past or whatever.

   8. GBGurwinder Bhogal25:12

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson25:12

      And I keep on thinking, how the living fuck does this guy get away with saying that on the internet without being canceled? Like, it's just-

   10. GBGurwinder Bhogal25:20

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson25:20

       ... outrageous stuff, but because it's delivered well and because it's evidently a joke, there are different rules. So, if you can accept the fact that there are different rules for jokes than things that people say seriously, what you have with pose lore is basically a way for people to push the variance and the boundaries of what they typically say while using the "it's maybe just a joke, bro" card as a, uh, an ejector seat that they can pull if they need it.

   12. GBGurwinder Bhogal25:45

       Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, I think this is spot on. I think a lot of... I've seen this happen as well on social media where a lot of people will say this and they'll use it, um, they'll use it as a get out of jail card basically. If, if you point out that what they've said is stupid, they can always just say, "Oh, I'm only joking, bro." You know? (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson26:00

       Yeah.

   14. GBGurwinder Bhogal26:01

       It's something that-

   15. CWChris Williamson26:01

       And then they try and make you look like the idiot for having not got-

   16. GBGurwinder Bhogal26:04

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson26:04

       ... the joke. There wasn't a-

   18. GBGurwinder Bhogal26:05

       Exactly. It's like whoosh. Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson26:06

       Yeah, you threw something out there that had it have landed as a genuine insight, you would have happily taken that road, and you-

   20. GBGurwinder Bhogal26:14

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson26:14

       ... threw something else, uh, th- the same thing and ha- if it gets lambasted and you need to call it a joke, then so be it. It's kind of-

   22. GBGurwinder Bhogal26:21

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson26:21

       ... unfalsifiable in a way.

   24. GBGurwinder Bhogal26:23

       Yeah, absolutely. It gives them plausible deniability at all times, so they can just say whatever they like and get away with it, you know. Like, they'll be... Anything that i- that is taken seriously and is, like, you know, appreciated, they'll be like, "Yeah, that's what I really mean," but-

   25. CWChris Williamson26:35

       (laughs)

   26. GBGurwinder Bhogal26:35

       ... everything that is not, "Oh, I didn't mean that." You know? (laughs) "I'm just joking." So, you know, it's like... (laughs)

   27. CWChris Williamson26:40

       Yep.

   28. GBGurwinder Bhogal26:40

       So it's, it's a very clever, very, uh, uh, digi- sort of digital defense mechanism in a sense.

   29. CWChris Williamson26:45

       Yes. So, I... On Rogan,

7. 26:48 – 33:54

   Chris’s Biggest Insight from Rogan

   1. CWChris Williamson26:48

      the, the biggest insight that I learned when I went on his show I've given a name to, so it's Rogan's difficulty and value conflation. So, this is from my Three Minute Monday newsletter, so, uh, some people may be familiar with this already, but, uh, I really loved it. This is a quote from him, quote, "Look at the car he's driving, look at the watch he's wearing, look at the girl he's with. That's so unattainable to many people, so it seems like it's valuable. But then you attain it, and then you realize, oh, this is not valuable, this is just difficult to get." And there's a difference.

   2. GBGurwinder Bhogal27:18

      (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson27:18

      There's a big difference. Some-

   4. GBGurwinder Bhogal27:20

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson27:20

      Some things aren't valuable, they're just difficult to get. In a world which has never been more convenient, our ability to avoid discomfort is very high. It means we can sail through life in a chasm of comfortable complacency. Most smart people also realize that there is value in stepping outside of discomfort, that on the other side of the discomfort is something valuable. We're told that worthwhile things are difficult to attain because if they weren't difficult to attain, they wouldn't be worthwhile. This is how non-valuable but difficult things get slipped into our desires without us noticing. Attaining something worthwhile is often going to be difficult, but just because it's difficult doesn't mean it's worthwhile. We use the challenge as a proxy for virtue or value or alignment or integrity. There's some signaling going on here too. Difficult things by design will be attained by a small number of people, which makes them desirable simply because it's an easy way to stand out from the crowd. We realize too that sometimes easiness can be a signal of value. In my opinion, valuable relationships shouldn't be hard. Your partner should be someone you would take to war... uh, take into war, not someone you're at war with. Your friends should make your life better, not more difficult. Your parents should make you feel enough, not insufficient. Valuable work, on the other hand, is a beautiful blend of difficulty and ease. An Apple employee once asked Tim Cook about whether it should still feel like hard work when you do something you love. Tim replied, "You'll have to work harder than you ever have in your... before in your life, but the tools will feel light in your hands." Beware the difficult things masquerading as the valuable ones."

   6. GBGurwinder Bhogal28:40

      Perfect. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I was a big fan actually of your, uh, your Rogan podcast, and I remember that line as well.

   7. CWChris Williamson28:45

      Thank you.

   8. GBGurwinder Bhogal28:46

      Um, yeah, and I think that this is actually... this explains a lot of the sort of incentive structures that we see in the world today. Um, for example, I'll give you an- a- an example of this. Um, I- I used to be quite addicted to video games and, um, one of the things I- I used to play was a game called Diablo III, um, (laughs) and it's basically, you run around just killing zombies and demons and, and stuff like that, and, um, and what they did is, uh, they basically had this concept called loot boxes, and, uh, this is something that you've probably heard about since then because I think Diablo III was the- the first one that really did this. Um, there were, like, loot boxes which you could o- obtain, um, but they made these loot boxes extremely difficult to get. And the re- and the reason that they did it, I think, is to make them valuable, um, for no other reason than just to, to make them valuable, because a lot of these, um... I remember, like, the- the actual things themselves weren't that great. Like, um, there were, there were legendary weapons, for instance, that you could get and these weapons would be, like, a bit more... They'd have bonus effects, like, for instance, they would freeze enemies if you hit them with, with a sword, you know, like an ice sword or whatever. (laughs) Um, and they would have these bonus effects, but they wouldn't actually be that powerful, they would just be extremely hard to get, so that when people did get them, they'd get a sense of achievement and there'd be... and it would create, like, a dopamine reward in their- in their brain. They'd be like, "Oh my God, I've got this sword, this rare sword," even though it's just a piece of crap, you know? And you will eventually... you'll need another better weapon as the levels progress, you know, because this weapon isn't gonna- isn't gonna cut it, literally, you know? (laughs) And so, um, you know, you're basically, uh, kind of, you're in this s- loop where you're constantly looking for the next legen- legendary weapon. Legendary weapons drop, like, once every 200 enemies or something. You have to kill about 200 enemies and then you- then it drops a treasure box and then in that treasure box, you'll get this thing that glows and it's like a legendary weapon. So-... they would make these really, really hard to get. And after a while, there were a lot of complaints. I think there was even talk of a class action lawsuit because they were making people, um, buy these, um, weapons. You know, people... 'Cause it's, it takes so much time just to get one of these weapons, that people would just fork out money instead, but the weapons wouldn't last very long, so you wouldn't get that effect for very long. And it, they were milking it. They were making so much money, and this was the thing that kickstarted this whole, uh, loot box thing. If you, if you know anything about video games, you'll know about loot boxes. It's a very manipulative practice that is used, um, in video games. And I think... I mean, I'm, I'm not really sure that they, that you could apply it to something like social media, um, but there is a certain difficulty in acquiring a large follower, follower count and getting that kind of social approval. And I think one of the reasons why people value that so much is because of the amount of effort that you have to put into it. It's not really that special to have, uh, a large number of followers 'cause it's, you know, anybody can do it if they've got enough time. Um, you don't actually even have to be an interesting person. You can just, just talk shit and you'll, you'll, you'll grow... You know, everybody grows an audience over time.

   9. CWChris Williamson31:38

      Yes.

   10. GBGurwinder Bhogal31:39

       Um, you know, you just have to look at some of the people who have audiences (laughs) to see that you don't need any special skill to, to be... You just need to labor away and just post consistently. And so it creates this kind of, this sort of sense that, yeah, if you've got a lot of followers, that you're a special person, but you're not really. All you've done is just posted consistently over a period of years.

   11. CWChris Williamson32:00

       Well, this is-

   12. GBGurwinder Bhogal32:00

       No matter what you post.

   13. CWChris Williamson32:01

       It's kind of a little bit like Goodhart's law, right? When a measure becomes an outcome, it ceases to be a good measure. That people use follower count as a proxy for value or integrity or insight or whatever, right? Entertainment, whatever it is that people are following these people for. Did you ever find when you were playing Diablo III that you would use a suboptimal we- weapon that signaled, um, difficulty ahead of a more effective weapon that would be more valuable?

   14. GBGurwinder Bhogal32:27

       (laughs) I can't say I did, but I think, uh, there probably were other people who did that, yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson32:32

       You understand the dynamic though, right?

   16. GBGurwinder Bhogal32:33

       Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson32:33

       The fact that you wanna swing, you wanna swing the cool sword that doesn't do much damage rather than the effective-

   18. GBGurwinder Bhogal32:38

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson32:38

       ... sword that doesn't look so good.

   20. GBGurwinder Bhogal32:40

       I mean, I, I, I didn't see it with Diablo III, but I do remember seeing it with, um, with Street Fighter. That was another game that I used to play. Street Fighter, I think it was Street Fighter III, right? Um, well, 'cause there's this character on Street Fighter called Dan and he's got a pink, um, sort of, he's got a pink, uh, what are they called? Uh, the overalls that they wear. I've forgotten what they're called. Um, but he basically... He was like a Ryu, like, and a Ken kind of character, except he was pink instead of white or red. And he was deliberately really weak. Like, the, the guys at Capcom who made the game, they made him deliberately weak as a kind of handicap to, um, you know, to... (laughs) So that people who were really good at the game, they could basically beat somebody with Dan and just humiliate them basically. (laughs)

   21. CWChris Williamson33:20

       Oh. Okay. Yeah. That's very funny.

   22. GBGurwinder Bhogal33:23

       Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, uh, so there were, there were people who would do this, and some people would actually take Dan to these tournaments as well. Like, there's these big tournaments in Street Fighter where you can earn, like, hundreds of thousands of, of dollars. And people, some people were so cocky they would actually take Dan, and they would play as Dan in these tournaments, these world tournaments with some of the best players. (laughs) Most of them would get their asses kicked, but, I mean, it... You would see, like, exhibition games against less skilled players where Dan would just completely wipe the floor with, you know, like, Ryu or, or one of the other characters.

   23. CWChris Williamson33:49

       Hilarious. That's funny, man.

   24. GBGurwinder Bhogal33:51

       So, yes. So that thing does happen, yeah. Um, yeah.

8. 33:54 – 53:16

   The Nova Effect & Modern Complacency

   1. GBGurwinder Bhogal33:54

   2. CWChris Williamson33:54

      All right. Nova effect. You may think losing your job is bad, but what if staying at your job would have led to you dying in a fire? You can't truly know if an outcome is good or bad because fortune can lead to misfortune and vice versa. So, don't be quick to judge the cards you're dealt.

   3. GBGurwinder Bhogal34:11

      Yeah. So, the thing with outcomes is that outcomes never end. Every outcome has another outcome, you know? So if, if something happens, then that's gonna cause other things to happen, and then that thing's gonna cause other things to happen, and it's a chain that's just gonna continue forever into the future. So, when you actually zoom out of the present moment and you actually look at the entire span of your life or even just, you know, it could just be a year, it doesn't even have to be that long, you can see that fortunes change very quickly. Uh, what seemed to be an advantage to you is now a disadvantage, or what seemed to be a disadvantage is now an advantage. And there's an old Chinese proverb about this, um, called Good Luck, Bad Luck. It's a long story and it's about, um... Well, basically just about a story of how, um, you know, a guy gets, uh, he gets thrown off his horse and he breaks his leg and he thinks it's bad luck. But then what happens is that some, uh, soldiers come to his village and they, they ask him to... They, they ask for conscription in the army because they wanna fight some war. And because he's got a broken leg, he doesn't have to go to the, into the war. So, what was initially a bad accident has turned out to be fortuitous to him. And I think this is something that people don't appreciate enough because we tend to just look at a single outcome and just be like, "Oh, that's a bad thing." But we don't look at the effects of the effects, and this is obviously, uh, links into second order thinking, um, you know, the idea that we should consider the consequences of consequences and not just the consequences. And so, I think people really need to take a... Zoom out and just take a wider look at things, and try not to be too hasty in, in judging things as good or bad. It's... This is something that I suffer from myself. I think it's instinctive and it's all... where we all are quick to judge something good or quick to judge something bad. But I think when we take a longer view, longer term view of things, we start to realize that, um, you know, that there's this kind of dynamic of oscillation of, of things that will be good one moment and they'll become bad and they'll become good and they'll become bad. And I think that if you remember this, it can help you to not be, not be crushed by bad events in your life and, and likewise not be, um, not be sort of... Not, not let good things go to your head and make you cocky and-

   4. CWChris Williamson36:28

      Yes. Yeah, yeah. I think this links in nicely with the fading affect bias as well, right?

   5. GBGurwinder Bhogal36:31

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson36:31

      Just the hyperbolic discounting thinking long term. So, there's something here that I've been thinking about for ages about what happens in reverse about the stories that we tell ourselves about when bad or good things happen to us. I always...... got irritated for ages, and I couldn't work out why. When people said, um, "It was meant to be." So something bad occurs and then a situation, uh, ends up spiraling around, and then they end up in a better place. And they go, "You know, I lost my job but that meant that I met my partner because while I was doing training or art class or whatever that I wouldn't have been able to go through." And I think the reason that I don't like that type of, um, narrative is that it's incredibly disempowering to the agency of the individual over them to take a bad situation and turn it good.

   7. GBGurwinder Bhogal37:20

      Mm.

   8. CWChris Williamson37:20

      Why would you attribute the success that a situation has had, from something suboptimal to something optimal, to anything that isn't you?

   9. GBGurwinder Bhogal37:31

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CWChris Williamson37:31

       Like why not take credit for it? People wanna take credit for almost everything. But for some reason, in these situations, looking in retrospect to a bad situation, a lot of the time people will claim that the outcome was some mystical, it was meant to be force. And it seems like-

   11. GBGurwinder Bhogal37:47

       Mm.

   12. CWChris Williamson37:47

       ... it's related to what we're talking about here, the Nova effect but, but in reverse.

   13. GBGurwinder Bhogal37:52

       Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think this kind of segues, um, quite well into the concept of the Regent beta paradox.

   14. CWChris Williamson38:00

       Yes.

   15. GBGurwinder Bhogal38:02

       Uh. (laughs)

   16. CWChris Williamson38:02

       There it is. Let's go.

   17. GBGurwinder Bhogal38:05

       So, you know, like, so circumstances can sometimes drive us to be better than we are, you know. So if we are in a sort of really, really bad situation, if we, um... I mean, you used this example when, when you gave the example, you basically spoke of how if something is a certain distance from you, um, you'll, you'll walk the distance, you know. But then if something's just a tiny bit further away, then you'll think, "Oh, okay, I might as well just drive it away there," you know. So that, that tiny change in the environment is causing a completely different outcome in your behavior. And this is how I think negative events in your life can actually turn you, uh, can actually be turned to your fortune, they can actually make you into a better person.

   18. CWChris Williamson38:50

       Yes.

   19. GBGurwinder Bhogal38:50

       Because if you're under discomfort, that can drive you to d- to be better and to do things that you wanna do in life, rather than if you're comfortable. And I think that this is something, another thing that people underestimate is that the discomforts that occur in our lives make us stronger overall. They make us go out there and do things. Um, they make us think about the, they make us think outside the box, you know. If you are comfortable your whole life, if you have everything given to you, that's not actually a good outcome. Even though you might think it is, it's not a good outcome because it's, what's happening is that your, your brain and your body is gonna be atrophying, because you're not using it. You don't need to use it because you're comfortable. It's only when you're not comfortable that you begin to think and begin to actually do things, and this is when you think outside the box. So if a bad event occurs in your life, there are two ways of looking at it. You can either feel sorry for yourself and say, "Oh, you know, this is horrible." You know, um, uh, "What- what's the point?" You know, "What's the point in doing it when fate's just gonna throw it in my ba- back in my face?" Or you can use it and say, "Okay, this is a problem, I need to solve it." And then you start solving it, and in solving it, you actually benefit from that bad event.

   20. CWChris Williamson40:03

       Yes.

   21. GBGurwinder Bhogal40:03

       And so, so-

   22. CWChris Williamson40:04

       That's like alchemy. That's like-

   23. GBGurwinder Bhogal40:06

       Yeah. Yeah, it is that.

   24. CWChris Williamson40:06

       ... psychological alchemy.

   25. GBGurwinder Bhogal40:08

       Absolutely, yeah. You turn, you turn the lead that would weigh you down into gold, you know. So it's, um... Yeah, this is, this is a form of, of this kind of oscillation that I was talking about, you know. You, you take something bad and then you turn it into something good, and so you, you get the, the, the trough of experience and you turn it into the peak of experience, you become better through adversity. And so this is another reason not to believe that bad things that happen to you are, are bad, because they, they drive you to be better than you actually are. I think this is one of the, the sort of defining philosophies of, of stoicism, which I recently released a, um, uh, an article about. And you also, I think you had a, a guest on talking about stoicism quite recently as well.

   26. CWChris Williamson40:48

       Yes.

   27. GBGurwinder Bhogal40:48

       And this is why stoicism, I think, is such a powerful philosophy and why it's so widespread in places like Silicon Valley and, and Wall Street, is because it allows you to turn stress and misfortune and things like that, neg- things that, that would ordinarily be considered negative and to turn them into empowering actions, you know, to, to actually make the most of them and, and to actually become better as a result of them. So you turn misfortune into force, into fortune, which I think is, uh, one of the most powerful things you can do.

   28. CWChris Williamson41:19

       I-

   29. GBGurwinder Bhogal41:19

       Because then you're invincible.

   30. CWChris Williamson41:21

       ... I never realized that amor fati wasn't stoic. It's Nietzsche, right?
9. 53:16 – 1:04:23

   Apatheia

   1. CWChris Williamson53:16

   2. GBGurwinder Bhogal53:16

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson53:16

      Right, this next one. Uh, Apatheia? Is that how I say it?

   4. GBGurwinder Bhogal53:19

      Yeah. Apatheia, yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson53:20

      Apatheia: Often, fear is more crippling than that which is feared; rage is more maddening than that which enrages; hate is more toxic than that which is hated; few foes crush us more than our emotions, so victory over our enemies requires victory over our feelings about them.

   6. GBGurwinder Bhogal53:38

      Yeah, so this is another core concept in Stoicism, and, um, this is, I think, something that's extremely relevant today because we are essentially, we're overstimulated in, in the, in the digital age, you know? We're just being barraged with stimuli and these stimuli are making us feel emotions, and they're, they're calculated to make us feel emotions as well. They're act- that's the reason that we're being bombarded with these stimuli, is, is to basically just make us feel and these feelings then drive our behaviors in ways that are beneficial to the people that are bombarding us with the stimuli. Um, so, you know, o- one example would be, um, the sort of dopamine rush that we get from being, uh, you know, approval on social media, getting approval on social media. That's whole, the whole system is set up in a way as to make us chase social approval. Um, we want more followers, we want more engagement with our posts, and so we, we, we seek out to do that, you know. We, we, we're rats in a Skinner box. We're basically pulling that lever to get that pellet, that food pellet. And, um, this is, it's not just with, with this emotion, it's with pretty much every emotion that we can possibly feel. If you look at anxiety, um, they make us anxious, like the news, the news, uh...... uh, agencies, they make us anxious because they want us to be fearful. Because if we're fearful, we're gonna wanna read more articles about the thing that's, we're scared of. So, if they make us fearful of terrorism, then we're gonna read more articles about terrorism because we're, we're gonna be worried, so we're gonna wanna know what's going on. And so, they're gonna get more income because they're gonna get more page views, so it works out for them. So, it's in their interest to make us anxious. And then outrage is also another classic example. Um, if you make people angry, then they're gonna complain about it on Twitter, they're gonna spread their outrage to other people, and we all know that outrage spreads like wildfire, you know, online. And it's one of the most consistent ways that you can get attention and get your message out there, is just by outraging people. So, now we have, um, things called ragebait, and even The New York Times, you know, the old sort of bastions of journalistic integrity, um, they are engaging in this sort of stuff now as well, where what they'll do is they'll say something that they know is stupid. So, it will be something like, um, you know... I mean, I'm just gonna make something up, but this is the kind of thing that they would post, something like, um, refrigerators are an expression of white supremacy or something like that, you know? (laughs) Um, you know, TVs are racist or whatever, you know. Like, uh, they'll just s- get a random object and call it, you know, racist. And they do that on purpose. I don't think that they're stupid enough to actually believe what they're writing, but they're doing it because they know that it's gonna anger their enemies. It's gonna anger people in the Republican Party. It's gonna anger the anti-SJW kind of people.

   7. CWChris Williamson56:16

      But the, the, the retweet of somebody that agrees with you is worth precisely the same as the retweet of somebody that doesn't.

   8. GBGurwinder Bhogal56:21

      Yeah, exactly.

   9. CWChris Williamson56:21

      In fact, it might be worth even more.

   10. GBGurwinder Bhogal56:23

       Yep.

   11. CWChris Williamson56:23

       I think I saw an, uh, a, a map of you showing just how bifurcated online communication is between left and right.

   12. GBGurwinder Bhogal56:31

       Yeah, yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson56:31

       So, what you're actually optimizing for maybe in order to reach new viewers-

   14. GBGurwinder Bhogal56:35

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson56:35

       ... is to get people who typically wouldn't engage with your content to engage with your content, which probably means people on the other side, not the same side.

   16. GBGurwinder Bhogal56:43

       That's a very good way, a good point actually, yeah. And I think that's probably, that, that figures into this sort of calculations. Um, I think with the, with the sort of these kinds of, uh, these divisive articles, um, I mean, like Scott Alexander, the, uh, the Bay Area psychiatrist, he, he, he spoke of scissor statements, which are statements that are supposed to make people angry and to make them take a s- a strong stance on, on, you know, one of the issues. So, for instance, you could say something like, "Trans women are women." You post that. You know that that's just gonna set off fireworks, you know? (laughs) Because there's gonna be some people who agree with it, and they're gonna agree with it very strongly, and then there are gonna be people who disagree with it, and they're gonna be, they're gonna think about it very strongly. And so, the, these two groups are gonna argue with each other, and in arguing with each other, they're gonna spread the idea. They're gonna spread it across all domains. And so this is, this is the, the interesting thing that he found is that, it's actually the things that divide people that spread furthest, not the things that people agree with, not the things that everybody agrees with. So, the things that really bother-

   17. CWChris Williamson57:42

       Was that The, The Toxoplasma of Rage, was that that one?

   18. GBGurwinder Bhogal57:45

       Yes. This, this is it. Yeah. This is exactly what he, what he called it. So, I think we, we did cover this-

   19. CWChris Williamson57:48

       Yeah.

   20. GBGurwinder Bhogal57:48

       ... on a previous episode.

   21. CWChris Williamson57:50

       Yeah.

   22. GBGurwinder Bhogal57:50

       But this, this is essentially what it is. It's, it's, um, that, that ideas that unify people don't spread as far as ideas that divide people. And so this is why we have ragebait. This is, it's a business decision, you know. It's to basically spread the ideas, not just in the, in, in the circle of The New York Times readers, but also in the rival gang, in the sort of right-wing sort of, uh, groups. So, so all these emotions that we're feeling, they're all, they're all sort of promoted by the online ecosystem. Anxiety, you know, uh, anger, desire, um, even happiness, you know, all these feelings, they're, they're, they're artificially sort of almost inserted into our brains, uh, just to make us, to control us. And so, the Stoic idea that the emotions causes more harm than the things that, that cause them is actually very apt, I think. It's more relevant now, even now than it was in ancient Greece when the idea was first formulated, um, which is why I, I posted the idea. Because these emotions are used to control us, you know. If you are sort of easily outraged, then you're easily manipulated. Uh, if you're, you know, sort of... Any, any emotion that you feel will be used to control you, basically. So, um, Epictetus has this great, uh, line where he says, um, "Anyone capable of angering you becomes your master." Because they're essentially, what, what they're doing is they're getting your attention. They're redirecting your attention into where they want it to be, and they're making you dance like a monkey, essentially. They're, they're just making you move, and they're making you act in ways that you don't r- necessarily want to, but which you can't control because your em- emotions are overpowering you. So, I think it's very important that we control our emotions in this digital age because those emotions are used to manipulate us and to control us more than they ever have throughout history.

   23. CWChris Williamson59:39

       Sam Harris has a really interesting insight here where he talks about, um, try and be angry without maintaining your anger. The point being that the, the, the sensation of whatever made you angry is super, super brief, and almost all of the area under the curve of your anger for the rest of time is you perpetuating some story or framework or narrative or little mantra about how you coulda, woulda, shoulda changed what that person would have done to you.

   24. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:00:04

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson1:00:04

       And it's you that ends up becoming, uh, uh... Your own mind has caused way more suffering than whatever occurred in the first instance.

   26. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:00:14

       Mm-hmm.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:00:14

       That's the, the pebble that caused the avalanche perhaps-

   28. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:00:17

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson1:00:17

       ... but it's you that perpetuates it.

   30. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:00:19

       Yeah.
10. 1:04:23 – 1:12:36

    Regret Minimisation

    1. CWChris Williamson1:04:24

       Somewhere in the future, your older self is watching you through memories. Whether it's with regret or nostalgia depends on what you do now.

    2. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:04:32

       Yeah. So this is one that I sometimes use myself when I feel that I'm not motivated to do things. Um, I've always found that a great way to develop the sort of, uh, a good character is to actually zoom out of your life and to look at the whole picture. And this is something that, you know, also applies with the, with the 10/10/10 strategy. Um, so the 10/10/10 strategy, I, I think we might have mentioned this before, I don't know, but this is one of the mental models in one of the mega threads I think that I, that I wrote. Um, and basically it's the idea that we can stop ourselves engaging in behaviors that we might regret if we think about how we would react to those behaviors in 10 minutes, in 10 months, and in 10 years. So let me give an example. So let's say you're addicted to cigarettes and you really wanna quit cigarettes. You don't wanna have a cigarette, but you're, you've got an urge to just have one cigarette. Like, "Oh, really, just, just one cigarette won't hurt." Most of the time it's very hard to, to overcome that, that urge. But what you can do is you can zoom out of your life and look at the whole, the totality of your life and say, "Okay, I'm here now. If I do have this cigarette, how will I feel about having that cigarette, having had that cigarette in 10 minutes? How will I feel about it in 10 months? How will I feel about it in 10 years?" And when you do that, you realize that it's actually not gonna make much of a difference to your life at all. Because after you have smoked that cigarette, like 10 minutes later, you don't feel any happier. You know, uh, I don't know if you've been addicted to cigarettes but I was at one point and, and it kind of... You don't feel happier when you smoke, you know, it's just you feel like you will be very happy if you could just have that cigarette but once you've actually got that cigarette in your mouth and you're actually chugging on it, you don't feel happier. And after you've had it, you certainly don't feel happier. You feel regret and you just go, "Oh, God."

    3. CWChris Williamson1:06:26

       Shame.

    4. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:06:26

       "I gave in." You feel weak and you feel like you've given in and that doesn't make you feel good. So if you look at the long view, look at what your future self would think of what you're doing, then that can help put things into perspective and it can help you to, to separate what's actually matters and what doesn't matter. And this is what I mean when I say that your future self is, is watching you through memories, because if you look at your future self as somebody who already exists and they are actually looking at you... And in a way, I mean, I, I'm a subscriber to the block theory of the universe. I do believe, um, that time, that all times exist, that when... time is not a river, that time is actually an ocean and that all moments exist forever but that our brains, because they're 3D, we can only perceive a moment at a time.... but I believe that every moment of our lives is, is already exist- in existence right now. Um, and I think that l- l- viewing things like that can help us to take the long view and to see that, hang on a second, we're gonna spend the rest of our lives in the future, so we should actually care about that quite a bit, you know. It's, um, it's a lot more important than the present moment which is just literally gonna be gone like that. I mean, does now even exist? I mean, you know, if I say now, that's now in the past, you know? (laughs)

    5. CWChris Williamson1:07:39

       Yeah. Yeah. And the now of... The now for you and the now for me is ever so slightly different in any case because of the light cone, right?

    6. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:07:45

       Yeah, exactly.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:07:45

       There is no such thing as-

    8. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:07:47

       It's all relative.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:07:47

       ... two, as two separate-

    10. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:07:48

        Yeah.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:07:49

        ... nows. Yeah. Well-

    12. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:07:50

        Yeah.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:07:51

        One of the interesting things to consider here when it comes to considering what a life well-lived means, for me a life well-lived is one that in retrospect you're glad you lived.

    14. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:08:02

        Mm-hmm.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:08:02

        And there's two views of happiness, one by Dan Gilbert and one by Daniel Kahneman, and they don't really agree tremendously well. So Dan Gilbert says if you were to spend the rest of your life, uh, on a lilo with a cocktail in a pool just drinking and listening to tunes, that would be a life well-lived because each individual now was one that was filled with pleasure. This is pleasure, this is pleasure, this is pleasure. And I, at first... because that doesn't appeal to me, that's not the sort of thing that would give me pleasure, but I know that there are people that it does, I felt like that was, I don't know, like a lesser type of pleasure or something. I got on my high horse about how moral I was for wanting the, the more difficult meaningful pleasure. And Daniel Kahneman says the opposite or something different. He says that, you know, a, a life well-lived, a good life, one that is happy is one that in retrospect has given you meaning, that you're happy to look on in retrospect. The moment to moment experience of it is less important than the retrospective experience of it. What I've come to believe is that this is dependent on how introspective you are. It'll align with stuff to do with extraversion and introversion, uh, how neurotic you are, all sorts of different personality biases and affects and stuff. But if you're the sort of person that spends a lot of time, um, reflecting, doing internal work, considering the way that your life has been lived and, and, and ruminating in a good way, I guess, or being nostalgic, what you want to do is optimize your life so that you have many different memory slots filled with things that you can be happy and proud of, because-

    16. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:09:27

        Mm-hmm.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:09:28

        ... things that you've done in the past can give you pleasure in the present-

    18. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:09:31

        Yeah.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:09:31

        ... in a way that doing something like a lilo and a cocktail can't. That being said, I have a ton of friends that I know that would fucking love to just spend the rest of time on a lilo with a cocktail listening to tunes and throwing a ball around with their friends. And I, I would happily go round to that party every so often.

    20. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:09:47

        Mm-hmm.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:09:47

        For me, that wouldn't work for the rest of time. But there are people for whom it does, and I've come to believe that the reason for that is that they maybe are more forward-thinking, maybe they're more present thinking, maybe they have, you know, fewer, uh, neuroses to deal with than I do, I'm not sure. But I think that that's an interesting way to look at it, right?

    22. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:10:03

        Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a perfect way of summing it up. I mean, I don't think I could add anything. I mean, it's just, um... It does, yeah, it does depend on how introspective you are really, because how we live our lives is not linear. Um, you know, we don't live our lives just straight through time. We live our lives darting to hopes to the future, then memories of the past.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:10:21

        Loops and loops and loops.

    24. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:10:22

        Yeah. We're constantly darting between the future, the present and the, and the, the past. You know, we're enjoying the sort of present... Even when we're enjoying the present, we're sort of sometimes just enjoying memories of the past. And so I think, yeah, it does depend on the sort of degree to which you, you introspect, because people who introspect a lot obviously are gonna be darting around through time a lot more. And so the, the whole of their life is gonna matter more than just the present moment. But people who don't introspect very much, like ex- extroverts, yeah, for them, it's just gonna be party all the time, you know? (laughs)

Episode duration: 1:47:06