Are Smart People Actually Happier? - Adam Mastroianni

1. 0:00 – 5:23

   Intro

   1. AMAdam Mastroianni0:00

      If you're a guy who can score a 150 on an IQ test, but you live in a basement and all you do is yell about how unfortunate you are all day, actually you are not very smart in an important way. You can take good multiple choice questions, but something has gone wrong in your life, and you've been unable to unravel that. And that's what happened to that one guy who sometimes goes as, like, the smartest man in the world. It just seems like the smartest man in the world should be able to, like, get a bank loan. (air whooshing)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:23

      Dude, I love your Substack. Your Substack-

   3. AMAdam Mastroianni0:25

      (laughs)

   4. CWChris Williamson0:25

      ... was one of my favorite finds throughout all of last year. It's absolutely phenomenal.

   5. AMAdam Mastroianni0:30

      I appreciate that. That's very kind of you to say.

   6. CWChris Williamson0:32

      Congratulations, man. What's your background? Who are you? What do you do?

   7. AMAdam Mastroianni0:36

      Um, I'm trained as a psychologist, in social psychology, so the kind of psychology that I can't help people directly, but I can certainly write papers about them. Uh, so that's what I got my PhD in a couple years ago. Uh, right now, um, I'm, like, finishing up a job where I teach, uh, negotiation to business students. Uh, but mainly what I do is write that Substack.

   8. CWChris Williamson0:56

      You made the decision to go full-time or more serious partway through last year?

   9. AMAdam Mastroianni1:01

      Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah, basically, I got tired of writing papers that nobody reads, where you basically have to lie to get them published. And I thought, "Why not just write what really happened in my studies, uh, or what's really going on in my head, uh, on the internet?" And I thought maybe nobody would listen, and then people started listening. (laughs) Uh, and then they started shouting at me, and that's another story.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:21

       What, what was that thing that you pirated? You pirated a study, did it yourself, and just published it, and said, sort of stuck a middle finger up at the usual journal-

   11. AMAdam Mastroianni1:32

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:32

       ... submission process.

   13. AMAdam Mastroianni1:34

       Yeah. I was running these studies with a friend of mine on basically what happens when you ask people how things could be different, and, you know, they write out their answers. And we're like, "Okay, if it was different in that way, how much better or worse would it be?" Uh, and they would tell us. And, and so we had, like, eight studies investigating this question of, of this, this bias in human imagination. And we were write it, trying to write it up for a scientific journal, and we felt like we couldn't do it without lying. Like, things like, we forgot why we ran study eight. This happens sometimes. You're working on a bunch of projects, you look back and like, "Wait, why did we do that?" Like, the results are interesting, but now I can't reconstruct how we got to the point where we ran study eight. And I was like, Ethan, my co-author, was like, "What should we do?" And we were like, "What if we just told the truth, uh, and just, like, wrote it ourselves and put it on the internet?" And so we were like, "Hey guys, here's study eight. We don't remember why we ran it. If you can figure it out, why don't you write to us?" And people really did, which is the best part. Um...

   14. CWChris Williamson2:26

       (laughs)

   15. AMAdam Mastroianni2:26

       So yeah, so we just wrote it honestly and put it on the internet, which is, uh, the way I intend to do science going forward.

   16. CWChris Williamson2:32

       And you got shouted at by people on the internet twice.

   17. AMAdam Mastroianni2:36

       Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. Uh, so not so much for that. People seem to be cool with that. I know some people are like, "Science is very serious and there shouldn't be jokes." And I'm like, "Man, who killed your fun?" Uh, but then I wrote an article about peer review, which is this process that scientific papers are supposed to undergo before they're published, um, and basically why it's a failed experiment. Um, and I had someone in the comments being like, "Uh, Adam, do you still work at," uh, at this, this dorm I used to work at and when I was in, in graduate school. Uh, like, "I have serious doubts about your ability to mentor undergraduates. Like, this is very serious. I'm a Harvard alum," which is where that dorm was that I, that I worked. Um, and this person was a tenured professor at Boston University. And I was like, man, so people got nothing better to do than, uh, than yell at, (laughs) at random people on the internet. Um, fortunately she was a little off to the... I don't work there anymore. Um, but-

   18. CWChris Williamson3:28

       You got accused of cynical metacognitive polywaffle.

   19. AMAdam Mastroianni3:32

       Yeah. Yeah. (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson3:34

       Does that descri- Do you think that describes your approach accurately?

   21. AMAdam Mastroianni3:38

       Uh, yes, it describes it to a point.

   22. CWChris Williamson3:40

       (laughs)

   23. AMAdam Mastroianni3:42

       Um... Yeah, some people just get really mad, especially when you, uh, criticize the, the ladders basically that they've climbed up. Um, and when you go, "Hey, it seems like these systems don't actually do the things that people claim that they do," they, they go, "Uh, uh, yes, they do, and also you're a big meanie." (laughs)

   24. CWChris Williamson3:58

       Well, I mean, if you've spent most of your career playing the rules of a game and somebody else comes and says, "Have we ever considered whether we could just change these rules, 'cause they kind of seem a little bit dumb," I-

   25. AMAdam Mastroianni4:09

       Yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson4:09

       ... quite rightly, people are gonna b- seem pretty threatened. But the bottom line is, it doesn't seem like a particularly effective way to play the game. At least given the outcomes that they are purported to be trying to get.

   27. AMAdam Mastroianni4:22

       Yeah. Exactly. That, uh, that if it's so good for papers to undergo this process that we call peer review, then you should be able to, like, tell the difference between (laughs) the papers that do and the papers that don't. You should be able to see, like, oh yeah, reviewers actually catch big errors and they don't. Uh, you should hear lots of stories of like, "Yeah, man, this guy tried to submit a paper to a journal and the reviewers, like, caught on that he was faking his data, and now he got fired." You never hear a story like that. Th- those stories always begin with, "Yeah, this guy published 60 papers, 60 peer-reviewed papers and journals, and then someone's like, 'Wait, should we check the data?' And then they did, and it turned out it was all made up, and then the guy got fired." Uh, and so when you have a system that works like that, but it takes 15,000 person-years of labor every year, uh, to make it go, maybe that's a system that, like, I don't know (laughs) maybe we should try to think about other things. I'm not even saying everybody should do what I did. Uh, this is what works for me. Um, like, I like writing papers in my own voice and giving them direct to people. Some people like this system. Great, they should do it, but they shouldn't force other people at gunpoint

2. 5:23 – 16:25

   Why Aren’t Smart People Happier?

   1. AMAdam Mastroianni5:23

      to do it as well.

   2. CWChris Williamson5:24

      Why aren't smart people happier?

   3. AMAdam Mastroianni5:27

      (laughs) Uh, I think it's because our, uh, definition of intelligence and the way that we test it carves off one part of what a human mind can do, and then basically claims that that is everything that a human mind can do. So, when you take an intelligence test, you're basically taking a standardized test, a bunch of multiple choice questions. Um, and, and it turns out that, like, your ability to take those questions actually does matter. So, a lot of people want to pretend that like, "Oh, we're not measuring anything there." We really do. Like, it, this is related to some of your life outcomes, your, your ability to, to get and to hold certain jobs.... but what it turns out to not be related to, it has no correlation with, uh, how satisfied you say you are with your life, um, which is of course a key problem that people are trying to solve. And so, it suggests that like your abil- ability to, like, do those anagrams and, like, solve these logic problems and do reading comprehension questions is unrelated to your ability to, like, make choices in your life, that when you look back you go, "Oh, those are the right choices. I feel good about those choices that I made." And I think a great example of this is, like, there are people who score extremely high on IQ tests who make extremely stupid decisions. (laughs) Uh, I mean, every year you hear about professors, you know, are like, "Oh, man, they, like, couldn't keep their hands to themselves, and they sexually harassed a bunch of people, and now they're fired." That just seems like not, I mean, an immoral thing to do, but also a really dumb thing to do. (laughs) And so you'd think if these people, uh, can ace these tests that they would also be able to not make very stupid, obvious mistakes. So, that's why there was some guy that you looked at who was adamant that banks weren't giving him bank account because he was white. Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson6:55

      And then Bobby Fischer, this sort of chess prodigy-

   5. AMAdam Mastroianni6:57

      (laughs) Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson6:57

      ... just started going on about the Jews. Again, you know-

   7. AMAdam Mastroianni6:59

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson7:00

      ... you, you can argue over the veracity of their argument. The point is, if you're a super genius investment advisor to somebody or the number one chess prodigy in the world, don't talk about the Jews-

   9. AMAdam Mastroianni7:14

      (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson7:14

       ... if, if you want to keep your job, and be surprised.

   11. AMAdam Mastroianni7:17

       Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. If you're a guy who can, you know, score a 150 on an IQ test, but you live in a basement and all you do i- is yell about how unfortunate you are all day, it just seems to me like a- actually you, you are not very smart in an important way. Like, you could take good multiple-choice questions, but something has gone wrong in your life, and you've been unable to unravel that. Uh, and that's what happened to th- that one guy, who s- who sometimes goes as, like, the smartest man in the world. Um, it just seems like the smartest man in the world should be able to, like, get a bank loan.

   12. CWChris Williamson7:44

       (laughs)

   13. AMAdam Mastroianni7:45

       Um, which is a thing that people do every day. Uh, they don't have to be a genius to do it. You just gotta, like, have some good credit and, like, explain what you want for it. Uh, but, like, this guy can't do it.

   14. CWChris Williamson7:55

       Does that mean that smart people are more miserable, or is there no correlation between intelligence and happiness?

   15. AMAdam Mastroianni8:01

       Yeah, no correlation. So, there's, uh, been kind of a cross study that did some of this analysis myself. Um, it seems like there's either no correlation or a very tiny one, uh, that can easily go in either direction. So, it's also not that, like, "Oh, h- like, having all this brain power makes you less happy." It just seems to be that there are these, these problems in life that are different from the ones that we test when we test people's intelligence.

   16. CWChris Williamson8:22

       What are the wrong theories that smart people have about what's going to make them happy in life?

   17. AMAdam Mastroianni8:28

       (laughs) Uh, I think it is, "Oh, I'll just get, like, this really prestigious job, and I'll just make lots of money. And then," like, question mark, question mark, question mark, "I'll be content and feel good about myself." Um, and, uh, I mean, all you need to do is look around, uh, and, like, actually get to know some of the people who have accomplished those things, uh, and quite often they feel like, "Ah, well, no, there's this other thing I just need to do and, like, then I'll be happy." Um, and, and most often th- I mean, the people, like, the best predictor that we have of happiness is the quality of your social relationships. Um, and, uh, and it turns out that like, yeah, those can sometimes suffer if the thing that you are maximizing is, uh, the title of your job or the size of your bank account.

   18. CWChris Williamson9:10

       I wonder whether smart people get captured or caught up in those sorts of games more readily than people who are less smart. Perhaps they have more opportunities and doorways that are open to them or something like that.

   19. AMAdam Mastroianni9:24

       Yeah, it's easy to, like, see the game being played and get really good at playing the game, um, because if you're good at acing these tests, you're probably good at game playing, and then mistake playing the game for living a meaningful and satisfying life. Uh, that, you know, you could spend your whole life doing it and just feel like, "Ah, but if I could just do better at the game, if I could just acquire more Monopoly money, uh, then, like, at some point I start feeling good." Uh, and the thing about Monopoly money is it's fake. (laughs) There is no amount that you could have before you feel good.

   20. CWChris Williamson9:54

       There's a, a quote from a friend who, uh, I, I really reflected on a lot last year, and I realized that we trade the thing that we want, which is time, for the thing which is supposed to get it, money. We also trade the thing which we want, which is happiness, for the thing which is supposed to get it, success. We give up time to make money so that we can finally have more time when we have enough money. We give up happiness to achieve success so that we can finally have more happiness when we achieve enough success. Like, it's so, what's that Japanese fisherman proverb thing about the American businessman that goes to the Japanese fisherman and says, "You could make a fish market and build this big business up and then eventually you'd just be able to fish on the, on the lake all day."

   21. AMAdam Mastroianni10:35

       (laughs)

   22. CWChris Williamson10:35

       And it does feel a lot of the time, especially now my, 'cause my background is in the productivity world, at least when I started this show.

   23. AMAdam Mastroianni10:42

       Mm-hmm.

   24. CWChris Williamson10:42

       And coming out of that, uh, does make me think that so much over-optimization has led people to get themselves into a situation where this treadmill, this ever speeding up treadmill of success to beget happiness, which doesn't because the sacrifice of happiness is in the p- the achievement of the success for the happiness.

   25. AMAdam Mastroianni11:01

       Yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson11:01

       It's very self-defeating.

   27. AMAdam Mastroianni11:03

       Yeah. Uh, it's weird that it is so hard, that it is so self-defeating in that way. You'd think that this would all be very obvious, and just like, "I know the things that make me feel good, and I should just do more of those things." And not make me feel good in, in, like, the most basic way. I mean, some of those things, but make me feel good in, like, that, that deep, like, meaningful way that, that I like. But instead we have extremely strong theories about what will do that for us that s- somehow seem, like, very hard to disconfirm. They're just like, "Ah, just a little bit more, and, and then I'll have it." I mean, I feel this in my own life that, um, it can be hard to actually tell what you like doing if you have a very strong theory about what you should like doing. So, when I was writing those scientific papers, I was like, "Yeah, no, I, I, I like this. Like, this is good. And, um, and before I start doing it, I just need to, like, drink a lot of caffeine, hit a Pomodoro timer, like, turn off my phone, like, turn off the internet, uh, and then, like, make myself do it for 25 minutes and only then can I take a break." And I was like, "Wait, that... Why would I have to do all these things for a thing that I supposedly like doing? The things I like doing, I just do them, and I don't want to stop, and I don't need to be managed into doing them." Um, and so there's something, I think, very weird and unexplained here about how very strong theories of happiness can mislead you into spending a lot of time making yourself unhappy.

   28. CWChris Williamson12:14

       That's a really interesting point, a very profound point, I think, actually, where...... much of what we take pleasure from, it's very difficult to separate out in the liquid how much of this is self-generated, stuff that I love and enjoy, and how much of this is social norms, biological predisposition, path of least resistance, way that I've dealt with past trauma, you know, pick your filter-

   29. AMAdam Mastroianni12:41

       Yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson12:41

       ... that you're making your behavior occur through. Uh, uh, s- filling my sense of insufficiency for today, compensating for my sense of insufficiency that lags over from yesterday, whatever it might be. Um, yeah. So many, so many things that we do are compensatory in that regard.
3. 16:25 – 25:12

   Adam’s Issue with ‘Eating the Frog’

   1. CWChris Williamson16:25

      of the world of productivity, it's, like I say, a world that I was very family with for a long time-

   2. AMAdam Mastroianni16:29

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson16:30

      ... and still am. What is your issue with eating frogs?

   4. AMAdam Mastroianni16:33

      (laughs) Yeah. So I wrote this post, uh, about this idea. Like, there's this productivity system called, like, "Eat That Frog," or whatever. Basically, the thing you wanna do the least, do that first. Um, which that in itself is not crazy. Whatever. We've all had to do stuff that we don't wanna do. If you do it immediately, you know, you cut down on the time that you spend dreading doing it. I think that's not the problem. I think the problem is feeling like there is something noble and natural in spending a lot of time eating frogs, or eating a lot of them. Um, and I think that comes from this theory that we have about the way that we are naturally, which is that people feel like, "Oh, deep down, I'm actually a lazy piece of garbage." Like, "If left to my own devices, I will sit motionless, and watch Netflix, and play video game... I will do all of these things that, like, uh, are not actually good, um, and only by, like, whipping my unconscious self, or, like, my natural self into shape, will I, like, become this person who does the things that are productive and good." And I think that actually comes from a lifetime of having to force yourself to do those things and then convince yourself that is the good self. Um, and I think that's wrong. I think actually, like, our unconscious selves, uh, uh, are pretty smart. I think they, uh, they tend to be pretty well attuned to, like, things that are valuable. And it only feels like our natural inclinations are toward laziness because, uh, our unconscious self only alerts our conscious self, like, when there's some kind of issue, like when something needs to be done. Uh, and so I have this metaphor in the, in the piece of, like, if you hire an in- an intern and tell that intern, like, "Hey, just go do the tasks, and then just, like, come to me if you ever have a problem." Whenever they... If you just ignore them when they're doing the tasks but pay attention to them when they have the problem, you will assume that like, "Man, this intern doesn't do anything. They just come to me all the time," not paying attention to all the stuff that intern is doing when you're not looking. And that is what your unconscious self is doing. Um, and so I g- I think you can get this totally wrong theory about what you would do when y- you are left to do whatever you want to do, um, based on, like, the wrong, uh, impression of how your unconscious self works.

   5. CWChris Williamson18:26

      Why do you think it is that we have this puritan, self-flagellation, s- like, uh, secret autoerotica thing going on?

   6. AMAdam Mastroianni18:37

      (laughs) Part of it, I, I think ... Not to be too conspiratorial, but I think this works really well for the people who are trying to squeeze labor out of us.

   7. CWChris Williamson18:44

      Dude-

   8. AMAdam Mastroianni18:44

      Uh, and like ...

   9. CWChris Williamson18:45

      ... I'm on board for this.

   10. AMAdam Mastroianni18:46

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson18:46

       I'm, I'm absolutely on board for hating yourself and feeling like the only way to subvert feelings of insufficiency are to contribute to a capitalist machine.

   12. AMAdam Mastroianni18:55

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson18:55

       I'm on, I'm on board with this conspiracy.

   14. AMAdam Mastroianni18:57

       Yeah. So, uh, if your boss could convince you that like, yeah, the things that you like to do are actually like lazy and bad. Like it's bad to play video games, it's bad to read books. It's good to do spreadsheets and emails. Uh, and like only when you're doing those is when you are your true self. Uh, so you must sublimate and subjugate, uh, your like natural self. Um, I think that's part of where it comes from. Uh, and so I think we learn over time to like not give ourselves permission to actually value and enjoy those things. Um, and a lot of it too is like you have to do some of that to survive. Uh, you know, you have to work jobs that pay you money so that you can do the other things. But it's easy to get confused and be like, "Oh, no, actually working the job and paying the money is the good thing. And having the fun part is like the bad thing." Like, that's like sneaking a cookie from the cookie jar. That's like having a little, that's a little indulgence for us. Like, no, that's also life. That's also good. Like, that's the whole point.

   15. CWChris Williamson19:47

       Yeah, you're not supposed to have that, you, you broken, disgusting creature.

   16. AMAdam Mastroianni19:51

       Yeah. (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson19:51

       Get yourself back to the desk. Tie yourself up there.

   18. AMAdam Mastroianni19:54

       How dare you feel good?

   19. CWChris Williamson19:54

       Come on, do it until your fingertips bleed, you bitch.

   20. AMAdam Mastroianni19:56

       (laughs)

   21. CWChris Williamson19:57

       Um, I read that the ancient Greek word for work was originally translated as not at leisure.

   22. AMAdam Mastroianni20:07

       Hmm.

   23. CWChris Williamson20:07

       So in ancient Greece, they saw leisure as the setpoint and work as the aberration.

   24. AMAdam Mastroianni20:13

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson20:14

       I must have said this five times, maybe more on the podcast. Then went and did a bit, did a bit of digging, turns out it's not true. Uh, so ...

   26. AMAdam Mastroianni20:22

       (laughs)

   27. CWChris Williamson20:22

       A really, really great ... Just perfect example of, of, of something I, I would've loved to use as a metaphor, uh, and now-

   28. AMAdam Mastroianni20:32

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson20:32

       ... and now I can't. But I can continue, I think it's still, it still is very nice thinking about the way that over time humans have changed their perspective of work. And, I mean, it's only been, you know, you can go back 200 years to see a very different sort of approach to work and what it meant, that it was a contribution mostly for survival. It was a s- you were connected with your work in a more existential way, as opposed to this kind of like dopamine hamster wheel thing.

   30. AMAdam Mastroianni20:58

       Mm-hmm.
4. 25:12 – 34:31

   The Strange Work & Tests of Sir Francis Galton

   1. AMAdam Mastroianni25:12

   2. CWChris Williamson25:12

      Talk to me about Sir Francis Galton.

   3. AMAdam Mastroianni25:15

      (laughs) Uh, this was a guy who lived, uh, in the 1800s, uh, the second half of the 1800s, who, um, was kinda one of the first modern psychologists. Um, he did a ton of stuff. He invented, uh, like, nature versus nurture is a, a, a phrase that he coined, um, invented what we now know as correlation, um, weather maps, uh, the scientific, the cr- the scientifically correct way of cutting a cake was also him, arithmetic by smell, he just got ... There's, like, this whole list. The first map of Namibia. Um, super interesting guy. Also had some beliefs that I think now we would find, uh, a little distasteful. Um, but I got to reading his autobiography, and it was just extremely entertaining, and so I, I wrote a, a review and a, and a post about it. Uh, oh, also, the biggest thing he invented was eugenics. I should of, shouldn't have left that off the-

   4. CWChris Williamson26:02

      (laughs)

   5. AMAdam Mastroianni26:02

      ... off the list.

   6. CWChris Williamson26:02

      His crowning achievement. (laughs)

   7. AMAdam Mastroianni26:04

      (laughs) Yeah. Um, and so, and so I wrote this post getting at, like, okay, what was this guy's life like? And how did he get to this point where he made progress in all these different fields and invented this thing that he didn't see that, uh, you know, only about 100 years later people would recoil in horror at what he thought would be a, quote, "permanent success" when he established, like, the, the Chair of Eugenics at University College London? Um, I'm just trying to get at, like, why is it so hard to see into the future morally? Uh, you know, he saw into the future in statistics, in biology, in meteorology, um, but not in morality. Uh, and so I was trying to get to the bottom of that.

   8. CWChris Williamson26:41

      Just to list some more of his achievements that you put in the article, tries to learn arithmetic by smell. Succeeds. How do you do that?

   9. AMAdam Mastroianni26:49

      He succeeded. Yeah. Uh, he, like, trained himself to associate, uh, numbers with smells, and then, like, put the smells together and ... I mean, this is purely his claim that, like, he felt the association of, like, the ... So, he, you know, he associated, like, one smell with three, another smell with, uh, two. You put the smells together and you feel five. Um ...

   10. CWChris Williamson27:08

       Wow.

   11. AMAdam Mastroianni27:09

       This is a paper in Nature. Like, the premier, well, now the premier, um, scientific journal.

   12. CWChris Williamson27:13

       Worships a puppet to see if he can convince himself it has godlike powers. Succeeds.

   13. AMAdam Mastroianni27:19

       Yeah. This too is just a story that he was like, "You know, some people get obsessed with, like, you know, cult figures or whatever. Like, could I understand what it's like to do that?" And he's like, "Yeah, so I just found this puppet and I just started, like, worshiping it." And he's like, "Yeah, I really came to feel like, uh," (laughs) like, "it did have those powers."

   14. CWChris Williamson27:35

       Tries to consciously control all of his automatic bodily processes. Nearly suffocates.

   15. AMAdam Mastroianni27:41

       Yeah. Uh, yeah, because he was like, "Oh, I will think every time I breathe." I feel like th- this guy is the sort of a dude who, like, never stopped being six. Like, these are the things that you do.

   16. CWChris Williamson27:50

       (laughs)

   17. AMAdam Mastroianni27:51

       Like, before it's so much tamped down on your imagination and you're just like, "Whoa, my body does stuff. Like, can I make it do stuff?" (laughs) Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson27:57

       What's ... Hang on, what's animal magnetism? He hears that animal magnetism is all the rage, learns it in secret. It's illegal. Magnetizes 80 people. What is this?

   19. AMAdam Mastroianni28:06

       Yeah, this is basically, like, a, a version of hypnotism.

   20. CWChris Williamson28:09

       Right.

   21. AMAdam Mastroianni28:09

       Um, and, like, putting people in a trance and getting them to do stuff. Uh, which was, yeah, he went to Vienna at the time, and, like, yeah, it was illegal to do this. Uh ... (laughs)

   22. CWChris Williamson28:18

       And he's doing it to 80 people. Replaces-

   23. AMAdam Mastroianni28:20

       Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson28:20

       ... the blood of a silver-gray rabbit with the blood of a lop-eared rabbit to see if it can still breed. It can. Tells himself-

   25. AMAdam Mastroianni28:26

       (laughs)

   26. CWChris Williamson28:26

       ... that everyone is spying on him to see if he can make himself insane. Succeeds.

   27. AMAdam Mastroianni28:31

       Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson28:31

       Makes a walking stick with a hidden high-pitched whistle inside it. (laughs) Takes it to the zoo and whistles at all the animals. Most don't care, but the lions hate it.

   29. AMAdam Mastroianni28:41

       Yeah. Uh-

   30. CWChris Williamson28:42

       What a guy, man.
5. 34:31 – 38:26

   How We Misjudge Conversations

   1. CWChris Williamson34:31

      do you think humans misjudge when it comes to working out what other people want to talk about in conversation?

   2. AMAdam Mastroianni34:36

      Mm. Uh, so I have some studies where one of the things that people were asked to judge was, um, when did the other person want to go? So, I bring people into the lab, they talk as long as they want to, and I ask them like, "Was there a point at which when you wanted to go? Like, tell, tell me when that was. What about for the other person?" Um, (laughs) and what I find is people are really bad at knowing when the other person wanted to leave, so when they guess, they're off by about half of the length of the conversation. So, if we talk for 20 minutes and then I try to guess when you want to go, I'm off by about 10 minutes in either direction. Um, people tend to underestimate a little bit how much the other person wanted to talk, so it's not like we always think, "Oh, all these people want to talk to me." In fact, we're like a little bit under-confident. But what this leads to is that conversations generally don't end when people want them to, uh, which is what that paper is about. So, um, so when we ask people like, "Okay, your conversation went on 25 minutes, uh, or 20 minutes, when, when did you want it to end?" People tell us, "Oh, the difference between when I wanted it to end and when it ended was, again, about half of the length of the conversation." So they want it to go somewhere between 10 minutes or continue on for another 10 minutes. Uh, and part of it is because they don't know when the other person wants to go, and the other part is people very rarely want to speak for the same amount of time. I imagine this comes up a lot in your line of work.

   3. CWChris Williamson35:47

      Yeah, it does. Some, some (laughs) episodes, some episodes seem to really be rounded out quite nicely around about the hour mark. On average, and then, and again, I'm the common denominator here, so it's probably me, um, 110 to 115 for me is really, really nice, and it's just finishing on a nice peak and it's maybe just starting to drop off a tiny bit, and you go, bang, there it is.

   4. AMAdam Mastroianni36:08

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson36:08

      Uh, but then there's other times when I can sit down with somebody and I go, "All right, this is... I'm, I'm not even half, not even getting going," and you've hit the hour number. So there is so much of a very interesting interplay, um, rhythmically, energetically, in the way that you speak to other people. So that's in terms of duration. What about in terms of content? What do people mistake-

   6. AMAdam Mastroianni36:31

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson36:31

      ... about what others want to talk about?

   8. AMAdam Mastroianni36:34

      Yeah. There's some other research on this that people just are bad at knowing whether people, like, want to keep talking about th- this topic or want to move on to some other topic. Um, so it's not in, like, some particular direction that, like, "Oh, they want to talk about football, but I thought they wanted to talk about basketball." It's more just like, "I really don't know what they want to talk about." Some other research suggests that people underestimate the extent to which others want to have deep conversations with them, that, you know, we get stuck having shallow conversations, um, that, "How's the weather?" and, "Oh, that's a nice shirt you're wearing," uh, thinking that, "Oh, the other person doesn't want to talk to me about, like, uh, the problems that they're having in their life right now, or the things that they're afraid of, or the things they're really excited about, 'cause like, oh, I don't know, that's just kind of scary and uncomfortable." When in fact, like, no, people are actually more willing than- than you think they are to have those kind of conversations. Because I mean, when we all stand around being like, "Oh man, isn't small talk bad?" Uh, like, we mean it. (laughs) Like, we will really do wanna actually have deeper- deeper conversations with people.

   9. CWChris Williamson37:30

      I learned... I was reminded in your article about that series of 36 questions.

   10. AMAdam Mastroianni37:38

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson37:38

       I- it's a ascending scale of intensity that-

   12. AMAdam Mastroianni37:42

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson37:42

       ... experimenters use to get people to be friends. What's that?

   14. AMAdam Mastroianni37:45

       Yeah. Yeah. This is the fast friends paradigm and th- so there was a big New York Times article about it. It was basically adapting those questions to, uh, to be for, um, uh, to be more for friendship. So- so the way that that works is what we call, um, like, increasing reciprocal self-disclosure. Just basically the idea of, like, I tell you a little bit more about me, I, like, open the door a little bit, you tell me a little bit more about you, you open your door a little bit, and like, we go little by little until, you know, we lower our guards, the dor- doors are open, and now we're willing to- to chat with each other.

   15. CWChris Williamson38:14

       Discuss our chronic flatulence together. Yeah.

   16. AMAdam Mastroianni38:16

       Uh, yeah. (laughs) E- exactly, dude. I did some bad farts recently. (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson38:19

       (laughs)

   18. AMAdam Mastroianni38:20

       Uh, yeah. And you can get there in just 36 questions. (laughs)

   19. CWChris Williamson38:24

       (laughs)

   20. AMAdam Mastroianni38:24

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson38:24

       One of my friends, George, sent

6. 38:26 – 41:04

   What the Media is Overlooking in Society

   1. CWChris Williamson38:26

      me a question the other day, which I put in my newsletter, and I thought it was absolutely fantastic. And you're the first person that I've spoken to since he sent it to me. Question was, what is currently overlooked or ignored by the media, but will be studied in future by historians? What do you think?

   2. AMAdam Mastroianni38:42

      Hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson38:42

      Anything come to mind?

   4. AMAdam Mastroianni38:43

      Yeah. Uh, I would say the professionalization of science, um, that we have this idea that, like, professionalization always good. Um, like, making people professional, that sounds good. And we don't realize that- that professionalizing something actually makes a certain set of trade-offs, and basically you lower the ceiling in order to raise the floor. So by professionalizing something, you know, you rein people in, and so you prevent the very best from doing exactly what they do in order to prevent the very worst from doing what they do. In some domains, this makes total sense. Like, I want my doctor to be professionalized 'cause like I don't really care about the very best doctor, I mainly want a doctor who's, like, good enough and isn't going to harm me, uh, 'cause sometimes they put me under anesthesia and I don't know what they're doing. Right? And it's really hard for me to judge, like, which are the good ones and which are the bad ones. I don't feel that way about scientists. I think science is what I think of as a strong link problem, where, like, we progress at the rate that we make our most important discoveries and do our most important work. And so I don't want to trade the best stuff in order to get rid of the worst stuff. I think the worst stuff basically doesn't matter, uh, it just fills journals, nobody ever looks at it ever again, uh, and it's, like, very weird that we live in this period where science is super professionalized and we're mainly focused on, like, how do we stop, like, the- these random bad studies from coming out that no one's ever gonna look at again. Uh, if you think about Galton's time, like, there wasn't a standardization. Like, I mean, the dude was wandering around, like, swapping blood from one rabbit to another and nobody was, like, stopping him from doing it. Uh-

   5. CWChris Williamson40:05

      What was that, what was that thing where... Wasn't he tutored by his sister who had-

   6. AMAdam Mastroianni40:12

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson40:12

      ... some bad spine problems so she had-

   8. AMAdam Mastroianni40:14

      Yeah. Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson40:15

      ... to lie on a plank of wood?

   10. AMAdam Mastroianni40:17

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson40:17

       This guy (laughs) had like the weirdest life ever.

   12. AMAdam Mastroianni40:20

       (laughs) Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah. I mean, this isn't to mention, like, all the- the- the travels that he did in southern Africa where, uh, or all the travels he did all over the world where he's constantly running into, um, uh, quarantines, uh, because there's pandemics going on. And so reading this, like I- I read that mainly, uh, you know, a year and a half ago when there was a lot more of this going on and being like, "Whoa, like, so little has cha-" Or like, we're back in this moment, um, where... And a lot of it too is like this theatrical element of like, "I showed up at this place and, like, because I was kind of prominent, I was invited to, like, dine with the mayor of the town, but then the newspapers were like, 'Mayor of town breaks quarantine to talk to...' " Like, man, this is all just-

   13. CWChris Williamson40:57

       Wow.

   14. AMAdam Mastroianni40:57

       ... the same thing. Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson40:58

       Yes.

   16. AMAdam Mastroianni40:59

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson40:59

       Dear God. (sighs) What, um...

7. 41:04 – 49:45

   Why We Forget So Much of What We Learn

   1. CWChris Williamson41:04

      You- you looked at some stuff to do with why we forget so many of the topics and bits and pieces-

   2. AMAdam Mastroianni41:10

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson41:10

      ... that we learn. What- what's the 30,000 foot view on that for someone that's not been indoctrinated?

   4. AMAdam Mastroianni41:17

      Yeah. This is just the idea of like you spend a lot of time in school learning a lot of stuff, and then, like, pretty quickly, you remember almost none of that stuff. (laughs) Uh, so, like, what's it... kind of what's that all for? Like, what are we doing here? And I mean, there's the question of like, okay, well, what are the, like, educators intend to do? But I think there's a different question of like, well, what is the mind doing? Um, which is I think not holding on very tightly to any individual fact, but getting some abstract sense of the way that things are, which I call a vibe, basically. And these things actually stick for a long time, maybe forever. And so the important things that you're learning in class aren't necessarily, like, what Mesopotamia was or, like, how many like US representatives there are. It is a sense of like, oh, history is interesting, or like history is complicated, or history is very long, or like, there are many ways that humans can organize themselves into different societies, and like, the way that things are now is not the way that they've always been and there can be other ways. Um, uh, and these are like the kind of like deep truths that no one ever really tells you specifically, but like, you are learning them by sitting there. You can get other vibes too, like education is stupid and like it's just a matter of satisfying the whims of the teacher, um, uh, or like, you know, it's cool, like, uh, like, this sucks, I want to be anywhere else. Like, these are vibes too. And I think these are actually the more important things that we get when we are in education rather than like all the PowerPoint bullet point stuff that we're going to forget as soon as the test is done.And so, I- so, I mean, I, I am partly an educator, and so I think a lot about, like, what is the thing that people are getting, like, when I speak, like, when I write? Like, the important stuff isn't, uh, like this thing buried in this paragraph. Like, it is basically an approach to life. Like, it is a, it is a philosophy that's kind of hard to put in any one place, but that you get this emergent property from spending a lot of time in it.

   5. CWChris Williamson43:06

      What would be a more direct way for people to learn vibes?

   6. AMAdam Mastroianni43:11

      (laughs) I think kind of the thing is like, you can't get there dir- like, that's the whole point, i- is like, you can't hack the vibes. Um, I think you can do a better job as an educator of thinking about like, "What vibes am I giving?" And thinking about like, oh, the most important thing isn't that they remember what ancient Sumer is. It is that they, like, remember that, like, human history is very long and complicated and, like, sometimes people do really good things and sometimes people do really bad things. We're capable of all sorts of things. None of those things are going to be like, the lesson of the day. Uh, like they're going to be the thing that like kind of sticks on th- your mind's ribs when you leave. Um, so yeah, I k- I kind of think it can't be sped up. Uh, it can only be appreciated.

   7. CWChris Williamson43:51

      It's a little bit like what we were saying earlier on to do with a lot of people have to go through the success in order to be able to say that success isn't the thing that was going to make them happy. That-

   8. AMAdam Mastroianni44:02

      Yes.

   9. CWChris Williamson44:02

      ... a l- a lesson that can't really be expedited in advance. And, uh, I wonder whether... I don't know, maybe it is just the case that you need to sit down and bang your head off the wall about the four principles of, uh, whatever is appropriate accounting. I remember... Dude, I remember in first year of uni, and w- I lived in this set of halls of residence that was two and a half miles away from the university. So, we had to get a bus in. We had to get a bus to nights out. We had to get a bus to lectures. And it was the morning of this, (laughs) the morning of this exam. And my housemate, who was a big stiff idiot, but was a lovely guy, hadn't done any revision. And he said, "What do you think is coming up on the exam?" And I said, "I th- think it's going to be the four, the four principles of accounting or something like that." I can remember the conversation I had with him. I can remember thinking, "Wow, I, I actually did... Even my lackadaisical version of, of revision makes me feel like super smart compared with you." And I remember that one of them is prudence.

   10. AMAdam Mastroianni44:55

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson44:55

       Can't remember any, any of the others.

   12. AMAdam Mastroianni44:58

       (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson44:58

       I don't really even know what prudence means when it comes to accounting.

   14. AMAdam Mastroianni45:02

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson45:02

       I mean, y- I mean, you're accounting for the figures. What are you being prudent about? The figure's either there or it's not. I have no idea how it wraps in.

   16. AMAdam Mastroianni45:08

       (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson45:08

       And this is, what, 16 years ago now? Probably, yeah, 15 or 16 years ago, and I have no idea about the rest of it.

   18. AMAdam Mastroianni45:17

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson45:18

       But I do remember what it feels like to have a sense of guilt around your lack of pre- preparation and realize-

   20. AMAdam Mastroianni45:26

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson45:26

       ... that there is way deeper to fall because there is always somebody who is-

   22. AMAdam Mastroianni45:30

       (laughs)

   23. CWChris Williamson45:30

       ... less prepared than you.

   24. AMAdam Mastroianni45:32

       Yeah. Yeah. And like, if your professor had stood up and said, like, "There's further to f-" Like, "There's always someone lower than you." Like, that too would go the way of prudence. It wouldn't make any sense.

   25. CWChris Williamson45:43

       Yes. Yes. Interesting.

   26. AMAdam Mastroianni45:44

       Uh, uh, like you, you had to experience that. I mean, to your point, like, I did a, a master's degree at Oxford, which I remember none of any of the stupid pointless lectures that they had. What (laughs) , like, the thing that I remember from there is living in this terrible apartment and I was one day in the basement kitchen, like eating Weetabix in the morning. And, uh, it was like toward the end of the year, so they were bringing people in to, like, look at the apartment. And some students came down the stairs and, like, I'm there in, like, my T-shirt and, like, my boxers or whatever, eating my cereal. And one of them looks around at this kitchen that's, like, not well lit, it's dank, it's bad. And was like, "I could never live here. I'd kill myself." And then they left. (laughs)

   27. CWChris Williamson46:16

       (laughs)

   28. AMAdam Mastroianni46:16

       And like, and like lots of people-

   29. CWChris Williamson46:17

       What w- what was the, uh, symbolic lesson that you took away from that?

   30. AMAdam Mastroianni46:21

       Um, I was like, uh... I think it's like, man, you could be at what some people consider the best university in the world and people could walk into the intimate parts of your life and say that if they experienced those things, they would kill themselves. So like, think about (laughs) , like, whether all this legible stuff matters a lot or whether I want to be living in such a way that when people walk into the room they go, "Oh, I'd like to do that too." (laughs)
8. 49:45 – 1:00:30

   How Adam Overcomes Writer’s Block

   1. AMAdam Mastroianni49:45

   2. CWChris Williamson49:45

      Thinking about this new venture that you've been going through for the last couple of years, writing your Substack. What are you doing? You're sitting down, you know that you need to write something because it's been however many days, and you've got a deadline that you've set yourself totally arbitrarily.

   3. AMAdam Mastroianni49:58

      Yeah. Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson49:59

      What are you doing that you found is an effective way to get past writer's block and creative, creative sort of blocks?

   5. AMAdam Mastroianni50:06

      Yeah. I do a few things. One is, whenever I feel stuck, like, "I can't get this sentence right, I can't get this point right," I ask myself, like, "What would be the, like, what is the most honest thing that I want to say right now? Like, if I faced no consequences for what I was going to say, like, what would I say?" And often, I find that, like, the reason that, uh, I ha- I can't write this is because I'm like, "I, like, feel like I shouldn't say it or I shouldn't say it this way." Um, so sometimes it'll come out. Sometimes it'll be like, "Oh, I actually don't know enough about this yet." That is what... 'Cause what I would say is, "I don't know," or, like, "Nah, I'm kind of, like, glossing over some stuff here." And so then I go back and, uh, and research more. Another thing is, is, like, I try not to give myself too much time. That, like, these things take time to bake. Uh, and it's like, you can't bake cookies faster by, like, cranking them up to 4,000 degrees and, like, cooking them in a second. I mean, there are, like, machines that are meant to do that, right? But, like, you can't do that in your oven. Like, they just take the time to bake that it takes. And I feel the same way when I'm, like, baking an idea for experimental history, that, like, if I try to speed it up, I'm just going to burn it, and, like, it's going to taste bad. I'm not going to like it. Uh, and so I have to give myself the amount of time that it takes. And if I'm not done in time, then I'm just not done in time, um, 'cause I'd rather give people something that they like to read than, like, the, like, an email that they, that I think they should receive.

   6. CWChris Williamson51:22

      "If I try to complete it too quickly, then I'm going to burn the idea and it's not going to taste good."

   7. AMAdam Mastroianni51:27

      (laughs)

   8. CWChris Williamson51:27

      I really, really like that. I really like it. And, um, yeah. It- it- it's a very strange, especially for me, right? 'Cause podcasting as a medium, I always have a, a sparring partner, except for e- maybe one episode in 30 I do on my own.

   9. AMAdam Mastroianni51:41

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CWChris Williamson51:41

       But for the most part, it's me and, and somebody else. So my, my motivation is externalized, my preparation is externalized.

   11. AMAdam Mastroianni51:47

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson51:47

       You know, I get to read all the stuff that you do. I don't have to generate... I have to generate nothing, right? Apart from half-baked takes about stuff from 15 years ago that I can't even remember on a bus to uni.

   13. AMAdam Mastroianni51:56

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson51:56

       So, it's a very different sort of medium, but I've, I have started writing more and more frequently at the moment. And it is one hell of a battle at times-

   15. AMAdam Mastroianni52:07

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson52:07

       ... to sit down and to get things out. And I do, um... For the guys that are full-time writers that are cranking out thousands and thousands of words a week. I mean, do you know Brandon Sanderson? Have you heard of him?

   17. AMAdam Mastroianni52:19

       No, no.

   18. CWChris Williamson52:20

       So, he's a, a fantasy author. There's a really cool post on Reddit, which any sentence that begins with, "There's a really cool post on Reddit," is followed up by a sentence which is nothing cool at all.

   19. AMAdam Mastroianni52:31

       (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson52:31

       But-

   21. AMAdam Mastroianni52:31

       Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson52:32

       ... really cool post on Reddit, and it explains the number of words or pages per year that this guy outputs, compared with the other most prolific-

   23. AMAdam Mastroianni52:42

       Mm-hmm.

   24. CWChris Williamson52:43

       ... page writers within the fantasy genre. Fantasy being known as a genre which can be a bit verbose, right?

   25. AMAdam Mastroianni52:50

       Yes.

   26. CWChris Williamson52:50

       It's- It can, it can be padded out quite nicely. Yeah. I remember once in, uh, The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, he spends, like, two full chapters explaining this kid's walk to work, where he goes to play his, like, lute or something. And he's describing in, like, intense detail the type of cobblestones he walks over. Anyway, um, this guy is five times as prolific as the next biggest fantasy author in terms of output. And he's, he's got secret series that he just hasn't ever got around to releasing, and then he'll just pull the pin, and they just appear on Amazon. And they're all really, really good, or at least most of them are good-

   27. AMAdam Mastroianni53:24

       Mm-hmm.

   28. CWChris Williamson53:24

       ... the ones I've listened to. So yeah, when I look at people like that and realize how challenging and incompetent I find sitting down to write. Yeah, it- it does feel like a, a very different sort of, very different world.

   29. AMAdam Mastroianni53:38

       Yeah. And, uh, and, like, I think part of it is figuring, like, "Okay, what's the niche that you're good at?" Like, some people are, like, crankers, and they just, like, throw, like, a fire hose of content. Um, and, like, that's good. Uh, like, I want to be... I don't know. What's a... Uh, rather than a fire hose of content, like a, like a bunch of water balloons. Like, I want them to go off (laughs) . Uh, I don't want them to be like, "Oh, man, I'm soaked," but in a good way, I guess. And then, like, I'll be like, "I'll see you in two weeks (laughs) ." Like, "I'll throw another one at you."

   30. CWChris Williamson54:04

       (laughs)
9. 1:00:30 – 1:06:55

   How We Misperceive the Sanity of Others

   1. CWChris Williamson1:00:30

   2. AMAdam Mastroianni1:00:30

      What is the reason for this asymmetry between how sane we feel we are and how insane everybody else feels? I had this discussion last night. I, it always keeps on coming up, this weird imbalance between what we see in-

   3. CWChris Williamson1:00:43

      Yeah.

   4. AMAdam Mastroianni1:00:43

      ... ourselves and what we see of everyone else. And often I think we believe that we see the world in a sane way and everybody else-

   5. CWChris Williamson1:00:50

      Yes.

   6. AMAdam Mastroianni1:00:50

      ... is, is very, very odd.Yes. There's this thing called naïve realism, which is just this idea that like my eyes are little portholes out of which I see the world, and I'm just seeing it how it is. Like, there's no interpretive step l- after th- the information gets to my brain and up to my consciousness. Like, that's just what it is. When in fact, there's all kinds of interpretive steps. I mean, even v- basic sensory perceptive stuff that like the world that you see isn't actually the world that's out there. Like, your eyes and your visual cortex make it useful for you. Um, but that also happens with higher level stuff, like the ideas that you hear that when you hear them you're like, "Oh, no, bad idea," or, "Oh, no, good idea." Like, all that's pre-processing. That's done under the hood. Like, you didn't consciously arrive at that decision. But it feels like that's just the way that it is. So, when you look out at other people who perceive the world in a different way, it just seems like they're mistaken. And when you're like, "Oh, no, actually, dude, it's a- it's this way," and they're like, "No, it's not," you're like, "Oh, well, you're dumb," 'cause like i- it's just obviously this is the way the world is, and if you disagree, like you just must be... Like, something's wrong in your head. Um, so I think, I think that is part of it. Uh, another part of why th- we feel this way about people that we don't know very well, but like when you're closer to someone, you can give them more leeway. They're like, "I know why you see the world differently from me, 'cause I know you have all these complicated differences in experience." This is why, like, we cut our friends a lot of slack. But when you don't know someone, you're just like, "Yeah, d- you're just a dumb person." And it's this phenomenon of psychological distance that like the closer you are to something, the more detail in which you perceive it. And the more detail in which you perceive someone, I think the more slack you give them. But if someone's just kind of like this blur to you, this blob, then you're like, "No, there's no complication to people in general." Th- they're not a bunch of, you know, flawed humans doing the best they can. They're a bunch of like idiots and evil people. Um, and when you get closer and closer, like when you... those people become your friends, you're like, "No, actually, not this one, but all the other ones are." Uh, so there's an illusion that keeps getting pushed back.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:02:39

      I wonder... Well, I can see how that might be adaptive for us to have that, that the people that you're closest to you need to kick off at the least frequently. You need to not find a problem-

   8. AMAdam Mastroianni1:02:51

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:02:51

      ... with every single thing that they say. Whereas if it's somebody else, maybe from, let's say, a different family within your tribe or from even a different tribe, you can afford to judge them much more quickly, because the risk of not doing so would be quite grave. If this is the smoking gun that this person's m- a malevolent narcissist, you want to be able to figure it out pretty quickly. But if you have this-

   10. AMAdam Mastroianni1:03:14

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:03:14

       ... broader sample of behavior, m- m- m- maybe you can give them a little bit more room.

   12. AMAdam Mastroianni1:03:19

       Yeah. You can't think hard about everything. Like, you can't, uh, like go through a deliberative process about everything that comes to mind. Like, you have to be very, uh, selective about that. So, it makes sense that like the people closest to you get the most detail about them, um, because we have to deal with them the most. And the people farthest from you get blurrier and blurrier. I mean, it l- it works the same thing, way in your visual field. Like, the things that you pay- point your eyes directly at have the most detail. And it's hard to tell, but the further and further out you get in your visual field, like eventually your color vision goes away. Like, all of that is, is just abstract. None of it feels that way. You have to look at like visual illusions that make this clear. Um, uh, but it's the same thing. Like, you... Like, the whole, the whole part of your visual field cannot be the point that's most in focus. Like, you have to be selective.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:04:02

       What's-

   14. AMAdam Mastroianni1:04:02

       And I think the same thing works in mind.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:04:04

       ... correspondence bias?

   16. AMAdam Mastroianni1:04:06

       This is the idea that, that other people's behavior flows from their personality rather than their situation. Um, so you see somebody who's ticked off, and you go, "It's 'cause they're a mad person, not because they're in a mad situation or a situation that made them angry." Um, and there's, there's this kind of other part that Alvin Gutzlem did, this actor/observer bias that we do this more for other people than for us, because you perceive yourself in the most detail. So, I know all the stuff about like my mitigating circumstances and why I do what I do, and I go, "Oh, well, I was pushed this way and that way," um, and like, "That's why I did it." It's not because it flowed from my, uh, like the person that I am.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:04:44

       Essence.

   18. AMAdam Mastroianni1:04:45

       Yes, exactly. Uh, and so I told this story in, in th- in this post of like the first time I got to New York where, you know, I'm walking through LaGuardia. I'm like looking for a taxi, it's a... And a woman comes up and she's like, "Hey, do you need a taxi?" I'm like, "I sure do." Like, "Thanks, kind New Yorker." Like, people were wrong about people in this town. Look at all these friendly people anticipating my needs. And she's like, "Come with me," and we walk outside, and then we walk across the street into a parking garage. And I'm like, "This doesn't... This isn't where I expected the taxi to be." And then we get to an unmarked car. I'm like, "Usually taxis are yellow." (laughs) And she's like, "Get in." And I'm like, "Oh, I feel like I'm in a bad situation, but I don't want to be impolite." I came all this way, and I did say that I would go with her. And she's like, "Okay, you can sit in the passenger seat." I'm like, "Uh, all right." And so I had this plan that like if she tries to kidnap me, I'll just grab the wheel, and I'll steer us into a building, and then she'll be dazed because she's m- middle-aged and I'm 18. And I'll dash from the car, and I'll get my luggage out of the back, and then I'll run away. And like all those... That story might make you sound like I'm a stupid person, but each of those things felt like I'm in this kind of weird situation. Like, I don't want to harm this person. Like, I don't want to be mean. Um, and like each individual decision that I make doesn't seem that stupid. Um, but it... Yeah. But when... B- b- because I'm in that situation, I'm like, "I know everything that went into it."

   19. CWChris Williamson1:06:00

       That's similar to... Is it the fundamental attribution error? Or it might even be-

   20. AMAdam Mastroianni1:06:05

       Yes.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:06:05

       ... the same thing-

   22. AMAdam Mastroianni1:06:05

       Yes.

   23. CWChris Williamson1:06:05

       ... by a different name.

   24. AMAdam Mastroianni1:06:05

       Yeah, a diff- different word for the same thing. Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson1:06:07

       Yes. I thought so. There was a period in the world of productivity about four to six years ago, a guy called Shane Parrish started this blog called fs.blogfarnamstreet, and he wrote a book of great mental models to think by. And, and it w- it did very, very well. And he's a super, super smart guy, and he's been on the show. The rationalist movement as well that Scott Alexander and Eliezer-

Episode duration: 1:11:41