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Mental Models 102 - The Decision Strikes Back | George Mack

I'm joined by long time friend of the show and all round great human George MacGill to re enter the world of Mental Models. Mental Models are tools you can use to improve your ability to effectively make decisions. Today we are upgrading our minds by thinking about thinking, as we delve into some of mine & George's favourite mental models from Jocko Willink, Paul Graham, Ben Bergeron, Navil Ravikant, Nassim Taleb, David Wong and many more. Extra Stuff: Follow George on Twitter - https://twitter.com/george__mack Rick & Morty & Roy - https://youtu.be/szzVlQ653as David Wong's Article - https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/ Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom #MentalModels #Naval #JockoWillink - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - I want to hear from you!! Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Email: modernwisdompodcast@gmail.com

George MackguestChris Williamsonhost
Aug 19, 20191h 28mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 1:03

    Personal responsibility, friendship randomness & setting up availability bias

    1. GM

      70 to 80 years ago, we would've been in a world war. Li- could you imagine telling someone in the trenches, "Oh, I'm addicted to Insta- shut the..." You know what I mean? Part of me is like, we go back to extreme ownership and personal responsibility, log off.

    2. CW

      So-

    3. GM

      Sign out.

    4. CW

      I get it.

    5. GM

      Delete the app. You end up at a random uni, and then the people who happen to be placed near you in halls-

    6. CW

      (laughs)

    7. GM

      ... it's literally Susan on a Excel spreadsheet who randomly decides this.

    8. CW

      Yeah (laughs) .

    9. GM

      And it's mad to think the amount of Susans or Dereks that have decided people's best friends forever (snaps fingers) .

    10. CW

      Next one, availability bias.

    11. GM

      I was chatting to, uh, one of the (laughs) guys from work, and there's some digestive biscuits in the kitchen. And none of us like digestive biscuits, but we're eating digestive biscuits every single day, 'cause they just are there in the-

    12. CW

      Yeah.

    13. GM

      ... in the jar. And yet, whatever's available to you, you've got to almost instill willpower to avoid it.

    14. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    15. GM

      Which means that given enough time, given enough lack of sleep, given enough XYZ, you're probably gonna give in at some point.

    16. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    17. GM

      So yeah, design the environment is key.

  2. 1:03 – 3:40

    Welcome back: cities, ambition, and what London ‘whispers’ to you

    1. CW

      The internet goes wild for George McGill back on Modern Wisdom. It's been a long time, man. Thank you so much for coming back on.

    2. GM

      It's good to, it's good to be back. You brought me out my cave. It's good.

    3. CW

      I have indeed.

    4. GM

      Yeah.

    5. CW

      A lot has changed since we were last here.

    6. GM

      Yeah, a lot, a lot has changed from, f- for, uh, both parties, I imagine.

    7. CW

      Yeah.

    8. GM

      Always changing.

    9. CW

      You're down in London now. You were in Manchester last time we saw each other.

    10. GM

      Yeah, down in London, uh, bit more expensive, but-

    11. CW

      (laughs)

    12. GM

      ... you get what you pay for.

    13. CW

      Yeah, you do, a lot of opportunities.

    14. GM

      Yeah, it's, um, it's certainly very, very different. There's a, a really good Paul Graham essay, uh, called Cities and Ambition.

    15. CW

      Uh-huh?

    16. GM

      Have you ever heard of it?

    17. CW

      No.

    18. GM

      It's one of, one of my favorite ones of his, one of the reasons why I moved, and he says that every city sort of whispers something to you, um, whether it's the sort of conversations that you overhear or, um, the people that you're around or the cars that drive past or the buildings that you see. You're constantly getting whispered to, and you, you don't, you don't consciously notice it, but you pick up on it. And, um, 'cause I've found that e- Paul, Paul, Paul Graham says that in, like, New York, it's the, the constant whispering is, "Make more money."

    19. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    20. GM

      Um, and that's 'cause ev- ev- every conversation you overhear is like, "How much money you make, you know, I made this, this month." Uh, whereas in LA it's, "Be more famous," is what it's constantly whispering to you.

    21. CW

      (laughs) What's London?

    22. GM

      Um, well, well he, he says San Francisco is, "Be, um, uh, be more powerful," in terms of they don't give a shit if you've made, like, a billion dollars o- um, if you've inherited a billion dollars.

    23. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    24. GM

      It's more about what you've done.

    25. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    26. GM

      Uh, whereas London, um, it's a, well, the thing about London is there's almost little cities within little cities.

    27. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    28. GM

      But at the minute, we've been primarily based in Mayfair. Have you been to Mayfair before?

    29. CW

      Yeah.

    30. GM

      It's like the, i- i- it's like the wealthiest part of, like, right next to Buckingham Palace, like-

  3. 3:40 – 5:03

    The tennis lesson: avoiding unforced errors (focus on being less wrong)

    1. CW

      And this is from, uh, Gabriel Weinberg's Big Book of Mental Models. Gabriel, if you're listening, I know that you're busy, man, but I'm ready and waiting whenever you are. Uh, and this is a mental model from tennis.

    2. GM

      Okay.

    3. CW

      The, the unforced error.

    4. GM

      Oh, okay.

    5. CW

      So the concept is that you need to focus on being less wrong, not because of an external situation, but because of your own poor judgment or execution. So you got to think about how making a bad first impression, that's your fault. Like, if you didn't get ready, insufficient preparation, that's an unforced error. Touches a little bit on, um, some of the asymmetries we were talking about before. You're in a car crash because you were texting, unforced error.

    6. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    7. CW

      Like, you've caused that situation. It wasn't, there wasn't some tornado that came out of somewhere and picked your car up and threw it to one side. This was an error that you caused. So you were talking previously about not aiming to be right all the time, just simply avoiding being wrong.

    8. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    9. CW

      And an unforced error is the most basic way that you can be wrong. Like, independent of all of the circumstances, you done fucked up.

    10. GM

      And isn't the argument that (sighs) : I forgot, I don't have the complete tennis metaphor, but the amateurs make way more enforced errors than professionals, or it's som- along those lines?

    11. CW

      I'm gonna guess so.

  4. 5:03 – 8:37

    Extreme ownership in the real world: Jocko Willink’s ‘Good’ mindset

    1. GM

      Yeah. There's an interesting one, that kind of ties into probably the hardest concept to wrap your head around. You, you ever heard of, like, Jocko Willink's, like, extreme ownership? Where you just take ownership of every single thing that goes on in your life, and it's always... You know, the famous Good Rant, where he's, uh, he's one of those, um, one of the best videos on YouTube. If you're having, like, a shit day, I recommend it 'cause it's just this, the hardest Navy SEAL. He's like the hard, he's like the hard Navy SEAL amongst hard Navy SEALs.

    2. CW

      (laughs) Yeah, yeah.

    3. GM

      You know what I mean? Where his mates go, "Fucking hell, he's intense."

    4. CW

      Yeah.

    5. GM

      Um, so he's that guy. Uh, the, what's the Bradley Cooper film? The American Sniper?

    6. CW

      Yeah.

    7. GM

      So Jocko, I think, was that guy's-

    8. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    9. GM

      ... um, like commander essentially or the-

    10. CW

      Oh, wow.

    11. GM

      ... the boss. And he's talking about when he was in Iraq and people would come over to him, um, and say, "Hey boss, we've not got enough machinery," or, "We've not got XYZ," or, "Things gone wrong," and he would just always reply with, "Good." Like, no matter what, b- because opportunity to work on this or opportunity to do that, and it's always something that he can control. Um, and he's obsessed with this concept of extreme ownership. And he tells, I think it's in his TED Talk and in his book where he talks about, 'cause it's very, it's very Orwell to, like, chat...... in, like, a, a nice little podcast about, "Oh, I've been doing X, Y, Z on my gym routine, on my meditation."

    12. CW

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    13. GM

      But when you're at war-

    14. CW

      (laughs)

    15. GM

      ... I have so much more respect for somebody w- when they, if they're chatting about, uh, interesting concepts and they go, "Oh, I applied this at war." I go, "Oh, okay, I might listen now," 'cause they go ******* hell.

    16. CW

      Map versus terrain.

    17. GM

      Yeah, yeah, and that's literally the fucking terrain, right?

    18. CW

      (laughs)

    19. GM

      It's literally-

    20. CW

      Well, Jocko's knee-deep in terrain.

    21. GM

      Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    22. CW

      Facedown in terrain.

    23. GM

      Yeah, so he, he's up, up to his knees in terrain, yeah. So, um, he talks about how in Iraq, where... You got f- uh, where he says that he had some friendly fire go wrong, and it was his, i- in his troops that it happened. And s- I think it was an Iraqi soldier lost their life, um, 'cause it was the, his f- sort of friendly Iraqi troops firing back at his own American troops.

    24. CW

      Mm. Mm-hmm.

    25. GM

      And somebody died. And as a high-up Navy SEAL, that's one of the worst mistakes you can ever make.

    26. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    27. GM

      And the reason he ended up keeping his job is because he took 100% blame over everything, and it was so impressive how he managed to just take extreme ownership over it. And it wasn't even, you could argue it wasn't even his fault. He, he wasn't directly there, but he said, "I, I, there's certain things we could've done. There's certain things I could've prepared for." And you think about how much I do it all the time, like little stuff where I'll be running late and I'll blame it on someone else. You know what I mean? You just blame it on something else.

    28. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    29. GM

      And you go, like the concept of extreme ownership, of e- everything that can go wrong is ultimately my fault. And even when it's not, it sometimes still helps to think that. Do you get what I mean?

    30. CW

      Mm-hmm.

  5. 8:37 – 11:23

    Antifragility: fragile vs robust vs getting stronger from stress

    1. GM

      Yeah. That's, um, that comes from Nassim Taleb, Nassim Taleb, um, who wrote The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, and a few other interesting concepts. And the idea of antifragility is, let's say for example you have quite a, let's say you looked at this, like, glass here.

    2. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    3. GM

      This is by very nature, as we just found out in the kitchen earlier when you fucking smashed the glass everywhere-

    4. CW

      (laughs)

    5. GM

      ... and I smacked my head on some in the kitchen-

    6. CW

      Yeah.

    7. GM

      ... uh, behind the scenes that will never get released.

    8. CW

      Yeah.

    9. GM

      Um, if you drop this on a concrete floor or a, a kitchen floor, as we saw then, it's fragile by its ve- very nature, in that when disorder happens, the whole thing basically disintegrates.

    10. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    11. GM

      So that's something that's fragile. When disorder occurs, it breaks down. The contrast to that is what's well-known as ro- robust, which is when you drop it on the floor, like a plastic cup-

    12. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    13. GM

      ... it sort of stays the same. It doesn't get worse.

    14. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    15. GM

      But it also doesn't get better.

    16. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    17. GM

      So what Taleb sort of identified is there's nothing that's truly the opposite of fragility, 'cause robust isn't the opposite of fragility, 'cause it stays the same.

    18. CW

      Neutral.

    19. GM

      Therefore-

    20. CW

      Minus one to zero.

    21. GM

      Exactly, whereas the plus one would be something that's antifragile, that it gets stronger from disorder. So the most obvious example is your immune system, that you give it a little bit of tuberculocous, and all of a sudden, oh, it knows... It gets used to dealing with that and now it's much better at dealing with that. Whereas if you, if you prevent a child from sort of playing around in the mud and damaging a little bit of its immune system each time, you never grow. If you never exercise and put your body under stress, you never grow. So your body's almost an antifragile machine, um, in that the more disorder you give it, the more it adapts. Of course, it has a breaking point where you go, you can overstep the mark and you, you break your legs or whatever you do.

    22. CW

      Yeah.

    23. GM

      But-

    24. CW

      Or you catch tuberculosis.

    25. GM

      Yeah, so there've... (laughs) Yeah, you catch tuberculocous. But the concept of antifragility is a, is an interesting one, because y- you see it all the time, where you see two people go through very, very similar events. And some people say that's the best thing that ever happened to them-

    26. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    27. GM

      ... and they compound as a result and they use that.

    28. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    29. GM

      And then other people who do the exact same thing, it's the, the worst thing that ever happened to them. And yeah, I think becoming more antifragile is, it's difficult, but it's, um, something I, I need to get better at. It's something that's very, very difficult to do.

    30. CW

      I think so. So, some of the ideas that comes to mind, I saw a tweet earlier on, hilarious tweet. Um, someone's five-year-old child had said to his mother, "The reason he wasn't cleaning my room was because it was good for his immune response." And you're like, "You clever little bastard."

  6. 11:23 – 20:10

    Antifragility applied: investing, athletics, and ‘inviting discomfort in’

    1. GM

      So, uh, one, like, really good practical example I heard came from Josh Wolfe, who, he's the, uh, the founder of Lux Capital, um, very, very, very clever guy. Um, he has quite a few mental models which we can go onto. But he talked about when he was deciding to invest in a certain company, um, which was nuclear cleanup. So c- cleaning up, uh, uh-

    2. CW

      Waste.

    3. GM

      ... nuclear waste, essentially. And he realized that it was an antifragile decision in the sense that no matter what, um, chaos occurred-

    4. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    5. GM

      ... it was upside for him. Because let's say, for example, the world carried on investing heavily in nuclear waste. Well, at one point, there's gonna be an accident, which means that there's gonna be need for nuclear cleanup.

    6. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    7. GM

      Or if the world decides, "You know what? We need less nuclear activity." Therefore, they need a nuclear...... clear up companies, essentially.

    8. CW

      Clever, clever. Man.

    9. GM

      So, and as a result, obviously Fukushima happened and he made a lot of, a lot of money-

    10. CW

      Was he prepped, ready for that?

    11. GM

      ... because, yeah, he was the only company that could, that could deal with that. And not only did he make a lot of money, but he saved s- so much damage-

    12. CW

      Ecology, yeah, lives.

    13. GM

      ... to the world as well, so. Um, so that's, like that, that's a good example of where you apply it to, to business in particular, as well.

    14. CW

      A couple of good examples here where anti-fragility is being applied in an athletic sense, uh, and you can take this and adopt it for yourself in a, a very personal sense. Katrin David's daughter, CrossFit athlete, one of the fittest women on the planet, was the fittest woman on the planet, uh, a couple of times. I remember seeing an interview with her, uh, as a part of Ben Bergeron's Chasing Excellence, a fantastic book, highly recommend it if you've not read it. Very easy, very narrative-based, quick read. And, uh, she says sometimes when people haven't had enough sleep, or they haven't prepped right for a day's training, they go into the gym and they've got a defeatist mentality.

    15. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    16. CW

      And they say, "Well, I'm not feeling very good, I'm tired, I'm this, I'm that, and the other." Whereas she goes in and her mentality is, "This is an opportunity for me to train at suboptimal preparation-"

    17. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    18. CW

      "... uh, uh, scenario." So this is, uh, the CrossFit Games last year, they didn't know, but they just got pulled out and put on the Wednesday. They didn't know there was gonna be a Wednesday event, out of nowhere. Then on the flight back, the plane was delayed, everybody was late, everyone was gonna get less sleep for the next day, and that was the one day that they were supposed to recover, and blah, blah, blah. All of that, she's preparing herself for that. She leans into, she calls it "leaning into discomfort as if you've invited it through the door." So she doesn't shy away from it. The same as if you put your hand on somebody's chest and you press against them, they press back. And you press a bit harder, and they press back a little bit more.

    19. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    20. CW

      And that's the kind of mindset that she's cultivated. You might want to talk about, uh, the, who was the guy from ... Josh Waitzkin. Josh Waitzkin and his reframing of his child's reign.

    21. GM

      Oh, yeah. That's one of my favorite ones of, um ... I always think about when I do have a kid, t- touch wood, someday, um, not s- someday soon, touch, touch wood again, um (laughs) -

    22. CW

      (laughs)

    23. GM

      ... that'll bite me in the ass, but if not-

    24. CW

      Yeah.

    25. GM

      Um, the, the, the sort of lessons you wanna apply, and I think obviously everybody's almost playing this weird, quite meta Darwinian game. Obviously they're literally passing on their parents' DNA, um, by the, by the nature of it, and everybody's p- passing on their parents' DNA, and then they're passing on their parents' DNA. But you're also kind of passing on, okay, what was the stuff that my parents did right? What did I like about it? Obviously you need to do a little iOS update for the current generation, 'cause obviously, like, these things weren't around back then. So now you've got to think of smartphone policies, right?

    26. CW

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    27. GM

      But you try and take what your parents did right, and then what your parents could've or should have done as well, and then-

    28. CW

      The evolution of ideas, as well.

    29. GM

      Yeah. And the better childhood you have, the, the more, the less stuff that you have to change. You just, you just copy and paste over. Um, and, and then you obviously look at ideas that you hear from other parents or other parenting stuff. And I've not really gone deep down the parenting rabbit hole yet.

    30. CW

      No.

  7. 20:10 – 24:35

    Who you’re around shapes you: high-agency friendship building (and why it’s hard)

    1. GM

      Mm-hmm. What do you think creates an individual like that?

    2. CW

      It's the perfect-

    3. GM

      I mean, it's like you said-

    4. CW

      It's a perfect storm.

    5. GM

      ... there's so many there, there's so many stuff in the algorithm. I definitely find the biggest influence in my output, general awareness, and, um, what's the correct word? Yeah, I, I just say output and the way I think is who I'm around. And I know that sounds fucking cliche, sound like you're at some Tony Robbins seminar.

    6. CW

      (laughs)

    7. GM

      "You just have to get new friends, man." But, um, when you... I, I just find, I always use this thought experiment of pick the pers- p- imagine you again, identical, but we tweak two variables in these two parallel universes. One where you spend the most amount of time, or the person you spend the most amount of time with is the person you know, whether you know them in your actual real life or you know them via, you follow 'em on Instagram or you see 'em on YouTube, who is the most positive or has the best output, work ethic, the way they think that you truly admire. You're around that individual the most. Let's say you're having, like a guy like David Goggins and he's just constantly, like, going-

    8. CW

      Making you jump in ice.

    9. GM

      Yeah, yeah. Just going, "Get in the fucking ice, man."

    10. CW

      "Get in the ice."

    11. GM

      Um, you've got that guy-

    12. CW

      Damn it, David.

    13. GM

      ... versus the everyone has one in their friendship circle, just a sloth.

    14. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    15. GM

      You know what I mean? He's constantly going, "Oh, he's not actually that good, he's only 'cause he's this," or, uh, "Yeah, yeah, they're rubbish." You know, that sort of individual who's const- You, when are you g-

    16. CW

      Fixed mindset.

    17. GM

      When you leave them-

    18. CW

      Classic fixed mindset from 2020. ... you feel, you feel like you've got an illness and you go, "Fucking hell-"

    19. GM

      (laughs)

    20. CW

      "... I, I'm slower, I'm fatigued, I-"

    21. GM

      Yeah. "... I, life is worse as a result of that individual." And imagine you spend, again, the exact same in, y- your DNA, your genetics, your, your situation, one where you spend it with the, the best person, one where you spend it with the worst person. And after a year, those two people, as in your two opposing selves-

    22. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    23. GM

      ... in these two universes, suddenly some Rick and Morty shit happens and you fucking-

    24. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    25. GM

      ... meet one another. Those are two different people.

    26. CW

      Very much so.

    27. GM

      Like two different people.

    28. CW

      But it's d- it's difficult, man. Like, you are so much less in control of the people that you're around than you are of yourself. And I think that-

    29. GM

      What do you mean?

    30. CW

      Well, I can't tell you, let's say that I spend every day with you for the next year. I can't tell you how to be. I can choose who I choose to be with-

  8. 24:35 – 28:38

    Directional arrows of progress: from computers to dating (and future AI matching)

    1. GM

      ... that have decided people's best friends forever. And they automatically assume that, "Oh, we should've been best friends." But I always use this example, so one co- mental model to follow, 'cause this then goes down a, a relationship tangent. But if you look at, this comes from Josh Wolf earlier with the, uh, the anti-fragility stuff, is he has this great mental model of the directional arrows of progress, where if you look at the, the computer in the 1950s, it was the size of probably the house that we're in now-

    2. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    3. GM

      ... in university where there was maybe only a limited amount of them in the world and very, very few people could use them.

    4. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    5. GM

      And then as decades go on and you get to nearer the, the '70s, you have the, the home computer, and all of a sudden it's got smaller in size and it, but it's cheaper and it's more powerful.

    6. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    7. GM

      And then you get the laptop, which we have here, in the, the, a few decades gone by. Then the next few decades you get the smartphone, it's even more smaller and it's even more compact, and now it sits in your pocket.

    8. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    9. GM

      And now you look at, now you got the AirPods that now sit in your ears. So you see these directional arrows of progress. And I know that Tobi Lutke, the Shopify, uh, CEO has a similar thing where he's trying to analyze future trends of following this directional arrow of progress. So you, you can't predict the future, but you can assume computing as we know it or, or hardware as we know it will continue to get smaller, more powerful, cheaper, and nearer to our bodies. And obviously everybody talks about the contact lens-

    10. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    11. GM

      ... that's coming or whatever it's gonna be. And I always apply this with, um, relationships, in that if you looked at our maybe great-great-great-grandparents' generation where you would, you might marry, um, well, if you, let's say we go back to hunter and gatherer times, you might just marry whoever you got assigned to in the tribe, or whoever-

    12. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    13. GM

      ... you had to fight, Dave, and see what happened or fight Jess and see what happened. And then obviously you go to our grandparents' time where you would liter- if you wasn't married by 18 or 21 or whatever that little age window was-

    14. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    15. GM

      ... you was an outcast.

    16. CW

      Yeah.

    17. GM

      And you would meet someone from your school or your next door neighbor. That was it.

    18. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    19. GM

      You had someone from your school or your next door neighbor. Who's it gonna be?

    20. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    21. GM

      So you had 15 people to choose from.

    22. CW

      Yeah.

    23. GM

      And then obviously, um, you have women coming into the workplace and you have the feminism movement and people would sort of delay marriage a little bit and you had a wider choice. You'd maybe meet people at work or you might meet them at a bar.

    24. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    25. GM

      And then you have OkCupid that comes along. Um, so now you can meet people online, but it tends to be a bit of an older demographic. Then you have Tinder that comes along and there's more and more choice-

    26. CW

      Yeah.

    27. GM

      ... and you can co- you can meet... I, I know people now, I know more and more couples who are from different countries. And I go, "How often would that have happened-"

    28. CW

      Yeah.

    29. GM

      "... 50 years ago?" Like, that is such a recent thing of the amount of, um, kids that are gonna be born who are gonna be dual nationality. So you're looking at the directional arrows of progress there of more choice, um, more people you're dating, you get to get more and more resources. And there's a, a novel called After On, great podcast as well.

    30. CW

      Oh, Rob Reid.

  9. 28:38 – 31:53

    Availability bias: why the jar, the jigsaw, and the news control your mind

    1. CW

      I like it. Next one, availability bias.

    2. GM

      Oh, yeah. Uh, this is a (laughs) one of the... there's a, a hilarious example I have about this one, which is I, when, back when I was at Social Chain-

    3. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    4. GM

      ... um, they have a, uh, a Harry Potter fan page, it was like the biggest Harry Potter community in the world. I'm not a Harry Potter fan at all, but I was trying to do this morning meditation habit and I went upstairs in one of the rooms just trying to meditate there.

    5. CW

      (laughs) I remember when you used to do this.

    6. GM

      And-

    7. CW

      Was it the, the, the... is this the bit about the jigsaw?

    8. GM

      Yes. Yeah. So there's a, so there's a Harry Potter jigsaw-

    9. CW

      (laughs)

    10. GM

      ... in the middle of the room. And I've, I've seen, I think I saw the first two Harry Potters and I dipped early. You know how for our generation it was such a big thing?

    11. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    12. GM

      I couldn't give a shit about Harry Potter.

    13. CW

      Yeah.

    14. GM

      Um, I've got a good friend, Hannah, who loves Harry Potter, so she's-

    15. CW

      Sorry.

    16. GM

      ... she's gonna hate me for that, but, um, couldn't give a shit about Harry Potter. And I was sat there meditating, um, and I was just observing my own-

    17. CW

      Surrounded by jigsaw pieces (laughs) of Harry Potter.

    18. GM

      Observing my own thoughts. And I, I, I just observed my own thoughts. And I remember I'd just catch myself maybe five minutes in, I'd go, "I wonder how Hermione and Ron felt about Harry being the face." I'd go, "Well, f- one thing about it."

    19. CW

      (laughs)

    20. GM

      "Come back to, come back to your breathing, come back to your breathing." And then I'd go, "Oh, I wonder what it's like being Daniel Radcliffe and that famous. It must have been crazy being that famous." I'd go, "Come back to your breathing, come back to your breathing."

    21. CW

      (laughs)

    22. GM

      And then I, and then I, I'm like, "I wonder how J.K. Rowling managed to get that out." And I remember it, I closed meditation just going, "I've thought more about Harry Potter in the last 20 minutes than I had in my entire life," just because there's a fucking Harry Potter jigsaw on the floor.

    23. CW

      Availability bias.

    24. GM

      So like at, at the minute, um, I was chatting to, uh, one of the guys from work and there's some digestive biscuits in the kitchen. And none of us like digestive biscuits, we're eating digestive biscuits every single day 'cause they're just there in the-

    25. CW

      Yeah.

    26. GM

      ... in the jar, the see-through jar. Um, and yet whatever's available to you...... um, you've got to almost instill willpower to avoid it.

    27. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    28. GM

      Which means that, uh, given enough time, given enough lack of sleep, given enough X, Y, Z, you're probably gonna give in at some point.

    29. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    30. GM

      So yeah, design the environment is key.

  10. 31:53 – 38:59

    Social media’s incentive trap: needles vs heroin, judo tactics, and policy ideas

    1. GM

      But the issue with that, and I have this, is that how do you then go about fixing this problem of social media?

    2. CW

      Yeah.

    3. GM

      Um, so obviously somebody who knows this space quite well, um, that people will insist on, okay, well, well Facebook needs to change its algorithms where it gives people content they don't want to see, but then they wouldn't spend time on the platform.

    4. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    5. GM

      So it's, it, I'm, I'm looking at, if you look at Mark Zuckerberg, you kind of get your decisions a little bit.

    6. CW

      Oh.

    7. GM

      And I, I look at it and go, because you've seen the, the recent news about the, um, the American Senate where they want to basically have it installed in the app that once somebody's scrolled so much, they get cut off and you go, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what? This is some weird George Orwell shit." And you know, it's Nancy from Florida who, who's heard about Instagram in an article and she's trying to enforce it. So that's the worst.

    8. CW

      So if we're emailing on WhatsApp...

    9. GM

      (laughs) Yeah, that, that exact sort of shit. But I've be- I think about this a bit, and I, I thought there's, there's two ways to potentially fix this problem. Um, first one is that instead of trying to fix, say, a heroin problem, look at the needles. So instead of trying to stop the heroin going around, the social media addiction, let's look at the needles, which is the smartphones, the, the pr- and app, um, uh, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, et cetera, are never gonna fix the problem because that, we'll come on to this in a second, but they, that's their incentives, that's their business model. They're never gonna stop doing it. McDonald's aren't going to start selling kale.

    10. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    11. GM

      I'm sure they have, but it was horrific, I imagine, right?

    12. CW

      (laughs)

    13. GM

      They only did it for a PR bid. But they're, they're never going to be their full products of kale. It's going to be greasy fries and a greasy burger because that's what people go there for and that's what they're incentivized to do and that's what their business model is. So instead, the people who have the power, uh, Apple and Google who own Android, obviously. So what you need to do, they've re- recently released the screen time stuff, but why isn't it that people can't, let's say you flip, I call it like the ultimate judo move, where you flip social media or the mental models that social media have about the way they've conditioned people on its head. And with the screen time stuff, you create a social network, what I can see out of my friends who spent the most amount or the least amount of time on Instagram, and it's ranked with them at the top of the leaderboard.

    14. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    15. GM

      And that would be quite a cool feature. And then the final one that they should do is if it's decide, if it's dec- oh, what I think they should do, um, is if it's decided that these things are bad for people's mental health, okay, well, let's tax them at 5% or 10% or whatever that tax is agreed to be, which would be billions of dollars. And instead of focusing it on government bodies that don't have a clue what they're going to do, just do an XPRIZE where, okay, whichever top 20 entrepreneurs come up with a solution that's falsifiable by science in terms of helping people's mental health, they get the funding.

    16. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    17. GM

      They get the funding and you filter the money away from these, uh, things that are arguably damaging people's mental health into these companies. And, and then you, Facebook can carry on being Facebook, Instagram can carry on being Instagram, Snapchat can carry on being Snapchat, but people have the control in terms of they can customize their own screen time way more, play games that way, and the money's getting filtered into these mental health startups.

    18. CW

      I like the analogy about the needle and the, and the drug, because it is, it's the delivery mechanism, isn't it? Through the phone. I would love to see the relative time on site desktop versus mobile now, because I think previously, uh, the last time I checked it was at 85% mobile. I bet that's even gone up.

    19. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    20. CW

      I bet that's gone up more. I bet it's like 90, 95%. And that's not to say that the desktop version of the apps isn't that good, but it's just that the mobile version is so overwhelmingly addictive-

    21. GM

      Yeah.

    22. CW

      ... and convenient that people can't get around it.

    23. GM

      So this is, so this is my thing about the sort of antisocial social network is what, um, it needs an, it needs again a PR stuff as most of my stuff, it needs a name and stuff.

    24. CW

      Cool.

    25. GM

      But basically, uh, what so, a lot of the social networks do is almost have these, takes our relationships and puts them in this weird little digital stuff and this little hierarchy going on. Whereas being on Instagram for five hours a day, if you heard someone, if you watch somebody doing that, it's quite a sad thing. And if that was in the leaderboard and you go, oh, and Dave knew that everyone else was looking at him going, "You spent five hours on Instagram today."

    26. CW

      Yeah.

    27. GM

      "You actually look a bit loser."

    28. CW

      Yeah, very much so.

    29. GM

      "You aren't even on live." And you can fl- you can actually use the biases that these social media outlets have used on the whole of humanity.

    30. CW

      Turn it upside down.

  11. 38:59 – 43:41

    Perspective and contrast: Zeitzalmers, abundance problems, and craving hardship

    1. CW

      I love it.

    2. GM

      ... Chris's casting couch. But basically, what we were saying earlier is 70 to 80 years ago ... Um, have I got that right? Yeah, roughly.

    3. CW

      A little bit more.

    4. GM

      Roughly. Um-

    5. CW

      Conscription.

    6. GM

      Yeah. We, we would have been in a world war, in the trenches, and realistically, we probably would have died, um, or would have seen stuff that if I would have seen a film of right now, I'd probably be still having nightmares of it 12 months later.

    7. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    8. GM

      So part ... I can't ... Like, could you imagine telling someone in the trenches, "Oh, I'm addicted to Insta-" "Shut the ..." You know what I mean?

    9. CW

      I c- ... Oh, yeah-

    10. GM

      So I, I have ... I had ... Part of me is like, we go back to Extreme Ownership and Personal Responsibility. Log off.

    11. CW

      S-

    12. GM

      Sign out.

    13. CW

      I get it.

    14. GM

      Delete the app. I get it if you're underage and that sort of stuff. Yes, that's a different question.

    15. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    16. GM

      But w- we seem as a c- uh, uh, our condition, as humanity's ... This is one of my mental models that I've thought about a lot, which is ... I call it Zeitzalmers. So it's a crossover of the current zeitgeist and Alzheimer's. So we kind of forget... We kind of... Every generation assumes that their problems are the worst there is, and forgets about the fact that we are just a, a blink in humanity's history, but we're also connected to all these previous generations, and we don't really realize it. And our generation is chatting about social media addiction, whereas I think it was my great-granddad where ... who, um, was a doctor, my dad was saying, and he was ... I think it was World War I. I forgot which battle line it was at. And so many people were dying on the battlefield. He ran out and was just rescuing bodies for hours and hours on end, and I'm fucking complaining about Instagram stories.

    17. CW

      (laughs)

    18. GM

      Do you know what I mean? It's ... I don't ... So what I think when you-

    19. CW

      Contrast.

    20. GM

      ... when you ... We've got to take a wider frame than this. And of course there's some stuff we can do, and we can look at the X Prizes, with the stuff you mentioned earlier. But come on. 'Cause if we, if we fix the Instagram problem, people will stop moaning about something else. I know I'm sounding like a '50s dad right now, and I'm

    21. NA

      No, no, no.

    22. CW

      I, I get it, man.

    23. GM

      But-

    24. CW

      So I mean, first off, I think you need to be careful because everything that you say will be used on the internet. And if you don't continue to brand well Zeitzalmers, which to me-

    25. GM

      (laughs)

    26. CW

      ... to me sounds like sparkling water, is going to be quoted by people on the internet and on Twitter.

    27. GM

      If a guy works at, in marketing, I'm gonna be doing horrific when it comes to my branding my terms.

    28. CW

      Yeah. Anybody who wants to rebrand some of Georgie's mental models, please, for the love of God-

    29. GM

      (laughs)

    30. CW

      ... get in, (laughs) get in touch 'cause they're terrible. But yeah, I get what you mean. I had a brief discussion with Theo and Eve from Social Chain the same day that we had our Mental Models 101 chat. In that discussion, I said exactly the same thing as you. However, as society progresses, the fidelity and resolution with which we look at our wellbeing has to advance as well. It's no good saying, "100 years ago, you'd have been in the trenches," because it is not 100 years ago. The advancement of wellbeing of humanity as a whole requires us to continue to look at this with a finer and finer viewpoint. We need to continue... Okay, just because it's not as bad as it was doesn't mean-

  12. 43:41 – 45:38

    Roy from Rick & Morty: life as a game, zooming out, and the ‘Roy score’ frame

    1. GM

      But that's why I'd say the most important thing on the sort of VR front to watch-

    2. CW

      (laughs)

    3. GM

      ... my favorite clip of all time, everybody who I sent it to, guys, it's changed me, it's the best, like, th- three minutes or two minutes-

    4. CW

      Roy.

    5. GM

      Yeah, R- if, Roy from Rick and Morty, um-

    6. CW

      In the show notes below, go watch it.

    7. GM

      Yeah.

    8. CW

      It's fantastic. ............................

    9. GM

      Just don't go back to the carpet store is all I'll say.

    10. CW

      Do not go back to the carpet store, ever.

    11. GM

      I actually, so one of the things, I don't know, you might know this, uh, it's-

    12. CW

      (laughs)

    13. GM

      ... not in my new place, it was when I was in Manchester, above my-

    14. CW

      Was it the photo on the wall of Roy?

    15. GM

      Yeah, above where I got changed is Roy falling off, the final scene where he falls off, breaks his back and dies. And it's the Roy score all over.

    16. CW

      Yeah.

    17. GM

      And I, I catch myself playing that. Like Tim Urban talks about this from Wait But Why, and you go, "Realistically, this is just a video game." Like, "What we're playing is just a video game." We, y- what are you? Like, and this sounds really weird, but you're just wake- you're just born one day and you're this fucking shaven chimp, and you, you take everything... I've got an iPhone, and I do da, da, da. And then at the end, it just, it, you die, and it's, uh, depending on, I guess, your, your religion and stuff, but I'd say you just die, and it's like feel all over-

    18. CW

      Yeah.

    19. GM

      ... or, or you certainly won't remember much in the next life. So it's just a video game. Um, and I think watching that Roy clip quite regularly, everyone who watches it goes, "Oh, fuck, that's what life basically is. We're just playing a game of Roy."

    20. CW

      Mm-hmm. So Roy, for the people that are listening, Roy is a scene from Rick and Morty. Uh, Morty goes into a virtual reality game where he's born, becomes an NFL player, lives the life of this guy called Roy, then he dies at the end, comes back out, but he's lived this whole life, right? Comes back out, and Rick then does a, like, analysis of how he played-

    21. GM

      Yeah, yeah.

    22. CW

      ... how he played the game. And it, you're totally right, it is that, the ability to view things with that broad perspective and to take-

    23. GM

      Mm-hmm.

  13. 45:38 – 52:47

    Occam, Hanlon, and ‘Mack’s Razor’: choose the option that generates more luck

    1. CW

      ... yourself out of the situation is a big part of it. So what I want to move on to is, I can't remember what we did last time, but let's quickly go through Hanlon's Razor, Occam's Razor, and then let's do MacGill's Razor.

    2. GM

      Let's do it again.

    3. CW

      Yet again, internet, if we can find something to rebrand it with, then-

    4. GM

      Um.

    5. CW

      ... please feel free.

    6. GM

      So I guess, uh, Occam's Razor is probably the most, like, well-known one from philosophy of if in doubt, you go with the, i- if you're presented with two similar arguments, um, and you can't make your mind up on which one, you go with the most simplest solution. Or you, the reason why it's called a razor is because you lean towards it. People often, I think, and again, I might not know this well enough, but people often think that therefore the simplest solution's always the answer. No, no, no. You assume the simplest solution is the answer, but then you work from there and you look for counter-evidence, et cetera. But you assume that. Whereas Hanlon's Razor's another version of that where if you're pre- let's say somebody's pissed you off, um, and you have equal evidence, was it out of malice or was it out of them not just thinking at all?

    7. CW

      S- do not attribute to, uh, malice what can be afforded to stupidity.

    8. GM

      Exactly. So, uh, Hanlon's Razor is just assume that it was down to their stupidity or it was down to their negative thinking-

    9. CW

      Negligence, yeah.

    10. GM

      ... it wasn't because they're a bad person. And then the razor I have-

    11. CW

      (laughs)

    12. GM

      ... um, is if presented with two situations, choose the one, uh, that will bring about the most amount of luck. And I'd say this is, if I had to give, I always say every episode if I was to pick one minute, I wanna, and I'll pick a different one each fucking episode.

    13. CW

      Well, that's fine.

    14. GM

      But this, I guess it, I guess as I get older, these things change, right?

    15. CW

      Yeah, they change.

    16. GM

      And I'd say in terms of actual output towards me and what I do, and again, I don't think I've done anything particularly special yet, um, or in general, in that this one by far has the most amount of impact. So I'll get, I'll give you, like, more practical examples of this. So, uh, quite recently, um, a guy was messaging me, and we were supposed to go for a drink, and he was like, "Oh, should we go, oh, should we go for a drink tonight or should we delay it?" And I was like going, and I remember I just caught myself, and I was going, "What's gonna bring about the most luck here? Me going and sitting at home and just chilling out and doing nothing, or going for a drink with a like-minded guy I've never met before, um, and seeing what happens?" And of course, I was like, "Well, definitely the latter is." But even though naturally I was going, "I just, I'm tired, I want to go home," I was like, "Okay, let's just pick the luckiest option." As a result, lots of stuff came off the back of that, um, and constantly looking for where, okay, I've got two potential decision trees to go down here. Which one do I think is gonna bring about the most amount of luck? And constantly doing that. One of my favorite examples is my, my mates, uh, James and Reece, when they were at a Drake concert-

    17. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    18. GM

      ... and they're at the M-E-N, uh, th- those two guys are massive Drake fans. And they were both in the toilet, so my mate James is proper into, like, sneakers, he's one of the sneaker heads, and he sees a, a massive guy, um, in the toilets, and he says, "Mate, I love your shoes." And he just, just randomly compliments a stranger-

    19. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    20. GM

      ... and he gets cha-

    21. CW

      Hand on penis?

    22. GM

      (laughs) Hand on penis, yeah.

    23. CW

      Was he hand on penis?

    24. GM

      He was doing the whole, the, uh, the cross move, yeah.

    25. CW

      They were hands on each other's penis?

    26. GM

      Yeah, of course, of course. Um, and I was building up to a point there.

    27. CW

      Sorry.

    28. GM

      But, uh, so yeah, they sit, complimenting him on his shoes, and they get chatting back and forth. And anyway, that guy turned out to be Drake's DJ.And he goes, "Do you wanna come back VIP with us and hang around with Drake and, like, Kevin De Bruyne and Paul Pogba and Odell Beckham Jr.?" And he went out with, like, the A-list of the A-list of the A-list. I'm not saying that's something you wanna aspire to, but, um, that's a fucking cool story, right?

    29. CW

      Yeah.

    30. GM

      And a great night. And as a result, whenever Drake comes to town, they text that DJ and he sorts them out. And you go, that just came down to complimenting a guy in his shoes.

  14. 52:47 – 1:02:23

    Third story & identity traps: steelmanning, self-serving bias, and using biases instead of fighting them

    1. CW

      So I've got one that you might not know. Have you heard of third story? Have you heard of this, mental model?

    2. GM

      No. Maybe.

    3. CW

      Cool. So third story, you can imagine that in any normal situation, you have your point of view, my point of view, but then you'd also have a third point of view, which would actually be from someone outside of the situation looking at both. A lot of the time people will discuss, um, the fact that-

    4. GM

      Yeah.

    5. CW

      ... you want to see things from someone else's perspective. You don't just need to see that, 'cause that might not actually be the best place to see this from. The totally impartial observer probably has the best view of both. Now, we spoke-

    6. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    7. CW

      ... we, we spoke at length about, uh, how much we love Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris's approach to the beginning of their debate together-

    8. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    9. CW

      ... when they steel-manned each other's arguments. And is it Warren Buffett who says he refuses to have a position on anything?

    10. GM

      Charlie Munger, yeah.

    11. CW

      Charlie Munger says-

    12. GM

      Refuses, I think he says he refuses to have a position on anything unless he can state the other side better than the other side can, basically, is what it is, and I think he calls that his iron discipline. Um, and that ca- that catches me a lot, is where I have an opinion on something and I'll keep researching my side of the opinion, keep going over it and over it and over it, and I go, "God, I've not even looked at the other side," and it kind of holds you accountable of not chatting about something. The other day I was, uh, having a chat with my mate and we were strategizing at work, and I go, I catch myself on like a proper Charlie Munger moment, um, where he's talking about a certain market that we should look at potentially investing in. And I go, "You know what I actually think that's a..." I go, "I actually don't have an opinion."

    13. CW

      (laughs)

    14. GM

      I can't tell you. I noticed everything about the other side, and I go, "I actually don't know this subject well enough."

    15. CW

      We just want to sound clever, don't we?

    16. GM

      Yeah.

    17. CW

      So much, man. And I, I feel-

    18. GM

      But then we talked about it earlier of the benefit of identifying probably as an idiot. Like, anybody ever listening to this, watching this, please know that I am an imbecile. And I say that, um, mainly for myself, because that, we was chatting about it earlier, of when you, you recently, and I'm sure people who have heard the podcast, uh, a lot, you chat a lot about the benefits you got from ROMWOD, and now you've U- done a bit of a U-turn on that and-

    19. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    20. GM

      ... uh, the, uh, WOOT band, you've done a bit of a U-turn on that, right? And once you go out there shouting out, "I am an X," or, "I'm a Republican," "I am a Democrat," "I'm a smart person," um, "I'm a," whatever you want to do, whenever you have those labels, it's then very hard to-... once you've said it out loud to everyone-

    21. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    22. GM

      ... to then pivot and do a U-turn. And often because people don't want to be seen as being a hypocrite, but I admire people so much more once they've been so gung ho- gung ho on something and they go the other way. Like, people who've been in, like, Scientology or the, um, who the, uh, what's the church in America that shouts at soldier's funerals and they, and they leave and they go against their whole family. Like, the ability to go against your identity, which I think is the hardest thing to do, is so impressive. Which is why I always id- identify as an idiot.

    23. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    24. GM

      'Cause if I identify as an idiot, then when I do stupid stuff-

    25. CW

      It's like the minimum viable-

    26. GM

      ... or I fail, then-

    27. CW

      ... minimum viable pro-

    28. GM

      ... then I'm an idiot, yeah. You got me.

    29. CW

      ... product to be a, to be a thinker-

    30. GM

      Exactly.

  15. 1:02:23 – 1:19:17

    Anchoring, peak-end memory, orthogonal thinking, and ‘cook vs chef’ originality

    1. CW

      Um, so a couple of things that have been floating around in my head recently. So anchoring, which is kind of a little bit like first impressions matter, so where someone posits a price to you when you begin, you then make everything else relative to that. There's a really good, uh, example of, about economist pricing. Have you heard this one?

    2. GM

      No.

    3. CW

      Oh, wow. So let me run you through this. So, um, in Predictably Irrational, there's an example from the economist's pricing strategy, okay? So three options to subscribe-

    4. GM

      Right.

    5. CW

      Have you heard this one be-

    6. GM

      The economist thing?

    7. CW

      Yeah.

    8. GM

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    9. CW

      Three options to subscribe. Web only is $59, print only is $125, print and web, $125.

    10. GM

      Yeah.

    11. CW

      The split is web only, 16% of people purchased, print only, 0%, print and web, 84%. Now, if you remove the print and web option, 68% instead of 16 buy web only, and 32% instead of 84 buy, uh, print. So by adding in an option-

    12. GM

      Wow.

    13. CW

      ... which means nothing, you anchor people's price in a different way. And this relates to something that I'm gonna butcher the example, so please send me the proper study, but the concept is still solid. Endoscopies were getting done on people, and they judged the relative amount of discomfort someone was going to be in by the amount of movement. That's apparently a, a fairly good metric for how much discomfort there's going to be. More movement equals more pain.

    14. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    15. CW

      People went through this particular endoscopy and were asked to rate their overall pain afterwards. Now, in one iteration, the pain was at a lower rate, let's call it four out of 10, for almost all, but at the very end, rose up to around-

    16. GM

      Wow.

    17. CW

      ... about a seven. In another iteration, the experiment was actually extended, so the, um, operation was longer, but finished at a two instead of a seven.

    18. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    19. CW

      So overall, the second version, second iteration of this experiment was more total discomfort. It was longer, uh, I think there was actually potentially like a five out of 10 throughout, five or a six throughout instead of a four, but then dropped to a two. Ask the patients to rate their relative pain at the end of it. Overwhelmingly, the patients that finished at a lower pain score, much fewer bad memories, much lower pain rating, even though through every objective measure it should have been higher. And there's a, a quote I remember seeing online that talks about if you care about your child, and they're going through an operation that they can feel, this is something that you want to happen. Because despite the fact that through every objective measure your child will go through more pain, that pain is transient, but the memory is forever.

    20. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    21. CW

      And what they will remember will be less pain. And that, to me, is something that I think about a lot. F- final memories or final impressions matter. The same way that first impressions matter, final impressions matter as well.

    22. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    23. CW

      So perfect example, one of the guys that I'm coaching, Sam, he recently got sent out to some random coun- country to go and train a sales team. Literally two days notice, "Right, mate, drop your life. You've got to go out to Istanbul, somewhere." "Okay, cool." Gets out there and has three weeks of chaos, and he's speaking to me about four days before he's gonna leave and he's like, "Well, what do you think that I should do?" And I was like, "What personally I think you should do is treat yourself as nicely as you can for the final two days of your holiday. Find the prettiest spot in Istanbul, take yourself out for a dinner, find some good music, do something cool, spend a little bit of money."

    24. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    25. CW

      "Buy yourself a nice pair of trainers, do something, and then when you come back, you are going to lean your memory towards all of the nice final finishing moments that you had on that trip, and hopefully it'll help you to forget that." So it's a really nice way to help to either double down on a nice experience or to mitigate a bad one, is to try and really finish it off with something that's good.

    26. GM

      It's like stand-up comedy 101. You start off with your second-best joke and then you finish with your best joke 'cause that is just, uh, yeah, it's what stand-up comedians always do. That makes a lot of sense. Um, one weird one which I've been thinking about for a while, and I'm not smart enough to really flesh this one out, but we'll give it a go.

    27. CW

      Crack it out then, come on.

    28. GM

      Um, which is orthogonal thought, um, which is when you come at something from a completely different angle-

    29. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    30. GM

      ... to somebody else. So this comes from primarily Eric Weinstein, um, and he talks about...... two particular examples. Um, one which is the, uh, I forgot the guy, but he was on the Japanese table, tab- table tennis team.

Episode duration: 1:28:53

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