Modern WisdomShocking Psychology Lessons To Understand People Better - Gurwinder Bhogal
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,216 words- 0:00 – 10:27
The Internet is Saturated with Garbage
- CWChris Williamson
You've become the intellectual Nikocado Avocado. You are-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... obese, obese with interesting ideas. So we're gonna go through as many-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... as we can get through today. My first one-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... one of my favorites, idiocy saturation. Online, people who don't think before they post are able to post more often than people who do. As a result, the average social media post is stupider than the average social media user. Worth remembering whenever Twitter dumbassery drives you to despair.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. So by Twitter dumbassery, what I mean is if you just go onto Twitter un- unfiltered and you're not sort of, you don't have a curated feed, and you just look at the posts, it makes you wanna blow your brains out just because there's just so much garbage. It's just a avalanche of garbage. Um, and it kind of like, when I first went onto Twitter, I got a really low opinion of humanity because I was fooled into believing that this was reflective of what humans actually think. Um, but it actually took me a bit of time to realize that the stuff that you see on social media is overwhelmingly cons- it consists of stuff that people have posted hastily without thought. Because the people who really think about what they're posting, they take a lot longer to post. And so naturally, it's gonna be filled with stuff like, um, "Oh, I'm tired, lol." You know, "I'm gonna go to bed, lol," and stuff like, just meaningless nonsense like that is gonna be the stuff that makes the majority of social media posts. And I think this is why it's so important to curate your feed, um, because I always say that, um, a social media feed is the worst possible source of information you can have, but a well-curated social media feed is amongst the very best sources of information you can have. It makes such a difference. It- it's the difference between hell and heaven. And, um, a large part of that really consists of filtering out people who don't think before they post, people who just give in to their worst impulses and just follow their whims rather than actually following their logic and their rationality.
- CWChris Williamson
What was that insight you had around how famous people will tweet some half-baked idea whilst they're sat on the toilet that will then be studied by the entire world for the next three weeks?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
(laughs) Yeah, I mean, um, I mean, this was kind of like a guess, but I think that this is true. I suspect it's true. I think w- we kind of, what's happened is that people, uh, have a tendency to over interpret information online. So they'll read into information a lot more than was intended. And I mean, I call this the politicization of babble, basically. I think that's what it, what it actually is, is a lot of people don't lo- because they don't think before they post, they're just making a comment about something that just off the top of their head, it's just something that's come very sort of, you know, quickly to their mind, and it's something that they just vomit out. They don't really think about it. And then what happens is you get people on the other side of the world who will see that, and they will assume that this is a hill that the person's willing to die on, something that they've spent their entire life thinking about. And they will scrutinize it and dissect it and evaluate it and write essays on it. And I've seen this happen a lot, you know, with... I mean, nowadays you get whole articles, whole news articles written about one tweet. You know, some, if some famous person like Elon Musk, if he just, just, you know, farts out a tweet, uh, then you'll get like a BBC journalist who will basically just lock onto that tweet and then they'll just write a whole piece about it, and they'll, they'll just completely scrutinize it as though they could sort of give a psychological profile based on this one tweet, you know?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
And I think that's very dangerous because most people don't think very much before they tweet. It's just a whim. It's like when you go and meet somebody and you have a cocktail party, and then they just start just talking. They're not, they're not really thinking, they're just trying to make conversation. Um, so they'll just say stuff that they don't even mean half the time. And I think this is something that people need to realize is that when people say things, it doesn't necessarily mean that they mean what they're saying. Sometimes people are just, they're just sort of experimenting, you know? They're just kind of throwing out ideas out there just to see what people think of it. And to be honest, I do that as well. I don't actually, uh, firmly believe a lot of the stuff that I tweet out. I just tweet it out just to see how people react and, you know, then I can maybe sort of calibrate what I'm thinking based on that. Um, so yeah, we shouldn't take what people tweet out or what they post seriously online most of the time because they might feel differently five minutes after.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
In fact, I do that all the time.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
You know, I'll tweet something and then I'll just, five minutes after I've tweeted it, I've got a completely different opinion.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
And I'm like, "Actually, what I just tweeted was a load of shit." You know? And, um-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... so I think people need to, to bear that in mind. Uh, Scott Adams actually had a really good, uh, idea where it, he, he calls it the 48-hour rule, where he says that we should never judge what a person has posted until 48 hours have passed and we've given that person a chance to retract what they've said. Obviously, this is not feasible. It's not something that you could actually do in real life because, you know, you, you can't wait 48 hours after
- NANarrator
Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... of every opinion. But the, I like the idea behind it because I think a lot of what people say is essentially it's kind of like just a untamed frisson of some sensation that they've had in their, in their mind, you know? Something that's just kind of triggered them to just say something. Um, and they haven't really, so they haven't domesticated it. They haven't really, you know, tamed it. So it's just a wild idea that's just kind of run rampant in their head and they've just decided to just, you know, let it out of the cage.
- CWChris Williamson
The, uh-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Um, and we-
- CWChris Williamson
... this is, this is facilitated by the frictionlessness of social media. You know, previously, if you wanted to use the Gutenberg printing press to actually get something down onto paper, the, you would make sure that you'd spent some time thinking about what you were gonna get. This one very, very small slot that you had to be able to produce your incredibly important pamphlet or whatever you're talking about. But you're right, the, the, the frictionlessness allows brain to mouth or brain to fingertips to be instantaneous. This is something that I realized around the Jordan Peterson, uh, Sports Illustrated girl furor. Was it last year, I think? And-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... I, I love Jordan. He's been a massive influence on me and he's very, very kind to me. But things like that...... people tried to dissect exactly what was going on in the inner recesses of Jordan's mind when he said, "Sorry, not beautiful, and no amount of totalitarian overreach will convince me otherwise." Everything about that tweet, and almost everything really that the older guys on Twitter are putting out, can be understood if you remember that they're boomers. All that you need to do-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... is just remember the fact that they're a boomer. Right? Filter it through, this isn't somebody who has a, a, a, a particularly additionally sophisticated Twitter habit or, or, or, or process that they go through before they construct a tweet. You know, our friends, some of our friends who are way, way less famous, George Mack, yourself, you know, these guys craft tweets over, over weeks. It takes weeks and weeks to come up with these huge mega threads. And George will show me his notes, and he's building them up over time and all this sort of stuff. I guarantee that Jordan took less than f- three minutes, probably, to type that tweet out, and yet it's then going to be indicative of his pathologization, "Let's get the psychiatrists in to work out... Oh, is this something to do with his unrequited Jungian archetype from the f-" Like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, it's just, he saw-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- 10:27 – 14:34
Why People Compare Opponents to Nazis So Quickly
- CWChris Williamson
way out of the door, I don't know. But there's another one as well-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, that's it.
- CWChris Williamson
... Godwin's Law, to add on to this, as an online discussion grows, the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Hitler approaches 100%. Most people are quick to compare things to Nazi Germany because it's the only history they know.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, so I think this is an instance of the availability heuristic. So, um, one of the ideas that comes most, sort of freshest to mind in, uh, people's minds when they think of history, is, is Hitler and the Nazis, 'cause it's one thing that we constantly taught at school. It's, it's the one thing that is, is basically... Because it's, it's got all the, sort of, it's got all the elements of a narrative, m- sort of box office smash, you know (laughs) ? It's a story of good against evil, uh, to an extent. I mean if you don't include Stalin on the, on the Allies, you know? Um, and it's basically about kind of, you know, um, people who wanted freedom from tyranny against essentially a tyrant. And the good guys won in the end, you know? Obviously this is a simplification but this is the general sort of way it's portrayed and, um, and it's, it's just a timeless classic. It's, it's something that you'd find in, in a movie. And so because it's so cinematic and because of all the stuff involved, I mean it's got so many crazy stories in there, you know, um, the story of the Enigma machine. We've got Oppenheimer now, which is gonna be a, a hit, hit film, and all these crazy stories within the sort of remit of World War II make it something that is very memorable and a lot of people will focus on that. Uh, a lot of people who don't know anything about history know about World War II and they know about the Nazis and they know about-
- CWChris Williamson
They think they know about the Nazis.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Oh, they think they know, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
They think they know about World War II. Do, do you not know that the Nazi was actually Socialist? It was actually the part of the Socialist Party?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah (laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
And then it just gets into a game of linguistic. There should be a rule-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You need to come up with one, uh, which is...... almost all arguments online devolve into a game of lexical Brazilian jiu-jitsu over time. Because-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... almost all of it is just, "That's not the term that I mean precisely. You're using that word in the wrong way. What is the word woman in any case? Do you not know that-"
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
No.
- CWChris Williamson
"... Nazi meant Socialist? Nazis were far left, not far right. Stalin wasn't a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Do you know what I mean?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, there is actually a, uh, a law, uh, about this actually. Uh, let me see if I can find it in my list of rules, 'cause I've forgotten the name of it.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
But it's, uh, there's actually a, uh... Let me just quickly go through them, right, so I can find it. Uh, so I'll find it. Lane's Law. So, um, every debate is ultimately a debate about the definition of words. Um, so for instance, you know, there are many examples of this, but one example would be gender, for instance. So if you're, you know, if you, if there's an argument between a gender critical person and a trans rights activist, the debate will almost always end with them discussing what gender is. Um, and if there's a debate about free will, it will almost always end with them discussing what free will is. And likewise, socialism, you know, like socialism will mean a different thing to a leftist as it will mean to a right-rightist. And so it's called Lane's Law, and it's basically the, the idea that every debate ultimately is a debate about the definition of words. And I think that's actually accurate. I don't think it's... It's probably not like a universal law. It's not, it's not true in every single instance, but I think it's a true enough law that it's a good rule of thumb.
- CWChris Williamson
Agreed.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Um, and that's why, yeah, I think in most debates it becomes like a contest between... It's like one play- one person's playing tennis and one person is playing baseball, because they're using different definitions for terms based on their tribe. 'Cause every tribe has got its own definitions, you know, it has its own definitions of what certain words mean. And so when t- people from two different tribes are arguing, they're using their own tribe's definitions, and that's why they'll never ever see eye to eye. And that's why if I am gonna debate somebody, I, I don't really do it very often, but if I am gonna do it, I'll always be sure to ensure that I'm, we're actually on the same page in terms of definitions. I think that's absolutely essential. There's just no point in having any debate unless you are willing to agree on the definitions of words.
- 14:34 – 26:09
Why is Happiness Evolutionary?
- CWChris Williamson
Yep. Next one, arrival fallacy. We didn't evolve to be happy, but to believe we'll be happy if we just accomplish the latest goal. So we seldom taste true joy, but we often pick up its scent just enough to keep us in pursuit. Paradise is not a destination or a journey, but a horizon.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, I think, um... So happiness, we have to ask ourselves, uh, why did happiness evolve? And obviously it didn't evolve for us to s- you know, uh, meet one goal and then be satisfied for the rest of our lives, because if we did that, we wouldn't live very long. We would just fulfill one goal and then we would die because we wouldn't have any motivation to do anything else. So in a sense, happiness is like a carrot constantly being dangled in front of your, your ha- your head, uh, except it's tied to your head. So every time you move forward, the carrot moves forward. So you're constantly reaching for the carrot, but you can't quite get it. And what this does is it keeps you moving forward under the impression that you're gonna eventually get that carrot, but you will never get the carrot because it's, it's tied to your head. Um, and this is, I think is a good way of looking at, at happiness. This is not to say that you can't ever be happy in your life. You will be happy in your life, but that happiness will never last. You know, you'll, you'll be happy, for instance, if you save up to buy a nice car. The day you get that car, you're gonna be happy. You're gonna be really happy. And you take it out for a test drive, and you'll impress your friends with it, and, you know, you'll be, you'll, you'll feel good. But within a couple of days, you'll have gotten used to having that car, and it's no longer gonna bring you that same joy, and then you're gonna want to chase something else. And this is the process that a lot of people go through in their lives where they're constantly chasing something new because the things that they have have not made them happy. And, um, Naval Ravikant, he had this, uh, great line where he said that, uh, "Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want." And I think that's a good way of looking at it, where you're basically choosing to be unhappy because you don't have this thing that you're looking to get. Uh, and you'll on- you basically tell yourself, you write this contract with yourself where you'll only be happy if you can get that thing. But the thing is, it's an illusion, because once you get it, you're only gonna a- be happy for a short period of time. And I think ultimately what I've found in my life is that the solution to this sort of quandary is that you're not gonna be happy by accumulating possessions, but by relinquishing desires. So you have to learn to be happy with less, learn to appreciate the little things in life. And I've found that since I've done this, I've just been so much happier. Um, I-
- CWChris Williamson
How do you relinquish desires?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Just to be content, like, with what you have. Like, s- this is a bit of a complex thing, and I'm gonna tell you a bit of a weird story. But, um, the other day I was in the supermarket, and I saw a tomato, and I was absolutely overjoyed by this tomato. I just thought this tomato was absolutely amazing. And I picked it up, and it was so plump and juicy and shiny and bright, and I loved it. I thought, "This is absolutely incredible." And I was so happy that I'd seen this tomato. And, you know, when I got home, I ate this tomato, and I was really, really happy about it. And the reason why that tomato made me really happy was because I've actually thought about the amount of work that it takes to make a beautiful tomato like that, right? This is, like tomatoes originally were not as delicious as they are now. They were originally not as beautiful as they are now. This is a product of many, many years, many centuries of selective breeding, of cultivation, uh, of people learning everything that they h- there is to learn about agriculture. And then over many, many years, them passing this knowledge down to their, their sons and daughters, and then their sons and daughters learning even more and then passing that information down. And all of this, this selective breeding of the tomato over many generations, and the knowledge of agriculture, of how to create the perfect tomato, and all of this was done in order to create this one tomato essentially, um, to create this beautiful thing that people want to eat. And...I th- when I think about the amount of effort that it takes to create something as beautiful as a nice tomato, something that feels really good in the mouth, something that has a lot of flavor, it makes me appreciate that so much more. And I think that a lot of the value in things comes from understanding just how lucky we are to have them. And that's why I try to not to take these things for granted, right? I- I will always try to look at how hard things are to get. For instance, I am constantly amazed by the fact that I can eat food from all over the world, right, without even leaving my apartment, right? That is absolutely incredible. If you were to go back in time to the 18th century, and you were to tell people that you could do this in the future, that you could just pick up a device and talk on this device, and then within half an hour, you could have food from anywhere on the planet delivered to your doorstep, they would be blown away. They would think this is, "You're living a life better than a king."
- CWChris Williamson
Have you heard-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
I mean, we-
- CWChris Williamson
Have you heard the story behind the first ever pineapple that was imported to the United Kingdom?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
I haven't. No. That sounds like it's-
- CWChris Williamson
I'll send you the, I'll send you the, I'll send you the link afterward.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I watched a YouTube video about it. It's absolutely fantastic. So pineapples cost, I think, the equivalent of £4,000 each in, I want to say, maybe late 1700s, something like that. And it was just a signal of opulence. So opulent, in fact, that people would get statues of pineapples placed outside of their family estates. This is the sort of house you're going into-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Wow.
- CWChris Williamson
... is a house that eats £4,000 fruit. Like that-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Wow. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
This is the kind of place. And, um-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, they're talking about, they're talking about the- the journey that this thing goes through, and then as soon as the first pineapple is grown in the UK, they're able to start growing them in the UK. Uh, i- i- it... All of the pineapple monuments go down because it, it's a counter-signal. You did a- a great thread about-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... um, Marcus Aurelius as well, and there's a quote from him that reminds me of what you're talking about here. "Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours. Gratitude for what you have can cure the endless desire for what you have not."
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, absolutely. And that's what I do, is I think of my- my life relative to, say, a medieval peasant, and how lucky I am. I mean, a medieval peasant-
- CWChris Williamson
You remind me a lot of a medieval peasant, actually.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
(laughs) Well, I- I think a medieval peasant has a lot of wisdom about them. I think that kind of lifestyle appeals to me, to be honest. Um, but like, uh, you know, they... To them, like, the idea that, of a person like you and I, that are living the kind of li... You know, we- we're talking to each other from across the world. Like, you're in the States, I'm in the UK, and we're having a- an ordinary conversation as though we were sharing the same space, you know? Thi- this is magic to a medieval peasant. Um, the things that we do are absolutely mind-blowing to pretty much all of human history, apart from to our generation because we're used to it, because to us, we- we're born into this world, and so it doesn't seem that special to us, but I think-
- CWChris Williamson
Here's- here's the crazy thing though, if- if that peasant... There's nothing special about that particular peasant himself. It's simply about the time that he was in. If you placed that peasant into the modern world, and he was able to pick up the language and do all of the things, I bet within five years, he would have forgotten the fact that he used to live in 1678 or something.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And like, he, the... I was imagining there in my mind what human existence would be like if our hedonic adaptation wasn't as powerful as it is. We'd be fucked, because we wouldn't be-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... able to keep up with the pace that the world changes at. There's a Morgan Housel quote as well, which is phenomenal, and he says, "The first rule of winning the game is to stop moving the goal posts." He's talking about it in a, uh, money-saving psychology of- of- of investing perspective. But (clears throat) it's so true. When we're thinking about the arrival fallacy, you know, this belief, um, that what we're moving toward, that we, eventually we will be happy. What is it? The, uh, uh, the, that thing about the idyll that you're moving toward was in fact your death. Uh, the not yet started life fallacy or something?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Uh. Yeah, um, uh, the, uh, uh, something syndrome, um. I've forgotten what it's called now-
- CWChris Williamson
Anyway, there's a-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
But yeah, I- I know, yeah (laughs) . Yeah.
- 26:09 – 36:33
When Incels Think They Would Be Better Suited to Medieval Times
- CWChris Williamson
of-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Absolutely.
- CWChris Williamson
... speaking of your peasant thing, I had a new one for you, which I came up with. This is a, a, a collaboration between me and Alexander Date-Sike, who is a, a great Twitter follow. This is the alpha history fantasy. Modern men who are angry at a world they believe has rejected them mistakenly feel that they would have done better in medieval times. They are somehow adamant that the chance of them being Genghis Khan is greater than the chance of them being cannon fodder peasant number 1,373,000-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... whose favela was sacked and destroyed.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
That's a brilliant one. I love that one. Yeah, absolutely. Um, I was, I was reading this, uh, this article yesterday about Bronze Age Pervert. I don't know if you've, if you agree with...
- CWChris Williamson
Yes, I read it as well. I read the same, I read the same article.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, yeah. It's, uh, it's quite funny, because for your audience, uh, who, who might not know who he is, so he's a sort of far-right figure. And when I say far right, I actually mean genuinely far right. Not the kind of far right that you'll, uh, see on Wikipedia, you know, but actual far right. Like, he's a, he's a neo-reactionary, so he's like... This guy basically believes that a group of strong men should rule over everybody with absolute authority, um, essentially, and he's openly fascist and stuff. So, uh, this guy's become quite popular sort of on the right, and, um, particularly, um, among certain people in the Trump White House, he was quite popular. They, they used to pass out, pass around his book, um, uh, Bronze Age Mindset. And, uh, he, his whole thing is basically about being strong. It's about, um, you know, working out and having a massive physique. Like his, his avatar on, uh, on Twitter is like this hench, like jacked, uh, guy basically. And he's all about, like, you know, um, cultivating physical strength, and basically the strongest should, should rule and the weak should perish, and all this. And it's hilarious because his identity was actually, um, sort of revealed against his wishes, and he's this guy called Amariu, who's like a, I think a Romanian, uh, immigrant to a- to the US. And he's basically... His actual appearance is he's like some scrawny little sort of pale kid, like, you know, who's (laughs) who's nothing like he was presenting himself out to be on Twitter and on sort of, you know, on his, uh, Caribbean Rhythms podcast. 'Cause he was making out like he was this massive bodybuilder, like beefcake, you know, monster, basically like a barbarian. That's what he was- his whole thing is based around. Mm-hmm. But in real life, he's like this really wimpy-looking, like, scrawny kid, and like... It's absolutely hilarious, 'cause I think that a lot of these people who claim that they wanna live in these, you know, old sort of Genghis Khan-style, uh, worlds where, you know, it's just all about brutality, a lot of them wouldn't survive like, uh, you know, even a, a couple of days. They would, they would be-
- CWChris Williamson
Dude, you, you've landed precisely on what Alex started having an argument about online. So he came up with, with half of this, and then I fleshed it out and gave it the name. Um, and he was having a, an argument with the @incels co. uh, Twitter account, which is super, super, like, uh, antagonistic and, and it... Like something really fascinating to observe, absolutely fascinating to observe, to be honest. He was having this big argument with them, and his point was, "Hang on a second. So you are unsuccessful in the competence dominance hierarchy and socio-sexually with, uh, or socio-economically in terms of being able to attract women sexually in 2023, and somehow the belief is that half a millennia ago in 1523 you would have done better?" That, that, that you... Like, a guy twice your size would have warned you to fuck a girl with. Like, there is, there i- uh, he would have, he would have happily beheaded you, he would have happily taken your wi-... You know. So I, I do think that it's just an important redress to the balance that things were b- you know, it was a purer time, it was a better time. Don't, don't get me wrong, like-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, I... I think that a lot of the people who claim to want to live in a sort of idyllic past are really yearning for their childhood, I think, a lot of the t- uh, a lot of the time. Because-... when they say that they want a simpler time, a simpler world, that is essentially their childhood. That's a world where things were much simpler, where, you know, they didn't have to worry with all, about all the kind of complexities of adulthood-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... and all that kind of stuff. So this is me being a kind of armchair psychologist here, but like I- I do think that a lot of people really are secretly yearning for their childhood when they claim to want to return to this idyllic past, because this idyllic past didn't e- actually ever exist. It's always been brutal. Like, I mean, there was this one really, um... There's a, this, this kind of far right, another far right, um, lady, she's half-Indian, I think, her name's Mega or something, and she's, uh, she's always tweeting about how the past was so much better than the, than the present. And she's wrote this one thing about how, um, you know, like in the past, it was much easier to grow food because all you had to do was just have your own little patch of land and then you could grow any food you wanted. And, you know, you, you had enough to feed your whole family and everything. And it's just complete nonsense because the, the kinds of... In the past, food was so hard to grow, like you had to have the perfect soil, you had to have the perfect pH, uh, you know, you had to, you had to constantly ensure that insects weren't getting at the food, pests and stuff. Um, you had to ensure that the weather was right. There were so many things that would g- just go wrong, things that we take for granted now, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Now, we've got pesticides, we've got fertilizers, uh, we've got like greenhouses, we've got, uh, UV, uh, sorry, infrared lights. We've got all this, um, different stuff that helps stuff grow, right? We can grow stuff at length now. We can grow as much food as we want. But this wasn't always the case. It wasn't, food wasn't always this plentiful. In the past, your crops could fail, like, within a day. Like, you know, you could, you could be, you could have a massive field of crops and within a day, they could get ruined-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... by a single flood, you know? It would... We were completely at the mercy of nature, um, you know? And people don't seem to realize this, people seem to think that, "Oh, you know, living in the past is just like, um, living around nature, man." You know, like (laughs) , you know-
- CWChris Williamson
Free love.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... just basically... Yeah, free love. You know, it's like the people... And this is true of the trads on the right as well a- as the kind of, the kind of hippies that you might find who are more on the left. But like, it's, it's this sort of idealization of the past, one that you just don't, one that doesn't reflect reality.
- CWChris Williamson
I wonder if-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
A lot of the stuff-
- CWChris Williamson
I wonder if we could fold in the, like the horticulturalists' history fantasy as well, or the agriculturalists' history fantasy as well as the alphas.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Exactly. You know, the- there's... For instance, like there, you know, there's... If you look at sort of the famines that are happening in places like Sudan, for instance, and Somalia, those things were widespread. They were happening everywhere at one point. Um, and the only reason they don't happen in the West anymore is because we have the technology to prevent them from happening. So this is not like, oh, you know, we're just lucky and, uh, to, to... Because nature's on our side and nature wants us to eat well. No. (laughs) Nature doesn't give a shit about us. You know, nature's, nature's desires are not aligned with us. I- if it wants to ruin our crops, it will just ruin our crops. It doesn't care about what humans want. And, you know, entire populations in the past died of starvation. We are lucky because we are the ones that descended from those who just happened to, to make it, you know, just-
- CWChris Williamson
Here's, here's another way to look at it. So for the people that are on the left, that would maybe, um, you know, "The climate 100 years ago, it was so much more balanced. Look at these extreme weather events that we're having," et cetera, et cetera. Climate-related deaths have decreased by 98% in the last century. There's been a 50X decrease, and more people die-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Wow.
- CWChris Williamson
... from cold weather than die from hot weather.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
More people die from cold than die from heat. And there's been a 50-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... 50X decrease in climate-related deaths over the last century. So, you know, there-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Amazing trend.
- 36:33 – 41:00
A Crisis of Purpose is a Privilege
- CWChris Williamson
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
So (laughs) -
- CWChris Williamson
There's a- there's one, there's one that I came up with, the existential crisis luxury. Only when the bottom levels of Maslow's hierarchy are filled can you ask questions like, "Am I truly self-actualizing?" Therefore, having a crisis of life direction should be a reason for gratitude, not despondency.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Absolutely. We are so lucky, you know, to have what we have. Gratitude is something that, in or- to have the kinds of problems we have, we have to be living lives that are essentially, you know, this- the whole thing about first world problems, you know, this is- this is what we worry about most of the time now. We worry pretty much, I would say, 90% of my problems now are first world problems.
- CWChris Williamson
Am I enacting-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Um-
- CWChris Williamson
... my logos? Am I speaking my truth forward?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Exactly. Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
Is this really my highest self showing up day to day?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. Yeah. And I- this is why, you know, it's- (sighs) we- w- you know, if you look at the kinds of things that t- people are talking about now, people are talking about trauma, for instance. Trauma has become probably one of the most common buzzwords in the world today, um, in the- in the West. And what trauma means now is it usually just means being a little bit disappointed, whereas what trauma meant in the past would probably mean something like having your arm cut off, you know? So (laughs) , look, there's been a- there's been a massive amount of concept creep with regard to what we really regard as a problem, um, because we live lives of such luxury now. Uh, the people, sort of who were living 200, 300 years ago, they would probably be laughing at our problems. They would be just considerably-
- CWChris Williamson
I- I- I- I don't disagree.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And I'm- I sing from the same hymn sheet as yourself, but as we said before, hedonic adaptation is a hell of a drug and it's gonna continue to come in, and whatever the opposite of hedonic adaptation, but for how you begin to zero in on an evermore high resolution, high standard, high bar that you want from your life. And I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing for society to do either. If we were to say, "We only need to have healthcare standards that are at the level that they were in the 1800s, despite the fact that we've made all of this progress," that would be a- a- a rejection of the responsibility we have with our newly increased capacity. So it is important, both structurally and individually, to continue to ask more from yourself. It's the balance, as with everything, the virtuous mean. As with everything, you're trying to find where is the middle ground, where is the balance between these two different things?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, absolutely. Um, I wrote this tweet, actually, which I think speaks to this, uh, quite a bit. And it's basically about, um, and this basically is, it's, um, "Everything about humanity has improved throughout history except contentment. But it is only because our contentment never improves that we keep improving everything else." And I think that- that kind of speaks to what you were saying, which- which is basically that it's- it's essential to progress. We have to be uncomfortable in order to progress. We have to keep- we have to always find ways that the world could be better in order to make the world better. And so I agree with you completely. You know, we do need to have this kind of sense of, you know, this kind of hedonic adaptation is- it's not just, uh, good, it's necessary. It's absolutely necessary. Because if it weren't, we would just be- we would never- we would never progress as a species. We would just be content with what we have. So I think it- like I said, it's- it's a case of balancing, um, what we have with what we want. So we should be grateful for what we have. And- and that's what I am. I'm- I'm absolutely grateful for everything I have. But that doesn't mean that I don't want more. I can still want more and still be grateful for what I have. And that's- it's a bit of a weird sort of line to- to balance, but it can be done, um, because you can always find new things to want. That's- that's the easiest thing in the world. The harder thing is to be- find some sort of value in what you already have. And I think just finding that balance is- is the key to being happy, I think.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
It's definitely made a difference to me.
- CWChris Williamson
Have I told you about that story I learned about, uh, the Buddha's quote of "Life is suffering"? So the word suffering is Dukkha, D-U-K-K-H-A. And some scholars argue, contest that it's not suffering, but unsatisfactoriness. Life is unsatisfactoriness. And I think that that makes an awful lot more sense.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yes. Absolutely, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That it's always just about going to be-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... behind where your anticipation and your expectation were, because your expectation is built to be out ahead of what reality can deliver
- 41:00 – 47:14
Why Activists Can Never Be Content
- CWChris Williamson
to you. Okay, next one, next one. Uh, Saint George in retirement syndrome. Many who fight injustice come to define themselves by their fight against injustice, so that as they defeat the injustice, they must invent new injustices to fight against simply to maintain their identity.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. I think this is a product of people, uh, sort of tying their- their mission with their identity. So people will come out and they will have some kind of political cause where they'll be like, you know, "Oh, I absolutely hate racism," or something, and then they'll go out there and be like anti-racists, you know? But what they will do is they'll make the mistake of tying their status as an anti-racist with their identity, and they will actually make that part of their identity. So they will begin to define themselves as an anti-racist. And the dangerous thing with this is that if they do eventually defeat a- racism, then their identity is essentially nullified. They no longer have any meaning in their lives.
- CWChris Williamson
They're not just out of a job, they're out of personhood as well.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Exactly. And they've lost their sense of purpose. They've lost their meaning in their life. They've lost their kind of narrative. Because we all view our lives as narratives. We- we're all kind of like movie characters living a movie. And-... if you've basically defeated the villain, then there's no point in continuing the movie. You know, th- that's it, the movie's over. Roll credits. So these people, unfortunately, what they, uh, how they tend to respond is that they will sort of increase the, uh, they will project new racisms in the world. They will, uh, create new causes, new dragons to slay, basically. And you can see this in the phenomenon of concept creep, where, you know, when we defeat one form of harm, we will expand the definition of that harm so that it covers more things. So, um, for instance, uh, racism is, is, is the obvious one. So racism, obviously there's still racism, but it, if we look at how it was with Jim Crow, Jim Crow was, uh, was actual genuine hardcore systemic racism, where you had two tiers of society. You had white people and you had Black people. And then the civil rights movement and everything kind of just destroyed that. And then the e- the definition of racism was expanded, so then you had institutional racism, you had systemic racism, and then you had these new subspecies of racism. You had microaggressions, cultural appropriation, and basically, the kind of definition of racism just kept expanding. Because as racism was gradually removed from society, people needed to retain that sense that they were fighting a great threat, and so they expanded it. And th- like I said, this is not to say that racism doesn't still exist. It does still exist, but it's nowhere near the problem that it was 100 years ago or even further back. So as racism has become less of an actual threat, people have expanded their definition of it in order to give themselves a purpose, in order to retain this sense that they are slaying this, this mighty dragon.
- CWChris Williamson
And if someone lets go of that, then who am I? Who am I-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
... after all of this has happened?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. Yeah, I think, yeah, pe- this is one of the- the things why it's almost pointless to argue with an activist, because they have tied their identity to their activism. So if you are arguing with their cause, if you're saying that their cause is meaningless, you're basically saying that their life is meaningless. You're basically saying that their, their entire identity is meaningless, you know? Like if you were to go to Ibram Kendi and s- tell him, "Look, racism is nowhere near them as much of a problem as you say it is," that's gonna be a personal attack against him, because he's spent his whole life writing about racism. And so this i- it comes across as a personal attack. They, they view it as a personal attack. It's not just a political disagreement. It becomes an actual attack on their whole sort of system of identity, uh, the way that they, they form sort of this, uh, self-conception, uh, which makes it very sort of hard to argue with these people, because-
- CWChris Williamson
Why, why do you think it is that people are attaching their sense of self, their sense of self-worth, uh, integrating art and artists together in, in this way? Is this a, a surrogate for religion? Is this that a lot of cultural technologies previously would have been so central to the way that we see the world? Is it just that the allure of fame and status and continuing to, you know, uphold whatever the cause is allows you to keep charging forward? Have you got any idea of the postmortem there?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
I would say that it's probably many different factors, because obviously humans do things for a variety of different reasons. And I think all of the reasons that you just mentioned are probably, they all probably play a part. So I would say, yeah, absolutely, the, the meaning crisis has contributed to this a lot. You know, there's, there's this kind of vacuum that people are now trying to fill w- with obviously the d- the death of God. People are trying to fill this vacuum with whatever they can, and some people are choosing to fill it with social justice. And the last time I was on this podcast, we, we spoke of atheism plus, um, being a kind of surrogate for, for... It, it was a way that the new atheists tried to retain a sense of purpose and meaning, was by going full social justice. Um, so I, I think that's definitely part of it. And then I think that there are other people who perhaps are looking for, um, clout online, looking for some kind of, uh, you know, some sense of belonging or something. You know, they want a big pa- they want to have a, a kind of, uh, an audience, um, you know, or a tribe to belong to. And so they-
- CWChris Williamson
And a hill to die on as well.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, and a hill to die on. You know, the- so there are many things, many reasons why people do it. And there are obviously, there are probably just people who genuinely have been fooled into believing that racism is more common than it actually is, or, you know, that misogyny is more common than it actually is, or, or whatever, like, you know, whatever cause you wanna, you wanna talk about. I mean, I was one of those people. I used to believe racism was more common than it actually was, because I used to get all my information from The Guardian and The New York Times. And this was around the time when we had the great awokening, where there was a 400% increase in the use of words like r- sexism and racism in the, the, the liberal media. And I was reading it at that time, so I developed this idea that, you know, everybody was racist and, and all this kind of stuff, and, you know?
- CWChris Williamson
That goes back to what you said before about a well-curated social media feed is either heaven or
- 47:14 – 56:26
We Don’t Take Expert Advice Unless We Agree With It
- CWChris Williamson
hell. Uh, okay, next one. Opinion shopping. Maybe who- uh, many who conduct research online ignore every source they disagree with till they find one they agree with and then use this source as an authority to justify what they already believe. They don't consider someone an expert unless they agree with them.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
So this is one that hits quite cl- close to home, because I used to do this. I was guilty of this. Um, when I was, when I first sort of, like, got onto Twitter and stuff, and I used to engage people in arguments, what I would do is whenever I wanted to prove something, uh, to, to my interlocutor, what I would do is I would type in what I wanted to prove. So-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... um, so basically, you know (laughs) like, so, like, let's say if I wanted to prove that... Let's just say something random, like I wanted to prove that the world f- was flat, you know? I would just type in, um, "Evidence that the world is flat." And then I would get, obviously I would get some kind of evidence from some fringe website. And then I would basically say, "Hey, look. See? Look. Th- this is proof that the world is flat." So, you know, I think this is something that a lot of people do. And the reason I think that a lot of people do this is because I've also seen other people-... do it. I, I've in p- in fact they've done it in arguments with me. Like, um, for instance, what would happen is that I would, I would say, "Oh, um, what evidence is there for claim X?" And then they wouldn't respond for like an hour or something. And then eventually they would, they would basically, um, post this link to this article or whatever which was which claims to represent what they say it claims. And then what I would do is I would go on Google and I would type in, uh, what they, you know, what they were trying to prove. And i- immediately it would be the first, first search result. And I would see, okay. So what you've done is you've basically just, you've gone onto Google, you've, you've typed in something, you've ignored all the search results which disagree with your position, picked the one which agrees with it, and then you've held this up as evidence.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, you've even, you've put a prompt in that is only going to give you things that confirm your worldview. You haven't asked-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Exactly, but even within that.
- CWChris Williamson
... is the world flat?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You've also, you've looked for, the world is flat evidence.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Exactly. Yeah. Th- that's the first thing. But then even within that they'll, Google will sometimes will, you know, say this is a myth or whatever. And then they will just skip that completely-
- CWChris Williamson
Ah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... and they'll go to the one-
- CWChris Williamson
No.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... yeah. And, and I think this is, uh, you know, people compare it to s- maybe confirmation bias. So it is a similar sort of mechanism to confirmation bias, except the difference is that confirmation bias is, uh, unconscious. It's, it's something that you do unwittingly. Whereas opinion shopping is a conscious action. It's when you consciously are looking for information-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... that supports your worldview.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, very good.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
And yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
So I do think that this is a very, very common thing because if you are good enough at Googling, in fact you don't even need to be very good at Googling. If you know basic English, you can always get pretty much any academic study or any kind of, uh, New York Times article or whatever that just supports what you're trying to prove. And then you can just held it, hold it up as proof of what you're, you know. Like any time somebody says they've got evidence of something, if you do a Google, you can always find evidence to the contrary. Because, and this probably goes to another, uh, concept that I, that was in one of my mega threads, um, which is the idea that for every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD. Uh-
- CWChris Williamson
Gibson's law.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... I think is this? Gib- Gibson's law, yeah, Gibson's law, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
In matters, in matters of law and policy anyone can find a subject matter expert who supports their view because having a PhD doesn't necessarily make someone right, it often just makes them more skilled at being wrong.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. And this is, this is something that's, uh, sort of very common in, um, sort of law courts. In fact, I think m- many of your audience might have watched the Johnny Depp trial where, you know, when him against Amber Heard, uh, which was last year. And anybody who watched that trial will have noticed that both, uh, both people drew on psychologists and psychiatrists to support their candidate, uh, their, their sort of, um, defendant or whatever-
- CWChris Williamson
I think candidate. I think candidate is probably more accurate.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, yeah. (laughs) Or plaintiff or whatever. But like, yeah, I mean, um, so the, you know, they, what, what happened is that you had two groups of psychiatrists and psychologists. Both of them were equally qualified, they're bo- you know, th- both groups had, were PhDs from pretty respectable universities because they had, they were, you know, being paid by Hollywood actors, so they were the cream of the crop. Um, so these were prestigious psychiatrists and yet they had completely opposite conclusions to what was going on. And so what you see here is obviously these two groups cannot both be right at the same time. Their opinions are mutually exclusive. And so there's only one thing that could be happening here which is that they are rationalizing, they are ch- they are cherry picking evidence to support the narrative that they want to push. And this I think is a very sort of good microcosm of what goes on in the real world when you have experts who are drawn on not just by, um, you know, uh, by lawyers, uh, and by legal teams but by businesses. And you see this, uh, with, with regards to say, um, for instance in the co- in the corporate world, in business what, what, what happened is, uh... In fact the original term opinion shopping originally comes from the business world because what businesses would do is that they would hire experts who agreed with them to write papers that agreed with what they were trying to do. So for instance, Coca-Cola would hire nutritionists who, uh, would say that, you know, "Oh, um, sugar isn't actually that bad for you," for instance, you know. Uh, "The main thing that you want to be worrying about is salt and fat. Those are much more worse for you than sugar." Obviously this, the, you know, this has been shown to be not quite true but, um, the, the, the issue was that they wanted to make people believe that Coke was healthy so they would cherry pick experts. They would, you know, they would find experts who had done research which they thought they could use to their advantage and then they would pay this person to write a report on their behalf, uh, which would, you know... And you see this everywhere now. You see it, uh, in gender clinics. So, you know, for instance, GIDS. Uh, GIDS, uh, basically the Tavistock, you know they, they were pretty cushy with Mermaids Charity and, um, with other similar charities and what they would do is they would, they would work with, um, academics who believed what they believed. People like Jack Turban who's, who's a well-known, uh, gender ideologue in academia. And they would, they would basically pay these people to write academic papers using their expertise, using their, uh, their sort of, their knowledge to make the case for, for instance giving puberty blockers to underage kids or whatever like, you know, or to, to, to young, young, uh, children. And then, you know, just to be balanced there would probably be people on the opposite side of this aisle who would do the opposite. They would get the, they would get the, um, the experts that agreed with them to write papers to do the same things. And that's, that really is a lot of academia is fueled by this. It's fueled by institutions paying academics to make the case for why that institution is great, in other words basically, but to do it indirectly by just by doing its studies. And these studies, uh, are usually quoted and widely quoted by the press. So this is another reason why you can't really believe what you read in the press because even the academic studies that are quoted by these, uh, media outlets are often the, uh, often a result of perverse incentives. So-
- CWChris Williamson
There's a quote that I put in my newsletter today from Nat Friedman that says, "Better to get your dopamine from improving your ideas than having them validated."
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
'Cause it feels good.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Nowadays th- yeah, absolutely. And nowadays what I do is I don't really read, um, work from authors that I agree with very often anymore. I do sometimes, you know, 'cause I- I feel like I... Mainly just so that I can kind of, um, boost them, you know, re-tweet them or whatever like, you know, and re-tweet some people that I agree with. Uh, so I naturally will read it first. But like, usually what I will do now- nowadays is I will actually seek out information from people I disagree with, because I find that's just so much more valuable to me. I learn so much more from reading people that I think I disagree with. And I say think because I'm not al- always sure whether I will disagree with them. But people that I assume that I would disagree with because they're on- they're in a different tribe or whatever, you know.
- 56:26 – 1:00:10
Does Karma Really Exist?
- CWChris Williamson
I've got- I've got one- I've got one here that I stole from Naval. You quoted Naval earlier on. And this is, uh, "Real world karma. Karma doesn't need quantum energy or spiritual woo to be real. Karma is just you repeating your patterns, virtues, and flaws until you finally get what you deserve."
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
So I think Naval meant this in a w- when he said this, he meant it in a very specific context, right? He meant it in the context of, um, whether you work hard or whether you don't or, you know, basically if you work hard, you will eventually get the fruits of your labors. And if you don't, you won't. I don't think that karma exists in any- any kind of capacity in the- in the wider world. I mean, history is filled with- with nasty, nasty people who got away with- with everything in the end and who lived very happy lives. So an- on the contrary, history is also filled with people who, you know, did nothing but help other people and then ended up getting betrayed at the end. So I don't think karma exists in any kind of real sense of the word, but I think it does exist in the sense that maybe I think Naval means, which is that you get the fruits of your own labors with regards to productivity and, um... So if you- if you feel like, you know, you're- you're not worth anything and you don't really- you're not willing to put in the work because you just feel like, you know, "Oh, what's the point?" And you don't really have any agency, then that's a self-ful- fulfilling prophes- prophecy. You know, you won't get- you won't get what you want in life. But if you- if you are adamant on getting what you want and you- you put everything that you want to wha- you know, you basically sacrifice the present for the future, um, within reason as we were saying before, um, then you will get what you want and you'll get essentially what you deserve and more. When he says the word deserve, I hate the word deserve because I don't even know what the word deserve means. You know, it- it basically implies a value judgment of some kind.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
What does it even mean? Nature doesn't have any concept of deserve. It doesn't- there is no concept, you know. Nature just gives people things, um, based on cause and effect. There is no deserve. And so, um, I do think that people deserve things only in the sense that, did they put in the work?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I think if- if you-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
If- if you-
- CWChris Williamson
... I was to- if I was to re-read the deserve bit at the end, uh, "Karma is just you repeating your patterns, virtues, and flaws until you finally get what you deserve," for me it's until you finally get what is likely. It's-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
The way that I think about it when I read-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
The likely out- out- yeah, outcome.
- CWChris Williamson
... when I read that quote is, um, people rolling dice. And it also relates back to this internal external locus of control thing that you mentioned earlier on, which is if you believe that you have an internal locus of control, if you continue to roll the dice over and over and your patterns, virtues, and flaws suggest that you are going to get... Uh, this is not to say that there are people, as you mentioned before, perfectly noble, virtuous, high integrity people who work hard who, at the end of their life or partway through their life have some catastrophe that they- it wasn't basically their fault. Uh, absolutely that can happen. But the more times that you roll the dice and the more effective your inputs are, the less likely it is that that's going to happen, right? The- the- the, uh...
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that, yeah. Yeah, I think, yeah, that's a good way of- of- of looking at it I think. Um, yeah, it's- it's- I think, yeah, it- it really comes down to, like, we can't control probability but we can control the probability space. So we can control the range of outcomes, but we can't control the specific outcome. So for instance, if you don't work hard, then there is no chance that you're ever gonna succeed because that's not within the probability space that you've created. But if you work hard then- then you are creating that probability space. You- you- you are putting that as one of the possible outcomes you can have. And so I think in that sense, yes, uh, you will get what you deserve in that sense, um, because you are essentially- you are creating the- the- the branching tree of possibilities that exist ahead of you. And so you'll get one of those outcomes.
- 1:00:10 – 1:08:00
The Issue with Tribalism in the Digital Age
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
- CWChris Williamson
Mismatch theory. Moths evolved to navigate by the moon, a good strategy until the invention of electric lamps which now lead them astray. Equally, humans evolved to be tribal, a good strategy until the digital age where it now leads us to act like polarized goons online.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
I think this is everything. I think this theory is the foundation of pretty much all of our problems in the modern age, the fact that we have created for ourselves a world that we didn't evolve for...... uh, you know, we're- our, our sort of the majority of our evolution and adaptation occurred over sort of 300,000 years when we were on the African savannas, and that's the world that we, that our brains are configured for. And pretty much everything that happens now is a result of this e- these evolved behaviors, behaviors that we evolved for the African savanna from hunter-gatherer lifestyle not being of much use in this new environment in which we find ourselves in. So that, the tribal thing is the one, is one aspect of it. You know, we are- obviously when we- when you're living in the African savanna as a hunter-gatherer, it makes sense to be tribal because if you're not tribal, you're not going to survive very long on your own. You know, you need, you need the cooperation of other people and you need to have a common purpose and a common sense of unity because if you don't, then the- another tribe that does have a common sense of pu- purpose and unity is going to completely wipe you out. So a lot of these things, and this is p- particularly true of belief forming. So belief forming, you know, we, uh, uh, sort of naively often believe that people believe things because they think they're true, but that's just not true at all. Uh, what's actually the sort of main driver of beliefs I think, and particular- this is particularly true of political beliefs, is whether those beliefs help us in a social context. So if they can make people like us or if they can give us a kind of identity, something to belong to, uh, a common purpose with other people... And, uh, this is, uh, uh, I wrote another article about this actually, uh, the why smart people believe stupid things. Um, there's an idea, um, called, um, by a, by a psychologist called Dan Kahan or Kahan, I don't know how you pronounce it, but it's K-A-H-A-N, and he had an idea called identity protective cognition, which is this idea that, uh, when people form beliefs, what they're doing is they're looking at other people and seeing how these beliefs, uh, operate in a social context. So if, if having a certain belief makes people very, very popular and if it makes a lot of other people love them, then that makes you feel that that belief is more true. And this is a mechanism that is designed to essentially allow us to form beliefs with people that will allow people to like us and that will allow us to have status and a sort of sense of belonging and to have this tribal sort of, um, arrangement around us, you know. So that, it's a way of arranging tribes, it's a way of forming these kind of hierarchies. So if you, um, you know, if you believe something, uh, that, uh, the everybody around you believes, they're gonna like you. And this is something that everybody knows. If you have the same beliefs as somebody, they will like you a lot more. That's the system. That's, that's basically a, a, a gluing system. It's a way that glues people together into tribes and allows them to form a common purpose and then allows them to succeed on the s- on the plains of Africa. Unfortunately, that doesn't work so well in this age where we now have a lot of sort of partisan thinking, we have people forming online tribes, engaging in misinformation online where people are posting information that they agree with, but not information that's necessarily true. And so the whole system has been sort of torn apart by this new way that we're living. You know, now it doesn't bring us, we don't really form mobs anymore. We don't form, at least we don't form them in the real world. We form online, but we don't form these tribes that would help each other out physically in the real world anymore. Now, we form mobs online and we go after people and we've, you know, we've had scapegoats and we have, uh, you know, this kind of bickering, uh, with other tribes. And all of this is not serving any of us well. It's not actually doing anything for us. All it's doing is just making us angry, it's, uh, making us bitter, it's, it's making us fight with people on the other side of the world who we're never gonna meet in real life. It's, um, making us push out information that's not true and, you know, fake narratives everywhere. It's causing indoctrination. Uh, it's causing people to be distracted from what they really want to achieve in their lives. So all of these negative consequences have emerged from what was once an asset, you know, which has now become a liability as a result of this new way that we're living. And, uh, this is just one aspect of the mismatch theory. The, the mismatch theory can be applied to so many different aspects of life. Another aspect is that our brains are sort of evolved to operate when, when we're moving. This is, uh, this is, uh, a lesser known thing, but we're supposed to be moving all the time pretty much. We're supposed to be on the f- on foot, uh, traveling vast distances and that's good for our body because that's how our bre- uh, that's how our bodies evolved. Our bodies evolved for movement. But now we spend most of our lives indoors sitting in a sedentary position and so the system, like our blood system, uh, the circulatory system, is sort of evolved for movement. It, it, it's supposed to, it's, it's created under the sort of assumption that a, a being is going to be moving. But we're not doing that. We're just sitting still for long periods of time and so our circulatory systems are not operating efficiently. Our blood's, uh, you know, blood's not efficiently, um, sort of oxygenating our organs and as a result of that, we're having many health problems now. Um, so this is another-
- CWChris Williamson
Do you know, uh, the, the best way that anyone who is uns- unsure whether or not that hypothesis is real can prove it to themselves? Think about the last time that you took a phone call and you needed to think hard while you were on the phone. A huge proportion of people will find themselves just, as if some hand has been placed inside of them. They'll stand up and they'll start pacing around the room.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yep. Absolutely. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And I, I learned this from Kelly Starrett-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
I do that all the time. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Kelly Starrett says-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... that we're built to locomote and that our brains work better when we're locomoting. And, you know-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... if there was a way that I could do a podcast...... that didn't look too weird-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
On the move.
- CWChris Williamson
... because if I was d- if I was doing-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... this on some-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... sort of treadmill, as I'm-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... bouncing up and down, and there may be a bit of noise. But yeah, I, um, I, I totally agree, and I think that-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. It, it's why walking is so good for writing. You know, I, when I wasn't walking, when I, when I just used to s- wake up in the morning and then go to my desk and write, it would take me ages to actually come up with good ideas. But I began sort of about f- shortly, eh, actually, quite recently, it was about three months ago since I moved into this new place, I've been going for walks every day pretty much. And I've found that the number of ideas that I come with is just so stark. And, uh, I mean, this is something that writers throughout history have said as well. It's not just me. It's not, you know, this is not just something that I discovered just now. But writers throughout history have f- have recommended walking. Like Nietzsche, for instance. Nietzsche used to go for long walks in the Swiss Alps, uh, when he was recovering, uh, from, uh, some sort of depression or anxiety that he had. They didn't call it depression back in the day, but, but he had some kind of mental problems and he, he went out into, um, the Swiss Alps and he'd go for long walks and he said that he didn't trust any idea that he didn't come out with, um, unless it was while he was walking.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
So, you know, it was, uh, so basically any idea that he came up with while he was sitting at a desk, he didn't trust that idea. And I mean, I feel almost, you know, I wouldn't go quite that far, but I, I think that, you know, uh, walking is just such a, a good book for-
- CWChris Williamson
If you have an idea while sat at a desk-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... for good ideas.
- CWChris Williamson
... make sure that you still believe it after you've gone for a walk. That's not a bad-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
That's not a bad razor
- 1:08:00 – 1:17:09
Intelligent People Can Often Have Stupid Opinions
- CWChris Williamson
to use.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay, next one.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Absolutely. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Disrationalia. Just because someone is intelligent doesn't mean their intelligence is pursuing intelligent goals. It's possible to devote a genius-level intelligence to justifying idiotic opinions and behaviors.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
So in artificial intelligence research, there is something called the orthogonality thesis. And what this says is that basically just because, uh, an, uh, a machine is in- intelligently pursuing a goal, it doesn't mean that the goal itself is intelligent. So, you know, the, uh, uh, uh, a standard sort of, uh, illustration of this idea would be the paper clip maximizer. So the paper clip maximizer is an- is a machine that is, it's a hypohto- hypothetical, thankfully, hypothetical machine which has been programmed to create as many paper clips as possible. And it's be- basically been p- programmed to have this as its absolute priority, to basically override all other priorities. And so what this machine does is it begins to turn literally everything on the planet into paper clips. And when the engineers realize what they've done and they go to change it, they go to re-deprogram it, it turns them into paper clips, because if it were to not, then they would have, there would be fewer paper clips. And so it ends up take- turning the whole world into paper clips. And so it does something extremely stupid, but it does it in a very intelligent way. And this really is a good sort of i- sort of metaphor for the human brain, because just because somebody is intelligent and just because somebody has a high IQ, it doesn't mean that that intelligence is being put into the service of intelligent goals. Uh, it's very, very possible to, to have very, very stupid opinions, like really stupid conclusions, but to very intelligently reason for them.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Uh, and-
- CWChris Williamson
Fortified, fortified with an absolute genius level armory around it.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Exactly. And you see this a lot in academia, you know, people who have their whole lives they, they've just, they sort of spend their whole lives in their head. And they become very good at thinking, but they use that thinking to come out with the most wackiest ideas, because they wanna be original. Because if you're, if you're in academia, you wanna, you, you want two things. You wanna be interesting and you wanna be original, and you know, because there's a publication bias in favor of those two things. And so, uh, you have to say something that nobody else is saying, and you have to say something that shocks people or surprises people. And so you see a lot of academics who come out with the most insane opinions, um, and then they will use their intelligence, which is usually quite considerable, they'll use that intelligence to justify that, the most moronic opinions. Um, you know, I read this, uh, this one laughable study, uh, which was conducted, uh, by this, uh, by this author who said that basically rape didn't exist in America until white people, uh, arrived on, on its shores, and then they introduced rape to the Native Americans. You know, just completely bizarre idea that they're b- basically saying that Native Americans were innocent, didn't have, they didn't ever commit any sexual assault, they didn't commit any rape-
- CWChris Williamson
I always think about the Comanche ins- Indians as being a very, very civilized people up until the point at which-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... they were invaded. Yeah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Exactly. And then white people taught them how to rape, and that's why, uh, rape exists in America amongst the Native Americans. Completely like idiotic opinion. But, uh, this author then used like all these weird sort of s- this really esoteric knowledge about, uh, peculiar things that happened in history, um, and basically got like scientific studies really, really cherry-picked, you know, just to kind of create this narrative.
- CWChris Williamson
Whoa. Yeah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Which is-
- CWChris Williamson
Some very special-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... narrative together.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. Exactly. And this re- doing this required a lot of intelligence because they had to get information from very disparate fields and sort of combine them together and, you know, create this weird argument, which i- when you, when you look at the argument, I mean, it's a complete nonsense argument. But it's very intelligently put together.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
It's, it's taken a lot of effort clearly because there's so much research involved.
- CWChris Williamson
Do you know what it makes me think of? It makes me think about the four Stoic virtues. So justice, temperance, courage, and wisdom. And without the fourth one, which I think is gonna be the final book that Ryan writes in his series on the, the, the four virtues. Um, without the fourth one, all of the previous ones can be deployed in a stupid way, that, you know, you can be courageous for a cause which is pointless, that you can be just towards something which doesn't require it, that your temperance can be used in, in, in the wrong sort of way. So, um, yeah, the, there is a... I don't even know what it... It's, uh, it's cognition and meta-cognition almost, right? It's like being able to-
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