Gleb Tsipursky || A Science-Based Guide to Truth Seeking

Doctor c Porski is passionate about promoting truth, rational thinking, and why is decision making. He's a tenured truck professor at Ohio State, serves as the volunteer president of the nonprofit Intentional Insights. Is a co founder of the Pro Truth Pledge, and the author of a number of books, most notably the number one Amazon bestseller, The Truth Seeker's Handbook, a science based Guide. Gleb, so nice to chat with you today. Thanks so much, Scott. It's a pleasure so

much to discuss. You really cover so many topics. As I was trying to prepare for this podcast today, I was wow, Like I didn't want to choose, but we have to exactly exactly. And do you have any advice to people who might be overwhelmed with too many options in life? Let me start with that question. Have you studied that at all or looked at that? Yeah, there's a phenomenon as probably both of us now, called decision fatigue, where when we are faced by too many options, we

get really tired. So what I strongly recommend that people do is look at the most important options, choose the top five most important decisions making criteria, then evaluate the most plausible options of those decisions making criteria, and look at the one that comes out on top. You'll usually have one that comes out on top pretty quickly. I assume that you walk the talk, right, so you practicely practice this in your daily life. Do you obviously you

think of yourself as you're a truth seeker? Right? That's how you probably conceptualize yourself as well. And are you constantly changing your worldview based on new evidence that comes in? Like do you have a very flexible worldview? Absolutely? Oh? I tend to think of myself as having a relatively humble worldview rather than flexible, So I have relatively low certainty on a number of things that people have high

certainty about that. People tend to have high certainty about So it's quite easy for me to change my worldview because I take a quite humble, deliberately humble position, because we as human beings tend to be very overconfident about our knowledge, and I don't want to fall into that trap myself. I love that so humility. So let me ask this question, why do humans us messy humans tend to flinch from the truth. It's almost like we have a build in aversion to it. We do from the

perspective of what our minds are adapted to. Our minds are adapted to the savannah environment. They're not adapted to the current modern, contemporary environment. And in the savannah environment, it really was not very important for us to have the truth in order to survive. So we are not adapted and we're not optimized for evaluating reality. Clearly, we're adapted for survival, so if we want to fit, it's much more important for us to fit along and conform

to our tribe rather than get to the truth. So anything that goes against tribal impulses and intuitions would tend to cause us to go away from the truth. And anything that causes us to feel uncomfortable and threatened, and that's the fighter flight response, would cause us to go

away from the truth. So both of those things, the fighter flight response, which is incredibly powerful, and tribalism, which is also incredibly powerful, both steer us away from the truth unless we very actively try to get over the fight or flight response and get over the tribal response. And that's hard, and most people choose not to do that. A lot of people intentionally choose not to do that

because they think that they're right. I mean, they think that they have a moral sort of so that maybe right, right. I mean, like, you know, some people have a certain political opinion or value system and see it violated and get outraged. And I don't know, telling some people for them to maybe rely more on their rational faculties will

actually just make them more mad. Right. Absolutely. There's a phenomen called the backfire effect, where when we are presented with information that goes against our beliefs, we often stick more strongly to our current beliefs, especially if it threatens our tribal sensibilities. So that's an example of what you're talking about. Now. There are many problems that result from us striving to win as opposed to go toward the truth.

Many people, if you give them a real choice, if you look at their behaviors, it's a phenomenon called revealed motivations. What are they really looking for? You'll find that they're not really looking for the truth. You'll find they're looking to win for whatever goal they are pursuing, for whatever value said that they're pursuing. They don't optimize for the truth.

They optimize for winning. However, they interpret winning in any specific context, whether it's in a corporate setting, whether it's in a relationship setting or a political setting like you're talking about, is winning tied up with power? Yes, so it can be tied up with power. It can also be tied up with relationships. So, for example, if you perceive some people, to them relationships are the most important thing. For other people, power is more important. It depends what

people are optimizing for. So often the tribal response, where people want to fit into their tribe. That's more the relationships are more important than individual power seeking. So interesting, are you familiar with the cartoon that they have two lines, one line for inconvenient truths and another line for comfortable lies two booths and the line which line is much much much longer. Yes, yes, I use that quite I

use that curtain quite often in my public presentations. Yeah. Yeah, it's an accurate and unfortunate statement about our society that we tend to prefer comfortable lies over uncomfortable truths. And as I mentioned before, because of tribalism and because of the fight or flight response, we have to deliberately be educated and taught to go against our intuitions. Otherwise, unless we are deliberately taught and choose to put in the effort to go against our instincts, we will definitely choose

the comfortable lies over inconvenient truths. So you know, your work, as I was reading it has some good, nice nuance, and you do talk about how we can go with our sometimes it's okay to go with our gut in everyday life, right, So you're not making a blanket statement that we should all become sparks, you know. Yes, Buck is actually a quite problematic figure because if you'll actually observe the show, if you look at the Star Trek, he does do things based on emotions without realizing it,

as do most of us. So most of the people who perceive themselves as not having emotions actually are very strongly driven by emotions. An example, I was doing some consulting for an engineering firm of about two hundred people. I was talking to the hr vice president who brought me in to do the consulting, and I was talking to him about how to motivate engineers, and I asked him. I saw that he wasn't really using emotions to motivate engineers and said, hey, so, how are you integrating emotional

motivation into getting engineers to do what you want? And he told me, Hey, what, engineers have emotions And I was like, yes, you know, they may not show it, but they're very emotional. They're emotionally driven. So you to think about emotions if you want to motivate them well to get what the firm wants done. So, what are some good examples of everyday life when we should rely on our gut in the jurious situations and situations or

immediate danger. It's a good situation. It's a good situation to rely in our gut, partially because it resembles a savannah environment where the fight or flight response is going to be immediately present. You don't want to think too much when you're in the way of a moving truck. No thinking there, Just get out of the way of the truck. Or if you see something flying at you from the you know, from the corner of your eye, that's a good time to duck. So none need to

think about that situation. That's one immediate danger. We face much less immediate danger than we intuitively think. We tend to make decisions way too quickly when we don't need to, so be careful when you're thinking about whether something is immediately dangerous. Your boss giving you constructive critical feedback is not a time to use your gut response. It might feel dangerous, but that's un actual physical danger. One actual

physical danger. The second major one is with people who you know for a while, with whom you have close relationships, and that's the tribal response. With people you know in a tribal situation for quite a while, you can trust your gut intuitions about them. You shouldn't trust your gut intuitions about people you just met, because we tend to respond to people we just met as though they're from a hostile tribe. That's a really bad thing to do.

In our modern contemporary world. But with people you know for a while, if you see something is off with them, if you feel something is off with them, if you're somewhat uncomfortable with them, then that's a good time to trust your gud. So those are two big areas where

you can trust your guy. Wait, I want to understand that last one you said, because I can't tell you how many times I have felt something was all off with someone, but once I gave them a chance, or you know, I found out ninety nine percent of the time that either they were just having a bad day and particularly stressed, or some of them are just maybe we're just on the autism spectrum and like you know, just have a different way of seeing the world. And

I just gave them a chance. You know, I realized that it was a lot more innocuous then maybe a lot of people would have just immediately dismissed them. So, yeah, what do you think of that? So that's the key thing that if you know somebody well, that's why I was making that statement. Oh okay, okay, So if you know somebody well, then that's when you can trust your God.

Relatively speaking, You're not always going to be correct. But if you know somebody well, you know, you'll you'll know that that person's on the autism spectrum and how you should relates. I see right, that's the tribal situation. We are adapted to read our tribal our tribe members sensations, feelings pretty well. That was really important for our survival in the savannah environment. So we are all the descendants of those who survived partially because they were able to

be socially adapt within those environments. Now we are not well adapted to read new people, people from outside our tribe. We tend to assume hostile intent, whereas that's almost much rarer the case than we would tend to imagine it is. That's a really good point when you project onto our supposed enemy of our deepest fears. Yeah, yeah, boy. There's

a phenomenon. There's a phenomenon called the fundamental attribution error, one of the coging to biases that results from us making where we tend to attribute people's behaviors to their personality, especially negative behaviors, rather than the context. And there the context is usually much more important. For example, when somebody cuts us off, you know, we tend to think, Oh,

what a jerk that person cut us off. Now, when we cut somebody off because we fail to look in the mirror, we don't tend to think of ourselves, Oh I'm such a jerk. We just tend to give ourselves a pass. We're like, oh, oops, didn't look in the mirror. That's a classic example of where we tend to make mistakes about other people by attributing to the negative perceptions hostile intent where that's not at all intended. Yeah, I

really like that. So how can are some tips of ways we can recognize these thinking errors to prevent us the errors that prevent us from seeing reality more clearly. The most important way the broad frameworks off for deductive thinkers who like broad frameworks is to notice whether this situation is similar to the savannah or not. Are you in a tribal relationship with this person, you have a

close relationship with this person. If not be suspicious of your got to be suspicious of your intuitions, you'll be likely more hostile than you should. That's one. Now, if this person looks like you, has your cultural background, and looks like this person is a member of your child, you might actually have too much favorability, too much positivity toward this person in comparison to what you should. That's called the halo effect. So that's one thing. The other

thing is to delay your decision making. We tend to make decisions way too quickly, and we need to very deliberately, to say, delay our decision making and think about what the decision we're making now. A third thing, just a very easy tip, is to make predictions about the future of your decisions. Predict what you anticipate the consequence to be, and see whether you're right or not, and then calibrate yourself based on these predictions. All of us have some

kind of mental errors based on our personalities. So for example, I tend to be highly optimistic. I tend to think, you know, the future will be bright, the grass is green on the other side. My wife on the other side, on the other hand, tends to be highly pessimistics. She tends to think the future will be bleak, you know, the grass is yellow on the other side. Well, there isn't that true, right, just sure? Exactly So you need to learn. You need to learn where your cognitive biases

are to which where you are biased. The kind of problems that you experience and making predictions about the future will help you calibrate yourself in the future and adjust for your personal biases. So is it possible to be perfect? It's never possible to be perfect, and that's not something we should ever strive for. We should strive to be better. We should always strive to be better than we were

in the past. And that's definitely a chewable. Being perfect is not really chewable because it's too high of a standard and you just get depressed and sad and anxious trying to be perfect. Okay, it's okay to be It's still human to be biased every now and then. Oh, I mean, it's inhuman to not be biased like that. And we are inherently biased because we're not adapted for

the modern world. The only thing we can do is work on ourselves to address these biases slowly over time and become slightly less biased over our period of time. That's great, So our friends the enemies of wise choices. Friends can definitely be the enemies of wise choices. To your friends wisely then, absolutely, because of this tribal phenomenon, we are deeply influenced by our tribe in positive ways.

And negative ways. So for example, if we stop smoking, our spouse is about sixty percent more likely to stop smoking, and our close friends are about thirty percent more likely to stop smoking. The opposite applies if they start smoking, and so on. So that's the clear example, and that's a good study. That's a clear example. There have been many similar studies where this phenomenon called network effects is really influential for us, where it highly shapes us in

ways that we don't understand and we don't notice. The people who we who we perceive as our tribe, really deeply influences. So that's why it's important to choose friends wisely and make good choices about who we interact with. That means letting go of some relationships that aren't healthy for us as we develop and grow over time. Yeah, it's easier said than done. Just letting you letting your friends go. It's like, okay, like setting them free. Yeah

it's not. It's they can be tough. It can be tough, but you want to think about what's better for them and what's better for you. Are you good at that? Are you good at doing that? Like? Are you have you learned a tactful way of doing that a tactful way of letting friends go. Oh, I would you tell them? Do you tell them that you let them go? It's a good question of I tend to let it develop organically and naturally, depending on how and whether we find

value in interacting with each other. And I generally tend to spend less time with those people with whom I find less value interacting. And that's just a healthy way of developing orienting over time in the future, spending less time with people whom you find less value with in interacting and who you want to be less like. So again, remembering that people who we are around and deeply shape us. That makes it really important for us to spend time with people that we want to be like, and not

spend time with people who we don't want to be like. So, for example, a lot of us, a lot of people tend to spend time with those they knew from high school or college or something like that, and that's often a bad idea because those people tend to often not be the kind of people who want to be like in the future, I let go of the large majority of my high school connections that's not those people want right and most of my college connections for the same reason.

Those not people I want to be like. So it's a very good choice as you go through life to choose who you want the people with whom you want to have your relationships. And that's talking about relationships. New Harbinger will really be upset if I don't plug my new book for them, which I'm writing on relationships and talking to biases. So fy everyone, So when will that

be out? That will be out in March twenty twenty. Congratulations, that's exciting, and so the focus will be on relation on social relationships, yes, social relationships, of work relationships, community relationships, so all sorts of relationships, all the biases we have in relationships. What a neat conjunction of things, biases and relationships. I really like that. Well, I look forward to reading it and maybe you can come on again. Absolutely, I'd

love it in twenty twenty. Twenty twenty is going to be an interesting year politically too, Yes, it will be. It will be. Let's talk about politics. Now you have a whole bunch of stuff you've writ about it and I'm like looking forward to talking to you in twenty twenty about how about we have a chat like the day after the election. Sure, happy to do it. That'll be fair and we can kind of see how things movie have changed. So here's some questions. What's the worst

problem in politics? I'm just going to straight up ask you this, Gosh, the workst problem is irrationality. People are deeply irrational about their decision making. They make choices based on their god reactions, like we talked about the tribal responses and the fight or flight response, rather than making choices based on what's good for themselves and what's good

for their country in the long term. So they are not seeing the truth of reality and making really bad choices that really harm them and people around them in the long term. And that's really dangerous for our future as a country. And it's causing right now as we see from the current political climate. It's causing not something increasing polorization, but fundamentally undermining the institutions that have made America great in the past. America has been great at

one point. Yes, America was definitely source of light and leadership for democracy, freedom of the press, freedom of expression in the world in the past. Not so much now, unfortunately, big unfortunate. Yeah, so you know, let's talk about a future with Trump. You know, we don't tend to talk about the politics on the Psychology podcast, but I think we can keep this conversation actually a political analytical you know, you say with Trump, you say that there's a kind

of a distinction. We need to embrace truth first. Comfort is that, right? Can you talk a little bit about that? So for people who are supporting Trump or people who are opposing Trump, it's important to establish and evaluate the distinction between what's comfortable and what's accurate. So, for example, a lot of people might who support who don't support Trump, who oppose Trump, might not like to hear the economy is doing really surprisingly well for many of them under Trump.

But it's an accurate and truthful statement that you can look at the data and see that, Okay, the economy is doing really really well Trump. Now, people who support Trump might not like to hear that he makes a lot of false statements. He makes a lot of deceptive statements that are very clearly deceptive. Lots of people, Republicans themselves, say that he makes a lot of deceptive statements, and

that really hurts the country. The credibility that the Office of the presidency has the credibility that the United States has in the eyes of the world as a whole has greatly decreased, and that is visible through polling and through a lot of social science mechanism where you can effectively clearly recognize that that's what's happening, and that's undermining the institutions of the country. The things that we talked about has made America great in the past in the

eyes of the world. So you might support Trump and at the same time recognize the truth of this is happening right now. So this is an important way to make a distinction between regardless of how you feel about Trump, you can recognize if you don't like him, that there's some things that are going on in the country that are positive, and if you do like him, you can recognize that there are something going on in the country

and the world that are negative. You know, you're talking about this so objectively, like kind of like a computer who's analyzing things from from afar, Like do you personally have any political convictions or do you just really like thinking about everything really gets objective. Personally have very strong political connections and I vote and yeah, it's you know, I have very strong feelings. I can also very clearly differentiate between the truth and my personal values really two

different things. Oh, that's really it's a truly interesting distinction. So you can hold all things in your I mean, that's a sign. That's a sign of intelligence, I would say to be able to No, seriously, that's that. That's not easy. It's not easy to hold both in working memory, especially when they're inconsistent. Yes, it is very it is

very hard, you know. And whether I support Trump or I'm not going to talk about whether I do or don't, sure, but both I made both points earlier that you couldn't have, you know, support Trump and still believe that there are some problems and oppose Trump and still believe that there

are some benefits. And that's the number of That is something that we all should strive for in order to be truth seekers, to be able to recognize that there's a difference between personal values and the truth of reality. That's a very fundamental way that we should be as real citizens of the country who recognize what is best for the country, what is best for our society as a whole, rather than a partisan position, what's best for

an ideology or our tribe. I mean, in an ideal world, our values would be extraordinarily truthful, they'd be all everything would be aligned. Truth, goodness, and beauty would be one. Oh, I actually disagree with you, Scott. I think that that's not a world that can be possible, always possible, that an ideal world. That doesn't mean there are things that are separate from truth. So, for example, do you you know one can value family values you know traditional family,

or one can value gay marriage. Those are not about truths. Those are about values. What do you value? You can value this or you can value that. Now you can also observe that children who grow up in gay families turn out really well according to the social science research, So that's an accurate statement according to the research. Doesn't matter whether you support traditional families or whether you support

or whether your for gay families or not. You can also say, looking at family research, that children who grow up in single parent homes don't do so well. And that's another sort of statement that you can say. According to the social science that psychology research, that's what happens. Single parent homes tend to be worse than homes with gay parents with two parents of the same sex, of the same genre. So that's a that's another sort of statement you can make and say, this is backed by

the research. I can I can personally approve appreciate traditional families, or I can appreciate gay families. But this is all what the science says. So we can separately hold value positions and separately hold truthfulness position. Where do you get how do you derive your values personally? Gosh, my personal valuest Oh that's part of for me personally, and for everyone that comes from their background, their culture, personality, their temperamire.

I mean a bunch of this is genetic, as you know that our genes determine a significant subset of our values. So for example, people who have a strong repulsive response tend to be more likely to be conservative, and people response repulsion discuss Yeah, yeah, Jonathan's research, Yep, exactly so, and there's a bunch of other stuff. So a lot of this is genetic, maybe about forty to fifty to sixty percent is genetic. A lot of it is about our personal experience and so on, and values are not

about truth. It's just what we hold as a value, our personal ideology that's separate from what is the fact about reality. I think that you're you're abnormal in the sense that I do think that most people. Yeah, I do mean that as a compliment obviously, but I think most people do not have that capacity or the inclination to hold those things separate in their working memory. And I think that, and maybe it's this is a problem.

It seems to me like most people automatically equate their value system with the universal truth, which is what gets us into these kind of tribal wars. Would you agree with that? You're absolutely right? And what research of the topics shows is that the more education someone has, especially in the liberal arts, the more capable they are of holding a difference between values and truths. So people who are more educated tend to be more capable of this.

It's a matter in other words, of education. As we talked about before at the beginning of the program, the difference between tribalism. You can be tribal and that tends to oververwhelm truthfulness, and fight or flight response also tends to overwhelm truthfulness. However, education training in critical thinking, this

is what critical thinking is about. Rational thinking, evaluation of reality can help us overcome these things and This is crucial for us, not simply in political settings, but let's say in personal company, corporate settings. If we are not able to overcome our impulses, will make really bad decisions

for in business settings. That's a clear example. If we're not able to There's a reason so many people lose money in the stock market because they sell they sell low and buy whereas experienced investors know that they should sell high and buy low. Oh, it's a really hard thing to do, which is why most people aren't able to make money in the stock market. We can go into a number of other examples where not being oriented toward overcoming your gut reactions harms you in life in

very many ways. Also, you talk about, you know how we can stop losing money and invest wisely. Yes, So we can stop losing money and invest wisely by not trusting our intuitions. That's a really important one. So we can invest. We can invest wisely by thinking about where do we by thinking about the difference between ETFs and stocks. We talked about selling low versus selling high. That's a

clear one. Now, a good way of making stock investments is to invest in the broad stock market and especially into exchange traded funds. So that's what I talk about the article. Look for exchange traded funds which include a lot of stocks, not simply one stock which can go up or down. For example, if you are recently invested in the mattress firm, you'd be wiped out, mostly because

it's mattress from one bank. Not only that, but I had a mattress from bed and when I saw they're about to go bankrupt, I returned it before they went bankrupt, and I'd never be able to ever get a warranty. Yeah, great idea. Absolutely, So that's an example. You don't want to be invested in one stock. You don't want to be invested in a mutual fund. Here's why many people are invested in mutual funds, and that's a big problem.

Let me explain why mutual funds are actively traded by stock traders who say, hey, we are we have made a lot of money in the past. You should trust us, you should go with us. Well, let's let's have a thought experiment. Let's think that there are a hundred thousand Let's imagine there one hundred thousand stock traders and they're trading just purely based on luck. fIF fifty percent down. So in one year, you'll have fifty thousand stock who have had a good year and fifty thousand who had

a bad year. In another year, of those who had a good year, the fifty thousand, you'll have twenty five thousand who had a good year and twenty five thousand who had a bad year. Now fast forward to ten years, you'll have fifty remaining who had a decade of good years. They simply in luck alone. Now what will happen. Those will be the gurus of the new stock market. They'll be appearing on CNBC, Fox Business, in company Wall Street journals saying these are the people you should go with,

and they just succeeded based on luck alone. So you'll be giving them your money and next year you'll have a completely blind chance of luck whether you'll be your money will be up and your money will be down, and they'll be taking a high commission. You don't want to do that. That's why the vast majority of exchange, the vast majority of actively traded funds mutual funds are a bad idea. I Exchange traded funds ETFs are not

actively traded. You just invented in a certain you just invest in a certain industry or the broads market, and you have very low payments on that percentage. So that's the best idea to invest for people who are not highly actively true. Wow, you just gave that advice for free. I do you realize there are people who would have kept that under a paywall. It's okay, I'm helping make your show more popularly, so I don't market thank you.

I'm saying thank you. Well, let's pivot back to politics, as we're saying, because you write some things that I thought were quite provoking. Thought provoking, so why should the mainstream media be careful when they criticize conservatives? So mainstream media often criticizes conservatives or Democrats, but in this case,

conservatives more recently, with a broad brush. And that's a big problem when you criticize people with a broad brush, because there's that that's there's that immediate tribal response by people who are identify as conservatives. They when they see the mainstrea media criticizing conservatives, saying republicans broadly, that's a big problem. Now let's go to the Kevin now nomination,

which just occurred so very recently occurred Kevinan nomination. When you see apeds which I read in the New York Times and the Washington Post, they were very broadly saying Republicans did this, Republicans did that. You know, the Republicans are a problem when they were criticizing the behaviors of Republicans, Whereas there are a number of individual Republicans who did

not behave in ways that the newspapers described. Now, but if you're criticizing Republicans, people who identify as Republican will say, you're criticizing me. That's criticizing a group of fifty or forty nine Republican senators. You're criticizing all Republicans. So that's an example of why it's a problematic idea to paint

all conservatives of the broadbrush. I was specifically referring to an example, historical example of where and that happened when when someone who's currently a congressman body slam the journalists, and all Republicans were criticized for how the Republicans are attacking the media, and that's just not true. There are many Republicans who are not attacking the media. But that creates a tribal response, which is really harmful for the future of our country and for trust in the media.

So that's why I strongly recommend media to not criticize conservatives with a broadbrush. It sounds like the same logic would apply in the other direction as well, you know, just does not pain anyone with a broad brush. You know, Republicans love paying democrats with the broad brush as well, and that's a bad idea as well. I was giving this as an example with the media painting saying that that's the way all Republicans act, which is not true.

The same with Democrats who are targeted by Republicans saying that all Democrats act in a certain way and that that's just not true. Now, let's think about who that benefits. That most benefits people on the edges, on the poles in both parties, because it creates more polarization, so people are pulled to the poles and the country grows further

divided greater parties rather than pulling toward the middle. Having a stronger center and having more care and concern for the future of our country rather than the poles of each party. Doesn't seem like we're moving in that direction right now. It does. So here's a potentially controversial question which I never shy away from on my podcast, What's the one thing Trump got right in Charlottesville? So the

one thing Trump got right in Charlottesville. That's an article I wrote that also got me in some hot water oats liberals was that he accurately pointed out that there

was violence on both sides. And that's a big problem that a lot of liberals were not able or willing to accept that the Antifa, the people who are fighting the not see fascist whatever, people on the old right engaged in some provocative aggressive violence, which was actually documented by Antifa themselves proudly afterward where they were saying that they aggressively pursued with violence some people on the old

right in Charlottesville. And that's really important technoledge and accept there was, according to documented evidence, quite a bit more violence on the old right side on the side of the right in that case in Charlottesville. But we can't simply ignore or sweep under the rug the violence on the left, on the far left and the Antifa. And that's an example of being of orienting toward truthfulness regardless of where your values are, so you can see, you know,

I personally really don't like the far right. I don't like Nazis. I wouldn't say the far right. Let's say it Nazis. That's I have a big problem with them. I think they're very badly for America as a country. Really, I think they're very ither respectfully disagree with you, well, I respectfully disagree with you, and we'll have to degree

to disagree. By the way, for the listeners who don't know me, I'm joking, you have to say that these days you know, yes, yes, as if your last name doesn't dedicate that, yeah, exactly, I'm a very self loading Jew. But anyway, go on. So it's very important to identify accurately that there's some people on the far left who engage an aggressive, provocative violence, and to say, okay, we can identify them, and we could say that those are tactics.

Whether you personally agree with them or disagree with them, you have to acknowledge that those are tactics that occurred for the sake of truthfulness, because otherwise you can't have a healthy conversation with people on the other side. If you can't acknowledge the problems in your own on your own side, then how can you engage effectively with people

on the other side? Yeah, well if I'm ready on board with you, and I'm just loving this distinction you're making between facts and values, and it's just it's kind of blowing my mind in a way because it's beautiful. It's just so clear to me now that we need more of that. That's what we're lacking. And I hadn't articulated in that way. So thank you for I love it when my mind gets expanded on this podcast. That's why I do this. So how can you talk to people who deny the facts? So there are a couple

of ways. The most important thing that you want to focus on, and what I talk about is a strategy called egret emotions, goals, report information, and positive reinforcement. First of all, you have to understand why people are denying the facts. We talked about the tribal response, the tribalism and the fight or flight response. The underlying components and

all of that is emotions got intuitions. So you have to understand what kind of emotions are going on with a person that are causing that person to do the facts, what's driving them. The first thing you have to understand then you need to understand what that person's goals are. Why is that person denying the facts. So, for example, why are people on the far left on the left denying the facts about far left antifa violence in Charlottesville?

What's going on there? What are their goals and doing? So, then you need to establish report with them. You need to show them that their goals are your own. So for example, I can agree with them that people on the far right in the Nazis specifically, not all far right people, but Nazis. We can both agree that they are highly promomatic of America, that that's a really dangerous trend to go. So we can establish that report. Once we establish that report, I can give some information that

now we can bring in facts. We should not lead with the facts. Leading with the fact is going to be quite dangerous if we want to prevent defensive aggressive responses from people on the other side. And again, defensive aggressive responses are consequence of the fight or flight response and tribalism that people want to defend themselves or they

want to attack you. So to prevent that, you want to first do the four do the previous three sides before you bring in the information and that's the eye of the egret. So you bring in information and you say, hey, in order to have conversations with people on the other side, we need to acknowledge the problems the challenges on our side, and that includes the provocative, aggressive violence of the Antifi.

So if you want to convince other people to collaborate with you effectively people on the other side, you need to acknowledge the problems on your side. And once they agree with this statement that's obvious on the face of it, you want to give them positive reinforcement. That's the key part.

Say okay, it's great that we can agree, and I understand this one was not an easy thing for you to acknowledge that the Antifi engaged aggressive, provocative violence, but it was really important that we did so in order to have these healthy conversations with people on the other side. So that's the kind of grass you want to make through the Egypt technique. Emotions, goals, report, information, and positive reinforcement. I'm gonna try to remember that. Do I remember the acronym?

So that's cool. Where are you from. I'm originally from Eastern Europe, a small republic, a small country called the Republic of Moldova. Now it's just to the south east of Ukraine and the west of Romania. It was liberated in nineteen ninety one from the Soviet Union from Russia whatever what's now Russia. It was conquered in nineteen forty five by the Soviet Union and then added to that territory.

And so my parents left in nineteen ninety one when it was liberated, and I was a ten year old kid when they left, and then grew up in New York City, lived in Boston, North Carolina, and now I'm based in Columbus, Ohio. Wow, what were you like as a kid. Were you really curious? I mean, I imagine you were very curious and intellectual. I was definitely curious intellectual. I was quite less self aware and quite a bit

less humble, much more intellectually aggressive. I would say, like, you wanted the things to be precise, right, I wanted things to be precise, and I wanted I was really concerned when they weren't. I was much more inclined to see both sides of the debate than other people, and that got me in a lot of hot with people on my side. Yeah, and that would still get you in hot trouble in this political climate you have, everyone wants you to take it. If you're not taking so

inside they don't like you exactly. Yeah, the thing about the Charlottesville that got me a lot of trouble with people who could see that were similarly agreed with me on the problem with Nazis sort of problem, but weren't willing to acknowledge the Antifa violence. I mean, my background also is Jewish, so that got me in a lot of trouble, particularly with people in my contact network were also Jewish. So you know, I also know, and if

this is too personal, please tell me. I know that you battled mental illness for some part of your life and you've escaped it. As you said, you know you've escaped that darkness. So how did you kind of cail your way out of that? So there, it was difficult to really acknowledge at first when mental illness pursed. It's not intuitive to see from within that mental illness is

occurring and that it's time to seek help. So it was really important for me to get an outside perspective first of all, to acknowledge that something is really wrong. I'm not able to function normally as regularly as I should, not to be motivated, not to be able to engage in important activities, and then to be able to go and find a therapist for help. So that was really important for me to be able to make that understand

that understanding. And the important thing to remember is that the brain is an organ just like any other organ, and we tend to forget that. We tend to identify our brain with ourselves. We would be much more like the quickst help if we had a stubbor problem or you know, if we broke our arm, rather than if we broke our brain. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, it's a really good it's a really good point. Yeah. Did do

you have depression? Yeah? So depression anxiety, And in order to address that, it was really important to have the recognition that I'm not able to function as in normally yeahs you know. And so I went to a therapist for a while for weekly, and then eventually so every week for a couple of years several years. Then started taking medications as well, psychiatric medications. Right now I'm seeing

a therapist monthly but still taking a psychiatric medications. Cool. Well, sounds like you've really come a long way, So congratulations, yeah, thank you. Still suffering from quite a bit of anxiety occasionally, but not so much. Yeah, yeah, me and you both, brother. I mean, at this day and age, if you're not anxious, you're not conscious. That's good. Right now, I'm much more capable of noticing when I'm experiencing anxiety and taking deliberate

steps to address it. Good. And I personally found that meditation has helped me leaps and downs for me too. Try to meditate daily, Yeah, I try to. So how can we defend our happiness against emotional traps? It seems that question is related to mental illness from anxiety. So one way, too sure, one way that we can defend our happiness against emotional traps is recognizing when these emotional traps are occurring, when we're driven by our god responses

and intuitions to make bad decisions. And that was the chapter of a book that I talked about choosing a house. How we chose our house of my wife and so what we want, the process through which we went in order to choose the house. We went to this house. It had a great it was in the summer, It had a great, beautiful backyard, and there was a lot

of shade, and we were really struck by it. And so that's really fascinating, really great house, and we were going to choose it, and then there was a second runner up, but we decided to not just go with our intuitions. It was a pretty major life decision. And what we did was we evaluated by a quantitative mechanism which I can describe right now, how we chose the house.

What we did was we evaluated each part of the house, including the backyard, also the kitchen, you know, the bathrooms, the living room and so on, by its importance to us and the quality of it. So importance is basically the weight of it, how weighty it is, how important there is, and we placed a number on that from one to ten. And the quality of this room, So how god are the bathroom so good as the kitchen?

How good is the backyard. One thing we realized was that we would not be using the backyard year round. We would only be using it for half of the year. So that made the backyard only five our ranking of five out of ten, whereas let's say the living room would be using year round. So I think we ranked

something like at nine. And when we added up everything the other house that one we thought was going to be a runner up, not the one with a great backyard, turned out to be quite a bit better on this scale. And so we really protected ourselves from a great year of unhappiness by using this weighted decision making method. And so we live in this We've been living in this house where I currently am for about two years, and we are very glad that we made this decision, even

though the backyard is not as awesome. Well, I bet there's many aspects of you that your wife fell in love with, you know, including your quirky personality, you know, your compassion, your big heart. But also it's obvious you have such a you know, you help the family make the best decision. So, yes, that's really important, and that's something I really strive to do. To focus and we collaborate together, my wife and I am. Oh, yeah, I saw a really nice picture of you two. Yeah, in

one of your materials that you sent me. So tell me a little about this pro truth movement that you're kind of spearheading. So the pro truth movement is an effort to get everyone around the world to commit to certain clear, truthful behaviors. Now, let's talk a little bit about the concept of truth. It's a very fuzzy concept. If you think about it, you know whose truth is? That my truth, your truth. It's very fuzzy. We can argue about it to no end. Who you know whose

truth is? Instead of arguing about truth with the capital T, let's focus on behaviors. Let's focus on truthful behaviors. In the same way that if you go to a doctor and he tells you to eat healthy doesn't mean to eat healthy. It could mean a thousand different things to a thousand different people. If he gives you a clear

set of behaviors, that's much more helpful for you to follow. So, yeah, the pro truth movement, which is the basis of it, is the Pro Truth Pledge at protruthpledge dot org is a set of simple, twelve clear, simple behaviors that anyone can follow. So for folks who are following along on their online just go to the Protruthpledge dot org websites. Again, that's p O T A E T H P L E G G P L E d g E dot org

and you can check out these twelve behaviors there. I'll give you a couple of examples fact check in information to confirm it's true before accepting it or sharing it. Cite my sources so that others can verify my information. Revaluate if my information is challenged and retracted. If I can't align my opinions and my actions with facts, ask people to retract information reliable sources have disproved, even if

those people are my allies. And celebrate those who attract and correct statements and update their beliefs to or the truth. And six more behaviors like this, very simple, very clear behavior. You're taking notes, you're talking too fast. It's all approach, all appro truth Pledge that org. So yeah, all of these very simple, very clear behaviors that are fundamentally important, that are the essence of critical rational thinking and media literacy.

So just committing to these behaviors taking the pledge is what we want folks to do. Cool, we'll all put down the show notes so people can go to that. Yeah, we have a number of prominent people who took the pro Trooth pledge, including four US congresspeople, over thirty state legislators, and prominent individuals like Peter Singer, Stephen Pinker, Jonathan Heide. We mentioned Jonathan Hyde earlier in the show, Michael Shermer and many others who chip Heath is a famous psychologist

who took the Pro Trooth Pledge. Many other organizations as well took the pledge, and over eight thousand ordinary folks. Wow, you just made this thing between height and ordinary folks right so well, you know I want to ask you one last question, how can you live the life you want to live? I think it's a good ending question here. The most important thing to do in living the life you want to live is making sure that you're not letting your gut intuitions drive you into making really bad

decisions for yourself. Think about the example I gave just be five minutes before about the house. If we chose that house, we'd be having quite a bit of a worse life than we have right now because we just let our gut intuitions drive us and make causes to make bad choices. If I didn't look at objectively at the fact that I needed some mental health support, I'd be still having quite a bit of struggle with depression than I am right now. And there are so many

other choices. In our final we made some examples of financial investments where if we made poor financial investments, sold low and bought high, we'd be having much worse lives. The most important thing to do in having the life that you deserve, the life that you want to live, is to make sure that you are able to notice when your gut intuitions are not aligned with reality and make choices that are aligned with reality. Otherwise you will not have the life you want, and that's really bad

for you. And I really don't want you to suffer. That's what it's driving in here. I mean seriously, my goal that my value set is utilitarian. I want people to not suffer, and that's what's really driving all of my activism. That's what I want the most good for the most number. That's what I want. You want your value there to be aligned with the truth. You want them to actually not suffer in reality. So thank you so much for chaving with me today, Gleb, and for

the great work you're doing. Thank you, Scott, and I hope you yourself consider taking the approach with pledge. We have a number of psychology podcasters who did so, and they welcome you to be one of them. Yeah, I mean you mentioned like a list of guests on the show. You're right, You're right. I will absolutely consider it. I'll check it out later tonight. Hey, thank you so much. Thank you, Scott, you have a great day. You two. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast. I hope you

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