Tim Urban || Climbing the Thinking Ladder

great Tim Urban. Tim is the writer and illustrator of one of my favorite blogs called weight but Why, which he co founded with Andrew Finn in twenty thirteen. With Rye stick figure illustrations and occasionally epic prose, Weight but Why has guardered millions of unique page views, thousands of patrons, and famous fans like Elon Musk. His long form blog covers a range of subjects, including artificial intelligence, outer space,

and procrastination. Tim earned his ab from Harvard University, graduating kum laude with a MA in government. In this episode, I talked to Tim about the complex relationship between identity and critical thinking. Tim cautions against blind loyalty to specific ideologies, for it can lead to an echo chamber of tribal minds. Instead of dogmatic maxims, Tim suggests we uphold basic core

principles that guide our thoughts and behavior. In this way, Tim believes we engage in high wrong thinking all the while cultivating ideal abs within our culture. We also touch on the topics of dating, education, politics, writing, morality, and tech. So that further ado, I bring you Tim Urban just chewing nicotine gum so I can get some energy. Does nicotine gum give you energy? Is that? Does that work? I know that? Uh, it's great. Biohackers love it. Yeah.

I've never smoked a cigarette. But nicotine gum when used like in moderation, if you used it a lot, you know, you get addicted. And also it loses this potency you have to take more and more. What if you take you know, the half dose two milligrams and you maybe like two or three of those max on a day and take a day off, you know, a couple of days a week. It's great. It's a little boost like

a Sharper. It's like a Sharper caffeine boost. It's like a caffeine boost but like sharper better focus and it doesn't last as long. Slow sure, half light. I want to ask you a question, tim Uh. Someone told me that you you said that you have ADHD. Is that true? I don't know if or if you've been diagnosed. I don't know if I have ADHD. I've never been diagnosed.

It's hard to know, like what ADSG exactly is. I was like, it's like, is it one of those things where it's just a label for what a lot of people have with or is it like a specific condition where people can't like sit still, except I never like have problems like taking an exam in school. It wasn't

like unable to focus. So I don't know whether it's like it's like a specific diagnosis of people who like literally can't focus when they need to, in which case I don't have that, or if it's like, yeah, kind of personality profile of mine is what we call ADHD, and like, yes, then I probably have that. So I don't know. Yeah, No, I hear you. I mean I I often say I have intellectual ADHD, you know, but

you know, I love lots of different tops. I feel like I get a sense you do too, like in the sense you you if if I told you you had to write all your articles about one specific topic the rest of your life, wouldn't you feel a significant limiting of your freedoms? Yeah, I would hate that. I would hate that. I'm all about aj Jacobs said it best. He said, if you could take college again, he would do thirty two one oh one classes. And that's how

I feel about life. Okay. I love my job because I basically get to do a one oh one, you know, dive and then come out, you know, explain it. So then you know, explain it, you really understand least a certain amount of it. Obviously there's expertise you have to put a lot more time in for, and then it's so fun to move on to the next topic, Like I yeah, I feel like at that point starts to get more, you know, after the one oh one level of starts to get more rigorous and and more technical.

And I'm sure it's satisfying to get to that level, but it's like, ooh, or I could just move on to like, you know, I'm like, I'm like intellectually promiscuous. Yeah, oh well, that's that's even the sexier phrase. Than intellectual ADHD. I like that phrase. By the way, A. J. Jacobs is my brother man, so big shout out to him. He's one of my best friends. Yeah, I love him. I love him too. I love him too. I love him to And I'm gonna make sure you hear you

that he thinks. He I just love the way he thinks, like he's thinking about It's like he's over there having a lot of the same thoughts and same like kind of thing that that that I haven't. So as soon as we talked, we get connected. We were like, oh wow, you're also like this, Well me too, and and well look it's all those grand grand VN diagram That's why I resonate with your writings a lot too. You know.

AJ has a new book coming out on puzzles. I don't know if you saw that, And I actually have a galley of that, I think or it's on the way and it's the exact book I want in life. I'm so excited. Yeah, treating like what would it be like if to treat all of life like one big puzzle, like the meaning of life as a puzzle. Like you know, you zoom out because I know you're a big fan

of zooming out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So I love that idea of like, you know, building scaling up the puzzle idea to to solve not just your life, but human human existence and more generally. Yeah, totally, it's I think it's great to approach complex things that way, and which is the opposite way of approaching things like dogmatically, right, which is the you know, it's the exact opposite mindset.

It's like, when you're puzzling, you're not attached to anything, You're like exploring, you're looking for stuff, You're you're and your solution oriented, as opposed to dogmatic, when you're like attached to a certain idea and you're not exploring and you're trying to protect that idea, it's like the polar opposite of puzzle solving. Yeah, it sounds like you're describing ideology or like firm commitment to an ideology, yeah, which which I think like shuts down puzz Yeah, it shuts

down truth seeking. I've noticed some common themes on your your own social media page of your frustration with a lot of the with a lot of well quite frankly ideologies going around. Is this is this something that's increasingly frustrating you or is there a steady you know, what's what's the rate of change in your feelings about this? Yeah?

So the way I like to think about it is like thinking like a scientist, which is puzzling, you know, truth truth seeking, you know, humble truth seeking, and like not attaching yourself or others to ideas, like ideas are just science experiments. If that's one type of thinking. I like, I have a lens. I use like a vertical ladder, and so that to me is high wrung thinking. Yeah, and then if you could, as you move down to the low rungs, you become more attached to ideas, more dogmatic,

more group thinking. More. It becomes the ideas you believe become become deeply intertwined with both your identity and your group. You know who you want to be friends with, and it defines the whole group. The groups you're in are defined by the ideas that everyone has to believe. So this is a different way of thinking. All of us to both live up and down this ladder. Like, I don't believe anyone is pure high rung. My goal is to increase the ratio of times I'm on the high

wrungs to the times, I'm in the low rungs. But what I'm frustrated by is that I think whether it's social media or maybe the kind of broadcast media turning into narrowcast tribal media, or whatever whatever it is, I don't I don't know. It's hard to know the exact inputs that are causing this, but it seems to me that low rung thinking is on the rise. Their low rung thinking is spreading, going viral, and little kids are being taught to be low rung thinkers by people who

you know. And I think that so that, yes, I think that's very It both just kind of like sad, and I think it's bad for people to be low rung thinkers. I think it's bad for society. But it also kind of it's kind of scary. It's like this

is you know, look at look at history. A lot of society, these that we're doing fine, like devolved into something really really bad because low rung thinking kind of it was like an epidemic of it took hold and it can becomes you know, it's that's once that starts to take hold, it's it's like contagious and it like switches on a switch in people's brains and kind of turns us into kind of crazy tribal monsters. Yeah, can you give me like a specific example of well run

thinking idea that kids are being exposed to that? Like? What? What? What is an example? So? I was just reading an article by Connor Friedersdorff on The Atlantic from twenty twenty one where he was talking about this Ebudenston, Illinois, there was a school district that did a you know, three

three action weeks. It was to basically learn about Black Lives Matter, And the way that it was being taught was that it's you know, it's like learning about like Black Lives Matter is necessary and that anyone who criticizes it is being is essentially a terrible person as being

a racist. So the point is that there's nothing wrong with kids learning it's an important movement of our time, right, and there's it's incredibly complex, and there's there's all this historical reasons behind it and all these different goals and then but there's different players calling themselves b LM, and there's and so learning about that is Yeah, that's that's schools should be teaching kids about an important movement of their time, but they should be taught about all different

kinds of civil rights movements and comparing contrast, Black Lives Matter today is similar to other civil rights movements, and it's different in these ways. And there are people there are anti racists, people who are into anti racism and they like Black Lives Matter and they think it's the right set of strategies and philosophies and world views. And there's other people who are anti racists who actually think

Black Lives Matter is not the right approach. Right, that's a good education that leaves the kids thinking, okay, well, I know, round things out and it encourages Yeah, of course these are there's different views, and like you have different views, and you know, but Connor's point, he quoted a parent. You know, these kids were being taught this is the one way to think, and it is kind

of religious moralistically, this is what good people think. Anyone who disagrees with the activists that were coming into the classroom to teach are are bad, bad people, including your parents if they don't agree with it, you know, And

so then kids are going home. There's a quote from a parent where she says something like, I can't even read it because I just was just looking at it where she says that this mother says, I believe in the importance of every school district, including my own, moving away from a traditionally wide centric voice to a broader and more thoughtful view of history that acknowlogists the wrongs in both the past and president recognized its white privilege

and honors black experience and the experience of other minority groups. I think we've come to the point, however, where our children are being used as ponds. I feel like we should can and should work together for a more just, equitable world. But don't believe that one political organization, with its own idea of how to get there, should be the our border of progress. There's no room in that. And then so then she tells the story of her

her student. Her kid came home and basically was thinking, like acting like a real zealot about it, and was telling what they learned. And when the parents, like, you know, the parents challenge it at all, you know, the kid was had been taught to be a low rung thinker, that this is the only way. Anyone who disagrees is bad. And that's so forget the fact that it's BLM. It

could be anything. It could be someone coming and teaching about Christian values or American nationalism, or someone coming and teaching in about whatever it is, capitalism, communism. But teaching one lens doesn't just deprive the student of a full education of understand It doesn't just deprive the student of understanding all the different crevices and nuances of a certain situation. It also teaches them to think in that way, teaches

them to think, I'm right. There's only listen to the authority. The authority knows, don't question it. Anyone who questioned it's a bad person. And that the way to handle someone who disagreed with you is to tell them they're they're a terrible person. That's training kids to think and the low runs, which is awful. I mean, that's that's a

great way to be. It's a great way to not learn and not grow and to end up siphoning off for any friends that disagree with you and form echo chambers and you and your groups of friends and so yeah, that's it's I don't like it. It's interesting because the political organization is usually like when people say that phrase, they're not thinking about this specific organization that it's called. Right, there's it's very smart move on the part of the

organization to call it Black Lives Matter. It's like you start an organization and you have a whole set of methodology and everything you call it like don't kill the children? Right Like anyone who says I don't believe what don't kill the children will be banished, cause I mean everything does this. And I mean the Nazis were like the National Socialist Workers. You know, it's like the most right wing caucus is the Freedom Caucus. Well, who wouldn't like that?

The Patreon Act, which was a surveillance program. Who oh, if you don't like that, you must be unpatriotic. I mean, this is classic, classic trickery. It's yeah, it's coercion. I share with you a deep desire to instill artical thinking in schools and more of like a scholarly mindset to it. And that's something I've made the cases that we've really lost the scholary mindset in our society. Very few people

do on the one hand. On the other hand, thing that I love to do, you know, and every time I try to do that, people start to glaze their eyes, going over, glaze over. I'm like, on the one hand, on the other hand, they're like, they're like, what you're boring. Something I wait to think about is how to separate those sets of skills key skills in school from IQ type thinking, because I think there's a lot of very smart people from an IQ point of view that have

well wrung thinking. So that's just something I wanted to riff with you a little bit about, because I think that those are two different kinds of smarts. Maybe they're correlated, but they're not. They're far from perfectly correlated. I frets from research that in some ways, higher IQ makes you more prone to lower on thinking, because lower onthinking emerges from this convincing yourself that you're one hundred percent right and you it disagrees with you is an idiot or

an asshole or both. And high IQ people have a very clever lawyer in their head who builds a case, builds a very effective case, and you can convince your talk yourself, you know, such a good case that you really believe your own bullshit. And I see that a lot.

I see I see a lot of the people who I think are really kind of caught because again, I don't want to say they are low wrong thinkers, because we all can be and they will I'm sure at some point in some way, and they're thinking they're they're less I'm more low rung than they are. Who knows. But I see some people who are really caught in it who seems like it, and these are some of the smartest people. I mean often often these people are

clearly extremely intelligent. There's also just you know, there's another kind of vector, which is a higher education level, which does not necessarily have to do with IQ, but higher education level correlates with more political just because there could

be a lot of reasons. But I think a lot of the time it's the people who can afford, you know, who are in that elite position to get higher education, have time on their hands and can can into these ideologies and as opposed to I think people trying to make ends meet are less political, They're less they're less

tuned in. I think some of the there's a lot of different factors, but if anything, I think the kind of elite echelons of society, whether it's whether it's an education or in IQ or whatever you want to say, or often some of the biggest kind of low rung pitfalls. Yeah, no, it's it's an It's a truly excellent point. Were you in gifted education as a kid. I was like a higher math class for a couple of years. Like I was always in like the high groups for like reading

groups and math groups. But I don't, I don't think we had gifted education programs, So I don't. I don't public. I was just in a pub public. Yeah, I was just in a public school system. And were you, I mean, what were you like as a kid, Like did you were you shy? Introverted? Were you like the class president? You know what? I was the class president. Actually I

was not shy or introverted. I was a class clown, and I was I was in trouble a lot, like for you know, talking in class or you know, being whatever silly. I got like calls home a lot and got in trouble. I also was the class president in high school. I Uh, it's part partially because like I'm like a very marginal athlete and it was like sports everything there and I was on very mediocre on the

ski team and like playing with my friends. But like I wasn't going to go you know, into my high school, like the varsity athletes there often like college athletes, just like the next level. I wasn't going to do that. And then there was like the theater crowd, and like I did a little of that, but like I wasn't really into like you know, theater either, and so I was like, all right, well there's this other thing I'll

I'll like drive myself towards. And I just like went for the class office, which is it's a pretty inane like looking back, it's just like so like I don't even know what we were doing, but it was fun. It was fun like running a campaign. It was like it was like a game, you know. But anyway, I was like but I was very like thinky, like I was like I was in camp. I was, you know,

when I was five six seven. The there would be kids like in the group walking with the counselor heading from one thing to another, and I would always be always like tim and I'd be way behind, like kicking rocks. In my own world. That was very common, like in my own world just very much like a lot of time was kind of just like buried in my own world, like thinking and you know, in my own so I

did a lot of that. Do any teachers comment on you being a good writer, like, did they see your potentially? I'm always interested in this because I'm very interested in how we can activate children's potential, and you are a very accomplished writer, and I'm just curious did anyone identify that? No, I don't think so. Because I was very good at math. I was always like, you know, like met math was. I was always getting told you're you know, you're very

good at math, you're in whatever. With writing, I feel like I didn't have a chance to do any kind of like fun writing, which is when I like actually tried to write like something fun, like you have to do you know, you have to do your thesis statement and your topic sentences, and I was just trying to get through it, probably on the morning before it was due,

like frantically. You know, I don't think like the school I was in, I didn't even realize that writing was like even something I like could do or like that I would want to pursue until I started just for fun, like blogging and writing in a totally colloquial voice, and then I was like, oh, this is fun, and like so yeah, I actually thought of writing as like something I kind of like didn't like at all until I was like twenty three or so. What about drawing stick figures?

Drawing is something I always it was like the thing I was one of the things I was always least talented that, you know, like some people can just like draw up face and it looks kind of like a real face, or they can draw like a horse and it just looks like I don't want to put the It's like I still if you asked me to draw a face or a horse, it would look like a second grader did. And so again this is interesting that, like, because there were things I was good at that I

knew I was good at, like math, like music. You know, I was composed music. I can hear something and I can play it, like I always thought I was going into music, you know, but writing kind of came out of nowhere. I was blogging for fun, and it turned out that like blogging with that voice like colloquial was something I liked. And then I thought one day I

just crossed my mind. I was like, maybe I'll like draw a little stick comic in an old blog I had, and I did, and I had fun doing it, and then people really liked it and I was like, oh my god, this is so fun. I became like and then I wrote like five comic posts in a row and I was so fun. And then I stopped that blog because I got tied up with some other projects. And then two years later I was when I came back to writing and startweight. But why I I was like, oh,

I'm obvious definitely bringing drawings into this. It was a good match, like silly bad stick figure drawings. I think it was like it was a good match for my writing tone. I was like, oh, these fit together, and so I was like, all right. It's like that's why I think people should always try a lot of stuff, because you never know when you're going to stumble upon something. You don't know what you're good at or what you know you actually like until you try a bunch of things.

It's you're not giving yourself a chance to stumble upon something that you're like, oh, man, I'm good at this unless you try a lot of stuff. Did you ever try that strategy with women or men? Whatever you're into women? And yeah, I mean, honestly, I do think that By the time I met my wife, when I was twenty nine. It is like a ski you get good at. And

I don't mean in like the pickup artist way. I mean because I mean like there's a whole language that a romantic language that is that the people speak, and if you don't know how to speak it and you're just being your normal self, you're gonna fall in your face a lot, which I certainly did. And it's like you start to understand that language as you get older. And like for me, if if I was you know,

I was this. I've never done the app swiping thing because I met my wife right before it started, which is too bad. It seems like it would have been fun, although people seem to hate it, so I don't know. Maybe I'm not but it's not fun. But if I can verify, yeah, I can verify are you? Are you on the apps as we say I am I am, it seems like it would be fun. Man. I seem like, oh my god, I feel like I procress in all day,

like trying to find days. But if I went up to it, just say I was in a bar and I was my friends and I saw a girl who I wanted to go talk to. Early on when I don't know. Seventeen eighteen nineteen, I would have probably not

done very well. But when I was older, like in my mid twenties, I would have done much better in that situation because I there's a few things I started to realize is that, Well, the biggest thing I can say, like the advice I would give anyone is I used to think of it as like the game Grand Theft Auto right, you like could just you know run over people on the sidewalk and like and it's part of the fun, is like you can kind of like be in a non consequence land and like do whatever you

want right now. If you apply that to the romantic world, what I mean is I'm not saying you should go and like be you know, like growt people. I'm saying you should go up and like talk to someone and think of it as a video game and you still be a nice, good person. But like if it were a video game, you might just go up and like

start a random comment. You might go up and like point at the bartender's hat and say like something a joke about that hat, and just like you would you wouldn't you would just try stuff and you wouldn't care. And that's a superpower because there's a part of our brains, male and female, who if you in a small tribe, which is when our brains were developed, if you try to hit on someone and it didn't work and you got rejected, that was going to make you know the other.

You know, if you're a guy, that the girls are going to go talk about how much of a loser you are and you're done. That's it. You're not gonna mate because like all the you're now a pariah forever and that and on that you're you're Our brains still

think that way. So it's a terrifying to approach a girl or a guy in a bar and and so we but but that, But it's a superpower when you're like there's literally a million people I can approach in this one city and they'll I'll never see this person again.

So I'm just gonna go up and be myself and be silly and whatever, and like she might not be into it, but then I'll go up to someone else and and who I think is interesting and and it's like so often that's like magnetic because it's just like someone with confidence being themselves and not trying so hard and not no fear. So I think we're moving the fear and just being like this is silly, it's a game.

Dating is silly, Like it's it's we're all in a silly situation trying to figure out who to date here. Just have on be silly and like be yourself and don't worry so much. And I think, like once I started to absorb that, it's a superpower, because what you really want is you want to end up on first dates with people who actually might be a good match for you. And if you can go, if you can go on a hundred of those, you're probably going to

find like an amazing life partner somewhere. The problem is, so that's that was always the goal for me, is like it's like I just want to figure if someone I see someone in the bar. You know, attraction is the first kind of hook at that point, I want to go and talk to this person and if it would be a good match for me, I want to

end up on a first date with her. And the problem is and the problem is if what's what's sad is when that person would have been a good match for you, but you can't pull off that bar interaction, so she does. She never even realizes that she'd be a good match. She just thinks of you as a weirdo or creepy or whatever, and you're out. And so it's like, you know, the key the skill is getting getting good at actually ending up on first dates with people who really would have been a good match for

you if, like, if you had that chance. Brilliant things are saying, but what if you're like me and you're attracted to what's not good for you? The kind of the kind of women that I'm attracted to are like dangerous women, and it never it's not good for me. I the ones that I probably should be approaching because because you made a point, like the ideal is to go on first dates with people who are good for you.

So you just made me think of that. I'm being a little cheeky, but I'm also being a little vulnerable with you. Yeah, okay, so get into this more dangerous meaning what what is it on? You know when you're now like, do you end up in a relationship and then you keep realizing this is not the right person or is it like what's actually happened? No? No, more on dates, more on dates with people that I realized are not the right people. I'm good enough not to

get into a full relationship. And why are they not the right people? Because it usually doesn't go past a couple of dates. So it's probably they're not because because because you because you don't you lose interest. Yeah, I mean suddenly became all the spot, like god on me, and I'm curious, I'm sweating, I'm figure out out what just happened? What happened in this interview? Well we might

as well explore. I'm actually curious because to me, it's like it's such a tragedy when like, yeah, people like it's like there's there's so many good matches out there for everyone, and it's like it's like so it's such a it's so sad when it's like it's like these yeah, there's some like block in the way. Here's something I would say that this is another thing I learned. This is a huge piece of wisdom that I learned from

being safe. Basic. I was single basically for ten straight years most of my you know, most of my twenties. It's a hack to be your This is more like once you're even in the bar, but especially you know, because that's like it takes. It's like an actual game in the bar, and like you have to get good at that specific game to be able to get that first date. Once you're on a first date, I think it becomes simple, which is be your exact self for

being yourself on a great day. I mean you don't want to, you know, you know, yeah, be a be a true version of yourself that is one of the best versions of yourself. But be you because it's a perfect filter. And it can also take anxiety away. If you're trying to get someone to like you and you're saying, my goal is to get her to want to date me. A. Now you might fail at that, and it's really upsetting when you feel you think, what did I do wrong?

I messed up right? And b if you win that game and now you're actually on date five with this person, she's on date five with some version of you that you've been putting on and that's who she is. You know, you found someone who was interested in this version of you, which is not maybe not really you because you're trying to manipulate. So if I would just go and be my full self, my full nerdy self, my full excited, energetic,

super talkative, interruptive self, my curious self. And that's a lot of females would find that annoying or unappealing or whatever. And that's and so if she ghosted me after that first date, I would never get upset. I'm like, I just learned she's not right for me because she But and then the people you end up attracting are the people who happen to like you. Yeah, And so it's really advice, I mean, and it's so simple in a way.

It's like a lot of this pickup artistry game, the game stuff is like so complicated, so much extra extra, So much of that is just trying to get. If your goal is just to to sleep around, that's a whole different that's a whole it's a whole different story. That's a different story. Yeah. Yeah, Like what always excited me was trying to like it was like having a crush on someone and like, uh, you know, going in

a first date. You know, my dream first date was like, oh, we're hitting it off so well, and we're like we're having so much fun and like we are super into each other. So if you that's a that game I think is easier because you just you just just yeah,

you just be yourself and drink. I mean, alcohol is so helpful in these situations, like it's it's it's because if the point is the output alcohol can do, is it can actually calm that part of the brain that thinks you're in fifty thousand BC and this is a dire situation. Alcohol can make you shrug and say, it's a date, doesn't it's not the beginning or the end of the world, Like, it's a date, let's have fun

and it doesn't work, I'll laugh at myself. That's a great zone to be in, and alcohol like helps get you in that moune. Yeah, can we unpack the physics here of why when you sleep with people is a different game? Is it? Because like lit's enern how on this intellectually? Is it? Because when you get right down to it, what you're trying to do in essence is manipulate people into finding you physically attractive who don't actually find you physically attractive. So that's like a harder game,

is that? Is that? Along the lines of why yeah, yeah, yeah, it's I mean, there's a whole level. So it's like, you know, you can go to really kind of predatory mode where you know, a guy is actually manipulating women and like telling them like like making them think he loves her, you know, so that he can you know, and then or like you know what to toutch tinder swindler, like making her think she's he's rich or that's the

full manipulative like. But but you can also just like I feel like if the goal is to sleep with them and you don't have goals beyond that, like you don't actually want a relationship, then then yeah, like probably what you're gonna end up doing is you're not trying to like you don't need her or him to know the real you, Like, that's not the point you are trying to make. You're trying to be someone they want

to sleep with. It's seduction. Seduction, yes, yeah, which is which is you know, but it's also we're like animals. That's fun. There's nothing wrong with like playing that game. Is again, I think what's wrong is when you go to the next level, you're actually hurting people. You're you're you're really manipulating, you know, saying I love you and you're just and you don't. That's that's that's pretty evil.

But like I think, like if you're being upfront about what you want and you're just in full like flirty mode trying to sleep around, I think like everyone's it's within everyone guy or girl's right to like have a phase like that and like want that. There's nothing wrong with that if but just just don't. You don't want to hurt people along the way. There's ways to do it that hurt every you know, you're a chain of victims,

and there's ways to do it where no one gets hurt. Yeah. Absolutely, So it's like you're playing a video game, but there are consequences, but the consequences aren't so bad. I'm trying to like integrate all the stuff because you said it's like a video game, like Grand Theft audio. When you approach an audio listen to me auto auto. When you approach a one, there are consequences if you lie to them, but there are no consequences if you're just being yourself

and you're being leading with a kindness. We need nuance here, we need more nuance. Yeah, yeah, it's an important disclaimer like that, like the Grand Theft Auto thing, you want to divide because hurting other people is real consequences, So you're not in grand theft Auto. Correct, you're in the

real world. Then you shouldn't forget that you're in grand theft Auto about getting rejected, Like if you approach someone and you're yourself and you go and you start to try to play a silly game with them in the bar, which again sometimes it's so much better than just going up and being awkward or going up and doing like a cheesy pickup line, just to go up and be yourself and just like make some comment about something and start making a joke or play a game with them

and like try to you know, I don't know whatever. It is. Like if you're just going up and experimenting and you get rejected, there's no consequence there. That's you can pretend that that was an avatar that rejected your avatar and okay and on to the next which is actually true. You're never going to see them again. They're a figment of your imagination as far as it matters, but they're actually a real person. So when it comes

to hurting them, you're in the real world. So when I say grand theft thought, I'm talking entirely about like you getting rejected does not matter. It is not a bad thing, it's irrelevant. You just get an experiment and you learn something cool, take that information, move on. But what happens if you don't have this mindset, It's our nature is to incorrectly think that getting rejected by a

stranger is mortifying and crushes your confidence. And it's like this awful, awkward, hideous life experience and you're going to be rattled for the rest of the night and the rest of the week. And that is a complete delusion based on a world that our brain was built for

them we don't actually live in. And so shedding that is a super And there's just so many there's so many people, So like if you can just you know, try a bunch of different things when you're trying to get that first date again, I'm probably sound like an old man talking about how to meet someone at a bar, because this is all my world, where I was talking about meeting someone at a wedding or a bar or like a party. I don't understand the app world exactly,

and what's how that works. I imagine it's similar, though it's a If I were doing it right now, my goal would be again This is if I were trying to find a girlfriend, my goal would be there's a game that has to do you have to get good at. But the goal of the game is to get the

right people to go on first dates with you. When you know, to find people that would be a good match for you, identify that, and then charm them enough that they're interested in going on a first date with you, and the texting phase, and then once you're in the first date, then I just think it's easy to just go be yourself and see what happens. But I think that that's it seems like it's a game now of like trying to get the right first dates. But I just I don't know. Yeah, now, Tim, are you you?

Are you married? Did you say you're married? Yeah? Are you too? Personal question? Let me know. Are you hoping for children? Is that on their horizon? Yeah? So both both me and my wife. If one quarter of us wants to not have kids and three quarters does so, we probably will. But like there's definitely a very solid chunk of each of us. It's like we really like each other, we really like our lives, we both like our jobs. Like it's just like we're not we're not

in it. We're not like, oh there's a missing hole here. If we have kids now, we'd be a family. And it's like we're a perfectly fine family, just the two of us. And it saddles you. It takes away your attention off yourself, which maybe is probably good for most people and probably for us too. But you know, there's something nice about being able to be selfish and really just focus on your pursuits and your friends and your fun.

There's nothing wrong with that. And it's like having kids, you are intentionally saying I am going to divert a lot of that forever, and but three quarters of us have reasons of you know, it just seems really fun to have raised kid kid together. I look at like my parents now, we just I was just with my two sisters and my parents for the weekend, and like

it was so fun. It's like a big group of friends, and like it's hard to imagine being being seventy and not being happy about having like three twenty somethings, you know, kids. So I so, yeah, I think we will. But it's a hard one. I think I think more people should

think about it. I don't think it should be an automatic people think it's an you know people, I think couples often think getting married is an automatic thing, and maybe we should, you know, be a little more open minded and same with like couples who are married or whatever are staying together, Like think having kids is just like that's what you have to do. Like it's like you go to school and you have your job and you have to eat, and you have kids. Like it's like, well,

I don't. I don't think. On the other hand, like this is like an Elon Musk thing. He would be furious and maybe heard this because he thinks that like people not having kids is an absolute catask forphere for fushure community, which is probably correct. But you know, there's a lot of things that I could that, like, in a collective sense, are probably a bad for humanity that I would still I still do. So I'm not like he thinks having kids is bad for him many he's

a natalist. No, No, he's the opposite. He's the opposite of natalist. I gotcha. He wants people having lots of kids, and he thinks in the Western world there's this this this kind of this this trend towards people having fewer and fewer kids, and you end up with this, you know, an inverted pyramid society where the weight of supporting the retired generation just crushes the productivity of the younger generation and is and the shrink population shrinks, and he thinks

that's a disaster. So he's he wishes that everyone would have three or more kids. I think, well, he wants to populate Mars. He wants he wants a whole He's got ulterior motive there. Yeah, but maybe so. You know, you've written about ego, and that's another topic very interesting to me. You wrote, if your ego is a backpack, each opinion you tie to your identity is like a rock in that backpack. Cool life act toss some of the rock out of the bag to feel lighter and freer.

Has that Is that a process you've worked on personally over the years. Do you feel like, did you ever have a big eo? And like now it's notably different? Yeah? I get Actually I probably should have said identity seat of ego there, because I get a little confused about what's a little bit of a confusing Yeah, it's a little confusing concept for me, Like I'm not really I guess I don't really know what an ego is, Like

I have an ideas of it. The self is a large representation of all of our self ideas about ourself, like our self concepts, like our values are who we are, and it's kind of reflecting the consciousness back on ourselves, a mirror that's our self. The ego is the certain subset of the self, which includes the representations of the defense mechanisms that constantly make sure that we have a positive evaluation of ourself. So it's really like defending the

fort of that positive evaluation. The slightest criticism, the slightest anything that might not that make us think that we're not great. You know, we have to fight that. Does that help it all? Yeah? So it's like it's like the string that holds yourself a steam up. It's like when there's a gravity pulling it down. This is like the force that's trying to hold it up. Yeah, and

yeah or something. Yeah. And you can have positive identity that's latched on the ego, or that's not latched on the ego, or you can have you can have a very defensive identity. So you can distinguishwen defensive identity versus positive constructive identity. So defensive identity is what it's like.

It's like it's like one that will at all costs, like even at this even at the cost of self self delusion will and at the cost of like of like lashing out at people have in about collective narcissism. So even just the person within the group that does the slightest criticism of something, you band, you banish them from the kingdom, you know, interesting, you're out of the group because you know, we can't take our identity, you know, the slightest chrism for growth. But I think a positive

identity is one where you want to grow, you know. Yeah, it seems like that then that the defensive identity is is is a complete impediment to any form of growth, just like it is with a self. I tweeted something today that I think is kind of trying to get at this where I said that like insecurity causes people to build like an arrogance bunker that they hide in.

Like to me, arrogance is well, sometimes arrogance is just like you literally are like too naive to realize that you don't know stuff and that you're you know, so we all probably have that phase at some point. But there's a lot of grown ups who are like kind of still you know, you know, they're building themselves bunkers of some kinds of shield themselves to you know, protect themselves,

and I think like that that's an impediment to growth. Well, on the other hand, like I think humility actually emerges from confidence because like, if you're confident, you can like relax all of those defense mechanisms and just be like, I don't need to build a shield because I'm safe anyway. I'm safe just being here, right, So there doesn't need to be a bunker. I don't need to hide in a bunker. I don't need a shield, I don't need a wall. And therefore I can acknowledge that of course

there's a lot I don't know. Of course I might be wrong, Like of course I can self improve and I'm flawed because you know, you're not relying on perfection of any kind to feel worthy. And so confidence then yields humility, which then yields growth and learning and improving, which then yields more confidence. And so I think I think we can both we can all fall into both of these. But but your but what you quoted was a tweet that I think I probably used the wrong

word there. I think what I meant is identity. You know, Paul Graham wrote, you know, keep your identity small, and I think that's a great goal for everyone, Like I think I think of it. It is like a backpack where if I'm like I am, I am a Democrat, okay, and that's who I am. I just put a big

old rock in that backpack. Where now, when the Democratic Party is acting a way that my principles would normally disagree with, I have to do so much work, mental work, and I have to you know, arguments, and I forget pursuing truth. I can't do that anymore. I can't afford to. I have to support this thing in my backpack. I have to make sure that it's always good to be a Democrat and that smart people are always you know the concept of smart equals democrat and good equals democrat

have to be true or else I'm bad and I'm stupid. Right, Why you get drop that drop that thing and say the Democratic Party resonates with me now? It might not later, and it doesn't resonate with me in every way. And if it goes down the sewer, I'm not going down with it. I'm gonna attached to it. It's it's I'm

gonna I'll drop it. Basically, don't be so you know, don't be loyal to your ideas like be you know, be flaky, drop your ideas, if drop your your associations and stuff if it doesn't if it doesn't fit with you. You know, be loyal to your principles. Latch onto your principles and attach those to your identity. You know, core basic principles. Don't get too specific and you start getting specific. What I mean by that is like core principle can

be kindness. But if you start saying, well, kindness equals anti racist for example, or something like that, right now, well, because anti racists can become you know, can get attached to a bunch of different kinds of ideas and now you have to suddenly, you know, take on all those ideas. So, you know, very core kind of basic principles I think

are great. You know, you can you know, and I think that most of us could list them and they're not that hard on your truth and kindness and like loyalty to people, you know, are something that like almost all of us, would you know, some people would would say, you know, self reliance, whatever it is. You know, there's certain basic things I think are great, and even those I think you should always reevaluate. Go back to the drawing board and say, do I still care about this?

Is this still a value of mine? You know, those should be reevaluated. But the point is those can stay in your backpack, but nothing else. That's how I now. I say this as the advice. Of course I do it. I have stuff in my backpack, and all the time we all do. But yeah, I love it, No, I love it, And that just how far do you take that? You know, politics is the obvious one, in religion is the obvious one. But like, how many things can you throw out of your backpack and still feel a sense

of self? You know what I mean? Like, like, just I'm doing the thought experiment here, Like just how many how a dentity lists can you really be so you throw out? Did you throw out the male one? You know you're no longer see yourself as having any gender identity? Do you throw out the you know, think of all the things we take for granted if we start throwing them out, you know what what what are we left

with in terms of our self concept. I think like a Buddhist or some high philosophical person would probably say, yes, throw it all out and maybe one day I'll decide that's a goal of mine. But I don't go that extreme, I think because I feel like at some point you lose a personality, right, Like it's okay to I mean, I think who you really are is like there's some very inner awareness that's like the actual spectator looking at and everything else and it it's it's always learning things

and it's getting like wiser and lenar. I think that is you. But I think it's okay to like attach something. I like, curiosity is always a driver of mine. Yeah, and it's also something it's also like it's also a

it's a virtue in my head. So I always so it's something I want to nurture in myself, that part of me and the times that I'm you know, feeling uncurious, like I want to see what's going on and like try to fix that because I think that's so I think I don't know to me, I think that's why I said, like principles can be you know, are good

to attach to. But nothing too specific. There's some spectrum here, and I think somewhere, there's somewhere along the line is the right place to be, at least in my head. But it's not all the way to the Buddhist side for me. Again, maybe I can imagine someone wiser than me looking at me and saying, yes, you're almost there, but the fact that you don't want to go all the way there shows that you're still whatever. And maybe that's true. But at the moment, I'm like three quarters

of the way. I think down the spectrum is my goal, where some core things about yourself and kind of some conception of yourself is okay, and some kind of personality and certain quirks of yours and certain you know, interests of yours and I think are okay to kind of be like that's me, that's who I am. But you can still reevaluate those things. But then but then all the much more specific you know, political movements and you know national identities, and I think, like ethnic identities, I

think these things are just just cause trouble. I don't think that, and I don't think they give a person enough credit. People are so deeply complex individuals, and like being like you know, I'm Jewish, being like I am a Jew, it's like who I'm Like, I'm so different than like so many Jews, I know, like we have nothing in common, like and then sometimes we do. Like it's just like why would I allow that to define me?

Like it's especially since like ethnically, like you go back and we're all MutS like so it's like it's not like it's like an actual pure bloodline or anything. And then I'm not religious, so like I'm not like political Jewishness whatever that would be, like Israel or whatever, Like I'm just not attached to any of those things. So I just don't know why I would ever allow that to become like an important part of my That's it's

just how I feel. I absolutely hear you, and I think this is a really important point that is causing so much strife. But the solution out is not obvious to me. And I'm a psychologist. Try nderstand psychology. Try to be like, well, how can we tempt people to see people as human first? And it's almost like I have to fight to do that. I have to fight to do that. It's not that it's not the centricrophal force whatever the word is, do you have any ideas

on what we can do? Well? I mean, I think we can think about what is causing people, what causes people to Again, I think this is a sheet. What causes people to build a costume around themselves that hides themselves inside. And the costume might say Republican, you know Christian, it might say you know that lawyer or whatever it is. And it's like they're building that thing around themselves for a reason because they don't feel like it's a They take that away and it's just them, and somehow it

doesn't feel like it's enough, right. And it's this notion that like you are defined by these things and if you don't know what you believe and you don't know what groups you know you're in, then you don't know who you are. That I think is not true. It's just as not true. It doesn't make sense. Every humans are so complex. Every human. Talk to any human and

get in their brain and really get it. Talked about their childhood and talk about what they really interest them, talk about what movies they like in wat what parts to you like? What senms? What actually did You're gonna find? Like a totally unique point of view in there somewhere, and a totally unique sense of humor, right, and like and what are you scared of? And why? And like how does it feel if you really got into these things,

you find like a completely unique situation. And so that's enough. That's it, that's all. It's just like, you know, you are a complete unique set of like traits and and internal thinking. Your plastic brain spaghetti in the plant. You know, the spaghetti of the neurons in the brain is like no other brain before and no other brain that will ever come. And why do you need more than that? That is awesome? Like just go and like be that person, because the world is different with that, with you in

it and with you out. If you're not here, that's a particular brain is no longer in the world. We don't have that. So you're adding something just by being like as uniquely you as you can. Right. So this all sounds so cheesy, but it's also like to me, it's the thing that I think is missing from I

think people are. There's a lot of dogma that makes people feel like you are just your race, your religion, your you know, your nationalism, your nationality, whatever it is, like and your profession and how much money you make and you know your marital situation, that these are the things that define you, the kind of the on paper version, And to me that is like so much more boring and less unique because there's a lot of people that

have those things. You can check those boxes, like you know, but there's no one that has your particular brain chemistry going on and your particular worldview and your life experiences. So I think, yeah, I think just getting people to kind of feel like and it's it's such a relief be like, Okay, I don't have to be and I don't even not to know what I think. I can

admit that I don't know. I don't know what I think about politics maybe or maybe I do, but like I'm not sure where I got those views, and like I need to maybe reevaluate, and like maybe I don't know what I think about Ukraine and Russia. That's okay, because that's really you, the real spaghetti brain in there doesn't know and and trying to hide that is why. It's because you think that that's saying I don't know makes you not enough, like you're missing something, you're not adequate.

But that's because there's this kind of this dogma that you've fallen for that that makes you think that, you know, if I don't know what I think, you know, I have to really have all the right opinions on Ukraine and Russia or else like I'm stupid or I'm like it's like it's just so misguided it will preach. I completely agree, And I think that the self actualization, the creative self actuization potential of each human is the most important thing, you know. And that's a lot of what

you're saying. You distinguish between two kinds of intellectual culture, idea lab versus echo chamber. You say, ideal lab is a safe space for people, a dangerous space for ideas. Echo chamber is a safe space for a sacred set of ideas and people who express them, in a dangerous space for opposing ideas and people who express them. Do you think we're seeing a lot more echo chamber these

days an ideal lab? Yeah. I think like one of the things that can be helpful to understand if you're in an echo chamber, or if you're enforcing an echo chamber, or is to define it and also to define its opposite. So I think of an echo chamber, not as a not as a physical place or even a metaphorical place, but as an intellectual culture. It's an intellectual culture where the truth might matter somewhat, but it doesn't matter as

much as upholding a certain set of sacred ideas. Maybe it's one sacred idea, maybe if it's a certain set, and those ideas being true matters more than finding out whether they're true or finding out the truth. And so we all do this in our heads when we're kind of what I would call low wrong thinking, when we are when we are kind of out to confirm our beliefs deep down more than we're out to find the truth and question our beliefs. But as a group, then

we kind of collaborate in low wrong thinking. And it's like there'll be this kind of group enforcement mechanism that you know, Sometimes it's one person in the group is kind of the bully, and everyone knows that, like, oh they're around, like don't challenge their politics, you know, don't say anything about you know, God or whatever it is. And that means that one person is kind of enforcing echo chamber culture on everyone. Sometimes it's the whole group

kind of agrees. Yes, obviously we're all in this group because we're good people who believe this, and those are bad people who believe who don't, who think other things. And that's classic echo chamber culture, because now if we're good people who believe this, they're tying this belief to good people. They don't want to think they're not good people. So whatever it is, this, this thing has to be true.

And now all of the discussions, all of the intellectual effort in the group will be actually working towards having people continue to believe that thing, rather than working on finding true. So we all are part of this. We all have been someone who's enforcing it. You know, it can be you know, you and your spouse, you and your friend, your parent. It can be a bigger group your family, can be a much bigger group of classroom.

But at any point, you know, one of us has been the person where it's like, you know, we've all been the person who we're super sensitive some reason and we're our egos involved and we get really angry about some certain viewpoint. But even more so, probably we've all been part of a situation where we're having an echo chamber enforced upon us. Or we're just complicit in it.

It's just human nature to do this because a long time ago, when we evolved, like, it makes sense that probably all thinking the same stuff and believing in the same gods and whatever, it was helpful, that's my guess. At least you probably know a lot more about the origins than I do. But anyway, I think we talk about echo chambers and it really helps to define them in relation to their opposite, which would I call an ideal ab which is also an intellectual culture, but it's

the opposite kind where no idea is that sacred. So in an echo chamber, in an idea lab culture, it's kind of fun to disagree. Disagreement isn't awkward or like ooh, now we can't be friends because we disagree. It's like, disagreement is what friends do. It's like it's almost like a sport to try to poke holes in people's arguments and say, are you being biased? Are you being hypocritical? Or like, are you know how don't you have a

blind spot here? Are you missing this thing? I think that's not a good analogy, that's not a good comparison. That's apples to oranges, you know, Devil's advocate playing with each other, Like this is idea lab and it's much less stressful. You can throw out any idea and you're safe. No one's going to, you know, be angry at you.

But you also can kind of disagree and it's not awkward, and so it ends up like ideas are like science experiments that the group is kind of kicking around together and playing with and no one's taking it to personally. It's like the science experience being kicked was mine in the first place. No one's like, oh, you're all being so mean to my idea. It's like, it's not my idea. I just threw it out there for all all to examine, and like, oh you all hate it, Like maybe I

was wrong now It's that sounds idyllic. Of course, there's usually somewhere in between where when your idea is getting kicked in an idea lab, it doesn't feel good. You probably have some instinct to be echo chamber about it and like get angry and like say that, you know. But the thing that defines an idea lab is and that people don't have those urges. It's that the overriding

culture polices those urges. So if in an idea lab I did say something I did start kind of getting really offended, the other people in the group are going to kind of make fun of me and be like, what's wrong with you? Why are you being so sensitive? Like it's just just criticizing your idea, And I'm going

to get put back in my place. In an echo chamber culture, that wouldn't happen a sensitive person is you know, the group seeds itself to the sensitive person or to the offended person, and there goes there goes a discussion, there goes the ability to grow as a thinker in this group. It actually makes you a worse thinker to be in an echo chamber, while being in an idea lab makes everyone a better thinker and the group itself

can really like accomplish great things. So funny, I just tweeted something out this morning that said, I'm so sensitive to people telling me I'm too sensitive. Yeah, I can't stand and what people say. That's funny. That's some good,

some good meta sensitivity. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, what you're saying, it makes so much sense, and it's but it's so tied to what we talked about earlier about identity and ego, and if your idea is tied to your identity, then you're going to be much more likely to take it personally and to not just be okay just being told you're too sensitive, or if it's tied to your self esteem, if you know, if this idea is not true, then I'm not so smart, or then

I'm not so good, or all these things that I'm trying to that I'm clinging on to. You know, these notions that I'm clinging onto about myself all fall apart. And that only happens if you allow an idea to define you in the first place. Well, I very much agree with that. I think that it does get legitimately tricky when we talk about like marginalized groups, right, I mean, there are people who feel their ideas are some ideas

could be dangerous. They see some ideas as dangerous to their existence, to their It's an existential like extent existential ideas, we can call it. We can coin something here and you can obviously you know, with empathy, see how that would be very upsetting to people when they see an opposing point of view that, as they perceive it, is dehumanizing them. Right, So, how do you how do you have really productive to me that I have no core answer, by the way, but I would love to get your thoughts.

How do you open up a space for opposing points of view and things to talk about things an abstract level without making clear that you're discrimining whatsoever the person in front of you. Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's a spectrum. Like on one end of the spectrum, you know, you're saying racial slurs, you're saying genocidal ideas, and you're trying to and that is genuinely like very

harmful stuff to be doing. And so the way I look at it is like ninety nine percent of the populace would want to police those two things I just said, especially genocidal but also racial slurs today are like almost almost no one, you know, a very tiny percentage of the US is like, you know things, it's fine to just kind of like, you know, be an open bigot. And so if nineteen eight percent of people are kind of find something to be kind of reprehensible to say,

then I don't think that's echo chamber policing. I think that is actually like the general marketplace of kind of humanity that the marketplace of of you know, kind of decency policing, you know, and so so you know, if you went into the I you know, us an example, if you went into like a coffee shop and you made like a leude comment to the barista, like not just are you probably gonna get kicked out of coffee shop, but everyone in the line is gonna be like, dude,

what's wrong with you? Right, Like you're gonna get policed by the general public, right because almost everyone thinks that's an awful thing to do. And so there is a part of the spectrum where I think you get to the higher and higher percentage of the population agrees this is bad. I mean, you get to these up in the nineties, I think it's actually not echo chamber. It's you know, you'd say it is an echo chamber about

those things. But that's okay. That's like, you know that society has decided as a much broader group that like this is this is something that that we we don't want. Now.

The problem I have is when things weighed down on the other side of the spectrum were maybe twenty percent or ten percent or five percent of you know, broader people in society would think this thing is not okay to say, or even just like in a college campus, you know, maybe fifteen percent deep down think this is a not a thing okay thing to say, and eighty five percent might disagree, but they think you can say

it right. And the fifteen percent is imposed their preferred echo chamber, which they're allowed to go and form a group of friends amongst their own fifteen percent of people. They can find all those other people and they can form a little echo chamber and say you're not you can't be friends with us if you say these things. That's totally fine, that's that's not not violating any liberal principles. Problem is when they are saying no, no, no, not

whether you're friends with us or not. We have the cultural power at the moment where no one here is allowed to say things that in our little group of

friends we don't like. Right. And so even if you know so, there's a lot now you're talking specifically about like a marginalized person feeling personally attacked, and and I can even elaborate a little more, so we can talk specifics because I know that it was such an abstract question, and I'm very interested in conflicts between scientific findings and ideology.

And I know that's something you're very interested in as well, So that's something we kind of bond over, you know, I know that you're interested in sex differences, for instance, and sex differences of personality and in the brain and things like that. There are some people some ideologies that are claiming these is that there is no such thing as biological sex, right, that's not even a doesn't exist, and it's all gender. It's one hundred percent gender identity.

And and then and that there's no sex differences whatsoever. And the science doesn't bear that out right. The science bears out that they're especially on the people versus things dimension. I mean, it's it's pretty large the sex difference there, and interest in people versus things, And and then when you do look at this whole brain approach, you find there there are there are significant differences. Now none of those scientific findings, and no scientific finding in my view,

justifies discrimination. No matter what you find, it doesn't disc justifying individual discrimination, and that that should be obvious. But some of these debates, people don't even want to hear the science because they feel like it threatens their existence. So that's kind of what I'm referring to. I don't know if that makes sense. Why did why did Galileo get how House arrested? Because people didn't want to hear the science because it threatened their worldview? Right, I mean,

this is this is all news. This is that's true. And if you're if you, if you think you wouldn't have you you prefer the Galileo side of that instead

of the Catholic Church side of that. You should prefer science here too, especially since I mean with this topic, I dug in and the science isn't even saying anything bad, Like really, the more I read about women and men brains, the first of all, the big thing that you come out with if you look at the stats is that judging an individual based on these broad averages is makes absolutely no sense. It's it's someone who doesn't understand statistics

would do that. If you understand statistics, like, it tells you nothing about any person. I use. I use an example like I was in a class at Harvard, you know, full of you know, crazy, kind of psychotically ambitious kids, and it was Sandel, you know, Michael Sandel's class. Justice is that famous class, and he eight hundred people and

he says, you know, raise your hand. If you were burned first in your family, your first child, eighty percent may maybe even more raise their hand, right, because so you could up sure those all kinds of stats about first children tend to be more ambitious, more conscientious, something, right, you know, probably less cools, less, so, you know, apt whatever whatever it is. Now, imagine a company hears that and they say, oh, okay, so we're gonna interview, but

let's ask on the application what order you're born. We're not going to interview any middle children or youngest children. We all agree that would be a ridiculous policy because like, clearly this is not actually interesting informative at all for any So I say the same thing. You can learn all you want about broad averages, and they're important for other things, but it literally makes no sense to judge a single person because there's so much more variation within

all groups than between them. Now, when you get to sex differences, the more I dug in also, the more I just kind of thought, Wow, the male brain on average and the female brain on average are two like like super magical power machines, and they each are strong, like you know, you know, they overlap a lot, and then they each have some extra strengths that the others doesn't.

And like, man, it made me like want if I'm starting a company, I'm going to be like, I want a lot of smart women and a lot of smart men here because I want, like all the strengths. I want all the tools, you know, and to make sure we so like it just made me care more about gender diversity. It made me more impressed with both the male and the female brain. It didn't make me think

any anything negative about women. And so this is what's being repressed is information that just is kind of fascinating and not bad at all. And what happens is like what there were. When something is repressed, people assume there must be some bad story here. So you know that what people are worried about is like these you know, old misogynistic myths about women. You know, women are bad at math, women or whatever, and they're worried about them.

But actually, when you learn about real science, you become less likely to believe those things, and when you repress them, you actually allowed you know, bad myths to become much more widespread. I think. So in general, it's hard to find that many I mean, maybe there's some instances, but it's hard to find many instances when repressing science is a net positive, you know, or even a positive for anyone,

for anyone. I mean, it's also just think about all the like all of the medical things that people learn, you know, the male and female bodies are just different machines, you know, you know, and there's different medical implications like you know. It's just I don't know, I just think we're pressing, you know, knowledge discovery is just not something that has ever look in history. How many times was it was it with the people were pressing knowledge discovery

on the right side of history. That's my thoughts. And by the way, I'll say, I learned a lot of this from you. I mean I thought you wrote some amazing articles on this and and and just measured and nuanced and yeah, I thought it was great. Well, thank you. That means a lot to me. I managed to write an article pointing out the sex differences in a way that didn't really piss off anyone. And I think that

we need to figure out more of that. We need to figure out how can we frame these things in ways. I think you're a great example of that with what you just said, and you're not framing it in a

zero some way. I really like the way way you framed it in a zero positive way on teams, and I like that way of thinking, and maybe if we can get at the truth more in that kind of way as opposed to a because we see a lot of provocateurs these days, you know, we see a lot of people who are like, this is the truth you write? Stupid liberals, do you know what I mean? Totally no, no, no, it's it's the same way I would argue that like hardcore kind of woke ideologues are actually really bad for

social justice. They're really bad for progressive activism, which you know, we need progressive activism, and this thing that's masquerading as it is, I think that for it, I think underminds it. And likewise, I think that the people who are trying to push back against that and who are trying to you know, not you know, make sure that science isn't getting repressed, are not being helped by like you know,

provocative right wingers, you know, jumping in. And I think that, like it's it's the job of some people like us to push back against that. Just like I would say it's the job of like a hardcore feminist to push back against I agree, I agree. I really like John McWhorter's writings on this. I don't know if you read his most recent book, We Love All the Stuff. Yeah, he's yeah, yeah, he's. He was on this podcast recently

and we had a delightful chat. So I direct the listeners to that, to that chat if they want to follow up on some of his really nuanced ideas and and and compassionate and nuanced and truthful those I like the interceptive and diagram of those three things. Yeah, I mean, And it's like if if you're gonna come at something with compassion, nuance and truth, and you're not like you don't have some secret motivation, some secret like you know, you're just trying to find the truth and and you

and you have a lot of compassion as you're doing it. Yeah, And anyone who still wants, you know, to cancel you or to you know, to slander you after that, like that's a them problem. Like it's like and it's you know, it's easy for me to say, I don't work it as an institution where I can get fired for you know, I mean if for some people, like it's not a

them problem, it's it's but for for you job privileged. Yeah, like it's I'm just not I mean, I know, like I could just avoid all this stuff and talk about aliens in space and talk about you know, tech and and procrastination forever and not have any you know, haters. But it's like this stuff is really important. None of those other things matter. If, like the political situation just going down to tubes, like we're just gonna we can't

get to any of that awesome future. So yeah, I think like if I'm not, if I'm not going to approach hard things like this because I'm worried about the two percent of crazy people who will like you know, try to ruin me because I'm like, you know, talking about something like it's just I don't I don't think we should. Yeah, I wanted to move on to the topic of life and death. When you were a last Do you remember the last time my podcast? It was almost like seven years ago. It was a while back.

You were You were one of my first ever psychology podcast guests, and I must thank you for for believing me, believing me, because that show was I didn't have that many listeners back then, and you were so kind to be on the show. Now we're the number one psychology podcast in the world. That's awesome. Congrats, but but thanks for being in the early early adopter of the show. And and I don't know if you remember in that discussion we talked about how you were thinking about getting

chirogenically what's the word, I preserved, we're cryonics. And we had talked about like you're like, I'm waiting for the bracelet. I might get the bracelet soon, and I was just wondering, did you ever get the bracelet? Are you wearing one? No, I'm like nine ninety five percent of the way there. I have the life insurance policy, I have I fill out all the applications. I have to get something notarized,

and I'm very close. And I think my procrastination is a just because I procrastinated on stuff like this paperwork, and you know, notarizing is always going to be like a six month delay for me if I have to get it, and really know what I don't really know what that means to get something notor I don't. I don't like it at all. I was very upset. But isn't that funny though You're You're like, that's like the

ultimate procrastination, like in the cosmics sense. Yeah, I'll procrastinate on like saving my mortal soul because I don't want to get something notorized. But there's there's another factor, which is, like, I think I'm going to do it, Like I'm leaning if I had to just press a button right now, you're going to either do it or not, and you have to make a permanent choice, I would say yes. Yeah. The thing that gives me a little pause is that

there is a downside. You know, when I wrote about it, I didn't really think that hard about this, and I said, like, right now you have three, you know, three broad options. You can get buried zero percent chance of waking up in the future. This is as an atheist. Obviously, religios

peple would feel diferently about this. You can be cremated zero percent chance of waking up in the future, or you could throw your brain to the future with cryonics and say, hey, here it is and probably pretty primitive twenty first century, you know, level vitrified form. Maybe the future is as shocking to us as our time would be to Thomas Jefferson, in which case, I imagine the future can probably do a lot with a pretty like crudely vitrified brain. I could probably say, yeah, we can.

You know, I've just read enough sci fi that I feel like we are probably heading towards a world where like that's no problem. And like I think Elias or your Kowski talks about, you know, if you want to really erase a hard drive, you need to basically set it on fire, because otherwise, like, you know, could any tech in the future or cover the info that was in this hard drive? And the answers almost always yes,

unless you basically set it on fire. So that's the only way to securely erase a hard drive, to truly make sure that no one can recover what was in it. And then he you know, talks about brains. How do you truly securely erase a brain so that it cannot be recovered, Well, you have to let it like fully decay, you know, or cremate it or whatever. And so basically the point is that even a primitive, even vitrified brain

with vitrified is like their word for freezing. It's not actually freezing or else the water word expands, so it's actually just you know, it's cooled using you know, with anti freeze to a super called temperature where it's like glass or the molecules just in our fluid state, but they can't move. Yeah, and so the future probably would be able to do something with that. And so the other two a zero percent throwing my brain to the future.

With cryonics is some percent, maybe it's only one percent, maybe it's five percent, maybe it's twenty percent. I don't really know. But you don't have to be like, you know, the people are like this is unlikely, or like this is this is very hard to we're far away from it. A I would say, don't underestimate exponential tech, Like a

lot of things that seemed impossible became very possible very quick. Secondly, even if it's just a small chance, why not, like why not have a change, you know, even just for the hope aspect. Like I'm always jealous of people who believe in afterlife. They can you know, be on their deathbed and think I might be heading somewhere awesome right now, and like even if they're even if that's not true,

it's nice to think that. So the same thing, you know, with cryonics, if you know this is about to happen. Your brain's going to be preserved. You're about to you know, close your eyes and maybe blink and wake up and in two hundred and fifty years in a robot body. So for all these reasons, it was like a no brainer, why not, you know. And it's not that I want to live forever. I don't think I want to live forever. It's like I like life, and i'd like to live

a lot more than one century. I mean, like thanks, but like I'll let you know when I'm done, Like I'm not. One century is not you know, it's not very much. So so so for all these reasons it was a no brainer. Now then I started just thinking, I think also probably from watching too much Black Mirror, like if you are buried or if you are cremated,

you have a zero percent chance. But there's also a zero percent chance if you get buried or cremated that nothing awful happens, Like death is death is seems awful to us, but it's actually pretty like neutral. You know, death isn't good or bad. Once you're in it. There is a non zero chance, probably a very tiny chance, much less than the good opportunity possibility, but there is a nonzero chance that throw your brain to the future.

You know, there's some horrible war and some you know, some some nuclear war, and then there's this you know where where we have warlords running where what the US used to be, and you know, and but they have their high tech and some you know, some sick fuck gets a hold of a chronic slab and it's like, ooh, let's like test like torture on like these brains, but they know how to actually upload it and like keep the keep it conscious and like let's put it through

like a billion years of torture just to see like what it does and how long it takes for the thing to go crazy, god knows. But this is like a late night I thought I started having and I was like, ah, like like I want to just just bury me, cremate me, like I don't want to take any chance of that, and then another and then in another mood, I'm like what, no, come on, Like the future is almost anything with that much tech is almost

definitely going to be altruistic. This is kind of like a I think it's a Carl Sagan point, but like it's it's like you know that things more advanced are

more likely to be altruistic. And then I also have talked to people in the industry and they say that they think about this and they have all these protocols where if there's a certain level of like instability and government like, they can just shut down that lab, which is sad, but it's better than you know, risking, you know, so that you have all these protocols to kind of protect you in that situation. So it's not perfect, and

it's it's still non zero. You always have to acknowledge like you are taking a risk that you're not taking if you or you just you know, something less bad. You just wake up and you're like a slave in a society, you know, and they want to you know, they want human brains. Is so who knows. But I'm just like you. I have a rich sci fi imagination and I think, if I run the stimulation, this is what I see. You tell me what you think I see.

The most probable thing is that those bodies that that hold the whole, that you and the that it's going to get lost. And it's good. It's almost like you know, how we discover dinosaur like figments now you know, we're like, oh god, we found this, like we're gonna it's it's going to be like like you may be revived, but we're I think it wouldn't be till like a billion years for now like that or a millionaires. Well the thing is that, but but but it requires electricity. If

the power goes out, the brain will decay. Then it's as if you're just buried because it it needs to keep the liquid at a negative one hundred and ninety six degrees. So it requires I mean, that's there's a lot of things that requires for this to come out, right, it requires a generation after generation of workers. Right, well, but but here, okay, but you think about it this

way exponential tech. You know, it could be two generations and suddenly it's very easy to revive chronics people, and it's very easy to upload your consciousness to robot bodies or to just regrow human body or or you know, give you an artificial body whatever whatever reason. Maybe it's one generation, maybe it's six generations from now, but like we're talking maybe just a century or two. And all that needs to happen is someonod needs to keep the

power on. Once you're in that VAT is not much maintenance.

So like, if this is a thriving future that we're going towards that, Like if the same thing that happened in the last two hundred years continues, which is an if, but if the future keeps getting more fancy and more advanced and probably more humane, then you're going towards the future that probably will be able to revive you and we will have no problem like keeping the power on and keeping like it'll probably become like once there's a lot of people in chronics and it's a big thing,

it'll become this extreme like moral issue where it's like those are like souls over there, and like it's like, you know, unbelievable, like you know, genocide if you unplug the power there or something. So it's so people would take it really seriously. These are patients and long term care is how I think it'll be seen eventually, and like imagine you know, you know you would It's it's it's a doctor's obligation to do the best they can

for a patient in the long term care. So I don't think it's like a crazy unlikelyhood that like if you just yeah, I don't know, I don't think it's crazy either. For the record, and I loved I loved seven years ago riffing, and we've talked about all sorts of possibilities. Are you signed up? So I'm seriously contemplating it. I've had the conversation with them. I haven't signed up yet. But there's a lot of things you have to do,

Like I like life insurance and all this stuff. It sounds worse than it is, Like it's just like I just got like some term insurance policy for twenty years. We're basically like, I probably should just get a normal one. I don't know because I think that when that ends, I'll be like it'll be much more expensive. But either way, I was like, look for the next twenty years, if I die unexpectedly, like, then this thing is paid for forever by this insurance policy. That's just how that's how,

that's how everyone does it. So anyway, it's just it's an insurance policy. Basically, you can just it's like a few phone calls you have to make. I'm saying this as someone who's still procrastinating from finishing the job. It's like, but it's like two good days, one good day of like phone calls and paperwork and you could you could

be all set. Yeah. One thing I will say, because I had a little bit of a conversation with Antonio Demasio about this on the podcast, is that it would have to be the whole body that's preserved, not just the brain. Because according to his theory of consciousness, consciousness, our consciousness very much draws on the body. So for those people that think you can just you can just recover the brain and your recover consciousness, according to his theory,

that's not going to be possible. How about when people lose their limbs. There's people know limbs who have perfectly consciousness. They didn't lose anything there. Why would the torso be so different. No, it's the it's the stuff that relates to feelings, like this brain was specifically designed to work with this body and like in relation to this body.

So obviously, but I kind of feel like, you have the brain, you have what's needed for a much fancier future tech to be able to be able to now mimic whatever the body's connection to that brain was doing. It'll have the info it needs to bring you back. That's that's my guess. But I would bring the consciousness. I don't know. Well, yeah, Antony seems to to really think that, but again we don't know one hundred percent. Well, so then let's do the whole body. Why not they

give that option? Yeah? Good, So that's why I said I'm adding into some caveats. I'm doing is give the caveats there because I'm It's also like, if you don't have to get your head cut off, let's like not, let's not get beheaded if we can. Yes, But also there's just so much we don't freaking know about about are we in a simulation? So, like David, there's so much stuff we could bring here, Like David Chalmers doesn't splsitic greater than probably belt fittyer probably that we are

in a simulation. Like what do you do if you start fucking with with the gods? You know, start playing god in a way it deserves you. Well, I mean, where are you right now? Are you sitting outside in a cave? You know, so you're fucking with the gods inside is an invention that we made, right Like you know where we're double, we're living double our live span, we're canceling all these diseases. We fly, We're not supposed to fly right, you know, so so this is just

the latest step. It's like, I feel like the simulators didn't like us playing god. They would have gotten rid of us a long time ago. They're probably amused by it. They're saying, Oh, let's see how far they can go.

Like let's like, if I'm watching the simulation, I'm super excited about a species like this, I'm like, Oh, let's see if they kill themselves off or like if they yeah, you know, it's get the popcorn for humanity right now, Like they're either going to definitely get the technology is exploding, all their weapons are getting fancier, but they're also they're getting like wiser, but also they're getting stupider because of social media, and like the population's exploding, Like what's going

to happen? It sounds like a great reality show. Yes, And then the third thing I wanted to bring up because these are just interesting potential complications in this or just additional nuance. I had a great chat with Jim Tucker on my podcast. He's the world's leading scientist of reincarnation and the science suggests when he when he listens to you know, these kids two to five years old

who have passed life memories and things. He really does believe that our consciousness lives on beyond the body in some really and he's trying to like figure out some mechanisms for this. But he's a legit scientist, and all the evidence taken together suggests there's there's something going on here where we can get some form of reincarnation can exist.

So you're you're putting at zero percent probability that when you die, even not not going to the religious level, but there might be some actually legit scientific, scientific mechanism that allow that. So don't put that at zero percent yet, I'd have to learn more. I mean, it's it seems like the big, big, big picture is that I've I've like, between a twenty year old me and today me, I have stopped being someone who's like scoffed at something like that.

And it is like that's, you know, because there's just clearly a lot we don't know and like not very wise to scoff at like very mysterious things like that, especially since we could be in a simulation in which case any rule could be true, right, like like anything could be true, right, So so I don't know and maybe there's you know, you look at how like other animals, like they have these senses for stuff that like you're like, it just seems almost magical, but it's just different, you know.

So I don't know. I would I just have to learn more because right now, like a brain buried that slowly decays and all the atoms are separated, like, it's hard for me to see how whatever arrangement of synapses was forming that person and their consciousness and their memories. It's hard to see how that is some in any way preserved in any way transfer. I don't know, but I just don't even know what's what's his like what

what does he say? Happens as he does? He know? Well, so there's all these different camps in the science of consciousness. It's a very fractionated feel. So you have the panpsychic people, what'd see a mechanism for it, because in their view, consciousness is not it's something that's that's out there and you know, and it's something we kind of tap into

in some way. Whereas anti demandsia absolutely not antio demands, Like when you're dead, you know your when your brain is dead, your consciousness, there's no way there's no mechanism for that. But there are people that disagree with Antonio Demandsias. So there's like these vibrant debates, you know, in the field.

So I definitely would would encourage you to look into p I mean, it makes me happy just hearing this because like it's not suffering fun being an atheist, Like I much prefer to believe one of these things, Like it's even even just like a little doubt that like, oh maybe there's like consciousness so this part of this other thing and the spiritual realm, and you're like, that's sounds great, Like I would love to like even think one percent that might be true, Like it makes it

would make me happy plus dark. Yeah, I think that'd be a great blog post. I'll send you the podcast chat I have with with Jim Tucker, doctor Jim Tucker when that comes out, because I think you'll be fascinated by it and it might even be an interesting blog post on the science of reincarnation. Yeah yeah, I mean I'm open, who knows. Look, it's we're definitely above this point in which I said we would stop, and I knew this is always gonna happen because every time I

talk to you, we mean it can go. We could spend the whole day, right I'm going to be one hundred percent respectful. We didn't have any time for the Twitter Q and A. Should we just call it a day? Right now? I can do twit and did not go on to the fifteenth minutes. Okay, So Paula Get says how does he process information and structure in the way

he does blog question? I mean I use some metaphors or how I learn, And I think probably a lot of people are like this, which is just like this this this tree where if if I don't have a foundation of knowledge, which is the tree trunk, I don't learn, I can't learn Like I can read as many articles right now about you know, some geopolitical thing that I don't know much about, or some fancy finance thing that I haven't learned about, or whatever it is, you know,

some element of crypto that I don't fully get, and I can read articles about it and try to like memorize, you know, understand the jargon and start to feel like I can almost say smart sentences about it. I don't actually understand. And because I'm taking leaves and branches and fruits and they have nothing to hang on to. They all fall down to nothing, right, And so for me it's all it's very binary. It's like once there's something that that foundation is there, now I A all those

articles become interesting. They're actually pretty boring when you don't understand them. You can sometimes get satisfaction from reading them because you feel like I'm learning something, or you like proud of yourself for reading something you know that's actually interesting. It's hard for it to be interesting you don't fully get it. Once the tree trunk is there, a topic becomes endlessly interesting to me. And because now I read something,

and it's like so satisfying. You're sticking something new onto this thing. And also it makes sense to you, and and and so all these thoughts are coming up and all these original thoughts can come out now because when you get it and you hear something and it has a clear structure in your head, you can now like extrapolate your own thoughts from that that are original. So so for me, it's it's all about the tree trunk.

And and but it's not like I'm like a you know, I'm not like a great learner where I'm like always out there seeking new tree trunks, Like I'd like to think of myself that way, and sometimes I am. That's part of why I like writing blog posts, because it forces me to do that once I'm there. I like it. But like I often will procrastinate on like just doing the full deep dive on a topic because I can just go turn into other topics I already know about

right now and do that one later. So I think that that's one way that I think about I always like, you know, Like I also like I think a lot in analogies and metaphors, which I put a lot in my writing because I think the reason that that's helpful is because what you're doing is you're taking something in relationship or a concept that already exists clearly in your head, and when you realize that this has that same thing going on all of this, you can kind of steal

from all this clarity and apply it to this and you can like cut that corner and like you have to, you know, So there's you know, there's there's so many I don't know. Like when I first wrote about reasoning from first principles and reasoning by analogy, I started off with like that post with two kinds of geology, you know.

There there was the sixteen hundreds that were the flood geologists that looked at the Grand Canyon and said, well, we know for sure that this thing that the Earth is no more than six thousand years old, So we have to work around that fact, and we have to basically allow our figure out a way for our observations about the Green King to prove to continue to confirm that fact. And then there were the science geologists who said, well, we don't know. You know, maybe some of them thought

maybe it's six thousand years weld. We don't know unless we observe it. So they had suddenly they didn't have that that straight jacket on, and they could just explore and they learn so much and they just propelled learning. Right, So I already had that in my head, like this concept you know of, like you know, being of. And then so then I learned about reasoning from first principles reasoning by analogy. I realized that this other thing I had in my head was actually part of a bigger category,

which is this thing these two kinds of reasoning. And so I then to put it in the post because I figured if if that was something that clicked made it helped it click for me, it would probably help it click for other people too. So when I put something in a post an analogy or metaphors, because I think probably my readers are going to also get the

same benefit from this, this relationship connection. How do you know that the ideas that you're gathering for your articles are high quality and are true if you're not an expert in the field, What is were some of the methods you used to try to ascertain that high quality aspect of the ideas? Well? First, I'm never sure. I guarantee I have some stuff and some articles that I would look back on now and be like that's trash. Like it's just like, you know, you're not perfect as

a blogger. I'm getting better and more rigorous as I go. Sure, early on, especially early on, like you know, I just I didn't even know how to like source things correctly. I'm just I've gotten a lot more professional about it. But but I think basically the real key to that is to just like vigorously not pretend to be something

you're not. So like that, Yeah, like I always try to think of knowledge as you know, one through ten ten is more leading expert, and my goal is to like get myself from like a two or three layman level to like a six, five or six, and then bring readers up to a five or six while fully making it clear that I am a five or six trying to bring you to a five or six, Like, if that's the game we're playing, well, then I can, genuinely, you know, with a straight face, on get myself up

to a five or six on cryonics or AI or on politics or whatever. And then I can, I can, again, you know, without feeling like a fraud or an imposter, genuinely say no, I really am going to help people get from a three to or a five or six. There's nothing fake about this because I'm not trying to

do more than I can do. If I wanted to get people to an eight or nine, I would have to put in a lot of years, put in a lot of study and and fully understand the entire you know, uh, spectrum of the topic, the entire context and and and all the different theories and and and have them all of a place in my head. And like, I don't want to do that, and so so so I think that when people get into trouble is if they're just trying to write like the authoritative thing, but they don't

they haven't done the work for that. So and the key insight there is, like I think some people try to do that because they think that's what's needed. But like getting people up, you know, if you put effort in and then you can apply that effort like that's someone's gonna want that that exact effort, not more than that. So just just admit the effort you're putting in and find the people who want that effort, and there you go,

like that's that's kind of the general philosophy. Yeah, I know there's a key insight there because there's something different between the way you write and the way quite frantly I try to write where you have a certain sense of epistemic humility while still having the spirit of wanting to educate people and thinking that you have the confidence that you can at least educate them in some way.

That's different than some people who are on Twitter, who they act as other profits like they're like this is the truth, you know, and then they get like fifty thousand likes and now the followers are like, oh my god, you're so brilliant. You're so brilliant, you don't kind of get those kind of people following us, right, I mean we do get people saying we're brilliant sometimes, but you see what I'm saying, Yeah, but very specifically, like what you're saying is so true, And I do feel like

it's a low wrong, high wrong thing. Like I feel like there's people who their whole game is to appeal to low wrong thinking. So in a low wrong thinking world, the more conviction you speak with, the smarter you sound, and you never show any doubt and you never admit you were wrong because then in the low wrung psychology that makes you seem stupid and wishy washy and weak.

So you're seeing as you're seeing someone who is appealing to people who are in that where they think conviction means you must be smart, you know, go to like a you know, I've watched a bunch of flat earther podcast or videos. You know, people are dead serious about it, and I mean they are so certain and so and so. So the game we're playing is super different where it's

the exact op and the high wrong world. And I know, I'm sure we're sometimes not high wrongers because no one's perfect, but I think we're both pretty good at trying to be up there, at least in our professional work. And in the higher world it's the opposite. If you speak with conviction, you're giving a promise. I really know this for sure, And if you get caught wrong, you're going to be met with skepticism. And if it turns out

like you're wrong, you just lost all your trust. And so what's respected in the high wrong world is humility is over is like using conviction sparsely and and and admitting you don't know, I mean, look like you think of like Scott Alexander, This dude knows a ton about a lot of stuff, right, super clear thinker, super rigorous reads a time, super curious like and yet he's he constantly admits his own degree of certainty and probably underestimates it and loves calling his old self out for being

wrong right like it's there's there's an and and so he's like to me like a very very like excellent hi wrong thinker. Right, and so he's Now what happens is now he acquires he attracts high wrong thinker readers who are the you know who, because because who is that going to attract right, it's the kind of person that thinks conviction equals smart, conviction equals knowledge. They're not gonna like him, They're gonna think he's this this like

you know, long winded, you know, wishy washy thinker. They're gonna but he's gonna attract people who like nuance and who appreciate humility, and you know, so anyway, I hope that we both are attracting that same crowd. I think I do. I think that like you do. I think if I the things I get called out on, you know, for are are are you know, if I'm acting low wrong in some way, I'm gonna get called out on it, I think more than if I'm I'm not gonna you know,

you know, yeah, I absolutely know. And I really quite like my audio. I'm very fond of my audience. Yeah, Meana, they're great. And I'm the kind of person that if I got to a point in my life where I didn't like my audience, I would I would have some serious questions about myself. Whereas you don't see that in other people there because what are you doing that? Then you're just like a grift. Then you're just a grift of manipulating people you don't like for money or fame

or something, right like, but you don't. But there are people that as long as their audience is feeding their ego, they could be the worst people in the world, and they'd be like, thank you, audience or or their wallet or whatever. Right. I think a lot of people have disdain for their audience and they think, you know, of course these idiots are like, it's just I have no interest in it just sounds really dark and yeah, no,

I if anything. Like what drives me is like I feel like I have to do like a really good job and like be really nuanced and like teach my audience something new because they've already thought about a lot of this stuff and they already know a lot of stuff, and like, you know, I'm always like trying to like rise up to that level. As how I think of it, beautiful Heidi Webers is, how do you choose what you what filters do you use? Not are not a great reader.

I wish I were such a better reader, But like basically I'm like a childish reader. And what I mean by that is like I'm a perfectionist. So I'll start like a sci fi series, and then I will like suddenly become addicted and like be an avid reader and read the entire thing. And then I just like I won't read anything for like six months, and then I start a lot of books, read a third of it, and then it's not that I don't like it, but

I just like it becomes less. I don't read it for like a month, and now it becomes like ikeygas, I'm like, I don't I don't have to go back to the beginning, and I'm gonna forget it. So I just put it aside. And I have a lot of books where I've read a third, So I don't think I uh, I think I have a lot of growth to do as a reader that that could help me kind of. But I will say, right, I had been

on a sci fi kick. I basically I used to just read only nonfiction because I was like, oh, like, I know, once you're getting to that zone, it feels like wasting time to read fiction, Like what are you doing? Like you know, you can learn so much from nonfiction,

and I love I love good nonfiction. Obviously, I mean I write nonfiction, but but I've really been on a fiction kick over basically I started I read The Three Body Problem and that whole see that whole trilogy, and I was like, just I felt I fell re in love with something I loved when I was like eleven, which is like reading you know, The Giver and reading like these sci fi kind of futuristic, dystopian or utopian novels, and I was like, oh my god, I forgot how much.

It's that feeling of like you get in a giddy mood when you realize like, oh, I'm about to be home and I can read, like or like I'm gonna go I'm gonna go up to bed now. And then I'm like, oh I can get in bed and read, and it's that feeling of like this like it's almost like having like a new relationship. It's like this excitement setting thing on in your life. So but I so so so then I started reading the Culture series. I'm three books in now love it. I'm going to try

to keep reading those. So I don't know, I just I mean I feel that that reading. I just read a lot of nonfiction for work, you know, and then it's really fun to just dive into a fiction universe. Plus I feel like it's good fertilizer for any writer, fiction or nonfiction, just to read really good. I think it's just it just it just I don't know, it's like another really smart, interesting voice is just in your head being artful, like that's good for you. I don't know,

I mean. Neuroscientific speaking, it cultivates the default mode brain network, which associated with imagination, which that can atrophy. So yeah, you're developed, You're literally developing your imagination neurons strengthening them. Yeah, it feels like that, like your social imagination, especially if I want to write about the future, even if from a nonfiction perspective, no one knows what's going to happen in the future, and sometimes the sci fi authors are

the best predictors. That's actually historically often been true. They're usually science nuts and they really understand the actual science and then they're but unlike other scientists, they're in the business of imagination and a prediction. So I do feel like it really does help me kind of make I think better educated guesses about what's coming. Totally now. The Best of Live Audio asked, taking a queue from Mark manson, what is an idea that fundamentally altered nearly everything else?

You believe to be true. Sometimes it's like an idea that you kind of know intuitively, but then someone like gives it a label and you realize that it's not just you kind of subconsciously thinking about this, but it's a real thing that other people think about and there's a label for it. And then like it suddenly it

crystallizes and it becomes like a mantra for you. So I think reasoning from first principles was like one of those for me, Like it's not novel idea when I learned about it, but it was like suddenly instead of just like having an intuitive sense that that was a good way to reason, I had like a very conscious sense that there's how much of my reasoning from first principles right now versus reasoning by analogy? And it's a spectrum, it's not it's not binary. Where am I on that spectrum?

And also where should I be on that spectrum? Like sometimes it makes a lot more sense, you know, it's Reasoning by from first principles takes a huge amount of energy if you don't need to be doing it. If you can copy. In this case, it's like think about it is like if you're a CEO of a company. You want to be doing only the work that you

absolutely the only you can do. So reasoning by analogy, in a way is delegating the reasoning to someone else, to either your past self or to this conventional wisdom, or to your parents, or to your friends, or to whatever, and saying, you know, they think this is good or right, and so it must be good or right. They this is how it seems cool to be, or what the

best place to travel is. They say that's I'm rather than having to like step back and be like, but what really is travel and what is the best place? Just to say this, these people say this place is good, So I'm just going to go there on my vacation. And I spent ten seconds thinking about it instead of two days digging into the meaning of travel. So yeah,

I think it's it. It became a whole framework in my head that I think is super useful and and also it's a superpower when you realize that reason, even first principles, does not require a genius, It doesn't require a crazy amount of talent, It requires a certain it requires a certain kind of epiphany about the unimpressiveness of conventional wisdom and the wrongness and the oldness of conventional wisdom, and to realize that you're a smart person kind of

individually reasoning based on what they see is almost is more often than not going to actually be smarter than conventional wisdom. And it's that that's this epiphany. You know, Steve Jobs has talked about this epiphany that changed his life. You never saw. Yeah, it's like, it's not an epiphany about how smart you are, it's an epiphany that, like these things that we assume are so much smarter than

us are actually kind of dumb. So therefore anyone can just kind of go and change the world if you want to think that way. So it's it's a long topic, but like this one is that was a big one I think for me creatively and just how I live my life. Yeah, yeah, that is a very mind changing idea. Because Ebahanda said, I'm a longtime supporter of weight about why and loved him, But I was disappointed that Lex Friedman didn't push back harder on bad outcomes. What could

go wrong with NBIS? Is it a good idea to have mars be settled by corporations? Money incentives always find a way to ruin things. I thought that was an interesting yeah sort of question. Yeah, I know, there's certainly lots of poss bad outcomes with any any future tech. I mean, the good outcomes are mind blowingly awesome, and the bad outcomes are like existentially awful. I mean that

that's how it works. Like, That's why it's kind of This is why I'm writing about politics right now, is because I'm like, we need to have our wits about us as a society. We can't be like devolving right now. Like the stakes are getting higher and higher every decade that goes by, as our tech gets better and better. The stakes are getting both the good what we could lose,

and also like how bad things could get. Like people, we get cocky when we've only lived and our parents have only lived in a nice world without you know, too much hardship, and a lot of societies before us have been just as cocky and and you know, and and and no one ever predict you know, it's hard to imagine a dystopian future really being true other than you know anything, I'm out of sci fi when you're in a very you know, long time piece and general

well being. So I think I think there's definitely a lot of bad outcomes. The you know MBIs, rain machine or ray machine interfaces are yeah, I mean yeah, neuralink like if you're putting the device in your head so a we can maybe think together, which is incredible. You know, I've talked a lot about all the great things that could come from this, written about it. Meanwhile, your brain can be hacked potentially, you know, there's gonna have to

be crazy cybersecurity industry. You know, that is even bigger than it is now, because you could hack into someone's memories. Like that's real and even maybe scarier, probably scarier. You can actually, right not just read out of their brain, but you could write into it, meaning you could actually make them feel feelings, or make them feel opinions, or make them, you know, act a certain way. You know, that's that's that's a pretty scary sci fi book right there.

So yeah, I mean, look, if it's you think about how much you know the world's gotten both better and also scarier because of smartphones and the internet. Like, wow, there's so much like so many things were nineteen eighty five,

you just weren't in nearly as much. There's certain things that are just much privacy and cyber attacks, and like, you know, there's all the kinds of you know, and and and like addiction to this thing, and you know how it's kind of creating political division in a way that that that that hasn't been around in one hundred years. Like so it's also made us a lot more vulnerable. It's mad, it's it's it's has some pretty scary consequences, and brainish interfaces is next level. It's it's even more

awesome than smartphones. But it also so yeah, I definitely think I think about bad outcomes. It's it's my nature more to get excited about good outcomes. That's just how I am. Like, I'm, I'm and it's kind of like this thing is coming anyway, And I think there's so much focus on dystopian you know, what can happen with AI goes wrong? What could happen? And that I think

that and that's good. I mean, I'm happy as a motivator to create, you know, for AI safety and stuff, for example, but I think it's just as good as motivator to think about what could we have if we get this right, and what do we have to lose if we don't like, so, I think painting utopia is also an awesome motivator that as opposed to just you know, fear so I like to focus on the more. Yeah,

and I thought that his point. I don't know their persons gender, sorry, because Honda's point about money incentives always find a way to ruin things, so that was a that was also kind of a good point. I don't know if I agree with that necessarily. I mean, I think money incentives is part of why we're all like living in you know, have to go to the grocery store and there's every possible food you could ever want to eat ell sitting there, fresh and in nice rows

like money. And you know, money incentives has done a lot of good things, and it's just you know, obviously also can do a lot of bad things. But I don't know, I don't Yeah, maybe I have to. Yeah, I would hear this person, I would change the word always, Yeah, I would, yeah, place always with can can. Finally, so it's important to consider at least yeah, when you kind of think about these things. Yeah, I have a little section. This will be the end of our interview to day,

like we'll do like a fast lightning round. I thought I put together just on the spot, just not like put together. I group together some questions I thought would be fun. It's like the first things that come to your head, you know, don't You don't have to think, you know deeply about these questions. Okay, France. What does he think about the French? I kind of assume. I kind of assume that they hate me because I think

of French people is hating Americans. But that's probably not really fair, and I think that, Yeah, I think they're judging me. That's what I think. Okay, favorite song when he was ten years old piano man? Maybe, yes, some Beatles song. I don't know. If you were to write a children's book, what message? What do you want to share? That the really hard things in life is managing what's going on in your own head and that and that that's okay because everyone has that challenge, but that the

outside world is actually not is a breeze. If you can get really good at managing what's going on in your own head, maybe you should write a children's book someday that can be fun. Yeah, mental health book? What is so important? I mean that would be super important. What is his favorite marvel superhero who is his favorite villain, not too much of a Marvel guy. I like this the magical ones, Like Superman's magical, spider Man's kind of like a one trick pony. Batman's not magical. He just

like has ropes and stuff. And same with like iron Man, like he's just has like a suit. So I'd go Superman villain. I mean, I guess Penguin's kind of funny. He's like an old short jew who's like who's like devious. I kind of like him like a net. Yeah, he's like kind of like a hilarious I kind of want to like hang with him and like star start like a devious company with him. Thoughts on psychedelics. I love psychedelics.

I love I love Mike Grodosing. I think it's like a little a little spruce to your creativity and without without you being high at all or trip at all,

because then you're not microdosing. And I like macrodosing. I think it's not not not very often, but I think it's uh incredibly powerful, super fun and actually change your life, like and you know, I I uh tripped over a New Year's one time and had like a deeper insight into like what it's going to feel like to be like an old, like hobbling person and got a train in the next day and have been far more physically

active ever since. That was like three years ago, and that's life changing, right like, And it's because, like I could, you know, we get in these this is not the lightning answer, sorry, but we get in these like grooves where we see everything through this kind of you know, one way and and and sometimes it's not very we're we're in some kind of delusion, but we're stuck in it, and you know you can and and this helps you kind of just like brush away a bunch of fogger

look at to the side and see things from a different angle. And like I was like, I feel like I just like really, I was like, oh, I'm going to be like seventy eight and like limping around and and I could like feel it, and I was like, oh god, I have to, like I have to take care of my body. And it sounds obvious, but to me, it like it like became crystal clear in a much deeper way. So I have a lot of examples like that. I think it's great. I wouldn't like brashly advise people

to all just do it. I think it's, you know, something you learn a lot about and that you should make sure you're doing in the right setting, and that you make sure you're doing with the right people and in the right time in your life. But I do think it's something that probably more people should explore than

currently are. What's the craziest perception you ever had? I'm or hallucination, Like, what's the crazy Do you have something that you're like, Oh my god, So I haven't gone, like I haven't gone like a crazy level where I'm like, you know, people go to the no heroic dose, no heroic dose, Well, i'd like to. I would like to. I just like it's kind of scary, but I know it's one of those things that once I do it, I'll be like, I can't believe I waited so long

to do that. But you know, that's the level where so the real, you know, the level I've heard people talk about is where you don't know that you've ever not been in this state or that you ever will not be in the state in the future, So you're truly psychosis, like you don't you don't know what's going on. You don't realize you're in a tripping this is this

is just that that's next level. I've always been very like rational and sane and like I know who I am, I know what's going on, and I know it's okay. And that's said you can get to some you know, I don't know, it's just I mean, it's been. It's

also been great for my marriage. We've you know, done this and then have these really like just these this like communication that we like, you know, you think you're communicating and then you don't realize like there's other stuff that you really you know that it wasn't being community and it's just like things come out in a really healthy way. I think. So it's it's been. It's been great in that regarding. It's also just fun, like people

talk about it. It's so much talk right now about because I think it's more less taboo to talk about it as in a medical sensor, a mental health sense. But it's just a great recreational and like it's like giggly, it's so giggly, and then it's like so every the colors are so beautiful. Everything you're looking at is so like gorgeous you're I feel like you actually have heard that your eyesight is actually better, and you know, music sounds so much better and nature is so much more

gorgeous and like fascinating and like. So yeah, I mean, I think it's it's a pretty magical thing that that we've discovered in the world. I agree. And it's also a great bonding experience. I don't know if you have done it with you with your wife, Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying, we've communicated together. Yeah, it's just really a true bonding experience of the person you've done it with. Okay, last question, last question, which is that was actually the

most asked question. But why wait? What does that mean? That's the most I think people trying to be clever because the name of your blog is wait. But why they're asking but why wait? Yeah, well I get a lot of I get if you're going to start a blog, all wait, but why you're going to deal with a whole lot of puns and like plays on words. So I'm very used to that and it always tickles me

a little bit. I think, But why wait? Because because sometimes it's only when you wait that you can process what's going on in a way that helps you then figure out what you want to do next. Nice they're going to ask a question like that, they're gonna get a yeah, I like it. It wasn't silly, it's it's so important for people to hear that message actually these days. Tim, thank you so much for coming back on my Psychology Podcast all these years later and for another epic interview.

Yeah man, anytime. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at thus Psychology podcast dot com or on our YouTube page The Psychology Podcast. We also put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,

and creativity. Eight