HealthyGamerGG - WTF is going on in the World? | Interview with MoistCr1itikal

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

Dr. K and MoistCr1itikal talk about everything from Crypto to Morbius to Gambling and more! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's not great. It's pretty bad. But you're an adult making your own decisions with your own money. It gets money when you are being paid to promote that casino. And the kids that are watching have the ability to sign up. They don't have verification to put money in, but they do have verification to take money out. So if they find out you're under 21, you won't get your money. You're under whatever gambling age.

It's probably 3.1. You won't get your money. They know what they're doing. There are a lot of, like, people who could be budding into school shooters. Right? So the kid who is 18 got there somehow. Whether it's mental illness, whether it's indoctrination, whether it's, like, being a part of an echo chamber, it's probably a combination of all of the above. Most of the time, it's, like, good humans.

I work with a couple people who are actually bad humans. They'll say, like, how do I be less of a bad human? Like, I want to be a better human. I would like to understand how they started to believe the things that they believe. leave, you know, what were they trying to accomplish? Like, like, I'd like to understand not just the fruit that comes off of the tree, but where did the leaves come from? How did the tree grow? What was the sapling and what was the seed? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Yeah, I'm sorry. What did you say? I was just saying it's been a tragedy, but. No, I was just

agreeing. Yeah, it's unfortunate times. Yeah, I mean, why do you, why do you think this is happening like more and more and more? Oh, I have no idea. I couldn't even pretend to come up with a valid reason. Hold on a second, Charlie. Sorry, my headphones seem to be crapping out on me. No worries. Yeah, so you were saying you couldn't even begin to provide a reason? Nah, I have no idea. I think more and more people retreat into their own fucked up, landscapes mainly just I think from online being terminally online and they just retreat into themselves and come up with some terrible terrible ideas how do you think that happens when you say we're like retreat into their online spaces I

think they just feel so alone and they'll read a bunch of shit and maybe a couple like-minded unfortunate souls and they start to provide a negative feedback loop. And then they just keep staying in there and they just become very unpleasant. Any idea what? So, you know, here at HG, we try to help the internet with their mental health, educating people, hopefully guiding people, sometimes offering things like coaching services. What, what do you, is there anything you think we can do? Like not, not just us, but also like streamers, the internet gamers. I have no idea.

I really couldn't tell you. I can't pretend to understand the mindset of a lot of these fucked up people. I don't know what makes them do the shit they do or feel the way they feel. I just think that there's a huge element at play where they see people that may, or may not be in just an awful spot like they are. And then they start giving each other terrible, terrible ideas and poisoning each other.

And then it's kind of like a situation where because they have so much access to so many people all the time, they just become diseased from it. What do you mean by that? So much access to so many people all the time? You can always find someone who believes in whatever garbage you believe in. there's always going to be groups for it so you can always find an echo chamber to associate yourself with and that just reinforces it. And how do you know, so when you're saying, you know, you can always find someone to believe

in the garbage you believe in, how do you know what's garbage and what isn't? I guess you'd never really do unless, you know, you're out from the outside perspective. So something like the JFK being revived and cruising through Dallas to a lot. announce his presidency. To someone of, I would say, ordinary body and mind that sounds ridiculous. But then you have so many people that believe it and have been camping outside of Dallas that that road that he was claiming to be, that 4chan claimed he'd be driving down for months. Oh, they're still there? I thought that they sort of figured out that he wasn't showing up. Nope. There's still a couple people that show up every now and then, but they no longer do the big

ceremonies. What ceremonies were they doing? They used to do candlelight vigils and wait for JFK to ride through. Fascinating. Do you know much about that? Yeah, it started as a 4chan joke to Q Annan. They made a post as Q saying that they had evidence to support that JFK Jr. had been revived. And then they gave a date. I don't remember the date.

I think it was like November of 2021 or something. that he and Donald Trump would be cruising through some street in Dallas to announce their 2024 presidential run. And they sat out there and waited that entire day. It didn't happen. They came back the next day. Still didn't happen and continued that for about a month or so. They said he had been revived, like he was literally brought back from the dead?

Yep. Initially, they said that he was revived. But I think they tried to change it to be more believable. So they said that he never actually died. and it'd just been in hiding. So they started using pictures of people's hands to prove that they were JFK Jr's hands. What?

Mm-hmm. Use pictures of people's hands to prove that they were JFK's hands? Yeah, there's a... Here, I'll send you the picture that they used for evidence. It was... Where is it? I think it was a presidential photo of Trump

when he was signing something. There was some guy in the background who had hands that they said were JFK Jr's hands. And they use that as evidence to support their claim that JFK Jr. is still alive. I want to see if I can find that photo. That's insane, dude. It's wild.

What do you think is going on? And do you prefer like moist or critical or Charlie or? You can just call me Charlie. So Charlie, like, what's going, like, why are all these echo chambers forming on the internet? Like, what do you think is going on, man? Access. Like I said, you can always find anyone who believes anything.

So then once you find that group, you just keep to yourselves in your own little bubble and you just feed off each other's paranoia. Yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of interesting. I wonder about some of these things. So when we've done some, we've been, I guess in a sense, like supporting budding in cells in this community for a while, like in terms of, you know, helping them hopefully get out of their echo chambers. so we've interviewed several incels on stream, sort of challenge some of their beliefs and ideas. It's really interesting. I saw a recent study where someone actually looked at characteristics

that lead to attractiveness, and it turns out that like jaw line, or sorry, not attractiveness, but male characteristics that correlate with sexual activity and maybe even having kids. And facial structure is, is actually like doesn't correlate at all. So some of these beliefs, right, that like a jaw line or the Chad jar or whatever is like

important in terms of being able to mate and some of these other sort of pseudo-scientific beliefs. But really the only thing that seemed to strongly correlate was muscularity, which is something that's controllable. Yeah. I think that's like a positive thing to hear because you have control over your muscularity. Yep. You just need to commit to it.

Something that you can never change, though, is height. And that's a tough one. Yeah, so I think height may have been a small correlation, but wasn't very big. So a lot of people, you know, do think that height is basically a nail in the coffin. If you're below a certain height that, you know, you're not going to be able to have a successful romantic relationship. But it doesn't seem like the research really supports that conclusion. No, but that's always going to be like they're smoking gun. I know a lot of the insoles because we used to do that on the podcast.

Sometimes one of our co-hosts would talk to them directly. they usually always bring up height. So it seems like a lot of the insoles are on the shorter side of things. Oh, can you tell me what you mean by that? That's something we talked about a lot on the podcast. Yeah, so I have a podcast with four buddies of mine, and one of them's like an in-cell epidemiologist. He's been on the forefront of plotting the in-cell course since about 2016.

Interesting. Yeah, over the course of the years, he's like talked to them, interviewed them, and everything. So I've learned a lot about them from that guy. his name's Kaya. And what is he, what is he concluded? That a lot of them are just too far gone. No matter what he's said or what he's tried to say, they are always somehow coming up with excuses for why it's beyond salvation

and that they're just going to be forever alone, loser, loners, and they will always hate women. At least some of them. But to be fair, Kaya's only talked to like the most extreme of in cells. Yeah, I was going to say that hasn't really been my experience in terms of the incels we've worked. I think a lot of them are very decent good human beings and also seem to be more attractive than they give themselves credit for. Yeah, I mean, what do? Hmm.

Anything in particular you want to talk about today? No, I'm good for whatever you want, man. I'm an open book ready to discuss whatever. And I can't find this picture of the hands anymore because YouTube crackdown on conspiracies so hard. Yeah, so Charlie, one of the things that I really like respect about you is I just like to hear you talk about stuff. Like I think my favorite, I don't know if this is stuff that you stream at some point, but I'll watch your YouTube channel from time to time. And sometimes you'll just like talk about stuff. Like I still remember when you were talking about, there was one video that you made.

talking about how gender reveal parties were stupid and that this is going to end badly. And then like a week or two later, like someone started a wildfire through a gender reveal fireworks. And so there are a couple of things that you've just, you know, you've opined on. And so I was just really hoping to kind of hear anything that's been bouncing around in your head if you've come to any conclusions recently, what you've kind of been keeping up with. I think there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of talk about the Johnny Debt. Amber Heard trial. There's a lot of, you know, talk about mass shootings. Like, those are kind of the two things that were just top of mind for me today. But I also see that you still have a quite magnificent Pokemon collection.

Yeah. So it seems like that was not a temporary thing the last time we talked. No, I actually finished the collection for Yu-Gi-O mainly. Pokemon, I finished mainly what I wanted there, but Yu-Gi-O was the big one for me, which I finished the collection. Finish the collection means that you have all of the cards now? What exactly? The ones that I wanted, yeah, all the cards I was going for. Yeah. So I no longer have to do that. Any of those topics seem appealing to you?

Yeah, whichever ones you want to talk about. I myself haven't been diving too deep in anything super serious. The main thing I've been, like, I guess researching is Morbius. So it's a superhero movie that memes. culture had almost propelled it to being profitable, despite it being an absolutely dog shit movie. It's just, I find it really fascinating. What do you guys? Can you, yeah, tell me about it.

It's, so Morbius is the latest Marvel stinker. It was, came out in April 1st, I think. And no one saw it because no one cared about it. It was kind of just a dead on arrival movie stars Jared Leto, who most people don't like anyway. And it gained notoriety online because it was a superhero, big, budget production that nobody was watching. So people started meming about it like Morbius is the highest grossing film of all time. It has a 2,000% on rotten tomatoes. It's morbin time, time to get morbed, Morb sweep, Morb summer. And from all of these memes, people actually went to see the film

just to be in on the joke and it's made 150 million, which is more than it's spent on production. Probably not marketing, but that's a movie that instantly flopped, but then got a second win because of memes. It's like one of those B-rated, you know, B-list films that people will watch because it's so bad. Yep.

Yeah. The movie itself is boring bad. It's not like an entertainingly bad movie, but the memes around it are what's entertaining. So people see it to be in on the memes. Interesting. So have you seen it?

Yeah, I saw it opening day. It was a pretty much empty theater. It's bad. It's a very bad movie. Wait, so opening day was empty theater? So how did people know that, it was bad on opening day. So they did like pre-release screenings and almost everyone,

even like the most shilly of studios or sites were saying it's bad. Like it's not a good movie. So people's expectations were super low. And then opening day, the few that saw it started making fun of it immediately. And then the memes started to snowball. How do you think movies like that get made? So it's a, it's Marvel, but it was produced by Sony. And Sony has a history of just making throwaway garbage for the sake of keeping their rights.

So like the most recent Fantastic Four movie, this just strikes me as a movie that was just made because it needed to be. And there was really nothing else put into it. What do you mean by that? It's a movie that was made just to keep their rights. How does that? Do you know how that works? From what I recall, Sony has a deal with Marvel where they get the rights to Spider-Man Fantastic Four and I guess Morbiased by extensive. but only as long as they actively use the IP.

So every few year, well, for Fantastic Four, I think it was 10 years. I think it's every 10 years or whatever, they have to make a movie. Or I might be confusing with Fox. I think it's Fox that might have done Fantastic Four. But it should be the same deal that to keep the rights, they have to actively engage with the IP. Got it. So they have to at least produce something. Yeah.

And I think it's, it might have been Fox for Fantastic Four. Hmm. And so it seems like this morbius movie is sort of like a, it almost reminds me of like a little bit of GameStop where, you know, it's, I mean, as I understand with GameStop, it was actually like undervalued, right? So that's, there was that one guy on Reddit, who was like doing an analysis and was saying like, even though brick and mortar game stores may be on the sharp, sharp decline because of online sales. even then GameStop is like undervalued and then I think somehow he also found out that everyone was like short selling it. It asked they were short selling more shares than existed, which I still don't understand exactly how that's possible. But I don't know. Yeah, I don't get that either.

And for Morbius though, no one's making money. They're just making memories with memes. Yeah. So GameStop I also heard is making some kind of NFT thing. Yeah, they're the transitioning. NFTs from what I read. I didn't go too deep into it, but it seems like the logical progression for GameStop. What do you think about NFTs? I'm not a fan. I think they're all a scam. How do you arrive at that conclusion?

So the big thing with NFTs is the Crypto Bros will usually buy their own NFTs for a huge price just to promote it on Twitter. Like, I'm a struggling art student. I made this NFT, and it just sold for 20 grand on OpenC and then they resell it for like 18 or something hoping that a legitimate sale comes in so they make money. But it's been proven multiple times that they are literally buying their own NFTs

just for a high price to market up. And I also think all the board apes and all the board ape clones are just really lazy cash grabs. Yeah, I'm just not a fan. I mean, I've heard a little bit about this stuff but I'm not too familiar with it. What's up with the board ape and board ape clones?

It's everyone believes, they're going to make money off it, but no one wants to be the last person holding a board ape. So they buy into the hype. They get a board ape for an astronomical price, like 500 grand or something. They squat on it for a little while, let the hype continue to fester, and then eventually hope to turn it around for more money than they paid for. No one actually wants the board apes. It's just they want to hold it long enough, just long enough to get a sucker to pay more for it.

So it's just something that has absolutely no use or value. other than making money off hype. So do you, what do you think about crypto? Do you think how much of this correlates with crypto and how much of NFTs are, you think, like, quite different from crypto? Because a lot of, because you refer to the crypto bros, right? Yeah, I actually, I don't, I think crypto's fine, like the main coins and everything. I got into crypto in 2016.

And while there's a lot of, like, really shady ones and a lot of dog shit, I think there is a future for it. But that future, I don't think, involves NFTs, even in the slightest at all. It's just that idea of having that crypto blockchain ledger, I think, could have practical use down the line. But I also just don't really like the crypto bro community either. So I don't care if it hits zero, even though I have crypto of my own. What do you think is the value in crypto? So, like, being able to have that ledger, which has proven to be great for exposing scammers and shit, I think is valuable for like a business if you need to keep track of things.

And since it's so quick and updated so like instantaneously, I think it's just makes. it for like a good customer service experience for a business, or at least it could. What do you mean by that? So like if, so for example, if you're buying something and you want to know the history of the item, you can immediately just look up everything and every owner, every price and everything like that. So you can instantly know if what you're dealing with is legitimate or a scam. I see. Okay. So the decentralized information that's available lets you track things. Yeah, but I also don't know if it'll ever get to that point outside of scams. I just

think there is a possibility where crypto is a legitimate thing right now I don't think it is so if it hits zero before then I think it's probably deserved to what what do you think needs to happen for it to reach that point I I don't know they they need to shut off everyone with a board a picture on Twitter it's killing it's killing all of it it's so bad it's it's so bad yeah I was I was reading a little bit about um Bitcoin and so I guess Elon bought a bunch of Bitcoin. And then a few days or a few weeks, I think it was days. He announced that Tesla would be taking Bitcoin, his payment.

Yeah. And then Bitcoin prices shot up. And then they said they won't take it anymore. Yeah. And then so it's unclear whether he sold it or what he did with all of his Bitcoin. And then like a week later, he was like, yeah, we decided not to take it. And then Bitcoin prices dropped. I know.

It's crazy. But that's like the whole nature of crypto That's why it's so hard to be like enthusiastic about it Because they shit like that Pretty much everyone in crypto Is the most annoying person that you can listen to So it has such a negative reputation So why do you think people get into crypto?

To make money I think the only reason people are in crypto is FOMO And trying to make some quick cash off of it Because they've seen a lot of other people make money off it So to them it's just like Early enough where they're convinced they can still make a big payday out of it. Yeah, I think we have, I remember talking to,

I'm blinking on the name now, but, uh, I think Anthony Milanakis. Yeah, he was an early crypto. Yeah, like super early. Like we're talking like early 2000s. Like, you know, so he made a ton of money on Bitcoin. But, um, yeah, it's interesting, man. I don't know.

Like I'm, I'm not really too much into crypto, but, even I've been sort of, I work with a lot of people in finance and it seems like, especially some of this stuff with like tether and things like that are like very, very shady. Oh yeah. Luna's the big one right now. Luna used to be the fourth most traded crypto and in seven days it went to 150th of a penny. It crashed from $100 a token to a 150th of a penny in seven days. I haven't been following what's going on with Luna. Can you fill me in? So I don't really fully understand it, but their head guy, Doquan, was actually on Botez's live stream, like the day before it started crashing, talking about, like, how it's entertaining to watch shit crash. And it was ironic because the next day his shit just completely exploded.

But from the videos I watched trying to break down the situation, it seems like from the get-go, it was built like a Ponzi scheme. And it finally crumbled after Doquan made so many enemies that actively wanted it to fail. So there are people betting like $20 million against Luna and like actively coming up and presenting how you can exploit Luna and how it could theoretically fall instantly into a death spiral. And I think with all of this compounding on top of each other all at the same time, it just started to collapse because it became very clear to a lot of people. It's pretty shady. But how can you, how does $20 million cause, how can you bet?

Because I think you can't like short a cryptocurrency, right? Like you can't. kind of can. From what I understand the, so the bet I'm talking about is there's a big guy on crypto who was publicly making fun of Doquan and then said, I'm betting you $10 million. This shit will be, you know, lower than it is right now in a year. And then Doquan's like, all right, bet. And he's like, you know, I changed my mind. I'm upping it to 20. And Doe Quan stayed silent on that. But they did bet 10 million into a public account betting against Luna. And then other people started betting against it as well. And it became common knowledge that if you had enough money, there was a way

where you could instantly keep spitting out $50 million from Luna and driving the price down and down until it death spirals and de pegs itself. What do you mean? But who's taking the other side? So I understand if this guy, Doquan, is taking the other side of the $10 million bet. But how can other people bet against Luna? So they had something called a stable coin, an algorithmic stable, stable coin, which historically always fails. And if they could depeg that stable coin, the whole thing collapses. And that's what they were proving, I think. Again, I don't fully understand it. I'm just trying my best to regurgitate the videos I watched. So the idea was, if you had enough money, which Luna was generating billions, there were some huge whales in there that did have enough

money. If you had enough money, you could bet against Luna and depeg that stable coin by doing something and I don't remember what. Yeah, so that sort of makes sense because I saw that, you know, there was, tether was supposed to trade at one, the whole point is that it's supposed to be pegged to the dollar, right? Yep. And I saw that tether at some point was trading for like 99 cents.

Or somehow the peg got removed, but it, you know, crypto is something that it sounds like both of us are sort of peripherally aware of, but not really like experts in. funny thing about that is I'm not sure that the people who are experts in crypto or actually experts in crypto. No one is really an expert in crypto. It's such a wild wasteland. Good news, though, to all the lunatics out there. That's what they call themselves. Doe Kwan has announced Luna 2.0 baby, Tara Luna is back and better than ever, and people are already buying it. It's

the most pathetic thing I've seen on Twitter in a minute. What does that mean? What is Luna 2.0? He's just started to... He relaunched it and people are buying it. How does that work? How do you... He just relaunched it. He just literally said, all right, Luna's dead. Here's 2.0. Does that mean he lost the bet?

Yep. So he lost the bet. I don't think he's ever going to pay up, but yeah, he lost the bet. I thought you said they put money into a public account. They did, but he still has to, like, confirm the transaction last I saw. Oh, wow. Interesting. And, yeah.

Charlie, any idea where these people come from? like these people who are making the the coin. I couldn't tell you, man. So Doquan, he's an actual billionaire because of his shit coin. And I've never heard of him before this. I actually, well, that's not true.

I looked them up a little bit. Apparently he tried one unsuccessful shit coin in 2020 that didn't work. So I'm guessing he just started taking protocols like contracts from other cryptos and then eventually got lucky with Luna. I don't know. I really don't know.

Interesting. The world is changing. man. I know. It's wild. It's absolutely wild. Anything in particular you think is like extra crazy? I guess staying in the same ballpark, just a delusion from people that are buying Luna 2.0 right now. It makes me sad. I don't know, reading their comments because when it crashed, people lost everything because they believed so heavily in crypto. So they were posts about like how much they've lost as well as how much that money meant to them.

And then people legitimately talking about how they're now suicidal and need professional assistance. It was sad. And then those same people are buying into Luna 2.0. It's, I don't know, it's just sad to see. Yeah, I mean, I think so we, I was, we had, I forget why, but something came up and I just shared some thoughts about crypto on, on stream a couple weeks ago.

And just why I think crypto is like fundamentally like different in some of the psychology. there's actually like a lot of different, I had sort of sketched out maybe even like a lecture series about like the psychology of like cryptocurrency. But a lot of it is like not quite. So what some people may think is that there's sunk cost fallacy here, which is like, okay, like I've already lost all my money. You know, so if you if I go to a casino and I lose $100, the only way I think I can get it back is by gambling again. Right. Like if I was up a hundred bucks at one point, now I'm down $100. The only way to make myself whole, which is a strong bias that humans have, is to keep gambling.

The interesting thing about crypto is I think there's more to it than that. It's not just the sunk cost fallacy. It's the idea that every time I do this, I understand the game a little bit better. And it's my ignorance last time that like, because, you know, Luna was, you were saying trading at 100, right? And so this time, like, I know. when is the right time to get out. So it's kind of like some cost fallacy, but I think every, you know, I'm not surprised that people are sort of like, well, what happened with Luna, I'm sure if I talk to people, what

they'll say is, yeah, what happened with Luna was that a group of people just basically tanked the coin. But if that had not happened, if this rare event where Doe Kwan took the bet had not happened, then I would be rich. And there's actually this other kind of, it's interesting because there's actually a lot of neuroscience and psychology into this, there's this part of your brain that engages in something called counterfactual thinking, which is when you go back into the past and you kind of like rewrite history, if I had done this, dot, dot, dot, then things would be different today, which is like

it's an adaptive sort of like part of the mind. It's like, you know, if I screw something up, how do I learn how to do it properly? I go back in time and I think to myself, oh, I shouldn't have said that or I shouldn't have done that or whatever. And then you like learn how to behave in the future. And so I think we're seeing this kind of thing in crypto where everyone like, people screw up and they're like, oh, now I know how to do it right. And so this time it'll work because I've learned my lesson. Yeah, that's a really good point. It's kind of the same mentality when it comes to gambling. Like if I just got out three hands ago when I was up, I would have won this money. Now I know for next time. But then you still never get out at the right time or anything like that.

It's the same with crypto. Yeah, well, it's so it seems, right? So I think that that's definitely the But, yeah, I mean, do you, what do you think about? I know that there's been a lot of streamers who've gotten flack recently for, you know, gambling streams and I know crypto sponsors a lot of streamers and stuff like that. What do you think about that stuff? For crypto sponsors, like Coinbase or like Binance or something, I don't have like a problem with it because it is just crypto exchanges as far as I know. They don't do anything besides just sell the coins.

But when it comes to stake, which is the big one. I think that's always in a really sketchy area because you're getting paid in their money to promote it. If you're using your own money because you're a gambling addict, it's one thing. It's still not good. But if you're using a company's money to get people to sign up to it,

especially when you can sign up underage with no problem at all, because steak just allows you to sign up as long as you have a pulse, there's no verification. Then it's a completely different issue, I think. So steak is not an exchange. It's a gambling website or something? Yeah, it's a casino. It's an online crypto casino. Online crypto casino. What does that mean?

So you play the slots, you play roulette, you play all the classic games, but with crypto on their casino. Oh, interesting. So what crypto do you play with? Whatever crypto you put in. So you can sign up at any age. There's no verification. Oh, interesting. Yeah. If you're eight years old and you accidentally got a hold of your parents' coinbase account, you can send some Bitcoin to a stake account you just made and just start gambling. There's no verification. Wow.

So I wonder if that's actually part of the, I know this may sound kind of weird, but I wonder if like that, because that's part of the, in a sense, the advantage of crypto, right? Like so a big part of, and maybe this is a controversial statement, but I thought the whole point or a big part of crypto is that it is to a certain degree like unrestricted, right? So it's like all on the blockchain. So there isn't any particular. government who can track your moves, block your moves, things like that. The whole point of crypto is that it's like it's a free currency that can be used however you kind of want to as long

as someone else is willing to take it. Yeah, pretty much. But it doesn't apply when it comes to gambling since it's so heavily regulated in the States. You're not even allowed to be on the same carpet as slot machines in a real casino, but crypto skirts that by being an online one. And since they don't verify age to play, anyone can sign up, which is the big problem. What do you say, what do you mean when you say you're not allowed to be on the same carpet as slot machines? What does that mean? If you're under 21 and you go to like a hard rock, there's carpets that the slot machines are on. And if you are under 21, you're not allowed to be on that carpet at all on that floor.

They'll ID you if you're under 21, they kick you out on the spot. Interesting. So it seems like there's a lack of regulation for these. online. And is the lack of regulation because it's online or because it's crypto? I think just because it's crypto. I think the big thing is since it's a crypto casino and no one has really, you know, come up with any solutions to the issue of kids being able to sign up, that they just don't bother. They're just not aware of it. So like, like I said, if you're using your own money to gamble because you're a gambling addict, that's one thing. It's not great. It's pretty

bad, but you're an adult making your own decisions with your own money. It gets money when you are being paid to promote that casino and the kids that are watching have the ability to sign up with no problems at all. That's a huge like problem. That's an actual like crime in the real world. But since it's online and it's a crypto casino, there's nothing to stop it from happening. If everyone that was watching like a sponsored steak stream was of the proper gambling age and they make that decision to go gamble after watching their favorites,

streamer do it. I still don't think it's a great thing because they're going to lose a lot of money and that money they lose directly profits. The streamers, not amazing, but they're adults making that decision. Kids don't know any better and they can freely sign up to these casinos, no problem. And I think that's a big issue. So what I'm kind of hearing is actually that the biggest problem is sort of the sign up process or the lack of Iraq. Yeah, I think the biggest problem is the actual casino, which is steak. Interesting. Yeah, I'm not really sure, you know, I keep up with some of this stuff, but like quite peripherally. And I, and, you know, I, I know that I saw a clip from Miskiff where I think he was being quite honest. And, and I really appreciated what he said. And he was

like, you know, everyone has their price. And it's like, it's hard when someone comes to you and offers you. It just occurred to me. I don't know if you have any, you know, gambling sponsors or stuff. But I may have been setting. I wasn't particularly trying to attack anyone. But I think it's just, You know, it's something that's, there's a lot that's changing in the world, and I just like hearing your thoughts about that kind of stuff. Yeah, no, it's a completely different landscape. It's all very different now. Things have become a lot shadier, if you ask me. There's a lot of under the table kind of shit going on, like Drake was doing a steak-sponsored stream last night, and there wasn't even like a hashtag ad in the title or anything. So, I don't know, it's a little wacky, a little weird out there. Why do you think things are getting shadier?

Because they're finding ways to go around like the norm. So it's really lucrative to be immoral, it seems. People beg to be scammed. You can see it in crypto, for example. People just keep falling for Luna 2.0. So if you take advantage of these people that are really gullible and everyone wants to make a quick buck, you can make so much money off of it. It's just super easy.

And it's hard to resist that temptation for a lot of these companies, I guess. Yeah. So, you know, Charlie, one thing I'd push back. a little bit, you know, having worked with people who I think would be called immoral, is that I think oftentimes these, you know, people don't think that they're being immoral. Well, I'm not talking about individuals. I'm talking about the companies. I'm talking about companies taking advantage of it. Yeah, like, steak has put so much money into getting everything on Twitch a stake-sponsored slot machine stream. Pretty much all of the people gambling right now

are gambling on stake. And they've done a lot of money to ensure that's the case. Interesting. I'm talking about the company specifically. I think a lot of people maybe don't do it with like the worst intentions ever or anything like that. But the companies themselves absolutely know what they're doing. Hmm.

Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I don't know. I'm just kind of like thinking through that for a second because I think oftentimes I I'm not disagreeing with you, but I just don't really know. And one of the things that I try to do is like reserve judgment on someone's intentions until I've actually talked to them. You know, and at the same time, I think that it's not an unreasonable claim to make that steak knows what they're doing or that they're trying to be purposefully predatory.

One thing that I can attest to is that I know that a lot of people will accuse public people or companies of being purposefully predatory. And I personally don't see it that way if I've had some kind of relationship with them and have sort of really heard their perspective. Yeah, absolutely. So I make the claim about steak because they very well aware of what they're doing. They're an offshore casino. I don't remember where they're stationed, but it's in like a really lax gambling area where they're able to do a lot of shady shit. They don't have verification to put money in, but they do have verification to take money out. So if they find out, under 21, you won't get your money.

Or you're under whatever gambling age. Oh, wow. That's, you won't get your money. They know what they're doing. Yeah, that kind of stuff I think really, wow. You can, you need verification to get your money out, but not to put money in. That's really interesting. I think that one's one of the companies you could say with a high level of confidence,

they're not ignorant. They know exactly what they're doing. Interesting. Yeah, that changes things a lot. I mean, because I, like I said, I try to reserve judgment, but, you know, that's sort of, sounds kind of shady. Yeah, it absolutely is. And I don't think every company is as bad as steak or as egregious as steak when it comes to things like that.

So I do definitely understand your perspective there. But for steak in particular, the one that I was talking about, I absolutely think you can make the claim that they're very well aware and very predatory. What do you think is, so you mentioned that things seem to be getting shadier, right? like and people are sort of learning to skirt the rules. I'm also sort of noticing that maybe the rules can't keep up. Like sometimes, so I was kind of thinking a little bit about all the school shootings and stuff and everyone's talking about gun control, which I think is definitely a piece of the puzzle. And there's good data that shows that people have done comparative studies between like the U.S., the UK and Australia that basically show that

culturally, like in terms of values and preferences and stuff like that, these three nations tend to be like pretty similar. They also have similar, somewhat similar demographics, somewhat similar socioeconomic status, things like that, like the economies and forms of government are like relatively similar and that, you know, the UK and Australia have far fewer shootings because they seem to have gun control laws. And there also appears to be a causal relationship there where I think Australia, maybe 20 or 30 years ago, like instituted stronger gun control. And prior to those laws passing, they were similar in terms of the U.S., like per capita, number of deaths and things like that.

But I think that when we're sort of looking at this stuff, like, it's more than that. So one of the things that I've been wondering a lot about is that, to my knowledge, gun control hasn't gotten that much worse in the U.S. Like, I don't know if you're, you keep up with this stuff or not. But, like, you know, I think, like, guns were pretty available. A lot of people had a lot of guns, like, 20 or 30 years ago in the United States. But what has changed is the Internet and, and, like, mental health and some of these other factors. Any thoughts about any of that?

Yeah, so what you just said is something I thought about a little bit. It's not something I think about too often because I just, I find it to be a really depressing topic that I don't have an answer for. but I do remember growing up, I had a lot more access to being around guns in public. I remember there was like convenience stores that would have guns for sale. That's not really the case anymore. Now it seems like there's, it's a little bit more difficult to like find them in the wild, but it seems the process is still pretty easy. I think there is merit to the claim that maybe they should at least increase the age or something

because 18 is probably a little young, especially. considering it seems to work to some level. Pretty much every mass shooter is 18. They literally get the gun when they're 18 and then commit the crime. So they didn't do it when they were 17. They're not getting it illegally at 17 years old. Maybe just wait a little bit longer. Maybe make the age a little bit later might help.

I don't really know. But I don't think gun control has gotten super lax. I actually think it's a little harder to find guns now than when I was growing up. And I grew up in Florida. So maybe I was just around like all the really like, wild gun-toting areas, but now I don't have guns for sale at convenience stores around me when I'm out in public. It's just one of those things where I think people have been changing, probably because of them feeling so, like, isolated or, like, locked in these really unhealthy

echo chambers online. I really think that is a big contributing factor. Yeah, I do too. And I think that's where part of what I think is challenging about this discussion is that, you know, so I think there's good kind of scientific evidence that stronger gun control laws will make a significant impact on the problem. And at the same time, just like you, I've actually found that gun, I don't think the availability of guns and over the course of my life is like drastically increased. I mean, I know that there's a lot of, you know, changes that have happened with like semi-automatic or like I think the guy at, you know, from the school shooting last week was, or sorry, a couple days ago. Wow, it's already been, felt like a long time ago, but that's probably, we're just getting

numb to it. But he had, like, I think, two AR-15s. And I was also reading about how, like, people actually fired shots at him before he even went into the school. Like, he crashed his car into a ditch, and people tried to stop him, and they, like, opened fire on him, and they just let him go in. Yeah, I read that. That was pretty upsetting. Yeah, it's wild. Um, Any sense about what we can do about echo chambers? I don't think there's anything you can do about echo chambers. That's the nature of the internet. You will always find these like fucking poisonous pockets of people that you'll just fall into and never leave.

And to you, it's normal. But to everyone on the outside, it's dangerous. You know, I have no doubt, like, I saw those text messages from the shooter. I mean, he's speaking like someone you would see in like a really degenerate Twitter group, right? Like, it's just these people that fall into these. stream groups and never leave and just never get that like reality of wow this is bad. Yeah, I think it's interesting. So we've been doing some research and supporting a couple of organizations who want to better understand some of these like internet based phenomenon.

And one of the things, one of the key things that I think is happening that we don't really appreciate is so when you watch a YouTube video, YouTube will recommend content, right? Yeah. And so what tends to get populated, so I think there are a couple of features on the internet. The first is that the most emotionally engaging content is what rises to the top. So what we're sort of seeing is like the more polarizing the content is, the more likely

it is to be successful. And so, you know, clickbait is an example of that. I think like one manifestation of that core principle is clickbait. So like the more that you can. emotionally engage someone through a thumbnail or a title. And this is something that even people in our community have criticized us for. And so it's something that we're kind of going back to the drawing board and kind of considering because I think their points are good.

But so what tends to happen is people like over time on the internet, there's this phenomenon called online drift where what happens is you watch like one YouTube video and then YouTube figures out that in order to keep you engaged, we're going to show you more of the same stuff. And over time, it'll, like, slowly radicalize you. And so, so it's really interesting. And I don't think it's like necessarily YouTube's fault because YouTube's job, for example, is just to give people the content that they want to, right? There's like billions of YouTube videos. So it's, it's in YouTube, I don't think it's like nefarious that they're trying to help you sift through all of the content on YouTube so that you can have like a good experience

there. Like, I know mine, for example, I recently, I have a bunch of Eldon Ring PVP videos popping up, right? And not like, I'm glad. Like, that's what I'm interested in. But the interesting thing is that if you look at sort of how these echo chambers form, it seems like a lot of this content aggregation and like content like kind of pushing you in a particular direction. And what you'll even do is there's, there have been studies of online behavior and mass shooters and things like that. And what they discover is that there is that there is, there is. is this like drift where you start out on Twitter and then you wind up on Reddit and then you wind up on subreddits and then like particular subredits and like more radical subredits. And then you wind up on discord servers. Then you wind up on more radical discord servers. And like over time, you like drift from a general exposure to like things that are radicalizing. Yeah. That makes sense. I haven't heard that term before, but that's definitely something that sounds like it's happening.

Yeah. I mean, it's wild. Like, just what is we look at what's happening on the internet, like sort of what we're doing to ourselves in terms of, you know, steering clear of just gravitating towards content because that's what we do. And then as we gravitate towards content. So I've been struggling a lot to try to figure out like what to do about this. But I'm not quite sure. because I think it's sort of like almost a manifestation of like the laws of how internet content dissemination works. Yeah, I don't know if there is anything you can do about it, to be fair. Like, even as the platforms, I really don't know how much there is that you can control. It seems like it's more of an individual thing where you're just constantly hungry for more and more content. So you keep drifting further and further down the rabbit hole until you end up somewhere weird.

Yeah. Any weird rabbit holes that you've stumbled? upon? I don't know if I've stumbled on into any weird ones recently. Nothing too crazy and nothing too new. At least not that I can think of off the top of my head, mainly just like the Luna stuff, which isn't really a rabbit hole. That one's just like a pit of misery. I don't think there's anything, anything weird. Did you hear about this like misinformation division or something that the U.S. government recently started? Did you know what's that? So, so they, I think they like tried to start some kind of like division of like misinformation handling, right?

Because like there's a lot of like misinformation around COVID and stuff like that. And I think it kind of got torpedoed because it sounded very draconian. Right. So like misinformation, you know, the control of information sounds quite sort of fascist or I don't know if. with fascist or authoritarian is the right term. But anyway, it was just something that crossed my mind because I think they tried to sort of do something about it, but it seems like really, really hard. Like, how do you know which information is correct? Yeah, I don't know. That's a pretty slippery slope.

And it's definitely not a cool sounding name. Yeah. That just sounds evil. Right. And people in chatter joking about Ministry of Truth and things like that. Yeah. But it's interesting because, like, there is, you know, you could, you. As you were saying earlier, like, you've got these, like, people on 4chan that are like,

JFK is still alive. I know. Well, it's that. So, 4chan themselves doesn't believe it. They just do it because it fucks with QAnon, and they're just kind of like 4chan's lal cow, because pretty much anything 4chan tells them, people in that group believe wholeheartedly. So they just make fun of them through, like, these really goofy conspiracy ideas. Yeah, what do you know about QAnon?

I don't really get it. I just can't believe it's real. So to me, they're just kind of clowns that do goofy shit, but apparently there's a lot of really, like, dangerous ones too. The only ones I ever see are the ones waiting at that Dallas Street for JFK Jr.'s revival and stuff like that. And the ones that go around with signs saying, I don't know,

Zach Snyder's eating Hollywood babies. These vampires in Hollywood are. real and stuff. It just seems like it's a group of people that believe any and all fanfic conspiracies. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah, it's,

there's also been some recent studies about psychology of like what people believe. Like, you know, conspiracy theory kind of like personality traits and things like that. So I think it's people are trying to investigate like how it is that people can believe this stuff. Yeah, I just don't get it. I don't know how you get to that point where you actually believe in reality with your whole heart that a man has been revived, like actually come back from the dead to run for presidency. It's just, I don't know. It just blows my mind because these aren't like mentally deranged people. Like they hold a job.

They exist in society. Like they don't stand out as, you know, some kind of raving lunatic. And yet somehow they still believe these things and wait with candles outside of that road waiting for JFK Jr. Yeah. So it's interesting because you use the phrase mentally deranged or they're not mentally deranged, right? Yeah, exactly. Like, they're just average Joe's, the God-fearing American guys that for some reason believe this weird shit. Yeah, I don't know.

So I think like part of the other thing that I've been sort of struggling with is where mental health or mental illness fits into this stuff. Right? So like people who are investing in crypto, like a lot of times what will happen is you'll get people who will kind of label things. is mental health or mental illness, which I think has a fair... I mean, there's a certain truth to that. You know, at the top of the list is... I think there's oftentimes not...

or black and white discussions, not nuanced discussions about whether school shooters are mentally ill. Do you have any thoughts about that, by the way? I think they absolutely are. I would definitely be on the side that says anyone that actually commits a crime like that, is mentally unwell. I think I can say that with a high level of confidence that I would view them

as a mentally unwell person. So mentally unwell meaning what? I would say I would go as far as to call them like actually like deranged. There's something that went wrong in their brains that broke down a barrier that told them that this is something that they can and should do. So I would absolutely put them in like a legitimate like Arkham asylum for the criminally insane like I don't view them as having like mental awareness anymore like they like deteriorated to a point that's almost like subhuman to commit something like that yeah so I know this is going to sound kind of weird but I'm not so sure and and that's where sometimes I think that like when people do things that are unbelievable, oftentimes people will jump to the conclusion that their mind is not functioning

properly. Right. So like, and this is where like if you look at things like suicide bombers, for example, like are suicide bombers, do you think suicide bombers are mentally ill? I would say so. Yeah, to take your own life like that for whatever reason, I would absolutely say that. Yeah. So I think that's where sometimes what I'm almost hearing you say is that if a human being behaves in a manner that is so contrary to what we consider normal, you would consider that a mental illness? I guess a better way of illustrating the point. And this is going to something that I learned about a while ago.

There was a guy in Canada, a completely normal guy from everything I read. And one day on a bus, he snapped, just stabbed the completely random woman, and then ate her eyeballs. Oh, did the stream just crash? My stream, something happened with my, something happened with my video card, I think, but it seems to have sorted itself out. Hold on. You can still hear me, right? Yeah, I can still hear you. Okay. All right, you were saying, sorry? So there's this individual in Canada, one day on a bus, he snapped, he stabbed and beheaded a woman and ate her eyeballs on the bus in front of everyone with her decapitated head. he would scare people with it as they got off the bus and locked them in. Absolute breakdown of mental sanity. Engaged in cannibalism, absolutely horrible stuff.

That guy went to jail for, I think, eight years and was let back into the general society. They deemed it just like a brief episode of psychosis or something like that. And I just disagree. I think when someone crosses a line like that, I don't view it as something that you can ever come back from. That's someone that I don't think should have ever been let back. back into society, even if it was like a acute episode of psychosis, I just don't see how someone who has something like that isn't in a place of mental instability and danger to the people around them.

Well, so let me ask a couple questions. So I'm not saying that mass shooters are not mentally ill. So I think that there's a decent chance that many of them are, but I think that there's like more nuance to it. So let me ask you this. If we're saying that that person is mentally ill, right? Mental illness can be treated, right? So if that person is treated, do you think that they can be let back into society? How can you ever know if they're fully cured, though? There'd be no way of ever knowing for sure if they actually, like, because this was a break with no history. You're 100% correct that you can't predict the future if you're a mental health professional.

You can never know, but we do have standards of treatment, right? So we can sort of say that this thing is in remission. It's in sustained remission for five years. We can't see the future. We can't ever know what's going to happen. But we have a lot of confidence that people who are stable for this period of time. I have no idea about this particular case and it just sounds really bizarre. I've worked with people who are acutely psychotic and I've never heard of anything like this ever happening.

But, you know, I think if we're sort of saying, that people are ill, then it sort of stands, generally speaking, we believe that people who are ill can be treated in sustained remission, especially if it's an acute psychotic. I would sort of think about something like substance use in a situation like that. Because usually substance use, when you see just really, like normal people don't just start murdering people because of an acute psychotic. I've like literally never heard of that. The only situations that I've heard of where that kind of behavior happens usually involve

substances of abuse because that's what precipitates. such a bizarre, aggressive, psychotic experience. Most people who have acute psychotic experiences are, they're not dangerous. Like, this is a very common misconception that people who are psychotic and people who have schizophrenia are, like, dangerous. Like, most of them are not. Like, they don't, schizophrenia, when you really have it, it has, it comes with so much disorganization.

So people will say, like, oh, you know, like these school shooters and stuff, like, maybe they're schizophrenic. I don't know. I've never evaluated them. But I've worked with a ton of people with schizophrenia, and most of them, even when they're, like, acutely psychotic or not, like, dangerous. It's actually, and part of what bothers me about sort of assuming that this is mental illness is that I think it really misrepresents mental illness. I want to make it clear. I'm not saying it's all mental illness.

I think the question was, do you think they suffered from mental illness? And my answer was, yes, I absolutely think there was a level to that. Yeah, yeah. I didn't think that you were blaming mental illness for that, but I appreciate your clarifications. But I think that it sort of stands to reason, right? That like something about the way that this person is viewing the world is like so divorced from what we would consider healthy. But that's where I sort of, the reason I brought up a suicide bomber is because I think I've also observed that there is a certain amount of indoctrination or conditioning that I don't know would be like a neurotransmitter malice. function, right? So if we think about things like depression or major depressive disorder,

we sort of know that there's like a biological basis for it, whereas I don't know that the people who become suicide bombers have like a biological basis for what happens to them. Some of that appears to be actually like more nurture than nature in terms of their taught and begin to believe particular things. They're parts of echo chambers and then they start to like, you know, behave particular ways. They have different sets of values. Any thoughts about that? No, I mean, I think that makes sense. I just think when it ultimately comes down to it,

the decision, in the example of a suicide bomber, to actually give your own life to something, I think there has to be some level of, like, I guess, mental conditioning or something mentally that's gone wrong that allows you to make that decision at the very end. Because most people have some level of self-preservation. Sure. I think it's like a very normal thing.

And when that's not there, you have to wonder, well, why and how? Yeah, I mean, I think that's where, so I think if we're, I would toss in conditioning into that, that's why I kind of think, because I've been struggling with this stuff a lot because, um, I'm trying to understand like what we can do to alter the course. So like here, here's the thing that I sometimes think about is that there are a lot of like people who could be budding into school shooters, right? So the kid who is 18 got there somehow, whether it's mental illness, whether it's

indoctrination, whether it's like being a part of an echo chamber, it's probably a combination of all of the above. I was also seeing recently that the American Psychological Association recommends a mental, like a therapist to student ratio of about 500 students to one therapist. And the number is closer to, I think the number right now is one thousand, I mean closer to 3,000 to 1. So we have a severe deficiency of mental health treatment. And like, I just wonder about, you know, three years ago, is there something that we could have done if society was different, if our interventions were different, if our resources were different? Is there, what could we have

done to prevent this from happening? So gun control is a piece of it. But like, if we're sort of assuming that mental illness is a component, how do we fix that? And that's something I've been thinking a lot about. Yeah. I don't know what the answer to that would be either, but I had a question for you, because I'm kind of curious, your perspective. You mentioned indoctrination for things like this, and I think that makes sense when it comes to, like, suicide bombing or, like, killing for, like, a military cause or something

because you can convince people that they're doing it for a good cause. How do you indoctrinate someone to be, like, a mass shooter, like a school shooter? Where does that indoctrination come from, you think? Oh, I think it comes from the echo chamber. I agree with you completely. Okay. So I think, and you can even look at, like, manifestos, right, where people think that they don't, they think they're striking a blow for like

goodness and justice. They even will cite other school shooters as like heroes. They're like, you know, this, this world like is, so I personally think that it has a lot to do with like resentment and hurt that people are sort of driven to the fringes of society and they see no hope of any kind of like recovery or any. any kind of like reconciliation with the world. And so they've lost at life already. And some people who lose at life will sort of go down the route of suicide.

Other people who have lost at life are like, I'm going to burn it down with me. You know, sometimes I think even in the most deranged kind of thinking, like people think that they're doing someone a favor. But I think that a lot of this stuff, if you look at like where a lot of like hatred comes from. I think hatred most commonly stems from one of two places. Either stems from conditioning where you're taught from a young age to hate someone else. So if you look at like, you know, anti-religious sentiment or like racial sentiment or things like that, a lot of that is like culturally or not, it's conditioned. So if you grow up in a household where people are, are anti-particular

religion or anti-particular race, those are going to be the values that you internalize. the second place is that oftentimes hatred comes from hurt. I think that's like, in my opinion, the number one case. Like we learn to hate that which hurts us, which is sort of what we're biologically designed to do. And what really terrifies me about this stuff is when I think about mental illness, so when I think about illness, the whole idea is it's like not the way the body is supposed to function. Right. So if we think about a heart attack, like a heart attack is a malfunction of the heart.

What actually terrifies me some about some of this like emerging, I think deranged behavior is maybe a better way to put it, is that I'm not so sure that this is a malfunction of the mind or the brain. I don't think like I'm not sure. You know, I haven't worked with these people extensively. I've never talked to a school shooter, so I don't really know. I'm sure that you could diagnose them with something. And I think that treatment would in my mind would undoubtedly help them. And at the same time, I'm not so sure that like, because I don't know that indoctrination is the same as illness. I think both will lead to deranged behavior.

But it, you know, it's something that like, I think our conceptions of mental illness are maybe not sufficient or our conceptions of like behavior need to be more nuanced than just mental illness. Okay. I think all of that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I would be curious though, if you did have a conversation with one of the school shooters, what do you think you would like learn from them? What like what would be like the main things you'd want to learn from them? Like where would you steer that kind of conversation?

Oh, I mean like what would I learn from them? Like what would you want to like to try and get out of them? Yeah. So I might sure I'll start first with a quantitative answer. I'm sure the I would imagine the answer would be a ton. And that's where like, you know, I mean, I would have the conversation in a way that I have it with anyone else, which is, so we had a, we had a interview several months ago with someone who had a lot of labels that I think were negative in nature. So the person was racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic and was sort of like, you know, labeled as a, is a Trump supporter. And some people were kind of upset because they were like, you're.

giving Trump supporters a bad name, but what I actually discovered by talking to the person is that, like, there's a human being behind all of those labels who's, like, actually an amazing person. And it was so interesting how we judge people based on those labels. And, like, one of the things that we try to do here on stream is, like, really, this has been my experience is that I've worked with a lot of people, you know, I've worked in jails. I've worked with homeless populations, things like that. And there's, like, most of the time, it's like good humans. I've worked with a couple people who are actually bad humans. And even then, sometimes some of them will say, like, when I work with real sociopaths, they'll say, like, how do I be less of a bad human? Like, I want to be a better

human, even though there's a fundamental piece of me that's like sociopathic. But in terms of kind of answering your question, you know, I would like to understand what motivates them. I would like to understand how they started to believe the things that they believe, you know, what were they trying to accomplish? Like, like, I'd like to understand not just the fruit that comes off of the tree, but where did that, where did the leaves come from? How did the tree grow? What was the sapling and what was the seed? Because I think we, until we understand that, like there's this concept in medicine called primary prevention, secondary prevention, and tertiary prevention.

So even when you're preventing a problem, you can prevent a problem from happening a second time. You can prevent risk factors developing into a problem or you can prevent the risk factors happening in the first place, if that kind of makes sense. So there are actually several layers of prevention. And I think when it comes to school shootings, like we need to apply all three of those. So is this, and I think it like some of the stuff could be super simple, Charlie.

Like it could be as simple as like, I don't know that these people are taught how to communicate. You know, like, I think if someone sat sat them down and like even just help them understand, like this is how you form healthy relationships. Because a lot of times like what we, and I sort of see this a lot with with some of the incels and other people that we work with. But a lot of them, just their whole concept. of the world never gets questioned. And it's not that you have to convince them otherwise.

It's just you need to ask them questions. And the more that you ask them questions, the more, like, you're not trying to trick them or anything like that. Like, the more you ask someone, okay, like, help me understand why you believe what you believe. Like, the more that they have to build up their belief system from the ground up, the more it kind of falls apart if it's not like based in reality. Does that make sense?

Yeah. I think I understand. But, I mean, I would love to understand, you know, what was your childhood like? Like, like this, the resentment that bore this fruit today, where was that resentment born? And, like, what, how did you nurture it? How did it grow? Like, what was the fertilizer? What was the water?

You know, because I think that this is where I've talked to a lot of people who have done bad things and even kids, right? So you'll get like kids who like go to juvie and stuff, right? And the challenge is that a lot of times people are looking to punish the kid. But very, it's very hard to ask the question. Like if a kid is like smearing poop all over the walls and like, you know, like assaulting other kids and things like that. Like very few people ask the question, why is this kid doing this in the first place? Like what's going on with this kid?

Do you think if you had access to, let's say, every kid in the first place? world, every kid in the country, and you talk to each and every one of them, do you think you would be able to identify, like, someone who is genuinely at risk to become the next school shooter? Like, is there certain things you would look for that would, like, trigger alarms in your head that's like, wow, this kid might actually be a threat? Okay. What would those factors look like? Well, so a part of psychiatric training involves assessing. So we all talk about, like, assessing for suicide, right? So, like, people, if you go see a thing, therapist. People will say, like, you know, are you suicidal? And we're taught how to do formal

risk assessments. So a formal risk assessment is when you ask a lot of questions about like, you know, what's the, like, so how do we tell if someone's really suicidal? If I post something on 4chan and I say, I'm a kill myself. Is that person actually suicidal? You know, or like, you know, you'll have people who will sometimes use suicidal language as expressions of frustration. So you'll have people who will say things like, oh my God, like this freaking, if this toilet gets clogged one more time, I'm a blow my brains out. So people will say things like that, right? Is that person actually suicidal, or are they just expressing frustration using like colloquial language? So we're taught ways that to assess whether suicidality is like how significant it is. Now, once again, I mean,

these assessments are not, I mean, they're far from personal. They're actually good studies that show that even trained mental health professionals are very bad at predicting suicide. Like, we just don't know because the short answer is that you can ask as many questions as you want to, but no mental health treater can see the future. That being said, there's something that there's a part of our training which is less popular, but we're also trained to assess for homicidal ideation. So we're trained to assess whether people are at risk to other people. And that too, when I say 100%, if I remember your question correctly, could I predict it 100% of the time? No.

But are there things that I could hear in those interviews that would make me concern that this person could become a school shooter? 100% yes. Yeah, well, there was never any chance of like being 100% accurate on anything. I was just wondering if there were certain factors. Because it's part of what we do, right? So like, and this is the kind of thing where it's sort of like, you know, I would just ask simple questions like, you know, do you. And it's not just about fantasies. I mean, that's not really where I would go. It's, it's more like, you know, like, tell me about how unjust the world is. Right? And then let's like, you know, tell me about like, you know, why is the world like so unjust? Like, how does it, who, who are the winners and who are the losers? who like how is it determined like which camp is in like who falls into which camp and there are all

kinds of features because you know we've worked with a lot of you know people who i think could have ended up in very bad places and i'm really grateful for even the people in our community who will share some of these thoughts like even on our subreddit like there was actually just a post today which was excellent about i have like in-cell like thoughts can we like talk about it. And it was a great post. Someone was like, this is what I believe. Like, I'm trying to understand. Like, is this real? Is this not real? And like, it's awesome that people are sort of like talking about it. But it's not an echo chamber. Right. And the people's responses are not, yeah, what you believe is 100% correct. People are like, well, and it's really great. I mean, even community

members are like, well, how did you learn to believe this stuff? Like, you know, that's not the way that I see it. So it's the opposite of an echo chamber. But I would start with questions like, you know, are there winners and losers, how is it determined whether winners are losers and what kind of recourse would you have if you are in the loser bracket or bucket? Like, you know, what are your options? And that's where I think there are a lot of features, which personally, like, we've done a lot of research on this. And as I mentioned earlier, we advise some institutions about, like, how to make these assessments or what to look out for. But, you know, there are certain things like, sort of like a deterministic mindset.

So the idea that, and this is what I think, a big part of it is like once a human being believes that there is nothing they can do to alter their future, that's when I think extreme behavior happens. Would that be like one of the main things you'd look for is someone that's completely lost hope in their future? 100%. Okay. Right? So like, it's 100%.

That's what I would look for. And so then the question becomes, you know, if you talk to them about it, and then you're like, okay, so what are your options if you have no hope in the future? And this is where a lot of people will turn towards suicide, right? Because they don't believe that things can ever get better. And some people, once they enter these kinds of echo chambers, will sort of think about, like, striking a blow for my beleaguered group. So other things that I would assess for would be a sense of, like, common identity that, outweighs individual identity. So I think a lot of the worst human behavior happens because people stop being individuals

and they be part of a group. So if you look at like Nazis, right? It's like Nazis were doing stuff for the sake of the Nazis and for some higher order goal. And I think actually most of the worst behavior in human history is not. due to negative emotions. It's actually due to positive emotions. Like, or they think they're doing something good for whatever they're aligned with? Yeah, because if you think about it, like, the, the natural human tendency to commit a harmful act,

like we're not harmful creatures by nature, at least I don't believe so. You can argue against that. But I think if you just look at the majority of humans, like most humans are not violent. Most humans don't kill anyone in their life. Most humans don't assault anyone in their life. most humans just aren't like that. We tend to be, and even in the animal kingdom, which is brutal and violent, most conflict is not lethal in the animal kingdom between, you know, like animals of the same species. So obviously, if you're like a lion who's hunting a gazelle, like that's going to end in lethality. But if you look at two males that fight, the mortality rate from like, you know, alpha conflicts is not very high.

I think. I don't really know statistics. But generally speaking, people will, like, joust. Right? But like one of them doesn't die. And so human beings are not intrinsically, we're all capable of violence, sure, but most people are not out there being violent. So then the question becomes, what does it take to overcome a human being's natural reluctance to be violent? And that's where I think like the greater good is a very strong motivator. Because I'm not doing this, you know, I have to do this lesser evil for the sake of the greater good.

And I think that's where things like suicide bombing comes from, right? It's for this like greater purpose. It's like this noble thing. It's something that we have to do. We have to protect people. Like, you know, there's a lot of in school shooters. There's a lot of like anarchist sort of thinking around it, right? Like everything needs to be torn down for the in cells that were mass shooters,

which I understand now that mass shooter manifestos are changing a little bit. they're like a little bit more politically oriented, whereas 10 years ago they were very like kind of insol oriented where people felt like, you know, society was unjust and things like that. Have you seen, so have you read like most of the like manifestos like Elliott Roger, the most recent shooter as well? Have you read those manifestos? Not in their entirety. I mean, some of them are like 60 pages long, right? Oh, yeah, I think the Buffalo one was 180 or something crazy. Yeah, like they're very long. I'm pretty sure I've read every scientific paper that analyzes the manifestos.

And I read parts of the manifestos myself. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense then. Okay. And I mean, there aren't that many. I mean, there are many, but they're not that many scientific papers analyzing their language. Why do you think that is? Why do you think there isn't a ton of stuff analyzing the language?

I remember with Elliot Rogers manifesto, it almost became like a joke with a lot of the shit that was it because of the way he talked. And I feel like a lot of people don't know about the manifestos. They know they exist, but they never actually read them. Is it just because of the length and it's a big barrier to entry? That's probably a part of it. I think that there are a couple of other issues. The first is that I don't know.

I'm saying I don't know. This is not my area of expertise. I don't know how much can be gained out of a. written thing as opposed to a conversation. So if you look at the way that psychologists are trained, we're not trained based on evaluating written material, right? Like, we're not analysts of written material. We're analysts of like mental function. And like generally speaking, we use conversation as our best instrument to understand the inner workings of the mind. So when someone writes something, like people can do thematic analyses and symbolism and all this kind of crap.

right? Like, you can do that sort of stuff. But I just don't know how what the correlation is between an analysis and something clinical. Because what we assess for, so for example, like, when we assess for schizophrenia, it's not the, you can talk about the content of delusions, but if you actually look at the criteria for the diagnosis of something like schizophrenia, the fact that they have delusions, is part of the criteria, but not the content of the delusions. It's a bunch of other stuff. So people who have psychotic disorders

will have disorganized thinking and disorganized speech. So they'll be like disheveled. They'll also, we look at all these other kinds of things. Like even if you kind of walk down the street, you know, we have this instinctive way of, sometimes we'll see homeless people

and we'll be like that homeless person, like I'm going to like stay away from them. You'll have this instinctive kind of revulsion towards particular people. people. And that's because your your brain is actually like looking at a lot of stuff like facial expressions, eye contact. So even if I like look at your eyes, you have a fluctuating, like your eyes move around, right? And and my eyes move around. And I have fluctuations in my facial expression. There are all these kinds of things that we look at, which if we stop doing those things, if I start talking to you

like this, and I adopt a monotone and I don't change where I'm looking, right? And what, like, what are you feeling right now? uncomfortable. Exactly. Like that. Right. And you even know I'm faking it. You know I'm faking it.

It's just an uncomfortable thing. Yeah. Right. So these are the kinds of things that were actually trained towards. And that's where like you can't get that from a manifesto. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a really good answer to it.

Then do you think there's any value at all in reading through the manifestos? Because I remember with the Unibomber, a lot of people read his manifesto. In fact, I think his manifesto is like it's on Wikipedia page at this point. It was like a pretty. well-studied thing, but not anymore. Now they don't look at these kind of people's manifestos. Do I think there's any value? Yes.

But I don't think that... So here's the thing. I think what causes the behavior is the process of radicalization. It's not the radical beliefs that you hold. So does that make sense? Yeah, I think that makes sense. So I mean, like this is where like you can have... You know, so if like one person writes a manifesto about being a school shooter

if one person writes a manifesto where they're going to, you know, 9-11 and like, you know, when Osama bin Laden made his like statements about why he did what he did, you can analyze all of those things. But I think that what you're going to see is that the content of the, I'm just going to call it delusional, I can't make that clinical assessment. I'm sort of using it colloquially. But the content of what they believed is not what I don't know how to say. Like, you can, like, even if what they believed is wrong, you can try arguing with them or giving them evidence.

They're not going to listen to you. Does that make sense? Yeah. Once they believe it, like, you know, the QAnon people, you can tell them, hey, by the way, we can't revive people from the dead. I don't know if you knew that. And the Qaeda people are like, they're not going to care about that, right? True. Well, I mean, you never know with necromancy.

I mean, anything is possible. I mean, presumably, well, necromancy is, yeah, you know, I don't know if that's a real thing. but, you know. Well, yeah, there's an entire community of necromancers that might disagree with you. My point, exactly. So, so, like, you know, you're going to, I don't know that, that really countering their belief system is actually an effective way of communication. And this is actually what really pisses me off about political discussion is that, like, I was watching this clip of a reporter asking a particular politician about, you know, why this keeps happening. the questions were an attack.

You know, there was, there was no, there was no actual, like, questions have stopped being. So normally, like, when I think of a question, it's weird because I actually have to formally teach this. So I'll even, like, teach people, like, what's the purpose of a question? Like, Charlie, what's the purpose of a question? Get an answer. So I would disagree. I would say, I think that you are correct, unfortunately, you are correct. So that's where I think that's why most people ask questions to get an answer.

And in particular, oftentimes they're looking for a particular answer, right? Or they're setting up the question in a way that the answer, like, it's like a loaded question, you know? Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the nature of debates now. I think debates are entirely pointless online. You're never going to change anyone's belief. I completely agree. So that's why like when I, so this is why I have to teach people and I have to like recalibate. And I'm like, the reason you ask a question is to learn.

Like, a question, like, if I know the answer, why am I asking a question? If you have an opinion, just state the opinion. Don't pretend it's a question. And if you have, if you actually want to learn something, ask a question. And you'll be, like, amazed at how much this helps, like interpersonal relationships. So I had to learn this in terms of my own marriage, but also in terms of couples counseling. and even like in e-sports teams. So you'll have people who are like

Socratic teachers in e-sports teams and I try to knock this behavior out of people where it's like, I'm going to ask you questions to convince you of my point. And that's where like even debates, I agree with you are useless because the presumption is that like

one party is right and one party is wrong. Whereas like I think what we need to have instead of debates is like, how about we actually have a conversation between two people who disagree? and we try to come to some kind of accord. It's not about convincing the other person that you're right and they're wrong. It's about like, you believe this, you're not a dumbass. I believe this.

I'm not a dumbass. How about we like get together and try to figure out, okay, like, how can we like have these different sets of beliefs? And instead of assuming that the other person is an idiot and convincing them that they're an idiot, how about we like get together and try to figure out like how we can both work together or how we can reconcile these views? Yeah, I think that sounds pretty ideal. I think one thing that really contributes and inhibits the ability to, like, have a conversation is that people have this desperate need to surround themselves with people that believe everything they do.

So if there's a disagreement, it's like a personal thing that someone believes something that they don't. So I think that's why a lot of these conversations are steered towards me trying to get like a gotcha moment to try and convince you that I'm right and you're wrong because it's part of like my team. Yeah. So, so, and that's where, give me just one second, Charlie. Sorry about that. Oh, good. So this, I completely agree with you because I think what's happened, it's like, it's become ego, right? It's like, I can't afford to be wrong.

And this is where I think that, like, honestly, I don't like, I mean, I'm going to get political for a second. But when I look at these, like, political interactions around gun control, the way that these questions are being asked about gun control is, like, I don't like. like, you will never get a conservative to admit that gun control is a problem now. Because if you get them, if you force them to say that, that means that they're going to be responsible for what happened like kids dying. You're not, you have to give them an out. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I see what you're saying. You can't say like they're, the way that these questions are being asked, you're forcing them to double down on, on their beliefs. There's no like, and this is like, like, I see this all the time. in terms of, you know, like couples counseling with addictions. Where when someone screws up telling them I told you so and forcing them to say, I, you know, yeah, I really screwed up on such a catastrophic level and we've been screwing up on a catastrophic level for years and years and years and years and years.

Like, it's going to get the opposite result. You're not, no one's ever going to budge because the only, like, if you, if you try to trap them in a corner by saying that, like, that comes with accepting responsibility for what happened. I don't know if people are willing to do that from an ego standpoint. And I do think that they're also, and I do think it's not a black and white issue. I mean, I'm in favor of gun control, but like, this is the kind of thing where there's, like, more to it than that, right? There are mental health issues. There are all kinds of other, like, radicalization issues. Like, it's not, you know, there's a lot going on here. But the fact that everything gets so damn polarized is, like,

the only way, like, it becomes a contest. And the problem with the contest is that there's a winner and there's a loser. And there's no like cooperation. Like there's no collaboration. There's no like, there's just accusation after accusation. And it's in a sense, like I understand it because I think that those accusations are warranted in a lot of cases. But I don't think it's an effective way. Like it certainly doesn't work in couples counseling. When people fuck up like, you know, calling them out on it over and over and over and over again is not how you patch things up. I think that makes sense. I mean, so I've always said arguing on Twitter or YouTube comments is the biggest waste of time in the world.

And I think it just ties into the point of no one's ever actually going to budge on a belief. I think we're at a point where no one ever wants to say like I was wrong about something or no matter what you challenge them on or what you present. It's just falling on deaf ears. even if it's like an objectively wrong stance, it's something they choose to believe in and will disregard everything else, like flat earth. It's just when you're arguing, I just find you to be wasting everyone's time,

especially your own. If you're trying to have a conversation, I think there's merit to that. Like if you're just actively talking to a flat earther and just listening to them and maybe asking questions, I think you can maybe gain something from that, whether it's productive or not,

that's up for argument. But at the very least, it's better than trying to have a legitimate argument with someone because no one ever is going to budge on something they've chosen to believe in, even if it's wrong? Yeah, I mean, I completely agree. I don't know where. So I think for me it comes down to learning, right? So like, it's not about who's right and who's wrong.

It's about learning. And anytime you engage in an argument, the mind is not in a frame. It's not prime to learn. It's prime to convince. And then you have two people who are each trying to convince each other. And like sometimes people do learn from arguments. I don't think that you can't learn anything. But generally speaking, it's almost like when we work with like parents and kids who are addicted to video games,

it becomes like a pissing contest where the parent is trying to get the kid to understand. And the kid is trying to get the parent to understand. And when you're trying to get someone to understand, like it's not going to work well. Instead, what you should really do is try to understand their perspective. like when we try to understand the person who disagrees with us instead of trying to convince the person who disagrees with us because if someone disagrees with us like they've got to have a reason for believing it right there's something out there like and this is where the other thing that happens is we tend to just insult the intelligence of people who disagree with us and nowhere is that easier than with flat earthers we're like how could someone be so stupid whereas i don't believe that if you test a hundred flat-earthers, their IQ is going to be lower than average. I really don't believe that.

I don't think it's about intelligence. But we assume what we tend to do is we make like personal attacks or we insult someone's intelligence or we call them, you know, subhuman or stupid or idiots or like, how could someone be so stupid? And we also elevate our own IQ, right? Like I have an IQ of 160 as tested by this internet IQ test. And like once you, no one's trying to, it's just not going to get you anywhere. It's just waste of everyone's time.

I think what really what politicians need to do is try to understand, like, why they believe what they believe. I think that just goes for everyone. I think just instead of trying to keep dunking, just having a conversation is more beneficial and you waste less time. I mean, I think so. That's why we do what we do. You know, we will take it. Some of my favorite streams have been with people who are like evil. But it turns out that they're not.

evil. Like we've had people on stream who like the internet doesn't like. But I think it's just, you know, it's so easy to judge, especially on Twitter. Like all Twitter is capable of is judgment. And that's the really devastating thing is if you look at engagement online, the more righteous fury, the more pitchforks you can get out, the more views you're going to get. Who would you say is your most controversial guest you've had on here? So I am not sure I'm comfortable answering that question. Oh, I see. Sorry, I didn't phrase that.

I'm totally, I was just thinking through it for a second. I mean, I think that I don't know that people would have a problem if I answer that question, but a rule of thumb that I try to follow is that I don't talk about about someone, even if they've been on stream. I break that rule. So, for example, I've talked about how much I appreciate your opinion on particular things. And if there's something going on, you know, sometimes I'll mention like general stuff. But generally speaking, I try my best not to reflect on conversations or at least name people.

I'm sure some people can put things together, but it's just a, you know, I. Okay. Yeah, no. That makes sense now. Yeah. Sorry. No, it's fine. I don't, I'm, I don't mind that you asked the question.

I was just thinking a little bit about how I felt about answering that. No worries. And actually, you know, I don't even know. the other thing I'd sort of say is who's the most controversial guess? I think you'd probably have to ask, because I actually don't know about a lot of what goes on. You know, I'm not really familiar with some of the Twitch drama and things like that. But I think the other thing that I'm kind of concerned about,

just in relation to that, if I can just kind of go on a quick tangent. So one of the things that I really struggle with, maybe you can help me with this, is, exploring issues with people, like trying to have these open conversations, and at the same time, not platforming someone who has views that upset a lot of people. Oh, I see. Yeah, that's a tough balancing act. I think no matter what you do, when you talk to someone who has views that are, we'll say spicy, there's always going to be people that think that you are doing more harm than good

by giving them a voice in front of people. I don't really think there's any way of convincing everyone that what you're doing is to try and understand or try and like talk about or challenge these things. They're always going to be viewed by at least some people as platforming and thus giving a voice to someone that could potentially convince someone else of bad stuff.

There's really not much you can do there. At least maybe there is and I've just never seen it yet, but from the nature of everything I've seen online, people are always just going to have that belief. So, Charlie, I, you know, I'd appreciate it. If you ever figure that out, let me know. Because I would like to talk to people who, so we would like to talk to people who just have like different perspectives on things. And I think especially with some of these like, you know, labels that we sort of really dislike. I'm not saying that those, to be homophobic is good or anything like that. But I think that what I really try to do is just help people, or what I believe, I guess,

is that there's like good humans at the bottom of everyone for the most part. Even the people who have antisocial personality disorder and are sociopaths. Like I've worked with a lot of them and they're like good, in a weird way, good people. Like they don't have that internal moral compass. But almost as a result, like the morality, the code that they choose to live their life by is like, developed through more effort, whereas it's kind of like instinctive for us. But I mean, I think there's a lot of stuff out there that I don't know how we're going to solve some of these problems unless we like really try to understand what some of these people

believe. Yeah, I think that makes sense. I do have a quick question kind of on the back of that. And you mentioned this earlier. You have talked to people that are labeled as racist or homophobic or something like that. But you've said, like, you know, at the bottom of it, there's a good person there. Is that, like, in spite of being, or holding racist and homophobic beliefs, it can still be a good person or I'm just trying to like understand exactly what that means. And I'm going to have to get going in about 10 minutes if that's cool with you.

Totally fine, yeah. So what is a belief? I guess it would be a set of values that someone lives their life by, something that they will always. hold in their heart. That's what I would consider a belief. I will always believe Santa Claus is real until proven otherwise. I don't think it's a strong belief, but even still. It's something that I think a person will always, or a person guides their life by.

Yeah. So I think I would, I would, I'm really happy with your answer. And I think I would dispute parts of it because I think it touches on a lot of nuance. The first is always. So I don't think by nature of the definition, a belief is not always. Right? So like, I can believe that my keys are in my pocket. Or I can believe in God.

And if I am a diehard religious person, that belief may not persist for the rest of my life. Now, we oftentimes think that way, right? Because that's how it is for most people. So I think your answer is like a good one. But if you really tunnel down into it, it's possible for people to find God if they were born an atheist, and it's possible for them to become an atheist if they were born religious. So the nature, first thing to understand is that the nature of beliefs is that they're actually changeable. That's what makes them beliefs. What isn't a belief is knowledge. So a belief

is something that actually we don't know. That's how I'd sort of define a belief. Or a different perspective. But I think the definition you offered, I think, is a much more practical one. But then, so I think just beliefs are just like constructions in the mind, and they're actually a little bit divorced from reality by their nature, because that's the difference between belief and knowledge. So knowledge is something that I can be secure in. A belief is something that I actually don't know, right? So people will ask, do you believe in the afterlife? No one's saying, I'm sure that an afterlife exists. The best you can get is belief. That's because we have no data from the afterlife. That also is a little bit disputable. But anyway, conversation for a

different day. There's one psychiatrist out of University of Virginia who actually does, has done a lot of interesting research on reincarnation and past lives and stuff like that. That's really fascinating. So he's published a lot of like scientific papers about it. So I think what I've sort of learned is that a lot of times believes, so what I think makes a good person is their actions. And I think what makes a lot of our beliefs is our sensory exposures. So if I grow up in a homophobic household, I'm going to be homophobic. If I grow up in a particular political-oriented household, I'm probably going to follow those political beliefs. So that's where I think we hold people accountable or even blame them for their beliefs.

But if someone is sort of like, you know, homophobic, I oftentimes find that that's a problem of ignorance as opposed to anything else. And I think there's a guy, I forget his name. he gave a really good TED talk. He's like a black dude who spent some time like with white supremacists or KKK members and just like got to know them. And even when I sort of deal with like a lot of racism, I think a lot of racism, for example, is born of ignorance. Like a lot of like homophobia is like born of ignorance.

It's just you've never spent time. Like you know, if you hang out with people who are of a different race and you have particular beliefs, over time you'll just naturally discover that these people are like normal or that gay people are normal. lesbians are like most people are just humans and it's sort of like an ignorance of that basic humanity that I think results in a lot of that stuff and so in my experience people who hold bad beliefs sometimes they're sort of chosen or people kind of give in to them but I'd like to

say that you know upwards of 50% of them it's like really due to ignorance and then in those people if it was due to ignorance, do you like try and steer them towards maybe changing those beliefs, or do you still consider them good people even with those beliefs if they continue them? Or what does that look like? I usually try not to steer people. So that's because, you know, how do I know that I'm not the ignorant one? Right? Maybe all the homophobes are right.

Maybe one race is worse than not. Like, who know? Like, you know, I don't believe that. I'm pretty confident in that, by the way. but generally speaking, my experience has been that you don't need to steer people if they have incorrect beliefs. All you have to do is ask them to explain. And that's where like, so, you know, you know, so I was talking to someone a couple months ago about COVID. And they're like, yeah, the reason I didn't get COVID is because I have a strong

mind. And the reason that people are dying of COVID is because they have weak minds. You know, and that's where it's like, I don't really believe that at all. but so then I ask him to explain it because who knows? And then what I tend to find is that if you ask, um, if you ask, you know, like a flat earther to explain things and like really explain them,

what you'll find is that they're like explanations are like inconsistent. They're internally inconsistent. And that if someone, you know, really has a very solid like understanding of things, they should be able to explain it well. And that oftentimes, the more that you ask questions and seek,

to learn, like if people have incorrect beliefs. So this is what we do sort of in, there's a technique called motivational interviewing that we do in addiction psychiatry, where oftentimes people are in denial that the substance is a problem, right? Oh, it's not like, it's not the alcohol that's a problem. It's that cops are racist. And every time I drive while I'm drunk and I get a DUI, it's like a consequence of racism. You know, like they'll cite all kinds of different things. And so you just ask them questions. And the more that someone is in, you know, denial, like the right move is asking open-ended questions. And what we've learned from numerous scientific studies on denial around alcoholism is just asking people open-ended non-judgmental

questions actually gets them to like recognize that they have a problem. It's kind of bizarre. Right. Oh, yeah. So I see what you're saying. So alcohol is like not the problem at all. Like there are bigger problems in your life. So it must be, you know, alcohol doesn't cause any problems whatsoever. Well, like sometimes I'm hung over. But yeah, but what's the problem of being hung over? Like, what's the big deal with that, you know? Like, who cares about being a hungover? It's like, it's not alcohol that's causing the hangover. And the person is like, wait, no, no, alcohol is causing the hangover.

Yeah, but you like hangovers. No, I mean, who the hell likes a hangover? Wait, I'm confused. You said that alcohol doesn't cause any problems and you don't like hangovers. Does that mean that you don't like being hungover? No, I don't like being hungover. Oh, so like, what can you do about that? Well, I could drink a little bit less, dumbass.

Oh, I see. So maybe you should drink a little bit less. Yeah. And then you kind of like, Uno reverse them into recognizing that they have a problem. A little exception play. It's called motivational interviewing. So, and that's where it's just asking people, you know, questions. I don't know if that makes sense.

But so I try not to steer them usually. But they let them arrive at their own conclusions. Because that's, I think, how people are going to change, right? It's the very opposite of a debate. It's not my place to convince you. But like, I'm happy to learn. about your beliefs and usually what tends to happen is when you create that kind of atmosphere where someone doesn't have to defend against your attacks, then like they're going to be more

open-minded. And then if I have an opinion, I'll share it with them. At some point I'll say, hey, like, I really think you should consider cunning back on the alcohol or even maybe taking a break from it. Here are the reasons why. Number one, you won't be hung over anymore. Number two, it sounds like if you get one more DUI, you're going to lose your license. And it sounds like you've got an awesome career, but you need to be able to drive. And number three is it sounds like two people have now broken up with you because of your drinking. And they may not have been, I'm not saying there were the right people for you.

I'm not saying that like, you know, you're never going to be happy in a relationship unless you stop drinking. But here are the three things that I've heard from you. What do you think about that? And then it just lets them go to a better conclusion. Yeah, or it just gets, it's not really even about the conclusion, Charlie. It's about getting them to question, right? I'm genuinely asking what do you think about that?

Like, I've stated my beliefs at that point. And I'm like, this is what I think, man. Like, you tell me, like, what do you think? And they're like, well, like, you know, I think there's a part of it that's fair and a part of it that isn't. And it's like, okay, cool. Like, what's fair about it and what isn't? And so you kind of just keep talking to them and conversation. And then I think most humans will come to the quote unquote right conclusions.

That's interesting. I've never heard of that before. Yeah. Cool, man. Awesome. I've got to actually do, we actually have a sponsored stream and there's a company that's been kind enough to offer coaching to our community. So I got to bounce over to that. But I just really wanted to thank you for coming on today. Yeah, no, thank you for having me on, man. I really appreciated the conversation. I like talking to you a lot. So. Oh, likewise. I always appreciate it. Yes, people are wondering if it's steak. Yeah, we have a, no, it's not steak. Yeah.

That would be such a big power play if it was, though, we spent the whole first minute just talking about steak and kind of shit on a little bit. No, yeah. But any kind of closing thoughts from your end before we wrap up? Not really. Talking about like some really depressing stuff is usually not something I do. But talking to a professional like you about it, it's always kind of interesting and eye-opening. So I just always appreciate the conversation. Likewise.

And as a professional, I think that, you know, we learn a lot. and we do have a lot of expertise, but I'm convinced that, you know, like, the best answers or a lot of the solutions to this problem are not necessarily going to come from professionals. So even if you look at things like Alcoholics Anonymous, which has helped, you know, way more people become sober, I think, than therapists have by statistically.

So I think that part of what I really appreciate is just, you know, if you have ideas or other people in the community you have ideas of people are listening and have ideas like that could help um yeah so appreciate it man thank you no thank you adios hey bye everyone