Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 593 - Never Stress Again, The Thinker James Smith

Episode Date: September 16, 2021

Interdisciplinary Consultant and possibly the smartest person we've ever met, James Smith aka The Thinker, is here to teach us that our interpretations determine whether an event is positive or negative, not the actual event. Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Magic Spoon Cereal: https://www.magicspoon.com/powerproject to automatically save $5 off a variety pack! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT15 for 15% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

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Again, drinklmnt.com slash power project head over there right now i know you have a tendency to yell and scream and get crazy let the emotions get to them gets flustered very easily yes cool extremely volatile emotionally and violent very violent violent outbursts difficult to predict when it'll happen you know are we on air yeah we're on now i'm actually curious james because like you definitely know you know all those different tests that can like tell you how volatile you are within the range and how neurotic you are um are there any out there that you think are even accurate because of like if you're you are. Are there any out there that you think are even accurate?

Because if you're, you know, yeah, are there any out there that you think are accurate? It's a good question. I think the way that I would answer that is by considering whether one recognizes accuracy as being localized to the conditions under which such a test are administrated. Meaning the psychological interpretation of the test environment

itself has to be included in the outcome of such an evaluation. Say you have someone who has what's referred to as the white coat syndrome, where any medical diagnostic situation is something that is an anxiety-inducing circumstance, which is obviously solved for by reinterpretation, but for someone who does not have that knowledge, then invariably that has something to do with their responses during such it's difficult the reality is it's difficult to perform diagnostic testing in that domain in ways that map universally onto the life experience and so i think what would be the future of maybe a more effective type of assessment would be some type of artificial intelligence capture that could non-invasively track someone i use the word

non-invasively not speaking specifically about something internalized within the human body but if you could imagine that eye in the sky existing and you're not ultimately you're not aware that it's there yeah it's just something that's monitoring you over the course of days weeks to capture To capture your behavior in the environment in which you operate and then have a panel of knowledgeable minds evaluate what you're seeing in that domain because that domain is your life. I don't know if that's helpful. Yeah, it's very, very difficult to maybe just observe yourself. Right. I don't know if that's helpful. Yeah, it's very, very difficult to maybe just observe yourself, right? So if you're taking like some online test to kind of see what your personality type is or any of those variables, it would be really want to be perceived from their best attempt at objectively describing the way they are. investments that it's, it's a lot of work for most people not to project some version of themselves into the answers as opposed to what's really happening. And it's also in a sense,

a difficult prospect because if you could imagine someone who knows you more than anyone else and how might their responses to the same questions align or diverge from your own which brings to bear another set of considerations in terms of what's the differential between the internal dialogue the thoughts etc versus what is outwardly observable i'm excited to dive into this topic because uh we just hear a lot of people talking about how they are stressed or um due to x circumstances over the last two years a year and a half, however long it's been, uh, you know, some people are saying that they gained a bunch of weight, um, because the circumstances were harder because of the various news that they were hearing.

It was, uh, stuff that they kind of felt that was heavy, that was, uh, dragging them down or slowing them down or, down or made it more difficult to maybe exercise the way that they're used to. And a lot of your research and a lot of the information that you've been sharing and this new app that you've worked on is to assist with being, I guess, psychologically resilient and building immunity to stress. And in my own sharing of some of the information you've shared with me in trying to assist people to kind of get back on track with certain things, when I sometimes say that you can build immunity towards stress, they kind of say, no, you can't. Or they'll say,

easy for you to say. And they could point out, they'll say, oh, it would be easy for you to say because you're wealthy or easy for you to say because you're already fit or easy. They kind of throw out another thing towards that on why maybe I'm not stressed, but why their life is so difficult. How do you share with people a helpful way that they can recognize and start to maybe take steps in the right direction to be immune to stress or build immunity to stress? By first explaining in a hard to vary-vary way what stress is. Let's agree on a definition. And my preferred definition of stress is some fact of reality,

which is not limited to that which is external to the human body. It can be thoughts that you're having. Anything that we could convince someone else happened or exists, some fact that is negatively interpreted. That's what stress is. It is the negative interpretation of something, an idea, person, place, thing, event. And the way to become immune to that is is the reinterpretation of the world as one navigates it. And when you think critically about that, that's what they would describe as stress or being stressful, that individual must admit that whatever that thing is or was, was a real thing. I use the word real loosely. It can include a thought that they had, even if it's by any

objective measure, an irrational thought. We can agree, okay, I believe you, you had that thought, and then your interpretation of it is what resulted in this heightened level of neuroticism, anxiety, worry, concern, anger, whatever it is. And that individual has to admit that, okay, James, I accept your explanation as being closer to the truth that it was in fact a thing that happened, say, and then it's the way I interpreted that thing. That's why I'm feeling the way that I'm feeling. Everyone must admit that. There's no exception to that.

As I said, it includes what's happening internally. Someone could have a congenital, sort of a hereditary predisposition, say, for general anxiety. And so it can go back a long way with them. What they would recognize as the physical sensation of anxiety. All the neurobiologists, neuroscientists that are out there understand, well, what they're feeling is probably epinephrine that's been released into the system and maybe that cascaded into cortisol being released from the HPA axis, etc. There's a technical description of the mechanism, not only for anxiety but for any emotion and why anybody would explain the physical sensation of a given emotion.

So say anxiety and the people who deal with that, which is many people, would have some similar description that centers around, well, maybe it's tightness in the chest or sweat, you know, clammy palms or elevated heart rate as the physical sensation.

And what must be understood is that physical sensation is a process of neurobiological, neurophysiological events that are triggered as a result of an interpretation. Remember, we were having this conversation yesterday that interpretation bookends both parts of it. So it starts the process of any emotion and it comes in at the other end of it, in which case the conscious recognition of what's happening internally involves an interpretation. I think an easy example of this might be a relationship. an interpretation. I think an easy example of this might be a relationship. Somebody could say,

um, when I was in that relationship with that person and, and we can talk about the maid part later, but, uh, when I was in that relationship, that girl really made me mad or really made me sad. What happens when you're no longer with that girl and you're perhaps maybe with somebody else? You probably don't care any longer about what that girl is saying about you because you swapped out ideas. You swapped out your, as you call it, I believe, value assignment. You placed a high value assignment on, uh, this particular, this particular person. Um, can you speak upon, you know, can you speak upon that a little bit further? Um, I have another example too, I want to bring up, but, but yes, is a close relation to significance. What we attach it to is either a conscious or an unconscious process.

That's the explanation for a lot of strong emotional reactions, the value that has been assigned and how the associations with that value have been essentially cascaded into how an individual would be described the nature of their emotions that are associated with it and as you just referenced that's one of the examples that i like to use anyone male female whatever that has been in a previous romantic relationship that they're no longer in can reflect on how that value changed that presumably at the beginning of the relationship it was just it was strongly assigned which explains say the positive emotions that are remembered from that time at the

beginning and let's say that it ended how they would describe as badly and they hold that former partner in low favor they have a low opinion of them the value assignment has changed and the same is true sort of generalizing now into how this works. I like to use the examples of different types of sports implements, a baseball, an American football, a hockey stick, etc. Anyone knows who's familiar with those sports, say in the Western world, at a garage sale in the U.S., at a yard sale. Anybody knows a few bucks gets you a baseball, an American football, a hockey stick. the reasonable affinity for sports recognizes that that same few dollar ball or puck or stick or whatever that was purchased for a few bucks, if you get Tom Brady or Yaramir Yager, or Larry Fitzgerald, or go down the list of whatever sports your favorite players are, to sign that thing that you bought for a few bucks,

someone out there is going to pay a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a million times the amount you paid because they're convinced a certain person signed their signature on it it's this arbitrary notion of value in you know the market value of the item on its own is a few bucks and then in certain contexts only it's only if you have that that value assigned to it might you at the same time recognize i know that thing was only purchased for a few bucks but because it's got his or her signature on it i'm willing to pay this whereas someone who does not place that value on sport or that athlete, it doesn't matter that the signature is on it.

It's a few bucks. I don't care who signed it. What kind of a rational person would? It's value. And value is another one of these properties that is malleable. Any individual has the capacity to unassign what they've assigned in terms of value and that's that's an important truth to recognize because that's one of the features of reprogramming how we interpret the world do you demote people do you devalue uh their the value

assignment that you had previously so you don't get hurt or how does like with your you know dad or your mom or your brother or someone that you care about i describe the psychological reserve and anyone who fully assimilates the space of possibilities is a person who doesn't have to demote or devalue. I see. It's a, it's a different way of looking at the world in that anyone who commits to fully endeavoring to come to terms with what is not defied by the laws of physics,

which encapsulates an enormous set of possibilities is a person who has a much more well equipped to navigate that circumstance. Like, for example, everybody that you know currently has the ability to die. Correct. Just understanding that that is a possibility. It can happen. Car accident, plane accident, whatever it might be. That's been really helpful for me. You know, I've had many friends die.

I've had many family members die. And kind of just walking myself through, you know, what would that be like? And even having conversations with my dad, who's still alive. He actually almost died a couple of times a couple of years ago. But I think at this point he's indestructible. But in communicating with him, just even talking to him very openly about what it will look like when he's gone and him talking about just kind of what to do, like what the actions would be. And it actually just, it'll, it'll be, uh, you know, um, regardless of our conversations about it, I love him very much. He's like an idol

to me and my value assignment for him is through the roof. Um, and so, uh, you know, his passing will be, um, will be something that will be, um, you know, I'm definitely, uh, not going to be immune to crying about it and not going to be immune to, uh, having some emotions for it and about it. However, just because I'm maybe sad or upset, it doesn't still have to be, there's really no reason for it to be negative. It can still be, you know, hey, like I had a fucking awesome, I had an awesome dad. I had an amazing time with him. He showed me a lot of stuff. He showed me how to be a man. He showed me how to live my life. He taught me a lot of great things. And they don't have to necessarily be tears of sadness.

They could be tears of happiness because I'm grateful that I had that guy around for as many years as I have. And any other interpretation you can think of? Yes, what you described is an example, so let's generalize, so we're not using your living father as the example. Take that as a fact. I don't know what the statistic is. People are dying every few seconds

in the country, in the world, and that's a fact and at the moment in which an individual dies in whom value has been assigned by anyone else

there's an interpretation to be made and you mentioned one another amongst the near infinite amount that are accessible could be what happens exists within the space of possibilities i have the choice how to interpret it i could choose to celebrate the life that was lived i could choose to grieve the life that was lost i could choose to be indifferent because this is just something that is in the space of possibilities and we could go on and on and on and on with i could choose and then fill in the blank. I encourage anyone to think critically about first recognizing whether you're persuaded or not to agree or disagree that you get to choose.

You get to choose. There's no such thing as, oh, well, grief is automatic. Or, oh, well, anger is automatic. Or, oh, well, indifference is natural. It's automatic. What is automatic is what each one of us has conditioned ourselves as that navigational tool. That's what's automatic for that person. And regardless of what anyone has made automatic, that can be changed.

I'm reminded of the quote from one of the leading, one of the most cited researchers in the field of behavioral genetics, Robert Plowman, states that behavioral genetics robert plowman states that behavioral genetics explains what is not what could be which is important to recognize that it even if we're referring to someone i mentioned the anxiety as having been inherited even if we're talking about someone that has an expression of behavior that is directly attributable to genes that they inherited from a progenitor on the other end of the spectrum someone in whom the behavioral expression is entirely behavior environmentally in terms of an epigenetic influence something that they encountered in their life that they did not have an inherited explanation, but nevertheless their behavior has changed as a result of what happened in their living experience, it doesn't matter.

What is most important to recognize is that no matter the situation that explains what is that the way navigating the path forward and that in the way that's most helpful for that individual is by recognizing something you said earlier all of this is explainable in the practical way at the level of ideas because again even the neurobiological mechanism of why one emotion feels physically than a different one has to be recognized as part of the equation what must precede that understanding is that which triggers for instance the release of certain neurotransmitters that lead to the cascade of events that we might describe as why joy feels physically different than sadness so there's the neurobiology of that well this is why that that feels differently because you've interpreted that physical sensation

with either a positive association or a negative association. The key is understanding what comes first in the order. Interpretation happens first and it happens last because, as I stated earlier, it's an interpretation that triggers the whatever feeling an individual describes, including all the possibilities from someone dying. And it's another interpretation that determines how that, say, initial feeling, which is a product of an interpretation is interpreted thereafter so due to social conditioning and social norms etc cultural influences complicated discussion regarding all that contributes to what makes and sema and mark and james different from one another it's not a short answer however that which determines our behaviors moving forward can if we so chose andrew you're included in this is something we could agree upon and unify just based upon a collective agreement and collaboration

that this is the way we're going to be this is the way we're going to navigate the world from this point forward so it's important to understand what is within the dominion of any individual and why i consider that to be a superpower because when you fully accept it you realize that it doesn't matter what happens that you have the agency to interpret that which has happened in a way that is helpful and that's simply a choice that anybody can make when we were listening to your app earlier something i think both mark and i wrote this down um but you said negative emotion is masochistic. Um, and I, when you, when, when I heard that, I was like, damn, because, uh, I've heard a lot of individuals I know say like, oh, she made me feel this way or he did this and he made me feel this way.

Uh, and everything you're saying currently, uh, we have to realize that literally the way that we feel about something no matter what somebody has done and maybe it did affect us the way we choose to feel like if we have a negative emotion that is our choice right you're correct so can you kind of go into that idea of negative emotion being masochistic because so many people are probably listening like i feel these things all the time i'm not choosing this this is happening to me i don't like pain and stress i don't like it it's not like i'm choosing to do this to myself but it's continuously happening and like people are probably listening like how the fuck do i just make this stop yes right

i guess it's important to point out you're uh also talking about uh healthy brains right like i mean there's some people that may have disorders that uh may have absolutely they might not have the same level of control is it right that's correct that there there has to be the differentiation between what just said was spot on the the level of control so while while some of what i share is hypothesis some is more theory some is consensus what must be recognized is that even in those extreme cases, something in terms of, say, a hereditary schizoid affective disorder, bipolar, where there are currently knowledge has not been created yet that can solve for those conditions. At present day, all that can be done is to mitigate symptoms, to manage. That being said, this significance of interpretation does not lose its efficacy. It's just that the degree to which it could have transformative potential at present day is probably less than in someone who is not dealing with such a disadvantage. Well, actually, I'll just leave that open because someone might be listening who has a clinical diagnosis of schizoid affective disorder, for example, and what that individual can do is they can make their own basal form of interpretation.

So, when we go through the somatosensory network, and let's just talk about the the basics of you know sight sound smell taste etc that this sensory information is on a foundational level interpreted by the respective seems to be the sort of the cutting edge of this type of scientific research these days has mapped a more general network of the brain, whereas what more previously might have localized, okay, well, something you smell or taste has primarily been handled by what's referred to as the gustatory cortex, or what's being seen by the visual cortex, or what's being executed with physical actions in the motor cortex. or what's being executed with physical actions in the motor cortex. Whereas I think those specific categorizations have been replaced by a more general interpretation of how there's more areas of the brain responsible for processing sensory information than it was previously localized regionally. And regardless, that sensory stimuli is interpreted in very basic levels, different from the way that we in a child who's processing the world around them.

These basic interpretations are happening that are informing them, that are allowing them to improve their ability to navigate through space, etc. That are in part independent of knowledge creation. And I assume we'll get into this later, but for now, the sensory data that is interpreted on a basal level that explains, say, different types of physiological processes that are independent of our cognitive form of interpretation are eventually cognitively interpreted. And I say eventually. This could be in fractions of a second relative to the initial exposure. interpreted. And I say eventually, this could be in fractions of a second relative to the initial exposure. And it's simply important to recognize that once we get to the level of discussing the cognitive interpretation, the reference frame, the context, the perception that one draws, The perception that one draws, that's where the power resides.

And it is at that point that determines spectrum that you were speaking towards, who is struggling with stronger and more frequent episodes that derive from neuroticism, which is the seed of all negative emotion. So whether it's someone who has more anxiety or depression or anger or is worried or concerned about, etc., this can all be derived in what's referred to as the five-factor model from neuroticism. And if we think of that spectrum, on one end is anchored down by neuroticism, and on the other end equanimity

people who are farther away from equanimity and i think we were discussing some of this earlier are more likely to react to something that i would say sort of the best case might be i heard what James described and it makes logical sense. However, it seems unaccessible for me. I'm an emotional person. Right.

That's not unlike anyone who endeavors to improve in any skill area, who is at the beginner level, if we talk jujitsu, the person's first day on the mat, never done it before. On top of that, no competitive sports history.

So they're really starting at a baseline. And the resident high-level black belt, just to show them the levels that exist, does his or her thing. And that person new to the gym is faced with an interpretation. Two common interpretations to discuss there. One person, that was amazing. This person who's 50 pounds lighter than me, just, I felt helpless. I couldn't do anything.

This is incredible. I want to be able to do that. And they're there as frequently as they can be there for years hence. Another interpretation, the hell with this. And due to shame and frustration and anger, their first day was their last day. They don't return.

I use that as an example regarding the psychological, in that someone, for whatever reason, and in fact, no matter where they are in that spectrum, but it's most likely that people who are closer to equanimity, who are less emotionally volatile, would be more similar to that individual who recognizes this is awesome in the jiu-jitsu gym and wants to learn because it seems accessible. There's something that is within their grasp. Whereas that person who's more inclined to the time it will take, when in fact the mechanism of every high-level black belt in jiu-jitsu, what they must agree upon was the consistency

and the determination to keep going. And keep going can be elaborated upon each individual sort of perception the consistency one hold one move one practice one minute one exactly you know one shitty practice you know what just like yes at one after another just whatever small amount you can devote to it you got to figure out a way to do it as much as possible. Same thing with you and the incredible barbell lifting achievements and anyone else who's achieved a high level of skill in anything will agree the time that was required, the consistency, the dedication, the quality of what was done consistently, etc. And the same is true for the psychological domain, that it's true that if someone is, to use a parochial term, operating on the programming that is high in neuroticism and

has convinced themselves that they're just an emotional person or that this is just sort of something they have to accept about themselves, must recognize that in order to traverse that distance towards equanimity, simply requires the same thing that everybody else has done in any other skill to reach the level of expertise. It's no different in principle. The type of, in this case, thinking exercises and what I just generally refer to as psychological preparation will simply take longer. I'm reminded of, you know, the BJ Penns of the world who accelerated to the level of not just black belt, but competitive, objectively speaking, in a short amount of time.

Same thing psychologically there's individuals such as yourself mark who you know speaking to andy the other day i said i'm sure that there's childhood friends of yours you know apart from your family who would describe mark was always sort of a cool cat in terms of you know a mellow fellow and so what that means is someone like yourself is inherently that much closer but you know as in this would this would be your own thoughts that you would share on this you could describe what was honed in on or optimized as a result of some of our discussions given the fact that your starting level using the belts like you were already a brown belt yeah well the whole reason why i kind of went to you in the first place was not to deal with myself it was to deal with other

people you know but i knew that i i knew that i needed more knowledge because i needed to be able to you know certain things coming at you a certain way um not maybe sure of the correct words to communicate back to somebody about you know what they could do about a particular situation um you know i had decent ideas but like you said i'm pretty calm calm. So if I said, well, this is how I'd handle it. They're thinking like, that's not what I said. Like I, you know, I'm telling you that I'm frustrated with this other person, or I'm telling you, uh, this because I'm expecting you to resolve this, maybe perhaps go yell at the other person. know um they have an expectation of what they were looking for from me so going to you and communicating with you um was really useful in just me saying uh me looking at things just i guess in a more factual way and just kind of

having a better understanding of uh there's a lot of different personalities in my life. There's a lot of, um, people from different backgrounds and they're going to sometimes not always align with each other. And, uh, I got to figure out a way to communicate to them that that's just the way it is and uh i was able to do that effectively i was able to go to people and and really kind of uh um like disintegrate the situation you know make it uh completely almost uh dissolve or disappear maybe not all the way but but super close to it by having what you refer to often as having a good explanation and that's the key is that it begins with the explanation and that must be married with the degree to which

an individual is cognitively open or closed to entertaining it which means it doesn't matter how strong which is to say another david deutsch lesson hard to vary an explanation is if one is not open to be persuaded it's irrelevant sort of the great example here is the degree to which a catholic and a muslim are likely to be persuaded by one or the other hinges as much upon the strength of the explanation of the other as it does each individual's willingness to be persuaded regardless how strong that explanation is if that catholic individual is simply not open to considering anything else it doesn't matter how strong the explanation is from the muslim

individual and vice versa generalize that to any other situation that it's the strength of explanation and the willingness to be persuaded critically important as you're talking um it made me think because like you know mark has mentioned that he's been kind of mellow and even myself, too. That's that's how like I there weren't many times that I responded to things super angrily or my mom gets pissed at me for this, but things don't really seem to hit me, even though they should. And that used to bother her quite a bit. So like, I haven't heard much of your app, um, but it's why that I vibe towards stoicism a lot. And I read a lot about that over the years. And I was like, I can, I dig this because I was already like, that was already something I was trying to get to a place where I could control my emotions. But you know, what I was trying to think about is like for an individual who

thinks that they're static or they can't change or people don't change and also an individual who may be their father off of the scale. Right. So they are more emotionally reactive. How can they even get to a place where like this makes sense? Like this is something that I want to be able to do. And it and it, it again brought me back to what you mentioned about negative emotions being masochistic. Cause if, if we, if we think about it, when has massive levels of emotional reactivity or negative emotions served us positively? Like, I can't remember a time in my life that me getting super angry at something or somebody anywhere, like reacting angrily or having massive levels of

debilitating sadness has ever ended up with a positive outcome and i think if an individual is listening and like let's say they are super emotionally reactive if you ask yourself that and you really think about any time that you've been super angry super sad super whatever has it actually served you brilliant and for all the evolutionary biologists out there who are standing up and getting ready to scream due to their unhelpful interpretation of what you just said what does what deserves to be clarified there is there's an evolutionary explanation for why we have emotions. And it's in almost all cases, specifically regarding what would be conjectured to be the emotional spectrum as it existed millennia ago,

is directly attributable to enhancing our survival rate. is directly attributable to enhancing our survival rate. So what anyone can imagine is prior to the advent of language in its sophisticated form as it exists today, if we go back far enough, much earlier than when the Stoics existed in the first era of 2,500 years ago, we can imagine a situation with some primitive type of language where that's the explanation for how these emotions developed. at expressing the behavior of their meat packaged hosts in the case of humans to live at least until the age of procreation so those genes could replicate themselves you know that's the only programming of the genes is replication replication replication and so through trial and error over the millennia this is a strong explanation for the advent of emotional complexity in humans

and then the more these nomadic tribes interacted with each other and there was more social interaction more emotional complexity development and you can see how this served its purpose but no longer has to have the same seat at the table given the knowledge and there's sort of a microcosm of this in any family where you look at the behavior of young children yelling screaming temper tantrums those behaviors there's an evolutionary explanation, and they do inform individuals in the presence. So even though, say, that child who has either limited language or they're not speaking with the native language yet, there's still a range of emotional expression. I mean, there's emotional knowledge that we are born with.

We enter the world with a certain amount of emotional knowledge, genetically inherited. And that is sufficient. That's why any mother, particularly those who are attentive mothers, particularly those who are attentive mothers, will describe the differentiation between cries. Like this cry means hungry. This means they need to be cleaned. This cry means the other thing,

that the more attentive the mother is, they become hyper-tuned. Again, there's an evolutionary explanation for that hyper-tuning. It enhances the survival of the offspring. So unquestionably from the evolutionary biological space, emotion served an integral part of our survival that must some way exist in the explanation for why it was Homo sapiens and not the Denisovians or the Neanderthals or the Cro-Magnon or whatever, that's the answer for why we can navigate the world, not even as adults, but as young people, much more effectively than placing the emotional navigation system in the driver's seat.

It's knowledge. We can imagine something like, how did the emotion of fear come to pass? I've thought about this. We know that all, essentially, organisms, all, let's say, I said organisms, let's say i said organisms let me modify that to let me just say all animals humans included are born with some level of threat detection not fear fear is learned threat detection is inborn like a baby might walk up to it or not a baby, but like a little kid might walk up to like an alligator or something, not have any idea that it's exactly harmful.

Exactly. They're one, you know, and they're just crawling towards it or something. Right. It's just something big and curious and the knowledge does not exist. So let's use that example. 500,000 years ago,

two young humanoids and one of them approaches a large reptile not knowing and that reptile attacks humanoid number one and prior to dragging them under the water

there's yelling and screaming and the rest and so humanoid number two is looking at this and extrapolating in whatever degree of either emotional or cognitive empathy that they possess there's some connection with like not some version of not good must not feel good something along those lines and you can imagine how the concept of fear developed perhaps it went from threat detection to fear who knows what the order was but you can imagine the associations there not through some version of intellectual dialogue but rather the genes influence on behavioral expression that fear for a period of time and i say a period of time this could have been hundreds of thousands

if not millions of years was directly linked to our ability to survive as a species, to avoid the precipice, to avoid the large predators, to develop weapons. No question, must have been integral to survival. However, when we get to the point in which the knowledge is created, we know that knowledge can replace that masochistic experience of being just as one example only you know riddled and operating on the basis of a fear-based worldview that forces interpretation I use the large predatory shark example say a

large great white shark and someone's swimming in whatever ocean or region of an ocean in which there are great whites president whether this is areas of south africa or australia or along most of the coast of california and the northern atlantic that if you're swimming in an area in which we know that these animals frequent and a large dorsal fin appears, and you're convinced that belongs to a great white shark, there's an interpretation to be made there. And someone who only knows fear is likely to panic. And that panic is likely to express itself either in a lack of motion, freezing, or frantic motion, which is more commonly perceived as panic, but either one of those can be expressions. prey item prey item for that large shark who's not necessarily a a man-eater at all but just something that's hungry and attracted to motion or the ease at which it will be to dominate its prey

it's the law of the animal kingdom that the predators are never seeking as their first choice the strongest, the fastest, the fittest, the most capable. Never. It's the weakest, the slowest, the oldest, the youngest. Because the energetic resources required for that predator to secure that prey item they're just conditioned to recognize that will cost less energy and it's the reason why someone unknowing would take a pass on mugging any one of us just just based upon the visual interpretation ah that looks like more work than i'm willing to do not even knowing how capable each one of us is in a situation like that and that unknowing person might be more likely to attempt to mug the person who weighs 100 pounds less than any each one of us.

Not knowing whether they are a UFC fighter or a hand to hand expert or a black belt, you know, a gun owner or a gun owner. Just just on the assumption of. That looks like less work. It's a law of the jungle and it applies to humans equally well. the 6'2", 230 pound jacked male that was mugged last night. It's just rare to find that. Why? Because those human predators

that are seeking to pull one off on somebody are following the same practical laws. They're going after the slowest, the weakest, the smallest, the oldest. So going back to that shark analogy, what is helpful? To not interpret it negatively. To interpret it practically. Okay, large shark, probably not interested in eating me,

but might be interested in doing a taste test. So how can I make myself least appealing? One answer would be to make yourself as big as you can, spreading the arms and legs underwater, and maybe even doing your best to yell underwater, to project capability and strength, and this can paint the illusion that you're bigger than you are, for the sole purpose of just look less interesting to that animal so that it thinks to itself, on its basic level of information processing,

these laws of the animal kingdom, eh, that looks like too much work. That's the most helpful thing you can do. Not freak out and pray to God and oh my God, we're going to die and negatively forecast all the painful ways that this could potentially go, but rather let's see how disinterested we could make that shark. What's the shortest distance back to the boat? You know, those things, right?

Right. Any one of those, any one of those options. So we, now we generalize that to any other situation in which someone might be fill in the blank, mortified, horrified, petrified, paralyzed with fear, anxiety, et cetera, and realize that is not helpful. What is helpful is navigating whatever situation that is that you've interpreted negatively in a way that is efficient. That could be an intruder in your home. It could be someone attempting to mug someone on the street, anything, fill in the blank, always what the most helpful

reaction is, the one that allows that individual to navigate the given situation the most efficiently. And so I use the word masochistic because it's a choice. it's a choice. Because interpretation is a choice, anyone who is frequently dealing with, it's not even frequently, any time any one of us is dealing with negative emotion, we're being masochistic.

Because, consciously or not, we chose that interpretation that resulted in the negative emotion. And because it's a choice, that's why it's masochistic, because you can choose otherwise. And I state that, and again, we have to be specific because where more or less control enters the equation must be acknowledged. So regarding those populations of people who have more control to influence their choices and decision-making, it's that much more tractable. It's that much more feasible to recognize you have power

over your thinking, your interpretations. Not the thoughts, the random thoughts that enter your consciousness, but the intentionality of thinking. And within that lies the ability to create the knowledge in that person's mind that is necessary to recalibrate how they interpret either the world in general or those subject matters in particular that are most commonly existing at the root of their negative emotion by way of being negatively interpreted. it not so obvious uh you know like if i was uh you know i was hitting a nail into a board and i smashed my thumb you know it's like pretty obvious like you know that i just i just messed i kind of messed up and i i hurt myself um but in this situation where we're maybe being masochistic with our choice to attach a particular negative emotion to a situation, how is it that we can't see it?

When we're in the moment, when we're in the experience, how are we not seeing the full picture of how we continue to choose these wrong interpretations over and over again it's a product of the disabling effects of negative emotion a couple technical terms relational and item specific processing that heightened negative emotion clouds judgment clouds our ability to reason logically and alternatively encourages the narrowing of our focus on the stimuli and associated trains of thought in that negative framework it's called called item-specific tunnel vision, if you will, that if anybody considers an argument, an emotional-based argument, say with a significant other, which almost anyone who's ever been in a romantic relationship will have experience with, which almost anyone who's ever been in a romantic relationship will have experience with,

they will remember that in the heat of it, they were laser focused on that one thing. That thing that, say, represents why that person perceives they were on the right side of the exchange and the other person was on the wrong side it could be one month later that you totally forget why you even got in a fight with that person in the first place that's true too however in answering your your question like why can't you see it when it's happening that's one of the properties of negative emotion, that it disables your ability to think clearly, literally, item specific. or that reason one thinks they're in the right or that explanation that they think absolves them, whatever it is. The other end of it is relational processing. This is seeing the big picture,

the connections between things. And relational processing exists within anyone the closer they are to baseline. And in different contexts, what can be understood as an advantage would be, say, a heightened level of arousal in terms of sensory processing that could, for example, reduce reaction speed. So it's not that baseline is necessarily optimal for every situation. It's that we could make the generalization remaining relatively close to it. That's optimal because there are situations in which being slightly aroused could be an advantage,

say, for decreasing reaction time in a given situation. The point is to recognize the differentiation between the two and that anyone has the ability, again speaking about those populations in whom the volitional control is at their access, is accessible to them, to modify how they interpret facts, events, things, circumstances in such a way that optimizes their clear thinking. circumstances in such a way that optimizes their clear thinking. As negative emotion escalates in its strength, the more disabled that individual is in reasoning. And again, there's neurobiological explanations for why that is true. A simple analogy is the relationship between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, which are two different parts of the brain that are principally responsible for opposing phenomenological experiences. So the amygdala is namely responsible for fear, negative emotional processing, and its outputs have influences over parts of the brain that release the catecholamines,

the glucocorticoids that explain the feelings one associates with negative emotion. And the prefrontal cortex, much differently, is the seat of rationality, reasoning, logic, executive level functions and decision making. And they're connected by tissue. There's actually a tract of tissue that connects the two that explains the relationship between modes of processing reality and how many areas of our brain can be simultaneously responsible for that processing. And they act, using this example between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, somewhat similarly to a seesaw or a teeter-totter. When one's output is upregulated, the other's is suppressed.

Therefore, anyone listening recognizes the most focused they have been, the most clear thinking, the most cognitively sharp and problem-solving mode, would be memories that are absent of strong emotion. Similarly, anyone, whether or not someone is emotionally volatile, someone is emotionally volatile most individuals who are not say clinically being described as having anhedonia or some other feature that is just the absence of emotion the absence of emotion regardless of someone's a volatile or not everyone will have a, you know, us included. SEMA, you've described yourself as being more of a mellow fellow.

We know that Mark is. I am. However, all of us know the difference between being angry and being absent of anger. And anyone, again, regardless of where they are on that spectrum can recognize that on the other end of the spectrum some of the angriest they've been they have been absent of clear and logical thinking that's because of this teeter-totter or seesaw relationship that exists between the area of our brain, namely responsible for being reasonable and thinking clearly and logically, and the other area of our brain that describes

sort of the seat of strong emotional expression, particularly that which is fear-based or related. It was helpful for me to kind of recognize that some of my thoughts were irrational. Sometimes the way that you would explain stuff, I mean, you weren't like, of my thoughts were irrational. Um, sometimes the way that you would explain stuff, I mean, you don't, you weren't like, Hey, you're irrational. You had a lot of explanation and you, um, you made a reference one time, uh, talking about, um, being in the experience. And in this particular case, you know, got this like bo jackson rookie card right here right uh in this particular case when you're in the experience james explained that you're holding the picture or painting like let's say we went to a museum and we're looking at this you know

beautiful painting or picture or in this case i'm looking at this bo jackson rookie card but when you're in the experience you're so close to it that you literally can't see well. You can't see the whole picture. In order to see the whole picture, you'd have to take a couple steps back so you have a better point of view. And the other thing that was really helpful was to just be observable. You know, have the, learn the ability to, like to drone yourself.

Get a fucking camera up in the sky and see if you can look down on yourself a little bit and have a perspective of what's going on. Like you were mentioning some of these feelings that someone might get, right? some of these feelings that someone might get, right? So let's say you're flipping through your phone and you see some news that you're interpreting as negative. It could be, you know, insert whatever thing normally makes you mad. It could be a post on politics or a post on the current situation that we're in. And it could, you know, sway you one way or the other under normal circumstances. But if you're observing yourself, you can say, oh, there's that.

There's that little that little flutter, like that little thing that was about to where I was about to choose being angry. And you can say, hmm, that's interesting. That's there, okay. But what am I looking at? I'm looking at some post that someone made that I don't, you can start to kind of deconstruct the whole thing. You can look into it. You can examine it further.

And you can kind of say, well, this is kind of, is this really useful? Is this helpful to me in this moment right now to be mad that someone made a post about Donald Trump or whatever it is? Like, is that, is that a useful interpretation of that? Is it, is it helpful to be sitting there at home just stewing and being angry and then not only getting mad about it, but then commenting on it and now sitting in it and now clicking on it and now watching a video about it and further investigating it. And then I can't believe what this guy said. And then this guy, and then this other guy. And before you know it,

because you're so close to the situation, 30 minutes went by and you're just sitting there having like a pity party for yourself or getting yourself all worked up over really something that probably just didn't have to impact you that way and the degree to which an individual like that finds it accessible to transition themselves out of such a world view goes back to the jujitsu analogy or any other skill development scenario in which the way out of there is the consistent and incremental and step-by-step progression to the types of thinking generally thinking exercises that result in the creation of new neural circuitry that results in different modes of default thinking and behavior the

there's many similarities between human brains and computers but they are not analogs of each other so the similarities only go so far but i think it can be helpful for people conceptually to think about behavior as being largely programmed based in terms of in most situations most people's behavior can be thought of as the programs they're running on the hardware of their brain in order to modify and create new behaviors we must create new, we must create new programs. We must create new circuits. It's the previous circuits that when they're triggered, say by neurotransmitters, that's what explains the default modes of the behaviors that are associated with those circuits.

And in order to modify and change, we have to create new ones. What does it take to create new circuits repetitive exposure to that new in this case line of thinking where if it's a physical skill that is expressed and say the learning the technical manipulation of a musical instrument or a sport, the thing that you're doing to create those circuits that will ultimately result in those actions becoming automatic,

in this case, is just a physical thing. case is just a physical thing in the psychological domain practically speaking there's there's no physical price one pays right there's there's no overreaching there's no deterioration of one's physiology simply requires that you dedicate some time to think, which everyone has. Because you can do this while you're driving, while you're walking the dog, while you're walking from the car to the place of work, to the grocery store. Any time one has to think for themselves is an opportunity to transform how they perceive the world.

And as a result, their well-being it's the that incremental step like consistent approach that anyone has done and must do to develop a high level of skill in anything same process it's just that the contents of that process are at least in the form of the type of ideas that I've generated coming to terms with the

understanding that explains why what is currently existing with an individual is currently existing getting an understanding of okay now i understand why the way my default mode triggers me to behave in this situation is because of this okay that makes sense and now in order to evolve that to modify it it, to redirect it, it's important for me to, say, self-observe and reevaluate a situation in such a way that I can incrementally condition myself to respond differently. Same way that anybody has done the same thing, you've been doing it on the mat, right? You've been doing the same exact thing it's just the expression of it comes in a unique physical form the mechanics

of it is the exact same that you see me like any technical flaw you've had in clearing an opponent's flaw you've had in clearing an opponent's guard let's say with a particular type of guard pass any type of flaw that you may have conditioned yourself due to say maybe not enough technical oversight from an instructor maybe you've been going really hard with someone say here in the gym without the supervision of someone more knowledgeable. And obviously, your physical tools will be superior to most of the people you'll be training with. And so it would be easy for you to rely upon those. You're going to have to recognize this. You'll have to work to not use your physical skills.

And you can imagine how a bad habit could be developed especially if you did not have someone staying on top of you you used your strength there cheater you know and so say that was pointed out then you would realize okay i'm gonna have to put that in my forebrain to remember not just to muscle my way through that pass. And I'm going to have to make that something I think actively about for enough repetitions until it becomes my new default mode. So maybe his interpretation is the guy that he's working with is instead of 5'8", he's 6'8". And the guy that he's working with is 300 pounds instead of 200 pounds. That's one way to look at it. Another way, sort of more in line with what I would just be describing, is you making the conscious intention to move this way as opposed

to moving the way I've been moving. And it could be subtle. It could be a slight different position of the hip, knee, elbow, depending upon what the pass was. But you can apply this to any circumstance. In a weight training activity, you could think about, ah, it's been pointed out to me and I've seen myself on video and I recognize in fact i am doing say this with my my right elbow i know i need to do that with my right elbow so what that means is you need to reduce the intensity and think about your right elbow every rep think about it every rep and not exceed the intensity that forces you to compromise that that's where the intensity discussion comes in you've talked about that before you train like that right i use less

physical force because i know that it's unnecessary it's not going to serve me especially if i'm working with somebody who i outweigh by 50 70 pounds i you know i could probably get away with things by hulk smashing them right but that wouldn't be beneficial for when I actually compete against somebody in my weight class who maybe they have the same level of technique as me, right? It's not going to work. So I need to ease off of the force that I of the physical resources you have with the technical expression. Because the perfect storm at whatever weight class is the individual who is highly technically proficient and can manifest a great deal of force in those positions. That's a person who's very difficult to overcome. And so it's that balanced utilization of resources,

just like the same in the psychological domain, that using the same step-like approach to not exposing yourself to situations in which the intensity almost forces you, even though literally that's not what's happening, to use the default mode. There's a term in psychological therapeutic domains called exposure therapy, which is effective for obvious reasons if it follows an incremental approach, such as what we were just speaking about. Because say someone is struggling with, say, arachnophobia,

where they're terrified of spiders. Exposure therapy would involve exposing them to spiders. But as we know, there's a lot of levels in how that could occur. Same thing, just in the interest of being consistent, there's a difference between you, Seema, thinking about this approach of skill development as it regards jiu-jitsu. There's a difference between, say, recognizing if you're rolling with a high level black belt who's 240 pounds and fit that you know not not not an obese 240 but a very high force producing in those specific jiu-jitsu

actions individual you know you trying to muscle that person is just going to be used against you. Now if we say, okay, that's a great way to keep you honest because you cannot muscle that individual. However, we have to talk about the specifics about how those rolling sessions are being handled. are being handled. What would not be helpful is if, say I'm consulting on that situation and I'm talking to the black belt, what would not be helpful if I said, smash him, do not hold back,

put him in his place every day. That would not be helpful to you because the level of overload you'd be dealing with would be beyond your ability to effectively navigate in a step-like fashion it would always just kind of be overwhelming and even if you had the psychological position where you were never dissuaded by that you would just look at it as sort of time wasted on the other hand let's say with that individual i said i want you to operate at an intensity of

action that you subjectively intermin to be just a hair bit above his so that he has the opportunity to execute the type of tactical expression you're looking to develop with clean technique just enough overload to stimulate that to where the overload is such that you know you can't get away with any brute force nonsense but if you do it right you will win the position now if you can imagine that scaled approach over time in which the intensity in which this more capable individual is using to roll with you is just enough to stimulate your technical expression that is efficient technical expression and allowing you to win various positions by presenting just enough resistance now apply this back to the psychological domain or any other that's how that person who if they're dealing with arachnophobia and everybody recognizes well if you fill up a room with tarantulas

and blindfold them and walk them into the room and remove the blindfold probably not helpful but what about if it's one tarantula and it's 10 feet away and then the next session

it's either two tarantulas or you move them nine feet away and follow that line of logic well now it seems accessible that all right well if i'm looking at it in this quantitative way now i can see how in time they could walk into that room full of tarantulas taking an incremental step-like approach in which the intensity in this case of exposure is not exceeding their existing capability and accessibility to the tool set that they have cultivated up to that point. And it's a universal concept that applies to any conceivable skill-based situation. Bruh, Encima, what do you plan on having for dinner tonight, man? I'm going to have a center cut ribeye and a flat iron times two from Piedmontese.

Wait, how many steaks is that? It's three steaks. Oh my gosh. Three steaks, two flat irons, one center cut ribeye. And the great thing about these steaks is that they have a decent amount of fat, but it's not so much that if you had three steaks, you're going to be eating a massive amount of calories.

So that's why it's called the diet steak. Yeah. So for myself, it's Friday. I'm like kind of, you know, a whole day or a whole week, I should say, of like some pretty solid eating. Like I'm in on my game. So it's like today I just want to go like crazy on the big old steak. So I'm going to have a bovet.

I know. I know. And the funny thing is, it's like, I'm still going to be 100% on my plan. Cause that whole thing has a hundred grams of protein. I think only like 16 grams of fat. So I'm going to have that probably some potatoes. Just, oh my gosh, I can't wait, dude. I'm going to. So if you guys want to enjoy some of these amazing steaks, a higher protein, less fat, which just means more jackedness, less fatness, head over to P.Bontese.com.

That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E dot com at checkout. Enter promo code Power Project for 25 percent off your order. And if your order is ninety nine dollars or more, you get free two day shipping. Head over there right now. free two-day shipping head over there right now what i find really interesting is as you're using the jujitsu analogy it made me um kind of think about how you can really tell within that martial art how big of a role an individual's like breathing can can make um and you know andrew hoobman was here yesterday and he was talking about the physiological sigh to help you calm down right and it can help individuals kind of calm

themselves down but in jujitsu you notice that when an individual starts to maybe they're getting frustrated or flustered they start breathing through their mouth they start panicking and i do a lot of nasal breathing and i've noticed that by breathing through my nose mentally i'm extremely clear so even when i get into bad situations where i'm actually going to get tapped they're going to tap me i know it's going to happen even though though I'm breathing, since I'm breathing through my nose, I'm still not panicking in this fucked up situation. And it allows me to still to more so be in an advantage when I'm rolling with most people because I'm calmer than all of them usually. Now, this makes me wonder with everything that we're talking about, there's your interpretation of what's

happening and you can kind of control that. But an example is what if something so fucked up happens that you literally feel anger coming up and you can interpret it. But there's this feeling. Do you have tools that we can use as far as our biology, our breathing? Because you now can feel this happening, but then you can start to slow it down or mitigate it or kind of use your breathing or whatever to control that yes however and the reason I put that in there is if you have the conscious awareness of what's happening, then what's even more effective is to recalibrate the thinking. Because using your example, you're consciously recognizing this impulse reaction and anger

is starting. If you consciously recognize that, then the most accelerated mode of resolving that situation is through a cognitive effort because you're aware. The influence that breathing activities can have in stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system to essentially downregulate the sympathetic nervous system response. They're real. They're verified experimentally. Dr. Hebron explaining that. The thing is what's being attempted to downregulate goes back to some type of an interpretation

that caused it to happen to begin with. This is why James is on the show. some type of an interpretation that caused it to happen to begin with. This is why James is on the show. Because there's a lot of people that speak of philosophy and psychology, and there's a lot of people that brought up a lot of the Stoic philosophers. But I think a lot of the tools that have been shared from what I've seen, and I, I try to dig into this stuff quite a bit. I like looking at this stuff. I find it,

uh, to be fun. I like, I like to, I like to, you know, absorb as much information on this kind of topic as I, as I can.

And I haven't really stumbled upon anybody else talking in the way that you are where, and maybe I've just missed it or something, but you're talking about like heading stuff off at the, at the, at the very, not even at the past, you're, you're talking about heading stuff off before it even has a chance to fully formulate. And you're like, I'm going to kind of intercept this right here. And I'm going to, uh, start to put the ingredients in it to formulate it right here and now.

So it doesn't become, now it's still helpful to have those skills of the breathing. It's still helpful to understand we need to nourish our bodies. We need to make sure we get proper nutrition, proper sleep. These are all things that can assist. If you're tired every day and you're underfed or you're malnourished in some way, you have just a crappy diet, I mean, it can make things a little bit more difficult. So it would be in your best interest of interception of allowing these emotions to ever even like kind of uh like bleed out into our system i think that's really well said you're correct the i think the reason why this is not common knowledge the way that it could be is a failure in the psychological enterprise is the emphasis on

sociological study at the expense of an absence of both evolutionary biological and epistemological and what I've done on my own is craft a learning experience where I have for a very long time reviewed an enormous amount of research in varied fields that I've determined to be the most helpful to understand as it regards as regards to solving this type of problems and the reason why it's been a heavy review of research is because the influx of published research peer-reviewed and fair enough there's criticisms to be applied to that process however the rate of research being published far exceeds the you know reasonable speed in which say books can be published so if you're interested in operating at the cutting edge you have to acclimate yourself to reviewing the newest research as opposed to limiting yourself to what's some book i can read

that covers all this it's not to dismiss the utility of books because i'm a huge advocate for reading it's just that regarding these domains in which there's so much more being discovered like not not unlike in the technological enterprise where it's sort of an exponential rate at which new knowledge is being created and so that's the reason why in the in the mobile application that you referenced i've ever aggregated epistemology psychology intellect and culture to describe how those implicate each other and i I mentioned the scientific underpinnings, evolutionary, biological, because there's so much to be informed upon

based upon gaining an applied understanding of the mechanism of evolution. And an absence of this, what I would describe as a system-level understanding, is what would describe how certain individuals are missing a level of understanding that could be had otherwise by way of not really thinking through the potential implications of various subject matter domains that are not necessarily at first glance obvious to select for as being necessary to understand to solve given problems. And so it's, it's easier. I mean, it's easier to just, uh, for us to say,

Hey, you know what? Um, I'm very sorry that you suffer from so much anxiety. Um, it's very clear. I'm going to write you this script. This medication I think is going to be really useful. You know, here's a couple, maybe they might give you, you know, they might evaluate even further and they might give you some, uh, tips on some things that you can do. Maybe they might mention exercise, maybe they might, but they're probably not going to kind of hit you with this kind of stuff because I think the era that we're in now, it seems like it's very rare that you would go to a specialist or expert, and these are probably the very people that should be sharing this information,

that they say, you can fix this yourself we should eliminate my job right now and you should be able to fix this yourself we let's let's let's train you to do that given the right knowledge yes it's been you know operating as an interdisciplinary consultant a great deal of which has included psychological consulting over the years. There's been many times in which I've consulted for or had conversations with individuals who in the first conversation has said something to the effect, why have I never heard this from my psychologist? Why have I seen seven different therapists in the last 12 years and no one mentioned this before that's happened many times and that's indicative of what in my mind it's it's curious how the nature of the conversation we're having is not elementary is not common knowledge that's curious to me because of how implicated this is in a human life. It's bizarre to me that this isn't what young children are not learning

at the level at which they could comprehend in grade school. Yeah, no, it's definitely very obvious. I mean, look at the reaction that your friend, you know, that somebody can think of their friend that they know that has divorced parents, somebody who has a parent that died when they're young, somebody who had the interpretation of how someone lives their life out that grew up without a mom or grew up without a dad or grew up without, you know, these particular circumstances.

There's no direct correlation to someone being successful, you know, these particular circumstances, there's no, there's no direct correlation to someone being successful. Um, you know, when they are missing one parent or when they have both parents or when they grew up with great circumstances or grew up with horrible circumstances, just goes to show you the many different interpretations that you can have of something like that. And the many different interpretations that you can have of something like that and the many different interpretations that you can have of something really simple like um just having a day off of work you know you could sit at home all day and just sit on the couch and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or whatever you could think of that you would like to do that day somebody else's interpretation of a day off would be that they're going to go, uh, hike and jog,

uh, eight miles up a Hill in, uh, at high altitude. You know, it's like, it's, it is pretty obvious that we have a lot of choices,

but for some reason when it comes to this, uh, emotional thing, what I kind of hear a lot of is a lot of, yeah, butts. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. I heard what you said, but that motherfucker pissed me off you know james when you came in here and told me how i could better my business that was very insulting because what you don't you don't know anything about slingshot you don't know i mean we know each other we've known each other but that really made me mad and it's like well just again how do we reflect how do we say is that really useful maybe he had actually some good information but maybe for some reason some sort of bias i have in my own brain shut down the ideas and i never even had a real chance to hear what you said

i just internalized it and interpret it as something that has to make me mad for some particular reason. I'm reminded of words from the late, iconic Christopher Hitchens who said, If someone tells me I've hurt their feelings, I respond with, I'm still waiting to hear what your point is. That just came to mind. The situation. Don't use that. I see that smirk on his face. I'm like, oh, my God.

Yeah, don't. Don't worry. I won't use that. Don't use that. Yeah. Why don't you look at me? I get it. I feel you.

I saw you light up over there. You're getting ideas over there. The one time knowledge is not good power. You can think it. You don't have to say it. Don't say it. Of course, you can imagine a circumstance in which that would go over well if someone was already aligned with more of a practical mode of thinking. But certainly that could lead to explosions.

And you mentioned your mom kind of getting mad that you're a particular way last night, she just kind of laughed because I think, I don't know, either her or you or something made a reference to, I don't care too much about certain things. And I think my wife, I think, was telling you before I got there, I don't know how much your house costs and I don't know how much this costs and that costs. And you guys were kind of laughing about it. That's an interpretation. You can laugh about it or you can be mad about it. I don't understand how he thinks that way. Or you could just not think anything of it. That's an interpretation. You can laugh about it or you can be mad about it. I don't understand how he thinks that way. Or you could just not think anything of it. That's true.

And it's probably worth pointing out, Nsema, the situation you described with your mother, very common in relationships, whether they're familial, romantic or otherwise, whether they're familiar familial romantic or otherwise in which one individual is less reactive and how that can often in that can often escalate the emotional interpretation of the more reactive person and without this knowledge that can seem curious so if I take the liberty of making some assumptions, there must have been times where, you know, you're receiving this emotional dialogue thinking. Doesn't make sense to respond with that.

I'm just going to continue with my, you know, see if we can talk our way through this and then that that logical thinking of well i won't meet fire with fire that that must be helpful but then the fire got bigger yeah well you're talking about my last relationship brother yes oh this is great anecdotally I have personal experience similar to yourself. And the reason that happens is because the lack of the emotional engagement from the individual who's balanced emotionally in that moment is interpreted as a lack of caring. Yeah.

Now it's irrational because of course it doesn't make sense to demonstrate your caring by meeting fire with fire. That would be operating within a larger misconception. That would be utilizing irrationality to navigate a dysfunctional situation, which people do all the time as coping mechanisms in relationships that are dangerous for a person. Abusive relationships, for example. There's all sorts of coping mechanisms that can make sense in isolation, kind of going back to the discussion we had earlier for survival reasons,

while in the objective framing, don't make sense because, you know, why are you in that situation in the first place? What are the sequence of events that led to you being who say has a similar disposition male or female or otherwise if someone is more operating close to baseline and they're realizing that say up till now they've just thought that taking that non-engaging approach makes the most sense regardless of how crazy their partner is going, that what's important to do is not, in my opinion, to not hear something like this and think, oh, I guess it just makes more sense for me to meet them at their level and go my version of a little bit crazy. Not what I would suggest. What I would suggest is when moments of clarity return to that partner who is prone to becoming unhinged emotionally to communicate how you do care.

And in fact, the ability to express the sentiment each one of those individuals has Communicate how you do care. with inflammatory language that is incendiary and accusatory, et cetera, that that would be the most effective thing sort of to work towards being able to solve for those situations arising. You could go on a walk with somebody. You know, when we talked to Andrew Huberman, he's talking about the amygdala and calming down of the amygdala like while going on a walk. So you could say, hey, let's talk about it more. Let's go on a walk.

I found it personally helpful to just let people know in some have some way of acknowledging that you hear and understand what they're saying. hear and understand what they're saying. You don't necessarily, in my opinion, you don't necessarily have to believe everything that you say, but you can just kind of figure out a way to assure them that you are understanding of what it is. Because in the moment, you might start to get a little frustrated yourself, the fact that they're frustrated with you or something of that nature um but you know do your best to be patient and to communicate and say i heard i heard what you said i want to build upon that here's my thought

process and then you could you know hopefully at that point go back and forth in a reasonable way what comes to mind here is something we haven't touched on is the organizational consulting that I do. If you can imagine what are the types of discussions I'm having with a chief executive or an HR representative that the same logic applies. And so that's why I'm thinking of it here. You're getting everyone on board, right? That's the key is that. So even if it's localized down to two people in a romantic relationship or a company like Amazon with 800,000 employees, the same exact logic applies in that

you can create for a shared sense of purpose that is collaboratively arrived at and adopted willfully, whether it's two people or a giant company, that's the greatest advantage. It goes back to me using the Catholic and the Muslim example that it's more than just having strong explanations to persuade and compel people. It's having the willingness to be persuaded. And so if you can imagine the romantic relationship between two people and each of those individuals adopting the same shared sense of purpose as one example only, sort of what we're talking about here the power of interpretation that negative emotion is unhelpful it's unhealthy physiologically psychologically that is a hard to very that is a hard to refute statement right it's going to be very difficult

for any medical professional any scientist anyone to say to say no, no, no, no, no, no. What about somebody who says, but when I got mad at that person, I got the result I was looking for. That would be an I yelled at that guy. He gave me my money back. Or when I treated my girlfriend, when I ignored her, she, you know, whatever, whatever,, insert, whatever. When they speak to the manager and get their way. Yeah, there you go. I'm reminded of a wisdom of the late Karl Popper in speaking about a philosophical principle of inductive inference. Inductive inference describes a situation in one forms a generalized conclusion based upon limited evidence. And so what I'm imagining is someone who generalizes a conclusion that, hey, when I raised my voice with this individual, I got what I want.

Therefore, I'm going to do that again in some other situation where what I want is hanging in the balance. in some other situation where what I want is hanging in the balance. So what we would want kind of goes back to because of or in spite of. What we want to drill down on is, let's say it is a situation in which somebody got what they wanted by utilizing this negative emotional expression. What we would then want to take a look at is, might there have been a more favorable mode of getting what you wanted, in which the price you paid was less? Because there is a physiological cost to negative emotion. Physiological cost to negative emotion. It is not controversial to describe the physiological ramifications of psychological stress, particularly of the chronic sort. The word stress is described by a variety of individuals in the scientific domain must be

differentiated. To use that word alone is irresponsible because it is irresponsible to view the word stress as only having a negative connotation. That stress distress depending upon the jargon one wants to assign stress must be differentiated in that you know what what requires the the muscles to look this way as it regards what you can do in terms of training requires that they are stressed in such a way in which the adaptive response is to grow in the paparian and deutschian philosophy no knowledge is created without the identification and correction of error the conflict of... This is one of those things where you, I think I've mentioned, all knowledge is created through error correction. Is that correct?

All progress depends upon error identification and correction. All knowledge is created based upon conjectures and refutations guesses and challenging what has been guessed all progress you know apart from pure accident which does have to be acknowledged certain progress has been made as a result of accidentally stumbling upon a solution and then conjecturing and criticizing what happened there and using that. Went to do one thing and you stumbled upon an amazing invention that could be utilized for something else. It's just that it would not be a particularly wise strategy to depend upon accidents occurring for progress. Certainly that happens and that's one way of facilitating knowledge creation.

But ultimately it is through guessing and challenging what has been guessed. And in effect, that still is what is happening in the event of an accident, because in order to understand why the accident was effective, you have to create knowledge. So you always have to create knowledge to learn learning is knowledge creation as i stated in our conversation earlier it is knowledge being created in the mind of the learner that did not previously exist that's what learning is yeah this is what you described to me yesterday after we got done with the podcast with Andrew Huberman when I was saying I'm not sure why, but I don't like to listen. And James actually kind of explained it's not necessarily that I don't like to listen. It's just a process that everyone needs to go through in order to adopt somebody else's information, right?

That's right. And someone like yourself, correct me if I'm wrong, I think you would agree that what your resistance is to is actually some form of tyranny. is not learning from someone else. It's the mechanism by which that information is being transmitted, which is why there's a difference between, Mark, you've got to do this, this, and this, which has that tyrannical connotation to it, like you're being instructed. There's definitely a little bit of that. I also just think it's like maybe just my process of,

you know, if someone like yesterday, some of the conversation, you know, was leaning towards steroids are dangerous. I just think that's controversial. For me personally, I think it's controversial. Like they can be dangerous, but they can also potentially be really useful. I mean, they can be extremely harmful and they can also be, I guess you can kind of maybe categorize all medications in that category where it seems like they can be really useful. They got pros, they got cons. I mean, just about everything that we do goes that way. So sometimes when I hear somebody say a certain thing, I have to mull it over a lot in order to kind of like have it go through the right processes. And then eventually I will probably down the road be like, that guy was right. And each one of us has to do that. The rate at which that process occurs differs between people, but that's independent of. rate at which that process occurs differs between people but that's independent of it's just important to point out that the rate at which you know speed of processing and memory are not to be conflated with intelligence and some people require longer to process information

and that's independent of how smart a person is regarding the dangerous concept i'm reminded of the the wisdom of the medieval alchemist paracelsus who stated, there are no poisons, only doses. this country for example and a firearm a medical intervention that says has consists of compounds with high addictive property properties or a high level of toxicity in my view are more usefully interpreted in terms of the potentials that they have as opposed to sweeping categorizations that might have profound psychological influences and those who do not otherwise possess a level of understanding that allows them to to negotiate words that might have a much different implication on someone who doesn't have that knowledge. The AR-15 is a semi-automatic magazine felt. I'm losing the ability to articulate myself here.

Magazine fed. Shoots small caliber rounds, but at supersonic velocities, which is why they're effective at what they're designed for. They can be modified to fully automatic. I use that as an example because those have come under really hot debate as to whether those should be accessible by people who are not in law enforcement or military, etc. And I never shot one of those, by the way. It's an example. If we if we map that is in terms of the potential threat that it poses because it is a higher capacity for carrying rounds than other types of say some automatic handguns if you look at that as similarly to say something like chemotherapy

which has another high toxicity component that's why it's effective when it's effective or the difference between heroin and the difference between marijuana in terms of the addictive properties of one versus the other. I think the most helpful way to perceive or interpret these subject matters is through the scale of the potentials they possess. So more through a threat identification versus fear-based interpretation. I've heard a medical doctor describe all types of anabolic substrate testosterone derivatives as dangerous too and i had the same thought that that's that's dismissive because it's all a question of it's a question of use it's a question of dosage and how in the one hand if a variety of compounds might be prescribed for for different medical purposes yet in another be say recklessly utilized the difference between

what's dangerous and what isn't has much less to do with the compound and much more to do with how it is used, just like a weapon. No bottle of anabolic steroids ever lifted a barbell. Just as no loaded safety-off weapon ever went on a shooting spree. Just as no vial of heroin ever magically injected itself into somebody's arm. These are all things that have the potential to be dangerous if used irresponsibly. And I think that's just a healthy way to look at anything that has the potential to be dangerous. I think our mind is that way. It's got potential to be dangerous, right?

But it also has potential to not be dangerous. You can kind of you know use your thoughts use your thinking that's exactly right that's that's sort of the the bottom line here is the power that the stoics at least in the western world were the first to my knowledge to bring to the broader collective of individuals was that our thinking is the only thing that we have power over and that must be distinguished from random thoughts that appear in consciousness. like neither of you has control over the course of this speaking whether the random thought popped in your head how funny it would be if i dumped my bottle of water over james's head while he

was explaining himself here say that thought arises that's something that we don't have control over where the control comes into place is what would you do with that thought? And so what I know is as unlikely it is that you've had that particular thought since we've been talking. If you had, well, I know that you haven't acted on it. And we all know what that's like. We all know what it's like to have a random thought that might seem inappropriate for a given circumstance, and we can let our imaginations run on what that might be. And recognizing the control that we have over thinking must be distinguished from the lack of control we have over thoughts that enter our consciousness. It doesn't matter that we don't have control over the random thoughts that appear. What matters is we focus our attention on what we

do have control over. And in fact, the only thing we have control over is our thinking. Because I tend to use my hands when I talk. Well, if I get paralyzed later today in such a way that I'm still living, well, I'll still be able to articulate myself, but no matter how much I want to move my hands, if I'm paralyzed in such a way that I'm quadriplegic, well, there goes the control of my hands, but I still have control over my thinking. The moment I no longer have control of my thinking, I'm either asleep, I'm disabled, or I'm dead disabled in such a way in which there's damage to my brain and so that's critically important to recognize for

people what we do have control over and what we do not have control over so going back to someone who say is more frequently dealing with the challenge of negative thought loops, anxiety, depression, whatever it is, it's important to distinguish the part of that that they do not have control over from the part in which they do have control over. And then it bears the question to what extent they've thought critically about the part that they have control over. I'm wondering wondering because i asked you earlier about you know how we can use biology breathing to affect all this right but it all even still comes back to the initial interpretation which will then help you not have that upcoming feeling of anger i'm also wondering like habits as far as like being someone that consistently exercises and gets revenge.

Someone that consistently walks, moves, does things like sleep, like sleeping. Also that I mean, the lack of sleep can affect a lot of things. But how big of a factor is this? Because when I think about this, I'm just like somebody that doesn't exercise at all. They can still do this. Right. they can still do this. Right. Um,

but I, I, at least for my own personal experience, notice that when I am, as I've been consistent with my physical activity over the years, the times that I haven't been are the times that I had more potential to be more volatile. Like I wouldn't be that way,

but if I ever had just annoyances or whatever, that would happen when I wasn't active or as active. Do you think that plays a big role for being able to go through these processes efficiently? Tell me if I'm understanding you, Kroge SEMA. You're asking me if I think your physical condition plays a role in how well you can adopt this way of thinking. Not even just, well, not just your physical condition in terms of how good a shape you are currently, but just the activities you do as far as like working, exercising, walking, whatever,-jitsu, just some type of continuous physical activity. For him personally, he's saying when he exercises, he feels better, and it feels easier for him to make better decisions. And when he's been injured a couple times, he's been more irritable.

For example, yeah, when I was 13, that was like my first. I had Oshkod Slaughter. I was a soccer player for seven years at that point. I started at six, got injured at 13. And that was the first time for the few months that I wasn't able to literally run. That was the first time where like I became a recluse. Like I wouldn't talk to people. I would just shut myself in my room when I come back home. I was extremely different. I was able to start going to the gym. I was, I went back to normal. It's my normal mode of being. So that's what I wonder for a lot of people who let's say they don't have anything like that.

And I've seen this happen to people. I've seen friends who they didn't have anything as far as physical activity or exercise. They started doing something like that. That gave them a cascade of positive habits, which helped them clear up their neuroticism. Okay. Okay. First, you were a football player. Football player. Yes. Okay. Understood. First, you were a football player. Football player, yes.

Second, second, okay, there's no question that a certain amount of stimulating the organism through physical

exercise is suggested for. stimulating the organism through physical exercise is suggested for. It's completely uncontroversial in terms of the physiological diagnostic measurements that are currently able to be performed and how it's conclusive that there's such thing as a certain amount that is absolutely healthy for everyone. However, when we talk about the degree to which that, whatever that form that that comes in,

we do not want to form a situation in which there's a dependency on that to be in a healthy state of mind because then what you're doing is you're divorcing yourself from the power that you have over your thinking and attaching it to an external factor so the the freedom here is acknowledging the distinction between those two. So on the one hand, the physical exercise, anything that's enjoyable for an individual, that is a positive. There's no question about that. We want to make sure that any individual who derives a positive phenomenological experience from fill in the blank with whatever the exercise is, is not dependent upon it in such a way to maintain that state of psychological composure. The same is true for anything that anyone might ascribe themselves to as an explanation for what provides them with psychological balance. has created a dependency upon some external factor, which is something that I would advise against, simply because you're creating a condition of volatility there in which if something interferes with your interaction with that external factor,

if something happens to the external factor itself, depending upon what we're talking about here, then now you are that much more susceptible to negative interpretations. I get what you're saying there. And I guess this also makes me wonder, the big thing that we've been talking about was how to manage stress and negative emotions and negative interpretations. But how about the other end of things? How about, you know, people are always seeking happiness. People are always like, what is the best way for me to feel happy? What is the best way for me to feel good? What is your look on that? is outside of the bounds at what we can speak about objectively in terms of something like a quantitative evaluation,

something that you guys will have spoken about a lot on here, something like a comprehensive blood work evaluation with a lot of different biomarkers, not just the lipids, not just the triglycerides, not just the liver enzymes, the whole network understanding of what's happening on the basis of what can be understood on the basis of blood work analysis while it's not completely objective because all data has to be interpreted and it's

through that interpretation that difference opinions you know you get somebody who is a an advocate of carnivore and someone who's more an advocate of sort of conventional medicine looking at the exact same lipid profile. You could have very different opinions. controversy surrounding is by and large what those quantities represent which is to say if something is quantified in terms of nanograms per deciliter then we can agree that that's the quantity and that's the quantity that it says you have in your system right here. Where we might not agree is, well, what does that mean? But we can't agree on the quantity, and that's the advantage of the more quantitative we can become, the more accurate the measurement can become. And the greater the resolution of measurement, the more accurate the measurement.

And so what is, in my view, irrefutable is what, as one example only, the physiological measurement of stress conditions represent in terms of what's compromised within the system? Is it related to hypertension? Is it related to obesity? Is it related, you know, we go through these different possible ramifications of psychological stress and their physiological effects. That's what is more simple to clarify to most individuals, in which case there's much more consensus agreement on healthy, unhealthy as it regards physiological assessment. I disagree with it, but there's a much broader spectrum in terms of emotionally empathizing with all sorts of negative emotion coming from, whether it's clinical communities or otherwise, that basically are much less effective at solving for what's creating those problems. And they do more facilitating than they do assist in creating for the knowledge that is necessary to resolve. So the more the attempt to being objective in the analysis of a given person's phenomenology,

the more persuasive that argument can become. Because short of attempting to convince someone solely on the basis of explanation, you can, let me rephrase, to be able to add to the strength of explanation is to present information, additional information, say that comes as the result of measurement, that is difficult to refute, that is difficult to widely interpret. Something that comes to mind, if that's becoming too abstract for listeners is something like the calcium score that anybody can have done that anybody is is recommended to have done above the age of 40 go to any radiology clinic and ask to be scheduled for one and what it's looking at

is the in a quantifiable way look it it's a CT scan that is looking at the percentage of plaque buildup in the arteries of the heart. And maybe it's the one physiological diagnostic that has the most gravity and consensus agreement surrounding it, in which they have a score a scoring system zero is zero plaque in the arteries and it scales up from there and the bigger that number is the more likely you are to be susceptible to various types of heart disease arteriosclerosis etc unlike a lot of other biomarkers you know lipid as an example, where there can be differences of opinion for different reasons. And so the more objective something can become, it's just an advantage.

Because what that means is we can have consensus. the more avenues there are to strive for that objective consensus agreement that it is not helpful to be dealing with negative emotion, certainly with any frequency. And what's more, everyone, barring a very small percentage of the population that does not have the cognitive control has the ability to make different choices in the form of different interpretations of the world that result in different reactions so it's getting past the misconception that facts equal reactions. This is false. Facts must be interpreted and then we react.

Seems simple, but it's a critically overlooked misconception. Nothing exists outside of the bounds of that objectively true statement. Fill in fact with anything that comes to mind. A child, the weather, COVID-19, politics, the climate, anything. The climate. Anything. Job, income, house, responsibilities, bills.

The state of affairs in Afghanistan. Currently fill it in with anything. That anything must be interpreted. Made sense of. Then the reaction occurs it's never event equals reaction cannot be must be interpreted must be processed in such a way that explains the reaction so is that how you determine what to pursue because earlier we were speaking about a certain pursuit that you had zero interest in because it might be too easy. But if we are going to be immune to outside events, how do we know if something is for us and something isn't? If our interpretation of it or I guess our reaction to it is equal

or equanimity. Yeah. If we're trying to chase equanimity, then how do we know what something is for us then? Based upon what one finds interest in. Interest is the starting point for all knowledge creation. So what any one of us right now, I like to use the example, if any one of us was given the opportunity to provide a lecture to an audience of the most knowledgeable people in that field in the world, what might influence.

Our decision making as to. What we would speak about. Well what we would speak about. Is what we're most knowledgeable in. This goes for anybody. And what anyone is most knowledgeable in. Is what they are most interested in. Interest drives the knowledge.

Bus if you like. And. Psychological. Interest drives the knowledge bus, if you like. And psychological balance, composure, equanimity, existing at what I've heard of as baseline, does not mean that one loses sight or the capacity to recognize interest. In fact, in my hypothesis, everything sort of subsumes the binary form of interest or disinterest. And so what you are able to recognize about yourself is what you find interesting. interesting. It's just that what you find interesting is within your domain of thinking through critically regarding what sort of cascade of thoughts and potential emotions amount as a result of how you're interpreting what you're interested in. And so if we use an example of, say, something that's happening today in the world such as the situation in afghanistan say that that's interesting to someone because that someone is involved in human

rights work so they've attached a large value a large significance to what's the human rights situation in any part of the world and so in the type of consulting that I perform, if an individual that fills that description was to state that I have a sincere interest in solving for human rights issues, and I'm aware of what's been happening in Afghanistan, and it's really difficult for me, I'm having a really hard time emotionally empathizing with all the women etc then the way this conversation would shape would be well understand how the extent to which you have the ability to provide problem solving as it regards that or any other situation in the world depends upon your most clear and rational and logical thinking.

And so any moments you're spending negatively interpreting the reality of what exists there or anywhere else is time taken away from your ability to assist in solving for that problem. Because no amount of solving for problems is going to have any long-term solution connected with emotional negativity emotional explosion the you know this is the same is true for anyone who erroneously decided to raid the capitol building long ago, or on the other end of the political spectrum, decided to burn down a grocery store. Anyone who's operating under the opinion that, well, sometimes it takes something like that to catalyze the beginning of problem solving in the direction

that it's intended to solve for is operating under the misconception that though it's less spectacular and less click bait on the media and the rest that reasonable logical discourse is built to solve for every problem that is the inability to resolve the conflict through means otherwise and so what what happened it resulted in a fight it is the failed, whether or not the attempt was made. It's what happens when, for example, all attempts fail to reason. And then what ends up finalizing a physical altercation. So you can just scale that up to a war. Clearly, everybody benefits from being able to reason as opposed to send you know i'm a military veteran as opposed to send troops and to use ground forces or use sea forces or air forces clearly everyone wins you know it's a it's a non-zero-sum game, win-win, if we can solve this with dialogue.

So whether it's a fistfight or a full-scale war, either are examples of a failure to reason. everyone is wise to consider how much ground they can cover being committed to reason logically and rationally as opposed to being bogged down disadvantaged by etc etc with negative emotion i think uh something in simo was asking that maybe you didn't get to, cause I think you went off on some other stuff, but like, I think he was asking about happiness and like just, uh, maybe kind of the pursuit of happiness.

He did. Um, and I, I want to make a guess at this one, uh, before you go. Um, I'm assuming that you're going to say something along the lines of

since it's not a problem situation, you probably don't need to give a lot of thought to it. And also on the same lines, maybe be cautious of your expectations of going, you know, thinking that something is going to make you happy or give you happiness. I have a theory. Which I describe in the application as emotional physics. Oh, yeah.

The potential thing, right? Yeah. On balance. oh yeah the potential thing right yeah on balance nesima if you think of emotion as a potential meaning it can manifest in the positive or negative form like a weapon like anything else it's how it's being in this case how the interpretation describes whether it goes in the positive or negative direction that the i postulate that human emotion functions the way physics describes the characteristics of a sine wave or a pendulum in which in the case of a sine wave the peak deviation from zero is the same in both directions no matter the amplitude

it's the same in both directions same as a pendulum the arc that it swings in either side of the point in which it hangs motionless is the same in both directions in which it hangs motionless is the same in both directions, just as emotional potential. So someone who's, to use the phrase, chasing positive emotion must recognize, this is how I would respond to that, just recognize that the amplitude that you're seeking opens you up to the susceptibility of having the approximate experience in the negative direction should you interpret anything negatively. That however high your highs are means you're capable of descending the same distance in the negative direction. So the strength of the emotional expression is the same in both directions, the larger that potential is. And so the reason that I advocate

for baseline and operating in a state of equanimity or near it is such that you do not lose sight of positive and negative because it goes back to you didn't, you do not lose sight of positive and negative, because it goes back to you do not lose sight of what you're interested in and what you're disinterested in. It's that the distance that you travel in either direction is smaller. Now, I'll add to that. I make the argument that say I copy myself and this copy of myself is creating knowledge in such a way that results in this copy of myself being an advocate of strong emotional

experience. And so they practice interpreting the world this way. emotional experience. And so they practice interpreting the world this way. What I argue is if both of us are the recipient of something that is irrefutably advantageous, such as using my existing business model, that if it explodes and there's that much more corporate clients, what have you, and then therefore the capital result is substantial, that let's just say for sake of example that that's a positive thing. So say the copy of myself goes through the typical sort of the stereotypical behavior of the person who wins the lottery.

Whereas speaking for myself, I know how I would react in such a situation. There would not be no strength of jumping up and down, but there would be a recognition of that's very helpful. That's great news. Like this is going to allow for a lot of different problem solving, et cetera, et cetera. Someone might say, oh, man, boy, did that model of James operating in the state of equanimity, look at him losing out on that joy that his copy is having. He's missing out on that.

His copy is doing cartwheels and jumping up and down and hugging strangers. And James version one, all he said was, that's good news, that's great news, that's helpful, et cetera. He's missing. He's missing on that, what life has to offer. My argument there is I'm benefiting more than my copy because in my balanced state of mind, I'm actually able to think through all the ways that this will be helpful and how those, whether they're collaborations or partnerships or individuals in whom I can assist, et cetera, that's all accessible to me. So while my copy is jumping up and down and hugging and screaming and celebrating,

So while my copy is jumping up and down and hugging and screaming and celebrating, I'm already in the mode of thinking how this news can be practically deployed, et cetera, et cetera. And so it comes back to – I mentioned this briefly earlier when I said the greater the resolution, the more accurately you can measure. It comes back to the resolution, which one chooses to evaluate situations. Because a more parochial one, in my view, would be just looking at the emotional experience. To me, that's parochial. A more sophisticated level is thinking through borrowing. I heard something that the clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson said, using a sophisticated mode of analysis or a sophisticated mode of explanation to effectively convey a point such that you're not losing any information

that would be lost if you oversimplify. This is critical. You don't want to overcomplicate in a way that is unhelpful and you don't want to do the opposite, which is to oversimplify and lose essential meaning to convey a point. And so in utilizing a sophisticated analysis or explanation, it's important to recognize that there is, in my judgment, more to be appreciated the closer one exists to baseline. Because of the depth and breadth of intellectual resources that you're able to apply to a given situation. And that clone of yours that got super happy and was doing cartwheels uh if the rugs pulled

out from underneath or it turns out that a employee or that um a major uh sales pitch that worked really well um it was for a company with 7 000, but the contract, not everything was fully signed just yet. And, uh, turns out, uh, they released a lot of people and they downsize and they're outsourcing and they're doing a, B and C and now there's only four people there. Uh, so instead of getting X amount of money, now you maybe still have, right. So you kind of walk yourself through all these different scenarios of you. I agree with a lot of what you're saying. I will also say that occasionally when I see somebody get super pumped, especially when it's about something that I'm observing as being like something super simple,

I'm kind of like, I guess I could say I'm jealous of them in a way sometimes because I'm like, man, I wish I was that. I kind of wish I was that easily amused or excited about a thing, but that's just not the way I've ever really been. There's a cover. I think it was Time Magazine, 1980. It was Time Magazine, 1980, the low statistical probability in which the U.S. Olympic ice hockey team defeated what at that time was the Soviets. It happened in the course of the rounds of the playoffs leading towards the Olympic final. the playoffs leading towards the Olympic final. And what this image cover captures, you've reminded me of there, one of the Soviet players, he's kind of got his chin on his stick and the U.S. team is going bananas on the ice.

And the Soviet player has a smirk on his face. It's a smirk sort of, I wouldn't want to imitate it here, but it's something that projects he's kind of getting a kick out of this expression of the win because in their culture... He wouldn't do that, yeah. Yeah, their cultural conditioning was, well, winning is the result of executing the tactics of the game superior than the opponent, scoring one more point than the opponent. That's the objective. And that just kind of brings to bear, I think, an interesting – it's a philosophical discussion on what's better.

What's something that – is there a stronger explanation for or against one or the other etc and i would not suggest for anyone to be this way or be the other way but more sensibly just evaluate what explains either reaction and what sounds more interesting to you and make your own decision similarly to recognize it goes back to the potential that using that example presumably those soviet players at the time were, if I'll make the assumption, operating on some version closer to baseline. The US players, not so much. And as a result, if we generalize now, because I can't speak for anybody, what we know is the way that that potential works, or rather, how I theorize how it works, is like that sine wave, is like that pendulum. that manifests as strong emotional expressions in the positive direction, then assuredly when something approximate to that in the negative direction occurs, then you're going to see something approximate to that emotional expression in the negative direction.

That magnitude of grief, that magnitude of depression, that magnitude of sadness, That magnitude of depression, that magnitude of sadness, that magnitude of anger, simply because these things are like potential. A sum of money is similar. If we go to a casino and you say, hey James, I want to put a million down. And I say, I want to put ten bucks. Potentially, you can win a hell of a lot more than I can. You can also lose a hell of a lot more. So it's just a choice people make. To drive it home a little bit more, just on what you're talking about, you know, being at this event that I went to recently, Bottle Rock, at this event that I went to recently,

Bottle Rock. It was a music festival. Some people's interpretation of the music was to dance and to be all fired up and to kind of go crazy. Some people, like when a different band came up or a different musician or artist came up, there was different interpretations of, it was all music um people were playing

similar things or either like singing or rapping or you know playing a whole host of instruments but each person had their own interpretation of what they liked uh how they liked it and then how they reacted and responded to it to the point where people would be dancing, they'd be super excited. That band would stop. Another band would come on and some, they'd start playing and people would be like, these guys are garbage. And we're, and there was other people who were like, oh, this is my, that, that band was cool before the, before them, but this band's even better. And then you get more, more excited. Um, there was a whole host of different kinds of music. There was, uh, everything from rap to country to, uh,

rock to metal. There's all kinds of different things. So each person had their own, you know, it probably has to do with some of our exposure, like how long you've been exposed to these things. Um, maybe some people were exposed to certain types of music when they were younger. Maybe it's just flat out preference for who the hell knows why. But different people, some people will even say when certain songs come on, they'll say, I can't help but dance to that. And you might be like, really? That song's garbage.

Like that song's crap it isn't but this other song is the song you know the song that gets me fired up or whatever it might be in the in the degree to which responses are actually more reflex oriented or the results of interpreted in which there's no sort of conscious accessibility in which someone might think it's the reflex action when in fact they've conditioned themselves that's explained by a theory that physicist david deutsch has shared in which he differentiates theories or ideas on the basis of explicit knowledge, inexplicit knowledge, and unconscious knowledge, which, if I summarize, the explicit knowledge is something

that has the conscious accessibility to their explanation in the moment in which the event is happening. Inexplicit knowledge would be something in which you have a sense for or an intuition for as it's happening, but you don't have the time or the opportunity to explain yourself but maybe after the fact you can reflect with explanatory knowledge unconscious by definition you have no conscious connection to yet ideas that are occurring on the unconscious level can affect us phenomenologically an example of that would be an unconscious interpretation of some event that results in an emotional feeling right one of these catecholamines without being released

into the system as a result of an unconscious interpretation that can surprise someone with like where did this come from this this feeling of fill in the blank like this seems to have come out of nowhere that would be an example of unconscious and i think what's very persuasive about david's argument is that feelings of discontent basically anything negative emotional is a conflict in one of one or more of those idea centers the inexplicit being asymmetrical with the explicit or the explicit being asymmetrical with the unconscious point is it's a theory and it's it's i think it's a compelling one in that we must think critically about how these forms of information processing exist in the brain. And so whether that regards a musical performance or anything else,

what we can perhaps agree upon is what is the price that we pay for our form of interpretation. And so if we're just interested in something, the efficient interpretation is simply to recognize not so much interested in that one. Let's see what's happening next. And that works in the opposite direction. was fantastic that was great and who knows like let's see what's happening next and understanding that if it's something different than that if it's more a mode of emotional processing in terms of inhibiting the reasoning capacity in favor of let's just try to feel this as much as we can. Well, then you just have to know that what comes with that territory is, you know, you conditioning yourself to feel things as much as you can

emotionally is subject to those amplitudes in which you feel things. And then the difference between your positive and negative interpretation sends that feeling in either direction and that those amplitudes are likely to be approximate to each other and it's just sort of like caveat emptor like buyer beware andrew are you recording this uh yeah let's see. That was a good warm-up. We can hit record the next one. Perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, you're going to want to record this because are we in a simulation? I have no idea. It seems unlikely. Because, like, why did you seek out David Deutsch? I mean, I think you went as far as to go to his house. You researched all his stuff. You've communicated with him. I think now he's become a friend. But this is a quantum mechanics, am I saying that right? A quantum physics professor. Why would this particular person have answers into

I've heard him laugh before when people kind of ask him about some of these questions because he's like, why would anybody leave it to me to tell you how to live your life? So why did you seek him out? How does he have answers that can help us with stress? It seems like an odd place to find some of the information that you found. It started in, I guess it was 2007, when, as I was explaining, in a previous career that I have where I was extremely disinterested in what I was doing. And I was explaining at the dinner conversation last night that I've had this affinity for theoretical physics going back a long way.

And so I was considering pursuing postgraduate studies and leaving what I was doing due to the disinterest in favor of pursuing physics research. And I discovered David, a TED talk of his that he gave in 2007. And I was captivated by his mode of explanation. And so that started it. And what did he say there that sparked? Do you remember? It was the quote that I have in the beginning. I have a book that I wrote called the governing dynamics of coaching. The, the first page of the book is a quote from David, which is that the

limiting factor is not resources for they are plentiful but knowledge which is scarce and he just he said that as a just in passing in the in the ted talk and it's seared into my brain as a a knowledge dense concise phrase that really as a result of my interpretation did does just great work at breaking down various empiricist viewpoints etc and it wasn't immediate that point like i i didn't i didn't have his books until some years after that and the fabric of reality was art was already written by that point and and i didn't i didn't get into reading more until some years later but what what i i wouldn't say that david considers me a friend that would be that would be nice i have a very high opinion of him and he was extremely friendly to me, inviting me to his home for sure. But I I'm certain he does not

consider me a, a friend, but, uh, well, I wouldn't want to speak for him, but the, I did, I did share my mobile application with him, which was great to get his critical feedback on. And the way that that happened was many years after my initial exposure to him, after I had published the book that I mentioned, I was traveling with a friend who we've spoken about to England. And I knew that I was going to be in the region in which David lives and works. And so I sent him a email asking if I could take him out to dinner as a thanks just for how influential his work has been on me. And I quoted him many times in the book and I sent him a copy of the book. And he said, how about you come over to my

place for tea instead? And I thought, what I thought, what, what a, what a generous officer offer. Fantastic. And so, yeah, we flew to England and, you know, up, up all night. I never sleep on planes really. And dropped the people I was traveling with off at the golf course. And then I drove in an hour to Oxford, Oxford where he lives and yeah we we sat on his couch and had a conversation for about four hours and just just just fantastic just just the towering explanatory knowledge that he is in possession of there's levels right there's because the degree to which my explanatory knowledge is held in favor of any listen there's levels to explanatory knowledge just like jujitsu skill or anything

else and david's mind is operating on on a level in which, in my personal opinion, his contributions to not limited to the epistemology philosophically more broadly, including what he's doing in the physics domain, I think that he exists in the space of individuals whom might be considered in the conversation of the most important person who's ever lived. It's a personal opinion that I have. This is kind of my typical fashion of answering a question in a more lengthy way. How does that influence my strategies for this type of consulting? So David does not speak towards psychology per se. What he speaks towards in ways that I have borrowed from that implicate heavily my mode of consulting is the epistemology of critical rationalism.

What in some circles is referred to as Deutchian philosophy, Popperian from Karl Popper. Can you explain what some of those words mean, epistemology and critical rationalist? Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that answers the question what is knowledge and how is it created and there are many epistemologies on offer if one goes online and looks up through various resources broadly speaking they're divided into the rationalist or the empiricist, broadly speaking. There's many derivatives, and anyone is wise to seek to understand all of them so that you can form your own conclusions.

But broadly speaking, there's rationalist and empiricist. The rationalist epistemology posits that knowledge is a product of reasoning. It is a product of guessing conjectures and challenging what's been guessed, criticism or refutation. And therefore it is not derived from anything. It's created. We guess, we challenge what's been guessed back and forth until we form good and hard to vary explanations and then we tentatively accept them as true, but only tentatively

because knowledge is always conjectural. On the empiricist side, the posit is that knowledge is derivative of experience. Now, what goes along with that is that knowledge is a product of sensory impression because experience is sensory impression. It is a fallacy, yet it occupies, I would

conjecture, most people in the world's thinking. If you're just looking at population level modes of epistemology that most people don't consciously recognize. Most people aren't walking around thinking, I share the epistemology of such and such. Yet most people are operating on the basis that is informed by one or the other, broadly speaking, divisions. A history lesson, I'll keep it brief, briefer. In the West, which is important to delineate, the most robust period in Western history was the Renaissance. It was this explosion of creativity of ideas in the arts, the painting, architecture, et cetera, sculpture, science. So not just the arts, just an explosion of creativity across the domains.

So not just the arts, just an explosion of creativity across the domains. And at the tail end of that, at the end of the 17th century into the 18th century, some of the smartest people of the day, this was namely in the Scottish Enlightenment, the philosophers David Hume and John Locke, the brilliant individuals of the time, David Hume and John Locke, the brilliant individuals of the time, they sought to form a more logical reason to appeal to someone on the basis of, say, their wisdom, which up to that point was synonymous with the concept of intellectual authority even though that in and of itself is a conundrum there's no such thing because all knowledge is conjectural and anybody can create knowledge according to the critical rationalism so up to that point the church was synonymous with the intellectual authority false though that concept is. And the philosophers of the day realized, well, there's got to be something better than I told you so, which was essentially what the church was positing to the world.

Sort of align yourself with what we're giving you or pay the price. Clearly, we can do better than that. Align yourself with what we're giving you or pay the price. Clearly, we can do better than that. And the philosophers of the day, as noble and as righteous as their intentions were, what they came up with was equally as fallacious. What they came up with was empiricism. that knowledge derives from the senses, derives from experience, and therefore the people who we should appeal to or hold in the highest regard as it regards their wisdom are those among us who are the most experienced. And we can imagine just how much this has influenced thinking to this day again consciously or not whether people are walking around thinking you know i'm an empiricist whether or not that's part of the

conscious experience we can recognize the weight or the gravity that most people assign to experience i think that i might be a little bit of both because when I hear, if I heard someone say a statement like, um, let's say they say intermittent fasting, like I'm not a huge fan of it or it doesn't work. Uh, I would be critical if they never really tried to employ it at all themselves. While I would also recognize that they don't have to necessarily do it themselves to have an understanding of what it is. They could have researched it. They could have experience through other people that they maybe have worked with.

So I think I might use a little bit of both. And that's everyone's prerogative. everyone's prerogative the key is to recognize this specific truth regarding where does knowledge come from and that's where the arguments go back and forth between those two broad categories the rationalist which the most profound work in that domain was done by the late Karl Popper. And what David Deutsch has done has done an incredibly comprehensive job in sort of taking that steps further amongst other people in that community. And the strong distinctions exist between on the one side, the empiricist side stating that knowledge derives from experience. And on the critical rationalist side say stating that knowledge derives from experience and on the critical rationalist side stating not not only is that not true not not only does knowledge not derive from anywhere it integrates those mathematicians out there knowledge is an

integral not a derivative it is a sum in which guesses and challenges accumulate over time and the remainder is either a good and hard to vary explanation or one that is discarded because it is refuted what's more than that is that is you know we've heard we've had the conversation before, not only does knowledge not derive from anywhere, including experience, knowledge can be created without any experience. No experience is required to create knowledge. And I found what goes a long way at either convincing or opening the gateway to do that to others who might at first hearing of this be put on the defensive is to redefine what most people understand as experience. I think a lot of that is where the misconception comes from. I would conjecture that most people who listen slash watch this when asked, say, what was that experience like listening to this conversation that the four of us had? Most people would start to go into the topics that were covered and what they thought about what each one of us had to say, etc., etc., when in fact this experience or any experience

is nothing more than a much more basic level of sense data interpretation. So what I mean by that is I just said the phrase, what I mean by that is, and anyone can agree, particularly with the benefit of having recorded this, yeah, he just said what I mean by that is and anyone can agree particularly with the benefit of you know having recorded this yeah he just said what i mean by that is however the experience that you had was not listening to me say and understanding what i mean by that is what you say heard if this is an audio listening, you heard sound that was transmitted electronically, digitally with the aid of quantum mechanics, et cetera,

that, that allowed, you know, whether you're wearing a headset or the speaker on your electronic device to amplify that sound. And that sound vibrated the small bones and fluid in your inner ear. That data, sound waves. In some basic level of interpretation, not of the cognitive sort,

but more of sort of disseminating the differences between timbre and volume and pitch. That's the end of experience. That's the experience. We're looking at each other right now the experience is not the description of what we see in the in the in the descriptive sense it's simply light reflecting off of objects that light reflects off the back of the retina that's fed by the optical nerve to the visual cortex base basal levels of interpretation but the to think that the experience say seem of me looking at you for me to think that the experience of looking at massima in sema is to take into account your skin color the color of of your hat, your shirt, your muscularity,

your height, these types of things. That's not the experience. The experience is just the light reflection. I think that most people conflate with experience are the cognitive processes where knowledge is created and assume that that's part of the experience. And with the critical rationalist community, if I may be so bold as to speak for it, is to draw a distinction there in which where we distinguish experience from knowledge creation is at that dividing line when, for example, when knowledge integrates from an experience which it doesn't have to again it can come out of nowhere but say we create knowledge on the basis of an experience there's a dividing line in which case the experience ends at the level of sense data reception and some level of

basal interpretation and then translates into guesses and challenging what's been guessed. This happens largely at a unconscious or subconscious level, in which case most people in the process of learning, for example, are not thinking about, I'm going to guess, then I'm going to challenge that, now I'm going to challenge that, I'm going to guess it, now I'm going to guess again, and I'm going to challenge that. It's usually not necessarily mechanical in the conscious experience. However, that's exactly what is happening. Any basis of the conversation that we've had that's being recorded or before it was being recorded or anybody listening will have been from any one of us challenging in their mind the credibility, the explanatory strength of what was stated.

of what was stated. And anything learned will have only been learned as a result of that individual in their mind creating knowledge in their mind that did not previously exist on the basis of challenging the information that was prevented,

presented rather, such that, oh yeah, that James thing said about, you know, the rationalism versus the empiricism. Knowledge is an integral. It's not derivative.

It has, it doesn't have anything to do with experience. All right. And then you're, you're rolling that around in your head. Let me, let me see if I can find a hole in that explanation in your head. That's what's happening.

Let me see if I can find except an exception to that. Is that really true? What he said? Let me think about that. And then what happens is you only accept something as being true in the critical rationalist framework if it survives that level of criticism and you only accept it tentatively because as popper shared all knowledge is conjectural it's all part guesswork and as popper introduced the principle of fallibilism, we're all mistake prone. We're all prone to making errors.

And therefore, all of our knowledge must be mistake prone. So all we can have is the best explanation so far, which is not to be confused with the best explanation there ever will be we want to eliminate dogma eliminate the knowledge that prevents itself from being questioned this is very dangerous to the possibility for societies societies progressing etc yet there's a lot of it

that exists in different forms. As we are all mistake prone, all knowledge is therefore mistake prone. And so the most we can do is evaluate knowledge on the strength of its explanatory power. And Deutsch has an excellent answer for what is that strength characterized by. And that is an explanation is good if it is hard to vary and all of its details serve a functional role. If an explanation is easy to vary, it's not good. An explanation can be good in the sense that it is hard to vary and all of its details serve a functional role, and it can be wrong an explanation can be bad because it's easy to vary but it can be true

mark how'd you get so strong answer bad explanation i worked hard because that's easy to vary and you could apply i worked hard to now i'll ask you a different question mark the business is so successful what's the explanation i worked hard mark you've got this great marriage and kids etc what's the explanation we worked hard right it's easy to vary it applies to many different situations and it's true because hard work did go into everything, but it's not a good explanation because it's too easy to vary. And if you turn the answers into hard to vary explanations, then they have the property that they make no sense in the context of any other question. They're only suitable for that one example. And that's one of the properties of strong explanations, that in their details serving an operational role and being hard to vary, that they are adhering themselves to that circumstance and not other ones. That being said, the property of sort of generalizing to more good theories

is that the foundations of them are present in many other good theories. And so that's important to recognize too. But in terms of explaining yourself and answering a question, the more robust and good and hard to vary that explanation is, it won't make sense if you use it to answer an unrelated question. And so that's important to recognize. And the depth at which this can go requires a lot of reading because Popper wrote encyclopedic novels on more than one of these subject matter areas.

And as you know, David Deutsch has two books out so far that are, in my opinion, the most knowledge-dense writing certainly that I've ever encountered. And there's a lot to think about in the domain. But the reason why it's important to make the distinction between empiricism and rationalism is because of how implicated each of the other is in our psychology. And so that's why I state that the most important distinction is in the context of the discussion that we've been having. There's many other contexts in which it has relevance. Because in the critical rationalist framework, we're evaluating everything on the strength of the explanation you know have you convinced me on the strength of your explanation and so if one adopts this worldview and then applies it to their psychology you realize that this is an exceptional tool for

working towards solving psychological problems so this this goes for both the clinicians as well as anybody out there who's looking to solve their own problems is that going back to the negative emotion being masochistic well how might one be persuaded that that that's true by that person being convinced that interpretation is a choice and that negative emotion is unhealthy and so therefore because it's a choice and because negative emotion is unhealthy the superior explanation is to correct for how we're interpreting the world and different reactions will follow that are healthy healthy being used in the in the objectively diagnostic context not just james's opinion on healthy but what do the physiological assessments demonstrate and so there's a huge distance that people can go

in the epistemological context with regard to resolving issues of psychology by evaluating the existing theories strategies etc that exist both in the clinical domain as well as just what each individual carries into their worldview by evaluating them on the strength of their explanatory power independent of all other considerations damn are we in the matrix I know you said you were your fan unlikely what about

multiple universes you've stumbled upon some of this stuff yes okay how can I answer you in a way that's that's helpful the aliens we got aliens you know you stumble i mean if you're you're if you're dealing with quantum mechanics you're probably dealing with space and maybe knowing some stuff about some of these things

on the aliens question the there's a lot of people who have thought deeply about this for a long time there's a lot of sort of mathematical probabilities that can be utilized in the thinking of this answer and there's there's there's compelling theories either way simply due to the scale of the observable observable universe which is expanding but given that if you were to take a static picture for the sake of sort of discussion the immensity of the observable universe is beyond most people's practically accessible comprehension 93 billion light years if i remember correctly at one pole of the milky way and you shine a light it takes that light 100 000 years to reach the other end of it whereas to

traverse the observable universe 93 billion i might be mistaking billion with trillion. A physicist out there will correct me. At minimum, it's 93 billion. So that's beyond most people's comprehension because there's nothing that most people who don't deal with these types of thinking problems don't have anything to relate that to. And so that's why it can be helpful to have analogies such as you know a stack of a billion pennies like how high does that reach and you can do calculations like this to give yourself from some perspective on you know the difference between a billion and a million is is massive and you scale that to whatever degree you have to to to attempt to grasp this so given the scale of the observable universe it just seems likely that we're not the only ones and i state that given the extraordinary circumstances that are necessary to arise not only in life but

complex life that's an important distinction because what you wouldn't get as much pushback from from you know astrobiologists and different types of physicists in this matter what you probably would not get as much pushback from is the statement that some type of life is present in some other stellar object somewhere in the observable universe this could be something existing in the microorganism level which is a much different claim than there are independently abstract thinking self-aware intelligent beings vast vast difference between those two that said again given the scale of the observable universe it seems certainly plausible that there are other abstract thinking self-aware intelligent entities it's just that when you think that through what you ask yourself is okay well if they were a more advanced species than us then they would have that much more technological advance in terms of you

know manipulating their environments their atmospheres modes modes of space travel etc but what they cannot do provided the laws of physics are understood correctly is violate a known law of physics and so using the light year example even if something was capable it violates a law of physics to say that any particle with mass can travel at the speed of light. Photons and other subatomic particles that are capable of traveling at the speed of light do not contain mass. So say, okay, we won't posit that a known law of physics is violated. So let's say something like 80% of the speed of light. Okay, that doesn't violate a known law of physics that some object could be traveling through space at that velocity.

Even said that, realize how long it would take to traverse depending upon its orientation in the observable universe, knowing that if it takes 100,000 years for the speed of light to make it across just our galaxy and there's however many trillion galaxies like the hubble deep space field can show an example of this in terms of everything that looks like a star is we refer to as our sun, exist with planetary orbits either in our own galaxy or the trillions of others that are suitable for what we determine to be necessary conditions for life in terms of pressures and temperatures etc that you're talking about trillions numbers so vast in which you're just asking yourself the

question is it more or less likely given that number? And so that's why I think there's very compelling reasons to suggest that it's quite likely given the number. Now on the other side of that, someone might argue, well, given a civilization approximate to our own or more advanced that has been emitting radio waves and all these other forms of analyzable and discoverable properties of physical law that are traveling across the universe some at the speed of light that we would have recognized some of that we would have

detected those already like we're detecting gravitational waves that are happening as far away as they're happening and therefore if anything was happening in proximities in which we are receiving information from then certainly within that same proximity we could be receiving information from, then certainly within that same proximity, we could be receiving information from an intelligent form of life, which so far we have not. And so some people utilize a line of thinking in that direction that adds strength to the position that we're probably the only intelligent life, which is my opinion is that I'm persuaded by the math that just based upon the number and understanding the evolutionary biological considerations that are necessary to produce intelligent life forms are extremely unique and complex. Well, you know, we say unique as if we have knowledge of whether it's happening, you know, elsewhere. It's an incredible situation that has, on the one hand, it's an incredible situation that has resulted in the way that it has here on Earth.

On the one hand, it's an incredible situation that has resulted in the way that it has here on Earth. And given that, I'm still inclined to lean towards something somewhat approximate to what we consider to be intelligent life somewhere else just because of the size of this observable universe is who knows but as to the the multiverse that's a whole first of all i'm not sufficiently knowledgeable to describe that and the opposing theories regarding the interpretations of quantum mechanics however if anybody is interested the these these it's important to recognize that while the mathematical predictions that are made by quantum mechanics are robust have understood about the mathematics of quantum mechanics. However, even though lasers and computers and the internet and all these technological advances owe their foundations to the understanding of the mathematics of quantum mechanics, there is yet to be an agreed interpretation of the theory in the many universes theory authored by the hugh everett is the is the one that physicists such as david deutch and others advocate for and there are maybe a handful or more of different and opposing and conflicting theories but i'm not sufficiently knowledgeable to to expand upon those in the extent that i would view sufficient as a as a critic of myself and you want to take us out of here buddy i will my camera just died it's amazing um but

wow dude i have so much reflecting to do so i really appreciate this conversation um shit was incredible um but if you guys are like me and you like this please hit that like button and share it with somebody um that needs to hear it i'm sure there's a couple of us out there that are kind of on that pendulum that get a little bit too happy and then it swings back that needs to hear it. I'm sure there's a couple of us out there that are kind of on that pendulum that get a little bit too happy and then it swings back the other way. So that's something I need to keep in mind because I'm definitely in that camp.

Follow the podcast at MarkBell's Power Project on Instagram at MBPowerProject on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ and at TheAndrewZ on TikTok. And Seema, where are you at? I am Seema Inyang on Instagram and YouTube. I'm Seema Inyang on Instagram and YouTube. I'm Seema Inyang on TikTok and Twitter.

James? I have a Twitter account, at TheThinkerSmith. And what are you going to be doing with your consulting app that you've only pretty much given me access to? The rest of the world kind of needs this thing. So what can they do? They got to wait. It's not definitive yet whether the application will be made available to the general public. I think we're leaning towards that. It was created for the, to begin with corporate clients. how can people contact you on that? Hey guys, it's Andrew. I just wanted to make a quick correction. The email address that James

gave out, his app is so brand new that it's not even active yet. So if anybody's interested in getting in contact with James regarding this consulting and even this consult app, just email James directly at jamesatnovasend.com. So it's James, so J-A-M-E-S at N-O-V-A-S-I-N-D.com. And apart from the email and Twitter, I thought it might be helpful to give a brief synopsis of how the organizational consulting works, which is through the company Novacyn. And it is a tiered process in which I consult for the chief executive officer or chief decision maker, if that's not the CEO in a given organization, through a series of consults, most of which, particularly during the pandemic, have been done via Zoom. Once the series is complete, I then consult with the C-suite, which is the chief executive team or top executives,

if it's an organization that does not utilize a C-suite, for a series of consults that are group-oriented, also on video. Of course, it can also be in person as traveling restrictions are freed up. And then there's a technological solution, which we've mentioned a couple times in our discussion, which is the mobile application. And the mobile application was created for what started now as corporate clients, but there's also going to be a military special operations and law enforcement version tentatively. And the mobile application was created as the resource that scales. So no matter how large the organization is, the same content that I'm going over with the chief executive in the C-suite can now be delivered to everyone in the company via the mobile application.

So in addition to scaling towards no matter how many employees there are, it is able to reinforce the interpersonal consulting that I'm doing with the CEO in the C-suite. And then in addition to that, there is another technological resource that my team has created for me. All of this technology, by the way, is fully proprietary, created in-house. My business partner has in contract a software development team that are former Microsoft executives that have done a fantastic job at developing the mobile application, which again, it's not presently accessible by the public, but we're giving serious thought to making it so. But in addition to the application,

there's another technological resource that I've termed the Error Identification and Correction Forum. And what this is, is an online resource, same as the application, that fully encrypted, source, same as the application, that fully encrypted HIPAA certified customizable for the client in which this EIC, error identification and correction form, is the solution to what inhibits the progress of most organizations, which is the inhibition of someone at some level of the organization either not having the access or the permission to solve problems elsewhere in the organization. So many organizations suffer from the failure to maximize talent that exists on the payroll. on the payroll. And logistically, it can be a problem for many organizations, particularly the larger that they are,

to capture and cultivate the feedback of employees because of the logistics that are involved with allotting time and space and resources for physical meetings. And so what this forum allows for is a tremendous amount of operational advancement because now anyone in the company has the ability to contribute to problem solving anywhere else in the company in which problems have been shared by department heads from those areas of the companies. from those areas of the companies. There's a phenomenal advantage to operating in this way in terms of solving for a lot of the issues that currently plague, particularly the corporate environment. Issues rooted in race, gender, discrimination, religious, others, even if they're not obvious,

but are the underlying explanations for why certain people advance slower than others or are not being paid the same as others. Because with this technological resource, everyone who contributes towards problem solving is able to be quantitatively, objectively tracked in terms of their contribution towards problems being solved and so now regardless of your race your gender your age your religious preference whatever else that might exist sort of in the background knowledge that biases people in positions to promote from making one decision versus another. Now it's objective and quantifiable. And so this has the potential to revolutionize human resources problems and issues of advancement and promotion and salary and hiring and the rest.

And it's essentially included in the package for the companies that had list to roll out the mobile application. in the package for the companies that had list to roll out the mobile application. They go hand in hand and that having gone through the mobile application, all of its content, you're that much more well equipped to be a user of the error identification and correction forum named so because the only mode of progress as we discussed apart from accident is the identification and correction of errors and so that's a summary of the organizational aspect of novison there we go um i was asking james about the matrix because he's a huge fan and we're all pumped up about the new yeah the new uh the new matrix that's coming up. Andrew, you were talking about the pendulum swinging.

What James kind of explained to me, which was helpful, was that you're not necessarily just trying to keep everything just completely neutral. It doesn't have to be perfect, but maybe how far it swings can maybe be reduced. but maybe how far it swings can maybe be reduced. And also in explaining maybe getting off balance a bit, same thing like maybe your band before was your emotions were really high and really low. Maybe before there was a lot of swings that people dealt with

that went high and low, and maybe over time you can work on kind of shrinking that down so you're just kind of closer to being able to, as he was putting it, traverse your way back towards the middle. Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense, and that's actually how I was kind of interpreting it. Yeah, and I think everyone can do that regardless of how far off they might think they are. I think everyone can shrink down their own version.

They still may be different than the next person. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. I'm at Mark Smiley Bell. Catch you guys later.