The One You Feed - Tim Urban Part Two

Episode Date: October 3, 2017

Tim Urban writes a pretty famous blog called Wait But Why - have you read it? Whether you have or you've never heard of it before, this episode will not only thoroughly entertain you but it will also help you implement a playful yet powerful approach to growing in wisdom. When it comes to concepts like "the consciousness staircase" or mindfulness about your moment to moment tasks, nothing helps your self-confidence more than reaping the benefits of making good decisions, "out of the fog", in the clarity of awareness. In this episode, Tim Urban teaches you hacks to do just that and you'll chuckle a lot along the way.   This week we talk to Tim Urban Tim Urban has become one of the Internet’s most popular writers. With wry stick-figure illustrations and occasionally epic prose on everything from procrastination to artificial intelligence, Urban's blog, Wait But Why, has garnered millions of unique page views, thousands of patrons and famous fans like Elon Musk His recent Ted talk has been watched almost 15 million times. His articles have been regularly republished on sites like Quartz, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, TIME, Business Insider and Gizmodo. In 2015, Fast Company wrote that “Wait But Why is disproving the notion that thoughtful, long-form content and virality are mutually exclusive.” Urban has gained a number of prominent readers as well: authors Sam Harris and Susan Cain, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, TED curator Chris Anderson and Brain Pickings’ Maria Popova. Recently, Urban received a call from Elon Musk, who told Urban he liked his writing and asked Urban if he’d like to interview him and write about his companies. Urban accepted, and spent the next six months writing a thorough blog series that Vox’s David Roberts called “the meatiest, most fascinating, most satisfying posts I’ve read in ages.” Since then, Urban’s relationship with Musk has continued: Musk invited him to host SpaceX’s launch webcast, solicited Urban’s input and slide illustrations in a talk he did at the December 2015 Climate Change Conference in Paris, and recently granted him early access to information about SpaceX's interplanetary transport system for use in a post on Wait But Why.   In This Interview, Tim Urban and I Discuss... The Wolf Parable The consciousness staircase That wisdom doesn't correlate with age Step 1: Being in the Fog Step 2: Thinning the fog to reveal context How meditation can help Step 3: Whoa Moments Step 4: We Don't Know What's Going On How he's an agnostic about reality The value of humility How ludicrous certainty can be     Please Support The Show with a DonationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Step four is reminding yourself that you're on a little island of what we do know inside an ocean of what we don't know. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.

But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The really no really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. This is part two of our interview with Tim Urban. Tim has become one of the Internet's most popular writers, with wry stick figure illustrations and occasionally epic prose

on everything from procrastination to artificial intelligence. Urban's blog, Wait But Why, has garnered millions of unique page views, thousands of patrons, and many famous fans. His recent TED Talk has been watched almost 15 million times. Tim's articles have been regularly republished on sites like Quartz, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, Business Insider, and Gizmodo. Tim was recently invited by Elon Musk to host SpaceX's launch webcast and was granted early access to information about SpaceX's interplanetary transport system. This episode is brought to you by Casper Mattress. Go to casper.com slash wolf and use the promo code wolf to save $50 off your purchase.

And here's part two of our interview with Tim Urban. Hi, Tim. Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me on again. Yes. I won't ask you to read the Wolf Parable because we did that last week. We will just go from there. And I want to talk about another of your posts that was right along with procrastination was probably my favorite one. And I don't know that I even know the title of it. But you're talking about the consciousness staircase. And there's so many things in this that I love but you start off by saying that for most of us

we don't have any real plan for self-growth we don't really change in any meaningful ways you list all the things that we go through and we do in our life in our day and you ask are we any happier and your conclusion is well we're not really getting any happier. And so you looked at your own life and you said, I would like to progress as a human, but I don't really have a plan for that. So you started coming up with an approach and you said that the goal was to have wisdom. And then you went on to describe something called the consciousness staircase. Can you pick up from there for me? Yeah, sure. I kind of got into that post just by thinking about the fact that people who are atheists, you know, or agnostic or whatever they are, but it's not something specific.

They think of that as, well, that's my belief system. That's what I do. You know, but it's not a belief system. You know, being an atheist, for example, is just not a certain set of belief systems that you're referring to. There's a group of belief systems and you're referring to. There's a group of belief systems and you are not those things. And that's all you are. I mean, that's not a thing. Right. It's like, it's not a framework for, you know, what's right and wrong. It's not a framework

for, you know, deciding how you're going to be as a thinker. It's not a framework for deciding how you're going to grow. I use the example of saying, I don't like rollerblading as a workout strategy. It's not a workout strategy. What are you doing to get in shape? So I realized that, you know, I think if someone's a very devout Christian, for example, I think that, you know, one thing that's nice about that is that it comes along with a lot of, you know, baked in strategies for how to live, how to grow. And there's a community that I think can support that. You know, a lot of people that don't have kind of a system that already exists that they subscribe to, it's really important to kind of design your own and to think really

about what you actually want to change about yourself and what you think is important in people to change. And then to actually design something where you can almost like a track that you can measure where you're on on it and actually see how far you've come on it. Something where you can almost measure your growth and compare against yourself in the past and remind yourself, you know, again, to use Christian example, you see the Jesus fish, the kind of what would Jesus do symbol. I think that's a great symbol. It's a pole to hang on to. It's something that you can always come back to and say, when you're feeling lost, when you're feeling in doubt,

you can say, well, what would happen here? And then that guides you in a certain direction. Well, you know, again, I decided I needed kind of my own. So I came up with a framework that kind of gets to what I think is important. And when I was doing my thinking about what is important for humans in general, as they try to grow, I thought about what I kind of call the consciousness staircase. And it's a reminder to me that, you know, you look at those pictures of evolution and you see kind of the primates and, you know, eight progressively growing upright, and then they get to a human, that kind of that familiar image where a human's on the far end. And it seems like you're looking at that, you're like, we won, you know, we are at the top.

But that's not really true. We're in the middle of evolution. And, and, uh, you know, we, we consider, you know, uh, people talk about consciousness in different ways, but you know, it's a little bit, sometimes it's just semantics, semantic arguments happen. But I think we can argue that like, uh, you know, we are more conscious than a primate. Uh, we're more self-aware or more, we're more present in that moment somehow. Um, and the primate is more conscious than maybe a chicken primate kind of just is, is awake in a way more than a chicken is awake. And a chicken is awake. You know,

if you're just just looking at a chicken and how they act, you know, they're awake more than maybe a beetle is awake. Uh, and that beetle might be awake more than a bacteria. So you can keep going and there's whether it's consciousness exactly or not that I'm talking about, there's some important thing I'm talking about is kind of just being awake and aware of what's going on. And for example, the monkey tribe might, you know, kind of attack another monkey tribe. And, and it might be a lot of really gruesome scene murders. And I think they're less likely to kind of pause and feel empathy and feel regret and feel, you know,

remorse for that. They're just, they're, they're just one notch kind of less aware of how bad they just did is and humans are in a different way, but we still murder people. I mean, we're not totally there. Like we're, we're, and it's just kind of going back to what we talked about in part one, there are these two wolves. There's not just one. And I think a future species, part one, there are these two wolves. There's not just one. And I think a future species, you know, a more evolved version of us could be much more the rational wolf and much less the primitive animal wolf. And there could be a species that, of course, would never go to war and never murder and never feel pettiness or jealousy and would never be greedy or, you know, really selfish or, you know, short-sighted. And you would never brag. And we would never be greedy or really selfish or short-sighted.

And we would never brag. And we would never – you can just go on and on about all these things that make no actual rational sense to do. And we do them because it's the worst side of ourselves, all these things. And I believe that's kind of the animal side of ourselves. And because we're a combo of these things, I think that a species that was just absent of the animal side would look at us the way we look at a monkey. They would kind of want to pat us on the head and say they're doing pretty well, but of course they're not as awake as we are. They do think they're in a bit of a delusion a lot of the time. They're kind of in an animal delusion that makes them act a certain way

that maybe on their deathbed they look back and regret. They don't see it at the time because they're just not fully awake. And I really think that humans in that regard are, it's almost like, no, they would see us as a three-year-old, you know, we're kind of in the blur of emergence into full sentience and we're not quite there yet. And so knowing that made me realize that, well, but we're not all three years old. Some of us, you know, maybe the human beings are capped at being, you know, seven or something, you know, in terms of how that species would view us. But some of us are maybe two or one in the way we act versus seven. And so we don't have all the leeway. We're not going to be able to overcome our animal selves entirely because that's not possible. That's half of who we are. We're not going to be able to be a totally rational,

totally empathetic, completely grown up person, but we can be more or less grown up. We have still a range that humans vary in. And I think about that, I realized that, you know, yeah, I think that there is a real concept of being a grown up. And it does not correlate with age. It doesn't. I know 11 year olds that I think are just kind of wiser people than some 55 year olds I know, you know, they just seem to be a little bit more self aware. Now, I certainly know, you know, 20 year olds that I think are far wiser than 55 year olds. But then I know a lot of 55 year olds who I think are tremendously wise, who I admire, and I try to be more like, so I just

think it depends on how much you've grown, and how can you control you are, of kind of your animal side, and how kind of aware you are of your animal side. That's what makes someone a grown-up. And I believe that grown-ups achieve a lot more in life. I think they're better people. I think they spread happiness a lot more than they spread misery. I think that they are much, much happier people. I think they're better parents.

I think they're better friends. I think they have fewer regrets on their deathbed. And I think, you know, almost everything that someone could want or want to change about themselves probably is fixed or is helped by becoming more of a grown up. I designed a mini staircase, which is kind of if humans are on one step of the consciousness staircase, this is kind of the little mini staircase within that step. It's the range humans can kind of manage to go up and down. And to me, that feels like it's being more or less conscious of ourselves and in control

of our inner self. So I think the procrastination discussion, for example, is one of many, many, many parts of this battle that goes on in our heads. And I think it's the balance of power in this battle in our heads that determines kind of where we are on this little mini staircase. And so even just looking at step one versus step two, for example, if there's just, say, three or four steps total on this mini staircase, step one and the lowest step is where we are a lot of the time, and it's where we are just the animal in us is running the show.

We're feeling its emotions. We're short-term thinking like the animal. And it's not just procrastination. It can make us hate people that don't look like us or that don't think like us. It can make us terrified of what other people think. It can make us want to fit in so badly that we give up our agency. We give up our independent thought, which is the most precious thing we have. We give up our independent identity and we just try to conform and we believe what we're supposed to believe. And all these things that just make us, as I said, not great people, people that I don't respect. And I'm often being like that. When I see someone acting on step one,

I respect them a little less. I kind of think that they're not very wise. If I'm on step one myself, I might even dislike them and kind of, you know, or, you know, really just think something bad about them. If I can get onto step two, where I suddenly have a much bigger awareness of what a human is, and that everyone's just going through this struggle, and everyone's just trying to be happy. Well, first of all, I'm not going to judge that person harshly. I'm going to say, you know, if someone's acting kind of, you know, maybe they're being racist, or maybe they're being just nasty to someone, or maybe they're just being a bad friend, I'm going to just see that with compassion. I'm going to say, you know, if someone's acting kind of, you know, maybe they're being racist, or maybe they're being just nasty to someone, or maybe they're just being a bad friend, I'm going to just see that with compassion, I'm going to say, look, this person is, is struggling, this person doesn't, you know, doesn't see what they're doing. And, and likewise, I'm less likely to be like that

in any of those ways, I'm much more likely to be, to just be wise. And that's, to me, you know, wisdom and kind of being a grown up are the same concept. And they correlate with how high you can be on the staircase. And that little staircase for me, that little drawing I did of a simple little staircase to me is that's my Jesus fish, my what would Jesus do. Any moment in the day, I can look at that, and it'll help me be a better person in that moment. It'll help me be a more effective person, a happier person, a more in control person, just because it reminds me that I might be being on step one without realizing it. Because part of being on step one is you don't realize you're on step one. You don't remember that there is a step one when you're there, because you're kind of in the fog,

you're the grasp of your animal self, and the animal is not that conscious. And that's who's running your brain right then. So you can't see what's going on. And only later can you look back, sometimes only on your deathbed, can you look back and see, you know, wow, I really messed up at something. And you know, the earlier you can realize that, of course, the better. Yeah, you referred to being on step one, you said it there as in the fog, and that when you're in the fog, you don't even usually know it, right? And that sometimes all it takes to move to the to the step two, which you refer to step two is thinning the fog to reveal context, is that all you have to do is become conscious of the fog in that sense, or become conscious that you are on step one. And I find that to be so true. And I think it's why this

idea of awareness is something that comes up a lot on the show. And I refer to a lot is the idea of like, I have to stop and have some ability to see that I'm in the fog. I think this is why this idea of distancing ourself from our thoughts, being able to observe our brain is so important because that's what it's doing. It's helping to thin that fog. Exactly. I think I could never put my finger on it, just why meditation was so effective for me, even though, of course, because I have a monkey in my head, I never do it. But when I do do it, I find that I come out and I'm just like, I don't know, I feel more adult.

I feel more in control. And part of that is the fog relies on you basically not pausing to look at it. It just relies on you being totally unselfaware, unconscious. And meditation just kind of forces, I think, some fog to clear. And you come out and you can just see what's going on in your brain a lot better. And when you look at it, you can suddenly say, wait a second, and you can kind of take control of what's going on. The thing I refer to as the fog is kind of, it's all of these animal feelings and emotions and desires and, you know, impulses inside of you kind of, you know, there's all different kinds of them. Again, there's the animal that wants to fit in. There's the animal that

wants to procrastinate. There's the animal that is going to sabotage you when you go on to do a public speaking thing. It's going to make you extra nervous in that moment. And there's all these animals that are all in the end, just they're not evil. They just care about animal, primitive animal survival. They think you're in 50,000 BC and they want to survive. And they don't understand that you're even in a modern world and they don't understand what that is. And they just want to, you know, they get so scared public speaking because embarrassment in 50,000 BC was the worst thing that could ever happen to a human because, you know, you're, you're suddenly you're, you're, you're not as cool in your status isn't as high in that tribe. And that's everything to you because now you're not, you know, you're not going

to, you know, get the mate you want and you might not you know end up in in with the chief as well i mean and that's really dramatically bad for you i mean and if you're survival and survival of your genes so your animals are just trying to help you survive and they unfortunately we live in a world where they're not that helpful right now they are in most of the time they're actually really hurting us without realizing it the The influence of those animals, the voices and the emotions of those animals form this fog that just kind of can ebb and flow in our head. When the animals, when we're feeling a survival instinct, because either we're feeling embarrassed or we're feeling in love or we're feeling bitter or jealous or scared, the fog is going to get thick. And it's going to, these animals are going to really, you know, start to get going.

And when they get going and the fog gets thick in your head, it A, takes over your behavior, your thoughts, your emotions. So it actually affects what you do. But then it has this second thing in that it actually makes you unconscious. So you can't see that you're in the fog. You don't realize what you're doing. You don't see how bad it is until later. And that's why sometimes you do something and you look back and you cringe at yourself later, something you said,

you know, or a certain way you wore, or you just feel bad. You know, you use the example of you never call your grandparent and then they die and suddenly, boom, the fog disappears. And you look and you can see reality and you say, what was I doing? Why did I not spend more time with them? And it's this tragedy that happened because the fog of your everyday life and procrastination, because I'll just deal with that some other time, and this unconscious animal who didn't think hard enough about what was going on took you over and now it's too late. That's why on people's deathbed, it clears all the fog. No, I say that nothing clears fog like a deathbed. And we don't want to have these as deep regrets at the end. We want to have them as epiphanies,

helpful epiphanies now. And, you know, I just, even myself, like every day, even procrastination, it's not just a struggle, it's a fog. And that sometimes you're in the dark playground and you are aware of what's going on. But a lot of the time in the dark playground, but I don't have the level of like, serious, like darkness. I should about that moment,

because I'm really, really messing my I'm just screwing myself over. But at the time, I'm kind of like, I should, and I just kind of being casual. And then I get in bed at night, and I just suddenly anxiety panic. And I just lying there can't sleep. And I'm tossing and turning looking at the thing. What did I do today? I can't believe how little I got done today oh my god and then I like I can't sleep freak out as long as I wake up and pound three hours of workout at two in the morning because I'm such that's crazy behavior but what's happening is because at night I'm lying there in bed and this fog isn't there uh about at least about my schedule right um and the day it was it was just there I was just kind of puttering around the light was out I was having my coffee chatting

with my friend and then looking on social media and I was just kind of puttering around. The light was out. I was having my coffee, chatting with my friend, and then looking on social media. And I'm just kind of in a good mood. And I know I should be doing it, but it's kind of fine. I'm in this fog, this totally unconscious fog where I'm not just looking at reality and stopping and saying, what will happen if I continue this? How will I feel tonight? And if I just had that thought, I would suddenly say, oh, my God. I need to right now.

But you don't. And then you can have another kind of, just know, just speaking of night, you know, a lot of people have another kind of fog at night when they suddenly get in that late night zone in bed and think, oh God, I'm the most embarrassing person in the world. Oh, I'm a huge failure. What did I do? Why did I say this? What am I doing with my life?

You know, some people get into that zone really hard at night. That's another kind of fog. It's like the animals all kind of like come in and have like, you know, the little fit in your head all at the same time, or a different a real fear animal you know a fear and a and a shame animal and these other animals come in your head and start going crazy at night and you wake up in the morning and now you have a different kind of clarity in the morning when you look back and you say what are you kind of in the shower you're thinking i i'm fine this is fine nothing is a big deal i was uh just just being i was catastrophizing because you were in this fog,

but you don't realize at night you think it's real because you're not conscious enough to see that you're just in some fog, some animal, you know, chemical fog. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations.

We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar. You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves, and who we know ourselves to be, and who we can be. So a little bit of past, present, and future, all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be and who we can be. It's a little bit of past, present, and future all in one idea. Soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It can be something that you love.

All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

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a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. dark room. And, and if you can get some context, things look differently. And I think the same thing with with being in that other fog, and I agree with that. We spend so much of our time on what you know, I refer to it as autopilot. I mean, I started this show to a large degree, to get myself off of autopilot, I thought, you know what, if I interview people every week, then I'll have to read their stuff. And it'll just keep these kind of ideas in the forefront of my brain. Because left to my own, I'm just going to kind of

spiral off into into a bad place. And so just being able to thin the fog being able to just stop and, and a lot of times I'll just stop, I've got this little thing where I like, if I can remember, it's like I stop, I ask myself, where am I like, literally pay attention? What am I doing? Literally? And then is it what I want to be doing? And for me, every once in a while that can interrupt solitaire if I can get if I can get that thought. Yeah, right. So let's talk about the other parts of the mini human staircase, which is step three, you call whoa moments. Yeah. So step one is, you know, you're just, you know, small minded, childish, and you're in the fog on self aware and all of those things. Step two is, you've been the fog, you know,

you're still in some level of deep, you know, fog, but it's much thinner. And you can actually see context, you can see around and behind. And I use the example of, you know, fog, but it's much thinner and you can actually see context. You can see around and behind. And I use the example of, you know, a cashier is just rude to you. And on step one, you just get rude back or you hate the person. What a dick. On step two, it just makes no sense to be angry. You don't even know this person. It's a rando in the world. And you're just getting a glimpse of probably a pretty unhappy moment in their lives. Like they're going through something. Maybe they had a bad morning or maybe they had a bad childhood or maybe someone in their life is sick or maybe they're going through a breakup. Who know?

You have no idea, but you're aware that you have no idea and you're aware that it's not about you. And so you're just, it makes no sense to be rude because when you look at the context, you say, not about you. And so you're just, it makes no sense to be rude. Cause when you look at the context, you say, oh, well, it's not my problem. Like, uh, I hope they get better or like, I just going to ignore them. Um, on step one, you're like, you take it personally, which makes no sense at all. And you think, you know, a lot about them. You think this is a bad person. They don't like me. They don't like people like me and screw them. And this is the problem with the world. And you get, and this is like totally you know irrational zone and still on step two there's still a level of delusion going on and that you kind of just look up the

blue sky and you think about life and you think you know yeah i'm just like here in this nice land with the blue sky and and full reality full clear of fog reality um is actually quite extreme which is that you're not really in a land with a blue sky. You are on a tiny rock in the middle of billions of light years of nothingness floating around a ball of plasma. I mean, it is so bizarre, the actual thing that's really going on. And so for me, it's the moments when that hits you, when true reality hits you, when it hits you that you're a bunch of atoms and that you're kind of, they form this complex structure that's like a growth on this almost like mold on a rock or moss. It's like this growth on this planet is this life and has these little critters going around that are made of atoms. And you're just one of them. And you're here for a short amount of time. And it's this giant universe. And the times you can absorb that, sometimes it's a

beautiful, exciting moment. Sometimes it's a terrifying moment. But you realize it hits you, really hits you, that you're going to die for the rest you know you realize it hits you really hits you that you're going to die for the rest of eternity or it hits you that the universe is like so unbelievably large that it's like it's just the actual scope of it starts to hit you or time how old the planet is how much time there has been or the fact that time itself is a construct in our head. It's actually an element of space-time. It's this fabric, and space and time are one thing. And again, you can say these things. Even right now, I'm saying these things, but I'm not having a moment. I may be getting closer, but there's certain moments when you think about it, and

you're in a certain zone, and you think about it long enough or hard enough, or you're on some drug that's helpful or you're at the right person, the right conversation or at the right time of night, but it just, it like really hits you for a second. It's an experience versus a thought. Yes. I compare it to,

you can look at pictures of the grand Canyon forever. And that's great. But when you're there, it's just different. It's just, it hits you in a more emotional, deeper way. And it's the same thing. Like just talking about these things is like looking at a picture of the Grand Canyon. A warm moment is like being there for a second. I don't think many

humans can hold on to a true warm moment that long, which makes sense. Our brains are not wired to absorb that kind of reality. That's not their job. Their job is to survive in a tribe in the animal world on the earth. And so a lot of this delusion we have is part of what our brains are meant to do. It's what they're wired to do because it's helpful for survival. Knowing the truth about reality is not helpful. If anything, it might be unhelpful. So we're not good at it. But we have the capacity to, you know, that a monkey does not have.

Because again, we're high enough in this staircase, we can touch that stair. We can touch it for a second. Another species that's more advanced might be able to live on it all the time. We can just touch it for a second. But I think it's a very powerful thing. In that moment when I touch it for a second, when maybe it's a starry night and I look up and it just hits me, what I'm looking at hits me. I'm looking at stars that are incredibly huge and far away. And that's just a little piece of this. And I can see the band of the Milky Way. In those moments, it does something to you. And it can last for a little while. And it puts you in a very, I think, wise place. I think a lot of the time, at least. Just that moment, I feel personally like an awe of everything in that

moment. And it's small. And just I feel like I'm lucky to be here. And I just want to like get on my knees and like, you know, like put my hands to the heavens. And it's like, wow, I feel like, I feel legitimately like spiritual in that moment. And then, you know, you go back to the cashier example. If on step one,

you're rude back to the cashier, you hate him. On step two, you have compassion for the cashier. You also understand that it's nothing to do with you and you just let it go by or you try to make them feel better or whatever. On step three, you're thinking about the fact that you are a collection of atoms that have formed this center of seemingly consciousness

for a brief moment in vast space and time. Here are. And the cashier is another collection of atoms at the same exact time in the same exact space. And it forms almost the same exact thing. And you just want to hug them and say, Oh my God, you know, like we're here. Uh, like, wow. Hi. You know, and it's, and, and, and, and you just want to, you just want to love everyone and you don't, your ego disappears and you just want to, you don't care about yourself any more than you care about other people. And you just want to, you just want to help anyone and you want people to be happy. And it's like, you have this moment when you're truly like, and I said, if I, if I could be there often, I could be like a monk somewhere, you know,

but I'm not, which is why I'm not a monk. But like, I feel like it's like, you know, in those moments, I'm like, you, you, you really can feel like, you know, I get what it would be like to be a real, like enlightened Buddhist for a second, you know, I get what it would be like to be a real like enlightened Buddhist for a second, you know, you just feel it. So suddenly, everything is so obvious, you have utter clarity, it makes you realize you're you have no choice but to be wise, you would never in that moment, when you're feeling that way, you would never be, you know, petty about something you just wouldn't, you would never be greedy about something in that moment, you wouldn't, you could never hate anyone in that moment, you couldn't, not because you're being nice, because it makes no sense. None of those emotions make any actual sense. They're just there because the fog is there. So the fog is just wiped away in

that moment. A woe moment just puffs it right out of the room. And you can just see the animals for what they are. And they're silly. And you realize that they have no power over you in that moment. And then because you're a human, you will inevitably drift right back down to where you were. You will. But I do think that one moment, it sticks with you somewhere, a little piece of it sticks with you. And you know, every time you have that, I think you become a little bit wiser forever, just a little bit. So I think a little piece sticks with you. And I think it's really good to have those moments. The goal for me, this kind of growth is not to end up on step three all the time, because I don't think that's possible for a human. And I don't think that's almost desirable,

because I'm not sure you can really connect with humanity or really work on your career or anything, you know, on that step, because you suddenly wouldn't, you know, at least right now, I find that to be not desirable. I'd like to be on step two, I like to be in the delusion that this world matters. And I'm here with the blue sky and everything's nice and sunny. I'm sitting here getting my work done and I'm being nice to people and whatever. Step two is a great place for me to be. But I like to get on step three sometimes because it helps me with the step one versus step two battle that I'm in all the time, that we're all in all the time. And I think the goal is never to be even permanently on step two. That's not possible.

The goal is to be on step two more often than you're on step one and more often than you were on step one last year. And if you're, if you're step two to step one ratio is going up every year, even just a little bit, you're doing great. You know, you're growing. And for me, that's my growth framework. That's excellent. Let's finish it up real quickly with step four. We don't need to spend a ton of time on it, but I do think it's important and a useful concept. Yeah. So I think that we keep kind of going to another iteration of clarity, of reality. You know, you clear the context around the social context or whatever, and that's one level. It's just been, the fog's been cleared and you can see, you know, another, kind of another second dimension of reality. And then, then you remember that you're on a rock floating in the sky or floating in the sky floating in the middle of nothing, you clear away a whole other layer of fog, and you have a whole new layer of clarity.

Step four, for me, if there is a step four, I think it is, you know, there's another because there is another level of clarity you can clear, which is reminding yourself that even when you think about the universe and space time and atoms and, you know, planets and stars, you don't really know what the hell is going on at all. We don't know what the universe is. You don't even know what the universe is. It could be a blip inside of a much larger thing, some kind of multiverse type thing. Or it could be the end all and be all of everything. If you don't know that information, you have to remind, if you just think about that for a second,

you realize like we're in a total cloud of delusion if we think we understand reality. We don't know what is going on. Again, I started this post by saying I'm an atheist when it comes to the Bible and the Quran and the Torah because those things are written by people and those people don't know anything more than I do. In fact, reading those things, you can tell that

those people were on step one a lot when they wrote those things. And so I'm certainly an atheist about those. But when you start thinking about step four, which to me is reminding yourself that everything we do know is a tiny piece of the full picture. Step four is reminding yourself that you're on a little island of what we do know inside an ocean of what we don't know and that fact is yet another kind of like whoa okay it's like it's the only thing that makes sense is like utter utter humility in that moment you just like you're just you you're just a molecule floating around an ocean you don't understand and so so that that i think does a further thing to a human it kind kind of, which is a whole different level of clarity

about how unclear things really are. And so this is when I realized I'm a total agnostic, not about the books. The books are not true. I'm an agnostic about reality. How did we get here? Could it have been a creator? Of course.

Could it have been some more intelligent species created us as an experiment? Of course. Could it have created, not created us, created the first life on Earth? I mean, I believe in evolution, of course. The first life evolved into us, but how did that get here? I don't know. We don't know. Maybe life spontaneously starts. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe something else did that. You realize, I just don't know what the hell is going on. Could we be in a simulation? This gets to another topic. But when you start thinking about that for a second, you think, well, if intelligent species make, super intelligent species exist, A. And B, if they make simulations, this is a Nick Bostrom kind of argument, if they sometimes make simulations, well, they could make a trillion simulations then. One hacker, one computer geek could make a trillion of them, meaning there's going to be far more simulations, civilizations out there than there are real ones,

meaning highly likely we are in a simulation. So you can go down that path. We're some instant gratification monkey solitaire game. Exactly, exactly. Someone is so self-loathing right now. Someone is so self-loathing out there because they made us, and this is the last thing they had timeathing right now. Someone is so self-loathing out there because they made us, and this is the last thing they had time to do right now. Like they have to go get their, their,

their tux ironed. And like, this is exactly. So it's a, when you realize that you just, all you can have is humility. And I think, again, some people I think will step three and step four will make them feel scared and bad, especially if they currently believe in, you know, some more specific good story, like an afterlife or something. And then this is going to, you know, make them feel like that might not be true or that probably isn't true and that's going to feel really bad. For me, as a kind of atheist type person, I think it feels great because I'm like, step three feels great because,

I don't know, I just feel in awe and I'm like, step three feels great because I don't know, I just feel in awe. And I realized like, you know, who am I like, it doesn't make sense for me to care so much about my own life and death because like, this thing is awesome and huge. I'm just like, it's cool that I'm here. And step four really makes me feel okay. Because I'm like, you know what, I before I thought about step four, I might have said there's a 0% chance my consciousness has any chance to like live on and you know, more than I thought it step four, I might have said there's a 0% chance my consciousness has any chance to live on more than I thought it would. And now suddenly on step four, I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what the hell is going on.

I really don't. I don't know what is going on. Maybe I'm the only consciousness and every other person is just an illusion in my head. Or maybe I'm an illusion in someone else's head. When you start not knowing even what you are, I think you care a little bit less about it. It chills me out a little bit. And it, and it kind of, I think, and certainly makes me less petty and less step one to think about step four. And it makes certainty, you know, of any kind, especially certainty about stuff we don't know and what

other, you know, what's going on in other people's heads or certainty about what's right in politics or what's right and whatever, just makes it seem so ludicrous in that moment and so yeah it's kind of uh the extreme version of beginner's mind that they talk about in zen but i think when we recognize we don't know everything it it opens us up to so many different things and it's something i have to struggle with because it's i can get very attached to what i think i know and and so remembering like, as a species, we've got very little of this figured out is comforting to me also. I think that when it comes to just like your thinking process, if you think about what you think versus how you think, we place way too much emphasis on what we think and what

other people think. And, you know, people who change their mind a lot and say they don't know, we think of them as wishy-washy or flip-floppers or wafflers. We have all these bad words for those people. Certainty is respected. It makes no sense at all. I agree. Instead of valuing how people think, and when you're thinking really, really highly, when you're thinking well, you're constantly uncertain. You're being a scientist-type thinker. You're starting place and ending place are humility, and you're just trying to get a little bit more knowledge than you had before. And that's

the wise place to be. And yet, because we're step one people, we are very often on step one where we care about what people think. We don't care how they got there. We don't care if they're just repeating what someone else said. Do they think the right thing? Good. I like that. They're smart. And it's a completely illogical way to look at that. I agree 100%. Well, Tim, thank you so much for coming on. I've had a great time with this conversation. I had a great time, like I said, preparing for it.

We'll have links to your webpage and your TED Talk and different things in the show notes, but thank you so much. Awesome, thank you so much for having me on. Been a pleasure. Okay, bye. All right, see you later. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation

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