Manipulation, Solved

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So I want to start this episode off with a question, which is, am I manipulating you right now?
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What if I told you that this episode is potentially life-changing?
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My team and I spent months researching and working on it, that some of the ideas and implications within it could have profound moral impact on how you see the world and every relationship that you have.
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Am I manipulating you now?
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Now, I realize that I'm just a podcaster in your ear, but seriously, I've been researching and writing about human psychology for almost 20 years, and what I realized prepping for this show is that manipulation and the ways that we try to influence each other is maybe one of the most under-discussed topics that impacts every single moment of our lives.
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And sure, maybe you already kind of get that, but the fact that these concepts are not widely taught or discussed has started to shock me.
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How about that?
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Was that manipulative?
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Yeah.
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Did it feel manipulative?
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Because everything I said was true.
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But at the same time, I used six persuasion techniques on you.
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In sequence.
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The curiosity gap, an authority marker, superiority flattery, social proof, strategic self-deprecation, manufactured urgency.
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But like I said, none of it was a lie.
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I didn't fabricate a single thing that I said.
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We really did spend more time on this episode than any other episode that we've done this year.
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I really do think this is one of the most under-discussed practical topics in this industry.
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I really have been studying this stuff for nearly 20 years.
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I did not deceive you about any of that.
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But I am also manipulating you.
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Because like every good podcast host, I want you to keep listening.
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I want to intrigue you.
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I want to create curiosity.
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I want to create excitement in you.
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And here's the really crazy part.
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You want me to do it too.
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You don't click on a podcast like this to be lectured for hours or bored to death.
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You want your attention to be swept away into a fascinating narrative.
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You want to feel that pull of curiosity.
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You want to feel the hours bleed away like they are minutes.
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To an extent, you want to be manipulated.
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You want me to manipulate you.
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Today, we are solving manipulation.
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And the first thing to know is that manipulation is not something that happens to gullible people at the hands of obvious villains.
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The science on this is extremely clear.
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And what it says is far stranger and more uncomfortable than the story that you and I have always been told.
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Because we are all manipulators.
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And in some contexts, we all seek to be manipulated.
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The moral question then is not who does the manipulation, but to what extent and for what ends.
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I think this episode is going to blow your mind.
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And no, I'm not just selling you right now.
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Today, we're gonna be talking about a lot of fascinating and important topics, including psychopaths, what they are, how to spot them, how one researcher's understanding of them kicked off a whole identity crisis around human interaction,
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We're going to talk about why law enforcement, psychologists, and body language experts are just as bad at detecting lies as you and I are and what that means for us.
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We're going to talk about the fact that not only do you manipulate others, but you also manipulate yourself and why.
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We're going to discuss what Immanuel Kant, Niccolo Machiavelli, and a $6,500 payment from the sugar industry have in common.
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and why it matters for your marriage.
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How's that for a spicy hook?
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We're going to talk about the experiment where people who have never met you, armed with nothing but a checkbox, shape your medical decisions more effectively than your own stated values do.
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We'll talk about how Sigmund Freud's nephew turned bacon into breakfast and cigarettes into feminism, and how he built an industry whose entire business model fails one ethical test that this episode is going to teach you.
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We're going to talk about the only evidence-based defense against manipulation that actually works, and why it's been ignored largely for 50 years, and why it costs you about five cents.
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This and much, much more.
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We're going to walk through how manipulation actually works, where the ethical lines fall, according to philosophers who genuinely disagree with each other, how entire industries and governments have weaponized the science of manipulation against us, and what you can concretely do about all of this.
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Because once you understand manipulation, it stops feeling like you need to identify and avoid the bad people.
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It stops feeling like you need some supernatural ability to read faces and spot liars.
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And it starts to feel like something that you can understand well enough to manage in your own life, beginning with the manipulator that you know the best.
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or maybe the least, which is yourself.
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I'm the three-time number one New York Times bestselling author, Mark Manson, and this is Drew Burney, my co-host, producer, lead researcher, and a man who thinks massages are weird but could really go for a belly rub right now.
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Where do these come from?
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It's true.
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You don't write this.
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I don't write.
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I don't know where these come from.
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This is Solved, the most comprehensive podcast in the world where every episode we aim to solve one problem in your life once and for all.
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Today we are solving manipulation, what it is, where the line falls, why do we all do it, how do we defend against it, and why it actually might be a beneficial thing at times.
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So I actually want to start this episode by talking about madness and psychopaths.
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But to begin, we need to go way back.
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I want to go back to the ancient Greeks because I think one thing that is...
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interesting about manipulation and lying in general, misleading people, is that it has generally universally been considered wrong cross-culturally, historically.
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So whether you're looking at Christianity, Islam, the Eastern traditions, lying and manipulation is pretty much universally considered a bad thing.
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Philosophically, if you go back as far as Plato,
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Plato saw manipulation as a failure of a person to manage their own emotions.
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It's basically a situation where emotion overtakes reason.
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In Plato's framework, he had this idea of a tripartite soul.
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So you had kind of your reason, you had your impulses and animalistic desires, and then you had your emotions.
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And he saw...
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lying and deceit as when somebody is overcome with their emotional urges or their own personal drives, and they allow it to take over their reason.
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And it is a failure of rationality, essentially.
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Aristotle's framework treats it pretty similarly.
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And then once you get into the Christian tradition, it's just lying is wrong.
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And if you're lying too much, you probably can't really control your own impulses or urges.
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So there's this
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psychological connection between impulsiveness and manipulation.
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People observe that highly rational people, people with a lot of self-discipline, a lot of self-control, generally are able to be more honest and upfront with others, whereas people who are very impulsive, very selfish, very self-indulgent, they tend to be the ones who are the most manipulative.
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Now, what's interesting is that even as, I mean, as far back as recorded history,
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fundamentally irrational all the time that they are just kind of disconnected from reality and they are lying 24 7 they're lying to themselves they're lying to other people they are just living in la la land and this became known as madness
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Just craziness.
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And for most of human history, these were not seen as people that we should sympathize with or feel sorry for.
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They were seen as pariahs, as people that were problematic to the social order, and they should either be quarantined or punished appropriately.
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Now, this all started to change around the Enlightenment.
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And there was a physician by the name of Philippe Pinel in France in the late 18th century who, in many ways, is seen as kind of the godfather of psychiatry.
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He spent a lot of time with asylum patients and people who suffered from mental disorders.
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And he was kind of the first prominent thinker.
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that argued that we should approach these people with kindness, compassion, and that it's actually through that kindness and compassion that these people are able to get better and have a better orientation towards reality and stop behaving so delusionally and so inappropriately all the time.
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Then in 1801...
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Pinel made a very interesting observation.
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He noticed that there were a certain group of people who actually seemed fully rational, completely integrated into society, but made highly irrational antisocial choices, that they could become incredibly violent.
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They had a propensity to lie and manipulate people, to use people, to control people, to take advantage of people's emotions, that they were in many ways evil and
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But they weren't crazy.
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And up until this point, those two things were always associated with one another.
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The most evil people were also the most crazy.
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They were kind of the cackling evil genius maniac who was, you know, almost like cartoonish in terms of their personality.
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Penel was the first person who came along and said, no, actually, there are some people that are highly rational, highly functional.
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And just fucking cruel.
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Now this observation was picked up a few decades later in England by a man named James Pritchard.
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And he actually started intentionally seeking out these people to try to understand them a little better.
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And he noticed a few things.
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For one, he said, not all of them are actually violent.
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In fact...
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Many of them are just as manipulative and self-serving without being violent.
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They actually can appear very compassionate on the surface.
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And Pritchard drew a very interesting distinction.
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Up until that point, it was just known as insanity.
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Pritchard differentiated moral insanity from actual insanity.
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So actual insanity meant...
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People aren't able to reason correctly.
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They are impulsive, delusional.
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Under Pritchard's definition, somebody who is morally insane is somebody who can intellectually reason appropriately, but their moral understanding of other human beings, their ability to empathize, consider other people's emotions is just completely scrambled or non-existent.
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Now, nobody really knew what to do with this, and it kind of just sat untouched.
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The idea wasn't picked up again until 100 years later by an American doctor named Hervey Cleckley.
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Cleckley worked at a mental hospital in the 1930s, and he became fascinated with these cases.
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There were a number of patients who came in who seemed completely normal, could have completely reasonable conversations with him, who showed no signs of delusions or emotional
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lives that were in total disarray.
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What struck Cleckley about these people is that they made horrible decisions, and in many cases, they couldn't even really explain why they made the decisions, but they showed no remorse for it whatsoever.
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In many cases, they could imitate remorse.
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They could give you a nice speech about how they felt bad, but underneath, they didn't really feel anything at all.
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So in 1941, Cleckley took a collection of interviews that he did with these patients and put them together into a book called The Mask of Sanity.
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And this book is kind of the foundational text on what we today consider psychopaths or sociopaths.
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And in that book, he distilled all of the characteristics down into 16 traits that you see in a psychopath.
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And these are all the classic ones that we associate with psychopaths today.
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So total lack of remorse or shame for their behavior, an absence of nervousness or anxiety,
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a chronic untruthfulness or insincerity, an inability to empathize or understand other people's emotions, a failure to learn from prior experiences, to draw lessons from their mistakes.
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What's really interesting about Cleckley's work and the reason that I want to start with psychopaths in a manipulation episode is because Cleckley really forcefully made the argument throughout all of his work that,
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that psychopaths are undetectable throughout daily life.
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Like you can't really walk down the street or go to a dinner party or sit down at lunch with somebody for an hour and properly detect that this person is a psychopath, that they have absolutely no empathy or remorse.
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What concerned correctly was how much these people blended into day-to-day society and how in many cases, a lot of the people in the psychopath's life
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don't even understand their condition.
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Like, don't realize that this is a person that doesn't feel remorse or shame, that doesn't give a fuck at all about what they feel or anything that they've done.
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And it's interesting because towards the end of Cleckley's career, starting in the 1970s and 80s, there were a series of extremely high-profile serial killer cases that kind of swept national media and turned the serial killers into celebrities, the biggest of which was Ted Bundy.
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And Kleckley himself was called in on a lot of these cases to interview, examine the serial killers, get to know them, make diagnoses about them.
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And the sad irony about Kleckley is that these serial killers, because they were so violent, they were so sadistic.
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And they were psychopaths, and Cleckley was the one who was called in to verify that they were psychopaths.
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Ever since, the concept of a psychopath has been merged directly with this kind of awkward, sadistic...
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compulsive killer who does really fucked up things and is extremely violent in very strange ways.
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So across pop culture and the mainstream understanding of manipulative behavior, this completely blew up the main point of Cleckley's work, which was that the most manipulative people on earth are undetectable.
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They are so similar to you and I that you actually could not point them out in a lineup.
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The truth is that everything you think you know about psychopaths is probably wrong.
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Our culture and Hollywood have turned psychopath into this highly visible monster, this like very strange antisocial person who is always behaving erratically and doing very evil and conniving and masterminded things to innocent people.
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And the truth is, is that psychopaths completely blend into the crowd.
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The vast majority of psychopaths, they're not violent.
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Many of them are not even antisocial.
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Many of them have actually learned very well how to mimic people.
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human emotion and empathy to get what they want from others.
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And so I actually think the most important lesson from psychopaths is not that there are these specifically evil people in the world that are highly manipulative and highly violent that we need to figure out how to avoid.
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It's actually the opposite.
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It's that manipulation is so common and so ever-present in our day-to-day lives and in our day-to-day relationships, we actually have to have a better understanding of how
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how these manipulative practices take place, how they're wielded against us, and how we wield them against others.
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Hold that thought.
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We will be right back after this.
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This episode is brought to you by AG1.
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Now at home, my health routine feels pretty locked in, but the road is where I get tested.
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Most trips will start the same way.
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I catch a flight at some ungodly hour, head straight from the airport to a stage, and then try to remember which city I'm in before I get to the mic.
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And after checkout, be sure to let them know that Mark Manson sent you.
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This episode is brought to you by Plod.
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So I get invited to a lot of events and conferences.
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I go to these events, I meet like 20 different people.
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I have all these amazing conversations.
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And then the next day, I don't remember half of the things that I talked about.
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It's a Plod has this amazing little device.
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And it takes notes on any in-person conversation you want it to.
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It's amazing in business environments.
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You can go back and check the notes of the conversation at any time.
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It's great for in-person meetings to capture those summaries of what was talked about or what the action items are.
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So all you do is you tap a simple button and it starts capturing.
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Now, Plaud can spit out a transcript with key insights, next steps, visual infographics.
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If I need to find specific details weeks later, I can just ask Plaud what I talked about with my content team back in September, and it will automatically dig through everything and find it for me.
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And so when it's finally time to execute on our plans, it's easy to go back and find it.
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Some of our best episodes started with a throwaway idea while Drew and I were just hanging out in the studio shooting the shit.
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Just make sure everybody knows and agrees before you hit record, because obviously you don't want to get sued.
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Now, if you want to try out Plod, go to plod.ai slash Manson and use the code Manson22 for 22% off.
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Okay, we're back with manipulation.
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Okay, so it was really a shame that Cleckley got done dirty like that, right?
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It was a shame that we missed it because in the 50s, 60s, even before the 70s and 80s serial killers came along, there was some kind of interesting ideas and research coming out that kind of started to...
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I guess, tilted towards normalization, even though in the literature, manipulation was still seen as like a deviant behavior.
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Right.
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For the most part, it wasn't a very normal behavior.
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It wasn't good people who did it.
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Right.
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It was these more psychopathic types that the popular culture had in their minds around it.
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That actually did start to change a little bit, though, in the 50s and 60s.
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There was this guy, Irving Goffman.
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in the 50s, he was kind of the first in Western psychology anyway to kind of call out like, oh, hey, actually, we're all kind of performing.
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We're all manipulating the image that we put out into the world, what I'm trying to get you to think about me or you to try to do something.
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All of it's just social interaction.
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It's all theater to some degree, right?
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Ralph Waldo Emerson has this great quote.
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He says, every man alone is sincere, but at the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.
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Right.
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Left alone, left their own devices in a vacuum.
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Sure, we're all saints, right?
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It's only when we interact with each other that all of this manipulative behavior comes out.
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I mean, that idea really started to germinate in the 50s and 60s in psychology, right?
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You get to the 70s, and then we tried to get a little more systematic about it.
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These researchers, Richard Christie and Florence Geis.
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And they wanted to, they actually came up with like a Machiavellian personality test almost, right?
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We'll get into the details of what Machiavellianism really is, but suffice it to say for now that it's manipulative behavior just in general.
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How do you get what you want?
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Right.
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Right?
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By manipulating others.
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How do you instrumentalize other people?
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Right.
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To achieve some other goal.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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Right.
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For instance, they had this one game.
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It was this $10 game.
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They had three people.
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They gave them $10 between the three of them.
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They could divide the money however they wanted to.
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The two people who agreed on the split would get the money, right?
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And they gave them this kind of Machiavellian personality test first, and then they had them play this game.
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No big shocker, the people who scored high on this Machiavellian personality test gained almost like four times more money than anybody else in it, right?
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They started to do this like really systematized, like what are these personality types?
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What is this manipulative behavior?
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And everyday people, again, these weren't people who were clinically insane or anything like that.
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These were people off the street, university students, whatever.
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These Machiavellian, high Machiavellian types, it wasn't that they could read people's emotions, that they were actually disregarding them altogether.
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So like in this $10 game, right?
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It's like, I don't care if this person's my friend or not.
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I want the money.
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That's all there was to it.
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That was the goal.
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They went after it.
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Not to give too much away, but I think one of the biggest surprises for me in prepping for this episode is how much reading other people is not really a thing.
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It's not, yeah, as we'll see.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And it's funny because if you look on social media, there's a lot of content these days about how to spot a liar, how to guard against manipulation, how to, you know...
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not be taken advantage of by narcissists and all this stuff.
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It's funny that a lot of that is just completely misguided.
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Like we're actually pretty terrible at reading other people's intentions in general.
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And maybe one of the reasons is that manipulation is so pervasive.
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It's everywhere that you could, you could say anything is manipulative.
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So any little body language thing you could pick up on, you could turn it into something that's manipulative and it turns out to not mean a whole lot.
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Right.
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We get into the 80s and research starts to focus on even more kind of like everyday situations.
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For example, like in your relationship, David Buss, who's a famous evolutionary psychologist, he started researching this in the 80s as well.
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They studied originally studied 59 couples.
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They found six really common manipulation tactics.
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Yeah.
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that came out of this charm, silent treatment, coercion, reason, regression, and debasement.
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Okay.
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Now the good news, there's some good news out of this.
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The number one tactic was reason using reason with your partner to try to get what you want.
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I wouldn't necessarily call that manipulative.
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Most people wouldn't, right?
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Charm came in second.
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All right.
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So first you try to reason with them.
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And if that doesn't work, then you try to charm them.
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Okay.
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So that's maybe one point for, you know, the better interest level of nature, right?
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What they kind of found though was that it kind of depended on the context of whatever conflict or interaction you were in with your partner, right?
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If you're trying to make them do something, you're more likely to use charm.
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If you're trying to get them to stop doing something, there's usually more coercion involved, okay?
284
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So again, this is an everyday relationship.
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You're using some form of manipulation in almost every interaction you have with the person that you're probably closest with and should supposedly love the most, right?
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I think we should pause for a second.
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Okay.
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Because I can already, I mean, I'm already feeling it myself.
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I imagine in listeners, there's already a little bit of resistance building of like, I don't manipulate people I care about.
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Who the fuck are you to tell me that I'm a manipulative person?
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I think it's probably worth kind of taking a moment and just talking about
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what is manipulation?
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Like, what is the definition of manipulation?
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So it actually comes from a Latin root of manus, which means to handle or like a handful of something.
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And so in ancient times, the concept of manipulation was like rendering and changing things with your hands.
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It was like manipulating this microphone stand, right?
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Or it's like the way we would change an object to fit our own will.
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And then at some point that got transferred on to people.
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Right.
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We manipulate people to reshape them to fit our own will.
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And of course, all sorts of moral connotations came along with that.
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The word manipulation, at least in the English language, we have a lot of negative connotations around it.
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Like there's kind of this implication that if I'm manipulating you right now, it is to take advantage of you in some way or to get something that I want out of you.
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Whereas if I'm just trying to influence you or motivate you or change you, like those all have very positive implications.
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But coming back to Irving Goffman and his argument that we're kind of always performing, he used a lot of extremely basic and simple examples.
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For example, like saying thank you after somebody does something for you, right?
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Or like, you know, if you ask me, how is my day going?
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Yeah.
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90% chance I'm going to say fine, regardless of how it's actually going.
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There's an intention to kind of meet expectations or keep the peace that is always happening in social circumstances.
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It requires an extended amount of effort or an important reason to break those social expectations or break with convention to change your behavior in front of people.
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So like in Western culture, we have almost this like pure idea of...
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that we should be fully authentic with ourselves.
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We should be honest at all times.
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I think it was when we did the ego episode, maybe six or eight months ago, we talked about how this idea that there is a monolithic identity, like there's a single Mark Manson and I should be Mark Manson in every context.
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The way I behave with you on camera should be the same way I behave with
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with my mother at Thanksgiving and the same way I behave with my wife on a Tuesday night.
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And in Eastern cultures, there's kind of more of a practical understanding that, no, actually, there's many different versions of yourself.
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And you actually should behave differently in different contexts and different situations.
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And certain things or conversations that are appropriate at work are not appropriate with your family and vice versa.
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For some reason, I don't know what it is about what, like, the Western lineage.
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I think we struggle with that concept.
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And we see it as manipulative, right?
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Like if I have the same conversation with you today that I had with my wife yesterday, and I say something different to you than I said to her yesterday, in a Western mind that is seen as inauthentic and dishonest, it's seen as manipulative.
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Whereas I think in other cultures, they would just see that as practical.
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The point I want to drive home for listeners in this first chapter is that manipulation is practical.
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And that we all do it all the time for very practical purposes.
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reasons that are not immoral at all.
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We have social politeness.
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We have niceties.
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We do courteous things for each other.
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If we disagree with somebody, but we don't really want to have a fight about it, we'll like kind of passively, aggressively nudge them in a certain direction.
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We'll discover in later chapters that there's kind of a game theory around all of this.
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that there are certain things, you know, we tell white lies to keep the peace with people that we care about.
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All of these things are completely normal and natural.
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I guess the arc that we're covering here is that for most of human history, dishonesty and lying was seen as this uniquely evil and irrational thing that we should aspire to never do.
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But
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Modern psychology has gradually and almost reluctantly uncovered over and over again that this sort of manipulation is present in almost all of our interactions, and it is happening all the time.
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Not only is it incredibly...
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common and incredibly practical and pragmatic, like you said, it's probably the reason we have the brains that we have.
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In the 80s, there were some researchers who came up with like the social brain hypothesis, or some of them call it the Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis, whatever you want to call it.
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Basically, they found this relationship between, especially in primates,
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the size of the brain and social group and social complexity.
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For a long time, they thought, oh, it's tool use.
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That determined the size of your brain and the complexity of your brain.
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It's not.
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It's social complexity.
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And so manipulation is one way, is actually the main way that we navigate that social complexity.
349
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That takes a lot of brain power too.
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And so we probably developed these huge brains.
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One of the main reasons for it anyway was to be able to
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gently deceive each other or manipulate the way we come off in a group.
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Our standing in group, we've talked about how important that is in other episodes too.
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Like we need to be able to shape that in some way, shape, or form.
355
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And manipulation is a very effective way to do that.
356
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And probably track deception as well.
357
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And tracking it too.
358
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Right?
359
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That's a big, big component of it as well.
360
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Because it's like, if you deceive me, I need to be able to remember that in future situations.
361
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Mm-hmm.
362
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You'd be completely ineffective if you didn't remember that, obviously, right?
363
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Part of the definition of manipulation is being able to track that over time.
364
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It really is not a disorder.
365
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This is where Dunbar's number even comes out of, too.
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We've talked about that in previous episodes as well, but quick refresher.
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Dunbar's number, it's about 150, which is about the number of relationships you can effectively manage.
368
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Any more than that, they're not very effectively managed that way.
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Really, you have about five close friends, 10 good friends.
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It goes out into concentric circles like that.
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This is probably where that comes from as well.
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And again, being able to manage those relationships, track everything you're doing.
373
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And there is some degree of manipulation, again, within that.
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You can only manipulate so much as well.
375
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So keeping those numbers to manageable levels is something we have to do too.
376
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And that's, again, that's probably why we have the brains we have.
377
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I think this probably gets us nicely into kind of the game theory aspect of this, right?
378
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Like if you look at our evolutionary history, we lived in largely small bands and tribes and social status was incredibly important for survival.
379
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Dependability and trust was incredibly important for survival, right?
380
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Like it's if you and I are out hunting animals.
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wooly mammoths together.
382
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Like I need to trust that you're actually going to show up and do the thing when you're supposed to do it.
383
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And the fact of the matter is that things like gossip, social exclusion, reputational damage, like these things could have life and death impact on certain people.
384
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What happens is that you create a situation where let's say you and I are in a tribe together.
385
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We disagree about something, but you're,
386
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that disagreement can have outsized impact on other people in the tribe.
387
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It could put everybody's welfare in danger.
388
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So instead of you and I actually physically duking it out, we can find all of these subtle ways to signal to each other the disagreement without actually having overt conflict.
389
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Right.
390
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So this is where you get stuff like passive aggression and and dropping hints and forming alliances.
391
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Right.
392
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It's like I can I can go over to Misty and be like, wow, isn't Drew such an asshole?
393
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Like, can you believe that he thinks this?
394
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And then she like gets on my team.
395
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And then it's like that creates a new dynamic of social pressure on you.
396
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So maybe that will manipulate you to change your mind in a way that doesn't require actual violent force or violent pressure.
397
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And so it's funny, there's a famous quote from von Klausowitz, and he said that politics is simply an extension of war.
398
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And I think you can kind of see this on a very evolutionary level of like, yeah, it's so costly to physically fight people or physically threaten each other that we find all of these things.
399
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Manipulations and machinations to influence each other in both subtle and overt ways to get what we want out of each other because ultimately it produces less risk and downside.
400
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than just openly fighting about stuff.
401
00:31:37.692 --> 00:31:38.012
Okay.
402
00:31:38.172 --> 00:31:38.372
Yeah.
403
00:31:38.673 --> 00:31:42.896
So it's, it's kind of like, uh, if you had like, I don't know, two big bull moose or something like that.
404
00:31:42.916 --> 00:31:43.036
Right.
405
00:31:43.056 --> 00:31:51.242
And they were about to go at it and a lot of times they will fight physically, but, uh, what they'll do first is kind of like they'll show off or, you know, grunt or whatever they do.
406
00:31:51.302 --> 00:31:51.503
Right.
407
00:31:51.523 --> 00:31:51.583
Um,
408
00:31:52.243 --> 00:31:54.206
Humans are a lot more complex than that, though.
409
00:31:54.726 --> 00:32:07.201
And we found that it's actually much more productive to engage in these machinations and this manipulation in order for us to still kind of get what we want, but also not have to come to physical violence for it.
410
00:32:07.221 --> 00:32:07.722
Right.
411
00:32:08.022 --> 00:32:09.823
in a way that would be much more costly.
412
00:32:10.183 --> 00:32:11.364
There's an outlet for it still.
413
00:32:11.564 --> 00:32:11.744
Yes.
414
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Kind of.
415
00:32:12.124 --> 00:32:13.465
Okay, that's pretty fascinating.
416
00:32:13.485 --> 00:32:13.645
Yeah.
417
00:32:14.105 --> 00:32:16.306
There are conscious ways we do this, right?
418
00:32:16.426 --> 00:32:20.588
Like I think telling a white lie is kind of the classic conscious way.
419
00:32:20.668 --> 00:32:27.151
It's like, you know, if my wife cooks a nice dinner for me and it's not really that great,
420
00:32:27.851 --> 00:32:29.534
but she asked me how it is, right?
421
00:32:29.574 --> 00:32:31.176
I'm like, oh, it's great, right?
422
00:32:31.196 --> 00:32:38.067
Like I just, I tell that lie because I'm like, I don't want to ruin the evening by having a fight over like this dinner that she spent hours preparing.
423
00:32:38.468 --> 00:32:39.649
So there's like the white lie there.
424
00:32:39.689 --> 00:32:40.992
That's a very conscious way of doing it.
425
00:32:41.012 --> 00:32:42.694
But we also do this very subconsciously.
426
00:32:43.295 --> 00:32:43.415
Right.
427
00:32:43.455 --> 00:32:49.836
Like we're often trying to influence each other in ways that I think in many cases, we're not even aware of.
428
00:32:50.076 --> 00:32:56.357
We are just kind of reluctant to be around a certain person or to agree with a certain idea.
429
00:32:56.377 --> 00:33:07.919
And so we find excuses to like procrastinate or delay doing the thing as kind of a unspoken signal to others that like, Hey, this isn't, I'm not really into this, or I'm not really excited about this.
430
00:33:08.299 --> 00:33:12.240
And then we hope that other people subconsciously pick up on that signal and say like, okay, okay.
431
00:33:12.660 --> 00:33:16.182
Yeah, Drew doesn't really want to do this thing, so let's stop bothering him about it.
432
00:33:16.483 --> 00:33:17.443
Here's a subtle one too.
433
00:33:17.463 --> 00:33:19.305
It's like, oh no, I'll do whatever.
434
00:33:19.325 --> 00:33:20.225
Right?
435
00:33:20.365 --> 00:33:24.288
Like somebody who's very agreeable sometimes, that could even be manipulative in a way.
436
00:33:24.408 --> 00:33:24.648
Absolutely.
437
00:33:24.668 --> 00:33:25.809
And you wouldn't know it at all.
438
00:33:26.049 --> 00:33:26.650
Absolutely.
439
00:33:26.790 --> 00:33:31.293
You could argue that you're manipulating people into liking you by being easy.
440
00:33:31.533 --> 00:33:35.716
You're suppressing your own desires and interests to keep the peace.
441
00:33:35.796 --> 00:33:36.016
Yeah.
442
00:33:36.236 --> 00:33:36.396
Yeah.
443
00:33:36.437 --> 00:33:38.898
But that wouldn't be at a conscious level for most people anyway.
444
00:33:38.918 --> 00:33:39.018
Yeah.
445
00:33:39.038 --> 00:33:39.278
Interesting.
446
00:33:39.559 --> 00:33:39.899
Interesting.
447
00:33:40.480 --> 00:33:45.145
A lot of manipulation of others is rooted in your manipulation of yourself.
448
00:33:45.185 --> 00:33:48.269
So I think most people pleasers genuinely think they're happy with whatever.
449
00:33:48.470 --> 00:33:51.513
It's because they haven't allowed themselves to have those desires in the first place.
450
00:33:52.409 --> 00:33:59.914
So the manipulation actually starts internally with themselves, and then it manifests outwardly in their relationships with other people.
451
00:34:00.174 --> 00:34:06.779
So related to this, there was a cool study that a researcher named Bella DiPaolo did where she had people keep lie diaries.
452
00:34:07.099 --> 00:34:16.985
So she had a bunch of people document every single social interaction that they had for an entire week and then go back after the fact and analyze whether they said something untrue or not.
453
00:34:17.325 --> 00:34:20.608
Young people, college students, averaged about two lies a day.
454
00:34:21.628 --> 00:34:24.369
And then working adults averaged about one lie per day.
455
00:34:24.569 --> 00:34:27.670
Self-serving lies outnumbered white lies two to one.
456
00:34:28.070 --> 00:34:29.830
We're not quite as innocent as we think.
457
00:34:30.070 --> 00:34:33.751
So like a self-serving lie would be like, it's something that made you look better.
458
00:34:34.051 --> 00:34:34.271
Yes.
459
00:34:34.451 --> 00:34:37.632
As opposed to a white lie that like kept the peace with somebody else and made them look better.
460
00:34:37.652 --> 00:34:38.292
Made them look better.
461
00:34:38.312 --> 00:34:38.932
Okay, all right.
462
00:34:39.092 --> 00:34:45.034
The most common thing that people lied about was how they felt, which kind of comes back to this game theory thing, right?
463
00:34:45.074 --> 00:34:47.734
It's the classic like, why are you angry?
464
00:34:47.854 --> 00:34:48.975
I'm fine, I'm not angry.
465
00:34:50.436 --> 00:34:52.098
I feel attacked, but also I get it.
466
00:34:53.460 --> 00:34:54.382
So hold it.
467
00:34:54.402 --> 00:34:57.466
The one lies for like working adults, two for younger adults.
468
00:34:58.047 --> 00:34:59.790
I think that's probably, I don't know,
469
00:35:01.013 --> 00:35:03.374
10 times too few, I'm going to guess.
470
00:35:03.555 --> 00:35:04.435
This is self-reported.
471
00:35:04.555 --> 00:35:08.037
This is self-reported, which means that this is probably drastically underreported.
472
00:35:08.057 --> 00:35:08.317
Right, right.
473
00:35:08.337 --> 00:35:10.739
So people report that they lie one or two times a day.
474
00:35:10.839 --> 00:35:11.019
Right.
475
00:35:11.319 --> 00:35:11.859
Yeah.
476
00:35:12.220 --> 00:35:15.942
And maybe a lot of that, like you already have alluded to, is a self-deception.
477
00:35:15.982 --> 00:35:19.364
Like, I don't even know that I'm lying, which we can get into that as well.
478
00:35:19.424 --> 00:35:22.545
But yeah, I find that to be way too low of an estimate.
479
00:35:22.565 --> 00:35:22.746
Yeah.
480
00:35:23.006 --> 00:35:23.206
Yeah.
481
00:35:23.566 --> 00:35:32.171
What's interesting, too, is afterwards in the study, people were asked whether they believe they lied more or less than other people their age.
482
00:35:32.791 --> 00:35:39.375
And almost universally, every single person said that they lied less than other people their age, which is you got to love humans.
483
00:35:39.435 --> 00:35:39.695
Yep.
484
00:35:40.076 --> 00:35:41.136
You got to love humans.
485
00:35:42.957 --> 00:35:44.999
Most of us realize that we do this.
486
00:35:46.219 --> 00:35:51.063
You know, we tell the little white lies, we tell a little self-serving lies when we think we can get away with it.
487
00:35:51.203 --> 00:35:57.587
I think, too, that the majority of us recognize that the majority of our manipulation, it's relatively benign.
488
00:35:57.727 --> 00:36:03.611
Like it's these are very small, little momentary, insignificant things like little face saving things.
489
00:36:03.791 --> 00:36:07.914
They're not like having these drastic repercussions on ourselves.
490
00:36:08.514 --> 00:36:15.319
And I think the reason why all of us do these things consistently, repeatedly, despite the fact that we know that we do them.
491
00:36:15.659 --> 00:36:19.040
is because the downside risk is so asymmetrically large.
492
00:36:19.080 --> 00:36:26.823
The downside risk of social exclusion or the loss of a relationship, for all of us in most situations, it's just easier to keep the peace.
493
00:36:27.423 --> 00:36:30.704
It's just easier to go along with it.
494
00:36:30.824 --> 00:36:32.505
Don't ruffle any feathers.
495
00:36:32.525 --> 00:36:33.605
Don't piss anybody off.
496
00:36:33.945 --> 00:36:36.306
And there's some interesting research around this.
497
00:36:36.786 --> 00:36:38.047
They found that even brief...
498
00:36:38.787 --> 00:36:52.203
Social exclusion by complete strangers in a lab setting increased impulsivity, slowed the subjective sense of time, reduced a sense of meaning, and increased avoidance of self-awareness in people that were studied.
499
00:36:52.323 --> 00:36:58.270
As we've covered in so many episodes, we really evolved as social creatures in so much of our well-being.
500
00:36:59.071 --> 00:37:06.719
And day-to-day happiness is derived from the people we surround ourselves with and the quality of relationships that we have with those people.
501
00:37:07.240 --> 00:37:16.911
And so if we are put in situations where even being honest creates like a 5% chance of massively disrupting a relationship that's important to us.
502
00:37:17.652 --> 00:37:18.453
We just fucking lie.
503
00:37:18.713 --> 00:37:30.141
From a pure expected value perspective, that lie actually makes a lot of sense and is overall better for social cohesion, both for the relationship but for the group in general.
504
00:37:30.361 --> 00:37:35.625
Okay, so that makes a lot of sense in the smaller scale, right, where you're trying to maintain those relationships.
505
00:37:35.765 --> 00:37:40.028
And through subtle manipulations, through benign manipulations as you were talking about—
506
00:37:40.668 --> 00:37:59.973
Where we get into trouble, I think, and this is a little foreshadowing for later in the episode, is when that need or that drive for social inclusion kind of gets hijacked or somebody intentionally is manipulating that, knowingly manipulating that to get you to do things that you might not otherwise do or even against your best interest.
507
00:38:10.735 --> 00:38:17.282
social cohesion, generally motivations that I think you and I would consider noble, you know, and like generally good.
508
00:38:18.243 --> 00:38:23.989
As you move up that spectrum of manipulation, it starts to become more status seeking, I think.
509
00:38:24.449 --> 00:38:27.432
And it becomes more like about power struggle and power games.
510
00:38:27.993 --> 00:38:29.714
So I have a good friend and...
511
00:38:30.575 --> 00:38:35.919
My friend had another good friend who she had known for about 20 years.
512
00:38:36.299 --> 00:38:41.503
And her good friend, his business recently went bankrupt, went out of business.
513
00:38:41.523 --> 00:38:44.465
So he was broke, out of money, in a really tough spot.
514
00:38:45.446 --> 00:38:53.608
And fortunately, my friend worked at a very large corporation and was able to help find him a position.
515
00:38:53.948 --> 00:39:01.089
And as soon as he came in, he started really politically manipulating some of the higher ups.
516
00:39:01.750 --> 00:39:11.792
And over the course of about two years, like pushed her out, pushed her off kind of the career track that she was on in terms of promotions and took the promotions himself.
517
00:39:11.812 --> 00:39:12.592
Yeah.
518
00:39:12.912 --> 00:39:17.093
And each time she confronted him about this, he denied it.
519
00:39:17.333 --> 00:39:18.713
He said, I don't know what you're talking about.
520
00:39:18.773 --> 00:39:20.214
I'm just doing the best job I can.
521
00:39:20.934 --> 00:39:32.276
But she had picked up signals throughout the workplace that like he had very intentionally kind of maneuvered himself in front of her and manipulated some of her coworkers against her.
522
00:39:32.296 --> 00:39:37.997
I mean, she was like very upset about this, not just because of what it did to her career,
523
00:39:43.358 --> 00:39:44.659
felt a lot of loyalty to.
524
00:39:45.119 --> 00:39:48.381
It was just betrayed and the loss of the friendship and everything.
525
00:39:48.741 --> 00:40:01.486
And so I think once we start getting up the scale of manipulation, the stakes get much higher, the power that's at play gets higher, and then I think at the
526
00:40:03.107 --> 00:40:18.576
tippy-top end, where I think everybody would agree that it is just kind of universally unethical, that's where you start to get into the things with like violent repercussions or like very serious and catastrophic consequences for individuals or large groups of people.
527
00:40:18.816 --> 00:40:29.021
But what's interesting is that that same kind of self-deception and self-justification continues on all the way up the spectrum or most of the way up the spectrum.
528
00:40:29.262 --> 00:40:31.303
So if you talk to somebody who is very Machiavellian,
529
00:40:31.883 --> 00:40:35.406
such as my friend of a friend, they will also justify it to themselves.
530
00:40:35.526 --> 00:40:42.231
They will also have all sorts of pro-social reasons, justifications for certain things that they said or did.
531
00:40:42.571 --> 00:40:44.853
I think that self-deception is still present.
532
00:40:45.213 --> 00:40:47.435
We've covered so many cognitive biases
533
00:40:48.015 --> 00:40:49.216
on this show over the years.
534
00:40:49.396 --> 00:40:56.624
And the propensity and ability for each of us to individually delude ourselves when it's in our best interest is just unmatched.
535
00:40:56.644 --> 00:40:57.304
Boundless.
536
00:40:57.324 --> 00:40:59.186
Yeah, it is absolutely boundless.
537
00:40:59.566 --> 00:41:00.207
Don't go anywhere.
538
00:41:00.227 --> 00:41:01.268
We're going to take a short break.
539
00:41:01.548 --> 00:41:02.710
We've got a lot more coming.
540
00:41:03.290 --> 00:41:05.634
This episode is brought to you by Macrofactor.
541
00:41:06.214 --> 00:41:13.225
So a while back, I told you that I was using Macrofactor to stop white-knuckling my diet and actually figure out what my body was doing.
542
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543
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544
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545
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546
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547
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548
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549
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550
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551
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552
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555
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556
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Most businesses don't get to fully clock out for the holidays.
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558
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560
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561
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562
00:42:28.253 --> 00:42:31.634
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563
00:42:31.894 --> 00:42:34.595
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And we're back.
579
00:43:28.520 --> 00:43:29.582
Let's get right back into it.
580
00:43:29.902 --> 00:43:39.432
I think it's useful to take a moment and actually dig into how most of our manipulation is not rooted in malice or bad intentions or taking advantage of people.
581
00:43:39.852 --> 00:43:45.818
A lot of it is just really genuinely us kind of manipulating ourselves, convincing ourselves of our own bullshit.
582
00:43:45.838 --> 00:43:45.938
Yeah.
583
00:43:47.019 --> 00:43:51.164
Because it is in our best interest and we will be advantaged for it and gain from it.
584
00:43:51.485 --> 00:43:51.605
Yeah.
585
00:43:51.625 --> 00:43:55.369
So there's a few different kind of categories of findings around this too that are really interesting.
586
00:43:55.490 --> 00:43:57.051
It's like we deceive ourselves.
587
00:43:57.312 --> 00:43:59.755
Like we can't even see ourselves doing this.
588
00:44:00.215 --> 00:44:01.197
Like, why would that be?
589
00:44:01.257 --> 00:44:02.218
Why would we want to do that?
590
00:44:02.518 --> 00:44:06.719
One kind of group of findings kind of falls under this like self-deception category.
591
00:44:07.179 --> 00:44:08.800
Your self-deception really has a job.
592
00:44:09.240 --> 00:44:12.420
That job is to help you deceive others, yes, and to manipulate others.
593
00:44:12.460 --> 00:44:15.181
But it has a very specific kind of function for that.
594
00:44:15.321 --> 00:44:18.982
There were these two psychologists, actually, Bill von Hippel and Robert Trivers.
595
00:44:20.142 --> 00:44:29.364
They made the argument that sounds a little bit backwards, is that we deceive ourselves in order to deceive others more effectively, which, I mean, actually checks out when you dig into it just a little bit.
596
00:44:29.464 --> 00:44:31.965
The deliberate liar has some problems, okay?
597
00:44:32.965 --> 00:44:34.546
there's this huge cognitive load.
598
00:44:34.566 --> 00:44:38.247
When you know you're telling a lie, you're like, oh God, am I going to get found out, right?
599
00:44:38.367 --> 00:44:40.227
There's this huge cognitive load around the lie.
600
00:44:40.247 --> 00:44:43.268
You have to cover your tracks, think through all the different contingencies.
601
00:44:43.328 --> 00:44:43.688
Right, right.
602
00:44:43.829 --> 00:44:44.029
Yeah.
603
00:44:44.409 --> 00:44:47.170
But somebody who believes their own bullshit, okay?
604
00:44:47.190 --> 00:44:48.210
They don't have to worry about that.
605
00:44:48.730 --> 00:44:49.311
Right.
606
00:44:49.952 --> 00:44:52.735
All of a sudden you're like, I'm not even thinking about it because this is just the truth.
607
00:44:52.755 --> 00:44:54.317
It's much more energy efficient.
608
00:44:54.478 --> 00:44:54.738
Right.
609
00:44:54.778 --> 00:44:55.018
Yeah.
610
00:44:55.058 --> 00:44:55.239
Right.
611
00:44:55.519 --> 00:44:59.144
It kind of has these functions where like, it's going to erase all of those tells that you have.
612
00:44:59.204 --> 00:45:05.111
Like you're not going to have the weird fidgety stuff that's going to make people think that you're trying to deceive them or anything.
613
00:45:05.893 --> 00:45:10.639
You're going to if you believe your own bullshit, somebody else's it's much more likely to believe your bullshit, too.
614
00:45:10.920 --> 00:45:14.044
And then if you are caught, you just plead innocence, too.
615
00:45:14.404 --> 00:45:14.645
Right.
616
00:45:14.865 --> 00:45:18.310
Like, do you you're like, well, that's not what my intent was at all.
617
00:45:18.330 --> 00:45:19.151
What are you talking about?
618
00:45:19.171 --> 00:45:20.193
I'm not that kind of person.
619
00:45:20.213 --> 00:45:21.735
Of course, I wasn't doing it for that reason.
620
00:45:22.055 --> 00:45:25.097
Believing your own story first has huge advantages.
621
00:45:25.497 --> 00:45:32.121
So in order to really effectively, I think on that smaller scale, at least deceive other people, you first have to deceive yourself.
622
00:45:32.441 --> 00:45:34.662
I think it also protects your own self-esteem.
623
00:45:35.162 --> 00:45:35.422
Yes.
624
00:45:35.482 --> 00:45:36.043
A hundred percent.
625
00:45:36.063 --> 00:45:37.584
You're not a bad person anymore, are you?
626
00:45:37.704 --> 00:45:38.584
I'm just doing my best.
627
00:45:38.624 --> 00:45:39.465
I'm just working hard.
628
00:45:39.485 --> 00:45:41.005
I'm just trying to get along with everybody.
629
00:45:41.045 --> 00:45:42.646
Like, what are you getting mad at me for?
630
00:45:42.686 --> 00:45:42.886
Right?
631
00:45:42.906 --> 00:45:47.089
Like it's, if you knew you were doing the things that you're doing, you would probably feel...
632
00:45:47.965 --> 00:45:56.200
Well, assuming you're not a psychopath, you would probably struggle with a lot of remorse and shame and guilt and all sorts of things.
633
00:45:56.596 --> 00:46:08.061
There's also some interesting findings around this about how we rationalize our choices after the fact to justify them to ourselves primarily, even if we didn't actually make the choice consciously to begin with.
634
00:46:08.181 --> 00:46:13.843
So one of the cooler studies that I've come across in a long time happened out at Lund University.
635
00:46:14.063 --> 00:46:22.126
So what they did is they actually took magicians who are great at sleight of hand card tricks and used them for this study.
636
00:46:22.306 --> 00:46:25.768
So what they did is they created decks of playing cards with people's faces on them.
637
00:46:26.248 --> 00:46:27.449
They would have subjects come in.
638
00:46:28.510 --> 00:46:30.912
The magicians, and the subjects didn't know they were magicians.
639
00:46:30.932 --> 00:46:32.012
They thought they were researchers.
640
00:46:32.353 --> 00:46:36.476
The magicians would present two cards with faces on the front of the card.
641
00:46:36.836 --> 00:46:39.638
They would ask the subject, which face do you find more attractive?
642
00:46:40.419 --> 00:46:42.180
The subject would choose one of the two faces.
643
00:46:42.641 --> 00:46:47.444
And then in half of the situations, the magician would secretly switch the card.
644
00:46:47.604 --> 00:46:50.307
They would hand the card to the subject and tell him to keep it.
645
00:46:50.727 --> 00:46:53.249
What's fascinating is that later on,
646
00:46:53.869 --> 00:47:00.514
Researchers came in and asked the subjects to pull their card out and explain what they found attractive about that particular face.
647
00:47:01.034 --> 00:47:05.077
And of course, half of the subjects are holding cards of faces that they didn't actually choose.
648
00:47:05.578 --> 00:47:10.541
Do you want to guess what percentage of people realized that they actually didn't choose the card that they were holding?
649
00:47:10.561 --> 00:47:11.082
All right.
650
00:47:11.122 --> 00:47:12.282
It's probably pretty high.
651
00:47:12.302 --> 00:47:12.963
Yeah, it's.
652
00:47:13.123 --> 00:47:14.644
a shockingly high amount.
653
00:47:14.784 --> 00:47:21.367
It was actually about three quarters of people didn't even realize that they were holding different cards than they had actually chosen minutes before.
654
00:47:21.647 --> 00:47:24.188
And then the researchers asked them, say, why do you like this face so much?
655
00:47:24.368 --> 00:47:33.112
And the people started going into these like elaborate explanations of like, oh, I really like the jawline and like the hairstyle is really cool and all this stuff.
656
00:47:33.132 --> 00:47:40.736
And it's like people are explaining a card that they didn't actually choose why they chose it in like minute detail of what they care about and what they like.
657
00:47:40.896 --> 00:47:44.681
And again, it's not that these people realize like, oh shit, I didn't choose this card.
658
00:47:44.741 --> 00:47:48.886
Let me make up reasons to justify why I might have chosen it.
659
00:47:49.327 --> 00:47:51.469
It's like they didn't even realize they didn't choose it.
660
00:47:51.670 --> 00:47:53.512
They just started justifying it to themselves.
661
00:47:53.652 --> 00:47:55.134
The explanation came...
662
00:47:56.289 --> 00:48:03.251
automatically without them even having to think about it, without them even having to realize that this isn't even a thing that they chose in the first place.
663
00:48:03.831 --> 00:48:07.192
So if you apply that to everyday life, right?
664
00:48:07.472 --> 00:48:14.493
Like how many situations on a weekly basis do you kind of just find yourself in and without even like choosing to be there?
665
00:48:14.993 --> 00:48:15.954
Like it just kind of happened.
666
00:48:15.994 --> 00:48:17.214
Like you just go along with it.
667
00:48:17.294 --> 00:48:21.335
Next thing you know, you're at like, I don't know, at this cafe or something with people and you're like, why am I here?
668
00:48:21.415 --> 00:48:22.055
Like, I don't know.
669
00:48:22.135 --> 00:48:24.176
I just kind of like followed this person here and
670
00:48:27.017 --> 00:48:28.880
but then you start justifying it to yourself.
671
00:48:28.900 --> 00:48:30.341
You're like, no, no, I actually like this.
672
00:48:30.582 --> 00:48:35.428
This is actually, no, this is, I wanted this, even though you had no say in the matter whatsoever.
673
00:48:35.528 --> 00:48:36.229
Yeah, yeah.
674
00:48:36.610 --> 00:48:39.033
I think I kind of did this with you this morning, actually on the way in here.
675
00:48:39.847 --> 00:48:40.827
Oh God, what did you do?
676
00:48:40.947 --> 00:48:42.188
Well, no, I was talking about myself.
677
00:48:42.408 --> 00:48:44.728
I was like, it was about being single and stuff.
678
00:48:44.748 --> 00:48:47.909
And I'm like, yeah, no, it's probably like, how much do I actually control this?
679
00:48:47.969 --> 00:48:48.249
Oh yeah.
680
00:48:48.269 --> 00:48:48.629
You did say this.
681
00:48:48.669 --> 00:48:49.089
It's fine.
682
00:48:49.129 --> 00:48:51.010
And it's like, I've kind of set up my life this way and it's okay.
683
00:48:51.050 --> 00:48:51.550
Yeah.
684
00:48:51.590 --> 00:48:52.370
Keep telling yourself.
685
00:48:52.390 --> 00:48:53.970
There's all this post, I do this all the time.
686
00:48:54.330 --> 00:49:01.832
Post rationalization, why I bought the thing I bought or went to the place I went to or said the thing I said, all of it is post rationalization.
687
00:49:01.872 --> 00:49:02.032
Yeah.
688
00:49:02.092 --> 00:49:05.234
We talked about this a little bit in the values episode, I guess it was.
689
00:49:05.254 --> 00:49:08.335
Jonathan Haidt talks about the writer and the elephant type of thing.
690
00:49:08.355 --> 00:49:08.655
Oh, yeah.
691
00:49:08.675 --> 00:49:10.616
I think this is related to that big time.
692
00:49:10.936 --> 00:49:14.238
We post-rationalize most of our decisions.
693
00:49:14.258 --> 00:49:14.398
Right.
694
00:49:14.438 --> 00:49:15.078
This just happens.
695
00:49:15.338 --> 00:49:16.619
A lot of them, a good number of them.
696
00:49:16.639 --> 00:49:16.799
Yeah.
697
00:49:16.919 --> 00:49:18.500
That's not to say we can't think and then decide.
698
00:49:18.540 --> 00:49:19.160
Obviously, we can.
699
00:49:19.200 --> 00:49:20.681
It just takes a lot more effort to do that.
700
00:49:20.721 --> 00:49:24.763
We automatically, the point here is we so often automatically
701
00:49:25.523 --> 00:49:26.143
We don't notice.
702
00:49:26.183 --> 00:49:26.803
Come up with something.
703
00:49:26.823 --> 00:49:27.924
We don't notice that we're even.
704
00:49:28.044 --> 00:49:29.124
It's like the slate of hand.
705
00:49:29.144 --> 00:49:29.284
Yeah.
706
00:49:29.324 --> 00:49:32.885
Like it's just, it just happens and we think it was always there.
707
00:49:32.985 --> 00:49:35.766
But God, those reasons sound so convincing, don't they?
708
00:49:35.786 --> 00:49:38.347
Like it's really not hard to convince yourself of why you did something.
709
00:49:38.507 --> 00:49:46.110
In many cases, there's like a lot of interesting contexts where being smarter backfires against you.
710
00:49:46.150 --> 00:49:49.491
And I think this is one of the reasons is that the smarter you are,
711
00:49:50.231 --> 00:49:55.600
the more easily and readily you are able to come up with justifications and rationalizations for your own bullshit.
712
00:49:56.141 --> 00:50:05.054
And like to convince yourself that like you're totally fine and everything you're doing is great and very noble and very well intentioned, when actually like you're completely full of shit.
713
00:50:05.455 --> 00:50:06.755
But you're so smart, you don't realize it.
714
00:50:06.775 --> 00:50:07.835
You come up with better reasons.
715
00:50:08.035 --> 00:50:08.276
Yeah.
716
00:50:08.396 --> 00:50:09.696
You come up with better bullshit.
717
00:50:09.836 --> 00:50:10.296
Exactly.
718
00:50:10.316 --> 00:50:10.456
Yeah.
719
00:50:10.656 --> 00:50:11.136
Exactly.
720
00:50:11.236 --> 00:50:25.919
And I think this is why street smarts versus book smarts, you know, like street smart people, they seem to have a little bit more self-awareness around this sort of thing and like kind of just get that like, okay, everybody's a little bit full of shit, but that's fine because you just got to play the game.
721
00:50:26.299 --> 00:50:33.280
Whereas like book smart people don't even realize this stuff's going on because they're so good at rationalizing everything that happens in front of them.
722
00:50:33.540 --> 00:50:45.868
It kind of explains a little bit of, you know, the nutty professor phenomenon of like being a genius, but not even realizing when when like a car salesman is ripping you off or like why they're trying to rip you off.
723
00:50:46.108 --> 00:50:52.953
Seeing manipulation out in the world actually doesn't protect you from it, especially if you're smart about it, because precisely because of that.
724
00:50:53.473 --> 00:50:53.673
Yeah.
725
00:50:53.753 --> 00:50:58.176
And then seeing it in yourself is even harder sometimes, which is also a weird little paradox.
726
00:50:58.396 --> 00:51:12.465
Coming back to the self-esteem thing too, our old friend who demolished self-esteem, Roy Baumeister, did some research in the early 90s that found that when your actions hurt somebody else, you tend to rationalize yourself as being the reasonable one in life.
727
00:51:12.925 --> 00:51:16.527
the person who was hurt as being the irrational and unreasonable one.
728
00:51:16.727 --> 00:51:20.189
This seems to happen automatically at a very subconscious level.
729
00:51:20.869 --> 00:51:28.574
It is that self-preservation of we all need to see ourselves as the main character, as the hero, as the good guy.
730
00:51:28.974 --> 00:51:30.855
Baumeister even had a quote in one of his papers.
731
00:51:30.955 --> 00:51:37.679
He called it the myth of pure evil, and he pointed out that this idea that people who are evil know that they're evil just doesn't seem to exist.
732
00:51:37.759 --> 00:51:41.841
I mean, Baumeister studied violent criminals in the late 90s, so like,
733
00:51:42.321 --> 00:51:45.723
He consistently didn't come across people who thought that they were evil.
734
00:51:45.963 --> 00:51:54.267
There's a fantastic quote from David Foster Wallace in Infinite Jest from around the same time, coincidentally, where he said that evil people never believe that they are evil people.
735
00:51:54.327 --> 00:52:10.595
They believe everyone else is an evil person, which if you think about the ability to deceive yourself into doing awful shit to other people, the most logical way to justify that would be to convince yourself that everybody else is evil and you're the only good person.
736
00:52:10.775 --> 00:52:12.656
I'll go back to those scales already, aren't we?
737
00:52:12.696 --> 00:52:12.916
Yeah.
738
00:52:12.956 --> 00:52:18.838
In the small scale, you can deceive yourself and it's fine to get you through your day, but scale it up and watch out.
739
00:52:18.999 --> 00:52:21.280
And the self-deception continues all the way up.
740
00:52:21.400 --> 00:52:24.501
It's just the nature of the deception shifts.
741
00:52:24.521 --> 00:52:28.062
So at the low end, it's very like, I'm just being polite.
742
00:52:28.943 --> 00:52:31.264
Oh, I just want to be nice, right?
743
00:52:31.904 --> 00:52:36.246
Middle of the scale, it becomes, hey, I'm doing my best here.
744
00:52:36.326 --> 00:52:37.607
I didn't mean for that to happen.
745
00:52:37.667 --> 00:52:38.467
It's not my fault.
746
00:52:39.147 --> 00:52:42.149
And then at the upper end of the scale, it's, no, no, I'm not evil.
747
00:52:42.229 --> 00:52:42.789
They're evil.
748
00:52:43.689 --> 00:52:44.410
I'm the good guy.
749
00:52:44.430 --> 00:52:44.870
I'm trying.
750
00:52:45.350 --> 00:52:46.291
I'm justified.
751
00:52:46.751 --> 00:52:49.312
I'm the one out here fighting evil all by myself.
752
00:52:49.992 --> 00:53:00.998
And the last thought around this, and this isn't really PC to say, but what you often find is that the people who talk the most about being a victim are not always the ones who have been hurt the most.
753
00:53:01.758 --> 00:53:05.420
In fact, there's research that has linked a virtuous victim to.
754
00:53:06.462 --> 00:53:10.906
with high traits of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.
755
00:53:11.647 --> 00:53:20.755
The truth is that by framing yourself as a victim, both to yourself and to others, it becomes easy to justify a lot of manipulative and violent behavior towards others.
756
00:53:21.015 --> 00:53:29.802
It becomes a way to preserve your image of yourself as somebody who is noble and good, despite the fact that you were doing awful shit to other people.
757
00:53:30.621 --> 00:53:35.825
And so it is actually quite dangerous to overly sympathize.
758
00:53:36.006 --> 00:53:37.827
Obviously, we should sympathize with victims.
759
00:53:37.947 --> 00:53:45.153
But if you see somebody who is chronically playing the victim, who seems to be victimized in every context, in every scenario...
760
00:53:46.341 --> 00:53:48.462
That is a huge red flag, right?
761
00:53:48.482 --> 00:53:53.904
Because they are weaponizing their victimhood into a justification for victimizing others.
762
00:53:54.104 --> 00:53:58.926
There's a fun quote from Nassim Taleb where he said, half of people lie with their lips.
763
00:53:59.166 --> 00:54:00.847
The other half lie with their tears.
764
00:54:01.587 --> 00:54:06.710
You know what the strongest predictor of believing that other people are willing to conspire against you is?
765
00:54:06.730 --> 00:54:07.010
Mm-hmm.
766
00:54:07.688 --> 00:54:09.770
It's your willingness to conspire against other people.
767
00:54:10.171 --> 00:54:20.161
So there is actually data that finds that people who believe everyone else is trying to manipulate them and take advantage of them are the ones who are most willing to manipulate and take advantage of others.
768
00:54:20.341 --> 00:54:21.102
It takes one to know one.
769
00:54:21.342 --> 00:54:21.762
Exactly.
770
00:54:21.883 --> 00:54:22.283
Yeah.
771
00:54:22.303 --> 00:54:22.603
Exactly.
772
00:54:22.623 --> 00:54:22.763
Yeah.
773
00:54:22.804 --> 00:54:23.164
Interesting.
774
00:54:23.224 --> 00:54:23.544
Okay.
775
00:54:23.764 --> 00:54:30.712
I know this is a hard question for us to ask ourselves, but I mean, to me, it begs the question of like, how...
776
00:54:31.856 --> 00:54:35.320
far up or down that scale do you think you are?
777
00:54:36.241 --> 00:54:39.424
How aware of your own lies and manipulation do you think you are?
778
00:54:39.624 --> 00:54:43.929
You know, you have that idea about the best thing about a person is also sometimes the worst thing.
779
00:54:43.969 --> 00:54:44.149
Right.
780
00:54:44.249 --> 00:54:46.491
I think that's where we should look.
781
00:54:46.512 --> 00:54:47.673
That's where I looked anyway.
782
00:54:47.753 --> 00:54:47.993
Yeah.
783
00:54:48.233 --> 00:54:52.518
A high value of mine is like helping other people that can get manipulated pretty quickly though, too.
784
00:54:52.978 --> 00:54:55.580
I don't outwardly come to somebody and be like, well, I help you.
785
00:54:55.740 --> 00:54:58.081
I've done all of these things for you.
786
00:54:58.161 --> 00:55:00.622
There are people who will just blatantly come out and say that, right?
787
00:55:00.802 --> 00:55:01.343
Yeah.
788
00:55:01.563 --> 00:55:07.426
I don't think I've ever said that to anyone before, but I think I've probably felt like, ah, I've done all these things for this person.
789
00:55:07.626 --> 00:55:09.187
Why can't I get a little bit back here too?
790
00:55:09.247 --> 00:55:10.127
That's manipulative.
791
00:55:10.187 --> 00:55:10.707
Yeah, it is.
792
00:55:11.188 --> 00:55:11.428
It is.
793
00:55:11.668 --> 00:55:14.649
I never, ever feel like I'm doing that in the moment though.
794
00:55:14.669 --> 00:55:17.131
I never feel like I'm manipulating them in the moment.
795
00:55:17.171 --> 00:55:17.951
It never feels that.
796
00:55:17.971 --> 00:55:18.892
Feels genuine, yeah.
797
00:55:18.972 --> 00:55:19.072
Yeah.
798
00:55:19.092 --> 00:55:19.232
Yeah.
799
00:55:19.732 --> 00:55:24.635
Only when I look back on it and if I'm really honest about things like, I probably did that to get something out of that, didn't I?
800
00:55:24.835 --> 00:55:26.456
There is a pro-social way to do that.
801
00:55:26.796 --> 00:55:30.258
You know, it's like, yes, I'm scratching your back, you scratch mine kind of thing.
802
00:55:30.278 --> 00:55:31.178
That just happens.
803
00:55:31.278 --> 00:55:33.079
That's how we function sometimes.
804
00:55:33.560 --> 00:55:35.641
But it never feels like that's the motivation for me.
805
00:55:35.661 --> 00:55:37.342
And I'm not saying that's the motivation all the time.
806
00:55:37.362 --> 00:55:38.482
A lot of times it isn't.
807
00:55:38.802 --> 00:55:41.444
I really generally don't expect anything in return.
808
00:55:41.864 --> 00:55:44.425
But when that's my mode, right?
809
00:55:44.485 --> 00:55:45.106
That's my MO.
810
00:55:45.126 --> 00:55:45.966
That's what I go to.
811
00:55:46.526 --> 00:55:47.967
I think that can pretty quickly.
812
00:55:47.987 --> 00:55:49.248
I got to be careful with that one.
813
00:55:49.468 --> 00:55:55.733
Well, it also, this begs the question of like, there probably is like net positive manipulation, right?
814
00:55:55.753 --> 00:56:04.940
Like I, it's like, if I do a nice thing for a person because I want to be friends with that person and it does help engender a very wonderful friendship, right?
815
00:56:04.960 --> 00:56:08.183
Like that is a pro-social net positive form of manipulation.
816
00:56:08.203 --> 00:56:09.264
Better than blackmail, right?
817
00:56:09.504 --> 00:56:10.305
Yeah, absolutely.
818
00:56:10.325 --> 00:56:10.445
Yeah.
819
00:56:10.505 --> 00:56:11.366
Obviously, right?
820
00:56:11.406 --> 00:56:12.326
Yeah, absolutely.
821
00:56:12.346 --> 00:56:12.567
Yeah.
822
00:56:12.787 --> 00:56:13.507
And interesting.
823
00:56:13.527 --> 00:56:15.369
And we'll talk about Machiavelli, um...
824
00:56:15.809 --> 00:56:17.150
in the next chapter, I believe.
825
00:56:17.190 --> 00:56:24.313
But he talked about the difference between manipulating via love versus fear and that there are advantages and disadvantages to each one.
826
00:56:24.653 --> 00:56:36.479
I like your framing as the best thing and the worst thing because it's one of the things that I keep thinking about when I think about this question is two consistent pieces of feedback I have received my entire life from the people closest to me.
827
00:56:37.199 --> 00:56:39.720
One is Mark is sometimes too honest.
828
00:56:40.041 --> 00:56:43.722
That is like every woman I've ever dated has said that.
829
00:56:44.383 --> 00:56:45.583
My family has often said that.
830
00:56:45.843 --> 00:56:48.285
But I've also been told that I can be very insensitive.
831
00:56:49.094 --> 00:56:53.459
And I can say things that are very hurtful without even realizing that I'm saying them.
832
00:56:53.479 --> 00:56:58.865
And I think that is kind of the flip side of that honesty coin is that sometimes I will say the thing.
833
00:56:59.666 --> 00:57:03.670
I will not say that the general polite nicety that is supposed to be said.
834
00:57:03.750 --> 00:57:06.072
And I will say the thing that most people are not saying.
835
00:57:06.313 --> 00:57:10.177
And it will be hurtful and it will cause a little bit of fallout or people will be very annoyed by me.
836
00:57:10.401 --> 00:57:17.604
When I think about like friendships I've lost over the years, I think it's often because I do just talk about the elephant in the room and people get really upset.
837
00:57:17.824 --> 00:57:30.209
What's interesting too, is I think most of the people who like read my books and listen to this show and follow me on social media, like that's also why they follow me is because of this kind of costly form of honesty.
838
00:57:30.269 --> 00:57:30.469
Yeah.
839
00:57:30.509 --> 00:57:30.689
Right.
840
00:57:30.949 --> 00:57:33.630
This goes back to what you were talking about in the intro a little bit.
841
00:57:33.650 --> 00:57:35.271
You want to be manipulated to some degree.
842
00:57:36.211 --> 00:57:37.972
Somebody comes to you and they're too honest with you.
843
00:57:38.072 --> 00:57:38.612
Oh my God.
844
00:57:38.872 --> 00:57:39.613
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
845
00:57:39.813 --> 00:57:40.634
It doesn't feel good.
846
00:57:40.994 --> 00:57:43.377
Or here's the other side of it too.
847
00:57:43.457 --> 00:57:45.879
Maybe sometimes you can use honesty as manipulation.
848
00:57:46.040 --> 00:57:46.600
Absolutely.
849
00:57:46.620 --> 00:57:47.161
Right?
850
00:57:47.201 --> 00:57:47.421
Yeah.
851
00:57:47.621 --> 00:57:48.843
So it's everywhere.
852
00:57:48.883 --> 00:57:49.163
Yeah.
853
00:57:49.363 --> 00:57:50.344
It's absolutely everywhere.
854
00:57:50.484 --> 00:57:58.773
I mean, one of the thoughts that I had too, prepping for this podcast, is that in a sense, everything this industry does is a form of manipulation.
855
00:57:58.793 --> 00:58:00.014
Like if you think about...
856
00:58:00.887 --> 00:58:06.152
actually trying to get people to change and improve themselves and grow, that is manipulation.
857
00:58:06.392 --> 00:58:18.142
If I put together a YouTube video with this beautiful script that is extremely inspiring and motivating to somebody, and they go out and they make different choices in their life based on what they heard me say in that video, that is manipulation.
858
00:58:19.323 --> 00:58:24.386
actively trying to manipulate them into doing better things or making better decisions in their life.
859
00:58:24.507 --> 00:58:39.657
And I think that is why this industry has such ethical gray areas and ethical issues, because I do think there are a number of people in this industry who cross that line morally and then justify it to themselves by saying, well, I'm helping people, right?
860
00:58:39.697 --> 00:58:41.118
So, okay, yeah, that
861
00:58:45.892 --> 00:58:49.255
made me a bunch of money, but look how many people I'm helping, right?
862
00:58:49.355 --> 00:58:53.078
And it becomes a very easy justification to get by with.
863
00:58:53.318 --> 00:58:58.263
And then, of course, you end up with all sorts of horror stories that we see out of the self-help industry.
864
00:58:58.683 --> 00:59:05.569
I guess the last thing we should talk about in this chapter before we move on is detecting manipulation, right?
865
00:59:05.609 --> 00:59:07.210
So we've covered how
866
00:59:08.090 --> 00:59:10.893
We all manipulate everybody pretty much all the time.
867
00:59:11.554 --> 00:59:14.117
We manipulate ourselves pretty much all the time.
868
00:59:14.598 --> 00:59:15.739
Is there a way to spot this?
869
00:59:15.819 --> 00:59:21.706
Like, can we train ourselves to see lies and misdirection in others, deceit in others?
870
00:59:21.887 --> 00:59:25.491
Like, can we become better at tracking this within ourselves?
871
00:59:25.932 --> 00:59:26.692
Yeah.
872
00:59:28.754 --> 00:59:29.916
I mean, give me good news.
873
00:59:29.976 --> 00:59:30.316
True.
874
00:59:31.337 --> 00:59:31.557
Yeah.
875
00:59:31.578 --> 00:59:36.903
So digging into this, it's basically a coin flip, maybe a little bit better than a coin flip.
876
00:59:36.923 --> 00:59:46.333
For the most part, the few meta analyses that have been done on this, like deception, detection, lie detection, manipulation, detection of any kind basically comes out slightly higher than 50%.
877
00:59:46.434 --> 00:59:48.276
It's statistically it's a coin flip.
878
00:59:48.316 --> 00:59:49.797
And these are like the best people.
879
00:59:49.817 --> 00:59:50.478
These are like.
880
00:59:50.718 --> 00:59:51.179
Doesn't matter.
881
00:59:51.199 --> 00:59:53.240
This is going to be lay people or experts too.
882
00:59:53.541 --> 00:59:53.801
Yeah.
883
00:59:53.841 --> 00:59:54.061
Yeah.
884
00:59:54.081 --> 00:59:54.902
So that's another point.
885
00:59:55.202 --> 01:00:01.047
Nobody, the best lie detecting people in the world top out of what, like 55 or 54, 55.
886
01:00:01.208 --> 01:00:02.929
56-ish percent, something like that.
887
01:00:02.949 --> 01:00:03.370
Yeah.
888
01:00:03.410 --> 01:00:03.890
What they found.
889
01:00:04.571 --> 01:00:07.854
I think this again goes back to like the smarter you are, the more expert you are.
890
01:00:08.034 --> 01:00:09.475
You can come up with better reasons.
891
01:00:10.076 --> 01:00:12.538
And again, but though it's just a coin flip at that point.
892
01:00:12.778 --> 01:00:24.794
Well, the researcher I mentioned earlier, DePaulo, she found in her research that police officers, judges, psychiatrists, therapists were no better at predicting lies than college students were.
893
01:00:25.015 --> 01:00:26.697
People who dealt with liars every day.
894
01:00:26.877 --> 01:00:27.098
Yes.
895
01:00:27.238 --> 01:00:27.638
Yeah.
896
01:00:27.939 --> 01:00:28.139
Yeah.
897
01:00:28.499 --> 01:00:29.720
are no better about it.
898
01:00:30.081 --> 01:00:36.085
Governments have spent billions, probably trillions of dollars at this point over that course of history working on this.
899
01:00:36.125 --> 01:00:37.346
Just a small example of this.
900
01:00:37.486 --> 01:00:44.612
After 9-11, TSA developed this program to train people to spot deception in- Shady people.
901
01:00:44.692 --> 01:00:47.595
Shady people, basically, in deception at airports.
902
01:00:48.095 --> 01:00:48.615
What was it?
903
01:00:48.675 --> 01:00:49.156
900 million?
904
01:00:49.616 --> 01:00:51.858
Basically, a billion dollars they spent on this program, right?
905
01:00:52.018 --> 01:00:53.719
Years of training-
906
01:00:54.680 --> 01:01:07.308
And a lot of this was pretty subjective, but what they basically found was that they weren't any better at spotting the deceiver or the shady people than just a random person on the street was after this.
907
01:01:07.348 --> 01:01:14.352
So they ran this huge experiment, very expensive experiment, very high stakes experiment, weren't able to produce anything out of this.
908
01:01:14.592 --> 01:01:21.178
Again, we all have this idea, like we were talking about, we can read body language or like averting your gaze is like a tell or something like that.
909
01:01:21.578 --> 01:01:22.679
It's really not, though.
910
01:01:22.739 --> 01:01:25.561
People just exhibit all sorts of behaviors all the time.
911
01:01:25.942 --> 01:01:31.446
But our brains will latch on to anything that the story that we're creating fits into, right?
912
01:01:31.486 --> 01:01:32.667
And we'll say, oh, no, no, no.
913
01:01:32.767 --> 01:01:36.450
He, you know, blinked a few times to me or something like that, right?
914
01:01:36.611 --> 01:01:37.191
Or he covered it.
915
01:01:37.291 --> 01:01:38.312
I know covering your mouth.
916
01:01:38.332 --> 01:01:39.213
Covering your mouth.
917
01:01:39.293 --> 01:01:40.694
Avoiding eye contact.
918
01:01:40.714 --> 01:01:41.695
Like all of those things.
919
01:01:41.995 --> 01:01:43.075
None of those really pan out.
920
01:01:43.175 --> 01:01:45.876
Averting your gaze, that's one of the most common ones found around the world.
921
01:01:45.896 --> 01:01:48.056
People are like, oh, if there's a liar, they won't look you in the eye.
922
01:01:48.076 --> 01:01:51.117
A lot of people are just uncomfortable with eye contact, though, too.
923
01:01:51.137 --> 01:01:51.917
Yeah, that's true.
924
01:01:51.937 --> 01:01:54.737
A lot of people are socially insecure or socially anxious.
925
01:01:55.297 --> 01:01:58.918
And by the way, psychopaths probably have no problem holding eye contact with you.
926
01:01:58.938 --> 01:01:59.398
Exactly.
927
01:01:59.998 --> 01:02:00.498
Exactly.
928
01:02:00.538 --> 01:02:00.758
Yeah.
929
01:02:01.058 --> 01:02:06.519
Someone you're familiar with, you probably have a better insight into their tells than other people just because you have that experience with them.
930
01:02:06.539 --> 01:02:10.940
But just like a random person on the street or somebody you're watching on a video somewhere or something like that, you know?
931
01:02:11.120 --> 01:02:14.061
there's not really a lot of evidence to support any of that kind of stuff.
932
01:02:14.361 --> 01:02:15.902
We're really bad at detecting lies.
933
01:02:15.942 --> 01:02:16.182
Yeah.
934
01:02:16.322 --> 01:02:17.262
Basically is what I'm saying.
935
01:02:17.342 --> 01:02:18.723
We can't train ourselves.
936
01:02:18.743 --> 01:02:20.123
Can't really get a lot much better at it.
937
01:02:20.143 --> 01:02:20.404
Yeah.
938
01:02:20.864 --> 01:02:21.024
Yeah.
939
01:02:21.044 --> 01:02:26.466
There might be some very specialized areas where this can work, but for the most part, no.
940
01:02:26.646 --> 01:02:29.067
Drew, we're, we're ruining so many podcasts right now.
941
01:02:29.547 --> 01:02:29.987
Well, but why?
942
01:02:30.007 --> 01:02:30.688
Okay, so why?
943
01:02:30.968 --> 01:02:34.251
So many podcasts have told me that this is how I can spot a liar.
944
01:02:34.351 --> 01:02:36.373
This is how I can know I'm dating a narcissist.
945
01:02:36.393 --> 01:02:37.654
Oh, God, it's all over.
946
01:02:37.735 --> 01:02:38.015
Yeah.
947
01:02:38.215 --> 01:02:39.056
No, you can't.
948
01:02:39.436 --> 01:02:48.704
I mean, the truth is, is that the only way to really verify the honesty of somebody is to go actually check if the thing that they said is true or not.
949
01:02:49.425 --> 01:02:50.946
And like, go verify it yourself.
950
01:02:51.006 --> 01:02:53.408
Go see, like, did they do the behavior that they said they did?
951
01:02:53.448 --> 01:02:55.309
Did you, did like go check with third parties?
952
01:02:55.589 --> 01:02:59.712
The fact of the matter is that's very cumbersome and tiring and total pain in the ass.
953
01:02:59.732 --> 01:03:01.653
And we don't want to have to do that with each other.
954
01:03:01.833 --> 01:03:06.637
So we, it's, it's, it's more convenient to just trust somebody.
955
01:03:07.437 --> 01:03:10.620
and assume that they're telling the truth until proven otherwise.
956
01:03:10.920 --> 01:03:18.906
Some psychologists have made this argument that our inability to pick up lies might actually be a feature and not a bug for this exact reason.
957
01:03:19.026 --> 01:03:30.915
Because if people are telling small lies and deceiving each other in very minuscule ways all the time, if any of us actually were really, really good at picking up on those things...
958
01:03:31.515 --> 01:03:32.916
it would drive us fucking crazy.
959
01:03:32.976 --> 01:03:37.260
Like we would be so distrustful and skeptical of everything and everybody all the time.
960
01:03:37.580 --> 01:03:39.022
It would destroy our social circles.
961
01:03:39.082 --> 01:03:49.991
It would just rock our worldviews in terms of like what we believed humanity is and capable of that I think we need to believe people most of the time.
962
01:03:50.171 --> 01:03:52.633
And these psychologists make the point that
963
01:03:53.554 --> 01:03:55.916
People are honest most of the time.
964
01:03:56.016 --> 01:03:58.318
Most people are honest most of the time.
965
01:03:58.418 --> 01:04:09.026
So it is better to default towards honesty to maintain that social cohesion and be lied to on the margins here and there every once in a while than the alternative.
966
01:04:09.267 --> 01:04:10.828
The constant distrust.
967
01:04:10.928 --> 01:04:14.411
If you distrust people, you can't really build a relationship with them.
968
01:04:14.651 --> 01:04:15.912
You can't rely upon them.
969
01:04:15.932 --> 01:04:17.253
You can't collaborate with them.
970
01:04:17.633 --> 01:04:25.839
And so if you distrust everybody all the time, you are socially, it's another form of social isolation and it is extremely harmful for your well-being.
971
01:04:25.939 --> 01:04:27.560
So we were kind of forced to trust others.
972
01:04:27.640 --> 01:04:29.282
It's good for us to trust others.
973
01:04:29.422 --> 01:04:35.286
And it's in many cases probably good for us that many of these white lies do go undetected.
974
01:04:35.526 --> 01:04:40.650
We do benefit from the pro-social cohesion that comes from them.
975
01:04:41.090 --> 01:04:43.572
This kind of goes a little bit back to the evolutionary thing too.
976
01:04:43.612 --> 01:05:00.383
You know, we, we evolved in small groups and we had repeated contact with the same person and those situations it's, it behooves everyone to be honest more often than, than not the little white lies aside, but it behooves everyone in that situation to interact honestly with each other.
977
01:05:00.464 --> 01:05:09.290
We've talked about this before, like the, the tip for tat, you know, that whole strategy, it's actually more advantageous for you, uh, in a repeated context with someone.
978
01:05:09.510 --> 01:05:09.690
Yeah.
979
01:05:09.950 --> 01:05:11.131
to be truthful and honest.
980
01:05:11.271 --> 01:05:12.772
And so you may as well just assume honesty.
981
01:05:13.072 --> 01:05:25.620
Yeah, if anybody wants to nerd out really hard on just kind of the evolutionary explanation of human friendship and human collaboration, check out the friendship episode from last November.
982
01:05:26.500 --> 01:05:32.344
We get really deep into a lot of the game theory of just human cooperation and why it matters so much.
983
01:05:32.704 --> 01:05:36.847
The other interesting thing that we came across that I found interesting,
984
01:05:36.987 --> 01:05:43.283
fascinating was that a survey in 2010 found that almost 50% of all lies came from 5% of people.
985
01:05:45.578 --> 01:05:50.860
And so very much like the same way you see this across a lot of crime statistics, right?
986
01:05:51.280 --> 01:05:55.782
So 70% of the burglaries are committed by like 2% of the burglars.
987
01:05:55.982 --> 01:06:04.405
It seems to be similar here where it's like the vast majority of lies are committed by a very small group of compulsive and consistent liars.
988
01:06:04.705 --> 01:06:11.068
As long as you just make a point to avoid those people and kind of give a little bit of grace to everybody else.
989
01:06:12.308 --> 01:06:21.813
you're probably fine and it's not worth agonizing over every little lie, every little like being manipulated in every micro situation.
990
01:06:22.613 --> 01:06:26.755
It's really just like avoid that 5% and you're fine.
991
01:06:26.915 --> 01:06:31.718
So this has been a long chapter to sum everything up kind of where we're at.
992
01:06:32.418 --> 01:06:36.943
We've established that manipulation is not a certain category of person.
993
01:06:37.504 --> 01:06:41.709
It is a spectrum of behavior exhibited by all people all the time.
994
01:06:42.534 --> 01:06:43.995
We're doing it all the time.
995
01:06:44.335 --> 01:06:45.595
Everybody we know is doing it.
996
01:06:45.976 --> 01:06:54.700
White lies, time compliments, strategic framings, stories that are a little bit self-serving, maybe exaggerated or embellished to make ourselves look a little bit better.
997
01:06:54.720 --> 01:06:58.962
The typical lie, it happens a few times a day.
998
01:06:59.282 --> 01:07:01.823
It tends to be very small in its implications.
999
01:07:02.303 --> 01:07:05.245
It is not even worth the effort to spot in the first place.
1000
01:07:06.165 --> 01:07:07.707
much less call somebody out for.
1001
01:07:08.068 --> 01:07:12.452
And not only do we do these things all the time, but we aren't even aware of the fact that we're doing them all the time.
1002
01:07:12.572 --> 01:07:18.058
Like the most effective way we deceive others or manipulate others is by deceiving and manipulating ourselves.
1003
01:07:18.519 --> 01:07:19.820
We are extremely adept at it.
1004
01:07:20.241 --> 01:07:23.624
Our minds seem to be prone or predisposed to do it.
1005
01:07:24.345 --> 01:07:26.046
And it's not because we're horrible people.
1006
01:07:26.106 --> 01:07:29.489
It's just because like, that's kind of, that's how our machinery is built.
1007
01:07:29.609 --> 01:07:44.420
And that's how the game theory of human interaction works out is that it is more cost efficient to believe your own bullshit than to have to spin up some wild tale consciously and then spend a ton of energy and effort and anxiety trying to defend it.
1008
01:07:44.640 --> 01:07:51.762
We've talked about how that self-deception and self-justification exist on all parts of the manipulation spectrum.
1009
01:07:51.823 --> 01:08:04.327
So even from the smallest white lie to the most heinous, violent assault on somebody, the person who is doing the manipulation is going to have justifications for themselves because they need to maintain that.
1010
01:08:04.927 --> 01:08:08.668
that sense of self, that they are the good guy, that they are the hero in the story.
1011
01:08:08.888 --> 01:08:21.892
And this is why you should be especially skeptical of people who always seem to have a narrative of themselves being a righteous victim, because it is that sense of righteous victimhood that justifies the worst and most manipulative behavior.
1012
01:08:22.232 --> 01:08:24.833
If the conclusion is, is that we're all manipulative,
1013
01:08:25.413 --> 01:08:33.216
to varying degrees, and manipulation is always occurring throughout our lives to varying degrees, the question becomes, where is the line?
1014
01:08:33.636 --> 01:08:45.040
At what point does manipulation go from just being kind of this benign, annoying, unfortunate thing to an actual ethical problem, something that is reprehensible or that people should be punished for?
1015
01:08:46.183 --> 01:08:49.427
And the truth is, is that that line is kind of murky.
1016
01:08:49.907 --> 01:08:51.349
It's not completely clear.
1017
01:08:51.589 --> 01:09:04.763
And so in the next chapter, we're going to get into a lot of the different ethical philosophies of where that line is and what manipulation is acceptable in our day-to-day lives and what manipulation is unacceptable and how to distinguish between the two.
1018
01:09:05.063 --> 01:09:07.044
All right, we will be right back after this.
1019
01:09:07.384 --> 01:09:09.766
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1038
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1039
01:10:22.631 --> 01:10:24.573
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1040
01:10:25.571 --> 01:10:27.632
This episode is brought to you by Ethos.
1041
01:10:28.192 --> 01:10:29.272
Remember adulting?
1042
01:10:29.653 --> 01:10:35.375
Around 2016, millennials were posting about doing their taxes or folding their laundry like they'd won a damn award.
1043
01:10:35.595 --> 01:10:38.596
The word has since been deemed cringe, but the feeling has stuck.
1044
01:10:38.836 --> 01:10:44.298
Plenty of us are in our 40s now, Gen Z's about to hit their 30s, and nobody feels like an actual grownup.
1045
01:10:44.498 --> 01:10:50.741
So we avoid thinking about all the grownup stuff, like life insurance, and I'm guilty of this too.
1046
01:10:51.081 --> 01:10:53.862
Then I hit 40, and I figured it was time to stop pretending I'm 25.
1047
01:10:54.582 --> 01:11:02.564
Now, I'm not planning on going anywhere, but if something does happen to me, I don't want my wife dealing with grief and a financial mess at the same time.
1048
01:11:02.704 --> 01:11:08.246
My process involved weeks of phone calls and forms, which is a uniquely depressing way to contemplate your own mortality.
1049
01:11:08.466 --> 01:11:13.627
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1050
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1058
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1059
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1060
01:11:46.438 --> 01:11:49.739
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1061
01:11:50.119 --> 01:11:51.380
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1062
01:11:51.620 --> 01:11:52.260
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1063
01:11:52.720 --> 01:11:55.348
All right, we're back with more manipulation.
1064
01:12:00.003 --> 01:12:06.028
The philosopher Emmanuel Kant was, I think, every biohacking bro's wet dream.
1065
01:12:06.729 --> 01:12:13.495
For pretty much the entire back half of his life, he lived such a regimented and planned schedule.
1066
01:12:13.755 --> 01:12:16.578
He would wake up at the same time every day, 5.30 in the morning.
1067
01:12:17.098 --> 01:12:19.100
He would read for the same amount of time.
1068
01:12:19.120 --> 01:12:20.701
He would write for the same amount of time.
1069
01:12:21.102 --> 01:12:24.685
He would go to the local university where he would teach science.
1070
01:12:24.765 --> 01:12:26.786
the same class every single day.
1071
01:12:27.427 --> 01:12:29.088
He would take lunch at the same restaurant.
1072
01:12:29.488 --> 01:12:33.110
He would go on his afternoon walk through the same park on the same route.
1073
01:12:33.250 --> 01:12:36.212
He would arrive at home at the exact same time every single day.
1074
01:12:37.092 --> 01:12:38.453
He would work into the evening.
1075
01:12:38.473 --> 01:12:43.996
He would hang out with the same group of friends and he would go to bed at the exact same time every single night.
1076
01:12:44.036 --> 01:12:45.377
He ate the same thing every day.
1077
01:12:45.757 --> 01:12:47.919
He never left his hometown of Konigsberg.
1078
01:12:48.579 --> 01:12:50.341
Prussia in his entire life.
1079
01:12:50.661 --> 01:12:54.605
He lived like 30 miles from the ocean and never saw it.
1080
01:12:54.825 --> 01:12:55.565
He did not drink.
1081
01:12:55.726 --> 01:12:56.606
He did not party.
1082
01:12:56.827 --> 01:12:58.188
He did not waste any time.
1083
01:12:58.388 --> 01:13:04.053
Everything was focused and dedicated to either work or his own personal mental and physical health.
1084
01:13:04.354 --> 01:13:11.720
And his routine was so predictable that his neighbors used to joke that they could tune their clocks based on Kant coming and leaving.
1085
01:13:12.041 --> 01:13:14.022
Now, what's interesting about Kant is that this
1086
01:13:14.823 --> 01:13:36.212
insane adherence to routine it was not accidental it was actually very intentional and it was based on his own moral philosophy now it's useful to kind of place kant in the context of the enlightenment so he is one of the most prominent enlightenment thinkers uh one of the most influential philosophers who's ever lived at the time there was a pretty
1087
01:13:37.759 --> 01:13:47.266
massive gap around moral philosophy, which was that up until that point in the West, all morality had been based around Christianity.
1088
01:13:47.706 --> 01:13:48.827
Everything was in the Bible.
1089
01:13:49.547 --> 01:13:50.648
God said, you can do this.
1090
01:13:50.668 --> 01:13:51.489
You can't do that.
1091
01:13:51.609 --> 01:13:52.509
That's just how it is.
1092
01:13:53.470 --> 01:13:53.670
Right.
1093
01:13:53.690 --> 01:13:54.672
That's how we're going to live.
1094
01:13:54.912 --> 01:14:05.524
When the Enlightenment thinkers came along, they argued that truth should be ascertained not from the Bible, but through critical reason and rationality.
1095
01:14:05.845 --> 01:14:13.333
And this worked really, really well for all sorts of things, for the advancement of science, for the improvement of technology.
1096
01:14:14.034 --> 01:14:19.077
inventing new theories in economics, the later industrialization of the Western world.
1097
01:14:19.137 --> 01:14:30.483
Like all of these things were very much driven by the scientific process, the pursuit of truth via rationality, experimentation, learning from failures, so on and so forth.
1098
01:14:31.544 --> 01:14:37.387
The problem at the time was that there was still no way to deduce morality, right?
1099
01:14:37.763 --> 01:14:38.964
rationally through reason.
1100
01:14:39.265 --> 01:14:48.875
The same way you can make a scientific prediction and then go verify it through observation, you couldn't necessarily make an ethical or moral prediction and then verify it through somebody's behaviors.
1101
01:14:49.035 --> 01:14:52.098
It just seemed to be very much based on people's
1102
01:14:52.859 --> 01:14:55.701
sentiments and how things made them feel.
1103
01:14:55.981 --> 01:15:04.226
And this was Hume's argument in, in earlier in that century is Hume argued that all morality is basically, it's just vibes.
1104
01:15:04.607 --> 01:15:05.667
It's just feelings, man.
1105
01:15:05.888 --> 01:15:10.771
Like we tend to associate what is ethical with what makes us and other people feel good.
1106
01:15:10.891 --> 01:15:13.793
And what is unethical with what makes us and other people feel bad.
1107
01:15:14.453 --> 01:15:15.914
This was not satisfying for Kant.
1108
01:15:16.094 --> 01:15:34.562
And so he took on the project of devising a kind of fully rational or theoretical view of morality that could be argued from first principles and reason through the same way you would reason through mathematical proofs or through like different physics experiments.
1109
01:15:35.078 --> 01:15:43.122
One of the things that he realized is that for something to be a moral truth, it needs to be true in every context and in every situation.
1110
01:15:43.503 --> 01:15:49.786
You can't have something be morally correct with this person over here, but it's incorrect for that person over there.
1111
01:15:49.826 --> 01:16:01.893
Like if something is a moral truth, the same way the law of gravity is true here in Los Angeles as it is in Tokyo, as it is in India, a moral truth has to be true in India.
1112
01:16:02.593 --> 01:16:04.575
everywhere and with every individual as well.
1113
01:16:04.915 --> 01:16:08.358
And Kant called these moral truths categorical imperatives.
1114
01:16:08.398 --> 01:16:14.384
They were basically truths that were self-evident and self-reinforcing and applicable to every situation.
1115
01:16:15.064 --> 01:16:28.816
Now, one of these categorical imperatives that he came up with that I personally find to be incredibly profound and also I think is extremely relevant for this ethical discussion of manipulation and where kind of the moral bounds of
1116
01:16:29.597 --> 01:16:35.783
influence and, uh, manipulating each other is, is something that he called the formula of humanity.
1117
01:16:36.564 --> 01:16:47.035
And the exact quote was act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.
1118
01:16:47.716 --> 01:16:48.476
So basically, uh,
1119
01:16:49.461 --> 01:16:54.885
Never treat people as a means to some other and only treat humans as a means unto themselves.
1120
01:16:55.345 --> 01:17:06.393
Now, what's brilliant about the formula of humanity is that I think it explains really nicely so many of our moral intuitions of what is right and wrong.
1121
01:17:06.793 --> 01:17:12.697
So, for example, if I tell you that I like your jacket and I like it because I just like it.
1122
01:17:14.073 --> 01:17:15.354
I'm treating you as an end.
1123
01:17:15.675 --> 01:17:20.340
The motivation of my behavior is purely for your sake.
1124
01:17:21.441 --> 01:17:30.210
And because I am saying something nice about you, because I am inspired to say something nice about you, makes it feel moral.
1125
01:17:30.790 --> 01:17:32.212
It feels like a good thing.
1126
01:17:32.392 --> 01:17:34.754
Like I did a good thing by complimenting you that way.
1127
01:17:35.615 --> 01:17:41.139
Now imagine if I said that you have a nice jacket because I want you to drive me home after this.
1128
01:17:41.700 --> 01:17:45.703
And I feel like if I compliment you a bunch, you're going to offer to give me a ride.
1129
01:17:46.143 --> 01:17:48.085
That feels like icky, right?
1130
01:17:48.105 --> 01:17:50.367
That feels a little gross.
1131
01:17:50.387 --> 01:17:53.529
And when people do that to us, it makes us feel a little bit gross.
1132
01:17:54.189 --> 01:17:58.653
And Kant would argue that the reason for that is because I'm not treating you as an end.
1133
01:17:58.673 --> 01:18:01.115
I'm treating you as a means to another end, right?
1134
01:18:01.715 --> 01:18:02.996
The end, the...
1135
01:18:04.037 --> 01:18:07.338
fundamental motivation is for me to get a ride home.
1136
01:18:08.198 --> 01:18:14.520
And so I'm going to say nice things to you because it's going to increase the chances that I get a ride home from you, right?
1137
01:18:14.540 --> 01:18:21.341
So I'm treating you as a means to some other end, which Kant would say that is by definition unethical.
1138
01:18:21.421 --> 01:18:27.523
So if you think about what lying is in general, it is treating people as a means to some other end.
1139
01:18:28.323 --> 01:18:35.993
If you think about stealing, right, it is treating other people's property or possessions as a means to some other end.
1140
01:18:36.053 --> 01:18:43.442
Like if I steal your car, I am treating you as a means to some other end, which is to get a car.
1141
01:18:43.462 --> 01:18:43.562
Yeah.
1142
01:18:44.603 --> 01:18:50.045
If I cheat in some way to impress you or get something that I want out of you, it's the same thing.
1143
01:18:50.105 --> 01:19:06.992
Like if you go down the line of kind of all the classic moral principles, lying, cheating, stealing, manipulating, violence, coercion, all of these things have kind of the same underlying principle in that you are using another human being as a means to some other end.
1144
01:19:07.332 --> 01:19:08.173
to benefit yourself.
1145
01:19:08.353 --> 01:19:16.997
Now, what's beautiful about the formula of humanity is that it also applies to ourselves because we also use ourselves as a means to some other end.
1146
01:19:17.358 --> 01:19:22.541
And again, we tend to see people who do this as distasteful or unethical.
1147
01:19:23.061 --> 01:19:26.503
So if somebody demeans themselves or degrades themselves
1148
01:19:27.083 --> 01:19:33.070
to earn the approval or impression of some other person, we see that as pathetic.
1149
01:19:33.210 --> 01:19:39.277
We see that as like somebody who has no integrity or dignity for themselves.
1150
01:19:39.377 --> 01:19:42.541
If somebody harms themselves in some way to...
1151
01:19:44.483 --> 01:19:47.986
earn more money or receive gifts from somebody, right?
1152
01:19:48.006 --> 01:19:50.348
Like you have that same X factor.
1153
01:19:50.749 --> 01:19:56.234
You're like prostituting yourself for, for just like some kind of superficial benefit.
1154
01:19:56.774 --> 01:20:10.006
When you look at things like compulsive behaviors or addictions, you could look at it through this lens of like, if you are drinking compulsively, you're demeaning yourself for the sake of, of, of,
1155
01:20:10.987 --> 01:20:17.574
fun or social cohesion or, you know, some kind of wild experience or wild night with a bunch of people.
1156
01:20:17.634 --> 01:20:21.538
Like, you could look at that as treating yourself as a means to some other end.
1157
01:20:21.618 --> 01:20:23.881
Like, that is an unethical way to treat yourself.
1158
01:20:24.561 --> 01:20:25.582
It's this incredible...
1159
01:20:26.663 --> 01:20:46.720
rubric that you can run almost almost every undesirable behavior you can imagine you can run it through the formula of humanity and it will come out the same pattern you're either treating somebody else as a means or you're treating yourself as a means and by Kant's definition that makes it unethical
1160
01:20:47.353 --> 01:20:49.814
Okay, this sounds good to me too, and I think you're right.
1161
01:20:49.834 --> 01:20:56.078
You can run lots of shady situations or whatever through this test.
1162
01:20:56.338 --> 01:20:57.879
This is one that always kind of confused me anyway.
1163
01:20:58.179 --> 01:21:03.302
What about when you're lying to protect someone else or even lying to protect their feelings?
1164
01:21:03.322 --> 01:21:03.823
Like somebody...
1165
01:21:04.643 --> 01:21:13.689
ask you a question and yeah, you have an honest answer, but like we kind of already talked about, there's these little white lies we tell to smooth things over or you don't want to be rude.
1166
01:21:13.709 --> 01:21:20.193
You want to protect a relationship and you want to protect that person's feelings, maybe even too, their self-esteem, their self-image of themselves.
1167
01:21:20.553 --> 01:21:22.494
What about a situation like that, Mark?
1168
01:21:22.855 --> 01:21:25.256
So Kant would say it's unethical.
1169
01:21:25.837 --> 01:21:27.037
Kant was very radical.
1170
01:21:27.297 --> 01:21:30.580
So it's funny because at the time, Kant's critics brought up
1171
01:21:31.520 --> 01:21:54.128
very quickly brought up thought experiments like you just suggested and they actually brought up a very extreme one which was the the murder at the door case right so they said okay what if a murderer knocks on your door and they say very plainly to you I want to kill your friend is your is your friend at your house currently and your friend is in the back what would you do now
1172
01:21:55.220 --> 01:21:56.820
obviously you lie, right?
1173
01:21:56.840 --> 01:21:57.401
Yeah.
1174
01:21:57.501 --> 01:22:01.402
Like there's never been a more obvious situation where you say, I have no idea where they are.
1175
01:22:02.182 --> 01:22:03.022
Check down the street.
1176
01:22:03.382 --> 01:22:09.464
So Kant actually argued that you should not lie to the murderer at the door, which this has done a huge number.
1177
01:22:09.524 --> 01:22:12.165
I think this single public defense
1178
01:22:13.125 --> 01:22:38.290
has probably tarnished his moral moral theory and moral framework more than anything else uh over the past 200 years because it violates every intuition that we have and and frankly it's just it's stupid so his argument was is that you should be honest with the murderer but the reasoning is like it's actually quite elegant if you understand it and like even though it's stupid
1179
01:22:40.092 --> 01:22:43.774
I still admire kind of the philosophical framework that it comes from.
1180
01:22:43.794 --> 01:22:56.000
So Kant's argument, the basis of his entire moral framework was that consciousness itself is the most rare and special thing in the known universe.
1181
01:22:56.560 --> 01:23:00.502
Out of everything we know in the whole universe, there is this belief.
1182
01:23:00.727 --> 01:23:10.130
brief flickering light of consciousness and reason that, to our knowledge, has never existed before and has never existed anywhere else and will never exist again.
1183
01:23:10.530 --> 01:23:25.934
And so everything we do should be optimized and designed to protect and promote that consciousness as much as possible, which is a very beautiful realization and, I would argue, basis of a moral framework.
1184
01:23:26.434 --> 01:23:28.495
Now, if you think about what consciousness is,
1185
01:23:29.735 --> 01:23:46.262
It's a lot of different things, but in Kant's framework, what he identified as ethically unique about somebody with consciousness is that they have agency, that they have the right to choose their actions and behaviors, to choose who they're going to become, to choose who they want to be in the world.
1186
01:23:46.863 --> 01:23:52.185
And so the reason the formula of humanity is a definition of morality is...
1187
01:23:53.795 --> 01:23:58.361
is because it is in principle what violating somebody else's agency is.
1188
01:23:58.761 --> 01:24:03.146
So when I lie to you, it's not just that I'm lying to you to get something out of you.
1189
01:24:03.727 --> 01:24:10.235
It is when I lie to you, I'm distorting or preventing you from acting with full agency in the world.
1190
01:24:10.515 --> 01:24:12.577
I am giving you false information.
1191
01:24:12.717 --> 01:24:15.599
I am distorting current information you may have.
1192
01:24:15.839 --> 01:24:18.321
I am hiding intentions that I have.
1193
01:24:18.441 --> 01:24:23.925
What it does is that it interferes with your ability to fully act in the world with full information.
1194
01:24:23.985 --> 01:24:27.848
And so that's that is actually what Kant's argument is, is unethical.
1195
01:24:28.249 --> 01:24:32.232
And what accompanies that agency is responsibility.
1196
01:24:32.752 --> 01:24:32.992
Right.
1197
01:24:33.392 --> 01:24:34.213
He called it duty.
1198
01:24:34.493 --> 01:24:34.633
Right.
1199
01:24:34.653 --> 01:24:38.877
He said that because we are conscious and we have agency, we all have a duty to
1200
01:24:39.537 --> 01:24:49.564
to do our best with everything in our lives, to maximize ourselves to our fullest potential and help maximize other people to their fullest potential.
1201
01:24:49.844 --> 01:25:06.256
And in his framework, the way you do that is by not interfering with their agency at all whatsoever, is by giving them full control over their own lives and not deciding at any point that you know better than I do what's good for me or vice versa.
1202
01:25:06.796 --> 01:25:22.616
So coming back to the murderer at the door, Kant's argument is that by lying to the murderer, like if the murderer is going to kill your friend and make that horrific mistake, it is not your responsibility to prevent that.
1203
01:25:23.337 --> 01:25:23.577
Okay.
1204
01:25:25.302 --> 01:25:25.642
Okay.
1205
01:25:25.782 --> 01:25:26.783
Which is fucking stupid.
1206
01:25:26.823 --> 01:25:27.944
Right, yeah, yeah.
1207
01:25:27.964 --> 01:25:30.165
But you can see how he arrives there, right?
1208
01:25:30.305 --> 01:25:34.408
Like it is this very idealistic moral framework.
1209
01:25:35.529 --> 01:25:42.254
And I think like all moral frameworks, they start very beautiful and elegant and noble.
1210
01:25:42.474 --> 01:25:52.060
And then when you start to get into more and more extreme situations, they all become absolutely absurd and they collapse upon their own kind of mental scaffolding.
1211
01:25:52.220 --> 01:25:52.521
Okay.
1212
01:25:52.741 --> 01:25:54.142
But that would be Kant's,
1213
01:25:54.822 --> 01:25:55.242
argument.
1214
01:25:55.402 --> 01:25:55.703
Okay.
1215
01:25:55.863 --> 01:25:57.544
If we don't take such an extreme example.
1216
01:25:57.584 --> 01:25:57.824
Yes.
1217
01:25:57.844 --> 01:25:58.044
Okay.
1218
01:25:58.324 --> 01:26:01.647
Let's say you have a friend that comes to you who's not going to be murdered.
1219
01:26:03.088 --> 01:26:06.390
But instead they're like, you know, do you think my nose is big?
1220
01:26:06.410 --> 01:26:07.551
Do you think I have a big nose?
1221
01:26:07.671 --> 01:26:08.551
And they have a big nose.
1222
01:26:08.632 --> 01:26:08.812
Right.
1223
01:26:08.912 --> 01:26:09.152
Okay.
1224
01:26:09.872 --> 01:26:16.637
The best way I've ever heard to deal with this anyway is to say, yes, you have a big nose and I don't care because you're my friend and it doesn't matter to me.
1225
01:26:16.717 --> 01:26:18.018
Those types of things don't matter to me.
1226
01:26:18.238 --> 01:26:18.498
Right.
1227
01:26:18.899 --> 01:26:24.123
So don't lie to them to say, no, your nose isn't big because then, you know, they're like, they know their nose is big.
1228
01:26:24.163 --> 01:26:24.383
Right.
1229
01:26:24.603 --> 01:26:26.645
Like, so they're not gonna be able to trust you at some point.
1230
01:26:27.311 --> 01:26:27.511
Yeah.
1231
01:26:27.731 --> 01:26:29.752
But also tell them that it doesn't matter that they have a big nose.
1232
01:26:30.612 --> 01:26:31.992
So I like that tactically.
1233
01:26:32.893 --> 01:26:36.954
Kant did soften on his stance later on towards the end of his life.
1234
01:26:37.114 --> 01:26:49.657
So about 10 years later, he wrote an essay called Perpetual Peace, which, by the way, he was the first person to suggest a United Nations as like a source of global peace.
1235
01:26:49.857 --> 01:26:51.578
Totally story for a different podcast.
1236
01:26:52.498 --> 01:26:58.402
But in that essay, he came up with something a little bit more practical to navigate a lot of these situations.
1237
01:26:59.123 --> 01:27:06.048
So basically, he acknowledged that the desire to influence each other is natural and kind of inevitable.
1238
01:27:06.748 --> 01:27:09.750
What makes it ethical or unethical is...
1239
01:27:11.016 --> 01:27:18.077
whether or not the other person, once becoming aware of that manipulation, would be upset or not.
1240
01:27:18.737 --> 01:27:28.999
So for example, if I lied to you and told you a bunch of stuff, hoping that you'll give me a ride home, and then you found out about it, you'd probably be like, wow, that's kind of shitty, dude.
1241
01:27:29.459 --> 01:27:31.500
You should just ask me for a ride home, right?
1242
01:27:31.840 --> 01:27:34.080
Whereas like, I don't know, let's say I do you a favor.
1243
01:27:34.120 --> 01:27:38.581
Like, let's say I decide I'm gonna run down to the corner store and I'll pick something up for you.
1244
01:27:39.583 --> 01:27:44.078
And then I tell you, I'm like, hey, I'm going to go pick this thing up, but I'm only doing it so you give me a ride home later.
1245
01:27:45.672 --> 01:27:46.753
That doesn't feel as bad.
1246
01:27:47.434 --> 01:27:49.896
It's kind of like, okay, well, yeah, it's like a tit for tat thing.
1247
01:27:50.216 --> 01:27:50.436
Sure.
1248
01:27:50.596 --> 01:27:51.217
All right, whatever.
1249
01:27:51.437 --> 01:27:54.439
We could think of this almost as like the publicity test, right?
1250
01:27:55.140 --> 01:28:01.886
If the person that you're trying to influence became aware of the influence that you're subjecting them to, how upset would they be about it?
1251
01:28:02.106 --> 01:28:04.108
And in a lot of cases, they actually wouldn't be upset.
1252
01:28:04.168 --> 01:28:07.751
And in some cases, they might actually be happy that you said it, right?
1253
01:28:07.811 --> 01:28:10.753
So I used the example earlier of like, let's say that my wife...
1254
01:28:11.674 --> 01:28:19.421
spent a bunch of hours like preparing a really nice dinner and their dinner is kind of like, eh, but I keep complimenting her for it.
1255
01:28:19.461 --> 01:28:20.462
I'm like, wow, this is so good.
1256
01:28:20.482 --> 01:28:21.283
Thank you so much.
1257
01:28:21.383 --> 01:28:22.604
Oh, you put so much effort into this.
1258
01:28:23.204 --> 01:28:31.552
Now let's say that she became aware that I actually don't like it that much, but I'm telling her that I like it a lot because I appreciate how much effort she put into it.
1259
01:28:32.072 --> 01:28:34.294
She probably wouldn't be upset about that, right?
1260
01:28:34.334 --> 01:28:36.756
Like she'd be like, oh, actually, I'm really glad he did that.
1261
01:28:37.603 --> 01:28:43.488
because it would have made me feel bad, and it would have caused a fight, and it would have just made the whole night worse, right?
1262
01:28:43.528 --> 01:28:46.951
So basically, the algorithm is expose the manipulation.
1263
01:28:47.611 --> 01:28:53.797
If once exposed, the manipulation upsets people, then it's probably unethical.
1264
01:28:55.017 --> 01:29:01.640
If it is met with indifference or even people are appreciative that you did it, it could potentially be a good thing.
1265
01:29:01.920 --> 01:29:02.440
Okay.
1266
01:29:02.480 --> 01:29:07.822
So there is room for some transactions and relationships or even transactional relationships themselves.
1267
01:29:08.242 --> 01:29:08.502
Yeah.
1268
01:29:08.582 --> 01:29:09.043
In this.
1269
01:29:09.083 --> 01:29:09.523
Yes.
1270
01:29:09.583 --> 01:29:11.664
As long as it's above board.
1271
01:29:11.684 --> 01:29:13.864
Like, hey, I'm doing this for you because you did this for me.
1272
01:29:14.245 --> 01:29:14.445
Right.
1273
01:29:14.705 --> 01:29:16.806
People deride transactional relationships so much.
1274
01:29:16.826 --> 01:29:18.826
But if you look around, we need them.
1275
01:29:18.846 --> 01:29:20.267
We absolutely need them.
1276
01:29:20.307 --> 01:29:20.507
Yeah.
1277
01:29:20.527 --> 01:29:20.767
Yeah.
1278
01:29:21.108 --> 01:29:24.610
I mean, if I'm like, let's say I'm going to sell my couch to somebody, right?
1279
01:29:25.071 --> 01:29:28.093
Like, can we get into a negotiation over price?
1280
01:29:28.413 --> 01:29:36.799
Obviously, there's a whole suite of behaviors and techniques to like negotiate better in situations like that.
1281
01:29:37.039 --> 01:29:44.965
Like you never walk into a sales negotiation and say, okay, well, I'm going to set my anchor price extremely high, hoping that this manipulates you.
1282
01:29:45.025 --> 01:29:46.026
And like, yeah.
1283
01:29:46.186 --> 01:29:48.067
People already know, like they get it.
1284
01:29:48.347 --> 01:29:50.049
It's just part of the context.
1285
01:29:50.129 --> 01:29:51.329
It's part of the situation.
1286
01:29:51.550 --> 01:29:54.692
It is a relatively benign form of manipulation.
1287
01:29:55.312 --> 01:29:56.172
And that's fine.
1288
01:29:56.333 --> 01:30:01.136
If I'm like negotiating with a car salesman or something, it's not that I'm trying to fuck over the car salesman.
1289
01:30:01.316 --> 01:30:02.657
I'm just trying to get a good price.
1290
01:30:03.277 --> 01:30:03.457
Right.
1291
01:30:03.537 --> 01:30:04.558
And he's doing the same.
1292
01:30:04.858 --> 01:30:06.379
There's nothing personal involved.
1293
01:30:06.399 --> 01:30:10.502
There's nothing like, uh, we're not like actively trying to harm each other.
1294
01:30:11.242 --> 01:30:15.543
It's just we're trying to find mutual ground where we can both agree.
1295
01:30:15.803 --> 01:30:19.784
The more interesting version of this is that there's this whole concept of nudges.
1296
01:30:20.245 --> 01:30:22.225
Are you familiar with nudges in economics?
1297
01:30:22.445 --> 01:30:28.907
There's a bunch of research kind of loosely based around Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory.
1298
01:30:29.547 --> 01:30:31.909
and how to actually leverage that in policy.
1299
01:30:32.009 --> 01:30:35.252
So a simple example is organ donation.
1300
01:30:35.752 --> 01:30:45.961
In Germany, only about 12% of people are registered to donate organs, whereas in Austria, it's like 99% of people are registered to donate organs.
1301
01:30:46.081 --> 01:30:47.542
And the reason is, is that
1302
01:30:48.363 --> 01:30:51.344
Germany has an opt-in organ donation.
1303
01:30:51.404 --> 01:30:57.687
So it's like whenever you go get your driver's license or passport or whatever, you have to check the box saying, I am willing to donate organs.
1304
01:30:58.167 --> 01:31:01.689
Whereas Austria has an opt-out organ donation.
1305
01:31:01.809 --> 01:31:04.630
So you are by default an organ donor unless...
1306
01:31:05.370 --> 01:31:10.652
You check the box saying, I don't want to donate organs when you go get a driver's license or whatever.
1307
01:31:10.672 --> 01:31:14.073
And so this is an example of what is called like a policy nudge.
1308
01:31:15.173 --> 01:31:22.135
It is creating policy that manipulates people's environment to push them into more pro-social behaviors.
1309
01:31:22.515 --> 01:31:25.076
Let's say you were automatically opted out to be in an organ noter.
1310
01:31:25.456 --> 01:31:27.917
Would you be upset about like, I wouldn't be upset about that.
1311
01:31:27.997 --> 01:31:29.698
Yeah, no, I would actually be kind of glad.
1312
01:31:29.738 --> 01:31:30.298
I'd be like, wow.
1313
01:31:30.878 --> 01:31:32.940
Our politicians are a little smarter than I thought.
1314
01:31:33.161 --> 01:31:35.023
To me, it's just like effective policy.
1315
01:31:35.103 --> 01:31:39.908
So I think there's just an understanding that human perception is bounded, right?
1316
01:31:39.948 --> 01:31:44.012
We're only capable of being aware of very few things at any given time.
1317
01:31:44.052 --> 01:31:46.775
And so it's not reasonable to expect...
1318
01:31:47.476 --> 01:32:09.927
everybody to be able to make conscious rational decisions about everything in their life at all times so i i think a sign of a functional society and a sign of uh a function like functional social relationships is being able to effectively nudge each other into better behaviors better choices um and better options yeah
1319
01:32:10.167 --> 01:32:15.350
Yeah, there might be some people who still think that that's a little too paternalistic, though, like in the organ donor case.
1320
01:32:15.430 --> 01:32:15.670
Yeah.
1321
01:32:15.690 --> 01:32:15.911
Right.
1322
01:32:16.391 --> 01:32:20.974
So they actually did go back and they set this up a little bit differently, too.
1323
01:32:21.134 --> 01:32:23.115
So, yes, Austria was opt out.
1324
01:32:23.395 --> 01:32:23.515
Yeah.
1325
01:32:23.535 --> 01:32:27.958
They kept it opt out, but then they put a little they made sure everybody knew that it was opt out.
1326
01:32:28.198 --> 01:32:32.603
And you even still get the same rate of compliance after that, even too, when it's a social benefit.
1327
01:32:32.623 --> 01:32:42.756
They told them, they said, okay, this is automatically chosen for you because it benefits the society, our society more, and because setting the default will give us a higher compliance rate.
1328
01:32:43.316 --> 01:32:44.398
People were still okay with that.
1329
01:32:44.598 --> 01:32:47.521
This was a really good example of Kant's publicity test.
1330
01:32:48.102 --> 01:32:49.142
It survives daylight.
1331
01:32:49.162 --> 01:32:49.522
Right.
1332
01:32:49.542 --> 01:32:51.663
Because there were a lot of people like, no, that's being manipulative.
1333
01:32:51.683 --> 01:32:52.483
That's paternalistic.
1334
01:32:52.523 --> 01:32:53.483
We shouldn't be doing that.
1335
01:32:53.644 --> 01:32:58.985
And then, but even when you do provide that for people, they still will, they're okay with it.
1336
01:32:59.105 --> 01:32:59.325
Yeah.
1337
01:32:59.505 --> 01:33:01.146
And so everything's above board at that point.
1338
01:33:01.306 --> 01:33:03.406
I just thought of another example from my own life.
1339
01:33:03.426 --> 01:33:06.327
You know, as you know, I spent about three years without drinking and, um,
1340
01:33:06.607 --> 01:33:24.314
And it was funny because there were a few different instances where I went out with friends and they told me explicitly, they said, I'm not going to drink tonight because I don't want you to feel left out or for you to feel any pressure or any urge to drink, like have to fight that urge.
1341
01:33:25.434 --> 01:33:27.175
And like, it was completely welcome.
1342
01:33:27.215 --> 01:33:34.277
It's almost like, it's funny, it comes back to this idea that there are actually like manipulation can sometimes be almost like a love language.
1343
01:33:34.337 --> 01:33:42.040
Like it can be, it can be something that you, you can actually do in a very loving and, and, uh, beneficial way for somebody that you care about.
1344
01:33:42.780 --> 01:33:49.167
Which is fascinating because I never would have that it never occurred to me that that was even possible before we started prepping for this this episode.
1345
01:33:49.187 --> 01:33:57.276
But it's like if you look for them, you can find all sorts of situations where we actually do manipulate our loved ones into.
1346
01:33:57.296 --> 01:33:57.396
Yeah.
1347
01:33:58.217 --> 01:33:59.637
being better versions of themselves.
1348
01:33:59.897 --> 01:34:00.978
There's a fine line with that too.
1349
01:34:02.598 --> 01:34:06.519
I mean, as long as like, if it does survive daylight again, right.
1350
01:34:06.739 --> 01:34:08.019
If they're on board with it, right.
1351
01:34:08.079 --> 01:34:10.960
If a partner came to me and said, I do this just to like help you do this thing.
1352
01:34:10.980 --> 01:34:12.280
And I'm like, oh, that's really sweet of you.
1353
01:34:12.300 --> 01:34:13.560
Thank you for helping me do that.
1354
01:34:13.620 --> 01:34:15.961
Cause I suck at this and you're helping me a lot.
1355
01:34:16.081 --> 01:34:16.601
That's great.
1356
01:34:16.901 --> 01:34:17.441
Yeah.
1357
01:34:17.461 --> 01:34:20.362
It all hinges on the recipient's
1358
01:34:21.422 --> 01:34:42.866
desire right okay like if my friend didn't drink because they didn't want to influence me and i actually really did want to drink i'd be like dude stop being like fuck fuck you like i'll do what i want you know yeah yeah yeah that's a philosophical um argument for where the line is and it would that agrees with much of uh philosophy throughout history as well
1359
01:34:44.094 --> 01:34:52.220
It aligns with our intuition, but then there's more of a pragmatic or like political definition of where that line is.
1360
01:34:52.581 --> 01:34:52.801
Okay.
1361
01:34:52.821 --> 01:34:54.182
So that was Kant's idea.
1362
01:34:54.222 --> 01:34:59.165
This is this philosophical idea that I think most of us can kind of agree with, at least in principle.
1363
01:34:59.205 --> 01:35:00.646
And it's very idealistic, right?
1364
01:35:00.786 --> 01:35:02.428
And does a lot of work for us.
1365
01:35:03.308 --> 01:35:10.974
It gives us a very strong framework, I think, too, to kind of base a lot of our decisions and a lot of our actions as they regard other people.
1366
01:35:11.975 --> 01:35:12.996
Great framework for that, right?
1367
01:35:13.556 --> 01:35:15.497
But there's another side, too, that's more...
1368
01:35:16.562 --> 01:35:41.303
practical sometimes and more political even too that we also need to address because like you've already mentioned caught was pretty idealistic and he went to extremes for that idealism but it sometimes didn't always work right he wasn't the first one to though to say that manipulation was wrong this was an idea that had gone back through philosophy for 1500 2000 years right yeah very very long time
1369
01:35:41.563 --> 01:35:43.885
Go all the way back to Cicero in 44 BCE.
1370
01:35:44.305 --> 01:35:50.030
He wrote on duties, which he said that wrongdoing actually takes two different forms.
1371
01:35:50.090 --> 01:35:53.833
And he used animals as a metaphor, right?
1372
01:35:53.953 --> 01:35:55.955
Force was a lion, okay?
1373
01:35:56.175 --> 01:35:56.636
Okay.
1374
01:35:56.996 --> 01:35:59.498
Whereas fraud was a fox, okay?
1375
01:35:59.858 --> 01:36:00.139
So...
1376
01:36:00.759 --> 01:36:03.202
wrongdoing, manipulation can take one of these two forms.
1377
01:36:03.222 --> 01:36:07.507
You can be very forceful about it, or you can be very deceptive about it, all right?
1378
01:36:08.048 --> 01:36:13.114
Cicero thought that both of these things were really, obviously bad.
1379
01:36:13.134 --> 01:36:19.622
They were unbecoming of being a human being in the first place, but he thought that fraud was actually more contemptible.
1380
01:36:20.242 --> 01:36:20.442
Okay.
1381
01:36:21.123 --> 01:36:31.690
Um, because it wears this mask of good while actually doing bad, where at least, you know, you had like a, a really forceful dictator of some kind, whatever you knew what his tactic was.
1382
01:36:31.830 --> 01:36:32.871
He wasn't lying to you.
1383
01:36:32.891 --> 01:36:33.091
Right.
1384
01:36:33.371 --> 01:36:36.594
But the Fox was very deceptive and, oh, I'm doing this for your own good.
1385
01:36:36.634 --> 01:36:38.455
When really they were doing it for their own good.
1386
01:36:38.475 --> 01:36:38.695
Yeah.
1387
01:36:38.715 --> 01:36:38.875
Right.
1388
01:36:38.895 --> 01:36:42.258
But this was very much the idea throughout.
1389
01:36:42.278 --> 01:36:42.538
Yeah.
1390
01:36:42.998 --> 01:36:45.499
pretty much all of human history for thousands of years.
1391
01:36:45.519 --> 01:36:46.280
Like, do good.
1392
01:36:46.580 --> 01:36:52.083
Like, virtue is the way to lead a nation or a group of people or a household even, right?
1393
01:36:52.543 --> 01:36:53.624
It's all about virtue.
1394
01:36:53.784 --> 01:36:55.465
This is a very stoic idea as well.
1395
01:36:55.605 --> 01:36:56.165
Very much so.
1396
01:36:56.445 --> 01:37:00.688
This was really the prevailing idea for centuries, right?
1397
01:37:01.928 --> 01:37:04.109
So we get up to the 16th century.
1398
01:37:04.450 --> 01:37:07.291
Around 1512, the Medici take over Florence.
1399
01:37:07.351 --> 01:37:09.092
The Medici from Spain take over Florence.
1400
01:37:09.592 --> 01:37:09.872
Okay.
1401
01:37:10.252 --> 01:37:17.336
And there just so happened to be a diplomat, a bureaucrat, in the Florentine government at that time named...
1402
01:37:18.296 --> 01:37:19.457
uh, Machiavelli, right.
1403
01:37:19.937 --> 01:37:24.500
As part of this takeover, when the Medici came in, uh, he was jailed.
1404
01:37:25.041 --> 01:37:26.542
He was put into, he was put into prison.
1405
01:37:26.582 --> 01:37:27.302
He was ridiculed.
1406
01:37:27.402 --> 01:37:29.964
He was told to renounce his government, all of these things, right.
1407
01:37:30.324 --> 01:37:34.367
He was a very dedicated Republican though, um, uh, to his government.
1408
01:37:34.407 --> 01:37:37.149
He served for, uh, like 15, 20 years, something like that.
1409
01:37:37.309 --> 01:37:43.053
A, an advocate of, uh, uh, of Republican government of representation of democracy, even too.
1410
01:37:43.173 --> 01:37:43.333
Right.
1411
01:37:43.353 --> 01:37:43.473
Right.
1412
01:37:43.993 --> 01:37:45.874
Then he sees this happen, right?
1413
01:37:46.134 --> 01:37:47.775
The Medici were not Republicans.
1414
01:37:47.815 --> 01:37:48.795
They were not Democratic.
1415
01:37:48.835 --> 01:37:50.856
They came in and they ruled with an iron fist.
1416
01:37:51.156 --> 01:37:52.137
So he sees this happen.
1417
01:37:52.157 --> 01:37:52.897
He's thrown in jail.
1418
01:37:52.937 --> 01:37:54.978
He's exiled to like a farm somewhere, I think.
1419
01:37:55.738 --> 01:38:02.781
And he's looking at this and he's like, okay, all of these virtues that we had, that we've been upholding for centuries now, look where it got us.
1420
01:38:03.141 --> 01:38:04.062
Look where we are now.
1421
01:38:04.582 --> 01:38:06.584
These people come in, they have no scruples about them.
1422
01:38:06.884 --> 01:38:09.806
They rule with an iron fist and we're the ones who get screwed over.
1423
01:38:10.507 --> 01:38:14.069
This is when he wrote The Prince, his most famous work, right?
1424
01:38:14.730 --> 01:38:20.695
Because in The Prince, Machiavelli argues that cruelty isn't really a scandal of people in power.
1425
01:38:20.935 --> 01:38:27.580
It's the fact that the old system was covering up the fact that they were actually cruel, but they were pretending like they weren't.
1426
01:38:28.040 --> 01:38:28.321
Okay.
1427
01:38:28.661 --> 01:38:31.986
He's the one who's trying to bring daylight to all of this here.
1428
01:38:32.026 --> 01:38:33.729
And so this is actually what's going on.
1429
01:38:34.049 --> 01:38:35.992
And this is how you actually have to rule.
1430
01:38:36.313 --> 01:38:39.657
It's just a necessity of life that rulers have to face.
1431
01:38:39.978 --> 01:38:43.002
And so he took that metaphor of the fox and the lion from Cicero.
1432
01:38:43.683 --> 01:38:48.327
And he said, you know, Cicero said these were two animals that were unworthy of man.
1433
01:38:48.507 --> 01:38:48.727
Right.
1434
01:38:49.168 --> 01:38:54.392
Machiavelli said, no, actually, the prince, the ruler, has to actually embody both of them.
1435
01:38:54.912 --> 01:39:01.257
It has to be they have to embody both the fox, deceit and fraud and the lion force.
1436
01:39:01.478 --> 01:39:05.901
And but they have to be like very cognizant of all of this in order to rule effectively.
1437
01:39:05.921 --> 01:39:06.081
Right.
1438
01:39:06.101 --> 01:39:06.241
Right.
1439
01:39:07.022 --> 01:39:14.409
He said that leaders have to learn how to not be good, okay, and use that knowledge as the situation demands.
1440
01:39:14.449 --> 01:39:17.953
Because just practically speaking, things come up where they have to use force.
1441
01:39:18.253 --> 01:39:24.098
They have to use deceit in order to save people from—it might be a huge war or a famine or—
1442
01:39:24.819 --> 01:39:29.900
You know, it's kind of from for their own good type of, a little bit paternalistic of him.
1443
01:39:30.320 --> 01:39:34.201
He has this famous line in there where men judge more by the eye than by the hand.
1444
01:39:34.381 --> 01:39:38.902
Everyone sees what you seem, but few touch what you actually are.
1445
01:39:39.342 --> 01:39:41.563
It is very Machiavellian, what we call Machiavellian today.
1446
01:39:41.643 --> 01:39:44.064
Keep your promises when it's convenient, break them when not.
1447
01:39:44.084 --> 01:39:45.024
Conditional.
1448
01:39:45.144 --> 01:39:45.944
Very conditional.
1449
01:39:46.244 --> 01:39:47.164
Conniving, yeah.
1450
01:39:47.444 --> 01:39:52.385
This raises so many interesting points and questions for me because I think, you know,
1451
01:39:55.707 --> 01:40:17.768
ultimately i mean we can wax on about virtue and ethics and morals all day till we're blue in the face but at the end of the day what gets shit done is power yeah and power is ultimately about leverage it's there's always this game theory aspects of like if somebody can get away with something they they will so if you leave a vacuum uh
1452
01:40:18.949 --> 01:40:20.490
somebody will always find a way to fill it.
1453
01:40:20.791 --> 01:40:25.133
I think what gets missed a lot is that, you know, Machiavelli, he was just writing what works.
1454
01:40:25.374 --> 01:40:27.935
It's not like he's saying rulers should behave this way.
1455
01:40:27.975 --> 01:40:29.216
Government should behave this way.
1456
01:40:29.376 --> 01:40:31.358
He's just writing like this is what works.
1457
01:40:31.558 --> 01:40:33.439
And this is when they do it.
1458
01:40:33.479 --> 01:40:34.460
This is why they do it.
1459
01:40:34.860 --> 01:40:37.362
But before we keep going, a quick word from our sponsors.
1460
01:40:37.902 --> 01:40:39.964
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1480
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1482
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1489
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1496
01:43:17.151 --> 01:43:18.692
All right, let's get back into it.
1497
01:43:18.932 --> 01:43:30.761
So I feel like we are seeing the two poles of a ethical conundrum, which is Kant kind of represents this idealistic philosophical side of us, right?
1498
01:43:30.821 --> 01:43:34.703
Like where everything he says feels correct.
1499
01:43:34.884 --> 01:43:36.024
It feels virtuous.
1500
01:43:36.084 --> 01:43:36.945
It feels true.
1501
01:43:36.985 --> 01:43:39.867
Like, yes, that's how we want people to behave.
1502
01:43:39.907 --> 01:43:40.988
That's how we want to behave.
1503
01:43:41.008 --> 01:43:42.629
That's how we want our leaders to behave.
1504
01:43:43.309 --> 01:43:46.792
Whereas Machiavelli has this very practical perspective
1505
01:43:48.068 --> 01:43:53.149
look, life is a power struggle and this is how it operates.
1506
01:43:53.449 --> 01:44:00.191
Whether you like it or not, whether you're virtuous or not, when there is a vacuum, somebody will always step forward to fill that vacuum.
1507
01:44:00.331 --> 01:44:09.473
And if the way to do that is unethical, there will always be somebody who will, is willing to behave unethically to fill that vacuum and take control of that power.
1508
01:44:09.693 --> 01:44:14.855
So you have this almost like internal tug of war, which I think happens within all of us, right?
1509
01:44:15.655 --> 01:44:15.715
Of,
1510
01:44:16.916 --> 01:44:31.436
What we know the better angel of our of our nature right the angel on our shoulder which is kind of the Kantian treat everybody as a not as a means but it ends to himself to themselves and then you have the Machiavellian side of ourselves which is like look.
1511
01:44:32.528 --> 01:44:36.651
You can probably get away with this, so you should probably go ahead and do it.
1512
01:44:37.372 --> 01:44:45.319
And, you know, nothing great is accomplished without, you know, you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs and so on and so forth.
1513
01:44:45.759 --> 01:44:49.502
And I do feel like a lot of us feel that tension within ourselves.
1514
01:44:50.403 --> 01:44:53.465
There is that temptation to cut corners a little bit.
1515
01:44:54.526 --> 01:45:04.490
To maybe piss somebody off, hurt somebody occasionally, if you believe that it is better off for yourself in the long run, or maybe for a lot of people in the long run.
1516
01:45:05.210 --> 01:45:08.571
And I think this is kind of where that spectrum of manipulation comes in.
1517
01:45:08.872 --> 01:45:09.292
There is...
1518
01:45:10.132 --> 01:45:17.354
the Machiavellian pole, which is just pure cynical, do what gets me power no matter what.
1519
01:45:17.594 --> 01:45:31.218
Then there's a pure Kantian pole, which is almost naively virtuous, like virtuous to the point of being stupid at times, of being honest to a murderer at the door who is looking to kill your friend.
1520
01:45:31.658 --> 01:45:36.840
And I think the tension we feel is that both of these poles are right, they are correct.
1521
01:45:37.580 --> 01:45:40.842
And the vast majority of us live in the middle somewhere.
1522
01:45:41.223 --> 01:45:49.328
So we feel the doubt and the second guessing and a lot of times the agony of stressing over, is it worth it?
1523
01:45:49.969 --> 01:45:59.375
I don't know about you, but like I can think about a handful of times in my life where I have either lied or kept a secret or hurt somebody.
1524
01:45:59.855 --> 01:46:02.037
And I still to this day feel like it's justified.
1525
01:46:03.225 --> 01:46:12.927
That it was, and not because I'm like such a special virtuous person, but it is just looking at kind of the cost benefit overall, right?
1526
01:46:12.967 --> 01:46:22.289
It's like, okay, this person got hurt in the short term, but it is going to promote all of these other causes or interests over the long term.
1527
01:46:22.409 --> 01:46:23.150
And so it's worth it.
1528
01:46:23.690 --> 01:46:32.592
And I think what Machiavelli was observing among princes and kings and leaders is that they have to make those difficult decisions all the time.
1529
01:46:33.372 --> 01:46:33.612
Right.
1530
01:46:34.072 --> 01:46:36.353
You kill one person to save 100.
1531
01:46:36.874 --> 01:46:39.675
You start a small war to prevent a large war.
1532
01:46:40.996 --> 01:46:47.579
You oppress this small group of people to allow this larger group of people to be free.
1533
01:46:48.319 --> 01:46:50.520
And none of that feels good.
1534
01:46:50.720 --> 01:46:53.101
None of it is in many cases.
1535
01:46:53.361 --> 01:46:56.203
It is downright reprehensible morally.
1536
01:46:57.252 --> 01:47:00.434
But also life puts you in a lot of situations like that.
1537
01:47:00.674 --> 01:47:10.979
And as much as we would like to be like Kant and be like, no, you are honest all the time and you promote the freedom and the livelihood of everybody equally all the time in practice,
1538
01:47:12.507 --> 01:47:13.527
It's not always that simple.
1539
01:47:13.667 --> 01:47:13.947
Yeah.
1540
01:47:14.007 --> 01:47:14.227
Okay.
1541
01:47:14.248 --> 01:47:19.049
So the question really becomes then, okay, so how do you pick and choose?
1542
01:47:19.469 --> 01:47:22.710
Which one do you use when, I guess, is maybe what we're saying.
1543
01:47:22.830 --> 01:47:26.411
Because like you mentioned before, there's a tension that you kind of just have to sit between.
1544
01:47:26.691 --> 01:47:29.872
This is a real thing that we all have to go through at some point where...
1545
01:47:30.624 --> 01:47:37.530
Do you do the noble ethical thing and, you know, maybe screw a bunch of people over even though it's the honest thing to do?
1546
01:47:37.650 --> 01:47:42.074
Or do you try to protect them and be paternalistic even at some points?
1547
01:47:42.815 --> 01:47:53.184
There was this philosopher in the 70s who tried to come up with some sort of reconciliation, I guess, for this, or at least some sort of way for us to navigate this.
1548
01:47:53.844 --> 01:47:54.925
His name was Michael Walser.
1549
01:47:55.005 --> 01:47:55.746
And this was in the 70s.
1550
01:47:57.147 --> 01:48:01.771
He actually was building off Jean-Paul Sartre's play.
1551
01:48:01.791 --> 01:48:02.892
It was called Dirty Hands.
1552
01:48:03.212 --> 01:48:03.492
Okay.
1553
01:48:03.552 --> 01:48:03.853
Okay.
1554
01:48:04.433 --> 01:48:06.615
There was this character in this play.
1555
01:48:06.695 --> 01:48:07.996
He was a communist leader.
1556
01:48:08.897 --> 01:48:10.158
His name was Hoarderer.
1557
01:48:10.478 --> 01:48:10.858
Hoarderer.
1558
01:48:11.099 --> 01:48:11.499
Hoarderer.
1559
01:48:11.839 --> 01:48:12.280
Hoarderer.
1560
01:48:14.261 --> 01:48:15.763
Not a very good communist to hear a hoarder.
1561
01:48:15.803 --> 01:48:16.443
No, no.
1562
01:48:16.463 --> 01:48:16.943
Hoarderer.
1563
01:48:17.704 --> 01:48:24.330
But it was this communist leader in this play and he had this famous line that says, I have dirty hands right up to the elbows.
1564
01:48:24.930 --> 01:48:26.671
I've plunged them in filth and blood.
1565
01:48:27.272 --> 01:48:29.394
Do you think you can govern innocently?
1566
01:48:30.074 --> 01:48:33.057
Kind of stating this whole conundrum that we're talking about right now.
1567
01:48:33.757 --> 01:48:45.527
Walter's kind of, his conclusion was that there are just certain roles in life, in society, in politics, even just everyday life too, where...
1568
01:48:46.730 --> 01:48:53.936
doing a good job requires you to do something we would consider wrong, at least on the surface.
1569
01:48:54.497 --> 01:49:01.943
Deception, manipulation, betrayal, sometimes these have to be deployed for good ends, like you were just talking about.
1570
01:49:02.063 --> 01:49:06.387
Sacrificing the one to save the hundred or some configuration of that, right?
1571
01:49:06.507 --> 01:49:10.390
Walser's point though was that we don't want someone who can just make that deal.
1572
01:49:10.790 --> 01:49:12.372
We can find anybody to do that, right?
1573
01:49:12.432 --> 01:49:14.894
That could just be a cruel person that we can find to do that.
1574
01:49:15.174 --> 01:49:17.441
What we actually want is someone who can make that deal
1575
01:49:18.867 --> 01:49:20.588
And they can feel bad about it.
1576
01:49:20.688 --> 01:49:22.188
They know that it's wrong.
1577
01:49:22.208 --> 01:49:28.551
They have the scruples to know that they've done something wrong and that they just have to accept that.
1578
01:49:28.751 --> 01:49:28.991
Yeah.
1579
01:49:29.311 --> 01:49:35.694
So it's a little bit of a reconciliation between the two because you acknowledge that, yes, there's this noble good thing over here.
1580
01:49:36.434 --> 01:49:46.578
But at the same time, too, in order for us to have a functioning system of any kind and almost any kind of system anyway, you have to be able to sometimes go outside of that.
1581
01:49:47.598 --> 01:49:49.360
that box that we put ourselves in, right?
1582
01:49:49.881 --> 01:49:52.864
So a great historical example of this is Abraham Lincoln.
1583
01:49:54.165 --> 01:50:05.557
When the South seceded from the United States and the Civil War began, Lincoln had to institute something called habeas corpus, which is basically like suspending legal rights, suspending the Constitution.
1584
01:50:05.577 --> 01:50:05.677
Yeah.
1585
01:50:06.077 --> 01:50:09.781
There was a massive draft of all sorts of people into the war.
1586
01:50:10.282 --> 01:50:14.646
Privately, Lincoln really struggled with a lot of depression and grief during this period.
1587
01:50:14.687 --> 01:50:23.536
I mean, obviously, he believed he was doing the right thing, but he sometimes wondered at the time whether he was actually destroying the Republic or not.
1588
01:50:23.896 --> 01:50:24.797
In order to save it.
1589
01:50:25.358 --> 01:50:28.500
Obviously he was assassinated before he left office.
1590
01:50:28.520 --> 01:50:38.549
So like we never really learned what his long-term views were looking back and like how much, how much guilt he would have ended up sitting with, um, over his decisions during that period.
1591
01:50:38.589 --> 01:50:41.332
But we do know that during that period itself, um,
1592
01:50:41.912 --> 01:50:54.717
He agonized over a lot of the choices that he was forced to make, and he very openly wondered whether he was making the right choices at all or not.
1593
01:50:55.337 --> 01:51:04.601
Interestingly, towards the end of his life, his speeches got a lot more religious, and he started speaking more publicly about being judged before God.
1594
01:51:05.421 --> 01:51:08.562
Um, ironically pretty close before he was assassinated.
1595
01:51:08.802 --> 01:51:22.887
I think it gives a glimpse into the psyche of somebody who is like forced to wrestle with a lot of these sorts of choices and decisions, um, of like making the hard, awful choice to prevent an even more awful choice.
1596
01:51:23.427 --> 01:51:29.269
And coming back to that spectrum of self-deception, the danger there is that, um,
1597
01:51:30.353 --> 01:51:39.716
As we talked about, the more egregious the manipulation, the more egregious the deceit, the more we tend to justify it with explanations of the greater moral good.
1598
01:51:40.057 --> 01:51:45.539
Really start to run into a lot of dangerous situations when you start justifying these things.
1599
01:51:45.859 --> 01:51:50.120
Like, I just feel like your threshold of certainty needs to be raised so much higher.
1600
01:51:50.560 --> 01:51:54.542
Like, if there's any doubt, you should probably just default towards...
1601
01:51:56.002 --> 01:52:04.126
Error on the side of honesty and virtue, because if you do start subscribing to, well, I'm doing this for the greater good.
1602
01:52:04.166 --> 01:52:08.929
I'm doing this to preserve the country, the Republic, my group of people, all these things.
1603
01:52:09.489 --> 01:52:11.290
You can start justifying a lot of heinous acts.
1604
01:52:11.490 --> 01:52:14.491
And there's a lot of counter examples to Lincoln throughout history.
1605
01:52:16.273 --> 01:52:19.535
of pretty awful people who use the same justifications that he did.
1606
01:52:19.975 --> 01:52:22.677
And like Walzer's point, he felt the dirty hands.
1607
01:52:23.018 --> 01:52:23.478
Yeah.
1608
01:52:23.498 --> 01:52:25.799
He knew what he was doing was on some level wrong.
1609
01:52:25.959 --> 01:52:26.160
Right.
1610
01:52:26.420 --> 01:52:39.829
Whereas a counterexample is like Joseph Stalin, who also used many of the same justifications of like, okay, we're going to let this million people die, you know, to preserve the, the socialist Republic or whatever.
1611
01:52:39.849 --> 01:52:40.409
Right.
1612
01:52:40.549 --> 01:52:43.750
Stalin seemed to be a person of zero remorse.
1613
01:52:44.011 --> 01:52:58.597
There's actually a crazy story where the Germans captured one of Stalin's sons during a battle, and they held him captive, and then they sent a ransom to the Soviet government, and they said, you know, we have your son.
1614
01:52:59.637 --> 01:53:01.258
These are our demands to let him go.
1615
01:53:01.498 --> 01:53:08.041
And apparently upon receiving the ransom, Stalin looked at it, and he said, my son's already dead.
1616
01:53:08.741 --> 01:53:09.442
And just left them.
1617
01:53:09.502 --> 01:53:10.203
Didn't do anything.
1618
01:53:10.844 --> 01:53:11.165
So, yeah.
1619
01:53:11.786 --> 01:53:12.427
Kind of fucked up.
1620
01:53:13.528 --> 01:53:15.251
You can justify a lot of fucked up things.
1621
01:53:15.691 --> 01:53:16.412
Yeah.
1622
01:53:16.553 --> 01:53:18.936
And there's a reading of that where you could say, well, that was how noble of him.
1623
01:53:18.976 --> 01:53:19.196
Right.
1624
01:53:19.257 --> 01:53:22.882
Gave up his own son for the benefit of the Soviet Republic.
1625
01:53:22.942 --> 01:53:23.102
Right.
1626
01:53:23.723 --> 01:53:25.184
So it gets it gets murky.
1627
01:53:25.304 --> 01:53:34.449
And I guess to bring this back home to the listener, you know, the whole point of this chapter is when is it OK to manipulate and when is it OK to be manipulated?
1628
01:53:34.949 --> 01:53:39.672
And I think so far we have the publicity test is kind of one litmus test.
1629
01:53:40.452 --> 01:53:45.135
I think this dirty hands test is, I think it's less of a litmus test.
1630
01:53:45.255 --> 01:53:50.118
It's just something to be aware of that like you're going to have to live with, right?
1631
01:53:50.158 --> 01:53:59.965
So it's like, even if you find a way to justify some manipulative behavior, even if it's for the greater good, even if it legitimately is the right thing to do.
1632
01:54:01.285 --> 01:54:08.908
there's going to be this kind of persistent disgust with yourself that you carry throughout your life.
1633
01:54:09.008 --> 01:54:09.248
Right.
1634
01:54:09.328 --> 01:54:10.709
And so you have to be prepared for that.
1635
01:54:10.909 --> 01:54:15.290
Like that is part of the price that you have to be willing to pay, I think.
1636
01:54:15.590 --> 01:54:18.912
Well, and we don't have to be Abraham Lincoln or Joseph Stalin either, right?
1637
01:54:18.972 --> 01:54:19.392
Exactly.
1638
01:54:19.432 --> 01:54:21.893
To talk about this or to think about this because there's...
1639
01:54:22.593 --> 01:54:45.836
plenty of examples parenting is going to be full of these kind of things like how much do you actually let your kid in on what's going on i i don't know about you but the older i get the more like family secrets come out you know what i'm like and i'm like holy shit this is fucked up right and i'm kind of like at first i'm in indignant about it right but the more i think about it the more like going through this episode too i'm like actually i'm not sure if i would have wanted to know all of this as a little kid
1640
01:54:46.376 --> 01:54:48.177
Or even a teenager or whatever.
1641
01:54:48.677 --> 01:54:54.459
And now that, you know, there's things coming out, you know, that I didn't know about certain people in my family or something like that, like extended family, especially.
1642
01:54:54.499 --> 01:54:55.999
I'm just like, yeah, I don't know.
1643
01:54:56.459 --> 01:54:57.259
I think about that now.
1644
01:54:57.279 --> 01:55:01.020
I think about how my parents, my grandparents, they had to carry that.
1645
01:55:01.301 --> 01:55:01.501
Right.
1646
01:55:02.081 --> 01:55:04.161
That had to eat at them to some degree.
1647
01:55:04.261 --> 01:55:05.382
And I'm sure it did.
1648
01:55:06.421 --> 01:55:09.204
And I don't know what the right thing to do there was necessarily.
1649
01:55:09.424 --> 01:55:09.524
Yeah.
1650
01:55:09.544 --> 01:55:09.684
Right.
1651
01:55:10.165 --> 01:55:12.567
It's funny because I can relate a lot to that.
1652
01:55:13.448 --> 01:55:13.668
Yeah.
1653
01:55:13.768 --> 01:55:20.254
There are a number of family secrets that became known to me in my 30s.
1654
01:55:20.575 --> 01:55:25.579
And it's interesting because I'm actually really glad I learned about him in my 30s.
1655
01:55:26.160 --> 01:55:28.342
Because I think if I learned about him as a teen or in my 20s,
1656
01:55:29.980 --> 01:55:31.681
uh, it would have caused the shit storm.
1657
01:55:31.841 --> 01:55:32.741
I would have caused the shit.
1658
01:55:32.761 --> 01:55:34.602
You already pissed off and angsty enough, right?
1659
01:55:34.702 --> 01:55:38.923
And I had all sorts of baggage with people and things would have gotten very, very ugly.
1660
01:55:38.963 --> 01:55:46.146
I think by the time I did learn about some things in my thirties, I think I had the maturity to realize like, okay, these things are secrets for a reason.
1661
01:55:46.206 --> 01:55:47.347
Um, um,
1662
01:55:48.587 --> 01:55:57.857
And so I've continued to hold those secrets and bear those secrets, have my hands dirty, right?
1663
01:55:58.157 --> 01:55:59.579
And I'm okay with that.
1664
01:55:59.739 --> 01:56:04.123
Like, to me, it's all the stuff we talked about in chapter one about...
1665
01:56:04.824 --> 01:56:17.859
how the asymmetrical risk of losing relationships is just so much higher than having a slightly uncomfortable but intact relationship with somebody that you love and care about.
1666
01:56:18.079 --> 01:56:20.642
To even make this less dramatic, I think.
1667
01:56:20.742 --> 01:56:25.024
You know, let's like really, let's like really try to get this into the day to day.
1668
01:56:25.324 --> 01:56:26.384
I'll give you another example.
1669
01:56:26.504 --> 01:56:39.350
So really good friend of, of, uh, of mine recently got married and it was one of those situations where his partner, like we were kind of like.
1670
01:56:40.050 --> 01:56:40.370
Really?
1671
01:56:40.571 --> 01:56:41.611
Like her?
1672
01:56:41.872 --> 01:56:46.696
It's one of those situations where you see a friend date somebody and you're like, wow, you could do a lot better than that.
1673
01:56:46.736 --> 01:56:49.538
It's not anybody's place to say that, right?
1674
01:56:49.739 --> 01:56:51.460
And you want them to be happy.
1675
01:56:51.500 --> 01:56:59.487
And if the relationship is a dumpster fire and the marriage is a disaster, like you got to let them find that out themselves.
1676
01:57:00.008 --> 01:57:03.511
My wife and I, like we spent a lot of time with the couple and we're like,
1677
01:57:04.377 --> 01:57:09.540
you kind of sit there and you just kind of put on a smile and you're like, that's great guys, we're so happy for you.
1678
01:57:09.580 --> 01:57:11.601
Sure, yeah, yeah.
1679
01:57:11.621 --> 01:57:23.106
But meanwhile it feels like you're watching like a car careening off the highway with no driver and you're like, okay, well I hope this turns out all right.
1680
01:57:24.427 --> 01:57:27.788
But like saying something just feels so much worse.
1681
01:57:28.168 --> 01:57:38.312
Like, again, I think this is a perfect example because in a Kantian world, you know, Kant's argument would be that you actually have a duty to honestly voice your opinion.
1682
01:57:38.332 --> 01:57:44.434
And whereas a Machiavellian world is like, look, what's the cost benefit here?
1683
01:57:45.014 --> 01:57:45.274
Right.
1684
01:57:45.614 --> 01:57:48.935
You're probably going to fuck up a friendship, complicate things.
1685
01:57:49.945 --> 01:57:54.027
a happy couple that is like very excited to, to be together.
1686
01:57:55.327 --> 01:58:01.709
You're not going to really change anybody's minds, but you're going to introduce a lot of like pain and, and strife into, into a friendship.
1687
01:58:01.769 --> 01:58:04.250
So just shut up.
1688
01:58:04.770 --> 01:58:04.990
Yeah.
1689
01:58:05.130 --> 01:58:06.171
And go along with it.
1690
01:58:06.211 --> 01:58:13.153
There's, there's also too, like in that situation, there's a high chance, you know, if it does, the, the relationship does end.
1691
01:58:13.393 --> 01:58:13.613
Yeah.
1692
01:58:14.313 --> 01:58:15.994
You'll still have a good relationship with your friend.
1693
01:58:16.194 --> 01:58:16.414
Yes.
1694
01:58:16.694 --> 01:58:18.295
And you can be there for him when, when,
1695
01:58:19.135 --> 01:58:19.295
Right.
1696
01:58:19.315 --> 01:58:26.442
And when it does end, whereas if you say something up front, it's like you've kind of ended it right there and there's no rebounding or it's not going to be the same.
1697
01:58:26.462 --> 01:58:28.304
Yeah, there's no good outcome.
1698
01:58:28.324 --> 01:58:29.165
There's not a good outcome.
1699
01:58:29.185 --> 01:58:34.650
It's like even if even if even if that that marriage falls apart, like what am I going to do?
1700
01:58:34.670 --> 01:58:35.551
Like what's going to happen?
1701
01:58:35.591 --> 01:58:36.192
He's going to come back.
1702
01:58:36.252 --> 01:58:37.273
I'm going to be like, told you so.
1703
01:58:37.293 --> 01:58:40.676
You know, like it's it's going to feel awful either way.
1704
01:58:40.996 --> 01:58:43.961
Well, if your friend came to you and asked you directly, though.
1705
01:58:43.981 --> 01:58:44.221
Yes.
1706
01:58:44.321 --> 01:58:44.902
What do you think?
1707
01:58:45.122 --> 01:58:45.423
Yeah.
1708
01:58:46.024 --> 01:58:51.011
I think this is kind of the missing piece of Kant's framework, which is that consent...
1709
01:58:52.050 --> 01:58:57.751
for certain perspectives and opinions is almost like necessary, right?
1710
01:58:57.771 --> 01:59:08.294
Like if you're going to say something that is potentially going to jeopardize a lot of relationships or different people's lives, like I don't think the onus is on you to be 100% honest all the time.
1711
01:59:08.474 --> 01:59:16.556
I think the onus is for you to be honest when the situation presents itself that the person is ready to hear it.
1712
01:59:17.156 --> 01:59:17.316
Right.
1713
01:59:17.356 --> 01:59:23.560
Like if you're if you're going to say something that's true, but the person who's receiving it is not going to receive it well or doesn't want to receive it.
1714
01:59:24.420 --> 01:59:27.702
I think in many ways that's just as damaging as not saying anything at all.
1715
01:59:27.882 --> 01:59:28.082
Yeah.
1716
01:59:28.383 --> 01:59:32.185
Well, there's actually some research that actually got to rise right up with that.
1717
01:59:32.345 --> 01:59:35.767
I love it when you back up my brain theories with research.
1718
01:59:35.807 --> 01:59:36.768
This is why you're here.
1719
01:59:38.669 --> 01:59:42.891
They have pro social lies are there's like some social glue to that.
1720
01:59:42.971 --> 01:59:43.231
Right.
1721
01:59:43.251 --> 01:59:45.433
There's like it increases trust.
1722
01:59:46.454 --> 01:59:50.819
Even when the person knows that you're lying for their own benefit, they'll at least trust you more.
1723
01:59:50.839 --> 01:59:55.484
Now, they're not probably going to trust what you say necessarily, but they trust you more as a person.
1724
01:59:55.504 --> 01:59:57.406
They're like, okay, this person is more trustworthy.
1725
01:59:57.486 --> 02:00:02.973
Even if I can't fully trust what they're saying, I know they have good intentions at least, and I can trust their intentions.
1726
02:00:03.413 --> 02:00:05.715
But you also made a really good point there too.
1727
02:00:06.275 --> 02:00:10.719
This does split when it becomes more paternalistic and people feel like they haven't consented to that.
1728
02:00:10.819 --> 02:00:13.502
That's when it does become a problem, whether it was for their benefit or not.
1729
02:00:13.622 --> 02:00:17.024
We just have this weird aversion, not weird, actually.
1730
02:00:17.085 --> 02:00:23.810
It's just, we have an aversion to someone like blatantly manipulating us, blatantly dominating us even too.
1731
02:00:23.950 --> 02:00:24.250
Right.
1732
02:00:24.871 --> 02:00:27.213
And that's the, so they do find a split there.
1733
02:00:27.233 --> 02:00:28.174
Um, yeah.
1734
02:00:29.823 --> 02:00:35.777
When the kind of boundary that they've kind of found in a lot of the research they've done, and it's not like super...
1735
02:00:37.017 --> 02:01:02.430
set in stone type research but pro-socialized do land when the honesty would cause pain without giving useful information like that's makes sense it's just like you're you're just being mean to be mean or not even be you're just being honest for honesty's sake right there's no end uh to it right there's no you see this a lot with assholes yes like every asshole is just being honest just being honest yeah just being on don't be mad at me i'm just being honest it's like well yeah no you're
1736
02:01:03.151 --> 02:01:04.973
It's like the line from The Big Lebowski.
1737
02:01:05.414 --> 02:01:06.315
You're not wrong, Walter.
1738
02:01:06.335 --> 02:01:07.136
You're just an asshole.
1739
02:01:08.378 --> 02:01:09.320
Yeah, exactly.
1740
02:01:09.540 --> 02:01:11.903
Sometimes you can make the for their own good defense, right?
1741
02:01:11.924 --> 02:01:12.985
So it's for their own good.
1742
02:01:13.085 --> 02:01:16.791
It's like, well, okay, are they consenting to that, though, in some way, shape, or form?
1743
02:01:16.871 --> 02:01:17.011
Or...
1744
02:01:17.952 --> 02:01:20.153
It kind of goes back to a little bit, at least to the publicity test.
1745
02:01:20.193 --> 02:01:23.515
It's like, okay, I know you're kind of like shading something here to help me out.
1746
02:01:23.575 --> 02:01:24.516
And I appreciate that.
1747
02:01:24.616 --> 02:01:25.836
And I'm going to let it go.
1748
02:01:26.077 --> 02:01:30.219
We're going to get into kind of sales and persuasion tactics next chapter.
1749
02:01:30.499 --> 02:01:33.281
But I do think a lot of this is tactical, right?
1750
02:01:33.581 --> 02:01:35.002
There is an elegant way.
1751
02:01:35.902 --> 02:01:38.583
to tell somebody that they're bad at something.
1752
02:01:38.623 --> 02:01:38.823
Right.
1753
02:01:39.563 --> 02:01:42.264
And there's a very inelegant way to tell somebody that they're bad at something.
1754
02:01:42.284 --> 02:01:45.064
Like the example I have, like if your friend has a big nose and they ask you about it.
1755
02:01:45.224 --> 02:01:46.384
Yeah, you got a big nose, but I don't care.
1756
02:01:46.565 --> 02:01:46.745
Right.
1757
02:01:47.005 --> 02:01:52.886
Or another example, this is something that I've, a very small tactical thing that I've implemented in my own life, right?
1758
02:01:52.906 --> 02:01:59.127
It's like, we've all been in this situation where like, we make plans with somebody and then it's like the day of and we're like, God, I really don't want to do this.
1759
02:01:59.468 --> 02:02:05.249
And then you make up an excuse to cancel or not show up or whatever.
1760
02:02:06.230 --> 02:02:11.117
What I do in those situations is I text the friend very plainly.
1761
02:02:11.137 --> 02:02:14.021
I'm like, look, not really feeling up to it.
1762
02:02:14.061 --> 02:02:15.122
Had a crazy day.
1763
02:02:15.663 --> 02:02:16.384
Didn't sleep well.
1764
02:02:16.424 --> 02:02:17.165
Not feeling well.
1765
02:02:18.343 --> 02:02:21.205
not really feeling up to it, but I still really want to see you.
1766
02:02:21.405 --> 02:02:21.625
Yeah.
1767
02:02:21.886 --> 02:02:22.086
Yeah.
1768
02:02:22.166 --> 02:02:23.827
And are you available this weekend?
1769
02:02:24.167 --> 02:02:25.128
Let me plan something.
1770
02:02:25.208 --> 02:02:29.371
And that way it's like reassuring them that like, Hey, this is not about you.
1771
02:02:30.011 --> 02:02:30.892
This is about me.
1772
02:02:31.692 --> 02:02:36.456
I don't want to come to your thing, but I still like you and I want to see you.
1773
02:02:36.576 --> 02:02:40.599
And so like, let me make this up to you, you know, on a later day.
1774
02:02:40.619 --> 02:02:40.759
Yeah.
1775
02:02:40.959 --> 02:02:41.980
That doesn't feel manipulative.
1776
02:02:42.000 --> 02:02:42.220
Yeah.
1777
02:02:42.960 --> 02:02:43.400
But it is.
1778
02:02:43.460 --> 02:02:44.181
But it is.
1779
02:02:44.401 --> 02:02:45.882
It's totally manipulative, right?
1780
02:02:46.002 --> 02:02:46.242
Right.
1781
02:02:46.502 --> 02:02:47.142
Don't go anywhere.
1782
02:02:47.182 --> 02:02:48.203
We're going to take a short break.
1783
02:02:48.483 --> 02:02:49.644
We've got a lot more coming.
1784
02:02:50.164 --> 02:02:52.205
This episode is brought to you by Notion.
1785
02:02:52.545 --> 02:02:56.987
Now, it feels like I can't go a week without somebody asking me if AI is going to replace all of us.
1786
02:02:57.207 --> 02:02:57.688
My take?
1787
02:02:58.248 --> 02:02:58.768
I don't think so.
1788
02:02:59.028 --> 02:03:10.414
I think AI will make talented people even more valuable, and it'll just let the machines handle the busy work so that the humans can focus on what humans do best, working together, being creative, trying to build something great.
1789
02:03:10.594 --> 02:03:14.577
Notion sees it the same way, and that's why both of my companies run on Notion.
1790
02:03:14.797 --> 02:03:20.562
Notion is the AI workspace where your team's knowledge, projects, and agents all come together in one place.
1791
02:03:20.902 --> 02:03:27.708
Our entire production pipeline lives there, episode planning, research, meetings, everything, because it's all connected.
1792
02:03:27.928 --> 02:03:32.972
And AI has the context that it needs to answer questions instantly and automate our busy work.
1793
02:03:33.252 --> 02:03:35.374
Plus, it adjusts to how we already work.
1794
02:03:35.734 --> 02:03:37.476
Otherwise, my team might have mutinied by now.
1795
02:03:37.996 --> 02:03:42.897
Teams using Notion move faster, cut friction and costs by consolidating tools, and stay aligned.
1796
02:03:43.057 --> 02:03:46.558
I respect that it's AI designed to strengthen teamwork, not replace it.
1797
02:03:46.678 --> 02:03:54.080
Over 100 million people use Notion, and it's trusted by 95% of the top 50 AI companies, including OpenAI, Cursor, and Lovable.
1798
02:03:54.400 --> 02:04:01.301
So if you want your team thinking together better, learn more about how Notion can support your business at notion.com slash solved.
1799
02:04:01.542 --> 02:04:06.343
That's all lowercase letters, notion.com slash solved to try Notion today.
1800
02:04:08.163 --> 02:04:09.044
You're supporting the show.
1801
02:04:09.765 --> 02:04:11.886
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1802
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1803
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1804
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1805
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1806
02:04:32.404 --> 02:04:36.791
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1807
02:04:36.891 --> 02:04:41.618
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1808
02:04:41.738 --> 02:04:45.764
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1809
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1810
02:04:47.967 --> 02:04:51.190
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1811
02:04:51.410 --> 02:05:02.040
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1812
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1813
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1814
02:05:12.388 --> 02:05:14.668
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1815
02:05:14.888 --> 02:05:17.809
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1816
02:05:18.169 --> 02:05:21.510
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1817
02:05:21.690 --> 02:05:23.591
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1818
02:05:23.991 --> 02:05:33.273
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1819
02:05:33.593 --> 02:05:37.815
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1820
02:05:39.195 --> 02:05:40.358
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1821
02:05:40.959 --> 02:05:41.821
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1822
02:05:42.763 --> 02:05:44.964
Okay, we're back with manipulation.
1823
02:05:45.405 --> 02:05:52.869
Speaking of, you know, for a person's benefit, I think some of this too gets into the definition of like, what do you see is for your benefit, right?
1824
02:05:52.909 --> 02:05:59.232
So let's say somebody is like very insecure or worried about their job or their performance at something.
1825
02:05:59.733 --> 02:06:07.057
I'm the type of person that if I am bad at something or something I do is bad, I actually get pissed off if people try to tell me it's good.
1826
02:06:07.357 --> 02:06:12.140
I've had many situations in my life where like friends and family have tried to be supportive and tell me like,
1827
02:06:12.560 --> 02:06:13.320
You did a good job.
1828
02:06:13.340 --> 02:06:17.142
You like really put all your effort out that I'm like, I'm like, my skin to your dude.
1829
02:06:17.182 --> 02:06:18.002
Just tell me it sucks.
1830
02:06:18.022 --> 02:06:18.302
Yeah.
1831
02:06:18.462 --> 02:06:23.224
Like if you love me, just fucking tell me it sucks because at least I can learn and get better from it.
1832
02:06:24.104 --> 02:06:26.825
But it's interesting because a lot of people are not that way.
1833
02:06:27.085 --> 02:06:33.508
And, and so I've ruffled a lot of feathers throughout my life by like being honest with friends, being like, Hey, Hey,
1834
02:06:34.375 --> 02:06:37.857
you know, this thing could be better if you did this, this, and this, and they actually get really upset.
1835
02:06:38.577 --> 02:06:45.321
So again, it comes back to the consent thing of like, yeah, there's another thing I've seen like that's gotten spread around Instagram and TikTok and stuff.
1836
02:06:45.341 --> 02:06:50.463
This is that like, um, if a friend reaches out, one of the most effective things you can do is ask them upfront.
1837
02:06:51.064 --> 02:06:52.684
Um, what are you looking for?
1838
02:06:52.724 --> 02:06:53.645
Are you looking for a hug?
1839
02:06:53.945 --> 02:06:57.767
Are you looking for somebody to help solve a problem?
1840
02:06:57.867 --> 02:07:01.289
Or are you looking for somebody to just hear you listen to you?
1841
02:07:01.909 --> 02:07:02.189
And yeah,
1842
02:07:03.628 --> 02:07:06.819
Sometimes all we need is just somebody to like sit there and listen to our bullshit.
1843
02:07:07.522 --> 02:07:07.743
Yeah.
1844
02:07:08.064 --> 02:07:08.606
Or a belly rub.
1845
02:07:10.477 --> 02:07:13.359
to look for that belly rub mark.
1846
02:07:13.379 --> 02:07:15.160
We're not there in the episode yet, Drew.
1847
02:07:15.180 --> 02:07:15.500
Okay.
1848
02:07:15.660 --> 02:07:16.320
We're not there.
1849
02:07:16.340 --> 02:07:19.682
Next time I want to manipulate you, I will give you a belly rub.
1850
02:07:20.182 --> 02:07:21.883
I will blackmail you with belly rubs.
1851
02:07:22.083 --> 02:07:23.484
I shouldn't have opened this can of worms.
1852
02:07:23.624 --> 02:07:24.024
Okay.
1853
02:07:24.625 --> 02:07:30.788
The last point I want to bring up in this chapter is the idea of power within relationships.
1854
02:07:30.988 --> 02:07:36.891
So there was a researcher in the 60s named Richard Emerson, and he had this idea called power dependence theory.
1855
02:07:37.312 --> 02:07:37.512
And...
1856
02:07:38.283 --> 02:07:45.024
he made a really interesting observation that power is not something that people bring to a relationship.
1857
02:07:45.064 --> 02:08:02.388
I mean, although there are aspects of power that you can bring to a relationship, but he said that power is an inherent part of each relationship, that each person in any relationship has a certain amount of dependency on the other person, whether it's emotional, financial, professional, emotional.
1858
02:08:02.868 --> 02:08:09.034
Whatever it is, developmental, like it's there's always mutual dependencies in any any given relationship.
1859
02:08:09.354 --> 02:08:12.437
There are always things that we rely on other people for.
1860
02:08:12.797 --> 02:08:18.121
And then depending on the balance of those dependencies, you get a power dynamic within the relationship.
1861
02:08:18.722 --> 02:08:23.946
And now what Emerson noted is that relationships with large power imbalances.
1862
02:08:24.767 --> 02:08:28.708
would produce more manipulative behavior within the relationship.
1863
02:08:29.148 --> 02:08:44.512
And it makes sense because if you are a person who is without much power in a relationship, the way for you to get what you want is to actually kind of hide your own needs and then manipulate the person with more power to get things out of them.
1864
02:08:45.092 --> 02:08:49.939
Whereas if you are the person with the power in the relationship, you don't really have a whole lot to lose.
1865
02:08:50.019 --> 02:08:53.223
So you can kind of just state what you want and what you need plainly.
1866
02:08:53.704 --> 02:08:55.886
And the other person is probably going to fall.
1867
02:08:56.227 --> 02:08:59.651
It's their incentive to fall in line and give you what you want and need.
1868
02:09:00.072 --> 02:09:01.654
So I actually think power dependence theory.
1869
02:09:02.495 --> 02:09:09.799
is kind of the missing keystone that links the Machiavelli side of things with the Kantian side of things.
1870
02:09:09.819 --> 02:09:14.102
Like what Kant missed is that, okay, yes, you should always be honest.
1871
02:09:14.182 --> 02:09:15.523
Yes, you should not deceive people.
1872
02:09:15.563 --> 02:09:18.645
Yes, you should always treat people as ends, not as means.
1873
02:09:19.425 --> 02:09:23.648
What he missed is that there are inherent power dynamics in human relationships.
1874
02:09:24.328 --> 02:09:28.451
And the problem with the murderer at the door is the murderer has all of the power.
1875
02:09:29.091 --> 02:09:30.552
And the person at the door has none.
1876
02:09:31.152 --> 02:09:35.794
And so in that dynamic, you actually kind of have to manipulate the murderer.
1877
02:09:35.834 --> 02:09:39.536
It's like it is immoral to not manipulate them for the greater good.
1878
02:09:41.060 --> 02:09:43.601
Whereas Machiavelli, he's all about power dynamics.
1879
02:09:43.901 --> 02:09:52.243
Like, the prince is just a primer and guidebook to power dynamics, how to manage them, how to maximize them, how to navigate them.
1880
02:09:52.743 --> 02:09:57.205
I don't know if Machiavelli missed it or if he just didn't really talk about it a whole lot.
1881
02:09:57.325 --> 02:10:04.807
Is that if you are in a relationship where power dynamics are roughly equal, both people are kind of bringing the same amount to the relationship,
1882
02:10:05.827 --> 02:10:18.717
It is in both persons interest to be as honest and virtuous as possible, because that maximizes trust and that maximizes well-being and collaboration and and all all the other good things that we've been talking about.
1883
02:10:19.358 --> 02:10:24.602
Now, interestingly, some follow up research has found that power dynamics within relation human relationships.
1884
02:10:24.842 --> 02:10:26.043
They generally are equal.
1885
02:10:26.423 --> 02:10:32.528
Like one estimate had it at 70 to 75 percent of relationships are generally equally power.
1886
02:10:33.817 --> 02:10:39.148
And so in most people's relationships, in most circumstances, it is in both people's interests
1887
02:10:40.162 --> 02:10:48.007
to be honest, not deceitful, not manipulative, to not overtly try to take advantage of the other person.
1888
02:10:48.627 --> 02:11:01.796
And coming back to what we talked about in chapter one about kind of the necessity of transactional relationships at times, I think a lot of the relationships where there is a clear power dynamic, it is a very transactional relationship, right?
1889
02:11:02.156 --> 02:11:07.439
It's like you go to work, you have a boss, the boss is paying you money to do a thing, so you do a thing for the boss.
1890
02:11:07.459 --> 02:11:08.140
So there's still...
1891
02:11:09.443 --> 02:11:16.590
it's still largely above the board where people get in the trouble is when there is a very acute power dynamic between two people.
1892
02:11:17.011 --> 02:11:18.592
And it is non transactional.
1893
02:11:18.612 --> 02:11:19.653
It's primarily emotional.
1894
02:11:20.694 --> 02:11:23.017
And this can happen within romantic relationships.
1895
02:11:23.077 --> 02:11:25.119
Obviously it can happen within family relationships.
1896
02:11:25.479 --> 02:11:29.243
I think probably the most acute example of this is parents with children and
1897
02:11:29.933 --> 02:11:36.162
And that's where you get a very different kind of moral duty on each person in that relationship.
1898
02:11:36.662 --> 02:11:46.536
If there is an extreme power imbalance between two people, I would argue that it is morally incumbent on the person with the more power to behave in a virtuous way.
1899
02:11:47.595 --> 02:11:51.298
to act in a way that protects the interest of the person with the less power.
1900
02:11:51.938 --> 02:11:55.801
Whereas I don't think you have that same moral weight on the person with less power.
1901
02:11:55.881 --> 02:12:06.368
I think it actually is rational for the person with less power to be a little bit manipulative and deceiving at times, simply for the fact of self-preservation.
1902
02:12:06.488 --> 02:12:08.510
You know, we did an episode on toxic relationships—
1903
02:12:10.500 --> 02:12:11.501
six months back or so.
1904
02:12:11.601 --> 02:12:11.821
Yeah.
1905
02:12:12.182 --> 02:12:22.691
I think we talked a lot about power dynamics in that episode, how almost the defining feature of a toxic relationship is a sense of a power struggle between the two people.
1906
02:12:23.362 --> 02:12:35.010
What was really interesting in the power dependency line of research is that they found that in a lot of romantic relationships, both people felt like they were the person with less power.
1907
02:12:35.290 --> 02:12:41.195
They even found in one study when they when they talk to men who abuse their partners.
1908
02:12:42.015 --> 02:12:54.345
the men reported feeling powerless in the relationship and that they felt driven, they felt justified in the violence because they felt like nothing else could help them get what they needed or get what they wanted.
1909
02:12:54.705 --> 02:13:00.730
Comes back to the most heinous shit is always justified through some sort of moral like I'm the victim.
1910
02:13:01.170 --> 02:13:06.454
It's interesting in that like you can have a relationship where both people feel disempowered to the other.
1911
02:13:06.875 --> 02:13:10.398
And like we talked about on that episode, I think in many ways the defining trait
1912
02:13:11.138 --> 02:13:19.242
of a toxic, unhealthy relationship is that both people feel uniquely disempowered in light of the other one.
1913
02:13:19.402 --> 02:13:19.602
Right.
1914
02:13:19.883 --> 02:13:28.007
Whereas the opposite might be true, too, because a lot of times there is a direct correlation between the power each one feels, right?
1915
02:13:28.087 --> 02:13:33.630
Like what you're saying is, if I feel like I don't have a whole lot of power, my partner probably feels like they don't have a lot of power, too.
1916
02:13:34.010 --> 02:13:35.231
The converse is true, too, though, right?
1917
02:13:35.291 --> 02:13:39.513
If I feel like I have a lot of power sometimes, then your partner can feel like they have a lot of power.
1918
02:13:40.053 --> 02:13:42.476
I don't know, can we have a relationship without a power struggle?
1919
02:13:42.516 --> 02:13:52.210
This is kind of where we landed in the toxic relationships episode, is that almost the definition of healthy intimacy is a lack of power struggle.
1920
02:13:52.230 --> 02:13:52.891
Yeah, yeah.
1921
02:13:52.911 --> 02:13:56.095
It's like kind of just surrendering to your partner and trusting them to,
1922
02:13:57.677 --> 02:13:59.057
to love you and treat you well.
1923
02:13:59.218 --> 02:13:59.418
Right.
1924
02:13:59.558 --> 02:14:04.839
I mean, every relationship, there's some sort of imbalance or another somewhere.
1925
02:14:04.999 --> 02:14:05.199
Yeah.
1926
02:14:05.239 --> 02:14:14.862
There's always somebody who makes a little bit more money and somebody who's a little bit more emotionally intelligent and somebody who is better at managing the household and somebody who's better at managing the finances.
1927
02:14:14.982 --> 02:14:17.323
Everybody's going to be better or worse at something.
1928
02:14:17.543 --> 02:14:21.184
And so it is, you know, healthy relationship is just
1929
02:14:22.687 --> 02:14:29.690
trusting that those imbalances are going to even out in the long run and not hold those things, not keep a scorecard.
1930
02:14:29.930 --> 02:14:34.493
I think where this really gets more problematic is with parenting and kids, right?
1931
02:14:34.553 --> 02:14:40.956
Because in a parenting relationship, there is also a severe power imbalance.
1932
02:14:41.416 --> 02:14:47.799
I would argue that it is rational and normal and even healthy in many ways for kids to try to deceive their parents.
1933
02:14:47.919 --> 02:14:51.721
It's almost a natural part of development is for kids to kind of
1934
02:14:52.321 --> 02:14:55.824
figure out how much they can get away with and you know how many corners they can cut.
1935
02:14:56.104 --> 02:14:59.607
And it's the parents job to like set a boundary and say, no, no, no, no.
1936
02:14:59.707 --> 02:15:00.528
You can't do it that way.
1937
02:15:00.788 --> 02:15:07.654
With adult romantic relationships, there's always a little bit of a, he said, she said element to it.
1938
02:15:07.974 --> 02:15:08.214
Right.
1939
02:15:08.354 --> 02:15:20.565
We got into this with like Johnny Depp and Amber Heard and like kind of how you could look at both of their situations and see very lots of trauma and lots of emotional dependency and power dynamics going in both directions.
1940
02:15:21.145 --> 02:15:26.893
Whereas like with a parent and a child, it's for the most part, the parent needs to be, they have all the power.
1941
02:15:26.993 --> 02:15:36.485
So it is the moral duties on them to behave responsibly and to wield that power in a responsible way to not take advantage of the child, not.
1942
02:15:37.293 --> 02:15:41.437
manipulate the child, treat the child poorly, so on and so forth.
1943
02:15:41.877 --> 02:15:54.707
The other thing I'll say about the power dynamics is that I think when there are power imbalances in human relationships, generally the person with the more power kind of sets the precedent for the other person or for the other people.
1944
02:15:55.088 --> 02:15:58.410
And I think this is largely what leadership is, right?
1945
02:15:58.491 --> 02:16:00.072
Is like good leadership is
1946
02:16:02.062 --> 02:16:05.723
the people who are following you trust and respect what you're doing.
1947
02:16:06.304 --> 02:16:13.627
And I think Machiavelli talks about this, that it's like, he, he talks about being loved is not a good in and of itself.
1948
02:16:13.707 --> 02:16:17.068
It's instrumental and just driving loyalty from people.
1949
02:16:18.008 --> 02:16:21.610
But I think it's kind of in practical business advice and managing advice.
1950
02:16:21.650 --> 02:16:26.792
One of the things that gets talked about a lot is the, the leader of an organization kind of sets the,
1951
02:16:28.304 --> 02:16:40.752
how psychologically safe the group is for people to express ideas, to be themselves, to, um, pitch an idea that maybe gets shot down or that's wrong.
1952
02:16:40.852 --> 02:16:43.834
You know, it's like, are people going to get ridiculed for things?
1953
02:16:43.974 --> 02:16:45.555
Are they going to get judged for things?
1954
02:16:45.615 --> 02:16:50.899
Are they going to be ostracized for, um, for not fitting in in a certain way?
1955
02:16:50.939 --> 02:16:53.981
And a lot of that hierarchical organizations, um,
1956
02:16:55.418 --> 02:16:58.320
the leader sets the precedent because of that power imbalance.
1957
02:16:58.720 --> 02:17:05.204
Whereas I think in personal relationships, it's a little bit more of a give and take type situation.
1958
02:17:05.324 --> 02:17:05.584
Yeah.
1959
02:17:05.804 --> 02:17:07.465
When you are in those personal relationships...
1960
02:17:09.039 --> 02:17:12.542
A lot of it is a perception too around power too, right?
1961
02:17:12.962 --> 02:17:15.825
Because like in an organization is pretty clear cut who has the power, who doesn't.
1962
02:17:15.845 --> 02:17:21.009
When it gets into a relationship, it's a lot murkier and we get these stories in our head, right?
1963
02:17:21.069 --> 02:17:22.370
Like, oh, I'm the powerless one.
1964
02:17:22.450 --> 02:17:25.313
And then that's where the manipulative tactics can come into.
1965
02:17:25.473 --> 02:17:31.098
Even if you have lower power, like you're talking about, it's actually more common for you to be manipulative in that situation.
1966
02:17:31.118 --> 02:17:31.278
Right.
1967
02:17:31.598 --> 02:17:36.884
And so now you start saying, well, no, you have an obligation to make me feel better in this situation in some way, shape or form.
1968
02:17:36.904 --> 02:17:38.466
You're not that overt about it.
1969
02:17:39.066 --> 02:17:46.214
Is there any value to just like trying to just drop that story altogether and be like, look, I have this imagined power imbalance that I'm operating from.
1970
02:17:47.410 --> 02:17:50.071
Um, does that get you very far?
1971
02:17:50.091 --> 02:17:55.213
I think in personal relationships, you should go to great lengths to drop that.
1972
02:17:55.453 --> 02:17:55.713
Yeah.
1973
02:17:56.113 --> 02:17:56.313
Yeah.
1974
02:17:56.433 --> 02:18:00.935
This whole idea that there's a scorecard and that there's a tug of war happening.
1975
02:18:01.035 --> 02:18:07.197
Like, I forget who said it, but I saw a quote that said, the only way to win a status game is to quit playing.
1976
02:18:07.538 --> 02:18:08.318
God, that's so true.
1977
02:18:08.478 --> 02:18:10.259
It's extremely true.
1978
02:18:10.479 --> 02:18:13.580
Think of how the power that status game has over you by playing.
1979
02:18:13.740 --> 02:18:14.020
Right.
1980
02:18:14.140 --> 02:18:16.301
And again, coming back to the parent-child thing,
1981
02:18:17.323 --> 02:18:22.547
I think it's a natural part of a child's development to feel the power struggle, right?
1982
02:18:22.587 --> 02:18:26.411
It's like initially when the child's very young, the parents have full power and control.
1983
02:18:26.831 --> 02:18:28.753
The child is very dependent.
1984
02:18:29.033 --> 02:18:31.835
The child pretty much goes along with whatever the parent says or does.
1985
02:18:32.756 --> 02:18:34.477
They get to adolescence, what do they do?
1986
02:18:34.517 --> 02:18:37.099
They start testing the power dynamic, right?
1987
02:18:37.119 --> 02:18:38.180
They start pushing back.
1988
02:18:38.240 --> 02:18:39.220
They start manipulating.
1989
02:18:39.240 --> 02:18:42.543
They start cutting corners, like, you know, deceiving a little bit.
1990
02:18:42.863 --> 02:18:56.012
And a lot of that is a natural part of their psychological development, not only to develop their own identity, but also to, like, push boundaries and see what they can get away with and what they're capable of doing.
1991
02:18:56.472 --> 02:18:56.912
of doing.
1992
02:18:57.452 --> 02:19:07.996
And what often happens is that power struggle, you know, especially if there's kind of an unhealthy family dynamic, that power struggle perpetuates well into adulthood for the child.
1993
02:19:08.156 --> 02:19:10.916
And so you get, I mean, I know I struggled with this for a long time.
1994
02:19:10.936 --> 02:19:12.097
It's very, very common.
1995
02:19:12.117 --> 02:19:12.637
Like people...
1996
02:19:13.813 --> 02:19:20.337
in their 20s, 30s, 40s, they still have a lot of resentment and frustration and baggage and bullshit.
1997
02:19:20.357 --> 02:19:26.040
They go home for the holidays every year and it's like they're just butting heads with their mom or their dad or whatever it is.
1998
02:19:26.561 --> 02:19:29.702
And a lot of it is they're still in that power struggle.
1999
02:19:29.802 --> 02:19:36.907
They're still seeing the relationship in terms of the respect they're not getting or the approval that they never got or
2000
02:19:37.807 --> 02:19:43.933
The type of relationship they thought they should have always had, but they never, you know, the parent never showed up in the way that they wanted.
2001
02:19:44.013 --> 02:19:46.455
And it's funny because I've seen this at both in my own life.
2002
02:19:46.475 --> 02:19:49.518
I've seen it in my wife, uh, with her parents.
2003
02:19:50.159 --> 02:19:51.860
I've seen it with a lot of friends at this point.
2004
02:19:52.160 --> 02:19:55.383
You hit a point in adulthood where you just let go.
2005
02:19:56.404 --> 02:19:59.892
And you're like, mom and dad, they weren't perfect.
2006
02:20:00.092 --> 02:20:01.214
They fucked some things up.
2007
02:20:02.337 --> 02:20:02.818
Who cares?
2008
02:20:02.978 --> 02:20:04.601
Like you just stop caring.
2009
02:20:04.782 --> 02:20:07.147
And it's funny because as soon as you let it go.
2010
02:20:08.457 --> 02:20:09.598
everything gets so much better.
2011
02:20:10.218 --> 02:20:10.979
Everything gets better.
2012
02:20:11.780 --> 02:20:17.043
And I think that parent-child relationship, it goes through a lot of different phases that gets very complicated.
2013
02:20:17.084 --> 02:20:28.252
Whereas I think when you're talking about like friendships and romantic relationships, I think you should go to whatever length possible to just not introduce any sort of power dynamic whatsoever.
2014
02:20:28.512 --> 02:20:31.354
Yeah, because getting out of that power dynamic, that sucks.
2015
02:20:31.494 --> 02:20:32.615
Yeah, it sucks.
2016
02:20:32.996 --> 02:20:33.776
And it happens.
2017
02:20:34.277 --> 02:20:45.786
I mean, in romantic relationships, it gets really ugly emotionally, but even friendships, like there are a lot of unhealthy friendships that are ultimately like two people kind of locked in a status game.
2018
02:20:45.806 --> 02:20:51.971
And, uh, and yeah, it gets, it gets ugly and dramatic for, for people to remove themselves.
2019
02:20:52.011 --> 02:20:55.434
And it's like, when you're in that status game, when you're in that power game, uh,
2020
02:20:56.502 --> 02:20:59.063
That's when you start justifying all the manipulation to yourself.
2021
02:20:59.163 --> 02:21:04.724
You're like, well, I'm going to lie to this person to get this thing because I deserve it because they haven't treated me right.
2022
02:21:04.804 --> 02:21:04.984
Right?
2023
02:21:05.004 --> 02:21:09.566
You start, you create all those stories for yourself and that justifies your bad behavior.
2024
02:21:09.686 --> 02:21:14.547
Create stories around how I'm not getting my needs met here and so I'm going to act out in some way to get those needs met.
2025
02:21:14.587 --> 02:21:16.387
And that's justified now.
2026
02:21:16.467 --> 02:21:18.228
Which is Emerson's power dependence theory, right?
2027
02:21:18.248 --> 02:21:23.489
And it's like he said that it's when people feel out of power, that's when they start becoming manipulative.
2028
02:21:23.569 --> 02:21:25.890
Whereas when people feel empowered in their relationship,
2029
02:21:26.627 --> 02:21:36.460
And to bring Machiavelli back into it and Kant, a very practical argument for treating people well is that if people feel empowered...
2030
02:21:38.344 --> 02:21:39.805
they have no reason to manipulate you.
2031
02:21:40.285 --> 02:21:40.506
Right.
2032
02:21:40.726 --> 02:21:42.407
Speaking as an employer, right.
2033
02:21:42.447 --> 02:21:48.471
It's like, if I empower you guys, then hopefully you never feel a need to like lie to me or bullshit me.
2034
02:21:48.571 --> 02:21:48.791
Right.
2035
02:21:48.831 --> 02:21:52.934
Cause you can, no, you can just come to me and tell me whatever you're thinking or whatever idea you have.
2036
02:21:53.835 --> 02:22:04.222
Uh, whereas if somebody is wielding their power over you and let like weaponizing it against you, that's when you have to start justifying a lot of shitty behavior.
2037
02:22:04.242 --> 02:22:04.562
Okay.
2038
02:22:04.582 --> 02:22:04.802
Yeah.
2039
02:22:05.392 --> 02:22:07.734
Yeah, I think that ties up all of this really well, actually.
2040
02:22:07.894 --> 02:22:08.134
Yeah.
2041
02:22:08.515 --> 02:22:10.436
Yeah, this is why I give you tummy rubs.
2042
02:22:12.718 --> 02:22:13.719
If only.
2043
02:22:14.059 --> 02:22:16.701
So you'll keep showing up for podcasts.
2044
02:22:17.442 --> 02:22:19.243
It's a very transactional relationship.
2045
02:22:19.283 --> 02:22:20.364
Oh, it's consensual.
2046
02:22:20.404 --> 02:22:22.066
Consensual, very consensual.
2047
02:22:22.906 --> 02:22:24.147
This is getting very weird.
2048
02:22:27.270 --> 02:22:28.070
Bring us home, Mark.
2049
02:22:28.110 --> 02:22:28.811
Oh, God.
2050
02:22:28.911 --> 02:22:29.672
All right.
2051
02:22:30.873 --> 02:22:31.833
So in chapter one,
2052
02:22:32.709 --> 02:22:35.851
We talked about how everybody manipulates.
2053
02:22:36.071 --> 02:22:39.673
It's just a fundamental part of human social life.
2054
02:22:40.314 --> 02:22:46.558
Manipulation is just, it is inherent in our communication and how we approach the world, for better or worse.
2055
02:22:47.118 --> 02:22:48.659
Everybody's doing it all the time.
2056
02:22:48.939 --> 02:22:50.360
We're terrible at detecting it.
2057
02:22:50.480 --> 02:22:55.624
It's really just a question of how much are you doing it and what is motivating why you're doing it.
2058
02:22:56.104 --> 02:23:00.486
Chapter two, we've talked about the ethical concerns around manipulation.
2059
02:23:00.686 --> 02:23:01.627
What makes it okay?
2060
02:23:01.667 --> 02:23:02.827
What makes it not okay?
2061
02:23:03.708 --> 02:23:05.349
What are the different dynamics at play?
2062
02:23:05.869 --> 02:23:12.072
Probably the two most important principles from this chapter is one is the publicity test, right?
2063
02:23:12.172 --> 02:23:18.795
It's like the way to know if manipulation is ethical is that if everybody became aware of it, they would probably approve of it.
2064
02:23:20.176 --> 02:23:23.518
We talked about, you know, the family secrets that after finding out being like,
2065
02:23:24.338 --> 02:23:24.538
Okay.
2066
02:23:24.558 --> 02:23:24.658
Yeah.
2067
02:23:24.678 --> 02:23:26.419
That should probably be a family secret.
2068
02:23:26.459 --> 02:23:27.280
Yeah.
2069
02:23:27.340 --> 02:23:27.800
Yeah.
2070
02:23:27.940 --> 02:23:28.620
Yeah.
2071
02:23:29.881 --> 02:23:38.146
Um, or telling a good friend, um, you know, supporting a good friend in a, in a relationship, um, that you don't think is really working out.
2072
02:23:38.186 --> 02:23:41.608
But, you know, if they found out that you were doing that, they would actually be happy that you were.
2073
02:23:42.448 --> 02:23:46.032
supporting their relationship despite believing that it's not really going to work out.
2074
02:23:46.732 --> 02:23:54.080
The second key principle here is the power dependency theory of understanding how power dynamics
2075
02:23:55.484 --> 02:23:59.047
partly dictate when manipulation can be ethical and when it can be unethical.
2076
02:23:59.267 --> 02:24:09.015
We also talked about the traps and pitfalls of justifying terrible behavior by rendering oneself powerless or believing oneself to be powerless.
2077
02:24:09.816 --> 02:24:15.200
Um, and how also disempowering people promotes manipulative behavior.
2078
02:24:15.941 --> 02:24:23.647
Um, which I think is, is just a lesson that seems to be needed to be learned over and over again throughout history.
2079
02:24:23.667 --> 02:24:23.727
Um,
2080
02:24:25.271 --> 02:24:26.922
and by every parent around the world.
2081
02:24:26.942 --> 02:24:27.707
So...
2082
02:24:29.237 --> 02:24:47.267
I think now that we've spent a couple hours kind of setting the table of explaining all of the evolutionary and sociological reasons why we manipulate, talking about the ethical concerns around manipulation, the organizational behavior around manipulation, some of the political concerns around manipulation.
2083
02:24:47.787 --> 02:24:55.491
So in chapter three, we're getting into all of the nitty gritty tactics and principles of human persuasion and influence and.
2084
02:24:55.511 --> 02:24:55.652
Yeah.
2085
02:24:56.672 --> 02:24:59.134
I think this is something that everybody should just know.
2086
02:24:59.214 --> 02:25:05.018
It's funny because a lot of the stuff that we're going to talk about in the next chapter, I learned when I studied sales and marketing.
2087
02:25:05.579 --> 02:25:08.381
But after learning it, I'm like, this should just be taught in high school.
2088
02:25:08.561 --> 02:25:10.423
Like, everybody should know these things.
2089
02:25:10.843 --> 02:25:16.107
Also, most of what we've talked about up until now has been about individuals and individual manipulators.
2090
02:25:16.627 --> 02:25:23.212
But what happens when a lot of these tools of manipulation are scaled across entire societies?
2091
02:25:23.853 --> 02:25:24.854
What does that mean for us?
2092
02:25:25.414 --> 02:25:26.015
Hold that thought.
2093
02:25:26.195 --> 02:25:27.796
We will be right back after this.
2094
02:25:28.456 --> 02:25:31.259
This episode is brought to you by our good friends at Shopify.
2095
02:25:31.619 --> 02:25:37.324
Now, I've talked to a lot of people over the years about their regrets, all the things that they wish they did, but they never did.
2096
02:25:37.604 --> 02:25:38.925
And no one has ever told me.
2097
02:25:39.488 --> 02:25:44.352
Man, I wish I sat around and waited a few more years before I started that business idea.
2098
02:25:44.672 --> 02:25:46.093
People do not regret starting.
2099
02:25:46.413 --> 02:25:47.494
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2100
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2101
02:25:53.959 --> 02:26:00.063
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2102
02:26:00.303 --> 02:26:02.685
But Mark, a few weeks isn't enough time, says who?
2103
02:26:03.045 --> 02:26:08.407
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2104
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2105
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2106
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2107
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2108
02:26:29.256 --> 02:26:32.218
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2109
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2110
02:26:38.461 --> 02:26:40.822
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2111
02:26:40.962 --> 02:26:44.524
Go to Shopify.com slash solved today to hear your first.
2112
02:26:47.032 --> 02:26:48.854
This episode is brought to you by purpose.
2113
02:26:49.594 --> 02:26:56.140
It's funny, we spend so much time worrying about being manipulated by other people, when most of the time, we're actually manipulating ourselves.
2114
02:26:56.520 --> 02:26:59.863
We twist that fight with a close friend so that we come out the hero.
2115
02:27:00.204 --> 02:27:08.391
We tell ourselves that we'll write the book or start the new exercise routine when things finally calm down, as if things have ever been calm before.
2116
02:27:08.591 --> 02:27:11.753
And sure, after this episode, you'll probably notice yourself doing this more.
2117
02:27:11.973 --> 02:27:18.697
But your brain is very invested in making you look good to yourself, which means catching it in the act is nearly impossible.
2118
02:27:19.097 --> 02:27:22.560
Purpose is an AI mentor that will not let you get away with that crap.
2119
02:27:23.000 --> 02:27:25.942
Chatbots like ChatGPT manipulate you into liking them.
2120
02:27:26.242 --> 02:27:28.903
They fawn over you and agree with every passing thought.
2121
02:27:29.284 --> 02:27:31.325
Purpose, on the other hand, is built to push back.
2122
02:27:31.665 --> 02:27:39.188
So when your version of that fight starts to sound a little bit too flattering, it will call you out and then give you the next step to work on it so that it goes different next time.
2123
02:27:39.449 --> 02:27:48.152
Over 98% of users have rated Purpose as either life-changing or helpful, and it has a 4.9 rating on the App Store because it's pretty fucking awesome.
2124
02:27:48.333 --> 02:27:52.374
You can start for free today by going to mark.deals slash purpose.
2125
02:27:52.594 --> 02:27:55.076
That's mark.deals slash purpose.
2126
02:27:55.896 --> 02:27:56.576
And we're back.
2127
02:27:57.076 --> 02:27:58.137
Let's get right back into it.
2128
02:28:03.658 --> 02:28:11.887
So the year is 1917, it's April, and President Woodrow Wilson gets Congress to declare war to enter World War I in Europe.
2129
02:28:12.805 --> 02:28:14.906
Now, this was highly unpopular at the time.
2130
02:28:15.086 --> 02:28:26.211
The U.S. public was largely against the war, and ironically, Woodrow Wilson ran on a campaign in 1916 bragging that he had kept the U.S. out of the war in Europe.
2131
02:28:26.451 --> 02:28:27.251
But he changed his mind.
2132
02:28:27.291 --> 02:28:27.972
He declared war.
2133
02:28:28.152 --> 02:28:29.272
Troops were going to be sent abroad.
2134
02:28:29.512 --> 02:28:35.355
And his administration decided to organize something called the U.S. Committee of Public Information.
2135
02:28:36.135 --> 02:28:43.837
which at the time had the explicit aim of influencing public opinion to convince people to be more supportive of the war.
2136
02:28:44.177 --> 02:28:52.060
Now, it's important to set some context here that back in the early 1900s, marketing wasn't really a thing.
2137
02:28:52.420 --> 02:28:55.901
Public relations wasn't really understood in the way that we understand it.
2138
02:28:55.961 --> 02:29:00.222
If you ever go look back at the history of advertising, it's it's it's actually quite amusing.
2139
02:29:00.462 --> 02:29:02.923
If you look at advertisements from the early 1900s or late 1800s,
2140
02:29:04.423 --> 02:29:09.390
It's all very factual and, and like technical, you know, functional.
2141
02:29:09.430 --> 02:29:09.711
Yeah.
2142
02:29:09.811 --> 02:29:10.131
Yeah.
2143
02:29:10.232 --> 02:29:12.515
It's like a use crest toothpaste.
2144
02:29:12.575 --> 02:29:19.885
It is a 3.8% more likely to prevent cavities with your favorite dentist says, and, and,
2145
02:29:20.486 --> 02:29:21.747
It's just like very bland.
2146
02:29:21.927 --> 02:29:28.490
It's like reading an instruction manual, explaining the features of whatever product is being shown to you.
2147
02:29:28.510 --> 02:29:40.117
There was no concept or understanding of brand, mood affiliation, pairing two experiences with one another, tapping into people's concept of identity and class and political views and all of that.
2148
02:29:40.437 --> 02:29:41.177
So at the time...
2149
02:29:42.298 --> 02:29:44.199
A committee for public information.
2150
02:29:44.259 --> 02:29:55.427
I mean, it was really the initial goal was to basically just get lots of pamphlets and speeches out to convince people rationally that the war was a good idea.
2151
02:29:55.447 --> 02:29:59.550
Now, there was a man on this committee named Edward Bernays and Bernays was a.
2152
02:30:00.370 --> 02:30:01.750
A little bit of a prodigy.
2153
02:30:01.810 --> 02:30:10.793
He was incredibly insightful, had a deep understanding of human psychology, and was incredibly prolific during this period.
2154
02:30:10.813 --> 02:30:17.734
And he was impressed with how well you could manipulate masses of people at scale through the use of information.
2155
02:30:17.975 --> 02:30:23.136
Now, the other thing that was really interesting about Edward Bernays is that he was Sigmund Freud's nephew.
2156
02:30:23.896 --> 02:30:28.039
He had grown up spending summers with Uncle Siggy, as he called him.
2157
02:30:28.299 --> 02:30:42.728
And so he was, at the time, Sigmund Freud, he was pretty well-renowned in Europe, but his ideas hadn't really permeated much in the United States, and they certainly had not been applied to any sort of commercial use by that point.
2158
02:30:42.968 --> 02:30:51.914
But Bernays had the brilliant insight to connect the psychological principles of Freudian psychoanalysis with the dissemination of information imaginative.
2159
02:30:52.474 --> 02:30:59.481
masses of people to influence opinion and to convince them to maybe buy something that they normally wouldn't buy.
2160
02:30:59.762 --> 02:31:07.910
After the war ended, Bernays went off on his own and started what today we would call an advertising or a PR agency.
2161
02:31:08.370 --> 02:31:13.835
Modern marketing and PR was very much invented by Bernays over the following 20 years.
2162
02:31:14.235 --> 02:31:25.304
Bernays went on to apply these psychological principles of influence and manipulation to some of the most successful marketing campaigns that had ever existed in the world up until that point.
2163
02:31:25.884 --> 02:31:40.620
So one of his first big successes was American tobacco came to him in 1929, and they complained that women were not smoking enough cigarettes, that men were smoking cigarettes, but women, it was still seen as unladylike for her to smoke.
2164
02:31:41.321 --> 02:31:43.243
And they asked if he could change that.
2165
02:31:43.603 --> 02:32:03.892
And so through a series of brilliant publicity stunts, he attached smoking to the women's suffrage movement, which was a major political movement at the time, and made it politically fashionable and trendy for smart, educated women to be seen smoking cigarettes in public.
2166
02:32:03.932 --> 02:32:07.773
He kind of associated it with a form of political resistance.
2167
02:32:08.093 --> 02:32:10.854
This was the first time anything like this had ever been done.
2168
02:32:11.155 --> 02:32:11.675
And it was amazing.
2169
02:32:12.415 --> 02:32:13.496
massively successful.
2170
02:32:13.937 --> 02:32:19.723
The other thing he did around that time is a bacon company came to him wanting to sell more bacon.
2171
02:32:20.203 --> 02:32:26.429
And so he did something that's really funny in hindsight, which is that he went out and surveyed 5,000 doctors.
2172
02:32:26.650 --> 02:32:27.671
And guess what?
2173
02:32:28.171 --> 02:32:32.295
90% of those doctors agree that bacon is the best breakfast for your health.
2174
02:32:32.616 --> 02:32:32.876
Yeah.
2175
02:32:33.376 --> 02:32:39.742
So he started running advertisements saying 4,000 doctors have agreed that bacon is the best thing to have for breakfast.
2176
02:32:39.782 --> 02:32:40.223
Guess what?
2177
02:32:40.263 --> 02:32:42.144
Bacon became really popular for breakfast.
2178
02:32:42.465 --> 02:32:50.312
Over the next two to three decades, he had some of the most wildly successful advertising and marketing campaigns ever.
2179
02:32:51.012 --> 02:32:51.473
In the world.
2180
02:32:51.733 --> 02:32:57.241
He was the first person who came up with the idea to have celebrities endorse products.
2181
02:32:57.541 --> 02:33:00.725
He was the first person to invent the idea of an advertorial.
2182
02:33:00.925 --> 02:33:08.836
So something that's sadly very common these days, which is that you basically go and pay a magazine to write an article about your product.
2183
02:33:09.316 --> 02:33:15.480
as if it's a piece of journalism, but really it's just kind of a very subtle form of of advertising for that product.
2184
02:33:15.700 --> 02:33:18.001
He innovated the product contest.
2185
02:33:18.302 --> 02:33:23.144
So Ivory Soap wanted to appeal to more of a family market.
2186
02:33:23.164 --> 02:33:29.828
So he created a contest where the kids who carve the best sculpture in their Ivory Soap bar would win a prize.
2187
02:33:30.069 --> 02:33:32.730
And then that winning soap could be publicized across the
2188
02:33:34.231 --> 02:33:36.411
Almost actually double dip with that campaign.
2189
02:33:36.431 --> 02:33:39.392
You get the initial campaign, which is the announcement of the contest.
2190
02:33:39.752 --> 02:33:41.512
And then you choose the winner of the contest.
2191
02:33:41.632 --> 02:33:50.894
And then that becomes another newsworthy item to get the product advertised in thousands and thousands of places, essentially for free a second time.
2192
02:33:51.234 --> 02:34:00.416
In many ways, I actually think there's potentially an interesting debate of like who actually is more influential, Freud or Bernays?
2193
02:34:01.813 --> 02:34:05.797
Like, obviously, intellectually and philosophically, Freud is more influential.
2194
02:34:05.837 --> 02:34:18.150
But I think if you look at the actual impact on society and the way day-to-day human life works, I think it'd be hard to argue that Bernays has not been more influential.
2195
02:34:18.511 --> 02:34:21.834
Stipping in Freud's books, he brought them to the United States, had them translated and distributed.
2196
02:34:21.934 --> 02:34:22.595
That's true.
2197
02:34:22.795 --> 02:34:27.998
Freud actually had to flee Europe and go to England because of Nazi Germany and everything.
2198
02:34:28.198 --> 02:34:30.659
So that was a big line of finances for Freud.
2199
02:34:30.679 --> 02:34:32.821
It was actually the translation into English.
2200
02:34:32.841 --> 02:34:35.362
And that's how a lot of the psychologists knew about Freud.
2201
02:34:35.642 --> 02:34:51.671
I completely forgot about that because not only did he bring the books to the U.S., but then he publicized them and took excerpts of them, put them in, placed them in magazines and ran all of the advertising playbook to turn Freud into a brilliant thinker in the U.S. market.
2202
02:34:51.891 --> 02:34:54.893
There's a fantastic documentary called The Century of the Self.
2203
02:34:55.313 --> 02:34:56.134
It's on YouTube for free.
2204
02:34:56.154 --> 02:34:56.955
It's a four-part series.
2205
02:34:56.975 --> 02:34:57.875
It's like four hours long.
2206
02:34:57.895 --> 02:34:58.316
So good.
2207
02:34:58.436 --> 02:34:59.516
But it's so good.
2208
02:34:59.917 --> 02:35:05.841
And I think it will convince you that, yeah, Bernays is probably one of the most, if not the most influential people of the 20th century, for sure.
2209
02:35:06.141 --> 02:35:07.302
For sure.
2210
02:35:07.442 --> 02:35:08.143
Even above Freud.
2211
02:35:08.203 --> 02:35:08.343
Yeah.
2212
02:35:08.363 --> 02:35:08.523
Yeah.
2213
02:35:09.023 --> 02:35:09.243
Yeah.
2214
02:35:09.424 --> 02:35:15.789
And definitely in terms of like people who are not a household name, I would say he's definitely the most influential person of the 20th century.
2215
02:35:15.949 --> 02:35:16.770
It is crazy.
2216
02:35:16.790 --> 02:35:29.140
I mean, even the stuff that we do today, we're going to talk about this in this chapter, like a lot of these sales tactics, marketing tactics, things that we run on our social media accounts, things that we do on this show.
2217
02:35:30.113 --> 02:35:35.836
originated with Bernays and his insights into human psychology and how to market to people.
2218
02:35:36.316 --> 02:35:36.436
Yeah.
2219
02:35:36.456 --> 02:35:38.157
The ironic thing, he wasn't a personable guy.
2220
02:35:38.177 --> 02:35:40.618
That's probably why we don't know.
2221
02:35:40.839 --> 02:35:46.722
He wasn't very good with the public himself, but he understood the public very well and was able to manipulate them in a lot of ways too.
2222
02:35:47.322 --> 02:35:48.262
He was not very likable.
2223
02:35:48.342 --> 02:35:48.903
No, he wasn't.
2224
02:35:49.543 --> 02:35:50.784
His own daughter will tell you that.
2225
02:35:50.904 --> 02:35:51.144
Yeah.
2226
02:35:51.544 --> 02:36:00.048
Yeah, Freud was also not very likable, but somehow he he kind of survived, I guess, just the nature of his genius kind of survived a little bit more intact.
2227
02:36:00.588 --> 02:36:01.889
Bernays was very unlikable.
2228
02:36:01.949 --> 02:36:04.770
He was also kind of on the wrong side of history in a lot of ways.
2229
02:36:04.971 --> 02:36:07.632
He did write a book in 1928 called Propaganda.
2230
02:36:08.612 --> 02:36:13.794
At the time, all of this stuff that we're talking about, publicity, marketing, advertising, it was all called propaganda.
2231
02:36:14.074 --> 02:36:16.415
And he was a huge proponent of it.
2232
02:36:16.515 --> 02:36:20.317
Like he actually believed it was a force for good in society.
2233
02:36:20.437 --> 02:36:29.520
There's a quote from his book where he said, the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is a necessary part of democratic society.
2234
02:36:29.720 --> 02:36:34.742
So he actually believed that it was incumbent on the elites to manipulate the masses.
2235
02:36:34.762 --> 02:36:34.942
Right.
2236
02:36:35.002 --> 02:36:36.403
I think to shape public opinion.
2237
02:36:36.483 --> 02:36:38.845
To get them to do what was best for themselves.
2238
02:36:38.865 --> 02:36:39.385
Right, right.
2239
02:36:39.526 --> 02:36:45.751
He describes social engineering as a public service, and he called it the engineering of consent.
2240
02:36:45.811 --> 02:36:49.353
He wrote a book earlier, too, called The Crystallization of Public Opinion, I think, as well.
2241
02:36:49.734 --> 02:36:53.297
And that it was very much, he was just like, no, this is a good thing.
2242
02:36:53.337 --> 02:36:54.818
We have to use it for good.
2243
02:36:54.938 --> 02:37:01.023
We have to shape this in a way that the elite can rule from a noble place, is the way he saw it.
2244
02:37:01.323 --> 02:37:03.805
A lot of other people did not agree with that, as we'll see.
2245
02:37:04.045 --> 02:37:11.449
And unfortunately, some of the people that were paying attention and taking notes on Bernays and his methods were the Nazis.
2246
02:37:11.749 --> 02:37:19.293
And Joseph Goebbels, in particular, was a huge fan of Bernays' work and applied a lot of these same principles to...
2247
02:37:20.313 --> 02:37:28.635
craft and promote Nazi propaganda across Germany, which was unbelievably effective when when leveraged for political uses.
2248
02:37:28.655 --> 02:37:41.899
A lot of governments have used a lot of this stuff to manufacture consent among the populations to justify pretty heinous and terrible belief systems and actions on behalf of the people.
2249
02:37:43.068 --> 02:37:46.689
Bernays, I'm not gonna say he was a Nazi support.
2250
02:37:46.709 --> 02:37:48.590
Like he didn't- He was Jewish, first of all.
2251
02:37:48.610 --> 02:37:49.590
He was Jewish, first of all.
2252
02:37:49.630 --> 02:37:55.732
Like he didn't, it's not like he was out there like waving a Nazi flag, but like there was a lot of, let's just call it sympathy.
2253
02:37:57.052 --> 02:37:58.493
He called it fascism light, right?
2254
02:37:58.553 --> 02:37:59.413
Or something like that.
2255
02:37:59.433 --> 02:38:00.774
And he had a phrase something like that.
2256
02:38:00.814 --> 02:38:02.634
Yeah, he did, he did call it fascism light.
2257
02:38:02.814 --> 02:38:08.136
Or it was like you apply this to market principles and call it fascism light in service of the greater good.
2258
02:38:08.876 --> 02:38:12.397
But he was appalled when he found out that Goebbels was a fan of his.
2259
02:38:12.477 --> 02:38:16.299
But at the same time, too, he was like, you know, he generated.
2260
02:38:16.339 --> 02:38:22.321
He was not a Nazi supporter, but it was also like he didn't really have a problem with their propaganda.
2261
02:38:22.541 --> 02:38:32.504
Now, I wanted to start with Bernays for this section because I think if we're actually going to study manipulation, I think the best place to study it is sales and marketing.
2262
02:38:32.624 --> 02:38:36.466
Like when we went into this episode, it wasn't obvious to me that we were going to
2263
02:38:37.246 --> 02:38:50.601
talk about a lot of sales and marketing concepts, but where human influence is practiced, optimized, mastered, it's around sales and marketing because that's where it's most profitable.
2264
02:38:50.881 --> 02:38:55.807
Salesmen and marketers have been crafting a lot of these manipulative techniques and they're not going to be able
2265
02:38:55.847 --> 02:39:01.412
It's often referred to as persuasion, influence, branding, publicity.
2266
02:39:01.872 --> 02:39:16.585
But ultimately, what everybody is doing is they are trying to manipulate you into perceiving a certain product or a certain person in a positive light to engender a certain demand for it, create curiosity, intrigue.
2267
02:39:16.986 --> 02:39:22.130
And so in those fields, this literature is actually incredibly well-developed and
2268
02:39:22.951 --> 02:39:27.414
There are techniques and practices that have been working for almost a century at this point.
2269
02:39:27.594 --> 02:39:36.679
And I think it's actually the best place to start to understand, okay, if you want to be persuasive or if you want to influence people or if you want to manipulate people, this is what works.
2270
02:39:36.999 --> 02:39:42.342
If I was to recommend a single book for people to read around this, it would be Robert Cialdini's Influence.
2271
02:39:42.742 --> 02:39:47.765
Anybody who goes into any sorts of sales job, marketing job, advertising job, they're
2272
02:39:48.345 --> 02:39:50.066
It is one of the first books that you have to read.
2273
02:39:50.326 --> 02:39:52.968
And it's written by a professor named Robert Cialdini.
2274
02:39:53.288 --> 02:40:06.297
The origin of how he got into this research is actually really funny, which is when he was a struggling college student and didn't have a whole lot of money, he kept finding himself buying a bunch of crap from door-to-door salesmen that he didn't actually want.
2275
02:40:06.817 --> 02:40:09.179
And so he was like, barely had any money.
2276
02:40:09.279 --> 02:40:13.482
Somebody would knock on his door, start offering to sell him a set of encyclopedias or something.
2277
02:40:13.502 --> 02:40:14.202
Yeah.
2278
02:40:14.382 --> 02:40:20.164
And he'd say yes, and he'd write a check and hand over the little bit of money he had in his bank account.
2279
02:40:20.604 --> 02:40:24.065
And it reached a point after a while that he was like, why do I keep doing this?
2280
02:40:24.145 --> 02:40:27.486
I don't want this stuff, but I keep saying yes to these salespeople.
2281
02:40:28.186 --> 02:40:29.287
How does this keep happening?
2282
02:40:29.647 --> 02:40:32.528
So once he got to grad school, he started studying this question.
2283
02:40:33.188 --> 02:40:34.248
How do you get people to yes?
2284
02:40:34.568 --> 02:40:38.910
How do you get people to agree to things that in many cases they don't actually want to do?
2285
02:40:39.210 --> 02:40:42.651
What is it about a great salesperson that convinces people?
2286
02:40:43.451 --> 02:40:46.194
to buy something, even if they initially didn't want to buy it.
2287
02:40:46.414 --> 02:40:51.658
Cialdini identified six principles of human influence or persuasion.
2288
02:40:52.219 --> 02:40:55.562
We're going to start with those six principles because they cover a lot of ground.
2289
02:40:56.062 --> 02:41:02.528
And then we'll get into some other kind of tactical or psychological tricks and things that people use.
2290
02:41:02.568 --> 02:41:04.269
You see a lot in sales tactics.
2291
02:41:04.570 --> 02:41:05.751
As we go, we will
2292
02:41:06.291 --> 02:41:17.515
see lots and lots and lots of examples and applications of how this affects our day-to-day life and hopefully how we can be more aware of all the many ways that we are influenced and manipulated by others.
2293
02:41:17.715 --> 02:41:21.837
So the first of Cialdini's six principles is reciprocity.
2294
02:41:22.497 --> 02:41:23.458
And this is...
2295
02:41:24.538 --> 02:41:31.020
This is the classic case that if you go up to somebody and ask them for a favor, chances are they might say no.
2296
02:41:31.200 --> 02:41:38.783
But if you approach them with a gift and then ask them for a favor, they are far, far more likely to say yes to whatever you ask for.
2297
02:41:39.003 --> 02:41:41.123
So there are tons of experiments that did this.
2298
02:41:41.183 --> 02:41:43.264
They did this with students with Coke bottles.
2299
02:41:43.304 --> 02:41:46.685
So they originally walked up to students and asked them to buy raffle tickets.
2300
02:41:47.125 --> 02:41:48.506
The majority of students said no.
2301
02:41:49.066 --> 02:41:55.388
And then they started handing out free bottles of Coke and then asked the students who had received the Coke if they wanted to buy a raffle ticket.
2302
02:41:55.949 --> 02:41:59.530
And overwhelmingly, the students started buying raffle tickets.
2303
02:41:59.830 --> 02:42:01.031
You see this with waiters.
2304
02:42:01.351 --> 02:42:07.433
There was a study that found that waiters who left a mint or a piece of candy for customers got slightly larger tips.
2305
02:42:07.733 --> 02:42:11.315
You see this all the time at grocery stores with free samples in front of the aisles.
2306
02:42:11.675 --> 02:42:14.116
They're not doing that just because they're really, really nice.
2307
02:42:14.456 --> 02:42:17.357
They're doing that because you are actually much more likely to buy coffee.
2308
02:42:17.877 --> 02:42:20.079
the product after you've tried the free sample.
2309
02:42:20.359 --> 02:42:21.219
You see this everywhere.
2310
02:42:21.259 --> 02:42:23.501
You're creating a debt.
2311
02:42:23.521 --> 02:42:24.242
They're creating a debt.
2312
02:42:24.262 --> 02:42:29.906
That's what they're doing, a social debt, and they're taking advantage of that little urge you have inside of you to repay that debt.
2313
02:42:30.086 --> 02:42:34.989
We talked last year on the friendship episode about the tit-for-tat evolutionary strategy.
2314
02:42:35.190 --> 02:42:43.576
Basically, for people who don't recall that episode, we are very much evolutionarily predisposed to reciprocate to the people around us.
2315
02:42:43.856 --> 02:42:45.297
If somebody is nice to us, we are
2316
02:42:45.777 --> 02:43:08.089
more likely to be nice back if somebody's mean to us we're going to be mean back this is kind of our our default setting of how we just approach all social interactions there's a very logical evolutionary explanation for it if you want to nerd out really hard on that explanation go check out that episode but yes this is essentially the tit for tat strategy being weaponized to sell shit
2317
02:43:09.566 --> 02:43:10.427
We watch out for this one.
2318
02:43:10.447 --> 02:43:11.488
It was where the imbalance is.
2319
02:43:11.508 --> 02:43:15.491
So like it's never a one-to-one reciprocity thing usually when it comes to sales and marketing, right?
2320
02:43:15.711 --> 02:43:18.153
I went on an all-inclusive trip one time, right?
2321
02:43:18.173 --> 02:43:21.235
To a resort and they gave, you've got a free massage, right?
2322
02:43:21.295 --> 02:43:21.635
Oh, great.
2323
02:43:21.835 --> 02:43:22.596
Here's a free massage.
2324
02:43:23.076 --> 02:43:26.419
It turned into a six-hour pitch for basically like a timeshare, more or less.
2325
02:43:26.439 --> 02:43:26.819
A timeshare, okay.
2326
02:43:26.879 --> 02:43:31.443
And I had to turn, it was like a $10,000 package or something like that for an hour-long massage.
2327
02:43:31.483 --> 02:43:31.723
Right.
2328
02:43:31.903 --> 02:43:33.484
The imbalance there is obvious.
2329
02:43:33.524 --> 02:43:33.764
Yeah.
2330
02:43:33.804 --> 02:43:35.445
That's where it becomes real manipulation, right?
2331
02:43:35.586 --> 02:43:37.447
See, if they had offered you a belly rub,
2332
02:43:38.347 --> 02:43:38.667
Right.
2333
02:43:38.747 --> 02:43:42.188
Then we would be doing this in your timeshare in Florida at the moment.
2334
02:43:42.388 --> 02:43:43.548
All they had to do was roll me over.
2335
02:43:43.608 --> 02:43:44.088
That's right.
2336
02:43:44.328 --> 02:43:44.668
That's right.
2337
02:43:44.689 --> 02:43:45.549
That's what she said.
2338
02:43:45.729 --> 02:43:46.209
Great.
2339
02:43:47.569 --> 02:43:50.750
So there are ways to abuse this as well.
2340
02:43:50.950 --> 02:43:58.291
You see in dating, people will just bombard women with gifts, right?
2341
02:43:58.331 --> 02:44:00.852
Just start buying them tons and tons of stuff.
2342
02:44:01.112 --> 02:44:05.553
And there's a really manipulative motive behind that, which is that...
2343
02:44:06.373 --> 02:44:12.957
The more stuff he buys you, the more you're going to feel indebted to him to spend time with him, get intimate with him, whatever it is.
2344
02:44:13.278 --> 02:44:16.920
Or even just buying somebody a drink at a bar.
2345
02:44:17.220 --> 02:44:18.021
Now you have to talk to me.
2346
02:44:18.201 --> 02:44:18.381
Right.
2347
02:44:18.421 --> 02:44:18.781
Yeah.
2348
02:44:19.261 --> 02:44:20.923
Now you have to sit there for five minutes, right?
2349
02:44:21.083 --> 02:44:23.844
This is actually a way that cults recruit people.
2350
02:44:24.045 --> 02:44:28.608
So cults will send people out into the world and they will actually just walk around and give people gifts.
2351
02:44:28.928 --> 02:44:29.948
They'll give them flowers.
2352
02:44:29.989 --> 02:44:30.829
They'll give them food.
2353
02:44:30.869 --> 02:44:32.070
They'll give them all sorts of things.
2354
02:44:32.250 --> 02:44:35.172
And then offer them to come to a free seminar to learn more about
2355
02:44:35.472 --> 02:44:36.772
you know, whatever, whatever, whatever.
2356
02:44:37.052 --> 02:44:42.114
When I was in university, we were right next to a Planned Parenthood clinic.
2357
02:44:42.514 --> 02:44:46.575
And sometimes there were a lot of like angry religious protesters outside of the clinic.
2358
02:44:47.175 --> 02:44:52.457
But other times there would be missionaries and they would stand out there and they would actually hand out.
2359
02:44:53.057 --> 02:44:57.458
like free snacks, pamphlets, books, copies of the Bible.
2360
02:44:57.918 --> 02:44:58.919
And they were really friendly.
2361
02:44:58.959 --> 02:45:03.100
They would like sit there and they'd be like, hey man, you want like a free popsicle?
2362
02:45:03.120 --> 02:45:04.460
It would be like a really hot day.
2363
02:45:04.500 --> 02:45:05.641
And I'd be like, yeah, sure.
2364
02:45:05.661 --> 02:45:07.721
And then they'd be like, do you have a minute for Jesus?
2365
02:45:07.761 --> 02:45:10.022
I'm like, oh, fuck.
2366
02:45:11.589 --> 02:45:13.750
It happened all the time on campus when I was going to college too.
2367
02:45:13.770 --> 02:45:14.130
Yeah.
2368
02:45:14.190 --> 02:45:14.410
Yeah.
2369
02:45:14.430 --> 02:45:15.230
Handing out free stuff.
2370
02:45:15.710 --> 02:45:16.650
Come sign this position.
2371
02:45:16.710 --> 02:45:18.151
Come to our church group.
2372
02:45:18.171 --> 02:45:18.371
Yeah.
2373
02:45:18.411 --> 02:45:18.871
Yeah.
2374
02:45:18.891 --> 02:45:19.971
This happened all the time.
2375
02:45:20.171 --> 02:45:22.132
Again, that imbalance is what I always look for though.
2376
02:45:22.152 --> 02:45:23.352
It's like, here's a little piece of candy.
2377
02:45:23.392 --> 02:45:25.973
Now give me, you know, two hours a week for the rest of your life.
2378
02:45:26.153 --> 02:45:26.393
Right.
2379
02:45:26.433 --> 02:45:26.613
Yeah.
2380
02:45:26.633 --> 02:45:27.273
Well, yeah.
2381
02:45:27.313 --> 02:45:27.853
Not going to happen.
2382
02:45:28.333 --> 02:45:29.094
I ain't that cheap.
2383
02:45:29.114 --> 02:45:29.394
Yeah.
2384
02:45:29.434 --> 02:45:29.714
Yeah.
2385
02:45:29.994 --> 02:45:33.075
The second principle is commitment and consistency.
2386
02:45:33.175 --> 02:45:34.215
So this one is...
2387
02:45:35.955 --> 02:45:42.301
Really interesting, and you see this happen a lot, especially around political views.
2388
02:45:42.682 --> 02:45:51.110
Basically, if people kind of publicly take a stance or a position on something, if they are publicly seen doing something or supporting something...
2389
02:45:51.690 --> 02:45:56.313
They are going to be massively predisposed to continue to support or do that thing.
2390
02:45:56.693 --> 02:46:10.042
Basically, psychologically, we talked about this in the ego episode, that there's a fundamental psychological need for us to have a consistent view of ourselves, to not view ourselves in contradictory ways, to kind of see ourselves as like...
2391
02:46:10.482 --> 02:46:15.006
you know, fundamentally about A, B, C, and D. And of course, you can manipulate this.
2392
02:46:15.086 --> 02:46:24.493
So one experiment that they did in the 1960s is they went around to homeowners and they asked them to put a small sticker in their window asking people to be a safe driver.
2393
02:46:25.194 --> 02:46:26.955
And a lot of people said yes to this.
2394
02:46:27.256 --> 02:46:36.223
And then they went around and they asked people if they would put these gigantic, gaudy, ugly signs in their yards saying, please be a safe driver.
2395
02:46:36.743 --> 02:46:41.827
Now, when they just went to random people, the vast majority of people said, no, I don't want that sign in my yard.
2396
02:46:42.288 --> 02:46:50.775
But when they went to the people that they had already asked to put a sticker in the window, the majority of them said, yeah, sure, put the sign in the yard because they've already got the sticker.
2397
02:46:50.815 --> 02:46:51.896
So why not?
2398
02:46:52.116 --> 02:46:56.399
You see this a lot in sales is kind of like an escalation, right?
2399
02:46:56.459 --> 02:47:03.024
So what a lot of savvy salesmen will do is they won't immediately show up and try to sell you the $10,000 package.
2400
02:47:03.405 --> 02:47:08.969
They will show up and they will sell you the $100 package and make it really enticing and exciting.
2401
02:47:09.009 --> 02:47:12.631
And then you agree to the $100 package and they're like, well, while you're here, you
2402
02:47:13.392 --> 02:47:17.215
We've got this other exciting add-on for just $900 more.
2403
02:47:17.255 --> 02:47:20.578
You could have the $1,000 package, and you can get this and this and this and the other thing.
2404
02:47:21.098 --> 02:47:23.040
And it turns out you're way more likely to take it.
2405
02:47:23.720 --> 02:47:26.683
And then once you have the $1,000 package, you're like, but wait, there's more.
2406
02:47:27.163 --> 02:47:32.387
We've got this super deluxe VIP package that is really only for exclusive customers that...
2407
02:47:33.208 --> 02:47:36.230
Only you happen to qualify for, for $10,000.
2408
02:47:36.450 --> 02:47:40.132
And sure enough, you're far more likely to take the package.
2409
02:47:40.553 --> 02:47:42.874
In sales, this is often called upselling.
2410
02:47:43.274 --> 02:47:45.976
It's a classic in the internet marketing space.
2411
02:47:46.216 --> 02:47:47.317
We've done it in the past.
2412
02:47:48.017 --> 02:47:50.799
Pretty much every online business does it in some shape or form.
2413
02:47:51.019 --> 02:47:56.523
If you immediately try to pitch somebody $150 product, the conversion rate, you know, it'll be...
2414
02:47:57.243 --> 02:47:58.423
so-so kind of piss poor.
2415
02:47:58.443 --> 02:48:04.685
But if you sell them a $20 product and then offer them the $150 product, the conversion rate is so much higher.
2416
02:48:04.705 --> 02:48:07.186
Because you're trying to generate that consistency.
2417
02:48:07.486 --> 02:48:07.906
Yeah.
2418
02:48:07.986 --> 02:48:10.527
Oh, you're the type of person, especially with information products, right?
2419
02:48:10.887 --> 02:48:11.667
And like learning products.
2420
02:48:11.687 --> 02:48:15.748
You're the type of person who wants to learn this and get better at this and upscale at this, right?
2421
02:48:16.169 --> 02:48:18.709
Well, if you're that type of person, then here's one that's even better.
2422
02:48:18.869 --> 02:48:19.410
Yeah.
2423
02:48:19.430 --> 02:48:20.830
You could ride the escalator all the way up.
2424
02:48:21.010 --> 02:48:24.111
Another interesting example, I'm pretty sure this was in Cialdini's book.
2425
02:48:24.311 --> 02:48:32.493
And he said one time, I think it was like an attractive woman came, was a door-to-door salesman, kind of attractive woman, started asking him questions, you know, like, oh, are you a fan of the arts?
2426
02:48:32.513 --> 02:48:33.594
And he's like, well, of course I am.
2427
02:48:33.614 --> 02:48:34.674
You know, I'm a very cultured man.
2428
02:48:34.694 --> 02:48:35.674
I'm a very sophisticated guy.
2429
02:48:35.694 --> 02:48:36.235
Very sophisticated.
2430
02:48:36.255 --> 02:48:38.015
And he was like a young broke guy, you know, whatever.
2431
02:48:38.335 --> 02:48:42.797
Where she was selling packages, I think it was for like an orchestra or something like that, right?
2432
02:48:42.877 --> 02:48:48.018
And so first get him to say, yeah, I'm somebody who is a fan of the arts and supports the arts.
2433
02:48:50.919 --> 02:48:54.782
this orchestra package that we have, you know, for a subscription to the orchestra.
2434
02:48:55.162 --> 02:49:00.566
So again, it's just like finding a way to make you stay consistent in what you're saying and doing and thinking.
2435
02:49:00.726 --> 02:49:00.986
Yeah.
2436
02:49:01.167 --> 02:49:03.989
So this is weaponized a lot for political causes.
2437
02:49:04.169 --> 02:49:11.154
So in California, we have a lot of referendums, which is basically policies that are kind of pitched to the population, the state population.
2438
02:49:11.714 --> 02:49:15.196
And then we all vote in November whether we want that to become a law or not.
2439
02:49:15.456 --> 02:49:17.397
In theory, it's great, right?
2440
02:49:17.437 --> 02:49:18.597
More democracy is great.
2441
02:49:18.757 --> 02:49:25.400
But in practice, it gets abused and just misrepresented and manipulated all the time.
2442
02:49:25.480 --> 02:49:30.742
And so what I've noticed is like starting around this time of year, we're recording this in October.
2443
02:49:30.782 --> 02:49:32.443
We're about a month out from the election.
2444
02:49:32.963 --> 02:49:38.505
Right now, almost every single day, I'm getting something in the mail saying like, do you support affordable housing?
2445
02:49:38.525 --> 02:49:39.706
And I'm like, well, of course.
2446
02:49:40.206 --> 02:49:41.987
who fucking does it?
2447
02:49:42.047 --> 02:49:44.967
And then you open it up and it's like, vote for proposition, whatever, whatever.
2448
02:49:44.987 --> 02:49:51.789
And then you actually go to Google and Google the proposition and there's all this shit in there that has nothing to do with affordable housing.
2449
02:49:52.109 --> 02:50:03.572
They take something that is very obviously likable and agreeable and then they staple on whatever thing they actually want you to do off the back of that.
2450
02:50:03.772 --> 02:50:07.212
And so you kind of get just strong-armed into doing it.
2451
02:50:07.512 --> 02:50:09.193
Next principle, this is,
2452
02:50:10.233 --> 02:50:10.653
A big one.
2453
02:50:10.693 --> 02:50:11.474
This is my favorite.
2454
02:50:11.794 --> 02:50:12.374
Social proof.
2455
02:50:12.774 --> 02:50:13.194
Ah, yeah.
2456
02:50:13.474 --> 02:50:20.577
People tend to value and pay attention to whatever other people value and pay attention to.
2457
02:50:20.697 --> 02:50:25.259
It's such a simple principle, but it applies to so many things in life.
2458
02:50:25.839 --> 02:50:31.481
It's basically if you can make something appear popular in any way, shape, or form, people are more likely to want it.
2459
02:50:32.021 --> 02:50:34.462
They're more likely to listen to a person.
2460
02:50:34.702 --> 02:50:38.084
This works on like even a minuscule scale like hotels...
2461
02:50:38.824 --> 02:50:46.668
have found that sometimes when you go into a hotel room and in the bathroom, they'll have like a little card and it says like, please reuse your towel or whatever.
2462
02:50:47.309 --> 02:50:54.393
What they found is that if they change the copy on that card to say, most guests reuse their towel,
2463
02:50:55.113 --> 02:51:00.198
people are actually much more likely to reuse their towel because it says most other guests are reusing their towels as well.
2464
02:51:00.238 --> 02:51:05.803
So we tend to default to doing what other people are doing around us or what we see other people doing.
2465
02:51:05.923 --> 02:51:12.189
There was another fun experiment where they just had people go stand outside beneath a skyscraper and stare up
2466
02:51:13.010 --> 02:51:13.551
at the building.
2467
02:51:14.271 --> 02:51:21.898
And then they just stopped and watched to see how many other people would stop and stare up at the building and for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
2468
02:51:22.499 --> 02:51:24.220
And it turns out a lot of people did.
2469
02:51:24.240 --> 02:51:27.283
Or nightclubs, they'll have a line going up the door, right?
2470
02:51:27.303 --> 02:51:28.524
And that's all engineered.
2471
02:51:28.805 --> 02:51:29.746
I got stories, man.
2472
02:51:29.766 --> 02:51:30.026
Yeah.
2473
02:51:30.386 --> 02:51:30.747
First of all,
2474
02:51:31.327 --> 02:51:55.356
to everybody psa never spend a dollar in a nightclub okay i was just gonna say mark has mark has plenty of experience i i let me get my soapbox out take it from me kids as a guy who spent way too much fucking time and money in nightclubs for god's sake do not buy a vip table it is the biggest scam in the history of scams you cross a rope and prices go up by yeah four or five times yeah
2475
02:51:55.536 --> 02:51:58.378
One of my best friends in Boston was a nightclub promoter.
2476
02:51:58.498 --> 02:52:02.121
And man, he had such fucked up stories just as an experiment.
2477
02:52:02.161 --> 02:52:02.922
He was kind of curious.
2478
02:52:02.942 --> 02:52:05.844
It was kind of a slower night and then the club wasn't full.
2479
02:52:05.884 --> 02:52:07.665
And so what he did is he took one of the tables.
2480
02:52:08.246 --> 02:52:09.527
He moved it.
2481
02:52:09.607 --> 02:52:21.396
He pulled it out from the VIP section and kind of put it like right next to the dance floor and then just put four velvet ropes in a square around that table and put a reserve sign on it.
2482
02:52:22.508 --> 02:52:23.288
It wasn't reserved.
2483
02:52:23.308 --> 02:52:23.929
There was nobody on it.
2484
02:52:23.989 --> 02:52:36.115
And he said immediately guys started coming up to him and asking if they could reserve it because it was like the prominence and the social proof and this like manufactured demand for this non-existent thing just started driving people crazy.
2485
02:52:36.155 --> 02:52:38.636
And they wanted to pay tons and tons of money for it.
2486
02:52:38.776 --> 02:52:49.403
I mean, obviously you see this with product reviews, you see this with social media, likes and follows, like the peer pressure of trying to get somebody to do something maybe they don't want to do.
2487
02:52:49.443 --> 02:52:50.824
You say like, everybody's doing it, man.
2488
02:52:50.864 --> 02:52:52.025
This is like the coolest thing.
2489
02:52:52.045 --> 02:52:53.386
It's really hip right now.
2490
02:52:53.426 --> 02:52:54.187
It's really trendy.
2491
02:52:54.647 --> 02:53:00.311
We all just feel this kind of natural pull of like, okay, well, I guess I should probably do that.
2492
02:53:00.531 --> 02:53:03.613
Bernays was the first one to kind of use the celebrity endorsement too.
2493
02:53:03.673 --> 02:53:06.335
So like the social proof around the status of the person.
2494
02:53:06.795 --> 02:53:08.136
We'll get into authority here in a second.
2495
02:53:08.176 --> 02:53:14.199
But one area that I think is maybe problematic these days, maybe I want to get your take a little bit on this, gambling sites.
2496
02:53:14.239 --> 02:53:19.883
You know, especially in the US, they've gone nuts since the Supreme Court ruling, like opened it all up to states, right?
2497
02:53:19.903 --> 02:53:20.023
Right.
2498
02:53:20.683 --> 02:53:26.309
And now you're seeing like LeBron James promoting sports betting apps.
2499
02:53:26.729 --> 02:53:30.073
These business models are built on you losing money.
2500
02:53:30.113 --> 02:53:31.074
That's how they make money.
2501
02:53:31.094 --> 02:53:31.915
Predatory, yeah.
2502
02:53:32.075 --> 02:53:33.096
It is predatory, right?
2503
02:53:33.476 --> 02:53:38.621
And yet you have somebody like a LeBron James or Kevin Hart was big on those for a long time too –
2504
02:53:39.828 --> 02:53:40.689
What the hell?
2505
02:53:40.949 --> 02:53:43.771
Some of these contracts are bigger than LeBron James' contract.
2506
02:53:43.871 --> 02:53:46.032
So I've got a crazy story around this.
2507
02:53:46.633 --> 02:54:01.302
So the World Cup this past year, the way World Cup TV rights work is that every four years, FIFA goes to each country and allows the TV networks in that country to bid on the contract for the World Cup.
2508
02:54:01.922 --> 02:54:05.465
So something crazy happened in Brazil this last year.
2509
02:54:05.625 --> 02:54:08.086
The biggest Twitch and YouTube streamer in Brazil
2510
02:54:09.127 --> 02:54:10.730
Won the contract for the World Cup.
2511
02:54:10.830 --> 02:54:12.553
I think he had 40% of the games.
2512
02:54:12.593 --> 02:54:14.837
He had rights to broadcast them.
2513
02:54:15.037 --> 02:54:18.663
He outbid all the major broadcasters in Brazil.
2514
02:54:18.703 --> 02:54:20.025
He outbid, like, yes.
2515
02:54:20.466 --> 02:54:20.666
Wow.
2516
02:54:20.686 --> 02:54:21.427
All the network...
2517
02:54:22.169 --> 02:54:23.290
All of them except for one.
2518
02:54:23.310 --> 02:54:25.412
There was a, the main one down there is called Globo.
2519
02:54:25.433 --> 02:54:29.797
I think they kept the finals and the semifinals and everything and like a lot of the games.
2520
02:54:29.817 --> 02:54:32.860
But I think he ended up with like 35, 40% of the games.
2521
02:54:33.161 --> 02:54:35.343
He was the only place you could go to watch it.
2522
02:54:35.643 --> 02:54:39.547
Tens of millions of people started watching this random Brazilian streamer
2523
02:54:40.728 --> 02:54:41.968
to watch the World Cup games.
2524
02:54:42.449 --> 02:54:50.291
And all of my friends down there, they said it was awful because the whole time, all he did was promote sports betting and prop bets.
2525
02:54:51.352 --> 02:55:01.075
So through the whole game, it was just him and his friends betting live on stream about who was going to score the next goal or who was going to get the next penalty or whatever.
2526
02:55:01.195 --> 02:55:03.196
And they had QR codes up on the screen.
2527
02:55:03.676 --> 02:55:08.338
It's very clear that what happened is that the sports betting sites went to him
2528
02:55:09.178 --> 02:55:13.699
And they were like, we will fund your bid for the World Cup games.
2529
02:55:14.160 --> 02:55:15.080
And then he actually won.
2530
02:55:15.140 --> 02:55:18.681
Like, I can't even imagine how much money it required for him to get it.
2531
02:55:19.021 --> 02:55:19.801
It's really fucked up.
2532
02:55:19.881 --> 02:55:22.542
And what was even more fucked up, this drove me crazy.
2533
02:55:22.602 --> 02:55:26.503
Because, you know, I follow a lot of kind of industry news sites in our industry.
2534
02:55:26.543 --> 02:55:29.924
You know, like the creator industries, like podcasters, YouTubers, whatnot.
2535
02:55:30.304 --> 02:55:34.826
All of these news websites here in the U.S. started running these big stories about this guy.
2536
02:55:34.886 --> 02:55:35.926
About how, like, he had...
2537
02:55:36.186 --> 02:55:41.329
you know, 15 million concurrent viewers, Brazilian streamers, largest streamer in the world, like celebrating him.
2538
02:55:41.389 --> 02:55:43.530
And I'm like, dude, this is fucking corruption.
2539
02:55:43.870 --> 02:55:45.671
Like he's just a sports betting corruption.
2540
02:55:46.211 --> 02:55:47.952
This is especially true online.
2541
02:55:48.152 --> 02:55:49.613
Some crazy post goes viral.
2542
02:55:49.753 --> 02:55:51.554
It has tens of millions of views.
2543
02:55:51.734 --> 02:55:56.897
And there's this illusion of importance, even though it may not actually be important.
2544
02:55:57.117 --> 02:56:00.940
This is all social proof kind of being leveraged and manipulated against us.
2545
02:56:01.240 --> 02:56:04.842
And then you bring it down to smaller scale to like reviews, like Amazon reviews and stuff like that.
2546
02:56:04.902 --> 02:56:12.467
How much those have been manipulated or fabricated or people get paid to do them, you know, and they try to have checks around it and stuff like that.
2547
02:56:12.547 --> 02:56:14.849
But, you know, just reviews in general on any site.
2548
02:56:15.029 --> 02:56:17.270
You used to be able to buy followers, right?
2549
02:56:17.331 --> 02:56:20.693
You don't really see it as much nowadays because I think they've gotten really good at cracking down on it.
2550
02:56:20.773 --> 02:56:27.577
And I think also just people are a little bit smarter and less gullible around stuff like that.
2551
02:56:27.697 --> 02:56:39.905
I can't tell you how many messages and DMs I've gotten from people with 10 million followers, but like zero engagement on their account asking me to like come on their show or, you know, do a collaboration with them or something.
2552
02:56:39.925 --> 02:56:40.686
And I'm like, eh.
2553
02:56:40.706 --> 02:56:40.906
Yeah.
2554
02:56:41.686 --> 02:56:44.248
I'm pretty sure that- They're trying to leverage that social proof.
2555
02:56:44.268 --> 02:56:45.628
Look how many followers are at.
2556
02:56:45.728 --> 02:56:47.509
I'm pretty sure it's a bunch of bots.
2557
02:56:47.810 --> 02:56:50.471
Next one, very similar to social proof, is authority.
2558
02:56:50.771 --> 02:57:00.197
So we instinctually defer to people that we perceive as experts or people who have status, people who have titles, uniforms, credentials.
2559
02:57:00.537 --> 02:57:05.520
There's a set of famous studies from the 1970s called the Milgram experiments that tested this
2560
02:57:06.140 --> 02:57:14.368
to some kind of horrifying results where they brought people in and had them sit across through a one-sided window looking at another person.
2561
02:57:14.729 --> 02:57:27.562
The person on the other side was supposed to answer questions, and each time the person on the other side got a question wrong, the person administering the experiment would tell the subject to press a button which would electrocute them.
2562
02:57:27.982 --> 02:57:29.403
And everything was staged.
2563
02:57:29.423 --> 02:57:30.143
It was all set up.
2564
02:57:30.323 --> 02:57:33.565
The person sitting on the other side of the window was like just another researcher.
2565
02:57:33.725 --> 02:57:34.646
They were kind of a decoy.
2566
02:57:34.926 --> 02:57:45.711
But the test was to see how often and to what extent each subject was willing to electrocute another person simply because like a scientist with a clipboard was telling them to.
2567
02:57:45.911 --> 02:57:46.372
And the...
2568
02:57:47.092 --> 02:57:49.512
Turns out a lot more than you would like.
2569
02:57:50.193 --> 02:57:50.393
Yes.
2570
02:57:50.893 --> 02:57:51.153
Yeah.
2571
02:57:51.213 --> 02:57:52.613
Like a vast majority of them either too.
2572
02:57:52.693 --> 02:57:53.993
A vast majority of them did it.
2573
02:57:54.333 --> 02:57:58.614
And a lot of them did it to an extent that like is morally concerning.
2574
02:57:58.634 --> 02:57:58.894
Right.
2575
02:57:59.114 --> 02:58:01.675
A lot of scams these days operate on this too.
2576
02:58:01.695 --> 02:58:05.555
You know, they're calling from like the IRS in the US or social security or something like that.
2577
02:58:05.575 --> 02:58:12.196
And you're automatically like, oh no, it's this big scary bureaucracy that's going to come down on me and take all my money if they want to or anything like that.
2578
02:58:12.536 --> 02:58:14.757
Scam artists will take advantage of that.
2579
02:58:14.777 --> 02:58:15.897
I've had people in my family actually...
2580
02:58:16.177 --> 02:58:16.958
Fall Prados.
2581
02:58:16.998 --> 02:58:17.279
Really?
2582
02:58:17.379 --> 02:58:17.599
Yeah.
2583
02:58:17.739 --> 02:58:19.001
Happens in art industry a lot too.
2584
02:58:19.602 --> 02:58:26.572
Um, won't name names, but there's, you know, there's a lot of people who have, you know, credentials behind their names where I've went and fact check some of them.
2585
02:58:26.632 --> 02:58:26.832
Right.
2586
02:58:26.872 --> 02:58:29.957
That's not, no, that isn't quite what's happening here.
2587
02:58:29.997 --> 02:58:30.778
What are you doing?
2588
02:58:30.798 --> 02:58:30.858
Um,
2589
02:58:31.058 --> 02:58:32.139
I mean, we do it to a certain...
2590
02:58:32.159 --> 02:58:35.482
I mean, obviously, we try to stick to the data and actually dig into the research and everything.
2591
02:58:35.502 --> 02:58:39.625
But I mean, there are times where we're just like, oh, this really smart guy said this thing.
2592
02:58:39.705 --> 02:58:42.007
And we just kind of... You go with it.
2593
02:58:42.127 --> 02:58:42.747
You go with it.
2594
02:58:42.827 --> 02:58:43.027
Yeah.
2595
02:58:43.047 --> 02:58:52.075
And I think one way to look at all these things, these are heuristics for us to manage large quantities of information and make decisions that...
2596
02:58:52.795 --> 02:59:07.389
are usually going to be correct but not always correct right so like social proof it makes sense that we evolved a mechanism to be influenced by by the crowd right because it's generally not always but generally if a bunch of people are running in one direction
2597
02:59:08.412 --> 02:59:09.692
Yeah, probably shouldn't ask questions.
2598
02:59:09.712 --> 02:59:10.733
You should probably run with them.
2599
02:59:10.813 --> 02:59:11.533
More often than not.
2600
02:59:11.553 --> 02:59:12.053
More often than not.
2601
02:59:12.073 --> 02:59:13.733
That's the right thing you do, yeah.
2602
02:59:13.853 --> 02:59:26.116
Similarly, it's like if somebody has spent their life working on something, developing mastery over something or developing expertise over something, and they have the credentials to back it up, nine times out of 10, like, yeah, you should probably just listen to them.
2603
02:59:26.156 --> 02:59:28.156
Like, they probably do know what they're talking about.
2604
02:59:28.377 --> 02:59:30.257
Obviously, they don't always know what they're talking about.
2605
02:59:30.677 --> 02:59:36.960
and there are very notable exceptions where they abuse their authority or abuse the trust that people put in them.
2606
02:59:37.000 --> 02:59:41.463
But the whole system of credentials that we've built society upon,
2607
02:59:42.322 --> 02:59:43.363
It exists for a reason.
2608
02:59:43.423 --> 02:59:52.488
It is so that we can make these quick judgments without having to actually go fact check every single thing every person says.
2609
02:59:52.688 --> 02:59:55.470
I like Nassim Taleb's kind of rule of thumb on this, though, too.
2610
02:59:55.490 --> 03:00:04.375
The Skin in the Game, that book he wrote about that, where it's like, I'm going to pay more attention to an expert who actually has some skin in the game, like a plumber, okay, who's been around for a while.
2611
03:00:04.455 --> 03:00:07.277
I'm going to trust him, his expert opinion on something where it's like...
2612
03:00:07.897 --> 03:00:11.221
You know, an economist or something like that has some crazy theory.
2613
03:00:11.621 --> 03:00:13.683
I don't care if he's at Harvard or anything like that.
2614
03:00:13.763 --> 03:00:15.665
Does his paycheck depend on him being right or wrong?
2615
03:00:15.985 --> 03:00:18.188
Or is he just throwing out ideas, right?
2616
03:00:18.608 --> 03:00:22.833
That, I think, is a good heuristic around authority where it's like, okay, yes, this person's a person of authority.
2617
03:00:22.913 --> 03:00:23.934
Do I blindly trust them?
2618
03:00:24.394 --> 03:00:27.517
Well, if they have a lot of skin in the game, more likely that you can trust them.
2619
03:00:27.537 --> 03:00:30.841
Are they just a guy in an ivory tower, you know, who's never...
2620
03:00:31.201 --> 03:00:33.062
Not to say that those people don't have something to say.
2621
03:00:33.082 --> 03:00:38.046
Like I said, there are genuinely academic experts who do have something to contribute.
2622
03:00:38.066 --> 03:00:43.229
I'm just saying the closer they are to where the rubber hits the road on their own theories or job.
2623
03:00:43.409 --> 03:00:45.611
The more dependable they believe.
2624
03:00:45.651 --> 03:00:48.053
The more dependable you can probably rely on them.
2625
03:00:48.073 --> 03:00:48.273
Yeah.
2626
03:00:48.813 --> 03:00:50.474
A thought I just had kind of going through this.
2627
03:00:50.494 --> 03:00:50.654
Yeah.
2628
03:00:51.035 --> 03:00:58.319
I would argue that the internet is very much undermining or disrupting our usual associations with authority.
2629
03:00:58.380 --> 03:00:58.600
Yeah.
2630
03:00:58.740 --> 03:00:58.920
Right?
2631
03:00:59.140 --> 03:01:14.231
today, at least in our lifetime today, and probably definitely in the most, like at least the last hundred years, I think people are more skeptical of experts and authorities today than any other time before, at least in recent history.
2632
03:01:14.751 --> 03:01:18.053
And similarly, I think people are more skeptical of social proof today.
2633
03:01:18.434 --> 03:01:24.678
Like if you think back to the 1950s or 1960s, it was very much like you go with the crowd.
2634
03:01:28.981 --> 03:01:31.062
Everybody kind of just blindly went with the crowd.
2635
03:01:31.662 --> 03:01:37.943
Whereas I think today we almost have the opposite problem, which is that people are instinctually skeptical of the crowd all the time.
2636
03:01:38.463 --> 03:01:42.964
And they're constantly questioning the prevailing ethos or belief system is.
2637
03:01:43.784 --> 03:01:46.985
And they're constantly questioning like what the authorities are saying.
2638
03:01:47.065 --> 03:01:58.628
And it's understandable because I think we are more aware than ever before of like the flaws and mistakes of experts and authorities and different organizations and social institutions and whatnot.
2639
03:01:59.408 --> 03:02:03.091
But at the same time, like you can't just fact check everything all the time.
2640
03:02:03.151 --> 03:02:06.833
Like we, at some point we have to trust some people and just go with it.
2641
03:02:06.973 --> 03:02:16.979
And then I would say on the flip side, I would say the internet has amplified commitment and consistency because everything everybody does now is so potentially public.
2642
03:02:17.119 --> 03:02:20.802
I think people have gotten a lot more rigid and like the stances that they take.
2643
03:02:20.922 --> 03:02:22.283
You said this 15 years ago.
2644
03:02:22.303 --> 03:02:22.403
Yeah.
2645
03:02:22.803 --> 03:02:22.923
Right.
2646
03:02:46.236 --> 03:02:50.580
They will trust you and they will follow you, right?
2647
03:02:50.620 --> 03:02:58.888
Whereas if you just kind of stand up and wave your degree around, your PhD around, they're probably going to be a little bit more skeptical right off the bat.
2648
03:02:59.108 --> 03:03:01.651
Principle number five is really basic.
2649
03:03:01.851 --> 03:03:02.191
Liking.
2650
03:03:02.972 --> 03:03:03.532
Are you likable?
2651
03:03:04.193 --> 03:03:04.854
Are you charming?
2652
03:03:04.974 --> 03:03:05.755
Are you interesting?
2653
03:03:05.795 --> 03:03:06.475
Are you engaging?
2654
03:03:06.555 --> 03:03:08.437
Do they find you friendly?
2655
03:03:08.797 --> 03:03:10.199
I actually think a lot of liking is...
2656
03:03:11.383 --> 03:03:12.704
comes down to relatability.
2657
03:03:12.944 --> 03:03:31.333
Cialdini, he did another book maybe about 10 years ago called Persuasion, and then he tried to argue that there's a seventh principle called unity, which I think strikes me as very much kind of captured by the moment of just how tribal people are being and how in-group versus out-group people are.
2658
03:03:31.353 --> 03:03:32.273
Identity-based, yeah.
2659
03:03:32.433 --> 03:03:35.975
Yeah, I just think people tend to like people that
2660
03:03:37.235 --> 03:03:37.735
are like them.
2661
03:03:38.075 --> 03:03:40.316
There's tons and tons of research that backs this up.
2662
03:03:40.436 --> 03:03:48.098
We tend to like people who look like us, people who came from the same place we came from, people who do the same things that we do, people who like the same things that we like.
2663
03:03:48.618 --> 03:03:51.719
We are just predisposed to like those people because we relate to them.
2664
03:03:51.879 --> 03:03:53.680
It's easy for us to empathize with them.
2665
03:03:54.060 --> 03:03:56.301
This is a little bit of the counterweight to Machiavelli.
2666
03:03:56.541 --> 03:04:03.583
If there isn't a severe power imbalance, like if you don't wield a bunch of authority over people, you're probably better off
2667
03:04:04.363 --> 03:04:11.325
influencing with the carrot and not the stick, appearing generous and magnanimous and supportive, right?
2668
03:04:11.405 --> 03:04:14.306
And again, coming back to the reciprocity.
2669
03:04:14.586 --> 03:04:19.708
And then the last one, and this one is huge in sales and marketing, is scarcity.
2670
03:04:20.520 --> 03:04:25.002
We tend to value things that seem rare or seem to be disappearing.
2671
03:04:25.402 --> 03:04:30.044
I could spend the rest of the podcast giving examples of manufactured scarcity.
2672
03:04:31.004 --> 03:04:36.566
You know, every countdown timer on every sales page is manufactured scarcity.
2673
03:04:36.586 --> 03:04:37.867
Refresh the page, see what happens.
2674
03:04:37.927 --> 03:04:42.969
Right, you know, limited time only, you know, only while supplies last.
2675
03:04:43.009 --> 03:04:48.491
Like, there's just so, scarcity is such a powerful lever in sales.
2676
03:04:48.671 --> 03:04:50.072
And it's pretty easy to manufacture.
2677
03:04:50.432 --> 03:04:52.954
It is a little countdown timer, you know, 10 minutes to do this.
2678
03:04:53.135 --> 03:04:54.196
You can make anything up.
2679
03:04:54.356 --> 03:04:56.217
And you, I feel it's not, I'll be on a website.
2680
03:04:56.237 --> 03:04:58.480
I'm like, Oh my God, I got to, I got to book this.
2681
03:04:58.540 --> 03:05:07.588
And it's, and I will say this as somebody who, again, I consider myself somewhat of a Kantian and I, I try to be as like honest and upfront with my audience as, as much as possible.
2682
03:05:07.608 --> 03:05:12.512
And I try to sell in a way that feels like very ethical and, and, uh, and aligned with my values.
2683
03:05:13.333 --> 03:05:15.635
It is so fucking upsetting to,
2684
03:05:16.496 --> 03:05:19.459
how well manufactured scarcity works.
2685
03:05:19.479 --> 03:05:29.170
So like it is like literally, if you just go on the same webpage and like add one line that says, offer expires in three days, it's like your sales double.
2686
03:05:29.690 --> 03:05:31.452
And it's really upsetting.
2687
03:05:32.173 --> 03:05:45.307
I remember we actually did this for the subtle art a little bit, but it was actually, I would say, pretty ethical the way you did it because there was an actual scarcity around it where I think it was like the first 100 people to preorder the book or something like that, right?
2688
03:05:45.548 --> 03:05:47.610
We had certain levels that we did.
2689
03:05:47.790 --> 03:05:49.012
You wrote haikus for some people.
2690
03:05:49.032 --> 03:05:50.253
You're like, I can only write so many haikus.
2691
03:05:50.533 --> 03:05:52.615
So we're going to limit this to 100 people or whatever it was.
2692
03:05:52.655 --> 03:05:52.835
Right.
2693
03:05:53.055 --> 03:05:53.276
Right.
2694
03:05:53.396 --> 03:05:56.399
Or, you know, I can only give out so much of this one thing that we have.
2695
03:05:56.439 --> 03:05:56.539
Yeah.
2696
03:05:56.579 --> 03:05:57.900
It's going to cost me too much if we have more.
2697
03:05:57.940 --> 03:06:00.542
So there was like, but we were generating scarcity around it.
2698
03:06:00.562 --> 03:06:04.506
I mean, it was actual scarcity, though, that we were generating for the most part.
2699
03:06:04.526 --> 03:06:05.527
I forgot about the haikus.
2700
03:06:05.527 --> 03:06:06.207
Remember the haikus?
2701
03:06:06.427 --> 03:06:15.849
So for people listening, there was like, we ran this offer when Subtle Art came out that I think if you pre-ordered, I think it was like 10 or 20 copies, I would write a personal haiku for you.
2702
03:06:15.989 --> 03:06:16.669
That's what it was, yeah.
2703
03:06:16.709 --> 03:06:19.810
And so I ended up writing probably around like 20, 25 haikus.
2704
03:06:20.190 --> 03:06:25.591
And some of them, like especially once I got 15 deep, they started getting really weird.
2705
03:06:25.751 --> 03:06:29.212
Like I just started kind of just going with whatever my first impulse was.
2706
03:06:29.252 --> 03:06:31.232
And so there was some really fucked up stuff.
2707
03:06:31.712 --> 03:06:35.193
And I think some of the people I sent the haiku to, like they were actually really disappointed.
2708
03:06:35.993 --> 03:06:40.197
Because some of them were so weird and just like awkward.
2709
03:06:40.477 --> 03:06:40.817
Shout out.
2710
03:06:40.837 --> 03:06:42.279
If anybody's got one of those haikus.
2711
03:06:42.419 --> 03:06:43.400
Oh, yeah, that would be good.
2712
03:06:43.440 --> 03:06:43.940
Send them in.
2713
03:06:44.180 --> 03:06:45.121
I would love to see them again.
2714
03:06:45.521 --> 03:06:46.342
That'd be a ton of fun.
2715
03:06:46.662 --> 03:06:50.225
So scarcity is also something that I think gets weaponized in-
2716
03:06:51.206 --> 03:06:52.607
human relationships as well.
2717
03:06:53.048 --> 03:07:01.615
One of the most common ways to manipulate somebody is like, well, I'm only going to be around for another day, so you better do it while I'm still here.
2718
03:07:01.815 --> 03:07:03.096
Or just plain hard to get.
2719
03:07:03.296 --> 03:07:04.237
Yeah, exactly.
2720
03:07:04.277 --> 03:07:10.122
It's like, well, I'm so busy this weekend, so, you know, unless you reply by tomorrow, like,
2721
03:07:10.342 --> 03:07:11.803
I don't know when I'm going to see you again.
2722
03:07:12.123 --> 03:07:15.464
It's kind of this game playing that that happens a lot.
2723
03:07:15.684 --> 03:07:24.268
You could even argue that no showing or ghosting people is kind of like a form of manufactured scarcity or constantly canceling on people.
2724
03:07:24.348 --> 03:07:32.452
Like it is that playing hard to get or like pulling away at the precise time that like the person is going to like, you know, want you to come back even more.
2725
03:07:32.752 --> 03:07:39.574
I also think there's an inverse of scarcity that's really interesting, which is the abundance of something makes it feel less meaningful.
2726
03:07:39.714 --> 03:07:47.257
I mean, we've had a lot of episodes where we talked about how it's the abundance of opportunities and options in modern life is part of our problem.
2727
03:07:47.637 --> 03:07:55.880
Sometimes I think part of the reason people don't take news nearly as seriously these days as they used to is there's just so much of it.
2728
03:07:56.883 --> 03:08:01.447
It's like you have so many stations that are trying to fill 24 hours news cycles.
2729
03:08:02.107 --> 03:08:06.631
They are posting constantly, all day, every day online.
2730
03:08:07.031 --> 03:08:14.197
And so it's inevitable that the average value of each story that they are broadcasting is going to decline drastically.
2731
03:08:14.237 --> 03:08:19.381
And so if the average value of the average story is extremely low, at some point people just start tuning out.
2732
03:08:19.621 --> 03:08:22.403
And they're like, well, most of this shit doesn't matter.
2733
03:08:22.463 --> 03:08:25.386
So like why am I listening or paying attention in the first place?
2734
03:08:26.206 --> 03:08:32.508
It's almost like news media became too plentiful, and so it started to kind of become absurd.
2735
03:08:32.948 --> 03:08:36.169
And I also think that's when it started to become very politically motivated.
2736
03:08:36.589 --> 03:08:44.552
If there's only so many useful things to cover, but you need to fill 24 hours a day, you might as well fill it with...
2737
03:08:45.403 --> 03:08:45.963
propaganda.
2738
03:08:46.203 --> 03:08:46.304
Yeah.
2739
03:08:46.324 --> 03:08:52.487
It was when the cost of distributing information went down so quickly and easily.
2740
03:08:52.707 --> 03:09:00.832
So now it's like, it's just cheaper to have some pundit on there giving his opinion, you know, 24 hours a day instead of somebody doing deep investigative journalism.
2741
03:09:01.132 --> 03:09:07.616
And so when that gets flooded with just the opinion pieces, right, that drives a cost or the price of everything else down with it.
2742
03:09:07.996 --> 03:09:10.057
And it becomes cheap and nobody wants it.
2743
03:09:10.357 --> 03:09:12.458
I thought about this with this podcast too.
2744
03:09:12.999 --> 03:09:16.561
We've experimented with doing two episodes a month, three episodes a month.
2745
03:09:16.641 --> 03:09:22.605
And it's funny because I do think there is something special about making people wait a month for a new episode.
2746
03:09:22.625 --> 03:09:26.047
I mean, first of all, these are long as fuck and it takes people a long time to get through them.
2747
03:09:26.067 --> 03:09:30.851
But I just feel like if we are blasting people like three times a week...
2748
03:09:32.691 --> 03:09:36.652
it all just starts to feel interchangeable and it doesn't feel like an event.
2749
03:09:36.712 --> 03:09:38.433
It doesn't feel special or unique.
2750
03:09:38.533 --> 03:09:45.695
You know, like I, what I hope for, for this, for the audience is that the first week of every month, like, you know, solve dropping is kind of an event.
2751
03:09:45.815 --> 03:09:48.936
Like you, you see it pop up in your feed and you're just like, oh, hell yeah.
2752
03:09:48.956 --> 03:09:50.016
It's that time of the month again.
2753
03:09:50.196 --> 03:09:50.556
Yeah.
2754
03:09:50.636 --> 03:09:54.277
I've stopped listening to podcasts or watch TV shows or whatever that is.
2755
03:09:54.817 --> 03:09:57.719
you know, went from once a week to three times a week or every single day.
2756
03:09:57.759 --> 03:09:57.999
Yeah.
2757
03:09:58.079 --> 03:10:01.542
And it's just like, you could kind of desensitize to it to a certain extent.
2758
03:10:01.562 --> 03:10:01.722
Yeah.
2759
03:10:02.042 --> 03:10:07.366
So I have a few, a few more concepts here that are not, they're not Cialdini's, but these are common concepts.
2760
03:10:07.626 --> 03:10:09.908
Some of these come from cognitive biases.
2761
03:10:09.948 --> 03:10:12.630
Some of these come from, uh, sales tactics.
2762
03:10:13.270 --> 03:10:19.795
Some of them are just kind of fundamental psychological principles, but I think they're interesting because you do see them show up a lot.
2763
03:10:19.815 --> 03:10:20.035
Yeah.
2764
03:10:20.335 --> 03:10:23.316
When people are kind of manipulating each other or trying to get something out of each other.
2765
03:10:23.717 --> 03:10:24.777
So the first one is anchoring.
2766
03:10:25.717 --> 03:10:29.639
This is a sales tactic, but I think it also applies to daily life.
2767
03:10:29.699 --> 03:10:32.020
Actually, Cialdini talks about this in influence as well.
2768
03:10:32.300 --> 03:10:35.141
In sales negotiations, you know, anchoring is really simple.
2769
03:10:35.361 --> 03:10:40.884
It's like if I am willing to sell you something for $1,000, I might initially ask for $3,000.
2770
03:10:41.064 --> 03:10:43.345
And you're like, $3,000, that's absurd.
2771
03:10:43.485 --> 03:10:44.065
Oh, my God.
2772
03:10:44.385 --> 03:10:48.288
When we settle on a thousand, that's going to feel like a very reasonable compromise to you.
2773
03:10:48.328 --> 03:10:51.290
Whereas if I just showed up and asked for a thousand, it might feel like a lot.
2774
03:10:51.390 --> 03:10:58.615
So anchoring, it's generally like whatever number is said first kind of sets the frame for the rest of the negotiation.
2775
03:10:58.875 --> 03:11:01.797
So you can be very tactical in terms of like what you lead with.
2776
03:11:02.297 --> 03:11:06.519
to make where you land seem more appealing than maybe it actually is.
2777
03:11:06.859 --> 03:11:09.380
This can work the other way around as well.
2778
03:11:09.681 --> 03:11:12.702
And other ways, like, so we talked earlier about the consistency thing.
2779
03:11:12.742 --> 03:11:18.945
Like if you get somebody to commit to something small, they're much more likely to commit to something large.
2780
03:11:19.305 --> 03:11:22.606
Why do you think there's three tiers for every single thing online?
2781
03:11:22.626 --> 03:11:24.587
It's because they're anchoring you, right?
2782
03:11:24.607 --> 03:11:26.528
Like, oh, they've got this real expensive option over here.
2783
03:11:26.548 --> 03:11:28.009
You got this real cheap one over here.
2784
03:11:28.029 --> 03:11:30.010
This one in the middle looks just about right though, doesn't it?
2785
03:11:30.050 --> 03:11:30.250
Yeah.
2786
03:11:30.530 --> 03:11:36.955
Those three options, they are designed in a very specific way so that the expensive one looks a little bit overpriced.
2787
03:11:37.355 --> 03:11:39.397
The cheap one looks like you're not getting a whole lot.
2788
03:11:39.697 --> 03:11:40.878
So the middle one looks perfect.
2789
03:11:41.499 --> 03:11:44.081
And you're like, wow, that's a lot of value for a reasonable price.
2790
03:11:44.101 --> 03:11:46.142
And it's like they've studied these things.
2791
03:11:46.162 --> 03:11:49.505
They've tested it a million times, and they're absolutely locked in on it.
2792
03:11:49.965 --> 03:11:50.825
what price that should be.
2793
03:11:51.225 --> 03:11:53.306
You can do this with people as well, right?
2794
03:11:53.326 --> 03:12:00.508
Like it's if you want somebody to do a favor for you, you can show up and ask for a huge favor and then kind of back down and ask for something simple.
2795
03:12:00.808 --> 03:12:03.169
Cialdini did this himself in the 1970s.
2796
03:12:03.229 --> 03:12:11.232
He had an experiment where he asked students of his if they would chaperone some delinquents to the zoo for a day.
2797
03:12:11.252 --> 03:12:11.652
Yeah.
2798
03:12:12.192 --> 03:12:13.593
The majority of them turned it down.
2799
03:12:13.753 --> 03:12:15.254
And so then he came back.
2800
03:12:15.434 --> 03:12:19.617
He asked students to volunteer two hours a week for the next two years.
2801
03:12:20.538 --> 03:12:21.638
Everybody turned it down.
2802
03:12:22.059 --> 03:12:27.743
But then when he followed it up with, well, would you take some of these kids to the zoo for a day?
2803
03:12:28.923 --> 03:12:34.625
way more people agreed to do it because it seems so less by comparison than the initial ask.
2804
03:12:34.706 --> 03:12:36.286
Yeah, your brain is a comparison machine.
2805
03:12:36.446 --> 03:12:37.126
It is.
2806
03:12:37.166 --> 03:12:40.928
The framing sets, there's an anchoring to the framing that can be set very easily.
2807
03:12:41.228 --> 03:12:46.450
This kind of leads into another tactic in general, which is just the concept of framing itself, right?
2808
03:12:46.490 --> 03:12:47.651
Like you can frame...
2809
03:12:48.666 --> 03:12:54.368
a problem or a story in so many different ways to kind of dictate what the narrative is around it.
2810
03:12:54.528 --> 03:12:57.248
It actually took me a while to figure this out when I was younger.
2811
03:12:57.428 --> 03:13:02.270
But, you know, so there were so many criticisms about news media being dishonest.
2812
03:13:02.370 --> 03:13:06.191
But then it's like, I would actually go like read an article or like watch a segment.
2813
03:13:06.211 --> 03:13:08.491
And I'm like, well, that is like factually correct.
2814
03:13:09.291 --> 03:13:13.993
But then what I didn't realize is that they're framing the facts in a certain narrative.
2815
03:13:14.193 --> 03:13:14.293
They
2816
03:13:15.754 --> 03:13:24.063
a bunch of assumptions that are actually questionable, but they take them to be true, and then they present a bunch of facts in the context of those assumptions.
2817
03:13:24.284 --> 03:13:34.395
So I remember in the 2000s, like when the Iraq war started, you know, you would see a news story that would say, you know, weapons of mass destruction were like a existential threat to the United States.
2818
03:13:35.095 --> 03:13:44.557
And they would walk through like all sorts of data about how awful Saddam Hussein was and how he gassed his own people and like all the stores of weapons that he had and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
2819
03:13:44.597 --> 03:13:52.958
And like if this got into the hands of terrorists that all these horrors in like it all seems very rational and reasonable until you realize that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
2820
03:13:53.018 --> 03:13:53.238
Right.
2821
03:13:53.499 --> 03:13:54.939
Like they never found anything.
2822
03:13:54.979 --> 03:13:55.639
It was never there.
2823
03:13:55.659 --> 03:14:01.000
It turns out that the intelligence that everything was based on was made up by a guy for political purposes.
2824
03:14:01.020 --> 03:14:01.240
Right.
2825
03:14:01.760 --> 03:14:10.469
You wouldn't notice that if like if you just saw that news story in a vacuum, you would just assume like, oh, yeah, this is a terrible thing.
2826
03:14:10.509 --> 03:14:12.111
Like we should probably go invade Iraq.
2827
03:14:12.151 --> 03:14:16.655
But the framing of it led the viewer, the reader into a certain conclusion.
2828
03:14:16.956 --> 03:14:19.098
You see this happen on both sides of the spectrum.
2829
03:14:19.959 --> 03:14:21.540
You can see the exact same story.
2830
03:14:21.600 --> 03:14:30.230
There's actually some really cool news services now these days that will actually go find the same news story on both the right and the left and present them side by side.
2831
03:14:30.250 --> 03:14:31.071
It's fascinating.
2832
03:14:31.151 --> 03:14:38.339
So that you can actually evaluate the framing that they are doing in real time and kind of make a judgment for yourself.
2833
03:14:38.499 --> 03:14:46.368
Some of the stories you'll see too, and I'm making this up, but like, you know, say there were 500 people in a building and, you know, it got bombed or something like that.
2834
03:14:46.428 --> 03:14:47.850
And like a hundred people died.
2835
03:14:48.210 --> 03:14:50.793
One side might say, oh, you know, a hundred people killed from this.
2836
03:14:50.833 --> 03:14:53.456
And then the other side might say 400 people saved from this, right?
2837
03:14:53.917 --> 03:14:55.578
Factually true on both sides, right?
2838
03:14:55.659 --> 03:14:57.581
But it just depends on who sent the bomb.
2839
03:14:57.921 --> 03:15:07.164
Another thing that you see in news and politics all the time, and this kind of comes back to Bernays and kind of manufacturing consent, is a concept known as the exposure effect.
2840
03:15:07.344 --> 03:15:14.005
So in psychology, what they find is that whether true or not, the more you're exposed to a piece of information, the more likely you are to believe it.
2841
03:15:14.085 --> 03:15:19.927
And so if something is repeated over and over and over and over again, you unconsciously just start assuming that it's true.
2842
03:15:20.287 --> 03:15:23.508
And you just kind of take it as a plain assumption.
2843
03:15:23.868 --> 03:15:33.182
I think this is particularly problematic in the social media age because it is so easy to repeat very incorrect things over and over and over again.
2844
03:15:33.543 --> 03:15:36.848
There's a lot of evidence that, you know, Russia and China have...
2845
03:15:38.087 --> 03:15:45.592
broadcasts a lot of kind of politically contentious ideas on U.S. social networks, repeated them tens of thousands of times.
2846
03:15:46.393 --> 03:15:55.819
And I think they're taking advantage of the exposure effect, where it's like even if you don't agree with something, if you hear it enough times, you just kind of start assuming that, okay, well, that's what everybody thinks.
2847
03:15:55.919 --> 03:16:04.125
And it's almost like working the same way social proof works, but instead of seeing a crowd of people, it's almost like you're seeing the same message
2848
03:16:04.945 --> 03:16:08.269
a crowd of times over a period of time, if that makes sense.
2849
03:16:08.549 --> 03:16:08.729
Yeah.
2850
03:16:08.770 --> 03:16:13.995
Well, if, I mean, if you hear it so many times and you don't hear any counter argument to it, then of course it must be true.
2851
03:16:14.015 --> 03:16:16.278
You see this in nutrition all the time too, right?
2852
03:16:16.318 --> 03:16:21.344
Like, you know, butter's bad one week or it's not the next day, you know, because it gets repeated for so long.
2853
03:16:21.704 --> 03:16:35.794
It's interesting you bring up nutrition because nutrition is a classic example of just rife manipulation, public manipulation at the hands of different food companies, even various academics.
2854
03:16:36.354 --> 03:16:37.135
Governments too.
2855
03:16:37.155 --> 03:16:37.875
Governments.
2856
03:16:37.916 --> 03:16:38.116
Yeah.
2857
03:16:38.296 --> 03:16:39.397
Probably 10 or 20 years ago.
2858
03:16:39.497 --> 03:16:47.002
So there was like a single researcher at the University of Minnesota who he was kind of behind all the quote unquote research that fat was bad for you.
2859
03:16:47.322 --> 03:17:00.334
It came out after he passed away and then it came out later that he had taken all this funding from all the different cereal companies and grain companies and had basically bullshitted a lot of his research.
2860
03:17:00.775 --> 03:17:08.082
And a lot of the dietary guidelines that you and I grew up with and the schools that you and I went to when we were kids...
2861
03:17:08.642 --> 03:17:16.053
based their school meals on were based on this guy's bullshit research because, you know, company paid him a bunch of money.
2862
03:17:16.113 --> 03:17:22.824
So there's another one here called Projection, which is basically accusing somebody of doing the bad thing that you're doing, right?
2863
03:17:22.904 --> 03:17:23.144
It's like,
2864
03:17:23.725 --> 03:17:24.285
I'm not lying.
2865
03:17:24.325 --> 03:17:24.866
You're lying.
2866
03:17:25.146 --> 03:17:25.826
I'm not selfish.
2867
03:17:25.866 --> 03:17:26.526
You're selfish.
2868
03:17:27.087 --> 03:17:27.287
Right.
2869
03:17:27.367 --> 03:17:34.390
And it's it's kind of this verbal maneuver to put the accuser on the defensive and make it seem like actually they're the problem.
2870
03:17:34.650 --> 03:17:35.790
It's a form of gaslighting.
2871
03:17:36.011 --> 03:17:36.211
Right.
2872
03:17:36.231 --> 03:17:42.653
It's like taking somebody who's like upset about something that maybe is legitimate and then trying to convince them that actually they're the problem in the first place.
2873
03:17:42.934 --> 03:17:50.217
So if you can kind of like twist things around and make it seem like they're actually the problem and you're the one who's being victimized, this comes back to just, you know,
2874
03:17:51.457 --> 03:17:58.960
be wary of people who leverage victimization as a weapon because it can be used as a weapon and it can be used to justify a lot of terrible shit.
2875
03:17:59.400 --> 03:18:14.485
Not to compare everything to Hitler, but Hitler very famously, I mean, they called it, I think, I believe even internally they called it the big lie, which is that basically all of the stuff that they were doing, they accused the Jews of doing and they used it as a justification to do all the awful shit that they were doing to the Jews, right?
2876
03:18:14.505 --> 03:18:15.025
So it's like...
2877
03:18:15.505 --> 03:18:19.587
They weren't rounding up and putting Jews into pogroms.
2878
03:18:19.647 --> 03:18:27.812
It's like, well, the Jews have been stealing our businesses and pushing us into poor neighborhoods for the last century.
2879
03:18:28.172 --> 03:18:29.813
So we're just doing it back to them, right?
2880
03:18:29.833 --> 03:18:37.297
And it's like everything you want to do, you accuse your opponent of doing first because then that justifies and opens up the way for you to do it.
2881
03:18:37.617 --> 03:18:38.617
A couple other little things.
2882
03:18:39.078 --> 03:18:40.598
There's a thing called the because effect.
2883
03:18:40.678 --> 03:18:42.979
I love this example from influence.
2884
03:18:43.239 --> 03:18:52.202
One of the things that Chielditi found was that's really funny is that if you ask somebody for something and you give them a reason, it doesn't even matter if the reason makes sense.
2885
03:18:52.422 --> 03:18:53.763
They're more likely to give it to you.
2886
03:18:54.183 --> 03:19:00.165
And so I remember in the experiment that he did, there was a photocopier line at the library with a bunch of people in it.
2887
03:19:00.745 --> 03:19:04.847
And he, as an experiment, he had students walk up and ask if they could cut in line.
2888
03:19:05.227 --> 03:19:08.708
And of course, majority of the time people were like, no, go to the back.
2889
03:19:09.248 --> 03:19:17.353
But if students walked up and asked to cut in line and gave a reason, no matter what the reason was, people were very likely to say yes.
2890
03:19:17.493 --> 03:19:20.614
And in some cases, the students gave completely nonsensical reasons.
2891
03:19:20.754 --> 03:19:23.856
Initially, they would walk up and say like, oh, I'm sorry, I'm really in a hurry.
2892
03:19:23.896 --> 03:19:25.537
Can I get in front of you in line?
2893
03:19:25.577 --> 03:19:27.098
And people would be like, yeah, sure, no problem.
2894
03:19:27.558 --> 03:19:31.339
But then later students would walk up and they'd be like, I've got to send this to my dad.
2895
03:19:31.419 --> 03:19:32.560
Can I get in front of you in line?
2896
03:19:32.660 --> 03:19:34.040
And people would be like, yeah, sure.
2897
03:19:34.520 --> 03:19:34.721
Right?
2898
03:19:34.741 --> 03:19:38.642
Like it just makes no sense, but it just kind of short circuits our brain a little bit.
2899
03:19:39.002 --> 03:19:49.286
Another thing that's really fun is that they found that if you ask somebody for something and then you say, but feel free not to do it, they're more likely to do it because you're like acknowledging their agency.
2900
03:19:49.506 --> 03:19:53.467
And then the last thing I want to touch on, which is kind of a tactic that relates to the consistency piece is.
2901
03:19:53.947 --> 03:20:00.711
Is that if you want to get somebody to do something, if you label them as the type of person that does that, they're more likely to do it.
2902
03:20:00.871 --> 03:20:04.853
Let's say I want you to come over and make dinner for me.
2903
03:20:05.134 --> 03:20:08.556
You know, I'll be like, you know, Drew, you're such a good cook and a really good friend.
2904
03:20:08.596 --> 03:20:10.697
Like, why don't you come over and make dinner tonight?
2905
03:20:11.037 --> 03:20:15.740
Like, you're way more likely to say yes if I kind of preempt it with something like that or like...
2906
03:20:16.140 --> 03:20:17.721
you know, you're always helping me out, man.
2907
03:20:17.761 --> 03:20:19.223
Can I get a ride home?
2908
03:20:19.263 --> 03:20:26.069
You're kind of setting the expectation in the person's mind and creating that desire for consistency within them.
2909
03:20:26.349 --> 03:20:29.191
I was getting some quotes for some work done in my house.
2910
03:20:29.351 --> 03:20:32.694
Had some people come and they were using this tactic big time.
2911
03:20:32.714 --> 03:20:35.296
So it was going to be some exterior work I was going to have them do.
2912
03:20:35.316 --> 03:20:36.477
I was just trying to get quotes for it.
2913
03:20:36.557 --> 03:20:41.862
Of course they come in, they got this long pitch and they just start pointing out, oh, I love this about your house, the interior of your house.
2914
03:20:42.082 --> 03:20:45.785
It's got to match the, the implication was it's got to match the exterior too.
2915
03:20:46.005 --> 03:20:47.306
Look, the interior is so great.
2916
03:20:47.687 --> 03:20:49.988
And they were real specific with their compliments too.
2917
03:20:50.008 --> 03:20:53.171
I had two or three people, two or three different companies come in and they all did this.
2918
03:20:53.551 --> 03:20:54.452
Every single one of them did it.
2919
03:20:54.552 --> 03:20:59.956
I've seen this with designers over the years is like the, yeah, they'll come in and they're like, every single one of them says the same thing.
2920
03:20:59.996 --> 03:21:01.577
They're like, wow, I love your taste.
2921
03:21:01.597 --> 03:21:02.078
Your taste.
2922
03:21:02.098 --> 03:21:02.318
Yeah.
2923
03:21:02.358 --> 03:21:03.379
You have such good taste.
2924
03:21:03.719 --> 03:21:03.939
Right.
2925
03:21:04.059 --> 03:21:08.703
Which was like the implication is if they can see that I have good taste and they must have good taste too.
2926
03:21:08.743 --> 03:21:08.843
Yeah.
2927
03:21:09.063 --> 03:21:10.925
And then of course they're, they're likable.
2928
03:21:11.045 --> 03:21:11.965
It's reciprocity.
2929
03:21:12.025 --> 03:21:12.846
It's all sorts of things.
2930
03:21:12.886 --> 03:21:14.087
So it is really funny.
2931
03:21:14.187 --> 03:21:24.355
You know, when I was younger, I thought sales tactics were a little bit sleazy and scummy again, as I get older and I just kind of recognize that a lot of the world is transactional and that's just kind of unavoidable.
2932
03:21:24.876 --> 03:21:29.299
I almost, I almost have this like sick appreciation for like a really good sales tactic.
2933
03:21:29.319 --> 03:21:32.542
You know, like sometimes if I walk into a store or something, or I talk to a,
2934
03:21:32.882 --> 03:21:49.016
contractor or something and like they're just a great salesperson i actually really admire it like it's like pleasant for me you know to be sold a good sales letter too oh man oh yeah i know exactly what they're doing sometimes i'm like that's fantastic and sign me up getting me all hot and bothered for real yeah
2935
03:21:49.596 --> 03:21:52.078
We could keep going and going and going.
2936
03:21:52.118 --> 03:21:56.941
I mean, there's still so many manipulation tactics and influence tactics.
2937
03:21:57.221 --> 03:22:02.124
There's intermittent reinforcement, love bombing, trauma bonding, Darvo.
2938
03:22:02.444 --> 03:22:05.146
There's so many levers that you can pull.
2939
03:22:05.406 --> 03:22:08.188
If people want to get access to more of them, you can check out the guide.
2940
03:22:08.528 --> 03:22:11.410
Go to solvepodcast.com slash manipulation.
2941
03:22:12.371 --> 03:22:18.795
There's a lot more detail there, but for now we're going to move on to chapter four because at this point, now that we've established...
2942
03:22:19.395 --> 03:22:26.340
how manipulation happens, what are kind of the psychological levers that we're pulling in each other to get what we want out of each other.
2943
03:22:26.680 --> 03:22:29.702
The next question is logically, how do we defend ourselves?
2944
03:22:30.322 --> 03:22:31.523
Can we defend ourselves?
2945
03:22:31.823 --> 03:22:31.983
Right?
2946
03:22:32.103 --> 03:22:38.047
We just talked about how we both kind of admire a really good salesperson, even though we really know what they're doing.
2947
03:22:38.067 --> 03:22:41.069
And we like completely understand how we're being manipulated.
2948
03:22:41.609 --> 03:22:45.112
And it's interesting because a lot of the research around this stuff
2949
03:22:46.078 --> 03:22:50.900
it shows that being aware of it doesn't really change the effect a whole lot.
2950
03:22:50.920 --> 03:22:57.503
Like you're still just as likely to do a lot of these things, even if you're aware that they're being wielded against you.
2951
03:22:57.563 --> 03:23:11.669
So in the next section, we're going to talk about how you can arm yourself, become more aware of the ways that you're being influenced and manipulated, how you can defend yourself when necessary, or at least be on an even playing field with your manipulators.
2952
03:23:12.129 --> 03:23:12.890
So stick around.
2953
03:23:13.350 --> 03:23:13.970
We'll be right back.
2954
03:23:18.387 --> 03:23:24.913
I hate to be the one to tell you, but if you trust nobody, then you are the easiest person to manipulate in the room.
2955
03:23:25.373 --> 03:23:30.858
After everything that we've described in this episode, you would think that it would be logical to distrust everything.
2956
03:23:31.318 --> 03:23:32.499
Don't trust an authority.
2957
03:23:32.660 --> 03:23:35.802
Always pay attention to the motive behind everything people are saying to you.
2958
03:23:35.963 --> 03:23:37.244
Question everything you see.
2959
03:23:38.144 --> 03:23:40.406
Walk the opposite direction of every crowd.
2960
03:23:40.426 --> 03:23:41.007
Don't trust an authority.
2961
03:23:41.107 --> 03:23:43.429
But it turns out that doesn't really work.
2962
03:23:43.590 --> 03:23:46.012
And in fact, it actually just makes the problem even worse.
2963
03:23:46.212 --> 03:23:53.920
The simple reason for this is that if you don't trust anything, then you don't have anything to fall back on when somebody tries to take advantage of you.
2964
03:23:54.120 --> 03:24:02.709
Like if you believe every institution is lying, then you are just going to be more susceptible when a charming, engaging person comes along and says,
2965
03:24:03.469 --> 03:24:04.430
Oh, trust me.
2966
03:24:04.730 --> 03:24:07.832
They're all lying to you, but I'm the one who's going to tell the truth.
2967
03:24:08.133 --> 03:24:19.421
So instead of trusting no one, the challenge is to trust better, to have a higher threshold or a better filter for what you go along with and what you reject.
2968
03:24:19.861 --> 03:24:28.107
It's a healthy sense of skepticism that keeps you connected to multiple people and multiple groups without ever allowing yourself to be completely isolated.
2969
03:24:28.427 --> 03:24:31.469
So after three chapters of this, one response.
2970
03:24:32.445 --> 03:24:35.947
feels tempting, but it actually backfires, which is to trust nothing.
2971
03:24:36.087 --> 03:24:45.152
The ads are engineered, the news is pre-selected, the science is bent, your own introspection is just other people's messaging.
2972
03:24:45.412 --> 03:24:46.753
So why believe anybody?
2973
03:24:47.113 --> 03:24:48.734
Why follow anything?
2974
03:24:49.295 --> 03:24:51.116
Why trust in anyone?
2975
03:24:51.476 --> 03:24:54.358
Not only does this make you more susceptible to manipulation,
2976
03:24:55.078 --> 03:25:00.481
but it actually just makes you miserable because trust is the bedrock of any relationship.
2977
03:25:00.862 --> 03:25:08.326
To have any healthy intimacy or connection to anybody else or to any group, you have to trust and believe in that person or in that group.
2978
03:25:08.687 --> 03:25:12.909
And so if you trust and believe in nobody, then you will feel profoundly alone.
2979
03:25:13.390 --> 03:25:19.814
And when you're profoundly alone, you actually become more gullible and more susceptible to people trying to take advantage of you.
2980
03:25:20.294 --> 03:25:25.817
On top of this, chronically distrusting everything and everyone is fucking exhausting.
2981
03:25:26.418 --> 03:25:27.258
It's tiring.
2982
03:25:27.418 --> 03:25:42.608
If you have to look into every claim, check every popular notion, look for the conspiracy theory behind every major political movement or every social cause, you're going to be spending all day for the rest of your life.
2983
03:25:43.885 --> 03:25:47.770
looking into the nooks and crannies of the internet, assuming the worst about everyone.
2984
03:25:48.150 --> 03:26:01.365
And so the first thing to understand is that while it is good to be skeptical and it is good to understand that you are inevitably going to be manipulated and influenced by all sorts of different people and groups, it's okay.
2985
03:26:02.355 --> 03:26:04.297
Like, this is just part of life.
2986
03:26:04.598 --> 03:26:07.361
The key is not to get rid of all manipulation in your life.
2987
03:26:07.721 --> 03:26:12.267
The key is to simply protect yourself from the most damaging manipulation in your life.
2988
03:26:12.547 --> 03:26:21.138
What I'm saying is that if you try to get rid of all manipulation in your life, you are ironically making yourself more susceptible to the most damaging kind.
2989
03:26:21.558 --> 03:26:24.739
Yeah, and it's not just about being smarter too, right?
2990
03:26:24.779 --> 03:26:25.799
It's not about being skeptical.
2991
03:26:25.819 --> 03:26:27.039
It's not about being even smarter.
2992
03:26:27.399 --> 03:26:37.221
We already alluded to this once before, but smarter people are usually better at convincing themselves of their own bullshit and therefore can be just as easily manipulated, if not more so.
2993
03:26:37.341 --> 03:26:37.541
Yes.
2994
03:26:37.581 --> 03:26:37.761
Right.
2995
03:26:38.201 --> 03:26:38.381
Yes.
2996
03:26:38.521 --> 03:26:40.141
Educating yourself through stuff like this.
2997
03:26:40.321 --> 03:26:40.521
Sure.
2998
03:26:40.781 --> 03:26:47.142
That helps to some degree, but it's not going to completely protect you, nor is it necessarily always going to be all that effective.
2999
03:26:47.262 --> 03:26:47.482
Right.
3000
03:26:47.762 --> 03:26:50.443
Just one example I came across this guy, Dan Kahan, he
3001
03:26:52.103 --> 03:26:55.024
has this motivated numeracy experiments that he ran.
3002
03:26:55.684 --> 03:27:02.887
Basically, people who are like really good with math and numbers and running statistics and all of this, he would give them situations.
3003
03:27:03.767 --> 03:27:07.188
First, he would figure out their politics, basically, then give them situations like, okay...
3004
03:27:07.908 --> 03:27:12.452
whatever they were about some politically motivated campaign or whatever, give them the numbers around it.
3005
03:27:12.692 --> 03:27:20.219
They were really bad if it was a, an argument that ran counter to their politics, but they were really good if it ran in line with their politics.
3006
03:27:20.359 --> 03:27:25.063
So there's just some motivated reasoning going around there, even with experts who are really good with numbers and everything like that.
3007
03:27:25.623 --> 03:27:28.806
Being smarter does not help you with this necessarily, right?
3008
03:27:29.206 --> 03:27:32.829
Being smarter in a specific way that we'll talk about here in a second does.
3009
03:27:33.230 --> 03:27:44.180
So it's not about being purely skeptical or purely smart and having just all the information and knowing all the facts about all of this and being able to protect yourself against every single little manipulation that happens, like you're saying.
3010
03:27:44.640 --> 03:27:46.201
That's not what it's about at all, right?
3011
03:27:46.221 --> 03:27:46.842
Yeah.
3012
03:27:46.882 --> 03:27:52.885
Because in fact, the more skeptical and the smarter you are, sometimes the easier you are to con, actually.
3013
03:27:53.386 --> 03:27:55.667
It's because you're more sure that no con is happening.
3014
03:27:55.687 --> 03:27:57.268
You're like, no, I'm a very skeptical person.
3015
03:27:57.508 --> 03:27:58.469
I'm a very smart person.
3016
03:27:58.489 --> 03:27:59.609
This could never happen to me.
3017
03:28:00.029 --> 03:28:00.250
Right?
3018
03:28:00.410 --> 03:28:00.550
Yeah.
3019
03:28:00.570 --> 03:28:02.971
And then that's exactly when it can happen to you.
3020
03:28:03.051 --> 03:28:03.872
And actually...
3021
03:28:05.820 --> 03:28:11.205
you could just end up constructing better justifications for why this isn't a con, because obviously I would be able to see it if I couldn't.
3022
03:28:11.365 --> 03:28:11.545
Yeah.
3023
03:28:11.585 --> 03:28:12.105
It's interesting.
3024
03:28:12.125 --> 03:28:23.255
There's, and if you look at the, the, the literature on fraud, there are certain classes of fraud, particularly like investment fraud that the victims skew much more educated.
3025
03:28:23.435 --> 03:28:29.400
So basically it's like the smarter and more educated the people are, the more likely they are to buy into certain schemes.
3026
03:28:29.960 --> 03:28:31.662
And part of it is, I think, because you,
3027
03:28:32.302 --> 03:28:39.929
if the scheme is complex, then the smart person feels like because they can understand the complexity, it must be true.
3028
03:28:40.209 --> 03:28:43.372
Whereas like a dumb person might look at it and be like, well, that's really complicated.
3029
03:28:43.412 --> 03:28:44.993
I'm not going to invest in that, right?
3030
03:28:45.193 --> 03:28:46.434
I look at crypto, right?
3031
03:28:46.474 --> 03:28:50.098
Like this is one thing I sadly was involved with crypto for a number of years.
3032
03:28:50.658 --> 03:28:57.261
And it was funny because this is one of the things that kind of sold me on it is everybody I ran into in the crypto world was so smart.
3033
03:28:57.361 --> 03:29:11.087
Like they had such a strong understanding of technology, finance, markets, cryptography, lots of like very interesting perspectives on government and privacy and industry and how AI is going to evolve and all these things.
3034
03:29:11.107 --> 03:29:14.029
Like some of the conversations I would have with crypto people.
3035
03:29:14.729 --> 03:29:16.470
we're just so fucking intelligent.
3036
03:29:17.250 --> 03:29:22.673
I mean, a very large percentage of that space is just gigantic pump and dump scheme.
3037
03:29:22.753 --> 03:29:29.616
Yeah, it's like it's a lot of it has turned out to be either fraudulent or just kind of fancy form of gambling.
3038
03:29:30.317 --> 03:29:30.457
Um,
3039
03:29:31.317 --> 03:29:33.318
or just a bunch of shit coins.
3040
03:29:33.779 --> 03:29:44.465
There is a certain flavor of bullshit that involves a certain amount of technical complexity and instrumentation that I think especially appeals to smart people.
3041
03:29:44.545 --> 03:29:44.785
Yeah.
3042
03:29:45.085 --> 03:29:47.226
Yeah, the 2008 financial crisis was full of this.
3043
03:29:47.246 --> 03:29:53.550
Bernie Madoff, the victims, those were very smart, educated, very rich people that he ripped off.
3044
03:29:53.730 --> 03:29:53.950
Yes.
3045
03:29:54.211 --> 03:29:54.411
Yeah.
3046
03:29:55.051 --> 03:29:57.712
So the goal is don't necessarily become skeptical of everything.
3047
03:29:58.112 --> 03:30:01.414
Don't try to be smarter or more informed about everything.
3048
03:30:01.654 --> 03:30:03.895
Both of those things are kind of unrealistic proposals.
3049
03:30:04.455 --> 03:30:10.818
So it raises the question, how do you inoculate yourself to the worst forms of manipulation?
3050
03:30:10.858 --> 03:30:19.102
How do you make sure you're not being, uh, just completely bamboozled in the making terrible decisions or going along with horrible causes?
3051
03:30:19.722 --> 03:30:22.604
So the answer actually comes from a really interesting place.
3052
03:30:22.864 --> 03:30:29.888
So back in the 1950s, when the Korean War ended, a bunch of prisoners were exchanged and they came home.
3053
03:30:29.928 --> 03:30:39.393
And so it was the first time ever that American soldiers had been captured and stayed within a communist country or a communist prison.
3054
03:30:39.953 --> 03:30:43.295
And interestingly, a lot of the prisoners came back communist.
3055
03:30:43.575 --> 03:30:44.236
They'd come back.
3056
03:30:44.816 --> 03:30:48.599
kind of suddenly believing all the political beliefs of China and North Korea.
3057
03:30:49.219 --> 03:30:51.320
And at the time, this kind of freaked out.
3058
03:30:51.981 --> 03:30:54.282
I mean, this was during the Red Scare.
3059
03:30:54.442 --> 03:30:55.503
It freaked out Congress.
3060
03:30:55.543 --> 03:30:58.605
It freaked out the whole public and especially freaked out the CIA.
3061
03:30:59.105 --> 03:31:04.389
This idea of brainwashing became very popular and prevalent for a period of time.
3062
03:31:05.169 --> 03:31:16.183
There are all sorts of controversial experiments that took place over this period that looked at how do you brainwash somebody and then also do how do you inoculate people from being brainwashed.
3063
03:31:16.343 --> 03:31:20.107
Now, during this line of research, there was a psychologist named William McGuire who...
3064
03:31:21.589 --> 03:31:24.572
took a slightly different approach to the same question.
3065
03:31:24.752 --> 03:31:32.979
While the CIA and most psychologists were asking, how is it that these soldiers were overwhelmed and overpowered and brainwashed with this ideology?
3066
03:31:33.459 --> 03:31:38.223
McGuire looked at it and said, well, why were these soldiers kind of so susceptible in the first place?
3067
03:31:38.283 --> 03:31:44.249
Like, instead of looking at what the North Korean army did or the Chinese army did, like, why don't we look at...
3068
03:31:44.889 --> 03:32:02.555
these soldiers background and what may maybe maybe there's a commonality that made them more susceptible to these beliefs than the many many prisoners who came home not being brainwashed and so he started looking into this and his initial uh hypothesis was that it was medical that there was some sort of like
3069
03:32:03.175 --> 03:32:25.763
neurological trait or you know mental trait that these soldiers had in common but it turned out it wasn't it turned out that the commonality that he found was that all of the brainwashed soldiers were raised in what he called an aseptic ideological environment which is basically like they were really coddled they had never been exposed to anything ever before they were very naive
3070
03:32:26.303 --> 03:32:31.325
They had never come into contact with opposing viewpoints, different ideologies.
3071
03:32:31.365 --> 03:32:37.087
They didn't know anything about history or geopolitics or the world order or anything like that.
3072
03:32:37.127 --> 03:32:42.369
They were just kind of these like naive 18 year olds who had never done anything or never been anywhere.
3073
03:32:42.569 --> 03:32:49.394
And this actually implies something really important, which is that you don't protect your beliefs by reinforcing your beliefs.
3074
03:32:49.955 --> 03:32:53.137
You protect your beliefs by actively challenging them.
3075
03:32:53.437 --> 03:32:55.279
Good beliefs are anti-fragile.
3076
03:32:55.319 --> 03:33:03.485
They get stronger the more contact they have with reality, and they get stronger the more contact they have with disagreement or people who might challenge them.
3077
03:33:03.906 --> 03:33:06.448
And so in a sense, Maguire found that you...
3078
03:33:07.668 --> 03:33:13.329
inoculate people to brainwashing the same way you inoculate them to a pathogen, right?
3079
03:33:13.389 --> 03:33:17.190
You give them a very small dose of the thing that you're trying to protect them against.
3080
03:33:17.250 --> 03:33:34.614
So before sending soldiers to war with a bunch of communists, you actually expose them to communism and let them think about it and show them the arguments for and against it and let them, you know, arrive at their conclusions about their ideological beliefs in a way that's healthy and normal.
3081
03:33:34.654 --> 03:33:35.975
So that way, once they're,
3082
03:33:38.035 --> 03:34:01.605
they're not just completely naive and susceptible to whatever the enemy like tortures into them but mcguire went further because he wanted to show that this principle held just across the population in general and so what he did is he went specifically looking for beliefs that nobody had ever thought the question before that seems so obvious that nobody had ever asked themselves like huh
3083
03:34:02.962 --> 03:34:04.403
actually never thought about that before.
3084
03:34:05.024 --> 03:34:13.912
And the thing he settled on, the thing that he wanted to challenge that nobody had ever really challenged before, the thing that he wanted to see if he could convince people was not true,
3085
03:34:15.072 --> 03:34:16.393
was that you should brush your teeth.
3086
03:34:18.694 --> 03:34:18.994
Okay.
3087
03:34:19.315 --> 03:34:23.317
Which you laugh because you would never even consider to challenge that.
3088
03:34:23.457 --> 03:34:23.957
I've heard it.
3089
03:34:24.097 --> 03:34:26.919
It's one of those things that's been repeated so many times that I've never questioned it.
3090
03:34:26.939 --> 03:34:31.221
Like, why would you ever, you've been told since you were three years old that you should brush your teeth every single day.
3091
03:34:31.242 --> 03:34:32.662
You should brush your teeth after every meal.
3092
03:34:33.083 --> 03:34:34.884
You've never even considered a counter argument.
3093
03:34:35.024 --> 03:34:42.048
And so Maguire's thesis is that people would actually be more susceptible to change their mind about brushing their teeth
3094
03:34:42.648 --> 03:34:46.571
than something else that they had been exposed to a lot of competing arguments before.
3095
03:34:46.771 --> 03:34:47.031
Okay.
3096
03:34:47.632 --> 03:34:49.873
So what he did is he wrote three essays.
3097
03:34:50.033 --> 03:35:02.181
Each essay was a strong, apparently factual argument about why toothbrushing was bad and why people had been misled by the toothbrush industry into brushing their teeth every day.
3098
03:35:02.221 --> 03:35:04.363
And this was all a hoax and this was all bullshit.
3099
03:35:05.023 --> 03:35:08.084
It was very well reasoned, well written, very convincing.
3100
03:35:08.104 --> 03:35:15.846
And he sat people down and exposed them to these essays, essentially tried to change their mind about tooth brushing.
3101
03:35:16.366 --> 03:35:25.429
And sure enough, within a single session, within a single day, he was able to collapse people's confidence in the value of brushing their teeth by over 50%.
3102
03:35:26.929 --> 03:35:27.870
Which is crazy.
3103
03:35:29.271 --> 03:35:32.894
Like, when was the last time you ever changed your mind 50% on anything?
3104
03:35:33.435 --> 03:35:33.635
Right.
3105
03:35:33.875 --> 03:35:35.717
It's something as basic as toothbrushing, too.
3106
03:35:35.737 --> 03:35:38.439
Like, if I were to predict this, I'd be like, no, you couldn't change my mind on that.
3107
03:35:38.579 --> 03:35:38.759
Yeah.
3108
03:35:38.839 --> 03:35:40.561
And he did it in one session with these people, yeah.
3109
03:35:40.821 --> 03:35:45.485
And so the conclusion he came to is that beliefs that have never been attacked are not strong.
3110
03:35:45.525 --> 03:35:46.866
They're actually incredibly fragile.
3111
03:35:47.147 --> 03:35:49.328
And that's because they haven't been stress tested.
3112
03:35:49.489 --> 03:35:56.274
People have not identified their weaknesses and reinforced those weaknesses or found explanations for those weaknesses.
3113
03:35:56.294 --> 03:35:56.435
Mm-hmm.
3114
03:35:57.138 --> 03:36:06.966
And so Maguire's recommendation was to pre-expose people, anybody that you would worry might be brainwashed or, you know, susceptible to terrible beliefs.
3115
03:36:07.346 --> 03:36:21.037
You need to pre-expose them to weakened counter arguments with refutations so that they can be inoculated when they are presented with kind of the full scale argument for the first time.
3116
03:36:21.778 --> 03:36:38.924
And interestingly, when he did this in experiments, it turned out that this actually did improve people's abilities to hold their beliefs, whereas just reinforcing people's initial beliefs barely did anything, barely improved their ability to handle contradiction or counterargument.
3117
03:36:39.424 --> 03:36:47.107
The way to protect yourself from being massively manipulated is to expose yourself to counterarguments, is to expose yourself
3118
03:36:47.867 --> 03:36:55.534
two crazy ideas that maybe seem reasonable on the surface, but after you think about them for a while, you're like, wait, no, that's fucking crazy.
3119
03:36:55.995 --> 03:37:03.882
I'm always reminded of this, you know, somebody who goes up maybe really religious, like in a small town or something, and they're sent off to university, you know, somewhere else.
3120
03:37:04.183 --> 03:37:09.588
And all of a sudden, they've never been challenged because of their belief system that they've held all their lives.
3121
03:37:09.828 --> 03:37:12.150
And then they're sent off to somewhere where all these other
3122
03:37:13.011 --> 03:37:16.633
counter beliefs are presented to them and they don't know what to do with that.
3123
03:37:16.933 --> 03:37:26.398
It's always been a weird thing to me where people are like, if your whole worldview depends on you not encountering other ideas, that's a pretty flimsy worldview.
3124
03:37:26.418 --> 03:37:26.639
Yes.
3125
03:37:26.959 --> 03:37:28.500
But I think the problem is, is people who
3126
03:37:29.480 --> 03:37:33.883
haven't encountered other world views don't realize that they haven't encountered other world views.
3127
03:37:33.923 --> 03:37:34.343
Right, right.
3128
03:37:34.403 --> 03:37:38.025
And then they, yeah, and then you see people getting sent off to these places, oh, they're getting brainwashed.
3129
03:37:38.145 --> 03:37:38.285
Yeah.
3130
03:37:38.305 --> 03:37:39.186
Well, they're not getting brainwashed.
3131
03:37:39.206 --> 03:37:42.048
They've just never been challenged in any way, shape, or form, just like this, yeah.
3132
03:37:42.068 --> 03:37:43.909
It raises a lot of questions and concerns.
3133
03:37:44.029 --> 03:37:58.578
I mean, I know here in the U.S., there's been a lot of controversies around, like, books being banned, certain points of view not being allowed on campus, teachers not being allowed to teach, you know, certain parts of history or certain perspectives on history.
3134
03:37:59.218 --> 03:38:02.900
And I think just by and large, like that is self-defeating, right?
3135
03:38:02.940 --> 03:38:09.884
Like it's the best way to preserve the most valuable points of view is to challenge those points of view.
3136
03:38:10.084 --> 03:38:15.127
Show the counter arguments, show the different perspectives, and then let the best idea win on its own merit.
3137
03:38:15.367 --> 03:38:21.951
Well, I think one of the reasons that this isn't a really widely known argument,
3138
03:38:22.151 --> 03:38:23.772
tactic or method that people use.
3139
03:38:23.912 --> 03:38:26.494
I mean, this is back in the 60s, I think, when McGuire was doing this, right?
3140
03:38:26.514 --> 03:38:26.674
Yeah.
3141
03:38:26.714 --> 03:38:28.855
Early 60s, where he did a lot of this research.
3142
03:38:29.376 --> 03:38:31.577
That kind of sat dormant for a very long time, actually.
3143
03:38:31.597 --> 03:38:31.837
Okay.
3144
03:38:31.857 --> 03:38:34.459
That research did for up until like the 2010s.
3145
03:38:34.979 --> 03:38:38.682
And the argument kind of is, is that, you know, corporations, businesses,
3146
03:38:39.642 --> 03:38:45.364
Um, governments too, they didn't really have a need to play defense with a lot of things.
3147
03:38:45.404 --> 03:38:47.065
They just, you know, people were buying stuff.
3148
03:38:47.565 --> 03:38:51.867
It was kind of like the second half of the 20th century was kind of a one big party, right?
3149
03:38:51.887 --> 03:38:53.467
For a lot of Western civilization anyway.
3150
03:38:53.787 --> 03:38:56.348
So we didn't really need a whole lot of inoculation going on.
3151
03:38:56.388 --> 03:39:01.670
It was just, yeah, you could be persuaded to buy this product or even vote this way, you know, to some extent.
3152
03:39:01.690 --> 03:39:02.471
And it was okay.
3153
03:39:03.011 --> 03:39:04.612
Then the 2010s came though.
3154
03:39:05.412 --> 03:39:08.313
And we saw like- Everything went to shit.
3155
03:39:08.493 --> 03:39:09.213
Everything went to shit.
3156
03:39:09.454 --> 03:39:12.815
There was manipulation at scale with social media and information technology.
3157
03:39:12.835 --> 03:39:15.597
That's just like the likes of which the world had never seen before.
3158
03:39:15.797 --> 03:39:16.057
Right.
3159
03:39:16.617 --> 03:39:19.899
And so there was a little bit of a revival of this.
3160
03:39:19.919 --> 03:39:30.885
There's a couple of researchers in the 2010s at the University of Cambridge who started looking a little bit more closely and getting very systematic about this again, revive some of McGuire's research, but then started doing their own.
3161
03:39:31.426 --> 03:39:34.107
The problem that they ran up against, though, was...
3162
03:39:34.207 --> 03:39:37.009
was that there was so much information now.
3163
03:39:37.129 --> 03:39:44.994
So back in the 60s, yeah, there was a lot of information being pretty sure, but nothing compared to like we had seen with the explosion of the internet and information technology, right?
3164
03:39:45.374 --> 03:39:50.277
So the problem was is that you couldn't inoculate everybody against every little thing
3165
03:39:50.737 --> 03:39:52.397
Every little claim that was being made.
3166
03:39:52.538 --> 03:39:52.758
Right.
3167
03:39:52.838 --> 03:39:55.138
That was a that was its own problem again.
3168
03:39:55.238 --> 03:39:59.539
And what we started this chapter with, too, was you can't just be skeptical of everything anyway.
3169
03:39:59.679 --> 03:39:59.880
Right.
3170
03:40:00.300 --> 03:40:05.901
And you can't just inoculate yourself against every little single piece of information, misinformation that comes out anyway, too.
3171
03:40:06.041 --> 03:40:06.281
Right.
3172
03:40:06.361 --> 03:40:06.541
Yeah.
3173
03:40:06.941 --> 03:40:08.282
So they had to go through.
3174
03:40:09.102 --> 03:40:33.228
um several different uh experiments and iterations of this to figure out what you actually have to do is inoculate at the level of the uh the technique the manipulative attack that's going on the principles from cialdini that we went over right like it's more like targeting those and showing people where those are happening interesting that's what you inoculate against not necessarily just information itself you know we could
3175
03:40:33.288 --> 03:40:36.730
still do big frameworks, you know, capitalism or communism or whatever you want to inoculate against.
3176
03:40:37.210 --> 03:40:46.434
But they're saying, no, no, no, what we really need to do is inoculate people against these specific manipulative techniques where they're being manipulated when they don't know it.
3177
03:40:46.614 --> 03:40:47.975
That makes a lot of sense to me.
3178
03:40:48.175 --> 03:40:51.557
As you know, I've been writing about since the early 2010s, right?
3179
03:40:51.637 --> 03:40:57.360
And I remember I did a piece in, I think, 2013, and it was called In the Future Your Attention Will Be Sold.
3180
03:40:57.600 --> 03:41:02.062
It's funny because looking back now, it just seems so quaint and, you know, like, like, oh, yeah.
3181
03:41:02.282 --> 03:41:02.622
Yeah.
3182
03:41:02.682 --> 03:41:03.483
If only you knew.
3183
03:41:03.503 --> 03:41:03.884
Right.
3184
03:41:04.144 --> 03:41:10.091
It's been interesting because I remember a lot of newsletters and articles that I wrote in the 2010s.
3185
03:41:10.251 --> 03:41:11.913
I talked about this.
3186
03:41:11.973 --> 03:41:17.819
I was like, I don't think I know we just talked about toothpaste, but like you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.
3187
03:41:17.839 --> 03:41:19.221
Like the technology is out there.
3188
03:41:20.442 --> 03:41:23.823
the content machines are running, the propaganda machines are running.
3189
03:41:24.383 --> 03:41:26.624
We're not gonna turn them off magically.
3190
03:41:27.164 --> 03:41:41.068
So the only thing to do is to educate the population on like how the game is being played so that they can at least be aware of the buttons that are being pressed and like how they're being nudged into different views and others.
3191
03:41:41.988 --> 03:41:49.310
And I do think by and large, the population is becoming more sophisticated at understanding this sort of stuff.
3192
03:41:50.330 --> 03:41:55.031
As time goes on, like, I think there are things that are just obvious to us today.
3193
03:41:55.071 --> 03:42:05.814
Like we talked earlier about bought accounts or fake follower accounts, or fake authority credential, you know, phishing emails from somebody pretending to be the IRS.
3194
03:42:06.194 --> 03:42:13.375
Like, that's the sort of stuff that you, you know, 15 years ago, you actually had to sit down and explain to people what was going on.
3195
03:42:13.676 --> 03:42:16.936
Whereas I think now everybody's just like, oh, yeah, that shit happens all the time.
3196
03:42:17.156 --> 03:42:17.737
Like I've seen it.
3197
03:42:17.897 --> 03:42:19.777
It's happened to everybody so many times.
3198
03:42:20.637 --> 03:42:25.199
So in a way, it's almost like an arms race.
3199
03:42:25.279 --> 03:42:36.043
I think it's as we innovate new technological ways to influence people, kind of the population's knowledge and understanding of how they're being influenced has to catch up.
3200
03:42:36.123 --> 03:42:40.205
And I think largely we catch up by being influenced in terrible ways.
3201
03:42:41.537 --> 03:42:50.721
buying into really stupid fucking beliefs and assumptions that, you know, five, 10 years later, we look back and we're like, oh my God, I can't believe everybody thought that, right?
3202
03:42:51.442 --> 03:42:52.202
It's very weird.
3203
03:42:52.242 --> 03:43:04.588
And I think that, I think the, the lived experience of that is that we all just kind of perpetually live in this state of uncertainty and, you know, feeling a little bit untethered to everything.
3204
03:43:05.108 --> 03:43:08.110
Yeah, I don't know about you, but I remember, I think we have caught up quite a bit.
3205
03:43:08.751 --> 03:43:15.035
I remember when fake things really started showing up on social media back in late 2000s, early 2010s.
3206
03:43:15.216 --> 03:43:19.058
I remember specifically this one incident where it was obviously a video that had been edited.
3207
03:43:19.699 --> 03:43:22.321
It was like a newscast thing, and it wasn't really consequential.
3208
03:43:22.341 --> 03:43:23.442
It wasn't political even, too.
3209
03:43:23.462 --> 03:43:24.682
It was just kind of dumb.
3210
03:43:25.303 --> 03:43:28.365
But somebody had posted it, and obviously they thought it was real.
3211
03:43:28.405 --> 03:43:30.767
And I replied, I'm like, you know this is fake, right?
3212
03:43:30.787 --> 03:43:30.947
Yeah.
3213
03:43:31.267 --> 03:43:33.269
I was like, this is probably 2010, somewhere around there.
3214
03:43:33.849 --> 03:43:34.989
And it was somebody my age, too.
3215
03:43:35.290 --> 03:43:36.670
So I was very surprised by this.
3216
03:43:36.690 --> 03:43:37.970
I was like, oh, wow, that's wild.
3217
03:43:38.331 --> 03:43:40.791
Little did I know what was going to come after that.
3218
03:43:41.292 --> 03:43:41.972
Oh, my god.
3219
03:43:41.992 --> 03:43:42.492
All the time.
3220
03:43:42.792 --> 03:43:43.933
All the time for years and years.
3221
03:43:44.073 --> 03:43:44.833
But I think you're right.
3222
03:43:44.853 --> 03:43:45.893
I think now we're catching up to that.
3223
03:43:45.913 --> 03:43:49.515
I think that same person would not fall for something like that anymore, obviously.
3224
03:43:49.555 --> 03:43:52.936
And now we're kind of, especially with AI, everybody's like, well, is this real or not?
3225
03:43:52.956 --> 03:43:53.356
I don't know.
3226
03:43:53.476 --> 03:43:54.816
I mean, I've noticed this with myself.
3227
03:43:54.856 --> 03:43:58.758
Like, my threshold to start believing something has gotten quite a bit higher.
3228
03:43:59.618 --> 03:44:06.349
Even things that I'm kind of predisposed to believe in, if I see it pop up on my feed, I'm like, okay, well, let's give it a week or two.
3229
03:44:06.369 --> 03:44:06.729
Yeah.
3230
03:44:06.970 --> 03:44:08.692
Is that dog really riding a bicycle?
3231
03:44:09.053 --> 03:44:09.393
Really?
3232
03:44:10.732 --> 03:44:12.413
I don't know.
3233
03:44:12.913 --> 03:44:13.254
Yeah.
3234
03:44:13.294 --> 03:44:13.534
Yeah.
3235
03:44:13.614 --> 03:44:25.722
Which I guess this kind of gets into, you know, I, I want to talk about like some of the actual techniques and tools people can implement into their own lives to, to help inoculate themselves.
3236
03:44:25.742 --> 03:44:27.963
So like we've kind of given everybody the principle now, right?
3237
03:44:27.983 --> 03:44:30.605
Which is that you do need to, uh,
3238
03:44:31.485 --> 03:44:34.548
challenge your own beliefs and viewpoints in small doses.
3239
03:44:35.789 --> 03:44:38.071
But it's like, okay, well, how do you actually do that?
3240
03:44:38.111 --> 03:44:47.619
Like, how do you manage to do that without getting swept away without falling victim to a lot of these, a lot of these persuasion principles are like psychological tactics that we talked about in the last chapter.
3241
03:44:48.360 --> 03:44:51.722
Like what is what is a practical thing that you can do today?
3242
03:44:52.543 --> 03:45:03.952
to safeguard yourself from just being, you know, whiplashed into into some some crazy group think that's that that's going to embarrass you a few years from now.
3243
03:45:04.772 --> 03:45:08.615
So the first one is I already mentioned it briefly, but is slow down.
3244
03:45:09.196 --> 03:45:11.317
And this is something that you'll notice.
3245
03:45:12.398 --> 03:45:31.143
especially in like news and politics these days everything is framed as an immediate crisis like something that has to be acted on today that if you don't do something today or this week all hell's gonna break loose the world's gonna end like everything's gonna be absolutely terrible
3246
03:45:31.923 --> 03:45:35.345
And the truth is, is that that is almost never the case.
3247
03:45:35.665 --> 03:45:41.509
But things are framed in that way because when things feel urgent, they leverage that artificial scarcity, right?
3248
03:45:41.529 --> 03:45:47.473
It's like, oh, my God, if we don't do this by tomorrow, like Trump's going to like do this thing and that thing.
3249
03:45:47.513 --> 03:45:48.433
And it's going to be horrible.
3250
03:45:48.493 --> 03:45:49.974
And like all these people are going to suffer.
3251
03:45:50.635 --> 03:45:55.118
You know, it short circuits your ability to reason because of that sense of urgency.
3252
03:45:55.138 --> 03:45:58.780
It's the same reason why a countdown timer on a sales page makes you buy things quicker.
3253
03:45:59.480 --> 03:46:03.964
It, it, it makes you just buy into that narrative with like, with thinking less.
3254
03:46:04.485 --> 03:46:14.133
So the first thing is, is just slow the fuck down, back up the truck, ask yourself, you're like, okay, if I wait a week, is it going to, is it going to matter?
3255
03:46:14.933 --> 03:46:16.455
99 times out of a hundred, it's not.
3256
03:46:17.075 --> 03:46:17.295
Right.
3257
03:46:17.795 --> 03:46:19.316
Is there anything I can do about this?
3258
03:46:19.736 --> 03:46:19.956
Yeah.
3259
03:46:19.976 --> 03:46:23.917
Like I was saying, it's so easy to create that sense of urgency or scarcity.
3260
03:46:24.137 --> 03:46:24.297
Yeah.
3261
03:46:24.317 --> 03:46:29.498
Like you, if you slow down, you'll recognize that like very easily manufactured and I very easily fell for it.
3262
03:46:29.558 --> 03:46:29.738
Right.
3263
03:46:29.858 --> 03:46:30.478
I do this all the time.
3264
03:46:30.518 --> 03:46:31.819
I say, I see this all the time too.
3265
03:46:31.919 --> 03:46:32.139
Yeah.
3266
03:46:32.319 --> 03:46:32.539
Yeah.
3267
03:46:32.699 --> 03:46:38.921
And it's, it's like, I kind of started to mention it earlier, but like one of my rules for myself is that like, if I see something that.
3268
03:46:40.521 --> 03:46:45.622
is upsetting or really interesting to me, but it seems like it could potentially be bullshit.
3269
03:46:46.122 --> 03:46:48.223
I always make myself wait a week, right?
3270
03:46:48.263 --> 03:46:50.403
Like, it's like, okay, I saw it once.
3271
03:46:51.724 --> 03:46:52.384
Might be true.
3272
03:46:53.224 --> 03:46:53.784
Let's see.
3273
03:46:53.924 --> 03:46:56.185
Let's wait three, four days.
3274
03:46:56.305 --> 03:46:58.145
See if stories keep coming up about it.
3275
03:46:58.165 --> 03:47:01.546
Let's see if there's, like, other sources start talking about the same thing.
3276
03:47:02.026 --> 03:47:03.246
And then I just give it time.
3277
03:47:03.426 --> 03:47:09.268
I basically don't really believe something until I've seen, like, at least three or four people that I...
3278
03:47:10.497 --> 03:47:12.138
relatively trust, talk about it.
3279
03:47:12.519 --> 03:47:14.260
And then I'm like, okay, this must be a thing.
3280
03:47:14.420 --> 03:47:14.780
Oh crap.
3281
03:47:14.841 --> 03:47:15.561
This must be a thing.
3282
03:47:15.581 --> 03:47:16.322
Let me think now.
3283
03:47:16.382 --> 03:47:16.762
Let me think.
3284
03:47:17.102 --> 03:47:22.366
And by slowing down and giving yourself that time, you like, you give your, you give yourself time to think about it too, right?
3285
03:47:22.386 --> 03:47:24.908
Like to actually get a sense of, does this matter?
3286
03:47:25.409 --> 03:47:26.850
Does this have any effect on my life?
3287
03:47:27.350 --> 03:47:28.651
Is this actually like likely a,
3288
03:47:29.632 --> 03:47:49.666
significant in the world or is this just a bunch of people freaking out and panicking over something like catastrophizing something uh because there is there is a lot of catastrophizing that is going on the other thing that that is good about slowing down is if you look at um like aggressive sales tactics um different kind of fraud tactics scams um
3289
03:47:50.346 --> 03:47:54.267
almost all of them rely on speed and urgency, right?
3290
03:47:54.287 --> 03:48:02.909
Like if somebody is trying to cheat you out of a bunch of money, they likely aren't telling you, go home and think about it for a week and get back to me, right?
3291
03:48:02.949 --> 03:48:05.130
No, they're like, no, you have to do this today.
3292
03:48:05.190 --> 03:48:06.030
You have to do this now.
3293
03:48:06.410 --> 03:48:08.191
You can't hang up the phone until you do this.
3294
03:48:08.211 --> 03:48:09.351
First is good for the next 10 minutes.
3295
03:48:09.451 --> 03:48:09.771
Exactly.
3296
03:48:09.831 --> 03:48:13.112
Like they are trying to put as much time pressure on you as possible.
3297
03:48:13.732 --> 03:48:19.454
Because if you do sit and think about it, you're probably going to realize that, like, wait, this doesn't actually make sense.
3298
03:48:19.474 --> 03:48:25.115
Like, once the emotions go away, the clarity, you'll be able to see it more clearly.
3299
03:48:25.475 --> 03:48:28.696
I think this is actually really important, too, in relationships.
3300
03:48:28.736 --> 03:48:30.437
Like, if you're having a fight with your partner.
3301
03:48:31.318 --> 03:48:33.601
simply letting a certain amount of time pass.
3302
03:48:34.282 --> 03:48:43.136
I, I, sometimes I don't see it that often, but sometimes I see relationship advice, which is like, you know, never go to bed angry or like always resolve it.
3303
03:48:43.196 --> 03:48:43.497
It's like,
3304
03:48:44.453 --> 03:48:47.736
No, you actually can't resolve every fight every time it happens.
3305
03:48:48.577 --> 03:48:50.198
Some fights drag out for years.
3306
03:48:50.539 --> 03:48:53.181
You will reach a point with your partner where it's like, okay, you know what?
3307
03:48:53.281 --> 03:49:00.388
The best thing we can do is probably just go sit on this for a couple days and then come back and talk about it again because...
3308
03:49:01.028 --> 03:49:15.227
we're both emotional like we haven't had time to sit with it we haven't had time to think through it so like let's let's take a pause take a time out and we'll come back to this in a day or two so another tactic that's very similar to the slowing down
3309
03:49:16.148 --> 03:49:19.332
and something that can help you slow down is by writing things out.
3310
03:49:19.532 --> 03:49:33.307
This is another benefit of journaling is that it actually takes a long time to kind of write your thoughts out into the practice of writing your thoughts out actually forces you to formulate a lot of what you're feeling into a rational thought.
3311
03:49:33.988 --> 03:49:38.073
So, yeah, if you really worked up about something, sit down, journal it out.
3312
03:49:38.153 --> 03:49:47.344
Not only is it therapeutic to kind of work through the emotions, but the process of writing something out, it will force you to think really hard about the beliefs that you're developing around it.
3313
03:49:48.025 --> 03:49:54.352
And we'll probably expose some flaws in your thinking if it's not completely based on on rationality.
3314
03:49:54.572 --> 03:49:57.854
I think a next level skill these days is slowing down.
3315
03:49:57.974 --> 03:49:58.134
Yeah.
3316
03:49:58.254 --> 03:50:02.796
And writing, like we've already said, slow down, but also writing things down that forces you to slow down a little bit.
3317
03:50:03.036 --> 03:50:04.216
That's a next level skill these days.
3318
03:50:04.256 --> 03:50:06.137
I think there's so much pressure to hurry up.
3319
03:50:06.557 --> 03:50:06.778
Yes.
3320
03:50:06.858 --> 03:50:08.558
And that I think go the opposite way with that one.
3321
03:50:08.658 --> 03:50:15.601
And I think we're, we're all kind of losing that muscle to, to like stop, take a beat, think about things like, huh, what if I'm wrong?
3322
03:50:15.681 --> 03:50:18.483
You know, it's just, yeah, it's getting harder and harder.
3323
03:50:18.543 --> 03:50:18.683
Yeah.
3324
03:50:19.183 --> 03:50:19.623
No, for sure.
3325
03:50:20.483 --> 03:50:23.344
Another one too, though, diversifying your relationships.
3326
03:50:23.864 --> 03:50:24.204
Okay.
3327
03:50:24.784 --> 03:50:34.846
This is, so there's this really cool studies, classic study, back in the fifties, they were doing all this obedience study, studies and manipulation studies after World War II.
3328
03:50:34.906 --> 03:50:35.086
Right.
3329
03:50:35.707 --> 03:50:42.308
And there's this classic study where some people go into a room, you sit down in a chair, there's two lines on a board in front of you.
3330
03:50:42.708 --> 03:50:44.108
One is longer than the other one.
3331
03:50:44.328 --> 03:50:46.209
And you just have to say which one's longer than the other one.
3332
03:50:46.969 --> 03:50:51.052
Little do you know that there's a whole bunch of other, all the other people in there are in on the experiment.
3333
03:50:51.493 --> 03:50:54.315
And they pick the shorter line as the longer one.
3334
03:50:54.495 --> 03:50:58.919
And most of the time, most people will go ahead and agree and say, okay, yeah, I guess that's the longer one.
3335
03:50:58.939 --> 03:51:00.060
The Ash Conformity.
3336
03:51:00.080 --> 03:51:01.461
The Ash Conformity experiment, right?
3337
03:51:01.481 --> 03:51:01.921
Very famous.
3338
03:51:01.961 --> 03:51:02.862
Right, very famous study.
3339
03:51:03.623 --> 03:51:11.589
What they found though, is that, so say there's five people in there, you're one of five people, all the other four are, they pick the shorter line, saying it's the longer one.
3340
03:51:11.909 --> 03:51:16.093
A lot of times you're gonna go with them, like 80% of the time or something like that, you end up going with them.
3341
03:51:16.733 --> 03:51:28.197
If there's only one other person in that lineup with you, so there's two of the five people who aren't in on it and they pick the other one, even if everybody else has picked the short line saying it's the long one, but no, no, they're like, no, I'm going to pick the long one.
3342
03:51:28.657 --> 03:51:33.079
You're way more likely to pick that other one too, to pick the longer line, the actual longer line.
3343
03:51:33.499 --> 03:51:36.480
So it's almost like an inoculation with your, your, your group.
3344
03:51:36.520 --> 03:51:42.622
It's just having a diversity of relationships of people who think a little bit differently and might call you out on a few things or question a few things.
3345
03:51:43.122 --> 03:51:46.405
Yeah, it can lead into conspiracy theorist friends or something like that, too.
3346
03:51:46.505 --> 03:51:49.508
I hate that this is kind of controversial these days.
3347
03:51:49.668 --> 03:51:50.829
Oh, yeah.
3348
03:51:50.889 --> 03:51:54.272
Oh, to have a diverse set of friends and opinions in your social group?
3349
03:51:54.312 --> 03:51:59.556
People are ending friendships and cutting off family members because of some of their beliefs.
3350
03:51:59.917 --> 03:52:04.341
And I think that is the single most unhealthy thing you can do.
3351
03:52:04.361 --> 03:52:04.621
Yeah.
3352
03:52:04.781 --> 03:52:05.021
Yeah.
3353
03:52:05.222 --> 03:52:22.981
One of the things I worry about a lot, and one of my big criticisms of California in particular, not to get on my California soapbox, but like there's so much emphasis put on racial, ethnic, and gender diversity, and there's no emphasis put on diversity of thought and opinion.
3354
03:52:23.001 --> 03:52:23.122
Yeah.
3355
03:52:23.142 --> 03:52:23.302
Yeah.
3356
03:52:23.562 --> 03:52:23.842
And so,
3357
03:52:24.523 --> 03:52:27.765
It's funny, like living in LA, it is a very diverse place.
3358
03:52:27.785 --> 03:52:31.547
There's people, all sorts of walks of life, different ethnicities, backgrounds, races.
3359
03:52:32.187 --> 03:52:34.109
They all think the same fucking thing.
3360
03:52:34.169 --> 03:52:35.469
They all have the same opinions.
3361
03:52:35.509 --> 03:52:38.751
They all do this, like they have the same political beliefs.
3362
03:52:39.171 --> 03:52:40.012
It drives me crazy.
3363
03:52:40.052 --> 03:52:41.333
I'm like, this is not diversity.
3364
03:52:41.613 --> 03:52:46.256
I mean, I grew up in a very, I grew up in fucking white on white Texas.
3365
03:52:46.336 --> 03:52:46.576
Yeah.
3366
03:52:47.176 --> 03:52:53.039
And I don't know, there's more political diversity where I grew up than I think there is where I live in LA.
3367
03:52:53.139 --> 03:52:53.320
Yeah.
3368
03:52:53.340 --> 03:52:53.600
Which is...
3369
03:52:54.460 --> 03:52:55.481
It's kind of fucked up.
3370
03:52:56.301 --> 03:52:57.261
I think it does, though.
3371
03:52:57.501 --> 03:53:07.325
If you do have people you care about in your life and they have different, like you're much more charitable and you can try to see the humanity in their way of thinking, even if you completely disagree with them.
3372
03:53:07.485 --> 03:53:09.306
I can see how you came to that conclusion, at least.
3373
03:53:09.446 --> 03:53:11.467
I vehemently disagree with you.
3374
03:53:11.707 --> 03:53:11.887
Right.
3375
03:53:11.947 --> 03:53:12.167
But.
3376
03:53:12.887 --> 03:53:13.728
I respect your opinion.
3377
03:53:13.908 --> 03:53:15.408
And I see that you're not a bad person.
3378
03:53:15.428 --> 03:53:15.969
Right, right.
3379
03:53:16.049 --> 03:53:23.133
And you're not evil and you're not trying to like destroy... No matter what the narrative is, you are evil and you are being manipulated or whatever.
3380
03:53:23.213 --> 03:53:24.934
This is how our minds get changed.
3381
03:53:25.454 --> 03:53:25.734
Yeah.
3382
03:53:25.754 --> 03:53:38.761
Is when somebody we respect and care about has a different opinion than us and we actually sit there and listen to it with good faith, with some compassion and actually consider like, oh, maybe they realize something I don't.
3383
03:53:38.801 --> 03:53:40.903
When you're just surrounded by everybody who agrees with you...
3384
03:53:41.683 --> 03:53:48.947
Again, back to McGuire, your ideas are never challenged, which makes you much more fragile and susceptible to being manipulated and brainwashed.
3385
03:53:49.308 --> 03:53:56.452
Okay, I've got another one here that I wrote down as use base rates, not vibes, which I actually really like this one.
3386
03:53:56.472 --> 03:53:58.993
I use this a lot in my daily life.
3387
03:53:59.894 --> 03:54:09.500
So what most people do, you know, if they meet somebody who is pissing them off or, you know, is maybe a little bit shady or whatever, they try to guess what.
3388
03:54:10.378 --> 03:54:12.960
you know, how trustworthy is this person?
3389
03:54:12.980 --> 03:54:16.823
And like you talked about earlier, how they start zeroing in on body language.
3390
03:54:16.843 --> 03:54:18.204
Like how's their eye contact?
3391
03:54:18.224 --> 03:54:19.626
Like, are they shifting on their feet?
3392
03:54:20.046 --> 03:54:20.987
Are they covering their mouth?
3393
03:54:21.427 --> 03:54:24.410
You know, what's the feeling I'm getting from them?
3394
03:54:24.730 --> 03:54:32.877
And it turns out as we've established our feelings, our vibe check on like how trustworthy a person is is completely inaccurate.
3395
03:54:33.137 --> 03:54:34.118
We're really bad at it.
3396
03:54:34.758 --> 03:54:46.965
I think what's more useful to do in situations is to remove yourself from the situation and just ask yourself, what is the base rate of this being bullshit?
3397
03:54:47.726 --> 03:54:52.708
You know, if I was to meet a hundred people like this, how many of them would be honest and how many of them would be liars?
3398
03:54:53.329 --> 03:54:53.469
Right.
3399
03:54:53.489 --> 03:54:57.071
So it's like a sales guy comes to my door and he's being a little shifty or whatever.
3400
03:54:57.905 --> 03:55:07.316
But he like works for a really large company and he said like he's like seems to have all the credentials and he seems really, you know, like he's got the fucking logo on his truck.
3401
03:55:07.857 --> 03:55:10.139
You know, he might be shifty.
3402
03:55:10.440 --> 03:55:16.206
But if I ask myself, OK, out of 100 people who come to my door like this, how many of them are going to be?
3403
03:55:17.452 --> 03:55:23.358
scam artists, you know, probably one out of a hundred, even though this guy's a little bit weird, like, is he the one out of a hundred?
3404
03:55:23.478 --> 03:55:24.218
Probably not.
3405
03:55:24.358 --> 03:55:25.279
I probably don't know.
3406
03:55:26.080 --> 03:55:31.225
So whatever, you know, I can hire him to like, fucking fix my, my faucet or whatever.
3407
03:55:31.765 --> 03:55:33.467
So you can do this with suspicious emails.
3408
03:55:33.527 --> 03:55:33.767
Right.
3409
03:55:33.847 --> 03:55:41.955
So, you know, one thing that happens periodically, um, is I get somebody emailing me or messaging me extremely angry.
3410
03:55:42.475 --> 03:55:49.639
because they thought that I emailed them with some incredible offer or that I wanted to set up a call with them or I wanted to hang out with them.
3411
03:55:50.359 --> 03:55:52.260
Obviously, it was a scam.
3412
03:55:52.380 --> 03:55:52.600
Yeah.
3413
03:55:52.800 --> 03:55:57.182
And they were just using my name and, you know, a fake email address and everything.
3414
03:55:57.222 --> 03:56:01.605
But then they emailed me mad that I they feel cheated or, you know, whatever.
3415
03:56:02.565 --> 03:56:16.526
And I just kind of look at it, I'm like, look, I don't want to like big shot people here, but I'm like, what's the chance that I randomly picked, you know, Jane Smith from Missouri, you know, a retired...
3416
03:56:17.587 --> 03:56:33.407
school teacher to hop on a zoom call and talk about her her finances like what are the fucking chances that that would happen it blows my mind um that people people are like susceptible to this but you know it's a special world special people yeah
3417
03:56:33.687 --> 03:56:33.927
Yeah.
3418
03:56:34.347 --> 03:56:40.750
This also ties into kind of that, that old maxim that if it seems too good to be true, then it probably is.
3419
03:56:41.010 --> 03:56:41.230
Right.
3420
03:56:41.370 --> 03:56:45.992
It's like really what that's saying is that what are the chances that this thing is true?
3421
03:56:46.312 --> 03:56:54.775
Like if you removed yourself from the situation and you were just looking at a spreadsheet, like in what percentage of the situations would this actually be a real opportunity?
3422
03:56:55.275 --> 03:56:59.837
If the answer is like less than 1%, then you're probably being cheated.
3423
03:57:00.197 --> 03:57:03.979
This is similar to the asymmetric gut policy and what we're calling that is.
3424
03:57:04.319 --> 03:57:08.081
So if something feels off, that's probably worth investigating.
3425
03:57:08.121 --> 03:57:10.962
That's probably worth taking a pause and actually digging into.
3426
03:57:11.042 --> 03:57:16.365
That's usually a pretty good signal that something actually is off or it's at least worth digging into.
3427
03:57:16.445 --> 03:57:16.685
Right.
3428
03:57:16.825 --> 03:57:17.025
Yeah.
3429
03:57:17.245 --> 03:57:24.607
Whereas if you're like really excited and something is just so amazing, that's probably, you're probably getting conned in some way, right?
3430
03:57:25.027 --> 03:57:27.447
Like if it feels too good to be true, like what you said.
3431
03:57:27.908 --> 03:57:30.068
So there's like this asymmetry that you need to be aware of.
3432
03:57:30.408 --> 03:57:32.969
And it's, I mean, it is kind of a negativity bias, right?
3433
03:57:32.989 --> 03:57:36.429
Like be biased against the downside more than the upside, right?
3434
03:57:36.810 --> 03:57:39.750
And it's contrary to our kind of our default instincts, right?
3435
03:57:39.770 --> 03:57:43.531
Because it's like generally when we feel uneasy about something, we try to suppress that and ignore it.
3436
03:57:43.671 --> 03:57:45.712
We're like, you know, just go along with it.
3437
03:57:45.792 --> 03:57:46.692
Don't cause any problems.
3438
03:57:47.212 --> 03:57:52.014
Whereas when we're really enthusiastic and super excited about something, that is when we're defenseless.
3439
03:57:52.114 --> 03:57:57.857
And it's funny, I think it is a good habit to question things that you are.
3440
03:57:57.877 --> 03:58:00.018
It doesn't mean you can't be excited about it.
3441
03:58:00.038 --> 03:58:01.779
It just means take a moment and question it.
3442
03:58:02.119 --> 03:58:07.582
Kind of the last one that I'll say is that I think usually when we are reading people
3443
03:58:08.893 --> 03:58:19.241
I think most of the time when we are watching somebody and kind of making judgments about their intentions, I think in a lot of cases we're really just projecting our own emotional state onto them.
3444
03:58:19.421 --> 03:58:25.345
So if we feel uneasy about a situation, we will convince ourselves that the person in front of us is untrustworthy.
3445
03:58:25.805 --> 03:58:34.212
If we're really, really enthusiastic about a situation, we will convince ourselves that the person is amazing and perfect and, like, going to change our lives.
3446
03:58:35.272 --> 03:58:38.054
So I think kind of the underlying principle here is just...
3447
03:58:38.947 --> 03:58:40.228
be wary of your own emotions.
3448
03:58:40.408 --> 03:58:42.710
Like don't buy into them wholeheartedly.
3449
03:58:42.730 --> 03:58:56.980
This is, I think a practice that just applies to so many other things that we talk about on this podcast of developing a kind of a metacognition around your feelings and like understanding, okay, I'm really excited right now.
3450
03:58:57.360 --> 03:58:58.581
Am I excited for a good reason?
3451
03:58:58.601 --> 03:59:00.783
Okay, cool, just checking, right?
3452
03:59:01.684 --> 03:59:06.948
Or yeah, I'm feeling really guilty or I'm feeling really sad or I'm feeling really distrustful or angry.
3453
03:59:07.897 --> 03:59:11.982
Is that just my insecurity or is there actually something weird in my environment here?
3454
03:59:12.383 --> 03:59:20.112
And I think having those conversations with yourself, it's just very fundamental to like navigating the world at this point.
3455
03:59:20.433 --> 03:59:21.474
Final thing I'll say too,
3456
03:59:22.761 --> 03:59:24.322
is holding your opinions lightly.
3457
03:59:26.003 --> 03:59:29.425
I think that is probably more important than ever today.
3458
03:59:30.426 --> 03:59:31.827
It's fine to be opinionated.
3459
03:59:31.907 --> 03:59:37.430
It's fine to be passionate about something, but the world is changing so quickly.
3460
03:59:38.971 --> 03:59:43.774
Information is disseminated so widely and so quickly.
3461
03:59:43.794 --> 03:59:49.097
Like it just, the facts and knowledge that we have is changing so fast.
3462
03:59:50.878 --> 03:59:58.305
from year to year that I think it is incumbent on everybody develop a certain amount of flexibility around their own beliefs and their own convictions.
3463
03:59:58.706 --> 04:00:12.939
Not only is it easier to be manipulated than ever before, but I also think the downside of being manipulated or buying into bad beliefs wholeheartedly these days is the cost is higher than ever before.
3464
04:00:13.780 --> 04:00:15.484
And we could do a whole episode on that.
3465
04:00:15.604 --> 04:00:16.346
And maybe we will.
3466
04:00:16.767 --> 04:00:17.428
Maybe we will.
3467
04:00:17.649 --> 04:00:20.375
Maybe we'll come back for beliefs solved.
3468
04:00:21.317 --> 04:00:23.141
So to wrap things up.
3469
04:00:24.160 --> 04:00:29.645
You know, in chapter one, we talked about how manipulation is just the water we all swim in.
3470
04:00:29.925 --> 04:00:34.209
It is a fundamental part of human interaction, and there's kind of no escaping it.
3471
04:00:34.569 --> 04:00:38.713
That doesn't mean we're all bad people, and it doesn't mean that all manipulation is even bad.
3472
04:00:38.733 --> 04:00:41.055
It just means that it is always going on.
3473
04:00:41.296 --> 04:00:49.843
And this idea that there are certain evil people out there who are manipulating and using us, and the rest of us are good and innocent and well-intentioned,
3474
04:00:50.804 --> 04:00:51.665
that's kind of bullshit.
3475
04:00:52.185 --> 04:01:05.132
Um, there's just a spectrum of manipulation that we all participate on and we all move it up and down that spectrum based on the context where we are in our lives, our personalities, uh, our, our value system.
3476
04:01:06.393 --> 04:01:07.374
how we're feeling that day.
3477
04:01:07.714 --> 04:01:10.276
In chapter two, we talked about the ethics of manipulation.
3478
04:01:11.056 --> 04:01:25.286
On the one end, we have kind of Kantian idealism and how we should treat everybody as an ends and not a means and how we should always be upfront and transparent and virtuous in every action, respecting our own agency and the agency of others.
3479
04:01:25.847 --> 04:01:32.932
And while that's beautiful and there's fluffy clouds and rainbows and unicorns, the reality is that life is...
3480
04:01:33.492 --> 04:01:34.733
largely a power struggle.
3481
04:01:35.133 --> 04:01:41.456
And as Machiavelli pointed out, whether you want to or not, you have to play that power struggle to a certain extent.
3482
04:01:42.157 --> 04:01:55.463
And what we discovered is that depending on where you are in the power hierarchy often determines how justified you feel manipulating others and also how ethical it can feel to manipulate others.
3483
04:01:56.104 --> 04:01:57.965
There are two key principles from that chapter.
3484
04:01:58.085 --> 04:02:02.327
One was the publicity test, which is that if you manipulate somebody and they become aware of it,
3485
04:02:02.935 --> 04:02:05.816
they would approve of it, then that would be an ethical manipulation.
3486
04:02:06.276 --> 04:02:21.481
And then the other principle from that chapter was power dependency, which is that every relationship has certain power imbalances, and those power imbalances are going to affect, basically the person who feels more disempowered is generally going to be more manipulative.
3487
04:02:21.501 --> 04:02:23.461
They're going to have more incentive to be manipulative.
3488
04:02:23.861 --> 04:02:32.424
And also, I would argue that the person with more power in any dynamic has more moral responsibility to not be manipulative when at all possible.
3489
04:02:33.169 --> 04:02:39.733
In chapter three, we talked about how we manipulate each other, all the marketing and sales tactics and persuasion tactics.
3490
04:02:40.633 --> 04:02:43.955
There are so many of them that we actually didn't even get through all of them.
3491
04:02:44.636 --> 04:02:47.998
So obviously, you can go check out the guide if you want to learn more.
3492
04:02:48.158 --> 04:02:50.359
But it is the water we swim in.
3493
04:02:50.379 --> 04:02:52.780
It is all around us all the time.
3494
04:02:52.800 --> 04:02:55.162
It is the ads in this podcast.
3495
04:02:55.182 --> 04:02:57.043
It is the intro of this podcast.
3496
04:02:57.143 --> 04:02:58.904
It is absolutely everything.
3497
04:02:59.104 --> 04:03:00.625
It is everywhere all the time.
3498
04:03:01.165 --> 04:03:11.399
The more aware you are of it, the more you can navigate the world, maintain your sanity without being straw-armed and buying a set of encyclopedias that you never asked for.
3499
04:03:11.419 --> 04:03:18.369
And then finally, in the last chapter, we thought about how to inoculate ourselves from egregious manipulation.
3500
04:03:18.749 --> 04:03:21.693
It's impossible to defend ourselves from all manipulation.
3501
04:03:21.713 --> 04:03:27.521
We're all very influenceable, and we all benefit from being influenced in many circumstances and the geese's.
3502
04:03:27.902 --> 04:03:32.408
But the question is, how do we protect ourselves from just getting brainwashed into being...
3503
04:03:33.870 --> 04:03:35.451
Fucking nipple dragon idiot.
3504
04:03:35.611 --> 04:03:38.554
You know, one of those trolls online that is just spouting stupid shit.
3505
04:03:38.734 --> 04:03:43.398
And the truth is, is that the way you protect yourself is by challenging your own beliefs.
3506
04:03:43.938 --> 04:03:51.404
Second guessing your immediate assumptions, not bite into your immediate emotional reactions, slowing down, riding it out,
3507
04:03:52.042 --> 04:03:57.284
diversifying your relationships, surrounding yourself by wider variety of perspectives and views.
3508
04:03:57.564 --> 04:04:03.527
And then of course, Zoomy now, asking yourself on the grand scale of things, how likely is this to be true?
3509
04:04:03.967 --> 04:04:05.268
How likely is this to matter?
3510
04:04:05.688 --> 04:04:07.208
How much has this happened before?
3511
04:04:07.709 --> 04:04:08.909
Am I really that special?
3512
04:04:09.169 --> 04:04:10.330
Is the world really ending?
3513
04:04:10.650 --> 04:04:13.411
Because chances are, it's probably none.
3514
04:04:13.851 --> 04:04:18.253
And you're just being a self-indulgent asshole, like we all are from time to time.
3515
04:04:18.853 --> 04:04:20.574
As always, thank you guys for tuning in.
3516
04:04:21.394 --> 04:04:33.061
The Solved Guide is available at solvedpodcast.com slash manipulation and adds all of our citations, references, research, and a more thorough guide for everything that we've talked about in this episode.
3517
04:04:33.081 --> 04:04:34.061
So please go check it out.
3518
04:04:34.081 --> 04:04:35.202
It is completely free.
3519
04:04:35.902 --> 04:04:44.185
And as always, if you love this show, please, the best thing you can do for us is to leave a review and a five-star rating.
3520
04:04:44.585 --> 04:04:47.246
It helps the platforms get the show out to more people.
3521
04:04:47.706 --> 04:04:50.547
I mean, think about all the things Drew and I have done for you.
3522
04:04:51.256 --> 04:04:53.096
all the help we've given you over the years.
3523
04:04:53.577 --> 04:04:55.317
Leaving a review, like how hard is that?
3524
04:04:55.417 --> 04:04:56.997
Like that doesn't take very long.
3525
04:04:57.057 --> 04:04:58.958
It's just eat quick on the five-star thing.
3526
04:04:58.978 --> 04:04:59.918
Like it's quite easy.
3527
04:05:00.078 --> 04:05:01.238
I'm not manipulating you.
3528
04:05:01.558 --> 04:05:06.239
I'm just completely being honest and upfront that this is something that Drew and I work very far in.
3529
04:05:06.279 --> 04:05:07.340
I know we care deeply about it.
3530
04:05:07.360 --> 04:05:14.801
And there's a whole team of people here with their livelihood depends on you leaving a five-star rating and leaving a positive review for this.
3531
04:05:15.221 --> 04:05:17.862
All right, we will be back next month.
3532
04:05:18.343 --> 04:05:19.246
Thank you all again.
3533
04:05:19.587 --> 04:05:20.410
Appreciate you.
3534
04:05:20.871 --> 04:05:21.674
Say goodbye, Drew.
3535
04:05:21.895 --> 04:05:22.316
Goodbye.