#1069 - Dr Max Butterfield - How Love Turns You Insane

16:06Chris Williamson:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I broke up with my boyfriend because of him. The likelihood of you being caught is directly correlated with the amount of guilt that you feel. And I just, every time that I see situations where someone is under pressure being, there's all of these court cases going on at the moment about the Epstein files, right? And people are being poked and prodded and cross-examined or whatever. And I'm looking, this is big shit, right? This is really fucking, this is the biggest case in the world right now. And probably the biggest one that'll happen for quite a while. And he's the worst guy in history and so on and so forth.

16:46Chris Williamson:And I'm looking at these people and I'm watching them and I'm thinking, how's this motherfucker breathing so slowly? And it's, to me, it's one of a few things. Either goat meditator breathwork practitioner with a fucking nervous system, like a glass lake, didn't do it. and importantly didn't do it and doesn't think that he's going to be falsely accused of having done it because didn't do it and still might do it is all of the disadvantages of guilt without any of the benefits of actually having to get away with the fucking thing. Or the third one just straight up doesn't think that he's going to be caught regardless of whether he did it or not.

17:23Chris Williamson:So yeah, it's interesting, especially watching somebody who did it, announced it themselves or maybe he got caught, he didn't really say or he says that he told her But this like retrospective guilt thing is real interesting to me because obviously all of the evidence is out there. He's already said it all.

17:40Max Butterfield:Right. And, you know, there's another possibility as well, and that's drugs. You know, when you take beta blockers, for example, I don't know if you know about beta blockers, but basically it blocks the ability in your body to detect that you're feeling anxious. and they're meant for something else, but you know, uh, you could take them if you have a, you're, you're going to go into a, like a billiards tournament and you don't want a shaky hand. So you take beta blockers or you have a big presentation and they're, they're prescription only. So you have to go to your physician to get them. But these beta blockers essentially lower your heart rate, lower your respiration rate, lower your, uh, your blood pressure, like all that stuff, but they also disconnect.

18:20Max Butterfield:So you don't feel that sensation of the beating heart. And so, you know, there could be any, any variety of that. Saying that the Epstein files are using performance enhancing drugs. They're juicing. That's what it is. Performance enhancing drugs. But come on, if I said that to you, would you be shocked? If the, you know, they went to their doctor and they said, I got to go to the courtroom and I have to, I have to maintain calm. Like, what do you do? Beta blockers. Done.

18:42Chris Williamson:Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Little do you know that you're helping people regulate their way through being cross-examined about being a part of the fucking worst conspiracy in history.

18:49Max Butterfield:That, let's just, let's cut this. Come on, man. You gotta, you gotta help me out.

18:55Chris Williamson:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. How similar is grieving a breakup to grieving a death? Neurologically in terms of the way that it sort of impacts our attachment system? I think in many ways it's the same.

19:08Max Butterfield:Yeah, we're very, we have very blunt instruments in terms of our regulatory systems. And it's like, like fight or flight, for example, the idea that we're being chased by a bear is going to activate the same systems as getting in a fight with your mom. And maybe not to the same degree, but it's just one system and it's either on or off. And in many ways, I think grief is the same. And so as a result, any kind of loss, whether you lose your dog or your grandma or your romantic partner, we just have these blunt instruments that are kind of on or off.

19:47Chris Williamson:This episode is brought to you by Gymshark. You want to look and feel good when you're in the gym. Gymshark makes the best men's and girls gym wear on the planet. Let's face it, the more that you like your gym kit, the more likely you are to train. Their hybrid training shorts for men are the best men's shorts on the planet. Their crest hoodie and light gray marl is what I fly in every single time I'm on a plane. The Geo seamless t-shirt is a staple in the gym for me. Basically everything they make, it's unbelievably well-fitted, high quality, it's cheap. You get 30 days of free returns, global shipping, and a 10 % discount site-wide.

20:19Chris Williamson:If you go to the link in the description below or head to gym.sh slash modernwisdom, use the code modernwisdom10 at checkout. That's gym.sh slash modernwisdom and modernwisdom10 at checkout. Why do we ruminate so much? What's the role of rumination?

20:36Max Butterfield:There are a variety of theories about that. You know, you mentioned evolutionary theory before. And one idea is that rumination will prevent you from doing this in the future. So this is an applied mechanism that over time, people who tended to ruminate would make less mistakes, actually, over time, you know, just kind of one theory, and they'd be more likely to survive. Right. So you accidentally cut off your finger with a rock back in the back in the day and, you know, you smash it or whatever. That's just kind of basic learning. Don't don't do that again. And if you're constantly worrying, don't smash my finger, don't smash my finger.

21:11Max Butterfield:Remember that time I smashed my finger. You're a lot less likely to smash your finger. And it's the same with breakups or anything else. So that that's one theory. Another is much more local, kind of present to your own life. And that is it serves a function for you in the moment, which is you ruminate and you get in some ways rewarded by that. It creates maybe stimulation in you, whether it's dopamine or anything else. And that rumination makes it's rewarding, even though it's punishing at the same time. This is, again, this idea that sometimes punishing things can feel good, like that class clown in fifth grade that gets yelled at by the teacher, but all the other students laugh.

21:54Max Butterfield:That punishment is actually reinforcing in many ways. So that's another theory is that rumination is this loop that we get stuck in. That certainly makes us feel bad, but also it can be self-continuing. And so different people have different, you know, different approaches to understanding it. For me, that's what I like to look at when I'm advising people is what function is this serving for you? And most people say, what are you talking about? That's not serving any function. And that's why it keeps happening is because we don't have that insight that it actually is doing something. And that's where we have to get to the bottom of it.

22:32Chris Williamson:Rick Hansen has a podcast with his son Forrest called Being Well, and they did a full episode on rumination. And that was one of the things that I found so fascinating. He gets people to ask this question. What are you getting out of your rumination? What are you getting out of your, what is it that it's doing for you? And you're right. When you first think about that question, you go, what the fuck do you mean? If I could exercise this out of me, if I could expunge it from myself, of course I would. I don't want to be thinking about this thing from the past. or this stupid sentence that I said at dinner last night or how that person that I really like probably doesn't like me back and I'm worried that they don't or whatever, that my girlfriend's going to find out that I cheated on her.

23:14Chris Williamson:But it is, it is. And a couple of things, a couple of insights that I think at least hold a bit of water. One is that the human mind abhors uncertainty so much. Ambiguity and uncertainty are kind of one of the seats of, like the germinators of anxiety. And if you've got ambiguity and uncertainty, you would rather imagine a catastrophe than deal with ambiguity. Because what happened, what is going to happen, what this means for the future, there is an open loop somewhere and you're closing it, you're collapsing it down. But because we have a negativity bias, you're collapsing it down to perhaps a situation so bad that even the physics of the universe couldn't allow it to, you know, you're fucking...

23:57Chris Williamson:dead grandmother comes back and she sees that you cheated on your girlfriend. And then the entire universe, well, I mean, this guy's managed to make the entire world see. You are collapsing down the superposition of all of the uncertainty into something. And it just goes to show how much humans abhor ambiguity and uncertainty that we would rather imagine a catastrophe than deal with not knowing. I think that's a pretty cool insight.

24:23Max Butterfield:Well, and another element of this is that our brains are also cognitive misers. They want to take the path of least resistance. They want to do the thing that's easiest. And so if you wear in a path, this is, you know, very much kind of glossing over a lot of details, but if you wear in a path, that path is going to get used again, and it's going to get used again and again. And so if you ruminate once, you're a little more likely to ruminate again. And if you ruminate again, and you see where this is going, this isn't good. So if we have an involved tendency to ruminate and it can serve a function for us and it's self-reinforcing just because of cognitive architecture, we're kind of doomed in a lot of ways once that rumination starts, unless there's intervention.

25:10Max Butterfield:And interventions, I mean, therapy can be helpful, but there are other interventions as well. Just, you know, breaking your routine, going somewhere else, doing something else. It doesn't always have to be therapy. Therapy is good for some people. But for others, you can do this without this serious kind of costly intervention. It's like do something else. Think about something else.

25:32Chris Williamson:it seems like you're suggesting that the content of your thoughts after a difficult period are pretty important that if you want to get over whatever it is that's happening giving yourself some fresh territory to inhabit i really really hate the way that if my partner's been on a night out that i worry about them the next morning and whether i've got a text or that every morning i wake up and i think about that girl and hasn't she hasn't texted me back or whatever it's like okay well, maybe if you do something different because your thoughts are attached to the patterns that you've been behaving, the fact that you get up and look at your phone straight away, or the fact that you get up and go to that part of the house in order to get breakfast.

26:13Chris Williamson:Well, maybe if you got up and went straight to a coffee shop, that pattern's already disrupted the way that you operate and therefore it's going to disrupt the way that you think.

26:22Max Butterfield:Exactly. If you wake up and you check your phone instantly, put your phone somewhere else, put it in the garage, put it in the car before you go to bed. It doesn't have to be complicated. It just is switched things up a little bit. And I think people overcomplicate, especially people who tend to ruminate. They're like, well, there has to be a complicated solution.

26:41Chris Williamson:Allow me to ruminate about my rumination problem.

26:44Max Butterfield:No, exactly. Exactly. And I think sometimes also just arguing with yourself, just chipping. You don't have to completely prove the rumination wrong, but just chipping away at it. I was talking to a guy a while back and he was worried that this woman he broke up with was living her best life after they broke up. And he just had that thought just kept popping into her head, his head over and over and over again. And I said to him, how do you know she didn't step in gum today? He's like, I don't know. Maybe she did. Maybe she did. You know, and that's all it takes is just a little bit of possibility.

27:19Max Butterfield:And you can do that to yourself. Just argue with yourself. And it's not, I don't want to say that there's just a simple solution. All you have to do is stop thinking that way. That's not it at all. It has to be very intentional. You actually have to take steps, put your phone in the car, go out for breakfast, chip away. Maybe she did stepping gum. And those things really add up over time. I love the idea of rumination being a teacher.

27:46Chris Williamson:And the reason that I like it is I think a lot of people have a problem with their first order of emotions, right? Feeling sad, but it's really the second and third order of emotions. It's their frustration at their sadness and then their bitterness about their frustration about their sadness. But if you've got this infinite regress of self-flagellation about all of the bullshit that you've done or think that you've done or how you should have seen the thing that you were going to do, a nice way to work out again, how is this serving you? Even if it's an ultimate as opposed to approximate outcome that we're playing with now from an evolutionary lens.

28:17Chris Williamson:What's cool is you go, oh, it's trying to keep me safe. It's trying to teach me something. I went through this very difficult, painful situation and it's making me think about it. And then it's making me think about how much of an idiot I am for thinking about it. And then it's getting me frustrated at how much of an idiot I think I am for how much I'm thinking about it. And all of this is just trying to marshal defenses to make sure that I'm safe and make sure that my life goes well moving forward. So thank you. Thank you, many million year old programming for trying to keep me safe. And it just, I think it at least helps to, it's a solvent that helps to dissolve a little bit of the judgment that people have around that stuff.

28:56Max Butterfield:That kind of self-judgment is so prevalent. And And I really envy the people who don't think, you know, who just can turn it off and go for that run or turn it off and just watch TV or, you know, whatever it is that they do. Because that's not me. And I think most people find themselves really harshly judging, not just what they've done, but especially what they haven't done, what they could have done as an alternative. And there's a lot of new research out there about, and we do some of this in our research lab, about the difference between compassion and self-compassion. and what's really interesting is if some so suppose you uh you know you cheat and like this guy and he should feel guilty for that don't get me wrong he should feel very guilty about that but that being said it's much easier for me to say you know what everybody makes mistakes move on you know don't maybe don't mention it at the olympics again next time and but to to forgive yourself is often much more difficult.

29:57Max Butterfield:So there's this disparity that researchers have been targeting recently. Why is it that it's easy to know when to apply compassion to someone else's life? And in our own case, we have a lot of guilt and shame about what we could have done or what we didn't do or what we should have done differently. And that creates problems downstream.

30:15Chris Williamson:How do you advise people to develop more self-compassion?

30:17Max Butterfield:That's it. It's such the cutting edge of research that there is not a good intervention right now. There's some, there's this researcher named Kristen Neff, who is kind of the guru of this. And one of the things she shows is that kind of like writing a letter to yourself as you would to a friend can be really helpful. Even just writing a letter to a friend, advising them if they were in the same situation, here's what you should do. So a lot of it has to do with self-reflection and just being aware of this fact that we're treating ourselves differently than other people. But truly, researchers are looking for interventions as we speak.

30:54Max Butterfield:We're doing it in our lab as well because it's such a prevalent problem that only recently has been identified.

31:01Chris Williamson:Very cool. Talk to me about high rejection sensitivity. I had an inclination about this, but I'd never heard it as a formal term before I started looking at your work.

31:11Max Butterfield:Yeah. So rejection sensitivity is basically, do you like rejection or not? And most people don't. So it's normal not to like it. But how much does it affect you downstream? And some people, what happens is they are so sensitive to being rejected that they see signs of it even when they haven't been rejected at all. So you send me a text and I don't respond instantly. If you were high in rejection sensitivity, it's, oh, he hates me. and probably he never wants to talk to me again. And you know what? I'm never going to talk to him again. I'll show him. And so what that does is it creates these turbulent social environments where you are now seeing, it's a lens that you see rejection everywhere.

31:58Max Butterfield:Even when it's just ambiguous, sometimes people don't text right back. And so rejection sensitivity has been associated with neurodivergence in some way. So you will occasionally see it in people with autism or people with ADHD. You'll see it in people with personality disorders at a much higher rate. And the reason why isn't necessarily because it's causing those disorders, but it's part of a constellation of behaviors and kind of ways of living and lenses of viewing the world.

32:32Chris Williamson:yeah what about what talk to me about some of the ways that you wish more men and women knew um how to signal interest because i think this is something i'm seeing more of online now maybe this is kind of the progeny of a post me too world where men have been taught not only that no means no but that anything short of a really really obvious hell yeah is probably get the fuck away from me right they don't want to make women feel uncomfortable and they don't want to blow through boundaries that aren't there and they're scared of being a part of some me too and they're just good people generally uh so i'm seeing more there was a video of a girl talking about how in new york people when women are stealing finance bros salads i've seen that yeah absolutely there's a girl walking through central park with like pretty big boobs and no top on no top on no bra on saying like, no, my skin's glowing and no guy's going to come up and talk to me.

33:31Chris Williamson:There's another one of a girl walking in a maxi dress, this party dress down the street and the caption's something like, I can't wait to go out and have no guy come up to me at the bar. What do you wish more men and women knew about how to signal interest?

33:44Max Butterfield:Yeah, it's much simpler than you would imagine. You don't need tricks. The easiest way to do it is to say, hey, you're cute or whatever. I don't know what people say. Normal people, human beings, you know, but you can say whatever. You can say, hey, I like you or hey, that's a killer boots. That is that is a great phrase. Not super dangerous. You know, that's the danger, I think, with with flirting and signaling interest is that you can go too far. You can absolutely go overboard and commenting on people's bodies, for example, don't probably don't do that. Commenting on their clothes is body adjacent.

34:19Max Butterfield:And so that can be dangerous as well. like, yeah, it really is. You know, it's like, oh, that, that top is pretty tight, huh? You know, like, yeah. Um, and so you do have to be careful flirting by its very nature is ambiguous. That's why it's good. People have lost the ability in many ways to flirt because not because of me too, but because I think people took flirting a little too far in the workplace, in schools. And as a result, we had to teach them, okay, stop doing that. Stop commenting on people's bodies. That's not welcome in some cases. But I think that's why being forthright is helpful, but it's hard because you have to put yourself out there.

35:05Max Butterfield:Whereas with flirting, it's like, oh, maybe I like you, maybe I don't. So you can't reject me if I haven't actually signaled that I like you. But I feel like this has been going on a really long time. I had a moment when I was teaching a class probably eight years ago. And this was when apps were, you know, they were, I wouldn't say the dominant form of dating apps of finding people, but they had become much more prevalent than they used to be. And there was this guy who I really liked in class, a student, and I had him for a couple courses, and he had gotten a text from a girl, and he didn't know how to respond.

35:37Max Butterfield:And there were in class, probably 15 people giving him advice on what to text back at once. And my reaction was in my head was, oh no, like this isn't, they're debating things that are so basic. They're in their heads so much. They don't have a chance, these poor kids. And so I think we have to get back to the basics in many ways. And it's very difficult on social media. It's very difficult through text because you don't have that back and forth. If I tell you a joke in person, I tease you a little bit. That's much more obvious. But if I send a text, it's like, was he being sarcastic? What did he mean by that?

36:21Max Butterfield:And those are all the questions that they were debating back and forth. How do I respond to that? So part of it is just the limitations in the way we communicate.

36:30Chris Williamson:In other news, Shopify powers 10 % of all e-commerce companies in the United States. They are the driving force behind Gymshark, Skims, Allo, and Nutonic, which is why I partnered with them. Because when it comes to converting browsers into buyers, they are best in class. Their checkout is 36 % better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms. And with ShopPay, you can boost conversions by up to 50%. They've got award-winning support there to help you every step of the way. Look, you are not going into business to learn how to code or build a website or do back-end inventory management.

37:03Chris Williamson:Shopify takes care of all of that and allows you to focus on the job that you came here to do, which is designing and selling an awesome product. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout that I use with Newtonic on Shopify. Right now, you can sign up for a$1 per month trial period by going to the link in the description below or heading to shopify.com slash modern wisdom, all lowercase. That's shopify.com slash modern wisdom to upgrade you're selling today. Crowdsourcing or crowdfunding your texts back to someone in a relationship. I mean, now people would just use ChatGPT. You've seen that South Park episode, right?

37:38Chris Williamson:Where all of the guys outsource their texts to their girlfriends to ChatGPT. And all of their girlfriends are having such a lovely time. And the guys are like, how are you, how is she so? And then they realize that it's because everyone's fucking outsourced it to an LLM. You mentioned people's outfits. What does science say about why women dress up?

37:57Max Butterfield:There's a lot of back and forth about that. And, you know, there's arguments from the evolutionary psych side, cultural psych, maybe personality, you know, a variety of things. All that to say, I don't think science says anything. I think people have theories. I think there's evidence in one way or another. But in my opinion, the evidence that's most persuasive is that it depends and depends on the context. So in many cases, women dress up to impress each other more so than to impress men. And that seems counterintuitive because like, why would they do that? But there are a lot of reasons why you might want to do that.

38:38Max Butterfield:Women have a social hierarchy in the same way that men do, and they don't want their mate to get poached. And so you have to show not just the man that you're an attractive person. You have to show other women like, don't mess with me. You're wasting your time. So personally, I find that explanation, that evidence to be pretty persuasive, but not everyone does.

38:59Chris Williamson:yeah it's an interesting one i i mean i've seen so many different studies there was a a great one that i learned about from uh not joyce benenson or candace blake uh not cory clark someone else one of the one of the evolutionary psychology ladies taught me this great study where they had a protagonist this uh what do they call the the person that's the actor in a study, what's it called? Typically, I don't know, actually. I usually use target.

39:30Max Butterfield:I use target and actor personally.

39:33Chris Williamson:Okay. Well, whoever that is, uh, one version of the study, same, same woman twice, one version of the study, uh, she's wearing quite revealing clothing. Second version of the study, she's wearing pretty covered up clothing and two people who think they're about to go into the study are waiting outside the classic it's begun before you think it's begun thing the protagonist goes up ask them for directions and then they did uh vocal analysis sort of micro expression tracking body language changes and stuff and the same woman in much more conservative clothing that sort of quite kind and pass her on the way or just say whatever i don't think they know where they need to send her in any case and then in the other version of it uh there's sort of this like this sort of look up and down and then did you see what she was no no no no no gonna um so i don't think i mean guys might notice the fact that she was more revealing but i don't think that it would be from the clothes i don't think that they're paying as much attention i think this is the thing that women don't understand about what guys notice about women right i mean there was that great study you you talked about what was that study to do with armani suits

40:36Max Butterfield:yeah it's a classic classic study in um just this idea that there is competition an intrasexual competition, competition among women and between each other. And so the study shows that if you put guys in Armani suits versus Burger King attire, wear the uniform, whatever, and you ask women, same guy. So like you have you wearing Burger King and you have you wearing Armani suits and you ask women, which version of Chris? Now, and you wouldn't say it that way. It's like, do you think Chris is attractive? And the Armani suit Chris, people like, yeah. And in the Burger King uniform, people are like, women are like, um, no.

41:21Max Butterfield:Same guy, just different clothes are, you know, is he attractive? Is he powerful? Is he somebody you'd want to date and mate with? Not really. No. But if you do that with women, the guys are like, yeah, she's hot. Doesn't matter what she's wearing, whether it's the powerful, you know, business attire, whether it's the Burger King uniform. And this study has been replicated many, many times. First, first kind of discussed in the nineties and it has continued to, you know, be investigated in many, many different ways. And, and so I look at that and I talk about that and I say, yeah, so women are pigs just like men.

41:57Max Butterfield:You know, I mean, it's very like we have our own domains of being a pig. Yeah.

42:03Chris Williamson:They're slightly, they're slightly different and they're pointed in different directions. Yeah. I think it's kind of tragic in some ways that the amount of effort that women go through thinking that there is some sort of male judge or tyrant that's this panopticon fucking godlike figure looking over them to judge their beauty standards when the call is very much coming from inside of the house. And if all women didn't like the beauty standards that were being enforced, I feel like if they were somehow able to do God's eye coordination and all say, okay, well, why don't we all try and have less long hair and less long nails and less high heels and less tan and all the rest of the stuff, we can kind of bring the market down together and guys are probably not going to fucking notice.

42:54Max Butterfield:Now, when's the last time you heard a guy say, did you see her nails?

42:58Chris Williamson:Dude, it is wild. I mean, that's the other thing that jewelry is a sort of area of attire that most guys I don't think really pay any attention to. The difference between a$50 bag and a$10 ,000 Birkin or a Louis Vuitton bag or something, the difference between this brand of shoes from the high street and this brand of shoes that's$1 ,000, we have no idea. Who do you think that this is for? But the same thing, the same exact fucking dynamic is true guys how much do you think that woman knows about the specific sporting cup edition recaro seats that you've got inside of your bmw m3 like oh but this is a limited edition because it's got the the twin tip exhausts at the back and they're the black that and then there's the alcantara seat in the middle and it's actually got the iDrive with the other like no not only does she not know she doesn't understand or care right yeah and it's again it's it's about

44:02Max Butterfield:allocation of your effort not this amplification of that effort you know and whether it's like hey i'm gonna tweak my car so that's a perfect car that will finally attract the love of my life that's that's stupid you know that's that's not gonna work so where can you put that effort instead, literally go talk to a woman. That would be step one.

44:26Chris Williamson:Direction over speed, dude. Right. Direction over speed. Is a man saying, you're too good for me or you're out of my league? Is that a red flag? I saw someone saying that that's a red flag. I don't think so.

44:39Max Butterfield:I mean, well, let me back that up. Can it be? Yes, but not out of context. You have to consider why is he saying that? So if you give that as blanket advice, no, that is not a red flag. It could be a green flag. It could indicate humility, but the reality there is we don't have more information about why did that guy say it? And so this is about investment rather than creating these rules. People want it fast. They want to be like, okay, this guy said this thing, therefore he's a good guy. Yeah, that's that's like a magic spell and that is not how relationships are built they're you know they're built over time they're built by getting to know people and there's just no way of i mean there are a few things people could say that would be a red flag like hey i'm gonna murder you but even then i just said it and that's not out you know out of context maybe now you know you clip this and it's like, oh, he's Dr.

45:39Max Butterfield:Max Butterfield is after. He's after Chris. This is a big trouble here. But, you know, that's why context is so important. There's no shortcuts.

45:47Chris Williamson:I think this is sort of much of the meta theme of what you're doing with your content, which is to say, if we take very short, out of context pieces of relationship situation, and then apply a from that, we end up getting in all sorts of trouble. It's so super fucking squirrely because yeah, I mean, you're too good for me is if said by a guy who's quite high status and self-assured, actually quite a nice compliment. And it can be done in such a cute, flirty way. You're just too good for me. How have I ended up with a girl like you? You know, that's a nice thing to hear especially if it's done from a place of uh not sort of pliable simping but it's it's genuinely done out of a look and we both know that we're good for each other but right that's cool and to to look at your date as she walks through even on the third date and you go dude you are so out of my league holy shit but that's that's cool i think that's good right but that's the rom-com writing right there.

47:02Chris Williamson:Exactly. So, well, okay. Are there things such things as real red flags and beyond the obvious shit of like, I'm going to eat you and bury your bones in the yard. What about red flags that people should pay attention to?

47:17Max Butterfield:I think there are certainly some, you know, and big ones are maybe not what's being said. They could be what's being done. You know, behavior matters a lot more than what people say, because people, let me back it up and say, there's a behavior intention gap. And so I might want to do a lot of really nice things for someone, but if I never do that, okay, that's a red flag. And that's a pattern over time is do I follow through or not? And okay, that's important. An inability to regulate emotions. We talked about this already. That's a major red flag. If you see these outbursts of anger, even if it's just minor ones leaking out, something goes wrong, you punch a wall.

48:04Max Butterfield:Yeah, that's worth looking at. And it's not. I have punched a wall when I was 13. And so was that a red flag back then? Yeah, I wasn't fully emotionally developed. People shouldn't have dated you when you were 13. Right. And they didn't, let me tell you. Tell Epstein. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and that's a red flag. Like, what are people doing under the cover of secrecy? You know, if what are they doing? And if you find out that, again, what they say they're doing is different from what they're actually doing, that's worth looking at. So ultimately, for me, I guess the short answer to your question is it's about consistency and it's about regulation.

48:51Max Butterfield:So do do actions match up with intentions? And are they a calm person? And do they have the ability to become calm when they get dysregulated?

49:01Chris Williamson:Because we all get dysregulated. Exactly. That's exactly what I was going to say, that not everybody is calm. And so you don't necessarily want somebody who is always calm. It's actually kind of cool to be someone who's excitable and maybe actually there's a useful time for them to get angry, especially if it's on your behalf. But if you're late for the flight and you just make it, does that ruin the entire holiday? Or by the time that the flight's landed, has everybody been able to sort of burble their emotions back down? Right. Exactly. In other news, this episode is brought to you by RP Strength.

49:37Chris Williamson:This training app has made a huge impact on my gains and enjoyment in the gym over the last two years now. It's designed by Dr. Mike Isretel and comes with over 45 pre-made training programs, 250 technique videos, takes all of the guesswork out of crafting the ideal lifting routine by literally spoon feeding you a step-by-step plan for every workout. It guides you on the exact sets, reps, and weight to use. Most importantly, how to perfect your form so every rep is optimized for maximum gains. It adjusts your weight each week based on your progress. And there's a 30-day money-back guarantee. So you can buy it, train with it for 29 days.

50:13Chris Williamson:And if you do not like it, they will give you your money back. Right now, you can get up to$50 off the RP Hypertrophy app by going to the link in the description below or heading to rpstrength.com slash modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's rpstrength.com slash modernwisdom and modernwisdom at checkout. Yeah, I mean, that's from David Buss. It's the number one trait that he says to look for in a partner, which is emotional stability. How long after some sort of emotional perturbment that takes you away from baseline, does it take your partner to get back to baseline?

50:46Chris Williamson:The shorter that that window is, the better.

50:50Max Butterfield:And to give credit where credit is due, I probably got that from David. David is like my research grandpa. So he had a student, Sarah Hill, who was my PhD advisor. King, absolute king.

50:58Chris Williamson:No way. You studied under Sarah?

51:00Max Butterfield:Yeah, yeah. Holy shit. Yeah. So, you know, it's that classic lineage.

51:05Chris Williamson:I spoke at her HBES symposium two years ago. Did you? yep yeah i was by far the least credentialed person in the room the only person in the room with a master's level education surrounded by phd double phd postdoc doctorate fucking don tubi was there this was before uh john tubi passed away so fucking john tubi sat in the front row as i'm speaking my 15 minute oh that's when you need the beta blockers you know that's right i wanted to feel all of that that was it was fantastic it was in palm springs it was this great place so um yeah sarah is wonderful she taught me about another one uh this great study that was done it was you'll probably be familiar with it to do with ovulatory shift hypotheses or maybe it was christina duranti it's one of the two yeah and um they had the same guy dressed in leather jacket smoking super cool with his hair done or another version where he was much more nerdy and he was wearing a sort of sweater vest type thing almost like a big bang theory caricature and in both iterations of the study women went in one it's the same guy right the absolute same guy women go in uh and see the first guy women go in and see the second guy but they're told that they're twins so they don't know that it's the same dude both times but they're told that they're twins so there's two different versions i love it and um they go in and they have a conversation and they're just told to sort of talk about sort of play out what dating might be like what the sort of meeting would be and they're asking the dude with the cigarette and he's like you know like maybe we could go out or you know maybe not i don't you know like it would be cool or something like maybe you know maybe i'd see you maybe you're not like i got my motorbike outside whatever the fuck um and then with the other guy he's much more pliable and all the rest of it and they're asked they track the hormone cycles where are they during the ovulatory window the women who were ovulating see the guy that's detached, smoking, obviously signaling sort of more classically masculine traits, but is the same fucking dude as the other one.

53:11Chris Williamson:Even lesbians rate him as a better father. If they ask questions, who do you think would be a more invested father? Who do you think would be a better father? And that, I mean, I know ovulatory shifts going through this. Is it true? Is it not? Replication crisis says, and then all of my friends say yes and I kind of want to back them. But this will come out, I think, in the wash eventually. But that stuff is so good. What was that one about women were more likely to vote for Obama over Romney when they were ovulating because Obama's evidently way more chatty than Romney was? Brilliant, dude. Brilliant.

53:49Chris Williamson:Yeah.

53:50Max Butterfield:Well, and that's what I really like about the evolutionary approach is that whether these studies turn out to replicate or not, they drive very interesting hypotheses. And that for me is where I really, I'm always trying to look for hypotheses that are supported by theory and evidence. And so like, what would, you know, what's the mechanism is the question that I have in my head all the time. If that would work, what would the mechanism be? And how can we target that through, you know, through the research and psychology as a whole. So, you know, my group met some of my degrees are in experimental psych, but social psych is truly my area.

54:29Max Butterfield:And social psych is kind of theory loose. And what I mean by that is many, if you read a social psych textbook, it's like a butterfly collection. It's like, oh, look at that one. Oh, that one's got blue wings. Look a tiny one. And there's no unifying theory of social psychology. And that at its core is what evolutionary psych in this domain is trying to be is it's a unifying theory of why people relate the way that they do. And And it does some things really well. And then there are some things we haven't quite figured out yet. And that's why I take an eclectic approach myself just because I think it offers, it's more like a Swiss army knife, offers a little more utility rather than this butcher knife that's just kind of like chomping things.

55:10Chris Williamson:I think more and more people are. That's not to say, I don't know, because I've done pretty much every big EP researcher on the planet. I'm sure there's some out there that haven't been on yet, but I'll get around to you. Lots and lots and lots and lots of them. and I'm yet to see somebody who is completely unwavering in there. It is adaptation, explanation or die, but that's it. There usually is some give, but that being said, there's people like Candace Blake or Mac and Murphy, who's sort of human behavioral ecology, and they're sort of trying to couch it in a broader sense of what's happening in the local environment right now and how we adapting to that.

55:48Chris Williamson:There's that really great study around the environmental security hypothesis. Have you seen this one? Yes. So the men prefer bigger women when the economy is doing badly and men prefer thinner women when the economy is doing well.

55:59Max Butterfield:Because they know where the food is.

56:01Chris Williamson:Correct, correct, correct. Yeah, and they did the study on students in the mess hall or whatever, their halls of residence. People before they'd eaten wanted the bigger women and people after they'd eaten wanted the thinner women. And you can track this. You could do a tracking of the state of the economy and the pinup women of the era. And it's crossed over, which is pretty interesting. So I like that. There's a few, I get a little bit squirrely with some of the relationship science stuff. It's nice, but it seems to have less explanatory depth. But the social psych stuff, you know, Rob Henderson has got some of that, a ton of that in his lineage.

56:36Chris Williamson:So are you familiar with Tai Toshiro's work? Did you ever come across his stuff? Some, yeah, certainly some. He has these three traits. I'd be interested to know your thoughts on these. So he's got three green flags that most people should generally prioritize on finding in a partner. Yeah. Conscientiousness. So I think he calls it thoughtfulness, but what he means is conscientiousness. Sure. Do you pay attention? Are you sort of reliable? Can you get things done? Have you got agency? Do you care about the partner? And have you got the ability to make that caring happen? Second one is agreeable.

57:10Chris Williamson:So somebody who is yes and, not no but, typically doesn't make everything into a fight or a disagreement, tends to be supportive as opposed to sort of conflict. and then the third one is at most moderate openness um he says you don't want too much openness because then you get into the realm of somebody who's got a wandering eye they're kind of unpredictable it's very hard to lock in a routine they're going to want to go polyamorous in 15 years time when the kids are a little bit older right when you definitely don't but you also don't want no openness right because then you've got no adventure in your life and right nothing is ever going to change.

57:48Chris Williamson:So what do you think of that? We've got conscientiousness, we've got agreeableness, we've got sort of moderate openness as generally prioritized traits for people in relationships.

57:57Max Butterfield:Yeah. What immediately strikes me is that that sounds great for me in my life where I am right now. And I also know if you ask this question to my college students, my 20 year olds, they might want much higher openness and they might actually prefer less conscientiousness. Cause like, I don't want this guy or this girl that's just focused on school. Like I want somebody that wants to have fun. And so that's what I would add to this is like, it's great to have these rules, guidelines. However, personality traits, especially the big five, those, those three, um, they vary throughout the lifespan.

58:31Max Butterfield:People are not aware of this, that personality changes actually. And that's why I have a beef. I'll tell you, I have a beef with personality in general, because it's very situation specific. I always ask this in my class when I teach personality, I say, how many people in here are liars? And like one kid will raise his hand. You know, it's always a little startling to get that, you know, admission, but most people are like, no, I'm not a liar. And then I say, how many people lie? Everybody raises their hand. What is personality then? What, what is the point if it varies from situation to situation and it doesn't describe what people are actually doing?

59:06Max Butterfield:So all that to say, I think those traits are high quality traits, but I also think they vary so much situationally that it's really hard to assess. And they vary over time so much that it might not be what you want tomorrow and it might not be what you want in 30 years. And so I wouldn't use it as a way to pick a partner, but I would use it as a lens. Are we compatible in this moment?

59:33Chris Williamson:Yeah, I suppose some sort of cognitive flexibility is probably pretty important as well. Is this person open to growing? Projectory. Yeah, if not, and you are, again, this is compatibility. I think about this so much, man. When I watch a lot of the relationship discourse that goes on online and the reason that he's like this and she's like that and that's not going to whatever. What it is for the most part are people who fundamentally weren't compatible in a few very important areas. trying to, for instance, guy says men should never open up to women about their emotions because he, as perhaps a bit more sensitive of a guy than most on average, tried to open up to a woman for whom that wasn't very enjoyable.

1:00:23Chris Williamson:That's not the sort of guy that they want. So what you're saying is, I, Cheese, tried to get with chalk. It went badly. therefore this weird outcome that i'm going to explain it's like no what you need because there is an entire slew of women out there who would just melt at the thought of this guy opening up his heart to her and telling her about how when he was a kid he used to feel on the outside and like that's all that they would just love to sort of bundle that and then they would still find you hot and they'd still take you to bed afterward and they're still going to wake up and watch you go to work and think he's the man.

1:01:00Chris Williamson:And similarly for the woman, there is a guy out there who is way more stoic and kind of doesn't really feel his feels all that much and isn't going to say that. So for her to say, when guys open up to me, I get the ick is I need to be in a relationship with a guy who doesn't have that kind of trait. And the dude who said, I tried to open up and she got the ick. It's like, okay, you just need to find the woman for whom not only is that acceptable, but it's actually a turn on. That's the sort of thing that they would go, oh, this is so amazing. I found a man who's competent and feels his feels or the opposite.

1:01:33Chris Williamson:So yeah, so much of it is basically people trying to reverse engineer incompatibility and then create universal rules from it. Right.

1:01:42Max Butterfield:And that's people want rules. They love rules. And that is because rules offer certainty and relationships are inherently uncertain. I don't know what to tell you. You know, it's like you want a magic spell. You say the incantation, you wave your wand, bang. You're in love forever. They don't even do that in Disney movies anymore. That's so detached from reality. And yet we are drawn to it because we like certainty. It makes us feel so much better. And so that ability to sit with uncertainty and to sit with ambiguity and not closing the loop, if you find somebody like that, that I think is a very good trait.

1:02:25Chris Williamson:Say more on that. Yeah.

1:02:27Max Butterfield:Well, life, you know, I felt like as a kid and as a teen that when I reached adulthood, things would kind of, I would get to a point and then I would live. And I, there was a lot of uncertainty. You know, I applied to grad school by the first round. I had done really well in undergrad, high standardized test scores, did all my research, whatever. I I applied to 12 top PhD programs, didn't get into a single one. And that was unpleasant, let me tell you. And so that set my life on this trajectory that eventually I made it kind of back to where I was trying to go. But what I found is that reaching that point that I was looking for in adulthood, A, took forever.

1:03:09Max Butterfield:And B, once I got there, we had a baby and things got even more uncertain. I like the kid. I figured the infant out. Great. Now he can walk. I got a bunch of new things to think about. And so what I learned is that adulthood creates increased uncertainty, not decreased uncertainty. And being able to sit with that and live with that is something that I've really grown in. I think my wife has really grown in that. And it makes life easier because life's never going to be certain. And when you learn to tolerate the uncertainty and live with it, you're just going to have a better time. Thank you.

1:03:51Chris Williamson:Is there anything by way of practice or prescription or mantra that has helped you in the times where the uncertainty really starts to sort of twist the wet rag inside of your stomach and make you feel uncomfortable? Where do you go to uncertainty as a part of life and I need to be able to be comfortable with it?

1:04:10Max Butterfield:Yeah, I have run probably 16 ,000 miles, I think, at last count in the last 10 years. And that helps.

1:04:19Chris Williamson:fuck me yeah what's the thing about you can't run away from your problems but you know i'm

1:04:24Max Butterfield:you can you can yeah you absolutely can no but that's the thing you can't but what for me that is not a lesson everybody should take you know i really i always i enjoy working out i enjoy being active um but running in particular i hated running growing up that was a punishment in all the other sports that i played but i found when i slowed down i had this shoulder injury i had to stop playing basketball. So I started running. And when I slowed down, what I realized is it gave me time to think. And I would have a thought that would bother me on this run. And it would bother me, and I would think about it, and I would think about it.

1:04:59Max Butterfield:And then I would see a bird. And that thought would go away. And if it was important, it would come back. And I would think about it again, and again, and again. And then I'd have to get out of the way of a car, and it would go away. And eventually that process of thinking and leaving it and thinking and leaving it, it really helped me just kind of deal with everything that was going on. And it's not a cure-all for sure. But in many ways, that was a meditative practice. I hate meditation, but running is a meditative practice for me.

1:05:28Chris Williamson:That's the same. My housemate George is every morning, the yards pool outside, I come downstairs and he's 45 minutes into a 60 minute meditation. Because for him, he's just found the button that he can press. And for you, that would sound more like torture. Alex O 'Connor, Douglas Murray, two British friends of mine, both of them, Sam Harris has tried to teach them live to meditate. This guy teaches probably millions of people that have got his app. And they got a in-person, live meditation thing. And they would have rather stuck pins through their fingers. Oh, me too. Exactly the same. done that.

1:06:07Chris Williamson:They would have rather fought Sam Harris in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu than being taught to try and fucking meditate by him. So again, what I like is there are generally accepted principles that are probably better and worse for your life, but there are no universal rules that work for everybody. Right.

1:06:25Max Butterfield:And so just getting that experience and learning what works for you is going to require some trial and error. And the biggest mistake I would say that people make is trying something, having it not work, and then not trying anything else. Or feeling like you can't try because you don't want to quit. For me, that was, I have quit everything. You know, I like you read the intro when I came in and it's like, yeah, I did a master's degree in clinical psych. I did not like being a therapist, so I quit. I studied in seminary. I hated it, so I quit. I quit football in seventh grade, since I'm confessing everything.

1:07:02Max Butterfield:Coach yelled at me one too many times, once. And that was enough. But that being said, quitting football allowed me to focus on other sports that I cared a lot about. And so if you don't try things, you're never going to, especially as you get older in life, you're never going to figure out what works for you, what clicks.

1:07:19Chris Williamson:So never be afraid to quit. An interesting blend that people have. I think there's some evidence that suggests people who make changes are happier than people who don't. Oh, yeah. Should I move to a new city or not? And people are worried about which city is the most optimal one. Am I going to be more happy in this one or not or whatever? And maybe there is an imbalance with where the city is or the tax or the weather or the whatever. But people who make changes tend to be more happy. And also, over time, our openness to experience seems to go down. Typically, people become more closed. their openness to experience dips as they get older throughout life.

1:07:57Chris Williamson:And also the only way that you can find out if a solution is right for you is to try it. And also we are praising a lot of the time, the stick with it muscle, the stick with it ability that you shouldn't give up on this thing. Cause if you push through, there is something good on the other side, right? All of these are traits, especially as you get older that suggest, well, maybe trying something new, maybe don't completely quit your job, maybe don't entirely leave your relationship, but perhaps have a look on LinkedIn and see if there's anything else out there. Perhaps journal a little bit about why you're not super fired up in your current relationship.

1:08:34Chris Williamson:Perhaps have a little look on Zillow or Rightmove at what the sort of property prices would be like to move to this different city that you're thinking about. Just little steps and you go, wow, I go to a different coffee shop. I don't wake up and ruminate. I don't check my phone immediately and ruminate. And this is one of the reasons, kind of like a psychological spring clean, I suppose, that you can do regularly to just pattern interrupt the bullshit that you're sort of locked into. I'm going to try running. That Dr. Max guy ran and everyone's got part of a run club. Maybe they've got some wisdom.

1:09:06Chris Williamson:I'll give it a try. I think there's something to it. I think there's something to it. And increasingly over time, like a sniper has to sort of adjust the sights on his rifle, if there's wind, that wind is going to blow more as you get older. And the wind is going to actually blow in the direction of being closed and not being open. So you need to account for that even further if you want to maintain that level of sort of novelty and intrigue and get out of your local maximas. What's the global maxima that I could maybe get to by trying something new?

1:09:38Max Butterfield:And it's so important to invest in the things that give a good return. And sometimes you need to invest in a new, you know, you have to recognize like, this is not giving me a good return. Like what you were saying, I have to try something else because this isn't working for me. And in many ways that applies for people as well. Invest in the people that invest in you, you know, rather than trying to insert yourself into somebody's life, if they don't want you in their life, like, yeah, okay. Take that as a signal that you don't have to cut them out of yours, but at the same time, know that it's going to be a lot harder to take that path than it is to invest in somebody who is going to be there for you.

1:10:20Chris Williamson:Before we continue, I am a massive fan of reducing your alcohol intake, but historically, non-alcoholic brews taste like ass. You don't need to be doing some big reset. Maybe you just want to crack a cold one without feeling like garbage the next morning, which is why I am such a huge fan of Athletic Brewing Co. They've got 50 types of NAs, including IPAs, Goldens, and even limited releases like a cocktail-inspired Paloma and Moscow Mule. And here's the thing, you can drink them anytime, late nights, early mornings, watching sports, playing sports, doesn't matter, no hangover, no compromise. And that is why I partnered with them.

1:10:57Chris Williamson:You can find Athletic Brewing Co.'s best-selling lineup at grocery or liquor stores near you, or best option, get a full variety pack of four flavors shipped right to your door. Right now, you can get 15 % off your first online order by going to the link in the description below or heading to athleticbrewing.com slash modern wisdom. That's athleticbrewing.com slash modern wisdom. Yeah, it's so cool to think about how we can step into our own programming. It's one of my favorite things. Speaking of programming, the way that people communicate on the internet, There was that Jonah Hill thing a couple of years ago where his texts got leaked, I think, by his ex, and he was using all of his therapy language.

1:11:38Chris Williamson:I saw you react to a video, if I tell you to leave me alone and you leave me alone, you're legit dead to me. Right. What do you think of that?

1:11:47Max Butterfield:In some ways, it depends. But in general, I don't think that's a very fun game. I don't like playing that game where you have to guess at what people mean. It's like, don't talk to me means talk to me. I don't know about you. I'm not good at decoding those kinds of signals personally. How are you supposed to know? So yeah, I think being straightforward weirdly has to be, it's a skill that can be developed and younger people are less likely to have that skill. I remember when I was younger, in college especially, I didn't know how to communicate how I was really feeling to people. And I also didn't know if it was safe to do that.

1:12:30Max Butterfield:And so you use this kind of like angle to get there. And they go, you know, I'm looking sad today. You know, I want to make sure I want somebody to notice that I'm looking sad today. And they go, oh, you look sad today. Are you sad? And I go, no. Why do you ask?

1:12:46Max Butterfield:Because I want them to ask more. I want them to dig deeper, you know. So I was so close, but not quite there. And that is odd to me that we would need to teach people to be straightforward. And yet here we are.

1:12:58Chris Williamson:Because there's more effort needed to obfuscate the thing that we actually want.

1:13:02Max Butterfield:Right. It's like, what are you doing? Why are you playing that game? And I think in many ways, it's self-protective. It's kind of like flirting, but with your emotions, like making them prove that they care about me enough to dig deeper. And yet I don't, it doesn't require me to put myself out there. I don't have to, it is hard to say. Like if I say to you, Hey, Chris, I'm feeling sad today. I don't know. Like this interview, I don't, I don't know how it's going to go. Can you imagine if I had started that way? You've been like, oh, okay. You know, so you have to pick your spots. But at the same time, if you are in fact feeling sad, which I'm not, by the way, but this is great.

1:13:38Max Butterfield:But there is a way to reveal that that's more socially appropriate. And I think that's where the skill is really learnable.

1:13:47Chris Williamson:Why do women say things like leave me alone, but actually mean the opposite?

1:13:55Max Butterfield:how should i know no uh i so i think it can be for a variety of reasons we could look at it through a cultural lens and i think culturally women have been more penalized uh for sharing openly than men have historically i think today you know it could go either way maybe men are even being penalized more but i think that's one lens of explanation that people sometimes use is that women have had to be very careful in how they communicate. And that has been transmitted across time to women today, even if it's not as true as it used to be. So, okay. So that's, that's maybe one lens. Another is that truly social media communication teaches them to do it.

1:14:35Max Butterfield:And so that is, it's like, Hey ladies, this is what you have to do. Never tell a guy X instead do ABC. And other times it can just be learning. You learn over time, like when you're in fifth grade, that if you pretend to be sad around a boy, he'll pay extra attention to you. And then you never learn a better skill. Well, you're still doing that when you're 30. And now people are dealing with it when you're trying to connect with them on Hinge or whatever.

1:15:08Chris Williamson:Mm-hmm. I, Joe Hudson, friend of mine, his daughter was seven years old, crying in the bathtub, and she'd been crying in there quite regularly over the last couple of weeks. And he went in, and the way that she was crying sounded kind of angry at the same time. And he said, hey, you know when you're crying, how often are you sad and how often are you pissed off? She said, pissed off. He said, okay, well, why are you crying if you're angry? So when I'm angry, everyone runs away. But when I cry, my sister comes and gives me a hug. Exactly. So there is this, it's not just the message, it's the way that that's received.

1:15:50Chris Williamson:And yeah, I think it's a difficult one. Putting us, learning direct communication or not speaking in shadow sentences, right? Not pointing in the direction of the thing that you mean, but saying it in a way where you don't plant what you want so that it can't be denied, so that you can't ever be invalidated. But you also deny the person the opportunity of actually giving you what it is that you want. It's kind of the same as telling somebody to hit the bullseye on a dartboard, but they've got to have their eyes closed. Right. Or you're moving it like this all the time. uh yeah okay i guess passive aggression it's shadow sentences stuff is similar to passive aggression what's the role of passive aggression in relationships you know why it comes about

1:16:35Max Butterfield:what yeah what its role is yeah absolutely so there uh sometimes researchers will call it indirect aggression as well uh you know there's multiple names depending on which angle in the literature you you're taking and that too is one that has been debated and kind of misunderstood over time. It used to be thought that men were aggressive, aggressive, and then women were passive aggressive or indirectly aggressive. And what more recent research has shown is that men are just more aggressive across the board.

1:17:07Chris Williamson:Including indirectly?

1:17:08Max Butterfield:Yes. Yeah, yeah. So they have maybe equal levels of women with indirect, but then when you add, or maybe even a little less, but then when you add aggression, aggression, it's like, no, guys are in fact more aggressive. but women I think are more, uh, I wouldn't say it's rewarded. It's more socially appropriate for women to be indirectly aggressive typically. And it's also less dangerous. So think about it this way. If you say to a buddy, you know, you're fighting and you take a swing at him, you're probably going to hold your own at worst. You personally, I mean, you're a big guy, you know, you're going to, you're going to hold, hold your own at worst.

1:17:46Max Butterfield:If a woman takes a swing at her guy friend, In anger, that's very dangerous. And so as a result, women tend to use passive aggression or indirect aggression a bit more simply because it's a safer outlet. And I think, you know, this is not my area of specialization, but I think there's some evidence that shows that when women are dealing with other women, they're a lot more likely to be aggressive aggressive than if they were dealing with men.

1:18:17Chris Williamson:Because the potential physical repercussion coming back to them, given that they're more fragile and more valuable evolutionarily, they're less likely to have lethal force be applied because the imbalance just isn't there. Correct.

1:18:30Max Butterfield:I'd have to go back and check on that. I'm almost positive. It makes total sense.

1:18:34Chris Williamson:I mean, female introsexual competition is the least popular on the internet, most fascinating. It's got the biggest disparity between how much you're allowed to talk about it, how little you're allowed to talk about it, and how fascinating it is to study. Right. It is fucking endlessly interesting. Joyce Benenson's, the Candace Blake's, the Corey Clark's, the fucking Christina Durante's, the Tracy Vying cause with Mean Girl, like all of this stuff is so fucking sick. I remember Rob Henderson taught me this story. Maybe it was bus. A woman had been kidnapped by an Amazonian tribe while she was on a tour.

1:19:16Chris Williamson:And she'd been taken into the local tribe after she'd been sort of taken from her touring group. And when she was there, a little boy had come up and given her a little parcel, given her a parcel that had some food in it. And no, sorry, one of the women had come up. Yeah, one of the boys had come up, given her a parcel that had some food in it. And it was, you can eat this. And she smelled it. And it sort of smelled bad. So she didn't want to. And then she went and sort of laid it down somewhere and didn't bother eating it. And then a little bit later in the day, one of the kids fell super ill.

1:19:54Chris Williamson:and when asked what's happened why are you ill she said oh that woman put this thing down near me and i went over and ate it and they chased her through the jungle you've just tried to poison one of these children what it turned out had happened was that some of the other women had given the parcel to a child to give to her knowing that she would either eat it and get sick or put it down and then they could accuse her a bit. And I'm like, it's a trap. Do you understand just how stupid the male equivalent of that would be? Like if it was a guy that had come in and the guys didn't like him, they would have, like man take rock.

1:20:36Chris Williamson:That's literally what I was going to say. Man throw rock. Right. And there's this seven step inception thing. Christopher Nolan's designed it. But, you know, it's got redundancies built in. If she doesn't do it, she'll give it to someone and then it'll hurt them. And then we can say that she, I'm like, Oh, I am so glad that I'm not a woman. I'm endlessly glad that I'm not a woman for that reason. I could not navigate that situation at all.

1:21:00Max Butterfield:Well, and I, I was shocked. So I made, I think I've made one or two posts on intersexual competition recently. And I thought people might find it to be mildly interesting. I find it to be very interesting. You know, that's one of the things we studied in grad school a bit. And I made this post and I started taking shots from all over the place. It's like, what, you guys have a problem with this? What? I thought it was just as well accepted principle. That's why I almost didn't post about it. I'm out of touch. I don't know what people don't know. And apparently, A, people don't know about this and B, when they find out, they get real mad.

1:21:36Chris Williamson:There are hidden third rails. I got in trouble a little while ago for a conversation I had about birth rate decline talking about birth rate decline to me is so overdone it's almost like a comedian doing a trans joke it's hacky so you know it's what i was interested in six years ago and it's still a big problem now or whatever i'm like it's is this not just completely accepted to the point where talking about it is hacky and it's kind of i know this broke out into the real internet. It broke out of the sort of wisdom verse stuff that I typically do. And I was like, oh, wow, this is not only not hacky, this is unspeakably beyond the Overton window to a huge group of people who they don't have any context about where I'm coming from, about the fact that I do this unnecessarily arduous throat clearing land acknowledgement about we must remember that we're not trying to get women out of the boardroom and back into the bedroom.

1:22:33Chris Williamson:We have to remember but that we don't want to roll back women's rights and birth control. And now that we've said that, allow me to talk about how the only data that we have from the WHO or from census is the total fertility per woman, that we don't have the data around men. So whenever we're talking about this, we're talking about women. I go on Tucker Carlson's podcast and I was accused of being riddled with feminist lies and infected with blue-pilled thinking. And then I went and had another conversation a month later and was accused of being a right-wing misogynist. I'm like, hey, guys, if I can say the same shit in two different places and be unspeakably on the wrong side in opposite directions.

1:23:10Chris Williamson:Yeah. And that's the intersexual competition thing. But the best argument, and this is another Rob Henderson one, when he sort of pushes back against people who say, have skepticism around female intersexual competition being as powerful as we say it is. The opposite of that is that women are non-agentic. Oh, so what you're saying is that women don't have the ability to coerce or cajole or manipulate their way through the world. So they're just sort of passive recipients of whatever other people, and if it's all women, that's men. Men just do stuff and women are the recipient. No, okay, that doesn't seem like a particularly empowering perspective.

1:23:55Chris Williamson:And also to any woman, that's obviously not how you go through the world or how you would want your daughters to go through the world. You would want them to be able to take control of their future. And if you deny the fact that they have control, that they can use intersexual competition and mate guarding and status seeking and all of these things, if you deny that they can use that, what you're basically saying is that whichever direction the wind doth blow, there they will be blown. It's very disempowering. And I think when you unveil but you sort of pull the rug off a little bit and you go i'm aware that there are lots of people on the internet that say fucking awful that that couch they couch misogyny in science in a desperate attempt to try and make women feel bad i'm just saying you've patterned you've pattern matched this one incorrectly uh when you sort of reveal you do see how there's subtle misogyny coming from the other side of the, like your side of the fence here by saying women are passive victims or implicitly derogating motherhood because you say that it's something that some women aspire to do and that taking that away from them might be a bad thing.

1:25:04Chris Williamson:Okay. So you're saying that women are second class, mothers are second class citizens. Well, no, obviously I'm not. It's okay. Well, again, hidden in some of the presuppositions are kind of like thinly veiled misogynistic assumptions from your side. It's not coming from here. So yeah, I feel you on the intersexual competition thing.

1:25:21Max Butterfield:Well, and that's what's been so interesting to me because I've only been on social media about a year. I did not want to be here, to be honest with you. I love it now. I'm having such a good time. I love it. Did not want to join this circus. That being said, I've learned a bunch of things. And one thing that's been really interesting to me is how you can be vilified kind of on both sides, just like what you're saying for the same thing. So I've been called a cuck thousand times. And then I get called a red pill incel a thousand times. And I'm neither of those things, to be honest with you. It should be clear that I'm just trying to call balls and strikes.

1:26:04Max Butterfield:And people don't like that. They don't like to be told that their favorite thing is wrong, even if it's very wrong and they give it becomes very personal so you know i found like you said there are these there's many rails there's a third rail there's a fourth rail you know it's like i didn't know that was there oh i didn't know that was there and probably there's something tomorrow that i'll post same thing oops did not know that was such an electric issue yeah the i i discovered

1:26:31Chris Williamson:at least in the first couple of months of 2026 that the basement had a cellar and in the cellar there was a fucking trap door and it just kept on going. And I was like, oh, this is - It just kept lower and lower. It was just interesting. It's really fucking fascinating. But ultimately,

1:26:50Chris Williamson:uncomfortable truths will always win against comforting lies, just given enough time. You know, how many things were people right about long ago, whether it's a year or six months or 10 years ago, So, and then it comes, being right but early is uncomfortable. But as long as you have your sort of stick with it muscle, I think you end up being redeemed in the end. So we said there about the sort of difficulty, I suppose, in men and women's communication. What have you learned about healthy and unhealthy communication? How do you suggest that people go about doing that better within their relationships?

1:27:31Max Butterfield:There are absolutely things that you can do, skills that you can develop over time, being open, being honest, knowing, though, how much is oversharing is an additional skill. You know, you don't have to say everything that pops into your head. And in fact, if you do, that probably is not going to be viewed positively, you know, and so that just takes practice. And it takes feedback. and that that's part of the trouble is people are very afraid partly because of what can happen on social media if i say the wrong thing i'm canceled and for you know you reach a certain point where that affects your career but i think for everyday people who you know have stopped posting on instagram or on facebook or whatever there's too much risk because what's the benefit if you post something and then you get ganged up on by literally 3 million people for what?

1:28:26Max Butterfield:The opportunity to get 15 likes from the couple of friends that happen to see your post. So that trade-off, it's quite problematic. And so people are disconnected in real life. So they don't get a lot of opportunities for feedback. Is this oversharing? Is this a good idea to say this kind of thing? And then they don't post online either. So it's like the opposite of an echo chamber where you don't say anything. And so you don't have the opportunity to learn was this good communication or not.

1:28:54Chris Williamson:That's so good. And I guess you never get to learn whether your assumptions should be corrected because you don't ever put yours out there.

1:29:02Max Butterfield:Right. And you just hear because of your algorithm that you curate yourself, you just hear the same old stuff. You get that. That's where the echo chamber comes in. And so you never said, you don't go to class as a 16-year-old in high school and say, I think women are great. And you find out women like to hear that. And so instead, you just have these thoughts that echo around in your head, but you curate a very peculiar algorithm that's very specific to you. And you hear these guys typically who are feeding you things. And I don't know, are those good or bad? It really depends on what you're liking, what you're commenting on, what you're watching longer.

1:29:44Max Butterfield:And I'm not anti-media at all, but it does create problems. There are certainly trade-offs. And one of them is that people don't interact as much and have an opportunity for learning and feedback.

1:29:55Chris Williamson:That fear of speaking up, of if I say something wrong, I do think that that probably entrenches people's opinions more than if they were actually allowed to spew what is wrong. because there was a great study that was done a while ago sort of comparing erroneous beliefs that each side had about the other left and right. And it was the percentage of right-wing people who think that left-wing people are trans are the people, the percentage of left-wing people who think that right-wing people don't want there to be any birth control. And there is just so much more. The Venn diagram is actually basically two circles with a couple of bits out on the wings.

1:30:40Chris Williamson:Most people agreed with most things. Most people on the right wanted some safe gun control. Most people on the left wanted some strong military. And you end up with, if the Venn diagrams never cross over because people stay in their echo chambers, or if people never speak up, they never get to engage in dialogue in a meaningful way with somebody else. And you're right. The pattern matching, like the speed of fucking pattern matching on the internet of you, who are these men to talk about women's issues? Like why men need to stay in their place? Who are they to speak about women's issues? It's like, well, the issue that you have is not about men speaking about women's issues.

1:31:24Chris Williamson:The issue you have is that men are speaking about women's issues from the perspective that you don't agree with. Because if they were saying the thing that you agreed with, you would be completely happy. And there is a cohort of women out there who are happy that they're saying it because that's their opinion. And also, if you were to say, who are these men to talk about women's issues? Okay, so only if I'm from the group that I'm talking about, am I allowed to speak on their issues? So that means that gay rights are fucked because I'm not gay. And I'm afraid that the soldiers on the front lines of the Ukraine war, I'm not Ukrainian or russian so right i have nothing to contribute there palestine that's also ruined uh i'm not a dog so the rspca is i'm not a child so the nspcc that's gone uh i'm not a whale so the save the whales project that's also fucked like you there is it because people are so quick to find an enemy on the internet and say you are the guy that's doing this wrong and i know your true intentions because the total number of reasonable people that exist on the internet is getting squished down to like five.

1:32:35Max Butterfield:They're not the ones who comment. They don't care. They like the post or they watch it and they move on. But the ones who comment are the people who are angry, typically, or the people who are your biggest supporters. And so in the comment sections, you see the polarity.

1:32:49Chris Williamson:Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the problem with that is that it causes people to dig their heels in more. but you see this you see this with um people who are real passionate about climate change they think climate change is is super important so they plant this flag in the ground and they say this is important and nobody listens or maybe people mock them or people say that they shouldn't be doing it so they shout louder because people aren't listening so what do you do when someone's not listening you make the signal greater you make the amplitude greater and people still not listening.

1:33:19Chris Williamson:So they go louder. And then eventually the first that somebody sees of you, well-meaning, calm climate campaigner person 10 years ago, is you gluing yourself to the M25 in London because you're shouting so loudly now that superglue is the only vehicle through which you can get your message across. And this is where I think I've managed to go through the entirety of a thousand and sixty episodes without sort of actively calling anybody out because it for me this game of fucking paddle that you play where it just increases the size of the ball and the velocity each time that you hit it i don't think that that's particularly i don't think that's particularly constructive and uh it's definitely not productive no and i

1:34:06Max Butterfield:think it is a really admirable thing to call out ideas rather than calling out people because ideas can be wrong. Ideas can be debated. People can be wrong and people can be debated. But so often it turns personal. And it's like, you are the type of person who, and that is where the conversation ceases to be a conversation anymore. It's just people yelling at each other.

1:34:28Chris Williamson:Well, they're not, you're no longer discussing the idea and this person, allow me, Max, I appreciate that you've got this perspective on ovulatory shift, but I think that you're mistaken here as opposed to, we really know what you mean. We know what you mean by that. And it's that you're saying that. You've lost our credibility.

1:34:49Max Butterfield:We know you're the type of person who dot, dot, dot.

1:34:52Chris Williamson:Exactly. And it's like, no, there are lots and lots of people out there for whom that is true. And the more, again, you were talking about it before, sort of the open, honest communication. Wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't that be lovely for more people to do? Fuck me. Wouldn't that be lovely for the internet to do? Like, that would be so great if people just said what they meant. I remember I saw this tweet a while ago that was breaking down the fact that passive aggression and sort of sardonic standoffish language is the language of Twitter. And it's that you see two people going back and forth, trading insults or whatever, and one person goes, lol, when what they actually mean is, fuck you.

1:35:35Chris Williamson:But no one ever says, fuck you, because that would show that you got to me or that you crossed a line. So everybody's in this weird, like Christopher Hitchens, sardonic, sarcastic ivory tower thing, where they're doing this cooler than cool as a, because nobody actually wants to show their true colors on the internet. And that means that if you do, somebody doesn't take your message for what it is. They take your message as the shadow of the thing that you really meant to say. Whoa, whoa. If that's what he's saying publicly, imagine what he's saying privately, like the same thing saying the same thing that because but i'm aware that that's a rarity online

1:36:11Max Butterfield:well and the other part of that is sometimes you do and you say things you might regret in the heat of the moment and then that gets screenshotted and saved forever and now you are that guy that did that one thing and that i think that limits people's even attempts to communicate for good and for bad, but that shuts, I think that shuts down the average person as well. And it also, it inhibits people from playing with ideas and from speaking freely because you just, I think about it every day, to be honest with you. It's like every day I wake up as today, the day that I, you know, this post that I have scheduled is the one that gets me, that does me in.

1:36:52Max Butterfield:And so I check every day, you know, it's like, okay, oh no, it's fine. Don't worry about it. My digital ghost of me is still alive. Fantastic. Right, right. No, exactly. And so I would probably say some, not that I would say crazy things, but I'd be a lot more playful. I would try things out. And so that's kind of problematic just for society in that we are becoming much more pigeonholed and we're pigeonholing ourselves in our lane, whatever that might be. And there's not as much crossover. There's not as much creativity. there are some benefits for people not saying crazy things don't get me wrong because there's

1:37:29Chris Williamson:pressure from the outside that if you do say something that's beyond the pale you'll get

1:37:33Max Butterfield:found out for it right and so it's not all bad but it's certainly not all good either it's the least

1:37:43Chris Williamson:possible gracious interpretation of anything that anybody's said yeah and i have to i have to

1:37:51Max Butterfield:convince myself to do that in my daily life, not even on the internet, but you know, I get this email and I'm like, okay, I don't like that. And so in my head it's okay, but what is the most possible gracious interpretation of this? And often it's like, well, maybe they're having a bad day and they didn't actually mean to phrase it that way. And I certainly have bad days and send the wrong wording. So why can't I extend that possibility to other people as well? Well, It takes extra effort. And sometimes that's the simple reason why we don't do that. But I really, I do personally, I try to make an effort to do that.

1:38:23Max Butterfield:Because so often our mind leaps to, they hate me. That's why they did that. They're a bad person.

1:38:29Chris Williamson:They're a bad person. Yeah, this sort of reductive two-dimensional view. Dr. Max Butterfield, ladies and gentlemen. Max, you fucking rule, dude. Thank you. What can I do? Have a think. If there's anything that I can do, if there's any intros you need or signal boosts that you need, you've got me. for whatever it is that you want. Oh, man. Within reason.

1:38:51Max Butterfield:Yeah, no, of course. I really appreciate it. Right now I'm trying to grow my email list, drmaxbutterfield.com. Just put your email in there. And I've got big plans. Some I can't really talk about publicly yet. You kind of know how that goes. I've got some things in the works. So sign up for the email list and find out what that secret is.

1:39:13Chris Williamson:Heck yeah, dude. Yeah. I want to fly you out to Austin. And as soon as I've got this new studio done, I need to get you in. We need to sit down and talk more. So once that's ready, I'd love to bring you out. Everyone should follow you on Instagram as well. What's your IG? Dr. Max Butterfield. Dude, you're great.

1:39:28Max Butterfield:I'm looking forward to seeing what you make. Awesome. Thank you so much. It was a blast. This was a great conversation. Fuck yeah.

1:39:36Chris Williamson:Rinse knows that greatness takes time, but so does laundry. So Rinse will take your laundry and hand deliver it to your door,

1:39:43Max Butterfield:expertly cleaned. and you can take the time pursuing your passions. Time once spent sorting and waiting, folding and queuing,

1:39:50Chris Williamson:now spent challenging and innovating and pushing your way to greatness.

1:39:54Max Butterfield:So pick up the Irish flute or those calligraphy pens or that daunting Beef Wellington recipe card and leave the laundry to us. Rinse. It's time to be great.