#978 - Spencer Greenberg - How Much Does IQ Matter?

24:43So I cannot make the less likely to go to jail. They're more likely to complete college. They're less likely to be a single parent. They're more likely to stay in a marriage. I've just made a ton of fucking predictions, many of which may be incorrect there, but I read it once on the internet. So even if it's not predictive at all in terms of life satisfaction, happiness, those things you would assume would be, right? Income, poverty is associated with a lot of stresses that probably don't make people particularly happy, etc. 100 % poverty is definitely associated with lower life satisfaction. So, in order for it to be not correlated at all, you're having to compensate for some of these better, quote, life outcomes that are predicted by IQ.

25:32So that actually kind of does suggest that there is some kind of break being applied, not just that you're coasting with it, not that it's totally impartial, but that it is actually applying some sort of negative multiplier to the life that you've got. Is that fairway? Am I talking about it? Yeah, no, no, you're completely right. There's something, and I say this is really a genuine mystery. I do not think we as a society know the answer to this because everything points the fact that it should give you a higher life satisfaction, higher happiness, but it doesn't. So there's some factor we're missing that kind of explains this.

26:06And hopefully one day we'll, some will figure it out. I'll tell you like even more about flying thing we found. We asked people to what extent they achieved their life goals. No correlation with IQ. It's especially odd because we know that people with higher IQs are better at achieving certain kinds of goals. It suggests that people's view of what is a good life or what are the goals that they have? It must change based on... It must change, yeah. And you know, and if you go back to thinking, well, what is happiness? Like on some fundamental level, it does relate to our expectations versus our reality and not just our reality.

26:45There may be something going on there about like the way that people plan their life, my change on average when they have hierarchies that screws them over in some way. The common sense for, you know. I had this idea called the Curse of Competence, which I think maybe kind of relates to this a little bit, that basically if things tends to go well for you, that you set your sights very high. And also that if you are good at maybe only a small range of things, or maybe only one thing, if you only have a skill in one particular area, then your life options are constrained more by your capacity than they are by your ability to choose.

27:25And a sort of rationalist utilitarian approach would say, well, the optionality is in favor of the person who has the competence not the one that doesn't, but that's not the way that the human brain works, like the paradox of choice suggests that you're actually less satisfied when you have more options as opposed to when you have fewer. So I kind of totally bro -signed all of this together and thought, well, okay, that means that somebody who is maybe higher in competence, you could probably given how predictive G seems to be for lots of things. People, it's robust and varied and allows you to have all of these different life paths that's open to you.

28:02I wonder whether this is one of probably tons of different areas that contributes to the lower life satisfaction, lower happiness thing. Your court up in the optionality of life, your unsure about which direction to go in. There is a switching cost and also just an executive functioning cost that you need to pay in order to be able to choose what it is that you want to do. the loss of version, the sunk cost fallacy, all of this stuff plays in in a manner where it wouldn't if you had fewer options open to you. And it's a very like unpopular opinion to hold that somehow having fewer options gives you a better quality of life.

28:41But I think when you look at the way that the human sort of system works that that does seem I would guess that that would be predictive of what's going on. Yeah, it's really interesting. You can see it cutting both ways, right? Like if you only have two options and they're both shitty, like that's not, that's not, you make a good life. But if you have like a thousand options, you have no idea what you want to take and you're constantly second guessing it. That's also not a good life. So there's kind of this intermediate territory where it feels where like you want at least at least some good options.

29:12But you don't want endless options and and I mean, you know, people say this about on my dating that it can actually make it more difficult to find a like a really good life partner because of the of the feeling of endless options can make you constantly second -guess and not give people a fair shake. Instead of going on that date and really being like, let me really take seriously the possibility that this could be my life partner and try that on just for a couple days and then you know, decide that they maybe are just always thinking about, you know, three other people they could go on a date with.

29:39Next thing, as it's known in the world of online dating, what? Just a linger on, I'm fascinated by this life satisfaction happiness thing. Have you got any other mechanisms by which you? This might be something that would contribute to it. Yeah, so I mean I've had policies, but they're speculative. So this is a home of Bro -sign to save space for you here. Yeah, so one thing I suspect is that when people are higher IQ, they tend to question with their told more and the like question all the like the sort of beliefs of their society and that this might like create a sense of social isolation. And you see this for example that there tends to be a negative correlation between IQ and religiosity and that's not to you know dis religion but just to say that I think they're, you know, it's like religion, you know, if you fit well, if you're sort of like the median or modal religious member or like it might give you sense of community, a sense of ease at life after death, and I give you a sense that someone's, or some great powers looking out for you.

30:52And then if you're like, crushing all that and being like, well, I don't know what to believe and like this seems like bullshit. Like that may actually make you less happy. I don't know, very speculative, but. Interesting. So IQ is a prophylactic against religion, but religion is a prophylactic against misery. And yeah, you're fighting against it. It's an interesting one, man. I am this episode is brought to you by Incogni. If you've ever typed your name into Google and found your info on some weird website that you've never heard of, that's not a fluke. Data brokers and people search sites, collect your personal information like your name, address phone number, buying habits, your income, your medical history, and they sell it without your consent.

31:28And there are hundreds of them, which is why I partnered with Incogni. It finds these bad actors and gets your info removed from their databases automatically. You don't have to email anyone, fill out forms or jump through Hoops, they handle the entire process for you and keep going as new brokers pop up. Best of all, you can cancel it anytime and they offer a 30 -day money back guarantee. So you can buy it completely risk -free, use it for 29 days. If you don't like it for any reason, I'll just give you your money back. Right now, you can get a 60 % discount on an annual plan by going to the link in the description below, are heading to incogni .com slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom, a checkout.

32:01That's i -n -c -o -g -n -i .com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. A checkout. So the reason that I asked about if there was a way that we could raise everybody's IQ, I've just become an advisor in a company that does embryo selection, gene polygenic risks score embryo selection, and one of the things that they can get a little bit into is looking at raising IQ. Hey, here's a dashboard of 10 embryos that we've harvested, these three, you don't want those three, here's seven that are left. Hey, this is better immune system, higher IQ, more externalizing behavior, etc., etc. I wonder, it seems to me inevitable that this technology is going to be used, especially to avoid what John Tubi talks about with Gene Decay.

32:49Are you familiar with that? No, it's not. It's a really interesting idea that basically, ancestrally, the selection pressures that were being applied to humans was so high that any suboptimal genetic mutations were selected out of the gene pool. But as you get rid of that pressure, as you raise the floor basically with modern healthcare, a perfect and totally non -controversial example, which it took me a really long time to try and come up with one, is myopia. So people that need glasses, we have to assume on the savannah 50 ,000 years ago, if your eyesight wasn't that good, you had a less high chance of survival and reproduction, right?

33:32Maybe by a little bit, maybe by a lot, it was as high. We now have glasses, right? It makes very little difference whether you're a child or whatever, I imagine it's maybe even not predictive at all of anything in life, other than whether or not your kids have got. But what that means is over time, people with bad eyesight are more likely to have kids who've got bad eyesight who more likely to have kids who've got bad eyesight But because the deleterious mutations are being accumulated and not selected out, what you end up with is a was called a crumbling genome, which is one that's kind of less robust over time because it's being buttressed and supported more by infrastructure.

34:08I absolutely do not think that people who need glasses should be killed at childbirth or at any point that later in life, I think that would be a terrible idea. But I would guess anybody who needs glasses, I'm someone that did need glasses and I got laser eye surgery to fix it. If you could have told me that my parents would have been able to not have that be an issue for me at birth, and I'm aware that this isn't actually technically the way that it works. You get into a much more sort of messy ethical territory because it's not about getting this same embryo and getting rid of the myopia. it would actually be choosing a different one, but for the purposes of not talking about whether the soul is transferable or not, I think we just need to stick with it here.

34:51My point being, I think that this is going to be used a lot. I think it's going to counter hopefully some of the mental health. Like we could see that. I certainly think that you could look at some of the negative outcomes we've got the predilections people have toward negative mental health and say, Well, you know, if selection pressures were higher, somebody that had a lot of depression and anxiety, maybe there would be less likely to survive and reproduce. I don't think that that should be the case either. I'm somebody that suffered with depression and anxiety. I don't want to be like left out to dry because my tribe doesn't like me or whatever because I'm not a fun hang all the time in my 20s.

35:30But yeah, I just get the sense that this is going to happen more. And if we've got that and IQ is one of the things that's going to be selected for, I think it's really important that conversations like this, that sort of look at IQ apolitically, that work out what it's good for, what it's not good for, where the limits of it lie. But to basically say that if you've got the choice, to make it like, don't live in a house with lead paint. Right? Like that's a good idea. Don't get hit in the head too much, don't live in a house with lead paint, because your life outcomes are maybe not going to be that good.

36:03That being said, I'm not actually going to make that much of an impact and your happiness, life satisfaction. Well, that's the irony. If the pair wants to continue, he happy. That's like for I care. And if you want to help the world, you know, maybe select for altruism, maybe that's, you know, that's more beneficial. That's a fascinating point. Well, think about it. Yeah. I'm just, that's such a great point. And one that like even for me hasn't fully sunk in, given I already forgot it kind of. Most parents, if you ask parents, what is it that you want for your kids? So I just want them to be happy.

36:39All right, well, you left with a pretty difficult decision here, right? Because you know that life outcomes objectively on average in a modern capitalist meritocratic society are gonna be better with higher IQ. But maybe they're gonna be a little bit more sad. So actually, what do you want? And that's, I don't know if that's the best. I just think they're not silly, not necessarily happier. If you're trying to do it for the kid, It's an interesting question. Are you trying to do it for the Canada? You're trying to do it for your idea of what you want your cell to be. And that's a different, somewhat different thing.

37:10What do you think the future of IQ research, IQ discussion looks like? It's a good question. I mean, I do think there are a lot of things that are unsolid footing. Like, I was, it was nice to see that because we, we've replicated, say, in other areas where we see really big problems, right? We have a project called Transparent Replications, where when new papers come out and top psychology journals, We'll use a random number generator to pick some of them. We go take the study, we redo it from scratch, we run it on a new population and see if it holds up and analyze it carefully, release a report.

37:43And we find that a bunch of really serious problems. So at least it's good to see the science is like largely functioning properly. We got a lot of stuff that didn't seem to hold up. I would love to see more research on can you raise it IQ? Because that would be really, really cool. if we could test lots and lots of different methods. Like I'd love to see a study that gets 25 different researchers to come up with ideas of how you might train at something that helps you with everything, right, it improves your skill at everything. And like just test them all, you know, because there's been some efforts in this and they haven't gone well, but it doesn't mean there's not some way to do it that we just haven't figured out yet.

38:20Fascinating stuff. All right, what have you learned about impulsive syndrome? Yeah, well, just one more last thing about IQ intelligence. If you're interested in this topic, We released a giant report with all of our findings all the 40 different claims we tested center website clear thinking org So you can check that out dude everyone needs to check out all of the shit that you're doing I love I love the podcast. I love the blog. I love your articles as well. I think I'll get Thank you so much. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yes, the podcast is clear thinking with Spencer Greenberg every week I invite on someone I think is brilliant to discuss four ideas.

38:53So yeah, I love you to check that out Cool. So yes, I'm positive syndrome So this is something that we deep -dived in. What we did is, this is kind of the style of our work all the time. We took all the different scales to measure imposter syndrome. We put them together. We ran a big study testing them all simultaneously. And then we analyzed it to figure out where the core components of imposter syndrome and what is it related to. And so for those who don't know, imposter syndrome is basically when you're someone who's skilled, but you believe that all your success was just lucky and that you're somehow secretly a fraud, and that you don't really have the skills of people think.

39:29And so we found, so in analyzing all these different ways of measuring a positive syndrome, two of the questions that were most predictive of it were when I achieve results that are praised, I worry that I might not be able to fulfill that person's expectations in the future. So if that's something that you resonate with, you might have a positive syndrome. And another one was, I'm afraid others will discover to the extent to which I lack knowledge or ability. So you feel like you're keeping the secret of your incapability. So both of these, both of these are in relation to others. Yeah, because a lot of it is feeling like people's beliefs about you don't match the reality.

40:10Like, oh, people think I'm really successful, but like if they only knew, or people think I'm talented, but if they're only doing, there's an amazing quote from Tom Hanks. He said, let me just read this, cause so good, no matter what we've done, there comes a point where you think, How did I get here? When are they gonna discover that I am in fact a fraud and take everything away from me? Oh, there's Tom Hanks, right? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Yeah, Woody. So it's an interesting question around the higher someone's praise than the sense that that is now an obligation to meet it again in future. Now, I have to assume that that's because if you feel like your successes are by chance and that you don't have quite as much control or agency over the outcomes at this kind of a level, that every new success is not a cause for celebration.

41:11It's simply a higher bar to fall from next time. Right. If you go below that, oh, now you're, you know, you're the client. they're going to find out and that plays into your precisely the concern that you have. So that's very interesting, this sort of, and I imagine that it's going to be tied in with status. Did you see was this at all, like, intracexual competition, intersexual competition, status anxiety? Was it related to that at all? Well, interestingly enough, early on in the research, people believed that it was mostly women in the head and posture syndrome, but then they discover that actually men have a ton of it too.

41:49So now let's say it thought that actually it's maybe about equal in genders. It may be slightly more women, but like roughly equal. And like it's hard to say who exactly has an posture syndrome for two reasons. One because it depends on where you draw the line, right? Like you have to pick some point of the line where you say that person has an posture syndrome, but the person just below them doesn't. So that's arbitrary. And the other thing is there obviously couldn't be people who genuinely just lack skill. and people think they're scuffing their nod, right? Yeah, maybe you have imposter syndrome or maybe you're just shit at your job.

42:22Well, and the problem is that the people in the bathroom think that they're that person. They're like, no, that's me. You're talking about me. There's other people in the foster syndrome. I just suck, right? Fuck, that's interesting. Okay, so how common is imposter syndrome? Yeah, so you get a wide range of estimates. Typically, estimates are 20 % to 60%. I know that's an enormous range, but it depends on these factors. like where do we draw the line and like how do we know it really really has it but it's extremely common like ridiculously common right even even in high achieving groups like there have been studies on like medical students right and they're working their ass off and they they grinded so hard to get there and like a bunch of them have been bossers to go to a high achieving people more likely to suffer with imposter syndrome than low achieving people that's a question I don't know What did you find out that we didn't already know what was interesting?

43:17Yeah, so here's some fascinating things. People in the Boston Journal are more like a perfectionism. And I suspect that what's going on here is that if you hold yourself to an unreasonable standard, it's going to create this gap between your performance and your perceived performance, right? Like, your standard is like, you have to do everything perfectly or you suck, then you do things like, you don't get perfect, but you do really well. And then you're like, I suck, right? Outwardly, you've outperformed everybody else because of your inner anxiety. Inwardly, you're never satisfied with your performance because of your unreasonable expectation.

43:53Exactly, exactly. And so they find it easy to dismiss their achievements because of the bar that they said is so unreasonably high. It also tends to be associated with me thinking the mistakes are unacceptable, right? Like, you know, one thing I like to say is that I want to fail at more things than most people try at their entire life. And you know, it's like, I think that's a healthy attitude towards like mistakes and fucking up and you know, not succeeding. But it's challenging, right? Like it sucks to be like you made a mistake. Like it's painful and to fail really, really sucks, right? But the reality is like we're humans, we're everyone's going to make mistakes all the time.

44:27But if you view mistakes as unacceptable, well, you're humans, you're going to make them. But that means you're going to end up thinking that you suck a lot more than you do. What are the key dimensions of imposter syndrome on your test? What was it measuring? Yeah. So we found it's a pretty pure dimension by itself, which is mainly around this fear that people think more highly of you than you really can justify and you kind of worry about it and you're worried that they're going to find out. So that's kind of the key, like a pure dimension, but then it has its perfectionism. We also found interesting enough upper -crass nation link.

45:05Maybe with a mushroom tend to like delay the tasks, not do them on time. Oh, that makes total sense. Yeah, I think, and that also my tie into perfectionism is something to do. But it is interesting how sometimes, if we don't give ourselves time to do something, then it's easy to just kind of like give ourselves like excuse and feel less bad about it, right? It's like, oh well, yeah, I only put two hours. I know I should have like started it last week, but then it's like, so I'm not really that bad a person because like, you know, I didn't do a good job just because I only spent two hours on it, right?

45:36So there's these weird like ego games we play with ourselves to try to protect ourselves. Yeah, we've got a get out of jail free card because it's the same as somebody that gets into a relationship and they're kind of committed but kind of not committed all that much and if the relationship doesn't work, they think, well, you know, not that much of a comment. I mean, it's like I gave it my all in any case. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. If you are really intent on protecting your ego, it creates a lot of weird effects that can make your life worse. Like, behaviors where you try to protect your ego, instead of doing the thing you actually care about, like having a good relationship or like getting this project done, right?

46:17Right. Yeah. Okay. So the reason that you're dating is to find a life partner that makes you feel happy and fulfilled, but in the process of trying to not feel like somebody rejects you, sees you truly who you are and doesn't want you or you're not good enough or whatever it is, you behave in a manner which defeats the very thing that you were doing the dating to try and achieve because you don't show somebody all of you and you're not fully committed. Exactly. And I don't know if we're going to talk about narcissism later in this conversation, but Like is especially a problem for narcissistic people, but but everyone like try to correct their ego to some extent We just differ in how much we try to do it.

46:58What do you make of this lean slightly lean towards females? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I think that that um women tend to be less self -confident and And we did have this funny study where we asked people out of 100 people of your age and gender, how many of them do you think you'd perform at different skills, surviving in a zombie apocalypse and dancing and kissing and cooking, all these kinds of things. And you know, men tend to be a bit more overconfident, like they tend to be a bit more, yeah, I could beat 70 % of men at fighting or kissing or whatever. You know, I can't sing that, not because I'm not doing it.

47:44But yeah, so I think, you know, and I think that's probably why people assume that women don't have this more because like they tend to have lower self -esteem and less confidence. But funnily enough, it seems like an apostasy that are not necessarily, and you know, and it's hard to know why that might be that it's more balanced, but it could come, it could be related to men often treat, to sort of their work as fundamentally their value, right? So what they do in the marketplace is like says who they are Okay, so are there any counter -intuitive benefits to impulse the syndrome? Well, that's really interesting.

48:22I think a lot of times when we have these like damaging psychological beliefs They are solving some kind of problem for us. It's often not worth it But like they're often not random and so so good example of this is like negative self -talk You know, some people when they don't do a good job, they're like, you're a piece of shit, like they're saying this to themselves in their mind. Like, you're a piece of shit. You suck. And you like imagine how damaged that would be if like your father said that to you, or your friends said that to you, like, how mean that would be. But it's like, well, why do people do that?

48:50And I think it's because at some point in their life, they learn that, like, that squeeze a little bit more performance out of them. And then they like, they're like stuck to that rule of like, Oh, if I whip myself into submission, then sometimes things go well for me. Exactly. I would get myself to work harder and blah blah. Of course there's an incredible cost and the cost you usually not worth it, right? But it's like, they're often, I'm not going to say always, but often I think people are solving a problem with these dysfunctional psychological beliefs. It's just that they're creating more problems.

49:20But then if you sort of challenge it and said, well, what if you just didn't treat yourself like shit? What if you didn't call yourself a dick all the time? They're like, on some level, they're like, but then I wouldn't be high. I wouldn't push myself. So they're like scared to let go of this dysfunctional measure. So you have to kind of give them another tool. They'll be like, well, instead of, don't get, they'll just throw it away. Try this other tool for getting a good performance out of yourself, right? This episode is brought to you by element. Summer hits different when you're actually hydrated.

49:49That tired, foggy muscle, crampy feeling, most people choke up to heat or exhaustion. It might be electrolytes and plain water alone won't fix it, which is why element is such a game changer. It's a zero sugar electrolyte drink mix with sodium potassium and magnesium in the exact ratio your body needs. No sugar, no food dies, no artificial junk, and this summer they've dropped something new lemonade salt. It's like a lemon popsicle grow up, got its life together and started supporting your adrenal system and your hydration. And best of all, there's no questions asked, refund policy. So you can buy it, try it for as long as you want, and if you don't like it, they'll give you your money back and you don't even need to return the box.

50:25That's how confident they are that you'll love it. plus they offer free shipping in the US. Right now you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors of your first box by going to the link in the description below are heading to drinklmt .com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmt .com slash modern wisdom. Have you got any idea of potential interventions for imposter syndrome? Yeah, so we look into this a bunch. And we actually, so we made an unclear thing that you can find our imposter syndrome assessment. You can go measure your imposter syndrome, But we also ended up having a bunch of techniques you can try.

50:58I'll say that the evidence is not a huge amount of evidence, but we looked at the evidence and we teach you techniques that are at least somewhat evidence -based. So one of them is self -compassion. And I have to say, this tends to res me a lot more with women than men in my experience. But self -compassion is actually a pretty cool set of techniques for someone who tends to be pretty harsh on themselves. And it's basically, I mean, at a core, it's saying, well, how would you treat someone when you really care about when they're going through something difficult and just use that same energy towards yourself, right?

51:28Like treat yourself with understanding, treat yourself with respect, treat yourself with kindness and empathy and, you know, don't berate yourself. Just like you wouldn't berate a loved one. Obviously, there's more to it than that, but I think that's like a good starting point. And I think for people that have a lot of negative self -talk, I think that's a really useful technique. Mm -hmm. Anything else? Yeah, another one is cognitive therapy can be useful here. So this basic tool from cognitive therapy where when you when you're feeling emotional you tend to have distortions in your thinking This is actually one of the things that first may be obsessed with psychology So I was reading a book on cognitive behavioral therapy and it said it made this claim like when you're you're feeling Intensive and emotions your beliefs tend to get distorted and predictable ways and I was like what really is that true?

52:09So one time when I was feeling like emotional I wrote down my thoughts and I came back to them when I was in a neutral emotional state. I was like, holy shit. That's exactly what happened there. That's like a path I can. I believe so distorted by the intense emotion. And so cognitive therapy, I think has this correct observation that often really often is the case. And so you, one cool technique is you write down your thoughts when you're feeling negative emotions. Like let's say you're telling yourself that you're a fraud and everyone's going to find out you write down those thoughts. You come back to them in a neutral emotional state and you really try to evaluate the evidence.

52:41You say, what's the evidence for? What's the evidence against? And then once you've done that, you ask yourself, can I replace this thought with a thought that's at least this true and more helpful? So let's say the thought that you tend to have is like, I'm a fraud and everyone's going to find out, right? You can think, what is a belief that's just as true or more true? But it's more helpful than that. Like maybe it'll be a belief like, you know, I'm not good at everything, but I am really good at some things, right? So it's an example of like a replacement thought. And then what you try to do is you try to practice that replacement thought.

53:09You try to notice when you're having that first thought and just immediately replace it with the second thought, like just say the second thought to yourself in your head or out loud. And it can be actually quite a powerful technique. Is there any relationship between IQ and Impostocindra? Oh, that's a good question. We didn't study it, unfortunately. Okay. Well, so the reason I ask it is I'm seeing at least one thread between the two topics that we've spoken about so far, which is outwardly the outcomes. Oh, actually, let me ask you this first, do people that have got in post -acendram have better life outcomes?

53:47Yeah, and fortunately, I don't know that either. So I don't know much about the link between post -acendram and like objective achievement or life outcomes. I mean, it is linked. So I will say, if I was to syndrome is linked to more depression and anxiety. So on an emotional front, they have worse outcomes, but things like whether they do better in school or things like that, I don't know. Yeah. So you can probably see where I'm going with this. High RICU, that objective life outcomes are the only way that we can be measured, which is externally, inwardly, these people seem to be, it's not correlated, but if life outcomes are better, and that would be predictive of better life internally, and that you're not able to do it.

54:23There's a little bit of a sort of a minus multiply going on there. And the same thing goes for the imposter syndrome. I would guess that people with imposter syndrome on average are higher performers than people who don't have it. And I think that it's because of this sort of paranoia that they have about being found out, which will drive them to pay more attention, be more diligent, be more obsessive, compulsive, neurotic, work harder at these things in a desperate attempt to try and disprove their own unreasonable expectation for that standard that everybody else doesn't even know exists. So again, one of the questions I've been the most fascinated by probably since I started this podcast is, what is the price that somebody pays in order to be a person that you admire?

55:09So high performers, high achievers, the ones that everybody seems to look up to. Okay, well, that's what it's like externally, but what's their experience of life internally? And I'm like a Pokemon card collector for just more little pieces of evidence that the way that somebody's life is going externally is not necessarily predictive of the things that you care about the most, which is peace of mind, the life -satisfaction, happiness, connection with others, you know, texture of their own existence as their head hit to pillow at night, that sort of stuff. And it seems like at least between the two things that we've seen so far, there's a bit of a correlate going on there.

55:56I think that's really astute. Often to get sort of the top of something, someone has to dedicate themselves fully to it. Obviously, there's weird examples where someone gets lucky, but usually it's people who dedicate themselves fully. And we look at Mr. Beast. Could someone be more dedicated to getting views on YouTube? He's probably the most obsessive person we're getting views in the world and he also has the most views in the world. It kind of makes sense. And I think a lot of times that obsessive focus really comes in tremendous cost to other things. I mean, Mr. Beast, I think if he's even saddling, I'm not the YouTuber you want to be.

56:28right? And this made my experience also like when I meet billionaires, like some of them are like, you know, great people and like, you know, seemed like, you know, happy, but a bunch of them seem really like there's something wrong with them. On average, high performance is more miserable than normal people, as far as I've seen. And I've spoken to like, you know, nearly a thousand on the show in one form or another. And when you see somebody that's got a well -balanced sensed themselves and they don't castigate themselves if they're for short and they relate to the people around them well and they're connected and their sleep's okay and their health's not bad and they're not too stressed and all the rest of the stuff.

57:05Like holy fuck, that's really rare. That's a rare, that's significantly rarer than somebody who is a high performer. And yet we look at the high performances, the ones that people who have the least desirable internal states have some of the most desirable external lives and that that paradox will never cease to fascinate me. I think it's so fucking interesting. Yeah, I think a really interesting question is, are you actually willing to make the sacrifices to be at that level? And like people, I don't think it takes seriously that question. And yeah, of course, like you want to incrementally improve your and making things better.

57:44But do you want to make the sacrifice to be at that level, right? At the very, very top of the cheaper level? Yeah. And for some people, it's worth it, some it's not. I think it comes down to values. Like, what do you really value in my frame? Mm -hmm. You re -examined the Dunning Kruger effect as well. Like, we're just going through and decapitating all of those sort of interesting psychological insights of the last few decades. Yeah. The Dunning Kruger one is a little hard to explain, but I think it's really fascinating. So just for those that are not as familiar, the basic done and career factor is the idea that people who have low performance or low skill or low intelligence tend to overestimate their abilities.

58:19And the original explanation is that it's because they know so little that they don't even know how to evaluate, right? They're so, they're so end -skilled, they can't even evaluate skills that they think they're better than that, right? So that's the basic idea. Sometimes in modern usage, people also mean the opposite that people who are high skill tend to underestimate their abilities. So you could also think about a done and crude alike effect, right? So we've got those two things to explain. And if you look at the original research, the way that they essentially prove the done and crude growth effect is they'll make these plots of people's actual skill versus their perceived skill.

58:51And they'll show that there's a gap where people who are lower in skill or over -shooting their predictions about themselves and people are higher in skill or under -shooting, I believe they're not as good as they really are, right? And they say, look, there's an effect. And so we set about to replicate this, but also we ran a bunch of simulations to try to really understand like what produces those plots. And we found two really crazy things. The first crazy thing is that it turns out you can get those plots that look exactly the same as like the original letting trigger studies with nothing to do with human psychology.

59:24It turns out if you're you've got a measure skill using something right you give people a test or something right. If you measure skill with something that has a decent amount of noise or error, right? Because you know, you give people a vocab test, well, you know, there's some noise in it, right? It's not a perfect measure of something's vocabulary, right? There's some choice of what questions ask. And so it's somewhat noisy, right? So you have this imperfect measure, you get a done -in -cruel plot. The noise actually causes that effect, where people who have low, who, you think have lower ability, tend to overestimate their ability.

59:57And the reason it, yeah, it's a little bit subtle, but the reason is because so you don't know someone's true ability, right? Like how would you know? All you know is someone's measured ability. But measured ability is true ability plus noise. So think about someone who is unlucky on the test. Like they performed worse than their true ability. Oh. So they're gonna overestimate, they're gonna look like they overestimated their ability. But actually they were just unlucky. Oh, wow, that's so interesting. Holy shit. Yeah, so both groups are maybe accurately perceiving their what should have been their expected level of output.

1:00:37But due to noise or luck or chance or a good night's sleep or a bad night's sleep or a crying baby or whatever, they didn't show up as themselves and that resulted in a disparity between what should have happened that they predicted and what did happen that they didn't predict. Exactly. And then anyone wants to deep dive on this on my YouTube channel, Spencer Greenberg. We've got a video that breaks us down. But yeah, exactly. And so in order to really say there's an incorrect effect, you actually have to have a test with incredibly little noise. There's a really, really accurate measure to protect against this.

1:01:12And that's really hard to do, right? It's like hard to build such a good test of almost anything. So that's the first problem. It's like, well, we can't. It's hard to even show that it's not just a mathematical artifact. But here's a potentially even bigger problem. Turns out perfectly rational agents also get a done and crude or effect. Okay, explain that to me. Yeah, so it seems weird, right? Okay, so suppose you're doing a new skill you've never done before. You know how good you are, and you're competing against people who've also never done it before. What would you estimate your percentile to be?

1:01:42Oh, fuck knows. I guess it would depend on the analogous other things that I'd done that were kind of similar to it in the past and I'd try and predict that. Yeah, so if you had analogous, say you're exactly, you're trying to predict it based on that. But let's say you had nothing analogous, right? You're like, well, what percentile? Like, I have no idea. No idea. Well, let's say, would you put yourself a 99 percentile? No, that's absolutely not. Right. Would you put yourself at first? No, 50. right? Right? Right? So you're like the rational thing if you don't have information is to be like, okay, I'm probably near the middle, right?

1:02:16Before I get evidence, right? Prior evidence. Okay, but then think about what happens. If you, the rational thing is put yourself in the middle without evidence, you start getting evidence. What do you do? You'll update on the information. You use Bayesian reasoning to update. So you get some evidence. It pushed, as you get more evidence, it pushes you away from the center. So if you get some evidence that you're not very good, you start pushing down. If you get evidence, you're good. You start pushing up. Well, guess what that leads to? It means you end up too close to the center. Everyone is squished towards the center, which is exactly the dining career effect.

1:02:46People are lower skill or overestimated themselves because they're squished towards the center and people are higher skill or underestimate themselves because they're squished in the center. Okay, so is the dining career effect bullshit? Well, this is the incredibly unsatisfying thing. I told you how the dining career effect might just be a mathematical artifact. It might just be rational actors, but we can't tell the difference. It's so hard to tell. So I can't even be positive. There's no done in trigger effect because I'm just saying, like these results have two other interpretations. And we can't tell which one it is.

1:03:16Is it irrationality? Is it a mathematical artifact? Or is it rational actors being Bayesian reasoners? But I will tell you something funny that we observed. I do think there's some irrationality going on. And that's because you can see in these plots, so we ran our unsightly and we've got these plots and we looked at a bunch of others from other studies. What you see is that there tends to be the line tend to be too high. On average, people overestimate their abilities. And I think that is a pretty robust finding. And so I think this better than average, or fact, that people tend to overestimate how good they are on average.

1:03:47I think that is true. And that is a form of rational. It's not that I'm correct or effect, but it is a form of rationality. Of course, it's not true for everyone. Like, depressed people might underestimate their abilities, but on average, right? So that's one thing. The other thing that's really peculiar about these curves is they tend to be really flat. In other In other words, you might think, well, as you get better and better, you have a slope of one. For every unit of increased skill, you go up by one unit of prediction. It tends to not be what you see. It's really flat. The people are really good.

1:04:16I think they're only a little bit better than the people who are not very good. The extreme flatness, I find very suspicious. It makes it hard for me to believe people are being rational. How could you really have so little evidence about your skill? It seems like people actually have a lot of evidence of how good they are driving or How intelligent they are or, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And yet there's very flat slopes, meaning that the people are really good. I think they're not that much better than everyone else. And actually, the funniest example of this is, there's a study asking people to rate how attractive they are on a, like, you know, zero to 10 scale.

1:04:48And they also have third parties rate how attractive they are on a zero to 10 scale. It's ridiculously flat. Like almost everyone thinks they're between a six and a seven, like on average. Like, the lowest attractors people on average, or they're like a sex and that is something they're like a sub. It's like, what is going on here? How is that possible? But it's super, yeah. It seems like people are weirdly underup dating on evidence. With the attractiveness thing, I get the sense as opposed to something that's more skill based. I think there is gonna be a huge amount of sort of white coat syndrome or whatever the equivalent is of like, oh God, like who says it about themselves?

1:05:24That they're an eight out of 10. I'd better say a seven. True, but these are anonymous surveys. So yeah, I agree. Like definitely, definitely if you're being interviewed, yeah, but most people would like they want to see Ergant social Desirability bullshit going on. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe that's just I get the sense that maybe with things like self -rated attractiveness It is so Enmeshed socially that even if you do that's anonymous No, it's ever gonna see the metadata has been wiped. We don't know your IP address because it feels like someone's watching you over your shoulder when you think about doing that.

1:06:04Well, you do a so strange is that people tend to self -assort by track goodness. So they must have some unpleasant sense in their track to this. Like I mean, how often would people date? Are they dating someone who's like pretty close to their trackers? Like it's unusual. Almost always. It's almost always. Because even in relationships that are supposedly lux for wealth trades, even when you've got the sugar daddy with the Playboy model. Like most of the time when you actually look at those relationships, they actually end up starting to match in terms of attractiveness. Mac and Murphy did a great breakdown about this.

1:06:38This species podcast is great. And yeah, it was, it's fascinating. It's really, really fascinating that people just seemed, so I have a really, really spicy theory about this actually, which is one of the reasons that there's many, many, many, many reasons about why people aren't coupling up. One of the spicier ones that I've got is that with increasing levels of obesity, with calorie -rich foods and hyper -palatable, hyper -process stuff going everywhere, everybody is becoming a little bit bigger. And there has to be a line below which, even if you are also a three, a three just isn't that attractive to you.

1:07:18And I wonder whether there's kind of a lower, a lower bracket to attractiveness that people are just not prepared, they're less prepared, let's say, to get into a relationship with, even if that's your level. But then there's also this sort of lagging indicator of where you know that you should be. Well, that's not who I am underneath. Like, I've gained weight a little bit recently, but they've really gained weight. And it's like, no, dude, you've gained the same amount of weight that she has or whatever. But I think it's fascinating to see what happens if you, and I guess body weight is probably one of the reliable ways that you could step in and adjust levels of desirability kind of population -wide.

1:07:55It's not so that you can't have people that are bigger that aren't beautiful, but you know what I mean in terms of desirability. It's just what are some of the things that have happened across the board. Like, I don't know, if the ozone layer above America disintegrated and everybody had leathery skin or something like that, like what's something that's happening in a relatively sort of global or at least like population -wide level that's impacting appearance and this is one of the, I guess, interventions unfortunate experiments that's kind of being run. It's like decreasing baseline. How attractive people are to each other.

1:08:30That's across the board. It's interesting. You know, Elah, the sex researcher, did a really interesting study where she found she could get people to more accurately indicate their own attractiveness level by having them compare themselves to people of their own gender. So she actually developed a scale of faces that were like people were you know faces where people rated them I won on average two or three or four and as you said where do you rate rating like ring yourself against these faces and people are actually More accurate than when they had to put on like a objective scale themselves Okay, what do people consistently get wrong about personality disorders?

1:09:06You mentioned earlier on about narcissism and BPD stuff like that where Where do we not understand personality disorder very well? Yeah, great question. So this is a moment deep diving a lot on recently. I actually did a series of interviews from our podcast with a narcissist, a sociopath, some with borderline. So just search clear thinking on your podcast app if you want to check that out. But I think it is actually a surprisingly important topic because almost certainly, unless you're really kind of a hermit, you know people with personality disorders, right? So if we think about even just three personality disorders, We think narcissistic personality disorder, anti -social personality disorder, also, like, not associated with the casually and borderline.

1:09:48Like each of them is estimated to be more than 1 % of the population. So, you know, 100 people are, there's a good chance, you know, someone would wonder more personality disorder. And I think they also, well, they're absolutely people with personality disorders are good. People are not harmful. They tend to have an elevated risk of causing harm to others. There's a very substantially elevated risk, especially if you end up in a romantic relationship or your business relationship or they're your best friend or that kind of thing, or family member. So I think it is useful and important to understand these disorders.

1:10:20I think the first big misconception is that people confuse traits with the disorders. A lot of people are like, oh, my ex partner was a narcissist or my boss is a narcissist or my boss is sociable, whatever. And I think it's important to understand that these are trait -based things, right? that narcissism is a trait, grandiosity is a trait, you know, manipuliveness is a trait. And so everyone kind of, somewhere on the spectrum of these traits, and most people who are like somewhat narcissistic or somewhat, you know, manipulative or not, they don't have their disorder. And I think that's, so I think on the first, on the one hand, they're like often over diagnosed, like people are like, choosing others that have them when they usually don't.

1:10:56On the other hand, the people that do have them often go overlooked, and like people actually don't realize that they have them, and that sometimes comes at an incredible cost. So they're both being overdagnosed and undidagnosed at the same time. Exactly. Exactly. And I think one thing that contributes a little bit here, if you think about, let's say, some of the nurses' personality disorder, if you really get to the core of their underlying motivations, which is how I like to think about it, I think what they're really driving towards fundamentally is attention and admiration. They're highest value drive.

1:11:34and thinking of themselves as special and better than other people. And if you think about it that way, you realize that their behaviors are not necessarily what people would expect of a narcissist. So let me give you an example. Suppose that someone says, hey, Chris, that's a really cool watch. I really like it. Where'd you get it? You might think of that as a nice thing to say, an altruist, a kind of thing to say. But what do you think is likely to happen after someone gives you, let's suppose you actually care about your watch. What do you think is likely to happen after that? You care about your watch more, you tell them maybe they go and buy it as well.

1:12:08Yeah, so that's on your side, but also you probably feel kind of good about that person, right? That's a nice thing. Oh, of course. Yeah, prosocial. What a lovely compliment. Thanks, Spencer. Yeah, I love this watch. I'm glad that you noticed. And how do you think that affects the likelihood that you compliment them later? Ah, yes. Yes, yes, yes. So it's this sort of reciprocal debt that you need to pay. Exactly, because they love admiration and attention and feeling special. So, they're flattering even though that doesn't seem like the sort of thing that somebody who is an narcissist would do, flattery is a tool that they can use to reciprocally get that back.

1:12:41Yes, and I think it's useful to think of like obviously people have different skill levels, but it's useful to think of a lot of people with narcissistic personality as experts in getting admiration and attention. So, they're not using like some of them use really like crude methods, they're just brag, you know, really boldly and obnoxiously, but they're experts in getting admiration and attention. So they do slice that all things. They give you really nice compliments. They make you feel special. They make you like them. And then they give them a compliment later. Right? I'll give you another example.

1:13:09My friend was dating a narcissist. And we were talking about him. And she's like, you know, it's, I mean, he's just textbook like everything, you know, it's clearly a narcissist. But she was saying, you know, the thing is that like, I felt like he wasn't a narcissist because he would give away all this money anonymously to charity. And I was I was like, that's really interesting. How did you know about that?

1:13:31So he was literally constantly bragging as to none of those donations. So it's no longer anonymous. Yeah, but it worked. Like it somehow worked, right? Where she was like persuaded by those that he must not be narcissistic. And so I think that like, if you think about them being savvy at this, it really changes your perspective and it makes you realize that They're a lot harder to pick up on than a lot of people realize and that's why people often misidentify right and in fact There was a fascinating study where they measured people's narcissism and had them give like a just a two -minute Speech about themselves like introduce yourself to the whole room and They asked people the rate how likable people were and what do you think happened the narcissist with more likable?

1:14:14Nice just remember likable in fact not only more likeable They were even more likable if they cut out the audio so people like they had people watch videos they cut out the other, it was still more likeable. Their facial expression were more likeable. Their clothing was more likeable. Like they're like experts in being like a... I can't rated themselves. Exactly, but people's impression of them does tend to fall over time, right? Because it's a bit of a mask, right? It's like they're trying to get you... It's just like eventually. Yeah, yeah. And so I think it's really important to know when you're dealing with someone who's not necessarily a personality disorder.

1:14:48It doesn't mean you should necessarily cut them out of your life. It doesn't mean that they're a bad person necessarily. But I think you should know, it's an extremely elevated risk to causing harm. And then you should take that seriously and say, do I want this person my way? And if you do want them in their life, it also is helpful to know because they actually can help you relate to them much more effectively. If you understand the way that their minds operate. What about sociopathy and BPD? Yeah. So, sociopathy. So I used to never be able to identify sociopaths until about three years ago.

1:15:17and something suddenly clicked and I meet them like all the time. It's absolutely wild. Like I almost can't believe how often I meet them. I was at a party like three months ago. I've had two sociopaths at the party. Now you might say, that's a really beautiful shit. How do you know there's those effects? Well, I'll tell you, do you not want to know how I know there's those effects? Yes, yes, yes. I take them aside and I say, hey, I know this is a weird question, but have you ever considered the possibility that you have anti -social personality disorder? And do you know what they say to me? They only say something very similar.

1:15:47No, what do they say? They say no emotion reaction. They say I have considered that.

1:15:55Yeah, but that's what we have a conversation. Presumably you're not saying that to everybody. No, I'm just saying it to people I think it doesn't matter. So what's the lead indicator? What's the indicator that happened before? Yeah, so here's the funny thing. You might think it's like oh, I must be noticing that they're you know, acting manipulative or callously, right, or whatever. It's very rarely that actually. It's, I think the best way I think of sociopathies is it's like, imagine there were aliens that looked just like humans, right? Obviously, they're not aliens. They're humans, but their, their minds operate so differently that it's like their aliens.

1:16:26So how would you tell someone who's an alien, right? You would notice that they said something that like would no human would say it's like out of the distribution of human behavior. That's actually what I noticed. And I don't think they're sociopath immediately. It's not like I'm like, oh, they just think so. unusual that there's a sociopath. I'm like my obsession is human psychology so when I notice someone do something like where I'm like I would predict like essentially zero people would ever do that thing and this person just did that thing I like become really curious I start asking questions and then that's when I develop the theory that I asked him about it so let me give you an example talk to a guy at a conference we're talking about how sometimes you can feel emotions in your body and I was like oh do you ever feel emotions in your body he's like yes one time I was driving down the highway and a refrigerator fell the back of the truck smashed through my windshield and I felt something in my stomach.

1:17:13And I was like, uh, what? So I didn't think this was so much about. I was just like, what is going on? This is not a psychology I'm familiar with. And then we talked about it for a while and then, you know, then he eventually came out that he keeps a list of everyone who's wronged him. And once a month, he checks it to see if he can hurt any of those people in ways that take very little effort because he wouldn't I want to expend a lot of effort to hurt them, but if there's a low effort way he could hurt them, then he might as well, because they hurt him. Wow. Okay, yeah, I mean, that's a slightly brighter red flag than...

1:17:47Well, yeah, exactly, but he probably wouldn't say that in just the normal conversation, right? So it's usually what happens is there's this thread of, wow, this person seems like an alien, like they don't seem like a human, like there's something they said that's show unusual, and then that's the thread that I pull on, and then eventually, yeah. Yeah. I actually hate, like hanging out with Soziapath way more than narcissists. Why? They just tend to be, well, no, the thing, I think the fundamental thing is that narcissists, they tend to make everything about their ego as much as they can. So everything's being redirected back there, you go.

1:18:18And I just find that like very uninteresting. It's actually very boring as well as opposed to someone who's a sociopath who you're not going to trust, but he's kind of fascinating at a distance. Exactly. Yeah. And the sociopath, you know, they're, like, when I, for example, I interviewed this associate path. She describes it almost like, she doesn't even know who her fundamental self is. She is like a shell and she's like, learn to blend in so you think that she's just like you. But it's like this practice thing over years. Like I've asked associate paths, do you like watching movies? Cause I don't know without empathy.

1:18:53Like you don't have empathy for the characters. Like what are you interested in? Exactly and they tell me they love movies because they teach them how to behave. Like one associate path was saying that he learned that if your friend's dad dies, you have to, you, you have to make a sad face and then say, I'm so sorry.

1:19:11It's like someone's read a handbook on how to be a human. Yeah, and I think this is where we can differentiate between low functioning, high functioning sociopaths. That low functioning ones often have struggled to fit in. Like, they don't learn those skills. They, you know, they, they don't get adept. And so they, they constantly have this jarring thing where they're like, they're ostracized and people don't like them in wherever. And then the high function ones, like the ones you meet in a board room, the ones you meet in a court room or the one, you know, as the lawyer, not the convicted felon, they tend to be really good at blending in, right?

1:19:42They've worked their whole life at blending in. What's the difference between sociopath and psychopath? That's a good question. So unfortunately, the terms are like all messy and all over the place. Technically psychopath is like not in the DSM -5, which is the diagnostic statistical manual. No, nor associate path. The technical term is anti -social personality disorder. And it tends to focus more on the outward signs, like manipulativeness and violating the rights of others, whereas I tend to focus more on what the internal experience is, because I think it gives a deeper sense of who they are.

1:20:14Sometimes sociopath is used to refer to less severe forms of the disorder, where psychopaths is the more severe forms. So then sociopaths are thought to be more like hat -hat and emotional, where psychopaths are more called blooded. And then there's also something called the psychopath checklist, which is sometimes used as a scaled measure, like really severe levels, it's using presences and stuff like that. But unfortunately, the terms are really not standardized. And the sociopads I've talked to tend to sort of use them interchangeably. Right. Okay. Can you think of how narcissism or sociopathy is adaptive?

1:20:51Is this some spandrel? Is this a weird byproduct of stuff? Or is this an adaptive trait that we needed at some point? Good question. It's hard to know for sure. I'll tell you my speculation. Narciss tend to be good at getting admiration and attention. And I think that actually sets people up to be leaders and to get everyone to rally around them. And so I think that they're way overrepresented among politicians. I think they're way overrepresented among like people in the public spotlight leaders of all different sorts. And I think it cuts both ways. On the one hand, they tend to be drawn to those kind of positions, because that's what they want.

1:21:31They also, though, I think tend to be better at it, because they're like, practice their whole life, I think getting admiration and attention, right? They also are overrepresented among cult leaders. And so I think we have the negative archetype of the narcissists as a cult leader. Like it's everything is about themselves, and they want to be worship like a god. the positive archetype of narcissists would be like a visionary CEO who's maybe willing to like doesn't care so much about you know the well -being of their employees because they have this bigger vision of this grandiose vision but they might end up playing a very positive role in society because they bring in something.

1:22:03They're self -belief in their desire to achieve things in the world will have some negative externalities but if either by designer by fluke they were pointing in a direction which is a net benefit for humanity overall, you end up with them being like kind of anti -social and manipulative on root and you end up with a question there of whether or not the ends justify the means to get there. Yeah, and you could think of it as someone who's like, they're devoted to that grandiose vision rather than, you know, the people around them or things like that. And sometimes that grandiose vision, or usher, was in something really important, right?

1:22:39I think they really can rally people and get people moving in the same direction, which There's also why they make great collators in harbour a lot of people, right? What about social up thing? Yeah, so let me ask you a question. Imagine you're living in a tribe of 100 people, 50 ,000 years ago. When would you want to associate path of your tribe and when would you not?

1:23:02Maybe when there is some sort of fracturing internally, some sort of mutiny, treacherous kind of gamesmanship type thing, and you need somebody that can shape shift and do the kind of political games and thing back and forth. Psychopath, again, the definition to kind of messy. Perhaps when there was a war, I guess, as well, you need to be conniving and manipulative with it. Basically, anytime that there's a rival risk game going on either internally or externally and you need someone that can play that and not have any empathy or hesitation around fucking other people over. I think that's a stupid, right?

1:23:47Like imagine for example, there's, you're surrounded by a bunch of tribes, they hate you, they want to kill you. They might just come and like kill you all or rape the women or whatever. Like there's a social path into your team who doesn't want them to come kill you. And you're like, yeah, that's what you about might just go and assassinate their leader and nothing twice about it. Not even think about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like just, well, I'll just go over and kill them. You know, and it's like, well, actually, that's pretty useful to have in your team. But imagine you're in peace time, right?

1:24:17Like everyone's planning the fields and things are good. Like, do you want that sushi about? You know, it's a little bit like having a wolf with a bunch of sheep, right? Like, it's just about, it's gonna, it's like probably not doing that part. The sushi path is being wartime manipulative during peace. And that's not really what you need. I mean, I guess who's to say that the sociopath would actually, the kind of like, you know what a sociopath's kind of like, the kind of like a misaligned AI, they're kind of like a relatively powerful agent that you just don't know what direction they're pointing at, because who's to say that during a time of what we've seen in movies and stuff a lot?

1:24:56But there is a distraction that creates a vacuum of leadership internally, and someone as opposed to trying to help the tribe by using their sociopathy against the opposition, they use it internally to try and capture power for themselves because this is a turbulence moment where they can step in and ascend to the top. Yeah, I'll tell you something. A top VC in Silicon Valley told me this. I don't know why he told me this. He told me he likes to fund small startups and associate paths as leaders, but then he kicks them out when the company becomes big. And he said it's because when there's a small company, the sociopaths like interest are very aligned with like the startup succeeding and They're mailing link to make like really brutal cut -throat decisions But when it gets big they actually benefit most by just extracting value from the company itself Where's the small startup doesn't have value to extract and so I was like it's like crazy He like I you essentially find sociopaths in the kicks of outer companies Dude, I mean like if you want to use sociopaths as the launch pad booster rocket to get your heavy load off the out of orbit and then you actually switched to a cleaner fuel source once you get up into the atmosphere, I guess.

1:26:12Yeah, that's an interesting one. I had this idea, I guess. I wonder whether we're over pathologizing difficult people as disordered rather than just unpleasant. So I can tell many people are just fucking unpleasant to be around. That's absolutely true. I mean, the vast majority of people, they're like kind of a dick or unpleasant. They don't have a personality disorder, right? They're just, you know, a bit of a narcissist, or they're a bit of a dick, or they're, or they're just like dealing with their own shit, and they're like, they put it out on you because they don't have good emotional regulation skills, right?

1:26:43So it is a lot of that. And like, we're really talking here about extreme personality types, like really extreme, where you, you know, something I've thought a lot about, like, is it even useful having these categories, right? If these are all traits that are on the spectrum, my suspicion is that what happens is as you get more and more extreme, it starts to dominate more and more of their behavior. So you have someone who's a little narcissistic, they may not have that much in common with other little bit narcissistic people, right? Because they have somebody other things going on. But if like, narcissism actually drives like, is there fundamental drive in life?

1:27:16They actually might behave really similar to other narcissists, because they're kind of like guided by the same North Star. So I think that's what happens. That's why I think these categories are useful at the real extreme. you start noticing so many similarities across them. Because this, if someone is 99 % made of custard, it's okay to say that you are custard. But if you're only sort of 65 % made of custard, it's like, wow, I'm kind of interested in what the other 35 % of that is. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you've custard analogies. You weren't thinking I was gonna go there today. Dude, your work's so fucking good.

1:27:51You're like, the only guy I know that's doing this. stuff. And it's just as well that you've got the obsession because I don't think that anybody else would be prepared to put up with the level of like fiddliness That you have to do in order to be able to test this stuff. So everyone needs to check out all of the shit that you've got going on Where the links will be posted around, but where'd you want them to go to? Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, so I've new YouTube channel would love for you to check it out Subscribe if you find interesting. Just search Spencer Greenberg on YouTube My podcast, ClearThink, and Spencer Grieberg, search it at any podcast app.

1:28:24In our website, clearthink .org, we have so much stuff. We have over 80 tools you can use on there for all kinds of things, forming healthy habits. We've got a tool, an actual cognitive assessment tool. So if you want to assess your cognitive abilities, strengths and weaknesses, so lots of stuff on there. Dude, you're king. Until next time, get some more studies done and let's run this back soon. Thanks so much, Chris.