The Daily Stoic - Paul Bloom on Why We Need Heroes

Episode Date: August 24, 2022

Ryan talks to psychology professor and author Paul Bloom about the importance of recognizing our own bias, the role that our character plays in everyday life, why we look to moral exemplars to base our lives on, and more.Paul Bloom is a passionate teacher of undergraduates, and his popular Introduction to Psychology 110 class has been released to the world through the Open Yale Courses program. He has recently completed a second MOOC, “Moralities of Everyday Life”, that introduced moral psychology to tens of thousands of students. And he also presents his research to a popular audience through articles in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom every day life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us dailystow.com. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wanderer's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target,

the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. I am going to take you way, way, way, way, way back to year 2007. I had just dropped out of college as working at a talent agency in Hollywood. I've told some stories about my time there. I've talked a lot about dropping out, but I almost dropped out of dropping out. Meaning I dropped out, I was working at this talent agency, and about six months in, maybe three, four months in, I felt like this wasn't for me.

I missed college, I missed learning. I felt like there was so much left for me to learn. And I didn't love representing talent as the term in the business was. And I definitely didn't like the people. I didn't like the vibe. I didn't like that. I had to dress a certain way every day

and everyone hated the same place and drove the same cars. I didn't like the vibe. I didn't like that. I had to dress a certain way every day and everyone hated the same place and drove the same car. I didn't like it. So I went to my boss and I said, I think I'm going to go back to school. And he said, why? And I said, why didn't I think I'm learning enough? And he said, you know, you can take courses online, right? And he's like, why don't you just stop coming to the office on Wednesdays, take online courses

whatever you want, just learn. I said, oh, yeah, this is why I'm mentoring under you. You're really smart. And I started doing that. I would stay home on Wednesdays. And one of the classes I took was a class, an intro to psych class at Yale. I went to UC Riverside, which is a perfectly good school. It actually has a number of great psychology professors that are very well known, but it's not here. And this class blew me away. It was taught by Professor Paul Bloom.

And I remember so much from this course. It was one of the greatest courses I've ever taken. He was an incredible speaker. He was just, you know, when you watch a professor, you're like, oh, man, every professor was like, what would this world look like? And so it was many years later, I was at a conference called Renaissance Weekend, which I've also talked about here before, and I met Paul Blum.

And I told him this and he thought it was cool. And I went on my way and he went on his way. I've continued to be a fan of his. I think about what I learned in that class all the time. I've read a number of his books, including my favorite is his book, Just Babies, which is about where it is our sense of justice innate in us or do we learn it as we grow up. And I thought that would be the end of it until Jane, who else we booked this podcast, suggested Paul Bloom as a guest.

I said, Oh, man, yes. She reached out. And as it turns out, as you will hear at the beginning of this episode, he is also a fan of mine. He has no recollection. Of course, he didn't know me from his class because it is an online class. He could take a break. But I didn't remember meeting some random kid

at a conference 12 years ago. But he read my book Conspiracy. And that was just the coolest full circle thing he liked the book for someone who was so influential in shaping my development to be familiar with my work and to like it. I don't know. I'm not saying it makes dropping out of college worth it, but it was a nice Told you so mom and dad. Let's put it that way and Paul Bloom is

One of the best in the world at what he does. He studies how children and adults make sense of the world, focuses on pleasure, morality, religion, fiction, and art. He's one numerous awards for his research and teaching. He was the past president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology and Co-Editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. He's written for journals like Nature and Science, but also quite brilliantly for the New York Times, a guardian in the New Yorker and the Atlantic. He's the author of six books. He's most recent, the sweet spot,

the pleasures of suffering and the search for meaning, which explores how effort, struggle, and difficulty can't in the right context lead to the joys of mastery and flow. Very much related to the book, I will be announcing here very shortly. My new book, Discipline is Destiny, the power of self-control. I'll tease it right here. You can pre-order it dailystalk.com slash pre-order or Amazon or go to the pain-in-portch.com. The point is his work on justice is what I'm thinking about now for the justice book, his book on suffering and discipline, very much connected to the book I just wrote. He's a fan of my book conspiracy, and I am a huge fan of his work, and feel very intended intellectually to him.

So I loved this conversation. You can go to PaulBloom.net or follow him on Twitter, PaulBloom at Yale, and you can take his intro to Psych class for free online if you google that as well. Just a wonderful conversation that I feel very fortunate to have, and feel very fortunate that our lives both took us in the directions they took and brought us back together. Enjoy. It is such a pleasure to meet you. Conspiracy. I know you've done other books. I know this is a solicissim thing, but conspiracy is an amazing book.

That's that means so much to me. I gifted it to two people, which I don't normally do. Wow. And it's just, it is a great story. It is a great story with heroes and villains, and it is just, and, you know, a good meditation on conspiracies. I've used this in argument that some conspiracies are true. Yes.

It's very timely. And anyway, it's just, it's a delight to meet you. Well, I, I, I, I'll bring this very full circle then. So we have actually met once before, we met at a renaissance. We can maybe in Jackson Hole, like 10 years ago or so. Yes. I think it was there. But I am very familiar with your work because I took this would have been in like 2007. I took your Yale intro to site class that was like one of the first classes that ever went online for people to take. Yeah. I hope you liked it. It lives on on YouTube. I loved it. I think there's actually I took a lot from it, but one of the things I specifically think about all the time is you told some story in that class about that I think about it when I think about language,

is you were talking about somebody was being told to drop their weapons by the police, and he said, give it to them, and then they ended up getting shot because you could interpret, give it to them as either lay down your weapons or open fire. Yes, you've changed example. Your example also works. It's let them have it. Give it to them as either lay down your weapons or open fire. Yes. You've changed the example. Your example also works. It's let them have it. Yes, let them have it.

But it's the same thing. It's exactly the same. It has a double meaning. And it's a way to sort of appreciate linguistics matters. Yes. And the context that whatever the frame of reference or assumption we're making can change how we decide to interpret the thing. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Which I guess is actually a very stoic idea, is the words or object, like the stoics would say that things are objective, but our opinion about them is not. And so the words don't mean anything, but it's the, what we decide to take from them can be the difference between their surrendering or they're about to shoot us. There's a quote by Anaias Nyn which I'm thinking right now is very stoic. We don't see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. Yes, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Well, I've been thinking about your work a lot lately because I'm doing this series right now on the Cardinal Virtues.

So I did courage, I just finished discipline, and then I am starting justice, and I was sitting down this morning writing about justice, and I read your book many years ago on justice and babies, which I've always thought that was a very clever title, just babies. I'm glad you say that the title in some way was a disaster because I thought I thought

it was a clever two, but apparently 95% of you, I have Amazon reviews saying, this book is about more than babies. I am so pissed off. Well, I'd be lied to us like that. I went through that with my first book, which is about medium manipulation and the publisher suggested we call it Trust Me on Line, which I thought was very clever. It's the Liars paradox. And then now I, like every time someone's goes, Oh, Ryan wrote Trust Me on Line, it's like a immediate negative connotation.

Like I'm playing into the paradox. They're taking it literally to go to a point about language. And sometimes you can be too clever by half with the timing. Yes. Yes. Good. You know, I actually have a book coming out in February, which is called Psych the story of the human mind. Oh, really? It's my course. It was going to be actually this little book that just took my lecture notes and maybe helped me renovate my house. It ended up expanding to five times the size, so that's what I'm up to. Well, to go to the idea of justice, what I was,

I was wrestling with this morning, what's interesting about justice is, in a sense, justice makes either renders all the other virtues either meaningful or meaningless meaningless if you think about it, right? Because courage in pursuit of evil, we don't particularly admire or wisdom in pursuit of selfishness or even discipline in pursuit of selfishness doesn't work. But so it has this ability to immediately render the thing that you are pursuing Meeting list or meeting full. I was curious what you think about that. I think that's fascinating. There is

A while ago. I think was Bill Marr said to 911 terrorists were brave You can't you can't doubt today were brave. You got taken off the air for some amount of time for that Some people's conception of courage Include an ocean must be for a just cause. It doesn't count as courage otherwise. Yes. You know, the serial killer who takes bold chances doesn't count as brave. Other people have a sort of narrower conception of virtues of these other virtues that doesn't convey them all out. You may have discipline in the course of some terrible activity.

Yes. Adolf Eichmann was known for his discipline and his careful thought and his flow, but plainly his goals were not good ones. Well, I think it was Lord Byron who said, Tiz the Cos makes all that hallows or degrades courage in its fall. And I sort of think about it that way. So it's not that it's not courageous in the sense, that it doesn't require bravery to say storm a cockpit,

a cockpit of an airplane and plunge it into the uncertainty of pain or death or whatever that is. But I don't think anyone would describe that as virtuous, right? So it's maybe what we're really making the distinction is like the act and then virtuousness Which I guess are separate things Yeah, I think that I think that that's right you could you could kind of break them apart

There's also a debate in philosophy which speaks to this which is should we all try to be maximally good? Maximum virtuous. There's a wonderful paper by a Susan Wolf called Moral Saints Where she argues that a life devoted entirely to goodness would not be a good life at all. You can imagine somebody whose life is spent entirely doing good things. Every minute, figuring out what's the most moral thing to do, if you're utilitarian, you're trying to maximize the pleasure of other people, maybe you might be trying to build up your own virtues.

She says that person would be living a boring life because you wouldn't go out for a bear with them or they'd be lousy friends, maybe lousy parents because that can be other moral things. And so she views virtue not as sort of a pinnacle thing of which everything is subsumed under it, but rather one good thing among many. Huh, I was just reading Orwell wrote this obituary of Gandhi when he died. And it's actually

really fascinating. But there's a quote in it and it sort of ties to what you're talking about with suffering and sacrifice in the last book. He said, no doubt alcohol and tobacco and so forth are things that a saint must avoid, but st. Hood is also a thing that human beings must avoid, which I imagine goes to the same point, which is that trying to be holier than thou or perfect is actually not a recipe not only for a good life, but but gets one into trouble. It gets one to trouble. It certainly makes one allows you, friend. Yeah. I. I want my friends to be partial to me, otherwise what makes them friends.

But true. To take it to extreme, a friend is the person you call up to ask to bury your body with. And now, some of us don't go that far, but you may have viewed, and again, friendship as yet another virtue, in which case, we shouldn't see this as virtue versus non-virtue, but rather virtues in conflict. Well, there is a tension between all the virtues, right? Not just in the sense that, okay, courage and pursuit of an evil end one might not consider to be a virtue, but also, you know, moderation being a check against courage in the excess or wisdom being the thing that helps you understand what you should be courageous or moderate about.

If you're all of one, you're almost certainly being out of balance with one of the others. I think that's right. And I think often political and moral disagreements between people of good faith and people who are basically normal, good people can often be seen as which of these you prioritize. You know, one thing I'm doing research on along with an interested in is loyalty. Psychologists don't talk about loyalty very much

in morals, psychology, philosophers don't talk about it that much. But for many people, it's just, it's this hugely important virtue. And it clashes with other things. If I have a friend who's doing awful things, maybe abusing his graduate students in some way. A lot of morality just calls on me to stop this,

to get to fix this. Sure, loyalty says, no, I go to my friend first, I try to resolve this without getting him in trouble. And you hear an example about that, and what you think I should do, depends on how you value loyalty versus how you value our debt to strangers and so on. Yeah, it's a tricky thing.

I'm thinking about that for this book too. One of the characters is going to be Harry Truman who's sort of this small town politician who brings this sense of loyalty to politics. But he famously goes on six days after being inaugurated, goes to the funeral of a correct political boss who he knew from his early days. And people said, how could you do this? And he said, what kind of man doesn't go to his friend's funeral?

And the argument was the president of the United States, right? You have certain obligations, not just to the people that you know or that you grew up with or helped you in your career, but you have obligations to be above certain things, to set a good example, so on and so forth. So loyalty is that tricky thing because there's kind of, it's like, are you abandoning them as a person casting them out of your life, or are you drawing a line and not being complicit in, let's say, illegal or unethical activity? That's, I think, the tension that we run into

when it comes to loyalty. I think it is, in your example, illustrates that some institutional roles by their nature are supposed to sort of have priority or velocity. I'm planning to be loyal to my friends and my children. But if I'm looking for a research assistant and my son applies, I'm planning to be loyal to my friends and my children. But if I'm looking for a research assistant, my son applies. I'm not supposed to say, you can't even apply for this. Because nepotism is considered wrong. It's inter-revenue abuse of power.

I mean, somebody might hear us talking. I think this is a kind of abstract discussion of bears on nothing in real life, but we're both on social media. And there, I have seen this more than once the issue comes up where somebody I know, or somebody I respect gets into some sort of trouble. And there is a decision of whether to be loyal or to be prudent. And decisions always harder when you actually don't agree with the person, when you say,

oh, no, I don't approve of this. We're wrong. And saying that face to face, but I actually think anyone, I have a very low opinion of someone who goes on Twitter or Facebook or whatever and says publicly, you know, I repudiate my friend. I, what a jerk he is. Well, Agnes Khaled wrote a piece and then there are times about this recently. She said, if I get canceled feast on my bones, basically saying that like she doesn't want

her friends to be torn about this in any way. If you disagree, say that you disagree, but that is an interesting dilemma, right? Your friend does something that gets you in trouble or that gets them in trouble and you disagree with it. Do you stay silent? Do you pile on or do you defend them? It's loyalty isn't this absence of affinity. Really, Aristotle would say, all the virtues are actions that you take. So you have to make one of those three choices, which one do you make?

I guess the fourth would be, do you send a note of private support? And is that meaningful or is it a cop out? Yeah, that's a good question. Agnes Caled is an endless source of unintuitive takes on things and I like to hold feast on my bones. Well, in some way, you don't pile on. Clearly you don't do that.

But do you step in? There's a practical agreement against doing that, which Calor talks about, which is sometimes it makes it worse when people have a step in there. But putting that aside, my intuition is the opposite of her. So if I get into trouble, I want all of my friends to come in and say, no, he's a prince of a man. He's a wonderful guy. You, I will fight you for saying anything wrong about him. And I will remember those who don't

step up. I sound like a character to God, father, but. No, no, it makes sense. And I have met a number of those people and what makes them so bitter and angry is that the friends that they did so much for could not be bothered to inconvenience themselves or risk themselves in any way to say something about them at their lowest most vulnerable moment, any kind of token of affection or support. So what would you make of this? You get into some sort of trouble, maybe deservedly so. And your good friend sends you an email and says, I am so much on your side.

I don't want to speak up because I don't want everybody to, hey, me, I think I'm a jerk too. But let me tell you, I'm on your side. I'm rooting for you. You feel good about it, bad about it, in between? So I actually feel better about it. There is a cop outness to it where it's like, I'm with you, like the, you see this in politics, like privately, I'm against Trump,

but publicly, I'll support him, right? Like what people say in private, you know, I don't like that, but to make this very concrete, I remember I was talking to Lance Armstrong one time, and he was walking me through the moment in which he is sort of unmasked, and his career is ended as the allegations, as he confesses to the allegations of Dope'n. And he showed me a number of texts and emails that he'd gotten when that was happening.

And they were actually quite meaningful to him in that moment because the whole world was against him. And those people, what they weren't, it wasn't like hollow notions of like, hey, you're right, but I can't say anything about it. It was, there is this real danger when a person is in a moment like that, that they could harm themselves, that they could believe. So I think there is something actually significant and meaningful about the, hey, like I love you, I care about you, if you need anything,

the private gesture of support. While obviously not as meaningful as I'm willing anything, the private gesture of support. While obviously not as meaningful as I'm willing to be your bulldog in public, there is something about not leaving that person hanging because in that moment, they are as vulnerable and isolated as they've ever been in their life. I agree with you. I agree with you. I might want to have somebody as my champion.

I make it a little bit of disappointment, but it's certainly better than silence. What you hear from people on the left, on the right, whatever, who get canceled, whatever you want to call it, is the feeling of loneliness. The feeling like, I am all alone here. Everybody hates me. And the world would be better off if I were dead. And maybe if I were dead, that would show them what they did. And a friendly word can make such a difference.

It's very tribal, right? It's like not just because canceling is probably the modern version of the exile, you know, but and before that was the precedent would be like being cast out of the tribe, being sort of sent off into the wilderness to die. I think it does touch a person, whether they, again, even if they completely deserved it and did something horrible that shocks you

as a person who thought that you knew them, I think you do have some sort of moral obligation to prevent self-harm. So I think about that way. Like if I talk to someone or I know someone, I'm saying like, look, there's gonna be cons, because a lot of time cancelling is really just consequences for your actions. But I do feel like one has a moral obligation

to prevent self-harm to the best of their ability. It's not on you if someone does something, but if you don't do something and they did harm themselves, you would feel awful. Yeah, Yeah. And these cases come up in exactly what we're talking about, which is cases of conflict. It's really easy when my friend says something I agree with, braid, or rages, gets in trouble and I say, I take your side. The harder cases is when I disagree with my friend, did something awful. Yeah.

He's in prison. He did something terrible and everything. That's where it puts me to the test, because that shows sort of a case of clashing virtues. Yes. And the story I was reading about Truman, I guess there's this moment where Algar Hiss, who was sort of part of the Democratic establishment at this time, is accused of being a communist, a spy or worse, and Truman's secretary of state, Dean Aikuson refuses to, he says, I won't turn my back on this person. But the interesting part of that is, okay, one, if you really was a traitor, isn't that, isn't that what is not worthy, or what is worthy of turning your back on someone,

if not betraying their country to a hostile foreign power. So there's a trickiness there. But also what Aikusen realizes is, oh, I'm also a representative of the administration, and I've now bogged the administration down in a horrible crisis as well. He goes to Truman to resign, but Truman refuses to accept the resignation because he's so valued loyalty as a virtue. But what is the political cost of that decision? And I guess you sort of touch on this on in your empathy book. The empathy and sympathy you would feel for someone who's being cast aside matters. But if there is any position that you don't want to be motivated by these personal concerns, it might be matters of state and foreign policy. Yeah, yeah.

I think it's a useful way to think about morality and to really frame it nicely here. We have, you know, an innate suite of moral emotions and moral capacities. And these are sort of our development situators powerful more universals. But sometimes doing the right thing involves transcending them and overriding them. And so, you know, my book on epithets, sort of a case study on this, where I say, look, it's very natural. I see somebody in pain who looks like me, who speaks my silence, my friend, to take their side.

Buyers, sexist bias, racist bias, nationalist bias is bread and a bone. But we can be smart enough sometimes to override it, to set principles, to that institutions, to say, look, even though I care so much more about my neighbor than somebody a thousand miles away of a different, who speaks a different language, I can recognize rationally that my neighbor has no more intrinsic value. So I agree with that. On the other hand, I think some biases, I'm not so radical. Some biases that are family and that are friends are good. We wouldn't be people without them.

Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on Page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellissi. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wondery's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud. From the build up, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy

pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Brittany's fans form the free Brittany movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other.

And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondering App. I was reading this story. There's a Greek. Was it Greek? No, there's a Roman general named Regulus. And Regulus is involved in the first Punic War. And he has the Carthanaeus juniors on the ropes. There's a sudden reversal,

and he's captured and taken prisoner. And he spends five years in slavery and rags in prison. And finally, they send him back to Rome on a diplomatic mission. They say, hey, we would like to do a prisoner exchange, and we want to send you back to Rome to negotiate a peace treaty. He says, okay, I'll go. They said, but you have to promise to come back. You have to give us your word that you will negotiate this treaty and come back if it's not successful. He goes to Rome and the Romans ask for the terms and he gives them.

Then they ask him his advice on the terms and he says My advice to you honestly is do not accept the terms of this negotiation. It's a bad deal And so they say oh, thank you. That's great They accept the terms and then they find him packing his bags to return to Carthage Yeah, and they say what are you insane? You just you just got free you made it all the way here. And he says, I gave them my word. I have to go back.

And now, whether this story is true or not, some of the historians dispute it. To me, it's an interesting dilemma because we value people who keep their word. We say your word should be your bond. But is it a suicide pact? That's really the question. That's a great story. I mean, so many, so many great moral stories come from prisoners,

I think, the story of Stockdale, which is very, which of course, in your line of your interests, is sort of very central. It's an interesting story because it's not clear he was morally, even about a finest morals, obliged to keep his word, because his word is in some sense, course from him. If a kidnap or a kidnaps me and locks me up, and then says, okay, I'll let you go somewhere, but you've got a promise to come back.

And they say, I promise. I'm not obliged to keep that promise. That is an interesting angle on it that I didn't think. One angle that I read a paper on about, they were saying, well, he also promised to negotiate the treaty in good faith, which he obviously did not because he advised against signing it. And so, is he actually returning to Carthage having kept his promise or is he only kept

50% of his promise and which of the promises is more important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, we see we see conflict. I mean, if I have a sort of head of you, but moral disagreement, we're not a little bit of a world full of moral disagreement. It's very rarely cases between people who are moral beings and psychopaths who don't care about morality. It's even less than we think it is a different dream, morality, and self-interest. I think it's often just clashing moral concerns. You and I are talking about these cases, and even in these subtle things, when should one keep a promise?

When should one be loyal? When does your institutional obligation supersede your personal friendships? And these are our hard problems. I think we tend to overestimate how much moral clanster are because the hard problems sort of jump out at us. We spend a lot of our time arguing with the 1% where we don't agree. Yes. Well, there's two interesting moral equandries to go to the example you brought up, which is Stockdale as a prisoner of war and then John McCain being in that same prison camp. The first is much clearer and I think we you brought up, which is Stockdale as a prisoner of war. And then John McCain being in that same prison camp. The first is much clearer. And I think we're admirable,

which is John McCain is shot down. And people often missed the fact that his father was the theater commander of all the operations in Southeast Asia at this time. So he's shot down and the opportunity to go get going. Yes, he has the opportunity to go home. He tries to hide who his father is, but eventually they figure it out and they go, ah, you're welcome to leave, right? They would let some of the prisoners out. But I guess there's a very clear, it's not like a law, but it's like a standard of behavior, which is like first in, first out, right? And so they essentially give him the chance to skip the line. And he says, no, I'm not leaving,

I'm not leaving until all the other people go first. And so he spends, you know, several years being tortured, he loses the use of his arm, not quite voluntarily, because he would argue that he didn't have a choice, but I think to any reasonable regular person, of course he had a choice. He could have left, but his honor would not permit him to leave. Yeah, yeah.

That's such a great story. I mean, it reminds me, this is a good political for a second, that not so long ago, the presidential race was between McCain and Obama in different ways, two men of considerable character, and very impressive people. And I think we're not in the same situation now. I think that's certainly true. These kind of moral quadraries would be incomprehensible to certain politicians today.

Like, there was this scandal about Trump at Arlington, where he said, you know, what was in it for them, right? And there's a sort of immediate moral repugments in that question, especially because he was saying it to the father of a, to a father who had lost his son in Afghanistan or Iraq. But I almost feel like there was an innocence to the question in that he truly did not comprehend why anyone would make a bargain such as that. Yeah. Trump is a man entirely driven by self-interest.

And it's true. It was not like he's not in a certain sense. He self-interest. And it's true. It was not like he's not in a certain sense. He's an innocent. Yeah. He just, right. I loved hearing about that because as a suggestes, he's like, why would, at times he said other things,

why would somebody ever give up an advantage that they have? Yes. And, and I don't know, in some way it makes them an exceptionally terrible person. Many people would say, maybe honestly, that was quite disacrifice, and I don't think I in some way it makes him an exceptionally terrible person. Many people would say, maybe honestly, that was quite de-sacrifice, and I don't think I would do it. Yes. And but the innocence is just amazing.

Right. To think, to actually judge, like, I think in part of the statement, he's actually implicitly judging the choice as, you know, the suckers pay off. Like who would who would be so dumb as to trade their life for an abstract idea or or honor or a country? And he would also, I imagine, believe sincerely, who would be so stupid as to not keep fighting to be president, even if even if you lost so long as you have any chance of getting it. And I suspect that's probably part of his disagreement slash conflict with John McCain

and his inability to realize why that was so beyond the pale for many people, is that he really just didn't get why people respected John McCain even when they disagreed with him. That's right. He did the famous remark about something to the effect of, well, I like the people who don't get caught by the enemy. And he was probably puzzled why people were offended. I was puzzled why they didn't destroy his chances of hammering. were offended. I was puzzled why I didn't destroy his chances of hammer. So the other POW story there is Stockdale and I've asked a number of people who knew Stockdale and military leaders and I've never quite gotten a super satisfactory answer, which is after the war, Stockdale explains that he was in the Gulf of Tonkin on the evening of the so-called

Gulf of Tonkin incident, and he says, there was nothing there. He was like, we were not attacked. I don't know what they were shooting at, but we were not attacked. So it either makes his sacrifice and his commitment in that prisoner of work and more impressive, or it makes it completely inexplicable

because he was one of the few people, I mean, obviously in retrospect, a lot of people know about it, but he was one of the only human beings, certainly one of the only soldiers in that POW camp who had firsthand experience or knowledge of the suspicious origins of the conflict as a whole and I I go back and forth either being blown away by it or Perplexed by it. That's so interesting. I hadn't known that. That's that's quite the puzzle

Yeah, I Got introduced to Stockton. I have a friend of mine tomorrow, Genneler who's a philosophy Philosopher at Yale and now out a dean of the, Tamara Genneler, who's a philosopher at Yale, and now out a dean of the faculty. She would give these very popular lectures about philosophy and psychology and morality and human nature. Stockdale was, if I have it right, she assigned his book to the undergraduates there. As an example of character, in a way, again, our conversation doesn't mesh well with how philosophers and psychologists typically think of morality. And I think the way we're talking about it captures something really deep that gets ignored. People in my line who talk about trolley problems and talk

about lifeboat dilema isn't talk about, about where should you give your charity. And I know those are important and they're real, but the idea of character, something which runs through a lot of your thinking, I think plays a lot bigger role in our everyday moral thinking and moral living than do these artificial dilemmas, often which involves strangers. No, that's a great point. And you're right. He sort of has this intuitive sense of what it is to be a philosopher. He studied

Stoicism at Stanford where the Navy had sent him before the war. And this could be his own invention, but he says that as he's parachuting down into, you know, at best and prisonment, you know, at worst, you know, a few day or a deal that ends in his death. He says to himself, I am leaving the world of technology and entering the world of epictetus. So there was some part of him that knew that the experiences he was about to undergo were actually the philosophical laboratory, not the classroom or the academy, it was that real experience where you're being tested.

Do I do this? Do I do that? How do I help this person at the expense of this person? That's philosophy. Yeah, yeah, the notion of being tested, the notion of affluent people in the mod. You can never escape morality. I mean, not so long as you have a job in kids and friends and you eat food and you consume

things. You can never escape it, but it's not sort of thrust in front of you, these deep moral problems until you're in certain situations where you're tested. Yeah, I do think all of us get tested at various times of our lives. Yes, some of those tests are, yeah, world events, and then some of those tests are, yeah, you speak about the importance of public education and then do you send your kids to private school

or public school? Or you are tested with all these different things and I think the pandemic has obviously been an interesting experiment in that regard where suddenly all these questions about how one's actions affect other people are, you know, not abstract, but matters of life and death to a certain degree. And then you have to make those decisions even when it is inconvenient for you personally. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I mean, one thing I've always believed is that we're more reflective about these decisions and most people give us credit for. Many psychologists, they always

have creatures of emotion and instinct and guts. And we aren't that. We have these reflect the reflexive attitudes. Oh, that's horrible. Are what a good person. Yeah. But often we got to work these things out, not typically by ourselves, but John Height, nicely points out, we do this in communities. We work together to figure out,

well, it doesn't make sense to put businesses out of business to save some lives. And that's actually a harder problem than you think, because, you know, people losing their livelihoods, people kill themselves, people, it destroys lives. And these are like hard problems. Yes. No, you're right. We are more reflective about it than, you know, we sometimes give people credit for. And then in other cases, we make up ways

to sort of put something between us and having to reflect. Obviously, let's say outsourcing, we're using factory farming being the other example. We try to create barriers between us and the thing so we don't have to think about the moral implications on us. And the sumics and tribal affiliation is one thing we can use for that purpose.

So, doing what your friends do or what your community does, what the Democrats do, what Republicans do, those two things. One thing is it keeps you popular. It satisfies your social desires. But another thing is that it offloads the responsibility of making more decisions for yourself. So you say, well, what do you think of putting it in a private school? And instead of thinking about it, I say, well, you know, what's the receive you?

What do my people do? And I answer with that. And this is one thing Stockdale couldn't do as a prisoner, which is he couldn't go on Twitter and see what the consensus was. That's true. I guess that, so the case there is, you could sort of take two things from that one, which is you've got to think for yourself, you know, try to ignore the tribal things that you can get you in trouble. The other argument might be you have to cultivate systems and cultures and codes that I think

part of what stock bill is doing, I don't think he's a superhuman. I think he's like, this is what the rules are, McCain too. These are what the rules are. This is what I was trained to do in the moment of stress and temptation and pain. I'm going to defaults to that training or that ethic. Obviously Christianity or religion serve a function in this regard to loving thy neighbor as thyself. That's not a thing we may be intuitively do, but if we have that as a reminder, we can try to aspire above our lower self, for our lower instinct. No, that's a good point. I was talking before as if the best way to proceed is just do

everything on a fly and reason things out, but it's not only in practical, it probably, in some sense, the wrong thing to do, because for ethics, just as for science or for anything else, we can draw upon the insights of other people. So, you know, it wasn't me who thought up the golden rule. Right. I didn't think really hard and figure out slave-rease about idea. That just wasn't me. I picked it up from other people, but they're pretty good insights. And I can walk around with them in my head.

Some, you know, trying to find a good ones from Christianity, from utilitarian philosophy, from epictetus, whatever. And you're right. That's more than just tribal because presumably the rules you draw upon, you have some reasons to take seriously to respect them. And this is probably what Stockdale, I've spoken at the Naval Academy a few times, I'm going to speak there again in a couple of weeks, like Stockdale as an example, as the embodiment of the code also perpetuates, you know, hopefully, if some other young midship men or a midship woman is in a horrible situation, or even a situation half as bad or one tenth

of as bad, they can, like, we, what's that long fellow line, the lives of great men remind us we can make our lives sublime, right? Like the example of these people, you know, call us to the higher level that maybe if there wasn't, we would default to what's easiest, you're most logical or self-interested. I think that's right. And I think that's what a lot goes into moral education and properly done. Both moral education, we give to our children, but also moral education we give to ourselves, which it isn't so much saying, you know, well, here's how to think about moral dilemmas.

Here's what Kant has to say. Here's a bentham has to say, yeah, it's not, you know, I think that stuff has real value. But a lot of the way we think about these things, because we're people, it's through moral exemplars. For some of it, it would be Jesus, our Martin Luther King, Jr., or whatever, but you look as a, that's good, that's a good person, that's a hero. Yes, that's what I want to be. And we're thinking of extreme circumstances, but I think there's a lot of these moral, practical slash moral decision to go on in every day.

Life's a good point to somebody's, wow, you know, that's a really good father. I'm watching what he's doing, and when I have kids, I'm gonna do that. Sure, sure. Well, yeah, you talk about Adam Smith in a couple of your books, but you know, he's saying it's that,

it doesn't even have to be what would Jesus do. He's like, if there was just an impartial observer watching you, what would you do? He's like, if there was just an impartial observer watching you, what would you do? And how ought, so that the, what are my friends doing thing that can obviously get you in trouble, but can, it can also create a kind of, by making the private somewhat public, we often, I think we do better than we might privately do. I think that's right. There's a great line in the movie Thief,

where the character played by Gene Hackman. He's asked how he's so successful at what he does. And he has a remarkable response. He says, I think of what somebody smarter than me would do and I do that. And yeah, it sounds like this is the same. But in some sense, we are capable of saying, what was somebody better than me do?

What would it be somebody who's not? We can abstract away from our selfish interests. Not as well as we think we can. I mean, there's, you don't need a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a million studies, a gestionate, even when people are trying to be perfectly objective, they tend to tilt things a little bit

to favor their own side. But Smith is right, we can get a little bit further down the way. I think it helps pull you out of self-interest, slight. Yes, right. Because your self-interest is perfectly logical to you and may well be utterly incomprehensible to someone else. And the tension between, well, this is what I want and how am I going to explain this

to someone else can average us out, I think, a little bit. And you could do this by yourself, just sitting alone in the room. Anything that's how Adam Smith envisioned it. But I think we're better at it with communities. To take it out of the moral, where I'm one reason science is successful, is to some sense, you're buttered against people

who think you're wrong, and you think they're wrong. And then you have to make arguments to appeal to impartial people around to convince them and you see this in the moral realm too One of my books I I cite this dialogue between a bunch of five year olds and they're arguing about who gets what toy to play with And you have a kid and you know because it's well you got to play it already now it's my turn and That's sort of an impartial appeal. He didn't just say, I want it, give it. He said, he said, here's a principle, you know, saying everybody gets their turn.

And I'm appealing to you. Can you appreciate this principle? Now, if he hadn't already, if he didn't want it so much, he probably wouldn't have thought of that principle. I thought of another principle. Sure. So there's still bias going on. But yeah, we are capable of sort of transc. I mean, I thought of another Prince. Sure. So there's still bias going on.

But yeah, we aren't capable of sort of transcending our narrow interests and making these broader arguments. It is, you know, Bertrand Russell had this thing where he says, what you should do when you go to newspaper and hear about international conflicts is take away the names of the countries, Russia, England, United States, replace them with A, B, and C, and try to read it like that. Yeah. What's interesting about what you just said about the kitty sort of, it's this appeal, not to authority, but to some shared. That's right.

But not to find sense of morality or right and wrong. What's interesting to me about the concept essentially is, it's like justice, what is fair, right? Yeah. What's interesting about justice is that on the one hand, it's an invention. On the other hand, it's also kind of a discovery. It's somewhere between an invention slash discovery. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.

Now, I see myself as a moral realist in that. I think that there really are moral principles and moral codes and moral truths and moral and moral mistakes. And we can work together to discover them. So in some way they're discoveries, but they also have flavors of invention. And unlike sort of scientific truth, you often enter the case where there's two competing ways of thinking about things And it's hard to know how to resolve it. You tell them about fairness But people have different conceptions as to what counts the sphere. Sure You know different emphasis on outcome versus opportunity and

There's some real puzzles where we sit and argue about taxes just taxation for instance And we just coming from somewhat different perspectives and it's hard to reconcile. Well, it's like the notion of fairness is like this discovery, but then the ways to get there are the inventions. Like the idea of like if we have a chocolate bar and we're gonna split it, some, like it's incredible to me to think, at some point someone was like,

okay, all break it in half and then you pick which one you want. Like that is a brilliant invention that at some point did not exist. But as soon as you hear it, it's immediately and intuitively so perfect and necessary that you can't conceive of life before something like that. Yes, yes, our idea of standing in line. Yes. You know, seemingly sort of intuitive, but I'm sure at one point somebody discovered, hey, instead of us all rushing and fighting,

why don't we make a line? Yes. And then a split of fighting might make right, we'll do it by who got here first. Right, and one could say, look, on balance, this is the smart thing to do, because although I personally would rather get whatever I want, the cost of having to get into a fight every time I do it is not worth it.

This is just line up. And then you get so complicated cases like notions of voting and different conceptions over what sort of voting procedures best optimise what people want. And this is what political scientists argue about, like crazy. And those really are clever people thinking up clever things. Well, I've been reading a lot about Gandhi. I referenced him earlier. Like somebody invented passive resistance.

Like he later discovered throw, but sort of as far as I understand it, it independently conceives of the idea of when there's an unjust law, you can just not follow it and force them to enforce it in mass and see what happens. Now, obviously, this only works, and as Orwell says in the obituary, this only works in a saying rational government. He says, how does non-violence work when you're against a lunatic, right? And Gandhi sort of embarrasses himself when asked, you know, how would you defeat the Japanese or the Germans in the second world war?

It doesn't hold up there. But the idea that like somebody invented that like up until that point, the only way to resist the law would have been to murder someone or to take or to overthrow them from power and assert your own power. The idea of, and how timeless this is, I mean, I, it's interesting, whatever, all you responded to this and then I have something else I want to I mean, I was, I was from, I was from a responsible question. This may be unfair to Gandhi and you could tell me if it is, but there's a story that he advised to Jews in, in World War II to just sit back and don't do anything. Don't resist. And some didn't affect him when he was told, well,

then they're all die. Gandhi said, well, you know, that's okay because it only could good moral point for future generations. Yes. In the biode, I, Ron Gu, well, you know, that's okay, because it'll make a good moral point for future generations. Yes. In the biography, Ron Gupta wrote a very big biography of Gandhi that I quite enjoyed and I had him on the podcast, but he's saying that that's obviously, if that is the flippancy with which the remark is made, it falls very far short of justice. I think he was saying, Gandhi's point is, and again, I'm paraphrasing Gandhi, so I don't want this to sound like something.

His point is, look, six million Jews die in the Holocaust or more, right? His point is had Jews pass, passive resistance is actually active resistance, but had the Jews publicly and from a place of unified front resisted their persecution in a way that it was visible, still millions would have died, but perhaps fewer than six million, and perhaps Germany would not have been able to do it in secret. But what's so tragic and terrible and incomprehensible about the Holocaust is that although we had some sense of it was happening and we stuck our head in the sand about it as the world, I'm referring to the world here, it was really only after the deed was fully done, did a full accounting of it. I think he's really saying at what Martin Luther King was saying is, no, the, the, the

Southern police is racist and horrible and totalitarian. Let's, let's make them show that on the television cameras. No, that's, that's fair enough. But I think your, your point earlier, earlier, um, make sense now, which is that some of these techniques only work either when you're dealing with a rational or somewhat moral actor or whether you're dealing with a sort of democratic system where if you get enough people upset, it'll be change. Well, don't you think that's a lesson we've wrongly taken from the civil rights movement?

I think you see it happening over and over again in American politics, which is something happens that's unjust or unfair or awful and people protest, right? And obviously protest is important, but to go to your point, protest only matters if the people in a position of power care about a protest, right? So what do you, how approach, if one is fighting against a minority that is attempting to exert its power over the majority, a demonstration of your majority-ness is not a persuasive argument. Does that make sense? Like if you're willing to steal an election or you're willing to govern from the right, despite losing a popular vote, why do you care that people are flooding the streets in protest of this? You know there are more of them than you. You have decided that you don't care and that that doesn't matter. That's right, that's right.

Almost by definition protests are gonna work when the people you're protesting against are responsive to public opinion. It really matters in this important and this is a benefit. And, you know, somebody who involved in protests and I've had discussions with people say, well, there's other things going on when you protest. Sometimes it's too sort. Sometimes it actually just is something you want to do because it sure meets a social and emotional goal.

Sometimes it causes cohesion in the group. But it's a really good question when protests are effective and when they aren't. You know, we've seen in the last couple of years in the United States in the enormous popular uprising. You call it the reckoning or whatever you call it in response to racism and in the different ways in response to COVID. And if you step back and say, well, how is the world change with regard to laws, say laws

regarding black people in America? And this is not very much. It's not clear any of this was successful. And so, in some way this goes back to your original point, which is if you want social change with certain sort, it is, it is a difficult problem. Yeah. We need to invent good solutions to how to add a solve it. When I think that this, I, I fear, I'd sell like something I'm looking forward to, I'm

saying this globally, I suspect that what Gandhi, people, people, again, underestimate the Gandhi was a lawyer that Gandhi often tried to negotiate and compromise with people in power. Ultimately, Gandhi gets to a point where civil disobedience is the only remedy available to him other than violence. And I fear that we are going to get to a point where the rubber is going to have to meet the road and the only response to the the dangerous direction things are going is actual civil disobedience. Not and there's a difference between a protest and civil disobedience, right? Gandhi says like fill up the jails, man.

Let's see what happens, right? Like his, his point is you are not actually as serious about this law as you think you are. You are, you are hoping that the law will intimidate us into submission to said law, but if you actually had to enforce it, you would quickly find that it's totally impossible. And I'm suspecting, you could argue that that is the response in America to prohibition. We basically said, okay, let's see if you really mean this all the way. And I fear that we're going to have to go in a direction like that again. The case I see that happening, it's possible that the next election is going to go wrong

in one of a few terrible ways. And under worst case, you can just see, you know, violence in the streets. It won't be something like you're talking about. I see what you're talking about, particularly as a response to overthrowing a, a row of you weight, where I could imagine an intelligent way of responding by doctors by people would be to do forms of civil disobedience that go beyond protesting that are not violent, but make it just untenable. And the prohibition analogy is is a good one there.

No, and it's a terrible moral dilemma, right? Because let's say you are a doctor or you are a woman in that situation. You have your principle. You have potentially a means of bringing that principle into stark relief in front of lawmakers or the public, but it is not without its costs. To you or to other people. And to some extent, I mean, he was the first time, but it looks like a collective action problem, where if I'm a single doctor and I decide under some circumstance, I'm going to perform abortions, we'll just kind of cart me off and put me in prison or find me

I'm going to perform proportions. We'll just going to cart me off and put me in prison or find me a tremendous amount. If a million doctors do this around the states, our 100,000 or 10,000, this becomes impossible to enforce. But the question is, is it sort of who bells the cat thing? The action has to be coordinated for it to work. That's right. That's right. That's right. And the tools that we have as far as technology goes makes it very easy to connect in forms of protest or speaking out, but then makes it

still that the human dilemma of taking action based on that thing is still a painful difficult is still a painful, difficult, and potentially unrewarding action, right? Like if you do the right thing, nobody is that necessarily that they're going to throw you a parade. You could just end up in prison about it alone. That's right. That's right. And I've been thinking a lot about social media these days. And one way in which social media gets in a way of what you're talking about doing it effectively is.

It's not merely the implementation of plans and policies, what it is is people often have terribly wrong ideas about what is and what is in the popular. Sure. So, you know, I'm an academic and I socialize of academic signs, I sort of follow them on them on Twitter. If I stick with that, I have, I think, oh, everybody agrees on this, everybody agrees on that. If I do this, I'll be seen as a hero. You look at polling data and you realize how skewed things are. I know people who are much more conservative than I am on the other side, I have the same problem. Yes. They think, wow, everyone's going to think I'm terrific. And then it turns out that they're living in echo chamber.

And since we've reached a point where we all have our own news and all have our own communities, this problem's gotten worse and worse. And beyond whatever sort of massive causes, it means the policies you're taking often, they're often done in a way which is uninformed as the hat's work. That's right. I remember I was talking to someone who was a political operative in Washington

and they were telling me, there's a huge difference between what you can fund to raise off of and then what you can conceivably do. And the internet makes it so so all the data they now have creates a universe in which all they're thinking about is what they can fundraise off of. Like this email gets opened, this thing raised this amount of money,

this petition got this many signatures, but then what's actually politically possible is very much different than that. And now you're in this situation where you've taken their money off X knowing that Y is figuratively or fundamentally impossible and that you're also creating a growing resentment too. So your base is radicalized and has some skin in the game and then you're just taking their money leading them on and eventually that explodes.

That's right, that's right. And the classic dynamics in American politics is the primary season where everybody appeals to their base and it's all radical. And then there's a nominee and also an nominee says, wow, I got to appeal to the other 90% of the country. And the base is furious because, wow, they're no longer free universities and, you know, it just suddenly that the policies change radically. Yeah. And it probably takes a special cut. Like, to me, that would be, I'm not sure I could do that.

Like, in the sense of like, like, I would find that mortifying and difficult to be able to promise something that I know in six months, I'm like the process of knowing like, hey, I've got to say this to these people, then this to these people, and then I've got to pivot over here. Then you're probably in a situation where politically, the system is selecting for a type of person that is capable of that kind of moral gymnastics, which is not necessarily

the person that then is the fearless moral leader that you would like in moments of crisis or difficulty. We wonder why they're wishy-washy. It's like the system selects for wishy-washy people. Person with a backbone is going to have trouble in that system. Well, two thoughts. One thought is this means you'll never be president Ryan. I've accepted that. Yes. Yeah, you've come to come to Louis Vett. And the second thing is again, Trump is this weird exception, which is a man who's perfectly unfiltered and perfectly. Yes. In some bizarre way, honest in that, he just says whatever, he believes we go regardless of the truth. So he's not honest in that way, but he way honest in that he just says whatever he believes we go regardless of the truth So he's not honest in that way, but he's honest in that there's a sense in which and their studies showing it

He comes off his genuine. He never pivoted Whatever he was gonna do forever and I think I think following what you're saying people find a kind of appealing I think so yeah, it's appealing and then obviously impractical. But like, I've said this to people like, shamelessness can be a skill. We don't think about it as a skill, but it like, if you think about like, if, if there was a tape of you saying absolutely disgusting things about women, and then I said, Professor Bloom, you now have to go in front of 70 million Americans on live national television and explain this tape away. You'd be like, I would rather die. You're like, I, I, I, it'd be like me also asking you to dunk a basketball.

You're like, it's just not possible. I can't do it, right? And so I can dunk a basketball with the picture. But so, so he can do that. He has the ability. He gets up there and he goes, yes, locker room talk. You know, he managed somehow to explain it to his wife or not care what his wife thought. That was actually a feat of strength, you know, in some perverse sense of the word. And I read a paper by some sociologist looking at how people respond to lies. When Hillary Clinton lied, they used some examples where she just didn't tell the truth.

People are disgusted. And they said, this is terrible. It shows like an immorality. When Trump lied and they get clear case where he definitely lied, people said, ah, that's just the kind of guy he is. What he's doing is he's kind of giving the middle finger to everything, including truth. Yes. Which is a kind of insulation because if you've already said,

fuck you to truth, then you could lie with impunity. If someone else, it's like someone else has the, at least the vestiges of the old operating system that says, I know you got to cover up your lies, you can't, you can't be blatant about it. It's in some, probably the existence of sociopaths, it's a positive that there's some evolutionary advantage to it. It's probably dangerous. That's why there's not a lot of them. But some of them exist because it allows you to sort of skirt through different loopholes that hold other people back.

There's sort of a frequency dependent selectionopholes that hold other people back. There's sort of a frequency dependent selection here regard to morality, which is, it's good to be moral, but then if 90% of people are moral, then the 10% who aren't, because sometimes clean up. And also there's a notion here. I think it's Frankfurt who talked about bullshit. Yeah.

And he says, you know, and what Trump is his bullshit in that, it's not, it doesn't either to lie in the normal sense means you say something that's knowingly untrue to deceive others to be bullshit, just not care. Apparently people find that refreshing. Yes. And it works. It works until it doesn't work, but you don't know how long that's going to be. It's the one's whole life, or it could be 10 minutes, right? And it's hard to, the scary thing is who follows in that example. Like just like the moral examples, the good people, people also, how many, how many Elizabeth Holmes, the CEO of Theranos, was a student of the Steve Jobs School of Leadership.

Right? And so, she is imitating what she thinks a Steve Jobs is. And so, the bad action, just as the good actions of a great man or woman can inspire, so can the horrible moral actions of someone. It's interesting. It reminds me of the cases like Steve Jobs, which is, I went to Gradsk with MIT and Nome Chomsky was, Nome Chomsky was, is this, really in scholar. And they all accounts of genius and very, very costic and very sort of dismissive of things. And I know so many people who imitated his style without being geniuses.

Yes. This dismissive sarcastic style where he makes pronouncements and everything, but they just aren't the genius. And it's horrible. Only Steve Jobs gets to be Steve Jobs. Right. There's a story, a Plutarch tells a story about the successors of Alexander the Great, that they were all vying to be Alexander's successor. So one cuts his beard of Alexander the Great, that they were all vying to be Alexander's

successors. So one cuts his beard like Alexander the Great, the other walks like him. They're all imitating the superficial thing. The attitude or the approach, and they're missing the genius, as you said, or the ability to do the job, and they don't understand that actually all those other things are taxes that society was willing to pay to get the genius. They weren't, they were, they were correlation, not causation. No, that's a terrific case.

You're missing the point. That's a terrific case. Yeah, yeah. So I shouldn't wear like turtleneck's. No. The turtleneck is the symptom of Steve Jobs, not the root cause. Yes. Professor Boomb, this was amazing and a total honor for me and I've loved your books and

I can't wait for the new one. This was a delight. This was a light thanks. It's such a pleasure game to talk with you. Amazing. Being able to control your anger is a difficult but worthwhile goal. We'll take time and effort, won't be free, but by changing your perspective and developing techniques to control your temper, we'll ultimately be achievable in life-changing.

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