Made You Think

Infinite Jest is a book meant to be an actively read –it’s meant to take a certain amount of work to finish it and try to figure out what’s going on. While David Foster Wallace, the author, spends words and words in beautiful descriptions, he purposefully omitted, exchanged, and told through the characters lenses parts of the story. In this episode Nat and Neil are going through some of the theories people have created to help understand the book. We cover a wide range of topics, including: Hal's relationship with the mold and DMZ Mario's ascendance References to Hamlet, 1984, and other books and authors If Infinite Jest will become a film A MYT classic: Aquatic Apes Theory! And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out the previous episode on Infinite Jest for more in-depth review of the book. Also, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, another of the longest books we read, that ended up filmed for a movie. Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Reddit [3:20] Creative Commons [3:30] What Happens at the End of Infinite Jest? (or, the Infinite Jest ending explained) – Aaron Swartz Blog [3:40] Futurama [11:33] Pineapple Express [11:35] Aquatic Apes Theory [16:02] The Wraith – The Ambiguities Blog [20:11] Lost [23:40] John Wayne and Avril Conspiracy Theories [25:28] Medusa [33:36] Atlas Shrugged (film series) [40:30] Game of Thrones [43:00] The Office [45:10] Books mentioned Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (book episode) Hamlet by William Shakespeare [5:23] The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka [7:48] 1984 by George Orwell [26:50] The Pale King by David Foster Wallace [36:50] Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand [46:38] (book episode) The Romance of The Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong [47:07] Les Miserables by Victor Hugo [47:10] War and Peace by Tolstoy [47:29] People mentioned David Foster Wallace Aaron Swartz [2:25] 0:00 – Spoiler Alert: this a commentary to Infinite Jest book. We discuss theories about those parts of the book that were left without There will be spoilers. Refer to the previous episode for more deep book review. 3:55 – Theory #1. The ghost/wraith is pretty obviously Hal’s father, the guy who made the Entertainment. He’s spirit was kind of resurrected by the radiation coming from the garbage dumped in the are he was buried. Allusions to Hamlet. JOI created Infinite Jest to take Hal out of his shell of silence. Unreliable narrators. 6:49 – Theory #2. DMZ or Madam Psychosis. The wraith steals the drug to give it to Hal via the toothbrush. Parallel with Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Hal’s experiences with the mold. He couldn’t communicate → Eats the mold → Communicates, but emotionless and stoic → Gets DMZ → Can’t talk again, but gains emotional complexity. 9:55 – Theory #3. Effects of marijuana withdrawal. Hal’s collapse and Gately’s help in the hospital. Digging up Hal’s father’s head. Connection with Gately’s vision. Hal, Gately, Joelle and John Wayne looking for the anti-Entertainment cartridge but it’s not there anymore. The suspect falls on Orin. How he new about it? Probably because of Joelle (they were dating). 13:21 – Weird theories around Avril, Hal-Orin-Mario’s mom. Apparently Avril is modeled after DFW’s mom. Theory #4. She is an A.F.R. or O.U.S. member, the secret terrorists or intelligence organizations. Affairs with John Wayne, Charles C.T. (stepbrother?). 16:10 – Theory #5. Orin, the oldest brother, fathered Mario with Avril. Avril can be the hand model. Orin doesn’t go to his father funeral. Other stories of parents abusing their sons. Who was in the car with Avril? 18:59 – Why was ghost Jim moving stuff around in the tennis academy? 19:59 – Theory #6. Why DFW uses the word wraith instead of ghost? The wraith explains to Don that it takes enormous effort for him to appear to Don: “Wraiths by and large exist (putting his arms out slowly and making little quotation-mark finger-wiggles as he said exist) in a totally different Heisenbergian dimension of rate-change and time-passage.”  Therefore, the wraith has to stand still for extremely long periods of time to appear at all to Don. 21:07 – Theory #7. Speculations that Jim ends up possessing Hal. 22:24 – Theory #8. How did DFW write the book? Did he mapped all out and then intentionally leave out specific sections so people can come up with theories? TV shows with open twists. Apparently Infinite Jest was longer. 24:53 – Theory #9. C.T. is Mario’s father. 25:23 – Theory #10. Avril and Luria are the same person. Theory #11. Orin didn’t die by the end of the book. 1984 flashbacks in the scenes with Luria. 27:08 – Mold in the basement. Mold that feeds on mold. Criticism against mold as a real thing, and more as a metaphor of the teens age difficulties. 29:33 – Theory #12. Did Hal watch the Entertainment or part of it? Doubts about how he got a copy of the movie. 31:11 – Theory #13. Hal has internally self synthesized DMZ because of the mold. 32:26 – Orin thought Joelle and Himself were lovers. Maybe that was because he didn’t want to attend his father funeral. Speculations about covering Joelle: is she disfigured or is she really so beautiful that needs to use a veil? How Joelle got acid in her face. Molly’s story. Joelle using a veil after filming Infinite Jest. 35:30 – What was the movie about? Things the reader is not allowed to know. Other DFW books. Difficulties explaining what’s the book about. Addiction and living passively. 40:00 – Would Infinite Jest make a good movie or not? Problems with Atlas Shrugged bad movie. Formats evolving after Netflix. Most of the value in Infinite Jest comes from the descriptions, not that much happens between the characters. Getting the chaotic feeling to a movie. DFW against an Infinite Jest movie. Longest books. Sierra Leone and Quebequian terrorists. 48:55 – If you enjoyed this weird episode of Made You Think, we appreciate any review on iTunes or if you share with your friends. If you didn’t like it, it’s OK, that’s an experiment, so go listen to a normal episode of the podcast. The previous episode about Infinite Jest is probably a much better introduction to the book than this episode. Find us on Twitter @TheRealNeilS and @nateliason and join the email list at Made You Think Podcast. The email list is the best way to stay up to date on future episodes and things that are going on with the show. Check out ways to support the show at madeyouthinkpodcast.com/support.  

“This wise old whiskery fish swims up to three young fish and goes, 'Morning, boys, how's the water?' and swims away; and the three young fish watch him swim away and look at each other and go, 'What the fuck is water?' and swim away.” In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat discuss Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. This is a huge novel taking time in a fictitious 2010 characterized by a non-conventional timeline and a lack of a plot. Despite it’s challenging structure and the fact of being a fiction, it has a lot of philosophical nuggets about particularly on the activeness vs passiveness way of living. We cover a wide range of topics, including: Hitting goals and sense of satisfaction Letting life happen to you while watching TV Accurate visions of the world in 2020 Best porno-like book titles How Nat & Neil broke and got back together 1-on-1 sports and their secondary effect on us And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, another book that critics how media and TV are ruining our lives, and The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey, another book that shows how tennis is not just about hitting balls with a racket. Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Kindle (link Amazon) [8:06] iPad [9:10] Netflix [17:50] The Office [18:36] BoJack Horseman [19:50] Cup & Leaf [40:44] A Crash Course in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Cryptocurrency (crypto episode) [42:57] AA - Alcoholics Anonymous [50:30] Ad Blocker [1:05:56] The Trouble With Facebook by Sam Harris [1:06:25] Snapchat [1:07:26] Skype [1:09:10] Mushroom Coffee [1:14:50] University of Arizona [1:18:39] The College Dropout by Kanye West [1:32:20] (album episode) The Matrix [1:33:07] Primer [1:33:14] Books mentioned Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter [2:25] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Ulysses by James Joyce [7:16] Finnegans Wake by James Joyce [7:17] The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus [37:59] (book episode) Cleveland is King by Brendan Bowers [38:20] The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz [45:12] Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [46:37] (book episode) Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault  [46:47] (book episode) 12 Rules for Life by Dr. Jordan Peterson [46:55] (book episode) Strange Loops [47:07] (book episode) Mastery by Robert Greene [47:10] (book episode) Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman [47:16] (book episode) The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey [52:05] (book episode) Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell [58:55] Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand [1:15:19] (book episode) Elegant Complexity by Greg Carlisle [1:15:50] Hamlet by William Shakespeare [1:22:44] People mentioned David Foster Wallace Quentin Tarantino [18:10] Michael Schur [18:58] B.J. Novak [19:36] Kyrie Irving [38:15] LeBron James [38:50] Taylor Pearson [42:57] Trump [1:04:20] Sam Harris [1:06:25] Mattan Griffel [1:19:26] David Perell [1:28:23] James Joyce [1:30:00] Martin Scorsese [1:32:00] Kanye West [1:32:20] (College Dropout episode) Joe Rogan [1:35:41] Show Topics 0:00 – Spoiler Alert: it’s a fiction book, there will be spoilers. However, this is not a normal book. There is not much of a plot, so to say. This is probably a book intended to be re-read. It’s self referential, once you reach the end it intends you to go back to the beginning. 2:50 – The book doesn’t follow the timeline of events. If you are confused, congrats! That’s the point of the book :). The “missing” year is where most of the action takes. 3:35 – “Fiction is about what it’s like to be a f**cking human being”, David Foster Wallace. The central plot of our lives is just a narrative fallacy. The book gives a sense that it’s like life, in a weird way. Life is extremely complex, but we try to give it a narrative with sequential events. The characters don’t suffer a major transformation. The book ends right before all the crazy stuff is going to happen, but nothing happens yet. 6:26 – DFW intended the book to be an active work of fiction as opposed to just something you  seat back and read. There are more than 350 endnotes with essential information to the plot, so you can’t skip them. It’s highly suggested to read it on a Kindle because of them. 9:45 – There are no dates to anchor yourself on. The 10 years where the story takes place, they stop using numbers for the years, but a company’s name that sponsors or subsides that year (“subsidized time”). 11:23 – One of the central characters (that is barely referenced btw) created a movie that is so entertaining that people would watch it till they die. This movie is called “Infinite Jest”. Again, the book is chaotic and focus on the characters details rather than a story. Some parts start getting boring (eg. a kids tennis play) but you don’t want to skip them because something important is said in a couple of sentences. Random passages are really beautiful essays. 13:29 – It’s such a weird book to even talk about. It seems we are talking about a dream that we had. Supernatural characters (a ghost, a guy that levitates) may confuse you and make you doubt about your comprehension. 15:12 – Each chapter is made up of many subchapters, that can have from one sentence to 30 pages. Usually, the point of view is changed for any new subchapter, like into a different character who might be in a different place or even year or day. Sometimes you don’t know what day or character you’re getting drop in to until you’re a couple of pages into it, so it’s moving around a lot. 17:05 – What would the book like if it was written knowing Google exists? What would a movie about Infinite Jest be like? Tarantino could direct this movie. Michael Schur, co-producer and actor of The Office TV series owns the movie rights to Infinite Jest. There are many reference to the book and the author in The Office. Other TV show, BoJack Horseman, seems to be loosely based on this book. Addiction component in the book, and addiction issues that the author had. Psychological addiction to marijuana. 21:52 – Broader context of the main characters. There are basically three or four groups that have their own separate stories and those main groups intersect throughout the novel. There is the tennis academy. A particular family with 3 brothers, Hal, Orin and Mario. The addiction home next to the tennis academy. And the groups of terrorists together with those who are fighting them. The book is hilarious at many times, including laughing out loud funny and horrible tragic things at the same time. There are some absurd parts of the book, that are also very funny because of the way they are written. 26:04 – Weird plots. The wheelchair terrorists that want to kill Americans with a movie. The undercovered anti-terrorist agent that dresses like a woman. The male character enamored with “her”. Kid with his forehead stuck in a glass. The way Jim commits suicide sticking his head in a microwave. Hal tricking the psycho therapists having a major breakthrough. The list of people dying watching the film at one guy’s house. Death by passivity. Examples of characters that stuck between an easy passive life and the will of doing something bigger. 36:12 – Beautiful nonfiction parts. Discussion of kids hitting their goals: “one is that you attain the goal and realize the shocking realization that attaining the goal does not complete or redeem you, does not make everything for your life “OK ” as you are, in the culture, educated to assume it will do this, the goal. And then you face this fact that what you had thought would have the meaning does not have the meaning when you get it, and you are impaled by shock.” “It is more invigorating to want than to have”. Kyrie Irving, the basketball player, pissed off after winning everything with the Cavaliers. Finding new hills to climb instead of contenting of reaching the top. Happiness comes from the climb, not much from the achievement. Boredom aversion. Losing the impetus to perform after hitting your goals. Veterans missing the war. “If you’re worried you can feel safe, and if you feel safe you should be worried”. Books with porno titles. 47:34 – Infinite Jest is the fictional version of Amusing Ourselves to Death. Heavy critic on TV. Avoiding letting life happen to you, instead of an active life. Effects of the addiction phase, and breaking through it. Cleanse from addiction hero journey. Self improvement and infinite games found in 1-on-1 sports like tennis, box, or martial arts. Yes, you’re fighting against another player, but mainly the fight is against your brain. 53:53 – Transcending own limits. The opponent is yourself. Most characters are fighting an internal battle throughout the novel. Relationship between DFW and his editor. All typos were intentional. First and third person narrators through the book, and the relation to typos. 1:00:53 – The author sees irony almost like a safety valve that people use to avoid feeling real things. Mario, one of the characters, says (or thinks) “there is some rule that real stuff can only get mentioned if everybody rolls their eyes or laughs in a way that isn't happy.” Laughing to avoid deep conversations. In the book, the author takes serious things and wraps them in absurd and funny incidents to make them tolerable or digestible. 1:05:06 – Predictions of the internet. Advertising invading every surface and communication. Snapchat filters. The rise and fall of video calls: “the amazing things about phones is that you can be paying half attention while assuming the other person is giving you their full attention”. The problem of video calls. 1:12:48 – We broke. No, we haven’t, but we missed the opportunity. 1:15:01 – The support of the reading companion. Getting through the first pages of the book. To read or not to read Infinite Jest. Is it worth it? Signaling. Perceptions about the book, what they liked and what not. Nat: “it’s one of the most incredible books I’ve read that I never ever want to read again”. Neil compares this type of difficult to read books with beers. Endurance and feeling of accomplishment. 1:28:23 – The Infinite Jest Reader’s Club. Writers that want to prove how smart writers they are. Fashion designers showing off. Impressing your peers and justifying your professional existence. Kindle reading time estimation. DFW use of psychotropics. Worsts things of the book. 1:40:26 – Stay tuned if you want to listen to a more spoilered version of this book. Find us on Twitter @TheRealNeilS and @nateliason and let us know your version about what happened in the book. Leave a review and share it with your friends if you like the show. Join the email list at Made You Think Podcast, which is the best way to stay up to date on future episodes and things that are going on with the show. Check out ways to support the show at madeyouthinkpodcast.com/support.

Let us call the collection of these forces that push and pull at us from deep within human nature. Human nature stems from the particular wiring of our brains, the configuration of our nervous system and the way we humans process emotions, all of which developed and emerged over the course of the 5 million years or so of our evolution as a species. In this episode of Made You Think, Nat and Neil talk about The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene. The author examines human behavior and suggests that it can be explained by different laws. Each law is presented and described in details: what every law means in your life, what you should do with it, how you should interpret it, and how you should use it. We cover a wide range of topics, including: How humans really behave and how one should adapt to it Historical and contemporary examples to better understand each law How to apply each law to your life Why corporations don’t give much importance to Twitter (and it’s because of Trump) The effect of context on our mood and behavior (yes, Nazis and Twitter examples) Why you may feel miserable even with 1 billion in your account And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on Mastery by Robert Greene, a fantastic book on sculpting your mind and your life in the pursuit of mastery, as well as Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, another book that delves into the idea that fearlessness is essential for individual success outside of a traditional path, and even within it.   Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we’re running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Irrationality [8:50] Self-awareness [10:37] Narcissism  [12:49] Role-playing [17:16] South Sea Bubble [32:22] Black Swan Preparation [33:05] Herd Mentality [35:16] Instagram Influencer [35:39] The Godfather [38:45] Matrix [39:25] Primer [39:42] Self-sabotage [44:01] Mueller Report [45:45] Around the Horn [46:58] Pardon the Interruption [47:08] Crossfire [47:40] UC Berkeley [49:00] Lyft [49:22] New York Times [49:50] QueensBridge Venture Partners [50:41] Nazi [53:17] College as an incubator of Girardian terror by Dan Wang [59:40] American Psycho [1:01:44] Theranos [1:05:38] Enron [1:07:41] Apple [1:06:13] Nat's Article: Increasing the Difficulty [1:09:29] Social Justice Warrior [1:12:07] Neil's Article: Entertainment Isn't Dumb [1:16:40] Netflix [1:16:51] Cup & Leaf [1:17:45] Estee Lauder [1:21:23] Taco Bell [1:22:09] Slacktivism [1:31:38] Star Trek [1:38:19] Books mentioned The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene Mastery by Robert Greene (book episode) [01:33] Antifragile by Nassim Taleb (Nat’s notes) (book episode) [1:34] Letters from a Stoic by Seneca (Nat's notes) (book episode) [1:35] The 50th Law by Robert Greene [03:00] The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene (Nat’s notes) [03:13] Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio (Nat’s notes) (book episode) [6:58] Poor Charlie's Almanack by Charlie Munger [10:11] What Every Body is Saying by Joe Navarro [17:42] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells [25:12] 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) [28:50] 12 Years A Slave by Solomon Northup [55:36] Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) [1:00:31] The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch (book episode) [1:29:26] Made in America by Sam Walton [1:32:30] The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker [1:34:45] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson [1:36:27] (Neil’s notes) People mentioned Robert Greene [01:15] Joe Rogan [07:55] Donald Trump [09:17] Charles T.  Munger [10:11] Bill Clinton [18:17] Barack Obama [20:07] George W. Bush [21:33] Sam Harris [24:41] Daniel Kahneman [24:42] David Wallace-Wells [25:12] Jordan Peterson [28:50] Isaac Newton [32:27] Fredo Corleone [38:45] Nas [50:20] Steve Jobs [1:06:13] Tim Ferriss [1:11:54] Seth Godin [1:22:31] Kanye West [1:25:37] Sam Walton [1:32:28] Ernest Becker [1:34:45] Ray Kurzweil [1:35:44] Show Topics 01:12 – Nat and Nate are major fans of Robert Greene. Takeaways from their top Robert Greene books, Mastery and The 50th Law. 5:12 – The laws of human nature is based on how humans act and behave and what one can infer about other people or learn about them based on their behavior. Each law goes in-depth on historical and contemporary examples. 8:50 – Law of Irrationality: You may think you are rational but you're not. The first step towards becoming rational is to understand our fundamental irrationality. We all fall into this trap of thinking that we're the rational ones and everyone else is irrational. Green believes that we all have irrational beliefs and the best way to become more rational is having that awareness of yourself that you are also not a fully rational creature. What stems out from irrationality is the conviction bias or superiority bias, where you think like you're better than everyone. The key to stop making irrational decisions is self awareness and reflection. Increase your reaction time: when some event or interaction requires your response, train yourself to step back. 12:50 – Law of Narcissism: Transform self love into empathy. The idea of healthy narcissism is everyone is a narcissist to some extent, but if you're healthy about it, you have a stronger, more resilient sense of self and can recover more quickly from wounds and insults. There is not much validation needed from others. Social media is the medium of overly narcissists. Also, there are two monologues happening sometimes on shows like podcasts where you just happen to be speaking at each other, but you're not really having a conversation. Everybody just wants to feel heard, that's why people are posting on social media.. 17:12 – Law of Role-playing: See through people's masks. Bill Clinton never lost sight of the fact that as president, he had to project confidence and power, but if he was speaking to a group of auto workers, he would adjust his accent and his words to fit the audience and he would do the same to a group of executives. Most of the time, trying too hard to adjust to your audience can be offensive. 21:38 – Law of Compulsive Behavior: Determine the strength of people's character. A lot of people do have some form of compulsion in how they act. The toxic types and drama magnets fall in this type of behavior. There are certain people, like in high school or in college, who always have drama no matter what's going on. The Laws of Human Nature can be read in two different ways – with the eye to learning more about other people or with an eye towards yourself. We go through Sam Harris’ interview of Daniel Kahneman and Joe Rogan's interview of David Wallace Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth. 26:43 – Law of Covetousness: Become an elusive object of desire. This law is very true for relationships, for instance, people who are using dating apps. The people you're connecting with on dating apps are always seemingly perfect, but then as you get to know them, you realize they're all human beings, they’re not perfect. Also, it states that if you don't give somebody too much information about yourself, then you have that air of mystery and they can project whatever they want to project onto you. In an era of so much advertising and marketing, it affects your decision-making, what is something that you actually want and what's something you need. We tackle the 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson, where he emphasizes on how many of our desires are actually internally-driven versus driven by what we're seeing other people do. 31:52 – Law of Short-sightedness: Elevate your perspective. It's basically civically training ourselves to detach from the heat of the moment. For any group or team, you kind of want someone in charge of revealing all the ways something could fail. Expecting the unexpected, the black swan preparedness. The concept of herd mentality, where you doubt your own logic in money and selfies. Take those Instagram influencers. 38:07 – Law of Defensiveness: Soften people's resistance by confirming their self opinion. Everyone thinks that they're autonomous and acting of their free will. Also, most think that they're intelligent and that they're good and decent. Regardless of whether or not those things are true, it behooves you to confirm people's beliefs in that about themselves. Fredo Corleone is a perfect example. He is the family idiot who also does some sleazy things and gets the family in trouble, but despite all of that and all the evidence staring him in the face, he still thinks he's an intelligent and good human being. Primer on being a Master Persuader: five strategies for instilling those beliefs in the people you're talking to. 42:50 – Law of Self-sabotage: Change your circumstances by changing your attitude. This part lists out a lot of bad mental routines people get into. When you see one of these self-sabotaging mentalities come out constantly from people, it makes it very hard to be around them. This happens in Twitter feed, where if you were constantly surrounded by political or hostile tweets or news, even if they're not directed at you, it changes your mood entirely. The click bait headlines confirming existing biases. 51:22 – Law of Repression: Confront your dark side. Part of the job in studying human nature is to recognize and examine the dark side of one’s character. You can't deny that there are going to be parts of your character that are bad. Seeking those out and figuring out where they're coming from can improve yourself to deal with those parts of your behavior. There's like very little genetic determination for whether you're a good or bad person. There may be some inclinations, but a lot of whether or not you become like a well-socialized or antisocial person is going to be from your environment and your upbringing. We dive in the two circumstances that can bring that type of thing out and study Nazi’s and slavery. Slave owners were not necessarily cruel individuals, it’s just that they were accustomed to such as they grow up. 57:53 – Law of Envy: Beware the fragile ego. This delves into how you can pick up on other people, the little things they say and do that convey some sense of envy or insecurity around you. Women talk about this a lot with other women but men are not exempted from this. The closer you are to other people, the more you will envy them and resent them. We touch on College as an Incubator of Girardian Terror by Dan Wang – how there is no clear sign of any diversity on college campuses. Also, there are different things that motivate people, and all these motivations are mashed up in our brains leading us to have different types of behaviors. The concept of Alpha dog, where it's more on status than the actual money itself. 1:04:58 – Law of Grandiosity: Know your limits. You should tie any feelings of greatness to your actual work and achievements in your contributions to society and not to something special about you because that's where it can get dangerous. A case in point is Theranos. If the projects you attempt are below or at your skill level, you'll become easily bored and less focused. If they are too ambitious, you will feel crushed by your failure. 1:10:18 – Law of Gender Rigidity: Reconnect to the masculine or feminine within you. Some of the things that you find attractive in the opposite sex is something that you need to develop within yourself. This is a good tool for introspection and personal development. Greene used these masculine and feminine traits as descriptors. Opposite traits complement one another. 1:13:13 – Law of Aimlessness: To advance with a sense of purpose. You'll be most motivated and happiest if you have a higher sense of purpose or mission that drives you on what you are doing as opposed to just following the direction or the goals of your parents for you and your peers. Purpose is doing something where you actually want to wake up and instantly start moving. People judge themselves if that sense of purpose isn't something big and special. 1:18:08 – Law of Conformity: Resist the downward pull of the group. Being aware that you're not immune to the way being in a group will change how you think. Notice how being around people changes the way you're behaving and thinking. Making decisions based on what you want think, not just what the group wants or thinks. LinkedIn launch table. Different groups hold different heuristics. Corporate America doesn’t use Twitter, they think it’s a Trump thing. 1:22:35 – Law of Fickleness: Make them want to follow you. You want to turn yourself into someone that people want to follow. There are three core things under this law: listening skills, dedicating yourself by respecting people's individual needs and proving that you're working for the greater good, and then taking the leadership as a huge responsibility and making sure that you're considering the welfare of the group as early on in your career as possible. Not letting other people categorize you so they will pay more attention trying to find out more about you. You want to develop the highest possible standards for your work and training yourself to be super aware of how your manner in tone are affecting the people around you. Reputation is going to play a really big role in whether or not you can succeed in becoming some kind of leader. The idea of sending mixed signals and showing qualities that are ever so slightly contrary. If you send mixed signals, if you're not allowing people to instantly categorize you, they're going to pay more attention because they're trying to figure you out. 1:26:10 – Law of Aggression: See the hostility behind the friendly facade. Too friendly person who you don’t actually know is irritating. We all have aggressive tendencies. Aggressiveness spectrum. Aggressiveness can be seen in sports too, and they can bring out that aggressive part in people who might not have thought they were aggressive. Everyone has an aggressive side, whether you exhibit it overly or passively, and your task is to not deny that you are aggressive, but to learn how you can channel it into something productive. Almost nothing in the world can resist persistent human energy. The trick is to want something badly enough that nothing will stop you or double your energy. And lastly, “most people engage at some cathartic release of their angers, some giant protest, and then it goes away and they slip back into complacency or become bitter”. 1:31:02 – Law of General Myopia: Seize the historical moment. Society moves in cycles of like kind of four generations. The first generation is that of revolutionaries who make a radical break with the past to establish new rules and create chaos. The second generation craves some order, and they want to stabilize the world and establish some new conventions in dogma. Then the third generation has little connection to the founders of the revolution and they're less passionate about it, they just want to make life comfortable and they don't want things to be getting upset. And lastly, the fourth generation feels society has lost its vitality and they're not sure what should replace it. The goal is to understand as deeply as possible the spirit of your generation, of the times that you live in. Learn how you can take advantage of it and how that has affected how you perceive the world. The premise behind Sam Walton’s Walmart. “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” 1:34:35 – The Law of Death Denial: Meditate on your common mortality. Essentially, we don't like to think about the fact that we're going to die and that makes us act in ways that we might not. It causes us to buy into philosophies that will save us from that fact. We dive into the technological transcendence being the modern version of religion. No one is ever going to upload their brain into a computer. We must think of our mortality as a kind of continual deadline. We must stop fooling ourselves. We could die tomorrow and even if we live for another 80 years, it is but a drop in the ocean of the vastness of time and it passes always more quickly than we imagine. We have to awaken to this reality and make it a continual meditation. 1:41:31 – Find us on Twitter @TheRealNeilS and @nateliason and let us know what are yours thoughts about the book and the episode. Leave a review and share it with your friends if you like the show. Join the email list at Made You Think Podcast, that's the best way to stay up to date on future episodes and things that are going on with the show. Check our supporters at madeyouthink.com/support.  

If psychedelics are one thing we can all agree on, is that it will make a lot of people happy. There's a lot of people who could use a heavy dose of psychedelics to stop being angry. There's something about stepping outside of yourself and even up the reality that comes with these types of experiences that is getting even more useful in a culture that is becoming even more obsessed with the day to day and itself. In this episode of Made You Think, Nat and Mansal Denton talk about Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna. This is a fun book episode about Terence McKenna’s take on psychedelics. First of which is that because mushrooms or “shrooms” basically grow faster in Caledon it leads us to see respect and certain religious adoration towards animals and lastly, that psychedelics are originators of religion. We cover a wide range of topics, including: What are psychedelics and its misconceptions How the society take these substances into account Why animals seem keen into psychedelics How psychedelic substances are lowering the floodgates of one’s experience Terence McKenna’s TWO ideas on psychedelics How religion coincided with psychedelics Mansal’s authentic Ayahuasca experience and the hunt for a good Shaman And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on Smoke Signals by Martin A. Lee, a book about the history of marijuana and the war on drugs in the US. Check also The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell that talks about the origin of religions. Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we’re running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Nootropedia [1:28] Nootropics [1:35] Psychedelics [1:39] OYASIN [1:46] Psilocybin mushroom/Magic Mushrooms “Shrooms” [4:28] MDMA for PTSD [4:30] DMT [11:43] Ayahuasca [11:59] Chacruna Leaves [13:37] N,N-DMT [13:49] 5-MeO-DMT [14:00] LSD [15:39] Stoned Ape Theory [16:20] Dominator culture [31:38] Marijuana [32:17] Vape [34:30] MAOI [36:01] Nicotine gum [36:43] Juul Vapes [37:00] Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia [38:21] Soylent [39:07] Polio [41:12] Opium [41:21] Ibogaine [44:29] Iboga [44:51] Burning Bush [49:40] Amanita Muscaria Mushroom [50:21] Aztec [54:31] Sweat Lodge Ceremony [55:06] Kundalini yoga [57:43] Ayahuasca Shaman [1:00:00]   Books mentioned Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna How To Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan [4:15] The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley [18:23] People mentioned Mansal Denton [0:33] Michael Pollan [4:15] Trump [8:15] Nixon [9:58] Timothy Leary [10:07] Dennis McKenna [17:07] Albert Hoffman [17:46] Ram Dass [17:56] Aldous Huxley [18:21] Hamilton Morris [38:21] Dr. Dan Engle [47:30] Jesus on Psychedelics [49:45] Santa Claus on Psychedelics [50:07] Show Topics 1:25 - Mansal Denton is the co-host for today’s episode! He has recently left an organization called Nootropedia, where his whole focus was helping people optimize their mental performance using nootropics. He found that some of the best nootropics were psychedelics and from that path he moved into another organization called Oyasin, which is a lifestyle brand reharmonizing people with the natural world. A high-level view of what he's interested right now: he believes that all of the external problems in the world are a manifestation of what's going on in our minds collectively at the society and that psychedelics can be a powerful tool to solve what's going on in our minds. He thinks that transformational or peak experiences are things that we all crave and could help change our perspectives someway. 4:00 - Interesting shift of perspective in society about Psychedelics and plant medicines. “How To Change your Mind” by Michael Pollan is a great influence to this. Some of the kinds of psychedelics are Silicide, Magic Mushrooms, and MDMA for PTSD. It is so compelling and helpful for PTSD. 6:25 - If psychedelics are one thing we can all agree on then it will make a lot of people happy. There's a lot of people who could use a heavy dose of psychedelics to stop being angry. There's something about stepping outside of yourself and even up the reality that comes with this types of experiences that is getting even more useful in a culture that is becoming even more obsessed with the day to day and itself. Imaginary world which is everything in the internet, a reality that doesn’t exist in a physical way. Recreating our relationship with our internal map is something everyone can benefit from, like meditation, like a recognition of something lost. 7:55 - Society's take on psychedelics. Safety and inherent risks with these substances despite its legality in some places. Be smart. In today’s generations, there are negative responses to these plant medicines. War on drugs has done injustice to psychedelics. 10:54 - What kinds of drugs people are comfortable taking and which ones they aren't. Coffee, alcohol, tobacco, and aspirin are drugs all of us use that alter our daily experience. 12:00 - Drugs and hunting. Drugs and animals. Ayahuasca doses given to dogs for more effective hunting today in the jungle. Which plants are mixed with Ayahuasca. There’s an archaeological evidence that people were making ayahuasca thousands of years ago. 14:42 - McKenna’s Hypothesis: hallucinogenic compounds may have actually had influence in developing our own self-reflective abilities. DMT vs LSD trips. Stoned Ape Theory. 18:16 - Brain as primarily a filtering tool. Idea that the brain functions not to understand our environment but to filter out all of the less important noise from The Doors of Perception. Consciousness as a subtractive process, not an additive. Psychedelic substances are lowering the floodgates of one’s experience to open your senses to everything that’s going on in your environment that you’re normally unaware of. Examples: appreciating trees, books you never heard of and hearing it a lot of times after within a week. There is some part of your brain that becomes receptive to that specific thing. 20:57 - Research on the brain about finding truth and logic in certain aspects of life are actually developed more with the intention on how can you create truth to make others believe. Humans are actually social animals. Our brain may not be interpreting actual reality rather it is interpreting reality socially. Elements of stimuli not normally present in our normal consciousness. 22:20 - Why animals seem interested in psychedelics. There’s some element in psychedelics that’s completely pressing reset in our consciousness that almost every species can benefit from. It’s actually an evolutionary disadvantage for animals to be tripping but all animals have habitual patterns which are sometimes helpful and sometimes not. Having these patterns interrupts allowed animals to change habits that proved to be more advantageous. Animals know how to micro-dose psychedelics. The higher the dose of LSD the more tolerant you become. 25:53 - Intention VS. External Environment. Psychedelics can be powerful tools or just for recreational use. Retreats for self-reflection. McKenna says there’s a stigma against taking drugs or substances alone. Respectful use in productive settings and not in rave parties. Taking it on your own makes more valuable experiences. When with somebody, sometimes the ideas come from all over the place and it’s hard to have coherent conversations when you are tripping. It is important to identify what’s the intention to take psychedelics, ex. to escape reality or to explore and reflect or connect. It’s harder to be locked into a monotonous routine that you hate if you’re having these psychedelics driven wake ups every few months. 31:38 - Legal drugs fits in the Dominator Culture. How would work, life, and environment be changed if people had access to psychedelics. We’re seeing it a little bit with Marijuana, as it becomes more and more legalized. It will always depend on the intentions. Stimulants and alcohol fall in the legal drugs category. A lot of these drug compounds create a baseline that is manageable. Psychedelics create peak experiences. There’s so much value in doing both in a regular basis. 34:30 - Why is Nicotine addictive? Nicotine itself is not actually a dangerous chemical, cigarettes are. If you’re smoking pure tobacco, that’s probably safe. Vapes are intense smoking administration method. Nicotine is only addictive when it is combined with MAOI. Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia on MAOI Inhibitors. 39:39 - How people seem to believe that Science and Rationality are the new god. Science is great but incomplete and can get things wrong like drugs with side effects. Drugs that you can do while going to work or do more work are okay while drugs that you would have to relax in the process aren’t okay, for instance, Marijuana. The term “Marijuana”. The propaganda on Mexicans and Blacks liking to get high to not do work and then attack people as racism. 43:07 - Empathy is so heightened in psychedelics - you start to feel this sense of protection for the earth. Michael Pollan’s take on psychedelics relating to modern environmental movement came predominantly out of psychedelic experiences in the 60’s and 70’s. 44:27- Ibogaine experience. Effects of Ibogaine. There are so many great applications of Iboga but high doses can harm the ones with heart conditions. It can cure addiction, like alcoholism, as well. Ayahuasca has similar effects, generally less statistically significant than Iboga. You can find Ayahuasca, LSD or mushrooms even in the US. Iboga it’s not something you mess around with on your own. Where do people do or take Iboga? 48:07 - Mckenna’s Idea that because mushrooms grow faster in Caledon we see respect and certain religious adoration towards cows in some eastern religions. A lot of religious and cultural texts have similarities, plausible stories of psychedelics being involved. Was Jesus the effect of collective consumption of psychedelics? Psychedelics are so mind-altering, great substances to help humans write down the myths. 51:13 - McKenna’s Idea that psychedelics are originators of religion. In doing them, you experience many of the same feelings and sense of connection and visual experiences of some of what you might see in religious texts. Experience on DMT. McKenna says, “God is not an idea. God is a lost continent in the human mind”. Divinity schools will agree that psychedelics can reliably create mystical experiences and connect to a Higher Power. Ayahuasca sessions and spiritual connection. Aztec religion takes Silicide mushrooms as flesh of the Gods. 55:06 - What kind of Higher Power you’re relating with -- Nature, External, or Ephemeral? Spirituality is very personal. You cannot really explain it but just feel it. The importance of doing deep multi-experience retreats is that you get to connect to a higher power. Mansal’s Kundalini yoga experience. Sweat lodge ceremony. 1:00:15 - How to find a good Shaman and the authentic Ayahuasca experience. Mansal’s recommendation is find referrals, but you don’t need necessarily to travel Peru. For newbies, it’s best to take Ayahuasca with a Shaman to keep you safe. In his hunting experiences, Mansal finds it valuable to do psychedelics before & after hunting yet never during the hunting. 1:05:50 - How to get connected with Mansal IG: @mansaldenton and grab Mansal’s email listening to the episode. Reach Nat on Twitter @Nat Eliason (@nateliason) and let him know what you are yours thoughts about the book and the episode. Leave us a review on iTunes and let your friends know about it. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com

Hi guys, this is an update episode. After end of the year hiatus we are looking back to read more books! But... we need your feedback.  Listen to this episode and let us know what's your preferred podcast format. Tweet Nat at @nateliason or reply his newsletter. Excited to share with you new episodes soon!

Dive into the intriguing world of consciousness as the hosts explore Thomas Nagel's thought-provoking essay on subjective experience. They tackle the mind-body problem, pondering the limits of physicalism while discussing empathy across perspectives. Topics range from consciousness in animals and the ethical quandaries of artificial intelligence to media biases and the complexities of interpretation in a polarized world. Plus, hear reflections on cultural practices and the inspiring commitment of a soldier who continued his duties for decades.

The truly good are those who believe in God and the Last Day, in the angels, the Scripture, and the prophets; who give away some of their wealth, however much they cherish it, to their relatives, to orphans, the needy, travellers and beggars, and to liberate those in bondage; those who keep up the prayer and pay the prescribed alms; who keep pledges whenever they make them; who are steadfast in misfortune, adversity, and times of danger. These are the ones who are true, and it is they who are aware of God. In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat discuss The Quran, the book revealed to the prophet Muhammad, and foundation of Islamism. This is a very special and interesting episode because there is so much discussion about Islam and its roots, Muslims, and the relevance in cultural and political news. We cover a wide range of topics, including: The different writing styles of the Quran at the beginning and the end Interpretation of Arabic and context at the time of Muhammad Strategies to build and spread virally a set of beliefs Changing views on sex, alcohol and women The validity of 600 AD concepts on today’s world And much more. Please enjoy, and try always to build your opinions reading books at their source! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell, a book that deconstruct the need of religions, as well as our episodes on Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (book episodes part 1 & part 2), a book that spans on the history of human existence. Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Jihad [6:50] The Crusades [9:09] Inquisition [9:10] Bonus Material on Patreon [11:40] Sharia Law [12:45] Buddhism [15:05] Mecca [16:20] History of Islam in India – India: A History. Revised and Updated [34:59] Enforced Monogamy - Jordan Peterson [38:38] Crony Beliefs [39:03] I'm a college philosophy professor. Jordan Peterson is making my job impossible. Post on Reddit [39:10] Islamic State [41:06] Reformation [44:40] Cryonics [49:57] Rick and Morty arcade life simulation episode [53:31] Burqa [1:37:24] Inception [1:52:54] Books mentioned The Bible [5:00] The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell [5:26] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff [7:40] The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson [9:50] (Neil’s notes) Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari [10:00] (Nat’s notes) (book episode part 1 & part 2) Old Testament [11:24] New Testament [11:24] Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault [40:04] (Nat’s notes) (href="https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com/discipline-and-punish-by-michel-foucault/">book episode) Code of Hammurabi [58:31] Way of Zen by Alan Watts [1:00:15] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) Smoke Signals by Martin A. Lee [1:19:47] (book episode) People mentioned Muhammad The Prophet Moises [19:10] Abraham [19:11] Jesus [19:12] Noah [22:02] Angel Gabriel [31:50] Satan [31:51] Saint Brigid Celtic Goddess [33:36] Jordan B. Peterson [38:15] (on Twitter) (12 Rules episode) Sam Harris [10:55] (Guns episode) Show Topics 2:33 – We think we picked a very good translation/interpretation of the Qur’an. The translator/interpreter includes lots of useful comments in the footnotes, why he prefers to interpret in a certain way, including comparisons with other interpretations. He gives good historical context of the Arabian peninsula at the times of Mohammad. Modern interpretation of ancient books affected by old translations. 6:30 – Politics in translation. Jihad: depending which scholars you listen to, it can mean a religious war limited to the context of when the book was written, or a war that has to be conducted all times. Times when Christianity was militarized. Other religions militarized: Nationalism and Communism. Is Islam a religion of peace militarized for bad use vs a religion violent at its roots? 11:35 – Ancient religious books were less about shared myths and more about legal codes prescribing how to handle human behavior. The problem with religions is when they mandate to impose them on other people. Buddhism is an exception, viewed more as a private practice. 16:15 – Intro. At Mohammad era, in Arabia there were polytheistic tribal religion. Judaism and Christianity were still not spread. People believed in Allah and many other gods. Islam expanded through the whole Arabian peninsula in just 10 years, before the Quran was even finished. Virality at top level. Qur’an is considered the direct words of God, while the Testaments are interpretations of its prophets. The Quran writing style: God speaking directly to you vs a story about God in third person. 22:12 – Mohammad was supposedly illiterate. Mohammad memorized the Quran and just spoke it. The manuscript was compiled later. There were lots of wars for power in the region at the time. Polytheist leaders saw Islam as a threat to their power. Quran is divided in 114 sections. The longest are at the beginning. The shorter ones more to the end, are more repetitive. 27:27 – First part of the Quran is very friendly with People of the Book (Hebrews and Christians). The chief conflict was against the Polytheists. Conflict shifts as the book goes on. Cracks between the three Abrahamic religions. Judaism: we are waiting for the Son of God. Christianity: SoG is Jesus. Islam: no, SoG is Mohammed, or all the prophets together are related to God, but not a direct son. 31:02 – The use of the word We. Polytheism absorbed and organized in Angels and God hierarchy. Christianity absorbed and on-boarded other religions by Sanctification of their deities. Example: Saint Brigid Celtic goddess in Ireland. Islam in India. Converting Hindus to Muslims with tax incentives. 35:50 – Acceptance of Jewish and Christians. Need to declare oneself Muslim, but no need to consider oneself Muslim in private. ‘Produce your evidence, if you are telling the truth.’ In fact, any who direct themselves wholly to God and do good will have their reward with their Lord: no fear for them, nor will they grieve. Double standard when requiring for evidence. Challenging other believes asking for evidence. People need evidence to challenge own beliefs, but don't require it to trust them, word of God is enough. What postmodernism says vs what it is. 41:10 – Reconciling differences in the Quran from the beginning to the end. [This is] a statement of the Truth about which they are in doubt: it would not befit God to have a child. He is far above that: when He decrees something, He says only, ‘Be,’ and it is. ‘God is my Lord and your Lord, so serve Him: that is a straight path.’ But factions have differed among themselves. What suffering will come to those who obscure the truth when a dreadful Day arrives! How sharp of hearing, how sharp of sight they will be when they come to Us, although now they are clearly off course! Warn them [Muhammad] of the Day of Remorse when the matter will be decided, for they are heedless and do not believe. Other books in Islam. Any changes today in religious books means God was wrong. Modern Christianity reconciling writings to today's context. Secular Jewish. Room for interpretation on supernatural events. Quran is much more about political actions than supernatural events. 47:16 – Idea of Paradise is pretty plain: a garden with clean water streams, free food, and attractive virgins. No mention of more complex wishes or benefit. Christian books don't mention heaven, but once we die we just have to wait until the Final Judgement day to come. Large scale conspiracies. 50:20 – Tangent. Cryonics is a religion. You have to wait until the prophet comes and unmelts you. Uploading your brain to a computer is religion for computing people. Need to believe in something. Life simulated. 54:00 – Tangent. Psychedelics revelations. Psychedelics and extension of time. Moises and use of drugs. Psychedelics being a part of spiritual life. When asked about the experience of revelation Muhammad reported, "sometimes it is revealed like the ringing of a bell. This form of inspiration is the hardest of them all and then it passes off after I have grasped what is inspired. Sometimes the Angel comes in the form of a man and talks to me and I grasp whatever he says."[4]:43 57:15 – Definitions of being good. At the beginning of the book a good person worships God and follow dictates of good conduct. Punishment for crimes and forgiveness. Significance of the opening In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy. Optimizing for mercy by following Quran's principles. Fully repenting because you understand what's really wrong. 1:02:04 – Jewish idea that if everything is going wrong is because God is displeased with humanity. Contrasting of polytheistic religions comparing natural context: Indus Valley vs Nile River. Deities punish humans with floods, or reward them with crops. Omnipotent being seeing what you do may prevent you from acting bad. Useful concept for making a society more cohesive. 1:06:32 – Islam starts to spread beyond boundaries and other regions push back. The book stop preaching peace and encourages fighting for the religion. Fight in God’s cause against those who fight you, but do not overstep the limits: God does not love those who overstep the limits. Kill them wherever you encounter them, and drive them out from where they drove you out, for persecution is more serious than killing. Do not fight them at the Sacred Mosque unless they fight you there. If they do fight you, kill them—this is what such disbelievers deserve— but if they stop, then God is most forgiving and merciful. Fight them until there is no more persecution, and worship is devoted to God. If they cease hostilities, there can be no [further] hostility, except towards aggressors. Fighting is ordained for you, though you dislike it. You may dislike something although it is good for you, or like something although it is bad for you: God knows and you do not.’ They will not stop fighting you [believers] until they make you revoke your faith, if they can. If any of you revoke your faith and die as disbelievers, your deeds will come to nothing in this world and the Hereafter, and you will be inhabitants of the Fire, there to remain. But those who have believed, migrated, and striven for God’s cause, it is they who can look forward to God’s mercy: God is most forgiving and merciful. Politicizing Islam. Violence in Quran was for attack or defense? 1:12:41 – How to bring a God's prescription from 620 AD to modern era. God's prescriptions made in a way you can't be peaceful with non believers. You have to fight for religion or you go to hell. 1:15:36 – Intoxicants and gambling. The sin is greater than the benefit. Marijuana and tobacco were not considered intoxicants at the time. Date wine and honey wine. Changing thoughts on alcohol. 1:20:43 – Women’s place. Your wives are [like] your fields, so go into your fields whichever way you like, and send [something good] ahead for yourselves. Apparently there was a belief in Arabia at the time that certain sexual positions were impure, but the Qur’an is saying you can “enter your wives however you please." 1:21:54 – Why would God care about that? Interesting comments in the footnotes about sex and Jesus. 1:22:50 – Eating. Forbidden foods to avoid illness. Best practices to kill an animal for food. Cortisol releases when strangling an animal. You are forbidden to eat carrion; blood; pig’s meat; any animal over which any name other than God’s has been invoked; any animal strangled, or victim of a violent blow or a fall, or gored or savaged by a beast of prey, unless you still slaughter it [in the correct manner]; or anything sacrificed on idolatrous altars. You are also forbidden to allot shares [of meat] by drawing marked arrows—a heinous practice! 1:25:08 – Prescriptions for lewd acts. Muslim lesbians and gays. Stoning in fundamentalist societies. Condemning and offering mercy as a converting tool. If any of your women commit a lewd act, call four witnesses from among you, then, if they testify to their guilt, keep the women at home until death comes to them or until God shows them another way. If two men commit a lewd act, punish them both; if they repent and mend their ways, leave them alone—God is always ready to accept repentance, He is full of mercy 1:28:19 – Fighting. Prepare whatever forces you [believers] can muster, including warhorses, so that you frighten off God’s enemies and yours, and warn others unknown to you but known to God. Whatever you give in God’s cause will be repaid to you in full, and you will not be wronged. But if they incline towards peace, you [Prophet] must also incline towards it, and put your trust in God: He is the All Hearing, the All Knowing. When the [four] forbidden months are over, wherever you encounter the idolaters, kill them, seize them, besiege them, wait for them at every lookout post; but if they repent, maintain the prayer, and pay the prescribed alms, let them go on their way, for God is most forgiving and merciful. Proselytizing. Simple choice if you were living in the area: either you are going to be hunted down and killed or you join the religion. Islam designed to spread as quickly and effective as possible. We did not wrong them; they wronged themselves. Their gods, which they called on beside God, were no use to them when what your Lord had ordained came about; they only increased their ruin. Absolution of guilt in participating in the fight. 1:30:32 – Start of the separation from Christianity. Underlining Son of Mary vs Son of God. People of the Book, do not go to excess in your religion, and do not say anything about God except the truth: the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was nothing more than a messenger of God, His word, directed to Mary, a spirit from Him. So believe in God and His messengers and do not speak of a ‘Trinity’—stop [this], that is better for you—God is only one God, He is far above having a son, everything in the heavens and earth belongs to Him and He is the best one to trust. 1:31:48 – Adultery. What is considered adultery and what not. You have to cast adulterers out even if it is your children. Integrity of the religion. Strike the adulteress and the adulterer one hundred times. Do not let compassion for them keep you from carrying out God’s law—if you believe in God and the Last Day—and ensure that a group of believers witnesses the punishment. The adulterer is only [fit] to marry an adulteress or an idolatress, and the adulteress is only [fit] to marry an adulterer or an idolater: such behaviour is forbidden to believers. 1:33:40 Prescriptions for women covering their bodies. And tell believing women that they should lower their eyes, guard their private parts, and not display their charms beyond what [it is acceptable] to reveal; they should draw their coverings over their necklines and not reveal their charms except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands’ fathers, their sons, their husbands’ sons, their brothers, their brothers’ sons, their sisters’ sons, their womenfolk, their slaves, such men as attend them who have no desire, or children who are not yet aware of women’s nakedness; they should not stamp their feet so as to draw attention to any hidden charms. It was not clear what it is acceptable for a woman to reveal even in Arabic language. Preventing sexual attraction. Dancing and sexual desires. Don't go beyond ordinary behaviors. Elderly women allowed to show more than younger because of lower attraction. In case of rape, it is suggested that the fault falls on the woman. Most of practices, especially about woman covering themselves, come from the edicts and not the Quran. 1:41:44 – In the Quran are mentioned 4 prayer times, not 5. So celebrate God’s glory in the evening, in the morning— praise is due to Him in the heavens and the earth—in the late afternoon, and at midday. The burden of proof is on everyone else except for Mohammed, God or Islam. You [Prophet] are not, by [receiving] God’s grace, a madman: you will have a never-ending reward— truly you have a strong character— and soon you will see, as will they, which of you is afflicted with madness. Your Lord knows best who strays from His path and who is rightly guided. So I swear by what you can see and by what you cannot see: this [Qur’an] is the word [spoken by] an honoured messenger, not the words of a poet—how little you believe!— nor the words of a soothsayer–how little you reflect! This [Qur’an] is a message sent down from the Lord of the Worlds: if [the Prophet] had attributed some fabrication to Us, We would certainly have seized his right hand and cut off his lifeblood, and none of you could have defended him. 1:46:22 – Qur'an gets boring at times, describing paradise repeatedly and saying believers will go to heaven, non believers to hell. It was intended to be recited, not written and read. In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy Say, ‘He is God the One, God the eternal. He begot no one nor was He begotten. No one is comparable to Him. 1:54:00 – Join the Patreon if you're not there yet. We talk about very exciting episodes coming up (and Inception!). Get access to our hangouts, get the book notes we use for the show, and participate on our community. You can support the show in additional ways buying stuff on our Support page. Also, very important, tell your friends and help spread the show through word of mouth. Leave reviews on iTunes. Or leave Amazon book reviews ;) If you hated this episode, make it go viral. This is our first source book. Give us feedback on Twitter: @Neil Soni (@TheRealNeilS) and @Nat Eliason (@nateliason). If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com.

Dom DeLuise, celebrity fat man (and five of clubs), has been implicated in the following unseemly acts in my mind’s eye: He has hocked a fat globule of spittle (nine of clubs) on Albert Einstein’s thick white mane (three of diamonds) and delivered a devastating karate kick (five of spades) to the groin of Pope Benedict XVI (six of diamonds). Michael Jackson (king of hearts) has engaged in behavior bizarre even for him. He has defecated (two of clubs) on a salmon burger (king of clubs) and captured his flatulence (queen of clubs) in a balloon (six of spades). Rhea Perlman, diminutive Cheers bartendress (and queen of spades), has been caught cavorting with the seven-foot-seven Sudanese basketball star Manute Bol (seven of clubs) in a highly explicit (and in this case, anatomically improbable) two-digit act of congress (three of clubs). In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat discuss Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer. It is a fun book episode about how Joshua Foer came from nowhere to win the US memory championship with the challenge and coaching of Ed Cook. In the book Josh shows how to train our brain memory “muscle” and remember everything. We cover a wide range of topics, including: Why and how poetry, religion, and epics are interconnected because of memory Mnemonic techniques to remember numbers, names, cards, everything How to hack our brain to “live longer” Incredible memory stats How to impress your crush and make your dates memorable And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our fun episodes on Emergency by Neil Strauss, a book for preppers, as well as our recent episode on How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff, a short an easy book that shows how media can be manipulated. Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show How to win the U.S. memory championship [3:12] The Google Effect [8:40] Playstation [15:09] Twitter [19:35] LinkedIn [19:35] Pearl Harbor [21:35] 9/11 [21:36] Anki [26:34] Lindy Effect [29:10] Nat's book notes and Brain [48:49] Evernote [53:00] World Memory Records [59:17] Memrise [1:01:11] Ed Cook on Tim Ferriss Podcast [1:02:11] Duolingo [1:02:58] CMU [1:04:22] Fight Through the Suck – Justin Mares [1:07:28] 10000 Hour Rule on Google [1:12:15] The World Memory Championships [1:17:03] Joshua Foer TED talk [1:17:32] 21 (film) [1:18:04] Books mentioned Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand [1:50] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Homo Deus by Yuval Harari [1:52] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari [1:52] (Nat’s notes) (book episode part 1 & part 2) Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter [2:21] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Emergency [2:32] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman [6:11] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Torah [11:00] The Quran [11:00] The Tower – Hotel Concierge [31:16] (article episode) Essays by Montaigne [47:27] 12 Rules for Life by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson [50:15] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) Way of Zen by Alan Watts [50:16] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [50:17] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson [50:18] (Neil’s notes) The 4 Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss [1:02:34] Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell [1:03:48] Peak by Anders Ericsson [1:03:56] Remember, Remember by Ed Cooke [1:15:52] The Memory Book by Harry Lorayne [1:16:32] People mentioned Joshua Foer Albert Einstein Ed Cook [3:40] Homer [5:36] Plato [5:50] Simba [16:13] Mufasa [16:33] Adil Majid [17:55] (Crypto episode) Sigmund Freud [18:20] Pepper the Poochon [23:06] Montaigne [47:12] Tiago Forte [51:46] Cicero [53:56] Frank Sinatra [56:26] David Beckham [56:32] Superman [56:37] Alex Mullan memory grandmaster [59:43] Tim Ferriss [1:02:11] Anders Ericsson [1:03:41] Malcolm Gladwell [1:03:48] James Franco 1:18:17 Michael Serrick 1:18:24 Show Topics 3:12 – Extreme memory is not innate, comes from training. Until books became affordable, there were no easy means to record and keep information. We had to use our brains and information was passed down orally. There is no need of crazy photographic memory or some innate ability, but just training the "muscle". 7:50 – How many phone numbers do you remember? If you don't have to struggle to remember it, you'll not remember it. For efficiency your body doesn't want to do anything more than needed. Poetry and religion and epics are connected to memory training. 11:20 – The story of how Josh learnt the techniques of extreme memory. First technique: remembering names. Associating name sounds with a vivid image. Remembering not westernized names. What names can you remember with these images? Nailing down in front of a Playstation. A lion's son being chased by an gnat. A wizard dealing cards to Freud. When introducing someone to your friends, name your friends a lot so the new comer can remember their names. 19:04 – Practicing these techniques on Twitter or LinkedIn. Challenges in the competition. Remembering participants' attributes in a fake dinner, cards, string of numbers, and a poem. 20:33 – Second technique. Chunking. Remembering in chunks is easier than in smaller bits. In reduces the pieces of information. Example: string of 12 numbers chunked into the two big surprise attacks on American soil. Combining large chunks numbers into bigger images. Keeping the order of numbers by keeping a path to your memory palace. 25:41 – The time you need to dedicate each day is pretty small compared to its ROI. Remembering cards by associating 3 of each each time. These tactics were used for a long long time, even thousands of years ago. The importance of context. A big part of why this works is because we are good at remembering things in context but not when it's random information. Chessmasters examples. 31:03 – Increased perceived longevity. Nuances and quantity of experiences increases perceptual time. Life seems to speed up as we get older just because life gets less memorable, more repetitive. Monotony collapses time and novelty unfolds it. Downside of the idea of flow. Time experience is based on what we can remember. 37:15 – Tips to make a date memorable. Tips for planning parties. Plan 3 phases of a party, for example move the party in different rooms, different drinks, and change activities. It will feel like a longer party even if it took the same amount of time. It's kind of narrative fallacy used to our advantage. 41:05 – Memory images. Creating images for everything. Our brain prefers visual information and novelty. Collect numbers wandering in your house. The funnier, the looter, the more bizarre images, the better. Our brain takes 20% of our energy consumption. We forget dreams because our brain thinks it's junk data. 44:26 – Make images dirty and sexual. Use multiple senses too. Include smells, feelings, multi-sensory experiences. How we can remember songs even if we don't listen them for 10 years. Write your feelings and thoughts at the end of each book you read. Very useful if you are getting into speed reading or want to remember what the book was about, snippents will give you cues to remember it. Nat's book notes are efficient to remember core parts of a book. Neil's tactic to give attention to books’ concepts. 50:53 – Repetition. Nat's 3 layers strategy: pull out all important sections, bold important parts of sections, then highlight the most important part of the bolded part. Layer 4: adding a summary. 53:02 – The Method of Loci. Using memory images based on your environment. If you have to remember a speech, visualize the points you want to talk about at specific places. You can remember your speech by looking at specific parts of the auditorium or walking through the stage. Useful to remember dance movements. Advantages of the memory palace vs the Loci method. 55:59 – Remembering numbers. The PAO system: Person, Action, Object. First, associate an image to numbers going from 0 to 99. Remembering a 6 digit number can be done mixing the person of the first pair of digits, with the action of the second, and object of the third. 1:01:00 – Tangents. Memory training companies. 1:03:20 – Learning advice. How to get further the OK plateau. Experiments on memorizing. How the early University experiments on memory looked like. Reaching the peak of memory training is not about the hours put in, but the quality of those hours. During the first phase, known as the “cognitive stage,” you’re intellectualizing the task and discovering new strategies to accomplish it more proficiently. During the second “associative stage,” you’re concentrating less, making fewer major errors, and generally becoming more efficient. Finally you reach what Fitts called the “autonomous stage,” when you figure that you’ve gotten as good as you need to get at the task and you’re basically running on autopilot. You could call it the “OK plateau”, the point at which you decide you’re OK with how good you are at something, turn on autopilot, and stop improving. Breaking up the OK plateau. When you deliberately want to get better at something, you may get initially worse. Sometimes you need to go down to get at a higher point later. It's not enjoyable in the short term. You have to deliberately make yourself uncomfortable to break the plateau. Changing variables to find where the weaknesses are. The 10.000 hours rule. 1:14:18 – Other books and resources about memory training. 1:18:48 – Get the story part reading the book! If you want to listen the bonus material, get the book note we use for the show, go to our Patreon page. There you can comment about the book too after they come out. You can also join our monthly hangout. On our first hangout we have a very interesting conversation for an hour and a half. You can support the show in additional ways buying stuff on our Support page. Also, very important, tell your friends and help spread the show through word of mouth. Leave reviews on iTunes. Or leave Amazon book reviews ;)   Find us on Twitter @Neil Soni (@TheRealNeilS) and @Nat Eliason (@nateliason). If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com

“When you hear a statistic say that the average American brushes their teeth 1.02 times a day, ask yourself how could they have figured it out? Does it make sense that it could have been researched effectively? In this case they would have had to ask and don't you think it's a safe assumption that people lied?” In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat discuss How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff. In this book we learn how to spot deceptive statistics, ways surveys are manipulated and the hidden agenda behind every piece of data. “If you can’t prove what you want to prove, demonstrate something else and pretend that they are the same thing. In the daze that follows the collision of statistics with the human mind, hardly anybody will notice the difference. The semi-attached figure is a device guaranteed to stand you in good stead. It always has.” We cover a wide range of topics, including: Biased samples & discarded data Stereotypes, demographics and diversity in data The Sphinx, Aquatic Apes and Conspiracy Theories Grapefruits, Graphs and Guantanamo How to question and uncover the truth behind statistics And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff! You can also listen on Google Play Music, SoundCloud, YouTube, or in any other podcasting app by searching “Made You Think.” If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on Influence by Robert B. Cialdini for a book with a similar structure, or the book Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb for more on the deception of data. Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Mushroom coffee [00:22] Caffeine [00:28] Goodreads [03:29] Amazon [06:22] Biased samples [08:17] New York City [09:18] Australia [09:26] Russia [09:31] Africa [09:34] Greenland [09:59] Liberal media [10:39] Republican [10:55] Middle Eastern [11:09] Saudi Arabia [11:14] CNN [11:19] American Flag [11:23] Israeli Soldier [11:27] Have more students been killed in schools than soldiers in combat zones? [12:15] Gallup Poll [14:06] Evolution [14:50] Fox and Friends [16:04] Twitter [16:05] Opioid epidemic [17:10] Biased averages [17:56] Mean [17:56] Mode [17:56] Median [17:56] US income [18:41] Power laws [20:35] MD [21:10] Phd [21:11] Startups [21:34] Revenue [22:07] Mode (statistics) - Wikipedia - Kim and Korean families [25:27] Tweet – Huge Plot Hole In Reality [26:21] Miraval Wellness Resort [26:35] Yoga [26:42] Massages [26:43] Healing Crystals [26:44] Spa [26:45] Plant based diet [27:04] Sphinx [28:15] Patreon [28:19] Crony belief [28:55] American Medical Association [28:58] Heart disease [28:58] PubMed [29:06] Aquatic Apes [29:45] Doctors [31:21] Robin Hanson on Sam Harris’ podcast [32:00] Self-Improvement [33:57] Christianity [33:59] Monogamy [34:13] Tariffs [35:24] Nazi [36:31] Alt-right [36:41] National Debt [38:32] Democrats [38:28] Congress [38:39] Lockheed Martin [39:24] UBI [39:39] Marines [40:22] Navy [40:22] Air Force [40:22] Joint Strike Fighter [40:44] VTOL [40:59] Supersonic [41:00] The F-35 Is a $1.4 Trillion National Disaster – War is Boring article [42:15] FOMO [42:42] Energy subsidies [42:55] Iowa [43:15] Corn State [43:17] Benevolent Dictator [43:25] Legalizing marijuana [43:44] Ethanol [43:48] Guantanamo [43:50] 2020 election [44:27] P-Value [45:50] Zoloft [46:06] ADHD medication [46:35] Big Data [47:49] Correlation and causation [48:34] FDA [50:33] Statins [51:40] Lipitor [51:30] Birth Control [51:31] Aspirin [51:32] Alcohol [51:48] Opioids [51:53] Marijuana [51:55] Naringin [52:24] Grapefruit Drug Potentiator [53:19] Graphs [54:39] Logarithmic Y-axis [57:04] Nostrum [58:08] Nat’s article – Could that Be Explained by Marketing? [58:40] Cigarettes [59:18] McDonalds [01:05:26] Tequila [01:06:56] Gluten [01:06:58] Estrogen [01:07:03] Hops [01:07:05] Phytoestrogens [01:07:8] Soy [01:07:59] Carnegie Mellon [01:10:23] WEIRD research [01:13:45] Harvard [01:14:33] Montana State [01:14:37] Maasai Tribe [01:15:05] Capitalist society [01:15:14] Communist society [01:15:17] Johns Hopkins [01:18:12] Wall Street [01:20:50] Utopia [01:23:02] Nat’s article – Social Disobedience [01:29:14] Medium [01:29:35] The Need for Social Disobedience – Nat Eliason on Medium [1:25:40] PornHub [1:34:10] ARPU [01:34:39] Alexa ranking [01:35:19] Reddit [01:36:43] Xvideos [1:36:45] VK [01:37:04] Twitch [01:37:41] eBay [01:37:47] Books mentioned How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb [02:59] (Nat’s notes) You are a Badass by Jen Sincero [06:51] Influence by Robert B. Cialdini [07:58] (book episode) The War on Normal People by Andrew Yang [20:46] (Nat’s Notes) (book episode) Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler [31:50] (Nat’s Notes) (book episode) Kanye – College Dropout [01:10:39] (album episode) Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [01:11:29] (Nats’ Notes) (book episode) Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault [01:21:58] (Nat’s Notes) (book episode) People mentioned Darrell Huff Nassim Taleb [02:48] (Antifragile episode, Skin in the Game episode) Jimmy Fallon [09:16] Donald Trump [10:37] Hillary Clinton [16:10] Bernie Sanders [16:38] Bill Gates [19:39] Ben Greenfield [30:06] Peter Thiel [30:13] Rhonda Patrick [30:16] Joe Rogan [30:29] Barack Obama [30:35] Robin Hanson [31:48] (Elephant in the Brain episode) Sam Harris [31:55] Jordan Peterson [33:14] (12 Rules for Life episode) Andrew Yang [44:30] (The War on Normal People episode, Q&A episode) Nicolas Cage [48:34] Taylor Pearson [01:11:53] Socrates [01:31:22] Show Topics 01:01 – Fun book to read, great pocket guide. Easy to internalize many of the ideas. Useful for everyday life and not getting tricked by data. People rely on data, easily let their opinion be swayed by statistics. The book shows there are so many ways to game a statistic. Learning these rules will serve you well. 03:02 – Lots of overlap to Fooled by Randomness, similar themes for similar problems. This not a new book. Published in 1954 and is more relevant today than ever. 03:38 – Amazon reviews, can’t rely on reviews to be honest, for books, restaurants etc.  People give arbitrary scores for unrelated reasons. Scoring using 1-5 or 1-10 isn’t a useful benchmark. Don’t use 7 as a score, 6 or 8 have more concrete meanings. Book reviews skewed by the emotion you feel after reading. Books that are feel-good are rated higher even though if they’re not useful over the long term. 07:23 – Bonus material, 25 minutes, mini-episode on Sphinx conspiracy theories. Check out the Patreon to get it. 07:33 – Book structure, 6 chapters. Different ways statistics can be manipulated. Final chapter gives questions on how talk back to statistics. How to think about data. Similar layout and structure to the book Influence. 08:21 – Biased samples. Where a sample is not representative or too narrow, results are also going to be the same. Psychiatrist example – everyone seems neurotic if you only work with neurotic people. Jimmy Fallon sketch, testing people’s geography knowledge. The joke is that Americans are stupid but they only show those that fail. Also the environment and element of surprise impacts data too. Biased data can’t tell you anything useful. 10:39 – Media portrayal of Trump voters. Using unflattering stereotypes that then becomes accepted as the norm. Media also uses the tactic of showing biased stereotypes of protests and violence to influence opinions on the Middle-East. 11:54 – Statistics on deaths in school vs military. Total deaths may be more in school but this data gets used to imply probability and likelihood of death – which is a completely different statistic. Presenting data one way to provoke an alternative interpretation. Data is being used to tell a story that serves an agenda. When we hear a statistic we assume it’s real, we need to question it more. 14:06 – Discarded data – Example of gallup polls, who answers these polls? Do you know anyone who has been polled? This shows that the sample is not truly representative. Twitter surveys on evolution and skewed data due to restrictive demographics in sampling. The method of survey affects the outcome. Phone polls vs online polls change age demographic. Difficulty of getting a representative sample. All samples will be biased in some way.  They key is knowing what is the bias in your sample so it can be corrected or highlighted. Hillary Clinton, opinion polls. Bernie Sanders on healthcare spending. 17:56 – Averages and mean, mode & median. How average can mean 3 different things and are used in certain scenarios.  The term average doesn’t mean a lot, need to understand how it was calculated. Mean is hugely skewed by a single outlier but outliers make little difference to the median. As Taleb says, never cross a river that’s on average four feet deep. Averages for income, height, grades, education and how they should be calculated. You can use mean average on things like education because there is a limit to the number of degrees someone can have. 21:34 – Startups and how they calculate their daily active users or revenue per user can be deceptive. Year to date revenue gives a better understanding than monthly. Incomes in a neighborhood can change depending on the average that is used. Once can seem high to prop up real estate figures. The other can seem low to support home owner association protests. Both use the same data manipulated to serve an agenda and presented in different ways. When to use the Mode? Use mode when dealing with non-numerical values to discover the most fashionable or most popular item. 26:35 – Health resort promoting ill informed seminars on the nutritional value of meat. Lots of common myths that we don’t do much research on. The top result on google is not always accurate, it isn’t being fact checked so we should know to research these things. 28:15 – Bonus material. Sphinx and conspiracy theories. Theories not being taken seriously by archeologists. Aquatic apes, crony beliefs and things we want to be true. 29:51 – Difficult to research for everything you hear, you have a time limitation on having to form a belief.  Find sources that you can trust and discount those who don’t have the authority to speak on a particular matter. Testing authority & parents. Authority and taking advice of doctors despite how long ago their education may have been. 32:01 – Dangers of listening to people who are not experts in a particular topic. Who is qualified to talk on a particular subject? Everyone thinks everyone should have an opinion on everything. If you trust someone in one area, don’t trust them on everything. The danger of intellectual heroes. Being fans of Taleb but knowing he is not always right. Admire someone’s work but don’t look to them for guidance on everything. Don’t agree with all someone’s opinions. Don’t criticize someone for favouring one viewpoint of someone you think is completely bad. 34:32 – Difficulties of political debate. Not possible to openly agree with Trump on a specific idea like tariffs. People automatically assume you agree with him on everything.  Opioid manufacturers being indicted, seems like a great idea but you can voice those opinions. Politics as the new religion. Now is more like picking a side and blindly sticking to it. Loss of discourse. Idea sports. 38:21 – Political parties flip ideals when they are in charge. No incentive to pay down the national debt. Involves imposing unpopular cuts and taxes. Cutting unnecessary spending seems logical. Latest military jet, expensive but unfit for purpose. 43:40 – Changing opinion of Trump. He wasn’t as radical as everyone was expecting. He wants to win a second term. Bernie Sanders may be more the type of person to make radical changes. Bernie Sanders as a dream podcast guest. Debating with Andrew Yang. 2020 Election.   44:54 – Discarded data. Companies continue to run experiments until they get the outcome they want. Significant portions of experiments have been discarded. What is classed as a statistically significant result? If you run 1000 experiments and 999 fail to show significant results. Using the 1 result as showing something significant without presenting the rest of the data. Antidepressant studies show negligible impact compared to a placebo but also had lots of negative side effects. Yet only those studies that showed net positive effects got published. 46:48 – Cosmetics and food companies regularly use skewed samples in their data. Skin complaints and using regression back to the norm as proof of product working. Companies start another study and keep going until they get the results they need. 47:49 – Big Data. The larger size the data set the more likely you will be able to prove whatever you want by slicing the data in particular ways. Correlation and causation. Nicolas Cage movies vs School Shootings. Ice cream consumption vs murder rates. Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Climate change vs Piracy. Nicolas Cage movies vs Swimming Pool Drownings. You can pair any two things together that rise and fall in the same trends. This does not mean that one affects the other. Small samples have a huge variance. It’s possible to get 8/10 heads when flipping a coin but so much less likely to get 80/100 however the result is still the same. You can get a significant result by using a smaller data set. Most pharmaceutical tests are not done on women. Most drugs go to market without being thoroughly tested on the female biology, the interaction with estrogen, birth control. Limited studies on the interactions with other drugs. You would think it should be tested alongside common medications. Grapefruit juice and other fruits have properties in them that amplify the potency of certain drugs so you have to be careful not to take it alongside certain medications 54:39 – Graph manipulation. Show 3 different graphs with the same data but from different perspectives they look totally different. By having axes that don’t start at zero they don’t tell the whole picture. Zoom in on a significant portion of the results making the incline of the line on the graph steeper or shallower according to the data included. How you frame the graph makes a difference in the perception of the same data. 58:08 – Semi attached figure is when you say one thing and imply another. You can’t say something cures colds but you can say it kills 300k germs in 11 seconds in a test tube. This data then lets people make up their own minds and infer an incorrect conclusion. Cigarettes statistics and the preferred brand of physicians. The statistic doesn’t tell you anything. Weather and the number of accidents. Even though fog is more dangerous there will always be more accidents in clear weather because there is more clear weather days than foggy days. Trying to compare 2 stocks by share price is a common mistake. 01:02:08 – Statistics used for catchy headlines and for their shock value. Accidents in the home are more common – makes you feel like it’s more dangerous. True of anywhere that you spend the most time. You can represent the same data in many different ways so it sounds completely different. 01:04:38 – Correlation vs causation. Smoking vs low grades. Easy to infer that one causes the other but it could be the opposite or other lifestyle factors. People who eat McDonalds vs heart disease and correlating that to eating meat. Beer bellies and the correlation to poor health. Often combined factors including environment and other common habits associated to beer drinking. 01:08:40 – Changing attitudes to college. Myth of college equaling success. Negates the other factors of how you got to college that contributes to your success. You don’t get to see alternative histories. College popularity is dropping, poor choice of investment. 01:11:01 – How to talk to a statistic, questions to ask to understand the data you are being presented with. Who Says So? Who is telling you this information and what is their bias or agenda. When presented with impossible statistics think how did they get that data? Look at the demographics of academic psychological studies – most participants are college students. Think about if studies can be replicated. 01:15:29 – How Does He Know? Look out for evidence of a biased sample or a sample that has been improperly selected. Is the sample big enough to give a reliable conclusion. 01:15:44 – What Were their methods? Does it make sense that people could actually know this information? Cancer diagnosis and changing rates. Survival seems longer as we are detecting it earlier, doesn’t actually mean the treatments have an impact. Also people are living longer to become more susceptible to cancer. And a growth in population so naturally numbers will rise. 01:17:25 – What’s Missing? Looking at raw data can give you a true picture. Johns Hopkins and female students. Look at startup growth, how they measure it. Percentages don’t tell you if they have 100 users or 10k users. Raw percentages are misleading. This also happens with diversity, gender. Expecting women to be exactly 50% of elected representatives. However that doesn’t account for the application pool and what happens when you reach that 50%. Do you limit diversity? Male vs Female leadership in Wall Street Organizations. Sexism. Dichotomy creates oppression. When you try to balance you create an alternative discrimination. 01:23:10 – Did somebody change the subject? The reasons for collecting data often skew the results. Do people want to be counted, are people incentivized to give a truthful answer? China example, different census record, one for military and tax reasons the second for famine relief. 01:24:27 – Does it make sense? If you hear a statistic that doesn’t seem plausible or too incredible it’s usually a good sign to be skeptical. 01:25:08 – Bonus material, sphinx conspiracy theories, join the patreon to access it. Overall a good book, quick read, quite entertaining and funny. Super useful. Internalize the questions and use them against outlandish statistics. Look for multiple examples to prove something is good or bad. People often take one or two experiences and extrapolate that to mean always. 01:31:54 – If you want to know everything that's coming up on the show, get access to that on our Patreon. You also get our detailed book notes and really fun bonus material. We also do monthly Hangouts, next one is going to be like mid-September. We don't like ads we're going with the the crowdfunded method. If you want another way to support podcast, go to MadeYouThinkPodcast. com/support. We have some of our wonderful partners there. Tell your friends about the show, shout us out on PornHub. Leave a review on iTunes. Hit us up on Twitter, @NatEliason and @TheRealNeilS, we'll see you all next week. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com

"Not long ago kids would argue over which console was better now teenagers whisper cuckold and Nazi like it's considered good manners. We are in the midst of a profound rearrangement of what traits are to be incentivized and rewarded, driven by some 7 billion people each acting with what they believe to be the best of intentions, but who can foresee with what success and with what result." In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat discuss The Tower. In this article we learn about ideas as memes that spread virally and art as a means of being understood. "The Judeo-Christian capital G—o—d, robed, bearded, opinionated, deadlifts, thematically male, is the avatar of civilization, just check the year. Even so, His omnipotence is not uncontested. He knows this. You should see what He did to the guys with the golden calf. God said, “Let there will be light,” and there was light. But just as Nyx preceded Zeus, that means the darkness was already there. And the house always wins at the second law of thermodynamics." We cover a wide range of topics, including: Diversity, privilege, racism & cultural stereotypes The importance belonging and the power of action Memes, memories, outrage and descent into chaos Art, Happiness and Tangents on Tacos & Texas And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to check out the article The Tower on the Hotel Concierge blog! You can also listen on Google Play Music, SoundCloud, YouTube, or in any other podcasting app by searching “Made You Think.” If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on I am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter for more on self-image and self-invention or our episode on The Riddle of the Gun by Sam Harris for another fascinating article on extreme views. Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Cuckold [00:06] Nazi [00:07] Wait but Why blog [00:47] The Last Psychiatrist [02:28] Doxing [02:52] Hotel Concierge [03:16] Samizdat [03:18] Amy Schumer offers you a look into your soul – The Last Psychiatrist [03:32] Tower of Babel [04:31] God [04:45] Virus Theory [05:39] Memes [05:58] Dominance hierarchy [06:21] Humanism [07:08] Bigotry [07:19] Dichotomy [08:38] Multiculturalism [08:55] Diversity [08:56] Nyx [11:22] Zeus [11:25] Second law of thermodynamics [11:23] Bible [12:36] Primordial Chaos [12:42] Religion [12:51] Mythology [12:51] The Big Bang [12:59] Entropy [13:33] Politics [14:20] Eros [14:32] Ananke [14:32] Super-ego [15:28] Socialism [17:02] Communism [17:03] Duration-neglect [17:42] Dilettante [18:24] Nomad life [20:41] Judaism [21:47] Yahweh [21:59] Old Testament [21:59] Circumcision [22:06] Prohibition [22:09] Christianity [22:41] Tyranny of the minority [23:05] Kosher [23:09] Postmodernist [25:44] Dogma [26:38] Superstition [26:39] Toxic Masculinity [27:38] Gene [29:05] Political Correctness [29:15] Democracy [29:18] Evolution [29:42] CNN [30:43] Virality [31:42] Clickbait [32:16] Islam [32:56] Apostasy [32:59] Birth control [33:24] Churn rate [33:57] Non-compete clause [34:00] Spread of Christianity [34:53] Missionary [34:58] Proselytization [34:59] Spanish Inquisition [35:12] Catholicism [35:16] Atheist [35:31] Halal [36:11] Saudi Arabia [36:14] Dubai [36:21] Emirati ID [36:26] Jainism [37:28] Buddhism [37:37] Schizophrenic [40:19] Hollywood [42:22] Agnostic [44:46] iPads [45:40] United States [45:48] World War II [46:38] London [46:48 The Blitz [46:48] Hedonic treadmill [47:16] JavaScript [48:58] Google [53:37] Facebook [53:38] National Memory Championship [54:38] Racism [57:32] Discrimination [57:33] Stereotypes [58:07] Hamptons [01:00:51] Carnegie Mellon [01:01:05] Carnivore Diet [01:01:24] Keto Diet [01:01:53] Paleo Diet [01:01:53] Chinese tourists [01:02:17] Louvre [01:03:53] Opiates [01:06:18] Fox News [01:06:38] World Trade Towers [01:06:51] Gun control [01:10:12] Estee Lauder [1:13:00] YC [01:13:09] Hierarchy of needs [01:15:16] Trade Tariffs [01:16:30] UK [01:17:13] Brexit [01:17:14] Middlebury school [01:18:13] Democrats Are Wrong About Republicans. Republicans Are Wrong About Democrats [1:18:17] Misperceptions of Republicans and Democrats [01:18:17] LGBTQ Cultural appropriation [01:19:50] Microaggression [01:19:51] Colonist [01:20:31] Tacos [01:21:49] Texas [01:21:55] Harvard sued for alleged discrimination against Asian American applicants - Discrimination article [01:22:48] MLB [01:24:24] Affirmative action [01:27:35] Diversity [01:27:41] Exeter [01:28:46] Minerva [01:29:36] Stanford [01:31:42] SATs [01:32:49] Harvard [01:37:12] IIT [01:37:12] UBI [01:47:00] Books mentioned The Tower 12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson [07:43] (book episode) The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus [17:28] (book episode) Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [22:56] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Torah [25:24] The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins [29:00] The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch [29:29] (book episode) Sapiens by Yuval Harari [29:31] (Nat’s notes) (part I, part II) I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter [38:26] Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler [38:49] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Bible [44:11] Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut [45:27] The Motivation Hacker by Nick Winter [49:05] Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer [54:27] The Riddle of the Gun by Sam Harris [01:10:16] (article episode) Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan [01:23:56] Black Panther by Ta-Nehisi Coates [01:23:56] Tibetan Peach Pie by Tom Robbins [01:35:02] People mentioned Hotel Concierge (Author Unknown) Tarantino [01:17] Jordan Peterson [07:43] (12 Rules For Life episode) Thaddeus Russell [09:11] Nassim Taleb [11:40] (Antifragile episode, Skin in the Game episode) Sigmund Freud [15:17] Elon Musk [20:04] Richard Dawkins [28:59] Douglas Hofstadter [38:28] (Godel, Escher, Bach episode) Gwern [42:31] Jesus [44:01] Mary [44:08] Joseph [44:09] Nick Winter [48:52] Joshua Foer [54:32] Ed Cooke [54:47] Mark Manson [58:14] Donald Trump [58:21] Apu [59:15] Jackie Robinson [01:24:19] Ben Nelson - Founder of Minerva [01:29:34] Tom Robbins [01:35:00] Andrew Yang [01:47:04] Show Topics 00:27 – This is one of our occasional article episodes where we have found an article so interesting and profound that it warrants an episode. This article is bordering on us on a short book. Very fun to read. The article is The Tower from a blog called Hotel Concierge. We don't know who this writer is but he/she/they are amazing. 03:59 – The Tower is based on the Tower of Babel which is built to be closer to God and to unite humanity in one place, under one language. This is destroyed by God and humanity is spread across the world. The analogy is that that with modern communication, being able to talk instantly with everyone it is creating this Tower of Babel like effect, leading to outrage culture. 05:48 – Our need to be understood and to feel in control is fuelling that outrage and rebellion. Previously unprivileged groups are now succeeding in the dominance hierarchy. We all need a set of beliefs and having any beliefs are better than none. If you have no beliefs, then you just sort of become a vessel for other people’s ideas. 07:44 – There is always a tendency towards more chaos. Art in all forms is an attempt to be understood. Privilege as how easily your art and memes can be understood. Multiculturalism and diversity go counter towards the goal of assimilation. A lot of white liberals who were fighting for diversity don't actually want diversity. They don't want different cultures. They want the same culture in different colors. 10:21 – This is a well-written persuasive article. “The Judeo-Christian capital G—o—d, robed, bearded, opinionated, deadlifts, thematically male, is the avatar of civilization, just check the year. Even so, His omnipotence is not uncontested. He knows this. You should see what He did to the guys with the golden calf. God said, “Let there will be light,” and there was light. But just as Nyx preceded Zeus, that means the darkness was already there. And the house always wins at the second law of thermodynamics.” The writing style comes off as masculine. Even before God created light, there was still was darkness. Tendency back to the chaos of darkness. You have to deliberately fight against chaos. Human desires for acceptance and control. 14:40 – Acceptance and Control. “Only when we see ourselves reflected by the universe can we believe that it is part of us.” Our tendency towards chaos causes us to feel unhappy and unfulfilled “Ananke hates nothing but entropy. Ananke rewards us for turning atoms into tools and tools into appendages, so much the better if those atoms comprise other humans, viz. the high of domination” “Ananke compels us to learn, to make the universe predictable, to gain control over time, what next happens, and space, what happens next.” 16:23 – A feeling of control is important for us to be able to have any life satisfaction. “Minimum wage jobs are worse because of their pointlessness more than because of their indignity, work harder/better/faster/stronger and no one cares, screw up and you’re replaced without a missed beat.” No control over work and no sense of belonging. Working just like a cog in a machine. 17:35 – “No direction, no story; the days blur together until arthritis leaves you crippled. Stoned summers don’t get you off the hook, duration neglect compresses both good and bad sensations. No matter how pleasant, when nothing is happening, the superego starves. There’s a reason couples fight on vacation.” Not only do we need control and reflection but we need a narrative that has a story to it. Happiness comes from working towards a goal. 18:13 – “Being a dilettante is too easy, flatlines don't form memories.” You need an arc to your story a narrative. “Reinventing yourself between brunches feels good.” 18:52 – It does seem possible to achieve multiple things in your life with focus which is different to bouncing around to new ideas “the illusion of control—until you’ve dreamt the same dreams too many times and they no longer get you high.” Getting excited over a vision is not making progress. If you don’t pick something you will be running around aimlessly. 21:25 – The reason God destroyed the Tower of Babel was he wanted to punish this consolidation under one belief system, one language. Ideas as memes.  If something isn't carefully designed then it can spread fairly naturally. Ideas are going to naturally evolve and spread and so religions get weaker over time. It is easier to wholly conform to a religion than to partially conform and have to make those decisions. Kosher vs non-Kosher. By keeping these very strict rules it made these religious concepts spread virally. Criticism to Humanism because it doesn't really give any prescriptions. Ideas need to take a concrete stand otherwise they are a weak belief system. Your religion becomes a decision making framework but if you are just open to everything then you have no answers. 26:40 – Reasoning through everything is exhausting. Trying to place blame on bad actions on someone's upbringing or genetics means nothing is every anyone’s fault and no-one can be held accountable. “When someone slaps your hypothetical girlfriend's ass in the proverbial club, what does humanism say you should do? At least toxic masculinity has an answer.” 27:45 – If you don't have a code of conduct one will be provided for you. We have a suppressed memetic immune system. It’s statistically inevitable that every meme will attain its most infectious form. A meme is a term introduced by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene to reference an idea that spreads through a culture, like a gene spreads through the animal world. Political correctness is a meme and democracy is meme. 29:42 – Just like evolution happens faster in animals that breed more often, the more iterations memes go through the more viral they become. We are now in an era where free flow of information is causing us to consume all of these viral memes. Do the ideas control you or do you control the ideas? One can actually control their sources of inputs. Then one becomes a vessel for the ideas that take control of her. 31:54 – “A pathogen that is too restrained will lose out in competition to a more aggressive strain that diverts more host resources to its own reproduction.” Replication is the key to success. High switching cost, once one have publicly committed to these ideas. It’s difficult to move out of a religion due to surroundings and strong deterrents. Parents pass their religion on to their children and with few leaving a religion this just creates more people passing on these beliefs. “But as long as transmission continues despite the virulence, virulent pathogens will have the advantage.” 35:31 – Some religions have weakened over time, you can say you're Christian and you don't actually have to do anything. Alcohol consumption in UAE. Compliance due to deterrents. Trying too hard to not have any memes means you become susceptible to becoming a vessel and getting sucked into the ideas that are around you. All art is memes and all memes want to do is spread. Human desire to share information. 38:51 – “Art is compressed communication. The better the compression, with regards to both perceived fidelity and amount of information contained, the more artful the art”. Both writing and art are ways to purify your mind from chaos. Any form of media is art, this podcast is too. 39:15 – “I think “ease of having one’s art understood” is a defensible conception of “privilege”. Being understood is a huge part of life satisfaction. Diversity in Hollywood, it makes sense that it doesn’t get any more diverse as they are making films for their target culture. “Gwern seems to think that if we banned Guardians of the Galaxy the relevant audience would switch to Douglas Hofstadter. The assumption here is that nonfiction exists, distinct from and more truthful than fiction. I don’t buy it.” 44:15 – Pre-Renaissance – The popular memes of the time of religion was the art and message that lasted. Your religion is another form of privilege. “So who has more privilege, a cis-white-hetero billionaire with full-checklist depression or an unemployed transgender black woman who, despite this, is basically content? Either the billionaire has less privilege, in which case “privilege” is a Harrison Bergeron happiness tax, or the suicidal person has more privilege, in which case, how much does “privilege” matter, really.” “I’ve met Upper East Side kids less fulfilled by their iPads than Sub-Saharan kids without running water were with “catch the rock.” Happiness and privilege are not the same. You can be happy without privilege and depressed with wealth. Statistics on suicide being mostly wealthy younger people or those at the end of their life. Suicide and depression rates go down during war time. Being well off is not the solution for happiness, doesn't automatically make you happy. “Saved wealth buffers against tragedy but suffering finds a way.” 47:36 – “Like a forgotten drive to work, we are amnestic to routine, and memories of “eat, menial labor, sleep” blur together in the rearview mirror. The important-yet-oft-forgotten obverse is that, independent of happiness, wealth buys freedom from routine.” “A night at the opera is no more fun than pizza and brewskis, but the former is novel, for a time, and the latter soon fades from memory.” The importance of memory on happiness. Novelty of an experience puts a little placeholder in our memory, a hedonistic measurement. Most of traveling isn’t actually that fun but there are moments that do stick with you. Enjoyment tracking of extreme sports vs video games. We remember the peaks more than the consistent or length of enjoyment. You don’t remember the world like a spreadsheet. Entrepreneurial businesses vs standard job. Earnings might be the same but there are more more memories and signposts throughout the entrepreneurial journey that make it worth it . You only get the peaks from climbing your own mountain. 52:27 – Experiencing self vs Remembering self. You need those indicators in your memories for happiness, to reflect back to you who you are. Ed Cook plans parties with several different thematic parts so that it feels like a multitude of new experiences and memories all within one three hour party. Mark Manson recommends going to multiple bars on dates so it feels like you have a lot to remember and look back on. Same how large or distinct life experiences feel lengthy even if they were just for one day. 57:10 – “Contrary to the pop-ethical consensus, discrimination is not caused by having too many stereotypes but too few. If you wake to find a lithe man dressed in all black standing over your bed and holding a katana, it may be quite reasonable to infer that he is a hired ninja and that you are in grave danger. If, however, you assume this about every East Asian man that you encounter, you lack nuance of stereotypes.” Nuances of stereotypes within race, religion and politics. “Race and gender are social constructs, but the cultural norms that correlate with race and gender—and goth, prep, jock, etc—are real.” Where there are these intergroup conflicts over trivial differences. To counteract a stereotype you need an alternative worldview that narrows down that stereotype into a more nuanced view. Framing an argument against stereotypes as don't be racist join or die, fails and it's infuriatingly counterproductive because it doesn't create a new stereotype to work with. Stereotypes portfolio. 01:06:00 – “The racist stay racist and now feel that society is out to get them. hashtag MAGA.” Being told you are racist is really counterproductive. The opposite of feeling you belong. This causes people to accept the label and not change their world view. 01:07:54 – “Once acceptance becomes orthodoxy even private dissent becomes grounds for ostracization. No matter your other convictions you become a stereotype that society will single-issue-vote off the island, just ask Brendan Eich. Of course I support gay marriage; my point is that if one’s views before were “well, it is kind of weird,” then being told “soon there will be enough of us that we won’t have to deal with people like you at all”—that makes homophobia logical. And at least you can change your opinion of gay marriage. It’s much harder to change being white and low-class.” You can’t talk about the middle ground. It is the two extremes that are virulent. The opinions seem to be all or nothing. False correlation between number of words written about something leading people to think that thing is more prevalent in society, like words in an article relate to more crime. Intermittent fasting and the bubble of understanding within social groups. When we meet someone outside of our own knowledge we realize the bubble that we are in. “No one is born hateful, stranger anxiety doesn’t even start til six months. But culture war is history being written by the winners, first draft. Conservatives are offered the choice of fighting the ever-changing tides of social values or toiling away in obscurity while journalists pretend to like soccer. People want to be understood. And they will rage all sorts of ways against the dying of the light.” 01:14:38 – “The upper-middle class—mostly urban, mostly blue—claims by far the largest share of America’s income, more than the middle class and far more than the 1%. This, despite their protests to the contrary, gives them disproportionate control over the news and entertainment industry, which in cyberpunk America is tantamount to controlling the culture.” Urban culture controls the media so you’ve got the rural conservative that feels constantly misunderstood that leads to Trump. Global need to be understood, “I’m saying that the specific way the media talks about race and culture, creating an incoherent set of rules regarding “appropriation” and etiquette, proudly crying out that this is the end of those boring, selfish white people, has made the situation much, much worse. If the left wanted to prevent assimilation, there would be no more effective way.” When there are all these rules, where everything is cultural appropriation then it makes it easier for people to throw their hands up and admit defeat and continue with their world view as they cannot correct it. 01:21:05 – Every culture has a past. Judge people on how they are today. Stop punishing people pay for what their ancestors did. Forced assimilation doesn’t go well – like asking people to have X percent of your meals as Mexican food vs allowing people to naturally adopt a culture and its food – like tacos in Texas. 01:22:48 – Asians in America are succeeding at everything faster that most other groups ever have. These are positive changes to the power structure. Make what you want to see. Jackie Robinson as the first Black baseball player. His coach knew as the first black player he would receive aggression and wanted to make sure that his reaction to this would offer an alternative stereotype than the expected violence. This would pave the way for others after him. “Ergo, you decide to hire some minority writers to write your minority characters. Applications rush in. How are you going to decide who makes the cut? “You know, the usual. Interview. Letters of recommendation. College transcript—” This is how the system protects itself against change. At every step of the social hierarchy, what is required for a person of color or a woman to succeed is determined by the values of the ruling class. I think that’s “white patriarchal supremacy,” but don’t quote me. Of course, the same principle applies to e.g. homosexuals and Jews; thankfully those traits are easier to hide.” 01:29:41 – Extracurricular activities weed out poor people as they are exclusive to those with disposable income. Is it true diversity if just the rich kids from Buenos Aires or Mexico City get into a school but poorer Latino kids in the US don’t stand a chance. Tom Robbins spent 8 years while trying to get his big break in writing. That takes privilege to have that time to create art and not to have student debt. “These “gifted” but “troubled” people will bumble through their whole lives, getting second through tenth chances, mysteriously finding that anything involving an authority figure goes their way, as they ruthlessly condemn capitalist injustice, never realizing that criticizing privilege is…the language of privilege.” 1:37:30 – When you think of how many do not have privilege and are not understood and cannot express themselves. It's easy to imagine all of the outcasts conspiring to destroy that Tower. Nobody wants to feel like their beliefs are not allowed. 01:41:42 – The Prescription. “What’s the solution? There’s only one and it is so radical that I hesitate to even suggest it: stop being a pleb. You. Stop treating words as a substitute for action. Stop paying time and money into institutions that loan a symbol of mastery in lieu of actual depth. Stop looking for such symbols in others. Stop judging policies by the veneer of good intention rather than the details of consequence. Stop looking past people, because this is all the same, isn’t it? Working from a map, a stereotype, a symbol, instead fighting for the complex truth? None of this horror requires malice or even stupidity. All it requires is taking the easy way out.” 01:42:05 – Such great writing, narrative style is just so fun. Ton of bonus material for this one. If you're not already supporting us on Patreon, you can go to patreon.com/madeyouthink. You'll get all our recordings for the episode, detailed notes on the article including bolding and highlighting everything. You’ll see which articles are coming up and you can also join us for our monthly hangouts. Thank you to everybody who has joined we love you. We do also have a support page on the site madeyouthinkpodcast.com/support. Just tell your friends. Leave a review on iTunes. If you want to get in touch with us tweeting is probably best option. Do it at @TheRealNeilS and @NatEliason. Until next week! If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com