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!

“A Martian scientist with no understanding of visual perception could understand the rainbow, or lightning, or clouds as physical phenomena,  though he would never be able to understand the human concepts of rainbow, lighting, or cloud, or the place these things occupy in our phenomenal world.” In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat critically discuss the article What Is It Like to Be a Bat? by Thomas Nagel. This is the most famous piece on the mind-body problem. In it Nagel explores the mind-body issue, freedom, knowledge, meaning and value of human life. This article was penned down at an era where physicalism and materialism were prevalent, the idea that you can reduce all aspects of the mind to simply firings in the brain. However, Nagel was unpersuaded that physicalism of materialism gives an all-encompassing account of human experience. “Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting with consciousness it seems hopeless.” We cover a wide range of topics, including The mind-body consciousness problem Creating an objective interpretations of reality. Learning skills to overcome reporters biases Consciousness in animals Artificial intelligence (AI) and hacking of consciousness And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of What Is It Like to Be a Bat? by Thomas Nagel! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our book episodes on consciousness like Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, Sapiens by Yuval Harari, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett, and The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. 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 The Beginning of Infinity on Wikipedia [04:52] (book episode) Pod Save America Podcast [19:20] HARO Help A Reporter Out [22:14] Fox News [23:30] CNBC [23:30] Turing Test [30:53] Chinese Room [31:13] Chess [32:00] Go game [32:40] Watson AI [39:53] Joe Rogan interviews Elon Musk [47:34] The Man in the High Castle Television TV series [54:08] Hardcore History ep 62 – Supernova in the East I [54:42] Books mentioned What it is to be like a bat? By Thomas Nagel Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter [00:39] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Way of Zen by Alan Watts [01:02] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) Homo Deus by Yuval Harari [01:06] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett [1:11] (book episode) The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch [01:16] (book episode) The Riddle of the Gun by Sam Harris [16:53] (article episode) How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff [24:30] The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson [36:08] (Neil’s notes) Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari [56:40] (Nat’s notes) (book episode part 1 & part 2) Trust Me, I'm Lying by Ryan Holiday [23:01] The Man in the High Castle Novel by Philip K. Dick [54:08] Plato's Republic [20:10] People mentioned David Deutsch [05:25] (Infinity episode) Daniel Dennett [08:25] (Darwin’s episode) Bobby McMullen – Blind Bike Rider [09:44] Donald Trump [12:23] Charles Darwin [30:15] Pepper the Poochon [33:40] Sam Harris [37:19] (Guns episode) Yuval Noah Harari [37:19] Douglas Hofstadter [43:36] Nick Bostrom [43:53] Karl Marx [46:02] Elon Musk [47:34] (on this podcast) Hiroo Onoda [55:17] Show Topics 01:00 – Consciousness. The article is about the theory of mind and consciousness, looking into the mind-body problem. Aspects of the mind can be linked to how the brain responds. 01:58 – Challenge to physicalism rather than refute reductionism. Reductionism and physicalism cannot be fully understood; thus, making these two theories flawed. “Every reductionist has his favorite analogy for modern science. It is most unlikely that any of these unrelated examples of successful reduction will shed light on the relation of mind to brain”. Nagel seems not to refute reductionism but rather exposing a big whole in it and saying you can't take reductionism seriously until you fill this hole. 03:43 – Mind-body consciousness problem. Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting with consciousness it seems hopeless. “It seems unlikely that any physical theory of mind can be contemplated until more thought has been given to the general problem of subjective and objective”. 05:27 – All problems are soluble given enough intelligence in time. 06:08 – Subjective filter for any information. Physicalism and reductionism create an objective interpretation of reality. Physicalism and reductionism in some ways rely on creating an objective interpretation of reality. All the thoughts human beings have are grounded from the subjective view of the world. 08:00 – Humans cannot understand a “what it is like aspect” because they are not in that very situation. A bat was used to demonstrate this concept. Human beings cannot comprehend how a bat moves and survives by echo-location thus this highlights human cannot understand subjective experience from human data. 09:04 – Humans can learn to echo-locate. An excellent example is Bobby McMullen, who is a blind mountain biker; he uses echolocation and his senses to mountain bike. 10:14 – However, according to Nagel, even if a human could echo-locate, that is still not equivalent to how bats echo-locate. 10:35 – Subjective interpretation of reality cannot be stepped out. This means something outside of one’s understanding cannot be fully grasped or comprehended. This concept applies to understand to someone who is totally different from you. You can never know exactly what they went through or understand what they do why they do some things; it is easy to judge someone thinking they are making irrational actions without viewing their actions from the subjective experience. 12:12 – How would look post-Trump era discussions. Urban Democrats have different interests and value systems than rural Republicans. Where to draw the line for life? Understanding pro-life people. Pro-gunners point of view. Having a gun in Texas is a must. 18:28 – Divided political sphere. Humans choose a side that will agree with their preconceived opinions. 19:58 – Decentralization makes it really hard to create a cohesive story and narrative for a population. 20:20 – Gell-Mann amnesia effect. Phenomenon where one will believe about something they know not about because it has been reported. Journalists are almost never trained to actually understand what they are reporting on, not confirming the authenticity of their sources and misunderstanding statistics. 24:00 – Learning how to read research articles is an important skill these days as we can't rely on media anymore. Famous bad reporters interpretations. Bacon is bad for you as smoking. Coconut oil is bad because saturated fats. 26:26 – Hanlon's Razor. Applying that to even news reporters, they are not doing it necessarily maliciously, they are doing it for one of two reasons- it works, people click on it and read it; the second thing is a lot of these sites are effectively content firms. This circles up to what Nagel is saying about subjective character of experience which we cannot step outside of and not understanding what it is like to be someone else. 28:20 – Test for consciousness. Mirror test for animal self awareness. 30:38 – AI discussion. What means a computer is conscious? Turing test is not enough. Reaching intelligence by brute force. Computers that don't want to play chess. 33:33 – Consciousness in animals. Every animal has a level of consciousness and awareness in the same fundamental way a human does. Dogs dreaming. 35:30 – The self is not necessarily an actual thing. Nagel is trying to keep the sense of self and the potential challenge to him is this thing you are trying to hold on to the mind, the sense of self is an illusion; there is not really anything special for what we think about this consciousness. 37:47 – Challenging reductionism. Nagel is challenging reductionism by pushing for a more helpful theory of mind that says it’s all mental- making it hard to comprehend any one’s mind. 38:43 – Subjective phenomena cannot be explained. Questions that arise with a conscious AI: can you unplug it? Can you reset it? Is it a slave? Riding horses and animals that work for humans. 40:26 – Artificial intelligence (AI) and consciousness. That will just reach a point where it is so competent that it is indistinguishable from interacting with another human. 43:05 – AI scare. An AI is sufficiently intelligent to be a threat to us all, it is sufficiently intelligent to know it shouldn't let us know it exists. AI that optimizes for paperclips can destroy the world. 43:38 – Use of the term is. E = mc2. Knowing that something is true without necessarily understanding why it is true. Consciousness and intelligence exist within its closed system. 50:10 – Knowledge is a justified true belief, based on theoretical understanding. “You can know that something is something without understanding what it means for it to be that thing.” 53:41 – Tangent. Japanese soldiers fighting after the war was over. 57:47 – Subscribe to Patreon to get our book notes, highlights, bonus material and support us without the need of ads. Sign up before october to participate to the next live hangout! Also, recommend us books (even via Instagram), and participate of our private community. Find us on Twitter @Neil Soni (@TheRealNeilS) and @Nat Eliason (@nateliason). Leave us a review on iTunes to get possible guests on the show. You can just write “Love this podcast! Neil and Nat are super fun.”. Check our supporters at madeyouthink.com/support. We are drinking delicious Lapsang Souchong tea from Cup & Leaf. If you want some tangent fuel, try the Mushroom Lemonade  Coffee and Chai Latte from Four Sigmatic. Perfect Keto Nut Butter is amazing. Try it frozen for an incredible texture. Check Kettle & Fire Mushroom-Chicken blend, now available on their site. Use our Amazon affiliate link to support the show effortlessly. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com.

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  

“The prestige of the government had undoubtedly been lowered considerably by prohibition”, Albert Einstein observed when he visited the United States in the early 1920s. “Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than laws which cannot be enforced.” In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat discuss Smoke Signals by Martin A. Lee. In this book we take a walk through the history of marijuana, from it being a legal, useful plant and the third largest crop in the U.S to it being illegal and harshly but selectively punished. We see how racism and the variety of political backgrounds have shaped the PR of this ancient plant. “It was a move that served as a pretext for harassing Mexicans. Just as opium legalization in San Francisco 40 years earlier was directed at another despised minority, the Chinese. In each case the target of the prohibition was not the drug so much as those most associated with its use. Typically in the United States drug statutes have been aimed or selectively enforced against a feared or disparaged group within society.” We cover a wide range of topics, including: The history of marijuana, benefits and uses Arguments for and against legalization Political figures and their contribution to The War on Drugs Effects of consumption, psychedelics and edibles Tangents on wellness retreats, duels and fact checking fake news And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of Smoke Signals by Martin A. Lee! 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 Homo Deus by Yuval Harari for more on the domestication of plants and animals. Or for a totally different type of episode check out Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter as a counter to this linear, fact based book. 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 Marijuana [00:32] Neolithic period [01:21] Recreational drug use [02:42] Colorado [02:49] World War I [03:57] World War II [03:58] Virginia [05:27] New York [05:28] Maryland [05:31] Washington, DC [05:32] Austin, Texas [05:38] Shaman [06:18] Biochemistry [06:23] THC [06:26] Psychedelics [06:50] Spirit Journeys [06:53] Hindu texts [07:03] Soma [07:06] Moses [07:52] God [07:53] Ten Commandments [07:54] Ayahuasca [07:59] LSD [08:10] High on Mount Sinai? – Hebrew University’s professor’s theory – Reuters [08:18] The Burning Bush (Ex 3:1–6): A study of natural phenomena as manifestation of divine presence in the Old Testament and in African context [08:18] Hebrew University [08:27] Israel [08:28] Sinai Peninsula [08:31] Amazon Jungle [08:35] Higher Consciousness [09:43] Joe Rogan Experience #1133 – Dennis McKenna [10:25] Silicide [10:26] Mushrooms [10:27] Pharmacological research [10:44] Hemp [12:54] CBD [13:56] Omega 3 [15:18] Declaration of Independence [15:28] Cotton [16:22] Tobacco [16:23] Dietary fat [18:33] Duels [18:40] WeWork [19:01] Estrogen [23:26] Cooking oils [24:46] Soy Oil [24:52] Corn Oil [24:52] Canola Oil [24:57] Arizona [25:32] Miraval Retreat [25:38] Mindfulness [25:38] Healing crystals [26:34] Mysticism [26:39] Civil war [28:26] Hashish candy [28:28] Sears Roebuck Catalog [28:30] Sativa [28:53] Indica [28:54] Edibles [30:11] Salvia [31:30] Paris [32:15] Prohibition [32:54] Mexican Revolution [33:35] California [35:03] Texas [35:11] Ivy League [39:23] FDA [41:18] Patents [41:27] Marinol [41:42] Whey protein [41:57] Keto Diet [42:11] Epilepsy [42:29] Skin diseases [42:32] Autoimmune disorders [42:34] Obesity [42:37] Glaucoma [42:56] Parkinson's [43:24] Federal Marijuana Farm [43:52] California Cannabis Law [44:10] Syria [44:48] Marijuana Tax Act [44:57] Federal Bureau of Narcotics [46:17] FBI [46:27] Great Depression [46:28] Opiate Epidemic [47:06] Alcoholism [47:08] Maryland [47:14] GreenDoc [47:31] San Francisco [48:38] Eaze App [48:44] Postmates [48:47] Ubereats [48:48] Skype [49:10] GrubHub [50:17] LaGuardia committee [50:57] New York Mayor [50:59] Jews [52:23] African-Americans [52:23] Mexican Government [52:56] Congress [54:34] Homophobia [54:39] Pro-family [54:43] Amphetamines [55:13] NIDA agency [55:30] Jamaica [55:38] Postpartum Depression [57:23] Nausea [57:25] Stress [57:33] Anxiety [57:35] Cortisol [57:41] Breast milk [57:45] Meditation [58:15] Heroin [01:01:42] Oxycodone [01:01:59] Libertarians [01:01:23] Protein [01:02:54] Amino acids [01:02:56] Iron [01:02:58] Magnesium [01:02:59] Vitamins [01:03:01] Self-medication [01:05:50] Chemo [01:05:54] Leukemia [01:06:04] Endocannabinoid system [01:06:54] Cannabinoid Receptors [01:07:06] Types of cancer [01:08:20] Peripheral nervous system [01:08:52] Immune system [01:08:54] Lymph cells [01:09:01] Endocrine glands [01:09:02] Reproductive organs [01:09:03] Alzheimer’s Disease [01:09:07] MDMA [01:12:00] Books mentioned Smoke Signals by Martin Lee Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter [04:45] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse [05:11] (book episode) The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus [05:17] (book episode) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley [07:08] The Bible [07:52] Homo Deus by Yuval Harari [20:44] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Sapiens by Yuval Harari [20:46] (Nat’s Notes) (part I, part II) Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas [31:58] People mentioned Martin A.Lee Albert Einstein [00:06] Barack Obama [02:37] Joe Rogan [10:31] Terence McKenna [10:35] Dennis McKenna [10:40] Thomas Jefferson [15:24] George Washington [16:30] Donald Trump [18:51] Al Capone [36:53] Nassim Taleb [44:36] (Antifragile episode, Skin in the Game episode) Franklin D. Roosevelt [44:59] Malcolm X [45:56] Harry J. Anslinger [46:07] Richard Nixon [51:23] H. R Haldeman [52:03] Newt Gingrich [54:48] Ronald Reagan [58:49] Nancy Reagan [58:53] Bill Clinton [01:05:08] Show Topics 00:31 – This seems to be one of the longest marijuana books in existence. 390 pages but incredibly detailed. So much history of this ancient plant. Includes scientific, medical and recreational history as well as legislative and political history. The book focuses on the US history of marijuana and some within Europe too. 02:09 – The book starts as soon as the U.S was colonized around 1776 and includes insights right through to 2009. The push on recreational legalization started happening right after this book came out. We knew that cannabis had been illegal for a long time but didn’t know how it became that way. It’s strange to consider that there used to be a law that farmers had to grow hemp. Lots of things in the book are counter to what your original impression might be. We are not high for this episode, this book is too linear and fact-based for that. 05:47 – The book includes a little bit of background on the history of cannabis and the uses. We know old tribes around the world were using psychedelics and other plant medicines to induce spirit journeys or healing rituals. It seems to be a global constant that people are using mind-altering drugs for spiritual experiences. There are theories around certain bible stories being a recounting of a psychedelic experience. 07:59 – Ayahuasca as an incredible psychedelic, several plants found in the Amazon are known for their mind altering capabilities. Drugs have been used in rituals for a long time. Cannabis seems to be like revered for that reason in many of these cultures. Marijuana is a psychedelic when consumed certain ways. It would be pretty easy to think that by taking this plant you're communicating with God. You can't really get these experiences any other way. 11:03 – Looking at the benefits of marijuana and how it can change your perception of the world. Dennis McKenna explains that your brain filters everything you interact with in life and you're looking at it through a lens. With psychedelics and even marijuana some of those filters start to fall away. In some ways you start to see things more clearly. You see things from a different perspective. It puts you in an altered state of consciousness. The uses and harms of marijuana – marketing problem vs framing problem. 12:54 – The distinction between hemp and marijuana is really interesting. They are the same plant but owning hemp products is legal as it is non-psychoactive. So much of society depended up on hemp up until the 1800’s, clothes, paper, rope, oil. It is nutritionally dense too. The production of hemp was so important it was a matter of national security. It’s amazing how public opinion of a product can change. It was the third largest crop until it was criminalized. 200 years later people are getting thrown in jail for possession. Are there any things that we take for granted that will just be like completely illegal in the future? 19:01 – WeWork banning meat consumption on expenses. Vegetarianism would contribute to the reduction in numbers of animals if meat consumption goes down. We can’t sustain the numbers of animals if it is not for consumption. In Homo Deus it mentions that 50% of all non-domesticated fauna have either gone extinct or are on the road to extinction in the last 200 years. 21:18 – Argument against eating chicken. Smaller animal with less meat, not eating chicken is the easiest way to reduce the amount of suffering created through your diet. Also for dietary reasons due to excessive estrogen. 25:49 – Wellness retreats and limited health science knowledge. Some people are vegan for health reasons, some for virtue signalling reasons. They only make choices that are externally visibly as being health conscious. Behind the scenes, like cooking with lower quality oil, poorer choices are made. 28:15 – Origin of the word marijuana from Mexico. Modern strains don’t have much CBD any more because they have been bred to have increased THC. THC is the psychoactive component and CBD is the healing component. Eating it is a very different experience to smoking it. Four times as strong as it is digested and processed by the liver. Varying trends over the years in consumption. Chewing, ingesting, smoking. Hashish clubs and dinner, as part of puddings. 32:44 – The term marijuana came from Mexican slang. Prohibitionist started using it take advantage of growing racism against Mexicans. Became attributed to being a Mexican thing. California was the first to outlaw it in 1913. 35:21 – “It was a move that served as a pretext for harassing Mexicans. Just as opium legalization in San Francisco 40 years earlier was directed at another despised minority the Chinese. In each case the target of the prohibition was not the drug so much as those most associated with its use. Typically in the United States drug statutes have been aimed or selectively enforced against a feared or disparaged group within society.” Recurring theme of using drug laws as a form of racism. Looking at the arguments to keep marijuana illegal, some say this is a way to like catch people who are doing other crimes. Also that the police choose to not go after the actual drug dealers. There are more low level consumers who are easier to prosecute. Laws seem to be enforced extremely selectively. By being put in jail that increases the likelihood of becoming a more serious criminal. 40:23 – Marijuana has so many medical uses. As a society we are used to single target drugs but cannabis has over 200 different active compounds. The pharma industry is mostly interested in patentable compounds – a plant isn’t patentable. Cannabis has been found to reduce side effects of lots of conditions. Remarkable stories of it stopping the progress of glaucoma, stopping people turning blind. People in states that do not have legal marijuana access for medical purposes have to rely on friends bringing it to them illegally. 44:36 – False narratives portrayed to the public about the effects of cannabis use. Taleb said that if any time somebody uses children or women as the reason for something being bad, they're probably lying. It was said that “marijuana will make Mexicans and blacks lust after your wives”. 44:59 – Acts of cannabis taxation were brought into force and enforced harshly before people even knew the law existed. The punishment does not fit the crime at all. Harry J. Anslinger put together a campaign against marijuana for more funding and to keep his job. Doctors are now getting tired prescribing opiates and seeing people get addicted to them so are turning to dispensing cannabis where usage is legal. In San Francisco there are startups that will deliver marijuana products in under 30 minutes. 50:47 – So many research initiatives are being done and they overwhelmingly say it's not harmful however Anslinger ignores them. Side effects are debunked and the LaGuardia committee refutes every claim. 51:41 – Moving on in history to Nixon. “Nixon linked cannabis to loudmouth to racial protesters. ‘They're all on drugs’. He brusquely told an aide. Susceptible to bouts of paranoia the commander-in-chief blamed the Jews for spearheading efforts to legalize cannabis. ‘You know, it's a funny thing every one of those bastards that are out there for legalizing marijuana is Jewish, what the Christ is the matter with the Jews Bob?’ Nixon asked his closest advisor HR Haldeman. In private conversations with his inner circle tricky dick also Savaged African-Americans. Nixon emphasized that ‘you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizing this while not appear in to’ Haldeman wrote in his diary.” 52:30 – You can't like just make a law that it's illegal to be black or Jewish but you can pass a law that targets them. Crackdowns on production did nothing except increase the price of marijuana and make more Mexicans want to farm it. Distinctions between alcohol and marijuana. “Nixon, a heavy drinker, drew a rather fuzzy distinction between marijuana and alcohol. ‘A person doesn't drink to get drunk a person drinks to have fun while a person smokes pot to get high’, the president told a friend” “Addicted to sleeping pills and amphetamines and often South on liquor Nixon staggered through the White House in a daze talking to portraits of past presidents that hung on the walls" 54:08 – Everybody who's heavily against legalization is a hypocrite in one way or another they're either alcoholics or they're taking painkillers. It seems like a fairly common theme. Studies on effects of marijuana consumption in Jamaican mothers. “The ganja moms and their kids did not appear to be harmed by marijuana exposure in the womb. There were no physical abnormalities, no cognitive deficits and no neonatal complications nor were there any discernible differences between the three day old babies of mothers who used marijuana and the three-day-old non-exposed babies. They were surprised to discover that after one month the babies of mothers who had used ganja throughout their pregnancy were actually healthier more alert and less fussy than one month old infants whose mothers did not take cannabis. Test results for one month old infants whose mothers also ingested ganja while breastfeeding were even more striking heavily exposed babies were more socially responsive and more autonomically stable than babies is not exposed to cannabis through their mothers milk. Alertness was higher motor and autonomic function or autonomous systems were robust. They were less irritable less likely to demonstrate in balance of tone needed less examiner facilitation than the neonates of non using mothers. And then when they were tested at four and five their team found absolutely no difference between the children of ganja moms and children of non-users.” 56:58 – These studies showed little side effects, seems quite beneficial. Nancy Reagan was a chronic user of prescription tranquilizers. Her daughter basically said her mother's anti-drug advocacy may have been a form of denial. Dangers of overstating the harmful nature of cannabis has other effects. “Uncle Sam cried wolf too often first. Marijuana was said to create maniacal Killers then to produce inert masses of lazy indulges when teens caught on they weren't getting the Straight Dope about marijuana. They were more likely to ignore warnings about genuinely dangerous drugs.” 01:00:26 – Perception of marijuana impacts other harder drugs. Whenever an authority says something is unhealthy we now re-consider if that is true or not. Fortunately we are now in a time we can fact check anything instantly. Nutritional value of red meat and checking what is true. 01:04:04 – It's really clearly a racism thing, whites and blacks use illegal drugs at the same rate however blacks were arrested prosecuted and jailed at much higher rates. This book covers the war on drugs and how it escalated from the 50’s through to the 90’s. Benefits of marijuana, fasting and ketosis on chemo patients. There could be so much more research on these things. Feels like a crime to make something so helpful, illegal. Horribly ironic in some sense because you know Reagan died of Alzheimer's. It seems like doctors just have known of these benefits it for years. 01:10:37 – Oxycontin and number of deaths. It’s crazy how something so deadly is legal. “Purdue Pharma multi-billion dollar blockbuster was linked to thousands of Overdose deaths. Of the almost 500,000 Hospital emergency room visits in the US in 2004 more than 36,000 involved Oxycontin.” No one has ever died from marijuana ever write as far as we know. People will say it's a gateway drug. The only way it's a gateway drug is when it's illegal as it forces you to create a relationship with a dealer. 01:12:53 – Since legalization teen marijuana use is unchanged in both, Colorado and Washington State. Amazing how political the history is, in a mix of racism and fear mongering. All of the research around the benefits is fairly compelling. “The Economist, the blue-chip British magazine editorialized that the FDA's stance on marijuana lacked common sense adding, if cannabis were unknown and bio-prospectors were suddenly to find it in some remote mountain crevice, its discovery would no doubt be hailed as a medical breakthrough. Scientists would praise its potential for treating everything from pain to cancer and marvel at its rich pharmacopoeia, many of whose chemicals mimic vital molecules in the human body.” 01:15:46 – There has also been significant reduction in opioid usage in the states with active dispensaries for cannabis. 01:16:08 – If you’d like to support the show go to patreon.com/madeyouthink. You get access to fun things like all of our bonus material our detailed notes for each episode and hangouts. You can get that at Patreon and we appreciate the support of the show. We like to keep it ad free and natural. We appreciate everyone who is already supporting us there and everyone who is going to go support us after this show. It means a lot. If you haven't left a review on iTunes, we'd really appreciate that as well. Let your friends know about the show and you can always message us on Twitter at @NatEliason and @TheRealNeilS. There are other options at madeyouthinkpodcast.com/support related to shopping. We'd love to hang out with you in the Patreon community and talk more there we'll see you there and we will see you next week. Thanks everyone. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com  

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat discuss The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. In this book we learn about the Legend of Sisyphus and his never-ending toil. How to find meaning in the struggle and hope for the future. “The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks and this fate is no less absurd but it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious.” We cover a wide range of topics, including: Meaning of life, Suicide, Law & Death Evolution, the Brain as an Illusion & the Decline of Religion Tangents on Tesla, Twilight Zone & Twitter The Absurd Man, Consciousness and Japanese Duels And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus 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 The Elephant in the Brain for more on taboo subjects of the mind or our episode on The Book of Five Rings for ideas on philosophy and a retrospective look over life. 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 Syphilis  [02:10] Antibiotics [02:21] Suicides [03:06] Meaning of life [03:35] Ethics [03:56] Metaphysics [03:57] Antinatalism [04:27] Evolution [05:48] Humanity [05:54] Post Modernists [07:05] Last Will and Testament [07:32] Absurd Man [08:50] Freakonomics Podcast – The Suicide Paradox [11:34] Euthanasia [12:30] Libertarianism [13:15] Stroke [13:24] Prohibition [13:48] Morphine [14:02] Life Insurance [14:16] Hospice Care [14:27] Painkiller Medication [16:57] Facilitated Suicide [17:11] Malpractice [17:24] Hospital [17:53] Liability [18:05] DNR [18:53] Washington [19:24] Legality of Cannabis[19:30] Alcohol Laws [19:44] California [19:50] Colorado [19:51] Byzantine [19:57] Mississippi [20:13] Texas [20:14] Pennsylvania [20:14] Nebraska [20:15] Lawsuit [20:44] Small Breweries [20:51] Lobbying [20:53] Alabama [20:58] Government [21:22] Nanny state [21:47] Austin [22:12] Dallas [22:19] Houston [22:20] Pickup Trucks [22:40] Red Pill [23:20] Atheist [23:50] God [23:53] Consciousness [24:36] Solipsism [27:58] World Simulation [28:15] Automaton [28:38] The Matrix [28:44] Costa Rica [34:19] Dog Refuge in Costa Rica [34:24]   Japanese Duels [36:59] Akane no Mai – Westworld episode on Musashi [37:10] Character Map [38:14] Kindle X-Ray [38:57] Game of Thrones [39:35] Emergency Awesome - YouTube [39:51] Click (film) [42:31] Post Religious [46:12] Secular [46:19] Genetics [47:32] Nihilism [47:45] Nationalism [48:01] Dichotomy [49:22] Hedonism [53:24] Ivory Tower [56:07] Intellectual Yet Idiot [56:09] Frugality [57:44] Stoicism [57:45] Minimalism [58:25] Confirmation Bias [59:10] Rome [59:54] Amazon [01:00:10] Amazon Valuation [01:00:23] Microsoft [01:01:13] Netflix [01:01:18] Apple [01:01:25] Nokia [01:01:43] Twitter [01:01:47] iPhone [01:01:49] Google [01:02:08] IMDb [01:02:32] Alexa [01:02:46] Twitch [01:02:59] Zappos [01:03:00] Pillpack [01:03:03] Audible [01:03:05] Kiva Systems [01:03:06] Goodreads [01:03:08] Stack Overflow [01:03:15] Basecamp [01:03:17] Domo [01:03:17] Business Insider [01:03:18] Washington Post [01:03:21] LivingSocial [01:03:27] AmazonBasics [01:03:40] Tesla [01:03:57] Hyperloop Transportation System [01:04:28] Legend of Sisyphus – Wikipedia [01:07:52] Nomad lifestyle [01:22:37] A Nice Place to Visit - Twilight Zone episode [01:23:02] Uncomfortable Reading – Neil Soni [1:24:14] Crony Belief [01:26:06] Lindy Rule [01:26:24] Gestalt [01:26:49] Guardians of the Galaxy [01:26:59] Disney [01:27:08] New York Times [01:27:43] Wall Street Journal [01:27:44] Harvard discrimination [01:31:01] Books mentioned The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [05:01] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Sapiens by Yuval Harari [05:27] (Nat’s notes) (part I, part II) Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch [05:29] (book episode) Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett [05:32] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Stranger by Albert Camus [08:22] Mastery by Robert Greene [09:55] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Cowboy Conservatism by Sean Cunningham [21:14] Homo Deus by Yuval Harari [24:23] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler [25:07] (Nat’s notes) (Neil's notes) (book episode) I am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter [26:41] Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter [26:47] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi [37:13] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy [38:06] The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey [44:58] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Letters from a Stoic by Seneca [58:36] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Happy Accidents by Morton A. Meyers [01:17:39] (book episode) Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse [01:17:56] (book episode) The War on Normal People by Andrew Yang [01:41:56] (book episode) The Jungle by Upton Sinclair [01:25:40] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) People mentioned Albert Camus Anthony Bourdain [03:01] Young Jamie [06:44] Joe Rogan [06:44] Kafka [07:28] Jordan Peterson [23:57] (12 Rules For Life episode) Musashi [37:02] (The Book of Five Rings episode) Adam Sandler [42:22] Yuval Harari [46:58] (Homo Deus episode, Sapiens episodes Part I, Part II) Seneca [57:56] (Letters from a Stoic episode) Tim Ferriss [58:30] Epictetus [59:27] Jeff Bezos [59:53] Elon Musk [01:05:00] Nietzsche [01:06:37] Dostoevsky [01:12:05] Mark Manson [01:21:57] Nassim Taleb [01:25:39] (Antifragile episode, Skin in the Game episode) James Gunn [01:26:47] Sarah Jeong [01:27:57] Andrew Yang [01:41:46] (War on Normal People episode, Q&A episode) Show Topics 01:28 – This week’s episode is Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. It is a philosophical book exploring the meaning of life, questioning if suicide is ever the rational choice. Themes include, humans questioning their cosmic significance and when life is a struggle, is it still worth living? 06:19 – The book is an essay in 4 sections, Absurd Reasoning, Absurd Man, Absurd Creation & Myth of Sisyphus. Camus was insecure about his work, similarly to Kafka who didn’t wish for his uncompleted works to be published after his death. Camus’ other work, The Stranger, was good, entertaining but it’s easy to hate the main character. Having read more by Camus it’s easier to understand his other works better. 10:03 – Taboo topic of suicide, often discussed as a wholly bad thing and something we should prevent at all costs. This book is a personal exploration of whether or not it makes sense. There are plenty of statistics to suggest that talking about suicide and reporting on suicides causes an increase. We have a natural aversion to talking about it. This essay is an argument against it as none of the reasons presented for it are considered convincing. 12:40 – For those in unbearable pain, what is the compassionate thing to do? This directly competes with the human with the human instinct for not ending a life. If someone is in pain, should it be illegal to let them go? Is it cruel and selfish to extend someone’s life artificially? The practice of assisted suicide still exists even though illegal but just via more illicit means. 14:38 – Insurance has no incentive to keep people alive as they stop paying out for care but hospitals stop getting paid when people die. Waiting for people to pass naturally is often a long drawn out process. Hospitals have to be vigilant in these situations before death to avoid malpractice lawsuits. Their desire is to minimize liability when someone does die. It is often a morally difficult decision for families. Legality of negative actions (not giving an intervention) vs positive action (assisting or speeding up the process of dying). 19:31 – Laws around alcohol and cannabis. Texas is very polarized compared to other states like Pennsylvania. 22:37 – “Living naturally is never easy, you continue making the gestures commanded by existence for many reasons. the first of which is habit. Dying voluntarily implies that you've recognized even instinctively the ridiculous character of that habit. The absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation and the uselessness of suffering” 24:00 – The brain as an illusion. Consciousness doesn’t have much control, just along for the ride. Can often result in a feeling of chaos or overwhelm. Hard to explain this concept to others not familiar with these subjects. Internal vs external experience of “I”, sub personalities and the internal chatter of the mind. It’s hard to consider that everyone experiences that about themselves. Considering everyone has their own unique experiences, it’s easier to think that it’s just me and the world and you’re all part of the simulation. Perhaps everyone else's consciousness is a figment of our imagination. 29:16 – Determinism vs Free Will & Evolution vs God. You can also think there is third option between non free-will and non determinism, where your brain is still deciding things, there is free will but it’s not yours. Very philosophical episode so far, contemplating the randomness in the universe. 32:07 – Man’s attachment to life. We get into the habit of living (surviving) before we acquire the habit of thinking. Animalian Drive, social bonds and the coexistence behaviors of other animals like chimps & dogs. Human’s drive to co-operate overrides our other urges. However scarcity causes confrontation. 35:52 – Violent crime can be thought of as failure of the cognitive mind. Crime levels show that we co-exist together relatively peacefully. Especially considering density of population, e.g on the island of Manhattan, most of which haven’t killed someone while living there. Getting through lengthy books, taking notes and needing character maps to follow plot. 40:27 – “Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep. And Monday Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm. This path is easily followed most of the time but one day the ‘why’ arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement begins. This is important weariness comes at the end of the acts of a mechanical life, but at the same time it inaugurates the impulse of consciousness.” Meaningless of the routine. Moment of clarity after extended periods of working hard. The movie Click and fast forwarding through the autonomous parts of life. How often are you in the driver's seat? How often is life on autopilot? Autopilot can used as a function to get out of your own way. You couldn’t function if you were aware of the absurdity of life for your whole day at your factory job. That would cause more suffering. You have to be satisfied with your life so that when the consciousness comes in you don’t feel weary of how absurd it is. 45:38 – “He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world” Changing notions of religion, no longer an unhesitant belief - without religion people are now ‘woke’. Science answers the how and what but doesn’t answer the why. Science and religion should be separate. If religion and nationalism are fading away, what are we a part of then? Jordan Peterson is an example of figureheads that people are looking up to in place of religion. Externalize the meaning of our lives onto these people - like an over obsessive mother who won’t let their child grow up, or obsession in romantic relationships. 49:13 – There is no objective meaning of life however we have an innate longing and desire for meaning - how do you reconcile those two things? “The mind's first step is to distinguish what is true from what is false. However, as soon as the thought reflects on itself what it first discovers is a contradiction. Of whom and what indeed can I say I know that? This heart within me I can feel and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge and the rest is construction for if I tried to seize this self of which I feel sure. If I try to define a to summarize it it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers.” 50:06 – What does the mind do that the brain doesn’t do? We are always stuck within that contradiction. Lots of overlapping themes with GEB episode. “If through science I can seize phenomena and enumerate them I cannot for all that apprehend the world. Were I to trace its entire relief with my finger I should not know anymore” Simply having the data from science isn’t the same as understanding and knowing. The mind is like water dripping through fingers, we can’t hold on to the concept. “What is absurd is the confrontation of the irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. At this point of his effort, man stands face to face the irrational, he feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” We want to be happy and we want reasons for existing but the world has nothing to offer us we can never find an external explanation for being and so we either have to create one ourselves or just accept that we will never have one. It’s a hard concept to be comfortable with. 52:51 – Chapter 2. Examples of the absurd life. Revolt, Freedom, Passion. It's the actor who recognizes that everything is ephemeral. Life ends at the end of the role. Mini universes are created within plays. The actor - in those 3 hours he travels the whole course of the dead-end path that the men in the audience take a lifetime to cover. You can sit and observe an actor but you can never do that with your own life. 54:40 – The Conqueror. Fighting and taking action, demands respect. Not sitting thinking. But they are not contemplating their life. Comparison of the conqueror to business. Choosing action over contemplation. 56:47 – Who is the "I". Discussing this topic makes you very self aware. These observations are not reasons not to pursue things in life. Stoicism and Minimalism are great philosophies for people who don’t want to feel bad about giving up on their goals. However some people interpret Stoicism as saying to go for your goals. There is fun in accomplishment. Your mindset is often reflected in what you’re reading. Our differing mindset applies different meanings to the same books. Our minds don’t hold on to thoughts we disagree with. We extract what is valuable. Our struggles and wealth can play a part on our viewpoint. Epictetus in poverty vs Seneca with wealth. 01:00:00 – Tangent. Modern wealth, Jeff Bezos and the escalating new heights of wealth. Which tech companies would you be least surprised to not exist in 10 years? Amazon, IPO’s, Tesla and stock prices. 01:06:05 – Humans long for happiness and reason but absurdity is born from our need and the silence of the world. It’s a philosophical contradiction. Nietzsche said we had killed God in becoming God ourselves. That we are taking power and trying to be the arbiters of our faith. We decide what is meaningful. The goal is to not wait for heaven in the afterlife but to create that eternal meaningful life here. 01:07:42 – The Myth of Sisyphus. He defied the Gods and put Death in chains so that no human needed to die. When Death was liberated and it became time for Sisyphus to die, he tried to escape. The Gods decided to punish him for all of eternity. He would push a rock up a mountain and upon reaching the top, the rock would roll down again leaving Sisyphus to start over. Is Camus saying that we are all Sisyphus now? Trying to defy death? Stuck in the absurd meaningless tasks of life. Despite being the Absurd Man, Sisyphus has accepted his fate and continues doing it. “He is as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the Gods, his hatred of death and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this Earth.” Trying to live eternal life here on Earth means we have condemned ourselves to the meaningless repetition. We are doing this senseless toil and we are occasionally conscious of it and trying to find meaning. To live a meaningful life you stay in the routine and stay “unwoke”. Once you’re conscious of the absurdity of life and try to do something about it you are trying to become like God. 01:11:59 – However there is meaning in the task itself, there’s a happy ending to this story. Camus was saying there’s not a God but there doesn’t have to be for your life to have meaning. There is hope in the returning steps of Sisyphus. “A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself. I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step, toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour, like a breathing space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the layers of the Gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.” In those moments, walking back down after the rock, he still has some control and he is conscious of it. 01:14:24 – “I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain, one always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks, he too concludes that all is well. The universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futiile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” 01:15:03 – “All of Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing.” A struggle can make your life meaningful. Tackling a goal can be uplifting. Finite and infinite games and horizon thinking idea. Goals as directional, metrics to shoot for. Being obsessed with a goal you ignore other opportunities and miss out on serendipitous discoveries. Tangent on goal setting, and adapting and changing the goal as you progress. Reaching the goal is not what makes you happy. You have to enjoy the struggle. 01:22:29 – The appeal of a nomadic life. However living the easy, happy life isn’t possible all of the time. Only by losing, does winning mean anything. Sisyphus can choose how he feels about the struggle. 01:23:22 – It’s very easy to keep reading books you already agree with, to avoid struggling with difficult feelings. When you read things that challenge your belief, feeling and challenging that discomfort is something necessary to do. Discriminating some races feels wrong while others not. 01:32:30 – “For the rest of men he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life. Sisyphus returning toward his rock in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions, which become his fate, created by him combined under his memories eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus convinced of the holy human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see, who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go, the rock is still rolling.” The book ends on a hopeful note, answers the question of suicide. Even though life may seem absurd, you can find meaning in the absurdity and the struggle. You can find your rock. 01:34:36 – Thank you to everyone supporting us on Patreon. We have some lovely bonus material to go with this episode. The first tier is $5, if you think we’re worth more than a fancy coffee we would love it if you supported the show. At that level you get the bonus material, notes for each episode, community area to talk about the show, Q&A. At the $10 tier you get to join at monthly one-hour hangout for a casual chat. We feel Patreon is a better model for the future than advertising. Check us out there or you can go to MadeYouThinkPodcast.com/Support - we’ve got our sponsors there. We’ve got a link through to Amazon you can bookmark, you can go to Kettle & Fire for their delicious Bone Broth - use code THINK for a discount at checkout. Go to Perfect Keto for their healthy supplements. Four Sigmatic for the great mushroom coffee and Cup and Leaf . You’ll get 20% off with code THINK. Also check out our Made You Think Tea Bundle. 01:41:46 – Keep telling people about the show. If you haven’t listened to the episode with Andrew Yang we’d love to hear what you think about the format. We also love getting book recommendations, let us know on Twitter. I’m @TheRealNeilS and I am @NatEliason Until next time, have a good one everyone. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com.