Is 4 Better Than 400?

So these cops weren't anxious.

They were afraid.

And right now, every cop hates me.

And I would tell you, stop for a minute because your fear is autonomic and it's unconscious to the point that you consciously think about being vigilant about your safety.

But unconsciously, your brain is calculating those things that could possibly go wrong and you think that you're going to be the jack reacher that's going to be able to go in there and make the difference. But then you show up and there's a bunch of people dressed like you that look exactly.

exactly like you that are standing right next to you,

and that equation goes sideways,

and anxiety,

okay,

is hugely confusing our brains.

Welcome to the Left to Craig podcast.

Hello,

and thank you for tuning into The Human Behavior Podcast.

I'm Brian Marin, the host and creator of the show.

As always,

I will be joined by human behavior expert Mr. Greg Williams,

who the show is affectionately named after.

Here on The Human Behavior Podcast,

our goal is to increase your advanced critical thinking ability through a better understanding of what we call human behavior,

pattern recognition,

and analysis.

If you'd like to find out more about what that is,

you can check the episode details.

If you have any questions or would like us to cover a specific topic,

Please reach out to us at lefthofgreg at gmail.com.

Today we are talking about diminishing returns in the context of how we respond to novel situations in our environment.

For the discussion we used a few recent law enforcement examples to highlight the fact that simply sending more people or spending more money not only doesn't solve the problem,

but can actually make the situation worse.

During the episode we bring up a few scientific principles from the software development and computer industry to explain how there are basic mathematical and computational principles that we can use to create more effective and more efficient procedures.

We also talk a little bit about how the bystander effect really works and how it can be a really bad or really good thing depending on the actions of specific individuals at the scene.

Please don't forget to follow us on social media. You can find the links in the episode details,

and if you enjoyed the podcast,

please tell your friends about it.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you enjoy the show.

All right, so...

Well,

on that note, Greg, we'll just go ahead and jump right into the conversation

Hello, yeah, we're already going

today.

We're kind of already going.

But so everyone listening. So today we're going to be discussing a few things. So we're going to be talking about sort of the point of diminishing returns.

We'll talk about some some lessons learned and theories sort of from the software development world,

which I think relates directly to some of the.

the complex problems we talk about and things like Brooke's law and anti-patterns. And then we'll get into some,

you know, bystander effect and some sort of basic math, basic probability, I guess.

Mm

And

-hmm.

we're going to talk about that within the context of some things that we see happening a lot. And there's certain rules, obviously, that we know about.

human behavior.

And when you get really deep down into it, some of it can be mathematically defined,

that there are certain things that are going to occur and you can put a number value to it and you can predict it and that helps in a lot of situations. Actually, a lot of stuff that we talked about has to do with there's

Yep.

certain numbers of limits that things that people can do.

But, you know, I want to get into it today and sort of within the context of a story just actually from this week.

week of a swatting example at a school and and we see this a lot we see this now uh with it's not even just people actually in the united states doing it like some prank kid it's like some international group from overseas coming through and you you know through using a computer sort of get into a phone line to come from even like a local number type thing which telemarketers and crap can do to me all the time but the idea is that they're they're um uh it's actually like some international organization calling in

And for whatever reason, to create chaos and panic at a school, you know, doing

Yeah,

these swatting

it works.

incidents and it 100 percent works and they know it's a very effective thing they do to tie up resources for the day, you know, cause a lot of fear and anxiety in the community and cause just general chaos. And it's a very low calorie thing that you can do. I mean, it's an asymmetric type of attack. So it's very, very little.

no resources needed to create a whole lot of havoc and and

Yep

i know you know first people like you know that's that's awful that's painful that's annoying it's a nuisance well it's it's it's actually much worse than that because think of all the things that could potentially go wrong during one of those situations and so what we saw this week which has happened in other examples too is one of then the one of the police officers responding to the scene had a negligent discharge or i believe it's called

called accidental discharge in the army for you army folks right we call it in the marine corps negligent discharge because it's a better description because you are negligent for your actions so

Yeah.

but anyway uh so that that that occurs which obviously then in the situation makes it even more chaotic because now it's like wait a minute do we really have a shooter here what's really going on um and the other issue with this too is i think in this that case i i just brought up from it was from massachusetts

I believe, you know, something around 100,

you know, people responded to this event.

And we see that with different emergency situations still,

even though we should know better, that it's let's send everyone.

And this is why we're talking about the point of diminishing returns today and a whole bunch of science behind it and why that's almost never the answer. And in fact, you're likely to do more damage. So a lot.

A lot to get into with that, Greg,

but I'll throw to you first to kind of dive in or take it somewhere

Thanks

where I think

for giving me a simple, a simple starting point,

Greg. Pick one of those 13 complex issues I just brought up and just get

It's

it. It's

Friday.

Friday.

We'll bring it up. Holy shit.

It's

So

Friday Eve.

here's the thing. First of all, to correct your earlier assumption.

in the military specifically we call it unplanned noise so you

that's right

know we didn't plan for it i didn't have my earbuds in

and

uh it was so noisy yeah and and there's other people folks that listen to us routinely there's other people that will go on about why not to call it a negligent discharge or an accidental discharge and let them court

and in

go go matters look those up yeah it does but and but in this point that's not we're going to talk about

And

Yeah.

Brian brought up swatting. And in essence,

swatting is today what bomb threats were 35 years

Yep.

ago.

Same thing.

So on that shaky ground to start,

I will say the following.

We've done thousands of assessments over the years.

And Brian and I,

the number one question we'll ask when we're standing in front of somebody is do me a favor,

show me your bomb threat phone call checklist.

and brian what happens the crickets

Yeah,

every

exactly.

time nobody's ever shown us hey we thought now it's easiest thing to get you go to the department of homeland security or you go to the fed website for uh uh the fdi or anybody else or just look it up just don't look up bomb threat you know i'm saying add checklist or something for the back of it right uh or you're going to get the kaczynski treatment by the guy in a black van so the idea though is that brian we know these things exist so there should be a way

of responding to them and that protocol becomes efficient efficacious and more safe so

Right.

i want to eventually get into fear anxiety anger

Sure.

and why if we respond by sending everybody but let's let's start by saying we have to understand that they're hugely serious they're simple to carry out you said they're asymmetric perfect example the boy who cried wolf is a lifelong lesson Yes. it's not just an east up

stop table. It's been around forever.

Why?

Because we know that there's an appropriate number.

To send, for example, air marshals, there's a perfect number to have on a plane,

a SWAT team,

there's a perfect number to enter a house where you're executing an

Yeah.

arrest warrant or search warrant.

So if we know those,

then why are we saying, and it's interesting that we're a year out of Uvalde,

OK,

Yeah.

so that's such a sad thing and three years out of George Floyd. And guess what, Brian, we're making the same mistakes over and over.

So let's table the fear and the anxiety until we're ready to get

No,

to that.

Let's

and it's

table the bystander effect. Let's talk specifically about numbers,

right?

No, and that's perfect because I appreciate you bringing up the fear and anxiety point because I think that's a good, almost a causal reason why these things occur,

even though we do know better.

So I brought up a couple at the beginning,

and I think it's very analogous to what we're talking about,

and it's from...

From this was actually kind of from software development and

Yeah.

one is called Brooks Law and this guy Brooks actually.

which i appreciate said look this is an outrageous oversimplification of what i've seen time and time again which is what it's meant to be but the he was talking about in progress so in progress complex software engineering program so extremely complex a lot of technical expertise so seeing where i'm going with this uh and and there's okay we have a problem and we need to bring more people in right eventually what happens you know it's it's

He calls this, you

Get

know, ramp

to

up

the point.

time what happens.

Yep.

Yep.

What he was basically saying is that.

On the project, you must first become educated about the work that has preceded them.

So you have to know what's going on on this in-progress call,

right?

Then when you're doing that,

that education,

it diverts resources that are already working on the project, temporarily diminishing their productivity while the new workers are not yet contributing meaningfully. So each

So anybody

new worker also,

listening

yeah.

right there, oh, my God, this is exactly the response to the school shooting incident.

That's

Right.

right.

That's gone.

And so so,

you know, in addition to reducing the contribution of the experience workers,

people who are already there, maybe because you have to and he was talking about training and explaining the lengthy process,

but this is the same manner in seconds when people show up right or minutes when people show up. So everyone working.

Well,

so basically said the other examples that he wanted to say is that, you know, when you have these new workers come up, they kind of introduce bugs.

and into the project so they create more kind of barriers but the other thing he talked about in it which i thought was interesting was communication and communication overhead as he called it right so your overhead have got all this extra communication increases as the number of people increase right that's that's completely normal that's that's basic basic math and he said due to computer combinatorial explosion the number of different communication channels increases rapidly with the number

number Right.

of people so everyone working on the same task needs to keep in sync so as more people are added they spend more time trying to find out what everyone else is doing all right so that's point two out of this and the third point that he made out of this adding more people to a highly divisible task such as and he used the example such as cleaning rooms in a hotel decreases the overall task duration

up to the point where additional workers get in each other's way so he said however other tasks including many specialties and software projects are less divisible and he points out limited divisibility with another example while it takes you know he said while it takes one woman nine months to make one baby nine women can't make a baby in one month and i thought those were great examples of exactly what we're talking about and how you get to diminishing returns and in this idea we just got

Just got to throw a bunch of people at it is just.

it it's it doesn't it doesn't work and it's been

You

shown over

got me right in

and

this morning.

in so many different domains where where this doesn't work and and i when when you know i mean you first kind of sent me that article i was texting you and i said diminishing returns you know what does it really take to do something like that as a school four people what's the magic number which we honestly should have uh jonah to talk about some of that stuff decision making under stress and

Yeah,

exactly

in the future,

it'll be a great thing.

So let's break down what you said, though.

Because

Yeah.

what you did is, again,

you dropped the logic bomb and it exploded. Now the pieces are laying everywhere.

So let's bring it together to street it up for a person that has no idea what you're talking about, but you're going to put those notes in the marginal

data Yeah, so I can't.

they can look it up.

Yeah.

So you made an incredible point.

So your point one.

preceded them literally

Yes.

means precedent so it can mean at the moment which you cited i would say go back and say before you start a project look there's a a look before you leap so there's a great movie out there it's a shitty movie but there's a great point to the movie called knocked up and they're trying to make a website of when any actress or actor appears nude in a film and they go through this entire process with months of planning

I forget what was the name of the website they were trading.

Yeah, yeah, whatever.

But

Yeah.

they say, oh, that's already existed.

So what do I mean by that point one?

And I've got all three of your points very close succession.

Police pursuits have been around since vehicles have been around and probably on horseback before that and then on foot.

But in a vehicular police pursuit,

we as an industry made a lot of mistakes early on where everybody went. And the higher value of the felony.

The more reckless they became and the more people got involved,

and Brian, there's logic and science out there that you can look up on your own.

When the lights and sirens of the other vehicle is also a police vehicle and you have your lights and sirens on,

you blank them out and

Yep.

you T-bone them coming into an intersection because you think you're the only person in the world.

So guess what?

Folks,

ton of research out there. I'm not going to waste your time this morning on it. Go look it up. Do your homework.

But I'll tell you this, Brian,

they came up with the magic number.

And that magic number changes if we have an air asset. So first.

first vehicle can't take the time calling the ball because they're right in the game and they're watching so

So

they're paying

they made

attention

a rule,

everything is good so

yep.

the second one guess what i'm the cons so we don't confuse the cons i'm the one that's got the eye on the two lead actors and guess what in a pursuit you only have to come in second best so yeah it's a little bit different for you folks out there that are sniping but it's not altogether different and i'll give you precedent again brian what's the size of an average marine squad squad

why what's

yeah 12

the size

13 yeah

of a fire

exactly

team

12

can

exactly

you hear

so

what i'm saying

you

okay

have four three fire teams of four people that's that's across the

crew

board and

life just came up with that right crew like

yeah

like it's two bones out of chicken bones on a plate

that's that's evolved for for thousands of years uh exactly

son's tavern like even before that when they looked at the phalanx and they looked at the greek

company

and

size

the romans exactly

and why is the company that size you can get into you know uh that that was what what dunbar's numbers i think it was 150 people about is what you can manage on your own

And after

Right.

that,

So you need,

then what do we go back to with

yeah,

the size of a tribe?

So what I'm saying is start looking at the big end of the funnel.

to the narrow end and add that to the historical precedent and now all of a sudden you understand that numbers are hugely important here and cop agencies should be developing time and money and spending money on hiring people to come up with what that number is and once that number comes up Ryan it's got to be protocol for a school a small-sized school rural

uh two two person teams for a total of four for

Yeah.

an intermediate thing now brian somebody's gonna go well you can't live by that because everything changes yeah yeah okay i get it but but when it changes guess what if you got two shooters change the number so

Right.

do the research

It's just the

now

math.

exactly

Just do the math.

so it's an algorithm so it's my arguments here number one to speed it up the second thing is you talked about when the additional players come in additional voices need to be heard so your communication chain

brain widens and you're going to start developing silos so you're going to start developing extraneous information that you don't need you're going to have the people that go silent now because another player is there and you're going to have the silo people that say you don't understand because you just got here so i'm going to keep the information myself so for those of you keeping track and yellow padding

I'll say this, have an agenda for your next meeting,

because when you don't have an

Yep.

agenda,

what happens? Everybody shows up, they have their own

Yep.

agenda and meetings go longer and they're inefficient and everything else. So that's your second point. So we got a first point.

Precedent's already been set.

Thousands of years of people understanding that a number can be a magic number.

Second thing is that if you don't have an agenda when those additional people show up there, guess what? You've got analysis paralysis. You've got too many people and we're getting closer to your.

your point uh and then the third okay is that additional workers get in the way now now you talked about the hotel industry there's no difference it's it's

Right,

anywhere and and that scientifically is called the diffusion of responsibility and

yes,

what i love about the this diffusion of responsibility is that spawned what we now call the bystander effect because of and you've mentioned it before on this show folks kitty genovese it's sad

28-year-old female murdered New York, stabbed to death in 1964.

Oh, that's, the

But it's

story is

not true,

not true.

okay?

The true story is that Kitty Genevieve was murdered, and it's a horrible situation. But a lot of people chipped in. A lot of people were yelling and screaming to stop and calling the police, and the police received numerous reports.

But everything has a starting point, Brian.

Right.

It's the P.

The P started under the first mattress,

and before it got to the 15th mattress.

people were adding on their own stuff which is back to my point too but the idea when you talk about that that diffusion of responsibility that's where those numbers come from because a platoon leader or a team leader or a squad leader can only see so much and so now if you're watching the rest of the world by your front sight post you're

Yeah.

missing things if you're living and look you look at uvalde and you talk about the incident you talked about there's two things important about that incident you

A hundred people responded.

And Yuval, it was over 300.

Yeah.

When you get to those magic

Yeah,

numbers,

that's,

people stop

yep.

thinking.

It's not unlike fight,

flight,

freeze.

Okay,

we can go into that.

The second part of that,

Brian,

is that in two incidents since January,

in one incident just before Christmas,

in those swatting incidents when that many coppers showed up, there was an accidental or a negligent discharge.

Yeah.

Why is that important? Because you didn't gloss over it, but you mentioned it.

But folks listening, you know why that's important? Because sooner or later.

and it did last year it's going to hit a kid

Yeah.

or the person is going to shoot themselves and die or they're going to shoot the goddamn system principle

And this is what we forget about basic probability.

yeah yep

And this has nothing to do, just so I'm clear, the statement I'm about to make has absolutely nothing to do with guns, but the more guns in a situation,

the more shootings there are going to be.

That's simple math.

of course exactly yeah and even a gun enthusiast even gun people are going to say that

That's true.

Yeah,

And

but they've

then you can all go

seen

down

it.

and make

Anyone

statistics out

who's

of it, but it's true.

The more guns

accidental

and the more gun violence and more guns and more gun

or intentional,

it doesn't matter.

That's what we're saying,

because you increase the likelihood for something going catastrophically wrong.

Right.

But

Right.

you brought up the hit that bystander effect,

Yes.

too, because you hit that because you got every asshole out there that says, oh, I would have done this, I would have done that.

Stop

But

that.

if you're thinking that,

if you're thinking that.

You are 100% wrong.

You would have done exactly, exactly what every single one of those other officers did.

so

You would

what

have.

so what so it's got to be a component of your training brian you and i a week ago in a rental car we pulled up to a joint and when we pulled up to the joint the car wouldn't let you shut it off until you acknowledge to check the back seat remember that okay so if our attention is so diffused divided attention the brain hates divided attention

and that yesterday or last week that poor kid died another one down in the south in the heat in the car okay if we're still doing that and

Right.

we need a mechanism in our car to remind us not to kill our baby by leaving him in the back seat then when you're talking about this diffusion when there's 100 people on scene and everybody's carrying a gun and they're all Brian you use this term all the time they're all well intentioned Yes. yes but the problem is they don't understand that mathematically

psychologically sociologically they're creating look i'll take you back to the kid uh uh in in uh kansas olathe kansas more than a year ago now uh it was right around the same time as the uh incident in oxford where uh the kid the school resource officer goes hey that kid's got a gun he

Yeah.

goes to another kid the kid goes hey he's got a gun so he goes over and he grabs a kid and he tells the assistant principal hey he's got a gun

So they all go into the office,

Brian,

school resource officer,

the assistant principal,

the coach,

Yeah, yeah,

right,

for the

there

team.

was three people

And the

in

kid,

there, I think, right? yeah.

And what's he do?

He pulls a gun and he shoots them and they shoot him.

Brian,

there's a magic number. And the idea is that there's all of these other factors that change.

based on that number of people that you bring into it

Right.

so so it can be a very good thing like the bigger a crowd and the more people are following the rules the others will tend to follow the rules

Yes.

but what's the corollary right the corollary is that if you've got people rioting

That's the true

absolutely

bystander effect goes both ways like that.

it

If everyone stands around and just watches it happen,

the more likely everyone that shows up is going to stand around and watch whatever's going to happen.

but now

Because it's

all

like it's that

it simple. takes is one person to step in and start doing something and guess what the rest of that crowd is then going to do that do the same thing and and

That's

so well

the simple part exactly

what is and you know you talk about the the um what you kind of also brought up was one of the other things that i mentioned at the beginning was and this came from software engineering what this guy called anti-patterns and i thought it was great how how he did it you know what he explained it

this guy who's a program

programmer andrew koneg i think was his name inspired by this kind of design patterns a way of looking things but this was about software engineering project management and different processes right and that's what he was talking about but what he's talking about is human behavior because it's he's talking about group behavior at this point if you're talking about a process or an organization and you know he said there's two key elements in this anti-pattern that distinguish it from a bad habit bad practice or bad idea the idea is it's not a bad idea it's not a bad practice or bad habit

It says the anti-pattern is commonly used process structure or pattern of action that

Right.

despite initially appearing to be an appropriate and effective response to a problem has more bad consequences than good ones.

We talk about stuff like that all the time on here.

Right.

And the other point he said another solution exists to the problem.

The anti-pattern is attempting to address.

The solution is documented,

repeatable and proven to be effective where the.

where the anti-pattern is not he said of course

Right.

then he said a guide to what is commonly used is a rule of three similar to that for patterns right to be an anti

Exactly.

-pattern it must have been witness occurring at least three times so the idea is we create a process that's seemingly logical or or well intentioned and it goes horribly wrong and it almost always goes it has well it always has the potential to go catastrophically wrong i mean that's you know but

But but it's always going to do more harm than good.

And it's the same thing is like you look at.

the response from that school shooting in nashville versus what happened with uvalde it's like what four people showed up three or four officers showed up and they immediately dealt with the problem in minutes right and and you compare that to you're only going to complicate things so um but the

Well,

problem

let's go

is we back keep to but

that.

while it goes well here's the thing is why do we keep going back why do we keep creating these anti-patterns why do we keep

keep making these mistakes and it kind of goes back to what you brought up at the beginning about the fear and the anxiety right we have the process or we have a way that we know we can point to and look at and go this is the best way to do it and then what happens in the moment right everyone goes

Well,

oh wait the fear and anxiety take over and we start making bad decisions

let me tell you when numbers matter and when we forget that numbers matter,

that's when we make the mistakes.

And I'll give you an example of this. First of all.

Everything that you're quoting is why I went to the computer industry when

Right.

I was making my theorems about human behavior,

Exactly.

because there were so many tens of millions of test studies before those computer engineers said,

hey, there's a pattern here.

Where in humans, we didn't have that.

We couldn't

draw Or

on that.

you couldn't

So all

see it.

my, yes,

my research came from

Yes.

big data

That's why

before

I brought big this data. up, Greg.

Exactly.

I thought, yeah.

This is, no,

this is wonderful.

But what I, what I, most people don't know that though,

Brian, you really have to take a step back because you've been.

been living in it for

Yeah.

a large portion of the third part of your life, right?

So let's look at World War II.

Hundreds of thousands of people died.

And we have a thing like the Normandy beach invasion,

right?

And I mean in an incident,

Oh,

okay?

yeah. Yeah.

So what did we do?

We poured a whole bunch of people into a hole where there was a whole bunch of people on the other side and we kept packing them in and pushing them and shooting and bombing and blowing shit up until there was a breach.

And then we expanded that bridge, that fissure, that crack by pushing even more people.

But every other form of warfare,

Yeah.

okay, when you take a look at it, when they sent you to Iraq or Afghanistan,

they didn't send everybody to Kuwait, give them all guns and go,

go,

okay?

There was a number and there was a plan and there was a plot.

So rarely what happens is that to overcome the amount of resistance,

you have to increase the amount of resistance.

it's thrust right it's just like

Yeah,

flying with

just like, yeah.

right you have to overcome the resistance to get off the ground but it's so rare that it's remarkable and on sunday and monday we're going to be celebrating memorial day right so so what do i mean by that what i mean by that is the urge to send everyone

is based on fear and

Yes.

so you have anxiety and you have fear so these cops weren't anxious they were afraid and right now every cop hates me and I would tell you stop for a minute because

Yeah.

your fear is autonomic and it's unconscious to the point that you consciously think about being vigilant about your safety okay but unconsciously your brain is calculating those things that

Things that could possibly go wrong and you think that you're going to be the jack reacher that's going to be able to go in there and make the difference.

But then you show up and there's a bunch of people dress like you that look exactly like you that are standing right next to you and that fucking equation goes sideways and

Yeah.

anxiety,

OK,

is hugely confusing to our brain because anxiety can happen from something that occurred in the past. But disabuse me now. And you're going,

well, wait a minute. How can that.

Because fear doesn't do that,

no

right?

i look at it as as fear is sort of like i'm is is right now in the present where anxiety is is the fear of something coming or something that's like i don't know that may happen right it's almost like that's the future

But

or

anxiety,

past which you said but

anxiety can come up because you were anxious about a thing when you were a kid,

oh

you shake

yeah

your yeah pants the first day of school and all that other stuff.

And all of a sudden I can't get out of bed.

Okay.

Fear is different,

right?

Because fear, you know, and you got to take a look at where they come from hormonally

Mm-hmm.

fear.

Let's equate it to anger because if we're going to talk about how the brain works fear,

you have a very good perception that the situation you're about to go into immediately.

is uncertain.

The fear is that you're not going to be able to control the situation.

So that is a huge thing beating in your chest and in your head.

Anger is when you have a really good idea of the certainty of the outcome of

Yeah.

the situation,

right?

But as it's rapidly unfolding,

you feel you have to take some sort of control.

So what's the same about fear, anxiety, and anger,

Brian?

That you're chemically changed in the moment and you're not thinking clearly.

Right.

So when you're in training,

you can train for.

all the crap that's out there on the market now but if you're not training the brain then when those overwhelming waves of hormones and emotions come at your brain you're not going to respond the way that you think you are and and guess what now that other people are watching brian you're going to rein it in or you're going to think that you got to step up and take charge and then all of a sudden the hierarchy is going to collapse and you're going to be fighting with somebody else that's at the scene and that person's going to clam up

And now you got to shit.

Okay. You know where that doesn't happen?

It's fire scenes.

firemen train for a very dangerous situation

Yeah.

they get in there and they follow their command and they follow their logic and they still die brian but it's not this

It's

analysis

rare.

paralysis where they all stand and just watch it burn down they're they're raring to go in right but

No.

do firemen just throw everybody at the fire no

No, they there's

have teams

just an equation.

and sizes

Okay, how big is it? Then that's how many trucks we send.

exactly

And then, okay,

how many

it's

exactly

over this high.

We need a ladder truck if it's actually.

i

You

somehow

have

we

to learn

need how

fire

many engines do we send how many companies based on okay

fire

so

under

they've

he understood it Brian he understood it he understood the math number of his situation

that's a that's a great um that's a great

analogy there with with the fire uh with the fire department the fire department response and it's almost like well why is why is that different um you know there's still because there's people involved but the they're not you're there to save and help your likelihood of getting hurt as a fireman yes it's a dangerous job

So

but

what do they do?

but

The numbers change because

but

there's a certain number of square foot to fire response and

that's

every

different

specific

but

matter.

but we look at that

that we

Yes,

look at

we

that differently than responding to a school shooting.

do.

You know why?

Because

We

in our brains,

don't understand

our

it.

fear and anxiety are working against us and saying this is somehow different.

I think because we don't understand it.

meaning we that we

That's

we

exactly what I'm saying.

Because

the

you're

fears yeah

saying in a very simple way,

I'm making it much more complex saying that it's inevitable.

Why is it inevitable? Because your brain and your hormones,

right?

So a school shooting is different.

A school shooting is tantamount to walking out of Walmart to the parking lot and seeing a flippant Tyrannosaurus Rex in the parking lot.

Okay,

you've

your brain doesn't

read about it

have,

you've seen any

I've

museum you

read about it,

know it

I watched the movie about it.

Exactly,

Okay.

but I've never seen it in person.

Exactly. And now all of a sudden I'm there, I'm hearing shooting,

I'm hearing screaming,

all of those things are adding up,

Brian. And I,

so the simplest.

answer is to equate exactly a school shooting rebuild the school have kids uh screaming uh

No.

and sounds firing and stuff but wait a minute that's not

That's

the

not,

answer

that's

okay

not how.

but but listen that's what you're going to get some purists right now that are thinking that's as simple as training is let's uh throw blood on the walls let's have a legless kid screaming let's have a couple of dead cadavers and listen that's going to prepare you for that building on halloween night right

But it's not going to pay it forward.

So we have to train the brain that there's a specific, that's what firemen do best.

Firemen get together on a Thursday night and they have a barbecue cookout. I'm not underplaying or underscoring how dangerous firemen are,

but we're cops. We do the real thing.

But the firemen, right,

while they're having their barbecue and they're doing their training, they're saying when you ever watch,

what's the old movie,

gosh darn,

where the.

a dirty dozen where they take the people out of prison and they're going to send them into germany the you know uh this castle to kill all of these uh nazi

yeah

leaders at the same time and what do they do they know that they don't have the intellectual acumen to do every part of it so they say number one he's got the gun number two

yeah oh yeah

you go for the shoe okay why do we do that and and i'm not dumb enough

through

tom

the concept

and i

of

love

operations

you but

i love it yeah

that con op for fire they rehearse all the time and you're going wait a minute cops do it too we actually go to schools

schools. Yeah, you go to schools and you have a negligent discharge.

Why?

Because you have too many people with guns waving around and you're not thinking of that.

So is it good to train at a school?

Of course it is. But how many people should go?

Well,

you got to think out of perimeter,

inner perimeter and who's moving through the school.

And does that change? Well, it's going to change in Topeka,

Kansas from Detroit,

Michigan. It's going to change in Saudi Arabia than it is in Hungary. So those are the things that we should be training for now.

And like things like penetration of rounds and all that, Brian,

that's all magic,

Yeah.

right?

But internal,

external and terminal ballistics,

okay,

have their place, but it's not in this first argument.

And the first argument is what's the best response protocol for an in-progress shooter and what makes a school so different

And

and so personal.

and for these types of incidents, especially, well,

almost with with any anything out there, see.

Um,

I'll, I'll say it this and you tell me if you agree.

Yep.

I actually think that.

In these situations,

those police officers responding already have the requisite amount and correct type of training to handle the situation much more effectively and efficiently than they.

typically do that we typically see them handled like this for the examples that we get right i think that they're already at a level where you can't the problem is is you're not focusing on the right parts right you're not focusing on

Precisely.

the right parts of training which is what you're talking about where it comes down to more communication and how we move effectively versus the caliber of the weapon and how much armored stuff we have and more body armor and this and that and it's like we focus on all those things

things because we can control them but then we don't know how to do this and how we interact it's easier like there's there's you know i say i've done missions before combat

Yeah,

missions

right.

with four people and i was like they're between the four of us and a radio what can't we accomplish what imagine how big the problem would have to be for us to get overrun or not so and this isn't this is just combat operations or something significant where where the potential danger is huge and there's we're out

We're

so to be outnumbered so so that's not the dynamic and i'm not trying to compare it saying oh you need military training i'm saying no there's this is about math and about how many people there are and when three random people can figure out if you can't figure out the situation with four people 400 is not going to help

that's the best line start with that and that should be the title of this this this episode because Brian those four people with you as a leader of police or security

or executive protection have to think of is who's on the ground.

Do I need to change that person out?

Or if that person's got a clear head,

what assets do I need to give that person?

Do I need to give them better comms? Do I need to give them a Halligan tool?

Do they need a vest?

Do they need these things?

And I can be doing that behind the scenes.

Brian,

if

Yeah,

you go black on

yeah.

ammo,

you're combat ineffective.

If you go black on comms or on food or on water or on medical supplies,

right?

So do they have a PFAC? If they don't have a PFAC, that's something I can do a personal first aid kit. I can do that during training next week and hand them out an on-duty roll call.

So what I'm saying is there's a hierarchy here, Brian,

and that the supervisor,

the chief of police doesn't need to be on the scene.

He needs to be supporting an element that's operationally supporting the tactical. And when it comes down to the tactical,

the lowest number possible of tactical people should be going into

Yes.

the scene.

And if two cops from different jurisdictions come together,

that's a team and they've got weapons and they've got training. So they've got to do a quick knee.

eat brian and look each other in the eye and go hey i'm going high you're going low or whatever the the things are based on their functionality training right and then they need to go in here's what's wrong you're saying then why do cops get killed on traffic stops and cops are still getting killed on domestic because you're failing to anticipate the danger and you're not addressing that in training you have a person in that car that was your perpetrator of the week

And everybody said,

we're going to go out and get this guy.

And when they stopped the guy, the guy said,

not today, I'm not going,

Right.

and shot a veteran cop to death.

And then guess what? They arrested him.

Brian,

it's not a tradeoff. Those ambush style killings come when you don't see the ambush.

That's the nature of an ambush. And a bad guy wants it more.

A bad guy with a gun wants it even more. And a bad guy that's in a car is mobile. And look,

you're searching the house for a sex.

sex offender and he knows that he's going to jail for years so the video that just came out a couple of days ago he's laying next to the bed they do a great search on the house the last place they go is of course the bedroom usually for me it was the bathroom they boot the door and the guy's laying next to the bed and

Yeah.

start shooting it out with him okay you have to anticipate the likelihood of danger in a situation and as you get closer and closer and closer to that bedroom the danger increases because it's most likely you

that this is the most dangerous course of action,

right?

And that's where you need all that support.

So we have to stop thinking that in a traffic stop,

there's a time element.

We have to stop thinking that on a domestic,

there's a time element because we're rushing to

You're

videotape our own deaths.

And then we have to turn that upside down with the school shooting and say,

here, there's an active shooter that's in progress.

The dynamics change and the numbers have to go down.

But

For

even,

a quicker response,

yeah,

clearly.

but even in those situations,

I mean, time is another element that we really don't understand as humans. It's defined in a number of ways.

It's defined by language.

It's defined by, you know, your emotional state.

It's defined by a number of things and how we describe it. But the concept of time is very,

very, it's an odd thing and how we measure it.

and and how we perceive it is often different and

Right.

i'm not trying to have some

you know whack like trying not trying to have some like whack job what's like what's that movie where what's his name's in there's like time is a flat circle you know that's not what i'm talking about i'm literally in those moments we think in some of those situations in some situations we think we have more time than we actually do and in other situations we we think that we we have to get something

you

done right now when in fact you do have more

have

time

all the time in the world because if you don't your world is going to end right there at that scene and there's going to be yellow tape around your

around your body.

So Brian, throw this in there, an example.

Everybody is read on coffee table.

Everybody knows about fight or flight.

Everybody can do their own research.

Yeah.

And one that everybody glosses over the single most important factor, if you're a trainer that you can do today at on duty roll call is freeze.

So when I scan a room full of people, when I'm scanning a new environment, when I'm looking through my binoculars at bad guys operating any of those situations, I always look for freeze because when the brain's chemistry feels that there's a danger or an opportunity in my environment just before my corporeal self notices it or my brain does.

Does hormones dump and cause me to freeze?

It does.

that freezes so i pay strict attention to that piece of danger or opportunity in front of me and so if i know what that looks like it equates mission focus and i can do two things i can say okay these people sent something therefore now i have my atmospheric polar push and the second part of it is i can find the predator why because the predator is the one in the room that's not given it because the predator knows what's happening next the predator is a magician that's about

about to pull the rabbit out of his ass and every one of the other kids has their chin down and is looking up with bright eyes so if i understand that i just solved your equation for time because when does freeze occur when it occurs and how long does it last how long it lasts right

No,

so so because it's context dependent stop looking at your watch stop thinking that there's a temporal element that forces you to act on that so when those things start coalescing brian

And that wave starts happening. The atmosphere of pull and push start happening.

That's when you strike.

How do you teach that? You got to teach it in training and people are going to go, yeah, but it changes all the time. I get that it changes all the time, but

but you don't

that's

have to

where your brain gets.

Once I teach them one time, where's Waldo and I show them again,

Brian,

now brain does it on its own. Hey, there's Waldo every time they go in that school.

well and that's what we're talking about we're just talking about look at what are the key what are the key elements that you need to look for or identify and those key elements are really the same and we brought up

We brought up a software example that that is directly analogous

That's so accurate.

to to to the response to a school shooting.

Tell me how that works. Well, that's basic math.

There's there's a limitation on human channel capacity.

There's a limitation when people get together.

All right. Everyone looks at, oh, you got to communicate.

You got to communicate. Well,

if you're not.

exchanging any meaningful information then then there's no point in communicating and just increasing

And

comm

what

doesn't

if you do to the time equation?

Because if we want to talk about time, now you're wasting time.

Now, I believe in wasting time,

meaning that I believe it's a thing that can be calculated and you can be more efficient.

And we go back to having an agenda for a meeting.

And you just gave a great example of the bystander effect. Look.

Bystander effect occurs when the presence of others discourages an individual from intervening in whatever situation is nigh, Right. good or bad,

Yeah.

Brian.

So the greater number of bystanders, the less likely it is for one of them to provide aid or step up or say,

hey, this is bad or this is wrong.

So how do you counteract that? You counteract that through training. When you see something going on, going,

hey,

I'm calling the police.

You can't do that here.

You're not.

OK.

And you go,

wow,

that seemed pretty simple.

Yeah,

it is simple.

Because what you're doing is the more people that get

Yeah,

into the situation go back to freeze,

mentally they're at freeze, they're calculating a profit and a loss.

And when humans look at other humans in a group, you know what they start saying?

Well, somebody had to have called the police.

right,

Somebody must already

right.

be on their way. Well,

I'm just going to get in the way, so I'll just keep, right?

So the idea is that equation,

Brian.

isn't based on time the equation's based on hormones and and the larger the group we don't want to waste calories so we've been taught in a historical survival setting that hey let the smallest group intervene so the rest of the group doesn't get tainted and all we're saying today is let's go back

Let's

to that mentality

go back

because

to that.

because if we go back to the origin theory brand that's a pretty good origin theory they kept us on this planet for you know how many millions of years right

We're alive.

live today so

Yeah,

obviously there's

but what do we do?

something to it yeah

We've got to overcomplicate it. We've got to name it something.

We've got to give it a better value.

The idea is when you're talking about the diffusion,

we had to rename it. We had to rename the diffusion of responsibility to bystander effect.

We know that Kitty Genovese was murdered,

and we know that it had nothing to do with the bystander effect,

but now it becomes a poster child for that, and that poor woman will be on forever in every Psych 101 class.

And that's what I'm talking about. What we do sometimes is these urban myths and legends permeate our training, Brian, and now they're part of our academy and we're not smart enough to draw back a little and go back to that computer example and go there's a better way.

And

There's a precedent for this.

because,

and there's a lot of reasons why we think this way, it's, well,

Yeah.

what that has nothing to do with this. We're talking about a school shooting.

Well, that's different than we're talking about.

And that's the problem is everyone wants their own. I mean, how many times do we have to deal with?

deal with that talking people well

Yep.

yeah but how does that address this and you know it's like yeah yeah you're gonna well the person working the front desk there is going to be you want them really good at customer service and you want them really good at security because they're the first line of defense it's like we have those two things have nothing to do with each other actually it's the same thing when you're dealing with humans

It's

but

the exact same thing.

but what we do it's like that someone's going to say well what the hell does a software developer have to do with a response to a school shooting

computing and that's

Oh

the issue

my God.

because we're not so we're not no one is conceptualizing these great concepts meaning uh we'll do all the fucking analysis all day long and everyone will talk and write their own theorem and get something published and do this it's like no no you you didn't change anything that hasn't already existed right so we're not good and we're not we've now reached the point especially with a lot of our public

Yeah,

we're smart enough to go oh wait we were doing things wrong for a while maybe we need to get better uniform

uniforms and change up our tactics okay that makes sense it's like but then we still keep looking for something else in there and it's like no no you haven't addressed the basic organizational issues around human behavior and human performance that that contribute to every single one Yeah, of these things and so it's going to happen again and and there's

exactly.

stuff people out there who who you know have done it at you know in in in small amounts or they go oh we do this at our agency or we have that or

We do this at our company is a thing, but if you haven't.

You know, if you haven't instilled that in everyone,

it's going to continue to happen.

And there's basic principles that guide all of this. We don't need to overcomplicate it.

Exactly. So go backwards,

make it smaller.

That's what the problem with the book left a bang was is they wanted to put air back into the tire to drive on sand.

You didn't need that extra air. It was fine. A little bit deflated because that gave you the traction and sand.

If you don't know what I'm talking about,

look it up.

Second part of that, I used to be on a Gosh and Remington website with their Remington expandable baton being attacked by a giant. And this guy physically and it was just massive and he had an aluminum baseball bat and he was swinging to hit for the fence. And the idea was that in on duty roll call,

nobody ever came up and goes,

hey,

today, remember gravity, it might kick your ass. Right.

But when we're talking about police pursuits, centripetal and centrifugal force are important. And when we're talking about interacting and deescalating with a.

With a less than lethal tool,

we're talking about forces equal to mass times acceleration.

So I bested the bully with that ass baton by getting in close,

figuring out

Yeah.

the arc,

doing the timing,

right,

and watching what his patterns were.

And once I understood and recognized his patterns, Brian,

I was able to stand his onslaught and take him down.

The idea is the same.

All of the math that we need to solve school shootings has already been done. All of the physics.

has already been calculated but what we have to do is we have to pull the focus back a little bit and look at the dynamic problem in those little instances where we can make an influence and what we're doing is we're talking about the gun and the high capacity magazine

Yeah.

we're talking Brian what's going to win the day is a human what's going to fail that day is a human what broke that day to create the problem was a human

So we've got to go back to the human in the loop. The human is the simplest thing that we can influence.

And if we can influence a human to think in those ways,

that these small clusters coming together, that cohesion of just three or four people to be able to go in, look,

and now we support it. So what do you support?

You've got a first aid kit that you're carrying with you that has a geolocator and you throw it down to the first injured person and move on.

Right.

Right.

Because you have to do that. Well,

that's called op tempo.

OK,

I understand it. Well, then what about cons? Well,

what does the commander need to know behind me for all that other stuff? Well, that becomes your operational layer because your tactic,

it starts forming itself.

Do you see what I'm saying?

And it doesn't have to be rewritten because the rules of small units,

counterterrorism operation,

every one of those have an FM or a TM. Is that true?

Yeah,

They're

yeah.

already out there and most of it's open source.

So what we're trying to say,

folks,

is don't sit there and try to solve for X by reinventing all the shit that went into it. Take a bar example and go backwards in time.

Look at what the precedents are set.

Start breaking down the numbers and say,

hey,

listen,

I can do this. We can solve this.

Yeah,

You know why I'm saying that, Brent?

that's...

Because New York is way ahead of gosh damn.

you know, Duck,

Colorado.

You know what I'm saying? That small town.

But it's just as likely that it's going to happen in that small town as it is in that big town.

So you better get on it now is what I'm saying.

yeah so you're saying just i don't want to do any of that i'm going to buy a shot spotter system

The chameleon. Okay.

I need the chameleon system. We need to activate blue force tracker every time we leave the base.

Now, some asshole in the beltway is looking at me and going,

it saved a lot of lives.

Yeah, it saved a lot of lives because what you did is you bypassed the human and you can't bypass the human.

The training in your unit has to be for the individual element.

And if you're saying it's okay,

I'm not going to name the guy, but I was in an academy class back in the day.

And we're just about to teach the pursuit of driving and precision driving emergency vehicle operation.

And this guy came up and he was giving this long convoluted thing about a kid with a gun at the school.

And when he came around, he knew it was a real gun and he saw the kid and he goes, that's just a shot that I,

you know, I'm going to have to take. I'm going to have to let the kid shoot me because I can't shoot a kid.

And I'm sitting there going,

wait a minute.

Did you think that the Secret Services job is to trade their life for the president?

Yeah

The idea is to be predictive and proactive so that I never.

We talked about this yesterday. I think it's Gavin DeBecker. Yes,

I read and I understand the world of Gavin.

But DeBecker gave that kid a story,

Brian,

and the kid researched the story and it came out that like in the last hundred years in the United States and

Yeah.

executive secretary protection,

only one time did a person use a firearm to stop a situation.

And yet, what are we trained for, Brian, in those?

When we see those,

it's all boot and doors,

ramming cars and full auto shooting and tracer rounds and flashback.

Yes, it's important to do those things, but that's not how you're going to solve the problem of school shootings.

Yeah.

And, you know, we're talking about every other incident, too,

not just that.

And

No,

that's

no, everything.

the thing here is we're not we're looking at each one as some separate

some separate confusing,

big,

complex problem that we need to have all of these other different training courses for.

We need to figure out this and let's research and study this when we're not just boiling it down to.

the simple steps that all humans have to take in order to do something and i i tried the security one's a great example i love that that executive protection one where one

Yeah,

time for

and look

the

it

last

up.

hundred

I don't

years

know the exact number.

it's

It might have been 70 years, Brian, but it's the same point.

it's it's

It's true.

yeah but what does everyone want to do and and and that's that but but that's the point because then that misunderstanding um you know it causes us to to

to approach these problems in the absolute wrong manner and especially

Yep.

when it's looking for a technological solution and it's like that's you're relying on something that's that's not going to do what you think it's going to do So yeah

let me add this element to what you just said.

You're using fear to sell training.

oh yeah

So people ask,

why do you break down certain videos and not every video? You can make a.

a living on just going

Yeah,

after the

you

web and

could,

doing video

well,

because

just go to YouTube and look at these clowns doing it. It's horrible,

but yeah.

that's the first reason we don't want to compete in a market that's that's uh surrounded by idiots uh the second part of it is uh i saw a snippet of a video of a guy leaning into the front door finally gets in the front door huge guy uh apparently under some sort of influence then takes a maddox and is trying to get into the second door and swinging like the barn door and doing all this other stuff

Look, folks,

there's no equation that's going to cover that situation. One,

it's remarkable.

It's so remarkable that it's worthy of note.

And in that situation, you have to escalate the level of violence to win.

So anybody going,

well, here's where you could have intervened with this net,

that's horseshit loser.

Yeah.

And you know what I'll tell you about that?

Let's talk about the situation and move it out to the parking lot.

The further out in the parking lot you're doing your chalk talk,

the better you're going to respond when the fear,

anxiety, and anger hits you.

And Brian, does anger hit those folks that are standing there?

Anger

Yep.

hit the 300 people in Uvalde

Yeah,

because

it did.

they felt as though they should have been doing something and they were paralyzed by the freeze.

So if you understand your body,

if you understand your human corporeal self,

if you understand your brain and the hormones and you understand other humans, you'll have a better day. And you know what? You'll be able to reason out that situation and not fight it out or shoot it out. And look,

the school shooting is one small example of how your brain works. So stop fixating on that because you're still getting cops dying on traffic stops and your kids are still drowning at hotel.

tell pools right

Yeah.

and people are still choking because they're not chewing enough meat brian when we were at that uh gosh damn now they do the the air blow things at the bathroom at the airport salt lake city airport and it took me back to detroit metro where they used to have those things that you pull down so you always get a clean one and then they come in and they take the the linen and they clean it and right on the side of the thing it said don't put your head in this and hang from this okay so until we can overcome

Yeah.

how inept and stupid humans can become,

we're always going to have to put the warning on a label,

right?

Yeah.

I mean, I was when I was a kid,

it was at 10 o'clock at night on the TV.

It's 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are?

You know, and it's like you have to remind parents that they have children.

I mean, so

Think of it, though.

I

Those

know.

are the pervasive arguments that are similar and have been for thousands

That's

of years.

a whole nother conversation of how we.

We cater to or address things to the lowest common denominator,

Yes.

and we can't always do that.

Yes.

Meaning,

I get why we put,

like, that's an important public service announcement. I'm not against it, but you can't legislate and make plans based on the lowest common denominator. That's sort of a different discussion. But, you know, we...

We covered a lot and we covered talking about, you know, what is the point of diminishing diminishing

Diminishing

return,

return,

you

yeah.

know, adding more people increases the complexity,

you know, and,

you know, you're going to get a negative outcome.

Sometimes you're doing something you think is meaningful and well and you're going to solve a problem, but you're actually making the problem much harder. And it goes back to what we always say is like, you know, it's first do no harm. How do I not fuck?

fuck this situation up but i do that with everything when i turn go in the house and and you know my wife and the insurgent are having an argument over something or i hear her discipline disciplining her over something she did i don't walk in and go hey what'd she do are you serious like what

Well,

no

if she did,

if she did, you're not going to stay married long,

but

right?

but meaning even if like you know i'm not gonna jump on her you know because my wife is yelling at her because she didn't clean up her room again after she was told 17 times like a normal

normal kid i'm not going to come in and be like hey i thought we talked about this you're supposed to clean your how is that helping the situation it's making it worse in fact i take the opposite role when that happens i was like hey what what what happened sweetie what's mom upset about okay but you kind of you knew you were supposed to do that right yeah you're right so it's to de-escalate the situation you know i mean meaning it's we show up with this i'm going to solve it it's like who's there all right

if they if you don't think that the person there can handle the call then why the fuck did you send them and i've said that on a radio to people before when it's like we were asking me nine million questions i said if you don't think i can do this job i'll come right back to base and you send someone else

You've got it.

go

You've got it. Leave me alone.

you

Let me do my do mission.

it yeah

So, so Brian, you know that you and I agree on many things and there's very few distinctions with the different and I'll tell you this one that I.

I think you've heard me say before,

I hate platitudes because

Right.

people grab platitudes and they throw them out there. I want to know what you think.

I don't want to care what Gandhi thinks.

Martin Luther King is going to help me solve my problem tomorrow.

Yeah.

So tell me what you think,

right?

Yeah.

So let me throw this at you, okay?

I look at a platitude as a window, a window into precedent.

And if there are platitudes that are out there that already cover the situation you're in,

take that.

Don't just change it a little bit and add your own.

Now, I'll give you an example of that.

Is there a platitude out there that says too many cooks spoil the broth or some variation of that?

Isn't that what we're talking

Yeah.

about today?

We're talking about if you have too many people and everybody has got an opinion,

it's going to muck up the gosh damn salad.

So

Well,

that's what we're talking about here is take precedent and look back and exactly what the computer said before you start bringing on people figure out why am I bringing on those people because look I'll tell you what we worked for a company Brian and the company.

changed and they were more into look at what the zip code is and look at the fancy logo and

Yeah.

look at the whip it smart name that we've got on it and they didn't give a damn about the person they were sending out to train you

And Brian, that's

that's that's

what I'm talking about, platitudes. Look backwards.

What are you going to do?

well it's an unsustainable model you can get

away Riding

with it

for

for a a little fall, bit you

buddy.

get you get away with it for a little bit and you know and i know we see a lot of those and people do like

doing quotes or something that i've become just empty

That's

platitudes

me right

because you're not you're not living by that and there's sometimes a lot of meaning sometimes it's just sometimes it's just you know look uh sorry to inform

Sometimes

you it's well so i'm sorry to inform you but but you know sun tzu was a 2 000 year old chinese guy who told you not to fight in foggy weather and avoid siege warfare like there's there's not much more to it than that um and and john boyd

created energy maneuverability theory and fundamentally changed the way airplanes are designed so if you're not a fighter pilot and you're not designing airplanes maybe maybe use something else i

Exactly.

don't know

And the coach that you're hiring,

okay, better have some life experience. So all we're saying is that when it comes to the context of having too many people lined up outside the door.

If

Yeah.

we don't look at it rationally,

Yeah.

if we don't conduct some experiments and see what came before,

then we're going to repeat the danger.

And my point is sooner or later, that person that did the negligent discharge is going to hit a kid and kill him or hit a school resource officer or shoot themselves.

And now we'll be taking people out of the school again and defunding police,

It's...

right? Because that knee jerk, Brian,

that gets us nowhere.

And now the pendulum swings the other way and we're spending all our money, we're spending.

and billions of dollars on training that's not going to make anybody smarter we're

it's

we're rolling

not going to work well

oh my gosh listen how many times role player how many times uh knowledge

yeah

ability and and build in a city that looks exactly like the you know I

well that's the thing is everyone keeps making the same mistake over and over at least now because of the the faster feedback loop of data and information you know you you were learning faster what doesn't work but

think

we still

so

have

i'll

Yeah.

have to learn or you know like we've seen a lot of different these these especially in the corporate world of all these different uh i'll go ahead and call them grifters came up with their different trainings that they want to teach people about they're all having the exact opposite effect that they thought it was going to have and it's it's stupid and it's made up and it's junk

It's

science but

silly.

uh you know and and you brought up a really good one when you talked about diffusion of responsibility and and that

That is going that that's that's something I just that term diffusion of responsibility. If I if I can can can stamp that into my head and walk

Yeah.

into some situation and think about that and go,

wait a minute,

is my starting to see a diffusion of responsibility?

Right. Yep. Is that what's happening here that can change the dynamic of how you look at a situation very quickly.

And. I absolutely agree,

Brian,

and it goes right back.

Confined space entry.

We see a person that's down.

It's a great

We

one.

go down the ladder and now we're down and then the mom or the sister looks and now they're down.

Anybody that knows what I'm talking about,

it happens every single year in the entire family.

Yeah. Yeah.

And Brian,

I sent you one in New Zealand

Just

I believe

just

it was

happened

where

like last

all

week.

of the

Yeah.

paramedics died doing the same thing. So if you fail.

to understand the risk that you're about to undertake and if it becomes your responsibility and you're not prepared for it or if you're third or fourth person in a stack and think the first person's got it going on but you're not sure of it that's when you need to sharpen that pencil and you need to check the math right because that's where those mistakes occur and that's what training overcomes and i'm not just talking repetition i'm talking stuff like part-task training and and

and tabletops and those things because guess what somebody comes up and goes wow there's a better way or somebody goes hey that already exists we don't have to reinvent the wheel why do you hear the term there's another platitude reinventing the wheel so it's important not to reinvent the wheel so take a look longitudinally at the efforts that have been done so far

Yeah.

cherry pick and don't rush after the lone hanging fruit there's so many people out there that want to rush after the new brian the shiny because that seems like the answer to these things

thing and you mentioned it with shot spider like without a human in the loop you're pissing on yourself and you're not going to be able to solve the problem that you think you're up against

Yeah.

No,

that's a good point. Go back to the dirty dozen model,

right?

One

Right.

is that,

It

you know, works. two,

it's a talk through and it works. I mean, no,

Chalk talk.

There has never been a mission that you could have been on where you

you

didn't chalk

got,

talk it and you went out to the parking lot and you set up the C ration boxes and it went through and said, okay, and Tommy,

what happens if this is too heavy?

Well,

Jane is my partner

yeah.

and we're both going to lift the parm, right?

Every one of us has done that.

Why do we not rehearse for the real event that way?

Yeah.

Well, we covered a lot. I'll put some links in the episode details, too,

with kind of everything we went over and

Yeah.

the different links to some of the software stuff.

I use this examples because it's just math,

Great

all software,

stuff.

Great

all computer

stuff.

stuff is it comes down to math and they've already mapped all that stuff out.

That's why I threw that in there. I know you love that because I

I

computer

love

terms,

it.

you know, that's what's situation awareness.

Same thing. That's where that is. That's a computer term.

term um but but uh you know we got into sort of the complexity and the point of diminishing returns and

Yep.

then i think we kind of offered some some sort of

basic sort of solutions that you can do on your own i mean meaning this doesn't rather have to be yeah

than just spinning the problem around a different way and well stirring up the pot we gave you some examples some tangible examples to think about

well and these are if you again it goes back to understanding the elements right if i understand these elements and i can then see them in any situation and know

that's going to be a problem.

I need to intervene now because I know I see this start to coalesce. I see these elements starting to occur.

Exactly.

That's what they were talking about.

I'm seeing number one and two.

I don't want to wait for three to come up and show its ugly face.

Let's go now.

And that's what we're talking about. I think most people have the experience and training to handle these situations.

It's just they're not effectively using what they already have.

Yep.

So just throw this in what I'm excited about. First of all.

First of all, Memorial Day, remember all those who gave the supreme sacrifice to everyone in your own way. It's really important.

Get off the shit about when somebody tells you thanks for your service.

Welcome that because that means at least they acknowledge you and care about it.

And Brian, I'm really looking forward to Patreon this week because we're going to talk about graduation and some things that happen at graduation.

I'm excited about that.

Yeah. And, you know, Patreon to me is fun because

No,

we get to go places we can't go.

and we get to show maybe some photos.

in photos and

Yeah,

and

some great

stuff like that and and get in there and talk about some of the things that we're not going to put on open source

Loot around a little bit,

yeah we

you know

gotta we gotta we gotta put up we gotta keep the chuds out or some of them you know so once you get to a certain number there there's gonna be some in there we're we're thankfully to all of our patreon subscribers we're not there yet we're not at the number of uh where we get some people with some wacky things to say they're all awesome and have great comments and great

Agreed

uh questions

and those some of the podcasts some

But

of these episodes

they're coming.

well some of these episodes yeah some of these episodes are spawned from from those discussions or questions that people on the patreon side do and then we go into detail give specific examples on that so no thank you for reminding me uh Oh, of that

I'm so

you

excited.

know and and uh so so everyone listening you can you can check out that site as well it's it's it's pretty cheap and you can go through and check out our stuff but um that's all i have greg uh again

Topeka

i'll have it

is coming up. Everybody check Brian's stuff.

If

Yeah,

it's coming up,

yeah. If you're excited you're

to see you, they're

not signed up at the Arcadia Cognorati website,

you should do that so

not going to know.

you stay in touch with everything.

So don't forget that. And also,

sorry,

Before you bring that up, Max Watch.

Where are we on Max Watch?

Have we started the countdown yet?

Max is on his way.

It's

I love

within,

it.

I would say, so we're recording this on May 25th.

Due date is kind of the 19th, but.

but it's it keeps getting moved up so i think it's going to be before then honestly

Wow.

so so

We're

in the next

all excited

couple weeks

for

yeah

you, buddy.

yeah i'm terrified he's gonna kill me one day so yeah

That's a given.

I mean, somebody.

It's going to be him or your daughter or your wife.

yeah exactly so statistically

Statistically, that's going

that

to happen.

so at least they're close by i just can't keep an eye on him i can't keep an eye on him all at the same time

time so

That's

all

so funny.

right well thanks everyone for tuning in we do appreciate it please share the episode of you if you enjoyed it and don't forget that training changes behavior

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