Left Of Greg 086 Context Is Everything

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Yeah, let's go ahead. You haven't heard that before, have you?

So, since we are recording and we attempted to go live and it didn't work, oh, my gosh. Oh, well, for those of you listening, we are not live on this one, but hopefully we'll be soon again.

So today, we are going to be talking about the general concept of what we're going to talk about is context. By context, it's that all, like we always say, all observations that you make, I don't care what it's about, have to be put into some sort of context, some framework, in order to understand how relevant that is, what it actually means, what the observation actually means to me at this given place in time. I guess that would be a loose sort of definition of it.

But it means we see a lot of stuff in the news, whether that's about historical perspectives, bringing up things that people said a long time ago, talking about different, for instance, statues being torn down, people that have done great things before, in the past or present, but maybe have not lived up to what we consider to be good behavior in today's standards. That's a very easy way of saying it, but it gets into a lot. And what happens if we don't put our observations into context, we're more likely to jump to an unreasonable conclusion.

This doesn't have to be about history or anything. This just has to be every day in my environment. We talk about HBPRNA (Human Behavior Pattern Recognition Analysis), reading human behavior, human behavior profiling, situational awareness, whatever everyone's calling it. That's what we do. So it always starts out with what we always call establishing a baseline. Every observation we make has to be compared to something. So anytime anyone's ever said, "Hey, that seems odd," or, "That's different," you're actually comparing that to some known that you have, that you've experienced, whether that's an objective or subjective experience, or knowledge base, or whatever it is, you're comparing it to something. And that's why what's normal for some people, someone else might consider that extreme or abnormal.

I'm trying to keep it vague for the purpose of that, just right here at the beginning. We'll jump into what this means, but I just want to get a good definition of what we mean by putting things into context. So Greg, I know you might have something to add to that, but that's generally how we discuss it in class.

One day, I'm going to say I have nothing. I have nothing. Just leave me hanging. No, I have nothing. If it was live, I would have. No. So here's a perfect example. Listen, I'll street it, Brian, because sometimes science, you got to go down to the street so people clearly understand what the topic is.

So I am within earshot of an argument, and the argument is vociferous, and it's in public. And therefore, I am requested to put in my two cents. Why? Because if you're going to have an argument like that in public, and you're going to be that stupid, I'm going to chime in.

Well, you're also, if you're having that argument or discussion in public in front of other people, you're opening up the floor. That's not a private conversation.

Just like a phone call. That's what I'm saying. If you're in public and you're talking on your phone, you heard that? Well, you're welcoming me into your conversation. That's the way I look at it.

So, and it just happens to be a female. I do not give a shit about color, about gender, about associations. Everybody is good in the hood. I'm all good with everything. I'm down to clown, as they say.

And so all of a sudden, the argument that's going on is about the six-foot rule. The argument is, "I'm not going to put my mask on because it's hoodoo science." And then the other person says, "Well, it's my store, and we have standards." And then the person that adds in on that says, "Hey, listen, you're in Colorado, and Governor Jared Polis did that. Well, that's not a law, it's an act. You can't do that. You can't enforce it."

Right, right.

So this is actually, Brian, this is two days ago, happening in a public place. My throat hurts because I'm yelling, "You're stupid! Get off that ship because it's going to crash!"

The idea was that the person that was the scientific brain of the group said, "And where did they come up with six feet? Why wasn't it 10 feet? Why wasn't it four feet?"

Okay, so rule number one: COVID scary. So we're not acting normally in the clinical sense. Two: We's got a lot to lose and screw us if we have to look up something or read something or go to a scientific test. If one of the recent politicians didn't say it, if some celebrity in Hollywood didn't say it, I ain't going to find it. You get what I'm trying to say?

So then the idea was, I said, "Well, ma'am, the six-foot rule comes from nasal droplets. And what they think is if you expectorate or you drop something out of your nose, even propelled by a sneeze, it's going to go on an average about six feet and then drop to the ground and then decay. So the idea is that if you're wearing a mask, the mask will severely limit the ability for those nasal droplets to project at six feet, but the mask isn't enough. So the mask plus that distance would probably double your chances of avoiding a catastrophic incident."

And she turned to me and she said, "F you, what do you know?" Holy shit. I parted the clouds and let some sunshine on this shitty argument. And because I had the unmitigated gall, Brian, to add facts or a basis of science to her argument, what happens is confirmation bias now sizzles. It gets hot. And we have a denialist that needs attention. And this is the route.

Stop for a minute because people call it fake news. It's not that fake news is not a really good thing. I call your attention. I've always hated that term.

Yeah, the term is wrong.

So, just like social distancing, we argue terms because words mean a lot. Words have a lot of meaning, a huge, huge impact on how our society and the fabric unfolds or binds and is tight. I draw your attention back to Benning. We were doing a Fort Benning in Georgia for units about to deploy, so they could carry our knowledge for the program. I wrote they were going to be able to do it, and Brian, you were right there with me, arm-in-arm with Shelly and some of the other incredible Shona by Shona. And the idea was that while we were imparting that knowledge down there, we would assign homework to every assignment conceivable and teach facts. And you had to come up, because we wanted to promote critical thinking, enough monkeys, enough typewriters, somebody's going to write the Magna Carta.

One of the people that was up in front that understood the information that was on that slide so they could share it and relate it in their own way with any number of people. And the people would go, "Oh, I got it." So we restricted and said, when you look up information, you got to cite your sources, and you can't use – and don't sue me, and nothing against it – but you can't use Wikipedia. And people objected. They go, "What do you have against Wikipedia?" I have nothing against Wikipedia, but Wikipedia is second.

Well, it's now second or third from Urban Dictionary.

Anybody can write a conclusion, and you can edit it, and you can add stuff that's not necessarily fact. And what I will say in defense of Wikipedia, if the sources they list at the bottom, you may then go into and read. But it should have a disclaimer before you read that first sentence saying, "Be advised, this is the site where a lot of people can put their thumb on the scale." You see what I'm trying to say?

Because you and I both, and I know everybody in the scientific community, we do peer review. In addition to peer review, we cite our sources. In addition to citing sources, Brian, we check different sources. We're not going to just latch on because this person's a published author, because you get what I'm saying? There were certain hate groups that are, I'm sure, claimed to be published authors as well. What I'm getting at is when they say fake news, what they're doing is they're invoking facts that aren't in existence. They're invoking facts that are opinion-based, and now we're acting more like a lawyer than a scientist. And that's what I object to. Do you see what I'm trying to say?

Actually, I want to get to that specific. I got to write that down. Actually, one of the things you just said with acting more like a lawyer than a scientist is probably the perfect analogy for how these arguments go and how it got started.

We want to win a side, Brian. We don't want to cite the example and go, "Wow, that's a reasonable conclusion." What we want to do is go, "So they're like on debate team."

Well, and this is why they make movies about the really successful, sexy, wordy lawyer, not the really successful, sexy, wordy scientist.

Yep. Because the scientist has to say, "Look, here's what I can prove."

Yes, that's it. This has been proved over and over. So, likely, what I'm seeing here means this, based on the artifacts and evidence in support of a reasonable conclusion and the historical knowledge that we have of this event, thing, whatever it is. But with a lawyer, you get to come in, whether you're a perfect prosecutor or a defense attorney. You get to sit here and go, "Alright, I can interpret this law and what happened and make it fit something."

And the other reason why the lawyer example is a perfect analogy is because think about a defense lawyer, a defense attorney. They don't need to prove that their...

Client.

Client. Thank you. They don't have to prove that their client didn't do it.

They just have to establish doubt in the jury's mind. And it doesn't have to be doubt. It has to be reasonable doubt.

Reasonable doubt, which is subjective.

"Reasonable" is a hugely important word because you have peers, and those peers are going to discuss it, and they're going to go, "Yeah, it sounds good to me." Do you get what I'm trying to say? That's such a... it's wonderful because our democracy is built on that theory, Brian.

Yes.

But it's also like, I always vote for the bench trial. Why do you do a bench trial? Because the judge looks at the facts. The jury doesn't have to look at anything. They want to hear a story. You understand what I'm trying to say? They're humans just like you. Now, you tell a good story, they might vote for you. They might not.

Well, and that's a great example of the... So, the lawyer doesn't... So this is how arguments come down. And this is how we get what people call, "Well, that's fake news," or, "That isn't real," or, "That is this." Is that what happens is...

Because we have to name it, Brian. We have to name a thing that's out there. Why do we tear down a statue, Brian? Because it's a thing. So fake news is a thing. I can show you fake news. This is fake news. So this is what we hate, and we have to go against it.

Right, right. And the idea too is that all someone has to do is create that reasonable doubt. So as long as, even if I'm... Even Greg, you're armed with all the facts due to the other stuff that we're working with, specifically we were talking about with masks and COVID stuff. But you're armed with, "Hey, this is why that was put in." You didn't say whether you liked it. You didn't say whether you should do it.

Because I don't have an opinion.

Right. You said, "Hey, this is where that came from." And then that person just had enough doubt. Someone had created enough doubt to go, "Well, no, because of whatever." And that's the big issue. And I like the lawyer versus scientist argument or analogy because that's exactly how some of these things occur.

Can I ask you a quick question? When you went through basic training, did you hear or are you familiar with the term called "the barracks lawyer"?

Oh, yeah. I was one for a while.

Okay. That's great. I constantly dole out legal advice that I have absolutely no authority or training or...

Exactly. No certification whatsoever.

So, here we are in basic training, and it's called, where I took my basic training, was a place they said "crossing the river." So here you're still partly civilian, but once you cross that river, dude, you're in the military. And so, we just get across, and they're doing the bunk thing, and we got to hurry because it's the haircut thing.

Yeah. And then you issue that. Watch Stripes, folks. It's exactly like the beginning of Stripes.

And I'm a lot like John Candy at the beginning. So the idea is that this guy comes up to me and they're having this discussion. He goes, "You know what I heard?" The barracks lawyer's always got that look. He goes, "You know what I heard? They can't touch you. They can't swear and they can't say nothing about your mother." And the guy goes, "Yeah, it's a law." And I go, "It's a law?" Because I'm having fun now. Do you get what I'm trying to say? They can't say nothing about your mother. Fifteen minutes from then, I heard swear words that I didn't even know. I wrote them down on my hand because I wanted to look them up later. In my face. And my mom might as well have been a street walker because it was just... And they can't touch you. No, but they can beat your ass and throw you down and kick you.

So the idea of the barracks lawyer is the barracks lawyer is wonderful. They have confirmation bias, and they say whatever they want to do. The danger is that somebody walks away from that conversation that doesn't go into the reality and goes to the water cooler. And somebody goes, "Hey, what was that about?" "Oh, that guy just said they can't touch you, and they can't. It's a law." And that goes out, and that goes out. And then after a while, all these little barnacles hook on that fake news. And somebody says, "Well, it's real. I've heard that. I heard that before." Just because you heard something doesn't make it true.

And the idea is there's no... Look, we're fragile. We have fragile ecosystems. My religion's important to me. My family's important to me. What I learned when I was growing up is important to me. And therefore, anything that challenges the fabric of me, which I'm not... Me, which is the most important person in the universe, if you challenge that, I'm going to fight you. And sometimes the only way I have to fight you is vote against you or complain and hold up a sign or a banner or tear something down that's important to you just to show how disgusting I am.

Do you ever hear the Hendrix song, "Excuse me while I kiss the sky"? "Kiss the sky." There's still people that say it's "kiss the sky." And they'll say you're a conspiracy theorist if you try to change it. Well, it was written that way only because Jimi Hendrix died. And they came in and they didn't want to have homosexuality with an upside-down, left-handed guitar player that was also Black. Do you see how that starts though? We could flat-earth the shit out of this, Brian.

The infamous "they." They are always out there. It is "they." And so this is kind of why I like, for the purposes of this discussion, is wrapping things underneath the banner of context. Think about context. I mean, we always say, obviously, the two greatest words in the English language are "prove it."

Not now. Not now. You don't have to, apparently.

But our threshold for what we'll accept when we want to believe something, because you brought up confirmation bias, which is, and flat earthers, which is a perfect example of, hey, I'm going to have a very, very low threshold for evidence that supports my claim. But something that goes against my claim, I want overwhelming evidence.

Yep. That's not enough.

Yeah, it's just not enough, which is a double standard, obviously. But, you know, you brought up a number of great spots, but then here's the thing: how am I supposed to put this information into context? If everything on my Facebook feed says, "Okay, well, yeah, Jeffrey Epstein, we know what he did, because all these women came forward and testified, and it's been proven, it's shown this, this, and this." And then, "Oh my God, so-and-so knew him, and he knew him, and they were on a plane together, and they knew this person over here. They breathed the same air in that plane." Holy crap. "Like, they're part of a pedophile ring that's killing babies to take out some part of their..."

Thank God the Clintons killed him in prison.

Yeah, you know what I'm saying? But why does it, how do I prevent myself from going down that rabbit hole and putting everything, because if you look at it in general, some people will research something that, "Okay, this is what I want," and will put in a diligent effort looking for information. But the problem is, if I'm looking for information, I'll find it, meaning if I want to know a certain opinion, all I have to do is Google it, and I'll find plenty of supporting evidence. I rarely go back and do the opposite of, "Well, what is the criticism here?"

So how do I put these things into context? If I'm going through, I'm hearing it on the news. How do I know what, is this reporter trying to sensationalize or put it in a certain way, or are they just trying to report what they're experiencing and what they call the facts? How do I know if this, my friend that posted this thing with links to all these articles on everything that connects all these random dots, how do I know what's real and what isn't? What do I use as evidence?

It's a great question. You framed it perfectly. I think we're going to get there. I think we have to do a couple more conversations before we're there today.

Now, and I want to street it again, so let's talk about your ego for a second and how your ego presents itself. You've got a lot of processes, information. Have you ever been, and this is for the listeners, the viewers, and for you, Brian, have you ever been in a situation? And I remember William Atkinson's wonderful comment when he was walking across an area and he tripped and almost face planted and again, went back to the Stripes moment, "Have that removed. Have that removed." Okay. Have you ever almost fallen, whether you were absolutely alone or in a crowd? What's the protocol?

Afterwards, they always look back to see what it is, straighten themselves up. Why? Because they're embarrassed. Because we have this mental image of who we are, that we have locomotion, that we understand gravity. Do you get what I'm trying to say? That we're some higher being, and we're really hugely important to the leaves and the changing of the seasons and the spinning of the earth, much more important than we are. And so we're so egotistical, Brian, that when we do that trip, we have to explain it. And then if somebody's around, even if we've never met him before, we'll go over and explain to him, "Hey, did you see that? I almost fell." "Yeah, yeah, we get it, ass bag."

The idea, Brian, is that it's part of how human nature processes information, and simply focusing on the evidence or the data isn't enough to change somebody's mind nowadays or to get them on board with you. Because what they want to do is they want to fire facts back at you. So if you say, "Well, listen, this was handled in the case of so-and-so versus so-and-so," they want to be able to come back and say, "Yeah, but our side said this."

Okay, so politicians specifically, but everybody has tuned into this, and it was probably about 12 years, 15 years ago by my estimation, where it started happening. And political people started saying, "Hey, wait a minute, advertisers have got this going on. You can advertise for weight loss or for testosterone gain or for any of this stuff." Right there in front of you, it says, "We're making no claims, no medical, it hasn't been tested." It's in writing now.

What legal system could have said, "Yeah, that's okay. Put a disclaimer at the bottom saying nothing we say is true"? Brian, it's a trillion or a quadrillion dollar a year industry. Why? Because we want to believe, Brian.

That's right.

We want to believe our side is right. And that's such a fragile system that we will go to great lengths to endorse something even if it's not true. We're going to go to great lengths to endorse something even if it's blatantly wrong, even if we can see that something's wrong with it, because our side says it so. And that can happen at church, that can happen at the dinner table, that can happen when you're dating somebody. Do you get what I'm trying to say? And it's certainly right now happening with political affiliations.

So political affiliations, they understand buzzwords. They understand advertising. It doesn't matter which side of the aisle you're on, Brian, because I've been to the Rayburn Building, seen both the inaction behind the scenes. What they do now is they know there are going to be winning strategies even if they're hollow.

Okay, because people will buy that product. Right. Right. And that gets into other things like if you keep saying something enough times, enough times, eventually...

Germans use that, by the way.

Yeah, it didn't... And if you keep saying that stuff over and over, eventually everyone believes it or it becomes so true. And that's very clear on both sides of the aisle in politics now, but it wasn't 25 years ago.

Molded. You're right. Because of instant media.

Yes. And then you nail it, you said about 12, 15 years ago, and I go, "Yeah, that's when this stuff kind of really started to go," as we started to be able to communicate more and with information just right now. And that's the thing is now, the louder that noise is, if all of my friends are going on, "Oh, something's got to be," because, "Well, Greg sent it to me. And all these people are following it." It has greater weight.

True.

And that's the issue. So, and we all do this. So for anyone listening, I'm not like, "Oh, bashing on everyone." I'm bashing on all humans, including myself. We all fall into that. And I think that's become a major, major issue now. We don't know what to believe or who to believe. And if you look back, you can look at how disinformation campaigns work and information operations, and how even intelligence services in the U.S. and abroad have done this stuff and really perfected it, even really back. You know how you get people to go along and believe with stuff and go, "Wow, this is a... This has a high level of organization in some of this stuff." But it's not accidental and it's tied. But the problem is then what everyone will do is go, "Oh, well, that's a conspiracy by the Republicans or the Democrats." And where I'm going, "Well, no, it's not some big well-organized thing. Someone had some well-organized plan here, but it was usually likely to either give them some sort of advantage, whether that was monetarily or politically or whatever. They were trying to get clout or power or whatever in some way."

And, and my intent was very much like, "No, these things, let's speak, it just go away." It doesn't mean that everyone else connected to that or who liked it or shared it was part of that. It meant that they constructed this. You kind of see what I'm getting at with this.

You're spot on. It's not, Brian, the insistence of a human being that facts are relevant to their case has nothing to do with the facts of the case. If you don't put it in context for the argument. You said that news media now, and trust me, I don't know what day it's going on, but it's months since I've watched a news broadcast because I just got tired of it. I had to walk away. But I still get news the funny old-fashioned way: I look things up and cite sources.

So there was this thing that was happening a couple of months ago about 360-degree news, and all the Denver stations went to it. "We're going to tackle this problem with 360-degree coverage." Okay, so just by mere happenstance, if you're talking about terrorism or pedophiles, are you telling me that you're going to get the perspective of the terrorist? Are you going to go to the pedophile and he's going to go, "Johnny bent over and he was the cutest kid on that softball field under 13"? No, that's ridiculous. But nowadays, it's, "Wait a minute, this person has an opinion."

Listen, the entire electoral process was to give one person the vote for that tribe or team or company, so not everybody could speak because we weren't getting anywhere. So we nominate a person to be the talker in that group, and that talker goes and has an agenda, our agenda. And we've gone away from that.

And I want to liken it to something that not all our, some of your viewers are like, they're surprised by something we bring up. Listen, take a look at pornography. And what I want you to do is balance purity. There was a time where anything goes, and pornography was used in articles and mailing and advertising and all this other stuff. Then there was a pendulum swing, and they said, "Well, not only can we not show nudity in any form, we'll go back to the Louvre and paint over parts of nude bodies. We'll go to statues and chisel off the penises of the male statues." Brian, this is facts and evidence.

Now we'll cover our entire body with six garments and 29 snaps and buttons and only show the wrist. All you got to do when somebody tells me now in "these uncertain times," I punch them as hard as I can. I donkey punch them as hard as I can, Brian, because it's ridiculous. These times are no worse than anything else. The Spanish Flu killed a third of the people on the face of the planet. You want to take a look at problems, look at our history. But guess what we're doing? We're following right in line with history instead of chipping off the...

Yeah, peanut.

...of a statue. We're taking down the statue of a Confederate general. Do you see what I'm trying to say? So what, so what's your message? Give me your message. Vote for a law, endorse the constitution.

So a position, but don't just go around and go...

Yeah, that too, because that leads to book burning and that leads to killing.

Well, no, no, no. And that's, that's the, "What is your message?" is what we go with, the "So what?" And I mean that in a number of ways, because I just had a discussion with someone, same thing, that we're going down this rabbit hole of the conspiracy theories, all kinds of different stuff. And this person that... And I'm like, "What, so what? What do you get?" "Well, shouldn't this?" I'm like, "What, what do you want to have? Like, let's say, let's assume all of this information to be true. What are you trying to get out of this? What do you want?" Because I said, "The end state, buddy, what are you?" Because it's like these hot button things come up and just blow up over social media. It's like right now, everyone's a pedophile. Everyone's a racist.

Greg, the last thing people were posting and sharing around is that hundreds of thousands of children are kidnapped and sold into slavery in the United States every year. Until I brought up that, but until I brought up the FBI Uniform Crime Reports that, well, the last year was 2018, and in terms of someone kidnapping a child that they had no connection to, and no one knew of, there was about 300 of them. And that's a little bit off than 400,000.

Brian, did we not see the same thing when people were saying cops were being killed wholesale slaughter on the streets? Well, before there was any fact-based data to add up to it. And nobody looked at LEOKA (Law Enforcement Officers Killed in the Line of Duty). Nobody looked at those stats. What do we agree on? The one thing you and I agree on with the FBI is there's some stats. Oh, yeah, they got their shit together. When it comes to data and research.

What they do that... Well, that's the whole purpose of what they were started for actually. You're exactly right.

You're exactly right. Why is a conspiracy theory so juicy? Why is salacious information make it like a cheeseburger that you got to go after? You gave it the X-Files explanation. Speaking of FBI Agent Mulder, who said, "People want to believe." That's it.

But people want to believe. That was what you want to believe. You don't want to believe like, listen, I'm not going to get into religion, but religion's a great example to research because people want to believe.

And I'll tell you, Brian, we're at a different age bracket now. I'm getting old. Fifty Shades of Grey is me now in the shower. So when I take a look at my mortality and I start thinking about it, I think things that I never thought before. What's my legacy? What am I going to do? So at different stages of people's lives, we embrace different things because they give us what we need. When somebody's sick, we want somebody to come in and heal them. And if the doctor says it's impossible, then we need somebody above a doctor. And if there isn't somebody there, Brian, we create that position because it feeds our, it feeds the beast. It fits the logic of our argument.

Leonard Nimoy used to host a TV show called In Search Of. And Spock, Leonard Nimoy, with his deep voice, every time they proposed something that was horseshit, it ended in a question. "The Nazca Lines. When you look down, it looks like a spider. Could this, could it be a message from the..." Whenever they say that, that's when you go, "It's horseshit." Call it, "Could it? Might? Could be? Who knows? Maybe?" Okay. The idea is science sets us apart from that.

Now, am I attacking anybody's belief system? No, baby, I believe stuff. As long as your stuff is legal, moral, and ethical, and you're doing it in your own house and not trying to sell it to my kid on the playground, I think we're good. But the idea is that you can't go back and rewrite history and clean up all of these things that happened because they were the things that formed the rich tapestry that we have now. So if you go to whatever memorial and you chisel off all the faces, why is it different than chiseling off the penises? If you go and you put the teeth on the Mona Lisa because we want to see what that bitch was smiling about, you've ruined everything that happened before that.

And I know I'm speaking metaphorically, and I'm trying to get a rise out of the audience, but what is the endgame, Brian? What will we do if we don't get to the endgame? What will we gain from disavowing or hiding that history?

Well, right, right. And that's why I always say, look, you have to put things into context. Whether that's what someone says or does, or a time period. You don't get to look back on everything and go...

Context is not perspective. Stop for just a second there and acknowledge that context and perspective are two completely different things. So if I look at it from the perspective of a person, I might come up with a different answer, Brian. So I can't do that. I cannot use confirmation bias. What I have to use is the context, and I have to look at it opaquely. I have to look at it from 30,000 feet, and go, "Oh, I understand." Even though it's wrong looking at it now, that bloodletting with leeches was a way that the medical profession... Do you get what I'm trying to say? So we can't go back and take all those scalpels out of the gosh damn Lister's book of notes and burn them. We have to acknowledge that that's the way that the medical profession is. That's what led us to this. We made mistakes. We imprisoned the wrong people. We persecuted people based on their color or their religion, and we killed, we interred Japanese people because we didn't want that to go sideways in World War II.

Lessons learned, Brian. Lessons learned. And that scar tissue made us harder, faster, stronger, and smarter. We have to embrace it.

Well, that's, that's the thing is that I don't think we do a good job of the takeaways are often lost. The "so what?" I think the message is often lost, because when we get into, "Well, this was done for this and for this reason, and that," and you go, "Alright, but what, what, what do we want? Like what's the so what? How should this look going forward?" But that's when we go down into the "we play" instead of the, "What do we want to do? What's our message? How do we change this?" We go into the blame game. "Oh, well, it's because of so-and-so." And then, "If we just, if that, if worse and wasn't there, then it wouldn't happen." Or, "It's because of..." It's like, "Wait a minute, this is our collective fault. It's our fault."

All of our responsibility, all of us. This is, again, one of the few things we're all in together, Brian. I hate that.

No, no, whether we like it or not, this is one of the, this is one of the few times anytime that you hear widespread, to begin to say, "Yeah, anytime you hear systemic, institutional," whenever you start hearing those words, I say, take a step back and be skeptical.

Framers of the Constitution didn't sit around and go, "This is for the betterment of everybody in America, except that gosh damn asshole at 446 Sage Drive. Write hidden stuff into all real estate code that'll last for 285 years, Brian, and when they look back, they won't even know it because it's so hidden."

Listen, it's okay to think that you got the shitty end of the stick. Many of us...

Yeah, everyone does at some point in their life.

Precisely. But there's precedent in how things were handled, and there's the high road. And I'm just saying, you take the high road. You back science. You vote for those people that share your opinion, but they share it for the right reasons, because it's in the betterment, it's in the better interest of all humanity and all society and our planet. And I don't give a damn whether I believe in global warming, I know that lowering our carbon footprint is better for the environment. Do you see?

Yeah, yeah. No, I can live with facts. And if they, if they're in the face of what I truly believe, then I have to reassess my belief system.

Well, that's the hardest thing to do. That is a hard thing to do. It goes back to our fragile ego system, as we describe it. It is hard for people, it's harder than we think to question our own beliefs and question what we were taught or how we view things, because that's what we constantly try to do. And I know a lot of that gets into fundamental basics for who we are. It's the underpinnings of our personality.

You know, our emblem. That's why we create shields and flags and totems, is because we want to go, "Look at us, you bastards. Look how different we are." And now we want to be inclusive. We want to be inclusive, and everybody should be the same, and we are the same, but we say, "It's okay to cut out your own little tribe." It's not, by the way. Whatever that is that just flew by was as big as the hummingbird, scaring the crap out of me. Yeah, you'll see it on the review again. It'll be coming around your side of the wall in a minute.

But Brian, you can't have it both ways. You can't and then call people out for being different. You can't say that every difference matters, but this difference is more important than the other. And we're just in a wonky period of science or the absence of science right now, where we're flat-earth thinking. I don't want to call it that. What should we call it, Brian? Lesser enlightened?

No, because I think, I think this, to go to that, is that this stuff affects everyone.

Yeah. I don't want to be a hypocrite because I'm as guilty as you are.

No, but that's what I'm saying is that, you know, we've had some discussions about what you kind of described as denialism and stuff, and it affects a lot. It affects really, really, really smart, brilliant people and really, dumb people. Meaning, it gives ammunition for the full spectrum of arguments, doesn't it?

Yeah, but that's the idea is then it's very difficult because now there's people want to deny some claims, but then want to call other things...

Embrace others.

Or say, "We'll look at the science on this, this is..." And the biggest thing is what a lot of folks don't understand. Have any of you ever been involved in a scientific study before and research, and how it's conducted and what it's meant for? You need a lot of evidence to go, "Yes, this is a theory that can be substantiated and we can go with, because it can be proven in multiple domains and all that." But what I'm getting at is like, you know, there was a while where what was it called, the head phrenology, where they would, they had scientists read the bumps on your head.

Sean Clemens used to call me the assistant phrenologist because I'd put bumps on people's head. He honestly did. And people would go, "What does that mean?" And Sean would go, "You're about to see that. You're getting them angry. You're going to see it in a minute." That's hilarious.

But that's the thing is like, for a while, people latch on to that, and then when they find out like, "Hey, this is complete BS," everyone went, "Oh, alright." So here, let's tie this to something, Brian. Have you ever seen a news article in your life? I want you to give me 10, a thousand times, 400 times. Have you ever seen an article about the 106-year-old woman, and you know what she's going to tell you? How to live. "I ate a gallon of suet and fat back and smoked cigars and had expected sex for 70 years." Why? Because we want to believe that just having the stair stepper in the basement, just having the elliptical in the basement that's holding my laundry, is going to make me thinner. We want to believe that I can put a drop on my tongue, Brian. We want to believe that the greater arsenal and gun safe that I build in my garage, that I'm going to be protected against these things. I want to throw holy water at them, and I want to hold a totem of a cross at them or whatever Buddha, Vishnu, I don't care.

But the idea is, Brian, we have to deal with this, and we're dealing with it poorly. Because what we're doing is we're having an argument that's burning down cities in America, arguments nationwide. But this one bothers me because we live in the United States. We're having an argument over how many cups of coffee are good for you, and not all the facts are in. Do you see what I'm trying to say? And somebody's going, "Oh, you can't discount it to that. This is about people. I'm a person too, and we're supposed to be exactly the same." And if you look at us at the DNA level, we are genetically, we are. So stop looking at the skin and saying, "The skin, and you're saying, yeah, but some people had it bad." Hey, if you're telling me a Black person had it bad, I'll tell you a Vietnamese that had it worse. Or I'll tell you this: we got to stop classifying.

Well, it's an oversimplification. I call it intellectual laziness. I mean, you're exactly right. It's too, it's very easy to write someone off. It's very easy to go, "Oh, yes, they're just that," or, "Oh, I'm just..." It's your... And it's happening much earlier than it needs to.

Yes, yes. And stereotyping is generally correct in a scientific term, or it wouldn't be called stereotyping. Do you see what I'm saying? Now it can be bad because we don't want to use that as a gating mechanism. We want to treat the individual as a unique little snowflake that they are. And now somebody right now is going to go, "Hey, you snowflake," instead of "chocolate drop." I didn't mean anything by it. There's nothing institutional, there's nothing systemic, there's nothing hidden. It's just me talking. But if you're going to go to that level of granularity, Brian, so everybody's guilty, right? Everybody's a pedophile. Everybody's...

That's my point is that right now, everyone's a pedophile. And everybody's a pedophile, and everybody's a pedophile, and everybody's a racist. Or there's something else here. But, meaning, you know, it's very easy for us to do that to people. But the whole thing is, why, why do we have to do that? Meaning, why is it so difficult for me to try and fully understand something? I just immediately latch on to whatever new thing is out there and coming up. And this is...

I don't want to be a sheep. I want to consider myself hanging with the wolves, Brian. I want to consider myself being the or the you that gets the most attention in the flock. I want somebody to come by and flock me once in a while, if you know what I'm saying. So these primitive needs of human beings result in us having to develop an identity in the crowd. And when we feel that our identity hasn't been established enough, then we fight. And guess what? A person selling a car is going to pander to me because they still got to sell that car. So whatever, whatever's nuanced, like, for example, for the next week, it's hate week against anybody that's got just one earring. If you got one earring, take a two-pound sledge and chase them down. If you let that go on long enough, advertisers would come up and say, "New from Ronco: the disposable third earring," or whatever. Do you see what I'm saying?

So don't judge your future or the future of the United States on advertising. Don't judge it on Wall Street, Brian. What's Wall Street based on? The long game. Wall Street's not based on what happened yesterday or the last 10 years. Do you understand? So if we're doing that and you say because of that, "Okay, we're not going to take an inoculation. We're not going to get a vaccine. We're not going to wear a mask." That's what we're doing here. We're using non-science to make my conscience feel better. And for you out there that ain't catching on, that's your conscience and your conscience that's rubbing you the wrong way, and that's why you're objecting to something. You're objecting it because you're selfish. All humans are selfish, Brian. But if we were more educated and we sat down and we used empathy, we would have been more educated. In other words, putting yourself in the other person's shoes and seeing the world through their eyes, we'd get along a lot better.

We got to give ourselves a gift of time to distance on this.

Taking, everyone says that, but taking another person's perspective is incredibly difficult for most humans to do, for all of us to do. It's really, really difficult. And when you, when you do that, you know, you really get when you've had to actually had experiences, where you do that. I always use the one where, especially, fighting in Iraq, and you're going, "Alright, we're fighting an insurgency." And then you had to sit there and go, "Well, what if Iraq had invaded and taken over the United States and I was out here with my buddies, what would I be doing?" "Oh, I'd be every day, 'How many am I going to kill today?'" "How many I'm going to go get some guns, some bombs?" So it's like, "Oh, okay. What does that look like?" This is a very complicated situation here. It's not, it's not good versus evil, us versus them. It's, "Man, if the circumstances were different, guess where I'd be? I'd be right over..."

So what if you were in the Western United States and you knew that there was a place a little bit north of you that had better education or had better schools, but there was a wall between you and it? Would you be willing to try to climb over that wall and maybe make a fake ID? Brian, that argument is of empathy, understanding that, listen, there are people out there that look, there's people out there with nefarious intent. They're called criminals and terrorists, and they only care about themselves, and they'll kill you and rape you and cut your throat. Not everybody's like that. It's actually a very small, insignificant number of people that want to do that. But what are all laws written for? Laws aren't written for general people. Laws are written to keep those people away from the rest of us. And right back to that flock mentality, we sometimes, and you said it really well the other day about, and you said it again today, but people don't understand what you mean sometimes when you say, "Sometimes the loudest signal gets answered." That doesn't just mean the loudest yeller. And you said it again today, but people don't understand what you mean sometimes when you usually the person that's yelling the loudest is the person that has no information. You get what I'm saying? And they want to remain relevant. But what you meant is signal-to-noise ratio. And what's happening is because we're addressing these ridiculous arguments, Brian, because we're going out and going down and splitting hairs, we're not getting to the core issues. And the core issues are, we are all genetically the same. We are all in this argument, in this together, and if we don't pull together, we're going to see the image that we can't unring, we can't.

So yeah, and that the signal to noise one is always a good one, because that's just, you know, it's more of like a data kind of term. But that's anytime you have a sensor or something, it's got a signal here and then there's all this noise. All the noise is what you see in your Facebook feed and on the news and just all this noise just constantly coming at you. And you got to go, "Well, which one of the, like, where, what signal do I need to pay attention to?" And sometimes the problem with those signals is they're wildly inaccurate. And so instead of looking, you got to look for what's the most accurate. What's giving me the least amount of false positives and false negatives? What's that, what's that sensor that I need to vector in on? But perfect. That's, it's very difficult to do. And the other thing is I, because I don't know, like how do I, how do I put any of this stuff into context?

Let me give you an example because that's a perfect question, Brian. You have undoubtedly at your young age been exposed to the weather, especially now that you're homeless and living out in the weather. Okay, so you understand when that box gets wet, it gets cold. You know what I'm saying? So, and it smells even more like your urine.

But the idea is that there's a thing called weather predicting, and with all the incredible tools that we have, I want you to imagine that tsunami coming on shore, that cyclone or water. I live in Colorado, so we don't have an ocean. But you see those tornadic weather effects, and they have all these models for when it's going to hit landfall. You see the high winds that are coming across or the Chinook, that snowstorm that's coming down, and they have prediction models, Brian. How is it that we in 2020, with all the science that we have, and the understanding of the planet and satellites and all this other stuff, that we can't determine whether it's going to rain or not on your wedding day? That's what people have to understand. That's what life is about. I keep talking about the rich tapestry of life, Brian. It's a different thing. We don't have it all down. We still make mistakes, scientists. We still make mistakes.

Listen, politicians make mistakes. And 100 years from now, we're going to look back at something that we all believed in, and we're going to find out it was horse shit. And I only hope that those Jetsons in the future don't come back and burn down the museum because they didn't like what somebody said. Do you see what I'm trying to say? We have to create a balance. And the balance has to be, what do we need to propel ourselves forward while not discounting the lessons of our past, even the horrible, horrific lessons? Because that's where we learn the most. The harder we fall, that's the best lesson of all. If we only get pinched once in a while.

Hey, my brother Jeff, coming up the steps of our house on the east side of Detroit, had two glass milk bottles. And my dad told him not to carry the milk bottles individually. Always put them in the metal tray because we had a milkman back in the day. And he had a little paper tab that came on top. And Jeff held him like this. And when he fell forward going up the steps, he hit the ground this way, and the bottle destroyed both of his hands. So if you ever see my brother Jeff, looks like he's got two catcher's mitts. He almost died from that, Brian. You know why? Because he didn't listen to something that he knew was better.

Now, look, there's so many things. Milk bottles aren't like that anymore and all this. But he had to do things his own way. And sometimes, Brian, when we're coloring outside the lines, we get spanked down. But I'll guarantee you this: Jeff never forgot that lesson. Jeff always understood from that point forward how to do it. "Hey, don't carry it that way. Get two people on that ladder. Watch out when you're stepping over those things." And he's the most safety conscious. And what did he go into? He was a law enforcement paramedic. So in Grosse Pointe Woods, where he was, you were a copper and you did the medical stuff. So don't you dare tell me that that doesn't influence us later in life.

I'm just saying, do that. Have a little bit of empathy. Give yourself the gift of time and distance. When you see something on TV, don't all of a sudden change the channel. I had to stop watching the news because the news kept picking the wrong side. And I don't mean from a bias. I don't mean that I'm confirming my bias. I'm saying that they were always going down and saying, "Hey, sometimes you got to vote, like we say, with your feet." They were saying, "Sometimes you got to burn down. You got to burn down the cathedral." No, you don't. Violence is an immediate end, but it doesn't make it the correct ending.

Well, it's... it influences things quicker than any other. The problem... Well, look, like we use that as all nations, civilizations have used violence in some way before. So, meaning, when you go to war, you're using violence, but it's not, it's not just...

Yeah, but there's, there's, there's some purpose behind it.

Well, regardless of what that purpose is, there's an intent and a purpose and a reason for it. Meaning that, that may later on be like, "Oh, that was a really bad or stupid or whatever." I don't care. I'm just saying, I mean, it's not, it's not violence for the sake of violence. It's not protesting for the sake of protesting. It's not yelling on Facebook for the sake of yelling on Facebook. If it is, you really got to be suspect. If there are people that you could buy to increase your stake on social media. If there's people that would be professional protesters, let's say, if there was such a thing, that would be kind of a bad thing. Do you get what I'm trying to say?

Well, that's what I'm saying is you're not, if you're not tying this action to something, then what, what is it for? Are you just being an asshole? I mean, I mean, really, what, what is your...

Let's, let's address that. I think you just came up with a great argument. There are certain people that will fight wearing a mask or fight you for not wearing a mask because they are assholes. Because this just, they're just looking for a fight.

I'm a voice. You got it. And that chip on my shoulder or that parrot on the other shoulder, however you roll, I'm all good with that. It's about the idea is that you want to exert your wish and your will. Almost everybody wants their say. Almost nobody wants their way, Brian, but those special ilk of people, this is, this is freedom to them. There's some people headed to Portland just to get into that.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then they don't buy just to fight.

Yeah, no, no, no, absolutely. That's, that's, that's a huge part of a lot of this. There's people who just want, even are famous or popular or whatever, that they just want to argue for the sake of arguing. They just want to bring stuff up. Meaning if it, this could be whatever the issue is, they're going to take a strong side, and they're just going to be peddling what they exactly.

And just for the sake of it.

And why, there's a moral road to Brian. There are Hollywood stars that need to get back in the limelight that have been out for a while that'll get a DUI. And they'll get a DUI and do something stupid and all this other stuff. Why? To get the attention. And you're going, "Well, why would they shave their head and walk around drunk?" Listen, attention, attending to them equals dollars, equals I can keep my kid on the payroll, equals whatever. So see, we don't like motive. We like intent. So stop thinking of motive and think what their intentions are behind us. Why would they want to act in a lawless fashion in a place where this didn't happen? Because we're going to have our say. Nah, it's not necessarily true. Sometimes people have ulterior motives, Brian, and that's what we have to say.

So I would, I would say that, and tell me what you think of this, that understand, because we always talk about intent, that's what really, really matters. Intent, intent. I don't care if you're doing something for a religious reason, a political reason, a social reason. If you're personal law, you're going to attack, whatever. It's all about what your intent is, because that, that, now I know what it is when you make a comment or whatever. It's all about what, what did you intend there? And I think that's a good way of using that to put things into context.

So, alright, you send me an article, Greg, and go, "Alright, hey, it's about this." What is, what is the point? What is the intent that this writer is trying to get across here? What is their message? What are they trying to tell me? Because when you approach it from that way, you start to see the article or information you're reading a little bit differently with a little bit... It's just, I think it's a, it's a filter, like you said, just to go, "Okay, well, are they, maybe some of the things they're saying in here are very true and verifiable, but does it really raise to what they're trying to sell me here?" Because that's part of it. Part of it is with any journalism or any article or any information. I don't care if it's your friend posting some crap on Facebook. It's, it's, there's, there's an intent. Part of that is there's a monetary reason for that too, for a lot of it. So, so don't ever forget that. What are they trying to sell me? What are you trying to get me to believe in?

Because if I approach it from that way, because we try, we always try to do what, you know, "Hey, Human Behavior Pattern Recognition Analysis to help increase your advanced critical thinking." Never going to tell you what to think or what to look for. It's all, "Here's how, here's how you process whatever conclusion you come to, but here's how. And here are reasonable conclusions and unreasonable. Here are likely conclusions and dangerous conclusions." And that's the architecture behind HBPRNA. And it took me my entire life to build it. And Brian, I didn't learn it in a vacuum. I learned it on the shoulders of giants. And that's why sometimes people go, "How do you feel when you see these people out there doing similar courses?" "Hey, they're trying, they're out there with 16-ounce gloves swinging to try to get where we already found the idea." The difference is people don't understand context, irrelevant sometimes. And they don't understand that perspective creates biases because people are different. So you have to look objectively, not subjectively. And that comes down to a very simple switch, Brian. Is it the most likely or the most dangerous? Is it reasonable or is it unreasonable? And you said, it's a Greg-ism from a long time ago: "We don't want to rush to an unreasonable conclusion." And to street that down further, we don't want to put a round peg into a square hole.

So I'll give you a real quick example, folks. If you're still listening, look up Escanaba, Michigan. Look up the bald eagle that destroyed the drone. Greg, would you agree? It's one of the best-written articles.

Extremely detailed. It was the most, like, it was boldly detailed.

A little... Come on, background, though, just for everyone, is it was just an article I sent to Greg actually today or last night or whatever about this bald eagle up in Upper Peninsula, Michigan, where my wife's originally from. It knocked down this drone that was out there for a mapping stuff for like a geological survey, looking at going back and forth. But this bald eagle knocked it out and it sank to the bottom of Lake Michigan, which was actually in about four feet of water, which is not the bottom of Lake Michigan. Lake Michigan is very deep. But reading it afterwards, after we sent it around and Sean had some whole laugh about it. You go through and you go, "This is actually a really, really well-written article and very detailed. I was right to the point."

So, so be suspect, folks. The reason I'm throwing it out there and look it up, because you'll laugh when you read the article, is that you'll read a companion article that says, "Eagle trained by Putin tries to influence drone movement." Do you see what I'm trying to say? So be skeptical. Or if you're reading an article about buying wool jacket inserts and in the middle of it, it says, "Remember back in 1827 when Thurgood Marshall itched because of this thing?" Listen, anytime somebody is working that hard to get you to tie these dots together, something's wrong. And anytime that your article is surrounded completely by advertising, be suspect, take a little deeper, but it can step back and find out what the information.

I think that would be more an Antifa-trained bald eagle knocks out, what I'm trying to say, that was proving climate change does not exist or something like that.

So do you want to choose precedent? And do you want to choose the truth and legal, moral, and ethical? Or do you want to choose fake news? It's hard. Because one's much more entertaining than the truth, Brian. But every time that we're faced with something that scares us, we have to modify our reality to accept it or to deny it. That's the only choices we have. Denying it is ostrich head in the sand, or going with somebody else's opinion. We can't face scary. It's hard to face.

And sometimes, sometimes too, like one, usually the truth is a lot more simpler and easily defined than these spectacular stories. But the other thing is sometimes truth, truth is stranger than fiction. Sometimes, sometimes that's the whole, that's, that's the whole thing is that like, look, it's actually some things can get pretty crazy. And, you know, a lot of this comes from, and I know you brought it up several times in a couple of different ways, of that, of that confirmation bias is so strong in all of us. We constantly look for just more facts that support what we already believe and want to believe. And we don't ever go down, we don't ever spend the same amount of time going down the rabbit hole of, "Well, what if, what if I'm wrong? What, what does the other side, what does the other side or what's the other perspective from this?"

Because when our brain perceives data, when we start to use metacognition, when we are engaging all parts of our brain, again, some of the answers don't make sense. So what we have to do is engage in sense-making, and some of those create ripples, problems. And we have to engage in problem-solving, and those burn calories. And that again, creates a Mobius loop that scares my brain. So instead of going through that fear loop, my brain will create it. And that's why the closet monster, just leave a light on the closet monster. Just leave the door open to closet monster, put a drawer under the bed. Do you understand what I'm saying? Those fears are so real that we have to create barriers and barricades in which to hide them, Brian. And so sometimes the truth suffers because it's a, what would Al Gore call it? An inconvenient truth. Well, I'll take the title, not the science, Gore.

But my idea is that imagine how you could use what we've been talking about for an hour as a de-escalation strategy. First, engage empathy. Give yourself a little more distance than you would. And instead of immediately taking control, approach the situation by saying, "Hey, look, what's on your mind? I understand your heart. We're heated right now."

And when you say, "I understand" to the person, I'll give you the Kevlar example. I met the guy that invented the Kevlar vest for cops. And he went around and he had this catalog case. And he pulled out a gun, put on his vest and shot. And we all shit ourselves, and then he went up and he took out some newspapers he had under it and said, "Hey, I'm fine." I bought the best, Brian. I never, ever engaged. So the idea is there's certain things that you look at it and you're going, "Okay, I'm going to believe that. I'll take the word for it." Your brain will compartmentalize information and avoid things that aren't fun.

Now we're in a situation in America where things aren't fun. Don't look the other way. Get to the root cause of these situations. Take a look at what's going on. Is it really about what they're telling you it's about? Is it really about these widespread systemic issues in certain things? Or is somebody trying to sell you a car? You see what I'm saying? And I'll tell you what, science and math rarely let you down. They're pretty well...

Yeah, they, but the problem is that they often require you, you know, ask more questions or we haven't figured that out yet. We're not really good at the research part, are we?

No, but that's what I'm saying is that a lot of even what we teach, it's like, look, I can't tell you, "Hey, when A happens and B happens, you're going to do C." It's, it's how do you ask?

Let me ask you this. Let me ask you this here. Here's another great point. You just hit the nail on the head. Folks, if you're listening, rewind and listen to what Brian's saying here. Okay. So Brian, we've been in this business a while, and I've taught this everywhere. And people that take the training always come up, and you can attest to that. They always come up and go, "Where was this before I deployed? This is the greatest training. This should be required for all that other stuff." Never once has anybody that's attended the course come up and said, "Man, you got to dumb this down. You got to Barney-style it. You got to go low." No. But any single time that somebody hears the pitch and hasn't been to the course, they come up to us and go, "Wow, man, that must be a really hard concept. And I don't think these guys, I don't think the young guys are going to get it."

Exactly. It's horse shit.

So, so what is that though, Brian? That's exactly our ecosystem beginning. That's a guy at the beginning of the Judo class or the Aikido class that comes up and tells the instructor, "Hey, just so you know, I slept wrong in my shoulders." They're setting themselves up for failure so they can bow out gracefully, Sensei, and say, "I don't want to be on the mat today." And that's horse shit. That's called denialism.

Yeah, no. And, and, and I get what you're saying with that, but that, that is, that is difficult for us to go, "Alright, well, we all want to go, 'Well, hey, this sounds really cool, but, you know, I don't think the average person is going to really get this.'" It's not, "Hey, let's dumb this down. Hey, why don't we explain it?" And I think, and this is my personal opinion, and I haven't done my due diligence on my own research on it, but, but is that that's part of the issue that we're having. Meaning we continue to dumb it down and dumb it down and dumb it down. "Hey, just give them a simple message." You want to really, it's like, "No, engage people and force them. Hey, look, these issues, especially with politicians, like I don't care what side of the aisle they're on, they come up with these horrible little taglines and everyone repeats it." And it's horse crap. It's that issue.

You want to touch the flame, but you want to get close. You're exactly right. But what they should be going, "Look, this is very difficult. Here's what we're doing. Alright." And I can articulate, "Look, here's what I know. And here's why we're doing it this way. Now, some of this might change in the future. And I know that's confusing, but we're going with the best thing. That's the best thing that we have right now." And that's clear. And it's in all of our best. But we can all understand. Everyone understands that. Everyone knows that.

Like, you know, everyone who has, you raise a kid, you do the best you can. You don't know everything that's going to happen. And there's lessons you can learn and things you do have to do, but, you know, there's going to be unknowns out there. So people understand that. And I think that comes along with it is how we, how we communicate and how we articulate this stuff. And context, it's irrelevant.

Yeah. That signal-to-noise ratio. I'll buy into. Meaning, if I understand that these things are going to be hard and it's going to seem like it's uneven, but we have to even the load or the freighter is going to sink to the bottom of Lake Superior.

You know, the certain things like that, we'll understand. And we always talk about, we all have a fragile ecosystem. We talk about it a lot, but when we get an emotional reaction to something, you have to think, "Now there's something wrong." You have some emotional reaction to something. Okay. Just remember, I always put my friend Jess always says the best, like, "Yeah, you know what? The greatest thing my parents did when I was young is they taught me that, 'Hey, sometimes your feelings can lie to you.'" Meaning like, you know, "Hey, sometimes like you don't deserve to feel that way." Right? You might be embarrassed or hurt or think that's wrong, but it's really not. But the idea is if you're having an emotional reaction to some story or something you're seeing, maybe someone intended for you to have that emotional reaction. And maybe you need to dig a little.

Yeah. So that's what I'm saying is, Greg, how many scientific, how many scientific studies have you read where you had an emotional reaction to reading a data set?

Not one. Not too many. And you know me. You know the way I read. It's very clear. I've got a bathroom book. I've got a bedroom book, and I've got a basement book. And each one of those books, one of those books at any one time has to be about what we do. It has to be a scientific journal. It has to be American Medical Association. It has to be something to do with what we do. And guess what? It's all a series of plain facts. It's like reading a calculus book. Do you get what I'm trying to say? The idea is that it doesn't raise, it may raise, you may go, "Hmm." Brian, we've done that a bunch of times and sent those things back and forth. I learned something there. But you're exactly right.

And that's why, Brian, escape is science fiction, fantasy, Disney. That's why they're in the world, Brian. And that's why confirmation bias exists. Confirmation bias was the caveman's version of Walt Disney, because you weren't sure what you were getting into. You had to rely on information, that hand, that's, "Get out of the cave and breed."

And that's a good point. Because this is why it affects us. It's not like, "Oh, hey, like you're so much more susceptible to confirmation bias than me. Look at me." No, it's, it's we had to, for survival purposes, we had to have a very limited understanding and view of the world to go, "Threat, no threat, food."

Exactly. It seemed so much higher than, but the stakes were no higher back to Spanish Flu, right? Not Spanish Fly, Brian. Not the fly-fishing show. Or the... So, that was a reward. We're sorry folks, we'll try to edit that.

The idea though, Brian, is that the investment, we constantly think we're the only generation that's faced problems. We constantly think that, only us, we only are the ones, we're the only ones to be able to get the answer. We've got to take a step back off the ego. We have to understand our little fragile Fabergé eggs we live in, and we have to get uncomfortable. And Brian, some of that means being comfortable when it's uncomfortable.

Yeah. And you said that in so many different ways in our last shows. I think that's an important, get comfortable being uncomfortable and questioning your beliefs sometimes.

Well, I know this. Questioning your beliefs, yes, your beliefs, but my beliefs too. I got to take a step back. And we're not saying that, that surgical master, the Antichrist, we're not, we're not selling anything. It's just another thing for free. It's another thing that we have to encounter. It's another speed bump on that road. It's another pit stop on that racetrack.

Yeah. It's another thing that we can jump on or do what we have to learn from and grow from. And I think that's a big picture way to look at, put all of this stuff in the context. Alright. It's another issue we have. Okay. Well, we have a global pandemic. Okay. Well, that's, that's another thing we've dealt with before in the past. Let's put this in the context of, "Oh shit, we're pretty lucky. We're actually pretty lucky that it has a pretty low mortality rate." There's already a battle. Oh, it's a battle cruiser. But yeah.

And then, okay, now we have some, obviously because of it, unemployment, economic issues. Okay. But, but, but we've, we've been a lot, we've been a lot worse off in the past. So let's learn from it and figure out what to do best now and put it into that historical context of where, where we fit in of this. You're exactly right. I think that that helps in some way to go, "What is the intent behind this message? How do I put this into some sort of context?" Because without that context, anything can mean anything. And that's, that's right. When you start changing language or changing how you, how you approach science, you're just throwing out any sense of rules or framework or anything. And that's then, then anything works. And that's BS. That's, that's a really simple world where you can just say, "Well, I believe what I believe and I'm always right." And every single person gets to say that. And you go, "Well, no, it's, it's..."

World used to be like that. People died. They died, were brutally murdered. So, so we have, we have to use a framework and agree upon some language in terms. And especially, you know, we have laws. We have...

Can I tell you a very brief, brief example of what you just said? So there's a city that's close to where I'm living at, Rogue Manor West. And I'm not talking about the little city. I'm talking about a smaller city 36 miles away where a lot of people with a lot of money. So their response to what's going on in the United States is unique, but ironic. So you can't afford to live there unless you make a tremendous amount of money. So the question came up recently about the police officers that are working in that area. And one of the people that was a politician that's in the know, I don't want to get too close because every day, said, "Well, how many of those law enforcement officers live in this town?" That was, "None of them. None of us can afford to live here."

And then it was the, don't, the uncomfortable science before you walk across the street to tell me I'm wrong. Before you paint another sign or wave your flag or a banner, as we all got one, we all got tats, and we all got our way to say it. How about sitting down on a bench for a minute and trying to see the world through my eyes? Try to walk around in my sandals. Try to, well, in my amazing 5X jacket Crocs. How about, how about taking a look?

Yeah, exactly. Open-toed.

But the idea is that empathy is a perfect psychological de-escalation tool. Mimicry works, but guess what? If mimicry isn't genuine and you're just doing it to get across the bow, you're going to come off creepy, and I'm going to see right through your argument. So give the time and distance, slow it down. Brian, those folks that are the first to argue, I have no idea what they're talking about.

Yeah, no. And I think that's kind of a good area to kind of wrap it up on everything that we talked about with context and intent and confirmation bias and how that, how these situations can occur. And this is not a, I try never to, nothing is like, to me, it's, I don't play the blame game. It gets you nowhere. So if you want to be part of, you're going to get better. And if they're not going to get worse, you want to be part of that, then you're not, you're not actually helping. You're just saying, "Oh, it's that person's fault."

No, that's called jumping on the bandwagon.

You're saying, "Hey, a lot of people really like this. Well, we better do that too." It doesn't, but it doesn't get us anywhere. I mean, meaning going, "Well, what it's, what can you do personally? What can I do?" And that would noise, Brian. It gives us additional noise that we got to get through. So it comes down to like, "What can I do personally?" It's, "This is about me not being the group, Larry, what, where do I fit in here?" And like, you kind of summed it up. It's like, look, you have to approach things from that level of empathy and go, "Well, you know what? I don't know what's going on in that person's life, but if they're yelling and screaming in public and they're a grown adult, obviously they're having a hard time dealing with the situation, and I'm not. So maybe I can help that person." So I can either be part of the solution.

Yeah. Or part of the problem. It's that simple.

I think that's kind of a good area to wrap up a context. I know we'll talk more about that. And we always talk about, I hope we get back on Facebook. I know. Apparently, it was put in Facebook jail. I have no idea what happened. It just wouldn't, some error going to live stream. But if you guys aren't following me yet on there, thanks again to everyone who's been a few more of you've been signing up at the Patreon site. We've got other things in mind. So if you are signed up in there, you're part of the early crew. I would suggest other people do that too, because when we do have a bigger project going on, those initial seats and test people, we'll call you. We'll be from those folks who've been following along with us and corresponding. So we do appreciate that. All of you have been doing that.

We'll also be posting. A lot of you have been asking about a reading list. We'll do an updated reading list. We have a bunch, but it just, there's a lot on there, and there's long. So we have stuff that we recommend. So we'll probably put something together that we like to dive into, and they're covered a number of different topics, everything from all kinds of stuff from politics to just like the webinars are books all over the place. So it's a good mix and you can find and pick and choose someone. So we appreciate everyone for tuning in. Thanks a lot. And don't forget that training changes behavior.