L.O.G. 210 Its All Greek To Me

All right. Well, good morning, Greg. After a good week of you running around Gunnison with family from Colorado. Actually, yeah, the timing was great. So yeah, I know you're coming back from that break, and then I had some other big stuff that we're working on, which is good. So, and then I get my break here soon because we're going to very soon be on baby watch. So that'll be good.

But today, we're going to talk about something that we've discussed elements of before in different episodes. But we're talking a little bit about language and how it's used, specifically around some very specific terms that I know you turn into the "you know what really grinds my gears" kind of episode. I really do, immediately.

But when it comes to things like people talk about, you know, situational awareness, and I use that term in general, "hey, you've got to pay attention." And I think it's important to start out saying, when people are doing this, obviously they're well-intentioned. They're typically telling people to be safe and all this stuff. But a lot of this stuff gets used incorrectly, and I think it gives a false understanding of it. These terms mean something, not just those but others, which even to the point where I'm like, "I don't ever use that term" because I don't like it, because I don't know what it means to you.

When someone talks about situation or situational awareness, that's a term a lot of pilots use because you have to maintain situational awareness to know literally where the horizon is so you don't come burning it in the ground, you can flip around. If you work in an Operation Center, you're in something like that, you have to, you want to have situation awareness about what's going on in your area of operations. And then there's this one now everyone's using, I guess just being aware of your surroundings and keeping your head on a swivel as they say. But it's important to kind of understand this in the context of what we talk about: critical thinking, pattern recognition, and human behavior. Because you don't just want to slap a sticker on something. It's the guarantee on the box, you know what I mean, from Tommy Boy. Right? Well, there it is, I can point to the guarantee, you know.

But I'll throw it to you, Greg, to kind of get into it and define some of these terms. And again, I just will preface it now, but someone will still get butt hurt. You know that a lot of people are well-intentioned, just like a lot of training stuff we see. It's not that it's bad training, it's just it's not going to give you the outcomes you think it's going to. And you only have so much time to do so much of it, so you need to pick accordingly on what's the most advantageous to use. But I'll stop there and let you kick it off with some of the terms and what we mean by them and what they actually mean.

I appreciate that, and I want to go a different way just now because I'm writing these things down because you anger me all the time.

You anger yourself.

I do. And that's what happened, is what you do is you just lit the fuse. So sometimes I go in there, switch. But here's, yeah, you did. And all you did is step on a scale. So here's three things before I give those definitions that made me think. I wrote down OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) because if I hear one more misappropriation. I wrote down Imposter Syndrome and Dunning-Kruger (effect). So here's the thing, folks: your knowledge, your background, experience, and those things that you intuit or gut instinct, all lead you to make the decisions that you make in your life. You don't need to adopt somebody else's unexperienced or researched term to name it.

So the idea is that every generation comes up with these terms to throw out there and name it. It has nothing to do with your daily life, mowing your lawn, making your dinner, taking your kids to school. So abandon it. So anytime that you're about to enter a situation that has danger and opportunity, your brain relies on a decision-making process that already includes pattern recognition, pattern matching, relevant analysis that helps you form likely story lines on what's happening right now. And then, based on the artifacts and evidence and your experience and knowledge, what's going to happen in just a few seconds. And if that outcome is dangerous, your brain and body have a system already made up. The decision is made in the amygdala, and then you act on it for fight or flight or fear or a number of other things that I'm sure your next book by Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman will talk about.

The idea is that if we then combine that with opportunity, meaning that the danger demonstrates now that it's more likely to be an opportunity to get anything on the four F's (feeding, fighting, fleeing, mating) or whatever scale that your brain is operating on, then your brain already has an opportunity and a situation in a rehearsal ready to avail yourself of that. Sometimes it goes really fast. Some people are very experienced with it. Some people will never sense the danger queue and die. What do I mean by that? So the best decision possible means you have to predict likely outcomes. Without that, it's worthless.

So what's the difference between, for example, situation awareness and situational awareness? So you just said it perfectly, and any definition I get will pale in comparison to a pilot that's flying. Now they're in a dog fight and they begin to shoot. And what happens is they lose their situation awareness of their surroundings and where the horizon is.

Yeah, they're burning the ground.

And it happens. It happens so much that it's significant, and every war has them, and you can go and look up training and stuff like that. I mean, that's a big thing. So, situation understanding means that you have constructed and you understand a fidelity-filled baseline and that the elements that make it unique can change: weather, time, light, and how those change with respect to, for example, time or another relevant factor. I was watching one person in my baseline, now there's three. So that's situation awareness: being aware that there is a situation. The situation is in progress, and you're part of it.

And so what's the difference between situational awareness? Those two letters to me mean everything, and we've had this discussion for years, right? Because most people don't get it. My thing is, situational understanding is what situational awareness is. Not paying attention; that's not the same thing. Do you get where I'm going?

Yeah, but and real quick, because these are great definitions and explanations. Now, if you're going, "but like, why do I need to know this?" You know what I mean? So, what is this, what does this matter? I mean, are we just having a semantic argument at this point?

No, no, so your brain has to have a fidelity-filled baseline based on your intent. So that's externally directed. Consciousness is directed at something. So for example, situation awareness means understanding that you're going to drive a car today and you're going to go get fuel and grab a USA Today and a burger and go back to your house. There's not a lot of thought process that's going on with that.

But now you've changed, and you say, "This morning I'm going to go and apply for a job." So how do I want to address what's my route selection? When do I want to be there? Do I want to smell like listerine? So what happens is now, Brian, that adaptive knowledge starts coming in. So it's not just about my baseline and danger and opportunity. Now it's about route selection. Now it's about temporal issues. Now it's about how I look to another person and what I want to say. So, those processes are what makes it different.

So the three big ones are: I have to gather the data from the situation or the situation I'm expecting to encounter. I have to therefore make decisions, and a lot more decisions than just saying, "Hey, I'm going to get on the bus and head to work," right? And then there's always the guiding the action that I want, the outcome that I'm expecting. Completely different, because that means we have to predict the future. You get it? The difference between us and like when somebody says, "Pay attention." Pay attention doesn't mean anything when you're trying to predict a likely outcome, right? It doesn't.

So what you're talking about, and you're just explaining an intuitive process that all humans do, and you have to—we're not even aware of sometimes. And sometimes what we're talking about is even sort of becoming consciously aware of this stuff.

Exactly.

That in and of itself will get you better at it.

It's huge. It's huge.

Right. It's knowing what you've done successfully to, right, to work on time every day. "Oh, wow, I naturally adapt to the environment. I saw that there was going to be construction coming up, so I chose a different route that morning. I don't want that." And it worked. Like, and we're using these very simple examples because this is how your brain does it. And it says it does the same thing in, you know, when you talk about the danger opportunity or a chaotic environment or something else. And yes, I don't always have something there, is the problem. But let me give you a comparison, right? In order to be that, to mitigate stuff, and what you're talking about, and understand pattern recognition, I have to understand it in the most basic elemental form before I can do it and see.

What's your argument about language, which speaks your argument about language? If we convolute the issue with a bunch of senseless obfuscation, then we're not getting to the point. So I'll give you an example. Back in 1980, I was railing against the mobile data terminal. We had two things: a KDT (Key Data Terminal) and an MDT (Mobile Data Terminal) that just came out. So the KDT was about the size of a longer version of the phone that I carry, and what you could do is run basic things like you could run a 28, 29, you could run a person's name and their date of birth for warrants. Now that was helpful on the street.

Yeah, what it did is it took your attention away from the task at hand. And it also took your visual field away because now you had to look down, and it took and added cognitive load because now I got to enter stuff. And then every cop I saw using the MDT, the mobile data terminal, that little computer in their car, which is much smaller now (back then you can imagine how big it was), because every cop that was using it was looking down. So I warned in training over and over and railed against people using it because it was going to take your attention away. So don't use it on a traffic stop; use it before or after because you're not going to pay attention. And we had a cop named Anderson, I won't go in any greater detail than that, and while he walked back from running the information on his MDT, the guy in the car got out, unbeknownst to him, walked all the way back, and stuck his gun in the window and fired a bunch of shots into his brain.

Now the idea, Brian, is that we say, "The MDT will increase your situational awareness," but look down at it. We tell pilots that all the gauges on your airplane are going to help you make decisions, but where are you looking? You're looking at the gauges, and guess where they're not looking? They're not looking out the window. So I'm saying that that balance of technology actually can make us dumber.

And the principal underpinnings of what we talk about all the time is making better decisions based on comparisons. So human behavior, pattern recognition, pattern recognition is intrinsically necessary to make better decisions under extremist conditions, under extreme conditions, under stress. Meaning that it doesn't matter if it's danger or opportunity, the more I know, the better decision I make. The further I am, I take a knee behind cover; all of those things are good. Why? Because I can run faster than you and get to the situation of danger or opportunity quicker. But that's not always the right task; that's not always the right way. So those people die. Then some people linger and look out the window, Brian, and those people never get there and they die. So there's that sweet spot of decision-making, and it's not paying attention.

So, let's disabuse that. Paying attention means attending to a thing, your environment, a task, and that's fine. But Brian, it's a completely different part of your brain that sense-makes and predicts the future and says, "These are the likely." That's the part. It's this, this, so what? I mean, "Okay, you're going to constantly scan your environment for what? Why? Where are you?"

Exactly. Because if you don't have a reason or you don't have a clear intent, then you're going to miss what you think you're looking for. I think everything in your environment is not equally weighted.

That's right. I just said in street terms. So, so go a little deeper.

So, you know, if I'm on a protective detail, right, I'm there looking for a specific bandwidth of behavior. Now, I have to open that up sometimes when we tell people in order to see, you know, maybe prevent indications of violence. But I'm looking for certain elements in my environment based on my role. That's very different. You know, yesterday we went down to a friend's, like a little, a baby shower, but it was where everyone was invited. And it was down in San Diego at Liberty Station, beautiful area. And it's, but it's Sunday, it's busy. So I'm looking for the right place to park based on the interaction of vehicles coming and going. Are those vehicles pulling out of that lot, or did they just drive through that lot looking for a parking space, and I know there's none, so I can bypass that one? It's a very different intent behind it.

But the underpinning, you know, the fundamental process is the same. And I can draw on my experience from any of those different environments to come up with a better decision: should I literally sit here in this line longer, or jump over there, or is everyone already doing that, so I'm actually going to have more advantageous to go up to this? It's like the grocery store line, right? Exactly. Is that line shorter but their carts are completely full? That line's longer but they don't have as much stuff, but it takes a while to process this. Which one is a better actual? Sometimes actually with those big heavy full carts, it's actually better to get behind them because there's only one person in that line where these three—it's just your brain's constantly doing that to calculate more efficient paths to save you some time. So you're exactly right.

And let's say this, when I was building Combat Hunter, there was a lot of pushback. And the pushback was because I would show photos from my hometown City Market, and there was a Red Bull in the spaghetti sauce aisle where somebody had been grazing. That's, folks, when you don't pay for something, you eat it in the store and just set it on the counter. I would take that photo and I would use it when we were trying to find VBIEDs (Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Devices) or snipers or any other type of danger. And the Marines around me would go, "Our Marines aren't going to understand that. You've got to put a bomb in there and put them in the environment." And I'm like, "No, your Marines will understand this more because every one of them has shopped with Mom or Dad, and they had to learn how to shop on their own. And they understand that that Red Bull doesn't sit on the gosh darn Progresso or Prego shelf."

And the idea is, your brain is much smarter than you give it credit for. Yes, and your brain pattern recognizes early and says, "This pattern doesn't fit." This is where you come in as a human in the loop. You have to therefore say it means danger or not. So the Red Bull on the shelf doesn't mean danger in this situation, nor did the car that already decided that they were going to use the parking space, so you might as well not stick around. But the self-same reasoning your brain used works to find a vehicle-borne sniper or a vehicle-borne IED in combat. Why? Because what would that person do, Brian? They would do the same thing, they would search around, they're doing a little recon for the vehicle. The difference is they would want a key parking spot right close to the front of the mosque or whatever. Right?

So, the idea is who fine-tunes information? You do. And how do you do that? You do that with fidelity-filled baselines and great mental file folders because that accumulation of knowledge over time is what makes you smarter and more canny than the—

But then, yes, but then what influences that decision-making is our biases, our biases of the things we've learned, that we have a bias towards certain elements based on our past experience, and our bias towards not wanting to—our brain just not wanting to expend too many calories, and so that, that influences the decision-making significantly, obviously.

Precisely. And adds to your cognitive load. So let's talk about that very briefly, Brian. Okay, when you complicate life by adding OODA Loop and adding a Dunning-Kruger and adding Imposter Syndrome, what you're doing is you're adding a layer. This, this, hold on, does the argument for The Human Behavior Podcast? What happened is two of my students that wrote The Human Behavior Podcast sat in a class and they said, "This is great." And instead of deconstructing, I spent my entire life, right? They tried to put things back on yourself, and you're, you, they missed. They hopelessly missed the point.

Yeah, right.

So, so the point is, Brian, that going back to your original argument about language, I can only do a certain number of things. The cognitive load means the part of my short-term memory, which we call working memory now, that I can use that amount of energy and effort to recall and compare, and it has limits. So if I'm tied up like, like you know me all the time, when I try to speak Spanish, I have a cognitive load, and there's a bias. Okay? In other words, I don't need to name the bias, the Spanish language bias. Yeah, it's on board anyway, right? Yeah, it's there. And what happens is I look at you and I'm going down through all the verbs and the action words and everything else. And by the time the waitress has left the table and I go, "Damn!" There was my opportunity to use my Spanish. Well, what happens is, is I've created, and remember, we're talking about this in terms of cognitive psychology, not like engineering and mathematics, okay? My working memory and my recall is reduced because I put pressure on myself in that situation. Yes, to say it exactly right instead of just whipping it out and saying, "Gracias." I was sitting there, and I missed the opportunity. You get it? So, so danger and opportunity are based on cognitive load as well because my brain has a bias against heavy cognitive load. In other words, I'm more likely to make a mistake when my cognitive load is heavier. And therefore, every time that I try to name more things and add those little knickknacks on my cabinet, it takes further dusting in the future, and I don't have time for that.

Can you sort of define what you mean by cognitive load for everybody because that's, that's how it's measured, especially, yeah, and especially performance, right?

I apologize, and I go too fast sometimes when I get animated. But the idea is this: you have short-term memory and long-term memory. Short-term memory is your working memory, those things that are available to you in the moment. And so cognitive load literally refers to the amount of working memory resources that you have available for use right now that you're using at this moment. So the amount of effort that's exerted or required while you're thinking, while you're reasoning, while you're making those decisions. And every mental process, memory, perception, language, they all create a cognitive load, right? If you think of those as buckets of water and you're putting them on a board that's on a piece of scaffolding and you're about to raise it up to a painter that's working on a house for example, if I exceed cognitive load of that palette, Brian, of that of that lifting mechanism, of that of that scaffolding, it's going to crash down and it's probably going to kill the person that's on the scaffold.

So we understand too that the reason that we beat home every day, you guys, when we're talking about those of you listening, about an expert model, experts have more knowledge, more experience, and therefore the cognitive load is lower for them, right? Because they can go to their long-term stored memory file folder rather than the working memory to make those decisions.

Right, you know, well, yeah, and and like you said, experience, training, influence that stuff, the situation heavily. You know, if, you know, you're Tom Brady in the Super Bowl, well, look, man, like you've been there before, you've been doing this a while. All right? But if he gets injured and it's the new guy, it's his first season in the NFL, gets called up, that's going to be a different experience for him out there, right?

But add this too, we talked about a couple of episodes ago, we were talking about flashbangs. And I will tell you this, going into a room and having somebody throw a flashbang at different times into that room when you're not expecting it, will not reduce your cognitive load. It'll just make you sad.

I want to go in that cash game room. Well, so it'll make a difference. Yeah. It's a sensory adaptation.

Oh, yeah, not a, not a, not a cognitive, you know, a load adaptation. No, but you're going to add a new bias. You're going to have a flinch reflex when throwing, somebody throws a beer can or a smoke grenade rather than. Yes, do you understand what I'm trying to say? So your body now has to assimilate new information, and somebody's going to say, "That's good training." And we would argue it's not. We would argue that the training reduces the cognitive load. Therefore, experiential, knowledge-based training for a novice is going to allow that novice to carry a heavier cognitive load. It's literally that simple in our mantra.

Yeah, and what, and and that's why with what we're talking about too is kind of a little bit different than some of those situations in terms of, I, you, you're building in repetitions for a conditioned response, and you can continually overwhelm someone so they get better and faster at that conditioned response. But that's, that's it, though. That is a response to a stimulus. And it may be a companion skill, it may be something that's essential. But before that, but like you said, it goes back to, it's that's not helping you think through a situation or make better decisions.

And you know, I do want to hit on something because you brought up some, some of the terms that I see thrown around a lot today. And again, yeah, I, I, I get it. And I understand why people, you know, come up with these terms like the Imposter Syndrome one or all these different ones. I get it. You're trying to name something that the problem is they get why they get used incorrectly and and what everything is now today and the name before it will, yeah. And everything is is like WebMD right now where everyone just goes, "Oh, I have that. I have that impact. I have Lyme disease, by the way. I have ADHD. I have this." Just because, you know, I, I've seen one person, you know, she was describing her like, "Oh my God, I had horrible ADHD. I was unloading the dishwasher, and I kept thinking about all this." And I'm like, "You just described consciousness." Like, congratulations, you have consciousness. Like, your brain is thinking, that's what it's supposed to be doing. It's like, so, so these things get that messed around. And I don't think they always, they get hijacked a lot of times too. And and it's, it's they're, they've all been around before.

My favorite one and two is that's to talk about, well, when people talk about like the Flow State. I was like, "Congratulations, you learned to focus on one thing at a time." Isn't it amazing how powerful your brain is when you're working on one single thing and centrally focused on it? You have a lot of energy towards it. You're just not used to doing it, especially today if you're more distracted, more cell phones, and all that stuff, right? You become more distracted. So you're training yourself because your phone is a teacher, right? It's not a phone anymore.

Absolutely.

And so you're training yourself to become more distracted. And it's like, you know, remember, remember where Kyle used to do, he'd walk right in front of a group of Marines and he didn't have any, he wanted to bum a dip. So he just with his hands, he didn't have any. So he, if everyone knows like, you know, I'm making the noise sort of like move my hand like I'm packing a can of dip. And then sure enough, some Marine or soldier or whatever would tap on wherever their can of Copenhagen was in their pocket, right? Because there's a conditioned response for that Marine that he could walk up and be like, "Hey, brother, mind if I get a pinch real quick?"

Now the idea, it's the same thing with a phone. Like if you hear a phone vibrate on a table, everyone goes, "I should probably check my messages." But if you're having that response, like you, you've gone too far. Like you need to unlearn that. But it's a good, it's a good way to describe what we're talking about because all it is is, are we creating critical thinking situations or, or are we just training a response? Because you can't train a response for every situation you're in. It's not possible.

What Brian just described in great detail, and it was wonderful street level stuff that you can use in your own class, is Brian said, "Hey, I'm attending to things in my environment." Attending to things in my environment are different than critical thinking and certainly advanced critical thinking and predicting outcomes. Okay? Because you're not predicting an outcome when the phone rings and you answer it. That's attending to something. But prediction would be that, "Holy crap! I wonder if that's the clinic calling for my very important test result." Right? That's a different skill that you have, and you would base that knowledge on the time of day. Had you made a previous call? Do you see, there's a bunch of different things that go into paying attention that are very different from making conscious decisions.

So Greg Prem the other day on LinkedIn was talking about how important B + A = D is. So I want to ask you a very simple question, folks. Do you think that 3,000 years ago on the steps of the Parthenon that they didn't understand what a Dunning-Kruger (effect) was, that they needed two extra names? Or they didn't understand the Imposter Syndrome? It's all been discussed before, and people over time have named it, and they fall in or out of favor. So I'm saying disabuse yourself of the clinical definition and go to the street. So, focus attention, for example, is where baseline plus analogy comes plus anomaly comes from. Because you can't make a decision in that quickly without understanding how to categorize stimuli. Because in every new environment, in every environment you walk into, you have to do B + A = D. So if somebody hasn't taught you how to weight objects in that scenario, in that mental exercise, then you're going to be at a deficit because Brian, what you're going to be doing is attending to things in the environment. You're going to attend them left to right if you're born in America, and you're going to go way slow. "There's a car, it's parked. There's a car, it's parked. There's a dog, he's on it." You understand what I mean?

Right.

So by the time you get to the guy that's walking up on you with the hatchet or the baseball bat, you're going to lose. And you're going to say, "Well, I would notice that first." No, you won't. You won't notice things unless you categorize things in your brain and you stage accurate rehearsals. That's called training. Education doesn't get you there. Writing a book doesn't imbue those skills upon you that are talked about in that book. And we have to stop the over-reliance on understanding. And look, I know it's semantic gymnastics. I know we're throwing words out, but every time I hear somebody, "Increase your situational awareness!" I go, like you do, "Why? For what reason? What are you doing it for? What do you expect the outcome is?" Because the word alone can't be thrown out there, nor can the word "attention" improve, you know, "pay more attention." You can pay more attention because now you're pushing against your cognitive load and you're going to be dumber.

Well, that, that's when you get into, obviously, you get into, you know, hypervigilance, which becomes a negative feedback loop. And the longer you do that, the less likely you are to ever see anything because you're constantly, you know, you just. So what's the importance of the feedback loop in decision science?

The feedback loop allows me to take my pulse in the moment to determine if the results that I deemed achievable going into the experiment are still achievable because if not, then it's a zero-sum game. And not then it's untenable.

Right. You, you, so you brought it up, you know, in the moment. And that's obviously the most important part, that's what we're talking about, right? And it, so it's hard to do that if I haven't done that in some sort of training environment, meaning.

Precisely.

You know, I can't, I can't reflect on what I'm doing while I'm doing it. I have to do it, you know what I mean? Then reflect on it and go, "Oh, okay, you know."

So, so let's change the word training for a minute that we're talking about language. Let's cherry-pick training for those sentences. Training now becomes experimentation.

Yes, the lab. And I use, you know, training in the most general sense because what you're doing, anytime you create a new process or come up with a way to do something, if it's your morning routine or whatever, that's a training program. You didn't, you didn't write it down and go and, and, you know, come up with ELOs (Enabling Learning Objectives) and TLOs (Terminal Learning Objectives) and time, like, no, but that's what you did. That's, that's a program. But if you came up, if they were there, then it's all the elements are likely already there. And if you've done it for something successful, what were those elements? And you know, kind of what we're talking about is actually I got a, I was reading another, I don't know if you know John Dewey, who's the old psychologist and, yeah, so guy, if and philosopher, which normally my favorite philosophers are all physicists because they have a fundamental understanding. This guy really understood education. I've been kind of reading some of his stuff recently too, going back into because I got the boy on the way, like developmental psychology stuff and really thinking about, you know, for kids and learning. You're not, right, right away.

I mean, well.

But, but the idea is what I was, he one, he's, this guy, John Dewey, he can write. He can put more in a paragraph than most people put an entire damn book. And I, you have to sit there and unpack it. But what he said was that what I really liked was, "The most important factor in the training of good mental habits consists in acquiring the attitude of suspended conclusion and in mastering the various methods of searching for new materials to corroborate or refute the first suggestions that occur."

So that's kind of almost like a careful, you have biases, right? And a feedback loop. Right.

Right. And then you simply measure. Right. And that's it. And then he's just said, "To maintain the state of doubt and to carry on systematic and protracted inquiry, these are the essentials of thinking." So what he was talking about was cognition, right? And he brought it down there, like thinking about thinking and having a suspended conclusion. Like, I don't know where this is going to go. What elements are here that would prove or deny my different hypotheses? And then we talk about this stuff all the time, but you just gave the example to right off the bat of the, you know, the parking lot or, or walking up and seeing something. It's like, we're constantly doing that. And if I'm not aware of the fact that my brain will just jam answers in before I get to the, I, before I even get to the, "I'm only at option A, and before I get to D," you know, because there's four or five options there.

My brain is so danger of biases and and because you've done it before, let's say you're a cop or a paramedic or anything else, yeah, because your brain will go there to say, "Would you like option A?" Because option A is a lot less calories. And if you don't understand that there's an option B or a C, you'll continue to choose A, and A may be problematic. So you're reading a book about physics and philosophy?

I am.

Heisenberg. And Heisenberg's quote: "What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of question." Yeah, this goes right back to our feral cat argument, Brian. But we tell people to pay attention to feral cats in their environment. Why? Because it keeps you primed for new and incoming information, which means it keeps you moving, looking, thinking for a new environment to create a granularity-filled baseline.

And I, I love the, the feral cat one because that's when we say, you know, "Hey, you're going out today. I want you to try and find as many feral cats as you can."

Yes.

What else it's doing, it's, it's one, it's giving you something active. It doesn't matter what it is, it's giving you some active thing to find in your environment. Plus, you have to look at, all right, well, where would a cat be? Does the cat just kind of strut down the middle of the road? No, it hides in negative space, it goes over areas where other people don't. Well, you're learning who else does that. Who else does that, you know what I mean? So you're exactly.

Why do we call them a cat burglar, Brian? Because they stole cats. But the idea is, I threw out what Buddy Ebsen threw out. Buddy Ebsen used to have a, when he was really old, and I'm trying to think of the show. There used to be Thursday night was the best night of TV, and you could have McMillan & Wife or Mannix or Cannon or all these old shows from the 70s. And Buddy Ebsen had one that was on there too. And Buddy Ebsen was the first person that talked to me about pocket lint. "Hey, the stuff that's in her pocket is more about." Brian, this was in the 70s on a cop TV show for a half an hour. Right? The idea is, how do you know about Schrödinger's cat? Well, you can read about it or you can open the box. So what we do is instead of sitting there and being disabled by a hypothesis testing, we open the box and take a peek. So that's okay, there's nothing wrong with that in your environment. So what would Heisenberg and Dewey, for example, was trying to say is that every time that you're not a fly on the wall, you're impacting the experiment outcomes. And yes, the idea is that if you ask the wrong question, this is my argument.

Well, that was, yeah, we're in a company right now, we have a strategic partnership with a company that has access to huge data. But if you ask the same old questions, right, to the data, you're going to get the same old answers. You've got to say, "What is this data trying to tell me?" That's what we do in Baseline plus Anomaly equals Decision. Is we're saying, "What are these anomalies doing? Are they normal anomalies because of the time of day and the weather? I'm just not experienced enough to, to add them or subtract them from my baseline? Or are they the compelling situational change, that, that atmospheric shift that I need to look for?" And the only way that we learn that is training and rehearsal.

Well, and the thing is, and then everyone gets frustrated where some people get frustrated with us sometimes or everyone just wants the simple, well, and you see a lot of people throwing out simple stuff, "Oh, just do these three things. Follow these 10 steps. One of these things." And that's damn junk, because it's junk, and it's always been junk. But the point is, isn't to give you the answers, to ask the right question, because that goes back to high school. Literally, you even said, he said, you know, "Figuring out the right questions to ask possible is, is that, is we'll get you halfway to the solution just, just doing that." And as long as you're there, you're ahead of the game. And sometimes asking those questions in the moment is what it is. If, if this is what I think it is, what else should I see? If it's not.

Hypothesis testing. That's it.

That's creating an explanatory storyline, making measurements and assessments. But Brian, as much as I like to say that I invented it, the shit's been around since man.

Well, that's why we throw back to the Greeks. I mean, exactly. It was there before them, they just were kind of the first to start naming some of it. You know.

Precisely. And the idea, or at least their language stuck around long enough for people to read, you know what I mean? Then and steal it. Yeah, exactly. So, so the idea is, I think essential nature of our argument is that you can't quickly detect the relevant unless you weight it. So you have, and weight, W-E-I-G-H-T. Yeah. So waiting an anomaly is essential.

When you were looking for a parking spot, you didn't weight that anomaly any more than this was an advantageous parking spot to go into this event. Had you gone further based on your experience and said, "This may, the person may park there because they want to shoot or blow up something. And if I turn on the red and blues, they may flee from me. So what's my pursuit here? Should I call on additional units?" That's where it should go to the critical corner. Yeah, precisely. So those things are what you get from the benefit of hanging around with seasoned graybeards or gray hairs, men or women in your environment that know things. And that's called training. And we want to take knowledge, skills, attitudes, ability, and we want to transform. Now, can you do that in a book? Yeah, Remsburg was great at writing stuff in books. But then what did I have to do? I had to go out and take my SureFire and my Streamlight and roll them in an arc to see if they illuminated other people in the room. Everybody that's read Remsburg knows exactly the experiment I'm talking about.

So when Schrödinger was talking about the cat, he didn't have a box, he didn't have a cat. The experiment was your thinking through which of these relevant things may have impacted it. And what does that knowledge help me do? So Schrödinger was slapping you, giving you the the the B-slap of reality asking you to think your way through a situation. Well, Brian, I can't think my way through a situation if I haven't experienced it in some manner. Reading is not enough. A webinar is not enough. In-person training, why? I know a person that's very important, and they said, "I've learned more about networking and people and their net worth in 15 minutes at a coffee shop meeting the person in person than I have the three years that we zoomed and teamed together." Why? Because in human interaction, Brian, that weight of danger opportunity is right there. Why? Because all of your synapses are firing, all of your sense-making hardware is working, and you're actually in the moment. That's why we, Brian, we go right back to the argument of calling it an IED lane or a Domino's, right? Okay, you're going to you make it the Domino's Pizza lane because they'll find the IED while they're looking for the pizza.

So when that guy was in the Church's Fried Chicken or whatever thing and he was acting up in front of the line, everybody behind him in line should have said, "He's the IED. I'm now in an IED lane, and I have to take these factors and begin to mitigate because he's going to start shooting." That's what we're talking about. We're talking about the greatest advancement in your brain is the ability to take a situation today and inherit against elements and predict the future. And people say, "Well, you can't predict it with great certainty." Will save my life.

You certainly can, within defined context. And you can in the construct that we've developed, meaning that, that you're going to take cover, run or fight. And there's, there's, there's certain rules that apply even at a macro level. If you could look at an economist, they'll tell you like, "Well, if this happens, you're going to see these three things." Kahneman was so brilliant, people forget he was an economist.

Yes.

This is for, it was for economics. It was not for, people are holding it up and they're saying, "Here's the best book that's ever written." Now that just shows that Kahneman had an insight into what he does. He is adept and experienced, but that's, that's a, that's a great question, a great example of what you're talking about where he came up with the, "Oh, there's different, two different types of thinking, and there's this," which is a great way to explain a certain mental process. But he was talking about one economy, or he was an economist, literally talking about this is how humans kind of scale make decisions. And, but, but it's not, it's not binary. It's, it's, it's a way to drive certain processes. So it's almost like what some of the stuff happens, it's not necessarily the researcher or or the material that comes out that's bad. It's everyone takes and goes, "Oh, so you mean this?" And it's like, "Well, hang on, no."

Yes.

It's so that, that kind of, that's a bias. Or we come into this very simple, "Oh, we'll look at what this person did." It's all great. We, we take from this stuff because there's certain elements of that will, will last and will stand up over time. But you know what's going to happen after a while, so that's going to go away. And that's why every new thing or new term that comes out, like everyone wants to use, "Oh, it's this, it's that." It's like, I get that this is a shiny object, but that so is phrenology. You know what I mean?

Exactly. And at its time, people lined up to have the feathers. Okay, you know, and that would tell your future. You know, and I I apologize. This is the Phrenology Clinic calling right now. And absolutely, the chief technologist. Yeah. Why not just, I, I put it on, I put it on a badge of honor. So, but let's get to the essence of, of what you're saying. Yeah, look, everything has limits. So the amount of things I can attend to in my environment had limits. My ability to focus my attention or concentrate on something has its limits. So why is therefore B + A = D so important? Because it's a simple way to remember that you have to feedback loop everything that you're seeing, and you have to weigh things differently based on the likelihood that that thing is going to achieve your goals, which are staying alive or get laid or go, you know, to the mall and this guy, you know, I'm hitchhiking might pick me up. Right?

I, I had a great conversation with somebody that was working in an area, and I won't tell you exactly where the area is, but it's on a border. And that person said, "You know, just for that moment, I saw that hitchhiker and I was like, 'Wow, I've been in that situation before.' And I pulled over and I immediately knew within the first mile that I had made a bad decision." Okay, why? Because things like compassion, things like human emotion, yeah, things like the weather or the time of day influence our decision-making. So what does good training do, Brian? It allows us a laboratory environment to test our hypotheses and spin our knees so we don't bleed on the street. We can hurt ourselves on a mat.

So you, you brought up something when it kind of a couple times, I want to hit on them because you talk about, you know, weighing things, weighing things, observations or whatever it is. And and, you know, my thing is because you brought up a couple, you said, you know, B, you know, B + A = D, a simple algorithm, is not like, you know, A² + B² = C². Well, that's, that's algebra, which is what, you know, ChatGPT and these large language models are. But the reason why I'm bringing it up is that it, if I'm like, I'm A² + B² = C² always works. And it's that algorithm will always give me C², will always give me the answer. Here's the problem: I'm the one putting in the values for A² and B². So if those are messed up, I'm going to get it. If your baseline is going to be a correct answer, it's not going to, it's not going to be the one that works. And so humans in general, we're horrible, we're horrible at measurement and assessment. I've even met really good data scientists who are really, really good at what they do. And then I turn around, I hear them talk about another subject and I'm like, "Hey, you're throwing all of your principles out the window. You're this is like what?" Exactly. And I'm like sitting there, it was almost disturbing to me because I was like, "How are you so good in this area?" But it's just going to highlight the point that we're not good at measurement and assessment. That is a very, very technical thing. And just like, you know, back to Heisenberg said, "We, we use what we think is important."

Right. Precisely the waiting. I give my dog. I anthropomorphize my dog and go, "Oh, look at this reaction." But my dog is actually doing that to me, thinking of me as the, "Well, this guy's the head dog. He's a dog, but he's a different one than me, and he can walk upright." You know? But, but we're seeing it through our perspective. So that's part of the issue with this, is we're not good at weighing those observations out. Yes, and that's where training can come in handy.

So, so I'll give you an example of that. Let me straighten that up for you. Again, back to your language, because I think language is key now because we haven't had language on board as long, and so we're still as humans understanding the the the functionality of language. But what we do is try to take shortcuts, and shortcuts don't give me the granularity I need to make a better decision. So that's called context and relevance. All of this stuff comes from computers. So I'll give you an example: Nico was going someplace this weekend for his friend Cal's bachelor party before Cal gets married. Now, they've been married for a couple of years. Cal has a lovely wife, but the idea is that they haven't done the legal marriage, so now they're going to do it because their second kid is forthcoming, and and they want to get this out of the way. So I know all of these people that are going to be there, over a hundred of them, and I knew him when they were kids. And I knew the area that they were going to, which was ripe for somebody to make the bad decision. So I even talked to, to, to Cal's mom and and his, his stepdad on Saturday to make sure that everybody was in the right mindset because I was a little worried about it too.

So Shelly's in the other room making a phone call, and she was talking to Nico, and Nico was supposed to call and update us to say, "Hey, I'm fine." He's 33, yeah, get it. But this is still things that critical thinkers do, right? And so I want to make sure he's safe. So all of a sudden I hear the words, "And spent all day at the clinic." And I go, "Damn! There was an injury, something's going wrong!" Why? Because I was looking for something to happen, my bias was there was going to be an injury and poor decision-making. Right? The idea was it was Bailey, our daughter, the daughter-in-law, the veterinarian, yeah, that was at the clinic all day while Nico was out at this party. And she had spent longer than she wanted there, but because I only had this much of a window, I only had a sugar cube, Brian, instead of the bowl of sugar in my own spoon, what I did is I created the explanatory storyline that I was always looking for. That's a bias. Right? So if you go in with that bias then.

Foreign blood test. Exactly.

Exactly. And we're all waiting on it, Brian. But, but the the idea is a cop is going to compare the situation that is forthcoming for them based on their experience, and they shouldn't. They should tabula rasa this is new. Yeah, I understand that this guy looks and smells like a doper, and it feels like it's going to be this decision. But if I categorize everything and try to put them into the buckets too early, you know, the old Plinko example, the old ice cube tray, and I don't give the room for them to leak out a little bit, every situation you encounter is novel and nuanced. And they're going to say, "Well, no, because it's the same." It's not the same when it comes to humans. Humans have free will. So therefore your predictive analysis has to follow a channel, a channel, a path, I will say.

Not as much free will as we think we do. No, no, no, no, exactly. But you mean the receiving end, you can make a choice, but those choices are going to be, there's a finite number of them, and they're going to call it based on the context of the situation. You only have so many options too.

Precisely. So you can predict, maybe not at the point where you can then predict what's likely going to happen next. Exactly. But that prediction is narrow but it's laser focused. So Brian, you get a call on the police radio that says, "There's shots fired." Then you get that there's at least a suspect that's never a victim that's down at the scene, and you're going there. And the next day's story reads, "Three cops shot, one dead, responding to shots fired call." Why? Because what happens with all of us, not just those cops, and I, I bless all cops for going into harm's way because it's dangerous. What happens is you showing up, Schrödinger's cat changes the outcome. Yes, okay? And when we think of that, Brian, now we're thinking in terms of critical decision-making and not being a victim. Right?

So yeah, the idea is the writing is on the wall. The problem is we didn't go get a linguist and say, "Hey, read that to me." We assumed that because it was there on the wall that it was the same old writing we see on everyone.

Well, but that, that's the whole point is you, you did to back exactly what you just said, you influenced the outcome of the situation. So you have options, like, I mean, every time, it's, it's not, I mean, it's just, it's basic math. You coming into an area either increases or decreases the risk of whatever is going on in that area, just you being there. It's not, it's not victim blaming or something, it's like, but you have a say in the matter, you being there. It's like you can't, you can't commit a crime unless you have a victim. You're physically being there, and, and what it is is that if I look at things that way, it opens up, it sort of opens up my mind to the possibility that I can influence the outcome. Yes, adversely, well then you get to the level, okay, wait a minute, am I the problem by adding in, am I throwing fuel on this fire, or, or what?

Isn't that the most essential part of maturity when you're talking about emotional maturity? You're saying, "I've, I've administered police work with my feet and with my hands. Okay? Very rarely with my head. I've used my mouth a lot to talk myself out of situations, but all of these things on my tool belt, okay, they're wonderful. But what if I just take a step back for a second and understand my mere presence changes things, whether I pulled up and parked in the driveway, whether I'm in a marked car or in full uniform, and the first thing that I tell everybody is, 'Hey, I, I'm here now, so this crap's going to get fixed right now.'" You see what I'm talking about? I'm having fun with it, but we don't get to that until later stages in life. Now we're 17-year vets. Yeah, right. Why don't we do that in Europe?

Because I, and I would say even just even those discussions on thinking and decision-making, yes, that I would say, I would say that promotes emotional stability. Yes.

And and, listen, if I'm doing that as a child, so in the context of First Responders, at the Academy, for example, and with my support system at church or at home or wherever else I am, then I'm more likely to get that thing that we've all been looking for, which is called adaptability and resilience. Adaptability clearly important. Resilience comes from spending time at the cognitive gym. And folks, if you're not doing that daily, if you're not experiencing those influences daily, you're in neutral. And neutral gets you nowhere. Back to a car analogy, put it in neutral, you can floor it, right, Brian? And it's getting you nowhere. You're not moving at all. Right? You live in San Francisco, right? And take your foot off the brake, and then you're in the ocean. But the idea is that exactly that we're talking about your inability to separate language from the skill. And what Brian and I are talking about is rehearsing the skill, practicing the skill, and experimenting with the skill is the only way to get better, not adding the weight of additional words to try to define it, because the definition doesn't matter, because the cat's either still in the box.

Yeah, yeah, see, they're dead or alive. I don't know. So it, it's, it's one of those when you're looking at it, right, you're, you're, I mean, you're getting into, to, well, I guess we started with Heisenberg and talking about the, the father of exactly quantum mechanics here. So, but the physics of the situation.

Quantum mechanics and physics, and and and then if we add physiology and if we add social mechanics, now we're getting to the idea. But we don't do that at a police academy. The police academy isn't Athens on the steps of the Parthenon. It's I have all this information that you have to get a check in the box. Yeah. And we.

I only have 15 weeks to do it, just go. You get what I'm doing. Yeah. Parking problems and, well, they're not equally weighted, right?

No. And there's, there's nothing wrong with the way they're, but there's nothing wrong with that information or that training. It's we're not using it the best way.

We're not using it because we're not having that discussion on the steps of the Parthenon. We're not going, "Well, in this, how do we, what about that? What about these other considerations?" Remember, first do no harm. You know, it should be the motto. What is the overall intent here of what we're trying to accomplish big picture? Because you've got that feedback loop is, are we getting any closer? Because they're not. We've got to change our manners because every, every micro, you know, decision that's made leads to the macro effect. That's the whole point, is that no, those little things are, it's always the little things. Well, the big stuff is easy because it's easy to identify, and we get handles itself or we either have the resources or we don't. And now we need to fix that big thing. And it's, it's just these daily little things that are the most important because like anyone said, just like building habits or mental about anything, you know, if I don't have to, you know, set some big lofty goal, I got to do one thing today, and then one thing the next day, and then one thing. Well, sure enough, you know, a year later. But we don't, we don't look at it that way.

You're so right. So one, I got Lyme disease. Why? Because I went to WebMD because I was having symptoms, and it was just that I was tired and had too much coffee. Right? But I look on there and it says two things: Lyme disease and brain cancer. And you know how many times have I come to you on the road and said, "I have brain cancer, I just looked it up." Yeah. Okay. So that's what I'm talking about when we throw those platitudes out there, and you're right on it too, when we start saying, "Well, I'm suffering from this, this syndrome. I'm suffering from this." Look, first of all, identify that all of us have biases. Some are stronger than others. And get it down to one or two that are manageable that sound an alarm in your own head where you say, "Hey, listen, I'm exhibiting confirmation bias again, only looking for evidence that makes me right." And I some amplify your life, get rid of all of those other mental models.

No, and I, I do the the opposite. "Oh, that's what I have." Like, I do the opposite with my doctors. You know, it's like, "Prove it. Prove to me that I have post-traumatic stress, Doc. I don't think so." Exactly, right? Yeah, prove it. I don't remember when this happened. So, but but the point is, it's like, "No, I don't have any of that. I'm good. Prove to me that I have that." You know what I mean?

But that's why we make such a great pair, because I'm constantly thinking that I've got something horrible, and it's like, "Brian, I've got this pain." And then you say, "Yeah, you don't have your right shoe on."

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's always something simple with me, right? Because I'm so busy in the moment going down, and in that I'm not looking.

"I've got this, I've got this burning all over my legs!" "Greg, you just spilled your coffee on yourself." I think that's the idea. The idea is, listen, folks, you're paying somebody to be your coach in all of this, and all that person is throwing at you is more words. I'm saying, and Brian is saying, I think, and our our company is saying, listen, winnow that down to the few things that are weighted more importantly than other things, and you'll be happy in the long run because you'll achieve your outcomes and consistently and constantly measure that baseline. Because what happens is if you're not updating your baseline, then you're not having a positive or a negative feedback loop. Both are important, right?

Come on. And what are those, what are those essential things that I can do in every situation, not just one single thing, "Hey, when this occurs," because you hear that too, "Let me give you another tool for your tool kit." It's like, "Oh my God." Yeah, yeah.

I think it's yours. If I can't use the same damn screwdriver, then, you know what I mean? It's like the Toyota truck. If you have a 10 millimeter, you know, socket wrench, you can pretty much take apart most of that vehicle. Right?

Designed it that way because it's, it's that, that's the if you either have a manual or you can buy a manual or you can go on YouTube and there's a hundred thousand other owners that have taken that piece apart and will guide you through it step by step. That's what, listen, that's the difference between education and training. Yeah. So education is out there, it's available to you. The training is you getting in there and busting a knuckle and saying, "Oh man, I got to chalk my vehicle. I better have a light because it's getting later in the day and I can't."

Well, that's the thing Brian brought it up because everyone already has the answers now. When you go do that, Greg, and you go on YouTube and someone goes, "Hey, look, you're going to be tempted to do it this way, but don't, because let me tell you what happens, it's three extra hours of work because you're good, you're going to break this piece." Here's the thing, right? So now I get to go, "Oh, I get to learn from your mistake." So I don't do that now. Now, will I, I still make some other mistake somewhere else? Of course, I mean, that's a police academy. So, so if if you're in the police academy and I'm sitting out on the steps of the Academy, I will tell you this: are you in a relationship? Have you ever been in one? Doesn't matter who it is, I don't care if you're marrying a damn fish. The idea is, if you've ever been in a relationship, those things, "Were are you mad at me? You haven't talked to me. Are we going?" That, this, those things are going to happen the first time that you go on a domestic on the road. So those life experiences are also going to taint you, which means that you're going to get in there and that man, woman, or fish is going to say or do something that's going to remind you of your mom, your sister, your uncle, whatever. And all of a sudden now I'm not dealing with the situation at hand. Now I'm dealing with all of those situations in my lifetime. And you know, Brian, we don't train folks for that. You know, you want to train your kid for it, you want to train your kid for a broken heart because it's going to kick them right in the balls or hit them right between the eyeballs. And when they're on that, that funk, then they're not going to be thinking clearly. So teach them a method for making decisions that'll make them feel better about themselves and have a self-worth so they can get out of that, or they could cut themselves or commit suicide or do an act of violence. That's life. Life is about those, and because we're in much bigger groups or smaller groups now, we don't have the influences of the tribe to guide us. So that's where training comes in. We don't have training, so sometimes now, Brian, we have to go seek it out or buy it. And that's all we're talking about this this episode right now. You you people that are listening to the episode, thank you if you've made it this far, hit like. Yeah. But but I'm telling you right now, this is the magic, and it's not just coming from Brian and it's life, man, that you can go out today to make. That's what I'm saying, is how many people listen to this right now could have this same conversation with the people they work with this afternoon?

Exactly. I mean, we're making it harder than it is.

Interpersonal communication is actions amongst the humans in the population. Remember when they built a neutron bomb? Well, the neutron bomb will kill all the people but it'll leave all the the buildings standing. Think of the ludicrous nature of that argument. Right? So, so the argument goes the other way, if we had nothing, okay, but we had people, could we rebuild anything? And the answer is of course we can. So why are we trying to deconstruct things out of our control when human relationships and human encounters are things we can impact every day? Human encounters, you're having them on the phone, Brian, you're having them during text, you're having them on a Zoom, you're having them at work, at lunch when you meet a counter person. That's where you have to improve your life. That's what's going to keep you safe and avail yourself of those opportunities that are hidden to other people.

Yeah, well, I think that's a good... now what do we do?

Yeah, what were we talking about again? Yeah, exactly. Some about your doctor's appointment and how it went horribly wrong. So, no, I, I think that is sort of a, we, we kind of put a put a lot out there with talking about something, what, what some of the words mean, what pattern recognition is, what situation and situational awareness meaning critical thinking and and how lane and how they should be used.

Well, right, how language is important and and then within a training context, what does that mean? What, what, what does that really mean? And those, those conversations are where that's where that's where the magic happens. You have to go do it and then you go, "Okay, now let me tell you about this time." And you go, "Oh wow, that's an interesting story. Let me go try that out there today." Anyway, I mean, really, like, I'll go, I'll go try that out. And then, then you learn in the next thing. And the sharing those stories are, are, um, as powerful as any other, what's more powerful, reading the news or sharing those stories? Yeah, there's a simple one, right? So if I'm going to spend five minutes of my day trying to make my life easier or better or influence somebody else's life to make their life easier and better, it's shut off the TV and take it in, "Hey, Brian, let's sit around the table and say, 'Hey, I want to give you the advice from old gray hair.'" Those are the essential lessons that we can build upon that make learning digestible and manageable and also turn them into usable chunks. Paint it for it.

So, yeah, I think that's, uh, that's a good spot to end. Yeah. So, and it's a Monday. We're recording this on a Monday, Brian. And I don't normally do it on a Monday. I know because we're so beat from the weekend from skin popping heroin and window painted bladder acid fentanyl motorcycle gangs. Yeah, it's a bad thing. Don't do it.

It's how I decompress from the week. Yeah. Excuse me. So I think that's a good spot. I was afraid right there. Yeah. They just take a hit or something. Um, thanks. No, we appreciate everyone from tuning in. Again, like if you enjoy it, just share it with your friends. Just tell someone, "Hey, here's this episode, check it out. This is why I like it." We're not charging anything. We do have the Patreon side, so thank you to the Patreon subscribers where we do extra stuff. We talk about things that we don't want to talk about on here just because it's either going to, or it's, yeah, yeah, you've got to keep the chuds out somehow, so just putting up a little bit of a paywall helps with that. But yeah, and if you have any questions, of course, you know, reach out to us at The Human Behavior Podcast (gmail.com). But thank you everyone for listening and for supporting the show. And don't forget that training changes behavior.