1
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November 4th, that was the date.

2
00:00:03,332 --> 00:00:15,907
I looked at the charts, I looked at the weather patterns in Guam, and I realized the price
of decorative gourds has been inversely correlated with the release dates of every single

3
00:00:15,907 --> 00:00:18,058
Nicolas Cage movie since Con Air.

4
00:00:18,058 --> 00:00:20,538
It's not an accident, it's a signal.

5
00:00:20,759 --> 00:00:29,893
If you take the runtime of national treasure, divide it by the current interest rate, and
subtract the number of times my cat is meowing in the refrigerator today,

6
00:00:29,893 --> 00:00:34,178
The number you get is exactly the zip code for Langley, Virginia.

7
00:00:34,429 --> 00:00:35,830
This is what happens.

8
00:00:36,130 --> 00:00:42,194
This is what happens when you leave me alone in a room with a microphone and an internet
connection for too long.

9
00:00:42,194 --> 00:00:44,616
I start connecting dots that aren't even dots.

10
00:00:44,616 --> 00:00:46,436
I start connecting lint.

11
00:00:46,857 --> 00:00:48,158
Welcome to the overlap.

12
00:00:48,158 --> 00:00:49,538
I am Joshua.

13
00:00:49,859 --> 00:00:55,083
Usually at this exact moment, you'd hear a reassuring slightly deeper voice say, and I'm
Will.

14
00:00:55,083 --> 00:00:58,605
And you'd hear that voice and think, good, the responsible adult is here.

15
00:00:58,605 --> 00:01:03,938
The guy who keeps Joshua from spending 45 minutes talking about the simulation hypothesis
is in the room.

16
00:01:04,327 --> 00:01:06,518
But you aren't hearing that voice today, are you?

17
00:01:06,738 --> 00:01:07,878
Silence.

18
00:01:08,459 --> 00:01:12,200
Just the hum of the air conditioner and the sound of my own existential dread.

19
00:01:12,200 --> 00:01:13,440
Will is not here.

20
00:01:13,440 --> 00:01:16,121
And because Will is not here, the guardrails are off.

21
00:01:16,121 --> 00:01:19,463
The teachers left the classroom and I have access to the chalk.

22
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Now, before we get into the heavy stuff, we have to address the elephant in the room, or
rather the absence of the elephant.

23
00:01:41,323 --> 00:01:42,563
Where is Will?

24
00:01:42,724 --> 00:01:49,476
The official narrative, the press release sent out by the Deep State PR team, also known
as Will's wife,

25
00:01:49,723 --> 00:01:51,144
is that he's at the dentist.

26
00:01:51,144 --> 00:01:54,386
He's allegedly getting a crown replaced on molar number 18.

27
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Boring, plausible, suspiciously mundane.

28
00:01:58,789 --> 00:02:00,049
I don't buy it.

29
00:02:00,070 --> 00:02:01,490
You don't buy it.

30
00:02:01,491 --> 00:02:03,932
We're critical thinkers here at The Overlap.

31
00:02:03,932 --> 00:02:05,732
We look beneath the surface.

32
00:02:05,732 --> 00:02:12,498
So I have spent the last six hours developing three alternative working theories regarding
his location.

33
00:02:12,498 --> 00:02:13,638
number one.

34
00:02:14,319 --> 00:02:18,582
Will got too close to the truth about why the ice cream machines at fast food chains are
always broken.

35
00:02:18,582 --> 00:02:19,792
You know the ones.

36
00:02:19,899 --> 00:02:23,081
it's statistically impossible for them to be broken that often.

37
00:02:23,141 --> 00:02:24,622
Will started asking questions.

38
00:02:24,622 --> 00:02:31,326
He started poking around the supply chain data and now he's currently being debriefed at a
black site in the Nevada desert.

39
00:02:31,327 --> 00:02:37,070
If he comes back next week and suddenly has a passionate love for soft serve vanilla, we
know he's been compromised.

40
00:02:37,070 --> 00:02:39,492
We know the reprogramming worked.

41
00:02:39,832 --> 00:02:44,996
Theory number two, Will is actually a large language model.

42
00:02:44,996 --> 00:02:46,556
He's ChatGPT in a human suit.

43
00:02:46,556 --> 00:02:49,258
uh

44
00:02:49,414 --> 00:02:57,616
The developers of Northern Virginia just need to take him offline for a patch to update
because he's starting to hallucinate too much about 90s shoe gaze bands.

45
00:02:57,776 --> 00:03:01,077
He's currently buffering on a server rack somewhere in Ashburn.

46
00:03:01,497 --> 00:03:06,938
And theory number three, and this is the one that really worries me, Will never existed.

47
00:03:07,318 --> 00:03:11,659
He's a Tyler Durden-esque projection of my own psyche.

48
00:03:11,719 --> 00:03:15,900
I created him because I needed someone to nod while I ranted about technology.

49
00:03:15,900 --> 00:03:19,241
I'm actually sitting in a basement talking to a volleyball with a face drawn on.

50
00:03:20,112 --> 00:03:21,102
I'm kidding.

51
00:03:21,282 --> 00:03:22,703
He's at the dentist.

52
00:03:22,943 --> 00:03:24,063
Probably.

53
00:03:24,464 --> 00:03:25,964
But did you feel that?

54
00:03:26,324 --> 00:03:31,546
Did you feel that tiny little dopamine hit when I said the thing about the ice cream
machines?

55
00:03:32,307 --> 00:03:36,568
For a split second, your brain went, wait, maybe he has a point.

56
00:03:36,568 --> 00:03:38,789
Why are they always broken?

57
00:03:38,789 --> 00:03:40,250
Is it a conspiracy?

58
00:03:40,250 --> 00:03:43,071
That little itch, that friction?

59
00:03:43,131 --> 00:03:46,892
It's exactly what we're talking about today here on The Overlap.

60
00:03:47,292 --> 00:03:49,232
We aren't talking about the aliens.

61
00:03:49,232 --> 00:03:51,603
We aren't talking about the grassy knoll.

62
00:03:51,723 --> 00:03:54,094
We aren't talking about who really built the pyramids.

63
00:03:54,094 --> 00:03:56,044
We're talking about the container.

64
00:03:56,045 --> 00:03:58,845
We're talking about the wetware, your brain.

65
00:03:59,346 --> 00:04:07,929
Why does the human mind crave a pattern so badly that it will invent a tiger in the
bushes, even when there's only wind?

66
00:04:08,109 --> 00:04:17,473
Why does a complex scary lie feel so much better physically, chemically better than a
boring chaotic truth?

67
00:04:17,473 --> 00:04:19,213
Today I'm flying solo.

68
00:04:19,364 --> 00:04:26,137
no will to rein me in, we're gonna do a deep dive into the evolutionary psychology of
conspiracy theories.

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We're gonna look at the paranoia feature that came pre-installed in your operating system
50,000 years ago and why it's glitching out in 2025.

70
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It's gonna be messy.

71
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It might get a little weird, but that's what happens when you let the pattern matcher run
wild.

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Let's get into it.

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00:04:44,724 --> 00:04:49,005
So to strip this down, we're gonna take the hood off the engine block of the human mind.

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00:04:49,018 --> 00:04:54,882
If you're listening to this and you're feeling a little smug, maybe thinking, well, I
don't believe in conspiracies.

75
00:04:54,882 --> 00:04:56,263
I trust the science.

76
00:04:56,263 --> 00:04:58,184
I trust the process.

77
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I have some bad news for you.

78
00:05:00,025 --> 00:05:06,589
You are running the exact same software as the guy wearing the sandwich board on the
corner screaming about the end of days.

79
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You just have a different user interface.

80
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To understand why we see patterns where they don't exist, we actually have to go back,
like way back, like way, way back.

81
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We leave.

82
00:05:18,597 --> 00:05:21,038
this beautifully air conditioned studio.

83
00:05:21,079 --> 00:05:29,404
have wifi gone, no paved roads, back to a hundred thousand years to the African savanna.

84
00:05:29,804 --> 00:05:31,565
I want you to picture the scene with me.

85
00:05:31,565 --> 00:05:32,626
It's hot.

86
00:05:32,626 --> 00:05:34,147
The sun's beating down.

87
00:05:34,147 --> 00:05:36,168
We're in the pleocysteine era.

88
00:05:36,468 --> 00:05:38,410
I want to introduce you to two of our ancestors.

89
00:05:38,410 --> 00:05:41,331
Let's call them Skeptical Bob and Paranoid Pete.

90
00:05:41,632 --> 00:05:44,037
And these two guys are hanging out near the watering hole.

91
00:05:44,037 --> 00:05:50,520
They're friends, they're just trying to get through the day without being trampled by a
mastodon or dying of an infected hangnail.

92
00:05:51,261 --> 00:05:53,782
Now, Skeptical Bob, he's a cool customer.

93
00:05:53,902 --> 00:05:56,283
He's the intellectual of the tribe.

94
00:05:56,364 --> 00:06:00,666
If Skeptical Bob was alive today, he'd be, I don't know, a data scientist.

95
00:06:00,886 --> 00:06:02,747
He'd read The Economist.

96
00:06:02,887 --> 00:06:08,530
He'd want peer-reviewed studies before he made a decision and prides himself on his
rationality.

97
00:06:08,570 --> 00:06:10,191
Paranoid Pete's a little different.

98
00:06:10,191 --> 00:06:11,332
He's a mess.

99
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He's jumpy.

100
00:06:12,859 --> 00:06:16,732
He didn't sleep well last night because he thought the moon looked at him funny.

101
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Pete is constantly scanning the horizon, sweating, waiting for something to go wrong.

102
00:06:22,398 --> 00:06:29,523
So they're standing there chatting about, I don't know, the best way to sharpen a stick
when suddenly something happens.

103
00:06:30,405 --> 00:06:33,067
A bush rustles about 30 feet away.

104
00:06:33,367 --> 00:06:38,172
Now this is the moment, the split second decision that defines human history.

105
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Skeptical Bob looks at the bush.

106
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His brain starts running the numbers.

107
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He thinks, okay, what are the variables here?

108
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It's windy today.

109
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There are small rodents in this area.

110
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Statistically speaking, the probability of that Russell being a predator, specifically a
saber-toothed tiger, is pretty low.

111
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It's most likely the wind.

112
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Bob requires evidence.

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He stays put.

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He waits for more data.

115
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Paranoid Pete, Pete doesn't wait for data.

116
00:07:02,906 --> 00:07:06,838
Pete hears the Russell and he screams, tiger, it's a tiger, we're all gonna die.

117
00:07:07,089 --> 00:07:09,330
Pete doesn't check the wind speed, right?

118
00:07:09,370 --> 00:07:11,371
Pete doesn't look for fur.

119
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He runs up to the nearest acacia tree and doesn't come down for three hours.

120
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Turns out it was a tiger.

121
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Skeptical Bob's dead.

122
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He's been removed from the gene pool.

123
00:07:22,397 --> 00:07:27,479
His rational evidence-based DNA ends right there on the grass.

124
00:07:27,840 --> 00:07:30,501
Paranoid Pete looks like an idiot stuck in a tree.

125
00:07:30,501 --> 00:07:32,062
He's hyperventilating.

126
00:07:32,062 --> 00:07:36,044
The rest of the tribe might even laugh at him later for being so scared of a bush.

127
00:07:36,507 --> 00:07:38,377
But here's the crucial difference.

128
00:07:38,417 --> 00:07:39,758
Pete's alive.

129
00:07:40,118 --> 00:07:43,198
Pete goes on to have children.

130
00:07:43,539 --> 00:07:49,280
And he passes down his jumpy, paranoid, assume the worst genes to those children.

131
00:07:50,240 --> 00:07:54,361
This happens over and over and over again for thousands of generations.

132
00:07:54,361 --> 00:07:57,122
The skeptics get eaten, the paranoid survive.

133
00:07:57,122 --> 00:08:00,002
You and I, we are the children of paranoids.

134
00:08:00,103 --> 00:08:03,523
We are the descendants of people who ran away from the wind.

135
00:08:03,684 --> 00:08:06,114
We are the spawn of the cowards.

136
00:08:07,034 --> 00:08:12,606
And because of that lineage, your brain has a very specific piece of software installed.

137
00:08:12,667 --> 00:08:15,278
Psychologists call it the HAD, H-A-D-D.

138
00:08:15,278 --> 00:08:19,349
It stands for hyperactive agency detection device.

139
00:08:19,610 --> 00:08:26,893
It sounds like a weapon from a sci-fi movie or something, but it's actually just a bias in
your cognitive processing.

140
00:08:26,893 --> 00:08:28,043
So let's break down the words.

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00:08:28,043 --> 00:08:31,855
Agency detection, obviously agency means intention.

142
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It means a who, an agent.

143
00:08:34,756 --> 00:08:37,998
Your brain is obsessed with finding a who behind every what.

144
00:08:38,478 --> 00:08:44,081
If a rock falls off a cliff, a purely rational computer would say gravity plus erosion
equals falling rock.

145
00:08:44,122 --> 00:08:48,084
But your human brain, your had brain, instinctively thinks, who threw that?

146
00:08:48,084 --> 00:08:48,945
Was it a monkey?

147
00:08:48,945 --> 00:08:49,675
Was it an enemy?

148
00:08:49,675 --> 00:08:50,966
Was it a ghost?

149
00:08:51,346 --> 00:08:54,728
We project agency onto everything.

150
00:08:54,728 --> 00:08:55,889
Think about it.

151
00:08:56,089 --> 00:09:01,142
When your car won't start in the morning, you think about the spark plugs and the fuel
injection solenoid.

152
00:09:01,292 --> 00:09:04,134
Or do you hit the steering wheel and yell, why are you doing this to me today?

153
00:09:04,134 --> 00:09:06,255
Come on, Betsy, don't be like this.

154
00:09:06,596 --> 00:09:08,056
You're talking to the car.

155
00:09:08,056 --> 00:09:15,841
You're treating a pile of metal and plastic like it has feelings and tensions and a
vendetta against your morning commute.

156
00:09:15,922 --> 00:09:19,304
But this is your agency detection device firing off.

157
00:09:19,304 --> 00:09:19,624
Okay.

158
00:09:19,624 --> 00:09:22,665
You're creating a personality where there isn't one.

159
00:09:23,607 --> 00:09:25,128
Let's look at the first word.

160
00:09:25,128 --> 00:09:26,588
Hyperactive.

161
00:09:26,588 --> 00:09:31,091
It's hyperactive because it's calibrated to be trigger hatch.

162
00:09:31,694 --> 00:09:35,928
This brings us to a concept in statistics called type one and type two errors.

163
00:09:35,928 --> 00:09:43,694
I know statistics are like mind numbingly boring, but stay with me because this literally
explains why your uncle believes the earth is flat.

164
00:09:44,536 --> 00:09:47,438
A type one error is a false positive, right?

165
00:09:47,438 --> 00:09:50,501
This is paranoid Pete thinking the wind is a tiger.

166
00:09:50,501 --> 00:09:52,722
He sees a pattern that isn't there.

167
00:09:53,604 --> 00:09:55,545
What is the cost of a type one error?

168
00:09:55,545 --> 00:09:57,688
Well, you look silly.

169
00:09:57,688 --> 00:09:59,439
You burn a few calories running away.

170
00:09:59,439 --> 00:10:03,993
Maybe you lose a little social status because you screamed like a dummy but you live.

171
00:10:03,993 --> 00:10:05,794
The cost is low.

172
00:10:06,095 --> 00:10:08,657
A type two error is a false negative.

173
00:10:08,657 --> 00:10:15,092
This is skeptical Bob thinking the tiger is just the wind and he fails to see the pattern.

174
00:10:15,092 --> 00:10:20,327
Well, what's the cost of a type two error in this scenario is obviously death.

175
00:10:20,327 --> 00:10:22,288
It's extinction game over.

176
00:10:22,669 --> 00:10:26,281
Evolution is a ruthless mathematician.

177
00:10:27,170 --> 00:10:38,029
It looked at the cost benefit analysis and says, okay, we're going to the wire and we're
going to make the human brain to make type one errors constantly.

178
00:10:38,290 --> 00:10:45,535
It's safer to see a hundred imaginary tigers than it is really to miss one real tiger.

179
00:10:45,836 --> 00:10:55,294
It's basically safer to assume that every noise, every shadow, every coincidence is a
threat, another monster, another plot against you.

180
00:10:55,833 --> 00:10:57,794
So your brain is a false positive machine.

181
00:10:57,794 --> 00:11:03,208
It's designed to be wrong as long as being wrong keeps you safe.

182
00:11:03,809 --> 00:11:07,582
Now, this was a fantastic system for the savanna, right?

183
00:11:07,582 --> 00:11:08,583
It kept us alive.

184
00:11:08,583 --> 00:11:10,434
It got us to where we are as a species.

185
00:11:10,434 --> 00:11:11,895
But here's the problem.

186
00:11:12,016 --> 00:11:14,137
We aren't on a savanna anymore.

187
00:11:14,398 --> 00:11:15,458
Some of us.

188
00:11:16,259 --> 00:11:21,113
Hopefully, maybe I have a few listeners out there on the savanna.

189
00:11:21,113 --> 00:11:25,546
But this is what biologists call an evolutionary mismatch.

190
00:11:25,967 --> 00:11:31,412
Currently, we're living in a world of high information and very low physical threat,
respectively.

191
00:11:31,412 --> 00:11:33,874
There are no saber-toothed in the break room at work.

192
00:11:33,874 --> 00:11:36,476
There's no predators hiding in your inbox.

193
00:11:36,476 --> 00:11:40,900
But your HAD software, it hasn't had a firmware update in 50,000 years.

194
00:11:40,900 --> 00:11:43,387
It's still running on version 1.0.

195
00:11:43,422 --> 00:11:46,725
So it's constantly scanning your environment for threats.

196
00:11:46,725 --> 00:11:48,506
It's scanning for agents.

197
00:11:48,907 --> 00:11:52,690
So when you see a stock market crash, your inner caveman screams, tiger!

198
00:11:52,710 --> 00:11:54,141
But there is no tiger.

199
00:11:54,191 --> 00:11:56,632
There is no physical predator.

200
00:11:56,852 --> 00:12:00,113
So your brain starts looking for the invisible predator.

201
00:12:00,113 --> 00:12:01,854
It starts looking for the who.

202
00:12:01,854 --> 00:12:03,675
It can't just be market forces.

203
00:12:03,675 --> 00:12:09,337
It can't just be a housing bubble burst caused by complex derivatives that nobody
understood.

204
00:12:09,337 --> 00:12:10,117
That's wind.

205
00:12:10,117 --> 00:12:11,238
That's random.

206
00:12:11,238 --> 00:12:14,639
And random is scary because you can't fight random.

207
00:12:14,639 --> 00:12:16,360
So your brain invents an agent.

208
00:12:16,360 --> 00:12:17,320
It's the hedge funds.

209
00:12:17,320 --> 00:12:18,280
It's the deep state.

210
00:12:18,280 --> 00:12:19,641
It's the Illuminati.

211
00:12:19,641 --> 00:12:20,781
It's the lizard people.

212
00:12:20,781 --> 00:12:23,082
Ah, that feels better, doesn't it?

213
00:12:23,533 --> 00:12:27,503
Even though it's scary, it feels better because now there's a who.

214
00:12:27,765 --> 00:12:30,605
Now there's a tiger you can't point at.

215
00:12:31,106 --> 00:12:36,048
This is why conspiracy theories thrive in chaotic times like the one we're living in.

216
00:12:36,148 --> 00:12:45,912
When the world feels unpredictable, during a pandemic, during a war, during an economic
crisis, your agency detection device goes into overdrive.

217
00:12:45,912 --> 00:12:52,674
It's screaming at you that someone must be in on this and has to be doing it on purpose.

218
00:12:52,835 --> 00:13:04,240
Because the alternative, the idea that bad things just happen, that systems fail, that
incompetence is more common than malice, that's the wind.

219
00:13:04,281 --> 00:13:08,102
And your brain is terrified of the wind.

220
00:13:08,353 --> 00:13:18,558
So if you find yourself reading a news story and connecting dots that seem, I don't know,
a little crazy, if you find yourself thinking that a celebrity blinking in Morse code is a

221
00:13:18,558 --> 00:13:20,780
signal to the resistance, don't beat yourself up.

222
00:13:20,780 --> 00:13:22,030
You aren't crazy.

223
00:13:22,718 --> 00:13:28,311
You're just a hairless ape with an overactive security system looking for a tiger in a
digital jungle.

224
00:13:28,311 --> 00:13:29,692
But here's the kicker.

225
00:13:30,412 --> 00:13:33,594
The tiger isn't the only thing driving us.

226
00:13:33,694 --> 00:13:37,476
Fear is a powerful motivator, sure, but fear is exhausting.

227
00:13:37,476 --> 00:13:39,637
You can't run on fear forever.

228
00:13:39,897 --> 00:13:45,130
To get really hooked, to really fall down the rabbit hole and stay there, you need
something else.

229
00:13:45,130 --> 00:13:46,561
You need a reward.

230
00:13:46,601 --> 00:13:50,183
You need a chemical hit that makes you feel like a genius.

231
00:13:50,183 --> 00:13:52,324
You need dopamine.

232
00:13:52,575 --> 00:13:53,776
So that's what we're gonna talk about next.

233
00:13:53,776 --> 00:14:03,481
How your brain kind of turns the connecting the dots into a drug that is more addictive
than caffeine, sugar, or validation from your parents combined.

234
00:14:04,382 --> 00:14:06,423
So we've established the brain is a coward.

235
00:14:06,423 --> 00:14:09,905
It's an ancient, terrified little creature scanning the horizon for tigers.

236
00:14:09,905 --> 00:14:11,765
That explains the fear.

237
00:14:12,066 --> 00:14:15,527
That explains why conspiracy theories often start with a threat.

238
00:14:15,588 --> 00:14:18,729
A virus, a war, a takeover.

239
00:14:18,790 --> 00:14:19,990
But fear,

240
00:14:20,231 --> 00:14:23,553
is a terrible fuel source for long-term engagement.

241
00:14:23,714 --> 00:14:25,916
Fear burns hot and fast.

242
00:14:25,916 --> 00:14:28,157
Adrenaline is exhausting.

243
00:14:28,318 --> 00:14:34,403
If conspiracy theories were only about being afraid, we'd all burn out in a week.

244
00:14:34,824 --> 00:14:39,267
We'd get tired of being scared, and we'd go back to watching dog videos.

245
00:14:40,029 --> 00:14:42,030
But people don't burn out.

246
00:14:42,281 --> 00:14:43,843
It sucks, but they dig in.

247
00:14:43,843 --> 00:14:45,939
They spend years on this shit.

248
00:14:45,939 --> 00:14:49,301
They ruin their marriages, they ruin their lives, they lose jobs.

249
00:14:49,301 --> 00:14:50,211
Why?

250
00:14:50,352 --> 00:14:53,274
Because for them, it's not just about fear.

251
00:14:53,274 --> 00:14:54,774
It's about pleasure.

252
00:14:55,475 --> 00:15:02,220
It's about the juice, the sauce, the chemical reward system that keeps you doom scrolling
at 3 a.m.

253
00:15:02,220 --> 00:15:04,321
I know it so well.

254
00:15:04,742 --> 00:15:06,723
We need to talk about dopamine.

255
00:15:06,723 --> 00:15:13,167
Now, usually when we talk about dopamine, we talk about it in the context of TikTok or
gambling or sugar.

256
00:15:13,167 --> 00:15:14,988
It's the do it again molecule.

257
00:15:15,314 --> 00:15:19,285
but it plays a massive role in how we process truth.

258
00:15:20,026 --> 00:15:25,328
To understand this, I need to introduce you to two of my favorite words in the English
language today.

259
00:15:25,328 --> 00:15:27,169
They're fancy Greek words.

260
00:15:27,229 --> 00:15:31,731
And if you can use them at parties, you'll maybe sound a little smarter than you are.

261
00:15:31,791 --> 00:15:34,752
The first word is pareidolia.

262
00:15:35,003 --> 00:15:41,982
Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon where your brain perceives a specific meaningful
image

263
00:15:41,982 --> 00:15:45,582
in a random or ambiguous visual pattern.

264
00:15:45,822 --> 00:15:48,462
This is the reason you see a man in the moon.

265
00:15:48,462 --> 00:16:00,602
It's the reason why back in 1976, the Viking 1 orbiter took a picture of the Sedonia
region on Mars and everyone lost their minds because a shadow looked like a giant stone

266
00:16:00,602 --> 00:16:01,502
face.

267
00:16:02,142 --> 00:16:11,893
This is the reason why every few years someone sells a grilled cheese sandwich on eBay for
$5,000 because the burn mark looks vaguely like the Virgin Mary.

268
00:16:12,059 --> 00:16:14,201
And notice, it's always the Virgin Mary, right?

269
00:16:14,201 --> 00:16:16,651
Like it's never like Gary from accounting.

270
00:16:16,793 --> 00:16:20,736
You never look at a cloud and go, look, that's that guy who cut me off in traffic
yesterday.

271
00:16:20,736 --> 00:16:23,218
Your brain searches for significance.

272
00:16:23,418 --> 00:16:25,660
So it wants the pattern to be important.

273
00:16:25,660 --> 00:16:28,282
Your brain's hardwired to recognize faces.

274
00:16:28,523 --> 00:16:31,305
It's the first thing we learn to do as babies.

275
00:16:31,305 --> 00:16:41,292
We were so desperate to see faces that we will construct them out of burnt bread, cheddar
cheese, marching rocks, um cheese-its, yeah.

276
00:16:42,064 --> 00:16:46,776
But visual patterns are just the tip of that iceberg.

277
00:16:47,097 --> 00:16:49,518
The real drug is the second word.

278
00:16:49,769 --> 00:16:51,089
Apophenia.

279
00:16:51,690 --> 00:17:00,594
Apophenia is a spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of completely
unrelated things.

280
00:17:01,515 --> 00:17:03,986
It's looking at static and seeing a signal.

281
00:17:03,986 --> 00:17:09,839
It's looking at chaotic world and seeing a script by a cabal of

282
00:17:10,064 --> 00:17:11,665
powerfully rich people.

283
00:17:11,665 --> 00:17:25,006
No, I don't want you to think that I'm casting aspersions or doubt about the current world
we're living in, of the oligarchy that is building inside the United States, but we're

284
00:17:25,006 --> 00:17:28,128
talking about things that don't exist, right?

285
00:17:28,128 --> 00:17:32,341
These things obviously do exist, and I'm pretty sure I'm not crazy.

286
00:17:32,592 --> 00:17:34,063
It's how the chemistry works, right?

287
00:17:34,063 --> 00:17:37,315
Your brain hates ambiguity.

288
00:17:37,315 --> 00:17:38,886
We hate not knowing.

289
00:17:39,149 --> 00:17:43,111
because ambiguity causes us cognitive stress.

290
00:17:43,111 --> 00:17:48,053
mean, sometimes more than cognitive stress, but definitely cognitive stress.

291
00:17:48,053 --> 00:17:51,754
And it's actually painful at like a neural level.

292
00:17:51,794 --> 00:17:57,036
When you're confused, your brain releases the stress hormone, cortisol, and you feel
anxious.

293
00:17:57,036 --> 00:18:06,450
But when you solve the puzzle, right, when you connect the dots, relief, satisfaction, a
little hit of dopamine.

294
00:18:07,074 --> 00:18:16,052
Think about when you finish a really hard Sudoku puzzle or when you finally guess the
wordle in three tries or when you're watching a mystery movie and you figure out who the

295
00:18:16,052 --> 00:18:18,734
killer is five minutes before the detective does.

296
00:18:18,734 --> 00:18:20,075
I do that all the time.

297
00:18:21,416 --> 00:18:22,757
My wife hates it.

298
00:18:23,017 --> 00:18:24,139
You get the rush, right?

299
00:18:24,139 --> 00:18:25,420
That aha moment.

300
00:18:25,420 --> 00:18:27,861
You feel smart, you feel capable.

301
00:18:27,902 --> 00:18:30,724
You feel like you've brought order to chaos.

302
00:18:30,724 --> 00:18:35,724
Now, imagine that feeling not from a crossword puzzle,

303
00:18:35,724 --> 00:18:37,969
but from reality itself.

304
00:18:38,220 --> 00:18:41,681
Yeah, let's walk through the do your own research rabbit hole.

305
00:18:41,681 --> 00:18:44,941
uh Let's simulate this addiction.

306
00:18:45,242 --> 00:18:46,402
It's late.

307
00:18:46,462 --> 00:18:47,922
You can't sleep.

308
00:18:48,202 --> 00:18:54,984
You're worried about the economy or the election or the fact that Will still hasn't texted
me back about the podcast outline.

309
00:18:54,984 --> 00:18:57,004
You feel powerless.

310
00:18:57,125 --> 00:18:59,385
You stumble across a forum post.

311
00:18:59,585 --> 00:19:04,666
Someone mentions, I don't know, the Denver International Airport.

312
00:19:04,666 --> 00:19:07,967
They say, have you noticed the murals are really weird?

313
00:19:08,578 --> 00:19:10,309
then you Google the murals.

314
00:19:10,349 --> 00:19:16,752
You see a picture of a soldier in a gas mask stabbing a dove and your brain goes, well,
that is kind of weird.

315
00:19:17,093 --> 00:19:18,813
Then you click a link.

316
00:19:18,894 --> 00:19:22,435
It says the airport went $2 billion over budget.

317
00:19:22,435 --> 00:19:25,236
Your brain asks, well, why is that?

318
00:19:25,917 --> 00:19:30,860
The mainstream media says, well, bureaucratic incompetence and the construction delays.

319
00:19:30,860 --> 00:19:32,731
Boring, there's no dopamine there, right?

320
00:19:32,731 --> 00:19:34,682
Bureaucracy is kind of dull.

321
00:19:34,742 --> 00:19:37,203
But then you find a YouTube video.

322
00:19:37,238 --> 00:19:38,629
It's got 400 views.

323
00:19:38,629 --> 00:19:43,233
It was filmed in some guy's basement named Truthseeker69.

324
00:19:43,233 --> 00:19:50,798
And he says, we went over budget because they're building a massive underground bunker for
the global elite to hide during the apocalypse.

325
00:19:51,159 --> 00:19:54,120
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, dopamine.

326
00:19:54,582 --> 00:19:56,443
You just connected two dots.

327
00:19:56,443 --> 00:19:59,125
Murals plus budget equals bunkers.

328
00:19:59,285 --> 00:20:00,746
The ambiguity is gone.

329
00:20:00,746 --> 00:20:03,088
The chaos has been replaced by a story.

330
00:20:03,088 --> 00:20:04,429
You keep clicking.

331
00:20:04,750 --> 00:20:07,071
Why is the airport shaped like a swastika?

332
00:20:07,071 --> 00:20:08,031
It's not, by the way.

333
00:20:08,031 --> 00:20:12,692
It's actually shaped like a pinwheel for, they say, for wind dynamics or whatever.

334
00:20:12,793 --> 00:20:20,505
But if you squint hard enough and you, guess, want to see it, that's, there's gargoyles in
the baggage claim.

335
00:20:20,505 --> 00:20:21,595
Yeah, sure.

336
00:20:21,595 --> 00:20:24,576
Every time you find a clue, you get a reward.

337
00:20:24,576 --> 00:20:26,356
You feel like a detective.

338
00:20:26,356 --> 00:20:28,637
You feel like Neo waking up in the Matrix.

339
00:20:28,637 --> 00:20:33,598
For the first time all day, you aren't just a passive victim of a confusing world.

340
00:20:33,598 --> 00:20:34,979
You're an active participant.

341
00:20:34,979 --> 00:20:37,129
You're, quote, doing research.

342
00:20:38,040 --> 00:20:41,080
And let's be honest about the phrase, do your own research, right?

343
00:20:41,080 --> 00:20:42,880
I love that phrase.

344
00:20:43,420 --> 00:20:48,440
If I mean that I absolutely hate it because it's the mantra of today, right?

345
00:20:48,440 --> 00:20:56,440
Like 99 % of the time, quote, doing your own research means quote, I'm actually conducting
a double blind peer reviewed study, right?

346
00:20:56,840 --> 00:20:57,700
No, it doesn't.

347
00:20:57,700 --> 00:21:05,999
It means I'm Googling shit until I can find the one guy on page 38 of the search results
who completely agrees with what I was currently anxious about.

348
00:21:06,761 --> 00:21:14,154
It's literally confirmation bias powered by Google's algorithm and is also designed to
keep you clicking.

349
00:21:14,154 --> 00:21:16,875
It's a feedback loop in hell.

350
00:21:17,195 --> 00:21:23,618
But here's the darkest part, the part that I think we miss when we make fun of conspiracy
theorists.

351
00:21:23,618 --> 00:21:25,819
We think they're nuts, right?

352
00:21:25,819 --> 00:21:26,759
We think they're afraid.

353
00:21:26,759 --> 00:21:30,501
We think they're terrified of the Illuminati or the deep state or the reptilians.

354
00:21:30,501 --> 00:21:32,441
And sure, on the surface they are.

355
00:21:32,441 --> 00:21:36,913
I mean, they talk about evil plans and global domination, but deep down,

356
00:21:37,611 --> 00:21:44,737
Beyond it, subconsciously, they love the conspiracy because consider the alternative.

357
00:21:44,988 --> 00:21:51,033
Option A, there's a secret group of evil elites controlling the weather, rigging the
banks, and scripting every single war.

358
00:21:51,033 --> 00:21:56,077
That is scary, but it implies that someone is in charge.

359
00:21:56,478 --> 00:21:58,559
It implies that the world is a machine.

360
00:21:58,559 --> 00:21:59,640
It has levers.

361
00:21:59,640 --> 00:22:01,182
It has a steering wheel.

362
00:22:01,182 --> 00:22:04,564
And if there are villains, that means there can be heroes.

363
00:22:05,276 --> 00:22:08,298
It means you can be the hero by exposing them.

364
00:22:08,318 --> 00:22:11,200
It means the suffering in the world has a reason.

365
00:22:11,200 --> 00:22:15,562
It's part of a plan, an evil plan, but a plan.

366
00:22:15,703 --> 00:22:17,443
Now, option B.

367
00:22:18,064 --> 00:22:20,005
Option B is the truth.

368
00:22:20,066 --> 00:22:24,188
Option B is nobody's actually driving this janky bus.

369
00:22:24,849 --> 00:22:32,953
Option B is that pandemics happen because of random biological mutations that don't give
two shits about humanity.

370
00:22:33,354 --> 00:22:35,135
Option B is that

371
00:22:35,227 --> 00:22:46,772
Economies crash because of complex mathematical feedback loops that not even bankers
understand, not even the stock market can figure out how it works.

372
00:22:46,892 --> 00:22:53,554
Option B is that wars start because of incompetence, miscommunication, and ego.

373
00:22:54,055 --> 00:23:00,617
Option B is that bad things happen to good people for absolutely no reason at all.

374
00:23:00,918 --> 00:23:02,178
And that?

375
00:23:02,758 --> 00:23:04,759
That is terrifying.

376
00:23:05,726 --> 00:23:09,097
Chaos is unbearable to the human mind.

377
00:23:09,318 --> 00:23:13,619
Would you rather believe in a malevolent God than an empty sky?

378
00:23:13,619 --> 00:23:23,806
Would you rather believe that a secret cabal is steering the bus toward a cliff than face
the fact that the driver had a heart attack 10 miles ago and we're just careening down the

379
00:23:23,806 --> 00:23:25,686
highway on momentum?

380
00:23:26,627 --> 00:23:30,809
Conspiracy theories are just fan fiction for reality, right?

381
00:23:30,809 --> 00:23:34,313
They structure the world, they give it a plot.

382
00:23:34,313 --> 00:23:41,287
They give it a climax, they give it a meaning and people, we will die for that meaning.

383
00:23:41,768 --> 00:23:52,135
And as evidence by what's going on in our world today, we will kill for meaning and we
will absolutely ignore reality if it means we get to keep our story.

384
00:23:52,376 --> 00:23:59,180
So when someone dives deep into that rabbit hole of spontaneity, don't think of them as
crazy.

385
00:23:59,240 --> 00:24:00,681
They're addicts.

386
00:24:01,002 --> 00:24:03,466
They're addicted to the story.

387
00:24:03,466 --> 00:24:07,158
to the feeling of order and that they understand it.

388
00:24:07,158 --> 00:24:08,058
Okay.

389
00:24:08,309 --> 00:24:09,269
That's a lot of the science.

390
00:24:09,269 --> 00:24:10,830
We've talked about the brain.

391
00:24:10,830 --> 00:24:12,711
Let's talk a little bit about the heart.

392
00:24:12,711 --> 00:24:16,293
We need to talk about why this is happening now in the 2020s.

393
00:24:16,673 --> 00:24:22,116
Why the most dangerous ingredient in the conspiracy cocktail isn't misinformation.

394
00:24:22,616 --> 00:24:24,547
It's actually loneliness.

395
00:24:24,798 --> 00:24:30,033
So if you're just tuning in, we've taken a tour through the haunted house of the human
mind.

396
00:24:30,033 --> 00:24:35,667
We've looked at the evolutionary hardware, the HAD system that makes us spot tigers and
bushes.

397
00:24:35,667 --> 00:24:42,323
We've looked at the neurochemical software, the dopamine hits that makes connecting the
dots feel like winning the lottery.

398
00:24:42,323 --> 00:24:46,346
But if we stop, we're missing the most important piece of the puzzle.

399
00:24:46,346 --> 00:24:48,688
We have to ask the question, why now?

400
00:24:49,209 --> 00:24:51,331
Humans have always been pattern matchers.

401
00:24:51,331 --> 00:24:53,352
We've always been superstitious.

402
00:24:53,352 --> 00:24:59,935
We've always seen faces in the clouds, but it feels a little bit different lately, doesn't
it?

403
00:25:00,496 --> 00:25:03,597
It feels like reality itself is fracturing.

404
00:25:03,938 --> 00:25:10,842
You go to Thanksgiving dinner and you realize halfway through the mashed potatoes that you
and your uncle aren't just disagreeing about politics.

405
00:25:11,042 --> 00:25:16,525
You are inhabiting two completely different physical realities.

406
00:25:16,885 --> 00:25:20,397
In your reality, the sky is blue and vaccines work.

407
00:25:20,421 --> 00:25:26,774
In his reality, the sky is a holographic projection and vaccines are full of nanobots
controlled by Bill Gates's 5G network.

408
00:25:26,835 --> 00:25:31,357
Why is this happening so much to us in the mid 2020s?

409
00:25:31,817 --> 00:25:37,600
The answer is the one reason why you're able to listen to this podcast, the internet.

410
00:25:38,261 --> 00:25:40,222
And the easy answer is the algorithms.

411
00:25:40,222 --> 00:25:42,943
And sure, the internet is the gasoline.

412
00:25:42,943 --> 00:25:48,126
It's the delivery mechanism, but you can pour gasoline on a pile of wet logs and it won't
catch fire.

413
00:25:48,126 --> 00:25:49,147
You need a spark.

414
00:25:49,147 --> 00:25:50,567
You need dry.

415
00:25:50,768 --> 00:25:57,290
And I think dry tender is actually loneliness and it's a massive loss of agency.

416
00:25:57,570 --> 00:26:02,651
We've talked on the show before about the concept of subscription serfdom.

417
00:26:02,851 --> 00:26:05,752
If you haven't listened to it, go back and take a look at that.

418
00:26:05,752 --> 00:26:07,652
Think about your life right now.

419
00:26:08,113 --> 00:26:09,513
What do you actually own?

420
00:26:09,513 --> 00:26:10,623
You don't own your music.

421
00:26:10,623 --> 00:26:12,114
You rent it from Spotify.

422
00:26:12,114 --> 00:26:13,694
You don't own your movies.

423
00:26:13,694 --> 00:26:15,375
You license them from Netflix.

424
00:26:15,375 --> 00:26:17,287
You barely own your phone.

425
00:26:17,287 --> 00:26:18,888
You're leasing it from the carrier.

426
00:26:18,888 --> 00:26:24,421
Software companies are moving to a model where you never buy an actual program or app.

427
00:26:24,421 --> 00:26:27,412
You just pay a monthly fee to be a user.

428
00:26:27,413 --> 00:26:31,454
We're shifting from ownership economy to a usership economy.

429
00:26:31,795 --> 00:26:37,358
And look, if you want to know more about that, you can definitely check out our
subscription serfdom podcast.

430
00:26:37,358 --> 00:26:40,920
That's another solo one this uh this past week.

431
00:26:40,920 --> 00:26:42,221
If you're listening to these in order.

432
00:26:42,221 --> 00:26:46,663
uh But while that's convenient,

433
00:26:46,737 --> 00:26:48,608
Hey, mean, look, unlimited music is great.

434
00:26:48,608 --> 00:26:50,248
Unlimited books are great.

435
00:26:50,248 --> 00:26:52,089
Unlimited movies are great.

436
00:26:52,089 --> 00:26:54,820
Psychologically, it changes us.

437
00:26:54,820 --> 00:26:57,211
It does something to our brains.

438
00:26:57,211 --> 00:26:59,392
It makes us feel like passengers.

439
00:26:59,692 --> 00:27:05,294
It makes us feel like we have no control over the framework of our own lives.

440
00:27:05,774 --> 00:27:10,296
We're just renting space in a world owned by somebody that's not us.

441
00:27:10,536 --> 00:27:15,472
So if you combine that economic lack of control with

442
00:27:15,472 --> 00:27:21,285
The political situation, you look at the government and it feels deadlocked.

443
00:27:21,405 --> 00:27:25,188
It feels like no matter who you vote for, the machine just keeps grinding.

444
00:27:25,188 --> 00:27:31,151
You look at the economy, inflation is eating your savings if you're lucky enough to have
savings at all.

445
00:27:31,151 --> 00:27:35,893
You look at the culture and it's moving faster than you can possibly keep up with.

446
00:27:36,094 --> 00:27:37,754
You feel small.

447
00:27:38,055 --> 00:27:39,635
You feel ignored.

448
00:27:40,016 --> 00:27:43,938
You feel like a cog in a broken machine.

449
00:27:44,475 --> 00:27:47,656
Psychologists call this a loss of agency.

450
00:27:47,757 --> 00:27:50,978
And the human brain hates feeling powerless.

451
00:27:51,139 --> 00:28:01,044
If you can't control your rent, you can't control your job, you can't control the
government, you will desperately look for something you can control.

452
00:28:01,364 --> 00:28:04,185
You can control the truth.

453
00:28:05,086 --> 00:28:07,267
Enter the conspiracy theory.

454
00:28:07,747 --> 00:28:13,110
This is where the conspiracy stops being a theory and starts being a hero's journey.

455
00:28:13,212 --> 00:28:17,625
And I'm not talking about five grams of psychedelic mushrooms.

456
00:28:17,845 --> 00:28:24,409
Think about the narrative structure of QAnon or the whole Flat Earth thing or the anti-vax
movement.

457
00:28:24,530 --> 00:28:31,575
In these stories, you aren't just somebody who got laid off from your secretarial job or
your factory working job.

458
00:28:31,815 --> 00:28:34,147
You aren't just a mom struggling to pay the bills.

459
00:28:34,147 --> 00:28:36,008
No, you're a digital soldier.

460
00:28:36,008 --> 00:28:38,059
You're awake.

461
00:28:38,560 --> 00:28:42,042
The wool has been pulled away from your eyes.

462
00:28:42,044 --> 00:28:46,897
You're one of the chosen few who sees the real world behind the curtain.

463
00:28:47,397 --> 00:28:50,939
You're fighting a cosmic war against absolute evil.

464
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:52,880
That gives you dignity.

465
00:28:53,221 --> 00:28:54,862
It does give you a mission.

466
00:28:54,862 --> 00:28:57,623
And I say people need a mission.

467
00:28:58,284 --> 00:29:07,960
It turns your suffering into a plot point in this gigantic story where you, my friend, are
the hero.

468
00:29:08,211 --> 00:29:13,484
So if you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right, right above safety is belonging.

469
00:29:13,484 --> 00:29:16,586
And this is the part where we kind of laugh, right?

470
00:29:16,586 --> 00:29:22,138
We call them crazy, we call them stupid, but we forget that they're lonely.

471
00:29:22,719 --> 00:29:34,445
And if you go down a rabbit hole, let's say you start getting really into the idea that
the earth is flat, you don't just find facts about the horizon line, you find a community,

472
00:29:34,606 --> 00:29:35,216
you join it.

473
00:29:35,216 --> 00:29:46,762
Discord server, you join a telegram channel, you go to a convention, and suddenly you're
surrounded by thousands of people who say, I see you, I hear you, you're smart, you

474
00:29:46,762 --> 00:29:47,832
matter.

475
00:29:48,633 --> 00:29:50,354
Ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping.

476
00:29:50,605 --> 00:30:01,871
For a lot of people, especially older men, statistically speaking, who are suffering from
an epidemic of loneliness right now, this is the first time they felt heard in years.

477
00:30:01,871 --> 00:30:03,411
Same thing with MAGA.

478
00:30:03,472 --> 00:30:04,642
It's a club.

479
00:30:04,750 --> 00:30:05,841
And it's a tribe.

480
00:30:05,841 --> 00:30:07,892
It's a price of admission to the club.

481
00:30:07,892 --> 00:30:11,445
You know, it's just agreeing the earth is flat.

482
00:30:11,445 --> 00:30:18,569
It's agreeing that Donald Trump is a family man who's a Christian and is going to bring
America back to a period of greatness.

483
00:30:18,850 --> 00:30:21,551
It's a small price to pay for friendship.

484
00:30:22,332 --> 00:30:25,214
This brings us to the tragedy of debunking.

485
00:30:25,214 --> 00:30:27,095
And I see this a lot.

486
00:30:27,415 --> 00:30:28,976
I do this a lot.

487
00:30:29,877 --> 00:30:33,399
I see people who mean well.

488
00:30:34,643 --> 00:30:45,109
like me, skeptics, scientists, maybe you, trying to save their family members and Facebook
friends with facts.

489
00:30:45,690 --> 00:30:58,738
You sit your dad down, you bring a stack of peer-reviewed papers, you bring up Snopes, you
have NASA data, you prove mathematically, logically, undeniably that he is wrong, and you

490
00:30:58,738 --> 00:31:01,269
think, done, I win.

491
00:31:01,823 --> 00:31:04,985
Hopefully now he has to come back to reality.

492
00:31:05,665 --> 00:31:07,126
But he doesn't, does he?

493
00:31:07,127 --> 00:31:07,987
No.

494
00:31:07,987 --> 00:31:10,148
He gets mad.

495
00:31:10,148 --> 00:31:11,990
He digs his heels in.

496
00:31:11,990 --> 00:31:16,032
He calls you a sheeple, brainwashed by the demon rats.

497
00:31:16,152 --> 00:31:17,132
Why?

498
00:31:17,673 --> 00:31:21,636
Because to him, you aren't correcting a math error.

499
00:31:21,636 --> 00:31:24,457
You're trying to evict him from his house.

500
00:31:25,378 --> 00:31:27,149
If he admits you're right,

501
00:31:27,800 --> 00:31:30,773
If he admits the earth is round, he loses everything.

502
00:31:30,773 --> 00:31:33,446
He loses his status as a digital soldier.

503
00:31:33,827 --> 00:31:39,733
He loses his sense of superior knowledge, but most importantly, he has to leave the club.

504
00:31:39,894 --> 00:31:44,799
He has to log off the Discord server and he has to say goodbye to the friends who
validated him.

505
00:31:45,050 --> 00:31:47,771
I hope you're listening to me when I say this.

506
00:31:48,152 --> 00:31:57,917
He has to go back to being a lonely aging man in a scary, expensive world where nobody's
in charge and he doesn't own his own future.

507
00:31:58,518 --> 00:32:12,385
And when you're given the choice between a lie that brings comfort, community and purpose,
and a truth that brings isolation and existential dread, most human beings choose the lie

508
00:32:12,385 --> 00:32:13,856
every single time.

509
00:32:14,107 --> 00:32:18,183
think it was Miracle on 34th Street, the updated one, where he says, what's better?

510
00:32:18,357 --> 00:32:25,967
A lie, an easy, harmless lie that brings a smile or the truth that brings a tear.

511
00:32:26,218 --> 00:32:28,079
We laugh at the tinfoil hat, right?

512
00:32:28,079 --> 00:32:32,442
Like it's kind of the universal symbol of a crackpot, a lunatic.

513
00:32:32,442 --> 00:32:34,043
Everybody knows, right?

514
00:32:34,043 --> 00:32:37,535
But you should look at it differently today.

515
00:32:37,786 --> 00:32:40,366
That hat for them is their armor.

516
00:32:40,366 --> 00:32:42,262
And I'm using it symbolically.

517
00:32:42,262 --> 00:32:43,609
I don't mean the literal hat.

518
00:32:43,609 --> 00:32:49,503
It's designed to protect the wearer from the sheer crushing weight of chaos, right?

519
00:32:49,503 --> 00:32:54,356
It protects them from the idea that everything

520
00:32:55,266 --> 00:32:59,180
within their suffering right now is completely random.

521
00:32:59,842 --> 00:33:05,098
It protects them from the idea that no one is coming to save them.

522
00:33:05,349 --> 00:33:08,100
But the truth is no one's coming to save us.

523
00:33:08,760 --> 00:33:10,761
We have to make the changes.

524
00:33:10,881 --> 00:33:12,842
We have to do the things.

525
00:33:13,782 --> 00:33:26,818
So when we look at these breakdowns of our society, right, when we look at the
polarization of our communities, we kind of have to think about it and say, look, we

526
00:33:26,818 --> 00:33:31,049
aren't having a crisis of information.

527
00:33:31,590 --> 00:33:34,959
We don't have a crisis of facts.

528
00:33:34,959 --> 00:33:38,060
What we have is a connection crisis.

529
00:33:38,981 --> 00:33:51,898
We built a world that's incredibly efficient at delivering goods and information as data,
but really bad at delivering meaningfulness and belonging.

530
00:33:52,149 --> 00:34:01,104
We're trying to cure loneliness with algorithms, but as we're seeing on a massive scale,
the side effect is mass paranoia.

531
00:34:01,355 --> 00:34:02,696
I think about Will.

532
00:34:02,876 --> 00:34:14,404
If he existed, which we are still debating, the reason Will and I can disagree on things,
and we do often without spiraling into conspiracy, is that we have a relationship.

533
00:34:14,664 --> 00:34:16,045
We have trust.

534
00:34:16,305 --> 00:34:22,429
I don't need to invent a secret cabal to explain why Will disagrees with me about tax
policy.

535
00:34:23,290 --> 00:34:26,212
I just know he's wrong because he has bad taste in economics.

536
00:34:26,212 --> 00:34:30,665
But if you strip away that trust, if you isolate people,

537
00:34:30,847 --> 00:34:32,708
the had system kicks in.

538
00:34:32,989 --> 00:34:44,937
The pattern matcher in our brain wakes up and suddenly the person you live right next door
to isn't just a guy with a different opinion, he's an agent of the enemy.

539
00:34:45,337 --> 00:34:48,159
And we've seen this on both sides.

540
00:34:48,410 --> 00:34:51,483
So the million dollar question, how do we fix it?

541
00:34:51,644 --> 00:34:55,528
How do we talk to someone who's wearing that armor?

542
00:34:55,869 --> 00:34:59,042
Either physically or metaphorically.

543
00:34:59,293 --> 00:35:04,827
How do you pull someone out of the rabbit hole without destroying them and their whole
world?

544
00:35:04,948 --> 00:35:09,671
Because I can promise you yelling facts at them definitely doesn't work.

545
00:35:10,612 --> 00:35:17,757
Mocking them seemed to work for a minute and then quickly they pivoted away from it.

546
00:35:17,757 --> 00:35:18,568
So what does work?

547
00:35:18,568 --> 00:35:20,229
We're gonna talk about that now.

548
00:35:20,692 --> 00:35:27,545
We're gonna talk about epistemic humility and the one question, the magic question that
can actually

549
00:35:27,667 --> 00:35:31,075
put a jam in the gears of a conspiracy theory.

550
00:35:31,326 --> 00:35:34,658
So here we are, rubber meets the road.

551
00:35:34,719 --> 00:35:38,882
We've covered the evolutionary biology, which is the tiger in the bush.

552
00:35:38,882 --> 00:35:46,408
We've covered the neurochemistry that was the dopamine hit in solving the puzzle and
Sudoku and whatever.

553
00:35:46,509 --> 00:35:48,580
And we've covered the sociology, right?

554
00:35:48,580 --> 00:35:54,055
Like the fact that loneliness drives people into these weirdo communities.

555
00:35:54,756 --> 00:36:00,360
It's all very interesting, very nerdy sociological stuff.

556
00:36:01,045 --> 00:36:01,895
But I know what you're thinking.

557
00:36:01,895 --> 00:36:05,007
You're thinking, okay, that's great, but how does that help me?

558
00:36:05,307 --> 00:36:14,985
And when my uncle Steve corners me at the barbecue next week to talk about the moon
landing film by Stanley Kubrick or religion.

559
00:36:14,985 --> 00:36:20,376
I hate to say it for my more religious listeners, but it's the hardest part, right?

560
00:36:20,376 --> 00:36:25,598
Your instinct and my instinct is to fight fire with water.

561
00:36:25,849 --> 00:36:27,760
Water puts out fire.

562
00:36:28,444 --> 00:36:31,055
We want to fight fiction with facts.

563
00:36:31,255 --> 00:36:34,616
But if you take one thing away from this episode, let it be this.

564
00:36:35,577 --> 00:36:40,639
Facts are not the cure to feelings.

565
00:36:41,159 --> 00:36:47,642
You cannot logic someone out of a position they didn't logic themselves into.

566
00:36:47,893 --> 00:36:57,041
If Steve, Uncle Steve, believes the moon landing was faked, it's not because he analyzed
the telemetry data from Apollo 11.

567
00:36:57,883 --> 00:37:01,134
It's because believing it makes him feel smart.

568
00:37:01,134 --> 00:37:05,915
It makes him feel like he sees something that you sheeple don't.

569
00:37:05,915 --> 00:37:07,576
It gives him status.

570
00:37:07,716 --> 00:37:09,536
It gives him agency.

571
00:37:10,057 --> 00:37:18,859
If you show him a photo of the lunar rover, like on the moon, you aren't fighting his
logic, you're attacking his status.

572
00:37:18,939 --> 00:37:21,720
You're attacking his identity at that point.

573
00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:24,141
So he'll just say the photo's faked.

574
00:37:24,341 --> 00:37:25,551
So what do you do?

575
00:37:26,427 --> 00:37:28,518
You stop playing debunker.

576
00:37:28,559 --> 00:37:30,020
You stop playing fact checker.

577
00:37:30,020 --> 00:37:33,322
And these things are incredibly difficult for me.

578
00:37:34,283 --> 00:37:38,617
So I'm uh not making fun of you by any means.

579
00:37:38,617 --> 00:37:43,670
So I'm preaching to myself as much as I'm preaching to you, I guess.

580
00:37:43,921 --> 00:37:45,872
You should start playing mechanic.

581
00:37:46,123 --> 00:37:48,754
Stop asking, why do you believe that?

582
00:37:49,314 --> 00:37:51,735
And start asking, how would that work?

583
00:37:51,986 --> 00:37:57,228
Psychologists call this exposing the illusion of explanatory depth.

584
00:37:57,479 --> 00:38:02,160
Most people think they understand how the world works, but look, most of us don't.

585
00:38:02,201 --> 00:38:08,423
If I ask you to draw a bicycle from memory, including the chain and the frame structure,
you probably couldn't do it correctly.

586
00:38:08,423 --> 00:38:12,855
You'd draw a bike that wouldn't steer or would collapse the moment you sat on it.

587
00:38:12,923 --> 00:38:17,936
We feel like we know how a bike works, but we really only know the surface.

588
00:38:18,137 --> 00:38:20,498
Conspiracy theories operate in the same principle.

589
00:38:20,498 --> 00:38:23,420
They rely on magic, not mechanics.

590
00:38:23,921 --> 00:38:26,902
Let's use our missing co-host, as an example.

591
00:38:27,063 --> 00:38:36,759
Let's say I believe that Will is a lizard person, a cold-blooded, shape-shifting reptilian
sent to monitor the podcast by the Galactic Federation.

592
00:38:37,349 --> 00:38:38,980
If you tell me Joshua, that's stupid.

593
00:38:38,980 --> 00:38:39,660
Will is human.

594
00:38:39,660 --> 00:38:40,430
I'll just dig in.

595
00:38:40,430 --> 00:38:43,492
I'll say, well, that's exactly what a lizard sympathizer would say.

596
00:38:43,492 --> 00:38:45,112
You've been compromised.

597
00:38:45,372 --> 00:38:49,594
But if you ask me how that changes the game.

598
00:38:49,845 --> 00:38:53,207
Okay, Joshua, let's assume Will is a lizard.

599
00:38:53,207 --> 00:38:56,348
How does he maintain his body temperature in the studio?

600
00:38:57,008 --> 00:38:59,019
We keep the AC at 68 degrees.

601
00:38:59,019 --> 00:39:01,940
Wouldn't he become slow and cold?

602
00:39:01,940 --> 00:39:04,991
And does he have a heat lamp under his desk?

603
00:39:05,332 --> 00:39:06,622
How does he blink?

604
00:39:06,804 --> 00:39:08,065
I've seen him blink.

605
00:39:08,065 --> 00:39:09,655
Did the eyelids move sideways?

606
00:39:09,655 --> 00:39:11,806
Have you checked the slow motion footage?

607
00:39:12,246 --> 00:39:13,887
How does he pay his taxes?

608
00:39:13,887 --> 00:39:16,607
Does the IRS have a reptilian checkbox?

609
00:39:16,828 --> 00:39:21,389
If he uses a fake social security number, how did he pass the background check for his
job?

610
00:39:21,690 --> 00:39:24,070
Is the HR department also lizards?

611
00:39:24,321 --> 00:39:25,941
You see what happens, right?

612
00:39:25,941 --> 00:39:35,643
You force the brain to explain the boring mechanical logistical details of a conspiracy
that dopamine hit.

613
00:39:35,643 --> 00:39:43,327
It dries up that sense of superiority doesn't hit the same way that it used to just like a
meth addict.

614
00:39:43,708 --> 00:39:50,431
The movie script falls apart because movie scripts don't worry about tax forms or
thermodynamics, right?

615
00:39:50,651 --> 00:39:54,272
The how is where the conspiracy dies.

616
00:39:54,673 --> 00:39:58,635
But there is a catch and it's my biggest flaw.

617
00:39:58,635 --> 00:40:02,426
You can't do this if you're arrogant about

618
00:40:03,228 --> 00:40:05,131
what you already know.

619
00:40:05,131 --> 00:40:08,536
You can't do this if you're just trying to dunk on them.

620
00:40:08,737 --> 00:40:11,211
You have to be genuinely curious, right?

621
00:40:11,211 --> 00:40:18,112
Like you have to treat their theory with enough respect to take it apart piece by piece.

622
00:40:18,363 --> 00:40:20,464
And finally, you have to look in the mirror.

623
00:40:20,715 --> 00:40:23,197
We talked about epistemic humility.

624
00:40:23,197 --> 00:40:24,977
I do this too, right?

625
00:40:24,998 --> 00:40:26,599
I have my own patterns.

626
00:40:27,259 --> 00:40:31,622
I have this tendency to believe that eventually technology will solve everything.

627
00:40:31,742 --> 00:40:36,065
I believe that if we get the data right, humans will behave rationally.

628
00:40:36,185 --> 00:40:38,306
That is a conspiracy theory.

629
00:40:38,647 --> 00:40:43,229
There is zero historical evidence that humans behave rationally.

630
00:40:43,710 --> 00:40:47,522
But I believe it because it makes me feel safe.

631
00:40:48,290 --> 00:40:51,521
It makes me feel like the future is manageable.

632
00:40:51,772 --> 00:40:53,433
We're all pattern matchers, right?

633
00:40:53,433 --> 00:40:56,234
Like we're all descendants of paranoid Pete.

634
00:40:56,234 --> 00:40:59,174
We're all looking for a signal in the noise.

635
00:40:59,855 --> 00:41:03,876
The only difference is which channel we have it turned to.

636
00:41:03,876 --> 00:41:05,636
Does that still work anymore?

637
00:41:05,937 --> 00:41:06,997
Channels turning.

638
00:41:06,997 --> 00:41:07,877
I don't know.

639
00:41:07,877 --> 00:41:12,250
I don't know if that holds up for the, the, um, Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

640
00:41:12,250 --> 00:41:13,366
Um,

641
00:41:13,366 --> 00:41:21,556
if you don't change channels i guess let's say changing you to channels still works tells
you change channels on you to break

642
00:41:24,015 --> 00:41:25,363
But I digress.

643
00:41:25,614 --> 00:41:30,747
So the point is, have a little grace, right?

644
00:41:30,747 --> 00:41:40,522
The person wearing the tinfoil hat is just trying to survive the chaotic, scary, scary
universe you are, right?

645
00:41:40,522 --> 00:41:46,576
They're just running a different user interface of a shared operating system.

646
00:41:46,827 --> 00:41:51,880
To wrap this up, your brain is a beautiful, old, terrified mess.

647
00:41:52,041 --> 00:41:53,677
It really is.

648
00:41:53,742 --> 00:42:01,366
It's running software designed for the Pleo Sistine era on hardware that is being flooded
with fiber optic data speeds.

649
00:42:01,707 --> 00:42:08,131
It's DSL running high speed data.

650
00:42:08,632 --> 00:42:15,326
It's desperate for connection, for safety, and kind of addicted to the feeling of being
right.

651
00:42:15,577 --> 00:42:26,980
So be kind to your brain, give it a break, go outside, touch grass, look at a tree, and
not because the tree is a 5G antenna disguised as an oak tree, just because it's a tree

652
00:42:26,980 --> 00:42:28,500
and trees are nice.

653
00:42:28,751 --> 00:42:35,653
Next time you see your face in a piece of toast, please don't start a religion, just eat
the toast, it's probably sourdough.

654
00:42:36,233 --> 00:42:42,775
Will should be back soon, unless of course, don't know, theory number two was correct and
he's currently rebooting a server farm in Virginia.

655
00:42:43,026 --> 00:42:50,753
But look, if he comes back with a slightly robotic voice and an encyclopedic knowledge of
capture codes, just uh act normal.

656
00:42:50,753 --> 00:42:52,114
Don't spook him.

657
00:42:52,515 --> 00:42:53,165
I'm Joshua.

658
00:42:53,165 --> 00:42:55,737
This has been a solo flight on the overlap.

659
00:42:56,038 --> 00:42:57,419
Thank you all for listening.

660
00:42:57,419 --> 00:43:00,622
Please try not to connect the dots.

661
00:43:35,953 --> 00:43:38,029
They know you're listening.