"Darwin's People" by Brian Moon

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
Hello everyone and welcome to the Human Behavior
Podcast.
If you make consequentialdecisions on patrol and a
command seat or in the C suite,this one's for you.
Brian Moon joins us to translatenaturalistic decision making
into tactics you can use today.
We get past lab tasks and onlinesurveys, and we take it to the
street.
We dig into real expertise, whyit comes from owning the whole

(00:21):
problem, facing hard reps, anddemanding honest feedback.
You'll hear where many studiesgo wrong, a simple way to
challenge your firstinterpretation before it
hardens, and how to capturetacit expert know-how so rookies
stop learning the hard way.
Stick around, you'll leave withcleaner sense making and
training moves you can run thisweek.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
We hope you enjoy the episode.
Don't forget to check out ourPatreon channel for additional

(00:43):
content and subscriber onlyepisodes.
If you enjoy the podcast, pleaseconsider leaving us a review and
more importantly, sharing itwith a friend.
Thank you for your time.
And remember, training changesbehavior.
All right, everyone, thanks somuch for tuning in to this
episode of the Human BehaviorPodcast.
I'm super excited about thisone.
A real quick shout out to all ofour listeners who've been

(01:04):
reaching out with some questionsand potential topics for the
podcast.
We we very much appreciate it.
And thank you, those who havebeen sharing the podcast with a
lot of folks as it's starting togrow.
And that's again something we wereally appreciate.
But today we have on a guest bythe name of Brian Moon.
I'll get to you, Brian, in asecond.
I just want to set up theepisode here and everything.
This is going to be a funconversation because there's a

(01:25):
lot of overlap in some of thestuff that he does and what he's
written about and the world he'sin, in a sense, and what you
folks are are used to listeningto here on the podcast.
And so what I want to try to dofor all of you listening is kind
of just make this informationtoday as accessible as possible.
So we're going to try and keepthis in the framework of like,
okay, we're going to be talkingabout these sometimes complex

(01:47):
subjects.
Sometimes they get a littleesoteric and almost academic,
but we got Greg here for that tokeep it, keep it on the keep it
on the street uh level.
Thank you.
Um but you know, we want to giveit uh uh some takeaways for you
because uh this diverse audiencethat we have of trainers, police
officers, you know, directors ofrisk management for
organizations, strategic levelthinkers, tactical operators,

(02:10):
you know, just people who areinterested in our approach to
human behavior.
We have we we we we appreciateall of you and then sort of that
diverse backgrounds that youhave.
And I think there's gonna be alot of takeaways from this one.
And I think you're gonna be veryinterested in what Brian has to
say.
And I'm gonna be bringing upsome of his work, and we're
gonna have some gooddiscussions.
So I just want to, for you guysand Greg, let's keep it framed,

(02:33):
you know, really, really forthat, for that listener, you
know, the person who might bedriving into work right now,
midnight shift at a policedepartment, lunch break, and
their role at some strategicC-suite, you know, level that
they're at.
Anyone who works has to makecritical decisions in complex,
uncertain environments,especially if there's an element
of danger or time constraints inthere.
This is really gonna be for you,and which is why we have like

(02:55):
having people like Brian on theshow.
So we're really trying to framethat conversation around what we
always talk about the sensemaking, the problem solving, the
decision making, and and howthat process works, how we can
get better at it, things we canfocus on, things we don't have
to worry about.
There, there's gonna be a lot inhere for for all of you.
So so as Greg would would remindyou, I hope you hope you got
your yellow pad out.
If you're sitting listening, ifyou're driving, don't don't

(03:17):
don't have the yellow pad out.
Uh, there's a transcript you cango look at on the site.
So so please don't do that.
But I want to get started off.
And before I throw to you,Brian, um, uh Greg, I want you
to kind of kind of open it uphere because we've got some
interesting uh background here.

SPEAKER_00 (03:30):
So Peabody Insurment, the Wayback Machine,
it's hilarious.
So I like to cover stuff,obviously from the intro.
I'm the lowest commondenominator, but I do understand
words like context andrelevance.
So what's hilarious about thisis all of a sudden we find
ourselves, Brian and I, inHuntsville in an Uber on the way
to yet another travelengagement.

(03:52):
And I go, hey, I'm reading thisbook.
And I said, I gotta, I gottasend it to you as soon as I'm
done, because it's it soundslike I wrote it.
And Marin goes, What are youtalking about?
I go, Well, you'll see.
I'm not gonna spoil it for you,just like we're we're talking at
the beginning.
We don't want to spoil all thesegreat things that are gonna come
out.
And then all of a sudden, go 20years blast from the past, back
during 2005, 2006, 2007, I wasvery new to audiences with human

(04:16):
behavior pattern recognitionanalysis.
So what was happening is thatbecause of the Combat Hunter
program, which was in itsinfancy, I was briefing at JFCOM
and NATO and JAINO and CENTCOMand the DE Ring and the
Pentagon, all these greatplaces, I got to go and talk
about human behavior profilingand how it works.
And one time I'm writing on anapkin for a couple of doctors

(04:38):
at a place called Monterey BayCanners in Oceanside outside of
Pendleton.
And I wrote, think like aninsurgent.
This is the the model.
And the doctor was one of myheroes who I had been introduced
to was Dr.
Carol Ross.
And Carol Romas ran with BillRomas, who tried to choke to
death, and I had to give him theHeimmaneuver.
And then Dr.

(04:59):
I think she's a doctor now,Jennifer Phillips, all from
Cognitive Performance Group.
And then later in that sameyear, I'm briefing at JFCom and
joined forces of command backthen had a very different
mission.
It was a transformationlaboratory.
So the the it would develop newjoint operational concepts and
test them through rigorousexperimentation.
So I'm I'm briefing there, andCarol's there, and Bill is

(05:21):
there.
And guess who's sitting theretoo?
Is our guest today, Brian Moon.
So it's amazing how tight theseconcentric circles can be
sometimes and how long thatwe've all been in and around the
flame of good ideas.
And so, Brian, when I wasreading this, and and I told
Marin, you know, this is sofamiliar.
Now we know, now we all know whyit's so familiar, because we've

(05:44):
been both dabbling in the occultand this magic stuff for a good
long time.
So I know you knew Gary Kleinfor at least 25 years.
And I bet we both have friendsin the University of Central
Florida and many other placesthat have done the research on
this.
And I go all the way back toMarty Seligman and his his
learned helplessness, you know.
So I I can't wait.

(06:05):
This is a, you know, this is afan moment for me, Maren,
because it's like uh everythingcomes full circle, you know.
We get to talk about my favoritetopic in the whole world for an
hour.

SPEAKER_01 (06:14):
Yeah.
Well, and and on that, I guessfinally, let's get to our our
guest of the day, Brian Moon.
And I want you to kind of giveour listeners a sort of a street
field definition of naturalisticdecision making, you know, how
that's different, and then kindof tell us like why why you

(06:35):
reached out to us to come on thepodcast.
Oh, by the way, a little humblebrag, but really a shout out to
our listeners because I postedon LinkedIn that we had a recent
benchmark of 250,000 downloadsthat we're proud of.
I'm surprised by too.
And then you do because of thatis when he reached out.
But tell us a little bit aboutyou and natural decision making
and then kind of why you wantedto come on the show.

SPEAKER_02 (06:56):
Well, the 250,000 downloads is the only reason
that I wanted to come on theshow.
So here we go.

SPEAKER_01 (07:03):
I appreciate honesty.
Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 (07:06):
I so I've known obviously Greg for of his work
for for many years and seeingthe great stuff that you guys
have been doing over the years.
And, you know, like all of us onthese various social media
platforms, we we see each other,we see the posts, we see the
work, and we know we're all sortof on the same side of the
fence.
You mentioned the CognitivePerformance Group.

(07:27):
I worked a lot with them when Ifirst started my company.
The further background there iswe all came out of client
associates, Gary's company thathe had for many years.
Side note, side note, you know,out of Gary's company of, you
know, at the time in the early2000s, we were 35, 36 people.
Out of that company, 15 othercompanies were formed.

(07:48):
Wow.
That's incredible.
Yeah, it's really I always liketo tell people that because Gary
has taught us, all who workedwith him, not only a lot about
cognition and and how people actand behave in the world, but
also how to be entrepreneurs andfigure out how to bring quality
services to folks who areworking in the kinds of domains
that you talked about earlier.

(08:09):
So my background, Iacademically, social science
background, Miami University inOhio for psychology and a couple
of other minors, like religionand and sociology, went on to
the London School of Economicsprimarily to study religious
cults.
And that was why I went there.
And, you know, it was in London.
So all all the big ones arethere, and a couple small ones

(08:30):
you've never heard of.
But but it was a great sort oftoss into the deep end of the
pool in terms of not only whatreligion's about, but how people
interact with each other,especially in circumstances that
are outside the the everyday, ifyou will.
They're not pedestrian.
Uh, but also how to donaturalistic research, right?

(08:51):
That's that's been a theme thatI I picked up on and was
interested in getting to LSE tosort of figure that piece out as
well.
And for me, the the bridge fromstudying cults naturalistically,
that is getting out there wherethey are, going to their homes,
going to their places ofworship, out on the street, as

(09:11):
they're proselytizing,interviewing them, talking in
depth about how they think aboutthe world and and what sort of
rationale and reasons they havebehind their behavior.
That's what naturalism is allabout.
So for me, it was a it was avery short leap from doing that
sort of thing to what I dotoday, which is in workplaces of
various varieties where folksare facing those same kind of

(09:35):
pressures, time pressures,resource pressures, uh danger in
some cases.
That's also true if you're in anew religious movement.
And really, again, trying to getinside their head and understand
the world from their perspectiveso that what they're doing and
and what they're saying they do,we can start to explain it.
We can start to account for it.
So I went to work, actually didsome legal work in between my

(09:59):
degrees and working for Gary.
I worked on defense team forfolks who are facing capital
murder charges.
So again, it's all about let'sunderstand from the perspective
of the defendant and everybodyelse around them how that
circumstance arose and how theybrought themselves and how they
made decisions to get to thatpoint in their life.

(10:19):
And so my role was to tell thejury after they had already been
convicted of doing whateverhorrible thing they did, my role
was to try to contextualizetheir life for the jury and let
the jury make the decision.
So I did that for a couple ofyears, and again, you know, the
another opportunity to be thrownin the deep end of the pool.
I mean, I was 25 years oldgiving testimony in cases that

(10:42):
would declare whether someonewas going to be put to death by
the state.
So uh early on, lots of workgoing into the hollers of
Kentucky and in the in the hillsin in western western Virginia
to get records, to haveinterviews, to talk to people
who liked and who didn't likethe defendant, right?
So really sort of testing myability and helping me to hone

(11:05):
my ability and and and doingthis kind of work.
So by the time I got to clientassociates, actually, unlike a
lot of other people who wentthere, I'd have been doing this
stuff for a while.
Right.
And and it's funny because Imean, even Gary, when he back in
the 80s, when he was trying tofigure out how to study decision
making and firegroundcommanders, still leaned on an
anthropologist to try tounderstand the methods.

(11:26):
And because he was anexperimental psychologist, like
so many other people whoactually come to this natural
decision making, I actually camethrough it pretty naturally,
right?
It just made sense that that'swhat you would do.
If you're trying to study peoplein the workplace, you go do
these naturalistic methods.
So did that with Gary and andJennifer and Carol and Bill for

(11:46):
seven years.
And then as Gary's company wasacquired by another company, a
bunch of us went out and set upour own shop.
And so since 2007, uh I'vemostly been on my own doing this
kind of work.

SPEAKER_01 (12:00):
Yeah, so that's uh that's a incredible story here.
And part of the reason why we'reexcited to talk to you.
I mean, I you you you recountsome of these experiences in
your book, and they're they'refascinating to me because, you
know, like you said, right,there's the way sometimes we're
where the rubber meets the road,there's sort of like this gap in
between what's coming out of theacademic community, typical

(12:22):
academic community, and thenlike, you know, like
practitioners, because you workwith a lot of people who would
be considered subject matterexperts, and you talk about that
in your book about expertise.
So it's like there's there seemsto be always a gap there where
you it's usually obviously thepractitioners, the people out
there doing are always fartherahead, but but then you know,
later you come in and study andfigure out, okay, well, it
wasn't this, it was more thisthat you were doing that was so

(12:43):
successful, or it was that.
So can you kind of explain foreveryone like the this this sort
of difference, I guess, betweenthis naturalistic way of doing
things and then maybe like atypical like academic
lab-focused research or study?
Like how just explain whythere's such a difference or
what it is.

SPEAKER_03 (13:00):
Yeah, it's a it's a methodological difference at the
end of the day.
It's deciding how you're goingto go investigate a question or
problem or how you're going toaccount for something.
Right.
So the standard way of doing itthese days in the social
sciences is come up with somesort of task for people to work
on in some sort of setting,usually a classroom or lab

(13:23):
setting and a college campus,and get a bunch of people,
usually first or second yearcollege students, that you're
going to reward with credits,classroom credit or pizza money
or whatever.
Have them work on that task.
That task is in many casesalready manipulated in the sense
that you're setting them up tofail because you already know

(13:47):
what the answer should be andyou want to manipulate the way
that they go through that taskin order to show that not
everybody does it the optimalway.
Right?
That gets you enough data, databeing typically some sort of
quantitative measurement of whatthey did, how they did it, how
long it took, all those sorts ofthings.
And that gives you the abilityto draw some sort of statistical

(14:10):
power out of however many peopledid it.
The more people, the better, andin that paradigm.
So that's one way.
Another way is you come up witha set of questions that just
automatically from the jumplimit the answers you can get,
right?
Surveys and questionnaires andthat sort of thing.
And then you dis distributethose in some way that you think

(14:32):
makes sense.
And then again, you're empoweredby the quantitative data you
have to make some sort offinding out of all those answers
that people gave you.
Assuming, of course, that theywere honest.
A lot of the stuff is onlinenow.
So assuming the person you gaveit to is the person who actually
there's a ton of assumptionsthere, right?

(14:52):
But the bottom line is both ofthose approaches, and these are
the paradigmatic approaches forsocial science.
This is what passes these daysfor social science.
Neither of those are actuallyconcerned with what people are
actually doing when they'reliving.
Right.
When they're out there in theworld and they're trying to can
complete a task, when they'retrying to engage with other

(15:14):
human beings, when they'retrying to use machines, uh, when
they're trying to solveproblems, when they're trying to
love and fight each other,right?
Neither of those approaches isare even close to uh getting
that view on the problems andthe and the and the actions that
people take.
So that's what naturalism is.
And it's not easy, right?
You gotta figure out who you'regonna go.

(15:36):
I mean, Gary tells a great storyabout his early studies.
You know, I'm gonna go studyfireground commanders, well, or
I'm gonna go study militarydecision making.
Well, let me pick a proxybecause I can't go in the
battlefield and just side saddlegeneral, right?
So let me pick fire groundcommanders.
Well, that's great.
They're they're closer andthey're easier to get to, but
you gotta wait for a fire tohappen, right?

(15:58):
And so going to study in peoplein the natural world is pretty
challenging.
You gotta find the right people.
And and what's really importantto us in the NGM community is we
wanna study people who acrossthe spectrum of experience can
give us different insights intowhat it's like to try to go do
something.
So, yes, we are typically veryfocused on the upper end of the

(16:21):
proficient performance scale.
We are very interested inexperts and people who have a
lot of experience doingsomething because we want to
understand what they're doing.
But we're also quite interestedin people at the other end.
We want to understand what it isthat they're thinking about and
how they're considering theproblem because that gives us
then a view of what it reallytakes to get to that high-level

(16:42):
proficiency of performance.
And so we we we know a lot aboutexperts, but we actually know
quite a bit about what it meansto become an expert over time.
And so those are all whichagain, you can't possibly get to
with experiments or or surveys.
Well, uh you can get to some ofthe expertise with a good

(17:05):
experimental design if thepeople that you are giving those
tasks to have the kinds ofexperience that that task is
related to.
Right.
So you can have a mix ofparticipants who are doing a
task which is pretty close tothe kinds of tasks they'll
regularly work on.
It's just that the majority ofsocial science doesn't do that,

(17:27):
right?
They do the easy cheap uh way ofuh of using college students,
and it's all about numbers andgetting data and enough people,
and they're gonna draw some sortof inference from that.
But we're we're interested inwhat goes on in the real world.

SPEAKER_01 (17:41):
So you you brought up sorry, go ahead, Greg.

SPEAKER_00 (17:45):
Look, for those of us that are listening, again,
the the context of the chief ofpolice or the training officer
or the court bailiff or somebodyelse, I want you to understand,
let's street this up for just aminute.
It takes an expert to simplifythe complicated.
The more expertise you have, theeasier your elevator pitch
becomes because you know it.
It it's the back of your hand,and you don't have a hard time

(18:08):
explicating the types of thingsthat you do.
So that creates an expert model.
And science isn't about havingall the answers.
Science is about asking theright questions at the right
time.
And and what happens is when wedumb that process down, then
what passes for science isruinous.
It it creates a model that'sunsupportable by science and

(18:29):
every other metric that youmeasure.
So to give you a very briefexample of what folks that are
listening, I only have LinkedInas a social media.
And often I see people saying,hey, we're conducting a study.
And so here's the questionnairefor the study.
And there's three or fourquestions that are already so
biased.
And when I mean biased, I meanangled in such a way as to

(18:52):
garner or gain a certainresponse that they already
anticipated.
So if you're alreadyanticipating the outcome and
you're writing the process tothat outcome, then that's not
science.
What you have to do is you haveto go where the doors are open
and discover what's beinguncovered.
And so to Brian Moon's pointhere, Brian, what I like is that

(19:14):
he's saying that the two thingsthat he didn't say about current
is he didn't say robust orrigorous in any of those uh
definitions.
And we've all, everybody on thiscall has been involved in those
scientific experiments that havelasted years and that have gone
wherever the information wouldtake you.
And that's not what we're seeingnow.
So I want to make sure that thefolks understand why we're being

(19:36):
critical of that process.

SPEAKER_01 (19:38):
And you know, I see it a lot too, especially with
social media, where you havevery, you know, seemingly highly
regarded folks with a bigfollowing and academics or
researchers or scientists, andthey're like putting out this
information, and you're like,hang it, like you did a study of
12 people and asked them howthey felt about this thing.
Like, what do you how this isn'tthis isn't even good

(20:01):
information?
But and so it's kind of and thennow people are saying, oh, well,
do you have a study to supportthat?
Do you have a study to this?
And it's like, if you've everbeen involved with a study,
conducted one, or been thesubject of one, I've been all
three of those.
It's like you kind of realize,like, all right, you're just
you're just kind of that's notreally what it's cracked up to
be sometimes.
And kind of like my firstexposure to what you were

(20:23):
talking about was I believe youwere out there.
We we we talked a couple weeksago, was out at the infantry
immersive trainer with theMarine Corps out on the West
Coast.
And there are people, I was oneof the facilitators putting on
the training, but you haddifferent researchers coming and
testing for stuff.
And just like you said, likethey were collecting information
pre-post, you know, thisevaluation exercise, this, and
and they were getting it fromeveryone there in a sense.

(20:45):
And right, and you even had likeMarines who were like, Well,
yeah, they don't need to fillthat out.
Don't worry about what that kidsays.
He's an idiot.
And they're like, no, no, no.
We we need to get thisinformation, not just from
people with the, you know, thebrass on their collar, or we we
want that that youngest, youknow, guy here with the least
amount of experience.
We need to understand theirperspective as well to get the

(21:05):
full comprehensive view of whatwe're actually doing to see if
we're meeting these objectives.
And so it was like, that's whatkind of originally fascinated me
about this.
And then as I progressed along,both on the academic side and
then practitioner side, it waslike, okay, like I've been, I
like this approach.
Obviously, we've fallen to thatsort of the naturalistic
approach because I mean, I spenta lot of time watching people.

(21:25):
I've I was a sniper, I've done alot of surveillance, I've done a
lot of reconnaissance, I've donea lot of counter-surveillance,
I've done all this stuff whereyou're watching people as they
fly in the wall in a covertplace where they don't know
you're there.
So you're getting a veryaccurate view, right, of what
their behavior is.
And now maybe that's forspecific context.
And I think what happens is alot of people try to like then
extrapolate that over anenormous population or over this

(21:48):
is how people behave or this iswhy they do things.
And it's just so, in my opinion,just like just so it becomes so
oversimplified.
It's like, oh, I take apersonality test.
Like, well, what if I take thatright after I got some really
bad news?
What if I take that after I justhad a great time at a comedy
club?
What if I just took that, youknow, when I was hung over?
Like, I think my answers aregonna, these questions are gonna

(22:10):
be very different.
So, how accurate is thisassessment that you're doing?
So that kind of what you weretalking about and what I was
bringing up kind of leads me tothis part of it in your book
called called Darwin's People,and and we'll have a link for
everyone and we'll get intothis.
But yeah, I want to read alittle bit of what you said
because it is you got somepowerful stuff in there.
And, you know, and you includedyou had you had Gary Klein write

(22:32):
an introduction.
It was not exactly a flatteringintroduction, too.
Well, I mean, he he he was not,you know, he didn't pull any
punches, which is great, whichis you you truly respect that,
right?
But here's why we're we'retalking about this right now is
because you said the study ofpeople's behavior is prime for a
Copernican Darwinian levelrevolution.
The present state of explainingwhy and how people do what they

(22:55):
do needs a full forceroundhouse.
I like that using my terminologythere.
I understand that.
Fortunately, the pieces todeliver the blow are already in
place, having been active inless traveled corners for quite
some time.
This should not be surprising.
Threads in both Darwin's andCopernicus' explanations can be
traced back to ancient Greece.
Hey, Arcadia, right?
The advancements lay in theircontributions of explanatory

(23:17):
pieces that collectivelycomprise a mostly coherent
whole.
Most importantly, they'vechecked their explanation
through close inspection of theworld.
So, right off the bat, you'resaying a Copernican-Darwinian
level revolution.
So if I'm going back to highschool, I believe Copernicus was
the one who said, Hey, wait aminute, wait a minute.
The sun is at the center of thesolar system.

(23:37):
This is now how we have tomeasure everything, and this is
what closes the loops, and thisis why we can't explain certain
things.
If we change the model, wow,everything starts to fit.
And then the same thing withDarwin, who obviously, you know,
on the origin of species and inevolutionary biology, which is
even other work in in sexualselection, not just natural
selection, was even moreprofound, I think.

(23:58):
But but that these are that's abig statement.
So, what do you mean by by it'sprime for that type of of
revolution and in the study ofhuman behavior?

SPEAKER_03 (24:07):
I I mean that uh from my perspective, this has to
happen, right?
So if you if you if you justtake this at the highest level,
yes, Copernicus is the guy whosaid, wait a minute, everybody.
After, by the way, centuries andcenturies of people trying to
make predictions and and gatherdata using all sorts of
workarounds and Willy Medoos andall sorts of weird stuff, just

(24:31):
so they can make the predictionwork, right?
So, you know, epicycles and ifyou if you look at the Ptolemaic
view, um it's just you know, I Ithink I use the term Winchester
House in there.
It's just all sorts of add-onsand right, so so that's kind of
what's going on now, right?
You've got an explanation ofpeople, you've got, well, it's
it's genes, but it's alsoculture, and it's got right.

(24:54):
So you've got all thesedifferent ways that people are
trying to explain how peoplebehave without actually talking
to the people themselves orobserving the actual behavior
that they're trying to uh tryingto explain, right?
So, so and Darwin would did thesame thing.
I mean, he what he did was wasshift the focus to a process.

(25:15):
This whole thing that we'reseeing in terms of
differentiation and andvariation is a process, right?
We need to get away from lookingat everything as things and
looking more at a process.
So again, recentering on topeople, that's sort of the
Copernican lesson is get getback to the thing that uh that
is actually at the center,right?
The sun was always at thecenter.

SPEAKER_02 (25:35):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (25:36):
It's just our explanation now is what's being
recentered.
And then with Darwin, this is aprocess.
It it it it some of it happensso slowly that it's really,
really hard to see, or happensat levels that we're not used to
looking at, but it's a process.
So that's those two types ofshifts are are are what I'm
suggesting needs to happen inthe social sciences because

(25:58):
otherwise the the status quo isis failing us in spectacular
ways, right?
Our our explanations of people,they are so brittle, they they
they just fall apart with thefirst counterfactual, right?
And and we're not helping peoplewho aren't professional
explainers to see the process,to think in terms of change over

(26:23):
time, right?
Because we're just reinforcingwith uh with the science that's
out there, I should use scarequotes there.
We're reinforcing layunderstandings of of behavior
with the science.
And it's just this vicious cyclethat seems to be happening,
right?
So we're not helping, we're nothelping people and and you know,

(26:43):
you guys, I mean you your workis in observing people over
time, right?
And you guys know that if youobserve people over time, you
see things that other peoplearen't gonna see, right?
And we're not helping to build ageneration, we're not helping to
build systems, we're not helpingto build institutions based on
what we can see when we look atthe right things over time,
right?
Instead, we're trying to make itquick and easy, and with AI

(27:06):
trying to make it quick and easyand big and and all the rest of
it.
But so what I I'm suggestingwith this with his roundhouse is
we we've got to punch throughall the nonsense and we've got
to use language that explainsthings as a process that is not
satisfied with substitutingsimple things in place of what

(27:27):
are vastly complex and andenduring processes.
You can actually we have reallygood explanations, and that was
my other point was they're outthere and they all can be sort
of cobbled together, woventogether because they're
mutually reinforcing, right?
I I I use kind of this analogyof a of a gymnastics team,

(27:48):
right?
The the kinds who the the thegymnasts who are putting
together the routines with eachother, right?
One's at the base and they'reholding up another one and
they're kind of hanging off theside, right?
That's the kind of gymnasticsteam that that to me is a good
metaphor for what naturalismactually is.
And so I I walk through thenwhether you're focused on the

(28:09):
biological entities that we allare, or you're focused on how do
we get the language that we use,or you're focused on, you know,
what does it mean to have a selfand and how does that develop in
a human being, or how do webecome proficient?
Those are the kind of the themain pieces that I tried to
weave together to say we've gotgreat explanations and they all
make coherent sense and they allmutually reinforce each other,

(28:33):
and they're all totally on theother side of the fence from all
these other explanations thatare out there that to your
point, Brian, have bigfollowings and people can just
spout off with new terms to sellnew books, and it's it's just
it's very frustrating for meprofessionally and personally,
because I know there's reallygood explanations out there.

(28:54):
So that's what we're trying todo.

SPEAKER_00 (28:55):
Yeah, and and Brian, that's such an excellent
detailed uh description.
So I'll I'll give you a case inpoint on that.
So talking to uh ISAF and abunch of commanders that are
sitting around a table, and oneof them challenged me
immediately.
And and you know what this islike being an anthropologist.
Whenever you're science-based onanything, there's somebody
sitting across the table that'sabout to rip you apart because

(29:18):
they don't agree with whateveryour methodology is or where you
studied or a book that they reador whatever else.
And so he's going like, Yeah,yeah, we get it.
Uh situational awareness.
If you see something, saysomething.
And I'm like, okay, you want toplay?
Let's play.
Well, first of all, sir, forsituational awareness, you have
to have anticipation.
And then you have perception,observing to see anomalous

(29:39):
behavior in that area.
And then you have to recognizewhat it is that you're looking
at and comprehend, knowing, infact, that it is anomalous
behavior and then interpretingits weight or significance based
on everything that's happeningwithin the area that you're
watching.
And then you have to measurethat against an operational
baseline, and that has to befidelity filled, so you can
determine the most likely andmost dangerous course of action.

(30:00):
And then project what's going tohappen next.
And the likelihood of what'sgoing to happen next is measured
against your continuous feedbackloop to make sure that the
things haven't changed while youwere watching them.
And everybody in the room, youcould hear a pin drop, and the
guy was like, oh, well, I didn'tsee it that way.
Yeah, you didn't see it thatway.
Because what you're doing isyou're reading the the, remember

(30:21):
the when you used to buy gum andyou unwrap the chewing gum and
there used to be the littlecartoon on it?
That's what people are readingnow.
And they're quoting that.
And they're quoting that stuff.
And so what happens is the morepeople that you get on the side
that want that quick answer, youknow, and and and so therefore
Ed determines everything that'sgoing to come out of that.

(30:42):
Shit time shit, pardon thevernacular, equals shit that's
coming out of that computer.
And we see that so much morenow.
And and AI, and I know nothingabout AI, but I know that AI is
based on models and all theinformation that's taken in.
If it's a flawed model to start,I think we're right back to
where we were again.
So so when you're trying toexplain something to something,

(31:04):
somebody, something, I alwaystry to use the street level,
something that they allunderstand.
And you're exactly right.
We spend a lot of time onspotting scopes and on the glass
and using UAV feeds to watchpeople in their natural element.
And we always see so much morewhen they don't know they're
being watched.
And then we come into a room,another one back in a uh in the
beltway, where I use the termatmospherics.

(31:27):
And a guy challenged me thatatmospherics are the layers of
the stratosphere and how itcreates weather for the planet.
It's like, no, atmospherics arewhat you feel and sense and you
know, just before an attackoccurs.
So so what I got tired of istrying to defend myself, which
is what all we use in ourscience in our work is science.

(31:47):
We all use science and we usehuman behavior, and we use human
behavior over hours and days andweeks and months of watching
people and determining what'slikely to happen next, and then
looking for evidence, artifacts,and evidence that support those
reasonable conclusions.
And you know what?
How how you could fight that isbeyond me.
But there's still people outthere that want to take that.

(32:09):
Look, you're gonna get agovernment grant if you write a
white paper and you already knowthe answer.
All we aim to prove is thesethree things.
So you have to find that too.
So how do you stay sane runningin and out of those circles all
the time?
You use the fence metaphor.
You said we're on one side ofthe fence and they're on the
other.
Well, we encounter that daily aswell.
How do you stay sane knowingwhat you know?

SPEAKER_01 (32:34):
Well, I'm you're you're making an assumption that
he's sane.

SPEAKER_03 (32:37):
Exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, look, I I I'veprofessionally I've always been
interested in trying to explainwhat people are doing, right?
Explain behavior.
I I went to, you know, when whenyou study something like
religious cults, you're lookingat effectively a microcosm on
things that happen elsewhere.

(32:57):
There's nothing really all thatspecial about what goes on in
religious cults.
My dissertation was called Copsand Cults because I was mostly
interested, this is right afterWaco, I was mostly interested in
the interaction between thosetwo groups that are on the
opposite sides of the fencesometimes.
Right.
So I I've always been interestedin in this sort of thing.
I've always been interested inreally good explanations of

(33:18):
behavior.
So I guess my sanity is keptintact in part because uh I'm
interested in it, but but I alsoknow that what's passing right
now for explanation is bad.
And and and the another keypiece that that I discuss a lot
in the book is all of theseother approaches and and models

(33:41):
and and theories about people uhhave a common understanding,
which is effectively to denyagency to human beings.
Right, right.
Right.
And it's all about somethingelse is responsible for the
actions that people take,whether it's genes or culture or
society, or you know, pick oneor another factor or variable.

(34:03):
And and that's actually howpeople get government grants, is
they just pick one of thosefactors or variables and they
study it to the hilt, right?
Because they assume that it's areal thing, a real thing, by the
way.
And notice I said thing, not aprocess, a real thing that you
can go measure somehow with someinstrument, and that once you
get to a certain level ofstatistical significance, that

(34:23):
real thing must exist, right?
These are all correlations,they're all correlating around
the idea that people effectivelyaren't responsible and don't
have agency in their ownbehavior, right?
And that is a lesson that hascome through loud and clear
through Gary's work and fromNDM, right?
It's not about doing thismassive computation in your

(34:44):
head, it's about managingyourself and those around you
and the work such that all thethings you just said, you
recognize what seems familiarand and you recognize what's
anomalous.
But that is an active agentprocess, right?
Right?
That's somebody trying to dosomething in the world, like
live, right?
So so I'm all about replacingthe roundhouse, if you will,

(35:07):
replacing all these otherexplanations that basically deny
people agency with the oneexplanation that I think is
correct, which is that peopledecide what to do with
themselves.

SPEAKER_01 (35:19):
So that's a perfect kind of lead-in to kind of what
I wanted to to jump into next toget into the actual behavior and
and some of the things thatyou're talking about.
And and you know, it's funnybecause I I appreciate it in
your book, how you you youseveral times you kind of start
with, well, look, there'sthere's physics, there's
chemistry, there's biology.

(35:39):
Like these are things that weknow that we can measure and
that have been.
And, you know, that's like howwe start some of our stuff where
people ask us questions or theycome in with behavioral, like,
well, hang on, like, do you knowwhat entropy is?
Like the like things are want tofall to the lowest order.
So like these are things thatare out there that we don't
really know or experience orcan't tell because sometimes it

(35:59):
happens so slowly.
But like there is a naturalprocess and ordered things, and
you're you're interacting withthat, what you're doing right
now.
You can't just pick what you'redoing is the most supreme thing
without knowing all of this kindof underlying processes that are
happening and that have beengoing on since before humans
were here, right?
So so it's like you gotta startin in that that that spot, and I

(36:20):
appreciate that.
And because even, you know, andyou like one of the sayings we
have is like, hey, look, youknow, good ideas stand the test
of time.
Like ideas come and go, peoplecome up with stuff and it goes
away, but like the good onessend around.
And so I just it just recalledduring this, but you know, you
we we're we every semester uh weteach a seminar out at Liberty
University in in Virginia, andthey're great part of their

(36:42):
criminal justice program, theHelm School government, great
relationship with them, and andthey love it.
But you know, when first goingout there too, I'm like, all
right, it's this is a Christianconservative school.
Like, I don't know, what arethey gonna say when I bring up
Darwin or something?
You know what I mean?
Like you're kind of like you gotto be mindful of your audience,
but it's always been such agreat, great course.
And it's funny because I, youknow, we were talking about some

(37:03):
of the physiological reactionsthat we know humans have.
Like you have certain ones whenyou get angry, certain things
happen, and your hypothalamuskind of sends triggers things in
your brain, and then you know,that'll cause certain reactions,
and you know, maybe you'll getstart to turn red in the face.
And everyone's like, Yeah, theseare general anger cues, and you
know, that nose might, becauseyou got silly hair-like fiber.
You can get to the science ofit, and this is why these things

(37:24):
happen.
And the greatest thing is oneour shout out to our our friend
Chris Rhodes out there,Professor Rhodes.
He's like, you know, there'she's like, you know, this is I
want to show you this YouTubevideo.
He shows me this YouTube video,and it's it's a it's an
explanation of an old testamentstory of they had a saying that
people who did not anger easily,they were long in the nose,
meaning it didn't buy, it took alot to get to that point where

(37:47):
they're getting angry and upsetand could feel it in their nose.
And I'm like, yeah, these arelike so.
Now we have all the science toexplain something that was
known, right, or identified insome way thousands and thousands
of years ago.
And and that's kind of what weget at is like, look, there's
certain systems or certainprocesses of certain things
people do.
So I I want to jump into thatsort of part of your book.

(38:08):
Yeah.
And, you know, in here you said,and uh, of course, I'm gonna use
it.
You said, if there's one mostimportant takeaway from this
book for you, I hope it's thisone.
In every situation andcircumstance, people choose
choose to act or not act.
They make decisions based ontheir analysis of their needs
and the perspective of others.
This event may take a long timeor it may happen in the blink of

(38:28):
an eye.
Our unique emergent ability todecide under both timescales has
given us unparalleled capacitiesin the competition of life.
In either case, people decide.
Free agency is our key to socialadaptation.
We can change ourselves at anytime.
Sometimes the need to change issprung upon us, as in the case
of self-change, but we controlthe process, we decide whose

(38:49):
attitudes matter to us.
So I love this, and actually,this is this is like that's a
lot to unpack in a singleparagraph.
We could do an entire episodemaybe just on that paragraph,
but there's some things that I Iappreciate in here, and then
also like some things I want youto explain in a little bit
greater detail, because I Imight have some fundamental
disagreements with you on someof this, and I'll explain what I

(39:12):
mean, but I want to get someclarity from you.
But like I I like how you framethis as people having choices
and making decisions.
That's good, especially from usand the training and the
interaction we do with people.
When you when we when we sort ofcontextualize it or we prompt
it, like these are decisions,these are choices.
Again, it it brings that personinto the situation as you have
agency.
Because I like to say, look, youcan influence any situation that

(39:35):
you're in.
You know, maybe, you know, yeah,you've been kidnapped and
blindfolded and handcuffed, butlike you you don't have a lot
that you can influence, but butthere's still things you can do.
And what it does is it putsthose decisions back on people.
So I I kind of like that how youframe it.
I think I have a slightly more,I guess, deterministic

(39:57):
viewpoint, you know, when itespecially when it comes to high
pressure situations that occurunder time constraints that
include some element of danger.
So, first of all, for everyone,for our listeners too, and and
for for me as well, can youfirst kind of start out?
Give me like the differencebetween what what you mean by

(40:17):
free agency and what people kindof call free will, and and so I
can get a kind of betterunderstanding.
And I just kind of want to startthere with that, because there's
a like I said, a lot in thisparagraph.

SPEAKER_03 (40:26):
Yeah, I uh I I think to get into that discussion
would be splitting hairs.
Yeah, okay.
What I'm getting at here is uhat the end of the end of the
day, if you will, we can all weall determine what we're gonna
do in the next moment, right?
And and when I say all, I amtalking about adults.
I do spend a little bit of timein the book helping people to

(40:49):
understand that when we areborn, we are there's not a whole
lot to us, but there are someimportant things to us that
enable us to become, you know,have a self and and become
choose choosing adult behaviors,right?
Choosing adult actors.
So so I I don't think it's it'snecessary to sort of go into to
free will and agency and whatthe difference is.

(41:10):
The book that I talk about a lotin my book, Kevin Mitchell's
book, which is terrific, andKevin is a neurogeneticist who
just does not put up withnonsense and tells us as it as
it is.
His whole his book basicallytraces the idea that living
things have agency and has beenthere since day one, whenever
that was, right?
And we are because we're livingthings just along the pathway of

(41:33):
of life, we have agency justlike everything else.
And so that that's really the asfar as I would want to sort of
push that, you know, what's freewill or free agency.
Now, to to the point you madeabout uh being kidnapped and all
the rest of that, you know, pepeople often will jump to those
kinds of circumstances.
And and what's interesting is wewe don't have a whole lot of

(41:55):
naturalistic data about peoplein those situations, right?

SPEAKER_04 (41:59):
Right.

SPEAKER_03 (41:59):
And in fact, within the the literature on on cults
and you know new religions,there's a bit of a split between
one group of folks who uh who'suh who like to rely on uh
research from uh one particularresearcher who who studied
people who were in concentrationcamps uh i in in in Asia, right?

(42:25):
And so, yes, we do have a littlebit of data about people who
were kidnapped and held in thosesituations, right?
But what happens is people thenwill generalize those very
specific situations to oh,that's what it's like to be in a
cult.
And it is not the same thing,right?
Being kidnapped, having a gunheld to your head, you know, all

(42:46):
those kinds of examples, peoplejump to them as a way to try to
frame things, but it's possibleto get data in those situations
because they have existed.
Yeah, right.
And and how we would do it wouldwould take a whole lot of care.

SPEAKER_01 (43:00):
But we could Well, you could kidnap some people,
but that might be that might begoing too far.

SPEAKER_00 (43:06):
I think your point holds water.
The the the thing is the smallerthe data set that you study, the
less robust the data you'regonna the conclusions you're
gonna make out of that.
And that's why I was luckybecause the uh all of the
hypotheses that I put out fortesting, not only did I do them
on the streets of Detroit andthe surrounding suburbs, but I

(43:28):
was offered the rare opportunityto go to combat zones in Iraq
and Afghanistan repeatedly toconduct those limited objective
experiments.
And you know what?
That was unprecedented.
Um, and and so I know how luckyI am.
And I also know what it's likebeating my head up against the
wall sometimes.
I remember we were teaching inFort Bragg, and a young

(43:49):
lieutenant colonel came up andshoved a book into my into my
ample stomach, and it wasvintage Jesus.
And he goes, You've got to getright with the Lord because you
don't understand any of this.
And and the the the aboutpeople, right?
About human behavior.
And and the statement that I hadmade before that break was that
people are the same all over theworld.
They all have the same needs andwants.

(44:09):
And, you know, once you identifythat, then it the scales fall
from your eyes, and now you cansee the way you're supposed to
see the world.
Now, very recently, we had thesame situation that arose where
I was asked a loaded question bytwo people that that I really
appreciate and admire.
And they were talking about thethe current A-Syrian leader with

(44:31):
non-attribution, I gotta becareful because I don't want to
crush their souls.
But they asked uh uh with thiscurrent Syrian leader, you know,
look at the things that he did,and he was, you know,
responsible for the death of anumber of Americans.
And does someone truly have thecapacity to change, to be on the
side?
And and my first knee-jerk wasto send them.
Do you understand that I workedin Iraq and Afghanistan to

(44:53):
target leaders that lived inthose countries whose families
are still living in thosecountries today?
So if I went over there to teachat their university, what would
they say about me?
Because now the rules have beenreversed.
Now the perspective has changed.
And now Copernicus is saying,hey, where's that shadow coming
from?
And the idea is that you can'toversimplify it.

(45:16):
You have to look for the themost logical scientific answer
and then try to poke holes inthat.
You don't come up with a newname and then, you know, say,
well, this is the blank effect.
I'm not going to go there again,or or come up with, well, in the
hierarchy of whatever.
You know, that's what I find.
The dumbing down of science hasbothered me because the people

(45:37):
think that there's a simple,there's an emotional answer to
this.
Well, that person just had a badupbringing or they don't know
what they're going on.
And what you're saying aboutagency just fits.
It just makes sense.
And people do have those choicesto decide.
How hard was it for you to goand talk to those jurors when
fully you understood thatlisten, these people made those

(45:58):
choices.
Now, they may have had adifferent upbringing than you
and I had, but at the end of theday, they were the ones that
were in that car.
They were the ones at the otherend of that gun.
They were the ones that didthat.
So, you know, I I I tire ofhaving to spar constantly with
the windmills of anti-sciencethat that I've been seeing
probably the last 35 years outthere.
So I don't know if that was aquestion, but by God, I was

(46:20):
pissed when I said it.

SPEAKER_03 (46:21):
Let me uh let me uh let me hone in on one thing you
said and then get to the largerpoint.
So I am all for small data sets,by the way.
If those data sets are studyingthe actual problem in depth.

SPEAKER_00 (46:35):
Right.

SPEAKER_03 (46:36):
So a lot of people will say, oh, well, how many,
you know, how many participantsis appropriate for a
naturalistic decision-makingstudy?
I said, Well, if if you give meeight world-class experts in a
given domain, that's probablyenough.
Right.
Because there probably aren'tthat many more, first of all.
And those are usually the kindsof folks that uh we're engaged

(46:59):
with.
But the other thing is whateverwe find, whatever models we
develop or what have you fromthose small data sets.
And by the way, Gary's originaldata set for his recognition
prime decision model was just acouple dozen.

SPEAKER_00 (47:13):
Right.

SPEAKER_03 (47:14):
Darwin's finches were only a few dozen.
Right.
So small data sets are fine ifyou're actually studying the
thing that you're purporting tostudy and you're doing it in
depth.
And you're putting whateverfindings you have out there for
everyone else to go say, do yousee the same things that I saw
when I was out there?

(47:35):
Right.
That's the essence of science isto put it out there and see if
in the cases that other peoplecan find, they see the same
things or not.
If they don't, if they don't seethe same things you saw and the
kinds of relationships you sawand the kind of accounting that
you were able to do, if they seesomething different, well then
you're wrong.
And now we all have to come upwith a different way to explain.

(47:55):
So I'm I'm okay with small datasets.
To to to the other sort oflarger point, I mean, yes, uh,
we're we're stuck in a place nowwhere psychologizing is the
primary means of of explainingpeople, right?
And again, you are putting theresponsibility, the agency of

(48:20):
what someone did, the behavior,onto some element or aspect of
that person that you're activelysaying is their essence and is
unchanging across context.
And that's simply not true.
It isn't like that's not whatpeople are.
We we we probably don't haveenough time to get into depth on

(48:41):
the discussion of the self, butthat's another huge part of the
book because if you don'tunderstand what having a self is
all about, um then you are goingto be stuck in either
explanations about what's insidepeople or what's outside those
people.
And or also there's a thirdcategory of perfectionism that I

(49:01):
talk about, which is we're ableto identify what the perfect
state is and then get theresomehow.
But basically the explanationsout there boil down to those
three categories.
It's either what's insidepeople, their genes or their
emotions or what have you, orwhat's outside people.
And the bottom line is humanbeings, like every other living
thing, is under continuousmanagement of both of those

(49:24):
worlds.

SPEAKER_00 (49:25):
Exactly.
Right.
Right.

SPEAKER_01 (49:27):
It it it is, and and the reason kind of why I brought
that up as the free agency andfree will, and and why I have a
little bit more of adeterministic approach.
It doesn't have to do about I Ilook at contextually within a
situation, right?
So let's say like the hostageone is uh that's an outlier,
probably not the best example,but like, you know, a police
officer use of force case wherethere's an officer involved

(49:50):
shooting, you know, those reallytough, tough situations where a
lot of times when we see them gowrong, like we we kind of refer
to them as like, well, these arethese are errors in sense
making.
They they they they thought theywere in a situation that they
weren't actually in.
And there's different reasonswhy they thought that part of it
is their genes, their values,their beliefs, and their

(50:12):
training sometimes.
Sometimes their actual trainingkind of gave them, led them down
the wrong path.
And and so that's why we kind oftry to stick to that
sense-making, problem-solvingphase.
The decision will become evidentbased on these other things,
based on your role, your goal,your policies, your procedures.
But what I what I typically seeis when people get to a certain

(50:33):
point of arousal of uh whether,you know, and and we we just
kind of generally call it OBE,where we say you're overwhelmed
by events or overcome byemotion, you've got those time
constraints, you've got dividedattention, you've got too much
cognitive load.
What we see is like you have thedefault primal mode, and you're

(50:54):
now in a survival situation,even though you're not actually
in one, you're unconsciouslythink you're in one, therefore
you're going to act like one andyou're going to use an
unnecessary amount of force.
And it's almost like a simplyput, like the less training,
experience, intellect,everything you have, the the
more likely you are to useviolence to solve a situation.

(51:17):
And so I look at it as almostprimal when I mean
deterministic.
It's like when you reach acertain point, you've sort of in
a sense lost that agency, andyou're you you now are overcome
where you know your your limbicsystem is is in full control and
it's gonna do what it thinks isbest without your sort of
conscious input.

(51:37):
Does that does that kind of makesense in in the way I explained
it?

SPEAKER_03 (51:41):
Yes, but only because you added without
training, without experience,right?
Because because what we see isonce people get exposure to
enough of those situations, andthat's kind of hard to do in
your line of work, right?
Is to get people the right kindof exposure.
But once they get exposure, oncethey're able to make a decision
and get some feedback on it, theright kinds of timely, direct,

(52:04):
accurate feedback over time, allthe primal stuff, if you will,
uh becomes uh overcomable.
Yeah, and you see that I mean,this is we see this not only
with experts, but frankly, wesee it in very violent people as
well.
Right?
A lot of the explanations of ofviolent people is they snap and

(52:26):
they their limbic system, youknow, they're just being prime
or whatever.
Well, people who are reallyviolent are actually pretty calm
the whole time it's happening,right?
They're actually prettycalculated about what they're
doing now, what they're gonna donext, right?
Serial killers don't snap,right?
They've done it enough thatthey're anticipating, they're
coming up with plans, they areflexicuting just like anybody

(52:48):
else, right?
And so, uh, so yeah, I I uh youknow, everything you said is is
applicable insofar as we'retalking about people who don't
have a lot of experience doingsomething, and that's that's the
whole goal in my mind oftraining and education is to
help people get to the pointwhere, and to me, again, you
know, this isn't a a reason orration versus emotion thing

(53:10):
either.
There's no sense in separatingthose two uh phenomena because
they are just a person doingsomething, they are people
taking action, they are peoplebehaving, they are people
experiencing, they are peoplemanaging the internal and the
external, right?
And there's way too muchemphasis on is this, you know,
men are from Mars, women arefrom Venus kind of narrative,

(53:31):
right?
But that is is the separation ofemotion versus reason, right?
And that has plagued socialscience for for several
centuries, if not more.
But my my point is, yes, withexperience and with again the
right kinds of experience, withexposing people to the whole

(53:51):
problem, with exposing people toa diversity of situations in
which those problems mightarise, with exposing people to
other solutions that people havecome up with to deal with those
situations, all that primallimbic stuff, if you will, all
can be overcome, right?
And that's how you get toproficient performance.

SPEAKER_01 (54:09):
Well, that and that that's a big part that you talk
about in your book that I wantedto wanted to hit on as well.
And and you kind of you you whenyou get into the concept of
expertise and what makes anexpert and becoming a true
expert.
And you know, I love I I pulleda few things out and I'll give
kind of the the summary in asense, and you tell me if I got
it right.
But one, you you big hit onsimply showing up like is is

(54:31):
good.
Like you you have to get in, dothe reps, be there, like even
talk about like simply going toclass means you're more likely
to get a better grade in thatclass, just sitting there in a
sense.
But like that's not good enoughto develop expertise.
You can you can developproficiency, maybe you can get
to a certain level.
I pulled out like kind of thethree main things that you talk
about with with developingexpertise, and you started

(54:53):
hitting on that one.
One, you face hard problems andyou are responsible for the
solution.
So, like you just said, likeyou, you actually not just this
one little part of this problem,you were part of the you you you
kind of had to understand all ofthe parts that went into this
problem.
And then you also brought up youyou gotta get feedback along the

(55:13):
way, and and feedback can begood or bad, or how you accept
feedback, but you received anaccepted feedback.
And then, you know, you youfailed.
You continue to fail, but but oryou failed, but you continued to
persevere past that point offailure.
So these are sort of these likeelements you were drawing out.
And there's some great quotesand how you explain it in there,
I just for the sake of time andto not read your whole book on

(55:34):
the podcast.
They can go buy it and read it.
But but you know, you you youbrought these elements up.
So like why are these why arethese the experiences that are
important to becoming a subjectmatter expert?
That's the first part of thequestion.
Like, kind of how did you honein on this?
And then if I'm listening tothis podcast right now, can I
like reflect on my ownexperience and and gauge sort of

(55:57):
where I'm at in that process ofof attaining an SME?
And then I guess the third part,like, how do how do I identify
that this so-called SME in frontof me has these things?
How can I vet someone if that'spossible to answer?
That'd be great.

SPEAKER_03 (56:11):
Yeah, uh, I'll try to remember those in order, but
but I will I wanted to add toone of the major learnings for
me in my career was actuallyexposure to the Hunter Warrior
stuff early on, because itdawned on me that, well, of
course, people who have spenttheir upbringing, their teen
years out in the woods trying tohunt stuff are just gonna have

(56:34):
those skills, right?
Some of them, because that'swhat they do, and those are
applicable to the kinds ofHunter Warrior tasks that
they're gonna be assigned,right?
So, yes, just showing up sort ofgets you there.
But but to the to the broaderpoint of how do we help people
and how do we identify people.
Uh, this is key for me inthinking about things like

(56:55):
motivation, which I talk aboutas well.
Um, it's it's for any givenability uh or behavior that we
want to understand, we have tolook at people over time.
We have to look at how uhsituations presented themselves
to those people, in particularthe situations that other people
create for them, and then whatthey did about them.

(57:17):
Right.
So whether you're trying tofigure out is this person on the
pathway to becoming an Olympiclevel field hockey player, which
by the way, Liberty has aterrific field hockey team.

SPEAKER_04 (57:27):
Yes, they do.

SPEAKER_03 (57:28):
Um or you're trying to understand, you know, the the
the has this person already beenthrough those first few stages
and have they uh broughtthemselves to a point where they
are prepared to reach the nextstage?
And again, stage for me isthey've they've been presented
with a situation, they've madesome decisions about what to do

(57:49):
about that situation, they'vegotten some feedback on it, and
now they're in the process offiguring out, okay, well, how
did I do?
Am I still performing at a levelthat's comparable to what I see
other people doing?
And again, that this plays outin sports, it plays out in
professional circles, it playsout in people becoming violent,
by the way.

(58:10):
Which again, I I I keep goingback to just people and behavior
because I'm thinking about thissort of thing across the
spectrum.
It makes no sense to me that wewould try to explain how people
become expert gum makers andhave that explanation be
different than how people becomeviolent, right?
It's all just life and peopleliving.
So we have to understand whatthat process looks like when

(58:34):
people are presented withsituations and they respond and
they respond to them by makingdecisions and taking action and
then getting feedback on that.
So organizations are typicallynot set up for this kind of
thing yet.
I hope someday they will be andwould like to help get there.
But the point is they're notidentifying people this way,

(58:55):
right?
And typically it's you show up,you got your credentials, and
you're good to go.
Well, nobody ever really talksabout what sort of experiences
you've had outside the pursuitof those credentials.
And credentials these days aregetting even sketchier because
people are getting throughcredential programs without
actually having ever beenpresented with a situation where
they had to take action.

(59:16):
Um so that's a challenge fororganizations.
But if the organization itselfunderstands the process that
people need to go to, go throughin order to get to a level of
proficiency, but if theyunderstand that process, then
they should be able to translatethat into what they're looking
for in people.
And again, you're notnecessarily you're you're

(59:39):
looking for the experiences thatpeople have had.
All the extant theories aboutwhy people are violent, none of
them, except the one that I talkabout in the book, is at all
interested in the experiencespeople have had.
Right.
They're all trying to pinviolence on some genetic or
social or or Or psychologicalfactor, right?

(01:00:02):
And and all of the response workthat's out there in terms of how
organizations should respond toviolence are all about you know,
so they'll say things like,Well, people don't just snap,
right?
They plan, they plan thesethings out, you know, mass
shooters and that sort of thing.
Well, which is all true, but uhwhat they're missing is that
whole process before they planfor this specific event.

(01:00:24):
How do they get to the point ofbeing willing to go do this sort
of thing?
And we saw this with, you know,the recent assassinations.
I mean, everybody's focusing onis it a left or a right thing?
None of that matters.
It's all silly.
It's all just wasted airspace.
What matters is whoever pulledthat trigger went through a
process that brought them to thepoint of being willing, again,

(01:00:46):
this is agency, willing to go dothat.
And if you don't understand thatprocess, then we're not going to
make any progress.

SPEAKER_00 (01:00:52):
That's so true.

SPEAKER_01 (01:00:53):
I and I don't know.
I thank you for explaining it inyour words, because that's what
we try to get people to focus onis that process, because those
behaviors, they're they'rethey're observable, they're
measurable, they're detectable,they're repeatable.
You can learn, yeah, that youcan like it's that process.
If you identify someone in thisprocess, that's now the thing

(01:01:14):
you need to go do.
Because they're not just talkingand saying things and posting on
social media, they're takingspecific steps that tend to show
this is what's going to happen.
I mean, it it's to us, it's soself-evident and obvious, but to
really get people to orient onwhat you're talking about,
because we're bombarded with,oh, they were this and they were
abused as a child, and then theywere radicalized by this.

(01:01:36):
None of that matters.
You know, it was always becausethat because that changes.
Remember, like when I was inhigh school, it was oh, this
this trench coat mafia thing,and now it's oh it's a it's a
transgender thing, or oh, nowit's like so.
We're we're we're facing thesame problem.
We're just renaming it likeevery every five, seven years
because some study came out andsomeone wrote a book.

(01:01:57):
Like, this is ridiculous.
This is absolutely ridiculous.
So I I I share in that.
Sorry, Greg, I I cut you.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:02):
No, no, no, no, no, no.
One thing and one thing I try todo too in the book is go back to
exactly what you just said,Brian, which was when I was in
high school.
Yeah, right.
And you gotta get people topresent their own
counterfactuals to the nonsensethat they're spewing out.

SPEAKER_00 (01:02:17):
Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:18):
So you gotta get them to realize show me some
examples from your own lifewhere this theory that you're
putting forward wasn't true.

SPEAKER_00 (01:02:26):
But that's the scientific method, okay?
And what you're doing is you'reforcing them to put rigor into
their own argument.
And Brian, you know, and I knowthat we're not in the cycle
where that occurs.
And and I said something to youlast week when we spoke briefly.
This is one of the few books, ifyou're listening still and
you've got your yellow pad out,this is one of the few books
that I've got dog eared pagesand highlighted all over the

(01:02:49):
place, largely because Brian dida great job of epitomizing what
we all in this arena think isthe right path.
Okay.
It's not that that Brian Mooncame up with this stark out
there, and nor did Klein.
We're all on the shoulders ofgiants.
Okay.
And as a matter of fact, I thinkthe only thing that you and and
Brian Merrin didn't discuss isinevitability.

(01:03:11):
So this book is a greatde-escalation model.
Why de-escalation model?
Because when you get going toofast, too many RPMs with your
engine, your break and yourtires won't allow your vehicle
to stop in time.
So if you're exceeding yourtraining threshold, if you're
exceeding your experiencethreshold, then what's going to

(01:03:31):
happen is you're going torapidly approach the threshold
of inevitability, and things aregoing to happen because of
physics, because of mathematics,and you can't control them.
So when you get into that andyou're a copper or you're a
supervisor and you allow thatpursuit to play out, or that
copper runs in there and doesn'tuse left lethal or accidentally
grabs left lethal and when theyneed to grab the handgun, all of

(01:03:52):
those inevitable situationshappen when we exceed human
behavior on one side and humanperformance on the other.
And that's what training is.
And that's what modeling andsimulation can help with.
And that's what this book canhelp you understand.
Because what Brian and Brianjust did in the last seven
minutes is they talked aboutschemas, dilemmas.
They talked about confounds.
And the more you look at thoseand play those out, they become

(01:04:16):
the scenarios that if you cansolve for X, you'll get better
the next time you approach thatscenario.
And we're not doing that.
We're not creating practicalapplications scenario.
We're shooting faster andflipping the tire and climbing
the rope and doing the physicalpart of it, but we're not doing
the cognitive part of it.
And the cognitive lift is theheaviest lift.
And if you get good at that,you'll get good at a whole lot

(01:04:37):
of other skills in comp work, incorrections, in in uh first
responders, in military.
And that's what I think, Brian.
That's what I think I got when Igrabbed the book and started
reading it on the plane, isthat, hey, listen, you're you're
preaching to the choir.
And it's a very small choir anda very small church, very far
away from thought centers today.

(01:04:58):
And so I'm hoping people willhave the balls, the temerity to
actually read this and thenchallenge what they're seeing
out on the street.
I truly hope that.

SPEAKER_01 (01:05:09):
Me too.
Yeah.
Well, I, you know, Brent, I Iwant to kind of give you sort of
the last word here.
And, you know, I'd also like tomaybe, you know, if you're
interested to keep theconversation going, I want to
get some feedback from ourlisteners.
And then maybe there's afollow-up or a Patreon thing we
can do if if you have the timeand are interested in doing it,
because I think there's a lothere, and we can go even deeper

(01:05:30):
on some of these concepts.
And I know there's going to bespecific ones, just like when I
was reading your book, there'sgoing to be specific ones that
people are going to want to do adeep dive on.
There's a lot in there, and butI I appreciate too how you
explain the problem with howpeople look at human behavior.
Because I I've, you know, I'mI'm always telling Greg to stop
going down that rabbit holearound the podcast.

(01:05:50):
Because we just sound like twocranks going, oh, this is BS and
that guy's dumb.
And it's like because you do abetter job of articulating why
these are problems, where someof them are just we're they're
known self-evident to us.
And and so your your critique ofthis uh of that way of looking
at things is always appreciatedand and kind of gives our

(01:06:11):
listeners a better understandingof what we mean when we say that
stuff and we say that stuffdoesn't matter, don't look at
this, or I don't care whatpolitical ideology this guy was.
You know, it's it the serialkillers and the people who do
that stuff are these areoutliers anyway.
And if you're trying to gainsomething from that, that's very
difficult.
You know what I mean?
Like and you know, you look at,you know, it's like reading

(01:06:33):
someone's manifesto.
I read all those manifestos thatthese people write, and it's
nonsense, it's all over theplace.
There's no intellectualconsistency.
It's like this is all you'reyou're grabbing parts from here,
too.
You're just justifying youractions, is all you're doing.
And you're you're grabbing theseconcepts and putting them
together because you're you'reyou're not well.
You know, you're not you'reyou're not assimilating into

(01:06:56):
society very well.
And so I think people draw allkinds of ridiculous conclusions,
especially the analysis part.
But I I do want to give you anykind of last comments or or
takeaways for for our listeners,I would, I would appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 (01:07:09):
Well, I I guess in some ways the the book for me
was a bit of a manifesto.
Um I mean, I mean, again, it'sit's it's got a it's got a point
that I hope comes through foreverybody, which is if we're
hoping to make any progress onthese challenging problems that
are in front of all of us, we'vegot to have better explanations

(01:07:31):
for what we're seeing out therein terms of people and their
behavior.
And and I have yet to crack thenut on getting people the balls
and temerity that they need togo understand this stuff.
But what I have found is thatonce they hear it, it's kind of
hard to unhear.
Right.
And once you give them a coupletools like counterfactuals or

(01:07:52):
like how to set up theirorganization to, you know, train
for situations that mighthappen, once you give them a
couple tools and and and youpair that with here's what
really uh great companies andorganizations and teams are
doing out there.
This is why they're winning.
I I do think people start tounderstand that.

(01:08:13):
Now, whether that can overcomethe millennia uh old uh
explanations that people aresimply just rehashing for
today's world, it is is anotherquestion.
I hope that it can.
And again, it's I I'm notsuggesting that everything that
uh I've pulled together is theonly things that matter, nor

(01:08:37):
that the coherence that I seedoesn't potentially raise some,
you know, issues between thetheories that I that I raise,
right?
And Brian, to your point aboutGary's forward, Gary was pretty
clear on there's some parts thathe doesn't agree with as well.
So I expect that we're gonnahave those conversations, but
all of us having theconversation on the side of the

(01:08:58):
fence, which says at itsessence, if you want to know and
explain people, go out there andlook at the people and talk to
them.
I I don't find thatcontroversial, right?
It's hard, it is expensive, andit requires a very special set
of skills that that some peoplecan develop and some can't,
right?
But the the value is that verydeep explanation that once we

(01:09:25):
come up with solutions andpolicies and organizations and
institutions work better.
We just know they work betterbecause we've seen it.
We haven't always been given thethe space and and the
opportunity to show that theywork better, but where we have,
they're pretty damn good.
And we've we've demonstratedthat.
So I'm hopeful that moredemonstrations, more people

(01:09:48):
getting exposed to the ideaswill overcome a heck of a lot of
baggage, but it's an uphillbattle, and I'm not I'm not
convinced necessarily that thisbook is going to be the thing
that pushes it over, but it's mypart of trying to get behind
that rock and push a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 (01:10:05):
Yeah, well, we we appreciate you coming on here
and and sharing this with us.
And it's it's Darwin's people.
We'll put it out, obviously,with the link and everything for
people who I enjoyed it on somany levels.
There's some great anecdotes,and there's some great personal
stories.
Shout out to anyone else whoalso read the Guinness Book of
World Records a lot when theywere a kid and loved it.
Your your Flowers for Algernonwas one of my first short

(01:10:26):
stories that I got onto as ayoung kid, which I thought that
was funny, which I don't know ifyou watch It's Always Sunny in
Philadelphia, but they did anepisode called uh Flowers for
Charlie, where it's a take onthat.
And it's one of the funniestepisodes ever.
So you got to check that out.
But there's some great stuff inthere.
Greg, anything, anything fromyou uh as well?

SPEAKER_00 (01:10:43):
There's still some people pulled off to the side of
the road jotting down notesbecause we went wicked fast on a
whole bunch of ideas.
I would like to say, Brian, uhwhat would be great is everybody
write down your questions forBrian Moon, send them to Brian
Merrin, and then Brian Moon,we'd love to have you on a
Patreon to specifically answersome of those questions, you
know?
I I don't endorse shit, and Ihighly endorse this book because

(01:11:07):
what you'll do is you'll love itand you'll come up with a whole
bunch of questions, betterquestions that you can go back
with and answer on your own, andthat's learning, and that's
wonderful.
Again, science isn't abouthaving all the answers, it's
about asking those rightquestions.
So, Brian, if you would workwith us on that, I think that
would be a great follow-upepisode.

SPEAKER_03 (01:11:25):
Absolutely.
Yep.
My point is to get the ideas outthere and let's chat through
them because I I do feel prettystrongly that this is the writer
set of ideas that we should befocused on.
So um absolutely, yeah, whateverI can do to help the audience
better appreciate the ideas andand then apply them.
I mean, that's exactly uhactually give them something

(01:11:47):
they can execute.
So I think the book's got a lotof that.
And we've got some other ideasthat aren't in the book too.
So uh happy to talk throughthose.

SPEAKER_01 (01:11:54):
That's great.
We appreciate that.
And again, folks, I'll havelinks to your to Amazon LinkedIn
book, but also to like yourLinkedIn if they want to connect
with you on there and reach out.
But yeah, I really appreciateyou coming on and thanks to all
of our listeners.
And don't forget that trainingchanges behavior.

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