Masters of Uncertainty

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Are you overwhelmed by uncertainty? In our latest episode, we tackle the intricate relationship between uncertainty, risk, and the anxiety they provoke. As we explore the brain science behind these emotions, we break down how they influence our decision-making and daily lives. The discussion also emphasizes the crucial distinction between uncertainty—the unknowns we face—and risk—the measurable implications of those unknowns.

Listeners will discover practical strategies for managing their anxiety surrounding uncertainty by leveraging their past experiences and creating clearer pathways for decision-making. From the idea that "anything can happen" to actionable steps for becoming more comfortable in unpredictable situations, this episode provides valuable insights that everyone can benefit from. Join us as we encourage you to lean into the unknown instead of shying away from it—embracing the adventure that life presents can lead to immense personal growth and resilience.

Don’t forget to subscribe to stay updated on our latest episodes and insights on human behavior! Dive into the conversation, assess your understanding of uncertainty, and share your thoughts with us; we’d love to hear your feedback!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello everyone and welcome to the Human Behavior
Podcast.
In today's episode, greg and Idiscuss the concept of
uncertainty, what it reallymeans, why it can overwhelm our
decision-making and how itdiffers from risk.
We'll explore the brain sciencebehind anxiety and fear, share
real-world examples from mundanemoments to high-stakes
situations and outline simplestrategies for reducing the
unknowns that so often lead usastray.

(00:22):
If you've ever heard someonesay anything can happen, you'll
learn why that mindset can becounterproductive and how to
replace it with more practical,clear-eyed approach that boosts
both confidence and performance.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
We hope you enjoy the episode.
Don't forget to check out ourPatreon channel for additional
content and subscriber-onlyepisodes.
Enjoy the podcast.
Please consider leaving us areview and, more importantly,

(00:44):
sharing it with a friend.
Thank you for your time andremember training changes
behavior.
All right, greg.
Today for this week's episode,we're going to be talking a
little bit about uncertainty andsome of the things around it
and associated with it and justto kind of frame the
conversation a little bit, thiscame from a few weeks ago or a
few months ago, whatever it was.

(01:05):
We did an episode called.
I forget what it was called.
It was oh, anything can happenas a myth, that was the name of
it, but what we were talkingabout was you know, people have
this sometimes, especially in atraining environment or anytime
where there's uncertainty andpeople want to go.
Well, anything can happen.
Anything can happen.
You got to be prepared foranything, and that's just

(01:28):
factually wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
It's, it's not true, and I what my biggest problem
with saying things.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
You know that that's that's my biggest issue is when,
when you have that kind of ideaor that, that mindset, that
actually helps createuncertainty and so or, or
increases the level ofuncertainty in a situation and
can make it more complicatedthan necessary, which can lead
to errors and sensemaking, andthen decisions that are bad or

(01:52):
less than ideal, simply becauseyou know there's a sort of cloud
of uncertainty.
So what I think we should dofirst is kind of define like
uncertainty and risk, and thenwe'll get into some different
examples of what we mean is kindof define like uncertainty and
risk, and then we'll get intosome different examples of what
we mean.
But you know again, to inform,you know, everyone who's
listening, you know, and currentlisteners, past listeners, you
know, new listeners doesn'tmatter.

(02:14):
You know we try to remove asmuch of the uncertainty from a
situation, you know, by taking asystematic approach to reading
behavioral and environmentalcues, comparing knowns against
unknowns, against the baseline,and understanding context and
relevance.
There's a whole bunch ofdifferent ways that we do that.
The whole idea is to give youthe ability to say, oh, wait a

(02:37):
minute, this isn't thatuncertain, I know these things.
So therefore there can only beso many possibilities and then I
can plan accordingly.
So that's a big 30,000 footexplanation, I guess, and that I
can do in a couple of sentences.
But but let's, uh, I guess I'llthrow you to start, greg, and
maybe we define some of theseterms upfront so that kind of we

(02:58):
, we all are on the same page ofwhat we mean by that.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
No, it's good to be broadcasting again, Brian, just
the intro.
While we're doing that, we'reboth jet lagged as an MF.
So it's funny because we reallywant to talk about this, but
it's like holy smokes, we'vebeen talking all week, so let's
do that.
Let's define uncertainty forour purposes, okay, so what
we're going to give is a streetdefinition that Brian and I use,
that you'll understand, simplyso we can have this discussion.

(03:21):
And uncertainty simply meansthat you aren't sure about
something, whether it's anupcoming meeting, an event, a
situation and when I meanmeeting, I don't mean just a
meeting in an office building, Imean like a meeting on the
street.
You don't have enough knowledgeabout the likely outcomes or
the potential options that youmight encounter.
And you have to understand thatrisk aversion is a survival
tool.
It's pre-programmed in allhumans and you have this risk

(03:45):
avoidance strategy that isconstantly sampling your
environment.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Okay, so yeah, and then can you kind of give the
sort of difference betweenuncertainty and risk.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Oh yeah, certainly so .
So not knowing what's going tohappen creates both.
It creates risk and it createsanxiety.
And in your brain those are twodefinite and do they cross
paths at points.
But it's like a train stationthere's two separate, distinct
train stations on the same track.
Okay, and so risk is thatever-present possibility that

(04:19):
something negative is going tohappen.
And again, electrochemicalneurotransmitters side, on the
negative Tie, goes to the runner, because they don't want you
inadvertently or accidentally orunintentionally going into a
risky situation.
So the uncertainty builds tostop you from, to make you look
before you leap, from stoppingyou from making a stupid error.

(04:42):
And that's the essence ofuncertainty and risk.
It's supposed to be there as asafety blanket to cushion you.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Right and I get what you're saying.
That's sort of like from acognitive perspective.
In a sense there's some overlapthere in what happens to you
cognitively.
And then big picture you know,risk can be managed, mitigated,
you can plan for certain things.
So if you have a job, if youwork you know construction your
job is inherently more risky.

(05:13):
There's more risk there, youknow in a sense, than you know.
you're a computer programmer orsomething like that right,
because there's just so manymore things that could happen.
There's some safety issuesright, and there's a lot, but
that doesn't mean that it'sinherent, like if your job has
risks, it doesn't mean whatyou're doing is inherently risky
.
It means that there, there's,there's these known risks,
there's these known things thatcan happen, and so, therefore,

(05:36):
you account for them in the waythat you do things Right now.
That's sorry, go ahead.
No, no, no.
So so you bring up a greatpoint and and and Now, that's
sorry, go ahead, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
So so you bring up a great point and and and here's
where science confuses peopleand it doesn't need to.
So you know those, uh, railjobs, jobs, those drag racers
that you see that go so fast andall of a sudden they got a
little parachute that comes outand the whole race is over in a
matter of seconds and they use atype of fuel that is really
really really unstable andunpredictable.
That is really really reallyunstable and unpredictable.

(06:03):
And they've kind of mastered it.
And I say kind of, because thepeople show up still to see the
explosion that takes the entiremillion-dollar car apart and
vaults the driver.
So that driver, that engineer,those people that work, the pit
crew, brian, that's not risk,okay.
What it is is the risk of doingsomething.

(06:24):
Danger has been minimizedalmost zero.
There's very few instances.
You don't see those attacks andand dangers and explosions all
the time.
So so being risk averse doesn'tmean avoiding those things that
are risky, and risk averse as astrategy that your brain goes
backwards in time and so thatthat time that it's talking

(06:45):
about, there were no internalcombustion engines.
There weren't.
It wasn't flight, there weren'texplosive and things.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
You see what?

Speaker 2 (06:51):
I'm saying.
So what we've got to do iswe've got to look at it as a
survival-based mechanism where,like we try to adjudicate, we
have a lot of friends that arein like safety and executive and
dignitary protection and doingrisk assessments on a building,
for example.
Okay, that's a different kindof risk, that's an exposure risk
.
You see what I'm saying?
An environmental risk.

(07:12):
What happens is your brain iscalculating risk all the time
and it always sides to thenegative.
It's always going to say, hey,we're in a survival situation,
how bad is it going to hurt?
And once we get that, then wecan function in our environment
with much reduced anxiety.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
Right, and when it comes to risk, like you just
said, you can do a riskassessment and say these were
things may go wrong or may beexposed, or it could be an
unsafe or whatever the situationis.
The risk doesn't necessarilyhave to be like physical safety.
It could be financial securityor something that's going on,
right?
Or the unknown what's differentis that, obviously, risk can be

(07:53):
sort of you know, you can planfor that.
It's the uncertainty thatcreeps in, that is okay.
Well, there's so many unknownsor there's things that I don't
know out there.
There's so many unknowns orthere's things that I don't know
out there, and the more ofthose that there are in my
environment, whether that's,yeah, I start to kind of it
starts to affect my decisionmaking and, like you said, my

(08:13):
brain is always going to goprimitive.
I'm going to look for thelowest common denominator,
what's going to keep me alive,kind of thing.
And so if too much of thatuncertainty creeps in, then I
can almost become sort of like Ibecome overloaded, overwhelmed
by the situation.
Right, I get, you know, mycognitive load is too much.
I get OBE, as we would call it,I can have, you know, and my

(08:35):
brain defaults this limbicsystem to the survival system,
right?
So the uncertainty or potentialuncertainty of a situation
leads to then, sort of what youtalked about, but anxiety.
So you know, anxiety, basicallyanxiety is something that all
humans have.
It's well, it's what's kept usalive.
Like anxiety is not a bad thingunless there's too much of it,

(08:57):
or you're you know what I mean.
You're overly anxious orsomething, but a little bit of
anxiety actually goes a long way, meaning it's why.
It's why humans, despite ourgreatest attempts, are still
alive, right.
So the anxiety is sort of thatfear of the unknown or fear of
something in the future.
Because people talk about fearand anxiety, because they are
two different things.
Fear is there's somethinghappening right now I'm scared,

(09:17):
or there's something I'm in fearfor my life.
But anxiety is that hey,there's something up there on
the horizon.
I'm not really sure what it isand I'm getting a little nervous
about it because I'm gettingthese signals.
So they go hand in hand.
They're similar in some ways,but I just differentiate them a
little bit.
Like that is, as anxiety issomething that's okay.
Even fear, I mean, is somethingthat is designed to keep you

(09:37):
alive.
I mean that feeling you get istechnically, it's a survival
mechanism.
That's a good thing.
It's only bad when it getsturned on in the wrong situation
, when I don't need to be, whenI fear for something that isn't
may not be, you know, somethingthat's going to cause me serious
harm or kill me.

(09:57):
But my brain remember we talkedabout those like kind of you
and your brain is sort of twoseparate entities just for the
purpose of discussion andtraining and talking about it.
Right, it's one and the same.
It's just a complex system andthis is all sort of happening.
You know, unconsciously that wedon't recognize sometimes and
which gets us into the trick bag.
You know, when we say no,you're already doing this,

(10:18):
you're already like.
You know we always say,especially the law enforcement
crowd, it's like no, you're,you're standing on the side of a
road car zipping past you at 70miles an hour, like you.
You you've done that so manytimes that you forget how
fricking dangerous that is.
Your limbic system hasn'tforgotten that, so it still
knows how dangerous that is.
So, even though your prefrontalcortex thinks, hey, this is
fine, it's another thing that Ido, it it's, it's kicking

(10:38):
underneath that surface alreadywithout you kind of really being
consciously aware.
Does that make sense, or isthat?

Speaker 2 (10:42):
a good way to describe it.
Yeah, absolutely.
And again, here we have to goback in time a little bit, so
you have to understand that riskand uncertainty seem like the
same thing but they're not thesame thing and anxiety occurs in
both, of course.
And people hate change.
Change produces anxiety becauseof the fear of the unknown.
So that would go on to theuncertainty side.

(11:04):
I'm uncertain, so that'spredictive analysis side, right,
but the risk side, risks aremeasurable.
You can say that jumping offwith a bungee, there's a one in,
you know, 1,275,000, you know,Panther or whatever, that your
head is going to hit the bottomof the Royal Gorge and you're
going to explode like a pumpkin.
So that's the difference there.
The problem with uncertainty isthat it creates this persistent

(11:26):
or overwhelming anxiety andthat starts to interfere with
your daily life or your businessoperations.
So uncertainty means I have afoggy view of the future.
Yeah, and human behavior,unpredictable behavior is
anxiety producing, so that's notrisk.
Now, if we're talking humanbehavior and we're talking risky
behavior unprotected sex,drinking and driving those type

(11:48):
of things then that's going toincrease your risk.
But risk can be managed betterthan uncertainty.
There's a plan for uncertainty.
You see what I'm trying to saybut risk is much easier to
manage and that's why people goto that.
That's why people hire thosepeople, Brian, because I can go
to a dry erase board and showyou risk, but it's really hard
to demonstrate uncertainty.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Okay, that's kind of, I think, the heart of the issue
there or the way to look at it.
So risk, that's the actuarialtable that an insurance company
uses to say okay, based on yourage and your history in this, we
know you have a likely chanceof this happening and so your
car insurance is going to beless or more based on these
factors that we've known at amacro level, with millions of

(12:33):
data points over decades anddecades.
Right, so we can quantify thatand you can give it a number in
some way.
And then you can say well,you've had a bunch of speeding
tickets or you've been inseveral accidents, so you're
more likely to continue thatbehavior.
So therefore I'm going tocharge you more money.
So I like looking at it thatway, because risk, again, it can
be calculated.
You can say this is what it'sgoing to cost.

(12:53):
You know, in some somemeasurable fashion fashion,
whether that's money or time orresources or whatever, right, so
we know that.
And then, but like you just said, the uncertainty kind of hard
to measure because it can bevery subjective, right, it can
be.
You know it's hard to quantify,and that's when you get into

(13:13):
anything with complexity, youknow too, is like well, there's
all of these other factors,there's these stuff, these
things that are occurring withinyou, within the situation, how
you're sense-making it.
You know, if you start to gowrong somewhere, then you could
be way, way way off.
Come down, you know, fartherdown the road, because you
started at a really bad point.
Now you've overwhelmed yourselfwith uncertainty and now I

(13:37):
don't know what to do.
And and so you know, which iswhy we were.
You know, we are constantlygiving the example of, like your
knowns versus your unknowns.
What do you know based on yourpast experience, based on what
everything in the situation istelling you, what can you
compare something against?
And that baseline comparison isalways the most important part,

(13:58):
more so than whatever thisthing or this observation or
perception is that you're having.
That's making you feeluncertain or giving you that
anxiety.
Right, because that thing, thatthing alone could be, could be
different.
You know, I always make the like, the joke, even in class, where
I'm like hey, if I called 911right now and say I'm surrounded
by a bunch of people with guns,you know it would subjectively

(14:20):
true statement.
Now, they're all, they're all,they're all law enforcement
officers in the class that I'mteaching.
But you know I failed to leavethat part out, but that's the
way you look at it.
And so, without that baselinesort of comparison, that's
actually where a lot of thatuncertainty can creep in, right
Cause I get a little bit anxious, cause I'm a little unknown,
I'm not sure, and, like you said, I fall back on what, what's
the worst thing that's going tohappen to me, and then I start

(14:43):
comparing everything to that andif it's cognitively close
enough to what I think thatmight be, it's real to my brain.
Whether or not it's an actualsurvival situation.
If you feel like it is, thentherefore it is to your brain
yeah, so so and this is notunlike an instructor development

(15:03):
.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
so so let me dig into what you were talking about so
we don't go too far from thescience and everybody can yellow
pad it with us.
So negative emotions areabsolutely essential to human
survival.
They make us think that thisendeavor that we're about to
become involved with has apossibility of going sideways,
has a possibility of being anegative experience, and
therefore we should avoid it.
So those chemicals are on boardas a mechanism, as a survival,

(15:27):
a risk avoidance strategy, right?
So every program I've everbuilt, going back to Sensei
Williams' dojo and Combat,hunter and ASAT and everything
else, the reason the science hasbeen there is there's a
similarity between Heisenberg'suncertainty principle,
schrodinger's cat, the secondlaw of thermodynamics, a
centripetal force, centripetalforce, gravity.
What do those things do?

(15:48):
And people don't get that.
People are always conflating.
Somebody comes up with a goodidea and they go oh, this is so
important.
No, I'll tell you why it'simportant.
The reason it's important isour accuracy in predicting
mental states of others andhuman behavior encounters
diminishes whenever we'reemotionally aroused.
So if we take a step back andgo directly to the science, our
prefrontal cortex allows us toattribute mental states to

(16:11):
ourselves and to others in thesecontexts.
So therefore it manages riskand lowers uncertainty.
For example, if I know I'm notgoing to spin off into the sun,
that manages and lowers my levelof uncertainty.
So the science part of it, youknow, and for example, if we
talk about Heisenberg, when itcomes to humans, the uncertainty

(16:34):
principle helps me because it'sindependent of personality and
it can take me outside of humanemotion.
And I understand things likethe observer effect, brian, that
if I'm observing you, I'mchanging the baseline, I'm
having an impact on what I'mtrying to study.
So I'm trying to stay at 30,000foot for everybody and street

(16:55):
it up.
What you must understand isthere's certain things we can
control and certain things wecan't.
So if we're talking aboutmanaging risk and putting it on
a table, we can do that.
If we're talking aboutuncertainty, uncertainty is
uncertain for a reason.
If we could figure that out,then life would be very simple.
We wouldn't have therelationship problems that we

(17:15):
have and we certainly wouldn'thave certain unique individuals
that go off the res and dostupid things right.
So uncertainty is there, thethe cloud, the fog of war that
we have to search through tofind things.
If we didn't do that wewouldn't grow.
So that's, that's an essentialconstruct between us and our
brains.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
So, how well, I first .
First, you know, I don't see alot of people.
Well, some of this is languageand how people talk about it,
but you know, we don't focus on,you know, managing uncertainty
or facing uncertainty, or orfiguring out that we kind of
focus on decisions, or what todo, or or policy and procedures,

(17:57):
or or like the solutions, likewe're like, here's all these
solutions.
It's like, well, hang on, wehaven't, we haven't clearly
defined the problem yet and facethis uncertainty, and in fact,
many of these situations are,are are less uncertain than than
we think, maybe.
So I, I guess my first sort oflike question about it is you
know, why should we manageuncertainty?
But and then what?

(18:18):
What does that even mean?
You know, I'm saying likethat's a great question.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
So but let's build it slowly.
Let's not, let's not dive inand try to give a sentence as an
answer.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah, well, no, you can't None of this stuff.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
that we talk about is , and that's why it takes a long
time.
Look, most people want you toread their book and their book
has one fact and then 15chapters of going back to that
one fact.
That's not us.
What we're trying to do isexpand your brain by by taking a
look at all these things fromHoberman from different angles,
because there's a lot toconsider here, and Brian used
the term complexity perfectly.
So uncertainty in humanbehavior and human relationship

(18:52):
dynamics you can see it allaround you.
Some people resort to drugs ordrinking or some form of false
ego and egotism, super ego,bullying, superstition,
philosophy All of these areself-defeating ways that humans
cope with uncertainty.
Because we're afraid, brian.
We're afraid little creatureswalking around in an environment

(19:15):
that might kill us.
So the best way simply to dealwith uncertainty in human
relationship dynamics is to usethat uncertainty as a motivator
to learn more about yourinteractions.
That's where human behaviorpattern recognition analysis
comes from.
If you apply that to yourselfand your significant other,
you'll know about GROW moreclosely aligned, because you'll
understand them.
But more importantly, you'llunderstand you.

(19:38):
Back to the observer effect inphysics.
So the influence of themeasurement on that which is
measured, the act of themeasurement changes what you're
attempting to measure.
So the closer you look atsomething, the more you're
pushing it away.
That's why your behaviorpattern recognition analysis has
to be based in science, becauseif you're looking for a person
to commit a crime, you'reinfluencing the battle space.

(20:00):
If you're looking for yoursignificant other to cheat on
you or your kid to lie to you,you're influencing that baseline
and you're influencing itnegatively and you'll never see
clearly.
So you got to stop usingemotions as a guide, for example
.
Emotions make my feelings, myperceptions, my observations
self-validating.
I'm a self-licking ice creamcone, and if I'm afraid, you

(20:20):
must be creating a fear.
If I'm ashamed, you must bejudging me.
If I'm angry, you must be doingsomething the wrong way.
Tell me that doesn't sound likeevery failed relationship that
you've had and you've had many.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
Brian said folks, brian is the poster child for
failed relationships.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
But think about that Every time you go into a
business relationship that fails, or a chance meeting on the
street, or an encounter, or youknow you want to go up and get a
job.
These are the things that gowrong.
Why?
Because we understand risk.
We're not really good atunderstanding uncertainty, so
the more time we spend, there.
I think the better we'll get.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
So would you say one of the things you said, like're
saying I take my, you know,lucky quarter with me, you know,
everywhere I go for thesecertain trips, or something like
I'm just trying to think ofsomething.
I don't have any talismans orsomething that I carry well,
let's okay, the, the, the littlebaby sunglasses that we found

(21:17):
years ago on that one trip, thatwe bring every room everywhere.
But you know so, something likethat, when, when, when people
do that, are you, are you sayingthat that's sort of a way for
them to cope with this, thisfear or uncertainty, or or the
fear that uncertainty will bring, is that, is that what you mean
by that?

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Or yeah, exactly so.
So the the thing in your pocket, the thing in your notebook,
the bumper sticker on your car,that's not accepting the unknown
, that's actually a call foraction.
That's you saying that.
You know, listen, I could rollover and just accept that
there's uncertainty, okay, butthat's unacceptable because
that's inefficient.
That's not how humans run.

(21:56):
So what you do is you createpatterns, and the more patterns
that you do, your brain says,hey, wait a minute, I've adapted
to this uncertainty throughthis process.
It's a.
We call it a plan.
And now guess what?
The more times through thatplan, the more resilient I
become.
Now there's a problem with that,because if you're comfortable

(22:18):
understanding that uncertaintyexists and that it can be
overcome, then facing thatuncertainty becomes mechanism
for you to get better in everyencounter.
But the corollary is true.
So every traffic stop I make, Iget better, but every traffic
stop I make, I get dumber.
Every human behavior encounter,I get better at reading humans,

(22:40):
but every human behaviorencounter, I get dumber.
You know what that means?
That means that I take my footoff the gas, I take my eye off
the prize.
You know simple stuff.
The sun rises in the east, setsin west, Water's wet, the sky
is blue, that's great, okay.
So that makes our encountersoccur with a degree of certainty
and that fights uncertainty.

(23:01):
The more that we get there, theless we appreciate it and the
less attention we pay.
And that's where fuckingsituational awareness comes in.
Situational awareness is thatyou increase your level of
awareness to manage theuncertainty, not to fucking have
eyes in the back of your head.
I get so pissed that when I readthese articles about oh, this

(23:22):
and that and the other fuck, putall the rounds down range that
you want.
If you can't read the situation, you're going to die with your
own gun.
Let's do that.
Let's have that training, go on.
But nobody wants to talk aboutthat because it's scary.
And there you get the fearagain.
Where's the fear come?
Fear comes from anxiety, notfrom the uncertainty.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
Well, and I would say it goes to you, because we
don't always know how to explainthese things and articulate
them.
Well, there is, we just go.
Well, you know, you just got aplan for it, or well, you know,
there's some things that arethat you just can't tell, or
there's some things that arejust uncertain.
You never know.

(24:00):
And it's like you know, but youknow.
But I would say that's rarely,you know, true, if ever.
I mean, yeah, you don't know ifyou're where exactly the bolt
of lightning is going to hit,right, but you know when there's
going to be.
You can predict when there'sgoing to be a lightning storm.
So you know, I mean, certainfactors have to be present in

(24:20):
order for that lightning tooccur.
Now, if you walk outside yourhouse and it hits you in the
head, sorry, you know, someonehad it in for you, it was your
day to go, I guess, but mostthings aren't like that.
I mean, that's why it'sliterally that's getting struck
by lightning.
It's pretty rare Getting bit bya shark.
You know what I'm saying.
These things that scare us somuch, you know, are incredibly

(24:41):
rare, and so we're, we'resurprised when some things will
spiral out of control or wedidn't see something coming and
it's like we never would havebeen able to do that.
And I, I think it just that are.
It's almost like you said.
It's that's a coping mechanism,just like the little talisman I
carry around with me.
I go, well, I, I, because Idon't know how I there must not
be a way.

(25:01):
So therefore, I'm just, I haveto accept that anything can
happen to me today and it's likethat's actually creating a lot
of just like cognitive turbidityand uncertainty.
It's like there's only so manythings that can happen in this
situation.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
So, so let me, let me ask you a question.
I'm going to depose you and doit playfully because I don't
want you to choke me next timethat you see me, but I want you
to help me decide what's theminimum amount of stuff that I
could take to leave my houseright now and be, okay, going to
name a place in your mind.
So I would agree with you thatif you said pants, because I

(25:42):
need a pocket and I probablyshouldn't expose my dick getting
on a bus, okay, so I have tohave a couple of things in a
pocket, maybe not a shirt, but ashirt would help, because some
places I've read no shoes, noshirt, no service, right, so now
we've got shoes, we've got tochange up the shoes too, yeah.
Okay, and now what's in thatpocket?
Well, we got one good creditcard.

(26:02):
If we got a couple of bills ofcash, you know what I'm saying.
And what else would we want?
Well, probably a cell phone,okay.
But, brian, if we went to allthe other things that we carry
in our life, those becometalismans.
They just make us feel betterbecause the minimum standard
stuff, that's the stuff thatreduces our uncertainty.
It doesn't do fuck for our risk, because the risk is calculated

(26:25):
differently, but what it doesis it makes us feel safer, less
anxiety producing.
Why?
Because we go.
Hey, listen, I can head to mycar and I can always purchase
gas on the way.
If my car breaks down, I canuse my credit card for a rental.
If they won't accept the creditcard, I've got a hundred bucks
in my pocket and various billswhere I can likely pay.

(26:47):
If not, I got that watch that Istored in my ass for all those
years in concentration camp thatI can trade out for for gosh,
damn.
You know I'm trying to do the.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
You know the from uh, Christopher Walken, yeah, it's
not good yeah not good.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
None From Christopher Walken.
Yeah, it's not good.
Yeah, not good.
None of my jokes are good, butI know it.
But the idea, brian, is, if Ilook at those things, that's a
way to manage uncertainty.
So if I wanted to understandtraining, you know what I would
train for.
I would train going up to you.
You're, you're playing thisgame with me and handing you my
credit card for the groceries Ibought because I'm hungry, and
you looking and handing it backand saying, oh, I'm sorry, sir,
your credit card limit's beenreached, or we don't take that

(27:23):
credit card here, or that creditcard is reported stolen.
Now those are contingencies,right.
That's where I need to rehearseand learn a strategy, because
that will manage my uncertainty.
It does nothing to lower myrisk, but it does manage
uncertainty.
And guess what that's going tohandle my risk.
But it does manage uncertainty.
And guess what that's going tohandle my anxiety.
Because if I know that, don'tworry, I have a backup plan and

(27:46):
I have a pace plan.
Then all of a sudden I know I'mgoing to likely survive this
encounter.
There are some unsurvivableencounters.
You say it all the time inclass I take a left instead of a
right and I get hit in the headby an asteroid or a meteorite
or something like that.
But almost everything that'sanxiety producing is that
uncertainty, and so the more Ilessen the uncertainty when I

(28:09):
make that traffic stop.
There's a procedural side,that's my risk side, but the
uncertainty side.
I can't read your effing mind,so I better take a class that
teaches me what are some of thepre-incident behaviors, what are
some of those artifactsandincident behaviors, what are
some of those artifacts andevidence that I should watch out
for that historically haveproven beneficial to my survival
?
That's it I mean in a nutshell.

(28:30):
That's a simple way of ofassessing risk, managing it and
lowering your anxiety.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
I mean uncertainty yeah, and that goes back to kind
of like what I mentioned withknowns versus unknowns, and what
do you know right now?
And then you know, what you'retalking about too is sort of
what's the likelihood here?
Not what's the probability,right, because that gets into

(28:58):
risk, I guess something tomeasure, but what's the
likelihood that this is going tohappen or that's going to
happen?
How likely is this to occur tome right now, here on this day?
And when you start?
Then this is again why we don'talways explain when we're
talking about stuff.
We use these terms.
There's a lot of meaning tothem and a lot of reasons why we

(29:21):
use them, a specific kind oflexicon, right, and we talk
about likelihood and most likelyand most dangerous, and, and
you know, even when we'retalking about uncertainty versus
risk, like it's important todifferentiate between all these
things because otherwise, youknow, it kind of it gets a
little cloudy, gets a, gets alittle hard to hard to
understand.
But likelihood is a greatstrategy, right.

(29:41):
It's like when we say look forincongruent signals, don't look
for the guy with the gun or theguy with sneaking in with the
bomb, it's like no, no, justlook for something that seems to
be out of place because you'regoing to find something and then
you can determine what what itmeans in that context.
But but looking for somethinglike that, you know, that allows
me to sort of again.

(30:01):
It's like a strategy forreducing that uncertainty using
things like likelihood, usingthings like incongruent signals.
And when I have any type ofcomparison, I have to be careful
what I'm comparing to because,like you brought up the law
enforcement examples like well,maybe if I'm, you know, in law
enforcement, and every time Ipull some over, they run or they
shoot at me like, or every fewtimes that happens, it's like I,

(30:25):
I'm going to fall back onsomething like that, versus the
95 other times where everythinggoes completely normal or or you
know, as normal as thosesituations can be, meaning it's,
it's, it becomes safe.
So, because my brainautomatically attributes more
value to these things, you know,and it's always going to fall

(30:48):
back on that.
And now, once I see it, well,look at what's it's like now.
What happened after you knowthe, the plane crash in DC, the,
where the helo ran in the planeright, suddenly everyone's an
air traffic control expert,suddenly everyone's going.
Look at all of these thingsthat are happening with planes.
It's like those were alwayshappening.
That's how many times planescrash or or something happens

(31:12):
Like that's.
That's been continuous.
In fact, it's even shown,gotten safer as every year goes
on in.
In general there it becomes moreand more safe, and and you know
, when you talk about risk,you're more likely to die in a
car accident on the way to theairport than you ever will in a
plane crash, or at least ifyou're flying in the United
States, that's for sure.
But we, suddenly, now we go ohmy God, this is a thing I forgot

(31:33):
or I didn't know this washappening.
And so now, because we havethat uncertainty dude, I just
get in this aluminum tube and gosomewhere.
It's like magic to me.
I try to fall asleep, I wake upand I'm in a different city.
My brain doesn't comprehendthat, and so it goes back to
these things and it's like, ohmy gosh, this is now prevalent,
this is now a problem.
It's like, is it or has thatbeen going on?

(31:53):
You just found out, you juststarted attending to this
specific, novel circumstance,and now you're finding it
everywhere.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yep, yep.
So let's talk about the riskside.
So let's meaning, in my mindright now I've created, and on
my desk, a yellow pad that'ssitting horizontally, and on one
side I've got the uncertaintyside and one side I've got the
risk side, to make sure that wecan talk about that and track
those, because it's a deep topic.
So on the on the risk side, Ihave moments of sheer terror and

(32:20):
moments of sheer boredom.
So on the risk side, I havemoments of sheer terror and
moments of sheer boredom.
Why?
Because that's when you're inmost dangerous waters, when
you're in an encounter.
So if I'm completely OBE or I'mcompletely under BE.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
you know to coin a few, right?
Yeah, you know what I mean.
You just stamp your name onthat one.
Now I'm in the shit, yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
Somebody will be using it by next week on
LinkedIn, but the idea is thatI'm in a risky environment,
right?
So talk about the uncertaintyside.
So you and I travel at theairport a lot, so let's think
about that the more.
Now this is the fourth tripthat we made in a very short
order, so by the fourth trip,our brains are mush.
So what does that mean?
So, okay, I'm going up to buysomething out of one of those

(33:03):
vending machines at the airportand I still have cash, which is
hilarious to some of you that II still put money in a machine.
But as I'm walking over there,all of a sudden guess what my
uncertainty side kicks in andI've got anxiety.
Do I have enough to buy thatsandwich or those Skittles or
the Skittle brow, Cause I wantto put them in a beer like Homer
?
Do I have enough money to dothat?

Speaker 1 (33:24):
Or the $9 bottle of water.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
Oh my God.
Yeah, everybody knows what I'mtalking about.
So listen, because this isdifferent to me.
This purchase isn't in mynormal ken, because I haven't
been at this airport before, Ihaven't walked up to this
machine before, and everythingelse.
How would I lessen thatuncertainty?
Well, I can do a probe.
I can go over and read the menuand see what things cost.

(33:48):
I can assume certain things.
Well, I've never left the housewithout money, so I likely have
money and I'm with Brian, so ifmy funds run out, maybe I can
rely on Brian.
Those are passive strategies,and what I mean by that is
psychologically, sociologically.
We assume certain things thatare going on, but those aren't
real anxiety busters, brian,because I don't know.

(34:10):
And so the active strategy isgoing over to you and going hey,
if I'm overdrawn, do you have acouple of bucks in your pocket?
Do you have that corporate card?
Can I put them on that?
Or hey, how about we stop atthe, the all sup or the lion
heart or whatever the you knowthe kroger is on the way home
and just buy some cheaper stuffto throw in the hotel room?
You get what I'm talking aboutthere.
So none of those are a risknone of those okay, and that's

(34:34):
why they don't produce that sortof psychological and and
cognitive anxiety.
The turbidity you're talkingabout always comes from the
uncertainty side, where you'rejust not sure, and almost always
we could overcome that withdoing stuff as simple as
surveillance or asking a fewquestions or historical
perspective.
You talked about historicalperspective before.

(34:54):
What's always happened?
What have humans always done?
Those are great ways ofreducing that anxiety almost
instantaneously.

Speaker 1 (35:04):
Okay.
So how is that?

(35:27):
You know your airport vendingmachine example?
How is that similar ordifferent than, like you know?
Go back to your.
You know one of your roles whenyou're a law enforcement
hostage negotiator.
So I imagine that would be anextremely volatile circumstance
with high stakes and a lot ofuncertainty, certainly risk
involved.
But how is that mental processany different or the same, or is
it the same?

Speaker 2 (35:38):
It's exactly the same .
So the more I know look, Iwrote to you one time the more
you know, the less you blow,because you remember in the dojo
back in the day in the late 70sit was SMOBM show me or blow me
.
You know what I meant by that.
It's a euphemism, so peoplewould understand that it's high
stakes, high return oneverything.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
So if we're going into a hostage negotiation,
Today we just use prove it, it'sa little bit more.
It works better, at LibertyUniversity, for example, and in
grade school.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
You don't want to keep telling grade school kids
show me or blow me, you will bein prison.
But the idea is that when I'mhaving those situations, I need
to know as much as possible.
I want an officer out theretelling me what was in the
getaway car.
Okay, what did they do?
Did they adjust the seat in themirror?
Am I dealing with somebodythat's shorter or taller?
Is that person wearing shoes ornot wearing shoes?

(36:32):
When they ran from the cops,did they cut themselves or were
they shot with a chemicalaerosol spray or a taser?
Was there somethingphysiologically going on in that
person that I don't know about?
Something physiologically goingon in that person that I don't
know about, brian, because if Idon't, what I'm doing is wearing
16 ounce gloves in a darkfactory, swinging until I make
contact with somebody orsomething, and that's
uncertainty.
So the more I know, the less Iblow, the more I know about that

(36:54):
vehicle before I walk up on it,the more likelihood, as you use
the term, which I love.
I see a bulge in your jacket.
Now, could that be your cellphone and one of those leather
cases that I see old men wearingall the time?
Yeah, but until I confirm whatit is.
I now know that that's a levelof uncertainty, not risk, that
I'm not willing to accept.
Okay, there's risk inherent inthe traffic stop, there's risk

(37:16):
inherent in the job, but thething that gives me the anxiety.
Now we're back to theuncertainty.
Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (37:25):
Yeah, but yes, it does not.
I don't mean to say but, buthow can I do that?
Because what you're talkingabout is then you rattle off a
few things.
Hey, I want to know this aboutthe guy.
I want to know this, I want toknow this so you're saying the
more information I have, thebetter decision I'm going to
make.
But then we obviously can't.
Sometimes you get too muchinformation and not a, not a,

(37:49):
it's not relevant.
So you know, do I look at eachsituation, as you know, and try
to extract what's normal, what'stypical out of that specific
situation, not out of somethingelse.
Like Chris, what's normal foryou know you going in and you're
, you know, buying, you knowsomething to drink and a little
piece, you know bag of chips atthe gas station is different

(38:09):
than, okay, you're called herefor the hostage negotiation.
Or you know you're dealing withyour kid who's coming over from
school, like differently.
But then I think that's where alot of things can go wrong in
the sense-making department,right, and we can increase the
uncertainty or increase ourlevel of anxiety in a situation,
because the comparison thatwe're comparing it to, if we're

(38:31):
not clear on where that is, thenwe actually don't even know our
own start point.
Does that make sense?
I agree, like where we'restarting from.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
So look, you know, BTK Folks do your homework.
How many times do I got toadmonish you to?

Speaker 1 (38:42):
do your homework.

Speaker 2 (38:43):
So you know BTK caper like the back of your hand.
So the problem with going andinterviewing anybody like that
now you're going to interviewDennis Rader If you go in there
and go.
Yeah, I love screwing my dog.
I, you know people talk aboutscrewing the pooch, but I've
actually done that and you knowI used to wear a dead dog on my

(39:08):
head into the shower every day.
And, man, I like rapingchildren.
Okay, brian, you're never goingto be able to pull that off
because that's not you, that'snot in any of your DNA.
You've never done any of thosethings before.
So your default has to be to abaseline of societal normalcy,
of history, of past performance.
You can leverage thatinformation and work it into
intelligence and avoid trippingover those hidden risks, because
if not, what happens is I'mgoing to degrade to your level

(39:31):
and then we're going to betalking about those
uncomfortable things thatincrease the anxiety.
So my goal is to degrease theanxiety.
Look, I don't know what it'slike to kill a person, but I've
had a really shitty golf game.
Is there any similarity there?
And the person goes no and I go.
Well, what's more similar?
Uh, getting in a car wreck.
And they go no and I go.
Well, you tell me what's more.

(39:52):
And the next thing they tell meis people put cigarette butts
out on my back while they wereraping me as a child.
Wow, I, wow, I don't understandanything about that.
Did your family know, brian?
What are we doing now?
Now we're having a conversation, so this passive or active
surveillance is a way of meplanning for that uncertainty by
asking certain things andknowing what my left and right

(40:13):
limits are and my limit ofadvances.
And, brian, there's nodifferent than conducting
hostage negotiations and goingin for a job interview or dating
somebody, especially if you'remarried or, or you know, going
out and deciding to have ashitty joke again or, or talking
to your children aboutsomething uncomfortable.
Look, this is a big topic and weshould be comfortable talking
about that, and it isuncomfortable.

(40:33):
So what do you do to make itless uncomfortable?
You reduce that gosh damnuncertainty, and, and so when I
go into that situation, look,great old John Wayne quote I
don't want to kill you and youdon't want to be dead.
Okay, picked up by ClintEastwood in a later film.
I love that line and I'm readyto use that at any time.
But guess what that infers?
That infers that the level ofviolence isn't going to abate.

(40:55):
So now I have to come up withsomething different.
I have no idea what I justwalked in on, but I'm afraid I'm
going to die.
Can you help me?
Can you tell me what's going onhere?
Now, there we go.
Now what I'm doing is I'm saying, hey, I'm searching here, I'm
not ready to kill anybody, let'sease off the gas and see if we
can get through this together.
And you say it best again inclass, folks, get to class, do

(41:16):
your homework, kill, capture,contact.
I came up with that standardbecause Marines got that, brian,
and it was a quick decision,methodology right.
But you can't go around in lifewith that on the tip of your
tongue all the time, becauselife isn't like that anymore.
So what we've got to do iswe've got to lessen the stakes,
unless the stakes are high, andwe got to lessen the anxiety,

(41:37):
because, if not, you're walkingthrough life hypervigilant and
it's unsustainable.
What I mean by that is you'redriving yourself crazy, seeing
danger in every potentialsituation.
Your brain's already doing thatfor you, so come off the gas a
little bit.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
No, and the come off the gas is the.
You know what we mean by.
You know time and distance.
Right, everyone says that andit's been a known thing, like
you know.
You got to like, hey, you knowyou want time and distance, but
it's like, well, okay that youcan't just say that, what is
that?
We want to have a decisionright away, and we especially

(42:18):
put our own sort of thumb on thescale of how important or how
relevant something is, even whenit's not.
I do that just in relationshipsup now with my wife, and we've
got this going on.
That happened in this.
And then all of a sudden, it'slike hang on, hannah, stop, we
don't need to do that right to.
It's like, hang on, hannah,stop, we don't need to do that
right now.
Let's put that on the backburner until next month.

(42:39):
We have a block going on.
You're traveling, I'm traveling, we got this happening, that
happening.
So it's like, let's, let'sfocus on, you know, or the
uncertainty, and just not walkinto your own homicide, in a
sense and I know that's the mostextreme case but walk into

(43:02):
anything that can blow up inyour face or backfire on you.
It's not weird, it just becausewe have that, you know,
survival based way of thinkingand because anxiety is what's
kept us alive, it's also our wayof of sort of coping with a

(43:22):
situation to just fall back onthat, because it it's literally
worked for hundreds of thousands, you know, or millions of years
, so, you know, depending on howlong you think we've been
exactly.
And so it's like it's like our,our go-to is sort of can be
counterintuitive, because it'sunlikely that we are in an

(43:42):
actual survival situation,whereas maybe 200, 000 years ago
, like almost everything was asurvival situation.
It's just not that way andbecause we're sort of primed for
that, we're automatically thatcard is already there.
It's like when you talk aboutthe jack-in-the-box and you said
, like you know that you knowyou're winding up the, the music
is going, waiting for the jackto pop out, like well, that

(44:03):
music is always going.
It's going right now and it'sin the room now.
Maybe it's not very loud, maybeit's not emergent, maybe it's
not something, but there'salways that that music's always
playing in the background.
So it's like I, if I don'tattend to that now, then jack's
eventually going to pop out ofthat damn box and scare the crap

(44:24):
out of me.
I mean they're.
And so what this is.
This is when, when managingthese kind of things is, you
know everyone, always, you know,when I get it, we want to take
away the the.
Well then, how do I go do that?
Well, what am I supposed to do?
And it's like okay, well, youhave to learn to understand the
external baseline and theenvironment that you're in and
get really, really good at whatis typical, what is normal.

(44:46):
How do I, what is my comparison?
If I see something that seemsincongruent or odd or different,
or I don't understand it?
I know I'm going to fall intothat trap of anxiety and
uncertainty.
So how do I, how do I get itback over here into the
certainty part of it to say, no,no, that's a known.
Or, wait a minute, no, this isreally different, I do have to
investigate this further.
And that's that's the balancingact.

(45:07):
I think everyone plays in justthose cognitive factors alone
that are sort of fightingagainst you.
If I don't have a process fordoing that, my default, the easy
button is always you knowviolence, death, you know fear,
hate, like that is the easybutton, and so that's sort of
what you're fighting against.
So it's, and again, it'sbecause it takes some mental

(45:27):
calories to do that, to walkthrough that and to see through
that.
It's fighting against youbecause obviously your brain
doesn't want to burn any morecalories than it absolutely has
to.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
Yeah, but you got to get dirty.
Folks, listen to it, brian, goback record.
Push the recording button tothe left.
Go back and listen to what hesaid again, because what he said
is you have to get dirty.
And what I mean by you have toget dirty is if you're prepared
for every situation, you'll beprepared for none and you're
going to die at first contact.
And what I mean by that is thatwhen you're studying and we say

(45:56):
study, study, study, and if youhave a good enough instructor
and you know leaders or readers,yeah, I get that, but what the
heck are you reading?
So if you understand Gordianknot, if you understand Occam's
razor, you're understanding thatsecond law of thermodynamics,
and you're going back toHeisenberg and what you're doing
is you're starting to measurethings.
I can be risk averse and in myday-to-day I can do that through

(46:20):
a certain amount of the certaintypes of training that are
available.
Uncertainty is different.
If I manage too muchuncertainty, I'm going to be
blinded by the situation at hand, because I'm going to be used
to things.
I'm going to say, oh yeah, well, that's common here.
Because I'm going to be used tothings I'm going to say, oh
yeah, well, that's common here.
It's common for a person tothrow a punch.
It's common for a person tocarry a gun In this area.
It's common for a person towant to resist me during an

(46:41):
arrest because they're going tohave the drugs on Brian.
If I try to assimilate thoseand I don't get scuffed up a
little, I don't see the danger.
In a situation I don't feel alittle dirty, then I'm not going
to respond correctly.
So the idea of pay it forwardthinking is that every encounter
I get smarter, I get faster, Iget harder to kill.
But I never get to the pointwhere I don't understand how

(47:04):
complex uncertainty is, becausethe minute that I do Brian now,
I'm complacent.
Anybody wants to know howcomplacency kills.
That's how it kills, that's howit killed that.
This is just another trafficstop, it's just another chance
encounter on the street, it'sjust another 7-Eleven I'm
walking into to pay for my fueland that's when it bites you.
Again.
That moments of sheer terrorwill likely get, that We'll

(47:26):
likely see that smell, that feelthe burning sensation as it's
coming.
But the moment of sheer boredomjust before the person sticks
that knife in my back or gut orpunches me in the head, that's
the one that we have to beprepared for, and that's where
your training comes in.
It has to be critical for theevent, because if you think you
got it down by having some checkin the box training, you've got

(47:46):
the risk side covered, butyou're not even touching the
gosh damn uncertainty side.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
I see, I think you you know, sometimes when you
give like your, your vendingmachine example, you know it's
like we kind of people tune thatout and they're like, okay,
whatever, like oh, yeah, I getit.
Yeah, no, I know what you mean.
It's like no, no, no, andthat's why I was like no, stop
think, listen for a second andgo those that same thing that's

(48:13):
happening to you.
You know when you're going shit.
Do I have enough money to payfor this cup of coffee, or do I
have to run back to my car, ordo I like?
that that's, that's apt, thatmental process of what's
happening right there is exactlythe same in maybe a much more
serious, chaotic situation.
It's just it, it and it's.
It's affecting you the same wayit just sometimes you're not,

(48:36):
you're not aware of that, right,you don't you?
It's hard for you to, in themoment, reflect on how your
performance is going in themoment if you're not doing the.
There's the cognition, thenthere's the metacognition, right
.
There's the thinking, and thenthe thinking about thinking like
all right, well, what do I needto think about?
How can I prime myself to setmyself up for success?
And and even just those?
You know, obviously we, we, webash and everyone about time and

(48:58):
distance, but that's it.
That's an extremely big conceptin the way we, we talk about it
, much bigger than even, youknow, most humans can.
Can we that we realize how, howmuch it affects us because it's
just it's, it's, it's justsomething that's we've taken for
granted for so long, or justoperate in a way so long that we
don't even recognize it's whatwe're doing?

(49:19):
And having that kind ofstructure of saying, all right,
how do I reduce the uncertainty?
What can I compare thissituation against?
What do I know right now.
Don't worry about all thethings that I don't know.
It's like well, let's focus onwhat we do know right now,
because Don't worry about allthe things that I don't know.
It's like, well, let's focus onwhat we do know right now,
because there's always going tobe, you know, a missing piece of

(49:40):
the puzzle.
There's no such thing as all ofit laid out in front of us in
logical order.
It's just.
It's just not how it happens.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
No, no, you're exactly right.
So so what Brian just said ishumans are already masters of
uncertainty.
If you weren't, we wouldn't betalking about this and you
wouldn't be tuning in right now.
We make countless importantactivities each day look very
simple.
All of them have a great degreeof uncertainty and some have
risk, and we make thosedecisions in stride.
We don't even think about it,we don't even calculate that,

(50:08):
and so I stick to what Iunderstand, what I know, and I
sent you an example aboutuncertainty that happened in my
real life.
My dad, the Marine, used to takeus to Cedar Point and he would
save up enough money in hiscoffee jars that's exactly how
he did his coffee cans theMaxwell House that once he got
it full enough, he would say,okay, we're going.
And it would be a road trip inthe 1970 Cadillac Sedan.

(50:30):
Everybody bounced into that sonof a gun.
We'd leave at three in themorning because of my dad's plan
.
And so you know, a few weeksout, I remember him calling us
to the kitchen table Okay, whatabout the weather?
What are we going to do?
Who's going to be carrying thesunblock?
What about the lines?
Where are we going to meet?
If there's a thing this is myold man, brian you know you had
one that was exactly the sameway.

(50:51):
How about the long drive?
What are the games that we'llplay along the long drive, so
you don't get on my bad side andthe big meat hammer comes back
and punches you in the head.
Will there be constructionJones, brian you're on that that
are going to delay my arrival?
And back in those days it was amap and calling the state and
everything, because we didn'thave computers and those type of
things.
So that operational strategicuncertainty okay, this was a

(51:13):
level of tactical uncertainty mydad was mitigating before we
ever left for Cedar point Now,risk would have been assessed if
there was a hitchhiker alongthe way and dad rolled the dice
and said, ah, what the hell?
And picked up a hitchhiker.
Do you see what I'm saying?
Now we would add a calculatethat you know, and then you know
dangerous.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
Yeah, what are the chances that two serial killers
are in the same car at the sametime?
It's like my dad and this guyright, you're spot on.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
But if we understand that that's all a function of
planning for the likelihood ofan uncertainty, then that's what
has to manifest in our training.
You and I still fight with thepeople that do the virtual
reality training, because whatthey're doing is creating an
incident and I can go over theincident and they go.
Well, yeah, there's a lot ofbranches in it.
Everybody has branches in theirincidents.
But what it doesn't do is itdoesn't increase the complexity.
It either increases thelikelihood of a shoot, don't
shoot encounter.
Well, that's fine, but that'snot making me think my way out

(52:16):
of a complex situation that'sripe with uncertainty.
So we feel that that's acompletely different animal.
We feel time and distance andtherefore we train our people to
be independent, criticalthinkers and that way they can
apply it to any novel, nuancedor future situation rather than
hey, you know, if I get shot inmy right hand, I'll switch and

(52:37):
do the left-hand reload.
Those are great, keep doingthose, but then it can help you
out, think of cutting a point.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
Yeah, and you know, when you say things like use
history and past performance asa guide, right, so you use that
as a guide.
But even with that, you, youknow, you, you, you have to make
sure you're using accuratehistorical precedent.
You know what I mean.
It's a well, you know,airplanes are falling out of the
sky now, greg, it's like no,they're not look at, look at,

(53:06):
look at the look at the historyof of airline travel.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
Understand the Brian, understand the irony.
This morning I wrote somethingfor Lincoln and posted the
Monday thing right and it wasabout at 6,.
You know, and as I'm showing itto a couple of people that I
trust and admire, they're going.
You understand how ironic thisis and I go yeah, because before
the clock there was alwayssomebody saying hey, look out
behind you.
Ask the Romans about that, askyou know, well, we won't get

(53:32):
into that.
At the Ides of March out thatask uh, you know well we won't
get into that the eyes of march.
But I would say that if youspeculate, it being attacked
from behind is probably got ahigher likelihood of many other
attacks.
Why?
Because it works.
Because your eyes are in thefront of your head, on the side
of your head yeah, you have amechanism behind your head.
So so what I'm trying to tellyou is your safer risk.
Okay, if you consider thethings that are behind you.

(53:55):
Now, that's not uncertainty.
I'm not reducing my uncertaintylevel.
Do you get what I'm trying tosay?
I'm reducing a risk, okay, bytaking into it that every once
in a while, I check my six.
Okay, if I wanted to reduce myuncertainty, I'd put a gosh damn
rear view mirror on my hat, youknow, so I could see behind me
as I was walking around.
And again, unsustainable.

(54:15):
Hypervigilance is unsustainable.
Most people create a jeopardythat they feel that they're in I
don't mean it's officerinvolved, but they create this
situation and then they'resurprised by the likelihood of
the outcome.
How can you do that?
How can you be surprised byanything that happens to you in
life?
If you're in a vehicle andyou've got money and you pull
over to get gas, the peoplelooking at you go.

(54:36):
He's got a car, he's stoppingfor gas, he's got money.
You're an instant victim.
Come on, that's a simplecalculation, brian.
That's baseline plus anomalyequals decision.
That's not rocket science, andI'm just saying that, that we
can dumb down a lot of thedecisions that we make and we
make a ton during the day wenever even consider.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
Yeah, and that's another big takeaway too.
It's like these are things thatyou do consistently throughout
your life and you don'trecognize that you're doing it
because you've done it so muchand it's an intuitive process
for humans.
Get, get.
Why don't we just get better atthat intuitive process that we
already do and get better atlooking you know at what matters

(55:19):
.
Better at looking at what thecomparative baseline is.
Better at looking at you knoweverything in the environment
that's around me and beingcurious with it.
Because that's I mean thatthat's the essence of what
everyone talks about.
With this stuff, especiallywith anything with decision
makingmaking and situationalawareness, it's just like no,
you don't have to be constantlyscanning everything and looking

(55:40):
everywhere I see people doingthat stuff.
I'm like man, that's got to beexhausting.
I could never do that.
Don't you teach this stuff?
I was like no, I teach abouthuman behavior.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
What else would you be doing during that time?
Do you know what I'm saying?
There are so many other thingslike you and I one of the best
folks.
One of the best things abouttraveling with Brian is we get
into these rich, wonderfuldiscussions that we don't tape.
Gosh, we should run a recordingall the time.
And then we get to meet peopleand we're constantly on transmit
, so we're constantly on receivewhen we're out there meeting
people and then we're in theseunique, wonderful locations.

(56:11):
So we want to find out aboutthat.
The Uber driver can tell usabout this and the guy at the
bar can tell us about that.
We spend a lot of time in Ubersand bars, but if I'm constantly
on this defensive mode and I'mthinking that negativity is the
order of the day, brian, I'mgoing to close off all of that.
I'm not going to see any ofthat.
I'm not going to enjoy the richtapestry of life and you're
saying, yeah, but my job is todo it.

(56:33):
Yeah, I get it.
I can see your trooper hat andyour belt and all your gear on
there.
That's shining at me already,but that doesn't mean that you
have to change who you are.
These type of decisions anduncertainty and risk are not
personality-based.
That's you.
You're bringing that to theparty.
It's a very simple calculationin all humankind.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
The gift of time and distance applies to everybody in
any society.
Yeah, and that's the big point,is we, you know?
That's another kind ofexplanation of what I meant when
we unknowingly put our thumb onthe scale of the situation by
bringing in, you know, our ownpersonality based.
You know ways of doing things.
And it's like look, you existin a much larger system.
Take a look at the system andhow it operates.

(57:15):
Take a look at how this personis operating within that system
and see how you can influencethe situation.
Okay, you think these thingsare going to happen, or you
think that's what's happening.
Okay, well then, why aren't youacting accordingly?
Well, I don't.
It's like okay, so that, so youdon't really think that's going
to happen then, becauseotherwise you probably would
have made a better decision.
It's like like well, yeah, Iguess you're right.
It's like okay, so you know, Imean, these are.
It's like a self-questioningprocess as you're going through

(57:38):
that, and that's beingsituationally aware, like what
you.
It's the opposite of trying totake in everything.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
It's going.
What's going on?
Exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
And so that's that's where it starts.
It starts to sort of like where, where am I, where did I just
get teleported to?
You know, I always make thequantum leap joke, remember that
show where it's like, okay,where?
Where he's got to figure outwhere am I, who am I, what's
going on, what is this characterI'm playing, you know?
Or who am I?
Did body, am I in this time?
You know, it's that thatquantum leap thing, and it's

(58:09):
like, yeah, that that's all anexercise in sensemaking.
Where am I in space and timeright now?
And then what's likely to occurbased on what I see and it's
not, don't overcomplicate.
It is what I always tell people.
Really, don't put your thumb onthe scale, because you're just
going to go off into, you know,playing the.
Well, what if the you knowlittle people with machetes

(58:30):
taped to their hands come out ofthe back of the van and you're
like, what scenario Did you justdream up here?

Speaker 2 (58:36):
So that's my biggest thing is like you should be
right.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
It's to prove it.
All right.
You think this chaotic thing isgoing to happen.
Prove it.
How would it work?
How would it work right now?

Speaker 2 (58:48):
Yeah, when we talk about irony, brian, let me give
you something ironic soeverybody replay Brian's words.
I tell you to do this.
Listen to podcasts two or threetimes.
You're always going to come upwith something you missed
earlier.
So Brian talks about QuantumLeap.
Scott Bakula, the actor inQuantum Leap, dean Stockwell was
the guy that was always talkinghim through stuff.
The old Okay yeah, ziggy orsomething like that, with his

(59:10):
little cigar and his like littlething, yeah, and his little
thing, the cool thing about himand a great jacket.
He's always had a great sportcoat.
The great thing about Stockwellis Stockwell was Kim in the
earliest Kim's game.
So when they did the movie Kimabout the Kim's game, that the
Marines yelled at me and said no, it means keep in memory.
Dean Stockwell was the youngboy character that played that

(59:33):
Rudyard Kipling character.
So how have we come full circlein this goddamn podcast back
when we've been Dean Stockwell?
See, and you know what that is.
That's centripetal force,that's gravity, that's life
keeping you in those lanes.
Is there some stuff that'sunexplicable out there and hard
to understand?
Yeah, but if you street it andyou stick to the science, it
makes it so much easier tocalculate likelihood.

(59:55):
And once you've done that andyou understand the gift of time
and distance, you're so muchless likely to get into Felix's
trick bag man.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
Yeah, Okay, Well, I think that's we covered.
We covered a lot.
So obviously we have, we havemore on on Patreon and we always
answer any questions on theretoo, and we appreciate everyone
tuning into this, Greg.
Any other final words onuncertainty and risk?
And anxiety and fear and allthe things that you experience
every morning when you wake up.

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
I've got it right now going, so listen folks if
you're listening out of my voiceor Brian's voice.
You're part of the Cognorati.
Cognorati doesn't mean that youjust sit back in a passive
example.
Go out, do something, talk topeople, get the training, read a
book, write a book, saysomething, give us a thumbs up,
get on LinkedIn, because if youdo that, then what you're doing
is you're raising the socialconsciousness and the awareness

(01:00:46):
of everybody that's around youtoo, not just sitting on some
what might be important andvaluable information, and we
love to hear from you.
As a matter of fact, I wouldventure to speculate that almost
all of our podcasts come fromsome viewer or listener, brian
saying, hey, I want to know moreabout a topic, so I would
really ask.

Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
That's true.
Actually, pretty much all ofthem do.
Yeah, all right.
Well, we appreciate everyonefor tuning in.
Check out more.
If you enjoy it, share it withyour friend.
Thanks so much.
And don't forget that trainingchanges behavior.