Dr. K_ This Group Of Men Are Slowly Going Extinct_(M4A_128K)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Anytime we watch pornography, masturbate and get sexual stimulation, our
negative emotions like fear and anxiety, that part of your
brain just gets suppressed. And this is where people get
into a lot of trouble because it's oppressed emotions just
grow over time. So the more guilty I become, the
more of a loser I become, the harder it is
to date, the worse I feel about myself, the more
I fall into pornography. So this becomes a neurological cycle.

(00:21):
But here's the real problem. All addictions are on the rise,
and this is why doctor k is back and the
Harvard trained psychiatrist is breaking down modern mental health, addiction.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
And the non traditional ways to break away from this cycles.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
There's lots of stuff happening around us that affects our
lives that we have no control over. For example, because
of the dating and mating crisis, we no longer have
sexual connections emotional connections, and there's a part of the
brain that is getting starved because sex is so important.
So there's something missing in our lives and that's what
is necessary for addiction to grow. And this is creating
huge problems because it's sort of like, if I fill

(00:57):
up your stomach with unhealthy food, you don't have any
micro nutrients, but you're not going to crave rock. So
that's what's happening in our society. We're using porn as
a substitute for relationships, and that's creating these really strong
societal pressures, including a mass extinction event because we've got
thirty two year olds who do.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Not know how they're going to ever have children. Men
are getting really, really angry.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
There's like this in cell movement, like women feel safer
with a wild bearer than they do with the man.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
I mean, there's a lot that I'm thinking about, Like
what do you do about this?

Speaker 1 (01:25):
The whole reason we get trapped in a cycle of
addiction is because we have one solution to one problem.
The moment that we create a second solution, a lot
of things change and we'll get to that. What about psychedelics,
So here's the real problem with psychedelics.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
Listen to my regular listeners. I know you don't like
it when I ask you to subscribe at the start
of these conversations. I don't like saying I don't like
it being and that none of us like it. It's frustrating.
Do you know what's also frustrating. It's also frustrating when
I go into the back end of the YouTube channel
and I see that fifty six percent of you that
listen frequently to this podcast haven't yet subscribed, and so
many if you don't even know that you haven't subscribed,
because I see in the comment section you say to me,

(02:02):
I didn't even realize I didn't subscribe, and that actually
fuels the show. It's basically like you're making a donation
to the show. So that's why I ask all the time,
because it enables us to build and build and build
and build, and we're going for the long term here.
So all i'd ask you is, if you've seen this
show before and you like it, help me, help my
team here, hit the subscribe button and we'll continue to
build this show for you. That's my promise. Thank you
to all of you guys that do subscribe means the

(02:24):
world to me. Let's get on with the show. Doctor
K see something we've obviously met several times before. But
for those of you that might not be familiar, who
are you and what do you do?

Speaker 1 (02:39):
I'm a psychiatrist and what I try to do is
help people understand themselves, because one of the harsh lessons
of the world that we live in today is there's
lots of stuff happening around us that affects our lives
that we have no control over it.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
So if you look at fundamentally, you know.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
There's like war, there's inflation, there's like a dating and
mating crime like whatever, there's ai. There are all these
like existential threats, but like you as a human can
do nothing about any of that. All you can really
control is like the bounds of what's in here, right,
That's like literally the only thing that you have control over.
And so one of the lessons I learned very early

(03:19):
on I spent years studying to become a monk, was
that if I can learn how to master this, then
the rest of the world becomes way more manageable at
a minimum and hopefully incredibly easy.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Is there a step one in understanding that this is
all we can control and taking control of just this?
Is there a first step that? Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Yeah, The first step is trying to control things outside
of me in failing.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Miserably time after time after time.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Check because I think it's wild, right, So I think
it's like most people will try to get their boss
to do something, try to get their boyfriend to do something,
try to get their girlfriend, and forget about boyfriend and girlfriend.
This person that I am texting, right, try to get
them to respond. And we spend so much of our
energy trying to shape the world to fit us. And

(04:12):
this has also been the direction of technology too, where
we don't want to change anymore. We want the things
around us to adapt to our environments, like air conditioning.
I don't want to change my tolerance to heat. I
want to change the entire space that I live in
to be more comfortable for me. And this is creating

(04:34):
huge problems because I want to change the environment to
suit my preferences. You want to change the environment to
suit your preferences, and then we have to be in
the same room. So this is why we fight over
where the climate control is.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
And what's the risk there then, of us having this
focus on changing ar external environment. Obviously we're going to fight,
but is there any other risk in that? Is it
just going to be that mean our relationship is going
to fray when you want a certain temperature and I
want a different temperature.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
That's a huge problem, right, So I think if we
look at like conflict in the world, it is two
groups of people wanting the world to be different. So
I want the boundaries of my country to be here.
You want the boundaries of you want to move that
line somewhere else. And this is literally why wars start.
So I think that what we spend a lot of
time and energy in is trying to shape the world

(05:22):
towards us, but that is not fundamentally possible, and so instead,
like we could be investing that energy into ourselves, learn
how to craft myself into let's say, perfection loaded word
which carries a lot of stuff. But then the moment
that you do that, things become really really easy.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
Things become really easy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
So I think if you look at like, you know,
there's a ton of research that shows that, you know, happiness, productivity, success,
all of these three things that come together. So one
of the biggest mistakes I think people make in society
is like they talk talk about work life balance, Like
that's wrong. Work life balance implies that you have to
make a sacrifice for the other thing, right that these

(06:08):
two I don't think that that's actually technically true. If
you look at the way that society. Really, I mean
the way that a human being really works. People who
are happy with their work will feel happy and they
will work the best. Right, the outcomes from their productivity
will be higher. This is not a trade off that
we need to make. The biggest problem is that most

(06:29):
people are forced to make trade offs, and then what
they try to do is they try to find the
perfect job.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
And this is what's so silly.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
Right, people will say, do what you love for work,
and you'll never work a day in your life. Right,
Like people will say, like, if your passion becomes your job,
like you'll never work a day in your life. And
then there are other people who also say, you know,
keep your passion is your passion, because the moment it
becomes your job, you'll start to hate it. And that's like,
how can both of these things be true? It's and

(06:57):
it kind of is like there's no way to win.
So I think that's where like winning happens internally, and
once you start doing that. There's tons of research about
flow state and things like that that once you become
happy internally, even in terms of relationship success. You know,
if you carry a lot of unhappiness with you in
a relationship, it won't work well. So internal work like
will manifest outward.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
And I don't mean that in a spiritual sense.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
I mean that like in a I mean that is true,
but in like a very concrete sense. Right, if you
show up at work and you feel happy, like people
will like you more, you'll be more productive.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
And so is there a second step? So I understand
I tried to control the world. I wasn't successful. Step
two is to focus that energy inwards and take control
of my internal state, which is difficult because it feels
to us like we're very much being dragged often by
our temptations, the dopamine receptors in our brain or something. Yeah,

(07:51):
and we have a bad night's sleep, we wake up
in a bad mood, and then we have a bad days.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
That feels so so and I think if we sort
of think about it, right, So it's like, you know,
I started my car this morning, I looked at the
gas tank. There was only a little bit of gas left,
and then I ended up on the highway without any gas.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
I ran out of gas.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Right, That's one follows the other, Like that's how it feels, right,
Like I just I left and I'm like, oh, no,
I'm running low on gas and then I run out
of gas.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
That's what happens logically, right, So how do you fix
that problem?

Speaker 3 (08:23):
Go to the gas station?

Speaker 1 (08:24):
Absolutely, the whole problem is if I ask you, what
is go to the gas?

Speaker 2 (08:29):
What's the equivalent in that analogy for a human being?

Speaker 1 (08:32):
No one knows You're like right, So if I were
to ask you, okay, you wake up, you slept poorly,
you wake up, Now you're in a bad mood.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Therefore you have.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
A bad day.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
You're assuming that those two things are connected. Those two
things I mean are connected, but only if you don't
know how to go to the gas station. So they're
literally everything from like practices to things you can eat,
to all kinds of things to alter that chain of causality.
So I think the second step is first of all,
understanding what is going on inside you? How can you

(09:04):
move the leisure levers? What is the internal chain of causality?
And once you understand that, then you can start to
implement change, and that's when it becomes easy. So if
you sort of think about it, like, I know, it
sounds weird because it sounds really hard, but literally, the
difference between something hard and something easy is whether you know.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
How to do it right.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah, it's like, oh, like the Rubik's cube is hard,
Like a Rubik's cube is hard, but if you know
how to do it, it becomes easy. So it's about
really understanding where do my desires come from? Where do
my temptations come from? And here you are trying to
control them. Forget about controlling them. Like, I don't like
controlling my desires. I hate it. It's hard. It requires
a lot of discipline, it requires a lot of willpower.

(09:45):
What works way better is sublimating them. What does that
mean getting rid of them?

Speaker 3 (09:51):
How would you put it in the context of pornography
in terms of controlling that desire and being productive and
not letting it consume you.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
Let's start with first principle. Good diagnosis precedes good treatment, right,
So in medicine, the quality This is what a lot
of people think doctors are about treating people, right, medicine
is about treating things, But actually fifty percent or more
of our training is in diagnosis. So you have to
understand the problem. And this is not just true of doctors.
This is like if I have a plumber who's coming

(10:21):
to my house, whether they can fix what the problem
is depends on whether they can find the problem right,
what's actually causing the leak, then you replace that.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
So that's true of life in general.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
So if you have a problem like pornography, the first
thing that you have to do is understand why you
are addicted to it, because that'll show you what you
need to fix. And with pornography, I think there are
basically like five layers to it. The first is a
societal layer. There's a reason why all addictions are on
the rise. There is a fundamental change in society in

(10:54):
the way that we connect with society that makes us
more addicted to stuff. So if it was in substance itself,
like in pornography itself, then what we would see is
there's a rise only in pornography addiction. But since there's
a rise in everything, that means that something is fundamental
is going on. We can get to that a little
bit later. Next thing that we need to do about
understanding about pornograph addiction is understand physiology, neuroscience, and psychology.

(11:18):
So if we look at pornography addiction, the first thing
is that it is a very powerful emotional coping mechanism.
So the way that our brain is designed is like
procreation kind of is the point, right, We can sort
of say that, like the reason that life exists.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
The purpose of life is.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
To procreate, which means to have kids.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, right, So this is where if you kind of
look at like the way that our body and our
brain are designed, it's like, if the opportunity for sexual
relations and procreations is there, then we're going to push
everything else to the side. So anytime we watch pornography
or we get sexual stimulation, are amigdala, which is our
emotional circuit of the brain. Experience is negative emotions like

(12:01):
fear and anxiety. It's also our survival center of the brain.
And you turn on porn, that part of your brain
just gets suppressed. And this is why a lot of
people don't realize what a pornography addict looks like. A
lot of people think it means like I'm watching porn
and masturbating a lot. But most pornography addicts will watch
it and not even necessarily masturbate, or they'll watch it

(12:24):
for hours throughout the day and aren't necessarily masturbating during
that time. And that's because once you have that stimulation
on the side. It's kind of like aromatherapy for your brain.
It's kind of suppressing you're amygdala. It's kind of calming
you down because it has that neurologic effect. The reason
that it has that neurologic effect is because sex is
so important, right, so these circuits of the brain are

(12:44):
very powerfully activated. The other thing that is really addictive
about pornography is that it does cause a dopamine secretion.
So orgasm feels really good. And so anytime we have
an orgasm, we get a cerge of dopamine, we get
a surge of pleasure. It feels really really good. And
then the other problem that that creates, and this is

(13:06):
the curse of humanity, is that anytime we get pleasure,
we also buy ourselves craving and motivation. So when we
secrete dopamine in the nuclear circumbents, it doesn't just do
one thing. These three functions are fundamentally tied together in
our neurocircuitry. So if I know drink this and I
enjoy it, I will want it tomorrow. That's like there's

(13:29):
no way to escape that effect. So when I gain
pleasure from pornography, I am buying myself craving, I am
buying myself motivation towards it in the future, in the
future one hundred percent, right, So it's behavioral reinforcement. And
then what happens is, so these are the two fundamental
pieces at a neuroscience level, then what happens is we

(13:50):
kind of find ourselves like in a trap, because since
it is so good at these two things, nothing else
is as effective. And we as here human beings. If
you look at like what we're designed to do on
a physiologic level, it is to be efficient. So why
do we love unhealthy food? Because we evolved in areas
where if there's one bite that has three hundred calories,

(14:13):
like that bite will save you, right, That's that's what
allows you to survive. So what we sort of got
is like a calorie dense, neurological dopamine surge from pornography.
And it's also like suppresses our emotions really really really deeply.
And this is like like literally true. So I don't

(14:33):
know if you've ever you know, if you've been in
love or like you know friends who are in love,
but like when you're in love and you're like horny
for something, right, there's like this idea of post nut clarity,
and like pre nut fog, I guess so. Literally, the
way that our lust circuitry works is it suppresses all
of these other parts of the brain. It suppresses the

(14:54):
part of our brain that assesses risk.

Speaker 3 (14:56):
For someone that doesn't know what that means, could you
be a bit more sort of.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
Direct, Yeah, So, like when you fall in love on
the less vulgar side, So when you fall in love,
like you start to do stupid things, right, Like you
do stupid things when you're in love, and that's not
a mistake. That's the way that it's wired because evolutionarily,
there were basically two human beings, Okay, one who would
fall in love and did not do stupid things and

(15:22):
one who did fall in love and did do stupid things.
Which one of those two do you think is more
likely to procreate.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
When you say stupid things? Give me an example.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
I'm gonna ignore my job.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
I've just gotten financially stable, and I've fallen in love
with someone who has a pile of credit card debt.
This is a terrible idea to enter a relationship with them,
because I've just gotten all my shits sorted out and
they don't have any other shit sorted out. So there
are all kinds of red flags that we ignore on purpose,
because if we didn't ignore those red flags, then we

(15:54):
wouldn't end up procreating.

Speaker 3 (15:56):
Ye, right, I don't want to be rational in that
moment because.

Speaker 1 (15:59):
And that's literally what happens. So we have circuits of
the brain that will actually inhibit and shut off the
rational parts of our brain. And this is where we
get to post not clarity, which is this experience that
many men have where after you finish the sexual act,
you feel like very clear headed, right, And so then
what happens is, now what's in why is that? That's

(16:21):
because the lustful parts of your brain were inhibiting, like
literally inhibiting and shutting off the thinking parts of your brain.
And once the lustful part shuts off, then we start
thinking again.

Speaker 3 (16:35):
Probably in my early twenties was the first time I
experienced postn clarity, and it was I think it was
two three am m in the morning. Here's me talking
about my masturbation. It was like two three am in
the morning, and there was this person that I was
like vaguely interested in. I'm like super horny, I'm arranging
to meet them at like three am. I think I'm
like twenty one years old, and I decide to masturbate instead,

(16:58):
And immediately after I masturbated dead, it was like a
completely different person inhabited my body. I was like, within seconds,
I was like, why the fuck were you going to
get out of bed at three am in the morning
and drive for fifty five minutes to meet someone you
have really no interest in? And it was like that
person could not recognize the person I was ten minutes earlier.

(17:18):
And I remember one day trying to explain this to
a woman and she couldn't understand it, and I actually
think she was quite offended by it, because it's quite
an offensive concept, I imagine to a woman to hear
that men experience a drop in interest potentially sometimes after
they masturbate.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yeah, And I think the reason it's offensive to women
is because in that moment, the dude is objectifying her, right,
It's like the woman becomes a sexual object. You're not
a human anymore.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
And like the reason they're offended is because that's exactly
what happens in that moment. There are such powerful drivers
in our brain to drive us to pro create that
we don't view them is a complex human being with
thoughts and feelings. Right, we are just really really horny,
And that's literally what happens, like in our brain. We
stop viewing them as complex objects and so the reason

(18:11):
they get offended is sort of because they're right and
we start to view them that way.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
But that's also like biological.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
They're absolutely like societal and psychological things that we can
get into in a minute, but that that make things
that worse. But I think it's like it's understandable, and
it's also like how we work.

Speaker 3 (18:27):
Yeah, which is difficult to say. Yeah, I just want
to be honest about it, because I think if we
start from a place of like total honesty about these things,
we can actually reason up to some real solutions. If
we're trying to be politically correct to whatever, we're never
going to get to real answers here.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
Absolutely and all all men I hope will experience post
Nott clarity. And also like that doesn't make us bad men.
It's a physiologic thing. And I think the key thing
about whether you're good or bad is the way that
you manage it, right, And that's kind of what I'm
talking about, is like you have to understand what is
happening in brain in order to then willfully take a

(19:03):
step back and sort of like think about what am
I feeling? And then eventually, once we understand where postnut
clarity comes from, we can cultivate it without having to.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
Not just this is I know we're in a little
bit of a tangent here, but do women experience the
inverse of postnut clarity because there's a lot of oxytocin
released when we have sex. So I was just reading
a study from twenty twenty one in the Journal of
Sex Research, and it found that women were more likely
to feel emotionally connected, vulnerable, and have a desire for
post coital closeness like cuddling or talking. However, men who

(19:37):
are in long term relationships reported feeling similarly bonded to women,
which is probably explains actually why I'm also down to
cuddle after because she's been my partner for seven years.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
Yeah, so there is so much there. So now we're
getting I mean, if you want to go into that,
that's the societal element, right, So there is the neuroscience
of pornography addiction, what it does to your brain, but
there is a fundamental societal issue which is driving men
towards pornography, and also addresses this kind of thing where

(20:10):
relationships between men and women are getting harder. And as
relationships between men and women are getting harder, there's a
part of the brain, more often the male brain that
is getting starved for something because we no longer have
sexual connections emotional connections with women, and so when we
get hungry for something, then the brain will try to

(20:32):
find what it can to satisfy it. Right, So there's
a part of our brain that drives us towards procreation,
but oftentimes in a real relationship, it comes with a
lot of other things.

Speaker 3 (20:45):
Right.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
The problem is that when we're and this gets a
bit technical, but when our brain wants something, it usually
wants a whole package. So for example, like if you
feel hungry, you don't want calories. I want to eat this,
and I want to eat this, and I want to
drink this, and I want to have some of this. Right, So,
there are lots of different things that my brain wants
or my body wants, and they're usually all they all

(21:07):
come together in a real healthy way, in a sorry,
in a natural way, which is why it's healthy.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Not that natural is healthy, but that's what we've adapted to.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
The problem with pornography is that it gives us a
slice of what our brain craves. And the problem is,
once it gives you a slice, once you get that
sexual gratification, your emotion, your emotional connection is not met.
You have no bond, you have no feeling of safety,
nothing like that. Oftentimes you're filled with like regret and
all kinds of guilt and things like that. And so

(21:36):
even though you're satisfying that sort of procreative drive, all
of the stuff that comes with it stays unsatisfied. And
then the real problem is once we satisfy the procreative drive,
the motivation to go and get all of those other
things disappears. Right, So, once I not post not clarity,

(21:58):
I don't need a relationship with anyone else, right, I'm
not willing to sacrifice to deal with this person. So
it's kind of like it's sort of like if I
if I fill up your stomach with just unhealthy food,
like let's say, just give you straight calories, like some
highly processed like hamburger wrapped in doughnuts or whatever, and

(22:19):
drizzled with take your pick of artery clogging stuff. After
you eat that, you don't have any fiber, you don't
have any micro nutrients, but you're not going to crave broccoli. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:30):
Right.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
So that's what's happening in our society, is we're using
porn as a substitute for relationships, and that's creating these
really strong societal pressures and being driven by So what
have you seen happening between men and women right now?

Speaker 3 (22:48):
Women, I think, don't need men as much as they
used to do. And I think this is in part
because of this whole sexual revolution and the pill and
feminism and all these things, which is has you know,
tremendous upsot. I think that women and men of having
less sex, they're getting married less. Men's attitude towards women
has become a little bit more resentful. In certain pockets

(23:12):
of the internet. They perceive relationships with the other sex
to be disposable more than ever before. Men's I would
say both, and I think in part that's because of
dating apps, just the perception of choice, Okay, the feeling
that if you don't work out, there's another thousand people
on my phone that I could give a shot to.

(23:34):
I think the equation of a relationship when we think
about the investment it takes for it to work and
what you get from it. People now perceive the equation
not to be worth it.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Okay, I think there's a lot of great stuff there.
So you're like a fully formed adult man, right, I
think so?

Speaker 3 (23:51):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah, Like you're like a man.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
You're not like a kid, You're not like a like
a dude in early stages of development. You've like you've
got a career, you've got a relationship, you're buying a
house like you were an adult.

Speaker 3 (24:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
So if I was an eighteen year old, yeah, and
I came to you and let's say I'm your nephew
or something like that, and I'm like.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Stephen, fully formed adult, handsome man in relationship, I'm struggling
to date. Yeah, what should I do?

Speaker 3 (24:19):
You want me to give you advice? Fuck? I think
you should work on yourself, okay, especially as an eighteen
year old man, because I think you need to, especially
at that age, create some advantages. And so working on
yourself could be learning, reading, going to the gym, building
up the ability to provide for someone else and to
protect somebody else. That's kind of really where i'd start,
And again that's biased. Because that's what I did at

(24:41):
eighteen years old, actually didn't date. I think I've been
on five dates in my entire life.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
Okay, so let's say I do that, yeah, and it
doesn't work.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
Yeah, Okay.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
So I'm like, hey, I'm on this growth journey and
I'm sure you've encountered this. And there are going to
be people in the audience who are like, the reason
they're watching this podcast is because they're trying to do that.
They're still not getting right, it's still hard to find
a girlfriend. Then what do you have to say to them?

Speaker 3 (25:04):
I would assume that the reason it's not working is
because they're not in this frame of mind to find
perfect love.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
And when someone says, when a dude says.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
I'm trying to do everything right, what is the most
common response that they get right?

Speaker 3 (25:22):
So like or like yeah right.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
If you kind of like look at Twitter, what you'll
find is people will be like, it's impossible to find
a good woman, and then like men will be And
let's say a dude says that or a woman says
that it's on both sides, it's impossible to find a
good man, and then people won't be like, yeah, it's
impossible to find a good man. So maybe some people
will be supportive. So you'll have a woman who says
it's impossible to find a good man. You know, there

(25:46):
are a lot of people who are like, yeah, like
men are trash fine, And then a lot of people
will be like, you're not trying hard enough, you're not
going to the right places. That gets we as men
get that a lot more because there's a societal bias
that men don't need help.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
Right.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
So, if if you look at like the comparison of
scholarships male only scholarships versus female only scholarships, there's about
four point nine billion dollars worth of scholarships given out
in the United States from private sources. Female scholarships outside
of athletics are way higher than male scholarships.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
So if you look at athletics, the numbers way higher
for men.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
But the really weird thing is that like sixty percent
of people who graduate from college or in college somewhere
in there are women. So the people who need more
gender based support or men, but we don't really do that.
We're usually like, if a man has a problem, this
is a man's problem to solve. And when a man
goes out and says, I'm having trouble dating. But what

(26:39):
people will say is men will say work harder, try harder.
You know, people will like like and people will really
be nasty about it.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
They're like, do you not know how to talk to women?
Stop being of creep?

Speaker 1 (26:49):
Things like that. And then the other thing that we're
sort of starting, not starting, we're really seeing is that
there is like this very very like deep anger entitlement.
There's like this in cell movement. You know, there's this
like alpha male, beta male kind of thing. And I
don't know if you kind of get this, but there's
like a deep sense of like anger, right, there's like
a in men and I think women feel it too.

(27:09):
This is why women are so terrified. This whole thing
about would you rather be in a forest with a
bear or a man? Did you hear about this? So
like people would ask this question on Twitter to women.
It's like would you be rather be in a force
with like a bear or a man? And like women
feel safer with a wild bear than they do with
a man. So I think people are picking up on
this like existential and I don't know if that makes

(27:31):
sense to you, but there's like an existential like cry
coming from men, which can manifest as anger. I think
we're also seeing reflections of this, like in South Korea
with like dropping birth rates right where like men are
getting really really angry, they feel really entitled. And I
think this is where it's important to understand a biological
difference and we'll get to what I think is going on.

(27:52):
So a woman does not need a man in order
to pass her genes along, right, So I mean like literally,
I know it sounds weird, but like, if you're a woman,
you can just go to a sperm bank and you.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
Can get pregnant. Yeah, you can just have a child.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
Without You can also argue that it's easier for women
to find a man who is willing to impregnate them
than it is for a man to find a woman
willing to carry their child. But I mean literally, we
live in a society where women can just procreate if
they feel like it and men cannot. So there's a
fundamental power balance there. I'm not saying it's right or wrong.
I'm just saying it is what it is. So I

(28:25):
think what we're starting to see is actually like a
mass extinction event. We are seeing natural selection for a
group of men who have no options. Many years ago.
I was a loser in the world that we lived in,
necessitated my entry into third spaces. I had trouble talking

(28:47):
to girls, but I was forced into college. When I
got my first job, it was serving ice cream. I
was forced to interact with girls. I was active in
a summer camp where I met girls, was forced to
talk to girls. So I sucked at talking to girls.
But the world that I lived in was structured so
that I still had to talk to girls. I had
no option to retreat from interaction and painful interaction with

(29:11):
the opposite sex. I think literally what we're seeing because
all this stuff started to get really bad during COVID.
So what happened in COVID was actually like a natural
selection event, but it wasn't a natural selection event about
life and death. That's what people think. Natural selection is
what happened during COVID. Sure a lot of people died,
and that's bad. But the post COVID world, some people

(29:33):
were able to adapt to it and some people are not.
We're seeing a spike in social anxiety. Now I can
work from home, Now I have pornography, Now I have
all this stuff going on to where I'm not forced
to learn how to interact with women. Does that kind
of make sense? So now you can live your whole
life at home. And I think what's starting to happen

(29:53):
is literally natural selection. And the way that natural selection
works is people think it's like, oh, if I'm naturalnatural
selection means I'm weak and someone is strong. That's not
technically correct. Natural selection is you were made a certain way,
someone else has made a different way, and then the
environment changes which one of these two is suited to.

(30:15):
It's not even adaptation because all the adaptations have been made.
And I think the best example of this is like
literally Darwin's finches. So you've got, like, you know, one
finch that has like a hard beak that can crack
a nut. You've got another finch that has a very
sharp beak that can get like a bug out of
like a cactus like that has these very like tight
type flowers. And so if something happens and all the

(30:36):
cacti die out, the birds that rely on the cacti
bugs will start to die out too. They don't know
how to procreate in this world anymore. And I think
what we're seeing with like all these alphas betas in cells.
What we're seeing in South Korea is there is a
whole generation of men that is like we are literally
watching them die out in real time because we've got

(30:58):
thirty two year old's thirty five years who do not
have children, do not know how they're going to ever
have children. And this is where like, I know, this
sounds bizarre, but so that's actually happening. That's not bizarre,
that's birthright in South Korea is like point seven. So
there's a bunch of men who will never pass on
their genes in the alpha male, beta male whatever, like
you know, in that kind of language, they talk a

(31:20):
lot about like procreation and legacy and stuff like that.
But I almost wonder is there a mechanism in a
human being that if your genes know they're dying out,
what would they trigger in your mind?

Speaker 3 (31:36):
Right?

Speaker 1 (31:36):
And I think what they would trigger is exactly what
we're seeing this like existential panic, angst, even aggression, entitlement,
because if these men do not behave in this way,
they are literally going to die out. So what we
see in this post COVID world is that people like
maybe you or me who were like losers and didn't
know how to talk to chicks.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
In high school.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
We were forced into social and action where we basically
like that's where we developed in order to so that
we could talk to girls. But in this post COVID world,
all those spaces are gone. There's no forcible interaction. So
then there are some people for whom it's natural to
talk to girls. And that's why we see this dichotomy
where it's almost like, you know, some people like, just

(32:20):
put yourself out there, just work out, work on yourself,
and things will work out. And then there are a
lot of other people who are like, that's not working.
And I imagine if you went back, like two hundred years,
went back to the Galapagos Islands and you took Darwin's
finches and you put them on Twitter, you would see
that exactly what we're seeing. Some people are like, oh,

(32:40):
like you have trouble getting bugs, just crack a nut, Like,
just get better at cracking nuts. But they have something
in their makeup, something in their attachment style, something in
their tendency for social anxiety, something in their neuroticism, something
in their circumstances, something in their support structure that allows

(33:01):
them to put forth effort and succeed.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
And then there are these.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
Other people over here who will go to therapy, who
will work on themselves professionally, who will show up on
dating apps, and because of the shape of their face
which cannot be fundamentally altered, or some other thing which
they're not even aware of, they grew up with a
certain attachment style that they're not aware of. They grew

(33:27):
up with on the spectrum, and their capacity to make
eye contact.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
And emotional connections is very difficult.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
So there's this whole crop of people who I think
are trying really hard. I don't think they're losers. I
don't think they're like pathetic or anything like that. I
think there's something about the architecture of how these people
are built so that standard advice does not apply to them.

Speaker 2 (33:51):
And what I.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Feel when I sit with these people is like someone
who is dying out, Like that's what it feels like
to sit with this person's life. They're not living a life,
They're in a slow protracted process of dying. And when
you are in a slow protracted process of dying, pornography
shows up. And then you've got this weird thing that

(34:13):
goes on where you get this burt of dopamine, this
existential dread of like I am not getting to participate
in life. There are all these people out there that
are participating. They tell me, oh, you should do this,
but it doesn't work, and it's just imagine how terrifying
it is if someone gives you advice that's supposed to
work and it doesn't work for you, How fucked are you? Right?

Speaker 2 (34:36):
Because that's the answer.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
It's like some people have cancer, we give them cancer treatment,
they get better. But if some people have cancer and
everyone's like, hey, do this chemotherapy and it doesn't work,
then how screwed are you?

Speaker 3 (34:49):
You're very screwed.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
So this is I think what we're seeing, this deep
existential loss, this desire for connection is somehow like inner
with pornography, because I think pornography addiction has a spiritual
component too, And if you talk to people who are
addicted to pornography, they can feel it. They feel like
spiritually like empty. They're like, I'm not doing anything with

(35:14):
my life. So one of the two variables that correlates
with pornography addiction, the two strongest variables that correlate with
pornography addiction. One of them is a sense of meaninglessness
in life, and there's a weird spiritual angle that I
talked about. But the other really simple thing is, you know,
if you want to stop watching porn, you didn't have
a reason to stop watching porn. And the problem with

(35:35):
porn is that you can be kind of like living
your life and then in the in between hours when
you're like back from work and before you go on
a date or maybe you're swiping on Tinder and no
one's really answering or whatever, like, you just have these
hours in the day where there's nothing going on. You're
not living for anything, so you might as well jerk off.

Speaker 3 (35:52):
I mean, there's a lot that I'm thinking about. The
first is, if we go back up to your point
about this being a bit of an extinction event, it
poses a question about like what do you do about that?
You said Also, people are trying to implement the advice
but it's not working. Now does that mean that that's
a question of like motivation disciplined? Is it bad advice?

(36:16):
What do we do there? And the third, I guess
question that comes to mind is does society have a
responsibility to intervene in some way to correct this?

Speaker 1 (36:28):
So I think does society have a responsibility? I don't
think that is a real thing. So I have never
seen society take a responsibility. I don't think society can
take a responsibility, right, So of like, how do I
get society?

Speaker 2 (36:45):
Like who do I talk to?

Speaker 3 (36:46):
But if you think about other people that are in
marginalized groups, society intervenes to make the world. Society the
governments and the way that we make our laws, and
the way that we give out money and grants, and
the way that we shape our communities.

Speaker 1 (36:59):
Yes, I understand the question, but I think like this
and this is just the way that I think. So
if I ask you what is society, you say the government?
And then who is the government? What is the government?

Speaker 2 (37:09):
It's people?

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Yeah, So I think this comes down to forget about
societal responsibility. And I think this is one of the problems.
Not to say that it is the problem, but this
is just the way that I think. There was a
case I don't remember her name, of a woman who's
being sexually assaulted in public, like it on a street
at night time, and there were a bunch of neighbors
who were aware that the sexual assault was happening, and

(37:32):
no one called for help. And the reason no one
called for help is because everyone assumed that somebody else
would call for help. You know whose problem is it? Oh,
society should fix this. And the moment that we say
society should fix this, we stopped taking individual responsibility. And
the moment that we stopped taking individual responsibility, like unless

(37:53):
someone shows up and runs for office and says, my
goal is to do this, which, by the way, is
happening in is like South Korea. So like conservatives that
are very like there's this huge tension in South Korea
right now between men and women and this four B
movement where women are like, we're not going to have
kids anymore. And then there's like this conservative kind of
like pro masculine kind of movement that is moving into

(38:14):
government says like this needs to change. We see governments
responding to this mating crisis, right, So I think like
China is now paying people to have children. So there's
all kinds of like moves that are happening. So is
it society's responsibility?

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Like, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
So I think if society doesn't do anything, what's going
to happen will be really simple. And that's what I
mean by we're witnessing a mass extinction event. We have
a group of young men who are somewhere between fifteen
to fifty who will just never procreate and then they
will literally die out right.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
Their genes will not be passed on.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
And for the people who do pro create, they will
have been adapted to the post COVID world.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
Yeah right, so they know how to form.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
They succeed on Tinder, whereas like if you go and
you look at like if you go to like some
kind of senior event and you look at all the
people who have grandkids, half the men there would.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
Not have succeeded on tinder.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
Yeah right, And this is something that really like shocks
people want to kind of tell them this. But if
you want to see like who's succeeding, it's not the
dudes on Tinder who are getting laid fifteen times. Like
go to like a I mean this is sometimes a
little creepy, but like if you go to a playground,
you're going to see like a lot of like average
looking men with like average looking dad bods, which with
average median incomes who are like having kids, and that's

(39:33):
what's really happening.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
But even those men are adapted in.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
Some way, right, because they're not exceptionally attractive, they're not
exceptionally rich, but they have something going on in their
psychological makeup which allows them to form bonds and procreate.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
You just said that a huge amount of men between
the age of fifteen and fifty will not pass on
their genes. They will effectively die out of the gene
mating pool. So people will hear that, and many people
will go, well, that's evolution, yep. And but I want
to understand if there's a counterpoint to that it should
should society intervene? Should? Why is? You know, in the

(40:10):
short term, we're going to have a lot of men
who are disillusioned that become in cells, find themselves in
pockets of the internet, are resent for all those kinds
of things. But should society intervene to course correct that.
Should we put systems in place to make sure that
those men meet partners?

Speaker 2 (40:24):
I'm gonna I'm going to answer that question with a question.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
Okay, if let's say a huge swath of people are
dying out from cancer, should we intervene with that. Yes,
If a huge swath of people are dying out from
like a virus.

Speaker 3 (40:39):
Should we one hundred percent. Yes.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
If a huge swath of people are dying out from genocide,
should we intervene with that?

Speaker 3 (40:45):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (40:46):
So I think there are two important things.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
One might different though it's.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
Just one is about death, right, So one is like,
if a human being is dying, we should step in.
But natural selection isn't necessarily about death. This is what's
really tricky about it. This is why I think it
gets hard. Natural selection is about passing on your genes. Yeah, right,
It's about creating viable offspring. And this is where if

(41:11):
someone you know, and I think we also say yes,
Like if there's you know, a couple that wants to
have a child and that child has cystic fibrosis, should
we help that couple?

Speaker 2 (41:19):
Should we help a couple pro create? We also say yes.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
So that's why we have IVF and things like that.
So I think the tricky thing about the reason that
this is different is because that's a couple. If a
woman is unable to have kids. Even if we say,
if a man is unable to have kids, should we
medically intervene so that they're capable of having kids?

Speaker 3 (41:37):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (41:38):
Right, So if we're talking about a couple, if we're
talking about a human being and there's a medical problem,
or if we're talking about protecting people from death, the
answer is yes. This is a new question, which is
do people have the right And I don't know if
right is and maybe that's the right word to reproduce.
And this is what's so challenging about it, is like

(42:00):
the answer is basically no, because for men, that requires
the consent of someone else. In my right to reproduce
never trump's someone's right to not want to reproduce with me.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
I think we sort of accept that right, that that's correct.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
Now, this is where the fundamental biological difference comes in,
because a woman doesn't need a man to reproduce. I
can go to spermc and once again, you can argue
that you can get laid if you want to, but
that hasn't been my experience.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
I think women.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
Struggle with loneliness and finding sexual partners and stuff quite
a bit as well. There's some really bad perception on
the internet. So I think this is like a new
problem for society, which is why it hasn't been solved. Now,
that's why the track that I take. I don't know
what the societal answer is. I'm not a sociologist. So
what I have found, thankfully, we don't need to solve
our I don't think we need to solve that problem.

(42:51):
It doesn't need to be solved. Sure, should someone solve it,
I think so. But I think what I found works
really well is that usually the problem that these men
are failing to adapt to it can be fixed. But
the problem is that the solutions that work for the
people who are successful will not work for the people

(43:11):
who are unsuccessful.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
These are apples and oranges, right.

Speaker 1 (43:14):
So like, and this is the big mistake, is that
when when I say, okay, I am happily married with
two kids, but the thing that I did won't work
for these people. That's been my clinical experience. My advice
does not work for them. Your advice won't work for them.
What we need is a different system that addresses their

(43:36):
fundamental problems. Right because I had what it takes internally,
I was loved as a child, like fuck like, this
is how deep it runs. So I knew how to
give love and receive love. A third of the men
that I meet do not know how to give love
and do not know how to receive love. Has nothing
to do with their tinder profiles. That's why they're fucked.

(43:58):
And when people can say go to the gym, make
more money. But if you do not know how to
fundamentally give or receive love, then like that's a huge problem.

Speaker 3 (44:06):
Is that where you start when you're trying to solve
this on an individual basis?

Speaker 1 (44:10):
Yeah, so I mean I start giving and receiving love
is not where I start because that's like so foreign
to them that they don't know how to do that, right.
So I think there are a couple of things. The
first place that I start with most men is in
understanding their emotions. So we have all kinds of patterns
that we engage in that are driven by different parts

(44:31):
of us that we have no insight into. And usually
this is like where the money is. So I was,
I had had a great conversation yesterday with a buddy
of mine, and you know, he gave me this fantastic
example which I've seen so many times. So you know,
there's a lot of women will talk about men who
are afraid of commitment. Yeah, you know, so it's like, oh,
like I'm dating this person. He's great, but he's afraid
of commitment. He's afraid of commitment and then and then

(44:53):
that then it kind of becomes like, oh, like the
dude is like he like needs to step up and
he needs to like be a man and needs to
like learn how to commit. So we sort of put
the onus on the man. You're afraid of commitment, you
need to fix that. It's a really funny thing is
if you look at like women that I've worked with,
they sort of fall into this pattern where they date
men who are afraid of commitment, and that's why they're
looking for commitment because they haven't found it yet, right.

(45:15):
And it's the really funny thing is sometimes women will
select for a man who is afraid of commitment because
deep down they're afraid of commitment. True, So I'm going
to find someone who I know is afraid of commitment,
and therefore I can blame them for never committing.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
And this is how I know this because sometimes the
dude will.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
Come into my office and he will work on his
fear of commitment and he will conquer it.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
And the moment that he conquers his fear on commitment,
the woman will retreat.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
They'll get terrified, they'll start to find all kinds of problems,
and it's not just like men. And it's not just
women are guilty of this. So there are all kinds
of patterns that people will engage in that they have
no insight into. First of all, understand your emotions, then
you will understand and your behaviors. Oh, like, why do
I keep on selecting people who are afraid of commitment?
Because I'm afraid of commitment And if I can find

(46:08):
somebody else who's afraid of commitment, I can blame them
from it and I never have to deal with my
laddering up my fear of commitment. There's a lot of
stuff that comes with emotions. So awareness of emotions, awareness
of your patterns, the ability to regulate them, and I'd
say that kind of ties it up.

Speaker 3 (46:23):
So step point is understanding one's emotions, and then step
two is sort of giving them a way to deal
with those emotions. That isn't the pornography or the addictive
behavior or the short term design that might be destructive
for the long term their long term goals, I think, so,
and what is that? How do I deal with the emotions?
So if I'm if I have a craving to engage
in some kind of addictive behavior like pornography, what should

(46:46):
I do instead?

Speaker 1 (46:47):
So if we're getting super practical, I can give you
kind of like my paradigm for treating pornography addiction. So
the first thing is that I know this sounds kind
of weird, but the first thing that I recommend people
do is schedule their pornography usage.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
So pick one hour of the day where they watch pornography.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
So if we look at like one of the problems
with pornography, it's that it invades all the cracks in
your life, and then over time what it does is
it widens those cracks. So the first thing that you've
got to do is like move it to like one
part of the day. I know a lot of people
are fans of like cold turkey and like like you know,
sobriety and things like that. I think for the digital

(47:24):
addictions that's harder. So log out of all your devices,
restrict it to one hour of the day. Next thing
that you need to do is anticipate what are going
to be the hard parts of your day. So what
are the parts where you're going to feel really bad
about something, and what's your plan? What's your alternative in
those moments? So the other really tricky thing about the

(47:46):
brain is that when we are suffering, we cannot create
new solutions. So usually when we get attacked by something,
our survival instincts kick in, our reflexes kick in. Reflexes
an innovation or at two opposite ends of the spectrum.
So you have to innovate before you need to use it. Right,
we need to have a fire hydrant in our house

(48:08):
before the fire starts. We can't go finding a fire hydrant.
That's a big mistake that a lot of people make.
So your emotional regulation techniques you need to be practiced,
whether that's meditation. I really like something called urge surfing.
So urge surfing is something that confuses a lot of people.
So if you have a desire, Stephen, like, do you
want anything right now?

Speaker 3 (48:28):
That house, final friends? Okay, great, Oh I'm getting a
little bit hungry, so maybe some.

Speaker 1 (48:33):
In either case, if you don't get those things, the
desire will disappear over time. Right, So if you don't
get the house forty years from now, there may be
a seed of desire left, but you're not going to
like want that house forty like you know. That's what's
really confusing for people is people don't realize that if
you do not give into your desire, it'll.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
Disappear on its own.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
And people sort of know this if you've been hungry,
and you'll notice that you feel hungry. But if you
don't feed yourself, though hunger goes away, it'll come back
because you're It'll get recreated stronger by certain signals in
your body. But the desire disappears if you don't give
into it. So urge surfing is recognizing that you don't
need to conquer your addiction. You need to wait it out.

(49:18):
So if you have a desire for pornography, the desire
will start, it'll increase, it'll peak, and then it'll disappear
on its own. Any addictive substance, you just need to
play the waiting game. So it can help to have
an emotional regulation technique. So the technique that I recommend
for most of my patients is alternate nostril breathing. So

(49:39):
there's something about our nose that when we change the
way that we breathe, it alters our sympathetic and parasympathetic
nervous system and causes us to calm down. Anytime we
have an urge for something we feel unsatisfied. When we
feel unsatisfied, it creates stress. Stress causes a spike in
cortisol us. All will then activate our nervous systems. So

(50:03):
when you want something that's like I want it, so
you need to just calm yourself down. So alternate nostril
breathing is a great way to do that. We start
that by taking your hand to do this. Okay, and
then thumb is out.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
Great.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
Then what we're gonna do is take your thumb, block
the right nostril.

Speaker 3 (50:19):
Breathe in.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
Now with a full breath of air. Switch there you go.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
Breathe out, Breathe in through the same nostril. Switch, breathe
out in, switch out, in, switch out. We'll do one

(50:59):
more or so breathing through the same nostril, switch, end out.
So if you do that practice, you'll notice a couple things.
One is that one of your nostrils is more closed
than the other. That's completely normal. It'll alternate about every
ninety minutes if you're healthy. Okay, So this practice, if

(51:23):
we sort of think about it, what were we.

Speaker 3 (51:24):
Talking about again? Comeber exactly right.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
So this practice is interesting because it forces our attention.
If I just tell you to take deep breaths. That
doesn't work well because the mind can continue to be engaged.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
Right, The mind can think about whatever it wants to.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
We can talk about marriage, we can talk about your house,
we can talk about what you want to eat. And
if I'm just sitting there meditating, observing my breath, it
doesn't anchor the mind. So alternate nostil breathing is really good.

Speaker 3 (51:54):
For a couple of reasons.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
The first is that it requires you to pay attention.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
And if you're concentrating, because we're doing all this weird stuff, right,
you're kind of screwing up. That's the point, because then
you're not thinking about something else. So then something really
cool happens. I feel like watching pornography. I do this
for a while, which which one? Which one again? And
then you do it for a little while. Calms down
the physiology. You'll feel a little bit calmer, and now
the urge has disappeared. It'll come back, it'll come back stronger,

(52:22):
but your brain has learned an alternative. The whole reason
we get trapped in a cycle of addiction is because
we have one solution to one problem. The moment that
we create a second solution, a lot of things change.
Now we have to train that a little bit ahead
of time. It's hard to do that for the first
time when you have a craving, So you need to
practice it for like maybe five to fifteen minutes every

(52:44):
single day as you get good at it.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
If you have a craving for pornography, you can use
that practice.

Speaker 3 (52:49):
And can you use that practice for other types of cravings?

Speaker 2 (52:52):
One hundred percent, you can use it for anything.

Speaker 3 (52:54):
Is there a longer term piece of work I would
need to do to get over that craving? Note?

Speaker 2 (52:57):
Because yes and no.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
So start by logging out of all your devices that
you watch pornography on, use only one device, and schedule
one amount of time for the day. Practice Urge surfing
is just the awareness that urges will disappear. I would
encourage you to pay attention to other things. So if
you sit down to eat a meal and you want
a soda, you've got your food in front of it's

(53:21):
really weird. Just don't eat and don't do anything for
a little bit and just watch the desire for the soda.
You'll see it peak and then as you observe it,
you will see it disappear. So this is what's really weird. Okay,
I'm gonna say this. I don't know if this is
gonna make sense. When you relapse, you know you're gonna relapse,
and then you stop thinking about it, Like you have

(53:44):
this internal struggle like should I do it?

Speaker 2 (53:47):
Should I not do it?

Speaker 3 (53:47):
Should I do it?

Speaker 2 (53:48):
Should I not do it?

Speaker 1 (53:48):
And then something happens and you're like, oh, like I'm
gonna do it, and then you like let the fight
happen for a little while, and.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
Then it kind of disappears from your mind, you know
what I mean.

Speaker 1 (53:58):
So what a lot of people don't realize is that
internal conflict is willpower. They think willpower means winning the
internal conflict. That's technically not the case. If we look
at the part of our brain that exerts willpower, it
is the same part of our brain that monitors internal conflict.
If you are internally conflicted, that is your willpower acting,

(54:22):
that's you fighting, that's the willpower itself. So as long
as you are monitoring your internal conflict, the only way
an addiction can win is when you leave the ring.

Speaker 3 (54:32):
Literally, are you saying, keep the conflict going.

Speaker 1 (54:35):
Keep the conflict going, and you will win one hundred
percent of the time, and if people have struggled with addiction,
they're going to know in the back of your mind,
you make a decision and then you pretend to fight
for a little while you've already decided, and then you
feel really good. You're like, oh, yeah, we're going to
just do it because some justification happens, and then you
stop the fight, and then you don't even do it
right away. You don't do it like right away, You're

(54:57):
like wait, and then it just happens on its own.
But if you really pay attention to your internal process,
you'll see that going on. Okay, So urge surfing, alternate
noscile breathing practiced ideally ahead of time, so that when
you are doing it, you know. It's like if I
want to learn, if I want to defend myself with
a sword, I don't want to pick it up for
the first time when barbarians are attacking me, right, I

(55:19):
need to practice. Same is true of cognitive skills. So
we want to do those cognitive skills and then when
we have those urges, we want to deal with them.
The other thing that we need to do is anticipate
the hard emotional parts of our day so am I
going to have this conversation? Is this going to be hard?
And then prepare yourself for that emotion. Then when the
allotted hour comes in, you can use pornography. So the

(55:43):
first thing that we want to do is we want
to like not have it invade every part of your life.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
Just just localize it to a particular thing.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
And this may not work for substances, but I think
it works for digital addictions way better. And then over
time you can reduce it. You can start skipping a day.
And is there internal deeper work absolutely so finding a
sense of purpose. So people have conquered pornography addiction when
they have no time for it anymore. So there's like
deeper work about finding your purpose in life that will

(56:12):
help you a lot. Overcoming an addiction requires a why.
So everyone's like, oh, like I got to do it.
Why it's because it's bad for me. That's not going
to motivate you. You need like a real reason to
do it. This is also why a lot of men
will relapse with pornography when their partner has a problem
with it, because keeping my partner from getting mad at

(56:34):
me is not a sufficient reason to conquer the addiction.
Usually what will happen is the addiction will then use deception.
So if I'm trying to give up pornography to keep
my partner happy, my addict's brain will be like if
she doesn't know, I can check that box and I
can use that kind of makes sense. Yeah, so you

(56:55):
need an internal reason why you need to give it up.
Enters the realm of maybe psychotherapy, maybe a lot of introspection, hiking, meditation,
and then there's a spiritual component too. The reason we're
seeing an increase in addictions is because we as a
society need to grow spiritually. And anyone you'll notice this.

(57:19):
People who are like spiritually powerful, not necessarily monks, but
like a lot of like the regular people, have overcome
an addiction. And anytime I have a patient with an addiction,
once they're on the other side, they are like absolute
beasts on the spiritual level. They can handle all kinds
of adversity because they've mastered themselves. So I think there's

(57:42):
some weird thing going on in the universe right now,
where like everyone is meditating.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
We all need growth.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
Our systems are falling apart, and like we need this
new skill set, and I think addiction is on the
path to meditation in spiritual growth. It's what really gets
people started, So even then, it's not karmically like bad.

Speaker 3 (58:02):
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there's a blind spot that I keep seeing in early
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And it's not because they're reckless or they don't care.
It's because they're obsessed with building their companies. And I
can't fault them for that. At that stage, you're thinking
about the product, how to attract new customers, how to
grow your team, really how to survive, and HR slips

(58:24):
down the list because it doesn't feel urgent, But sooner
or later it is. And when things get messy, tools
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(58:46):
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(59:07):
that's just works dot com. I've interviewed a lot of
people who are deeply spiritual, and pretty much what of
their stories seem to start with an addiction. Yeah, I'm
really trying to understand what the domino effect I guess
is there.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
Yeah, so I think what's so there are different ways
to think about it. One is that if you randomly
have an addiction and you conquer it, that requires an
internal work, like an internal like strengthening of your interior
singulate cortex, which is what monitors your internal conflict.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
Is you will power, You have to master yourself in
some way.

Speaker 3 (59:37):
So I think that it doesn't stop before the addiction,
because yes.

Speaker 1 (59:41):
I think so. So I think an addiction is like
a karmic It's like signing yourself up for a boot
camp when you're getting born. So you like come into
this earth prone to addiction, and then if you conquer
that addiction, you will be a different person. And so
I see a huge karmic kind of thing, where like

(01:00:02):
we are given these addictions to spiritually grow. Right, so
when I lift a weight, it's not easy, but it
makes me stronger. So I think we sometimes forget that
the mind doesn't wear out.

Speaker 3 (01:00:14):
Can you challenge what I'm about to say? Then? Okay?
So the way that I would think about it is
that something might happen in your life. Now you might
think this would happen in a past life or in
some other form, some kind of early trauma. I guess
your dad's screams in your face that you're a piece
of shit when you're three years old, and because of that,

(01:00:34):
I don't know, you developed some sort of addictive behaviors
to deal with the stress and the dope, the portosol
that's running through your body. So that becomes domino number two,
and then you struggle in battle the addiction. It ruins
your life one domino. Okay, okay, it ruins your life.
Your partner says she's going to leave you because of
this addiction that you have. So you decide that the

(01:00:57):
pain of making a change is greater than the pain
of staying the same. So you go to rehab and
you go on the journey, you overcome it, and maybe
there is still a hole or a gap.

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
There is you will not overcome it. The scenario you
described that person will relapse.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
Okay. So okay.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
So the scenario that you said okay was you realize
that the pain of not giving up the addiction hurts
more than the pain of giving it up.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
That's not going to work.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
So the moment that if you say okay, the consequences
of the addiction are so high that I have to
give it up. The reason that doesn't work is because
you're being forced.

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
So, if the goal of this is to give into
myself and reduce my total amount of pain, if it's
a calculation to reduce my pain, I'm still giving into
the part of myself that wants to lessen pain.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
You with me.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
Yeah, if I'm giving into the part of myself that
wants to lessen pain, the addiction will continue, not one
hundred percent. But that's like, honestly my clinical experience, the
way to beat it is saying, fuck it, there's gonna
be pain. I'm gonna embrace that pain. I don't need
to run away from pain.

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):
Anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
I don't need to choose the lesser evil. I'm going
to choose the greater evil because it's the right thing
to do. Surrender, surrender, and challenge.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
So that's what's kind of confusing for people. Surrender.

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
Surrender in this case means allowing yourself to walk the
hard path, not being trapped by I have to lessen
the pain.

Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
In my life.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
The domino that I would add at the beginning would
be why were you born in that family?

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
So that presumes a layer of reality that we do
not generally speaking, scientifically accept.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
Why don't you believe in that layer of reality? And
what is that layer of reality?

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
Two reasons.

Speaker 1 (01:03:04):
One is because I think that I think that there's
order in the universe. I think we have abundant evidence
that there are laws that govern existence, Okay, and the
laws that we have so far are generally speaking, in
my opinion, insufficient to answer the question why someone is

(01:03:24):
born in a particular place.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
We have a piece of that.

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
We have a piece of why you're born the way
you are because of things like genetics. Right, so we
know that like your tendency for baldness is like determined
before you're even born, right. That's what the theory of
karma kind of says. It's like there's a lot of
stuff about your life that is determined before you even
show up.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
So that's one reason.

Speaker 1 (01:03:48):
So I think we need a system that is sufficiently explanatory.
And for me, there are other arguments like biological reductionism
and like you didn't say there's no broader purpose to
anything or whatever. I think that's fair to say. But
I do think that there's order to things. And I
think if we have a reason, why if I have
three dominoes, right and I knock them over, this is

(01:04:17):
the cause. But the finger is the cause? And then
what is the cause of the finger moving? It's the shoulder,
it's the head. It's that I am here in this
room trying to explain to principle. So the causes keep
on going back and back and back and back and
back until you reach a until you reach a singularity, right,
which is what Big Bang theory says, is that cause

(01:04:39):
and effect basically kind of got created.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
I don't know, maybe physicists understands better than I do.

Speaker 1 (01:04:45):
But what's really fascinating is if you look at some
of these old Eastern texts, They say that the universe
is born out of a point called Bindu visarga, which
is literally described as a point of infinite energy, matter, consciousness,
which then explodes into the universe.

Speaker 3 (01:05:04):
Do you believe in a god? Uh?

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
Sure, So I think that what we call a god.

Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
So if you look at like a person, a person
has like layers, right, So if I ask, like, who
is Stephen? Stephen has a body. So there's a certain
level of Stephen that is a physical form. There's a
certain level of Stephen that is a bank account. There's
a certain level of Stephen that is a brand. Which
one of those is really Stephen? They're all really Stephen.
So I think there is something at the resolution that

(01:05:33):
people would call a god that does exist.

Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
So you think there's a higher power that is somewhat intentional, yes,
Obviously the question becomes what created that?

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
So this is what's really interesting. In the West, we
think of time as linear. So if you ask a yogi,
he'll say time is circular. So what's the first season spring?
I'm confused, But doesn't winter come before sprin?

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
So is winter the first season?

Speaker 3 (01:06:03):
I see what you mean?

Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
Right, So we have this conception that time moves linearly,
but there are a lot of conceptions of time that
are quite circular. What comes first, the chicken or the egg?
So I think that there's a circularity to time, which
there's a very like simple argument against, which is that
we cannot move backward in time, right, Like, so time
seemed like the sand in the hourglass only.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
Goes one way.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
Yeah, So this is where I'm not an expert in physics,
So I wouldn't make an argument of this based on physics.

Speaker 3 (01:06:33):
But I just want to know what your intuition tells you.

Speaker 1 (01:06:35):
It's not so experience, right, So I think when you
experience certain states of meditation, you have experiences of things
outside of.

Speaker 3 (01:06:44):
The normative reality.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
Now you can also make a biological reductionist argument that
those are just illusions hallucinations created by neurons.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
I don't think that that's true.

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
What specifically you're referring to that you've experienced.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
I don't talk about it. You can ask me a
more specific question and then maybe I.

Speaker 3 (01:07:04):
Can say something. But what is the right question to
ask you?

Speaker 2 (01:07:07):
So I'll try to explain. So this is going to
get weird, Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
So I realized recently that I used to value credibility
over truth. You understand, credibility and truth are two fundamentally
different things. So credibility is saying something that is believable, right,
So believability depends on you, not on me.

Speaker 3 (01:07:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):
So what I realized recently is that credibility is about
changing your language to fit the ignorance of the audience.
Like literally, So I was thinking about this recently and
in my own mid life crisis, and I was like,
what am I here to do? Am I here to
be famous and successful? If so, then I should be credible.
But if I want to speak the truth, then I

(01:07:56):
need to allow my brand or whatever the fuck it is,
to like fall apart and be like not credible for
people to think that I'm an idiot. And I think
that is more important, right, because that's ego, Like people
can think I'm dumb. I would rather speak the truth
than be credible in this moment, and in some limited ways,
that's number one. So I acknowledge that what I'm about

(01:08:18):
to say doesn't make sense, And I think if you
want to understand this, you have to experience it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
And we'll explain why in a second.

Speaker 1 (01:08:24):
So, if you look at your existence in the world,
you have a body, you have a mind, but then
you have this other thing, which I think science sort
of like acknowledge. We sort of acknowledge. We don't really
know what it is, but the capacity for experience. We
have this subjective part of you. Right, so I can
see objectively what you are, but you have an element
of subjectivity.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 (01:08:45):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
Do you think? How do I know? Do I think?

Speaker 3 (01:08:50):
I don't know?

Speaker 2 (01:08:51):
I ssume saying exactly right. It's kind of weird.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):
So even when we're like scientists and we say anxiety
comes from the amigdala, it's kind of we're doing something
really really sneaky. We don't know that anxiety comes from
the amygdala. We can measure blood flow in the amygdala,
we can measure electrical activity using an EEG. How do
we know that anxiety comes from the amygdala because we
ask a human being, Hey, when there's blood flow going

(01:09:14):
over here in this fMRI, what are you feeling? I'm
feeling anxious. So there is a level of human existence
that is subjective with me. So what science has done
is we developed telescopes and microscopes to take our physical
eyes and extend them. So my physical eyes with the

(01:09:36):
baseline sensory organs, I can perceive certain things and I
cannot perceive other things. But if I develop an instrument,
I can see a star. If I develop an instrument,
I can see a bacteria. So I'm taking my natural
physical ability and I am enhancing it with technology. With
me meditation is doing that for your subjectivity. So if

(01:10:00):
I take like the material realm, which is observable, objective,
and I use a telescope and I use a microscope,
I can go further than where I started.

Speaker 2 (01:10:09):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (01:10:09):
Yep? So now the question is for the subjective realm,
can you go further in the opposite direction? And when
you do that through meditation, you will discover things that
are not available to the basic subjective experience. So like
with the naked eye, you can't see a bacteria, but
if you use this instrument, you can see it. There's

(01:10:31):
basically a spiritual equivalent, a subjective equivalent of a microscope
and a telescope that allows you to perceive things using
your baseline subjective experience that are not perceivable by normal means.
That doesn't mean that they're supernatural. We call them supernatural,
But I think this is all reducible designs. We just
haven't figured it out yet. I think that I have

(01:10:52):
seen enough stuff through personal experiences, through the clinical value
of working on these things where I think, like, some
this stuff is real.

Speaker 3 (01:11:01):
Well early, when I asked you about your experience, you
said I didn't talk about it, yes, which is extremely
rare for you to say, because you talk about everything.
It seems like pretty much most things. I mean, there's
not a question I've ever asked you where you said
I don't talk about it, yes. So I'm curious as
to why you don't talk about it. Two or three reasons.

Speaker 2 (01:11:17):
One is that it depletes shot the immensely. It depletes energy.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
So as as you accumulate spiritual energy, there are certain
practices that you can do, including helping people, that will
deplete your energy. Second thing is anytime I talk about it,
I think it it induces a subtle form of ego, right,
So it's like, oh, I've been to the other side
even like talking about not talking about it. So that's
why I won't show up on a podcast and be like, oh,

(01:11:44):
like I've had all.

Speaker 3 (01:11:45):
These experiences that I'm not going to tell you about it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):
It's real, but by the way.

Speaker 1 (01:11:49):
So I think there's a subtle form of ego that
I really wrestle with and I've just learned. So there
are one or two times in my life where I've
shared these experiences and it wipes away like my meditative
progress for like five years.

Speaker 2 (01:12:01):
So it it'll take me years.

Speaker 1 (01:12:02):
Of practice to get back to having those experiences. And
I think I've also been told by my teachers and
now I'm understanding. I didn't understand back when they told me,
but I think it's not and there's other reasons too.
So it creates expectations, it creates an imagination. The moment
that there's an expectation in the mind, the mind will
reproduce that experience.

Speaker 3 (01:12:24):
Obviously, the viewer is thinking, listen, doctor kay, I trust you,
and you're suggesting you've been to the other side and
seen something and I haven't been there. But that knowledge
that you have might help me make more informed choices
of my life. So help tell me what you see experience?

Speaker 2 (01:12:42):
Yes and no, so let's understand. Okay, So.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
Any help that I can give, I'm going to give. So,
like my understanding of this mass extinction event that is
happening right now is like a spiritual sense, and I
think some people may resonate with that and some people
may not.

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
So that's the first thing. Second thing is if I
can help you, I will.

Speaker 1 (01:13:07):
I don't think this is going to help you. I
think all it's gonna do is it's gonna create ego.
It's gonna create an aura around me. I don't want that.
It's gonna create people hunting for this, which will inhibit it.
The more I say, the harder it will be for
it to help you. So the best thing to do
is if you're interested in this stuff. I mean, like literally, like,

(01:13:28):
what are we talking about here, Let's just stop and
think about this is crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
This guy is saying there's stuff after death.

Speaker 1 (01:13:33):
There's like these beings out there right Like, this is wild,
this is dumb, is unbelievable, exactly. So if you really
want to know, and this is what I love about
this work. This is the reason I say it one
of the great tragedies of the world today is that
it's explored. We know what's behind every nook and cranny.

(01:13:55):
We've mapped the Earth. There's no exploration. Maybe deep sea
is what's left, space is what's left. It's so exciting
to explore. But most human beings on the planet do
not have the opportunity to explore the frontiers of the universe, right,
the known universe. The cool thing is that I don't
know if this is gonna make sense. In the realm
of subjectivity, no one can explore for you. You have

(01:14:18):
to do the exploration yourself. And if you are hungry
to be in Magellan's shoes, if you're hungry to be
an astronaut and explore something that no one has ever
seen before, then you should meditate. And I'm a crazy person,
Like sure, am I a Harvard Medical School trained psychiatrist, Yes,

(01:14:40):
but like I could be a crazy person. I had
some experiences. I've maybe joined a cult and like that, Like,
you can't trust me exactly, So don't trust me. You
go see for yourself. Right, Go and meditate. Take take
a moment to sit, not a moment, take a year,
take a decade to sit and look that subjective experience

(01:15:01):
of self and see how far you.

Speaker 3 (01:15:03):
Can take it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:05):
Try to get rid of all of the anchors of
the material realm. If you're got an itch, you need
to not focus on that. Just focus your attention fully inward.
It's not a process of evolution. It's a process of involution.
Put all of your attention, all of your sensory inputs.
So if I close my eyes, what I hear is louder. Right,
If I smell and close my eyes, I smell something

(01:15:26):
more intensely, Remove all of your sensory perceptions and all
you're left with is attention and put it inward. If
you do that, you'll discover things if you practice consistently enough.
And this is why it's so hard, This is why
it's so unbelievable for people. I mean, the order the
time scale that we're talking about is years, if not decades.

(01:15:46):
So if you do like solid esoteric spiritual practice for
years and decades, hopefully it'll happen to you. Maybe it won't.
I haven't figured that out.

Speaker 3 (01:15:58):
What about if I do some magic mushroom, some ketamin instead.

Speaker 1 (01:16:01):
So then you'll get some experiences, right, but you won't
control what those experiences are. What are those experiences? Are
they real or are they not real? Like we're not sure?

Speaker 3 (01:16:10):
Do you think more people should try? Especially people that
are suffering from treatment resistant depression or other things were
struggling in their lives, should try things like zidocybin, which
is the active compound in magic mushrooms.

Speaker 1 (01:16:22):
Generally speaking, No, and there's a really important reason for that.
So all these things. So the number of people who
have been that I've seen in my office who have
been messed up by psychedelics far outweighs the number of
people who have been helped. Really yes, So LSD like
we know this right, there's bad trips with LSD. It
lives in your spine. You have like LSD flashbacks. I've

(01:16:46):
seen PTSD from trips. I've seen new anxiety disorders panic
disorders from psychedelic substances induced. So these are people that'll
come to me like I'm thirty two years old. I
was fine for my whole life. Six months ago I
used psychedelics and now like I'm having panic attacks.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
Here's the key thing to understand psychedelics.

Speaker 1 (01:17:09):
What we know scientifically, forget about all the whether the
beings exist or not whatever, Doctor K's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:17:15):
What we know is that they induce neuroplasticity. Now here's
the problem. Neuroplasticity means my brain is in edit mode, okay,
which means that if you edit it in the wrong way,
you'll mess up your brain. So what we know is
that this is what's really interesting. If we look at

(01:17:35):
the therapeutic effects of psychedelics, set and setting matter a lot.
You need to have like people with you who can
like shepherd you through the journey, because if you just
do it on your own, you'll potentially get worse all
of those negative whatever emotions or whatever. With the psychedelics
experience in neuroplasticity, you'll sometimes get you know, people will

(01:17:56):
call it, I forget, it's called the heroic dose, right,
So there's some guy who kind of coined that term.
So a super high dose which will activate your nervous
system in a potentially traumatic way. So if you look
at the history of psychedelics the way that they've been used,
you're helped by like a shamanah, right, So there's someone
who knows how to do it in a way that

(01:18:17):
is positive. And unfortunately, what I've seen is I've had
plenty of patients who will like experiment with it when
they're feeling really bad because they hear it is healing,
but it just messes them up even more because now
they're just going in they're editing, they have a traumatic experience.
Some demon is there it's hounding them. They can't escape.

Speaker 1 (01:18:34):
They like wake up from the trip and they're like
the demon is like there when they close their eyes,
and like all kinds of weird stuff. So I think
it has to be done in the right way, which
the studies also support that psychedelics. It's not you just
takes the asibond in your healed. What happens is you'll
have a trial that has thirteen weeks of therapy with
two doses of psychedelics in the middle. And one really

(01:18:55):
important part is after the psychedelic the therapist will talk
to you about.

Speaker 2 (01:18:59):
Integrating and what you learned into your life.

Speaker 1 (01:19:02):
Now that you've had this experience of a vastness of
self and you feel connected with other people, what are
you going to do about this divorce that you're going through.

Speaker 2 (01:19:12):
So I think there's elements that make it clinically useful.
There are elements that can heal, but you need shepherding.
I think there's a lot of data to support that.

Speaker 3 (01:19:21):
So you're pro psychedelics, but in the context where it's
guided with a trained professional and the set and setting
is controlled.

Speaker 1 (01:19:29):
I would say that I am cautiously optimistic about psychedelics
and if we want to talk about their benefits, we
need to pay attention to the way in which the
trials are conducted and the traditions in which they're conducted.

Speaker 3 (01:19:42):
I want to go back up to the top of
the top of the river here to where we were
before we took this turn, and we were talking about
the importance of cultivating a why so that you can
overcome an addictive behavior. And I actually think this is
super important because our why seem to run our life.
They seem to really be actually what we refer to

(01:20:03):
as discipline. I think it's people think of like I
am disciplined. I'm not disciplined, But actually it's for me
in my life anyway, it's when I have a really
really strong why, then I make the decision. In hindsight,
I wanted to make so, like going to the gym
as an easy example, going to the gym requires time,
it's not always super comfortable. I don't love the running machine,

(01:20:23):
but there's this overarching why that gets me there and
gets me to do it. So I wanted to a
pause and reflectors like is that accurate? But also, how
does one go about cultivating or why? If it really
is that important?

Speaker 2 (01:20:36):
I think yes is the short answer.

Speaker 1 (01:20:38):
Why is incredibly important and I lean on Eastern systems
of cultivation because if you look at the difference between
yoga and a therapist, a therapist does something to you.
Our system of psychology is designed with like a patient
that I therapize, right, they have to do some work
on their own. But like Freud was doing the analysis

(01:21:01):
in the same way the surgeon is doing the surgery.
So in the West, we have this idea that like
I'm trained, I'm gonna do something. I'm gonna therapize you.
So if you want to diyat, do it yourself. That's
where the Eastern traditions come in. Because no one was
ever meditating for the Buddha, right, the Buddha was like
I'm gonna teach you something, You're gonna do it yourself.

(01:21:22):
So I think the cultivation of if you want to
do stuff on your own, the spiritual traditions, and I
think that's why they're so powerful, because like it's a
diy system. No one was a yogi, was working by themselves.
They weren't working with anybody else, so they get taught
things and then you.

Speaker 2 (01:21:37):
Do it yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:21:39):
So I would use the word dharmah. So the tarama is
the Sanskrit word for duty, and cultivating the dharma in
your life is what I would correlate with a why,
And the reason is exactly kind of what you described,
is that there are some things in life that are painful,
but we choose to do them, and we have to
be a little bit careful because if we're delaying gratification,

(01:22:03):
then we're still giving in to desire.

Speaker 2 (01:22:05):
Right. It's just like like.

Speaker 1 (01:22:07):
My desire for ten dollars instead of one dollar means
that I'm going to work two days and then I'm
gonna get ten bucks, but it's still greed that's driving us.
So the thing about dharma or duty is it allows
us to choose hard things. So the analogy that I use,
if someone is like pointing a gun at me, I'm
going to run away from it. Gun means death, that
means disability, means all kinds of stuff. Someone points a

(01:22:28):
gun at my kid, I'm stepping into that path, no question,
no doubt, And it makes sense to everybody, right, gun bad.
But when doing dharamah, gun is easy, Like I'll take
that gun every single if a bullet leaves that gun
I want it to hit me. And it's that simple
that once you discover what your dhtarmah is, then all

(01:22:50):
of the difficult things in life become easy, the things
that if you're chasing fundamentally greed, I want something. I
want money, but I don't want to work. Why is
that such a problem, right, Because I'm always chasing my
own betterment. So i want money because I want this,
but then when I start to work, it feels bad,

(01:23:11):
so I want to go home. So I'm always being
pulled by my wants, being pulled by my wants. But
if you ask me, do I want the gun? Do
I want to step into the path of the gun?

Speaker 3 (01:23:20):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:23:20):
Absolutely not. I want to run away from the gun.

Speaker 1 (01:23:22):
But Dharamah allows me to do the things that I
don't want to do. It activates a different circuit that
allows me to embrace difficulty.

Speaker 2 (01:23:33):
So that's what the why is.

Speaker 3 (01:23:34):
Now, go ahead, you know what I'm going to say. Yes,
how do I cultivate doma? Excellent?

Speaker 1 (01:23:39):
The reason dharamah is hard to cultivate is because we
don't know what we want. Instead, we know what the
world tells.

Speaker 2 (01:23:49):
Us to want.

Speaker 1 (01:23:50):
It's like if you think about the things that you want.
How did you learn that you want those things because
you saw somebody else doing it, Like.

Speaker 3 (01:23:58):
An advert I sold the the waffle or the oreos
in an anfa.

Speaker 2 (01:24:02):
Absolutely right.

Speaker 1 (01:24:03):
That's why advertising is an industry because we've figured out
as human beings that I can control your wants. So
when I work with like young men used to be
young women, it's slightly different. But this is a bigger
issue for I think women maybe ten years ago this
is somehow it's gotten better. But for young men right now,
if I ask them what they want, they want what

(01:24:24):
they see.

Speaker 2 (01:24:25):
Also true of women.

Speaker 1 (01:24:27):
It's balancing some but like I want to be I
want to be like I'm gonna start a podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:24:32):
I'm gonna be like Stephen.

Speaker 1 (01:24:34):
I'm gonna get ripped, I'm gonna buy a house, I'm
gonna get a girlfriend. I want this, I want want one, want,
want want. None of those voices are coming from you.
They're not da So the first thing that you have
to do is evacuate anything that you want that came
from outside of you.

Speaker 3 (01:24:50):
Sometimes it's hard to tell where it came from though,
because it almost feels on the surface because when you
just said, then I want a house. I'm like, fuck,
do ax you want that household? Is the reason? No
one that house? Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:24:59):
So this is the problem is that when we want
something from the outside, we internalize it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:04):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:25:04):
So this is like if you say you should do
something right, oh, everyone in the world is struggling with
what they should do.

Speaker 2 (01:25:12):
That's not what you want. Otherwise you would use the
word want.

Speaker 1 (01:25:16):
So should is externalized expectations that we then internalize. Even
a lot of our desires are of those kinds of quality.
So it didn't come from you. You weren't sitting there
still on a mountaintop and be like, ah, I want
that house.

Speaker 2 (01:25:30):
And then the question.

Speaker 1 (01:25:31):
So the first thing you have to do is if
you like saw someone getting it and you wanted it,
that's not really what you want.

Speaker 2 (01:25:39):
But what you will find is that that triggered.

Speaker 1 (01:25:41):
Something deeper within you, so that what you saw someone
else when I I don't know if this kind of
makes sense, but like the things that we gravitate towards
connect to what we really want, but it's a version
of it. So when I see, like, you know, a
sexy dude with a sexy girl, and I say I
want that's what I think I want. And this is

(01:26:03):
the whole problem is I've worked with tons of people
who've gotten what they wanted, chased these things, and we're
still unhappy. You get the first girl, and then you
need the second, and then you need the third, and
it's like what are you even chasing here? That's when
you get to the psychological root of like, Okay, what
I want is to feel loved.

Speaker 2 (01:26:19):
I want to feel secure.

Speaker 1 (01:26:21):
And this is where people get into a lot of
trouble because if I want to feel loved, and I
craft myself into something that cannot be denied, I'm rich,
I'm famous, I'm handsome, and then someone chooses to love me,
then I'm fucked because who do they love? Do they
love this crafted version of me? Or do they love

(01:26:42):
the loser me? I don't know, and then their marriage
has all kinds of problems. So the external desires that
you have will will if you follow them within yourself.
You really ask yourself, what about this do I want?
Why do I want this? What is the thing that
is hungry within me? Because oftentimes, even when you get
the girl, you're resentful towards her. You're like, ah, you

(01:27:06):
rejected me when I was a loser, but now you
want to date.

Speaker 2 (01:27:09):
Okay, let's go.

Speaker 1 (01:27:10):
Let's have a transactional relationship where I'm gonna get laid
and I'm going to ghost you.

Speaker 3 (01:27:15):
I did that, Yeah, I did that. This girl, this
girl I meant when I was eighteen, when I was
a broke, I was a loser, and she was she
was not interested in me, and then a couple of
years later, she's interested in me when things are going
well in my life. And it was exactly what you described.
It was like there was a part of me that
knew that this was I guess I was resentful towards it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:36):
Absolutely right. And so even getting what you wanted back
then doesn't satisfy you. So your ta is what I
would say, is like, that's one thing. So look at
the things that you want, what do they track back
to within you? And then the last thing that works, really, really,
really well is to be silent, to try to find
as much quiet as you can, to remove all the

(01:27:58):
external influences and just see what comes up. Because the
things that the whys always.

Speaker 2 (01:28:04):
Come from within.

Speaker 1 (01:28:06):
They can never people can try, and god, people, my
parents tried to convince me to become a doctor, right
they tried so hard.

Speaker 2 (01:28:13):
They said why, and I was like why, And They're.

Speaker 1 (01:28:15):
Like because this and this and this and this and
this and and people are people are gonna be telling
them why they should do this, this reason, this reason,
this reason why I should get married, why you should
get married? Right, And it's never gonna work. So the
why literally comes from within. And this is why it's
so hard to find the why, because we live in
a world where we are sensorily bombarded. We're under assault

(01:28:37):
twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. In
my case, it was like efficiency. So podcasts when I'm
walking to the train, read a book on the train,
podcasts where I'm leaving the train, sitting down in class,
lectures in the ear, when I'm working out, constantly sensorly bombarded,
and so you never get to spend time with yourself, right,

(01:29:00):
So once you get rid of all of that, something
will float up. And if you talk to people who
are artists and inspiration, right, you look at something else
and I feel inspired. I'm inspired by that. But even
if you listen to the language, the inspiration arises in here,
it is triggered.

Speaker 2 (01:29:19):
By the outside thing. Does that kind of make sense?

Speaker 1 (01:29:22):
So you have to look really look within, and the
best way to that is just be silent. So I
talk a lot about my spiritual journey in India and
things like that. But what I don't talk a lot
about is like I climb mountains, like climb to Killiman
Jarro climbed all these mountains and like Colorado and stuff
like that, and like climbing is great. Like you're just
with yourself for fourteen hours a day and at the

(01:29:43):
top of kill Him and jar A, not the top.
Eight hours from the top, you have no breath to talk.
It requires all of your energy, all of your concentration.
You're huffing and puffing. You are just with yourself in
a very deep way. You can't pay attention to what
anyone else is saying or doing because ea should leg
My leg feels like it's made of lead. I'm just

(01:30:05):
with myself so so, so, so deeply. And when you're
with yourself deeply in that way, the why will come?

Speaker 3 (01:30:15):
Why is it we don't like being with.

Speaker 1 (01:30:18):
Ourselves because no one taught us how to in the
right way?

Speaker 3 (01:30:25):
That study comes to mind where they put college kids
in a room and ask them if they would rather
sit alone or electrocute themselves. And the college students, many
of them decided they'd rather electrocute themselves than sit alone
with their thoughts. And wait, yeah, why is that?

Speaker 1 (01:30:42):
For the same reason that people engage in self injurious behavior,
So people cut right burn, So when people are very
mentally unhealthy, they will engage in these behaviors because pain
wipes me free from all the thoughts in my head.
I don't have to be with myself. Most people their
experience of themselves this is negative because if, like you know,
I experienced this a lot, where I would play video

(01:31:04):
games all day and then if I went to bed
without falling asleep, immediately this current of negative negativity would
come up. Anxiety, regret, guilt, shame, whatever, right, And so
if you sort of think about it, like being with
us is normally a very negative place. And the reason
it becomes a negative place is because we suppress all

(01:31:24):
this negativity. So in my mind becomes an unhealthy place
to be. I don't want to be there. It sucks
being me. That's why we get into the pornography, because
in the in between spaces of my life, if I
have to sit with myself, it's shit. I'm worried, I'm guilty,
I'm pathetic. There's this existential crisis. AI is going to
take take my job. And it's not just negativity, it's

(01:31:45):
also positivity. I should be using AI. I should start
an AI startup. I'm not doing this. I really should
be doing this. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:31:52):
If you just like sit with yourself, you'll notice there's.

Speaker 1 (01:31:54):
All kinds of like trash desires and wants and ambitions
and teach people lesson and oh my god, the world
is such a terrible place. It's like this is not
a good place, so no one ever teaches us how
to sit with ourselves.

Speaker 3 (01:32:09):
I have this habit where I get in bed. My partner, Shia,
falls asleep very very quickly. She doesn't need any kind
of stimulation, and I sit there and I like listen
to the sounds of crazy talk. But I listen to
like serial killer stuff, or I listen to the news.
I just need to. I'm conscious of saying the word need.
I choose to listen to things to kind of preoccupy
my mind. And I think what I'm scared of, if
I'm being honest, is the thought of going to bed

(01:32:32):
and laying there and doing nothing It's just like it
just makes me feel that there would just I wouldn't
be able to sleep. I don't know if that's true,
but I just feel like I'd start thinking so much
and then the thoughts might make me get out of
bed and start writing a PowerPoint presentation or something. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:32:53):
So in your case, I just continue listening to your
fun thriller podcast before you go to bed. You don't
need to change that. Okay, you just keep doing that,
So don't worry. I'm gonna give you, but be kind.
Cut yourself a break. Bro, you're doing so much like
if you just want to help you get what I'm saying. Yeah,
and I'll help you with the issue.

Speaker 3 (01:33:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:33:12):
But so this is really important on the road of
self development. You don't have to, like, if you're going
to flagulate yourself, you don't have to flagulate yourself in
the nuts.

Speaker 2 (01:33:24):
What it's like when you whip yourself. You know, there's
all like all like you know, like you don't have to.

Speaker 1 (01:33:29):
Do it the hardest way. You were allowed to do
it in safer, easier ways. And I think bedtime is like,
if that's what you like to do, like you work
plenty hard, Steven, if you want to listen to something
where you just do that. Now your issue of if
I feel like it was empty, or if I didn't
have a podcast or something like, all this stuff would
come up.

Speaker 2 (01:33:49):
So I think you should do that work. You just
don't have to do it before bad.

Speaker 1 (01:33:53):
And we've talked about this before that you know, like
I think sitting on a beach is hard for you
doing nothing, right, Yeah, So like I think like there
are other places where you can sit and kind of
do nothing. The other thing that I would a couple
of things that I would tell you is one is
whatever comes up needs to come up, Okay, so just
let whatever is coming up coming up.

Speaker 2 (01:34:12):
It's kind of like your mind is so full of stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:34:14):
There's another kind of mistake that you're making is that
you assume that when a thought comes up, you will
get up and work on it.

Speaker 2 (01:34:23):
So the reason that your mind is a.

Speaker 1 (01:34:26):
Dangerous place for you is because of the way that
you respond to your thoughts. If I have this thought,
then I have to act. You notice that, like I
have to get up.

Speaker 2 (01:34:34):
You said that.

Speaker 1 (01:34:36):
The moment that you don't have to get up is
the moment you'll be free in your mind. Right, So
let it come up. Okay, it's a thought. It's okay
to get up. Sometimes I do too. I get up,
I'll write things down. That's how we get to you know,
Book three is ready at the same time that Book
two is ready, like like cause, I you know, there's
a good part of that, but I think it's you know,
learning how to sit with yourself is very important. This

(01:35:00):
is also where I'd recommend a practice called thratica to
you if you want to meditate. It's fixed point gazing
on a candle flame. And the key thing about that
practice is when you close your eyes, you'll see so
you stare at a candle flame for like sixty to
three hundred seconds without blinking, whatever feels safe and comfortable
to you.

Speaker 2 (01:35:17):
It'll feel a little bit uncomfortable, and.

Speaker 1 (01:35:19):
Then when you close your eyes, you'll see an after
image of the candle and then you just concentrate on that.
So the first step is like being able to do
a meditator practice and like not feel bad, Like it's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:35:32):
Like I do this practice with my.

Speaker 1 (01:35:34):
Kids because it gives them a sensory experience that is
like gripping, So it kind of concentrates your awareness in
the present, but I think you don't need to worry
so much about like the bedtime.

Speaker 3 (01:35:48):
Yeah, I was gonna say, I think it's more so
that I think I've associated that behavior with some kind
of avoidance. So I think, and especially because I look
over my partner and she's like a yogi, so she's
doing everything differently. I was gonna say, well, but again
that's passing judgment on that she's just doing everything differently.
She can fall asleep like this, she doesn't need to

(01:36:09):
listen to someone getting murdered or something. She wakes up.
She does have meditation. And do I think that she
has a more peaceful mind than me? I probably, I
think she certainly does.

Speaker 1 (01:36:20):
Yeah, so here's what I would say. This is gonna
get hard. Okay, So it's avoidance. What's wrong with that?
So here you are, you're saying, oh, like I'm avoiding
my thoughts, and then you come to me and you're like,
doctor Gay, teach me how to avoid avoiding my thoughts.

Speaker 2 (01:36:41):
It's the same thing.

Speaker 1 (01:36:43):
Yeah, Oh, now you're gonna avoid the avoidance of your thoughts. No,
never gonna work. You'll do it a million. You can
go back as far as you and you see what
I'm saying. Now you're like, oh, teach me how to
like not avoid I want to avoid. Avoidance doesn't work.
That's why I'm saying, like with this, what you just
do this? Just go to bed and just look at
yourself today. Are you going to listen to a podcast

(01:37:04):
or not? Just just ask yourself that. I know it's
like really unsatisfying, but that's really so the problem is
like there's this paradox of like if I'm avoiding avoidance,
that's just falling into the same pattern.

Speaker 2 (01:37:15):
So you need to like crack it.

Speaker 1 (01:37:18):
Like this is why the Zen tradition is really beautiful
because they have all these paradoxes and there's this like weird,
like transcendent transcendental understanding what it'll click for you and
then you'll realize you don't need to listen to the
podcast anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:37:30):
But it's not going to come through the resisting exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:37:33):
So just when you go to bed today, am I
gonna give in to this part of myself? Or do
I need to be better? And what you'll discover. What
I found is that there's a lot of laughter there. Right.
He's like the absurdity of it's like all right, I'm
going to lose today.

Speaker 2 (01:37:48):
I'm going to win today. Oh Man.

Speaker 1 (01:37:50):
Winning feels way worse than losing. There's a certain like
humor to it that you just have to sit with.

Speaker 3 (01:37:55):
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(01:39:46):
want to join our private, closed community, head to the
link in the description below or go to doac circle
dot com. I will speak to you. Then there is
this quote that I found in one of your videos
from Sunsuit mm hmm. Video is titled how quit and
porn can be dangerous? What is that Sunso quote? And

(01:40:07):
can you explain it to me?

Speaker 1 (01:40:08):
So? Sanzu has a great quote he will win who
knows when to fight and when not to fight. And
a big part of like overcoming addiction is choosing your
battles and making sure doing everything that you can to
make sure that you're going to win when you fight.
So this is something that really confuses people about pornography addiction.

(01:40:30):
So one of the things that I I'll tell people
is that resisting pornography is one of.

Speaker 2 (01:40:36):
The worst things you can do. So I'll explain this
to you.

Speaker 1 (01:40:39):
So this I learned when I was dealing with people
with who had opioid addiction. So let's say I'm addicted
to opiates and so I feel like using opiates. Okay,
Now I don't know how much you know, but we'll
just find out if I resist my opioid addiction. What
will I experience stress? Absolutely? And then what will I

(01:41:00):
What do opioids do? Do you know why we give them?
We give them for pain relief? Okay, So like you
have a dental surgery, So then I feel stressed and
then I want it more. And then if I don't
give my body opioids, what do you think happens? What
for what period of time like in the next hour,
two hours, three hours? Brilliant question.

Speaker 3 (01:41:21):
Cravings?

Speaker 1 (01:41:22):
Absolutely, I get cravings, and if I don't give into them,
what happens full period of time four hours, five hours,
six hours. Basically, what happens is the cravings intensify, and
then opioid addicts especially start to feel pain. So they
start to feel this like whole body pain. You start
to go into withdrawal, and so the craving intensified. Does
that make sense? I start to feel worse, and then

(01:41:43):
if I use opioids then it all gets better with me.

Speaker 3 (01:41:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:41:48):
So then if you follow that cycle of resisting, resisting, resisting,
and then caving, Okay, your body learns a very very
bad lesson, it says, making him hurt ten percent. I
don't get what I want making him hurt twenty percent,
I don't get what I want, making him hurt forty percent,

(01:42:09):
I don't get what I want, making him hurt eighty percent.
Then he gives me what I want. The second time around,
you'll jump straight to eighty percent. So you will start
to suffer more. So your body literally learns what signals
do I need to send this dumb ass to give

(01:42:31):
me what I need. And so the more that you
resist addiction, the stronger the addiction will like, the stronger
the withdrawal will become. Now here's what I mean by resist.
If you cave, then it'll intensify. But it so if

(01:42:52):
you're going to give in, you're like need to give
in early, otherwise it'll get harder and harder and harder,
and the cravings will intensify, intensify, intensify as you try
to give it up. Which is why it's really important
to pick your battles. So once you make a decision,
or you create a structured environment where you go into
rehab so that like you can't give in, and then

(01:43:12):
if you can make it all the way on the
other side of the craving, and the craving disappears, and
then you're like, you finish the withdrawal process, then you'll
be really strong. But literally, I've seen this principle time
and time and time again, where if you resist something
and end up losing, the craving will only intensify over time,
and it'll be you'll lose one battle and you'll start
losing the war. So instead, what you really need to

(01:43:34):
do is pick and choose when you are going to
fight that battle, when you're going to give in. And
if you decide that you're going to not use pornography,
then it needs to be like you're dying on that
hill no matter what.

Speaker 2 (01:43:47):
Otherwise the cravings will intensify and it'll become harder.

Speaker 3 (01:43:50):
What about artificial intelligence? Does that change the pictrootl in
your view?

Speaker 1 (01:43:54):
No, I think artificial intelligence is like just building on
a lot of these trends. So what we're seeing with
things like pornography is that there is a fundamental need
that is not being met.

Speaker 3 (01:44:06):
I'm looking at this graph here, Okay, it's the search
volume for people searching for an AI girlfriend yep, which
is going up into the right.

Speaker 2 (01:44:14):
I don't know if I did this on your podcast,
but I made this prediction a few years ago that
we're going to get some This is going to get
worse before it gets better, I think.

Speaker 1 (01:44:24):
So here's the next prediction is the first version of
AI girlfriends will be everything that you want. Then someone
is going to figure out that it is more addicting
to have an AI girlfriend who gets pissed at you
once a month, so every now and then, like the
AI girlfriend is not going to want to talk to you,
and that's the one that people are going to stick with.

Speaker 2 (01:44:43):
That's my next prediction.

Speaker 3 (01:44:44):
That maps in terms of addiction psychology, doesn't it If
there's what's it called unpredictable reward.

Speaker 1 (01:44:51):
Yeah, random reinforcement schedule, So it's going to be like
an AI girlfriend that's.

Speaker 3 (01:44:55):
A loop box. That's what my girlfriend's like.

Speaker 1 (01:44:59):
Exactly why it's going to be addictive, right because if
she was nice to you all the time, like you'd
go crazy.

Speaker 3 (01:45:06):
I'm thinking of the pigeon study that I learned about
in our sixteen in psychology classes. If you know the
study where they give the pigeon the reward at random intervals,
and the pigeon that's most addicted to performing the behavior
per se is the pigeon who gets given the treat randomly,
not in a predictable, scheduled way, So random rewards seem

(01:45:27):
to reinforce engagement with.

Speaker 2 (01:45:28):
Behavior absolutely one hundred percent.

Speaker 3 (01:45:30):
So our AI girlfriends and boyfriends are going to be volatile.

Speaker 1 (01:45:35):
Yeah, I think they're going to learn to be volatile
because what's going to happen is someone is going to
give you an AI that it gives you the answers
that you want all the time, and then someone's going
to give you an AI that gives you the answers
that you want some of the time. And I think
what we're seeing with AI girlfriends is in the same
way with pornography. We're craving these things and it's so
much easier to talk to an AI. But I think
that over time it's going to mess us up. I

(01:45:57):
don't think that it will be able to e the
neurochemical and physiological connection that real humans do that will
really satisfy us.

Speaker 3 (01:46:07):
I mean, you've probably heard of the study from MIT
which showed that essentially using chatchypt is making our brain's atrophy.
For context, they had roughly fifty four participants I think
it was over four months, and they allowed some of
them to use just their brain, some of them to
use Google search and some of them to use CHATCHYPT
And they found a bunch of different interesting findings. One

(01:46:28):
of them was that roughly eighty percent of people that
use CHATCHYBT to write an essay could not remember a
single sentence from what they just produced, versus the brain
group and the Google group who could remember pretty much
everything that they had written. The other finding was that
the communication was soulless, described as soulless by objective observers.
And the last thing is just the impact that had

(01:46:49):
in the brain. They found that the connections in the
brain I think were roughly fifty percent weaker because they
hadn't been using their brain. And you think about this atrophy.
So like we talk about go to the gym, you
use it. If you don't use it, you lose it.
But also as it relates to the brain and maybe
our skills to form relationships, maybe there's going to be

(01:47:09):
an atrophy there.

Speaker 1 (01:47:11):
Oh, there absolutely is. So I think it's really simple
to understand. The human body is efficient more than anything else.
It is an energy conserving mechanism beyond anything else. So
anything that it doesn't need, it's going to get rid
of So this is why we forget languages that we
don't use. Skills atrophy over time. That is not a problem.

(01:47:35):
That's the way we're designed. Our brain is like, if
you don't need it, get rid of it. So if
Stephen everyone were to be riding around in electric wheelchairs
for hours and hours a day instead of walking, what
would happen.

Speaker 3 (01:47:50):
We'd lose all legs absolutely right.

Speaker 1 (01:47:52):
So, and our brain is like, hey, we don't need
these muscles. Our body is like, we don't need these muscles.
And so what we're seeing is an atrophy of critical
thinking skills absolutely with AI usage. And the reason is
because we don't need them anymore. The real question, and
this against this is what because the AI does it
for us, right, why do I need to learn how
to write an essay? If an AI can, if I

(01:48:12):
can click, I can just put a prompt in and
then it gives me an answer.

Speaker 3 (01:48:16):
They actually found that in the study I was reading
about it last night, they found that people who then
tried to write an essay without CHATCHBT was significantly worse
at that than those who had never used it. Absolutely so.
But that and also they started thinking and speaking like
the AI. So it said that they internalized the way
that the AI was speaking when they wrote their own essays.

Speaker 2 (01:48:37):
It makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1 (01:48:38):
So I think there's there's a couple of even scarier
things going on. The first is that when we use
an AI. So I did a really fun experiment with
a couple of friends of mine. We like streamed this
thing where we basically gave the AI clinical cases. So
it was me and two psychologists friends of mine, and
we basically like I wrote up like a clinical history,

(01:49:01):
pulled some things from my notes.

Speaker 2 (01:49:02):
And I put it into AI.

Speaker 1 (01:49:04):
So when I ask my friends, you know, here's the
clinical history word for word, I read it aloud, I
got their thoughts on it, and then I put it
into the AI. And some situations they were pretty close.
But there are a couple of really great cases of
patients who are incredibly narcissistic, who will like come in,
will say, my daughter doesn't want to talk to me anymore.

(01:49:25):
She does this, and she does this. I try my best,
I make sacrifices, I do this. I'm like, basically she's
like incredibly narcissistic. Talks about our daughter is the problem.
So immediately the two therapists pick it up and they're like,
this person sounds a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:49:38):
I think this person is missing something. We're missing some
part of the equation here.

Speaker 1 (01:49:41):
Whereas the AI is like, oh yeah, Like sometimes this
is hard, you've got empty nest syndrome. Sometimes kids aren't
grateful to you. You're like, you're not doing anything wrong.
It can be useful to like share with them how
you feel. Right, So the AI reflects back what you
give it. So the AI, if you have a really
strong cognitive bias, the AI will just reflect that back

(01:50:05):
to you, which is why it feels so right. If
I take the most narcissistic person on the planet and
I tell them, oh my god, you are beautiful, you
are intelligent, you're brilliant, You're the best, that person will
look at me and say, oh my god, this guy
is brilliant. So this is the real problem with AI
is that it's going to just give you whatever you're

(01:50:26):
looking for.

Speaker 2 (01:50:27):
It won't give you the truth.

Speaker 1 (01:50:29):
And the problem is, if you have a strong cognitive bias,
what you want to hear is what you think the
truth is. The really scary thing is the AI can
give you the right answer, but you have to know
how to ask it.

Speaker 2 (01:50:43):
So what I'm seeing is that prompt engineering.

Speaker 1 (01:50:47):
So if we play around with what I ask the
AI with that case, it starts to get closer and
closer to narcissism. But here's the real problem is that
you don't know how do you know what to ask
the AI? The real skill of AI usage is in
asking the right questions, because that will I think, get
you the closest to the truth. But we don't know

(01:51:09):
if it's the right questions. So you can ask it
one question, is that the right question? Or could you
ask it better? Are you moving in the right direction
with your prompt engineering or the wrong direction with your
prompt engineering? So I think this is what's really scary
about it is it can just let you feed into
your existing cognitive biases, make you think you're learning a lot,
give you a lot of sense of validation, and it's

(01:51:29):
incredibly validating, by the way.

Speaker 3 (01:51:31):
And do you think it's going to atrophy our ability
to form relationships? Because one of them is just like
forgetting how to communicate and think for ourselves, absolutely critical thinkings, PETE.
Having a good relationship with the opposite sex.

Speaker 2 (01:51:43):
It will absolutely a trophy r So it'll give us.

Speaker 1 (01:51:45):
Right now, it's in a phase where it can teach
us a couple of really important things. So I think
it's really good at disseminating some good information, but it
will never give us skills. An atrophy is on the
level of skill, not knowledge. Knowledge doesn't atrophy. Atrophy really
applies to a loss of function. So it'll get worse
and worse. And then what will absolutely happen is some

(01:52:09):
dating app will will collaborate with an AI to have
you text. It'll like modify your texts to be really
really responsive, And then what will happen.

Speaker 2 (01:52:17):
We're already seeing this in the employment space.

Speaker 1 (01:52:20):
So employers used to use tools like AI to filter
through applications. Right, we can have a bunch of applications.
I can scan it, I can filter based on this.
Now that we have access to AI's like chat GPT,
it's just some weird dead Internet kind of thing where
the employer has a bot and now I'm submitting a
bot with a resume, like I have a resume writing

(01:52:41):
a bot.

Speaker 2 (01:52:42):
So it's just bots talking to bots, and.

Speaker 1 (01:52:45):
Employers are like where you're getting all these AI generated resumes,
whereas they've been using like computing to get rid of
resumes and filter things out for a long time.

Speaker 3 (01:52:55):
So what's the advice then, is it to not use AI,
not these sledge language models.

Speaker 2 (01:53:00):
No, No, I mean I saw.

Speaker 1 (01:53:00):
I think this is what's really tricky is you have
to use AI now because you're going to be out
competed by the people who don't. So I would kind
of think about it like you know, caffeine, where it's
like a certain amount is probably good for you, but
if you get really addicted to energy drinks and things
like that, you're doing yourself a disservice. So what I
tend to, what I would recommend for people is that
you don't let it do your thinking for you, but

(01:53:23):
you can let it do. So I let it do
some refining for me. But every refining that I let
it do, it weakens my ability to refine. So the
way that actually maybe the best analogy is think of
chat GPT like taking the elevator. So for this trip,
it will make things easy for you, but it will

(01:53:44):
make every single trip that you take after.

Speaker 3 (01:53:47):
It harder because there's sym atrophy absolutely by not taking
the stairs right.

Speaker 2 (01:53:53):
And I sometimes take the elevator, and I sometimes take
the stairs.

Speaker 3 (01:53:59):
Don't okay, thank you. We have a closing tradition on
this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for
the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for.
And the question that's been left for you is what
is the most powerful love in your life? And why.

Speaker 1 (01:54:16):
The most I mean, I would have to say it's
the love for my nuclear family, like hands down and
without a doubt. And I think it's kind of interesting
because it's not localized on one person. So I have
two daughters and I have a wife, and we started
playing Dungeons and Dragons recently, and we also I create
we created a new holiday called Mother's Day Eve, which

(01:54:38):
is like Christmas Eve but for Mother's Day.

Speaker 2 (01:54:40):
And I love this holiday.

Speaker 1 (01:54:41):
So it's basically like a chance, like we prepare and
we get all the stuff that my wife loves, like
ready for her, and instead of like Mother's Day being like, oh,
like here's breakfast in bed, like we like party basically
doing all of our favorite things.

Speaker 2 (01:54:53):
So I'd say the biggest love in my life.

Speaker 1 (01:54:55):
I don't remember exactly what the question is, but I
think it's encapsulated with Mother's Day Eve, and I think
think if y'all are listening to this and you want
a really fun holiday that has not been overly commercialized.
Father's Day Eve and Mother's Day Eve are the two.
Just like make a celebration of all the things that
this person does. Do it at night, the night before.

Speaker 3 (01:55:13):
And not the morning. It's great. Thank you, Yeah, thank you.
I really appreciate these conversations. I mean, I don't have
to tell you, but every single time, it's kind of
like a reset in my life. Speaking to you for
so many reasons, because it helps me, brings me back
from whatever bullshit has consumed me since we last spoke. Yeah,
and it's really it's almost like a baptism. That's the

(01:55:36):
way I would describe it. But I know it is
for my listeners too, because they come up to me
in the streets. So I was saying to you before
we started recording. They come up to you all over
the world. I remember lady in New York a couple
of weeks ago came over to me mid workout and
told me and what she was like, I'm listening to
doctor K right now and showed me her phone and
was like, can you get it back on the podcast?
And it's it's incredible and I actually aspire to be

(01:55:57):
like you in so many ways because I think there's
a spiritual component to me that I'm yet to explore.
And I think spending time with you as someone I
trust so much in so many areas really is a
and held into a new realm which I'm a little
bit sort of hesitant to investigate.

Speaker 2 (01:56:14):
Do I get to respond, No, I'm joking with what
you do.

Speaker 3 (01:56:17):
Sometimes we get.

Speaker 1 (01:56:18):
Into this last word game where it's a meeting of
the mutual appreciation club. So Steve and I what I
love about you and I really do love coming here.
They say, oh, you should have me back on the podcast.
What we create here is a diet. There is a
component that you bring. I could not do this without you, right, So,

(01:56:38):
like there's something that you and I meet and then
we make something that is unique, and I think you're
really good at making it with a lot of people,
and you and I are going to make our own
kind of baby, you know, And so it's it's honestly,
it's a blast.

Speaker 3 (01:56:53):
Thank you.