Order of Man - How Not to Think Like a Loser ｜ SCOTT ADAMS

00:00:00.000 Social media is a powerful tool. If it weren't for the good that social media has done, you likely

00:00:05.020 wouldn't be tuned into this podcast right now. That said, it seems to me that the use of social

00:00:09.740 media is what's making us dumber, or at least it's encouraging us to behave that way. My guest 0.87

00:00:15.940 today, Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert joins me to talk about exactly why that is and the type

00:00:21.140 of thinking that he refers to as loser think. It's also the title of his new book, which is

00:00:26.480 subtitled How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America. Today, we talk about the fact that being right

00:00:31.980 and also being wrong feel the exact same, how to determine what battles to fight online,

00:00:38.320 how shaming and mockery can be used positively, and ultimately, how you can avoid thinking like a 0.82

00:00:44.260 loser. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears, and boldly chart your

00:00:49.640 own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time. You are not easily

00:00:55.620 deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who you are. This is

00:01:02.920 who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself

00:01:08.300 a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler, and I am the host and the founder

00:01:13.340 of this podcast and the movement that is Order of Man. You know what we're all about here. This is a show

00:01:18.040 designed to give you the tools and resources and guidance and specifically the conversations that

00:01:22.620 you need to make yourself more capable in all ways. Today, we're going to be talking about

00:01:28.040 verbal jousting. We're going to be talking about training your brain to think correctly,

00:01:33.140 and then being able to articulate that in a online conversation and also a real life conversation.

00:01:40.680 We just wrapped up Thanksgiving. I hope those of you who celebrated Thanksgiving,

00:01:44.500 at least if you're in the States, you probably did enjoyed and had some food and

00:01:48.500 we're able to give thanks for all that you have. I do want to thank you guys for being

00:01:53.100 on this path. I know I do this every week, but it's important. I do it now as well because

00:01:57.400 of Thanksgiving and it reminds us of the things that we should be grateful for. And man, we've

00:02:02.480 been on this path for almost five years. And every day I wake up with this just tremendous

00:02:09.460 sense of gratitude for the work that I get to do and something that's rewarding and fulfilling

00:02:13.600 to me. And it wouldn't be possible without you. Now we move into Christmas season for better and

00:02:20.420 worse because it can be both. So I hope that you do enjoy your holidays and Christmas season and new

00:02:25.980 year and Thanksgiving and all of that. Right now, guys, if you're looking for Christmas gifts,

00:02:31.240 I have a couple of thoughts for you. The first is go to our store. We just got some new hats.

00:02:36.680 They're doing very, very well. They're called the Ranger hat. It's a low profile snapback hat.

00:02:41.180 And it is designed to be a curve brim hat for all you curve brimmers out there. 0.99

00:02:45.080 In fact, this is a hat that I actually wear and it's a curve brim. So maybe you guys are converting

00:02:49.080 me back to the curve brim side. Anyways, check that out. Store.orderofman.com. You can check out

00:02:55.260 the shirts, the battle planners, the wallets, the flags, everything, everything we've got over there.

00:03:01.060 And also if you want a great Christmas gift, one thing that I would recommend that you pass along to

00:03:07.140 your friends or your spouse or significant other or whoever it may be is let them know that you want

00:03:13.580 a brand new pair of origin boots. You can head over to origin main as in the state main origin,

00:03:19.740 main.com and see what options they have. I have the bison boots. Those are, I believe they're best

00:03:26.580 selling boots according to Pete. And I can get you a discount on them as well, which if you're talking

00:03:31.360 about a pair of boots, the discount is sizable. Use the code order O-R-D-E-R at checkout and you'll

00:03:38.500 get a discount on your boots, denim, geese, rash guards, supplemental lineup with Jocko, all of it,

00:03:44.980 origin, main.com. Check it out for your Christmas gifts and your Christmas shopping. All right, guys,

00:03:50.360 with that said, let me get into the introduction to our guest. His name is Scott Adams. And I'm stoked

00:03:57.780 to be able to introduce you to him before I do. I want to make sure that I thank my friend Jordan

00:04:01.340 Harbinger for introducing us. You may not know who Scott is right away, but I'm sure that any of you

00:04:08.120 listening know Dilbert. Scott is the creator of Dilbert and the bestselling author of when Bigley

00:04:13.320 and his new book, which we'd be talking about today called loser think. Although Scott has really

00:04:19.600 started to gain attention and traction with Dilbert many, many years ago, his political commentary is

00:04:25.880 in my mind, just as if not more important. If you're interested, you can check out what he has

00:04:31.180 to say on Twitter. It's always good for a laugh and entertainment, but he's also right a lot of the

00:04:36.340 time. And he's never been afraid to ruffle a few feathers. And I think that is why he has gained such

00:04:41.000 a following. It's his ability to say what needs to be said and his ability to say it in a way that

00:04:46.380 connects with so many of us. So I hope you enjoy this one. It's my conversation with the one only Scott

00:04:51.700 Adams. Scott, thanks for joining me on the Order of Man podcast. Looking forward to having you.

00:04:57.760 Thanks for having me. Yeah, you bet. I, uh, I was, uh, let's see, I was talking with Jordan

00:05:02.940 Harbinger, a mutual friend of ours. And I had listened to that conversation you had and asked

00:05:06.840 if he'd make an introduction. I'm really glad he did because I just told you before we hit record

00:05:10.860 that I just finished the book. And it was funny as I was thinking about it, I'm like, man, this is a

00:05:15.080 great book. Unfortunately, everybody who needs to read it probably won't. But then I thought

00:05:19.480 maybe that's some form of loser think myself. So I'm really anxious to dig into this.

00:05:24.880 Well, you know, one of the things that, uh, I recommend in the book is that people take a

00:05:29.680 picture of it with their phone and just post it online whenever it would be useful for their part

00:05:35.400 of the argument. So if I've said something in the book, that's better than the way you could have said

00:05:39.940 it yourself, just take a picture and post it that way. Other people get to see it secondhand.

00:05:45.700 Yeah. Well, I think that that's probably the case for everything that you wrote in the book.

00:05:49.480 Is that you said it much more eloquently than I would ever say it. That's one of my biggest

00:05:53.220 challenges is engaging with people on social media tend to, uh, lose my cool. We'll say lose

00:05:59.000 my cool more often than I'd like to admit. Yeah. It's, uh, it's too easy because you're not in

00:06:04.980 person. You know, it's, it's easy to be the angry person when, when you don't have to look somebody in

00:06:09.880 the eye. Well, I think there's a lot to be said for that. I think, uh, the lack of, I don't know

00:06:16.540 if humanity is the right term, but you know, certainly when you have a disagreement with

00:06:20.540 a neighbor or a family member, there's a lot more humanity because you know, the medical issue that

00:06:26.060 they're dealing with, or, you know, a little bit more of the nuances that they may be coming from

00:06:30.740 with their experiences in life. And in that context, what you talk about in the book, uh, gives you the

00:06:36.280 ability for some, uh, I don't know if mercy you would say, but just humanity in general.

00:06:43.120 Well, there's also no risk if you're just insulting strangers on the internet, but if 0.99

00:06:47.680 you insult your neighbor, that's probably going to come right around and bite you in the ass sometime. 1.00

00:06:53.660 Yeah. It's funny because a lot of people talk about social media with this negative connotation 1.00

00:06:58.860 towards it. And certainly it can be, I think learning the principles and the strategies you share in

00:07:04.860 this book will, will definitely help. But social media is such a powerful tool for connection. I

00:07:10.640 mean, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation if it weren't for the power of social media and

00:07:14.200 everything that, uh, everything that it represents. Yeah, it's more than, it's more than a communication

00:07:21.360 tool. You know, sometimes things evolve and you say, Oh, that's just a better way to communicate.

00:07:26.680 It's just more communication. It's just a little better, but eventually sometimes things will

00:07:31.520 improve to the point where it's just a whole different thing. You know, where, where your

00:07:35.540 phone used to be just a, Hey, it's a way to make a phone call. Now you're a cyborg because you basically

00:07:41.800 have your, your cell phone with you all the time and it augments your intelligence and connects you

00:07:46.940 to the intelligence of the world. You're effectively a cyborg. And it just started down as, Hey, here's a

00:07:52.820 way to tell my friend I'm on the way to the restaurant. And, uh, it grew from there.

00:07:57.580 Do you think that people don't fully realize the potential of, of their phones and being a cyborg,

00:08:05.520 which is why we are untrained, I guess you'd say, to use it effectively and corrective correctly?

00:08:12.600 Well, you know, technology sometimes moves faster than evolution moves faster than society can catch

00:08:18.920 up. So we're always going to have that, you know, technology gets ahead of us and then we figure it out.

00:08:23.880 So I think we're in the wrestling with it phase where what social media is and what it can do to

00:08:30.560 people kind of caught us a little bit off guard. Uh, but I think people are figuring ways to cope

00:08:36.720 now. There's, there's a little more, I'd say adult approach to the internet, although it has divided

00:08:42.920 us into essentially two worlds and they barely speak. Uh, you're talking about the digital and the

00:08:49.320 physical realm or something else. Well, I'm talking about in the digital realm, especially people

00:08:54.920 don't want to communicate with the other side, don't want to watch their news, don't follow them 0.82

00:08:58.840 on social media, but it obviously is translating to the real world as well. It's, it's funny. My wife

00:09:05.660 and I were having a conversation the other day about, uh, well, we were driving to DC, which for us is a 10

00:09:10.820 hour drive and we were with our kids and they had wanted to listen to some music and they asked us to

00:09:16.060 put on the one song that they wanted. And my wife and I kind of laughed because, uh, when we were kids

00:09:22.360 is you didn't get to pick the one song. You had to listen through the entire tape to get to the song

00:09:28.600 that you wanted. So you had, you had to take the good with the bad. And I feel like in society anymore

00:09:33.720 is you don't get, you don't have to take the good with the bad. You can just select and handpick

00:09:38.500 everything that you want to hear and everything that confirms what you already believe and everything

00:09:42.720 that makes you feel comfortable. And you have to take nothing that might challenge anything that

00:09:47.960 you believe or threaten who you think you are. Well, you know, choice is sort of a double-edged

00:09:53.700 sword. Everybody would want more choice if you gave them the option. Do you want more or less choice?

00:09:59.380 People will usually say more, but it makes us less happy because it's, uh, we have more things we have

00:10:04.760 to process and figure out. And then you have regret. Oh, I should have picked that other choice.

00:10:10.040 But I, I remember the days when we had two good network channels we could watch on television and

00:10:17.540 the rest didn't come in clearly. And I think I was just as happy. You know, I complained more about

00:10:24.320 having to sit through the commercials, but I don't think I was less happy as a person. So, you know,

00:10:30.220 that we have to watch out for the unintended consequences of this stuff.

00:10:34.380 How do you think then that you decipher between what is productive progress and what is maybe just

00:10:42.920 noise? Yeah. I say in loser think that one of the reasons you shouldn't say something is a slippery

00:10:49.540 slope is that quite often that slippery slope is somebody else's progress. So, you know, if you went

00:10:56.300 from, uh, you can't discriminate against gays and employment. Well, it's a slippery slope. The next thing

00:11:03.000 you know, they're going to be getting married. Well, now they're getting married now, depending on

00:11:07.020 which, uh, I guess perspective you're taking, that's either progress. In my opinion, it's progress,

00:11:13.760 but somebody else is going to say, well, it's a slippery slope. Look where it's heading. Next thing,

00:11:18.580 you know, uh, so, uh, slippery slopes are something that can typically be ignored.

00:11:25.340 That's interesting because that one actually stood out in my mind and, and you had,

00:11:29.440 I believe on that segment talked about, uh, gun legislation and regulation. And it's funny because

00:11:35.600 you have things like red flag laws. And there was an issue that I was following on, uh, on Instagram

00:11:40.260 just over the weekend. And I've caught myself saying that, that that is a slippery slope.

00:11:44.280 And I'm trying to think about how I would better frame that because quite honestly, what comes to my

00:11:50.820 mind is that if you open up, for example, red flag laws, there is some danger and that it continues to

00:11:57.380 go down that path, regardless of what I'll, or how you interpret that path to mean.

00:12:03.180 Well, to that, I would add what I call the Adams law of slow moving disasters. When society can see

00:12:10.460 a specific problem that, and everybody can see it and it's coming, but it's a ways off. We have an

00:12:16.920 extraordinarily good track record as human beings for solving the problem. We didn't run out of food,

00:12:23.940 even though the population was going up. We didn't run out of oil. We just figured out how to frack and,

00:12:28.780 and make windmills and solar panels. And we didn't, you know, we didn't lose all of our power or we

00:12:35.580 didn't lose all of our technology in the year 2000. And those, those were all things that we,

00:12:40.680 we saw coming. They were very specific. You know, you didn't have to wonder about them.

00:12:45.220 And I think the red flag laws and the gun, gun confiscation risks, same thing. You can see the

00:12:52.540 potential risk and every person can see it. You know, even the people who wished all the guns would

00:12:57.660 go away, we're all looking at exactly the same facts, the exact same likely outcome. And that's

00:13:04.320 usually enough because I think the United States has so much pro gun, you know, uh, feelings that I

00:13:12.240 don't see that we're going to go to the next step. It would just be too hard. So I think that's a,

00:13:17.400 things will slip until there's a reason for them not to slip anymore. And if that reason doesn't

00:13:22.600 exist, somebody will invent that reason and insert it just to keep things from slipping. So look for

00:13:28.980 cause and effect, not slipperiness. Well, and the other thing I think you're alluding to here,

00:13:34.120 and you mentioned this in the book, maybe in a different context, but you talk a lot about, or

00:13:37.640 to some degree about linear thinking, right? We think that we know everything that's going to

00:13:42.600 happen. And, and, and we look at problems that we may be dealing with on the plane of what we

00:13:48.740 already know. And yet we have no idea what the next five, 10, 20, 40 years is going to hold that

00:13:54.120 could completely render some of these problems obsolete and non-existent.

00:14:00.080 Yeah. We live in this, uh, semi absurd existence where in order to know what to do next,

00:14:06.540 especially if you're doing long range planning and getting ready for the future,

00:14:10.260 you have to make a prediction about what that future looks like. Otherwise you wouldn't be

00:14:14.840 able to prepare for it. And most of our predictions are something like a straight line. Things will be

00:14:20.380 in the future, um, basically a straight line from what we can see today. Now it turns out that that's

00:14:27.700 literally the least likely future. If you had to bet is it going to be something that's a straight line

00:14:34.020 that we could predict from today or something completely unpredictable, you should always go

00:14:38.480 for unpredictable. Um, it reminds me in, uh, some Tom Cruise racing movie and, uh, some, some

00:14:45.760 experienced person, I'm going to butcher this story, but, but, uh, talked about what to do if you're

00:14:51.220 in a crash situation and there's a bunch of smoke up ahead and, and you see a car that's sort of,

00:14:57.420 you know, spinning around and then it disappears into the smoke. What do you do with your car?

00:15:02.700 Stopping is too dangerous. And so I believe the, uh, the, the guidance was to head toward the last

00:15:09.980 place you saw the car because that's the least likely place it will be. So straight line production

00:15:15.200 predictions are like that. The thing we predict to be is always the least likely thing because you

00:15:21.480 can't see any of the changes in the step functions and the inventions and the wars and the shocks.

00:15:26.600 And that's what drives the future. I'm just glad that you threw a, uh, a days of thunder reference

00:15:32.220 in this podcast. That's a great movie. Um, I couldn't remember the day. That's what it is.

00:15:37.720 Days of thunder. Yeah. I love that movie. Yeah, no, you know, it's funny because a lot of what you

00:15:42.820 talk about in the book, especially with linear thinking and, uh, some of these other, uh, points

00:15:47.640 that we'll get to, I'm sure is you just reminded me so much of my financial planning days that I'm,

00:15:53.780 I'm not sure if you're aware, but that's my background. Uh, I was a financial advisor for

00:15:57.620 nine years and I've been leading this, this organization movement for the past almost five

00:16:02.600 years now, but man, what you had talked about in there specifically with linear thinking,

00:16:06.620 how I would look at somebody's plan and I'd say, this is a perfect plan if everything goes

00:16:12.180 according to plan, but we all know that that's not going to happen.

00:16:17.220 Yeah. So, but the alternative is even crazier. The alternative is to not have any kind of estimate

00:16:23.660 for how the future looks and therefore not prepare for it. So we're in this absurd world

00:16:29.560 where the thing we have to do doesn't make any sense and we know it, but we still kind

00:16:33.880 of have to do it because the alternative is even worse. Yeah. I, I, I don't think that

00:16:39.700 there is a one size fits all. I don't think we always know the answer, but it seems to me

00:16:43.800 that we just do the best we can with the most information we have available and, and adjust

00:16:49.140 and adapt where necessary and as often as possible. And we seem to make it work just

00:16:53.220 fine. Yeah. That that's my concept of the talent stack. So the idea that you don't know

00:16:59.000 what the future holds, but you do know, and this is very predictable and almost never has

00:17:05.380 a, an exception that the more skills you can layer together that work well with each other,

00:17:10.920 the more rare and valuable you'll be. Now you don't know exactly where that will lead.

00:17:16.140 You don't know exactly the job or the place you live, but you know, that if you've got

00:17:20.360 a whole bunch of talents that work well together, you're going to do well. And the person who

00:17:24.640 doesn't have that is going to have a harder time. Yeah, it is interesting because a lot

00:17:29.500 of people, what they'll say is they'll say, you know, what's order of man going to look

00:17:33.600 like in 10 years? I'm like, I, I have no idea if I'm being truthful and answering that,

00:17:38.960 answering that question. I have no idea. If you would have asked me five years ago,

00:17:43.080 what I'd be doing today, I wouldn't have even remotely thought of anything close to what I'm

00:17:48.100 doing now. But one thing I do know is that I know how to communicate well. Uh, I'm fairly good at,

00:17:53.280 at networking and connecting with, with, uh, important and influential, uh, smart, intelligent

00:17:58.820 people, and I can work hard. And I feel like even just those three variables will tend to play well

00:18:05.780 in my favor. Yeah, those are, those are three skills that work really well together. So yeah,

00:18:12.140 I wouldn't be surprised if, if you're successful and, and you, you kind of remind me of some of the

00:18:17.840 best advice I ever heard. And I wish I knew where it came from. It was just some random millionaire

00:18:22.340 who said it once. And the idea is that, um, what's important is not what you want. What's important is

00:18:29.020 what you decide because deciding is different than wanting. And so, you know, if you want to be

00:18:34.980 successful, the advice is find out the price of success and then pay it. And the reason lots of

00:18:42.080 people are not successful is that they find out the price. It's like, Oh, I really have to work

00:18:47.080 every day for 10 years, weekends and nights and, you know, miss my family and don't get to go out much

00:18:53.240 and get up early and all that. Well, that's what it costs. If you're willing to pay that price,

00:18:58.740 your odds are pretty good. And if you're not willing to pay it, well, you better get lucky

00:19:03.600 because that's the only way it's going to work. Well, I think you actually alluded to that in one

00:19:08.100 segment of the book, you talked about the differentiating factors between those who

00:19:11.400 are successful and those who aren't. And what you had said is the first factor is luck. Uh,

00:19:16.560 the second factor is a belief that you could, and I'm paraphrasing here, uh, change your circumstances

00:19:23.200 or change your environment or your, or your, your level of success. I can't remember exactly what you

00:19:27.700 had said. Yeah. Essentially the, one of the key differences between successful and unsuccessful

00:19:33.740 people is who they blame. Uh, successful people blame themselves period. You know, even though there

00:19:40.820 are things they can't control, they still say, well, I should have known if I was here that that might

00:19:46.420 happen. I should have gone where it was safer. I should have been more protected. I should have

00:19:50.740 planned for that. So even though there are things you can't control, you know, luck is out of our

00:19:56.600 control. Mostly you can certainly go where there's more of it. Uh, but generally speaking,

00:20:02.920 the people who feel they have control over their life and their environment will act that way. And

00:20:08.480 that's a really predictive, uh, variable for success. Yeah. And what was, what was fascinating about it

00:20:14.940 too, is you said that even if it's not true, right? Even if it's not true that they can affect that

00:20:21.880 sort of change, the belief that they can is what makes them a success. Right. So if you believe you

00:20:29.100 could be successful, you would say, okay, why am I not successful so far? And you'd say, well, what

00:20:34.980 could I do? Maybe I can add another skill. Maybe I can take a class. Maybe I can network with somebody

00:20:40.740 and meet somebody who would help me. So if you think it's under your control, then your plans

00:20:45.520 will reflect that. But if you think it's not under your control, you'll do today with the same thing

00:20:51.140 you did yesterday. Came home, sat on the couch. Wished, I wished I were luckier, but that's not going

00:20:56.460 to get you anywhere. Right. Once, once my ship comes in, then, then I'll have the success. Then I'll

00:21:02.060 have the relationship. Then I'll have the business or the bank account or whatever it is people are after.

00:21:05.980 Right. A lot of people look at successful people and they look for that point of luck.

00:21:12.480 They say, well, you know, I could do that too, but look, there was that point where this person met

00:21:17.980 that person or they just fell into this situation and, you know, you can't control that. But I would

00:21:25.440 say that most lucky people have created energy and put themselves out there and allowed luck to find

00:21:32.220 them. So I often say that luck, luck doesn't come looking for you. You have to make noise. You have

00:21:38.740 to go out in the world. You gotta, you gotta make energy. You've got to change things. And then you

00:21:45.480 have a real good chance that luck will find you because luck is attracted to energy. That's a good

00:21:50.200 rule for life. Yes. Yes. I can see that it would be, you know, and the other thing about luck too,

00:21:57.000 is it's not, or fortune, whatever you, I would prefer to use the term fortune, but I think we're

00:22:01.980 on the same page. It might just be semantics there, uh, is although there may be fortunate

00:22:08.420 events in your life. And certainly I can point to fortunate events in mind that I have absolutely

00:22:12.980 no control over. You still have to act upon that. It isn't a guarantee just because you were fortunate,

00:22:20.360 just because you had a loving parents or just because you were born in the United States,

00:22:24.940 or just because you were born, uh, the son of a wealthy father. That's a factor, but not the only

00:22:33.360 factor. Yeah. And people don't get to see all the times that successful people fail. And if you don't

00:22:40.380 see that, you think, Oh, well you tried one thing, you got lucky. You know, I guess there's no skill

00:22:46.580 involved. You just got lucky. But if you saw all the things I've tried that haven't worked. And usually

00:22:52.920 if I, I could look at any one of those and say, you know, the reason it didn't work is I had bad

00:22:58.260 luck. I mean, they've had some really bad luck, you know, examples in various investments, et cetera.

00:23:06.020 But when you look at the one that worked Dilbert in this case, or writing books, uh, there was a huge

00:23:12.580 piece of luck that made them work. So the things that didn't work were bad luck. The things that did

00:23:17.920 work were luck. But the one thing that I had control over is how many things I did. And I just

00:23:23.840 did things until one of them got lucky. So I used sort of the, the, uh, just the fact that energy

00:23:30.840 would attract luck and eventually it would find me. Yeah. Well, I talk a lot about the, the difference

00:23:36.840 between accepting blame and accepting responsibility. You know, there might be things in your environment

00:23:43.360 and circumstances that are not your fault. Like you shouldn't blame yourself for that. But if it's

00:23:49.200 in your environment and in your sphere of influence and the things that you want to create, then although

00:23:54.240 it may not be your fault, certainly you probably ought to take some level of responsibility for it. If

00:24:00.120 you, if you hope to improve it. Yeah. That's a real healthy way to see the world. When you talk about

00:24:05.240 blame, you started feeling that sort of suggests words like guilt or shame. Uh, I'm not in favor of

00:24:13.800 any of that stuff, you know, do it, do it the best job you can, but sometimes things don't work out and

00:24:19.220 there's nothing you can do. You can't go back in the past. Maybe sometimes you just can't fix it.

00:24:24.420 So taking responsibility, even when you maybe don't have full control over the situation you're

00:24:30.280 talking about is just a great mindset because we can control more than we think we can. Uh,

00:24:36.920 I like to use the example of, uh, if you're trying to deal with other people, you say, okay, well,

00:24:41.700 it's not up to me. This other person has to hire me. This other person has to want to invest in me.

00:24:46.760 It's not up to me, but we influence those people by our actions. And if you learn how to influence

00:24:52.760 people, that's one of my earlier books, wouldn't bigly. If you learn how to persuade, then it is,

00:24:58.520 it is up to you because what you do turns those other people into different versions of themselves.

00:25:05.540 And some of those versions are good for you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and now you're getting into the

00:25:12.280 sphere of, you know, influence and leadership and what a lot of people will try to do. I think this

00:25:17.960 is not exclusive to men, but I think generally men is they try to strong arm every situation,

00:25:23.580 right? If I can lead and dominate this, the, the, the circumstances and the environment and the

00:25:28.900 people around me, then they will follow me. And then we will accomplish X, Y, and Z. And I think

00:25:33.720 that's probably more akin to dictatorship or tyranny than it is leadership. Leadership is about influencing

00:25:40.660 and controlling yourself first, and then ultimately giving people the opportunity to decide whether or

00:25:47.440 not they're going to be influenced by you. Yeah. Leadership is a, sort of a strange job,

00:25:54.900 if you will. Uh, I've often said that I would be a bad leader because I can't, I can't convince

00:26:00.700 people to do things that are bad for them. And that's something you have to do. In other words,

00:26:05.260 you have to say, you know, this would be good for the whole country or the company or whatever,

00:26:10.260 but it's going to be bad for you. You know, you're going to have to work all weekend or you'll have to go

00:26:15.260 fight this war. But trust me, even though it's really bad for you, it'll be great for other

00:26:20.520 people. Now to be a leader, you've got to be able to say that and sell it. And I don't feel that I

00:26:26.900 could sell that honestly, telling people to go sacrifice themselves. So I'd be a bad leader in that

00:26:33.160 sense. But you know, I might push back on a little bit because we don't get to decide for that other

00:26:39.840 individual, let's say fight a war. So I'm a veteran. Um, I served in, in the military. And although

00:26:44.880 I was commanded to go to Iraq in 2005 and 2006, uh, I found a lot of meaning and significance in that

00:26:54.300 sacrifice. And so there was purpose and there was accomplishment and fulfillment for me. Although

00:27:00.100 somebody else might interpret it, that sacrifice is not, not good for an individual. I actually think

00:27:07.040 I'm a better man because I had that circumstance. Yeah. You know, everybody has a different relationship

00:27:15.040 with those kinds of situations. I feel as though the way I'm built, you know, just my DNA, I probably

00:27:22.580 could not have come home from a war zone, even if I hadn't been physically injured. I just don't think

00:27:27.640 I'd be, I just don't think there'd be much left, but there are other people who are just made of

00:27:32.920 stronger stuff. I'm guessing you're one of those. And you, people tend to know themselves. You, you

00:27:39.440 kind of know if you have a good chance of getting through something like that or not. Uh, I'm just

00:27:44.500 glad the world is full of people who can do that stuff so that the people who can't, you know, get,

00:27:50.260 get the, uh, the benefit. Yeah, that's, that's a good point. And, and the world takes all kinds. And

00:27:56.800 this is something I feel like I'm, I'm learning myself. Maybe it's a level of maturity or intelligence

00:28:03.480 or just what kind of happens over time with enough experiences that I used to think, you know,

00:28:09.480 it's gotta be my way that my way is always right. That if everybody was this way, then the world would

00:28:14.580 be a better place. And if everybody thought like this, then the world wouldn't be so insane. And what

00:28:19.240 I'm realizing is that, you know, maybe if everybody thought that way, the world would actually be more

00:28:23.560 insane. I'm not sure. Yeah. You know, I, you can't do much about other people except try to survive

00:28:31.620 them. Yes. Yes. And influence, right. And influence those individuals as well. Yeah. You know, influence

00:28:39.880 is one of those things that unless it's somebody you're with all the time, it's hard to influence

00:28:45.900 them much. So when you're talking about politics or something, you know, you can try influencing for,

00:28:51.720 you know, three solid years and you're lucky if you can move that one or 2% of independence one way

00:28:57.140 or the other. So influence is a very weak force. It has to be, uh, either applied to large populations

00:29:04.520 where you just try to move a few of them. Or if you're trying to influence one person, you got to

00:29:09.580 spend a lot of time. It's, it's a, it's a weak force that they can build over time.

00:29:15.460 Well, I think you actually alluded to this in, in the last segment of the book, when you talked about

00:29:19.880 your, uh, your priorities and how we sometimes tend to get these backwards, I know a lot of guys who

00:29:25.500 listen to this podcast certainly do because they'll place themselves, for example, at the bottom of the

00:29:31.080 totem pole of priorities. And, and I think there's noble intentions in that they want to serve their

00:29:36.480 families. They want to serve their friends and their communities and their employers and clients

00:29:40.340 and everybody else, but themselves. But I found that the better we serve ourselves first,

00:29:46.260 the more capable we are of serving the next person, which would, I would assume, and in my case would

00:29:52.880 be my spouse. And then it would be my children. And then it would be my close associates and friends.

00:29:57.480 And then it would be the people who organize around this movement, et cetera, et cetera.

00:30:02.000 Yeah. I recommend a form of enlightened selfishness. The idea being pretty much what you said,

00:30:08.140 which is if you don't take care of yourself first, somebody else is going to have to take care of 0.99

00:30:13.220 your ass eventually. So, you know, job one is to make sure you're not a burden on other people, 0.98

00:30:19.680 especially your, your family. Now, if you can take care of that and take care of your, your family,

00:30:24.440 as you said, um, a few of us have been lucky enough because our careers worked down or whatever

00:30:30.040 that we could take care of our families and friends. And then we started looking at a larger picture

00:30:35.120 because I think we're, I think we're kind of just designed that way, biologically evolutionary wise,

00:30:41.920 whatever. There is something in you that clicks once, you know, you've taken care of everything

00:30:47.820 locally and you just, you just automatically think, all right, now who can I help next? I took care of,

00:30:54.120 took care of business locally. So that's kind of where I'm at in my career arc. Um, my books,

00:31:00.800 for example, the periscopes I do, they all have the same, a common theme, which is it's got to be good

00:31:06.500 for the people who are watching something that'll help them lead a better life, make better decisions,

00:31:11.360 that sort of thing. Cause I feel that's, that's where I should be focusing now because everything

00:31:16.700 close to me is taken care of. Gentlemen, let me hit the, uh, hit the pause button real quick.

00:31:21.920 Uh, we're all aware of how important systems and processes are on our path to success, but how many

00:31:27.980 men, uh, have not created those systems in every facet of their lives. Uh, these are the same men who

00:31:33.600 a lot of the times wonder why they can't seem to get ahead this month inside the iron council.

00:31:38.560 We'll be exploring and deep diving into the systems and processes that I specifically use.

00:31:44.080 And also the strategies that over 500 members are using inside the iron council to achieve maximum

00:31:50.420 results. Uh, we're going to help you unpackage your systems, uh, explore what's working, remove what

00:31:55.760 isn't, and then ultimately rebuild a strategy that is going to ensure your success, whether that's in

00:32:01.600 the gym or in the walls of your home or in business or your bank account, whatever facet of life

00:32:06.720 it is. Uh, if you'd like to know more and build your own blueprint for success, then band with us

00:32:12.240 inside the iron council. Again, you're going to get the tools. Uh, there's challenges every single

00:32:17.440 week. There's two, uh, you're going to get a monthly assignment, which is broken down into weekly sub

00:32:21.680 topics. You're going to get, of course, the camaraderie and brotherhood, uh, inside as well.

00:32:26.400 All of this ultimately is what you need to thrive. And we've got it inside the iron council. Again,

00:32:31.040 you can join us at order of man.com slash iron council, order of man.com slash iron council.

00:32:37.200 Go check it out after the conversation for now. We'll get back to it with Scott.

00:32:41.760 Yeah. I almost feel like, and have thought about it as, as a video game in a way, you know, you,

00:32:47.280 you start at this bottom tier and you learn a set of skills and then you level up. And with that level

00:32:52.880 up comes greater responsibility, harder missions to accomplish, but you, you need those skills you

00:32:58.080 learned in level one to get to level two and three and so on. And I kind of feel that same way when

00:33:02.640 it comes to being able to take care of a family, you know, or, or, or serve in the community or, uh,

00:33:09.280 lead a movement or an organization like yours or mine. Like you're never going to be able to get to

00:33:13.520 that point unless and until you develop the level zero and the level one skills. So you can move up the

00:33:18.880 ladder. Yeah. You gotta, gotta start there. So I think we're on totally the same page there.

00:33:25.760 Take care of yourself first. And I always say, make sure that, you know, sort of a, a good way

00:33:31.360 to test whether you're taking care of yourself is if you're making time for exercise. You know,

00:33:37.760 if you, if you can't find time for that, it's almost certainly because you're putting other

00:33:41.520 priorities higher and in the short term, it always makes sense. Oh, I'll work overtime today. I'll,

00:33:48.640 you know, go to my kid's game. They're all good things. But if, if what you've sacrificed is your

00:33:54.720 long-term health, it's going to come back and, uh, and bite you. Right. I mean, there's seasons,

00:34:00.880 right? So yes, there may be a deadline that you need to hit or, or, or some task that you have 30

00:34:06.500 days to get accomplished and that's a season. And then you go back into making sure that you're

00:34:10.780 resting and recharging and taking care of yourself. Yeah. I, I think you need to develop

00:34:17.600 systems too. And I talk about that in one of my earlier books about, uh, if, if you could say,

00:34:23.260 I have a rule of, uh, let's say working on a lunch, then it's easier to schedule your day.

00:34:29.820 If somebody says, can we get together, you know, not to do it at lunch. So it just makes everything

00:34:34.720 easier. If you have sort of a standard rule, even if you can't do it every day, it's good to have a

00:34:39.080 rule. Yeah. And I think you talk about that as being, um, I don't want to say priority or take

00:34:45.980 precedence over goals, but you say work on systems before goals or in conjunction with goals,

00:34:52.200 something along those lines. Maybe you can help me clarify that. Yeah. So I say that goals are,

00:34:57.520 can be a problem because while you're working on a goal, you're in a state of failure because you

00:35:02.460 have not achieved your goal yet. And then once you achieve it, you set a new goal and then you go back

00:35:07.520 into your failure mode. Whereas if you have a system, you can succeed every day at the system.

00:35:13.800 And that might give you lots of opportunities that are even better than the goal that you might've

00:35:18.700 picked. So in the case of fitness, I talk about, um, getting yourself addicted to it by making sure

00:35:25.300 that you have a time to do it, a system to do it, but you also reward yourself. You don't,

00:35:29.960 don't work out too hard and hurt yourself. You just make sure you enjoy it. And that takes some

00:35:35.400 experimenting to make sure that's the case. Once you're mentally addicted to exercise and you've

00:35:40.640 carved down some time in your day, you turn a thing that used to be hard into a thing that you

00:35:45.380 prefer to do. You know, I, I actually look forward to going to the gym because I like my downtime

00:35:51.480 afterwards and the, the protein shake I have afterwards getting, you know, change of scenery,

00:35:57.200 et cetera. So, uh, work on your mental addiction to exercise first. That's, that's the way to get

00:36:04.500 there. Yeah. This reminds me of the system. In fact, that we use for setting and accomplishing

00:36:10.340 goals. We start with a vision. What, how do we want to show up? What are we going to look like?

00:36:15.700 How do we want to affect the environment around us? Work into specific goals. Okay. Here's some

00:36:20.240 goals that I'd like to accomplish, but I think most people stop there and where they stop,

00:36:24.820 we go deeper. We say, okay, now what are the tactics? What are the things that you can do on a

00:36:29.520 daily basis that will inevitably lead you towards that objective? And then we measure it along the way

00:36:35.020 with checkpoints, 30 day and 60 day checkpoints to ensure that our systems or our tactics are getting

00:36:41.060 us to where we actually want to be and adjust accordingly. Yeah. And I also note that the

00:36:46.780 world used to be simpler and when the world was simpler, it made more sense to have a goal for what

00:36:52.620 you're going to do next year. So let's say you're a farmer and you had a goal of clearing the trees from,

00:36:58.160 you know, 10 acres before next planting season. When the next year comes around, that's still a

00:37:03.440 perfectly good idea because nothing changed. But if you take today, any goal that you have,

00:37:09.060 that's a year from now, the entire industry could be gone. You know, you, you may say, Hey,

00:37:14.300 I'd like to be a truck driver. And then you open up, you know, uh, your web browser and find out that

00:37:19.320 Tesla just made a self-driving truck. Right. And did you buy one of those? No, not yet. But, uh,

00:37:26.740 uh, I'm kind of liking the new, new Tesla cyber truck. I have to say, I, I, I disliked it when

00:37:33.360 I first saw it, but it's growing on me in a way that's almost magical. So there's some kind of weird,

00:37:39.140 weird sorcery they use to make people like stuff, but yeah, I kind of want one now.

00:37:44.480 They make it cool and they make it, uh, a little mysterious and edgy, literally and figuratively as

00:37:49.900 well. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's, I think that makes sense in that things are complex

00:37:56.960 and they're ever changing. And the other problem I see with goal setting too, is that you in a way

00:38:01.240 pigeonhole yourself into something you use the, the example of a truck driver. Well, if you're so

00:38:05.920 focused on that or farming or whatever it used to be, then you can't see other opportunities that

00:38:13.240 will present themselves. I mean, the, the taxi cab industry is a perfect example. These, these

00:38:17.560 organizations are fighting so hard to keep things at the status quo. When, if they would just

00:38:22.100 learn and open themselves up and expand their horizons and open up new potentials and possibilities,

00:38:29.440 none of that stuff would even matter, but they're just fighting for the old way. It's,

00:38:33.820 it's really fascinating. Well, I suppose if you owned a medallion, you know, you'd paid a ton of money to

00:38:40.660 have a rights to, for a cab. And then the oars coming in and eating your lunch, you're going to fight to

00:38:45.360 keep the old ways as long as you can. So there is a financial incentive for that.

00:38:49.980 There is, I think there's a short-term financial incentive, but there's a long-term risk in clinging

00:38:56.500 that status quo and not realizing that frankly, it's inevitable. So the sooner I think you can

00:39:01.740 accept that and embrace it and look for opportunities long-term, I think you're going to be better off.

00:39:08.120 Yeah. If, if it turns out you were a cab driver with one skill, that's a big problem. But if you were

00:39:14.360 adding to your skill and your talent stack, well, maybe you can, you know, pivot to something better.

00:39:21.860 I want to rewind. I feel like I got ahead of myself a little bit because I was so excited to

00:39:26.700 jump into some of these topics and things like this, but the title of your book is Loser Think,

00:39:30.200 How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America. What is loser think? Help us, help us understand what you mean 0.51

00:39:36.980 when you say that.

00:39:37.560 So I invented a term to describe the situation where people might be smart and well-informed in 0.50

00:39:44.400 general, but you see ridiculous arguments coming from them. Now, sometimes it's just, you know,

00:39:50.120 confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance and people being silly. But what I noticed is that 0.97

00:39:55.680 there was a consistent pattern. I would click on the profile of somebody on Twitter who had said

00:40:00.800 something smart and I'd see what kind of life they have because, you know, usually the profile will say

00:40:06.160 something about them. And often it would be an economist or a lawyer, engineer, scientist,

00:40:12.000 the types of skill, the types of areas where you learn how to think. Whereas I'd hear a bad

00:40:18.720 argument and I'd look at it and it would be artist or poet or musician. And I would think, huh,

00:40:25.460 there are actually skill, there are actually areas. And I'm, I'm an economist by training in which

00:40:31.840 they teach you how to think an economist literally learns how to compare things rationally. And

00:40:37.960 people who have not learned how to think the way that people do in various different disciplines,

00:40:42.320 and it's a little different in each discipline, those people are under the impression that their

00:40:46.620 common sense is all they need. They look at a situation in the news and they say, well, okay,

00:40:52.320 I'm going to common sense this. How, how hard could it be? And I like to use this one example

00:40:57.160 to, to show the blind spot. If you say to, um, the average person, uh, is president X,

00:41:05.820 it doesn't matter which president doing a good job or a bad job, they'll almost always give you an

00:41:09.660 opinion. They'll say, yes, great job or no bad job. But if you ask an economist the same question

00:41:15.740 more often than not, sorry, I've got my nose is itchy. You ever, you ever get an itchy nose when

00:41:21.120 you're on camera? That happens to me all the time.

00:41:23.000 That's the only time it itches is when you're not supposed to scratch it.

00:41:27.140 There's no way that you can, you can scratch your nose without looking like it's something

00:41:30.880 different.

00:41:31.660 Right. Just own it. It's fine.

00:41:34.800 What was I talking about?

00:41:36.300 You were talking about how an economist would approach that question of, is he doing a good

00:41:40.100 or bad job?

00:41:40.980 Right. So if you ask an economist, is the president doing a good job? If they're a good economist,

00:41:46.100 they're going to say the following compared to what? Because that's what economists learn.

00:41:52.260 Now the, the problem is that there's no such thing as a president who's doing the job at

00:41:57.380 the same time as the real president. There's nobody with the same variables, the same everything,

00:42:02.420 but they're just making different decisions. So you could say, oh, these decisions came out

00:42:06.520 better. So, um, the person who doesn't know that unless you have a valid comparison, there's

00:42:15.040 you're, you're just talking out of your, your butt because there's no, there's nothing that 0.95

00:42:20.840 can be compared to. You can't say if it's a good one or a bad one, unless there's something 0.98

00:42:24.860 extreme going on, of course.

00:42:26.580 Sure. Sure.

00:42:27.280 So that's just one of many examples in loser think where you just have to be exposed to

00:42:33.160 this other way of thinking and you immediately can incorporate it. Cause just what I explained

00:42:38.600 would allow somebody to say in the next situation, oh, compared to what it's, it's as simple as

00:42:44.760 learning it the first time.

00:42:45.820 Yeah. I mean, this meant, this makes sense. We ran across this in the financial planning

00:42:49.760 practice as well. People would say, you know, is this a good investment relative to what

00:42:56.340 investment, you know, and what does good mean? Does that mean there's low risk? Does that

00:43:00.720 mean there's potential for high return? What do you mean by good? Sometimes that's a little

00:43:04.720 frustrating to people because they think that you should just be able to interpret what it

00:43:07.960 is they're after, but we can't, right? And you talk a lot about that in the book as well

00:43:11.600 is that we don't have the ability to read minds and interpret, uh, what people are thinking

00:43:17.100 and feeling in any given moment.

00:43:19.200 So let me, let me give you one of my favorite examples, because with your background, this

00:43:24.100 will, this will probably hit better. When I got, uh, when I built my house back in 2009,

00:43:29.740 uh, I had the decision of putting solar panels on it or not. Now the calculation was that if I spent

00:43:36.860 X amount of, for the solar panels, they would pay back in, I don't know, five years or something.

00:43:41.720 And I was sure I was going to keep the house longer than that. So I was like, oh, good investment,

00:43:45.800 right? Put in X amount of money, pays back in five years, no brainer. But unfortunately I'm also

00:43:52.380 a trained economist and I did financial analysis for living. And the additional facts that I knew

00:43:58.320 is that the installation costs were going to be dropping every year at a lot. So that if I waited

00:44:04.560 five years and then put it in, I would have overspent for my electricity for five years.

00:44:10.640 But by the time I put it in the system, it would cost maybe 20% as what I had five years earlier,

00:44:16.360 and it would be way more efficient and save me way more money. So if you're not trained in economics,

00:44:23.540 you don't know things like the time value of money. You haven't incorporated the, you know,

00:44:28.720 inevitable improvements in technology. You just look at the situation and you say, well,

00:44:33.140 it pays for itself in five years. Of course, why wouldn't I? But there's always a deeper level.

00:44:39.100 I think this comes into what you had talked quite a bit about as well as the differences between

00:44:44.500 short-term thinking and long-term thinking and how it's advantageous to think over long periods of

00:44:50.880 time. Even if we don't quite know what's going to happen, looking at the long play seems to play out

00:44:55.380 better in a lot of cases.

00:44:56.880 Yeah, I've often thought that what we see as disagreement on climate change is

00:45:03.560 inability to understand how to look at the future. And the people who are better at it are coming to

00:45:11.940 different conclusions than people who don't know how that's done, or don't even know that it's a learned

00:45:16.780 skill. So for example, the UN recently, a few months ago, put out a economic forecast that in 80 years,

00:45:24.880 the cost of climate change, if unchecked, because they're assuming it's warming,

00:45:30.540 would depress the GDP 80 years from now by 10%. Now that was supposed to scare us because that would

00:45:38.420 be trillions of dollars and it would be a real big deal. But if you've studied economics, and you're

00:45:44.560 probably ahead of me on this, you're saying to yourself, wait a minute, in 80 years, our GDP will

00:45:50.560 have gone up by five to 10 times from what it is now. So if the only effect is that in 80 years,

00:45:57.600 it's 10% less than it could have been, we're not going to even notice. Because it'll be almost five

00:46:04.400 times better, but it could have been five times better. We won't even notice. Literally, you

00:46:09.160 wouldn't know the difference. So, you know, the UN puts that out to scare people. And of course, it works.

00:46:15.640 So as per se, persuasion, it works. But I look at the numbers and I say, first of all, nobody can do

00:46:20.280 an 80 year financial projection. That's not a thing. Because somewhere in that time, you know,

00:46:25.960 we're inventing fusion, we've got flying cars, we've, you know, I mean, everything's going to be

00:46:30.220 different by then. We're already developing technology that can suck the CO2 out of the air

00:46:36.560 if we need it. And people worry that we'll take too much of it. But I'm pretty sure we'll turn it off

00:46:41.640 if that becomes a problem. Unless the robots have taken over by then and there's nothing we can do

00:46:48.300 about it at that point. Yeah. I mean, that's the perfect example of the, whatever the change in

00:46:54.480 civilization that comes from the robot, you know, apocalypse, it's going to happen in that 80 years

00:47:00.880 for sure. And that's all bets are off at that point. We don't know, you know, will we all be

00:47:06.000 collecting UBI? Will it be, will it be easy to move? Let's say the biggest problem of climate

00:47:12.240 change is that people have to move. Well, what if in 80 years, you just open your app and say,

00:47:17.620 huh, it looks like they're hiring over in Bangladesh. Right. I guess I'll grab my self-driving

00:47:23.740 Uber and I'll be in Bangladesh and in two days and I'll have a new job. So everything's going to be

00:47:30.320 different. So I think the people who are most frightened by climate change are perhaps in some

00:47:36.420 cases, not all, least qualified to look at the future and make a good guess about what that's

00:47:42.940 going to look like. Well, I mean, climate change is an interesting one anyways, because I don't think

00:47:50.060 that there's any rational human being who believes that we ought to be cognizant of the way that we're

00:47:55.800 impacting the climate, whether you're a climate change skeptic or, or, or believer. I think

00:48:03.740 everybody believes that we probably impact the, the climate and then we ought to be aware of how

00:48:09.900 we're doing it. It's, it just seems so polarizing. And a lot of that obviously comes from, from the

00:48:15.200 media and, and their, well, their whole, their whole model is designed to get us fighting and riled

00:48:22.800 up. Um, but we fail to see that quite often. Yeah. I talk about this in the book. There was this one

00:48:30.080 small technological change that you wouldn't have really noticed as important, but it ruined

00:48:36.680 everything basically. And that's the ability to measure with precision who is clicking on what

00:48:42.200 and watching what. And why, right? Yeah. And why, once you know that you've got to pursue that if

00:48:49.460 you're a public company and you've got stockholders, you've got to go where the profit is. So the

00:48:54.240 profit is in things that set your hair on fire and not so much boring old facts that would be nice to

00:48:59.720 know. So we're in a world where everything seems worse than it is because the business model of how

00:49:06.900 to communicate what is has changed. And I, and I found that once you understand that and accept that

00:49:14.680 that's actually what's going on, life becomes a whole lot calmer, uh, a whole lot easier and a

00:49:21.900 whole lot more efficient because you're focused on things that actually move the needle versus things

00:49:27.020 that are just distracting you from, from producing results in, in your immediate circle.

00:49:32.240 Yeah. Just for fun. If you tried to become like a fake psychic and I do this sometimes to try to make

00:49:39.060 predictions based on all the worst case scenarios won't happen. So you just take every news item

00:49:45.480 and say, all right, I predict that won't happen. You know, I predict that we won't all die from

00:49:50.860 climate change. I predict that, uh, ISIS will not form a caliphate again. You know, you could just go

00:49:56.940 right down the line. I predict there will not be a depression. You know, uh, I think you'd be fine.

00:50:03.400 You, you'd be right. Certainly nine out of 10 times. Well, I think you'd be right as, as much

00:50:09.160 as anybody else who's guessing about everything else's is going on. It may be better because the

00:50:14.120 idea is that, um, and I, I heard, uh, or I read a blog post about this that made everything make

00:50:19.860 sense to me. It was Scott Alexander wrote about this, that it's not a coincidence that the news is

00:50:26.560 so ridiculous sounding because the things that get people to click are the things that actually are not

00:50:31.920 true. If something is true, it usually looks like it's in the family of things that are ordinary

00:50:38.680 and therefore not interesting. But if you see a story, right? If it's true, it's like, yeah, I got

00:50:44.220 it. I know that. Right. Yeah. So if you see president Trump sent a tweet insulting somebody, you're like,

00:50:51.560 well, you know, this doesn't make my hair on fire. That's just normal. What's new. But, but if you

00:50:56.440 heard that he slayed a baby and ate it in front of the press, you'd say to yourself, my God, my God,

00:51:03.300 you'd click it, you'd share it. And then two days later, you'd find out it wasn't true, which is the

00:51:08.160 way most of our news is going these days. 48 hours later, it wasn't what you thought it was. That's

00:51:14.720 the most common thing that we see now. Yeah. This is, this is one of your rules, right? The 40 hour,

00:51:19.900 48 hour rule is, you know, just let it simmer for 48 hours and then you can maybe dissect it to the

00:51:25.000 degree that you, that you want. Yeah. Yeah. And the more, uh, the more absurd the story sounds when

00:51:31.100 you first hear it, the more likely you should wait. My, my favorite example is the, the Russian 1.00

00:51:36.780 sonic weapon. So it was the idea that there was some secret sonic weapon that was being used on

00:51:42.120 the embassy personnel in Cuba. Now, the first thing I said was it's not a supersonic weapon

00:51:48.180 because that's the ridiculous story. That's what makes it interesting. Right. If the whole story was

00:51:53.480 that some people were sick in an embassy and you didn't know why, well, I don't know if it would

00:51:58.940 be that different than probably lots of corporations, lots of buildings. There are probably lots of

00:52:03.680 places where you have clusters of people with mysterious symptoms. It's probably a fairly

00:52:08.440 ordinary thing. But as soon as you throw in the secret sonic weapon, click, click, click,

00:52:13.760 click, click, click. I got to find out more about that secret sonic weapon. So on day one,

00:52:18.240 I predicted in public, no secret sonic weapon. And so far they can't find a secret sonic weapon,

00:52:25.960 but they have some other, they have some other theories of what might be causing it, but not a

00:52:30.100 secret sonic weapon. Surprise, surprise, right? How do you know if you're engaged in loser think?

00:52:37.440 Because I imagine all of us, I know all of us have engaged in loser think. And I imagine that when you

00:52:44.320 are most guilty of engaging in it, you are probably least aware of engaging in it.

00:52:50.400 Yeah. Yeah. That's the, uh, the basic problem with life is that when you're the one who's being

00:52:56.040 fooled, how do you know? Cause you're the one who's being fooled by definition. So the best you can do

00:53:02.300 is familiar, familiarize yourself with the basic, um, let's say failures of loser think, and then let

00:53:11.140 other people remind you when you're doing it. My favorite one is, uh, people like to do mind reading,

00:53:16.760 I call it, which is to not just look at what people are doing or the words they're saying, but to

00:53:22.720 imagine you can determine a stranger's inner motives. Oh, sure. They're saying that for this reason, but the

00:53:28.880 real reason is X. And you see this continually in the news. The real reason is it's part of his secret

00:53:34.760 plan to destroy the earth or whatever it is. And I, I counsel people that we don't even know

00:53:41.720 what our spouse is thinking most of the time. I mean, you can't tell what your best friend is

00:53:46.160 thinking that even the people closest to you, you're routinely surprised that they're, you think

00:53:52.280 they're angry, but they're not. Do you think they're happy, but they're not? So what are the odds

00:53:57.100 that, you know, the secret inner thoughts of a stranger you've never met on the other side of the

00:54:01.060 country? Pretty low. Now there's some obvious ones you can tell, you know, when politicians are doing

00:54:06.540 things that are just political, that's pretty obvious. But once you go beyond the obvious,

00:54:11.400 you know, don't assume that, you know, this is step one for, you know, forming the, you know,

00:54:16.420 the, the next Nazi regime or whatever it is that people are imagining today.

00:54:20.940 It, that, that thought right there has just made my interactions on social media that much more

00:54:27.760 bearable, you know, because I'm not worried about trying to interpret what somebody thinks.

00:54:33.620 I can interpret what they're saying and decide for myself if this is something worthy of my

00:54:38.160 attention or not, but I don't have to play this game of guessing what they think or what they don't

00:54:42.540 think. And then debating what they believe versus what I believe about it's, it's crazy what we get

00:54:47.880 wrapped up in. And I'm telling you, I read this book over the weekend, uh, in, in last week,

00:54:52.860 and just in the week or so that I've had some of this information, my engagements on social media

00:54:58.340 have been so much better and less stressful because I'm just not wrapped up in the game that

00:55:05.500 I see a lot of people playing. And frankly, that I'm guilty of playing as well.

00:55:09.380 Yeah. And you know, once you've seen some of these little techniques there,

00:55:14.240 there's sort of a natural barrier to using them because I use the power of mockery,

00:55:19.500 which is one of a civilization's most important forces. Cause there are things that you could

00:55:25.580 get away with that you still don't do because you don't want to be mocked. When I say get away

00:55:30.220 with it, you won't go to jail for it. Uh, but you don't want to be mocked. You don't want to be

00:55:35.820 embarrassed. And so given that there's a book called loser think, and somebody might be taking a picture

00:55:40.980 and appending it to your tweet, it's a little bit of a counterforce to make people not do the obvious

00:55:47.900 bad things. I'll give you some, another example. Um, analogies. People like to use analogies

00:55:55.500 as a, as a replacement for reason or for thinking. Now analogies are great for explaining a new

00:56:02.300 concept for the first time. If you wanted to tell somebody what a zebra was and they'd never heard of

00:56:07.340 a zebra, you'd say, well, it's sort of like a horse, but it's got stripes. So it's a good

00:56:11.460 short hand way of describing things, but where we go wrong is what we use it to predict.

00:56:17.620 And so, you know, we'll say, uh, my cat has markings under its snout that look like a little

00:56:23.020 Hitler mustache. So I think my cat's going to invade Poland. Now, when you hear that example, 0.81

00:56:28.340 you say, ah, that's crazy example. There's, there are no real ones like that, but all you have to do

00:56:33.380 is look at the news and you see that, um, president Trump is being criticized for criticizing the

00:56:40.140 press. And what do people say about that? Instead of asking the obvious question or should be obvious,

00:56:46.140 which is, is the press doing something to deserve it? Is there anything that changed? And the answer

00:56:52.000 is yes, something changed. The press is no longer the legitimate, you know, neutral voice it used to

00:56:58.520 be. So the president has every right to criticize them. And it might even be good for the country that

00:57:03.500 he's doing it. So, uh, if you, but if instead you use the analogy way of thinking, you say, wait a

00:57:09.980 minute, who else criticized the free press dictators, right? That's where it's all going. The president

00:57:16.300 is, it's step one of his, his plan to never leave office. So analogies are bad for predicting. And,

00:57:25.800 and until you hear that for the first time, you don't really know that's true because people will

00:57:32.040 routinely use it as sort of their common sense that, well, if it looks like this, it might go the same

00:57:39.380 way as that thing. It reminds me of, but usually it's just two things remind you of something and

00:57:44.040 that's it. That's the only connection. This is a, this is a very important distinction for men to

00:57:50.980 know, because I'll tell you one situation that we deal with quite a bit is, and there seems to be a

00:57:56.700 growing movement among men to embrace the idea that because they happen to have one or two, or maybe

00:58:02.820 even a handful of bad experiences with women that somehow women are the enemy and we need to go our 0.98

00:58:09.640 own way and we need to not be in these relationships. And my thought is, okay, you had a bad experience

00:58:16.480 with a woman or a handful of women, but that doesn't mean that all women are that way. It doesn't mean

00:58:22.040 that your relationship is destined to be that way in relationships or marriage in general is a,

00:58:27.400 is a failed institution. It means that something didn't work out in the past. So figure out why it

00:58:33.480 didn't work out and then correct whatever needs to be corrected. Nothing more than that.

00:58:38.380 Yeah. That gets back to taking responsibility too, because, um, I'll tell you my college, uh, insight I had,

00:58:47.720 uh, in college, I smoked a lot of marijuana and I would notice that when I was high, other people seem nicer.

00:58:55.860 And I thought for years, well, that's just because I'm high that I'm, my perceptions are changed.

00:59:03.100 They're not actually nicer. I'm just perceiving it that way. And it was many years later that I

00:59:08.360 realized that I had it backwards and that I was causing them to be nicer by my demeanor. And you can,

00:59:15.000 you can see this in yourself. I, I sometimes will look kind of intense if I'm just thinking deep in

00:59:20.420 thought or something and people will react to me the same way I'm presenting myself. So if I'm tense

00:59:27.080 or tense looking, they'll get tense because they're thinking, what is the situation? You know,

00:59:31.720 do I need to be tense? You're tense. Is there danger? But if I go into a situation completely

00:59:36.800 relaxed and loose and laugh at laughing, more likely the other person is going to pick up my

00:59:42.260 pattern and start to be looser and laughing themselves. So once you learn that other people's

00:59:47.920 decisions are actually largely in your control. So you control not only your own decisions,

00:59:53.760 but by how you present yourself, you control what they do and what they think and how they act.

00:59:59.220 And until you realize that it's you causing them, them to act the way they want,

01:00:03.860 you're going to think it's like, well, there's another bad woman. I got another bad one. 1.00

01:00:08.080 Right. When you're the only common denominator in this whole equation, right?

01:00:12.300 Right. 10 in a row. I keep getting bad ones. So yes, there was an old comic about this. There

01:00:19.180 was a guy in a prison cell and he was saying to his cellmate, he goes, 17 arrests, 17 convictions.

01:00:26.980 Maybe it's me. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I get that a lot too. You know, my, my demeanor tends to be a

01:00:34.660 little bit more serious. Of course, I've got the beard and things like that. And, and people I don't

01:00:38.440 know, even my wife at times, why are you so angry? What, what are you mad about? I'm like, I'm not

01:00:42.380 mad. I'm just, I'm just, I'm, I'm studying or I'm focused or I'm thinking about something else.

01:00:48.600 And, and so you were talking about that earlier is like, we, we can't even interpret those who

01:00:52.300 are closest to us, let alone those, those who are not. But it is interesting. Cause I'll hear a lot

01:00:57.360 of guys say it's this, uh, and I'm sure you're aware of this. It's the, the zero F's mentality,

01:01:02.480 right? Zero F's given, like, I don't care what anybody else thinks, or it's just the way that I am.

01:01:07.780 So that's somebody else's problem. It's like, that's a weird thought. Cause you realize that

01:01:12.580 you're capable of changing who you are simply because you want to, like you do realize that,

01:01:18.140 right? And it's weird because I think there are people who don't understand that.

01:01:22.480 Yeah. One of the best pieces of advice was from Dr. Laura. She used to be on the radio. I don't know

01:01:28.020 if she still is, but, uh, she, she was talking about philosophically that who you are is what you do.

01:01:34.700 It's not what you think. So you are not your internal thoughts. You are what you do. So if

01:01:40.380 you want to be a different person, do something different because that's who you are. If you have

01:01:45.640 evil thoughts all day long, but during your day, you're feeding the hungry and doing good deeds,

01:01:50.980 that's who you are. You're not the thoughts. You're the person who's feeding the hungry and doing the

01:01:56.060 good stuff. So to those, those people, they can be different people. And if they become that

01:02:02.980 different person, ideally an improved version of themselves, they will influence other people

01:02:08.620 with that improved version. So they have not only control over themselves, who they are

01:02:13.540 at a fundamental level, but they can control other people's behavior by just being that different

01:02:19.440 person. Yeah. This is what you talked about in, in, uh, what I would dub the solutions chapter of

01:02:25.640 the book or section of the book. When you talk about, uh, change what you do to change the way you

01:02:31.100 think, I believe is what you said or something along those lines. Yeah. Um, how often have you

01:02:37.800 seen this situation? I remember when I first got stepkids years ago and my ex-wife would say,

01:02:43.740 you know, they'd be acting up and she'd say, Oh, it's just cause they're hungry. And I'd say,

01:02:48.920 no, it's not, it's not that they're just, they're just being bad. There's nothing to it. Just be bad.

01:02:55.140 And then she'd say, watch this. And she'd give them hot dogs and they'd sit there like little

01:02:59.920 angels eating their hot dogs. And then they'd be good for a while after that until they were

01:03:04.640 tired or somebody stole something from the other kid or whatever. But, but then I started to look,

01:03:11.160 well, is that true with adults? Are we just as simple that if we're not, you know, if we're,

01:03:17.980 let's say tired or stressed or hungry or whatever, do we act that way too? And the answer is yes.

01:03:23.520 I mean, you can see it in adults just as clearly how they act before they eat versus after they eat

01:03:29.320 after a nap, before a nap, all that stuff. It's, uh, if you want to feel different,

01:03:35.560 put your body in a different situation. So that might mean go get some entertainment that cheers

01:03:41.560 you up, leave the house, get in the sun, um, do a different activity exercise. You know,

01:03:48.020 there are a hundred ways to do it, but if you don't like where your head is at,

01:03:51.200 put your body somewhere else because your body leads your head.

01:03:55.160 I like that. Yeah. We call it, uh, we call it hangry around here when, when a child or in,

01:04:00.600 in our case, a husband, me is hungry. I tend to get a little, uh, a little, uh, unbearable at times.

01:04:07.740 Yeah. I can relate to that.

01:04:09.520 Yeah. I think any guy who's listening to this probably can just throw some food at us and,

01:04:13.320 uh, we'll be good to go for another couple hours before we need to eat again.

01:04:16.140 I, I often, uh, have reduced my happiness to just a few elements. And I say that if in a 24 hour

01:04:26.080 period I can get some work done, have exercise and in a perfect world, have some, you know, loving from

01:04:33.840 my, uh, beautiful girlfriend, that's like a perfect day. But if I could get at least one of those,

01:04:39.880 you know, ideally two of them, I still have a pretty good day, but if I don't get any three,

01:04:45.320 like if I don't accomplish anything, I don't exercise and I don't have any, you know, uh,

01:04:50.500 alone time with Christina, I'm almost always in a bad mood, almost always. And if I get two and a

01:04:58.380 three good mood, if I get all three great mood and it's very consistent. So I, so how much of it is

01:05:05.580 my free will, how much of it is just my, my internal thoughts, none of it, it's all external

01:05:11.500 stuff that determines my mental state. Yeah, that's interesting. And isn't it a nice way to

01:05:17.340 live when you, when you break it down to that little framework, I just need these three things

01:05:21.560 and I'll be satisfied and happy and fulfilled. And by the way, uh, it took me decades to learn the

01:05:29.240 correlation because, you know, there are lots of things happening in your life. There, there are all

01:05:33.420 kinds of variables. And the one you usually look at is like, Oh, that other person made me mad.

01:05:38.860 Right. I'm mad because the person didn't return my call. They didn't deliver. They didn't,

01:05:43.200 they raised the price. You always think it's other people until you eat and the other people didn't

01:05:49.680 change. And now you're okay with them. Right. I'm suddenly okay with those people. I had, I had some

01:05:54.820 food. Interesting. How do you determine what battles are, maybe battles is not the right word,

01:06:02.980 but what to engage in and what not to, I imagine just be the nature of your work as,

01:06:08.140 as a political commentator and illustrator that this is part of your job. It's certainly part of

01:06:15.480 mine to engage on social media, to, to share my thoughts and ideas. But I think there's a large

01:06:20.520 swath of, of, of the population who really don't need to engage in these things. And they do. It's

01:06:27.300 like, what, what metrics do you use to determine whether this is worthy of your engagement or not?

01:06:33.780 Well, I'm a special case because part of my engagement is for my own entertainment.

01:06:39.320 Part of it is for research. I'm always seeing, okay, well, this kind of a comment, give me this

01:06:44.380 kind of a response or will it persuade or not? But I, uh, people also follow me to follow the

01:06:50.300 comments because I have a pattern of, uh, of witty put downs for people who deserve it.

01:06:57.440 And so they watch it for the entertainment. So whenever I'm responding to somebody in my head,

01:07:01.740 I'm thinking that this is part of the show, you know, it's part of the entertainment for my

01:07:06.460 followers. So in my case, I'm driven by entertainment and whether it's interesting and whether I can learn

01:07:13.100 something from it. But if it's just a, a random troll doing a random thing, I'll just give them a block.

01:07:19.000 But sometimes there's a challenge there and there's a show. And if there's a challenge or

01:07:24.740 there's a show to put on, I'm all in. I like that distinction because whether you agree or not with

01:07:32.960 you, you, you like it, right? You, you maybe even would say that maybe to a degree you,

01:07:37.980 you thrive on that. Whereas other people wouldn't. So whether you agree with it or not is irrelevant.

01:07:42.300 I think the message we need to extract there is that you're intentional about it. You know why you

01:07:48.140 do it? I think there's a lot of people that get sucked into things and they don't even know why

01:07:53.220 they're getting sucked into this, this vortex of, of whatever they want to call it. It's, it's,

01:07:58.480 it's, there's no intentionalities. There's no thought behind it. And therefore they're wasting

01:08:02.840 a bunch of time. Yeah. I mean, I, I allow myself to get sucked into exchanges that in retrospect,

01:08:09.020 I wish I had used my time for something else, but I'm always, but I'm always aware of it as an

01:08:15.260 entertainment vehicle. Like, you know, you can play a video game too long or, you know, do anything

01:08:21.040 that you like too long. So I don't, I don't think it's a big mistake if I spend time enjoying myself

01:08:26.660 battling with somebody on social media because I enjoy it. Right. Well, you seem to, and it's

01:08:32.260 definitely helped me just in, in this book. And, uh, and I know it's gonna help a lot of other

01:08:36.340 people as well. I did want to say something interesting or I, I thought interesting anyways

01:08:40.460 on, uh, on the, the concept of mockery and shame, which is obviously what you're using when you talk

01:08:45.960 about loser think. And you had mentioned it when you, uh, uh, have witty comebacks for people who

01:08:50.400 deserve it. Uh, there's a really interesting thing in society is that we, we, we shouldn't shame or put

01:08:56.680 other people's other people down. Uh, it's also the thing that I, that I worry about with bullying,

01:09:01.540 right? Everything becomes bullying. And so we have all these sorts of like anti-bullying

01:09:06.060 campaigns. And, you know, sometimes I think what other people would dub as bullying is just

01:09:11.520 a bunch of boys trying to get each other to toe the line and act appropriately. Right. Or,

01:09:17.340 or to be tougher or to be stronger. Like not everything is bullying just because somebody

01:09:21.480 feels bad about it. Yeah. You know, we're not allowed to say that there are male, female

01:09:26.300 differences in anything anymore. And so I think we lose a little bit with that because it does feel to

01:09:33.800 me. And again, you know, I'll, I'll say I haven't done a research on this, but just it seems to me

01:09:39.900 having lived in the world, the men and women, um, have a different reaction to fighting with trolls

01:09:46.780 online. When I do it, it's quite literally entertainment and I, you know, I'm not going to

01:09:53.940 get hurt. Nobody's going to, you know, come to my house and stalk me, you know, probably. Uh, so I

01:10:00.620 don't have any, I don't have any real risk and I don't feel bad when they insult me. So there's no

01:10:05.480 downside in my case, but I would imagine that women, um, maybe, maybe just process it differently. 1.00

01:10:12.220 It probably seems more threatening. I don't think I would get into, uh, I probably wouldn't get in

01:10:18.200 online battles with people I would be afraid of in the real world. You know, even though you think,

01:10:24.800 well, they can't find me, I just don't think I would, but in the real world, there's no,

01:10:29.660 there's no human being I'm afraid of, you know, short of a terrorist or something, but I'm not

01:10:35.140 afraid of anybody online. You know, I'm not afraid of men. I'm not afraid of dangerous men. Uh, you

01:10:40.760 know, that's one of the benefits of being a male is that I go through life, not being afraid of

01:10:45.180 anything. I mean, on a typical day, I don't have any fear of anything physical. And I think about what

01:10:51.660 it must be like to be a woman where every time you leave the house, you have to choose your route. 1.00

01:10:57.040 And it's like, you know, you're living in Baghdad or something where you're like, ah,

01:11:01.460 you know, IEDs on that route, you know, it could be men there and no supervision. And

01:11:07.000 that's just, I can't even imagine that world, but I take that to online. And so for me,

01:11:12.740 it's just a playground. Whereas I can imagine if you lived in a world full of IEDs that online

01:11:19.020 would look like just more of that, you know, something you'd want to avoid.

01:11:22.800 Yeah. Yeah. I do have these kinds of conversations with my wife because she'll see comments that are

01:11:27.760 made about me or what I'm doing. And she says, how do you deal with that? And I, I mean, I deal

01:11:32.260 with it in stride, but ultimately I look at it as not only a challenge. I, I enjoy some verbal

01:11:38.060 jousting because it's challenging. It pushes me. It, it, it hones my skills. You know, it might even

01:11:43.540 bring into question some thought that I may need to think differently about, which makes me a

01:11:48.040 better human being. Uh, but I, I like that challenge. I enjoy that challenge. And I realized

01:11:55.020 that it's par for the course that if I want to have the levels of success that I want to have

01:11:59.100 in the public eye, then that's part of the deal. And I can't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

01:12:05.300 Yeah. I, I got in trouble for saying this years ago, but I'll, so I'll try to say it in a more

01:12:09.960 elegant way. So I don't get in as much trouble. It seems you're less likely to get trouble in trouble

01:12:15.140 being on this podcast, but you never know. Somebody might hear it and take issue with it.

01:12:19.820 It seems to me, and this is just observational. So if somebody wants to tell me I'm, you know,

01:12:25.100 uh, uh, I'm being unscientific, I will accept that. But observationally men enjoy arguing with other

01:12:33.800 men for entertainment. And so it's a win-win proposition. Nobody changes anybody's mind,

01:12:40.220 but both, both the men will go away from it. Kind of had, they had fun. Right. You, even if,

01:12:45.800 even if you hated each other at the end, it was kind of fun. I don't know that women have that 1.00

01:12:50.100 experience. I feel, and I don't know how women process it, but I don't, I don't observe them 1.00

01:12:57.640 arguing online for entertainment. And it's obvious that men are doing it for entertainment.

01:13:02.020 Well, of course, everybody's different, blah, blah, blah. Right. Sure. Generally. Yeah. Women tend 1.00

01:13:07.280 to be more relational, right? Would they, they, they operate better that way. And so their whole,

01:13:12.280 their whole goal in, in social exchange is, is relational, right? How can I, how can I connect

01:13:20.800 these people in this organization? Men tend to be more confrontational, right? So the only reason that

01:13:26.200 Scott, you and I would band together is because I'm stronger if you're with me and vice versa. So we can go

01:13:30.460 confront the enemy together. If that doesn't happen, there's no reason to have you around.

01:13:36.160 Well, plus there's, uh, and again, I have no idea how women process the world in this regard, but 0.85

01:13:43.320 men try to dominate. It's quite, you know, and we do it online, we do it in person. You know,

01:13:50.140 we, we try to tamp it down for the benefit of society, right? You know, you, you try, you try to

01:13:56.220 repress, you try to repress some of your most aggressive instincts cause it doesn't work well

01:14:02.360 with, with society, but it's always there. I mean, I'm, I'm never, I'm never not aggressive.

01:14:09.440 It's just that I I'm hiding it as sometimes. Well, an aggression is funny because you can be

01:14:16.800 aggression doesn't equate to physicality always or, or violence. I think people sometimes think it

01:14:22.960 does. You can be aggressively patient. Even you can be aggressively pursuing an, an interest in

01:14:29.620 an activity without being violent. So it's just a way that we choose to express that aggression.

01:14:35.300 That, that is an interesting frame. I'll have to go and think about that a little bit.

01:14:39.820 Aggression in terms of a goal achievement, aggression toward a point.

01:14:46.760 Or maybe even intensity. Yeah. Think on that. Think on that.

01:14:49.780 Yeah. I'm going to think about that one.

01:14:50.840 We'll have to follow up on that conversation. Yeah. Well, Scott, I don't want to hold you up

01:14:55.040 any longer. I really appreciate your insights. Let me ask you a couple of questions as we wind down

01:14:59.240 here. Uh, the first one is what do you believe it means to be a man?

01:15:04.580 Well, I do observe that there are now many definitions of genders and I'm going to say that

01:15:11.020 I buy, this might surprise you because you know, I do most of my talking on the, the political right

01:15:16.500 and, and have more affinity for a lot of that stuff. But when it comes to gender, uh, I am fully on

01:15:24.040 board with the fact that it's infinite varieties now for convenience and for the law and for lots of

01:15:30.740 just practical reasons, you have to characterize it. This is a man, this is a woman, you know,

01:15:35.720 whatever. So there's some practical implications, but I'm very much on the, on the, uh, on the side

01:15:43.420 that says everybody can be whatever they want. Now I'm built a certain way. So there's a certain

01:15:49.320 way I can live that works for me. And it is more classically male stuff, you know, achievement and

01:15:56.440 competition, but that's just me. It doesn't make me more of a man than just one of them. Um, and,

01:16:04.840 uh, I think society itself has changed our, this is a bigger conversation, but society has changed in

01:16:12.760 a way that our testosterone levels are absolutely different. And you know, you've, you've probably

01:16:18.360 seen the studies. Testosterone has dropped in men for decades and there's all the obvious reasons.

01:16:24.380 You know, we have less, less manly things we're doing that would drive up your, your testosterone.

01:16:29.680 So we now have much more variety among men. And unless you think there's something broken about

01:16:36.840 that and I don't, I just say it's different. Now I spend most of my time doing things which by

01:16:43.220 coincidence or design, I don't know, uh, are good for my testosterone. So, you know, I'm always

01:16:49.360 exercising. I'm always fighting with somebody. I'm, you know, I'm happy when my book is the

01:16:54.240 bestseller, which, which this one is. So, um, my testosterone is probably pretty jacked,

01:17:00.740 but I don't think that's the one way to be. I appreciate it. Certainly unexpected and different

01:17:07.200 than we've heard in the past, but I really do appreciate the, uh, the candor and insight insight

01:17:11.200 there as well. Well, Scott, how do we, uh, how do we connect with you? How do we pick up a copy of

01:17:16.080 the book, connect with you, learn more about what you're doing, et cetera, et cetera.

01:17:18.680 Well, the book's called loser think, and it's available everywhere. They have books. You can

01:17:24.480 find it and connecting with me. The best way is on Twitter at Scott Adams says all one word,

01:17:31.020 Scott Adams says. Perfect. We'll sync it all up. I just want to let you know, I appreciate you. I've

01:17:36.500 been following you for a while. So again, I'm glad that Jordan synced us up and want to thank you for

01:17:41.560 this book because you have made me in a few words through the book, a more intelligent, uh, individual,

01:17:49.040 especially online, which I greatly appreciate. So thank you for that. And thank you for taking

01:17:53.480 some time today. Thank you so much for taking the time with me. I enjoyed this very much.

01:17:59.840 Gentlemen, there you go. My conversation with the one and only Scott Adams. I hope that you enjoyed it.

01:18:04.300 I do need to apologize about something because Scott said something very, very interesting, uh, at the end

01:18:10.260 when I asked, what does it mean to be a man? And, uh, ultimately I didn't necessarily agree with what

01:18:15.960 he had to share. And I feel like I missed a great opportunity to not disagree, but to have a discussion

01:18:22.700 about that. And I feel like I dropped the ball. Ultimately, I want to tell you that what I believe

01:18:28.140 is that, uh, being a male is a prerequisite to being a man. And that's something that I think Scott

01:18:34.780 and I could have probably riffed on a little bit, and that would have been valuable. So again, I apologize

01:18:39.500 for not bringing that up. Uh, that kind of ate at me a little bit and you know, I'm learning too. I'm learning

01:18:44.780 in this podcast, how to communicate and share ideas and disagree and agree and all of that as well. So I

01:18:49.500 appreciate your patience in that, but I do appreciate Scott's candor and his, uh, his ability to share

01:18:55.300 what's really on his mind. I think that's important. Uh, and that's what the topic of his book is all about

01:19:00.540 is not only how to think about things, but how to articulate and share those messages in a way, uh,

01:19:07.200 that lands and opens up meaningful, thoughtful, important dialogue. So I highly, highly recommend,

01:19:15.440 uh, his book loser think, uh, as I read through the book, it was very interesting and telling because

01:19:21.600 a lot of the principles that he talks about or the types of loser think, uh, that he explains,

01:19:27.200 I felt that I had fallen prey to quite a bit as well. So it helped me, especially with my interactions

01:19:33.120 on social media, which I alluded to in our conversation. So go check it out. It's called

01:19:36.880 a loser. Think how untrained brains are ruining America. I think you guys will enjoy it. Uh, 1.00

01:19:42.240 also connect with Scott on Twitter. That's where he's most active. I believe he's on Instagram as

01:19:45.840 well. You can check it out, but Twitter is his thing. That's where that's his domain. That's where

01:19:50.400 he's at. So go check it out. Uh, Scott Adams says, and follow me on Twitter as well. Let us know what

01:19:55.360 you thought about the show. Connect with us on YouTube. If you're interested in watching the video,

01:19:59.360 some of you guys probably already are. Uh, you can do that at, uh, order, excuse me,

01:20:03.920 youtube.com slash order of man, youtube.com slash order of man. I want to say we're at 98,000

01:20:09.520 subscribers and we're just knocking on that a hundred thousand member subscriber count right now. So

01:20:15.840 do me a favor, go check it out. All right, guys, that's all I've got for you back. I'll be back

01:20:19.600 tomorrow with Kip for our ask me anything, but until then go out there, take action, become the man you

01:20:26.160 are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge

01:20:30.880 of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order at order of

01:20:36.080 man.com.

Order of Man - December 03, 2019

How Not to Think Like a Loser ｜ SCOTT ADAMS

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript