The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 417. How to Manage Your Job, Your Company, Your Life ｜ Derick Cooper

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00:00:57.420 Hello everyone. Today I have the opportunity to speak with Mr. Derek Cooper.

00:01:16.080 Derek's the chief executive officer of QOL Medical, which is a private pharmaceutical company that specializes in the production of treatments

00:01:25.700 and the origination of treatments for rare diseases.

00:01:28.620 So, you can understand how that properly done could be a very worthwhile enterprise.

00:01:34.460 I've got to know Derek over the last few years.

00:01:38.640 He volunteered to be of aid to my enterprise in whatever way might be useful a while back.

00:01:45.300 And after investigating his background a bit, both Michaela, my daughter, and I reached out to him,

00:01:51.360 and we've established a very productive relationship.

00:01:54.340 We worked together on Ralston College in Savannah, Georgia, and he's a benefactor of that institution.

00:02:01.540 And we've gone on a number of adventures together in Greece with the people from Ralston College,

00:02:07.440 the students and some of the other principals and benefactors.

00:02:10.560 And that's been extremely interesting.

00:02:12.520 I've had a lot of conversations with Derek about deep biological matters.

00:02:16.180 He's an expert in immunological function, and as he's instructed me about the adaptations that the immunological system is capable of,

00:02:25.600 we've been able to work out a mapping of the manner in which the immunological system works to stave off pathogens

00:02:32.540 and the manner in which human thought and general behavioral adaptation progresses.

00:02:38.560 And that's one of the things that I wanted to share with everyone today.

00:02:41.760 And I think we did that quite effectively, bringing the communication patterns of bees along for the ride.

00:02:48.580 It's very interesting, you know, to talk to someone whose knowledge is quite disparate from yours in some ways,

00:02:56.440 and still where the communication still remains in the boundaries of mutual comprehensibility.

00:03:03.500 And so I also walked Derek through his experiences as a businessman,

00:03:09.520 first working for a large baked foods enterprise and then as an investment banker.

00:03:14.360 We tied that into our biological discussion as well,

00:03:18.400 talking about how experience can be mined to lead to, what would you say,

00:03:26.160 the facilitation of broader and broader patterns of adaptation, practically and conceptually.

00:03:32.000 And so that's all on the table in this discussion.

00:03:36.180 So welcome aboard.

00:03:38.240 Derek, do you remember where we met and how?

00:03:41.860 I do.

00:03:43.180 It was originally on Zoom.

00:03:46.060 Actually, I was sitting right here and Michaela introduced us.

00:03:50.460 I reached out to Michaela back when you were having some health issues

00:03:55.300 because I run a pharmaceutical company and just have some access to resources

00:04:00.800 and offered to help however I possibly could because I've, over time,

00:04:06.340 developed a lot of respect for what it is that you're doing in the world.

00:04:11.840 Yeah, well, you have been a tremendous amount of help.

00:04:14.720 And so for everybody watching and listening,

00:04:17.540 I've worked with Derek since we've met.

00:04:20.180 And to a large degree, I suppose our most intensive collaboration

00:04:24.440 has been with regards to Ralston College in Savannah.

00:04:27.800 And we'll talk about Ralston as we walk through this interview.

00:04:31.880 But Derek's also been very helpful in relation to the tour as well

00:04:37.460 and has provided me with transportation and so forth.

00:04:40.900 And that's been extraordinarily helpful.

00:04:43.520 And we've also had a variety of extremely productive conversations,

00:04:49.020 not least in Greece.

00:04:51.740 So I've traveled with Derek to Greece as part of her collaboration

00:04:56.460 with Dr. Stephen Blackwood.

00:04:58.720 Some of you watching and listening will be familiar with him

00:05:01.000 as a consequence of the Exodus seminar.

00:05:03.140 And Dr. Blackwood is president of Ralston College.

00:05:07.540 And Derek is one of its supporters and developers.

00:05:11.760 And so we've traveled to Greece a number of times

00:05:15.380 and gone to some remarkable places and had some amazing adventures

00:05:19.460 and also had the opportunity to get to know each other

00:05:23.000 at a conversational and personal level.

00:05:26.080 And the conversations have been extremely enlightening to me,

00:05:29.800 partly because Derek knows a lot in the biological realm,

00:05:35.620 especially with regard to immunological function.

00:05:37.820 That's something I really hope to touch on today.

00:05:39.500 And we've found all sorts of interesting parallels

00:05:42.300 between how the immune system works and how cognitive systems work.

00:05:45.780 And part of the reason I wanted to interview Derek today,

00:05:48.180 apart from the fact that he's an interesting character

00:05:50.120 on the entrepreneurial side, as well as the cognitive side,

00:05:54.380 is because of what he knows on the biological front.

00:05:57.480 I thought that would be really interesting to bring to people's attention.

00:06:00.840 So let's start, if you don't mind, let's start with your company.

00:06:03.940 Do you want to describe it and describe its scale and exactly what you do?

00:06:09.380 Sure, yeah.

00:06:10.240 So it's a mid-size, maybe large, private specialty biopharmaceutical company.

00:06:16.960 We make drugs for rare diseases.

00:06:20.140 So we focus primarily on genetic diseases and therapies for those diseases,

00:06:26.800 which involve understanding the sort of genetic background for why those diseases may occur.

00:06:35.520 And then once you sort of capture that biological dynamism,

00:06:42.220 you investigate how you can possibly counter whatever may be going wrong.

00:06:47.640 So the scale of our company, we have a couple hundred employees,

00:06:54.300 primarily in the U.S., although we do have some European operations.

00:06:58.320 And we sort of run the gamut from the manufacturing side we have in-house

00:07:03.860 to sales and commercial operations, as well as clinical development, etc.

00:07:09.120 So we do a fully integrated biopharmaceutical company.

00:07:15.240 So you told me at one time, paradoxically, that there's nothing rare about rare diseases

00:07:21.860 when you take them in their cumulative sense.

00:07:25.460 So maybe you could explain to everybody what that means.

00:07:29.260 Yeah, so I think that a rare disease in the U.S. at least is defined as a disease

00:07:36.160 that less than 200,000 people have.

00:07:39.100 And typically, rare diseases are rare.

00:07:45.820 Each silo, each disease is rare because they tend to be fairly impactful to human health

00:07:54.200 and can cause real problems.

00:07:56.640 And so when they are more significant in terms of human health,

00:08:01.260 it's they're less likely to have survived through evolutionary history.

00:08:06.080 So each rare disease in and of itself is unique and relatively small

00:08:13.780 in terms of the prevalence or the number of people that would have the disease.

00:08:18.240 But overall, the total people with rare diseases,

00:08:22.080 if you add up all of the categories of each individual disease,

00:08:25.960 is pretty substantial.

00:08:29.260 And another thing that's happening just as we evolve in the industry

00:08:33.100 and learn more about the genetic background of different diseases,

00:08:37.740 what we're learning is that they have implications for other diseases.

00:08:43.100 So a rare disease that impacts cognitive function, for example,

00:08:47.840 we find that maybe minor mutations with something like that

00:08:51.680 could have a broader impact on a disease like dementia, for example.

00:08:57.320 The two could be related.

00:08:58.920 And so then you learn about the disease in a broader context

00:09:04.480 by focusing on the sort of hyper-severe portion of the...

00:09:09.340 Right.

00:09:09.840 Well, that's, I suppose, in some ways, that's almost a scientific truism

00:09:14.740 because it turns out that because everything is ultimately connected,

00:09:19.800 if you investigate anything deeply enough, even something rare,

00:09:23.420 you start to find commonalities and associations between what you're studying

00:09:29.560 and all sorts of things that are relevant to the broader world.

00:09:32.480 One of the things you see in the careers of scientists often is that

00:09:35.560 they start out to some degree, maybe when they're undergraduates, as generalists.

00:09:40.980 Then they specialize intensely on a phenomenon that might seem trivial

00:09:46.280 because of its particular specificity.

00:09:49.860 genetic mutations in fruit flies, I suppose, comes to mind.

00:09:54.220 But as the scientist develops his or her career

00:09:58.340 and starts to approach the limits of their cognitive ability,

00:10:02.400 the connections between what they're studying and everything else

00:10:06.160 start to become more and more apparent to them.

00:10:08.420 And as their careers progress, they become broader and broader

00:10:11.940 in their range of knowledge.

00:10:13.580 And I think that's a, this is partly why I think it's possible

00:10:17.900 for people to follow what they're interested in

00:10:21.420 and to do that effectively.

00:10:23.580 Because if you follow what you're interested in, even if it's a pinpoint,

00:10:27.740 it'll lead you to, if you do it properly and in a disciplined manner

00:10:31.940 and striving uphill, it'll lead you to wherever you want to go.

00:10:35.760 And I guess this is partly also what happened to you.

00:10:38.060 And I'm kind of interested in that on the autobiographical front

00:10:41.260 because you started out in investment banking.

00:10:44.860 You were in investment banking for 16 years, right?

00:10:47.700 So maybe walk us through that and tell everybody how it is

00:10:52.020 that you, your interests transformed across that period of time

00:10:56.580 and how you ended up, first of all, in investment banking

00:10:59.220 and then out of it and then into the company that you now run.

00:11:03.200 Yeah. So, so when I left undergraduate school at Washington and Lee,

00:11:08.940 I started in what's called corporate finance and investment banking,

00:11:12.860 which is sort of the, the capital raising side.

00:11:17.520 We, we would help small and mid-sized companies go public

00:11:21.220 or raise debt and, and execute on an acquisition, that kind of thing.

00:11:26.560 Um, and then I ended up, uh, moving to a, um, I moved to a family owned business

00:11:34.840 that my father, uh, had built after working for a good size fortune 500 company

00:11:41.440 for, for many years, he left in the late eighties and started his own company

00:11:45.880 in the baked foods business of all things.

00:11:48.200 So I, I moved into the operations of a baked food business.

00:11:52.560 It was a good size company.

00:11:53.660 We had 2,500 employees at one point, um, operations throughout the Southeast.

00:12:00.320 Um, we then sold that company about 10 years later.

00:12:03.960 So in the late nineties, I worked for that company for a while.

00:12:07.180 And, and after we sold it, I went to work for a company in Nashville, Tennessee,

00:12:12.440 actually, which was a, a mezzanine, it was called a mezzanine capital.

00:12:16.000 That's basically, um, helping invest in small companies so they can, they can grow.

00:12:22.160 Um, at the time it was a lot of fun.

00:12:24.320 It was right in the, uh, sort of peak of the internet craze.

00:12:28.540 So we were, um, would be the defining characteristic of what was happening in the capital markets

00:12:34.160 at the time.

00:12:35.180 And so we're, um, making a lot of investments in a lot of different small companies.

00:12:40.860 Um, and then, uh, that company was sold and I, I sort of talked to my family and some

00:12:47.060 friends and we ended up putting together a, a private, uh, equity investment company that

00:12:53.200 ultimately made an investment in this pharmaceutical company in 2003.

00:12:58.620 And then I just, I was on the board initially and got to know the company and then joined

00:13:05.000 the company full-time in 2010 as CEO and have been there ever since.

00:13:10.880 So when you started out in the big foods company, what did you, what, what did you, what did

00:13:19.480 that teach you?

00:13:20.180 What did that teach you about business?

00:13:21.760 And what, and so what did it teach you personally?

00:13:24.920 What did it teach you about business?

00:13:26.240 And what did it teach you that enabled you to make the move to the investment banking side

00:13:30.880 of things and then into the pharmaceutical industry?

00:13:34.820 So you, because the reason I'm asking, I suppose, is because you have an intellectual interest

00:13:38.300 that we'll explore in relationship to biology, but you also have business knowledge and interest

00:13:43.640 that enables you to not only investigate cognitively, let's say, and conceptually, but to run a business

00:13:50.040 successfully and profitably and to manage people while doing that.

00:13:53.440 And that's a, you know, that's not an obviously overlapping skill set.

00:13:58.160 So I'm curious to pull out the threads and to explain, you know, how both of those abilities

00:14:03.420 developed.

00:14:04.340 So let's go on the business side first.

00:14:06.240 You started with this baked goods, baked foods company.

00:14:10.000 Yeah.

00:14:10.180 So I think, I think maybe it is more of an overlapping skill set because a baked foods

00:14:15.580 company is defined by sort of a hyper-competitive environment.

00:14:19.700 And it's very much what I would call a cost-driven business.

00:14:24.780 And what I mean by that is you have to watch your costs very, very carefully because the margins

00:14:30.220 are thin.

00:14:30.840 There's a lot of competition.

00:14:31.860 We basically were producing a very high volume of like white bread and the basic stuff that

00:14:40.400 you get on the shelf in a Walmart grocery store, white bread and wheat bread and hot dog and

00:14:45.820 hamburger buns and distributing them to, I mean, we had a facility in Valdez, North Carolina

00:14:53.300 that would make 50,000 pounds of an hour just to, just to put some perspective on this.

00:14:59.460 So because of that fairly low margin cost-driven business, you have to manage the hierarchy

00:15:06.780 of costs really, really precisely because anything that sort of grows or gets out of control can,

00:15:14.640 can be disastrous in terms of the cost of the business.

00:15:18.020 So it's sort of the extreme side of pencil sharpening.

00:15:24.100 I would say the pharmaceutical business by juxtaposition is almost the complete opposite.

00:15:30.860 It is driven by a focus on the intellectual property development around a unique approach to treating

00:15:42.780 a particular disease, which is highly complex and requires an extraordinary amount of thinking

00:15:51.180 to juxtapose the two.

00:15:53.580 And the consequence of that is that the margins in the industry are just completely different

00:16:01.440 because the investment comes on developing the product and the patent portfolio around the product

00:16:09.600 and that kind of thing, as opposed to managing the cost explicitly.

00:16:15.140 But your question is a good one.

00:16:16.920 It's not one I've thought about before because one of the things that we do somewhat uniquely

00:16:21.620 with our company is we manage our costs pretty rigorously, even though we don't necessarily

00:16:29.880 have to because it is a more profitable business than baked foods, for example.

00:16:35.460 But what I've found in doing that is that it limits chaos.

00:16:41.360 Because if you sort of are continuously hyper-focusing on what it is that is your goal and make sure

00:16:50.740 that you are not allowing noise to enter the situation in pursuit of that goal, well, it's

00:17:00.300 highly correlated with success.

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00:18:45.160 Yeah, so I'm trying to think of that from a psychological and a trait perspective.

00:18:53.220 I mean, we know very well that success in complex endeavors is primarily dependent on intelligence, but that personality trait variance also plays a role.

00:19:04.180 And so when you're talking about very tight cost control, I immediately think of two things, and one is conscientiousness.

00:19:12.760 That's the ability to pay attention.

00:19:14.540 That's orderliness and industrialness.

00:19:16.200 The ability and willingness and desire, for that matter, to pay attention to details.

00:19:21.820 So details matter.

00:19:22.660 And I would also suspect a certain degree of disagreeableness, too, because when you're talking about control of costs, let's say, to me, and this is partly practical experience speaking, that also means the ability to say no, right?

00:19:41.000 And control implies no.

00:19:42.760 Right, right.

00:19:43.200 But then on the product development side, let's say, with regards to the pharmaceutical industry, that seems to be more something associated with high levels of openness and creativity and interest in intellectual matters.

00:19:55.300 And so that's a relatively rare combination, extremely high openness.

00:19:59.780 And I know that's characteristic of you because I've talked to you a lot, and you're unbelievably interested in ideas, but you're also extremely detail-oriented.

00:20:06.780 So that's a relatively rare overlap of traits.

00:20:08.980 And so it sounds to me like you really did, when you were working in the baked foods industry, did you enjoy the detailed management that was associated with keeping the company functional despite it being lean?

00:20:29.580 No, no.

00:20:31.140 That was not something that I found interesting.

00:20:33.760 It's necessary, and I understood the value from a good management perspective, but I am a bit of a chaos seeker from an openness perspective.

00:20:48.860 I do like to explore new ideas.

00:20:51.380 And so an overly ordered organization is not optimum for me.

00:20:56.460 Right, so you weren't fundamentally interested in, so for everyone listening and watching, if you're temperamentally suited to be a manager, let's say, what that means most basically is that you're intelligent and that you're conscientious and that you have a certain degree of emotional resilience.

00:21:16.440 So you're low in neuroticism.

00:21:17.640 Those are the best predictors on the managerial front.

00:21:19.700 On the entrepreneurial front, the best predictors are intelligence, once again, because that's universal across any domain that's complex, but trait openness.

00:21:30.720 And openness is basically aesthetic appreciation on the one hand and interest in ideas and intellectual exploration on the other.

00:21:38.200 And my empirical investigations into predicting entrepreneurship showed quite clearly that the major trait predictor there was openness by a substantial margin.

00:21:47.280 And so it sounds to me like when you were in your baked foods incarnation, let's say, that there was plenty of room there for conscientiousness, but not necessarily as much room as you have now for the investigation into deep problems, the intellectual investigation.

00:22:04.980 Is that fair?

00:22:06.400 That's fair.

00:22:07.160 That's fair.

00:22:07.400 That's a very good description.

00:22:09.080 Okay, okay, but it trained you.

00:22:11.680 Yeah, I think that there's a, if you're a very open person, it's good to work on the discipline.

00:22:20.240 You know, if you're like a CEO, ultimately, your responsibility is strategic.

00:22:26.740 You need to be looking ahead and deciding where the organization is going and what it is that you're going to do and how you get there.

00:22:33.800 And, but you have to learn to constrain your own openness in terms of seeking those things because if you don't, you will become the biggest source of chaos in the organization because very open people tend to be, well, open to lots of different ideas.

00:22:52.420 And so, if you can discipline yourself on that front first, then I think that it propagates throughout the organization ultimately.

00:23:04.220 And it's like anything, you have to draw the boundary between chaos and order intelligently.

00:23:10.340 As a matter of fact, I think you could even define competence that way as the sort of optimum dynamic positioning of the boundary between order and chaos depending on the circumstances.

00:23:23.320 And it does change because, do you have any idea how in your present business you make a decision about, so, okay.

00:23:35.560 So, if you're open, any given idea has a high probability of triggering a set of associated ideas.

00:23:42.880 And the more open you are, the larger the gap is between the ideas that are triggered.

00:23:48.900 So, in fact, when you're talking to highly open people, they'll jump from one topic to another.

00:23:54.300 And if you're less open, you may not understand that there's any connection between those ideas at all.

00:23:58.880 Now, the advantage to that is that you bring things together that are not normally conceptualized together.

00:24:04.160 And also, you're a seeker of multiple pathways.

00:24:08.760 But the disadvantage, as you're inferring or even pointing out, is that, well, if you have 30 open people working on a project, there's going to be like 900 ideas a day.

00:24:21.460 And some of those might even be great ideas.

00:24:23.640 But the problem is that, well, most great ideas are still going to fail.

00:24:28.520 Pursuit of any great ideas, unbelievably time-consuming and costly.

00:24:32.540 And you can't do everything at once.

00:24:35.860 And so, how have you learned, do you think, to distinguish between the ideas that attract your interest that are worth pursuing and the ideas that attract your interest that are, you know, that you have to let fall by the wayside?

00:24:48.760 And, you know, how have you learned to deal with that conceptually, but also practically, right?

00:24:52.820 Because you can have people around you that can help you with that, too.

00:24:55.960 So, how have you solved that problem, given your openness?

00:24:59.620 Yeah, yeah.

00:25:00.160 You know, that's a good question.

00:25:01.220 I hadn't really thought about it before.

00:25:03.140 I think that what occurs is a process of sort of aligning the opportunity with the relevant sacrifice that you have to.

00:25:15.980 In the investment world, we call it good capital allocation.

00:25:21.160 So, the way that you do this with investments is you sort of create a hierarchy of your opportunities.

00:25:27.860 And whatever is at the top of the hierarchy, your very best opportunity where you can get the best return, you put as much resource into that opportunity.

00:25:37.020 So, fill that bucket first before you allow – Warren Buffett actually says this in an extraordinarily pithy manner.

00:25:47.380 He says, you know, when you're 25 years old, sit down and write down the top $25 that you have for your life.

00:25:54.160 Draw a line under number five, tear the page off, keep the top five, and don't do anything else.

00:26:03.780 I mean, you can make, you know, some changes, but it's a capturing of this concept of hyper-focus.

00:26:10.360 And so, I think you have to – if you have an extraordinary opportunity, you're willing to direct more sacrifice to that opportunity, as you should.

00:26:22.340 And so, it's a mathematical – it's a math-esque balancing of the equation of how good is the opportunity and how much is it going to cost to pursue it.

00:26:34.000 Right, right. Well, so, there's a number of avenues of exploration that are germane to that observation.

00:26:42.780 So, one is – so, if you talk to managers of small and large companies about what frustrates them, one of the things you find very rapidly is they're frustrated by the constant necessity of having to put out fires.

00:26:57.540 So, they're so busy dealing with, like, crisis minutiae that they never get a chance to strategize over the long run or even to sit down and think about what a reasonable medium to long-term strategy is.

00:27:10.700 And that is not productive.

00:27:11.940 But part of the reason is this, is that the typical manager – so, the typical manager, first of all, fails.

00:27:18.320 The empirical estimates are that 65% of managers add negative net value to their companies.

00:27:23.720 Right, so, that's a pretty damning – that's a pretty damning statistic.

00:27:28.900 Yeah, I do think that's mostly chaos.

00:27:31.120 Well, that's – so, what happens to managers very frequently is that they spend the majority of their time with their worst employees.

00:27:40.940 And so, the perverse management strategy, which is well-documented empirically, is that you do the same thing with your employees that you do with your goals, according to your description, which is you figure out the people who are stellar performers and you spend all your time with them.

00:27:59.120 And part of the reason is that the payoff, as a consequence of facilitating your stellar employees or partners, let's say, is exponential and not linear.

00:28:13.240 And so, also, the probability that if you're dealing with problem employees that you're going to be able to do anything for them in the medium to long run is extremely low.

00:28:22.620 You don't have the time or the energy, and they may not have the inclination.

00:28:26.020 I mean, managers aren't clinical psychologists, and their employees aren't people who are coming to them for psychological help.

00:28:32.620 So, there's an analogy there, you know, and the other thing I'm –

00:28:36.840 Yeah, I think that that's directionally partially correct.

00:28:43.300 I might say it a little bit different.

00:28:44.860 I think that you – yeah, at a high level, it's definitely a Pareto distribution, and you want to focus your time and energy on the sort of uber-competent people that can get a lot of things done. 0.66

00:28:59.620 But you need to build a functional organization that has a lot of different people in a lot of different roles.

00:29:06.920 And you can't do that by saying, well, we're just going to focus on, you know, these two or three superstars and hope everything else works out.

00:29:16.400 You have to understand how the entire organization functions up and down the hierarchy.

00:29:23.960 And I would say that chaos to me, if things are going wrong in some element of the organization, it's, you know, the sort of hyper-manager conscientiousness types that you're describing.

00:29:38.960 They want to just get rid of the chaos.

00:29:40.660 They don't want any change.

00:29:41.740 They don't want anything to sort of disturb the organization.

00:29:45.540 And I don't think that's actually exactly right.

00:29:47.840 I think there's more subtlety to it.

00:29:50.420 I think that when, you know, and sort of the sign of chaos to me is that the idea of proliferation just kind of starts to go crazy.

00:29:59.020 You get all these, well, maybe we should do this.

00:30:01.020 Maybe they're competing ideas.

00:30:02.480 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:30:03.320 And that's a sign of, I think, in the business context, it's a sign of one of two different things.

00:30:13.440 Either you have not communicated the goal clearly as a leader or you don't have the right goal and people aren't sure what to do.

00:30:23.220 And so they're actually doing the right thing in the sense that if you don't know what to do and what you are doing isn't working, changing is a good idea.

00:30:34.380 Now, that doesn't mean that you necessarily are changing in the right direction because you may or may not have access to or be privy to what is going on in other aspects of the organization.

00:30:44.340 But to me, it's a smoke signal of something that you need to pay attention to.

00:30:51.100 And the other thing that typically I see that causes chaotic behavior is people have a goal.

00:30:59.120 The goal is relatively clear and they realize they're not going to be able to make the goal.

00:31:03.340 And so there's sort of a fear or threat aspect that's starting to occur and they feel like whatever it is that they're doing isn't working and they need to make a change in order to make sure that they're successful.

00:31:16.940 So, in a sense, both of those reactions are correct, but you need to understand what it is that's motivating the person to sort of change direction so that you can either help them get to the goal or make sure that the goal is clear.

00:31:34.620 And it's not necessarily just that there's a misalignment of competence, I think, which was your description.

00:31:45.520 I mean, it could be.

00:31:46.380 Well, I guess I'm also wondering, it may be the case as well, it's complicated when it comes to intelligence because intelligent people tend to perform better wherever they're put if it's complex.

00:32:00.080 But you could imagine a situation where there's a lot of different sub-games in your corporate environment and they're all necessary.

00:32:10.720 So maybe there's a distinction, let's say, between sales and research.

00:32:16.380 So that's a good distinction.

00:32:18.120 The great people on the sales side aren't going to be the same people who are the great people on the research side.

00:32:25.320 Absolutely.

00:32:25.720 So, right.

00:32:27.020 So there's going to be a distribution of competence by specialized bin.

00:32:33.640 I mean, one of the things we know psychologically about specialized bins, let's say, for example, because you might ask yourself, well, how do you conceptualize the different?

00:32:41.300 What does it mean for an occupation to be different from another occupation, right?

00:32:47.400 Because obviously nurse and doctor are similar, but probably, you know, doctor and graphic artist aren't that similar.

00:32:56.560 And so it begs the question of what constitutes similarity and interest seems to be relevant in that regard, right?

00:33:03.720 They are empirical.

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00:34:11.480 Yeah, you know, I think that your goal is to run any organization, but well, I'll focus on a pharmaceutical company.

00:34:25.040 If you want to run it well, you absolutely need to understand people.

00:34:29.720 And I think that one of the things that you've been tremendously helpful to me with is things like the Big Five personality profile.

00:34:38.320 And I understand myself, and I think if you can understand what it is that you're good at and what it is that you are not good at,

00:34:47.620 and there's a key component to that, which I would describe as epistemic humility.

00:34:52.520 You have to know the boundary of what you know and what you don't know.

00:34:57.560 And if you can fill in the gap, if you can understand that and fill in the gap properly, then the organization will function better.

00:35:09.100 Right, right.

00:35:10.140 Because you're sort of aligning different skill sets appropriately with what needs to be done.

00:35:15.960 So I think, and you know, another key component to this, I would say that I've learned from listening to you,

00:35:22.620 is that because different people perceive the world differently, they, there's, you have to understand at least somewhat,

00:35:34.000 you have to have some concept of what their reference frame is.

00:35:37.700 Because if you're a highly ordered, you know, conscientious person, then someone who's a creative marketing person,

00:35:49.780 it's almost a different language in terms of how those people view the world.

00:35:54.340 And so you need to sort of, you need to align the way that you communicate with the recipient of the, of the communication.

00:36:02.240 Because, I mean, it literally is almost like a different language.

00:36:07.640 Right, right.

00:36:08.300 Well, and you know, we hear a lot of squawking about diversity in the culture wars that are raging,

00:36:14.320 but there is relevant appreciation for diversity.

00:36:18.720 And real, true diversity is actually diversity of temperament,

00:36:22.620 because we know there are five temperaments, dimensions of temperament.

00:36:26.660 We know they're normally distributed,

00:36:27.980 and we know that there are different skills associated with them, and that those differences are real.

00:36:33.460 So we know, for example, if you're extroverted, rather than introverted,

00:36:37.200 you're going to be motivated by social interaction.

00:36:41.440 And it's going to energize you, rather than innervating you.

00:36:45.700 And it's highly probable, especially if you're involved in sales,

00:36:49.500 this isn't invariably the case, but it's highly likely,

00:36:52.580 that like sales, especially sales that involve a lot of presentations,

00:36:56.600 meeting a lot of people, a lot of group presentations,

00:36:58.960 that's much more suitable for someone who's extroverted.

00:37:01.860 Now, extroverts can also be impulsive.

00:37:05.020 And in the extreme, you know, there's pathologies associated with every skill.

00:37:11.280 They can also, you know, that can degenerate into mania.

00:37:14.000 You don't get anything without a cost.

00:37:16.240 But it is extremely useful to know that people are actually different.

00:37:21.060 You know, the people who are higher neuroticism,

00:37:22.760 they're going to be much more sensitive to threat.

00:37:25.100 And so you can imagine that that would be one of the things

00:37:28.380 that would stop them from taking risks.

00:37:30.800 And that might be a very bad thing on the strictly entrepreneurial side.

00:37:35.120 But you might imagine, too, that having a few people around that

00:37:37.640 who serve as canaries in the coal mine could also be extremely useful.

00:37:41.540 And agreeableness is particularly interesting in that regard,

00:37:44.720 because there are really pronounced advantages and disadvantages

00:37:47.560 at the ends of the distribution.

00:37:49.520 So disagreeable people, they're much more likely to bargain hard for themselves.

00:37:55.080 So they're going to be formidable competitors.

00:37:57.460 And they're going to be super blunt.

00:37:59.500 And they can be blunt enough to be offensive,

00:38:03.800 especially if you're agreeable and neurotic.

00:38:06.300 But they'll tell you exactly what the hell's going on.

00:38:09.140 And if you need a foil for yourself,

00:38:11.560 and also someone who, if allied with you,

00:38:14.160 can help you stop you from being taken advantage of,

00:38:17.380 they're unbelievably useful.

00:38:19.060 Whereas agreeable people, they can be taken advantage of.

00:38:21.640 But they're very good at facilitating social bonds between people

00:38:26.080 and making the environment have that feeling of what closeness and intimacy.

00:38:31.600 Now, that's not always appropriate,

00:38:32.980 but sometimes it's unbelievably useful.

00:38:35.720 Right?

00:38:36.000 And so...

00:38:36.940 Yeah.

00:38:37.580 Agreeable people will tell you what they really think.

00:38:39.800 And I find that incredibly helpful.

00:38:43.320 Because if I'm making a mistake in leading an organization,

00:38:46.280 I need to understand that it's a mistake.

00:38:48.840 And agreeable people won't tell you that you're making a mistake.

00:38:52.600 Because they don't like to upset the apple cart.

00:38:56.280 Yeah, yeah.

00:38:56.720 They don't like interpersonal conflict at all.

00:38:59.200 Yeah.

00:39:00.240 Yeah.

00:39:00.580 So, you know, we can see there that...

00:39:03.060 One of the upsides of viewing the world this way

00:39:05.800 is that you can understand that

00:39:07.400 people genuinely differ in their abilities.

00:39:10.600 But there is a very large number of potential games that people can play.

00:39:16.140 And if you're running something like a corporation,

00:39:18.840 there's plenty of games within the corporation

00:39:21.480 where you...

00:39:22.520 That you can...

00:39:24.280 If you can identify the players properly,

00:39:26.380 you can put them into a game that they'll be highly motivated to play.

00:39:30.040 And so you can get the advantage of that diversity.

00:39:32.520 Right?

00:39:32.720 You can get the advantage of the diversity.

00:39:34.580 You can maintain your standards of excellence.

00:39:36.820 All that happens, though, is the excellence...

00:39:40.020 What you're measuring in terms of excellence and performance

00:39:42.800 is going to change.

00:39:44.180 And so that would mean, for example,

00:39:45.600 that you're not going to look for the same kind of performance,

00:39:49.440 as you said, from a creative marketing director

00:39:51.740 that you might expect from someone who's assigned to manage

00:39:55.860 and carefully control costs.

00:39:59.120 Absolutely.

00:40:00.160 Absolutely.

00:40:00.840 I mean, that is a very good description of good management, right?

00:40:05.180 It's to align personality and competence with the job.

00:40:10.440 Right, right.

00:40:11.080 Well, yeah, that's a good definition of...

00:40:12.840 That's a good definition of merit

00:40:14.420 that's also not particularly exclusionary.

00:40:17.080 Now, Derek mentioned,

00:40:18.280 for everybody who's watching and listening,

00:40:19.760 Derek mentioned this Understand Myself site.

00:40:22.720 And so Understand Myself is a site

00:40:24.560 I set up with Dr. Daniel Higgins

00:40:26.340 and Dr. Robert Peel,

00:40:27.520 who I've interviewed on this podcast,

00:40:29.300 to help people understand their personalities.

00:40:32.100 And it offers people a five-dimensional analysis

00:40:36.700 of their personality.

00:40:37.920 And five dimensions is a lot, by the way.

00:40:40.500 The world has four dimensions.

00:40:42.420 And so personality has five.

00:40:43.840 It's a very complex structure.

00:40:45.620 And it breaks each of the two dimensions

00:40:47.440 further down into two aspects.

00:40:49.080 So it gives you 10 different aspects of your personality.

00:40:55.200 And so you can take that and find out where you sit,

00:40:59.080 what your relative strengths are

00:41:00.900 in relationship to your temperament,

00:41:02.500 and what your relative weaknesses are.

00:41:04.780 And if you take it with your partner,

00:41:07.160 then you can find out theirs as well,

00:41:09.800 assuming that they allow you access to it.

00:41:11.780 And also you'll get a report that details out

00:41:14.020 your similarities and differences with that person.

00:41:16.420 Because that's also really useful to know, right?

00:41:18.460 I mean, if you're talking to someone

00:41:20.320 who's disagreeable and you're agreeable,

00:41:22.560 they are really looking at the world

00:41:24.280 quite differently than you are.

00:41:26.100 And so if you don't understand that,

00:41:27.920 there's no shortage of opportunities

00:41:30.140 for misunderstanding and friction.

00:41:32.600 And if you do understand it, as you said,

00:41:34.880 especially if you're talking to someone

00:41:36.900 who has a personality trait that you lack,

00:41:39.480 is that they're going to be able to shed light

00:41:42.240 on elements of the world that are somewhat opaque to you.

00:41:46.840 Exactly.

00:41:47.740 I mean, I think that's one of the problems

00:41:49.660 with things like Twitter.

00:41:52.560 The algorithms are driven to aggregate you

00:41:55.920 into echo chambers of people

00:41:58.160 who see the world similarly,

00:42:00.720 but that's not how the world works.

00:42:02.820 We need good operations people

00:42:05.000 and good sales and marketing people

00:42:06.500 and good scientists.

00:42:07.780 And those are all different skill sets.

00:42:09.940 And so,

00:42:11.160 and they have to talk across an organization

00:42:13.860 in order to be able to function optimally.

00:42:16.740 So you can't just stay in your silo

00:42:19.940 and just do what you want to do

00:42:22.500 without understanding that,

00:42:25.540 you know,

00:42:26.000 if the distribution function

00:42:27.320 is not functioning optimally,

00:42:29.920 then it's going to cause disruptions

00:42:32.180 for the sales team.

00:42:33.740 Right.

00:42:34.120 So,

00:42:35.480 you know,

00:42:36.160 these things have to align

00:42:37.880 across perspectives,

00:42:39.260 I guess.

00:42:40.040 So what did you learn

00:42:41.720 in addition to what you'd learned

00:42:43.600 in the baked foods industry?

00:42:45.820 What did you learn

00:42:46.440 when you moved into investment banking?

00:42:49.000 And how did you learn to,

00:42:51.060 I presume,

00:42:52.380 I mean,

00:42:52.660 the first thing I guess

00:42:53.660 I would like to know

00:42:54.340 is exactly what is it that you did?

00:42:56.820 And then what was the utility in that

00:42:59.800 like socially

00:43:00.860 and also

00:43:01.440 in terms of your development,

00:43:03.860 later development

00:43:04.560 and work in the enterprise

00:43:06.440 that you're pursuing now?

00:43:08.240 Yeah.

00:43:08.880 I think

00:43:09.600 investment banking

00:43:11.800 is a highly

00:43:13.760 technical,

00:43:16.280 highly

00:43:16.840 conscientious,

00:43:18.880 I mean,

00:43:19.180 you work 100 hours a week.

00:43:20.760 I mean,

00:43:21.020 it's a pretty brutal environment,

00:43:23.380 but you are exposed

00:43:25.680 to a

00:43:27.140 unbelievable stream

00:43:29.100 of CEOs

00:43:30.740 and CFOs

00:43:31.920 and you're

00:43:32.740 only dealing

00:43:33.760 with people

00:43:34.560 who have been

00:43:35.960 very successful

00:43:36.800 running businesses

00:43:38.080 and they're looking

00:43:39.060 to take their business

00:43:39.920 to the next step.

00:43:41.320 And it's

00:43:41.740 a pretty,

00:43:43.560 it's an amazing

00:43:44.940 educational environment

00:43:46.120 because

00:43:46.500 you're

00:43:47.440 working hard

00:43:48.440 and you're being exposed

00:43:49.460 to people

00:43:50.280 who are

00:43:51.220 highly competent

00:43:52.920 and they are,

00:43:54.060 they're looking

00:43:55.120 to take the business

00:43:56.140 to the next step.

00:43:57.040 And so you're,

00:43:57.660 you're involved

00:43:58.380 in that whole process

00:43:59.660 in,

00:44:00.120 in terms of writing

00:44:01.260 a description of the company

00:44:02.400 and what it is

00:44:02.960 that they do.

00:44:03.740 So when you go

00:44:04.440 market it to

00:44:05.760 institutional investors

00:44:07.420 and whatnot,

00:44:08.060 you can say,

00:44:09.120 look at this amazing company

00:44:11.020 that's created

00:44:11.600 this new software

00:44:12.460 or whatever it is.

00:44:13.880 You have to,

00:44:14.840 you have,

00:44:15.240 you become

00:44:15.760 the,

00:44:16.900 the

00:44:17.780 financial marketing

00:44:19.760 arm

00:44:20.360 of the organization

00:44:21.400 and so you have

00:44:22.160 to do all

00:44:23.220 of the analysis

00:44:23.920 on what the,

00:44:25.760 how competent

00:44:26.420 the company is

00:44:27.400 from a,

00:44:28.060 an,

00:44:28.760 an income

00:44:30.400 perspective

00:44:30.960 and,

00:44:31.440 and how sustainable

00:44:32.840 they'll be

00:44:33.280 and what their

00:44:33.640 growth opportunities

00:44:34.380 are.

00:44:35.180 So you're,

00:44:35.800 you're hyper exposed

00:44:37.160 to a lot of

00:44:38.140 very high level

00:44:39.340 financial and operational

00:44:42.000 concepts

00:44:42.680 at a very young age.

00:44:43.580 it's,

00:44:43.820 it's,

00:44:44.220 it's,

00:44:45.180 it's July

00:44:46.480 and it's,

00:44:47.860 it's a very open

00:44:48.740 environment.

00:44:49.180 So you're,

00:44:50.200 you work on one deal

00:44:51.340 for three months

00:44:52.060 and then go right

00:44:53.220 into the next one

00:44:54.020 and then go right

00:44:54.880 into the next one.

00:44:55.800 So it's.

00:44:56.540 Right.

00:44:57.320 How many companies

00:44:58.280 do you think,

00:44:58.980 how many companies

00:44:59.660 do you think

00:45:00.140 you evaluated?

00:45:01.720 Oh my gosh.

00:45:02.760 I don't know.

00:45:03.780 Hundreds.

00:45:04.480 I couldn't.

00:45:04.720 Hundreds,

00:45:05.240 hundreds,

00:45:06.100 hundreds.

00:45:06.660 Uh huh.

00:45:07.340 And how long,

00:45:08.160 how many did you

00:45:08.880 have to evaluate

00:45:09.700 do you think?

00:45:10.340 I mean,

00:45:10.500 I know you came

00:45:11.160 from a business

00:45:12.000 background and when

00:45:13.280 you moved into

00:45:13.760 investment banking,

00:45:14.460 but how many

00:45:15.640 companies do you,

00:45:16.780 did you have to

00:45:17.420 evaluate before you

00:45:18.680 felt that you knew

00:45:20.620 what you were doing

00:45:21.480 and what is it that

00:45:22.860 you were looking for?

00:45:23.780 I mean,

00:45:24.000 so,

00:45:24.360 so we could imagine.

00:45:25.840 Okay.

00:45:26.080 So,

00:45:26.680 and I'd like to start

00:45:27.500 from basic principles.

00:45:28.900 So as,

00:45:29.440 as Derek pointed out,

00:45:31.000 if you run a company

00:45:32.500 and you want to

00:45:33.480 make it grow at some

00:45:34.780 point,

00:45:35.200 it's possible that

00:45:36.420 you're going to look

00:45:37.020 for additional funding.

00:45:38.360 And so if you go to

00:45:39.220 an investment banker,

00:45:40.320 you're going,

00:45:41.600 to find people

00:45:42.540 who will invest

00:45:43.140 in your company

00:45:43.780 and they're,

00:45:44.960 you're going to,

00:45:46.720 they're going to take

00:45:47.540 a piece of your company

00:45:48.620 as a consequence

00:45:50.340 of working with you.

00:45:52.020 And so there's a risk

00:45:53.320 on both sides.

00:45:54.160 The risk to the

00:45:55.060 investment bank

00:45:55.680 is that the company

00:45:56.320 fails or is fraudulent

00:45:57.520 and the risk to the,

00:45:58.520 to the person

00:46:00.120 who's running the company

00:46:00.960 is that someone else

00:46:01.820 will end up with

00:46:02.860 more control

00:46:03.920 or more ownership

00:46:05.220 than might be optimal

00:46:06.640 as far as they're

00:46:07.380 concerned of the enterprise.

00:46:08.800 And so that has

00:46:09.720 to be negotiated.

00:46:10.480 And so as an

00:46:12.040 investment banker,

00:46:13.020 you're in a situation

00:46:14.080 where you have to

00:46:14.760 evaluate a company's

00:46:16.400 probability of success.

00:46:17.680 Now that's a very

00:46:18.220 tricky thing because

00:46:19.020 there's many things

00:46:20.440 other than

00:46:21.700 the apparent

00:46:23.940 creative,

00:46:25.420 what would you say,

00:46:27.440 the apparent creativity

00:46:28.640 and utility

00:46:29.400 of the product,

00:46:30.420 right?

00:46:30.640 There's the management

00:46:31.360 team,

00:46:31.820 there's the timing

00:46:32.380 in the market,

00:46:33.100 there's the marketing

00:46:33.700 team,

00:46:34.020 there's an endless

00:46:35.080 number of things

00:46:35.740 that go together

00:46:36.300 to make a company

00:46:36.980 work.

00:46:38.000 And it's not at all

00:46:39.500 obvious that

00:46:40.280 you can take a look

00:46:42.140 at a portfolio

00:46:42.780 of stocks

00:46:43.720 and you can

00:46:44.540 assess the companies

00:46:46.000 and predict which

00:46:46.840 stocks are going

00:46:47.680 to perform well

00:46:48.800 because most money

00:46:49.660 managers actually

00:46:50.500 do worse than chance.

00:46:52.700 What,

00:46:52.880 what do you,

00:46:53.920 do you think that

00:46:54.780 is different in

00:46:55.540 investment banking?

00:46:56.460 And there's something

00:46:57.580 else I'd like to

00:46:58.660 introduce into that.

00:46:59.560 So investment bankers

00:47:01.540 look for,

00:47:02.260 they're hoping to,

00:47:04.360 this is my understanding

00:47:05.260 of it,

00:47:05.480 they're hoping for

00:47:06.480 at least something

00:47:07.420 approximately a 10 to 1

00:47:08.880 return on their

00:47:09.520 investment.

00:47:10.320 And part of the reason

00:47:11.180 they're looking for

00:47:11.960 a return that high

00:47:13.120 is that a number

00:47:14.440 of the companies

00:47:15.180 that they evaluate

00:47:16.140 that look good

00:47:17.280 won't succeed.

00:47:19.420 And so there'll be

00:47:20.380 substantive losses.

00:47:22.540 Did you get to the

00:47:23.540 point where you felt

00:47:24.360 that you were

00:47:25.300 credible in your

00:47:27.100 analysis of

00:47:28.220 the growth potential

00:47:29.980 of companies?

00:47:31.240 And if so,

00:47:32.040 what did you learn

00:47:32.820 that enabled you

00:47:33.560 to make that

00:47:34.200 determination?

00:47:36.280 Yes,

00:47:36.840 probably not then.

00:47:38.320 I was too young

00:47:40.180 to be able

00:47:41.100 to do what it is

00:47:42.380 that you're describing.

00:47:43.380 I would say that

00:47:43.980 I've gotten a lot

00:47:45.160 better at it

00:47:46.560 since then

00:47:48.000 and that

00:47:48.880 one of the

00:47:50.620 primary teachers

00:47:51.880 is science itself.

00:47:53.740 And what I mean

00:47:54.380 by that is

00:47:55.060 is science

00:47:56.380 teaches you

00:47:57.140 the discipline

00:47:57.940 if you pay

00:48:00.340 attention,

00:48:01.220 the data

00:48:01.680 will really

00:48:02.560 help get you

00:48:03.500 to the right

00:48:04.060 answer.

00:48:04.760 And so

00:48:05.180 I think a lot

00:48:06.600 of investment

00:48:07.120 banking and sort

00:48:07.860 of investing

00:48:08.340 in early

00:48:08.760 stage companies

00:48:09.740 is a bit

00:48:10.800 of a

00:48:11.360 you would call

00:48:12.760 it Kentucky

00:48:13.260 windage in

00:48:13.940 the south,

00:48:14.480 but it's

00:48:15.160 making guesses

00:48:16.280 as to the

00:48:17.000 competence of

00:48:17.620 the management

00:48:18.140 team and whether

00:48:18.840 or not the

00:48:19.240 idea is going

00:48:19.920 to explode

00:48:21.060 and take off.

00:48:21.820 What science

00:48:23.920 says is

00:48:25.000 get hard

00:48:27.360 data

00:48:27.780 and then

00:48:29.060 make a decision.

00:48:30.500 It's much

00:48:31.440 more

00:48:31.960 cold and

00:48:33.960 calculating

00:48:34.500 and analytical

00:48:35.180 and much

00:48:35.960 less

00:48:36.540 intuitive.

00:48:38.600 Now,

00:48:38.820 I do think

00:48:39.440 that intuition

00:48:41.100 is important

00:48:41.880 for being a

00:48:43.260 good scientist.

00:48:44.280 You can't

00:48:45.040 just rely

00:48:46.500 on what the

00:48:47.000 spreadsheets tell

00:48:48.040 you,

00:48:48.540 but again,

00:48:50.700 there's sort

00:48:51.000 of an

00:48:51.320 optimum

00:48:51.680 balance.

00:48:53.400 If the

00:48:55.220 data tells

00:48:55.800 you something

00:48:56.220 different than

00:48:56.920 what your

00:48:57.520 intuition is

00:48:58.140 telling you,

00:48:58.940 listen to it.

00:49:01.360 Well,

00:49:02.160 it's tricky

00:49:02.980 too, it

00:49:03.400 seems to me

00:49:03.940 too, because

00:49:04.380 I suspect

00:49:05.040 that one of

00:49:05.660 the things

00:49:06.000 you're also

00:49:06.660 trying to

00:49:07.220 figure out,

00:49:08.680 and this

00:49:09.040 would be

00:49:09.300 harder to

00:49:09.820 reduce to

00:49:10.460 data,

00:49:10.920 is that

00:49:11.320 when you're

00:49:12.340 entering into

00:49:14.100 a partnership

00:49:14.840 with someone

00:49:15.560 that you're

00:49:15.960 going to

00:49:16.380 fund,

00:49:16.920 one of the

00:49:17.420 things that

00:49:17.940 you're also

00:49:18.560 attempting to

00:49:19.660 specify is

00:49:20.620 whether you

00:49:21.860 can work,

00:49:22.740 your team

00:49:23.440 can work

00:49:24.100 productively

00:49:24.800 with that

00:49:25.540 team,

00:49:26.460 and that's

00:49:27.180 also a matter

00:49:27.860 not so much

00:49:28.740 of initial

00:49:29.560 analysis,

00:49:30.280 but of

00:49:30.560 continual

00:49:31.060 negotiation

00:49:31.620 as you're

00:49:32.340 getting to

00:49:32.700 know each

00:49:33.020 other,

00:49:33.260 I would

00:49:33.520 presume.

00:49:35.060 In today's

00:49:35.980 chaotic world,

00:49:36.940 many of us

00:49:37.420 are searching

00:49:37.840 for a way

00:49:38.280 to aim

00:49:38.700 higher and

00:49:39.260 find spiritual

00:49:40.060 peace.

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00:49:42.220 prayer,

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00:49:44.140 isn't just

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00:49:45.020 whatever comes

00:49:45.640 to mind.

00:49:46.360 It's a

00:49:46.720 skill that

00:49:47.300 needs to

00:49:47.700 be developed.

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00:50:53.780 It is.

00:50:54.980 It is.

00:50:55.900 And I'm

00:50:56.820 disagreeable enough

00:50:57.840 to very strongly

00:50:59.100 prefer running

00:51:00.440 the business myself.

00:51:02.640 So, yeah.

00:51:04.340 Yeah.

00:51:07.300 There's a

00:51:08.240 tangible interaction

00:51:09.740 with the

00:51:10.200 organization that

00:51:11.040 I think is

00:51:11.520 tremendously

00:51:12.000 beneficial in

00:51:13.460 terms of

00:51:13.920 sort of really

00:51:16.140 more clearly

00:51:17.040 understanding what

00:51:18.100 it is that

00:51:18.580 you're doing and

00:51:19.200 making sure that

00:51:20.300 the various

00:51:22.320 functions up

00:51:24.200 and down the

00:51:24.700 hierarchy of the

00:51:25.440 organization also

00:51:26.560 understand that.

00:51:27.840 So it's hard to

00:51:29.500 make sure that

00:51:31.260 that communication

00:51:32.500 game is played

00:51:34.160 effectively and

00:51:35.540 clearly if you're

00:51:36.680 more removed.

00:51:38.460 Right, right.

00:51:39.060 At the investment

00:51:40.140 level, it's

00:51:41.400 your source of

00:51:44.060 information is

00:51:44.800 well, you don't

00:51:46.480 you're much less

00:51:47.400 likely to get the

00:51:48.820 smoke signal of

00:51:50.400 the chaos somewhere

00:51:51.380 halfway down the

00:51:52.340 organization that

00:51:53.620 something's not

00:51:54.320 functioning well if

00:51:55.840 you're kind of

00:51:56.320 removed from that.

00:51:57.780 Well, I think

00:51:58.200 that's why so many

00:51:59.060 big enterprises

00:51:59.920 inevitably fail.

00:52:02.420 Yeah.

00:52:02.520 You know, they get

00:52:03.040 layers and layers

00:52:04.320 of operation and

00:52:06.640 at some point the

00:52:07.400 information can't

00:52:08.340 propagate up the

00:52:09.300 layers without

00:52:10.000 disappearing or

00:52:11.300 becoming biased in a

00:52:12.440 way that's completely

00:52:13.140 unproductive.

00:52:14.440 Like there might be

00:52:15.300 built-in failure to

00:52:17.020 gigantism in that 0.97

00:52:18.360 manner for some of

00:52:19.480 the reasons that you

00:52:20.080 just described is you

00:52:20.960 just don't know what

00:52:21.640 the hell's going on

00:52:22.480 anymore.

00:52:22.940 Yeah, I think that's

00:52:24.000 part of it.

00:52:24.460 I think you don't

00:52:24.980 know what the hell's

00:52:25.620 going on.

00:52:26.440 But I also think a

00:52:28.520 big part of the

00:52:29.020 reason you don't

00:52:29.640 know what's going

00:52:30.180 on is because the

00:52:32.160 chaos does tend to

00:52:33.540 become a self-fulfilling

00:52:35.040 propagation function

00:52:36.240 and so it, as you

00:52:39.140 add more layers, the

00:52:40.960 mid-level layers add

00:52:43.240 layers themselves

00:52:44.460 because at some

00:52:46.100 point in the

00:52:46.620 organization what

00:52:47.440 starts to happen is

00:52:48.780 the number of

00:52:49.840 people that you

00:52:50.560 have that report to

00:52:51.760 you is finding

00:52:53.500 characteristic of

00:52:54.460 success.

00:52:55.520 So it's sort of,

00:52:56.560 it's not, are we

00:52:57.860 achieving the goals as

00:52:59.360 an organization that

00:53:00.240 we want to achieve?

00:53:01.080 It is how many

00:53:02.040 people do I have

00:53:02.740 reporting to me?

00:53:04.440 And so, and so

00:53:06.280 the, the tendency

00:53:07.340 to sort of build

00:53:08.360 fiefdoms is just

00:53:10.560 inevitable in a, in

00:53:12.040 a large, many

00:53:13.440 instance.

00:53:14.440 Right, too.

00:53:15.200 Well, and there's

00:53:15.720 some evidence, you

00:53:16.780 know, from the,

00:53:17.760 from the comparative

00:53:19.100 anatomy, evolutionary

00:53:22.820 biology end of

00:53:24.960 psychology that human

00:53:26.960 beings, human being

00:53:29.640 group size tended to

00:53:31.120 fractionate at about

00:53:32.240 200 individuals.

00:53:34.220 And so there's, you

00:53:35.420 could imagine that if

00:53:36.340 400 individuals are

00:53:38.040 reporting to you, let's

00:53:39.180 say, that you

00:53:39.780 actually can't keep

00:53:40.600 track of the

00:53:41.440 permutations of their

00:53:42.400 interactions.

00:53:43.880 Right, and so that's a

00:53:44.780 recipe for chaos as

00:53:45.980 well.

00:53:46.600 You know, I talked to

00:53:47.340 Frank Magna, who's run

00:53:49.120 a very successful

00:53:49.900 organization in Canada,

00:53:51.060 and he had a rule, and

00:53:52.520 I can't remember

00:53:53.160 precisely the rule, but

00:53:54.480 his factories were

00:53:56.280 capped at something

00:53:57.140 like 400 employees.

00:53:58.420 He just built another

00:53:59.840 factory after he got

00:54:00.940 bigger than that, because

00:54:02.000 it was his experience.

00:54:03.380 You know, and that might

00:54:03.860 be somewhat unique to

00:54:04.740 him, but I think the

00:54:05.600 general principle is

00:54:06.440 reasonable, is that once

00:54:08.200 the enterprise got to,

00:54:10.260 it could become

00:54:11.040 unmanageable in terms of

00:54:12.540 size and scope, and

00:54:13.920 then it didn't know what

00:54:15.060 it was doing anymore.

00:54:16.720 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:54:18.260 Okay, so let's turn to

00:54:20.220 your current company, and

00:54:21.940 so the first question I

00:54:24.680 would have for you is,

00:54:25.920 how in the world is it

00:54:28.180 that you've been able to

00:54:29.280 run a profitable

00:54:30.380 enterprise concentrating

00:54:32.320 on rare diseases, when

00:54:34.160 you know, that's an

00:54:35.480 interesting niche, and

00:54:36.640 the fact that they're

00:54:37.460 rare should indicate

00:54:39.700 that there aren't, this

00:54:41.080 is the standard excuse

00:54:42.540 as far as I've been

00:54:43.360 able to, or reason, as

00:54:45.200 far as I've been able to

00:54:46.100 determine for the fact

00:54:47.060 that not that much

00:54:48.100 research effort is put

00:54:49.320 into addressing rare

00:54:51.600 diseases.

00:54:52.160 But you have this niche

00:54:53.140 where you seem to have

00:54:54.660 managed that, and also

00:54:56.420 to be profitable, you

00:54:58.460 know, and people who

00:54:59.660 are somewhat soured on

00:55:01.620 capitalism listening to

00:55:02.720 this might think, well,

00:55:03.820 why does profit matter?

00:55:05.000 And the answer to that

00:55:05.720 is, well, it's an index

00:55:06.660 that you're running an

00:55:07.420 efficient organization,

00:55:08.460 but without profit,

00:55:09.880 there's no growth.

00:55:11.620 So, if you're not

00:55:14.460 careful enough to run

00:55:15.620 your enterprise

00:55:16.240 profitably, it's not

00:55:17.740 going to thrive.

00:55:19.420 I think, yeah, I think

00:55:20.720 on the ethical, sort of

00:55:22.560 the implicit ethical

00:55:23.600 question there, I think

00:55:24.820 one of the, there's a

00:55:28.760 distinct advantage in my

00:55:30.100 mind of running an

00:55:31.300 organization that is

00:55:32.620 profitable because it is

00:55:34.120 doing something that is

00:55:35.420 actually good for people.

00:55:36.900 So, if you develop a

00:55:38.960 drug that actually really

00:55:39.840 helps people, there's a,

00:55:42.340 there's an ethical

00:55:43.440 exchange that occurs

00:55:45.200 there.

00:55:45.860 You know, yes, it is

00:55:48.540 costly for the patient

00:55:49.740 to, or the insurance

00:55:51.500 company to buy the

00:55:52.720 product.

00:55:53.520 You're actually doing

00:55:54.340 something that is, is,

00:55:56.260 can be transformative in

00:55:57.780 that patient's life.

00:55:58.920 So, so it's a pretty

00:56:01.540 valuable trade, I think,

00:56:05.200 to do something that

00:56:07.620 really benefits people's

00:56:10.660 lives and, and, and can

00:56:12.160 make dramatic changes in

00:56:13.800 their health.

00:56:14.640 I mean, that's certainly a

00:56:16.500 good thing to be able to

00:56:17.780 look in the mirror in the

00:56:18.780 morning and tell you, and

00:56:20.160 realize that's what you're

00:56:21.620 doing.

00:56:21.900 So, why do you, why do you

00:56:23.280 think that matters?

00:56:25.040 I'd like to take that

00:56:26.060 apart.

00:56:26.320 I was just talking to

00:56:27.220 Jocko Willink yesterday

00:56:28.400 and one of the things

00:56:29.220 Jocko said that he learned

00:56:30.320 in the military, and this

00:56:31.700 came as somewhat of a

00:56:32.540 surprise to him, partly

00:56:33.620 because he's a pretty

00:56:34.300 rough guy.

00:56:35.540 He said he was quite

00:56:37.020 shocked at how much

00:56:38.960 pleasure he took, implicit

00:56:40.580 pleasure he took in the

00:56:41.880 mentoring and development of

00:56:42.940 other people's skills.

00:56:44.160 He didn't know, although

00:56:46.160 learned quite rapidly, that

00:56:47.400 that was an innate source

00:56:48.780 of motivation and

00:56:49.980 pleasure.

00:56:50.900 Right now, the cynics with

00:56:52.620 regards to capitalism or

00:56:54.000 the cynics with regards to

00:56:55.200 human beings, you know,

00:56:56.140 they, they basically make

00:56:57.140 the claim that, well,

00:56:58.360 fundamentally people are

00:56:59.300 motivated by nothing other

00:57:00.520 than power, right?

00:57:02.000 Or maybe some combination

00:57:03.380 of power and hedonism,

00:57:04.700 because you need power for

00:57:06.000 some reason, and it's

00:57:07.500 usually to serve some

00:57:08.500 hedonistic goal.

00:57:10.180 So, and they would say, in

00:57:12.520 response to, you know, a

00:57:14.100 claim like the one you made

00:57:15.380 is that, well, you've made a

00:57:16.580 lot of money and you've

00:57:18.200 accrued a lot of power as

00:57:20.040 a consequence of addressing

00:57:22.700 these rare illnesses.

00:57:24.420 And the real reason you

00:57:25.980 did that was for the power

00:57:27.200 and the money and the

00:57:29.660 claim that you're making

00:57:31.020 that you, you know, can be

00:57:32.860 reasonably satisfied when

00:57:35.700 you look yourself in the

00:57:36.940 mirror, or at least not too

00:57:38.020 guilty.

00:57:38.780 That's just a cover story for

00:57:40.580 these other more fundamental

00:57:42.020 motivations.

00:57:43.200 But you claim that as a

00:57:44.740 primary motivation.

00:57:45.920 So why do you, why do you

00:57:47.640 believe that even of

00:57:48.760 yourself?

00:57:49.500 You know, I mean, there's

00:57:50.140 reason to be cynical about

00:57:51.260 ourselves, just like there

00:57:52.200 is about other people.

00:57:53.920 Now, you did decide to go

00:57:55.380 into the business of

00:57:56.360 pursuing cures for rare

00:57:57.520 diseases.

00:57:57.940 But what is it that led

00:58:00.460 you to believe that that

00:58:01.600 motivation to help other

00:58:02.820 people is actually a genuine

00:58:04.160 motivation rather than a

00:58:05.440 cover story for, you know,

00:58:06.940 your own upward striving

00:58:08.660 social mobility or something

00:58:10.300 like that?

00:58:14.380 Well, but the answer for me

00:58:17.320 is because I know how I view

00:58:18.740 the world.

00:58:19.500 But, you know, I think that

00:58:23.340 the thing that motivates most

00:58:27.280 really competent, successful

00:58:28.920 people that I know is a job

00:58:34.740 well done, a functioning

00:58:37.440 organization, there's an

00:58:40.140 element of deep

00:58:43.080 satisfaction that comes

00:58:44.500 with, well, you know,

00:58:47.380 closing the entropic gap,

00:58:49.620 as you would say, and

00:58:50.960 moving towards a goal that

00:58:52.420 is probably dopamine

00:58:54.340 related and has something to

00:58:56.280 do with, there's a

00:59:00.680 satisfaction in doing

00:59:02.440 something well.

00:59:03.740 You know, I think we could

00:59:06.520 look back to ancient Greece

00:59:07.700 and Patmos and Samos and

00:59:10.380 some of the islands that

00:59:11.280 we've been on, and that's

00:59:12.140 really where capitalism

00:59:13.020 developed.

00:59:14.500 And it, you know, if I make

00:59:16.600 olive oil on my island and you

00:59:18.680 make wine on your island and

00:59:20.600 we trade, there's an implicit

00:59:24.300 ethic in that.

00:59:25.780 Because if I make rancid olive

00:59:28.320 oil, and this is where the

00:59:30.740 postmodernists are just

00:59:31.900 completely wrong.

00:59:32.780 They think that, that

00:59:34.300 narcissistic, you know,

00:59:36.480 self-interest is the sole

00:59:38.260 motivation.

00:59:39.020 But if I make rancid olive

00:59:40.320 oil, you're going to stop

00:59:42.920 trading your wine with me.

00:59:44.520 I'm not going to get any more

00:59:45.660 of your wine.

00:59:46.300 You might get some vinegar.

00:59:48.200 I might get some vinegar.

00:59:49.560 Yeah.

00:59:49.740 That's exactly what's going to

00:59:50.700 happen.

00:59:51.200 And so, you know, there's a,

00:59:54.560 and, you know, it feeds on

00:59:56.560 itself in terms of if you

00:59:58.980 elevate your game and you make

01:00:00.560 better wine.

01:00:01.880 Well, then there's an implicit

01:00:03.100 call to me that, hey, buddy,

01:00:04.780 you got to step up your game

01:00:06.080 because my wine, I now get 10

01:00:09.100 bottles of olive oil for one

01:00:10.540 bottle of wine because my wine's

01:00:12.520 so much better.

01:00:13.360 And so there, so I've got to make

01:00:15.460 better olive oil, right?

01:00:16.500 And so there's a, there's an

01:00:20.100 invitation to, to excellence.

01:00:23.380 I think that it's an implicit

01:00:25.000 aspect of, of the ethical side

01:00:29.420 of capitalism that the.

01:00:30.900 So that's, see, the other thing

01:00:32.440 that, that, that blinds people's

01:00:34.260 vision to some degree is that we

01:00:35.760 use terms that become abstracted

01:00:38.080 and then, then that carry with

01:00:39.640 them an unfortunate baggage and

01:00:41.080 capitalism is likely one of those,

01:00:43.000 you know, and it's more what you're

01:00:45.100 pointing to, especially the

01:00:47.000 implicit ethic, I think is more

01:00:48.900 simply conceptualized in

01:00:51.420 relationship to voluntary

01:00:52.720 exchange.

01:00:54.440 You know, and I think if you ask

01:00:55.580 the typical college student, if

01:00:57.460 they're opposed to capitalism,

01:00:58.620 they might be inclined to say yes.

01:01:00.460 But if you ask them whether

01:01:01.800 their capacity to engage in

01:01:04.160 voluntary exchange should be

01:01:05.620 restricted, they'd say no.

01:01:07.960 Right.

01:01:08.200 And so you, the case you're making

01:01:10.520 was twofold with regards to

01:01:13.160 implicit motivation.

01:01:14.340 And one is, once you specify a

01:01:17.380 goal, there's an intrinsic

01:01:20.620 pleasure in moving efficiently

01:01:22.340 towards that goal.

01:01:23.820 And then we might say, well, you

01:01:25.980 know, if the goal is destruction

01:01:28.060 of other people, there could be

01:01:29.680 implicit motivation in moving

01:01:31.340 towards that.

01:01:32.100 And sometimes that's true, but I

01:01:33.460 would say, yeah, that's, that's

01:01:34.720 not a goal that's very easy to

01:01:36.400 sustain in a social community.

01:01:39.180 Right.

01:01:39.680 And then that moves us into the

01:01:40.940 second domain, which is if you're

01:01:42.220 in a social community, you are in

01:01:44.160 a community of exchange.

01:01:45.800 And even if you're not exchanging

01:01:47.280 goods, you're going to be

01:01:48.060 exchanging glances.

01:01:49.560 You're going to be exchanging

01:01:50.720 ideas.

01:01:52.120 You're going to be exchanging,

01:01:54.540 well, to the degree that you're

01:01:55.880 interacting with other people,

01:01:57.520 you're exchanging.

01:01:59.160 Then if you see those other

01:02:01.800 people repeatedly, the exchanges

01:02:03.900 are going to be iterated.

01:02:05.480 And we know, like this has been

01:02:06.880 mathematically modeled.

01:02:07.920 I've been reading Robert Axelrod's

01:02:09.540 book on tit for tat

01:02:10.700 computer competitions.

01:02:13.480 We know perfectly well that there

01:02:15.600 are emergent ethics.

01:02:17.580 There are ethics that emerge out of

01:02:19.040 iterated exchanges.

01:02:21.100 And you're, okay, so you imagine

01:02:23.020 that any goal that you have that's

01:02:25.400 going to be sustaining is going to

01:02:27.360 have to serve the purposes of

01:02:30.060 iterated exchange, because otherwise

01:02:31.560 it's not going to function in a

01:02:33.380 social environment.

01:02:34.600 People will just punish it out of

01:02:35.920 existence.

01:02:36.780 So that sets a set of constraints

01:02:38.700 on what your goals are going to be.

01:02:40.600 Okay, so now you have a set of

01:02:41.720 constrained goals.

01:02:43.040 If you posit one of those goals and

01:02:44.820 start moving towards it, there's

01:02:46.920 going to be pleasure in that.

01:02:48.360 But then you've added an additional

01:02:50.120 layer to that, which is, well, okay,

01:02:51.600 imagine you have goal A and I have

01:02:53.300 goal B and you produce something and

01:02:54.860 I produce something, and we're going

01:02:56.480 to exchange our products.

01:02:58.340 There's an implicit ethic that's going

01:03:00.160 to emerge out of the repeated

01:03:01.760 exchange as well.

01:03:04.160 One of them is going to be, I'm going

01:03:05.940 to try to match your quality, because

01:03:07.640 if I don't, you're going to find

01:03:09.820 someone else to play with.

01:03:11.900 Yeah.

01:03:12.740 I think you actually touched on this

01:03:15.120 in quite an elegant fashion, but I

01:03:17.240 think it was with Sapolsky when you

01:03:19.780 did a podcast with him, and you guys

01:03:21.800 talked about, I hadn't heard you

01:03:24.740 mention this before, but you talked

01:03:25.920 about sort of the concept of a

01:03:29.320 reciprocity bank that's-

01:03:33.240 Right, right.

01:03:33.820 That's what reputation is.

01:03:36.100 Yeah, yeah, that's a good

01:03:37.640 description.

01:03:38.480 And I think that, so if I go

01:03:40.720 hunting, you know, it's 10,000

01:03:42.440 years ago, and I go hunting and I'm

01:03:43.920 successful and I share with you, well,

01:03:45.560 now we have a mutual banking system.

01:03:49.140 We have a relationship that transcends

01:03:52.720 across time, right?

01:03:53.620 Because the next time you hunt, you're

01:03:55.360 successful and I'm not, you're going

01:03:56.740 to share with me.

01:03:57.800 Yeah, yeah.

01:03:58.100 And I think that that's a good

01:04:00.440 description of the same thing in the

01:04:02.980 wine and the olive oil.

01:04:05.720 So, Derek, I've been writing about,

01:04:09.300 I've been writing this book, We Who

01:04:10.880 Wrestle With God, as you know, and

01:04:12.360 I've been closing it up.

01:04:14.020 I've been writing the final chapter,

01:04:15.840 which is a chapter on the Gospels, and

01:04:17.440 one of Christ's injunctions, I believe

01:04:20.580 it's in the Sermon on the Mount, but

01:04:22.400 it may occur in other places, is to

01:04:24.700 store up treasure in heaven.

01:04:27.400 And so, I've been trying to understand,

01:04:29.380 and not on earth where moths can eat it

01:04:31.720 or rust can get at it or it can be

01:04:33.620 stolen.

01:04:34.120 And I've been trying to understand what

01:04:36.200 that means.

01:04:36.760 Now, a lot of the ethic that's

01:04:39.340 embedded in the Gospels and in the

01:04:41.700 biblical corpus as a whole is an ethic

01:04:44.760 of eternal view.

01:04:46.860 So, the idea is something like, so

01:04:48.760 Abraham, for example, becomes the father 0.98

01:04:50.980 of nations because he embodies a set of

01:04:53.500 paternal attitudes and actions that

01:04:56.920 propagate best across the longest

01:05:00.200 conceivable span of time and in the

01:05:02.960 largest number of situations.

01:05:05.020 So, you could imagine, this is why the

01:05:06.940 selfish idea with regards to propagation

01:05:09.700 and genetic propagation doesn't make any

01:05:11.720 sense to me, you know, because human beings

01:05:13.720 have this long-term investment strategy with

01:05:15.800 regards to their kids.

01:05:16.820 You don't just have sex and reproduce. 0.98

01:05:20.000 That doesn't work at all.

01:05:21.040 In fact, if you just have sex and

01:05:22.700 reproduce, your children are very much 0.59

01:05:24.280 likely to die.

01:05:25.400 They're going to be abused.

01:05:26.380 They're going to be abandoned. 1.00

01:05:27.580 So, you have to have sex and then you 0.97

01:05:29.560 have to invest for, okay, 18 years.

01:05:32.740 That's a long-term strategy.

01:05:33.920 But it's not 18 because there's

01:05:35.560 grandparent investment.

01:05:37.320 And there's even great grandparent

01:05:38.720 investment.

01:05:39.360 Then you might say even there's, if you

01:05:41.480 conducted yourself properly as a father,

01:05:43.760 you would embody a set of sacrificial

01:05:47.160 gestures that would maximize

01:05:49.680 reproductive fitness across the

01:05:51.580 broadest conceptual span of time, right?

01:05:54.640 And so, that's an implicit ethic.

01:05:56.200 Now, a fair bit of that has to do with

01:05:58.400 reciprocity.

01:05:59.320 So, when Christ says that you should

01:06:02.040 store up treasure in heaven and that

01:06:04.340 that's the most effective form of

01:06:05.820 treasure, what he's essentially

01:06:07.300 referring to, at least practically

01:06:09.780 speaking, is something like

01:06:11.040 reputational integrity.

01:06:12.280 So, the idea would be, you know, a

01:06:14.940 currency can inflate and collapse and

01:06:17.120 you can lose everything.

01:06:18.420 But if you've stored up a body of

01:06:20.380 goodwill in a distributed community,

01:06:23.280 well, even if everything around you

01:06:25.280 falls apart, you're going to have

01:06:26.600 people who are perfectly willing and

01:06:29.300 eager to come to your aid just to

01:06:31.780 fulfill their obligations of

01:06:33.580 reciprocity.

01:06:34.760 And that's the hospitality, by the way,

01:06:36.400 that's made so much of in the Old

01:06:37.780 Testament, right?

01:06:39.000 And so, and this is, I think, what

01:06:41.020 human beings really figured out is

01:06:42.600 that our best investment is in the

01:06:45.040 minds of others.

01:06:46.120 Like, our, and then you can imagine

01:06:47.640 how that can be gamed, right?

01:06:49.160 Because if the most important thing I

01:06:51.440 have is my representation in the minds

01:06:54.060 of others, then I can use narcissistic

01:06:57.060 manipulation and Machiavellian

01:06:58.720 manipulation to game that reputation.

01:07:02.620 And here's another thing that happens

01:07:04.080 in the Gospels that's so bloody

01:07:05.420 interesting.

01:07:05.940 So Christ's primary enemies in the

01:07:08.900 Gospels are the people who game

01:07:10.520 reputation.

01:07:11.980 And so he goes after the Pharisees and 0.76

01:07:13.880 the scribes and the lawyers, and he

01:07:15.260 basically says, you people are claiming

01:07:18.320 to act under the aegis of divine

01:07:21.160 inspiration, but all you're doing is

01:07:23.620 falsely elevating your status in the

01:07:26.020 marketplace, right?

01:07:26.880 They're, you're, which is essentially 0.94

01:07:28.800 exactly what he tells them, you know,

01:07:30.660 they're, and, and so they're gaming the

01:07:32.840 system in order to falsely obtain

01:07:35.100 reputational points.

01:07:37.080 And that's, well, there's no difference

01:07:38.500 between that and virtue signaling, is

01:07:40.100 there?

01:07:40.620 Those are the same thing.

01:07:42.260 Yeah.

01:07:43.180 Yeah.

01:07:44.140 Yeah.

01:07:44.700 So, so, so, so what do you do?

01:07:48.460 Okay.

01:07:48.780 Let's go back to your company.

01:07:50.660 What do you do?

01:07:51.620 You think, do you think that's effective

01:07:53.060 in terms of motivating your, the people

01:07:56.800 that you're overseeing and mentoring?

01:08:00.380 What do you do in your company that's

01:08:01.800 effective in terms of providing them

01:08:03.860 with a clear vision?

01:08:04.920 And what do you think the consequences

01:08:06.300 of that are?

01:08:08.360 Um, I, I, I think that, well, part of

01:08:12.500 it we've, we've touched on, you, you,

01:08:14.140 you have to understand how communication

01:08:17.740 propagates differently throughout

01:08:19.540 different functions within the

01:08:22.100 organization.

01:08:22.660 So, so, um, and it, but, you know,

01:08:25.880 ultimately there's a, there's a

01:08:29.840 hierarchical aspect of good communication

01:08:32.680 of a goal.

01:08:33.480 You, you have to have a clear sort of

01:08:35.540 superordinate goal for the, for the

01:08:37.460 organization.

01:08:38.380 This is what we're going to do.

01:08:40.160 And then translate that goal to

01:08:42.860 individual process steps and actions

01:08:45.500 for different functions across the

01:08:48.520 company.

01:08:48.860 So, so if our goal is to sell a

01:08:51.900 certain amount of product, well, we

01:08:53.160 need salespeople to find a certain

01:08:55.880 number of new patients in order to

01:08:57.480 achieve that goal.

01:08:58.180 And then we need to make sure the

01:08:59.580 manufacturing team understands they

01:09:01.600 have to produce this product, um, at

01:09:04.480 this level in order to achieve that

01:09:06.040 goal.

01:09:06.240 And so it gets translated into

01:09:08.020 different, uh, pertinent, you know,

01:09:10.740 functional area, pertinent goals, but,

01:09:14.080 but all of those are subordinate to

01:09:17.300 the, the overall objective to the

01:09:19.540 company.

01:09:19.840 So a lot of, it's just a matter of

01:09:21.340 translating that you, you, you do want

01:09:24.460 to state the high level goal to make

01:09:26.400 sure everybody understands it, but

01:09:28.540 then, but then try to clearly

01:09:31.080 communicate how that is translated to

01:09:33.200 what it is that you need for them to

01:09:34.860 do.

01:09:35.180 So, but people, um, really appreciate

01:09:38.960 clarity of, of goal setting.

01:09:42.060 Right.

01:09:42.720 It, it, um, it's comforting from the

01:09:46.740 standpoint of, well, you, you want to

01:09:49.100 know what it is that, that is going to

01:09:51.840 be the defining characteristic of

01:09:53.660 success.

01:09:54.160 Right, right.

01:09:55.140 Well, and a failure for that matter,

01:09:57.020 because then you can avoid failure.

01:09:58.900 Well, yeah, yeah.

01:09:59.700 People don't, don't want to know what

01:10:01.060 that is.

01:10:01.660 It, it, you know, it is, um, failure is

01:10:03.980 the no fun part of it, but, but you do

01:10:06.600 have to, you have to set a goal because

01:10:10.860 if you don't set a goal, you, you can't

01:10:13.540 accomplish anything because you don't

01:10:14.940 know what it is that you're supposed to

01:10:16.380 be doing.

01:10:16.860 Um, I mean, it's sort of a statement

01:10:19.440 of the obvious, but, but I think that

01:10:21.880 look, goal setting is implicit and it's,

01:10:24.660 it's wrapped up in who we are, right?

01:10:26.640 Like you're, I think your, your identity

01:10:31.200 is vision integrated.

01:10:35.200 Yeah.

01:10:35.600 It's integrated into goal setting, which

01:10:37.600 is, which is responsibility, which is

01:10:39.260 setting that boundary.

01:10:40.220 If you're, if your goal is to become a

01:10:42.820 good lawyer, well, then you need to

01:10:44.420 understand the law, you, you have to

01:10:46.480 execute the law well, in terms of your

01:10:48.860 responsibility to your client.

01:10:50.340 Like it, it, it sets the goal.

01:10:53.100 Your identity sets the goal for what it

01:10:56.660 is that you're doing every day.

01:10:58.060 It's your responsibility in the world.

01:10:59.520 If you want to be a good mother, you

01:11:01.000 have to take care of your children.

01:11:03.000 And so I think without a goal, it's, you

01:11:06.620 can't, I don't think you can have an

01:11:07.800 identity.

01:11:09.040 Well, you certainly can't have clarity of

01:11:10.740 emotional fun.

01:11:11.560 Well, I think, I think that, I think that

01:11:13.720 identity, properly understood, is

01:11:16.620 visionary and subsidiary.

01:11:19.260 So you need the highest order vision, the

01:11:21.400 thing at the pinnacle of the pyramid, and

01:11:22.960 then you have to differentiate down into

01:11:25.000 actionable.

01:11:26.040 Yeah.

01:11:26.840 Into actionable steps, right?

01:11:28.680 Yeah, yeah.

01:11:29.140 And I think that is what identity is.

01:11:31.020 And in the absence of visionary identity, we

01:11:34.000 default to things like sexual identity or

01:11:36.560 ethnic identity or, you know, those are

01:11:38.780 all.

01:11:39.260 We, we fractionate is what, is what

01:11:40.920 happened.

01:11:41.540 Yeah.

01:11:41.680 Well, definitely, well, we certainly

01:11:43.280 fractionate without a uniting vision,

01:11:45.420 virtually by definition.

01:11:47.060 Well, the other thing too, that happens

01:11:48.400 with clear goals is, and this is so

01:11:50.400 important in terms of managing chaos, is

01:11:53.000 that if the goal is clear and even the

01:11:55.340 steps are clear, then there's no anxiety

01:11:58.620 producing ambiguity.

01:12:00.740 So you control a tremendous amount of both

01:12:03.280 entropy and negative emotion, but you also

01:12:05.300 make the criterion for movement forward

01:12:07.640 clear.

01:12:08.080 And what that literally produces positive

01:12:10.460 emotion.

01:12:11.340 Like, as soon as you establish a goal and

01:12:13.660 you move towards it, you feel positive

01:12:15.360 emotion.

01:12:16.040 That's how the system works.

01:12:17.860 Well, I think one of the, one of the most

01:12:19.520 important aspects of narrowing focus is

01:12:21.960 that, well, the, the goal, you could, you

01:12:25.520 could reconceptualize a goal as all of the

01:12:28.720 things that you are not going to do because,

01:12:31.580 because the, the things that you, that are

01:12:35.760 going to distract you from the goal.

01:12:37.460 Like if, if you pick up, pick an example

01:12:40.640 in biology, if you, if you are a lion

01:12:42.860 pride and you are approaching a herd of

01:12:45.900 zebra, what, what the alpha lioness does is 1.00

01:12:49.480 she actually communicates to the entire

01:12:52.080 pride, which zebra they're going to carve

01:12:54.940 out and focus on.

01:12:56.220 So, right.

01:12:56.760 So she communicates the goal to the price

01:12:59.900 so that they can, they can set, they can

01:13:01.840 set a boundary and separate that zebra from

01:13:04.020 the rest of them and then the whole pride

01:13:06.100 can pounce on that zebra and it makes, it

01:13:08.060 makes the hunt much more effective when

01:13:11.100 you target your efforts highly, highly

01:13:14.300 specifically.

01:13:15.400 I think, I think that's what a hierarchy

01:13:16.640 is.

01:13:17.040 It's a, it's a procession from a general to

01:13:20.040 a specific and that's the same thing as a

01:13:22.720 fractal, et cetera.

01:13:24.040 Right, right.

01:13:24.660 Well, so, so that means what the lion is

01:13:26.720 communicating in large part is just how

01:13:29.320 many zebras we're not going to chase 1.00

01:13:31.260 today.

01:13:31.880 Exactly.

01:13:32.280 That's exactly it.

01:13:33.440 And what the zebra and what the zebra is

01:13:35.540 doing is, so the lion's trying to create

01:13:38.220 order.

01:13:38.740 What the lion's doing is, is rank ordering

01:13:41.260 the zebras based on, you know, who's the

01:13:44.260 slowest and the oldest, right?

01:13:46.200 Yep.

01:13:46.720 Or most easily identifiable.

01:13:49.160 Most easily.

01:13:50.100 Yeah.

01:13:50.560 Yeah.

01:13:50.860 And, um, so, so she's trying to create

01:13:53.540 order in, in the sort of chaos of the herd of

01:13:57.500 zebras.

01:13:57.820 And what the zebras are actually doing is, as

01:14:00.340 prey animals, and I do fundamentally think

01:14:02.760 that a predator is an order creating

01:14:06.760 hierarchy seeking, um, action.

01:14:10.600 Right, right.

01:14:11.060 And what prey often do, not, not always, but

01:14:14.260 most of the time, they try to disrupt the

01:14:17.700 lion's hierarchy.

01:14:19.380 Yep.

01:14:19.560 So, so what they do that with their, go

01:14:22.060 ahead.

01:14:22.440 What they do that with their camouflage?

01:14:23.380 They start running around.

01:14:24.300 Yeah.

01:14:24.560 They just start running around, zigging and

01:14:26.660 zagging.

01:14:27.280 And actually what the, what the camouflage,

01:14:29.540 what the black and white stripes do is

01:14:31.820 disorient the sensory perception system of

01:14:35.020 the lion.

01:14:35.520 So they can't actually pick out one, one

01:14:37.920 particular zebra.

01:14:38.760 You know, birds do the same thing.

01:14:41.280 If you, if you come up on a, a covey of, of

01:14:44.460 quail, uh, a raccoon approaches a covey of

01:14:47.180 quail, they just explode in 40 different

01:14:48.980 directions at once, which disorients the

01:14:51.800 predator.

01:14:52.680 Right, right.

01:14:53.280 And deer do that because they leap randomly

01:14:55.360 into the air.

01:14:55.980 Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

01:14:57.680 I think, I think fundamentally a similar prey

01:15:02.000 behavior across almost all aspects of

01:15:05.700 I mean, uh, bees do the same thing when the

01:15:08.700 bear comes along and tries to steal their

01:15:10.680 honey, the, the whole swarm of bees just

01:15:13.580 starts, they create chaos for the bear.

01:15:16.840 They start stinging them all over the place.

01:15:19.480 Right.

01:15:19.620 So there's, um, so, so, so, but just, just

01:15:23.160 the, the scientists that figured this out

01:15:25.060 about zebras, I don't remember the name, but

01:15:27.420 it's, it's fascinating.

01:15:29.980 Uh, they, they darted a zebra and they just

01:15:32.660 painted a red stripe.

01:15:33.540 I think that was the pulse.

01:15:34.740 I think that was Sapolsky.

01:15:36.180 I think that was Sapolsky.

01:15:37.640 Yeah, I think so.

01:15:38.640 So, so, so, and the, and, you know, he's

01:15:40.500 dead in the dead that the lions could, and

01:15:42.560 what, what they did was they, they basically

01:15:45.020 disrupt zebra's chaos mechanism.

01:15:47.940 Right.

01:15:48.300 Okay.

01:15:48.560 So this is a good, one of the things I

01:15:50.220 wanted to talk to you today about was

01:15:52.400 immunological function.

01:15:53.420 And this is actually a pretty good segue into

01:15:55.500 that because one of the more fascinating

01:15:57.140 things you taught, taught me, told me about

01:16:00.340 was exactly how the immunological system

01:16:02.600 targets its prey.

01:16:04.920 Why don't we take a segue into that?

01:16:06.780 And this is obviously one of the interests

01:16:08.960 that you had on the biological front

01:16:10.540 that overlapped with your pursuit of cure

01:16:13.720 for rare diseases.

01:16:14.600 But do you want to walk everybody through a

01:16:17.480 brief description of how the immunological

01:16:19.380 system adapts to the, to, to a target?

01:16:22.940 Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yes.

01:16:26.360 You, you actually, you, you covered this in,

01:16:29.140 in, I think it was maybe with, with Hoffman,

01:16:32.820 but you, you called it true enough, which I

01:16:35.080 think that is actually a very, very good

01:16:37.020 description.

01:16:38.120 So there's a, there's a sequence of

01:16:42.400 activities that I would say seems to be a

01:16:44.960 fairly common behavior pattern within

01:16:48.420 biology generally.

01:16:49.500 And, and the immune system follows this same

01:16:52.840 sequence.

01:16:53.240 So it's when you're confronted with the

01:16:55.880 randomness of a pathogen, the first thing

01:16:58.200 you do is, is react with randomness because

01:17:01.100 there's, there's no other way to deal with

01:17:02.840 randomness other than wander around randomly.

01:17:06.200 And so.

01:17:06.980 Right.

01:17:07.380 So you throw everything, including the

01:17:09.300 kitchen sink at it.

01:17:10.520 Yeah.

01:17:11.060 Um, not, not, well, yeah, yes.

01:17:14.080 And so, and so what, what happens is that,

01:17:17.240 and this is part of the reason you get

01:17:19.140 tired when you first get sick, you've got

01:17:20.960 a bacterial pathogen that gets into your

01:17:23.060 bloodstream and it's growing and

01:17:24.900 proliferating.

01:17:26.280 Um, what, what your immune system does is

01:17:29.300 it's, it creates millions, billions of

01:17:33.720 different plugs would be a good way to 0.69

01:17:35.740 think about it.

01:17:36.480 And each of those plugs has a slightly

01:17:39.120 different structure.

01:17:40.880 An analogy might be, um, you know, an

01:17:43.000 American plug versus a European plug for

01:17:45.200 plugging in your computer, but, but

01:17:47.340 imagine there are billions of them.

01:17:48.700 And so the, the surface of a, of a

01:17:52.220 bacterium actually is highly specific.

01:17:56.040 It's, it's got curves and valleys and, uh,

01:17:58.940 you know, you could imagine it, um, like

01:18:02.180 an, the Island of Britain.

01:18:04.220 There's a geography.

01:18:05.920 It's a geography, there's a geography

01:18:07.460 aspect of, of a bacteria.

01:18:09.200 And so what, what the immune system is

01:18:11.900 trying to do is, is identify specific

01:18:16.160 aspects of that geography in order to be

01:18:19.140 able to identify the bacterial cells

01:18:22.140 themselves.

01:18:23.760 Because once it can identify a particular

01:18:26.500 shape in that geography, then it, if that

01:18:29.960 shape is the same for all of the bacterial

01:18:32.300 cells in your body, then it can identify

01:18:34.640 every single one of them.

01:18:35.920 And so what it's, what it's trying to do is

01:18:39.400 map the bacteria essentially.

01:18:41.340 And, and, and it uses a really highly

01:18:43.900 sophisticated sequence from the general to

01:18:47.180 the specific in order to do that.

01:18:49.380 Um, and it starts with sort of a general

01:18:52.440 high level, um, shape recognition.

01:18:56.520 Um, you described this, I think as a, as a

01:19:00.020 child grasping in a ball that doesn't know

01:19:02.060 how to grasp yet.

01:19:03.040 And, and so there's, they use their whole

01:19:05.040 arms, they use their arms, they use their 0.83

01:19:06.760 whole arms and it's, it's high, they can

01:19:09.180 kind of grab.

01:19:10.060 So, so the first thing that happens is the,

01:19:12.820 the whole arm grasp of the bacteria is not

01:19:15.580 very good, but what the body does is it

01:19:18.960 takes the few antibodies that sort of grasp

01:19:22.960 generally, they get a little bit of a hold

01:19:25.200 on the bacteria and they, they concretize

01:19:28.340 that first level of analysis.

01:19:30.700 How, how, how does the immune system, like

01:19:33.200 how did the cells that get, uh, like that

01:19:36.340 initial, how do, how do they communicate the

01:19:38.860 fact that they've established that grip?

01:19:41.660 There, there's, there's, um, so what, what

01:19:43.980 the immune system does is it, it, it has a

01:19:48.580 second function.

01:19:49.720 It's, it's a little bit technical.

01:19:50.840 I won't go into it, but basically there are

01:19:52.420 other cells that come along and they, they

01:19:55.100 analyze antibodies that are plugged into

01:19:57.860 things. And so then they test and say, well,

01:20:01.660 is this antibody plugged into something that

01:20:04.480 I recognize, which would be a human cell?

01:20:07.220 And they say, no, no, no, don't, don't

01:20:08.680 bother with that. Or they look at, is this

01:20:12.500 something that I've, I'm familiar with, or I

01:20:14.380 know? And they say, no, when, when the answer,

01:20:17.320 the T cell answer is no, then what ends up

01:20:20.320 happening is that antibody that sort of vaguely

01:20:24.240 grasps the bacteria, it gets copied. So the, the

01:20:29.760 immune system stops making all the wild

01:20:33.940 variation and it starts making more and more

01:20:37.140 of the first level of antibody that has a

01:20:40.660 little bit of grasp. And then, and then what

01:20:43.020 happens is that, that sort of first level

01:20:45.000 grasp, call it from the shoulder to the elbow,

01:20:47.980 sort of this, the childlike vague grasping at

01:20:51.520 the ball, the shoulder to the elbow becomes

01:20:53.960 concretized. And then there's variations. This

01:20:58.780 is all called what's called the chimeric

01:21:00.620 region, but there's variation from the elbow

01:21:03.280 to the wrist. So the, the, this part, there

01:21:07.900 are millions of copies made from here to here. And

01:21:11.540 then this part is allowed to be very, yeah,

01:21:14.260 very neat. And so as that part varies, what

01:21:20.220 will happen is some, as some copies of from

01:21:25.180 here to here are better graspers, some angle

01:21:28.320 actually fits the fractal structure of the

01:21:30.860 bacteria better. And then, and you get from

01:21:33.480 here to here. Okay. So this whole section from

01:21:35.980 your shoulder to your wrist is fitting better

01:21:37.880 than just this section. Yeah. Then what

01:21:39.820 happens is that gets copied over and over and

01:21:42.320 over again. And this part is allowed to

01:21:44.260 flex. Right. Right. Right. So then, then, then

01:21:47.140 you, you get grip like this. And so the grip

01:21:49.140 just proceeds with a higher and higher level of,

01:21:53.140 of what's called affinity. It's precision. It's

01:21:57.220 proceeding from the general specific and it's

01:22:00.140 getting better and better. Right. Right. So

01:22:02.260 you could imagine, imagine trying to map a

01:22:05.400 coastline with blocks. And so you could imagine

01:22:09.660 if your blocks were 10 miles by 10 miles, you

01:22:14.400 could push them against the coast and they

01:22:16.400 obviously wouldn't fit very well because they're

01:22:19.980 very low resolution, but some blocks would fit

01:22:23.760 better in some areas of the coast than others. And

01:22:25.980 so then once, so maybe it would be a block or a

01:22:28.520 triangle or a circle or something like that. And

01:22:30.720 then you could proliferate. Once you got the 10 square

01:22:34.320 mile blocks in place, you could proliferate like one,

01:22:37.060 one mile by one mile blocks and then 500 foot by 500

01:22:40.800 foot blocks and, and map the coast very, very

01:22:43.360 precisely. Yeah. So, so what you, what you're

01:22:46.440 describing is a fractal dimension actually. Right. Right.

01:22:49.580 And so I'm going to use a slightly different analogy and

01:22:53.760 translate that to, so imagine you could, you could get

01:22:57.340 on a 200 foot boat and just sail around the Island of

01:23:00.180 Britain. I think that's about 3000 kilometers, or you could

01:23:03.760 go in and out of every, uh, cove. Yep. And that gets to 6,000

01:23:09.540 kilometers, call it. Or you could get on a 10 foot row boat

01:23:13.500 and, and go in and out of every river and, and little nook

01:23:17.220 and cranny. Right. Or you could use a one foot measuring

01:23:20.580 stick and measure around every single rock. And so when you,

01:23:25.620 a fractal dimension is, is a way of measuring, it's a way of

01:23:30.300 mathematically measuring the complexity in something. And so

01:23:32.980 right. The way you can discern this is that as your

01:23:36.240 measuring stick decreases in size, the total perimeter of the

01:23:41.000 Island of Britain is going to dramatically logarithmically

01:23:44.720 increase. And so you go, as you go from the 200 foot yacht to a

01:23:48.820 one foot measuring stick, you go from 3000 kilometers to 300,000

01:23:53.460 kilometers. Right. Right. Right. It's astronomical

01:23:56.040 increase. So what the, what the immune system does is sort of

01:24:01.280 true enough. I think your description is perfect. It's sort

01:24:04.420 of optimum fractal dimensional, uh, Goldilocks. Yes. It, it, it, it

01:24:13.400 finds one or two or three different, what are called. And so

01:24:16.720 it just maps one cove. It maps part of one cove. And then once it

01:24:20.280 gets that, that cove is the same on every city. Imagine there are

01:24:24.960 thousands of Britons all over the Atlantic ocean and you map one

01:24:29.700 cove. Now your immune system goes, okay, I know this. I know this

01:24:33.480 one cove and all of these bacterial cells have this cove. So I know how

01:24:38.060 to identify all of them. Right. I don't need to keep, I don't need to

01:24:40.900 keep mapping the whole entire thing. Right. And so good enough and good

01:24:44.240 enough in that situation would be the immune system just has to map

01:24:47.760 that organism well enough so that it can stop it. Yes. Yes. And that's a kind

01:24:54.820 of understanding. Right. Well, this is part of the reason I got attracted to the

01:24:58.520 new England pragmatists because they have a philosophy of knowledge. That's

01:25:03.420 very much akin to this is that how do you know when something is right? It's

01:25:08.120 like, well, first of all, you have to set a target and then it's right. If you

01:25:13.840 can use it to hit the target. And that's actually the definition of what

01:25:18.180 constitutes. Right.

01:25:19.160 I think it's the right boundary between order and chaos. And I mean, you used a

01:25:25.500 definition of truth. I think it was with Sam Harris of evolutionarily

01:25:31.060 advantageous, basically something like that. Right. Well, it promotes survival and

01:25:36.260 reproduction, something like that. Right. So here's the definition. If your immune

01:25:40.840 system identifies a couple of epitopes or coves on a bacterial cell and it wipes out

01:25:49.140 all the bacterial cells, it can identify the bacterial cell. It's done. And so, and

01:25:56.020 then the really interesting thing happens is that that library gets encoded in almost

01:26:01.420 like a language in what's called a memory B cell. And those are kept in a library. And

01:26:07.600 so the next time that bacterial cell comes into the body, the sequence of fractal dimensions

01:26:17.600 of antibodies from the broad to the more and more specific, that's all maintained. So, so

01:26:23.780 it, it can identify the bacterial cell at multiple levels of analysis, large coves and

01:26:28.940 small coves. Right. So if there's a mutation, it doesn't have to start from square one.

01:26:33.380 You can go back to sort of halfway between the general and the specific and start at the

01:26:39.480 point where the fractal dimension no longer matches. Okay. Okay. So there's, there's two

01:26:45.120 things that are relevant there. Practically speaking, I would say, and the first is if

01:26:51.760 you're negotiating with someone like your wife, it's useful to, to let her, let's say, wander 0.97

01:26:59.800 around the problem space until she comes up with a first approximation of a solution. And you don't

01:27:05.520 want to criticize that to death too badly because even though it's not a great fit, it's better

01:27:10.720 than the initial state. And then what you're doing as you're negotiating is you're, you're

01:27:15.960 getting a, you're getting a tighter and tighter grip. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think, I think that the

01:27:22.640 immune system is perhaps a good analogy to hypothesize about in terms of the way that human

01:27:30.660 thought. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It strikes me as highly probable. I think the human thought sort of

01:27:35.420 proceeds from the general to the specific so that maybe, you know, with, you would know this better

01:27:41.520 than me, but, but with a child is sort of learn the hierarchy of things as, as they mature at a

01:27:47.140 young age. So, so a blueberry might be something like food, fruit, berry, blueberry. Oh, you know,

01:27:54.120 that's proportionate to word length, by the way, the shorter words, the shorter words map onto more

01:28:00.800 fundamental concepts, right? And those words have been conserved in linguistic history.

01:28:05.840 That's fascinating because that's the same. Yep. Yep. They call those primary level or base level

01:28:09.980 words. Yep. Cat is one, by the way. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or dog. That's the same thing as the antibody

01:28:17.440 gaining sophistication as it proceeds sort of down the, I, I call it cone centricity, but it's,

01:28:24.960 it's really concentric, but with another, imagine a upside down traffic cone is really a hierarchy,

01:28:31.540 but you're, you're getting more and more specific as you, and more and more technically sophisticated.

01:28:36.960 Okay. So imagine this, imagine this then, then. So the, an archetype is like a shoulder. It's like this,

01:28:44.600 it's like this from the, from the shoulder to the elbow. It's like, it's a general purpose,

01:28:49.220 problem solving approach. And it isn't, you have to make it specific, right? To match it to the precise

01:28:57.040 conditions that obtain in the environment. But the stories we conserve, the narratives we conserve

01:29:02.600 are those general purpose, problem solving tools that have the broadest possible application. Then

01:29:08.220 you can imagine this too, Derek, you can imagine this is that if you hear a story and it really

01:29:15.280 strikes you and it's memorable, that's because your memory has evolved to have a place for that story,

01:29:22.900 because that story is so necessary that without it, you, you're functional, your functional,

01:29:32.800 your, your general functionality would be massively impaired.

01:29:36.360 And so it's like the, yeah, it's like the antibody is, it goes, you can go back to the general,

01:29:41.900 generality level where it resonates with whatever it is that you're, I think that's some, maybe

01:29:48.300 something like a heuristic in terms of problem solving. You're, you're, you're looking for a

01:29:55.140 pattern similarity at the level of analysis that matches the new problem appropriately. You, you were

01:30:02.020 sort of describing this earlier, you know, when you, when you describe one, when you, when you learn how

01:30:08.120 one genetic disease works, well, there's a lot of knowledge that you learn that translates to

01:30:12.640 another genetic disease. It's not exactly the same protein, but in terms of DNA and RNA and all of

01:30:19.640 the functional, uh, elements that go wrong with the genetic disease, many of them are the same.

01:30:25.040 Okay. So, so, so, so, well, so imagine that there's a behavioral space where evolutionary competition

01:30:32.100 between strategies occurs. And we, we've already agreed on the fact that the strategies that are

01:30:39.340 going to work consistently across time in a social organization are going to be functions of iterated

01:30:47.220 reciprocal interactions. They have to be, because that's what defines a society. Okay. So now imagine

01:30:52.880 those are all laid out through behavioral cooperation and competition. Okay. Now imagine you have a mapping

01:30:59.940 function and you can map those strategies. That's what a story is. Okay. Now imagine those stories have

01:31:09.380 levels of generality and specificity, right? And so if you told your story, it would be specific to your

01:31:16.920 time and place and the conditions of your life, but it would also be a variant of a broader story

01:31:23.100 that people could rely on to orient themselves in conditions that were somewhat similar to yours.

01:31:29.300 There's a whole hierarchy of those. So I would say the deepest, the deepest and most general stories

01:31:35.860 are the, we define them as the religious stories and translating them into their specific application

01:31:42.900 is actually quite a complex act, right? It's like you can take a general, a general heuristic,

01:31:51.140 which would be coded as a narrative. And it might not be obvious to you how to apply that to the

01:31:56.460 conditions of your life. That's a problem you have to solve, but that doesn't mean it's not without

01:32:00.400 worth because it's a good, it's a, it's a great starting place. I don't know if this, this analogy is,

01:32:08.780 is appropriate, but I think what you're describing is the changing of the, the sort of dynamic moving of

01:32:19.340 the boundary between order and chaos as you proceed down the level of specificity from the general to

01:32:27.620 the specific. So, so, so actually what's happening there is, is the, it's the same thing as the antibody

01:32:34.200 is the, the, the boundary is moving. The boundary is getting closer and closer to the target.

01:32:41.040 And, and I think, yeah, definitely, definitely. Well, and in some ways too, the target might also becoming

01:32:47.540 clearer and clearer, right? Because, because you imagine that's happening in two ways, right? Because it's

01:32:52.220 happening, you're trying to minimize the distance between you and the target, but you're also trying to

01:32:58.820 minimize the ambiguity in relationship to the target as you move towards it.

01:33:03.280 You're trying to get rid of the noise. You're trying to get rid of it.

01:33:04.580 Yeah. The perceptual noise. Exactly. And that, and that is a matter of zeroing in, which is,

01:33:09.040 you know, basically how we describe it. And, and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:33:12.940 That, that, that's how, that's how bees rank order. That's, they rank order flower beds based on 0.99

01:33:21.880 the frequency of bees coming back from flower bed and, and saying, this is a flower bed of value,

01:33:32.300 which, which they communicate in a pretty sophisticated manner. And so what they're

01:33:37.280 actually doing is, you know, they start in the morning and they, they leave the hive and they

01:33:41.760 fly around and it's, it's random. They don't know where the flower beds are. And then throughout the

01:33:48.440 day, different bees identified different flower beds that have more nectar and less nectar. And then

01:33:55.920 they come back and they communicate that they found a flower bed and that there's nectar there.

01:34:02.300 And then the hive redirects the sacrifice to the most valuable flower bed based on the value,

01:34:10.540 the amount of value in each individual flower bed. So what ends up happening is you, you create a

01:34:15.420 hierarchy from the general to the specific. It's sort of a parade of distribution is what it is,

01:34:21.040 where you're targeting, you're targeting the, the sacrifice more and more and more algorithmically

01:34:28.200 to the most, to the highest value. Right. Right. Okay. And so, okay. So, so let's walk through that.

01:34:33.980 So it's random to begin with because the bees go in every direction. Okay. Now some bees come back

01:34:38.680 and report. Now you, I think you told me that the length of the dance of the individual bee is

01:34:46.380 proportionate to the store that they're trying to indicate. And so, so then the human equivalent to that

01:34:53.500 would be like, if I watch you put a lot of time and effort into convincing me of something,

01:34:58.240 it's going to be more convincing because you are, what you're doing is indicating by your

01:35:03.780 sacrificial action, which is your dumping of time and effort into that attempt, that you're,

01:35:09.340 that's your commitment to the goal. And so that's a pretty valid indication, at least of your estimation

01:35:15.160 of how valuable that goal is. Yeah. Well, I mean, you, the, the dance, uh, if you, if you watch,

01:35:21.900 uh, the sugar plum fairies, the dance increases in the level of excitement to indicate the procession

01:35:29.720 towards value. Right. So I think, I think that's what you're just, is that, is that what you're

01:35:35.220 describing? Um, yeah, well, you, you, you want to think about how, well, how bees would indicate to each

01:35:41.300 other the reliability of the message. And it's got to be something like the, that the, the bee,

01:35:47.160 a bee that's willing to risk a lot of effort in the dance has obviously found a source of energy.

01:35:51.760 Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think, I think it's actually more precise than that. So, so there's sort of

01:35:56.240 three. So this guy, Von Frisch, uh, got the Nobel prize for discovering this in like 1973. And,

01:36:03.120 um, what he discovered is three different elements of how bees encode the location of value in a

01:36:12.820 language. I mean, their dances is really a sort of a proto language. And what they do

01:36:17.280 is they, they find a flower bed, they gorge themselves on nectar. So they're, they're covered

01:36:23.220 in pollen and nectar. So, so one telltale sign of a valuable flower bed is that bee actually comes up

01:36:30.880 and he, he throws up in the middle of the, of the hive. And so he smelled, he's just covered in

01:36:36.580 flower smell. And then, and then he, he does a dance and there are two aspects of the dance that

01:36:42.400 actually create a vector. Um, one is the length of the dance and it's, it's, it's extraordinarily

01:36:48.340 precise. So the length of the dance, every second, I think represents about a thousand meters.

01:36:54.980 So if one second dances, the flower bed is a thousand meters away.

01:36:58.840 Okay. The curvature from the, so the, the bee sort of goes in a straight line and then he curves

01:37:04.960 out to the start. The curvature of his dance indicates the direction of the flower bed

01:37:11.900 as an angle off of the direction of the sun. I mean, it's unbelievably sophisticated.

01:37:17.960 So the week five, he looks up at the sun and he says, okay, this bee just told me the flower bed is

01:37:24.380 45 degrees off the angle of the sun. So go East, you know, a thousand meters and yeah, yeah. It's

01:37:34.000 unbelievable. So then what I, I don't know that this part is true. I'm sort of guessing here, but

01:37:38.540 then I think what probably happens is that because that flower bed is so valuable and because there's

01:37:46.040 so much nectar there, more and more bees come back and they dance. And so that creates a hierarchy,

01:37:53.640 right? There's more and more bees that are dancing and that track more attention. I wonder if they get

01:37:58.320 more precise in their specification too, as further exploration occurs. Probably on, I would, it's

01:38:04.080 probably a weighted average of all the bees coming back and doing a very similar dance that, that tells

01:38:10.960 you, um, where the flower bed is. And so that, yeah, they ultimately direct their sacrifice in a

01:38:17.940 highly intelligent algorithmic way. And the sacrifice is their willingness to expand energy,

01:38:24.020 right? When we talk about sacrifice, here's the bees burn up energy flying around. So that's the

01:38:29.140 sacrifice. Yeah. Well, another thing this, uh, Von Frisch figured out, which this is even more

01:38:34.660 fascinating is that bees can lie. So, so you can have cane bees and able bees and a cane bee will 0.93

01:38:43.440 come back and do a dance, but not be covered in pollen and, and not have found that valuable of a

01:38:52.040 flower bed. So it's a virtue signaling bee. He's a virtue signaling bee. Yeah. And the other bees will

01:38:58.240 pay less attention if you don't smell, if you don't have sort of highly potent flower smells.

01:39:05.380 I wanted to, did, did, did Von Frisch figure out why a bee would falsify his report? I mean,

01:39:12.640 obviously, the obvious answer is obvious answer is for attention, you know, but it's not easy to

01:39:18.260 translate that into the bee world. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that we know that part, but

01:39:23.180 narcissist, those are narcissist bees, by the way. Postmodernist bees. Yeah.

01:39:28.240 Yeah. They signal for treasure when that exists. Right. Right. Well, I mean, this tells you a lot,

01:39:33.880 right? Because the postmodernists think that there's no hierarchy. It's just all made up and

01:39:38.980 we can sort of invent whatever hierarchy we want to. Well, bees can find value. Right. So, so, so it's

01:39:47.940 so deep in nature that if bees can do it, well, human beings can damn well do it. Right. Well,

01:39:54.400 and I would bet my bottom dollar that the systems that are activated when a bee watches another bee

01:40:00.160 dance in a particularly motivated way are mediated by dopamine. It's highly probable,

01:40:05.700 right? Cause that's, well, that's conserved so far down. Yeah. Yeah. I bet, I bet you're right. And,

01:40:10.640 and so it's, it's going, they definitely, they have all kinds of interesting behaviors. I mean,

01:40:15.340 when I, when a hornet comes in and starts trying to take bees, they scream, they literally scream predator,

01:40:22.540 threat. And, and so they, they have, they have behavioral patterns that are prey and predator.

01:40:30.140 I mean, going and finding the flower is a predatory behavior. It's, it's, it's, it's value

01:40:35.760 constructing. Right. When the bear hierarchy. Yeah. When the bear comes, that's a predatory threat to

01:40:42.500 the bee. They create chaos. Right, right, right. Around to, to, to disrupt the goal seeking behavior of

01:40:50.360 the predator. And so, so the, the level of, actually they sort of balance level of chaos and

01:40:56.880 order depending on the situation. So, so when a hornet comes to the nest, what they'll, they'll

01:41:02.140 actually do is, is a highly, highly, almost hyper-ordered, uh, uh, dance. They, they surround

01:41:10.120 the, the hornet and all the bees around the hornet start beating their wings in, in synchronous

01:41:15.760 fashion and they raise the temperature. So they can, they can survive, I don't know, like 106

01:41:20.820 degrees and hornets die at 104 degrees. So it's, it's the same thing. Right. So they, like a fever.

01:41:27.660 Yes, a fever. It's a fever. Wow. That's amazing. Isn't that amazing? Right. They cook, they cook the

01:41:32.640 wasps, eh? They cook the wasps. They literally cook the wasps without cooking themselves. Right. So

01:41:38.920 that's, that's right on the border of chaos. Right. Right. Right. Perfect management. Right.

01:41:45.080 You know, it's like, it's like the peak of a Beethoven symphony or something. It's, it's as

01:41:50.380 far as you can possibly push it and still maintain order. Right. Right. Okay. So let's, let's close

01:41:56.480 this up by, by tying some things together. Okay. So when you moved from investment banking

01:42:01.180 into the pursuit of cures for rare diseases, you talked a little bit about, you know, how that

01:42:07.580 had prepared you to do it. You talked a little bit about your motivation because you're actually

01:42:11.480 inclined ethically, let's say, and therefore on a motivational basis to pursue cures that

01:42:17.360 are going to be of benefit to people. How did your intellectual interests align with your

01:42:23.520 pursuit in the new company? Well, I'm, I'm fundamentally just a curious person. So, so I love learning

01:42:33.120 new things. And I, I, I realized I had an entropic gap in terms of my knowledge. And when I started

01:42:41.380 with the biopharmaceutical company, that's a, that's an inadequate description of what I did

01:42:45.700 not know actually. And so I just went to work. I read, I just started reading. I went to classes.

01:42:52.400 I, I just did all I could to, to educate myself on every dynamic of biology I, I possibly could.

01:43:01.220 So what do you think? Okay. So now if I understand correctly, you came across this company when you

01:43:06.900 were working in the investment banking realm and then, okay. And then you got deep. Now,

01:43:10.880 why do you think you got so deeply interested in this particular company? Like what was the calling

01:43:17.380 there? So one of the things, Derek, that I've been working on, you can tell me what you think

01:43:20.700 about this because I think it's an extra cool idea. I think that what's occurred to me as a

01:43:26.120 consequence of walking through the biblical stories is that the Yahweh, the God that's presented in the

01:43:31.840 Old Testament is a dynamic process that's conscience on the one hand. So that calls you out on your

01:43:42.680 misbehavior and that's calling on the other. So God is the spirit of conscience and calling. That's a good

01:43:48.640 way of thinking about it. And so calling makes itself manifest in those things that grip your

01:43:53.440 interest. And conscience makes itself manifest in, it's like the grip of, it's almost like the grip

01:44:00.660 of, it's something like predation because when you do something wrong, that behavior, that element of

01:44:08.940 yourself should be eradicated. And conscience tells you what part of you should die. And it tells you

01:44:15.940 what part of you should die instead of you, right? And so calling is like the bee dance in some ways.

01:44:23.140 Calling is what indicates to you, for whatever reason, where the treasure lies. And conscience

01:44:27.560 is what tells you when you're deviating from the path. And the united spirit that's presented in the

01:44:33.340 Old Testament looks like the dynamic interaction of calling and conscience. And I really like that.

01:44:39.060 I mean, it makes sense to me because we can follow our calling and we should attend to our conscience.

01:44:42.820 And if you're doing something you're really interested in and your conscience is clear,

01:44:47.040 things are going pretty nicely for you. Like that's a good place to be. So, okay. So you came

01:44:51.320 across this company. And so what was it in that that called to you, do you think?

01:44:56.540 Initially, it was the dynamic environment of the academic challenge that was highly intriguing.

01:45:04.620 And so I think that was definitely part of it. But, you know, to summarize what you just said,

01:45:12.160 you speak about adventure. I think that an adventure, you don't necessarily have to have

01:45:18.760 exactly the right calling to go on an adventure. I think-

01:45:24.620 Right. It can be a low-resolution adventure.

01:45:26.460 It can be a low-resolution adventure. It could be.

01:45:29.060 Yes, exactly. I think that what ends up happening if you just, an adventure is that first step into

01:45:35.640 chaos, like the bee getting up in the morning and flying around. It doesn't know where the flower

01:45:39.340 that is. The only way to find it is just to start down the path. And I think that maybe conscience

01:45:46.720 is the, as you proceed down the path, your accuracy of path direction evolves more specifically.

01:45:57.620 Yeah.

01:45:57.900 And I don't know exactly how that happened. Well, I think it's this, what we've been discussing,

01:46:02.120 it's sort of-

01:46:03.000 Well, you'd learn more about pathways that lead nowhere.

01:46:06.560 Yeah. It's gaining knowledge about where to set the boundary between order and chaos. I think it's

01:46:11.840 something like that because you need a little bit of chaos. If you don't have chaos, you can end up

01:46:18.280 with the wrong goal.

01:46:20.160 Well, and also, if there's no chaos too, the other problem too is that, you know, you have to pursue

01:46:25.600 a goal in a manner that allows you to pursue other goals when you're done with that goal.

01:46:31.000 So as you're pursuing the goal, you want to be accreting information that allows you to pursue

01:46:35.420 other goals, right? So there's a goal and a meta goal all the time. And the meta goal is going to be

01:46:40.220 something like increased flexibility in positing and pursuing future goals. You don't ever want

01:46:45.660 to sacrifice that to the specific goal.

01:46:49.140 You know, this is why like a liberal arts education is such a good thing because knowledge of multiple

01:46:54.560 domains increases the meta knowledge.

01:46:59.520 Right, right.

01:47:01.060 It's algorithmic or analogic pattern recognition that, and I think this has actually been helpful

01:47:07.320 to me in terms of my lack of highly specific background in the pharmaceutical industry.

01:47:13.620 I've done other things that actually, well, they don't constrain me to the, if you've always done

01:47:22.960 something this way, this is why we do it because we've all done it this way. And I come in and go,

01:47:27.380 well, why? Because over here in this functional area, we did it this way. And so you ask the questions

01:47:35.420 that can actually, I'm, I'm a source of chaos, I guess, would be, hopefully just the item of chaos.

01:47:41.720 Because you want to, you want to constantly be tilting you towards the optimum, which requires

01:47:48.180 knowledge.

01:47:50.080 It's multidimensional.

01:47:51.480 It's multidimensional.

01:47:52.840 Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of the things I've noticed about successful people, and this is something that's

01:47:57.800 very practical for those of you who are watching and listening, is that there's lots of people who are

01:48:02.200 specialized, no, there's a minority of people who are specialized in any given area. And being

01:48:08.980 specialized in a given area is very useful because there's a minority of people who are specialized.

01:48:14.200 And so that marks you out. It gives you something to trade. But then there's a much smaller number

01:48:20.120 of people who are specialists in two relatively unrelated domains simultaneously, right? So maybe

01:48:25.360 you're one in a thousand here, and you're one in a thousand here, and assuming there's some overlap,

01:48:31.080 you're one in 500,000 in that, in that overlap. And then if you add a third domain of specialty,

01:48:37.900 well, there's like one of you.

01:48:40.520 Yeah.

01:48:40.800 And so, yeah, I think that's, that's actually a real problem in the world, is that what you're

01:48:47.580 describing in some respects is sort of what Ian McGilchrist talks about in terms of a highly,

01:48:53.260 highly left-brained specialization such that you're hypermyelinated and concretized in one area,

01:49:01.640 which doesn't allow for this dynamo.

01:49:05.540 Right, right.

01:49:06.420 It's a understanding how multiple functions may interact, the patterns of behavior may interact

01:49:11.620 across domains.

01:49:12.920 Right. It's a kind of blindness of specialization.

01:49:15.300 Yeah, yeah. And I think you can't, I can't, I think you cannot be right-brained integrated in

01:49:21.820 your thinking without being multi-dimensional in your education. I don't.

01:49:27.180 Right, right. So that's a good, okay, well, the, well, the other thing that, that that sort of

01:49:30.820 points out too, and this is more or less relevant to Ralston College is that, so you imagine that one

01:49:35.460 of the things that you're doing with a classical education is that you're increasing the dimensionality

01:49:40.980 of the, maybe what, so imagine it's sort of akin to those shoulder-to-elbow elements of the, of the immune

01:49:49.940 system. So if you have a good general education, you have a lot of those.

01:49:54.460 Yes.

01:49:55.220 Right, and so that, yeah.

01:49:56.600 That's a good description.

01:49:57.380 Right, right, right.

01:49:58.300 So then you can see almost every bacteria and viral protein, yeah.

01:50:02.040 Right, at least you have a starting, you have a starting place, you have a starting place, and,

01:50:05.760 right, and these have been conserved, right, the best of the past is the conservation of these

01:50:11.340 first-pass approximations.

01:50:13.780 That's archetypal and biblical stories is what it is.

01:50:16.580 Right, right, right.

01:50:17.240 It's the first, it's the first part of the arm. It sort of gives you a doorway into the maze.

01:50:24.140 Okay, so then, okay, so then imagine this too. So, so this is, this has something to do with

01:50:29.760 certain degree of cultural homogeneity. So imagine that there's a hundred of us, and we were all

01:50:35.140 raised on the same stories. Okay, now these are stories that are, like, they're first-pass

01:50:40.940 approximations to solutions. But because we all know the stories, they're also first-pass

01:50:46.520 approximations, so partial solutions, that we would already regard as ethically viable.

01:50:52.580 Because we've got the same initial, we've got the same initial.

01:50:56.140 That's like a language.

01:50:56.800 Yeah, right, that's right, right, right.

01:50:58.620 Yeah, you can't, you can't, you can't have a functional society without a shared language.

01:51:03.100 It doesn't work. You and I can't communicate if we don't have the same language.

01:51:09.920 Right, well, and maybe what we're talking about here is, like, the prototypical elements

01:51:14.020 of a shared language of value.

01:51:16.500 Yeah, I think, I think it's sort of a language of morality, maybe.

01:51:20.300 Yeah, well, I don't know, I don't know if there's a difference between a hierarchy of

01:51:24.680 value and a morality. I think those might be the same thing.

01:51:27.480 Yeah, I think so, too. I think this exists in biological systems broadly. It's more of

01:51:36.360 a micro level than the macro level that you're describing. But I think, you know, you could

01:51:41.960 define, like, you're going to have to give me a little bit of leeway here, but you could

01:51:48.060 define a living system as the ability to dynamically manage the boundary between order and chaos

01:51:58.780 to direct sacrifice. I think all living things have the ability to do that. They all share it. And,

01:52:05.440 you know, there's a good reason for that, because the physical world itself, outside of nature and

01:52:10.380 living things, is somewhat chaotic, right? There's, even at the quantum mechanical level or quantum

01:52:17.620 physics level, we know that things can be waves or particles. They can randomly become something

01:52:23.120 completely different. So there's a dynamism that's in the physical world. So I think, by definition,

01:52:29.940 biology has to be able to navigate a highly complex environment that shares the tension between order

01:52:38.940 and chaos. Yeah. Well, it seems like that. It seems like that in the archetypal accounts, because

01:52:44.980 the constituent elements of reality in the narratives of value are order and chaos. And the third element

01:52:52.900 is the ability to traverse that border. I mean, so in the Taoist worldview, you just see that absolutely

01:52:58.540 clearly is what's the world made of? Well, it's made out of chaos. So that's something like entropy,

01:53:03.220 and it's made out of order. And that's something like predictability. And then,

01:53:07.420 and the dynamic interaction between them, what would you say? And then it's the ability to

01:53:12.660 mediate between those two forces dynamically that constitutes, well, you said it constitutes life.

01:53:19.160 It certainly constitutes consciousness, that's for sure. Does it constitute life? Yes, likely. It's acted out.

01:53:25.200 I mean, it's happening at the cellular level. It's happening at bees do this, ants do this. They map,

01:53:31.480 they create a boundary and randomness in order to direct sacrifice to sensory, perceptive,

01:53:41.780 phenotypically relevant value. That's too targeting. But, you know, and every species is doing this

01:53:49.600 differently, but they're basically doing the same thing. Well, you look at, look at, well, look at the,

01:53:53.760 look at the dragon archetype, the dragon fight story. I mean, the, that's a map of value and what

01:54:01.220 it says. So, and Jung believed this was the core value in alchemy, in Sturkulinus Inventure, which was

01:54:08.100 in that what you most want to find will be found where you least are inclined to look. And Jung's take

01:54:14.600 on that was, well, you're weakest at your blindest point. And so, of course.

01:54:20.040 You have to go into chaos. You can't find value if you don't, that first step on into chaos. It's

01:54:26.640 impossible because by definition, the value is not in, it's not maintained perpetually inside of

01:54:34.500 order. It can't work. You have to seek new, new value. Right, right. Because the order is exhaustible.

01:54:41.700 Yeah. Otherwise the bear is going to come and steal all your honey. Well, you see, well, you see the

01:54:46.140 same thing with the bees. It's like if they get locked onto a flower bed, that's great until they

01:54:51.340 take all the resources. And then that whole pattern is now longer, no longer, not only no longer

01:54:57.400 functional, it's deadly. Right, right, right, right. Yeah, exactly. And then they have to revert to a

01:55:03.440 random search, at least to some degree. Yeah. So I think this, this boundary setting mechanism

01:55:11.280 it enables different species to direct what it is they're doing. It's sort of an intelligent

01:55:20.360 direction of behavior that is phenotypically specific. So, you know, to a bat, to a bee,

01:55:31.880 God is the flower bed, right? So they are wired to rank order flowerness is what they're actually

01:55:40.520 doing. Yeah. To a bat, God is a big fat mosquito at dusk. So they are, they fly out of the cave at 0.88

01:55:49.020 dusk and they rank order mosquitoes and they target their efforts and their sacrifice to the Doppler

01:55:55.480 effect, the sound bouncing off of the fattest mosquito. So it's a completely different way of

01:55:59.880 seeing the world. Right. Well, and for human beings, God is something like the pattern of

01:56:04.700 the spirit. So we'll say the pattern of behavior that best instantiates the most positive, positive,

01:56:11.820 possible reputation in the minds of other people. Yeah. Yeah. I think, yes, yes. And I think that that

01:56:17.320 by definition, I think that by definition, you touched on this very nicely earlier, it has to

01:56:23.200 transcend different perspective and different worldviews. So God has to take into account the

01:56:30.440 variation of agreeableness and the variation of neuroticism. Right. It's outside of all that.

01:56:36.020 Yeah. Because you need neuroticism, right? Because you want the zebra who's hypersensitive to the lion

01:56:42.560 that's threatening. Right. To alert the whole herd. To alert the whole herd. You need that. So,

01:56:47.600 yeah. So, but, but for some reason, you know, I think chaos is fundamentally a prey response. So,

01:56:57.160 so the, the zebras create chaos when they sense the predatory lion approaching them. And that for

01:57:03.700 some reason. I have to think about that. That's, that's very interesting because that, that also

01:57:08.360 means that the victims should sow chaos. Victims should sow chaos. Exactly. Exactly. I think,

01:57:14.600 you know, maybe part of it is, is that in higher ed, we are teaching people that they are victims.

01:57:21.780 Yeah. Your sole reference frame of the world is that, you know, it's sort of this weird dichotomy

01:57:28.220 where you can be anything and do anything you want to be. Totally unconstrained. Yeah. Yeah. But,

01:57:33.380 but there's this hyper oppressive patriarchal hierarchy that is going to keep you from being

01:57:40.660 successful. Yeah. You have no chance of being successful. Well, it's going to eat you. Basically,

01:57:47.700 we're teaching young people that they cannot be successful. And so of course, they're going to 0.98

01:57:53.820 have a prey response to being told you're being preyed upon. Well, that's very interesting. I hadn't

01:57:58.020 thought about that, that, that, that sowing of chaos as a prey animal response. That's very

01:58:03.460 interesting. Yeah. Off to stew on that. It's a hypothesis, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Stew on it because

01:58:09.160 I think, um, you know, we're sort of getting both aspects of it wrong. The, the predatory value

01:58:14.840 seeking goal oriented side of the equation, which is what you say in 12 rules for life,

01:58:20.880 go make something of yourself and become a better person. And, um, all of the good things

01:58:25.800 that happen downstream of that, that is the predatory side of the equation. I think in, in,

01:58:32.000 in translating the analogy to nature and the, the prey side of the equation is sort of hyper

01:58:38.900 victimization where, and we're teaching young people. Yeah. Well, that, that first pattern

01:58:45.460 deteriorates into predator and the second pattern deteriorates into prey. Right. Yeah. Yeah,

01:58:52.460 exactly. Exactly. Right. And I think that's probably true. I think that's probably true. And this is

01:58:56.640 partly why the more radical left-wing end of the interpretive spectrum is difficult to get rid of is

01:59:01.960 because that first pattern of goal seeking can deteriorate into predator and often does.

01:59:08.300 Right. Absolutely. That's, that's the sort of an extremist, uh, you know, narcissistic bully

01:59:14.560 is the hyper predator. Right. Right. Directionally, the, the, the, the, the far left has the vector 1.00

01:59:21.980 correct. I mean, those people definitely exist. Yes. Yeah. And those tendencies. Yeah. But, but the

01:59:27.640 categories, the ideological pattern categorization of every predatory behavior as narcissistic psychopath

01:59:36.480 is just, well, misses the nuance of the olive oil for wine trade that is, that actually does have an

01:59:44.080 ethic built into it that they just say, well, that doesn't exist. Right. All treasure hunting behavior

01:59:49.760 is not predatory. Exactly. Well, how's the bee going to eat? Right, right, right. Okay. Okay. Well,

01:59:55.320 that's a good place to end, Derek. That's a good place to end. You know, that's a nice, that's a

01:59:59.560 nice summation of what we've been discussing. So for everybody who's watching and listening,

02:00:03.640 I'm going to continue to talk to Derek for another half an hour on the daily wire plus side, as I do

02:00:07.860 with all my guests. And so if you want to join us, then I'm going to have to take five minutes and

02:00:12.380 figure out where I want to take this next, but, um, it'll probably be a continuation of the biological

02:00:17.900 analogy because I think it's, I think it's extremely useful. So if you want to join us for that,

02:00:22.820 do so to everybody who's watching and listening, thank you very much for your time and attention,

02:00:27.620 Derek. Thanks very much for talking to me today. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm glad we got to weave in,

02:00:32.900 uh, like the practicalities of your career into, you know, the philosophical and biological

02:00:40.280 discussions that we've had before. That's exactly what I was hoping to accomplish. And I think we

02:00:45.160 managed that. So thank you very much for that, sir. Let's take five. And for everybody watching and

02:00:50.100 listening again, thanks for your time and attention.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - January 25, 2024

417. How to Manage Your Job, Your Company, Your Life ｜ Derick Cooper

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