262. The Division Problem
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Tap a timestamp or any sentence to play from there · machine transcribed (mlx:mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo), expect mistakesAlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann and Alex Cox. This week's challenge, bite a pencil really hard.
MerlinHello. Hello.
AlexI felt as if that was a bit serial killer-y, and I wanted to see where it went, but it didn't really go anywhere. Like, I thought, uh...
MerlinWhat's that? What was serial? What?
AlexYou kind of did an Anthony Hopkins, hello?
MerlinOh, like where I do a funny serial killer voice?
AlexMm-hmm. I mean, what's funny about killing? There's nothing funny about that.
MerlinHmm. What's so civil about war? No.
AlexWait, is that a thing people say or quote or do?
MerlinDo you want to know?
AlexYeah, no. Like, I don't know. Sometimes you say things that are funny. Often, often you say very funny things. And I don't know if it is in a mocking way or a... You just came up with that funny...
MerlinMe mocking you?
AlexAll the... Well, everyone just...
MerlinI invented sarcasm.
AlexMocking...
MerlinAxl Rose.
AlexAxl Rose said it. Wait, really? That's so dumb. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have contempt.
MerlinIf memory serves, I think it's from that. So they had a big hit with their Appetite for Destruction records circa 1987, right? And I feel like they followed up pretty quickly with an EP, and it had the song Civil War on it, where Axl Rose says, what's this civil about war? And I think it's also the one where it's one of his, famous problematic lyrics, I think, is on that EP.
AlexI truly can't.
MerlinHe talks about immigrants and F-words.
AlexOh, oh, yikes. I am not feigning ignorance here. Is there a doc?
MerlinYes.
AlexWhy don't I?
MerlinIt was sent to you last week.
AlexWhat?
MerlinBut I can...
AlexThis week's doc was sent to me last week?
MerlinNo, no, no. Next week's doc. If you wanted to call in during the elder pet care episode, you should have. I thought I sent it to you, but I might not have. I will send it to you now. I'm a sixes and sevens, Alex. I'm just not myself today.
AlexHuh.
MerlinI'm a pony. I'm a little bit hoarse for one thing. I didn't sleep all that well. Also, I've got a lot going on today, and I've got a lot of loose threads today. So I may need you. Oh, good.
AlexYes.
MerlinWell, I may need one set of footprints, and that's going to be the footprints that you make. Don't talk about feet. I may need you to carry me.
AlexWell, I was just thinking, if this were to be a live show, and you've kind of brought this up before, what would happen if we were to walk on stage? How would we even start the show? And I don't know. I believe it was with your favorite co-host, Mr. Syracuse. You had a pre-flight, was it?
MerlinWe're doing pre-flights now. Yeah, we're all in. We had our second pre-flight and it went great.
AlexIs that like when you have like a decanter before the wine? I don't see. I'm not even I'm not sure what a flight is, let alone a pre-flight. Is that where you drink all the fancy beer? But it's like a tiny bit.
MerlinThere's a bit.
AlexI truly don't know. What what is a pre-flight? Like you're hanging out in the virtual green room beforehand discussing.
MerlinI'm going to respond. I had asked you, I think.
AlexI'm sorry. I was too many footprints. I'm confused.
MerlinI think I ask you to carry me, and I don't want to work contra whatever bit. Is that a 365? What was that?
AlexSorry. It was my Diet Coke.
MerlinI'll go wherever you want to go. I've got nowhere to be. I've written a bunch of things down. I've got a lot of really frayed threads going on right now. See, I don't even know what's the show.
AlexNo, I was.
MerlinIs this the pre-play?
AlexExactly. Exactly. I am all yours today. That sounded weird. Oh, boy.
MerlinThat's not going to be very satisfying for either of us.
AlexGod.
MerlinThat I can promise you.
AlexI started watching a talk that you did yesterday. Sorry, I yesterday.
MerlinThe one where I yelled at people about social media?
AlexNo, no, no. Well, I'm not sure. I did not finish it, but I did. Oh, oh, what's happening? Oh, oh. No, no, no. I love you, Matt Bertram, but no. um i i tried to update uh my mac and then i i rolled it back uh but there was a you put something on youtube and it popped up in my feed and i started watching it and immediately you made a joke about uh being impotent or flaccid in some way and i'm like wait have you been making non-boner
Merlinjokes for over a decade i see what you're saying there's a difference between dick jokes and boner jokes. Maybe not for young men.
AlexSee? That was a ding.
MerlinUm, I don't know where to begin with you right now. Um, yes. because I think that as much as I have been and continue to be, I'm just going to start going through these, you know, last in first out. I think it, even though I am a fragile dude in a lot of ways, at least I feel like I'm slightly more aware of male fragility than I used to be. And now I think it's hilarious. And I think it is hilarious.
I mean, okay. Now, you know what? Somebody's going to yell at me because are you being ableist about men who don't have a penis or something? And it's like, I'm so sorry that you lost it in the big mining accident of 78. I'm sure your penis used to be majestic.
AlexWhat about those who weren't born with penises?
MerlinOh, you know, actually. Team turf. It's really, you know, it's almost impossible to find a Judith Butler book that isn't fully justified. Do you know how frustrating that is for me right now?
AlexOh, really?
MerlinI really wanted to read Gender Trouble, and I've resorted to trying to steal it. Resorted, like it's that hard for me. I spent my morning in Caliber. But anyway, I...
AlexOh, so you're not at... I was... Side parentheses. Oh, man. You don't want a physical copy. You want a digital one, right?
MerlinOh, man. Okay. It just keeps getting deeper. I was sorry. I was... No, no, no. The problem is, Alex, I buy hard copy books, but then I don't read them. And even though the... of an e-book is no guarantee of being read. It's much more likely to be read. I don't have the eyes for it, Alex. It's not fun for me to sit. I could be that kind of person who's like, really, all I need is books. Man, a t-shirt about how I love books. Fuck off. It's fine.
It's fine. I just want you to be happy. But I really wanted to. So I got the sample of, I think I actually posted a picture of this on the internet a few weeks ago when I first got, I didn't realize there were two big gender books. I think the one I want, what I want is probably Gender Trouble. But then there's the un, is it un, it's not Unwinding Anxiety. It's, what's the other gender book? The more recent one. Anyway, I want to read some Judith Butler. It's time. And I'm very intrigued by what I perceive to be Judith Butler's approach of, you know,
sort of like that Kessler McKinnon thing in the sense of like, hey, you know, calm down.
AlexI was just going to say that. She is, I think, my inspiration of calm – like, her whole philosophy around gender is basically calm down. And it's very comforting to me. I like it.
MerlinWell, I mean, look, and again, I can only read so far because I cannot look at – if I have to read justified text at the size that's comfortable for me, I hate it. Because it's nothing but rivers. Like, all I see is the spaces between the words that create ad hoc Niles, which is not a character from Frasier. but my point is that I want to read this book and what I'm getting, what I get from, and I read her piece in wherever that was, probably an English newspaper. Uh, that was really good. And I'm just intrigued, but you will tell me if I, okay. So first of all,
tell me if I'm right or I don't want to be right. I want to be happy. Tell me if I'm on the right track with my understanding of this. And if it's, if it's as fascinating as it seems, not only are we talking about the ethno methodological thing of like, Hey, what if gender is not really a thing? And like, it can be a thing, but what if it's all these different things? I feel like the spin that she puts on it is, yeah, and what if that's constantly changing and maybe not in the way you think it's changing? Like, what if, I mean, you think about any other aspect of human development.
A learned person is okay with the fact that people are different, slightly different, different days. John Roderick wants to know what the uniform of the day is. It's not just about Harry Styles is what I'm saying. Isn't it possible that, My understanding that what Judith Butler is saying is like, hey, calm down, because gender is not a moving target. It's moving, but not a target because there's no target. Yes. It's just the thing that's out there. And like, what if we kept, what if we saw it as this, you know, the, I'm sorry, I'm a mess today. One of the things that we inherited from this idea of gender being a binary is an idea that is fixed in any number of ways.
and I think the part of that that we we learned people get as being fixed is like well what if it's not fixed in one way but like what if it's not fixed in a ton of ways because that is almost heretical in some ways right I mean not just for religious things or people who decide on bathroom facilities but that must be heretical to a lot of people that like it's sort of like my impression that like my mom understands the confusion of homosexuality, but it's utterly
undone by the idea of bisexuality because you can't just be confused in one way. It seems like you're confused in several ways. And I understand that's a sexual thing, not a gender thing, but I should read Judith Butler, right?
AlexI think so. I mean, her... I love Judith Butler. There's...
MerlinDoes she go by her?
AlexAh, see? That is an interest...
MerlinIt's like George Orwell says. Pretty soon you start editing yourself. I'm so used to being corrected on gender, no matter, at this point, my daughter, unless told otherwise, there is one pronoun, I think, in my daughter's world, and that is they. And that is just, that is the lodestone until you hear otherwise. You know what I mean?
AlexI mean, I realized that I had sort of been doing that for a long time, pre any, you know, notion of queerness, but the example of like, oh, they left their umbrella here, And you're talking about a stranger, you know, in third person. And but then I became a total bitch in high school about like, well, that's grammatically. And then I'm still a bitch about that.
MerlinIt's still. Yeah. I mean, first of all, as you know, from from from the document, I think the book of Merlin to call people what they want to be called and don't be a dick about it. I do believe that. But where we run into troubles is when we have to use pronouns for the reason that they exist, which is disambiguation. And if pronouns create ambiguation, we have to work on that. Because otherwise, and I'm not trying to be prescriptive about language. I think you should call yourself whatever you want to be called.
But when we get into a situation, let's say when I'm talking about you and Matchy. And I'm trying to talk about something regarding in that dyad, I'm talking about you. Okay? And so I do my best to refer to you as they, but somebody who's listening could very easily then think because of the original prescriptive use of pronouns, meaning the real use, is that I'm talking about the two of you. But Matt's not a they. Matt's a he. But Matt is still – oh, fuck me.
AlexSee? See? Uh-huh.
MerlinYeah, butler. Butler. Don't make me tap the butler.
AlexButtle it. Buttle it.
MerlinButler. Hello. But, but, but, but, but.
AlexJudith Butler is an interesting person because despite being a professional gender critic, she's rarely critical.
MerlinFor some reason, I suddenly imagined Judith Butler being like a NASCAR automobile. And like having all these patches and sponsorships as a professional.
Try the chime card. Maybe get Kevin to draw Judith Butler covered with patches and a big tide on her chest.
AlexOh, no, it's already been done with Kristen Sinema with her denim vest and founder of Cox's Carpenter.
MerlinShe hates how much she loves wine. All her money came from the big Charlie Brown.
AlexShe's so confusing. Are you saying things or do you have a question about Judith Butler? Because I am all—
MerlinI just don't understand why I can't get books that aren't justified. And then when I bring them into caliber and I've set my defaults to always say left align, and sometimes I still cannot bring down the patriarchy. And no matter what I do, I'm still given fully justified books. And I feel like I don't know what I need to do at this point because it's not merely aesthetic, although it is largely aesthetic. But, you know, I discovered today in Calibre is you can hook it up with Kindle Unlimited and you can hook it up with Overdrive.
I did not know this.
AlexOh, okay. All right.
MerlinSo if you've got something in there, you've got a janky-ass copy of something in Calibre, you can say, is this available on any of these, you know, Internet Archive, San Francisco Public Library.
AlexI have, let's say I have a Kindle.
MerlinJust say you've got something under the camera. Just say you've got something that's free.
AlexI have a free copy of 1984 from Kindle Unlimited that I pay. I pay Kindle Unlimited, like what, $5.99 a month or whatever? Are you saying?
MerlinTen bucks a month for ten books, I think. I think it works the other way. There's one of the many aspects of Caliber that I've not explored because it's really the perfect combination of ugly and powerful.
But boy, is it ever powerful. But apparently you can do stuff. There's things like virtual libraries. I'm learning what that means. But you can have a placeholder and say, I would really like a copy of Keats's Endymion, which no one should want. But it's a very bad poem. But if you wanted a copy of Keats's Endymion and say, I don't have a copy of Keats's Endymion, there's some way that you can put it in there without adding a Moby or an EPUB or whatever. And you just add it to your library as kind of like a placeholder, I think. And then you can say search for this in any of the things I've configured.
It's a plug-in. And search on Overdrive, Kindle Unlimited, Internet Archive, any of the places where I've configured that, and it will do its best to find it for you to your preferences even to say I prefer a Mobi, I prefer an EPUB, that kind of thing.
AlexI'm going to break the rule and make the cardinal sin of talking about this show on the show, but I'm led to believe we might have a few new listeners. and I what? in theory no no no no
MerlinAlex we gotta start over no no
Alexthis is not usable I just wanted to note that Calibre or Calibre which I unironically called it for years because I never heard anybody say it out loud
Merlinit looks better
Alexand I didn't put it together
Merlinwell cause Calibre Calibre with a B-E-R is a thing cause this is like when people say they get fancy and they go to the theater
Alexyes yep yep yep
Merlindon't call it a theater It's a theatra.
AlexCalibra is just fun. It's like, it sounds like a Pokemon, but this is the app that has been around for like, oh gosh, at least a decade that allows you to take your Kindle stuff that's locked and like you said.
MerlinWell, it's a lot of things. It's an ebook manager.
AlexI was just trying to, there are people who were like, hey, what's the difference between a PowerBook and a MacBook?
MerlinYou were complaining about the Amazon delivery company just last night.
AlexYes.
MerlinSo why are you pimping the Kindle, baby?
AlexNo, I'm pimping the first. It's not pimping if I don't get any sort of money from it. And two, or capital, as we say, two, we're talking about a program that lets you be unbound from your Kindle. Unleashed, as Apple says. And it's nice when you want to use that fancy e-reader that's on, gosh, margin. Yeah.
MerlinYeah. But because it works with stuff like Kindle and it is kind of tuned for stuff like Kindle, what I find handy about it without respect to the like, ha-ha, I'm stealing books from Amazon. It's not really so much that because I'd rather have it in an EPUB. But what it does enable you to do is like, I mean, and this is, I sound like one of those people who's trying to be cute about this. But have you ever gone to standard e-books?
AlexNo. Let me check in.
MerlinTry. Oh, come on. Click, click, click. Let's go to, I think it's called standard. I've donated money to them, and I got a nice note from the developer. StandardEbooks.org, for example. And this is, so we all remember things like probably Project Gutenberg, where the idea was to scan a lot of public domain books, and then people would clean up the scans. And there's been evolutions of that over time. Well, fast forward to today, Standard Ebooks, I think, starts out with Project Gutenberg materials, and then they make it really pretty.
They give it a really good cover. They clean up everything. They make like you can get a regular EPUB or advanced EPUB with like really cool features. And you can get all these great public domain books that look really pretty. And that's where I get a ton of my public domain books now.
AlexAs soon as I arrived on this website, I was like, this can't be real.
MerlinFutura, right? It's already got credible because it's got Futura or close to Futura. That's a little curvier than Futura. But anyhow, the idea is then you just so you get this caliber. And it is really a comically weird looking app. I think it's all Python, but it's really cool. And so basically you can just grab your whatever e-books you've got. It could be PDFs. You can even, there's, so there's the app and there's a ton of plugins, including stuff to let you manage comics. Not very well, but you can manage comics. But the whole idea is if you've got a collection of books, however you got them, you just drag
them onto there and it pulls down the metadata, lets you pick what covers you want, lets you pick, you can go in. there's like this really cool heuristic processing where it'll try to be smart about how it reformats it for you. And then you can take whatever you got, turn it into different formats, and then manage all of that. But the powerful part, if you do have a Kindle or similar, is that when it's plugged in and mounted, you can basically just say, send all my books to that device or all the books that are on that device pull into Calibre. And I recently,
so I had been doing all that. This is so fucking boring. I had been doing all that on Synology. And I still, that's still my primary place that I do it. But I recently, for shits and giggles, threw it all onto iCloud and did a hazel to keep it all synced. And it's working great. So that means I can get to it from anywhere. So if I'm at home and want to just, or put it this way, let's say I'm on my iPad. I open up files. I drill down. I can grab any book and grab it just from iCloud. Isn't that smart of me?
AlexIt is. I don't want to say that. Well, how many books do you have? I'm wondering.
MerlinHow many books are in the thing? How many titles? Probably a couple hundred. But even stuff like, I keep all my, I mean, and again, I steal things, okay? I want to be clear about that. I'm not trying to be cute about this. But what it is ultimately most useful for me in some ways is stuff like the Take Control books. So there's Take Control books. Like, I buy and rebuy Jason Snell's photos book, like, as soon as he updates it. I just buy it for good luck. Launch Bar. Like Glenn Fleischman's written so many good ones.
First titles I have, it says here that I have 192 books in here. So this is one instance of like, ironically enough, whereas I might go crazy with movies and like trying to get a 4K of every movie. I don't want to go too nuts with this. So latest one I got, I got a fresh copy of Confederacy of Dunces because I needed some text out of that.
Oh, Ray Bradbury, short fiction. And somewhere in here, I've got the I've got the all you zombies in here somewhere.
AlexOh, gosh. That's one of my favorite small stories.
MerlinWas that satisfying for you to realize that's what you knew Sarah Snook from?
AlexYes. Incredibly.
MerlinThe movie. Sorry. The movie Predestination.
AlexYes, yes, yes. I am. Oh, God. She's magic.
MerlinShe's just magic.
AlexI'm only on the second season. Sorry. No. Yes. No. The third season of Succession and the second episode.
MerlinWait, wait, wait. So since yesterday, you finished season two?
AlexOh, I told you. That was going to be my project for the day.
MerlinOh, shit, dog. No, no, no.
AlexI watched about six hours of Succession.
MerlinI do that. I do not.
AlexIt was incredibly satisfying, and I love this show.
MerlinSo I'm trying to think. I remember two starts with Kendall. Kendall's meant to be. He's meant to be having his silica salt rub or whatever. That's one of the British isms I got. But Kendall's in rehab in, I want to say, Finland? Mm-hmm.
AlexIceland. Iceland.
MerlinYeah, there we go. Sorry, yes, Iceland. Dumb mistake. And so it ends with, it ends with, I'm getting blamed.
AlexIt ends with a twisty, rude PR.
MerlinHe does a twist. And then we end on Brian Cox's face where you're wondering what he's thinking, but he seems like he might for once be a little bit proud of Kendall.
AlexOh, I mean.
MerlinDid you get that? Yep. I fucking love that. What a great season.
AlexIt was like the end of Inception. You cannot convince me otherwise. He looks so waxy like an unshaven candle. Oh, that was a smile on Brian Cox's face. Like, oh, gosh. I love him.
MerlinWell, there's a nice twist on that later on. But isn't it a good show? I like it. People like it.
AlexBut yes, I adore it. Judith Butler.
MerlinStandard read books.
AlexWhat are we doing? Standard read books.
MerlinAt this point, we could really do just a hard reboot. Caliber's neat. Judith Butler seems cool. I have a lot to learn in life. What else? I bought a rubber stamp.
AlexIt seems like you have a lot of things that you want to talk about that I cannot see because it's not the doc.
MerlinNo, that's the problem is I didn't. Well, I mean, I've got. Okay, listen. Listen, I've got sub lists. I don't have a governing list. Now, when I prepare for a program like Back to Work, I very often totally do have a governing list. a top-down thing that says, and we should talk about process someday, because I think process is interesting. Part of my process is...
AlexAnd I want to talk about process and prop, prop, prop-o. Prop, prop. Prop, prop.
MerlinProp, prop. Prop-a. I love when you call me Big Prop-a. Prop-a. process okay because one of the things that i do and i was who am i talking to about this i guess probably syracusa oh yeah syracusa we um so i do a thing where like in prep for some shows i have a i have a template in text expander for the show notes that i have and it includes stuff like
especially for back to work. And this sounds silly, but this kind of priming or reminder is very helpful to me. This came up in the context of talking about a thing from the 90s called life streams and this idea of how we might organize information in an internet age. Just an interesting idea. And so I was talking about how like I don't know always where I found things and I don't remember that I found things. So for example, when I'm prepping for back to work, I have links to pull up my InstaPaperCube, my YouTube history, my Amazon buying history, my pinboard links, etc.
And I'm just telling you, most of the time, just flipping through any or all of those reminds me of something. Why Amazon? Well, I just got a new weather station that I like. And I think it would be interesting to contrast setting up this one versus setting up the previous one I had. Maybe not, but that's one thing. But ideas stimulate ideas. It's difficult to have one idea until you've had a previous idea. And stimulating myself with, wow, I'm going to go blind.
But looking at Instapaper and all the things I haven't read or started to read will remind me, oh, yeah, I want to talk about this particular anxiety guru today or something. So I start with a top-down list for things like that. I've got bottom-up lists today. Like I've already started my anxiety guru power rankings as a markdown table.
AlexA markdown table.
MerlinGo get an app called Table Flip.
AlexAll right. On it right now.
MerlinIt kind of looks a little bit like a spreadsheet program. So any .md with a table in it, you open it up with Table Flip, and you can edit that table, all of those tables inside of Table Flip, and it cleans it up for you and makes it pretty. Ooh.
AlexOh, this is pretty. Yeah. When you, anxiety guru power rankings, I'm unsure like the sincerity level that's happening right now. Are we?
MerlinI didn't sleep very well last night. And I think it's a thing where if I record a podcast at night on Tuesdays and I watch Alien, Aliens, Alien 2 for the second time in two nights, maybe I don't sleep so well. But one of the things I kept finding myself turning over in my head was like there's elements. So this is regarding this week's challenge. and I was thinking like I actually had this moment when my little you know trivial pursuit piece was turning the carousel was turning in my mind and I was thinking like oh my god I had this crazy thought that I sent you a link yesterday to a new episode of you are not so smart
right and I sent this to you and I said my duty's back um recommended and uh you you said I like this guy. And I said, the part about replacing worry with curiosity is so good. And I still need to hear it over and over. And then I had this thought and you know how these thoughts are. I was like, wait a minute. I honestly, for the time I was not sleeping very well, I kept turning over my mind. Had I just done something like beyond goofy, beyond silly, beyond stupid into
full-on like pathological and I suddenly couldn't remember which anxiety guru from which podcast we were talking about this week and I had this thought I bet I sent Alex the podcast with a guru that we already talked about last Wednesday no no it's not but that's not a good sign that I
Alexcan't keep my gurus straight okay yes you understand and I thought oh no this is one
Merlinthose things where Alex is going to play along with me even though I just did a total grandpa thing. But it's not. It's the guy. It's the guy. We've talked about this guy before here, I'm pretty sure. I went on a jag about this guy like in May. Now it's like in May when he was, I think, previously on You Are Not So Smart. So then I was thinking like we've had three recent anxiety gurus at least. We've had the trauma guy. We've had the bite a pencil guy um and we've had the um unwinding anxiety guy and then i was thinking okay that's
three anxiety gurus are there other anxiety gurus and how would i rank them you'd call the
Alexbiting a pencil guy an anxiety girl well save for the challenge oh boy i got him third of three right now oh of three okay uh you you want to review i like i like the trauma guy i like the um body
Merlinkeeps the score guy the most. Second place goes to the Judd Brewer, the unwinding anxiety guy. And I also have, in these columns, I also have things like why I'm not loving them or why I'm suspicious of what their deal is. And Biting the Pencil guy comes fully in third, because I think he might be a little full of shit. But still useful. A little? Oh good, it's not just me, right? Because I'm trying so hard in order to buy in, in some ways, in order to even to like, this is actually, this is a really good example of a thought technology
in the sense of like, well, what if we just try on an idea like a suit? And that idea is, however you feel in your bones, in your heart, in your tummy right now, let's pretend like a difference could be made by choosing to love people and by choosing to etc., etc., right? To give his thing a fair shot, and we're just talking about the challenge, this isn't the challenge, unless it is.
AlexIt could be a short one. Oh, short. I'm sorry. I was about to make an insensitive joke. Go on.
MerlinGood for you.
AlexYeah.
MerlinBut to give a fair try or a fair trial to a thought technology, there's a very obvious second year of college word for this that is escaping me right now. But you have to have a good faith effort to actually try it on as it's intended, not as you choose to misunderstand it. See also in box zero. So like really give this a shot. You have to kind of buy in and go, OK, that's interesting. Here's what this guy is saying. And like I'm going to set aside almost like a suspension of a willing suspension of disbelief or a willing suspension of cynicism or skepticism to just buy in on this.
And like I don't know. I'm not sure. I having done that, I don't know. I think I still like the Dutch guy best.
AlexI mean, the phrase that came out of your number three guru's mouth was democracy is the political version of capitalism, which.
Merlindemocracy is the political that now see that does sound like somebody from the american enterprise institute in terms of both like you know insight perspicacity and precision
Alexbecause that's bullshit i mean there are many things that this young man who wait no he's like
Merlin70 or he was at well he was at the american enterprise institute for 10 years so he can't
Alexbe that that young all right um and so i'll i'll assume in good faith is this the challenge should we do the challenge let's talk i i i need to i'm so the challenge this week was did you apparate merlin's you evacuated what i'm activated this challenge was merlin's
Merlinyeah and um i heard a um i really like the um the podcast freakonomics i like steven dubner a lot But he's a great interviewer, great guest. And it turns out Roots, notwithstanding, I think he's made something. And that's a fun book. But he's done a lot with it. He talks to very interesting people. And he's acquainted with some of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame all-timers of behavioral economics and has a nice relationship with them. So anyway, this is a recent episode of Freakonomics that I will have to look up.
and it's a podcast episode called, we talked about this in the after show last week, patreon.com slash do by Friday. How can we break our addiction to contempt? Episode 478. It will be in notes. And it is an interview with a fella named, I think his name is, is it not Albert Brooks? That's an actor.
Ellen Brooks? Should I delete this episode? Arthur Brooks.
AlexThere we go.
MerlinI'll send it. I'm looking at it on the web. I'll send it to you. Arthur Brooks. and I'll just read you what it says here. Arthur Brooks is an economist who for 10 years ran the American Enterprise Institute, one of the most influential conservative think tanks in the world. He has come to believe there is only one weapon that can defeat our extreme political polarization, colon, love. Is Brooks a fool for thinking this? Are you perhaps this kind of fool, et cetera? And then because they're good and professional, they have a whole transcript here. You could choose to read alongside listening to this,
But there were several things this guy talked about that I really liked. He definitely kind of grabbed me quickly because I was, I guess, really ready to hear someone say to me that contempt isn't helping us and it's not helping you. And he goes on to describe, you know, what it is that's different. What is the distinction he makes between contempt and like hatred? Like contempt is about as bad as it can get because it basically says you've given up on other people. And I was ready to hear that. And I happen to agree. I think our level of contempt in this country is not wholesome.
Spoiler alert for me. I think the problem is that we don't even realize how many people we have contempt for, and that we tend to judge people who aren't like us by the worst example we can think of, of somebody who we regard as not being like us. And boy, there's all kinds of ways you can unpack that to realize that's not a particularly sound way to go through life. But I do think we are terrible to strangers that we don't need to be terrible to, and it doesn't do much to improve any aspect of anybody's life. So I was ready to hear that. The thing that brought this challenge and the hook,
the hook is the actual per se challenge this week is to bite a pencil really, really hard. And this is where it gets interesting. Because he says, the phrase he used was, I think he says, I had to teach a course on happiness at Harvard. I think was how he phrased it.
AlexHad to, had to.
MerlinYeah. Well, he's one of those guys. He's got a lot of fruit salad and lapel pins and bona fides. Brooks, reading here.
There's a famous exercise that I teach to my Harvard students now. I have to teach a class on happiness. And when you're feeling unhappy, if you want to feel happier, if you put a pencil in your mouth and you bite down so it's sideways in your mouth and you're biting down on your molars, This will actually strain the orbicularis oculi muscles in the corner of your eyes, giving you little crow's feet. And that signals to your brain that you're doing a Duchenne smile, which is the only smile associated with true happiness. And it runs the causality in the other direction and you will literally feel happier.
That's what made me want to try this. And I'm withholding several notes about this. But that was the challenge was to bite a pencil really hard. And I think the upshot being, yeah, you're going to listen to this podcast. But also, did you notice anything when you did you notice any improvement?
Because I am one of those people. Alex, how different is this really, really from Look for the Chimneys?
AlexIt's it's not.
MerlinIt's a trick you play on your brain.
AlexSaying that it's scientifically accurate.
MerlinAnd you Googled it, didn't you?
AlexI know. I I intentionally.
MerlinDid you find out it's probably bullshit?
AlexI mean, I don't need to Google it to know that it's probably bullshit and that there must be a million turns outs about it. Like I was like, OK, I've never agreed with someone's opinion about contempt while trying not to feel extreme contempt.
MerlinOh, go off, King. I want to hear all of this. Yeah, I like when you get fired up. Tell me. So, yeah. So wouldn't you tell me anything you want? I'd love to hear your journey with this. It sounds like you got some thoughts. Is it about approach? Is it about underpinnings? Is it about values? What gets your go with this Brooks fella?
AlexI mean, I did not go into this knowing that he was, I assume he wrote something that was his bio, was a part of a conservative think tank. but I just went in thinking this is a guy who's an economist who thinks about happiness which I mean in behavioral economics
Merlinthat is certainly a very big theme
Alexit is
Merlinturns out or otherwise because there's a lot of things in behavioral economics a big piece of that the basic thing in behavioral economics like Tversky and Kahneman onward there's a big thing in behavioral economics which is that we assume that people in economics we tend to assume that people are rational actors who are doing something knowingly and for a good reason and that there's an economic basis for their behavior. And what that generation of behavioral economists, as I understand it anyway, brought us is this idea that, no, actually there's all kinds of crazy stuff that, to me anyway,
crazy stuff that people do in behavioral economics that is at odds with being a rational actor. There's a lot of things we do that we think are going to be good for us, or we think are going to help us, think are going to make us happy. Such an important idea. But we keep doing it even though it's not helping us, which is interesting because in economics, as I understand it anyway, that's the whole basis is that you go and you work to make money because money lets you buy food and that kind of stuff. And there's certain assumptions that tend to fall apart at a behavioral level.
And from that, you do get a lot of crabgrass and turns out stuff about the marshmallow test and hidden brain shit and all of that. But there is something to this idea that we, and Kahneman has gone so deep on this in fascinating, readable, lucid ways. But we think we're doing things that are good for us when it turns out we're doing things that are not actually that good for us. So that part of it, yeah, there's a lot of turns out.
AlexBut I don't know if that is new, interesting. Nothing that he says is new or interesting. And he says it as if he has found out something new and interesting. like the way that you have
Merlinin the same way that the turns out reporters do where they're basically reading something comes out like it somehow survives the file drawer effect gets printed maybe not even in a journal it might be like a press release from a university and it turns out reporters of the world pick up on that and in the penultimate paragraph talk about the research and say well it turns out that blah da da blah acting like they're a fucking research scientists doing longitudinal studies when they're not they're a beat reporter reading press releases
and this guy for somebody who is that high up he does kind of have that feel of like well it turns
Alexout here's something i read it drove me to the point of actual insanity of am i like just is this a bias because he's a republican do you remember specific examples um okay well i i already said uh democracy is the political version of capitalism which is a statement that i just cannot even i i can't i can't i i cannot even as they say uh okay um and he says like the right off the bat
he says that you can't insult someone into agreeing with you yeah totally totally but then he like expands on it as if it's his idea like okay okay and uh oh here's one i wrote down um I can't even contempt divided by love is your virtue
Merlinoh not so sure about your police work there Lou
Alexme it gives you a lot to think about
Merlinyou've given me much to think about mm-hmm
Alexyeah and I and like he talks about love as a verb and like that you know that being the important part and how I mean like I I was on board with his basic ass pop psychology stuff that like everything that you've just said is all of the insight you can gain from this interview. And I was actually disappointed because you're right. Normally, what's his name is a really good interviewer.
Well, no, actually I take back. He was still, he was asking the right questions, but this guy had an agenda and like, it was, I, I've never heard an interview of someone who sounded like a politician so much. And yet he is not. As he said, he he has to teach at Harvard. Oh, he's got to teach happiness at Harvard.
MerlinOh, yeah. I mean, that's probably just like weird choice of words in a transcript.
AlexBut no, I just searched for the fucking because in the transcript, I look and I'm like, oh, no, it is as just stupid as I remember. And like he does give props to.
MerlinI'm not trying to defend him. Don't get me wrong.
AlexNo, I know. And he gives props to like, well, he compares Bernie and Trump in terms of populism. And because the idea of like, OK, we need to find people.
MerlinThis is exactly why the contempt thing happens is stuff like that.
AlexNo, no, no, no. Like, I agree with him. We need to find folks.
MerlinIf black people blow up their pants, we treat them for.
AlexIt's like, yes, let's find people who we can, you know, vote for versus finding someone we can that we can vote against. Like, yes, I totally. And I expected some sort of insight, especially from a conservative economist. And I still don't get it. Like, what am I missing? I don't understand what makes this man successful other than failing up, like being a guy like, oh, he's a successful man who endorses love and doesn't believe in contempt.
MerlinHe has to teach a class.
AlexYes. I know that I'm being a bit bullish on that.
MerlinI don't I don't I've never I've never envied until I once I became aware of this phenomenon. I've never envied anybody who has to do like a press junket. Like back in the day when like whoever, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Carrey or Sharon Stone would sit in this like dark room and reporters would come in and out and interview them for five minutes or whatever.
AlexSeems like hell.
MerlinYeah. And we've seen people have fun with that in, for example, I want to say the other two. I'm the wonderful, strange, sad movie, Meeting People is Easy. Like just watching, just hearing this avalanche of dumb questions people have asked Tom York on the promotional tour for OK Computer is just, you know, and I've gotten just the tiniest little tasting flight of that, you know, of having to deal with silly shit and dumb loaded questions.
And boy, you get one part of this wrong and you might be screwed. Right. I've never envied that. and like like if you watch even like me you watch a fairly small amount of say like cable news well not small smaller not as small as i'd like but you'll just see like you know people have to come out and just say these same talking points over and over and my book came out today and you got to keep saying that over and over why am i saying all this is because even though he's pretty cheerful he has the level of he strikes me in once you dig into this as having the level of
depth and engagement roughly equivalent to somebody who's on to the on the second to the last day of a book tour where he's just he's just grinding out these fucking cliches that i guess people don't call him on where you'd be like okay like you know like for example um oh okay like for example, one of my favorites, this is in my quotes file. I love this one so much. I think it's Pima Cho John said something in that formula, in something similar to that formula that I think is one of the all-time great quotes. No, it's Shinzen Young. Ready for this? Go, go.
Suffering equals pain times resistance.
AlexHmm. Hmm. That is really good.
MerlinWe suffer because resistance to pain is a multiplier of pain. The more we resist pain, the more we suffer. It's a multiplier. Suffering equals pain times resistance. I think that's true. I think it's true. I think it's accurate. I think it's smart. I think it's insightful. And it uses that weird, like, it's like in the 90s, everything was, it's like XYZ on acid. You know, that kind of thing where you get those formulas that people just keep regurgitating. and like the math formula, you know, genius plus love equals yellow tango or whatever.
Like you can do those, but can you read that? Would you be open to reading that to me again? Divided. What's his division problem again? Title? Because that would be a good, if you're going to write a book about this guy who doesn't really understand how to talk about contempt, I think calling it the division problem would be pretty good.
AlexGod, contempt divided by love is your virtue. And even if you buy that, later on he goes on to say he believes in a denominator management strategy. Oh, sure. Okay, I don't understand what the fuck any of this means. And I'm like, do I not know the definition of denominator, which is—
MerlinThis is all stuff that should have stayed on the cutting room floor in terms of coming up with his pitch.
AlexI sort of ended up—I'm like, okay, yeah, I do have contempt for this man. And he also says, I thought he told you not to do that. I know. And I was trying really hard. And he's like, people need, they need.
MerlinHe's very clear about this, Alex. You're supposed to love him.
AlexOh, God. And he asked, like, what are you willing to fail for? And I'm like, OK, so now he's just doing Hamilton quotes.
MerlinNow he's doing TEDx, XXX, XXX, XXX. It's extremely, extremely local TEDx talk.
Speaker AHey, everybody. I'm in my guest bathroom doing a TEDxXXXX stuff.
AlexOh, God.
Speaker AGenius plus love equals yellow tango.
AlexHe also, like, he speaks with just, he's so dubious and, like, as if, like, yes, I'm above the aisle. Like, I'm.
MerlinBut he's friendly. He comes off friendly, which helps.
AlexOh, I see. that's the i actually i'm i'm gonna do like the uh the gender card here i think like if i were to meet this man in real life immediately i would do the like scratch the back of my neck which is one of the um signals to like my friends at the party to be like get me the fuck out of here because you know that he's gonna do the full tether xxxx talk and then he's going to ask you if he wants to be if you have a podcast and if he can be on it or like you know what are your verticals and
can i help you with them and like oh boy in a variety of ways this fellow rubbed you the wrong way in a and i a very i'm not disagreeing i'm just interrogating yeah i like he was just like a fucking cheese grater on the clit and i agreed with a lot of i wouldn't do that more than a couple times but yeah no that's uh just really wearing it down um make some problematic pasta you're saucing it wrong I personally do believe that happiness is love but he says happiness is love full stop and I'm like
okay I mean that's I I believe that's like more of a full philosophical yeah I mean that's uh Okay. And the whole biting a pencil thing, which I did do. I didn't get it. And then I broke a pencil while I was listening to this.
MerlinI mean, I have more luck with the chimneys. I have more luck with the chimneys, I think.
AlexBut he talks about this as it is like it's neurologically the only smile. I'm like, what?
MerlinHe talks about it the same way that a dentist would say, if you want to reduce tooth decay, you need to brush and floss regularly. Yes. You know what I mean? In the sense of, he presented this like, if you take this penicillin, all of this penicillin, right? But then I didn't, and I kind of got at this a little bit last week because I wanted to play in the space and try on the thought technology. But it sounds like that is a far from medically conclusive fact that biting a pencil will make a Duchenne smile.
Now, with that said, I've got even simpler methods for elevating my mood. Like there, I think there are even simpler ways than biting a pencil that you can elevate your mood, including stuff like looking for the chimneys.
AlexYeah, I have no problem with that. Like, I think you said this as well in the after show last week, Dubai Friday dot com. No, fuck me. Patreon dot com slash Dubai Friday. It's like it takes more muscles to frown.
MerlinAlexandra's a digital native. So a lot of this comes to them naturally.
AlexVery much so. but the idea of it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile, I doubt that's true but it's a night, I don't know
Merlinthat's an annoying factoid from the 70s and 80s but there are things where there is something to be said and this is kind of it's why I'm so attracted to people more attracted, let's put it, at least in my power rankings to this Judd Brewer guy who has a little bit of a thing Judd Brewer's got some jazz he's got some talks and he's got an app and there's some jazz whereas the dutch guy i think is like i think he's on another level the judd brewer guy i think is really interesting and like like i said his
like if you oh man this is so fucking boring but so true it's like you yeah you ever notice one of the dumb things i do when i say over and over is i'll say these things that it sounds like i'm saying the same thing three times and sometimes i am but often i'm trying to make a distinction because I think people get lazy about gliding right past something, overlooking something that they should be paying more attention to. And so because we're pals and we've heard each other talk,
you've probably heard me say at some point something along the lines of, for example, aha, now this is something that came along that made me think differently or made me see differently and that seeing made me think differently and that thinking differently made me behave differently and then that behaving differently ultimately made me decide differently, which sounds like I'm trying to be cute, but that's a long way from I have a New Year's resolution to never smoke again. It's like, well, what's your plan for that? What's the infrastructure for that?
Because I know for me those all matter. Like if I don't learn to think about something differently, how would I ever behave differently? And if I arbitrarily start behaving differently, if I haven't changed the way I see something, how the hell is that going to work? I'm building in a layer of cognitive dissonance that dooms any of my ventures to fail. And that's why I'll say these really, really stupid things like that, right? That sound kind of meaningless. But like when the dude, when the Judd Brewer guy talks about, and this goes straight back to the doctor.
This goes back to lots of things that are important to me. And a big life goal for me is to, it's not that I'll never have fear again. It's not that I'll never have anxiety again. But in the stack of possible responses, in the stack of responses, how do I move curiosity way up in that stack? Because if you're back on your heels and you're fearful and you're anxious and you're all of those things, you are very, very unlikely to be curious. Right?
AlexThis man has it figured out. Like, that's why I love Judith Butler. She continues to be curious about how people perceive and perform, not negatively, perform gender.
MerlinWell, I can't guarantee the following will be true for all people for all times. Don't make me tap the sign. But what I am going to say is something I've heard a lot of people say that I have found to be true, even if I don't always do it or remember to do it. Again, huge, important distinction. How can you do it if you don't remember to do it? And if you think that's not a distinction, remember better. But like, I feel like I need to move curiosity up in the stack. I need to move gratitude up in the stack.
Because what you'll hear a lot of people say, especially on the Buddhist side of the aisle, is that it's difficult, it's more difficult to be angry and miffed and contemptuous if you're helping or being helped. Right? So if you have gratitude, maybe you have gratitude because somebody's helping you. This is going to sound corny, but I've lived this in my church and my various good works projects that you don't need to know about is like, hey, you know what? It's true. Like if I'm helping another person, like it's difficult for me to get real in the weeds
about how shitty the world is. Right? So if there's two sort of, you can't have two North Stars, I guess, but if you want a couple of things to guide your way at sea, two ways to try and be more often is grateful and curious. And yeah, I know that's corny, but like, if you try to remember, try to read well, but here's, but I need to hear this, Alex, because there's so much, this comes back. I know John, John Sarcuso doesn't like skeleton keys, but I think these things are, are like load bearing ideas
is that we know in the same way that, you know, if you're feeling terrible, everybody says this, it's so smart. You know, have you gotten enough sleep? Have you had enough water? Have you had enough food? Have you had enough orgasm? Like whatever it is, there's all that stuff. But I mean, an only slightly more nerdy brainy way to think about it is have you had enough curiosity and have you had enough gratitude? Because the curiosity thing means, and this is how I relate it to my version of a Duchenne pencil title, is that I, if I can have a moment
and catch myself in a kind of CBT way and go like, like I say, it's like Walter Sobchek says, nothing is fucked here, dude. It's like, it's when my head runs away with me that I go to a bad place. And then I don't notice that my head has run away with me. And I don't notice that I have and still have the opportunity to make a decision about how much farther I want to like chase my brain around the yard, like some kind of deranged chihuahua. And sometimes if I, all I have to do in some cases is remember to remember. and I go, nothing is fucked here, dude.
It's like, and I know you don't like that, I'm just a guy in a room, but that's a consolation to me sometimes is to go like, oh my gosh, all of this mishigas is all happening in my head. Only I could have created such a deranged notion of what safety feels like to create this incredibly painful, rotten salad of dubiousness in my head. How fucked is that when I could just go, dude, God, you're so fucking lucky right now. You're, you know, how lucky you are to be alive right now. And like, why don't you get curious for a second about what it feels like
to feel that deranged feeling? Get curious about it instead of just trying to, you know, drive into that curve and go off the bend. But that to me is like incredibly useful. And it will elevate my mood. Weirdly quickly, I'm that basic. I'm that simple. I'm that uncomplicated is that remembering that this all of this is a gift and you can choose how fucked up you want to be about it on some level sometimes if you do that more often than not i think you're
Alexmoving in the right direction what you say it's basic and perhaps it is but i don't think there's anything wrong with that and i don't think it's basic i think it is humble and that's i obviously
Merlinmust like it, Alex, because I'm trying to do it. As I said to Dan the other day, for me to get to the sweet meat of this delicious point that everybody wants, I need to get past your hard shell. Because as there was some graffiti in a new college bathroom that I always thought was really good, it said, drinking won't solve your problems because real problems float. And I often do think about the problems that float. And the trouble is, if you've decided that something is an intractable problem, and then somebody comes along and says,
just smile, which is not what I'm saying, you would go, oh my God, you're so lucky. I would love to be a moron and be able to just feel better by deciding to feel better. But I have real problems. So that's the shell I'm trying to get through to get to the nut meat. I believe this. The only way I feel like, one of the only ways I can get the listener to believe this is to first get past the rejection of this idea as something that's for simple people and children.
That it's so much easier. It's not easier, but it's simpler. It's simpler than it looks.
AlexIt's hard.
MerlinWell, it's difficult, but simple. Some of the most difficult things in the world are very simple.
AlexYeah.
MerlinRemembering to remember is so much harder than anyone wants to admit. There's never a good day to wake up and go like, yeah, I guess I'm really not as good at all of this mundane, who fucking gives a shit stuff as I would like. I don't write things down. I have a big penis. Oh, whatever. You know?
AlexThe, I, I, I've been told that sometimes I'm curious to a fault in a, like I was, I wasn't that annoying of a kid because I was so anxious and quiet all the time. But one thing I'm doing is like, why, why, why? Yeah. My third grade ulcers from anxiety.
MerlinThat's a terrible name for a little league team.
Alexbut you are you're one of the why is the grass green kind of kids like why why why why and uh but in that like it's i i got one of these i was gonna call it silly i thought it was silly uh the Kirk is at gratitude journal. And it's really, it's really interesting because it's like thinking about gratitude,
like a muscle almost. It's like, okay, you're going to just write one thing you're grateful for today. You're going to write like two things.
MerlinIt seems like you're just going to be repeating yourself every day. I'm thankful for health and family. Because that's because you haven't done it yet. When you actually do it, You will find yourself grateful for smaller and smaller things that have a bigger and bigger impact once you start realizing how grateful you are for them.
AlexAnd if I yeah, I don't think it's basic. I think it is simple. And oh, I don't even want to. I think this is another thing that, as you say, we need a word for. It's kind of just part of this God. It sounds like I'm stoned, but it's part of such complexity that we miss it. And again, I hate beating up on that guy.
Well, yeah, gratitude, curiosity. And the dude, what's his fuck? Was like, you know what you should do? if you have like a beef with somebody, write down what you're upset about and then write five nice things about them.
MerlinAnd then you won't even. Oh yeah, that's mental.
AlexAnd I was like, that is like, okay. Okay, like I, okay. Yeah, I'm like, you know me, I'm Captain Contacts.
MerlinOf course my mind goes straight into, well, the person who owns me hasn't sold my child yet. I'm really grateful for that. And you're like, wait a minute, should we go back to first principles and think a little bit about how we got into this situation where we're now trying to see everybody shake hands? Because he's implying this whole like, oh, sure. Or as they say in Holy Grail, oh, this is supposed to be a happy day. Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who.
Speaker AYou know, that kind of thing.
MerlinYou're like, yeah, but you killed my daughter. Oh, come on. You're so contemptuous. Why don't you just relax? Calm down. I had to teach this class. You think I like this? I have to be at Harvard. I hate how much I love wine.
Speaker AThank you.