Hardwired For Outrage

All right, we're going to go ahead and get started here, Greg. Kind of a little bit different topic than we typically discuss. I mean, we're going to frame it in how we do things, but this was actually inspired by an article. This is more of like a philosophical discussion about sort of right and wrong, and where we get our ethical judgments from. But what I found interesting for a number of reasons—and I'll put the link up—because the name of the article is called, "Does One Emotion Rule All Our Ethical Judgments?" So, whether you want to take it from an ethical judgment and a philosophical standpoint, or as we do, with the behavior and what you actually do, it doesn't really matter. I think what I was interested in about it, too, is it once again kind of ties everything back to very primal instincts, a very unconscious way of thinking, that is tied directly to survival, which is sort of the basis of what we do. Right? We tie things back to the unconscious brain, how it's tied to survival, and then why your behavior sort of manifests out of that, right? And in a sense, and so, given things that are happening in the environment, perceived threats, what you're thinking, what your life experiences are, there's a lot that plays into it. But this was sort of an interesting one to start from.

So Greg, I think I'll kind of give a recap and go over my thoughts initially, and then to get everyone up to speed on what we're talking about. I'll have the link in there, you can go back and read it, but we'll cover a lot of it in here today. Like I said, this came from, I believe, The New Yorker, right? "Does One Emotion Rule All Our Ethical Judgments?" Elizabeth Kolbert's article in The New Yorker centers on research from moral psychologist Kurt Gray, who proposes that our strongest moral convictions all revolve around one key emotion: the fear of harm. Kolbert begins by telling the story of Raymond Dart's 1924 discovery of the Taung Child, an ancient human ancestor in South Africa, which upended the notion that our earliest forebearers were fearless predators. Instead, the evidence suggests they were often prey. This evolutionary history, Gray argues, may explain why we're so quick to see threats and feel outrage in the modern world. After millions of years of trying to avoid becoming dinner, humans developed a hypersensitivity to harm—an innate hypervigilance, if you will. Kolbert then contrasts Gray's view with what's called Moral Foundations Theory, most famously associated with Jonathan Haidt. Haidt's approach claims people have multiple modules, like loyalty, fairness, and sanctity, which shape their moral judgments. But Gray counters that one overarching concern—perceived harm—drives almost everything, even in scenarios that seem victimless. Most people instinctively suspect that someone is getting hurt, even if they can't say exactly how. According to Gray, that's because we're wired to assume harm lies beneath any moral transgression. So, it kind of goes back to this evolutionary way of looking at it. But the article also examines why societies are so divided on issues like abortion or immigration. Both sides often invoke vulnerable victims but focus on different ones; for example, the fetus versus the woman, or local citizens versus immigrant children. Kolbert notes that when people try to sway others with facts, it usually fails, but vivid, harm-based stories work far better at engaging emotions. Finally, she raises the question of whether a primal instinct designed to confront saber-toothed tigers can handle today's complex threats, like artificial intelligence or political discourse. In the end, fear of harm emerges as a possible unifying explanation for moral outrage, yet it also points to a deep-rooted challenge: our instinctive tendency to see and fight about danger that's seemingly everywhere. Before we jump into discussion, there are a couple of things that I want to start off with.

So first, from a linguistic perspective, when the term "threat" or "threatened" is used, it typically means someone perceives or feels that something is a threat. This subjective aspect of the perception is important to understand, because there's no difference for your brain. Meaning, if you feel that something is a threat to your safety or survival, then for all intents and purposes, it is a threat, and you will behave accordingly, regardless of whether or not it's true. It's true to you, and that's all that matters to your brain. Secondly, as a behaviorist, I focus on what people actually do, rather than why they say they do it. Your unconscious mind makes the majority of your decisions for you, and so it's not always clear why we make certain decisions or arrive at various conclusions—or at least, it's not as clear as we think it is. This is also why you hear me refer to "you and your brain" as sort of two separate entities physiologically. There's a strong and complex relationship between your conscious mind and your unconscious one, and they work together in a manner that we still don't fully comprehend. But for the purpose of training, education, and discussion, I think it's important to distinguish between the two, because it helps to delineate between what you can and cannot control. And then, I had a note in there to insert some joke about Stoicism, but I apparently never went back and thought of one. I'll let you do that, but that wouldn't allow it, you know. But no, that's sort of just the introduction to everything from the article and how we approach things. I just want to kind of delineate a few things up front, and then there's a lot we can get into. So, before going on or anything, Greg, I want to kind of throw to you as well.

No, no, that's great. And so Brian, you did such a great job of framing the discussion, so I'd like to just throw in a couple of definitions so we can all talk about it—meaning everybody at home and us as well. So, first, a cautionary tale: I remember being called out by a Marine Gunny, and he came up right in the middle of class and he said, "Unconscious means you're asleep!" And it was like, okay, Brian, some people you're not going to be able to spar with, no matter where you are, or what the argument is, or how intellectual it may seem. So, that's the first one. A couple quick things: Definition of Moral Psychology. Moral psychologists put aside questions of how people should make moral judgments to examine how people do make moral judgments. Important distinction, important distinction. Definition of Moral Foundations Theory. There's two. So, there's the Moral Foundation Theory and then the Moral Foundations Theory. In other words, one card, one ring to rule them all, or many cards, many examples. The mental structure, the modules. And people reach ethical decisions on the basis of either a mental structure or a series of mental models that have been pre-wired into our brains, and that involves feelings like being vulnerable, being empathetic, a resentment of cheaters, a respect for an authority figure—all of those things that we call "file folders" that we know that people have. Right? But this again is somebody else's attempt to categorize something in a way that works for them. Do you get what I'm saying? "Oh, we don't call that a snow cone here, we call that an ice dish." Then we've got a definition of bias. So, a bias is merely your tendency to respond one way compared to another when you're making any number of life choices. I prefer a red blanket; Brian is blue. I prefer a sports shoe; Brian's more of a ballerina. I like salads over fast food. Those biases are going to consciously and unconsciously impact all of our choices: the door we go in, when we start our car, whether the radio's on or off. Those are just things we do. So, a bias isn't a bad thing; it's how we approach things because of historical precedent, because of ease of movement, because of any number of things. So, what's an implicit bias? And this is where we got to jump on it just for a second. Implicit biases have also been called implicit prejudices, or attitudes, or negative attitudes. You've got to remember, if it's implicit, it's a bias that you're not consciously aware of. So, it means that you choose against a specific social group. Well, our colleague Sean sent me a very interesting video of a dog herding ducks, and a number of the ducks were white and a number of the ducks were black. Now, this has nothing to do with race. What it has to do with is self-preservation. So, when the dog was trying to cut the ducks, the ducks hid with other ducks that looked like them. So, a white duck would clearly stand out in a group of black ducks, and vice versa. So, we have to understand sometimes an implicit bias is beyond our control, Brian. And we're there because we don't understand what it had to do with our upbringing. So, we don't know 3,000 years ago what it was, and the reason we turned the doorknob to the right or to the left, and we make up things to say that, you know, "So, we come into the church and we touch the holy water that's on the right." We're not sure that that water was there because it was a fire risk, and before it was used to douse the candles. You understand what I'm saying? So, what happens there? And you brought up something I just took a note on when you're talking about ethical or behavioral. Both of us are behaviorists, and that's not an insult because philosophically, when we think about threats, we think about an existential threat. And that means you're questioning your life choices, even though you're not in danger, or you might not be in danger, but you're projecting a potential danger. Do you see what I'm trying to say? And what I mean by that is that's a very selfish fear of harm to me. And this is where I want to deep dive just for a second. When Dart was writing about the predatory transition from ape to man, it was profound, it was very influential at the time, and then he figured out, "Wait a minute, with more study, his theory was wrong." So, as a good scientist, you've got to update, you've got to change your theory when new science comes in, right? The Taung Child changed that. So, instead of being that apex predator, guess what? He was running for his life most of his life, and he ended up getting eaten. So, Gray, in Outraged (the book by Kurt Gray), Gray argues that most of the problems of contemporary society can be traced to that: being prey. That's simple. That's something that we love because that means that all our thoughts and feelings arise from that mental model that was evolved eons ago, and that was hardwired for our survival. And we know that. We know that we're much more likely to choose survival-oriented thinking and predicting anarchy and anxiety, rather than saying, "Everything is fine," having the "everything's okay" alarm going up. But Gray also says, "Harm is the master key of morality." And this is where he starts going off, because he says our ethical judgments are governed not by these modules, but by one overriding emotion. And that, you know, this fear emotion is making us hypersensitive. Well, what he's accounting for again is a very—in my opinion only—is a very selfish view. What he's saying is these things that I fear, whether they truly cause harm or not, are enough for me to go off and be who I am. And you can't do that because the existential threat to a scientist means that a living, non-living future event that threatens something else, and it's realistic. Like, we don't understand if a meteor is ever going to knock us out of orbit. We don't understand if global warming is going to change stuff and trigger a nuclear winter. Do you see what I'm trying to say? So, one is an irrational fear, and humans don't do irrational fears unless they have some other external scheme of pressing on them. That's just my opinion.

No, and that's this is kind of the part I want to get into because, you know, when we have such a strong evolutionary advantage by doing that, being fearful of things, right? And so then you can make the, "Well, that's Plato's Allegory of the Cave, that's everything." It's like, okay, I'm going to sit back here where it's warm and I know what's going on. I'm not going to venture out because a lot of people have ventured out and died. But occasionally, they do really well, and they thrive, not only thrive, but become leaders of some new thing or create something that never existed before. So, there's always that play, and it's this fear. And when you get into how this is why, too, because, you know, you're talking about existential threat. Well, existential threat is literally something that would threaten your existence. But now, if you get stuff, and this is why, because this was all originally talking about these authors writing about politics and politicians, which didn't even matter to me; it was just the interest of their underlying theories, right? Because it's funny, even in their writing, I found it a little bit ironic because it's kind of like, "Wait a minute, you're saying all these things that this person's bad, but you're actually helping prove your theory here, but you're kind of getting it wrong and how it's getting laid out here." Exactly. And what I look at it is, you know, because that's a subjective measurement of something that's an existential threat. Like, well, that's to a human being, that could be anything. What's a threat to you is nothing to me. What's a huge threat to me is nothing to you. I mean, literally, one person eats a peanut butter, they'll die. Like, that's an existential threat to them, where everyone else is fine eating it. Right? But what I'm saying is that it plays with so much emotion-based stuff, especially when, you know, there's all of these seemingly things that are very complex that I don't fully understand coming at me. Well, that's [ __ ] scary for my little pea-brain, you know what I mean? It really is. So, I always default to that fear. And so what they're trying to say is like, "Okay, that's sort of where morality in a sense comes from." Yeah. And I see what you're doing here, I see how you're connecting the dots, but I think you're taking something that's complex, you're addressing the complexity of it, and how long this has happened, but then you're kind of providing too simple of an answer for me, you know what I'm saying? It's like you're oversimplifying this part of it. So, there's, you know, the things that I found interesting, obviously, because we talk about it, and, you know, like the article talks about what they call "fear wiring" and "harm detection," and that's pattern recognition, right? That's why we're primed for that kind of stuff. And so this whole evolutionary backdrop is like, "Yeah, you're dead on, that this is where these things come from." So, the recognition of how these things fall in, like I'm making those unconscious choices of what's scary and what isn't. Especially now, like, because this is written about politics, well, the saying used to be like, "All politics are local," right? Like, if you're in the political world, you still have to get out there and do this, and you still have to, you know, which is technically true, right? You still have to get people to vote and all those things. But what's changed, because of the speed of communication, how connected everyone is, is like, now everything is a national story, and everything has to do with the United States. And it's like, how many of these actually affect you in your backyard today, like in your family and your life?

But if I tell you it does, and if I put my thumb on the scale, and if I make a dark cloud and lightning, then all of a sudden it does, Brian. And that's what I don't think is fair here. I mean, let me explain that. Okay, so horses, elk, and elephants were once vampires. And they were vampires that changed how we write stories and scare children and make movies. Okay, so male horses have fangs, known as canine teeth, and all male horses have four canine teeth, two on the top and two on the bottom, and maybe a quarter or less of female horses have some canine teeth, but they're usually small, they're benign. So, historically, they were used for fighting; horses fought other horses. They didn't and don't help the horse chew. These canine teeth start with a mature horse, four to six years of age. Elk, prehistoric elk and past elk, once had tusks, and even now when you hunt elk, their modern canine teeth are remnants of those tusks. And we call them ivories, or as a Jäger (German: hunter), we call them whistlers. Ancient elk had the tusks for defense and to establish dominance, much like antlers establish dominance in the tribe. So, a scientific study, the actual research that's conducted to answer a question, if I pick and [ __ ] choose from that, what I can do is come up with the story, "Well, the only reason a horse would have canines, and the only reason an elk and a gosh-darn elephant would have them, is because they sucked the blood of the other animals, and that led to a downfall or whatever else." Brian, it's unscientific to the point that it's non-scientific. And this is what I mean. So, he wrote Outraged. And here's his own quote: "When I wrote Outraged, it was written at a time of extreme political polarization, and it's coming out just days before the polarizer-in-chief, Donald Trump, is set to be inaugurated." Okay, Brian, so that's what I'm talking about. Listen, exactly. I do not care. We work at the behest of the government, and when we do, the Commander-in-Chief is our boss. It's just simple. Okay? And so the idea is that when you start saying that, "Listen, I know he's in power, but we've got to do everything that we can to fight against them," what you're doing is fighting against your fellow Americans. You're fighting against our livelihood, whoever's in power. So there was no good demeaning and bashing Biden for not showing up because he was, you know, in mid-Alzheimer's or whatever it was. But it also wasn't good for anybody to hide that. Do you see what I'm trying to say? Transparency and knowledge science is one of those things that when we shine a light on it, it still exists. It's not smoke and mirrors, and it's not a parlor trick. So, what Gray's done here is, he brings up some incredible arguments, but then what he does is he throws all of these other politics-based conjecture in with a solid argument. And that's the only reason I just called horseshit when I started to deep dive in Outraged.

Well, and this, this is in general why I don't get, and I know you don't either, but it's really like, I don't have those philosophical discussions a lot because it's kind of like, you get—they're so general that you can throw anything you want in there. And then I've never walked away from one of those conversations going, "Wow, that's enlightening!" It's always like, "That was a waste of time." Now, unless—I will say this—there are like in some roles, right? So, I look at like, there's a lot of military leaders, and you're talking about different philosophical ways of approaching things. I actually understand it a little bit more in that context, obviously, being from the military, but also because they have—they're dealing at a nation-state level with the geopolitics of a country, with changing administrations, changing public. They have a mission to do, and a lot of times it's not clear, and they're always trying to figure out what the next thing coming is. And so in order to do that, you can't make up random [  ] and go, "Well, I think it's going to be the Klingons, and they're going to come out of here!" Like, no, you have to base it on something. However, you're in uncharted waters, in a sense, going, "Well, we don't know what's going to happen or what the next step is. Maybe the strategic initiative here isn't very clear." So, you have to fall back on something. So, they'll have these moral discussions on what the values are and the ethics, because without that and a commander's intent, you're kind of—you're screwed. But a lot of places are just having these kind of philosophical things, and it's like, "Well, you have to frame it around something, and if you're going to frame it around something, then you have to include everything in there. And then you have to look at those laws, or those things, the evolutionary things that we know haven't changed or don't change very quickly, and go, 'This is...' And you have to look at that as the constant. You can't then dig down into these different weeds of what's happening today, because it's so micro. It might be a blip on the radar, and in ten years, no one's even—it's not even a thing, because there's been some either major thing, or we've realized, 'Hey, wait a minute.' You know, that's why we'd always make the joke, like, "This was, you know, the third presidential election in my lifetime that was the most important election in the history of the country, the history of the United States." Statistically, that's not even [  ] possible! Like, so you're telling me I was alive for the three most important ones out of our almost nearing 300 years of existence as a nation? Like, that's highly unlikely based on, "What about the Civil War, where 600,000 Americans were killed fighting each other?" Like, maybe that one was slightly more important. So, I'm not bashing Gray, because Gray brings up some good points, and we'll discuss his good points, but I will tell you this: a selfish fear helps no one. So, for example, I was in a—you know me, I'm always going toe-to-toe with somebody somewhere—and I'm in City Market, and somebody was just talking smack about immigration. First of all, there are laws. So, we live in a country of laws. So, read immigration law. It's very specific. There are different rules that apply to immigration and protecting your borders than other laws. And if you're not educated on them, don't go spouting off on them. As a matter of fact, if you take a look at the base of the Statue of Liberty, there's a "Give us your..." you know, okay, great speech that's down there. Yeah. Okay. But you know what was on Ellis Island? People stopping you and asking you for ID and who you were from, and everything. People were sent back, so we forget certain parts of our own history, and we choose the ones that suit us better than that.

That's, and that's my—that's the interesting part to me of all those conversations, because you even said, you said, you know, "selfish fear." Well, technically, all fear—most fear—is selfish because it affects me, which affects the society. Right? We are thinking that way in a sense of survival of ourselves in order to survive the species. So, that's the inherent evolutionary trait in everyone. And then what gets really subjective is what then is an existential threat or what's a fear? Because if I can link a few points together and see, "Well, if this occurs, then it's going to be chaos, and it's going to go..." It's like, "Oh my God, it really is!" And that's where that storytelling comes in. And this is what they even brought up, and how easy it is to polarize people. Even though we're technically wired in a sense in the opposite direction, where we want to get along in order to make things, but we do need to have some common threat or enemy. And since that's not happening in our environment, we're still hyper-vigilant in a sense to go, "Well, but it's in my DNA that there are threats out there," because there are. It's just, development of the world has changed significantly, exponentially faster than the operating system we're working on. So, I think—

But also, to that, like every generation has had this, "This is more than humans are supposed to know or understand," or, "This is too much," or, you know what I'm saying? Everyone keeps going back to this, "Well, you know, back then we didn't have these problems." Like, yeah, back then Plato was bitching about young Greek kids [ __ ] who didn't know their history. Same problems!

And it was graffiti everywhere, and a crime, and the price of eggs was the most on people's mind! You're right. And this is—this is the important part to remember, because I remember even like when we had Dr. Liz de Bello on a while back, who's great, she's like, "No, it's called the adaptive unconscious for a reason." And I was like, "Yeah, that's right. It can adapt very quickly." Like, your unconscious brain is constantly adapting and it's setting a new baseline, and it's changing. That's why when something comes out and goes, "Oh my God, this is horrible for people!" or, "Oh my God, this is really good for people!" it's like, "Dude, it's only been a few years. Like, we don't know, we still don't know. We don't know enough about the brain, we don't know enough about things." And when we learn new things, we have to adapt our conscious thinking, how we think of those. So, Brian, I'm guessing you're 40, or early 40s?

Yeah. Okay. There you go.

So, that's how much I know about my [  ] business partner and future CEO of the company! How stupid am I? But, you know me, I don't like numbers. But think about this, Brian, since you've been able to reckon, you know that there's a thing called the Doomsday Clock, or other people call it different things. And they move the numbers and they make a big show of it. So, you know, we're eight seconds to annihilation, we're 65 seconds to annihilation. We've never been more than a minute or a minute and a half in 40 years that you've lived on the face of the planet. But, you know what the funny thing is, we're still here. At 4:00 in the morning when I get up and head down to the gym, the first thing that's on television is Match Game, and you know the jokes they were making on Match Game? They were making jokes about the price of groceries, how they're off the charts; the price of fuel; how politicians are untrustworthy. And when a new broom sweeps clean, everybody on the other side... Look, Brian, certain things never change. And therefore, there's certain hardwiring that we have in our brains that is adaptable to current conditions. There's your adaptive conscious. But what we do is we pick and choose. I read a LinkedIn article just yesterday, and the person was saying, "The thing that's going to save police work is changing how you teach cops to a Socratic method." No, no, you have to have a basis for a Socratic method. Socrates himself would have showed you how to do that. Now, I agree 100% with: Socrates was an intellectual bully and also didn't believe writing things down. So, if you're writing down a Socrates quote, he would make fun of you, he would laugh, "It's so stupid!" But the idea is that if you're telling me that you want semi-Socratic, I'm in your corner. "What's semi-Socratic?" "Okay, so what do you mean by that?" "Well, what are other ways we would approach that?" Brian, that's always been around, and we don't attribute that to Socrates. That's an intelligent mind is never bored and wants to learn more about things. So, your intuitive mind is constantly thinking, "Harmless things are harmful," because it's a defense mechanism. It's a predisposition that all humans have. Okay? But we abandon that sometimes. And what we do, we [  ] die. People swim out to help their animal. I remember in Avon, the dog fell through the ice. They were playing with the Frisbee. The guy went out, and people drowned. People drowned trying to save a dog. Now, Brian, that's so counterintuitive. And then somebody would say, "Well, I love my dog." I love my dog too, okay? And my dog's laying right next to me. But, you know what? If it's between she and I drown, I'm not going with her. I mean, those are types of things that keep the species going. Procreation is another one. War is another one, because bad ideas have to be punished somewhere. Right?

Well, and it's a different setting, because, you know, you hear a Marine or someone jumps on a grenade when it gets thrown in a group. It's like, "Yeah, because they sacrifice themselves." It's like, but that's part of the training and initiation process you go through. It's like, "No, you don't have to physically train to jump on a grenade," like, "Hey, we're going to practice jumping on a grenade today!" But the idea is it's instilled: someone has to walk point, right? Someone has to do something. And so you'd rather take it all for the team rather than exposing everyone to that. Right? But that's a process of sort of training, and in a sense, but it's society, too, because nobody can thrive alone. Nobody. And you can—meaning there are examples of people overriding your basic need for survival for what, though? For the survival of others, or for the greater good of the team.

You're spot on, Brian, spot on. And some of the stuff, the big things, and we get into this all the time because one of the big things in the article, too, is, which is obvious, we know, and most people do, is like, you know, storytelling versus data, right? You know, nothing works better than a story. A story is always powerful. And of course, when they're politicians, obviously, that's the—they have to create a story or an image or a way to get sticky. And so with this guy, too, it's bashing certain ones. Like, "Well, but they all do that. That's part of capturing." You can't pick and choose because everyone has done... And storytelling is the oldest form of knowledge and skill transfer. That's how it is. That's why it's so potent. So, but that's also why, you know, because humans implicitly understand stories, and I can relate to it. I don't understand statistics. No one does. Really good data science and statisticians still don't have a full comprehension of it because it's so counterintuitive to how humans think sometimes. So, it's like, "Well, I can show you all the numbers, or I can just tell you the story." And that story will always be more popular. And that's where the urban legends come around. That's where everything... And so like, when the thing about the politics is like, "Yeah, but you're not supposed to make policy off of stories. You're supposed to make it off of data and what will work best and looking at it." But that doesn't sell. So that's why you have to tie something to it. And sometimes if they'll pick the wrong ones or use one that doesn't apply. But it doesn't. And once the narrative's out there, it doesn't matter anymore. But that's like even why we try not to do the, "Hey, one of these days this is going to happen, you better hire us because we want..." It's like, no. Exactly. That was our first principle, that we would never ever fear-advertise. No, because you don't need—because one, it works, yes, but it also creates [  ] more [  ]. How many... We're the ones that have to say the opposite when, "Feel like anything can happen!" No, it [  ] can't! Like, and when you said, "Tell me science says it can't." Well, Greg, that goes right back into this. If you tell me that anything can happen when I walk out that door, I'm [  ] terrified! Because that's really difficult. I can't manage. My Rolodex is going to be spinning a mile a minute. So, I'm never going to be able to land on a likelihood. I'm never going to be able to anticipate or see through the fog of war to go, "There is a semblance of normalcy here, I just have to find it." If not, it's chaos. It's constant chaos. And you know what? You want your enemy to think like that. You want them to never understand what your move is. But you're like that, Brian, that's unsustainable. And that means you're going to be a victim soon.

Yeah, no, and that's the whole thing is that that's what leads to being overwhelmed. Then now you're going to fall back on, obviously, you know what they call the "harm bias," or "harm perception," or "vulnerability assumptions." There's some great terminology. You can call it whatever you want, but we're talking about the same primal instincts. It's the same thing that you have, which allows immediate group cohesion, people together, or rip each other apart. And it's like, it really is there. When if you're tying it back to evolution, if you're tying it back to the limbic system, you're generally going to be right. But what happens is then, meaning if that's really what's causing it or that's where it's coming from, if you're basing it off of these—these are autonomic human reactions—you're probably heading in the right direction. But where I think these things go wrong, and there's plenty out there, is when you try to make an overarching, general, moral judgment on someone, that's where things go wrong. Right? That's like if you look at even our first principles, and the first one being, "People are the same all over the world." Do we have differences? Well, yeah, of course. But if I go in general, across time, of humans being here, look, there are some basic things that humans need, and beyond that, it's kind of made up after that, because everything else after that changes with time and with culture, and with, you know, advancements in technology. But there's some core elements here that affect every single human being, and they affect us all the same way. So, why don't we start there and then go from it? And then once you get into, obviously, "Well, plus they're the different moralities," so, like, that's heavily influenced by different religions, by different cultures, by different traditions, right? So, it's like, "What are the core things?" Well, everyone believes, like, "Hey, you know, the Golden Rule, right? Treat other people as you'd want to be treated." Like, that's—you're not going to go somewhere where they're like, "No, treat people like [ __ ], shit on your neighbor every day!"

Exactly, exactly! Even North Korea doesn't do that, come on! Yeah. So, sorry, North Koreans. Yeah, I don't know if we have a big after me GIS...

Yeah, exactly.

But no, but look, you're right on. And let's talk about a moral, ethical truth that's also in the behaviorist philosophy: "Respect is easiest to build with harm-based storytelling." That's why when you see the downfall of a deadly attack, or an explosion, or a car wreck, or anything else, it's much easier for me to sell you an airbag, or a gun, or a concealed holster, or training. Okay? So we know that that's true. And then Gray cited the study from 2021 that showed that strangers who were offered anecdotes (stories), it turned out they were much more willing to engage with the researchers than those that were offered data. And you said that people don't understand when they see the data, even if it's the best chart in the world. And the group that got the stories also treated their interlocutors with more respect. So, what we're saying there is two truths, but is it fair? So, for example, the reason I mean, is it fair to humans, is that you're again putting your thumb on a scale. An injustice collector that's going to kill, needs to control the narrative. "You caused this. You made me do this. You were the one that left me out, and look at what I endured." Same thing with the family annihilator. Same thing with the last three weeks where each time a teen killed their entire family and then committed suicide. How do you think they rationalize that, Brian?

Yeah.

They look at what's going on in the media, and on songs, and movies, and all that other stuff, and they create a narrative. Now, whether that narrative is intertwined with reality doesn't matter, because it becomes a reality. And that's where you started the show. It is so powerful to humans that you can write a false narrative, but your brain will believe it just as if it's a real thing.

Well, this is what—this is the other, one of the significant parts about this in understanding like, "Yeah, you know, people are going, okay, yeah, I get it, it ties all back to, you know, survival and fear." It's like, yeah, but once you do that, now all of my actions are morally justified. I've now myself taken moral, like, "No, it's okay because this is evil, and so now it doesn't matter." And which is funny, which is why they need to be exterminated. They need to be ostracized.

Exactly.

Which is actually why I think the military discussions about this stuff are important, because they understand, "No, that doesn't." Like, just because these people are bad doesn't mean just—the ends don't justify the means. We can't kill everyone in the village because there's a handful of bad guys in there. I mean, that's the whole thing. It's like, "We can't be like them, otherwise we're just them if we do those same things." And then there is no more, no matter what you're wearing, no matter what cause or banner that you're marching under. You're exactly right. And that also, too, goes back to why I so focus on behaviors and what people actually do, not why they say, "Well, I did it because this..." It's like, because it goes right back to the family annihilator thing. It's like, okay, maybe everything you said that was wrong was true. Maybe all of those things did happen. That doesn't mean you—that doesn't justify you killing those people. Like, maybe your feelings are justified. Maybe what is happening to you is unfair and [ __ ], but like, a lot of people dealt with that and they didn't go kill their family. Like, I mean, you don't look into the sort of sympathy side of it from that person and go, "Oh, well, they had all these..." Okay, well, are you going to address those issues and young kids then? Is that what you're getting out of this, or are you just trying to justify their actions? Like, you know, it's just this backwards way of looking at it where they'll take into account some good things, like someone wants to go through and to say, "I want to do a forensic examination of that family annihilator kid." It's like, "Wow, look at all the issues they had growing up and this, and then they had a chemical imbalance!" That, but that doesn't mean then, "Okay, well, we've got to change how we do everything." It's like, no, we can get better at identifying those people earlier on and saying, "Hey, this is someone that needs more help than everyone else." I'm all good with that. But then you can't come after the fact and then use that as some sort of justifying action or justifying reason. It's not like—I mean, that's the whole thing. Like, I'm all good with the analysis and talking about it, but how you use that is incorrect. Like, your application of this going forward. It's like, "You don't get to make you don't get to make these then statements." Like, it's just because I coupled together some great reasoning doesn't mean my—doesn't mean my hypothesis or my solution is right. It just—that's why we talk about the scientific method. That's, look, the—

There's a line that perfectly epitomizes what we're talking about, and Gray says that, "We have, it could be argued, been surprisingly good at muddling through modern times with the impulses we inherited from our troglodytic forefathers." First of all, what a great line! Use "trogs" all the time! All the time! Right? Just remember Shelly, I go, "What did you just call that person?" And she walked over to the board and wrote "trog" and the definition. She like, and she goes, "Learn this." And I'm like, "They learned this early!" Exactly. That was back in the T3, if you remember. Yeah. So, the essential, the most compelling claim of moral psychology is that people make ethical judgments on the basis of intuition rather than reason. Well, you can't say that because you threw the word "ethical" in there. Okay? Because ethos does not apply to survival thinking. Because when you think of survival, the electrochemical neurotransmitters, your brain, the adrenal cortex, your limbic system, they override prefrontal cortex thinking. And all of a sudden, you now exclude certain things that your body and your mind work together to say they're not as mission-essential to my survival. And therefore saying that that's an ethical judgment, Brian, that's wrong because it's not an ethical judgment. As a matter of fact, killing another human being is against all ethical judgments. But, you know what? Sometimes we have to allow it. And sometimes people do it, and sometimes people do it for the wrong reasons. There are people that claim self-defense that are in prison now, right? Because in their mind at that time, they made a selfish choice. I remember a caper that I did where a kid broke into a car—kid, remember that kid? So, and I call a kid anything from 13 to 21—kid broke into a car. Homeowner comes out. Car alarm starts going off. Kid runs from it. Homeowner starts gunning him down, boom, boom, boom. Finally, shoots him with the third shot. He's DOA (Dead on Arrival), DRT (Dead Right There) kid, because he was doing a property crime inside. And we arrested the homeowner because it was outside the curtilage of his property. It wasn't a self-defense situation. It wasn't in a community. That guy [  ] on us. Now, two streets over, they go, "That guy should spend the rest of his [  ] life in jail," as did the parents of the kid. Do you see what I'm trying to say? This isn't a moral dilemma, it's not an ethical judgment. What it is, is that our instinct and intuition combined with our brain survival chemistry is always going to choose what it thinks at that time and place is best for us. So, therefore, if we skew the information coming in, if we change that and make you rationally fear something, then that'll lead to prejudice. That'll lead to bias, the bad kind. That'll lead to conscious and unconscious fear of things that we shouldn't be fearing. And that'll linger. That'll last a long time. It's like, "Rust never sleeps."

Well, and that's—that's why, you mean the law is already—it has, you know, ethics and morals and values imprinted into it. That's where—that's what the law is as the Constitution and the Bill (of Rights), right? Not just about legal. Well, the legal standard comes from our collective, societal judgments on things over time, and how they change what they look at. And internationally, globally, you know what I'm saying, shaped our things. Someone goes, "Hey, these guys are doing it here, and it's actually working really well!" And they're like, "Oh, wow, okay." And then sometimes that can go wrong. It's like, "Well, we're not like that society at all, so you're comparing apples to oranges." So, that won't work here. But the theory behind it is sound. But maybe that's sound because they have a very homogeneous group that they're working with, whereas in the United States, it changes your view after a while too. Yeah.

But you brought up a good one, and you said that, you know, ethos doesn't apply to like a survival situation. I'm sort of paraphrasing, I didn't write it down, but close. But you know, in that, let's take that example right there. Because, you know, the kid breaking into the car and then running away and then getting shot and killed. And people like, "Well, you shouldn't be breaking into the car!" Like, yeah, you're right, but does he deserve to die for that? There's nowhere that makes sense, you know what I'm saying? I mean, what are we talking about here? Like, we don't do that anymore. We realize there are different classifications of criminal activity and where they fit in. And you know, maybe it's unfair, but that's constantly changing. It's like, "Yeah, you don't have the right to do these things." And so I—but again, I agree that you can't—I—when someone's making judgments like that, yes, you can say their values as a person, their ethics, plays into that. But that's shaped their perspective. But it's sort of detached from the specific decision, you get what I'm saying? In a sense, like, they didn't say, "Well, you know, because I was taught this way, and because my daddy taught me this, because I went to this school and learned that, I'm going to make this decision." No, the decision's been made, and then all of those things may be informed it at some level, but maybe not. I mean, because you see really bad people do good things sometimes. You see really good people do shitty things sometimes. So, it's what's so contextually based in the moment with the individual circumstances. And everyone talks about that, "Oh, you have to take in the totality of the circumstances." But then they go, "Well, what about their ethics and morals?" And it's like, "Well, does that even apply in the situation?" Because this was something fear—if it's fear-based and it's survival-based, it's going to be limited in capacity to what options your brain comes up with.

Now, you're talking about a bias though, Brian. Now, you're spot on, a bias. Because things I don't know that influenced me when I was 11 years old in East Detroit come to play, and I don't even know they're coming to play. My fear of my uncle, and a situation, and a smell, and a sound that transports me back there, and now I'm feeling anxious and uncomfortable in a situation. Okay, I'll buy that. But that piece of a larger puzzle is going to be unpacked sometime later, not during the incident. During the incident, I'm going to do what it takes to get out of the incident. And that's why we can't claim psychology or moral psychology or an ethical judgment in a spontaneous, nanosecond decision. You see what I'm saying? That's why we have to understand that biases can be both good and helpful, and they can be horrible and detrimental.

Well, and that's it, that's my point, too, is like when you have those discussions, and it's like, "Okay, given these set of circumstances," or, "What are your thoughts? Would you rather do this or that? Or you have to choose between this." And it's like, okay, sitting here talking about it and discussing, that's one thing. But that's not how they play out in real life. And this part of the reason I found this interesting, too, is it leads right into how we look at solutions, whether it's a policy decision, whether it's a training solution. Because some of the, you know, people will say, "Well, if you have a higher level of training and a higher level of experience, and you don't just know how to shoot, but you know how to fight, you know how to do this, you know how to do all that, and you're really proficient