Orientation How We Make Sense

All right, good morning, Greg. Hitting this one early morning before the holiday break coming up. So, we're getting towards that time, the end of the year. And today, we've got an interesting conversation and some things that we want to bring up about something that we talk about in class: about orientation and functional field of view. I'll explain what it is in a minute, but the goal is to kind of have a larger, sociological understanding of how things affect us as humans.

So, for this one, what I'll do is I'll run through the overall overview of what we're going to be talking about, and then we'll get into some of the details. And I'll go to you (Greg) for that to kind of walk us through, from sort of, I guess, tactical to strategic, or micro to macro, however we want to do it. Small to big, I guess, is the simplest way to put it.

So, here's the thing that we're doing. Today, we're discussing a seemingly simple concept that we talk about during training, as well as on the show, and that's orientation. So, we're going to explain what we mean by orientation, get into things like functional field of view and perception. And while the science is fascinating, it's also a window into how we navigate and adapt—keyword there—in everyday life. From the moment we open our eyes, our brains engage in a complex, automatic process called sensemaking. It's how we extract meaning from the flood of sensory input that surrounds us.

So, our five senses—sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste—those are our primary tools for gathering environmental data. There's no sixth sense, right? Instead, our cognitive power lies in how we organize, interpret, and act on the sensory information. So, visual perception plays a central role here. We rely on vision, guided by our actions, using what we see to make decisions based on experience and expectation, enabling us to make rapid decisions.

So, this is where the concept of functional field of view comes in: the portion of our visual field where we can effectively process information without moving our eyes. So, the central vision is about fine details, but functional field of view isn't static. It's dynamic, right? It's shaped by our orientation in space, and orientation aligns our senses with our intended action, guiding us toward meaningful targets while filtering out distractions. I'm going to get into that process and what that means and how that works and how it can go wrong sometimes, but it's a life-saving mechanism in high-stakes scenarios where rapid assessment is critical.

So, today we'll dissect that stuff that I brought up. We'll dissect how functional field of view and orientation interact, transforming this raw sensory input into actionable intelligence. And we'll explore how these concepts help us detect anomalies, assess potential threats, and adapt to ever-changing environments. And it's that adaptation that is going to lead us to the larger sociological discussion we'll have about how these things shape our world and our mind. And then it's kind of like a continuous feedback loop, right? So, that's the overview, Greg. Why don't you—well, I'll go to you to start that process, in a sense, and sharpen our focus here, since we're starting and talking about orientation and vision and everything, and what this means and how powerful it is.

Yeah, and if you're following at home, break out the yellow pad—as long as you're not driving on the freeway, unless you're the passenger—and write down what Brian said as the outline. And I'll go in order as much as I can.

Well, I would say just listen to that, but write down what you're going to say because we're going to kind of go down into these. If I [do it] myself, it's going to be as memorable as yours.

My overarching theme, when Brian and I discussed the topic, I'll open and close with it, and that's that your senses orient your body so that you can collect vital information quicker and in order to survive challenging encounters. Now, when I say "survive challenging encounters," your brain is constantly switched on to look for danger, "Warning, Will Robinson!" So, this is just another function of your daily life because that's how your life works. You think that all the stuff that you're doing is important in your life, while your brain is going, "Yeah, yeah, that's second or tertiary. My survival is the first thing."

So, that first point that Brian brought up is very, very essential: understanding that your brain favors organization. What does that mean? That means that organized thoughts and organized artifacts and evidence provide a much simpler encoding of an array of sensory input. So, your brain is overwhelmed daily with the amount of sensory input, so it has to have a gating mechanism. It has to have a way to take all of that information and prioritize it, and leave some behind. A lot is left behind, as a matter of fact.

So, sensemaking gives meaning to our experiences, specifically our collective experiences, so we can share that reality in spacetime. So, that means sensemaking helps us organize information from the vast array of environments that we operate in every day so that we can create meaning and understanding. And our meaning and understanding, the second part of that, can be shared with others. Can be shared with kids, can be shared with our boss, can be shared with the next generation.

Okay, so a lot to just unpack real quick there. Can you give me sort of an example of what you mean? Because you're saying obviously gives meaning to our individual experiences, but then this collective shared experience that we can go back. So, can you kind of break down what you mean by that meaning? How can my experience shape your, or us as a group? Do you get what I'm saying?

No, that's brilliant, and it's a great question. Let's white belt this. Every culture on the face of the planet has a form of dance. Most dances are associated with wonderful, happy things: the birth of a child, a marriage. But there's other slow dirges that are associated with movements where somebody has died and, you know, we're paying penance or giving them the honor of remembrance and stuff. Those are different than a person that's having a medical issue and is flopping around on the ground, although in the late '60s, early '70s, you might not have known the difference immediately. But that idea, for example, sleeping is different than death.

So, what happens is these subtle nuances between these flavors at Baskin Robbins, when it's all just ice cream, help us determine what likely is going to happen next. What environment we're involved in. Is this a survival environment, or are these people in a cafeteria just eating? So, what happens is, through a veritable panacea of sensory input, our brain has to categorize, organize, to make sense of the environment—sensemaking. And sensemaking is the essential first step in decisions. So, if you don't have one, like for example, if your brain is unorganized or disorganized—two very different concepts in psychology—you're going to have a harder time sharing your reality, sharing your experiences. And I'm going to listen to you and go, "What's wrong with this person?" rather than understanding that perhaps your perception is skewed in some manner. Does that make sense?

Yeah, so you're saying, because I like the dancing analogies or how we have different ways, because there's so much from our environment. Like, we think that we're processing everything or thinking about everything, but really, it's like we're taking these cues from our environment, and based on those past experiences, we're sort of making these decisions. And this is happening constantly in the background. This is how we navigate things. So, now what you're saying is like, there's shared experiences. Now we create those to go, like, as a shortcut: "Oh, okay, I know what the tribe means by that. I don't have to spend time thinking." So, the dance is a good dance. Something great must have happened as I'm approaching the village. You know, so it's like a—it's a faster—

Exactly, Brian. And that lines up my emotions, memories. I might need to go back to, "Hey, who was that girl? Is that the daughter of Johnny, or is that Billy's sister?" All of those things start flooding in, and that's where organization comes in. If I don't have tabs on my file folder for the big items that are going to be in there, then what I'm doing is I'm searching for meaning and understanding in every nuanced thing that comes across my bow. You can't survive. You can't do that.

Right. Right. It's too many mental calories. So, let's talk about that organization, right, and how that works. So, I've heard, I've kind of given one when someone's asked me a question, one analogy—and you tell me what you think of this. It's like, because we use the term "file folders," right, and file folders, to how to categorize things. So, it's if I think about like a computer, when I get my computer, there's a whole bunch of programs and apps and things on there already just when it's clean, right out of the box, right? And before I've ever interacted with it, that help it run. It helps it do whatever the hell it does in this magical machine that they give me that I just slowly turn my life over to more every single day.

Every day!

Right. But then there's the folders I create to organize information, right? And then there's within those folders, there might be some more folders, or images, or documents, or whatever. And I now—now that's how I organize stuff, because that's the way I use it. And then sometimes it can help me and say, "Do you want to categorize it this way?" Like, meaning, "Do you want it all in alphabetical order on your desktop, or you want it by in order of the last time you opened the file?" So, meaning there are ones that I control, right, that I chose to categorize in a certain manner, but then there's this underlying sort of operating system that I don't mess with. And in fact, when I get to some of those folders, you ever see some like, it's like folders with just like letters and numbers and stuff like that? I have no idea what it means. And I'm not going anywhere near that, because I assume if I change—go to the library—if I change one letter, my computer's going to explode or something, right? But meaning, there's the ones we create, right, with these for sense, but then there's ones that are already there, and I have no control over those, and I have no idea what the hell they do. Now, I know they make my computer work, but I can't explain it. I certainly can't tell you how that works, right?

But you don't need to. What you need to understand is that there's an overarching cable that's constantly streaming and constantly on in the back of your brain. And I speak in metaphors, everybody that knows me, I'm streeting it up for you so you don't have to go and spend the next decade studying this stuff. It's this simple. There's a bird, and I've seen a bird on the wire, and I've seen the movie The Bird on the Wire, and I know that there's Mark "The Bird" Fidrych that used to pitch for the Detroit Tigers, and there's Charlie "Bird" Parker that's an amazing musician. They're all birds, Brian, but they're very different birds, okay? So, we could go down that line forever. So, that's meaning. Okay, the meaning behind the word "bird" is in the file. So, the general file folder might say "bird" at the top, but then I've got all these—

A napkin I wrote on, a Post-it note, a photo, you know. No, that's how I name the different birds that come around our house. There's one, there's a hawk that keeps coming by, and I'm like, "That's—" and you know, like, "That's Ken Harrelson." People are like, "What? Who's Ken?" He was the announcer for the White Sox, who was "Hawk" in baseball. And then the crows that keep coming back, right? I go, "Well, that's the couple that's Russell and Cheryl over there." And then—

So funny! But look what you just did. What you did is you put meaning to this sensory input as a manner of encoding. So, you have two sides of that. You have meaning and understanding. And everybody that listens to me understands that words are important to me. So, meaning is, what does this mean? Understanding means, what can I do with it? What can I—how can I pay that information forward? And that's especially meaningful and necessary when we're faced with an ambiguous situation (one side of the coin), or a complex situation (the other side of the coin), or the big coin, which is the challenge that might face a potential survival situation.

You've got to remember, an ambiguous environment is just one that I'm not immediately understanding that I'm going to base myself into. I'm going to be in the oven, do you get what I'm saying? Using some of the juices, and then after a while, "Oh, [unintelligible], that's what this is." Okay. Then, understanding is understanding I'm in the middle of something. That's where situational awareness comes from. What is going on around me? How are they interconnected, if they are interconnected? And what can I use out of that—sight, sound, feel, smell—to pay it forward, to give me an idea of how to decide what to do next?

And people, we skip over this [unintelligible] all the time. This is why my fundamental argument—oh my God, it's Christmas, stop!—but my fundamental argument when we deal with virtual reality, and we've been in the field as long or longer than anybody that I know, especially if we date back to our military stuff that we were doing for Fight JCTD, and the underpinnings that surround that, Brian, when we talk about having a 270-degree screen or a 360-degree screen, or lifelike, or realistic, or all that other stuff. Look, there's limits to that, because the way—if you come up with something that's whiz-bang and wonderful, I'll play it all day long. But that doesn't mean I'm learning from it. That doesn't mean that the encoding is occurring and that I'm getting meaning and understanding out of it. And this is the central argument. A peer review is going to say, "Oh, yeah, it was fun, and I really enjoyed it. And when I came out of there, I was like, 'Man, it's like nothing I've ever done.'" Well, none of that means that I got meaning or understanding out of that. Do you see? Learning is a very different thing. And so, if we're talking about the brain favoring organization and our overarching message today is how you orient towards things as a survival mechanism or a sensing mechanism, then what we're saying too is we're purists, we go back to the science rather than searching out the next thing. Is that—is that air without somebody?

Well, and that's just people focusing on the wrong things and measuring the wrong things as well, right? They mean well.

They do.

And they never make it up to that. Like, this is why no one understands that, or someone wants to argue with it. Like, we say training changes behavior. I'm looking for an outcome here, and I'm looking for a behavioral change that leads to an organizational outcome. And so, you know, you're looking at which is very different—

Very different than learning.

Very different than learning. Like, it's like, "Oh, are you going to get a survey for everyone after, like, you know, when they're on the last day of the course?" I'm like, "I no, I already know what they're going to say. I don't [unintelligible] care." Like, "Well, isn't that important?" "Nope. What's important is when I get the call or the email or the text or the reach out a week later and go, 'Dude, you're not going to believe this. I saw exactly that and it allowed me to intervene sooner. I didn't do this.'" Like, that is a change of behavior that changed the outcome of a very dynamic study that shows that that training changed the organization, and the change was positive. They were more mindful. Let's go back. Let's go back. Let's get back to where we're—let's talk about sensemaking.

Sensemaking involves integrating new information into your existing mental model so that you can decision-make. Stop for a minute, write that down folks. Sensemaking: integrating new incoming information into my existing mental model of the world, of this environment, of today, of this minute, so that I can decision-make going forward. And decision-making is the necessary precursor to action. So, everything that we do is preparing us for that next thing. Or time would be meaningless if we don't have a series of events along a timeline than the word "time" itself. And I like using spacetime, the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time together in that, because that gives us the robust, Haberman (referring to the Haberman Report), Brian, that gives us the 360 we're really talking about.

So, and this is to why we use, like, kind of like the file folders, terms, mental models. People heard the term "schema" before, that's what we're talking about. I just, I like our definition better, because I think it makes more sense and it's easier to understand.

Feels better, yeah. I agree. Well, it's just easy to understand. There's a scientific argument that's going to say, "The brain is not organized in file folders." That's not true.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We get that argument.

But for me to understand this vast, complex series of memories and how I can only—the file folder and the photograph makes a lot of sense to me.

Yeah, the computer analogy is, "Okay, there's stuff in that I don't touch. There's stuff in there that I do touch, and they're all working together, and I'm not fully understanding it, but some of it I do." I hear back there, "I don't. Getting warm right now." You know what I mean? But the minute my microwave opens and my coffee is hot, I don't have to understand it to know that that happens.

Exactly. It's not radiation folks, it speeds up the water molecules. But anyway, that was big scare back—

Well, kind of. But so you're—here's the thing. So, you just said that sensemaking involves integrating new information into your existing mental model of the world that you can decision-make. So, I don't want to get off on a whole sidebar here, but I do want to address something because I see this come up now, and finally more people realizing there's some stuff on some social media that these different companies or different organizations put out and they're, you know, saying like, "Hey, cognitive training, if you if you're, you know, trying to—" and their example was, "If you're doing chess exercises in between something, that's not going to [unintelligible] do anything." It's the same thing as like the Lumosity app and all these brain game things. Like, this is—that doesn't—that get you better at the game that you're playing. That doesn't get you better at decision-making or critical thinking or any of those skill sets. And this is what we've been—

You'll be able to play that game on a bus while it's in motion with a person bumping, but that—that doesn't transfer over to anything else other than that specific thing. But here, here, no more than reading a book, Brian. No more than reading a book or watching a television show. You're exactly—

So, so you're saying sensemaking involves integrating new information into your existing mental model of the world. And we already said that sensemaking gives us meaning to our experiences, and we can sort of—and not just for us, but shared. So, can you—can you sort of modify or enhance someone else's mental models through training?

Yes, of course. And you can share your experiences through storytelling and through training—the proper way of training—so that that person's brain doesn't know they weren't there. That person's brain feels as though they were there at Ground Zero when you had that experience. And it's not exactly the same, but it's close enough. Greg Williams patented the theory of "close enough," you know, dozens of years ago folks, to show you that your brain doesn't care.

Answered. Willis. Brian Willis, I respect you and admire you, if you're listening to this. Brian Willis had that great post, okay? And I added to the post a little bit of friction, a little bit of immaculation. That's called masturbation. I had to use self-gratification or something, because LinkedIn would have thrown me off for six months. But the idea is your brain is so powerful that it gets where you're trying to go, and it's actually trying to help you get there, Brian. So, when you're listening in class—

No one else has helped me get there.

Yeah, exactly, because you shouldn't ask those questions in McDonald's drive-thru. But the idea is, if you're—and you know you do—if you're sitting there in a classroom, and then you're going out to the range, and then you're going to the interactive portion of defensive tactics, all of that stuff is magic. But what has to happen is your brain has to assign meaning to it, and the meaning has to be, "Ah, I understand this so that I can recognize similar situations in the future and apply this answer."

So, so the primary sensemaking tools, and you alluded to it at the very beginning, are our sight, our hearing, our touch, our smell, our taste. There is no sixth sense. So, if we're trying to cultivate a sixth sense, look, of course, you have instinct, okay? But your instincts are something that must be cultivated over time, okay? So, you—it takes time. So, how do you do that with training? Education is wonderful, but I can't read a book to learn how to ride a bike. At some point, I have to get out and get on the gosh darn bike.

So, and that—that for especially a lot of people that listen to our podcast or this kind of folks involved with training or anything, that they understand that part. But you—you—the thing you said, hang on, hang on. You said you said "cognitively close enough," because I brought up that case of that other kind of social media post and the way people talking about the different chess games, because we—we've come across other folks that that have done that as well. But it's not that bad, it's just that your point is wrong. Well, it'll help you get better at that game, not necessarily. But the—the thing that you're learning, that's not the end state. The end state is the real-world application. So, and even with the people said, it's like, "Well, you—your training has to be close to what you're likely to encounter and expect to see, and you want it as close as possible for the best type of of, you know, the best type of kind of retention of that skill set." But I—I think people get it wrong when they say that, because then it was like, you know, when you do the military stuff, it's like, "All right, we're going to have the fake IDs and the people that speak Arabic and people coming out with legs missing and squirting blood and this, that, and the other thing." It's like, "Hang on."

Some of those—some of that may be integral or important, but what we could—you, I want just you to take a second to define a little bit more, because you said we use the term "cognitively close enough." So, it's not about fooling my prefrontal cortex and my conscious brain. It's about fooling or engaging that unconscious part of it. So, it doesn't have to be—right? It's like you just said, "A little bit of fiction, a little bit of friction," and my brain goes, "Oh, it's procreation time."

Care that—that's—that's amazing.

Exactly right. So, look, you know that I go antler hiking every year, and I always take the grandkids. I take the kids, and when we go out there, we're in an area that has a high mountain lion population. So, the first thing that you start seeing is bleached bones, which is a longtime exposure to the environment. Then, all of a sudden, you see bones that [have] meat and fur on them. Then you smell decomposition, and immediately your senses are heightened because your brain is telling you, "Danger, warning, Will Robinson! We have an apex predator around here. You are now in the home of the predator." You don't have to put a lot of thinking to that. But what we do then is walk backwards and go through all of those artifacts and evidence that led us up to that. And some are visual, some are dactyl, Brian, we have to touch them, okay? Some are—are—are nose, we have to smell them. And what happens is we filled this robust file folder full of those experiences and say, "Okay, that—I smelled the same thing when I was by I-70 searching for antlers, but that was due to a motor vehicle hitting the deer," okay, or elk, or whatever animal that was decomposing. "But here, I noticed that the pieces are separated and the meat is missing, not because of decomposition, but because it's likely been eaten."

And you're going, "Where the [unintelligible] are you going in this detailed story about a mountain lion?" Because that's how your brain learned. That's how I'm going to be able to take that shared experience and pass it forward to somebody that's never been antler hiking and never encountered a cougar before. So, so survival means that not just I can get to the finish line, but I can bring my tribe too, and that's why the shared experiences are so essential.

Right. So, our senses allow us to gather information from our environment through all of those different senses. Then our brain processes that information so we can understand, but more important, interpret the environment around us. We can make assumptions about the future and about the rest of the world around us. If this is here, then it probably is the same there. If these are poison here, that's probably the same there. If balled-up fists here mean I'm going to be fighting, they're likely—

So, that's how we learn to use them. And situational awareness is a comparison from the now to the likely future. That's what we have to remember. And we don't use it that way. Science is so important.

And you're the—the thing to highlight about every basically example you just brought up is like these are all very primitive. These are primitive, hardwired. And I actually had someone who's like, "I remember hearing this story about this person. I wasn't personally involved in the incident, but I knew right away when I when someone was telling me where this woman was like, you know, 'God, it was this weird smell, and I don't know, it just, I thought it was like a smelling like burning human flesh.'" And the person was like, "Have you ever smelled that before?" And they're like, "No." And it—this woman was right, and and someone was burning a body. But those are the things where it's like, if you've smelled something like that before, your brain goes, "Uh, this isn't [unintelligible] right. There's something wrong." That's such a primitive, hardwired response to know that this person who is who was in who who was just experienced something that one, almost no one experiences, and two, never done it before, and kind of already knew what it was. Okay, where did you gain that knowledge? Meaning, there's all that unconscious stuff happening under the surface that that this is what [we] stick to, and this is what we think is important, because it's far more important than anything else, because it's been around the longest out of anything.

Exactly. And those primitive, like you're talking about like balled fist, dude. The terrorist does that. Max (referring to Brian's son) does that. He's, you know, 17 months old. He gets angry, right? And what does it immediately do? Balls his fist. It's like, it's—it's that's a primitive thing. No one taught him that, right? So, it's—it's—it's so the—I just want to hit on that, because all of those things, like you're walking me through the decomposing body and this and like I can smell it, I can see, I know what you're talking about. Like, man, I could teach anyone that and and they're going to get it. And right when they're there, and that's what you mean by those shared experiences, shared file folders, and shared sensemaking.

And so, so, so now go back to that bird analogy, Brian.

Now, I don't have to say it's a mountain lion or a cougar. It could be a pack of coyotes. It could be in Africa, or it could be in Antarctica with a polar bear. The ideas are sound enough that I can transmit the information, and you can put your personal touch on it and go, "Oh, I know what means. I know what she means." That's the beauty of the storytelling that goes along with the lived experience, or at least the assumed experience that we get. And that's what training gives us. Training can't always give us the real thing, but training can equate. And if the training is cognitively close enough, we're allowed to do the rest. We're allowed to finish. Your brain will fill in the details. Rarely will it be wrong. Rarely will it be wrong.

When will it be wrong?

Shitty training where physics don't apply, where somebody says, "Hey, you can shoot the axe and split the bullet and kill both of the terrorists at the same time." And we've all seen that, and it's an example on somebody who's going to write in, "But Kit Cody did that." Yeah, he did it one time, and I was there, so I don't believe that [unintelligible].

The one Marine sniper who put one .50 cal office round through a cinder block and they killed two people with it. It's like, "Okay, and so now on the range, Brian, they—they train just that shot."

And shut up. So, so that—that's the stuff I classify as a behavior-oriented vision, where it could occur, but it's not—look, so I got to tell you about this call, because it happened at Christmas. I get a call down to Hinsdale County. Hinsdale County's 90 minutes under ideal circumstances in the winter to get to from where I'm at, and there's no other coppers that can respond to it. And the female's burning up the line calling dispatch in Gunnison. I don't know if I should go into much more detail than that. And the call is that, "Hey, there are deer, specifically mule deer, flying through the neighbor's backyard." Okay, that's great. So, how much of you had Santa Claus, or so? "There are mule deer flying through my neighbor's yard, and you need to send somebody down here because it's a wild [unintelligible] sham thing, and now it's drawn a crowd, and the people are wondering what's going on."

So, I get in the sled, I drive down there. All the whole way I'm getting updates from dispatch, "There's now 15 people at the scene and some kids have seen it as well, and all this." So, I'm going, "Okay, prank, gag, mass hysteria." Do you get what I'm saying? It's a long drive. So, I'm going through all the stuff. I get there, it's hours of darkness. I'm standing where the people are standing, and you hear the clamp, clamp, clamp, clamp associated with the running deer. And then all of a sudden, you see the shadow of a deer flying against the buildings, and then the next one lines up and goes too. And I'm going, "Okay, the greatest animation I've ever seen."

What it was, is a mule deer buck was walking through a neighborhood backyard and got his antlers caught in the gosh darn clothesline. And there's clotheslines that make like an octagon where they go up like an umbrella, upside down, a fan. And so this one was designed so when you're hanging the clothes, you can just move it to the right, spin it around. So when the mule deer buck was going through the backyard, its antlers got stuck, and he was running along the aluminum siding of one house, landing back on the ground, running along the wood on the other house, and the light from the Christmas tree lights made it look animated. So, there was one after the other deer lining up, running and flying, okay?

So, Brian, because I didn't have a file folder for effing mule deer—I'm from Detroit, you get what I'm trying to say—and I'd never had a clothesline in my entire life, that was a whole different thing in Detroit. You hung your clothes out, somebody else borrowed it, if you know what I'm saying, and they didn't return it. And I had never seen this, and the mass hysteria is working on me. That that visual and perceptual skills that I was bringing in made no sense. I had nothing to compare it against.

So, finally, I had to talk to a very friend—I'm not going to name either—that was at the time the DNR (Department of Natural Resources), which is now CPW (Colorado Parks and Wildlife). And I go, "What the hell is going on?" And he explained it to me, and we got the deer loose and walked over there, and it was the damnedest thing in the world. And if we had to recreate it, Brian, only Hollywood or Bollywood could probably do that. Computers, now AI, might be able to do that, right? But it was the wildest damn thing. So, it had the whole community up, it had dispatching up. Everybody needed to know what was going on. And because it was before the time of the gosh darn best phone in the world, everybody there now has that one wild ass explanation. So, nine years from now in Israel, when a gosh darn goat is caught up in a jump rope and doing the same thing, one of those people will go, "Well, you know what I saw in Hinsdale County?" And now we've solved for X, Brian. That's the beauty of shared information.

So, the orientation is forced orientation because I was called to the scene. The other type of orientation was a functional field of view oriented that you brought up earlier. And there's a miscommunication there too, if I might segue right into that. So, when you're standing still and you're looking straight ahead, okay, and you're not moving your eyes, your saccades, your brain—we can go back through your optic nerve and all that. That's what we—the optempo of our course doesn't allow us to go into such great detail. But understand that there's basically four levels or four stages. Your head's not moving, you're looking straight ahead. Males have a six-degree functional field of view in this situation. Females about double that, about 11. And what that means is I can process visual information in my new visual field, this straight ahead, not moving my eyes. Then the second is slight movement of my eyes to track a target with other things that are competing for my attention. Then the third is I have to also move my head, and now I'm moving my head and my eyes. And then the final one is I have to orient my body. I literally have to orient my body.

So, our brain gives us light, motion, and edges. And then our hardwiring gives us, "These are some environmental cues you need to pay attention to because they could cost you your life." And between that, between that rich tapestry of knowledge that we're started off with as kids and the stuff that we learn from kids all the way to adult—like catching a ball, throwing a ball at a target, those type of things—what happens is we're able to use behavior-oriented vision. And now we have a mental trigger, whether we acknowledge them or not, that orients us towards potential danger or potential opportunity. It's really simple when you think of it in those terms.

Right, because you can see that lining up, but what happens is vision and and if we start reading about it, we get overwhelmed, and next time we're at the optometrist, he slaps us and says, "Stop," because we're asking so many questions. You don't need to get so detailed to understand the basics of human vision and how to process information visually. Yeah, and and so you hit up on those the big things is is that functional field of view, which is very much central vision, and then your peripheral kind of can alert you to things. And then then we tie that in with orientation. So, I—so, I just, you know, think of if you know, picture you're walking past something, if you ever had that where something caught, you know, the corner of your eye or something like that, and you did like the double take, and you turned. And then, "Oh, crap!" It was powerful enough for you to turn your whole body and look at that. That's what we mean by that functional field of view and orientation lining up.

So, so what your brain did for you unconsciously is say, "Hey, there's something going on over here. I don't know what it is. It could [unintelligible] kill us, yes. So, why don't you thrill us?" Right? Or, "Or, or we can eat it," whatever if you're hungry. But but, and then it will force your—it unconsciously it tells you, "Turn and face that direction." And so you will actually turn and face that direction so that, just like you said, all of our senses are aligned to the front, which is what we're designed as humans for—forward motion and moving forward, right—to pick up what that is. Now, it—it might be nothing. And and so think about those things when it was nothing was, "Oh, it was just just a cat making noise." So it came over the fence, whatever. Yeah, when it's nothing, okay, that what it is, what that means is that all that stuff is happening underneath, right? And and so it's basing it on—so things you've learned in your life, your experience, what you've been told, what you've heard, maybe that ghost story, maybe that boogeyman story, maybe this. So, whether it's real or not doesn't matter. If it's fiction or non-fiction, your brain goes, "This is important. We know about something over here. Use all of your senses to figure out what it is." "Okay, it's nothing." What—what that means is it was at some point your brain determined—and we talk about the brain is sort of a separate thing because it's really just like your conscious awareness versus unconscious awareness and those things, right? But we just—we—we talk about it in this sort of like there's you and then there's your brain. And your eyes technically evolved from your brain, so they're technically part of it. But we, you know, we parse those out.

But when you do that, right, it—it what it's saying, it was something was going on over here that is cognitively close enough to some trigger, or some threat arousal trigger, or hunger arousal trigger, whatever it is, that we—we want to attend to it. We want to attend to. We want to pay complete attention to it. So, when we use those terms "cognitively close enough," that's another example of what we mean by that. When we say, "Look, your brain didn't know. It needed an extra second. It needed to spend a little extra time on this to justify what it was and what it thinks it might be to make sure it wasn't something dangerous." So, so it's cognitively close enough, and and so that's a very, very powerful term that we use that that sometimes we don't, because we can't—like, can't get into everything and and the meaning behind everything and what it—it's just even on a—even on a podcast, you can't, Brian. So, let's be—

All day, yeah. Let's go deeper in cognitively close enough. For the purists that are also listening to us, what's shape dependability? Well, shape dependability is when I've seen these shapes in the past, they were always a car. When I saw those shapes in the past, they were always a ball. When I saw those shapes in the past, they were always a horse. So, your brain has a file folder that does that autonomically. Form recognition: "Hey, that's Greg, the shaved ape. I can tell by the amazing guns he's carrying around and the bald head, leaning forward with the, you know, a 12-inch forehead."

So, you're back in that evolution scale, right? Okay.

An object—we do love you—size of an object. I've never seen an elephant in a matchbook. So many stories there. Dominance, in other words, the things that I see more than other things. Directionality, the way something is oriented towards or away from me is meaningful. Visual manipulation. That's why we do the Haberman, we can lift it up mentally and use our visual visualization and imagination to think of what likely happened. That's what we mean by cognitively close enough. We can go into that. The simple answer on that is we orient based on environmental triggers—that's light, motion, and edges. And why? So that we can take in all this information, the visual input from our eyes and the rest of our senses related to our current situation, our past experiences, whether it's real or learned in training, and then relate it to the other senses to make sense out of it all. So, the whole goal is to plan for action.

So, you said something I want to bring up, and folks, listen to what I'm saying. Brian brought up about the cat. Okay, I just saw a cat on a fence. So, I saw a cat on the fence, and I see the direction it jumps. The next thing I should be thinking is, what pushed that cat out of that backyard? Or what's that cat going for? Or has that cat ever been there before? Because intentionality to me, the intent of seeing that cat is hugely important. There's a burglary going on next door, and the cat was let out accidentally, and it's a house cat, not a not a local cat. Do you see how the world is full of stories, but we're never going to see him if we're walking around with blinders and we don't take that information processing step? So, the most curious people have survival advantage in an environment. And Brian, that's why we teach about curiosity. That's why in class we're talking about how important that phase is, because those companion skills are wonderful, but if you don't have that orientation that gets visual input—the largest field and to humans now, through evolution, the most important field—it's essential to move our functional field of view so our brain can account for our position, the target's position, and then relate them to the nuances of the environment. If we can't do the known unknown against the baseline, then our brain will never be able to go to the right file folder in time.

And there's your gosh darn training range guy. There's your training driving instructor. I wish Pablo was on here because he would understand what we're talking about. He does. And little Joe would understand in terms of defensive tactics. And our shooter friends would understand that what happens, Brian, is we also don't spread load that knowledge across all of these fields. We come upon that knowledge and all of a sudden, "Oh, look at this new thing!" It's been around forever. We just didn't think about the cognitive processing. Our cognitive gym, Brian, has been around for over two decades now, do you get what I'm trying to say? And we feel that it's the right way of taking your training, because your visual field isn't enough, and your visual acuity isn't enough. I understand that you can see very well, but if you can't process what you're seeing into digestible chunks for your brain, then those perceptions are worthless.

Yeah, and this is—that that's a—that's a lot to sort of unpack. That's a lot happening.

No, no, no, no, I got a bunch in a row in my mind.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's how it works, right? And and and and actually, what you're demonstrating here is the ability to, we got to go back to my computer analogy here, is to use all of your file folders more effectively, right? So, because, you know, your brain basically has unlimited memory. However, our recall isn't always that great, or if I don't link those things together, if everything I learn is—if I always have separate file folders on my desktop on my computer, and they never interact, and I don't draw from multiple ones, then then they stay sort of siloed in these areas, and I can't access them. The idea is, because how your brain can make neural connections, is it can connect all of those together, right? It can create, you know, it can create a neural network in a sense that that that accesses all of that. And then you can get better at priming it for certain things.

Like, you know, you—it's just like, so I have a Mac, and it has an iCloud. So, what it does is, the—the if I don't open certain folders or files for a while, it goes, "Okay, you're not using this. I'm going to upload this to the iCloud. You don't need it on your physical computer because you're not—you haven't accessed this thing in a year, so it's just wasted space." Now, now if [I] go to it, and I'm searching something I need, it's got to download that real quick for a second, and then I can open up that Word document or whatever it was from a year ago, right? It—it's kind of like that in a sense. But if I—I—I want that all on my desktop, but just the most relevant ones are going to be right there at the front. They're going to be top of mind. They're going to be—and that might be contextually based, right? So, so that that the things I need top of mind for, you know, my my family coming into town for the holidays, is different than I need them for, you know, a surveillance mission.

Buy a frozen piece to cover your bruised eye when your dad gives you a black eye. Those type of things.

Exactly. No, no, he's—he's—he's a lover, not a fighter anymore, because he can't fight, he's too old. So, he's—he's—he's now transitioned to that next phase of, "Oh, no, we're all good, and we had a great time, and you know, I—I was a great—I was a great father, and I taught you to be a great father, don't you remember that?"

Exactly. Oh, that that's a different thing about memory.

So, you you see how that that gets switched around. You're like, "Um, me and my brother looking at each other, like, 'Uh, we were there. That's not what happened at all.'" But anyway, so I'm going back to that for for recall and an an an orientation. Big picture now. Now, I—I think we—we kind of covered sort of that that tactical micro level of functional field of view and orientation recognition and anticipation and how those things work. Now, there's a lot of detail that we can go into about all those things, but let's kind of go from now sort of the—the—the—the so what of all of this and the larger picture of what how significant orientation is and what we mean, it just not now like, "Hey, I walk past something, I hear," and always I say, "Turn and orient." What does that mean then to that next step sociologically? Because we covered about sharing things, you know what I'm saying?

So, let's save a life first to to make sure people are still attending to us. So, let's save a life right now by saying this: the fovea is called the fovea because that means "pit" in Latin, and it's a little divot at the back of your eye that takes all of that chunked information and throws it back to our brain. So what? So what? So if you understand foveal vision and you understand that your functional field of view is about six degrees, then what you understand is those things that are right in front of you are the most important to your brain. And then that goes to central vision, then that goes to peripheral vision. So, from the most important to the least important. So what? So what? So functional field of view helps us do stuff like reading. Well, reading wasn't survival-based when we were kids. It had another purpose, so we had to learn that over time. So what? So if you read from left to right, like I read, then when you want to look at your environment, you should look from right to left, because that's contrary to the way that your brain has been tested and trained, and that means it'll be nuanced, so it'll be easier to find an anomaly. What's that mean? That when you're doing your five and 25s with your binos, go from right to left. Now, if you're from Israel or Russia, you may have to change that and do it the exact opposite. But if you understand that principle, that small of a principle, that's cognitively linking this information about the functional field of view to how you can use that to survive in an environment, Brian.

And you know what, if if there's a sniper school that's teaching that, good on you. But if hunters aren't teaching that to their kids, or if that's not an NRA course somewhere, then they're failing to tie some of those file folders together like you were talking about. It's there for a reason. So, the historical reason, the survival reason, is the most important. So, understanding your functional field of view is crucial for you to assess potential anomalies within your visual field and specifically in situations where you need to quickly identify objects, whether that's survival or opportunistic, or you're navigating a complex in extremis environment, potential danger. The ice is thinner out there, you get what I'm trying to say. And Brian, you know me, I classify survival as one thing and danger as an all-encompassing thing because we don't know what that danger might be. It might be a long-term danger from smoking, which is different from, you know, immediate survival. But but but when I refer to that, I'm saying that if we understand that the functional field of view, just like the fovea centralis, just like every other component in our eye, is put there for a very specific reason. And we can go into detail and rebuild it and show it and, you know, flash light against it and talk rods and cones, but the base level of it is if you understand that orientation forces my functional field of view to the unknown, why? Because it may have meaning, and that meaning may help me make a decision in a very, very important danger or survival situation or opportunity. And I always put opportunity last. I don't want to miss opportunity.

Yeah, and it's it's searching for an answer and a reasonable explanation for everything. And if it doesn't quite have one, it'll jump to whatever the closest thing is that I've heard.

Or even if it's wrong. Even if it's wrong, you're exactly right. It's a lot of a lot of UFO sightings could be classified as that. There were there were deer flying in the yard on Christmas. They were they were lining up, Brian, and jumping off the stage and flying.

It's what's what's happening, you know, right right now on the Eastern Seaboard and especially New Jersey and everywhere, just having some hilarious conversations with some other folks about it. And it's it's everyone wants to come up with wild stories. It's usually the simplest. If you don't tell me, then my mind will create the reality. If I don't have a story for it, then my mind will create as a matter of fact, if you go back to most stories, they'll either have a—like, that's why some people go, "It's folklore." Yeah, you get folklore, but folklore came from somewhere. It was to teach a message. Aesop's Fables were to teach us how to do something better. Look, have you ever watched what's that gosh darn show Shelly liked it with Sheldon and the blonde girl and all the scientist buddies? The Big Bang Theory?

The Big Bang Theory, yeah. Okay, so I love Sheldon on Big Bang when I when I get a chance to watch it, and I love the reruns because it's very well written. What happens is Sheldon doesn't understand the sociological implications of being Sheldon, so it's always creating an uncomfortable situation that he goes into, and he says things that are on his mind when he shouldn't, and he does things that that that seem off-putting to others and stuff. If you want to understand what your brain is like without the context and relevance of functional field of view and orientation of sensemaking and decision-making, watch that show. Just one episode, and get it right away. Just follow Sheldon.

I—I see your—you're you're really really connecting with this character Sheldon, Greg. Is there any reasons—

Shut up, gosh darn it! I connect with a lot of things that don't have sex very often and are deep thinkers that nobody understands, you bastard! You know what I mean? No, but but you get it. I mean, I totally understand. I—I associate with that. Look, there are times that I come into a room and I know I'm the one that's off-putting, only because what I'm trying to do is my form of making sense of an environment isn't yours. And and so I'm trying to open your aperture by using an alternative methodology that your brain will understand. I'm much more in tune with the primitive brain than I am with, you know, whatever current [unintelligible] is on the market.

And you you specifically are doing that sometimes intentionally, deliberately.

Exactly. Most most of the time. But then some shirt—you don't think this is deliberate? Come on. You—you choke—

So, you chose that. You're telling me you chose—

It chose me, right?

That's so funny. It's the what was the—the Tommy Boy where he's like, he's like, "What's that smell?" He's like, "Oh, that's pine tree," you know, "air freshener." Like, "Good. First step is identifying. The second step is getting rid of it, doing something about it."

You're exactly right. No, look, look, look. I know I'm an acquired taste, but the idea is that the—when people think that making an environment busy makes it more challenging to the brain, all you're doing is confusing your survival brain. You don't need all of those external things unless you assign meaning to them. So, having the smell of decomposition without giving the halt signal, taking a knee, and explaining what that means to the brain, and then revisiting that in the future time and time again during a situation that you're trying to prompt somebody for danger, if you don't do it that way, Brian, it's meaningless. And it's it's a bunch of fidelity that your brain doesn't need. And so it's great, and you'll clamp and you'll get the award for, "Oh my God, look at these, you know, what do they call it, the visual effects and the CGI." Okay, but your brain calls [unintelligible]. And and that's why most movies are about an hour and a half too long now, because, you know, the people go, "He [unintelligible] got it." And now it's a protracted fist fight. How come Aquaman can speak to the fishes, but he still resorts to punching somebody? You know, those type of things.

And that's what I want to do with our—Brian, we've known each other for a long time, and what lured you to the training is I was a goofy, ill-dressed, fat guy stumbling around on stage, but there were three out of the five things that I said you'd never heard before. You conducted your own research, and guess what? It changed the trajectory of your life. That's what we're trying to do with the podcast. That's what we're doing with our in-person training and with the book, is we're trying to say, if you back off the gas pedal for a minute and and and try to make more sense of your environment, look at how rich and fulfilling your life could be.

Well, that was my first, was like, "Okay, this guy's hilarious and he's completely full of [unintelligible]." And I know some—

You still think that!

Well, yeah, yeah, of course, of course. That was on my Christmas card. I can show you. "Merry Christmas! I still know you're full of [unintelligible], and one of these days I'll be able to prove it." But exactly. But no, and and because what my—that to just to speak to that point, it was, "Um, that I said these are heavy, complex subjects you're bringing up, and there's no way," you know, especially at that at that time, my age, with that experience that I had, it was like, "There's no way it's this simple. Like, you—you I get where you're going, but no, dude, you can't just say that. You can't just say that. You can't just say this. Like, you can't just put those things together." Those are, you know, very, very heavy, complex subjects that we're kind of still, especially anything with neuroscience and brain and well, and before you even get—

And it's all still new, you know that, right?

We're still—we don't—like, we don't fully understand how the brain works. We—we kind of—I don't know how far in we are with it. It's like the same thing like, you know, the—the universe. It's like, "Well, here are some things we know. The farther out we go, we're unsure. We don't know." There are people like, "Well, I thought you said the universe started four billion, now you're saying it's 50?" It's like, "Yeah, because we—we—we learn new things. I don't [unintelligible] know, dude. Like, what we knew in 1960 is is—"

Yeah, but but you—that—that was my thing, but what you're really trying to do is tie this back to those primitive signals. Start there. One primitive signal right now that you can use, Brian, when you walked out of that class, you did not believe anything I was saying. No, until you walked out into your environment and you tried a couple of things, and you said, "They work! Holy crap, they work! They're oversimplified, but they work." Why do we need to make these concepts so—I don't have to understand the internal combustion engine to drive to the 7-Eleven. I don't. You know, and that's that's my argument. My argument is when you look out the window, your brain is processing what's out that window. Just because you're sitting on a bunch of books and you got a PhD degree in your [unintelligible] pocket, doesn't make you any smarter than me. That's the problem with thinking nowadays is you can convey those ideas and messages to me so I can be as safe as you are in that environment without me having to go and get a college degree.

Well, you—I—I don't know where this quote came from, but it's something I heard where it was, "You know, the only way to fully understand a theory is to either derive the conclusion yourself or prove it wrong." Right? You—you sort of have to, like, I thought it was that was just a general thing. I was like, that—that kind of makes sense, you know what I'm saying?

Right. Right.

It was a pretty profound thing that that I'd heard. Um, and and so we're getting into, so we did—you you did sort of just explain the internal combustion engine when it comes to orientation, right? So, so we sort of explain that.

Exactly. Exactly. Because because now was the time to take more time to understand that your senses orient your body so you can collect vital information.

No, no, and that that that was that was that was a purpose of this. That was a purpose of this. So, so now, so so the next part that I kind of want to get into is, "Okay, got it. We've explained the internal combustion engine, we've explained orientation. So, now I'm in the car driving, but I'm not the only one on the road, right? And and everyone else is too. So, what what does this mean sociologically?" Because what we—we don't always choose, or we—we think we choose what we attend to, but often times it's not. Like, I always tell, you know, everyone, "Yes, humans have free will and we have agency, but it's a lot less free will than we think," right? Meaning that the—the—the—the folders, the operating system in that computer have way more control than I do and what I'm setting it up, right? It just does it, it runs it. I think I'm manipulating it and I'm getting better at it.

And we're—we're creating tools to maybe help like, my biggest thing is the—the new updates and different technology. Everyone wants to come out with some whiz-bang [unintelligible] before we even understand what we already have. So, it's like the best ones for me are the ones that allow me to use what I have better. So, now like the search function on my computer is way better now. Like, I can just type in some words and it'll bring it up. Look at if you have an iPhone, like with photos now, you can search a like, you know, "I want dogs," and it'll—it analyzes photos and it'll give you every photo with a dog in it. You're like, "That's [unintelligible] powerful!" That's way better than trying to think of where I was and I took a photo of that dog and what time it was and what date it was. And I have thousands of photos in there. So, so that—that's the idea. And that's almost like what we're talking about with with with how we approach that training. Because yeah, I can use that better.

So, so um, how does these different societal factors um sort of uh uh play into that orientation, meaning—meaning and and what are some of the outcomes? So, like if we're all talking about something, we don't always know how important it is, right? It feels like whatever is coming out and whatever is happening right now is the most important thing to us because everything is we're entric for survival of us in the species. And we think everything is the worst thing ever, but with time you go on and go, "Ah, remember that thing everyone was arguing about like two years ago? Turns out like important anymore." They're not really that [unintelligible] important anymore. So, so we but we can't weigh that out in the moment. So, part of this—part of this discussion is how communication has changed very rapidly in a short amount of time. So, let's say over the last 10 years, really rapidly. And then then COVID kind of accelerated that in a sense, because then people started adopting some newer technologies at at a larger scale. Um, but but everyone's fear is or or people talk about, especially like parents with kids, it's like, "Oh, this [unintelligible]'s rotting their brain and it's this and and now we're doing—" because sometimes it is and it can be bad. And and they're saying, "Well, it's rewiring us, it's changing us." And it's like, "Well, okay, I—I there there's meaning you can find evidence to support that claim." Sure. But it—it's—it's it's—is this to me, I'm going like, "Is this changing the trajectory or is this a blip on the radar the moment or is it changing?" Because most most things become a blip on the radar. Like, I which I love when people go back and bring up quotes from the past and they completely misunderstand them. And, you know, it's like people are quoting or or writing some big thing about, you know, Socrates and he said this. And I'm like, and I'm like my response is, "Socrates would disagree with everything you just said." Like, "What do you mean?" It's like, "Well, one, that [unintelligible] didn't believe in writing things down. He thought that was lazy, and you should be able to memorize everything." So, they'd be against your social media post because you shouldn't be writing it down, you should be able to explain it. It's like this is—it's no—

You're spot on. So, let me give you a couple of for instances. Right. I mean, let's do a couple of for instances along that spacetime. So, the smartest human I know is Shelly (referring to Greg's wife), and I don't mean just the smartest female that I know, I mean human. The one that I most admire. She edits a lot of my stuff, mentally and physically and verbally, and, you know, corrects me when I need correcting. And she physically—

Exactly. I'm frightened.

Yeah, because she beats my ass. And and I need it though. But she works in an environment where she sees daily that kids of a certain age come in and have no idea how to sign their own names because they've never been forced to do it, or understand how cursive writing works because it's not been challenged or taught, and therefore it's a lost art form. Now, Brian, I—I don't often eat out, but when we're on the road, we kind of have to. We—we stop at healthy places and grab some stuff for the hotel, and then go to a healthy restaurant. And, you know, I always carry the pink phone everywhere I go. And the function I think I use most other than photography is my calculator, because I want to leave a nice tip and I don't want to be an idiot, because Brian, a teacher taught me a long time ago, "Move the decimal point, do this and that." I'm from Detroit, man, I don't know how to [unintelligible] do any of that. So, what I do is I enter the number in and multiply it by the the thing and it tells me what to do.

I noticed on Monday it was that I—I went and got some chow for Shelly and I because it was a very a busy day, first time in town in a long time. And I said, "Oh, I didn't bring my calculator." And the woman said, "No problem. Look at the bottom of your receipt, Brian." [It] had all the different calculations necessary, and all I had to do is tap the one that I wanted. Well, that's just like the cursive writing. The more I have to press a button, like, "What's your own phone number? What's your dad's phone number?" "Well, I don't do that because I press 'Dad' on my phone." What happens is when we supplant, when we exchange, when we stop using those old methods to make fire, okay, to splint a leg, what happens is the more that we use that app and the more we look at the phone—I—I can give you one that costs us money. How many times you've been in a light, the light changes, you look left and right to make sure nobody's running the light, and you move forward, and there's cars still sitting still, and you look at them and they're all playing Angry Birds or looking down at their phone? Yeah, that costs tens of millions, if not billions of dollars. So, what happens is those are impacts that we're feeling now, and somebody would point it does and go, "That's changed how humans think." Here's my argument against that.

All right, because especially because writing is a great one, but writing has not been around very long, and there's still plenty of countries in the world where only 25 to 50% of the people in that country can even write.

Read. Exactly. I agree.

So, when when we—when we make—like, I—I get what you're saying and it's following a logical that that makes sense. Okay, we're—we're doing less, so is that going to go away? But but is it—did did that come up and then now going away because it's a because societally we've evolved past the necessity for it, right? You know what I'm saying? And and that's what everyone gets into when they try to—

But my argument with you, and it's a continuous argument that we both have, is we don't know. Because it's going to take for the least of us, it's going to take a thousand or 10,000 years to figure out. And for those real big muscle movements, Brian, that have been around with us since since birth, it may take longer than our planet has left to decide. So, I think both of us would agree, don't jump at a conclusion that's based on what you're seeing today because it may not be so tomorrow. It may not be so next year, right? But I would say that skillcraft is still important, because those things that we throw out, like reading, cursive writing, might still be essential. We—we might not see how essential their nature is right now, Brian, but, you know, at sometime in the near future we may have to use that, and now we're screwed. You can't just tap a button.

Yeah, and then this is—this is what I kind of want to get into with with how orientation affects this, right? Because we get—we—we now sort of at scale, due to the speed of communication and how it's shared quickly, it—it—it's sort of this this mass orientation together towards something, right? It happens sort of at scale, larger. So, does that mean those those changes occur faster because they're—they're happening at scale, or is it just that it captures our attention? But because this is the other thing, is with with attention and orientation is that it's sort of it—it's weird, right? Because I—I see two uh uh sort of opposing things happening, right? So, so everyone talks about, "Oh, people have a short attention span now, and everything is these 10-second clips, and you got to hook people in right away." And and it's—and, you know, these TikTok videos are only a few seconds long, and let's do micro-learning, and let's do this, and let's—it's like, "Okay, but but also, also some of the most popular things in the world today are podcasts that are three [unintelligible] hours long, or or people a new series comes out on Netflix, and they drop the whole series, and people binge-watch the entire [unintelligible] series from start to finish over the course of a weekend." That's a lot of time, that's a lot of attention, and that's not fleeting, that's not 10-second, that's not coming at you a 10, 30-second clip. So, it's weird, it's like we're—we're seeing both.

And so it's almost like there's—when these things occur, right, these new forms, everything's fast, and it's got to be quick and hook people, and it's like there's a deeper sort of drive towards this longer-form content and a deeper knowledge and understanding. And people now going, I mean, look at even the latest presidential election, a lot of people are crediting part of the success of of of Trump and his team was that him and and and JD Vance were going on these podcasts and they were talking for hours at a time. Because a five-minute interview, what do you really learn in a five-minute interview unless you're keeping it very specific to one specific policy or one specific stance? Like, you can only get so much. But over an hour, two hours, three hours, well now you get a better understanding of that person and how they think and the way they look at things. And so that was really, really—that that's something that's new, right? We haven't had the ability to do that. But but if you go back, you can go back to FDR's, you know, Fireside Chats, you know, every week that he was putting out for the nation and talking and and and communicating constantly. So, it's like there there's these two sort of diametrically opposed forms that are out there. Um, so that's that's the part that's interesting to me when people make these grandiose claims, or they say, "This is where things are heading." We don't know what's going to be important in five years. We—we don't know what's going to be important in five months.

And and I'll agree with that. I will tell you this, Brian, you—you're very sound argument, really thought-provoking, and that's what you intended, to be provocative. And I agree. I would say this, what is behind the theory of academics? What's behind the theory of higher education? It's to take us and expose us to things that aren't fun—calculus, geometry—because we may have to use those to understand spatially our role in the rest of the world. So, the idea is that this nuanced stuff that's coming at us, and it's fast and all, you know, for example, most people, let's say most people are just reading the headlines rather than reading the content. Well, then they're going to end up searching for those things that align with their views, which means that they're absenting—look, some of the best decisions you'll make in your life are after making a bad decision. You learn from those things. So, the idea is, well, that's why it's out there though, right?

So, so if if God and Buddha, Vishnu and Allah knew enough to give us lessons, and that's what the Bible is, that's what the the Talmud is, that's exactly what the Quran is, there's a series of lessons, then maybe those are important, Brian. Maybe that form of long-form storytelling is important. And what I would say is, let's not drown that baby or throw that baby out with the bath, depending on where you are in the world at this time. Let's make sure that we give it the time that it takes. And when somebody asks what that time is, you know what I say? Probably a million, three years. Am I saying that it's not going to make an impact today or tomorrow? No. It's like Bitcoin. Nobody still understands that, or frangible tokens, or any of the—or fungible, rather, tokens. But the idea is that they've already made an impact societally, but is that going to be a long-term, lingering impact, or is it going to be that flash in the pan? You know the term "flash in the pan"? Two things: from gold mining and also from putting gunpowder and making light while you're taking the old daguerreotype photos. That term is still around, while neither of those other things is still around. So, we just don't know, Brian. We—we don't know. And that's why you and I rely on stuff like science and physics that's much more rigid and in—stood the test of time. When we fully understand that math has limits, and we understand that things like physics change, and when they change and everybody acknowledges the change, I'll be the scientist and step up, and I'll change my used to.

Yeah, um, and this is also, um, you know, when it gets into you—you know, everyone's talking about AI this and AI that, and most people aren't even really talking about AI when they say that stuff. Um, or or they're—

The definition of, right.

Right, right, right. Well, what they think AI is. Well, you know, you look at these different tools and things, and like you got these large language models, and and I highly just everyone, um, use them and and get to understand ChatGPT so then, and those things, because you'll understand the limitations. And it's great for going on LinkedIn after you use that stuff for a while, because you can see how much just made-up AI material really is on there and people posting [unintelligible]. And it's like, "Oh, you just put this [unintelligible] prompt into ChatGPT, and you didn't even bother taking out some of the keywords that it always uses, or the formatting. You literally just copied and pasted it." But that's that that's that's a different one.

But, um, you know, those tools are very good at at—they're very—they have a deep, deep, deep knowledge in one area. Whereas humans, um, you know, we have the ability to reason, and we have, um, like maybe our level or of understanding isn't deep in in a lot of areas, but but it's it's it—we have a a large amount of a wide amount of things that we can learn and understand and conceptualize. So, you're interested in sports, you have your job, you have your hobbies, you have your family, you have your this. Each one, because the more of those things you have and do, like the—the—the less sort of expertise you can have in all of them. Well, these different tools now it's most technologies are, it's like this deep level of expertise in one thing. So, it can't really conceptualize going from that one thing over into another area like we can as humans because of the whole process we just took an hour to explain, right? Because of everything that we just talked about that allows us to go into new, novel circumstances and not go, "I don't know, I wasn't programmed for this." It's like, "Yeah, you were, and you can get better this your entire effing life. You just didn't know you were. You just didn't know that that's what your brain is is organizing things for is for that unknown." And it's just—it's just a very—it's based on primitive rules, and if you haven't been taught or learned in some way, whether formally or informally, been trained in something, it's going to fall back on some basic, basic processing and basic, basic rules.

And so what we want people to do is understand the basic rules, right? Understand what you can't break, what you can't change, how things are going to be, right? So, I have a deep foundational knowledge of that. And then understand that you have all of these other experiences in life. I don't care how—I don't care if you're eight years old and that's the only experience you have is at your house and in your neighborhood and go to school. You have lessons that you can draw from. You have experiences that you've had that you can then say, "Well, this is kind of cognitively close enough to something I've experienced before. What did I use back at that experience that can help me through this one?" Right? What can I do? So, if I'm not unpacking those different experiences, my meaning, if I go back and do that, it makes my—in a sense, and not for the scientist listening, don't you—you understand what I'm saying, I'm—I'm oversimplifying, but like it sort of gets me better at that orientation. It gets me better at the recognition. It gets me better at the sensemaking. It gets me better at understanding and problem-solving, and sort of like helps and increases my functional field of view in a way. You can't physiologically get it bigger, but you can in a sense of knowing what's important to identify and what's not important is just as good. I mean, even if you just know, "All right, I don't know everything here, but I know these things don't matter." Well, you've just reduced your cognitive load. You've just—you—you've just made your ability to sensemake in that environment that much better, that much faster, and that much easier.

So, so it's—it's whether it's learning something new or learning what you don't have to do and what you have to focus on. It's like that's why we talk about focusing on the—here's the things that matter, right? Here's the things that we don't know if it matters, but maybe it's interesting, right? Oh, this is past interesting, this is now an anomaly. Wait a minute, there's multiple anomalies here. Hang on, all stop. Stop. What—what to orient? Can I can I grab some time and distance here and figure out the next step and determine likely outcomes based on what I know now? And that all starts with everything we discussed in here today. And then it doesn't just happen at that micro level, me individually making my way through the world. It's at that macro level, then how we share that information with others, how it gets processed, how we orient as societally, right? As a family, as a team, what are we orienting towards? Because that that you actually can—you can put a mark on the wall and and you're never—you're never going to be 100% right, but you don't have to be. You just have to be more right than you are wrong, right? And we can say, "All right, Greg, we're going to orient towards this for today or this week or for the company or for this strategy. This is how we're going to orient things." And and from there, your brain can go, "All right, if I have a general end state in mind, what how what do I want the outcome of the situation to be?" I can orient towards that ideal outcome and and then work my way towards it. Now, track my performance with a pen and a yellow pad. And then and then if the situation is overwhelmingly forcing me in a different direction, well now I know, "Hey, it's not headed towards the most likely outcome. It's heading towards the most dangerous. It's—it's heading somewhere else. So, either A, I'm—"

Strategy. Exactly. What—what—what am I—

Mitigation. That's not management. Management is is saying, "Well, it's going to happen, it's inevitable, and I'm going to deal with it." Mitigation is fixing it. It's changing it before—

And you're exactly right, in stride, when new and incoming information might not be favorable to the likely outcome. That's it. You—you—you—you hit the nail on the head. So what?

No, yeah, what's the so what, right? So, what's the so what, Greg, of of everything we discussed, because we mean—

Give three. I—I got three gifts. I like a lot. So, this is my three Christmas gifts that I'm giving to everybody, okay? Let's talk instinct and intuition for 10 seconds. Instinct everybody has, but it's a prompt. It's just a push, it's a, "Hey, it's a whisper." You have to do something with it, so it's just a prompt, it's not going to save you.

One of the things they can do with that, Greg, is go back to one of our previous episodes, it's called "Instinct Versus Intuition." So, just just want to shout that out for us right there.

And so intuition is something learned that we develop over time, but don't make the mistake, instinct has to be tuned as well. Okay, that's your first gift. Second gift, I got it here somewhere. Yeah. Brian said, "Learning something new," and I love it. And what I wrote down, "Learning something old." You want to get better for New Year's? Yeah, go back and pick a concept and go back and deep dive it. Find out how much you were off the mark from the muzzle to the target. Find out what your Kentucky windage took over in your brain and how you're not cognitively close enough anymore. So, I would call that learning something old, and that that'd be a great sound, but I can already see a couple of our friends jumping on that one. So, so I want—

So, I want an old priest and a young priest is what you're saying.

Well, that's my last furry convention in a nutshell. And the final one, Brian, is what price virtual reality? You know, I constantly bang on virtual reality. That's got punching me in the nose right there for being a wise guy. And what I mean by that is what was the idea of virtual reality? What's your idea of virtual reality? If you're talking about costing less money and everybody has availability so I can do unlimited practice on my own to get better, that's my idea of virtual reality. If you're making something that's so finely tuned with fidelity and colors and lights and flash and and it's so expensive, I got to take out a loan to buy one for my agency, and I can still only get one person through at a time, that's not virtual reality. It doesn't have to mimic reality identically. What it does is we have mirror neurons for that. What it does is it has to allow me perfect practice or close to perfect correctable practice a number of times for that same low dollar amount. It's got to be cognitively close enough, and once it is, I'll learn. So, you take the high-price one and you take a low-price one, and if the low-price one gives the same outcomes, Brian, I will opt for the low-price one every time. That's my two cents. That's what burns my—grinds my gears. Know what grinds my gears?

Yeah, and and the key—the key word there is, um, is is is outcomes. Um, the we are not, as humans, sort of—we don't fully understand outcomes. We go into this thing, we go into—we make decisions based off of of actions, not outcomes, right? Meaning we look at what actions are happening or what actions I need to take, and maybe that's tied to some intent or some some motive to, you know, in a sense. Um, but we—we don't always take into account outcomes. And this is what I was thinking about, um, after our discussion about the whole Luigi Mangione kid who who killed the the United Healthcare CEO, and the social—the just the—the response to all that, right, society. And I was like, "What the [unintelligible] is wrong with people?" Like, because because, first of all, I get it if you don't care about the guy, and you're like, "Whatever, some dude got smoked. I don't [unintelligible] know him." Okay, that's fine. That's—that's actually kind of a normal way to look at things, like, in a sense, like, "Hey, this didn't affect me," like, at least I get that at at a primitive level. Um, and it didn't affect your life in any way. But that the thing is, is Luigi Mangione was thinking about him and his world and what he thought and how he interpreted it and said, "This is what it is," because what was the outcome? You got there. All right, you—you didn't—you think you changed something? You think you—you—you brought attention to something that people didn't already know about? You think it's going to change that there? Because I'm going to tell you exactly what's going to happen is now every healthcare company, every senior executive's, "Well, I guess they're going to bump up their security," which means that's going to increase their cost. You think they're going to take that out of their [unintelligible] paycheck? No, they're not. They're going to pass it on to the customers, right?

But I compare that to, you know, the September 11th attacks, Greg. Well, what was the outcomes of that? Changed the [unintelligible] world! And and did did they achieve what they wanted? They didn't care how many people they killed that day. What did they want to do? They wanted to drag us into a long [unintelligible] protracted war, and believe—you know what I mean? Like, they got the outcomes they wanted. And and and so, so it's I—and I—I use these examples because they're relevant, and people people look at them, but I'm like, "No, no, no, think about that. Your individual things, whether it's training or whether it's a situation you're in, it's like the outcome is the most important part." So, you may be working really, really hard on something that's very complicated and tough and and you think you're doing really well, but but you're—you're focused on the actions that you're performing, not the actual outcomes. The outcome should define what that action is, what the path it is that you take. It's you start there with what is the best way to do this or what is the outcome that I want? And so if I focus on that one, I get you back to your training and investments stuff, it's like, one, I—I obviously get more bang for my buck that way. And it helps me figure out and do the cost-benefit analysis of something of an action that I'm going to take, because that's an investment, and that's your time and money.

And that's the biggest thing. It's it's none of this is about money or funding, because there's plenty of it out there, and when people get on board with something, that [unintelligible] opens up, and all of a sudden there's plenty of money for something. And the problem is we spend it all on stuff and not necessarily get any return on that. So, it's not about the money, it's about time. And people don't—we human beings are lazy, right? We don't want to take the time to plan this out or think this out or or or recognize the potential spirals of a situation because that's hard. It's complex, right? We don't know everything, right? And and and something can come along and change, you know, it like you said, we don't know what's—I said we don't know what it's going to be in five years. You said, "No, we don't know where it's going to be in five months." It's like, "Yeah, [unintelligible] yeah, you're right." Because a natural disaster could occur that, you know, California breaks off and falls into the ocean, which I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't care, but, you know, I live here, so I would. Um, do you see what I'm getting at though?

I do. I do. So, let's let's street it up one final time before the holidays, Brian. You live in California, is that true?

Yes. And you understand—wait, are you—are you deposing me right now?

I'm deposing you, Brian. I would not answer any questions about attorney-privilege. You have an attorney coming on Sunday.

Um, what an attorney.

So, do you understand what a rip current is?

Yes.

So, a rip current perfectly explains, folks, look it up if you don't know what Brian was talking about. If you're in the water during a rip current, and you just go through a lot of flapping your arms and kicking your feet, the outcome is you're still going to die. So, there's a couple of simple things that you have to do to fight a rip current for the outcome to survive and get back to shore. So, all all of that motion that you think, "I'm strong and I'm tough and I'm smart and I'm going to just swim my ass off and I'm likely to get out of this," doesn't matter to a rip current. The rip current doesn't know you. So, that's the problem that we're facing. What problem are you solving? What are you working towards? And all that work you're doing, it's noble, but if it's not outcome-based, we have a specific problem with that. We don't have a general problem with that because generally we think that everybody is noble and is doing the right thing. But we have a specific problem if it doesn't move the dial. If all of the stuff that you're doing doesn't move the dial, I would say reassess your priorities.

Yeah, that's a—as usual, you're—you're great at streeting it up and giving those uh sort of live—

Living on the street, Brian. This is all a stage. Behind stage, I'm right now, yeah, it's cold. You can see my breath if I turn sideways. I'm outside. It's horrible. It's horrible for the holidays. Poor Lanny, I'm sitting in Lanny's truck right now recording this, getting that free Wi-Fi from the McDonald's across the street.

Exactly. God, it's our life. You were talking about, "Oh, when a good idea comes around, there's money." Neither Brian and I have money, so we would like some, please send it. So, so we—we—we got into a lot. Um, there's there's any—God, even some of the concepts—this is the tough part about this, is talking about some of these. And because they're all complex, um, topics that kind of, you know, they—they all interplay with one one another. But you—you—you can't just just learning the under—or learning the science behind it or understanding the complexity of it doesn't always help me, right? I want to keep things simple, right? And that's why we said, "Well, what's what are you trying to achieve here? What's the outcome you want? And are your actions and thoughts and beliefs, are they aligned with that? Because if they're not, then then you're never going to get to that outcome even with the best intentions in mind," you know. So, um, there's a lot in here, so what what I would love is if if you're still listening at this point, an hour and 20 minutes in—

You mean me or do you mean like people listening to us?

Hilarious. Exactly. Um, you know, calling by the way. Oh, God. Oh, jeez, don't don't. Why you got you got to throw that flashbang into the room. Um, so the, you know, reach out with questions, comments, ask us about it. I know our Patreon folks, we'll always get to you first. Um, and we can have a further on discussions on there. But any of these things, you know, I to pick it apart, go, "What the hell did you mean by this?" Or, "Why are you saying it this way?" Or, "What is that?" Because that's how we can, uh, uh, really parse out some of these details for some of you who are really interested in it. If you're not interested and you're not—you're not listening at this point, so I don't care. But, uh, but, you know, you reach out to us so we can answer those questions and we get on here and talk about it. That that that's the thing I would ask. And then, um, you know, also, you know, have a have a safe and wonderful Christmas and New Year and holidays, all that too, because this could be a contentious time for some people and families and and travel is—

Talking about himself right now. And his family's coming in. The plane is landing soon.

I, you know, my coping mechanisms are alcohol, so I'm fine, right? I—I know that, you know, I can just have some drinks. My family—my family isn't the one getting up and doing the 5K Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving. You know, that's not us. That's not how we do things.

So, what Brian is telling you folks is he sets his expectations very low, and he always accomplishes them.

You know, the only thing I do is I—I just try to take as much off of my wife's plate as possible, and I try to do as much as I can and let her actually relax for the holidays. I'm literally like, "I'm cooking every meal. I'll get this. I'll take my parents around. I'll—like, you do you, and you hang out. You watch your watch your, you know, Real Housewives of Whatever. Take care of Max. I'll—I'll—I'll take care of this situation." And we'll divide and conquer.

Thinking, "Buddy, you're the alt on the show for that one."

Well, it's it's self-preservation, really, is what it is. So, all right, well, I appreciate Greg. You know, appreciate you giving the explanations and talk about this one. This is the interesting ones for me, I know that that I like getting into, but it doesn't always translate well sometimes to the to the audience or to to people listening. You know, it's always hard to tell, you know, what part they want to glam onto. So, I appreciate you breaking this stuff down and the way you did. So, um, any any any final words, uh, Greg?

Yeah, real quick, and you know, all the Merry Christmas, Happy New Year stuff that Brian said. But the person in your life, and that may or may not be you, that can collect vital information more quickly is the one that's likely to survive and prosper during during a challenging encounter. Replay that a couple of times.

Yeah, it's all about information. And so orientation is a prompt to gather better information more quickly. That's what this episode's been about.

Yeah.

Great final words. I appreciate it. So, thanks everyone for tuning in. We do appreciate it. If you enjoyed the episode, please share, share it with a friend. You know, give us a thumbs up, give us give us a a review on whatever podcast platform you're listening to. Reach out to us, connect. Uh, we appreciate it. You always hit us up on LinkedIn, is actually a good one for that. Um, besides all the other 95% of the [unintelligible] that's on there is [unintelligible] junk, but, uh, uh—

Well, it's gotten pretty bad.

Feel bad about Grossman now. It's gotten pretty bad recently. Um, but anyway, uh, we thank everyone for tuning in, and don't forget that training changes behavior.