Episode 205: Making Your Nervous System Your Ally (William James on "Habit")

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad and psychologist Dave Pizarro having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] To answer your question what I'm trying to do is be righteous and when I say righteous I don't mean God, you know God righteous. I mean just when I wake up I know I was honest to myself. You know what I mean?

[00:01:16] Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave today Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States of America. Be honest did you cry again? Did you cry?

[00:01:35] No, I had the glorious opportunity of having like not a single real emotion. I think I said this before, I love being back to apathy. It's like never did I think that a status quo establishment politician would bring me like anything close to pleasure it's had.

[00:01:56] But I did see Lady Gaga. What a signal. Lady Gaga and J.Lo performing. They're already in their performative mode. The QAnon people really thought like this was going to be the time that all those people would just be rounded up.

[00:02:16] You know like there'd be mass arrests of Biden and Harris but also like John Roberts and- Right, like what went wrong? Right and it's interesting like there's a couple of articles about how they're kind of dealing with this. How do they reconcile their beliefs?

[00:02:33] I'm sure they'll find a way. Oh, they'll find a way. I mean famously when Leon Festinger wrote the book on cognitive dissonance he used the example of- I used a number of examples but one of them I think was William Miller here

[00:02:47] in the mid 1800s who in upstate New York preached that Jesus was coming in like 1833 or 1844 and everybody sold their possessions and got on the rooftops with robes and nothing happened. Out of that came Seventh Day Adventism which is the religion that I grew up in.

[00:03:06] So they found a way- Out of like nothing happening? That's what came- Yeah, out of like and they even call it the great disappointment. And then they just went back and said oh like we did the numerology wrong.

[00:03:17] We misinterpreted these super esoteric prophecies and numbers from the book of Daniel and then when they re- then they're like oh no we got it, we got it. We figured it out. Like so of course they're going to find something you know.

[00:03:30] There's just no hope for humanity when it comes to changing their minds about shit. It's not about- Yeah because what's the alternative? It's like you go back to your life where everything's meaningless and bullshit and you're struggling and you're isolated and all your family like hates you now.

[00:03:47] Yeah, like who would say fuck man I was wrong for like three years about all of this. Right. I mean there were like a few on the message board it's like I'm a laughing stock right now. I'm on the queue and on message board.

[00:04:01] I know what you mean who said that? I didn't say that, you said that. You were on it. What are you talking about? I hope you're using our VPN. NordVPN when you go to the Q&A. No, I was just reading articles.

[00:04:19] You could say something that right before we started recording something that scared me a little bit which is we were talking about our episode on conspiracy theories and you said something about how you've been reading more into them. So I don't know what to believe.

[00:04:32] Yes, and I think there's a lot of truth to what's going on and actually for the last five or six episodes there are coded messages in all of those episodes. You're blinking except for that you know this is an audio only podcast so like everybody's

[00:04:49] missed out on your blinking. A lot of people complain about my mic you know like I sometimes go far away from my mic and then I'm right up to it and so that's a little pattern to absolutely look for it listener. You'll find what you're looking for.

[00:05:08] I thought you were like pausing frames of my video to look for scales to see if I'm one of the. I think I already know that you are so I don't have to do that. I would love to be a lizard people. A lizard person? Yes.

[00:05:23] Or would you be multiple? I am multiple. You're like a kid though he thinks he's people he thinks he's lizard people. I saw today in the New York Times I was looking I didn't have time to watch the inauguration

[00:05:38] because I'm scrambling to prepare for classes but on the New York Times this was the on the front page this was a headline. Biden has a Peloton bike that raises issues at the White House.

[00:05:50] So like that's the kind of headline now that you're going to get to hear what are we going to do about Biden's Peloton bike? Yeah, it was such a weirdly quick adjustment back to like this is a mundane like you know Obama's tan suit right?

[00:06:09] It's like oh well let's just act like the last four years didn't happen. There's a great picture of Bernie and his mittens just kind of sitting there looking like I think Paul tweeted it out like he's waiting for his wife in some department store. Oh poor Bernie.

[00:06:27] Oh God he should be there he should have been sworn in today. Well you know unlike you I actually am opposed to communism so. Definitely unlike me. So what are we talking about today? In the second segment we're talking about William James and his chapter on habit from

[00:06:46] the principles of psychology which I'd like to say I was going to say I wish I had read as a young person but I did read it for the first time and so like I don't have any excuse

[00:07:00] but it is I don't think I fully understood its importance. You may have to be an older person to recognize its wisdom but by that time it's too late.

[00:07:11] Yeah I read it in graduate school as part of a class so like I you know reading for a class is a way of reading that I don't usually do so I really liked it I don't know. Yeah it's great.

[00:07:24] First though there is a new breakthrough in neuroscience that we should talk about. Breakthrough in science, a breakthrough in science. It's just generally that was done by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. And the Ohio State University. And this is I've lost the title.

[00:07:51] It's political humor sharing and remembering colon insights from neuroimaging. Yes so what are the insights from neuroimaging? The brain is involved. Very complicated ways. They wanted to find out whether humorous news stories compared to non-humorous news stories

[00:08:14] so like the same exact news story told in a humorous way or not would one be remembered better, two be more likely to be shared and three is the neuroimaging part which

[00:08:26] is trying to find out whether I guess their goal was to figure out what was driving the increased memory and sharing and what they argue is that the part of the brain that's involved in thinking about other people's mental states is activated during humorous

[00:08:47] clips more than during non-humorous clips and that that is somehow indicating people's desire to share them. Like it makes it socially relevant in some way. I guess it's really hard because this is all correlational right but I guess the story they

[00:09:03] want to tell is oh it was a funny story my brain then starts thinking about other people finding it funny which then leads me to want to share it but it could very easily be

[00:09:15] it's funny I know Tamler would like this and since I'm thinking what Tamler would like then that's the part of my brain that gets activated so I can't really say anything. Or it could be that that's total bullshit that part of the brain gets activated when

[00:09:29] right I mean like in that way like that's really something that it's tracking. These are huge areas of the brain that are involved in all kinds of cognition and you know and so they these regions include the dorsal middle and ventral

[00:09:46] medial prefrontal cortex which like is just almost everything that's about social cognition. So who knows like what it's really finding but above and beyond I mean this is something we've said so many times but like really what's interesting is if people want to share it

[00:10:03] right like that's and if they remember it and if they remember it but their measure I don't know if you saw this but their measure of whether people shared it their so-called behavioral

[00:10:12] measure is just a seven point scale that says how likely would you be to share this story? Oh so it's not even like they yeah no and and what's really annoying to me is that from then on

[00:10:23] even though they say well like these are just intentions to share and then they say like but intentions to share have been in other studies correlated with actual sharing. The Ponzi scheme. For the rest of the article they refer to it as actual sharing

[00:10:42] and that's just not like I it's super annoying but I guess people so this is the part that that at least I give them credit for. They actually got two actors to read news stories

[00:10:55] that were either written they got actual comedy writers they say and they had 128 clips half 64 featured one actor 64 featured another actor each of them read 32 humorous and 32 non-humorous versions of the stories and and they had everybody listen to these or watch these in one study just

[00:11:15] like out in the in the lab in another one while they were in fmri but like here's the thing don't we already know like can we just look at facebook and see what stories are shared isn't that the ultimate like metric of what's shared like what's actually shared

[00:11:33] doesn't make any so I mean right so there's so many things right so there's like that there's that there's you know like I guess they're also doing a behavioral test to see whether people

[00:11:46] actually remember the content of the story and people yeah it turns out people do remember the humor stuff more right yeah and I have stuff to say about that afterwards yeah but then again

[00:11:55] it's like so both the things sharing likelihood to share and then the memory thing those are behavioral measures the fmri stuff is is either supposed to find the mechanism but that's but it sounds like

[00:12:10] that's pure speculation or just confirm that this is actually what's happening um and I think that's like another that's that's a big issue with why neuroscience is involved with this at

[00:12:22] all just what does this have to do with neuroscience and I saw like this was originally shared on our reddit um our subreddit but it came from a different reddit and somebody had a great line about this

[00:12:35] they said it's like going into a cloud with a microscope to prove it's raining yeah and that's like I think a really good analogy for what a lot of these things are doing

[00:12:46] it's like we have the evidence right here it's like you I mean with the behavioral measures or like even more directly just with how like the articles are shared like what's the likelihood of

[00:12:57] a certain kind of article to be shared you have all that data and then you keep going to like smaller and smaller microscopic levels to try to demonstrate it or prove that it's real or provide something more concrete and that's where the that's so misguided and so common

[00:13:14] yeah like okay suppose that there is an area of the brain that does and only does reasoning about other people's mental states like suppose that we had somehow localized that um and then suppose that we could go in with like transcranial magnetic stimulation and turn off that region

[00:13:35] we would show I guess that people would not have the intention to share the news story like what what that adds I am just not sure like and that would be the ideal situation in which you

[00:13:47] would study this so so I mean there's just there's just reverse inference all the way around this is the kind of you know like this is like these are professors of communication so I don't know

[00:14:01] if they've gotten the memo about reverse inference not you know but I hope we're moving on you hope we're moving on from this kind of reverse difference but why do you think they

[00:14:11] involved fmri like from a sociological level why involve fmri in a in a study where it just seems utterly irrelevant or perhaps even just kind of a distortion or a distraction you know I obviously can't speak for these authors but I will like to maybe answer your

[00:14:32] question I've never collaborated with an on an fmri study but here's the closest I've come and here's why so it'll be like I'll be talking to a colleague about an idea I have say about like um discussed

[00:14:46] and moral judgment and they also happen to do social neuroscience and so they say oh you know it would be interesting we could toss people into an fmri and like see this or this and

[00:14:58] then like me 10 years ago perks up and says oh like cool like that would be that would like give us brain data right and and so so the temptation for me was never now I'll get to

[00:15:13] find out something that I didn't know before but again like maybe my neuroscience colleague might consider it a real like but behavioral way to look at something in the brain that

[00:15:25] they hadn't looked at before maybe you know me and they could learn something about the brain that way so they're not trying to like add information about the phenomenon they're just looking to connect something to their science research or something like that if this is going to be

[00:15:44] real contentious if they're good perfect but like you know some of my best friends did like this for 10 years you know and uh I mean I we I think we were interested in the

[00:15:55] Josh Green stuff like I know I was you know that the and now if that if if that came out like oh the areas of the brain are associated with emotion is where what makes you be a

[00:16:08] deontologist I would think it was ridiculous but at the time there is something kind of so there is like a pull to this stuff but it also feels like that was when it was newer

[00:16:20] and now it's it's it's not anymore and people have been pointing this out for for a long time and it still seems like it's rewarded to add this stuff maybe for grants maybe just for public

[00:16:32] interest maybe I mean you see people all the time just say like this is not just like it's not just like a habit this is actually like built into your brain yeah it's it's like that's

[00:16:43] that makes it real if it's built into your brain you know it's it's not just some fleeting thing this is like a part of you it's it's so funny because when we get to the William James Parr and

[00:16:54] he talks about the brain a little bit in a way that like seems more sober than like the way we've talked about the brain for the last 20 years it's like he just accepted just like like yeah

[00:17:08] like brains do this shit so like it's good to learn about brains like nobody's saying that we shouldn't but but here it's like it's it's unclear now it might add any information about the phenomenon no it might add value when like brain scientists are looking across all

[00:17:22] all studies to see well I want to know what the heel prefrontal cortex does and so then they look across all studies to see what people found and maybe this will be you know

[00:17:33] like one of those studies that they can add to the pile but I but that's certainly not the goal of this right paper the other thing I want to say is like taking neuroscience aside

[00:17:44] now I'm always wanting to say even if it's an obvious idea we should test it but that people would be more likely to remember humorous things than non-humorous things seems to border so much on the trivial that or at least on something that we know well already

[00:18:00] like we know we've known for a long time that emotional things are more likely to be remembered than non-emotional things like did you was that surprising at all to you no not at all but I'm

[00:18:10] amazed almost stunned to hear you say this because this is something you usually resist but yeah no of course not like I mean for the for all of like the obama years everyone

[00:18:21] was talking about how young people got their news from john stewart and that's the only way that they had any idea what was going on and you know people are constantly sharing the john oliver's stuff

[00:18:33] and but you know at the same time people are constantly sharing cnn right like I mean kind of but not to the same degree at least for a while on facebook it's but I've there were those

[00:18:45] there was a time where those shows really were I don't know at their peak and then and I was on facebook more but you'd constantly get people sharing john oliver or or john stewart yeah

[00:18:58] now I think people are a little rightly annoyed by some of these shows I don't think john donald trump was good for them but you know there are actually there is

[00:19:08] a lot of good work on the role of emotion and memory like a ton a ton of good work stuff that is even about the brain that is not fmri work like that that is actually experimental like I'm sure I've

[00:19:22] mentioned this but one of my favorite favorite studies is you give people a list of words to learn after they learn that list of words you have them dunk their arm in ice bucket and that successfully gets their emotions going or not or they don't dunk their their

[00:19:41] arm in ice bucket and people who dunk their arm in an ice bucket are better more likely to remember that list of words and it turns out that that is mediated by amygdala activation so like emotions

[00:19:53] are kicking in helping that memory set in and there you know when you do it in an experimental way and use MRI just as like a measure not as the main what do you mean as a measure as a measure

[00:20:06] of emotional so yeah here they used the manipulation of emotion of like the cold presser test so that the manipulation experimentally people randomly assigned to get that that was the heart of the methodology and then they could measure memory right so they could see whether or not

[00:20:23] that had an effect on memory and then they measured amygdala activation just as another way to understand the emotional arousal right so so there it's it's adding something it's not the central measure of emotion like there's a manipulation and it's not the central

[00:20:39] dependent variable it's not the study can stand alone without the fmri part because you know that when you stick your arm in ice water your emotions are around yeah and doing it afterwards

[00:20:51] kind of you know it's like it's a very clever yeah yeah that's a cool study yeah and not necessarily something you would predict right unlike this yeah exactly exactly but i guess it is

[00:21:05] i mean i it seems like you could criticize what you're describing as going into a cloud with the microscope to prove that it's raining you know their emotions are activated so what is that adding to show amygdala activation there i think it was actually adding like which

[00:21:21] which part of the brain is most implicated in consolidating those memories or like on encoding those memories so so there i think they weren't just using amygdala as a measure of emotion but rather they were as neuroscientists interested in which which part of the brain is actually

[00:21:36] getting that memory to to uh to let me sort permanently um so they had like a genuine neuroscientific interest in in in a finding that we had had for already probably 20 years that emotions

[00:21:49] play a role in memory um but it was just yeah we need to have like the best defender of neuroscience and neuroscientific approaches on and um and see if you know they need they can tell us

[00:22:05] what we're missing about some of this yeah sometimes i'll go to conferences like social psych conferences and people will like uh like they'll be they'll people who do social neuroscience

[00:22:14] will be like man you're too hard on it or whatever like you can and they'll actually argue with me but they're never right so like i yeah we need some i mean i don't think they're gonna be right

[00:22:22] even the the the best one but at least i'm sure there's something that we're being unfair about there's something that we're missing we're not there's no way that like our constant

[00:22:33] scoring just unrelenting contempt for this research is uh is fully on target at this point though i think what what you were alluding to is that it's just sociologically annoying like it's just

[00:22:46] it's just like the thing to do if you have access to a big magnet right it's the thing to do to just get people interested in do it and in what you're saying and to make it make people think

[00:22:57] that this is an actual real result that we have to take seriously yeah and not some bullshit social psych you know result it's uh it's in the brain it's funny i used to like i guess there are a bunch of

[00:23:11] these sorts of things and like to be honest using robots is one of those things that just makes things sound more interesting you know right i've been guilty of that i remember a friend of mine

[00:23:20] who's in in engineering he does materials engineering he used to tell me that like there was a period of time where all you had to do was put the prefix nano in your grant application

[00:23:30] and like it would get so even if it was like a million nanometers as long as you use the word nano yeah get funding and then of course like once you even if that's your original motive you

[00:23:43] start to tell yourself that it actually is important but still i i just want people i used to ask this about the knowledge debate and philosophy i would go around just asking people like give me a

[00:23:55] defense of this tell me why this isn't the most obvious pseudo problem in the history of the world and i never got a good answer yeah we are perhaps ill-suited for being receptive to good answers

[00:24:06] so like we really do need to find somebody who will take us to task i used to ask something similar like what give me a fmr study that has contributed to psychological theory

[00:24:17] and it's not like people have given me decent answers which i don't remember but it is surprisingly hard like the ratio of the number of fmr studies to the to the number of ones that pop out in

[00:24:30] someone's mind as a candidate for like having improved psychological theory is depressing well maybe if they were presented humorously uh you would remember them more that's right that's right i remember you getting into a huge argument with a friend of the show eddy namious about

[00:24:44] this uh in san antonio and pizza place outside in san antonio uh and it was about this very issue i think like he was a little more he wasn't even that sympathetic to some of the stuff but he was

[00:24:57] just a little more sympathetic slightly and i'm like talking to shon nichols was there too and we're sort of talking about something else and all of a sudden you guys are yelling at each other

[00:25:05] yeah fuck eddy namious no i i think that you disengage because you had eaten an edible i'm sorry or you were smoking on your vape or something and you were just not amused

[00:25:16] well i was just like i this is not going to end well you know another problem with these things and these kinds of studies i would say the supplies to at least a significant portion of just regular

[00:25:27] psychology um is that there's no consequences if it's if it's just completely off base or if it doesn't work to tally arcone the like the informed critic like to my just uninformed critic of

[00:25:43] psychology was he said that you know like there's these other areas of research in the sciences where if you get something wrong like something's gonna fuck up like planes will explode or go

[00:25:54] down or you but there's no pressure on that in neuroscience or some areas of brains will stop working exactly fuck it wasn't the rtj after all it was so you have no real pressure like you

[00:26:09] know like studies cannot replicate but that's still just internal to the world of what you're of what you're doing there's nothing external to it that will um you know have any serious consequences if if it doesn't work i think that's definitely true of the neuroscience stuff

[00:26:25] but that must be true for most science i think the problem is probably deeper than that right like yeah we can easily think of all of the sciences where it matters but you know if you're

[00:26:32] studying cellular membranes of like you know amoeba or something i mean where it does matter is philosophy like that's where if you have the wrong philosophy like a country will just enter

[00:26:44] like 150 years of you know do you think any fascism do you think i would like to get a philosopher who who believes that um philosophy is contributing to truth now i actually thought

[00:26:57] that same thing that you're saying um how true is this i think yarkoni gave the example of like engineering like where it's the obvious case of like you know a bridge collapses or something if

[00:27:09] you're wrong but you know what about these other fields um physics or biology i mean parts of biology i suppose that could have seri you know certainly like anything involved in developing

[00:27:22] vaccines say or um yeah i mean the minute you take any basic science and and turn it into to an applied problem and maybe different fields have different like you know they're relatively harder or easier to turn into an applied problem um you know i mean let's take

[00:27:40] nudges in in behavioral science like that's kind of the engineering of behavioral science and we can really fuck those up um is i think we've shown but it also but it always like it never seems

[00:27:53] to totally trace back to um this is like economics is like this too like they i'm sure economic ideas has have led to disaster uh even you know false economic ideas based on overly simplistic

[00:28:06] models of like human behavior and choices in agency but it's like there's always a way to sort of spin it where they didn't actually perform according to the model it's like it is the

[00:28:20] QAnon of science right like once it turns out trickle down economics doesn't really work well we never quite meant it that way that was based on a misunderstanding of the original text it is

[00:28:33] it is like so yeah science is a conspiracy oh god you're finally seeing the light yeah i have never been more gratified all right all right let's uh take a break and we'll come back

[00:28:49] and talk about a great piece of psychology by william james hey dav you know how we sometimes do episodes about issues in physics but we have no clue what we're talking about i don't know what

[00:29:03] you're talking about my my intuitions about physical reality run really really deep but yes yes well there's a podcast uh where they actually know what they're talking about by physicists talking to physicists called physical attraction that we wanted to give a little

[00:29:21] plug to yeah physical attraction is a podcast about science technology in the future and it's all from an actual physicists perspective physical attraction basically does a deep dive like he does a ton of research um he interviews experts and scholars uh it covers a huge range of topics

[00:29:40] in physics astronomy cosmology so from the birth of stars to the ways the world might end from nuclear fusion and artificial intelligence to economic inequality climate change and cosmology from the hundred billion dollar venture venture capital fund trying to accelerate the technological

[00:29:58] singularity a little worried about that one i was going to say i hope that the hundred billion dollars is to prevent this interview from interviews with uh the uk's astronomer royal

[00:30:10] who i wanted to say martin reese martin reese is like he is like the lady gaga of astronomy he is you can't get bigger than him i had a chance to meet him once would he would he uh

[00:30:22] be flattered by that comparison he should be he should be lady gaga would be um uh and it was a really really wonderful interview with martin reese who's you know who's nearing the end of

[00:30:33] his life but who has written a ton of of broad interest books and who has had a real role in the way that major governments deal with science a lot of science podcasts like real science not

[00:30:47] ours are super overproduced and there's lots of like you know music coming in and out and everybody sounds like they're in an mpr station this isn't like that but in a good way um thomas actually

[00:31:01] in some episodes just sits there and explains things so it's sort of a breath of fresh air yeah so um check out don't let it replace your vbw listening but compliment your vbw listening so

[00:31:18] you can then say oh they don't know shit i can't believe i i can't believe i believed them go to physics podcast dot com and you can see all of the episodes he has like 200 episodes it would be

[00:31:33] a good addition to your podcast diet so once again go to physics podcast dot com or type in physical attraction wherever it is that you listen to podcasts and it'll come up and thank you to physical attraction for sponsoring this episode

[00:32:32] welcome back to very bad wizards this is the time in the show that we like to take a moment to thank all of our listeners all of our supporters for just your support and your

[00:32:42] interaction with us and your contribution to this show because whether you know it or not hearing from you keeps us motivated to do what we do so we very much appreciate that if you do

[00:32:55] want to get ahold of us you can email us at very bad wizards at gmail dot com you can always tweet to us at very bad wizards at tamler or at peas if you want to join in a discussion with

[00:33:08] fellow listeners you can go to reddit.com slash r slash very bad wizards where you'll see lively discussions and interesting things posted interesting things posted in fact um at tamler i don't know

[00:33:19] do you do do you ever use discord did you see no i don't know what that is but i saw that there people are starting that yeah so somebody you can go to our subreddit and find the post

[00:33:30] somebody whose name i forget i apologize started a discord server just basically a way to chat with other people it's a video audio or text chat of people who are interested in

[00:33:42] similar things so there's now a discord server i don't know how to tell you where to go because i'm very bad at knowing things that kids do but you can also follow our instagram

[00:33:53] wane quasar posted it wane yeah wane and wane is my discord friend so like wane yeah so follow our instagram page you can rate us on apple music and you can leave a review

[00:34:08] yeah i saw a review that pissed me off the other day but did you see that one there was also a great review that i actually wanted to read there was a really good one yeah it touched me

[00:34:16] um well maybe i'll we'll read it next time but uh it was really nice it was like kind of a i don't know like a fairly in depth yeah and very thoughtful the thoughtful account of how the

[00:34:31] podcast has evolved yeah over the years and yeah it was really nice it was really nice and then there's a guy who says like it's fucking too woke you know i was talking to i think paul bloom

[00:34:43] about uh he was saying that he can't believe that the shit that we've said on this podcast and that we get away with and i told him and i think this is right that the angriest emails or messages

[00:34:54] we've ever gotten are from people who think were too social justice like absolutely i would say like 99 percent of them and we and we've said some stuff we've said some shit we've said a lot

[00:35:05] of shit yeah i think it's like but we don't it's it's what agnes collard said like we don't pile on the woke like side enough so it tracks for them as we are like woke and social justice

[00:35:21] because we're not doing what their other heroes like eric winestein do which is just scan everything or like what did i see thomas chatterson williams like literally going to like yelp reviews to find

[00:35:35] like some new like woke thing that they can complain about it was like a yelp a fucking yelp review after after giving you all of the ways to interact with us on social media i'm about to say

[00:35:47] social media is the fucking death of society it's just terrible anyway so uh rate is on apple music if you would like it helps other people find our podcast and you can always listen to us and

[00:35:59] subscribe to our podcast on spotify and thank you for all of those things that you guys do we really appreciate it yes and if you'd like to support us in more tangible ways you can

[00:36:09] give us a one-time or recurring donation on paypal you can get a t-shirt or a sweatshirt the beautiful t-shirt and sweatshirt um and with a great design from cotton bureau so comfortable i've been wearing my my hoodie all the time now and um and you can support us

[00:36:31] on patreon become one of our invaluable patreon supporters they give us ideas for what to talk about and they give us financial support and we appreciate them so much we try to uh put out some bonus

[00:36:47] episodes every month or so dave you have four volumes of beats out there for any level of support also you get ad-free episodes and um you know we're always looking into other ways to

[00:37:01] to try to express our gratitude to the people who are supporting us so we really appreciate that oh one other thing um our five-dollar enough listeners will get directly to them our brothers

[00:37:13] caramats of five episode mini series that we did over the summer and that you can also find and pay for on himalaya on the himalaya app and if anybody has any you know we might do

[00:37:27] something like that again maybe even just on patreon so if anybody has any idea uh any ideas for us yeah a book a book some sort of text interpreted broadly that you would like us to go really deep

[00:37:41] on like we did with brothers caramats of that was fun that was great we could only do it over the summer i think but it was yeah seems like forever ago it does and also like yesterday

[00:37:53] time is a flat circle that's all right true detective nice you got the right um great so all right let's move on to today's topic which is one chapter on uh from william james is

[00:38:12] two volume magnum opus published in 1890 the principles of psychology one and two i'm a one guy what are you which is i'm a one guy but you know like every so often i kind of feel myself

[00:38:28] getting a little tempted towards volume two but so uh we're covering the chapter on on habit and i think the reason that we we did was because hamler you you sent over uh somebody's just sort

[00:38:41] of short discussion of this chapter is that right turns out that i think i think this chapter has been in a very frankfurtian bullshit kind of way like it's also been wrapped up and sold as a book

[00:38:52] yeah absolutely i think it was initially even a chapter the principles is not even where it first appeared because he says in the principles that it appeared in some sort of popular

[00:39:04] magazine of some kind okay um so so yeah william james was a uh he's called the father of american psychology but he was also a philosopher i think best known for his views on pragmatism

[00:39:16] as a theory of truth he was a psychologist first and and actually wrote the principles of psychology i think it took him a decade to write these this two volumes um and and i think the story goes that

[00:39:31] when he was done uh he just said fuck it i'm i'm turning to philosophy from now on um i think he was he was frustrated this is too this is too hard yes it is hard um in this book though along

[00:39:43] with the chapter on habit he sort of has a famous discussion about will and and free will and uh he then wrote about the book on the varieties of religious experience um but this is a real a very

[00:39:58] sort of in-depth and very sort of physiologically medically informed treaties on you know the cutting-edge science of psychology of the day william james was actually trained as an md but you know what he never made us call him doctor no unlike dr jill biden right so in this

[00:40:17] chapter on habit i mean it's it's a fairly straight straightforward discussion of something that clearly is was important to william james which is essentially chapter on learning how we get certain actions to be automatized and he thought that habit was a very important aspect of

[00:40:33] uh just the life of a human being um pragmatically but also morally which gets into a lot of moralizing about how we ought to cultivate the right kinds of habits almost in an Aristotelian way i would say

[00:40:45] yeah very much in an Aristotelian way i think yeah yeah so yeah let's dive into what what james said on habit first of all tell me what what you thought like we both have said we read this

[00:40:55] like way back in the day yeah but upon rereading what were your thoughts well so just generally my thinking about habit these days both moral habits and regular habits is along the lines of this is

[00:41:10] the most important and underexplored topic in psychology and philosophy like we don't pay attention to the centrality of habits in our lives and i think Aristotle when you say that this is Aristotelian i think Aristotle knew this and based his entire ethics around the idea of

[00:41:33] developing good habits that will lead you to acquire virtuous character and i think that you know you definitely can quibble with the details of his picture but in terms of just naturalistically

[00:41:45] in uh figuring out what actually drives human beings and human behavior like it was totally right on and then starting you know after Aristotle Stoics were also they emphasized habit as well they were

[00:42:01] also very focused on character but with the turn to in philosophy focusing on choices and actions rather than care like a more broader picture of of character and character development it was

[00:42:14] lost and really not talked about and still isn't talked about in in philosophy and i think it's just so important at every level including like just in my own life and i do feel like once i started to

[00:42:30] recognize this this was you know it was like i don't know like 10 years ago or something like that and then you start to realize what how you can make the nervous system your ally

[00:42:41] instead of your enemy as as William James says and and you know when you can do that and it's hard it's it improves your life like it proves it's like this couple habits like exercising you were

[00:42:53] mentioning and earlier and also meditating those habits that i developed like improve my life probably and like biking to work there's another one like when i used to have to go to work like 25 probably like it's just huge change in my well-being so i'm glad we're talking about

[00:43:12] because i think it's just so important and people don't talk about it enough yeah absolutely agreed and it is an interesting turn that you point out i don't know if we're going to blame Kant

[00:43:22] for this but the the focus on the will and even what you you know you refer to as action theory where like the the key piece of the thing to be evaluated is only the will like all the rest is

[00:43:36] noise and the act the individual act the act that contains the the intention the conscious action the power there um yeah it does it gets ignored and even from a psychological perspective you know like psychologists were not immune to that to to all of that

[00:43:55] and and it wasn't until people started talking again about automaticity and you know let's not bring up the the replication crisis but but there was a big turn in i would say the 90s to being more

[00:44:10] interested in how behaviors and thoughts become automatic and i think there's so much insight in this chapter right one of the things i was telling niki when i was reading this is it's

[00:44:20] almost depressing how much insight is already here that like that i i would have thought came from 100 years of research on the topic but probably not really it just came from william james kind of

[00:44:34] like thinking about stuff and also reading this one book quotes from dr carpenter like that length it's almost just like all dr carpenter i didn't look up the book but but yeah so one of the

[00:44:48] one of the things that i that james points out is just pragmatically we we as creatures like our lives are so dependent on the habits that we acquire things that automatize all our behaviors

[00:45:01] because as he points out the alternative would be to deeply think about every single thing that we did and if that is what we had to do we would get as he says one or two things done a day

[00:45:11] you know right big yeah there's there's so many interesting things that he says it's also very well written in this he's not british but a little timey way yeah yeah um but that where where he talks

[00:45:26] about the person who would have to spend all day putting on their clothes but then he also says which is true few men can tell off hand which i like the off hand is there's a dash between it

[00:45:38] like that's a very old-timey thing to just have ice cream exactly it's like mr burr how mr burn stuff few men can tell off hand which sock shoe or trouser leg they put on first they must first

[00:45:51] mentally rehearse the act and even that is often insufficient the act must be performed so the questions which valve of my double door opens first which way does my door swing etc i cannot

[00:46:03] tell the answer yet my hand never makes a mistake there's so many things that we do and we do with utter consistency that we couldn't if you asked us tell you how we did it right i mean that's

[00:46:16] that's why not everybody can teach that's why you know magic johnson wasn't a good coach he was a great player but like you it really requires a different skill to unpack the what what you're doing

[00:46:27] and how you're doing it because the process by which you acquire a habit is is very different from the ability to to explain how you do it like it seems like it's frustrating to try to

[00:46:41] explain to somebody how you do something just like no no you just do it just do it and it's funny that how i think we notice if you have dogs you notice how habit oriented they are it's

[00:46:53] like funny how they always want to go out the same door and they have this very specific things that they do they go immediately to the water dish after they've come to a walk and

[00:47:04] we're so attuned to that in others and just so blind to it in ourselves right and you know because that's sort of the role that it's supposed to play right so so one of things that james

[00:47:19] you know he first sets the stage by talking about the physiology he uses this metaphor that i think you know probably many people have used of like water going through a valley right like the more it

[00:47:29] goes in that path the more likely it is to go in that path again and in the grooves right the grooves and he's he's uh he wants to build this in in a way that i was alluding to in the initial

[00:47:43] in the opening segment in a way that i think is a better use of not physiology for explaining psychology like he actually is trying to ground this in the nervous system and you know here's

[00:47:53] and so he says that habit art is something that simplifies the movements required it diminishes your fatigue it diminishes the need for conscious attention right so you can do things while you're doing other things if those yeah those second things are habitual um like quoting carpenter says

[00:48:10] the beginner at the piano not only moves his finger up and down in order to depress the key he moves his whole hand the forearm even the entire body so it's like when you're first learning

[00:48:19] your your whole body as well as your conscious intentions is just activated and then when it becomes a habit it's like yeah you know only what's necessary do you know uh you know the difference between that uh behavioral economists and psychologists they distinguish system one and system two

[00:48:38] versus system system one is the intuitive natural way system two is the more effortful conscious way i was at a conference called the society for judgment and decision making and this happened

[00:48:50] to be the year that dan aureli was the president of the society and part of like the activities was that he bought uh he bought out a bar in whatever city we were in and there were just

[00:48:59] people like on stage dancing but they were all people who do judgment decision making and you looked at the dance floor and it was hilarious and somebody who i was talking to

[00:49:08] pointed to the dance floor and said see that that's system two dancing which was just the most effortful attempts at bottling movement that you can imagine i wish i could make fun of them

[00:49:21] make at them but that's how i am system two dancer is exactly uh it describes my my dancing and also why i don't like to do it right well if you slowly built it up uh you know i

[00:49:35] what are the the jew the jew one you know you like one that round um one of the things that i wanted to ask you about was at times i found it hard to distinguish what james meant by habit

[00:49:50] versus every other kind of learning save for the most conscious effortful actions so like it seems to be more an account of just learning in general like what we know from like behaviorism

[00:50:00] conditioning um and i use like guess i use the word habit to be a more narrow concept uh like like like you were saying like build up a habit of exercise or whatever i don't necessarily when

[00:50:14] i say when i'm driving a stick shift i don't call it a habit to shift from gear one to gear two so i think that's right yeah i mean like even just playing the piano is not a habit

[00:50:25] exactly right like that's just you're practicing a skill um stick shift is an interesting one because although i wouldn't call it a habit where my daughter is learning to drive now and we only have

[00:50:37] manual transmission and so she she's had to learn to drive on the stick shift what kind of heart do you have it's like a model t no we have like um no the mazda three and like a subaru um

[00:50:51] although the new model of the subaru it's they're vanishing it's it's i love that and i haven't had one for so long yeah oh i've only had one i've never had a car that's an automatic in my whole life

[00:51:01] it's wow but the number of them that you can buy are diminishing by the but anyway like so when she first was doing it it's a perfect example of how you need to focus every bit of your energy

[00:51:12] on the clutch and on the and just and then not to mention just all the other things you have to learn how to drive and now watching as she's gotten better um it all this stuff is second becomes

[00:51:24] second nature to her that's exactly what james is talking about yeah but i agree that it is not exactly a habit yeah and so i think that he is simply saying i like as i understand it and and it's

[00:51:37] a little hard to to pin him down but i think he's saying the class of things of behaviors that we engage in that are not innate like we don't come into the world knowing them

[00:51:49] even though sometimes you can use the word habit for that and um and the things that aren't what he calls voluntary but but here voluntary means conscious right like conscious so the stuff

[00:52:01] that falls in between there which is the bulk i think of of all learning um is what he means what he means by habit and he's right like it's so fucking fascinating how you can start

[00:52:13] trying to learn something see an expert and think there's no way there's no way i will ever get there and all you have to do is keep repeating it and you're there yeah how like how the fuck

[00:52:24] does that happen yeah like met you do magic uh all the time right in fact he quotes a magician in here he quotes robert hudan uh talking about juggling because that that is you know late

[00:52:35] in life maybe as you were pointing out the older i get the less new thing the fewer new things that i try the fewer new things that i try to learn and so i started trying to learn sleight of hand

[00:52:46] and cards maybe five years ago and it seemed to me and i actually videotaped myself doing a particular move i have about three years of of videotapes showing progression and it's like

[00:53:00] wow like how it's incredible just what effort will do and so you know i never even thought of this but you're right that even that i guess not exactly a habit it's just acquiring a skill

[00:53:14] so i think maybe the point is you there's no word for this but there is there are our habits which we acquire often not through intention although sometimes we do and then there are

[00:53:27] skills that we sort of set about doing like driving a stick chef learning magic um right and it's all the same kind of thing it's just we call like what makes us call something a habit

[00:53:40] and something else just an ability or something or right right he at one point i don't know if i can find it easily at one point he's he does distinguish between the kinds of things that

[00:53:52] started off as a clear intention and the kinds of things that didn't so we develop bad habits like we never i never said like i'm going to go to bed real late like i'm going to try right bite my nails start

[00:54:09] they're all kinds of habits that i don't want to talk about but those i don't think psychologically aside from aside from whether you want them or not i don't know that they're that different psychological well just so can we just do some conceptual analysis for a second

[00:54:26] what makes us call always for you know i know of course uh easy sell for you um like what makes us call something a habit is it because it can't be just that we didn't intend to because

[00:54:38] there are some habits we deliberately acquire so no right makes us call something a habit so i think in my in my usage of the word habit i think that i mean things that i do frequently

[00:54:54] that i care about that's i think that's the usage so he has some interesting examples of habits in his own life that i don't think fit that definition and um i don't remember like

[00:55:06] i remember linking it to one of mine so so doing something okay so when i went back and visited the building where i went to graduate school um i used to always pop my head into the

[00:55:17] mail room to check if i had mail because we had physical mail so i hadn't been there for like 10 years and i walk into that building and i automatically went to my mailbox now james

[00:55:28] wants to call that a habit in this chapter i wouldn't call it a habit because it's not a behavior that is frequent in my life i think that's that at least the way that we use the

[00:55:35] word now is not just learning but but i don't think it's necessarily that you care about because i do that like um when i go into the office i will always check my mailbox i like

[00:55:47] i haven't gotten like an interesting piece of mail you know i probably get like six or seven in the whole year but i always check it yeah and i would call that a habit but i don't care about it

[00:55:58] it's just for whatever reason i started doing that and now it's just no i know but he wants to call it a habit that the fact that once in 10 years i popped my head when i went back and

[00:56:07] visited right and like i'm like that right i see what you is no longer a habit but that but it's not something that you don't care that you care about i guess this is my point that was part that was one

[00:56:18] of your necessary conditions you're right i would have cared about it in the beginning right it was a behavior that i would intentionally uh do in order but it doesn't but but a bad habit

[00:56:31] it does not right biting your nails is not something right you care about it who knows it might we might be talking about family resemblance here and maybe it's a fool's errand

[00:56:39] to try to come up with necessary insufficient condition but i think that we should take him as talking about a much broader thing which is the autumn automatization of any uh i agree anything

[00:56:51] learned and i think that's the deeply important thing that he ends with this moralistic thing which is like look you can pick up habits without trying so before we get there i want to talk

[00:57:00] about that i just want to just summarize what we've been talking about and what so he says here's the first thing about habit is that um and you read this that it simplifies the movements required

[00:57:12] to achieve a given result makes them more accurate and diminishes fatigue the second one is that it diminishes the conscious attention with which our acts are are performed he talks about like

[00:57:26] people fencing or whatever um and like you can just see the gleam in the man's eye and you know like where to parry or something like that but then he also says this is also true for the

[00:57:37] not just the right things the wrong things who is there who is there that has never wound up his watch on taking off his waistcoat in the daytime or taken his latch key out on arriving on the

[00:57:51] doorstep door dash step of a friend very absent minded persons going to their bedroom to dress for dinner have been known to take off one garment after another and finally to get into bed merely

[00:58:03] because of that habitual issue of the first few moments when performed at the later hour i love how like very much places him in in class and time this is what it's all about and then he

[00:58:18] says in this like amazing passage habit is thus the enormous flywheel of society it's most precious conservative agent it alone is what keeps us within all bounds of ordinance and saves the

[00:58:32] children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor which is a great habit is what like saves like the rich people from a real revolution it alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive

[00:58:47] walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread there in it keeps the fishermen and the deckhand at sea through the winter it holds the miner in his darkness and nails the countrymen to

[00:59:00] his log cabin and his lonely farm through all the months of snow it protects us from invasion by the natives of the desert in the frozen zone not sure what that sounds very like science

[00:59:11] fiction all the time who are these games the frozen zone what is that it dooms us to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nurture of our early choice and to make the best

[00:59:25] of a pursuit that disagrees like a job or whatever that disagrees because there is no other for which we are fitted and it's too late to begin again it keeps different social strata from mixing

[00:59:36] already at the age of 25 you see the professional mannerism setting in the young commercial traveler or the young doctor or the young minister the young academic the young philosopher at the apa you see the little lines of cleavage running through their character the tricks of

[00:59:52] thought the prejudices the ways of the shop in a word it's just like a very interesting little passage that comes kind of in the middle before he turns like explicitly to ethics

[01:00:03] just like this is the whole reason the world is the way it is and yeah resistant to change you know is because if they could just arise or transcend these habits there would be like a

[01:00:15] massive like class revolution and like no deck hands at sea in the winter and you know yeah and it doesn't sound like he's trying to be like a systems justifying kind of person

[01:00:29] like it sounds like he thinks that this is a good thing like the flywheel of society is yeah I mean I don't know like I think he's like I read it as more sort of straight up ambivalent or something

[01:00:42] yeah descriptive and also like you know this is a we're all hanging by a thread here and if they if they did revolt they would be right yeah maybe today's episode is brought to you once again

[01:00:56] by give well for over 10 years give well.org has helped donors find the charities and projects that save and improve lives the most per dollar they dedicate over 20,000 hours a year doing research and then handpick a few of the highest impact evidence backed charities whether it's medicine or

[01:01:15] mosquito nets to prevent malaria vaccinations deworming or just straight up cash transfers for extreme poverty give well finds the most effective philanthropies to do the most good and now give well wants to say thank you and I want to say thank you too in 2020 podcast listeners

[01:01:34] like you gave over 1.6 million dollars to the cost effective charities that give well recommends and David and I are extremely proud to report that our listeners have contributed over 182,000 dollars in immediate and recurring donations to give well that's amazing just a few weeks ago I donated

[01:01:56] once again to give well and I selected give directly which is a program that gives unconditional cash transfers to poor households in low income countries and to people affected by humanitarian crises no strings no bureaucracy just direct cash transfers to the people

[01:02:15] who need it the most this is just one of the many extremely effective charities that give well has researched and in 2021 it's no longer the holiday season but give well is encouraging you to keep

[01:02:28] the giving spirit alive any listener who starts a monthly donation by the end of February will have their first month's donation matched up to 250 dollars every month you'll work towards saving lives preventing deadly disease or helping those in extreme poverty whether you're new to

[01:02:47] give well or already a donor you don't have to be a new donor here any listener who starts a new monthly donation by the end of February will have their first month matched up to 250 dollars

[01:02:59] so go to give well.org slash very bad wizards and select podcast and very bad wizards at checkout once again go to give well.org slash very bad wizards and select podcast and very bad

[01:03:11] wizards at checkout thank you to give well for all the great work they do and thank you our listeners for supporting them as much as you have this episode of very bad wizards is also brought

[01:03:21] to you in part by better help look there are times when we all need help each and every one of us and there are times where it seems really difficult to get help especially times like

[01:03:31] the ones we're in right now of course there are crisis lines that specialize in dealing with emergencies but what if you just want or need to speak to a professional about something that's

[01:03:39] going on in your life currently you have to go about finding a good therapist making sure maybe through word of mouth that they're reputable ensuring they have openings for new patients and that they take your insurance that you can make an appointment soon these are all

[01:03:53] hassles that better help are there to get around better help can help connect you with a therapist a licensed professional therapist in a safe and private online environment in under 24 hours you'll be having an online chat video chat telephone call or even text messaging if you don't

[01:04:10] like that therapist you can always switch anything you share is confidential it's convenient it's affordable and financial aid is available if you don't believe me check out the testimonials posted daily on their site so start living a happier life today as a listener very bad

[01:04:26] wizards you'll get 10 off of your first month by visiting betterhelp.com slash vbw joined over one million people who are taking charge of their mental health again that's better hlp.com slash vbw for 10 off of your first month thanks to better help

[01:04:44] for sponsoring this episode of very bad wizards yeah and then he says you know a couple paragraphs later what you alluded to the great thing then in all education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy it is to fund and capitalize our

[01:04:59] acquisitions and live at ease upon the interest of the fund and this is the the insight that I think was completely lost by the time he was writing well not completely lost because dr carpenter

[01:05:09] clearly believed it but that with usually I think even now habits and automatic behavior are looked down upon they are thought you know these are the things that we fight against and what he's saying is no like this these are the very things that we should embrace because

[01:05:36] these are the only things that allow us to do the complex actions that we do so when he describes earlier in this sort of physiological way he says what a habit does is when you initiate

[01:05:46] action a it automatically gets action bcd and e going and so on so to go back to the analogy of driving the stick shift your only the only intention that you need is to sit in the car and start

[01:05:58] going and that intention initiates your you know arm and wrist to move in this direction your left foot to press the clutch and all that and so he's acknowledging the power that

[01:06:12] this has in being the one thing that enables us to perform these complex actions so he says why not lean in why not do whatever it is that we can to cultivate the right habits because then life will

[01:06:26] be that much better and easier yeah later on I love the metaphor it is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions and live at ease upon the interest of the fund and that's such a good

[01:06:37] metaphor for developing a good habit it's like not only are you doing the thing that you want to do say like when I was got the habit of biking to work and that's good for me like it's good

[01:06:51] health wise it's good exercise but then it becomes just also like the thing I want to do whereas before I had to like the willpower was to make myself bike to work now the willpower

[01:07:04] is to make myself not bike to work and like and it's hard to convince myself to do that that's like living off the interest is when this is something that you just want to do it requires

[01:07:15] no effort at all anymore it's like the easiest thing in the world that's that's such a great metaphor you are you develop these good habits and then you just can like kick back in your

[01:07:27] beach chair that's right and and everything is relaxing and easy right but of course that's the problem is a developing them and be also developing the ones that aren't good for you right um so I

[01:07:41] remember reading this and and you know I became I don't I became interested in studying character right later than this but now that I read this it must have had a pretty deep effect

[01:07:53] on on my thinking because I didn't I hadn't I don't think read too much about the moral value of habit except for in folksy wisdom right exactly that's what it sounds like like Benjamin Franklin

[01:08:07] exactly like poor poor Richard's Alvin act yeah yeah um the other thing that I think he gets right I don't know if he explicitly says it is that effortful action is not just hard because it's effortful but it kind of sucks like it's like doing

[01:08:25] things through effort is just not that pleasurable I think anytime you try to learn anything you realize that yeah especially at first yeah like especially when you're not good at it and

[01:08:37] it's just something like you know you see like how many of these I don't know projects or skills will be like oh that sounds good and then you start getting into it you realize oh wait this

[01:08:46] is too hard and then you stop but if the ones that you continue are like they just get easier and easier but yes yeah yeah I let's definitely talk about it but let's go through his maxims of how

[01:08:58] to acquire a new habit but so he says he gives these maxims which I think are absolutely psychologically plausible at least from my own experience um he says the first is that

[01:09:10] in the acquisition of a new habit or the leaving off of an old one we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided and initiative as possible accumulate all possible circumstances which shall reinforce the right motives put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage

[01:09:28] the new way make engagements incompatible with the old take a public pledge if the case allows in short envelop your resolution with every aid you know so he's really I mean he's talking about commitment devices there totally I mean he's he was talking about stuff that that you

[01:09:43] know I didn't learn about until like reading Robert Frank Robert Frank and and uh like Tom Schelling and like those right yeah um but so he's saying like get a new habit because it's so

[01:09:58] hard at first because like what we were talking about how hard it is at first you need to go in full force and do every external motivation thing that you can to make yourself continue it or else you're fucked this is what I think New Year's resolutions

[01:10:13] try to play this role at least but again like you have to tell other people that this is your resolution and so that they can you know when you feel like you might backside they'll give

[01:10:23] you shit about it like whatever it is like all these things are good make it public yeah accumulate all the possible circumstances which will reinforce the right motives um yeah that that's one of the hardest parts right because anybody can come up with a resolution but to

[01:10:39] organize your environment and your circumstances strategically in order to make sure that this habit takes hold is the hard part yeah it's like what situationists would say yeah you know like about how you want to get your situation so the and the two things are the same don't

[01:10:56] trust your present will that's the thing you can't trust you have to get everything organized so that you don't have to rely on your present will that your present will is kind of forced

[01:11:07] to do the thing at least of first then he says the second one I think this is so important as somebody who has tried to develop habits and failed and then tried failed but then succeeded

[01:11:17] never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life each laps is like letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again there's something both

[01:11:33] totally true but also depressing about this is that you can do everything right you know for a certain period of time and then you make one lapse and that just undoes like

[01:11:44] so much of that progress so in my life this is the the story of exercise is in normal times travel fucks it up so right like exactly so hard to develop good habits when you know as

[01:12:05] an academic your life is sort of filled with if your career is going well I suppose is filled with travel that interrupts every single routine that you have and I often would

[01:12:16] look down on my colleagues who would like you know they're like oh I can't I'm working out this morning in the hotel gym right fuck you that little yeah come on we're having fun

[01:12:25] we're supposed to be having fun here yeah then I started packing I just got like uh you know time about situationism just got really really uh light and slim running shoes

[01:12:36] you know and kept those kept a pair of those in my in my suitcase um and that that was a while it's still yeah until we couldn't travel anymore that's such a good example because I was the

[01:12:48] same way like so many good habits have been ruined by and meditation was like that actually travel was bad for meditation so took a while for it to stuck took me just being like I'm

[01:12:59] willing to like meditate in front of somebody else without feeling like embarrassed but but like it's because of this insight that if you let it go then all of a sudden it slips away

[01:13:08] yeah and all the thing that you've worked for is gone right the asymmetry in in uh yeah the influence of one failure versus the influence of multiple successes yeah yeah yeah exactly it's

[01:13:20] a huge and it's a big asymmetry yeah this is how he puts it every gain on the wrong side undoes the effects of many conquests on the right he says the third at maximum sees the very first

[01:13:34] possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain it is not in the moment of their forming but in the moment of their producing motor effects that resolves and aspirations

[01:13:50] communicate the new set to the brain so here he's actually making a kind of empirical claim which again I think somehow he just understands like the brain and human nature it's it's it's

[01:14:04] it's not totally clear how but um I think that's right I feel like I've read research about this that when your emotions and this is also very Aristotelian when your emotions are tuned

[01:14:16] correctly to what it is that you're trying to develop that you start to and that you actually recognize the pleasure that you're feeling when you perform this action it's not just it's something that you're actually aware of then that reinforces the habit yeah I have you

[01:14:33] had the experience of you know I know when I'm trying to be this is all most always with exercise if I feel like exercising I go do it like if I can right because like that that

[01:14:44] feeling will go away exactly and then you and then once you've made that connection in your brain between that feeling of I want to do this and I'm doing it it's good and the same thing when

[01:14:57] you realize how good I mean going to the gym is like this reading for me is like this like reading novels it's like once I'm actually doing it I always am so glad I'm doing that and not

[01:15:08] just on the web looking at bullshit on Twitter but like I need to take the moments to actually appreciate that you know and like seize on those emotional things so there he's very clearly tying

[01:15:20] this is a theme if I recall in the principles where the only thing that matters is doing right like he like James places such an emphasis on thoughts that lead to action

[01:15:33] yes yeah and this is where it comes to what you were saying so what he says is a tendency to act only becomes effectively ingrained in us to in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency

[01:15:45] with which the actions actually occur and the brain grows to their use every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance loss it works so as to positively positively hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking them

[01:16:04] normal path of discharge because you didn't actually do the action but you still got the glow there's and then he says there's no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nervous sentimentalist and dreamer who spends his life in a weltering sea of

[01:16:19] sensibility and emotion but who never does a manly concrete need rousseau and flaming all the mothers of france by his eloquence to follow nature and nurse their babies themselves while he

[01:16:30] sends his own children to the fountaling hospital is the classic example of what I mean but every one of us in his measure whenever after glowing for an abstractly formulated good he practically ignores some actual case among the squalid other particulars of which the same good lurks disguise

[01:16:47] tread straight on on rousseau's path I mean this is like this is what we've been talking about you know and episodes if we're talking about moral grandstanding or something like that it is

[01:16:58] no it absolutely reminded me of our discussion of porn not porn necessarily a sexual kind but just everything that we can call porn of some kind like outrage porn and I'll reach for power washing porn it gives you the sense the emotions associated with having satisfactorily

[01:17:17] completed a task without having done anything and I've been I'm not a big I'm not a big reality TV watcher but I've been watching on Netflix this show called grand designs where people build these

[01:17:28] amazing houses and in an hour you can get the feeling of planning of working hard and of succeeding and you haven't done shit right right but it gives you that feeling and I think this is what

[01:17:40] he's railing against is being a sentimentalist in a way that I wouldn't use the word but like just being somebody who who lets let's those emotions like oh it'd be good to exercise let's that emotion wash over you watches like a video of people like you know motivational

[01:17:58] video or something yeah that's what the montage is the montage like it gives us that satisfaction he went from nothing to being like an awesome fighter you know in like one song and I think

[01:18:10] what's interesting about what he's saying here is first of all we're all sort we're all tempted in this direction and that we really need to watch out for it like we need to make sure that we

[01:18:23] don't get like these vicarious feelings of goodness when you actually didn't do shit right because that is the most contemptible kind of human character he says and it's true it's like you know the people who complain about whatever on Twitter without actually taking active steps

[01:18:39] that they could take to address the issue they're complaining about this is what they're talking about but we all do this at every level of our life I'd rather not I'd rather do neither

[01:18:49] neither talk about it nor actually do it but like the idea that you should really be on guard for that because that's going to set you back in any kind of acquisition if you're trying to acquire

[01:19:02] a habit of exercise you can't take vicarious pleasure in exercising without actually doing it right you're fucked right right I like his casual xenophobia against the french russo and also here where he says the weeping of a Russian lady over the fictitious personages in the play

[01:19:19] while her coachman is freezing to death on his seat outside is the sort of thing that everywhere happens on a less glaring scale even the habit of excessive indulgence in music for those who are neither performers themselves nor musically gifted enough

[01:19:32] to take it in a purely intellectual way has probably a relaxing effect upon the character one becomes filled with emotions with which habitually pass without prompting to any deed and so the inertly sentimental condition is kept up so I'm sympathetic to always saying the

[01:19:49] inertly sentimental but I mean you and I do nothing but uh in many cases enjoy art for art's sake without feeling the need to be moved to do something yes right no I I took that very

[01:20:05] personally a little passage there like because that's pretty much all I do like watching movies and watch it you know like is and I know like I'm not going to become a filmmaker I'm not going to be

[01:20:16] you know and I am trying to understand it and trying but it's it's for the sake of appreciation of that art for him yeah that's a weird thing and I wonder why he says even like so he his

[01:20:29] his he says the remedy would be never to suffer oneself to have an emotion at a concert without expressing it afterward in some active way let the expression be the least thing in the world

[01:20:40] speaking genuinely to one's aunt or giving up one seat in a horse car if nothing more heroic offers but let it not fail to take place he's like no you like those emotions are meant

[01:20:50] to motivate so let them motivate even if you know it's just petting a dog or whatever what if it's like a bad emotion that it's a right and I'm gonna kill a ju I feel like killing a ju exactly go to

[01:21:05] Wagner I'd be like all right well William James said I should act on the emotions all just in I'll just buy a Mercedes right don't kill a ju but you do have to at least buy a Mercedes or a BMW

[01:21:23] I so here's this last thing that he says I think might be a maybe a little more open to question but it also sounds like it could be right and I think it's related to this he says

[01:21:33] that these latter cases make us aware that it is not simply particular lines of discharge but also general forms of discharge that seem to be grooved by habit in the great in the brain

[01:21:45] and he says that by analogy what we were just talking about if we let our emotions evaporate they get into a way of evaporating so there's no reason to suppose that if we often flinch

[01:21:55] from making an effort before we know it the effort making capacity will be gone in general so what are you saying so it's not even like acquiring a specific habit I have exactly that

[01:22:07] like that note in my it's the last thing I wrote in my notes that he seems to have a view that acquiring habit or like is a general ability right like if you practice it in

[01:22:21] domain a it will work in domain b and this is why he goes you know into saying like he has this one passage where he says every day you should do something that's like just a little

[01:22:32] inconvenient in order to like keep that sharp your will sharp enough to like for when you need it yeah it's it's ego it's sort of like the ego depletion view right it's like one muscle

[01:22:43] that you are developing and and yeah he says keep the faculty of effort alive and you by a little gratuitous exercise every day be like ascetic or heroic and little unnecessary points do every day or two something for no other reason that you would rather not do it

[01:23:03] and he calls this like insurance like you know it may never do you any good but it also could be the difference between disaster or salvation I find that so when I first read this I mentioned

[01:23:17] that I took a class where we read both of these volumes it was from a philosopher named Carol Rovane and it was her last semester teaching at Yale philosophy department she was moving

[01:23:29] she was super chill and when she came to this passage I'll never forget her reaction she was a very sort of a a peccurian kind of a person she she read this out to the class and she said

[01:23:43] I couldn't disagree more if I want to drink sherry and eat bonbons all day I don't see what's so wrong with that and I remember disagreeing with her I remember thinking you know that it seems

[01:23:55] to be right that if you get used to a little bit of hardship that it will come in handy when some unrelated hardship emerges like I've felt that same way before I think I've mentioned this where

[01:24:07] like when I'm having a hard time I think back to like you know basketball practice in college and and running these suicides in in the gym and how terrible that was and I somehow get

[01:24:18] grit from that memory so like I want to believe James I don't know if it's empirically true or not but it makes sense like you can let yourself get like lazy sort of just generally and then it makes

[01:24:30] it harder like now all of a sudden you have this deadline and it's harder even than it would normally be to like get yourself off your ass to do it but it also sounds very pure and

[01:24:42] Protestant kind of like don't like enjoy life like make sure you suffer enough so that you are going to heaven so that you're so that you've already been determined every every night sort

[01:24:53] of like maybe whip your back with like a piece of leather that has shredded glass on it punish yours but again it's an interesting metaphor that he has it's like it's also very the

[01:25:05] pragmatic and like it's the insurance which a man pays on his house and good the tax does him no good at the time and possibly I mean ever bring him a return but if the house does burn down

[01:25:17] that's it makes all the difference in the world you know I don't know like here's it almost conflicts with the situation ism a little bit because it seems like if you really if the shit goes down you can snap into a more disciplined mentality because all the external

[01:25:39] circumstances and commitment devices are in place and so like those things get activated again like those parts of you that remember oh wait I actually have to get this shit done

[01:25:50] fire back up and so I don't know which is true I do think like you get into ruts if that's all he's talking about you can get into a rut that isn't just about like exercise or working or

[01:26:02] reading or whatever it's just a generalized rut and probably that's total that's true to the large extent yeah I guess it's an empirical question that's probably people who study this a whole lot um like a question would be hard to study though yeah but like I'm imagine that

[01:26:23] that here's one way to operationalize it that if you like develop one habit like start from scratch and you just like have the discipline to develop that one habit upon trying to acquire a second habit will it be easier for you like is this something

[01:26:39] that would generalize it all or is it domain specific because you know of course I can envision in my mind the person who's a strict disciplinarian who you know like boot camp kind of people

[01:26:49] but for all I know they have like horrible lapses in some other domain in their life right um so I'm not sure if it generalizes and here's the thing it's like he's not even saying this

[01:27:00] though about like if you develop one habit like you can develop another he's saying like just take a cold shower one day because just because you don't want to not because you're trying to develop the habit of taking a cold shower but just because you like that was

[01:27:13] sucked all of a sudden not have hot water so but he's not saying because one day you might not have hot water he's saying do things like everyone's well take a cold shower because one

[01:27:23] day you might have like a real bad itch and you won't be able to scratch it right or you might get really sick or your yeah that's the question will it will it have helped me in that yeah to have

[01:27:35] taken a cold shower and I'm not sure it seems it's toughens you up I mean it's sort of stoicism too a little bit it's like toughen yourself up a little bit or that's right

[01:27:45] that's right it might not spread as a physical skill it might just be that what you're cultivating is an attitude toward things you don't like yeah like you're able to do them yeah an indifference

[01:27:55] toward doing things that you don't like or you know a more positive attitude but you know we could just drink sherry any bonbons that sounds good to me I'm gonna pour myself some sherry

[01:28:06] right now grab some bonbons that was actually my new year's resolution for January was no bullshit candy you know I was somebody that has like sorry apologies to your professor from who taught you your Yale professor yeah I was just like especially since I like to take an

[01:28:25] edible sometimes or almost all the time and edible what like and then you just want to eat like just the shitty as candy which is my taste like gobb stoppers or like blow pops or something

[01:28:36] like twizzlers like unlike seven years old those are all movie candies and I think that you should give yourself a pass because you're now teaching a course on cinema and philosophy so you

[01:28:46] have to eat you should probably eat like two boxes of gobb stoppers they can't call them boxes you have to call them things two things of gobb stoppers like joylessly too like just kind of nervously

[01:28:58] and joylessly I hate it when I go and I buy a thing of Reese's pieces and before the like before the previews are over like I'm already done yeah totally and then you start wrap you

[01:29:07] put it under your chair or something like that trying to do like pre-commitment devices give it to my daughter don't give me any until we're at least in the second act

[01:29:16] I yeah if I lived alone like I don't know what I would do yeah and I could you just be masturbating and eating chocolate all day like a monkey not even chocolate though that's the thing it would

[01:29:25] be like nerds or something I have the worst just like the worst candy taste so I just cut myself off from all of that for January hoping that I won't want to go back but we're kind of 20

[01:29:39] days in and I still feel like but maybe that's like what James says do something because you don't want to do it you know keep the faculty of effort alive yeah keep the faculty now fully

[01:29:51] that would have helped us I mean if there is any evidence that habits will keep you doing something that there's no good reason for you to do it's this podcast that's right that's right

[01:30:03] that and our patrons yes thank god for habits we should do another chapter at some point yeah absolutely one on the will I mean this is it's so brilliant and I also like to talk to you

[01:30:16] about like his methodology for psychology because it's like not something you could do right now like you're not getting tenure writing this kind of stuff yeah me yeah I like I was just talking

[01:30:27] about this earlier where like it's you can't who could write you know to even to like it's long it's two volumes but it was all of psychology I could go right that like uh you there is no

[01:30:41] incentive uh to do this well you just wouldn't like there's no way to get to know I saw that there was a paper I was talking to Fareed and he's very interested in introspection as a way of

[01:30:56] approaching psychology maybe we should do an episode on that oh yeah but that's kind of what this is a little bit you know introspection plus just read like quoting like eight pages from another text yeah he does it's interesting William James I don't think ever himself empirically investigated

[01:31:15] any of the stuff he actually like you know there's a lot of physiology in here he's he talks a lot about you know like yeah the electrical like signals that make frogs legs moves and stuff like that

[01:31:28] but he didn't do it himself so it's this mix of quoting experts on something but like in a way that he clearly knows what he's talking about yeah and then quoting like well for all I can gather

[01:31:40] are like pastors like yeah pastors and then just also just sort of examining his own experience and his sort of observations of other people yeah um and it resonates really well like you know

[01:31:55] you're kind of shitting on Russo for no reason yeah like he's not going to do that he's not going to enjoy that uh all right we'll do I think the will would be a good one for some other time

[01:32:06] yeah all right all right we'll join us next time on very bad