Episode 239: Lose Yourself

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist, David 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.

[00:00:16] It's like something happening here. And what it is, ain't exactly obvious. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards. I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, the CEO of the crypto company Celsius, Alex Mishinsky, your boy, has halted all withdrawals on a day where cryptocurrencies are tumbling.

[00:01:30] You're the big crypto guy of the podcast. You still think like the fucking blockchain is the answer to all of our problems? If only we had the blockchain, our podcast would be so much more successful. I know. I don't know how.

[00:01:45] Having the blockchain on the back end of our podcast would have made us famous. Well, we're doing NFTs of the podcast. I didn't know this, man. What a scam. You know what this reminds me of?

[00:01:57] It's like in Argentina, banks would just take bank days because inflation was so rampant and the value was tumbling. And so there are just days that you just... You couldn't get your money. No, you just can't get your money. It's crazy.

[00:02:16] The funny thing about this guy, your boy Alex Mishinsky, is literally the day before people were expressing like they're not going to let us withdraw the money and he was shouting them. He's like, why are you spreading fake news and disinformation?

[00:02:30] Name me one person that has had trouble withdrawing from Celsius. That was literally yesterday and then today they've just stopped giving any withdrawals to anybody. What's crazy is a crypto was supposed to be... We're going to get, I'm sure, email from all these crypto people.

[00:02:48] But I don't want to hear it. We really don't care. We don't care when we're not that... We don't care when we're the other. But the very promise of this was this sort of decentralized, untraceable. Now it's just these centralized companies that create their own stupid coins and

[00:03:06] services. They actually bought crypto a year and a half ago or some two years ago. At its peak I had doubled my money and I just opened up my Coinbase after you asked that question and it's down $500 less lower than I had put in.

[00:03:26] I've just glossed $500 in the last two weeks. It really is like what you were saying. It's like Animal Farm, remember? Animal Farm where it's like at first it's this new thing that's going to revolutionize and reform and all the corruption will be...

[00:03:41] But by the end you can't tell human from pig anymore. Right. The thing is in the ideal you were supposed to have, say Bitcoin and you would have your personal wallet that was encrypted and it lived physically on one of your hard

[00:03:56] drives and you could go to the actual dark web, not the intellectual dark web. You could go to the actual dark web and use those. So Eric Weinstein for it. Yeah, you could buy mushrooms from Eric Weinstein.

[00:04:08] But nobody wanted to do that because it's a pain in the ass. There are people who actually have hard drives that they forgot their passwords for it and there's just like millions of dollars of Bitcoin in it.

[00:04:18] It's just inscrutable and it's a barrier to all the non-serious nerds. So then they just start things like Coinbase where you're not really exchanging crypto in the way that it was intended. You're just sort of playing the market of the value of the crypto and it's

[00:04:36] like completely taken over by just... I know you don't like this word but Scheister. I don't know why you don't like it. Very anti-Semitic, but it does seem like the purity of it has been long transcended and now it's just like a total unapologetic Ponzi scheme. It is.

[00:04:57] And Elon Musk can just tweet about the Dogecoin which was like a joke cryptocurrency and pump up the value and make a ton of money on it. And then they just won't let the poor suckers that bought all of this.

[00:05:13] They just like, no, we're not giving you your money. You have to just watch the market tank and all your money disappear. And we're not regulated. That was the whole point. So nobody can stop us from doing this. That's right.

[00:05:26] One of my really good friends, he knows somebody who had like 200,000. Anybody just lost the password? And like that would... 100% is something that I would do if I had it. I would definitely lose the password. Like and then there's just nothing you can do.

[00:05:43] It's like when we lost the audio for that episode. It's like there's nothing that will get it back. You know? Yeah, it's a desperate feeling. I know a podcaster, Leo Laporte, he's a pretty well-known tech podcaster. And he has a hard drive that is just sitting there.

[00:06:01] He has like enough Bitcoin that would have been worth like $750,000 by now. He's pretty just like nonchalant about it. He's like, it wasn't worth that much when I first got it. But he completely forgot the password. And if he tries to enter too many times,

[00:06:17] like 10 to 20 times, it'll actually lock him out for good. So he's just sitting there. And like permanently shut out. Yeah, so he's been like almost a millionaire. I would feel better if it tanked. If I had one of those hard drives. Totally.

[00:06:29] And I would be rooting for it. Yeah, it's just gambling on something that's less stable in college basketball. It's at least college basketball. The bookies will pay it out. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, there are consequences if they don't.

[00:06:44] That's the good side of regulation is corrupt and inefficient and incompetent. You know, like all the problems with it are true. But you know, that does provide some kind of security for you. Right. Like the FDIC, you know, like someone robs the bank.

[00:07:01] You're not shit out of luck. The other funny thing about it is that it's like also destroying the environment. So it's not even just defrauding people. Right, which is crazy. So you know, we remember the 2008 crash that was a result of, you know,

[00:07:18] terrible financial practices of swapping mortgages. Like our zoom or audience probably was very young when this happened. But yeah, you probably remember your parents crying. Yeah. And then getting really fucking angry, really pissed when the banks got bailed out.

[00:07:33] Probably hit you, you know, like it was nothing personal. It wasn't because they don't love you. But at least at the end of that, they were like more houses in like in the world. And whatever, whatever it hit, the environment took was a hit of like, you know,

[00:07:48] putting all that work into, you know, deforestation to build houses. You're right. Like it does leave a trace. Sometimes the trace when these things collapses negative, but at least it's a trace. You know, at least it existed in the first place.

[00:08:02] You know, it wasn't just a like just churning out numbers and the only thing cryptos has left to trace on is that there are going to be a bunch of just like graphics cards that people bought to like run these crypto things.

[00:08:17] What's incredible is like, you remember the Super Bowl and like Matt Damon and Larry fucking David, like of all people doing and, you know, like it just keeps going. Spike Lee. Did you ever see Spike Lee? Oh man.

[00:08:29] How do you feel about that now if you're one of these people? And like because you didn't need the money. They probably just offered them so much money. Super Bowl. Like I'll just give $10 million to give well or something and then like to ease

[00:08:42] my conscience and like pocket the other 40. Yeah, you know, it's it's painful. We're going to look back on this on this era and be like, what were we all smoking? It's like tulip mania, but for weird nerd shit, it doesn't make any sense.

[00:08:57] It gives me developing country vibes to know that there are people who can't take their money out just like in Argentina when I was a kid. Right. There's just something deeply wrong with the way things are going.

[00:09:08] That's it's not it's not good, especially if you have well, I mean, it's just not good period. Well, you know what is good is that we we're going to do an opening segment. Yeah. About a paper that we had read that we thought wasn't very good

[00:09:23] and might lead to funny conversation. But the moral saints, the moral heroes that we are. This should restore your faith in the human spirit right now. Dave is about to tell you. Yeah, we made a last minute call not to do this because the lead

[00:09:40] author was a student and it turns out that it was their honors project and we don't want to shit on anybody like that. Yeah, it would have been funny though. It would have been funny. So like imagine like conjure up in your mind a very funny

[00:09:55] opening segment, but then also think about the moral virtue to you know, older professors not wanting to keep the score and on a young student. Us tenured fat cats as people have like right saying academia is good or not as bad or not obviously as bad as industry

[00:10:19] or something like that. Like that's not going to win you a lot of praise like one of the most controversial things you could say apparently. Yeah. And it's true. It's like I get it. Like I can 100% get that you know for two people who it's

[00:10:34] happened to have worked out for two white males, whatever all that shit even if what we're saying is reasonable. It's like still fuck these guys. Yeah. And I maintain that my primary point was that industry is actually bad.

[00:10:49] So one thing we like talked about but we weren't prepared to do was it was just an idea called substack starters where we give an opinion and a belief that we honestly have to least to some degree that we think could lead us to have a profitable substack.

[00:11:07] They're right. So like what ideas are floating around in our head that would be a great grift for opening up our own substack? But yeah, it had to be it could just be joke like for the Journal of Controversial Ideas. We just made some stuff up.

[00:11:22] This would have to be like what do you really believe that substack might be able to get that substack off the ground sign up for my newsletter. And I like I don't think either of us are prepared. I had like one idea just literally based on something

[00:11:35] I saw today today. I don't know. Do you have anything? Well, I again didn't feel prepared until I was at a wedding this weekend actually Paul Bloom's wedding. I was talking to somebody about music and it turns out that the claim that that anything musical might have

[00:11:54] it might be some sort of innate basis for musical appreciation, not even the ability to play an instrument or anything like that. But that's something like melodies like our aesthetic appreciation of certain harmonies or melodies versus cacophonies that it might be just something that we're

[00:12:11] quote unquote hardwired with is apparently a very controversial idea. So I'm willing to stake my flag in the claim that some things are universal and innate. And I think that that might be enough. So just full on eugenics is what you're saying.

[00:12:28] It's just like let's just you know weed out the people who don't have the proper like genetic appreciation of certain harmonies. Let's shoot them. Yeah, I have I'm in a department where the any like any whiff of making a claim that something is innate would get me scorn.

[00:12:51] And I used to joke that my colleagues didn't even believe that arms were innate and I made that joke to one of my colleagues. He didn't even laugh. He just launched into like a description like an explanation for why that particular claim didn't make sense in the

[00:13:03] context of like I was like no. I actually have one socially constructed arm. Does it work better or worse than the other one? It really depends. Is it the one you jerk off with? That's the one. That's probably the more hereditary one. This actually constructed one is lazier.

[00:13:29] Yeah, somehow. No, it just thinks like oh you're not supposed to do that or at least quite as often. You know, but yeah, then the other ones like fuck that. This isn't this is in me. This is like it's unchangeable because all as we know

[00:13:43] anytime there's any kind of genetic that's right. Like relationship. That means it's unchangeable but but with socially constructed things are completely and totally all terrible. Yeah, and everything to genetic is like obviously correlated with race and gender. So what was yours?

[00:14:03] Were you gonna turf your way to sub-stack? Yeah, right. Mine is trans people are ruining women's sports. Like that's mine. There's just too many of those sub-stacks by now. You know, I know it's like hard to break into the like

[00:14:20] trans people like you have to find something else that trans people are ruining because I get it's very popular to blame them. Yeah. What else like stranger things they're ruining stranger things. Wait, is there a trans character in Stranger Things?

[00:14:34] I don't know but or no here like this was just honestly true. I don't hold this against trans people. I have absolutely no issue but kind of they were responsible for Ted Lasso season 2. They were in the writer's room.

[00:14:48] You're not even you don't even know for sure but they like sounds like. I don't think so like actually and I don't think there's a trans character on the show. I just mean that the general kind of not really

[00:14:59] knowing like what's a man and what's a woman that that just led to unperceivable consequences to these political opinions. Exactly, but it has to be called out. My sub step. No, the thing that I actually believe is that I think

[00:15:19] could start me a sub stack maybe it's probably almost all of my COVID beliefs. Specifically the thing I was saying I saw in the Atlantic today is like you know because they have a they have a lot of his COVID hysterics.

[00:15:31] The headline is of this article a negative COVID test has never been so meaningless. A string of negatives can still pre-sage a clear as day positive. It's like literally nothing will satisfy these people. It's just like nothing is good enough like you can

[00:15:50] get vaccinated boosted like all of that shit which the you know was supposed to be the thing that's not and and and you're supposed to be testing and you're supposed to be and it just doesn't matter. It's like they'll still be like why are you not

[00:16:03] taking this seriously anymore? Like what's wrong with you but like the idea that like just like negative at this point like COVID test like what do you want people to do if like you know you don't even want them to test

[00:16:17] because it's meaningless and in fact if you test negative a few times in a row that's like uh-oh like you're probably positive. That's extra evidence for your problems. It's just like you know and I'm sure maybe some of these questions are answered in the article itself.

[00:16:33] I'm not denying that but still. So is was your analysis going to be like if you follow the money you'll see that they're that they're trying to circulate COVID hysteria to like up to like get more clicks or do you think that it's not

[00:16:47] even tied to that anymore now it's just become a political position that's like functionally independent of whatever. Yeah I was saying I've actually thought about that question it's a good question like it doesn't seem to track well with money you know like

[00:17:03] to be all worked up about COVID I mean it did for the farm for like Pfizer and Moderna and you know to a lesser extent to my vaccine of choice Johnson at Johnson but that part of it is over now and

[00:17:17] so like all this stuff I think is more it's it's it taps into a kind of American psyche that I think is definitely of like the upper middle classes of just being like scared of anything and like always thinking that nothing is being

[00:17:34] taken seriously you know like crime now like like there's a this group of people think right now like walking out of your house you're taking your life into your own hands you know like so we go on next door and people will be saying

[00:17:48] it's the fucking Wild West out there like a nice neighborhood of Houston you know it's like it's ridiculous like I think that's and I think this is just like a part of people's psychology that then can be exploited for clicks and stuff

[00:18:00] like that but there's not some deeper reason where like you know some massive corporation it's more just the Atlantic one in clicks. It's interesting because the fear of doing things just like the fact that the world is threatening was for so I thought for so long something

[00:18:19] associated with conservative beliefs that like yeah the way to get conservatives going is to do that you know the political ad showing the nuclear bomb going off with the little girl. You were yeah or like Willie Horton or something like that exactly like that the conservatives are

[00:18:37] the clutching their purses kinds of people but that's it just doesn't cut so neatly that way anymore. It's sort of weird that that COVID has become something that goes in such the opposite direction where you know I remember being in my uncle's funeral

[00:18:55] in South Carolina at the height of the pandemic nobody was wearing a mask just nobody. Yeah just weird like you were just. Yeah because you know like masks aren't the be all end all it turns out. Yeah but yeah so like I do think like with this issue

[00:19:16] I have opinions that are more outside of the mainstream but that some people are like very passionate about you know yeah even though I'm not like super passionate about more about bicycle helmets. Yeah well I should have just done that but now it's over because I've won. Sharks.

[00:19:42] Yeah I don't have much much more to contribute I was gonna I was going to ask whether libertarian beliefs I have some libertarian beliefs that I think would be would be contra my people but now I don't even know anymore like is it even controversial to

[00:20:01] say that all drugs should be legalized and regulated. No I don't think so it's not going to get you a sub-stack. You know I think you should stick to your like pro-eugenics position. Yeah I think so I'll be I'll even be willing to

[00:20:16] say that that a large part of intelligence is heritable. Yeah I mean you have said that and somehow you've like skirted out of you know like that's that's good thing about not writing you know it's so much harder to get your scandalous takes on like race and IQ.

[00:20:37] That said why don't we talk about flow we didn't even say what we're talking about man. It's gonna be the worst most rambly intro for you to edit but. All right yeah we'll be right back to talk about flow.

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[00:28:16] for this episode which is something that we have talked about maybe on a few podcasts but never a full episode and that is the concept of flow but flow is a concept that was developed initially by the person with the most challenging name in all of psychology

[00:28:33] Mihaly Chicks and Mihaly Chicks sent me high and sent me high chicks at me high that's remember chicks sent me high it doesn't make sense in the sentence but he was Hungarian. He passed away actually last year but here we go. Chicks and Mihaly Chicks and Mihaly Chicks

[00:28:54] sent me high it's like you got someone like in LA just sending you weed exactly. You know exactly. Yeah. So Chicks and Mihaly was a professor at Claremont graduate school in psychology and he developed this very influential concept of flow as a

[00:29:13] sort of psychological state that is highly motivating intrinsically rewarding and it's one in which sort of your skill level and the challenge of an activity match up perfectly so that you kind of lose yourself in that activity and we thought it'd be

[00:29:32] interesting to read the classic paper on this. In fact I had never read it even though you know I'm sure I read articles on flow. The original article where he lays out the sort of conceptual framework is this great article I thought at least from 1975 called

[00:29:50] Play and Intrinsic Rewards. So Tamler you need yeah had you ever read anything about flow? It's always been secondhand you know like so you know Paul's book has a little section on it and definitely like you read that? We did an episode on it do you remember?

[00:30:08] Like we read every word of it. Some Buddhists and inspired books talk about the concept itself and refer to Chicks and Mihaly. That's good yeah in their work but I'd never really read this I even have the book on flow but it's always been such a like

[00:30:28] I don't know intuitively appealing concept. I'm so glad we decided to just dive into you know what some of the stuff he actually said about it because it lived up to my fairly high expectations. Yeah I highly recommend reading this article

[00:30:43] too so you know flow for me had been this concept that was around already obviously when I was in graduate school but it had kind of become like a cottage industry of folks who are interested in it and I get why now I understand a bit more why

[00:31:00] so like the psychology of sports especially there's just a lot of productivity that kind of that kind of people who are like into things like growth you know. Everything gets everything good gets debased you know. It's probably like corporate training sessions

[00:31:22] on how to improve flow in your employees. That's capitalism we'll just take any just like and especially with flow where it's the whole point of it is that it's not like that right. You're like intrinsic motivation is like central

[00:31:36] to yeah and I like that he talks about that right like he talks about he says psycho even psychologists when they're studying play because actually initially this starts up being about play they usually focus on play as a means to some other end but not as a process

[00:31:52] which is important to understand in its own right. Ethological psychologists will say play allows us to experiment with like all these kinds of behaviors in a non threatening setting and then learn by trial and error without paying too high a price for errors.

[00:32:06] So it's like everything has to be productive like a means to some sort of end for it for the concept to be something that you can study. I think it's more just part of just that added Western attitude of everything is a means to an end.

[00:32:18] Everything is instrumental. Yeah. No absolutely like what can what can play do for my child like will it make her smarter will make her out compete her her whatever classmates. Yeah I think it's just it's like this fundamental mistaken levels of analysis that psychologists

[00:32:37] should know better than to do but they often don't which is it makes as a psychological state attack. It's to me true and reasonable to say that it is rewarding unto itself and you don't need a theory about why you and I would want to do

[00:32:55] something that gets us into a flow state because it's just rewarding in of itself. But then of course you have you can ask the question so like why would creatures like us have that and that becomes an evolutionary question I suppose you want to which is fine

[00:33:07] right like different questions. Yeah it's a different question exact it's not going to be helpful in studying the phenomenon itself right and what makes it so pleasurable and what are the conditions that allow you to achieve it. So OK so this article that in 1975 is I thought

[00:33:25] great because it is just you don't see people right like this that much anymore all of the times that we've sort of bitched in moan about theory and psychology and we say things like there needs to be more good descriptive work

[00:33:40] and we'll talk about sort of like that ash paper where he makes a call for more of that kind of work but it's rare to actually talk about a paper that does it because they just don't exist but that's exactly what he does here.

[00:33:52] He actually starts by saying like yeah this is going to be a paper where I'm going to try to flesh out this concept of what it means to be in this particular psychological state that that is rewarding you know there's no need

[00:34:05] for external incentives that people seem to lose themselves in and he wants to try to map out the features of those kinds of experiences independent from like whatever activity people are doing he wants to provide a more general you know broad explanation for what all of these

[00:34:22] states have in common and he does it by interviewing people for of all things and quoting them. You know what this is like it's like the more modern it's not modern day because it's like 50 years ago almost but like William James. Yeah, like exactly.

[00:34:39] I had that thought when you were yeah. He doesn't interview people but he just quotes them at length in the same way that Chick sent me hi does you know. Exactly. Yeah, so let's talk about like the different features of it right.

[00:34:54] Yeah, or just like let's I want to read what he says flow denotes because I think this is the first time he like he used the term right. This is this is the where he coins it. Flow denotes the holistic sensation present when we act with total involvement.

[00:35:10] It was a kind of feeling after which when nostalgically says that was fun or that was enjoyable it is the state in which action follows upon action according to an internal logic according to an internal logic which seems to need no conscious intervention on our part.

[00:35:24] We experience it as a unified flowing from one moment to the next in which we feel in control of our actions and in which there is little distinction between self and environment between stimulus and response or between past past present and future.

[00:35:39] I mean it's so Zen like also in terms of you know like these are exactly the features of like what you know Zen teachings tell us could be just our moment to moment life. Yeah, yeah. And he says so one that experience this kind

[00:35:59] of experience which he relates to what what Maslow referred to as peak experiences and some other people have touched on it. He says it's you see it in religious ecstasy sometimes you see it in sports you see it in a sort of a variety of activities sex.

[00:36:18] Does he say sex? Yeah. No, I missed I missed that I can't believe I'm just such a prude my eyes go right over two points need to be stressed about flow. He says one is that this experience seems to occur only when a person is actively engaged in

[00:36:32] some form of clearly specified interaction with his environment. It could be primarily physical emotional or intellectual but in each case the person is able to use some skills in acting on a limited area in his or her environment and that's therefore dependent on these flow activities.

[00:36:48] When people describe this thing where they lost themselves for hours engaging in an activity in which they're engaged with the environment physically or more intellectually. What is going on like what are the features that those yeah those share? Yeah, I love first.

[00:37:06] Oh sorry go ahead go ahead actually I was just going to go the first feature. Yeah, do it. The first feature is lack of self consciousness loss of ego. This was pretty interesting. So he talks about what so what it means to

[00:37:20] lose self consciousness or ego and he says the self has been traditionally that of an intracyclic mechanism which mediates between the needs of the organism like us and the social demands placed upon it and the primary function of the self is to integrate one's

[00:37:37] person's actions with that of others and hence it is a prerequisite for a social life. And what is lost here is not exactly like loss of self he says but of the self construct the intermediary which one between stimulus and response so essentially that kind of running

[00:37:57] monologue in your head where you're not just doing the actions you know taking in the stimulus you know like the challenge thinking about it and then performing the action it's what's lost is that middle part like the fact that you're thinking about what

[00:38:15] you're doing you're just doing it right. Yeah, I love that. It's like a lack of meta awareness. He says a person flow does not operate with a dualistic perspective. One is very aware of one's actions but not of the awareness itself. Yeah, and so being consciously aware of

[00:38:30] something is used often sort of in this interchangeable confusing way we saying is you know you're not blacking out here. What you are is you're just not stepping outside and looking at your awareness. This is from the book he says there's an

[00:38:44] active role from the self but and loss of self consciousness is how he talks about it in the book is not a loss of self and certainly not a loss of consciousness but rather only a loss of the consciousness of the self what slips below the threshold

[00:38:59] of awareness is the concept of self the information we use to represent who we are but being able to forget temporarily who we are seems to be very enjoyable and it's true right like absolutely true. It's like when you you know sports is

[00:39:15] a great go-to example when you're playing sports you are just focused on the task at hand and you're just whatever your problems are whatever you're like whatever bullshit is going on with your life is irrelevant to you like it doesn't be in that way your identity has been

[00:39:32] just pared down to exactly what it is that you're doing right now. Yeah, absolutely and to the extent that it's interrupted by that popping in of the self it's bad for your performance for your happiness. So he says the typically person can

[00:39:51] maintain a merged awareness with I love that notion of merged awareness with their actions for only short periods interspersed with interludes in which flow is broken by the actor's adoption of an outside perspective these interruptions occur when questions flash through the actor's

[00:40:04] mind such as am I doing well or what am I doing here or should I be doing this when one is in a flow episode these questions simply do not come to mind and yeah and that does capture it so nicely as we'll get into

[00:40:17] you as we keep reading this that it takes time to get to that point for any activity because at first when you're you know if you're just learning to whatever play basketball that's all that's going on is like am I doing this right or think about

[00:40:32] driving a stick shift like it what's the next thing that I need to do that meta awareness is sort of actually driving all of your actions. It has to get to a point where it's somewhat habitual so that you don't need to be kind of running

[00:40:48] through your mind using your mind to kind of run through the rules or the strategies or something like that like it really is something where that information has been internalized and now is being reflected in your actions but not in your conscious like deliberation which is

[00:41:08] interesting like it's it's an interesting kind of paradoxical state that part of what defines it is you're not aware that you're in a flow state yeah yeah because like if you were aware that you oh like I'm in a flow state now that is means you're not

[00:41:25] right because now you're already starting to think about at this meta level about what it is that you're doing rather than just doing it and you know still that requires a lot of information processing and often at the highest skill levels that that you're capable of but so

[00:41:42] there's yeah I don't know what that says about us it's like we're if you if there's an activity in which you can get into a flow state like it's like getting into an experience machine you step in knowing that for the next

[00:41:57] few hours this you'll be in this state but you're not that you're never gonna like be making decisions about whether or not to keep engaging in that task you know there's this whole strain of of thought in psychology and I guess in some existential philosophy

[00:42:14] that forgetting that forgetting of self is something that we are primarily drawn to and that you know in moments of sort of collective ecstasy of religious rituals or even rock concerts or even sex that what we're enjoying is that we don't have that we're not step stepping outside

[00:42:38] and that meta awareness is gone and maybe that's why we drink and do drugs as well it's always struck me as something that seems true but not necessarily positive like it's never frame it's mostly framed as an escape in a lot of that work but here

[00:42:54] Chikkun Mahaya saying like no yeah but there's these there are these instances of actual mastery over the environment where you lose the self and and that these seem like a much like a constructive way of losing the self I don't know

[00:43:11] yeah I mean and but I guess there is something slightly pessimistic about the fact that we're happiest when we're not like in our own company you know like when we're not and I think this is some people it's really unbearable to have this kind

[00:43:26] of constant doubt and questioning and running monologue in your head and for other people it's less it's it's less anxiety or stress or you know depression inducing but it's still not as good as when you're just doing the thing and you're

[00:43:43] you are out of it you know and all your doubts and questions and desires and hopes and dreams it doesn't matter like you're now just this thing that you're doing you know I took this I think this is so it's such an obvious thing that I

[00:43:59] hadn't thought of that I was embarrassed about it but I was talking to somebody who has severe social anxiety and they were describing it as constantly questioning everything that they're saying so like the moment they said something they'd be like did was that a super thing to say

[00:44:15] yeah and I thought to myself well fuck no wonder you have like severe social anxiety because you know I remember the first few times I ever got high off of weed like like one of the times my parents called and I was talking to them and every

[00:44:29] sentence that came out of my mouth I was like oh shit did that sound high or she did that's not high and I was like now I see how intrusive that kind of social anxiety can be where you're constantly right because because if you're you know maybe

[00:44:44] this doesn't count as flow I don't know if you can hide wood on it but interacting in a social environment like I'm comfortable just talking and not thinking about what I'm talking about why we can do a podcast like this right like if we're constantly thinking about

[00:44:57] we wouldn't say like 10% of the shit that we say I know it's crucial that we forget certain things in order to have these conversations. I mean I think that that relationships are a great example of like the better the relationship is the more you're

[00:45:11] in a flow state when you're with the person like one great sign of how good a friend somebody is as if you can go like a year or two without seeing them and then when you see them it's like you're like nothing like no time

[00:45:24] has passed you're immediately losing yourself in your jokes and your conversations but then there are other kinds of interactions that you have where it's like yeah you're thinking of it because you don't know like if like what the lines are what the things that

[00:45:39] they are going to be offended by or you have some goal it becomes means and based rather than just the intrinsic pleasure of hanging out with your like really good friends. Yeah that's the difference between feeling drained at the end of an interaction and feeling energized.

[00:45:53] Yeah, we have podcast episodes where we feel energized at the end of the interactions sometimes more than other times but yeah like not this one but yeah this one's terrible. Yeah, so these some quotes from the interviews that they conducted an outstanding chess player says

[00:46:10] the game is a struggle and the concentration is like breathing you never think of it the roof could fall in and if it missed you you would be unaware of it or an expert rock climber you're so involved in what you're doing you aren't thinking

[00:46:19] of yourself as separate from the immediate activity you don't see yourself as separate from what you are doing and you know some of these things are solitary activities and some of them aren't yeah and I wonder what we were just describing is that being in unison with someone

[00:46:35] else where you you are in such sync that it's like less it's not even clear who's idea you know in in memory it's not even clear who said what can I say one super interesting thing that so when he talks about the conditions for loss you know self-consciousness

[00:46:55] one great way to bring this kind of state on is competition because it gives you kind of a restricted set of rules right now you have to you know the boundaries he says and so he says two terms this is from the book describing states of social

[00:47:12] pathology apply to conditions that make flow difficult to experience enemy and alienation enemy literally lack of rules is the name the French sociologist Amil Durkheim gave to a condition in society in which norms of behavior had become muddled so first of all I didn't know

[00:47:31] that enemy was literally lack of rules that's super interesting but then but that's the you know like when it's no longer clear what's permitted and what's not and when it's uncertain what public opinion values behavior becomes erratic meaningless and it's just so easy this is me now

[00:47:47] not him it's just so easy to overthink everything because the possibilities of what you could say or could do are endless right and that's when you get that kind of anxiety thing you know and it's like when you take when you're acting within fairly narrow constraints

[00:48:06] you know that still allow you the freedom to excel within them like that's when you're going that's when you're going to lose yourself but if there's if you can just do anything yeah that's when you're going to start you know that's such a good point

[00:48:19] that's I mean and I think we've talked about something like this in the context of creativity but never yeah I never put it that way like I'd never where if you have constraints it just brings out this creativity I hadn't thought about that though

[00:48:36] one of the reasons being that when you have sort of unlimited access to whatever a lot of your time is spent making meta decisions about what what you should do next right whereas if there's rules to this shit that or constraints then those decisions are just clear right

[00:48:54] you can't in basketball you can't just pick up the ball and run right that that so you don't have to think about what you know there's only a certain set of moves even if it's like obviously like a gajillion moves but I imagine mountain climbing right you know

[00:49:09] that there is a constraint in that there might be a number of options about which way to go on the rock face but it's certainly not infinite now and it's pretty narrow kind of things that you can do right and like every and the key is everyone agrees

[00:49:25] upon the rules whether it's just you and the rock or it's like you're playing a sport like I think in the paper he says like the self is primarily about like negotiating these rules or trying to figure out what the rules are that's something that the self

[00:49:40] or the ego does like when you're with your old friends even though there are no rules you know what's the limits are you know what you can say what you can't say what like and that's part of what makes it so comfortable whereas you're just unsure

[00:49:54] in in other kinds of conversations like what the boundaries are and part of your interaction involves sort of sussing that out which is what brings the self or the self-consciousness back into play right right yeah so the next what the next feature of low is this centering

[00:50:11] of a ten of attention the merging of action and awareness is made possible by centering of attention on a limited stimulus field to ensure that people will concentrate on their actions potentially intruding stimuli must be kept out of attention some writers have called this processing

[00:50:25] a narrowing of consciousness a quote giving up the past and the future one respondent a university science professor who climbs rocks phrased it as follows I've loved this quote when I start on a climb it is as if my memory input has been cut off

[00:50:38] all I can remember is the last 30 seconds and all I can think ahead is the next five minutes right it's you know it's that's what a crippling amnesic would have but in the context of doing something that's like the memento guy exactly the memento guy yeah

[00:50:56] but memento guy you know doesn't have that that constant insertion of the questions like why am I doing this yeah constant flow state so I I want to talk to you about this in the context of sports I'm have you ever seen this clip of Kobe Bryant who

[00:51:15] Benny would consider one of the more focused NBA players and Chris Rock he's sitting on the bench and Chris Rock is next to him and Chris Rock is trying to say something to him like Chris you could see in the clip Chris Rock is clearly talking to Kobe

[00:51:29] and Kobe doesn't even acknowledge him and I remember for seeing that and thinking well I mean Kobe could be kind of a dick but you know Chris Rock is trying to talk to you on the bench I saw an interview where Kobe was saying he has zero memory

[00:51:40] of that at all he said I had no idea he was talking to me because he was even on the bench so focused on the dynamics of the game that it never entered his awareness and yeah yeah you've narrowed down the possibilities of what matters to you

[00:51:56] or like what you're going to pay any attention to cause you know like if Chris Rock is talking to you that's like gonna steal your attention and you're just like too focused right like what if he says something about your wife you know

[00:52:09] like whatever he makes a joke about some condition she has I mean that's actually what that's why it's been sort of ruined that slap because now comedians have to be thinking that that was a clear case of of rule violation and that now comedians

[00:52:22] gonna have to think like what if what I say is going to cause someone to come up to the stage and slap me it's hard to get into flow when you're worried about getting the composer says I get quite oblivious to my surroundings

[00:52:37] I think that the phone could ring the doorbell could ring the house could burn down or something like that when I start working I really do shut out the world but once I stop I can let it back in again

[00:52:46] it's so interesting that that is pleasurable as a state yeah but really it really is and this is where he says the rules of games define what the relevant stimulus stimuli are and exclude everything else as irrelevant so then like so you have rules you have competition that's

[00:53:06] you're just motivated to pay more attention when you you could lose money you know like and it's not about the money as he quotes Dostoevsky saying like it's the money has nothing to do with it but it's it's like I think you need that with say poker

[00:53:23] which I can get in a flow state playing poker you need the money not because like the money is the meaningful thing but because it provides like the constraint of the game yeah feedback exactly right it's it's telling you how good you're doing

[00:53:37] I mean that's why rock climbing is so freaky to me some kinds of rock climbing because the rules are just like physics and life right like the very real constraint is that if you mess up the consequences are that you get severely injured or you lose money you're

[00:53:52] you know skin in the game but that is serving as a constraint and obviously focusing your attention so then the next he says loss of ego which right we kind of talk about yeah because if you're centered your attention so much and your action and awareness are so

[00:54:13] are so merged that it's hard to have too much room but this is where like a lot of that stuff that we were talking about at the beginning I kind of bumped it up front but this is where that quote about the self construct is between

[00:54:26] one thing we didn't mention about it is it's also like it fucks with time right like he quotes a chess player saying like time passes a hundred times faster in this sense that resembles a dream state a whole story can unfold in

[00:54:40] seconds it seems your body is not existent but actually your heart pumps like mad to supply them the brain and it's it's really the goal of so much practice is to just merge that you're over thinking mind with

[00:54:56] the environment and to get to a point where you're letting go of all the things that sort of define you so that you can just be part of what it is that you're do this episode of very bad wizards is brought to you by a new

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[00:57:16] up they'll plant 10 extra trees in your name that's rent w R E N dot co slash vbw start making a difference our thanks to ren for sponsoring this episode of very bad wizards sometimes I'm tempted to think of I don't know

[00:57:34] practicing a skill or doing something really because of the end state that it will produce where you will have said I won this game or I climbed this mountain but it really is true that the enjoyment comes from the participation so and and that calming down

[00:57:55] or quieting of the ego from intruding is when I think about it why you know like I picked up a deck of cards like whatever six years ago now just to try to learn slight slight of hand stuff and I realized that I was

[00:58:09] just using it as a way to calm that voice to to get myself into a state where that constant practice it's not about whether or not I could perform a trick at the end of the day it's just about like developing

[00:58:23] a skill like having it unfold in this way where you're challenging yourself and your control of what this gets to the other one that control of action environment those small ways in which you can exert control in this albeit constrained situation you're exerting control over the environment that

[00:58:40] just feels good and one of the reasons that really does feel good is because you're not thinking about their shit yeah because you have enough to think about in the activity itself even though you're not aware of thinking about

[00:58:52] it you know a big flow activity for me is scuba diving and I've always sort of wondered what I mean it's it's so beautiful to do so that part is obviously but one thing that this paper made me understand

[00:59:07] is part of what so flow like about scuba diving is there are a lot of things you have to do you know they're not hard you get in the water there's certain things now that you have to do and you have to you have to equalize you have

[00:59:20] to get a kind of good balance in the water and there's all sorts of things you have to do on the boat and you have to check and you have a buddy and you have hand singles with your buddy so you're like constantly doing stuff but

[00:59:32] in a way that instead of distracting you from the beauty actually lets you fully take in the beauty or become like a part of the beauty because it occupies you just enough so that now you're just fully involved in a way that

[00:59:47] like although I love hiking hiking doesn't do that because there's nothing to do while you're hiking except walk right but I think scuba diving because it has all these other things provides the perfect amount of just stuff to occupy your brain whereas hiking you can

[01:00:02] you really can get lost in thought because there's nothing to occupy the self or the ego at that point. Yeah, that's right. You this this gets to the like in this particular paper if he doesn't talk too much about skill.

[01:00:19] I mean he gets to it when he sort of formally presents what gets you into flow and but as I was saying earlier takes time for any activity to be able to get you into state of flow because you have to work through the

[01:00:33] part where all of those things aren't constant like second guessing things that you're doing. Like I imagine that there are people who might never get into flow states because they've never had the time or taken the time to acquire the skills. Now I don't know.

[01:00:51] I mean maybe just by did to being human human being on this earth you there will be something but it really is the case that you need to put enough time into something to even get close to flow and there are

[01:01:03] so many more things that I've given up on before getting before being able to get there. So I like I'm not sure if I agree. I think that is a characteristic of a lot of flow states and maybe some of the best and most reliable ones.

[01:01:16] But I think you get like mini flow from like wordle and dirtle and quirtle and octurtle you know like those octurtles sometimes where it's like everything's just coming to you just know the word like you're barely even thinking about it like but you didn't

[01:01:30] we didn't have to spend that much time doing that. Well yeah that gets to the question of whether those those are true flow states. Yeah so do you not think that they are. I think they might be but I think that what you're ignoring is probably the just

[01:01:47] the sheer amount of time it took us to get to the point where we can play those games. So it's more like that some of the work has been is done by the game creator in tapping into these skills that we already have.

[01:01:59] Right and so they've made it easy for us to use our skills and abilities like it's like the first time you play a brand new game. Oh yeah. Like it's but the whole wordle thing he did create something that that taps into something that we already have.

[01:02:17] That's fair right I think that's true but I think some things are much harder to get to the point where you're going to experience a flow state of it like you know like for me like piano or something like that getting

[01:02:29] to a point where playing piano is a flow state would have taken me probably like more than the time I'm gonna live on the air. Some stuff takes a year it takes years and years and some stuff just doesn't like you know

[01:02:40] when your kid just playing is doing that you're playing already like you know how to do that you know like just one rule like tag like you know and all of the exactly the tacit rules that are involved in it can get you into flow state.

[01:02:53] Yeah I think you're right. I think you're right. It's funny because I look back on the particular choices that people make in terms of the skills and hobbies that they develop and you know some people like model trains and it's easy to sort of when you're a kid

[01:03:08] you're just like it's easy to mock some people for some of the choices they make but god damn it if those people don't seem happy when they're doing that. Exactly. They're just in this amazing flow state when they're putting together little models

[01:03:20] and painting like Bobby Bakala on the surprise. Right. And with the trains. Oh poor Bobby Bakala. He has a lot of stuff he probably wants to forget but like and that's a way of doing that in a way that doesn't so one thing

[01:03:35] he doesn't distinguish but it's probably worth distinguishing is the other way you can do that is just zone out and watch like shitty you know or even shitty but like okay there's a way of just I'm going to watch like 30 Blonde orders back to

[01:03:50] back to forget about my problems. Yeah. Well that's and this isn't that no it's not and that and and I think that sort of passivity is excluded in his definition of it and I don't know how intentional it was but you know skill

[01:04:04] and challenge and acting on the environment are central to the concept of flow and again we did talk about shitty flow and when we're talking with Paul and it seems like those things might mimic the what you get is some of the features were like you could

[01:04:22] have lost a lot of ego. Yeah. But I don't think it's a recipe for you know because I think Chikzama hi here is giving a recipe for a happy life like a happy meaningful life like the end of those binge watching law and order you don't feel good.

[01:04:41] I don't feel fulfilled. Yeah. It's it's not a there's something that is so deeply rewarding about mastery. Yeah. The challenge the opponent which makes it clear to me why evolutionary psychologists might want to think this talk about it in evolutionary terms I think that's fair because there

[01:05:00] is good it's good to have that desire to have mastery over your environment. Control as a as a feature of flow implies that it's not just passive. Yeah. Like you're watching a law and order you don't have any control over like you're just passively receiving it

[01:05:16] whereas flow experience of involve you interacting with the environment. Yeah. And you know that feeling is so great when you're practicing and practicing something it's so hard it's so hard you're practicing it and yeah that very first time where you did it and you weren't having to think

[01:05:34] too much about it it just happened it's it almost feels like incredible that we're capable of acquiring skills like that you know the I could think of the first time a particular cards light actually worked like because at first I would think this is actually physically impossible

[01:05:49] or chicks and my talks about this dancer. Yeah. So this is a dancer says a strong real act relaxation and calmness comes over me and I have no worries of failure what a powerful and warm feeling it is I want to expand hug

[01:06:03] the world I feel enormous power to affect something of grace and beauty which again is not the feeling you get when you're just on the internet or watching passively a TV there's still that kind of ansiness right. Yeah. It's not relaxing in the way that

[01:06:21] when you're doing these kinds of things and you're good at them it's incredible also that we just don't try to set up our life so that we do way more of I yeah I really do think it's because it's hard to get there

[01:06:36] and we don't have that much time to work on the kinds of skills that will get us there in this deeply rewarding way. I think it's capitalism. Well, just like like just be like the next featured he says another quality of the experiences that it

[01:06:54] usually contains coherent non-contradictory demands for action and provides clear unambiguous feedback to a person's actions that's so key. Yeah. These components of flow like the preceding ones are made possible by limiting awareness to a restricted field of possibilities. I think that's got to be like one of

[01:07:11] the most essential aspects of all of what makes flow states conducive. You know, like when you're doing magic right like there's not that many things you can do to make the trick work. There's just yeah and when and you know when it works

[01:07:27] very clearly, you know, it works very clearly. Exactly. Right. Like if we're if we're all like how the fuck did you do that? Yeah. I really like this idea or harping on it, but I really like this idea of this constraint this constraining possibilities.

[01:07:40] You know, in my mind, I was thinking it's the difference between choosing which game to play and choosing what to do when you're playing the game like there really is two different modes of being like if it's a game that I'm good at what could be hard

[01:07:55] is deciding whether which game you want to play to begin with. Exactly. If you're if you've already decided on the game, then you're now just playing the game and that's it. If you have to think about what game should we play?

[01:08:06] Should we play a game or should we watch TV or should we just sit outside and talk or should we like all of a sudden like that's too many possibilities? No flow state. That's why some of the most anxiety inducing situations is when you don't

[01:08:17] know what game you're playing like think about that socially is it really is the case where where you have not come to a consensus with other people about which game it is you're playing and whether that's because you're in a different culture or these are new

[01:08:29] people that you haven't interacted with yet or it's a new phase of a relationship and you're not quite sure you know whether joke these kinds of jokes are OK like all of those life is full of those uncertain moments. Life is primarily those uncertain

[01:08:44] moments and like you were saying that's where the ego that's the hard work of reflecting and deliberating and anxiously wanting to know what other people might be thinking and then when we get these moments where everybody knows the rules like OK once that's

[01:09:00] why people I think you know say things like you know once I step on the core you leave everything behind that the end of that section says in other words the flow experience differs from awareness in everyday reality because it contains ordered rules which make an act

[01:09:13] which make action and the evaluation of action automatic and hence unproblematic when contradictory actions are made possible as for instance when cheating is introduced into a game the self reappears again to negotiate between the conflicting definitions of what needs to be done and the flow is interrupted.

[01:09:29] It's like there's no crying in baseball. This can be broadened so much that's what I loved about the thing about an enemy it's like you see this just delicate balance between when there are overly restrictive rules which limits your autonomy in ways that can be oppressive but then

[01:09:48] there's no rules in culture and the life which then also has this problem of well now the possibilities are endless. I'd like I think I thought about like millennials like not trying to decide whether to have kids or not like it's good that you can decide

[01:10:03] not whether to have kids nobody should there shouldn't be pressure on people to just keep overpopulating the planet but at the same time it's like that didn't used to be something that occupied people's attention and deliberation everyone just tried to have kids and that

[01:10:16] was that that's what's expected of you that's what you did and now that this is something that you have to do like a cost benefit analysis for that's just another element of like stress when the game is picked better or for worse but again that can be oppressive

[01:10:31] it can be it can be terrible but it's also what can be great so it's just a question of what the best game and rules are. You know right absolutely the task of choosing what the best rules are is daunting and I think that's what you're saying is

[01:10:46] actually like a good explanation for why traditionalism for instance is attractive and so yeah I think we can be a bit unfair to people who have this strong desire for to maintain the social rules that they were brought up with. I mean as you say some of those

[01:11:08] are oppressive and so we should obviously change them but there is this freedom from knowing I don't have to worry about a whole bunch of stuff if I know that I'm going to be this. You just go to the KKK rally because that's what everybody does

[01:11:22] you know down with the Jews right if I have to now decide like which races should be allowed to have freedom that's daunting for me I don't want to do it. We're we're definitely entering sub stack stars with your defensive trads and no but I think that's

[01:11:40] right like this can be broadened outwards like it's not flow exactly you know to have certain things settled but it's the same kind of idea of you know like that nausea that Sarge talks about the possibilities of your action are endless and your decision will be

[01:11:56] a big part of defining who you are that's an anxiety producing state. Yeah so there is like the there's the reduction of friction in narrowing of possibilities but what I really do like about what this notion of flows adding is the development of skill

[01:12:14] this state that requires increasing skill and increasing challenge. Yeah yeah the final characteristic is that auto tealik nature which is when you stroke your own penis is tealik your nickname for your job it's what I call my penis tealik hey tealik are you ready for another

[01:12:36] round do you want to go? It is funny though that you know that Chicks of my high is having to fight against people who think that things can't be intrinsically meaningful you know so he goes to some length to be like look obviously there are these auto tealik

[01:12:55] activities but it's practically every writer who has dealt with play has remarked on the auto tealik nature of this activity and so he quotes the Bhagavad Gita let the motive be in the deed and not in the event be not one whose motive for action is the hope

[01:13:08] of reward. He talks about poet talking about rock climbing the mystique of rock climbing is climbing you get to the top of the rock glad it's over but really wish it would go forever the justification of climbing is climbing like the justification of

[01:13:21] poetry is writing you don't conquer anything except things in yourself the act of writing justifies poetry the purpose of the flow is to keep on flowing not looking for a peak or utopia but staying in the flow it's not a moving up but a

[01:13:36] continuous flowing you move up only to keep the flow going there's no possible reason for climbing except the climbing itself it is a self communication you're not doing it for anything other than the doing of it at that moment in the present and the only

[01:13:52] reason you would want to get better at something is so that the flow could keep continuing not for some other and yeah absolutely and being like the best in the world at something those people are constantly on the lookout for somebody or something that can keep challenging them

[01:14:12] I'm so jealous of those other podcasts that still have something to shoot but we've like perfected is there there's nothing more than five stars exactly after outlining these conditions for what makes up for the state Chicks Mahi has a he proposes it's sort of a preliminary

[01:14:35] systematizing of what this looks like and so he says this is my kind of sense system yeah like a complicated model there's not a whole bunch of box scenarios it's elegant it's actually elegant really flow is the balance between having skill and the right kind of

[01:14:52] challenge if something is too far beyond your skill that ego would keep popping in and telling you like you got it what you have to do to improve it's just not fun it's not flowy right it can be either just worrying because you're just thinking about

[01:15:08] it whether you're doing it right or at the extreme end if the challenges are so hard but your skills are not anywhere close to being able to meet them then that's anxiety producing yeah on the other hand if you are so good at something

[01:15:23] and the challenge is low then right that's just boring yeah the more that's true the more so why do you think that is that the more that's true he says then you go back to anxiety again so anxiety is on the extremes of both ends of this

[01:15:39] it's that ansieness I don't know it's like yeah yeah you're not occupied anymore when you're so not occupied because your cognitive abilities are not being exercised in any way it's the self consciousness creepy back back in a big way and it comes back and because

[01:15:57] it too hot if it comes back in too strong then it's going to be you know like that's anxiety producing is to have too much consciousness of self right it's like yeah it's like not even engaging in the activity might as well

[01:16:10] the ego has all of the same ability to just pop right back into your mind because it's not you don't need to focus if I have a criticism of this model and also a slight resistance to when you know when you keep emphasizing that everything is about developing

[01:16:27] the skills and the times that it takes to develop the skill I well I think that's true of a lot and probably most flow activities it feels like and especially when if you're talking about social relationships or just being with family that you love

[01:16:43] friends that you feel comfortable around that seems to me to be also like flow experience but not involving skills unless skills now just you know social interaction or something like that but it's really more just the experience of being with these people that allows the loss of ego

[01:17:02] allows it allows all these things it doesn't seem to me to map much on skills you know what I mean yeah totally I would just say that then that's not flow I don't know what I would say where you can be there are other ways

[01:17:20] to both have like a purposeful set of activities that where the ego dissolves a bit but that's not what he's talking about but I think phenomenologically it's a similar kind of experience I guess or if not just like you lose the time you lose the time

[01:17:39] it's it feels easy everything comes naturally you don't feel like you know even just playing a game that doesn't require a ton of skill but like playing it with these people that you love and I don't know like I feel like in the book

[01:17:50] he talks about this to some extent but I only really skimmed through that but I think he wouldn't mind calling some of those experiences flows but I've thought of this before because the because of the kinds of experiences like when we were talking about browsing Reddit or something

[01:18:09] can get you lost like my fear would be that he would sort of call everything flow that that is like I don't think that's an analogy like they're getting lost on Reddit isn't like hanging out with like family and friends but you could say it's you lose yourself

[01:18:26] you lose a sense of time like you want to keep doing it it has a couple of them maybe but it's not like intrinsically rewarding it's not so taking this paper at face value where he's saying like that he is trying to describe actions in which you're engaging

[01:18:42] with the environment at a particular level of skill then I guess I would say either there is a swath of things like in this fuzzy category of of what you might call flow where it's like there's never going to be some sort of necessary and sufficient thing

[01:18:58] that some there are some states that are flowy in this way and some states that are flowing in that way and his little graph of skill and challenge maybe doesn't perfectly capture family interactions and that's fine it's just like a flow of a different sort

[01:19:14] I think he would say either that or focus particularly on on skillful behavior and maybe family interactions involve a kind of skill that you're just not aware that you have yeah I just think you could make a slightly broader model that captured both the social flow and

[01:19:36] and skillful flow but but but left out because it's phenomenologically different you know spending three hours on the internet yeah it is a good question though I was trying to think what would be the kind of family interaction in which you weren't feeling flow

[01:19:53] so now imagine all of those things are going on and you're familiar interaction you're having all of these what would pop you out of that what would bring your ego back into it that well like tense a kind of tense conflict like when relationships are going bad

[01:20:07] you start to do a lot of the things that you start to do when sort of your skill level isn't matching the you know like you start overthinking things you started like some it seems that it reminds me of the somebody cheating discussion

[01:20:22] that he has in the paper where what pops you out is that somebody has like not going by the rules and that I think that does capture some features of relationship yeah right and so you now have to renegotiate

[01:20:35] yeah exactly or like figure out what they are now and that's the key you know like in skillful stuff like you that's our setup and now you just work within like steps is true I don't think we're supposed to be doing this super maybe we are renegotiate

[01:20:52] so I can make some is that the ultimate flow activity it's better than auto teal it yeah step sibling like sexual exploration oh God I hope people know that you're making poor and have references you were the one that brought it up so that I'm

[01:21:12] this is your sub step now is this a relationship flow it's like you could do that graph but it's like you know step is the ideal like just full on like brother or sister that gets you into the worry or anxiety

[01:21:33] and then if you're not related at all that's bored ultimately anxiety you know I know all right you popped me out of my flow for this for this episode and I have to worry whether we violated any rules exactly oh God

[01:22:02] I mean I guess that was the only thing I want to the last thing I wanted to say do you have yeah you know what's funny is that there's like 3040 years of research that might might say something about the

[01:22:15] questions that we raised but that's why this is an episode about a classic paper because we don't have to worry about all of the progress that people have made toward answering these questions totally well the challenge of editing this particular

[01:22:30] is is is too high for my skills and I am in the anxiety territory so all right but that's my problem not yours join us next time on very bad with it

[01:23:24] very bad with it