Mark I joined the club. Which one?
I'm I just turned 40. Oh shit.
And I'm not. This isn't fishing for some
celebration here. I completely forgot you wish me
on my birthday. No, no, I remembered on your
birthday. I completely forgot.
I was like, we're gonna use Drew's birthday as a cold over
and then I. Forgot.
Yeah. Yeah, I didn't forget.
I've. I've actually been reminded that
I'm 40 every day since I've been 40.
So how, how is it? How, how have your 40s been?
It's been, what, a week? Now it's been a week.
It's been a week the entire week leading up to my birthday.
I'm not shitting you. My back hurt.
Just just preparing you. It's just getting your body is
getting you ready for what's ahead.
So my my back hurt, my hair I'm sure got grayer.
It just keeps getting grayer and grayer.
As everybody is is pointing out, it does that.
It also, though, too, I don't know about you, but I don't
really do the whole I sit down at the first of the year and I
don't really do much of that. But birthdays, I kind of, I kind
of sit back and look back at the year behind, the year ahead,
where I've been, where I've come from.
It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your
holes. Mark Manson.
How would you rate 39? Was it?
Was it an A year AB year? What was?
It, it was, this was one of it was a mixed bag year for sure.
We've done a lot of work, you know, professionally, we've done
doing a lot of work. We've had a lot of ups and downs
with that, you know, and these personally things happen too.
I felt like my, like my mid 30s were like, man, this is I'm
like, I'm winning. And, you know, we talked
previously on an episode about, like, I always got to keep in
mind, like, there's something around the corner here.
Life has a way whenever you just like, feel like you're winning
for too long. Life has a way of reminding you
who's boss. It was not in like a fatalistic
catastrophic way by any means, but I was just reminded of some
things and and it kind of made me be grateful.
Also, though, it started to make me think about like, maybe what
I would have done differently up to this point, which is what I
kind of want to. That's what I want to talk about
today for the fuck of the week. Regrets, Regret.
Are you a man of regret? I think the older I get, the
less I am. Yeah, yeah.
I'm a man of very few regrets. You are.
We've talked about this. You and I just personally talked
about this before and you're fucking weird, man.
I. Don't have like the regret bone,
the shame bone very little of. It it's like you're like, oh, I
would have done this differently, but then you just
move on. Yeah, you move on.
I was like can. You fuck that up, all right?
I dwell on shit. One thing I've started to notice
though, is that I'm I'm. I'm getting better at choosing
my regrets. I think.
I think anyway. That's fair.
I well, I do think it's probably not good to have zero regrets.
But you know, my, my approach to it was always, and I remember I,
I actually wrote about this years and years and years ago,
like very early in my career, I wrote that part of who you are
as a person, part of your identity is all of your past
experiences. So if there is any past
experience that you wish never happened, you're essentially
wishing for a part of yourself to not exist.
And that just strikes me as incredibly like, why would I
ever wish a part of myself to not exist?
Yeah, that's just like a losing proposition.
So to me it, it just from the get go, it just seems
emotionally, mentally imperative to to find a justification or a
silver lining for any and every experience I've had.
That said, too, I've just, I've never been the sort of person
that beats like, I don't know, like things roll off me pretty
easily. If, if I have a superpower, it's
probably that. It's crazy.
Like I looked up some of the, you know, the surveys they've
done on regret and people regret education with the things, you
know, decisions they made around education, their careers,
romance, parenting, self improvement, leisure activities. 00:04:03,880 I wish I would travel more, that
sort of thing. I don't some of none of those
really land for me. And I don't know what do do any
of those when I pop, when I read those off, do they pop up for
you? Like oh, I wish I would have
done that differently. No.
For for those.
But it is, you know, there is that cliche that that the most,
most regrets are the things that you haven't done right.
Yeah. And.
Regrets of omission, not Commission, right?
Yes and I I definitely have always taken out the heart and
been like I would rather regret doing something and falling on
my face then regret not trying at all.
So I try to keep that in mind, but I don't know, I, to me,
it's, I feel like a lot of people's regret, Like there was
a thing that went super, super viral 10 or 12 years ago.
It was like a Hospice nurse wrote the five most common
regrets of the dying. It turned into a book and a Ted
talk and all this stuff. But it was everything was, you
know, I spent too much time at work.
I didn't spend enough time with loved ones.
I, I fought over stupid things, you know, got sucked up in the
drama and things. So I mean, to, to me, they're
all like pretty obvious. I'm not saying I don't struggle
with those things. I mean, I do.
But it, it, there's nothing like coming out of left field.
There's nothing like, oh, wow. I never expected somebody to
regret that. It's like, yeah, we're we're we
tend to take things like we're human.
We take things for granted. We get upset over like petty,
stupid things. We probably work too much and
don't spend enough time with loved ones, you know, So I don't
know if I regrets around that, but I it's like, I don't know, I
definitely look at past behaviors and, and even current
behaviors and I'm like, yeah, that could be, that could have
been done better. So do you, do you have any
regrets at all then? I mean, every, everybody does.
That's kind of my point here is much like the fucks we give, you
have to give a fuck about something.
You're you have to regret things in your life because everything
you do has a cost to it, right? Yes, I struggle again, I
struggle with this question a lot because of what I just said
about the identity. Like it's like all the mistakes
I've made I feel like have eventually made me who I am
today. So it's like the bar for me to
actually genuinely regret something is extremely high.
Because to me, what regret means is like, if you could go back
and undo it, you would. So there's very, very, very few
things in my life that if I could go back and undo it, I
would. My biggest embarrassments, my
biggest failures, the tragedies and traumas and stuff, I
wouldn't take those back. The only things that I can think
of that if I could go back and undo them, I would tend to be
times that I was really selfish or disrespectful to people I
cared about. So there are, you know, I, I was
kind of a, a drunk, narcissistic, selfish young man
in my late teens and early 20s. And, and I, I was kind of a Dick
to a number of people in my life and many of whom I care deeply
about. So there's some experiences
around that. And I'm like, yeah, if I could
go back and not say that thing or not do that thing, that would
have been I, I would do that. Yeah, I think when I was
thinking about this again, like looking back on my life on my
birthday or whatever, I I was thinking of the embarrassment
thing you brought up, right. And I used to that used to
really eat at me. I like, oh, I did this stupid
thing 1020 years ago that doesn't so much anymore.
I think what I found was a little bit more clarity around,
like I said, choosing, choosing my regrets.
And very similar to U2, it's usually around, it's been around
relationships. What I found though, too, is
that a lot of the regrets that I have have a common theme that
kind of underlying underlie all of them.
It's it's been a theme of taking people for granted in my life.
That's probably that's the biggest regret I have around
just about anything. I've lost big chunks of money
doing stupid things. I've done dumb, dumb things
where I put myself in danger or other people, whatever.
It's the relationships that I've taken for granted.
It started like with grandparents when my
grandparents started passing away.
Like, that was kind of the first, like, oh shit, you know,
my, my grandma's not my, my first grandparent died when I
was 16. And until the funeral, I didn't
even really realize that she was gone.
You know what I mean? And I was like, God, I took her
for granted that whole time. But when you're that age too,
it's like. You, I get that, but then I
continue to do it away into my adult life, ex girlfriends, you
know, other family members, my parents.
It's funny because I'm the same. It's the it's the the taking for
granted slash disrespect of other people.
Like I'll give you an example. I cheated on my girlfriends when
I was young. And when I look back at that
experience, on the one hand, if I'm only evaluating, you know,
my life and my development and my growth and everything, I
don't necessarily regret that because it's like I, I learned,
I fucked up my relationships and I learned lessons from those
things. And I, I had to learn how to be
a better partner and more committed and more honest and,
and I kind of had to go through some of those experiences to
figure my shit out. What kills me is when I think
back to my girlfriends, how they didn't deserve that.
How I, like, I really did care about them and I like, was so
blatantly disrespectful towards them.
You know, the the 40 year old mark is horrified by my
behavior, whereas you know, the the 20 year old mark, you know,
was just kind of doing his thing so.
I think we found a little pocket of regret there for you then.
Just a little smidge. Little smidgen.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely, yeah, the taking for
granted and like the the bad behavior was part of it.
The other kind of theme I saw running throughout all this
though, too was I, I took them for granted because it in a way
that I was like looking for something else, something quote
UN quote better, you know, whether whether it was a family
member or, you know, ex girlfriends or whatever it was.
It was like, oh, I was behaving poorly because I was looking for
something else. And not like the biggest thing I
actually do regret was not like appreciating what I had right in
front of me, which was so much now that I realized that as I
get older, I had so much that was just like right in front.
Of me but isn't some of this just being hawaii's old man and
looking back at that was a. Question I was going to have for
you too. Yeah, like how much of this is
'cause I think some of this is just being young.
Like when you, when you're young, you do take everything
you grew up with for granted and you do just kind of assume it's
always going to be there. And you do assume that there's
something better out in the world than whatever you got
stuck with, you know, growing up with.
And I, I certainly relate to that and that it's taken me a
long time to come around and really appreciate a lot of the,
the people and things that I grew up with.
So I hear you. I hear you.
It's a we we now we sound like 2 old men sitting on a porch back
in my day, I mean. Yeah, yeah, yes, that's true.
And there is just some of it. I mean, that that's another
lesson I've just learned about being a human being, is that
there's just some shit you just have to learn on your own and
there's no way of getting around that.
Yeah, I mean, I don't. Again, to me regret is like a
very strong word for, for example, I probably the closest
thing that doesn't involve other people that I would potentially
regret is it took me, I think way too long to get on the the
health bandwagon. I had a lot of very
self-destructive habits when I was young and that persisted
well into my 30s. And I was very cavalier about
them. My brain is just very good at
justifying whatever I want. And, and that worked against me
with a lot of these self-destructive behaviors.
I always found ways to, to justify them.
And, and so my health got a little bit out of control in my
30s. And now that I have gotten my
shit together and I do have healthy habits and I, I, I'm
sober and I'm eating well and sleeping well and exercising and
everything, I'm like, oh, why the fuck did I wait so long?
Like, I'm definitely having an experience of like, what, what
if I did this 10 years ago? What if I like went to half as
many parties and drank half as much booze and instead spent
that time in the gym? And it's, I try not to dwell on
that too much because it just, I don't know.
I don't think it's very productive, but that pains me a
little bit to think about for sure.
But, but do I regret it? I don't know, man.
I have a lot of great fucking times.
And yeah, you do learn some. Yeah.
And you've talked before too about like, you know, people
say, I wish I wouldn't have spent so much time at work.
And you're like, well, I went, you went all in when you're in
your 20s for years and you were not balanced and you don't
regret that, you know, that, that sort of thing.
So I think there's pockets of that where if you apply it in,
in certain cases, you're OK. The the health thing though,
that's a very, very common one that older people cite too.
Like I regret taking care of my health.
Absolutely. And so I think there are just a
handful of those, like if you if you ever get on a plane and
there's somebody who looks like Yoda, like switch seats with
with whoever, sit next to them and talk to them about this kind
of thing, you will be blown away at what they come up with.
Well, you know what's funny about that one too?
As you probably remember, when I turned 30, we crowd sourced an
article from the audience. I basically asked everybody in
the audience, I said, if you're over 40, what do you wish
somebody told you at your 30th birth?
Like, what's your best piece of advice for somebody turning 30?
And the number one piece of advice was don't wait to get
your health in order. Because when it by by the time
you're in your 40s and 50s, in some cases it's too late or it's
going to be too hard or, or, or it's, you know, whatever.
And I fucking just completely disregarded that, Right?
Yeah. It's like literally like 98% of
my audience told me the same thing.
And I was like, yeah, I'm good, Yeah.
And it goes back to it.
It goes back to we've talked about this before about taking
care of your health has all these little tiny things and
those that takes a very, very long time to build that that
bank up that Bank of health, if you will.
It does, and it I think the in my case the the issue was a lack
of clear measurement. You know, so it's, I fell victim
to my own ability to delude myself and convince myself that
I was being healthy when I, I know today I was not being
healthy at all. So it's it's, you know, living
under a little bit of delusion for a while.
But then again, it's like I don't know how I would have
snapped out of that any other way, right?
So it's hard to regret something that I don't know how I would
have changed. Like, it's not like, it's not
like I had a realization when I was 30 of like, dude, you're
fucking up your health and you're lying to yourself and
you're doing all these wrong things and you drink way too
much. And then I kept doing it.
It's like, no, I just never had that realization.
I just, yeah, I was out to lunch, so to speak.
Well, OK, if, if somebody is out there just wallowing in regret,
yeah, I don't know, reframe. I don't even know what the
language around this would be. In my experience, the people who
are like really hung up on regrets, it's one of two things. 00:15:43,320 Either it's a very traumatic or
tragic experience that they just are really having a hard time
letting go of. And to me that's that's like a
more of a grieving issue or their actual issue is just a
very deep self loathing and lack of self worth.
And that it manifests through constantly being preoccupied by
all the things that they did wrong or they could have done
better or that they fucked up or missed opportunities or
whatever. Like so, the symptom is the is
the regret, but the real issue is just like this general
loathing of oneself. Yeah, yeah.
I think like you said, just having a bias towards doing
things and just going for it, that'll go a long ways.
And this is going to sound really cheesy, so get get your
your cheese hats ready. Self forgiveness goes a long
way. I know that that just like
sounds so banal and but it really is true.
Like you just everybody fucks up.
Everybody misses opportunities. Everybody takes people and
things for granted. Everybody has parts of
themselves that they're not satisfied with or that they
don't love or that they wish was different.
I think where we really get into trouble is when we start telling
ourselves that we shouldn't feel that way, that we're like, well,
Drew's completely happy with himself and didn't fuck up his
opportunities. You know, it's like, no, we all
have stuff that we feel like we missed out on or that we didn't
do right. And so there's no reason to
judge yourself for it. It's just like a normal part of
the human condition. And much in the same way, like
we fuck anything up and we have to, you know, people in our
lives mess things up and we forgive them.
Like if your best friend screws up and, you know, you, you
don't, you probably don't have that hard of a time for giving
them or letting them, like letting it go with them.
Yet so many of us struggle to do that with ourselves.
Yeah. But that's definitely getting
older. That was, it was one of the
lessons I've learned as well too, is that like self
compassion, self love, self forgiveness is a a skill you
have to develop because you can't always get that from
outside. And I think I regret is a big
part of that. People are looking for some sort
of outside solution and it's just not there.
All right, we'll be right back. This episode is brought to you
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Some brilliant and bullshit. Brilliant or bullshit, Mark,
this is going to sound. This is going to make me sound
like a real asshole. Oh, I'm here for it.
I'm here for it. Mark is is empathy brilliant or
bullshit? Is empathy bullshit?
Yeah.
Let's do we'll put that a giant full screen quote.
Empathy is bullshit, Drew Bernie.
Yeah. 2024. 2024 The man turns 40 and he's just He's decided
that he is not empathy. Full on get off my lawn, crabby
old man. At this point, There's there's
okay. This is a serious question,
people. Seriously, people who I think
people who are not psychology nerds don't realize that this is
actually a very legit question. Actually, like he goes back to
pre psychology event. I mean, so there's a deep
philosophical argument behind a lot of this and we we found this
article recently. It's it was from we found this
on CNN. The title of the article is
empathy is on the rise in young people.
Here's how to build yours. So there's an assumption right
there or obviously that, you know, empathy is good.
And we do take that for granted these days.
We, we, we take it as a given that empathy is a, is a good
thing. Just some quick stats on this
though. From 1979 to about 2009, they've
monitored, they've, they've measured this in, in different
surveys and it seems that empathy has gone down from 1979
to 2009 in younger people, OK teens, adolescents, early 20s,
that sort of thing. This includes both cognitive
empathy, which is being able to understand someone else's
perspective, and also emotional empathy, which is feeling
concerned for others and feeling it like you can feel how they
feel. That's what we think of as
empathy about anyway. So from 2009 to 2018, though,
they measured a measurable increase in empathy among this
this population. Same population or a young
population A. Young population, yeah, there's
they haven't so. Gen.
Z, basically. Yeah, yes.
So what you're telling me is our generation is the least
empathetic generation well population.
So if. You look back at the data, it
kind of waxes and wanes a little bit, but there has been a
noticeable increase in in the last 15 years or so.
Yeah, yeah. Got you.
Yeah, how's that? How's that working out?
Well, that's what I that's what I want to talk about, right?
So. Where?
Where is that getting us? You know, they, they, I, I
looked at the paper here too, the, the actual paper.
And you know, they, they, they posit there's a few different
causes for this, you know, increased social connectivity
through social media or, or all these different communication
technologies. We have now collective responses
to economic hardship was one of those two like a 2008, 2009 like
I'm not sure about that one. These are speculative from.
From the paper. Changes in the social norms that
probably goes back also to just cultural connectivity.
Increased awareness of social issues again through news media,
social media, communication technology.
One I found pretty interesting too was loneliness and social
isolation. They found a correlation between
respondents who are more lonely. We're also more empathetic.
So I wonder if it just, you know, they have a lot of time to
sit around and think about, oh God, I'm lonely.
This other person must be lonely and that must suck, or it must
suck to be ostracized or. Or maybe highly empathic people
have a higher need for social interaction that can be very
well. Too.
And so even though they are interacting with lots of people,
they feel lonely, right? Yeah.
But the, the, the, the argument that's kind of implied in this
is, you know, empathy is a good thing.
And the title of this article is that here's how to build yours.
Here's how to have more empathy. What do you think?
Is empathy always a good thing, Mark?
Ten years ago I would have said yes.
There's a great book by Paul Bloom called Against Empathy
which I was triggered when I saw that title, but it came out
probably 20/16/2017. Or something.
I think they're right in there. 20, 2018, 2016 or 18, yeah.
And I, I remember being like, what the fuck?
And, and actually, it's a great book.
It's really fascinating. And he, he basically convinced
me with, with, with the book, like he won me over.
And I do think that the key distinction is what you made it
was cognitive empathy versus emotional empathy.
You know, I, I do think it's important to be able to
cognitively or rationally put yourself in the other person's
shoes, so to speak. Like imagine what life would be
like if you were a Ukrainian refugee or whatever.
That's very useful. I think the emotional empathy,
to me, it's, it's like what I took away from it is that it can
cut both ways because depending on who you were empathizing with
and why you're empathizing with them, like any other emotion,
empathy can blind you or bias you.
And so the results can be very mixed.
The same way people justify awful things with love or care
or compassion, you can justify a lot of awful things with
empathy. And so it, it's, it's, it seems
to me that it's like it just empathizing with a person or
population is not sufficient on its own.
There needs to be like some sort of like rational placement or
contextualization to have around it, right?
That makes sense. Yeah, and that's that Paul
Bloom, I that's one of his the big arguments throughout the
book. It's it's narrow.
It narrows your focus. He calls it the spotlight
effect. And so your empathy is kind of
like a a spotlight going around like what should I, who or what
should I empathize? That's.
Confusing, because there's another spotlight effect in
psychology, which is that when you assume that people are
paying more attention to you than they actually are.
So the empathy highlighter. Yeah, it's a pink highlighter
that you just colored people with.
Yeah. So, so, yeah, you can.
It can blind you to you can get what you see this all the time
now. People glom on one single issue
or one group of people and they say why aren't you caring?
Why aren't you as empathetic and caring about this?
And it's like, why aren't you as empathetic and caring about this
to all these other things going on?
Yes. Not that we should be like, not
that we should not that we can, not that we have the capacity.
The issue is, is that it's not sufficient, right?
So yes, we're starting to get into the we're, we're, we're
starting to approach a lot of social issues that have been
going on lately. Because I think part of the
problem is that a lot of people who empathize deeply with people
like victims or populations, they seem to feel that that is
sufficient. It's like, OK, well, this bad
thing happened to this person. So I'm really upset.
And you should be really upset too.
And, and it's like, it kind of ends there, right?
Right. Feels like you've done
something. Whereas like, well, what
actually happened and and I think that this can backfire in
a lot of cases. So perfect example is the George
Floyd protest in the fallout from that from 2020, right?
So for people who are not familiar, George Floyd was a
African American man was murdered by a police officer,
was caught on camera. There were massive protests
against police brutality in 2020, a huge firestorm of racial
debate and arguments. And there were calls to defund
police and put body cameras on every cop in the country.
And all the, all, all these things.
And that outrage is understandable.
The empathy that came, I mean, I saw the video.
I thought it was horrifying. The empathy is completely
understandable. But it's interesting that, you
know, we're about 4 1/2 years removed from that.
And there's actually a thing now that some researchers are
calling the George Floyd effect, which is since the George Floyd
protests and all the outrage towards police, police are much
less likely to to arrest or subdue people out in public.
And as a result, the murder rates and the the violent crime
rates have gone up in certain communities, predominantly
African American communities. And so the people who have
actually suffered the most from the George Floyd effect are the
very people that everybody had empathy for, their targets of
the empathy. Exactly right.
And so it, it's, it's, again, it's like the emotion.
The emotion's valuable, right? Like it's, it's especially when
you have this like outpouring of outrage and, and this sense of
injustice and everybody's upset and they want to make things
better. Like that is valuable.
It just needs to be channeled in the right direction.
And when you don't channel in the right direction, it can
actually unwittingly make things.
Worse right, right. OK.
So you, you are kind of getting at the emotional empathy versus
cognitive and then see then there where right and and Paul
Bloom makes the argument he's not the the title is against
empathy, but he's not like I, I don't hate empathy.
He's like. I just think it's overrated.
Paul Bloom hates you. Right.
Yeah, right. Like Paul Bloom is a is a
psycho. That was actually, that was
probably the first title he wanted.
He submitted that first. And yeah, and the publisher was
like, you know, yeah, maybe we changed that.
Let's let's. Redirect but but he he does make
a a case that cognitive empathy where you can understand
somebody but you don't necessarily have to put yourself
in their shoes or feel a certain way.
You just need to be able to understand them.
Now I should say there's some psychologists who think can you
really cognitively understand somebody without having some
emotional component to it too? I kind of maybe not, I don't
know, but the the the point still remains that if this whole
cognitive empathy is kind of the basis for what we now call
effective altruism made famous by Peter Singer, made infamous
by Sam Bigman for you too. But there there's this rational
side to our brain that he, he thinks we need to use alongside
our empathy to make sure that we're effectively channeling all
of these emotions, all of this empathy into the right direction
and making sure that we're using our our higher reasoning powers
to make sure that the good we want to come can actually come.
What do you think of that? I mean, that's, that's a, that's
a big thing to bite off and chew.
I agree with the principle that the limiting factor is
understanding the the 2nd and 3rd order effects, understanding
the downstream effects of the empathy and making sure that
you're not acting out in such a way that is is going to backfire
or or work against you. The problem is it and, and I
like I, I never really got the effect of altruism thing just
because it's, once you get past like the second order effects of
anything, it's just the complexity becomes overwhelming
and people's biases kick in that it, it's just like there's such
a fog of war to understand what is actually going to have the
biggest long term impact and what's not that I, I've just
always been very skeptical that you could objectively measure
that sort of thing. And in my observation is that
any like really serious attempts to quantify that sort of thing
of like what's going to create the greatest good for the
greatest amount of people leads you into a very absurd place
very quickly. You know, like like like from
what what I understand, there's a whole subset of effective
altruist who basically came to the conclusion that since there
was like a point O 1% chance that super intelligent AI would
just destroy humanity, that all of their efforts should be put
into preventing super intelligent AI.
Which like that just strikes me as completely nonsensical,
right? Like.
Or like like the the we all have two kidneys.
Like you shouldn't have one of your kidneys because you don't
need it. And that the the the risk of
dying from the kidney transplant surgery is so low, and yet the
the outsize return you get for donating your kidney is so high. 00:32:03,760 Yeah.
It goes to some ridiculous places.
Pretty. Quickly.
Yeah, it does. Like none of us should have both
of our kidneys. Like it's just, it's amoral for
us, we're. Going to put, we're going to put
that quote under the first slide.
So Drew Bernie. None of us should have two.
Empathy is bullshit, Drew Bernie.
No one should have two kidneys. Well, let me.
OK, OK, so I mean that is part of the argument.
We're barely staying on the rails.
Here, yeah, Let me see if I can get us back on.
The train here, where are we going with this?
So the, the, the case that Bloom makes against empathy, one of
them we've we've covered a little bit of this.
It narrows your focus a little too much on on single issues or
or a handful of issues. When there's all sorts of issues
going on, it doesn't scale very well.
Like empathy causes you again, narrows your focus, causes you
to focus more on a single person rather than the thousands of
people that are suffering. It's how our brains are wired
because. It causes you to stereotype very
plainly. That's another one.
The that it that's it's kind of the basis for in Group out group
thinking is empathy because you're going to empathize with
one group over the other. Just naturally you have a
natural. Ankle and it is human nature
that we naturally empathize with people who look and.
Think and. Think and act like us and come
from the same place we come from.
So it's again, if you are, if you're against things like
racism and prejudice and nationalism and all these things
and then, you know, baseline empathy is actually potentially
empathy is not only the solution of those problems, it is also
the cause of those problems. Yeah, another one too.
Your empathy is easily manipulated.
I thought that was an interesting one that he brings
up in the book. Totally.
Yeah, as a writer, 100%. Right, and responses depend on
priorities. Give me two pages, I'll make you
empathize with anybody. Yeah, yeah.
And so it's it's very easily manipulated because it's an
emotion that a deep emotion that we feel.
Can I give you an example? OK this this pissed me off.
There is a new trend going on, particularly on Netflix, but I
think it started with all the podcast like all the murder who. 00:34:16,760 So Netflix is getting in on it
and now net Netflix is producing all these like murder mystery
shows and and shows about serial killers and all this stuff.
And I've watched a few of them and it's really bugging me what
they do. They, they, they did this with
the recent Menendez brothers one and they did it with the Jeffrey
Dahmer 1. And it, it like it makes me
sick, which is that they show the murder like they show the
the murderer and the murderer. And it's like horrendous and
horrific. And you, you're just absolutely
disgusted. And then you get like episode 3,
three or four and, and the next, like the next 50% of the show is
completely written to make you empathize with the murderer.
Yeah. So you start seeing how horrible
their childhood was and how they he was bullied and his dad was
this horrible person. And you know, and it's like it,
they spend multiple episodes like getting you to feel so
sorry for him and maybe he was actually the victim and all this
stuff. And to me, it's a really sick
use of the audience's empathy because I think particularly in
a case like of somebody like Jeffrey Dahmer, like, I actually
don't think we should empathize with him.
I think it's it is the ethics of getting people to empathize with
Jeffrey Dahmer is a very questionable thing.
I I don't think yeah. I can't believe you had to say
that, but yeah, you're right. Yeah, like, I don't know how
those writers and directors sleep at night like it's it's
sick. And there are, again, because
empathy is a powerful tool and getting people to empathize with
certain actions and behaviors and people and find in helping
them find justifications or explanations for those heinous
behaviors. I don't think that's necessarily
a good thing that we should be like broadcasting the millions
of people within society. So that's a perfect example
where I think empathy is used terribly.
And, and it also just makes the shows bad.
Like I, I, I don't buy it, you know, like I, I, I've watched a
few of them now and every single time I get halfway through and
I'm just like, I don't buy this. This just feels, it feels too
contrived. It's like we're doing the like
the both sides thing, You know, I'm not, I'm not here for that.
Maybe I'm old, maybe I've aged out of this demographic.
But anyway, what you were saying made me think of that of just
like how easy it is to manipulate what what the
audience feels and what they care about and and by dictating
the narrative around what happened.
Right. Yeah.
And what the justifications were for something.
Like something similar is happening and you have a
connection with this as well in El Salvador through Kelly has
had to come out, people are railing against he's he's thrown
gangsters or suspected gangsters in jail in Mass, right, hundreds
of thousands of them. And people are like, you're
mistreating them. And he had to come out and say,
look, most people in El Salvador eat beans and rice every day.
I I'm not going to worry about what criminals are eating in
prison right now, OK? I have other things to think
about. So it's like, that's a
misdirection of empathy too, I think.
As well. That's another great example.
It's so for people who are unaware, we shot a YouTube video
in El Salvador. It will be coming out by the end
of this year. And part of the reason was I, I
actually wanted to go talk to the people in in the
neighborhoods, the poor neighborhoods where the gangs
controlled everything and where there was just that immense
amounts of violence as recently as a few years ago.
And yeah, I mean, regardless of what you think about him or his
politics, like he has a point, which is I think the outside
world has been so focused on the potential human rights
violations of the mass incarceration there that they're
they're missing the forest for the trees.
And and they don't realize, like I think Buchelli himself even
said it. He he said some say I wrongly
imprisoned thousands. I think I freed millions, right? 00:38:13,720 Because it's like you have a
country of 5 million who no longer lives in fear.
They're not no longer afraid to go outside.
They can take their kids to school, like do all the normal
things. So anyway, that video is coming
soon. Yeah, yeah, just a little
teaser. Yeah, a little teaser.
It'll be on the YouTube channel. What else?
Anything else about empathy are we?
I'm not as extreme as you, Drew. I'm not going to say it's
bullshit. Yeah.
Yeah, I don't I'm not going to call it.
I get we. OK, here's I'll offer some just. 00:38:40,880 Putting words in your mouth.
No, no, no, no, no. The I I empathy has its place,
absolutely. And I think it has its place in
especially in your personal relationships with people,
one-on-one situations or smaller groups.
That's what we evolved the empathy for.
That's where it's supposed to like, you know, that's our, our
evolutionary past. Probably.
That's how empathy evolved. That's kind of been hijacked
though lately I think. Yes, I think that's a really
good point is that it's empathy is it's optimized for the small
and local and and the people close to you and.
It's best used there. And it's best used there.
And I think maybe a side effect of our our technology is that
it's, it's empathy has been inflated and amplified and and
spread a little bit too much and too far.
Yeah, I don't know. We definitely sound like 240
year olds. Yeah, we do.
We do. Embracing it.
That's the other thing about getting older.
You're just like, Yep. Yeah, fuck them, fuck them.
All right, We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored by
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All right, we're back. What are the questions, Drew?
What are the people want to know?
The people want to know this one came in from YouTube.
Mark, what are your thoughts on ChatGPT and AI in general and
increasing commodification of the creative process, like using
it to write essays, song lyrics, that sort of thing.
What you take on AI in 2024? Mark this.
Is a great question. So I use AI quite frequently.
I believe you do as well. The team uses it quite a bit.
I think when anytime you look at like a major technological leap,
something get something that used to be scarce gets
commoditized, becomes abundant and then something new create it
becomes scarce, right? Like I, I don't think any, any
time people start freaking out about a new technology that they
always freak out about the thing that used to be scarce, then
it's going to become abundant. They never think about the new
scarcity. And I think what AI is going to
do is it's going to make creativity very abundant.
It's going to make it easier, more accessible to most people.
The time that it takes to go from idea to execution is
drastically going to get reduced.
And I, I generally think that anybody who is a creative, first
of all, if you're not messing around with it and trying to use
it, you, you're dumb. You're already behind that.
You're already behind. And then two, I think it's just,
it's going to make creatively talented people even better.
I don't think it's going to replace creativity.
I I just think it's going to make the creative people even
better. But what I'm excited for, and
this is something I've actually been asking myself this a lot
since Chachi BT broke out. It's like, what is the new
scarcity going to be? And I have AI have a theory
about this. I think AI is actually going to
put a premium back on in person connection in relationships and
community in particular, because we've already seen, you know,
information is already commoditized.
Information is already free and abundant.
And there's like probably too much of it.
There's like so much bad information.
Like we can actually probably deal.
We'd probably be better off if we had a little bit less
information. Pretty soon we're going to have
something similar with creativity.
Like it's just any, any, anything that you want to be
entertained by or any crazy idea you have, it's going to be out
there. There's going to be some version
of it available. What's going to be hard to find
is people that you connect with, people that you feel like you're
part of something, people that you relate to.
And I actually think there's, I've got the a little pet theory
around this, which is I think there, I think we're going to
end up with two internets and I think of them as human Internet
and machine Internet. So the machine Internet is
basically anytime you just want to solve a problem or know a
fact or get feedback on something, you're just going to
go ask the AI. You're like, you know, read
these five books and summarize for me and 10 bullet points and
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the AI will do that pretty
much instantaneously. And that's great because then
it's a tool that's going to help you and it just makes your life
better. But there's no emotional
sustenance in that, right? Like I, I could go to chat GP.
Let's pretend ChatGPT is like 10 times better than it currently
is. And let's say it's good enough
to write like a Pulitzer Prize winning novel.
I could go and ask it, hey, write me a Pulitzer Prize
winning novel about this, this and this with these themes and
whatever. I could read it and be like,
this is a really good novel, but it's going to lack there because
I know it's a machine and it's not a human.
There's going to be some sort of missing piece there.
I'm not going to feel like I'm relating to the author.
And I personally believe very strongly that a huge percentage
of why we like art is because of the person behind it, right?
Like, if that wasn't true, then it wouldn't bother us that like,
Michael Jackson was a pedophile or it wouldn't bother us that,
you know, I don't know, Leo DiCaprio doesn't sleep with a
girl over 25. Like, it, it, it, it's we care
about those things because we attach people's art to the
person. And that's human nature.
And that's never going to change.
I think the, the example that a lot of people refer to, which is
indicative is that computers have been better than humans at
chess for over 20 years now. Yeah.
And there are tons of chess tournaments for software, like
software developers enter their software into chess tournaments. 00:45:29,200 And they have.
They compete in the exact same way that humans compete to see
which software is the best chess software nobody watches.
That Who gives a shit? Nobody gives a shit.
Nobody knows who won. Nobody cares.
Everybody knows that Magnus Carlsen's the best chess player
in the world, and he has been for the last 12 years.
He has millions of followers online.
He has tons of fans. He's made millions of dollars,
right? Why?
Because he's the best human player, and that's what we care
about. We care about who is the best
human chess player. So I think we're the second
Internet is going to be the human Internet.
And that is where we go to connect with people, where we go
to relate to people, to hear drama and stories and judge each
other and do all the human things and be parts of
communities and, and ideally see each other more in person.
Because AI is going to solve all the abstract informational stuff
for most of it for us. So what it can't solve is that
human to human relational. Right.
Well, OK, a lot to unpack there, but one, I think I'm already
starting to use the Internet that way.
I found anyway, I don't I really don't even use Google anymore.
I use perplexity. Have you used?
Have you been? Using I've not messed with
perplexity. It's pretty sweet.
I've heard it's. Great.
It's like a it's like AI for Google basically.
And it kind of like you put in a question that gives you the
answer and it gives you the citations, you know, so you can
click into those. So it's that's a cool way to use
kind of the AI Internet right now.
But then what I've also noticed too, and this is something I
wanted to ask you about. Should we all be investing in
Reddit, you think? Because that's the human side of
the Internet. I think that's the early human
Internet that you, I think you might be talking about because
now it like it, like you just said, if I want to go and I want
to find out, OK, oh God, should I have kids or not?
I'm going to go to Reddit for that because there's threads of
people who've done it now there's people in their 60s,
seventies around there, people in their 20s still thinking
about it and everybody in between.
That's kind of the human Internet.
That's how I'm starting to use the Internet more and.
More I would say I, I think it's all social media.
So I, I really think you're going to have the social media
and then you're just going to have the AI.
Which already the social media is already the Internet for a
lot of people. It, it really is.
It really is. And and it's funny too because I
I get on social media to find new information or hear about
new things and then I go to Google or an AI to verify and
learn more about it. And like see what?
Is this true? Like who said this?
Or you know what? Did this actually happen?
So yeah, I, I'm kind of already using it as like 2 separate
internets as well. But I, I really do think I, I, I
just think the, the social media companies, yeah.
They're pretty well positioned. You can, you can hate on them as
much as you want, but they are where the human internet's going
to live. And and we, you know, I, I think
we will eventually appreciate that, Yeah.
I do. I think you're absolutely right
though, about social connection being being the new scarcity and
you're already seeing that as well.
Not chess you, you, you said that, but chess events like live
chess events where people play, they're hugely popular right
now. There's chess is more popular
than it's ever been and we can't there's nobody on the planet who
can beat the best chess computers.
It's insane. A is can write songs.
You can put in all sorts of parameters.
Be like, write me the next pop hit of 2024 or whatever it is,
and they can probably put you out something that's going to be
it would be close to it. Live music, though, is also at
an all time high. There's probably a little bit of
like revenge live music stuff from the pandemic, but still
live music venues are doing as as best they have the touring
artists. That's how they're making all
their money right now because people want that.
I have a friend in London who runs like a little record label
on live event music and all of my other friends in England are
like, oh God, we need this so bad into London.
London's has great music, but the the social connection scene
there is is just it's just now starting to flourish.
It's insane. The other thing too, that I
think I I sent this to you recently, dating apps are
becoming a little bit less. You, you did send that to me
that that people are leaving dating apps.
And we might talk about this on another, another episode at some
point, But I want to make the point here about how, you know,
as soon as like ChatGPT came online and then, you know, all
these other tools that were kind of already around, they started
getting repurposed for all these different, all, all different
things that people do. One of them was here, use AI to
improve your, your dating profile on these apps.
And I think people were just like, Jesus Christ, are you
serious? And so actually now, like on
Eventbrite, live events, live dating singles events are more
and more popular than they're ever interesting.
So I think, I think the trend is already there.
I don't think, I don't think it's a prediction you're making. 00:50:23,960 I think it's already.
Happening. Yeah, yeah, I believe it.
I believe it. It's, it's in my experience too. 00:50:31,720 I mean, you know, when, when
ChatGPT first came out, I kind of had the same fear.
I think I even tweeted this at one point and I like joked I was
like, OK, how long do I have before I, I'm out of a job?
And I was like, I think I can make it to 20-30.
But honestly, the way the last two, you know, the more I use
it, the, the less convinced I am that it's going to replace
anybody. I just think it's, I mean, the,
the, the phrase that's going around Silicon Valley to my
understanding at the moment is you're, you're not going to be
replaced by an AI. You're going to be replaced by
somebody who knows how to use the AI.
And I've definitely found that to be true that it's if I tell
we were actually joking earlier that if you, if you tell ChatGPT
to like write something in the style of Mark Manson, it is
awful. It is like the worst half assed
parody of my work that you've ever seen.
But but I use ChatGPT all the time to help research.
I use it to come up with title ideas.
I use it to come up with segment ideas.
Like it's it's super useful as a tool.
And so, yeah, big UPS on AI. Yeah, I think this is one of
those where we need to just embrace it, don't fight it so
much. I get the push back.
I do understand the the knee jerk reaction to it, but it, it,
it is, it's it's like a huge unlock for us.
And I think if we we need to not be so scared about it, not not
be so scared of it so we can use it in in better.
Ways. Yeah, I agree.
Yeah. Cool.
Well that's our show. This was not produced by an AI.
It was not. This was produced by two humans,
Or was it? Yeah, the wisdom of the week
mark, this one comes from Mason Cooley, who said this goes back
to the regret. Mason Cooley said regret for
wasted time is more a wasted time.
I really like that. Well said.
Yeah, well said. That's it.
We'll be back next week. Please like and subscribe.
And if you have a question, feel free to submit it.
You can comment on YouTube or e-mail us at podcast at
markmanson.net. We will be back next week.
And maybe, just maybe, we might be more empathetic next time.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew
Bernie. It's edited by Andrew Nishimura. 00:52:47,160 Jessica Choi is our videographer
and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we
will see you next week.