My name is Barry Moses or it's Barry Mohan, social media and we've come to the last segment or the last interview of the day And this guy is a conscious conscious rapper. I like the lyrics. I like the beats I like the the path that he has taken despite the pop culture Currently he goes by the name Trouble Lee and is in studio with us. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Trouble Lee You're one guy who doesn't follow the wave. I don't follow the wave Yeah, I create my own how I feel how you feel is how you create it. Yes, exactly Wonderful. Mr. Trouble Lee, you can introduce yourself on camera one I go by T. R. A. B. O. L. W. E. Trouble Lee that is truth reigns above but only love exists eternally I'm a hip-hop artist and Sometimes the spoken word artist and I express myself on raps and beats and things of those nature You express yourself on raps and beats and things of that nature. Yeah, I appreciate that Thank you very much for coming through to why in the morning. It's a pleasure to meet you, man So how long have you been in this music thing? Like seriously, I started like actively being involved. I think was late 2013 between 2013 and 2014 is when I actually went to the studio and started like putting out music Trying to get it out there And you started shooting videos as well. Yeah, like now 2014 to 15 year from there. I like that. Which producer are you working with currently now? I'm working with the killie black. We have a project an album that you can find it on iTunes It's killer streaming side. Yeah, it's called telos and I've been trying to just release visuals for it So I've done three videos for from the songs of the album just to give you how many albums are on the song How many songs are on the album? How many songs are on the album? Thank you for the question All right, nine songs. Nine songs on the album. Sorry for that miss. All right Raph is all about what play anyway so Nine songs you've shot three videos so far Yeah, but this is my fourth project your fourth project now. All right.  All right. It's not even from the album it's not from the video we did because The director of the video liked the song and he wanted to interpret it So I was like if you want to collaborate with if you have an idea, let's do it All right. How did you meet this director? How did he get to? Through my previous content go to my youtuber and a couple of songs. He was a fan And so he sent me a treatment. He was like, this is the idea of this song I have if you have something we can do something out of the box. I was like, all right, let's do it And I like that it's definitely out of the box if we can project the video on screen Black sheep it's one of my favorite songs by you and when I listen to the song The lines that get me thinking yeah, yeah, like I said back and think have you ever had A situation where people are asking if you're a gospel artist by chance Yeah, I have I have that but it's just I just express myself and I think it's consciousness I have I think I have a little bit of both I can be I can be positively negative even if I want You're ready You can be positively negative ignorant. I like what is this concept about? Yes, where you get Your neck gets checked. Yeah, like in the old days like some game of thrones thing The whole song was about just being an individual In a society that's trying to tell you be like everyone else So there's a line I say Thanks a lot for throwing salt on my wounds that only made me a season to see it's just like you can use You can use the the darkness of the world and transform it into your own life Through salt in your wounds made me a season don't see only made you a season don't see Lions bars for days The reason I got you here probably is not to have this conversation I mean right now is for the bar the last segment of the day I where we get artists rappers to just show off their skills And then we'll upload them on youtube as well and then we can share with the world hip-hop from ke But you're quite an interesting guy already. I'm getting interested in more So this project that you were working on with Akili black akili black is from Nairobi as well Super producer mixed and mastered by akili black as well. Yes The latest single is called cc first cc first that is the one on youtube. Yeah, the latest song on youtube It's called cc first. Yeah cc first also It's it's you know greek mythology So cc first was like this king Who was cast to push to push this rock over here and every time the rock will reach the top It will fall down So I was just using that as an experience of what happens in the world All right, you almost get that and then they bring you down I think like that But now you just gotta be enjoy the process So, uh, you're an identity there Yeah, I just in this can you escape information in this age? It just finds you I guess Yeah, I don't even actively But I do I do read you do read. Yes. So what are you what are your topics of interest currently? What are some of the things you're interested in? philosophy spirituality What happens in the world things like that All right, I'm curious as a conscious rapper or somebody's interested in philosophy. Yeah, uh, do you party from time to time? Yeah, I um, I parted. I did all those things. All right. Perfect. Perfect Not as much as I used to not as much as you used to but you party So do you get to jump to these songs? Like bud and bougie When it bangs in the speaker, I think they they all have a place In music because hip-hop was started as a aside from jamaica actually jamaican DJs went to brooklyn And they in african bombata hip-hop was all about be boring Break dancing is an element of hip-hop So all those parts is if you leave life, you know, so I think it's essential even like everything has its place the me goes Yeah, and I I think I don't think like They should be taken away from the hip-hop from hip-hop all those. They're just sub-genres of hip-hop.   I actually have a couple you have a couple of commercial tracks. I don't consider them commercial but we We just down a little bit. No, we don't even down it down like we're like this beat sounds like this Let's let's do what how the beat sounds. So yeah, there's a couple that's song called bamboo bear with amokamili Have a bunch of them I think I've heard that one. Yeah Uh, is that guy from Tanzania? No, no, no, no, it's from Kenya. All right. Nice one. So let's play that game It's called read the bar. Okay, so we are going to have it be having some bars from songs that you have heard before Maybe or never had before that would be and then you're going to tell us in a scale of one to ten Are you going to read this bar and then after you read the bar? You are going to tell you The artist who came up with the bar. All right, so this one, maybe you can read it out I think if it's I think it's a trap song like from the flow from the flow and the syllables All right, and uh also You can tell from the The length of the lines Yeah, I can tell it's if on a beat I would actually enjoy this song. You actually am I supposed to rate it? All right on a scale of what on a scale of one to ten, but before that, uh Uh Let me see What are some of the styles you see in this verse some stylistic devices? Um The rhyming is good is good and then there's the internal rhyme. I think it's just too To to make the flow more interesting. You have the internal rhymes and the rhyme the rhyming stands out


In all of life, there should be meaning and intention to your actions. And I think our relationship with technology has really missed that mark. Totally. So we are really trying to introduce that into people's worlds. And for young people who've never known what that is, I think we are really helping change their behavior by just adding an ounce of intention into what they're doing. Boom, what's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sakyan. We are still at the Transformative Technology Conference. We have moved locations to a different location on site still, which is cool. It's cool. It's nice to switch up the ambiance every once in a while. We have Alana Harvey joining us now on the show. Thank you very much for coming on. Thanks for having me. Thank you. And from Flipped. And did you co-found that? Okay, cool. So co-founder of Flipped and helping the next generation with the relationship with technology, which I'm really excited to talk to you about. And maybe before we get to there, just give us the quick bit on who you are and how do you even get into this space? Yeah, so I am the co-founder and CMO of Flipped. And it all started a few years ago when my co-founder, who's actually my partner and we've been together for eight years. But a few years ago, he gave his youngest brother his first smartphone and just noticed how quickly his relationship, their relationship, actually was impacted by technology in his life. And so Christian thought, is there a way that instead of technology enabling these bad behaviors, could we shape behavior in a positive way with technology? And at the same time, I was finishing up my degree in school, marketing and communications, a business degree at Ryerson University in Toronto. And meanwhile, I was actually serving at a restaurant. And over that same time period, this was around 2014. So it was when Snapchat and Instagram and all of those things were really becoming a lot more mainstream and it was still fairly early days. But just noticing how that was impacting people in a public space. And I had been working at that place for about four years. So to me, also the behavior had shifted so dramatically in a really short amount of time. People just not interacting face to face anymore, not interacting with me as their server. And so we had those two pivotal moments in our own lives and decided how about we build technology that helps solve this problem. And that's what we've been doing. Nice. That is a very cool story. Because I think we don't think too much about those moments in society where technology is introduced and societal dynamics shift on a global scale. And the example of Christian, your partner, having his younger brother get a smartphone, that is insane because as soon as you pass it over, it just takes over. And then the behavior and the family changes and you were seeing as well when people go out and are not engaging with each other, engaging more with their devices. There's a lot of nuance to it because there are times that maybe the subject that is being talked about like somebody is saying something that maybe you've heard before or you're not interested in that specific conversation that maybe you want to browse the internet to learn something else. There's a lot of nuance to it. It's tough to unpack in binary conversation. Now that was 2014 when Flip became online or when did it come online? That was like early days for ideation that we launched in 2016. And what we initially thought we were building was actually a parental control application which would help parents manage their kids' screen time, which funny enough has now become a bit more on trend. We weren't really attracting a lot of parents to the platform but what we did notice is that there were a lot of young people gravitating towards it for self-regulation. So we thought, hey, this is interesting. It's not a control experience. It's a self-regulated and a self-motivated experience. And so that's where we shifted and moved towards and we've actually now gone into schools trying to help students who are otherwise unaware of their attention deficiency and inability to maintain their attention and focus and helping them with Flip. Tell me about the self-regulation aspect to things. So give me the high level or view. Is this available on Android and iOS? Is that the idea? Yeah, so Flip is available Android and iOS and has been since 2016. How it works is that it adds like a layer of friction when you're using your device. So it's kind of like a screensaver for those of us that remember what those are that stays on your phone and it prevents you from leaving or it adds a level of friction and makes you think twice about leaving that experience and then it tracks those moments. So if you haven't spent time on your phone and you've been tracking it with Flip, it's like a productivity and a focus tracker that you can measure progress over time. So we've gamified that experience. We have day streaks, we have leaderboards so people bring their own friends and create little communities where they're enjoying time well spent together. And then they also can tag these moments. So if you're using it to study one day or you're using it to read or spend time with family, then you can see a graph of all of the ways you've been spending your time away from technology. All right, we got a little demo for everyone. We're going to show you the demo on here. So as you open up Flip, you're shown don't just be there, be present.  And then you log in. So I'm going to log in with Facebook. It's quite easy to get through things. All they get is your name, profile picture and email address. See they're not asking you for everything. Only asking for what they need. Hello, Alan. My personal stats. Okay, welcome to Flip. That's a message from me. Oh, it is a message from you. There she is at the top. I'm in two places at once, everybody. Tech life balance is important, which is why we're here to help you achieve it with flipped. You'll be more present, engaged and focused on a matters most. Right. A short blog post explaining all you need to know about getting started. We wrote one. Tap the image below to check it out. Science behind flipped. Cool. So then, so then here I see, you know, here's the home screen. Hello, Alan. My personal stats total sessions minutes. Today, day streak. So mindful moments. My day, study, sleep, work. Interesting. So if I click work for four hours, what happens? So it'll be, it'll begin a time session. Yep. It just started. That is four hours long. Mm-hmm. If you want to end it early, then it will, it will mark you as whatever you were successful up to that point. So if you used it for 10 minutes, you would still achieve 10 minutes. So this is not allowing any notifications to show up? No, you still get notifications. It's just tracking your productivity, whether or not you were using that, your phone. So if you leave that screen, then the session ends. Oh, interesting. Okay. So you basically, you can close your screen and set your phone aside. Oh, you're giving up. Exiting the screen will end your flipped session early. Interesting. Aw, shoot. You only completed 37. You'll do better next time. Interesting. Mm-hmm. Interesting. And there's a streak counter. How many minutes today? What are the minutes about? How long I did what for? How many minutes I did these at mindful moments for? Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. And you'll see the 180 number there. Yeah, yeah. So like Fitbit made 10,000 steps, a benchmark for people to hit a daily goal. We looked into our users and recognized that some of our most active daily habitual users were achieving three hours a day. So we wanted to drive more people to hit that. And we thought, well, three hours kind of sounds like a really big number. And 180 is a bit easier. It also rolls off the tongue. There's also the idea of a 180, like you're giving yourself a bit of a transformation. So we launched that as a marketing campaign a couple of months ago, and it's been really successful. Nice. Nice flip off for a bit today, unlocked. Okay, so then full lock mode, hide my apps and turn off notifications. Yeah. Okay, so if I click select for five minutes. That one you have to go through and add on. You're about to be fully locked out. Okay, there's an add on. Yeah, there's an additional thing you have to install too. Usage data, usage access to, got it. So then you would select those things as like not allowed, right? Or you would select as allowed. Interesting. And then so as I keep going down, there's sounds, happy sound. Oh, premium required. Okay, so that's where you get... The first one, you should be able to listen to campfire. Okay, let me go to campfire. Campfire. Okay. Yeah, so this is what campfire sounds like. Nice, that's relaxing. That's cool. And that's to help facilitate a lot of our users who are students that are using it for focus work time. Yeah. Nice. Okay, cool. That's good to get a little insight into what flipped is like right there. Awesome. Nice. It's good to see mindful tech be developed like that. That's good stuff. Now, interestingly enough, we're using technology to get away from technology. It's kind of funny. I look at it as using technology to help with a habit. Okay. And so we've managed to do that with a lot of things like the way fitness trackers have helped motivate certain behaviors, step counters and things like that. And I see it in the same light as we're trying to encourage people to spend more minutes away from their tech. So that's the unit that we really care about is minutes. Minutes. That's right. So we've helped our user base achieve over a billion minutes spent away from their phones. And we are always trying to increase the number of minutes that they're spending doing things mindfully away from their tech. This is so interestingly nuanced. So it is because I just came back from my fourth, 10 day Vipassana meditation retreat. And when I was there, it was amazing to be away from that device for 10 days. Sure it was. Yeah. At the same time, it's cool because when I come back to the device, it's cool to socialize and connect and in real time be able to talk to people through that thing that are across the world and learn the world's information at my fingertips, looking things up. Yeah. It's more complex and nuanced. And we don't have a golden key for how to solve the appendage of technology yet. But I think you're on your way to being one of the many players that's doing research around the ethics, research around mindfulness, research around the time that we're actually spending on those devices versus not. So I like how I can just click through and set a habit, set an intention which is for an hour, two or three, four hours, do something and then just put that away and then not touch the device. So there was an option for like a 60 second break too. So I can always take a break. So you could, yeah, you select the 60 second break and then you can leave it and it wouldn't end the session but then you have to come back after the 60 seconds is done. Yeah. Yeah. So again, we do this in relation to like fitness trackers is when you stop, when you're going for a run, you stop at a stoplight and you have to stop your watch if you remember to turn it back on. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's no stoplights on the hills and the nature. I'm from the city. The city running. I know. I've done both. Okay. And then how many people you said are two years now you've been building this how many people are using it? So we have about 75,000 monthly active users. 75,000. That's a lot. That's incredible. Good work. Good work. And then how many of those are premium users? Premium subscribers are about 6% of our users. Yeah. And they get access to more customized features. So they can, for example, you can set flipped for a specific amount of time like an hour and 45 minutes if you want to have a focus session that's outside of the default moments that we've created. There's also more sounds and there's more statistics. So you didn't check out the stats screen, but there's more comprehensive statistics if you pay for it. Cool. So you can see like all of your stats for months past in a really nice graphic. Nice. Yeah. Okay. And so what is the top, what's the top feature that is being used? What's the top session that's being enabled? Study and self. Study is an hour. Yeah. And self is actually a tag you can just set. Yeah. So our users are actually setting self sessions to track just moments for themselves. For themselves. Oh, so a self session means you're working on something about yourself. Yeah. But oh, okay. Rather than something that's like a paper or a project. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's all self-reported. So we're able to track if people change their tag and set it as something. And the most common ones right now are study and self. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And what's the most popular, so then I guess, well I guess if 6% are premium then, what is the cost? It's $24 a year. Oh. Or $6 a month. Yeah. It's really affordable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like two bucks a month. Yeah. It's affordable. Yeah. Interesting. And then how big is the team right now and where are you based? We're six people. We're based in Toronto. In Toronto. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Nice. And what's the future of flipped? Our vision really is to be a digital wellness hub that has all of your needs across what it is that is wellness for you. So right now I think that it's a little bit too fragmented in that you either have to meditate or you have to listen to sound that is helping you fall asleep, for example, or journaling. All of these things seem to be very independent of one another. And for us is that people sort of enter flipped as it's a very low friction starting point where you enter flipped and you're not actually really intending to have a wellness experience. But that first intention of I want to spend less time on technology is that entry point into wellness. Yeah. We want to have more resources, which we're actually creating partnerships instead of creating our own content. We're creating partnerships with content providers who will feature it within flipped. So soon that's going to be Aura, which is working with them. Yeah. We like them a lot. Not the ring. Not the ring. No. Interesting. Which Aura? Meditation. Yeah. Meditation and coaching. So we're going to be featuring some of their content in flipped. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Particularly around helping with anxiety and stress for students and young professionals. Interesting. So then you'll have video content. It's audio. It's audio content. Yeah. And I'd like to enhance the audio therapy side as well. So we have sounds already, but I'd like to improve that on that offering. I think there's a lot that can be done in the audio therapy space. And then also connecting people to opportunities and events and things that are happening around them that are in the wellness market. Yeah. So just being sort of a one-stop place where you can get everything that you need. Mindfulness-related. Yeah. And then, what are some of the statistics that you've been learning about the youth using technology? I mean, you probably know at least some stats about how the youth is using tech because of your experience. Yeah. Is that what you're here? Yeah. Well, they're pretty addicted to their technology. Yeah. Usage has increased over the last couple of years, so it's gone from a couple of hours a day to about five to six hours a day on your phone alone. But what's really, really interesting and exciting for us is that this year, Deloitte did a global survey and discovered that over half of 18 to 24-year-olds are actually looking for ways to disconnect from technology and that they're very aware of this behavior. That's great. And even just in personal conversations. Yeah, this is a nice piano. In just one-on-ones, we do interviews with young people. Their awareness is very high. That's good. Yeah. That's good. So it's almost as though young people, even though sometimes we think that they're not aware of them being manipulated, it seems as though a lot of them are very aware of their use of technology. Yeah. This is a bit of an insight that we have, because a lot of our users, they come to us knowing that they have an issue that they want to solve or they want to improve upon a behavior or achieve goals that they've been unable to because of their relationship with tech. Totally. That's great. And so when we get surveys, like I did a 2000-user survey recently, and the last question is like, anything else you want to share? And just all of the personal stories that we were getting from users about how Flip just helped them in a variety of ways is really, really interesting to hear. Yeah. What were some of those? We would have some people who say that they have ADHD. And it's not something that is clinically recommended in any capacity, and that's very inspiring to hear that these people who have suffer with ADD and attention disorders that they come to Flip and they find a solution in that. That is great, yeah. Yeah. Also, people saying things like it helped them get through their thesis or they wouldn't be able to sleep without it. I think that's really interesting that we've created something that's versatile for a number of different needs. Totally. As simple as just getting off your phone. Yeah. Yeah. That's great that it's being used for so many different people across different use cases for them. That's awesome. And then it also seems as though I can't, I guess I can't tell yet, and even like medically it seems as though this needs to be more of an option for potentially a physician that's diagnosed someone with ADHD to prescribe. It's like, yo, try flipped. Our friends over at SIEMPO, who we've had on the show as well, Andrew. Yeah, Andrew. Yeah. Yeah, like prescribe these, see what happens. Yeah. There's also neuroscientists that have made video games that help with focus and retaining focus for people with ADHD, so you can, and they're going through clinical trials even to be able to actually have that be a prescription. I love to do that. This is all very good that these things coming together. There was one other thought that I had that I wanted to share with you, which was out of the 18 to 24 year olds, 50% of them want a better relationship with their technology. I want to know what percentage of them will actually do something though and how easy it has to be for them to do something. How do they mean a better relationship with their technology? What does that actually mean? Because it can mean so many different things. I think perhaps it's my feeling about it is that most people who are now 18 have grown up with nothing else and they're feeling like that's not right. Interesting. They're sensing that there's something missing in that experience. Interesting, yeah. If someone were in 2018, they, by six years old, there was Facebook, right? So that's that generation. They've grown up with nothing else. They know nothing else. Their parents have been using technology and I think it's impacted relationships in a way that they can recognize is wrong. Things like eye contact and really important human behaviors are being kind of messed with and manipulated and they're recognizing that this is a problem. Whether or not they can do anything about it is a really good question and I think we've tapped into the types of people who are going out of their way to find solutions, which is why we have like a community aspect where we're trying to get our champions and our really power users to create little micro communities where they bring their friends and they're all using flip together and so I think it's a matter of changing that social norm that, hey, this is okay. This is how it is. This is what everyone does to, wait a second. This isn't good for me. I know deep within my being that we need to find a connection in deeper, more meaningful ways and that's just a great human nature to tap into and I think that's why there's that survey result and I think that over the years we're going to see more people gravitating towards offline experiences and low-tech experiences. I'm already seeing it in a lot of young people. You know, Christian's younger brother, my co-founder's younger brother, he was 13 when he got his first smartphone. He's 17 now and he's like an old soul. So it's really, really interesting. I think that there will be sort of this resurgence of low-tech experiences. To think about the youth being so, being born without the opportunity to know what it's like to live without technology is kind of weird. It's definitely a strange change. Yeah, they're the first generation to not know what it's like. Anyone born after the year 2000 basically. Or even just a bit earlier too. Yeah, yeah. And it's a big evolutionary experiment that we're going under. Everything is, but especially now with technology just seems to... I frequently have conversations with people about the nuance of things, especially of smartphones and social media. You can tell that I'm not... Like there are reasons why when I got into a group of four people and that if we're all like, okay, let's all use flipped right now and we turn it off for four hours so we can actually hang out without that. It's great. I can see how that would be fantastic. You know, I can also see the potential of a missing a really important conversation when someone was trying to call you or being... You shouldn't hang out with people that you could get bored with, but if you do get bored for a period of time, you know, being able to go in and do something, you know, either go sit in the grass since you're outside with your friends or pick up your phone and do something on your phone. So it's very strange. Anyway, we could talk about this for hours. I'm sure you guys do talk about this for long periods of time. Well, in either of those cases, you could still use your phone even if you are using flipped. So it would just mark you as unsuccessful. Yeah, that's right. Just stop it and just stop it and start it again. Yeah, it's like a practice for your mind if you think about it. And I always go back to a fitness tracking type experience and comparing it to the way that we address our physical health is that if someone told you to go for a run and you're like, okay, I'm going to go for a run, you could stop at any point, you could choose to end it, you don't have to just keep running. But if you were like, I'm going to go for an hour long run and you gave up halfway through, that's that. There's nothing wrong with it. But you didn't meet your goal, maybe. And I think there's a lot of that type of thing happening in meditation and wellness as it's trying to turn these behaviors into more habitual, more habitual behaviors. Your app is really well designed. Thank you. It's a well-designed app. It's very friendly design. Thank you. I like it a lot. Yeah, user experience is signed well. And then I like how you said that. It's about changing the habits. It's about moving in the direction of being more aware of our use of technology rather than being unaware of our use of it. So at least the flipped is getting people to become more aware of their use of technology. That can overall be said as being a good thing, whether you are being bored in that conversation or missing that call or whatever. Well, and think about it. Imagine you and a group of friends decide, OK, we're going to try to use flipped and just engage with each other for the next two hours.   Sure. You're going to reach for your phone and flipped is going to be there that moment of friction that makes you go, oh, yes, I'm flipped off right now. Maybe I shouldn't be Googling this. And let's keep talking. That's right. And that's the experience that we managed to get into classrooms because it forces students to think twice about using their phones when they are there engaged in a class. So that's part of the trajectory is to get into classrooms. We're in over 100 schools right now already in the US. And then does that mean the kids all have to have flipped or what does that mean? We're in actually mostly university classes. And it's up to the educator how they introduce it. But usually, they tie some sort of engagement credit for if you use flipped for 100% of your course. Well, that's cool. Yeah. So you can gain some points if you do 100% of course or 90%, 90% or 80%. They get to choose how to introduce it. Actually, most of them, it's like if you've used flipped for 80% of class time so that they're giving them a buffer. Yeah, exactly. That's cool stuff. 100 classrooms around the US? Oh, more than 100. We're at 100 different schools. 100 schools. More than 100 classes. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. So that hits, like, what, 10,000 students alone? Yeah, we've had over 15,000 students subscribe. And 13,000 just regular consumers on just any day subscribers. Yeah. Wow. This is awesome. Yeah, thank you for introducing me to this. Yeah. Alana, thank you for coming under the show. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Did we miss anything that you wanted to touch on? Do you think it was pretty good? Yeah. I think what's an important takeaway is that in all of life there should be meaning and intention to your actions. And I think our relationship with technology has really missed that mark. Totally. So we are really trying to introduce that into people's worlds. And for young people who've never known what that is, I think we are really helping change their behavior by just adding an ounce of intention into what they're doing. I really like the way of putting that. It's just adding that ounce of intention into relationships with technology. Yeah, that's really good, becoming more aware of the habits we're forming with the technologies. Yeah. Yeah, that I think everyone can get behind. I'm always looking for things like that, that everyone can get behind, something like that. Because then we're not doing the binary device bad or device good, but more like just have a little bit more awareness and intention when we reuse it. We definitely don't think that it's bad. And we want to use technology to enable that understanding and teach people to have a better relationship with it through it being used. Yeah. Everyone, check out the link in the bio for Flipped. Definitely give them a go. Give it a shot. See how you like it. Huge thank you for tuning in. Thanks for coming on the show. Appreciate it. And give us a comment below. We'd love to hear your thoughts about how it's going, using the service or what your thoughts are about thinking more towards our habits with our devices and technology. And go and build the future.  Much love, everyone, and we will see you soon. Peace.


OK, Shvatbatin and Shvatbatot, look it up. Even Hebrew speakers may have trouble with these ones. And today we are going to discuss what does the narcissist attribute to you in his mind? What are your attributes in the narcissist's mind? We're going to make use of a family of theories known as attribution theories. And a proper attribution. My name is Sam Baknin. I'm the author of Malignan Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited. I'm also a former visiting professor of psychology in Southern Federal University. London, Russian Federation and a long time member of the Faculty of Seaups Commonwealth for International Advanced Professional Studies in Cambridge United Kingdom, Toronto, Canada and Lagos, where else Nigeria. Let's delve right in after this lengthy and utterly boring introduction. OK, Shoshanim, attribution theory. Attribution theory is a proposition. Like every other theory, it puts together disparate or ostensibly disparate phenomena. It is synoptic. It's a theoretical proposition about the processes by which people ascribe motives to their own and to other people's behaviors. In other words, we ask people, why did you do that? We ask people, why did he do that? We ask people, why did she do that? And then they list the possible motivations and motives of people. And this is attribution theory. Attribution theory also deals with the question whether these motives are internal and personal or external and circumstantial. Internal and personal motives sort of an internal engine that drives the behaviors of individuals. This is known as dispositional attribution. But some people behave the way they do in reaction to external external circumstances. And this is known as situational attribution. A short recap. Attribution theory deals with the following questions. Number one, what were your motives? Why did you behave the way you did? Or why do you behave the way you do? Question number two, why do others behave the way they do? Question number three, these motives, your motives, other people's motives, are they internal? Are they personal? Are they, in other words, dispositional? They dispose you to behave in a certain way? Or are they external, environmental, circumstantial and situational? These are the questions. Now, let's elaborate a bit on dispositional attribution and situational attribution and then apply these to narcissism. Dispositional attribution, it's when you ascribe your own actions or you ascribe someone else's actions or even an event to internal or psychological causes specific to you or to the person concerned. So dispositional attribution is the ascription of one's own or another's actions or an event or an outcome to internal or psychological causes specific to you or to the person you are ascribing them to. In other words, the question is, why did you behave the way you did?  Why do you make the choices that you make? Why do you select for certain outcomes? And the answer is because of psychological reasons, because of internal causes. And similarly, so you ascribe to yourself psychological internal reasons and causes. Similarly, you can ask this about another person. Why did he behave the way he did? Why did he make the choices and selections that he has made? And again, you can say, because that's the way he is, that's his psychology. These are his internal dynamics. These are his traits, his moods, his attitudes, his decisions and judgments and abilities and effort. They're all derivative. They emanate from his internal composition.  It is an essentialist explanation of motivation. It's also known as internal attribution or personal attribution. Okay, this is dispositional attribution. What about situational attribution? It is when you ascribe your behavior or someone else's behavior or an event or an outcome, when you ascribe these to causes or reasons which are outside yourself or outside the person concerned. For example, when you ascribe them to luck, why did he behave the way he did or why did this happen to him? He was unlucky. Or to pressure from other people, why did you behave the way you did? Why did you make this choice? Because of peer pressure. Or because my boss told me. Or because I had no other choice. There was no other possibility. Or because of external circumstances. So when we attribute motives, motivation to the outside environment, other people, luck, the universe, God, when we attribute our own actions, decisions, choices, behaviors to the outside, to external forces acting upon us. This is situational attribution also known as environmental attribution or external attribution. And of course, dispositional attribution is intimately linked to an internal locus of control and auto-plastic defenses. In other words, someone with a dispositional attribution attitude believes that he or she is in control of their lives. And also tend to blame themselves or to assume responsibility for mistakes, defeats, failures, losses. Someone with a situational attribution has an external locus of control. He or she believes that others are responsible for any mishap or failure or defeat or miscalculation or misjudgment or whatever. It's never your fault. Someone else's fault. And this is known as alloplastic defense. Okay? That's the background. The theoretical background. Now let's apply what we've just learned to the narcissist. You remember that the narcissist confuses external objects with internal objects. In other words, he never sees other people as separate from him because he himself has never separated from mommy at age two. He didn't experience. He didn't go through separation, individuation, so he cannot perceive the separateness of other people. As far as the narcissist is concerned, other people are extensions of himself. They're just internal objects in an internal space. They're just introjects, disembodied voices, if you wish, or mental representations of other people. But as far as the narcissist is concerned, everything is internal. There's nobody out there. There's nobody in there, but there's nobody out there as well. So this is the first fact about narcissists. The second fact is grandiosity. Grandiosity is a cognitive distortion. It's a falsification of reality and a filtering out of information data in order to buttress, uphold, and support an inflated, fantastic self-image. So number one, the narcissist cannot tell the difference between external object and internal object. Everything is happening here. Everything is inside his mind. And number two, his reality testing is impaired, is not very good at perceiving reality as it is. He falsifies it and reframes reality to support a totally fantastic, imaginary fictitious, inflated sense of self, also known as the false safe. And this is grandiosity. So if you put the two together, the narcissist is constitutionally incapable of situational attribution. He cannot accept the separate existence of other people. So how can he attribute anything to other people, to external objects? The narcissist is capable only of dispositional attribution with regards to the positive aspects of himself. Let me try to explain this. The narcissist actually maintains two types of attribution. One type of attribution is dispositional attribution. And the other type of attribution is what I call the null attribution, the null attribution, which is very similar to situational attribution, but not exactly. So bear with me, like everything else with narcissism, with pathological narcissism, the distortions, the convolutions, the contortions are mind boggling, literally mind boggling. So you need to be on your toes at all times. Nothing is simple with the narcissist. Healthy people sometimes are dispositional, sometimes are situational. Unhealthy people are either dispositional or situational. The narcissist is incapable of situational attribution when he is positive about himself and he is incapable of dispositional attribution when he is negative about himself. And I will try to explain what I mean. When the narcissist deals, contemplates, considers, revises, analyzes, thinks about the positive aspects of himself, his perfection, his brilliance, his drop dead gorgeousness, his divine like features, his omnipotence or powerful, his omniscience and so on. When he deals with positive aspects of himself, in other words, when he's being grandiose and hyperreflexive. Look it up, grandiosity and hyperreflexivity. I won't go into it right now. When the narcissist deals with positive aspects of himself, he is only dispositional. He cannot be situational. So when he has to explain to himself or to others why he is such a unique, amazing, unprecedented, perfect specimen, he would attribute everything to himself. He would say, this is all because of me. I am accomplished because I'm a genius. I am irresistible because I am drop dead gorgeous. So it's all about me. He would attribute everything to his traits, to his endowments, to his capacity, capabilities, to his skills, to his training, to his personal history, to his contacts. So everything will revolve around him when it's positive. When he has to explain the positive aspects of his life, his accomplishments, his self-efficacy. It's all because of who he is. It's an essentialist explanation. Everything good that's happening to me, everything good that I generate is because I am a perfect God. I am a perfect divinity. That's why all these positive things, that's whence they come. This involves two cognitive distortions, grandiosity and hyperreflexivity. I dealt with them in other videos so I won't go into it right now. But what happens when you talk to a narcissist, when you ask a narcissist about the negative aspects of his personality, of his misconduct, of his wrong choices, of his failing selections? What happens when the narcissist is confronted with incontrovertible evidence of his own imperfection? At that moment, the narcissist flips from dispositional attribution to situational attribution. When you talk to the narcissist about the negative aspects of himself and of his life, his biography, people around him, at that moment the narcissist becomes incapable of dispositional attribution and capable only of situational attribution. This is at the core of alloplastic defenses. In other words, when you ask the narcissist about something negative connected to him, he would blame other people. He would say it's because of the world, it's because of people out there, it's because I'm being envied, it's because the world is wrongly structured, it's because there's not justice, because there's discrimination, because the state is after me if he's a paranoid. And so, when you talk to him about positive things, it's all he's doing.  A perfect godlike being. Everything bad that's happening to him, every failure, every loss, every mistake, every defeat, all negative things being hated, being prosecuted or persecuted, everything that's happening to him has nothing to do with him. It's because of the outside, it's because of other people, it's because of misunderstanding, it's because of limitations of society or communities or collectives or you name it, it's nothing to do with him. So, when you talk to the narcissist, when you ask a narcissist, when you interrogate a narcissist about the positive aspects of himself and of his life, he is incapable of situational attribution, environmental attribution. If he will attribute everything to himself, to his advantages, to his skills, to his talent, to his amazing personality, everything comes from him, everything positive comes from him and this is known as dispositional attribution. But when you talk to him about negative things, then it's never his fault, it has nothing to do with him and who he is and how he's structured and his composition or his psychology, nothing to do with him and that's of course situational attribution. Narcissists are the only creatures, if you wish, entities who are rigidly either situational or dispositional depending on the input. All people in the world, everyone in the world, every human being is capable of both dispositional and situational attribution but only the narcissist is rigid, inflexible, he reacts either or with one type of attribution or another. The transition from one to the other doesn't come from the inside, it comes from the outside, it's triggered and in this sense the narcissist is a binary machine. This is when you talk to the narcissist about himself. Now what happens when you ask the narcissist about the alleged or imputed motivations of other people? When you ask the narcissist why did she do this to you? Or why did he behave this way with you? When you ask the narcissist to attribute motives to other people, what happens then? He's done for them. He's done for them. Now the narcissist is incapable of any kind of attribution with regards to other people's actions, choices, decisions and behaviors. Period. As far as the narcissist is concerned, it's an unsolvable enigma. Now why? Because the narcissist does not recognize the separate existence of external objects. When you ask the narcissist why did she behave this way, he has to resort to the mental representation of his intimate partner in his mind. Why did your intimate partner cheat on you? The narcissist is incapable of conceptualizing his intimate partner as a separate person, as a separate object with their own needs and fears and pain and emotions. He's incapable. What the narcissist would do if he were to be asked why did your intimate partner cheat on you? What he would do, he would resort to his intimate partner's introject to the internal object that represents her in his mind and he would interrogate that internal object. But because it's an internal object, it's not possible to attribute to it anything. So the narcissist is incapable of any kind of attribution with regards to other people because there are no other people in existence. Other people don't exist. There are no external objects and this inability to attribute motives to other people is especially evident in the shared fantasy. Now shared fantasy never happens in a healthy relationship, ever. A healthy relationship does not comprise any element of fantasy. Fantasy is a defense mechanism and when it is applied to relationships it's always pathological. Shared fantasy occurs only in pathological relationships. Within the shared fantasy there is a problem of attribution because the narcissist is unable to perceive his intimate partner as a separate external object. He is unable to attribute to her motives and motivations. He cannot tell whether her behavioural choices are driven by who she is, by her internal composition, or whether her conduct is driven by external environmental cues and circumstances, for example his abuse. Narcissists cannot tell why other people behave the way they do and in this sense narcissism is very close to severe extreme cases of autism spectrum disorder, inability to read cues. But the acupathology, the reason for the autistic person's inability to read other people is probably neurological, while the reason for the narcissist's inability to read other people is compounded. The fantasy defense, the grandiosity and the confounding and confusing of external and internal objects.  Of course he cannot attribute to them any motivation, they are inert objects, they are playthings, they are not people. Harold Kelly identified three general principles of attribution. Number one, the covariation principle states that for a factor to be considered as a cause of behaviour, for any factor, for any reason, for any cause, to be considered as a reason or a cause for behaviour, it must be present when the behaviour occurs, normally, and not present when the behaviour does not occur. Now this sounds like gibberish, like sure, like that, of course we know it, but listen well, this is a cumulative condition. The factor that serves as a cause or a reason for the behaviour has to fulfil two conditions, it has to be present when the behaviour occurs and not present when the behaviour does not occur. And this again presents a problem with narcissism, the covariation principle is problematic when it comes to narcissism because the narcissist is only present, is always present, is always present and is present everywhere because he interacts only with internal objects in his mind and he is always present in his mind. And so as far as a narcissist is concerned, he is the cause of both the behaviour when it occurs and the absence of the behaviour when it does not occur. I want you to listen to this, because this is seriously effed, you know. As far as a narcissist is concerned, all of humanity or at least all people he has met and definitely all significant others, people who matter to the narcissist, intimate partners, business partners, friends, family, neighbours, co-workers, people he is in constant interaction with. As far as a narcissist is concerned, all these people don't exist out there, they exist in his mind and only in his mind. I repeat, only in his mind, that's why Kernberg thought that narcissism is not very far from psychosis and he was right. So, because these people exist only in the narcissist mind, when they behave in a certain way, the narcissist is the only cause for this behaviour. And when they don't behave in a certain way, he is also the cause of this lack or absence of behaviour. So, the narcissist violates the co-variation principle. The narcissist is always the cause, the reason, the driving force, even when the behaviour does not occur. As far as a narcissist is concerned, for a behaviour to not happen, for a behaviour to not manifest, it's an active thing, it's a choice to not behave. So, the narcissist says to himself, she, my intimate partner, behaved in a certain way because I made her do it. I was the cause. Or he says to himself, my intimate partner chose to not behave in a certain way. And again, I am the cause of this choice, whatever she does and whatever she doesn't do, I am the cause. The ancients called it the prima causa and the causa movements, the moving cause and the first cause. It was also known as God. But this creates a dialectic, creates a problem because if you are the cause of someone's behaviour and if you are the cause of someone's choice to not behave in a certain way, then what is the decision making algorithm? How is it determined whether this internal object will behave this way or that way? Even if the narcissist is the sole and only and prime cause in the entire universe, how does the narcissist decide? How does the narcissist make something happen? How does he cause the behaviour and how does he cause the non-behaviour and what is the decision making algorithm? What tells him to choose to make the internal object behave in a certain way or to make the internal object not behave in that way? Where is the inflection point? It's a dialectic and it is resolved. By radically transforming in the narcissist's mind, radically transforming the traits and identity of the internal objects, or by denying reality, by reframing in action as action. Allow me to explain. When the narcissist is faced, let's again continue with the example of an intimate partner. When the narcissist is faced with a specific behaviour of an intimate partner, to explain to himself why he made her behave this way, because he is the cause, he is the reason, he is the only driving force, he is the engine and he is the fuel, that's it.  If she behaves in a certain way, it's because of him. We call this internal defence. So if he behaves in a certain way, she behaves in a certain way, it's because of him. But why did he make her do it? Why did he make her behave in a certain way? Because of who she is, because of the way actually that she has changed. Her traits, her demeanour, her secret or hidden motives, if he is a paranoid, she is changing, she is changed, her identity is changed. The internal object in the narcissist's mind must undergo a transformation for the narcissist to explain to himself why this internal object had adopted a specific behaviour. So let's say again, the unsavory example of cheating, I'll drink to that. Imagine that the narcissist intimate partner cheats on you. He needs to tell himself, I made her do it, I made her cheat on me, I pushed her to cheat on me.  There's a video here about the betrayal fantasy. Okay, so that's the story he's telling himself. I made her do it. I'm the cause, I'm the reason. I drove her to this decision and this choice and finally to this behaviour or misbehaviour. But she's idealised in his mind. How can he reconcile these two? She's an ideal perfect object, a good object. And on the other hand, she misbehaved. She cheated on him. Infidelity doesn't sit well with a good object. So what is she? A good object or a bad object? The narcissist's solution, the narcissist's answer is, I made her do it because she was no longer a good object. Or I made her do it because she was beginning to become a bad object. I wanted the other shoe to draw. I wanted to get it over with. I wanted to accelerate the inevitable, ineluctable process of corruption. So to explain to himself, how could he have motivated his intimate partner to cheat on him? The narcissist needs to revamp, to transform the internal object that represents his intimate partner in his mind. He needs to rewrite the introject. He needs to play with the properties of the internal object. And in many cases, devalue the internal object and render it a persecutory object. Okay, this is one solution. There's another solution. Another solution is to deny reality. To reframe the action as inaction or to reframe the inaction as action. Or to reframe the action as actually desirable. So the narcissist would tell himself, yes, she cheated on me, but she did it to please me. Or he would say to himself, she didn't actually cheat on me. That wasn't cheating. He would reframe the action. Or he would say, she hadn't cheated on me for many, many years. So this transgression is out of character. Something happened to her, you know, so he would reframe the action. So these are the two solutions. Either the narcissist transforms the internal object or the narcissist transforms reality in order to resolve the contradiction, the dialectic. Because if you are the sole reason and cause for people's behaviors, how do you explain behaviors which are injurious to you, modifying to you against your interests, betrayal and so on and so forth by doing this? Okay, you remember when we were much younger, we were talking about Harold Kelly's, Harold H. Kelly's three general principles of attribution. And the first one was the co-variation principle. The second principle of Kelly is the discounting principle stating that the role of a particular cause in producing a particular effect should be given less weight if other plausible causes are also present. This again, the only exception to this is the narcissist because according to the narcissist, he is the only cause. Other causes plausible or not, other causes are never present. No other causes are ever present during the narcissist interaction as long as the narcissist is an interaction with an object which is always invariably internal, never external. The narcissist is the mover and shaker of his internal world and of every internal object in his internal world. So how could other causes interfere? There are no other causes. This is especially true during the idealization phase. During the idealization phase, the narcissist idealizes the representation of an external object in his mind. So he idealizes an internal object and then he subsumes it. He consumes this internal object in order to allow the idealized internal object to idealize him, the process of co-idealization. So during the idealization phase, which follows on the heels of the love bombing phase, during the idealization phase, the narcissist is utterly solipsistic.  When the narcissist withdraws from the object, when he de-effects the internal object, he takes away his emotional investment, he dis-invests emotionally in the internal object and devalues it and discards it much later, a little later. So when he withdraws from the object, at that point, the narcissist seizes to exist as a cause or a reason for the object's behaviors, choices and decisions. And at that point, only other causes operate. You must wrap your mind around this. As long as you are idealized by the narcissist, he is the sole cause and reason for anything you do or do not do in his mind. In his mind, he is the only driving force in your life. Everything you do is about him, every choice you make is about him, every decision you take revolves around him. And if you don't do some things, if you choose to not do some things, it's because of him. That's when in the idealization phase. In the withdrawal phase, in the decafaxis and devaluation and discard phase, at that point, the narcissist absents himself. He is no longer the cause. He is no longer the cause for anything you do, for anything you say.     In other words, when he's withdrawing from you, when he's devaluing and discarding you, everyone else becomes the cause of your behaviors and of the transformation from idealized to persecutory object. It's your fault that you become his enemy. It's your fault that you're being devalued. You earned it.  They are now the exclusive causes. Narcissus has nothing to do with it. Your corruption is an autonomous process driven by other people. You are no longer interiorized. This is the only point where the narcissist tries desperately to project your decrepit, destroyed, devalued object, the internal object, on you. Tries to match the two of you, the internal object that represents you and you. During love-bombing and idealization, the narcissist is the only reason for your existence and when he seizes to idealize you, he begins to devalue you. Narcissus has nothing to do with you and you have nothing to do with him. He has expelled you from his garden of Eden. He has corrupted your idealized introject. At least try to. He fails and that's why he constantly fails in attempting this and that's why he hoovers you. But there's another video dedicated to this. Now the result of all this dynamic which is unique to the narcissist is the triggering of defense mechanisms such as splitting and a general state of paranoia. Because when the narcissist devalues you, when he attempts to discard you, when he renders you of a secretary object, when he transforms you into a demon, an inner demon or a persecutor, at that point he develops paranoia. Because at that point you are under the influence of other people. Other people are the causes. He is no longer the reason or the cause.  To hurt him, he develops paranoia and he splits. He becomes all good and you and your collaborators, the collusion you're involved in, conspiracy against him, of course, all bad. So it's splitting. Okay, so this was the second principle of Kelly, second attribution principle known as a discounting principle. The third attribution principle is known as the augmentation principle. It states that if someone performs an action when there are known constraints, costs or risks, then his or her motive for doing so must be stronger than any inhibitory motive. So according to Kelly, we have two types of influences inside us. There are motivations and there are inhibitions. Now inhibitions are also motivations. Inhibitions are motivations not to act. So we have motivations to act and motivations to not act. What determines whether we act or not? The balance. The balance of costs, the balance of risks, the balance of consequences, the balance of constraints, the balance of social judgment, sanctions, benefits, rewards, etc. So there's an intricate cost to benefit ratio analysis going on. What Kelly says in the augmentation principle, if someone behaves in a way that looks crazy, a way that looks self-defeating, self-destructive even, it's because the motivation to behave this way is stronger than any motivation to not behave this way, than any inhibition. Then cluster B personality disorder, the motives can be self-defeat, self-handicapping, self-harm, self-trashing and self-destruction. In healthy people, these are inhibitory motives. In healthy people say, I am not going to do this because it's going to be self-defeating, because I'm going to be harmed, it's self-harming, it's self-trashing, it's self-destructive, I'm not going to do this. The cluster B person, person diagnosed with cluster B personality disorder, most notably borderline narcissism, they say on the very contrary, I am going to do this because it is self-defeating, self-punitive, self-harm. Self-handicapping, painful, self-harming, self-trashing and self-destructive. Rational self-love is inhibited. This is the mirror image of mental health. Kelly's work and other prominent attribution theories emerged from what we call the naive analysis of action developed in 1958 by Fritz Heider. So let's go even deeper and discuss correspondent inference theory. Correspondent inference theory is a model that describes how people form inferences about other people's stable personality characteristics from observing their behaviors. So we observe other people's behaviors over a protracted period of time. And then we say he is stingy, he has problems with anger management, he is timid, she is lustful or lascivious or disinhibited, etc. We derive stable personality characteristics and traits and attribute them to people based on their long-term and consistent behaviors. So there is a correspondence between behaviors and traits. And this is more likely to be inferred. The connection between behaviors and traits is much stronger and more likely to be created, to be generated. If the actor is judged to have acted freely, intentionally and in a way that is unusual for someone in the situation and in a way that does not usually bring rewards or social approval. I'm going to explain this in a minute. After I drink my wine, first things first, I have my priorities. Life, work, separation. The correspondence inference theory says you are likely to derive conclusions about someone's personality characteristics and traits having observed their behaviors. If these behaviors appear to be free, intentional, a bit unusual for someone in this situation. So they are highly unique, they are highly individualistic, they are idiosyncratic. And the behavior is not aimed at generating rewards or social approval. In other words, the behavior is about the individual, not about society. And this was proposed in 1965 by US social psychologist Edward Jones and Keith Davies, who I think is still alive. So observing behavior is how we determine the personalities of other people. We attribute to them a personality. Personalities, even in clinical settings, even in experimental settings, personalities are derived exclusively from observations of the behaviors of people, no other way. And self-reporting, no other way. That's why psychology is, all of psychology is on very shady ground and can never be a science. Okay, don't get me started. Now, here's a problem again with narcissism and other cluster B personality disorders. When you observe the behaviors of people with cluster B personality disorders, you get the wrong inferences. You get the wrong information. Observing people with cluster B personality disorders in order to determine the structure, composition and dynamics of their personalities is a serious problem. Seriously, bad idea. Bad way to go about it. Because people with cluster B personality disorders are compulsive. They're not free. They don't make free choices. They are compelled to make choices. Their decisions are chaotic, not intentional. They're not intentional because these people have an identity disturbance. You cannot generate consistent intention based on shifting identity. So, there's chaos, not intentionality. There's compulsion, not free will. These people always act abnormally. So, this is not a test. And they always act in a way that brings social opprobrium, sanctions and worse penalties. So, these tests in the corresponding inference theory, the four tests of the corresponding inference theory cannot be applied to cluster B personality disorders. I mentioned that a lot of attribution theory came from the work of Fritz Heider in 1958. Fritz Heider sounds like some SS commandant of our concentration camp, but actually he was a nice guy. So, he came up with something called the naive analysis, naive analysis of action. It's a process of reasoning or intuiting by which lay persons, not qualified mental health practitioners, but just lay people, determine whether another person, an actor, caused a certain action. This is also known as lay psychology or naive psychology. So, they lay people, normal people, just, you know, people in the street. They observe someone's behavior and they decide whether there was causation there, whether the person wanted to do it. They attribute to the person causes internal or external. Now, naive personality theories emanate from this. These are ideas, the ideas that lay people tend to hold about how specific personality traits cluster together within a person. Such so-called theories, which are often held implicitly rather than explicitly, they are also dealt with in attribution theory. Now, naive personality theories, theories propagated and postulated and promulgated by lay people. People were not trained in psychology. They are also known as implicit personality theories, lay person personality theories. And so, let's talk about implicit self-theory. In other words, the theories that you have about people, you don't have training in psychology.  Then you come up with a theory about how other people, specific people, behave and why the causation. And this is known as implicit self-theory. It is a proposal that people hold a self-belief that psychological attributes such as personality, emotion, intelligence are either fixed essential qualities that are impossible to control or are more malleable, controllable and able to be developed gradually. Implicit self-theory has made it sway into psychology. And we have this division in personality psychology between what we call entity theory and incremental theory. Entity theory, which is a form of implicit self-theory. Entity theory says personality, emotion, intelligence are fixed. They are essential. They are impossible to change or to control. They are there forever. I am an adherent of entity theory. Incremental theory, which is another form of implicit self-theory says no. All traits, all qualities are malleable, controllable, transformable, develop gradually and develop throughout the lifespan. This is intimately linked with the idea of neuroplasticity of the brain. Now these self-beliefs imply certain expectancies which in turn guide behavior. In particular, beliefs about controllability guide the way that people construe their reality and also influence the motivations of people to engage in self-regulation. And I refer you to the excellent work by US personality psychologist Carol Dweck, D-W-E-C-K. She analyzed cognition, personality, motivation. She did it much better than I can ever hope to do. What about narcissists? Narcissists and even more so psychopaths adhere to a rigid entity theory. In other words, their self-belief is that they can never change. And they can never change because there is no need to change. They are proud of their rigidities. They are proud of their rigidities. They perfect their disorders. They are emotionally invested in their disorders. They convert who they are, the fact that they cannot change or will not change. They convert it into an ideology, organizing principle, interpretative principle. It imbues their universe with meaning. The inability or lack of will to change is a hallmark, a badge of honor. And so they use this to generate sets of rules and values. In other words, they have ideology and they superimpose on it what we call axiology and deontology. They create a whole worldview, Weltanschauung, a whole philosophy of their disorder. This is why it's extremely difficult to treat narcissists and psychopaths. Because they come to you and they say, I am a superior being. I'm the next stage in evolution. So they adhere only to entity theory, never to incremental theory. And I am aware that maybe my choice to believe in entity theories of the self is influenced by my diagnosis as well. I'm aware of this possible handicap. Anyhow, that's the situation. This is how our attribution theory does not apply to narcissists, psychopaths, borderlines and histrionics. It doesn't. And to some extent doesn't apply to paranoids. So we need a new attribution theory when it comes to narcissists and psychopaths, especially narcissists and especially borderlines, because they don't live in reality. They either inhabit their minds exclusively, the narcissists, or they have no mind, they outsource it. External regulation in borderline. Attribution theory is meaningless in the absence of a functioning, autonomous, self-owned, agentic mind. Narcissists and borderlines don't have this. And so attribution theory fails catastrophically when we try to apply it to these people. As usual, we need to write a whole new psychology for these pseudo-humans, half-baked, half-made, imitation, simulation, I don't know what to call them. Lacking empathy and access to positive emotions. They are mirror images of healthy, normal humans. It really begs the question, who are these people?


My daughter Patricia, my son Christopher, my other son Timothy, my son Cedar, this is Diane Rankin. It's a pleasure in awarding the National Security Medal to John N. McMahon. Mr. McMahon's outstanding career began in 1951 when he joined the Central Intelligence Agency. During this remarkable career he has capably served in a number of high-level agency positions including Deputy Director, Office of Special Projects, Deputy Director and Director, Office of E-Lin, Director, Office of Technical Service, Associate Deputy Director for Administration, Associate and Acting Deputy Intelligence Community Staff, Deputy Director for Operations, Deputy Director, National Foreign Assessment Center and Executive Director of Central Intelligence. His success in these important positions was further recognized when in 1982 he was appointed Deputy Director for Central Intelligence. Mr. McMahon brought to this new assignment not only a keen intellect and an invaluable background in CIA operations and activities, but he also possessed the highest degree of integrity, initiative and desire for preservation of his nation's security. At a time when both the CIA and intelligence community were going through a period of revitalization and rebuilding, Mr. McMahon provided strength of character, high moral conviction and leadership that reflect great credit on himself, the intelligence community and his country. This award is presented to Mr. McMahon not only to highlight valuable contributions he has made to the national intelligence effort, but also to reflect his standard of excellence throughout his remarkable CIA career. Thank you. Keep you busy. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. Do you want to go to the front? I'm going to have to do that. Stand right over here. One, two, three. Just a second. This is Charlie Allen, Secretary. The President takes pleasure in awarding the National Security Medal to Lieutenant General Bennett L. Lewis for his exemplary performances of duty as Director of Defense Mobilization Systems Planning Activity from November 1982 through June 1985, where he was personally and directly responsible for management of a critical national security program. General Lewis' total dedication, unique leadership and management skills and unblemished personal integrity were the reasons for the successful fielding of a highly complex national security system on time and within budget. His keen foresight and uncanny ability to recognize and respond to major program adversities led to achieving the goals of this critically critical, presidentially mandated program. General Lewis' superior achievement, which is recognized at all levels of government, deserves the highest recognition for his meritorious service to the Department of Defense and to his nation and fully warrant the award of the National Security Medal. Billion service to Charles E. Allen for exemplary national security service as Deputy Director of Defense Mobilization Systems Planning Activity from November 1982 through January 1985. Mr. Allen's extraordinary skills and dedication led to major program achievements during his tenure where he was personally and directly responsible for management, his brilliant achievements in organizing and coordinating the activities of the diverse bureaucracy and minimizing the cost of a complex national security program distinguish him as a true leader in the service of our nation. Mr. Allen's meritorious service and steadfast loyalty are in the highest traditions of those who serve their country and fully warrant the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service. Thank you very much. Take a deep breath. Yes, in two. Right. Just exactly. Just give them a single shot. Just a single shot. I have two kids in front of me. I'm going to step up. I don't want to step up. I don't expect as a brother that is going to help me. Who's my brother? Sometimes a little bit of energy will tell you what I'm doing. I don't want to step up. I'm going to step up. I expect the bottom of the kitchen. It's like a lot of ground around, and 100 beds, a room for a hundred beds. I remember we said something to each other, we said, what did I thought of him? I was most grateful. Why he must be proud of you. I would think so.  That's very personal. Very good, that's very kind. No, I think we're all supposed to be doing well. We still can see it's good in that thing. Thank you. Mr. President. Thank you.


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I'll come in last week got like a couple of her sonnies and the chick I got them off She must have forgot to take those tag things on yeah, so if I come in can you like take them off and that? If I just come in someone just just take some straight off, and I'll just get out of these What are those machines called that like take them tags off?  I love you Alice, and I'll see you soon.


As I said last night, I'm Father Parkson, a priest from Phoenix, Arizona. It's a great joy to be with all of you here at this wonderful conference. There's a scene from Dante's Inferno that's always haunted me, and Dante is brought by Virgil into what he calls the anti-chamber of hell. Basically, there's this group of people, they're massively large, they're naked, they're dirty, they're being stung by these wasps, they're crying, they're bleeding, and somebody picks up this banner, this whirling banner runs, and then he says this massive line of people. He said, so long you couldn't see the end of it, it's chasing after this banner. And then eventually the banner gets dropped, then somebody else picks it up and they run, and then they all run after the banner.   They never waved a single banner of their life, they never had the courage to say, this is who I'm, my allegiance is to, and so now they spend all of their eternity aimlessly running after this banner. And I remember reading that thinking, ugh. Yikes. And I've wanted that in my own life, you know, if you had followed me around this last week and watched the way that I lived, what could you say was the banner over my life? Who is my ultimate allegiance to?  Whose banner are you flying over you? And we have a cautionary tale of what it can look like if our hearts are not fully sold out for the Lord and the readings that we have. You know, Jeremiah speaks out and they say, this man deserves death because he's speaking against the city. What Jeremiah says is, you think this is me against all of you or me against the city, but I'm a prophet and I was sent by God and God is calling you to repent to return to him with your whole heart.  This is not between me and you or me against the city. This is between all of you and God. And he says, so your move. And then they say, let's not kill him. Maybe you're right, you know? And in the gospel we have a hered and he does something he doesn't wanna do. Why? Well, in some sense we could say he was attached to pleasure. He's enamored by this dance by Herodias' daughter or we could say he's attached to honor. He makes this promise. And then when it says the mother tells Herodias, tells Herodias' daughter, I want the head of John the Baptist.  He didn't wanna do it, but he was attached to other things. And there was a goodness to John the Baptist, a goodness to Jesus that he's drawn to, but his heart is not there. It's torn between these two things. You know, somebody once said, sometimes in life we can have too much of Jesus in us to be happy in the world and too much of the world in us to be happy in Jesus. That we're kind of in this middle place. And friends, where are our hearts right now? Can you and I honestly say that our hearts are totally sold out for the Lord and His kingdom? Our allegiance, the banner over our lives is that Jesus is Lord. And if you were to watch me live my life, you could say that. Can you and I say that about our lives? And when we talk about the gift of purity of heart, a lot of us will talk about purity.  But in its broadest sense, it just means that your heart is about one thing. When we say something is pure gold, it's just gold. There's no admixture of anything else. When you say something is pure water, it's just water. There's no admixture of anything else. When you say that you have purity of heart, means that your heart is totally sold out for the Lord. What does that sound like in a believer's life? Well, here's a quote by San Ignatius of Antioch. He said, my dear Jesus, my Savior, is so deeply written in my heart that I feel confident that if my heart were to be cut open and chopped to pieces, the name of Jesus would be found written on every piece. Amen. And so that's what purity of heart sounds like. And friends, every human revolution always begins in the same place, which is the human heart. History changes is when people tell Jesus, I just want to be about you and your kingdom. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in my heart and in my life. Holiness is the most powerful thing in human history when somebody unites their will totally to Christ. As a priest, I'm so convicted when I hear this story about Satan appearing to St. John Viani and he tells him, if there were three more priests like you, my whole show would be up. Just three more. Are we those kind of believers that are totally sold out for the Lord? And let's ask the Lord today, ask him at this mass, that he would convict our hearts. And we say, Jesus, if I have an allegiance to anything else other than you and your kingdom, please reveal that to me, Jesus, not because you want to condemn me, but you want me to repent and return to you with my whole heart. And friends, we wouldn't need any other evidence in the Eucharist itself that Jesus gives us everything because he gives us himself in the Eucharist. So none of us should be afraid to give our hearts wholly to the one who gave himself wholly to us.


All right, what's up everyone? So I was doing a little personal work. I've been transcribing this book here And I realized there's a learning moment and we can have a little time to learn about the power of Vim and La Tech combined What kind of optimization it can give me on a daily basis. So this is what I'm actually doing I'm transcribing this book. This book is on Indo-European grammar It's like an old type written book and I just scanned it And so the part I'm doing right now is a text in Sanskrit And it actually comes from the Rig Veda. So there's a text here and you know It has these different stanzas and then it explains the text in a glossary, right? Really, it's it's written for people who don't know anything about Sanskrit or Indo-European languages It explains like each and every word So that's the kind of thing I want to reproduce now. I've already actually written the text out Okay, so that's that part. I don't have to worry about so I already have all this done But it you know, it's a little bit of effort to do all this because you know You have all these fancy characters and you know escape sequences and you have to do all these accent stuff and whatever And for the glossary what I'm gonna have to do If I'm doing this if I'm doing this in word or something like that I basically have to copy and paste each and every word or at least rewrite them for the glossary because each and every one of The words barring repetitions is in the glossary So what are we gonna do to make this super easy in Vim and La Tech? Well, as you can guess, it's gonna be pretty simple. But yeah, well, let's go ahead and get into it Now I'm gonna start I think first I'm gonna get rid of this preview. We don't actually need it But what I'm gonna do at the beginning is I'm gonna highlight all of this text And I'm just gonna copy it into the glossary section, which you can't really see right now because of my Screenkey or whatever but Anyway, so now we have a copy of it now what I'm gonna do with this all of this is I'm going to take it and I'm going to put each and every one of the words on an individual line And that's gonna make it easier. So when I actually, you know, do the modifications on everything But before I do that, I want to get rid of all of these You know double slashes at the end of lines to make new lines because I don't need any of that crap So I'm gonna highlight everything in visual mode And I think the easiest way to delete them is, you know, enter a command enter a normal command And what I'm gonna do is do dollar sign x dollar sign x and that's gonna get rid of the last two characters on each one of these lines So now we don't have to worry about that And I think I'll actually go in and you know delete each and one of these extra spaces just you know for fun Just because you know, I don't know there's probably an easier way to do that. But who cares We don't have to optimize everything, you know, so the next thing I'm gonna do to Actually, maybe I should make this so it's like a little more centered. I don't want to use go-yo because it does have the We'll put this somewhere in the center. Okay, so the next thing Kind of a macro and what this macro is gonna do is it's gonna it's gonna take a word and put it on its own line So I'm gonna start recording. Let's say I'll record it as S So I'm gonna press zero to make sure I'm at the beginning of a line I'm gonna press capital E to go to the in the end of the first word and Capital E is gonna include things like slashes and brackets and stuff like that. It's everything. That's not white space I'm then gonna press a to go into insert mode Delia delete to the you know delete the care excuse me delete the space afterwards They're gonna press return and so that ends me on the next line escape and cued it in the macro So now if we run the macro you should see that it will basically just take the next word and put it on its own line So let's run that. I don't know 50 times. I don't know how many Yeah, so that's gonna run We have left Great. So now this is doing all the work for me. Don't really have to worry about any of this So yeah, now we have all of our words on one line. So that puts us I don't know maybe about halfway there So this is where the law tech portion is gonna come in now What I wanted what I want to do now is I want to have a set like a set way of like defining each of these words So they're all in the same formatting and I think the easiest way to do that is actually have a law tech Macro like a kind of environment you make for a glossary entry in this situation in each of these glossary entries It's gonna have of course the word it's defining then some kind of definition and usually like an explanation of what's going on So they're sort of like three different arguments. We want this macro to have So let's go ahead and start thinking about this So I'm gonna have a new command and that's gonna be my new macro. We'll call it like I don't know gloss entry. I Assume that's not used already And we're gonna say it needs three arguments three, you know because the word the definition and the explanation So where are we gonna put those things? So remember to call the arguments you just use like number sign and then a number so first we'll have Number sign one which will be the actual word then we'll have say a line that goes to the definition And the definition is gonna be in you know parentheses or not parentheses quotation marks And then maybe we'll have I don't know just sort of a space or maybe Yeah, we'll just have like a space and then like number three if it exists and we'll see what that looks like and Oh, we do need to have a new line as well. Okay, so that should be it. So this is gonna be a new command It's gonna be gloss entry. So what we're gonna want to do now is actually first off I want to let's see how many words we have so 66 to okay, so just around a hundred. Okay, great Okay, so what we're gonna want to do is Put all these words in this syntax. So that should be pretty much. Oh, why did I turn my screen key off? Let me turn that back on So we're gonna make another macro and let's say we'll call it G for gloss entry And so we're gonna do capital I to go in insert mode at the beginning of a line and we're gonna say loss entry And then we're gonna open our brackets And of course the word is actually going there so going to go in there So we don't need to change it and then I'll do capital a to get after it and we'll put You know close the brackets there and then I'll put my little guide character So this sequence of characters, you know, whenever I press space space You might know for my other videos. La Tex or yeah, La Tex searches for this deletes it and goes to whatever one's next I'll show you what it looks like later. So now that that's done.  Okay, so now if we run that again We're gonna have great now. It works on the other line. Now if we run it 99 more times. Oh Geez, it looks like it's gonna take forever, but it's going to repeat the macro on each and every one of these entries all 100 however times Yeah, blame the blame the screen casting. That's why it's taking so long But yeah, just imagine typing all of this out though But if you do this on your own computer, it's gonna be pretty quick So you don't have to sweat it too much But as it gets to the end, you will see you will be very happy that you have saved all of that effort So yeah, now we have everything in particular entries. Everything should look pretty fine And we can you know check everything out. It's to the formatting every, you know, the second the definition is in the Quotation marks stuff like that So now we don't have to worry about anything really we're at the point where yeah, we're pretty much all set All right, so final addendum I've go I've gone ahead and started to fill these in just copying the book more or less Remember, of course that you can make changes to the macro. Let's say I want For example, let's want let's say I want the word to actually be bold So if I just throw that in maybe I should actually spell the command right if I put it in text BF Now all of our words are bold something like that if we want, you know extra spacing or something. I don't know So we want a new line or something like that So that's gonna add in a new line. So you can pretty much easily change it So anyway, this is just a minor optimization I'm actually gonna be using this a couple times because I'm not just copying Latin tech or excuse me Sanskrit text But I also have a Latin text the Hittite text Greek text a bunch of other stuff that I'll have to do Thinking of ways to like skimp on typing all this stuff out, but there's not really much of a way of doing it But anyway, so this video is just an example of how you can use vim and la tech or you know You can replace them with whatever extensible text editor you want And you can get a whole lot out of it. So this is this it's not a meme guys It's not a meme so stop pretending. It's a meme because it's not So anyway, thanks for watching. Hope you learned something and see you next time


so we're never gonna be a slugger, a left-handed slugger standing at home, playing at Yankee Stadium. What is it like? Can you describe it as much as you can to lay people like us? Yeah, it's just, it's starting to get used to it a little bit. But you can hear the crowd kind of chanting and wanting you to do well. And for me, it's just, I just wanna make them proud and make my team proud and win the game and have a good at bat.  So it's, you know, it's kind of like a dream, but it's, you know, you try to focus on a task at hand and that's having a good at bat and getting pitches to hit. You try not to listen to the outside noise because it can get loud in there. Take two more, we have Garrett Cole in the room, Brian.  Hey Joey, it seems like there's been a lot of excitement about you personally here. We saw some Italian flags waving today around the ballpark. What have you thought of your reception so far? Yeah, it's been really cool. Yeah, you know, I remember coming here with the Rangers and thinking, wow, this would be a cool place to play for me because it's, you know, a Italian and now the fan base is, you know, really Italian here. So it's exciting and I saw that flag waving and you know, it makes me proud because you know, there's not a ton of Italian baseball players, but Rizzo's one of them as well. So it's like, it's kind of, it's kind of prideful to have those guys to have us having success, especially here in New York. I just ordered a shirt that says Italian stallion on it with me and Rizzo. I thought it was too good to pass up. So it's been pretty cool to see all the memes and whatnot.