What's up guys my name is Michael and welcome to my YouTube channel today we are going to go over this problem by Lentini and gold coins basically You are given a coin and and it could be exchanged in a bank for three coins and over two and over three and over four But these numbers are all rounded down to make a profit You can also sell by Lentini and coins for american dollars and the exchange rate is one to one But you cannot buy a by Lentini and coin. You have one gold coin. What is the maximum number of American dollars you can get for it? So Yeah, that's pretty much the problem here. You have a one By Lentini and gold coin. It has a number on it The coin n can be exchanged into three coins and over two and over three and over four And these coins are all rounded down to make a profit You can also sell the by Lentini and coins for american dollars and the exchange rate is one to one Okay So how do you do this problem? um Let's just explain it now. All right guys, so Now let's think about what exactly do we have to do in order to solve this problem so Back to the problem statement. Remember we say that the exchange rate is one to one And that a n coin can be exchanged into three coins and over two and over three and over four So let's just try some numbers and see Well, if we could find a pattern. So let's say I have a n is equal to eight, right? So I could exchange just for n over two plus n over three Plus n over four Right, and this is going to give me eight over two plus eight over three plus eight over four And this is going to give me four plus two Which gives me four plus okay So this is just going to give me the exact same number As my original one and remember we want the maximum value, right? So you would just stick to the original Now let's look at n over seven Let's look at n equals seven All right, n equals seven is would be let's say n over two plus n over three plus n over four So this is going to give us seven over two plus seven over three plus seven over four And this is going to give us, uh, three plus seven over three three two six two plus Seven one one. This is going to give us six right so at this point you would only choose n equals seven right you don't split it you just stick with n equals seven right now let's try something else let's try 22 all right because 22 is something large n equals 22 so then n over 2 plus n over 3 plus n over 4 this is gonna equal to let's try splitting it I would get 22 over 2 plus 22 over 3 plus 22 over 4 this is gonna equal to 11 plus 7 plus 2 5 6 5 5 yeah and this is gonna get me 18 plus 5 which is gonna get me 23 so at this point I would choose this splitting I would choose the splitting instead of choosing the original value because we get more right this is more 23 is more than 22 so now our question is when do we split and when do we keep the same value so remember we go back to n over 2 and over 3 and n over 4 well apparently basically it turns out that you would actually split if you you would split more when you have greater than 12 so if n is greater than 12 you would actually want to split split so you would actually add these up and the reason why is because if you look at the LCM of 2 3 and 4 the LCM of 2 3 and 4 is 12 right the LCM of 2 3 4 at least common multiple is 12 and that's why when you get greater than 12 you want to split it because at the point when you get greater than 12 the value that after splitting and adding them up is going to be greater regardless of the original value of n no matter what you put after n is greater than 12 you are going to get a value that is going to be greater than the original value of 12 so anything less than 12 so let's say n is less than 12 right anything less than 12 you're just gonna keep keep the original value and just return it so now the big question is is that how do I make this faster though because if I'm just gonna keep splitting by 2 3 and 4 and just keep repeatedly splitting splitting for those values I'm going to get a situation where I'm gonna recalculate the same question over and over again right I'm gonna get the same value so like let's say I had like 6 over 2 and then in another splitting the 6 over 2 is equal to 3 right I don't want to calculate this again 6 over 2 equal to 3 over and over again so we're gonna do something called memorization is when every time we calculate a certain value for n over 2 or n over 3 and 4 we are going to store that specific value into a map and then every time we have the same value that's divisible by it again we are just going to look up the problem to it okay so that's what we're gonna do okay so yeah so back to the problem when I say that we're gonna use memorization in that the given n basically what I mean is like let's say we have like back to like 22 right 22 is gonna give us a value for for this part it's gonna give us the best possible value for the max is going to give us 23 right so then every time we if we're gonna ever look up the best possible value for coin 22 we're gonna store the value of 22 best possible value for 22 as a value of 23 right so then in the case of the next iteration let's say we had like I don't know 64 100 or whatever different value of coin and you went and when you split the values if we had to look up the best possible value of 22 again we don't have to calculate this again this state again we just have to look up and see if it once we have it we just added to we just return 23 so then we don't have to keep recalculating this part over and over again right and comparing if the left side is great or the right side is great right so then every time we compute something we're gonna store it into a hash map and then store the best possible value for that value in the hash map and then we look it up and then we just return it so yeah I'm gonna explain the code now and then I hope you guys understand what's going on our guys I'm going to explain the code now to you guys so they said that to keep reading in and a test case until there is the end of the file so because of that I had to do this long long N in a while CNN right that's gonna keep reading it until the end of the file and then I print out my method exchange which basically returns with the the answer to whatever test case it was okay whatever number and it was okay so now let's go to the exchange method so above exchange I have a map called s and this map just stores the best possible value for each test case right so if it was 22 it would restore 23 it was 8 it would store 8 right stuff like that okay so in my exchange function now if my current value and is less than 12 I just return n and I already explained the reason why we do this is because if it's less than 12 we know that no possible number can be greater than this right because if you do n over 2 plus n over 3 plus n over 4 it's always gonna be less than the original number so that's why we just return n and yeah okay now we have this this condition if s dot find n is not equal s dot end this is just checking if in our current map that we did did we already calculate the value of n did I already calculate the pot best possible value of n in the case to return so if it's not equal to the end this means that I already did calculate it so I just have to return it I don't actually have to recalculate it again okay that's what this this value means okay so if I already have a value inside this function inside my map that already stores the best possible value I don't have to recalculate it so I'm just going to return it now otherwise we actually do have to calculate it so I have a variable called to return in here I'm just passing exchange n over 2 so I'm gonna recursively call this original function and pass an n over 2 and that's going to keep calling the function again and again all right and then I'm gonna add it to exchange n over 3 and then add it exchange n over 4 so this is going to recursively call it and get the best possible value for n over 2 and then add it with n over best possible value of n over 3 and add it for the best possible value of n over 4 okay then after that I set my because we did not have the this value calculated yet right now the two returns are going to store the best possible value of n over 2 plus n over 3 plus n over 4 then I just store that in my map of s so s at the s at the n right for the nth value for whatever my n value is right I'm going to set that equal to the best possible value that just calculated and I just return to return okay so that's just going to return the best possible value that you just calculated so yeah that's basically how you do this problem it's just a bunch of recursive calls and then you just store each recursive calls value inside a map and then you don't have to look it up again all right so that's pretty much how you do it rate com subscribe I'll check you guys later peace


The vision party for today's ceremony consists of Lieutenant General... Thanks for the kind words. Typically, when people hear the background, they just kind of say, oh, he's here now. It's what the response is. I'm used to that, and it's okay. But the thing with kind of words nonetheless. I'd like to recognize our family and friends who have joined us. My mom in Illinois on live stream, Betsy's parents, John and Betty, thanks for coming and joined us. Right here, who took the opportunity to do some business up here and have her out. So, just really appreciative that... You might be able to envision what was similar to this one. But, um, it was a great spot to be out here. Team Hildon's owner deserved once again that word. We're excited and we're proud to be here in Central Texas. The support of surrounding communities is incredible. And I look forward to working alongside all of you as we support our soldiers, families, civilian workers who live in, go to school, and work in your communities. Both on and off post. And our short time back, we seem to be seeing a lot of great things happening. Both here on Fort Hood and on. Again, I just want to say thanks from Betsy and I to all of you who have attended today. They say there's a cake inside, so please come in and help yourself. And deserve the poor dinner. For those of you who are willing to take the risk, like myself, and deserve twice tonight. It's great to have you here. It's going to be a great time that we will absolutely give to those folks and enjoy it together. Family, people, go Army. GI challenges. First of all, it's just great to be here at Fort Hood. It's an opportunity for us. We've returned after six years of being away. I think that we've got challenges that exist here. Also exist across the Army. As we talk about making sure that the CG is number one priority, people. And that's what we do in the United States Army. People is what makes our Army go. Regardless of any of the equipment that's out there, we're based upon people. And we've got to make sure people are ready to train and educated in their respective job sets and able to go perform their jobs when qualified. People is the number one priority. But what we've also got going on across the Third Corps is modernization. Obviously training readiness as we improve our training in order to go to places like the National Training Center, which is our combat training center right at Fort Hood, California. And then any other missions that the Army determines would be assigned to Fort Hood and our subordinate units within on Fort Hood and within the Third Corps. Because this position as the Deputy Command in general is not just the Deputy Command in general here at Fort Hood, of which we've got multiple units and installations that are subordinate to the Third Corps. There's four divisions separate from gates at various installations around the nation. Conversation with him are words of wisdom, particularly as he just assumed command of the First Shattery Division yesterday. I mean, we've both got over 30 years of experience. And he gave me what he's been doing for the past year here as the Deputy Command in general. And I hope to build upon that as we support Lieutenant General White's priorities and achieve his inputs. Two desserts tonight, okay? One here, I can see some people are excited about that. Two more additional desserts tonight here and then pass later on. Thanks for coming and joining us. I really appreciate it. It's great to be here at Three Corps. I mean, think about it.  And, you know, almost 90,000 soldiers are across our corps and the opportunity to serve them, their families, and of course, our great Army civilians. So again, thanks for coming. Get in line and get some pain. Have a great day. Thank you.


Hello, it's Missy. Thank you for watching. For today's video, I wanted to share some hairstyles using Dutch Fishtel braids. I don't think I've done a combination video with this type of braid before, so let me know in the comment section which of the three hairstyles is your favorite. Also, make sure to like and subscribe if you're new to my channel, then you'll never miss any future videos. And let's get started! For the first style, I want my braid to go down the left side of my head, so I'm going to have my hair parted in a deep side part. So I'm going to have my part on the right side, just so I can utilize as much hair as possible. And I'm going to begin by separating out a few pieces from along the hairline to frame my face once the style is done. So then I'm going to pick up a piece near the part line and divide this into three smaller pieces. I like to start these braids like a regular three-strand braid. So I'm crossing the two side strands under the middle strand one time for the initial stitch. Then I'm going to combine two of the sections together and switch the braid to a fishtail style braid. So for the fishtail braid, I'm going to be dividing off small sections of hair from one side and then cross them underneath to the opposite side and add them into the hair that I'm holding in my hand. And as I braid, I also want to bring in the hair from my head, so I'm going to cross a small section underneath to the opposite side and then divide off a small section of hair from my head and cross it underneath to the opposite side as well. I'm going to be doing this on both sides of the braid, so I'm alternating between crossing a small section from the left side under to the right side, picking up a new section of hair from my head and crossing it under to the right side as well. And then I'm going to switch and cross a small piece from the right side under to the left, then divide off a small section of hair from along my head and cross it underneath to the left side as well. So for this particular hairstyle, I'm going to form the braid down the left side of my head so it drapes over my shoulder. So I'm going to make sure to bring in the hair from the hairline and down from the part line.  This will give the hairstyle a softer look. So I'm alternating between crossing a small section from the left side under to the right side, picking up a new section of hair from my head and crossing it under to the right side as well. And then I'm going to switch and cross a small piece from the right side under to the left, then divide off a small section of hair from along my head and cross it underneath to the left side as well. So I'm just going to continue dividing off small sections of hair from one side, crossing them under to the opposite side, and then picking up new sections of hair from along my head and bringing them into the braid as well. Then once I've brought in all of the hair from my head, I'm going to continue braiding the section down the length of hair until it reaches near the bottom. Now I want my braid to be really big and full, so I'm going to go back over the sides and pull on the edges so they carefully slide out of the braid. This will give the overall hairstyle a more casual and lived-in look. You can really make the braid as big as you'd like and a texturizing powder or dry shampoo can really give the hair some grit, so it'll pull out more easily without falling loose. Then so the braid doesn't unravel, I'm just going to tie off the bottom using a clear elastic band and then set the style with a medium hold hairspray just to help smooth down any flyways and help keep the style in place. For the next hairstyle, I'm going to place my braid on the left side of my head again so my hair is parted on the right side.  This is going to be right near the part line at the top of my head and I'm creating the same type of fishtail braid. So after the initial stitch of the braid, I'm going to combine two of the sections together so I have two strands for the fishtail braid and I'm going to begin dividing off a small section of hair from one side and cross it underneath to the opposite side that I'm holding in my hands. And with each cross under, I'm also going to be incorporating new sections of hair into the braid and I want to create the braid along the left side of my head slightly angled towards the back of my head since I'm going to be placing my hair into a ponytail. So I'm just going to continue dividing off small sections of hair from one side, crossing them under to the opposite side and then picking up new sections of hair from along my head and bringing them into the braid as well. And once the braid trails above my left ear and I've brought in all of the hair from the left side of my head and the braid reaches just behind my ear, I'm going to stop adding in new sections and just continue braiding the section down the length of hair until it reaches near the bottom. And then I'm going to take a clip and place this over the end of the braid so it doesn't unravel. Now I'm going to combine the remaining hair together, adding in the braid last and tie all of it off using a hair band. And then once the hair is tied off I'm going to go back over the braid and pinch and pull on the edges so it slides out just slightly making the braid wider and more full. Then to finish off the hairstyle I'm going to divide off a small section of hair from out of the ponytail and wrap this around the hair band a few times. And then I'm just going to take a bobby pin and pin down the wrapped section underneath the ponytail using a bobby pin. Working off of the last hairstyle, instead of finishing the hairstyle in a ponytail, I'm going to create a low messy bun. So with all of the hair combined together with the braid at the nape of my neck, I'm going to wrap the hair with a hair band. And on the second wrap of the hair band I'm going to pull the hair part way through so it creates a loop with the hair at the nape of my neck. And now with the ends sticking out from the bottom of the bun, I'm going to divide this into two sections and I'm going to wrap each one around the top of the bun in opposite directions. So one half is going up the left side and the other half is going up the right side crossing them over the top of the bun. And then I'm going to bring them back down underneath the bun and tuck the ends around the hair band so they stay in place. And then I'm just going to loosen the hair around the crown of my head to add a little bit of texture to the hairstyle. And I'm going to pull on small sections of the bun so it's a little messier. And this will just help create a softer, more lived-in hairstyle. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed today's video. Be sure to let me know in the comment section which of the three hairstyles was your favorite. And if you haven't subscribed already, make sure to subscribe and click that notification bell so you never miss any future videos. And I will see you next time.


Welcome to another edition of frightfully forgotten and we're gonna continue the Canadian horror movie theme that we started last week We figure why stop let's just keep going and get some good Canadian horror off of our chest, right? But first off what are we drinking the seagrass gossa mmm today?  It's during this party where there's a phone call It's his aunt Felice who she's never heard of before so we find out that Felice is gonna be coming to town Hillary goes shopping for a gun a gun for some reason.   Sardo from are you afraid of the dark? No, mr. Exit on the dough This blood is actually from like a corpse technically do not lie What do you mean no blood pressure no fuzz Felice gets Amy and she ties her to the bed and starts performing The ritual to I guess kind of change bodies Brenda and the dad pull up to the house to try and save Amy And that's where we're gonna end it. There's a lot more crazy shit that happens finale in this movie is super intense Action it's kind of weird because it starts off with the first shot of the movie in the train station It looks all pro and like big budget of Hollywood and then suddenly when it comes into the 80s It looks all Canadian Like what happened? Why didn't you make it all look like that? You know they blew the budget in the first few minutes The kills are awesome in this movie. What I like about them is they're a little misleading, right? Yeah, you think that the the person's gonna die one way and they don't yeah died completely differently Like the mother underneath the car you think all what you just gonna go up in flames or something Or the car is gonna fall on it's all shaking or something like that But no they just drag her out and then that kind of last little tidbit with her leg being left behind It's like whoa that kind of like Oh Face that one the boyfriend right I thought he was gonna get into an accident or the cat was gonna kill him Yeah, but I just gets out This movie is cool too because it kind of has a different twist on the whole voodoo kind of thing right How did this woman get into all this voodoo and what has possessed her and all that kind of stuff that the movies very Intriguing that way and puzzle that you're putting together as you watch it Nothing's really laid out on the silver platter for you like this is exactly what's happening in this movie You kind of have to figure it out yourself, which is fun The fact that there's no backstory on This talisman or how the ant in the beginning even got it zest or whatever You kind of don't need to know no just starts that way and that's good enough the effects for this movie You're really good in there. Of course the 80s practical effects, you know that cat Vicious-looking fucker, and it's a little kind of puppity a little bit, but it does its job when the priests Spontaneously combust really cool effect they drag the mom from underneath that truck like you don't even really see that It's a fake leg like it just it's pretty believable.


gaining respect from your boss or manager is the most important thing employees want according to a study by Harvard Business Review of 20,000 employees around the world. We all want to be valued as individuals and our work viewed as valuable. Whether you have just started a new job or have been with your manager for years there is a lot you can do to encourage your boss to respect you. Gaining their trust, appreciation and respect happens in stages. An example of the stages of your boss thinking towards you could be for instance first stage this person is doing a good job they are worth keeping. Secondly they might be thinking you know they are fitting in with the team not causing any problems and everyone seems to like them. Third I feel they help me personally with my problems and pressures. Fourth it could be I like this person I'm happy to chat about my life outside of work with them. Fifth I'm happy to invest my time to give them interesting work and develop their careers. And the sixth it might be I value and seek out their opinions and views. House again respect from your boss is a top priority for pretty much everyone. I have seven actions to share with you to proactively gain respect from your manager and then deepen that respect to become a trusted partner to your manager. These are firstly show respect to get respect. Secondly align your work thirdly put the team before yourself. Fourth adapt your communication style. Fifth provide solutions. Sixth have your own opinion and then seventh educate your boss. Be proactive in managing your relationship with your boss having good relationship with your manager matters more to you than it does to them. Take ownership of the relationship and actively work to gain respect from your boss by taking action what I share with you today. My name is Jess Coles and if you're new here in Hans Dot Training shares people management expertise resources and courses teaching you how to step change your team's performance. And I've included links to additional videos and resources in the description below as well as a video timestamp so do take a look at these. And if you like this video please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. House again respect from your manager starts with showing respect to get respect. You can't expect your manager to respect you if you don't respect them first. Pay close attention to your boss in what they do in their job how they interact with the team what they're really good at what impresses you what you think you can learn from them. Focus on the positives and you'll find lots of areas that you can consciously respect your manager for. Even if you have a difficult boss a demanding boss they'll be things that they do that you admire and therefore respect your boss for. Demonstrate your respect by giving your manager positive feedback in these areas or ask them to teach you a bit about how to do X or stand up for your boss in areas that you respect them for when colleagues are complaining. And manage your body language tone of voice and how you behave to demonstrate your respect for your boss and show them what you admire about what they do or at least parts of what they do. Be proactive without going over the top. You're thinking I respect and admire my manager alone is not enough. Demonstrate your respect for your boss in ways that you are comfortable with. Show respect to get respect. The second action to gain respect from your boss is to align your work with your boss's work. Your boss will be under pressure and have a long list of challenges and problems to overcome and tasks and activities to organise. What can you do to help them personally? You observe what they talk about complain about and spend their time on. Ask them what are they working on and how to prioritise your work to help them. Ask your colleagues. Ask your boss to pass over a few of their minor problems and then do a good job of delivering against them. Then ask for more complex problems, deliver and then repeat. If firstly this gives you more interesting work to do then secondly your manager will be very grateful. You will gain respect from your boss for proactively helping them and don't forget to deliver on your day job first before taking on extra work. Look to personally help your boss reduce their challenges. Deliver on what they ask you to do proactively and with energy and you'll get respect from your manager. The third action to gain respect from your manager is to put the team before yourself. Your manager's performance is mainly assessed on how well the team performs. Improving team performance is the main goal of most people managers. Improving team performance is how managers can add the most value to the business. There is loads every team member can do to visibly help improve team performance. You know a few of them are, you're firstly proactively help colleagues where you can. You know they will appreciate it plus it helps improve the team's overall output. Secondly work at building positive relationships on a professional and personal level with team members. The more trust that is built within the team the better the team performance. Third be positive in your outlook. You encourage a positive and a can do attitude in other team members too. Fourth do extra work to help other team members and to help reach team targets earlier. Fifth manage expectations realistically and honestly thus ensuring no one gets too many surprises and everyone consistently delivers to the expectations you have set. Sixth participate in social events to get to know and build stronger relationships with other team members. And seventh work to be above average in terms of what and how you deliver your work. All of these actions will help the team's performance overall and contribute to the motivation and energy of the team. Work to put the team before yourself and it won't be long before you feel my manager respects me. The fourth action for the boss to respect you is to adapt your communication style. Your boss will have more relationships to manage than you plus having a good relationship with your manager is much more important to you. For both of these reasons adapt your communication style and communication activities to what your boss wants rather than expect them to adapt to what you prefer. Ask your manager how they want to be kept in the loop with what you are doing. Your popular options include if first it could be a formal one-on-one meeting each week or every other week. Secondly it could be an email summary each day or at the end of each week or it could be ad hoc emails or it could be ad hoc meetings or it could be even weekly team meetings. The hardest is a boss that doesn't tell you what they want and doesn't give you much or any time. Build a list of actions you could take to keep them in the loop try each one and see what the response is. You'll repeat the ones that seem to get a response or work better for your boss. Adapt your communication style to what works best for your manager. Your efforts will help ensure your boss respects you. The fifth action to get your boss respecting you is to provide solutions. Every boss loves team members that consistently spot problems and work out a solution for that problem before chatting through the solution with their boss. The message from the team member is I've spotted a problem and I've taken the time to solve it. Are you happy with my solution? What is not to like about this approach? It saves the manager time, energy and effort. Providing solutions is an act of proactively taking work off your bosses to-do list. This is one of my favorite ways to get respect from my boss. You should know more about your area than your boss. You should be the first to spot problems and understand the impact of those problems. You may need to educate your boss about the issues. You are also in a good place to build practical solutions. If you're struggling ask team members for help to create a solution. You're proactively creating solutions and implementing them is very valuable. Another very good way of spotting problems is asking a lot of questions of others and listening to what they tell you. Be curious and work to understand the why and the context behind the requests you get and the activities the team undertakes. When you spot problems create at least one practical solution before speaking to your manager.  The sixth action to get respect from your boss is to have your own opinion. You have to earn the right to have your opinion listened to by your boss. You need to earn your boss's trust before they will value your opinion. When your boss starts to seek out your opinion you know that you've gained their trust and respect. When you are consistently delivering on the first five actions that we've already gone through it is very likely your boss will trust you enough to seek your opinion. Having an opinion that adds value to dealing with the problems or the situation and being confident to honestly communicate that opinion diplomatically are also really key. Good managers want other people's opinions and views. They value the differences of opinions to their own. You know they value the different ideas the different backgrounds and the different perspectives other people bring. To form a considered opinion reflect on the issues the team is facing and work out your opinion on those issues and what assumptions and dates you have to support your opinion. Yet everyone has an opinion. A considered opinion supported by data experience and insights is much more valuable in the workplace. If you want to gain the respect from your boss put in the time to think through your opinions on a range of issues currently facing the team and be prepared to defend them with reference to data and insights. Express your opinions in private with your boss unless they specifically ask you to express your opinions in public especially if they are not aligned to your boss's opinion. Your boss will respect you a lot more for taking this approach. The seventh action in how to gain respect at work is to educate your boss. There is loads that your boss doesn't know about your areas of responsibility and you are the expert. Don't be afraid to educate your manager when for example you spot a current or a future problem and issues or you might be overworked or can't deliver against everything that's being asked of you or thirdly it might be they're proposing something that you know is unlikely to work or fourth they don't appreciate the help that you need to overcome a specific hurdle. How you educate your boss is important. Don't tell them bluntly that they're wrong unless you've got a really strong relationship with them. Ask them questions that will lead them directly to the issues you spot talk them through previous experiences you have had with their idea and what in your humble opinion might need to change to improve its likely success. Be diplomatic and be considerate. Never make your boss feel silly or embarrass them. For example you could start a conversation with I'm sure you've already know this so just to remind you or it could be you have you considered the impact of implementing XXX on YYY or it could be I'm a little confused we've tried XXX in the past and the problems we had with it with this were YYY have you taken this into account in your suggestion or it could be may I make a suggestion that will improve on the ideas you're putting forward. Good managers will be delighted you are happy to educate them when they don't fully understand a specific area this gives them the confidence that you know your stuff and more importantly are confident enough to cover any knowledge shortfalls that your manager has educating your manager in a respectful way is a great way to gain respect from your boss so in summary earning respect from your boss is super important for any team member when you have a good relationship with your boss your life at work is so much more enjoyable and you are much more likely to be successful in your career your boss showing their respect of you and you consistently demonstrating your respect for your boss is a key sign of a good relationship work to get your boss respecting you by taking each of these seven actions firstly show respect get respect secondly align your work thirdly put the team before yourself fourth adapt your communication style fifth provide solutions sixth have your own opinion and then seventh educate your boss be proactive and take responsibility for your most important relationship at work if you have any questions on how to gain respect from your boss or manager please leave them in the comment section below and i'll get back to you and don't forget to take a look in the description below for additional resources and videos that might be useful to you thanks very much for watching and i look forward to speaking to you again soon


A lot of the core team, they seem to be really gung-ho on going with the off-chain scaling solution, at least prioritizing that first. So much so that I have a quote here on red recently that says, we should not change Bitcoin to accommodate more users. And that's one of the things that they were talking about in the IRC. So they were going with like the said with soft working rather than let's say going with the hard working. And they were also criticized notably like by other people like Jeff Garzik of the risks that are inherent by gung with the more complicated solution. So how can you compare this with let's say Tom Xander's flex cap proposal of taking the hard work approach and how might core's roadmap be wrong? This would take an hour to answer and more importantly I don't think my opinion matters at all to any of the parties involved, nor should it. This debate about big blocks and small blocks and how we scale Bitcoin. First of all, I don't think it's accurate to say the core is focused on not scaling the core layer. It's, as you said, it's a prioritization issue. Which one gets prioritized first? Now, I have a nuanced opinion on this, which pisses off everybody. Because if you have a nuanced opinion, then you're sitting on the fence and both sides can throw eggs at you for not taking a side. And I'm not gonna take a side because I think that both sides have merits. And really the question is a matter of prioritization and sequencing and conservatism versus a more aggressive approach to scaling. From time to time, my opinion has changed as I've seen new data. More recently, two days after the Ethereum fork, I thought, whoa, that went extremely well. A clear 95%, 5% splits technologically executed beautifully. This is gonna put a lot of pressure on the core to come up with a similar solution for Bitcoin. I was wrong. I was very wrong because a week later, actually two weeks later, we discovered that even though technologically the fork worked, politically it failed. And suddenly you ended up with a 70-30 split. And that was a disaster because there was not enough provision in the software to deal with replay attacks. It cost a lot of exchanges some money. I think there's some people from Coinbase in here who may have suffered some losses because of that, because of the replay attacks. I know other exchanges did too, or I heard that other exchanges did. So after that, my opinion was revised. And I think in Bitcoin, politically, a hard fork is a hell of a lot more difficult and will cause a deeper schism. So I don't think it's as easy as one team is right, the other team is wrong. I think we're going to have to let this roadmap play out. And for the time being, it seems that the majority of the participants in the system are continuing to put their trust in core, as long as core continues to deliver on their roadmap to a certain approximation. I'm not worried, because I think in the long term, what we're going to do is we're going to scale in the second layer, and we're going to scale the core layer with a block size increase. And we're going to do network optimizations, and, and, and. The scaling options are not either or, they're, and, and, and, and, and you just have to decide which comes first. I think a lot of this drama is unnecessary. And honestly, in terms of segregated witness, soft fork versus hard fork, I think soft fork is a better way to go. I do. I think we're going to get to the cleaner and quicker than a hard fork. I think a hard fork, given the current political situation in Bitcoin, is way too dangerous. Even if it was for something that everybody agreed on, like Segway, which I don't think you can even get that agreement. So that's probably a very nuanced answer about a very nuanced question, and I'm sorry if I didn't give you more of a direct answer. I don't think there is a simple black and white answer to that problem.


Hey everybody, it's Dave Duford here at daviduford.com where I help agents like you become top producers and today I'm doing a special interview with Cody Askins at SecureAgentMentor.com. Say hello, Cody. Thank you, brother. How are you guys? I'm doing good. Thank you so much for popping on the call today. So the purpose of today's interview is to talk more about Cody's new conference, which is going to be in Nashville in late October. And before we get into some of the details about this great conference that's designed specifically for insurance agents looking to up their game, let's go ahead and ask Cody a little bit about himself just to formally introduce yourself to my audience so they can get to know more. Thank you, buddy. Appreciate you doing this very much, man. We're really excited about the conference. I've been in the business since I was 19. I started actually as an intern at 18. My father's been in the business almost 30 years. He started like three months before I was born. He started in April. I was born in July. I don't know if I ever said that on video, dude, that's kind of funny. And so then I got started at 19. I was in college playing basketball, full-time student athlete, really fell in love with the business. Didn't know what a lead was. So there was a lot of cold calling, call nights, bringing over college kids, cold door knocking. I was fortunate enough to make 117 grand in my first eight months and just truly fell in love. I mean, we are in the best industry, the best vehicle in the world. I mean, it's amazing. Most people don't realize that there's more millionaires in the financial services and insurance industry than any other industry in the world. And so I love it. That was early stages of career. I was fortunate enough to go to the World Series a few times, earn a few nice trips with the captive carriers with back then, Mutual Loma Hall, who I started with. And then over the last four or five years, fell in the field, fell over the phone, built a security mentor. Since I looked this morning, my first security mentor video was December 28 of 2015.  It sucked. And now we've just continued to, you know, involve the mission and focus is to bring value just like you do and help our audience. You know, the insurance industry where unfortunately about 92% of insurance agents fell. So here we are. Yeah, so that kind of brings me to the whole concept of what the 8% nation means. So you mentioned 8% a lot. Tell us more about what the implication of that is and more about how what that really means. Absolutely. That's definitely been a really popular question. Statistically, you know, most stats aren't always down to the decimal correct, you know, down to the number, but about 92% of insurance agents fell in this business within their first few years, which is a sad number. When I got started in the business, there was four of us all getting trained, trained at one time. And they said, hey, the chances are three of you won't be here, at least three of you won't be here. And here in a few years, I'm like, dang, this is not a good start, man. That's like, that's kind of worried, you know, that's like, I'm trying to make this thing work. And actually, two of the four are still there. The other was my best friend, brother-in-law, and he's still in the business too. So there you go. But it's just, it's all about bringing awareness to the fact that too many insurance agents fell. It goes back to, like you talk about a lot, seeing people on a consistent basis, getting in with friend people. That's, you know, people don't fell because of a lack of experience, a lack of knowledge, you know, they fell because they don't ask the people to buy, just plain numbers, just like 92% of agents fell in. So we've created the 8% Nation Insurance Wealth Conference to bring awareness to that fact, to bring a modern spin around helping insurance agents, developing insurance agents, bringing everybody together in Nashville at a big NFL stadium and Nissan stadium to hang out and really give back to this industry that's given us so much. So why now are you putting this conference together? I mean, the intent is completely understandable and good because the unfortunate reality of this business is that the vast majority fail. Why now? Why this conference? That's probably the one question I would ask for anything else is, dude, why in the world are you doing this? And at the end of the day, I'm someone that I believe in goal setting. I write down my goals every morning, every night. I'm sold on my mission, my goals. And Memorial Day this year, I was in the pool, but actually day before, hanging out with my family, talking to my dad, you know, laying around. And we were talking about conferences and events. And I'm like, you know what, I've always wanted to throw a conference. I've always wanted to throw an event. And I thought, why wait? What better time? I was 27 at the time. I'm like, you know what, I preach, think big and take action. So what kind of hypocrite would I be if I think big, but then I don't take action and really put it into force. And so yeah, we're doing something that's bigger than me, bigger than our team. And it's gotten a lot of awareness and getting bigger and bigger every day. So the people know it's less of the Cody show. It really is. That's what I've told my team from the very beginning. I don't want to think about me. It's about me. People aren't going to tend, you know, most people in the business have no clue who I am and they don't care, which is cool. But at the end of the day, I want to bring value to the industry. I want to bring awareness. I want to bring people like you onto the panel to give back and to educate so that our industry can start to elevate. And so I did it because I knew that I was going to do it eventually anyway. So I took time out of the equation and what better time than now. So you've emphasized on some of your promotional videos that this is not just a conference. This is an insurance wealth conference. Can you kind of expand on the overall meaning of that and the theme behind the event? Absolutely. I've got a few mentors in my life as I feel like everyone should. One of them, his name is Mr. Charlie Cina. He'll be at the event. Really, really good dude. And we were talking one night and he said, hey, what's the, because it didn't start, it started out as just an insurance conference, you know, back in June. And he said, hey, what does everyone want? And everyone initially gets in this business to create wealth. They just do. They want to generate revenue. They want to make money that they see other.  They learn from you. They feel like you that they can also make the kind of money you make. And so rather than just making another insurance conference, I want to make it a insurance wealth conference where the entire focus is we're going to break the four days down into different parts. And so the whole focus goes back to creating wealth. And you say, well, dude, it ain't all about money. Well, sometimes wealth is more than just money, you know, it's the freedom it gives us. It's the ability it gives us to spend time with our family. I know you spend a lot of time with your family, all your kids, man. And that's what this industry and this career allows us to do. It allows us to give back, allows us to donate, allows us to be a part of charity. It allows us to be more than just us being self-absorbed in us and only thinking about the end result and money. And so wealth in all facets of life as an insurance agent. Yeah, I think reaching for the higher purpose of this is great because it kind of draws the whole the whole draw to this business. That's like you said, from the outset separates it from so many others, you know, just the freedom and prosperity that you can achieve through this this medium is fantastic. So, so if that's not enough, continue to expand on why my audience agents like those who are in the field selling whatever it is they're selling, what reasons, what kind of benefits will they get out of attending the wealth conference? Absolutely. So this conference is focused on four different areas. It's focused on becoming a marketing master. Friday morning, the 26th, that's what we're going to spend time on. That's what the speakers are going to educate on. Then Friday p.m. is where we talk about living an ideal life. We've got Tim story. I believe that due to the best motivational speaker personally that I've ever seen. I got to see him at growth con in Vegas, Grant Cardone's event when I tap front row. And I'm telling you what Tim story is unbelievable. He motivated me like nobody before. But then after him, we could hear from an NFL Hall of Famer, recent NFL Hall of Famer, Mr. Ray Lewis and the Baltimore Ravens. That dude, his story is incredible how he fought through pain. His 52 card story. If you guys haven't heard his 50 52 card story. I implore you to go back and watch that. You're probably on YouTube now. Research that once we're done. Then it's watching this. But after that, you got to watch the 52 card story. I'm telling you what it's amazing. And then we get into Saturday. Saturday morning, we get into a million dollar self summit. Guys that have built million dollars and 10 million dollar businesses.  And then that Saturday morning on the 27th and then Saturday p.m. After lunch, we get into blow up your business. Coach Michael Burt is a really good, good, becoming a good friend of mine. I met him at growth con. He spoke at growth con. He lives in Tennessee. He believes everybody needs a coach in life. And that dude is a coach and he's going to coach. He's going to coach you. And then even after that, Grant Cardone. Grant Cardone is becoming the most sought after international sales trainer on the planet. And it's because I do know how to get attention. He knows how to help people. And we've also got two different panels. We got a lot of industry guys going to be filling up the speaking spots in the panel. Especially this for David Duford, who's going to be up there hanging out, bringing some knowledge back. Man, I'm excited. That's the cool thing. I think the best part of this, the speakers will be unbelievable.  That's what I'm probably most looking forward to. So at the end of the day, you're going to learn, you're going to, the reason to tend events, you're going to learn valuable nuggets. And you're going to be able to network and connect with people that'll impact your business. And then you'll be able to implement those nuggets that will drive revenue. I went to growth con in Vegas and I've been able to four to five X my income since then by attending an event. And so I'm sold on events and the power of networking. Right. Yeah, I know it's super exciting because, you know, agents have this opportunity to, to see some well known sales trainers in the business, but then also see people who are doing it specifically in the industry. I'm super excited. Some of the panelists, I know they're going to be there. Matt Mangea, he wrote about a half million in business and final expense. I think in 2014. Great guy, great trainer as well. Jeff Roots going to be there. He's the owner of digital BGA. He's going to be on the panel. And if you don't know about him, he's really at the cutting edge of helping agents develop their own websites. We generate organically training. That's just absolutely pivotal if you want to develop your business in that capacity. And then they're there for your edification questions. So, you know, I'm super excited to be speaking with them and conversing with them as well. And of course, you guys can bum rush us as well and flag us down and ask us questions. That's what I plan to do is peruse the aisles and meet people out there and shake hands and I'm looking forward to it as well. How did you end up getting Grant Cardone? I mean, that's, that's kind of a cool question here. I mean, especially Ray Lewis, too, and an NFL stadium. I mean, you're going big, as for sure. How did you do it? Yeah, it's really the Grant Cardone piece. I've followed Grant for probably five years, as long as most have followed him back when he first started getting attention. And I was fortunate enough to not only follow him, but I was in Miami back in January with my wife. She's a big Duke fan. I take her to the Duke game every Duke basketball game every year. So we're at Duke in Miami game in Miami. We stopped by Grant Cardone's office just north of Miami and we were there for over an hour. They were the nicest people, you know, because you see stuff on video, you know, he's very well known. He's got like six million followers, you know, and so you don't think they're going to give you the time of day. Well, his staff was incredible. His video guy talked to me. They let me in the studio to shoot some video content testimonials for them. We were waving at Grant. Grant came out. We got to talking and negotiating for tickets to his event. Just that Michael Bondette, his salesperson there is just an incredible guy. I was just, I was amazed. I was really, really shocked. And so then I went to growth con at front row, got backstage, got to talk to him and Elena quite a bit. I talked to a lot of the speakers. Then afterwards, my wife and I did a one on one coaching mentorship strategy session with him for about 30 minutes on Zoom or Skype or whatever it was. And it was, it was, it was amazing for him to spend some time with us to invest in our lives. I just know that he is great at getting attention, bringing value, driving revenue at the end of the day. That's everything that an insurance agent does. We want to get in front of people. We want to provide value. So having Grant Cardone, I'm really excited about the MPs. He's incredible. Ray Lewis, I just love his story. To get to the NFL Hall of Fame, people have no clue how much effort that takes. It's incredible. When I do things, I'm like, okay, how can we get attention around what we're doing? Well, have an NFL stadium in Nashville and that's a good start. So that was my way of getting Grant Cardone, getting Ray Lewis, plugging in the stadium. Once we walked through the stadium and got a tour and they were telling us how we could have the event here and stuff.  I was so jacked up and excited. I'm running around the parking lot like, man, we are doing it here. So the stadium didn't know that yet, but I knew. So it was cool. So, you know, I spoke of a few panelists that are going to be there to answer questions. Can you kind of expand on who else is going to be there as well? People probably have heard of before on YouTube and Facebook and the insurance space. Absolutely, yeah. Obviously, you mentioned, we mentioned yourself, we mentioned Jeff Root, Modern Life Insurance Selling Podcast. Probably one of the most listened to insurance podcasts, at least for me. Maybe I don't know about all of them, but I know I've listened to that one. I listened to Winning Interviewed You, man, for that podcast on a plane. When I get on a plane, I turn on that podcast. I told Jeff that last week. Matt Mengia, doing over half a million in personal production with his own pen, final expense in the field, face to face, by himself. That's unbelievable, unbelievable. He's going to be up there. Sam Wolfe, a Marilife HBS, really incredible story, Mortars Protection guy. Ryan Saragakis, a community leader with Facebook Group 4000 agents. Tips, tricks, and closing. Really good guy. Eric Fierro and Justin Brock in the Medicare space. They want to help agents sell more Medicare, drive more renewals, create that financial freedom. And then Ryan Madison with the Adress Academy and Sean Fogelsen with the Finance and Business Coach Group becoming more prominent on YouTube as well. Somebody just added to the actual speaker lineup on stage given a keynote is insurance soup. We don't know that. We just added them the last couple of weeks. Michael McCormick and Taylor Dobby. Super, super well-known. Over 21,000 people are part of our group. I've been following them for years, just very well-known in our industry. We've got some other industry guys, Branding Clay, VP of Health Sales, Senior Marketing Specialist out of Columbia. My father, Brian Askins, who's been in the business for a long time. He's got as much knowledge about this business as anyone you'll ever meet. It's unbelievable. Ryan Palomini is going to teach people from stage how to write over $5 million a year in annuity. Vince Pampinato, the tele-filled guy with North Star. Just a lot of really cool names. Just a really good group of dudes. I'm getting to know. I'm starting to really enjoy the networking, the collaboration. I used to not believe that mentorship was that important. Finding mentors, learning from others. I think that was an ego thing. It was a pride thing. It was getting in my way. I started letting other people help me. I started to learn from others. I started collaborating with other people like yourself. My life's totally changed. So would you say this event is more geared towards the brand new agent, the experienced agent, or really both? Definitely both, but if I had to choose one, it's that agent out there that is struggling. Or maybe it's the agent that feels like they've got more potential than where they're at. They feel like they can do more. They feel like they can write more insurance. They feel like they can build a bigger team. They feel like they can make more money. I feel like all these things, I think it comes back to we all can do better. We all need help. We can all learn. You get two books up there behind you. One I was fortunate to be in. The other one, the official guide to selling products for insurance. I mean, really good books. I'm a huge believer in self-improvement, books, audio books, learning from others. So I know that anytime I'm sold on the fact that I am nowhere near my potential. I'm sold at David Dufort is nowhere near his potential. I'm sold that our audience is going to be at this event, has more left in the tank. And so let's put emphasis on helping all of us learn the mindset. I'm a big believer in the mental part of the game, the mission. Everybody's got to have a why. You talk about this a lot, the why. And then the specific moves that they can implement, the strategies and the nuggets, you know, to produce millions of dollars in this business. It's extremely capable. I feel like it's for everyone, but I feel like it's for anyone kind of a funny answer. But I feel like it's for anyone that feels like they got more left in the tank, that they can still do more and they've got more potential. They can get more. So as we wrap this up, Cody, tell us exactly if my audience is interested. I said, I want to attend. Where do they need to go? What do they need to do? Yeah, so what I'd love for them to do is go to 8%nation.com. Again, 8%nation.com. They can learn more about the event. They can see the speakers, literally as we're shooting this, because obviously we're shooting it before we release it. We're 29 days, 14 hours, 35 minutes and 24 seconds from showtime at Nissan Stadium in Nashville. We've got some amazing options on tickets. I'm not, you know, I'm somebody that I'm not going to make money from the event. I'll be fortunate if I don't lose money, frankly. But at the end of the day, it's more about the value, the mission, giving back. I don't care if I ever make a dime on the event. At the end of the day, I want to help people. I want to be like you and care and really, really care. So they can go to, they can do, they can do this. They can go to 8%nation.com. They can use the coupon code DOFORD B-U-F-O-R-D. And if they want to use it, that'll give them 50% off of any of the ticket levels. So whatever the current price, you got it, buddy. Thank you. Yeah, and I'll put the link below as well as the, how could you forget the coupon code? But I'll put that below. And it just follows the link there. And bye. So very good. Anything else you want to leave us with, Cody, for a wrap it up? Dude, man, I'm excited to hang out with you. I'm excited to hang out with everybody that's going to be there. We're expecting about 1,000 agents and we're, I'm just excited for the, like you mentioned, the conversations backstage, the conversations in the audience, the conversations at the VIP party on Friday night, the conversations at the VIP lounge, the conversations in the hotel, the conversations in the elevator, like those things are, they're freaking priceless. So I'm just, I'm just excited to get there, hang out, get to hang out with dudes like David Duford.  So thank you for not only being a part of this, thank you for, for, for interviewing me about this and for being a part of this and, and it's really, really appreciate it, buddy. Thank you. No, you're welcome, Cody. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you then, okay? That's awesome. Thank you, buddy. Alright, man. Appreciate you guys. See you there.


Our next speaker, Carol Tavris. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association. Her talk, which is a great title, who's lying, who's self-justifying origins of the he-said, she-said gap in sexual allegations. Carol Tavris. So, first of all, I have an important question. Does this bulletproof jacket make me look fat? I need to know that. I told a friend that I was the topic of this talk. And she said, well, you know, you may want to go with some protection. And I said, no, no, no, I am talking to an audience of skeptics and scientists, the kind of people who are open-minded and welcome evidence that we might be wrong. Sure, she said, and sure we do. So let me start with a question. How many of you know about Dillon Farrow's allegation last February that 21 years ago, when she was seven years old, Woody Allen took her to an attic and sexually molested her?  Anybody want to? Okay, you know this story. Well, Allen, of course, denied the accusations, and he argued that Dillon was influenced by her mother's continuing and unabated rage at him. Now, most people at the time took a position that one of them was telling the truth and one of them was lying. It was hard not to do that. And as always the case with sensational charges of sexual abuse, people leap to conclusions. Of course he did it. Why would she say such a thing if he didn't do it? Oh, don't be absurd. He couldn't possibly have done it. Why would he molest a child in an attic when he was already having an affair with Sunni and it's coldly preposterous and so forth? So people take a position. They talk with their friends.  And that's natural. That's inevitable, but it is also the mechanism that impedes our ability once we have taken a position to think skeptically and scientifically about it. In my previous presentations at TAM, I've talked about cognitive dissonance, the powerful discomfort we feel when two attitudes conflict or when a belief that we are deeply committed to is challenged by disconfirming evidence. In that evidence, we can reduce dissonance in one of two ways. We can accept the evidence and say, thank you for explaining why my lifelong belief in psychic powers is wrong. I believe that Randy is still waiting for the letter that will say that to him. Or we can preserve our view of ourselves as being smart, competent, and wise for having held that belief and tell the person who's telling us that we're wrong where they can go with that evidence. Now it is a counterintuitive finding that it is the people with high self-esteem who have the most difficulty reducing dissonance when they are wrong.  I'm just a schlunky person, so of course I would hold a schlunky belief. That's perfectly consistent for me. But the more we pride ourselves on our intelligence and our competence, the stronger our commitment to an ideology or a philosophy of life, even philosophies of justice, equality, and skepticism, the harder it is to accept evidence that we might be wrong, that we made the wrong choice, that we took the wrong side in that allegation, or that we harmed another person. Given those alternatives, it's much easier to justify our beliefs rather than take a dart to our high self-esteem egos. So lately I have been thinking about the way dissonance operates in discussions of sexual allegations.  But the topic has forced me to confront my own dissonance. I recognize it in the rising feelings of distress that I feel when I'm talking about these issues with someone who disagrees with me. What is the matter with them? Don't they see that I have the answer? Who don't seem to get it, who don't seem to see it the way I do. I find myself getting defensive and testy even more when I hear that annoyed buzz of dissonance in their voice. I am hoping that in the next minutes as I speak to you, you may hear that you begin to feel some of that annoyed buzz of dissonance yourself. If you don't, I'm not doing my job. I feel that as skeptics it is our intellectual obligation to tackle big, complicated, emotionally charged issues as well as the easy ones we all agree on, such as demunking psychic powers or tarot cards or UFO sightings. When an emotionally compelling allegation, especially of rape or child abuse, hits the news, it is tempting for all of us to jump to conclusions that fit our prejudices, our beliefs, our personal experiences, and our politics. But this is precisely when we as skeptics should not be doing that. Skeptical and critical thinking are crucially important when people's lives are at stake, when reputations can be destroyed in a heartbeat by allegations on the internet, where self-righteousness is not the same thing as being right. In 2006, an African-American woman, a professional stripper, claimed that three members of the Duke La Crosse team had raped her. You may remember this story. Two weeks later, 88 members of the Duke faculty, without waiting for an investigation, took out an ad in the school newspaper supporting her allegation and condemning the racism and sexism that induced those athletes to feel entitled to rape her. Way to go Duke faculty in setting an example of the principle of innocent until proven guilty. And to be sure, the faculty had statistics on their side.  Yet when the men's alibis proved to be unimpeachable, when DNA testing and the accuser's own inconsistent accounts failed to support her claims, even when the district attorney was disbarred for prosecutorial misconduct, the Duke faculty did not publish an ad saying, we were wrong. Their silence is predictable once we understand the pyramid of self-justification. It works like this. As soon as we make a decision or take an action, and especially if it's an impulsive hasty decision, I want to believe Dylan, I want to believe Woody, the brain will see to it that we will justify and solidify that position by seeking only the information that confirms that belief and will help us minimize or ignore information that disconfirms that belief. Have we got a slide? No. Now do we have a slide? We do not have a slide. Blank. That's not the, ah, okay. All right, so here's how it works. You have two people at the top of a pyramid. I would say they're pretty much close together. I don't know who's right or who's wrong in this Woody, Alan, Dylan, Farrell case. I have really no opinion one way or the other. I don't know. So you start talking with friends and you do come up with an opinion. You decide, one side decides Dylan must be right, the other side decides Woody, Alan must be right. Now notice the minute they make a decision, which way to jump down that pyramid, their attitudes will now be, will now change to be consistent with that new evaluation. And they will begin moving further apart from each other. I believe Dylan, I believe Woody. Over time those attitudes will become further and further apart until anyone who disagrees with Dylan is rape-cultured and on the other hand, anybody who thinks Woody, Alan really did it, is just a crazy person. That is how our attitudes can morph from uncertainty or ambiguity into very rigid points of view. Everybody memorize this? Tattoo this on your leg. So now with this preference, let's talk about what we talk about when we talk about rape. Many places are all too clear and everybody would pretty much agree at the top of that pyramid. One way off the pyramid on certain cases. There are men who rape out of a desire to dominate, humiliate or punish their victims.  Soldiers who rape military women to convey the message, you aren't wanted here. Men who rape other men in gangs or prisons. Men who rape women to keep them in their place as with the horrific gang rapes we've been hearing about in Egypt, Afghanistan and India. Some rapists including a significant percentage of the perpetrators on college campuses are predators, repeat offenders who use force, alcohol or ruffies. Few dispute that these acts of rape are contemptible and criminal. Though once I found myself arguing at a dinner party with a man who said oh please he said everybody gets all upset about rape. It has nothing to do with misogyny or power.  At which point one of the women at the dinner party a quite shy, soft-spoken woman who had been listening to this argument said, and if I hit you on the head with a frying pan is that an act of cooking? That ended the debate. But 85% of all reports of rape in this country occur between people who know each other. And it's here in people's intimate lives where sexual encounters can be far more ambiguous. The intersection between consensual and non-consensual sex is usually not marked with flashing lights and traffic signals that say stop, yield, you know, go, stop, walk, pet, right? You don't get these signs. And this is the territory of he said, she said and the polarized interpretations that can send people tumbling down opposite sides of the pyramid. I just want to say with apologies to the gay men and lesbians in this audience, I'm going to be talking about the research with straight couples. So let us consider this recent story that was in the news of two first-year students at Occidental College, ages 17 and 18, who had sex while both were very drunk. According to official reports, the 17-year-old visited a classmate's dorm room, took off her shirt while dancing and made out with a guy. Then she left and texted him to see if he had a condom and returned. Her friends tried several times to take her to her room, but she kept texting him and going back. The next day, she said she couldn't remember what had happened, including whether or not they had had intercourse.  The LA County District Attorney's Office declined to file charges, concluding that both parties were willing participants exercising bad judgment. Occidental agreed, noting that the young woman, quote, engaged in conduct and made statements that would indicate that she consented to sexual intercourse, but the college added she did not have the capacity to appreciate the nature and quality of the act because she was too drunk. As for the young man, the report added, he was too drunk to recognize that she was too drunk to consent. He was expelled. She wasn't. What?  Is this story extremely rare? Or is it all too common? Sandy Banks, a columnist for the LA Times, wrote this assessment. The problem occurs because of the combustible mix of sex and alcohol when two young people, both drunk and amorous, have sex that neither completely remembers, both belatedly regret, and each sees through a different lens than mourning after. In my day, we called that a lesson. You might cry privately, commiserate with friends, and then life goes on. Today, we call that a crime. Lives unravel, lawyers intervene, and years of therapy ensue.  It just turns naive and awkward college students into perpetrators and victims. Do you agree with her? Do you disagree with her? Well, I sure agree with her, but I have found myself recently in many discussions with young college feminists who are outraged at that argument. We are talking about perpetrators and victims, they tell me, and it's anti-feminist to call it anything else. If the guy is expelled and he feels outraged by an accusation he can't defend or outrun, too bad for him. She feels outraged by what he did to her, and she's entitled to be angry. Even if she can't remember exactly what it is that he did. That is not the feminism I signed up for. Now, our beliefs, thank you. Now, our beliefs about blame and responsibility are opinions. Science does not have much to say about them. Our politics, our age, our gender, and as I said, our own sexual experiences will influence them. But scientific research does have something to contribute to some of the assumptions that many people on both sides of the pyramid hold. And perhaps by understanding these, we can bring some light and not just heat to this issue. Many of you, I'm sure, have heard about the White House Task Force to protect students from sexual assault, which reported, research reported to the Department of Justice that 19.1% of college women have experienced rape or attempted rape. Remember this statistic? It was quickly rounded up to 20%, one in five women on college campuses have been subjected to rape or attempted rape. Well, that number, of course, went viral. A more recent report from the Center for Disease Control based on a nationwide phone survey conducted in 2010 reported that 9% of American women have been victims of completed forced penetration or attempted forced penetration in their lifetimes, and an additional 3% have been victims of alcohol or drug-facilitated penetration. But it was the campus study that made the news, although it was seven years old and conducted at only two American universities. That's the one that got everyone's attention, prompting time and everyone else to ask if there's a rape crisis on American campuses. What should skeptics make of these numbers? Well, at one level, it shouldn't matter. Rape is ugly, it's serious, whatever the numbers. But skeptics are entitled to ask questions without being accused of being rape-cultured. Are rates rising? What kinds of experiences are being included as rape? The numbers keep changing with the times, with the population being questioned, college students, homeless people, prisoners, women in the military, with the way questions are phrased with whether rates pertain to experiences during college years or over a woman's lifetime and with the methods used to get the numbers, phone, questionnaire, or interview. That said, we don't get to agree with a percentage or dispute it based on whether it fits our perceptions and politics. Thus, for people on one side of the pyramid, 20% feels like the right number. It supports their argument that misogyny and sexual violence in our hypersexualized society are on the rise.  Slut-shaming has become so ubiquitous that it's now a term in women's studies. I didn't know that. I thought that was, all right, never mind. The culture today, they point out, encourages men to feel sexually entitled to take advantage of women who are inebriated or otherwise unable to consent. Look how casually young men post videos of themselves doing just that. In fact, on OKCupid, and I don't know this because I've been on OKCupid, I haven't had one to add, but a friend told me this, there is a question. Someone you like is drunkenly flirting with you. You know that with a sober mind, this person would never engage in casual sex, but now it seems they're willing. What do you do? The answers are A, take advantage of the situation, or B, absolutely nothing. What does it say about our culture that choice A is even a possibility? So that's one point of view.  The culture today, they say, encourages women to avoid taking responsibility for their own part in sexual encounters. Today, a young man is accountable for his actions when he's drunk, but a young woman is not. If we warn men that it's unsafe to get drunk and hook up, why do we think it blames the victim? If we warn women that it's unsafe to get drunk and hook up, no one gets huffy if we warn women to protect their purses and wallets if they're visiting Prague, by the way, which is known for its pickpockets. You can go online and find ways to protect yourself from pickpockets in Prague. Go try saying that. Protect yourself from pickpockets in Prague 12 times. So have you taken sides on these two ways of understanding where the problem is and what the problem is? You're allowed to agree with both sides, by the way. A tolerance for holding dissonant attitudes is a sign of high intelligence. Nevertheless, people on both sides of the pyramid tend to make the same mistake that in any he said, she said situation, one of them is lying. In the Woody Allen case, one blogger put it succinctly, quote, Woody Allen cannot be presumed to be innocent of molesting a child unless she is presumed to be lying to us.  Another blogger wrote that only one side, the victims, could be the truth. Believe the survivors, she wrote, even if they don't remember everything, believe them, even if they remember almost nothing. Believe them, even if they don't want to share details or press charges or ever talk about it again. Believe them, even if their story sounds implausible to you. If you are skeptical in this view, you are aiding and abetting pedophiles and rapists. Skeptics rightly reject this reasoning when it applies to any of the excuses people give Randy when his experiments failed to support their belief. No one says I must believe dousers, even if their claims sound implausible to me and the evidence against dousing is incontrovertible. Isn't the whole point of skepticism to ask questions and not accept any claim unskeptically if the story sounds implausible? The discounting of evidence means that there are only two ways off the pyramid in allegations of sexual coercion and rape. She is either the innocent victim of a knowing rapist or she is the knowing false accuser of an innocent man. But decades of research on memory, testimony, and self-justification show that there is a third possibility. Each one honestly believes that he or she is telling the truth and one or both of them may be wrong.  One or both parties can be misremembering and confabulating commonplace memory errors as you will learn tomorrow from Elizabeth Loftus. One or both parties can be self-justifying unable to accept evidence of the harm or cruelty that he or she caused the other. The result can lead to what Deborah Davis, a social psychologist at the University of Nevada, calls honest false testimony about sexual consent. She with two colleagues have reviewed the enormous research literature documenting three pathways to honest but false testimony. The first is miscommunication. This is a tough one, so listen up. Just about everyone concurs that as soon as a woman says no, he has to stop, no matter how far along they are and no matter where his penis is at the moment, he's supposed to stop. The repeated message of anti-rape groups, what part of no don't you understand? It's a great slogan. My generation loved that slogan. We thought that was really clear. But to the dismay of feminists of all generations, studies are still finding three problems with that message that remain true today. One, no remains difficult for many women to say clearly and directly. Two, no remains difficult for many men to hear and accept. And three, both sexes often do not, in fact, understand no. It can mean no, but occasionally it means maybe or in a little while. It can mean I want to, but I don't want to appear too easy, because then you'll call me a slut and I'll have to go through all that slut-shaming thing. It can mean persuade me. In one study of high school students, although almost 100% of the males and females agreed that a man should stop his sexual advances as soon as the woman says no, nearly half of those same students of both sexes also believed that when a woman says no, she doesn't always mean it. Both sexes said they play the game of token resistance. A third to half of the females reported that they first respond to a sexual overture with an intentionally token no. In addition, as sexologists know from research and clinical experience, most straight couples, even long-term couples, communicate sexual intentions, including a wish not to have sex indirectly and ambiguously through hints, body language, eye contact, this wonderful term, testing the waters, and appropriately enough for a skeptics convention, mind reading, which is about as accurate as mind reading. People rarely say directly what they mean and they often don't mean what they say. They find it very difficult to say what they dislike. They don't wanna hurt the other person's feelings. They may think they want intercourse and then change their minds. They may think they don't want intercourse and then change their minds. When I was in college, a digression for a story, when I was in college, my much older brother decided it was his obligation as brother to offer me constructive medical, psychological advice for his younger sister. Our conversation went like this. Look, he said, keep in mind that when the guy comes to your place, or you go to his place, or you're in the car going to his place or your place, or for that matter, if you are in any enclosed space whatsoever, it means only one thing.  What if we just wanna study for midterms?   You know, nowadays men and women were egalitarians and none of this stuff, we can be friends. It's not all about sex. You think everything is about sex. We just want a place where we can talk about Hegel.  But what about Arturo, I said?   Okay, so you get the point, right? It took a while, I will tell you, before I grudgingly got his message. It took a while. In the sense that I eventually came to understand the brilliance of that wonderful story of the man who seeks the secret of wisdom from the great guru and he says, oh, great guru, what is the secret of wisdom? And the guru says, good judgment. But oh, great guru, how do I get good judgment? Bad judgment. Right, so I had a whole lot of experiences with bad judgment and although I finally understood what my brother meant and how right he was, I didn't get his message because any man ever said to me, Carol, I'd like to put my penis in your vagina. Or for that matter, because I was able to say to him directly, just keep it in New Jersey for the moment, bud, okay? Or, actually, that would be nice, but only after you've read me some rapturous love poems. So instead, I made a lot of mistakes. As I learned to play what Deborah Davis calls the dance of ambiguity, which protects both parties and the relationship. By being vague and indirect, each party's ego is protected in case the other says no. She can say yes without having to explicitly admit it's what she wants. Either one can subtly reject the offer without rejecting the suitor. It's a terrific system, really, except for the fact that it gets both parties into so much trouble. As Davis says, there's a price for all of this ego protection. Each one can misinterpret the other's wishes. If one partner's desire to have sex isn't made clear, they can lose a great opportunity. If one's desire not to have sex isn't made clear, unwanted advances proceed unchecked. Indirection saves a lot of hurt feelings and it also causes them. She really thinks he should have known to stop and he really thinks she gave consent. To make matters muddier, studies find that many young women following gender rules that say they should be nice or self-protection rules that say they should not risk offending or angering the man try to convey no without saying no. They do so in nonverbal ways such as by stepping a few inches back or pretending not to notice the man's advances and by not agreeing but not resisting either. As one woman said, if I just freeze here, he'll know what I mean, maybe not. In a series of interviews of men and women ages 18 to 22, one researcher found that the most commonly reported signal to indicate consent used roughly equally by men and women was simply not resisting the sexual advances of the other person. Do you get what this means? The lack of resistance to sexual advances can mean I don't want to and I do want to. So the same action or nonaction has ambiguous and even contradictory meanings. You can see how men who are sexually aggressive or men who are simply sexually aroused would tend to resolve that ambiguity in a way, shall we say, that suits their interests by overinterpreting women's nonverbal actions. How they behave, what they wear, are they flirting, do they hug them, seeing everything as signs of the woman's interest.  Is it a sexual signal? She's wearing tight jeans. If she runs her fingers through your hair, if she smiles or gives you a hug and so forth. And basically what they found was, to the guys, everything was a sexual signal. If she was wearing tight jeans, it was clearly she was trying to inflame my lust. But if she was wearing a potato sack, why else would she wear a potato sack? If she didn't want me to think about what's under it. The young women are saying things like, I'm wearing the tight jeans because they fit, I lost five pounds. And sometimes because they were flirting and really wanted to express sexual interest. Same activities to entirely different meanings. The fact that guys see everything as a sexual signal is actually known as the over perception bias. Sexual over perception tends to be more prominent among people who enjoy short term and casual hookups, regardless of their gender. They project their own desires for sex onto the other person.  In Davis's analysis, the second pathway to honest false testimony is alcohol, which facilitates having sex, increases miscommunication about sex, and impairs memory about sex. For some women, alcohol is the solution to the sex decision. After all, if they're inebriated, they haven't said yes. And if they haven't explicitly said yes, no one can accuse them of being a slut. Men know this of course, and some play their part, encouraging the woman to drink more so that she will be more inclined to agree. But for both parties, alcohol significantly impairs the cognitive interpretation of the other person's behavior, sexual negotiations, and how they construe the event. As Davis reports, men who are drunk are less likely to interpret non-consent messages accurately, and women who are drunk convey less emphatic signs of refusal. The third pathway to honest false testimony is through the normal errors of memory. In any he-said, she-said debate, each side reports who said and who did what, right? How she felt, how he reacted, their intentions, their perceptions, blah, blah. But these reports, which after all happened the next day, the next week, the next month, sometimes the next year, are contaminated by all the factors that can contaminate any other memory. If the participants were not attending to certain details at the time because they were inebriated or distracted, they would not have encoded those details into long-term memory. As Davis puts it, memory tends to be for the gist of what happened rather than the exact details. So the victim may report such gist characterizations as it was clear I didn't want to, whereas the accused guy may report his own summary as she obviously wanted it or she didn't do anything to tell me to stop. Here's the key. Because memory is reconstructive in nature and susceptible to suggestion, someone in the faculty or your friends as you're telling the story, and because we distort or rewrite dissonant memories to conform to our views of ourselves, people can remember saying things that they only thought about or intended to say at the time. One of my most embarrassing experiences was going to a guy's room where you know what it was that he wanted to do. And it's embarrassing to me to this day because I see myself as the kind of competent woman who would have said, you rude person, I'm leaving you now, but I didn't. All right, nevermind, we go right, moving right ahead. Okay, so anyway, that's another story for Lee. As a result, this is important though. The woman might falsely remember saying things that she thought about, but didn't say to stop the situation because she sees herself as the kind of assertive person who would stand up for herself. The man might falsely remember doing things to verify the woman's consent that he did not do because he sees himself as a decent guy who would never rape a woman. She's not necessarily lying, she's misremembering. He's not necessarily lying, he's self-justifying. An understanding therefore of dissonance can help us also manage the universal temptation to believe a claim made by someone on our side whose story confirms our beliefs, our way of seeing the problem. And to minimize or dismiss or discredit claims made by someone on the other side whose story makes us uncomfortable. That Duke LaCrosse story made a whole lot of women's activists really uncomfortable. People who believe that children never lie about sex abuse will have a hard time hearing Beth Loftus's evidence about how children's memories like adult memories can be shaped and confabulated. People who believe that women never make false allegations of rape will have a hard time hearing Deborah Davis's evidence about how women like men can misremember, misperceive and fail to express their wishes clearly. People who believe that most men would never have sex with a woman without her consent will have a hard time hearing how the overperception bias and feeling entitled to take advantage of the situation can cause them to do just that. It would be nice to believe that regulations and rules and policy guidelines are the best route to reducing the incidence of rape on college campuses or elsewhere. The California State Senate in its infinite wisdom has just passed a bill that would require colleges to adopt a policy instructing students that each partner must provide quote, affirmative, conscious and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity. Way to go California State Senate. How could any couple implement this policy?  Some activities? All activities? When? Before? During? After? What about threesomes who can't agree? What if two of them agree and one doesn't? And what's conscious by the way? Anyone care to draw the line between a mild buzz, intoxication, an ecstasy high, inebriation and all other possible states of consciousness on the way to passing out? If the California State Senate wants to reduce the incidence of sexual coercion, I think it would be better off trying to find ways to increase empathy, kindness, fun, advanced courses in the art of seduction, an emphasis on reciprocal pleasure and the many benefits of turning the other cheek. Okay, I didn't get that one. All right, moving right along. Okay, while colleges, courts and politicians wrestle with solutions, we will all do well in any given case or allegation to play our part as skeptics, to maintain our skepticism, wait for evidence and avoid reflexively jumping off the pyramid. If we can do this, we will be in a better position to seek ways of achieving justice and safety for women and for men and for turning the dance of ambiguity into a dance of intimacy that is more pleasurable, more honest and more satisfying for each of us in our private lives. Thank you. Carol Tavris, Carol Tavris.