Welcome everybody to the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host Rob dial and I'm very excited to have my guest Sam Harris with me today If you guys don't know who Sam Harris is I would say Sam the best way of Me explaining from what I've seen and read and listened to you is you're kind of the bridge for me of science and a lot of the Eastern philosophies that exists and for The analytical Western mind like me makes it more palatable to go. Oh, yeah, this meditation thing does make sense It does it does show how this actually is Does have benefit as well. Do you kind of feel like that's that's the way it is And that's what you hear from other people as well that you're kind of the bridge between the Western Analytical mind and then also the Eastern philosophies and religions and in practices as well Yeah, well that those are definitely two domains. I've been conscious of trying to bridge So I'm happy that it's working for you I guess I I'm building a few other bridges as well, but that is Probably My main focus at the moment and as you know, I have a podcast where I talk about all manner of thing and much of it Can be political and and unrelated to what we're going to talk about but I spent a lot of time in Another wheelhouse, which is which is really Mostly focused on my app waking up at the moment and that's why I talk about meditation and and related brain science and and Find points of contact with Western philosophy, but the truth is there there hasn't been That many points of contact with Western philosophy of late because it's been a couple of thousand years since Western philosophy was explicitly Trying to answer the question of what it means to live a good life, right? How do we live a life without regret so much of philosophy has been totally divorced from that project and devoted to a bunch of interesting but but ultimately not all that consequential linguistic games and So yeah, I you know, I am not I don't think of myself as a as Consciously focused on the East per se, but there isn't a symmetry here Which is that and then this is an analogy that that may shock some people but it you know with respect to Wisdom that's specifically the wisdom born of Contemplation meditation introspection There's this asymmetry where in the east it's a little bit like The asymmetry between Western and Eastern medicine, right? I mean like a real medicine medicine that makes serious contact with a biological understanding of You know what we are as organisms that is Western medicine It's not to say that nothing in Eastern medicine has ever worked or or but but for the most part if it works It has to conform to our understanding of biology as it has been born in the West there really is a similarly extreme and invidious asymmetry between the West and the East with respect to contemplative wisdom and we might talk about that but it's so I just by it's very nature I have drawn a lot of insight from from Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies and methodologies Yeah, and I know I know you got your degree in philosophy and then also you got your PhD in Neuroscience And you've been meditating for 30 years. What what's I guess the first question is how did you get into it? What was like the beginning of it the genesis of deciding that?  Have you noticed that as well? Yeah, well mindfulness is is certainly in vogue and you know for for good reasons It's you know, there's a superficiality to much of it. So which is you know, you know Worth at least being aware of and and if not criticizing but I think you know even a little bit of mindfulness is is better than none and It's it's increasingly popular now because there is so much Competition for our attention and it's it's so obviously dysfunctional, you know I mean the human mind was painfully distracted 2,000 years ago, right? So, you know at the time of the Buddha the problem, you know, the the explicit problem He was addressing Were the consequences of having our minds be by default out of control But there's no question our situation has gotten worse. We've got the most powerful companies on earth right now doing everything possible to Prior attention away from what matters most to us. Yeah, right? I mean we're what should matter most to us and people I think are becoming more alert to the the The consequences of that both, you know personally and collectively it's it's you know personally We are living lives that that feel more and more fragmented because in fact they are and You know societally we are witnessing a Just the the utterly divisive and deranging consequences of being siloed into Into these bespoke information bubbles and being game to differentially by algorithms You know whether it's YouTube or or just the consequences of a Google search or what comes comes into our timeline on Facebook or Twitter I mean, it's just we're we're we've all been enrolled in in a mass psychological experiment to which no one consented and the consequences of which are Have not really been thought through and it's pretty clear that many of the consequences are bad so Yeah, many many millions of people now are seeing the need to reclaim their attention and you know, I would argue that Our attention really is the true source of our wealth in each moment and you know Therefore each day and over the course of our lives even more than time We all know what it's like to protect our time But then to squander it because our attention is elsewhere, right? You decide to carve out some quality time with your kids and then you find yourself checking your phone and perhaps having to respond to some pseudo-emergency born of you know, you're entanglement with it and so it's We really have to seize more than time To be making contact with our lives. We need we need to be able to pay attention In each moment to what to what is what what actually repays our attention and meditation is really the art of discovering that and training that Hey, let me tell you about my favorite drink that I take a couple times a day It's called athletic greens and how I start my day as I drink it first thing in the morning before I do anything else And then I go meditate and in 30 seconds in just one scoop I get 75 vitamins minerals and whole food source ingredients and it has everything that a multivitamin has plus greens probiotics prebiotics digestive enzymes immunity formula adaptogens and more when COVID first hit I actually ordered this out of my own pocket for my mom because I wanted to keep her immunity up So if you're looking to upgrade your multivitamin or take one nutritional formula that's going to cover all of your daily nutritional bases Check out athletic greens athletic greens makes it so much easier to get high quality nutrition Incredibly easy into your diet without the need to buy multiple products So make an investment today in your health and try out the ultimate all-in-one wellness bundle and support your immunity gut health energy by visiting athletic greens comm slash dial and you'll receive a free year supply of liquid vitamin D for free With your first purchase again that is athletic greens comm slash dial Five years ago Felix gray realized that our eyes were not meant to look at screens all day And they designed glasses to make daily screen time more comfortable in the workday more productive Felix gray lenses Filter 15 times more blue light that can help make screen time tough on the eyes And it also disrupts your sleep if you don't have the right glasses Felix gray offers classic frame styles that are hand-finished They're durable they're lightweight, and they're really comfortable to wear So you can buy your blue light lenses that come standard at $95 or add a prescription at checkout And it comes out to 145 if you can notice that screen time is not right for your eyes Or if you're noticing that the blue light glasses that you're using are not right for you Start with the best in blue light and try Felix gray and went through a 30-day money-back guarantee You have absolutely nothing to lose but your eye strain So get yourself a pair of glasses made for the 21st century that are designed for modern hard-working eyes You have nothing to lose go to Felix gray glasses comm slash dial for the best blue light glasses on the market. That is f e l i x g r a y Glasses comm slash dial you get free shipping free returns free exchanges at Felix gray glasses comm slash dial I love that phrase attention is our true source of wealth and you know as I've Researched and watched some of your stuff and and gone through and done the research for for this episode One of the things that you said is is it's kind of just happiness boils down to our present our level of happiness? Devil you know boils down to our present moment and how present we can be and the reality of your life is always now That's what it is but One thing that I say is that you know if somebody wants to be really good at basketball if they were to wake up They've never played basketball before their entire lives, and they just decide I want to be really good at basketball I'm gonna wake up and I'm going to from the moment. I wake up to the moment I go to bed 16 hours play basketball every single day in six months You're gonna be pretty damn good at basketball and even if you're not gonna go pro But you'd be pretty good what people don't realize and I feel like in the world that we live in right now Is that we wake up and the very first thing that we do is we become distracted and we become distracted for 16 hours we've basically unbeknownst to us become Pros at being distracted we have we have literally distracted ourselves from every single moment from we wake up We literally look in our text messages or emails. We go to Facebook Instagram We wake up with go through all of those motions take a shower and then we listen to something We go to the work and there's people to distract distract distract and literally we become masters of distraction and so for us to be in the present moment number one is so foreign, but it's also hard as hell right now and I'm really curious with you for people who are out there I know there's a lot of people that listen that Meditation is just hard as hell to have to be in the present moment without feeling some Anxiety tends to be really hard So what's the first step for someone that's out there to be able to actually experience the present moment and not be pulled by some distraction? Well, the first step is really to notice how distracted you are and that you know that can come in in Stages, you know the most people when they try to meditate, you know For first, I should say they're different styles of meditation. They're different techniques. There are at least two basic principles that Differentiate various approaches here and But both Entail non distraction as a bit of basic Goal so the the the antithesis of meditation whatever meditation you're attempting Is to be lost in thought is to be thinking without knowing that you're thinking right so you want to be able to place attention on something and notice in fact what you intend to notice in those moments and You can do this narrowly you can try to focus on a single object So this is very common in the beginning. Let's say you're being taught You know form of mindfulness meditation you're told to pay attention to the breath Say and then there's nothing magical about the breath But it's it's always appearing right as long as you're alive you're breathing and it's it's fairly salient you you can notice it and Unlike a mantra or some visualization or anything else you might strategically add to your experience It doesn't require any Kind of but you know kind of buy in with respect to concepts, right?  I mean, there's there's skepticism That creeps in there for many of us There's no dogma test your breath Exactly missus like just pay I mean here here's the base basic hypothesis if you want to understand Your mind more deeply if you want to become more sensitive to the mechanics of your Happiness and suffering it makes sense to pay attention, right? So let's see if you can pay attention and The truth is you know, I would invite all of our listeners to try this If you tried to pay attention to something for the next minute say, you know let's say your breath if you try or you know anything in your environment you could just stare at an object and You try to do that to the exclusion of everything else and in particular You tried not to get carried away by thought while doing that Unless you've had unless you happen to be some kind of prodigy of concentration or you've trained significantly The truth is you just won't be able to do that, right? And in the beginning you'll be so distracted and distractible You might not even notice how distracted you are, right? You might come away thinking.  And you're and that's a that's a thought that you're not noticing And it's a thought that feels strangely it feels like Self, right? I mean that there's this identity that That many of us Feel identical, you know, virtually everyone by default feels identical to which is this sense of being a thinker of thoughts or or an Experiencer of experience. So there's most people feel that there's it's not that there's just experience As a matter of their subjectivity they feel that they're they're appropriating their experience They're having an experience from some point of view as a subject inside their heads and that is the The central illusion that that meditation is really designed to inspect and ultimately cut through And it it's it's something that falls away for us all the time haphazardly and those are the moments in life. We most value. I mean the moments of of flow or or You know ecstasy or you know, just just a real connection With the present moment that that seemed to come over us But we can't control that right this it seems to depend on Arranging things in the world So as to be really extraordinary.  Yeah every time Exactly and and you know, you know, you have to actually be having sex and it's just a moment that you know in sex that you know May or may not come right? It's like like you're you're you're just You're you're seeking a peak experience for the purpose of getting consciousness to fully coincide with the present moment and And it does you know, occasionally for for everybody and and that's why People value specific experiences and then life becomes a a really a an unending effort to Keep arranging experience such that we can have more and more moments like that and we're constantly trying to get back to our favorite things on the menu What what meditation teaches you is that It's really not about Those diverse experiences. There's nothing nothing wrong with having those experiences and and you know, you'll continue to enjoy them but What what what really is the principle there is The quality of attention, right? It's not the fact that you happen to be in the ocean and covered with salt water And getting pushed around by a wave That that makes surfing so Extraordinary for someone who who's really into it um, it's the Because really we're just talking about a collection of sensations, right? We're just talking about you know, your five senses and proprioception and it's it's just not That is not what is so extraordinary. What's so extraordinary is that it has done something to your mind That you haven't figured out how to do any other way, right and meditation is a technique for directly seizing the reins there and learning to that Paying attention to anything sufficiently yields that kind of of reward and It really can be any arbitrary object even something as simple as the breath you know and something as as apparently boring as the breath so In the beginning you you attempt to do that you attempt to pay attention to the breath and you the first thing you notice is how hard that is and and I mean as you know, as you say, you know on the point of anxiety People you know people can tend to encounter a lot of Resistance they can they can the the mental effort of paying attention can be unpleasant But the reality is is that you can simply just drop back and relax there. There is no Straining effort that is that is actually required to do this What you need to do is is just recognize that you're already Fully paying attention to something. I mean you can notice simply what you're noticing in each moment and This is where the the second type of meditation is is more relevant and this is it's just more interesting ultimately and and It's the one I recommend which is You know, you're not trying you're not trying to focus on one thing not the breath or anything else to the exclusion There of everything else You're simply trying to notice clearly whatever you're in fact noticing so so sounds and other sensations in the body And ultimately even thoughts themselves Are not Are not distractions from meditation as long as you're clearly noticing What's arising in consciousness?  It just you know, it is just this this luminous context in which everything is appearing and Your mind can be like that and it's not you don't have to make it like that It's already like that but you but meditation is the process whereby you would recognize that And become more familiar with it. Hey, is there something that's interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals? Maybe it's anxiety or stress or worry with how much is going on in the world right now Well, better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist And you can start communicating with them in under 48 hours. It's not a crisis line. It's not self-help It's professional counseling done securely online and there's a broad range of expertise available Depending on what you need and they're service available for clients worldwide And you can log into your account at any time send messages to your counselor and better help is committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches So they make it easy and free to change your counselors if you need to and it's more affordable than traditional offline counseling And financial aid is available and better help wants you to start living a happier life today So visit better help.com slash dial. That's better H-e-l-p and join over one million people who have taken charge of their mental health with help from an experienced professional And get 10 off your first month at betterhelp.com slash dial. Yeah, I love that. I I did a vipassana Um about two years ago and it's crazy exactly like you're saying the first Three or four days of vipassana The only thing they tell you to do is just watch your breath go in and out of your nose Just feel what it feels like to have it going out of your nose and you notice that where did you do that? I did it out in in Dallas right outside of Dallas. There's a vipassana center that's out there And it was a a 10 day retreat or yep 10 day retreat and they follow You know the traditional vipassana and you can't look anybody in the eyes. You can't journal. You can't do yoga You can I mean literally all that you can do is you can either meditate or you can go for a walk outside in this little tiny area that they had And what you notice is how many what I notice specifically is is how I could only get to like two or three breaths before my mind was already somewhere else And the thing that they tell you is not to judge the fact that your mind is going everywhere Just bring it back and that's one of the hardest things that people tend to just You know judge themselves. Oh my god. There goes my mind again. No, it's not about that It's just about bringing your mind back and just going okay. Yep. We did it again You know you went off and and now we're going to bring it back and It's funny because After seven days It it started getting you know started getting easier and then eighth day and I remember Eighth or ninth day I was sitting there and I was about two and a half hours into meditation And I just started to cry because of how amazing I felt like the amount of presence and joy I was like I if I didn't have to go to the bathroom I could stay here forever And it was just I've never felt so good in my life Just by sitting there and meditating and it's kind of like the last thing I love about what you're saying is that Whether it's surf or sex or roller coaster or racing that somebody wants to get into that that brings them to the present moment It's really the amount of that they love is the amount of presence that they are feeling in that moment And I guess from what we're saying is that meditation Is allowing you to get rid of all of the distractions and bring as much presence as you possibly can to a present moment So that even just sitting there and Watching your kids play without feeling like you have to check your phone The amount of presence and attention you could bring to that moment makes your life more rich Yeah, yeah, and ultimately it's not about Changing experience. So it's very easy to get the sense that The goal of meditation Is to experience Extraordinarily pleasant states of mind now as you point out that those those states are available, right? You can certainly go on to a retreat And develop significant concentration and along with that concentration Just these amazing Qualities of mind begin to develop right you you can feel bliss and rapture and and And and thoughts can cease to arise and and and you can lose all sense of your body So the mind becomes this Really vast open space And it's very drug-like right it can it's you know, it's very much like Taking, you know, certain psychedelics or mdma or anything. You can you can be in an altered state and It's very I mean it's it's almost inevitable that someone Who has that experience for the first time or even the hundredth time? We'll we'll think okay. This is the the center of the bullseye. I mean, this is this is why I meditate This is why I you know put my put my life on hold to come on this retreat This is Now it's working right. This is the the whole point and if I could just feel more like this most of the time You know, I I'd be good, right? This is you know, this is this is the project to get back here and stay here But the problem is it's another trap. Yeah anything anything any change in the character of experience of that sort Is predicated on Some causes and conditions coming together Which are by their very nature unstable, right? You have to be very concentrated. You can't be you know, you can't be checking your email You can't be your as you said, you know, I could see if I could if I didn't have to go to the bathroom I could stay here, right? But you do have to go to the bathroom and The the the more fundamental insight which is the the ultimate purpose of this kind of practice Is to recognize that that consciousness itself right that the very consciousness that You would use to check your email or go to the bathroom or do anything else that seems to be not meditating That consciousness is already wide open free of self Any kind of impediment, I mean, there's just no there's no problem. There's no problem to solve when you in consciousness as consciousness and That is the that is the thing that is experiencing everything including states of of mind and body like anxiety or anger, right and And so ultimately mindfulness becomes a a practice of recognizing the the openness and clarity and Centerlessness, you know the selflessness of of of mere awareness whatever's arising and You can do that in the middle of in the midst of your ordinary life and in the midst of even you know seemingly undesirable and You know neurotic states of mind the very states of mind you're trying to get rid of Or you know, maybe trying to get rid of by practicing meditations is something like anxiety. So for instance, let's say you're you know, so you're afraid of public speaking and you you need to go out and give a a lecture and You have all this anticipatory anxiety That experience right that that can be punctuated by mindfulness in a way that that really is freeing And it can be freeing Even in the midst of anxiety, which is to say that that you can you can recognize that you're free in some basic sense even before the the physiology of anxiety has dissipated and you can you can also reframe it as as Just energy essentially, I mean like you're you know, because when you're mindful of anxiety like it because there's there's the the physiology of it the sensations in your body and in your face right and At the level of raw sensation it anxiety is very similar to other states of mind that you actually like right?  It's just the frame around it is different the the cognitive Summary of the experience is different and but when you get out of this The story you're telling yourself and you just connect with the raw sensations They're not that bad and they're and in fact, they're not even valenced as bad or good I mean they're they're really indistinguishable from again the guy who's about to go on a roller coaster or or get on a jujitsu mat or or something and So breaking that connection is actually stepping out of the thoughts and going to the raw experience can be freeing really freeing Even before the the qualities of experience have changed. I mean they will change because the truth is once you Break the spell of identification with thought it's it's impossible to stay anxious or angry or Any of these Classically negative states of mind for very long at all I mean the half-life of these emotions is very short But they do have a half-life So if you were if you're thinking anxiety producing thoughts and then you suddenly become mindful You can you can break the connection to psychological suffering Instantly, you know and just become interested and open to the sensations in your body But the sensations have a half-life of their own, you know, you know 30 seconds say and so so it's in the The amazing thing is that even coincident with Classically unpleasant experience You can recognize that that your mind is just this open Context in which everything is appearing and find the freedom in that and that freedom is isn't actually predicated on the next Really pleasant thing happening. It's not predicated on Oh my god, this feels so good, you know, that's that's more of a Again, it's more When you're doing that you you leap back on the treadmill of seeking to change your experience And again, it's not that you can't change your experience but all these changes are impermanent and and eventually we have to become interested in what what The context of these changes and that that's what meditation ultimately is. Yeah, I love that and and yeah, there's actually a I did a episode on this not not too long ago about anxiety and excitement You know, there's an actual clinical term called arousal congruent the way it's the Physiola like the actual physiological Feelings inside of your body are exactly the same between anxiety and excitement and it's called anxious reappraisal Whenever you're just really anxious you can actually trick your brain into thinking that it's actually excited And they've done a lot of studies on this but really what you're in that going to it actually is Semi against what you're talking about in the first place, which is Not even trying to change the emotions It's just trying to be free from the emotions and not identify yourself as the emotion, right? Because some people say oh, I'm an anxious person and when you now have the identity of an anxious person the habits the traits the qualities the thoughts that you have are now going to be Congruent with those that identity that you've now said for yourself So what you're talking about is seeing the emotion Feeling the emotion and taking a step back and going. Yeah, but it's going to end one time And I'm free from this emotion and it seems like in that moment is actually where you step back and you're able to give yourself some power Yeah, well, I would recommend both. I think both approaches are very useful and Practically speaking indispensable for most of us. It's not that you couldn't accomplish all of this with just meditation, but I think it's I mean to take the specific case of public speaking, right? I think the way to get comfortable In that circumstance is to get comfortable in that circumstance, right?  Yeah, that's conceivable. I think the mind I can certainly work that way, but For most of us The experience would be To to continually meet in ourselves this habit pattern of becoming anxious in response to this particular stimulus and Then they then the the opportunity seems to be okay I can be mindful of the anxiety. I can be compassionate with myself Around the anxiety. I can be I can be non-judgmental I can keep dropping back and relaxing. I can I can decide that This is this is just not a bad experience. This is just just the experience and That's okay But I think it's it's rational to want something more than that which is There's no reason for this anxiety really right and there's and you can you want to be able to to Find some point of leverage in yourself So that it's just this is no longer a problem fundamentally and There the you know techniques of cognitive reappraisal and reframing Are just very useful and it's um And also just the sort of the this is more like, you know cognitive behavioral therapy just becoming just Manageable exposure to the stimulus that freaks you out And becoming more and more comfortable In its presence Right and and this is a kind of you know, it's almost like a a muscle building principle here. I mean you just you're just gradually increasing the load on yourself and becoming more and more comfortable with it and then things begin to shift where you know, you You know, whether or not anxiety, you know, whether or not you're still adrenalized at all It doesn't have the same meaning. I mean, you know, I used to be someone who was Who was truly Afraid of public speaking. I mean it was something that I took steps to avoid right and then at a certain point I it was unavoidable. I was publishing my first book. I realized I had to do a book tour and So I just had to get over it and yes mindfulness was certainly a part of getting over it But I just also had to do it and you know, then, you know, if I if I have to give a speech now I'm sure if you if you were tracking my galvanic skin response and my cortisol levels and and you know, every other physiological measure of anxiety You would detect A change in my state, right? It's not even if I if I have to go out on stage in front of 3000 people It's not exactly the same as me Just, you know, walking down to the kitchen and and making myself a cup of tea, right something I'm sure I'm Adrenalized to some degree, but the whole thing has been So totally reframed for me That there's no problem with any of that. In fact, that energy is Is useful, right? It makes me, you know less of a sleepy guy that I mean, I'm I'm I tend to be a low energy guy Anyway, you know, I can use a little energy so it's um And and a lot of that is more than just mindfulness. It is it is more is simply having the experience and finding the various gears within it and Um, and and just getting, you know, frankly succeeding at it, right? Getting positive feedback for doing the thing in the first place that begins to to rewire your brain and so it's um I mean the basic principle here is that you know Your brain is a machine that changes Based on how it has been used, right? I mean, this is just neuroplasticity Has this as a consequence, you know, you're your brain is continually changing as a matter of its physical structure and and and its moment to moment function And capacity to function in the future it it becomes Uh, what you do with it in some basic sense and this is there's a an analogy here to What we spoke about earlier in terms of our you know our exposure to to social media and media in general it's uh, you know every one of us has noticed that YouTube Is training itself to predict what we will want to see, right? I mean the algorithm is is It's really responding to how we use it, right? And you know and on some in some basic sense you get more of what you click on, right? If you if you keep clicking on on Films about you know bears attacking, uh, you know other animals You you just start seeing animal attack videos being sent your way, right and and they they tend to get more extreme and that is a There's a deep analogy there With our own minds and brains, right? You you you begin to conform to what you pay attention to you begin to conform to what you have found rewarding and uh in some basic sense you can make your mind you mean you can you can intelligently guide and curate uh the contents of consciousness such that you become one way rather than another way and I mean, I think you said this at the at the beginning of our conversation that this you know in some sense each of us is a pro at Remaining distracted and I mean what we're you know, each of us really is the world champion at Remaining similar to who we were yesterday, right and that is not That's not destiny. That's not You know, we're not condemned to be that way. I mean, we're we're making a thousand choices that we're not even aware our choices each day and you know something like meditation practice is a Is a choice seems like a Seems like a real choice that people have to Make I mean they they do feel like they have to sort of get behind themselves and push In order to do it and it takes some discipline, but eventually It just becomes a quality of your mind. I mean it becomes something that's not actually What you're doing with your legs crossed on a cushion and then you stop doing when you go check your email No, it becomes it becomes a kind of default state of your own awareness where you're just this is this is just how you see the world and meditation in that case is Is not something you're adding to experience. It's it's something you're doing less of it really is just Less distraction, right? You just you just just whenever you're not distracted. That is meditation Once you know how to meditate and that's that's not something you could say of somebody who who Doesn't know what they're doing. I mean their way is to be focused and to not be meditating You can be you know hyper focused on on something that you hate, right? And that's that's not meditation, but Once you know how to meditate it's um It's compatible With any other experience. This this can sound a little paradoxical because because people often want to say well You know, I I don't meditate but I jog or I you know, I play music or I you know I listen to music or I I go out in nature And as though those things were substitutes for learning how to meditate And the truth is that they're not substitutes and they're not remotely substitutes. I mean you're no more learning to meditate by Doing athletics or you know walking in nature or playing music or dancing or whatever it is you like to do Then you're then any of those things substitute for any other but The reality is that once you know How to meditate in particular how to be mindful and and non distracted Well, then you can do that doing any of those other things you can do that while while jogging or surfing or whatever it is and And then those things become synonymous with meditation But the bridge can only be walked in in one direction, right? You just can't you can't get there from Just jogging more and yeah Yeah, that's I was really open up to that when I went I was over in Thailand And I spent a couple days with some monks over there and they taught us a walking meditation It's a slow meditation where it's just But you can't just Take it and go well I'm just going to walk and that's going to be my meditation every single day And and I think it's it's almost like escapism for a lot of people trying to find something to do to escape from this present moment I'm curious Your opinion or if you happen to have any any actual data on this as well, but you know Are people running from something that's that's what I'm always so curious of is it is the present moment? So hard because we're running from something like or is it like you said the quality of our mind We don't want to come in contact with that or we don't want to think about Past traumas or we don't want to think about we you know have a job that we hate Are they do you feel like people are running from something or is it just because we've trained ourselves not to be present? well, I think it can be both but part of it is just this this um unhappy accident of evolution. I think what's happened is that Language in particular, you know your conceptual thought in general, but linguistic thought in particular Is so useful for us. I mean just as social primates We have evolved this capacity and it is the thing that makes us human. I mean it is it is the why it is why we are So much more interesting than our ape cousins And it's it's you know, it is how we create culture. It's how we pass down knowledge You know, you know, brain to brain and and across generations it's the basis of everything we do and it's And yet it is it is a kind of curse psychologically For most of us most of the time right because because once this gets Once this conversation gets started Once it and it gets internalized. I mean just look at what happens with them You know with a young child a young child is is More or less You know discovered in his or her crib by others but before He or she discovers Himself there right like you like there's no there's there can't be a significant sense of self Certainly not a you know a consciously, you know recursive one in a in a six month old child right now the some rudiments of of Individuation there, but What's what's happening is that you have a You have a mind which is is continually confronted with by other people for whom It is an object in the world right and they're like you're being perceived as an object in the world by your parents mainly and they're talking to you and you have this, you know, you you come into this world with the the operating system that that is Is poise to learn language and poise to learn how to differentiate self from world and This gets tuned up in dialogue with your parents, but it gets it's it's really it takes a takes a while and you You begin to participate in this language game And you're always, you know, once you can learn to talk you're you're you're talking to your parents Uh, and then you begin to talk to them on in some sense when they're not there, right? They leave the room and you're still chattering And you're talking to yourself As though that made any sense, right? I mean so let me just look at the structure of our subjectivity here and how peculiar it is I mean when when we're alone with our thoughts We are very often in conversation explicit conversation With ourselves, right and we'll be narrating our experience to ourselves As though there was some part of us that wasn't also having the experience I you know, who are we who are we telling right like what you leave if if You know, I'm looking for something on my desk And I find it I might think oh there it is Right, like but I I see it right. Who am I telling like is there somebody else in the search party? Right who needs to be told that we found this thing, right? um, there's a there's an implied duality here that makes absolutely no sense and To just to get a kind of triangulate on yourself and get a sense of how crazy and Non-normative your your default thinking is Just imagine how crazy you would seem If all of your thoughts were broadcast on a loudspeaker for everyone to hear, right?  And what's what's what's with that hair? Like just like just you you compulsively fragment experience with this this just Loguria, right? I mean you're just you're just vomiting words on everything all the time inside and the only the the real difference between A normal, you know healthy mind and the mind of a psychotic is the You know, we have the good sense to keep our mouths shut, right? If you're doing if you're talking to yourself, you know out loud In public well, then people you know within three seconds people understand that you're crazy Right and all of us have done that too. I mean some of us, you know, we talk to ourselves when we're when we're alone We'll say something out loud. I mean sometimes You know your thoughts escape your lips But if if that happens compulsively well, then that is kind of the bright dividing line between mental illness and normal unhappiness But the normal unhappiness is so similar to mental illness, right? It's so similar to being asleep and dreaming and not knowing that you're dreaming and and so on some level the the The um the real context here for meditation is to Is to form a different expectation about what it means to be Healthy and and quote normal and you know like what is what is a you just have What can you expect of your mind on a on a day-to-day basis? and What would you What what is what are you right to to expect here and It does it just it does take some training to Even see the see a glimmer of daylight here so that you can see that okay. It's actually possible to Be at peace more and more of the time and and actually most of the time and and when you get destabilized by anxiety or anger or you know something you know there's some is there is some real emergency in your life Well, then that that swing into Into obvious mental suffering Need not last very long, right? Like most people's before you know how to meditate And you know if you get angry if something something in the world makes you angry You will be as angry for as long as you'll you'll be angry, right? Like there's nothing There's there's nothing but just the The the dynamics of your own conditioning that will determine Or or some intervention from the world that will determine how much of an emergency that becomes for you and how and how how fully you You De-stabilized your own life based on on the things you might say and do based on being angry, right? Like what are you going to say to the people you're angry at right and how Deranging of your relationships is that going to be right?  Yeah, so it's it becomes a kind of superpower to be able to do that Yeah, I always say The the path of growth for most people is realizing that something happens And there's a reaction to it and that reaction can last You know Someone can do something to me and I can be pissed off at her for a week Before I start working on myself and trying to become mindful and start reading and better myself and grow Then as I work on myself for a year or two years that that thing can happen again And maybe it's five days this time instead of seven days and then I work myself for a few more days Maybe it's three days. Maybe it's one day and then you get it down to maybe it's 30 minutes And then the real path is that you know something could happen And you might not even react to it because you might reframe the situation that just happened And really that's the the paths or growth that that people are working for is that no matter what circumstances come at me I will be able to handle them by building up my strong mind and um, and I want to I want to take a really Weird pivot because I'm really really curious for this as well One thing that that that you're really good at obviously is mindfulness meditation Understand the human mind, but I know that you also have, you know, your thumb on the pulse of what's going on in the world um Politics that type of stuff that's happening and I'm really curious there's One thing that you said in one of the interviews I was listening to and this was actually a few years ago Was that we have to be open to the fact that we might be wrong and in fact probably are wrong a lot of the time And I'm I love that because I've actually tried to be like hey, maybe I'm always wrong and and I feel like Lately I don't know if you felt this way a lot of people Are so stuck into who they are in their beliefs their political beliefs whatever happens and I've noticed and I'm sure everybody else listening has that it seems like over the past year Maybe the divide between one side and another side whatever side those are Um has gotten really strong from one side to the other and I'm curious with you Do you feel like it's it's a psychological thing of tribalism of you know, I am a democrat or I'm a republican or I believe in this and I believe in this and and that people are the the psychological You know, this is who we are and this is how I've been for millions of years that the tribalism that's kicking in And it's really hard because of all of the circumstances have gotten harder over the past year or do you feel? That maybe there is a system that's actually working against in Against us in our own psychology and creating the circumstances. That's making us divide faster Well, there's a lot of tribalism and tribalism is something that we're Evolved to participate in right so this this is really old Legacy code, you know Predates our humanity even right Um, so there's that layer of things and then it's being Leveraged by technology again because now Your tribalism Can be can be amplified. It can be it can be brought to scale, you know, your tweet can go viral right so you can be seemingly leading the tribe in any moment, right and You can also silo yourself so that you're not getting any kind of information Corrective from from you know any other Tribe right so you're you're you can become You know informationally xenophobic, you know and and and really succeed at that right you can you can kind of pre stigmatize any inconvenient information in such a way that you You live in a in a hermetically sealed worldview and And because of the internet because just how much information there is on anything right now because it's not just you and A few crazy people in your village It's it's you know thousands Of people at minimum for anything you want to get embedded in right so you can get almost Yeah, you can get endless reinforcement for the craziest possible idea if that's if you want to go down that rabbit hole and You know and you know, I mean literally you can be a flat earther and just spend full days seemingly having your your You know genuinely genuinely crazy idea confirmed right and what's more the the The provenance of this information It can be rendered opaque in a way that that it never could be in the real world right so like if if you were let's say going going to be You know totally obsessed with The idea that people are getting abducted by ufo's right like you're the abduction phenomenon or something you take a strong interest in Uh, you you believe it's it's really happening And you read a bunch of books on it and and yeah, it just it seems like it's really worth your attention and intergalactic travelers have come here for no purpose other than to to uh, You know Probe us anally and kill our cattle and and and it's a kind of a strange A strange agenda, but clearly it's happening right? um It used to be that if you were going to get really into that Well, then you you would have to kind of physically go to one of these conferences and meet the people who are also really into that And it would just so happen that you there'd be many other social cues That would begin to you know reveal other you know other aspects of this project that are That give some clues to why it's you know Fairly disreputable right i mean you're you're you're meeting people who um are For the most for the most part advertising their capacity to believe in lots of crazy things, right? um This doesn't capture everyone who's ever paid attention to that phenomenon, but it's it's just there's a there's a um Uh, there are many tells you know to to to the the problem of of somebody you know devoting their lives to something that is is Fringe and and requires a lot of you know conspiratorial Thinking that is not governed by the most careful principles of reasoning right and there's a kind of a hey You know, it's not an accident that you know people who believe one outlandish conspiracy theory tend to believe Many of them if not all of them right and many of them are working in at cross purposes and people are comfortable with the the incoherence there um but so Having to do that in the in the in the brick and mortar world was one thing but now doing it online you just it's stripped away from all of those those uh contextualizing cues right you're not meeting the the the people who You know don't bathe quite enough Right, you're seeing a fairly slickly produced Video that you may have been produced by some 18 year old and in his mother's basement But right is really pretty well done right and you're you're not in a position to to debunk it right and all of a sudden it becomes yet another data point in your worldview that is that may in fact be just uh You know Every bit is persuasive to you as a a documentary You know that took a million dollars to produce and is getting run on front line on pbs that night Right and and just you basically you think you have in hand the the front line version of the confirmation of of uh, whatever it is and so there's there's a a leveling of of um Kind of a reputational leveling and and a um uh A coincident loss of trust in the normal gatekeepers of information and some of this, you know loss of trust has been Has been earned, right? I mean many of these these institutions have degraded themselves in how in how partisan they've become or how um Yeah, just how just how gamified they've been by That the change in business models of you know, you know online, right? I mean the the click beatification of everything has crept into even you know, the new york times and and You know our best organs of journalism. So, you know, that's a problem with the business model and and um, you know the technology, but It has left us. We just don't have a cognitive immune system for this yet We have to build one and it's it's left us in in this very precarious place where You know our politics and Our ability to to collaborate with one another generally and just to find common projects that we agree on, right? You know, how do how do we respond to a pandemic, right? What do we do about global warming? Is global warming even a thing? Right? Is that is it a chinese hoax? The president just said it's a chinese hoax. Well, what do I think about that? Uh, how can I know? Oh, let's listen to alex jones for the next four hours, right? That it's it's completely deranging and um We so we have to find some way to to put our house in order and it's it's it's a real challenge I think what it all comes back to whether it's meditation whether it's all this is is Full self-reliance and realizing that you're in control of every thought that you have whether you want to be crazy and completely out there And you want to go out and and google it and see if you can reinforce that thought or if you just You know see every see every thought that's coming in and go all right. Well, you know, that's a thought that's coming in I'm not attached to it and you know Don't put any emotion behind it as well The thing that I love about about what you preach is, you know, it's it's kind of you have to go out there and experience it Right? There's no dogma behind it. It's it's it's for you to go out and experience and see What works for you? What doesn't work for you? But ultimately the power is in your hands Which is the most beautiful part about it But um, but I appreciate your time. Oh, go ahead Robert just add one thing here. So I mean a crucial piece here is to become sensitive to the The mechanics of all of this and again, this is the meditations the tool you would use to to become sensitive but I mean for instance to notice that the way certain facts or arguments or information Make you feel right is separable from the truth of any proposition, right?  Like all of these the the the emotional veil valence to any With which your mind greets any proposition That is separable from evidence for or against that proposition And so so when someone is challenging one of your your cherished beliefs And you feel angry or anxious or you know, it's just some some You're in the grip of some psychological rejection state, right? that that should Most most people's default setting is that that the very feeling itself Is evidence against the proposition, right or you know for it in the opposite case when you when you want to believe something and The first thing to notice is that that's just not true, right? I mean that is a guaranteed way to be misled in life, right? that is the that is the The the emotional code that gives us You know confirmation bias and wishful thinking and several, you know, you know obvious you know reasoning fallacies and and you know bad heuristics and so to to step out of the the the mechanics of that is really important and and You know the the alternate piece of code you could be could be running here is is just to become interested In your reactions to things like that. I mean to have to kind of have the metacognitive layer of of Just just being curious about what does it say about me that I'm so Uh reactive to this proposition that I'm you know, I'm spending all my my fuel now trying to figure out What's wrong with it and how to knock it down rather than just Entertaining the argument for a few more seconds, right? Um, and it's a philosophy is is very good training for this because in philosophy you You're often especially moral philosophy you're you're often entertaining things that You know Just, you know Would would bother anyone else, right? Like and I did a podcast with with someone who's a um You know, it was called an anti natalist, right somebody who thinks that you're you're by bringing Children into the world you're creating great harm because life is is is really unendurable in the end and And as it is you're basically committing a crime on anyone who you bring into the world And therefore, you know, it's a good thing not to have kids it'd be a good thing for all of us to disappear Right, there are many different flavors of this This kind of nihilism, but anyway, there are people who are committed to this idea that like life is not worth living We should admit it If we all died in our sleep tonight That would be a net positive And it's um And a few a few things follow from that that, you know strike many people as starkly unethical or at least undesirable and and so you sort of get into into the the thicket of these thoughts and You can you can just have a bad taste in your mouth. You can think I don't you know I don't want to think about this. This is awful and you know, who is this person who would who would try to spread these ideas, right, but You can completely flip the script here and just become interested in both the ideas and in in the in the game of trying to figure out where you know, what's wrong with them and and In the discover I mean the the thing you you should learn to find mental pleasure in Is to discover that you are wrong about something of consequence, right? Yep, and that's uh that is that is a a Kind of a firmware upgrade that most people have not Downloaded at this point most people do not want to discover where they're wrong and they certainly take no pleasure in it, right? And this is this is something that I I really I strongly recommend that That you that people find this gear and and begin to to seek it out because it's that is the The ultimate error correcting mechanism, right to to to be asking the question What if you're wrong be interested in it and ultimately to be rewarded by it because the thing is You don't I mean what we see so often is this this doubling down phenomenon where where it becomes obvious that somebody's wrong It's it's certainly obvious to most of the people in the audience And yet you see this person doubling down and tripling down on a bad idea, right? And it's it's it's mortifying or it should be it should be mortifying, right?  It just feels like okay This is just he wasn't you know, I tried to hit him in the face, but his face wasn't there long enough, right? um And so again, even if ego centricity is your you know your your true operating system, right? You still don't want to be one of these people who is doubling down on an obvious error ever, right? And and yet so many people just can't it really is a kind of childlike You know automaticity where they just it's a reflex. It's like okay. I I've got it It's some version of the sunk cost fallacy, right? You've you've been committed to this thing and So you've invested in it and now you're going to throw good money after bad until you know, essentially you go broke Reputationally and you know, you see so much of that on social media and it's so reinforced within the echo chamber of any kind of digital tribe that I mean that what is so Disfunctional here is that there's so many ecosystems now you can find where Nobody's keeping score in any kind of honest way. I mean in my view the ultimate example of this is Is in Trump's bubble, right? I mean like like Nobody nobody who is a fan of Trump Is actually keeping track of his errors, right? I mean they don't they don't care about his errors, right? And so he has learned not to care about his errors and It becomes a kind of I'm sure you've seen these These fake martial art videos, right where you have the the the grand master of some Yeah, completely fake martial art someone who falls over Yeah, but but but the truth is you can get deep enough into that world where apparently You the fake martial artist who's knocking people over with magic Believes that he actually has magical powers, right? Because no one has discovered it's been decades since anyone resisted you, right?  Like, you know the world of a pandemic You know the coronavirus doesn't care about our politics. It just cares about the actual dynamics of The the epidemiology, right? So it'll spread by its purpose, you know by its its, you know Principles and it will affect us to whatever degree it does and Then there's the layer of all of our talking about it and disagreeing about it and fighting about whether or not to wear masks and you know and and it's If if we're going to thrive as a species we have to Get the map To fit the territory better and better and what we're seeing More and more now is that you know, the the cartographers have lost their minds And they're they're shrieking at one another and they're not making any sense, right and so that's um And it certainly doesn't help when you see that style of conversation begin to invade science and and journalism and as it as it has Yeah Yeah, I completely agree and it's it seems like with both of them It's more of like whether it's the meditation whether it's realizing that you're wrong and admitting it It's a mental gym. It's it's it's realizing that there's growth through all of it There's growth through sitting through a meditation when you don't want to and seeking that growth. There's growth in going Damn, I was wrong, you know, there's growth in that versus and and that's where people should get their their dopamine release from is from Oh, i'm getting growth from this of realizing that I was wrong versus my dopamine release is proving to myself that i'm right And I think if if we could all if we could all kind of take a page from that book I think a lot of people would Well, what would be a better place if more people meditated more people admitted they were wrong. That's for sure So, um, I appreciate your time, man I know it's your busy and I know you've got an app You've also got a podcast as well that are perfect for my listeners and people that are out there So if people want to find you out on the internet, what's the best places to find you? uh, well for the app it's just waking up.com and For the podcast the podcast is called making sense So you just search under that and you'll you'll get it But my website is sam harris.org which can give you all the other information about me Amazing. Well, I thank you rob. It's great to talk to you. Absolutely, man. I hope you have a great day Thank you for everything you too. Take care Hey, thanks so much for watching this video. If you love this video, I've got another one you're gonna love Just click right here and watch it


On September 29th, we witnessed the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Personally, I had no plan to watch this debate, and I was actually going to watch American Horror Story Coven with my lovely girlfriend Tristan, but she had to go out. So, like millions of others around the world, I endured the debate, and it was more of a mess than any of us expected. Trump's lack of maturity and emotional regulation caused him to interrupt Biden at every turn, and Chris Wallace was forced to stop the president on numerous occasions. In my opinion, Biden's one goal should have been to keep his cool to really highlight Trump's lack of candor, but Biden failed miserably at this. But, the focus of this video isn't to share my opinions about how each candidate did, or to fact-check each of their statements. I'm more fascinated with how each side perceived the debate and who won. Although I'm liberal, I find it a good practice to follow right-wing media to not only see how their side thinks, but even though I disagree with their ideology, they're more likely to call out factors my biases may miss on the left. So, since the debate, I've seen both the right and the left share their opinions on who won and who lost the debate, and it's been fascinating. The left has been focusing on Trump's avalanche of lies throughout the evening and his constant interruptions. But what stood out the most to many of us was the fact that Trump was given the opportunity to denounce white supremacists and he came so close, but he then refused to do so. Meanwhile, those from the right argued that Trump clearly won this debate, and they've created the narrative that Trump was outnumbered as he had to defend himself against Joe Biden as well as the Fox News moderator Chris Wallace. Since the debate finished, Trump has sent out a barrage of tweets with clips of conservative pundits and his supporters to further create the image that he won the debate. While watching the debate, I tried to be as objective as possible, and that's why I found the coverage so interesting. Although there were many lies from Trump, I saw certain people hyper-focus on strange flaws from Trump's debate. Meanwhile, I saw this clip that Trump shared where Leo Terrell claims Biden didn't say anything about helping the black community. Not only was Leo Terrell wrong, but I've seen many people on the left who miss things as well. So I thought this was the perfect time to discuss a psychological flaw that many of us suffer from without even knowing it, and it comes from one of the most famous studies in the field. But before we get started, if you're new to the rewired soul, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. Here we develop our critical thinking skills and practice skepticism by taking a look at what's going on in the world and see what we can learn from it. I absolutely love reading books on the flaws in our thinking and how to improve it. Some of the most recent books I've read on the subject include The Art of Thinking Clearly, Black Box Thinking, and Cluj. I read books like this because I truly believe that the closest any of us can get to self-awareness is to realize that our brains and how we think can be extremely fallible. A study that's often referenced in some of these books, as well as many other books, is the famous study on Perception from Albert Hastorf and Hadley Cantrell. By analyzing this study, we may be able to have a better idea of who won the presidential debate of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The authors of this study had the idea after a 1951 football game between the rivaling teams of Dartmouth and Princeton. In this game, there was quite a bit of controversy as well as a disagreement between the two schools as to what actually happened during the game. Much like the left and the right after the debate, Hastorf and Cantrell found it interesting that it appeared as though people witnessed completely different events. So, they designed a study which is described in the abstract of their famous paper, They Saw a Game, A Case Study. A questionnaire was designed to get reactions to the game and to learn something of the climate of opinion was administered at each school in the same motion picture of the game was shown to a sample of undergraduates at each school, followed by another questionnaire. Whether the students were physically at the game or watched the video of it, you'd hope their memory of the events were accurate, but that's far from what happened. Here are just some of the results from the study. One question said, for what you saw in the game or the movies or what you have read, which team do you feel started the rough play? 36% of students say Dartmouth started it, but there were 86% of Princeton students who said that Dartmouth started it. And then another question that says, from your observations of what went on at that game, do you believe the game was clean and fairly played or that it was unnecessarily rough and dirty? Dartmouth students, 6% of them said it was clean and fair and 24% said it was rough and dirty. Princeton students, 0% said it was clear and fair and 69% said it was rough and dirty. In total, there were eight questions asked and as you can see from the examples, the students saw completely different events. When interpreting the data, the authors stated, it seems clear that the quote-unquote game actually was many different games and that each version of events that transpired was just as quote-unquote real to a particular person as other versions were to the other people. A consideration of the experiential phenomena that constitute a quote-unquote football game where the spectator may help us both to account for the results obtained and illustrate something of the nature of any social event. As they said, this is more than just a study about a football game. This study illustrates something about the nature of any social event. This study spawned many other social psychology studies which then led to what's known as selective perception. So who won the debate? Well, it depends who you ask. Trump supporters will say Trump won and Biden supporters will say that he won. The reality is that we all fall victim to selective perception and we see what we want to see. Although the 2020 elections have major implications for the future of our country, as well as the rest of the world, we should all take a moment to think about how selective perception manifests in other aspects of our lives. Are we staying in toxic relationships because we're not seeing the truth of the situation?  And what about the thoughts that go through our head that fuel our depression or anxiety? Critical thinking not only helps me analyze what's going on in the world, but it helps me take a look at my own thoughts and life to try and get closer to the truth. Oftentimes, our perceptions are not reality. Our brains are flawed and subject to a slew of biases that many of us neglect to acknowledge. By becoming more aware of the inner workings of our minds, we can become better critical thinkers, improve our emotional intelligence, and get a little bit closer to living a better life. All right, everybody. I hope you enjoyed that quick little video essay. But yeah, I want you to think about selective perception. When we're viewing situations, our own biases completely skew what actually happened. And there's a whole bunch of other studies that I could dive into. But anyways, let me know your thoughts on the debate, who you think won. All right, or if you just think it was a hot mess all around. But anyways, I always think that these are great opportunities to discuss a little bit about psychology and the way our minds work and all that kind of stuff. And if you want to check out any of those books, I recommend it down in the description below. Those are affiliate links. So when you use my link to get those books, a little bit comes back to support the channel. And by the way, make sure you're following me on Instagram and Twitter. I'm starting a weekly book review. I finished like, I don't know, four or five books a week. So I'm going to start just kind of knocking them out as a review. So follow me on social media, and I'll be sharing them over there. Alright, but anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And a huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel over on Patreon, or getting my books at therewardsoul.com, or using affiliate links for the books, or any of that stuff, you're all awesome. All right, thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.


I want to start by saying this that it all happened to me, and I am writing this foreclosure. We all know of the animated TV show called Aquateam Hunger Force. Well, at least until it was still called that, now the show has changed its title and lost all humor that it ever had, which was little, but it was still pretty good. Anyways, I myself had forgotten about the show long ago, until recently while searching the backwaters of The Endermint, don't ask me why. I had come across a site similar to The Pirate Bay, a much simpler in context and style.  Being as extremely bored as I was, I clicked on the link that read TV. I regret that now. Once the link had opened, I scrolled through the list of shows that were available. Most were children's TV shows, like SpongeBob or Pokemon, but towards the end I came across a link to Aquateam Hunger Force. I clicked it and two episodes came up. One was the Christmas episode, a funny one I liked, but I had never heard of the other one. It was called, the final episode, Editor's Cut. I figured this was a rejected episode, that adult swim never bothered to wear. I clicked and opened it and began watching. The episode began as normal, with the intro coming on as such. But the sound was different. And the way the characters act seemed rather odd. Anyways, once the show started up I relaxed a bit and was getting ready to start laughing. The episode opened up at the team's house, with Master Shake sitting at his chair, drinking some wine, staring at the camera. I was waiting for something to happen, for him to say something. But, he just kept staring. I checked to make sure my computer was still fine, and it was. I looked back up at the screen, Shake still sitting there, he was starting to tear up, and then eventually cry. The screen then cut to a live action shot of a pulpy and a lot appeared to be a cage. A man walked towards the creature, petting it at first, then pulling out a lot looked like a knife. I closed my eyes. I heard high pitched whimpering, and a man yelling, Quit moving. When I looked back up, it was back at the aqua team's house, but meep-log-log sitting motionless in his room, blood leaking from what appeared to be his rear end. It then cut to Frylock, brutally beating Shake with a broomstick, as the latter was yelling. Oh, I deserve this. Frylock started tearing up and then cried. Though his voice was muffled, he whispered to Shake. Before Frylock could finish his sentence, the screen went to black. When something came on, it was Shae St. John. I figured that something funny was about to happen, as I found Shae to be laughing hysterically. But his laugh, usually high pitched, became increasingly lower and lower, and he began mumbling things. He got up, went to his closet, and pulled out a lot appeared to be a cordless drill. He turned it on, and began drilling into a cake he pulled out about his dresser. I was beginning to chuckle, but the screen went to black, and when it came back on, there was blood in Shae's room and he was sitting in a corner shaking violently mumbling the words. I'm sorry, it hurts. A few seconds later, footage came back on, this time of an elderly woman strapped down to a metal table, and a man approaching her away with a pair of pliers. The woman began pleading, bringing up such things such as her grandkids and her pets. But it was to no avail, as the man began pulling her teeth out with the pliers.  I almost vomited. I tried to turn my computer off, but it was frozen. I couldn't help it now, so I let a few tears go down. The screen left the old lady and came back on to black and white images of corpses, corpses I would later learn belonged to victims of Jeffrey Dahmer. The screen would zoom in on each of the bodies, and then some old time music would play, rather cheery for what was showing. I couldn't take it anymore.  I was going to contact the police, I knew whatever sick fruit made this needed to be put away, but the screen changed up again. It went to a man in a gas mask in a barren desert, crawling around like an insect that had just been stepped on. He was violently jerking and shaking until he pushed over a stone, and underneath was a human baby. The man pulled the baby up to his face and tucked it into his shirt. The baby was struggling in there, suffocating. Struggling, but the man kept in there until it stopped moving. The alarm started being emitted from my computer, until the screen changed to something else. It went back to the aqua teams, this time for the final scene. Sheik was dead, no doubt having been killed by Frylock. Sheik was laying face up on the floor, Frylock hovering over him. There was blood everywhere, and on the walls of the house there were pictures of realistic severed heads, and autopsy bodies, which the camera would zoom in and out all randomly. Frylock then looked into the camera, then back at Sheik, and whispered one thing, in a demonetically electronic voice. The door to the aqua teams house suddenly burst open, then, with loud moans coming from nowhere and the house started shaking, and the screen cut to black. The screen came on and showed some footage of 9-11, and turned off again. It was over. The computer returned to normal, and I contacted the police shortly after. The cops watched the video, and said they would track whoever made the video. Good, I thought the sick Frick would get what was coming to him. A couple months later, I read something in a newspaper that a convicted pervert, with a thing for making home movies, had been caught, and lost hide directly into the making of the aqua team episode. However, when questioning about it, the man said he had no idea of the episode, and said he didn't even know what aqua team hunter forces. However, after watching the episode with the cops, the man gave only one comment. The thing the fries said at the end, was what my wife said, after I killed our firstborn son.


Welcome to the Boyle's Law video presentation. During the 17th and 18th century, scientists established a variety of laws that pertained to the interactions of pressure, volume, and the temperature of gas. One of these laws is called Boyle's Law, and it states, The absolute pressure of a confined gas is inversely proportional to its volume. This law only applies if the temperature to which the gas is exposed remains constant. This means that if the gas's pressure or volume changes, the other variables will also change. There are two variations of Boyle's Law that we'll be covering in this presentation. A change in pressure exerted on a given quantity of gas causes an inverse effect on its volume. A closed container is shown. It has no external pressure pushing down at the piston other than the atmospheric pressure of 14.7 psi or one atmosphere. The volume of the entrapped air is one liter. The pressure of the entrapped air measured by the gauge as 14.7 psi is always equal to the pressure exerted on the piston. If the external pressure on the piston is doubled to two atmospheres or 29.4 psi, 2 times 14.7 psi equals 29.4 psi. The entrapped air inside the container will compress to 0.5 liters or half the original volume. The pressure reading for the entrapped air has increased to 29.4 psi. This animation illustrates why the pressure varies as the volume changes. If the gas is compressed, the molecules crowd closer together, which causes more molecular collisions with the container walls, resulting in an increase of pressure. Observe how changes in volume affect pressure. Now, we'll be covering the second variation of Boyle's law. A change in the volume of air will cause an inverse effect on the pressure it exerts. A one liter tank, which holds compressed air at 2 atm of pressure, is shown. When the air is released by opening the valve, it escapes into the balloon until the pressure equalizes at 14.7 psi. The volume of air increases from 1 to 2 liters, 1 liter inside the tank, and 1 liter inside the balloon, as the pressure reduces to half. Congratulations! You have completed the Boyle's law video presentation.


Hello Yes, I'm just I'm just gonna start so just that we're not gonna delay the next talks So Hello, good morning If you want to watch this thing just please have a seat or hang around Well, thank you very much for coming to this small improvised talk about Something Tom asked me to do this a couple of days ago, and they just wanted to fill a slot here this morning So I thought I would be cool if I would like if I would show what I'm currently working on So just a little background. Oh, right. I have this little piece of technology here That's amazing. Wow. So just to give a short introduction of who I am For those of you who don't know me. I'm I'm Andy. I I'm a blender user for about 15 years now, so I'm pretty old and I've worked on the open movie projects elephants being big black bunny tears of steel coming on this grande di lama and the last thing I did was creature factory 2 which is now out on the blender cloud and Actually, the thing I wanted to start with was kind of embarrassing This is actually my first. This is a faithful representation of my first blender image It was actually a movie of a spaceship that docks into Space station which you can see being represented by this little Plane there so that was like that was actually 15 years ago and when I started out with blender it was of course really It was just really just 90s technology and everything but I was completely amazed by the things you could do I mean like every one of you who started out with it like you. Oh my god. I can I can make stars and I can make Yeah And more stars By the way, actually, I had to fake that stars background because now the stars features and in blender anymore, but well um Anyway, I was completely amazed with what you can do in the virtual world and I was actually like back then I was in high school. I was making little I mean like that generation I was completely obsessed with dinosaurs and monsters and so I I made little little puppet movies with Dinosaurs in school and I actually made a model of my school and blew it up For a movie it looked completely terrible. I sure you but yeah, so I Always liked, you know, I always liked the virtual world, but also do something in the physical world. So a Couple of years ago. I actually did this short movie Which is a mixture of stop motion animation and blender. It's about 19 minutes long It's called Omega. I actually didn't do it alone. I had a very talented team of people like 20 other students because I'm a student Who made this thing work like this completely ridiculous world will made out of stop motion puppets foam Trash and things like that and that was actually the first project for me of that kind like going back because before that I I Basically just worked in the virtual world. I only did blender and I actually Step back from drawing a little bit because I I did drew I did draw a lot when I was a little kid and So this was kind of the opportunity for me to go back into something a bit more practical But also at the same time I had the chance to to do something With the software that I love the most which is blender and and kind of elevated what it like From what it could have been just with like with practical effects So I'm currently I'm I'm studying media arts. I'm mostly finished and the thing I'm I'm talking about here is my graduation project actually and It's probably going to be finished end of November So the thing I also do next to blender is kind of It's strange. I also do Electronic electronic music mostly I I really like performing in front of people on the stage with hardware synthesizers and drum machines so Couple of years back.  I started programming and processing which is a Java ish kind of environment for making graphics and So the transition was really easy to go to Arduino, which is not Java anymore. It's kind of more like C and C plus plus C not C So I started making like these little projects. I I made this I made this sort of Hybrid synthesizer which is like which you can see it up there and the upper left corner Which is a mixture of a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino mega the Arduino mega mega just does the The buttons and the encoder readings and everything does the sequencing and the time stepping so that the time is pretty accurate and Then the Raspberry Pi in it is just there to provide the synth are the synths are architecture and The the synthesizers just basically software It's using pure data and it's just taking MIDI from the Arduino. So it's nothing really really complicated I also did synth upgrade. I upgraded my Dave Smith instruments Tetra with additional buttons because That was the original synthesizer. So I just thought okay It has like eight buttons or something eight knobs and I wanted to to give me more More functions, so I added those I added those Enchiometers there and little things like that So, yeah, I kind of like grew to become this sort of Making Nerd person who's also using blender and the thing was I was always thinking about how I Combine these things again like and of course the perfect opportunity for that is using 3d printing Which is I mean, it's not it's not really an exact exactly a new technology, but it's always amazed me and I Yeah, I just wanted to Explore what I could do combining blender and this Stuff which I don't know exactly what So One year ago actually I I started thinking about my graduation project at some some crazy ideas And I actually originally I wanted to build a robot of some sort, but I couldn't really find a use for for a robot I mean, it's cool to have a robot sure but what does it do and I Guess there has to be some kind of justification for it. So I Kind of I was always interested in in nature Kind of the internet interaction of humans in nature, so I thought let's make something That's that's a mixture of organic and mechanic so I started thinking about this idea of a botanical garden that's made with 3d printed plans and Have some kind of way of With the viewer to interact with that kind of stuff on a really basic level Again, I'm not I'm not a scientist. I don't I'm also not a programmer I all the things I can do are just really on the most basic level though. I thought of of making Of making this little Garden thing which basically just consists of These are seven, but now there are six spheres and On these spheres there are plants that they're just planted or growing out of these spheres and The idea from that came from there's a Japanese technique for for action for for growing plants out of moss balls. It's called kokedama and It's pretty amazing people have these little greenhouses and they have these moss balls hanging from hanging from the ceiling and All these plants growing out of it. It's actually pretty amazing to see like these huge plants growing out of this little moss ball so I thought that would be kind of an interesting image to to explore and so My idea is that I'm gonna have this this room which is completely dark and In it there are these floating or hanging spheres Some of them could be on the ground or it could be on different layers and and on each sphere There is a different type of plant. So I kind of wanted to I wanted to limit myself first. So I Mean, there's there's literally millions of possibility with this kind of subject and even in Blender you can you can do anything So I really wanted to limit myself to only like really basic type of plants. So I have carnivorous plans fern and flowers as the three main like interacting objects and Everything else is kind of just on a lower interaction level and What I mean by that is that Basically just like to make things easier for me because I just have a limited time frame on this only the top of These things the fern the flowers and the carnivorous plants. They're gonna move basically so and the rest like First ones are going to be a mechanic and the rest which is Right now, it's I think only the mushrooms fear made it to a final completion right now But I have mushrooms and little sand deserti plans. They're called succulents. I think and Another thing which I haven't completely finished yet Hmm So that's a rendering of Of how this could look like just to give you a basic idea. I mean, that's really quick for a presentation at school So all these plans are just they're not gonna be painted it's all gonna be a very sort of clean artsy aesthetic all just white plastic and and The each of these fears inside has like Has that what has the brains in it basically to make that whole thing work? so on the most basic level each of the spheres is going to have It's going to emit light and it's also going to react to light Well, that's probably one of the easiest things that you can do using Using hardware just stick the light sensor and it's shine a light at it It does something have it emit light when it does something else But then you get this kind of interaction at least I hope it does like when you have multiple of these fears And they have different cycles of light They're they're probably gonna interact with each other on some level depending on the brightness so each of the spheres is going to have 24 LEDs and There's also going to be a speaker in the bottom It's going to emit sound so each of them are going to emit sound and light and they're gonna react to light How does that work well, it's also really really simple Each of the spheres has an Arduino Leonardo Leonardo Leonardo Which is Leonardo, sorry, I don't I don't speak Italian. So Which is just out of cost reasons, I mean the the Arduino Uno just costs about 30 bucks or something and the Leonardo Leonardo is about 25 or 23 I don't know so it's just less and the the chip is a little surface mount thing So it's probably a bit cheaper that way Also, there is an LED driver chip Which handles all the pulse width modulation for the LEDs I didn't want to you know, I didn't want to do any elaborate soldering with this thing I don't didn't want to work out circuits circuits and things like that I had so many things on my plate already with the printing which I'm coming to you next That I just wanted to keep it as simple as possible. So, yeah two things LED chip Arduino and third is sound generator chip for each of them, which is also just basically an Arduino But it's a more it's a cheaper version. It's it's actually an airfruit pro trinket Which uses the 80 mega chip which uses a compatible 80 mega chip which is on the Arduino which Let's me use the same sound libraries because the sound is generated on the fly Is that clear or am I just talking gibberish right now? Okay? That's okay, right cool Anyway, it's it's really simple as so there it's just imagine a dark room You have a torch as you have a flashlight and there is sound coming out of these plans Just a little tones like each of the the power pots basically has one tone and When they all kind of sing in unison there, they're gonna form chords and and So I started out just Being crazy and I'm I started modeling plants in blender Which is something I quite enjoy because I don't you don't have to think about it very much because plants are They have some really aesthetic shapes and most of the structure that that's that underlines them are is mathematics, so You just have to type in the right numbers press R and some degree that Pops up in nature every once in a while, and then you have a plant so I'm going time-wise, okay, so Yeah, that's that's the the succulent sphere, which is actually just a Two-thirds sphere, which is going to be underground because they're ground plants. They're all gonna emit light and sound That's that's the mushroom sphere Which is my favorite for some reason because I really like these cute little things growing out and they're all gonna have different size So this is what this one is like a little sphere that has these huge mushrooms pick up popping out, which is kind of interesting There is one of the more elaborate things which is the carnivorous plants and these are I Mean they they kind of have to fit together with each other But I'm also aware that like if I combine two things one that is static and one that is Mechanic and moving there's gonna be some differences even like when you do when you manufacture them because Yeah, you have to design them differently when they move obviously So I'm gonna have five five of these little like how you call them these five little strands of lands and they have This Dug at the top that opens and closes anyway So if you shine a light at them, they're gonna close and inside there's LEDs And it's gonna appear as if the light has been captured by the plant. It's gonna like swallow them like Right and that's that's my design for flowers Which are also just I mean on an interaction level It's pretty basic if if you shine a light at them, they're gonna open and There's gonna be an LED in the top and they're gonna glow or whatever Really simple stuff by I just I was really interested in Like what happens if I put all these things in a room and what happens if people interact with these I Have no idea so I just have like 10 minutes left. Okay, I'm gonna Are you interested in the blend file? I'm just gonna open this blend file, baby I'm gonna try to see if this microphone works as well. It does beautifully. So All right, you've probably seen the presentation about 3d printing yesterday So I don't have to do any more of the basic stuff all know Constraints of it. I thought I knew it worked actually Hello Yes, does that work? Okay. I'm just gonna talk real. I hope you guys on the internet hear me Anyway, so I thought I knew oh Yeah, let's let's dim the lights. I can also switch that theme here I thought I knew everything about 3d printing. I mean the basics are just you have to design a non-manifold mesh That has no openings and then you're set basically you can print anything, right? right, so Well Well as long as it kind of adheres to physics I mean Things are not too small that it doesn't break And also the the goal I had was to print this only with things that are like glorified blue guns You know, they just were some kind of plastic on Thing and then so yeah This was actually one of the first things I which was design this plant that kind of I was trying to think of the mechanism the mechanism behind this and this is just really a basic setup There's a driver that drives in the middle. I thought okay. Let's have these these little pulleys here and somehow using a bound tube or something I'm gonna have a server underneath plant that that pulls that string and Here I'm gonna have some kind of rubber thing that pulls them back So I only have push pull action, which is something really simple, right? Well first But back then I thought well, let's just try this okay First thing I did when I this is how it came back from printing You can see I was kind of scratching my head here, and I thought okay. Well It's gonna be less exciting than I thought So yeah, I really had to think about like make don't make things too small don't design ridiculous kind of like too many joints here there just way too many joints here and That's never gonna work. It's all gonna break and But I went back to the drawing bar board and I actually thought okay now I have to make everything flat Because I mean printing on a flat bed is really simple. Yes, it works beautifully You don't have to do anything and you didn't have to do any support. So just make everything flat, right? but then where's the like You basically you just the design looks like paper craft and you can just do the same using I don't know laser cutting or Machining or something like that This looks like that And again, I want I really want to have Simple as possible. So I just want to have one server It's really easy to drive that so On one morning thought of this little thing think about it. It's actually very simply one thing that turns and these little Here It opens it just opens actually made the first one I made Eight pedals I ended up just making five because that was easier to print and kind of I liked it. So yeah, and to test this I just like scribbled something on paper and then Like I showed it to my girlfriend that no, that's not possible it's it's it's no that's not gonna work and she built it and they go and then we found a kind of works and Next I built this in blender. This is really also just simple this one is the driver for the rotation of these pedals here and But I'm that I can just control all that there's no Simulation or something because it's really a simple simple mechanism and then these little pulleys. They're just They're just tracked to some something really simple and Going to 3d printing. I only had to I only had to pull some some of the parts together like this platform That which houses the server has to be one thing and then I'm good to go So what am I printing on currently? I Have the big fortune of Being at a media arts school. So we have some printers But it was it kind of really bothered me that I didn't have access to them all the time because with this kind of stuff You really you really want to tinker every day You want to see if something works and then just immediately send it slices slice it send it to the printer and Have it pop up in front of you. So me and a couple of friends actually bought this printer up there in the upper left corner It's called. It's not really common. It's called a Hadron or bot. It's supposedly it's a Printer bot design design which builds on maker slide, which are these awesome aluminum profiles that and in the middle There's this this Mark 7 make about extruder there So all this thing like all this stuff was really built on Technology that was available and that is open source by the way And then we also have the ultimaker to and to make about a rich to ultimaker original and one Actually, we have three maker bots and those things break all the time. So I only ended up using this one Yeah, I was only I only ended up using the replicator Generation 5 which had filament dams all the time I'm not sure. I didn't operate it. It was the guy who kind of maintained this whole room but mainly only like most of that stuff was just printed on the art bot and Yeah, I just basically it was really I mean once I figured out all the things I needed and I figured out the constraints It was kind of just really easy going.  It's not a crazy resolution. It's really it's it's kind of average and the prints that came out of it were pretty okay So I really wanted to keep keep keep the cost down of this I didn't want to you know order all that stuff and shapeways and pay like a million bucks for it I'm sorry. I'm just really poor.  Like yeah, you have an array. That's that's using the empty as the duplication source and I just thought okay Well, you know all know this thing like when you when you move the empty everything kind of goes like whoop And if you scale it down everything kind of goes like it's all and then if you rotate it it kind of makes these awesome spirals, right, right and Here that's just an array modifier and there's like a Nylon kite string. That's in the middle. It's a double strand just for Making it less bendable. It's still bendy kind of bends in itself But there's just two kite strings and if I pull one of these just curls up And it's all just an array modifier and if I can have Right if I can have four of these and I can have all the strings going into the center And I have a gear motor attached attached to the middle. That's pretty strong I mean like 12 kilograms should be enough probably to pull this thing Obviously, there is also going to be fern leaves that's sticking out here And that that should probably work I also found out it's pretty cool to print things on the flatbed. The printer we have is Has a heated bed. So it's really easy to peel these things off and if you peel them off While while they're cooling down they kind of show make this little leaf shape I mean this this little curvature here, which kind of is also really interesting if you combine it with the idea of the fern So I have to print more of these So this is currently what I have It's not I actually just put all of this on my floor Three four days ago, and I thought okay. Well, it's not It's probably not enough. So I probably have to print more. I have one more month left. So that should be okay But I kind of made an estimate and it's about 800 individual parts printed Which is kind of insane Anyway, so Yeah, these That's just a close-up of one of these parts. I actually I actually brought one of the plants here It's again on a mechanical level and also on a program level. It's incredibly Moronic, I mean I I didn't do anything really Just to have well just to see something that you've designed in gender and even on the most basic level it moves and you can you can just one day come up with something in your head and be able to outline that in thunder and then just print it out and Bring it into the real world. That's amazing. Isn't it? I mean, that's pretty awesome, right? And more so if you if you think about it, I mean all of this stuff that that I've used to make this and this is nothing Nothing compared to what other people do with this, but this is open source. This is the power of open source I mean open source is pretty awesome, right? It's all None of this would have been possible with all the projects that have contributed to all the people that have worked on getting 3d printing to work All these programs that make working with this kind of stuff a breeze Yeah, it's pretty amazing and Thank you Thanks to all of these people and thank you for watching my presentation. So Is it working? Yeah, we have to speak go to the next talk. There's no time for questions You can talk to him all the time Questions you could do on the corridors I see it I think this microphone is a bit louder. This one is a bit Wow You want to speak This is working, yes Where where can I see that Where To make it I I