On this episode of Conversations with Tom, host Tom Bilyeu and guest Daniel Schmachtenberger engage in a fascinating discussion about social media, neural warfare, game theory, power itself, and the ways that our society has over-optimized. In particular, they talk about why it’s so important to stop trying to be right, why we need to start thinking in more complex ways, and why the real battlefield is the human mind.

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SHOW NOTES: 

Daniel was home-schooled, allowed to study whatever he thought was most important [0:30]

Daniel’s parents actually referred to his family as an “experiment” [3:40]

By the time a child goes to school, civilization has already been imprinted on them [6:04]

Daniel advocates that optimization is actually a part of the problem [8:37]

Daniel details exactly why trying to optimize leads to serious problems [13:14]

Daniel talks about how to understand civilization’s history through game theory [18:40]

Some kinds of value can be extracted and lead to power, and other kinds can’t [20:57]

Daniel uses the example of COVID-19 to illustrate the problems with optimization [25:48]

How can we think in complex ways that respect the interconnected nature of existence [30:41]

It’s much easier to break things than it is to build complex systems [35:39]

Tom and Daniel discuss whether it’s possible to nudge people in the right direction [38:16]

Social media will lead us to war even though no one wants it [46:01]

Daniel and Tom discuss the connections between high school bullying and terrorism [51:12]

If you aren’t considering counter-responses, you are just being emotionally hijacked [58:56]

People’s minds are the battlefield [1:04:17]

There are no authorities that are trustworthy enough to just assume they are right [1:09:59]

Do you want to be effective or do you want to be right? [1:15:15]

Daniel explains how people become fundamentalist about things they are wrong about [1:19:45]

Debates are often not about understanding. They are just dogfights. [1:28:48]

Legitimate power is when I am trying to influence someone to be more self-directed [1:32:03]

Tom explains the relief of focusing on finding the right answers instead of being right [1:35:35]

If you want to be right, you are very easy to control. Fragile egos are vulnerable. [1:39:55]

Capitalism, the Trump campaign and Christianity have all been antifragile so far [1:42:33] 

FOLLOW DANIEL: 

WEBSITE: neurohacker.com 

INSTAGRAM: https://bit.ly/2UxGUo1 

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