 Good. Hey mate 40 here. So I've long had a part of me that just wants a shortcut to intimacy I go I've long had a part of me. There's like, oh, it just be so good. Just we have to hire a hooker I've never hired a hooker, but like there's a little part of me that thought oh, you know what a great shortcut to intimacy or It'd be awesome to be famous and then to have groupies and so then I could have like intimacy on my own terms so I don't tend to be terribly flexible in my relationships with other people and so You know, I really really like things on my terms and Then I've long felt an attraction to like woo-woo theories like color therapy Because it's so personalized. It's bespoke. Okay. Do you know what bespoke means? It means personalized So I've long had an attraction and interest in alternative therapies Alternative medicine because it's like it's individual it makes you feel special and I've long had like a little bit of an inclination towards cults because cults will celebrate you It's like yay 40. We're so glad that you're here You know, we love you 40 and you can just like slip into this this warm stream of love and affection so I recognize that and You know, I recognize my lifelong desire is to kind of take the easy way out This this tendency has not worked out particularly well for me But it's it's like my very strong inclination just on the surface is like what's the easy way out? Like what's the shortcut to intimacy? But then there are a lot of people all right, obviously belonging to a cult and pursuing not evidence-based therapies and Living your life where your most intense intimate interactions are over live streams. Obviously, that's not the ideal but What if you're so broken? That's the only option you have so this is from the latest episode of decoding the gurus The right person I guess Yeah, that's right like I've told the story to Chris But really briefly like I was in Japan actually when I went to visit a friend of a friend and and she was into color therapy And there's these bottles of different colored oils and and you choose a couple of colors that appeal to you And they represent your future and your president. You'd like it Yeah, you'd love this yeah And the practitioner sits there across from you and like stares into your eyes and holds your hands and touches your arm and shoulder And they they talk about you for like 30 minutes or so And so I went along to that being the skeptic guy and I loved it You could feel the power of the interpersonal experience and you can see how when all of these colds all of these quack kind of things They always generate a genuine in a verticom as Response because we're monkeys and that's what it works on us So will allow me to retort. I don't think I disagree with you I think though what I what you're saying what I'm saying is simply That so that's Matthew Brown. He's one of the two hosts of this decoding the gurus podcast He's a professor of psychology at the university the prestigious University of Central Queensland his co-host is Anthropologist Christopher Cavanaugh and they have two guests this week moral psychologist David Bazzaro and Philosopher Tamela Summers hosts of the very bad wizards. So they are talking about the 2012 movie poor Thomas Anderson movie the master Which is ostensibly about Scientology at come on what the active ingredient is in color therapy is clearly not the colors It's the connection and I think that the method that the process that they're using in this movie is More on the face of it what it says it is force it right So there's probably a lot of healing that goes on from from alternative therapies like chiropractic and color therapy and and all these therapies for which there isn't Evidence, but there's probably still a lot of healing going on and also I bet with a lot of pharmaceuticals. It's It's not just the placebo It's the personal care and attention like you're going to a doctor to get a prescription and someone says this will help you All right, you're getting some personal care and attention you go to an acupuncturist and they touch you and they they Seem to care about you you go to a chiropractor. They seem to care about you you go to a color therapist They seem to care about you they might touch your arm and so Some of us sometimes so broken that that this is like the easiest or most viable form of Connection that's available to us. So yeah belonging to a cult not such a great idea You know pursuing non-evidence-based medicines not such a great idea, but for many people It's the easiest the most viable path to human connection So that's why I think sometimes these cults and these non-evidence-based therapies Do some people far more benefit than harm? And and maybe your your connection to it to a live streamer or to some kind of virtual community, right? This is this is a parasocial interaction Obviously face-to-face interactions generally speaking You know have more impact and a better for you than than a parasocial interaction But what if this parasocial interaction is your best alternative for an interaction right now, okay? So it's it's either this or you're alone right, so We don't always get to choose between great and bad or good and bad often We get to choose between bad and less bad And so having some kind of human connection having someone who seems to care about us like you're special Like you you have a special gift to bring to the world like I really think I understand where you're coming from I think I've got something that's really going to help you and I just see your life completely transforming and turning around All right, so going to a an astrologer I once went to an astrologer meaning there was one period in my life where I was particularly lonely and bereft in in May of 1998 and I ended up dropping like $900 on this astrologer and On the one hand it rationally it seems like a complete waste of money But I was at a particularly low point in my life and I was able to buy a friend All right, I was able to buy individual attention I was able to buy a type of intimacy where I talked to this person about my deepest darkest Problems and my most embarrassing needs which was oh, I want to rebuild my my friends here with Dennis Prager Like I've just totally shattered my Relationship, you know meaning very distant Acquaintanceship that I had with Dennis Prager, but I got to confess things that you know wouldn't be fun to confess to friends so So what if the the astrologer and the the cult or the you know The color color healing therapist or the live streamer is like the best of the alternatives for you Sing an interpersonal connection right so it is simply saying now you tell me some vulnerable shit No, I'm gonna ask you again. I'm gonna ask you again There's no pretense that there is like I'm because I think psychics do the same thing right they forge this connection Which is pseudo it's all done false falsely. Yeah If one chooses to ignore the thousands of years of evidence, but this one it's it's more laid bare I don't think this is good therapeutic practice by any means But I do think that it I guess I would call it like a ice-breaking exercise on steroids Horsing and let me add to that that it's all well and good to say there, you know, I'm sure there is it's true there are better ways to Make this kind of connection that don't involve a lot of this spooky shit But that isn't happening to Freddy. Well, right like so this is what he has This is what's on offer for a lot of these people. It's that we're nothing and so They get that and that is really important It's not like the other option that the movie seems to lay out is tell me what this thing is that looks obviously like a vagina That's the other option Is that and the back to the discussion of whether or not Filpsy more often was trying to sick his dog whether he was trying to do this or not I actually read these interactions as Reflecting something different. I don't think that he really walk. So I think this is a good point like people are often lonely What type of people are particularly vulnerable to colds people who've got something, you know Missing in their life people who are not interacting with other people normally what type of people are particularly Vulnerable to alternative therapies that are not evidence-based people who have a Very strong need for intimacy and attention that they're not getting met through through normal means so I Don't think generally speaking healthy people are getting into coats I don't think generally speaking healthy people are spending, you know, astronomical sums on sums on non-evidence-based therapies or on astrologers, but for some people this is the Easiest most effective only way they know how to connect right there are some people who are just so socially awkward There are some people who are just so anti social that no decent person would want them in their life and They're only the only people who want them around a con artist or live streamers or virtual communities and And and colts and you know yoga gurus religious gurus and a lot of people are that broken right probably Probably between 10% and 30% of the population is that broken but normal healthy high functioning people Have no rational incentive to bring these non-functioning people into their life and So what do you do then do with with the broken? What you do with the breath what you do with the anti-social what do you do with the people that that normal people have no Rational moral, you know cultural incentive to bring them around because these people are so They're so dangerous online virtual communities are going to destroy people's minds. Yeah They they are frequently dangerous on the other hand. They provide a type of community They provide some the meeting a need and so obviously some some human connections are much more dangerous than others but People have to connect right that there's no there's no way around that and so When people are highly dysfunctional Normal people and healthy communities will not want them around Apps like discord have already destroyed people's minds. Well They're dealing with people who are highly broken yet make make the broken people fight each other in Tennessee Have bum fights and and film it So I think we have to look at that fundamental brokenness and think about how do we How do we help it and and for me the best answer of which I'm aware 12-step programs and often good therapy But I think 12-step programs seem to be more helpful, but people want to connect man and If you're a bad person or if you're a broken person if you're an inept person If you're just a failure if you're awkward if you give people the creeps if you weed people out if you're a loner Breast of social skills if you're not really bringing anything to the table then why would healthy people Okay, I got to dispel this crude language, but they're under something like sometimes people can't reach the ideal of you know monogamous marriage Should they deny be denied or forms of intimacy? Do you get the sense that he is finally able to have sex in that scene I think so right well I hadn't tweaked about the impotence Where we're getting the impotence well just like he always is like with the girl at the Department store and he kind of falls asleep when they're going out to eat and then he has these like kind of pre-sex things where he's like let's fuck to the transcribers who are right, but we never actually see him able to take any of those Right completion to support that family it does slip out Yeah, but he says put it back in which means that it can Close up just to get to the bottom of this But you're right Tamler that he has pre-sex and whether or not he's a stud at the end there It is the first time we see him really do it. Yeah, and it's um, you know, and he's lumbering Processing sucks right his idea of processing is like a real stripped out He's not really doing it right, but he is finally like his own. Yeah, I I I also it's really irrelevant by But I gotta mention it anyway that you know the stuff you were talking about the techniques that they kind of work right that they break down Even if it isn't it's better than that fucking ink blot Rorschach Test I also took that as an indictment of those techniques because it seemed to me to be saying that Yes, these do work, but like Getting people to sit opposite each other and stare at each other and that scene where they're they're supposed to tell Truths to each other. These are all things. I don't know Scientologists specifically do this I think they do but like they're they're associated with cult movements, right? They have these techniques that force intimacy and that it works it really works because like they've Pamela they've done psychology studies where people have picked like art boxes where if you force people to reveal secrets intimate secrets Afterwards, they feel more, you know like close like it because that's what humans do when they become close to someone they reveal Information so if you artificially create that and I felt the movie was saying That these guys are good at doing that they are intuitively or not They understand how these manipulative things work and they're using them that the draw people in this could be me Yeah, my own interpretation on top. Well, no guy agree Yeah, it's interesting because whether or not you call it manipulative has just simply to do with whether or not you Find the ends appropriate right because you're right There is actually like the social psychologist in a relationship. They use this method to get two people in the lab to get to know each other Asked right. It's like a whole technique where you divulge information each other It's well and it works and so the thing is no I don't think any of us here would disagree with the claim that cults are effective at giving people These tools to bond with other humans I think what our judgment is about whether it's fake or not It has more to do with whether or not we think that the goals of that bonding are manipulated Rather than whether or not people have bonded it's effective and also I think that There's a way to look at this and say Well, all this is doing is just normal Intimacy and it would be much healthier for him to have this intimacy without all the bullshit But clearly that's not in the cards for him He has no opportunity to do that in a way that wouldn't involve These kind of cult-like aspects. So I think it's really asking the question of for People who are truly lost and aimless and who feel like their existence is kind of a joke Is this something that is actually helpful or beneficial for them in spite of the fact that there's all this Metaphysics behind it that is crazy like is it still better than living this atomized life of bouncing from job to job and Never being able to actually have sex even when you know, it's this hot department store worker How about Tamlo that same where he God tells him no one else likes you just me right like it tells him Did you read that as like he wanted to hurt him so that he was kind of saying I'm the only one that Yeah, so sometimes nobody else likes you except the scanner scanner scammer scanner con artist Leader of a cult You know a Christian, you know, sometimes only the Christians will take you And and so I don't think we think very much about What do we do with the people who are bereft of social skills? What do we do with the people who can't? Seem to form normal human connections Like what do we do with the lonely? Well, no one speak up for the lonely What do we do with the people who are so desperate for human connection that they go to courts or they go to French religions Or they go to conspiracy theories Or you know, they form strong attachments to live streamers or they devote themselves to discord chats or virtual communities as as their you know, favorite most intense form form of intimacy People go where the love is right and then some people are just so dysfunctional that that normal happy healthy people are not going to have them in their life and So I think that this this podcast and this 2012 movie by Port Thomas Anderson the master kind of touches on that and so then that puts a responsibility on the con artist Leader of the live streamer to try to have you know At worst and a neutral effect on people but but at best a positive effect. So Kyle Kyle is back Great to see you Kyle and he says a friend of mine calls podcast friendship porn That Kyle says he's been reading Ian M. Banks. So I have no idea who Ian M. Banks is but he is a Scottish author and He died in 2013 and he wrote science fiction Okay, and the Times of London named in banks in their list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945 okay, and The chat says the alt-right provides human connection to low empath and to your social people You'd say the same thing about in Tifa provides a sense of excitement and human connection To to people are otherwise dysfunctional when you look at mug shots of in Tifa These do not seem to be people are thriving in the real world So people need to feel important people need to feel like they're living from the inside people need a tribe or a community and These extreme political Social-cultural movements, you know provide an easy way in for people who are otherwise dysfunctional. So one of the One of the tropes about lesbians is are that they can't get a man. So That that kind of thinking of like people who can't do the normal thing like you can't get married who Can't can't have kids who can't form normal human relationships. No Where do they go? right Where's the dog park for them for people who don't have have dogs and That's why I try to keep an open mind that you know sometimes Scientology probably helps some people Jehovah's Witness probably helps some people something advent is in the religion in which I was raised definitely helped a lot of people and These you know evidence-free therapies have often help people because they provide That that missing human connection for people who would otherwise be bereft because they can't function Kyle says in banks wrote about the AI powered utopian future All the smartest people I know have been saying that AI safety is the only thing that really matters Yeah, I hear that and I've never thought about it Kyle says I signed out very skeptical and hostile to that perspective, but I've been gradually converging AI safety never thought about AI safety but because I resonate with what it's like to be to be broken to To be missing some social skills to wanting like shortcuts to intimacy and and putting You know putting some people on a pedestal and putting other people, you know down like Idealizing and devaluing people right it is something that I've been particularly prone to and And such people who are when I was in that idealization and devaluing stage That made me dangerous because I would you know move from putting someone on a pedestal one minute to You know dropping them down the next minute Remember what it was like my first girlfriend the first one that I had sex with and what a special intimate connection that formed and When I was in it like part of me could see this this may well be the only woman I'll have sex with for the rest of my life and then When I broke up with her and I started having sex with a lot of other women it in some way It hardened me it made me more cynical on the other hand I did learn some social skills like I did overcome my my shyness and my my awkwardness and so six years later when I got back together again with my First girlfriend she asked me well how many women have you been with since me and I said ten and And how many men have you been with since me? She said one and then she said well those other women. They've taught you well. You used to be very awkward so Not ideal to be promiscuous like society would fall apart if it had had you know if everybody had my level of sexual promiscuity But the people that I was hooking up with were equally as broken as me most of my girlfriends had fathers who were sex addicts and so We could be in a party, you know filled with a hundred people But we'd find each other because our traumas would kind of match and it would we'd scratch each other's itches Regarding dysfunctional people having no place in normal healthy society Kyle says it strikes me that extremely dysfunctional people and abusers often have tons of people orbiting them Well, not the dysfunctional people. I'm thinking of like the dysfunctional people. I'm thinking of the only people are orbiting them Those who feel some kind of moral or familial obligation to to orbit them So maybe just through my 12-step programs or through my own brokenness. I know a lot of dysfunctional anti-social people and The only people really around them are people who are obliged to by ties of morality Ethnic ties like religio moral ties or familial ties I think most people find themselves having no social place because they avoid they are avoidant rather than hurtful Well, about five percent of the population of psychopaths That's what I've read so somewhere in that number that number seems about right to me So certainly there is a a significant portion of the population that no sane person would would have in their life Like good people make you feel good bad people make you feel bad So someone who's consistently making you feel bad. You should not have them in your life Or to any any degree of closeness so you can dial back the intimacy the intensity Whether you see them in person or just over the phone how often you see them So there are ways of dialing people up and dialing people back So it's not always necessarily in our best interest to completely cut people off except when it comes to psychopaths you meet a psychopath and Yeah, you want to you want to be psychopath free to use use the title of The best book that I've read on the topic Right, you really want to be psychopath free. That's a great book by Jackson McKenzie and so you know psychopaths are dangerous And and no sane person Would would want to have them in their life When is loneliness preferable? Well loneliness is preferable to getting raped Uh to having You know vast sums of your money stolen from you Uh loneliness is preferable to doing bad things to other people. So I just watched the end of Ozark. So I was up until Against against my wishes against my better judgment I confess I was up till 12 30 a.m. This morning watching the end of Ozark It was such an incredibly compelling show they they put I read this they put more drama into You know 20 minutes of an Ozark show than the most shows have in several episodes. So I was up to the end of Ozark And there's this one woman who wants to get checked into a mental health facility an insane asylum And they won't check her in because they don't have a bed for her And so finally she goes in and says if you don't check me in I'm going to go out there and murder somebody And so then they're forced to to check her in so if you're going to hurt somebody if the alternative is between being lonely And needlessly gratuitously hurting someone or needlessly gratuitously hurting yourself Then it's better to be lonely all right, so How do you spot toxic people? All right, so I don't know five percent five percent Maybe the population are toxic. All right, if people who gaslight you Who deny their manipulative behavior? Who ignore the evidence when you present it to them? Who who are dismissive and critical if you disprove their fabrications? Who never address their inappropriate behavior and said it's your fault for being overly sensitive? right The problem isn't the abuse. It's your reaction to the abuse And have I been a toxic person? Yes I have been a toxic person in In my desperate attention seeking I have disrupted the The continuity and the happiness of groups with my inappropriate language inappropriate speech inappropriate behavior Uh, I have been very assertive and aggressive pursuing women in the past So I've made some women cry. That's what I heard secondhand So that was toxic I've had a recklessness in things that I've done online in blogging Where I wasn't as diligent as I should have been with being fair and accurate I I've invaded unnecessarily people's privacy in things I've said or written online and so What I want to do is try to do more good than harm But often I've done more harm than good online And so that's been toxic Uh, how else have I been toxic? How has my selfishness hurt other people? Like that's like the most sobering question I got it from fred luskin and it kind of always brings me back to to reality and so I've been unable to hold together a crew on this channel Like I used to have kasey on the show regularly used to have denis dale on the show regularly used to have You know kevin michael grace and brondle and rustin and vivian And you know all sorts of people are on the show regularly and I was unable to hold that crew together Now i'm not saying that's 100 percent on me I'm saying it's not zero percent on me It's not 10 percent on me. It's not 20 percent on me. It's somewhere between I don't know 30 percent and 60 percent on me Right. I played a significant role that I've been unable to schlep along the regulars onto my show as we move into 2022 that Many of the people used to be regular on the show in 2015 2016 2017 maybe 2018. They're just no longer here And a lot of that is because of me. There's something about me And and my selfishness my self aggrandizement and In some character flaws with me Say lack of honesty or an emotional coldness It's 56 percent is 56 percent on me All right, I played a role in being unable to sustain those wonderful group discussions That we used to have on this channel All right That has something to do with flaws in my character Okay, toxic people are unable to empathize So a lot of I think a lot of those people I mentioned have felt burned or betrayed by me Now betrayal is often the hyperbolic word that we use to other people not having the same priorities that we expected Toxic people are the ultimate hypocrites do as I say not as I do So they demand extreme levels of fidelity and respect and adoration from you But they give none of this back. All right, they will cheat. They will lie. They will criticize. They will manipulate But but you have to always You know give them fidelity respect and adoration Uh toxic people are filled with pathological lying and excuses They focus on your mistakes ignore their own mistakes You have to find yourself explaining basic elements of of human decency in respect to An adult man or woman right someone like that is there's a psychopath They have a this crippling thirst for attention. So they just drain the energy from you and consume your entire life They accuse you of feeling emotions that they're intentionally provoking such as You know, they're provoking your jealousy If you find yourself playing detective about someone And and it hasn't happened in previous relationships. All right, I've only had one girlfriend who had contempt for me And so that wasn't about me She just had so much contempt for me when I say, oh, I've got you know, sore feet I need to go to my physical therapist. She said you're such a wimp. You want me to airlift you out So if you find yourself playing detective because you don't know what's really going on in in With you with your partner in this relationship And you've never done that before All right, you're probably dealing with a toxic person You're the only one who sees their true club colors like no matter what they do They always seem to have a fan club cheering for them. All right, so the psychopath uses people for for money resources and attention But the fan club doesn't notice because Um, yeah, so I tell you what I will How can I bring kyle on? Yeah, so kyle, do you know my skype? I can I can bring you on via skype so so Here I'll play I'll DM you I'll DM you kyle and uh Bring you on via skype. You know, I'll play this Recognize you has merit because with my reading of touching that I keep feeling like I'm a fellow stein Is that freddy actually felt that he had connections with the other people in the group and then dodd Cruely told him none of that's real. I'm the only person that lights you I'm the only reason you're there and that felt to me like manipulative and cruel even if it was true because it felt like freddy Did feel that he was accepted by the other people. So I just check you that am I a piece I think it's true But I think what he was saying isn't wrong Those people were ready to throw him under the bus at the first opportunity And never mind like the rest of the world that he's always running away from so I think it's true But I also think it was Maybe a manipulative thing to say at that moment Yeah, no, I think it's just upset. You know what I mean? Like Chris is so cynical. You always attribute the worst I think like castadov is just upset and was telling him now it was that he's really had just told him that his son had said He was full shit. Yeah, right. I think one of the uncomfortable Truths being spoken here is that our relationships even at their most sincere are often manipulative Right. So we often even with people whom we love Do things in order to get our way and in order to at least satisfy our needs I read it always as and I think this is where you know, Chris and I coming into it with a little bit of a different take I always read it is of course, that's manipulative, but he's manipulating him because he really wants his affection Like he's just actually cares about the guy. That's how Parents are sometimes. I certainly seen people in more toxic relationships who Love each other Yeah, he manipulates me but I try it's hard to manipulate a psychopath I get my up early at the morning. I say, you know, we've got to record it for a while. Tell me your log What did you do today? Yeah, sleep deprivation cutting me off from all other social connections. It's still happening and we're letting you talk Yeah, the thing is that's a good one Usually I just hold up a little piece of paper on zoom that says do you want to fuck? This is going deep this is going deep