vZ-SVpVmCH0.txt

Speaker 1:          00:00          I'm unwilling to deny the existence of free choice merely because I don't understand it because it looks to me like that's how people are, that's how they expect to be treated and that societies who structure themselves in accordance with the idea that people have free choice actually work now that doesn't prove that there's free choice, but people have been arguing about that forever. So, but it looks to me. So those are two possible means of integration and that I think what you're doing is feeding one or the other constantly. And I think you probably choose which one to feed. I think that's, and I mean that's how it feels that way to me as well. Like when I look at my own, you know, maybe you're really aggravated with something. Maybe you're aggravated with your wife, you know, or, or, or your child or something like that, you know, and you're feeling kind of nasty and maybe even know that you're in the wrong and an idea comes into your head.

Speaker 1:          00:59          You can think I could say that and you know, you could say it and you know what it would do, but then you pause and you think, would that make it better or worse? And then maybe you go to hell with it, which is quite the thing to say. I've got a little story about that in a minute and then you say it, but you knew, you knew that you took the low road, right, and you know it and then you're guilty about that and defensive and that makes the fight way works because then there's no damn way you're going to admit that you actually did that and so things do go to hell. And so. So here's, here's an ugly little idea. So that's, that's, that's relevant to the question. So imagine you're playing around with cocaine. Now I'm using cocaine because it's very addictive, but it's a very interesting chemical because it's a dopaminergic agonist.

Speaker 1:          01:51          And what, what dopamine does is two things. It makes you feel like what you're doing is worthwhile, but it also imagine that there's a bunch of neurocircuits that are active and then they get a hit of dopamine or you do in those neurocircuits get a little bit more powerful. Okay, so it. It has a rewarding property which is that it makes you feel like what you're doing is important and it has a reinforcing property which is. It makes neurocircuits growth. So now what that means is that whatever you were doing just before you took cocaine, grows. Okay? So now imagine there's a bunch of different things that you do just before you take cocaine, but there's a string of decisions and it one decision point is the same for all of those difference occurrences. And that decision point is because you know you're in trouble and that decision point is well to hell with it.

Speaker 1:          02:47          Okay? So then you think that each of the 200 times that you take cocaine, even though you do it different places, but that one thought is there all the time and that thing grows because you're reinforcing it and it grows and it grows. And it grows, and so now that's in you, that's part of you. And it's the thing that says to hell with it, okay, so now, and maybe that's not such a good thing to grow inside your brain. So then you, you're addicted and they take you to a cocaine treatment center. And after a week you're no longer physically, physiologically addicted. You're not craving. You don't have a problem as long as you're there. But then they take you back to your normal environment and you see like cocaine, Joe, you're a friend. And as soon as you see him up, that thing comes in, Bang, you're back on the back on the to hell with a track and that's while you're in will, you're where you will end up too.

Speaker 1:          03:44          If you reinforce that particular perspective long enough. So that's a ken in a sense to the this decision making process. You know, if you, if you take the low road, then that winds and it gets a little stronger because everything that wins neurologically gets a little stronger. It's like a Darwinian competition. So one rule is don't practice what you don't want to become because you really do become that. It builds, it builds itself right into your neural architecture. And that's one of the terrifying things about addiction, you know, because you think, well, it's kind of psychological. It's like, yeah, kind of. It's also kind of neurophysiological and you build a one eyed cocaine monster in your head if you hit yourself enough with something that reinforcing. So yeah.

Speaker 2:          04:34          Thank you.