Destiny talks to Harvard Psychiatrist Dr. Alok Kanojia

it's super super super rare that I feel like I speak to somebody that is actually like listening to the words that I'm saying and then responding to them hey man how are you pretty good how are you done good um so I'm not quite sure what we're talking about today but I understand that both of our communities wanted us to speak yeah I think so I do a lot of philosophy politics and then I talk a lot about like life and life related things so I think they just thought there'd be some kind of crossover so yeah so I think I talked about a lot of things that maybe I don't talk about philosophy or politics but I do talk about life sure so I try to help people understand themselves and their minds and sort of help people that's why I started streaming on Twitch because I think that there's a the mental health challenges and people's understanding of themselves is like becoming a real problem like in the United States there's some very disturbing epidemiologic data about mental health so mental health now causes more I think greater morbidity in mortality than cardiovascular disease in cancer suicide rate has gone up by 50% I think in teenagers over the last decade more deaths than a cardiovascular related diseases around gotta get in here morbidity and mortality so that includes like loss of productivity and things like that oh okay so disease burden okay not not straight mortality sure um that's I think the last I read I think it was like something like 18% of women in the United States have taken like or either have had an SSRI within like the past six months or something like an insane stat and then have a smack back there man yeah it's pretty crazy yeah so but my so a lot of times people come on streams so the main reason that people come on my stream is to actually that was that Soylent cocoa-y am I in trouble my destroying my general health okay III like I saw when I had I had tried sewing that for a while it sort of did good things and bad things for me but okay so most people tend to come on because they're interested in in some kind of like understanding about themselves or help in some way but my understanding is that that's not some that you're pretty content and you're pretty happy and you're not interested in that um yeah I think or unless I really don't have like a specific thing to talk about to like to be 100% blunt I think my audience wants me to talk to somebody and then to see me get like very emotional and cry that seems to be like what they're all like kind of gunning for right now so okay but I mean otherwise yeah I would yeah whatever you're interested in my my my audience is calling you a raid boss oh okay so I think that they're looking for the same thing I think that they're gonna be disappointed yeah probably I consider myself to be like a pretty I'll say grounded person which sounds really dismissive of I've heard that you're more into like like Eastern or spiritual related stuff personally I don't care for that kind of stuff but I think that if it offers like a great value and it can be descriptive of some underlying truths that I think it's totally fine so I think a lot of people are expecting me to like go really hard and to saying like all forms of whatever are stupid which I don't really agree with so all right yeah I don't think I would ever say that so yeah I'm not really sure what what what the conversation should be can you tell me what you mean by grounded I'm I guess um there's two different ways to go with this I'm a very empirical kind of person I guess when I look at stuff that I choose to believe in when it comes to like making statements of fact about the world I'm very big on like what can we observe what can we test I guess it's kind of a boring answer but I tend to shy away know a lot of like yeah a lot of light like I'm very easiest ik in terms of like my looking at like gods and whatnot I don't really believe in the supernatural turning like that and you say you're empirical about sort of looking at the external world I would guess that you're actually empirical about looking at yourself as well I mean as much as you can be yeah what do you mean by that um I mean like I would consider myself to be like a materialist or like a physicalist I don't believe in an immaterial world but I mean obviously consciousness is a very complicated process and the question about something like that can emerge from like underlying properties is very complicated and it's hard for me to like say with any absolute certainty you know what I can know what my own conscious state in an empirical sense but I mean I'd like to think that everything isn't that's the type of analysis that I tend to occasion yeah yeah so so you're talking about sort of consciousness of being an emergent property which is not anything that has to do with you that's sort of like a scientific view right it's a it's something that comes from the external world yeah it's about the science of the origin of consciousness sure yeah but I would actually guess that you are empirical within yourself yeah I try to be there yeah and and when you say like so I think you know what I mean can you just explain for everyone what we're talking about cuz I agree with you by the way that I think we're a lot more similar than people realize yeah possibly yeah I guess when I say that I'm empirical and my own analysis I mean what I try to say is it like something I learned very early on in life is that your memory and your interpretation of events is highly unreliable that getting external like points of view of yourself is incredibly important because we are very selective in terms of what we remember about ourselves and how we view ourselves so I try to like very hard to have these like external cameras these communities that I consult I'm I try to be very honest when I look at myself to make sure that I'm out you know like telling lies to myself or not confronting you know a problem I might have or something that that's what I mean when I say I try to be a little bit more empirical about how I do myself yeah yeah so but so it sounds like your empiricism the way with we that the way that you look at yourself is by using external lenses to make sure that your interpretation of things is aligned with what the external world says yeah I guess basically yeah I'm looking for congruence there that doesn't result from me just selecting groups of people that tell me what I want to hear but yeah to try to get like Oh got to review myself sure and you're happy I think yeah I would say so yeah for sure I think so what does that feel like um like if I wake up if I'm supposed to like sleep for eight hours like I think I do really well on about seven and a half hours of sleep seven and a half to eight hours of sleep if I wake up like two hours early I'm usually like so looking forward to stream that I I can't go back to bed I usually like will just go downstairs and start working I really enjoy like my day-to-day life like my experience was pretty high I look forward to talking people I look forward to playing games even if they make me hate myself because League of Legends is a horrible game but like a my general like baseline like mental status is like very excited about like everything I can do okay and so I'm just gonna just tunnel down for a second so hmm it sounds like the experience of the happiness of your life too has nothing to do with external congruence oh absolutely of course yeah okay so okay and how long would you say you've been happy I think my whole life I think I've always had like a pretty high mental state okay I mean obviously within like there have been periods of my life where I have like been sad or like something has happened but like those are like traceable to like this is happening now so now I'm upset but like my baseline like as long as nothing is going on that's bad it's very high I would say and so you've kind of always been this way I think so yeah um so let me just try to ask you kind of like a couple of clarifying questions yeah go for it one is so I'm almost getting a sense from you that the experience of emotion is actually different from the happiness that you're talking about that you have some sense of underlying contentment which is almost independent doesn't necessarily change if you get let's say angry or sad yeah I would say so yeah I would separate those two things out quite a bit being content doesn't what do you think that is yeah so I guess my personally I don't know for sure but like I guess like my personal answer I would say that like my greatest asset is I feel like I'm very confident on myself I very much love the person that I am I like Who I am and I enjoy that regardless of kind of what people around me say and I can always be like comfortable to myself and I feel okay with that yeah and do you think that's what leads to your sense of like happiness or contentment that would be my guess when I see a lot of people that are unhappy it feels like a lot of that comes from their view of how other people view them or kind of like their place or their just contentment with where they fit in in society they don't like the feedback that they're getting it feels that way yeah yeah so I'm trying to get a sense of which one is the chicken and which one is the egg because you know you're kind of saying that you're confident in who you are to me it actually makes sense that that confidence actually comes from being sort of generally content with who you are as a person yeah I don't know um I used to say I to kind of advocate for people to like grow like a sense of confidence and everything because you know from that you develop habits and everything that allow you to love yourself and etc but you know if I'm really honest with myself I'm not sure if I could foster that in my 20s or if that's just something I've kind of always had from a really early age either through a combination of lucky biological and environmental factors it just kind of like led me into being the person I am so yeah I don't know I can't draw like a causal link there unfortunately yeah I think that makes sense because what you're saying is that you've sort of always had it so it's unclear what the origin of that was because it's always been around yeah it seems to be the case yeah yeah hmm I'm just gonna think for a second sure have you ever read anything by Krishnamoorthy I'm horrible when it comes to reading the time commitment is grit my eye can read pretty well but the time command is really about me watching TV shows watching movies and reading like very hard for me to like sit down and do it for long periods of time okay I think you may find it interesting just in terms of you know I I know you that you don't hold a lot of like spirituality or things like that um and you've described yourself as pretty atheistic so I just think that if if you are interested in sort of exploring spirituality from a perspective that I think is a lot more aligned with your point of view Krishnamoorthy is someone that I would highly recommend and that's also for the people who are respectively watching as well try I think so a lot of people how can I say this like destiny why do you think that's what is the name just I can write it down so my China's kr is H and a and then either mu R th Y or mo o r th wise I think it's usually mu but okay gotcha alright so I go from so I think you pointed out something very important which is that a lot of people have their sense of contentment be related to other people's opinions of that yeah which is a very negative negative what do you mean by negative I think that when you become reliant on how other people view you I think that your mental state is like perpetually held hostage by the people around you which I consider to be very negative I don't know if that's like a normal human opinion or not but like yeah I wouldn't want like if somebody around me says that like oh hey Lee I don't like what you're doing right now a lot of people like view that as like personal attacks and like can start to lose confidence in themselves just because they're getting negative feedback from people which i think is like very bad yeah yeah so I think in in the in the system of yoga that aspect is called a hum Ghadir ego okay that a sense of self can be based on two things one is sort of an internal like experience of self and the second kind of self that we have is based on a more common external identity so anything that goes on a resume is a part of that thing and the opinion of others how other people receive you like that can form a sense of self and that sense of self is called the ego and generally speaking in yogic philosophy having an ego that's the larger your ego is the more discontent you will be sure so what I'm hearing from you is that your sense of self is actually not based on external things it's based on this internal sense that you've always had of kind of being confident to yourself in some degree of internal tranquillity yeah definitely why don't you think other people have that what separates like what is the causative factor that that has you being one way in them being another way if this is its I can give like conjecture about this but I always caution people and I say this like it's hard to draw causal links to anything I grew up like relatively independent like my parents are busy with stuff growing up so I kind of foster like a sense of Independence and it seemed to me that growing up typically like if you had problems the way that people are kind of told to resolve problems is to just get affirmation from friends or family without ever actually addressing the problems so people kind of grow up thinking that like the way that I know that I'm mentally healthier mentally sound so if other people around me are telling me that I'm mentally healthier mentally sound but then obviously as soon as you start to run into confrontation that your worldview kind of falls apart because now when people are telling you you're not doing well you feel like you're actually like unwell which i think is really bad yeah okay and is there any part of you that is concerned that so when when a large part like I understand that a lot of people are kind of contrary towards you or take issue with some of your perspectives or beliefs you what's your understanding of like what they take issue with um it depends um this is something this is probably the biggest thing that I try to keep in check is it's very easy to get lost especially being a streamer but but even for normal people I kind of get lost in an echo chamber where you're disregarding external opinions of yourself I very much keep in mind what people think of me I know what every community thinks of me and I know the reasons why they don't like me and then my goal is to like understand why people disagree with me and then to integrate those understandings into my life to see of other things I want to change I don't change so I guess like two examples I'd give us like maybe I get the feedback a lot that like oh destiny is very rude all the time to everybody and maybe when I get that feedback a lot maybe I watched some videos and I find out hey I actually talk over people a lot like I can change that or maybe instead I watch a video and I find out like I don't really think I spoke over this person a lot I think I just you know responded well to his arguments so you know in one case I would say okay well you know I took their feedback I you know did a little bit introspection I found out well I need to change this in another case I took the feedback I looked at the situation and I kind of determined well I think they just feel that way but I think the perception is incorrect so then I have to feel you know do I want to deal with that incorrect perception or do I just ignore it and kind of move forward I guess is how I try to integrate other people's feedback into my own self concept or whatever you know and or their particular I think that that makes a lot of sense so it sounds like when people criticize you in some way you you kind of really do your your best job to take a look and see if their criticisms have merit and then you kind of conclude they do have merit or they don't have merit and so that that sounds like it makes sense to me let me just think for a second are there particular things so like I was kind of confused about what this was as I mentioned earlier so I did just a Google search for you and I looked at your subreddit and then I looked at some of the top some of the top posts of all time on your sub reading because depending on what you look at me you can find anything from guy that did you know 40,000 in charity in a single day to guy that is a pedophile rapist that has a secret daughter to God like there's like a million different things you can read about me depending on which communities you jump into so yeah why do you think that is why do you think there's such a wide disparity between how you're viewed I think that's the intersection of like several different underlying topics any of which I mean like one is it like people are very like people are very holistic views of somebody or I should say people are very binary views of people it's impossible for a good person to have negative characteristics they're either wholly good or wholly negative so for some communities as soon as they find out one negative thing everything about me becomes negative so for instance over the past year I'm a very left-leaning political person I'm incredibly left-leaning and my economic positions into my social positions but I'm not a communist or I'm not a socialist so I've had this issue with a lot of left-leaning people that see that I'm a capitalist and now all of a sudden I'm not just a capitalist I'm also an alt writer I'm a right wing I support you know imperialism and all these crazy things just because we don't know a line on that one view so like in that case I would say well these people don't like me because we disagree on this one position and then they start to like attribute like everything that doesn't have that particular position to me right so like that would be like one reason and yeah there's like a million other I have to look like would look at like every single individual like thing that people have with me to figure out why they sure have a bit yourself so like well it's almost like so you know a human being has many many facets in many many nuances mm-hmm and beliefs are not don't like like a human beings beliefs don't generally subscribe to like a whole manifesto of like being liberal or communist or capitalist like we all have different kinds of beliefs in different shades of beliefs mm-hm and what happens is you encounter different groups of people who will kind of put you in one bucket or the other right yeah I think it's a very normal human thing to do yeah so I mean I agree I think it's a completely normal human thing to do and I think that most people are just as multifaceted as you are yeah you seem to have a lot more discrepancy in terms of how people view you compared to everyone else sure how do you understand that I very much have like my personal identity and the things that I believe in and when it comes time for me to decide like if I like a particular thing or if I don't like a particular thing I have like an internal kind of rubric by which I score things it feels to me like what people tend to do is they tend to try to group themselves into certain communities and then how they feel about a particular thing he's usually more reflection of what that person thinks everybody in that group wants them to say so like for instance let's say uh oh using extreme example let's say somebody presented me with like a very sparkly pink dress and they wanted they were like hey would you like to wear this I would evaluate that in terms of like well what colors do I like I don't really like pink I don't particularly like the way that my legs I think would look at a dress I don't think I would enjoy wearing a dress and that would be my answer but I feel like I vote if I would ask a lot of people that question like would you ever wear a dress the answer would be more they would think okay what part of what group am i in and then what is our answer supposed to be in regards to like wearing dress okay I'm a man men don't [ __ ] wear dresses and they have to be like of course not dude that's so stupid like it feels like the answer from I get from people when it comes to evaluating things they like or don't like for instance is usually a reflection of what they feel like the group they belong to would like or not like that yeah what I mean so people are multifaceted yes simple yeah judgments and put people into groups so like I I mean it sounds to me like the answer that you provided which is that no I don't want to wear that pink dress because I'm not gonna you know I'm not so happy about the way that maybe my legs would look or I'm not a huge fan of the color pink I mean that to me sounds like a how can I put this a less chaotic chaos inducing answer than [ __ ] that I'm not gonna wear a dress mmm-hmm like I would think that that kind of response actually leads to a general sense of like understanding on the part of other people um like if you give like a real detailed answer yeah because your thought like you come across as like thoughtful right and yeah not reactionary and so I would think that if you were thoughtful and not reactionary like you're saying most people are then people with like that you wouldn't be such a divisive figure on the internet um maybe so I'm gonna come off okay so here is where I have to fully admit that because of the work that I do there might be a horrendous selection bias applied to the types of people that I talk to I might talk to the worst of the worst thing about right but it seems to me that most people don't actually appreciate a new monster answer if the question that's asked demands an answer from an entire group that would be one way even considering an answer to that would be absolutely unfathomable so like a real-life example I can give is yeah sorry good yeah I mean so like I completely agree with you but what I'm trying to understand is like I don't understand anything that you're saying seems to apply to everyone else right so people are multifaceted people make judgments therefore any random person that you take on the street is gonna fall into like one of two camps and that people will react to them they'll like if you're in the middle of the political spectrum people who are on the the conservative side will call you a [ __ ] liberal and if you're on the liberal end of the spectrum they're gonna call you a [ __ ] alt writer sure and so what I'm trying to understand is like why and that's true I completely accept your premise so what I'm curious about is what is your understanding of if that's the case why are you perceived as you put it so like you said like when I said I go show you like globally and you're like I guess like okay so actually maybe I misinterpreted the same and maybe there's a point of disagreement II have actually I don't know if I would agree necessarily that people are multifaceted in the way that you are thinking multifaceted I was thinking of in terms of like is somebody like a Republican or a Democrat probably not people have views from both but that's not necessarily because they're a multi-faceted person that's considered every position it's more that they belong to a more fundamental group that defers on those two lines so they might identify more strongly as like evangelical Christian and that's more important to being a Republican or a Democrat and as a result of being an evangelical Christian they have some beliefs that may or may not fit kind of like both sides I guess is what I'm saying yeah so but then depending on which party they're talking to aren't they going to get bucketed by that respective group um well it depends on the it depends on the pair on the lens to which that conversation is happening like if this was a conversation I'm serving in a church then they'll get bucketed if it's a conversation that's happening like politically then they might not they might just end up getting attacked by everybody depending on what their beliefs are I guess depending what type of person they are you so I'm still confused about like fine I'll you know I I think you explained about what multi-faceted could look like and I don't think that we were that far apart yeah yeah I'm a little bit confused about so you're you're kind of saying that the reason that you're such a divisive figure on the internet which I still don't really understand how divisive or not nice of you are you seem pretty reasonable to me sure is that people talk to you and then they end up putting you in a bucket and because people tend to think in a binary way yeah so like I guess like the the short answer would be I have a core set of principle that I believe in that I use to generate like all of my moral statements all of my policy positions and that's what I confer like that there that's what I consult when I am given a thing to think about feels like for other people it's more just kind of like they want to belong to certain groups on the internet and then anybody that has a belief that is separate from any one of those things instantly rejected as an outsider and because of the internal positions I have I don't line up exactly well with any of these groups so it causes people to like try to castigate me I guess from these groups whatever that's the feeling that I get okay so you think that the reason that your view differently is because you are processed you don't just subscribe to a particular uh thought-out system yeah you think through things clearly you develop your own internal manifesto and it's because of the uniqueness of your position that these people who tend to make snap judgments about people and group people that your internal process in the way that you view the world upsets or makes people fall in love with you yeah obviously this is like a very high view of myself this is what I would like to think yeah yeah I mean what do you think about that as you say it like I understand that that's a high view of yourself in that you would like to believe that but what do you think about what do you think about that when you reflect on that how does that sound to you I mean I consider it to be very good but I mean I mean there are other that's really that different from other people like you don't think that other people so let me actually rephrase that so it's my experience that most people believe that their beliefs have been carefully considered and examined and that they come up with a relatively unique perspective on the world they may ascribe themselves to certain group identities absolutely but that generally speaking people think that their beliefs have been well thought out like if you go to someone you say hey you believe this because you haven't considered it properly you haven't considered it fully and you've just described to a particular set of like inherited beliefs huh they would disagree with you and they would say that on the contrary I've thought this through and the reason that I ascribed to the Republican Party is because I think the Republicans are right based on my own internal study yeah most of them would say that the vast majority of them 95% plus would be absolutely wrong that's just been my personal experience with almost every single person I talk to that as soon as he starts a question like okay well you think that you've thought this through as soon as I get about two questions in be completely and totally crumble they haven't thought through with a single thing that they said they have okay yeah and that that seems to be the case with a lot of people yeah and so help me understand how you're different I guess maybe as a result of growing up like pretty independent I've had like so let me be very clear for instance we're real quick when I say like I I'm independent or I have my own thoughts clearly there it's influenced by the society around me I'm sure how do I play different games how do I'd seen different movies had a grown up in a different country it's entirely possible I'd be a completely and totally different person alright so I would acknowledge that right I don't believe in any divine freewill that's given to me master control over the perfect life whatever I guess I feel like as a result of growing up relatively independent I didn't draw my opinions or what I should or shouldn't like necessarily from other people and as a result of that I have like an internal rubric by which I evaluate things and that that's kind of led me to a unique position where I'm able to take a topic consider the topic using what I personally believe without trying to think of like what a group would you know approve or disapprove of and then give an answer that's like I feel uniquely mine even if other people might agree with that answer or give the same answer my thought process like I would like to say is unique to myself and it doesn't rely on another group to tell me how I should answer a question okay so and and so you think that your your thought process has been very independently developed you sure you've been influenced like things just like everyone else has uh-huh and that by virtue of you sort of not catering to other people's opinions that the divisive nough state on the internet is by virtue of like this internal thought process that is very like unique and well thought out yeah I would I would hope so yeah and okay let me just think about this so I'm gonna ask a question that I asked once before I'm just gonna ask it again yeah no problem um which is that like so let's say that I take just any person and I ask them you know how did you come up with the beliefs that you came up with mm-hmm I imagine that most of them would give me and based on me having asked a lot of people that question I'm sure you have - mm-hmm maybe in slightly different contacts they pretty much everyone says your answer yeah of course they like grew up and they sort of thought independently and so what I'm trying to understand is if everyone has an internal process and 95% of them are right I mean 95% of them are wrong and it seems like the reason that you're saying that yours is right and theirs is wrong is because you can ask them two questions and they can't answer question number three four five six seven eight nine whereas you feel like you can answer questions 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 and that's why your thought process stands up better than theirs you know in a in a in a backwards way yes so like I'm not so interested in them understanding like 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 but more so that like if they don't it's usually indicative of them inheriting those top level positions rather than arriving at them if that makes sense so like for instance if you want to ask me a question about like like should health care be free in the United States like I started a very fundamental possession position to figure that out right like what do I think goodness is and then what's the best way to apply goodness and then you know what's the most applied position within the night and then I kind of work through there so then if you back up and ask me a question I can kind of figure that out right for some people you know it might just be that they read off of their favorite political candidate that like oh you know socialized health care is horrible or socialized healthcare is great and then if I ask them a question about oh you think it's good or bad well why if they can't answer it it's not that I'm like I I think that it's so bad that you don't know the 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 bla bla bla it's more so that it's like it's clear that you haven't really thought about this there's just somebody that you look up to told you this answer now you're just kind of parroting it to me and you haven't really like arrived at that conclusion so much as somebody else is kind of stuck you there it's kind of what I think of yeah I understand that that's how you perceive them yeah what I'm confused about is like when I talk to them huh they don't perceive themselves that way and so what I'm trying to understand is like how are you different from them because you don't perceive yourself that way they don't perceive themselves that way and yet you're clearly different because like I I accept that you're different so that's I a that's what I'm operating under the assumption of because most people when I like look at their subreddit you know don't have someone as a pedo rapist and raise for charity right so so most people aren't like that so I'm trying to get a sense and this is I'm trying to be just as transparent oh yeah of course I'm trying to get a sense of like how you understand how people react to you are you asking me how I get a sense of understanding of how other people react to me or yes and and that's what we I mean that's what I've been asking you about I'm just making sure yeah I mean well in terms of so the question is really how do I understand like how do I get an understanding of how other people view me yeah like how do you like like so you you are a divisive figure let me just let me just make sure I'm on the same page I go for yeah yeah so the first is that you are a divisive figure when I ask you why are you a divisive figure you say that I have a very independent way of looking at the world uh-huh and that most people don't really appreciate nuance and if you take a multi-faceted viewpoint that they're gonna slot you into one bucket or another for sure and the reason that you're so divisive is this sort of makes perfect sense right like if you're in the middle and like you're gonna half the people are gonna call you a Democrat and a half the people are gonna call you a Republican which is sort of what we see charity pedo rapist right sure so you're you're kind of saying that like because people slop me into these two slots that's like that's why I'm perceived the way that I am and then I ask you okay so then right but in my experience people you know that can apply to a lot of people right so like not everyone it doesn't matter where you are along the political spectrum like I tend to be I think somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum and that some people think I'm a Republican and some people think I'm a Democrat that that sort of applies to a lot of people that if you if we're accepting that people slot get bucketed in two different ways that most people are gonna get bucketed to the ends of the spectrum because most people are in the middle somewhere right I'm gonna say yeah kind of yeah I don't know if we're missing on this point but like politically they might be bucketed in the middle which like is deceptively nuanced but I feel like the underlying reality is that usually they're just completely ascribed to some more fundamental group that gives them the illusion being in the middle is kind of what yeah I don't know this realm to this night yeah yeah I think I mean that's about politics and specific but I think your general point still stands that that human beings tend to be binary in the way that they look at other human beings yeah most human beings are not at either end of any kind of spectrum so as a result if you take a hundred human beings who are in the middle and you show them to another hundred human beings that those all hundred of those human beings will be slotted towards both ends of the spectrum by the hundred people that they meet okay well okay maybe this is getting more fundamental okay maybe my cynicism will start showing I do think that most people try to find a group and identify wholly with that group I don't think that most people try to be nuanced or have multiple opinions of things I think they try to find like a certain group and stick to it and then inherit all the beliefs and opinions that doesn't that shouldn't apply at all because then what we're talking about is how people are perceived by others right so irrespective of whether I identify as a Republican or a tea party person or in a fundamental or a PC Gamer I'm still gonna be shunted into one of two buckets by everyone that I meet because that's how human beings operate sure and since I'm somewhere in the middle hmm I should be shunted onto both ends of the spectrum by a hundred random people and I should have like a while like people should be calling me Democrats and Republicans and like that should happen it doesn't matter whether I identify with a particular group or I came up with my own philosophy other people are gonna still shunt me yeah yeah so then if that's the case then like why do people treat you differently from other people um everyone's shunting I may be it may be because I'm more like visible in the space and maybe more like I guess like unapologetic about what I believe like maybe it's possible that any twitch streamer that did politics full-time would also be hard core divided uh you know between different people but I mean because this is kind of like I don't know how much you know about my content I'm sorry like my main draw is probably political conversations that's what I'm most well-known for so that that's probably why I I'm more divisive in that sense than other twitch streamers because not many others do that full-time maybe yeah okay sure so I think that sort of makes sense right like you're saying that by virtue of the kinds of conversations that I engage in so like let's think about it scientifically sure so a hundred people mechant you right or left but the problem the reason that you're more divisive is because the hundred people that you're talking to is a more diverse set than the hundred people that other people expose themselves to yeah that's entirely possible sure that's a good way second yeah yeah so for it is like am I talking to people yeah so I might talk to people that are literally like literal neo-nazis and I might also talk to people that are literal like communists like Stalin defenders so as a result of conversations both of these people you get to see way more device than us in my opinions that gives everybody a good reason to absolutely hate me yeah more so than maybe what the average stream or even would deal with yeah so do you think that most people's and and this could be by virtue of you know my methodologies I shared which was going on your subreddit and then sorting by top sure from all time and then looking at a few links and you know my sense is that like no one's talking about your political beliefs it really just depends on what we're doing at any particular point in time so like over the past like month and a half or two months I've been playing a lot of League of Legends so there's not much like politics going on but I would say like the stuff that I'm most well known for on the Internet and then my biggest viewership draw is usually when we're doing like political content so it's usually debates I'm having with either people the defense Stalin Russia or people that are you know neo-nazis or whatever like my conversation with jontron or Martin shkreli or Lauren southern like these big like these kind of like big headliner debates or whatever are probably my most viewed content that people are most interested in so when I get the most viewers for someone I get the most engagement on ok so um I'm gonna sort of switch gears thank you for explaining that ya know I'm kind of curious so one of the things that popped up is this thing that destiny is a sociopath yeah what does that mean I have a very I'm a relatively colder detached person for most people and it's people just described me that way sometimes and then sometimes I rot eclis refer to it that way myself but I don't I don't like what do you guys hold or detached um I'm just not a very like emotional person I guess like I don't get like I don't like cry a lot or I don't you know like I'm kind of like I don't wanna say like I'm a loner like I have friends online a couple friends that I talk to and they have like a girlfriend but for the most part they could do like really well on my own I function really well without like a large group of people around me okay so they call you a sociopath because what I don't know I think because I evaluate things like very coldly yeah let's yeah so like for instance I when I look at like relationships for instance whether their business whether they're romantic whether their friendships like I view everything like highly transactional that's usually how I try to like analyze those relationships to make the most sense of them yeah so what do you think that means for someone's life who views as good maybe to abstract of a question so let me think about how to phrase it better just state what my because I just realized there's an implication to my question sure let me just think about this so when you when you view relationships more transactionally what effect does that have on you I don't I get has any effect I think it's incredibly positive I think it gives me a really good view of relationships but if I'm transparent about that thought process then it seems highly manipulative highly unemotional very cold very detached and people get very upset if I usually open up about that yeah so let's start with the first half of what you said I agree with you that I think in it it feels really good so you said something along those lines you said it's highly positive high light and you said that oh yeah I think it's really good you have course yeah yeah so so what's really good about it it gives me well so I so generally I favor having a greater understanding of things that are true because I think the more information I have about a given situation the better act I can take to maximize my own you know my own enjoyment of said situation so the more information I have the more power I have to make decisions the benefit made so when it comes to understanding relationships where I understand them on a transactional basis it feels like it gives me the power to understand what do I need to do to make this relationship beneficial for me so when I engage with another person my thought process is usually something along lines of like I want to get X Y or Z out of this person so whether it's friendship whether it's um playing games with me whether it's you know some kind of business relationship in order to get that I need to make sure that I am some level of value or worth to that person that makes them want to you know treat me in kind is basically how I view it like a very some people say there's like highly transactional now personally I view every single relationship in my life this way you know I show a certain level of kindness because I like a person that I want to receive some reciprocated kindness you know I provide some you know level of consultation or financial support or business advice or whatever to somebody in exchange for some sponsorship or whatever [ __ ] right yeah this is just basically how I view like all of these types of relationships yeah yeah and I think I mean it sounds like it's very comforting for you to view relationships in that way in terms of like it's simple it's clean and you know what you're getting and it's like and highly descriptive and predictive yeah I would say it's descriptive and predictive sure huh can you tell me a little bit you said all of your relationships are like this yeah I believe so yeah and can you you said that you grew up pretty independently mm-hmm can you tell me a little bit about what that means um sure so let's see how we can do this by parents were very busy growing up and I was pretty kind of like left on my own growing up so I kind of developed for whatever reason I don't know why but i and i was very very independent growing up like I did things because I wanted to do that your parents busy with my mom did a daycare 24/7 and then my dad did whatever random multi-level marketing by 24/7 you mean like she had it the daycare kept people at night um yeah so it was like a family home daycare I guess so we had kids over it like anywhere from I think 10 to 14 kids over the house 24 hours a day 7 days a week okay and what about your dad he did multi-level marketing stuff Randy okay yeah so what does that have to do with what is his multi-level marketing like help me understand so I don't know what that means in terms of like assumptions of oh that meant pyramid scheme no I know it means a pyramid scam like like so for example if someone says yeah my dad was an attorney versus like my dad drove a school bus that gives me a sense of like that parent's availability and like you know it's an assumption could be wrong huh what about like what influenced that person like how much that person would have been around oh yeah the availability of both parents was like pretty close to zero save for like a family vacation or something it was pretty low yeah and what did you do you remember how you felt about that growing up yeah I think early on in my life I don't think I was very happy with that I think about we made quite a bit but for whatever reason after time the feelings just like went away and I became like more okay like just doing things on my own yeah can you tell me like around what age that happened I wish I could it was before high school but okay yeah I don't I don't know exactly what it change happened before high school yeah must have yeah like do you remember being like in elementary school and and thinking like you were a little bit unhappy that your parents weren't around yeah like I remember like in third grade or fourth grade or something like I would like walk around like outside and I'd wonder like oh like if I ran away with my parents like you even notice that I'm gone like those kinds of thoughts I imagine a pretty normal for kids that don't see much of their parents but by the time like I got to high school it's like an important thing I remember in high school is like I wanted to do music and I you know decided to pick up the saxophone knowing that like none of my parents are ever coming any my concerts or anything like that but I'm okay with that I picked up music because I really love music and that's what I want to do so I know for sure by the time I hit high school none of it bothered anymore but I'm sure that like for varying levels from like first like sixth grade or something it must have bothered me a little bit cuz I have memories like that but for whatever reason the feelings just kind of like went away okay what do you think happens when feelings go away um I mean a lot of things could happen I mean like the two most common paths I see is either one you confront them you get an understanding of them and then you integrate those feelings so that you're capable of dealing with it going forward another way is you repress the faucet what you did I mean I would like to think so right yeah I would like to think that but the alternative is that you repressed them you pretend that they're not bothering you but then they end up manifesting in different ways in your life later on I try to give like very I'm trying to give you like very honest answers because like yeah yeah like I mean I would like to think that like none of it bothers me more like I upgraded it yeah yeah yeah yeah so so I'm just a little bit surprised because I you know like I think your answers are a hundred percent I mean I agree with you a hundred percent and I think like so I think like I said at the beginning I think my chat and your chat are both gonna be disappointed but sure so I think they thing that the reason I think you saw me like raising my eyebrows the thing the reason you saw surprise in my face is not because I disagree with your answers it's just I'm very surprised to hear you sly cuz you described confronting your feelings processing your feelings like internalizing them moving past them metabolizing them like that makes perfect sense to me and I don't know many 7 year-olds who do that yeah I mean like I don't think it happened when I was 7 I think it was more just like an automated thing that happened you know before I got to high school when I when I say see that we're glad so so like when you kind of say that like you confront them and and kind of like process them and stuff like that that sounds like a very like active process yeah right it's like an active mental process and it's almost like the process that you describe when someone criticizes you like it takes thought and you analyze it and you kind of see where it's coming from is it valid is it invalid and yet when you talk about what happened to you it sounds anything but intentional it sounds because you kind of uses this language like oh it just kind of like happened on its own sort of like happen like automatically like I don't know like I was this way when I was growing up and then older like I was just I was different it was like no longer a big deal yeah I like the the reason why I try to be careful my answers is like if you were asked me five years ago I would have said all of it was a very intentional but if I'm totally honest looking back I don't know how much was intentional versus how much was just kind of lucky so like for instance I can growing up a lot of the video games I played were Japanese RPGs the main characters tended to be like very intelligent which is some you don't find in a lot of American media and then they also had like traditional masculine archetypes as well they tend to be very independent they tended to help other people which RPGs um like Final Fantasy games Final Fantasy seven eight-nine phonotactics the Metal Gear Solid games like I love like snake Oh like yeah growing up and I think I kind of sort of modeled my myself off of those people I guess right because they're heavy early influences so like the idea of like oh like being independent is like really cool like I want to have that I think being able to be independent is really cool and then for whatever reason I wasn't bothered by not getting constant approval from like friends or family and then that just kind of worked out so that's what I mean when I say that like I think that I kind of automatically developed it in a healthy way and that I don't think that I was like miserable and I repressed it and I used games as a retreat that depressed me but I don't think it's fully to say that my 10 year old self was like you know I have a problem yeah that's what I said yeah so so like like so you like you grew up like cloud Cloud Strife sure yeah well I mean like that would've been like the modeling when I was a kid I mean I'm gonna say I don't do cold how do you think Cloud Strife would respond to parents being like super unavailable to him growing up oh god my fancy seven knowledge is being tested well technically cloud grow up an orphan although it seemed to me that cloud dealt with that in a very unhealthy way because he was very very rude towards other people and seemed to always have a chip on his shoulder about it yeah so yeah I mean I would say cloud probably would hate that but he dealt with it in a very unhealthy way yeah wait what it seemed like he done with the divert he like always had like problems with other people it wasn't until like Tifa put his mind back together in the lifestream like later on in the game that he actually developed like a sense of self and then wanted to do things for other people and help the party I'd like everything done or whatever for the game yeah yeah so so I'm sorry do you said that cloud dealt with it in a poor way it seemed like it growing up as an orphan he was always like kind of an [ __ ] and a jerk to people and he just yeah yeah so like was kind of a divisive figure had a lot of people like upset with him no I would say that he was objectively like an [ __ ] like and the goals that he had at his life we're kind of shitty or whatever like he just wanted to be strong to be a soldier cuz that's what all the cool people whatever and then yeah yeah and you kind of modeled to yourself after him um aspects of my character are aspects of my personality after those types of people I would imagine yeah yes so like I don't I can't envision cloud ever being upset with his parents for dropping off it and dropping him off at an orphanage um yeah I guess later in life probably not sure yeah yeah I mean it almost sounds like you kind of grew up almost like an orphan in some ways um that's a really dramatic way of putting it I guess in some ways yeah yeah absolutely as surely yeah what do you think about that um I don't have strong feelings about it one way or another I mean how did you grow up um I played a lot of video games yeah yeah so it sounds like your parents weren't around I mean they were I just really responsible because I was like some guy is listen to this he was a literal [ __ ] orphan who's like hating me for saying this cuz I did it like my mom and dad like absolutely love me like no questions asked like I'm pretty sure they would like if I came out as like gay or trans no um like cuz my mom always tells me she loves me she's like always excited for you know she doesn't have anything mean to say about me she's always excited for what I do with my streaming stuff if I call and talk to my parents they're always excited to talk to me they've never liked that we had a lot of problems and I became an atheist in high school but like I've never gotten the feeling that my parents hate me ever and my mom expresses like great yeah my mom's just a lot of regret over not taking a more active role in my life growing up but something that like makes her really sad Sam how do you feel about that my parents are hard sanely [ __ ] conservative so I'm kind of grateful for it yeah like I kind of worried if I would have grown up to be more like my parents if I would have ran into a lot of problems like it sounds kind of shitty to say to my mom and I love her to death but like the independence that I got from them has equipped me for I mean for this job if nothing else holy [ __ ] more than anything else that I could have learned from them individually yeah so I mean at all I mean thank God that you they didn't have time for you yeah kind of yeah man of my mom Alyssa this I love your mom so much yeah okay yeah and I think it's a very strange thing for a person to say I'm really grateful that my parents didn't have time for me yeah 100% holy [ __ ] I think that the sense of Independence that I got growing up is my most valuable asset and it's something that I think yeah is so important to me and I think that that makes perfect logical sense I'm just trying to think about like the alternative right so if you if you aren't grateful to your parents for not having time to you how would you feel um that's a hard one I mean these manifests of so many different ways I mean some people spend their lives like kind of like seeking the like a replacement for a parent like maybe you go and look for a girl that resembles somebody that would take care of you and that's the kind of thing you're after or maybe you look for somebody to like give you constant affirmation cuz you're not no I'm not talking about like some weird psychological thing down the road I'm just saying like if you're eight years old and you're your mom is busy taking care of like eight other kids mm-hmm like how do you think that kid feels like a like a normal kid or like near our normal kid um so are you it seems like a lot of people get really resentful of their parents if they don't paid enough attention to them so I imagine they probably feel resentful or a normal kid back then right you started to become a non normal kid later when you had your transformation maybe yeah I mean it's hard to say well I mean I don't yeah I don't know if you used to you used to have some of those feelings of feeling like neglected or lonely or whatever from your parents and then like something happened sometime around the middle school years you started to really like focus on being more like cloud and there's these other like male role models who are like emotionally suppressing or like focused on self growth and independent and self-reliant and then you kind of became this self-reliant human being who's all of their relationships are transactional and has left kind of a lack of emotional connection with others uh-huh right until you enter the live stream which will see you if and when that happens but sure right yeah yeah I think so yeah yeah yeah so I mean it the when I'm so real quick just to be very clear I try to be brutally honest with with how I view myself I can tell you very clearly like why I thought the things that I did from like probably 16 17 years onward it's a lot harder for me to give you resolute answers about like my particular state of mind or how I felt about something but it was like something that's that's why it feels like I'm giving you a wishy-washy answers gonna try to avoid answering something that's I'm just trying to be honest and like I don't know like 100% maybe I was a little bit more bothered by the perspective that you're wishy-washy okay very very clear okay yeah I'm just trying to be clear yeah why do you think your answers are wishy-washy well cuz sometimes when people it feels like sometimes people want more exact answers sometimes and if I give an answer with them it's it's like a habit that I've gotten into from debating so many people like for instance like my girlfriend might ask something like um this sounds really bad but she was like do you think we'll still be together in a year and my answer that is always ended like I mean I hope so we should be but like I can't say with 100% certainty because you might go [ __ ] crazy I don't know but like it's so like I tend to answer like every question that there's nothing to read into there sorry I try to answer like every girl into it like like you when I'm asking when we're talking about your and my interaction you have this tendency to talk about what feels to me to be like completely irrelevant examples sure but you can just you offer a lot of examples like I'm just curious like why you think that I think that your answers are unclear because you're you're you know you're a clear spoken guy I know you're a clear spoken guy I've asked you several times over the course of like the last half hour or 45 minutes if this is what you believe it seems like we're on the same okay sure yeah I'm probably honestly because I'm so used to speaking to chat that it's this is more like a public experience right so I guess I'm trying to clarify partially for that as well but I'll try to focus more on just that and ignore like outside clarifications because I think you're understanding most of what I'm saying I'm just I'm still in the habit of like over clarifying everything I say like with the orphan thing earlier for instance to make sure that people don't think that I have the understanding that I'm like an actual orphan because I know that would like to offend a lot of people whatever be like okay I'll try to be more like just one-on-one with you yeah so yeah so that's just no I mean that's mmm I think it's you know it's interesting that the wishy-washy the reason for the wishy-washy Nisour the perception of where she washing is seems to be also changing like at first it was about because sometimes your ambiguous and you want to clarify things and use the example of your girlfriend and when I say all right I don't think that's the case then you say it's like it's because of chat and I'm trying to make sure that Chad understands and I'm half talking to them so it seems like there are a lot of reasons why I over clarified yeah for sure yeah yeah okay okay so um can you tell me a little bit about I mean do you have memories of like when you were young and like times that you got upset time to take out I was young yeah of course some stuff does I had a very strange relationship with my with my grandma I spent a lot of time I swear to God my growing up there's like just really weird [ __ ] but so my grandma was I believe that okay my grandma but for the most part my life was pretty good okay my grandma is very [ __ ] crazy okay she had whee problems she like she would buy a dog and she would like kill it in like a year and she did this like [ __ ] 20 times I don't know why where she would she would basically she they go to the pound she to get a dog and she would carry it for about six to twelve months and then she would say like oh it's sick I need to go put it down and I don't want to give it to somebody else cuz I think it might be hurt or whatever and I remember that when I was when I was pretty young maybe around like fifth grade I think she did this to two dogs that me and my little sister were like very attached to I remember obviously being incredibly upset when that happened cuz they were like my the two dogs that I like the most but then after that I kind of stopped caring so much about each individual dog because I knew that it was it had like a 12 month timer on it basically yeah that's interesting so so you used to care about things and then what did you what did you learn sounds like you learned something I guess we're trying to say that I learned not to get attached to anything or I mean in this particular case particularly my grandma yeah I guess to some extent like like you used to form emotional attachments with like living organisms and then you sort of realize that forming attachments with living organisms leads to pain and so you better learn how to like not care about the dog anymore um yeah I guess we could say that sure yeah and what about with your parents I never did anything on the level of like doing anything bad or say of course yeah of course yeah I mean do you remember sort of times actually let me ask you kind of a different question so do you remember times that like does anything stick out let's say like before seventh grade about when your parents were super proud of you um when you sort of really did feel like they made time or when did they make time for you let's put it that way I don't think so I remember there was one time I was in a hotel and I made a reference to something that I'd read online that where I said like oh look like they have mirrors in the hotel and that makes the room look bigger and my dad I actually remember this comment for my entire life my I said wow you're real smart kid and I think that's the only time he's ever going to be like that and I think I actually felt like really good when I heard that but otherwise I don't think they typically my mom like always gives compliments so they don't really mean anything to me my mom like showers me to those side of whatever yeah can you remember a time where they made time for you um yeah we went back so before I was like I think before was my time lines are so bad but before I was like 14 or 15 we had like a very upper middle class lifestyle when my mom was doing the daycare and we would go like on like every year every other year we would take like a family vacation to like Disney World or whatever we would do stuff like that so I mean I would say that was like making time for me yeah hmm do you ever remember them doing things outside of the norm like periods where you were either really good or really bad and they sort of like treated you differently because of it um I don't think so the worst things that I probably did growing up where I was very antagonistic towards my sister which bothered the [ __ ] out of my mom and dad quite a bit I think that's pretty normal for siblings but like yeah but other than that no I think they did their thing I call me about your sister um she's just like my little sister I basically I don't really talk to any my family much I just don't I'm just not that kind of person I guess we should hang out sounds like they didn't talk to you much um no that's not true they my mom and dad make an effort to reach out I try to talk to my mom like at least like once everyone back to growing up um yeah I mean they didn't but they your mom loves you a lot it sounds like she's very excited and happy for your success it sounds like you know on the occasions that you all do interact she's very supportive and loves you a lot and you love her and at the same time it also sounds like they kind of haven't been a part of your life in a very like day to day kind of chitchat share experiences with ferb basically your entire life yeah my mom regrets it but I mean it yeah yeah yeah I guess yeah yeah for sure yeah it's been normal to have so earlier used a word transactional uh-huh would you say that your relationships with your parents were transactional when you were growing up um I don't think I would have viewed relationships like that back then and then those relationships you would have yeah but what do you think now like I'm just trying to put myself so I have two kids and I'm just trying to put myself of like what the [ __ ] would my relationship with my children be like if there were eight other kids at home uh-huh and I would think that it would be like quite businesslike because I don't have time to like read them a story sure like meals would be sort of like an assembly line yeah it has a very assembly line filled yeah there was a nap time there was a feeding time there was a time when a teacher came over and held the key what you felt like or what your needs were a moment to moment we're sort of like completely swept under the but like just just swept under the though just the simple need of like making the rains the trains run on time yeah for sure I cannot and and so you know and I I think it sounds like that used to upset you but at some point you sort of figured out that like me being upset doesn't actually do me any good yeah I guess so yeah and so you started to like treat yourself very independently you started to treat people pretty transactionally because having kind of like an emotional relationship or an emotional investment in a situation that is not going to change is like completely idiotic and that's essentially essentially like emotions are just gonna lead to suffering when they lead to relationships which is because the only thing that you can really count on the only thing that you can rely on and the only thing that has predictive value for making a change is sort of a transactional selfish sort of perspective to relationships yeah you can count on other people's self-interest exactly if you love them and they love you that doesn't count for [ __ ] yeah 100 percent make sense man yeah makes perfect sense sure any thoughts about what I just said I'm not that gets descriptive of how I view the world like pretty well so one of the reasons why I went into music I always considered a reeling point to have a hobby that I couldn't draw my own without having to rely on any other person to be there and then yeah I'm very aware that like any relationship I'm in I try to make sure that it's as beneficial for the other person as it needs to be for them to maintain the relationship yeah it's pretty much my outlook on really ships in general yeah yeah and and you think you okay so let me just stop for a second let me think yeah sure destiny do you have any thoughts about the way in which I'm phrasing things are you detecting any implications in my words I'm saying I think people could read it to it that way but I didn't sound like you have the same type of judgmental implications that I would expect a person to so yeah and what kind of judgmental implications of that generally that this way of thinking is either autistic or sociopathic that it misses a lot of the underlying important aspects of human interactions but yeah no no no no I think I think that this this way of interacting I think is learned adaptive and vital for survival sure I I I'm sorry just to be clear I don't think you're thinking about I'm saying that's what a lot of people imply I think yeah which is that this way of approaching the world huh is adaptive learned and vital for survival yeah I mean obviously I would agree yeah why do you agree with that well I mean I would have to agree that it's adaptive because it seems like it adapted to the environment I had growing up it seems key for survival because I think it's got me like two great accomplishments in terms of my career and everything and then it's learned obviously because I I think must be everything learned in yeah yeah so destiny I'm gonna kind of give you and maybe you've sort of figured out my punchline but I think you know I think what the way you feel makes perfect sense so I think this is this is what I understand this is my running hypothesis for how life shaped you to be the way that you are okay so I think that early on you experienced a lot of emotions like a kid normally would and that your life was just structured in such a way where your emotions were your emotional needs were probably not met because they couldn't be met because your parents weren't you and I think that hurt you for a while and I think that you did what most children or young adults do which is adapt to the situation but I I think unfortunately most of those adaptations are not like the challenging processing metabolising most of them are suppression so yeah for sure and and that since you basically had parents who are not it's not that they didn't love you it's just like the circumstances made it so that they could not meet your emotional needs uh-huh and so I think early on somewhere along the way you probably had and you remember some things you don't remember others but I think the grandmother example is a prime example you learned the very important lesson that emotions are a [ __ ] waste of time and that they just need to be removed in whatever way they can from my personal point of view yeah I wouldn't advocate everybody talking about I'm talking about this like how you're the the mind of your child self evil sure okay and they were like let's just remove emotions from the equation because as long as emotions are there we get hurt sure and then over time you started to discover that like when you remove emotions from the equation that that relationships become transactional right because that's what happens huh I think the real challenge is that now at this point the reason that you don't feel emotions is because you essentially are suppressing because that's something that's that's like that concrete was pretty was laid down when you were a kid and you have everything in your life sort of points to that and now the real challenge is that your current worldview is so adaptive that the possibility of like Rhian gauging with your emotions sort of like changes everything that you believe in everything that you built in your life around so it's almost even further adaptive to not explore that part or not even question that because that [ __ ] has been buried it's like nuclear waste that got buried like you buried that [ __ ] the second time that dog died and you were like okay these are emotions and I think that your brain is human so that you have the amygdala and the limbic system and that you're capable of feeling emotions that you feel sadness and you feel joy but at the end of the day like those are sort of relatively temporary fluctuations that you experience like those parts of your brain are active but emotionally you you sort of don't have that shit's like buried because you learned how to bury it because that's what you needed to do and I think had you done this later than it would make more sense for this to be sort of like a metabolism or digestion but that essentially since it happened so young it was sort of like a it was like a reflexive protective response because that's what kids do sure what do you think about that I don't think that at all I've spent a great deal of time I think about a year or two ago kind of reflecting on kind of like the cold way that I approach people and it's something that I revisit like like quite a bit you know I think about it every now and we're I kind of wonder like typically totally axing certain things when your life is not good because usually it's possible to engage with them in a healthy manner such that you limit the downsides and capitalize on the upside so if we're talking about like emotional relationships here are being more emotional with people I wonder sometimes if there were like potential upsides that I might be missing they don't engage with people in that way I just have a hard time coming up with that yeah good yeah so I don't think it's about upsides so I think your strategy has if we're talking about making a probabilistic bet yeah I think your strategy has more upsides I just think it's incomplete right yeah that's what I'm saying like I could I could integrate some type of emotional experience into my current existence in a healthy and responsible way using all of my prior adaptations or whatever to evaluate if those emotional relationships are healthy or not I wonder if that's something that I should do I guess just so far I just haven't felt the need for it or it doesn't seem like I don't think there is a need so I think the question is so this is not really a great analogy but I think essentially like you're going through life color-blocked sure and we sort of think about color as being better than so there's like a value judgment there that I don't necessarily agree with uh-huh but that there's there's like if you look or it like all these other people out there they are operating with a particular like sense that you just sort of don't have or it's not that you're like lack you lack emotions entirely it's just that like your your perception of color it's it's like dark outside so you know your rods and cones like you can still see some variants color but the amount of color saturation that you get has a lot to do with the overall ambient level of light uh-huh and I think my sense of you is that you're someone who's like in a low ambient level of light so you do experience emotions but you just don't experience the full range and then the question from your perspective is like is it worth it for me to turn the lights on because if I turn the lights on I'm gonna experience a whole range of things and those may not necessarily be good which is absolutely correct I think the question is whether you want to experience a wider range of things than what you're experiencing now yeah and that's kind of the that's always been the central question is like if I am missing out on something you know is it worth it to open myself up to those experiences knowing that some might be better than I've ever felt before and some might be worse than I've ever felt before is that something that's worth exploring and I guess like so far I mean like I feel like I'm pretty uniquely situated in terms of my mental state at my job and I feel like I have like such a high when I say uniquely situated I mean it like I feel like I'm uniquely equipped with my level of Independence to deal with the amount of negative feedback I get for instance and I'm kind of worried if I start trying to change up like too many things like is that experience going to change such that either that makes me unsuited for this job or I lose like my current level of what I would considered to be like very high very content like mental state is that something that I'm willing to risk to try to experience a wider array of emotions I guess not as not to dismissive oh well no that that's I guess like currently I feel I feel like I get all of the love and attention I need from people that I have relationships with however transactional they may be and then I also feel like I mean you've been talking to streamers holy [ __ ] every streamer is insanely depressed and has I don't know how many streamers you've gone through so far but like every streamer that I know has personally had at least one major breakdown related to you know like dealing with feedback and stuff and I've never dealt with these problems and I don't know if like becoming a more emotional person okay so what do that would make me more vulnerable to those types of things which I'm really scary absolutely what yeah yeah so I mean I think you know using some some video game terminology I think the main question is whether you want to explore so you have you have carved out a pretty nice niche in your own world in terms of I don't mean like success externally just in terms of like the way that you interact with the world sure and there's there's a world beyond that and so far I think it come it makes complete logical sense that going outside of the known is not really a good bet it's just about your degree of adventurousness it's about your degree of tolerating risk it's about whether you're willing to explore an aspect of life that I think will make your life richer not necessarily better but yeah like richer right because we're talking about other shades of we're talking about experiences that other humans don't have for sure another good example is like the decision to have kids or not have kids which i think is a life transformative I mean it was for me not to say that it's better or worse it just completely changes the [ __ ] ballgame okay I have an eight-year-old son if that if that changes think of it yeah I mean so so I mean I mean I think it changes something in my mind I don't know that it's actually relevant I have more of an emotional reaction to that Janet include it incorporates more assumptions uh-huh I don't I mean I think that most of your emotions are were actively suppressed in a very what's called an in kind of like an insecure attachment growing up which is something you can google but there's something called attachment theory which sort of talks a little bit about like how children experience emotions and how they like understand the world and that you've essentially created like this adaptive mechanism which by the way like now getting to kind of like that the end point so I don't think that your logical argument for why you're such a divisive figure sort of makes sense which is sort of what I was implying because I don't think it's because they see multiple facets of you I think it's because they they're picking up on something on this realm which like makes people deeply unsettled and makes them dislike you you're just disliked and arguable and also on the flip side liked by more like more people than the average person I don't think that's just because of the political stuff you engage in although that's a very good variable in the equation I think it makes a lot of sense I don't think many people expose themselves to the variety of opinion that you do uh-huh primarily because you do have this insulating armor right like you can see you can expose yourself to like more things because you're kind of emotionally protected which other people don't do so I think that has a lot to do with it but I think there's something there's something visceral about people's and I think if you stop and think about that I I really be surprised if you disagree with it I 100 agree 100 percent there's something yes sir oh so all this stuff about like you know people are like binary and they judge you this way and this I think that's fine but I don't think it's about the political spectrum I think it's visceral there's something about you that like sets people off in like a a weird way and it almost reminds me of something called the uncanny valley yeah which is this this you're familiar the uncanny valley yeah it's almost like uncanny valley level which is sort of this idea that like if we human beings for people who aren't familiar with this concept you wanna explain it yeah basically something is not quite human but it's very very close but that very small amount of not quite human is so much more crazy and weird and when discomforting than if it was just completely fake all together yeah and so I mean I'm not saying that that's what's it's kind of like a unfair characterization or analogy I'm not saying that you're not human but there is something incredibly visceral and emotional to people's from what I could see initially there's something incredibly visceral and emotional to people's responses to you and I think they're picking up on something and like I really watch this YouTube video about someone who's like trying to convince you of the value of emotions and it was like guy didn't know what [ __ ] ya talkin about and I'm sorry for being judgmental I didn't let me put real Oh me rephrase I didn't understand what he was trying to say uh-huh I think I actually I'm almost positive I know exactly you're talking about but I think he was trying in a less formal way to get at what you were saying is it like maybe it's worth exploring like some level of emotional attachment because there might be some good there that you're missing out completely by shunting yourself from it or whatever yeah I don't know being charitable yeah but I mean I think the destiny here like so here's what I'll kind of leave you with you have questions by the way um I'm just saying leave you with it yeah sure um yeah I mean I don't I mean I don't think so what questions am I supposed to have so here's what I'll offer you I don't know um cuz I wasn't sure if you were gonna be asking me questions or I was gonna be asking you questions it seemed like this was like I was enjoying this seemed like you were enjoying it yeah I think that you know if at some point you decide that you do want to explore your emotional side uh-huh then I'm happy to have another conversation about that I actually don't know how that's gonna go like I really don't because this [ __ ] seems pretty dick buried to me uh-huh at the same time I do think that here's what I do believe if you decide to explore it because this has been my experience with other people uh-huh is that the armor that you've essentially put on yourself is something that is so ingrained that you'll be able to like put that back on like you can on equip it and you can react with it so my experience for people who learn habitually how to do something is even if they learn how to like stop doing it it's not like the armor gets destroyed it just gets unequipped sure and then you can react with it mm-hmm and so I don't think I think in my my instinct tells me that if you were to get connected to your emotions that the net would be positive because generally speaking in the work that I do I find that exploring just about anything and understanding yourself deeper and better and having a greater experience of yourself is almost always an overwhelmingly positive experience sure okay you're basically saying it's not going to like it revocable changed me in a way that introduces like I mean I think it could there could be like rough patches here there but I would put it like scientifically that your neurons have been like hard-coded in a non-emotional transactional non empathic kind of state mm-hmm and that you know like like this is this some that's learned so it's not like in the same way that like if you start swimming you don't forget how to learn how to ride a bike it's just like if you're in the water you're gonna swim and if you're on a bike you're on a bike that's been my experience sure okay yeah I only bring this up back because people were swimming about it many opinions about psychedelic drugs why the [ __ ] this is the only question that people ever ask me I've asked this question like a thousand times uh-huh okay so so this is what I'll say so as a psychiatrist there are some preliminary studies which show that are very promising that the psychedelic some psychedelic compounds can have positive effects on your mental health yeah I don't necessarily mean in terms of like a clinical setting I mean more of like I don't want to say just recreational but not like in a like treating like depressive disorders wherever but like in like utilizing them to gain some insight into your life with like a monster like LSD or shroom trip or something do have any thoughts or opinions on it so I don't advocate for that and the reason is very simple so one of my teachers so the first thing to understand is that psychedelics can only do what your brain is capable of doing sure it's like I want everyone to understand this because this is an important point chemical compounds go and activate existing brain machinery in new ways mm-hmm or not even new ways but they just activate the machinery that's already there sure right so like for example marijuana is a cannabinoid yeah and gives us a sense of like like relaxation or whatever's there they're different compounds in marijuana uh-huh but we also have endocannabinoids which when it comes to like video games and habit circuitry we release a lot of like so when you get addicted to video games when you're playing a video game like every day all day at that point you're not even getting like rewards it's not even dopaminergic its cannabinoid at that point which is why I like gamers have so many so you're when you develop a habit it's no longer dopamine that governs it it's actually an endocannabinoid that governs like the performance of habits and endocannabinoids the reason that habits are so easy to do is because they don't require motivation and in turn like gamers have a problem with motivation because they have endocannabinoids that are like floating around in the brain like all the time so it's kind of like they're sort of like kind of chilled out or they're a motivated my point here is that you can smoke marijuana but like marijuana is activating all of these endogenous like circuitry's and LSD and things like that are exactly the same so they activate your brain in ways that we don't normally activate it but that essentially if you talk to people who do psychedelics and you talk to people who meditate a lot and you talk about and you also talk about people who dissociate during trauma there's a remarkable amount of similarity between these three experiences so you talk about like like you know dissolution of the self people feel connected it's the same way people feel when they meditate sometimes and you can have very powerful spiritual experiences through meditation and so my my teacher once told me that you know if you really want to like understand like kind of the nature of self and the boundaries of reality and all this [ __ ] meditation those kinds of things should be avoided for a couple of reasons one is that when you do that and then you try to meditate it creates an expectation of an experience that is very difficult for meditation to live up to and makes it harder to continue to meditate the other way to think about it is that I kind of think about like climbing to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro like you can take it you can take LSD which is like getting in a helicopter and flying to the top of the mountain the view that you get is the same as if you hiked one is way easier one is way harder view is equally great the problem is that if you've trained yourself too high to climb to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro you're in a better state to climb higher and with LSD or other compounds you have no control over the direction or where you land you just like it's just you're like getting in the chopper and the pilot decides I'm gonna take you here I'm gonna take you here I'm gonna take you here so I don't advocate for the use of psychedelics if you really want to understand like yourself in the nature of reality because I think it's sort of a crutch that gets you it's like a cheat code that kind of gets you to like a pretty important milestone which people love and find invigorating but if you really want to go all the way you should use meditation instead okay okay I got a really big fight over this yesterday I agree 100% I'm always really skeptical of people that say that psychedelics are a good tool to solve problems it always seemed like a substitution for your inability to kind of deal with problems without having to be hi-spec to do it so I think so I mean it is a substitution which is what most medications are right so like like if we think about so I think that they can have a role in treatment because those people so someone who's super depressed who has been through a lot of trauma they may not have the time circumstance or wherewithal to like spend a year in India like meditating so like psychedelics can potentially be helpful yeah band-aids aren't bad they're just not optimal when it comes to treating someone yeah yeah sure okay other questions do you have questions why why did you ask me to explain why did you ask me to explain the uncanny valley was there a reason for that no just because I got two reasons yeah one is when people ask questions or just in general I if there's something that the person that I'm talking to can explain I default to having them explain it okay for a couple of reasons one is I like to hear other people's explanations of it in the second is I I don't want to talk all the time okay gotcha cool I was just curious yeah okay um I died there's like a million random things from chat but I don't if you don't have any other like major things that you want to talk about I don't need me to say this obviously especially I don't know if you are you practicing in terms of like you like a license like okay yeah I've tried like therapy before I'm gonna be totally honest there's only one person and oh my god was it a horrible waste of time although understanding yeah you're supposed to shop around for therapy I don't think I don't think you said anything here that I disagree with that I thought was stupid or like totally like dumb like meandering conjecture which I hear from a lot of people that aren't necessarily like psychiatrists but like therapy ask people sometimes it feels like they're looking for opportunities to insert their own narratives into whatever story you tell them they're trying to make the pieces fit you do a really good job at I think of understanding what I'm saying and then rephrasing that and then presenting it to me in a way that it's like makes sense and is like a complete story I think a so destiny the one thing that I think may that I would like you to take away from this because I believe this is where we disagreed yeah I don't think that you're emotional I think you're emotionally suppressing and I don't think I didn't get the sense at the beginning of our our talk together that you thought that but I do believe that um I would probably agree I think maybe there might be like I don't think I would have disagreed with that it might be more of a semantic than anything I mean obviously unless I am literally inhuman I must be suppressing my emotions to some extent like you said I have an amygdala I have a limited system like I can't just not have these things yeah so some level of learned suppression I guess when I think of suppression I'm sorry when I speak is there's so many implications every word usually when somebody uses the word suppression there's a a lot of negative baggage and other ways of that manifests in your life and in really detrimental ways that I don't think i exhibit those behaviors but I did I would have to agree of course it's probably some level suppression yeah I'm not so sure about that right because we have some evidence that you have a track record for disrupting a lot of other people's lives like in terms of like the way that they respond to you Derek I don't know if I would necessarily agree that's a bad thing though I think to some of this I think it's just shorter okay I think the other thing that's that's kind of like tricky here is that I think you're placing yeah okay but I mean III think that that that could be causing problems in your and I think actually there's a decent chance that it will cause problems in your relationships um because for sure transactional yeah for sure yeah that's something that's come up a lot yeah yeah and and so I think the problem here is that when you are in a transactional relationship with someone who doesn't view it it's very rough is gonna have a tough time of course yeah and generally speaking I do whereas a personal value judgement I mean hopefully these words don't bite me in the ass but I have some relationships that are not transactional and in fact I would say that most of the relationships that I have are not transactional that serves me very well okay okay put in mine when I revisit this thought to myself up maybe I'll push harder in that direction sure yeah cool okay cool well hey listen I really appreciate the conversation yeah likewise any other final things that nope nope okay well hey listen I really pressure the conversation um if there's anything ever in particular that comes up that I don't know people like always bother me to talk to you not that it's a bother to talk to you but if you go away then a lot of online I don't know if you've gotten this yet from twitch by the way that a lot of these conversations happen is usually both fan bases start firing shots in the direction of the other fan base in order to get the two people to come together so if people I guess keep poking me to pick your brain about a particular topic or likewise whatever we can chat again if you're interested sure okay cool and I know that sometimes I mean I I didn't give you an opportunity to that like ask me questions and stuff like that so if you I'm not saying you shorter that you want to but yeah I'm kind of curious about like the the I've heard a lot of like origin stories in terms of starting off as like a spiritual Hindu person I don't know how much this is true versus not true for your development I mean I can do that in five minutes yeah go for it hit me up I'm curious yeah so I grew up playing a lot of [ __ ] video games uh-huh and then did okay in high school started college was failing out of college my parents kind of took me aside after trying everything else from yelling and punishing and all that kind of stuff and my dad was like look this is not working out like we got to do something and so then I was like yeah I agree so it felt like super antagonistic early on but then it sort of felt like we were problem-solving together okay and so he's like you got to go to India and I said [ __ ] it okay so I went to India I stayed in an ashram which is sort of like a monastery I studied yoga and meditation a little bit of Ayurveda for period of about three months and then decided I wanted to become a monk so went to my teachers and I said hey I want to become a monk I'm not interested in the material life they said fantastic real quick just so right at it we understand we are with so I understand when you say monk what is what does that actually mean yeah what does that take son yes so in the Hindu tradition but distribution as well there are four stages of life so the first stage is student the second stage is a householder the third stage is transitionary in the fourth stage is to like let go of your material attachments slash meditate slash devote yourself to God if you believe in that kind of thing and so what I said is I want to forego a material life and focus on spiritual development and like realizing my true self which is the goal of a lot of meditative practices is something called moksha or enlightenment or liberation okay so I wanted to devote myself to that that was gonna be my full-time job okay they said that's a fantastic idea you'd be great at it but finish your school get a doctoral degree and come back when you're thirty and if you still want to do it we'll take you so the place that I studied was run by so the head of the ashram was actually a quantum physicist like other teachers of mine were like like neuroscientists and things like that and they'd all taken Sun yeah so they'd become monks but they believed in sort of getting like a worldly education first in understanding science and then kind of following a spiritual path and so turned out that their decision was a great one because I went back to the US and then travelled back and forth from the u.s. to India for about seven years with the goal of becoming a monk mm-hmm but in that time met my wife fell in love got confused and then decided ultimately that becoming a monk was about ego that I couldn't cut it in the real world and that like it was a very if I'd said like oh I'm like the real world isn't for me because I'm bad at it and I thought of all of the reasons why becoming a monk was like a fantastic idea right because like there's so many positives about it there's so many logical reasons that it's good but at the root of it the problem was ego which by the way I think could apply to you in your view of emotions as well a form of post hoc rationalization you have like an end goal and you're just gonna do whatever you can to get to it basically yeah without really yeah sure yeah so I think you have a potentially a subtle ego but I don't think your ego is generally very larger I agree um but ultimately that that it was really about ego and that living a spiritual life has nothing to do with wearing robes or like you know being in a particular location that spirituality is all internal it's like internal struggles it has nothing to do with what you wear what you eat or you know whether you walk around with prayer beads or whatever so decided to ultimately live life and ended up doing neuroscience research for a couple of years went to med school became a psychiatrist and now I incorporate a lot of meditation yoga Eastern principles into like clinical practice I do a lot of stuff for professional athletes performance enhancement kind of stuff some eSports orgs and that's kind of where I where I am okay that answer yeah I think so yeah can I am if you have to go to any time you can always tell me just go for it um if I were to ask you the question do you feel like we've made a lot of progress as a civilization over the past like 50 to 100 years specifically like in the Western world or ever arleigh would say more specifically in the United States would you agree or disagree with that how would you measure that generally I would agree but it depends on how you're defining progress yeah that's the question I guess I'm curious how you would define that is something I've thought about a lot recently I mean so I think progress has different facets so if you look at something like so I you know I sometimes get into discussions with like my mom for example and and not just my mom but there's a general idea that boomers like myself things that think that things used to be better in the past and that the world has become more materialistic it's become more vapid I do think for example that mental health is on the rise and I think that has a lot to do with social media but also like infant mortalities like wave [ __ ] down you know like the the norm for people growing up like a hundred or 150 years ago is that multiple of their children would die yeah and there's I mean I just think that that's progress okay like I think that yeah so I think in general we made progress and I think that the challenges of any given point in time continue to evolve and change and that the the primary challenges right now tend to be around ego materialism and like a disconnection from self okay yeah I think I agree with that I think that um gone the other way I'd put it is that the challenge is let's say 150 years ago we're lower on Maslow's hierarchy of needs and now we're getting closer to the the challenges being like at the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs oh I'm not sure if I agree with that my I'll just that my general thought on this and then you can excuse me it feels like when we measure progress it feels like we we really like quantifiable stuff so when we talk about like medical advancements like vaccine rates infant mortality graduation graduation rates median income that we look at that but it almost feels like we have I'm only 30 years old but even in my lifetime it feels like we never measure progress in terms of like how we view ourselves how we maintain our personal relationships how many friendships we have and it feels like a lot of people missed that and that around like it feels strange that like in all of this technological I'm sorry I'm 31 years old my birthday was three days ago it feels like an in the in the wake of like all of this like technological and biological medical advancement everything somehow like it feels like as a society people have totally missed the self development thing and that in some ways that's even regressing and I mean self development IRMS like lifting where I agree with you but I don't think it's regressing because when you're dying of Cholera like feeling fulfilled is irrelevant do you think that people and this isn't strong disagrees I'm just curious do you think that people that lived have you ever heard the theory that like the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that those people were probably like incredibly fulfilled and very happy and those people yeah do you think that you know that it's possible that people like a hundred years ago that Internet well I won't go to a honey years ago to like world war one stuff but like outside like Wars and stuff didn't meet people generally were more fulfilled in life and less depressed and and felt better about themselves or no so this is gonna be a little bit strange but I think that this is exactly like what I in my own life I sort of came to this realization that happiness is actually independent of like so the conciliar and I asked you like would you say that the contentment that you feel is independent of emotion yeah right so I think that like this is something that the Yogi's understood really well as they recognized that there's like there are different layers of like pain and suffering so would they use a word called book and look means suffering and the really interesting thing about Duke is that it's actually independent to pain and pleasure that you can have Duke and be pleasure and being a life full of pleasure or you can have Duke and you can have a life full of pain or you can have silk which is like contentment or bliss or happiness and being a life full of pain so I think that these are independent and the progress has been like more on the physical level but I think what we're seeing in terms of the spike of the decline of messages yeah so oh you're saying there's a meme for like suck it like succ is like I think that's why they're saying that if that's what you're looking at in your chat oh yeah okay good but that those are relatively independent and this is like a big thing that I think a lot of the people that I work with struggle with because a lot of them are successful and they think that just because you're successful you should be happy but in my experience success and Happiness like in terms of worldly success or independent uh-huh and that you know I was stunned when I was working in a jail and was talking to one of the inmates and then like was talking to one of my patients who's an investment banker and that the amount of suffering they experienced and the cause of their suffering was essentially the same mm-hmm and it really caused me to strike to scratch my head I was like how on earth is it that this investment banker is feeling the same thing that this guy in prison is feeling yeah their lives are completely different and it's this recognition that you know sure life was simpler it's hard for me to say like I do think that social media for example exacerbates ego and makes us more prone to book yeah so I would say that like social media has that kind of effect but generally speaking I think the whole point that would the made was that contentment and suffering is on a separate axis from success joy pleasure sadness failure and that I don't know if that really has changed which i think is part of the reason why like those teachings are becoming have like been so prevalent right now there's a Darwinian like effect on human knowledge uh-huh and this stuff has been around for thousands of years and it now is kind of having a revitalization because this is what we do so I am incredibly atheist very atheist very anti theological everything when I was growing up I went to a Catholic school from from grades 1 to 12 I went to a Jesuit High School in to a Catholic grade school despite being very anti religious I feel like throughout the course of my entire life the only type of institution that was giving me any type of actual like long term fulfillment actually came from the Catholic Church that like everything else in life is kind of like geared towards like true happiness is like going to school so you can get a good job and you need a good job so that you can get you know a big house and to have some whatever like a lot of things that don't I don't think necessarily go towards like a more like fulfilling life in terms of like feeling like you're your self actualized I guess we if we borrow the Maslow thing do you ever think that like these are very broad questions like do everything like the secularization of society and kind of like the loss of religion and the lack of replacement for that like leads people to get I don't know kind of lost in terms of like the things they're looking for like how do you direct somebody to find purpose in life who is like an atheist and a religious person it seems like a really hard thing to do for a lot of people well those that's three questions yeah sorry do you think that the secularization of society comes at a cost and I say yeah and I think that's why like mindfulness and yoga studios are popping up all over the place huh because that there is something that religion used to fill which we've kind of now fewer people are turning to and there's been a resurgence of like appreciation of Buddhism for example which is sort of a religion but not really like a judeo-christian religion huh in Hinduism is kind of the same way and and so I think yeah that's so like you can you can look as a scientist or an epidemiologist as I think is a better way to think about it you can look at trends in society and say like what is causing people suffering now what is causing them hurt and water people gravitating towards and I think that there's a very natural correlation there mm-hmm the second thing that you asked is if someone's an atheist how can you help them find purpose and fulfillment so I think that both ISM and Hinduism or good religions because Hinduism very few people understand this but Hinduism is theistic and atheistic at the same time it is monotheistic polytheistic and atheistic all three of these doctrines exist equally and and happily within Buddhist I mean within Hinduism so I think that like in terms of fine and giving someone a sense of purpose like they don't have to be religious but I think it can be very helpful to turn to religious texts because those are sources of very good knowledge in my opinion so I used to be and or / am an atheist still and I derive a lot of value out of a lot of a Hindu and Buddhist texts because I think it's not about like beliefs so this is the big thing is that judeo-christian religions are about believing in a particular thing whereas the Eastern religions are not they sort of start with the idea that like Paul what you want to out of this religion because there are many different paths to enlightenment uh-huh and so on my stream the other day like I don't know how what percentage of people that I listen to I mean that watch my stream are atheists are religious but I I did a story that's from a theory an Indian epic / Hindu religious sects and I think that went really well and the story is not like you should believe this and it's like the 10 commandments and this is this the story is about exploring what your purpose is in life and it's kind of like a convoluted thing that turns morality and purpose like on their heads so there's like a good guy in the story and there's a bad guy in the story but the good guy is the one who's not fulfilling his purpose and the bad guy is the one who is so it sort of causes you to grapple with questions of duty and morality and that those main are always line up and like how do you navigate life how do you find purpose I get a lot of stuff out of some of these corner quote religious tax evenly after you have to believe in the [ __ ] religion you just you know read it and think and learn and explore for yourself and come to your own conclusions sure and to answer your question in a very concrete way I think if you're looking for purpose in life a great text to start with is something called the Mahabharata because it's a it's a story about duty and responsibility okay it's just a fun read - okay so it looks like a good translation is it in entertaining or I mean I think there are cool stories like I liked video games and I loved reading the Mahabharat because there are like different kinds of weapons and there's like this half-demon guy that is unkillable and then someone has to use like he can throw lightning from the sky and he's like a child of he's a grand son of the wind-god which I just like yeah yeah yeah yeah it's cool mythology and theology especially is usually entertaining I've tried to get more into philosophy oh my [ __ ] god reading anything by even Hume or Khan or anything is a very [ __ ] dry holy [ __ ] about betrayal and and like tricking and like there's this guy who was saving this one arrow so he's got like this one-shot kill it's like he's got this one very special arrow that will destroy anything that he shoots it against and like if you're playing against that how do you create a situation where they have to use their one shot kill and protect your ace in the hole sure and so it's sort of like stories like that that I think are cool okay alright is that it guys anything else so again I I think we're good man thanks a lot honey thanks a lot doing it up like your stuff or what do you where do you would've come on yeah I am people are crucifying me because I forget to do that yeah go for it oh so you know a couple of things so we stream ice-cream on on Twitch and I do like sort of mental health support content teach meditation help people understand you know how they work as human beings because it's my belief that a lot of the reasons that we get stuck in life is we don't understand like where we come from how our mind works how our mind got to be that way and if you make a change in your life you have to understand like where the origins of your patterns come from so I essentially try to help people do that we also have a website called hell www healthy game or gg where originally it was about treating people with video game addiction but now we're just sort of expanding on all this stuff we have a beta program that were training coaches in so we've got about a dozen coaches that I'm personally training because I get about 20 to 200 requests for people so for me to work with them per day so there's no way I can help everyone I want to but I'm training a group of coaches the beta is now closed because we kind of filled up and so we're basically trying to create a community for gamers to support themselves support each other and sort of mental health for gamers by gamers it is not a medical thing so I'm a clinician but it's not medical so it's not intended to diagnose or treat anything so people should understand that we've got a discord and all that kind of good stuff - ok cool - you guys should and if y'all want to come on stream and have me talk to you then I'm open to doing that we have people all kinds of people come on stream awesome do you have a link you're just code in your cheddar whatever if you bring it up I can link it on my community or whatever I don't know you that exclamation mark disquiet um yeah I think that I think that link should be fine okay cool awesome well yeah thanks I ever want to chat again or if I wanna shed I can I'll hit you up and yeah yeah let me know cool thanks a lot I appreciate the conversation decide to explore your emotions sure technology No bye bye oh my god that dude was just insufferable am i right guy no I'm just kidding that guy was that guy was really really really intelligent it's super super super rare that I feel like I speak to somebody that is actually like listening to the words that I'm saying and then responding to them especially anybody that like claims to do what he does like generally what I'm expecting is they usually have like a very one-dimensional paradigm through which they view the world and then anything you say they're gonna try to squeeze that into that paradigm and make it come out and it's just very boring to listen to like you and a very quick you're if you're paying attention very quickly you kind of catch on to it and it's like okay do you like tell me like what [ __ ] you're trying to tell me but um he did a very good job at like understanding what I was saying and and taking that breaking it down using some internal system that he has to do that and then reconstructing it and then selling it to me in a way that made sense that yeah that was I think indicative of a very very very good thought process so that was good yeah that's awesome emotions are gay loli nice good one at any point did it feel like he was trying to catch you on something um so I personally I got the feeling sometimes that he was trying to catch me on things but I don't think he ever was I think I'm just so used to that happening that I would just assume that but I don't think he was I think that he was 100% like good faith in that conversation like he was approaching it in a positive manner and he wasn't trying to like pull a trick or whatever but I was assuming that he was because that is just what I'm so used to part like phrases like why like I over clarify everything I say and I even I [ __ ] I do this in real life now to an obnoxious extent where if you hang out with me like if you ask me a question I like I always like add like two or three conditional statements on to the end of like anything I say like it's really not but I'm so used to doing it online because and it's really dumb anyway because people always try to clip me outta context or whatever anyway so don't even know why the [ __ ] I do but um why did I oh I was curious why he asked me to explain the uncanny Mellie thing because I know that he knows the answer so I didn't know if he was asking me because he was either trying to get me to say something to understand what I was thinking or if he was trying to build rapport with me if he was I don't know if he did admit that I think he would he seemed like you admit I'm just um one of the ways you build rapport with somebody is to ask them questions whether you ask them questions about themselves it makes you feel like they're you were interested in them or if you ask them to explain things it makes them feel like you have a high opinion of them which makes ya high opinion yeah which is good yeah so I was just curious why you asked me out if it was like something like that were you saying but but I don't think um just to be like super clear I'm sorry I'm trying to be serious super super ultra super super super ultra clear with us I don't think he was trying to like play games or do like any mental tricks or whatever like I think he's being very forward and very honestly it's our time any time I perceived him as being kind of trying to get me was just because of I'm just so used to it when I talk to people that I'm always kind of like on the defensive especially like public conversations here yeah yeah what's never trained a psychologist a psychiatrist psychiatrist has to go to med school and can write prescriptions for drugs I'll receive that graduate how did you feel about his random examples comment um yeah I mean he's right typically the only reason you give an analogy for something or an example of something is if you feel like the other person doesn't understand it I mean he's like a very intelligent person so if you're having a conversation and both of you perceive yourselves as being very intelligent why the [ __ ] is the other guy giving constant analogies or examples I mean it's a good point yeah I usually just do it to elucidate a topic or a subject for the audience but it's very hard for me to have like a one-on-one conversation knowing that a lot of people are watching so I'm just I'm used to giving like a ton of examples for the thing it wasn't really necessary with somebody like him like he understands what I'm saying he understands that I understand what I'm saying like there's no reason to do it so yeah do you think you were more or less emotionally guarded during that conversation um I think I'm pretty guarded because I get very nervous that like I am I like I have experiences I have some experiences in my life that are relatively traumatic depending on how much you want to go but I don't think that those define me but I'm really worried that some people will pick up on a certain thing and then they just like that's what everything becomes about and I don't think that I have like now like in terms of him saying like Frances like I surprised myself emotional whatever yeah I think that was I think that's a fair statement but like some people will pick up on something and they'll like make your entire life about like some one traumatic event like it's like the defining moment of your life was like I don't really feel that way so I get a little nervous when people start to dig in certain directions to be clear for the 15th time I don't think he was doing that that's just like the that's the feeling I get that as soon as somebody stumbles onto one thing like oh that those two dogs dying actually represented like the entire emotional disconnect you feel on every problem that you have when you debate somebody the problem destiny the reason why you raise your voice when you debate - Sargon is because you think that if you if you win that debate against Sargon you can bring your dogs back to life and that's what it's like to come on I never like that's all I always get the feeling but that's like the direction we're going it's like dude come on but but he didn't do that at all 100% he was not like he was not going down that road at all or something so because people then agender when they're talking to ya generally they are yeah are you gonna try to be more emotional go afford to [ __ ] that maybe I don't know it's something that I've considered a lot my personal life we'll see no mean you seem somewhat shaky at times what part made you nervous I don't know I get nervous during some things I was really nervous during that conversation which is something I'll probably think about in the future I'm not really sure why I think I was more nervous that he would do like really stupid things or be really stupid is it something that I've said before like I have a very negative opinion of most people huh I've had a bad I've had pretty bad experiences with like two different therapists just whatever so like I kind of thought that like this guy would just like be trying to like pigeonhole me into some stupid Buddhist [ __ ] and that he was gonna [ __ ] like try to figure it all out or some dumb [ __ ] I had very very very that was kind of my impression going in what would happen just cuz I whatever but it wasn't like that it all like once I got more comforting to him and I realized he wasn't just trying to like nail my whole life down on like one event I felt a lot more comfortable so yeah our therapist normally psychiatrists or psychologists I don't know if therapists are normally either you can get therapists at our psychiatrists or psychologists they tend to be much more expensive than non I don't want to say not a credential because you can be a therapist you can call yourself a therapist without having a psychology or a psychiatrist degree I think but [Music] shamelessness have you ever stopped to wonder why people reading you and trying to pigeonhole you bother you so much um it bothers me because it feels like a waste of a conversation I feel like I have a relatively good understanding of myself my six month anniversary if you want to give me like any insight into my personality you need to have a very good understanding of what the [ __ ] you're talking about like if you're just like a random dude that's never really thought a lot about even your own mind let alone other people's minds you're not gonna tell me anything I haven't thought about a million times over it when I was 19 right that's why so like when some guy tries to like come up and like a hardcore psychoanalyze some aspect my personality I've thought about this [ __ ] way more than you ever [ __ ] it will and I know myself way more than you [ __ ] know me so like it's just it's insulting and it's a waste of my time to do it and it's boring generally but not but this guy was really smart he did it a really responsible way and he seemed like he knew what he understood really well like his whole thought process and how'd I break down it almost other people's thought processes so what do you mean when you say your relationships are transactional oh 19 months well we I don't like to talk about this publicly because it makes people feel very [ __ ] weird but like basically the way that I view this this is so fun snap-snap oh the train was it about transactional [ __ ] okay so this is the way that I view relationships and this all of my system of doing this is predicated on a very tight a very specific type of emotional relationship to the world if you don't share my emotional relationship with the world then this will not work for you and if you try it you're gonna be miserable and you shouldn't take my advice on this is I'm not I'm not giving you advice on how to live your life or I'm telling you how to do like a particular thing here is my part of the transactional relationship thank you : transaction appreciated this is just how I make sense of relationships basically there are people that can offer me things that I want whether that's friendship or that somebody to play games with whether it's somebody to spend time with and there are certain things that I want now I also know that there are certain things that those other people want so the idea is that if I know that I'm providing certain things that other person considers valuable that I'm likely to get something return in kind that I'll probably get something value in exchange for it and that's the type of way that I view relationships so like my assumption would be that if I stopped providing a certain level of value or I stopped demonstrating a certain level value to a person that they're not going to be interested in like demonstrating a soar level value to me that's basically how I view most of the emotional capacity and control I feel that's weird most people I feel that most people they don't think about it yeah I agree but typically usually when you present that to most people most people just feel like you're you're manipulating them are using them is usually how like it's usually like the feeling that most people have when I give that explanation honestly like I'm less like I don't talk about it publicly very much I try to say this with every person that I date because I don't want to be with somebody that doesn't like fully understand me because I figure at some point it's gonna come up but I think that most people that I have any type of relationship with personally will feel uncomfortable if I reveal that thought process to them because I think oh you're just using me but like I mean like I apply this analysis to all types of relationships like I think everybody uses everybody to some degree the goal is just that like that your usage of another person that you know like you're providing them some exchange of value that they deem it worthy or whatever is basically I say right how does it concept of unconditional love apply to I don't believe in unconditional love I'm sure some people do it because they feel like they need to where they have some duty or obligation to it but like I don't rely on it or give it to anybody you know if Nathan grew up to be like a serial rapist or some [ __ ] I wouldn't [ __ ] love and [ __ ] that toss him to the [ __ ] jail leave him forever I don't believe like an unconditional or anything like that are you ready for a hot question do you find that your transactional way of doing things opens you have to be a money bank for other people more than average person meaning your way of being beneficial to a person is by offering what is evil yeah I mean that can definitely be the case sometimes it's just up for me to figure out like if I am comfortable with that transaction or not like so for instance like if you pay for a prostitute or if you pay for porn right that's like a transaction that you're comfortable with but then there can be other ways to where it works out where like say you have a household where one person works and one person doesn't work like it's not a bad thing that one person is providing the financial support while the other person is like keeping up in the house whatever right because in one way you know a person is using the other person for money but then the other person might be using that person to like maintain a house or whatever right these aren't necessarily one-sided transactions even if only one side is providing the money how do you view other how do you think other people relationships as opposed to a transactional view um I don't know and if there's a whole bunch of flowery worded like some people I know they like they feel special about people like they make them feel a special way and so they want to make them feel a special way and then I saw something like that you said it might be beneficial to we're gonna be more emotionally open is that something want to work on her difficult do you think would be for you to do so I don't know it's something I've thought about a lot but it seems like a very hard path to go down but I don't know maybe someday we'll see would you have asked dr. kay how he's able to have non transaction transactional relationships maybe I thought like a deeper conversation or longer conversation though and I'd seem like he needed to go so when you cut people off from your life how do you remove all your emotional thinking about them I mean I think it goes away with time it seems to be the case do you extend goodwill in your relationships yeah of course like allowing people to [ __ ] up for instance but I think that like extending goodwill to people is just like a deeper manifestation of like like tit for tat relationships so for instance if we read analyze certain like evolutionary systems where animals punish each other or people punish each other for certain types of behaviors you may have something called tit for tat where if somebody you know you know good good good good bad and then bad response and that type of thing might be ultimately destructive because nobody has any forgiveness right but it's it for tat system where you have one forgive in their weave you do good good good good good bad good maybe that person is good again good good good like that right maybe like I having a one forgiveness or there are more complicated versions of tit for tat there's a play out as well I think that like a far down the road from those tit-for-tat systems you find things like good well like if somebody [ __ ] up or makes a mistake or whatever it's usually worth it different government because in the long run there's more fruit to be harvested forgiving somebody than holding everybody accountable to every single mistake that may show is those gamer hands now there you go I think you value your time and your religious schooling because of some underpinning values that religions typically promote the way that I heard this explained that I thought was like really beneficial was um I think it was again transhumanism on Sean Carroll's podcast but basically the idea is that theology is worthless [ __ ] theology we don't need gods we don't need spooky men bla bla bla [ __ ] all that [ __ ] but religion and all of the rituals that go alongside religion and the community is incredibly [ __ ] valuable maybe even fundamental to the human experience the idea of gathering around every day of the week to be together with your fellow people to say hi to everybody in your community doing volunteering projects and working with that community to accomplish goals having like a set of customs that you believe in a coming-of-age ceremony when you're 1617 to show everybody that you've grown into an adult that these are things that atheists never should have ceded to religious people to theological people that just because you're not religious doesn't mean you can have your own set of traditions it doesn't you can have your own set of community values it doesn't mean you can of your own congregation every week we get together and talk about things that are important to you that sometimes when we cast aside to theology we get rid of all the good things that religion had involved with it and that's a very incredibly negative I think yeah I'm incredibly atheistic by the way I [ __ ] hate everything related to God or whatever but I can recognize the extreme value that goes along with a lot of religious doctrines and not just Buddhist ones either but like even like judeo-christian really religions have a lot of incredibly valuable ceremonies and rituals associated with them your lenses so limited towards Abrahamic religions there's plenty Valley to be gained from theology you ought to at least Wikipedia other forms at the ology before you disagree on upfront maybe probably the religion I thought a lot about the religious thing ever since my mushrooms Trevor ironically enough but I thought a lot about the religious thing because I always used to fetishize the pursuit of knowledge because I used to think that knowledge or information knowledge everywhere dounia's I'm gonna use truth with a lowercase T with a capital T truth I always thought that discovering true things about the world was down data very well was intrinsically valuable that finding out more information about the world in and of itself is a good thing period after my mushroom trip I realized that wasn't actually true that information gathering is only useful insofar as it provides some benefit to your life that if you start to gather a bunch of truths that don't really make you happy then they don't really serve you very well they don't really do much for you it's not really a good truth to uncover you need to be able to leverage these truths that was [ __ ] weird that uh yeah we acquire truth because we can usually use that truth to achieve greater happiness in life hold on one second I'm going somewhere with this but the but the reality is is yeah that we acquire truth oh the reason why I thought about this is because you know out there somewhere you know there are people that have a very good grasp of the world they understand they have good processes for evaluating you know what is true and what is false what is empirically verifiable versus what is a bunch of hogwash a bunch of religious [ __ ] and they're very smart for it incredibly intelligent very smart they understand the world much better than some crazy religious fanatic [ __ ] right but maybe they're just sad maybe they're miserable they don't really have like a purpose in life they don't really know what they're doing they don't really you know feel like they belong and they're kind of like not very happy it's a little bit cynical a little bit miserable and deeply unhappy and then you know alongside that person you know there might be some dude that's 50 years old he doesn't think that dinosaurs are real Thanks the earth is 6,000 years old empirically he just believes so many things about the world that is so [ __ ] stupid unbelievably stupid but every Sunday he goes to church he listens to his pastor he sees all of his you know fellow community members you know he talks to people he loves his life he loves his children he feels like he has real purpose in life there's an afterlife awaiting him he's super happy every family death that happens is only a brief period of sadness before he feels like he's okay with it and moves on and he spends his entire life with an incredibly positive outlook on the world and just feels incredibly positive about every aspect of his life and at the end of the journey of these two people you you you have to ask yourself like well who's like better off you know the the incredibly cynical deeply unhappy guy that has a well-founded like empirical analysis good view of the world you know there's miserable is that guy better off than the the stupid religious person that like genuinely loves his family loves his kids loves his life and is looking forward to what comes next like that's a really hard topic two years ago that woulda been a really hard question for me to engage with because reasonably I have to admit that the ignorance is bliss argument is strong but it's so deeply unsatisfying but now when I look at it it's like yeah [ __ ] like if you're gonna spend your time you know being an atheist disregarding spiritual [ __ ] or disregarding immaterial things and you only want to look at like the factual whatever you have to do it you have an obligation to yourself to make sure that that information that you gather is serving some type of like greater purpose in terms of like making you happy because if it's not you're just [ __ ] yourself like you're literally spending hours of your life investigating things that are making you miserable which is like contradictory to the entire human experience which is incredibly stupid that's that's really the dumb [ __ ] in life yeah don't do that don't be that guy Dustin you're going to die anyway so it's better to know as much true things as you can before you die do you understand that you're presupposing a value of it of intelligence there though right because a religious person could just as easily say you're going to die anyways so it's better to just not know anything before you die right like I could go either way do you think RAM agrees the knowledge and Happiness he but how do you master an ignorance has many hidden negatives on a societal level though yeah of course it could sure I mean the acquisition of knowledge or the analysis of the world to reveal truths about the world can absolutely lead to things that make you happy all I'm saying is don't lose sight of like why you acquire knowledge ultimately you acquire knowledge for happiness not and not in and of itself right what leads you to feel a high sense of respect for someone honest to god like oh I just had this conversation with a couple friends a couple days ago aim shoot so this might be my inner western person talking or my inner liberal talking I really appreciate people that I feel like are unique individuals that have their own thought processes that's something that I very much value like if I ask a question and I feel like somebody is passing this through some type of internal filter to deliver me an answer that is such it sounds really simple but that is such an incredibly [ __ ] rare thing to find in somebody people that can take things break them down based on some internal rubric and then give me an answer that is uniquely there it's so hard to find and I really appreciate that in people it seems like today it seems like people tend to belong to two groups and when you ask somebody a question their what their mind thinks is like okay this is the group that I'm in what is the answer that I'm supposed to give based on my identity rather than like what is it that I genuinely actually believe that's something that really bothers me can give me an example the dress example is like a really good one I think like if you were to ask somebody you know like how do you feel about wearing a dress I think like very rarely somebody might actually like consider it or actually we can say incest even is a really good example right how do you feel it incest like very few people can actually critically engage with that topic and consider the question generally what you're saying is like okay well Society says this is bad I'm part of society I want people think I'm [ __ ] weird so obviously is [ __ ] horrible and that's usually the answer that somebody gives you because they can't really step outside of whatever group they're in to think of like a unique response in their own generally yeah oh yeah like yeah there's a lot of examples like when basket said that sanctions sometimes might be worse than a war that's the fact that Hasan couldn't even for a second think that that might be true like sanctions better than war or worse than war that's impart like of that obviously that must be possible sometimes I'm sure for instance we can look at the Iranian sanctions and see how many people's lives when damaged right or the North Korean sanctions as how many people been killed by that and then say like compare that to like certain types of wars and there's probably like a greater loss of life to some sanctions Awards even if we don't acknowledge it that might be the case for Iraq or other countries like we can at least acknowledge that's probably the case sometimes you know same thing with like when Mike asked me like huh so what can you tell me anything good about fascism it's like yeah I can think of a couple things that are probably beneficial to fascism or fascist governments and he like loses his [ __ ] mind it's like what the [ __ ] is wrong with you yeah there's a lot of that yeah oh yeah when you ask this I'm like is there any case ever where somebody should call the cops he's like no never call the cops like what if a woman was walking down an alley and two guys were about to rape her should she call the cops I wouldn't call the cops again oh great answer dude yeah I need a strict debating conservatives again so I can get better conservative examples instead of a cab examples I shed sorry destiny Gregory is salmieri has a goat on YouTube about the quality you said you respected people called thinking for yourself I recommend sure well the hard thing though is it like everybody likes to think that they're an individual everybody likes to think that they hate they think for themselves like dr. Katie brought up he brought that up that like well if I were to talk to anybody they would all say that they have their own internal thought processes and they genuinely arrive at their conclusions yeah a lot of people say that it's not unto you actually this is why I like debate as aggressive as it sounds this is why I like debating people in person more than I like watching YouTube videos because in a debate you really find out if they have a critical thought process because now I'm challenging you in real-time and now I get to see how your mind works I don't have to like try to contend with a script now I'm contending with an actual person so now I can find out like do you understand why you believe the things you do do you understand how to deal with opposite points of view or are you just somebody that like gets a big chunk of information and then shoots out a script that like loosely relates to the topics and then reads it off on a YouTube channel you know that's one of the reasons I like cut live conversation so much I don't understand how a doctor couldn't understand their screen Destin other people I guess he was stuck trying to make that point so I think ultimately what he was saying was that my initial answer to why do people hate you was I said well it's because I think I have a unique thought process and he was say well everybody thinks they be any thoughts process why would people hate you just because you have some quality that they perceive themselves as having I think that I think he was trying to get to that point that my explanation that was insufficient to explain why other people wouldn't like me I think yeah where you talk with him again yeah maybe at some point yeah do you think a song would benefit from having a couple with dr. kay maybe have to be funny you guys should push him to do it have commercials bokya [Music] [Music]

Channel: Destiny

Views: 1,047,662

Rating: 4.8454928 out of 5

Keywords: steven bonnell, ted talk, ted talks, harvard, dr. Kanojia, Harvard psychiatrist, psychiatrist, reckful, video game therapy, destiny debates, destiny debate, destiny jontron, destiny sargon, destiny lauren southern, jontron destiny, destiny jesse lee peterson, jesse lee peterson destiny, destiny lilypichu, destiny ben shapiro, bestiny of destiny, Dr. Alok Kanojia, Dr. Kanojia, alok kanojia, dr. alok kanojia, dr kanojia reckful, harvard psychiatrist dr. kanojia, mental health

Id: O7-8dqCOJMY

Length: 127min 25sec (7645 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 16 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/thowaway_throwaway]

HOLY SHIT

His grandma murdered a bunch dogs so he kinda learned not to care about people - https://youtu.be/O7-8dqCOJMY?t=3233

[u/SnapshillBot]

The only point you'll ever have is that you represent the sad, fedora-wearing, bloated face of capitalism in the 21st century.

Unfairly made famous and rich through copied ideas and appealing to kids. And yet is driven by some bizarre need for attention to spout insane, teenage edge lord style views. You are clearly not all that up on politics (or anything, maybe you can code?) yet your wealth has given you an oversized platform of confused 12 to 16 year olds to yell "sjwjjwjwj" at over and over again.

Honestly, I don't give a shit if you've been driven mad by fame or some bullshit. When I see amazing creative people dying depressed in poverty every day and you get to sit on twitter and make half assed 'now yur the nazi' comments, it's fucking sickening.

Snapshots:

1. Harvard Psychiatrist uncovers how D... - archive.org, archive.today

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[u/GeminiRocket]

The combine power of the Indian Vedas and (((psychiatry)))

He never had a chance.