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Malcolm Gladwell's 12 Rules for Life · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:20
Speaker 2: So one thing that chapter one is about is the
0:24
Speaker 2: fact that if a lobster is defeated in a dominance battle,
0:28
Speaker 2: you can give it essentially antidepressants, and it will fight again.
0:34
Speaker 1: There's a Canadian like me, my age, almost exactly, who
0:39
Speaker 1: teaches my favorite subject, psychology at my alma mater, the
0:43
Speaker 1: University of Toronto. His name is Jordan Peterson.
0:50
Speaker 2: If you want to understand a complex nervous system, it's
0:52
Speaker 2: a good idea to understand a simple one first and
0:55
Speaker 2: then sort of elaborate upwards. And it turns out that
0:57
Speaker 2: seratonin governs status, emotional regulation, and posture in lobsters just
1:02
Speaker 2: like it does in human beings, and so that would
1:04
Speaker 2: just blew me away.
1:07
Speaker 1: He wrote a very provocative self help book called Twelve
1:10
Speaker 1: Rules for Life. Rule number one stand up straight with
1:15
Speaker 1: your shoulders back. Rule number two treat yourself like someone
1:19
Speaker 1: you are responsible for helping. Rule number twelve, pat a
1:23
Speaker 1: cat when you encounter one on the street. Peterson's book
1:28
Speaker 1: was a sensation, and soon all kinds of other people
1:31
Speaker 1: were doing twelve rules, like the economist Tyler Cowen, whose
1:35
Speaker 1: blog Marginal Revolution is the first thing I read every morning.
1:38
Speaker 1: I particularly like Cowen's rule number seven, learn how to
1:42
Speaker 1: learn from those who offend you every time you turn
1:46
Speaker 1: a corner. Twelve rules the columnist Megan McCardell rule number three.
1:52
Speaker 1: Always order one extra dish at a restaurant, an unfamiliar one.
1:57
Speaker 1: You might like it, which would be splendid. If you
1:59
Speaker 1: don't like it, all you lost was a couple of bucks.
2:03
Speaker 1: The exercise of curiosity requires a risk, a sacrifice, a commitment.
2:09
Speaker 1: I love that. Also, mccardle's rule number twelve. Always make
2:16
Speaker 1: more dinner rolls than you think you can eat. For
2:19
Speaker 1: some reason, dinner rolls loom much larger in our imaginations
2:23
Speaker 1: than in our stomachs. Whoa Megan mccardal makes her own
2:28
Speaker 1: dinner rolls. Everybody's doing twelve rules. Wait, I'm jealous. My
2:39
Speaker 1: name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my
2:42
Speaker 1: podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is about
2:47
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell's twelve Rules for a Living, my guiding principles.
2:51
Speaker 1: My wisdom distilled. EXCEPT thought about this for like a month,
2:58
Speaker 1: and I realized I don't have twelve rules. I just don't.
3:02
Speaker 1: I mean, I have rules like the fact that I
3:05
Speaker 1: only drink five liquids ever, water, tea, red wine, espresso,
3:10
Speaker 1: and milk in some combination. But that's not a rule
3:13
Speaker 1: for living. It's just pointlessly provocative. Self denial the least
3:17
Speaker 1: attractive part of my personality. If you want a cocktail,
3:20
Speaker 1: you should have a cocktail. I only have one rule,
3:24
Speaker 1: pull the goalie.
3:32
Speaker 3: What do you mean when you say you're obnoxious? Ah
3:35
Speaker 3: the most specific.
3:37
Speaker 4: If I found something funny which is still a disease
3:41
Speaker 4: I have, I will say it, even if it's gets
3:46
Speaker 4: me in some trouble. I never thought I was particularly cruel,
3:49
Speaker 4: but I was a class cut up.
3:51
Speaker 1: My one rule for living came to me from the
3:53
Speaker 1: work of two people, Cliff Assness and Aaron Brown, both
3:57
Speaker 1: philosophers of a sort and friends. This is Clifford Assnes.
4:02
Speaker 1: He's in his mid fifties, bald Goate grew up middle class,
4:05
Speaker 1: Jewish and Long Island.
4:06
Speaker 4: I was in the honors classes, and I was the
4:08
Speaker 4: cut up in the honors class. Whi's always a strange
4:10
Speaker 4: thing to be. You don't think of those classes as
4:12
Speaker 4: having one.
4:13
Speaker 3: But we had him.
4:14
Speaker 4: Wasn't always me too. We were not perfectly well behaved,
4:18
Speaker 4: so obnoxious. I was tolerable, but I found myself extremely funny.
4:24
Speaker 1: Now I should say that I didn't find Cliff Astness obnoxious,
4:28
Speaker 1: he's delightful company. Instead, I suspect he is what psychologists
4:32
Speaker 1: call disagreeable short digression. Psychologists believe that human personality can
4:41
Speaker 1: be assessed along five dimensions extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness to experience,
4:48
Speaker 1: and finally agreeableness. My sense of Cliff Astness, he's at
4:54
Speaker 1: the low end of that last trait number five. He's
4:57
Speaker 1: low agreeable disagreeable, which is not the same as obnoxious.
5:01
Speaker 1: It's rather the quality of not being depended on or
5:04
Speaker 1: particularly interested in the approval of others. When I went
5:10
Speaker 1: to interview Cliff Astness in Manhattan, I turned on my
5:13
Speaker 1: digital recorder and discovered that my memory flash guard was full,
5:17
Speaker 1: And after much fluster and fumbling, I realized I had
5:20
Speaker 1: no idea how to delete any of the existing data
5:23
Speaker 1: from the flashguard to make room for my interview with Asnes. Now,
5:27
Speaker 1: the rational thing would have been for me to hand
5:29
Speaker 1: Asness the digital recorder and ask him to figure it out.
5:33
Speaker 1: Because Cliff Astness has an IQ I'm guessing two to
5:36
Speaker 1: three standard deviations higher than mine. He could have solved
5:40
Speaker 1: the problem in about thirty seconds, but I didn't hand
5:43
Speaker 1: on the recorder because I was embarrassed, because I worried
5:47
Speaker 1: that he would think I was pathetic and that concern
5:50
Speaker 1: was more important to me than actually fixing my tape
5:52
Speaker 1: recorder issues. I am agreeable, I am interested in the
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Speaker 1: approval of others. I am the opposite of cliff Astness.
6:01
Speaker 1: So I ended up running down forty second Street, two
6:04
Speaker 1: cross down blocks to Staples to get another flashguard to
6:07
Speaker 1: replace the one. I was too embarrassed to ask for
6:10
Speaker 1: help figuring.
6:10
Speaker 4: Out here you may include this is this is. This
6:17
Speaker 4: is not a secret. I don't work as hard as
6:19
Speaker 4: people think. I goof off a lot.
6:22
Speaker 1: Cliff Astness likes puzzles, games, problems that engage the imagination.
6:28
Speaker 4: I have been caught several times playing internet chess in
6:32
Speaker 4: my office from people, and I say, caught. I'm the
6:35
Speaker 4: senior guy at the firm. I don't, I don't, I
6:36
Speaker 4: don't quit over this. But people come in and I'm like, yeah,
6:39
Speaker 4: I gotta beat this guy, hold on more or lose.
6:41
Speaker 4: I'm not a great chess player.
6:43
Speaker 1: He doesn't play conventional chess. He plays one minute chess,
6:47
Speaker 1: known as bullet chess. If you're curious, this is what
6:50
Speaker 1: a typical bullet match sounds like. It's like Einstein playing
7:00
Speaker 1: ping pong. By the way, when Astnes says I'm the
7:05
Speaker 1: senior guy at the firm, he's referring to the fact
7:07
Speaker 1: that he heads a company called aq R Capital Applied
7:11
Speaker 1: Quantitative Research, a hedge fund with two hundred and twenty
7:15
Speaker 1: five billion dollars under management, which brings me to philosopher
7:20
Speaker 1: number two, the second architect of the Pologuli principle, Cliff Astnes'
7:25
Speaker 1: friend Aaron Brown. If we were to create a disagreeableness
7:30
Speaker 1: scale where zero is like a golden retriever and ten
7:33
Speaker 1: is mister Spock, Cliff Astness would be a solid seven.
7:37
Speaker 1: Aaron Brown is an eight, maybe even an eight point five.
7:44
Speaker 1: Brown is a member of the tribe of mathematically minded
7:47
Speaker 1: finance guys known as quants. The Wall Street Quants used
7:51
Speaker 1: to gather after work at the Odeon Restaurant in downtown
7:53
Speaker 1: Manhattan to talk about Gaussian probability in the bond market.
7:59
Speaker 5: Yeah, so there's different definitions of quant. So remember quant
8:02
Speaker 5: is an insult invented in the mid nineties that became
8:06
Speaker 5: adopted as a point of pride.
8:09
Speaker 1: Aaron Brown is a big guy beard, impassive demeanor. When
8:13
Speaker 1: I met him, I was reminded of my favorite joke
8:16
Speaker 1: about engineers. The optimist sees the glasses half full. The
8:19
Speaker 1: pessimist sees the glass as half empty. The engineer wonders
8:23
Speaker 1: why the glass is twice as large as it needs
8:25
Speaker 1: to be. Brown grew up in Seattle. His mom had
8:30
Speaker 1: a master's in chemistry. His dad had a PhD in physics.
8:34
Speaker 1: Did a lot of unconventional work for the Air Force,
8:37
Speaker 1: like the time he inherited a strange contraption.
8:41
Speaker 5: The Air Force had even this guy like two million
8:43
Speaker 5: dollars over ten years to build some machine, and they
8:46
Speaker 5: didn't know what it was supposed to do, but they
8:48
Speaker 5: know he was really smart. And then he killed himself,
8:51
Speaker 5: and so the Air Force said, is there anybody who
8:53
Speaker 5: wants this machine? You can figure out what it does
8:55
Speaker 5: and fix it him. My dad said, chure, I'll take it,
8:56
Speaker 5: and he had in our base learn.
8:59
Speaker 1: A tortured genius builds a sinister contraption with millions of
9:03
Speaker 1: dollars of secret Pentagon money. The man mysteriously commits suicide.
9:07
Speaker 1: The Air Force says, who wants the machine? Aaron Brown's
9:12
Speaker 1: dad says, over here, over here. He puts it in
9:15
Speaker 1: his basement and says to his teenage son, Aaron, Hey,
9:18
Speaker 1: take a look if you want, Like it's a box
9:20
Speaker 1: of legos. This is how you raise a child to
9:25
Speaker 1: be an eight point five?
9:27
Speaker 3: What was the machine?
9:28
Speaker 5: It was just this huge fish. I stared at that
9:31
Speaker 5: thing for hours and hours. I couldn't have tubes and
9:34
Speaker 5: wires and this and that. And he turned it on
9:37
Speaker 5: and it did kind of you know, lights would light
9:39
Speaker 5: up and do interesting things. But we never figured out
9:41
Speaker 5: what it was intended to do. His note his notes
9:43
Speaker 5: were indecipherable, and he burned some of them. So either
9:47
Speaker 5: he was the guy who invented like the Universal Wonder
9:50
Speaker 5: Machine and whatever, or he was just some crazy guy
9:54
Speaker 5: who liked quit wires together.
9:55
Speaker 1: It was the thing from that movie from Back to
9:58
Speaker 1: the Future, the flat the flux capacitor.
10:00
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, maybe he didn't. Maybe he teleported himself to
10:05
Speaker 5: some other civilization or something.
10:09
Speaker 1: When Aaron Brown was a teenager, Seattle was in the
10:11
Speaker 1: midst of a deep recession. All around him, people are
10:14
Speaker 1: losing their jobs. He decides he needs a marketable skill.
10:18
Speaker 1: He teaches himself poker and finds a big money game
10:21
Speaker 1: in the basement of a local tavern.
10:23
Speaker 5: And I figured out two really important things. I was
10:27
Speaker 5: much better than these guys. I could easily win money consistently,
10:32
Speaker 5: and they let me win it and walk out with it.
10:34
Speaker 5: You know, a kid comes in plays, walks out. So
10:37
Speaker 5: that's like epiphany for me that says, okay.
10:39
Speaker 3: You're how old?
10:40
Speaker 5: Fourteen? But I was a shy kid. This took every
10:44
Speaker 5: ounce of courage I possessed a walk in there. You know,
10:46
Speaker 5: there are people who could have done this and it
10:47
Speaker 5: wouldn't have been a big deal. But for me, it
10:49
Speaker 5: was like the most traumatic event in my life. But
10:52
Speaker 5: when I walked down, I said, Okay, I never have
10:54
Speaker 5: to worry about getting a meal, you know, having a
10:56
Speaker 5: place to stay because you always find a poker game.
10:59
Speaker 3: Did you pay you way through Harvard with poker?
11:01
Speaker 4: Yes?
11:03
Speaker 1: Aaron Brown ends up on Wall Street, then goes to
11:05
Speaker 1: work for Cliff Astness at AQR Capital. Of course, a
11:10
Speaker 1: match made in Heaven.
11:12
Speaker 3: Do you guys think the same way? Do you have
11:13
Speaker 3: differences in the way you approach problems?
11:15
Speaker 5: Well, the massive difference and the reason he has billions
11:18
Speaker 5: of dollars and I have a comfortable living. He cares
11:22
Speaker 5: far more. He gets literally physically angry when things don't
11:29
Speaker 5: work and lose money. I'd rather work on an interesting
11:32
Speaker 5: problem than profitable problem.
11:35
Speaker 1: Now what do these two do aside from making money?
11:37
Speaker 1: Of course, they do thought experiments, write them up and
11:42
Speaker 1: post them online on something called SSRN, the Social Science
11:46
Speaker 1: Research Network, in my opinion, the greatest website on the Internet.
11:53
Speaker 1: It's a place where anyone, anyone can post any kind
11:56
Speaker 1: of paper or research or argument, and every article posted
12:00
Speaker 1: is then ranked according to its popularity. As I'm writing this,
12:03
Speaker 1: there are seven hundred and ninety eight seven hundred and
12:07
Speaker 1: forty five papers on SSRN. I don't know if you remember.
12:11
Speaker 1: Back at the beginning of this season an episode called
12:13
Speaker 1: Divide and Conquer, I talked about my love of law
12:16
Speaker 1: review articles. Well, where do you think I read law
12:19
Speaker 1: review articles? Not in law reviews? Are you kidding? Why
12:22
Speaker 1: would I wait two years for some dusty publication to
12:25
Speaker 1: put something out. I read them on SSRN because that's
12:29
Speaker 1: where everyone posts their articles the minute they finish. In Manhattan.
12:33
Speaker 1: For years, the most important source of gossip was page
12:36
Speaker 1: six of the New York Post. SSRN is page six
12:41
Speaker 1: for Dorks, so not long ago. I'm on SSRN poking
12:46
Speaker 1: around and lo and behold what is the number one
12:49
Speaker 1: ranked paper at the time. Pulling the goalie Hockey and
12:54
Speaker 1: Investment Implications by Clifford Astas and Aaron Brown. I thought
13:00
Speaker 1: I didn't have any rules for living. I was wrong.
13:05
Speaker 5: Pulling a goaltender down three so really giving a big
13:11
Speaker 5: advantage on the power of flay with possession firmly a standler.
13:16
Speaker 1: Here's the issue. You're playing hockey. Your team is down
13:19
Speaker 1: by one goal late in the game. The coach of
13:22
Speaker 1: the losing team typically removes his own goalie and substitutes
13:26
Speaker 1: in an extra attacker. So instead of having five offensive
13:29
Speaker 1: players and a goalie guarding the net, he now has
13:32
Speaker 1: six offensive players and no one guarding his net.
13:39
Speaker 4: That don't make him pay for it, I'm shorthanded goal.
13:43
Speaker 1: It's a tradeoff. Pulling a goalie makes it easier for
13:46
Speaker 1: the other team to score and put the game even
13:48
Speaker 1: further out of reach, But at the same time, your
13:51
Speaker 1: extra attacker increases your chances of scoring a goal and
13:54
Speaker 1: tying the game. Now, if you watch hockey, you know
14:00
Speaker 1: that coaches typically pull a goalie with a minute or
14:03
Speaker 1: a minute and a half left in the game. But
14:05
Speaker 1: that's just hockey tradition. It's not based on data. When
14:10
Speaker 1: exactly should you pull the goalie?
14:12
Speaker 3: Tell me the genesis of this paper I love so much.
14:16
Speaker 5: Okay, Well, Cliff and I talk a lot about sort
14:19
Speaker 5: of quant sports stuff, and I have always been talking
14:23
Speaker 5: to him about decisions that coaches make that are mathematically indefensible,
14:29
Speaker 5: but you know, makes sense from the coach's motivation. And
14:32
Speaker 5: specifically we were talking about Seattle Seahawks twenty fourteen Super
14:37
Speaker 5: Bowl New New England Patriots. I got the ball on
14:39
Speaker 5: the one yard line, second down, twenty six seconds.
14:41
Speaker 6: To go, second in goal, Russell Wilson, what are you doing?
14:45
Speaker 4: He gets picked up by the undrafted rookie free agent.
14:48
Speaker 6: From Western Alabama, Malcolm Butler.
14:51
Speaker 4: Who preserves the victory.
14:53
Speaker 6: And it will leave everybody asking why in the world.
14:56
Speaker 1: With marsha on in the back building, the Seahawks throw
14:59
Speaker 1: the football twenty one reasons. At this point, Brown goes
15:03
Speaker 1: on a tangent for maybe fifteen minutes about that particular play,
15:08
Speaker 1: which has gone down in Super Bowl lore as one
15:11
Speaker 1: of the worst coaching decisions in the history of football.
15:14
Speaker 1: But Brown convinces me that in fact, it was the
15:17
Speaker 1: right call, the rational call, and I would explain his
15:21
Speaker 1: logic to you, except that we have much bigger fish
15:25
Speaker 1: to fry. Anyway, talk turns to pulling the goalie in hockey,
15:30
Speaker 1: and Cliff says to Aaron, Oh, I've done some work
15:33
Speaker 1: on this already.
15:34
Speaker 4: It's probably six seven years ago, man, five six years ago.
15:38
Speaker 4: I wrote this model and xcept out of pure personal interest.
15:42
Speaker 4: I thought I had a neat way to think about
15:44
Speaker 4: the problem, and essentially it was it's really hard to
15:48
Speaker 4: think about what five minutes left, but with ten seconds left,
15:51
Speaker 4: it's really easy to think about.
15:53
Speaker 1: Cliff shared his calculations with Aaron Brown. Aaron made them
15:57
Speaker 1: better and built a beautiful computer model, and their conclusion
16:01
Speaker 1: was a team down by one goal should pull its
16:03
Speaker 1: goalie with five minutes and forty seconds left in the game,
16:08
Speaker 1: and a team down by two goals should pull its
16:10
Speaker 1: goalie with eleven minutes and forty seconds left. Eleven minutes
16:15
Speaker 1: and forty seconds with an undefended goal. No one in
16:20
Speaker 1: all of hockey pulls their goalie with that much time left.
16:23
Speaker 1: If a coach did that in a playoff game with
16:25
Speaker 1: real stakes involved, the entire arena would probably go up
16:29
Speaker 1: in smoke. In basketball and baseball, there's been a statistical
16:36
Speaker 1: revolution over the past generation known as moneyball, where advanced
16:40
Speaker 1: metrics have been applied to maximize every aspect of the game.
16:44
Speaker 1: Hockey is a step behind, with the exception of my
16:47
Speaker 1: beloved Toronto maple Leafs, who if a genuine quant is
16:50
Speaker 1: their leader. This is a sport where players pick fights
16:54
Speaker 1: with each other in full knowledge of the fact that
16:56
Speaker 1: the penalty for their transgressions will materially diminish their team's
17:00
Speaker 1: chances of winning. Baseball is quantum theory. Hockey is the
17:04
Speaker 1: grown up, professional version of Red Rover, Red Rover, let
17:08
Speaker 1: Waying Gretzky come over. Hockey coaches are not looking for
17:12
Speaker 1: strategic tips on SSRN, So what do they do? They
17:17
Speaker 1: keep their goalie in place until the very last minute,
17:20
Speaker 1: defending the goal. And why do they keep doing that?
17:24
Speaker 1: Because anything else would be impossibly disagreeable. Imagine you're a
17:33
Speaker 1: coach of a hockey team down three to one with
17:35
Speaker 1: eleven minutes and forty seconds left in the game. You
17:38
Speaker 1: pull your goalie. The other team scores, so now it's
17:41
Speaker 1: for to one with half of the final period left,
17:43
Speaker 1: and now your fans think that you've robbed them of
17:45
Speaker 1: what might have been a reasonably interesting game. They'll hate
17:48
Speaker 1: you and so your players, because it's an awful lot
17:53
Speaker 1: more humiliating to lose a lopsided game than a close one.
17:57
Speaker 4: The Cliff and Aaron strategy maybe, again inn our geeky sense, optimal,
18:03
Speaker 4: but it doesn't provide the optimal or the maximum amount
18:06
Speaker 4: of entertainment.
18:07
Speaker 3: It is very high.
18:09
Speaker 4: Probability you create a laugher where you get down by three,
18:13
Speaker 4: down by four, And of course, if you follow Cliff
18:15
Speaker 4: and Aaron's cold vulcan model you never put the goalie
18:18
Speaker 4: back in. You're still an infinitesimal chance you will tie it,
18:21
Speaker 4: and you lose fourteen to nothing. And it's embarrassing and
18:24
Speaker 4: maybe entertainment in a side show kind of way, but
18:27
Speaker 4: it's not what they want.
18:28
Speaker 1: Who would try this or anything like it, Not anyone
18:32
Speaker 1: who has any normal human expectation of being liked and applauded.
18:37
Speaker 1: But do Cliff and Aaron need to be liked and applauded. No,
18:40
Speaker 1: they don't. Astas founded his firm with a couple of
18:44
Speaker 1: other PhD graduates from the finance department of the University
18:47
Speaker 1: of Chicago, which is like the geek capital of the world,
18:51
Speaker 1: and his basic hiring philosophy ever since has been to
18:54
Speaker 1: hire more PhDs disagreeable quants just like him. He's now
19:00
Speaker 1: up to seventy three PhDs. For comparison purposes, the economics
19:05
Speaker 1: faculty at MIT has forty one PhDs at one point
19:09
Speaker 1: seven eight x MIT and counting. Now does he need
19:14
Speaker 1: that many PhDs? I have no idea, But how much
19:17
Speaker 1: more fun is office life for insanely smart, disagreeable people
19:21
Speaker 1: if at all times they are surrounded by dozens and
19:24
Speaker 1: dozens of other insanely smart and disagreeable people circling each
19:28
Speaker 1: other's arguments like vultures.
19:32
Speaker 5: Which is going to be one of the watershed days
19:34
Speaker 5: in financial market's history.
19:36
Speaker 1: It was a manic Monday in the financial markets.
19:39
Speaker 7: The Dow tumbled more than five hundred points after two
19:42
Speaker 7: pillars of the Street tumbled over the weekend.
19:45
Speaker 1: Remember the start of the financial crisis in two thousand
19:48
Speaker 1: and eight, when no one knew what to do as
19:50
Speaker 1: stocks were falling in banks teetering on the brink, and
19:53
Speaker 1: everyone was running around screaming for the Secretary of the
19:55
Speaker 1: Treasury to do something. Aaron Brown told me that if
19:59
Speaker 1: he had been Treasury Secretary, he would have done nothing.
20:04
Speaker 1: In fact, he would have gone on vacation for a
20:06
Speaker 1: few months, because the truth was no no one knew
20:09
Speaker 1: what to do. And when no one knows what to do,
20:11
Speaker 1: Aaron Brown says, the rational thing is to wait until
20:14
Speaker 1: you have the data you need before you start throwing
20:17
Speaker 1: around trillions of dollars in bailout money. This is exactly
20:21
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that someone with a disagreeable score
20:25
Speaker 1: of eight point five would say. In times of panic,
20:28
Speaker 1: the agreeable Treasury Secretary would want to be a calming presence,
20:33
Speaker 1: to project stability and wisdom, to have others look at
20:35
Speaker 1: him and nod approvingly and murmur something about the importance
20:39
Speaker 1: of a firm hand at the tiller. But not Aaron Brown.
20:43
Speaker 1: He doesn't care about Wall Street's feelings. He cares about
20:46
Speaker 1: the trillion dollars people would be calling for his head.
20:50
Speaker 1: He would be pullside in Boca, browsing SSRN on his BlackBerry.
20:58
Speaker 1: Oh man, how great if we could all be as
21:02
Speaker 1: disagreeable as Cliff and Aaron.
21:09
Speaker 3: I suppose you were. Let me give you a hypothical scenario.
21:12
Speaker 3: You have a plucky young team and inexplicably you have
21:16
Speaker 3: ended up in the Stanley Cup Finals and you're up
21:19
Speaker 3: against one of the great Pittsburgh Penguin teams in the
21:22
Speaker 3: last couple of years. Would you consider pulling the goalie
21:27
Speaker 3: to start the game?
21:28
Speaker 5: I absolutely would love to do it, and I'd have
21:30
Speaker 5: to do the math.
21:33
Speaker 1: Do the math always, We'll be right back. A few
21:47
Speaker 1: years ago a movie came out called No Good Deed,
21:51
Speaker 1: starring Taraji p Henson as a woman named Terry and
21:55
Speaker 1: the ridiculously handsome Idris Elba as Colin. No Good Deed
22:04
Speaker 1: is a home invasion movie, and home invasion movies are
22:08
Speaker 1: of a piece with pulling the goalie. They are meditations
22:12
Speaker 1: on disagreeableness. Not to get pretentious, but both goalie pulling
22:17
Speaker 1: and the home invasion genre are versions of the canonical
22:20
Speaker 1: story of God commanding Abraham to kill his son Isaac.
22:25
Speaker 1: Sorren Kirkgard wrote about it in Fear and Trembling. God
22:29
Speaker 1: commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac to demonstrate his loyalty,
22:34
Speaker 1: and the rational thing is for Abraham to obey God
22:38
Speaker 1: because If God is all powerful, then Abraham's future and
22:41
Speaker 1: the future of his family depend on being in God's
22:44
Speaker 1: good graces. But how can he look his son in
22:47
Speaker 1: the eye and then kill him. It's a disagreeableness test.
22:51
Speaker 1: How much will you let the thought of what others
22:53
Speaker 1: think of you and what you think of yourself get
22:56
Speaker 1: in the way of doing what is right in the
22:57
Speaker 1: eyes of God? On the one side is fear, on
23:00
Speaker 1: the other trembling. This is exactly what goes on in
23:05
Speaker 1: home invasion movies.
23:06
Speaker 8: Absolutely.
23:07
Speaker 1: That's Ami Lagos who wrote No Good Deed.
23:10
Speaker 8: To me, that's at the core of why these movies
23:14
Speaker 8: are interesting to people. Why the home invasion genre? You know,
23:19
Speaker 8: it's an actual genre at this point, you know why
23:22
Speaker 8: it persists.
23:24
Speaker 1: I called Logos up after the Revisionist History research team
23:27
Speaker 1: determined that No Good Deed was the most perfectly Kureka
23:30
Speaker 1: guardian of all home invasion movies.
23:33
Speaker 8: It puts you in these incredibly morally ambiguous situations where
23:39
Speaker 8: the audience can see the direct path to success.
23:43
Speaker 1: So here's the premise of No Good Deed. It's late
23:48
Speaker 1: on a Friday night, raining hard. Terry is at home
23:53
Speaker 1: with her two small children.
23:56
Speaker 5: Okay, finished.
23:57
Speaker 1: The doorbell rings. It's interests Elba.
24:02
Speaker 4: I'm sorry. I don't mean to bother you.
24:04
Speaker 5: I just lost Jola macaw as directed.
24:07
Speaker 1: He says he's been in an accident and he forgot
24:10
Speaker 1: his cell phone. Can he come in and use her phone?
24:14
Speaker 1: She lets him in, Of course she does. He kind
24:22
Speaker 1: of has to be insanely handsome. Yes, for that to work.
24:27
Speaker 1: She's not gonna let me in if I show up
24:30
Speaker 1: wet and bedraggled at one hundred and thirty pounds. She's
24:34
Speaker 1: not like, I don't know.
24:36
Speaker 8: I mean, I think maybe she would. I think ultimately, yes,
24:40
Speaker 8: I think his insane good looks are a huge part
24:43
Speaker 8: of that, and another, you know, another big part of
24:48
Speaker 8: her character. You know, she's sort of been primed for
24:50
Speaker 8: this moment in her life. Leading up to this moment, right,
24:54
Speaker 8: she's feeling unseen, she's feeling unsatisfied in her marriage, she's
24:58
Speaker 8: feeling neglected. This handsome stranger shows up and compromises her
25:05
Speaker 8: her instincts, you know, on some level, because he so handsome.
25:10
Speaker 1: It's awkward at first, but he's super charming. They flirt
25:14
Speaker 1: a little waiting for the tow truck to come. There's
25:17
Speaker 1: a whole lot of something in the air, and then
25:20
Speaker 1: halfway into the movie she sees him for who he
25:23
Speaker 1: really is, a deeply evil guy. She runs to the
25:28
Speaker 1: kitchen to call the cops and sees that he's cut
25:31
Speaker 1: the phone line. She looks around, terrified to see where
25:34
Speaker 1: he's gone, can't find him. Then oh my god, runs
25:37
Speaker 1: upstairs to find him playing with her daughter again.
25:44
Speaker 4: Again. All right, let's do it.
25:46
Speaker 6: Let's go and up.
25:48
Speaker 4: Such a scare.
25:50
Speaker 5: No, Ryan, Ryan, Baby, you gotta go to bed. Okay, Ryan,
25:56
Speaker 5: and I just hav him some fun.
25:58
Speaker 2: That's a lot we were No.
26:01
Speaker 5: Come on, fuck a ball, it's past your ball time.
26:04
Speaker 7: See.
26:04
Speaker 1: Amy Lagos says she went to see No Good Deed
26:07
Speaker 1: on opening night at a theater and ball Hills in
26:09
Speaker 1: Los Angeles.
26:11
Speaker 8: You know it was it was a really rousing I mean,
26:14
Speaker 8: there were lines out the door to get in, and
26:16
Speaker 8: the place was packed, and people were screaming and shouting
26:18
Speaker 8: at the screen, and.
26:19
Speaker 1: It was wait, what point do you remember what point
26:21
Speaker 1: they're screaming?
26:22
Speaker 8: I'm the entire after they get to back to the
26:25
Speaker 8: house where Collins ex is murdered. I don't think I
26:29
Speaker 8: could hear a word for that. The rest of the film.
26:31
Speaker 8: From then on, it was just people screaming at her
26:35
Speaker 8: what she should do.
26:37
Speaker 1: And did they have well, I mean, what were the
26:39
Speaker 1: range of things they were suggesting did they say? Were
26:42
Speaker 1: they saying to her run.
26:43
Speaker 8: Yeah, kill him?
26:44
Speaker 6: You know?
26:45
Speaker 8: It was like it was it was everything from like
26:47
Speaker 8: run get out of there, to kill him, to you know,
26:49
Speaker 8: to like just every everybody had their answer of what
26:53
Speaker 8: she should do next, and they were one hundred percent
26:55
Speaker 8: sure that's what she should do.
26:59
Speaker 1: Exactly what should Terry do? She's a baby and a
27:03
Speaker 1: four year old. A psychopath is threatening her children. At
27:07
Speaker 1: one point, she grabs are extinguisher and hits him over
27:10
Speaker 1: the head and he tumbles down the stairs, but he's
27:13
Speaker 1: Idris Elba. He gets back up. Later, Idris herds them
27:17
Speaker 1: all into her car and they drive to another house.
27:20
Speaker 1: On the way, they get pulled over by a cop.
27:22
Speaker 1: He's suspicious, but Idris reaches into the back seat and
27:26
Speaker 1: takes her baby into his arms, so Terry can't tell
27:30
Speaker 1: the officers she's in trouble? Can she? What should she do?
27:34
Speaker 1: I felt like I needed high level assistance, someone who
27:38
Speaker 1: could put the home invasion dilemma into broader context. So
27:42
Speaker 1: I called up Sam Harris, author, podcaster, neuroscientist, the kind
27:48
Speaker 1: of person who would publish his own twelve rules, or
27:51
Speaker 1: if pressed, maybe even twenty four.
27:54
Speaker 6: So yeah, if someone breaks into your house, I mean
27:59
Speaker 6: there are a few things that are relevant to flag there.
28:02
Speaker 6: One is the time of day is relevant if someone
28:05
Speaker 6: breaks in in the middle of the night and you
28:07
Speaker 6: are there. Now you're talking about somebody who hasn't taken
28:11
Speaker 6: any care to show up when you're not there. And
28:16
Speaker 6: the kind of person who does this is the kind
28:19
Speaker 6: of person who either doesn't care to find a person
28:24
Speaker 6: in the house that he's breaking into, or finding a
28:27
Speaker 6: person there is part of the fun, right, And so
28:29
Speaker 6: this selects for the scariest kind of criminal.
28:33
Speaker 1: That would be Idris Elba in no good deed.
28:37
Speaker 6: You can't assume that this person has any ethics that
28:43
Speaker 6: you can interact with profitably by bargaining, by pleading your case.
28:50
Speaker 6: I mean, this is just that's not who's coming through
28:52
Speaker 6: the window in all likelihood.
28:56
Speaker 1: Halfway through my interview with Sam Harris, I began mentally
28:59
Speaker 1: calculating his score on the Disagreeableness Index. I'm thinking nine
29:04
Speaker 1: point five.
29:05
Speaker 6: And I must admit this is highly counterintuitive and perhaps
29:11
Speaker 6: impossible to act on. But I mean, just think this through.
29:16
Speaker 1: Sam Harris says, you have only one option. When Idris
29:20
Speaker 1: elba is upstairs playing with your kids, that's your opportunity run.
29:30
Speaker 6: Everything in us recoils at the idea of doing that,
29:33
Speaker 6: except it does change the situation in a surprising way.
29:38
Speaker 6: One It introduces significant uncertainty in the mind of your attacker,
29:44
Speaker 6: because now he knows the clock is ticket. You'll be
29:48
Speaker 6: summoning help in a matter of moments or minutes at
29:52
Speaker 6: the longest. And then you know, we'll discover just what
29:59
Speaker 6: sort of attacker this person is.
30:03
Speaker 1: We'll discover just what sort of attacker this person is.
30:11
Speaker 6: Now, if your concern is that he's going to kill
30:14
Speaker 6: your child because you didn't follow instructions, well, then very
30:18
Speaker 6: likely this is the sort of person who is going
30:19
Speaker 6: to kill your child anyway, right, and kill you as well.
30:24
Speaker 1: It's late in the third period, you're Taraji Henson. You're
30:28
Speaker 1: losing down by a goal to a psychopath. Now running
30:32
Speaker 1: away carries a huge social cost and a real risk
30:35
Speaker 1: of an even more disastrous outcome, But at the same time,
30:39
Speaker 1: it increases your chances of winning from zero to something
30:43
Speaker 1: slightly greater than zero pull the goalie.
30:48
Speaker 6: That is a totally rational option, and may in fact
30:50
Speaker 6: be the only rational option.
30:53
Speaker 1: But it's impossible, isn't it. You've got to be disagreeable
30:56
Speaker 1: level eight or nine to pull that off.
30:58
Speaker 6: I imagine how you will look to your child, or
31:01
Speaker 6: to your wife, or to anyone else who's terrified and
31:04
Speaker 6: looking in your direction for help if you just bolt
31:08
Speaker 6: from the house at that moment. Uh, it's you know,
31:11
Speaker 6: it's only when you come with the cavalry and rescue
31:14
Speaker 6: everyone that you know, you seem like you were, you know,
31:17
Speaker 6: wise and responsible. But in those moments, it just seems
31:20
Speaker 6: like a total failure, and you know, may in fact
31:22
Speaker 6: feel like a failure.
31:24
Speaker 1: I know that sounds crazy. I thought he can't be right,
31:29
Speaker 1: but he is right. The job of a parent being
31:32
Speaker 1: held hostage by Idris Elba is not to win a
31:35
Speaker 1: parental popularity contest. It is to maximize their child's chances
31:39
Speaker 1: of survival. I try to convince Amy Lagos of this.
31:44
Speaker 1: Amy Lagos, herself, the mother of two small children, wish
31:48
Speaker 1: me luck. She should run without her children, like she
31:53
Speaker 1: should just well, this is what I want to get.
31:55
Speaker 1: This is totally what I want to talk about let's
31:57
Speaker 1: think about this rationally, she what's he going to do
32:03
Speaker 1: to the kids when she's not there? Right?
32:07
Speaker 2: Right?
32:07
Speaker 1: Is it any right? I mean, the only reason to
32:11
Speaker 1: mess with her kids is to get leverage over her.
32:14
Speaker 8: Well, not necessarily know what his motivation is, right, I mean?
32:21
Speaker 1: Oh, I mean he just could be just a psycho
32:23
Speaker 1: standard issue.
32:24
Speaker 8: Yes, I mean, I'm telling you. If I'm in my
32:27
Speaker 8: house and I realize that there is somebody there is
32:32
Speaker 8: a psychopath in my house, I am not leaving my
32:36
Speaker 8: kids like you could. You could burn the house down
32:38
Speaker 8: and I would stay with the kids.
32:40
Speaker 1: No, no, No. The fact that he's a psychopath is
32:45
Speaker 1: exactly why you should leave your children behind. It's your
32:48
Speaker 1: only chance to save them. Amy, Run for the love
32:50
Speaker 1: of God, Rule number one for living pull the goalie.
33:02
Speaker 1: In common law, there's a principle called duty to retreat,
33:06
Speaker 1: which holds that a person being threatened as a duty
33:09
Speaker 1: to retreat to a place of safety to exhaust all
33:12
Speaker 1: avenue of escape before they can justifiably use force in
33:16
Speaker 1: self defense. In the past several years, though about half
33:21
Speaker 1: of American states have passed stand your ground laws. Now,
33:24
Speaker 1: what's to stand your ground? Law. It's a law that
33:27
Speaker 1: effectively repeals duty to retreat. It says you don't need
33:31
Speaker 1: to exhaust all avenues of escape to claim self defense
33:34
Speaker 1: in a court of law. You can stand your ground,
33:37
Speaker 1: defend yourself, and the law will support that choice. Duty
33:42
Speaker 1: to retreat is a legal principle that gives people license
33:46
Speaker 1: to act disagreeably. I am not a coward if I
33:50
Speaker 1: cut and run the first opportunity. I am, in fact,
33:53
Speaker 1: acting morally and responsibly. Stand your ground laws sanction the
33:59
Speaker 1: Socially Agreeable Act. They say, what matters is that you
34:03
Speaker 1: preserve your honor in front of family and community. I
34:07
Speaker 1: did not run. I stood ground. So what's happening in
34:12
Speaker 1: those states that now have stand your ground laws? Well,
34:16
Speaker 1: I refer you to stand your ground laws. Homicides and Injuries,
34:21
Speaker 1: Journal of Human Resources, Summer twenty seventeen.
34:26
Speaker 7: I think overall, we found about a seven and a
34:28
Speaker 7: half seven point seven percent increase in the overall homicide rate.
34:33
Speaker 1: That's Chandler McClellan, adjunct professor at American University, first author
34:39
Speaker 1: of the study in question. States that pass stand your
34:42
Speaker 1: ground laws saw their murder rates rise seven point seven
34:46
Speaker 1: percent compared to states that didn't pass those laws.
34:50
Speaker 7: Well, the fact that the homicide rate increases in these
34:53
Speaker 7: cases suggests that that's not the case. That people were
34:58
Speaker 7: using these laws and standing their ground in cases where
35:02
Speaker 7: they're actually not being lethally threatened. They could de escalate
35:06
Speaker 7: the situation, they could get away, but instead the using
35:09
Speaker 7: to engage in self defense and use lethal force against
35:12
Speaker 7: this threat. And as a result, you're seeing this kind
35:16
Speaker 7: of net increase in homicide rates.
35:20
Speaker 1: And who are all these extra people getting killed in
35:22
Speaker 1: standard ground states? White men?
35:25
Speaker 7: I think our estimates kind of show about twenty percent,
35:28
Speaker 7: twenty five percent increase in homicides among white males. And
35:32
Speaker 7: actually that seems a little.
35:35
Speaker 1: High, middle high. It's a huge dunburn.
35:39
Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly, it is. But nevertheless that's kind of what
35:43
Speaker 7: that's what fell out the modeling. Yeah, Yeah, we speculate
35:47
Speaker 7: that because the white male population is the population this
35:53
Speaker 7: most interested in the gun culture, more likely to be
35:57
Speaker 7: members of organizations like the NRA, Because white males are
36:01
Speaker 7: so entrenched in this sort of culture, we think that
36:04
Speaker 7: these laws are most salient for them, and as a result,
36:08
Speaker 7: they're most aware of them and they're most likely to
36:11
Speaker 7: act on them.
36:13
Speaker 1: So a certain kind of white guy who is really
36:16
Speaker 1: into guns and the NRA gets super excited about stand
36:19
Speaker 1: your ground laws and instead of looking to avoid violence
36:23
Speaker 1: or run away, grabs his gun and stands his ground.
36:26
Speaker 1: That is, right before the other guy shoots him dead.
36:31
Speaker 1: Tragic astic is the is the most appropriate word, but
36:36
Speaker 1: the other word disappropriate here is ironic that the NRA
36:39
Speaker 1: is has been pursuing a policy agenda with stand your
36:44
Speaker 1: ground that has the effect of getting its own members killed.
36:49
Speaker 7: It is a little ironic and.
36:53
Speaker 1: Figuring out when to pull the goalie or what to
36:56
Speaker 1: do when Idris Elbas shows up late at night seem
37:00
Speaker 1: like abstract intellectual exercises. They are not. They are rehearsals
37:06
Speaker 1: for real life, because being disagreeable, well when you need
37:10
Speaker 1: to be disagreeable, is hard, especially because the world around us,
37:14
Speaker 1: the crowd in the stands, the short sighted lawmakers. They
37:18
Speaker 1: encourage us to do the easy and agreeable thing, which
37:23
Speaker 1: gets us killed, pull the goalie.
37:28
Speaker 4: I have an aunt, She's Australian who once a year
37:32
Speaker 4: calls me to ask when she should convert her Assi
37:35
Speaker 4: dollars to wherever she's going that year on vacation. For
37:38
Speaker 4: about ten years, I explained ant Cynthia. You know, we
37:42
Speaker 4: do have views on currencies, but their micro views, they're
37:45
Speaker 4: fifty one percent chance of being right, let alone on
37:48
Speaker 4: a given day. So I'm loath to give this to you.
37:51
Speaker 4: And she'd always act like I knew the answer. I
37:53
Speaker 4: just refuse to tell her.
37:55
Speaker 1: Year after year, his Australian aunt called and Cliff refused
37:59
Speaker 1: to help her. Then one day Cliff asked us, realized
38:03
Speaker 1: he didn't have to always be disagreeable.
38:06
Speaker 4: She'd say, when should I convert my my ass to
38:09
Speaker 4: Japanese yen? And I'd go, not this, but next Thursday,
38:15
Speaker 4: and everyone was happy. She I was lauded for giving
38:22
Speaker 4: her the truth. She was happy because she really feels
38:25
Speaker 4: she knows what she's doing. She never checks before or after.
38:28
Speaker 4: And I did not harm her one drop because nobody
38:31
Speaker 4: knows what day to do it, and she was always
38:33
Speaker 4: going to do it on some arbitrary day.
38:34
Speaker 3: I just picked the arbitrary day.
38:37
Speaker 4: So there's a case of maybe it's so optimal, but
38:39
Speaker 4: I picked a high EQ if not IQ solution.
38:43
Speaker 3: You were protecting your reputation as opposed to just.
38:46
Speaker 4: Making my aunt not mad at me.
38:49
Speaker 1: He could be cliff astness polar of goalies. He could
38:52
Speaker 1: also be Cliff Astna's dutiful nephew. Malcolm glad Bell's first
38:57
Speaker 1: rule for living poll a goalie, but be wise enough
39:01
Speaker 1: to know that disagreeableness is not a matter of temperament,
39:04
Speaker 1: It is a choice. I'd love that you take calls
39:07
Speaker 1: from your aunt about currency and what did he say next?
39:12
Speaker 4: Anyone who's successful that won't take calls from their crazy
39:15
Speaker 4: aunt is no friend of mine.
39:19
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell's second rule for living. Two Down, ten to go.
39:35
Speaker 1: Revisionist History is a Panoply production. The senior producer is
39:39
Speaker 1: mil Obel with Jacob Smith and Camille Baptista. Our editor
39:43
Speaker 1: is Julia Barton. Lawn Williams is our engineer. Fact checking
39:47
Speaker 1: by Beth Johnson. Original music by Luis Garra. Special thanks
39:51
Speaker 1: to Andy Bauers and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Gladwein.
40:04
Speaker 3: What makes you a good poke player?
40:08
Speaker 5: Two things. There's just the basic math and theory, which
40:13
Speaker 5: I mean why once anybody can learn, but if you're
40:15
Speaker 5: quiet you can learn it. But the real thing that
40:18
Speaker 5: sets ship part is something I think you have to
40:22
Speaker 5: do by traditional wisdom. You have to learn this in
40:25
Speaker 5: your teens. While your brain is still forming and you
40:28
Speaker 5: have to do it under in can sleep deprivation. So
40:30
Speaker 5: we do these seventy two hour sessions with maybe a
40:33
Speaker 5: few powered amps in between, and you pushing every sense
40:38
Speaker 5: you have in the world, sometimes more than every sense
40:40
Speaker 5: you have in the world in the middle of the pod.
40:42
Speaker 5: And that developed certain mental abilities that the way I
40:47
Speaker 5: think about it is, I think you managed to harness
40:49
Speaker 5: the processing power of your unconscious brain so that you
40:53
Speaker 5: are not staring at people in the table and sort
40:56
Speaker 5: of you know, enumerating tells to you that person, you know, moods, chit.
41:01
Speaker 5: Your unconscious brain is so much better at noticing what
41:04
Speaker 5: people do, kind of like blink, you know, you just
41:07
Speaker 5: look at somebody and you don't know he holds the
41:10
Speaker 5: ace and jack you know, it's not doesn't tell you that,
41:12
Speaker 5: but it says this guy is afraid to lose, or
41:17
Speaker 5: this guy is afraid of being bluffed. And it tells
41:20
Speaker 5: you what they're going to do if you do something.
41:23
Speaker 5: So it tells you when you can push and they're
41:24
Speaker 5: going to fold, or when you can draw them in
41:28
Speaker 5: and they're going to go high.
41:30
Speaker 1: This outtake goes on for a long time. If that
41:33
Speaker 1: bothers you. I don't care anymore.
41:36
Speaker 5: It is a curse. I would never recommend to somebody
41:40
Speaker 5: do it. Yes, you can make money from it, but
41:45
Speaker 5: it strips away a lot of illusions. Right, It's a
41:47
Speaker 5: lot more pleasant in life to believe that there are
41:49
Speaker 5: things like love and friendship and honor once you're ruthlessly
41:54
Speaker 5: strip all that away and just look very objectively how
41:56
Speaker 5: people act. There's probably something that psychopaths do. The world's
42:01
Speaker 5: a bleak place, so it's kind of a dangerous road
42:04
Speaker 5: to go down.
42:05
Speaker 3: Do you feel like you went down that road? Yeah? Yeah,
42:09
Speaker 3: how did it affect your life?
42:11
Speaker 5: What it meant is that you're bleak, You're just kind
42:15
Speaker 5: of you know, you don't really trust anybody in a
42:20
Speaker 5: sense you trust them, you know what they're going to do,
42:22
Speaker 5: and because you know what they're going to do, it
42:25
Speaker 5: just h I guess it almost makes you treat them
42:28
Speaker 5: like robots that you can predict what they're going to do,
42:31
Speaker 5: you know their program, and therefore you can't really trust that.
42:35
Speaker 5: There's a lot of in friendship and honor or anything
42:38
Speaker 5: like that. So that's one of the reasons to move
42:41
Speaker 5: to finance. I actually moved from poker to sports betting,
42:45
Speaker 5: and then to finance