Markdown lines 190–325 · Part 2 of 5
down this one on comes out and runs back down. This one comes out maybe even goes back
to this one. There's no cheese and comes back. But eventually I mean, our rat is gonna run
down this tunnel and get the cheese. We take our rat out, we put our cheese back in the third
tunnel, we throw our rat back in the box. Maybe it runs down the first tunnel first and no cheese
and comes out. Maybe it runs down the second. No cheese and comes out. Maybe even went
back to the first again. Eventually, it's going to go down our third tunnel. Right? We take our rat
out, we put our chromo cheese back in the third tunnel, a rat is still hungry when we throw him
back in the box. What tunnel is our rat run down? Three. Right? Okay, so our rat runs down
the third tunnel. And each time gets the cheese first. So we run the experiment and other 17
times the rat on each trial runs down the third tunnel, end of phase one of the experiment.
Right? So now we got to go to our graduate student, right? So we we have to figure out what is
it that we've learned from our rat? Okay, well, there's a period of trial and error. And then once
you learn where the rewards are in life, you keep running back there. It makes a lot of sense.
It's very efficient. All right. So now we have our graduate student we need a reward will be a
good reward that would be less filling to a graduate student. So they keep running after they're
willing to give up having families and, you know, drinking with their buddies on the night before
the test. I mean, what could we figure out? Well, how about grades? You talk about something
that doesn't fill you up, right and that you'll run to the nth degree to get right. Grades. I think
that's a great one. So we have our graduate student and our graduate students taking a
psychology course and with Professor Smith, and Professor Smith is an expert. He's written a
textbook that thick, right? And the first test is coming up and our students is studying like crazy,
right reading the book on a class going over the notes, you know, hasn't seen his girlfriend and
who knows how long right? Day the test comes, takes the tests a killer. All right, that our
students prepared. papers come back our student got to be pretty good grade. Right? Okay,
look. So over at his friend who didn't buy the textbook went off drank in the night before. And
the friend got in a really curious, he goes over to Anson, the friend says, Hey, don't you know
that Smith takes all his tests off the old test. You know, this is identical to last year as I went to
my fraternity, got the test out of a file and was the same exact test. Now, you could bet that our
student on the next time that there's a test guess what our students going to do, probably
going to get the old test and study it now maybe dedicated and will study more, was very angry
about this, but you know, probably will end up studying a little less than they did on the first
time and probably in each time. And our student goes and takes the next test. And of course,
it's the identical test and our student gets an A All right. And each time after that, that there's a
test, our student probably studies just a little bit less, and gets an A from the studying the old
test. Okay, so we now have, by our definition, a smart graduate student, right? Making the
grades, right and a smart rat. Okay. All right. All right. So let's go into phase two of the
experiment, you can bet where this is going to be and that we now have our trained rat and we
move the cheese out of the third tunnel, instead, we put it into the first tunnel. And we roll the
rat back in the box and our rat runs down the third tunnels no cheese and comes out and runs
out their torches and comes out and runs out their lunches and runs out there for us and
comes out and runs out the juices because that runs out their cheese and comes out runs out
of her cheese and comes out. Okay, and sits in the doorway. So I put another microphone over
there since we've done this. And we hear squeak squeak. You know, oh, Life is so unfair. They
promised me that they'd be cheese if I, you know, did their experiment and did everything the
way I was supposed to. And what are the kid rats going to say when I get back to the cage and
I got no cheese. And then our rat runs down the third tunnel again, no cheese and comes out
and runs out there. Because that runs out there. And she's in comes out made back over
there. And we pick them up on the other one, you know, and we hear squeak squeak again,
oh, life was really miserable. Maybe I'll go see Sigmon route. All right. And that's many times
when my clients come in at about that point. All righty. But, you know, eventually our rats
crying and. And he smells the cheese and goes down the first tunnel and gets the cheese and
to phase two of our experiment. So then we go back to our graduate student has been getting
A's all along. All right. And at that point, Professor Smith goes away and sabbatical and
Professor Jones takes over the class. All right. And the first test is coming up and all the
students get together and they say, you know, this John's gonna make up a new task. And
they don't, no way. You know, Jones studied under Smith, he knows what the protocol is here,
you know?
24:00
And besides, you know, how these guys are these associate professors, lazy. So, you know,
they come in, get the test. And of course, what they there's a new test, and our student gets a
C and gets put on probation because you can't get C's in graduate school. All right, because
they didn't calculate in that what was the truth? Believe becomes a lie. And so our students,
least at that point, learned a valuable lesson. They didn't realize that Jones was angry at this
one. He was a student and this was his chance Plus, he didn't feel like teaching the class. So
alright, so if not, now we're going to maybe this I should leave this to Steve, you know, we're
going to have looking at the data here. And what we need to calculate and to decide is when
we compare the performance of The rat who takes and the graduate student who's going to
take less trials to find the reward, okay? And I'll make it multiple choice, you know, will the rat
perform better than the human worse than the human or the same as the human? Okay? All
right. In actuality, when you do experiments like this, obviously, we can get humans sticking
their head and little tunnels with cheese. But when you compare the performance, the rat
outperforms the human any day of the week. And the real answer for that is that the human will
run down the third tunnel forever, because it's the right tunnel. Okay? See, rats don't care
about right and wrong only human beings do. If you thought that the rat would, you know, or
the human would perform better than the rat, I call that human beings are smarter than rat
theory. And they are smarter than rats. They're so much smarter that they think with words and
concepts, and they have a whole conceptual life. But that's what in the end traps them
because in our culture, there can only be one right tunnel what we learned when we were
younger. All right, and all the other tunnels, by definition, are the wrong tunnels. All right,
because there is only one, right? And so what we're going to discover many times is that the
moral of the story is that in life, you're gonna have a choice to be right or to have cheese. All
right. And so with the people who come in to see me, I tell them, you may be right, but there's
no cheese in this life. All right. So rather than that, I've kind of devised based on a model that
we're going to take a look at shortly, a new way of looking at life that I say, you know, what I
found is that, somehow, I always end up on the wrong, you know, whether it's being searched,
or whatever it is, I don't know how I managed to do that. But what I found that if I go and the
people come to see me, according to right and wrong, then I tend to always end up on the
losing end of it. I think that'd be playing a game called lose win. All right. And so I want to
propose a new criteria that perhaps may be useful for people to take a look at in their own
lives, and maybe to live their lives that way that I call best, you know, because I don't agree
with whatever the going way is, doesn't make me wrong, bad and deserving of punishment.
You can't blame anybody in our society for wanting to do the right thing. But I want to propose
best. Perhaps, my way may even be better. But that's all I can ask of myself as a human being
to do the best I can. That's all I can ask. And so I can really live with myself, you know, in most
circumstances, and then I say best for who? Best for self, others in the planet. And in that
order. All right, I don't give it all away. If I did, then I'm a martyr. But if I keep it all, then I'd be
truly would be selfish. All right. And so I stopped using that word, because I found that as a
whole, the most selfish people I ever met are always accusing everybody else of being selfish
and working with all goodies. So. So instead, I do the best I can. And I invented a new word
called self foe we need to be full up was what do we really have to give others a value? If we're
running on empty ourselves, we're just running around being resentful, at least in my opinion.
So give it give it a shot. Next time you're in a circumstance and you're trying to figure out
what's the right thing to do, you may want to instead do what's best. Okay. And that all relates
now to a model that I kind of developed that looks like this. All right. And I guess that's all we're
gonna get on.
29:19
Is it? How's that? Sorry, at some point. Okay. And you heard earlier, someone talked about
George Leonard. And this is kind of a combination of a model by George Leonard and Ken
Wilber put together and what this is, is that if you've ever seen a graph like this, it's called a
stair step graph or the learning curve or the mastery curve. And what it says is that and there's
time on the bottom axis and level of awareness, let's say, but it could be anything, anything
you were learning how to do. And that, what it says is that we initially that first human beings
learn very smart, quickly, they're very bright. Okay? That there's a very, very little time, lots of
learning and awareness. And then they get to a spot where they're out on the edge, they've
run out of resources, they need a certain skill that they don't have. All right, and it's scary,
whatever it is, and that they go back to lock it in, so that into their comfort zone, so they don't
kind of lose it all and just slide back. Okay. And then they're on a plateau. And, you know,
we've heard another number of Catholic references, so I'll give you another one. They call this
plateau, the plateau of purgatory. All right, where it just feels like you're in hell, but actually,
you're not, and you've got a chance to kind of pay your dues and move to the next level. And
this can go on for a long time. Or you can kind of go to a lower level, or, you know, I always
use tennis as an example, but I'm not going to today. And, or you can just give up, take up
another activity, you know, instead of Hemi sync this week, it'll be you know, what, some form
of meditation, right? And you can always tell when you're getting to the point where you're
going to make the jump, because that's the point when you want to give up like how. So you've
put in invested all your time or your effort, and you don't seem to have gotten anything. All
right, but you really have what you've gotten is all those experiences that really eventually lead
to making the next jump to the next level. Right. Another important thing about this is that you
can see is that really, this level down here, really doesn't understand what this level up here is
all about. Okay? Never Been there never done that. It's hard to know something you know