https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=lm9cHRWAEHU
But, you know, so that’s one thing that interests people, how to do something successfully. But a lot of what people talk about is something different, which is I was trying to get from point A to B and it didn’t work, and now I’m at a place where it didn’t work. And so it’s a problem, right? It’s like the world’s opened up around me, I don’t know what to do. And the reason you talk to people about that is because they have brains, and so do you, and you might as well have two brains working on the problem if you can. And if you’re reciprocal, you know, you’re in trouble, you come to me, and we talk it out, and maybe I can help. And then, because we’re playing an iterative game, now you owe me a favour. Now, you know, I’m not going to be too restrictive about that, but you know, socially intelligent people are reciprocal. Ben Franklin once said, you’re new to neighbourhood, what should you do to get integrated? He said ask a neighbour for a favour, a small favour. He’s like, don’t, will you build me a new house? It’s like, no, that’s not going to work. But you know, would you watch my… here’s my dog’s on the lawn, would you watch him for two minutes while I run down to the corner store? It’s like, okay, they can do that. Well, why would you do that? Well, it opens up the possibility of reciprocal exchange. It’s very, very smart, because now they can ask you for a favour. So you get the trade thing going. People who are highly social are really good at identifying and maintaining reciprocal obligations. So we use each other as problem-solving resources. And a lot of our communication is exactly that. So basically the story you’re telling isn’t, I was at point A and I went to point B and everything worked. The story is this instead. It’s half of this. Okay, I was at point A, that’s the top left hand corner. I was at point A and I was going to point B, but something didn’t work. And then things collapsed to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the severity of the event, and the closeness of your friendship, say you’re telling this story. You’re not going to tell catastrophic stories to someone on a bus that you just sat down beside unless you have a mental illness. And sometimes… well really, it’s the truth. Sometimes you’ll sit down on a bus and someone who has a mental illness will come and sit beside you and they will immediately tell you horrible things about their life. And the reason for that is they have to. They don’t have anyone to talk to, they can’t sort out their brains. They’re so desperate, they’re so ruined, they’re in chaos, they’re so ruined that the proclivity to proclaim the chaos absolutely overwhelms them. And you just can’t deal with someone like that most of the time because the magnitude of the problem they’re facing you with is way beyond your capacity to solve. So it’s just awkward, it’s not good. Anyways, you say I was going from point A to point B, didn’t work, now I don’t know where I am, I don’t know where I’m going, and I’m lost. And you say, well I know I experienced when I was in a situation like this, I did this and I know someone else who in that situation did this, and maybe you could try those. Or maybe you just shut up and you let the person talk. And that’s often extremely useful. And the reason you do that is because they’re thinking. Because people think they think, but they don’t. They talk. Thinking is hard, right? It’s a very complex, abstract, cognitive operation. And I don’t think that there are many more people who can think than there are people who can really read. And that’s probably 2 to 5 percent of the population at most. And so most of the way that people deal with that is that they talk. And that’s their thinking. And so they have some ideas about what might be going on, but they’re mixed and muddy, so they’re basically thrown out these ideas. Did this happen? Is he like this? Is she like that? Did I do this? And then they watch you. And if you’re nodding about one, they think, oh well, that seems plausible. And they lay out another and you go, you don’t even notice. And they think, no, that’s off the table. I didn’t think that was a very good idea, but now I’ve got some social validation. And soon they talk it out and instead of having 60 vaguely defined problems, now they have like five fairly tightly defined problems. And they’re feeling a lot better about that, right, because it’s five snakes instead of 60. And maybe they can deal with five snakes. So you’ve already helped them a whole bunch just by listening. And then maybe you can be an active listener and they lay out their story and you say, well you said something here that doesn’t make any sense with this thing that you said, so how would you reconcile those? It’s this dialectical process. And so the person collapses into chaos and they come and tell you about it and then you rescue them, if you can, out of the chaos and then they pop back up the other side.