https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=CaQnlg1TwX0
So I teased in a previous video about core concepts to understand the model that I’m going to be going over, which is part of this project to talk about a bunch of other things, right? We’re sort of opening up. We’re getting some vocabulary, getting some sense making tools. We’re helping to sort of understand critical thinking, I hope. Right. And then as we open that up and sort of broaden that out, we’re going to need some baseline information. And so this is about signals. Now, previously, I talked about information and information is important. Right. Knowledge. Those are important things. What happens with knowledge and information and how they go together. And this is related. It’s signals. And the reason why signals are important is because they’re absolutely everywhere. That doesn’t mean that they’re good. It doesn’t mean that they’re bad. It doesn’t mean that they’re meaningful. Right. There are signals everywhere and we need to kind of figure out what to do about that. And I sort of talked a little bit in my video on anxiety as to why this is important and what sorts of effects it might be having on us. And so what we really want to do is understand what happens with them, why we should care and what’s important about them and how to deal with them in general. And so that’s what I’m going to talk about today. Now, as I mentioned, get previous videos, this is kind of laying some groundwork might not seem to be going anywhere necessarily, but I’m going to try to be as helpful as I can. So the signals are everywhere. Right. And there’s lots of different types of signals. So there’s total signals. Right. There’s signals around word usage and word placement. So sometimes we use words in combination with tone and sometimes we use words in combination with other words to change how you’re conveying the information. And that’s actually really important. And it can cause a lot of confusion. And the ordering of words is a signal that is separate from the word, just like the tone of the word is separate from this from the signal of the word. And this is important because this goes back to something I mentioned before. The meaning of a word can be changed by intonation entirely. In fact, it can be flipped. That’s what sarcasm is when you’re flipping the meaning of a word or a phrase or a statement entirely by using tone or typically by using tone. There’s other methods. And that’s why expressing sarcasm is difficult and people don’t always get it. And it depends if they listen to tone very well, which I tend not to do, unfortunately. So these signals are very important. There are other signals like facial signals. Right. There’s all kinds of body language signals. There are signals around how shrill somebody’s voice is, how high it is and how low it is. And that sort of independent of tone, I would propose I might be wrong about that. And, you know, what we need to do is curate the signals that we’re sending out. That’s the thing we have the most control over, as well as the signals that are coming into us. And one sort of base example of curating signals is not listening to the news. Don’t listen to the news. You won’t have bad news signals coming in. Listen to the news from last month, once a month. That’s what Nassim Taleb says. I rather like that idea. I don’t watch or listen to much news at all anymore. I get snippets and that’s about it. And that’s probably too much already. Because what do I really need to know about? Do I care what the president’s doing now? I don’t really. I don’t really need to worry about it. But it might affect me or I can just disobey. So, you know, that’s probably going to happen. It’s probably already happening. It’s pointless. You’re already breaking so many laws that you don’t even know about that breaking a few more that you do know about doesn’t matter. And that’s the problem is that we have all these signals, like what we should do, what we shouldn’t do. Some of them are just, you know, stares, right? Sometimes people glance at you and you’re not wearing a mask or something and it’s like, right. And sometimes doing this. These are all signals and they’re everywhere. And most of the signals that we absorb are subconscious. They’re subconscious. You’re not conscious of them, but you need to curate them and you can filter them. So not watching the news is a good filter. There are other lots of good filters. There’s a real difference here. And you may think it’s not. It’s not really a real difference. But I actually accidentally exposed myself to this difference. So I live in a small town on the border of the capital city. I had started going to the small town grocery store. I had a bad incident with some lunch meat. I said, all right, that’s it. I’m going to travel another three whole miles and go to the expensive fancy grocery store so I won’t have this problem. And it’s in the city. It’s in the outskirts of the city, but it’s in the city lines there. So when I go to the grocery store in my small town, it’s just a grocery store. You just kind of go there and they have like one little sign saying like we recommend you wear masks and that’s it. And, you know, people are wearing masks if they work in the store. Most of them, about half of them, half of them are either have masks, but they’re not wearing them properly, which is fine by me. Or, you know, they don’t have a mask at all. And I’m fine with I don’t care. I just don’t care. So I’m not part of the safety religion. So I went to the city grocery store and it’s a much larger chain or maybe it’s not a much larger chain, but it’s a very large chain. And there are signs all over the place where I’m asked, where I’m asked, where I’m asked. Recommended. It’s not enforced. Right. They’re not forcing you to wear a mask to go into the store or anything like that. On the loudspeaker, they have announcements. CDC recommends Delta variant stop the spread. All our all our workers wear masks and they were all wearing masks. And I was like, this is three miles away from the grocery store where none of this is happening. Three miles. Pretty insane. But the signals I’m getting are very different. Now, you can ignore some signals to some extent. It’s not perfect, though. And so, you know, maybe I have to reconsider which grocery store I go to again, start ordering stuff online or something and get it delivered, which I can sometimes do because I live right on the outskirts of the city. Sometimes delivery works fine. This is just terrible. And because you’re soaked in it, right? You can’t go to the grocery store and not listen to the thing that’s blaring music or sound or announcements throughout the entire grocery store. You can’t go through the door of the grocery store and miss all the sign cues like it’s not possible. And I’m good at ignoring things, but they still have a subconscious impact on you. So, you know, as part of my curation, it might be, yeah, go back to the other grocery store where the crazy people are not. I don’t want to hear about the Delta variant and how we’re all going to die immediately if we don’t all wear masks and get shots and crazy things. That’s not I’m not interested. Even if it’s true, I don’t care because it’s not going to alter my behavior one little bit. So I’m disagreeable. That happens. So what can we do about these signals and how can we understand these signals? How do we how do we curate signals? What are we going to do about curating our own signal? Well, curating our own signal is about being contemplative and careful with our tone, with the shrillness in our voice, right, which with how quickly we change our affect. Right. Because if I very suddenly start to talk very fast, right, that’s that can startle you. And even if I don’t intend to startle you because I’m just trying to speed up, that’s not helpful. You don’t want to do that to people. You want to be calm and even keeled as possible, but not exclusively. Right. There’s a time to yell when people aren’t listening, maybe. And it’s important. Right. If you need to convey importance, maybe you need to raise your voice a little. Some people interpret that as yelling. In my family, we call that conversation. I don’t know. Happens. So all of these signals are there and you can pay attention to what you’re doing after the fact. Not ideal, but you got to start somewhere. It’s a good place to start. You can think about these things. You can meditate on them, if you will. You can contemplate them. Another way to help is that signals signals can be toxic. Right. And that’s why you need to filter them. So they talk about toxic people. Well, toxic people are generally toxic signals too. Obviously. Otherwise, where’s the toxicity? I mean, maybe there is physical toxicity, but it’s probably also verbal toxicity or tonal toxicity or whatever. Right. Or body language toxicity. These things do exist. You know, maybe they don’t work the way people say they work, but we can recognize it and decide because no one’s 100% not toxic. I’m not making a purity claim here, unlike certain religions. You know, people are not perfect and you’re not going to get a zero toxicity environment. And your definition of toxicity is going to depend on your frame. And so you want to be mindful of your frame. What frame of mind are you in? What physical frame are you in? These things contribute to toxicity. And so if you take the attitude that the person in front of you is talking to you and that they’re impacting you and their goal is to change your feelings, then that will be more likely to happen. Is it 100%? No. But if you cooperate with them, you together can make that a reality, not a good reality. If instead you take the attitude that the person talking to you is alone, afraid, mistaken, confused, ignorant, because we’re all those things sometimes. And sometimes we’re all of those things in the moment. That happens. Happens to me. Happens to you. Happens to everybody you’ve ever met or ever will meet. Is it every moment? Hopefully not. Although there are those people. This is something that you can be mindful of and change your frame and say, here is a human. I am also a human. We’re here together. They are using my name and they are angry. Therefore, they are angry at me, except maybe it’s not me. They’re angry at. Maybe they’re just projecting their anger at me. And maybe they’re not going to do anything about being angry in their projection. Right. So maybe I don’t need to worry about it. Maybe I can just let them blow off some steam. It’s very stressful in the moment. I get that. It’s very stressful for me when people are angry at me, even though they’re not angry with me. And once once they settle down, then we can resume talking. But often you can just let those people be angry. And this kind of happens all the time. So just changing your frame. Are they angry with me? Did I do something to deserve their anger or are they angry at me? But they’re just angry in general. That’s a way to change your frame so that you can engender more grace, for example, so that you can engender more patience in yourself for them so that you can understand that you’re going to accept these toxic signals for a small period of time in the interest of getting along with them later. We do this with family all the time. For example, occasionally I see my family and yeah, that’s just. Exercise and patience with most of them because they’re mean. They don’t mean to be mean, but they say horrible things all the time. And I’m just horrified at some of the stuff that they say and do. And it’s very stressful. It’s very stressful. But, you know, I also they also have good qualities occasionally, and I like to take advantage of those. So, you know, I put up with some things and you have to because people aren’t perfect. And they’re putting up with you after all. And, you know, you’re a muppet too. You make mistakes too. You create problems too, right? You’re toxic sometimes and angry sometimes too. That happens. I know I do that. I’ve never met anybody who didn’t do that. If you meet somebody who doesn’t do that, please put the comments. Put it in the comments. I’d like to meet them. People are not perfect. And having the frame that you’re both people and that you’re both imperfect and you both make mistakes and that you both project anger when you don’t mean to or when you don’t need to. But maybe you do need to. Like maybe they need to get it off their chest and once it’s off their chest, it’s gone. I don’t know. Hopefully we can hope. We can hope. And that they do have things to offer. Otherwise, you would be around them. And look, sometimes people yell at you at the grocery store for not having a mask. So I’m told it hasn’t happened to me yet. I’m rather imposing sometimes. I can very quickly switch to sending out you get away from me or I’ll kill you signals. I’m very good at that. I used to walk in very bad neighborhoods and I never got mugged or robbed or approached or anything. I’m very good at sending off signals that if you approach me, there will be problems. And I can switch in and out of that very quickly, by the way. Very handy. Very handy. So these signals are there. These signals are important. And sometimes if strangers are being angry at you, walk away. You don’t have to put up with them. But be careful when you do that, because when you walk away, you sever a potential connection or an actual connection. And so that’s sort of a last resort situation. If somebody is just being angry at you and that anger is going to go away and you have a relationship with them, maybe don’t walk away or maybe walk away and come back. But consider these things carefully because you don’t have to put up with it. That’s true. But some amount you will always have to put up with from pretty much everybody. But you can curate this. You can change your frame. You can step outside. You know, maybe not right in the moment, but you can learn over time. Oh, I could have stepped outside of myself at that moment and engaged with the potential of the person rather than the anger they were signaling in the moment. Right. So these signals are there and how we interpret them depends on our frame and we have some control over our frame and your aim matters. So if you’re angry, that’s technically just your aim going negative on everything that you encounter. Right. It’s like a negativity filter over you. And then everything you see is going to be seen in a less positive light than it would otherwise. And we have some control over that. Right. So this is part of stoicism. Right. And another way to help you other than contemplation and and practicing stoicism, for example, and I recommend understanding true epicureanism first and then stoicism so that you don’t get sort of locked into the Spartan existence of the stoic needlessly because the epicureans have a solution for that. Helpful quotes from either from the stoic tradition, from other ancient wisdom traditions. There’s lots of cool quotes out there with Victor Frankl and Dostoevsky and Nietzsche and some people who have actually said intelligent things, maybe despite being idiot philosophers. And there’s lots of good religious quotes. And certainly you can go to the Bible, you can go to the Koran, you can go to the Bhagavad Gita. There’s all sorts of wisdom traditions out there and wisdom quotes that can help you to gain perspective because that’s really what a lot of those quotes are about. Right. If you read Sun Tzu’s Art of War, and if you haven’t read Sun Tzu’s Art of War, then shame on you. Definitely got to read that. You can see how changing the perspective on what’s happening in a war changes how you conduct the war. The signals that you get. Same thing. You can have an aim towards being a good person or being patient or being more attentive. It’s a big one for me. I fail at that all the time. I’m so good at failing at that. I can beat you. Yeah, there’s all sorts of ways in which our aim affects our framing and then our framing affects what signals we’re getting. That’s part of curating and filtering your signals that are coming in and curating your signals going out. It’s the same thing. It’s the contemplation. Thinking about the wisdom stuff, maybe doing some meditation or prayer, which I would argue is a form of meditation, doesn’t have to be fancy. But these quote little things, if they’re done over and over again, can have a big impact on your life and your happiness. Maybe you won’t notice the difference in the signals you’re sending out, but maybe other people will. That’s what’s important. Maybe you won’t see those other people ever again. This is the smile at one person. You don’t know what they’re going through sort of a thing. Yeah, do that. These signals matter. They matter to you. They matter to me. They matter to everybody, even when we don’t realize it consciously, because we’re really not all that well in control of ourselves most of the time. And it’s good to know that this is an option, that we have some control over the signals. And we have a limited amount of time and limited amount of attention, as I’m fond of pointing out. And if you waste it on bad signals or noisy signals or unclear signals or signals that are negative, then it’s gone. It’s gone. You can filter for the positive signals, for the happy signals, for the signals that help you to gain perspective, right? For the signals that are clear, right? Because often we have a choice and clear signals can be scary because they give us very, very, very sharp intimations about what to do, right? They give you very sharp ability to follow or not follow. And sometimes that’s a good thing. Depends where the signal is going. What’s the aim? And often you don’t you only have to follow the signal a little ways to figure out what the aim is. You can kind of project the aim to some extent and figure out whether or not that aim is good. And then that tells you whether or not to follow the signal. Is it a good signal? Is it a bad signal? All of these things. So, yeah, there are practices that we can do. And those practices don’t just help enhance us or water our soul or shine light on us. In doing that, they shine light on others and it sort of spreads out. It’s paying it forward, right? Smiling at the person who didn’t smile at you first. That’s paying it forward. And we don’t know what impact that’s going to have. Even if they don’t respond in the moment, it may change their mood because they got a good signal from us. And all those good signals add up. And, you know, it doesn’t have to be a conversation. It doesn’t have to be a debate. It doesn’t have to be an admonition like, oh, you did a bad thing or this is a this is the good thing. Not that. It doesn’t have to be any of those things. Signals can just be out there. No one has to listen to a signal, but they will hear it, whether they’re listening or not, whether they realize it or not. And when we fail to put out good signals and I know I do this better than you. I fail at this way better than you do. I guarantee it. We fail to give the world the gift that is our positive signal. And no signal is not necessarily good. And a negative signal is necessarily bad. And we’d rather give positive signals out as much as possible. And that’s basically the crux of what I’m talking about with signaling. Right. You can. And signaling includes speech. You can speak your truth. You can say this is what I believe and this is why I believe it. And that doesn’t have to be a discussion. It doesn’t have to be a debate. It doesn’t be a conversation. It can just be a statement and you can just keep moving on with your day. And if you say it with a smile and with joy in your voice, then, you know, maybe people will follow that or maybe they’ll at least look at that differently. Maybe they’ll consider it and maybe they’ll maybe they’ll do something about it. And maybe that thing will be good. And maybe it’ll be good for everybody. I don’t know where that ends. I hope it never ends. I hope it continues forever because that way if my videos continue forever, they’ll get more time and attention.