Rewiring Your Brain for Hope: How to Overcome Cynicism with Dr. Jamil Zaki : 1197

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Man, Today is going to be such a fun episode because we're going to talk about cynicism. You may have heard me say, historically to trolls that skeptics die something like six years ahead of people who are not skeptical. And I've done so much work on myself at 40 years of Zen and in caves and monasteries around the world to not have a glass half full or half empty, but to just have a glass with some stuff in it and to not judge it. And being not a Pollyanna where, oh, everything is so good, but also not being the inverse of that, where everything is so bad. This has been a path for me because I grew up in a family of skeptics. My grandparents subscribed for many years to the Skeptic Inquirer, which is a magazine that did what Snopes does or any of these other hater websites, like, we'll take down everyone who doesn't agree with whatever. So I grew up a cynic and a skeptic. And how would you like to learn from a professor of psychology at Stanford University and a director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab who is an expert in cynicism and skepticism? I know I would like to learn. And Our guest is Dr. Jamil Zaki. Who is that man? Jamil, welcome to the show.

It's great to be back. Dave.

Man, last time we talked, you were. You were in a little Covid closet. And let's open with that. How did you stop yourself from becoming very cynical after this government response to Covid and destruction of all these businesses, including a couple of mine. Did that leave a mark on you or did you overcome it?

I did not stop myself from being cynical during the pandemic. In fact, I failed completely in that task. And the reason that I started working on this book, Hope for Cynics, is to figure out what was happening inside me. As you know, Dave, I've studied the science of empathy, compassion, kindness for 20 years.

So you're kind of a stud that way. I love that you're putting numbers and research behind these things that are generally the focus of religion and spiritual practice around the world. Like, you're. You're changing the world by making it safe for cynics to at least consider what you're talking about.

I hope so. And certainly I think sometimes that my work is just adding another angle to wisdom that people in many spiritual practices have had for thousands of years. But, you know, it's also this work on human goodness made Me, a kind of ambassador for our better angels. People bring me in to speak or write for them when they want to feel good about our species.

Yeah.

And yet during the pandemic and lockdown and all the isolation and sadness that came with it, I felt like just because I studied something and knew all about it didn't mean that I felt it. I felt this real split between my outer and inner worlds. You know, I would, I would be brought in and give a browsing talk on empathy and how great people were. And as soon as the zoom screen went black, I would go back to doom scrolling. I felt like I was secretly much more cynical than I was letting on. And I thought, well, man, if, if, if I, a scientist of human goodness, is having a hard time believing in human goodness, what are the rest of us going through? And that set me on this journey to understand why it's so hard to have faith in one another, what that's doing to us and what we can do about it.

Why is it so hard?

Well, part of it is the way that we are wired.

Yeah.

Human beings experience what's known as negativity bias. We pay lots more attention to threats in our environment than to the good stuff. We pay more visual attention. Right. We look more closely at threatening versus positive information. We, we remember negative events better than positive events. And we make decisions more based on what we don't want to lose as opposed to what we want to gain. And you can see why that would make sense from a almost survival perspective. You know, 200,000 years ago, the person who was worried about the saber toothed tiger probably did better than the person next to them who was blissed out by the sunset.

Can I share some thinking with you? I was going to bring this up later in the interview, but it feels like this is a good framework that our audience understands.

Please.

That supports what you just said so thoroughly. I definitely was a skeptical, cynical guy when I was younger. And also a lot angrier. Funny enough, those go together, don't they? But since I studied mitochondrial biology and I'm a, I'm a computer hacker and a systems engineer kind of guy, I realized all life on the planet has to follow basic rules. And these are basic rules that have to work for bacteria, not for complex life forms. And it turns out it doesn't matter if you're a tree or a slime mold or a person number one. If it's scary, run away from, kill or hide. Different life forms, like trees will make bark or make toxins or make spikes. Right. Or A jellyfish will sting you. Or bacteria make toxins or form biofilms. In humans, you know, we form tribes and, you know, we make weapons and all, but it's always fear is number one. And that makes sense because if something eats you, your species may end from the point of view of a bacteria, right? So fear that there's a negativity bias explained evolutionarily. And the second thing that all life has to do is eat everything that's food, that they're off words of fear. And then food.

And then.

And this is why people eat all the pizza and all the cheesecake at the same time, right? Because you're the basic building blocks of your body. Single cells and subcellular things. They're wired to do that whether or not you're in there. In fact, they do it before you're in there. So fear food. And then, let's see, we'll have to reproduce to keep life around. So fear, food. What's the other, the third F word?

Romance.

Romance is not an F word. It's fertility. I know you're about to drop an F bomb, but you're from Stanford. You guys don't do that over there, except when you're drunk. Just kidding. So fear, food, fertility. And then the fourth one that all life does universally is friend, right? But they do these in order. And the fifth one in my framework is forgiveness, which is to evolve and to let go of unnecessary fears so that you're more effective and efficient as a life form. And this works for any life form, including us. And what that leads to, though, is this idea that, you know, we. We do these things. I don't think it's me doing that. I think it's my operating system doing that. And it's doing it kind of against my will and invisibly. And the more I gain awareness, the more I gain consciousness, the more I can laugh at the way my body responds to the world. And I don't identify that as me. It's like I have a split personality. Like, there's an automated system that does all the animal stuff, and then I get to choose whether I believe what it shows me or not. But, man, that's been an enormous amount of work. And it's allowed me to drop the cynicism and replace it with discernment so I can feel something and then decide if that's real. Is that a good framework? Does it. Does it support what you're talking about? I'm looking for holes in it.

I've. I have so much to say. In response to this first, what you're describing reminds me of the first time that I trekked through the Amazon many years ago in Peru. And I remember going through this little tributary and all of these plants, these, this dense plant life everywhere, and noticing that their plants grow so quickly that you could actually see them interacting with one another almost like a stop motion film. And the interaction was incredibly aggressive. You could see plants attacking one another, trying to suffocate one another. Even the vines that seemed harmless if you looked closer had tiny syringe like spikes coming out of them. It was just this battle. And I thought to myself, wow, this is what nature is like if you juice it enough, if you give it enough fuel. But of course, there was also so much fertility and, you know, I mean, whether you want to call it friendship or not, so much collaboration in that environment as well, right down to slime molds, all the way up to mammals.

Right.

And so there are these forces in us, these default settings that we all have. I think that what you're describing though, is how awareness of our default settings can help us overcome them or at least counteract them when we want to. There's a something in psychology that we call the naturalistic fallacy. The idea that because something is natural, because it's evolved, that somehow means it's good for us. Right?

That's not what nature looks like to me.

Exactly. I mean, natural and good are not the same thing all the time. And, you know, we have so many default settings in our brains that we probably don't want to accept. You know, I'm wired to like people who are the same race as me more than people who are a different race than me. Do I just want to accept that instinct? Of course not. We, as an evolved species, as an egalitarian species, reject that. I'm more likely to judge somebody morally as a bad person if I'm hungry than if I've just eaten lunch. Do I want to accept that? Of course not. That's not a rational basis for decision making. It's not a way that I think any of us want to live our lives. And cynicism, this idea that we want to take that fear in, that instinctive fear and turn it into an entire worldview is something that a lot of us accept but hurts us at basically every level that psychologists can measure what you are describing, this sort of sense that, hey, I'm going to watch my instincts arrive, then use them as one source of information, but not the only source of information, and try to make more Integrative, informed decisions. There's two things that I want to say about that. One connects right back to the spiritual traditions you were talking about. This is a practice of careful noticing and of awareness. But two, and I do want to push back, Dave, on something that you said.

Please do. Yeah.

You've been using cynicism and skepticism interchangeably.

Explain the difference. I love this. Okay, tell me.

Well, because I think what you're actually describing is that maybe members of your family when you were growing up were cynics, meaning that they trusted that negativity bias. They listened to that instinct, actually, in a sort of naive way, and plastered it all over everything that they saw. They assumed that people are on the take. They assumed that they couldn't trust anybody. They, you know, you think of what's the opposite of a cynic? Somebody who naively trusts, but cynics naively mistrust. So they're actually, in a way, as gullible as the rubes and marks that they make fun of.

Wow, that's gold.

By contrast, skeptics don't carry a blanket assumption about everybody or everything. If cynics think like lawyers in the prosecution against humanity, skeptics think like scientists. They say, well, let me gather all the evidence I can and again, put it together, integrate it into the most informed decision possible at this moment. So skepticism, I would say, is what you've tried to grow into. You've tried to grow out of cynicism and into a more scientific, contemplative and skeptical approach to the world, which, as we can talk about, is enormously healthier.

It is healthier. I'm not sure, though, that I would identify as a skeptic where I'm curious. I'm looking for evidence. Most of the people I know who would say I'm skeptical, maybe they're just all cynics and they're calling themselves the wrong name, but they'll fundamentally believe. I think it was Neil Degrasse Tyson said extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That's bullshit. The reality is, if it's science, evidence is evidence, and it doesn't matter if you think it's extraordinary. The reality is we either have evidence or we don't, and that you can put no weighting on that. And it, to me, all of the things that help me lose a hundred pounds and get my brain in this amazing place and, and have a sense of peace, they all came from just looking at evidence saying, oh, it's possible. Show me a corner case. And I'm not going to discount the Corner case. I'm going to go there and investigate it. And if it was fake, then I'm not going to go there anymore. But if it was real, now I know it's possible and I'm going to do it. Is there a word for that? Is that still a skeptic?

That's absolutely skepticism. I do think that we have been. I completely agree with you that you've. Well, I believe you that you've probably heard many people describe themselves as skeptics and then be really negative or sort of try to shoot down other ideas. Yeah, those people are wrong in the, in the name that they're using for themselves. And one of my many missions with this new project is to help us be more precise in our language because I think it really matters. I since writing this book and writing more and talking more about hope and cynicism, I have all sorts of people who write to me angrily saying, I'm not a cynic, I'm a realistic or I'm a skeptic. And they're just. This is what I encountered, Dave, when I started studying empathy as well, people were using this word to mean a dozen different things and talking past each other. I believe that precise language about the human mind allows us to work more more precisely with it and to shape our minds to meet our goals. But we have to know what we're looking for. And I do think that being open to evidence, curious and data driven are the qualities of a skeptic. I would, I would add to this and if, you know, one flourish that I try to put on, skepticism for people is what I call hopeful skepticism. That is not only being open to evidence, but also being aware that we process information asymmetrically. So if you're picking up evidence right, if you, if you interact with 50 people in a given day, 48 of them are open minded, kind, generous and friendly. And two of them are assholes. Yep, those two people will become your memory or will be the headlines of your memory for the day. That is a biased way of processing information. So hopeful skepticism means being open and simultaneously aware that, that we are probably picking up more on negative than positive information, especially social information, and trying to rebalance that by saying probably if I pay close attention, pleasant surprises will be everywhere. People might be better than I realize.

What if there was something you could add to your water to make you perform better, have more energy and protect your cells from damage? Hydrogen is the smallest molecule in the universe and the only one that can get deep inside your cells. Mitochondria and even your DNA. It fuels energy production, crushes oxidative stress and supports sharper brain function. Hydrogen's a gas so you can't take it as a pill, so you either have to breathe it in or infuse it into your water. But your tap bottled or filtered water doesn't have it. That's why I use the Echo Flask. Echo Flask is a hydrogen generator that uses advanced electrolysis and a proprietary proton exchange membrane to infuse your water with pure hydrogen. No chemicals, no ph change, just therapeutic science backed hydrogen. I've noticed more energy, faster recovery, less inflammation and mental clarity that lasts all day. Go to echo.comdave and use code DAVE10 for 10% off your Echo Flask. You'll feel the difference in days. Your phone screen is aging your skin and wrecking your sleep at the same time. Artificial blue light goes from your phone screen straight into your eyes and deep into your skin. That light messes with your melatonin levels, interrupts your deep sleep and speeds up skin aging by breaking down collagen. The Bodyguards Red Light Converter fixes this at the source. It's a first of its kind screen protector with real tech that converts blue light into bright beneficial red light before it hits your face. It turns your scrolling into a skincare routine. It supports healthier skin, reduced eye strain, improved sleep quality and fewer screen related headaches. Third party testing showed a 50% plus increase in red light exposure within the optimal range of 620-770nm and this comes with zero compromise on your screen. The Red Light Converter preserves your screen's true colors and full touch sensitivity. Beyond its wellness benefits, the Red Light Converter provides ultra thin edge to edge protection for your device and Bodyguards stands by their quality. Enjoy peace of mind with lifetime replacements, ensuring your Red Light Converter continues to protect and support your biology for the long haul. Visit bodyguards.com and use code Dave for 25% off. That's bodyguards with a Z.com for 25% off.

You said if I pay close attention, One of the things that I've been a proponent of since the very early posts I did a dozen years ago is the value of a gratitude practice and a gratitude journal. And when I started this practice, okay, three things at the end of the day that I'm grateful for. And then Dr. Barry Morgolan who's been on the show, very popular episode, he said well why don't you see if you can find 50? And it took me a while and I realized Completely, invisibly. There's a process running in my brain that erases the good stuff. And I'm sitting here at the end of the day and I'm going through. I've got like a dozen good things that happened that day. That was the day I got a phone call from my agent saying, congratulations, you made the New York Times list again. Well, I had forgotten that by the evening. And it took me a lot of plumbing the depths ago. Oh my God, that just happened. How could I forget? And I think that drives us to become cynics because we don't know that we're erasing all the good stuff. And it took me a long time where I could sit down anytime, say, God, what are 50 things that happen? Just little good things.

They're gone. Yep.

From your memory. Unless you train it. Do you have a practice like that?

I do. It's a little bit different. I love gratitude practices, and I think they're one of the most robust and well supported ways of improving happiness and social connection. One thing about gratitude is it relies on the fidelity of our memory. And as you're saying, we erase positive events very quickly. I do this with my teaching reviews. You know, I teach a 500 person class each fall and I get the teaching reviews at the end of the quarter and you know, invariably something like 480 of them will be positive, some will be neutral. But what are the ones three days later when I'm trying to go to sleep that pop up in my mind? It's like, what don't you like about that shirt? Which shirt did you not like? I just hang on to the one negative piece of information. And so a sort of rotation of a gratitude practice that I try and I do with my kids as well is savoring.

What does that mean?

Well, if gratitude is remembering good things that happened during the day, for instance, savoring is making sure to notice them systematically and try to note them as they happen. So this is a practice written beautifully about by Fred Bryant, the psychologist. And I think that it's a hedge against our biased memories. Now, I'm not saying that we should all go around with a notebook and meticulously document every single thing that happens to us, but I think that slightly more real time documentation, not end of day, but end of event, sort of when something meaningful happens to you, you don't have to spend 15 minutes, spend 15 seconds just jotting that down. If you integrate that savoring with a gratitude, slightly longer gratitude practice, at the end of the day, you're much more likely to have an accurate accounting of what actually occurred and much less likely to let the good events from that day, especially the good social events, the evidence of human goodness you've experienced, recede into the landfill of lost memories.

I, for about a month I carried a piece of paper around every day and I wrote stuff down until I just got the ability to do that in my head. It was a very valuable exercise. But the evidence of human goodness, which is in the title of your book about human goodness. I look at human kindness versus human goodness. What's the difference?

I mean, I think goodness is a much less scientific term. Not that kindness is the most precise term either. Um, I, I think of goodness as the qualities that we appreciate in other people. That includes kindness, which could be considered some mix of pro social behavior, doing for others, and compassion, feeling for others. I think it also includes other qualities. You know, we appreciate when the folks around us are attentive, when they're open minded, when they're warm and friendly. And I think all of those qualities are, are systematically underestimated in our species. I don't just think that the data are very clear. And you know, David, it was actually really surprising. I told you that I started this project in the depths of my own Covid cynicism. And one might think that the worst thing a person could do in that state is spend three years marinating in the data on suspicion, mistrust and, and hopelessness and despair. But ironically, that deep dive made me more hopeful about our species than anything that I've done in my career studying all the good stuff. Now why would that be? Well, because I discovered that cynicism isn't just hurtful. And we can talk about how it is if you like. It's just plain wrong. You know, of course there are people out there doing harmful things every day. We read about them in the news constantly. We see them on social media. Politicians, you mean politicians also. I mean, all sorts of people do all sorts of bad things. But the data that we're getting, again, we process it asymmetrically, but we also receive asymmetric data. We receive so much information about the minority of people.

Yeah.

Doing terrible things and even the minority of acts that a person does that are their worst. And so it turns out that if you look at just dozens and dozens of studies over decades, that has led to a place where if you ask people about what others are like, they're just wrong. They, they don't know how trustworthy other people are. We don't know how generous other people are. We don't know how open minded they are and we don't know how warm they are. We don't know how much they'd like to talk with us and support us and be there with us. And so in essence, cynics are leaving on the table the opportunity for a lot of what we want in life. Connection to others, cohesive community, collaboration. And that might seem like, wait a minute, you just said this made you more hopeful. That's even more depressing. But, but it suggests that there are incredible opportunities available to any of us who, who are willing to drop the bias in the way that we process information, who are willing to be more even handed and skeptical instead of cynical.

One of the big learnings I've had over the past probably five years or so is that there are bad people out there. You know, 4% of people are sociopaths or psychopaths, maybe 6%. And there are a bunch of people who are somewhere on the narcissism spectrum where they will look you in the face and they will tell you something that is not true, that they wish was true. And if you fall for that, it will cause you harm. I mean, I, I got fired from Bulletproof a few years ago and you know, they ended up selling the company for about 10% of what it was worth when I was there. Wow. And I'm like, what just happened? And it would have been very easy for me to be stuck in a really angry place from that. And it took some work and the work was actually all around forgiveness. Fortunately, I run a neuroscience company that focuses on forgiveness, so I was able to let that go. And you know, I recently, well, not that recently. Three, three or so years ago, consciously uncoupled from my wife. Same thing. Lots and lots of forgiveness, which allowed me to maintain trust. But, but I realized I sucked at discernment. How do people know whether they're dealing with someone who's trustworthy or not? Because you're going to not feel safe, you're not going to feel good if you're surrounded by people who are takers, of course.

And again, the, the perspective that I'm offering is not that we should replace cynical, blanket negative assumptions with Pollyannish blanket, positive assumptions.

I think I was a little naive. I'm, I'm a lot better now, but I'm not cynical.

Yeah.

Like show me that you're trustworthy and if you show me once you're not, you're out.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's fair. And you know, what economists talk about is a process known as trust but verify.

Yeah.

That is, if you want to learn about somebody, maybe don't start with your assumptions about them, good or bad. Try to, again, think like a scientist and act like a scientist. Try to give people a chance to show you who they are and then process that information, update your expectations about them. And the other thing I would say, and it sounds like you did this really wisely in the face of real difficult experiences, is to keep our inferences local. What do I. What do I mean by that? It makes perfect sense that if somebody takes advantage of you, you should feel disappointed in that person. You should maybe lower your expectations of future interactions with them, with that person.

Though not all people.

Yes, yes. You. You're way ahead of me here.

Okay.

What I think we often do, and I don't just think this again, the data are clear, is we often extrapolate and over generalize. You know, disappointment and betrayal are too good a teacher sometimes. They don't just teach us about that one instance. They teach us about the whole world. And you know, the paradigm case of this is trauma. And again, first and foremost, compassion and solidarity for people who go through traumatic and especially interpersonally traumatic events. I mean, these. It makes perfect sense that your brain is reeling, your body is reeling, you're wanting to be safe. I completely understand having been there myself. The issue is when that craving for safety diminishes our opportunities and our lives afterwards. And one way that that happens is when disappointment in one person turns into what I call pre disappointment in everybody. The sense that the only way I can be safe is to never count on anybody again, which turns out in the long run to be a very dangerous strategy for us.

It's very dangerous. And sometimes it doesn't go to all people. It can be to all people of one sex or all people of one race or all people of one social class or all the other ways that our automated brains just make quick and easy decisions that feel really good even though they're not real. I spent three days last week with my girlfriend. Christina Weber runs something called the Love Club Immersion. We got about 25 people spending three days focusing on healthy relationships. And every single one of them, these are successful people, had relationship trauma in the past that was holding them back because our operating system will just say, oh, I was hurt by a woman or a man. Therefore, is going to happen again from any woman or any man.

Yes.

But none of this is logical. It feels so real inside the body. How do we get out of our head and into our feelings so we just get beyond that.

It's a hard thing to do. But this is what emotion focused therapy is all about. Right. This is a form of relation of therapy not only, but often used in the context of relationships that focuses on what we could call attachment wounds. Right. So oftentimes when people can't trust in an adult relationship, it's actually not because of a betrayal in a previous romantic relationship, but because they didn't feel safe or cared for as children. So we're talking about like decades old feelings of, of insecurity that we are passing on to our new relationships. And in eft, there's a bunch of things that people try to do. One is to acknowledge and give compassion to the child they were who didn't receive what they needed. You know, it's very hard to move forward without looking back first. And you know, there's a term re parenting in eft.

Done that work, right?

Yeah, me too. Where you try to go back and be present for yourself in a way that people weren't for you earlier in life. And a second is to find moments of safety in your adult relationships and all. And that's not just with other people, with yourself as well. To become a haven for yourself first and then slowly to build out more of a sense that you have a haven.

Is the air you're breathing making you sick? Just because you don't see mold doesn't mean it isn't there. My friend Jason Earle has been on a mission for over two decades to help people understand the hidden role of indoor air in their health. He's one of the world's leading experts on mold and indoor air quality. And he created the Got Mold Test kit to make professional grade air testing simple and accessible. It uses cutting edge air sampling tech that top inspectors trust. And it's engineered for you at a fraction of the cost. It takes just minutes to get samples using the patented biovac air sampling pump. Then you send them prepaid to one of the most prestigious microbiology labs in the world. No guesswork, no paperwork, and no hidden fees. You get fast results, intuitive reports and great support. And since you keep the pump, you can retest anytime for less. It even comes with a lifetime warranty. Mold may be invisible, but its impact isn't. This kit helps you understand your environment so you can take action for your health. Go to gotmold.com and use code DAVE10 to save 10% and see what's in your air. Because the best biohackers don't guess they test. Right now, your body might be wasting energy on stress instead of healing. That's why your gut feels off, your brain feels dull, and your immune system keeps letting you down. What if you could switch your healing state back on? Without meds, stimulants or guesswork? Vibrant Blue Oil's parasympathetic essential oil blend is a powerful, non invasive way to activate your nervous system and shift your body into healing mode just through scent. A drop behind your ears can help switch off your stress response, calm inflammation and support digestion, detox and immune function. And it can even help clear up your stubborn brain fog. It's natural, easy to use and thick. Thousands of happy customers already love it. And right now, the Human Upgrade podcast listeners can grab a full size Bottle for over 50% off at vibrantblue oils.com Dave that's vibrantblue oils.com Dave don't wait to start feeling like yourself again.

Even with others.

Safety is a state that's internally generated, both in men and women. I think it's a little bit different for, for each of the different, the different sexes on average. And when it's internally generated, other people feel it around you, which allows them to step more into their own safety and to sort of expand. How does one go about generating an internal sense of safety so that you don't have to be cynical?

It's, it's hard work and it takes, it takes time. But it is possible. You know, in eft they even talked to talk about earned attachment, that if you didn't have the foundation you needed, you can build it for yourself. How do you go about that? There's a few things that I think can be helpful. One comes from my colleague at Stanford, Jeff Cohen's lab. Jeff focuses on values, affirmation, that is. He'll give people a set of 20 things that might matter to them in life. Relationships, success, strength, humor. And he says, pick one of these that matters a lot to you. Write about why it matters to you and write about how you express it in your life. And it turns out that people who do this practice regularly of focusing on what matters to them and how they're living those values. They feel safer, they feel more secure in themselves, they're less fragile when it comes to their opinions, for instance. That's one step. Another is to practice self compassion. And I'm sure that you have talked a lot about this on the show, but you know, self compassion is a way of meeting our own suffering and being there for ourselves. As you said Safety, a feeling that arises internally. And you know, I think a lot of us, myself included, have a pretty easy time finding care for others and a very difficult time finding care for ourselves and self. Compassion is the practice of doing what often comes naturally when we are parenting, when we are being a friend, when we are being a mentor and pointing that energy back at ourselves to create that sense of safety. You know, sometimes nobody else can protect you, but you can protect yourself. And to generate that space and to generate that care along with values. Affirmation. That's a kind of one, two punch, I think, for creating a foundation of safety from which we can then move and build towards relationships with others.

Beautifully said. You mentioned eft. I realize some listeners may not know about that. It's called Emotional freedom Technique, and it's basically tapping. If you listen to the episode with Nick Ortner, who's a good friend, or Dawson Church, another friend, we talk about that a lot. And this is something that drives me insane. Okay, As a scientific computer science guy, you're telling me that if I, like tap like this or I tap like this and I say an affirmation, it's going to do something and I don't want it to work. And maybe that's some cynical leftover thing, I mean, because what the heck. So I finally think I understand. You're just dealing with layers of your operating system that are not visible to your conscious brain. They're not supposed to be visible. They don't even want you to know about them. But I've had profound results, not really on physical stuff very often. Like some people can resolve pain that way, but some of my emotional blocks, or even some kind of esoteric spiritual things, sometimes tapping is powerful stuff. And so if. If you're feeling always triggered, therefore always cynical about something, maybe, maybe listen to one of those episodes. I'll put the links in the show notes for you or find a therapist who does that. And a lot of the stuff that's been most freeing for me is almost not logical. It's not about what's going on in my brain. It's about what's going on inside my heart, inside my cells. And it's that. That division where most people think they are the same thing as what's going on in their operating system versus in their conscious mind. Do you think those are separate consciousnesses inside of you, or are they all one?

Oh, that's such an interesting question. I think that they are all one in that we have a unified conscious experience. But I think they are multi Sourced. Right. So we have the illusion of a single cohesive experience, but that experience draws from so many different pathways, some of which we are aware of and some of which we're not. And I think you aptly say that we confuse this cacophony of different sources with just the truth about who we are. I would add to that, Dave, that we confuse the cacophony of information we're receiving from inside our body and outside with an accurate depiction of the world.

It's not accurate at all.

We have, I mean, this is what my wonderful late colleague Lee Ross called naive realism. So if I feel skittish around you, if I feel nervous around you, it's because you're a bad person. If we disagree about something, it's because you are wrong. You don't have the data that you need. Not ever. Because I'm wrong. You know, if, if, if I like music, it's because it's good, not because it reminds me of what my mother is saying to me when I was an infant.

Right.

And Right. And I think that one of the practices of anti cynicism is frankly trusting our values more but trusting our beliefs less. If that makes sense. Right. It's understanding who we are and what we want out of life, but not over rotating on every inference we draw in a particular situation because those inferences are so noisy and based on so much bad intel that our, that our body might be giving us or that the world might be providing as well.

It can feel overwhelming. And I've been with so many friends when they start just realizing this stuff. But I think a lot of cynicism comes from just not feeling safe, like what if I'm wrong? And having worked with a lot of, of people at 40 years of Zen, where we go really deep into childhood stuff. Sometimes it's a teacher, you know, they criticize you in class, or a parent who says, well, you know, if you, if you don't know it, you're not worthy of love and things like that. And then you end up years later as an adult thinking, well, if I'm wrong, instead of I just didn't know something, or I made a mistake where I'm a bad person. Yes, right. And, and this is a really common thing. I had a conversation with one of my teenagers about this who was being really defensive about something, didn't make any sense. And we got into it and it was like, oh my gosh, how many adults are stuck with this deep subconscious programming that if I'm wrong, I'm bad?

Yeah.

Versus if I'm wrong, I'll learn. How do you get over that?

I mean, this is the difference between guilt and shame, right? Guilt is I made a mistake. Shame is I am a mistake. And again, I mean, I think that the same way that we over judge others based on single instances of their behavior, right? I mean, somebody cuts me off in traffic, I, I suddenly feel like I know everything about their soul, right? And we treat ourselves that way as well. We don't have as privileged information about others or about us as we think. And again, this is a place that I think skepticism can be helpful, right? You make a mistake, whether that's to trust somebody that you shouldn't have trusted or to say something you shouldn't have said. And it's easy to feel really unsafe, like wait a minute, maybe I'm a bad person, maybe I'll never experience love. And that draws you in, into a defensive position that you know, actually again, over the long run is quite unsafe. And, and this is a, a point that I do want to draw out because I think again, with all compassion and understanding, people who have been hurt often shrink, right? They, they, they don't want to trust others because they don't want to be hurt again and they think it's safe. But really, being pre disappointed, being cynical is safe only in the way that house arrest is safe, right? I mean, sure, you, you won't get hit, you won't get run over by a bus if you stay in your room for the rest of your life. Yeah, but what will you lose? And it turns out that over the long term, people who can't open themselves up, be vulnerable and trusting, yeah, they might be betrayed less often, but they also lose the ability or the opportunity, let's say, to feel real connection with others. And that over the long term is devastating to our physical and mental health. Yes, it increases loneliness, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, but it also increases cellular aging, creates more sleep disruption, and eventually leads to heart disease. As you said, there are long prospective studies of thousands of people that find that more cynical folks, people who are less willing to trust others, who think that trust is a sucker's game, actually end up dying younger than non cynics. You know, maybe the most famous quote about cynicism comes from the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who 500 years ago said that we needed strict government because left to our own devices, human lives are nasty, brutish and short. But ironically, the people who might reflect that best are cynics themselves. By deciding that about humanity, we make it more Likely that our own lives will be diminished and cut short at the end.

If you hate yourself and others, you probably won't like your life. And ultimately, I feel like some of that sits behind cynical perspective. It's a deep lack of trust and lack of love that can become hate it. It's interesting you also talked about safety. My new coffee company is called Danger Coffee, because who knows what you might do? And it's choosing danger. Not dumb danger, but choosing to do something that doesn't feel safe but is worth it. And it might mean asking that girl out. It might mean getting a new job or stepping out on your own or doing something that, that really felt and that might not be safe, but it might be worth it. And I, I'm just deeply opposed to a world that's designed for safety because then we would never trust anyone, because that's safest. Except that that kills you. According to the evidence in your book. It makes your life suck and then you die early.

Yeah, that's right. And you know, a lot of my lab these days is studying what we call social risk taking. And you know, risk taking almost has a bad rap in our culture. It sounds like a bad thing to do, which I think is terrible. Yeah, you know, I think if you reflect on the fact that risky behavior is almost a pejorative, you know, like an insulting thing to say that somebody's, oh, this person is engaged in risky behavior, that's speaks to something really broken in our public conversations. And, and it turns out that social risk taking, things like striking up a conversation with a stranger, disclosing what you're going through, your struggles to a new friend, trying to support somebody, expressing gratitude, all of these, being vulnerable, being vulnerable, all of them forms of vulnerability. There's a whole bunch of, of data from the last 10 years or so suggesting that we are too risk averse, that our risk calculation in the social world is, is miscalibrated in ways that are really clear and very hurtful. So my friend nick Epley at UChicago and lots of other people study under sociality. And it turns out that if you ask people, hey, you know, what would it be like if you struck up a conversation with a stranger on your commute today? Or if you thanked that third grade teacher who made a difference in your life or complimented somebody, people are like, oh, man, that would be incredibly cringe, awkward. It would not be fun. It would not be nourishing for me if you then force a separate group of people to have those interactions and say, well, how was that they say, it's amazing. It was so fulfilling. It was not awkward at all. So we really don't know how good interactions with each other will be. And part of that is because we're too cynical about people. So at Stanford, my lab and I surveyed thousands of undergraduates, and we asked them two types of questions. One about themselves. How empathic are you? How much do you like helping peers who are struggling? How much would you like to meet new friends on campus? And then we asked, how do you think the average Stanford student would answer these questions? And we discovered not one, but two Stanfords. Right. The actual community was full of warm, caring people who wanted to connect. But in their mind, students, average peer was cold and prickly and judgmental, or at least more than the reality. And students who didn't know how much others wanted to connect took fewer social risks and ended up more socially isolated six months later. So there's this cycle where we don't realize how much others want to connect and we think we're alone. We think that we're the only lonely people who wish for more, stronger relationships. And because we don't realize that about each other, we stay alone to our own detriment.

A while ago, I had the surgeon General on the show and he the only book he's ever written was about the epidemic of disconnection with people. And the number of close friends we have has gone down dramatically. And something like, don't quote me on exactly these things. It's a memory. But something like 30% of people report having not even one single close friend. And this is because we fetishize safety.

Yes.

Instead of, I choose danger, I'm going to go out and say, hey, like, nice shoes or whatever. It doesn't matter. And if the person responds negatively, it's probably because something's wrong with them. It's not because something's wrong with you.

Or they're just having a bad day or whatever.

They oatmeal for breakfast and their blood sugar was crashing. Who would have thought?

I called. I call these social shark attacks. So, you know, shark attacks are one of the most terrifying, at least for me, one of the most terrifying things that could happen to a person. But they are extraordinarily rare. The thing is that they're so vivid and that they live in our mind and shape our behavior in ways that are totally unnecessary. You don't need to avoid going into the ocean because you're going to get eaten by a shark. That basically never happens. But people do all the time. They're fearing something that they don't need to fear and trying to be safe in a way that actually ends up hurting them. And, you know, I think that this. You see this all over our social lives. You see it in our parenting as well. You know, we. We have now, you and I, Dave, but. But a lot of us in our generation have raised our kids to try to keep them as safe as possible, not to help them explore the world. And that has led to a generation that is much less trusting and more anxious than in previous. Than in previous decades that the good news here. And I do want to give some good news. I mean, I. Again, somehow studying cynicism has made me much less cynical, because the idea is that we're wrong about this. We overestimate the risks and underestimate the opportunity, and so we don't take enough risks. Right? We don't take enough risks in our social lives. But all you need to do to shift our risk profile to something healthier and more optimal is not lie to people. It's to tell them the truth. You know, at Stanford, we had a campaign, an advertising campaign that we ran where the target audience was Stanford undergraduates, and the product was also Stanford undergraduates. We targeted certain dorms, and we put posters all around those dorms, just showing people the real data about what their peers said. Did you know 95% of your peers would love to help somebody who's struggling? Did you know 85% of the people around you want to make new friends? And we paired that with some psychoeducation where, again, people learned only the real data. And we found that people who learned what their peers were really like were, first of all, happier, they were more willing to take social risks, and they made more friends over the subsequent six months. So this is a vicious cycle of mistrust, de risking, and missed connections that can be remedied, not again, by lying to people, not by only showing them the good stuff or being Pollyannish, but by showing them real data.

Wow, what a profound practice there's. Just to do that. In college, I. I remember I had a belief that is definitely cynical that. That I'm in this alone. I'm gonna have to do this by myself. And in my freshman year of college, I was in an entrepreneur focus group because I wanted to be an entrepreneur, didn't know how. And a guy who was probably 50 showed up and said, oh, I'm happy to show you everything. And my programming was, well, he's going to want something in return, and it's not safe. And I didn't take advantage of it. And that was actually right around the time that the first product ever sold over the Internet, before the browser even was made, was a caffeine T shirt. I sold out of my dorm room. And I. I kind of. I don't say I kick myself. I just look back. I kind of laugh at myself now, but at the same time I was doing that, Mark Andreessen, a famous investor, of course, he created the first web browser, Netscape. And Mark was like, let me go to Silicon Valley and find someone who's done this a lot of times and have him teach me. So he was willing to receive help in because he didn't have cynicism. And me, I'm like, I will do this all by myself. And I just got tired of putting T shirts in bags. I was like, I've had enough of this and. And didn't make much out of it. I've had a great career. I'm not complaining. But the difference in like a Mark Zuckerberg or a Mark Andreessen is that they didn't have that cynicism about receiving help because somehow they. They understood people want to help. Where I am now, people always want to help. Not just me. I help people all the time with their business stuff or their personal stuff. And my businesses are all about helping people. And you realize the inherent human goodness is that. That. That final or that. That friend F word is that we genuinely feel good in service to others. It puts us in a flow state.

Absolutely.

And we forget it all the time. What's the best way to remind ourselves that humans are good and want to help?

This is a great question. And I think that we've talked about thinking like scientists. I think a great way to remind ourselves of what people are really like is to act like scientists as well. You know, the monk and author, one of my favorites, Pima Chodron, says we can treat our lives like an experiment. We can interrupt the usual cycle of thought and explore more actively. That's a paraphrase, by the way she writes. She writes so much better, so much more eloquently that I speak. But. But this is what I try to do. I do what I call taking leaps of faith on other people. Now, this is not, you know, sending my bank information to a prince who's going to wire me $14 million. It's not being naive or Pollyannish or being taken advantage of. It's taking calculated risks again, to show that I believe in people. You know, Ernest Hemingway said the Best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them. But it doesn't just teach us about people. When we trust them, it changes them. One thing that we haven't talked about today is self fulfilling prophecies. It turns out that people become who we think they are because who we think they are affects how we treat them. And how we treat them affects how they treat us in response. So cynics, because they start out with this bleak assumption, treat others in contemptuous and mistrustful ways and bring out their most selfish side. When we practice hopeful skepticism instead, we treat people like the folks we hope they are, instead of the people we fear they will become. And as a result, we bring out their best. We witness human goodness all the time, and it is there whenever we want to see it. You know, my friend Dacher Keltner studies awe, this emotion that we get when we experience vastness and feel like we're part of something greater than ourselves. And you might think of awe as, okay, I'm looking at the Milky Way on a dark night or a mountainscape or a grove of redwood trees. But in surveys of thousands of people, Dacher asked them, what made you feel awe today? And the most common response was what he calls moral beauty, the everyday kindness of other people. So you're asking, how do we get better at witnessing this Again, I want to say we just pay closer attention, right? We give people chances. We think and act like scientists. Again, this is not about being naive. It's about being aware. And when we are aware, that goodness sort of bubbles up from every corner of our lives. I'm not saying that everybody is great all the time at all, but we underestimate how much of it there is around us all the time.

It turns out that gratitude and awe are necessary for deep forgiveness. And when I have people go through my 40 years of Zen program in Seattle, you know, five day, mostly executives and celebrities and people, in order to let go of some belief that that was put in there without your consent when you were young. The thing that opens the door is recognizing gratitude and feeling awe. And lately I added ketamine as an option to that program. You don't have to. People have ketamine like experiences without it. But ketamine ramps up the awe and it ramps up neuroplasticity when it's used under medical supervision. And that leads to a question for you. What is the role of psychedelics in seeing human goodness?

You know, there's, there's a lot of data coming out on this, and I won't pretend to be an expert in that entire literature. I know that there are some studies that find that therapy with psychedelics and in particular MDMA can in essence open us to perceiving other people. You know, I don't think there's work on cynicism in particular, but focus us on perceiving them empathically. And my sense is that the more clearly you see people, the more you witness their goodness. So one could extrapolate and say, well, maybe there's a connection there. But again, I don't want to get out over my skis as an empiricist here, but I think that intuitively you can see the connection pretty clearly.

Since I moved to Austin a couple years ago, I've gotten to know a few groups of friends. And I'm. I'm someone who has friends all over the world because I travel extensively to speak on big stages and. And for my work in the world. And I'm really inspired. These are people, one group I'm thinking of in particular in their early 30s, where they all. I don't know how, kind of became conscious communicators and just as a dozen plus people. And they're all real with each other because somehow they cultivated trust in that friend network. And there's some of the happier people and they all have their struggles and.

All, of course, but it.

It's so inspiring to me. I didn't have that at that age where people were just so real because they learned how to have a trusted group of people where they could just show up and be themselves and not have all the. All the drama and pain and fear. How would you advise young people to build a trusted group like that? Is there a process? Is there a learning? What's the trick?

Wow. I think that one thing is to be more open to initiating relationships. The more people we connect with, the more we can find who our people are. We can find our tribe. I think that a second piece is, again, this is a type of social risk taking. But one thing that I think we see in our social network studies of Stanford is that there are certain people who have what we would call betweenness centrality. This sounds like the wonkiest phrase. What does that mean? It means that they connect people who are not otherwise connected, that they are social bridges between groups. And I think that finding your people, finding a trusting community requires the bravery, the courage to not just have isolated relationships that are great, but to bring those people together as well. Community is an active practice. It's not Something that happens to you. And so the more ownership we can take over our communities, the more active that we can be as stewards of those communities, the more likely they are to cohere and come together.

There are people who are super connectors or have that superpower of creating community and safe spaces. I'm thinking like Joe Polish, who's been on the show in group of 500 entrepreneurs who genuinely. It's amazing the kind of experiences. Or JJ Virginia, who does entrepreneurship for health, who's also been on the show and taught me how to be in the New York Times for the first time. I'm genuinely helping people who have that. That special ability to just know all this stuff about all the people and match people with the right ones. So one thing that I wish I'd have known earlier is it's possible to find people like that and then join their tribe. If you have good discernment and you realize, okay, if that's not your superpower, you can find a group and join it or you can make your own very. I'd say in my early 20s, I went about. I maybe had a group of six people where I worked really, really hard on that. And I realized that's probably not my superpower. And some of those are still really close friends today. But the amount of work for me to make a group cohesive is very high. For people for whom it isn't work at all. It's just natural and inherent in them, those seem very rare. Do you have any data or thoughts? How common are these superconductors?

Well, they're. They are relatively rare, but Charles Duhigg, my friend and author of this great book, Super Communicators.

Yeah.

Would argue that any of us could become super communicators with the right effort. Now, he wouldn't say it's easy, but he would say that there are techniques that we can use in our interactions that I say actually connect a lot with hopeful skepticism, things like being really curious about others asking. He finds that super communicators ask ten times more questions than the average person that they validate, and they try to draw out themes in the comments that multiple people are making during a conversation, trying to actively generate connection and deepen communication in real time. Again, I think this takes work, and maybe it's easier for some people than others as a default. But Charles would argue strenuously that if we want to be better connectors, we can work at that.

I know we're running up on the end of the time you have available final Question for you, Jamil. Your book is Hope for Senex, and I gotta ask you this. If you could feel as good as you do now or better, how long would you want to live?

I mean, that's a profound question. You mean I could choose centuries? I could choose to. As long as. As good.

Well, we're right at the cusp of this being possible.

Yeah. I mean, it's so difficult to answer because the animal inside me says forever. No animal wants to die. Yeah. And so that's a knee jerk response. I guess my second follow up question would be, does everybody else get to do it with me? You know, I would, I would not want to live centuries and centuries if it meant watching my children and grandchildren themselves age and die.

You don't have a right to force other people to live longer than they want to.

Right. But if they had the choice with me.

I believe we're building this for our species.

Yeah.

And some people are going to do it, some people aren't.

Wow. Well, it would be a lot longer than I, than, than the current life expectancy. Let me say that.

Yeah.

How about you?

My number is at least 180 because our current best is 120. We have 100 years to do 50% better. I think I'm being super conservative and I've been in the longevity movement for 25 years. And like I just reset my central aging clock using stem cells, my hypothalamus, and I've done gene therapy. And I know this is happening, like it's ridiculous what's possible, but it raises the question, if you're not cynical and you're aware of the world, my answer, that's my kind of number answer. But my real answer is I'd like to die at a time and buy a method of my choosing. So when I'm done, I'm done. Because I don't think, even though my animal parts would like to live forever, I don't think that would be good for me from a happiness perspective. And there will be a time when there's no more interesting problems and there's nothing else I want to learn. And I'm like, I'm done. But I think it might be centuries. And I'm open to that. I'm also open to like tomorrow going, maybe, maybe I'm done.

Right.

Like it's, there's just a sense of freedom in that.

That's beautifully put.

If you're cynical, though, you can't make that choice. And yeah, that's why I think your book is so powerful. And guys, I I know JAM has to run. Just Hope for Cynics if you're feeling cynical or just distrustful and angry, read the book. There's so much science. Humans are actually good. And yes, there are some people who are bad people, but there are far fewer than it feels. And all you have to do is learn how to spot them or have people around you can spot them and there's a quality of life that you would never believe. And this book will teach you that. So Hope for Cynics. Is there a URL people should go to to find the book?

Yeah, Jamil Dash Zaki is my website and I'm really easy to find. And Hope for Cynics is available everywhere you get books.

Jamil, your work is awesome. Next time I'm in the Bay Area, let's hang out, please.

I would love that.

All right. Thank you, my friend. Thanks. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.

A Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider, carefully read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.