The Dailey Edge Podcast
Join hosts Trent, TJ, and Todd Dailey as they explore the intersections of technology, culture, fitness, and personal growth. Through engaging discussions and personal anecdotes, the trio dives into topics ranging from childhood gaming nostalgia and cutting-edge fitness tech to the pursuit of happiness and lifestyle choices. Whether reminiscing about epic gaming marathons, sharing tips for staying on the forefront of fitness trends, or unraveling the complexities of modern life, The Dailey Edge delivers thoughtful insights, lively debates, and relatable stories for listeners of all walks of life.
The Dailey Edge Podcast
Episode 45: You Can Share The Same Moment And Leave With Different Truths
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
We wrestle with why people can experience the same facts and still leave with wildly different realities. We trace how language, media, bias, and AI shape what we think is true and we push ourselves toward curiosity instead of certainty.
• leadership moments where identical events become conflicting stories
• the brain filling gaps with assumed motives and missing context
• confirmation bias and why we latch on to what we already believe
• why feedback often lands as personal rejection
• social media incentives that reward extreme framing
• deciding when to speak on moral injustice without pretending to know everything
• how anomalies and viral clips can demonize whole groups
• perception as a spectrum of more informed vs less informed
• AI as a tool that can reduce bias or amplify agendas
• what skills still matter for kids as jobs shift
be open, communicate, ask questions, and we'll see you next time.
Perception Vs Reality Opens
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to the Daily Edge here with my brothers TJ and Todd Daily. Excited about this topic today, perception versus reality. It's clear that we all see things differently. I remember when we were younger, someone would say, Well, how do you know this is a blue crayon? How do you know if the color blue that you're seeing is the same blue that you're seeing, it's the same blue that you're seeing? I think it's a really good question. I think a lot plays into our perception, uh, both visually and cognitively, um, and how that translates into our own realities. So I'm gonna kick this over to Todd to get us started.
Same Facts Different Stories
SPEAKER_01I have just, I would say over the last decade, I have been so fascinated at the situations I've been in professionally and personally, of people that have experienced the same situation factually, but have come away with unbelievably different perceptions of the situation. Like, not like, oh, you know, this person kind of thought this. I mean, like it you if you were in two rooms hearing the stories, you would have no idea that they were actually like in the same situation. So vastly different, drastically different. The brain's ability to fill in details, make assumptions, jump to conclusions, and create a reality that I'll call a perception is fascinating. And I I guess growing up, I never really understood that. I always felt like look, if we're all experiencing the same world, this is a brown table, those are you know decorative, whatever. And the reality is, like, I'm to the point now where I'm not sure exactly what you guys see. If you see a brown circular table, obviously I'm exaggerating for uh uh and poking fun a little bit, but I have been blown away. And I think we see this, and media has taken full advantage of it because they've realized they can fabricate and manipulate to have people perceive the world a certain way, Republican versus Democratic. And it's it's incredible. Uh, I'm I'm really fascinated.
How Language Gets Co Opted
SPEAKER_00It's very interesting how, you know, I mean, the base, the basis of all of this is language, right? And it's what language we assign to our perceptions. And it's interesting how it's been co-opted over the years, and I think it contributes heavily to what you're talking about. You know, I think that we've become more the more we're exposed to media, the more we're exposed to inputs, the more desensitized we become, and the more extreme things need to be communicated for it to resonate or for it to engage us at all. And so I think what's happened in a lot of instances is certain words have been bastardized and co-opted to the point that for certain people, and we're talking about perception again, they mean different things. You know, so a couple of one of those words is Nazi. To someone who lived through the Holocaust, that is the worst possible thing you can ever fathom. I cannot fathom it. Um, you can't fathom seeing your loved ones burned in an oven, people shot on site, yet it is used so freely today as like, you know, a common descriptor for for anybody who essentially, in a lot of instances, doesn't agree with a particular perspective, and you hear that word used on both sides. Um, but there's so much of that that's gone on, and it's gotten so extreme that I think that it's worth examining um how language has been co-opted in that way. And then I think that the more you see, this goes back to, I guess, environmental variables, the more you see people who have come up in different environments, and again, what certain things mean to them, the more that informs maybe their perspective on some of these uh situations that have occurred.
SPEAKER_01Interestingly enough, the um I'm Todd, when you're talking about now you've had several years in leadership, right? And as you have probably been in several situations where you've heard two sides of a story and sometimes there's a third that no one's seen. Uh, I know that I've seen it. I I'm curious um obviously not to give examples, but like take us through uh processing that and what do you think the biggest influences are on perception for people? Is it their environment, as TJ mentioned? What are your thoughts?
Gaps Motives And Assumptions
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think it's a combination of things. Um I think it's a combination of things that develop a storyline that basically predisposes the brain or positions the brain to fill in the gaps, right? Of someone's motive or why they did it, uh even how they did it in some cases. I think we all have varying backgrounds, experiences, uh, biases that set the brain up to fill in the gaps in different ways. And I think that is what I've found is in a given situation that you experience together, there are way more gaps to be filled than what someone would initially instinctively suggest. Right. So if you're sitting in a in a room and you're having a conversation and someone says, I would have done that differently. The person who did it is hearing, you're an idiot. Right. And this person is potentially just saying, Hey, I would have done that differently, right? Maybe giving them some constructive criticism of like, hey, here's a different way to do that, or think about that. And some of this goes into delivery, but there's so many. Why did that person say that? What's their motive? Like, well, yeah, they told me that, they called me an idiot because such and such and such and such, and boom, like off it goes. I I think it is a combination of factors, um, both recent and I think longer term that had been instilled, uh deeper seated that helps fill the gaps.
SPEAKER_00Why do you guys think that we are wired inherently to jump to those conclusions versus tease them out through discussion? Right? Like most people, self-included, that would be an initial reaction, you know, especially um with less life experience, right? Like that guy called me an idiot. I'm not even gonna talk to him and wonder why I'm going to make it my professional goal over the next year to destroy said person's career instead of just trying trying to understand why do you think we're wired that way?
Confirmation Bias In Daily Life
SPEAKER_01Confirmation bias. And and it's easier. Laziness and confirmation bias. And by confirmation I bias, I mean we are all wired to seek things that we already believe. So if we thought that person was already out to get us, and they just simply say, Hey, I would have done that differently, that's confirmation bias. They're gonna latch on to that. See, I told you so. And you see this all the time in politics. People taking advantage of that, but but we have a confirmation bias as a human species that we really find ourselves latching on to things that we already believed or had hypothesized. I think there's two parts of this. There's the person that maybe be is the communicator, but like how we receive stuff, I think is important too. And um, I think there's a disconnect. And I think there's um we all want to, I believe, when we do something, which is as you get older, a lot of people don't like to try new things because we want to do it well, right? We want to do things well, we want to please people. And so any type of feedback, I don't know, and this would be interesting, could be we've gotten a little soft over time, but any type of feedback comes across as I didn't do it right, or I'm not good enough, or and then I'm not valued, and then I'm not loved, right? Let's just go right right right down the chain. Do you think that that's changed over time that people that we're just a more sensitive society? Or why do you believe, or would you disagree, that feedback in general is something that is hard for people to take, that that's not a natural uh we've taught, I mean, it's the introduction of new communication mediums.
Why Feedback Feels Like Rejection
SPEAKER_00You know, if you were gonna say something to somebody 50 years ago, you had to say it to their face for the most part. Maybe you could write them a letter, right? So we can but but now I think there are these different forms of communication that are readily available. I mean, they talk about it on like Joe Rogan talks about it a lot. We weren't meant to be in a situation where we could communicate to 10,000 people at one time in 30 seconds. Like that's not something that we, I think, fully as a as a species under understand the gravity of when something like that happens.
Social Media Turns Silence Into Guilt
SPEAKER_00There was an individual uh that we're all friends with the other day. I'm not on Facebook much, but I did jump on, or maybe I saw it on Instagram and then moved over that was talking about some of the things that have been going on. And that uh it was equating silence related to these current events directly to being silent during historically oppressive events. I'll be general with my statement. Basically saying if you're quiet now, these people would, the people that are quiet now, they would have been quiet back when these other oppressive things were going on back in the day. And I found that really interesting because again, I don't think I think that there's we've talked on prior podcasts about us 99.9%, I think you can say with certainty that most people are humanitarians. So I'm sure, to your point earlier, that there was some positive reason that they did that, that they put that out there. But man, it's real hard to see that when essentially somebody is calling you a supporter of like a horrific historic event because like the Holocaust or slavery or whatever. Like, hey, if they're not talking now, they wouldn't have talked back then. They wouldn't have been when if you when if you look at, you know, I'll be transparent. I look at my relationship or some of our relationships with this particular person historically, like we've always had their back, whoever this person was, we've always been good friends, we've always supported each other. Uh they've supported us and vice versa. So, you know, you you there there's a factual element there that you're you're that is in front of you, but it's still hard, even knowing that, to not feel like they're attacking you and saying that you would have been a uh somebody that would have supported one of those horrific events.
SPEAKER_01I think that's the sensitivity of that we have is like by him saying that it hits home and like well, you're calling me this or that. And um how how we capture that I think is important. One of the things that um I think we've done is just we just haven't done a good job of well, I I would say I think we put our um we put things that are super important to us out there, and if they're not super important to other people, I know who you're talking about just by how you're describing it, but like is it okay that your mission in life is not my mission in life? Um and so what what I what I mean by that is like, well, in in this instance where if you're not standing up for those people, my whole life is centered around um racial equality, which I think is super important. And that's what I'm focusing on. And the bar now is if you're not saying anything, then you're part of the problem, not part of the solution. And we can either take offense to that or we can say, I get why you're saying that. That's something you're passionate about and that's what you believe, but that isn't the top priority for me. My priority is creating Christian environments in the workplace, and that's where I'm focused, my time, energy, and effort. I can't take on every battle that you're taking on at the level and intensity that you're taking it on. So I think we've also lost a little bit of like just because someone is super passionate about something, I don't believe we have to be certain, we have to be as passionate and as vocal about said thing, especially if we're uninformed or um we just don't feel like we've got the the um information to provide value to that. So uh that's something that I've also wrestled with and I've had to ask myself, does it bother me because that's hitting close to home? Or does it bother me that like I feel like I'm being asked to carry the same cross this person is based on what they've been called to do? You hit on something there that I think is really important, and I think it's a step further than just saying this isn't a passion of mine. I don't have the time and energy to have the information necessary to form an opinion on certain things. And I think people need to people need to be more mindful of the time and energy it takes to truly be well informed on a topic enough to share and make a statement or opinions about it that you're publicly trying to push people towards. I think a lot of people, due to confirmation bias, see something that they had a hypothesis about, they jump on it, and then the air horns start cut start coming out. And I think that's super dangerous.
ICE Clips And Overgeneralizing
SPEAKER_01And I will give you an example, like a lot of a lot of what's been going on uh with ice, okay? So ice, I think I think at least a decent portion of the population understands the idea of securing borders, like or having like borders. I think some disagree with that premise, and I think many of us disagree with uh the tone that's being set and how aggressively we're pursuing that, as you guys mentioned, in this spirit of being humanitarian. And for me, even the Pope has spoken out a lot about this. There have been, I will say, maybe a handful of uh situations with ICE officers that have been recorded, and it has people have immediately jumped to the idea that ICE is basically ripping people out of their homes in cities across the country and you know, ripping families apart, separating kids and parents, and just putting people on planes and shipping them places. And and again, it's probably a number of situations that we've seen that we can count on our fingers, would be my guess. The reality is there's thousands and thousands of ice agents that are out there, and I have no idea what the vast, vast majority of these people are doing, how they're conducting themselves, how it's actually being executed. I think people are really quickly, they see a few of these scenarios, and boom, it's like fulfills my hypothesis. That's what I said, told you so. You're a Nazi, you voted for them, blood's on your hands, right? It's like very aggressive. And I think it's short of my perception is that it's short of people doing the amount of research they need to be doing to actually understand what is happening on the whole. So this happened with Catholic priests. You had uh more than a handful of situations, but I think there's several hundred thousand Catholic priests in the world, and there were some very bad eggs doing some super bad things. There were police officers, right? Half a decade ago, that was that was the thing. They were videoing police officers. You got hundreds of thousands of police officers across the country. There's gonna be 10 of them, and it it basically an entire society wanted to like stop having police officers, wanted to defund the police. There are firefighters doing the same thing. There are probably, not probably, I can guarantee you, there are dozens and dozens of teachers out there who are verbally abusing students, who are crushing confidence, who are talking with them and potentially even physically abusing them in some cases. And if the right people got a hold of that and put that out there, it would it could have an effect of demonizing. Now, fortunately, I think it would take more because people have such an appreciation for what teachers do, but you can demonize an entire profession these days with 10 scenarios because of our brain's desire to just hear what we already think, and then people run with it. And I think to me, that's disappointing. So for me, on some of this ICE stuff, I do feel like it's gotten, I just feel like the the president and the administration's tone on how aggressively they're pursuing this is wrong. What I am like my pause and my silence is really an offering of humility that just because I've seen five videos of 10,000 ICE officers that are out there, that I'm gonna jump to the conclusion that everyone's being ripped out of their homes across the country and people who are just great, good standing citizens. I mean, maybe that is happening. I'm not saying it's not. I'm just saying I don't have the time to really formulate a well-informed opinion and then try and go out and like influence the world on it. So I do think there's something really powerful to we only have so much capacity. And I think if we're not well informed on something, we got to be very careful with how we how we approach it.
SPEAKER_00I think it's important to reinforce what you said. And it's that you're not saying that it's happening one way or the other. You're saying that again, there are consequences for any analysis that you put out in the public domain. You know, uh, I do tend to agree with you. And I think, again, from a humanitarian perspective, most people do when it comes to the tone that things are being handled with. If there were instances hypothetically, where we'll again use this as an example, um ICE were to go out and get somebody that there was a serial killer, and they found out that said serial killer had met the qualifications for a violent criminal from who knows where. And 10 of those things were picked up and conveyed via particular, then you'd have potentially a different perspective. But um I think it is important to understand, I don't think a lot of people think about that because there's either historical environmental experiences that people have had, and or there is a point of success that I think people, and I think it's more aligned with maybe it's more aligned with power, or maybe it's exposure. Um there's there's a level that people get to where there's this like nurturing, mothering tendency. And so it's always the perceived meek that are in need of support. Right. And and we talk about the what could happen from a negative perspective when you jump to conclusions. It's like, you're right. Let's say, and I don't know the number. Let's say there's 50,000 ICE agents out there and these things are happening, and and again, our government is not doing a great job by pouring more gasoline on this fire. But what happens to the people who are getting that are in these roles that are getting doxxed because of, you know, people's desire or lack of desire to really get to the bottom of things and to really understand what's broadly happening. Somebody could be in some state that's way away from wherever, you know, a lot of this stuff had occurred in Minnesota over the last couple of weeks. Somebody could be in Virginia just doing some random, um, non-invasive, non-uh-tactical maneuver in terms of bringing something in or addressing a situation. And, you know, they could face physical harm and physical violence because somebody saw something on X a couple of weeks ago and didn't do their due diligence. So there's also the other side of this that could be thrown into harm's way because somebody's reacting a little bit too quickly to something.
SPEAKER_01It's really fascinating uh to think there's a percentage of negativity or moral injustice in just about everything. There's a percentage. And as you kind of indicated, Todd, what society has allowed us to do with phones and video cameras and stuff is capture more of that. We as a society thrive on the negative. I mean, papers, new newspapers, when they were r relevant, they used to send out stories with you know the headlines. And then obviously on the internet, the things that people click on are the ones with the titles and captions that actually have the most but it but it is an interesting point. We talk about perception and specifically with moral injustice, you know, because I think what we're all saying is like, look, we've all got our own callings, our own problems, our own things that we're using our time and energy and focusing on, right? And we all, we've talked about this before, where we all have different value systems. We value things differently and we have made decisions around those. Like if you voted for Trump because you're maybe your number one value is you are are against abortion, right? So if you're against abortion and that's your top value, then you're voted for Trump. You didn't vote for Trump for any other reason outside of abortion because that was the most important thing to you. And similar with Kamala, you may have voted for her because your top is X, Y, Z. So I'm curious though, when it comes to moral injustice, how do you
When Ignorance Stops Being Okay
SPEAKER_01determine and when do you engage? How how do you determine severity? And are you more likely to engage in that because I mean if you look if you look back through history, like seeing someone being treated a different way or a group of people like moral injustice, there's almost like this like chivalrous thing of like that's not okay. That's I think in today's day and age, with all the misinformation out there and all the agendas out there, it is so, so, so hard. And that's the risk, right? Like, I'll I'll I'll uh I wouldn't say a contradict, but I'll I'll offer a counterpoint to what I had said earlier, which is you can't just sit on the sidelines indefinitely and claim ignorance, right? I I think that's the the balance here is when can you engage? At what point do you have enough information to suggest it's enough of a problem that you need to engage and do something about it? And that for me is the problem I have not figured out how to solve. I just find it incredibly difficult to become accurately informed on any given topic in today's day and age. Now, I think it's obvious when it's obvious, right? If someone takes a stand on an issue or you're gonna go to a bar and and there's a sign on the outside that says, you know, white males over 45, or you know, between the ages of 30 and 65, or blacks are not allowed, or whatever, like that that is obviously um at least within that community, or for that particular, that that's that's an obvious thing. But where you have these specific situations that are being perpetrated and or being suggested implicitly to be representative, a sampling representative of the broader population of a particular profession or particular uh, you know, situation. That's where I just think it's so hard now to figure out. I wish I had a better answer.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we talked a lot about, I think in a prior episode, we talked about government, right? We talked about where we thought government should lie. And I think the majority of us thought it should be a lot of things should be handled on a more local level. And I think potentially that is where the ability to exact change is is probably the most pertinent. Like you should be engaging in that because there's there's more of a chance that you have the right perspective on something, you know, somebody being treated poorly in a workplace. Um and I think that the further you zoom out, the more difficult some of these things. Again, it's the same thing you just said. Uh, you know, it's much more difficult, I would imagine, for human resources to deal with something at a company of 50,000 people than it is for you guys. And we've seen, we've all, you know, I don't know what training you guys have your employees go through, but having gone through employee training at very large corporations, like some of it is wild. You know, you're like, again, it's it kind of goes to what do I call those? Um, it's it's it's again, it's a result of social media, but like fear that's not real. Like you're talking about something that is so rare, but because we are not designed as humans to be exposed to this much information, you know. I mean, again, I think to your point, most of what we see, if not all of what we see in the media, they're anomalies, relatively speaking. Yes.
SPEAKER_01At least we don't have proof otherwise.
Is Any Perception Correct
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Well you're talking, this is fascinating to me. It's like, is there a a right perception or is there ever a correct perception? And how would you determine that? Because as I'm sitting here, I don't know I'm gonna let you answer that. But like if I have a perception on X, and like I have a perception on silver going to a thousand dollars an ounce, right? If you go up enough layers or even in the marketplace, like investments, the people that make all the money in the markets, they can actually move the market. Sure. And so, like, their perception is way better than my perception because I'm looking at it down here and they're looking up here. Like, do you feel like do we ever have any perceptions that are actually correct? Or maybe, or and how how would you even know?
SPEAKER_00I would say if if they're grounded in moral factuality, and we talk a lot on this podcast about the Bible and some of the moral directives that are in there. If let's just say you use that as your as your guideline, right? Or or like there are things I wonder, I I think back, and it would be interesting to have somebody on here that's in their 90s or something like that, or in their 80s, but like you look back at some of the what we perceive today as atrocities historically, and it would be very intriguing. I'm sure there's interviews out there to understand was there a moral nagging? Like, if you were a slave owner in whatever time, did you feel uneasy about that? Like, was there something that told you maybe this isn't right? I'm kind of doing it because it's, you know, that's how you do things. This is who works for you. You know, did you justify it because you were giving them essentially food, shelter, and clothing, even though it wasn't to the level that you had it? It'd be really interesting to understand that. Um, because then, you know, if that that was the case, yeah, I because I do look back historically and wonder when when some of these things, again, that we perceive today as um morally reprehensible, like was it was the desire community so this desire for community and belonging so strong and falling into line so strong that you just buried that inner wiring, or was the perception so different because of the time that it just goes back to is there a right perception or not that they they really thought that, oh, this is the way to do things. Yeah, slavery's been around for thousands and thousands of years. This is just how you do it.
SPEAKER_01I don't think there's a right or wrong perception, but I think there's a spectrum. I don't think there's a point on the spectrum that's like, okay, right or wrong. I think there is a spectrum of informed perceptions versus less informed, more informed versus less informed perceptions based on factual evidence or culturally or societally agreed upon foundations, for example.
SPEAKER_00Factual evidence, by the way, is a increasingly more difficult statement.
SPEAKER_01Sure, it is, yeah. I mean, we just we've been talking about that. I mean, what is reality? Is this a I would love to hear one perception that's like a that you're strongly? You can be less or more or less per uh informed. I think as you mean, if you get more information, for example, about this ice situation, if you're going out and you're doing surveys and discovery sessions and you are interviewing the right cross-section of people that don't have uh maybe implicit biases or getting perception from people on both sides, and you find that some of these videos that we're seeing are that is what is collectively happening across the country. Then I think, you know, based on that, you could develop an informed perception that A, this is what is happening, and then B, that it is wrong based on these premises. Whether you're and I think that's variable too, right? So you need to be clear about hey, I think this is wrong based on these seven scriptures in the Bible that suggests that people are people and no one is above or below someone else, and Jesus' example of treating everybody equally or however you want to um characterize that, I think you can have more or less informed perceptions for sure. It's you know, you I mean, I was just I'm not sure I can make one statement at this moment where I'm comfortable from a perception standpoint. I think back to the Bible, and it's been interesting because we're going through Hebrews 11 together, and it's basically a historical uh documentation of all the ancient um people within the Bible. And the perception is your Moses, your Noah, your Cain and Abel, your Joseph, like these are really good, godly, fearing people. But the reality is, is when you go back and read about it, these guys were just wild. They were killing Cain and Abel, you know, they're the sons of Adam and Eve. Obviously, Cain killed Abel. I mean, Joseph was sold off by his brothers, and even when he went to work for Pharaoh and finally got into the position he was in, he honestly helped the Pharaoh take everything from the Israelites through trading them the grain that they stored up, took their land, their possessions, took it all. And then so like um Moses was was radical, right? So, like the perception is it's like, man, I wish I could be like these guys. But when you actually go to your point, you get start learning about some of the stories, and you know, even Abraham sleeping with Abraham and Isaac, yeah. Yeah, and then you know, Ishmael and Isaac stole a blessing. Um, no, Jacob stole Isaac's blessing, and Abraham slept with his wife's like all these people as people were humans and made all these different things. But when we just think about the Bible, like, oh man, these people were so I think to your point a little bit, why I bring all that up isn't is to more say, well, the more facts you can pull in, you can make a better um, you can create a better perception of what it was really like, potentially, but also like your initial perception, even historically, maybe wildly off too, based on getting the cliff notes. Like Abraham Lincoln was, you know, he did some really great things, but he did some really bad things too. And so there's just like, I think we struggle to get the historical facts to your point to get those right, to get current facts right. And then I feel like someone's always gonna have more information to perform a better perception, which makes me feel inadequate to have a perception at all.
SPEAKER_00I remember so yeah, to you know, and there's always this like continued zoom out. Like, we'll take, for instance, the uh, and I love this. Again, we talk I've mentioned
Context Wars And Viral Fear
SPEAKER_00it ad nauseum, but I have a very nice purview of both sides of the um aisle based on historical geographical locations. And so, like, it's been a while now, but when the uh the woman was shot in her car, and one side, um, and and I don't believe anybody should be merged. So, regardless of why that happened or how it happened, it happened, not good. Um, one side is taking this video and they're showing you 17 angles of exactly what happened, and they're trying to quantify whether or not it was justified. And that's like their uh, I guess their method of communication. It's their that's their piece of media. Well, then the other side zooms out, and there's more context apparently to the story. This lady was blocking traffic and she was being aggressive, and she was being, and there is this whole like prequel to this happening that may um have created unrest in the person that did that because she was kind of, you know, it was a it was a tense situation prior to that happening. I don't, I'm not picking aside. Again, nobody should ever die. So let's make that statement. But my point is that like we're so good now with 700 different angles on things. And all, and because we're exposed to so many of the world's anomalies, that puts the ability to reason that it could have happened. You know, like I, you know, I may have mentioned this before, but when our kids were young, uh, Tara had this really strange fear that one of them was going to get tangled in the cord from the blinds and die because she had like seen this on a Facebook post or some shit. Like the likelihood of that happening is probably one in 500 million. But because she'd seen that, she could justify it in her brain that, oh, that's possible. And now that we've experienced all these different anomalies throughout all of these different areas, you know, there's a way, let's say hypothetically, to justify that that guy doing that to that woman was justified. Like there's a way to do that because we've seen these things happen in the past. And it's it's again,
Aspartame Studies And Moving Goalposts
SPEAKER_00going back to like the factual side of things, um, it's so difficult. I just listened to a podcast on aspartame. We have heard throughout most of our lives, especially when we were younger, that diet sodas cause cancer.
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_00Aspartame and all of those things, and all of those chemicals, they cause cancer. You've heard people say that they still cause obesity, that they activate insulin, they do all these things. So I listened to this podcast, and this particular individual is obsessed with human randomized control trials. And he's like, you know, they created this uh AI agent that examines um PubMed and some other platforms that store medical uh scientific research. And he's like, if you search for the negative effects of aspartame, 60% come back that it could be harmful, 40% don't. But if you remove animal studies, it shifts. And if you account for human randomized controlled trials where there isn't a biases based, you know, you guys have heard the when people do studies on um certain food tendencies, and but but they're doing their studies on people who eat McDonald's all the time, right? It's like it it's not, you know. So, anyways, it goes to 8020 that it's not bad. And so my point is like people see that for some reason we want to like latch on, you know, diet coke's bad, it's cancerous, it's all this, that, and the other thing. But the more you zoom out on the more you learn. There are like seven different tiers within that conversation that you could land on and think you were in the right. You do that initial research, it includes the animal trials. You're like, see, I told you. Oh, but wait, oh, but wait, oh, but wait. And nobody wants to go that far to get to where they need to get to to be that informed.
SPEAKER_01I think that's why it's in a spectrum to your point. And and it is. I I think very few people want to go the distance to get a fully informed, because even depending on that, the 8020 may not necessarily be that it's proving it's not bad, but that there's no evidence that it is bad, right? Which is a completely different uh statement. Uh Trent, you asked for a perception that we could make that might be informed. I would say we could make a pretty informed statement that Trump's a narcissist. Like there is enough factual comments, evidence, whatever, that you could probably say, and again, this is a spectrum. I would say with some level of confidence, by the definition, Trump is a narcissist. That would be the perception that I would offer.
SPEAKER_00Hilariously, Jordan Peterson has a video out that speaks exactly against that.
SPEAKER_01That's great. Well, the funny part about that is is what if he I actually have heard he's what if also very philanthropic guy is a big show that he's putting on so that people think he's crazy and other countries are afraid of him. He's doing this stuff and the arrogance and all the stuff he says about self-promotion. But what if it's like deep down he's a very film now again? This is a big what if that he's doing all of this because he wants to, it's part of an act that that he's playing, right? In order to that's a potential perception, but your what if suggests that it's probably less informed because it's just a hypothesis, what if, right? Versus like we have seen him on many occasions. And to your point about I have heard many people that interact with him personally. He's a very, very kind person. He is very philanthropic, he has tried to help people. He's not again trying to so so when I say narcissist, that doesn't mean they're just a horrible person, but they're very egotistical and just like they want their name on everything, they want to be the guy, they just calling the shots. I mean, it's a it's a fairly safe well.
SPEAKER_00I think I think we've actually gotten this far and forgot the elephant not mentioned the elephant in the room. You want to talk about speculation, wild speculation? Let's talk about the Epstein files. Holy cow. Um I mean, it is wild, some of the things that people are running with, and I'm not calling them right, wrong, or indifferent, but it's such a seems to be such a like skeleton of what would need to be there to be proving these things factual. It's almost doing a disservice to itself by there being so many documents, so much information, but like that is something that I'll give you an example. I think you're all familiar with him, Peter Atiya, right? We're familiar with Peter. Peter Atia is in the Epstein files 1,700 times. Um, and it's all in almost all of it, or a large portion of it, is in direct communication with Epstein himself. And there are uh it's a very um, and again, this is like very cliff notes, which is a bad thing, right? But like very bro conversations. So there are references to things that you'd have in like joking with your homies that given the context of what's going on, probably not the right stuff to joke about. But um it's crazy. I I mean that's one like it's one thing to take a video of something that happened and push your agenda based on that, but to take these like very crude, very, you know, sometimes one or two sentences in email form and like place judgment on or judging right, wrong or indifferent how you're judging them, I think that that's been fascinating to me.
SPEAKER_01I think people underestimate the brain's ability to create a conviction on reality. I remember listening to a Joe Rogan podcast, and he had someone on who was basically basically saying that chicken and meat, any sort of like animal protein meat is like do you want to die by hanging or by gunshot? Like horrible, not good. Uh and you after you listen to that podcast, you're like, Wow, I'm gonna be dead tomorrow. Like, I've been eating meat, the kid the like this is a thousand percent causing cancer. I mean, the amount of statistics and studies and just the way this guy delivered this was unbelievable.
Meat Debates And Manufactured Certainty
SPEAKER_01And then Rogan had someone on two weeks later. I'm thinking I'm getting I'm not getting these mixed. I think I'm getting these right, but there's a small chance I'm I'm getting the two swapped that basically suggested just the opposite. That like a small portion of meat, like on a consistent regular basis, how that has proven to be a great source of uh nutrition and health, and from B12 to to other things. And you just you listen to the first, and you just you don't even think there's a sliver of any other possibility of any other story, and then you listen to the other story and you realize holy cow! And that's where I think the brain, there's probably many, many good reasons why the brain is wired to be able to do that, to be able to. Fill in the gaps and like get us so convicted about something. But I think we way overestimate the truth of what we're interpreting, and we don't realize how easy it is for the brain to fill in the gaps or for people to manipulate studies and information to lead us down a path that isn't necessarily reality and it may be even just a moderately informed perception. So I hear you talk, mine goes to what are the steps the brain needs to form certainty? Like as you talk about, there's probably a psychological thing that we need facts, something, something, something to help us create certainty or belief which informs our perception. And it's probably a science. And it's probably many people know how to do it. To your point, I can't tell you. There's been several times where I've done the same thing where I'm so certain about something because I just listened to it, and then I hear the opposite, and I'm like, okay. Now I generally walk away with one going one way or the other, but I've definitely seen doubt creep into something I was extremely certain about. You hear the go ahead.
SPEAKER_00No, I think we probably utilize comparison. I think that's one of the elements, is like, you know, I talk about human human randomized control trials when it comes to like a lot of these scientific studies. It's like, okay. If whatever this is has been tried in a controlled environment, it's it's probably more on the scientific side than it is anything to be able to develop like this factual stasis or base. But like um, you know, if it's been tried in a controlled environment on something that is like something else in more ways than not, then and and this result has been proven over and over and over again, then you know, it's like I think the the the brain has the ability to to let its guard down and potentially um you know look at that as factual.
Curiosity As A Social Skill
SPEAKER_01Do you guys think perceptions are bad? Um because I think one of the things is once you form one, a little bit of like egotistical bias, so it's not as easy to switch. But do you think they're bad? And if so or if not, how do you lean into conversations? I think with a humble inquisitiveness. I think curiosity, if everyone would just be a little more curious, we'd be in a much better world. Perceptions are necessary, they're absolutely necessary. Otherwise, we would all be in a paralytic state mentally trying to get every last piece of information about. I mean, you've seen those people. There have been times where I've been that person. But uh yeah, I think they're absolutely necessary. But I think if people I heard this the other day, if people were just more curious, the amount of good that would do in the world would be very difficult to quantify. Everyone is just so sure of things that in reality are not factual.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think there's qualification there, but I think it's also about discernment, right? Because unfortunately now you can be curious and you can just spend 10 years going down the same rabbit hole. That's that's the other thing, right? Like now, because of the way things are, you can go as, and this goes back to another you know thing the brain does, you can go as far to justifying. I mean, think about the people that still believe in flat earth. Like, how far have they had to go down? You know, I remember there was a movie done, a documentary, and it was with flat earthers, and there was this thing, and they were trying to prove the curvature of the earth, and it was like they went a certain distance, call it a couple of miles, and shot a laser. And they're like, well, if the earth is curved based on physics or based on the measurement of the earth, there's no way we'll be able to see the laser. There's no, you know, like it whatever, 10 miles, whatever, super high-powered laser. Well, they shot the laser and the earth was curved, and only four out of the five changed their mind. So, like now, and especially with the advent of AI, um, there's gotta be some level of discernment, and that's what's kind of scary, you know, because again, we're exposed to all these anomalies,
Discernment When Beliefs Resist Evidence
SPEAKER_00we start to be able to justify things that are just so highly unlikely.
SPEAKER_01Here's a question for you if your perception now is more informed and could be informed by AI, who's helping the AI form their perceptions? And we know some of it has to do with the way you prompt a question. Because if you ask something like, help me understand why this is the case, it will lean into that being the case more than others. But if your perception now is being formed by an AI agent.
SPEAKER_00Have you noticed that a lot of authors, um, I've listened to a couple books lately, and at the end of them, the authors are like, this is not to be used to train any large language models. Like, because a lot of it's self-fulfilling, right? Because yes, it's how you prompt it, but it's also trained on us. And who is us is a really big question. And so I think some of these authors are like, I don't want you to train on me. I'm not taking responsibility for two generations from now believing something's a particular way because they took whatever I said as gospel, which I think takes some uh real self-awareness.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I think every I think it's pretty well documented that every large language model has a bias and they're gonna have biases based on the information that's put in. I think the best thing you can do at this point is to have an awareness of it, of what is the bias, and it's gonna be depend on the society and the time when that information was fed and uh what that collective amount of information is. Obviously, the broader set of information that you get across societal time periods, across generations, across different cultures, like there's more of a diversity in there, and I think it gets a little less bias as you expand, but I think there's always a bias you have to be aware of.
SPEAKER_00Well,
AI Bias Deepfakes And Prompt Power
SPEAKER_00you want to talk about you want to talk about like fine-tuning perception now? I mean, it's always it's getting so hard. I always felt like, you know, I think most of us that use AI on a regular basis can suss out verbiage from AI pretty easily. Um, most imagery pretty easily. But I saw one the other day. It was a lady in Ireland who had a bakery and she had a picture on there with Brad Pitt, and it was split like dead nuts. And I think it was real because he's in Ireland filming something right now. Um, but it was like nobody knew. Like it's and again, it's inconsequential. It's a picture of a lady in a bakery with Brad Pitt, but we're really gonna have to continue to fine-tune our perceptions to navigate all this.
SPEAKER_01It's uh I would say human tendency and perception and the way we're fed information seems to be more drastic, more absolute. One thing I've noticed with AI is I feel like most of their responses are never absolute. It's always asking more questions, it's always being more thoughtful. And if AI becomes a a co-pilot per se, not to steal Microsoft's terminology, but if it is a true co-pilot to everyone on the daily, will it round out our perceptions? Will it be a good thing to some extent?
SPEAKER_00I mean, once it gets, I mean, it's still having. I was talking, so a buddy of ours did a film on Pizza Hut recently, right? And one of the elements of that film was uh who architected the original red roof design. And he asked AI six different ways who it was, knowing who it was, because he had like done some some real uh hardcore research on the other side of it, and it six separate times told him he was wrong. Um, it's so it's scary to think that it's still in the the that stage where it doesn't always and that would seem to be something that it would know. I mean, that's a pretty iconic design. And to not be able to provide that information now again, it could be prompted wrong, but but having that be the thing that rounds out our pers perspectives on things, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01I I think this is kind of like autonomous cars. They don't need to be perfect, they just need to be better than the human. And I would say large in part the AI models are less biased and are probably going to be more well-rounded than most humans. And so I think in that regard, I feel like it is a good thing because I think it is it is offering, and everything can be abused, everything can be used in a toxic manner, and we've already seen many examples of this of AI. But I think at its core, if it's used in the right manner, I think it can offer some additional perspective that is valuable.
SPEAKER_00What we talk about though, you know, and we've generalized who these people are, right? But we'll call them the fire starters, right? The the ones that are the the squeaky wheel, like you see on the different platforms. And they talk about it all the time. You hear them say, oh, it's just, it's not as bad as you think it is. It's just these handful of people that are really, really loud. Do you trust that those people are going to prompt in or engage AI in the right way? Probably not. So, like, you know, it could also, yes, if engaged in a neutral manner, probably does round out the human better. But it also makes the person with an agenda way more powerful.
SPEAKER_01People are always going to do bad things. They're going to use every tool provided to them to do bad things. But I've never seen in my prompting, when I'm generally inquisitive, being curious, I've never seen it come back with a post that I would say would be a fire starter. It always seems a little bit more like, well, here's some basic information. It'll ask another question, or it'll say, Well, um, you might want to lean into this. Like it always seems to have a flavor of a curiosity or a non-absolute, not a now, I've never prompted it to be like, show me how I can post against this and be super negative and super condescending. And if you do that, maybe it'll spit stuff like that out. I'm not sure. But for those that are trying to perform a perception um, and they're trying to be inquisitive about it and they're coming into it from a stance of humility and trying to understand it feels like AI is gonna round people out a little bit better and make them think a little bit more.
SPEAKER_00I wasn't saying that the AI would be incendiary itself. I was saying, like, if I want to defund the police, I go to AI and I say, can you tell me exactly XYZ statistics to bolster my position? That's what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_01You mentioned I think every everything that we say and do, we've got to be thoughtful about. I mean, you said AI will round people out and make them think a little bit more. I think the prevailing perception right now is that people are worried that AI will make people think less and stop thinking in like the neural networks that we develop through that. I forget I had I had referenced or read something else that talked about how certain parts of the brain have seen drastically reduced activity in areas where technology has supplemented it. And I forget exactly what the example was. Um, but that's gonna be interesting. Do people use it to advance their thinking and round it out, or do they they use it instead of?
SPEAKER_00I think we're using parts of our brain now for analysis and thinking that we've never used before. Think about how you analyze different forms of marketing and communication. You know, how creative people are getting with spam email and with other types of spam texts and with the mail you get in the mailbox. Like that was a big thing. Like, how can I make this communication that I'm sending someone in the mail look like it was handwritten? Um, how can I make this email? I mean, I'm sure both of you do, because I get a ton of them, these emails from different people looking to it, who knows, looking to engage. I mean, I get two or three emails a week about people who want to buy Liquipel. Like, come on. First of all, I'm not the guy, but like they're they're spending time using AI to try to figure out how to articulate some of these things. And so it's like we're having to use our brains a lot more now to analyze um and to suss out communication that isn't legitimate and it's not a skill set that everybody has. Um, so I think we're thinking about things in different ways to be able to perceive uh the most true world.
SPEAKER_01It'll be interesting. We're the generation that's in the middle of it. So we're like, there'll be a time when the there won't be the middle generation, it'll just be it. Like you may have an AI thing that says, hey, any email you get that's AI generated, I don't want to see, and it'll filter it out. But when our kids are in this spot, it'll be something else. But like we're the ones that are trying to compete with what's real, what's not, what we value, what what we don't. But I think in 10 to 15 years, that skill set won't be there. They're they're growing up with Chat GPT, they're learning how to ask the right questions to dig into layers that we could never get to at that age. And so it'll be interesting to see how they how they grow with it. Speaking of AI, one other perception, I actually read this, I thought this was super interesting, is that the
AI Job Loss Stories And Purpose
SPEAKER_01mind, and this goes back to our our natural ability to flock to the negative, but that the mind is much better at imagining what jobs won't be there in the chaos that will ensue versus the jobs that haven't been invented yet that will become much more prevalent as AI develops. And it's just another perception type thing that people are basically saying. There was a big article that came out called Something Big Is Happening, written by Matt Schumer. And he basically paints this doom and gloom picture that 50% of white-collar jobs are gonna be gone in five years, and like it's it's coming. And he he may be correct, right? But it was interesting because I think it it played into that human, natural desire to be like, here we go, chaos, panic setting in versus kind of the shift of, yeah, we're gonna lose some jobs, it's gonna be disruptive, but this whole other wave of profession or um ability is gonna be needed to navigate this new world. But I thought I thought that was interesting, the perception of that versus the reality of what the future is actually going to be like. What's interesting about that is he's a programmer and basically saying that you know, all the programmers are gonna be not needed anymore. Well, 50 years ago, or maybe 70, man, there was tons of people in manufacturing. Robots came in, automated a lot. There was no programming jobs. Then this thing called tech came around, and then they hired hundreds of thousands of programmers, and now the programmers are gonna become somewhat obsolete. Um and so it will be interesting to your point to see what is the next iteration of whatever we're gonna need to survive as a human species and race because we go back to it's like at the end of the day, we're all looking for purpose, and we gotta have purpose. Without purpose, we're we're we're I I think we're gonna be lost.
SPEAKER_00Well, how how how long and how much value are going are we going to continue to put on human-generated anything? I think we've seen that in sport. We don't care about the Honda robot that can hit a thousand threes in a row from the top of the key. For whatever reason, that just doesn't hit. There, I think Mr. Beast did a video right a while back that had like six or seven sports and it had AI robots competing against humans. One was a pitcher, a couple were runners. It just doesn't, like it just doesn't click. So, you know, I've said a couple times when it comes to creative and or other things generated by AI, um, it just doesn't quite hit the same as something that a human has has done.
SPEAKER_01I and I wonder. This is my take, and this probably for another podcast, but I think everything's gonna be highly relational and everything is gonna be done by AI. I mean, all back in processing, comparison, technical contracts, almost everything can be done by AI, but the relationship side. So when people stop caring about interaction, when an AI agent at company XYZ can talk to an AI agent at insurance carrier XYZ, and they can figure out they know each they know each other's businesses well enough and they can process all the insurance between the two AI agents and they don't need a distribution channel and a broker. And the person that owns the company is comfortable with that, saying, like, well, if something happens, um my I still think with an AI agent that 99% more accurate or is going to be accurate compared to an independent insurance agent, and that when it happens that the carrier is gonna pay the claim and I don't need an independent agent to be an advocate for us, like when the buyers become that comfortable with the AI responses, I think it it's gonna be challenging to figure out, and that's just in the insurance world. I mean, arguably, I think there's a lot of insurance companies that are billions and billions and billions of dollars that have all doubled down on the in the distribution channel of independent insurance agencies because they know how hard it is to get the last mile to build relationships. When relationships stop mattering, I think the
What Skills Kids Still Need
SPEAKER_01world changes at a whole nother level. If you were to advise your kids to study a particular subject or two or become really prevalent in a skill or two, like what outside of just general be relational and be able to connect with people, like what do you think the really what could they be learning in school that is gonna be relevant?
SPEAKER_00I don't I don't see it. It's it's it's like how we talk about sports, right? They're not in, you know, at this point in time, my son is not in soccer to be a pro soccer player. He's in soccer for all the other things. And I think you're right from a relational perspective. It's like put yourself in as many environments as you can, learn the values, you know, establish the values that you get, um, the tenacity, the hard work, the problem-solving skills. All of those are going to come into play. Um, you know, I think it'll become much more clear to us when we have kids. I mean, you do, but like when, you know, it's getting closer. Maybe it doesn't become clear. I don't know where you, you know, you guys are with Roman as he's getting kind of close to that into that road. But um I think it's all of the secondary things that they're getting to do um right now that are going to be the most beneficial to them in the long term.
SPEAKER_01It's been a really interesting experiment with uh homeschooling Isaiah. And you know, just recently we went and he came with me to a company event, and we had 60 carriers and employees there, and he was going up and shaking hands and talking to people. I know you said be more specific than relational. Uh we do this thing called Beast Academy that's very much um it's really interesting, it's problem solving and it's different like things, and it's it's it's pretty fascinating. But I don't think there'll be anything more important than your ability to relate, to connect, and to build community. And I think you get that in school a little bit. I think you get it in sports a little bit, but your ability to foster and teach them how to build community and how to maintain relevance is gonna be, I think, one of the most important skills. And my oldest is gonna be a he's a junior and he's thinking about he wants to be a lawyer, right? Well, contracts are gonna be a thing of the past from needing someone to write and articulate. Now, there probably will be for the next couple of decades um a need for people to still want to have a person to talk to, to feel comfortable about, to do that final review. Um, and you may have, you know, corporate attorneys, or maybe you become a specified attorney to where you're doing something very, very specific. But that's one of those profession that your bottom line attorneys aren't gonna, the ones that just do basic things are not gonna be, I think, as relevant as um, but the ones in smaller communities may still be because our generation still wants to talk to people at that level, I think.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think most of the skills that you could learn would be learned in like a trade environment, right? I mean, I think engineering is applicable still. Um, because there are some uh we've kind of talked about with with Dike Dan, there are just some real world things that AI and and some of that can't account for um yet. Um so I I think that's an element that will be necessary for a a while longer, just because there's so many, there's so much depth to some of those engineering problems.
SPEAKER_01Um the trades.
SPEAKER_00And the trades, yeah. I think those things will continue to be um relevant.
Closing Takeaways And Next Steps
SPEAKER_01That was a fun conversation. Uh, perception versus reality. If you learned anything, you learned that you can't have a perception at all. They could all be wrong. But I think ultimately to be more curious, to ask more questions, there's a lot of different ways to look at something. Um, and I don't believe you have to take on everyone else's, you know, cross and the things that maybe align more on the moral and justice side. Those are things you may want to dig deeper into. So um be open, communicate, ask questions, and we'll see you next time.