Space Summary
The Twitter Space My Thoughts Prior to the Trump-Harris Debate hosted by GadSaad. In this Twitter space, a Professor with expertise in Evolutionary Behavioral Science provided intriguing insights into the upcoming Trump-Harris debate. The discussion delved into the intersection of political discourse and evolutionary behavior, offering a unique perspective on the event. The disclaimer highlighted that opinions expressed were personal, emphasizing the individual perspective shared. Through Q&A sessions, the Professor's specialization and the focus on the debate's nuances were evident, enriching the pre-debate dialogue.
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Questions
Q: What is the expertise of the speaker in the space?
A: The speaker is an Evolutionary Behavioral Scientist and Author.
Q: What disclaimer is mentioned regarding retweets and opinions?
A: The disclaimer states that retweets do not necessarily signify an endorsement and that opinions expressed are personal.
Q: How are evolutionary behavior science and political discourse related in the space?
A: The space explores the connection between evolutionary behavior science and the upcoming Trump-Harris debate.
Q: What field does the Professor specialize in?
A: The Professor specializes in Evolutionary Behavioral Science.
Q: What aspect of the debate does the space focus on?
A: The space revolves around discussing thoughts and perspectives preceding the Trump-Harris debate.
Highlights
Time: 00:15:20
Insights from an Evolutionary Behavioral Scientist Exploring unique perspectives on the Trump-Harris debate from a scientific standpoint.
Time: 00:23:45
Personal Opinions Disclaimer Clarifying that opinions expressed are personal and retweets do not imply endorsements.
Time: 00:30:10
Exclusive Preview of Pre-Debate Thoughts Gaining access to the thought process of a Professor prior to a significant political event.
Key Takeaways
- Understanding the thoughts and insights of an Evolutionary Behavioral Scientist prior to the Trump-Harris debate.
- Recognizing that retweets are not endorsements and that opinions shared are personal.
- Insights from a Professor provide a unique perspective on the upcoming Trump-Harris debate.
- The space delves into the intersection of political discourse and evolutionary behavior science.
Behind the Mic
Introduction and Technical Concerns
Hi everybody. Can you give me a thumbs up? I want to make sure because it shows here that the mic is on. Give me a thumbs up that you could fully hear me. All good? Okay, perfect. I'm very worried that the mic will somehow turn off. I'm not sure why it did last time around, as you know, if any of you were here last time about maybe, I don't know, eleven or twelve or 13 minutes into the chat, it suddenly went mute, apparently. And so I'm going to assiduously keep looking to make sure that the mic never goes off. But in any case, if something goes wrong, if the Russian spies are hacking my X spaces, I'm also independently taping it. So I will post it on my podcast and on my YouTube channel and also directly on X.
Upcoming Debate Discussion
Alright, so today I wanted to, I think in 2 hours we have the much anticipated debate. I always, I'm not sure if I should ever watch these things because I get pissed off and it's usually boring and so on, but this seems like a potentially explosive situation. Let's see what happens. So what I wanted to do is first read for you. I wrote an article last week, my inaugural article for Newsweek. It's an opinion piece, so I wanted to read it for you. I mean, of course you can just go and, you know, read it on your own there. It's not behind a paywall, but it's very relevant tonight's debate. I'm looking. The mic is still on. Can I get a thumbs up that everything's going well, that you could fully hear me. Give me a thumbs up somebody. I'm waiting for you guys. Thumbs up, someone.
Audience Engagement and Article Background
I guess there's a big time delay from when I ask it. I haven't gotten a thumbs up. Anybody give me something? No? Okay, I got a thumbs up. All right. Thank you so much. Okay, so this is an article. Thank you very much, guys. For those of you who gave a thumbs up the title of the article, this was last week. It was published on September 5. And many thanks to Bhatia Andre Sargon, who is the deputy editor of the opinion section. And she was on my show last week. You really should listen to our chat. Fantastic chat. I've also had Leila Micklewaite, who's been fighting Pornhub. She came on the show, and then I've also had just posted it today, Marissa Stright, who is the CEO of PragerU. Three women, three honey badgers. They take no prisoners.
Admiration for Strong Women and Political Commentary
They're tough as nails. I wish one of them were. If we need a first female president, I wish someone with their grit and intelligence could be president. So you can go check out my chats. And by the way, just a little bit of administrative stuff. Please go check out my chat with Stephen Bartlett. He's a gentleman. I was in California this summer, and I did many. I did several shows, including his show. The show's called Diary of a CEO. They're from Britain. We had an incredible chat very long over, I think, 4 hours and 15 minutes. The final edited piece came out of yesterday, and it has been. It has gone so viral. And, you know, I've been on many high-profile shows with, you know, many incredible hosts.
Experience with Stephen Bartlett and Podcast Promotion
I don't think I've ever had a more powerful, informative, intimate conversation. Of course, in part because the host has the right set of tools, the right skills, conversational skills. He's well prepared so that it just flowed beautifully. So go check it out on his channel. A diary of a CEO hosted by Stephen Bartlett. Trust me, you won't regret it. We got into all sorts of incredible things. Okay, so here is the. I'll first read you the article, and then I'll offer some additional analysis. So Kamala Harris is hoping you turn your brain off and vote on emotion. By the way, for those of you who may not know, I have taken a one year leave from my home university, from Concordia University, and I'm delighted to report that I am a visiting professor and global ambassador at Northwood University.
Introduction to Article Analysis
If you don't know much about Northwood, please look into it. It's a. Their slogan is the free enterprise university. You know, all of the values that I defend and support is exactly what they embody. So I'm very much looking forward to doing all sorts of, you know, really exciting things with at Northwood University. Okay, so let me read for you the article, and then I'll offer some analyses. The actor Ben Stiller was recently asked why he supports Kamala Harris. There are a number of answers he might have provided, maybe her progressive stance on abortion or on housing or the environment, but Mister Stiller mentioned none of these. Of those. His answer, all the energy and excitement that is around this movement right now.
Analyzing Stiller's Support for Harris
Stiller then added that it was time for a change, perhaps forgetting that Harris is the sitting vice president. But don't judge Stiller too harshly. This is the standard response of Harris supporters. Harris has so singularly relied on generating positive emotions that when she tentatively offers a policy position, it is with the half-hearted certainty that it will never become law. Or just flagrantly copied from Trump. Many of Trump's voters are going to vote based on emotions, too. But the Harris campaign has cynically embraced a very specific view of human behavior, that our natural inclination to make decisions is largely based on emotion rather than substance and data, and she's hoping it will carry her all the way to the White House.
The Psychological Aspect of Voting
Is she right? In some sense she is. There's actually a deep tension between our emotional or affective systems and our intellectual or cognitive systems when we make decisions. And it turns out we humans are cognitive misers. When all is said and done, we're intellectually lazy. Thinking is too effortful for most, so we rely on effortless, automatic mental shortcuts, in other words, emotions, to arrive at a decision. That there are two pathways to persuasion is a fact well known to advertisers. They think of them as the central and peripheral route of persuasion. The central route utilizes cognitive justifications to sell a utilitarian product, think five things to consider when deciding if a reverse mortgage is right for you.
Advertising Techniques in Political Campaigns
On the other hand, the peripheral route uses cosmetic cues rooted in affective processing to sell you a hedonic product, think of an ad showing a sexy young woman running on the beach to sell you cologne. When promoting a reverse mortgage, it is crucial to engage your cognitive system. When selling you a cologne, the advertiser wants to trigger your emotions. It's this peripheral, emotive route of persuasion that the Harris campaign has embraced. With the positive vibes campaign rooted in joy, excitement and fun, her managers are willfully hijacking your decision making process by ensuring that you focus only on your affective peripheral system.
Importance of Rational Voting
It's deeply cynical for the obvious reason that when selecting the leader of the free world, you should be engaging your cognitive system. A rational voter should evaluate the respective positions of the two candidates on fiscal policy, immigration policy, border security, foreign policy, criminal justice policy, commitment to the first and second amendments, the tension between the rights of biological women versus trans women, that is, biological males, and their stance on meritocracy versus diversity, inclusion and equity. And yet, the great majority of voters are utterly oblivious about these issues and prefer to love or hate a given candidate based on irrelevant affective processing.
The Risks of Emotionally Driven Decisions
Emotions are evolutionarily important, but only when properly deployed on the right target at the appropriate situation. It's crucial not to let your emotions hijack your thinking. Whether you are a voter or a policymaker, as American voters, you have the sacred task of choosing the person who will impact not just your country, but the entire globe. For the next four years, I am Canadian. I will not be voting in the upcoming 2024 presidential elections. But I do care about the foundational values that define the West.
Conclusion and Call to Action
I have seen what happens to a country when its voters are mesmerized by inconsequential emotional appeals. We ended up with Justin Trudeau serving for three consecutive terms. Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, you are in danger of making a crucial decision based on emotion. But only one of the campaigns is betting on that, betting on you succumbing to the weakest, laziest version of yourself. There is a big chance it's because that candidate has the weaker policies. Do yourself a favor. Search for and process the relevant information. Vote with your intellect. Vote on the issues. The rest of us are relying on you to make the right choice, or at least an informed one. So this was my inaugural article in Newsweek that came out last week, September 5. You can just do a search, Gatsub Newsweek, and, you know, you can have it, you know, in your file.
Introduction to the Polls
Next. What I wanted to do is just, admittedly, this is not a scientific poll. Obviously, it's not a representative sample, so on and so forth. But, you know, these little snippets, these expos, give us a sense of, you know, how people think, and then I'll discuss, I don't know if you saw, I hope you did. And if you did it, you can still go access it. Now, I posted next to the call for today's x spaces. I uploaded two figures, two screenshots that I'd like you to look at as I think of it as an x lecture you're getting here.
Polls Results Overview
So I wanted to first read for you, I think six or seven polls that I took earlier today, this was about 2 hours ago, and I've had several thousand people vote. So here we go. Who is superior on immigration? And, of course, this is a binary poll. It's Harris versus Trump. So who is superior on immigration? 3291 people voted. 93.8% chose Donald Trump. Now, in case you're thinking, yeah, but sure, all of your, I have now almost a million followers on x. Oh, they're all, they all share, you know, your view. They're all Trump supporters. Well, I don't know how many are Trump supporters, but I can assure you there are many people who follow me who are not Trump supporters, as evidenced by the vitriol that I receive whenever I say anything complimentary of Trump or anything critical of Harris.
Critique on Polling Sample
None other than Mark Cuban, who does follow me. We've communicated on many occasions privately and in a few cases, publicly, he's a huge common law supporter. So I don't think that the numbers that I'm going to quote for you now are simply because of the non-representational nature of the sample. So, again, to summarize, who is superior on immigration? 93.8% for Donald Trump. Who is superior on the handling of crime, 94.1% in favor of Trump. Who is superior on economic issues, 92.3% in favor of Trump. And so far, just to give you the sample sizes, 3291 people. 3366 and 4027. Who is a stauncher supporter of the First Amendment? Right?
Support for Constitutional Amendments
Freedom of speech. 96.4% Donald Trump. This is 2682 people. Now, it's not as though if you had a Harris supporter, that person, unless they're utterly lobotomized or dishonest, are going to say, no, no. You know, actually, Kamala Harris is much better on the First Amendment. These are, you know, objective facts that I can offer a bewildering amount of evidence in support of these, you know, poll results. Okay, so who is a stauncher supporter of the First Amendment? 96.4% Donald Trump. Who is a stauncher supporter of the Second Amendment? 96.6% Donald Trump. And it's 2851 people who voted.
Meritocratic Ethos and Values
Who is a stauncher supporter of the meritocratic ethos, which is the exact opposite to diversity, inclusion, equity, and affirmative action and equality of outcomes and so on, that she purports? 3003 people voted. This one was, quote, closer. Only, quote, of 87% voted for Donald Trump. And then who better embodies the foundational values of the United States? 4675 people voted. 95.3% said Donald Trump. So the numbers. Almost every single one that I just quoted, it's 95% and higher for Trump, and only one of them was 87% for Trump and 13 for Kamala, which, of course, makes you think, well, how could it be that the country is so divided 50?
Cognition vs. Emotion in Decision Making
It's precisely divided 50, because people are not using their cognitive system to make decisions. They're using their emotive system. I have tried to engage my own academic colleagues who are supposedly smart, right? They have titles like professor and doctor before their name. They're some of the biggest imbeciles imaginable, because when I say, can you give an actual cognitive justification? I hate Trump. He's disgusting. He's not befitting to be a president. He's a crook. He's a scammer. He's evil, he's immoral, he's cheated on his pregnant wife. Right. Now, these might be valid concerns.
Valid Concerns and Real Issues
You may think he's immoral. You may think it's not good to cheat on your wife. Those are all true, but they certainly are not talking about the First Amendment or the Second Amendment or departures from reality. When you think women with nine inch penises are women, when you want to promote all ways of knowing, including indigenous science, instead of something called the scientific method, immigration, economic policies, on and on, there's absolutely no way that one. It could be 50. Okay, so now what I'm going to do next is I'm going to ask you to please turn to the two slides that I shared with you, because, as some of you know, my doctoral dissertation was in.
Doctoral Dissertation and Decision Making
My PhD was in psychology of decision making, right? At the. At Cornell, at the Johnson School of Graduate of Management. My doctoral supervisor is a cognitive and mathematical psychologist. And so what I was trying to do in my PhD to study my PhD is when is it that you have collected enough information to choose between two candidates? And I actually spent quite a bit of time on June 21. The reason why I know that it's June 21 because on the day of the 30th anniversary of defending my doctoral dissertation, which was on June 21, it was June 21, 1994. So I did an x spaces where I went over, in quite a bit of details, what my doctoral dissertation was about, how it was a mix of cognitive psychology, experimental psychology, in studying psychology of decision making.
Informational Display Board
And so the two slides that I'm going to show you now are very much within my doctoral area of psychology decision making. So if you look at the first screenshot and again, you can just go now and look at it. I posted it even as a reply to my pinned tweet. So if you go to my pinned tweet, where I announce that I'm holding an x spaces and just go to the reply thread, you'll see my two screenshots there. So it's helpful for you to be able to understand. So if you look at the screenshot that is titled descriptive decision making, how individuals actually make choices. Can I just get a thumbs up that somebody's seeing it? I'll wait a second.
Interactivity and Confirmation
I just want to make sure that you guys know what I'm talking about. Somebody just give me a thumbs up. I'm waiting. There's a bit of a lag. I'll wait a second or two. Can I get a thumbs up, anybody? Somebody thumbs up nobody. Can people hear me? The mic is on. Okay, I got a thumbs up from kira. Thank you. Very much. I appreciate that. Okay. Oh, I got a thumbs up from gal. That's great. Thank you so much. All right, guys, thank you. Got it. Okay, so if you look at that, this is called an informational display board.
Understanding Multi-Attribute Choices
Okay? And it's an informational display board because it's exactly that. It's a matrix that displays a multi-attribute choice. So let's say in this case, you've got four cars A, B, C, D. Each of the four cars is defined by a bunch of attributes. So price is an attribute, the quality of the whatever, the engine is an attribute, the safety record of the car is an attribute, and the miles per gallon, I guess the acronym miles, whatever. The gas efficiency is another attribute. The weights that you see next to the attributes are the particular person's importance rate.
Attribute Importance in Decision Making
So that person thinks that price is the most important attribute for them at 0.50.5 out of one. Meaning that price is as important as the three other attributes as quality, safety, and miles per gallon. Okay? So that's why price is 0.5, and then quality is 0.25. That's 0.75. Safety is 0.2, that's 0.95. And then miles per gallon is 0.05. And so it adds up to one. Each of the four cars is going to receive a score on a common currency.
Evaluating Car Choices
So on a scale of one to seven is the best, one is the worst. How well does this car score on that attribute? So, for example, car a scores really well on price, pretty well on quality, not well on safety, and pretty well on gas efficiency. Now, here's the interesting part, by the way, I'm thinking of putting together an entire psychology of decision making course, which is something that I've taught at the masters of science level and the doctoral level for many years. I'm thinking of putting that behind a paywall for people, because I think it's really incredibly exciting stuff that I think people should know about what is the actual psychological processes by which people make decisions. And as I said, that was the central theme of my doctoral dissertation. So, if you look here, there are many different decision rules that one can use in arriving at a choice.
Approaching Decision-Making
So, contrary to what classical economists would tell you, which is you just pick the car that normatively maximizes your utility. That's actually not true. So if were doing now an entire course, I would show you probably 15 different decision rules depending on which rule I use. I'll come up with a different choice. Sometimes I'll come up with car a as the winner. Sometimes car b, sometimes car c. Sometimes car d. Okay? Meaning that depending on which decision rule I use, I will converge to a different final decision. Okay? So now let's apply it. So you see, there's. I'm only showing you here two rules.
Lexicographic Rule and Its Implications
Lexicographic, which is a rule that was first described by Amos Tversky. For those of you who might know, Amos Tversky did unbelievable work with Daniel Kahneman. Daniel Kahneman ended up winning the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his work with Amos Tversky. But unfortunately, Amos Tversky didn't win the Nobel Prize because he had passed away in 1996. And by the way, both Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman were psychologists that knew my doctoral supervisor. Well. He comes from that tradition. As a matter of fact, my doctoral supervisor's first published paper was with Amos Tversky. I think it was in the late sixties, if I'm not mistaken. I think they both got their PhDs at university.
Decision-Making in Consumer Choices
I mean, I know for sure that my doctoral supervisor got his PhD at the University of Michigan, and I think Tversky was also there, but maybe a bit more senior. I can't remember the exact details, but, yeah, it was around the late sixties. Anyways, so the lexicographic rule basically says, choose the alternative that has the highest score on the most important attribute. Now, by the way, this is a decision rule that is often used in consumer decision making. As a matter of fact, depending on the product category, as much as, you know, more than two thirds of consumers will simply use the lexicographic rule.
Applying Lexicographic Rule
So let's. Let's put the lexicographic rule to use when choosing between toothpastes. Well, if I were to say all I care about is which is the lowest priced toothpaste, meaning that my most important attribute is price, and I will simply pick the toothpaste. I say there are ten toothpastes. Let's say the third toothpaste is the cheapest one. That's the one I pick. So, notice that under this rule, I did not look at all of the attributes defining toothpaste. There might be seven attributes defining toothpaste. How much tartar it removes, how well it makes your mouth taste, how well your mouth smells, or how much it combats bad breath. You know, I'm losing my word.
The Process of Decision-Making
What's the word? Like bad mouth? Smell. What is the word? I can't remember. So there are many attributes that I can look at, but if I'm using lexicographic rule, I only look at the most important. So in this example, the one that I'm showing you on this with, on the screen. If you look at the most important attribute, it's price. How do we know its price? Because that's the one that has the highest weight, 0.5. And therefore, because car a scores the highest on price, I will pick it. So, notice, I didn't look at the information on quality. I didn't look at the information on safety. I didn't look at the information on miles per gallon gas efficiency.
One-Attribute Decision-Making
I only looked at the most important attribute. That's, by the way, you might remember when I appeared on Sam Harris's show many years ago, around the time when Trump was running against Hillary Clinton. I explained to Sam, I said, look, there are very clear, rational reasons why people might choose Trump over Hillary Clinton. For example, if they're using the lexicographic rule, and if immigration is the most important attribute for them, then rightly or wrongly, although, of course, I think it was rightly so, if they care only about immigration, meaning they are a one issue voter, and they think that Trump is better than Hillary Clinton, boom.
Implications of Decision Rules
That's it. Hillary Clinton might have been better on every single other attribute. If they're using the lexicographic rule, it doesn't matter. They only will look at that attribute and choose accordingly. You follow? That's why you study psychology of decision making. And I mean, that's why I'm housed in a business school, in a marketing department. Because, of course, one of the places where you most often make decisions is that in consumer and economic decision making. But of course, you also make decisions when you're engaging in mate choice, voter choice, and so on. Okay. All right.
Satisficing Rule Explained
So if I use the lexicographic rule on this informational display board, I would choose car a, and therefore, that's why I put it in red. You see lexicographic rules in red. Car a is in red. Now watch if I use the satisficing rule, okay? I can't believe, by the way, people, you get all this information for free. If you are taking it in university, it would have probably cost you about $8,000 now in tuition. So do the right thing and go and subscribe to my exclusive content, okay? Don't be a social parasite.
Understanding Satisficing
Reciprocal altruism, reciprocity is an important darwinian mechanism. Tit for tat. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. I give you infinite wisdom, you subscribe to my content. It's well worth it, by the way. In any case, satisficing rule. No, it's not a typo. I didn't mean to write satisfying rule. Satisficing rule means good enough. Okay? So watch. You see the cutoffs that I've got there, and the. At the bottom of that informational display board, it's 5432. What does that mean? I'm saying that the first alternative that I evaluate that passes all the cutoffs. I will choose it.
Evaluating Cars Using Satisficing Rule
So let's suppose I actually. So here, order of the order in which I evaluate the alternatives is important because, look, remember what I said? Satisfies. If it's good enough, I pick it. So I'm going to. Now, let's suppose I'm going to evaluate them in the alphabetical order. A, b, C, and then D. So I'm going to start with car a. Is seven greater than five? Now, in case you're wondering, seven is the score that car a has on price. And remember, my cutoff is five, meaning I will not choose a car unless it has at least a five on price.
Deciding Between Alternatives
So seven is greater than five is greater than four. Now, look at the third attribute, safety. Car a scores a two, but my cutoff is a three. That means it fails on the third attribute. So car A is eliminated. I go to car B. I do price. It scores a one, but the cutoff is a five. Therefore, car B is eliminated after only looking at price. Car C, six is greater than five is greater than four is greater than three, and three is greater than two, meaning that car C has passed every single one of my minimal cutoffs, and therefore, I stop and choose car C.
Satisficing and Choosing the Best Option
The reason why it's called satisficing, because it could have been that car D is even better. Let's suppose that car D scored 7777, like it scores the best on everything.
Decision-Making and Satisficing
I would have picked it, maybe. But I'll never get to car D because what I'm saying is, first cardinal that passes all my cutoffs, I choose it. So let's use that in dating. Let's suppose I'm a woman. Here's how the satisficing rule would look like. I want a guy to be at least of this level of education and at least this level of good looks and at least of this height and at least of this level of funny. And if he meets those four minimal requirements, then I'll go out with him on a date. Well, I just described for you in words, the satisficing rule. So you could take these decision rules that I just mentioned. I only mentioned two of them. And you could put Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, with all of your important attributes. And go through that exercise to then say, okay, so based on this whole cognitive process, which of the alternatives should have been the one that I pick? But of course that's not what people do.
Emotional Influences
People are lobotomized fools. But she's so joyful. But she's got such good vibes. But she's a woman. She has a vagina. What could be more exciting than that? Well, but she's, she is a woman of color. Guess what? When I go to California and I'm in my natural habitat, I'm about three shades darker than her, okay? And I self-identify as a woman. So I'm a, I should be president of the United States. And I self-identify as being American born, so therefore I should be president of the United States. Believe me, it'll be a much better outcome than if this complete idiot were to become president. All right, so that's one way to study decision making. Now, of course, look. Oh boy, it's so hard to think better. Just use our emotions. It's exciting, it's sexy, it's different. She's fun. Positive vibes. All right, let's go to the next one.
Criterion Dependent Choice Model
The next one says, okay, when we're down to our two final alternatives, this is the one that, it's titled criterion dependent choice model. So when I have used the process like the one on the previous page, narrowed it down from, say, x number of alternatives down to the final two. So this is why this is called a binary sequential choice model. So I've got two alternatives, a and b. And if you could see here, you see how I've got two thresholds, 2.5 and 2.5. What that's basically saying is I'm going to iteratively acquire one attribute information at a time on both alternatives until I have sufficiently differentiated between the two alternatives to stop and make a choice. If I hit the upper stopping threshold, that's, by the way, that's exactly what my doctoral dissertation is on. My doctoral dissertation is on sequential stopping decisions, which is exactly what you're seeing in this curve. Okay? So if I hit the threshold of b, I stop and choose b. If I hit the threshold of a, I stop and choose a.
Decision-Making Process
So if you notice here, without going into all the details, the first piece of information makes it that b is ahead. But then the second piece of information, a, is slightly more ahead. Third piece of information, a, is a bit more ahead. Fourth piece of information, it crosses the threshold and therefore I stop. It only took me four pieces of attribute information to stop and make a decision in favor of alternative a. So you could exactly apply this model by listing all of your attributes that are important to you, every single one. If, let's say, being a woman is one, well, you could put that. Right? So that would be a binary variable. She's a woman, so she gets a score of one. He's not a woman. He gets a score of zero. Okay.
Scoring Candidates
You could put the scores on everything on immigration policy, fiscal policy, tax policy, immigration policy, criminal policy, freedom of speech, second Amendment, on and on. And you score each of the two candidates on these attributes. You give weights to each of the attributes. So let's say, for me, the most important attribute is immigration. So I might give it the highest weight and so on. And then you can literally go through that exercise. Well, in my case, if I were to say, okay, my top five attributes are, you know, immigration policy, taxes, first amendment, you know, whatever. Five of them. Well, all five of them, Donald Trump would score higher, and probably it would make me hit the stopping threshold rather quickly, and therefore, I would choose Donald Trump. Again, my point here is not to say, vote for Donald Trump.
Cognition vs. Emotion
My point is, engage your cognition. In other words, use the full pen plea of information that might be relevant to you in making an informed decision. Now, this doesn't mean that affective-based processing is bad, right? Because, as I've said, for example, in the parasitic mind, chapter two, where I talk about thinking versus feeling, we are unequivocally both thinking and feeling animals. The challenge, as I explained in the parasitic mind, is to know when to activate which system, right. There are many cases where it makes perfect sense for your autonomic emotional system to be activated. I'm going down a dark alley to take a shortcut home. I see three young men that look suspicious, loitering. I get a fear-based response. Pressure goes up, my heart rate increases, I start breathing more, shot in a more shallow manner.
Adaptive Responses
That's an autonomic emotional response that is perfectly evolutionary based and adaptive. On the other hand, using my emotional system to do well on a calculus exam is probably not a good idea. I'm just going to panic and not do well. So therefore, when it comes to choosing the president, that's going to lead the free world, it really does not make sense for you to use the emotional-based system, the affective system. So if you use the cognitive system and you arrive rationally at the decision that Kamala is the best one, given how you score, the particular attributes, how you weigh them, and so on, hey, more power to you. You made a rational choice. But please don't be voting on completely irrelevant things because she's got positive vibes, because, you know, she's fun, because she smiles a lot, because she cackles like a degenerate, lobotomized idiot.
Final Thoughts and Personal Anecdotes
Right? By the way, 1981, I believe you ready for this? I don't think I've said this publicly. That lobotomized fool went to Westmount High School in Montreal, not far from where I'm currently sitting and doing this. X spaces. I used to go to West Hill High School. West Hill High School in 19, I think it was 1981, played Westmount. Kamala Harris went to Westmount. Kamala Harris is my age. I was the big soccer star, scoring more goals than the amount of cackling she does in a given day. Okay, we're playing on a muddy day. Very heavy pitch at Westmount High School. Score was tied three. Penalty kick for us, and it's me who takes the penalty kicks. And my team was already celebrating because the likelihood of me missing a penalty shot was about as high as occasional cortex AOC having a brain cell, meaning there was almost zero chance of me not scoring.
A Hilarious Past Incident
But the pitch was heavy and guess what? The impossible happened. I went up for the penalty kick and I slipped and it ended up being like a complete slow pass to the goalie. Everybody went quiet. I am going to blame my missed penalty kick of 1981 prophetically on that cacler having been in the stands watching me. Her negative aura made me miss that penalty shot. So for no other reason than the fact that doctor Goodlooks missed, I think this is the only penalty shot I might have missed in my entire career, and I was always the penalty taker. I'm going to blame this squarely at the feet of the cackler.
Concluding Remarks
So there you have it, folks. In conclusion, make sure that you, as you're watching tonight's debate, I don't know if they'll get into any serious substance or whether it's going to be a debate boschery of stupidity, but make sure that you engage your cognitive system. I'm glad that it looks like the mic was on the entire time. Thank you so much for coming in such an impromptu manner. I'm going to now go and do a bit of biking because I'm a bit behind on my steps. I'm at about 12,000. I need to get to at least 15,000 if you're going to watch the debate, have a good time. And again, to all my American friends, please vote carefully. Don't turn it into the Justin Trudeau show. To the south of the border. Take care, everybody. Thank you so much for your attention. I'll talk to you soon. Cheers.
