WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.720 Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Alex Hortmosey. Welcome me back to the game. Today I have a 2 00:00:07.120 --> 00:00:12.720 political edition podcast and know before everyone gets excited, this is not me talking about 3 00:00:12.720 --> 00:00:17.440 my political beliefs, but I actually wanted to talk about it within the context of the workplace 4 00:00:18.080 --> 00:00:22.640 and maybe even you can use this in everyday life. And so I wanted to 5 00:00:23.360 --> 00:00:27.280 bring this up because I thought it was I had a fascinating conversation this morning with a 6 00:00:27.280 --> 00:00:33.280 coworker, a leader in the in our company. This was somebody with whom I had a difference of voting 7 00:00:33.280 --> 00:00:37.360 record, meaning we voted for different different candidates. But I respect them a lot and I think 8 00:00:37.360 --> 00:00:40.800 they percent hope, you know, I think they respect me a lot. And we have actually really one for 9 00:00:40.800 --> 00:00:45.680 relationship. I thought it would be a great thought experiment to try something out, which I did 10 00:00:45.680 --> 00:00:49.200 and I want to share those results with you. And I think I think going through this process 11 00:00:49.840 --> 00:00:55.280 is actually something that can kind of heal the divide between the parties that I think is very 12 00:00:55.280 --> 00:01:00.720 worthwhile, especially considering, and I want to make this very clear, half the nation disagrees 13 00:01:00.720 --> 00:01:06.640 with you if you voted. And so the blanket statement that half the nation is moronic, I wholeheartedly 14 00:01:06.640 --> 00:01:12.560 disagree with. I say this from both sides to be very clear, like I see people who voted for Trump 15 00:01:12.560 --> 00:01:16.720 and say everyone who didn't vote for Trump is an idiot and I see people voted for Kamala and said 16 00:01:17.280 --> 00:01:22.960 anybody who voted for Trump is an idiot. I think anybody who thinks that is an idiot. I say 17 00:01:22.960 --> 00:01:27.680 this because I know very intelligent people who have good reasoned arguments on both sides. 18 00:01:27.680 --> 00:01:33.520 I want to walk through not my political ideologies, but the thought process that created something that 19 00:01:33.520 --> 00:01:37.680 I think would be very helpful for anyone going forward. And also for those you are parents who have 20 00:01:37.680 --> 00:01:42.320 kids that are kind of becoming a political age, maybe share this with your kids because I think 21 00:01:42.320 --> 00:01:47.760 this might be helpful. So first things first, it feels fitting to start with my single favorite 22 00:01:47.760 --> 00:01:52.240 quote of all time, which is a permutation of an Orson Scott card quote, and he's the author of my 23 00:01:52.240 --> 00:01:57.040 favorite book, Andrews game, science fiction, about a boy genius, military stuff. Anyways, 24 00:01:57.040 --> 00:02:02.320 it's a really good book. We question all of our beliefs, except for those that we truly believe 25 00:02:02.320 --> 00:02:08.320 and those we never think to question. That's my paraphrasing of the quota. That's hermozy version. 26 00:02:08.320 --> 00:02:12.960 But basically, like if you truly believe something, you never think to question it because it's so 27 00:02:12.960 --> 00:02:18.400 ingrained in your pattern of reality. It's woven into your perspective on the world. And so many of 28 00:02:18.400 --> 00:02:22.640 us are willing to question things that we believe are, you know, things are pseudo beliefs, 29 00:02:22.640 --> 00:02:29.920 but not the true beliefs. The follow up to that is a different quote, which is if you do not know 30 00:02:30.720 --> 00:02:37.120 why you believe what you believe, it's not your belief, it's someone else's. Meaning if you're like, 31 00:02:37.120 --> 00:02:42.240 I believe this stance, then if you cannot make a reasoned argument for why you believe that stance, 32 00:02:42.240 --> 00:02:47.440 then it means that you've taken what I considered off the shelf a belief set. So it's like at the 33 00:02:47.440 --> 00:02:51.840 store of beliefs, you've got a big blue book and a big red book and you pull it off the shelf to 34 00:02:51.840 --> 00:02:55.040 say, you are blue. Therefore, you believe these things are you are red. Therefore, you believe 35 00:02:55.040 --> 00:02:59.360 these things. And what's interesting is that all people say, oh, I'm not that way. But then all 36 00:02:59.360 --> 00:03:03.840 of a sudden, what's very fascinating about this is that the decision making process for when we 37 00:03:03.840 --> 00:03:10.560 want to decry or hate or make basically even just make an appraisal or judgment of an action 38 00:03:10.560 --> 00:03:14.640 that someone does. I'm going to play this forward for you because I think this will be really fascinating. 39 00:03:14.720 --> 00:03:19.680 So let's say you hear someone did something who hear on their newsfeed, who here has seen 40 00:03:19.680 --> 00:03:24.720 something. You don't know the political affiliation. And then before making a judgment, you do the 41 00:03:24.720 --> 00:03:29.600 research to figure out if they're quote on your team. And then you say, then it's fine. Or you say, 42 00:03:29.600 --> 00:03:34.800 they're not on my team. Therefore, I hate them. And this is all wrong. Real talk, that's how a lot 43 00:03:34.800 --> 00:03:37.920 of people do it. And that's because that's how your brain works. It's not because you're an idiot. 44 00:03:37.920 --> 00:03:43.520 That's just how brains think, right? And I think it takes a lot of active effort to acknowledge how 45 00:03:43.520 --> 00:03:50.080 incredibly skewed and biased our thinking is. So I wrote down every one of my beliefs. And I have 46 00:03:50.080 --> 00:03:55.920 very extreme beliefs on both sides, which is like, so then what color am I? I don't know, right? 47 00:03:55.920 --> 00:04:02.240 That's what's crazy is because only a Sith thinks in absolutes, black and white, right? Typically, 48 00:04:02.240 --> 00:04:06.960 by the way, I think it's the side of intelligence to have nuance, which is an understanding of the 49 00:04:06.960 --> 00:04:12.960 gray and encouragement of walking the line between two streams. And most people like to do binaries 50 00:04:12.960 --> 00:04:19.440 because it's easier to think in binaries, but it's not more truth seeking. And so for me, 51 00:04:19.440 --> 00:04:22.800 personally, it's like if I have a life that I want to dedicate to the pursuit of truth, 52 00:04:22.800 --> 00:04:28.080 pursuit of knowledge, then it would follow that I have to be comfortable waiting in the gray 53 00:04:28.080 --> 00:04:32.000 and going through it and actually trying to figure, okay, well, under what circumstances is this 54 00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:37.200 better or worse? And what are more long-term implications, blah, blah, blah. So I went through, 55 00:04:37.200 --> 00:04:43.120 I have a doc that I sent to this teammate and I said, hey, this is all that I believe. 56 00:04:43.680 --> 00:04:47.360 I had, you know, one or two lines of reasoning, you know, underneath each one of them, 57 00:04:47.360 --> 00:04:51.760 just as like a, you know, quick back of napkin. It wasn't sending, you know, a magnus open here, 58 00:04:51.760 --> 00:05:00.080 or a magnus, whatever it is. The teammate sent theirs back to me. And we only disagreed on one 59 00:05:01.040 --> 00:05:07.520 of like 20 something beliefs. And I have very specific kind of belief sets that are not yay or 60 00:05:07.520 --> 00:05:11.600 nay. They're like this under this circumstance, this under this circumstance. And what was 61 00:05:11.600 --> 00:05:16.080 interesting here, and this is why I think I wanted to make this podcast because it's very easy 62 00:05:16.080 --> 00:05:20.480 to say this person's blue, this person's red simply based on who they voted for. But what I would 63 00:05:20.480 --> 00:05:24.320 encourage you to do, and I think this is very helpful for anybody in the workplace, especially if 64 00:05:24.320 --> 00:05:28.320 you have a team that has who voted, you know, people who voted differently than you or anything 65 00:05:28.320 --> 00:05:34.640 like that, is to just look under the hood. Just simply ask, what do you believe? And what's 66 00:05:34.640 --> 00:05:39.920 interesting about this is this allows you to actually have a discussion about individual things 67 00:05:39.920 --> 00:05:45.440 under circumstances, rather than blanket statements of like he is red, I am blue, which by the way, 68 00:05:45.440 --> 00:05:49.600 and we've got the crypts and we've got the bloods. And somehow we think we're somehow better or 69 00:05:49.600 --> 00:05:55.680 different than these gangs that fight based on these binary ideologies or identities that are 70 00:05:55.680 --> 00:06:02.720 associated with them. And I think it's a load of hogwash and reality, I think it's actually just 71 00:06:02.720 --> 00:06:09.520 an undisciplined mind. And that goes for both sides. In walking through this particular one that 72 00:06:09.520 --> 00:06:15.680 we disagreed on, we then chatted further about the team meeting question was like, well, under this 73 00:06:15.680 --> 00:06:21.680 thing, zero circumstances, and I said, oh, I thought that was assumed. And so I added that note 74 00:06:21.680 --> 00:06:27.520 to my reasoning and to my contingencies of the belief that I had. And then after that conversation, 75 00:06:28.240 --> 00:06:32.800 we basically agreed, oh, we actually agree on literally everything. It makes sense that I have 76 00:06:32.800 --> 00:06:37.440 a good relationship with this particular employee. And to be very clear, my relationship with 77 00:06:37.440 --> 00:06:41.920 that employee has in no way changed based on the fact that they voted for someone else. It's 78 00:06:41.920 --> 00:06:46.160 more important to me, and this is really, really important. I want to really fucking drive this 79 00:06:46.320 --> 00:06:52.240 and I'm cursing on purpose here. I have significantly more interest in ideological alignment 80 00:06:52.880 --> 00:07:00.800 than I do in voter card alignment. I will say that again. I care significantly more about someone's 81 00:07:00.800 --> 00:07:10.320 ideologies, their idea of a perfect future. I want as much alignment on that. And I care almost 82 00:07:10.400 --> 00:07:16.400 zero about their political alignment in terms of who they voted for. Now, it would then follow. 83 00:07:16.400 --> 00:07:23.520 If you both believed the exact same thing, then why would you have voted for two different candidates? 84 00:07:23.520 --> 00:07:31.120 Aha. And this is where I wanted to get to for this podcast. Fundamentally, it would follow 85 00:07:31.120 --> 00:07:39.520 that we have different sources of truth or different sources of information. And then based 86 00:07:39.600 --> 00:07:45.120 on those different sources of information, we cast an approximated vote of confidence 87 00:07:45.120 --> 00:07:50.560 under which candidate based on the information that we collected, we believe will approximate 88 00:07:50.560 --> 00:07:57.520 that ideal future most closely. So I'll say this again. You have this information that you consume. 89 00:07:58.080 --> 00:08:04.640 You then make an approximate bet on the candidate that you believe will bring about that ideological 90 00:08:04.640 --> 00:08:12.480 future most closely. This then means that we simply made a different bet for the same outcome. 91 00:08:12.480 --> 00:08:18.000 And again, I think this is so important because I think this will help bring a lot of this 92 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:23.280 this animosity down. Imagine you knew somebody else literally wants the same thing as you. 93 00:08:23.280 --> 00:08:26.400 Now, to be clear, that's not always the case. Sometimes people literally want different things 94 00:08:26.400 --> 00:08:31.440 than you in which case, great. But that's a different bucket. But I think that so many more of us 95 00:08:31.440 --> 00:08:40.800 share 80%, 90% of our actual ideological beliefs. And so if we pull up the hoods and we find out 96 00:08:40.800 --> 00:08:49.360 that we share significant amounts of ideological beliefs, then it just comes down to who we believe. 97 00:08:49.360 --> 00:08:54.640 Because fundamentally, almost none of us are going to meet candidates in general either because 98 00:08:54.640 --> 00:08:58.960 we have a lack of interest or we just don't have that kind of access or whatever, right? It's very, 99 00:08:58.960 --> 00:09:03.440 you know, it's difficult to buy the $100,000 dinner so that you can meet the candidate, 100 00:09:03.440 --> 00:09:08.240 right? Especially at like a presidential level. But the same thing applies at a regional level 101 00:09:08.240 --> 00:09:16.480 and so forth. And so we have to rely on third party media to get what we want. And looking at 102 00:09:16.480 --> 00:09:23.600 original speeches and, you know, public appearances to try and piece together what someone believes. 103 00:09:23.600 --> 00:09:28.800 But the thing is, is that most of the times, a lot of the, and because it makes sense for a 104 00:09:28.800 --> 00:09:35.040 political candidate to be relatively vague, mostly because they can't actually recite legal documents 105 00:09:35.040 --> 00:09:38.240 and no one would read them anyways and it would go over the head of the vast majority of voters. 106 00:09:38.240 --> 00:09:44.320 And as a marketer myself, I completely understand why they are vague. And it's because it doesn't matter. 107 00:09:44.320 --> 00:09:48.240 I mean, it very much matters, but from a marketing perspective to get the vote, it doesn't matter, 108 00:09:48.320 --> 00:09:53.200 very much at all because the very small percentage of the of the electorate that is literate and 109 00:09:53.200 --> 00:09:58.720 key point and would take the time to actually understand a nuanced position for some person. 110 00:09:58.720 --> 00:10:03.280 It also creates more things for people to disagree with because the more concrete your plans, 111 00:10:03.280 --> 00:10:08.400 the more someone can try and poke holes in it. It very much becomes a popularity contest for 112 00:10:08.400 --> 00:10:14.400 lack of a term on key kind of like sound bites, unfortunately. But this is, you know, hating that 113 00:10:14.400 --> 00:10:18.320 is just hating how marketing and humans work, right, which I tend to not spend a lot of time 114 00:10:18.320 --> 00:10:24.640 there because I don't hate reality. I just accept reality and then try and change my behaviors 115 00:10:24.640 --> 00:10:30.720 to win. I just wanted to make this one, one podcast about this because I think that there are probably 116 00:10:30.720 --> 00:10:35.680 people in your family. There are probably people in your team, probably people above you are below 117 00:10:35.680 --> 00:10:41.680 you. You take your kids to, to soccer practice. There's other parents there. You may not need to hate 118 00:10:41.680 --> 00:10:47.120 them, right? You might actually find out that you, if you actually just peel up the layer, 119 00:10:47.120 --> 00:10:53.120 you might have 90% agreement. And so the actual then disagreement comes to what sources of information 120 00:10:53.120 --> 00:10:59.040 are we going to listen to and based on those, where are we going to make our bet? If you consume 121 00:10:59.040 --> 00:11:04.160 from the identical information sources, right, you're still going to have some level of beliefs based 122 00:11:04.160 --> 00:11:08.320 on your history of which one of these while I believe more and then also based on your history 123 00:11:08.400 --> 00:11:12.480 of dealing with other people looking at the candidates, which one do I believe them more, right? 124 00:11:12.480 --> 00:11:16.160 But I think that if we just focused on like what kind of world do we want to build, I think we 125 00:11:16.160 --> 00:11:20.480 have a lot more similarities than we have differences. I thought it was worth making this because, 126 00:11:20.480 --> 00:11:26.560 you know, on one side, you know, the quote, victors shit on the other side and be like, ha ha, 127 00:11:26.560 --> 00:11:33.440 na na na na booboo. And I think that if we want to win as a country, then not hating one another 128 00:11:33.440 --> 00:11:39.600 is probably a decent start. I know that this podcast will probably change nothing, but I wanted to 129 00:11:39.600 --> 00:11:44.800 at least at least give a couple of people maybe a better life or a better working life or a better, 130 00:11:44.800 --> 00:11:48.400 you know, life in your neighborhood that as soon as someone wants to hate, if she just said, hey, 131 00:11:48.400 --> 00:11:52.800 like real quick, like, I'll bet you if I took all of my beliefs and all of your beliefs, 132 00:11:52.800 --> 00:11:57.600 we probably have a lot of common. I think that the only a lot of our differences come down to like 133 00:11:57.600 --> 00:12:02.960 who we wanted to make a bet on, but I think by and large, we want probably very similar things. 134 00:12:03.600 --> 00:12:09.440 If you zero in on the ideology, then the discussion becomes way more about the ideology and way less 135 00:12:09.440 --> 00:12:15.840 about, oh, you voted for this person. Therefore, you love them. Also, therefore, you must, like, 136 00:12:15.840 --> 00:12:22.160 you are that person and I hate you, right? It just gets around the in group out group bias. 137 00:12:22.160 --> 00:12:27.200 And you'll also find that if you actually define out your ideological beliefs, you may find to 138 00:12:27.200 --> 00:12:31.520 your surprise that some of them belong on the quote other side of the aisle. And so if you have 139 00:12:31.520 --> 00:12:37.440 two kind of books off the shelf, these boxes of pre-made beliefs, they have to encapsulate, 140 00:12:37.440 --> 00:12:41.120 let's say there's 10 fundamental things that we need to make decisions off of, whatever. 141 00:12:41.120 --> 00:12:45.040 And half are on one side and half on the other side. Well, if you've got five on one and five on 142 00:12:45.040 --> 00:12:50.640 another, which I think a lot of people do, a lot of people are, well, I wouldn't like a lot of 143 00:12:50.640 --> 00:12:55.760 people, for example, are fiscally a little bit more conservative. Like, hey, government sucks at 144 00:12:55.840 --> 00:13:03.280 spending money, very inefficient. In general, the larger the government is compared to GDP, 145 00:13:03.280 --> 00:13:07.600 the worse the country does long-term, more growth with smaller governments, private sectors, 146 00:13:07.600 --> 00:13:11.280 more efficient. I don't think these are things that people are you about to the same degree. A lot 147 00:13:11.280 --> 00:13:17.360 of people don't care about social issues. All right? Like, Mary, who you want to marry? 148 00:13:17.360 --> 00:13:21.520 Screw you want to screw, right? There's a lot of people who are on that side as well. Just 149 00:13:21.600 --> 00:13:27.280 don't mess with me. Now, there are some people who want to, who will be in a vocal minority, 150 00:13:27.280 --> 00:13:35.040 who say, everyone should do what I want. And I want to have a few people who make the rules for 151 00:13:35.040 --> 00:13:39.920 everyone. And if you disagree with me, tough cookies, tough way to live, honestly, because you will, 152 00:13:39.920 --> 00:13:44.240 you will always have people hate you. And so I have always personally preferred the perspective of, 153 00:13:44.240 --> 00:13:48.320 I would like as little interference with my life as humanly possible for everyone else. And I 154 00:13:48.320 --> 00:13:52.480 also would like to interview as a little as possible. Everyone else's life provided that the 155 00:13:52.480 --> 00:13:57.120 comments that we have do not get destroyed. The environment, for example, is a comment. It's 156 00:13:57.120 --> 00:14:01.120 something that we all participate in, and so we try not to destroy those things. The community 157 00:14:01.120 --> 00:14:04.080 that you're at, you probably try not to destroy those things. The roads that you drive on, you 158 00:14:04.080 --> 00:14:08.560 probably try not to destroy those things. And so we have rules around that so that everyone can 159 00:14:08.560 --> 00:14:13.120 benefit. I don't have the biggest platform in the world, and I don't intend to do anything 160 00:14:13.120 --> 00:14:17.440 political. And I've been very, very deliberate about avoiding, I would say, largely one, the 161 00:14:17.440 --> 00:14:22.480 manosphere. And secondarily, kind of the the politosphere. And the big reason for that is because 162 00:14:22.480 --> 00:14:30.400 I am a businessman. I'm not a political pundit. But politics are a fact of life. And business is 163 00:14:30.400 --> 00:14:38.000 affected by politics. And certainly employees and relationships are. And I think the more polar 164 00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:44.080 the country gets, the worse it is for the small microphone that I have. And to be clear, 165 00:14:44.080 --> 00:14:49.680 I have voted on a different side than I am registered to vote. And I say that because 166 00:14:49.680 --> 00:14:54.640 I don't believe in binary thinking in general as a fact of life. And the system that we have 167 00:14:54.640 --> 00:15:00.160 currently, at least in the US, is a duopoly, right? There are only two parties. And so you were 168 00:15:00.160 --> 00:15:04.240 forced to literally pick a side at registration. And then also, you know, later when you actually 169 00:15:04.240 --> 00:15:10.080 make your final votes for different candidates. My hope is just that if we just realized that there 170 00:15:10.080 --> 00:15:16.000 is nuance in reality, if many variables exist, many variables must be studied. And that's really 171 00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:22.000 what it comes down to. And as much as you probably want to hate some other person across the street 172 00:15:22.000 --> 00:15:25.920 and you find out they voted someone different than you. And it just gives you, quote, more reason 173 00:15:25.920 --> 00:15:31.280 to hate them. I think that is the wrong way to live. And equally, if you find out that you, 174 00:15:31.280 --> 00:15:35.200 you know, you didn't like somebody, but then you find out they voted for the same person as you. 175 00:15:35.200 --> 00:15:40.640 They could still be a shithead. And so I would say don't necessarily like them for that same reason 176 00:15:40.640 --> 00:15:47.840 as well. I mean, half the country disagreed. And half the country agreed. 50, 50 is not a very good 177 00:15:47.840 --> 00:15:55.200 razor for character testing or character judgment on both sides. This is probably one of the one of 178 00:15:55.200 --> 00:15:59.120 the only, you know, political, which I would say isn't political. It's really just about how to 179 00:15:59.120 --> 00:16:03.200 deal with other people and deal with differences just under the guise of talking about politics, 180 00:16:03.200 --> 00:16:06.880 because it's trending. And of course, it would make content that's trending. You know, that's me. 181 00:16:08.240 --> 00:16:12.560 Sorry. Anyways, lots of everyone. If I can help one person get, you know, 182 00:16:12.560 --> 00:16:17.120 avoid a calamitous exchange with somebody else and maybe make a closer friend as a result, 183 00:16:17.120 --> 00:16:22.240 then, you know, this podcast will serve as purpose. And the TLDR, by the way, for the particular 184 00:16:22.240 --> 00:16:27.680 teammate that we shared our beliefs, which weirdly almost feels like it's like cognitively 185 00:16:27.680 --> 00:16:32.320 showing someone your cards, right? I think that we now have a better relationship 186 00:16:33.040 --> 00:16:39.360 than we did prior. And I think that that is cool. Have an amazing day. Maybe make a friend 187 00:16:39.360 --> 00:16:44.480 from someone across the aisle. It might serve you. All right. Thanks guys. Have a good one. Bye.