Jocko Underground: All The Reactive Devaluation Going On

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Reactive Devaluation: Tendency to disparage proposals made by another party especially if this party is viewed as negative or antagonistic. Living life with a sudden disability. Teaching honor and culture to groups of kids. No deployments leaving an feeling of inadequacy. Going into business with your girlfriend. Following your own path that different from what your significant other wants. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast number 112, sitting with Echo Charles. New Year's, New Year 2024, January. Reactive devaluation. Occasionally, I find things that sound cool. That one definitely sounds cool. Let's face it. Reactive devaluation. What this is, I'm gonna read the definition. "Refers to our tendency to disparage proposals made by another party, especially if this party is viewed as negative or antagonistic. This cognitive bias can serve as a major barrier in negotiations." Alright, so that's the definition from, there's a website called thedecisionlab.com. It's actually a very cool website and it has every cognitive bias.

• 0:46Jocko Willink?

  How many cognitive biases do you think there are?

• 0:49Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 0:50Jocko Willink?

  There's more than that. There's more than you think that there is.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, cuz I think there's like fifteen.

• 0:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and there's not. There's way more than that. So this one has, I don't know if it has every single one, but it has many, many of them. Cuz we covered cognitive biases cuz they're so important to understand, no? But we've only scratched the surface. Now, look, some of them are probably more rarely, you know, viable than others. Others, you're probably just bouncing into them all the time. But this one,

• 1:22Jocko Willink?

  it definitely is something that people should think about and be aware of cuz it can really jam you up. You know, you don't wanna get jammed up. Trust me. So,

• 1:34Jocko Willink?

  I think especially as we look at what's going on with America right now, and not just America, but the whole world. So what this is reactive devaluation. They give an example. The first example that they give is they're like, oh, there's these two neighbors. One of the neighbors is named Sarah. And she's in, her and her husband are in a dispute with her neighbors about property lines and noise complaints and like garbage collection and just whatever general upkeep of the area of the, the property line between these two properties. And it's been hostile. They're not getting along. And so the Sarah and her husband are kind of talking about like what a solution would be. Well, if they did this and they did that and we could do this and they kind of came up with a solution in their mind.

• 2:18Jocko Willink?

  But then the neighbor comes over and says, hey, here's a proposed solution. And it's pretty almost the same, but they deny it. They reject the solution because they're at odds.

• 2:32Jocko Willink?

  So there's another experiment. Now they they they talk about an experiment that proves this. So this was in, and I'm going to do some paraphrasing slash quotes. This is also from Decision Lab, thedecisionlab.com. I don't want anyone to think I'm plagiarizing here. I'm not, I'm citing my sources. So there's an experiment that talk about it's the 90s apartheid is going on. And at Stanford University, they run this experiment. And they go out and they they offer these two divestment plans for South Africa. And they've got two plans that they're offering. One is called specific divestment, meaning the school would immediately divest

• 3:14Jocko Willink?

  from any corporations involved with the South African military or police force. That's number one. Number two plan is deadline and divestment, meaning the school would entirely divest two years down the road. So they just come up with these two plans, whatever, there's pros and cons. But that's not what the important part is. The important part is that going to the going to the document here, some students were told that the university was adopting this specific plan. And some were told it was the deadline plan and some were told nothing of the university's intentions. And the results showed significance, significant evidence of reactive devaluation. If the students were told that the university was going toward the specific plan, they would value it as less impactful than the deadline plan and vice versa.

• 3:59Jocko Willink?

  So basically the students think that the the man, and this is at Stanford, the man is bad. And they don't know what they're doing. So any plan that they, whether they say it's the the specific plan or the deadline plan, whichever one they get told the university is doing, they automatically think that the other one is better. That's just the way it is. So.

• 4:20Jocko Willink?

  This is something we have to pay attention to. They went against the man, but, but basically because they have whatever kind of animosity against the administration because it's authoritative. And so that's what it is. Does it make sense what reactive devaluation is? Yeah.

• 4:37Jocko Willink?

  We do this all the time and we're seeing it. When you talk about the political divisiveness in America, every single idea that Donald Trump has is horrible, or every single idea that Biden has is horrible, or every single idea that Trump has is good, or every single idea that Biden has is good. That's what we're seeing. It's actually crazy how people fall in line with this, that anything that Trump or anything that Biden or anything that the left or the right does, if they're the other side, doesn't matter what they're saying, they're against it.

• 5:17Jocko Willink?

  Palestinian Israeli conflict. Look, there's, when they do, when they have over the past years made, when one side has made some kind of concession, the other side still doesn't want to move forward with it. That's happened over and over again. And now, look, there's, there's some moderates in the middle that are like, yeah, that sounds like a pretty good deal. Let's go. But there's always the extremists on either side to be, no, we're not doing that.

• 5:41Jocko Willink?

  So when I think about this, this is really good. Now we go from a, a, a national level to an international level. Cool. Let's understand that. But then let's think about your personal level, right? When you're at work and there's the one freaking guy that you don't like because you think he's kiss ass and then everything that he says you're against. Or someone that seems like they're smart and they seem like they're doing a good job and you kind of think that they're cool. And then every idea that comes out of their mouth is a good idea. So this is all I'm saying. Open up your mind a little bit. Recognize that you have this cognitive bias. And it's especially true if you have strong feelings one way or the other, right? If you have strong, strong feelings. And this one doesn't really talk about the, the fact that if I think Echo is really smart.

• 6:25Jocko Willink?

  Then everything he says must be smart. It's, we see that on a grand scale as well when some business person thinks of an idea. And everyone goes, oh, my gosh, it's amazing.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:36Jocko Willink?

  When, when you only have to peel back the onion a little bit and go like, that's dumb. That's a dumb idea and it's not gonna work. But they get that. I think that's actually another bias called the halo effect, right? Yeah. So this doesn't really talk about the halo effect. It just talks about the negative side. But man, an important thing to pay attention to. When somebody that you have a negative opinion of says something, instead of taking it at face value and trying to interpret what it means and the merits of it based on the thing itself. Instead, you get crazy and you think you throw the baby out with the bath water. So something to be careful of. That's all I got.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, fully the. So you, it's all, it's not almost as straight up that you will deny yourself, if you go through life not knowing this is going on in your head. You will deny yourself probably critical information, benefits, like all these things that are gonna help you and your family most of the time.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  And you're denying this stuff.

• 7:34Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Like say, it's like you're, it's like you're hungry and someone's like, oh, here's some food. Oh, but I don't like you. So that food's bad. You know, kind of a thing. It's like you're literally doing that or metaphorically doing that. Yeah, these biases you gotta, uh.

• 7:47Jocko Willink?

  You gotta pay attention.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Cause they feel real, you know, like even like the halo effect, the opposite one or whatever. Same thing. And then they kind of work hand in hand, you know, like everything this guy says is freaking correct. Cause look how successful he is, you know? Bro's freaking, I don't wanna go too deep into it, but I was listening to.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  You know Jake, I tell you about Jake Tran. He's a guy, he makes these mini like kind of documentaries about like, you know, sometimes about corruption, sometimes about the.

• 8:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  On YouTube.

• 8:16Jocko Willink?

  Wait, which one did you tell me about?

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Uh, I think the first one I told, mentioned to you is the charity one, the one about starting a foundation and charities and what people do. Little things it is, but.

• 8:28Jocko Willink?

  Jake Tran.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Jake Tran.

• 8:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  So he, um, he had one about.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  People who are massively successful, you think that they're smart, but they're not like the smartest of people are not successful. And it's usually people who are not quite that smart.

• 8:45Jocko Willink?

  Why, what happens? What's what derails the massively smart people?

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Two things, their ego and they overthink. So you know how like, if you're real smart, you're gonna be like, wait a second, this decision right here that to take action here isn't that smart. There's like three things missing here. So there's a better way to do it. Let me figure that out.

• 9:03Jocko Willink?

  Let's hesitate.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Hesitate on taking action on that because there's a better way. So they'll think, oh, whether they think of a better way or not, they know that this isn't the best way. And someone who know, you know, it's like, it's kind of that, you know, for maybe lack of a better way of explaining it, but they're kind of, they hesitate too much. They don't just freaking send it, you know, a dumb, not a dumb person. It's bad to say a dumb person, but someone who doesn't overthink like they're just gonna send it. And whatever comes back, they'll make the adjustment and send it again and go and go and go. Now, the ego part too, because look, if I'm the smart person, I went to Harvard, you know, all the best schools or whatever. And then I go out into the real world because I got taught like schooling stuff and I got in the real world where there's a lot, there's a lot more to it than that. And I take the first step and I'm not massively successful

• 9:48Speaker 01

  and I fail at something. Everyone's looking at you like, bro, I thought you went to Harvard, you know, like what the hell? And you're like, oh, I don't want that feeling, you know? So I'll just stay in my little safe space, kind of a thing. They can't take the adversity a lot of the time.

• 10:00Jocko Willink?

  So they'll be successful, but when, when, within the confines of let's say a normal job.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:05Jocko Willink?

  Like, hey, go to the hedge fund, work at the hedge fund. Like you go to a hedge fund and there's a bunch of people that are analysts. They all went to Harvard. They all went to Princeton, whatever. A few of them are going to break out and do their own thing and be massively successful. They're probably really smart as well. But there's a bunch of them that that's their life. They're just going to stay there. They're going to get, they're going to make a ton of money, but it's cool. But they're not, you're not going to know who they are. They're not going to. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen.

• 10:36Jocko Willink?

  Go to jockounderground.com and subscribe and we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors and we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen

• 11:21Jocko Willink?

  this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's jockounderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.