ASM154 Male Violence, Toxic Oxygen, and Personality Tests

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male violence toxic oxygen and personality tests all that and more on this week's episode of ask science mike [Applause] [Music] well welcome to another ask science mike that weekly ish podcast where i answer your questions about science faith in life really literally whatever you want me to answer i answer regardless of my utter lack of qualifications to answer any questions at all it's good to be back it's good to be talking with you all this week uh let's start with a couple of announcements shall we don't hit that forward button these are good ones uh i can see the analytics i know that every time i start giving announcements like 5 to 11 of you just hit skip forward 15 seconds at a time until you're convinced i'm not doing announcements but uh well okay there's there's really just two announcements one the normal event stuff july 27th i'm gonna be in ontario canada for the skylight festival um i'd love to see you there just got back from vancouver that was a blast so i'm excited to see more of you lovely canadians by the way one of the most polite audiences i've ever uh encountered uh were my friends in vancouver and then a free folks over in the uk we're doing the liturgist gathering in london october 5th and 6th and tickets are on sale right now you can learn more by going to asksciencemike.com and clicking on events so that's one two and did i say there were two there are three uh so two uh we're getting ready to do some more literature gatherings um so if you're in portland minneapolis nashville sydney australia or melbourne australia and you have access to a venue a church a concert hall whatever and you'd like to host the liturgist gathering you can just go to the liturgistsgathering.com host dash us and fill out the form and we'll be in touch that's two here's number three and this one is big to me a little while ago um i did a webinar yeah a webinar how nerdy is that uh and it was called making your mark and it was for people who want to do public work think speaking books podcasts blogging youtubing literally anything that involves communicating with the public about an idea this is not about being famous i don't know anything about being famous i don't care about being famous but this is if you feel some thing in your body in your soul in your mind that says you have something you want to communicate to the world and you can't figure out how to do it so maybe you can't get started maybe you've been trying this for a couple years and hadn't gotten anywhere maybe you already have a public platform but you're broke and you can't make any money at it well that's why i want to do this webinar i've learned a lot one in 16 years in the advertising and pr business and two in the last several years being science mike and making uh the liturgists happen so i'd like to share those secrets with people so this webinar is completely free it costs zero dollars um and i am also starting a kind of group coaching class for people who want more in-depth stuff but uh we're doing this webinar we've already done one it was super long i forgot to record it so i'm doing another one uh because people said hey did you record that over 500 people signed up for the webinar y'all and it was super short notice so this time we're giving you a little more notice it's june 25th uh at 4 pm pacific uh you can register by going to mikemcarg.com webinar that's m-c-h-a-r-g-u-e dot com slash webinar you can register it's completely free stick around to the end for sure if you're interested in group coaching i'll talk for 15 or 20 minutes about what i think is important going into a platform my friend bradley who's partnering with me in this he is an executive coach he's really good at what he does uh he'll talk a little bit about finding motivation and doing the kind of self work you have to do to to make an impact on the world and then we'll just take questions that's it that's how it works i'm going to do these semi regularly for free and then periodically we'll open up new spots on our group coaching program uh so if you're interested in that you can do that we had a lot of people apply already uh we'll open up applications on this one we won't be able to take everybody but we'll take you know the people we can and work out the bugs and then hopefully have something that's open to more people in the future so that's making your mark webinar june 25th um i'm really excited about the last one was a lot of fun i mean people stuck around for more than two hours this one will not be as long try we'll try to keep this one 45 to 60 minutes for sure okay so that's my announcement so uh let's get it started hi mike my name is may we met once and i cried on you but that's beside the point my question is this what would happen to your body if the air you lived in consisted of 100 pure oxygen some context i won't name any names but i was once in a rather prolific program for young aspiring missionaries and my class had a speaker who was teaching us about adam and eve in the literal garden of eden he insisted that the reason everyone lived such long lives before the flood was that the atmosphere had a higher oxygen content he asked the class what would happen if he breathed nothing but pure oxygen and i confidently said you'd die but he said wrong you'd live forever my classmates gave me some pitying looks but nobody backed me up and i'm still a little salty about it which is why i've come to you the only evidence the speaker used to support his theory is that patients are given oxygen on emergency helicopter rides to the er so what would it actually have been like in this hypothetical oxygen garden would adam and eve be okay what about the plant life thanks for your work much love a 100 oxygen atmosphere on earth would be i think lethal to pretty much everything on the planet i really i could be mistaken there may be some micro microbial life i guess ocean life would be fine at first it depends how on how long the atmosphere remained 100 oxygen a couple of things one pure oxygen is incredibly flammable so any naturally occurring source of combustion say volcanoes say lightning strikes would cause massive sustained atmospheric explosions that's bad that's antagonistic towards human life also think about plants before we even get to a hypothetical adam and eve photosynthesis happens because plants use carbon dioxide to get the carbon they need to start producing food simple sugars from light plants can't survive in a pure oxygen atmosphere they require carbon dioxide it is a requirement and plants of course sit at the base of almost every food chain on earth there are some deep ocean ecosystems that are not based on photosynthesis but based on you know outgassing uh of kind of these sulfuric vents or hot sulfur vents uh deep in the ocean but every other food chain on the planet the vast majority of life here depends on photosynthesis and photosynthesis depends on carbon dioxide the basic premise here is very flawed now what happens to people if you get a 100 oxygen atmosphere they get oxygen toxicity they get oxygen poisoning you know there's a word that gets thrown around a lot today and that is toxins it mainly gets thrown around in kind of natural medicine woo context when you're flushing toxins from your body in a cleanse which is frankly total nonsense but toxicity is a specific phenomenon in biology and every substance that i'm aware of has some threshold that it becomes toxic to people everything uh including oxygen including water the basic necessity necessities of human life in sufficient quantities will kill you and it's true of oxygen at first and we noticed this when we uh used 100 oxygen under high pressure in medical and space exploration contexts pretty quickly people get acute oxygen poisoning they have muscle twitches they can have seizures blurred vision they can feel sick be nauseous they get really dizzy have vertigo these are not uh good things they happen quickly if you continue to persist in a 100 oxygen state you're gonna have a problem doing a gas exchange in your lungs basically the fact that there's a difference between the oxygen and co2 concentrations in your lungs at each end of a breath creates a natural exchange between oxygen and carbon dioxide in your lungs so when you're in 100 pure oxygen over time you actually have to breathe harder you can lose something like 20 percent of the total volume of exchangeable air in your lungs you have to breathe harder and harder which starts causing um you know collapse avioli and your lungs and you get these mucus plugs and it's it's lethal in time it you know you start coughing a lot you get fluid accumulation in the lungs uh a 100 oxygen atmosphere would pretty quickly kill all the plants and i think before the people could starve to death they would suffer and die from acute oxygen poisoning so this this this teacher was not speaking in any remotely scientific manner now we do use pure oxygen in emergency context for people every difficulty breathing but typically when you put on an emergency oxygen mask you're not putting on a spacesuit right normal atmosphere is still getting to your nose and mouth and so usually the concentrations of oxygen are up to 90 percent not a hundred which means there's still some nitrogen and yes some carbon dioxide which means in the short term uh it makes it easier to breathe you'll notice in hospitals uh typically when people get oxygen they have um like a nasal apparatus that delivers oxygen into their nasal cavity but they still breathe normal atmospheric air through their mouth and that is to get people the assistance they need they're having difficulty breathing getting a higher oxygen concentration but not a hundred percent which as we have just discussed is dangerous and possibly lethal to our species so no pure oxygen would not cause people to live long lives it would kill most life on the planet and do so quickly our next question came in via email and it reads hey science mike i love your show it's so validating to hear your approach to life now i know you are an enneagram fan five wing4 here but i think you also know myers-briggs i have in the past found them both to be useful tools i have always been an intj and have found it explains so much about myself and my personality like why everyone keeps calling me blunt when i'm as diplomatic as i can be but in the past few years i've become very ill with fibromyalgia i don't work anymore i don't do much staying home i've become more reflective and emotional i've spent a lot of time working on my emotions while learning to process the grief and loss that comes with being disabled in your thirties i've noticed that my personality seems to be changing pretty dramatically five years ago i would have tested as an enneagram one now i'm a five wing four five years ago i was a solid intj and now i cross just into infj five years ago i was about as choleric as possible to be and now i test as melancholy all of those have changed for me at a core level not just because of learned behaviors here are my questions does research actually support any of these personality typing tools does it say anything to changes in personality over time is it really important to define oneself within specific types or is it mostly just about understanding the concepts and growing as a person if it is important to know why how does it really impact life well thank you for your questions there were a lot there at the end um you have stumbled upon the great truth of personality tests they are almost all pseudo-scientific garbage that's that includes the enneagram that includes myers-briggs that includes pretty much every personality test i can recall save one which measures you for five temperaments on a gradient and so it does accurately assess your personality scientifically and the tests are the results are repeatable it just doesn't tell you anything useful about how to live your life so uh why are these tests so popular why as a scientific person do i actually like talking about the enneagram do i talk about myers-briggs because friends we are mysteries to ourselves our conscious awareness is such a small part of our life so not only does the world surprise and confuse and confound us not only can friends and loved ones confuse and confound us we can confuse and confound ourselves because we don't understand why we do things we don't understand why we have different feelings in different moments and so what personality typing tools do the reason they're so popular is they give people language to describe their experiences they give people language to understand how they relate to other people and in that context they are helpful in the same way and with the same amount of scientific rigor that knowing which hogwarts house you belong to is helpful there's nothing scientific about the mythology of the sorting hat and yet people find it helpful for navigating the world it is exactly the same in my opinion with the enneagram with myers-briggs and with most personality tests they're not based on research when they have been researched they have failed to meet the criteria that psychological diagnostic instruments need the results are not repeatable they ignore significant components of human psychology um you know for example i was reading a piece in psychology today and one thing psychologists are looking for when they're examining personality is whether you stay calm and collected under stress or pressure or not and that's one of the most important predictors of individual and group patterns of thought feeling and action according to this article and that's ignored as a fundamental measure in myers-brigg or the enneagram now certain types will kind of speak to how you respond under pressure sure but it's not a fundamental aspect of these things because they are not psychological instruments why does myers-briggs continue to exist because so many people know the language the enneagram is exploding in popularity and i think all that's fine i think it's fine as long as you approach them the way you have i used to be this thing now i'm this thing these labels help me navigate the world better today what concerns me is when i hear people say your myers-brigg can't change well according to the data it does change in fact many people are basically unscorable they can take the test five times in five minutes and get five different results people say your enneagram can't change that is not a scientific claim absolutely no research supports that idea people who say that are operating off of like personal anecdote kind of a personalized wisdom that's fine they're just scientifically incorrect absolutely your enneagram type can change and it doesn't just have to be the way between you know stress or growth or whatever the enneagram predicts you can change to these two other types no i look a lot like a five i look a lot like a two i look a lot like a nine finally one day i just kind of picked one why do i call myself a nine because i'm uncomfortable with my anger that's like the fundamental thing you see in the the enneagram 9 personality type so that's something i know i need to be aware of it becomes useful in conversations with other people it doesn't mean the enneagram is in any way scientific the skeptics in my audience and there are many go crazy every time i talk about the enneagram and i think it's because they're concerned that by talking about it i'm lending scientific credence to the model so let me be very clear i don't find scientific credibility to the enneagram to myers-brigg or to basically any personality typing system that exists today literally one that i can't remember the name has had any success in peer review now there have been studies that have shown when people in group settings organizational settings study the enneagram group dynamics improve in the organization why because the navigating myth is helpful regardless of its scientific validity do you see what i'm saying so these things are fine if you hold them lightly one thing that concerns me is when myers brig or especially the enneagram becomes the new religion for someone who has gone through a faith transition it gives them a new grounding you should not put the same confidence in the enneagram that you once put in god you should not and the enneagram instructors i work with the ones i talk to if you think about annie diamond who did that course with us you think about ian krohn or suzanne stabile the reason i like them so much is they understand and they communicate like what level the ending is appropriate annie diamond is a genius she is an honest-to-god genius and her ability to apply the enneagram to help people grow personally and have better relationships is astounding and beautiful she has invested deeply in understanding this map this model and she uses it to help people grow to be more content to be more satisfied to accept themselves and to accept other people and in that context i'm a huge fan of personality tests we're a storytelling species and i think the enneagram and yes also myers-briggs can help us tell better stories they're just not science [Music] hey science mike i think i have a pretty good question for you so i was listening to a video you posted on facebook talking about um gun violence and how it's particularly a male issue and about how like loneliness and isolation and toxic masculinity contribute to that i was curious to what extent you think biology might also play a role um like what's the science behind behind masculinity too like for instance um testosterone being associated with increased aggression or lack of empathy i guess it's kind of the nature nurture question but i was just curious to what extent you think men might just be innately more aggressive or if it's more social conditioning okay i'd uh be curious to hear what you have to say um and uh thanks for the show well let's start with something important i don't think this question can be definitively answered today um let's see how let's how should we go about this well one there's a there's a long-standing kind of hypothesis in psychology and evolutionary biology about the warrior male hypothesis this is the idea that evolution has biologically primed men to be violent to engage in conquest to engage in enter and intra-group conflict to establish hierarchy all these things that it's as a function of biology and well one i guess everything is a function of biology for a biological organism if you think about it uh but i don't think it's anywhere near that simple uh that is a very dominant theory today but it is being called into question one is i saw one study effectively looking how testosterone was linked to dominance and they found among men in high social rank who have high testosterone in fact are very domineering but among men who are lower in a hierarchy if they have high testosterone they're actually more submissive and cooperative than lower ranking men who have lower testosterone and this led these researchers to theorize that uh what's going on is that testosterone doesn't create domination or violence but an intense or heightened awareness of hierarchy like almost a social awareness um fascinating so this idea of the you know the warrior male hypothesis uh is starting to really become questioned because when you look at a an anthropological or historical examination of the species it's pretty widely accepted that in hunter-gatherer societies men don't dominate women nearly as much because while men may do a lot of hunting they they very much depend on the food that women gather there's a mutual need there's a necessary cooperation to keep people alive but when you get to agriculture and hurting kind of upper body strength you think about large animals and plows and all this sorts of things become very important and then men become providers and it creates an economic dependence for women and once that happens it can kind of unlock the worse parts of male behavior right because now women are in a position of dependency of vulnerability and it changes male behavior and so i think when you look at that kind of the birth of patriarchy with agriculture you start to understand that i it's very possible in fact i might even say probable but that that's an overreach scientifically that uh what's really going on is a self-reinforcing social training socialization and i just think more and more research is kind of opening that up for us but violence is an incredibly complex issue to dive into what we do know is that with proper social support and when when men are are taught that it's okay and safe to be emotionally open and when men engage in deep friendships they do become less violent so whether we're naturally biologically more prone to violence or not changing social conditions does in fact make men less violent so i think there's an interesting discussion to have over time about how much biology plays a role in male violence but much more interesting to me is what research shows us makes men less violent that's that's emotional vulnerability secure relationships and economic security there's a link between you know resource scarcity and male violence for sure um you know 90 of the world's homicides happen men commit them uh men start all of the wars today but when you look at where that's coming from it's coming from isolation and resource scarcity and when we address those things i don't think i mean an i'm just one anecdote but i don't think i'm any more violent than any woman it doesn't mean that i'm not a man or masculine or you know biologically male whatever that even means anymore um it just means that i've been socialized to cooperate with other people and to enjoy that to feel secure in relationships and uh i think that's the way forward for our entire species okay our last question came in via email hey science mike this is more of a love question but i want to approach it scientifically i'm sorry if this seems a little ask abby i love someone who will never love me back the church and christian literature has led me to believe that love is a choice i do believe that i believe that every day we need to wake up and choose to love others our neighbors our families our spouses especially when we don't feel like it i am in love with this person who is not attracted to me and uninterested in me romantically this has been going on for almost three years even though during this time i've been with other people right now i am currently in a relationship with someone else these feelings of love that i feel for this other person will not go away to love someone who will never love you back is one of the most painful things and this is not my choice i want these feelings to go away please tell me how and please explain to me this whole love being a choice thing why would people choose to put themselves through this kind of pain well first thank you for writing me and when we use the word love we're describing an absolutely massive set of feelings and behaviors i love pizza i love my children i love my wife i love my friends and each of these loves is very distinct from one another they're very different i love westworld on hbo right it's a very different love than i have for pizza it's very different love than i have for my children which is a very different love than i have for my wife so there are kind of sensations there are feelings of love that we have that seem often to be very unattached from our decision-making process and our cognition and then there are people we choose to invest in and our feelings may come along or they may not so to get a really great answer about what's happening with you in particular scientifically you'd need to talk to a counselor a social you know a a therapist a psychologist i'd say look at a couple of patterns does this happen often has it happened before where you fall in love with someone who doesn't love you back if you're very young this may be the first time but sometimes consistently falling for people who don't love you back can be a sign of insecure attachment as an attachment theory meaning from birth to two years and from birth to 18 years old there were factors in your life that determined your attachment style and if you're in one of the insecure attachment types because of something in your childhood unreturned love can actually be safe because it allows you to feel like you're in love with someone but they can't reject you because they already have rejected you if that makes any sense and if that's the case that's something you would want to work through with a therapist so i can't explain the love being a choice thing because that's a very oversimplified statement sometimes our choice influences who we have romantic feelings for now one of the primary drivers of human attraction is who you spend time with so if there's this person that you've had feelings for for almost three years and you spend time with them often that's going to keep the brain you know in an attachment relationship of some kind with that person so an easy way as in easy to understand not to implement to get over these feelings is to reduce or eliminate the time you spend with this person and then allow your brain to go through the grief and separation anxiety of them not being in your life anymore we tend to be most attracted to the person we spend the most time with at least at first so if you have the opportunity to speak with a professional i would go through the story i would bring up attachment theory kind of look for patterns in your relationships uh if failing that just break contact with this person if that's not possible reduce contact as much as possible but if you completely break contact in time it is very likely that this bond you feel with this person will decrease and in fact could be eliminated completely and studies have actually shown us that to be the recipient of unrequited love is is painful as well most people that are healthy wouldn't choose to have someone love them and not love them in return that feels bad so this doesn't necessarily just hurt you if the person you're in love with knows this and you're saying they're not interested in you romantically so i don't know if you had a conversation then that actually becomes like an emotional toil on them as well so it may be best it may be healthiest if you just don't spend together time together for an extended period of time and believe it or not i've actually very much been in the position that you're in now when i was much younger unrequited love was the norm for me it makes me question if i was good enough as a person if i was desirable if i would ever be desirable so i know that this really hurts deeply so i don't want to make light of your experiences and i hope i haven't in my answer by having a pragmatic focus but just know that whether this person loves you or not has nothing to do if whether you are lovable at all it has no relation attraction's a highly individualized and variable sort of affair and i understand that me saying that does nothing to your feelings but if you learn to pay attention to your thought process and you learn that whenever you think of this person to stop yourself and say i am desirable to stop yourself and say i can love someone else over time you may find through this technique of cognitive behavioral therapy that your feelings do change and you do get some relief you may find again the best way forward in this one is to talk to a therapist and if if that's like economically impossible for you there's things like talk space where you can get more affordable access to conversations with a mental health professional and uh it may help you to unpack on a one-on-one basis this situation whatever happens i wish you well and i wish you a life of returned love well there's another ask science mic in the books thanks andrew golucky for pre-production greg nordine for producing the show jeb botteford for writing the theme song i've been your host ask sciencemike hit me up on social media if you feel like it or leave a review on itunes uh that'd be lovely helps people find the show anyway thanks for listening i'll talk to you next week