Dr. Laurie Santos

And when we can put these mechanisms into situations where they have to scale up, They go awry in interesting ways. I'll give you one from the perspective of helping people, right? We talked about one way to matter well is to do nice things for other people. But one of the ways we get that boost of mattering is we often need to see the results of that thing that we did, right?

We want to see someone smile and say, oh, thank you so much. All your listeners right now could donate money to a cause online that would, for small amounts of money, you can literally save a life of people who are living in extreme poverty, right? But you might not get the same feeling that you get when you carry your neighbor's groceries into the house, right?

We want to see someone smile and say, oh, thank you so much. All your listeners right now could donate money to a cause online that would, for small amounts of money, you can literally save a life of people who are living in extreme poverty, right? But you might not get the same feeling that you get when you carry your neighbor's groceries into the house, right?

We want to see someone smile and say, oh, thank you so much. All your listeners right now could donate money to a cause online that would, for small amounts of money, you can literally save a life of people who are living in extreme poverty, right? But you might not get the same feeling that you get when you carry your neighbor's groceries into the house, right?

You might not get the same feeling that you get when you do something direct for someone one-on-one. You probably don't get the same facial expressions, maybe the same thank yous and so on. And the research really shows that we're not putting our money into these causes where we really could help folks, right?

You might not get the same feeling that you get when you do something direct for someone one-on-one. You probably don't get the same facial expressions, maybe the same thank yous and so on. And the research really shows that we're not putting our money into these causes where we really could help folks, right?

You might not get the same feeling that you get when you do something direct for someone one-on-one. You probably don't get the same facial expressions, maybe the same thank yous and so on. And the research really shows that we're not putting our money into these causes where we really could help folks, right?

A lot of times, even if you look at the specific charities that people are investing in, they're investing in charities that are much more like face to face, right? Giving say to your like local food pantry or rather than these people who like are living in extreme poverty, right?

A lot of times, even if you look at the specific charities that people are investing in, they're investing in charities that are much more like face to face, right? Giving say to your like local food pantry or rather than these people who like are living in extreme poverty, right?

A lot of times, even if you look at the specific charities that people are investing in, they're investing in charities that are much more like face to face, right? Giving say to your like local food pantry or rather than these people who like are living in extreme poverty, right?

The point of this example is to show that what kind of got us going in terms of mattering evolutionarily was like, we needed the facial expressions, right? We needed the one-on-one kind of feeling to know, ah, I feel good. I feel like what I did mattered.

The point of this example is to show that what kind of got us going in terms of mattering evolutionarily was like, we needed the facial expressions, right? We needed the one-on-one kind of feeling to know, ah, I feel good. I feel like what I did mattered.

The point of this example is to show that what kind of got us going in terms of mattering evolutionarily was like, we needed the facial expressions, right? We needed the one-on-one kind of feeling to know, ah, I feel good. I feel like what I did mattered.

And so online, we try to do the same thing, maybe do an action that matters much more, say giving a small amount of money to someone in extreme poverty so the outcomes are much better. It doesn't feel as good. We don't get the same psychological oomph that felt really nice, right? That's a backfiring of our evolutionary machinery, right?

And so online, we try to do the same thing, maybe do an action that matters much more, say giving a small amount of money to someone in extreme poverty so the outcomes are much better. It doesn't feel as good. We don't get the same psychological oomph that felt really nice, right? That's a backfiring of our evolutionary machinery, right?

And so online, we try to do the same thing, maybe do an action that matters much more, say giving a small amount of money to someone in extreme poverty so the outcomes are much better. It doesn't feel as good. We don't get the same psychological oomph that felt really nice, right? That's a backfiring of our evolutionary machinery, right?

We should feel like the more objectively positive outcome in terms of helping somebody should make us feel like we matter more. But otherwise, it doesn't make us feel as good, right? I think that's just one of many ways that kind of scaling things up doesn't really use the evolutionary machinery in the right way. And we get these kind of misfirings that kind of mess up our mattering.

We should feel like the more objectively positive outcome in terms of helping somebody should make us feel like we matter more. But otherwise, it doesn't make us feel as good, right? I think that's just one of many ways that kind of scaling things up doesn't really use the evolutionary machinery in the right way. And we get these kind of misfirings that kind of mess up our mattering.

We should feel like the more objectively positive outcome in terms of helping somebody should make us feel like we matter more. But otherwise, it doesn't make us feel as good, right? I think that's just one of many ways that kind of scaling things up doesn't really use the evolutionary machinery in the right way. And we get these kind of misfirings that kind of mess up our mattering.

Yeah, for sure.