#357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil
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What is discussed at the start of this section?
The following is a conversation with Paul Conti, a psychiatrist and a brilliant scholar of human nature. My friend, Andrew Huberman, told me that Paul and I absolutely must meet and talk, not just about the topic of trauma, which Paul wrote an amazing book about, but broadly about human nature, about narcissism, sociopathy, psychopathy, good and evil, hate and love, happiness and envy. As usual, Andrew was right. This was a fascinating conversation. As the old meme goes, one does not simply doubt the advice of Andrew Huberman. Allow me to also quickly mention that I disagree with Paul a bunch in this episode, as I do in other episodes, even with experts, in part for fun and in part because I think the tension of ideas and conversation is what creates insights and wisdom.
My goal is to always empathize, understand, and explore ideas of the person sitting across from me. Disagreement is just one of the ways I think it's fun to do just that, as long as I do so from a place of curiosity and compassion. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got NetSuite for business management, Indeed for hiring, and InsightTracker for bio-monitoring. Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you want to work with our amazing team, we're always hiring. Go to lexfriedman.com slash homework. hiring. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I find those annoying. I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors.
I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by NetSuite, an all-in-one cloud business management system. They take care of all the messy but critical things that make a business run. It's kind of incredible. Human civilization together has been able to collaborate, first in a small village for hunting and gathering and therefore agriculture, then to build and build and build into more and more complex entities where each individual human is operating, doing its different roles individually. like the mitochondria in a cell. Together, the cells make up organs, and the organs make up the human body. In the same way, humans together come together to make a company. It's incredible.
Those companies, build gigantic physical architectures. They build gigantic software architectures. They connect us. They give us services.
How does trauma shape our understanding of human nature?
They enable the quality of life that is observed in the developed world and that the developing world is reaching towards. I mean, this is just incredible. But of course, it's not just the idea. It's not just the engineers or the product people that make a company work. It's the whole thing. Everything is needed, just like in the human body. And there's a lot of messy things. There's a lot of things like human resources, management of inventory and e-commerce, if you have an online presence of selling your products, all of that the financial stuff that whole mess you should use the best tools for the job for that and NetSuite is just that for the new year NetSuite has a new financing program for those ready to upgrade at netsuite.com slash lex that's netsuite.com slash lex
This show is also brought to you by Indeed, a hiring website. Like I mentioned, we're always hiring. Indeed is part of the toolbox that I use. It's the main service I use outside of my own putting together crappy webpages. When I actually want to use a tool that does a lot of the work for you, that's when I use Indeed. You can post jobs there. They have the instant match tool. It gets high quality candidates right away. So that first stage, but it takes you through all the stages. And ultimately, of course, in the end, the most important, the most difficult stage they can't help with, that's when you're really just the face-to-face conversation between two human beings, trying to understand if there's a fit.
But the most important thing is to get you there as quickly as possible. And that's what Indeed does. Indeed knows when you're growing your own business, every dollar counts.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is discussed at the start of this section?
0:00–2:43
2
How does trauma shape our understanding of human nature?
2:43–5:29
3
What role does envy play in human behavior?
5:29–8:07
4
How can we navigate the complexities of human emotions?
8:07–1:42:11
5
What is the relationship between emotion and meaning in life?
1:42:11–1:43:48
6
How does trauma influence creativity and personal growth?
1:43:48–1:46:40
7
What role does communication play in therapy and human connection?
1:46:40–1:49:12
8
How can individuals navigate hardship and find fulfillment?
1:49:12–3:22:10
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Lex Fridman Podcast
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