This talk was recorded at White River Books in Carbondale, Colorado on October 12, 2023. Larry speaks about his education in physics and how certain ideas from that discipline can be brought to bear on why we don't behave in our own best interests.

We know for sure that our rational analysis and problem solving skills are the best tools we have for getting more of what we want.  We know this because everybody says it’s true.  But what if that certainty turns out to be a superstition?  What if we have more powerful tools at our disposal and our belief in the supremacy of rationality constitutes a self limiting belief?  

For example: you consider one of your problems.  You talk to yourself about it.  You discuss the pros and cons of one or more possible solutions to it.  You hear yourself talking about it, and the voice you hear is yours.  That’s you speaking “inside your head,” isn’t it?  It’s sometimes called the internal dialog, and all humans engage in it.

But what if that’s not actually you?

I knew at a relatively early age that what Ronald Reagan called the “shining city on a hill,”  the America of our ideals, was an invention, a romantic notion that made us all feel good.  The overturning of Roe v. Wade shattered that illusion for me.  But it turns out that disillusionment is a good thing.