IATC - A&Q - Altrusim - Andrea

and his writing worked out this table in situation all right I can hear all the crinkly my apologies for the sounds it'll be a pretty ok that's all right let me know what's ready to Ottawa just we may have to adjust the sink but it should be fall ok it's just you just need to change it to duplicate I think that'll work and all right I believe we have a technology problem solved you are on a big screen looking at several people who are listening intently ok so anytime you're ready go ahead and uh and start talking okay well first of all I want to thank you guys for inviting me to speak today because you know as a

scientist you don't know when we get in our little academic Bowl bubble and not very often gets you go out and talk two completely different groups of people about the stuff we're working on which is actually really important for a research in general so this is a topic that well first of all I'm a cognitive scientist and my background is in psychology and cognitive neuroscience and I'm also a behavior therapist and so this is a topic that I have been working out for about I think four years now and it's something its my primary research interest which I actually consider to be probably the most important thing that I've ever worked on this is actually

really important to me personally it was kind of like a journey of self exploration a bit and so what I'm looking at is a personality type called X altruism which stands for extreme altruism or you could think of it as an extreme heroic behavior or a whistleblower personality and so people that that I see that embodied this completely and perfectly as far as my model goes someone like Edward Snowden and also people like Aaron Schwartz and other people that you're probably familiar with that you look up to as being Patriots kind of in your field the problem is that this type of behavior is simpler in a lot of ways and often compared to sociopathy and some

dimensions are actually very similar and ice actually sent along like an overview / email review where I got on here kind of like it just have a brief description of the personality type and wanting to be talking about because it is kind of a complicated topic there when I spent too much time on the details I want to talk about more of the application of so basically an XL tryst has their the person that they're they're willing to put themselves out there on the line looking to stand with a courage in the face of adversity willingness to break rules and if just the common good they put they put the cause before themselves and because of that oftentimes they face

getting fired their job getting in prison arrested or sometimes even kill just so that they can stand up for their mission and so the problem I'm looking at this kind of like from two angles first of all just what defines an XL turist it's it's never been a cohort that's been actually defined specifically so this is kind of a brand new thing and since I first came out with this a couple of years ago in a few essays that I wrote one percent American one on my personal blog I received a lot of attention from people that are studying similar things and the real I guess you're really onto something and this is really important so I've

continued on this line and what ended up happening is a person that would maybe eight be perceived as a sociopath by their behaviors their outward behaviors we don't really consider all the time the motivation and intent of why people do things and that's actually one of the crippled things that separates someone who is associate path someone who is in exile turist the ex ultras made you know it may end up breaking the law or even killing someone or doing extreme things that we may consider immoral but in the context of why they're doing it it's actually the moral choice the right thing to do just because of the context and so as far as like good and bad and good and

evil things like that these are all context-driven there is no one definition of morality or what it means to be good or what it means be evil and it doesn't mean that every time you follow the rules you're doing the right thing and every time you break the rules you're doing the wrong thing sometimes it's exactly opposite sometimes following the rules is actually the wrong thing to do and you have an obligation to break them in order to do the moral and ethic thing so it's kind of like a sticky subject and before I when I wanted to told people but though it was actually speaking at this conference one of the things that I

heard from them was well you seem like the kind of person that's always about you know following the rules all the time so I'm kind of surprised that you would be taking this / powerful witch and I'm actually really not a thing sometimes the right thing did that it was necessary and for him specifically he had that absolutely intolerance for seen injustice happening and not do anything about it so in his case you know the government's after him he's living in seclusion but when he was asked you know would you do this again and he was like absolutely and he knows that he might be in jail forever he knows that he might always be living in

seclusion and he's okay with that he wouldn't change it because for him it was worth it he had a threshold for things that were wrong that he saw and he acted but one of the other angles I'm looking at is so the ex ultra this has this tendency to go out on the limb and do take bold action and courage in the face of adversity in order to you know do things for the common good but I put yourself out there and every time you stand up to potential punishment or or things like that I mean there's always a chance of getting damaged in the process and someone who lives this life on a daily basis in any way not just putting

your life at risk but people who in your job you stand up for what's right even if it means getting reprimanded or fired and you're constantly always stepping in to help out someone even if you don't know them or like them because it's just the right thing to do you do this long enough and eventually it could wear down on you because well a lot of us consider these kinds of people heroes we're not actually treated that way in society which is said so when is up happening is you have not only are you fighting against the status quo but then you have the people that are trying to maintain the status quo trying to drag you down

as well and it gets exhausting and emotionally damaging so looking at what are the ways that we can prevent people like this from actually breaking down and ending up in depression and suicide and so that's done in a number of ways but the two I don't want to get too into detail wanna leave a lot of time for questions so I really like the Q&A so much better but I was risk that they have these like two superpowers is what I call them and they're basically two additive traits that they have that the one thing separates them from us as you path and the other thing it actually allows them to take the bold action that

they do and then you prefer burger from it still intact and living to fight another day so one of them is ego resilience which is an extremely strong sense of self I strong sense of purpose you can you can put yourself out there you can have failure you can someone can try to drag you down but you keep standing up it's like the video game character that gets knocked down on and you're blinking but you just keep standing up standing up you just keep going and you have confidence that you will be able to keep going and so you're able to take this bold action even if you suffer some consequences your ego is still intact and you have that extremely

resilient personality naturally just as an asset and the other one is flexible detachment firm emotions and so basically that's when you're in a situation that is that takes a lot of a lot of courage and most people be scared of it you know you can feel a fear but what you do is you just like set those emotions aside like you're put them on a shelf for tara lee and that allows you to kind of go into situations that would otherwise be too emotionally you know sensitive or terrifying and then you're able to do what you're doing without worrying about you know the emotions flooding that you know prefrontal cortex which allows you like better feed and think logically and

do you know make good choices about things and not act on emotions so emotions get you to act in the first place but then once you make a decision on how to act then you kind of temporarily set that aside you do what you need to do and then afterwards you reattach you know with your emotions or your empathy and so that's really key because what sociopaths do is they show up their emotions aside and they do it permanently because it's easier for them to live the way that they do without having to worry about you no shame guilt and the emotional fallout of doing you know things that are wrong an ex altiris is able to do that situationally but

they don't do it permanently and so the ability to go back and forth flexibly detach from emotions and reattach is really an absolute it really is a superpower and fortunately it can also be trained and so can even resilience and so when you're looking at the bigger picture here when you have people that have this tendency to act in bold courageous ways but they don't have the strength or let's say we don't have the resilience or they don't have you know they're emotionally sensitive and they don't have the ability to just set it aside momentarily these are actually things I could be trained and strengthened and so that's like my ultimate goal is to so now that I've

identified what a lot of these things are looking at ways to train them so i can take preventative steps even in childhood so training these kinds of trades training these things so that when they get to be adults they're able to act in bold and courageous ways that as a society we really need but still emerging from an intact and not completely destroyed and let me to fight another day so that's just basically an overview and I'll kind of leave it at that right now and if you want to go to if someone wants to ask questions on anything I'd like to do that right now okay good that your editor so I had a

question as as we were watching the video we just had a couple of folks to you've out burnout and the emotional stress that comes from continually having to exercise our emotional resilience they talked a little bit about some ways that they used to get out of burnout get out of the depression you know the stress and I was wondering if you would give Sam happy so they they gave some examples of how they had overcome the burnout and I was hoping that you could from a more clinical or more less anecdotal more fact-based broad-scale just share with us in space okay yeah just share with us some of the tips that you have for avoiding burnout

or recovering from burn out okay so when you're talking about burnout I mean there's a lot of ways that can be interpreted so are you talking about just being emotionally worn down from what you're doing feeling our lack of motivation or what exactly what are you talking about because it's the extreme emotional fatigue depression frustration kind of cloister in yourself bouts of anger like the those types of symptoms okay so the first thing that I wanted to say is that i think when i first had a conversation with josh oaken here okay i think the first conversation that I had we talked about this and the fact that if you're this kind of a person and you

know to be personal but this is actually I am actually next altiris which is one of the reasons what drove me to state is the first place because I was constantly getting myself into situations without even realizing it because this is more like a temperament you know it's not like you really have a whole lot of control over your instincts and soon you instinctively act in these ways that you know you're doing the right thing but then you end up suffering these consequences as a result and it really sucks you end up you feel like no rules against you you can't win like what's the purpose and after a while of doing this by yourself exhale tree and attend

to be lone wolves because you're more effective that way it gets you start to get depressed and it was distressing for me but when I wrote my first piece and I first launched this out there and I was a little bit terrified to do it because it was a brand new idea and you're he's worried about you how many people can accept this I started getting emails from people all over the world like not just United States from other conference telling me that it was like I was speaking right to them when I was talking about this personality type and just how relieved they were just just even to know that there's someone else out there that there's not something

wrong with me I'm not crazy I'm not damaged you know why do I keep doing these things ourself damaging I thought I was self-destructive I thought I was self injurious and emotional ways but to know that there's other people out there that share this personality and the fact that other people appreciate the fact that you're doing this it took it it just brought me so far out of my depression it actually motivated me to keep going even stronger so knowing that that there's a community of people even though you may not know each other immediately because it's not like twenty percent of people in the population or of this it's probably a maybe around one

percent I would say but it's important that you seek out and at least get communicating with with other people that are also like this because just just knowing that there's a community even if its digital that I'll support each other it is really important um and then also just not as far as getting emotionally worn down things like that what I do and actually have been through this recently myself this is actually personal so a couple months ago is actually going through a hard time where I've given up jobs but I was making a lot more money I've given up having things you know I used to have this 3,000 square foot house and I gave up

everything and moved to San Francisco like four suitcases because this is so important to me that this this you know research needs to be continued and it was difficult and I find myself sometimes feeling like what the hell is a point in all this because I feel like I'm making no headway Harry I'm putting myself out there it's you know people are trying to discredit me people are trying to stop me from are doing they're doing everything they can to power to stand in your way and you keep going keep going and there's not too many people encouraging you but there a lot of people discouraging you because it looks like you're this you know pain

the ass troublemaker but I I reminded myself it's like what what was the purpose what's the bigger mission so keeping in mind the purpose behind why you're doing what you're doing and that's important to keep in mind anyway so are you breaking these rules are you leaking government documents because [ __ ] you government I can do it or are you doing it because the people need to see this and it's really important that the public has transparency and these things get out there and if no one ever brings us forward things will never change you know so keep that's the bigger that's a bigger point keeping that in mind so if you're a junior ways

because you're being reckless and things like that you know that's probably not going to help you out in the long run but keep it in mind the bigger mission why you're doing it and keep your mind in yourself what's the point why am I doing this and actually that will will actually keep you grounded it kind of keeps you motivated to think there's a reason for all this it's my you know purpose for what I'm doing and you may not see the results in the in the short term but you'll see the long run and reminding yourself of that actually helps but seeking out individuals that are like you that understand what you're struggling will quiz and not necessarily

needing like group therapy or anything but just knowing that other people understand that they're there for you really kind of goes a long way yeah good anybody else have questions I'll refute these for you Andrew okay

right

[Music] yeah yeah so uh one good question that somebody just asked is whether or not you studied information security professionals our IT professionals and whether you find a higher prevalence of X altruism in our fields than in the general populace okay so I haven't studied that specifically as far as actually going in and doing inventories of people but I am familiar with the community and I have company of peers and friends that are in that community and at wherever there's a high percentage