The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

417. How to Manage Your Job, Your Company, Your Life | Derick Cooper

Thu Jan 25 2024

rare diseasessuccesspersonality traitsmanagementcommunicationinvestmentmotivationproblem-solvingimmune systembeeshierarchybalance

Description

This episode explores various topics including rare diseases, success in complex endeavors, personality traits, managing organizations, understanding people, effective communication, maximizing return on investment, motivation and ethics, problem-solving in immune systems and bees, hierarchy in organizations, and the balance between chaos and order in pursuing goals.

Insights

Success in complex endeavors depends on intelligence but also personality trait variance.

Intelligence and openness to ideas and intellectual exploration are predictors of entrepreneurial success.

Understanding people is crucial for running an organization effectively.

The Big Five personality profile can be helpful in this regard.

Running an organization profitably is important for growth and efficiency.

Profitability allows for the development of drugs that can genuinely benefit people's lives.

Translating religious stories into specific applications is complex but provides a starting point for solving problems.

Stories can be mapped to strategies and have levels of generality and specificity.

Bees use dance to communicate the location and value of flower beds to other bees.

The length and curvature of the dance indicate distance and direction respectively.

The immune system adapts to pathogens by creating billions of different plugs that recognize specific aspects of the pathogen's surface.

Mapping bacterial cells allows the immune system to identify and eliminate them.

Negotiating with someone involves allowing them to come up with a first approximation of a solution without criticizing it too harshly.

Problem-solving involves looking for pattern similarities at the appropriate level of analysis.

Understanding how multiple functions may interact is important for problem-solving.

Living systems dynamically manage the boundary between order and chaos.

Human beings perceive God as the pattern of behavior that best instantiates a positive reputation in others' minds.

Consciousness and life are constituted by the dynamic mediation between order and chaos.

The teaching of victimhood prevents young people from believing they can be successful.

Predatory behavior is often misunderstood and categorized as narcissistic psychopathy.

Chapters

Derek Cooper and QOL Medical
From Generalists to Specialists
Personality Traits and Success
Managing Organizations and Understanding People
Understanding Personalities and Effective Communication
Aligning Skills and Maximizing Return on Investment
Motivation, Ethics, and Capitalism
Investigating Immune Systems and Problem-Solving
Communication and Hierarchy in Bees
Mapping Bacterial Cells and Problem-Solving
Problem-Solving and Archetypes
Understanding Human Behavior and Communication
Hierarchy and Problem-Solving in Bees
Calling, Conscience, and Pursuing Goals
Complexity, Chaos, and Consciousness
Victimhood, Predatory Behavior, and Misunderstandings

Summary

Transcript

Derek Cooper and QOL Medical

00:03 - 08:42

Derek Cooper is the CEO of QOL Medical, a private pharmaceutical company specializing in treatments for rare diseases.
QOL Medical is a mid-sized bio-pharmaceutical company that focuses on genetic diseases and therapies for rare diseases.
Rare diseases are defined as those that affect less than 200,000 people, but when considered cumulatively, they impact a substantial number of individuals.
Rare diseases can provide insights into other diseases and their genetic implications.
Investigating rare diseases can lead to discoveries that have broader implications for human health.

From Generalists to Specialists

08:15 - 16:33

Scientists start as generalists and become specialists, but as their careers progress, they broaden their range of knowledge.
Following one's interests can lead to success if pursued properly and with discipline.
The speaker started in investment banking for 16 years before transitioning into the pharmaceutical industry.
Working in a cost-driven business like the baked foods industry taught the speaker to manage costs rigorously.
The pharmaceutical industry is driven by intellectual property development and requires complex thinking.
Managing costs rigorously limits chaos and increases the chances of success.
Success in complex endeavors depends on intelligence but also personality trait variance.

Personality Traits and Success

16:06 - 23:47

Success in complex endeavors is dependent on intelligence and personality traits.
Conscientiousness and attention to detail are important for tight cost control.
Disagreeableness can also play a role in cost control.
Product development in industries like pharmaceuticals requires high levels of openness and creativity.
Being detail-oriented and interested in ideas is a relatively rare combination of traits.
Some individuals may prefer an organized organization while others seek exploration and new ideas.
Managerial success is predicted by intelligence, conscientiousness, and emotional resilience.
Entrepreneurial success is predicted by intelligence and openness to ideas and intellectual exploration.
CEOs need to balance their openness with strategic discipline to avoid chaos in the organization.
Competence can be defined as finding the optimum dynamic positioning between order and chaos depending on circumstances.
Highly open people tend to jump from one topic to another, connecting ideas that are not normally conceptualized together.
Having many open-minded people working on a project can result in an overwhelming number of ideas that may not all be feasible or successful.
Distinguishing between worthwhile ideas worth pursuing and letting go of others requires a process of finding opportunities with relevant sacrifices.
Good capital allocation involves prioritizing the best opportunities for maximum return on investment.

Managing Organizations and Understanding People

23:23 - 31:00

Hyper focus is important when pursuing extraordinary opportunities.
Managers often struggle with putting out fires and lack time for long-term strategy.
Empirical estimates suggest that 65% of managers have a negative net value to their companies.
Focusing on stellar performers yields exponential payoffs.
Building a functional organization requires understanding the entire hierarchy, not just focusing on superstars.
Chaos in an organization can be caused by unclear goals or fear of failure.
Intelligent people tend to perform better in complex environments, but different subgames may require different competencies.
Specialized bins exist within occupations, and interest seems to be a relevant factor in determining similarity between occupations.
Understanding people is crucial for running an organization effectively. The Big Five personality profile can be helpful in this regard.

Understanding Personalities and Effective Communication

30:44 - 38:10

Understanding people is crucial for running a company effectively.
The Big Five personality profile helps in understanding oneself and others.
Epistemic humility is important in knowing the limits of one's knowledge.
Different people perceive the world differently, so communication should be tailored accordingly.
True diversity lies in temperament, which affects skills and motivations.
Extroverts are energized by social interaction and are suitable for sales roles involving presentations.
Neuroticism can prevent risk-taking but can also serve as a warning system.
Disagreeable people are formidable competitors and provide honest feedback.
Agreeable people facilitate social bonds but may avoid conflict and fail to provide critical feedback.
Recognizing individual differences allows for effective utilization of diverse skills within an organization.
Good management involves aligning personality and competence with job requirements.
"Understand Myself" is a site that helps individuals understand their personalities through a five-dimensional analysis.

Aligning Skills and Maximizing Return on Investment

37:45 - 45:31

Data should be trusted over intuition when they provide different insights.
Building a productive partnership requires ongoing negotiation and understanding between teams.
Being actively involved in running a business allows for better communication and understanding of organizational functions.
Large enterprises with many layers of operation often fail due to information propagation issues.
The number of people reporting to you becomes a measure of success rather than achieving organizational goals.
Human group size tends to fractionate at around 200 individuals, beyond which chaos can ensue.
Running an organization profitably is important for growth and efficiency.
Profitability also allows for the development of drugs that can genuinely benefit people's lives.
Developing transformative drugs creates an ethical exchange despite the cost to patients or insurance companies.
Mentoring and developing other people's skills can be a source of motivation and pleasure.
Cynics argue that power and hedonism are the primary motivations behind pursuing rare disease cures, but the speaker believes helping others is their genuine motivation.

Motivation, Ethics, and Capitalism

52:42 - 1:00:16

The speaker believes that the primary motivation for competent and successful people is the satisfaction of a job well done and achieving goals.
Capitalism is often misunderstood and associated with negative connotations, but it can be better understood as voluntary exchange and an implicit ethic of excellence.
In social communities, exchanges are iterated, leading to emergent ethics that shape behavior and goals.
Goals must serve the purposes of iterated exchange in order to function in a social environment.
Pleasure is derived from achieving goals, but there is also an implicit ethic that emerges from repeated exchanges, motivating individuals to match the quality of others' products or offerings.
Reciprocity plays a significant role in human relationships, where sharing resources creates mutual banking systems and long-term investments in each other's well-being.

Investigating Immune Systems and Problem-Solving

59:56 - 1:07:21

Negotiating with someone involves allowing them to come up with a first approximation of a solution without criticizing it too harshly.
Human thought proceeds from the general to the specific, similar to how a child learns the hierarchy of things at a young age.
Shorter words in language map onto more fundamental concepts and are conserved in linguistic history.
Archetypes are general purpose problem-solving approaches that need to be made specific to match the conditions of the environment.
Memorable stories have a place in memory because they are necessary for general functionality and problem-solving.
Problem-solving involves looking for pattern similarities at the level of analysis that matches the new problem appropriately.
Strategies that work consistently across time in a social organization are functions of iterated reciprocal interactions.
Stories can be mapped to strategies and have levels of generality and specificity, with religious stories being the deepest and most general.
Translating religious stories into specific applications is complex but provides a starting point for solving problems.
The boundary between order and chaos moves as one proceeds from the general to the specific, similar to how an antibody gets closer to its target.
Minimizing distance and ambiguity in relation to the target is important in problem-solving.
Bees rank order flower beds based on their value by communicating with each other, creating a hierarchy.

Communication and Hierarchy in Bees

1:07:00 - 1:14:46

Bees use a dance to communicate the location and value of flower beds to other bees.
The length of the dance indicates the distance to the flower bed, with each second representing about a thousand meters.
The curvature of the dance indicates the direction of the flower bed as an angle off of the sun's direction.
Bees that find valuable flower beds are covered in pollen and nectar, indicating their reliability.
More bees come back and dance when a flower bed is valuable, creating a hierarchy of information.
Bees may become more precise in their specification as further exploration occurs.
Bees sacrifice energy by flying around to find valuable flower beds.
Some bees may falsify their reports for attention, but other bees pay less attention to them if they don't have potent flower smells.
Bees' ability to find value suggests that hierarchies exist in nature and can be observed in human behavior as well.
Dopamine may play a role in how bees react to highly motivated dances from other bees.
Bees exhibit prey and predator behaviors, such as finding flowers (prey) and defending against hornets (predators).
When faced with a predatory threat like hornets, bees perform synchronized wing beating to raise temperature and survive while killing the predators.

Mapping Bacterial Cells and Problem-Solving

1:14:20 - 1:21:54

The immune system adapts to pathogens by reacting initially and creating billions of different plugs that recognize specific aspects of the pathogen's surface.
The immune system maps the bacteria using a sequence from general shape recognition to specific identification.
The initial grasp of bacteria by immune cells concretizes the first level of analysis, leading to further communication within the immune system.
The immune system communicates its grip on bacteria through the analysis of antibodies.
Antibodies that are recognized as human cells or familiar are disregarded by the immune system.
Antibodies that vaguely grasp the bacteria get copied and become the first level of antibody.
There is variation from the elbow to the wrist in the antibody structure, allowing for better grasping of the bacteria.
The grip of antibodies becomes more precise and specific over time.
Mapping a coastline with different-sized blocks is an analogy for measuring complexity using fractal dimensions.
Fractal dimensions measure complexity by increasing perimeter as measuring stick size decreases.
The immune system maps one cove of bacterial cells and can identify all similar bacterial cells based on that mapping.
Good enough for the immune system means mapping an organism well enough to identify it and eliminate it.
The definition of truth in this context is using something to hit a target successfully.
Identifying a few epitopes or coves on a bacterial cell allows the immune system to wipe out all bacterial cells with those characteristics.
Memory B cells store information about previous encounters with bacterial cells, allowing for faster identification in case of mutation.

Problem-Solving and Archetypes

1:21:37 - 1:29:41

Negotiating with someone involves allowing them to come up with a first approximation of a solution without criticizing it too harshly.
Human thought proceeds from the general to the specific, similar to how a child learns the hierarchy of things at a young age.
Shorter words in language map onto more fundamental concepts and are conserved in linguistic history.
Archetypes are general purpose problem-solving approaches that need to be made specific to match the conditions of the environment.
Memorable stories have a place in memory because they are necessary for general functionality and problem-solving.
Problem-solving involves looking for pattern similarities at the level of analysis that matches the new problem appropriately.
Strategies that work consistently across time in a social organization are functions of iterated reciprocal interactions.
Stories can be mapped to strategies and have levels of generality and specificity, with religious stories being the deepest and most general.
Translating religious stories into specific applications is complex but provides a starting point for solving problems.
The boundary between order and chaos moves as one proceeds from the general to the specific, similar to how an antibody gets closer to its target.
Minimizing distance and ambiguity in relation to the target is important in problem-solving.
Bees rank order flower beds based on their value by communicating with each other, creating a hierarchy.

Understanding Human Behavior and Communication

1:29:15 - 1:37:06

Negotiating with someone involves allowing them to come up with a first approximation of a solution without criticizing it too harshly.
Human thought proceeds from the general to the specific, similar to how a child learns the hierarchy of things at a young age.
Shorter words in language map onto more fundamental concepts and are conserved in linguistic history.
Archetypes are general purpose problem-solving approaches that need to be made specific to match the conditions of the environment.
Memorable stories have a place in memory because they are necessary for general functionality and problem-solving.
Problem-solving involves looking for pattern similarities at the level of analysis that matches the new problem appropriately.
Strategies that work consistently across time in a social organization are functions of iterated reciprocal interactions.
Stories can be mapped to strategies and have levels of generality and specificity, with religious stories being the deepest and most general.
Translating religious stories into specific applications is complex but provides a starting point for solving problems.
The boundary between order and chaos moves as one proceeds from the general to the specific, similar to how an antibody gets closer to its target.
Minimizing distance and ambiguity in relation to the target is important in problem-solving.
Bees rank order flower beds based on their value by communicating with each other, creating a hierarchy.

Hierarchy and Problem-Solving in Bees

1:36:38 - 1:44:22

Bees use a dance to communicate the location and value of flower beds to other bees.
The length of the dance indicates the distance to the flower bed, with each second representing about a thousand meters.
The curvature of the dance indicates the direction of the flower bed as an angle off of the sun's direction.
Bees that find valuable flower beds are covered in pollen and nectar, indicating their reliability.
More bees come back and dance when a flower bed is valuable, creating a hierarchy of information.
Bees may become more precise in their specification as further exploration occurs.
Bees sacrifice energy by flying around to find valuable flower beds.
Some bees may falsify their reports for attention, but other bees pay less attention to them if they don't have potent flower smells.
Bees' ability to find value suggests that hierarchies exist in nature and can be observed in human behavior as well.
Dopamine may play a role in how bees react to highly motivated dances from other bees.
Bees exhibit prey and predator behaviors, such as finding flowers (prey) and defending against hornets (predators).
When faced with a predatory threat like hornets, bees perform synchronized wing beating to raise temperature and survive while killing the predators.

Calling, Conscience, and Pursuing Goals

1:44:02 - 1:51:54

The speaker discusses the concept of "calling" and "conscience" as presented in the Old Testament.
They suggest that calling is what indicates where the treasure lies, while conscience tells you when you're deviating from the path.
The speaker explains that they were initially drawn to the company due to its dynamic academic challenge.
They mention that embarking on an adventure doesn't necessarily require having exactly the right call, but rather taking the first step into chaos.
The importance of balancing chaos and order in pursuing goals is highlighted, as well as the need for flexibility in positing and pursuing future goals.
The speaker emphasizes the value of knowledge in multiple domains and how it can contribute to problem-solving and innovation.
Being specialized in multiple unrelated domains simultaneously is seen as a distinguishing factor among successful individuals.
The limitations of highly left-brained specialization are discussed, particularly in terms of understanding interactions across domains.

Complexity, Chaos, and Consciousness

1:51:33 - 1:56:00

Understanding how multiple functions may interact and the patterns of behavior across domains is important.
A classical education increases dimensionality and provides a shared language of value.
Living systems have the ability to dynamically manage the boundary between order and chaos.
Biology navigates a complex environment that balances ordering chaos.
The archetypal accounts of reality involve the interaction between order, chaos, and the ability to traverse that border.
Consciousness and life are constituted by the dynamic mediation between order and chaos.
Different species have different ways of directing their behavior based on phenotypically relevant value.
Seeking new value requires stepping into chaos as value is not maintained perpetually within order.
Boundary setting mechanisms enable different species to direct their behavior intelligently based on specific phenotypes.
Human beings perceive God as the pattern of behavior that best instantiates a positive reputation in others' minds.

Victimhood, Predatory Behavior, and Misunderstandings

1:51:33 - 1:56:00

Neuroticism is necessary for zebras to sense and alert the herd of threats.
Chaos is a prey response that zebras create when sensing a predatory lion.
In higher education, people are taught that they are victims, which leads to a prey response.
The teaching of victimhood prevents young people from believing they can be successful.
There are two aspects being misunderstood: the predatory value-seeking side and the hyper-victimization side.
The far left tends to categorize all predatory behavior as narcissistic psychopathy, missing the nuance.
The biological analogy is useful and will be continued in future discussions.