0:00:00 - 0:00:20 I'd like to share, share some thoughts on the topic of improving the understanding of value. We're specifically going to focus on the relationship between inputs and outputs. I hope that this presentation will uh stir up some thoughts and trigger some, some thoughts, hopefully, some changes you can make 0:00:20 - 0:00:46 in your life. And as always, we'll be just touching on a few ideas and hopefully that is just the the catalyst to your own exploration of more. So why is this important? Well, uh hopefully, this is a review, but maybe these are new ideas. If you don't understand the value of something, you can't experience 0:00:45 - 0:01:14 the full joy, it could otherwise provide. Uh So one idea that I've introduced and repeated is that the joy that you find in something is limited to the minimum of how valuable it actually is and how valuable you find it. So reality is not what you perceive, it's what actually is. And one of the strongest 0:01:13 - 0:01:40 motivations for learning more about God is that he already has it figured out. So reality is not subjective, although our perception of it is and God knows what it actually is. And there are tremendous benefits of exerting any possible effort to learn and live according to more of that. But um the key 0:01:39 - 0:02:07 here is that if you uh whatever we're talking about, whatever person thing, idea that you find value in, if you find less value in it than it actually has, then you are doing yourself a great disservice by diminishing your joy more than you need to. And so the key to greater joy lies in finding the things 0:02:07 - 0:02:39 that have the greatest actual value. But then also changing your perception so that you actually see it and feel it. One of the obstacles to accurate appraisal of value is the incorrect understanding of the cost of better things. We have a bias as humans to presume that anything better than what we already 0:02:39 - 0:03:09 have must be closely related in cost to what we've already paid. Now, there's no logical reason behind this, but we can take, take it easy on the judgment of those who do this, which is everyone obviously to varying extents, but we can, we can take it easy on them because if you were to write a book 0:03:09 - 0:03:34 , obviously, you'd use the words that you already know. And no matter how rich the story may be, if you have a poor vocabulary or poor writing skills, the quality of the story will be diminished down to your limitations. And so whatever fault might lie in the individual who's perceiving this, uh this 0:03:34 - 0:04:06 biased view of what something costs. The fact is that the only tools we have really to um account for the cost of something we don't have is the cost of what we do have now to make matters worse as we're committing this fallacy or this inaccurate perception of value. We uh we're not, we'd actually be 0:04:06 - 0:04:31 in a much better place if we, we, we did have the vocabulary of the cost we've already paid or the cost of the cost, the actual cost of the things we already have. The problem is that it is, it's extraordinarily rare if possible at all to find someone who has actually paid the cost of what they currently 0:04:31 - 0:04:56 have in this. It, it just adds fuel to the fire and it fuels the fallacy of incorrect perception of cost because not only are we limiting the cost of things we don't yet have to the cost of things we do, we're actually limiting the co our perception of the cost of the things we don't have to our incorrect 0:04:55 - 0:05:22 vastly uh under measured perception of the cost of the things that we have. And so this is highly problematic and so it's no surprise that people are so absolutely clueless as to the actual cost of things particular in, particularly in today's modern, wealthy world, or at least the wealthy parts of the 0:05:22 - 0:05:48 modern world where we are flooded with unmerited prosperity, largely due to access to fossil fuels. And so the cost of things on a historical basis to the people who use them has never been lower, it's never been even comparable to how low it is today. And so even as the cost of living skyrockets, as 0:05:47 - 0:06:12 those fossil fuels and their benefits cease to overcome the entropy of the system, we'll say just to keep it brief, even as the cost of living explodes, we're still in a case where on a historical basis, things just can't be compared. They are so cheap today to how expensive they always have been. And 0:06:12 - 0:06:34 if you want a very simple example of this, try to live off of the food that you grow in your house or in, you know, on your property without using fossil fuels in any way, just your hands and whatever tools you make out of the woods. So it's a preposterous idea because, you know, without having any experience 0:06:33 - 0:06:51 in any of that, you already know that the cost of that is explosive compared to your normal life. In fact, it might even be impossible because if you're like most people, you don't live in a place where you could grow anywhere near the food, the amount of food that you need to maintain your body weight 0:06:51 - 0:07:19 . So here's an example that uh comes up very frequently, more and more frequently with every passing day. It's this idea that rich people don't deserve to be rich because they have much more money, but they have not paid much more. So they haven't paid a higher price. They have much more money than you 0:07:18 - 0:07:47 do, but surely they haven't done anything to deserve it. Do you see how this is an application of this, of this fallacy? So the truth is the truth is that those who are in this position have absolutely done way more than you ever would to get there. Now, unwilling to yield the point most people would 0:07:46 - 0:08:11 contend to that argument by saying, what about these people that got huge loans from their parents or just gifts from their parents or inherited a functioning business from their parents? Here's the thing, it's a terrible experiment. If someone were to give you or anyone else a huge sum of money. What 0:08:11 - 0:08:36 do you think the probability would be that after one year, two years, five years, 10 years, you'd still have it, let alone grow it. Normal people presume that the probability is high, but they do this in defiance of data because you can look at many, many, many examples of people suddenly getting money 0:08:35 - 0:08:57 and what you'll find is it's almost always the case that they lose it very quickly and many of them end up far worse in the end than they were in the beginning before they had the money. So lottery winners, for example, they almost always spend all the money very quickly. And then there are a surprisingly 0:08:56 - 0:09:22 high number of cases where they're either in greater debt after the money's gone than they were before they won the lottery or they're riddled with lawsuits from, from friends relatives, whoever, who now suddenly see a payday by, um, accusing them of this or that. And then some of them also, a surprisingly 0:09:22 - 0:09:48 high number are murdered for their money. So, um, you have that but the truth is, and, and you can look into these stories, one by one, these people, whether they got a leg up from some freak circumstance or not, they do things that you would not do and they don't do things that you absolutely would 0:09:48 - 0:10:16 do. Why does this matter? It's not about money. That's just a nice tangible thing that we think about and are familiar with in a broader sense. The fact is that in the gospel, in the universal view of things, there is tremendous cost paid for every good thing that you enjoy. And if you haven't paid it 0:10:16 - 0:10:39 , someone else has. And if you don't appreciate that, going back to where we began with the limits of joy, valuable things cannot give you the joy they're capable of giving you while you don't know what they cost and appreciate what they cost. Because someone could tell you and you'd say, well, that's 0:10:39 - 0:11:10 nice. You'll never be happy in the kingdom of God or send into it very far without understanding and paying the cost of excellence. So this is an interesting example of how, when you really understand something, not only can you comprehend it, but you can actually do it as well. So knowing, knowing something 0:11:10 - 0:11:38 truly also includes um the revelation of the path to either obtain it or become it. This is very important when we talk about knowing Jesus. And also AAA stark limitation in the capability of anyone who minimizes the definition of the phrase knowing Jesus to just knowing about him as if there's no connection 0:11:38 - 0:12:04 to becoming like him. OK. So I have uh an example here of Jeff Bezos and I don't have time. And so I purposefully didn't enumerate this, but I wanted to um orient you to read the story of Jeff Bezos on Wikipedia or whatever. And I like this example because I think Bezos is not exactly a guy who we should 0:12:04 - 0:12:29 try to emulate. And sometimes in using examples of people who are not ideal in many ways, we can more clearly illustrate aspects of what they've done that are worthy of emulation or to demonstrate a principle that might be not be as clear if it were given a very shiny wrapping. And of course, Jesus did 0:12:29 - 0:12:59 this all the time highlighting the strengths of sinners and publicans and uh and so forth. So we'll, we'll use old Jeff Bezos. And what you'll find is as you go through his story is that this guy again and again and again, kept his chips in the game when any normal person on any, any scale would have 0:12:59 - 0:13:22 pulled out and said, ok, it's not worth having everything I've gained so far at risk anymore. So he got a loan from his parents to start amazon.com. But notwithstanding, everyone thought he was crazy and that, that would never ever, ever work. This was very early in the internet days and as you weave 0:13:22 - 0:00:00 through his story, which I won't do what you're going to find is this pattern where he goes after something everyone says is impossible. He proves that actually, it's just really hard. He does what's necessary to make it happen. He ends up with a massive increase in, in, uh, net worth. And then, uh, 0:00:00 - 0:00:00 and by the way, in case you don't know this highly wealthy individuals, um, like Bezos or Musk until they cash out their stock. It's all just paper money. It's just, it's totally locked into the business in terms of stock. So it's not, uh, they can get loans on their stock and everything if they're, 0:00:00 - 0:14:28 if they're, like I said, very wealthy. But, um, so they, they can get cash to live on and they can live extravagantly. But it's a very small fraction of the, the numbers you hear in the news of, oh, this person's net worth rose or dropped by $17 billion this month. Well, that's all paper money until 0:14:27 - 0:14:51 the stock is sold. So, anyway, it's important side note to, to really understand this. So Bezos had all of his money. In the casino. And when everyone said that was a very bad idea, he put everything on black 42 or whatever and then he won, which never ever happens. And instead of then taking it out 0:14:51 - 0:15:11 and saying, holy cow, this lightning just struck. I better take it and run and go enjoy it. He let it ride and he did it again and again and again and so an interesting thing that I could do if we were all sitting here in person is I could walk you through the details of this story from start to finish 0:15:11 - 0:15:34 and say, raise your hand if you would have done what he did and what you'll find is because I've done, this is a lot of hands go up at the beginning and I'm pretty sure they're dishonest hands. But nevertheless, um, the hands go up. But eventually the sheer weight of the risk, it overcomes people's tendency 0:15:34 - 0:15:58 to promote themselves beyond reality and the hands go down and it's way way before the end of the story and lo and behold, there are no hands by the time we get to the end of the story. So this is, this is really important to understand because if you don't understand the sacrifice of Jeff Bezos, you 0:15:58 - 0:16:22 cannot understand the sacrifice of Jesus. That's not, that's not blasphemous. It's the opposite of blasphemous because I'm saying, if you can't even get that because he's just a businessman, how can you understand Jesus who paid such a higher price than that and how can you understand anyone who is on 0:16:22 - 0:16:47 the path to Jesus? You can't, so we, you could do this with Elon Musk. You do this over and over again with a lot of people who have a lot of money and you're gonna find again and again, those who have or are better than you did things you would never do to get there. And it's an uncomfortable thing 0:16:47 - 0:17:20 to think about for many reasons. So, um the examples that we used are, are all monetary. But um the principle is general, it's not specific to anything. It's just specific to comparing people. So in alma 13 5, for example, we read how the people who were called as high priests and received this holy 0:17:19 - 0:17:43 calling. Um Well, I'll just read it. So I'll read verse four and five. So, so these are people who are called and prepared from the foundation of the world uh on account of their exceeding faith and good works because they were left to choose between good and evil and they chose good. They exercised 0:17:42 - 0:18:03 exceedingly great faith. And that's why they were called with the holy calling. That's verse three, paraphrasing and I'll read four and five. And thus, they have been called to this holy calling on account of their faith while others would reject the spirit of God, on account of the hardness of their 0:18:03 - 0:18:30 hearts and blindness of their minds, pause. Spirit of God. This is a tendency we have is, is to relegate generic transcendent principles in the gospel into very specific religious kind of words and settings. What is the spirit of God? It's the channel and voice of improvement. It's everything that leads 0:18:30 - 0:19:01 to God. Spirit of God could be an actual spirit, could be an actual being, but that's not what is the most valuable uh facet here. Let's get more generic. Generic. Go up the the pyramid here. The spirit of God is everything. Every idea, every motive, uh every piece of knowledge that God has, you could 0:19:01 - 0:19:25 call it the mind of God and the scriptures do well. It is called that in the Scriptures. The scriptures don't call anything anything. It's a collection of books anyway, back to the the words here, the verses. So uh while others would reject the spirit of God, on account of the hardness of their hearts 0:19:24 - 0:19:45 and the blindness of their minds, we pause again, rejecting improvement. So when we read, reject the spirit of God, on account of the hardness of their hearts and blindness of their minds, we're like, oh terrible people. These are pitchfork and torches, antichrists, right? But if we say what it really 0:19:45 - 0:20:08 means, which is reject improvement, reject opportunities for improvement on account of the hardness of their hearts and the blindness of their minds, all of a sudden the finger starts pointing to you, doesn't it hardness of heart is a refusal to yield to something clearly shown to you to be better than 0:20:08 - 0:20:38 what you have. And blindness of mind is an unwillingness to participate in or yield to better reasoning that really brings it home, doesn't it? So do Pitchfork and torch antichrists do this. Absolutely. But so does that gentle grandma next door. And so do you. And that's the difference continuing in 0:20:38 - 0:21:03 verse four. While if it had not been for this, they might have had as great privilege as their brethren. The ones who were called with the holy calling on account of their faith continuing in verse five or in fine, in the first place. They were on the same standing with their brethren. Hm hm. Is there 0:21:03 - 0:21:40 privilege with God? There is not God is an equal opportunity. God outcomes are absolutely not equal but the inputs are available for all the only thing they're subject to are your faith and your diligence. Isn't that interesting specifically? Will you yield your desire to that? Which is better when it 0:21:40 - 0:22:10 is plainly shown to you? The reason that is the key to everything moving on. Here's a visualization of this myth which now I've converted over from my phrasing of the human bias. Anything better than what I have can only be understood in terms of what I've already paid or um rich people don't deserve 0:22:10 - 0:22:27 to be rich because they have much more money than me. But they didn't do much more than I do. Now. We're gonna put it into spiritual or scriptural language. This is Isaiah 5612 from the Isaiah Institute translation. They say tomorrow will be like today only far better. Now, there's a lot of ideas that 0:22:27 - 0:22:49 you could tie that to. But here's a representation with graphs because that's always fun. If you're ever confused about anything, the best way to make it less confusing is to use math. That's a joke. Um But graphs, graphs can be helpful sometimes. OK. This is how you think it works and that's as things 0:22:49 - 0:23:15 get better. Oops, I realize I made an enormous mistake and it's actually going to trickle through the rest of the presentation and it's been so good for so long, so far that uh this is really gonna mess things up. So I'm gonna make a part two as I fix my mistake and then uh we'll do this in part two 0:23:14 - 0:23:15 .