0:00:00 - 0:00:19 Of a presentation called Improving understanding of value relationship between inputs and outputs. And uh I had to break the video because I caught a significant mistake in my visual and rather than try to fix it on the fly, I fixed it and now we're back. Um Please watch that video first. This is not 0:00:19 - 0:00:42 a stand alone video. OK. So here's a visualization of that myth. Um So this is how people think it works. So this is why axis is cost and they think man, it's so hard when you're starting out and just rolling out of bed and working your, your minimum wage job, that's just as hard as life ever gets. But 0:00:41 - 0:01:08 um you know, as, as people give you loans and rich people, rich parents, whatever or you, you get your degree and get your job and it just keeps getting easier. Life is just uh an arc, an arc where the cost gets lower for every increment of improvement. And that is the opposite of truth. The truth is 0:01:07 - 0:01:35 there is nothing easier than where you, where you start and it just keeps getting harder. So rocket launching from the earth experiences the greatest pull from gravity on the surface of the earth. But as it exits into orbit, the the gravity drops off in an inverse square relationship. That is not the 0:01:35 - 0:02:04 way entropy works. Entropy is the opposite of that. The higher you climb, the more drag is on you. And so it's like uh it's like the speed at which you travel on earth, the faster you go, the more is pulling against you, it gets harder and harder to accelerate. And this is, this is the truth, it only 0:02:03 - 0:02:30 gets much harder. So put into text here are some relationships. People think the following a little extra effort will yield a big improvement in the results. If I just go to college, I'll be way better off for the rest of my life. No, not really. That's only true in so far as the system is corrupted 0:02:29 - 0:02:56 from reality. If we're not going to fake jobs, getting paid fake money for something, no one really cares about then that's not true. And as the, the value of money drops, you're gonna see all those jobs disappear, turns out that you have to be, be putting in uh more effort over time to gain greater 0:02:55 - 0:03:18 results. And it's not a linear re relationship. Big improvements require much bigger efforts than small improvements do now in popping that bubble. I don't want to conflate the idea of putting in a little extra effort. Um The yield for that, I don't want to conflate that with whether it's necessary or 0:03:18 - 0:03:39 not. The problem is that we're really terrible at telling the difference between the little things and the big things. And people, including me will tell you the little things matter a lot if they matter a lot. Are they actually the little things? No, they're not. The littleness or bigness of them is 0:03:38 - 0:03:59 subject to a really messed up perception. If we saw things correctly, we'd see the little things as really big when they fulfill that pattern of little things being a big deal. Do you get that? So I just want to prevent any confusion with that. Maybe I just made it worse. I don't know. So here's another 0:03:58 - 0:04:26 fallacy, the more effort you put in the greater, the multiple of the result that's just putting into words this curve. So the more effort you put in, that's this axis. So the higher on this graph you are, the more you'll go this way for every unit that you go this way, right? So we could draw lines here 0:04:25 - 0:04:46 and connect these. And what you'll see over time is that this line gets longer as you climb up here, even if this line does not. Can you imagine that if we drag, if we drag that line up through this graph and then there's something that draws a line to connect it this way, this line would get longer 0:04:45 - 0:05:12 , even if this line stayed the same height, you can animate that in your mind, uh aided or not by pharmaceuticals. I can just imagine someone getting high and watching my videos. That's, that's a fun thought. Anyway. Um That's not true. It's not true that the more effort you put in, the greater, the 0:05:12 - 0:05:33 multiple of the result, the truth is the more effort you have already put in, the more effort you're gonna have to put in to make things just a little better. Do you understand that? It just gets harder? And this is why people who are wealthy just going back to the financial example. Do you have any 0:05:33 - 0:05:54 idea how hard it is to hold on to say, $3 million? And people say, well, the richer, you are the easier it is to get richer. That is not true at all. You run out of things you can do with your money, you run out of what you personally can do to manage it because there's too much to manage and every single 0:05:53 - 0:06:16 dollar you make is a bull's eye for everything in the world that can go wrong to hit you lawsuits from people. Um You're, you're subject to more and more uh loss for changes in the world. So you know, a butterfly could burp in China and now you just lost half of your fortune or some new regulation gets 0:06:16 - 0:06:38 passed in Washington and you happen to be within the 1, 1/100 of a percent of Americans who it affects and not only does it affect you, it absolutely bankrupts you. That stuff happens every day, every day it happens. Right? Or your, your factory catches on fire and burns down or whatever. So, the more 0:06:37 - 0:06:54 you have, the harder it is to keep, that's why Jesus talked about this several times in the New Testament where he's, he's basically teaching the principle that the more wealth you have, the more of a slave you are to it because it's a full time job to worry about it. And if you don't worry about it 0:06:54 - 0:07:17 , you lose it. And uh that's one reason why he recommends getting rid of it through your own choices rather rather than waiting around for it to be taken against your will because that is the most likely outcome. And of course, it's a guaranteed outcome when you die anyway, you could read Carnegie's 0:07:16 - 0:07:39 the gospel of wealth for much more eloquent ideas on that. So, back to the topic. So that's the textual take on those, those graphical ideas. OK. So let's get to the nitty gritty. If you uh have a pulse, you'll find this extremely depressing, right? It pops the bubble of everything you've been told since 0:07:39 - 0:07:59 kindergarten and public schools, but not everything. Um But it's actually, it's not depressing. It actually doesn't matter if it's depressing or not because it's true and you can squint your eyes and stamp your feet like a toddler and pretend that something isn't real but it just increases the likelihood 0:07:58 - 0:08:17 that you're going to get hit in the face with a baseball bat that you could have seen and ducked to prevent. But you'd rather be comfortable for a few seconds before it smacks you than avoid getting hit with it. And that's not a very rational position, but here's my take on why this isn't incredibly 0:08:16 - 0:08:46 depressing. The most, the strongest argument for that is to focus on what it means about the love of God. I promise you that the world far underestimates the absolute cost of what Jesus did and does for us. Here, we're going to focus on the fact that the world far underestimates the qualitative cost 0:08:46 - 0:09:15 of what Jesus did and does for us. I just make a mention of the first one cause it's also a very big deal. So here's my question for you. If this, if this uh you know, generic man figure, if that represents Jesus, I want to ask you which of these two graphs indicates a Jesus that loves us more. Of course 0:09:15 - 0:09:41 , the second one, there's no question and that is if we keep the height of the top point, the same truth is these are not the same height because like I said, the world far underestimates the absolute love that Jesus has for us. But here we're focusing on the quality quality of that love in, in terms 0:09:40 - 0:10:07 of what was it like for him to pay this cost this is what it was like. This is the life of Jesus. It was not this. And I'll tell you the world actually, oops has a worse representation of this and even less correct idea, which is that this was the cost that Jesus paid and that he didn't pay it until 0:10:07 - 0:10:37 the last three years of his life for the last three days or whatever chunk they choose to pay attention to while ignoring the rest. And that's really sad because the greatest joy comes from and is found in God. We started this whole presentation talking about how the joy that you have is limited by the 0:10:37 - 0:11:04 lesser of how valuable it actually is or how valuable you find it. And I'm telling you the greatest joy is in and from God. And if you believe that the price he paid looked like this or like this, you absolutely positively will not have anything close to the joy that he has paid the price for you to 0:11:04 - 0:11:36 obtain. This is overlapping. But it says the right graph has a much taller y axis than the, the, this is actually reverse. I said right and right. Hm. This should be left. OK. But let's take this to the personal application, which is much less important than the application to understanding the love 0:11:36 - 0:12:15 of God. But they're connected because the one motivates the other. The love of God is ultimately the thing that entices us to be more than what we are, it's also the thing that we receive to make us more than what we are and we receive it by giving it. And that is a tremendous key. So this truer understanding 0:12:14 - 0:12:43 of the shape of cost and benefit is not actually depressing when you understand the value is what something is worth and that worth is determined by cost and benefit. Now, if you're paying attention, you're going to object to this and you're gonna say, wait a second cost and benefit. OK? So cost benefit 0:12:43 - 0:13:19 . But if worth is cost and benefit, then doesn't the worth decrease as the benefit increases because the benefit grows more slowly than the cost. No, but only if you understand that the benefit of greater good is not absolute, it's relative, it's not absolute, it's relative and maybe that language is 0:13:19 - 0:13:55 too technical. So let's just show it with a picture. The absolute difference between here, we can use more lines. Let's add some lines. The absolute difference between these two lines is another line. Oops, that's not a line is this right? That's the absolute difference between these two lines. But what's 0:13:55 - 0:14:30 the relative difference? What is the relative difference between being here? This is probably unnecessary. I was gonna make some arrows. We'll skip it. What's the relative difference between being here and here? What's it like to be here? And what's it like to be here? Put, put in a better way. Let's 0:14:30 - 0:15:07 see. Let's make these lines about the same as the same with the part and good as these are. Ok. Maybe here, there we go. The program helped me. I'm no good at hanging cabinets. OK? What is the, the absolute difference in good between this and this? It's double, it's, this is literally double. It's twice 0:15:06 - 0:15:28 as good to be here as it is to be here. Now, in this curve, what happens is depending on where we are on it. It's a more ex extreme effect, but the cost goes to the point where it costs way more than double to yield, double the benefit. OK. And that's why this could be depressing the further along you 0:15:28 - 0:15:57 go, the higher the cost goes for the good it yields. But what's the relative increase of good between these two? This is indescribably better than that. There's no comparison. There is no comparison. This holds true across many, many things. It's, it's not just this uh transcendent heavenly view of things 0:15:56 - 0:16:18 . You can slice it out to specifics and see what's the difference between these two things. Well, relatively speaking, there, there, this is double that but, but I'm sorry, absolutely speaking. But relatively speaking, it's all the difference in the world. Do you have anything that you've experienced 0:16:17 - 0:16:45 in life or perceived in life where the absolute difference is way smaller than the relative difference? My life is full of things like that. It's absolutely full of things like that. And I would think we're getting kind of deep here. But I think just thinking on the fly that these differences between 0:16:44 - 0:17:13 absolute and relative probably come down to meaning they probably come down to meaning. So when I think of the worth of spending another 20 minutes with one of my kids, instead of having to work or sleep or change light bulbs or whatever, then that is worth, uh, much more than it seems on paper to me 0:17:12 - 0:17:46 , much more. So, um, that explains a bit of this mystery and I could drone on about that. We'll just, we'll just keep going. It's relative. Ok. Now, the key is to understanding the difference, our faith and charity. These are deep wells. We're gonna, I'm gonna try to limit this to the three slides I 0:17:46 - 0:18:12 have left. So I will activate the intentional filter specifically by charity. We could break this down by desire for benefit of others and lack of desire for benefit of self. I wrote a whole book on faith. It's called through Faith, Robert Smith. You'll find it online. So this is the key to why this 0:18:12 - 0:18:31 is something we've investigated before. Humans are Pareto distributed in so many things. This is a Pareto distribution. I've talked about it many times. I won't go into it again. You can Google it. If you, if you don't, if you're not familiar with that or just poke around on the channel, you'll find 0:18:30 - 0:19:07 some things. This is the graph we had before. This is how humans are now. Uh this, sorry I lost. There's something lost in translation here. And that's, this is the number of people so cost benefit and number of people in their quality, their, their mirror images of one another. So um this is very important 0:19:07 - 0:19:34 . Do you wanna know why there are so few people up here? Well, it's because so few people would ever do this mystery solved. But if we wanna get a little more specific, it's because faith and charity work the same as this, meaning, the number of people with tremendous faith are very few. The number of 0:19:34 - 0:20:04 people at tremendous charity are very few. Therefore, they will not climb up this hill. And so there are very few of them who end up high quality humans or with an abundant life. And uh a man's abundance is not um counted for the things he has. I'm not saying an abundant life is wealth, saying this is 0:20:04 - 0:20:29 an abundant life and it uh truth always leaves clues. And so that's where these come into the situation. But there are much more important things you can produce than money like kids who are not rascals. Ok? In conclusion, if you set out on the path of the Lord, you should expect it to get steeper as 0:20:29 - 0:20:47 you go. And Jesus said things like if you're going to build a tower, you better find out how much it's gonna cost you before you lay the foundation or otherwise you look like a chump because there will be a quarter built tower sitting there forever. He also said, don't go to war if you don't know the 0:20:47 - 0:21:09 cost of war. Second, it's worthwhile to improve your faith and charity. That's the understatement of the year. But we have to draw the line somewhere. I wrote a book on faith. So we'll say, and I talk about it all the time. So we'll say that that one that box is, is sufficiently checked for. Now. Uh 0:21:08 - 0:21:32 I have a book in the works on charity. Who knows when you'll see it. My time is extraordinarily limited for what I have to do. And so it's taking forever. Finally, when you see someone who's a little better than you in any way, you ought to have a greater appreciation for what it must have cost them 0:21:32 - 0:22:02 to become that way. If you do the biggest effect it will have is that you will improve the joy that you receive from them, giving it to you. You'll also obviously be far more inclined to pay the cost of receiving it from them. So I hope these things give you some, some things to think about and specifically 0:22:01 - 0:22:06 some ideas on where you can improve in your life. Take care.