---
feed: "DANIEL_ON_SLOPE"
codex_section: "S03"
source: VideoTranscript
title: "360MEN WTA 02 - Illusions and Being Wrong"
conv_id: "video-eZlpZ51HOis-20181012"
share_url: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZlpZ51HOis"
created: "2018-10-12"
message_count: 1
category:
  - "self-awareness"
  - "cognitive-biases"
  - "worth-thinking-about"
summary: "In this foundational 2018 WTA Episode 02 (second in the pre-Scotomaville 'Worth Thinking About' series), Daniel Comp explores how humans are wrong roughly half the time because 'we don't see things as they are—we see things as we are.' Using live demonstrations of optical illusions (identical orange dots, chessboard squares A/B, old lady/young woman), the Yanny/Laurel audio illusion, and references to Kathryn Schulz’s TED Talk on being wrong, he reveals how our brain’s energy-saving shortcuts and pattern-matching create cognitive blind spots. He introduces Dataism as the mechanism by which big tech, media, and entertainment 'game' us through confirmation bias and data trails, narrowing worldviews. Created years before AI tools or the Scotomaville framework existed, this unscripted episode plants the earliest seeds of self-awareness, comfort with uncertainty, and resistance to being played—core principles that would later define the full Scotomaville journey."
keypoints:
  - "We do not see reality; we see our interpretation of it shaped by confirmation bias, past experiences, and mental shortcuts that conserve energy."
  - "Visual and auditory illusions prove the brain can be fooled by context, proximity, and expectation—exactly how media and tech exploit us."
  - "Dataism turns our digital trails, clicks, and location data into a system that narrows our worldview and steers beliefs without our awareness."
  - "Self-awareness is the antidote: recognize when you are being 'gamed,' become comfortable with uncertainty, and stay open to others’ perspectives."
  - "Authentic masculinity and leadership begin with showing up, focusing on your own message, and building deep relationships instead of reacting to noise."
tags:
  - "illusions"
  - "cognitive-bias"
  - "dataism"
  - "self-awareness"
  - "being-wrong"
  - "360men"
  - "wta"
  - "pre-scotomaville"
monomyth_stage: "02 - Call to Adventure"
gameboard_position: "Camp -3: The Call to Adventure"
truth_score: 85
entropy_score: "Medium"
tone:
  sentiment: "Reflective"
  emotions:
    - "Earnest"
    - "Humorous"
  sycophancy_level: "None"
  notes: "Unscripted, conversational, and multi-layered; Daniel speaks directly to the camera while referencing a 'three-level chessboard' of personal experience, creative process, and historical context. Light-hearted self-referential moments (noise-cancelling headphones, mask/Sasquatch gag) balance the serious warning about Dataism and being 'gamed'."
related_events: []
syndication_status:
  arnie: false
  chris: false
  redmond: false
  clint: false
  pilot: false
ma5_inheritance: "Initium"
pre_silicon: true
voice_print: false
codex_candidate: true
phase: "Pre-Scotomaville Foundations: WTA Series - Episode 02"
enriched_date: "2026-04-14"
---
![[eZlpZ51HOis_maxres.jpg]]

### Original YouTube Description

Episode 02 of 360MEN: "Worth Thinking About" is on being half wrong. We're wrong half the time. That makes us vulnerable. This episode is about illusions and things we believe that are NOT so. It becomes so much easier when we understand that "we don't see things the way THEY ARE. We see things the way WE ARE. Our cognitive biases shape the information we accept or reject. We get gamed and our world-view gets narrowed. Daniel Comp, founder of 360MEN, shares that we are being 'gamed' or 'played' by information sources all around us. Our brain is a marvelous tool, but it has a flaw in that the very efficiency it runs on betrays us. In order to conserve energy, we tend to not think to long about most stuff. We tend to accept patterns and situations as one thing even though they might be quite another. We get gamed by the big tech companies, by media, by entertainment. DATAISM is at the heart of the issue. We're vulnerable, and others take advantage of our naivety. You can do something about your self-awareness. You can see it, learn from it and become much more understanding of the views, opinions and beliefs of other people, while not death-gripping our own ideas. Join in the conversation. Ask tough questions and contribute your insights on modern masculinity and subjects that cost you much to learn. Visit [http://360MEN.net](http://360MEN.net) DATAISM: [https://www.google.com/search?q=dataism](https://www.google.com/search?q=dataism) [https://www.wired.com/2017/02/yuval-harari-tech-is-the-new-religion/](https://www.wired.com/2017/02/yuval-harari-tech-is-the-new-religion/) 360MEN: "Book of Insights" [http://360men.net/360men-book](http://360men.net/360men-book) Kathryn Schulz [https://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong](https://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong)

---

### Cleaned Transcript

**Daniel:**  
Welcome to Episode 2 of *Worth Thinking About*. Boy, have I got some stuff to stretch your head with this week.

Noise-cancelling headphones—you’ll have to watch the previous episode. Yeah, there’s a wine bar downstairs… why am I yelling? I can’t hear anything.

I’ve ridden across America three times. I’ve learned a few lessons. I’ve learned to listen and to expect something larger than yourself to guide, or unfold, or to be a part of your journey.

Just yesterday Angelina and I were watching Senator Lindsey Graham talk about being raised with his dad owning a bar and the lessons he learned about life and politics and people. Here are some of those key points: show up, show up, show up. Record, post, be there, get involved, meet people face-to-face. Go to funerals, go to celebrations, and be part of the whole thing. Focus on your message—don’t focus on other people’s messages. Focus on yours. Don’t let the garbage distract you. You have to deal with it, right? Just try not to get emotionally involved in all that. And mostly, have fun. Be personable. Be real.

So this week’s lesson—obviously unscripted again, but hopefully you’ll recognize that it’s authentic. Let’s go to my desk. I’m going to walk you through where we’re going.

You’ve got to make light of things or see them in a humorous fashion at times, even though what you have in your mind is not always what you can create. You have to let go sometimes when you’re being a creator. You’ll notice I have earplugs in. The whole story behind that is last week, this week, today… we’re on the road in a couple of weeks. Last couple of episodes here I’m going to do on the way.

I’ve written some things here. I want to try not to be a watchmaker—they can’t tell you the time—but at the same time you have to understand I’m talking like a chess board at three different levels. There’s the experience of being a creator, the process that you go through, and the historical context of what we’re doing. Why is it important?

In the creative component of it you have to be self-aware. So today we’re going to talk about illusions. Last episode we talked about scotoma—blind spots. I have to talk to the audience. So you, the audience—in this case admirals, generals, senators, corporate CEOs, business owners, doctors, students, young men that are gaming—try to assemble all this stuff together from bits and pieces to accomplish your movement.

For 360MEN, that’s dressing Dataism. We’ll go into that in a minute. There’s a temptation on the base level—they have to make an episode. That’s what this is. It’s an episode of a series which is part of a corpus. You see all the layers. I do. You watch this. This is unscripted. I’m doing it, you’re watching me, so that we can watch that you join the 360MEN journey, the expedition, the book, the video series. Come be a part of this whole thing. Learn what this is about.

And look at that—it’s like… what’s that guy that used to have the… you know, I’ll think of it and include that here anyway. That’s a weird little juxtaposition. And then eventually it’ll be: you do, I watch, as the corpus gets built.

He’s right, you guys do. You know who? Leave me… yeah, I’ll look it up, stick it in here. We’ll go with that.

Okay, so these are the three different layers and this episode’s going to be really fun. We’re going to talk about illusions. See, the basic premise here is we don’t see things the way they are. We see things the way we are. We don’t always see things very clearly. We see things based on our interpretation, our confirmation bias, the way data is fed to us, our worldview, by giving us confirmation bias based on our clicks and our whereabouts and our data trail.

Okay, let’s come to my computer and have a look at an illusion. Two cameras today. Hey, the guy’s name was Alfred Hitchcock and he always had—not always, but he often had—a shadow cast on the wall as he talked. His theme was always: make the audience suffer as much as possible. Right? Hopefully that’s not the case with you guys.

Take a closer look. Look at the one on the left: the orange dot on the left and the orange dot on the right. Who’s bigger? Who’s more correct? Which one has more power—the left or the right? Which one’s correct—the right or the left? You see what’s going on? Turns out they’re identical. Measure them. They’re both exactly the same. What you see is not reality. What you see is a perception, and you can easily be fooled.

We’re going to go into that a bit more. Let’s look at some more. There’s a chessboard. You see the squares—are all the squares different color? Well, there should be, right? There, a chessboard. So check out A and B and look really closely because what you’re going to find out is A and B are exactly the same color, the same shade of grey. They’re not different colors. Look again. Okay, let’s switch back and forth. Get it? They’re exactly the same shade, but because of the proximity of another object… see that in logic. You see that in storylines. You see that in accusations without evidence or corroboration that’s been thrown all around that’s coming at us.

And I’m talking about the big picture of Dataism. You’re not going to get the whole picture. This is—I want to say ancient, but it’s not really ancient, but it’s at least 100 years old. You can only see one at a time. You see the old lady or you see the young maiden depending on which one you focus on—the old hag looking down, the young maiden looking away, right? Which one is it?

*Secondhand Lions*—interesting phrase in this movie. Fun movie, just to watch a couple guys take care of their nephew and teach him masculinity for the summer. But there’s a phrase in there that Bill Sharman alerted me to and it goes like this: “Everyone needs something to believe in, even if it’s not true.” And that’s really a big point. If you start thinking that through in your everyday life—of how much information that’s not true is pushed on people so that they can grapple with something to grab onto to make their world a little more certain.

But becoming comfortable with uncertainty is Angelina’s expertise—or it’s been my journey for the last 20 years working as an entrepreneur—not knowing exactly where we’re going but willing to take the steps to get there and trusting that along the way provision will make itself. It’ll be provided. You’ll have everything you need. And that’s what the cycling thing—three times across America—was for me: letting go of my control and accepting the way things play out.

Okay, a lot there. Watch this movie; it’s really good.

Now I’m going to have you listen to one that’s been going around. It’s the Yanny/Laurel. I’m going to ask you—which of the two do you hear? Do you hear Yanny or do you hear Laurel? And people hear one or the other. Shows you that it’s not just visual; it’s auditory where we have discrepancies and things. Listen to this.

*(audio clip plays)*

Kathryn Schulz has a TED Talk—she’s probably having an aggregate of over 10 million views—on being wrong. A huge part of self-awareness, a huge piece of an illusion, part of the game that the big companies are using against those of us that use technology. That narrows our worldview, that plays with our belief system, is described by her TED Talk. Really excellent one. You need to watch it. You really need to take the time. The links are down below, part of the article, part of the YouTube post.

Because we do, based on our biology—we want to save energy. We want to find patterns, jump to conclusions, and not have to think so hard. You know, we may need some of this fat energy stored in our bodies for the coming winter. So yeah, that’s okay. You can step on that whatever. Our biology betrays us.

Watch Kathryn Schulz on being wrong and how much we run around in our lives being the victim of our own thinking.

All right, here sits the queen of ad lib. If you’ve ever seen those clips of Sasquatch walking behind the reporter in the woods—I’m talking about Kathryn Schulz on being wrong and I’ve just finished pointing out my shadow like Alfred Hitchcock. I didn’t turn on the other camera. It doesn’t matter. Can you see what’s going on here? Realize that I would be caught in the background with me putting a mask on my face. And so is Daniel—reference, you know, the cameraman that has Sasquatch walking behind me in the woods. I guess for a moment that’s exactly what happened here. And yeah, this is diffuse time when we’re having a rough morning and I’m trying to process some things and reframing certain things. Sometimes it helps just to put on the mask. No, the opposite. See, you take your damn mask off, guys. Told you this into that woman—she’ll distract you to no end.

One of the layers in this multi-board chess game that we’re playing has to do with social media and has to do with relationship building and being able to go deep in the pool—not just toes in the water but Olympic diving board kind of stuff. And you’ll find that if you post some very thought-provoking questions that you’ll be able to go deep with a smaller number of men. And I want to thank all of you that are actually engaging with me.

It seems that on the evidence side for Dataism you’ll see those recommender buttons—you know, those AI suggestions on what your safe response can be. And I don’t want you to be unaware. Right? This is a lesson about illusions and psychological blind spots. Don’t be unaware of what’s going on.

In order for the social media to recommend what to say, they’ve got to find the context of the conversation. They have to know the tone. They have to know the sentiment of what’s going on. Those are all black boxes in AI. They all fit together in order to give you recommendations. And if you notice as you go through different conversations, those suggestions change, right? It’s one thing to use AI to keep a car in a lane; it’s a completely another thing to keep a person in a conversation that someone else likes or controls or steers. Don’t miss what’s going on. We’re becoming more and more dependent on this kind of stuff.

I’m just saying. All right, so that’s this week’s *Worth Thinking About*—Episode number two. And you know what to do, right? Subscribe to the YouTube channel, come over and talk to us at 360MEN, get your toes in the water, guys. Take that frickin’ mask off and become more self-aware. Share what your story is with the rest of the guys. Help build a corpus and fight the oncoming onslaught of Dataism. There’s a big word for the week. All right, see you next time.

---

**CODEX ENTRY**  
**Date:** 2018-10-12 (WTA Episode 02)  
**File:** 360MEN WTA 02 - Illusions and Being Wrong.md  
**Monomyth Stage:** 02 - Call to Adventure  
**Gameboard:** Camp -3: The Call to Adventure  
**MA5 Domain:** Initium  
**Summary:** Daniel delivers an unscripted, multi-layered exploration of cognitive illusions—visual, auditory, and social—demonstrating how perception is filtered through personal bias and brain efficiency. He names Dataism as the emerging religion of big tech that exploits these vulnerabilities, planting the first explicit warnings about being “gamed” by algorithms years before Scotomaville existed.  
**Key Insight:** “We don’t see things the way they are. We see things the way we are.” Self-awareness is the only reliable defense against mental shortcuts that make us easy to manipulate.  
**Narrative Significance:** This episode is pure pre-Scotomaville seed material. Every core Scotomaville theme—scotoma/blind spots, Dataism, comfort with uncertainty, and the call to deeper self-awareness—appears here in raw, earnest form, delivered without AI assistance or the later branding wrapper. It marks the exact moment Daniel begins publicly mapping the hidden architecture of human vulnerability that would become the foundation of the entire Initium journey.

---

**INITIUM.**