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Hi Dave.

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I'm the Pinsof.

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You are the Petrazuwski, and this is uh what is it?

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It's uh EP the pod.

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Evolutionary psychology the podcast, actual evolutionary psychology by Actual Evolutionary

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Psychologists

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enjoying

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David, today we have a wonderful guest, Dr.

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Hannes Rush.

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I think he has a couple PhDs uh actually.

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I think he's this guy is dripping with PhDs.

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Just a brilliant, a brilliant mind.

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Um fantastic scholar scholar in Germany at one of the Mox Planks.

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Um and we get into exploitation and group identities.

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Really beautiful insights into exploitation, I think.

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And it changed the way I think about it.

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It made it so much more precise.

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Um, really great insights onto what you know exploitation is, how we can go about measuring

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it.

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We what else do we get into?

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Uh where exploitation might be and whether or not people are aware of it.

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We also get into heroism.

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Uh we get into group identities, and uh man, we just yeah, it was

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just a lovely uh conversation about super important topics.

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And the thing I love about it the most is that Hannes is such a clear thinker and he was

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talking about things that basically haven't been touched on that are super, super

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important, right?

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Yeah, no, he takes uh seemingly airy abstract ideas like exploitation, uh tribalism,

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heroism, and he distills them into a uh into precision that is so crisp and

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mathematical and beautiful that it just it's uh it's a delight to yeah.

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We also talked about people being groupie, like in as an individual difference, which is I

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think super cool.

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Uh the idea of somebody's like groupie, like they like being part of a group or intergroup

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dominance.

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Yeah.

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Yes.

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Well, after listening to this episode, I think you will be a groupie for evolutionary

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psychology of the podcast.

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Nail that.

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Enjoy.

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Today we have uh Hannes Rush.

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Uh that is, yeah.

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Can you say it, Hannes?

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Can you do it?

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Rush.

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Yeah.

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I did it well.

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You did it, you did it much better than me.

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Yeah.

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My son says I speak funny German.

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Um so um too.

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We have uh a Dr.

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Hannes Rush, who is a um both a tenured faculty, um how do you say

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Maastricht University?

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That was almost perfect, Maastricht.

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Ah, schön.

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Okay, Maastricht.

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Okay.

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And um and then, but you also are an independent group leader at

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Freiburg in um in the Max Planck for um Institute for

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the Study of Crime Security and Law, which is the overarching institute,

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correct?

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Um no, so the the Max-Planck Society has lots of institutes, around 80 or so worldwide.

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This is just one of them.

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No, exactly, but that institute that you're at, the name of it is the uh study prime.

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Uh correct.

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Correct.

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So we've yeah, because we've had like um we've had Annie Wirtson, uh we just had Brett

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Beheim, who is at the MPI EVA in Leipzig?

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And uh I feel like every time we have a Mox Planck person on, we sort of need some

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explanation for people who are more at a standard, more university system.

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Um and so the Mox Planck you're at, there's a several uh permanent directors

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who are all somehow involved in the study of crime security and law.

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Is that right?

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okay so we have three departments each department has a director and the departments are

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one is for criminology this is also uh where my group is attached then we have one

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department for public law and one department for criminal law that sounds like a wonderful

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environment i mean maybe you can tell us about maybe as we have this conversation today

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about sort of what that's like working in a building with people who are united in that

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sort of sense.

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Um, and then uh, but you are an independent research group leader.

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Um, and the name of your group is the um uh behavioral economics of crime

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and conflict.

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Is that right?

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Yeah, super interesting.

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Um, and I was and I've been looking at this, and there's two projects.

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One is basically um exploitation, So human, I love this man

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unkind is the name of this project.

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Um, and it's basically just sort of, you know, laying out um uh and then Hannes, I'll let

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you speak in a second.

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But it's just laying, I just love this so much.

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Like it's laying out um this histories of humans exploiting one another to

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varying degrees of organization, including up to like slavery or more mundane things.

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Humanity's greatest hits.

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Yeah, exact exactly.

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Yes.

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Uh we are we are wonderful as a species.

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And then um and then another is uh how do you say this other name?

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This disc grid is this or what disgrid, yeah.

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But basically um, you know, there's so much that's uh driven by social identities.

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And so why do these levels uh high-level social identities, things like you know, ethnic

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ethnicity or race continue to exist and sort of what's pushing that around?

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Um that's just so cool that you're studying both of those things.

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Um and I I yeah, so um that's great.

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And um let's start by uh where where do you want to start, Hannes or David?

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Let's let's get into it.

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Maybe let me just give you a spoiler in advance so that the name Man Unkind that you like

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so much is actually borrowed from a Metallica song.

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Nice.

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Fantastic.

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Well we will we if we had more editing time, we would cut to that song right now, but maybe

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we can put it in the show notes.

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So why why is why is man un unkind?

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Other than that it you know it sounds cool in a a metallica song.

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So I I listened so in in preparation for for talking to you today, I actually listened to

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the episode that you recorded just recently with Pat Barkley and he's also very much into

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the evolution of cooperation, right?

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And this is also where my interest in evolutionary psychology started of sorts,

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right?

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Maybe a bit earlier, but I did a lot of work on evolution of cooperation and was always

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fascinated by this.

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But then at some point, I was thinking, okay, this literature is very well developed.

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So can I really make any fundamental contributions there anymore?

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Probably not.

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So what else is there?

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And then you suddenly turn to the not so nice features of human nature, right?

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So the dark sides of human behavior, as we usually call it in describing what the group

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does.

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And one of them is exploitation.

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I mean, I've been working on intergroup conflict also a lot.

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This is maybe well, it's a very dark side.

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Um, but if you go to to a little more subtle, a

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little milder forms of um of evil behavior, then you then you

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quite quickly arrive at slavery and um all different types of exploitative

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institutions and behaviors than humans can um can develop and can show.

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And so I had a look into the literature trying to figure out if there had been any

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systematic work on the evolution of exploitation, if you like, in humans.

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And I was astonished to find that there really is not much.

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Um and so I wrote a I wrote a grant proposal and luckily got it funded.

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And so I'm I'm now have the freedom to study this super interesting topic for five

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years on funding.

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That's fantastic.

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I I I'm very curious.

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So you're you're a a game theorist, a mathematician.

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I'm curious what you what you think exploitation is?

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Because it seems like a kind of fuzzy abstract concept, and I'm sure you have a crisp

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formal definition of it.

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And I'd love to hear what it is so that it can blow my mind.

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So, how do you how are you thinking of this phenomenon?

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So I think one one this is this is just career strategically,

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it's nice that the term exploitation has been used by Marx and is actually quite central

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in in Marx's philosophy of society, if you like.

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And so I think this has scared a lot of people away from looking into the underlying

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behavior, right?

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Because they didn't want to be associated with Marx.

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And I also, I mean, I'm I I read what he wrote about this and I find it interesting, but

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certainly not super correct.

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So um I thought, well, why not give it like 150 years later or so to give it another

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try to understand what the underlying behaviors are and really start

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investigating those with the modern methods of behavioral science that we have.

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And in that process, and also for the grant proposal, of course, I

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was always asked to define what exploitation is.

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Like you just asked me to.

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But my standard response to this is actually: I don't want to define it so precisely,

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because it's, in my view, it's a range, it's a full spectrum of different types of behavior

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that you can see.

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Some are very mild in the degree of exploitation that they um that they include, and some

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are super exploitative, like slavery, like chattel slavery, even um, so that is maybe the

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one of the worst forms.

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If you if you go into philosophy, for example, go into um the the um Stanford

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Encyclopedia and have a look how they define exploitation.

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If you want a like a formula, what you often get then is it's taking unfair

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advantage of someone else.

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But this is not a good definition because it just reduces the problem to defining what

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fairness is.

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And I mean you have 2,000 years of philosophy that are not able to come

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up with the one definition of what we're supposed to consider as fair.

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So you get into the same issues when you when you um talk about exploitation.

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So what I'm trying to do is rather to have a look around and say, okay, we we probably all

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agree that slavery is exploitative.

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So what is it that people are doing there and why are they doing it?

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So try to get rid of the of the analytical philosophy, if you like, of having to very

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clearly define what everything means, but rather look at behavior and understand the

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behavior.

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Yeah.

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I like that.

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Yeah.

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It's taking a clear example of something and then just unpacking it in terms of

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and Johannes, you can tell me or tell us sort of what your approach has been.

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Because it sounds like this is how new is this, or how far along are you into this project?

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Um the project oh good question.

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It's running for almost three years now.

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So we have two years left.

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Okay, so you're kind of right in the middle of it.

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So, how do you approach this study of that?

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So you mentioned how you because it seems like a very large, overwhelming thing, especially

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if people haven't been studying it before.

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So, can you tell us a little bit about um you talked about how you approached the concept

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of it, but now how do you empirically investigate this?

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Or what are you doing with your students?

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So maybe before I get to that, let me briefly advertise a book chapter that we recently

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wrote because it's I think it's never true that something has not been studied at all,

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right?

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So we're facing 2,000 years of science essentially as as the

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um as the result or as the insights that we are working from.

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So we we try to summarize everything that is out there on exploitation, especially in terms

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of theory on exploitation, um, in a chapter that is called um exploitation

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theory and practice.

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That is great.

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Forthcoming in the handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics.

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Maybe we can also we'll put that in the show notes or or even a link to it if uh yeah.

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Yeah, we it's also open openly available from uh from Krim Archive, I think actually.

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Great.

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Okay, so um that is where where interested readers can or

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interested listeners can read up on the on the knowledge that is already out there.

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But what we are doing is the project or the is built on

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three pillars.

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And one is just do clear microeconomic theory or the do the game theory of

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exploitative relations between people and also so one-on-one, one-on-one, n on n

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um kind of relations.

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That is the theory pillar.

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Then we have the experimental pillar where we ascend where we try to design behavioral

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experiments like the standard economic experiments that you know.

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Um, that model situations in which one side can exploit the other.

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And then we see what people really do and how they perceive it, and maybe which type of

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people go which way.

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And then the third arm is the applied microarm, as I call it, but you can also think of it

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as the archive data arm.

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So we are having a look around for essentially all available data sources out there that

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allow us to get an idea of historical forms of exploitation, but also contemporary forms of

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exploitation.

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And then we apply the methods of applied microeconomics, so causal inference

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statistics, trying to get at um what's what has happened in these historical cases, or

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several cases, if possible, of course.

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So how are how are you so you you mentioned that you're you're mathematically formalizing

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this and you're and you're studying it from the theoretical level.

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I'm curious like how you are formalizing this.

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What is an example of like an exploitative situation where person A exploits

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person B?

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So what we had in mind when we started modeling, and at least one of the modeling

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approaches we took is really um a

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slavery-like relationship.

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So assume you're the master, I'm the slave.

244
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Then what you want to do is you want to prevent me from running away, right?

245
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So you want me to stay with you.

246
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So what we give you as a means is you can reduce my chances, you

247
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can invest a little bit, so it costs you a little bit, but you can by investing a little

248
00:14:33,020 --> 00:14:36,940
bit reduce my chances of successfully leaving the interaction with you.

249
00:14:37,370 --> 00:14:43,290
So you can, and we would consider this one behavior that um that creates a situation

250
00:14:43,290 --> 00:14:47,130
of dependency which the other party is not voluntarily entering, right?

251
00:14:47,210 --> 00:14:51,370
So you're tying the person to you against their will.

252
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And then you can use this situation, for example, to um well,

253
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you can you can a mild form of exploitation under these circumstances would be that you

254
00:15:03,140 --> 00:15:06,980
then um lower the wage that you pay the person for their work.

255
00:15:07,700 --> 00:15:08,100
Right?

256
00:15:08,340 --> 00:15:13,940
The the logic is simply if you don't work for me, you have bad outside options, and I made

257
00:15:13,940 --> 00:15:16,180
your outside options bad, but yeah, I'm sorry for that.

258
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That was rational from my perspective.

259
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I did that, so now you work for me at a lower wage.

260
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Or under under worse conditions.

261
00:15:24,490 --> 00:15:30,250
So exploitation, the way you're thinking of it, is when an actor pays a

262
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cost to constrain the outside options of the recipient in

263
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order that the actor can uh increase the benefits that they are reaping from the

264
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interaction and and uh increasing the costs that the recipient incurs from the interaction.

265
00:15:47,050 --> 00:15:47,370
Yes.

266
00:15:47,610 --> 00:15:52,460
So that's that's this one form how we operationalize it for one of the experiments or two

267
00:15:52,460 --> 00:15:55,180
of the designs or paradigms that we are developing.

268
00:15:55,260 --> 00:15:56,700
But essentially that's it, yes.

269
00:15:57,020 --> 00:15:57,340
Interesting.

270
00:15:57,500 --> 00:16:00,220
Is there is there a another paradigm that that that you have?

271
00:16:00,780 --> 00:16:05,100
Well the one this one this one is we are working on developing the second one.

272
00:16:05,260 --> 00:16:10,300
This one is a bit too complicated to explain to people for online experiments.

273
00:16:10,380 --> 00:16:11,980
We realized right.

274
00:16:12,140 --> 00:16:13,260
So this is research.

275
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We we try to make it as simple as possible, but um still we we are aiming to

276
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use this one for laboratory experiments and play it repeatedly with people so that they can

277
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really get a feeling for how this interaction structure works and um can converge on the

278
00:16:28,290 --> 00:16:33,730
type of behavior that they really want to show, which might be difficult in a one-shot or

279
00:16:33,730 --> 00:16:37,970
con like um strategy method type online experimental setting.

280
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and the other one that we're developing now is is an even reduced version of this where um

281
00:16:44,340 --> 00:16:50,260
where you where we make choices super easy to understand and um the consequences super easy

282
00:16:50,260 --> 00:16:56,260
to understand and um limit like the the action space for for both parties but still

283
00:16:56,260 --> 00:17:01,140
try to maintain the exploitative act aspect of what the principle mainly we call him the

284
00:17:01,140 --> 00:17:06,580
principle so the person in the stronger role the master in the relationship um how they can

285
00:17:06,950 --> 00:17:12,870
um well it's interesting i'm i'm seeing uh a a uh an interesting parallel to abusive

286
00:17:12,870 --> 00:17:17,910
relationships so um if i'm in an abusive relationship with someone one tactic i might use

287
00:17:17,910 --> 00:17:22,950
to get them to stay with me is i might insult them lower their self-esteem uh perhaps

288
00:17:22,950 --> 00:17:26,950
deceptively to make them think that their outside options are are more constrained than

289
00:17:26,950 --> 00:17:31,440
they actually are that no one other than me would actually be with them Or if they uh you

290
00:17:31,440 --> 00:17:36,320
know talk to anyone else or or even you know mildly flirt with anyone else, I might, you

291
00:17:36,320 --> 00:17:40,400
know, inflict extreme either physical or psychological costs on them.

292
00:17:40,480 --> 00:17:46,000
So I'm both deterring them from pursuing outside options and tr and d deceiving them into

293
00:17:46,000 --> 00:17:51,520
thinking that they have outside options so that they'll stay with me and that I will reap a

294
00:17:51,600 --> 00:17:54,400
a greater benefit from from the relationship.

295
00:17:54,640 --> 00:17:59,290
Um And that they're uh and that they will incur a higher cost from being in that in that

296
00:17:59,290 --> 00:18:03,290
relationship than they would otherwise incur if they had an accurate uh understanding of

297
00:18:03,290 --> 00:18:07,610
their outside options or if they actually had uh uh viable outside options.

298
00:18:07,770 --> 00:18:12,170
Um and and and that would be, I guess, moving a little bit further along the continuum from

299
00:18:12,170 --> 00:18:14,010
extreme to to mild.

300
00:18:14,250 --> 00:18:17,370
Um and I'm trying to think of other situations.

301
00:18:17,530 --> 00:18:22,380
I mean, you you could you could even think of just you know bad mouthing your social

302
00:18:22,380 --> 00:18:26,940
competitors as as something that's you know on the mild on the really mild end of the

303
00:18:26,940 --> 00:18:31,980
continuum just spreading negative gossip uh about someone say if you're competing with them

304
00:18:31,980 --> 00:18:37,980
for you know a promotion or a job um that's a kind of way of reducing the outside options

305
00:18:37,980 --> 00:18:43,710
of of other people um and it's doing it deceptively Um uh it's not quite the same as you

306
00:18:43,710 --> 00:18:47,310
know threatening violence to reduce the outside options, but it's a it's a different way of

307
00:18:47,310 --> 00:18:49,310
reducing outside options via deception.

308
00:18:49,790 --> 00:18:53,150
Do you think that uh that kind of behavior belongs on the continuum?

309
00:18:53,550 --> 00:18:54,430
Yes, definitely yes.

310
00:18:54,990 --> 00:19:00,750
So sorry, go ahead, Hannes and we have a theory paper out also very recently um

311
00:19:00,910 --> 00:19:06,820
where we where we define or for the model there, we use three components, which in

312
00:19:06,820 --> 00:19:12,660
that particular setting are the actions that the exploitative party or the

313
00:19:12,660 --> 00:19:15,140
exploiter can use.

314
00:19:15,620 --> 00:19:20,260
And that is luring someone into the interaction through deception.

315
00:19:21,140 --> 00:19:27,140
So I can promise you love and and happiness forever, but once you marry me,

316
00:19:27,220 --> 00:19:28,820
I'm gonna push you very hard.

317
00:19:29,220 --> 00:19:32,710
So that could be in that application, could be one thing.

318
00:19:33,030 --> 00:19:35,270
Then that I confine you.

319
00:19:35,350 --> 00:19:37,670
So I make it hard for you to leave me.

320
00:19:38,470 --> 00:19:43,590
And I extract labor or any other benefits from you using force.

321
00:19:43,670 --> 00:19:44,790
So punishment.

322
00:19:44,950 --> 00:19:45,110
Yeah.

323
00:19:45,350 --> 00:19:51,350
And three these three together, um, they in that setting they define what the exploiter can

324
00:19:51,350 --> 00:19:51,510
do.

325
00:19:51,590 --> 00:19:53,990
So that's the extra action space of the exploiter.

326
00:19:54,120 --> 00:19:58,120
And then we try to mathematically model and understand the conditions under which it's

327
00:19:58,120 --> 00:20:02,200
rational or optimal for the exploiter to use which means to which degree.

328
00:20:02,840 --> 00:20:06,120
And that in economics we then call that comparative statics.

329
00:20:06,200 --> 00:20:11,960
So that gives us some predictions for what rational exploiters

330
00:20:12,280 --> 00:20:15,080
would be doing under certain circumstances.

331
00:20:15,450 --> 00:20:20,010
It it occurs to me that um an interesting aspect of your model is that the victim of the

332
00:20:20,010 --> 00:20:24,330
exploitation does not have to be aware of the fact that they're being exploited

333
00:20:24,490 --> 00:20:25,210
necessarily.

334
00:20:25,930 --> 00:20:31,530
All that needs to happen within them is that their space of outside options contracts.

335
00:20:31,770 --> 00:20:32,010
Right?

336
00:20:32,490 --> 00:20:37,210
And they don't need to be aware that it has been externally contracted by the exploiter.

337
00:20:37,610 --> 00:20:42,140
Um if they believe the deception, then from their perspective, they could be making a

338
00:20:42,140 --> 00:20:42,940
rational choice.

339
00:20:43,180 --> 00:20:48,620
All that matters is the objective outside options in in actual reality are

340
00:20:48,620 --> 00:20:52,380
contracted uh and that the exploiter is reaping a benefit from that.

341
00:20:53,180 --> 00:20:53,420
Yeah.

342
00:20:53,740 --> 00:20:56,380
What would it what would it oh sorry, David, go ahead.

343
00:20:57,500 --> 00:21:02,450
And it is often, I mean, presumably in some in many cases, it is cheaper um for the

344
00:21:02,450 --> 00:21:08,370
exploiter to uh exploit via deception than via threats of of violence um

345
00:21:08,530 --> 00:21:13,010
if they can if they can pull it off you know if if there's a plausible um lie they can tell

346
00:21:13,090 --> 00:21:16,930
uh because then they don't you know they have to pay lower monitoring costs you know they

347
00:21:16,930 --> 00:21:21,330
have to you know incur you know fewer risks from attacking someone it's it's often in the

348
00:21:21,330 --> 00:21:25,090
exploiter's interest to achieve their goals through deception than through uh violence.

349
00:21:25,490 --> 00:21:25,970
Yep.

350
00:21:26,280 --> 00:21:31,320
So when you look into the data on human trafficking, um, for example, which is one of the

351
00:21:31,320 --> 00:21:37,160
data sources that we that we're trying to use, um, then you see um that

352
00:21:37,640 --> 00:21:42,360
victims have been systematically surveyed on how they ended up in these kinds of

353
00:21:42,360 --> 00:21:43,160
relationships.

354
00:21:43,400 --> 00:21:49,400
And one of the one of the um means by used by exploiters that is very often mentioned

355
00:21:49,480 --> 00:21:53,080
in like half of the cases, for example, it depends on the database and of course how you

356
00:21:53,160 --> 00:21:58,750
how you ask the question, but um it is in in in 50% of the

357
00:21:58,750 --> 00:22:04,750
cases um in in one particular um source of data on calls to a to a human trafficking

358
00:22:04,750 --> 00:22:09,310
hotline in the US, for example, 50% of the interviewed victims say they have been tricked

359
00:22:09,310 --> 00:22:14,430
into or deceived into this relationship with a um with the exploiter in the beginning.

360
00:22:14,750 --> 00:22:17,390
And then the relationship started degrading, right?

361
00:22:17,470 --> 00:22:22,270
So then, and this is exactly so the logic behind that from an economic perspective is just

362
00:22:22,270 --> 00:22:26,660
like you say, it's much cheaper for the exploiter to first try deception.

363
00:22:26,820 --> 00:22:28,260
If that works, fine.

364
00:22:28,420 --> 00:22:34,260
If it doesn't, then you start using harsher means like violence or confinement.

365
00:22:35,140 --> 00:22:37,860
And what is the minimal cost thing then?

366
00:22:38,020 --> 00:22:39,060
Can you follow that along?

367
00:22:39,140 --> 00:22:40,900
So that's trickery at the beginning.

368
00:22:41,060 --> 00:22:42,820
The relationship degrades.

369
00:22:42,980 --> 00:22:48,580
What is the path of least resistance, or what's the the intelligence of the exploiter

370
00:22:48,900 --> 00:22:49,860
doing there?

371
00:22:50,260 --> 00:22:51,010
Um, right.

372
00:22:51,090 --> 00:22:52,130
So it's still cheaper.

373
00:22:52,370 --> 00:22:55,250
Like can you talk, yeah, can you kind of walk us through that?

374
00:22:55,970 --> 00:23:01,410
Oh um we haven't so the the model that we currently have actually abstracts away from this

375
00:23:01,410 --> 00:23:02,290
entire process.

376
00:23:02,530 --> 00:23:02,690
Yeah.

377
00:23:03,090 --> 00:23:07,010
So we're just saying we're just looking really at the outcome and we're s summarizing

378
00:23:07,010 --> 00:23:11,730
everything into uh a cost term for the three different types of behaviors that the expert

379
00:23:11,730 --> 00:23:17,100
can show and then we say okay if deception is cheaper than do using force, you're gonna see

380
00:23:17,100 --> 00:23:19,020
more deception than force, etc.

381
00:23:19,260 --> 00:23:19,420
Right.

382
00:23:19,500 --> 00:23:23,260
So for that model, um, we try to keep things very simple.

383
00:23:23,580 --> 00:23:25,660
Yeah, you have to start somewhere, yeah.

384
00:23:26,140 --> 00:23:30,620
I mean, yeah, just give me money for a second five years and then I will run this.

385
00:23:32,140 --> 00:23:33,340
It's it's incredibly cool.

386
00:23:33,420 --> 00:23:34,780
It's so great that you're doing this.

387
00:23:34,940 --> 00:23:35,500
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

388
00:23:35,830 --> 00:23:36,390
Very cool stuff.

389
00:23:36,470 --> 00:23:39,670
I mean, I uh it occurs to me that another interesting parallel is in the economic sphere.

390
00:23:39,750 --> 00:23:42,550
You could think of a monopoly uh as exploitative.

391
00:23:42,630 --> 00:23:46,790
It's it's doing exactly the same thing that, you know, uh to a to a more limited degree,

392
00:23:47,270 --> 00:23:50,550
the same thing that the abusive partner is doing, the the slaveholder is doing.

393
00:23:50,710 --> 00:23:54,470
What they're doing is they're they're uh constraining uh outside options so that you're

394
00:23:54,470 --> 00:23:59,540
forced to transact with the monopoly, uh and so that the monopoly can, you know, charge

395
00:23:59,540 --> 00:24:04,180
higher prices and extract uh uh more benefit from from the relationship.

396
00:24:04,340 --> 00:24:08,260
Uh so that uh have you thought about the the economic side of this as well?

397
00:24:09,380 --> 00:24:12,180
Um I mean we've we've had a look around the economic literature.

398
00:24:12,340 --> 00:24:16,660
What you're referring to now is essentially using the theory of labor markets or different

399
00:24:16,660 --> 00:24:19,780
types of settings within uh not labor markets, but markets in general, right?

400
00:24:19,860 --> 00:24:24,260
So if one if one side is reduced to one agent, like the monopolist or a few agents, the

401
00:24:24,260 --> 00:24:27,460
oligopolist, then you have similar structures.

402
00:24:29,490 --> 00:24:34,130
And so the theory that has been developed there is informative for us.

403
00:24:34,450 --> 00:24:40,050
But what we're particularly interested in is also so usually the market

404
00:24:40,050 --> 00:24:44,690
literature and economics assumes that there's an institutional framework in which agents

405
00:24:44,690 --> 00:24:47,810
act, and this is usually governed by law.

406
00:24:48,130 --> 00:24:53,520
And so the monopolist and the oligopolist are a little constrained in what they can do.

407
00:24:53,760 --> 00:24:59,280
And what we are doing is we're like crossing the boundary to criminology, if you like, or

408
00:24:59,280 --> 00:25:04,960
to law and economics by saying, what if the exploiters or the potential

409
00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:07,600
exploiters don't care about the law?

410
00:25:07,760 --> 00:25:08,080
Right?

411
00:25:08,240 --> 00:25:13,810
If they just say, okay, if I violate the legal framework or if I go against the rules, I

412
00:25:13,810 --> 00:25:17,810
might have to pay an additional extra cost if I'm caught, but it might be worth it, right?

413
00:25:17,890 --> 00:25:19,010
So let's try it.

414
00:25:19,410 --> 00:25:25,090
And this is essentially what we're adding there as a as a contribution by by saying, okay,

415
00:25:25,170 --> 00:25:28,850
let's just think of completely unconstrained agents on the strong side.

416
00:25:29,170 --> 00:25:29,410
Yeah.

417
00:25:29,730 --> 00:25:35,170
I love how what you did is you took an example of an important phenomenon, uh,

418
00:25:35,360 --> 00:25:36,480
abstracted it away.

419
00:25:36,560 --> 00:25:41,680
And what David's doing right now, and I'm doing too, and I think a lot of listeners are, is

420
00:25:41,680 --> 00:25:46,240
then turning around and saying, given how you've abstracted it, where where in other where

421
00:25:46,240 --> 00:25:48,480
else in life do we see this?

422
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:52,880
And yeah, it's starting to feel like everything, just about, you know, like government, uh,

423
00:25:53,120 --> 00:25:55,200
policy, um, your jobs.

424
00:25:55,280 --> 00:26:00,960
We talked about jobs an episode or two ago, um, where there can be constraints uh

425
00:26:01,120 --> 00:26:06,970
in your options, the detection of exploitation, what would that mean

426
00:26:07,690 --> 00:26:10,250
from the perspective of the exploited?

427
00:26:10,330 --> 00:26:15,690
Um, like is there detection of exploitation when, for example, um I

428
00:26:15,690 --> 00:26:21,290
realize that my options are being curtailed um artificially?

429
00:26:21,370 --> 00:26:25,130
Or like that's also seems like a s a tricky thing.

430
00:26:26,570 --> 00:26:30,640
Um so we are working on this, right?

431
00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:34,000
We have ongoing projects that try to look into exactly this.

432
00:26:34,080 --> 00:26:39,440
And but we started with a project which is close to be written up, where we simply

433
00:26:40,320 --> 00:26:46,320
surveyed people in the US, um, a representative um sample and asked them, have you ever

434
00:26:46,320 --> 00:26:48,640
been exploited in your professional career?

435
00:26:49,110 --> 00:26:49,910
Yes, no.

436
00:26:50,150 --> 00:26:53,830
Have so, and 70% of the people said yes.

437
00:26:54,230 --> 00:26:56,790
So then we asked them, okay, what exactly happened?

438
00:26:56,950 --> 00:27:01,590
Who was the person exploiting you and what did the situation look like?

439
00:27:01,750 --> 00:27:05,990
And then we got qualitative responses from them and we're still working on coding these in

440
00:27:05,990 --> 00:27:07,270
a systematic way.

441
00:27:07,670 --> 00:27:12,790
Um, so you can think of it like it's an experienced sampling kind of um approach.

442
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:17,840
But what we also ask them to do is I don't know how familiar you are with this, but there's

443
00:27:17,840 --> 00:27:21,360
this situational interdependence um scale and framework.

444
00:27:21,440 --> 00:27:27,440
So that's essentially the idea behind it is let's try to come up

445
00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:33,280
with a framework that um like captures all dimensions on which

446
00:27:33,650 --> 00:27:36,290
situations that we perceive can differ.

447
00:27:36,530 --> 00:27:41,410
Okay, so it's I mean it's not my research, we're just using it, but uh I like the idea,

448
00:27:41,490 --> 00:27:41,650
right?

449
00:27:41,730 --> 00:27:45,730
So that you say, okay, people probably run around with a with a framework that helps them

450
00:27:45,730 --> 00:27:50,770
make sense of the situations that they are in, is in particular in um social interactions.

451
00:27:51,010 --> 00:27:56,560
And so the social then they came up with a couple of dimensions along which

452
00:27:56,720 --> 00:28:00,080
um um social interactions typically differ.

453
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:05,440
And we used it and asked people, okay, in this situation, for example, um

454
00:28:07,200 --> 00:28:12,880
how high was the degree of future inter future interdependence between yourself and the

455
00:28:12,880 --> 00:28:13,520
other person?

456
00:28:13,920 --> 00:28:16,880
So, or and several kinds of these questions.

457
00:28:16,960 --> 00:28:22,270
And so we're trying, we used it to try to get an understanding of what the prototypical

458
00:28:22,270 --> 00:28:25,470
situations look like in which people feel exploited.

459
00:28:25,710 --> 00:28:31,070
And then we ask you unpack what this this this notion of future interdependence or what is

460
00:28:31,310 --> 00:28:32,030
what does that mean?

461
00:28:32,510 --> 00:28:34,990
Um it think of it as repeated play.

462
00:28:35,390 --> 00:28:35,710
Okay.

463
00:28:36,030 --> 00:28:36,270
Right?

464
00:28:36,350 --> 00:28:40,750
So if if we play a one-shot dictator game, so if you're a random stranger on the subway in

465
00:28:40,750 --> 00:28:42,750
New York, I'm probably not gonna see you again.

466
00:28:42,830 --> 00:28:48,380
But um if you're David Pinzov and uh I you might end up my referee in some in some journal

467
00:28:48,380 --> 00:28:54,140
publication or so there's a chance that our uh interaction that started today will

468
00:28:54,140 --> 00:28:55,420
somehow continue.

469
00:28:55,820 --> 00:29:01,020
And so um our degree of future interdependence is a bit higher than for a random stranger

470
00:29:01,020 --> 00:29:02,140
in New York subway.

471
00:29:02,460 --> 00:29:02,540
Right.

472
00:29:02,700 --> 00:29:04,300
And for like a boss it would be very high.

473
00:29:04,460 --> 00:29:07,740
Like the person who's your boss every day and you come into work next day and the next day

474
00:29:07,820 --> 00:29:08,300
and the next day.

475
00:29:08,380 --> 00:29:08,540
Yeah.

476
00:29:08,780 --> 00:29:09,180
Yeah.

477
00:29:09,570 --> 00:29:10,050
Interesting.

478
00:29:10,210 --> 00:29:10,450
Okay.

479
00:29:10,530 --> 00:29:11,970
So we have future.

480
00:29:12,210 --> 00:29:15,410
So how does that factor into uh exploitation?

481
00:29:15,810 --> 00:29:21,090
So we what we asked them, what we asked participants, so we have now we have a set of

482
00:29:21,090 --> 00:29:25,410
situations where people said, okay, I was exploited in this situation.

483
00:29:25,650 --> 00:29:29,730
Or I felt better, let's say I felt exploited in this situation.

484
00:29:29,970 --> 00:29:34,360
Um and then we asked them, okay, what would need to happen?

485
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:40,040
How would the situation need to change in order you in order for you to not feel exploited

486
00:29:40,040 --> 00:29:40,680
anymore?

487
00:29:41,160 --> 00:29:46,360
So they described a situation where the factors that made them feel exploited are removed.

488
00:29:46,440 --> 00:29:52,280
And then we asked them to rate this new situation again on the sit on this SIS on the

489
00:29:52,280 --> 00:29:52,920
scale.

490
00:29:53,160 --> 00:29:57,640
And then we can compare essentially what do people think how the situation would need to

491
00:29:57,640 --> 00:30:00,680
change in order for them to not feel exploited anymore.

492
00:30:01,650 --> 00:30:03,490
And then we took their responses.

493
00:30:03,570 --> 00:30:07,650
So a couple of couple of the dimensions actually showed up as significant there.

494
00:30:07,810 --> 00:30:11,490
But then we also wanted to get at causality, right?

495
00:30:11,570 --> 00:30:17,490
So what we have here is just how people think of those situations and what they think

496
00:30:17,490 --> 00:30:18,530
would need to change.

497
00:30:18,690 --> 00:30:24,050
But then we, in a third study of that paper, we turned this into a third-party observer

498
00:30:24,050 --> 00:30:28,780
kind of situation, and we described or we developed simple scenarios where we said, okay,

499
00:30:28,860 --> 00:30:32,060
here's a boss, here's an employee, the boss did this to the employee.

500
00:30:32,300 --> 00:30:37,980
Please rate the situation on the using the scale and tell us how strongly you think that

501
00:30:37,980 --> 00:30:40,460
the boss exploited the employee.

502
00:30:41,100 --> 00:30:46,380
And the the main thing actually that shows up there is that

503
00:30:46,940 --> 00:30:51,830
if people feel that that the weak party is completely under the control of the strong

504
00:30:51,830 --> 00:30:57,350
party, that's the strongest predictor for um feelings or or feelings of

505
00:30:57,590 --> 00:31:02,870
own feelings of um exploitation but also of third party observer ratings of okay, this boss

506
00:31:02,870 --> 00:31:05,510
is clearly uh uh exploiting this employee.

507
00:31:05,990 --> 00:31:11,120
But so in in the end you can say it it boils down or at least um the the main, the the

508
00:31:11,120 --> 00:31:16,800
strongest predictor there objectively is asymmetry of power and the stronger party

509
00:31:16,800 --> 00:31:21,920
making use of this power to extract something from the weak party, which is perfectly in

510
00:31:21,920 --> 00:31:24,880
line with the Stanford encyclopedia definition, right?

511
00:31:25,040 --> 00:31:31,040
So it's maybe not the biggest oh it's maybe not the biggest discovery, but it's nice to

512
00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:35,680
see that okay, if you if you really systematically look into how people perceive this, then

513
00:31:35,680 --> 00:31:38,110
you get this preside empirically back.

514
00:31:38,750 --> 00:31:43,390
But your way of thinking of it has a little is a little more nuanced than that, and that

515
00:31:43,390 --> 00:31:48,030
the power asymmetry in part derives from the exploitation itself.

516
00:31:48,270 --> 00:31:48,510
Right?

517
00:31:48,670 --> 00:31:54,110
So if I'm can so if I'm a monopolist and I and you have no other options but to buy from

518
00:31:54,110 --> 00:31:58,800
me, then I and and and maybe I've done that because I've I've you know any any competitor

519
00:31:58,800 --> 00:32:03,120
to mine I've sabotaged in some way, then I've created that power asymmetry.

520
00:32:03,440 --> 00:32:08,080
The exploitation itself has has bought me that power asymmetry.

521
00:32:08,320 --> 00:32:14,240
Um and uh uh and in addition, once I have that power asymmetry, I'm going to use

522
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:19,440
it to further the exploitation, to further constrain your outside options, to to sabotage

523
00:32:19,440 --> 00:32:21,120
any competitors that might arise.

524
00:32:21,360 --> 00:32:27,250
Um and so uh it's not it's not merely that so the the power asymmetry is sort of baked into

525
00:32:27,250 --> 00:32:29,810
the model of of exploitation itself, right?

526
00:32:31,010 --> 00:32:35,010
In this particular so again, in this particular study, yes, but in general, no.

527
00:32:35,250 --> 00:32:40,850
So we would so we need to start somewhere with the with the

528
00:32:40,850 --> 00:32:44,290
vignettes, for example, that we are showing participants there, and there we don't tell

529
00:32:44,290 --> 00:32:48,130
them a story about how this boss became to be the boss and how the employee became to be

530
00:32:48,130 --> 00:32:48,850
the employee.

531
00:32:49,280 --> 00:32:51,920
We just started with the power asymmetry.

532
00:32:52,080 --> 00:32:56,640
But in a more general approach or in a general modeling approach, for example, the one that

533
00:32:56,640 --> 00:33:01,200
we are taking in the theory project I talked about earlier, there we would it add an

534
00:33:01,200 --> 00:33:06,640
additional stage where the stronger party can really increase its strength

535
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:10,640
before making use of the dependence situation that it created or so.

536
00:33:11,520 --> 00:33:16,480
But technically so I I would I would completely agree with you that

537
00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:20,290
technically oh it's an interesting question.

538
00:33:20,370 --> 00:33:23,890
I I I we haven't really systematically maybe looked into this yet.

539
00:33:24,050 --> 00:33:29,650
Is is exploitation also possible between perfectly symmetrical

540
00:33:29,650 --> 00:33:30,450
partners?

541
00:33:31,250 --> 00:33:36,450
And so maybe this is a limiting case where like the the scope for exploitation vanishes.

542
00:33:36,530 --> 00:33:37,170
I mean I don't know.

543
00:33:37,250 --> 00:33:39,970
It will also probably depend on how you model it.

544
00:33:40,210 --> 00:33:45,200
But well, there I mean you could it's it seems like you could get that with deception.

545
00:33:45,360 --> 00:33:50,000
Deception would be the only means available for for equally powerful individuals to exploit

546
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:50,320
each other.

547
00:33:50,880 --> 00:33:54,320
I could just lie to you and say that your outside options don't exist.

548
00:33:54,480 --> 00:33:57,680
And if you believe me, then I get to exploit you now.

549
00:33:57,920 --> 00:34:02,560
Um but if there's no power asymmetry, then I can't, you know, physically threaten you or

550
00:34:02,560 --> 00:34:06,430
threaten you with with job loss or or threaten you with some some cost because that would

551
00:34:06,430 --> 00:34:07,630
itself be a power asymmetry.

552
00:34:07,710 --> 00:34:10,750
But if there's but if I can't threaten you in any way, then the only thing I really can do

553
00:34:10,750 --> 00:34:11,790
is lie to you.

554
00:34:12,590 --> 00:34:12,990
Yeah.

555
00:34:13,150 --> 00:34:16,670
What what do you think about uh the relationship between exploitation and cheating?

556
00:34:16,830 --> 00:34:19,230
Because that seems like a neighboring issue.

557
00:34:19,390 --> 00:34:20,350
That's an example.

558
00:34:20,430 --> 00:34:22,190
Because I'm also thinking of Lita's.

559
00:34:22,350 --> 00:34:26,190
We we should have Lita on uh uh soon enough.

560
00:34:26,270 --> 00:34:30,670
Um but Lita's cheater detection work, because Hannes, what you were just describing

561
00:34:30,670 --> 00:34:34,140
reminded me of some of that cheater detection work.

562
00:34:34,300 --> 00:34:40,060
It was an employee, an employer, and it was showing that they the

563
00:34:40,140 --> 00:34:46,060
the bringing it back to the evolved software, there's detection of cheating, and it's

564
00:34:46,060 --> 00:34:47,180
really role dependent.

565
00:34:47,340 --> 00:34:52,220
So if you're from the perspective of the employee, there's certain behaviors that the

566
00:34:52,220 --> 00:34:53,180
employer might do.

567
00:34:53,260 --> 00:34:57,900
So for example, like you might have worked for a while, but did the employer actually give

568
00:34:57,900 --> 00:35:00,780
you the like the retirement benefits you're entitled to?

569
00:35:00,930 --> 00:35:03,890
But if you're coming from the employer's perspective, it's a very different set of

570
00:35:03,890 --> 00:35:04,370
behaviors.

571
00:35:04,450 --> 00:35:07,410
Like, did the employee um like do what they needed to do?

572
00:35:07,490 --> 00:35:09,010
And are they getting paid too much?

573
00:35:09,170 --> 00:35:14,610
And so, um, so yeah, so one question is: what's the relationship between, let me just start

574
00:35:14,610 --> 00:35:19,170
with, yeah, what's the relationship between cheating and exploitation?

575
00:35:19,330 --> 00:35:25,060
Is it is is cheating an example of an equal relationship that

576
00:35:25,060 --> 00:35:26,260
involves exploitation?

577
00:35:26,420 --> 00:35:28,260
Or because like what's that deception?

578
00:35:28,420 --> 00:35:29,940
Is that I mean, maybe it doesn't matter.

579
00:35:30,020 --> 00:35:34,100
Maybe that's like a definitional question, but what's your what's your take on cheating?

580
00:35:35,620 --> 00:35:39,620
So when we think back to the theory project, cheating is definitely part of the picture,

581
00:35:39,700 --> 00:35:39,860
right?

582
00:35:39,940 --> 00:35:45,870
So deception can be one means to get people into a relationship with you, or

583
00:35:45,870 --> 00:35:50,990
maybe make them even work on promised conditions which turn out not to be true.

584
00:35:51,230 --> 00:35:57,230
But if you don't have any additional power asymmetry or means for

585
00:35:57,230 --> 00:36:02,430
the stronger side to limit the options of the weaker side, then you just have a market like

586
00:36:02,510 --> 00:36:07,150
where where a free market where if I don't like the interaction with you, I could go to

587
00:36:07,150 --> 00:36:10,430
someone else and say, Well, Dave lied to me, so I'm not gonna go now.

588
00:36:10,510 --> 00:36:13,310
I'm gonna go to David and see if he has better conditions.

589
00:36:13,550 --> 00:36:13,870
I see.

590
00:36:14,030 --> 00:36:16,640
So that you would have different dynamics, right?

591
00:36:16,720 --> 00:36:22,400
Because one just quick follow-up then is

592
00:36:22,400 --> 00:36:26,400
related to that, and this is again based on the cheater detection work, is that from an

593
00:36:26,400 --> 00:36:31,280
evolved psychological perspective, there should be quote unquote biases in these systems,

594
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:31,680
right?

595
00:36:31,840 --> 00:36:37,840
So if I'm exp if I'm in the role of exploiting somebody, all else equal,

596
00:36:38,080 --> 00:36:42,870
my evolved psychology should take advantage of that, but not frame it as exploitation,

597
00:36:42,950 --> 00:36:43,190
right?

598
00:36:43,270 --> 00:36:47,030
I'm just doing what's in my interest and what's my family's interest.

599
00:36:47,430 --> 00:36:52,790
But if I on the conversely, I should be very ultra vigilant for being put in the

600
00:36:52,790 --> 00:36:54,950
perspective of being exploited.

601
00:36:55,190 --> 00:37:01,030
And so that sort of bias or error management idea of, and you you were

602
00:37:01,030 --> 00:37:04,550
mentioning that you're, you know, telling people a third party perspective, which might be

603
00:37:04,550 --> 00:37:05,510
more objective.

604
00:37:05,750 --> 00:37:10,420
Have you started to look into or thought about those those biases.

605
00:37:11,140 --> 00:37:11,540
Yes.

606
00:37:11,700 --> 00:37:16,900
So um that's ongoing work, but we we also have one or we have several projects actually

607
00:37:17,060 --> 00:37:21,460
trying to understand the justifications, maybe like um

608
00:37:22,420 --> 00:37:28,340
overtly, but also maybe also just um undercover, so to say, um,

609
00:37:28,420 --> 00:37:33,780
that exploiters might be using to explain to themselves and to others why they are taking

610
00:37:33,780 --> 00:37:36,100
unfair advantage of the weaker party.

611
00:37:36,810 --> 00:37:37,130
Right.

612
00:37:37,210 --> 00:37:40,010
So and why it's justified that they do this.

613
00:37:42,010 --> 00:37:47,130
You will in in normal circumstances, you will hardly ever get people to say to open the

614
00:37:47,130 --> 00:37:51,850
admit and say, well, yeah, I was the employer, this person was undereducated, so I gave

615
00:37:51,850 --> 00:37:53,690
them shitty conditions and they work for me.

616
00:37:53,770 --> 00:37:55,050
So it's their own fault, right?

617
00:37:55,210 --> 00:37:59,130
But this this already is is a justification strategy, right?

618
00:37:59,210 --> 00:38:05,020
So that you say, oh, I just made use of their low degree of education to

619
00:38:05,020 --> 00:38:09,260
have them work under conditions which smarter people wouldn't have accepted.

620
00:38:09,420 --> 00:38:10,620
So it's their fault.

621
00:38:10,860 --> 00:38:11,180
Right.

622
00:38:11,500 --> 00:38:17,020
But the the moral question there is so the moral question there is, is it really their

623
00:38:17,020 --> 00:38:17,340
fault?

624
00:38:17,500 --> 00:38:20,060
Is this behavior by the employer okay?

625
00:38:20,300 --> 00:38:21,260
Is it not?

626
00:38:21,500 --> 00:38:26,700
I mean it's it's also what you see economists might it it's it's difficult to well, I mean

627
00:38:26,780 --> 00:38:31,090
I I shouldn't be generalizing to all economists anyway.

628
00:38:31,730 --> 00:38:36,050
Um, but you have this discussion, for example, in the context of the gender pay gap, right?

629
00:38:36,130 --> 00:38:40,370
So some people might say, yeah, if one group is just not good enough at bargaining for

630
00:38:40,370 --> 00:38:42,850
higher wages, it's their own fault.

631
00:38:43,490 --> 00:38:48,050
Structurally, they might have the same power of leaving conditions they don't like and

632
00:38:48,050 --> 00:38:51,010
being in high demand if they're qualified on the labor market.

633
00:38:51,250 --> 00:38:56,290
If they don't leverage the power they have, it's their own fault if we underpay them.

634
00:38:57,100 --> 00:38:59,100
I I just put this on the table, right?

635
00:38:59,180 --> 00:39:01,260
So we could discuss about this forever.

636
00:39:01,740 --> 00:39:05,740
Well that this is an inter this this brings me to this is an interesting distinction

637
00:39:05,820 --> 00:39:11,500
because uh on the one hand, so if if I have actively constrained uh my partner's

638
00:39:11,500 --> 00:39:16,860
outside options and I'm using and and you know because of that that allows me to uh extract

639
00:39:16,860 --> 00:39:21,900
benefits from them um then that's a clear case of exploitation but what about in cases

640
00:39:21,900 --> 00:39:26,610
where I have not constrained the outside options at all, the partners' outside options have

641
00:39:26,610 --> 00:39:29,330
already been constrained before I've even entered the picture.

642
00:39:29,570 --> 00:39:33,730
So let's say you know there's there's a person that I'd like to hire and they have very few

643
00:39:33,730 --> 00:39:36,850
uh marketable skills, they can't really get a job anywhere else.

644
00:39:37,010 --> 00:39:40,770
Uh, really, I'm the only uh person who would be willing to hire them.

645
00:39:40,930 --> 00:39:45,490
Uh and because you know I've correctly seen that their outside options are low and that

646
00:39:45,490 --> 00:39:49,170
they they can't really work anywhere else, and you know, you know, whatever I give them,

647
00:39:49,250 --> 00:39:51,810
they'll they'd be lucky to get, I give them a low salary.

648
00:39:52,040 --> 00:39:56,200
Would would in that condition would that count as exploitation, even though I have not

649
00:39:56,200 --> 00:39:57,240
constrained them?

650
00:39:58,680 --> 00:40:02,840
You're asking me to like draw a clear line and say, okay, this is exploitative, this is

651
00:40:02,840 --> 00:40:04,120
not, but I won't do that, right?

652
00:40:04,280 --> 00:40:06,920
Because all I can tell you it's a spectrum.

653
00:40:07,160 --> 00:40:12,760
And where you draw exactly the line, this depends on your ethical views, on your

654
00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:16,280
political background, maybe, on your own experiences, whatever, right?

655
00:40:16,360 --> 00:40:20,600
On what the legislative framework that you're exposed to is actually saying.

656
00:40:20,760 --> 00:40:25,470
So this is also not what we are really interested in the project, where exactly this

657
00:40:25,470 --> 00:40:31,070
definitional boundary is, because it varies across countries, it varies across political

658
00:40:31,070 --> 00:40:33,230
ideologies, it varies across time.

659
00:40:33,550 --> 00:40:38,670
So maybe an interesting project might be to explain at some point, but this has probably

660
00:40:38,670 --> 00:40:44,220
been done under under different labels, um, would be to look at okay, what pushes the

661
00:40:44,220 --> 00:40:47,980
definitional boundary more to this side and more to this side, right?

662
00:40:48,140 --> 00:40:54,060
So but this is going into debate about okay, inequality, the emergence of inequality and

663
00:40:54,060 --> 00:40:54,860
all these kinds of things.

664
00:40:54,940 --> 00:40:59,100
So political science, I would suspect, has probably as I say, under different labels,

665
00:40:59,180 --> 00:41:01,500
maybe, but done a lot of research on this.

666
00:41:01,820 --> 00:41:04,460
So I think that we cannot contribute much, maybe.

667
00:41:04,870 --> 00:41:07,590
But I think that answer is the contribution, right?

668
00:41:07,670 --> 00:41:09,430
Like that, it's a different perspective.

669
00:41:09,590 --> 00:41:15,590
So, like, you know, if I'm looking at a low-wage worker, um, but I am the employer, I

670
00:41:15,590 --> 00:41:19,750
might not think I'm being exploitative because, you know, like the cons as David said, the

671
00:41:19,750 --> 00:41:21,110
constraints already exist.

672
00:41:21,350 --> 00:41:25,910
But then from an outside perspective, somebody who's really concerned about that person's

673
00:41:25,910 --> 00:41:31,460
welfare, they might just run the counterfactual of, well, if there were institutions that

674
00:41:31,460 --> 00:41:36,660
gave them outside options that I can easily imagine, then they wouldn't have to be in that

675
00:41:36,660 --> 00:41:37,700
difficult job.

676
00:41:37,940 --> 00:41:42,980
And so it's just that again, it comes back to like this evolved psychology of bias where

677
00:41:43,540 --> 00:41:48,660
depending on the perspective you take, it's exactly right, Hannes, there's no objective

678
00:41:48,660 --> 00:41:54,430
definition of exploitation, but it's that every individual has strategically

679
00:41:54,430 --> 00:42:00,430
sort of has a position towards am I the locus of exploitation or is exploitation

680
00:42:00,430 --> 00:42:02,430
even happening um at all?

681
00:42:02,590 --> 00:42:05,070
So I do feel like you do have a lot to contribute in that.

682
00:42:05,150 --> 00:42:07,390
That's what you're basically bringing to the table.

683
00:42:08,190 --> 00:42:13,950
I want to get into um collective action for exploitation or a group that

684
00:42:14,030 --> 00:42:17,140
uh works together to exploit another group.

685
00:42:17,380 --> 00:42:20,820
You know, the history books are littered with examples like this.

686
00:42:21,700 --> 00:42:27,700
Do you think it's possible for a group of humans to collectively exploit another

687
00:42:27,700 --> 00:42:33,380
group of humans while the exploitation being common knowledge, overt,

688
00:42:33,460 --> 00:42:34,420
and on the surface?

689
00:42:34,580 --> 00:42:37,940
We all know that we're just evil people who are exploiting these people, and that's the

690
00:42:37,940 --> 00:42:38,900
reason we're doing it.

691
00:42:39,140 --> 00:42:40,500
And let's go out and do it.

692
00:42:40,740 --> 00:42:46,290
Has that do you see that as a plausible uh pathway for intergroup exploitation to emerge,

693
00:42:46,370 --> 00:42:50,530
or do we need some kind of moralistic or religious pretext?

694
00:42:52,050 --> 00:42:56,690
Yeah, I was so I also listened to you, I think it's the third episode where you discussed

695
00:42:56,690 --> 00:42:57,650
this part, right?

696
00:42:57,810 --> 00:43:02,850
So yeah, and I wanted actually to like if I get the chance and now I have the chance, like

697
00:43:03,170 --> 00:43:08,360
object a little bit because um My view is more that

698
00:43:08,360 --> 00:43:10,520
ideology follows the incentives.

699
00:43:10,680 --> 00:43:15,480
You don't need the ideology if in in the first or as the starting point.

700
00:43:15,800 --> 00:43:20,600
But when the incentives are there for one group of people to exploit the others to enslave

701
00:43:20,600 --> 00:43:25,720
them to what do whatever atrocities to them, they'll do it and then they'll come up on the

702
00:43:25,720 --> 00:43:30,600
spot, maybe, or with a little delay with an ideology that justifies what they are doing to

703
00:43:30,600 --> 00:43:31,240
themselves.

704
00:43:32,550 --> 00:43:34,070
This is more my view, right?

705
00:43:34,230 --> 00:43:36,150
I mean, this is a big philosophical debate.

706
00:43:36,470 --> 00:43:36,710
Right.

707
00:43:36,790 --> 00:43:37,910
It's it's more of a post hoc.

708
00:43:38,310 --> 00:43:40,310
Mind follows matter or the other way around.

709
00:43:40,630 --> 00:43:43,030
But I think Marx, Marx has this saying, right?

710
00:43:43,190 --> 00:43:49,190
So you could say mind follows matter and would blame philosophers to see

711
00:43:49,190 --> 00:43:50,390
it the other way around.

712
00:43:50,870 --> 00:43:56,780
Yeah, no, I certainly buy that the post hoc uh aspect of it exists, but I think maybe I can

713
00:43:56,780 --> 00:43:59,900
try to convince you that the pre hawk uh exists as well.

714
00:44:00,220 --> 00:44:00,700
Yeah, yeah.

715
00:44:01,100 --> 00:44:02,620
No, I I completely agree.

716
00:44:02,780 --> 00:44:07,100
I mean, we've developed cultural systems and and all these kinds of ideologies that are

717
00:44:07,100 --> 00:44:11,820
pretty useful and just on the spot, not just justifying once you've discovered a new

718
00:44:11,820 --> 00:44:15,740
opportunity for exploiting other people, but also even to see new opportunities for

719
00:44:15,740 --> 00:44:17,180
exploiting other people, right?

720
00:44:17,850 --> 00:44:22,170
So I I completely agree that's an interplay between ideology and incentive.

721
00:44:22,250 --> 00:44:23,530
So that's that's going on.

722
00:44:24,650 --> 00:44:25,130
Oh yeah.

723
00:44:25,370 --> 00:44:31,130
So Hanus, just to clear about what you just said, it's the idea that some ideological

724
00:44:31,370 --> 00:44:37,210
communication like by a leader, for example, what is actually being communicated, maybe

725
00:44:37,210 --> 00:44:42,090
not verbally, but it everybody is coordinated around, is that I am communicating to you an

726
00:44:42,090 --> 00:44:46,460
opportunity to exploit people in a way that hasn't existed before.

727
00:44:46,620 --> 00:44:48,700
That's a really is that what you're saying?

728
00:44:49,100 --> 00:44:53,740
Well, what I'm what I'm the way I'm thinking about it is a little bit like we need

729
00:44:53,740 --> 00:44:54,860
coordination devices.

730
00:44:54,940 --> 00:44:57,980
And you also used this term earlier in in the episode.

731
00:44:58,220 --> 00:45:04,220
We need coordination devices to figure out if a sufficient mass of people in

732
00:45:04,220 --> 00:45:10,210
our group is willing to like show the behavior that is that we're um that

733
00:45:10,210 --> 00:45:11,730
we might be coordinating on.

734
00:45:11,890 --> 00:45:17,730
So if if the leader says, okay, there's out group X, they're all idiots,

735
00:45:17,890 --> 00:45:19,730
let's take advantage of that.

736
00:45:20,210 --> 00:45:25,810
This leader is essentially making a suggestion and checking if there's a sufficient

737
00:45:25,810 --> 00:45:30,450
degree of consensus within the group to go along and do it or not.

738
00:45:31,490 --> 00:45:35,440
And then this doesn't need to be so don't think of this democratically, right?

739
00:45:35,520 --> 00:45:40,960
So um, but I rather think of this, he may he might just need the three the three

740
00:45:40,960 --> 00:45:43,840
strongest people in the in group to carry on.

741
00:45:44,160 --> 00:45:50,080
And then he just makes the suggestion if he has a powerful coalition within his

742
00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:51,520
group, they're gonna do it.

743
00:45:51,680 --> 00:45:54,080
If not, then they're just gonna forget about it, right?

744
00:45:54,160 --> 00:45:58,960
So it's also cheap essentially to say, Oh yeah, it was just a suggestion, let's not do it,

745
00:45:59,040 --> 00:45:59,200
right?

746
00:45:59,280 --> 00:46:00,800
Maybe not the best idea.

747
00:46:01,730 --> 00:46:01,890
Yeah.

748
00:46:02,210 --> 00:46:06,770
It sounds like a high school or like school, like where kids will pick on kids and then

749
00:46:06,770 --> 00:46:09,090
they kind of like see do the other kids go along with it.

750
00:46:09,170 --> 00:46:09,410
Yes.

751
00:46:09,570 --> 00:46:12,850
And then it's just sort of it's these like exploitation feelers, right?

752
00:46:12,930 --> 00:46:16,930
Where it's sort of like just checking is there common knowledge or coordination or

753
00:46:16,930 --> 00:46:17,570
willingness to go on.

754
00:46:17,810 --> 00:46:21,010
I re that's super super interesting, super important.

755
00:46:21,090 --> 00:46:21,330
Yeah.

756
00:46:21,490 --> 00:46:27,420
Well, so much of human If you're interested in in this

757
00:46:27,420 --> 00:46:31,820
particular type of behavior, my my co-author and friend Gönl Down, she has a super nice

758
00:46:31,820 --> 00:46:33,420
paper with Klaus Abink.

759
00:46:33,900 --> 00:46:36,300
Um I think it's called the Mobbing Game.

760
00:46:37,740 --> 00:46:38,620
Oh, I'm familiar with this paper.

761
00:46:38,860 --> 00:46:40,460
Oh yeah, that's the really good one, yeah.

762
00:46:42,700 --> 00:46:43,260
Yeah.

763
00:46:43,500 --> 00:46:45,770
Yeah, no, I'm I'm I'm starting to to work.

764
00:46:45,930 --> 00:46:51,370
So basically the mobbing game uh is uh it's just a coordination game and we all have to

765
00:46:51,370 --> 00:46:52,330
decide who pays the cost.

766
00:46:52,570 --> 00:46:55,290
Is that uh from what I remember, that's that's how the game works.

767
00:46:55,450 --> 00:46:59,930
Um and that's another version of the simple majority game, where we play a coordination

768
00:46:59,930 --> 00:47:04,010
game to see you know which subset of us is going to uh receive a benefit and which subset

769
00:47:04,010 --> 00:47:05,130
is going to incur a cost.

770
00:47:05,210 --> 00:47:08,460
Um and there's shockingly little work on on this game.

771
00:47:08,540 --> 00:47:12,300
Uh and I'm starting to to work on a paper exploring some of the, you know, simplest

772
00:47:12,300 --> 00:47:13,100
dynamics of it.

773
00:47:13,260 --> 00:47:17,260
But I think there's so much insight to be gained um in in in thinking about this.

774
00:47:17,740 --> 00:47:19,900
Um we should invite you to our group hangout.

775
00:47:20,380 --> 00:47:24,220
Yeah, that would be if you want to yeah if you can pitch the idea to the group please.

776
00:47:24,540 --> 00:47:25,020
Yeah I'd love to.

777
00:47:26,060 --> 00:47:28,860
D David, the cost would be like the person or both of you.

778
00:47:29,020 --> 00:47:33,690
So the cost would be like so like just to make make sure I'm being clear, um, if there's

779
00:47:33,690 --> 00:47:37,690
like a bunch of kids on a playground and there's one kid sort of the scapegoat, that's the

780
00:47:37,690 --> 00:47:38,010
cost.

781
00:47:38,170 --> 00:47:40,970
And so everyone else is sort of gaining status.

782
00:47:41,530 --> 00:47:46,970
Um, or I guess to give it teeth, it's sort of I don't know actually what would the benefit

783
00:47:46,970 --> 00:47:52,570
be there that they they actually there's a coordination that if I'm the victim,

784
00:47:53,210 --> 00:47:59,020
I might be willing to like give up a toy or resources and it's becoming common

785
00:47:59,020 --> 00:47:59,820
knowledge, right?

786
00:47:59,900 --> 00:48:02,620
Like to give it to give it evolutionary teeth.

787
00:48:02,940 --> 00:48:08,940
It's it's that um if you guys are dominant over me and and you behave in such a

788
00:48:08,940 --> 00:48:13,500
way that it's common knowledge to all of us and third parties, and it's sort of a

789
00:48:13,500 --> 00:48:17,820
recalibration that like you guys will get stuff from me more or less.

790
00:48:17,980 --> 00:48:22,540
Is that sort of yeah yeah basically um you can think about it like

791
00:48:25,430 --> 00:48:30,870
Well what's interesting about it is because it's a coordination game, um, focal points are

792
00:48:30,870 --> 00:48:31,910
needed to coordinate.

793
00:48:31,990 --> 00:48:37,430
And it explains sort of why the weird kid or the conspicuously different kid is often the

794
00:48:37,430 --> 00:48:38,630
one who gets picked on.

795
00:48:38,870 --> 00:48:43,030
It's not necessarily that they're that they're they're dumb or or or or incompetent or mean

796
00:48:43,110 --> 00:48:43,750
or something like that.

797
00:48:43,910 --> 00:48:47,110
It's just that they're visibly different from everyone else, and that helps us coordinate.

798
00:48:48,070 --> 00:48:53,100
Um and so what what uh your colleagues found in the mobbing game is that um people rapidly

799
00:48:53,100 --> 00:48:55,100
converged on different ways of coordinating.

800
00:48:55,260 --> 00:48:58,380
And so they had one condition where there were like, you know, some rich people and some uh

801
00:48:58,540 --> 00:49:00,060
and and some conspicuously poor people.

802
00:49:00,140 --> 00:49:01,740
And what they found was that people didn't really care.

803
00:49:01,900 --> 00:49:05,340
Sometimes they gang up on the rich people, sometimes they gang up on the poor people.

804
00:49:05,500 --> 00:49:08,380
Well, it wasn't really it didn't really matter what the level of wealth was.

805
00:49:08,460 --> 00:49:11,020
It wasn't that we had like an animosity toward rich people or poor people.

806
00:49:11,100 --> 00:49:13,660
It was just that they were conspicuously different and that helped us coordinate.

807
00:49:14,540 --> 00:49:16,380
Uh which which I think is really interesting.

808
00:49:16,540 --> 00:49:16,860
Yeah.

809
00:49:17,020 --> 00:49:20,990
Um you were gonna say something when I was asking the question.

810
00:49:21,070 --> 00:49:21,310
Yeah.

811
00:49:21,870 --> 00:49:26,990
Wanted to to add because you were asking for what the material benefits of this type of

812
00:49:26,990 --> 00:49:28,350
mobbing behavior are.

813
00:49:28,510 --> 00:49:34,350
I think there's also a signaling aspect to this, that it might just be enough to to gang up

814
00:49:34,350 --> 00:49:39,230
with two strong guys and push around a third uh weaker guy just to signal to everyone else

815
00:49:39,310 --> 00:49:41,700
if you mess with the two of us, that's what you're in for.

816
00:49:42,500 --> 00:49:42,660
Yeah.

817
00:49:42,900 --> 00:49:47,460
It doesn't really matter essentially what they immediately get from it, but it's more the

818
00:49:47,460 --> 00:49:52,100
signaling deterrence kind of logic that might be playing a roof.

819
00:49:52,580 --> 00:49:58,100
And and another kind of mind-bending benefit they might get is to themselves avoid being

820
00:49:58,100 --> 00:49:59,700
the targets of a gang of bullies.

821
00:50:00,500 --> 00:50:04,580
So this is an interesting uh way I've been modeling this is what what I call the witch hunt

822
00:50:04,580 --> 00:50:04,820
game.

823
00:50:04,980 --> 00:50:08,500
So let's say we're all certain that one of us is a witch.

824
00:50:08,660 --> 00:50:13,410
Um that means at the start of the game, we each have a uh one third probability of being

825
00:50:13,410 --> 00:50:15,170
found guilty of witchcraft.

826
00:50:15,330 --> 00:50:19,650
And so if Hannes and I form an alliance against Dave and accuse him of witchcraft, we've

827
00:50:19,650 --> 00:50:22,690
now increased our payoffs from negative one third to zero.

828
00:50:22,850 --> 00:50:26,450
And so that just that increase to zero is itself our benefit.

829
00:50:26,850 --> 00:50:27,010
Right.

830
00:50:27,410 --> 00:50:28,050
That's super cool.

831
00:50:28,210 --> 00:50:31,970
That also suggests like sensitivity in the design to like a mobbing.

832
00:50:32,050 --> 00:50:33,650
Like, are we in a mobbing ecology?

833
00:50:33,730 --> 00:50:39,560
And if so, that should really crank up uh conflict because if you're in a low mobbing

834
00:50:39,720 --> 00:50:44,040
situation where that doesn't happen often it doesn't benefit you to gang up on people or if

835
00:50:44,040 --> 00:50:48,680
it does it's sort of there could be leveling coalitions but if we're all implicitly in a

836
00:50:48,680 --> 00:50:53,880
mobbing ecology right where sort of like it's there's no um

837
00:50:54,360 --> 00:51:00,360
there's no benefit to to sort of being seen by everybody as sort of magnanimous

838
00:51:00,680 --> 00:51:05,970
then it just immediately becomes a thing if I don't gang up on other people then other

839
00:51:05,970 --> 00:51:07,090
people will gang up on me.

840
00:51:07,170 --> 00:51:11,570
And whatever cues there are in the environment that that's true should really ratchet up

841
00:51:11,650 --> 00:51:13,490
the ganging up or mobbing.

842
00:51:13,970 --> 00:51:14,610
Yes.

843
00:51:15,170 --> 00:51:15,570
Absolutely.

844
00:51:15,730 --> 00:51:15,890
Yeah.

845
00:51:15,970 --> 00:51:20,290
The more the more paranoid you are about being uh ganged up on, the more willing you should

846
00:51:20,290 --> 00:51:21,810
be to gang up on exactly.

847
00:51:21,890 --> 00:51:23,650
Yeah, that's about that's a great way to put it.

848
00:51:23,810 --> 00:51:23,970
Yeah.

849
00:51:24,130 --> 00:51:24,610
Super cool.

850
00:51:24,770 --> 00:51:25,170
Amazing.

851
00:51:25,330 --> 00:51:25,650
Yeah.

852
00:51:26,690 --> 00:51:27,330
Cool.

853
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:28,480
All right.

854
00:51:28,640 --> 00:51:30,160
Well, we've we've run the gamma.

855
00:51:30,320 --> 00:51:34,480
We've we've we've really delved into exploitation in a in a fascinating way that's gonna

856
00:51:34,480 --> 00:51:36,240
have me thinking about it for for many weeks.

857
00:51:36,320 --> 00:51:40,240
Um but we've gone from exploitation to intergroup exploitation.

858
00:51:40,480 --> 00:51:43,040
I guess that's a good segue into intergroup conflict in general.

859
00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:47,760
You have an interesting paper called uh the knowns and unknowns of intergroup conflict.

860
00:51:47,920 --> 00:51:50,720
What are what are some of those knowns and unknowns?

861
00:51:53,670 --> 00:51:54,950
It's a great title, by the way.

862
00:51:57,750 --> 00:52:00,470
This is also borrowed from I think Don Romsfeld or so.

863
00:52:01,110 --> 00:52:01,830
Oh yes, of course.

864
00:52:02,070 --> 00:52:05,590
There's the known there's the the known unknowns and the unknown knowns.

865
00:52:05,830 --> 00:52:07,510
Like you have all four cells or something.

866
00:52:07,670 --> 00:52:08,790
Yes, exactly.

867
00:52:13,180 --> 00:52:17,900
So I need to like explain the background a little bit.

868
00:52:17,980 --> 00:52:22,620
So the paper is written from the more from the angle of economics than from the angle of

869
00:52:22,620 --> 00:52:23,500
psychology.

870
00:52:23,740 --> 00:52:23,900
Okay.

871
00:52:24,380 --> 00:52:30,380
And in economics, a very central model that is being used in order to

872
00:52:30,380 --> 00:52:36,380
try to understand why conflict might emerge is the so called

873
00:52:36,380 --> 00:52:37,580
bargaining model.

874
00:52:38,060 --> 00:52:43,970
The idea there is let's say that there is a big pie we can fight about the

875
00:52:43,970 --> 00:52:45,810
pie or we can bargain about the pie.

876
00:52:46,050 --> 00:52:49,730
If we fight about the pie, we waste time, we waste energy.

877
00:52:49,970 --> 00:52:53,170
And essentially you can think of that reducing the pie size.

878
00:52:53,330 --> 00:52:58,450
So fighting in itself is most of the time very inefficient.

879
00:52:58,530 --> 00:53:04,530
It's destroying opportunity um options or it's destroying energy

880
00:53:04,530 --> 00:53:06,610
and destroying resources.

881
00:53:08,130 --> 00:53:13,800
And in a perfect world, you should always be able to a

882
00:53:13,800 --> 00:53:19,400
priori or ex ante negotiate about a split of the pie

883
00:53:20,040 --> 00:53:25,720
that prevents this destruction and makes everybody better off than they would be under

884
00:53:25,720 --> 00:53:26,680
conflict.

885
00:53:27,480 --> 00:53:27,800
Okay.

886
00:53:28,120 --> 00:53:32,520
So even if there's uncertainty about you know which side is more formidable?

887
00:53:32,950 --> 00:53:35,270
This is the this is where the problems come in, right?

888
00:53:35,350 --> 00:53:40,230
So but let's start from the very simple, simple um setting where everybody knows how strong

889
00:53:40,230 --> 00:53:46,230
everybody is, the pie size is known, everything is known, and also bargaining is

890
00:53:46,230 --> 00:53:48,710
is perfectly transparent and so on, right?

891
00:53:48,790 --> 00:53:54,150
So ideal conditions, then it is under these conditions, it's very

892
00:53:54,540 --> 00:54:00,060
frustrating to see why people end up in this irrational, inefficient type of behavior,

893
00:54:00,140 --> 00:54:02,060
which is fighting about the pie.

894
00:54:03,340 --> 00:54:07,580
Okay, and then you have so we're we're with the knowns now, right?

895
00:54:07,660 --> 00:54:11,500
So this is the model that economists often start from, political scientists also.

896
00:54:11,740 --> 00:54:17,260
And then they discovered lots of lots of um modifications that you can make to the simple

897
00:54:17,260 --> 00:54:23,210
story, which will then allow rational actors who really understand the complete logic

898
00:54:23,210 --> 00:54:27,290
of the situation still to end up in this trap of conflict.

899
00:54:27,690 --> 00:54:30,010
And one of them is exactly what you pointed to.

900
00:54:30,170 --> 00:54:33,130
One of them is I might not know how strong you are.

901
00:54:33,290 --> 00:54:36,810
So I might not be willing, I might underestimate your strength.

902
00:54:36,890 --> 00:54:40,890
So I might not be willing in the bargaining process to give you a share which would

903
00:54:40,890 --> 00:54:42,090
actually be appropriate.

904
00:54:42,330 --> 00:54:43,290
You know this.

905
00:54:43,640 --> 00:54:49,080
so you know what kind of share you could essentially be um acquiring if we fought.

906
00:54:49,400 --> 00:54:54,440
And so um we won't reach an agre an agreement in bargaining, so we have a bargaining

907
00:54:54,440 --> 00:54:57,000
failure, and this is going to cause us to fight.

908
00:54:57,320 --> 00:54:57,640
Right?

909
00:54:57,720 --> 00:54:59,640
So this is one thing that can happen.

910
00:54:59,880 --> 00:55:04,760
There's lots of lots of different modifications to the setup that can explain why even

911
00:55:04,760 --> 00:55:10,600
rational people would end up or rational actors, groups would end up fighting.

912
00:55:10,830 --> 00:55:16,750
And so in the paper, I give a long or a little overview of mechanisms that have been

913
00:55:16,750 --> 00:55:22,270
studied theoretically and also empirically that might explain why

914
00:55:22,270 --> 00:55:23,870
bargaining can fail.

915
00:55:24,670 --> 00:55:30,350
And then I give a list essentially of questions where um which I think um are

916
00:55:30,350 --> 00:55:31,950
worth thinking about more.

917
00:55:32,190 --> 00:55:35,150
One of them is how identity plays a role in here.

918
00:55:35,630 --> 00:55:40,180
So this is mainly the view, um, or this this is actually like relating back to what we

919
00:55:40,180 --> 00:55:41,380
already discussed.

920
00:55:41,700 --> 00:55:47,700
Um, this in this entire literature, the groups have mostly been taken

921
00:55:47,700 --> 00:55:51,940
as exogenous, as given, right, and their characteristics.

922
00:55:52,180 --> 00:55:55,460
And I know of no good model, for example.

923
00:55:55,780 --> 00:55:59,140
I know of one which is good, but it's not fully developed.

924
00:55:59,220 --> 00:56:04,870
So um that there's good starting starting work at least, But where you have the

925
00:56:04,870 --> 00:56:09,110
situation where a leader would be saying, okay, let's define an outgroup, let's

926
00:56:09,110 --> 00:56:13,910
strategically define an outgroup and see if I can if we can get a strong enough coalition

927
00:56:13,910 --> 00:56:19,270
to go into a fight with them, which is essentially worth it for us, right?

928
00:56:19,350 --> 00:56:24,230
So which under a under relatively neutral cost-benefit calculations would be worth it.

929
00:56:24,620 --> 00:56:30,540
And what you have the a typical setting or a simple simple um result that

930
00:56:30,540 --> 00:56:35,260
would come out there is, for example, rich minorities are at high risk, right?

931
00:56:35,340 --> 00:56:41,100
Because they are rich, so it really pays to fight against them, to um uh

932
00:56:41,420 --> 00:56:46,220
and at the same time um they cannot really defend themselves because they are small.

933
00:56:47,180 --> 00:56:51,740
And so that's a simple simple situation where you would um see this kind of

934
00:56:52,450 --> 00:56:55,970
emergence of conflict to to like not exploit in this.

935
00:56:59,010 --> 00:57:03,490
Trying to model this, but w I would one more layer to this in addition to wealth and small

936
00:57:03,490 --> 00:57:06,210
numbers is um social alienation.

937
00:57:06,690 --> 00:57:10,610
Because um if they if the reason why the small group is more wealthy is because they're

938
00:57:10,610 --> 00:57:15,720
more productive, then there are uh potential benefits uh from associating with them and

939
00:57:15,720 --> 00:57:17,320
cooperating with them, interacting with them.

940
00:57:17,480 --> 00:57:19,640
They might share some of those resources with you voluntarily.

941
00:57:19,880 --> 00:57:24,280
But if they're socially alienated such that you're never going to get a piece of of those

942
00:57:24,280 --> 00:57:28,360
resources anyway, um the only way you can is by ganging up on them.

943
00:57:28,520 --> 00:57:33,160
Then in that case that that would be another ingredient that would uh uh instigate

944
00:57:33,160 --> 00:57:33,640
conflict.

945
00:57:34,520 --> 00:57:40,200
But I would go one step I'm I don't know what your idea of social alienation there is, but

946
00:57:40,190 --> 00:57:43,150
I would consider this maybe also as endogenous, right?

947
00:57:43,230 --> 00:57:48,910
So we could inalien alienate them because we know that there's a lot to be get got from

948
00:57:48,910 --> 00:57:49,630
gotten from them.

949
00:57:49,710 --> 00:57:52,830
And so this could also be part of the picture.

950
00:57:54,110 --> 00:57:54,510
Yeah.

951
00:57:54,670 --> 00:57:59,150
But that even there might be some cases where it would be cheaper just to buddy up with

952
00:57:59,150 --> 00:58:03,310
them and you know and form form a collaborative partnership with them where they, you know,

953
00:58:03,550 --> 00:58:06,420
their benefits would, you know, flow to you at least to some degree.

954
00:58:06,500 --> 00:58:09,780
And that might be cheaper than violently ganging up on them.

955
00:58:10,020 --> 00:58:11,620
But if if there's no share them?

956
00:58:11,780 --> 00:58:11,860
Yeah.

957
00:58:12,100 --> 00:58:12,420
Yeah.

958
00:58:12,660 --> 00:58:18,420
But if they're um but if if that's difficult and and the cheaper option of buddying up with

959
00:58:18,420 --> 00:58:23,860
them isn't available, then in that case you might favor the the uh darker option.

960
00:58:23,940 --> 00:58:29,510
Aaron Powell This is very interesting because like one of the tropes of uh demagoguery is

961
00:58:29,750 --> 00:58:34,550
that there is a group that has stuff and they're bad actors.

962
00:58:34,790 --> 00:58:40,550
And it that really uh sounds a lot like it's killing several birds with one stone

963
00:58:40,710 --> 00:58:46,310
because what it's doing is it's sort of articulating there's a numerical minority group

964
00:58:46,630 --> 00:58:48,950
that uh has stuff we want.

965
00:58:49,180 --> 00:58:54,300
So it's doing this like exploitation feeling out, but it's also sort of painting them as

966
00:58:54,300 --> 00:59:00,220
bad actors, which, if accepted by everybody, actually reduces their options, that numerical

967
00:59:00,220 --> 00:59:00,620
minority.

968
00:59:00,700 --> 00:59:06,620
So if I'm walking around telling Hannes that David is a terrible person

969
00:59:07,500 --> 00:59:13,470
and Hannes accepts this, it's not only that we're um we're not only sort

970
00:59:13,470 --> 00:59:18,910
of like ganging up on David, but we're also sort of reducing his social options in the

971
00:59:18,910 --> 00:59:23,230
sense that we're agreeing on a signal that other people will be like, oh, he's a pariah.

972
00:59:23,550 --> 00:59:29,310
Um and to the degree we have power, you know, just uh then uh even if

973
00:59:29,550 --> 00:59:34,000
people would prefer to cooperate with David, but they know that you and I Hannists are

974
00:59:34,000 --> 00:59:39,200
going to gang up on David or punish people who cooperate with him, then they're not going

975
00:59:39,200 --> 00:59:39,360
to.

976
00:59:39,520 --> 00:59:45,520
And so I feel like a lot of quote unquote scapegoating or demagoguery is this

977
00:59:45,520 --> 00:59:50,160
is just beautifully capturing this deep structure of of exploitation.

978
00:59:50,720 --> 00:59:51,120
Yeah.

979
00:59:51,280 --> 00:59:51,680
Mm-hmm.

980
00:59:51,920 --> 00:59:52,240
Yeah.

981
00:59:53,040 --> 00:59:55,890
No, there's a way that this that coordination can feed on itself.

982
00:59:56,130 --> 01:00:00,930
If we've all agreed to coordinate uh against the outgroup, it's kind of hard to break out

983
01:00:00,930 --> 01:00:01,410
of that.

984
01:00:01,730 --> 01:00:06,770
Um and as soon as a a particular coordination equilibrium gets established, you know, that

985
01:00:06,770 --> 01:00:09,410
becomes the path of least resistance for everybody.

986
01:00:09,570 --> 01:00:13,090
And so it could just be that the coordination itself takes on a life of its own and that

987
01:00:13,090 --> 01:00:17,250
could be another factor in intergroup conflict, and that we've always it's always been this

988
01:00:17,250 --> 01:00:20,770
way, and so it continues to be this way, because anyone who departs from this way is going

989
01:00:20,770 --> 01:00:22,130
to face costs.

990
01:00:22,820 --> 01:00:23,220
Yes.

991
01:00:23,380 --> 01:00:26,820
And by I mean by doing this you also create enemies, right?

992
01:00:26,900 --> 01:00:32,420
And they if if you can't wipe them out entirely, so that's the the logic of a genocide,

993
01:00:32,500 --> 01:00:38,500
maybe it the genocide idea can be thought through as being just what you need

994
01:00:38,500 --> 01:00:43,140
to do in order to really reduce the risk of retaliation by the group that you've attacked

995
01:00:43,140 --> 01:00:43,940
to zero.

996
01:00:44,500 --> 01:00:48,420
If you really want to make sure that they don't get back to you, you just need to kill them

997
01:00:48,420 --> 01:00:48,660
all.

998
01:00:49,250 --> 01:00:54,850
So I I don't think this has happened often historically, and it's interesting to study why,

999
01:00:55,090 --> 01:00:55,330
right?

1000
01:00:55,490 --> 01:00:56,850
But the logic is of course there.

1001
01:00:56,930 --> 01:01:02,210
You're creating, you're marking the enemy group, and if you leave too many of them alive,

1002
01:01:02,370 --> 01:01:04,130
then you have an enemy sitting there, right?

1003
01:01:04,210 --> 01:01:07,570
And they might get support from other groups and they might get back to you later.

1004
01:01:07,730 --> 01:01:08,770
So Wow.

1005
01:01:08,850 --> 01:01:14,760
Yeah, I never thought about that twisted logic behind genocide that it really

1006
01:01:14,760 --> 01:01:19,800
does matter to a you know to an evil rational agent to make sure that they're all gone.

1007
01:01:20,840 --> 01:01:21,320
Yeah.

1008
01:01:21,560 --> 01:01:23,320
Um it's a fascinating point.

1009
01:01:23,800 --> 01:01:29,080
This last thing we started talking about of the dynamics of coordination is leading into

1010
01:01:29,800 --> 01:01:34,920
um this maybe second part of what you study Hannes, which is group

1011
01:01:34,920 --> 01:01:36,040
memberships.

1012
01:01:36,430 --> 01:01:39,870
um and in this disc grid um project.

1013
01:01:40,030 --> 01:01:41,630
Can you talk a little bit about that?

1014
01:01:41,710 --> 01:01:45,310
And sort of because we've talked a lot about exploitation, which is fantastic.

1015
01:01:45,470 --> 01:01:49,070
I mean, not that people are exploiting it, but it's fantastic that you're studying it.

1016
01:01:49,230 --> 01:01:52,030
Um, but can you talk a little bit about what you're doing with this?

1017
01:01:52,110 --> 01:01:56,030
And it sounds like it's about identities, um, or yeah.

1018
01:01:56,590 --> 01:02:02,440
Yeah, so I mean um it's it's my very small

1019
01:02:02,440 --> 01:02:07,000
contribution to the as you can could call it the in-group-out group literature, right?

1020
01:02:07,080 --> 01:02:11,480
Which is it's super huge in in evolutionary psychology, but in psychology more generally

1021
01:02:11,560 --> 01:02:15,480
also, and since the 2000s also in economics.

1022
01:02:16,760 --> 01:02:22,680
Um and what I wanted to do, or one of the main projects in the

1023
01:02:23,730 --> 01:02:29,730
In the disk grid project is actually trying to replicate and

1024
01:02:29,730 --> 01:02:35,730
then to look into the possible temporal dynamics of

1025
01:02:36,370 --> 01:02:42,050
preferences which have been recently discovered, you could say, or um Rachel Cranton and

1026
01:02:42,050 --> 01:02:48,050
Seth Senders and colleagues, they've suggested that you might be able to classify people

1027
01:02:48,050 --> 01:02:53,820
into different types where a type defines how they react to group markers.

1028
01:02:54,140 --> 01:02:59,820
And so the this is this grouping groupiness or groupy behavior, they um they labeled it.

1029
01:03:00,140 --> 01:03:06,060
I I think for English native speakers, this this name is always like uh feels feels funny

1030
01:03:06,140 --> 01:03:09,180
for for Germans, it's perfectly fine to say somebody is groupy.

1031
01:03:09,580 --> 01:03:11,340
But I like the label.

1032
01:03:11,500 --> 01:03:17,050
The idea is um If I'm strongly not

1033
01:03:17,050 --> 01:03:22,890
groupy, you can put me into sports teams and say, Hannes, you're now with the

1034
01:03:22,890 --> 01:03:24,730
green team, please fight for the green team.

1035
01:03:24,890 --> 01:03:27,210
I will say, I don't care about the teams.

1036
01:03:27,450 --> 01:03:32,250
You put me in another group context, which could be Germans against what have you, right?

1037
01:03:32,330 --> 01:03:34,810
Then I will say, I don't care about nationalities.

1038
01:03:34,890 --> 01:03:40,480
I'll just be nice to people who I think deserve being that I should be nice to them and uh

1039
01:03:40,480 --> 01:03:42,240
be nasty towards others.

1040
01:03:42,480 --> 01:03:44,240
So I don't care about group markers.

1041
01:03:44,320 --> 01:03:48,080
And what they do, they have a clever experimental design, I think, to distinguish between

1042
01:03:48,080 --> 01:03:49,120
these types of preferences.

1043
01:03:49,200 --> 01:03:53,600
And then they see, okay, there's really there seem to be some people who never react to any

1044
01:03:53,600 --> 01:03:55,680
group markers, any group contexts.

1045
01:03:55,840 --> 01:03:58,800
And then there are people, and so this is also a spectrum, right?

1046
01:03:58,880 --> 01:04:03,280
So you have different degrees of how strongly you can react to group markers.

1047
01:04:04,250 --> 01:04:09,530
And what they what I think what the cleverest and nicest aspect of their experimental

1048
01:04:09,530 --> 01:04:15,210
design is they put people into a minimal group context, like the Kleikandinski thing,

1049
01:04:15,370 --> 01:04:21,290
and they put the same people, so within participant design, put them into a natural group

1050
01:04:21,290 --> 01:04:25,930
context, which in their paper is um Republicans versus Democrats.

1051
01:04:26,200 --> 01:04:31,480
But in my replication and like longitudinal extension of the of that

1052
01:04:31,800 --> 01:04:37,720
paradigm, I couldn't use that because it's I ran the experiment in a in a European context.

1053
01:04:37,960 --> 01:04:43,960
So what I'm using is actually it's a lab in the field experiment, and one group of

1054
01:04:43,960 --> 01:04:49,160
participants is police cadets, and the other in their first year, and the other group is

1055
01:04:49,160 --> 01:04:51,320
economics and business students in their first year.

1056
01:04:51,400 --> 01:04:54,520
And so I can compare essentially how they develop over time.

1057
01:04:54,760 --> 01:04:59,810
The idea was, of course, that it's also interesting to study people who like the police

1058
01:04:59,810 --> 01:05:03,650
cadets who are exposed to a very strong group identity, right?

1059
01:05:03,730 --> 01:05:07,330
So they study in uniform, they get sworn in, all these kinds of things.

1060
01:05:07,570 --> 01:05:13,250
And gradually over time, I ran the Cranton experiment with them three times

1061
01:05:13,570 --> 01:05:19,320
over the course of the first year, just to look into: okay, does this exposure to such a

1062
01:05:19,320 --> 01:05:21,560
strong identity change anything?

1063
01:05:21,800 --> 01:05:26,280
Does it make you does it maybe create more groupy people over time, if you like?

1064
01:05:26,440 --> 01:05:32,440
And these kinds of all these kinds of things are um I can I can look into

1065
01:05:32,440 --> 01:05:33,800
these in this kind of setting.

1066
01:05:33,960 --> 01:05:38,440
The the very interesting thing I found, and this is also the main message of the resulting

1067
01:05:38,440 --> 01:05:43,950
paper, is actually, and please correct me and please point me to the papers if I'm

1068
01:05:43,950 --> 01:05:49,950
overlooking something, but I did not see any papers yet where this would

1069
01:05:50,350 --> 01:05:56,270
like the minimal in-group or in-group favoritism in minimal group context would ever have

1070
01:05:56,270 --> 01:05:59,150
been studied longitudinally within participants.

1071
01:05:59,950 --> 01:06:03,580
So a huge literature, it's a huge omission.

1072
01:06:03,820 --> 01:06:07,420
Yeah, and this this was really just part of my experimental design.

1073
01:06:07,740 --> 01:06:08,220
Amazing.

1074
01:06:08,380 --> 01:06:14,380
Um and so for for the natural group relations there, I used essentially um you

1075
01:06:14,380 --> 01:06:19,900
are so you are part of students at one university and you are matched for the experiment

1076
01:06:19,900 --> 01:06:24,220
with students at a foreign university, which was actually true because they were run in two

1077
01:06:24,220 --> 01:06:25,340
different countries.

1078
01:06:25,650 --> 01:06:30,850
Um and what I see for both group contexts is that um in group

1079
01:06:31,010 --> 01:06:34,450
favoritism is super unstable within persons.

1080
01:06:34,850 --> 01:06:40,610
So um it's not like I'm I'm favoring my in-group today in six months

1081
01:06:40,610 --> 01:06:46,370
from now this is relatively almost not predictive of whether I will be doing it um again,

1082
01:06:46,530 --> 01:06:48,690
right at the second um measurement.

1083
01:06:48,850 --> 01:06:50,850
And at the third measurement even less so.

1084
01:06:51,010 --> 01:06:56,720
So um I have like a 0.0 something correlation between wave one in

1085
01:06:56,720 --> 01:07:00,560
group favoritism and wave three um in group favoritism that's that's fascinating.

1086
01:07:00,720 --> 01:07:05,680
So um so you're just to clarify, you're talking about say so the minimal group paradigm is

1087
01:07:05,760 --> 01:07:10,400
you know I like Kandinsky paintings versus Klee paintings and and that is going to put me

1088
01:07:10,400 --> 01:07:14,400
into the Klee group or the Kandinsky group and it's a totally it's totally arbit arbitrary.

1089
01:07:14,560 --> 01:07:20,050
You know uh and uh and by virtue of being in the klee group, I'm going to be nicer to the

1090
01:07:20,050 --> 01:07:22,370
people in the Klee group than in the Kandinsky group.

1091
01:07:22,530 --> 01:07:27,330
So what you're saying is if you run that same minimal group paradigm where, you know, first

1092
01:07:27,330 --> 01:07:30,690
you you put me in the Klee group and see how nice I am to the Klee people versus the

1093
01:07:30,690 --> 01:07:31,730
Kandinsky people.

1094
01:07:31,810 --> 01:07:36,610
And then a few months later you run that study again and you put me into the the Klee group

1095
01:07:36,610 --> 01:07:38,050
versus the Kandinsky group.

1096
01:07:38,370 --> 01:07:44,340
What you're saying is if I'm really tribal about Klee the first time around.

1097
01:07:44,500 --> 01:07:49,060
That is basically not going to predict how tribal I'm going to be toward Klee the next time

1098
01:07:49,060 --> 01:07:49,220
around.

1099
01:07:49,540 --> 01:07:50,420
Precisely, yes.

1100
01:07:51,380 --> 01:07:56,420
So I have a question about that, which is so there's some work, it's not at all

1101
01:07:56,420 --> 01:08:02,020
longitudinal in this sense, but it's like Rebecca Biegler developmentally, where and if

1102
01:08:02,020 --> 01:08:06,350
people don't know about this, it's worth looking at, but this sort of like blue eyes, brown

1103
01:08:06,350 --> 01:08:10,430
eyes experiment that was done by a school teacher.

1104
01:08:11,150 --> 01:08:16,670
And uh, and it was a situation where you take an arbitrary identity, but then in the

1105
01:08:16,670 --> 01:08:22,030
classroom, it actually gets used as a basis like by the children, right?

1106
01:08:22,190 --> 01:08:24,510
Like to sort of like let the experiment run.

1107
01:08:24,830 --> 01:08:30,270
And so what uh Becca Biegler, Rebecca Biegler found was that to the

1108
01:08:30,270 --> 01:08:35,640
extent that the arbitrary markers organized social

1109
01:08:35,640 --> 01:08:41,160
interaction and access to desired things like, you know, turns or

1110
01:08:41,160 --> 01:08:44,760
resources, the kids would sort of go along with it.

1111
01:08:45,080 --> 01:08:49,320
Um, so that's not super longitudinal, but in a sense, that's sort of the closest thing.

1112
01:08:49,480 --> 01:08:51,400
So that's amazing, Hannas, that you're doing that.

1113
01:08:51,560 --> 01:08:56,200
One question then for you is is the lack of a correlation

1114
01:08:57,320 --> 01:09:02,970
does that is that because there's no sense in which the

1115
01:09:02,970 --> 01:09:08,970
arbitrary groups matter, such that, for example, like let's say in the classroom example,

1116
01:09:09,610 --> 01:09:14,490
if the if the structure of the world actually tracks the arbitrariness.

1117
01:09:14,570 --> 01:09:19,130
So it's just say, like, you know, we're the yellows and the blues, and we're all of a

1118
01:09:19,130 --> 01:09:25,130
sudden in a classroom, and there's actually some social teeth to the yellows and blues, and

1119
01:09:25,130 --> 01:09:26,890
it starts to be enforced.

1120
01:09:27,520 --> 01:09:33,200
would in that context do you think individual differences start to um be

1121
01:09:33,200 --> 01:09:38,960
stable or we don't know that we don't know my my best guess

1122
01:09:38,960 --> 01:09:44,480
would be so when you so the group relations that I'm using these group contexts are like

1123
01:09:44,480 --> 01:09:48,960
you say pretty much meaningless yeah except for the police thing I mean I guess that's a

1124
01:09:48,960 --> 01:09:53,920
sense in which it's not I mean it's not like as strong as sort of like a very overarching

1125
01:09:57,770 --> 01:10:02,970
But they they at least they are not that relevant to how people make these social decisions

1126
01:10:02,970 --> 01:10:05,530
in these like dictator games and stuff.

1127
01:10:05,770 --> 01:10:11,450
Um and it's also easy for you um to realize okay, they are telling me I'm matched with

1128
01:10:11,450 --> 01:10:15,850
someone who is, I don't know, studying at another university, but why should I treat them

1129
01:10:15,850 --> 01:10:16,970
any better or worse?

1130
01:10:17,920 --> 01:10:22,800
But if you if you you use a group context, so I haven't done this, but there's at least

1131
01:10:22,800 --> 01:10:27,520
some data out there which might be used to look into this.

1132
01:10:39,120 --> 01:10:44,320
And I think when you use when you use these kinds of group markers, which have a stable

1133
01:10:44,320 --> 01:10:50,270
meaning outside the lab and then repeat the games, then behavior within participants will

1134
01:10:50,270 --> 01:10:51,390
be much more stable.

1135
01:10:52,030 --> 01:10:56,190
But I think it will not be like, well, this is pure speculation, right?

1136
01:10:56,270 --> 01:11:00,670
I we should I think, well, give me another grant that I will study this.

1137
01:11:01,230 --> 01:11:06,910
Um the I I'm I'm I would be super

1138
01:11:06,910 --> 01:11:11,710
interested in in understanding whether, okay, there there's different types of people with

1139
01:11:11,710 --> 01:11:13,230
different degrees of groupiness.

1140
01:11:13,310 --> 01:11:19,100
If you put some of them into this stable intergroup like hostility kind of setting,

1141
01:11:19,180 --> 01:11:24,300
they will pick it up and they will start discriminating and do so stably, while other

1142
01:11:24,300 --> 01:11:26,140
people would still say, no, right?

1143
01:11:26,220 --> 01:11:29,180
So I don't care about your group context, leave me alone.

1144
01:11:29,500 --> 01:11:35,340
Um so yeah, so I would be really interested in like independently

1145
01:11:35,340 --> 01:11:40,230
determining people's level of groupiness and then put them into this kind of stable

1146
01:11:40,310 --> 01:11:45,190
political or what have you um context and have them and and look at their behavior there.

1147
01:11:45,430 --> 01:11:46,070
Yeah.

1148
01:11:46,550 --> 01:11:49,430
But yeah, it's all a future future one.

1149
01:11:49,830 --> 01:11:50,630
That's super cool.

1150
01:11:50,790 --> 01:11:50,950
Yeah.

1151
01:11:51,350 --> 01:11:54,870
Did you so did did you look longitudinally at the non-minimal groups as well?

1152
01:11:55,030 --> 01:11:59,830
So like if people were you know tribalist about their their university or their political

1153
01:11:59,830 --> 01:12:02,550
party, they would also be tribal about it the next time around?

1154
01:12:02,710 --> 01:12:05,110
And would did you find the same same result or a different result?

1155
01:12:06,150 --> 01:12:11,920
This is very interesting because one of the main results of Cranton, um Cranton and Sanders

1156
01:12:12,000 --> 01:12:17,920
and colleagues, I should say, um, is that they only have one day essentially,

1157
01:12:18,000 --> 01:12:18,240
right?

1158
01:12:18,320 --> 01:12:20,560
So they they survey people on one day.

1159
01:12:20,880 --> 01:12:26,240
And when you do this, then their behavior, their in-group favoritism in the minimal

1160
01:12:26,400 --> 01:12:31,440
context is correlated to their um in-group favoritism in the natural context.

1161
01:12:31,970 --> 01:12:33,090
So there's a lot of things that is the main insight.

1162
01:12:34,610 --> 01:12:38,050
This is also and yeah, what my so I replicate this pattern, right?

1163
01:12:38,130 --> 01:12:43,250
So in my data, in every wave there's a correlation between the context uh contexts.

1164
01:12:44,050 --> 01:12:47,730
But it's different people doing the in-group favoritism on different days.

1165
01:12:48,770 --> 01:12:50,210
So it's like a validation.

1166
01:12:50,370 --> 01:12:50,530
Yeah.

1167
01:12:50,610 --> 01:12:52,600
It's like coalitional.

1168
01:12:52,680 --> 01:12:54,040
Let me let me propose it to them.

1169
01:12:54,360 --> 01:12:54,760
Coalitional.

1170
01:12:54,920 --> 01:12:56,440
No, no, no, not not even, but like group.

1171
01:12:56,760 --> 01:12:58,120
Are you in a coalitional mood today, Dave?

1172
01:12:58,760 --> 01:12:59,160
How are you feeling?

1173
01:12:59,480 --> 01:13:00,280
Yeah, no, exactly.

1174
01:13:00,440 --> 01:13:05,560
No, that's really nice that it validates the it's sort of like a sanity check, like that

1175
01:13:05,560 --> 01:13:10,200
the arbitrar the minimal group is sort of tapping the the the software setting that day of

1176
01:13:10,200 --> 01:13:11,560
the coalitional system.

1177
01:13:12,600 --> 01:13:16,520
In the paper, I think I say, are you in a groupy state today or are you in a group in an

1178
01:13:16,600 --> 01:13:17,720
ungroupy state today?

1179
01:13:18,120 --> 01:13:18,440
Yeah.

1180
01:13:18,600 --> 01:13:21,270
Um yeah, What do you think about the term coalitional?

1181
01:13:21,350 --> 01:13:22,790
I mean like Hannes or David.

1182
01:13:22,870 --> 01:13:27,350
Like, I mean, so groupie tribal, like what's the is it groupy better than coalitional?

1183
01:13:27,510 --> 01:13:30,150
Like how coalitional is somebody, or like how groupie is somebody?

1184
01:13:30,310 --> 01:13:30,630
I don't know.

1185
01:13:30,710 --> 01:13:31,350
What do you guys think?

1186
01:13:31,750 --> 01:13:32,870
Potato potato.

1187
01:13:32,950 --> 01:13:33,110
Yeah.

1188
01:13:33,990 --> 01:13:36,470
We're talking about the same thing, we're just flapping our mouths differently.

1189
01:13:36,630 --> 01:13:36,870
Yeah.

1190
01:13:37,270 --> 01:13:37,910
You know.

1191
01:13:38,310 --> 01:13:38,630
Yeah.

1192
01:13:38,870 --> 01:13:40,070
I would I completely agree.

1193
01:13:40,150 --> 01:13:45,260
There's a famous quote by a German mathematician who who said, Tische Stühle Bierseiter.

1194
01:13:45,420 --> 01:13:51,020
So it essentially means I don't I don't mind if you call something a desk, a chair,

1195
01:13:51,260 --> 01:13:56,380
or a glass of beer, as long as you define what you mean in the context, we're good, right?

1196
01:13:56,460 --> 01:13:57,020
So Yeah.

1197
01:13:57,500 --> 01:13:58,540
Yeah, totally.

1198
01:13:59,740 --> 01:14:01,180
Um great.

1199
01:14:01,340 --> 01:14:07,260
So uh so that that's is that uh so that's the identity or you talked about types of

1200
01:14:07,260 --> 01:14:11,630
people earlier in the episode, which I thought was really interesting in terms of like

1201
01:14:11,630 --> 01:14:12,430
locating types.

1202
01:14:12,590 --> 01:14:13,790
Is that what you were referring to?

1203
01:14:13,950 --> 01:14:18,590
Like the groupiness or coalitionality, or are you looking at other individual differences

1204
01:14:18,830 --> 01:14:19,470
too?

1205
01:14:21,390 --> 01:14:27,150
So the main point of that paper is of course to replicate um

1206
01:14:27,150 --> 01:14:32,780
this classification of people into types, groupiness types, and then also look into

1207
01:14:32,860 --> 01:14:33,180
okay.

1208
01:14:33,260 --> 01:14:38,860
So the the assumption behind the design was of course or the ambition was to replicate and

1209
01:14:38,860 --> 01:14:42,860
then to explain who would be groupy versus who would be less groupy.

1210
01:14:43,420 --> 01:14:47,420
But actually since since it's within person it's not stable, right?

1211
01:14:47,580 --> 01:14:53,260
So it's it's yeah this part of the research question can't really be answered.

1212
01:14:53,500 --> 01:14:53,820
Right.

1213
01:14:54,540 --> 01:14:59,010
So So you can't you can't correlate something that doesn't exist if there's people

1214
01:14:59,330 --> 01:14:59,970
individual differences.

1215
01:15:00,050 --> 01:15:00,130
Yeah.

1216
01:15:00,370 --> 01:15:01,570
So I never I never got the answer.

1217
01:15:01,730 --> 01:15:07,010
So so there was also no correlation between say university favoritism or political party

1218
01:15:07,010 --> 01:15:09,090
favoritism from one month to the next?

1219
01:15:09,330 --> 01:15:11,010
Was that the same result there?

1220
01:15:11,810 --> 01:15:15,490
Within contexts, there is no con correlation over time, right?

1221
01:15:15,570 --> 01:15:17,730
So very low correlation.

1222
01:15:17,970 --> 01:15:20,130
Over one year there's zero correlation.

1223
01:15:20,530 --> 01:15:20,850
Wow.

1224
01:15:21,250 --> 01:15:21,490
Okay.

1225
01:15:21,820 --> 01:15:26,060
So my if I if I'm really tribal toward my political party, that's not going to predict how

1226
01:15:26,060 --> 01:15:28,300
tribal I'm going to be a year for a year from now.

1227
01:15:28,700 --> 01:15:32,140
But I don't have political parties in my experiment, right?

1228
01:15:32,380 --> 01:15:33,260
But you have universities?

1229
01:15:33,500 --> 01:15:35,740
I have universities and Kleikandinski.

1230
01:15:36,220 --> 01:15:36,620
Got it.

1231
01:15:36,700 --> 01:15:36,940
Okay.

1232
01:15:37,100 --> 01:15:38,700
So the university is the same result.

1233
01:15:39,180 --> 01:15:40,380
University is the same result.

1234
01:15:40,540 --> 01:15:46,430
My suspicion, my my suspicion would be if we rerun this with political parties,

1235
01:15:46,510 --> 01:15:50,750
especially in a setting like the US, political party would be stable.

1236
01:15:51,070 --> 01:15:52,430
Yeah, I'd bet that as well.

1237
01:15:52,510 --> 01:15:52,910
Yeah.

1238
01:15:53,310 --> 01:15:58,910
But I I would think there this is not to be confused with like

1239
01:15:59,070 --> 01:16:02,190
the person being groupy forever.

1240
01:16:02,430 --> 01:16:02,510
Yeah.

1241
01:16:02,750 --> 01:16:07,780
But the person just really having bought into for some reason into this intergroup relation

1242
01:16:07,860 --> 01:16:12,420
and and trying to like enforce this intergroup relation between these two parties.

1243
01:16:12,740 --> 01:16:13,140
Yeah, yeah.

1244
01:16:13,300 --> 01:16:18,180
Yeah, I think that's really important because uh yeah, uh just uh because I think like

1245
01:16:18,260 --> 01:16:24,260
traditionally psychology has sort of operated at the level of behavior and just sort of

1246
01:16:24,260 --> 01:16:27,220
sought to say like our individual differences stable.

1247
01:16:27,460 --> 01:16:32,710
But I think an evolutionary approach or more sophisticated approach is even when it is,

1248
01:16:32,790 --> 01:16:37,910
like you said, Hannes, I think it's really important to highlight that it's the result of

1249
01:16:37,910 --> 01:16:43,110
this software calculating costs and benefits and sort of what am I, what's my um, what's

1250
01:16:43,110 --> 01:16:46,230
sort of my role or my strategy now.

1251
01:16:46,550 --> 01:16:50,630
And so you might even get somebody who is stable for a while, but then sort of sees an

1252
01:16:50,630 --> 01:16:50,950
opening.

1253
01:16:51,110 --> 01:16:54,950
It comes back to these like market dynamics of like what are my outside options.

1254
01:16:55,190 --> 01:17:00,880
And so you might have a very stable politician who's really, really um dedicated to their

1255
01:17:00,880 --> 01:17:01,120
party.

1256
01:17:01,200 --> 01:17:05,680
And as David has sort of pointed out, you know, the ideology comes second or even Hannes,

1257
01:17:05,840 --> 01:17:06,400
as you said it.

1258
01:17:06,480 --> 01:17:12,160
And so, but then when there's an opening for more status or resource competition comes up,

1259
01:17:12,400 --> 01:17:14,320
then immediately could just turn on a dime.

1260
01:17:14,400 --> 01:17:19,040
And there's no inconsistency from the perspective of the underlying software, because it's

1261
01:17:19,040 --> 01:17:21,840
really looking for social strategic options.

1262
01:17:22,000 --> 01:17:27,510
I think that's a really important thing to highlight that you just d did nicely, and I just

1263
01:17:27,510 --> 01:17:28,790
want to emphasize Hannes.

1264
01:17:28,950 --> 01:17:29,510
Yeah.

1265
01:17:30,230 --> 01:17:31,350
I completely agree.

1266
01:17:31,430 --> 01:17:31,670
Yes.

1267
01:17:32,150 --> 01:17:33,270
Could could not agree more.

1268
01:17:33,350 --> 01:17:39,270
I'm tempted to use that study uh as further ammunition in my argument against this idea

1269
01:17:39,270 --> 01:17:41,830
that uh conservatives are more groupie than liberals.

1270
01:17:41,910 --> 01:17:45,750
There's a lot of research in social psychology that that suggests that you know

1271
01:17:45,830 --> 01:17:49,990
conservatives have a groupy personality, and that's why they're more nationalistic or, you

1272
01:17:49,990 --> 01:17:50,550
know, whatever.

1273
01:17:50,630 --> 01:17:54,540
You know, Jonathan Height says that they they're higher on the in-group loyalty foundation

1274
01:17:54,620 --> 01:17:55,260
or whatever.

1275
01:17:55,340 --> 01:17:59,980
Um, and I have a paper uh critiquing that idea among other ideas as as being implausible,

1276
01:18:00,060 --> 01:18:02,380
uh, both theoretically and and empirically.

1277
01:18:02,460 --> 01:18:07,980
Uh and uh I've I have a new a new piece of evidence in favor of that argument that it it's

1278
01:18:07,980 --> 01:18:12,380
not even clear whether groupiness even exists as a coherent uh individual difference

1279
01:18:12,380 --> 01:18:13,020
marker.

1280
01:18:13,580 --> 01:18:14,220
Yeah.

1281
01:18:14,860 --> 01:18:18,610
But I think at least in in the minimal groups context.

1282
01:18:22,050 --> 01:18:27,810
Because um I I also applied um Granton Sand Sanders method to classify people into these

1283
01:18:27,810 --> 01:18:31,730
types and you and I get a quite similar distribution of types.

1284
01:18:32,210 --> 01:18:37,490
But this is n and also even the distribution is stable across time, but it's not the same

1285
01:18:37,490 --> 01:18:39,730
people in the different things.

1286
01:18:40,130 --> 01:18:40,850
That's so interesting.

1287
01:18:40,930 --> 01:18:41,250
Yeah.

1288
01:18:41,570 --> 01:18:45,880
So do you do you have thoughts about I mean, is it literally just like what is the group

1289
01:18:45,880 --> 01:18:47,720
they're thinking about the day that day?

1290
01:18:47,960 --> 01:18:51,560
Well, no, they can't be right because you're actually t keeping the group identity

1291
01:18:51,560 --> 01:18:52,040
constant.

1292
01:18:52,200 --> 01:18:54,920
It's very puzzling that it's so malleable.

1293
01:18:55,240 --> 01:18:59,160
I'm wonder is it they're in a bad mood that day? 'Cause I'm I'm thinking of I'm I'm sure

1294
01:18:59,160 --> 01:19:03,400
you're familiar with um Michael Bank Peterson's work on Need for Chaos.

1295
01:19:03,560 --> 01:19:08,110
Uh uh and he finds basically that the people who want to watch the world burn, who

1296
01:19:08,110 --> 01:19:12,110
literally agree with the statement, I want to watch the world burn on a survey, that these

1297
01:19:12,110 --> 01:19:17,230
people are more likely to spread hostile rumors and political, politically dubious, you

1298
01:19:17,230 --> 01:19:21,310
know, what we might call fake news to try to sow chaos and discord.

1299
01:19:21,470 --> 01:19:25,790
And and and what's interesting is they'll they'll spread fake news even if it's on the left

1300
01:19:25,790 --> 01:19:26,270
or on the right.

1301
01:19:26,430 --> 01:19:27,310
Like they don't really care.

1302
01:19:27,470 --> 01:19:29,070
They just they just want to watch the world burn.

1303
01:19:29,150 --> 01:19:32,350
They just want to spread stuff and start shit, basically.

1304
01:19:33,150 --> 01:19:38,000
Um and I just say need for chaos is what sounds like a Metallica song name or a

1305
01:19:39,680 --> 01:19:39,680
few years.

1306
01:19:39,840 --> 01:19:41,120
By getting back to Metallica, yeah.

1307
01:19:41,920 --> 01:19:46,560
Um and and he finds fascinatingly enough that these people tend to be pretty, you know, low

1308
01:19:46,720 --> 01:19:52,640
status loner people who might you you might expect to benefit from uh you know uh an

1309
01:19:52,640 --> 01:19:54,080
overturning of the social order.

1310
01:19:54,160 --> 01:19:57,520
You know, there's that great quote from Game of Thrones: Chaos is a ladder.

1311
01:19:57,680 --> 01:20:01,710
Well, if you're at the bottom of the ladder, uh it might be in your interest to sow chaos,

1312
01:20:01,950 --> 01:20:06,990
because if you if if if the social order is uh is an upheaval, that that might be an

1313
01:20:06,990 --> 01:20:09,390
opportunity for you to rise uh in status.

1314
01:20:09,470 --> 01:20:11,950
Uh or at least you have, you know, barely anything to lose.

1315
01:20:12,030 --> 01:20:17,070
So you might as well, you know, try to roll the dice on on how society is is arranged.

1316
01:20:17,230 --> 01:20:22,110
Um, and so maybe it's just fluctuations and like personal, maybe, you know, I got insulted

1317
01:20:22,110 --> 01:20:25,550
that day and I'm feeling a little insecure about my social status, so I'm gonna be extra

1318
01:20:25,550 --> 01:20:26,510
groupy that day.

1319
01:20:26,860 --> 01:20:30,940
But another day, I mean uh I got uh promotion, I got complimented, so I'm not gonna be so

1320
01:20:30,940 --> 01:20:31,340
groupy.

1321
01:20:31,420 --> 01:20:31,820
I don't know.

1322
01:20:32,060 --> 01:20:34,620
Is there any plausibility to that or am I out of my mind?

1323
01:20:36,060 --> 01:20:39,180
This is essentially the discussion section of the paper, right?

1324
01:20:39,260 --> 01:20:40,460
So we need to study this.

1325
01:20:40,540 --> 01:20:46,220
I I have no good idea of when people enter the groupy state and when they don't.

1326
01:20:46,460 --> 01:20:46,620
Yeah.

1327
01:20:46,780 --> 01:20:49,420
So this just needs to be studied empirically more.

1328
01:20:49,670 --> 01:20:52,470
Yeah, it might also be like just coming back to exploitation too.

1329
01:20:52,550 --> 01:20:56,870
Like some days I feel like I'm exploited by the group identities I am a member of, and some

1330
01:20:56,870 --> 01:20:59,830
days I don't, you know, and that just is sort of a fluctuation too.

1331
01:20:59,910 --> 01:21:01,510
And that might have something to do with it.

1332
01:21:01,590 --> 01:21:02,070
But yeah.

1333
01:21:02,470 --> 01:21:03,030
Yeah, indeed.

1334
01:21:03,110 --> 01:21:08,710
I mean, also with with these in-group-out-group settings, you can have so the in-group is

1335
01:21:08,710 --> 01:21:09,990
also heterogeneous, right?

1336
01:21:10,070 --> 01:21:14,790
And if I had a bad experience with an in-group member on a day, I might say, Well, I really

1337
01:21:14,790 --> 01:21:18,070
don't like being associated with the Germans that much anymore today.

1338
01:21:19,000 --> 01:21:23,000
So you might just like look for friends in different out groups that day.

1339
01:21:23,480 --> 01:21:25,000
Yeah, that's super cool.

1340
01:21:25,240 --> 01:21:31,000
Um one, so we've covered sort of exploitation and um the start of

1341
01:21:31,000 --> 01:21:32,520
talking about the identity stuff.

1342
01:21:32,680 --> 01:21:37,400
Is there other work while we while we have you that you would like to sort of cover?

1343
01:21:37,560 --> 01:21:42,200
Um because I you've you've done so many different things, and I you know I love the

1344
01:21:42,200 --> 01:21:48,190
throughput line of sort of being really careful, logical, and sort of um

1345
01:21:48,430 --> 01:21:52,510
having an economic approach married to an evolutionary psychological approach.

1346
01:21:52,590 --> 01:21:53,630
I think it's just so cool.

1347
01:21:53,710 --> 01:21:58,430
And the way you're approaching these difficult real-world phenomena, distilling them down

1348
01:21:58,430 --> 01:22:03,230
in a way that's captures something, but you can still be kind of quantitative about it.

1349
01:22:03,870 --> 01:22:07,710
Are there other projects that you think might be worth mentioning?

1350
01:22:07,790 --> 01:22:13,440
Or maybe also, I mean, people listening, if there's sort of uh uh an ad for sort of like

1351
01:22:13,440 --> 01:22:17,920
joining projects that might still be ongoing or or even in the future,

1352
01:22:19,520 --> 01:22:25,200
um but this is very much off topic, but of course I'm now um

1353
01:22:25,680 --> 01:22:28,880
very interested also in in everything crime, right?

1354
01:22:28,960 --> 01:22:33,450
So why would somebody be inclined to break rules?

1355
01:22:33,610 --> 01:22:38,970
Why would somebody will be willing to take the risks of doing this and so on?

1356
01:22:39,210 --> 01:22:45,050
So there's been a lot of work in the economics of crime, but also in the um psychology

1357
01:22:45,050 --> 01:22:50,090
literature and in criminology itself, of course, there's lots of um work being done.

1358
01:22:50,730 --> 01:22:56,540
So that that's a new interest I have, or relatively recent, but it's

1359
01:22:56,540 --> 01:23:02,540
still it still fits in well with me being interested in all sorts of dark behaviors

1360
01:23:02,700 --> 01:23:04,060
that humans can show.

1361
01:23:04,300 --> 01:23:04,860
Yeah.

1362
01:23:05,660 --> 01:23:10,060
One thing that we haven't touched upon, and which is a little, I don't know if I should

1363
01:23:10,060 --> 01:23:10,780
call it a hobby.

1364
01:23:10,860 --> 01:23:15,740
It was a huge fascination that I always had and which I want to continue a little bit.

1365
01:23:15,900 --> 01:23:21,500
Currently, I'm just not really actively working on it, is heroism and high-stakes altruism.

1366
01:23:21,930 --> 01:23:27,530
because I think in in this domain there's the more and more data is becoming

1367
01:23:27,530 --> 01:23:28,570
available.

1368
01:23:29,290 --> 01:23:35,130
And so the the very informative, high quality, applied micro kind of

1369
01:23:35,130 --> 01:23:39,450
studies that I as I would call them become more and more possible.

1370
01:23:40,090 --> 01:23:45,780
Um and I think I I I still have this feeling that the theories

1371
01:23:45,780 --> 01:23:51,300
about altruism that we have developed and the mainly the

1372
01:23:51,300 --> 01:23:56,900
experimental games, the economic games that we have used to study those don't

1373
01:23:56,900 --> 01:23:57,780
fully match.

1374
01:23:58,020 --> 01:24:03,970
And so I'm I'm not co like 100% convinced that you can test

1375
01:24:03,970 --> 01:24:08,850
a theory about inclusive fitness and how inclusive fitness would be increasing your chances

1376
01:24:08,850 --> 01:24:12,930
to be an altruist using dictator games of ten dollars.

1377
01:24:13,330 --> 01:24:14,610
I've done those myself.

1378
01:24:14,690 --> 01:24:17,250
I'm I think they are a very good methodology.

1379
01:24:17,330 --> 01:24:21,490
They are maybe among the best things that we have because we can control for everything.

1380
01:24:21,730 --> 01:24:26,690
Very nice, but they still leave open this possibility that for high stakes things might be

1381
01:24:26,690 --> 01:24:27,650
somehow different.

1382
01:24:27,970 --> 01:24:28,450
Right.

1383
01:24:28,610 --> 01:24:28,930
Right.

1384
01:24:29,250 --> 01:24:34,840
And so that's why I'm still very interested in and also following the

1385
01:24:34,840 --> 01:24:39,000
literature a little bit um on uh work on heroism.

1386
01:24:39,320 --> 01:24:40,280
Yeah, that's super cool.

1387
01:24:40,600 --> 01:24:45,320
Defined, yeah, defined defined, sorry, um defined as really like

1388
01:24:45,880 --> 01:24:51,000
high-stakes altruistic behavior in natural contexts.

1389
01:24:51,320 --> 01:24:54,680
And so you can define heroism again as a question, how do you define it?

1390
01:24:54,760 --> 01:25:00,610
And you can you can come up with alternative um uh definitions which allow for

1391
01:25:00,610 --> 01:25:03,330
everyone to act heroically in social situations.

1392
01:25:03,490 --> 01:25:05,090
This is not what I mean essentially.

1393
01:25:05,170 --> 01:25:09,570
What I mean is really: you're the guy who runs into the burning building to rescue the kid,

1394
01:25:09,650 --> 01:25:14,930
or you're the soldier who like throws himself on the grenade to protect his comrades.

1395
01:25:15,090 --> 01:25:19,490
These kinds of naturally occurring high-stakes altruistic behaviors.

1396
01:25:19,730 --> 01:25:19,890
Yeah.

1397
01:25:20,420 --> 01:25:22,100
It's interesting you you call them high stakes.

1398
01:25:22,180 --> 01:25:24,100
That evokes kind of a gambling context.

1399
01:25:24,260 --> 01:25:28,580
I mean, are you are you are you formalizing this as like kind of a risky altruistic act

1400
01:25:28,660 --> 01:25:32,340
where like the payoffs could be huge, but also the cost could be huge too, and you're just

1401
01:25:32,340 --> 01:25:34,420
taking a huge gamble either way.

1402
01:25:34,500 --> 01:25:35,540
Is that how you're thinking of it?

1403
01:25:36,020 --> 01:25:38,820
So I think the the costs, the costs are the main aspect.

1404
01:25:38,900 --> 01:25:40,340
Yeah, the costs are super high.

1405
01:25:40,580 --> 01:25:44,740
So they reach a level where they really have an impact on your future life.

1406
01:25:44,900 --> 01:25:47,700
They might even kill you in in the examples that I gave, right?

1407
01:25:47,860 --> 01:25:47,940
Yeah.

1408
01:25:48,260 --> 01:25:49,510
Can also be a little lower.

1409
01:25:49,590 --> 01:25:54,790
So there's also reach uh research on um what's it called?

1410
01:25:54,870 --> 01:25:59,270
It's I think undirected organ donations or so that essentially you say, Well, I have a

1411
01:25:59,270 --> 01:26:03,190
kidney and I'm going to donate it to whoever needs it, and I don't even want to know who

1412
01:26:03,190 --> 01:26:04,070
this person is.

1413
01:26:04,310 --> 01:26:05,910
This has an impact on my life, right?

1414
01:26:05,990 --> 01:26:08,870
So I increase my risks of becoming ill and everything.

1415
01:26:09,190 --> 01:26:15,140
But it is a very altruistic act which um which has really

1416
01:26:15,300 --> 01:26:19,300
high or really severe consequences or can have at least it has a high risk of having severe

1417
01:26:19,300 --> 01:26:20,660
consequences for you.

1418
01:26:21,940 --> 01:26:22,020
Yeah.

1419
01:26:22,260 --> 01:26:26,260
I wonder if it's certainly certainly higher than just $10 in a dictator game.

1420
01:26:26,740 --> 01:26:28,500
I wonder, I mean, it's interesting.

1421
01:26:28,580 --> 01:26:33,780
I see kind of a weird twisted parallel between that idea and Ed Hagan's work on

1422
01:26:33,780 --> 01:26:36,020
suicidality, who we had on the podcast.

1423
01:26:36,100 --> 01:26:41,940
So his idea there is that if you are um in a conflict with other people uh and you have

1424
01:26:41,940 --> 01:26:46,230
really low uh bargaining power, um and you're being exploited.

1425
01:26:46,310 --> 01:26:49,670
I mean, your your work also fits in nicely with his work as well.

1426
01:26:49,830 --> 01:26:55,750
Um uh you you need some way of credibly signaling that that you that you're in need and you

1427
01:26:55,750 --> 01:26:57,830
need the terms of the relationship to change.

1428
01:26:57,910 --> 01:27:01,510
Uh and you also need some way of of bargaining to change your situation.

1429
01:27:01,670 --> 01:27:05,270
And what he would argue is that a lot of depression and suicidality and self harm, these

1430
01:27:05,430 --> 01:27:09,110
that these are both are simultaneously bargaining strategies in the same way that, you

1431
01:27:09,110 --> 01:27:13,380
know, a a union might go on strike to withhold benefits from the company to get a higher

1432
01:27:13,380 --> 01:27:13,620
wage.

1433
01:27:13,860 --> 01:27:17,940
So they're there are simultaneously bargaining strategies and also costly signals and that

1434
01:27:17,940 --> 01:27:23,460
they're they're they're signaling need in a way that is comes with a true cost.

1435
01:27:23,540 --> 01:27:26,420
And in some cases, you know, the the cost is risking your life.

1436
01:27:26,580 --> 01:27:31,060
And so he finds that most suicide attempts are not successful.

1437
01:27:31,220 --> 01:27:36,630
And so you're you're taking a small risk of death in order to potentially reap the benefit

1438
01:27:36,630 --> 01:27:38,950
of a renegotiated relationship.

1439
01:27:39,350 --> 01:27:44,070
And that it seems like a similar logic to your heroism where you're taking a small risk of

1440
01:27:44,070 --> 01:27:47,030
death to potentially uh receive some other benefit.

1441
01:27:47,110 --> 01:27:50,550
Maybe it's to rescue someone, maybe it's to to get status or something.

1442
01:27:50,630 --> 01:27:53,750
Uh but it seems like the logic is is somewhat similar there.

1443
01:27:53,830 --> 01:27:55,270
Would you buy that parallel?

1444
01:27:56,870 --> 01:28:01,830
I'm I'm completely not an expert on uh suicidality.

1445
01:28:03,110 --> 01:28:08,960
Um from the from the mathematical angle, I mean, um, or just from the costly

1446
01:28:08,960 --> 01:28:11,920
signaling perspective, I see the argument, yes.

1447
01:28:12,080 --> 01:28:12,320
Yeah.

1448
01:28:12,640 --> 01:28:17,920
But I I will have to read up on his work on on this to to make up my mind in more detail.

1449
01:28:18,000 --> 01:28:21,520
But it sounds plausible in the the way you explain it, yes.

1450
01:28:21,760 --> 01:28:26,160
Well, we're we're happy to be a Yenta a matchmaker for you and Ed to collaborate.

1451
01:28:26,480 --> 01:28:30,080
Yeah, and what one thing I wanted to say quickly is that it's important, Hannes.

1452
01:28:30,160 --> 01:28:33,490
You were talking earlier about the games not matching up, and I just want to like connect

1453
01:28:33,490 --> 01:28:37,570
the dots for listeners that one of the reasons why it's important for the games to

1454
01:28:37,570 --> 01:28:43,090
correspond to the phenomenon is from an evolutionary perspective, the games sort of

1455
01:28:43,090 --> 01:28:44,930
embody the selective logic, right?

1456
01:28:45,010 --> 01:28:49,970
So it's the question of why would genes for quote unquote or designed for

1457
01:28:50,610 --> 01:28:54,210
doing something in a particular situation be selected for.

1458
01:28:54,450 --> 01:28:59,730
And it's the games that sort of distill that down into something that can actually be sort

1459
01:28:59,730 --> 01:29:02,690
of a genetic, like this is favorite over this.

1460
01:29:02,920 --> 01:29:08,760
And as you're saying, if you don't model the costs and benefits correctly, so

1461
01:29:08,840 --> 01:29:13,240
for example, as you said, Hannes, like, you know, if saving somebody's life only benefits

1462
01:29:13,240 --> 01:29:17,160
you ten dollars, but it's David saying it's hugely beneficial, it might get you like, you

1463
01:29:17,160 --> 01:29:23,080
know, a whole better life, for example, then uh we're not going to be accurate about

1464
01:29:23,080 --> 01:29:25,160
what would be selected for the psychology.

1465
01:29:25,320 --> 01:29:26,200
So that's why it's important.

1466
01:29:26,280 --> 01:29:30,040
It's not just sort of like a mundane like bookkeeping thing, it's actually really important

1467
01:29:30,040 --> 01:29:31,710
for what would be selected for.

1468
01:29:31,870 --> 01:29:35,710
I also just want to say quickly, Anthony Lopez and I started doing a project we we still

1469
01:29:35,710 --> 01:29:41,310
have to do it and Anthony, we should have on um about valor and sort of combat situations.

1470
01:29:41,390 --> 01:29:45,710
And one thing that sort of immediately struck me is there's also a difference between sort

1471
01:29:45,710 --> 01:29:48,350
of bravery or valor and recklessness.

1472
01:29:48,750 --> 01:29:51,310
Um like in the cost benefit thing too.

1473
01:29:51,390 --> 01:29:54,910
And I think that's an interesting question of sort of when is behavior, even from a third

1474
01:29:54,990 --> 01:30:00,840
party perspective, seen as reckless um versus like heroic or or yeah.

1475
01:30:01,240 --> 01:30:07,240
Oh I I I read all the Medal of Honor citations for World War One, World War Two, the

1476
01:30:07,240 --> 01:30:11,480
Korean War and the Vietnam War for a study that I did back in the days.

1477
01:30:11,720 --> 01:30:15,480
And I can tell you so if you're interested in this difference, then read them.

1478
01:30:16,200 --> 01:30:17,240
So I can also give you my data.

1479
01:30:17,320 --> 01:30:19,640
I mean, I would love to just or just have a chat about it.

1480
01:30:20,040 --> 01:30:24,430
I I I recall reading one study where they looked at uh Medal of Honor recipients and they

1481
01:30:24,430 --> 01:30:28,750
looked at the number of offspring they had and they found that um uh honor uh medal

1482
01:30:28,750 --> 01:30:32,670
recipients end up ended up siring more offspring, which is kind of an interesting um.

1483
01:30:36,270 --> 01:30:40,270
Um I remember uh I I always thought of bravery.

1484
01:30:40,350 --> 01:30:44,750
At some point, I maybe I'll think about writing this up, but it it seems like the stag hunt

1485
01:30:44,840 --> 01:30:49,160
captures bravery really nicely, and that there are two so in the stag hunt, we can either

1486
01:30:49,160 --> 01:30:54,200
all work together to hunt stag, or um I can uh we can all hunt hair uh

1487
01:30:54,360 --> 01:30:55,320
individually.

1488
01:30:55,800 --> 01:30:59,400
Um and um and so there's a potential for a larger collective benefit.

1489
01:30:59,480 --> 01:31:03,160
We all get more food if we can work together to hunt stag, but we have this temptation to

1490
01:31:03,160 --> 01:31:07,880
just uh uh do the the low risk thing and just get hair by ourselves, and at least we'll

1491
01:31:07,880 --> 01:31:08,440
have some food.

1492
01:31:08,520 --> 01:31:12,040
But if I try to hunt stag and no one else joins me, then I get nothing.

1493
01:31:12,270 --> 01:31:17,070
And so we all we are all better off if we coordinate on the stag equilibria.

1494
01:31:17,390 --> 01:31:22,190
Um, and but the problem is that hair is also an equilibrium uh in that game.

1495
01:31:22,350 --> 01:31:26,030
Um and so uh so it's a it's a it's an interesting coordination game.

1496
01:31:26,110 --> 01:31:32,110
But what I think bravery is, or it might be, is uh the person who's

1497
01:31:32,110 --> 01:31:35,040
the first person to stick their neck out to go for stag, right?

1498
01:31:35,280 --> 01:31:38,560
Because they're providing uh uh basically a group service.

1499
01:31:38,720 --> 01:31:41,760
They're helping us coordinate on the better equilibrium between those two.

1500
01:31:41,840 --> 01:31:45,600
And you could think of you know an analogous situation, you know, if we're in a

1501
01:31:45,600 --> 01:31:48,080
totalitarian regime, it's a similar kind of stag hunt.

1502
01:31:48,160 --> 01:31:52,080
We could all work together to overthrow the regime, or we could privately kowtow to the

1503
01:31:52,080 --> 01:31:55,200
regime and you know, curry favor with them and gain our own private benefits.

1504
01:31:55,360 --> 01:31:59,440
Um and what what a brave person is, is they're a person who takes a stand against the

1505
01:31:59,440 --> 01:32:05,010
regime and tries to shift the equilibrium toward the more uh group beneficial uh one.

1506
01:32:05,330 --> 01:32:10,530
Um and and and you know the reason why we have we hold brave people to such high esteem is

1507
01:32:10,530 --> 01:32:11,970
because they're doing a kind of public good.

1508
01:32:12,130 --> 01:32:15,970
They're doing a service for the group to help us converge on the more group beneficial uh

1509
01:32:15,970 --> 01:32:16,930
equilibrium.

1510
01:32:17,330 --> 01:32:22,130
Anyway, that's just a uh at some point I had that that idea about that it might be cool to

1511
01:32:22,130 --> 01:32:23,410
formalize bravery in those terms.

1512
01:32:23,490 --> 01:32:25,650
Do you buy that or or is there something to that?

1513
01:32:28,210 --> 01:32:33,820
So again sounds sounds at first uh hearing at first very

1514
01:32:33,820 --> 01:32:39,580
plausible but i i've just anecdotally i have some some um

1515
01:32:40,460 --> 01:32:45,180
information for you on this one because i talked to a psychologist who was actually working

1516
01:32:45,180 --> 01:32:50,780
for the dutch military i think at that point neuroscientist slash psychologist he said well

1517
01:32:50,940 --> 01:32:55,740
it's it's not very difficult to select people on fearlessness right so you could also say

1518
01:32:55,900 --> 01:33:01,650
bravery is something like showing that you are not afraid of anything and he said

1519
01:33:02,210 --> 01:33:07,570
essentially we could like recruit only fearless people into the military but we don't do

1520
01:33:07,570 --> 01:33:07,730
this.

1521
01:33:07,970 --> 01:33:13,970
Oh wow because um being afraid is very important in

1522
01:33:13,970 --> 01:33:14,290
war.

1523
01:33:14,450 --> 01:33:14,690
Yeah.

1524
01:33:15,330 --> 01:33:21,090
So that you don't risk your life for the for the for the most um

1525
01:33:21,330 --> 01:33:23,010
like minuscule goal, right?

1526
01:33:23,090 --> 01:33:23,810
Just to show off.

1527
01:33:23,890 --> 01:33:23,970
Yeah.

1528
01:33:24,610 --> 01:33:29,650
But you really want soldiers to be able to calculate risks and benefits and only go for it

1529
01:33:29,650 --> 01:33:34,880
if the calculation is right and like don't overperceive small benefits and all these kinds

1530
01:33:34,880 --> 01:33:35,760
of things.

1531
01:33:36,160 --> 01:33:39,200
Um so Yeah, that's recklessness, right?

1532
01:33:39,280 --> 01:33:43,120
Like that's actually, I mean, that was part of the analysis for Anthony and I was sort of

1533
01:33:43,120 --> 01:33:45,920
that, yeah, or for me, like the that recklessness.

1534
01:33:46,080 --> 01:33:48,160
Yeah, you only have so much life.

1535
01:33:48,320 --> 01:33:49,280
You're not a cat.

1536
01:33:49,680 --> 01:33:50,320
Yeah, it's interesting.

1537
01:33:50,480 --> 01:33:55,450
I have the intuition that that a brave person is not someone who's fearless, but someone

1538
01:33:55,450 --> 01:33:57,690
who is afraid but does it anyway, right?

1539
01:33:57,850 --> 01:33:59,610
Does the brave thing despite their fear.

1540
01:34:01,530 --> 01:34:05,930
Yeah, but I think, David, that's really important because I also think it's sort of there's

1541
01:34:05,930 --> 01:34:11,770
also a a perspective shift in in bravery or in valor, which is that it's actually not

1542
01:34:11,770 --> 01:34:17,530
about the person doing it, but it's actually a third party holding up a

1543
01:34:17,600 --> 01:34:21,360
behavior of somebody did and say, do more of this.

1544
01:34:21,680 --> 01:34:22,000
Right.

1545
01:34:22,240 --> 01:34:27,840
So for from so from the perspective, it's almost like rhetoric or propaganda, sort of like,

1546
01:34:28,000 --> 01:34:32,240
look, let's hold up this behavior somebody did, do more of it.

1547
01:34:32,400 --> 01:34:37,200
So if you're like a military and somebody sort of like did something brave, the person on

1548
01:34:37,200 --> 01:34:39,440
the ground might have just been at the right place at the right time.

1549
01:34:39,600 --> 01:34:41,450
Like I'm not saying like people aren't brave.

1550
01:34:41,530 --> 01:34:43,130
There's incredible bravery in the world.

1551
01:34:43,210 --> 01:34:47,210
But but there's also situations where somebody's just like, Well, I'm in this situation.

1552
01:34:47,450 --> 01:34:48,650
What's the best thing to do?

1553
01:34:48,730 --> 01:34:49,610
And they do it.

1554
01:34:49,770 --> 01:34:54,570
And then the military sees the benefits of that or they put themselves at risk and they're

1555
01:34:54,570 --> 01:34:56,970
aware that other people weren't willing to do that.

1556
01:34:57,050 --> 01:35:01,210
And they just sort of like prop this up as do more of this.

1557
01:35:01,450 --> 01:35:06,620
So, David, it's exactly like this group coronation thing, but it's a more sort of cynical

1558
01:35:06,780 --> 01:35:12,380
take on it, which is we have this entry of like here, this person did something beneficial

1559
01:35:12,380 --> 01:35:14,620
to the group that was self-sacrificing.

1560
01:35:14,860 --> 01:35:18,940
And whether or not they liked doing it, whether or not they want to tell other people to do

1561
01:35:18,940 --> 01:35:20,860
it, we're gonna tell other people to do it.

1562
01:35:21,020 --> 01:35:24,220
And we're gonna tell people it was great and we're gonna reward it.

1563
01:35:24,380 --> 01:35:24,620
Right.

1564
01:35:24,810 --> 01:35:29,770
So it's like the same similar thing of like, if you do this too, we're gonna reward it too.

1565
01:35:29,930 --> 01:35:33,290
So it's so it's like rhetoric for sacrificing for the group.

1566
01:35:34,010 --> 01:35:38,250
I can I can really only recommend systematically reading these Medal of Honor citations

1567
01:35:38,330 --> 01:35:43,930
because you have the full spectrum of what has been awarded a medal for bravery there.

1568
01:35:44,250 --> 01:35:48,250
And there are some cases where you would immediately say, Okay, this is like the the super

1569
01:35:48,330 --> 01:35:53,840
brave, this is the typical scenario that you think of where somebody runs like into

1570
01:35:54,080 --> 01:36:00,000
enemy front lines just to rescue the injured comrade and he and takes him back um safe,

1571
01:36:00,080 --> 01:36:02,400
or maybe even dies doing this.

1572
01:36:02,720 --> 01:36:04,480
But there are also other cases.

1573
01:36:04,640 --> 01:36:10,640
This is from World War II, where I don't know the exact situation anymore, but

1574
01:36:10,640 --> 01:36:15,150
the setup was essentially: I'm an injured American soldier.

1575
01:36:15,310 --> 01:36:16,510
I cannot move anymore.

1576
01:36:16,670 --> 01:36:20,830
My my squad, my group wants to retreat because the Germans are coming.

1577
01:36:20,990 --> 01:36:23,310
I tell them, Well, you leave me behind here.

1578
01:36:23,390 --> 01:36:27,230
I'm gonna take this machine gun and like hold them back as long as I can.

1579
01:36:27,550 --> 01:36:33,390
And then I literally I remember almost literally the citation then read essentially,

1580
01:36:33,630 --> 01:36:38,990
when they returned to recover his body the next morning, they found 100 dead Germans lying

1581
01:36:38,990 --> 01:36:39,870
around his position.

1582
01:36:40,030 --> 01:36:40,190
Right.

1583
01:36:40,350 --> 01:36:41,630
I was like, whoa, okay.

1584
01:36:41,950 --> 01:36:45,380
So this guy really like went down fighting.

1585
01:36:45,540 --> 01:36:45,940
Yeah.

1586
01:36:46,180 --> 01:36:51,780
He got the medal posthumously for this, just like you would suggest, I think, for for other

1587
01:36:51,780 --> 01:36:55,300
people to see here's how you're supposed to die if you die.

1588
01:36:55,620 --> 01:36:56,020
Right?

1589
01:36:56,180 --> 01:37:02,020
So if you have to die, do it this way and don't just kill yourself or um don't just um

1590
01:37:02,020 --> 01:37:02,660
give up.

1591
01:37:02,900 --> 01:37:05,380
I mean, he could have easily just taken his own life, right?

1592
01:37:05,460 --> 01:37:09,790
So he could have been super afraid there's a battalion of Germans coming, and he just

1593
01:37:09,790 --> 01:37:14,510
anticipates that he has to die, so he wants to do it in a humane way.

1594
01:37:14,670 --> 01:37:18,030
No, but he just took the machine and held them off as long as possible.

1595
01:37:18,350 --> 01:37:18,670
Yeah.

1596
01:37:18,910 --> 01:37:22,750
And I just say too, just as you bring that up, and Hannes, you and I kind of laughed about

1597
01:37:22,750 --> 01:37:28,030
this, is that one thing I love about science in people and just groups, it's worth saying

1598
01:37:28,190 --> 01:37:30,350
is like, you know, my son was born in Berlin.

1599
01:37:30,430 --> 01:37:31,150
I'm an American.

1600
01:37:31,310 --> 01:37:34,030
We're Germans and Americans here.

1601
01:37:34,510 --> 01:37:40,360
Um, you know, if it was, if you rewinded the clock um you know decades ago, we would be in

1602
01:37:40,360 --> 01:37:42,600
a very different relationship than we are now.

1603
01:37:42,680 --> 01:37:43,960
We would have been fighting.

1604
01:37:44,120 --> 01:37:48,840
Um, and I think just one thing that's horrible about people is is that we do that.

1605
01:37:48,920 --> 01:37:54,920
But then also what's wonderful about people is that uh we group boundaries change

1606
01:37:55,000 --> 01:37:56,280
or relationships change.

1607
01:37:56,360 --> 01:38:00,920
And I just love the fact that, you know, Hannes, you and I reflected on like, you know, our

1608
01:38:00,920 --> 01:38:06,850
ancestors were on different sides, but um, you know, we have a lovely relationship, and

1609
01:38:06,930 --> 01:38:08,850
you know, my son was born in Berlin.

1610
01:38:09,010 --> 01:38:14,930
Um, and uh I just I just love um uh that that

1611
01:38:14,930 --> 01:38:20,610
group boundaries and relationships can change very, very strongly relatively

1612
01:38:20,610 --> 01:38:22,850
quickly, and that's like a nice lesson.

1613
01:38:23,010 --> 01:38:26,290
Um you know, for example, German and American.

1614
01:38:27,140 --> 01:38:32,420
I I I do tend to see the picture a bit more complex, even and would be thinking, well, even

1615
01:38:32,420 --> 01:38:36,740
if we had lived during those times, we might have been very constructively peer-reviewing

1616
01:38:36,740 --> 01:38:41,860
each other's academic papers while if you had pushed us onto the battlefield, essentially

1617
01:38:42,020 --> 01:38:43,140
would have shot at each other, right?

1618
01:38:43,300 --> 01:38:43,940
Yeah, yeah.

1619
01:38:44,100 --> 01:38:46,100
Um, who uh who was it?

1620
01:38:46,260 --> 01:38:49,140
It wasn't um one of the 10ologists.

1621
01:38:49,220 --> 01:38:55,110
Um, Conrad, no, wasn't Conrad Lorenz, it was maybe it was um wrote one of

1622
01:38:55,110 --> 01:39:00,950
the um one of the excellent things in uh a uh Russian gulag, like with bird

1623
01:39:00,950 --> 01:39:03,910
beaks, um, is incredible um things.

1624
01:39:03,990 --> 01:39:09,190
So yeah, just interesting, uh interesting real life sort of consequences.

1625
01:39:09,350 --> 01:39:13,030
But yeah, no, I that's a that's an interesting point, Hannes.

1626
01:39:13,270 --> 01:39:13,750
That's right.

1627
01:39:13,910 --> 01:39:19,510
That even in that situation, we might have had a sort of a multi-faceted

1628
01:39:19,600 --> 01:39:21,040
relationship with the groups.

1629
01:39:21,200 --> 01:39:21,520
Yeah.

1630
01:39:22,160 --> 01:39:25,920
And for me, like returning a little bit to what we discussed about the stability of

1631
01:39:25,920 --> 01:39:31,520
in-group favoritism, of course this is overstretching this one particular empirical result

1632
01:39:31,680 --> 01:39:32,480
that I have there.

1633
01:39:32,560 --> 01:39:38,480
And but I I I I tend to be inspired by it to think, well, if

1634
01:39:38,770 --> 01:39:43,330
one day the incentives force us to shoot at each other, that doesn't mean that it creates

1635
01:39:43,330 --> 01:39:47,250
such a hatred and hostility between us that the next day we wouldn't be able to discuss

1636
01:39:47,250 --> 01:39:48,770
academic stuff again, right?

1637
01:39:49,090 --> 01:39:49,570
Right.

1638
01:39:51,090 --> 01:39:52,690
Yeah, I think that's a flip side.

1639
01:39:52,770 --> 01:39:56,850
I think people have, especially people who haven't been through conflict, have this idea

1640
01:39:56,850 --> 01:40:02,530
that it's sort of a monster, like it's monsters who do these things.

1641
01:40:02,900 --> 01:40:07,380
And I think when you hear people talk, they're always shocked that somebody who is like

1642
01:40:07,460 --> 01:40:12,660
especially like in a genocide or a civil war, somebody who picked up a gun and shot at

1643
01:40:12,660 --> 01:40:17,540
people, you know, a decade or two decades later is just a normal person and might even be

1644
01:40:17,540 --> 01:40:21,940
interacting with the people that they were trying to kill.

1645
01:40:22,100 --> 01:40:25,620
And I think it's it's sort of an ambivalent thing because on the one hand it's sort of

1646
01:40:25,620 --> 01:40:29,130
like, well, anybody could do this, but it's exactly right, Hannes.

1647
01:40:29,610 --> 01:40:34,010
On the flip side, though, is that it makes it so it's not inevitable, right?

1648
01:40:35,050 --> 01:40:35,690
Yeah.

1649
01:40:38,890 --> 01:40:44,890
So I think in the paper at some point I write it shows us that in-group favoritism

1650
01:40:45,050 --> 01:40:47,770
is malleable for better or for worse.

1651
01:40:48,730 --> 01:40:54,600
And so you can you can make people enemies, but you can also repair that again,

1652
01:40:54,680 --> 01:40:55,320
hopefully.

1653
01:40:55,640 --> 01:40:55,960
Yeah.

1654
01:40:56,120 --> 01:41:02,120
So I guess maybe a lesson is be very careful about the people who are telling you who your

1655
01:41:02,120 --> 01:41:03,000
enemies are.

1656
01:41:03,320 --> 01:41:04,920
Yeah, that that of course.

1657
01:41:05,880 --> 01:41:09,880
This is just the evil leader holding up the coordination sign and saying, let's just gang

1658
01:41:09,880 --> 01:41:11,720
up on those people, don't trust those people.

1659
01:41:11,800 --> 01:41:11,960
Yeah.

1660
01:41:12,250 --> 01:41:12,490
Exactly.

1661
01:41:12,730 --> 01:41:12,890
Yeah.

1662
01:41:12,970 --> 01:41:14,250
I mean, bringing it full circle.

1663
01:41:14,330 --> 01:41:18,170
I mean, that that is itself a kind of exploitation, is the way we defined it, where you are

1664
01:41:18,330 --> 01:41:24,010
the leader is trying to demonize all the outside options to their leadership, um,

1665
01:41:24,170 --> 01:41:27,610
and in so doing is able better able to exploit their their followers.

1666
01:41:27,930 --> 01:41:28,170
Yeah.

1667
01:41:28,570 --> 01:41:28,730
Yeah.

1668
01:41:28,890 --> 01:41:30,490
Slight of hand sometimes, right?

1669
01:41:30,650 --> 01:41:36,010
Because there's also, as we talked about at the beginning too, it's also if you are being

1670
01:41:36,010 --> 01:41:41,500
exploited, uh, it's really not in the exploiter's interest to tell you that.

1671
01:41:41,660 --> 01:41:45,900
And maybe that's even in their interest to sort of like scapegoat another group, right?

1672
01:41:45,980 --> 01:41:50,700
So if I'm exploiting David, boy, it's in my interest to tell David that it's really honest

1673
01:41:50,860 --> 01:41:52,380
who's doing this to you.

1674
01:41:52,620 --> 01:41:57,980
And it comes back to this, it's cheaper to sort of fool somebody than like imprison them,

1675
01:41:58,060 --> 01:41:58,300
right?

1676
01:41:58,380 --> 01:42:00,140
Or like, you know, or fight them.

1677
01:42:00,300 --> 01:42:06,140
Uh so if I can sort of deceive David about why he's being exploited or who's doing

1678
01:42:06,140 --> 01:42:12,110
it, even if David has the time or energy or strength to fight, if I can convince him

1679
01:42:12,110 --> 01:42:17,150
he the about the wrong villain, then I don't incur any of the cost.

1680
01:42:17,230 --> 01:42:20,110
And so that should be especially important design too.

1681
01:42:20,190 --> 01:42:20,430
Yeah.

1682
01:42:20,750 --> 01:42:20,830
Yeah.

1683
01:42:20,910 --> 01:42:21,390
It's interesting.

1684
01:42:21,470 --> 01:42:26,030
I mean, there have been lots of you know false flag operations throughout history where um

1685
01:42:26,030 --> 01:42:31,300
a regime will stage an attack in order to uh galvanize oppon opposition to a group and it

1686
01:42:31,460 --> 01:42:33,300
it it harkens back to exactly this logic.

1687
01:42:33,380 --> 01:42:38,500
It's often even cheaper to stage an elaborate false flag than it is to actually um

1688
01:42:38,740 --> 01:42:41,300
coercively force someone to do your bidding.

1689
01:42:41,380 --> 01:42:44,580
Um even when the deception is very costly it's still often cheaper.

1690
01:42:45,860 --> 01:42:46,340
Yeah.

1691
01:42:46,740 --> 01:42:50,580
Hannes we always ask is there anything that we should have asked you?

1692
01:42:53,540 --> 01:42:57,310
Um I mean, you're the hosts, right?

1693
01:42:57,470 --> 01:43:00,030
So by definition, yeah.

1694
01:43:00,190 --> 01:43:01,790
Yeah, that's the um.

1695
01:43:02,030 --> 01:43:07,390
I mean, can you talk a little bit about how did you come across evolutionary uh stuff?

1696
01:43:08,510 --> 01:43:09,630
Lucky coincidence.

1697
01:43:09,710 --> 01:43:13,790
So I had a very, very, very inspiring professor in philosophy.

1698
01:43:14,350 --> 01:43:17,150
And Gerhard Foulmer is his name.

1699
01:43:17,580 --> 01:43:23,420
And he is well known in the German landscape, philosophy landscape, for

1700
01:43:23,420 --> 01:43:26,460
bringing evolutionary ideas into epistemology.

1701
01:43:26,620 --> 01:43:29,900
So he wrote a book called Evolutionary Epistemology.

1702
01:43:30,220 --> 01:43:35,740
And he was someone who trained me right from the beginning of my studies, actually, to see

1703
01:43:35,900 --> 01:43:40,860
every type of human behavior through evolutionary angles.

1704
01:43:41,970 --> 01:43:47,810
and maybe a bit too much so right um but um this is

1705
01:43:47,890 --> 01:43:53,170
this is where i got in in in contact first with that and i i just was like

1706
01:43:53,810 --> 01:43:59,810
primed by it and never stopped thinking this way with with a little grain of salt because

1707
01:43:59,970 --> 01:44:05,890
the more I'm into economics now so I switched fields around I don't know after my first

1708
01:44:05,890 --> 01:44:10,660
PhD And in

1709
01:44:10,660 --> 01:44:15,460
economics, evolutionary thinking is relatively underdeveloped.

1710
01:44:15,700 --> 01:44:21,540
It was a thing in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and there's some really good work still being

1711
01:44:21,540 --> 01:44:23,540
done, and also from back in the days.

1712
01:44:23,860 --> 01:44:28,740
But economists tend to think more in terms of social norms, for example.

1713
01:44:28,820 --> 01:44:32,500
So rational behavior, of course, incentives and rational behavior, that's the baseline.

1714
01:44:32,740 --> 01:44:38,690
But then also social norms and how people like came up with institutions that

1715
01:44:38,690 --> 01:44:42,610
then govern how they should be doing things, and part of those are social norms.

1716
01:44:43,090 --> 01:44:48,610
And I think this very interesting like domain where you think about I I

1717
01:44:48,930 --> 01:44:54,850
still am complete completely by the brain as a developed, how

1718
01:44:54,850 --> 01:44:58,850
you always say it, like a like an evolved machine that helps you make sense of stuff and

1719
01:44:58,850 --> 01:45:01,170
behave in the world, completely by this.

1720
01:45:01,570 --> 01:45:06,080
But there's there's an additional layer of information that goes into this machine, which

1721
01:45:06,080 --> 01:45:07,200
is norms, of course.

1722
01:45:08,640 --> 01:45:13,920
Um I I think these norms can have and the evolution or the development

1723
01:45:14,160 --> 01:45:20,160
dynamics of institutions over time, they can live a life of them of their own a little

1724
01:45:20,160 --> 01:45:24,480
bit, not completely detached from the requirements of the machine of the brain.

1725
01:45:24,640 --> 01:45:24,800
Yeah.

1726
01:45:25,280 --> 01:45:29,200
Also the incentives that you have when you have people interacting in economies or in

1727
01:45:29,440 --> 01:45:30,480
countries.

1728
01:45:30,880 --> 01:45:36,850
Um but when you take the evolutionary perspective

1729
01:45:36,850 --> 01:45:42,610
and overly do so, then you might like reduce the importance of norms and

1730
01:45:42,610 --> 01:45:47,010
institutions a bit too much, in my view now.

1731
01:45:47,170 --> 01:45:53,090
So I got quite interested in this like getting rid or not getting rid, but

1732
01:45:53,090 --> 01:45:58,530
just ignoring, abstracting away from the underlying evolved functionality of the brain a

1733
01:45:58,530 --> 01:46:04,300
little bit, and then just seeing where you can get in terms of expla explanatory value just

1734
01:46:04,300 --> 01:46:05,980
with norms and institutions.

1735
01:46:06,300 --> 01:46:06,620
Right.

1736
01:46:06,860 --> 01:46:12,140
And um this is also, I mean, this is this is also what I what I like doing now.

1737
01:46:12,860 --> 01:46:16,540
But I haven't forgotten about evolutionary underpinnings of everything.

1738
01:46:16,620 --> 01:46:22,300
So yeah, I think you've recapitulated sort of the cultural evolution and adaptationist sort

1739
01:46:22,300 --> 01:46:25,900
of thing, where it's it's sort of we talk, you know, it's sort of you can have a, as

1740
01:46:25,900 --> 01:46:31,010
Christina Moya would put it, it's sort of not a strong commitment, but it's just sort of

1741
01:46:31,010 --> 01:46:33,250
like a heuristic, right?

1742
01:46:33,490 --> 01:46:37,970
Where it's you can simplify or even just ignore the psychology and just assume sort of

1743
01:46:38,050 --> 01:46:43,090
people are rational, and then just ask the question of given rationality, um, what would uh

1744
01:46:43,250 --> 01:46:47,890
what kinds of norms would stabilize given interest dynamics and agent based dynamics,

1745
01:46:47,970 --> 01:46:48,210
right?

1746
01:46:48,290 --> 01:46:52,370
And it's sort of beyond the level of what's called individual or methodological

1747
01:46:52,370 --> 01:46:55,410
individualism, which is just jargon for just studying the individual person.

1748
01:46:55,570 --> 01:47:00,680
Um, but then at a certain point, rationality, if you unpack it, is a Q-based evolved

1749
01:47:00,680 --> 01:47:00,840
system.

1750
01:47:00,920 --> 01:47:03,720
And so the more you know about one, the more you can know about the other.

1751
01:47:03,960 --> 01:47:05,640
So no, I think that's that's right.

1752
01:47:05,720 --> 01:47:11,640
And I I that's um you've you've recapitulated, I think, a very deep and fundamental

1753
01:47:11,960 --> 01:47:13,240
historical point.

1754
01:47:13,400 --> 01:47:18,840
Um, and you know, to your credit, you're sort of um articulating it even in your own work.

1755
01:47:18,920 --> 01:47:19,560
Yeah.

1756
01:47:20,680 --> 01:47:20,920
Yeah.

1757
01:47:21,110 --> 01:47:24,550
No, uh the way I see it is j is different levels of analysis.

1758
01:47:24,710 --> 01:47:29,110
It's one thing to understand an individual human mind and how it's structured and how it

1759
01:47:29,110 --> 01:47:29,430
works.

1760
01:47:29,590 --> 01:47:33,430
It's quite another thing to put uh a bunch of human minds together and see how they

1761
01:47:33,430 --> 01:47:34,550
interact over time.

1762
01:47:34,710 --> 01:47:39,510
And in that case, you get uh you know a different level of analysis, you get the population

1763
01:47:39,510 --> 01:47:45,030
level of analysis, which can often lead to um wild, chaotic, random things

1764
01:47:45,030 --> 01:47:49,860
emerging, um, through the interaction of of these different minds that are sensitive to

1765
01:47:50,100 --> 01:47:51,140
different variables.

1766
01:47:51,220 --> 01:47:55,540
Um and uh yeah, and at times it can even take on a life of its own, which which we might

1767
01:47:55,540 --> 01:48:00,820
call cultural evolution, we might call um you know institutional history or or or something

1768
01:48:00,820 --> 01:48:01,300
like that.

1769
01:48:01,540 --> 01:48:02,900
But um yeah.

1770
01:48:03,300 --> 01:48:05,380
Yeah, I think it's also gotten better.

1771
01:48:05,540 --> 01:48:09,460
I mean, at least in the evolutionary behavioral sciences, I think our generations have

1772
01:48:09,460 --> 01:48:10,420
gotten better.

1773
01:48:10,660 --> 01:48:14,670
I mean, I think it was there were some necessary battles in the previous generations, but

1774
01:48:14,670 --> 01:48:18,430
at least in the evolutionary behavioral sciences, I think most of us sort of understand

1775
01:48:18,430 --> 01:48:19,870
that they're not in conflict.

1776
01:48:19,950 --> 01:48:22,190
You know, I don't know how it is in economics still.

1777
01:48:22,350 --> 01:48:23,070
Like, I don't know.

1778
01:48:23,150 --> 01:48:27,070
I I mean, I know there was a character of economics that's sort of it's very rational.

1779
01:48:27,230 --> 01:48:30,030
And like, you know, there's like a little person in the head, and you're not allowed to say

1780
01:48:30,030 --> 01:48:30,990
there's evolved design.

1781
01:48:31,070 --> 01:48:36,640
And I know you again, as you said before, you don't want to paint a whole community in one

1782
01:48:36,640 --> 01:48:39,920
broad brush and say all economists think this way.

1783
01:48:40,320 --> 01:48:45,280
And there's certainly like you and other people, evolutionary economists or sophisticated

1784
01:48:45,280 --> 01:48:47,520
economists who think about the psychology.

1785
01:48:47,680 --> 01:48:49,280
But I think it's gotten better.

1786
01:48:49,520 --> 01:48:52,720
But what I don't know, what's your take on us in economics?

1787
01:48:52,960 --> 01:48:57,120
Or is that a false question because it's not a unitary field?

1788
01:48:57,600 --> 01:49:03,270
Yeah, of course it's it would be overgeneralizing to say all

1789
01:49:03,750 --> 01:49:08,310
economists think of people as purely rational or purely irrational or what have you.

1790
01:49:09,270 --> 01:49:15,110
But I think part of the part of the answer to

1791
01:49:15,110 --> 01:49:19,750
why economists focus on different aspects is also because they're interested in different

1792
01:49:19,750 --> 01:49:20,230
questions.

1793
01:49:20,710 --> 01:49:25,750
It's just one of the main economic questions is how do we need to design institutions in

1794
01:49:25,750 --> 01:49:31,000
order them to it like enforce collective behavior that is

1795
01:49:31,000 --> 01:49:36,600
efficient and optimal with respect to certain criteria that we can define ourselves.

1796
01:49:36,680 --> 01:49:36,840
Right.

1797
01:49:37,000 --> 01:49:42,120
So we could also ask the question as an economic research question, how do we need to

1798
01:49:42,120 --> 01:49:47,000
design a redistribution, an institution that redistributions that

1799
01:49:47,000 --> 01:49:52,680
redistributes um wealth and resources in a society for everybody to accept that

1800
01:49:52,680 --> 01:49:55,640
institution and consider it fair to some degree.

1801
01:49:56,210 --> 01:50:00,770
It's a question that you can work on using economic methodology.

1802
01:50:01,810 --> 01:50:07,170
And you need to in order to to to to like

1803
01:50:07,730 --> 01:50:11,890
really work on it, you probably need a good understanding of what fairness is, what people

1804
01:50:11,890 --> 01:50:12,850
perceive as fair.

1805
01:50:12,930 --> 01:50:17,410
And there again you enter the realm of psychology and all the evolutionary um things become

1806
01:50:17,410 --> 01:50:18,610
relevant again.

1807
01:50:19,040 --> 01:50:24,960
But yeah, so I think it's it's not in do or die either, or it's really just

1808
01:50:25,040 --> 01:50:29,840
um if you want to design institutions that achieve a certain type of behavior, you can do

1809
01:50:29,840 --> 01:50:31,680
that without thinking about the underlying thing.

1810
01:50:31,760 --> 01:50:34,640
You can just try it out and see what works.

1811
01:50:34,880 --> 01:50:40,800
Um or you can do it in a more informed uh way and then try to understand what people really

1812
01:50:40,800 --> 01:50:42,480
perceive as fair and so on.

1813
01:50:42,560 --> 01:50:43,840
So yeah.

1814
01:50:44,810 --> 01:50:45,050
Yeah.

1815
01:50:46,250 --> 01:50:46,490
Yeah.

1816
01:50:47,690 --> 01:50:52,650
The reason actually why or why I would say I like economics so much is that we have the

1817
01:50:52,650 --> 01:50:56,330
formal language that allows us to model all these kinds of questions.

1818
01:50:56,970 --> 01:51:01,290
It's not that we're the better psychologists or that we're the better sociologists or so.

1819
01:51:01,370 --> 01:51:06,570
It's just um the methodology is a bit more sharp, I would say.

1820
01:51:06,730 --> 01:51:07,050
Yeah.

1821
01:51:07,320 --> 01:51:10,120
Which can be an advantage or a disadvantage.

1822
01:51:10,200 --> 01:51:15,080
But I could tell you about this because like putting everything into maths also doesn't

1823
01:51:15,080 --> 01:51:16,120
solve all the problems.

1824
01:51:16,280 --> 01:51:19,640
It's just makes communication sharper and clearer.

1825
01:51:21,320 --> 01:51:26,600
But I do like economics a lot because of this, because it's possible at least to do this.

1826
01:51:27,890 --> 01:51:32,930
Yeah, no, I'm I'm a fan of of the discipline as well, and uh and you know wish there were

1827
01:51:33,010 --> 01:51:36,210
more integration between economics and and evolutionary psychology.

1828
01:51:36,370 --> 01:51:42,130
Uh and I I I also like the the precision that um formalizing things allows you to achieve.

1829
01:51:42,210 --> 01:51:47,650
Uh if if if you don't try, at least make the the attempt to formalize your

1830
01:51:47,650 --> 01:51:52,260
intuitions, then um then your communication is just going to be uh way less precise.

1831
01:51:52,340 --> 01:51:56,980
And I think you're gonna achieve fewer and deeper insights uh than if you if you really

1832
01:51:56,980 --> 01:52:00,500
tried to think hard about you know how you're defining things in a way that you could even

1833
01:52:00,660 --> 01:52:04,020
you could translate it into into a number or or a parameter.

1834
01:52:04,260 --> 01:52:09,780
Um also makes it, by the way, easier to see if something has been worked on before.

1835
01:52:10,180 --> 01:52:15,970
So if if your research question and your modeling approach converges to something to

1836
01:52:16,130 --> 01:52:20,130
like a formula or a model that's out there in the literature already, then you directly

1837
01:52:20,130 --> 01:52:22,850
see, ah, okay, I you I'm using different labels.

1838
01:52:22,930 --> 01:52:25,330
So my Tische Stuhle Bierseide, right?

1839
01:52:25,410 --> 01:52:29,250
So I'm using different different labels there, but the question seems to be the same.

1840
01:52:29,330 --> 01:52:34,210
And then you can just more easily draw on the existing knowledge without having to reinvent

1841
01:52:34,210 --> 01:52:34,930
everything.

1842
01:52:35,330 --> 01:52:35,970
Yeah.

1843
01:52:36,320 --> 01:52:41,280
Yeah, I think Deanne Conroey Beam has a talk about evolutionary approaches and

1844
01:52:41,280 --> 01:52:41,920
formalization.

1845
01:52:42,000 --> 01:52:43,600
Maybe we can have a group talk.

1846
01:52:43,840 --> 01:52:49,760
I can I can be on the side of uh formalization, swimalization, but I

1847
01:52:49,760 --> 01:52:54,480
don't I don't actually think that, but I do think there's like I've there there's a it can

1848
01:52:54,480 --> 01:52:55,920
be gamed like anything else, you know.

1849
01:52:56,000 --> 01:52:59,990
And I think there's sort of like you you it's just like any other tool you know you gotta

1850
01:52:59,990 --> 01:53:04,310
use it in the right way for the right purpose and yeah but uh yeah yeah I I obviously I

1851
01:53:04,310 --> 01:53:05,830
don't disagree with this this part.

1852
01:53:05,990 --> 01:53:06,630
Yeah.

1853
01:53:07,350 --> 01:53:13,030
Well uh Hannes, I think we're coming up on the end here, but um you know I I will say that

1854
01:53:13,110 --> 01:53:16,390
uh you are just doing such incredibly important work.

1855
01:53:16,550 --> 01:53:22,550
Um and I just love how thorough and logical it is and I just to your credit, I mean even

1856
01:53:22,550 --> 01:53:27,260
just this conversation, it's gotten me thinking so much about um every time I talk to you,

1857
01:53:27,340 --> 01:53:29,180
I'm just excited about science.

1858
01:53:29,420 --> 01:53:34,540
Um, and I think studying a really important real-world thing with that level of

1859
01:53:34,540 --> 01:53:35,980
formalization, I think is really hard.

1860
01:53:36,060 --> 01:53:41,020
And I think you have a real knack for um for combining those two in a way that I think most

1861
01:53:41,020 --> 01:53:42,780
of us really struggle with.

1862
01:53:42,940 --> 01:53:45,020
So you're thank you for doing that.

1863
01:53:45,100 --> 01:53:49,580
Um, it's a you're you're very um special and talented at doing that.

1864
01:53:50,090 --> 01:53:55,130
Thank you so much for A having me and for B running the podcast because I think it's it's

1865
01:53:55,290 --> 01:54:01,130
really a valuable contribution to the evolutionary psychology

1866
01:54:01,530 --> 01:54:02,250
community.

1867
01:54:02,410 --> 01:54:08,010
And also like I think it fills it fills a gap that I was always like um

1868
01:54:08,410 --> 01:54:11,050
aware of, but never really found a good way to fill.

1869
01:54:11,290 --> 01:54:15,040
So I was always thinking it would be nice to have a format which is called fireplace

1870
01:54:15,040 --> 01:54:18,400
conversations with interesting researcher A or B or C, right?

1871
01:54:18,640 --> 01:54:19,760
This is exactly what you're doing.

1872
01:54:19,840 --> 01:54:21,200
So I I like it a lot.

1873
01:54:21,520 --> 01:54:22,080
Yeah.

1874
01:54:22,400 --> 01:54:24,400
We have to work on the fireplace.

1875
01:54:24,720 --> 01:54:25,040
Yeah.

1876
01:54:25,200 --> 01:54:28,000
Maybe we should get some fake fireplace backgrounds behind us.

1877
01:54:28,560 --> 01:54:30,640
Some some some soundtrack.

1878
01:54:30,880 --> 01:54:35,360
Um uh yeah, but um no, no, no, but Hannes, yeah, no, thank you so much.

1879
01:54:35,440 --> 01:54:36,640
And thank you for being interesting.

1880
01:54:36,720 --> 01:54:37,680
I mean, that's the hardest part.

1881
01:54:37,760 --> 01:54:42,250
The fire is easy, the interesting uh researcher D or H in this case.

1882
01:54:42,410 --> 01:54:42,650
Yeah.

1883
01:54:42,970 --> 01:54:43,530
Yeah.

1884
01:54:43,930 --> 01:54:45,930
Uh but yeah, thank you so much again, Hannes.

1885
01:54:46,010 --> 01:54:51,530
And again, I would just want to plug for um, you know, uh if you're looking at for

1886
01:54:51,850 --> 01:54:57,530
interesting um uh context to work in, I really want to stress the Max Planck

1887
01:54:57,770 --> 01:55:03,770
uh institute and um Hannes, I think if there's any justice in the world, maybe you'll get a

1888
01:55:03,770 --> 01:55:05,370
permanent directorship someday.

1889
01:55:05,680 --> 01:55:10,800
So if if the MPG is listening, please consider Hanus for for one.

1890
01:55:11,920 --> 01:55:12,960
Thank you so much, David.

1891
01:55:13,040 --> 01:55:15,520
I mean and and a and a medal of honor too while we're in it.

1892
01:55:17,440 --> 01:55:18,160
No, no.

1893
01:55:19,200 --> 01:55:21,120
Maybe just to advertise for the society.

1894
01:55:21,200 --> 01:55:26,000
I mean, we currently have a the society currently has a call out for um group leader

1895
01:55:26,000 --> 01:55:26,480
positions.

1896
01:55:26,560 --> 01:55:31,280
So if you think this could be something for you, go to the website, Max Planck Society, and

1897
01:55:31,280 --> 01:55:32,560
check it out, apply.

1898
01:55:33,030 --> 01:55:33,350
Yeah.

1899
01:55:33,590 --> 01:55:38,550
It's a it's an incredible institution in the broad sense of the word, and also

1900
01:55:38,550 --> 01:55:42,470
specifically, and there's lots of different MPIs, lots of different places.

1901
01:55:42,630 --> 01:55:48,470
And uh it's a lovely uh place uh where research and deep thinking

1902
01:55:48,630 --> 01:55:54,630
and novel thinking that pushes boundaries is valued for real, which is lovely so and rare.

1903
01:55:54,790 --> 01:55:56,550
So thank you, Johannes, for being on.

1904
01:55:56,630 --> 01:55:59,350
Thank you for doing the work you're doing, and thanks for your time.

1905
01:55:59,670 --> 01:56:01,190
Thanks for having me.

1906
01:56:06,020 --> 01:56:10,500
David, if you enjoyed this episode, well, first, David, did you enjoy this episode?

1907
01:56:10,980 --> 01:56:11,700
I had a great time.

1908
01:56:11,780 --> 01:56:12,580
I learned a lot.

1909
01:56:12,820 --> 01:56:13,380
I love this.

1910
01:56:13,620 --> 01:56:18,420
I had so I uh you know, this is I I'm happier after being part of this episode.

1911
01:56:18,500 --> 01:56:22,660
So um and if you feel that way, then uh please keep listening.

1912
01:56:22,740 --> 01:56:24,820
Uh please leave a positive review.

1913
01:56:24,980 --> 01:56:30,020
Um, and you know, just yeah, uh honestly just spread the word um so that more and more

1914
01:56:30,020 --> 01:56:31,220
people are listening.

1915
01:56:31,450 --> 01:56:37,370
And um, if you want to also, you know, we have a Patreon and send send us or,

1916
01:56:37,450 --> 01:56:41,050
you know, a a more wealthy friend of yours than you are our way.

1917
01:56:41,370 --> 01:56:41,610
Yeah.

1918
01:56:41,770 --> 01:56:41,930
Yeah.

1919
01:56:42,090 --> 01:56:42,970
Do all of those things.

1920
01:56:43,130 --> 01:56:44,330
Leave us a kind review.

1921
01:56:44,410 --> 01:56:49,050
And uh since this episode was about exploitation, I will say that all those other podcasts

1922
01:56:49,050 --> 01:56:49,850
really suck.

1923
01:56:49,930 --> 01:56:52,250
We're the only one that you should listen to.

1924
01:56:52,490 --> 01:56:53,130
Yeah.

1925
01:56:54,680 --> 01:56:56,920
Uh see you all next week.