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David, um, we have been uh away from the podcast for a little bit.

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So let's see if like we're better or worse at doing our our introduction here.

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My name is David Petrozowski.

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And my name is David Pinsoff.

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And what is this?

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It is a podcast about evolutionary psychology called

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Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast.

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With a parentheses in it, the tagline is Actual Evolutionary Psychology.

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By actual evolutionary psychologists.

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Wow, we did it.

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David, uh did you ever play Follow the Leader as a kid?

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Uh I am familiar with the game.

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I'm I've I've actually forgot how how it works.

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Is it just you do what the person says?

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Is that how it works?

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Um it's pretty straightforward.

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There's a leader and a follower, and the leader just randomly does stuff, and the

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follower just sort of does it um back.

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Oh, that's a pretty simple game.

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That's simpler than I thought.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Okay.

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Well, I or you can draw it out.

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I can draw it out, I can like diagram the whole thing later.

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But okay.

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Well, it seems like um we play that game all the time, every day.

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And we have a wonderful uh guest with us today by the name of Zach Garfield, who is an

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expert in this leader follower game and why we evolved to play this game with one another.

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And it's not exactly uh what you might think, you know.

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Like I think a lot of people have this like idea of what a leader and a follower are, or

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like what it is.

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And I think this discussion with Zach is a good example of taking an evolutionary approach

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to a known thing like leadership and sort of making it a little stranger than we might

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think.

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And so if you think you know what leadership is, um, listen to this, uh, stay tuned because

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you might not.

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Yes, absolutely.

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And Zach has a lot of um uh rich knowledge to share with us uh uh about the cultural

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variation and the cultural uh universality of leadership.

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Uh and he brings a lot of insights to what leadership is, and I I think in a in in a

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somewhat surprising way.

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I think it changed the way I think of leadership, uh, and uh I think it will change the way

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you think about leadership.

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Yeah, and there's not much more better than you can say about a scientist than they change

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the way you think.

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And uh just wanna give a shout out to um him collaborating with Luke Glocky on the Omo

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Valley Research Project, which is super cool.

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And he'll talk more about that in the episode as well.

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And we'll have Luke on um in the near future too.

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So yeah, without further ado, enjoy Zach Garfield leadership and David, yeah, we'll we'll

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I'll we'll talk after this about um follow the leader.

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Sounds good.

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I will follow you.

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Enjoy.

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Uh today we have Dr.

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Zach Garfield.

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Um and Zach, where were you uh prior to where you are now and where are you now?

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Yeah, so I'm I'm currently in robots in Morocco at the University of Mohammed Six

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Polytechnic.

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I can tell you a little bit more about this university.

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But before that, I was at the Institute for Venice Study in Toulouse.

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So in Toulouse, France.

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It's an interdisciplinary institute that's housed within the Toulouse School of Economics.

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And so it's sort of the brainchild of Jean Tirole, a Nobel laureate economist, who

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wanted to really bring this interdisciplinarity uh to to Toulouse and it's really an

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amazing institute.

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So I mean anyone who's looking for postdocs, you should definitely apply there.

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A lot of economists and political scientists and anthropologists and psychologists.

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It's really just a beautiful center.

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Yeah I the is IAT what is it the abbreviation?

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IAS T.

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I A S T.

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Yeah, there was a um a conference there.

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Maybe it was EB or uh one of them.

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And I visited Toulouse.

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And uh in keeping with France, my experience of France, uh I went uh

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with some other fellow evolutionary behavioral scientists to what looked like a a home

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kitchen, which was a restaurant, and they were like, Well, we don't really have a lot, but

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we'll throw something together, and it was like the best meal of my life.

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Uh, and uh and it was like you know, ten euros or something like that for like all three of

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us or something.

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So yeah.

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So uh Toulouse is lovely.

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I highly recommend visiting.

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Yeah, it was a great four years.

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And yeah, as the as the postdocs you get to go on dinners with lots of the visiting

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scholars.

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It's just like a continuing, you know, rotation of some of the most impressive and

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interesting scholars across the social sciences, and you get many, you know, very lovely

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dinners along the way too.

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So it's yeah, and that's that's a that's a lovely segue into something you study, which

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is cooperation, sharing of food, leadership,

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whether leaders are disproportionately generous compared to other members of the group.

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So do you think that the sharing of food plays a pivotal role in

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human social status or leadership?

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I mean, yeah, for sure.

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I mean, if you if you go through a lot of ethnography, um feasts, feasting, this is a huge

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mechanism by which people um you know build reputations and like basically

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build social asymmetries.

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And it's sort of a there's sort of two dynamics.

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It's generous, so it's actually a good thing.

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It's pro-social.

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Especially if you don't have food storage, you can sort of store you know your excess in

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the belly of your neighbor.

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So you expect that return maybe at some point in the future.

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But at the same time you also build up this this asymmetry, this status, this capacity to

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to share.

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And it's I think this is an interesting example because it also highlights that you

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something like, especially in subsistence-based societies, something like physical

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formidability, you know, if you're able to just work harder in the field or hunt more,

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we often think of this as being like a capacity for coercion, which obviously it could be

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if you're just mightier and stronger and people are afraid of you.

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But it also means you can like do all these very pro-social things, generating resources,

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share, and you know, build this pattern of indebtedness and influence by basically making

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people happy.

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So I think sharing and and building these surplus of calories and distributing them is a is

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a really interesting dynamic by how which um you know status hierarchies can emerge.

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Polly Wiesner has written a lot about this.

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There's a there's a great book called Food and the Status Quest um that brings together a

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lot of archaeologists and ethnographers who who focus really heavily on this topic.

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Hmm.

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So do you think, I mean, you mentioned that uh making people happy is a good way to gain

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status or to rise politically within a society?

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Um is that the only way to rise politically?

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I mean, you know, Machiavelli famously said that you can, you know, influence people

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through love or through fear, and often doing both is the best strategy.

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Is there both love and fear in in the strategy of a leader, or is it is it more

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of the former and less of the latter?

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How do you view the the the trade-off between trying to make people happy versus trying to

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intimidate people and keep them in their place?

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Right.

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Um so I mean it really depends on the ecology and like what are the outside options that

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people have.

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Um I mean, your listeners might recall you I you know you Chris von Ruden talked about the

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reverse dominance hierarchy.

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So this is the idea that you know if people have the capacity to really resist the you know

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coercive propensities of any status-seeking individual or leader that changes the dynamic,

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um, if there's equal access to weaponry or people can you know pack up and leave.

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Um, but your question I think is really interesting, and I've been thinking a lot about

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this uh because we often think about these sort of two opposing strategies.

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And I'm working on writing some stuff about this right now and have a recent paper thinking

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about this.

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And I'm not exactly sure why this is, but if you look through literature, you know, movies,

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film, we see a lot of these like good versus evil, hero versus villain, um, the prince

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versus even um Machiavelli has written about the importance of virtue and trust in

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some other writings.

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You know, Tolstoy, all these influential sort of discussions of status and leadership seem

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to like have this binary, diametrically opposed strategy that seems to really resonate

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with a lot of our subjective thinking about leadership and status.

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So I don't know exactly why that is, but as I looked more at like the ethnographic record

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and the sort of wide range of diversity of discussions of status and leadership,

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we saw more and more that you could see evidence of these two different strategies, but

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they overlapped much more than sort of the standard sort of two styles or dual

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model theory would predict.

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And so I think your question is interesting because yes, it does often take some element of

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fear and love, so to speak, to use those Machiavellian phrases, or as we are kind of

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casting it, which isn't just our approach, but a lot of people in our field are looking at

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the benefit generation and cost and pos imposition.

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And so if you can generate benefits via maybe making potential free riders be afraid of

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punishment, or generate benefits by calorie generation, calorie surplus,

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organizing cooperation, that is going to be an effective strategy.

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But it's always dependent upon what the sort of ecology is, what potential followers or

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other community members have as outside options, and then what your role can accomplish

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given the demands of the group in that particular context.

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So it seems like it's it's almost a sunnier view of leadership than you might expect from,

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say, a Machiavelli, and that the ability of leaders to gain a following through pure fear

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or through pure intimidation and force and coercion is really not very common or very

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plausible.

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And that you often need to have a strong benefit conferral component to rising in

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status or power within any community.

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Would you agree with that assessment that the the dominance and fear and coercion aspect of

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it is overrated?

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I mean, I would agree in general, but it still depends on the ecology.

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There are certain contexts where followers just don't have outside options.

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They they need to be within the group.

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And even though they're you know subjected to lots of cost and tyranny, and there is

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obviously not optimal for them, they just don't have the ability to break off and leave.

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Um so in that context, if you can sort of maintain some equilibrium of very aggressive,

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domineering type leadership, and it's good for you, maybe your family, and those who are

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suffering can't really do anything about it, then that might be quite stable.

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Um, but I think on the whole, if you look across a wide range of human societies, um,

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including more stratified and more egalitarian, um, a more pro-social style of leadership

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does seem to be the more effective in the long term.

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Um, because if individuals have an opportunity to band together, you know, to resist, to,

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if they have outside options, they're gonna be looking for those opportunities.

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So if you're if you're not producing net benefits for the constituents in the long run,

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that's obviously not going to be as stable as if if you are.

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So I've I have a a question that I've been pondering a lot.

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So you mentioned the pro-social style of leadership versus more of the uh dominance style

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of leadership.

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What about having your cake and eating it?

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What about having a dominance style of leadership that masquerades as a pro-social

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style of leadership?

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That is, it is a kind of dominance or coercion or in some cases violence that is

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justified with an ideology, with a mythology, with a set of rationalizations,

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um, that uh frames the dominance as for the good of the person being dominated.

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Uh history is littered with these kinds of justifications, these kinds of ideologies and

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mythologies, uh, the belief systems, you know, I could the most common and obvious ones

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would be the divine right of kings, you know, karma, uh justifying caste systems.

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Um, but I could go on all day.

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So, what do you think is the role in human evolution of the fear-based strategy that

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masquerades as the love-based strategy?

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Yeah, this is super interesting.

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I mean, I'm curious to hear if you have other like examples we can talk about.

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Um people like Timothy Earle have talked about how chiefs come to power.

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So if we assume that, you know, thinking about subsistence-based societies,

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hunter-gatherers, horticulturalists, at some point there's intensification of the economic

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base and also of the sort of sociopolitical structure.

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And it seems that chiefs, so a chiefdom, is when there's sort of a hereditary

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institutionalized leadership structure where the leader often has like absolute authority.

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All the resources of the community get funneled into basically the chief who then

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distributes them accordingly to various norms and other obligations.

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And you can have like nested chiefdoms.

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So you might have like a chiefdom where the chief's boss is, you know, what's called the

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paramount chief.

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Um, so these systems tend to be very hierarchical, very coercive.

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And if you read the ethnography, some of these chiefs are just like maniacal,

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megalomaniaus.

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They would just you know decimate followers sometimes.

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Like sometimes there's there's all sorts of very gruesome uh stories of their of their of

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their authority.

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But what it seems to be is that first you have to control somehow the economic base.

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And then what seems to happen is that they are able to leverage that control into

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ideological control and also controlling like the the the military, um the sort of physical

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force.

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So if you have this sort of warrior class of young men who you have control over, you also

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control the economics.

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Then you sort of start to control this ideology too.

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And then I think this gives rise to you know these sort of uh state societies like you

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know, Incas or Mayans, where you have this sort of sun god type leader.

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And there hasn't been enough writing about this, how this transition occurred.

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If you look at more hunter-gatherer type societies, or let's say smaller scale societies,

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you have these distinct individuals.

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You have like the shaman, who is often, you know, feared because of their special

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expertise.

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They can cast a spell on you.

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Someone might hire them to, you know, do some bad, some do something bad to a rival.

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But they also might have special medicinal knowledge and ritual expertise.

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So they're blessing you and they're healing you.

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But they have this sort of supernatural leader component to their sort of social role.

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Then you'll have your military leader who is organizing raids or in charge of defense, and

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the influence might oscillate between.

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And then you have your sort of broader political leader, like the big man or the headman,

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who's kind of solving more day-to-day conflicts.

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But then at some point over the course of either cultural evolution or in particular

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ecologies, these different roles kind of coalesce into one individual.

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And how that exactly happens, I think this is still a big open question for sort of like

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the cultural evolution of of status and political hierarchies.

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But then when that happens, we get to exactly the scenario where you're describing, by

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which, you know, this acceptance of potentially extreme despotism is kind

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of reinforced through other norms and ideologies.

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And then we get to, you know, any of these examples I guess we might pick out.

253
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Yeah.

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Is do you think that what it is, and I mean, maybe this is just speculative, but it's that

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uh there's sort of a you talked about the ecology.

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And I think, you know, we talked about in a couple papers, uh, in like leadership quarterly

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and things, there's almost like a market dynamic.

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So it's sort of like what's being offered.

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And so in a world where there's a shaman for medicinal purposes, but then somebody is

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formidable, um, and you have to go to them, that all creates this market of

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if you can create a team of people who can sort of all provide that and maybe have one

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figurehead to coordinate, um, then all of us sort of as a team

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uh get the benefits of that.

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00:16:08,480 --> 00:16:14,080
Um and if you look at anything um like any of these despotic governments,

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they're typically hugely uh unified to the people, right?

266
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Like the Nazis being a good example.

267
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But then if you look the bickering within and the status within, but everybody's sort of

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serving different roles within that.

269
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And so I wonder if it's just this thing of we can all do different provide different

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services.

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And I know you've talked about that, like services as leadership, but I wonder if it's this

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thing of individuals sort of team up on the idea that we can

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we can essentially monopolize the leadership market if as a unified

274
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appearing team uh we we provide all those services.

275
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What do you think about that?

276
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Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.

277
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I mean, you some of your work has talked about this.

278
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Paul Hooper has also talked about this.

279
00:17:00,840 --> 00:17:05,880
So I think a lot of different I people are sort of converging on this idea of leaders and

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leadership being a market.

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Uh I suppose as some individuals or groups of individuals kind of get monopolies, so to

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speak, on different aspects of the market, their outside options become diminished.

283
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And so you end up basically having to choose the best of the bad options.

284
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I mean, I think we all can relate to that in many of our political systems today when we we

285
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don't have the option we want, but we have to choose the least of our unpreferred options.

286
00:17:33,620 --> 00:17:35,700
Sorry, I think that's a very useful way to think about it.

287
00:17:35,780 --> 00:17:39,940
And leadership in general could could use more of this type of bringing in like these

288
00:17:40,260 --> 00:17:43,460
economic dynamics and market-like dynamics into these preferences.

289
00:17:43,780 --> 00:17:43,940
Yeah.

290
00:17:44,100 --> 00:17:49,700
It also suggests approximate psychology of leaders being really good at identifying

291
00:17:49,860 --> 00:17:54,750
uh potential threats to the niche that you occupy.

292
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And I don't think there's really been a lot of work on that.

293
00:17:57,390 --> 00:18:03,390
So, like just understanding and anticipating ahead of time is this going to be a threat to

294
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the way our leadership is?

295
00:18:05,070 --> 00:18:08,910
Is this going to provide an offering to people that they're going to prefer over us?

296
00:18:09,070 --> 00:18:13,550
It's essentially like the leadership equivalent of sort of, you know, corporations wanting

297
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to like prevent an upstart a competitor.

298
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Yeah.

299
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Really like that idea.

300
00:18:17,960 --> 00:18:22,520
I mean it I mean it it reminds me of, you know, uh competitions between, say, the king and

301
00:18:22,520 --> 00:18:27,960
the Catholic Church, where oftentimes the the government will want to suppress the reigning

302
00:18:27,960 --> 00:18:32,040
religion because they view it as as providing a competing service that the government is

303
00:18:32,040 --> 00:18:32,920
trying to provide.

304
00:18:33,240 --> 00:18:37,960
And so you get uh tr you know crackdowns on on on the local religion because it's a it's in

305
00:18:37,960 --> 00:18:39,720
competition with with the government.

306
00:18:39,880 --> 00:18:43,000
Uh I wonder if there are there are other interesting historical examples of that, but I

307
00:18:43,080 --> 00:18:48,290
really like that idea that uh you can think of uh coercive leadership as a kind of

308
00:18:48,290 --> 00:18:53,090
monopoly over the various services that people are bargaining for in a social marketplace.

309
00:18:53,250 --> 00:18:58,850
And part of the the strategy of uh of of a leader is to suppress and shut out the

310
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competition.

311
00:19:00,050 --> 00:19:00,290
Yeah.

312
00:19:00,530 --> 00:19:05,490
I wonder if like war, a lot it sounds like this just sounds like a lot of war, history of

313
00:19:05,490 --> 00:19:10,450
war in particular, sometimes might be um the individual people on the ground sort of

314
00:19:10,450 --> 00:19:13,680
fighting possible status competitors from the leader.

315
00:19:14,080 --> 00:19:19,120
Again, this would be for more hierarchical, not necessarily like small-scale conflict.

316
00:19:19,680 --> 00:19:25,680
This might lead into Zach, you uh with Luke Gloacki, right, are sort

317
00:19:25,680 --> 00:19:30,320
of heading up a um uh the Omo Valley Research.

318
00:19:30,720 --> 00:19:32,080
Um what what is the name of it?

319
00:19:32,160 --> 00:19:32,640
Um yeah.

320
00:19:33,040 --> 00:19:34,640
The Omo Valley Research Project.

321
00:19:34,950 --> 00:19:35,030
Okay.

322
00:19:35,110 --> 00:19:36,630
I just I got uh I got all the way at the end of the year.

323
00:19:36,790 --> 00:19:37,670
Homo Valley Research Project.

324
00:19:37,750 --> 00:19:40,230
We also OVRP as our acronym.

325
00:19:40,710 --> 00:19:42,150
Gotta get that brand out there.

326
00:19:42,390 --> 00:19:43,030
Yeah, exactly.

327
00:19:43,110 --> 00:19:44,310
We shouldn't sell t-shirts.

328
00:19:44,390 --> 00:19:45,830
Um, but uh or hats.

329
00:19:45,910 --> 00:19:51,750
Uh but can you talk a little bit about that and sort of this um maybe to backtrack a little

330
00:19:51,750 --> 00:19:57,670
bit, um, you know, is your you what's your like scientific gig in terms of, you

331
00:19:57,670 --> 00:20:00,950
know, what what are the things that you're looking at, have been looking at, and continue

332
00:20:00,950 --> 00:20:01,510
to look at?

333
00:20:01,860 --> 00:20:02,660
Yeah, for sure.

334
00:20:02,820 --> 00:20:08,500
Well, we talked a little bit about leadership already, and um I got into this interested

335
00:20:08,500 --> 00:20:10,660
mostly in status and status hierarchies.

336
00:20:10,740 --> 00:20:16,180
And ironically enough, you know, when I was a undergrad, um, Chris von Ruden was a PhD

337
00:20:16,180 --> 00:20:16,740
student at the time.

338
00:20:16,820 --> 00:20:21,140
So I was like reading all of his work on status, and it was really inspiring and useful for

339
00:20:21,140 --> 00:20:21,300
me.

340
00:20:21,460 --> 00:20:26,810
Um, then at some point in time I we started emailing when I was a PhD student, And then we

341
00:20:26,810 --> 00:20:29,850
both sort of kind of got to leadership via similar paths.

342
00:20:29,930 --> 00:20:33,450
And so now we have a lot of collaborations and we work together, and Chris has been a great

343
00:20:33,690 --> 00:20:35,690
mentor and colleague for me over the years.

344
00:20:36,090 --> 00:20:38,650
So I'm interested in things like status and leadership.

345
00:20:38,970 --> 00:20:43,930
And then from this focus on leadership, I came to a lot of these other topics that are

346
00:20:43,930 --> 00:20:47,210
really common in our fields, like, for example, punishment, third-party punishment.

347
00:20:47,290 --> 00:20:53,130
So when do people engage in costly punishments on behalf of someone who's maybe not a kin

348
00:20:53,130 --> 00:20:54,090
or a friend?

349
00:20:54,580 --> 00:20:56,340
This also gets into conflict resolution.

350
00:20:56,500 --> 00:20:58,100
Leaders are often resolving conflicts.

351
00:20:58,260 --> 00:21:02,820
And so what I kind of saw is there's all these literatures on conflict or on punishment, et

352
00:21:02,820 --> 00:21:03,220
cetera.

353
00:21:03,540 --> 00:21:08,420
And leadership was kind of central to all these dynamics, but hadn't, and even you know,

354
00:21:08,500 --> 00:21:10,420
cooperation, how do individuals cooperate?

355
00:21:10,500 --> 00:21:15,620
Well, it often involves someone taking on a special role to punish free riders or to

356
00:21:15,780 --> 00:21:18,420
encourage people to invest in group projects.

357
00:21:18,580 --> 00:21:23,050
So I kind of saw that leadership dynamics were obviously essential to all these different

358
00:21:23,050 --> 00:21:26,890
domains, but hadn't quite got sufficient attention, I think, within these respective

359
00:21:26,890 --> 00:21:27,530
literatures.

360
00:21:27,690 --> 00:21:33,050
So I focused a lot on a lot of these type of sort of downstream, I think, phenomena of

361
00:21:33,050 --> 00:21:38,810
leadership, like conflict resolution, punishment, and also social learning and teaching.

362
00:21:38,890 --> 00:21:44,410
So teaching is uh, if you kind of think about it in in a in a really broad way, also a form

363
00:21:44,410 --> 00:21:45,290
of leadership.

364
00:21:45,450 --> 00:21:50,020
Um So I'm interested in these topics, and I've been doing field work and cross cultural

365
00:21:50,020 --> 00:21:52,820
research for well as as long as I've been in the game.

366
00:21:53,780 --> 00:21:58,180
But I think then all anthropologists doing fieldwork today also have this broader interest

367
00:21:58,340 --> 00:22:04,020
in like how do the economic and social transitions that rural communities are going

368
00:22:04,020 --> 00:22:07,380
through, how does that influence all the other things we're interested in?

369
00:22:07,620 --> 00:22:11,610
So I think basically all fieldworking anthropologists they are also interested in market

370
00:22:11,610 --> 00:22:12,170
integration.

371
00:22:12,330 --> 00:22:14,730
That's like the big question right now.

372
00:22:15,050 --> 00:22:20,730
And, you know, we're we're probably coming to a period in the not too far

373
00:22:20,730 --> 00:22:25,930
distant future where there are maybe no subsistence-based communities in the world today.

374
00:22:26,090 --> 00:22:30,170
Um Brett Beheim has talked about this in some of his talks, the end of subsistence, you

375
00:22:30,170 --> 00:22:35,540
know, and I think anthropologists have been talking about this for forever, um, but it's

376
00:22:35,540 --> 00:22:39,220
got to happen at some point, and it's we've got to be getting closer and closer to it.

377
00:22:39,300 --> 00:22:43,780
And so there are still today many communities around the world that are what we'd call

378
00:22:43,780 --> 00:22:44,660
subsistence-based.

379
00:22:44,740 --> 00:22:49,140
So, like most of their food, most of their calories are coming from food that they grow

380
00:22:49,140 --> 00:22:55,050
locally, or animals they hunt, or livestock they they raise, um, And that as a

381
00:22:55,050 --> 00:23:00,730
sort of social and economic base can have a profound impact on how we think, how we raise

382
00:23:00,730 --> 00:23:02,810
our kids, how we relate to each other.

383
00:23:03,050 --> 00:23:07,770
And so when people transition from these subsistence-based communities to market-based

384
00:23:07,770 --> 00:23:10,490
communities, it can change a lot of our psychology.

385
00:23:10,650 --> 00:23:14,810
Obviously, this happened already in many places around the world, in most places around the

386
00:23:14,810 --> 00:23:20,010
world, but we didn't have this interdisciplinary scientific toolkit documenting it as it

387
00:23:20,010 --> 00:23:20,970
was unfolding.

388
00:23:21,370 --> 00:23:27,120
So now what we can do is be a part of these transitions and kind of track how things

389
00:23:27,120 --> 00:23:32,000
like conflict resolution or leadership structures or trust and so forth are unfolding.

390
00:23:32,080 --> 00:23:37,600
And that's kind of like the overarching goal of the Omo Valley Research Project.

391
00:23:37,840 --> 00:23:42,880
So we are managing field sites, Luke and I, among different ethnolinguistic groups or

392
00:23:42,880 --> 00:23:45,520
different societies, different cultures, you you might say.

393
00:23:45,760 --> 00:23:48,800
So these are mostly agro-pastoralists.

394
00:23:48,880 --> 00:23:53,030
We're working with Hammer, Kata, Kwegu, and Niangatong.

395
00:23:53,670 --> 00:23:56,790
And what's super fascinating about this Omo Valley region?

396
00:23:56,870 --> 00:23:58,710
So this is southwest Ethiopia.

397
00:23:59,110 --> 00:24:02,390
North of Lake Turkana, there's this Omo River that flows up.

398
00:24:02,470 --> 00:24:06,710
And so it creates this like very broad range of varied ecologies.

399
00:24:06,870 --> 00:24:08,550
You've got highland and lowland.

400
00:24:08,870 --> 00:24:13,030
There was seasonal flooding in the past, a lot of sorghum cultivation, and lots of

401
00:24:13,030 --> 00:24:14,150
pastoralism.

402
00:24:14,520 --> 00:24:18,920
And in this region, there's more than like a dozen distinct ethnolinguistic groups.

403
00:24:19,160 --> 00:24:21,640
And many different language families are represented.

404
00:24:21,720 --> 00:24:25,800
You have Cushitic speakers, Emotic speakers, Nilotic speakers, Surmic languages.

405
00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:29,480
So if you know anything about linguistics, these are very different languages.

406
00:24:30,120 --> 00:24:34,120
The populations have a lot of social institutions in common, but they're also like very,

407
00:24:34,200 --> 00:24:34,760
very different.

408
00:24:34,920 --> 00:24:40,870
So you have in this relatively close environment just a huge array, a

409
00:24:40,870 --> 00:24:44,390
huge mosaic of cultural diversity, really like nowhere else in the world.

410
00:24:44,710 --> 00:24:48,790
If you have a truck, you can basically drive around and you can like go visit all these

411
00:24:48,790 --> 00:24:49,670
different communities.

412
00:24:49,990 --> 00:24:51,910
There's really nowhere else in the world like that.

413
00:24:52,150 --> 00:24:57,830
And then on top of that, as you probably know, Ethiopia was the only African

414
00:24:57,830 --> 00:25:01,670
country not colonized by European powers.

415
00:25:02,280 --> 00:25:04,360
Effectively, the colonizers were domestic.

416
00:25:04,440 --> 00:25:09,960
There was an Amhara kingdom, and there's a sort of history behind that, but the Ethiopian

417
00:25:09,960 --> 00:25:13,080
Empire was very strong at maintaining its borders.

418
00:25:13,480 --> 00:25:17,400
So the you know the Turks tried to invade and the Italians tried to invade also, but they

419
00:25:17,480 --> 00:25:18,920
they just they never really did.

420
00:25:20,120 --> 00:25:24,760
But this Ethiopian Empire didn't really do much in the far, far southwest of the country.

421
00:25:24,840 --> 00:25:28,120
They maintained the border, but they didn't develop it at all, so to speak.

422
00:25:28,830 --> 00:25:32,990
The Empire fell in the late in the mid-70s, then there was this communist regime that

423
00:25:32,990 --> 00:25:33,870
eventually failed.

424
00:25:34,030 --> 00:25:38,270
And now you have this new ethnic federal democracy that emerged in the early 90s.

425
00:25:38,590 --> 00:25:43,950
So now there is development happening in Ethiopia, but you didn't have like the sort of

426
00:25:43,950 --> 00:25:46,830
scramble for Africa during the colonial era.

427
00:25:46,990 --> 00:25:51,150
You also didn't have this like big investment across Africa that was going on with like the

428
00:25:51,150 --> 00:25:55,710
British and the French and the Portuguese in the 80s and 90s, because Ethiopia just like

429
00:25:55,710 --> 00:25:59,100
kept everything kind of under its own control.

430
00:26:00,380 --> 00:26:04,700
So when I talk to some of my other colleagues about what things are like now, they see it

431
00:26:04,700 --> 00:26:09,580
as like, oh yeah, this is what it was like in Kenya 20 years ago, or this is like in in uh

432
00:26:09,580 --> 00:26:12,540
Nigeria 20 35 years ago.

433
00:26:12,700 --> 00:26:15,820
Um so it's really fascinating for all these reasons.

434
00:26:15,900 --> 00:26:21,500
Uh there's these communities are still very much sort of governed by customary

435
00:26:21,500 --> 00:26:21,980
institutions.

436
00:26:22,140 --> 00:26:23,260
Certainly there's been change.

437
00:26:23,660 --> 00:26:27,790
Of course, there's been change, and it's happening more and more now, But it's really

438
00:26:27,950 --> 00:26:29,790
there's really nowhere else in the world like this.

439
00:26:29,870 --> 00:26:34,110
And so for this reason, I'm obviously quite biased, of course, but I think it's like the

440
00:26:34,110 --> 00:26:38,430
most exciting place in the world to be doing the sort of focus on subsistence based

441
00:26:38,430 --> 00:26:40,670
societies, because there's just nowhere else like it in the world.

442
00:26:40,990 --> 00:26:41,150
Yeah.

443
00:26:41,310 --> 00:26:45,230
From that perspective, I mean, obviously, you know, in 40 or 80 years, we'll all the

444
00:26:45,230 --> 00:26:48,910
science will come in and we'll know sort of market to from subsistence to market

445
00:26:48,990 --> 00:26:52,430
transition, what that looks like and what it does to our psychologies, hopefully.

446
00:26:52,590 --> 00:26:55,660
Um, assuming science is still happening in 80 years.

447
00:26:56,060 --> 00:26:59,020
We might be all in subsistence for for all we know in 80 years.

448
00:26:59,100 --> 00:27:01,820
But uh we'll need to do any anthropology, we'll be living it.

449
00:27:01,980 --> 00:27:02,380
Yeah, exactly.

450
00:27:03,260 --> 00:27:03,740
Exactly.

451
00:27:03,980 --> 00:27:07,100
Um but uh uh but what what's your take?

452
00:27:07,180 --> 00:27:11,020
Um, you know, and we can continue on, but just like you were on the ground.

453
00:27:11,260 --> 00:27:16,250
And so like either the difference between like you as like, you know, an American going to

454
00:27:16,250 --> 00:27:21,290
these places or um you know talking to your colleagues where you know it's sort of like

455
00:27:21,290 --> 00:27:27,050
there's you're you're experiencing this difference in the ecology or the way of living

456
00:27:27,290 --> 00:27:32,890
do you have sort of a representation of what day to day differs or

457
00:27:33,290 --> 00:27:37,850
or is that sort of too hard to tease apart from just like there's lots of other just

458
00:27:37,850 --> 00:27:41,770
differences that may have nothing to do with market versus subsistence?

459
00:27:42,250 --> 00:27:46,260
You mean like how life is like in the more subsistence-based context?

460
00:27:46,340 --> 00:27:47,060
Is that kind of your question?

461
00:27:47,220 --> 00:27:48,340
Yeah, I mean, well, two things.

462
00:27:48,420 --> 00:27:52,020
I mean, you brought up that it's a different way of living, and then it also has effects on

463
00:27:52,020 --> 00:27:53,060
our psychology, right?

464
00:27:53,220 --> 00:27:56,660
Like day-to-day, and then maybe also more calibrational stuff.

465
00:27:56,900 --> 00:28:02,740
You know, is it clear to you, or do you have ideas or even guesses about sort of either

466
00:28:02,740 --> 00:28:08,500
these very more um transient day-to-day differences or the more

467
00:28:08,500 --> 00:28:13,110
sort of profound, maybe like, you know, if you pulled somebody out who has been in a

468
00:28:13,110 --> 00:28:17,910
subsistence existence and they go to a marketplace and they feel like a fish out of water,

469
00:28:18,070 --> 00:28:18,630
why is that?

470
00:28:18,710 --> 00:28:19,350
And what is that?

471
00:28:20,710 --> 00:28:24,630
Well, I mean, I think for sure life just moves way slower.

472
00:28:24,790 --> 00:28:26,470
And you you kind of feel it.

473
00:28:26,630 --> 00:28:29,750
And um people also people don't think of time the same way.

474
00:28:29,830 --> 00:28:33,990
I'm not trying to get too like superior warf on us, but like the idea of like keeping a

475
00:28:34,150 --> 00:28:39,180
schedule or like that there would be some sort of governing system that's like larger than

476
00:28:39,180 --> 00:28:41,500
the environment, that's not really salient.

477
00:28:41,660 --> 00:28:43,420
Um things just move really, really slowly.

478
00:28:43,580 --> 00:28:46,620
If someone's gonna come, you know, they're gonna come when they're gonna come.

479
00:28:46,780 --> 00:28:50,300
You know, and you there would be no reason for you to expect them to be there at a

480
00:28:50,300 --> 00:28:52,940
particular time other than when they're gonna be there, if that makes sense.

481
00:28:53,500 --> 00:28:58,860
Do they have like a a time-keeping system, like a calendar or a clock or anything

482
00:28:58,860 --> 00:29:02,460
analogous, or is it just like it's daytime or nighttime?

483
00:29:02,890 --> 00:29:07,850
Well, now obviously everyone has access to clocks and has a conception of time because

484
00:29:07,850 --> 00:29:10,490
they're also engaging with kind of the markets.

485
00:29:10,730 --> 00:29:12,970
People, these are there is m some market integration.

486
00:29:13,050 --> 00:29:14,410
It's just extremely low, right?

487
00:29:14,490 --> 00:29:20,410
So um, but the typical sort of indigenous system of time, as far as I have an

488
00:29:20,410 --> 00:29:24,490
idea of it, is like there's obviously seasons, um, there's months, so everyone understands

489
00:29:24,570 --> 00:29:27,690
like the months, um, everyone understands like the weeks.

490
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:31,600
Um, so yeah, you usually talk in terms of months basically.

491
00:29:31,680 --> 00:29:35,840
And they'll say, like, oh, say six months, seven months, or like the seasons, the rainy

492
00:29:35,840 --> 00:29:36,960
season, the dry season.

493
00:29:37,120 --> 00:29:40,720
So when I'm talking to people, I'll be like, I'm coming back in three months, you know, and

494
00:29:40,720 --> 00:29:43,680
and they know they basically know that and they they'll remember that quite clearly.

495
00:29:43,760 --> 00:29:46,160
And then if I come back in three months, they're super happy.

496
00:29:46,400 --> 00:29:50,790
Um in terms of But if you say I'm gonna come back in an hour.

497
00:29:50,950 --> 00:29:53,030
Is that less intuitive to them?

498
00:29:54,150 --> 00:29:57,190
I think at this point people understand an hour.

499
00:29:57,430 --> 00:29:57,910
I don't know.

500
00:29:57,990 --> 00:29:59,350
I mean, they've I think they've learned it, right?

501
00:29:59,430 --> 00:30:00,630
They've learned it over time.

502
00:30:00,790 --> 00:30:06,710
Um, so they can kind of get it, but I think in this context, there can also be a high

503
00:30:06,710 --> 00:30:08,310
degree of misunderstanding.

504
00:30:08,550 --> 00:30:12,070
They they'll f certainly say they understand it, but then whether they kind of respect that

505
00:30:12,150 --> 00:30:17,400
or whether they Whether they'll be mad if you're like an hour and a half, whether you if

506
00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:21,240
you're late, or whether they have like expectations and emotions surrounding it, that's

507
00:30:21,240 --> 00:30:22,840
probably less present.

508
00:30:23,480 --> 00:30:24,440
Yeah, that's for sure.

509
00:30:24,600 --> 00:30:25,080
That's for sure.

510
00:30:25,640 --> 00:30:31,160
Um are there norms around lateness and punctuality or anything like that just totally uh a

511
00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:31,880
Western thing?

512
00:30:32,360 --> 00:30:34,040
Typically it's more of a Western thing.

513
00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:38,680
Um I mean I can think of some examples where we you know have set up meetings, and if if

514
00:30:38,680 --> 00:30:40,840
you're not there, then people can get upset.

515
00:30:41,080 --> 00:30:46,750
But uh I think in a more sort of customary way, like you

516
00:30:46,750 --> 00:30:51,630
wouldn't do things in a way that would be so contingent upon very tight scheduling, right?

517
00:30:51,710 --> 00:30:55,070
Like if you're gonna go somewhere, travel somewhere, you're gonna stay there for like maybe

518
00:30:55,070 --> 00:30:56,110
days or weeks.

519
00:30:56,270 --> 00:31:00,670
And so we're gonna overlap, um, like you know, meet if we have a meeting and I go to the

520
00:31:00,670 --> 00:31:04,110
coffee shop and I might wait for 20 minutes and if you don't show up, I'm gonna leave.

521
00:31:04,190 --> 00:31:06,060
But the it would just be a longer scale.

522
00:31:06,220 --> 00:31:09,820
So if we say we're gonna meet at this village, I'm gonna go there and wait like five days.

523
00:31:09,980 --> 00:31:13,580
And you might come after two days, but you know, we're then we handle our business just

524
00:31:13,580 --> 00:31:13,740
fine.

525
00:31:14,060 --> 00:31:14,540
That's interesting.

526
00:31:14,620 --> 00:31:15,900
It's almost like it scales up.

527
00:31:15,980 --> 00:31:20,140
That's a very interesting idea that it might not be it seems so foreign to sort of say,

528
00:31:20,220 --> 00:31:21,820
well, 20 minutes doesn't matter.

529
00:31:21,980 --> 00:31:25,260
But you know, again, it's this thing of like, well, every hour counts because we have

530
00:31:25,260 --> 00:31:29,390
internal combustion engine cars moving us around and we're not traveling by days because

531
00:31:29,390 --> 00:31:30,430
we're on airplanes and things.

532
00:31:30,510 --> 00:31:35,950
So that's an interesting idea that it sort of scales to the um meaningful time units.

533
00:31:36,510 --> 00:31:38,110
Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it.

534
00:31:38,430 --> 00:31:42,750
I mean, is it is it because of this analogy between time and money where your time

535
00:31:42,750 --> 00:31:45,870
literally is a kind of money and you can charge people by the hour?

536
00:31:45,950 --> 00:31:49,630
And if you're dilly-dallying, that means less cash in your pocket at the end of the day.

537
00:31:49,710 --> 00:31:54,460
And so participating in a market economy forces you to think about the time that you're

538
00:31:54,460 --> 00:31:58,700
spending and to budget it wisely for your own self-interest.

539
00:31:59,100 --> 00:32:00,460
You think that's what's behind this?

540
00:32:00,620 --> 00:32:00,780
Yeah.

541
00:32:01,180 --> 00:32:03,420
I think that's a very interesting hypothesis.

542
00:32:03,580 --> 00:32:05,740
I think that's a very intuitive way to think about this.

543
00:32:05,900 --> 00:32:09,820
And my colleague Damian Blasi has an idea to test this.

544
00:32:09,980 --> 00:32:14,300
And so from this perspective, he also thinks that the way individuals use language is

545
00:32:14,300 --> 00:32:16,620
shaped by this involvement in market economy.

546
00:32:16,700 --> 00:32:21,500
So once you like monetize your time and you realize that this amount of time is worth this,

547
00:32:21,990 --> 00:32:25,590
He thinks that actually changes how you speak and people will actually kind of speak

548
00:32:25,590 --> 00:32:25,910
quicker.

549
00:32:25,990 --> 00:32:29,590
And then it's sort of there's there's many sort of downstream effects of how it impacts our

550
00:32:29,590 --> 00:32:29,910
behavior.

551
00:32:30,070 --> 00:32:36,070
And I think, yeah, showing up, managing time, travel, um, once you

552
00:32:36,070 --> 00:32:41,910
have a a commodification of labor and time, I think it changes a lot of aspects of our our

553
00:32:41,910 --> 00:32:42,710
thinking and behavior.

554
00:32:43,120 --> 00:32:43,520
That's interesting.

555
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:47,840
I mean, even like people, there's a stereotype, and people sort of parody this on movies

556
00:32:47,840 --> 00:32:53,360
and things of uh somebody who's like, you know, really in business and they're just purely

557
00:32:53,360 --> 00:32:56,960
transactional, or it's sort of like they don't even, you know, take the time to listen to a

558
00:32:56,960 --> 00:32:57,680
response, you know.

559
00:32:57,760 --> 00:33:02,800
And it's sort of so even I think even within individuals, there's sort of maybe the hyper

560
00:33:02,960 --> 00:33:06,400
commoditization of time or the transactionality.

561
00:33:06,560 --> 00:33:09,690
Um that must also happen over the course of development, right?

562
00:33:09,770 --> 00:33:12,730
Like kids are not born knowing they're in a market economy.

563
00:33:12,890 --> 00:33:16,890
Like I'm just thinking, like, you know, my my son right now, he's asking a lot of questions

564
00:33:16,890 --> 00:33:20,650
about time, you know, because we're starting school where we have to be punctual, you know,

565
00:33:20,810 --> 00:33:21,930
what is an hour?

566
00:33:22,090 --> 00:33:22,810
Um, these things.

567
00:33:22,890 --> 00:33:28,810
So it's sort of reminding me that the same cultural transition occurs among all of us

568
00:33:28,810 --> 00:33:30,330
over the course of development.

569
00:33:30,970 --> 00:33:31,130
Yeah.

570
00:33:31,540 --> 00:33:36,980
Getting my daughter out the door to to get her to appreciate punctuality and getting to

571
00:33:36,980 --> 00:33:38,260
school on time is just impossible.

572
00:33:38,420 --> 00:33:39,940
She like cannot comprehend it.

573
00:33:40,420 --> 00:33:40,820
That's right.

574
00:33:43,860 --> 00:33:44,100
Exactly.

575
00:33:44,180 --> 00:33:44,500
Yeah, yeah.

576
00:33:44,740 --> 00:33:48,500
It's it's really hard for her to grab like she she's at the point right now where she

577
00:33:48,500 --> 00:33:54,100
refers to anything in the past as yesterday and like has no concept of like how long ago

578
00:33:54,170 --> 00:33:54,890
something was.

579
00:33:55,450 --> 00:33:57,210
I can empathize with that very much.

580
00:33:57,370 --> 00:34:01,770
I feel like that's not so far off of most people's experience of time.

581
00:34:01,850 --> 00:34:02,010
Yeah.

582
00:34:02,330 --> 00:34:02,490
Yeah.

583
00:34:02,650 --> 00:34:03,450
It's a really alien.

584
00:34:03,690 --> 00:34:06,410
I mean, it's it's kind of hard to live like this.

585
00:34:06,490 --> 00:34:08,250
Uh it takes so much practice.

586
00:34:08,330 --> 00:34:13,290
But you know what what's interesting about this kind of cultural change is that the lever

587
00:34:13,290 --> 00:34:15,290
is so clearly one of self-interest.

588
00:34:15,450 --> 00:34:19,940
That if you are in a market economy and you and you are playing this market-based status

589
00:34:19,940 --> 00:34:24,660
game where whoever is most successful and prosperous in the market economy has the highest

590
00:34:24,660 --> 00:34:29,140
status, uh, all of a sudden the rules of the status game become very different.

591
00:34:29,380 --> 00:34:34,900
And you either uh win or lose based on how well you follow these alien set of rules.

592
00:34:35,060 --> 00:34:40,510
And so, what what I like about this idea is that um it it it

593
00:34:40,510 --> 00:34:44,350
frames cultural change as this is in my personal self-interest, this is how I'm going to

594
00:34:44,350 --> 00:34:45,950
win this new alien status game.

595
00:34:46,030 --> 00:34:50,910
This forces me to develop these new skills and these new ways of thinking because that

596
00:34:50,910 --> 00:34:53,870
helps me uh advance in this new status game.

597
00:34:53,950 --> 00:34:58,510
Is is that how you're you're thinking uh about cultural change in this regard?

598
00:34:58,750 --> 00:35:01,630
I I personally like that way of thinking about cultural change.

599
00:35:01,710 --> 00:35:06,030
It sort of demystifies it a little bit, where these are all just people acting in their

600
00:35:06,030 --> 00:35:10,280
individual self-interest under new under changing ecological circumstances.

601
00:35:10,360 --> 00:35:16,040
And what happens as an emergent result is that you get different norms and habits and ways

602
00:35:16,040 --> 00:35:16,680
of thinking.

603
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:21,800
But it's not that these norms and habits and ways of thinking exist outside of us and and

604
00:35:21,800 --> 00:35:22,760
are and are shaping us.

605
00:35:22,840 --> 00:35:27,160
It's that this just emerges as a byproduct of people pursuing their own interests.

606
00:35:27,720 --> 00:35:30,680
So that's a it's a it's a way of thinking about culture that I personally like.

607
00:35:30,760 --> 00:35:31,800
What do you think about it?

608
00:35:32,200 --> 00:35:33,160
Yeah, I like that a lot.

609
00:35:33,240 --> 00:35:36,360
And I think I mean I think there's going to be variation among individuals, though.

610
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:40,730
And I can think about different individuals who are pursuing these different strategies.

611
00:35:40,810 --> 00:35:42,490
It's like there's a niche that is opened up, right?

612
00:35:42,570 --> 00:35:47,290
If the if the market is there and you can go there, there's some cost, but it's it's it's

613
00:35:47,290 --> 00:35:47,610
there.

614
00:35:47,770 --> 00:35:50,730
And then some individuals are more motivated to pursue that.

615
00:35:50,890 --> 00:35:55,610
And so some of my colleagues think about market integration at the community level.

616
00:35:55,770 --> 00:36:00,330
Like, okay, this town is this village is this far from town, and it's a more

617
00:36:00,330 --> 00:36:01,290
market-integrated village.

618
00:36:01,370 --> 00:36:05,960
And I think that's useful, but kind of to your point, the niche opens and then individuals

619
00:36:05,960 --> 00:36:10,200
kind of strategically choose how they want to invest in that potential strategy.

620
00:36:10,360 --> 00:36:14,600
And I've I can think of some interviews with some of the like younger kids, quote, like

621
00:36:14,600 --> 00:36:18,600
teenagers in these villages, and sometimes some of them have even like kind of identified

622
00:36:18,600 --> 00:36:19,960
as a businessman.

623
00:36:20,360 --> 00:36:24,040
And they're they it's kind of like you don't you can't really tell, and they're kind of I

624
00:36:24,040 --> 00:36:28,770
think a little secretive about it, because we ask people questions about you know how often

625
00:36:28,770 --> 00:36:30,930
do you go to the market, what do you sell, what do you buy?

626
00:36:31,090 --> 00:36:36,930
And then I've had some sort of sort of stories of like maybe guys who are 18, 19, 20, and

627
00:36:36,930 --> 00:36:40,130
then they'll say, like, well, yeah, I got one beehive at the beginning, and I had this

628
00:36:40,130 --> 00:36:40,530
beehive.

629
00:36:40,690 --> 00:36:44,930
Honey is one of the most valuable uh commodities that you can get, especially if it's a

630
00:36:44,930 --> 00:36:46,530
it's a man's activity typically.

631
00:36:46,770 --> 00:36:51,250
So I got one beehive, and you know, I took all the money and I I bought two more beehives.

632
00:36:51,330 --> 00:36:54,690
So you can see they're very they're thinking very entrepreneurially.

633
00:36:54,900 --> 00:36:56,660
Um and now I had the three beehives.

634
00:36:56,740 --> 00:36:59,460
And after one more season, then I took all that and I bought a goat.

635
00:36:59,700 --> 00:37:05,060
And they they mapped out a very clear strategy to how to get to more money.

636
00:37:05,540 --> 00:37:07,060
And they wouldn't have necessarily had to do that.

637
00:37:07,140 --> 00:37:08,340
They could have gone about it differently.

638
00:37:08,420 --> 00:37:13,620
They could have taken the the honey and invested it in social relationships and given it to

639
00:37:13,620 --> 00:37:14,180
friends.

640
00:37:14,580 --> 00:37:16,820
Or they they maybe could have done something else.

641
00:37:16,980 --> 00:37:22,500
There's but they're very clearly thinking about how to maximize the the monetary returns of

642
00:37:22,500 --> 00:37:23,220
their labor.

643
00:37:23,540 --> 00:37:27,470
Which but th then their their friend or their brother might not be doing that at all.

644
00:37:27,630 --> 00:37:32,750
So it's interesting to see like who uh among this community are the ones pursuing this um

645
00:37:32,990 --> 00:37:34,270
this new strategy.

646
00:37:34,510 --> 00:37:34,830
Hmm.

647
00:37:34,990 --> 00:37:39,310
Do you find I mean so the way I would intuitively think about it is that the people who are

648
00:37:39,310 --> 00:37:43,950
more drawn to this strategy are are people for whom other types of niches or other types of

649
00:37:43,950 --> 00:37:46,620
status games don't look as promising to them.

650
00:37:46,780 --> 00:37:50,300
And this particular status game, this market based status game, looks particularly

651
00:37:50,300 --> 00:37:50,700
promising.

652
00:37:50,780 --> 00:37:54,140
Maybe they have a particular set of aptitudes that are well suited to it.

653
00:37:54,300 --> 00:37:57,900
Maybe they are better at quantitative thinking.

654
00:37:58,060 --> 00:38:02,620
Maybe they're more socially alienated from people who are not in this community.

655
00:38:02,700 --> 00:38:06,620
And maybe this will be a better opportunity for them to rise up and acquire resources and

656
00:38:06,620 --> 00:38:06,940
influence.

657
00:38:07,500 --> 00:38:12,540
Do you see these kinds of considerations happening where people are evaluating all the

658
00:38:12,540 --> 00:38:17,130
different uh potential paths they can pursue and strategically picking the one that's gonna

659
00:38:17,130 --> 00:38:21,370
work out best for them, whether it be more of a market-based route or more of a you know

660
00:38:21,530 --> 00:38:24,570
per local uh community-based route.

661
00:38:25,130 --> 00:38:28,170
I mean, that's kind of an empirical question we're trying to answer.

662
00:38:28,490 --> 00:38:33,770
Um there are also people who do seem to be more do seem to be more culturally conservative,

663
00:38:33,940 --> 00:38:37,540
And that's a really cool feature of these pastoralist societies because if you're a

664
00:38:37,540 --> 00:38:42,180
pastoralist, like a s if you're if you're a man, for example, um, it doesn't really pay off

665
00:38:42,180 --> 00:38:43,460
until you're older.

666
00:38:43,780 --> 00:38:47,860
And if you leave the pastoral community and you, let's say, go to be even more market

667
00:38:47,940 --> 00:38:52,100
specialized, like you want to actually get a job and work in town, you immediately go into

668
00:38:52,100 --> 00:38:55,780
this like very, very low marginalized class of society.

669
00:38:55,940 --> 00:39:00,690
You you look different, um, you might not speak the the language that everyone's using at

670
00:39:00,690 --> 00:39:02,450
the market like quite fluently.

671
00:39:02,610 --> 00:39:07,010
Um so it's it's a very difficult to just completely jump in that that world.

672
00:39:07,250 --> 00:39:11,330
But if you stick around and you, you know, go through all the the difficulties of being a

673
00:39:11,330 --> 00:39:15,410
young man, you might be gone for many months or years herding the cattle and then

674
00:39:15,410 --> 00:39:20,840
eventually you get enough wealth to um pay for bride price and and get married, which

675
00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:22,440
usually doesn't happen until you're much older.

676
00:39:22,680 --> 00:39:27,880
By the time you get to be like fifty, um, maybe even fifty five or so, you can kinda live a

677
00:39:27,880 --> 00:39:28,840
semi retired life.

678
00:39:28,920 --> 00:39:33,960
Where now you just you chill out, you talk about ritual stuff and you solve conflicts and

679
00:39:33,960 --> 00:39:38,440
you drink a lot of, you know, the local beer and it's a it's a pretty easy life.

680
00:39:38,670 --> 00:39:43,870
And so the incentives are to sort of stick around and to not get too involved in the market

681
00:39:43,870 --> 00:39:49,390
world, but yet to maintain enough cattle and keep the sort of the the sort of traditional

682
00:39:49,390 --> 00:39:51,470
cultural economic strategy going.

683
00:39:51,630 --> 00:39:57,070
And so that sort of, I think, in turn leads a lot of pastoralists to really kind of double

684
00:39:57,070 --> 00:40:02,750
down on all the sort of the sociocultural package of pastoralism, the the ritual, the

685
00:40:02,750 --> 00:40:06,110
myths, the ways of adornment, and all these other things.

686
00:40:06,350 --> 00:40:11,120
Whereas like forger horticulturalists or more hunter-gatherers, I've I've done some

687
00:40:11,120 --> 00:40:15,920
research also during my PhD with what we'd call forger horticulturalists or more recently

688
00:40:16,000 --> 00:40:17,120
hunter-gatherers.

689
00:40:17,440 --> 00:40:22,720
But for them, once the subsistence base kind of dwindles, there's there's no real incentive

690
00:40:22,720 --> 00:40:27,520
to sticking around and trying to be a a hunter-gatherer now when you're in your 50s.

691
00:40:27,680 --> 00:40:31,280
Um you're more incentivized to transition quite quickly.

692
00:40:31,440 --> 00:40:34,950
Uh whereas the pastoralists, because the livestock are still doing fine.

693
00:40:35,030 --> 00:40:40,150
Now, this is a side point in that I think because of clim climate change and environmental

694
00:40:40,150 --> 00:40:45,670
pressures, the pastoralist regime is going to be much less sustainable in the next 20, 30

695
00:40:45,670 --> 00:40:45,910
years.

696
00:40:45,990 --> 00:40:47,350
And we see this actually right now.

697
00:40:47,430 --> 00:40:51,030
There's a huge um cattle death in East Africa.

698
00:40:51,110 --> 00:40:54,470
Uh it's been the worst drought in in history, it's been going on for a few years, so

699
00:40:54,470 --> 00:40:56,310
there's been like a huge drop in cattle.

700
00:40:56,550 --> 00:41:00,080
But um overall, like you know, goats and sheep, they're quite resilient.

701
00:41:00,240 --> 00:41:04,800
You can have cattle and goat and sheep, and um it it pays off to kind of keep this system

702
00:41:04,800 --> 00:41:05,040
going.

703
00:41:05,120 --> 00:41:06,560
It's gonna pay off when you're older.

704
00:41:06,800 --> 00:41:11,600
So I think it it definitely could be that there are individuals who see that long term

705
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:16,560
strategy as being less viable, and maybe that's in incentivizing them to pursue market

706
00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:17,760
based opportunities.

707
00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:19,440
I think that's a good way to think about it.

708
00:41:19,600 --> 00:41:23,040
But these are exactly all the types of things we're trying to measure empirically and

709
00:41:23,040 --> 00:41:23,680
track.

710
00:41:24,810 --> 00:41:25,370
Very cool.

711
00:41:25,690 --> 00:41:31,610
I mean, I I it's another way of of demystifying uh culture, I think, is to view it in

712
00:41:31,610 --> 00:41:36,250
terms of the material and ecological differences between different ways of life and what

713
00:41:36,250 --> 00:41:38,090
the local incentive structures are.

714
00:41:38,250 --> 00:41:43,690
If you're in a place where uh hunting and gathering just isn't going to allow you to a

715
00:41:43,690 --> 00:41:48,640
comfortable retirement, um uh then, you know, a market-based life is going to be more

716
00:41:48,640 --> 00:41:48,960
appealing.

717
00:41:49,040 --> 00:41:53,680
But if you're in a place where, you know, you know, cattle uh can live a long time and uh

718
00:41:53,680 --> 00:41:57,600
help you retire comfortably, uh, the incentive structures are going to be different just

719
00:41:57,600 --> 00:42:02,560
because of the nature of what cattle are, the you know, the the nature of what the hunting

720
00:42:02,560 --> 00:42:06,960
and gathering lifestyle is like, you know, the distribution of the local flora and fauna

721
00:42:07,120 --> 00:42:11,550
within the the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, you know, the lifespan of of of your cattle or

722
00:42:11,550 --> 00:42:16,110
what what it requires to raise them, these material considerations are what are ultimately

723
00:42:16,110 --> 00:42:19,390
going to shape the uh the cultural norms and ideas.

724
00:42:19,470 --> 00:42:25,230
And I think that's another uh cool way of of um explaining airy

725
00:42:25,230 --> 00:42:29,790
notions of of of cultures and norms by by the material constraints in a particular society.

726
00:42:30,580 --> 00:42:31,940
Yeah, I also really like that.

727
00:42:32,020 --> 00:42:35,220
You, I mean, it sounded like a little bit Zach that you were saying to put it in David's

728
00:42:35,220 --> 00:42:40,500
language is almost sort of the people are playing status games and trying to anticipate the

729
00:42:40,500 --> 00:42:40,900
future.

730
00:42:41,060 --> 00:42:46,900
And sort of so if you are the if you are already sort of locked into the pastoral status

731
00:42:46,900 --> 00:42:52,340
game or that's you know you're going to do well, you're doubling down on the accoutrements,

732
00:42:52,420 --> 00:42:58,150
the cultural trappings and the traditions and all the lore and whatever rituals um and

733
00:42:58,150 --> 00:43:03,270
probably clothing and rules and everything and diet restrictions of the pastoral uh

734
00:43:03,270 --> 00:43:03,910
lifestyle.

735
00:43:04,070 --> 00:43:09,590
And I think that also that also feels very human to just sort of be like, you know, it's

736
00:43:09,590 --> 00:43:10,950
hard to predict the future.

737
00:43:11,110 --> 00:43:15,640
We're all just trying to like figure out like what's going to be the best path for me.

738
00:43:15,800 --> 00:43:17,880
There's some risk, there's some uncertainty.

739
00:43:18,040 --> 00:43:19,800
And you're just like, am I going to be happy?

740
00:43:19,960 --> 00:43:21,960
Which might mean like, you know, I have enough stuff.

741
00:43:22,120 --> 00:43:24,120
I can be the retired pastoralist.

742
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:28,840
And you know, there's sort of the um, and then it also feels very human to look at people

743
00:43:28,840 --> 00:43:31,720
who are choosing different paths and sort of for there to be conflict.

744
00:43:31,800 --> 00:43:36,840
I imagine there's some conflict between the pastoralist who wants to keep that way of

745
00:43:36,840 --> 00:43:41,650
living going because they're benefiting from it, or they're anticipating it from maybe the

746
00:43:41,650 --> 00:43:44,370
young upstarts who are sort of like going to the market.

747
00:43:44,450 --> 00:43:46,770
Or maybe, I don't know, maybe they're not around each other.

748
00:43:47,330 --> 00:43:48,450
Um, no, there's some conflict.

749
00:43:48,530 --> 00:43:53,170
I mean, I can think of you know one family where you know the father who's an older, an

750
00:43:53,170 --> 00:43:56,290
elder man, uh, has this sort of social role.

751
00:43:56,450 --> 00:43:58,050
This is in a hammer society.

752
00:43:58,130 --> 00:44:03,760
Um, it's called Parko, but he's sort of like the supernatural keeper of this

753
00:44:03,760 --> 00:44:04,400
community.

754
00:44:04,640 --> 00:44:06,320
And he's an amazing guy.

755
00:44:06,480 --> 00:44:08,720
And you know, every so often he's doing all sorts of stuff.

756
00:44:08,800 --> 00:44:13,920
I most of the time don't know what's going on, but he it's very complex, like blessings and

757
00:44:13,920 --> 00:44:16,320
behaviors that are ritually significant.

758
00:44:16,400 --> 00:44:19,200
And it's sort of a part of his sort of protection of the community.

759
00:44:19,360 --> 00:44:24,640
And he has a couple sons, and one of the sons is very much the market strategy guy.

760
00:44:24,800 --> 00:44:29,830
Um, and he's actually now one of the sons has since left the community, and there's a lot

761
00:44:29,830 --> 00:44:34,550
of conflict there because his father is so important to the community, so well respected.

762
00:44:34,630 --> 00:44:40,230
And normally the the sons should be supporting them, um, but they're not.

763
00:44:40,470 --> 00:44:44,390
And so for this particular family now, it's it's kind of hard for him and his wife, and

764
00:44:44,390 --> 00:44:49,110
they're sort of um, they're kind of like my adopted uncles and aunts in a way, or whatever,

765
00:44:49,190 --> 00:44:53,440
they're part of my my sort of adopted family, and their kids aren't really doing the the

766
00:44:53,440 --> 00:44:56,960
job that they should be doing following the traditional way because they've really pursued

767
00:44:56,960 --> 00:44:58,880
this market strategy and now they're left.

768
00:44:59,040 --> 00:45:02,960
And so it's really a burden now on the community because other people have to help out and

769
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:03,760
help them.

770
00:45:04,160 --> 00:45:07,680
And they have an incentive to, but there's also a cost there because they actually

771
00:45:07,680 --> 00:45:09,120
shouldn't be the ones to do that.

772
00:45:09,520 --> 00:45:12,320
We've we've you guys have talked a lot about this and know a lot about these you know

773
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:15,040
interdependencies but conflicts of interest.

774
00:45:15,200 --> 00:45:21,110
And so yeah it does create tensions um when people deviate from their prior

775
00:45:21,110 --> 00:45:21,830
expectations.

776
00:45:22,150 --> 00:45:22,390
Yeah.

777
00:45:22,550 --> 00:45:28,470
It reminds me there's a Monty Python skit where the family, the parents are like theater

778
00:45:28,470 --> 00:45:32,390
people, and the son, the son, I think, wants to work in a coal mine and they're very upset

779
00:45:32,390 --> 00:45:32,870
with him, right?

780
00:45:33,110 --> 00:45:36,870
It's the just but that that trope of, you know, the kids want to do something different

781
00:45:36,870 --> 00:45:37,430
than the parents.

782
00:45:37,510 --> 00:45:40,790
I think that's a very universal sort of experience.

783
00:45:42,150 --> 00:45:43,590
Yeah, I've seen that before too.

784
00:45:43,670 --> 00:45:49,120
Even when the in the the hunting and gathering community, the forage horticulture, this

785
00:45:49,280 --> 00:45:50,160
Chabu I worked with.

786
00:45:50,240 --> 00:45:54,720
I remember one of the big guys, the kind of the one of the leaders of the community, he had

787
00:45:54,720 --> 00:46:00,480
a bunch of sons and um, you know, the the one son, the oldest son, was had just

788
00:46:00,480 --> 00:46:03,040
killed like a monkey in the forest recently.

789
00:46:03,120 --> 00:46:06,160
And he was like a small guy, like maybe eight or nine with like a a wooden spear.

790
00:46:06,320 --> 00:46:08,960
And everyone was like praising him, how he was gonna be this big hunter.

791
00:46:09,040 --> 00:46:10,640
And he was telling me, no, I don't want to be a hunter.

792
00:46:10,720 --> 00:46:11,680
I want to go to school.

793
00:46:12,400 --> 00:46:16,950
So even this guy at like eight who didn't really know much, this is quite a remote loc

794
00:46:17,110 --> 00:46:19,750
community, had never really seen bigger cities.

795
00:46:19,910 --> 00:46:22,950
He had seen some, you know, there'd been missionaries and some people would come to the

796
00:46:22,950 --> 00:46:26,550
community, but he had very early on decided that he did not want to be a hunter.

797
00:46:26,710 --> 00:46:27,670
He wanted to go to school.

798
00:46:27,830 --> 00:46:32,310
And so, you know, why people, what are the sort of environmental cues that allow them to

799
00:46:32,310 --> 00:46:35,190
make those decisions at such a young age is a very interesting question.

800
00:46:35,510 --> 00:46:35,830
Yeah.

801
00:46:35,940 --> 00:46:36,260
Yeah.

802
00:46:36,500 --> 00:46:41,620
One one thing we've tiptoed around, and maybe this is a bit of a transition, maybe not, is,

803
00:46:41,780 --> 00:46:45,860
and I know you and I have talked about this, Zach, is when we talk about leadership, and I

804
00:46:45,860 --> 00:46:50,820
think a lot of listeners, especially just outside, when they think of like the science of

805
00:46:50,820 --> 00:46:55,780
leadership, it's very much like business school model of, you know, like there's a single

806
00:46:55,780 --> 00:46:59,380
leader and it's like a single person talking in front of a big group of people.

807
00:46:59,620 --> 00:47:05,390
And you know, my reading and my understanding of sort of the anthropology and evolutionary

808
00:47:05,390 --> 00:47:11,150
sciences of leadership is: I think we all sort of as Westerners sort of start with that

809
00:47:11,150 --> 00:47:11,710
idea.

810
00:47:11,950 --> 00:47:16,270
But, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like the literature is sort of moving

811
00:47:16,270 --> 00:47:21,070
towards this idea that leadership is actually a lots of different things.

812
00:47:21,230 --> 00:47:25,120
And I almost wonder if that as a category or kind.

813
00:47:25,280 --> 00:47:29,600
I have ideas about why we might have this archetype, this entry for like a leader.

814
00:47:29,680 --> 00:47:34,080
Um, but I'm just curious, like what your thoughts are of do is it correct?

815
00:47:34,320 --> 00:47:39,280
Do you would you characterize it as being correct that sort of as you study this idea of

816
00:47:39,280 --> 00:47:44,000
leadership, that the idea of what it is itself sort of becomes more

817
00:47:44,330 --> 00:47:46,010
interestingly distinct.

818
00:47:46,090 --> 00:47:52,090
And maybe that our initial intuition about what a leader is, it's a big, strong, you

819
00:47:52,090 --> 00:47:54,650
know, person who's sort of domineering.

820
00:47:55,130 --> 00:47:59,850
That maybe there's a grain of truth to that for some respects, but in other respects, it

821
00:47:59,850 --> 00:48:05,370
sort of assumes away what the the point of a lot of what leadership is for is doing.

822
00:48:05,850 --> 00:48:07,050
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

823
00:48:07,210 --> 00:48:11,130
And you know, leadership is one of these topics that we're so familiar with.

824
00:48:11,290 --> 00:48:16,160
And I think to your point, there could be a bit of like instinct blindness on the part of

825
00:48:16,160 --> 00:48:19,120
like much of leadership studies up to this point.

826
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:25,120
Um, so I've I've given some lectures and some presentations for like executive education

827
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:29,920
type programs where I talk about leadership from a very um unique perspective.

828
00:48:30,080 --> 00:48:34,320
I I even had the opportunity to give the Prince of Morocco um in a classroom a lecture

829
00:48:34,320 --> 00:48:36,400
about the evolutionary social science of leadership.

830
00:48:36,560 --> 00:48:39,760
And the people are usually very interested to hear about this, but I often ask them at the

831
00:48:39,760 --> 00:48:41,680
beginning, like, so what is leadership?

832
00:48:41,840 --> 00:48:45,330
And people have like very strong held opinions about what it is.

833
00:48:45,490 --> 00:48:51,170
Um leadership is inspiration, or leadership is and they'll have you know sort of the the

834
00:48:51,170 --> 00:48:54,210
business model phototrope of what a leader is.

835
00:48:54,450 --> 00:48:58,610
And I have to bring them back and like explain that, okay, well, that's perfectly fine.

836
00:48:58,690 --> 00:49:03,890
I'm not disagreeing with you, but if we're going to take this psychological scientific

837
00:49:03,890 --> 00:49:05,970
approach, let's operationalize leadership.

838
00:49:06,220 --> 00:49:07,420
Is it a set of behaviors?

839
00:49:07,580 --> 00:49:09,100
Is it a set of qualities?

840
00:49:09,500 --> 00:49:13,660
And then if we do that, where can we apply that and where can it where can we find it?

841
00:49:13,740 --> 00:49:18,380
And obviously, then we find leadership as a behavior or as a psychological phenomenon in

842
00:49:18,380 --> 00:49:19,820
many different domains.

843
00:49:20,140 --> 00:49:24,460
And we have to kind of then identify what's the limits of it.

844
00:49:25,500 --> 00:49:30,290
Obviously, if a if a baby is crying, it's it's influencing the parents, but is that

845
00:49:30,290 --> 00:49:30,690
leadership?

846
00:49:30,850 --> 00:49:31,730
Well, probably not.

847
00:49:31,890 --> 00:49:34,370
There needs to be probably some bit of agency.

848
00:49:34,450 --> 00:49:39,330
Um, but yeah, you find that leadership as a phenomenon, as like a psychological process, is

849
00:49:39,330 --> 00:49:40,850
occurring all over the place.

850
00:49:40,930 --> 00:49:45,090
Um and that's what we want to understand because the the sort of business world of

851
00:49:45,090 --> 00:49:49,810
leadership or the political world of leadership is building up from that psychological

852
00:49:49,810 --> 00:49:50,210
foundation.

853
00:49:50,370 --> 00:49:56,020
But talking to my my colleagues in like political science and and other other fields, it's

854
00:49:56,100 --> 00:50:01,220
uh getting them to think about leadership as a phenomenon rather than like a role or an

855
00:50:01,220 --> 00:50:05,380
institution, um, I think is a has been a big conversation.

856
00:50:05,540 --> 00:50:09,380
But I think people, like you said, are are more and more converging on this more holistic,

857
00:50:09,460 --> 00:50:12,660
kind of multifaceted um way to think about leadership.

858
00:50:13,060 --> 00:50:17,380
Yeah, I mean just to say as a oh sorry, just as a quick funny slight, well, maybe not funny

859
00:50:17,380 --> 00:50:22,020
thing, but like, you know, kids who are crying on the playground or at a toy store uh and

860
00:50:22,050 --> 00:50:25,970
their parents do something different because of it are definitely leading.

861
00:50:26,050 --> 00:50:27,890
Uh yeah.

862
00:50:28,290 --> 00:50:32,450
Yeah, no, absolutely I feel like my my daughter is often dominating me uh

863
00:50:35,010 --> 00:50:40,770
uh but uh it seems like what you're saying is that leadership is actually a much broader

864
00:50:40,770 --> 00:50:44,210
phenomenon that is tip than is typically appreciated.

865
00:50:44,420 --> 00:50:48,500
that you know we we think of it as you're either the CEO or you're the politician.

866
00:50:48,580 --> 00:50:54,020
Uh but that those are just very unique local instances of leadership of of a much broader

867
00:50:54,020 --> 00:50:58,180
category that encompasses what we do uh in virtually every social interaction.

868
00:50:58,260 --> 00:51:00,260
Would would you be advocating for that kind of definition?

869
00:51:00,340 --> 00:51:04,180
And I would then segue into the question of how do you define uh leadership?

870
00:51:04,340 --> 00:51:07,380
How can we pick it out from other kinds of social phenomena?

871
00:51:07,890 --> 00:51:08,770
Yeah, exactly.

872
00:51:09,010 --> 00:51:13,890
So anytime there's like a group of individuals, there's depending upon the structure of

873
00:51:13,890 --> 00:51:17,330
that group, there's probably going to be some individuals that have disproportionate

874
00:51:17,330 --> 00:51:19,490
influence in some particular context.

875
00:51:19,730 --> 00:51:23,890
And so that's sort of the working definition that folks, I think, in the evolutionary

876
00:51:24,050 --> 00:51:25,650
social sciences are often using.

877
00:51:25,810 --> 00:51:28,130
Then that allows you to first define the group.

878
00:51:31,730 --> 00:51:32,450
Is it a nation?

879
00:51:32,610 --> 00:51:33,490
Is it a school?

880
00:51:33,650 --> 00:51:34,690
Is it a playgroup?

881
00:51:34,840 --> 00:51:35,960
Is it a family?

882
00:51:36,360 --> 00:51:38,760
And then how do you want to measure disproportionate influence?

883
00:51:38,840 --> 00:51:40,440
And there's different ways you can go about that as well.

884
00:51:40,600 --> 00:51:42,600
Is it um is it speaking?

885
00:51:42,840 --> 00:51:44,520
Is it having attention?

886
00:51:44,680 --> 00:51:48,520
Um is it is it physically coercing?

887
00:51:48,600 --> 00:51:54,200
Um and I think one of the things I've been thinking and talking about more recently is like

888
00:51:54,200 --> 00:51:56,520
the benefit generation cost and position.

889
00:51:56,600 --> 00:51:58,040
And a lot of people have talked about this.

890
00:51:58,120 --> 00:51:59,560
Um, I mean, Dave, you've talked about this.

891
00:51:59,720 --> 00:52:03,080
Patrick Durkey has also written a lot about this with status hierarchies.

892
00:52:03,240 --> 00:52:08,730
Um, So this kind of makes it a bit more concrete to see that what are the actual outcomes

893
00:52:08,730 --> 00:52:11,370
that this disproportionate influence is producing?

894
00:52:11,530 --> 00:52:13,210
Are they doing something good for the group?

895
00:52:13,370 --> 00:52:16,010
Are they imposing a cost on someone?

896
00:52:16,250 --> 00:52:21,210
Trying to break it down to really concrete, simple ways to think about the outcomes of the

897
00:52:21,210 --> 00:52:22,570
disproportionate influence.

898
00:52:22,650 --> 00:52:27,930
So yeah, then you can define, you know, maybe the uh the parents are the leaders of the

899
00:52:27,930 --> 00:52:33,700
family, um, or the the more outspoken person on the captain of the

900
00:52:33,700 --> 00:52:35,300
basketball team is the captain of the team.

901
00:52:35,540 --> 00:52:39,620
So for any social group, you can identify what the influence who has disproportionate

902
00:52:39,620 --> 00:52:39,940
influence.

903
00:52:40,020 --> 00:52:44,340
In some cases, it might be kind of institutionalized, like you're the captain, so you have

904
00:52:44,340 --> 00:52:45,780
an agreed-upon role.

905
00:52:45,940 --> 00:52:50,900
But in other cases it might be non-institutionalized, but it should emerge from who can

906
00:52:50,900 --> 00:52:53,380
provide benefits for us in this particular context.

907
00:52:53,590 --> 00:52:55,510
So maybe they have some special knowledge.

908
00:52:55,590 --> 00:52:59,030
Um, they're not normally the leader, but all of a sudden, hey, you're the expert on this

909
00:52:59,030 --> 00:53:01,110
domain, so tell us what to do.

910
00:53:01,270 --> 00:53:01,990
Um, yep.

911
00:53:02,630 --> 00:53:05,430
So it's almost like it's yeah, for example, yeah.

912
00:53:05,750 --> 00:53:09,350
So you're what you're saying is leadership is kind of chimerical in that in that there

913
00:53:09,510 --> 00:53:14,150
there isn't, you know, uh we think of a leader as being one person, but what you're saying

914
00:53:14,150 --> 00:53:18,400
is that we're constantly morphing in and out of leadership roles all the time.

915
00:53:18,640 --> 00:53:23,040
Like, you know, for m my daughter, for example, you know, if we're at home and she throws a

916
00:53:23,040 --> 00:53:24,480
tantrum, it's not that big a deal.

917
00:53:24,560 --> 00:53:28,160
But if we're in a public place that's very nice and formal and she throws a tantrum, that

918
00:53:28,160 --> 00:53:29,520
imposes a huge cost on me.

919
00:53:29,680 --> 00:53:34,240
And so she has way more bargaining power in in the fancy public place than she does at

920
00:53:34,240 --> 00:53:34,560
home.

921
00:53:34,720 --> 00:53:35,840
And she likely knows this.

922
00:53:35,920 --> 00:53:38,080
And I'm more willing, she has more influence over me.

923
00:53:38,160 --> 00:53:41,680
You know, I'm more willing to placate her and let her, you know, watch videos on my phone

924
00:53:41,760 --> 00:53:44,000
or whatever to make sure that she doesn't throw a tantrum.

925
00:53:44,160 --> 00:53:47,280
Whereas at home, she's gonna have much less influence over me.

926
00:53:47,690 --> 00:53:52,250
And so she might, you know, move a little further on the leadership continuum, you know, in

927
00:53:52,250 --> 00:53:57,210
a in a in a nice fancy place, and then move, and then I might rise a little bit when we're,

928
00:53:57,290 --> 00:53:58,810
you know, at my home.

929
00:53:58,970 --> 00:54:02,970
Uh and and what you're saying is that we're constantly sliding in and out of uh along,

930
00:54:03,050 --> 00:54:07,530
we're sliding along this continuum of more or less influence, more or less leadership,

931
00:54:07,610 --> 00:54:12,970
depending on the context and what the needs of the different parties are in the situation.

932
00:54:13,610 --> 00:54:15,480
Is that what you're is that is that accurate?

933
00:54:15,720 --> 00:54:16,360
Yeah, exactly.

934
00:54:16,520 --> 00:54:18,280
Did you have something to add to that, Dave?

935
00:54:18,680 --> 00:54:24,600
Oh, I was just gonna say, um uh well I was gonna just say uh like the

936
00:54:24,600 --> 00:54:30,600
example of the um uh um uh navigation, but uh the but I mean the way I think about

937
00:54:30,600 --> 00:54:35,000
it almost is that I mean to answer the substantive thing is that I actually think like

938
00:54:35,000 --> 00:54:40,490
leadership roles and events, like for example, you know, we're all in a group together, and

939
00:54:40,650 --> 00:54:44,410
you know, maybe one of us has better knowledge of like where where to eat.

940
00:54:44,570 --> 00:54:48,170
And so in that moment, they're like essentially the leader, but then somebody knows

941
00:54:48,170 --> 00:54:50,090
somebody else knows how to get there, right?

942
00:54:50,250 --> 00:54:51,690
And like they're the leader too.

943
00:54:51,850 --> 00:54:57,850
And I think in a in a funny way, like our folk concept leader probably doesn't tag those

944
00:54:57,850 --> 00:54:59,840
as leadership per se.

945
00:55:00,080 --> 00:55:05,680
And I actually think it's biased towards what, and I think this is a word used by like

946
00:55:05,680 --> 00:55:09,040
people like Aaron Lukashewski or other things, where it's almost like a leadership

947
00:55:09,040 --> 00:55:15,040
manifold, where there's certain attributes that are uh recurrently

948
00:55:15,040 --> 00:55:17,360
and repeat repetitively useful.

949
00:55:17,520 --> 00:55:20,400
So, like, you know, being a good communicator, being formidable.

950
00:55:20,640 --> 00:55:26,590
So, sort of, I think our our idea, our folk idea of what a leader is, doesn't

951
00:55:26,590 --> 00:55:32,110
look at leadership instances at all, but what it does is it looks at the aggregate, like

952
00:55:32,190 --> 00:55:34,910
what's the throughput or what does a person afford.

953
00:55:35,070 --> 00:55:41,070
And so I think like half of leadership or three quarters of leadership isn't even seen by

954
00:55:41,070 --> 00:55:43,710
our intuitive idea of what a leader leadership is.

955
00:55:43,870 --> 00:55:48,270
And what our intuitive idea of what leadership is is looking, is doing the job of

956
00:55:48,270 --> 00:55:54,180
individuating between people and seeing what what kinds of leadership instances they're

957
00:55:54,180 --> 00:55:56,500
good at and ranking them in that way.

958
00:55:56,660 --> 00:56:01,140
So it's like very much like it's this, it's we're not designed to do the science of

959
00:56:01,140 --> 00:56:02,100
representing leadership.

960
00:56:02,260 --> 00:56:06,820
We're actually just doing the evolved thing of sort of picking who's good for doing certain

961
00:56:06,820 --> 00:56:07,060
things.

962
00:56:07,220 --> 00:56:10,260
And that's what our folk psychology is completely focused on.

963
00:56:10,820 --> 00:56:10,900
Yeah.

964
00:56:11,140 --> 00:56:15,730
And then there's sort of like a meta leadership and identifying who should be leaders in

965
00:56:15,810 --> 00:56:16,290
what context.

966
00:56:16,530 --> 00:56:17,730
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

967
00:56:18,130 --> 00:56:21,650
And you know, just this like really emphasizes the market dynamics we were talking about

968
00:56:21,650 --> 00:56:22,050
before.

969
00:56:22,210 --> 00:56:26,290
So the context shapes who can provide benefits or impose costs.

970
00:56:26,370 --> 00:56:28,930
There's variation among all the individuals involved in the group.

971
00:56:29,330 --> 00:56:32,050
And then also you have the pool of competing leaders too.

972
00:56:32,130 --> 00:56:38,050
And so kind of to bring this back to like adaptive psychology, there's potentially either

973
00:56:38,260 --> 00:56:43,060
either adaptations or there are mental structures that facilitate this process by which we

974
00:56:43,060 --> 00:56:48,020
can see what groups are we a part of, what are the challenges we face, and should I solve

975
00:56:48,020 --> 00:56:48,580
those groups?

976
00:56:48,980 --> 00:56:50,420
Excuse me, should I solve those problems?

977
00:56:50,500 --> 00:56:51,540
Am I equipped to do that?

978
00:56:51,700 --> 00:56:57,460
Or should I defer to this other individual who clearly has more knowledge or formidability

979
00:56:57,540 --> 00:57:03,060
or the right combination of of capital, so to speak, um, in this particular market?

980
00:57:04,410 --> 00:57:04,650
Yeah.

981
00:57:04,810 --> 00:57:08,410
And I think this gets into like one of my students, Clara Lavador, is really interested in

982
00:57:08,490 --> 00:57:11,210
like niche niche occupying niches in groups.

983
00:57:11,370 --> 00:57:14,170
And I think like the psychology of sort of what's my role?

984
00:57:14,330 --> 00:57:17,610
You know, like in movies, there's always like, you know, you're the dri you're the getaway

985
00:57:17,610 --> 00:57:19,930
in a heist movie, you know, like what's your expertise?

986
00:57:20,090 --> 00:57:25,690
I think that idea of sort of every group has this role and this role and this role, and

987
00:57:25,690 --> 00:57:27,690
people value being that role.

988
00:57:27,770 --> 00:57:31,050
Uh, and it's a threat when somebody else comes and might be better at you.

989
00:57:31,130 --> 00:57:36,580
I think that happens a lot more in in that dynamic is sort of what we're also

990
00:57:36,580 --> 00:57:37,780
talking about here.

991
00:57:39,460 --> 00:57:45,300
Yeah, that's like the the dominance hierarchy within the the roles that assemble together

992
00:57:45,300 --> 00:57:48,020
to form like a cohesive, functioning, interdependent group.

993
00:57:48,100 --> 00:57:48,980
That makes a lot of sense.

994
00:57:49,140 --> 00:57:49,700
Yeah.

995
00:57:50,020 --> 00:57:50,420
Hmm.

996
00:57:50,580 --> 00:57:51,540
It's interesting.

997
00:57:51,780 --> 00:57:56,390
So within the heist group there's a dominance hierarchy about who's the best getaway

998
00:57:56,550 --> 00:57:56,950
driver.

999
00:57:57,030 --> 00:57:57,190
Right.

1000
00:57:57,270 --> 00:58:01,190
And right and maybe one who's who's widely recognized by the group as the best getaway

1001
00:58:01,350 --> 00:58:03,270
driver, you could consider them the alpha.

1002
00:58:03,350 --> 00:58:05,270
And then maybe the second best would be the beta.

1003
00:58:05,350 --> 00:58:09,030
And then if someone else is showing their chops at being a getaway driver, well, the alpha

1004
00:58:09,030 --> 00:58:13,110
might feel threatened by that and try to act against that person.

1005
00:58:13,270 --> 00:58:17,670
But that's just a little micro status hierarchy within the larger group of, you know, w

1006
00:58:17,830 --> 00:58:21,620
what what they're trying to do, which is, you know, rob banks or whatever.

1007
00:58:21,700 --> 00:58:23,940
Uh and then you have different status hierarchies happening there.

1008
00:58:24,020 --> 00:58:25,380
I mean, it's all extremely complicated.

1009
00:58:25,540 --> 00:58:28,980
But of course, once you zoom out, you see that this is just a niche within a niche within a

1010
00:58:28,980 --> 00:58:29,380
niche.

1011
00:58:29,460 --> 00:58:33,940
Because you know, choosing to rob banks versus, you know, do brain surgery is itself a a

1012
00:58:33,940 --> 00:58:37,060
huge complicated decision of which niche I'm going to pursue and then, you know, which

1013
00:58:37,060 --> 00:58:39,300
niche I'm going to sho pursue within that niche.

1014
00:58:39,460 --> 00:58:43,110
Um so it's it's a really it's a rich way of thinking.

1015
00:58:43,190 --> 00:58:48,870
Uh and it helps you carve nature at the joints and and and and think about what the little

1016
00:58:48,950 --> 00:58:53,590
micro decisions are within the the fractal nature of all these different status games and

1017
00:58:53,590 --> 00:58:54,390
all these different niches.

1018
00:58:54,790 --> 00:58:55,910
Anyway, I'm I'm ranting.

1019
00:58:56,070 --> 00:58:57,910
But uh but it's Yeah, I like that.

1020
00:58:57,990 --> 00:59:02,870
But it unifies like the the like Congress person who's threatened by another

1021
00:59:02,870 --> 00:59:08,120
congressperson, and that's the same underlying logic as the kid who's a good skateboarder

1022
00:59:08,200 --> 00:59:12,120
and a c the best kid skateboarder in class and there's a new kid who's a better

1023
00:59:12,120 --> 00:59:12,920
skateboarder.

1024
00:59:13,080 --> 00:59:18,200
It's the same uh expression at a deep level of the same phenomenon.

1025
00:59:19,000 --> 00:59:19,240
Yeah.

1026
00:59:19,400 --> 00:59:22,440
I mean I think it explains a lot of political phenomena.

1027
00:59:22,600 --> 00:59:27,080
I mean you could think about you know uh antipathy toward immigrants as you know I uh

1028
00:59:27,240 --> 00:59:31,400
provide the service of you know working for this factory and here comes this this new group

1029
00:59:31,400 --> 00:59:36,130
of people who seem to be doing this this this work or providing this service at a lower

1030
00:59:36,130 --> 00:59:41,570
price than than me and that could uh to my evolved psychology feel like a threat and I

1031
00:59:41,570 --> 00:59:46,690
might try to act against that that upstart or those those newcomers coming in to try to uh

1032
00:59:46,850 --> 00:59:52,690
overshadow me or you know if I am a a cultural well-educated uh uh elite uh

1033
00:59:52,770 --> 00:59:56,450
and I have and I want to have lots of influence over the culture and I see these you

1034
00:59:56,660 --> 01:00:00,980
wealthy corporate CEOs who have disproportionate political influence, they're a threat to

1035
01:00:00,980 --> 01:00:01,140
me.

1036
01:00:01,300 --> 01:00:06,100
And I might be uh attracted uh by political parties that try to take take down those

1037
01:00:06,820 --> 01:00:08,260
corporate fat cats.

1038
01:00:08,340 --> 01:00:08,580
Right.

1039
01:00:08,740 --> 01:00:14,660
And so you see these kinds of uh status conflicts happening uh uh in in all different

1040
01:00:14,660 --> 01:00:18,500
parts of a society and at different levels of social hierarchies and in different social

1041
01:00:18,500 --> 01:00:19,140
hierarchies.

1042
01:00:19,300 --> 01:00:24,340
And these are some of the raw material uh for uh creating political coalitions that are

1043
01:00:24,340 --> 01:00:26,950
attractive to people and uniting different alliances together.

1044
01:00:27,110 --> 01:00:32,070
Anyways, I'm getting into uh uh my uh hobby horse, which is thinking about politics.

1045
01:00:32,150 --> 01:00:36,470
But I'm curious if you if you if you think uh I'm onto something in this in this direction.

1046
01:00:36,950 --> 01:00:37,910
Yeah, definitely, definitely.

1047
01:00:38,070 --> 01:00:41,910
And there's a there's another layer of complexity to this in that as let's say a would-be

1048
01:00:42,070 --> 01:00:45,750
leader or a potential leader, you can also manipulate people's perceptions of the

1049
01:00:45,750 --> 01:00:51,560
environment to promote your own capacities at the expense of your rival.

1050
01:00:52,040 --> 01:00:57,240
And this is like a classic thing that authoritarian would-be leaders do is emphasize the

1051
01:00:57,560 --> 01:00:59,320
outgroup threats or the external threats.

1052
01:00:59,400 --> 01:01:02,520
And we've, you know, we've seen Donald Trump do this in many of his campaigns.

1053
01:01:02,680 --> 01:01:08,120
Um, but we don't have uh an enemy, so to speak, you know, coming in our border or in our

1054
01:01:08,120 --> 01:01:09,800
territory, except like immigration.

1055
01:01:09,960 --> 01:01:12,520
So that's been a very salient message for him.

1056
01:01:12,680 --> 01:01:17,830
It creates this out-group threat, And there's a lot of evidence that suggests that when

1057
01:01:17,830 --> 01:01:22,390
there is this intergroup threat, we're more likely to prefer these more domineering,

1058
01:01:22,710 --> 01:01:25,350
strongman, authoritarian type tendencies.

1059
01:01:25,830 --> 01:01:29,430
It might be a cost for us, but it's a cost we're willing to pay if that threat is real.

1060
01:01:29,510 --> 01:01:33,910
And if the threat is real, then you want that leader who can protect our border and keep us

1061
01:01:33,910 --> 01:01:38,550
safe and provide those benefits to us that we think are going to outweigh the costs of

1062
01:01:38,550 --> 01:01:41,750
their potential coerciveness.

1063
01:01:42,480 --> 01:01:48,320
But if you have a rival who is, let's say, less authoritarian or or less co less

1064
01:01:48,480 --> 01:01:52,000
has less capacities for coercion, but they're going to provide all these other benefits.

1065
01:01:52,080 --> 01:01:55,920
They're going to solve all the problems, and the economy is going to be great, and the

1066
01:01:55,920 --> 01:01:59,600
social system is going to function well, the benefits are going to be great from that

1067
01:01:59,600 --> 01:02:00,080
individual.

1068
01:02:00,240 --> 01:02:04,800
Well, you might not be able to compete with them in benefit provision, but you can compete

1069
01:02:04,800 --> 01:02:10,530
with them in some other domain if you sort of tweak the perception of the ecology to favor

1070
01:02:10,770 --> 01:02:12,530
your capacities rather than theirs.

1071
01:02:12,690 --> 01:02:16,930
So there's you can compete in these on both sides of the coin, so to speak.

1072
01:02:17,250 --> 01:02:20,130
And I think you see this in political rhetoric quite quite clearly.

1073
01:02:20,370 --> 01:02:24,450
And I I don't know that I don't know that politicians have like evolutionary social

1074
01:02:24,450 --> 01:02:25,490
scientists on their staff.

1075
01:02:25,570 --> 01:02:28,130
I don't think they do, but um it's almost as if they do.

1076
01:02:28,210 --> 01:02:32,610
And I think that's an indication that the psychology underlying this is so salient that

1077
01:02:32,610 --> 01:02:36,440
someone like Donald Trump doesn't have to be coached to say, oh yeah, you want to emphasize

1078
01:02:36,440 --> 01:02:38,360
the outgroup threat to play into your strength.

1079
01:02:38,600 --> 01:02:43,160
It's just like a natural process, a natural outcome of our psychologies.

1080
01:02:43,640 --> 01:02:44,680
And you could think of it as a market.

1081
01:02:45,080 --> 01:02:49,320
I mean, you see you you have a bunch of competing politicians with competing uh uh agendas

1082
01:02:49,320 --> 01:02:51,640
and platforms and and uh uh beliefs.

1083
01:02:51,800 --> 01:02:54,920
And some of those beliefs are just more attractive and compelling to the human mind.

1084
01:02:55,080 --> 01:02:59,870
And the ones that win out are the ones that, you know, uh demonize uh you know an outgroup

1085
01:03:00,030 --> 01:03:04,110
or you know, frame some group as being a free rider that needs to be punished.

1086
01:03:04,270 --> 01:03:08,110
These kind these kinds of narratives that fit uh our evolved psychology very well are the

1087
01:03:08,110 --> 01:03:12,110
ones that win out in the political marketplace and then trickle up to form the contents of

1088
01:03:12,110 --> 01:03:13,950
our ideological belief systems.

1089
01:03:14,350 --> 01:03:14,990
Yeah.

1090
01:03:15,390 --> 01:03:17,230
This is why we can't have nice things.

1091
01:03:17,550 --> 01:03:18,190
Yeah.

1092
01:03:19,840 --> 01:03:22,640
People are terrible and wonderful, but also terrible.

1093
01:03:22,880 --> 01:03:23,760
Yeah, they're both.

1094
01:03:24,000 --> 01:03:24,320
Yeah.

1095
01:03:24,560 --> 01:03:30,000
Um, Zach, uh what uh we've so we've been launching into sort of leadership.

1096
01:03:30,160 --> 01:03:35,040
Um, you know, you you there's this thing about like services, like cognitive services.

1097
01:03:35,200 --> 01:03:38,400
I don't know if you want to talk about that at all, or is there some other part of your

1098
01:03:38,400 --> 01:03:38,800
research?

1099
01:03:38,880 --> 01:03:39,920
Like, are we missing anything?

1100
01:03:40,080 --> 01:03:41,760
Because we sort of launched right in.

1101
01:03:41,920 --> 01:03:46,080
Um, are we missing, you know, a good swath of what you're doing or thinking about?

1102
01:03:46,800 --> 01:03:51,290
Um Well, yeah, we've talked a little bit about some of this stuff.

1103
01:03:51,370 --> 01:03:56,490
I guess on the on the services side, so this is like some work I I've done with Ed Hagan,

1104
01:03:56,570 --> 01:03:58,490
who you who you both talk to and know well.

1105
01:03:58,650 --> 01:04:03,130
Um, this is the idea that you know part of what leaders are doing are providing these

1106
01:04:03,370 --> 01:04:06,970
services, often cognitive services, in our in our in our model.

1107
01:04:07,450 --> 01:04:12,780
And I guess a lot of my work is kind of it's been very inspired by the sort of dominance

1108
01:04:12,860 --> 01:04:14,140
prestige framework.

1109
01:04:14,220 --> 01:04:19,340
This I read this paper, you know, the the seminal paper here is Henrik and Gil White 2001.

1110
01:04:19,500 --> 01:04:22,620
I read this as an undergraduate when I was working with Ray Haymes.

1111
01:04:22,700 --> 01:04:25,580
He turned me onto this, and that just like blew my mind.

1112
01:04:25,660 --> 01:04:29,180
And I mean I think I still have my PDF copy of that that's like you know, it's all

1113
01:04:29,180 --> 01:04:31,100
highlighted and has coffee stains on it.

1114
01:04:31,260 --> 01:04:36,790
And so I I spent a lot of my work as a graduate student trying to understand what this

1115
01:04:36,790 --> 01:04:40,790
dominance prestige model was, how we could test it, what it would look like in different

1116
01:04:40,950 --> 01:04:41,670
different contexts.

1117
01:04:41,750 --> 01:04:45,910
And you see tons of ethnographic evidence that this is going on.

1118
01:04:45,990 --> 01:04:48,710
And there's been a lot of different ways to think about prestige.

1119
01:04:49,910 --> 01:04:50,790
Is it respect?

1120
01:04:50,950 --> 01:04:53,590
Is it competition in these symbolic domains?

1121
01:04:53,750 --> 01:04:59,110
Instead of competing with physical aggression, we can compete by being a guitarist or being

1122
01:04:59,110 --> 01:05:00,950
a good hunter or a basketball player.

1123
01:05:01,190 --> 01:05:04,870
So is it analogous to physical competition, but in non-physical ways?

1124
01:05:05,030 --> 01:05:07,240
That's sort of the Jerome Barco model.

1125
01:05:07,400 --> 01:05:13,080
Um, or is it like an opportunity to identify the important model to learn skills from?

1126
01:05:13,240 --> 01:05:15,880
That's sort of the Henrik cultural evolution model.

1127
01:05:16,280 --> 01:05:22,200
And so once we really dug into a lot of the ethnography, um, it led us to think about

1128
01:05:22,360 --> 01:05:28,360
uh how the sort of um social selection models of learning and

1129
01:05:28,440 --> 01:05:34,310
and and finding the ideal individual to to learn important skills from also relates to

1130
01:05:34,310 --> 01:05:39,830
this very clear pattern that high status men and leaders have much enhanced reproductive

1131
01:05:39,830 --> 01:05:40,150
success.

1132
01:05:40,230 --> 01:05:44,550
You know, the Chris von Ruden has talked a lot about this and um we s we sa we see this a

1133
01:05:44,550 --> 01:05:45,830
lot in the ethnographic record.

1134
01:05:45,910 --> 01:05:51,660
So there's clearly like a a sexual selection and a social selection process going on.

1135
01:05:51,820 --> 01:05:55,580
And so this led us to think about: well, what is it that prestigious leaders are really

1136
01:05:55,580 --> 01:05:55,980
good for?

1137
01:05:56,140 --> 01:05:59,980
Why would you want to sacrifice your autonomy to someone else?

1138
01:06:00,220 --> 01:06:04,940
And the social, the sort of cultural evolutionary story, the social learning story probably

1139
01:06:04,940 --> 01:06:06,220
explains a big chunk of it.

1140
01:06:06,380 --> 01:06:12,330
Like, yes, you wanna identify who you can learn from, but there's some issues

1141
01:06:12,330 --> 01:06:14,570
there we we think are are not fully explained.

1142
01:06:14,730 --> 01:06:20,570
For one, like if that is the case, if prestige is a mechanism to identify someone who

1143
01:06:20,570 --> 01:06:25,290
has important skills from, so that then you can learn those skills, you might expect that

1144
01:06:25,290 --> 01:06:30,410
prestige would go down as a function of that individual sharing that information.

1145
01:06:30,650 --> 01:06:32,890
Um and that's obviously not how prestige works.

1146
01:06:32,970 --> 01:06:37,880
I mean, if if I if I want to learn how to you know shoot a three-point shot because you're

1147
01:06:37,880 --> 01:06:42,200
the best and you teach me that shot and I mimic your technique exactly, now your prestige

1148
01:06:42,200 --> 01:06:42,920
doesn't go down.

1149
01:06:43,080 --> 01:06:45,080
Um so there's more going on than that.

1150
01:06:45,240 --> 01:06:50,200
And then, you know, why would you defer to someone who is prestigious once you have already

1151
01:06:50,200 --> 01:06:53,720
sort of acquired whatever knowledge that you could potentially acquire from them?

1152
01:06:53,800 --> 01:06:55,880
Um that doesn't seem to happen either.

1153
01:06:56,120 --> 01:07:01,390
Um Why would prestigious people be like sexually attractive to the opposite sex?

1154
01:07:01,950 --> 01:07:07,790
Or if you're in an arranged marriage situation, which characterizes a lot of humanity,

1155
01:07:07,950 --> 01:07:13,310
why would you want your son or your daughter to be partnered with a prestigious individual?

1156
01:07:13,550 --> 01:07:15,310
So there seem to be a lot of gaps in this.

1157
01:07:15,470 --> 01:07:19,230
And our our solution is this idea of computational services.

1158
01:07:19,470 --> 01:07:23,840
So prestigious individuals have special knowledge and they have intelligence.

1159
01:07:23,920 --> 01:07:26,320
And we kind of use this term neurocapital.

1160
01:07:26,560 --> 01:07:29,760
Some of my colleagues don't like this so much, but for us, it's like it's a it's a

1161
01:07:29,760 --> 01:07:30,320
catch-all.

1162
01:07:30,480 --> 01:07:36,320
So it's whatever intelligence is, you know, whatever uh expertise is and knowledge is and

1163
01:07:36,320 --> 01:07:40,160
also personality, just all the stuff that's in the in the brain that's variable.

1164
01:07:40,640 --> 01:07:44,110
And in this sense, it's kind of like physical formidability.

1165
01:07:44,670 --> 01:07:45,710
You can't fake it.

1166
01:07:45,870 --> 01:07:50,510
And to some extent, you can build it up over time, but you can't just overnight increase

1167
01:07:50,510 --> 01:07:54,190
your neural capital, just like overnight, you can't become physically formidable.

1168
01:07:54,510 --> 01:07:56,110
And so there's natural variation.

1169
01:07:56,270 --> 01:08:01,870
And if you're high on this neural capital, then it puts you in a position to provide

1170
01:08:01,870 --> 01:08:07,150
input into other individuals, solve problems for them, resolve conflicts, and offer

1171
01:08:07,150 --> 01:08:07,790
services.

1172
01:08:08,030 --> 01:08:14,000
And it's beneficial for the altar, the other individual, because

1173
01:08:14,000 --> 01:08:16,240
they don't have the information that you do.

1174
01:08:16,560 --> 01:08:21,680
And imagine a scenario where you have one individual who has a big problem.

1175
01:08:21,840 --> 01:08:22,800
They don't know what to do.

1176
01:08:23,040 --> 01:08:25,680
They lack the information, they lack the experience to solve this problem.

1177
01:08:25,840 --> 01:08:30,320
So they go to someone who is known for having this expertise, having this prestige.

1178
01:08:30,480 --> 01:08:34,480
And they there's you know situation A, B, and C, and they have no idea what to do.

1179
01:08:34,560 --> 01:08:38,350
Uh the prestigious individual, because of their expertise, because of their sort of theory

1180
01:08:38,350 --> 01:08:43,790
of mind capacities, maybe just even their cognitive capacities, their intelligence, they

1181
01:08:43,790 --> 01:08:48,750
might know that option A is clearly bad for this individual, so they can like take it off

1182
01:08:48,750 --> 01:08:49,550
the table right away.

1183
01:08:49,790 --> 01:08:55,390
Option B and D, excuse me, B and C might be equally good for the for the

1184
01:08:55,390 --> 01:08:59,870
requester, but option C might be great for the leader, the prestigious individual.

1185
01:09:00,030 --> 01:09:02,030
So then they can recommend option C.

1186
01:09:02,350 --> 01:09:04,510
And both parties get a benefit here.

1187
01:09:05,100 --> 01:09:09,820
it's easier for the follower in this scenario because all they have to do now is compare

1188
01:09:09,820 --> 01:09:12,460
the proposed option to whatever they might do on their own.

1189
01:09:12,620 --> 01:09:14,940
So just a sort of binary comparison.

1190
01:09:15,340 --> 01:09:19,260
The leader, on the other hand, had a quite a complex set of scenarios and a lot of

1191
01:09:19,260 --> 01:09:21,260
information processing going on.

1192
01:09:21,580 --> 01:09:26,220
And that means that now most decisions will be a benefit to the leader.

1193
01:09:26,380 --> 01:09:31,260
So that's why it's attractive to be married to this individual, to have your close kin

1194
01:09:31,260 --> 01:09:36,990
married to that individual, to be partners to that individual, because outcomes are

1195
01:09:36,990 --> 01:09:38,350
usually going to be in their favor.

1196
01:09:38,510 --> 01:09:40,590
So it's they're a good social partner to have.

1197
01:09:41,310 --> 01:09:44,510
So that's sort of the idea of computational services in a nutshell, in a sense.

1198
01:09:44,910 --> 01:09:48,430
If I could break that down, because it's a it's a cool idea and I want to break down like

1199
01:09:48,430 --> 01:09:49,710
the the mechanics of it.

1200
01:09:49,870 --> 01:09:53,310
So within any decision, uh there are decision costs.

1201
01:09:53,470 --> 01:09:59,300
There's time, energy, uh uh uh uh et cetera, that it takes to evaluate all the

1202
01:09:59,300 --> 01:10:03,380
different possibilities, conceive of all the different possibilities, map out how they're

1203
01:10:03,380 --> 01:10:06,740
gonna work out in your head, uh, and that takes time and energy.

1204
01:10:06,900 --> 01:10:12,340
Um, and what a leader does is it uh saves you that time and energy.

1205
01:10:12,500 --> 01:10:17,890
You you uh provide the service of reducing that decision cost for the person that you're

1206
01:10:17,890 --> 01:10:18,450
helping.

1207
01:10:18,850 --> 01:10:23,170
And so you get a benefit, and that, and then I'm saving you some cost, I'm saving you some

1208
01:10:23,170 --> 01:10:24,770
time and energy in making the decision.

1209
01:10:24,850 --> 01:10:29,410
And I'm getting a benefit too, because I'm going to guide you toward decisions that benefit

1210
01:10:29,410 --> 01:10:29,730
me more.

1211
01:10:29,810 --> 01:10:31,170
So we're each benefiting from this.

1212
01:10:31,330 --> 01:10:34,210
You get a lower decision cost, and I get a better outcome.

1213
01:10:34,450 --> 01:10:40,210
And through that mutual benefit, uh this kind of this kind of leadership uh dynamic

1214
01:10:40,300 --> 01:10:45,260
emerges where a person who is better at reducing decision costs for people tends to reduce

1215
01:10:45,260 --> 01:10:47,580
more decision costs and have more influence over the group.

1216
01:10:47,660 --> 01:10:51,340
And in exchange for providing that service, they get more favorable outcomes.

1217
01:10:52,300 --> 01:10:53,580
Is that a good way of breaking it down?

1218
01:10:53,900 --> 01:10:54,540
Yeah, exactly.

1219
01:10:54,700 --> 01:10:57,820
And in the in the paper, we call this joint utility improvement.

1220
01:10:58,380 --> 01:11:00,380
So we actually both get a better outcome of this.

1221
01:11:00,460 --> 01:11:01,820
And so leadership is costly as well.

1222
01:11:01,900 --> 01:11:05,340
So I need to get some, if someone's leader, they need to get some payoff and make it worth

1223
01:11:05,340 --> 01:11:06,140
their while as well.

1224
01:11:06,390 --> 01:11:09,750
A lot of people in these, especially smaller scale societies, they don't want to be the

1225
01:11:09,750 --> 01:11:11,990
leader because the costs are quite quite high.

1226
01:11:12,390 --> 01:11:15,830
Opportunity costs, potential reputational damages.

1227
01:11:16,310 --> 01:11:20,470
But in the end, it makes sense exactly given the dynamics you just explained.

1228
01:11:21,270 --> 01:11:21,590
Cool.

1229
01:11:22,070 --> 01:11:23,030
It's a really interesting model.

1230
01:11:23,110 --> 01:11:23,830
I like it a lot.

1231
01:11:24,150 --> 01:11:24,390
Yeah.

1232
01:11:24,470 --> 01:11:28,790
And just in defense of your sort of agnostic about like what intelligence or the neural

1233
01:11:28,790 --> 01:11:34,500
underpinnings are, the there's this idea of a difference detecting

1234
01:11:34,500 --> 01:11:34,900
mechanism.

1235
01:11:35,060 --> 01:11:38,500
I have a paper that's hopefully going to come out pretty soon, and it's based on it's an

1236
01:11:38,500 --> 01:11:43,940
idea from David Buss and people like Aaron Lukashewski and other people and Patrick Durge

1237
01:11:44,260 --> 01:11:49,540
in personality, looking at um it's this idea that it's what we talked about before for

1238
01:11:49,540 --> 01:11:55,220
leadership, which is what we're evolved to do is look for differences in

1239
01:11:55,460 --> 01:11:58,660
something not necessarily the full causal story.

1240
01:11:58,820 --> 01:12:04,030
So for example, like if you're trying to predict like what's a good restaurant, you're not

1241
01:12:04,030 --> 01:12:06,270
going to go through like, well, do they cook food?

1242
01:12:06,430 --> 01:12:08,190
Um, you know, do they have a wait staff?

1243
01:12:08,270 --> 01:12:09,550
Like that's held constant.

1244
01:12:09,710 --> 01:12:13,310
So what you're gonna do is look for like, is there like a line out the door?

1245
01:12:13,470 --> 01:12:15,310
You know, like how hard is it to get in?

1246
01:12:15,470 --> 01:12:18,510
Does like the upkeep look, you know, like is it being kept up?

1247
01:12:18,750 --> 01:12:24,110
Like these are all cues to predict among the variants that of the choices that you have.

1248
01:12:24,350 --> 01:12:29,500
And so in intelligence, for example, there's this long literature and like there's a paper

1249
01:12:29,500 --> 01:12:34,620
by Denny Borsboom about how people have looked for like the underpinnings of what

1250
01:12:34,620 --> 01:12:39,020
intelligence is forever, and it doesn't map onto any like single thing.

1251
01:12:39,100 --> 01:12:42,620
And that's in part because, you know, like the mind is not domain general and there's not

1252
01:12:42,620 --> 01:12:44,060
like the thinky part of the mind.

1253
01:12:44,300 --> 01:12:50,030
But it's also because this idea is that really what intelligence is a third-party

1254
01:12:50,030 --> 01:12:54,270
representation of somebody who's better at something than somebody else.

1255
01:12:54,510 --> 01:12:57,470
And the source of that variation is always different.

1256
01:12:57,630 --> 01:13:02,270
So in some cases, it might be like we're in a high pathogen environment, and the person

1257
01:13:02,270 --> 01:13:06,910
who's just got faster processing speed for this particular task is the one who has like the

1258
01:13:06,910 --> 01:13:08,270
lowest pathogen load.

1259
01:13:08,510 --> 01:13:12,750
But what that produces or why that's there is very different from another situation where

1260
01:13:12,750 --> 01:13:14,350
it's like, who's the best guitarist?

1261
01:13:14,430 --> 01:13:18,320
And like, why did that, you know, that particular combination of things and what makes the

1262
01:13:18,320 --> 01:13:22,720
best guitarist isn't what makes the best accountant or most like, you know, and so what

1263
01:13:22,720 --> 01:13:28,560
people have discovered is what unifies these difference-detecting concepts like

1264
01:13:28,560 --> 01:13:34,160
leadership or intelligence is not the um the thing in the head that

1265
01:13:34,160 --> 01:13:37,840
corresponds to it, but it's the perception of a difference.

1266
01:13:38,080 --> 01:13:40,110
But what causes that difference is always the same.

1267
01:13:40,190 --> 01:13:44,350
So the fact that you're being agnostic about it, I just want to like as a side as a side

1268
01:13:44,510 --> 01:13:50,350
here, um, it's vindicated in the sense of there's these many categories that are really

1269
01:13:50,350 --> 01:13:55,550
part of our intuitive evolved folk psychology, where it's really we're designed to detect

1270
01:13:55,550 --> 01:13:59,470
differences, but what causes those differences is very opaque and might even be

1271
01:13:59,470 --> 01:14:01,710
heterogeneous across the situations.

1272
01:14:02,430 --> 01:14:03,390
Okay, that's really cool.

1273
01:14:03,550 --> 01:14:06,590
Yeah, that fits perfectly with uh this sort of framework.

1274
01:14:06,840 --> 01:14:07,080
Yeah.

1275
01:14:07,320 --> 01:14:07,560
Yeah.

1276
01:14:07,640 --> 01:14:09,880
I I like that a lot too, Dave.

1277
01:14:10,040 --> 01:14:16,040
Um, and uh incidentally, uh, it relates to I think a lot of uh panic about

1278
01:14:16,040 --> 01:14:21,000
artificial intelligence is because we import we import this folk concept of intelligence as

1279
01:14:21,000 --> 01:14:22,760
just sort of being generally awesome.

1280
01:14:22,920 --> 01:14:25,480
And then that leads to these uh wild thought experiments.

1281
01:14:25,720 --> 01:14:29,480
What if we what if the computer just gets more and more generally awesome at everything?

1282
01:14:29,560 --> 01:14:32,760
And then it'll be better at everything than us, and then it'll it'll kill us all.

1283
01:14:33,050 --> 01:14:38,890
Um and I so I think a lot of fears about AI runama come from this kind of folk psychology

1284
01:14:38,970 --> 01:14:41,290
um that that we're just letting run wild.

1285
01:14:41,370 --> 01:14:45,370
Um I have a blog post called AI Dumerism is bullshit that you might enjoy, Dave, that that

1286
01:14:45,370 --> 01:14:46,410
basically makes this argument.

1287
01:14:47,130 --> 01:14:47,210
Yeah.

1288
01:14:47,530 --> 01:14:51,770
Um but yeah, no, I I I I love this idea of neural capital, Zach.

1289
01:14:51,850 --> 01:14:56,520
I think it puts the focus where it ought to be, which is not on this like mental substance

1290
01:14:56,520 --> 01:15:00,760
called intelligence, but thinking of it in economic terms as a as a s as a thing that you

1291
01:15:00,760 --> 01:15:02,200
accumulate over a lifetime.

1292
01:15:02,360 --> 01:15:06,280
You know, just as I, you know, eat lots of food and I, you know, and that, you know, it

1293
01:15:06,280 --> 01:15:11,160
gets converted into um, you know, physical capital, you know, bigger muscles or or you

1294
01:15:11,160 --> 01:15:16,600
know, larger size or whatever, uh, I, you know, uh forage for lots of pieces of valuable

1295
01:15:16,600 --> 01:15:17,880
information in my environment.

1296
01:15:17,960 --> 01:15:22,360
And I learn lots of valuable lessons and I accumulate that in my nervous system.

1297
01:15:23,310 --> 01:15:27,150
And that allows me to provide lots of value to other people.

1298
01:15:27,230 --> 01:15:30,350
And some just as some people might be better at hunting and foraging and better at

1299
01:15:30,590 --> 01:15:35,470
accumulating food, some people might be better at accumulating valuable pieces of

1300
01:15:35,470 --> 01:15:37,550
information, valuable insights, valuable lessons.

1301
01:15:37,870 --> 01:15:41,550
And those people will just tend to have more neural capital and be able to provide more

1302
01:15:41,550 --> 01:15:45,630
benefits, which in turn allows them to have more bargaining power in the social marketplace

1303
01:15:45,710 --> 01:15:49,470
and have more social influence and rise to leadership positions.

1304
01:15:49,550 --> 01:15:52,110
So I think it's a it's a beautiful uh model.

1305
01:15:52,880 --> 01:15:54,560
And I I yeah, I like it.

1306
01:15:54,800 --> 01:15:55,200
Cool.

1307
01:15:55,600 --> 01:16:01,600
I uh also want to tie it back to, I think people listening might also recognize uh this

1308
01:16:01,600 --> 01:16:02,640
in another context.

1309
01:16:02,720 --> 01:16:07,920
And I know you've also thought a little bit about this, is that um is parenting, right?

1310
01:16:08,080 --> 01:16:13,280
Where like a lot of this dynamic, again, uh it sounds like it's almost really starts with

1311
01:16:13,280 --> 01:16:14,160
sort of parenting.

1312
01:16:14,240 --> 01:16:19,280
You can almost imagine that as if if you wanted the first set of selection pressures, it's

1313
01:16:19,280 --> 01:16:25,050
this thing of there's this helpless organism in my control system is not

1314
01:16:25,050 --> 01:16:29,850
only controlling this body envelope, but it has to do the services for this other body

1315
01:16:29,850 --> 01:16:33,450
envelope that's totally helpless, doesn't know anything.

1316
01:16:33,690 --> 01:16:38,810
And so this thing of like the choices A, B, C, uh, that really sounds also like parenting,

1317
01:16:38,890 --> 01:16:43,450
where like A is really bad for the kid, B and C are equally good for the kid, but like C is

1318
01:16:43,450 --> 01:16:43,850
better for me.

1319
01:16:43,930 --> 01:16:45,130
So I'm gonna suggest C.

1320
01:16:46,650 --> 01:16:47,210
Yeah, exactly.

1321
01:16:47,290 --> 01:16:49,290
But I mean that's sort of the tongue in cheek version.

1322
01:16:49,500 --> 01:16:53,340
But then, I mean, how seriously should we take the metaphor?

1323
01:16:53,420 --> 01:16:57,660
And is it that this thing of like, you know, the original evolved psychology is really a

1324
01:16:57,660 --> 01:17:01,820
parenting psychology that's been sort of tweaked and co-opted to then do other things?

1325
01:17:01,900 --> 01:17:03,500
Or how are you thinking about that?

1326
01:17:03,660 --> 01:17:07,340
Um, you know, and it certainly seems like a lot of this is happening within the family too.

1327
01:17:07,500 --> 01:17:09,420
So, you know, can you talk a little bit about that?

1328
01:17:09,740 --> 01:17:11,900
Yeah, that's that's exactly kind of our thinking.

1329
01:17:12,060 --> 01:17:17,180
I don't remember if Ed got into this in his conversation with y'all, but um, if we kind of

1330
01:17:17,180 --> 01:17:22,070
extrapolate back and kind of to take a Dave Petrazuki approach, think about the adaptive

1331
01:17:22,070 --> 01:17:22,550
problem first.

1332
01:17:22,630 --> 01:17:27,030
We come to this idea of it all starts in the in the family.

1333
01:17:27,190 --> 01:17:30,470
So the mother is the first leader of all of us.

1334
01:17:31,030 --> 01:17:34,870
And you know, a mother's offspring are her followers in this sense.

1335
01:17:35,110 --> 01:17:37,830
We think about disproportionate influence and decision-making.

1336
01:17:37,990 --> 01:17:42,580
And so kind of a consequence of this line of thinking that started with like thinking about

1337
01:17:42,580 --> 01:17:47,140
dominance prestige, looking at the ethnographic record, seeing this overlap, coming this

1338
01:17:47,140 --> 01:17:49,220
idea of neural capital and sexual selection.

1339
01:17:49,460 --> 01:17:54,100
An outcome is that it seems that the cognitive demands of motherhood would have been the

1340
01:17:54,100 --> 01:17:58,340
strongest selection pressure over a long period of hominin evolution.

1341
01:17:58,500 --> 01:18:03,140
And so this is sort of also like a it's a sort of social intelligence, a Machiavellian

1342
01:18:03,140 --> 01:18:07,380
intelligence kind of explanation for encephalization or the evolution of the brain.

1343
01:18:07,970 --> 01:18:13,410
Because it seems like every woman is the at least the leader of her children, and probably

1344
01:18:13,410 --> 01:18:15,970
also the leader of her family in a lot of ways.

1345
01:18:16,130 --> 01:18:21,410
Optimizing decisions, resolving conflicts, and all these cognitive demands that we see as

1346
01:18:21,410 --> 01:18:26,610
being associated with leadership more broadly is what every mother is doing basically from

1347
01:18:26,610 --> 01:18:30,610
her first, or maybe especially her second offspring, but even her first, all the way

1348
01:18:30,610 --> 01:18:32,770
through the rest of her life, effectively.

1349
01:18:33,040 --> 01:18:38,400
And so this suggests that you know a lot of the phenomenon of leadership behavior might be

1350
01:18:38,400 --> 01:18:40,320
more women-specific.

1351
01:18:40,880 --> 01:18:44,480
And so this psychology might have that might have been the selection pressure for it.

1352
01:18:44,880 --> 01:18:49,120
And then when you have two individuals who are both good at this, it's it's even better,

1353
01:18:49,280 --> 01:18:49,440
right?

1354
01:18:49,520 --> 01:18:55,290
So if you have a good joint utility improvement cognition of a mother and

1355
01:18:55,290 --> 01:18:59,130
a good joint utility improvement cognition of a father, then there's gonna be a really

1356
01:18:59,130 --> 01:19:00,010
stable pair bond.

1357
01:19:00,090 --> 01:19:04,250
They're able to resolve all these conflicts because they necessarily have lots of

1358
01:19:04,250 --> 01:19:04,890
conflicts.

1359
01:19:05,130 --> 01:19:08,730
You do you invest in the paternal line or the maternal line?

1360
01:19:08,810 --> 01:19:12,410
Or what if someone had some other children with another mateship, now you're together?

1361
01:19:12,650 --> 01:19:14,890
So in order to make it work, you have to resolve conflicts.

1362
01:19:15,050 --> 01:19:19,530
And anyone who's been in a a a partnership obviously knows that good relationships are not

1363
01:19:19,530 --> 01:19:24,540
the ones that avoid conflicts necessarily, but the ones that resolve them more effectively.

1364
01:19:25,180 --> 01:19:30,060
And so if the cognitive demands of motherhood were a strong selection pressure, if you

1365
01:19:30,060 --> 01:19:33,420
resolve those conflicts, you're going to have more surviving offspring.

1366
01:19:33,580 --> 01:19:39,020
And you know, many children are dying in before the age of what, before six months, even

1367
01:19:39,020 --> 01:19:41,740
before one year, in the subsistence-based context.

1368
01:19:41,980 --> 01:19:45,020
So keeping your kids alive is not, it's not easy exactly.

1369
01:19:45,180 --> 01:19:47,820
So you have to have, um you have to be thinking very carefully.

1370
01:19:47,900 --> 01:19:49,340
There's lots of threats out there.

1371
01:19:49,490 --> 01:19:55,250
Um and so then if if all mothers are doing this, then you only need like one or two or

1372
01:19:55,250 --> 01:20:00,210
maybe a few guys who aren't doing as much in the home that can then provide these similar

1373
01:20:00,210 --> 01:20:04,210
services that mothers are providing for their children within the house at the community

1374
01:20:04,210 --> 01:20:04,610
level.

1375
01:20:05,490 --> 01:20:11,330
It's a ri I I I wanna um make this connection between conflict resolution and what you call

1376
01:20:11,330 --> 01:20:17,020
joint utility maximization because it's uh I I love how elegantly it maps on uh one maps

1377
01:20:17,020 --> 01:20:17,660
onto the other.

1378
01:20:17,820 --> 01:20:22,380
So the original model is that I save you decision costs, uh, and in exchange I get a more

1379
01:20:22,380 --> 01:20:23,340
favorable outcome.

1380
01:20:23,580 --> 01:20:27,180
The that same logic applies beautifully to to an instance of a conflict.

1381
01:20:27,340 --> 01:20:32,700
So if you and Dave are in conflict, um, you have a variety of possible ways of resolving

1382
01:20:32,700 --> 01:20:35,100
that conflict, a variety of different courses of action.

1383
01:20:35,180 --> 01:20:38,620
It takes a lot of time and energy to evaluate all those different options and those

1384
01:20:38,620 --> 01:20:39,500
different possibilities.

1385
01:20:39,660 --> 01:20:43,470
So right off the bat, you have a lot of time and energy that's being spent in you and Dave

1386
01:20:43,470 --> 01:20:45,790
figuring out what you're gonna do about this conflict.

1387
01:20:45,950 --> 01:20:49,630
But on top of those time and energy costs, you also have the costs of potentially fighting

1388
01:20:49,630 --> 01:20:54,190
with one another, physically perhaps, or you might have the costs of foregone cooperation

1389
01:20:54,190 --> 01:20:56,110
if you decide to not be friends anymore.

1390
01:20:56,270 --> 01:20:59,630
So th there are there are these huge costs that you and Dave are now facing.

1391
01:20:59,790 --> 01:21:04,780
And me as a potential leader, I have the benefit to save you those huge costs.

1392
01:21:04,940 --> 01:21:09,100
I can save you the decision costs by making a clear uh outcome that both of you can agree

1393
01:21:09,100 --> 01:21:11,900
to, and you don't have to spend time squabbling and fighting over it.

1394
01:21:12,060 --> 01:21:16,540
I can perhaps save your relationship and and the benefits of future cooperation.

1395
01:21:16,700 --> 01:21:20,780
I can prevent you from fighting with each other and incurring physical uh costs.

1396
01:21:21,020 --> 01:21:25,660
I can provide all those huge benefits to you as a leader and as someone with a lot of

1397
01:21:25,660 --> 01:21:29,180
neural capital who knows you both and knows what might be a favorable outcome to you both.

1398
01:21:29,410 --> 01:21:32,690
And in exchange, I get to resolve that conflict in a way that might benefit me.

1399
01:21:32,770 --> 01:21:35,650
You know, maybe maybe if you know if you're both my allies, I'm really going to want you

1400
01:21:35,650 --> 01:21:36,450
guys to get along.

1401
01:21:36,610 --> 01:21:40,370
And so it benefits you if it benefits me if both of you guys are getting along.

1402
01:21:40,450 --> 01:21:44,050
Uh, but if you know, if Dave is my brother, I might you know favor an outcome to the

1403
01:21:44,050 --> 01:21:48,450
conflict that benefits Dave more than you, but that still might be make you better off if

1404
01:21:48,450 --> 01:21:50,930
at the end of the day you're saving these huge decision costs.

1405
01:21:51,460 --> 01:21:56,420
And so I I really love how elegantly this model maps on to the to this idea of conflict

1406
01:21:56,420 --> 01:22:01,620
resolution and explains really insightfully why conflict resolution uh is such an important

1407
01:22:01,620 --> 01:22:02,660
part of leadership.

1408
01:22:02,820 --> 01:22:07,460
Um and and it's and intuitively, and uh from a Western mind, it's not a very important part

1409
01:22:07,540 --> 01:22:08,180
of leadership.

1410
01:22:08,340 --> 01:22:12,020
We when we think of a leader, we don't really think of them as being like a mediator or

1411
01:22:12,020 --> 01:22:15,460
like you know, mediating conflicts between people or like being an impartial judge or

1412
01:22:15,860 --> 01:22:16,500
something like that.

1413
01:22:16,660 --> 01:22:21,730
And yet, if you look cross-culturally, what you find is that that actually is the most

1414
01:22:21,970 --> 01:22:25,730
common and enduring feature of leadership, which I think is a really surprising and

1415
01:22:25,730 --> 01:22:27,730
interesting empirical finding.

1416
01:22:28,210 --> 01:22:28,850
Yeah, exactly.

1417
01:22:29,010 --> 01:22:30,450
That was, I was just going to mention that.

1418
01:22:30,610 --> 01:22:35,250
We we did the work and went through the ethnographic record and identified all these

1419
01:22:35,250 --> 01:22:36,210
different functions of leaders.

1420
01:22:36,290 --> 01:22:37,330
And it was kind of overlooked.

1421
01:22:37,410 --> 01:22:42,920
And I was first sort of looking for theories to operationalize to see what I could test in

1422
01:22:42,920 --> 01:22:43,960
the ethnographic record.

1423
01:22:44,040 --> 01:22:48,280
There wasn't like a really clear theory saying conflict resolution is what leaders are

1424
01:22:48,280 --> 01:22:48,600
doing.

1425
01:22:48,760 --> 01:22:54,200
Um but in the end, when we did like a kind of an exploratory study, we found that conflict

1426
01:22:54,200 --> 01:22:59,640
resolution was by far, well, not by far, but it was among a few very common functions that

1427
01:22:59,640 --> 01:23:00,440
leaders are providing.

1428
01:23:00,520 --> 01:23:04,200
And in fact, it was the most common function that leaders are providing across like a wide

1429
01:23:04,200 --> 01:23:07,320
range of societies and also different contexts.

1430
01:23:07,670 --> 01:23:07,910
Yeah.

1431
01:23:08,230 --> 01:23:10,070
There's also a common knowledge element too.

1432
01:23:10,150 --> 01:23:13,670
So just to continue the metaphor or the example, like if Zach and I are in conflict and

1433
01:23:13,670 --> 01:23:18,390
David, you resolve it, it's also that if Zach and I are already in conflict, we already

1434
01:23:18,390 --> 01:23:22,230
have our worried about the other getting more status or having more control in the

1435
01:23:22,230 --> 01:23:22,870
relationship.

1436
01:23:23,030 --> 01:23:28,150
And if we all have common knowledge that David, you have made the decision, we're both more

1437
01:23:28,150 --> 01:23:32,550
comfortable going forward because the precedent isn't, well, Zach just called the shots

1438
01:23:32,550 --> 01:23:34,390
now, and I would be reluctant to do that.

1439
01:23:34,470 --> 01:23:38,360
So even if there was an agreement that we could both live with, I might just not want to go

1440
01:23:38,360 --> 01:23:43,000
along with it because I don't want the precedent being that Zach is the one who I who got

1441
01:23:43,000 --> 01:23:43,560
listened to.

1442
01:23:43,880 --> 01:23:48,200
So like we both know that you, yeah, yeah, you did the allows both of you to save face.

1443
01:23:48,440 --> 01:23:51,400
Exactly, exactly, and not get status in that other way.

1444
01:23:51,480 --> 01:23:56,120
And then it also means like we know that we're both being monitored in the sense of like, I

1445
01:23:56,120 --> 01:24:00,600
know that now David knows that this issue exists, but I also know that Zach knows that

1446
01:24:00,600 --> 01:24:01,480
David knows.

1447
01:24:01,750 --> 01:24:07,510
And so it really is like a beautiful feed uh forward cycle of can

1448
01:24:07,750 --> 01:24:13,750
increasing common knowledge, saving face, and um and also just your unique perspective,

1449
01:24:13,830 --> 01:24:15,830
David, and solving all of our problems.

1450
01:24:16,470 --> 01:24:19,990
When we stop recording, Zach and I are gonna um talk to you, David.

1451
01:24:21,190 --> 01:24:21,510
Yeah.

1452
01:24:21,830 --> 01:24:24,630
I I'll sit you down on my couch and you can hear it.

1453
01:24:24,950 --> 01:24:25,990
That sounds great.

1454
01:24:26,310 --> 01:24:31,640
Um I I think Dave that brings up another interesting point of like the temporal dynamics

1455
01:24:31,640 --> 01:24:35,640
that leaders must be sensitive to, which is another layer of the cognitive complexity.

1456
01:24:35,800 --> 01:24:40,440
So sometimes it might just be kind of arbitrary and you might not have the sufficient

1457
01:24:40,440 --> 01:24:43,960
information to really make a uh a justified decision.

1458
01:24:44,120 --> 01:24:47,320
But let's say you already have that influence because of past decisions you've made and

1459
01:24:47,320 --> 01:24:49,480
it's agreed upon that you have some authority in this context.

1460
01:24:49,640 --> 01:24:52,090
So you just have to say, okay, stop it.

1461
01:24:52,250 --> 01:24:56,170
You take the toy or you take the resource and we're done.

1462
01:24:56,410 --> 01:25:00,970
But then the next time, the person who got the short end of the stick, you have to remember

1463
01:25:00,970 --> 01:25:06,490
that they might have a turn now in this sort of the randomness or the noise of imperfect

1464
01:25:06,490 --> 01:25:07,530
decision making.

1465
01:25:07,930 --> 01:25:10,970
And if you if you remember it the next time, okay, now things are fine.

1466
01:25:11,370 --> 01:25:17,130
This kind of gets into the idea of welfare trade-off and is someone taking you your outcome

1467
01:25:17,210 --> 01:25:19,210
sufficiently into account consistently enough.

1468
01:25:19,370 --> 01:25:24,480
You can maybe short someone once in a while, but you can't short the same person too much,

1469
01:25:24,640 --> 01:25:27,680
or you're going to risk that um the influence for that individual.

1470
01:25:27,920 --> 01:25:31,520
So leaders have to be mapping all of this stuff and temporally as well.

1471
01:25:31,760 --> 01:25:32,160
Yeah.

1472
01:25:32,320 --> 01:25:33,040
That's cool.

1473
01:25:33,440 --> 01:25:37,600
Do you find that there is a preference for impartiality in a leader?

1474
01:25:37,760 --> 01:25:41,840
Because you would imagine if if leaders are playing such a a strong role in resolving

1475
01:25:41,840 --> 01:25:46,410
conflicts, it would uh really be in everyone's interest for that leader to not play

1476
01:25:46,410 --> 01:25:46,810
favorites.

1477
01:25:46,970 --> 01:25:51,530
So if you if you and Dave are in conflict, uh you're not gonna want me to be Dave's best

1478
01:25:51,530 --> 01:25:51,770
friend.

1479
01:25:51,850 --> 01:25:52,890
That's that's very bad for you.

1480
01:25:53,050 --> 01:25:56,410
Or even if I am Dave's best friend, you're gonna want me to have some kind of distance,

1481
01:25:56,570 --> 01:26:01,290
some kind of impartiality to make uh a fair resolution of the conflict without being biased

1482
01:26:01,290 --> 01:26:03,370
by my allegiances to Dave.

1483
01:26:03,530 --> 01:26:09,400
And so to me, that suggests a uh an underlooked aspect of leadership,

1484
01:26:09,480 --> 01:26:13,320
which is that we might want leaders to to have a kind of impartiality, a kind of

1485
01:26:13,320 --> 01:26:18,200
objectivity that allows that prevents them from, you know, pi playing favorites uh or or

1486
01:26:18,280 --> 01:26:19,480
you know helping out their buddies.

1487
01:26:19,640 --> 01:26:21,720
Do you is that an aspect of leadership that you've seen?

1488
01:26:21,880 --> 01:26:22,840
Have you thought about that?

1489
01:26:23,320 --> 01:26:27,080
Yeah, I think that there that is an aspect of leadership that makes me think of two things.

1490
01:26:27,320 --> 01:26:32,130
In the cross-cultural data I've I've done, the cross-cultural using the ethnographic record

1491
01:26:32,130 --> 01:26:36,690
to build quantitative measures of like conflict and leadership and conflict resolution.

1492
01:26:36,850 --> 01:26:42,130
We do see some evidence of fairness being associated with leadership and conflict

1493
01:26:42,130 --> 01:26:42,530
resolution.

1494
01:26:42,610 --> 01:26:45,730
So I do think that is a very clear signal in the ethnographic record.

1495
01:26:45,890 --> 01:26:49,010
Leaders should be fair, they should have a record of impartiality.

1496
01:26:49,170 --> 01:26:53,090
I mean, that's like a desirable characteristic in someone who has influence who you're

1497
01:26:53,090 --> 01:26:54,770
deferring to regularly.

1498
01:26:55,330 --> 01:27:01,220
But I also think about like I've done some studies on conflict resolution

1499
01:27:01,220 --> 01:27:03,940
among pastoralists, among the hammer.

1500
01:27:04,180 --> 01:27:05,460
This is work with Luke.

1501
01:27:05,700 --> 01:27:11,700
And we also see that kin groups play a big role in who's going to help

1502
01:27:11,700 --> 01:27:12,900
you resolve your conflicts.

1503
01:27:12,980 --> 01:27:18,820
And so if you know if uh me and Dave have a conflict, we might both recruit like one of our

1504
01:27:18,820 --> 01:27:22,100
close friends, like an institutionalized sort of friend to come to our behalf.

1505
01:27:22,180 --> 01:27:27,050
So in that in that sense, there's equal subjectivity or there's equal impartiality.

1506
01:27:27,130 --> 01:27:32,010
And we each like have kind of our almost our our lawyer, so to speak, who is going to

1507
01:27:32,010 --> 01:27:35,850
represent our perspective, not us.

1508
01:27:36,010 --> 01:27:39,370
So there's there's sort of an idea that they're relatively impartial because they're kind

1509
01:27:39,370 --> 01:27:42,010
of removed, but they're also clearly representing our interests.

1510
01:27:42,090 --> 01:27:46,090
And as long as we both have someone who's going to advocate on our behalf, it removes like

1511
01:27:46,250 --> 01:27:50,650
some of the emotion or the passion, and it removes that direct conflict.

1512
01:27:50,730 --> 01:27:56,680
But now it allows the negotiation to happen with a slight degree of what let's

1513
01:27:56,760 --> 01:28:01,560
say equal subjectivity or equal um partiality, so to speak.

1514
01:28:02,360 --> 01:28:06,520
Which uh in in turn creates a massive incentive to have people who will who would be

1515
01:28:06,520 --> 01:28:11,000
willing to advocate for you, to to form alliances with people who will have your back

1516
01:28:11,080 --> 01:28:12,600
should you ever get into a conflict.

1517
01:28:12,760 --> 01:28:17,240
Um and and signalling about about loyalty and you know, whether you get in a fight with

1518
01:28:17,240 --> 01:28:22,130
someone, whether they take your side uh automatically or not, is a is a huge feature of of

1519
01:28:22,130 --> 01:28:22,930
social relationships.

1520
01:28:23,010 --> 01:28:24,770
It's it's a fascinating topic.

1521
01:28:25,010 --> 01:28:26,450
Um yeah.

1522
01:28:26,690 --> 01:28:29,490
So I'm I'm I I also I wanted to pick your brain.

1523
01:28:29,730 --> 01:28:34,290
So this idea of impartiality and the importance of it in resolving conflicts.

1524
01:28:34,450 --> 01:28:40,280
Um so there's this really cool idea uh from Pascal Boyer, who we will I imagine we'll

1525
01:28:40,280 --> 01:28:45,480
probably have on at some point, where he thinks that the function of divination is to is is

1526
01:28:45,480 --> 01:28:50,040
to basically provide this kind of impartiality where it cannot otherwise be obtained.

1527
01:28:50,280 --> 01:28:55,400
So if if I cannot be trusted to make an impartial decision about how to resolve your

1528
01:28:55,400 --> 01:29:01,070
conflict, um maybe the only way to resolve it is just to say, let's just, you know, uh uh

1529
01:29:01,310 --> 01:29:04,910
throw something in the water and see if it sinks or floats, or let's look at some tea

1530
01:29:04,910 --> 01:29:09,070
leaves, or or let's do do some random ritual that that produces a random outcome.

1531
01:29:09,230 --> 01:29:13,950
And in that case, randomness is actually preferable to the judgment of another human being

1532
01:29:14,030 --> 01:29:18,910
if if that j if that human being cannot be trusted to be i uh uh impartial.

1533
01:29:19,070 --> 01:29:24,350
Um and so what these these rituals do in these divination is that they provide uh common

1534
01:29:24,350 --> 01:29:29,060
ground, they provide common knowledge to coordinate the group, uh resolve disputes, get

1535
01:29:29,060 --> 01:29:34,900
everyone with a common set of expectations without the corruptive, the corrupt influence of

1536
01:29:34,900 --> 01:29:36,660
any particular person making the decision.

1537
01:29:36,820 --> 01:29:37,860
Do you buy that model?

1538
01:29:37,940 --> 01:29:42,580
And does it uh uh fit with the way you're thinking uh about these issues?

1539
01:29:42,980 --> 01:29:46,740
Um yeah, I think there's something to that, or a lot to that for sure.

1540
01:29:46,980 --> 01:29:50,900
But at the same time, you need to have kind of the neural capital, so to speak, or the

1541
01:29:50,900 --> 01:29:52,660
expertise to perform that ritual.

1542
01:29:52,900 --> 01:29:57,590
But it does give those individuals like sort of plausible deniability in some sense or the

1543
01:29:57,590 --> 01:30:01,750
capacity to say, okay, well, we're gonna go to the Oracle now.

1544
01:30:01,830 --> 01:30:07,270
Um, and I have the authority to make that decision, but now I'm putting that responsibility

1545
01:30:07,270 --> 01:30:08,070
outside of myself.

1546
01:30:08,150 --> 01:30:12,230
And it's also a really good strategy from the perspective of said leader or high status

1547
01:30:12,230 --> 01:30:14,230
person because it now limits the cost.

1548
01:30:14,630 --> 01:30:18,870
Um of the biggest costs for leaders are status loss.

1549
01:30:19,190 --> 01:30:23,990
Um and so we if you look at we've kind of quantified this in the ethnographic data we've

1550
01:30:23,990 --> 01:30:28,940
collected, there still are more, there's more evidence in our data set of benefits than

1551
01:30:28,940 --> 01:30:31,420
costs, status benefits than status costs.

1552
01:30:31,740 --> 01:30:33,900
But it's not as much as you would think.

1553
01:30:33,980 --> 01:30:35,660
There's tons of status costs.

1554
01:30:35,740 --> 01:30:38,860
Um, they're outweighed by the the benefits, but it's very costly.

1555
01:30:39,020 --> 01:30:44,940
Like I see leadership as being a really high risk or high high high reward strategy.

1556
01:30:45,100 --> 01:30:47,420
It can pay off big, but it can also really cost you.

1557
01:30:47,580 --> 01:30:52,380
So I think the divination element gives leaders the opportunity to sort of strategically

1558
01:30:52,850 --> 01:30:57,250
not go into very risky territory um and use some strategy.

1559
01:30:57,410 --> 01:31:02,770
Um in in Hammer there's like a a throwing of shoes sort of strategy that individuals can

1560
01:31:02,770 --> 01:31:02,930
use.

1561
01:31:03,010 --> 01:31:03,490
You have two shoes.

1562
01:31:03,570 --> 01:31:06,450
I don't exactly know how it works because it's not really done very much, but you have the

1563
01:31:06,450 --> 01:31:10,770
two shoes and you kind of hold them a certain way and you throw them and the angles they

1564
01:31:10,770 --> 01:31:13,890
make uh you know can be interpreted to provide some insights.

1565
01:31:14,130 --> 01:31:16,050
So you haven't you haven't needed it yet.

1566
01:31:16,290 --> 01:31:21,040
I haven't needed it thankfully but yeah I think Pascal has a has a very really great point

1567
01:31:21,040 --> 01:31:21,200
there.

1568
01:31:21,280 --> 01:31:23,200
It's it's advantageous for the individual.

1569
01:31:23,360 --> 01:31:27,120
And then also like it's kind of flipping a coin, you know, so it's people can't argue with

1570
01:31:27,120 --> 01:31:27,360
that.

1571
01:31:27,680 --> 01:31:32,480
I wonder if like the uh the the cultural evolution of like larger scale religions and like

1572
01:31:32,480 --> 01:31:37,120
monotheistic or even like other agents is just the passing, it's a reflection of passing

1573
01:31:37,120 --> 01:31:38,880
the buck of the responsibility.

1574
01:31:39,120 --> 01:31:44,080
So it's sort of like if I'm doing divination and it goes wrong, um, well, like maybe that's

1575
01:31:44,080 --> 01:31:44,800
a problem with me.

1576
01:31:44,960 --> 01:31:49,350
But if if there's another person who I was talking to, then they were wrong.

1577
01:31:49,430 --> 01:31:51,510
Or like I can just say, well, they can't be wrong.

1578
01:31:51,670 --> 01:31:53,270
We we we must be wrong.

1579
01:31:53,430 --> 01:31:54,070
It's not me.

1580
01:31:54,150 --> 01:31:55,590
I'm not saying I'm infallible.

1581
01:31:55,750 --> 01:32:01,030
So like I like the idea that maybe like all of all of the like elaboration of beyond

1582
01:32:01,030 --> 01:32:05,670
divination is just sort of like passing the buck and it's not my responsibility.

1583
01:32:05,830 --> 01:32:10,710
And like that's why we have like agents as gods and multiple gods and things like that.

1584
01:32:11,670 --> 01:32:11,910
Yeah.

1585
01:32:12,320 --> 01:32:12,800
That's a good idea.

1586
01:32:12,960 --> 01:32:13,440
That's a big idea.

1587
01:32:14,800 --> 01:32:16,880
I mean it harkens back to what we were talking about at the beginning, you know,

1588
01:32:16,960 --> 01:32:22,240
masquerading fear-based strategies with, you know, with a kind of rash rationalization or

1589
01:32:22,240 --> 01:32:23,040
moralization.

1590
01:32:23,280 --> 01:32:27,840
So th there's a cool study, I think, by the name by a guy named Watts, where he looks at

1591
01:32:27,840 --> 01:32:33,360
ritual sacrifices cultures, and he finds that um

1592
01:32:33,590 --> 01:32:36,550
cultures with these ritual sacrifices last longer.

1593
01:32:36,630 --> 01:32:37,350
They're more stable.

1594
01:32:37,510 --> 01:32:40,950
They're less likely to have rebellions and so forth.

1595
01:32:41,430 --> 01:32:47,270
And the hypothesis is that it's a way of scaring and

1596
01:32:47,270 --> 01:32:51,910
intimidating a subordinate group of people with plausible deniability and with passing the

1597
01:32:51,910 --> 01:32:53,350
buck on to someone else.

1598
01:32:53,590 --> 01:32:58,950
So it's not that we're just terrorizing you to dominate you and put fear in you.

1599
01:32:59,030 --> 01:33:01,830
It's that we're just following orders from the big guy in the sky.

1600
01:33:02,840 --> 01:33:04,840
Don't blame us, you know, blame blame him.

1601
01:33:05,160 --> 01:33:05,400
Right.

1602
01:33:05,480 --> 01:33:10,200
Uh so it's a it's a way, it's a narrative that justifies the dominance relationship in

1603
01:33:10,360 --> 01:33:12,440
precisely the ways that that we were talking about.

1604
01:33:12,520 --> 01:33:16,680
Um and and that might explain why it has, you know, uh appeared uh so often in the

1605
01:33:16,680 --> 01:33:17,880
historical record.

1606
01:33:18,760 --> 01:33:21,160
And we see this in a lot in in ethnography as well.

1607
01:33:21,240 --> 01:33:26,990
There's all sorts of, I guess sort of socially constructed systems that allow

1608
01:33:26,990 --> 01:33:31,710
elites to sort of suppress even like the reproductive interests or the opportunities of

1609
01:33:31,710 --> 01:33:33,310
people lower in the social hierarchy.

1610
01:33:33,390 --> 01:33:38,030
And in Hammer, where I'm doing a lot of field work, there's lots of rituals individuals

1611
01:33:38,030 --> 01:33:41,630
have to do before they can get married or before they can get pregnant, and then while

1612
01:33:41,630 --> 01:33:42,510
they're pregnant.

1613
01:33:42,750 --> 01:33:48,720
And there's sort of not always clear opportunities to prove that you did everything that

1614
01:33:48,720 --> 01:33:50,240
you had to do ritually.

1615
01:33:50,560 --> 01:33:55,440
Now, that gives the sort of burden of trust on many other people in the community, but it

1616
01:33:55,440 --> 01:34:00,480
also allows very high-status people to accuse you of not having followed through with,

1617
01:34:00,560 --> 01:34:02,960
let's say, X ritual or X step.

1618
01:34:03,760 --> 01:34:09,750
And that gives them a sort of this sort of religious domain to potentially punish you

1619
01:34:09,830 --> 01:34:13,750
that they can use strategically and opportunistically for maybe their own self-interest or

1620
01:34:13,750 --> 01:34:15,750
for some other political interest.

1621
01:34:16,230 --> 01:34:16,950
Interesting.

1622
01:34:17,590 --> 01:34:18,550
Interesting.

1623
01:34:18,870 --> 01:34:24,150
Well, um, Zach, I know a lot of what we're talking about, you know, people who might not

1624
01:34:24,150 --> 01:34:28,150
know your work, you know, you're talking about the summary of it, but you've just been

1625
01:34:28,150 --> 01:34:32,710
collecting an incredible amount of data and going to the field.

1626
01:34:33,190 --> 01:34:37,980
As we're wrapping up here, can you just talk a little bit about like what you're I know

1627
01:34:37,980 --> 01:34:39,740
you're collecting lots of social network data.

1628
01:34:39,900 --> 01:34:44,860
Can you just talk a little bit about sort of you know the you're not just talking off the

1629
01:34:44,860 --> 01:34:49,980
cuff here and you've got a lot of data and you've taken a lot of effort to collect data all

1630
01:34:49,980 --> 01:34:50,860
these places.

1631
01:34:51,100 --> 01:34:54,060
Can you just talk a little bit about like what what that is?

1632
01:34:54,700 --> 01:34:55,900
Yeah, yeah, with pleasure.

1633
01:34:55,980 --> 01:34:58,620
I mean that's really why I'm I'm in the game.

1634
01:34:59,420 --> 01:35:03,730
So Luke and I, you know, have this, like I talked about, this collaborative field-based

1635
01:35:03,730 --> 01:35:05,730
project, the Omo Valley Research Project.

1636
01:35:05,810 --> 01:35:11,250
And now we've assembled a small army of research assistants and collaborators and

1637
01:35:11,250 --> 01:35:11,730
colleagues.

1638
01:35:11,890 --> 01:35:14,210
So we have many other people on board.

1639
01:35:14,770 --> 01:35:19,490
Maud Mujineau is a postdoc working with us who's collecting a lot of data right now.

1640
01:35:19,740 --> 01:35:25,500
We have a guy, Temechin Bira, who's finishing his PhD at WSU in anthropology,

1641
01:35:25,580 --> 01:35:26,380
who's also on board.

1642
01:35:26,700 --> 01:35:30,940
Ashetu Uwentu, another Ethiopian anthropologist, is collecting data from us.

1643
01:35:31,660 --> 01:35:37,580
Another uh anthropologist doing her PhD at WSU, Tigis, is probably going to be collecting

1644
01:35:37,580 --> 01:35:38,460
data with us pretty soon.

1645
01:35:38,620 --> 01:35:41,820
And so we've assembled this team of people that have different interests, different

1646
01:35:41,820 --> 01:35:47,650
backgrounds, but all collecting this these diverse data but piping into this centralized

1647
01:35:47,650 --> 01:35:49,250
cross-cultural database.

1648
01:35:49,330 --> 01:35:53,410
And so actually during COVID, uh Luke and I spent a couple years really thinking about

1649
01:35:53,490 --> 01:35:57,250
okay, how can we collect these data just mechanistically?

1650
01:35:57,330 --> 01:35:58,210
Like what's the process?

1651
01:35:58,290 --> 01:36:03,970
And so we built our own application with a firm and a very amazing

1652
01:36:03,970 --> 01:36:09,090
software developer who's working with us to solve a lot of the problems that we've

1653
01:36:09,090 --> 01:36:10,290
encountered over the years.

1654
01:36:10,530 --> 01:36:14,420
So, for example, in in many of these Omo Valley groups, people change their name.

1655
01:36:14,500 --> 01:36:16,580
Like it changes over your life course.

1656
01:36:16,980 --> 01:36:19,780
If you have a kid and you're a woman, your name changes.

1657
01:36:19,860 --> 01:36:23,300
It basically becomes like the mother of, you know, Dave.

1658
01:36:24,260 --> 01:36:25,620
And people have many names too.

1659
01:36:25,700 --> 01:36:28,500
They have like a a bull jumping name, a ritual name.

1660
01:36:28,660 --> 01:36:31,860
And then the name that they would tell me in an interview when I ask them what their name

1661
01:36:31,860 --> 01:36:35,620
is is not necessarily the name that their best friend would call them by.

1662
01:36:35,930 --> 01:36:39,450
So it is very difficult to ask people about other people in the community.

1663
01:36:39,610 --> 01:36:42,090
So everything has to be like based on faces.

1664
01:36:42,570 --> 01:36:46,810
But now if you have a community of hundreds, you can't carry around all these photos all

1665
01:36:46,810 --> 01:36:47,130
the time.

1666
01:36:47,290 --> 01:36:52,250
And so one of the key features of this application we built is to have a record of

1667
01:36:52,250 --> 01:36:56,570
everyone, all their names, their faces, and then be able to query that using a fuzzy

1668
01:36:56,570 --> 01:37:00,970
phonetic search to identify people by their faces, to then have people say, Yes, that's the

1669
01:37:00,970 --> 01:37:02,170
person I'm friends with.

1670
01:37:02,330 --> 01:37:08,120
And so we've built this sort of social network construction sort of form

1671
01:37:08,200 --> 01:37:10,440
to collect these social network data.

1672
01:37:10,680 --> 01:37:16,440
And we collect a lot of data on demographics, kinship, reproductive histories, all the sort

1673
01:37:16,440 --> 01:37:22,040
of standard human behavioral ecology type data suite, a lot of data on market integration,

1674
01:37:22,440 --> 01:37:24,520
you know, things you buy and sell at the markets.

1675
01:37:24,600 --> 01:37:30,190
And now a lot of our work is focusing on social networks and networks that people have with

1676
01:37:30,190 --> 01:37:31,230
other community members.

1677
01:37:31,390 --> 01:37:37,310
And that's really a key focus of our work now, is because friendships

1678
01:37:37,310 --> 01:37:39,230
cross these cultural boundaries.

1679
01:37:39,630 --> 01:37:45,390
And so there's a function of distance in the relationship and also the different ethnic

1680
01:37:45,390 --> 01:37:45,550
group.

1681
01:37:45,790 --> 01:37:50,190
And these different ethnic groups have different territories, different regions, slightly

1682
01:37:50,190 --> 01:37:53,400
different uh economic or subsistence specializations.

1683
01:37:53,960 --> 01:37:58,920
And as it turns out, as we're finding, there are lots of friendships crossing these ethnic

1684
01:37:58,920 --> 01:37:59,480
borders.

1685
01:37:59,720 --> 01:38:02,840
And this is probably really important over evolutionary history.

1686
01:38:02,920 --> 01:38:07,160
Um, if you think about, I mean, if the OMO is any sort of model, and there's been other

1687
01:38:07,160 --> 01:38:11,400
work, other anthropologists have shown that people have like really wide-reaching networks.

1688
01:38:11,480 --> 01:38:15,960
And so people are going to have friends in other cultural groups, and we think that these

1689
01:38:15,960 --> 01:38:18,040
relationships are going to serve specific functions.

1690
01:38:18,120 --> 01:38:22,910
And so we're mapping how these networks exist now and then how they're changing over time.

1691
01:38:23,070 --> 01:38:24,270
So we'll have like multiple waves.

1692
01:38:24,350 --> 01:38:26,270
We've already collected um, I think two ways.

1693
01:38:26,350 --> 01:38:30,430
We'll have a we'll increasingly have more waves of these network cross-cultural network

1694
01:38:30,430 --> 01:38:35,870
data to see you know what are the outcomes of having friends of other ethnic groups.

1695
01:38:36,110 --> 01:38:40,990
So that's that's a lot of what we're doing now, um, and across these different villages,

1696
01:38:41,150 --> 01:38:42,750
across these different ethnic groups.

1697
01:38:42,910 --> 01:38:48,830
So it's a longitudinal and also cross-cultural, um biological and social database.

1698
01:38:49,200 --> 01:38:49,760
Amazing.

1699
01:38:49,920 --> 01:38:51,440
Yeah, super cool.

1700
01:38:51,760 --> 01:38:56,560
And you know, the big vision of this is to be able to do also cool collaborative work with

1701
01:38:56,560 --> 01:38:58,320
people from all different types of disciplines.

1702
01:38:58,560 --> 01:39:04,160
So, you know, people like Luke and Moe and I are sort of, you know, gluttons and passionate

1703
01:39:04,160 --> 01:39:06,720
about being in the field, but not that's not everyone.

1704
01:39:06,800 --> 01:39:11,120
Um, so our hope is that by you know building this infrastructure, having this database, we

1705
01:39:11,120 --> 01:39:14,880
can collaborate with, you know, an economist or political scientist who has a question that

1706
01:39:14,880 --> 01:39:19,170
we would never have thought to ask, or some other methods that we you know aren't experts

1707
01:39:19,170 --> 01:39:24,130
in and they can leverage our data leverage our infrastructure and you know do some really

1708
01:39:24,130 --> 01:39:25,090
interesting science.

1709
01:39:25,490 --> 01:39:26,290
It's fantastic.

1710
01:39:26,370 --> 01:39:32,290
Yeah no I mean it's like there's always you you you and your projects and you and Luke and

1711
01:39:32,290 --> 01:39:37,250
other other people it gives me hope for our current generation of science that we're we're

1712
01:39:37,250 --> 01:39:43,090
not just uh mothballing um you know uh yeah we're not just mothballing period

1713
01:39:43,170 --> 01:39:48,360
yeah yeah Uh this is the time for the question.

1714
01:39:48,520 --> 01:39:50,440
Should we have asked you anything?

1715
01:39:51,400 --> 01:39:57,240
Um well I didn't talk about the sort of philanthropic components of

1716
01:39:57,240 --> 01:39:59,800
the OVRP, which is really exciting.

1717
01:39:59,960 --> 01:40:05,240
Um, you know, all anthropologists, you have to be doing something for your communities, for

1718
01:40:05,240 --> 01:40:07,480
the people you're working with to maintain those relationships.

1719
01:40:07,560 --> 01:40:11,790
You become like a family member, um, you have lots of obligations, and you any

1720
01:40:11,790 --> 01:40:14,030
anthropologist can talk about this for hours.

1721
01:40:14,270 --> 01:40:18,430
But what Luke and I wanted to do was really formalize that in a way to which to where it

1722
01:40:18,430 --> 01:40:19,230
could could scale.

1723
01:40:19,390 --> 01:40:22,990
So our organization is also a 501c3 in the US.

1724
01:40:23,070 --> 01:40:26,270
So it's a you know tax-exempt nonprofit organization.

1725
01:40:26,430 --> 01:40:31,390
And in addition to supporting like our scientific aims, we also have these philanthropic

1726
01:40:31,390 --> 01:40:31,630
aims.

1727
01:40:31,710 --> 01:40:36,190
And right now, what we're mostly focusing on is supporting students who come from these

1728
01:40:36,190 --> 01:40:38,350
rural villages to go to university.

1729
01:40:38,510 --> 01:40:40,960
And so we have like a grants committee.

1730
01:40:41,200 --> 01:40:43,760
We take applications and we review them.

1731
01:40:43,840 --> 01:40:48,320
And then for the students that we that we fund, we pay for their tuition, we pay for their

1732
01:40:48,320 --> 01:40:51,920
room and board, if they have dependence or if they have special, let's say medical care

1733
01:40:51,920 --> 01:40:52,240
they need.

1734
01:40:52,320 --> 01:40:55,520
We try and cover like all their expenses so they can go to school.

1735
01:40:55,760 --> 01:41:01,520
And these students are like super remarkable because they usually come from like a like one

1736
01:41:01,520 --> 01:41:02,080
big region.

1737
01:41:02,160 --> 01:41:05,610
So let's say there's a like a kind of like the county or the department.

1738
01:41:05,850 --> 01:41:10,090
And there there will be some schools in that department, but they're often like difficult

1739
01:41:10,090 --> 01:41:12,170
to access or kind of far away.

1740
01:41:12,410 --> 01:41:18,170
So these students that are especially motivated, like might be walking for

1741
01:41:18,170 --> 01:41:22,410
hours every day to go to school and by some miracle they managed to like complete high

1742
01:41:22,410 --> 01:41:22,650
school.

1743
01:41:22,730 --> 01:41:24,170
Like how they did that, I have no idea.

1744
01:41:24,410 --> 01:41:28,490
And there might be like one student from like a whole population of let's say 5,000 people

1745
01:41:28,570 --> 01:41:30,170
or hundreds and hundreds of households.

1746
01:41:30,330 --> 01:41:33,520
There's one guy or girl who finished high school.

1747
01:41:33,600 --> 01:41:38,480
And so those are the types of students that we like we search for and we find, and then we

1748
01:41:38,480 --> 01:41:40,080
basically support their education.

1749
01:41:40,240 --> 01:41:46,000
And part of our philosophy here is that a lot of these students want to pursue education to

1750
01:41:46,000 --> 01:41:47,440
like do something for their community.

1751
01:41:47,600 --> 01:41:52,080
They want to study veterinary medicine because the cows are getting sick, or they want to

1752
01:41:52,080 --> 01:41:56,880
study business because their community is transitioning to market economies, but they don't

1753
01:41:56,880 --> 01:41:58,480
understand the systems.

1754
01:41:59,450 --> 01:42:04,090
So they're just really inspired and and noble and amazing individuals.

1755
01:42:04,250 --> 01:42:08,810
But then they they get to the university and now like they either don't have the money or

1756
01:42:08,810 --> 01:42:10,810
there's now systems they don't understand.

1757
01:42:11,290 --> 01:42:17,050
So we we fund their education, we host um digital skills workshops and training.

1758
01:42:17,210 --> 01:42:19,370
And yeah these students are just remarkable.

1759
01:42:19,530 --> 01:42:24,090
Now I'm we're really happy that we have like kind of a pretty equal gender parity as well

1760
01:42:24,330 --> 01:42:28,180
because norms are very different for men and women, for boys and girls.

1761
01:42:28,340 --> 01:42:32,340
So girls are especially disadvantaged.

1762
01:42:32,500 --> 01:42:37,860
So if anyone wants to support our cause, we can accept your tax deductible donation.

1763
01:42:38,020 --> 01:42:42,740
You can go to our website, omavalli researchproject.com, or you can reach out to Luke Rai.

1764
01:42:43,540 --> 01:42:49,540
We can just about support one student for like a whole year of university for like, I

1765
01:42:49,570 --> 01:42:54,370
feel like it's not more than like a a thousand bucks or one thousand five hundred bucks.

1766
01:42:54,450 --> 01:42:57,250
So like even like a ten dollar donation goes like a long way.

1767
01:42:57,330 --> 01:43:01,490
And a lot of our donations are just like people giving us 10 bucks here, 20 bucks there.

1768
01:43:01,570 --> 01:43:05,730
And um, it allows us to put a lot of students through through education through university.

1769
01:43:05,970 --> 01:43:06,370
That's great.

1770
01:43:06,450 --> 01:43:08,130
We'll put a link uh on the show notes.

1771
01:43:08,210 --> 01:43:08,930
That's fantastic.

1772
01:43:09,010 --> 01:43:10,210
That's really, really cool.

1773
01:43:10,290 --> 01:43:13,890
What an amazing thing to be able to sort of see that and see those people.

1774
01:43:14,540 --> 01:43:19,660
Yeah, it's you know, it's um not why I got into doing field work, but at this point, and I

1775
01:43:19,660 --> 01:43:24,300
know Luke would agree with me, it's like um it's more rewarding than uh any of the science

1776
01:43:24,300 --> 01:43:24,860
stuff we're doing.

1777
01:43:24,940 --> 01:43:26,220
So it's really been a lot of fun.

1778
01:43:26,460 --> 01:43:28,540
Yeah, that's that's amazing.

1779
01:43:28,780 --> 01:43:33,500
So um yeah, David, uh any any final thoughts?

1780
01:43:34,300 --> 01:43:35,900
No, I this very cool stuff you're doing.

1781
01:43:35,980 --> 01:43:38,710
It was uh you know wonderful talking to you, Zach.

1782
01:43:38,790 --> 01:43:43,030
Uh, you know, you're full full of insights, doing it really uh fascinating uh and important

1783
01:43:43,350 --> 01:43:43,590
work.

1784
01:43:43,670 --> 01:43:47,910
Uh and uh yeah, I look forward to chatting with you again at some point in the future,

1785
01:43:47,990 --> 01:43:51,350
either on uh this podcast again or at a conference.

1786
01:43:51,670 --> 01:43:52,150
Yeah, yeah.

1787
01:43:52,230 --> 01:43:52,790
And thank you both.

1788
01:43:52,870 --> 01:43:56,710
I mean, you guys are doing a great service for the field of evolutionary social science,

1789
01:43:56,790 --> 01:43:59,430
and uh your work is also super impressive and inspiring.

1790
01:43:59,510 --> 01:44:01,830
So it's an honor just uh to be here and have the chance to chat.

1791
01:44:02,200 --> 01:44:03,400
Thank you so much, Zach.

1792
01:44:03,480 --> 01:44:05,880
Uh we'll we'll put your links uh in the show notes.

1793
01:44:05,960 --> 01:44:09,880
And yeah, we'll definitely have you back maybe sooner rather than later.

1794
01:44:09,960 --> 01:44:15,480
Uh uh in in different in different um uh capacities uh here on the podcast.

1795
01:44:15,640 --> 01:44:16,680
But uh but thank you so much.

1796
01:44:16,760 --> 01:44:21,320
Yeah, and again, everybody, I really encourage you to look at um Zach's work and and we'll

1797
01:44:21,320 --> 01:44:22,680
have Luke on soon too.

1798
01:44:22,760 --> 01:44:27,560
So um I'm looking forward to that and uh just fantastic, lots of cool stuff.

1799
01:44:27,640 --> 01:44:29,160
And yeah, thanks for coming on.

1800
01:44:29,410 --> 01:44:30,610
Thanks, guys.

1801
01:44:34,290 --> 01:44:40,050
David, you just uh spent quite a bit of time talking to Zach Garfield and myself.

1802
01:44:40,130 --> 01:44:42,210
And uh what are you doing right now?

1803
01:44:42,530 --> 01:44:47,410
Uh I'm sitting here uh talking to you, recording the outro for for the episode that

1804
01:44:47,410 --> 01:44:47,730
happened.

1805
01:44:48,210 --> 01:44:49,090
Okay, that makes sense.

1806
01:44:49,250 --> 01:44:49,890
Okay, yeah.

1807
01:44:50,130 --> 01:44:53,330
Uh so can you continue doing that?

1808
01:44:53,740 --> 01:44:59,340
Yeah, so um if you're still listening, uh that means that you enjoyed listening.

1809
01:44:59,580 --> 01:45:00,140
You're here now.

1810
01:45:00,380 --> 01:45:00,940
Presumably.

1811
01:45:01,100 --> 01:45:02,940
You're here now, so you must be a fan.

1812
01:45:03,100 --> 01:45:07,340
So maybe just consider telling people that you're a fan, you know, talking about us on

1813
01:45:07,340 --> 01:45:09,660
social media, maybe maybe writing a kind review.

1814
01:45:09,820 --> 01:45:13,820
Uh if you're really a super fan, you might consider checking out our Patreon page and

1815
01:45:13,820 --> 01:45:15,110
supporting us there.

1816
01:45:15,590 --> 01:45:19,750
We should you should wear a t-shirt, but that me saying that out loud makes me realize that

1817
01:45:19,750 --> 01:45:25,030
it would involve you designing and printing a t shirt, uh, which is seems like a big ask.

1818
01:45:25,110 --> 01:45:26,390
Maybe we should get t-shirts.

1819
01:45:26,790 --> 01:45:28,070
That's that's a that's a good idea.

1820
01:45:28,150 --> 01:45:28,950
I can see that working out.

1821
01:45:29,030 --> 01:45:29,830
Um but if you're not thinking about it.

1822
01:45:31,190 --> 01:45:31,910
Or fanny packs, yeah.

1823
01:45:31,990 --> 01:45:34,630
We we we had that bit in a in a previous episode.

1824
01:45:34,710 --> 01:45:36,870
Uh, didn't we send you a fanny pack yet?

1825
01:45:37,270 --> 01:45:38,460
I think we had a fanny pack bit.

1826
01:45:38,620 --> 01:45:39,100
No, no, no.

1827
01:45:39,180 --> 01:45:41,820
Did you did somebody send you a fanny pack, David?

1828
01:45:42,220 --> 01:45:43,580
Oh, I've not received a fanny pack.

1829
01:45:43,740 --> 01:45:45,500
Oh, that's another way you can support the podcast.

1830
01:45:45,660 --> 01:45:47,900
Please send David a fanny pack.

1831
01:45:47,980 --> 01:45:48,860
He really needs one.

1832
01:45:49,100 --> 01:45:49,580
That's true.

1833
01:45:49,740 --> 01:45:51,900
I'm I'm in the market for a fanny pack.

1834
01:45:52,060 --> 01:45:55,420
Uh so uh thank you so much for listening and uh I'll see you next week, Dave.

1835
01:45:55,580 --> 01:45:56,460
Sounds good.