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Welcome to Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast.

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I'm David Pinsov.

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I'm David Petrozowski.

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And what are we what are we even doing here?

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Um that's a good question.

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Maybe we should have an episode about that.

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Yeah, maybe.

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Um but oh I think you mean just like uh just approximately like what what are we

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doing in people's ears?

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Yeah.

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Oh, I see.

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Okay, that was that was confusing because there's a couple different ways.

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Okay, so yeah, no, we're recording a podcast that's about evolutionary psychology.

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That's right.

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And it's it's not fake evolutionary psychology, it's actual evolutionary psychology by

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actual evolutionary psychologists.

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That's right.

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Okay, Dave, we have an awesome guest today.

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Uh we do.

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Chris von Ruden, University of Richmond, Virginia at the Jepsen School of Leadership.

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Um, and he studies the Chimane uh in uh in the Amazon and

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he does really cool work understanding inequality and status.

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And this was just a really fun episode.

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Yeah, this this was a blast.

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Um, he does awesome research, uh really great insights into uh status hierarchies, uh

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inequality.

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He also has an awesome name, Chris Von Ruden.

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I wish I had a Vaughn in my name, David Von Pinsoff.

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It sounds pretty epic.

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You can always uh you know, you can change your name.

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You think I should change it?

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But you published a lot of papers so far, so you'd have to um previously known as Yeah,

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okay.

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The artist previously known as David Pensoff.

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Yeah.

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It might be confusing with Von Ruden though, but we'll we'll talk to Chris.

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We'll see what he thinks about you changing your name.

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We'll ask him.

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All right.

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Without further ado, enjoy.

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Enjoy Chris Von Ruden.

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Uh welcome Chris Von Ruden.

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Good to see you.

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You are professor at the Jepson School of Leadership, University, excuse

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me, University of Richmond.

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Chris, how long have you been at Richmond now?

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2013 I arrived.

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Okay.

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So, you know, as you know, I was at UCSB with you as a grad student.

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Um, but yeah, then I was I did a uh a postdoc year or two, I think it was two years with

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Mike Gervin, uh also UCSB, and then on the jar market at

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the time, um, and had a couple of hits, but the most, you know, the first offer I

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got was from this school, which was sort of like, well, what is this?

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Leadership studies.

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Um and uh it sort of worked out because I'm sort of uh a misfit anthropologist.

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I have my fingers in a lot of different thoughts and wear different hats.

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And this school is sort of like a uh gen ed within a gen ed.

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Um uh what do what does that mean?

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Can you just explain that for people who might not know what that means?

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Like the how is it different than a typical maybe anthropology or psychology department?

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So my direct boss is a dean, which is fantastic.

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And there's about 15 or so faculty.

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And they I'm the only anthropologist.

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There are uh well, there were like three psychologists.

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Now we just have one, two recently retired.

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Um uh histor a couple of historians, uh, three philosoph, four

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philosophers, um, a couple of political scientists, sociologists, English

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studies, religious studies person.

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Um, so very diverse faculty, and it's geared around the understanding of leadership, not

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sort of training leaders per se, but understanding processes of leadership, um,

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social and political organization, social movements, social justice, uh, ethical questions

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surrounding all those topics.

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Um, yeah, sounds like a cool program to be a part of.

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Are you the only uh explicitly Darwinian person who brings evolutionary ideas to

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the study of leadership, or are there others uh in that uh area as well?

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Explicitly Darwinian, very few and far between.

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Um maybe like the closest person to me on the whole campus, so even beyond the leadership

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school, but University of Richmond broadly is a geneticist that studies ancient

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populations uh in Asia.

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Um but that said, a couple of psychologists I think who had had hired me and uh

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now retired, um, have collaborated with evolutionary psychologists, are

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interested in evolutionary psychology.

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And so that uh maybe, you know, I had while they are around, I had

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some shared interests with them.

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I mean, I have a lot of shared interests with a lot of people, but explicitly Darwinian

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theoretical focus, yeah, it's it's me.

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Got it.

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And do you find that you get blank stares or hostility or

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confusion when you bring these ideas to bear?

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Or do you is it is there more of an enthusiasm and and interest in incorporating what what

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what do you think is the vibe in terms of you being uh this ambassador from uh evolutionary

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theory?

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You know, I've had um sort of discussions in in some public forum

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campus regarding different topics, gender and masculinity and other things, um,

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where I've just sort of you know unabashedly expressed my views and theoretical

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perspectives and it hasn't really raised any eyebrows, particularly with younger faculty.

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Maybe, you know, with older faculty I've gotten a sense sometime, not not tremendously,

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that sort of, you know, my assumption is that they they understand the sort of Darwinian

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perspective as somehow a genetic determinist kind of view or something of that nature.

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Um which would be incorrect which would be do uh incorrect.

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I mean do you try to disabuse them of that or is the idea that you can't have a

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conversation with everybody and so you're just noticing that there's a uh cohort effect for

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how people understand science and that the newer generation is a more sophisticated one.

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I don't sophisticated maybe or just more charitable or um

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uh yeah I don't know.

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I think uh especially among you know anthropologists and and other social scientists

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um there's you know a lot of fear surrounding Darwinian perspectives uh in terms of its

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sort uh assumed repercussions for Uh

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policy, which is you know, not you know.

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Um, so I don't know.

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I I always try with especially with students.

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I mean, I don't get into too many conversations with faculty about the rational rationale

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reasons for my theoretical views.

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Um, but especially with students, I I try to argue the ways in which taking a nature

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versus nurture approach is is not tremendously useful outside of some limited domains

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like irritability or something, where you can formalize it at a population level.

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But understanding the ways in which genes and environments construct together who

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we are, and the role that uh understanding Darwinism as a uh in

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helping us understand the ways genes and environments uh interact, often by design.

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I mean, I try to portray that as sort of a middle ground that's fairly, you know, neither

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genetically determinist nor sort of social constructivist.

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Um yeah, I think even implicit in studying other cultures and going to somewhere

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else, right?

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Um, I think that that is sort of acknowledged in there.

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Um we haven't really had a chance, We haven't, for example, had any Wurzon yet to talk

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about development and nature nurture, why that's sort of a fallacy.

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We haven't actually covered that.

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It's still early days here.

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Um could you what do you say to the students aside from what you just said, or is that

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about it with maybe an example?

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Well, I get into more detail about the, you know, lots of examples of how you know

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individual physiology and behavior um reflects gene environment

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interactions.

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You know, um, I'll still use I don't know if this is sort of out of favor these days, but

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Tubi and Cosmedi is sort of evoked and transmitted distinction.

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Um could you uh for those who aren't familiar with that distinction, could you give a quick

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uh recap of it?

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Sure.

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So describing the sources of cultural variations or different average differences of

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behavior across groups or communities or societies, uh one source of that variation could

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be what they call evoked culture.

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So the ways in which environments, uh social, legal, ecological environments

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evoke differences in behavior akin to the way that moving from shade

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to the sun might evoke changes in skin pigmentation over a period of time by

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design.

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Um and so the argument is that uh for example, average differences

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in uh physical aggressiveness or trust or other sort of

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psychological phenomenon uh phenomena vary uh in response by

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design to differences in the sort of demographics or ecology of a society or

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community.

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Um sex ratio, for example, and the way that can shift uh mating behavior uh or use

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of mating competition tactics.

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And it's not importantly, it's not necessarily or you know, in contrast with so-called

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transmitted culture, not a product of social learning.

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But it's just the way our minds uh produce, uh you know,

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generate behavior in response to particular environments.

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Um right.

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And I and the idea, I think, just to fill in is that um you need to understand

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both the cultural situation and then also the design in the mind to understand the eventual

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phenomenon or the output because it's the output is not just a function of the

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content of what's being told to people.

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So if you want to predict it, understand it, change it, understand where it's going to go,

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where it's coming from, you have to understand both the design and the phenotype and the

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inputs to the system, and both can be a lot more complicated than maybe either

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historically our sides have have seen.

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So even this view might argue that the social context is very complicated, lots of cues.

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It might even be different than what's intuitive, right?

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It might be something like what's the local level of trust?

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Like Chris, I'm looking forward to talking to you about egalitarianism and those inputs and

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what the the that design is.

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Um, but yeah, is that fair, Chris?

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Like do you think that's the fair characterization?

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And I especially like how you tapped onto prediction to that too.

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I mean, this is uh, you know, we should be able to predict changes in behaviors uh

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as environments shift.

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Um so yeah, I've uh who I forget his name.

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Who's done the work?

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He's done work in East Asia with respect to rule rice versus wheat growing.

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Thomas Talhound.

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That kind of I don't know if you're familiar with his work showing how historical exposure

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to different forms of production, food production, that uh demands different kinds of

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cooperation and collective action, uh, maybe in part or good part responsible for variation

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in collectivist kind of norms within and across societies.

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So that's the kind of sort of socioecological explanation for cultural phenomena that I'm

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really drawn to as a, you know, primarily uh trained as a behavioral ecologist, um

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sub-area within evolutionary anthropology.

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Um it's not to discount like social transmission, but uh I can see social transmission

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has force in its own right.

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Um but it also can complement yeah.

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So so so we we we went over the evoked culture, the idea that you know a response to a

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particular aspect of the environment, a strategic response to a particular aspect of the

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environment, uh that itself is an adaptation, uh, a form of evolved design that we can

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talk about and study scientifically.

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But there's the other uh distinction that we didn't get to yet, which is transmitted

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culture.

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So this is uh different from evoked culture in that the the strategic response to the

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environment is not what we're talking about.

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We're talking about something else.

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So, what are we talking about when it comes to transmitted culture?

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Right.

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Uh so this is differences in behavior, values, norms across societies,

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populations based on the social learning.

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So what you've acquired uh from others through either observation or direct

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social learning, um uh teaching, instruction, etc.

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Uh and those, you know, may make can generate cultural dynamics that are unpredictable

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based on the sort of socioecol ecology, you know, what you might be able to predict from

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just uh an evoked culture uh perspective, uh or behavioral ecology perspective for that

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matter.

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Although, you know, the argument is that um cultural norms, uh institutions,

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you know, one factor in their emergence will be the socioecology that will shape the kinds

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of norms and institutions we create.

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Um that doesn't fully determine them but influences them.

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Um yeah, there's a nice example of um somebody, I don't I

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apologies to whoever class of people's work this is because I'm forgetting who it was, but

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there's I know there's a bunch of people who have argued that um if you just look at

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climate um and work crops, uh the correlation between bad

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climate for growing crops and warfare is enormous historically.

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And so it's this idea that, you know, the transmitted cultural idea of we should go attack

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some people is sort of always there.

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But that doesn't on its own sufficiently predict when warfare ratchets up.

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Um and there's and but the idea is that when there's hardship or you know when you're

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starting to get hungry and resources get scarce, um, that changes the the the the

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marketplace of ideas and how appealing it is to go, oh, let's get their stuff changes when

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you're when the when the climate gets worse.

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And so that would be a nice example of that.

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Yeah, the synergy between them.

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Um but you know, I think there's also lots of evidence of cases where the

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culture persists after the environment shifts and is sustained by that transmitted

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cultural uh mechanisms.

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Um a lot of, you know, uh exact like the Thomas Stahlhelm work again, where people

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that are long distant from sort of agricultural uh production living in urban

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areas maintain these sort of norms uh from their sort of uh an ancestral region where they

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came from in say parts of China.

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Um or work on sort of the effects of colonialism in West Africa uh

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by none um that had this long lasting effects.

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Um so yeah.

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Um evoked, transmitted, they have synergistic effects, that they can operate independent of

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each other.

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Um I think also they'll miss oh, go ahead.

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Yeah, so the idea there is that um a strategic response to a particular aspect of the

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environment, like when food is scarce, you know, go to war and and get the stuff from the

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other tribe.

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Uh when uh you need to cooperate more to get food, like with you know rice farming,

244
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uh uh then upregulate your cooperation uh motivations.

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These kinds of strategic responses uh uh emerge in response or in uh emerge uh in tandem

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with environmental changes, but they can lag.

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They can persist past the point when they were originally useful, such that you know people

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whose ancestors were rice farmers will still be more cooperative today, even though know

249
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rice farming was, you know, a couple hundred years ago.

250
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Um so the idea is that evoked culture explains the initial response to the environment, but

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transmitted culture explains the lag, why it persists in populations uh past the point uh

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from which it was useful.

253
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Is that the idea?

254
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Yeah, that's well said.

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Um I think also transmitted culture can uh generate sort

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of de novo kinds of practices and things uh that uh independent of the

257
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socioecology.

258
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So aren't necessarily just created via socioecological uh factors to

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begin with.

260
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Um, and that's where I think your use of the word strategic you can interpret in two ways.

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One is strategic in the sense of the vote culture, where it's sort of evolution to the

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strategy making or you know, strategizing, And then there's also sort of the individual

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agency where our ability to sort of think um about potential

264
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outcomes, potential technologies, potential norms, um counterfactually.

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Um and that could be a a potent source of what becomes a cultural transmission to the

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extent those certain people are more influential than others and getting groups to adopt

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their ideas.

268
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Yeah, I I think technology would be a good example.

269
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We're gonna have Christina Moy on in a few episodes.

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She she was uh, you know, part of the Rob Boyd um group of people.

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Um and Christina was really influential for me for realizing, you know, I'm I'm an

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adaptationist, not usually thinking about the importance of cultural, of

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transmitted culture.

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And I think the idea like the Rob Boyd idea of like canoes, right?

275
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Where or kayaks, where um it's individual sort of trial and error.

276
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Like you wanna, you want to stay dry and you want to move quickly over water, right?

277
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And there's just certain like trial and error stuff either within an individual or across

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individuals.

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But you know, hunting success, staying dry, staying warm, getting a seal or whatever you're

280
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hunting, fishing, that is sort of a trial and error dynamic that selects for

281
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kayak or canoe design that may be better than, certainly better than like what quote

282
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unquote you would have innately in your mind.

283
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Like we don't have a canoe or kayak building template in our mind.

284
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It might be better than what any person can do, right?

285
00:18:33,100 --> 00:18:38,460
Like we all know of intergenerational transmission of, you know, the way um

286
00:18:39,100 --> 00:18:43,340
uh airplanes, the first generation of airplanes, you know, the design is actually pretty

287
00:18:43,340 --> 00:18:45,580
similar to the Wright brothers did pretty well.

288
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But you know, the constant tweaks, you know, when I when I fly, it's not like Wilbur and

289
00:18:51,090 --> 00:18:52,290
Orville were flying, right?

290
00:18:52,370 --> 00:18:53,410
It's quite different.

291
00:18:53,570 --> 00:18:59,410
Um, and this idea that all of that trial and error accumulation

292
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of design in an artifact or technology would is is a different

293
00:19:05,170 --> 00:19:10,930
way to explain how complexity, emerging complexity, or like, you know, the phenotypic

294
00:19:11,250 --> 00:19:15,400
um The extended phenotype in Dawkins' terms, right?

295
00:19:15,480 --> 00:19:18,520
Like, where does that canoe or kayak design come from?

296
00:19:18,760 --> 00:19:24,040
The idea that it's transmitted culture, and that's an important thing to understand if you

297
00:19:24,040 --> 00:19:27,000
want to understand how a canoe ended up like that.

298
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Like I think Christina and Rob, I'm convinced by that that that's a really important thing

299
00:19:31,080 --> 00:19:31,800
to understand.

300
00:19:32,040 --> 00:19:37,960
It's all made possible by the by the evoked psychology and by the evolved phenotype,

301
00:19:38,040 --> 00:19:40,280
but it's in addition on top of that.

302
00:19:40,760 --> 00:19:44,730
And that last point I think is important because it, you know, being a graduate student

303
00:19:44,890 --> 00:19:50,330
UCSB and it had front stage to sort of ongoing battles between the sort of evolutionary

304
00:19:50,330 --> 00:19:56,330
psychology emphasis on psychological adaptation, specific psychological adaptation,

305
00:19:56,650 --> 00:20:02,490
and the sort of um UC Davis UCLA emphasis on

306
00:20:03,370 --> 00:20:09,240
social learning and cultural uh you know phenomena more generally

307
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sort of broad-based learning.

308
00:20:11,080 --> 00:20:14,120
Um but yet the the two are are quite compatible.

309
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Um in fact require each other in my view in a lot of ways.

310
00:20:17,720 --> 00:20:22,520
Um one person who I've liked who's who's created some synergy I think between them and also

311
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really centered sort of individual agency and counterfactual thinking and um is Manvir

312
00:20:28,440 --> 00:20:28,840
Singh.

313
00:20:29,240 --> 00:20:32,840
Some of his uh broader pieces on on culture.

314
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Um envy your own.

315
00:20:35,990 --> 00:20:36,550
Yeah, we'll have to have.

316
00:20:36,710 --> 00:20:37,670
He he does great stuff.

317
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I mean, the idea that he's interested in is to what extent uh culture is shaped by the

318
00:20:43,190 --> 00:20:48,790
self-interested motivations of the uh producers of the culture in terms of the benefits

319
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they might receive either from status or by trying to shape a social norm that might

320
00:20:52,870 --> 00:20:53,670
benefit them.

321
00:20:53,830 --> 00:20:58,950
Uh these kinds of uh bringing the the individual agent into the equation of culture, I

322
00:20:58,950 --> 00:21:01,590
think, is a really uh insightful way of of thinking about it.

323
00:21:01,840 --> 00:21:02,080
Yeah.

324
00:21:02,560 --> 00:21:02,800
Yeah.

325
00:21:02,880 --> 00:21:07,760
Chris, one before we move on, um uh let's let's who are you and what are you doing here?

326
00:21:08,240 --> 00:21:14,240
Let's let's do a little um because I don't think we've had any um uh Chimane

327
00:21:14,800 --> 00:21:16,480
folks on yet.

328
00:21:16,640 --> 00:21:22,160
So can you tell us a little bit about w what you what you study and who your

329
00:21:22,480 --> 00:21:25,840
study population is and yeah.

330
00:21:26,710 --> 00:21:27,270
Sure.

331
00:21:27,590 --> 00:21:33,590
So um I did my graduate work at Santa Barbara with Michael Gervin,

332
00:21:33,910 --> 00:21:39,350
who had recently started a a large project with a group of people in uh

333
00:21:39,510 --> 00:21:45,350
Blivion Amazon called the Chimane, um, with Hillary Kaplan, um,

334
00:21:45,590 --> 00:21:46,710
who is at New Mexico.

335
00:21:46,790 --> 00:21:49,660
He's now at Chapman in California.

336
00:21:50,940 --> 00:21:56,780
And the two had just started this large uh sort of medical

337
00:21:57,420 --> 00:22:01,580
demography project to understand human life history and aging with the Chimane.

338
00:22:01,900 --> 00:22:07,740
And as part of this project, they were bringing on uh PhDs and

339
00:22:07,740 --> 00:22:13,020
postdocs in anthropology to um go to communities,

340
00:22:13,260 --> 00:22:18,790
Chimane communities, and uh study sort of people's social behavior,

341
00:22:19,030 --> 00:22:24,470
social relationships, um, as it relates to demography, longevity,

342
00:22:24,790 --> 00:22:25,430
aging.

343
00:22:25,670 --> 00:22:31,030
Um uh since that project has just has had grown leaps and

344
00:22:31,030 --> 00:22:37,030
bounds, um knock on wood, it's been well funded by NIH um

345
00:22:37,670 --> 00:22:43,320
and uh has generated incredible insights into how things we

346
00:22:43,560 --> 00:22:49,160
might assume about human health and aging uh based on a lot of research with Western

347
00:22:49,240 --> 00:22:51,320
developed populations is not universal.

348
00:22:51,400 --> 00:22:56,520
And there's much we like learned about the diseases of so-called civilization from from

349
00:22:56,520 --> 00:22:59,080
studying and working with people like the Chimane.

350
00:22:59,480 --> 00:23:01,880
Um what what are some of the things we've learned?

351
00:23:02,670 --> 00:23:08,430
So the relative absence of cardiovascular disease, um asthmas,

352
00:23:09,070 --> 00:23:14,590
autoimmune disorders, um, and that uh

353
00:23:15,070 --> 00:23:19,790
you know there's uh uh people live to to late age.

354
00:23:19,950 --> 00:23:25,390
Um now there's a lot of uh uh mortality, but it's not driven by those, you know, uh

355
00:23:25,470 --> 00:23:30,520
cardiovascular diseases or cancers to the degree it is in other uh more developed

356
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populations.

357
00:23:31,560 --> 00:23:35,320
Um this is an interesting this is a common misconception I hear that people think that in

358
00:23:35,320 --> 00:23:38,840
ancestral times people didn't live much past 30 or whatever.

359
00:23:39,080 --> 00:23:41,000
This is a very common misconception.

360
00:23:41,240 --> 00:23:46,600
Um so uh you can correct me if I'm wrong, but a part of the reason this misconception

361
00:23:46,600 --> 00:23:50,600
arises is because if we're looking at average mortality, that doesn't take into account at

362
00:23:50,600 --> 00:23:51,560
what age the person dies.

363
00:23:51,640 --> 00:23:55,710
So it could be if you have a high child mortality rate that that could bring the average

364
00:23:55,710 --> 00:24:00,990
mortality down to a pretty low number, even if people are uh if they make it past childhood

365
00:24:01,070 --> 00:24:02,350
living to a quite old age.

366
00:24:02,430 --> 00:24:03,790
Is is that how you think about it?

367
00:24:04,110 --> 00:24:05,230
That's exactly how I think about it.

368
00:24:05,310 --> 00:24:08,270
You know, high childhood mortality will bring that average way down.

369
00:24:08,910 --> 00:24:13,070
And I think there's a more a there's higher age specific mortality, you know, across the

370
00:24:13,070 --> 00:24:18,110
lifespan uh in these populations, but still people are, you know, there are people living

371
00:24:18,110 --> 00:24:21,310
to their 80s, you know, 90s even.

372
00:24:21,680 --> 00:24:26,240
Um now, a lot of small scale societies like the Chimani that have been studied recently

373
00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:29,360
aren't, you know, this is probably a good point to make for a lot of other things we might

374
00:24:29,360 --> 00:24:29,920
discuss.

375
00:24:30,320 --> 00:24:33,360
Um, they aren't like, you know, living fossils, so to speak.

376
00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:39,200
And um uh but the sort of it ecology and

377
00:24:39,200 --> 00:24:44,960
demography and and uh aspects of their life help us better reconstruct the past

378
00:24:45,280 --> 00:24:50,970
um than if we say only studied uh people in the in larger scale developed societies.

379
00:24:51,050 --> 00:24:54,170
So I think that's I mean that's an important point to make that there are, you know, the

380
00:24:54,170 --> 00:25:00,170
Chimane have uh our interaction with the state level society have variable exposure

381
00:25:00,170 --> 00:25:02,810
to modern medicine, although fairly limited.

382
00:25:03,050 --> 00:25:06,490
Um they they also are horticulturalists.

383
00:25:06,650 --> 00:25:10,970
So they they do a lot of foraging, but some of the food they do produce through gardening.

384
00:25:12,090 --> 00:25:14,800
Yeah can you wanna I wanna Oh sorry, David.

385
00:25:14,880 --> 00:25:19,840
Um I w I wanted to briefly get into this uh cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disease

386
00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:23,280
point that you make, because I think this is something that will probably be of interest to

387
00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:28,080
our listeners, and then we can once we uh move past this, uh we can get on to more uh uh

388
00:25:28,160 --> 00:25:30,080
interesting topics in evolutionary psychology.

389
00:25:30,160 --> 00:25:35,600
But this idea that um these diseases are are problems of the modern world and they're not

390
00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:38,320
necessarily um uh ancestral diseases.

391
00:25:38,400 --> 00:25:42,730
So is the idea there that there's something about the modern diet, uh the our consumption

392
00:25:42,730 --> 00:25:47,050
of mass-produced foods that is causing higher rates of cardiovascular disease?

393
00:25:47,130 --> 00:25:51,610
Is it something about our hygienic practices that increase the prevalence of autoimmune

394
00:25:51,610 --> 00:25:51,930
disease?

395
00:25:52,010 --> 00:25:53,370
What is what is the story here?

396
00:25:54,170 --> 00:25:58,410
I mean, the simple story is diet and exercise.

397
00:25:58,650 --> 00:26:03,290
Um and the more interesting story involves a couple other things.

398
00:26:03,370 --> 00:26:07,880
I think well, first thing is that I know it's really interesting work by Herman Poncer and

399
00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:12,440
others, uh, in collaboration with some people that have worked with the Chimane, um, that

400
00:26:12,440 --> 00:26:17,320
implicate diet much more so than exercise in the sort of obesity,

401
00:26:17,480 --> 00:26:21,320
cardiovascular issues in the civilized world.

402
00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:25,480
Uh not civilized per se, no, but modern developed societies.

403
00:26:25,720 --> 00:26:26,200
Sure.

404
00:26:26,520 --> 00:26:32,190
Um and uh based on interesting work with so-called doubly

405
00:26:32,270 --> 00:26:37,950
labeled water, where you can look at uh metabolism um and uh

406
00:26:37,950 --> 00:26:41,790
compare rates of energetic uh expenditure across populations.

407
00:26:41,870 --> 00:26:46,910
And it yeah, the lot of things point to diet as being a potential uh uh larger player than

408
00:26:46,910 --> 00:26:48,510
necessarily exercise.

409
00:26:48,670 --> 00:26:53,550
Um but both the Chimone seem to do better on in terms of uh

410
00:26:54,110 --> 00:26:58,750
healthier diet, uh much more exercise per day.

411
00:26:58,880 --> 00:27:04,800
Uh but the other interesting thing is the potential role of the so-called um

412
00:27:04,960 --> 00:27:10,480
hygiene hypothesis or uh friendly friends or old friends or I don't know what the forget

413
00:27:10,480 --> 00:27:15,440
the moniker there is, but um certain kinds of of worms that are our immune systems evolve

414
00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:20,800
to anticipate uh and without exposure to uh misfire or or

415
00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:26,400
overfire with respect to minor issues and generates more frequent, constant kind of

416
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:28,870
inflammation, autoimmune issues.

417
00:27:29,110 --> 00:27:33,590
And so there's some level of pathogen exposure, particular kinds of pathogen exposures,

418
00:27:34,070 --> 00:27:39,910
certain kinds of worms, especially that um may have protective effects in terms

419
00:27:39,910 --> 00:27:45,910
of cardiovascular disease and uh autoimmune disorders, um, while

420
00:27:45,910 --> 00:27:50,870
also having significant costs too, in terms of anemia and and other kind of effects on your

421
00:27:50,870 --> 00:27:52,470
your body over as you age.

422
00:27:52,630 --> 00:27:58,440
Um So before people don't rush out and start uh, you know, uh asking their kids

423
00:27:58,440 --> 00:28:04,360
to go uh roll around in the mud and uh eat garbage, um you're saying that there is a

424
00:28:04,360 --> 00:28:09,560
trade-off here where yes, we have greater medical and hygienic practices that uh reduce the

425
00:28:09,640 --> 00:28:15,000
uh incidence of uh pathogens during childhood, and that and one of the prices we pay for

426
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:20,190
that is uh a greater prevalence of autoimmune diseases in late age, but it's a price worth

427
00:28:20,190 --> 00:28:24,590
paying because it reduces the incidence of childhood mortality that that is much higher in

428
00:28:24,590 --> 00:28:25,630
in these societies.

429
00:28:39,340 --> 00:28:39,900
why is that?

430
00:28:39,980 --> 00:28:41,820
They're not working in factories.

431
00:28:42,780 --> 00:28:45,420
Oh, pneumonias and um other things.

432
00:28:45,500 --> 00:28:49,340
And it's you're not getting access to antibiotics or other things regularly then.

433
00:28:49,740 --> 00:28:50,060
Yeah.

434
00:28:50,300 --> 00:28:51,420
Can you talk a little bit?

435
00:28:51,500 --> 00:28:55,900
Because I mean I mu mo I think people may not know at all what Chimane, what a village is

436
00:28:55,900 --> 00:28:57,420
like, or when you go to the field.

437
00:28:57,660 --> 00:29:01,740
Can you just sort of walk us through like what what is the level of access like?

438
00:29:01,900 --> 00:29:03,100
I mean, yeah.

439
00:29:03,820 --> 00:29:08,050
Part of the reason that it they became such a focus of study, and perhaps at this point,

440
00:29:08,210 --> 00:29:14,130
the most well-studied traditional smaller scale society on the planet in terms of number of

441
00:29:14,450 --> 00:29:18,210
people and research groups that have worked with them in the past couple decades.

442
00:29:18,690 --> 00:29:24,610
But their um avoided missionization uh early on in the sort of 17th,

443
00:29:24,770 --> 00:29:26,530
18th, 18th centuries.

444
00:29:26,690 --> 00:29:30,770
Um, said, you know, no thanks, retreated further into forest.

445
00:29:31,010 --> 00:29:36,880
Um, and it was also there in a part of the believing Amazon that wasn't, I guess, that

446
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:42,320
lucrative in terms of rubber trade and other resource extraction, and so escaped a lot of

447
00:29:42,320 --> 00:29:47,680
the sort of um slavery, basically, that a lot of indigenous groups experienced as part of

448
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:51,600
the rubber boom and uh in the 19th century.

449
00:29:51,970 --> 00:29:57,730
Um, and then it wasn't until the the 20th century, late 20th century, that roads were built

450
00:29:57,730 --> 00:30:00,290
to the region from La Paz, the capital of Bolivia.

451
00:30:00,450 --> 00:30:06,450
And that sort of opened up migration to the area and renewed missionization attempts by

452
00:30:06,450 --> 00:30:08,610
Cat Catholics and evangelicals.

453
00:30:08,770 --> 00:30:14,760
Um, and evangelicals were successful because they brought with them primary schools,

454
00:30:14,920 --> 00:30:17,960
a health clinic, built a radio station for the Chimane.

455
00:30:18,920 --> 00:30:24,920
They also started the first sort of Chimane council as sort of representative body of

456
00:30:24,920 --> 00:30:25,720
the Chimane.

457
00:30:25,880 --> 00:30:29,560
And this was in the late 80s, early 90s.

458
00:30:29,720 --> 00:30:34,950
The Chimane had had previously, you know, no formal sort of political organization, whether

459
00:30:34,950 --> 00:30:36,870
within or or between communities.

460
00:30:37,990 --> 00:30:43,270
They were and still to some extent are fairly mobile across communities.

461
00:30:43,510 --> 00:30:48,470
They'll move uh their social life is concentrated around extended families in which

462
00:30:48,470 --> 00:30:51,350
cooperation and production are concentrated.

463
00:30:51,750 --> 00:30:55,190
And extended families will congregate in communities, but then will also move to other

464
00:30:55,190 --> 00:31:00,840
communities where they might have relatives or um now more

465
00:31:00,840 --> 00:31:05,960
recently communities have become much more sort of of a political entity.

466
00:31:06,680 --> 00:31:10,680
You know, they're formally recognized, and people are part of this community or that

467
00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:14,040
community, and you'll have like soccer teams from one community or another.

468
00:31:14,120 --> 00:31:18,840
And now most communities have primary schools, some have secondary schools.

469
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:24,070
Um, that really cements a greater sort of sedentism within particular communities.

470
00:31:24,230 --> 00:31:29,110
There are Chamani families that have become more urban dwelling and live in the sort of

471
00:31:29,110 --> 00:31:31,270
local market town called San Borja.

472
00:31:33,990 --> 00:31:39,830
And many Chamani, most Chamani now earn wage labor

473
00:31:39,990 --> 00:31:45,670
from various sources, participation in logging activities or working for ranchers, or

474
00:31:46,150 --> 00:31:51,740
and almost all Chamani make money selling horticultural goods in the market town.

475
00:31:52,380 --> 00:31:57,420
But all this change has been fairly rapid since really the introduction of roads in this

476
00:31:57,420 --> 00:31:58,540
1970s.

477
00:31:58,780 --> 00:32:02,140
So a lot of their traditional ways of life have been fairly well preserved.

478
00:32:02,540 --> 00:32:04,220
Almost everybody still speaks their language.

479
00:32:04,300 --> 00:32:07,260
I mean, that's starting to change, but that's been the case.

480
00:32:07,500 --> 00:32:13,260
Um and uh Hunter Hunter horticulturalists, hunter for what

481
00:32:13,500 --> 00:32:15,500
how would you characterize their subsistence, sir?

482
00:32:16,250 --> 00:32:21,290
like 65% or so of their calories, food calories comes from horticulture.

483
00:32:21,370 --> 00:32:27,290
So growing um rice, banana, yucca, it's like an underground starch,

484
00:32:27,850 --> 00:32:30,170
um, like a potato like thing.

485
00:32:30,410 --> 00:32:36,410
Um, and uh about 30 the most of

486
00:32:36,410 --> 00:32:39,450
the remainder comes from hunting uh and gathering.

487
00:32:39,530 --> 00:32:42,090
So they do a lot of fishing, so a lot of fish in their diet.

488
00:32:42,250 --> 00:32:44,570
They also hunt wild game in the forest.

489
00:32:44,810 --> 00:32:50,720
Um And so they're, you know, horticultural foragers, if you

490
00:32:50,720 --> 00:32:50,880
will.

491
00:32:50,960 --> 00:32:54,240
I'd emphasize more the horticulture, more calories come from horticulture.

492
00:32:54,560 --> 00:33:00,000
Um, it's not they don't use much technology in their um horticulture.

493
00:33:00,320 --> 00:33:05,280
Sort of why we distinguish it distinguish it from agriculture, as agriculture being more

494
00:33:05,280 --> 00:33:10,320
tool intensive, often using domesticated animals, uh plows, that kind of thing.

495
00:33:10,730 --> 00:33:12,330
It's a pretty riverine.

496
00:33:12,410 --> 00:33:15,290
Is it like a lot of c transportation historically was canoes?

497
00:33:15,370 --> 00:33:16,010
Is that correct?

498
00:33:16,090 --> 00:33:17,210
Like exactly, yeah.

499
00:33:17,450 --> 00:33:17,690
Yeah.

500
00:33:18,490 --> 00:33:22,810
Uh the river is the heart of the Shimade society.

501
00:33:22,970 --> 00:33:25,370
Traveling up to visit other communities.

502
00:33:25,610 --> 00:33:27,610
Um so yeah.

503
00:33:28,090 --> 00:33:32,250
There Chris, this might be apocryphal, and we can cut this if it turns out I completely

504
00:33:32,240 --> 00:33:33,360
confabulated this.

505
00:33:33,520 --> 00:33:37,360
But you told I think you you were the person and if it wasn't me, you, I'm sorry.

506
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:41,040
But you told me I think you like you were a couple days upriver, which is the expression,

507
00:33:41,120 --> 00:33:45,840
you know, for like how far into the jungle you are and how far away from public

508
00:33:45,840 --> 00:33:46,720
transportation.

509
00:33:47,040 --> 00:33:52,480
And am I am I making this up that somebody told you that like Michael Jackson had died and

510
00:33:52,550 --> 00:33:54,630
you realize so can you tell me the story again?

511
00:33:54,710 --> 00:33:56,150
Okay, I you're shaking your head, yes.

512
00:33:56,230 --> 00:33:57,510
So I'm really glad I didn't make it up.

513
00:33:57,590 --> 00:33:58,790
Can you please tell me what the story is?

514
00:33:59,110 --> 00:33:59,910
It made an impact, I see.

515
00:34:00,230 --> 00:34:00,630
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

516
00:34:00,950 --> 00:34:02,070
Okay, can you so fill it in?

517
00:34:02,310 --> 00:34:03,430
Yeah, please fill it in.

518
00:34:03,510 --> 00:34:03,910
Yeah.

519
00:34:04,470 --> 00:34:10,310
Uh this is in a fairly remote community, and it's, you know, uh it's not like

520
00:34:10,310 --> 00:34:12,790
information or news gets there pretty quickly.

521
00:34:13,030 --> 00:34:17,080
Um, and I had been in that community for only about a week.

522
00:34:17,240 --> 00:34:21,400
And like I said, you know, it took me uh a couple of days to get there on a canoe from the

523
00:34:21,400 --> 00:34:23,000
market town, the San Borja.

524
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:28,840
Um, and uh somebody says to me, Oh, hey, do you know Michael Jackson died?

525
00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:32,200
And first of all, I'm like, You know Michael Jackson?

526
00:34:32,280 --> 00:34:32,760
That's awesome.

527
00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:34,440
But secondly, no, he didn't die.

528
00:34:34,520 --> 00:34:39,960
Like, yeah, this is one of those things you just but uh it turns out uh he had died

529
00:34:39,960 --> 00:34:45,130
subsequent to my leaving in the canoe for this community, And this guy had got word of it.

530
00:34:45,210 --> 00:34:49,930
Uh, you know, this was about a week after I'd left, uh, just through word of mouth, people

531
00:34:49,930 --> 00:34:50,650
coming and going.

532
00:34:50,810 --> 00:34:54,250
It's all, you know, the world is small, uh, is the lesson.

533
00:34:54,570 --> 00:34:54,730
Yeah.

534
00:34:54,890 --> 00:34:57,450
That's be I mean, it's just such a beautiful thing, right?

535
00:34:57,530 --> 00:35:01,930
Like, so there's this guy who's like, you know, two days upriver or something, maybe not

536
00:35:01,930 --> 00:35:06,730
exactly, but in it it was clearly just through word of mouth transmission that this got to

537
00:35:06,730 --> 00:35:06,970
him.

538
00:35:07,340 --> 00:35:12,060
They're they're informing you of developments in Western culture that you weren't aware of.

539
00:35:13,660 --> 00:35:15,100
That's very funny.

540
00:35:16,220 --> 00:35:21,900
So so yeah, uh that I've been working with the Chimani since 2005.

541
00:35:23,020 --> 00:35:23,580
Um Yeah.

542
00:35:23,820 --> 00:35:29,340
And when you go, um, we had Sheena Lou Levy on uh who worked with uh uh Bayaka

543
00:35:29,820 --> 00:35:32,490
and um in Central Congo.

544
00:35:32,650 --> 00:35:35,770
When you go, what is the what are those conditions like?

545
00:35:35,930 --> 00:35:41,930
Are you living in a um yeah, like, you know, from from like lavish hotel

546
00:35:42,250 --> 00:35:45,210
to uh I don't know, what's the minimal thing?

547
00:35:45,370 --> 00:35:47,290
Like what what is it like when you're there?

548
00:35:48,250 --> 00:35:51,850
Um typically when I'm going to communities, I'm in a tent.

549
00:35:52,000 --> 00:35:55,120
Um, occasionally I've been in a tent inside a hut.

550
00:35:55,200 --> 00:35:58,480
So added layer of you know protection from the elements.

551
00:35:58,960 --> 00:36:04,320
Um and then uh I'll bring canned food and

552
00:36:04,960 --> 00:36:08,080
uh pasta and things like that with me.

553
00:36:08,320 --> 00:36:14,240
Uh I'll trade sugar and salt and fish hooks and other things for like f meat sometimes

554
00:36:14,400 --> 00:36:17,440
and and other v other things, vegetables.

555
00:36:17,840 --> 00:36:21,750
Um but uh yeah not not hotel.

556
00:36:21,990 --> 00:36:27,830
Uh and uh it's nice to sort of when I've been there to sort of live with the

557
00:36:27,910 --> 00:36:29,990
by the sunset and sunrise in a lot of ways.

558
00:36:30,310 --> 00:36:32,950
So I get up earlier, I go to bed earlier.

559
00:36:33,430 --> 00:36:37,030
Um do you miss it when you're not there?

560
00:36:37,190 --> 00:36:38,150
Or is it yeah?

561
00:36:38,470 --> 00:36:42,790
Uh there are things I the things I miss are like this things like the stars that are

562
00:36:43,030 --> 00:36:43,670
amazing.

563
00:36:44,310 --> 00:36:50,300
Um or uh just having especially this one community I've

564
00:36:50,300 --> 00:36:54,540
visited the most, getting to know people and going back and seeing them and how they're

565
00:36:54,540 --> 00:36:56,860
doing, catching up, is always really enjoyable.

566
00:36:57,100 --> 00:37:02,700
I think as I get older, tenting it out and the humidity and the insects, you know,

567
00:37:04,140 --> 00:37:05,740
sort of you know wears on me more.

568
00:37:05,980 --> 00:37:06,220
Yeah.

569
00:37:06,300 --> 00:37:09,420
I also imagine once you're a parent, you know, we're all three of us are parents, it's

570
00:37:09,420 --> 00:37:10,780
harder to be away too, yeah.

571
00:37:11,100 --> 00:37:11,660
Oh yeah.

572
00:37:12,030 --> 00:37:16,190
In fact, the most recent trip I did research related was in Namibia.

573
00:37:16,350 --> 00:37:20,030
Uh I was a little better living conditions.

574
00:37:20,350 --> 00:37:25,230
Um so I haven't been to Bolivia actually since uh the beginning of COVID.

575
00:37:26,190 --> 00:37:28,030
So it's been uh several years.

576
00:37:28,270 --> 00:37:28,750
Yeah.

577
00:37:29,550 --> 00:37:30,110
Yeah, cool.

578
00:37:30,270 --> 00:37:33,630
And I like, I mean, one of the things, and you can tell me more about this, is like, you

579
00:37:33,700 --> 00:37:37,540
know, the obviously anthropology, there's sort of a history of colonialism and, you know,

580
00:37:37,620 --> 00:37:41,780
or extraction, capitalists, like, you know, or missionaries coming in.

581
00:37:41,940 --> 00:37:47,700
Um, and uh we within even anthropology, my understanding is there's been a real change

582
00:37:47,700 --> 00:37:53,620
from uh us, you know, coming in and tell as opposed in and changing

583
00:37:53,620 --> 00:37:58,910
that to something more where the research is also done by other by the people in the

584
00:37:58,910 --> 00:37:59,710
community as well.

585
00:37:59,870 --> 00:38:04,270
And it's a much more of a um collaboration as well.

586
00:38:04,430 --> 00:38:07,550
Is that have has that happened in in the Chimane land?

587
00:38:08,510 --> 00:38:14,510
So the just in terms of well, reciprocity, which I think is important, that

588
00:38:14,670 --> 00:38:18,590
the larger medical project we had been discussing, you know, it's providing free medical

589
00:38:18,590 --> 00:38:23,070
care to the majority of the the Chimane, which is insane.

590
00:38:23,820 --> 00:38:29,020
but that's sort of in order to generate the the data that the project is is studying, it's

591
00:38:29,020 --> 00:38:33,340
part of the uh what you need to do, but it's also you know provides benefits.

592
00:38:33,660 --> 00:38:38,220
Um in my own personal work where I've veered off into studying social hierarchy and

593
00:38:38,220 --> 00:38:44,220
collective action and leadership, um I always uh work with uh communities I'm in

594
00:38:44,220 --> 00:38:49,980
to discuss my ideas and and inevitably tweak or change the way I am asking

595
00:38:49,980 --> 00:38:51,660
things or doing things.

596
00:38:51,980 --> 00:38:57,750
Um and so you just discuss the research project and your and your research interests and

597
00:38:57,750 --> 00:39:00,390
the questions you're interested in with the people you're studying.

598
00:39:00,790 --> 00:39:01,110
Yeah.

599
00:39:01,270 --> 00:39:05,110
Uh I'll do focus groups where I'll I'll ask say, hey, this is something I'm gonna be

600
00:39:05,110 --> 00:39:07,030
asking, or this is a topic I'm gonna be getting into.

601
00:39:07,270 --> 00:39:09,110
Uh what do you think about this or that?

602
00:39:09,270 --> 00:39:10,870
And they'll give me feedback.

603
00:39:11,110 --> 00:39:14,310
Um like if I'm asking about conflicts, right?

604
00:39:14,390 --> 00:39:18,710
They'll there's a ways to ask about it that will elicit better responses than other ways of

605
00:39:18,790 --> 00:39:19,110
asking.

606
00:39:19,190 --> 00:39:24,940
And if you just jump into your study, you know, you'll you won't get it right and you might

607
00:39:25,260 --> 00:39:26,620
just less quality information.

608
00:39:27,100 --> 00:39:31,420
Are they are they at all like uh hostile or turned off?

609
00:39:31,500 --> 00:39:35,260
Like because if someone was you know approaching me and my community and saying, I want to

610
00:39:35,260 --> 00:39:38,780
understand the social hierarchy, you know, who's at the top and who's at the bottom and

611
00:39:38,780 --> 00:39:41,740
your group, I would be like very uncomfortable by them doing that.

612
00:39:42,220 --> 00:39:45,740
I want to just you know, I want to learn about you know who's in conflict with whom and

613
00:39:45,740 --> 00:39:48,700
what the different you know squabbles are in your friend group.

614
00:39:48,780 --> 00:39:52,410
Like I would be a little reluctant to to sh share that information with them.

615
00:39:52,490 --> 00:39:53,690
I'd be like, why who are you?

616
00:39:53,770 --> 00:39:54,890
Why do you want this information?

617
00:39:55,050 --> 00:39:58,250
So is there any of that kind of response when you discuss this with them?

618
00:39:58,810 --> 00:40:02,490
Yeah, and I was very prepared to meet with a little success there on that basis.

619
00:40:02,650 --> 00:40:06,890
On the other hand, I had an inkling before I really jumped into that particular area of

620
00:40:06,890 --> 00:40:07,050
work.

621
00:40:07,130 --> 00:40:12,810
I was doing other things with the Chimane for months before digging into social

622
00:40:12,970 --> 00:40:15,210
hierarchy, social relationships.

623
00:40:15,530 --> 00:40:21,520
Um the that just common public conversations often centered around

624
00:40:21,520 --> 00:40:26,800
people's reputations um in front of the people that are being discussed.

625
00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:32,320
And it just seemed very people seem to be very comfortable uh discussing

626
00:40:32,720 --> 00:40:38,000
um, you know, status related topics in general, just in daily life.

627
00:40:38,240 --> 00:40:38,560
Really?

628
00:40:38,800 --> 00:40:40,350
Um yeah, I think so.

629
00:40:40,670 --> 00:40:40,990
Interesting.

630
00:40:41,150 --> 00:40:45,630
Do you find that that is a difference in with between between the cultures you study and

631
00:40:45,710 --> 00:40:46,590
say Western cultures?

632
00:40:46,750 --> 00:40:52,270
Is there more of a comfort with being overt and explicit about status relationships in the

633
00:40:52,270 --> 00:40:55,070
Chamane than among say Western cultures?

634
00:41:05,710 --> 00:41:11,660
Um where you're interacting with and know about the goings-on

635
00:41:11,820 --> 00:41:17,740
of the people living around you um fairly intimately in ways that like here in my

636
00:41:17,740 --> 00:41:22,060
house I don't know so much about what my neighbors are doing on a day-to-day basis.

637
00:41:22,380 --> 00:41:28,140
Um and so the the former I think creates a you know sometimes out

638
00:41:28,140 --> 00:41:32,750
of just the reality is you're observing and listening to what's happening around you.

639
00:41:32,830 --> 00:41:33,870
And so everybody just knows things.

640
00:41:33,950 --> 00:41:39,230
And also people gather and discuss what's going on more frequently as

641
00:41:39,230 --> 00:41:40,350
communities.

642
00:41:42,350 --> 00:41:48,190
I think also there this might relate to our discussion of egalitarianism, but people are

643
00:41:48,830 --> 00:41:54,260
uh very sort of, you know, not they don't defer to

644
00:41:54,260 --> 00:42:00,180
authority per se or to uh individual attempts to gain influence, but will

645
00:42:00,420 --> 00:42:05,860
laugh at it or will, you know, point out grievances quite

646
00:42:05,860 --> 00:42:09,700
readily, um just in common conversation.

647
00:42:09,940 --> 00:42:12,340
Um now to get angry is different.

648
00:42:12,500 --> 00:42:18,500
Uh that's sort of not seen as appropriate, but these topics I think are, you

649
00:42:18,500 --> 00:42:19,540
know, are common.

650
00:42:19,700 --> 00:42:23,950
Now they're maybe not common for somebody just walks into the community, but also if you've

651
00:42:23,950 --> 00:42:28,670
been there a little while, you know, it's there it's it's these are frequent topics of

652
00:42:28,670 --> 00:42:28,910
conversation.

653
00:42:29,230 --> 00:42:30,830
You're not a stranger anymore.

654
00:42:31,230 --> 00:42:32,430
Yeah, yeah.

655
00:42:33,230 --> 00:42:39,230
Um not wanting to be coerced, having autonomy, um, and egalitarianism.

656
00:42:39,390 --> 00:42:44,030
These were all things that you recently gave uh talk, and I was listening to, and I thought

657
00:42:44,030 --> 00:42:44,670
it was amazing.

658
00:42:44,750 --> 00:42:49,390
And I know Lita was suggesting you should write a book about egalitarianism.

659
00:42:49,790 --> 00:42:55,540
Um uh um because I feel like, you know, and correct me if I'm wrong, or you can sort of do

660
00:42:55,540 --> 00:42:59,140
a better job of summarizing what your perspective is, but you've been doing this long

661
00:42:59,140 --> 00:43:04,260
enough that you've sort of it seems like you've wrapped your head around this thing of

662
00:43:04,260 --> 00:43:05,220
egalitarianism.

663
00:43:05,380 --> 00:43:05,940
What is it?

664
00:43:06,100 --> 00:43:07,380
Why does it exist?

665
00:43:07,860 --> 00:43:12,340
Um and what what kind of thing is it a product of, and is it a good or bad thing?

666
00:43:12,580 --> 00:43:18,350
And it's it's it's a bit more complicated and nuanced than maybe uh the the sort of

667
00:43:18,350 --> 00:43:22,270
superficial thing would be sort of like, well, we currently live in a great income

668
00:43:22,270 --> 00:43:23,390
inequality.

669
00:43:23,630 --> 00:43:27,710
And obviously, there are examples of that that are horror horrible, you know, like rich

670
00:43:27,710 --> 00:43:32,030
people who don't need their money who are buying, you know, $50,000 baseball caps, and like

671
00:43:32,110 --> 00:43:34,110
there's kids dying because they can't get medicine.

672
00:43:34,190 --> 00:43:36,190
Like that's nobody thinks that's that's good.

673
00:43:36,270 --> 00:43:38,750
Or I hope most people don't think that's good.

674
00:43:38,990 --> 00:43:43,800
But but there are uh but there's so that's we can put that aside.

675
00:43:43,880 --> 00:43:49,240
But then there's this flip side of like a place where there's very, very little inequality.

676
00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:53,800
People, I think, sometimes think that's that sounds really good too.

677
00:43:54,120 --> 00:43:59,720
Um, and and I think you've looked at this continuum

678
00:44:00,200 --> 00:44:02,760
um and had thoughts about it.

679
00:44:02,920 --> 00:44:07,880
I'm just curious, sort of, I I don't have a specific question, but uh this is just sort of

680
00:44:07,880 --> 00:44:12,670
um uh pushing us over into that egalitarian thing you've been thinking about.

681
00:44:12,750 --> 00:44:16,030
And I don't have a good articulate way to put it, but yeah, please help me.

682
00:44:16,430 --> 00:44:22,350
No, I think you frame things uh that uh you know, we live in hierarchy or we live in

683
00:44:22,350 --> 00:44:25,390
societies with very pronounced hierarchies based on material wealth.

684
00:44:25,550 --> 00:44:31,470
Um and I think uh especially as there's more political and and

685
00:44:31,470 --> 00:44:36,830
general societal tension to levels of inequality, wealth and income inequality, there's uh

686
00:44:36,910 --> 00:44:42,800
you know inevitably uh people saying, hey, look, you know, human ancestors

687
00:44:42,800 --> 00:44:48,560
lived in more egalitarian kinds of societies, you know, why can't we just re-kindle those

688
00:44:48,560 --> 00:44:52,560
kind of, you know, sentiments, values, et cetera?

689
00:44:53,040 --> 00:44:58,960
Um and um and then you know, or even arguments that humans are sort of

690
00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:04,890
intrinsically pro-social, altruistic, other regarding inequality averse.

691
00:45:05,450 --> 00:45:05,850
Right.

692
00:45:06,010 --> 00:45:10,730
Um, and based upon our long evolution in presumably more egalitarian, smaller scale

693
00:45:10,890 --> 00:45:11,690
societies.

694
00:45:11,930 --> 00:45:17,210
And so we have the right motivations, we just gotta sort of push people in the right

695
00:45:17,210 --> 00:45:18,730
direction for us to realize those.

696
00:45:19,210 --> 00:45:22,490
We've been corrupted by civilization and capitalism and agriculture.

697
00:45:22,570 --> 00:45:23,770
All you know, that that narrative.

698
00:45:24,330 --> 00:45:28,330
We used to be, you know, peaceful and harmonious and and that all changed.

699
00:45:28,490 --> 00:45:28,890
Yeah.

700
00:45:29,740 --> 00:45:35,340
So um I think that that sort of noble savage trope gets

701
00:45:35,980 --> 00:45:38,140
you know gets resurrected all the time.

702
00:45:38,380 --> 00:45:44,140
It's age old philosophy know philosophers, Rousseau, Montaigne, to the

703
00:45:44,140 --> 00:45:50,140
present day continue to evoke this idea of the sort of noble savage egalitarianism

704
00:45:50,140 --> 00:45:53,260
and altruism and was our sort of natural state.

705
00:45:53,500 --> 00:45:59,210
Uh you see it in movies, um like avatar and what what have you.

706
00:46:00,890 --> 00:46:06,410
But uh but I think most anthropologists, if not all anthropologists, you know, would you

707
00:46:06,410 --> 00:46:08,890
know argue that the reality is much more complicated.

708
00:46:08,970 --> 00:46:14,490
There's interesting variation across smaller scale societies, that egalitarianism is not

709
00:46:14,490 --> 00:46:15,770
what you think it is.

710
00:46:16,810 --> 00:46:22,570
And so that talk you mentioned, Dave, that I gave uh is not me sort of like

711
00:46:22,960 --> 00:46:28,240
you know, introducing these revelations to anthropology, but rather just reflecting what

712
00:46:28,240 --> 00:46:29,120
people have long known.

713
00:46:29,280 --> 00:46:35,280
But yet this, I think, especially outside anthropology, uh, in in particular in

714
00:46:35,280 --> 00:46:41,280
in media and in certain certain places of academia, but not everywhere, that noble savage

715
00:46:41,280 --> 00:46:44,240
idea continues to rear its head.

716
00:46:45,550 --> 00:46:51,390
And a lot of my work that was focused on um status and reputation and leadership and

717
00:46:51,390 --> 00:46:56,750
hierarchy, you know, uh both my work with the Shimane and my reading of ethnographies and

718
00:46:56,750 --> 00:47:00,990
and of other smaller scale societies suggests to me that people are people and that yes,

719
00:47:01,070 --> 00:47:04,590
there are societies that are more and less egalitarian.

720
00:47:05,390 --> 00:47:10,190
But that's those are, you know, there's not any

721
00:47:10,980 --> 00:47:15,860
massive qualitative differences in the in human society with respect to things like

722
00:47:16,500 --> 00:47:22,340
status motives or um uh re motives for why we cooperate,

723
00:47:22,500 --> 00:47:28,180
or uh that the the environments can shape and influence

724
00:47:28,180 --> 00:47:31,540
those motives can f you know in interesting ways.

725
00:47:31,620 --> 00:47:36,340
Um can they can result in either more dampened inequalities or very heightened ones.

726
00:47:36,660 --> 00:47:42,510
Um so um so yeah, my own personal work and my understanding

727
00:47:42,510 --> 00:47:47,870
of broader ethnographic work on smaller scale societies is maybe, you know, uh

728
00:47:48,510 --> 00:47:53,870
seem like it'd be important to um do something

729
00:47:54,110 --> 00:48:00,110
regarding general kind of uh article, if not a book, for Lita's suggestion

730
00:48:00,190 --> 00:48:01,710
on egalitarianism.

731
00:48:02,030 --> 00:48:06,160
Um and uh I'm I've been working on this project recently with somebody who works for the

732
00:48:06,160 --> 00:48:10,080
Hadza, who are um one of the last remaining you know full-time hunter-gatherers, at least a

733
00:48:10,080 --> 00:48:13,040
good segment of their population still in Tanzania.

734
00:48:13,200 --> 00:48:15,520
Um his name is Duncan Stubert Hawkes.

735
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:21,760
Um so that's been a great partnership to discuss egalitarianism and the our joint knowledge

736
00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:27,270
of various ethnographies and what you know basically we've been trying to answer two

737
00:48:27,270 --> 00:48:27,910
questions.

738
00:48:28,150 --> 00:48:34,150
One is just how egalitarian in are various societies in terms of outcomes with respect to

739
00:48:34,790 --> 00:48:40,710
social capital, leadership, gender, uh, ritual status,

740
00:48:40,950 --> 00:48:42,070
reproduction.

741
00:48:42,390 --> 00:48:47,910
Uh, and then secondly, irrespective of the level of inequality in those things, just how

742
00:48:47,910 --> 00:48:51,510
egalitarian and motive are members of these societies.

743
00:48:51,750 --> 00:48:57,700
Uh, versus could you get relatively less inequality

744
00:48:58,180 --> 00:49:01,540
in these societies via more selfish motives as well?

745
00:49:02,420 --> 00:49:03,700
That's a really important distinction.

746
00:49:03,860 --> 00:49:08,180
So there's a difference between the levels of equality or inequality you see in terms of

747
00:49:08,180 --> 00:49:12,100
outcomes, like who's getting the resources, who's reproducing more than whom.

748
00:49:12,260 --> 00:49:15,220
And there's also uh variation in terms of people's motives.

749
00:49:15,300 --> 00:49:18,980
So it could be that everyone has really hierarchical motivations.

750
00:49:19,140 --> 00:49:24,010
They're really motivated to get status and maintain status, but they're just blocked by

751
00:49:24,010 --> 00:49:24,970
various forces.

752
00:49:25,130 --> 00:49:31,050
Maybe people just um gang up on them whenever they try to gain sufficient status over other

753
00:49:31,050 --> 00:49:31,210
people.

754
00:49:31,370 --> 00:49:34,490
And so the motive is still there, but the outcomes might not be there.

755
00:49:34,650 --> 00:49:35,770
Is that what you're getting at?

756
00:49:36,250 --> 00:49:36,490
Right.

757
00:49:36,730 --> 00:49:42,090
And um the motives for status can also produce a lot of generosity, too.

758
00:49:42,970 --> 00:49:47,690
Not just sort of you know self-aggrandizing overtly uh through aggression or whatever, but

759
00:49:47,770 --> 00:49:53,060
um uh other ways that have in the effect of actually leveling other kinds of inequality

760
00:49:53,060 --> 00:49:54,900
while boosting your own reputation.

761
00:49:56,260 --> 00:49:57,620
Yeah, interesting.

762
00:49:57,940 --> 00:50:03,700
Um so there's this popular idea um pioneered by Christopher Bem, this idea of a

763
00:50:03,700 --> 00:50:05,620
reverse dominance hierarchy.

764
00:50:05,940 --> 00:50:10,420
So the narrative there is that other primates have these linear dominance hierarchies where

765
00:50:10,500 --> 00:50:15,150
you know the alpha at the top picks on, exploits, bullies those at the bottom.

766
00:50:15,710 --> 00:50:17,070
And in humans, this changed.

767
00:50:17,230 --> 00:50:18,430
This sort of flipped on its head.

768
00:50:18,590 --> 00:50:24,270
So an alpha could no longer monopolize resources and mates because coalitions of

769
00:50:24,270 --> 00:50:28,270
betas and gammas would team up to take down the alpha.

770
00:50:28,350 --> 00:50:32,830
And so instead of a normal dominance hierarchy, what you had is a reverse dominance

771
00:50:32,830 --> 00:50:37,860
hierarchy where those who were displaying the most domineering behaviors or attempting to

772
00:50:37,860 --> 00:50:42,740
monopolize resources would in fact sink to the bottom of the hierarchy because all of the

773
00:50:42,740 --> 00:50:46,500
other members of the society would gang up on them and bully them.

774
00:50:46,820 --> 00:50:48,900
Um so I see this this narrative a lot.

775
00:50:48,980 --> 00:50:50,260
Bem's work is very popular.

776
00:50:50,500 --> 00:50:53,540
Do you buy this narrative or would would you challenge parts of it?

777
00:50:53,620 --> 00:50:55,700
What how do you how do you think about this?

778
00:50:56,170 --> 00:50:59,690
Um yeah thanks for asking because I Bohm I I love his work.

779
00:50:59,770 --> 00:51:01,210
He was been a huge influence on me.

780
00:51:01,370 --> 00:51:02,650
I'm sorry, did I miss is it Bohm?

781
00:51:02,730 --> 00:51:03,450
Is that how it's pronounced?

782
00:51:03,690 --> 00:51:04,490
I actually don't know.

783
00:51:05,130 --> 00:51:05,290
Okay.

784
00:51:05,930 --> 00:51:07,290
I've never met him in person.

785
00:51:07,610 --> 00:51:09,930
Um I've had it Bohm, but I don't know, yeah.

786
00:51:10,250 --> 00:51:12,170
Okay, maybe maybe regardless.

787
00:51:12,490 --> 00:51:16,490
I can't even I mean I have like three pronunciations for my last name, so who yeah, who

788
00:51:16,570 --> 00:51:16,650
knows?

789
00:51:20,200 --> 00:51:21,240
a lot of his work too.

790
00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:25,320
He was he did work with human populations and with primates.

791
00:51:25,400 --> 00:51:31,400
Um, and he synthesized a lot of that work in this really uh uh novel arguments about

792
00:51:31,640 --> 00:51:35,960
um status hierarchy and inequality and human motivations regarding status.

793
00:51:36,360 --> 00:51:40,440
Uh and so that concept of reverse dominance hierarchy, yeah, really resonates with me.

794
00:51:40,760 --> 00:51:46,610
Um Although I think the extent to which dominance is reversed, like

795
00:51:46,610 --> 00:51:52,610
those who would just bully others, uh, are pushed down by a

796
00:51:52,770 --> 00:51:55,410
coalition of group members.

797
00:51:55,570 --> 00:51:59,810
Um it's I think there's been there's been modeling work supporting this idea by Sergei

798
00:51:59,810 --> 00:52:05,570
Gavrets and others that individuals are are motivated to intercede uh to prevent

799
00:52:05,570 --> 00:52:10,940
bullying because of the benefits to themselves of either avoiding future bullying or being

800
00:52:10,940 --> 00:52:14,060
a group that does not have resources controlled by bullies.

801
00:52:14,700 --> 00:52:20,700
Um and so very much, I think that's I there's across a lot of smaller scale societies,

802
00:52:20,780 --> 00:52:26,620
you see these normative emphases on humility, and um uh

803
00:52:26,780 --> 00:52:32,620
you see a constant kind of uh uh mockery of those that

804
00:52:32,620 --> 00:52:38,270
try and act with bravado to the point of as Bohm

805
00:52:38,430 --> 00:52:42,670
as cataloged sometimes uh expulsion from the group or even death.

806
00:52:43,070 --> 00:52:47,870
Um it hopefully we can talk a bit about gender here, but often a lot of the individuals

807
00:52:48,270 --> 00:52:53,230
responsible for um calling out bravado are women uh

808
00:52:53,790 --> 00:52:54,830
towards men.

809
00:52:55,070 --> 00:52:59,980
Um I can think of this you know great example of this one individual was expelled from his

810
00:52:59,980 --> 00:53:03,500
campus might have been the Mbuti Central African foragers.

811
00:53:04,060 --> 00:53:07,900
This women wanted him out of the community because he was hunting too much.

812
00:53:08,220 --> 00:53:08,620
Right.

813
00:53:08,700 --> 00:53:13,900
And so that's an example not of um and I mentioned that because it's an example not of

814
00:53:13,900 --> 00:53:19,020
dominance per se, but of too overt an attempt to gain prestige.

815
00:53:19,310 --> 00:53:21,550
And this is this is where I think Bomb is locking.

816
00:53:21,870 --> 00:53:26,190
Is that the idea he was being he was showing off and being braggadocious about his hunting

817
00:53:26,190 --> 00:53:26,510
ability?

818
00:53:26,590 --> 00:53:27,230
That's interesting.

819
00:53:27,710 --> 00:53:27,950
Yeah.

820
00:53:28,350 --> 00:53:32,670
So that that's where I think Bohm's reverse dominance hierarchy is I like, but also I think

821
00:53:32,670 --> 00:53:36,030
it misses that uh prestige is this alternative.

822
00:53:36,270 --> 00:53:42,270
Some vote argue that dichotomy is oversold, but um you know developing a reputation

823
00:53:42,270 --> 00:53:47,960
for benefiting others as an avenue to status um does mean that there are uh

824
00:53:48,200 --> 00:53:51,480
hierarchies not based entirely on dominance that can emerge.

825
00:53:51,560 --> 00:53:57,400
Um, but even prestige too is seen as a a means of gaining status, has its

826
00:53:57,400 --> 00:53:57,880
limits.

827
00:53:58,120 --> 00:54:01,640
Um and uh like that example.

828
00:54:02,280 --> 00:54:03,080
That's fascinating.

829
00:54:03,240 --> 00:54:09,160
I mean, I I'm I continue to be fascinated by this paradoxical nature of status,

830
00:54:09,320 --> 00:54:12,280
and I'm I'm continuing to, you know, I'm working on a theoretical paper on this.

831
00:54:12,440 --> 00:54:17,770
Um, but this idea that uh often the best way to achieve dominance is to rebel against

832
00:54:17,770 --> 00:54:21,930
dominance or at least create the narrative that that is what one is is attempting to do.

833
00:54:22,090 --> 00:54:26,570
So if if you gang up on a dominant, you know, would-be alpha, what you are doing is

834
00:54:26,570 --> 00:54:30,090
dominating that alpha, and you are doing the thing that you are apparently rebelling

835
00:54:30,090 --> 00:54:30,250
against.

836
00:54:30,410 --> 00:54:34,010
The same thing goes with this, you know, uh norms uh promoting humility.

837
00:54:34,170 --> 00:54:38,650
If uh humility gets me status, then there's something kind of paradoxical about that, where

838
00:54:38,730 --> 00:54:42,410
s displaying my humility in fact makes me look better than other people.

839
00:54:43,640 --> 00:54:49,560
And so because we have to compete for status within this system of

840
00:54:49,560 --> 00:54:54,520
norms where overt status seeking is itself socially costly.

841
00:54:54,600 --> 00:54:55,720
It can lower our status.

842
00:54:55,880 --> 00:55:01,560
It creates a kind of volatility to our norms, such that once we all uh gain common

843
00:55:01,560 --> 00:55:05,880
knowledge of the fact that uh we're seeking status or that one particular individual is

844
00:55:05,880 --> 00:55:11,830
seeking status, It sort of uh rearranges the social hierarchy such that those who are most

845
00:55:11,830 --> 00:55:16,310
aggressively seeking status will now sink to the bottom or at least uh get lowered.

846
00:55:16,470 --> 00:55:21,830
I'm I'm curious what you what you think about this idea that um the the the paradoxical

847
00:55:21,830 --> 00:55:25,750
nature of status hierarchy makes makes it kind of volatile and might generate you know

848
00:55:25,910 --> 00:55:27,910
cultural variation in in status symbols.

849
00:55:27,990 --> 00:55:28,870
Do you buy that idea?

850
00:55:28,950 --> 00:55:31,910
Do you think uh that's that's crazy or is there something there?

851
00:55:32,420 --> 00:55:34,020
No, I've and I've I've liked your writing.

852
00:55:34,100 --> 00:55:38,500
That's sort of the nuance you bring to these these topics or novel ideas with regard to the

853
00:55:38,500 --> 00:55:44,340
sort of signaling or anti-signaling, etc., involved in um status

854
00:55:44,340 --> 00:55:44,900
competition.

855
00:55:45,140 --> 00:55:45,700
Yeah.

856
00:55:46,020 --> 00:55:52,020
That uh you know you gotta be humble but not too humble.

857
00:55:52,660 --> 00:55:55,620
Um you gotta be a good hunter, but not too good.

858
00:55:56,260 --> 00:55:59,060
Um generous but not too generous.

859
00:55:59,780 --> 00:56:05,410
Um and so yeah, there's this you know, but that

860
00:56:05,410 --> 00:56:07,890
sweet spot varies from society to society.

861
00:56:08,130 --> 00:56:14,130
And from and the the what you use to generate prestige varies from society to society,

862
00:56:14,210 --> 00:56:15,090
obvious obviously.

863
00:56:15,170 --> 00:56:21,010
And um so I think in these more Galitarian societies, uh where

864
00:56:21,010 --> 00:56:26,610
there's not a lot of wealth to accrue, um people are very interdependent,

865
00:56:27,090 --> 00:56:33,020
um that and displaying generosity, willingness to help others,

866
00:56:33,180 --> 00:56:38,300
uh is very key to people's survival and reproduction.

867
00:56:38,700 --> 00:56:44,460
That um, of course, that's a huge contributor to prestige, but to the extent you're

868
00:56:44,460 --> 00:56:50,460
overly uh generous, it's showing that maybe, oh, you think you're too good for

869
00:56:50,460 --> 00:56:52,300
the rest of us and don't need uh us.

870
00:56:53,100 --> 00:56:58,460
Um and so that then becomes a negative.

871
00:56:59,130 --> 00:57:00,090
Interesting.

872
00:57:00,890 --> 00:57:02,330
So yeah.

873
00:57:03,690 --> 00:57:09,610
There's this famous, you know, the uh paradigmatic example of the status

874
00:57:09,770 --> 00:57:11,930
loving is called the the meat fight.

875
00:57:12,170 --> 00:57:18,090
Richard Lee was this researcher of the the Kung uh hunter gatherers in the Kalahari and

876
00:57:18,490 --> 00:57:24,340
for um it was Christmas and he said you know this is what I celebrate And uh he wanted to

877
00:57:24,340 --> 00:57:26,660
buy an ox for the community.

878
00:57:26,900 --> 00:57:31,460
Uh and he was told that it was disgusting, kind of gangriness, whatever they said, we

879
00:57:31,460 --> 00:57:32,500
wouldn't touch it.

880
00:57:32,660 --> 00:57:35,300
Um because it was too generous, too presumptive.

881
00:57:35,780 --> 00:57:41,540
And it would, in fact, that level of generosity creates a form of debt

882
00:57:41,540 --> 00:57:42,900
that's unpayable.

883
00:57:43,380 --> 00:57:49,220
Um people are interdependent, require others' aid, and but but it's uh if you can't

884
00:57:49,220 --> 00:57:53,830
reciprocate, um then you just you're just indebted.

885
00:57:54,070 --> 00:57:58,870
And um that creates a uh a situation that people don't like.

886
00:57:58,950 --> 00:58:04,710
That it it it's um uh limits their autonomy,

887
00:58:04,950 --> 00:58:10,470
um which is I think that's an uh sort of a motive in addition to status that's

888
00:58:10,470 --> 00:58:14,310
central to egalitarianism and I think human behavior generally.

889
00:58:15,120 --> 00:58:19,600
Yeah, the actually I'm working on a paper called The Evolution of Autonomy.

890
00:58:20,240 --> 00:58:22,480
And Chris, we should talk about it.

891
00:58:23,680 --> 00:58:29,680
And I think, you know, one question then is have people

892
00:58:29,760 --> 00:58:34,320
but just been wrong about sort of the underlying principle or the North Star of human

893
00:58:34,320 --> 00:58:40,160
nature that it's not actually about egalitarian outcomes per se, but it's more

894
00:58:40,160 --> 00:58:44,930
of this combination of I want a reasonable enough amount of status.

895
00:58:45,010 --> 00:58:45,970
I want autonomy.

896
00:58:46,130 --> 00:58:47,810
I don't want to be coerced.

897
00:58:47,890 --> 00:58:51,970
Um, and then you combine that with something like a, you know, just reasonable welfare

898
00:58:52,130 --> 00:58:52,690
trade-offs.

899
00:58:52,770 --> 00:58:57,090
Like you said, you know, you have a better idea when you're with the chimane, what's going

900
00:58:57,090 --> 00:58:58,130
on with the neighbors.

901
00:58:58,530 --> 00:59:04,210
The scenario where you have more than enough to eat and a neighbor's kid is

902
00:59:04,210 --> 00:59:10,160
dying of starvation just wouldn't happen, right in that kind of community because if

903
00:59:10,160 --> 00:59:16,080
you put a normal human who's not impaired in that kind of environmental ecology,

904
00:59:16,240 --> 00:59:22,000
who's getting the cues of that, they just, you know, that just doesn't that's not gonna

905
00:59:22,000 --> 00:59:22,240
happen.

906
00:59:22,320 --> 00:59:24,720
You're gonna say, okay, of course, I'm gonna give him food.

907
00:59:24,960 --> 00:59:30,000
Um so I kind of wonder sometimes if the motivation behind people wanting

908
00:59:31,050 --> 00:59:35,850
novel savage thing, the sort of thing that there's there's something I'm missing, or it

909
00:59:35,850 --> 00:59:36,810
would be better.

910
00:59:36,970 --> 00:59:41,930
I wonder if it's just the inability to articulate maybe something like

911
00:59:42,410 --> 00:59:48,170
it's not just the um equal outcomes, but there's something about,

912
00:59:48,250 --> 00:59:54,250
you know, the structure of modern life that prevents or conversely

913
00:59:54,250 --> 00:59:59,050
enables terrible things like kids starving to death when there's more than enough food.

914
01:00:00,300 --> 01:00:00,700
Yeah.

915
01:00:02,300 --> 01:00:06,140
So part of my interest is understanding Galitarianism, but then also I'm interested in

916
01:00:06,380 --> 01:00:10,780
given my work with communities like the Chamani that have been undergoing change as they

917
01:00:10,780 --> 01:00:16,300
are more and more exposed to the market economy and why people come to tolerate inequality

918
01:00:17,020 --> 01:00:17,740
then, right?

919
01:00:17,900 --> 01:00:23,660
If it infringes on an individual autonomy or generates debt

920
01:00:23,660 --> 01:00:25,580
relationships and other, you know.

921
01:00:28,690 --> 01:00:34,130
and I think there's a lot of different answers, but you're, you know, in traditional

922
01:00:34,210 --> 01:00:39,090
smaller scale, more egalitarian societies, often people are, you know, highly

923
01:00:39,090 --> 01:00:43,010
interdependent of each other and have minimal reads of but means of buffering risk other

924
01:00:43,010 --> 01:00:44,850
than investment in social relationships.

925
01:00:45,010 --> 01:00:50,530
So lack of private wealth or insurance to buffer risk is one arguably key reason

926
01:00:50,530 --> 01:00:54,210
why inequalities are remain low.

927
01:00:54,450 --> 01:01:00,320
Um So the idea there is is without a health insurance company, say, or

928
01:01:00,320 --> 01:01:06,320
a social safety net, um I have to mitigate the uh the the

929
01:01:06,320 --> 01:01:07,280
winds of fortune.

930
01:01:07,360 --> 01:01:11,920
You know, the if I come up short hunting one day every there's a famine, there's a natural

931
01:01:11,920 --> 01:01:14,880
disaster, there's a flood, you know, shit happens.

932
01:01:15,040 --> 01:01:17,200
And I need some way to insure against that.

933
01:01:17,280 --> 01:01:22,670
And if I don't have an insurance company to insure me against those uh catastrophic risks,

934
01:01:22,910 --> 01:01:24,750
then I need some other way to insure myself.

935
01:01:24,830 --> 01:01:30,590
And so the the w the the reasoning is that uh we form cooperative networks where we all

936
01:01:30,590 --> 01:01:35,150
agree to help each other should someone suffer misfortune and that uh is mutually

937
01:01:35,150 --> 01:01:36,990
beneficial for all of us.

938
01:01:37,230 --> 01:01:40,350
I d uh is that is that sort of the the logic there?

939
01:01:40,590 --> 01:01:41,070
Definitely.

940
01:01:41,230 --> 01:01:41,470
Yeah.

941
01:01:41,630 --> 01:01:44,910
Uh you know and David's mentioning the kid that's starving you're you know, but it's

942
01:01:44,990 --> 01:01:47,550
probably your kid will be starving in a week because he didn't get that.

943
01:01:48,350 --> 01:01:53,580
Um So now that's not to say that there aren't average differences in say

944
01:01:53,740 --> 01:01:58,540
productivity and ability to produce food and if you're in a hunter-gatherer society, right?

945
01:01:58,620 --> 01:02:02,860
Or um and uh more mobile hunter-gatherer society.

946
01:02:02,940 --> 01:02:06,940
There are some we haven't discussed is there are hunter-gatherers that have formal coercive

947
01:02:06,940 --> 01:02:09,020
hierarchies, but that's a whole other story.

948
01:02:09,500 --> 01:02:15,310
Um But in the most more egalitarian mobile foragers, uh, yeah, there's there is variation

949
01:02:15,310 --> 01:02:17,230
in productive ability and skill.

950
01:02:17,470 --> 01:02:22,110
And uh but yeah, but the best hunters still come home days without food or get sick and

951
01:02:22,110 --> 01:02:22,590
injured.

952
01:02:22,670 --> 01:02:28,590
And um uh so it's you know, gaining a reputation for generosity

953
01:02:28,590 --> 01:02:31,390
is important such that when you need it, you yourself are helped.

954
01:02:31,600 --> 01:02:31,920
Right.

955
01:02:32,080 --> 01:02:37,280
And um it also matters in that you know, in other domains, like getting social allies or

956
01:02:37,280 --> 01:02:42,560
being preferred as a mate, uh, also uh, you know, you benefit from being generous in those

957
01:02:42,560 --> 01:02:43,040
ways.

958
01:02:43,520 --> 01:02:49,040
Um such that uh you know the the levels of reproductive

959
01:02:49,040 --> 01:02:54,960
inequalities in sort of uh realized surviving offspring variation across individuals

960
01:02:55,200 --> 01:03:01,130
in even more egalitarian forgers is not that different from uh societies with more wealth,

961
01:03:01,290 --> 01:03:05,210
agricultural societies, um, so based on some work I did.

962
01:03:05,370 --> 01:03:11,210
So um, but um yeah, but there's also,

963
01:03:11,290 --> 01:03:17,130
you know, people are enmeshed in this web of of cooperation, but they're, you know, it's

964
01:03:17,130 --> 01:03:22,810
not just sort of based on pure altruism or necessarily inequality aversion,

965
01:03:22,890 --> 01:03:28,170
but based on sort of risk minimization um or

966
01:03:28,760 --> 01:03:32,920
avoiding a reputation for singiness that will come back to hurt you in the future.

967
01:03:33,080 --> 01:03:38,120
Um or there are models that have been called tolerate scrounging, where like if you happen

968
01:03:38,120 --> 01:03:43,400
to have a lot at one time, there's less and less motive for you and keeping all everything

969
01:03:43,400 --> 01:03:45,160
you have as others demand it.

970
01:03:45,400 --> 01:03:48,840
Um so yeah.

971
01:03:49,080 --> 01:03:54,790
Uh and these the all these are reasons why we sort of, you know, there's not strong

972
01:03:54,790 --> 01:03:59,990
evidence that individuals these societies are sort of intrinsically uh inequality averse,

973
01:04:00,390 --> 01:04:06,310
you know, and um but rather do so for these motives that ultimately have benefits for

974
01:04:06,310 --> 01:04:10,950
them, um, through giving, sharing, uh, leveling the status of others.

975
01:04:11,190 --> 01:04:11,350
Right.

976
01:04:11,640 --> 01:04:12,520
So the idea would be.

977
01:04:12,920 --> 01:04:13,640
Oh, sorry, David.

978
01:04:13,720 --> 01:04:19,640
Uh so just the idea would be that um one of the themes of this has been sort of being

979
01:04:20,760 --> 01:04:26,040
shutting up for a second and letting the the data speak for itself, um, you know, uh or

980
01:04:26,040 --> 01:04:27,960
like what's true, the adaptations.

981
01:04:28,120 --> 01:04:34,120
And so the idea would be that it's not that in egalitarian societies, I'm just saying what

982
01:04:34,120 --> 01:04:39,560
you've already said, but it's not that there's some intrinsic motivation uh that's

983
01:04:39,560 --> 01:04:45,490
angelic per se, but it's that, you know, even when I'm helping this starving kid, I mean,

984
01:04:45,570 --> 01:04:46,690
obviously that's a good thing.

985
01:04:46,770 --> 01:04:49,010
And I'm motivated intrinsically to do that.

986
01:04:49,170 --> 01:04:54,930
But if we want more of that to happen in a large-scale social world, we

987
01:04:54,930 --> 01:05:00,610
should not um think that uh attributing a

988
01:05:00,930 --> 01:05:06,930
very altruistic motivation, as warm and fuzzy as that feels, if

989
01:05:06,930 --> 01:05:12,620
that's not the correct motivation or why somebody's doing that, or

990
01:05:12,620 --> 01:05:17,260
it's or it's more precisely described in other ways, then if we actually want to like have

991
01:05:17,260 --> 01:05:22,860
fewer starving children, we shouldn't just us we shouldn't just be patronizing

992
01:05:22,860 --> 01:05:24,780
towards that lovely event.

993
01:05:24,940 --> 01:05:30,540
We should actually be humble about it and actually ask in a very dispassionate way

994
01:05:30,700 --> 01:05:36,590
what's the best way to characterize what is that person doing, and how can we engage that

995
01:05:36,590 --> 01:05:42,350
psychology in future situations in a large-scale world where we don't want kids to

996
01:05:42,350 --> 01:05:42,830
starve?

997
01:05:43,230 --> 01:05:48,510
And I think charities and organizations understand psychology in ways maybe

998
01:05:49,550 --> 01:05:54,350
with respect to our psychology of reciprocity and deservingness and

999
01:05:54,590 --> 01:06:00,110
interconnectedness, so that, you know, uh you don't want to say, hey, give

1000
01:06:00,160 --> 01:06:02,080
$100 to help starving children.

1001
01:06:02,240 --> 01:06:06,160
You want to say, hey, give $100 to help Rokia, this girl, right?

1002
01:06:06,240 --> 01:06:07,680
Uh who needs your help.

1003
01:06:07,840 --> 01:06:12,000
You put a face to it, an individual who is another agent with whom there can be

1004
01:06:12,080 --> 01:06:13,040
relationship.

1005
01:06:13,600 --> 01:06:19,440
Or you like, you know, you put those tiers of giving uh that communicate sort of status.

1006
01:06:19,760 --> 01:06:25,590
Um but I think making the world more interdependent is al is always a

1007
01:06:25,590 --> 01:06:30,710
good thing um with respect to willingness to cooperate.

1008
01:06:30,870 --> 01:06:36,390
Um uh and but I you know one stumbling block is the extent to which you know there's this

1009
01:06:36,390 --> 01:06:38,470
so called deservingness heuristic, right?

1010
01:06:38,630 --> 01:06:44,310
That we often won't give when we believe, even if somebody's needy, when we believe they're

1011
01:06:44,790 --> 01:06:48,710
uh have put poor little minimal effort into rectifying their situation.

1012
01:06:49,240 --> 01:06:50,600
They're lazy and irresponsible.

1013
01:06:50,840 --> 01:06:51,000
Right.

1014
01:06:51,160 --> 01:06:51,400
Yeah.

1015
01:06:51,480 --> 01:06:51,720
Yeah.

1016
01:06:52,600 --> 01:06:57,480
And I wonder and I wonder too, like, I mean, those are but I also wonder to what extent,

1017
01:06:57,640 --> 01:06:59,720
and I I would hope people that have research on this.

1018
01:06:59,800 --> 01:07:03,560
I mean, it's one thing if you're with that person and you see what they're doing, right?

1019
01:07:03,640 --> 01:07:09,080
If they're their hunting partner and you see day-to-day what they're doing versus your

1020
01:07:09,560 --> 01:07:15,390
you experience your your higher social class than somebody else, the variation

1021
01:07:15,390 --> 01:07:21,390
you experience is somebody putting in minimal effort gets to like, you know, a hundred

1022
01:07:21,390 --> 01:07:23,630
units of capital, right?

1023
01:07:23,710 --> 01:07:25,710
Or like, you know, physical capital.

1024
01:07:25,870 --> 01:07:28,110
And I see somebody and they have two.

1025
01:07:28,430 --> 01:07:34,190
So what is an what's a reasonable but probably incorrect inference for that

1026
01:07:34,190 --> 01:07:36,590
evolved psychology is well, they're just lazy.

1027
01:07:36,830 --> 01:07:42,190
But that's somebody who grew up in or is calibrated for this correlation, right?

1028
01:07:42,350 --> 01:07:45,640
That may be invalid in a different environment.

1029
01:07:45,800 --> 01:07:50,280
Even if it's physically proximate, it might be there's just a different, um, you know,

1030
01:07:50,360 --> 01:07:56,280
there's different amount of social and uh physical capital across social class divides, for

1031
01:07:56,280 --> 01:07:56,680
example.

1032
01:07:57,080 --> 01:07:57,400
Yeah.

1033
01:07:57,560 --> 01:07:58,040
Yeah.

1034
01:07:58,280 --> 01:08:04,090
Um I was gonna say that in uh there's evidence in in more

1035
01:08:04,090 --> 01:08:09,930
egalitarian smaller scale societies of you know purposely you know identifiably lazy

1036
01:08:09,930 --> 01:08:12,250
individuals not receiving help.

1037
01:08:12,330 --> 01:08:12,490
Yeah.

1038
01:08:12,810 --> 01:08:18,490
But I think we uh so there's maybe a reason for this heuristic, deservingness heuristic.

1039
01:08:18,730 --> 01:08:24,410
Um but I think we the cues we use to identify deservingness in our large scale

1040
01:08:24,570 --> 01:08:29,210
societies are not um aligned with actual deservingness.

1041
01:08:29,530 --> 01:08:35,300
Uh we we underestimate the amount of luck that governs people's outcomes in their large

1042
01:08:35,380 --> 01:08:38,740
scale society, especially with respect to wealth accrual and all the sort of things you

1043
01:08:38,740 --> 01:08:40,580
need to gain status in society.

1044
01:08:40,660 --> 01:08:44,740
It's heavily based on extensive human capital and money.

1045
01:08:44,980 --> 01:08:50,900
Um if we're getting it wrong in modern societies, in terms of you know figuring

1046
01:08:50,900 --> 01:08:54,900
out whether a recipient deserves help or not, whether they were lazy or not, whether they

1047
01:08:54,900 --> 01:09:00,790
were irresponsible or not, do you find that we're more likely to get it right uh in a more

1048
01:09:00,790 --> 01:09:03,510
ancestral social ecology like like the Chimane?

1049
01:09:04,310 --> 01:09:09,510
Yeah, just uh if you're living with a group of people and you observe them a lot often, um,

1050
01:09:09,670 --> 01:09:15,350
you'll get to know uh who was failing due to luck versus

1051
01:09:15,830 --> 01:09:19,750
um you know bad luck versus uh low effort.

1052
01:09:19,910 --> 01:09:24,950
Um and as a result, I mean people are maybe are gonna avoid low effort more often.

1053
01:09:25,430 --> 01:09:25,670
Sure.

1054
01:09:25,750 --> 01:09:31,720
I mean I I I want to flesh out this this distinction between uh low effort versus bad luck,

1055
01:09:31,880 --> 01:09:37,560
uh, because it's not obvious why uh such a distinction would would be an adaptive

1056
01:09:37,560 --> 01:09:38,760
distinction to make.

1057
01:09:39,080 --> 01:09:44,840
Um so uh the logic there, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that uh if

1058
01:09:45,080 --> 01:09:50,890
if uh this behavior evolved to minimize risk such that if we're all

1059
01:09:50,890 --> 01:09:56,090
equally vulnerable to this risk, we can all work together to uh insure each other against

1060
01:09:56,090 --> 01:09:58,970
this risk by helping each other out when we suffer it.

1061
01:09:59,050 --> 01:10:04,170
Um, we all mutually benefit uh insofar as we can pay a small cost to deliver a large

1062
01:10:04,170 --> 01:10:04,650
benefit.

1063
01:10:04,810 --> 01:10:08,730
Assume that we're assuming that we're equally likely to receive those benefits and pay

1064
01:10:08,730 --> 01:10:09,290
those costs.

1065
01:10:09,370 --> 01:10:12,890
If the if the benefits are larger than the cost, then we all benefit and we all come out

1066
01:10:12,890 --> 01:10:14,570
ahead in Darwinian terms.

1067
01:10:14,730 --> 01:10:20,460
Um but the crucial assumption there is that we're all equally likely to uh suffer the

1068
01:10:20,460 --> 01:10:20,780
risk.

1069
01:10:21,020 --> 01:10:25,740
As soon as you take out that assumption, it no longer necessarily becomes adaptive to

1070
01:10:25,740 --> 01:10:27,500
participate in this cooperative arrangement.

1071
01:10:27,660 --> 01:10:32,060
So if it's entirely down to skill, say the only reason why some people have more than

1072
01:10:32,060 --> 01:10:36,700
others is because they're better at, say, hunting or foraging, then the better hunters and

1073
01:10:36,700 --> 01:10:41,100
foragers do not necessarily come out ahead in Darwinian terms by sharing with the less

1074
01:10:41,100 --> 01:10:43,180
productive hunters and foragers.

1075
01:10:43,340 --> 01:10:49,170
And so this distinction between uh effort versus luck is a very uh sensible

1076
01:10:49,170 --> 01:10:53,970
distinction to make if you're trying to calibrate altruistic behavior towards situations

1077
01:10:53,970 --> 01:10:58,130
where it is likely to pay off in Darwinian terms, compared to situations where it is not

1078
01:10:58,130 --> 01:10:59,170
likely to pay off.

1079
01:10:59,410 --> 01:11:01,010
Do you do you buy that logic?

1080
01:11:01,730 --> 01:11:05,010
Yeah, I mean, why do good hunters share?

1081
01:11:05,250 --> 01:11:10,050
Uh is why should they do that if um they're doing generally better?

1082
01:11:10,130 --> 01:11:15,820
And I think it it uh to the extent that good hunters themselves

1083
01:11:15,820 --> 01:11:21,740
don't suffer similar levels of risk, even if they are slightly better hunters than

1084
01:11:21,740 --> 01:11:22,860
the next person.

1085
01:11:23,020 --> 01:11:28,540
Um there's there just in terms of risk reduction, there's less motive to engage in

1086
01:11:28,540 --> 01:11:31,740
sharing um or aiding those with less than them.

1087
01:11:32,140 --> 01:11:38,130
Um uh regardless of, you know, whether those with less

1088
01:11:38,130 --> 01:11:43,010
have were, you know, was a result of um bad luck or low effort.

1089
01:11:43,170 --> 01:11:46,690
Um I don't know if that's part of what you're driving at.

1090
01:11:46,850 --> 01:11:50,290
Uh that distinction doesn't matter if you have more or why share at all.

1091
01:11:50,450 --> 01:11:54,610
Um, regardless of whether the person that has less is is a result of bad luck or low

1092
01:11:54,610 --> 01:11:55,250
effort.

1093
01:11:55,490 --> 01:12:00,320
Um in that case, you know, they're beyond risk reduction, they're there are just their

1094
01:12:00,400 --> 01:12:04,000
benefits to status gain and developing a reputation through through signaling or for

1095
01:12:04,160 --> 01:12:07,120
partner choice of your commitment to others.

1096
01:12:07,360 --> 01:12:09,040
So that's one way out of that.

1097
01:12:09,280 --> 01:12:15,280
Um so um can I can I push

1098
01:12:15,280 --> 01:12:16,000
on one thing too?

1099
01:12:16,080 --> 01:12:18,400
Just but there's also like kids and old people, right?

1100
01:12:18,480 --> 01:12:22,320
I mean, there's also this thing of like, I know how much a kid can do, I know how much like

1101
01:12:22,400 --> 01:12:24,080
my grandparents can do.

1102
01:12:24,400 --> 01:12:30,250
Um So there's presumably some understanding of, you know, it's not that the person who

1103
01:12:30,250 --> 01:12:34,650
used to be a good hunter who's now old and can't hunt at their old level, it's not that

1104
01:12:34,650 --> 01:12:38,410
they're unlucky for the last 20 years, right?

1105
01:12:38,490 --> 01:12:42,010
It's that they've changed their competence has changed, right?

1106
01:12:42,170 --> 01:12:45,050
And likewise for the kids for different reasons.

1107
01:12:45,290 --> 01:12:50,650
How, you know, the idea of luck and laziness already

1108
01:12:50,650 --> 01:12:53,820
assumes kind of accounting for those differences.

1109
01:12:54,300 --> 01:12:57,820
How do you understand those differences being accounted for?

1110
01:12:58,380 --> 01:13:03,500
Well, you you know, mentioned older people whose productivity declines are not necessarily

1111
01:13:03,500 --> 01:13:05,260
due to low effort, right?

1112
01:13:05,340 --> 01:13:07,820
But change benefit other ways, right?

1113
01:13:07,900 --> 01:13:09,500
Like like maybe that's part of the answer, right?

1114
01:13:09,660 --> 01:13:13,340
As they're providing other things like alloparenting knowledge, skills, social skills,

1115
01:13:13,580 --> 01:13:13,740
right?

1116
01:13:13,820 --> 01:13:17,980
So it's it's multidimensional, but we're just we're using hunting as an example.

1117
01:13:18,140 --> 01:13:19,100
So yeah, sorry.

1118
01:13:19,490 --> 01:13:25,010
But while, you know, I think older people are often r receive respect, the oldest people um

1119
01:13:25,650 --> 01:13:31,170
are often, you know, their s um social networks decline in

1120
01:13:31,170 --> 01:13:31,730
size.

1121
01:13:31,890 --> 01:13:37,890
Um, they ex from work we'd done with the Chimane found that older individuals can suffer

1122
01:13:37,890 --> 01:13:42,690
increased anxiety and depression given their fears about their low productivity and l and

1123
01:13:42,690 --> 01:13:44,770
decreasing value to others.

1124
01:13:45,410 --> 01:13:51,200
Um so uh yeah, so their uh their ability to

1125
01:13:51,200 --> 01:13:55,600
engage in sharing based principally on reciprocity, you know, is declined.

1126
01:13:55,840 --> 01:14:00,000
Um that's not to say they're not recipients of aid that's motivated for other by other

1127
01:14:00,000 --> 01:14:05,280
reasons, um kinship, um signaling, whatever.

1128
01:14:05,440 --> 01:14:11,440
Um so yeah, um I think that you know

1129
01:14:11,680 --> 01:14:16,560
this is another misnomer that the oldest people in traditional societies are the most

1130
01:14:16,790 --> 01:14:18,790
respected, highest status people.

1131
01:14:19,110 --> 01:14:21,990
Older, but not the oldest, has been my experience.

1132
01:14:22,070 --> 01:14:23,990
Uh in my reading in various ethnographies.

1133
01:14:24,070 --> 01:14:28,070
I mean, there are exceptions where the the oldest, yeah, retain high levels of respect.

1134
01:14:28,150 --> 01:14:33,910
But um I think as productivity wanes um and your

1135
01:14:34,150 --> 01:14:38,710
your ability to be mobile wanes, then your your status declines.

1136
01:14:38,950 --> 01:14:44,340
Um yeah, and these aren't, you know, the oldest of the old aren't leading community

1137
01:14:44,340 --> 01:14:44,660
meetings.

1138
01:14:44,740 --> 01:14:49,140
They're not um in a lot of more traditional societies.

1139
01:14:49,540 --> 01:14:50,020
Yeah.

1140
01:14:50,260 --> 01:14:55,060
There there's also a a political dimension to this that I've been interested in lately,

1141
01:14:55,140 --> 01:15:00,180
where this distinction between bad luck versus low effort or low productivity or whatever

1142
01:15:00,340 --> 01:15:04,260
is also extremely politically relevant if you're if there are conflicts over who deserves

1143
01:15:04,260 --> 01:15:05,780
resources and who doesn't.

1144
01:15:05,940 --> 01:15:11,930
Um and uh your attributions about bad luck versus low effort can be hugely biased by

1145
01:15:11,930 --> 01:15:14,250
your allegiances to the person in question.

1146
01:15:14,410 --> 01:15:19,770
So if it's my brother or my ally and they uh have, you know, low access to resources, you

1147
01:15:19,770 --> 01:15:23,610
know, not enough food, whatever, I'm gonna be more motivated to say it was bad luck.

1148
01:15:23,770 --> 01:15:28,170
But if it was my enemy or my rival, then I'm gonna say, oh, he's lazy, he's irresponsible.

1149
01:15:28,330 --> 01:15:33,050
And so there are these political considerations as well that shift how you interpret the

1150
01:15:33,050 --> 01:15:37,140
situation and how political coalitions can gain more resources for themselves while

1151
01:15:37,140 --> 01:15:41,940
excluding rivals from valued resources by exploiting this part of our psychology.

1152
01:15:42,180 --> 01:15:47,060
Do you do you buy this idea that that the this distinction between bad luck and low effort

1153
01:15:47,060 --> 01:15:48,500
is is a political weapon?

1154
01:15:48,580 --> 01:15:51,860
And do you see any examples of that in in the Chimane?

1155
01:15:52,580 --> 01:15:54,740
I see examples of that every day in my life, I think.

1156
01:15:55,060 --> 01:15:55,380
Wow.

1157
01:15:57,220 --> 01:15:57,940
Yeah, yeah.

1158
01:15:58,100 --> 01:16:03,380
Uh no, I I know I love uh you I I've enjoyed your recent pieces on coalitional kind of

1159
01:16:04,030 --> 01:16:10,030
uh coalitional psychology driving our politics in a lot of ways and um yeah uh

1160
01:16:10,110 --> 01:16:15,790
yeah certainly framing of deservingness based on uh alliances political

1161
01:16:15,790 --> 01:16:21,150
repercussions oh yeah i think that's in any the part of the politics of any society um

1162
01:16:21,950 --> 01:16:27,950
and including the chimane uh i've done some work on alliances there um and

1163
01:16:28,190 --> 01:16:33,840
uh you know who forms alliances with whom, and it's often based on past

1164
01:16:33,840 --> 01:16:38,400
relationships and um who mutual enemies and things like that.

1165
01:16:38,480 --> 01:16:42,960
And um sort of based on a triadic kind of understanding of the way that Dave himself has

1166
01:16:42,960 --> 01:16:44,400
modeled these things too.

1167
01:16:45,040 --> 01:16:46,880
Um we'll pay you after this, Chris.

1168
01:16:47,360 --> 01:16:53,360
Yeah, I'm trying to realize this also occurred to me, I don't know, maybe this is sort of

1169
01:16:53,440 --> 01:16:59,390
a left field, but um the philosopher sort of government uh

1170
01:16:59,790 --> 01:17:05,630
uh political science uh uh Harvard professor Sandel, I think has

1171
01:17:05,630 --> 01:17:11,550
written, among others, has discussed the idea that, you know, um everything is luck

1172
01:17:11,630 --> 01:17:15,710
uh in s in some ways, and that you know, you're born in the right place of the right genes.

1173
01:17:15,790 --> 01:17:20,910
And so to talk about even low effort as as somehow not a product of luck.

1174
01:17:21,230 --> 01:17:23,300
I mean, what isn't a product of luck?

1175
01:17:23,380 --> 01:17:24,740
So it might be an extreme.

1176
01:17:24,820 --> 01:17:29,380
It's part of his attack on meritocracy, and I wanted to claim, you know, who deserves what.

1177
01:17:31,940 --> 01:17:36,900
And I think, you know, in these smaller scale more Galitarian societies,

1178
01:17:37,220 --> 01:17:43,220
distribution is maybe um least meritocratic

1179
01:17:43,430 --> 01:17:48,870
uh in the sense of like going towards those typically need because most people are need

1180
01:17:49,270 --> 01:17:50,390
most of the time.

1181
01:17:50,630 --> 01:17:56,390
Um and so um it's not just privileging those that, you know, are

1182
01:17:56,550 --> 01:17:59,190
the best hardest workers get the most.

1183
01:17:59,590 --> 01:18:05,590
Um I'm wondering if if maybe this luck versus low effort is

1184
01:18:05,590 --> 01:18:07,620
the wrong way to think of it.

1185
01:18:08,260 --> 01:18:11,540
Because it's not necessarily luck per se.

1186
01:18:11,780 --> 01:18:15,460
Really, the distinction that we should have evolved to care about from an evolutionary

1187
01:18:15,460 --> 01:18:20,580
perspective is is there variation in susceptibility to this risk?

1188
01:18:20,820 --> 01:18:24,660
So if there's no variation and we're all equally susceptible to it, then that's a that's a

1189
01:18:24,660 --> 01:18:27,300
situation where reciprocal altruism is going to pay off.

1190
01:18:27,540 --> 01:18:33,220
But if there is inequality in our susceptibility to this risk, then it uh uh it no longer

1191
01:18:33,220 --> 01:18:37,890
pays pays off uh as much or at least as straightforwardly for the people who are at reduced

1192
01:18:37,890 --> 01:18:41,650
susceptibility for the risk to give to the people who are higher susceptibility to the

1193
01:18:41,650 --> 01:18:41,890
risk.

1194
01:18:42,130 --> 01:18:47,810
So really what we should be f uh focusing on is uh uh variation in um

1195
01:18:48,050 --> 01:18:52,290
uh in uh vulnerability to this sh shortfall rather than luck per se.

1196
01:18:52,450 --> 01:18:55,330
I mean it sort of translates to luck when you think about it but when you start to think

1197
01:18:55,330 --> 01:19:00,180
about how genes themselves are a kind of luck, then the this logic starts to fall apart.

1198
01:19:00,260 --> 01:19:04,980
And maybe maybe it's a more fruitful way to think about this in terms of variation and risk

1199
01:19:04,980 --> 01:19:05,540
susceptibility.

1200
01:19:05,620 --> 01:19:08,340
Do you think do you think that's a better way to think about it?

1201
01:19:08,820 --> 01:19:09,060
Yeah.

1202
01:19:09,300 --> 01:19:13,780
I I would think that wouldn't you predict where there's greater variation across

1203
01:19:13,780 --> 01:19:19,230
individuals and there's susceptibility to risk, you'd expect more reciprocity because you'd

1204
01:19:19,230 --> 01:19:24,990
want to especially then figure out who's gonna be more reliable partner based on um

1205
01:19:25,150 --> 01:19:27,870
higher risk, uh lower risk profile, right?

1206
01:19:28,030 --> 01:19:32,830
Whereas if people have similar levels of risk, there's less need to um

1207
01:19:33,630 --> 01:19:37,950
engage in reciprocity, direct reciprocity per se.

1208
01:19:38,270 --> 01:19:41,120
Um there's also this complication.

1209
01:19:41,280 --> 01:19:46,800
Sorry, Chris, I just like there's this complication too of like the the risk, risky things,

1210
01:19:46,880 --> 01:19:52,160
like the distribution of high packets of high resource high value are just more distributed

1211
01:19:52,160 --> 01:19:53,680
and just clumpier, right?

1212
01:19:53,840 --> 01:19:54,400
Like in the world.

1213
01:19:54,560 --> 01:20:00,000
Like error, we don't consider like air high value uh because it's just everywhere.

1214
01:20:00,160 --> 01:20:04,240
I mean, unless you're you know in space and then it is actually a high variance thing.

1215
01:20:04,400 --> 01:20:10,070
But um so so even the idea of sort of what um what what

1216
01:20:10,070 --> 01:20:14,070
counts as high variance is not even just attached to an individual per se.

1217
01:20:14,150 --> 01:20:19,910
I mean it can be, but it's also, you know, this is classically the idea of low variance

1218
01:20:20,070 --> 01:20:25,830
resources like the things you can just like dig up a tuber, those are not shared, but

1219
01:20:25,830 --> 01:20:29,510
high variance things like meat um are right.

1220
01:20:29,820 --> 01:20:30,300
That's right.

1221
01:20:30,380 --> 01:20:30,620
Yeah.

1222
01:20:30,860 --> 01:20:31,020
Yeah.

1223
01:20:31,260 --> 01:20:34,300
I mean, yes, I'm I'm not so much thinking about the clumpiness of the resource.

1224
01:20:34,380 --> 01:20:39,820
So just to give a concrete example, let's say uh uh we all are vulnerable to this problem

1225
01:20:39,820 --> 01:20:41,180
of our homes collapsing.

1226
01:20:41,340 --> 01:20:45,340
And let's just say for the sake of argument that that is entirely a product of how good of

1227
01:20:45,340 --> 01:20:47,580
a craftsman you are and when you're building your home.

1228
01:20:47,740 --> 01:20:49,740
If you're a good craftsman, your home's not going to collapse.

1229
01:20:49,820 --> 01:20:53,980
If you're bad at building homes, if you're careless or or stupid or whatever, your home is

1230
01:20:53,980 --> 01:20:55,260
more likely to collapse.

1231
01:20:55,420 --> 01:21:01,250
Uh in that case, it doesn't necessarily benefit the good craftsman to help the

1232
01:21:01,250 --> 01:21:03,090
bad craftsman, right?

1233
01:21:03,490 --> 01:21:08,850
But if your home collapsing is entirely uh a product of luck or a luck that we're all

1234
01:21:08,850 --> 01:21:13,090
equally likely to experience, say, you know, a storm or bad weather conditions or or

1235
01:21:13,090 --> 01:21:17,890
whatever, then it it's it creates the situation where where we want to create a reciprocal

1236
01:21:18,050 --> 01:21:20,290
altruistic arrangement.

1237
01:21:21,020 --> 01:21:21,340
Okay.

1238
01:21:21,740 --> 01:21:25,660
Uh based on that anecdote, yes, I can see that see the logic there.

1239
01:21:25,820 --> 01:21:31,420
Um although David uh in the person uh but but also maybe the home

1240
01:21:31,420 --> 01:21:35,580
builder does build there and says, Hey, let me actually help you next time because then

1241
01:21:35,580 --> 01:21:40,220
that other person did that's the that's the prestige, right?

1242
01:21:40,300 --> 01:21:43,740
Where it's sort of like that person who's not very good at building homes.

1243
01:21:43,820 --> 01:21:47,420
If like let's say I'm the incompetent home builder, I don't want my home to collapse on my

1244
01:21:47,420 --> 01:21:48,770
kid and hurt them.

1245
01:21:49,010 --> 01:21:54,530
So it's actually I'm I'm I intrinsically value you because you've helped me in that

1246
01:21:55,010 --> 01:21:55,730
I'm willing to.

1247
01:21:55,890 --> 01:22:01,410
So you can also then as long as you helping me, the

1248
01:22:01,410 --> 01:22:06,690
incompetent one, is conditional on me ratcheting up some benefit in return,

1249
01:22:07,170 --> 01:22:09,730
then it becomes a reciprocity thing, right?

1250
01:22:09,890 --> 01:22:15,420
Where where I'm I'm conferring more status to you, more benefits to you, I'm indebted to

1251
01:22:15,420 --> 01:22:18,780
you, or I want to return in in maybe not in kind.

1252
01:22:18,860 --> 01:22:23,260
Maybe there's things I'm better at than you, or maybe I can just help you out in other

1253
01:22:23,260 --> 01:22:23,820
ways.

1254
01:22:24,060 --> 01:22:29,740
Um it's exactly right that I think if you look just across the commodity, if you just hold

1255
01:22:29,900 --> 01:22:34,780
constant and just say building houses, it's not in the best home builder's interest to help

1256
01:22:34,780 --> 01:22:36,460
the poor home builders.

1257
01:22:36,700 --> 01:22:42,510
But if you add, there's actually multiple currencies uh to the

1258
01:22:42,510 --> 01:22:47,710
world and you tr you're you're tracking whether or not the uh the

1259
01:22:47,710 --> 01:22:53,710
indebtedness or reciprocity is is possible and happening,

1260
01:22:54,030 --> 01:22:59,550
then you can see where that would open up and it would be uh really good for me to

1261
01:22:59,550 --> 01:23:00,030
represent.

1262
01:23:00,110 --> 01:23:01,070
You're actually better than me.

1263
01:23:01,230 --> 01:23:03,230
Hey David, please help me build my home.

1264
01:23:03,310 --> 01:23:04,110
That's awesome.

1265
01:23:04,640 --> 01:23:08,400
And I'm super happy to do it because you can do better than I can do.

1266
01:23:08,560 --> 01:23:13,120
You know, then you start to get this this market or this division of labor, right?

1267
01:23:13,440 --> 01:23:13,600
Right.

1268
01:23:13,680 --> 01:23:13,920
Yeah.

1269
01:23:14,000 --> 01:23:14,880
No, I totally buy that.

1270
01:23:14,960 --> 01:23:20,960
So the argument is um that direct reciprocity uh for for the specific good

1271
01:23:20,960 --> 01:23:22,160
or service being provided.

1272
01:23:22,240 --> 01:23:26,880
So that I help you with uh repair your home if it collapses, you help me repair my home if

1273
01:23:26,880 --> 01:23:27,520
it collapses.

1274
01:23:27,680 --> 01:23:31,040
If my home is not going to collapse and yours is, then that arrangement doesn't benefit me

1275
01:23:31,040 --> 01:23:31,200
at all.

1276
01:23:31,600 --> 01:23:31,760
Right.

1277
01:23:32,150 --> 01:23:36,230
But indirect reciprocity could still evolve where I help you repair your home and I get

1278
01:23:36,230 --> 01:23:40,550
some other uh benefit in return maybe high status for being a good craftsman or or or

1279
01:23:40,550 --> 01:23:40,870
whatever.

1280
01:23:40,950 --> 01:23:45,270
So the argument applies to direct reciprocity rather than indirect reciprocity.

1281
01:23:45,510 --> 01:23:49,910
And there's a lot of great work on how those different currencies matter more or less as

1282
01:23:49,910 --> 01:23:51,590
the socioecology changes.

1283
01:23:52,150 --> 01:23:58,150
Um so in in very mobile hunter-gatherers, uh actually there seems to be greater

1284
01:23:58,150 --> 01:24:02,520
s um evidence of demand sharing,

1285
01:24:04,200 --> 01:24:08,520
where you know you're sharing based upon diminishing returns to hoarding a resource that

1286
01:24:08,520 --> 01:24:10,280
you've just got, just captured.

1287
01:24:10,600 --> 01:24:15,560
Single reciprocity is stronger where people are congregating in camps together for longer

1288
01:24:15,560 --> 01:24:16,440
periods of time.

1289
01:24:25,210 --> 01:24:30,730
uh as societies get more material wealth, the sort of signaling of personal

1290
01:24:30,890 --> 01:24:36,890
ability becomes a much larger sort of motive than reciprocity as individual

1291
01:24:36,890 --> 01:24:42,570
wealth diminishes uh the need to s insure against risk through social

1292
01:24:42,570 --> 01:24:48,570
relationships, then you get a lot of sharing as sort of demonstration of

1293
01:24:48,570 --> 01:24:52,410
skill uh or ability or whatever or competitiveness.

1294
01:24:52,730 --> 01:24:53,660
Um Interesting.

1295
01:24:53,900 --> 01:24:59,740
So yeah, the the way these different motives for sharing uh as they relate to risk

1296
01:24:59,900 --> 01:25:02,300
shift with the the ecology in these kinds of ways.

1297
01:25:02,380 --> 01:25:06,380
The ability to first of all the what's the nature of the risk is declining or going up and

1298
01:25:06,460 --> 01:25:10,620
um how is that risk can it be mitigated through means other than social relationships.

1299
01:25:10,780 --> 01:25:14,780
And also what's the opportunity to develop reciprocity with particular people over time.

1300
01:25:15,790 --> 01:25:16,670
Is there any work?

1301
01:25:16,910 --> 01:25:21,550
Is there any work like there's been like this long history of political science that's sort

1302
01:25:21,550 --> 01:25:25,070
of implicitly assumed things about this psychology?

1303
01:25:25,310 --> 01:25:30,830
Is there any ethnographically informed political science from your perspective?

1304
01:25:30,990 --> 01:25:33,470
Or is this what you the book that you need to write?

1305
01:25:33,630 --> 01:25:37,950
Uh I mean, I don't I don't want to oversimplify and care or over characterize an entire

1306
01:25:37,950 --> 01:25:38,190
field.

1307
01:25:38,270 --> 01:25:42,270
I'm sure there is, but I mean, in your perspective, have you looked into this literature or

1308
01:25:42,510 --> 01:25:43,630
talked to people?

1309
01:25:44,360 --> 01:25:50,280
Uh so um the political science of smaller scale societies

1310
01:25:50,360 --> 01:25:50,680
generally.

1311
01:25:51,000 --> 01:25:55,080
Or just I mean, even you know, even just sort of people being like, well, let's like what

1312
01:25:55,160 --> 01:25:58,280
what is a how do we build a more just fair society?

1313
01:25:58,840 --> 01:26:04,840
Um, you know, like that is often implicitly like the overriding goal of a lot of political

1314
01:26:04,840 --> 01:26:05,400
theory.

1315
01:26:05,560 --> 01:26:06,040
Oh, yeah.

1316
01:26:06,200 --> 01:26:11,490
Um, and you know, a lot of that implicitly appeals to, well, what are the motivations of

1317
01:26:11,490 --> 01:26:14,290
people or I mean what you're describing is it's complicated, right?

1318
01:26:14,370 --> 01:26:15,410
Like what's the resource?

1319
01:26:15,570 --> 01:26:21,410
What's the um and how do you so if there are people who want to um respect the

1320
01:26:21,410 --> 01:26:26,370
complexity of it and understand how the system works, to then say, for example, like, you

1321
01:26:26,370 --> 01:26:31,200
know, how do we encourage people to like create a society where people aren't starving or

1322
01:26:31,200 --> 01:26:32,960
have all the medical care they need.

1323
01:26:33,920 --> 01:26:38,080
Is there work that's sort of bridging those two areas, or is that not yet happening?

1324
01:26:38,640 --> 01:26:42,800
No, I think there are there are a number of political scientists that have um been

1325
01:26:42,800 --> 01:26:47,520
interested in the work that like evolutionary anthropologists have done in in sort of

1326
01:26:47,680 --> 01:26:53,510
evolutionary motives for for giving, and then have tried to leverage that to understand

1327
01:26:53,750 --> 01:26:59,670
why um, you know, policies succeed or fail or institutions succeed or fail at a

1328
01:26:59,750 --> 01:27:01,510
in a large-scale society setting.

1329
01:27:01,990 --> 01:27:07,510
Like Michael Bank Peterson, you know, the somebody that you know we know, uh, that has

1330
01:27:07,510 --> 01:27:11,830
commented on this kind of thing with regard to the sort of uh deserving that her d

1331
01:27:11,990 --> 01:27:15,270
deservingness heuristic and people's views about welfare.

1332
01:27:15,910 --> 01:27:21,860
Um I think uh one thing our institutions, this is something Joe Henrik has written a lot

1333
01:27:21,860 --> 01:27:27,140
about is and done you know ex sort of experimental games in different societies to that he

1334
01:27:27,140 --> 01:27:31,860
argues are consistent with this point, is that we've generated institutions that increase

1335
01:27:31,940 --> 01:27:33,380
trust among strangers.

1336
01:27:33,540 --> 01:27:39,140
And that's one thing that we talk about the the generosity and its motives in terms of risk

1337
01:27:39,140 --> 01:27:45,050
reduction or um to in terms of demand sharing or signaling in these smaller

1338
01:27:45,210 --> 01:27:46,090
scale societies.

1339
01:27:46,250 --> 01:27:51,450
But in the context of experiments, members of these societies are often the least likely to

1340
01:27:52,250 --> 01:27:53,850
give to an anonymous other.

1341
01:28:09,700 --> 01:28:15,620
uh you know mean in some ways we're at least with non uh anonymous

1342
01:28:15,620 --> 01:28:17,540
strangers we may not meet that often.

1343
01:28:17,700 --> 01:28:23,300
Uh in practice, we're more likely to uh be generous than our members of these more

1344
01:28:23,300 --> 01:28:24,500
egalitarian societies.

1345
01:28:24,660 --> 01:28:30,340
Um the idea is that like an anonymous other, um that's when you're growing up in a world

1346
01:28:30,340 --> 01:28:35,490
where you know everybody, then if it's an anonymous other, you're gonna have a low, you

1347
01:28:35,490 --> 01:28:40,130
have no idea, yeah, it may be a low trust, whatever, but in in the the idea is that there's

1348
01:28:40,130 --> 01:28:43,570
certain um institutions that do a better or worse job.

1349
01:28:43,810 --> 01:28:48,130
I can say living in Northern Europe versus the US, Northern Europe does much better.

1350
01:28:48,210 --> 01:28:53,890
Like I actually I'm like, I feel like part of my reverse culture shock is uh I I'm feeling

1351
01:28:53,890 --> 01:28:59,620
a less trusty uh So

1352
01:28:59,780 --> 01:29:00,820
I'm feeling that right now.

1353
01:29:00,900 --> 01:29:04,980
I'm sort of recalibrating to US versus Northern Europe on that.

1354
01:29:07,780 --> 01:29:10,660
Yeah, good example of evoked culture happening inside your head.

1355
01:29:11,060 --> 01:29:11,300
Exactly.

1356
01:29:11,380 --> 01:29:12,900
Yes, no, exactly.

1357
01:29:13,060 --> 01:29:13,860
I'm like, yeah.

1358
01:29:16,990 --> 01:29:22,750
we we often ask people how they got interested in evolutionary social sciences

1359
01:29:23,470 --> 01:29:29,230
um did you did you um have a uh we we've kind of

1360
01:29:29,390 --> 01:29:32,990
quote unquote call these are people's origin stories because sometimes people had you know

1361
01:29:33,070 --> 01:29:38,350
sort of a a journey to find it um for you how did you get into this

1362
01:29:39,500 --> 01:29:42,540
Um, I was a history major at first in college.

1363
01:29:43,420 --> 01:29:49,260
Uh and um, you know, I liked the classes, great teachers, and but I was

1364
01:29:49,420 --> 01:29:54,860
you know, we're learning about the fall of you know um Constant Constantinople, whatever it

1365
01:29:54,860 --> 01:29:59,740
becomes this, you know, then uh among other things, and it's like, well, why?

1366
01:30:00,030 --> 01:30:02,670
Why do humans engage in warfare generally?

1367
01:30:02,830 --> 01:30:05,230
Why are we so tied to symbols?

1368
01:30:05,550 --> 01:30:08,190
And why do those motivate war?

1369
01:30:08,270 --> 01:30:09,310
Uh, just to take an example.

1370
01:30:09,390 --> 01:30:14,990
So extrapolating out those larger questions about human behavior um just seemed

1371
01:30:14,990 --> 01:30:18,510
missing from the history classes I was I was taking.

1372
01:30:18,830 --> 01:30:24,600
Um and I'd also been interested in biology in high school, especially, and I was sort of

1373
01:30:24,600 --> 01:30:27,240
unsure what direction I'd take in college and went the history route.

1374
01:30:27,400 --> 01:30:31,800
And then one day I was with my roommate leafing through the course catalog and came across

1375
01:30:31,800 --> 01:30:33,320
biological anthropology.

1376
01:30:33,480 --> 01:30:39,160
And it was like primates and like Frank Marlowe, who'd worked with the Hadza, was uh part

1377
01:30:39,160 --> 01:30:40,760
of the department there at the time.

1378
01:30:40,920 --> 01:30:46,760
And um, you could do paleogenomics and all kinds of things

1379
01:30:46,760 --> 01:30:52,730
that sort of collectively helped our tools to help us understand human origins and

1380
01:30:52,730 --> 01:30:55,450
the evolution of our behavior and psychology.

1381
01:30:56,730 --> 01:30:58,490
And I was like, wow, this is it.

1382
01:30:58,650 --> 01:31:03,770
And then like I think I had read at the time was read or was reading Gun Germs and Steel,

1383
01:31:03,850 --> 01:31:09,610
the sort of that like gateway drug for a lot of people, uh, to this area by Jared Diamond

1384
01:31:09,690 --> 01:31:15,130
and um and uh Steven Pinker,

1385
01:31:15,610 --> 01:31:18,410
uh um how the mind works.

1386
01:31:18,820 --> 01:31:19,620
So yeah.

1387
01:31:19,780 --> 01:31:23,620
Um, so yeah, so then I switched to that as an undergrad.

1388
01:31:23,780 --> 01:31:25,700
I wasn't sure I was gonna go to grad school.

1389
01:31:25,780 --> 01:31:29,540
Uh I I started off looking into like environmental consulting kinds of jobs after I

1390
01:31:29,540 --> 01:31:34,180
graduated from college, but I kept reading in the area.

1391
01:31:34,980 --> 01:31:40,890
Um and then also because uh this is uh at

1392
01:31:40,890 --> 01:31:44,650
least a story I tell myself, but Santa Barbara continued to be on my mind for a couple of

1393
01:31:44,650 --> 01:31:44,970
reasons.

1394
01:31:45,210 --> 01:31:50,970
One was that it was mentioned to me uh when I'd read, uh I think it was Matt

1395
01:31:50,970 --> 01:31:55,610
Riley's Origins of Virtue for a course in college, and two being Cosmeties came up.

1396
01:31:55,690 --> 01:31:59,530
I'm like, what this sort of you know, discussion of some of their work was just fascinating

1397
01:31:59,530 --> 01:32:00,090
to me.

1398
01:32:00,330 --> 01:32:03,240
Um and they were at Santa Barbara.

1399
01:32:03,320 --> 01:32:07,240
And then I also remember in high school at my guidance counselor's office, we had like VHS

1400
01:32:07,240 --> 01:32:09,720
tapes that were promo videos for different colleges.

1401
01:32:09,960 --> 01:32:14,280
And I remember the Santa Barbara one had people like on the beach coming in surfing.

1402
01:32:14,440 --> 01:32:14,840
Yes.

1403
01:32:15,080 --> 01:32:17,320
Uh so I was like check.

1404
01:32:17,480 --> 01:32:17,560
Yeah.

1405
01:32:17,720 --> 01:32:18,600
It doesn't, yeah, yeah.

1406
01:32:19,080 --> 01:32:19,480
Good environment.

1407
01:32:20,360 --> 01:32:20,680
Winter.

1408
01:32:20,760 --> 01:32:20,920
Yeah.

1409
01:32:21,000 --> 01:32:22,920
You're like, yeah, Boston.

1410
01:32:23,000 --> 01:32:23,240
Yeah.

1411
01:32:23,560 --> 01:32:24,360
So I was like, you know what?

1412
01:32:24,440 --> 01:32:25,160
Let's apply there.

1413
01:32:25,240 --> 01:32:30,950
And I um and uh I didn't know Mike Gervin uh really was just starting out there and

1414
01:32:31,110 --> 01:32:35,510
but that was tended you know ended up being just such a benefit uh coming into the

1415
01:32:35,510 --> 01:32:37,830
beginning of that major project he started with the Chimane.

1416
01:32:38,550 --> 01:32:43,350
So that's where uh you know my sort of trajectory um is uh

1417
01:32:44,070 --> 01:32:44,710
yeah.

1418
01:32:44,950 --> 01:32:45,190
Yeah.

1419
01:32:45,430 --> 01:32:49,430
Wanting to know the big stories about humans and our, you know, wanting the bigger bigger

1420
01:32:49,590 --> 01:32:54,560
explanations, despite the reductionism, that's sort of the the area which I uh the land in

1421
01:32:54,560 --> 01:32:55,520
which I love to operate.

1422
01:32:55,600 --> 01:32:59,680
Um I love the details too, but the the larger stories are more appealing to me.

1423
01:33:00,000 --> 01:33:05,520
Yeah, it is a common thread I've noticed that people are constantly bringing up the need to

1424
01:33:05,520 --> 01:33:06,480
ask why.

1425
01:33:06,640 --> 01:33:08,400
Um why, why, why, why.

1426
01:33:08,480 --> 01:33:13,120
I my daughter is at the stage of her development where she asks me why, why, why until I

1427
01:33:13,120 --> 01:33:16,080
get down to like the basics of metaphysics and ontology.

1428
01:33:16,400 --> 01:33:22,070
Uh but I think I I what I'm starting to see is that an evolutionary psychologist is someone

1429
01:33:22,070 --> 01:33:26,870
who just never turned off that childhood part of themselves where they still just retain

1430
01:33:26,870 --> 01:33:30,790
this need to know why why and just drill down to the the basics.

1431
01:33:31,030 --> 01:33:33,270
Um and and that's that's what I love about it.

1432
01:33:33,350 --> 01:33:37,510
You know, it just it goes all the way down to, you know, the second law of thermodynamics,

1433
01:33:37,590 --> 01:33:40,740
as you know, John Tuby uh insightfully wrote.

1434
01:33:41,220 --> 01:33:46,740
It's you know, evolution is the only anti-entropic uh force uh that guides

1435
01:33:46,740 --> 01:33:49,860
organisms toward adaptive complexity that that we know of.

1436
01:33:50,020 --> 01:33:55,460
Um and uh it's a really deep and satisfying way of seeing the world.

1437
01:33:55,860 --> 01:33:59,780
Um Yeah, I I've I think proximate questions are fantastic.

1438
01:33:59,940 --> 01:34:03,210
I mean, in a sense, that's what evolutionary psychology does do, is answer approximate

1439
01:34:03,210 --> 01:34:04,730
questions about mechanism, right?

1440
01:34:05,370 --> 01:34:11,130
Um, but uh without the the larger motivating ultimate questions, you know, there's no spark

1441
01:34:11,130 --> 01:34:11,850
in it for me.

1442
01:34:12,090 --> 01:34:12,410
Yeah.

1443
01:34:13,050 --> 01:34:13,850
Totally.

1444
01:34:14,650 --> 01:34:15,450
So cool.

1445
01:34:15,610 --> 01:34:16,010
Yeah.

1446
01:34:16,330 --> 01:34:18,330
So uh one last thing.

1447
01:34:18,490 --> 01:34:22,650
I remember um we were we were having an email exchange about some of these ideas a while

1448
01:34:22,650 --> 01:34:22,810
ago.

1449
01:34:22,890 --> 01:34:26,970
I for I forget when it was, and you had mentioned this really interesting distinction

1450
01:34:27,290 --> 01:34:32,780
between what you called superlative status and I forget what the alternative was.

1451
01:34:32,860 --> 01:34:37,900
It was like uh not being so I guess it's the difference between being better than other

1452
01:34:37,900 --> 01:34:39,740
people and not being worse than other people.

1453
01:34:39,980 --> 01:34:40,300
Right.

1454
01:34:40,460 --> 01:34:46,220
Um which is re I th I think of it as sort of offensive status versus defensive status.

1455
01:34:46,460 --> 01:34:49,740
You know, like I'm I'm trying to be better than you versus I'm trying to defend myself from

1456
01:34:49,740 --> 01:34:50,780
being a pariah.

1457
01:34:51,340 --> 01:34:56,940
Um and so far as I'm aware, like there's not a lot of research on this distinction.

1458
01:34:57,180 --> 01:35:02,710
Uh and I think it's a really important one and uh of huge evolutionary significance,

1459
01:35:02,870 --> 01:35:08,710
because I would expect the the defensive version of it to have exerted a stronger

1460
01:35:08,710 --> 01:35:12,630
selection pressure on our ancestors than the offensive version of it.

1461
01:35:12,790 --> 01:35:16,230
Um just because you know the slope of fitness, you know, it has diminishing returns.

1462
01:35:16,310 --> 01:35:20,870
So if you're gonna go down the uh go go backwards, you're gonna have a steeper drop in

1463
01:35:20,870 --> 01:35:25,680
fitness than if you go forward uh uh uh uh up the plateau of diminishing returns.

1464
01:35:25,760 --> 01:35:28,640
So fitness costs should loom larger than fitness benefits.

1465
01:35:28,960 --> 01:35:33,840
And you would expect people to be more paranoid about being seen as a bad person than they

1466
01:35:33,840 --> 01:35:35,760
are motivated to be seen as a good person.

1467
01:35:35,840 --> 01:35:40,720
And I think a lot of altruism uh psychologically is motivated by the fear of being seen as

1468
01:35:40,720 --> 01:35:46,320
a bad person, uh, compared to the uh positive desire to be seen as as

1469
01:35:46,320 --> 01:35:47,520
morally superior.

1470
01:35:47,680 --> 01:35:53,470
Um you know even uh the this uh so Peter Singer makes this this classic argument that um if

1471
01:35:53,470 --> 01:35:58,830
you if you see a child drowning in a pond, uh would you wait in to to save the drowning

1472
01:35:58,830 --> 01:36:01,390
child and ruin your fancy thousand dollar suit?

1473
01:36:01,550 --> 01:36:02,990
And most people say, Yeah, of course.

1474
01:36:03,070 --> 01:36:06,430
Uh, you know, the you can get a new suit, but you know, you it's worth it to save the

1475
01:36:06,430 --> 01:36:06,670
child.

1476
01:36:06,750 --> 01:36:10,910
But then he he poses the counterfactual why don't you donate a thousand dollars to Oxfam to

1477
01:36:10,910 --> 01:36:14,270
save children uh from starvation or malaria or or whatever.

1478
01:36:14,670 --> 01:36:20,560
Um and I think the reason why this argument is effective is because it makes us

1479
01:36:20,800 --> 01:36:26,800
seem like the sociopath who would refuse to rescue the drowning child to save their

1480
01:36:26,800 --> 01:36:27,680
fancy suit.

1481
01:36:28,400 --> 01:36:32,720
It's not that it motivates you to be a good person, is that it elicits this fear in you

1482
01:36:32,720 --> 01:36:36,800
that you're a bad person, that you're that sociopath who doesn't save the child.

1483
01:36:37,120 --> 01:36:42,350
And so I think this fear of being a bad person is really powerful psychologically.

1484
01:36:42,430 --> 01:36:43,390
It's understudied.

1485
01:36:43,550 --> 01:36:44,510
And I'm curious.

1486
01:36:44,750 --> 01:36:50,110
So you have this paper measuring reproductive success and its correlation with status.

1487
01:36:50,750 --> 01:36:55,070
So far as I'm aware, that paper doesn't measure the negative dimensions of status.

1488
01:36:55,150 --> 01:36:59,870
It measures political influence, but it doesn't measure the extent to which you're a social

1489
01:36:59,870 --> 01:37:03,870
pariah or whether you're excluded or whether you're the hunter who hunts too much and

1490
01:37:04,030 --> 01:37:05,470
becomes a social outcast.

1491
01:37:05,790 --> 01:37:10,300
But I would suspect that if you included that negative dimension of status, the correlation

1492
01:37:10,300 --> 01:37:12,380
with with fitness would would be much higher.

1493
01:37:12,540 --> 01:37:14,380
Do you do you share that intuition?

1494
01:37:15,420 --> 01:37:18,220
Yeah, I mean uh it's great you brought that up.

1495
01:37:18,300 --> 01:37:23,660
I think I'm myself I've devoted too little attention to the sort of bottom half of the

1496
01:37:23,660 --> 01:37:28,860
distribution or even the bottom 75% of the distribution of status as relative to the top

1497
01:37:28,860 --> 01:37:29,420
25%.

1498
01:37:30,460 --> 01:37:36,060
Um and it's probably a bigger motive for us to avoid being at the

1499
01:37:36,060 --> 01:37:38,790
bottom than it is necessarily to reach the top.

1500
01:37:38,870 --> 01:37:40,550
Like, yeah, if we can reach the top, that's amazing.

1501
01:37:40,710 --> 01:37:42,310
But definitely do not reach the bottom.

1502
01:37:42,390 --> 01:37:44,230
That's that's strike out.

1503
01:37:44,470 --> 01:37:50,390
Uh and um maybe that accords with sort of risk profiles where you know people are riskiest

1504
01:37:50,550 --> 01:37:54,470
at the bottom and at the top, but most of the middle of the hierarchy people are more risk

1505
01:37:54,470 --> 01:37:56,950
averse because they don't want to slide down to the bottom.

1506
01:37:57,220 --> 01:37:57,620
Yeah.

1507
01:37:57,860 --> 01:38:01,460
Um, but uh yeah.

1508
01:38:01,700 --> 01:38:03,780
Um I don't know.

1509
01:38:03,940 --> 01:38:09,380
I think uh with regard to reproduction, um I know in

1510
01:38:09,380 --> 01:38:14,980
modern industrial societies the relationship that still exists between like income and

1511
01:38:14,980 --> 01:38:20,020
reproduction in men is almost entirely driven from lots of studies by childless men who

1512
01:38:20,020 --> 01:38:21,220
just never reproduce.

1513
01:38:21,540 --> 01:38:22,500
Interesting.

1514
01:38:22,850 --> 01:38:27,490
So it's not driven by men at the top having a lot more kids, which there is a small effect

1515
01:38:27,490 --> 01:38:31,970
of that still with respect to income, but nothing like the what drives that relationship is

1516
01:38:31,970 --> 01:38:33,890
more the childless men at the bottom.

1517
01:38:34,130 --> 01:38:40,130
In the societies like the smaller scale societies, like the Chimane, there's very few fewer

1518
01:38:40,130 --> 01:38:41,330
men that strike out.

1519
01:38:41,410 --> 01:38:47,410
I I think, and there is um uh, although that's still part

1520
01:38:47,410 --> 01:38:52,050
of the equation, I think there is a bigger signal of reproduction at the top end.

1521
01:38:52,700 --> 01:38:57,820
um, in terms of those with more influence, more likely to be polygynous or marry surially,

1522
01:38:58,140 --> 01:39:00,860
um, or have better child survival.

1523
01:39:01,100 --> 01:39:06,940
Um but uh clear, yeah, I I would bet across all human societies, yeah,

1524
01:39:07,100 --> 01:39:11,900
that striking out is the the the bigger motive.

1525
01:39:12,060 --> 01:39:17,870
So I mean arguably our status psychology evolved more even to avoid the

1526
01:39:17,870 --> 01:39:20,110
bottom than to hit the top, just as you're saying.

1527
01:39:20,270 --> 01:39:23,310
But it's not something I've devoted much attention to and probably should more.

1528
01:39:23,470 --> 01:39:25,390
So thanks thanks for bringing that up to me.

1529
01:39:28,430 --> 01:39:28,830
Please do.

1530
01:39:28,910 --> 01:39:31,630
It seems like a really underappreciated thing.

1531
01:39:31,870 --> 01:39:32,190
Yeah.

1532
01:39:32,430 --> 01:39:37,230
Um I wonder if there's developmental, I mean, because I keep thinking about like gym class

1533
01:39:37,230 --> 01:39:37,710
or school.

1534
01:39:37,790 --> 01:39:41,870
You know, like that's such a, you know, any kid, when we were all kids, I mean, correct me

1535
01:39:41,870 --> 01:39:47,520
if I'm wrong, but like, you know, that's that's like the super salient,

1536
01:39:47,760 --> 01:39:53,280
um, just you know, not not being the the pariah or not being the kid that's picked on.

1537
01:39:53,440 --> 01:39:58,880
And then the kid who is, you know, that's a real um you you've got to figure out you've got

1538
01:39:58,880 --> 01:40:02,480
to be funny or you've got to figure out another way to survive.

1539
01:40:02,640 --> 01:40:07,200
I mean, that's a really John Tube always said, you know, the the right way to think about

1540
01:40:07,200 --> 01:40:12,800
human social life if you're not like Chris and working with um folks who have a more

1541
01:40:13,090 --> 01:40:15,970
ecologically valid quote unquote existence.

1542
01:40:16,130 --> 01:40:19,810
Um it's more like high school or junior high or elementary school, right?

1543
01:40:19,970 --> 01:40:20,370
You know?

1544
01:40:20,930 --> 01:40:21,250
Yeah.

1545
01:40:21,410 --> 01:40:22,050
Yeah.

1546
01:40:23,170 --> 01:40:24,050
This made me think too.

1547
01:40:24,130 --> 01:40:24,690
Oh go ahead.

1548
01:40:24,930 --> 01:40:25,570
Oh go ahead.

1549
01:40:26,610 --> 01:40:31,250
I was just thinking of the you know asymmetric war of attrition is sort of based on the

1550
01:40:31,490 --> 01:40:36,050
you're gonna want to minimize the the cost of continued competition.

1551
01:40:36,210 --> 01:40:40,960
And so it's better to sort of, you know, rather than potentially you know, make the best of

1552
01:40:40,960 --> 01:40:41,520
a bad deal.

1553
01:40:41,600 --> 01:40:44,800
Don't end up at the bottom, but don't necessarily shoot for the top if it's gonna it's

1554
01:40:44,800 --> 01:40:46,320
gonna hurt you over the longer run.

1555
01:40:46,400 --> 01:40:48,720
Uh cost that way of the benefits.

1556
01:40:48,880 --> 01:40:54,080
Um, I think a lot of people will accept somewhat subordinate positions as long as they're

1557
01:40:54,080 --> 01:40:57,360
not the very bottom in human societies.

1558
01:40:57,760 --> 01:40:58,480
That's a really good point.

1559
01:40:58,640 --> 01:41:03,950
Yeah, a lot of lot of people going along with uh very dominant uh

1560
01:41:04,270 --> 01:41:08,110
totalitarianism, for example, just because they're the second bottom rung, right?

1561
01:41:08,190 --> 01:41:14,110
Where you know, like poor whites in the south or um people in you know Europe during the

1562
01:41:14,110 --> 01:41:15,390
Third Reich coming in.

1563
01:41:15,550 --> 01:41:20,030
And you know, if you're not if you're not the victim and you're still okay, you know,

1564
01:41:20,110 --> 01:41:23,470
you'll go along with the regime, sort of is the idea.

1565
01:41:23,630 --> 01:41:24,270
Yeah.

1566
01:41:24,960 --> 01:41:26,480
Yeah, no, I find this really interesting.

1567
01:41:26,560 --> 01:41:32,080
I I also suspect that there's interesting individual differences uh related to the question

1568
01:41:32,080 --> 01:41:36,000
of how motivated you are to be at the top versus avoid being at the bottom.

1569
01:41:36,480 --> 01:41:40,480
So I I have the intuition that if you're really concerned with being at the top and being

1570
01:41:40,480 --> 01:41:42,320
better than other people, that you're kind of a dick.

1571
01:41:42,640 --> 01:41:46,240
That like you're you're you're kind of a a a mean competitive person.

1572
01:41:46,400 --> 01:41:50,640
Whereas if you're primarily uh motivated by avoiding being at the bottom, you're not

1573
01:41:50,640 --> 01:41:51,840
necessarily a bad person.

1574
01:41:51,920 --> 01:41:53,760
You're just that's just kind of understandable.

1575
01:41:54,050 --> 01:41:57,410
Um, so I that's another question that I'm curious about.

1576
01:41:57,570 --> 01:42:03,330
And um I find that this comes up in discussions of the role of signaling in human behavior.

1577
01:42:03,650 --> 01:42:08,050
So I am of the opinion that signaling plays a pervasive role in in human social life and is

1578
01:42:08,050 --> 01:42:12,610
the explanation for a lot of our behaviors, even when we would not want to admit that it is

1579
01:42:12,610 --> 01:42:14,530
the explanation for our behavior.

1580
01:42:14,770 --> 01:42:19,330
But um I find that a lot of people are turned off by this uh because they see it as

1581
01:42:19,330 --> 01:42:19,970
cynical.

1582
01:42:20,120 --> 01:42:20,600
Yeah.

1583
01:42:20,840 --> 01:42:26,120
Um, but I think the cynicism is coming from an interpretation that the signal is offensive

1584
01:42:26,120 --> 01:42:30,440
in nature, that the signal is to try to display my superiority to others.

1585
01:42:30,600 --> 01:42:33,560
But I think a lot of the times the signal is defensive.

1586
01:42:33,640 --> 01:42:38,920
Um, it's trying to prevent others from seeing you as worse or inferior to others.

1587
01:42:39,080 --> 01:42:43,480
And as soon as you see these signaling motives as being really more about defensive motives

1588
01:42:43,480 --> 01:42:48,200
than offensive motives, it becomes less cynical and it becomes more of a plausible uh uh

1589
01:42:48,390 --> 01:42:52,150
theoretical framework from which to view human behavior that you know really it is a lot

1590
01:42:52,150 --> 01:42:55,910
about signaling, but we just have to recognize that a lot of those signals are defensive in

1591
01:42:55,910 --> 01:42:56,790
in nature.

1592
01:42:57,990 --> 01:43:01,670
I think we we treat sort of punching down the same though, no matter where somebody is on

1593
01:43:01,670 --> 01:43:03,750
the hierarchy, I think, right?

1594
01:43:03,910 --> 01:43:08,950
So even if it is defensive, if you're like second from the bottom hitting the bottom wrong

1595
01:43:09,030 --> 01:43:13,590
to not get down to the bottom wrong, do we see that as bad as the person at the top

1596
01:43:13,590 --> 01:43:15,480
punching down on the person at the bottom.

1597
01:43:15,800 --> 01:43:21,400
You know, I think that's an interesting um put

1598
01:43:21,560 --> 01:43:26,760
individual differences in the sort of propensity for for this that you raised.

1599
01:43:26,920 --> 01:43:28,360
Um yeah.

1600
01:43:28,840 --> 01:43:33,880
Uh I think um maybe things related to

1601
01:43:34,440 --> 01:43:40,200
neuroticism, sort of personality variation, where we're gonna be much more focused on

1602
01:43:40,200 --> 01:43:46,130
avoiding the bottom, which would preclude taking risks that might get us to the top.

1603
01:43:46,530 --> 01:43:47,170
Yeah.

1604
01:43:47,490 --> 01:43:51,090
Um or um Yeah.

1605
01:43:51,330 --> 01:43:57,090
But I think that's I mean, and there's also an aspect of this where is

1606
01:43:57,250 --> 01:44:02,930
if you're a male, uh and you know, we we know that you know uh variance in in

1607
01:44:02,960 --> 01:44:07,520
reproductive success is higher among males than females uh and likely was ancestrally.

1608
01:44:07,600 --> 01:44:13,200
Um if you're if you see yourself as being at the bottom, as being doomed to uh reproductive

1609
01:44:13,200 --> 01:44:17,200
oblivion, then you're in a really dangerous place for the rest of the people around you

1610
01:44:17,360 --> 01:44:18,560
because you have nothing to lose.

1611
01:44:18,880 --> 01:44:21,920
You know, you you can take dangerous risks, take other people down with you.

1612
01:44:22,080 --> 01:44:25,850
Like from a Darwinian perspective, you know, you can you can run amok.

1613
01:44:26,250 --> 01:44:32,010
Um and so I suspect a lot of the most vile um uh attacks we see

1614
01:44:32,250 --> 01:44:36,970
are are from you know men with nothing to lose who who who see themselves as at the bottom

1615
01:44:37,130 --> 01:44:42,410
or groups of of of people who see themselves as at the bottom and and and and don't see a

1616
01:44:42,410 --> 01:44:43,930
way out from that position.

1617
01:44:44,250 --> 01:44:48,090
Those those people are gonna be really dangerous to society.

1618
01:44:48,330 --> 01:44:49,530
Uh yeah, yeah.

1619
01:44:49,800 --> 01:44:55,720
I think uh like Martin Daly, Margot Wilson's work on you know the male, what is it

1620
01:44:55,800 --> 01:44:57,720
they call it, the young male syndrome.

1621
01:44:57,800 --> 01:44:58,360
Yeah, right.

1622
01:44:59,160 --> 01:45:04,760
But it's particularly young men in who are find themselves in positions of low status

1623
01:45:04,760 --> 01:45:08,200
within a a high inequality uh hierarchy.

1624
01:45:08,520 --> 01:45:13,080
Um and there's one recent work by this guy, uh Pat Barclay and Misha.

1625
01:45:13,240 --> 01:45:15,050
I don't know, I forget his full name.

1626
01:45:15,130 --> 01:45:19,930
Um, might have been a student with pad or a collaborator on sort of risk sensitivity with

1627
01:45:19,930 --> 01:45:25,690
respect to stat status position um and its relationship to yeah

1628
01:45:25,930 --> 01:45:28,090
um just what you're describing.

1629
01:45:28,650 --> 01:45:34,410
Um or broader in a broader sense when you're you have sort of political

1630
01:45:34,410 --> 01:45:40,360
elites mobilizing that group of people uh and mobilizing their anger for their for

1631
01:45:40,360 --> 01:45:41,320
their ends.

1632
01:45:41,640 --> 01:45:43,720
Uh yes.

1633
01:45:43,960 --> 01:45:44,280
Yep.

1634
01:45:44,680 --> 01:45:46,120
Forming forming alliances with them.

1635
01:45:46,200 --> 01:45:46,360
Yeah.

1636
01:45:46,840 --> 01:45:50,280
Which is sticky completely on sure.

1637
01:45:50,600 --> 01:45:55,960
Um Yeah, no, I I there's some other work uh I'm loosely familiar with it called last place

1638
01:45:56,200 --> 01:46:01,880
aversion, where we have an aversion to being uh i uh in last place in a competition,

1639
01:46:02,040 --> 01:46:05,870
much more so than any other position in in the totem pole.

1640
01:46:06,110 --> 01:46:11,630
And I I I remember reading that uh they were looking at uh attitudes toward the minimum

1641
01:46:11,630 --> 01:46:16,270
wage and it was people who were right above the minimum wage who opposed raising the

1642
01:46:16,270 --> 01:46:19,150
minimum wage because it would it would put them in last place.

1643
01:46:19,790 --> 01:46:24,910
Um so I I don't know if that paper I haven't looked into like the data analytics of it or

1644
01:46:24,910 --> 01:46:28,780
whether that holds up, but it's an interesting idea that this could potentially be uh you

1645
01:46:28,780 --> 01:46:31,580
know explains some variation in in our political attitudes.

1646
01:46:31,980 --> 01:46:32,220
Right.

1647
01:46:32,300 --> 01:46:36,860
That it's not just the wealthiest who are opposed to welfare, but those given that our the

1648
01:46:37,100 --> 01:46:42,140
most salient comparisons were those in our sort of local status net sort of social

1649
01:46:42,220 --> 01:46:45,900
networks, uh status relevant social networks.

1650
01:46:46,220 --> 01:46:49,020
Um but yeah, uh who's that?

1651
01:46:49,180 --> 01:46:53,820
I know I think Michael Norton, Harvard Business School, and a c but he wasn't the premium

1652
01:46:53,820 --> 01:46:59,670
author, uh did the f paper on this that uh those just above the poverty line,

1653
01:46:59,830 --> 01:47:05,750
you see an uptick in um anti-welfare views because it's it's getting a hand out to the

1654
01:47:05,750 --> 01:47:08,150
people right below them down the street.

1655
01:47:09,030 --> 01:47:09,430
Yeah.

1656
01:47:09,670 --> 01:47:11,190
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

1657
01:47:11,510 --> 01:47:15,670
No, I think it it it it really explains a lot about the dynamics of of political

1658
01:47:15,670 --> 01:47:20,940
coalitions, particularly in the United States and why why we see this divide between uh

1659
01:47:21,180 --> 01:47:26,940
ethnic uh subgroups of within the lower class, where you see you know low status uh white

1660
01:47:26,940 --> 01:47:30,940
Americans pr uh uh predominantly shifting toward the Republican coalition and low status

1661
01:47:30,940 --> 01:47:34,940
ethnic minorities pred uh uh predominantly shifting towards the Democratic coalition.

1662
01:47:35,180 --> 01:47:41,100
I think um those status conflicts I think are are a major driver of of political alliances

1663
01:47:41,180 --> 01:47:45,740
and uh and obviously political elites try to exploit that in various ways, often

1664
01:47:45,740 --> 01:47:46,460
successfully.

1665
01:47:47,100 --> 01:47:52,290
Well I think the whole immigration dialogue and debate in the US and in other countries

1666
01:47:52,290 --> 01:47:58,290
recently, but in the US uh that's been uh appealing to um

1667
01:47:58,290 --> 01:48:04,130
a lot of minority communities, including the sort of Latino community that uh I know I have

1668
01:48:04,210 --> 01:48:10,050
a lot of friends who uh Latino friends who are you know first second generation immigrants

1669
01:48:10,130 --> 01:48:16,120
but see have some conservative views with respect to illegal immigrants um then might be

1670
01:48:16,120 --> 01:48:21,720
shaped in part by this sort of um you know they don't get to sort of leapfrog me kind of

1671
01:48:21,720 --> 01:48:26,760
view which is uh yeah so you know it's uh

1672
01:48:27,640 --> 01:48:31,640
I think there are minority communities that are you know have the reasons similar to the

1673
01:48:31,640 --> 01:48:37,570
theory we're articulating here for being anti um welfare to the lowest

1674
01:48:37,570 --> 01:48:38,850
rungs on the ladder.

1675
01:48:39,090 --> 01:48:39,410
Right.

1676
01:48:39,970 --> 01:48:40,130
Yeah.

1677
01:48:40,370 --> 01:48:46,290
When Chris, when you're at um when you're in with the Chimane versus you come back to

1678
01:48:46,290 --> 01:48:52,210
Virginia, what do you are there anything is there anything that's pops out to you?

1679
01:48:52,370 --> 01:48:56,530
Like, you know, because like, you know, not all of us get to experience this.

1680
01:48:56,770 --> 01:48:58,770
What is it like switching back and forth?

1681
01:48:58,930 --> 01:49:01,650
And you know, is there what is it like?

1682
01:49:02,400 --> 01:49:04,800
I think the main thing is supermarkets.

1683
01:49:06,080 --> 01:49:08,160
I mean, holy crap.

1684
01:49:08,320 --> 01:49:14,320
Like you know, assembling that much dense caloric stuff in one place that's like

1685
01:49:14,480 --> 01:49:15,920
been produced all over the world.

1686
01:49:16,080 --> 01:49:16,400
Yeah.

1687
01:49:16,560 --> 01:49:18,320
Is you know, oh my god.

1688
01:49:18,480 --> 01:49:18,720
Yeah.

1689
01:49:18,960 --> 01:49:23,120
That's like I think is that's typically the big thing that gets me.

1690
01:49:24,070 --> 01:49:26,630
Uh I'm very food motivated person.

1691
01:49:26,710 --> 01:49:27,990
I think you know we all are.

1692
01:49:28,150 --> 01:49:28,470
No too.

1693
01:49:28,630 --> 01:49:31,430
We all are, but uh um yeah.

1694
01:49:31,910 --> 01:49:33,590
It's food is everything.

1695
01:49:33,830 --> 01:49:35,270
If you don't have food.

1696
01:49:36,310 --> 01:49:36,470
Yeah.

1697
01:49:36,710 --> 01:49:36,950
Good luck.

1698
01:49:37,190 --> 01:49:37,910
Oh, this was interesting.

1699
01:49:38,070 --> 01:49:43,910
I did I had a um uh a student in in Bolivia who I've been

1700
01:49:43,910 --> 01:49:47,440
sponsoring um came to the United States to be part of this workshop, this indigenous

1701
01:49:47,440 --> 01:49:48,160
leadership workshop.

1702
01:49:48,240 --> 01:49:54,080
And I saw he, you know, his Chimane and um uh

1703
01:49:54,320 --> 01:49:58,560
he f got him a visa, he's able to come to the United States and I picked him up in DC.

1704
01:49:58,640 --> 01:50:03,360
And I remember the first thing he thought when he saw coming here was he thought that we

1705
01:50:03,360 --> 01:50:07,840
were uh our land was on fire because it was autumn and the the tree leaves were turning

1706
01:50:07,920 --> 01:50:08,240
color.

1707
01:50:08,560 --> 01:50:08,960
Interesting.

1708
01:50:09,120 --> 01:50:09,920
Oh, that's so cool.

1709
01:50:10,240 --> 01:50:15,190
And that was like so so coming back to just the the

1710
01:50:15,430 --> 01:50:21,350
vegetation is yeah, you know, uh that's sort of what trees I always on

1711
01:50:21,430 --> 01:50:21,750
the lookout.

1712
01:50:22,070 --> 01:50:24,630
Amazon is like, you know, trees are not always your friends.

1713
01:50:24,870 --> 01:50:29,830
Um because of animals and insects and spines and poisons.

1714
01:50:30,790 --> 01:50:31,030
Yeah, yeah.

1715
01:50:31,670 --> 01:50:33,430
Yeah, we have to have any wortz on, yeah.

1716
01:50:33,750 --> 01:50:39,190
Yeah, and there are you know animals that live uh commensally with the tr ants and others

1717
01:50:39,190 --> 01:50:44,580
of the trees that act as their defense mechanisms and yeah, uh it's more of

1718
01:50:44,900 --> 01:50:49,780
like parts of the you know, being the Amazon, it's so much more and more surprises around

1719
01:50:49,780 --> 01:50:53,780
the next corner of different animals and things and uh but you're right, you got to be in

1720
01:50:53,860 --> 01:50:54,180
your toes.

1721
01:50:54,260 --> 01:50:58,020
So did you have you had any interesting animal encounter stories?

1722
01:50:59,300 --> 01:51:05,300
Oh, uh like living with bats in the hut out I

1723
01:51:05,300 --> 01:51:06,340
would stay in.

1724
01:51:06,580 --> 01:51:12,390
Um I came across jaguar footprints, never encountered one uh directly, thankfully.

1725
01:51:12,550 --> 01:51:18,550
Uh came across a Python or not a python, um a raptor, like uh uh it's called a

1726
01:51:18,550 --> 01:51:20,790
bushmaster, highly venomous snake.

1727
01:51:21,350 --> 01:51:21,750
Oof.

1728
01:51:22,230 --> 01:51:26,070
Uh and uh Demon's face.

1729
01:51:26,470 --> 01:51:27,110
Demon's face.

1730
01:51:27,430 --> 01:51:30,150
Yeah, one of one of the many reasons I'm not cut out for field work.

1731
01:51:30,710 --> 01:51:30,950
Yeah.

1732
01:51:31,190 --> 01:51:35,110
I'm like a midpoint because I I'll go like backpacking and stuff, especially before I

1733
01:51:35,110 --> 01:51:35,750
having children.

1734
01:51:35,830 --> 01:51:38,550
But yeah, but yeah, no, no, it's that's a whole other level.

1735
01:51:38,630 --> 01:51:38,870
Yeah.

1736
01:51:39,110 --> 01:51:39,750
Yeah.

1737
01:51:40,060 --> 01:51:46,060
But uh one of the more like dangerous things I was doing uh was part of this project

1738
01:51:46,140 --> 01:51:51,740
we were measuring tree circumferences and species with um too many people who are cutting

1739
01:51:51,740 --> 01:51:54,700
down trees to to for places to grow their crops.

1740
01:51:55,020 --> 01:52:00,220
We're interested in sort of like how they expend energy over time in doing this and how

1741
01:52:00,460 --> 01:52:01,580
often they take grass.

1742
01:52:02,140 --> 01:52:08,010
And um uh and we had sort of heart rate monitors they were using, and I would

1743
01:52:08,010 --> 01:52:12,570
go in and measure tree circumferences, and then they were using um axes to chop these

1744
01:52:12,570 --> 01:52:13,370
things, these trees down.

1745
01:52:13,450 --> 01:52:16,090
But the older the chemani person, the more skilled they were.

1746
01:52:16,170 --> 01:52:20,010
So they wouldn't just go after every tree with like much ismo, but like carefully go after

1747
01:52:20,010 --> 01:52:24,490
this one tree, look around, look where the vines are connecting trees, go to another tree

1748
01:52:24,490 --> 01:52:26,650
that seems like totally far away, cut that one.

1749
01:52:26,810 --> 01:52:31,130
It would be sufficient to like bring all the trees down from just a minority of them cut

1750
01:52:31,210 --> 01:52:33,610
because they're all connected through vines, right?

1751
01:52:33,770 --> 01:52:38,240
But I'd be when I'd be following an older individual doing this that was more strategic, I

1752
01:52:38,240 --> 01:52:40,720
wouldn't know where the trees were gonna come from when they started falling.

1753
01:52:40,880 --> 01:52:43,760
And you have to like get out of their way fast.

1754
01:52:44,000 --> 01:52:46,560
Uh smarter was not harder.

1755
01:52:47,200 --> 01:52:48,320
That's smarter than that.

1756
01:52:48,800 --> 01:52:52,880
Indiana Jones here, you know, jumping away from falling trees and venomous.

1757
01:52:54,560 --> 01:52:59,360
Well, I like that story, you know, it it signals my sort of yeah, I you know, med metal for

1758
01:52:59,360 --> 01:52:59,920
being able to do that.

1759
01:53:00,000 --> 01:53:04,890
But I mean m but also that it showcases the role of skill acquisition uh for them.

1760
01:53:05,610 --> 01:53:06,170
Yeah, yeah.

1761
01:53:06,250 --> 01:53:07,210
I love, I love that.

1762
01:53:07,290 --> 01:53:12,490
I mean, yeah, I think every anthropologist has has I have I've talked to has a story like

1763
01:53:12,490 --> 01:53:16,250
that where even the kids in the community will just be like, come on, like I think she

1764
01:53:16,490 --> 01:53:22,090
knowy talked about that, you know, where it just like yeah, we're all I uh sometimes people

1765
01:53:22,090 --> 01:53:25,100
say things like I don't know if this is still a thing that's said, but people say, like,

1766
01:53:25,260 --> 01:53:30,940
well, the human mind is more complicated than it needs to be for like hunter, gatherer, or

1767
01:53:30,940 --> 01:53:32,860
foraging, like yeah, exactly.

1768
01:53:33,020 --> 01:53:33,340
Exactly.

1769
01:53:33,500 --> 01:53:35,580
And it's like, you have you what?

1770
01:53:35,980 --> 01:53:39,740
Like, have you tried to like, you know, yeah, exactly.

1771
01:53:39,820 --> 01:53:44,540
I mean, it's and I think that comes from this place of sort of this this great chain of

1772
01:53:44,540 --> 01:53:45,580
cultural being, right?

1773
01:53:45,740 --> 01:53:49,900
Where sort of it's like primitive and it's simple, and how how hard could it be?

1774
01:53:50,140 --> 01:53:55,850
Um, and I just love that there's all these stories of Chris is trying to avoid trees

1775
01:53:55,850 --> 01:53:58,810
falling on him, and the guys are like, come on, Chris.

1776
01:54:00,250 --> 01:54:00,570
Yeah.

1777
01:54:00,810 --> 01:54:04,090
You gotta you know, listen to the local people, especially those that have lived there a

1778
01:54:04,090 --> 01:54:04,410
while.

1779
01:54:04,570 --> 01:54:05,530
They know what's going on.

1780
01:54:05,690 --> 01:54:06,250
Yeah.

1781
01:54:06,490 --> 01:54:08,490
Um yeah.

1782
01:54:09,850 --> 01:54:12,890
Well, the tree of time is about to uh fall on us.

1783
01:54:12,970 --> 01:54:14,570
We're approaching two hours now.

1784
01:54:14,810 --> 01:54:19,610
Yeah, and we we always have one question, which is um, were there is there any question we

1785
01:54:19,610 --> 01:54:20,810
should have asked you?

1786
01:54:22,010 --> 01:54:24,520
Oh, I think we've covered a fair bit of ground.

1787
01:54:24,760 --> 01:54:28,360
Um I knew you wanted to talk about egalitarianism in some way today.

1788
01:54:29,000 --> 01:54:29,480
I think we hit that.

1789
01:54:29,560 --> 01:54:30,760
I mean, we hit that, yeah.

1790
01:54:30,920 --> 01:54:31,720
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1791
01:54:31,880 --> 01:54:34,120
Um but no.

1792
01:54:34,440 --> 01:54:38,440
Um my secret exploits at UCSB as a grad student.

1793
01:54:38,840 --> 01:54:39,400
We didn't cover that.

1794
01:54:39,640 --> 01:54:39,880
That's good.

1795
01:54:39,960 --> 01:54:41,000
That's not true again.

1796
01:54:41,320 --> 01:54:43,640
I mean we we we didn't really append your book.

1797
01:54:43,720 --> 01:54:43,880
Yeah.

1798
01:54:44,120 --> 01:54:45,320
We didn't really talk about leadership.

1799
01:54:45,400 --> 01:54:48,520
I feel like that's a huge maybe we'll have to bring you on again and really get into

1800
01:54:48,520 --> 01:54:49,080
leadership.

1801
01:54:49,560 --> 01:54:50,440
Sure, sure.

1802
01:54:51,290 --> 01:54:54,330
How we how and why we romanticize it.

1803
01:54:54,410 --> 01:54:58,330
Um, how much does it matter are good questions, I think, to ask.

1804
01:54:58,570 --> 01:54:59,610
But yeah.

1805
01:55:01,130 --> 01:55:02,010
Super cool.

1806
01:55:02,250 --> 01:55:08,170
Um, but uh Chris, uh you are um so you're at at

1807
01:55:08,410 --> 01:55:12,730
University of Richmond, Jepsen School of Leadership, and people can find you on your

1808
01:55:12,730 --> 01:55:16,420
website and Yeah, Google Chris von Ruden.

1809
01:55:16,740 --> 01:55:18,980
Uh I have my sort of school website.

1810
01:55:19,140 --> 01:55:24,180
Also I have a Google site that I curate occasionally with like videos and publications and

1811
01:55:24,180 --> 01:55:24,900
things up there.

1812
01:55:25,220 --> 01:55:25,460
Awesome.

1813
01:55:25,700 --> 01:55:29,620
And Chimane, people who are interested in finding more about Chimane, like what are there

1814
01:55:29,700 --> 01:55:31,460
what resources are are for that?

1815
01:55:32,580 --> 01:55:38,230
For the Chimane, um, again, they've been the subject of a lot of uh research, uh,

1816
01:55:38,470 --> 01:55:43,910
everything from like their musical performance and musical cognition

1817
01:55:44,310 --> 01:55:46,790
to uh you know health, a lot of work on health.

1818
01:55:46,950 --> 01:55:51,590
And so if you Google the Chimane Health and Life History project, you'll see information.

1819
01:55:51,990 --> 01:55:57,270
Um, but uh there's lots of work done with the Chimane, including by the Chimani themselves,

1820
01:55:57,350 --> 01:56:03,120
who have made some uh documentaries about their way of life that some of which you can find

1821
01:56:03,120 --> 01:56:07,520
posted on like YouTube and oh cool and it it starts with a T Chamani T

1822
01:56:07,840 --> 01:56:09,760
T-S-I-M-A-N-E.

1823
01:56:10,160 --> 01:56:12,720
It's also been spelled C-H-I-M-A-N.

1824
01:56:13,520 --> 01:56:19,200
Um but yeah very cool very cool um yeah David do you have

1825
01:56:19,200 --> 01:56:20,000
anything else?

1826
01:56:20,370 --> 01:56:20,690
No.

1827
01:56:20,850 --> 01:56:22,530
I th I think uh that about does it.

1828
01:56:22,930 --> 01:56:24,370
This was a really fun conversation.

1829
01:56:24,450 --> 01:56:26,370
Thanks for for talking to us, Chris.

1830
01:56:26,610 --> 01:56:27,890
Yeah, it was it it was great.

1831
01:56:27,970 --> 01:56:32,930
Yeah, we'll have to have you back on for leadership or uh um for tree felling.

1832
01:56:33,330 --> 01:56:33,570
Yeah.

1833
01:56:33,890 --> 01:56:39,410
Totally yeah, totally happy to talk you through the the yeah scale of tree felling.

1834
01:56:43,650 --> 01:56:46,450
Uh well, here we are at the end of the episode.

1835
01:56:46,530 --> 01:56:47,570
Thank you for listening.

1836
01:56:47,730 --> 01:56:51,540
Uh if you like what you're hearing, uh please don't be shy.

1837
01:56:51,620 --> 01:56:54,100
Uh tell people about it on social media.

1838
01:56:54,260 --> 01:56:56,020
Uh shout it from the mountaintops.

1839
01:56:56,180 --> 01:56:57,220
We're a new podcast.

1840
01:56:57,300 --> 01:57:00,100
We're trying to build an audience and gain support for what we're doing.

1841
01:57:00,180 --> 01:57:02,980
And where can people uh support us, Dave?

1842
01:57:03,460 --> 01:57:08,580
Well they can support us emotionally however they want, but in terms of behaviorally they

1843
01:57:08,580 --> 01:57:10,340
can sort of leave a good review.

1844
01:57:10,500 --> 01:57:12,900
Um they can support us on Patreon.

1845
01:57:13,150 --> 01:57:19,150
Um and yeah, just listening, liking, subscribing, and leaving reviews um, you

1846
01:57:19,150 --> 01:57:23,310
know, that are neutral to positive is certainly helpful.

1847
01:57:24,190 --> 01:57:24,910
Absolutely.

1848
01:57:25,070 --> 01:57:25,310
Yeah.

1849
01:57:25,390 --> 01:57:25,630
All right.

1850
01:57:25,870 --> 01:57:30,270
If you feel that way, you know, if you feel like it's you feel negatively about it.

1851
01:57:31,150 --> 01:57:32,990
You know, I'll leave that discussion.

1852
01:57:33,150 --> 01:57:33,230
Yeah.

1853
01:57:33,390 --> 01:57:33,470
Yeah.

1854
01:57:33,550 --> 01:57:35,390
You if you hate us, you can send us hate mail too.

1855
01:57:35,790 --> 01:57:36,270
But you know.

1856
01:57:36,680 --> 01:57:41,160
i would not maybe no maybe not hate mail no if you hate us just think about why you hate us

1857
01:57:41,240 --> 01:57:44,600
and maybe think about something more productive you could do with your time yeah if you

1858
01:57:44,600 --> 01:57:49,400
have nothing nice to say then don't say it at all i think that's a good rules to live by so

1859
01:57:49,480 --> 01:57:54,520
but yeah you take that would take that with a grain of salt so but uh but yeah thanks for

1860
01:57:54,520 --> 01:57:57,320
listening and we'll see you next week see ya