Egalitarianism in the Amazon with Chris Von Rueden
2025-07-22 12:00:00.000 +00:00

Welcome to Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast. I'm David Pinsov. I'm David Petrozowski. And what are we what are we even doing here? Um that's a good question. Maybe we should have an episode about that. Yeah, maybe. Um but oh I think you mean just like uh just approximately like what what are we doing in people's ears? Yeah. Oh, I see. Okay, that was that was confusing because there's a couple different ways. Okay, so yeah, no, we're recording a podcast that's about evolutionary psychology. That's right. And it's it's not fake evolutionary psychology, it's actual evolutionary psychology by actual evolutionary psychologists. That's right. Okay, Dave, we have an awesome guest today. Uh we do.

Chris von Ruden, University of Richmond, Virginia at the Jepsen School of Leadership. Um, and he studies the Chimane uh in uh in the Amazon and he does really cool work understanding inequality and status. And this was just a really fun episode. Yeah, this this was a blast. Um, he does awesome research, uh really great insights into uh status hierarchies, uh inequality. He also has an awesome name, Chris Von Ruden. I wish I had a Vaughn in my name, David Von Pinsoff. It sounds pretty epic. You can always uh you know, you can change your name. You think I should change it? But you published a lot of papers so far, so you'd have to um previously known as Yeah, okay. The artist previously known as David Pensoff.

Yeah. It might be confusing with Von Ruden though, but we'll we'll talk to Chris. We'll see what he thinks about you changing your name. We'll ask him. All right. Without further ado, enjoy. Enjoy Chris Von Ruden. Uh welcome Chris Von Ruden. Good to see you. You are professor at the Jepson School of Leadership, University, excuse me, University of Richmond. Chris, how long have you been at Richmond now? 2013 I arrived. Okay. So, you know, as you know, I was at UCSB with you as a grad student. Um, but yeah, then I was I did a uh a postdoc year or two, I think it was two years with Mike Gervin, uh also UCSB, and then on the jar market at the time, um, and had a couple of hits, but the most, you know, the first offer I

got was from this school, which was sort of like, well, what is this? Leadership studies. Um and uh it sort of worked out because I'm sort of uh a misfit anthropologist. I have my fingers in a lot of different thoughts and wear different hats. And this school is sort of like a uh gen ed within a gen ed. Um uh what do what does that mean? Can you just explain that for people who might not know what that means? Like the how is it different than a typical maybe anthropology or psychology department? So my direct boss is a dean, which is fantastic. And there's about 15 or so faculty. And they I'm the only anthropologist. There are uh well, there were like three psychologists. Now we just have one, two recently retired.

Um uh histor a couple of historians, uh, three philosoph, four philosophers, um, a couple of political scientists, sociologists, English studies, religious studies person. Um, so very diverse faculty, and it's geared around the understanding of leadership, not sort of training leaders per se, but understanding processes of leadership, um, social and political organization, social movements, social justice, uh, ethical questions surrounding all those topics. Um, yeah, sounds like a cool program to be a part of. Are you the only uh explicitly Darwinian person who brings evolutionary ideas to the study of leadership, or are there others uh in that uh area as well? Explicitly Darwinian, very few and far between.

Um maybe like the closest person to me on the whole campus, so even beyond the leadership school, but University of Richmond broadly is a geneticist that studies ancient populations uh in Asia. Um but that said, a couple of psychologists I think who had had hired me and uh now retired, um, have collaborated with evolutionary psychologists, are interested in evolutionary psychology. And so that uh maybe, you know, I had while they are around, I had some shared interests with them. I mean, I have a lot of shared interests with a lot of people, but explicitly Darwinian theoretical focus, yeah, it's it's me. Got it. And do you find that you get blank stares or hostility or confusion when you bring these ideas to bear?

Or do you is it is there more of an enthusiasm and and interest in incorporating what what what do you think is the vibe in terms of you being uh this ambassador from uh evolutionary theory? You know, I've had um sort of discussions in in some public forum campus regarding different topics, gender and masculinity and other things, um, where I've just sort of you know unabashedly expressed my views and theoretical perspectives and it hasn't really raised any eyebrows, particularly with younger faculty. Maybe, you know, with older faculty I've gotten a sense sometime, not not tremendously, that sort of, you know, my assumption is that they they understand the sort of Darwinian perspective as somehow a genetic determinist kind of view or something of that nature.

Um which would be incorrect which would be do uh incorrect. I mean do you try to disabuse them of that or is the idea that you can't have a conversation with everybody and so you're just noticing that there's a uh cohort effect for how people understand science and that the newer generation is a more sophisticated one. I don't sophisticated maybe or just more charitable or um uh yeah I don't know. I think uh especially among you know anthropologists and and other social scientists um there's you know a lot of fear surrounding Darwinian perspectives uh in terms of its sort uh assumed repercussions for Uh policy, which is you know, not you know. Um, so I don't know. I I always try with especially with students.

I mean, I don't get into too many conversations with faculty about the rational rationale reasons for my theoretical views. Um, but especially with students, I I try to argue the ways in which taking a nature versus nurture approach is is not tremendously useful outside of some limited domains like irritability or something, where you can formalize it at a population level. But understanding the ways in which genes and environments construct together who we are, and the role that uh understanding Darwinism as a uh in helping us understand the ways genes and environments uh interact, often by design. I mean, I try to portray that as sort of a middle ground that's fairly, you know, neither genetically determinist nor sort of social constructivist.

Um yeah, I think even implicit in studying other cultures and going to somewhere else, right? Um, I think that that is sort of acknowledged in there. Um we haven't really had a chance, We haven't, for example, had any Wurzon yet to talk about development and nature nurture, why that's sort of a fallacy. We haven't actually covered that. It's still early days here. Um could you what do you say to the students aside from what you just said, or is that about it with maybe an example? Well, I get into more detail about the, you know, lots of examples of how you know individual physiology and behavior um reflects gene environment interactions. You know, um, I'll still use I don't know if this is sort of out of favor these days, but

Tubi and Cosmedi is sort of evoked and transmitted distinction. Um could you uh for those who aren't familiar with that distinction, could you give a quick uh recap of it? Sure. So describing the sources of cultural variations or different average differences of behavior across groups or communities or societies, uh one source of that variation could be what they call evoked culture. So the ways in which environments, uh social, legal, ecological environments evoke differences in behavior akin to the way that moving from shade to the sun might evoke changes in skin pigmentation over a period of time by design. Um and so the argument is that uh for example, average differences in uh physical aggressiveness or trust or other sort of

psychological phenomenon uh phenomena vary uh in response by design to differences in the sort of demographics or ecology of a society or community. Um sex ratio, for example, and the way that can shift uh mating behavior uh or use of mating competition tactics. And it's not importantly, it's not necessarily or you know, in contrast with so-called transmitted culture, not a product of social learning. But it's just the way our minds uh produce, uh you know, generate behavior in response to particular environments. Um right. And I and the idea, I think, just to fill in is that um you need to understand both the cultural situation and then also the design in the mind to understand the eventual phenomenon or the output because it's the output is not just a function of the

content of what's being told to people. So if you want to predict it, understand it, change it, understand where it's going to go, where it's coming from, you have to understand both the design and the phenotype and the inputs to the system, and both can be a lot more complicated than maybe either historically our sides have have seen. So even this view might argue that the social context is very complicated, lots of cues. It might even be different than what's intuitive, right? It might be something like what's the local level of trust? Like Chris, I'm looking forward to talking to you about egalitarianism and those inputs and what the the that design is. Um, but yeah, is that fair, Chris? Like do you think that's the fair characterization?

And I especially like how you tapped onto prediction to that too. I mean, this is uh, you know, we should be able to predict changes in behaviors uh as environments shift. Um so yeah, I've uh who I forget his name. Who's done the work? He's done work in East Asia with respect to rule rice versus wheat growing. Thomas Talhound. That kind of I don't know if you're familiar with his work showing how historical exposure to different forms of production, food production, that uh demands different kinds of cooperation and collective action, uh, maybe in part or good part responsible for variation in collectivist kind of norms within and across societies. So that's the kind of sort of socioecological explanation for cultural phenomena that I'm

really drawn to as a, you know, primarily uh trained as a behavioral ecologist, um sub-area within evolutionary anthropology. Um it's not to discount like social transmission, but uh I can see social transmission has force in its own right. Um but it also can complement yeah. So so so we we we went over the evoked culture, the idea that you know a response to a particular aspect of the environment, a strategic response to a particular aspect of the environment, uh that itself is an adaptation, uh, a form of evolved design that we can talk about and study scientifically. But there's the other uh distinction that we didn't get to yet, which is transmitted culture. So this is uh different from evoked culture in that the the strategic response to the

environment is not what we're talking about. We're talking about something else. So, what are we talking about when it comes to transmitted culture? Right. Uh so this is differences in behavior, values, norms across societies, populations based on the social learning. So what you've acquired uh from others through either observation or direct social learning, um uh teaching, instruction, etc. Uh and those, you know, may make can generate cultural dynamics that are unpredictable based on the sort of socioecol ecology, you know, what you might be able to predict from just uh an evoked culture uh perspective, uh or behavioral ecology perspective for that matter. Although, you know, the argument is that um cultural norms, uh institutions,

you know, one factor in their emergence will be the socioecology that will shape the kinds of norms and institutions we create. Um that doesn't fully determine them but influences them. Um yeah, there's a nice example of um somebody, I don't I apologies to whoever class of people's work this is because I'm forgetting who it was, but there's I know there's a bunch of people who have argued that um if you just look at climate um and work crops, uh the correlation between bad climate for growing crops and warfare is enormous historically. And so it's this idea that, you know, the transmitted cultural idea of we should go attack some people is sort of always there. But that doesn't on its own sufficiently predict when warfare ratchets up.

Um and there's and but the idea is that when there's hardship or you know when you're starting to get hungry and resources get scarce, um, that changes the the the the marketplace of ideas and how appealing it is to go, oh, let's get their stuff changes when you're when the when the climate gets worse. And so that would be a nice example of that. Yeah, the synergy between them. Um but you know, I think there's also lots of evidence of cases where the culture persists after the environment shifts and is sustained by that transmitted cultural uh mechanisms. Um a lot of, you know, uh exact like the Thomas Stahlhelm work again, where people that are long distant from sort of agricultural uh production living in urban

areas maintain these sort of norms uh from their sort of uh an ancestral region where they came from in say parts of China. Um or work on sort of the effects of colonialism in West Africa uh by none um that had this long lasting effects. Um so yeah. Um evoked, transmitted, they have synergistic effects, that they can operate independent of each other. Um I think also they'll miss oh, go ahead. Yeah, so the idea there is that um a strategic response to a particular aspect of the environment, like when food is scarce, you know, go to war and and get the stuff from the other tribe. Uh when uh you need to cooperate more to get food, like with you know rice farming, uh uh then upregulate your cooperation uh motivations.

These kinds of strategic responses uh uh emerge in response or in uh emerge uh in tandem with environmental changes, but they can lag. They can persist past the point when they were originally useful, such that you know people whose ancestors were rice farmers will still be more cooperative today, even though know rice farming was, you know, a couple hundred years ago. Um so the idea is that evoked culture explains the initial response to the environment, but transmitted culture explains the lag, why it persists in populations uh past the point uh from which it was useful. Is that the idea? Yeah, that's well said. Um I think also transmitted culture can uh generate sort of de novo kinds of practices and things uh that uh independent of the

socioecology. So aren't necessarily just created via socioecological uh factors to begin with. Um, and that's where I think your use of the word strategic you can interpret in two ways. One is strategic in the sense of the vote culture, where it's sort of evolution to the strategy making or you know, strategizing, And then there's also sort of the individual agency where our ability to sort of think um about potential outcomes, potential technologies, potential norms, um counterfactually. Um and that could be a a potent source of what becomes a cultural transmission to the extent those certain people are more influential than others and getting groups to adopt their ideas. Yeah, I I think technology would be a good example.

We're gonna have Christina Moy on in a few episodes. She she was uh, you know, part of the Rob Boyd um group of people. Um and Christina was really influential for me for realizing, you know, I'm I'm an adaptationist, not usually thinking about the importance of cultural, of transmitted culture. And I think the idea like the Rob Boyd idea of like canoes, right? Where or kayaks, where um it's individual sort of trial and error. Like you wanna, you want to stay dry and you want to move quickly over water, right? And there's just certain like trial and error stuff either within an individual or across individuals. But you know, hunting success, staying dry, staying warm, getting a seal or whatever you're

hunting, fishing, that is sort of a trial and error dynamic that selects for kayak or canoe design that may be better than, certainly better than like what quote unquote you would have innately in your mind. Like we don't have a canoe or kayak building template in our mind. It might be better than what any person can do, right? Like we all know of intergenerational transmission of, you know, the way um uh airplanes, the first generation of airplanes, you know, the design is actually pretty similar to the Wright brothers did pretty well. But you know, the constant tweaks, you know, when I when I fly, it's not like Wilbur and Orville were flying, right? It's quite different. Um, and this idea that all of that trial and error accumulation

of design in an artifact or technology would is is a different way to explain how complexity, emerging complexity, or like, you know, the phenotypic um The extended phenotype in Dawkins' terms, right? Like, where does that canoe or kayak design come from? The idea that it's transmitted culture, and that's an important thing to understand if you want to understand how a canoe ended up like that. Like I think Christina and Rob, I'm convinced by that that that's a really important thing to understand. It's all made possible by the by the evoked psychology and by the evolved phenotype, but it's in addition on top of that. And that last point I think is important because it, you know, being a graduate student

UCSB and it had front stage to sort of ongoing battles between the sort of evolutionary psychology emphasis on psychological adaptation, specific psychological adaptation, and the sort of um UC Davis UCLA emphasis on social learning and cultural uh you know phenomena more generally sort of broad-based learning. Um but yet the the two are are quite compatible. Um in fact require each other in my view in a lot of ways. Um one person who I've liked who's who's created some synergy I think between them and also really centered sort of individual agency and counterfactual thinking and um is Manvir Singh. Some of his uh broader pieces on on culture. Um envy your own. Yeah, we'll have to have. He he does great stuff.

I mean, the idea that he's interested in is to what extent uh culture is shaped by the self-interested motivations of the uh producers of the culture in terms of the benefits they might receive either from status or by trying to shape a social norm that might benefit them. Uh these kinds of uh bringing the the individual agent into the equation of culture, I think, is a really uh insightful way of of thinking about it. Yeah. Yeah. Chris, one before we move on, um uh let's let's who are you and what are you doing here? Let's let's do a little um because I don't think we've had any um uh Chimane folks on yet. So can you tell us a little bit about w what you what you study and who your study population is and yeah.

Sure. So um I did my graduate work at Santa Barbara with Michael Gervin, who had recently started a a large project with a group of people in uh Blivion Amazon called the Chimane, um, with Hillary Kaplan, um, who is at New Mexico. He's now at Chapman in California. And the two had just started this large uh sort of medical demography project to understand human life history and aging with the Chimane. And as part of this project, they were bringing on uh PhDs and postdocs in anthropology to um go to communities, Chimane communities, and uh study sort of people's social behavior, social relationships, um, as it relates to demography, longevity, aging. Um uh since that project has just has had grown leaps and

bounds, um knock on wood, it's been well funded by NIH um and uh has generated incredible insights into how things we might assume about human health and aging uh based on a lot of research with Western developed populations is not universal. And there's much we like learned about the diseases of so-called civilization from from studying and working with people like the Chimane. Um what what are some of the things we've learned? So the relative absence of cardiovascular disease, um asthmas, autoimmune disorders, um, and that uh you know there's uh uh people live to to late age. Um now there's a lot of uh uh mortality, but it's not driven by those, you know, uh cardiovascular diseases or cancers to the degree it is in other uh more developed

populations. Um this is an interesting this is a common misconception I hear that people think that in ancestral times people didn't live much past 30 or whatever. This is a very common misconception. Um so uh you can correct me if I'm wrong, but a part of the reason this misconception arises is because if we're looking at average mortality, that doesn't take into account at what age the person dies. So it could be if you have a high child mortality rate that that could bring the average mortality down to a pretty low number, even if people are uh if they make it past childhood living to a quite old age. Is is that how you think about it? That's exactly how I think about it. You know, high childhood mortality will bring that average way down.

And I think there's a more a there's higher age specific mortality, you know, across the lifespan uh in these populations, but still people are, you know, there are people living to their 80s, you know, 90s even. Um now, a lot of small scale societies like the Chimani that have been studied recently aren't, you know, this is probably a good point to make for a lot of other things we might discuss. Um, they aren't like, you know, living fossils, so to speak. And um uh but the sort of it ecology and demography and and uh aspects of their life help us better reconstruct the past um than if we say only studied uh people in the in larger scale developed societies. So I think that's I mean that's an important point to make that there are, you know, the

Chimane have uh our interaction with the state level society have variable exposure to modern medicine, although fairly limited. Um they they also are horticulturalists. So they they do a lot of foraging, but some of the food they do produce through gardening. Yeah can you wanna I wanna Oh sorry, David. Um I w I wanted to briefly get into this uh cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disease point that you make, because I think this is something that will probably be of interest to our listeners, and then we can once we uh move past this, uh we can get on to more uh uh interesting topics in evolutionary psychology. But this idea that um these diseases are are problems of the modern world and they're not

necessarily um uh ancestral diseases. So is the idea there that there's something about the modern diet, uh the our consumption of mass-produced foods that is causing higher rates of cardiovascular disease? Is it something about our hygienic practices that increase the prevalence of autoimmune disease? What is what is the story here? I mean, the simple story is diet and exercise. Um and the more interesting story involves a couple other things. I think well, first thing is that I know it's really interesting work by Herman Poncer and others, uh, in collaboration with some people that have worked with the Chimane, um, that implicate diet much more so than exercise in the sort of obesity, cardiovascular issues in the civilized world.

Uh not civilized per se, no, but modern developed societies. Sure. Um and uh based on interesting work with so-called doubly labeled water, where you can look at uh metabolism um and uh compare rates of energetic uh expenditure across populations. And it yeah, the lot of things point to diet as being a potential uh uh larger player than necessarily exercise. Um but both the Chimone seem to do better on in terms of uh healthier diet, uh much more exercise per day. Uh but the other interesting thing is the potential role of the so-called um hygiene hypothesis or uh friendly friends or old friends or I don't know what the forget the moniker there is, but um certain kinds of of worms that are our immune systems evolve

to anticipate uh and without exposure to uh misfire or or overfire with respect to minor issues and generates more frequent, constant kind of inflammation, autoimmune issues. And so there's some level of pathogen exposure, particular kinds of pathogen exposures, certain kinds of worms, especially that um may have protective effects in terms of cardiovascular disease and uh autoimmune disorders, um, while also having significant costs too, in terms of anemia and and other kind of effects on your your body over as you age. Um So before people don't rush out and start uh, you know, uh asking their kids to go uh roll around in the mud and uh eat garbage, um you're saying that there is a trade-off here where yes, we have greater medical and hygienic practices that uh reduce the

uh incidence of uh pathogens during childhood, and that and one of the prices we pay for that is uh a greater prevalence of autoimmune diseases in late age, but it's a price worth paying because it reduces the incidence of childhood mortality that that is much higher in in these societies. why is that? They're not working in factories. Oh, pneumonias and um other things. And it's you're not getting access to antibiotics or other things regularly then. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit? Because I mean I mu mo I think people may not know at all what Chimane, what a village is like, or when you go to the field. Can you just sort of walk us through like what what is the level of access like? I mean, yeah.

Part of the reason that it they became such a focus of study, and perhaps at this point, the most well-studied traditional smaller scale society on the planet in terms of number of people and research groups that have worked with them in the past couple decades. But their um avoided missionization uh early on in the sort of 17th, 18th, 18th centuries. Um, said, you know, no thanks, retreated further into forest. Um, and it was also there in a part of the believing Amazon that wasn't, I guess, that lucrative in terms of rubber trade and other resource extraction, and so escaped a lot of the sort of um slavery, basically, that a lot of indigenous groups experienced as part of the rubber boom and uh in the 19th century.

Um, and then it wasn't until the the 20th century, late 20th century, that roads were built to the region from La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. And that sort of opened up migration to the area and renewed missionization attempts by Cat Catholics and evangelicals. Um, and evangelicals were successful because they brought with them primary schools, a health clinic, built a radio station for the Chimane. They also started the first sort of Chimane council as sort of representative body of the Chimane. And this was in the late 80s, early 90s. The Chimane had had previously, you know, no formal sort of political organization, whether within or or between communities. They were and still to some extent are fairly mobile across communities.

They'll move uh their social life is concentrated around extended families in which cooperation and production are concentrated. And extended families will congregate in communities, but then will also move to other communities where they might have relatives or um now more recently communities have become much more sort of of a political entity. You know, they're formally recognized, and people are part of this community or that community, and you'll have like soccer teams from one community or another. And now most communities have primary schools, some have secondary schools. Um, that really cements a greater sort of sedentism within particular communities. There are Chamani families that have become more urban dwelling and live in the sort of

local market town called San Borja. And many Chamani, most Chamani now earn wage labor from various sources, participation in logging activities or working for ranchers, or and almost all Chamani make money selling horticultural goods in the market town. But all this change has been fairly rapid since really the introduction of roads in this 1970s. So a lot of their traditional ways of life have been fairly well preserved. Almost everybody still speaks their language. I mean, that's starting to change, but that's been the case. Um and uh Hunter Hunter horticulturalists, hunter for what how would you characterize their subsistence, sir? like 65% or so of their calories, food calories comes from horticulture.

So growing um rice, banana, yucca, it's like an underground starch, um, like a potato like thing. Um, and uh about 30 the most of the remainder comes from hunting uh and gathering. So they do a lot of fishing, so a lot of fish in their diet. They also hunt wild game in the forest. Um And so they're, you know, horticultural foragers, if you will. I'd emphasize more the horticulture, more calories come from horticulture. Um, it's not they don't use much technology in their um horticulture. Sort of why we distinguish it distinguish it from agriculture, as agriculture being more tool intensive, often using domesticated animals, uh plows, that kind of thing. It's a pretty riverine. Is it like a lot of c transportation historically was canoes?

Is that correct? Like exactly, yeah. Yeah. Uh the river is the heart of the Shimade society. Traveling up to visit other communities. Um so yeah. There Chris, this might be apocryphal, and we can cut this if it turns out I completely confabulated this. But you told I think you you were the person and if it wasn't me, you, I'm sorry. But you told me I think you like you were a couple days upriver, which is the expression, you know, for like how far into the jungle you are and how far away from public transportation. And am I am I making this up that somebody told you that like Michael Jackson had died and you realize so can you tell me the story again? Okay, I you're shaking your head, yes. So I'm really glad I didn't make it up.

Can you please tell me what the story is? It made an impact, I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, can you so fill it in? Yeah, please fill it in. Yeah. Uh this is in a fairly remote community, and it's, you know, uh it's not like information or news gets there pretty quickly. Um, and I had been in that community for only about a week. And like I said, you know, it took me uh a couple of days to get there on a canoe from the market town, the San Borja. Um, and uh somebody says to me, Oh, hey, do you know Michael Jackson died? And first of all, I'm like, You know Michael Jackson? That's awesome. But secondly, no, he didn't die. Like, yeah, this is one of those things you just but uh it turns out uh he had died

subsequent to my leaving in the canoe for this community, And this guy had got word of it. Uh, you know, this was about a week after I'd left, uh, just through word of mouth, people coming and going. It's all, you know, the world is small, uh, is the lesson. Yeah. That's be I mean, it's just such a beautiful thing, right? Like, so there's this guy who's like, you know, two days upriver or something, maybe not exactly, but in it it was clearly just through word of mouth transmission that this got to him. They're they're informing you of developments in Western culture that you weren't aware of. That's very funny. So so yeah, uh that I've been working with the Chimani since 2005. Um Yeah. And when you go, um, we had Sheena Lou Levy on uh who worked with uh uh Bayaka

and um in Central Congo. When you go, what is the what are those conditions like? Are you living in a um yeah, like, you know, from from like lavish hotel to uh I don't know, what's the minimal thing? Like what what is it like when you're there? Um typically when I'm going to communities, I'm in a tent. Um, occasionally I've been in a tent inside a hut. So added layer of you know protection from the elements. Um and then uh I'll bring canned food and uh pasta and things like that with me. Uh I'll trade sugar and salt and fish hooks and other things for like f meat sometimes and and other v other things, vegetables. Um but uh yeah not not hotel. Uh and uh it's nice to sort of when I've been there to sort of live with the

by the sunset and sunrise in a lot of ways. So I get up earlier, I go to bed earlier. Um do you miss it when you're not there? Or is it yeah? Uh there are things I the things I miss are like this things like the stars that are amazing. Um or uh just having especially this one community I've visited the most, getting to know people and going back and seeing them and how they're doing, catching up, is always really enjoyable. I think as I get older, tenting it out and the humidity and the insects, you know, sort of you know wears on me more. Yeah. I also imagine once you're a parent, you know, we're all three of us are parents, it's harder to be away too, yeah. Oh yeah. In fact, the most recent trip I did research related was in Namibia.

Uh I was a little better living conditions. Um so I haven't been to Bolivia actually since uh the beginning of COVID. So it's been uh several years. Yeah. Yeah, cool. And I like, I mean, one of the things, and you can tell me more about this, is like, you know, the obviously anthropology, there's sort of a history of colonialism and, you know, or extraction, capitalists, like, you know, or missionaries coming in. Um, and uh we within even anthropology, my understanding is there's been a real change from uh us, you know, coming in and tell as opposed in and changing that to something more where the research is also done by other by the people in the community as well. And it's a much more of a um collaboration as well.

Is that have has that happened in in the Chimane land? So the just in terms of well, reciprocity, which I think is important, that the larger medical project we had been discussing, you know, it's providing free medical care to the majority of the the Chimane, which is insane. but that's sort of in order to generate the the data that the project is is studying, it's part of the uh what you need to do, but it's also you know provides benefits. Um in my own personal work where I've veered off into studying social hierarchy and collective action and leadership, um I always uh work with uh communities I'm in to discuss my ideas and and inevitably tweak or change the way I am asking things or doing things.

Um and so you just discuss the research project and your and your research interests and the questions you're interested in with the people you're studying. Yeah. Uh I'll do focus groups where I'll I'll ask say, hey, this is something I'm gonna be asking, or this is a topic I'm gonna be getting into. Uh what do you think about this or that? And they'll give me feedback. Um like if I'm asking about conflicts, right? They'll there's a ways to ask about it that will elicit better responses than other ways of asking. And if you just jump into your study, you know, you'll you won't get it right and you might just less quality information. Are they are they at all like uh hostile or turned off? Like because if someone was you know approaching me and my community and saying, I want to

understand the social hierarchy, you know, who's at the top and who's at the bottom and your group, I would be like very uncomfortable by them doing that. I want to just you know, I want to learn about you know who's in conflict with whom and what the different you know squabbles are in your friend group. Like I would be a little reluctant to to sh share that information with them. I'd be like, why who are you? Why do you want this information? So is there any of that kind of response when you discuss this with them? Yeah, and I was very prepared to meet with a little success there on that basis. On the other hand, I had an inkling before I really jumped into that particular area of work. I was doing other things with the Chimane for months before digging into social

hierarchy, social relationships. Um the that just common public conversations often centered around people's reputations um in front of the people that are being discussed. And it just seemed very people seem to be very comfortable uh discussing um, you know, status related topics in general, just in daily life. Really? Um yeah, I think so. Interesting. Do you find that that is a difference in with between between the cultures you study and say Western cultures? Is there more of a comfort with being overt and explicit about status relationships in the Chamane than among say Western cultures? Um where you're interacting with and know about the goings-on of the people living around you um fairly intimately in ways that like here in my

house I don't know so much about what my neighbors are doing on a day-to-day basis. Um and so the the former I think creates a you know sometimes out of just the reality is you're observing and listening to what's happening around you. And so everybody just knows things. And also people gather and discuss what's going on more frequently as communities. I think also there this might relate to our discussion of egalitarianism, but people are uh very sort of, you know, not they don't defer to authority per se or to uh individual attempts to gain influence, but will laugh at it or will, you know, point out grievances quite readily, um just in common conversation. Um now to get angry is different.

Uh that's sort of not seen as appropriate, but these topics I think are, you know, are common. Now they're maybe not common for somebody just walks into the community, but also if you've been there a little while, you know, it's there it's it's these are frequent topics of conversation. You're not a stranger anymore. Yeah, yeah. Um not wanting to be coerced, having autonomy, um, and egalitarianism. These were all things that you recently gave uh talk, and I was listening to, and I thought it was amazing. And I know Lita was suggesting you should write a book about egalitarianism. Um uh um because I feel like, you know, and correct me if I'm wrong, or you can sort of do a better job of summarizing what your perspective is, but you've been doing this long

enough that you've sort of it seems like you've wrapped your head around this thing of egalitarianism. What is it? Why does it exist? Um and what what kind of thing is it a product of, and is it a good or bad thing? And it's it's it's a bit more complicated and nuanced than maybe uh the the sort of superficial thing would be sort of like, well, we currently live in a great income inequality. And obviously, there are examples of that that are horror horrible, you know, like rich people who don't need their money who are buying, you know, $50,000 baseball caps, and like there's kids dying because they can't get medicine. Like that's nobody thinks that's that's good. Or I hope most people don't think that's good.

But but there are uh but there's so that's we can put that aside. But then there's this flip side of like a place where there's very, very little inequality. People, I think, sometimes think that's that sounds really good too. Um, and and I think you've looked at this continuum um and had thoughts about it. I'm just curious, sort of, I I don't have a specific question, but uh this is just sort of um uh pushing us over into that egalitarian thing you've been thinking about. And I don't have a good articulate way to put it, but yeah, please help me. No, I think you frame things uh that uh you know, we live in hierarchy or we live in societies with very pronounced hierarchies based on material wealth.

Um and I think uh especially as there's more political and and general societal tension to levels of inequality, wealth and income inequality, there's uh you know inevitably uh people saying, hey, look, you know, human ancestors lived in more egalitarian kinds of societies, you know, why can't we just re-kindle those kind of, you know, sentiments, values, et cetera? Um and um and then you know, or even arguments that humans are sort of intrinsically pro-social, altruistic, other regarding inequality averse. Right. Um, and based upon our long evolution in presumably more egalitarian, smaller scale societies. And so we have the right motivations, we just gotta sort of push people in the right direction for us to realize those.

We've been corrupted by civilization and capitalism and agriculture. All you know, that that narrative. We used to be, you know, peaceful and harmonious and and that all changed. Yeah. So um I think that that sort of noble savage trope gets you know gets resurrected all the time. It's age old philosophy know philosophers, Rousseau, Montaigne, to the present day continue to evoke this idea of the sort of noble savage egalitarianism and altruism and was our sort of natural state. Uh you see it in movies, um like avatar and what what have you. But uh but I think most anthropologists, if not all anthropologists, you know, would you know argue that the reality is much more complicated. There's interesting variation across smaller scale societies, that egalitarianism is not

what you think it is. And so that talk you mentioned, Dave, that I gave uh is not me sort of like you know, introducing these revelations to anthropology, but rather just reflecting what people have long known. But yet this, I think, especially outside anthropology, uh, in in particular in in media and in certain certain places of academia, but not everywhere, that noble savage idea continues to rear its head. And a lot of my work that was focused on um status and reputation and leadership and hierarchy, you know, uh both my work with the Shimane and my reading of ethnographies and and of other smaller scale societies suggests to me that people are people and that yes, there are societies that are more and less egalitarian.

But that's those are, you know, there's not any massive qualitative differences in the in human society with respect to things like status motives or um uh re motives for why we cooperate, or uh that the the environments can shape and influence those motives can f you know in interesting ways. Um can they can result in either more dampened inequalities or very heightened ones. Um so um so yeah, my own personal work and my understanding of broader ethnographic work on smaller scale societies is maybe, you know, uh seem like it'd be important to um do something regarding general kind of uh article, if not a book, for Lita's suggestion on egalitarianism. Um and uh I'm I've been working on this project recently with somebody who works for the

Hadza, who are um one of the last remaining you know full-time hunter-gatherers, at least a good segment of their population still in Tanzania. Um his name is Duncan Stubert Hawkes. Um so that's been a great partnership to discuss egalitarianism and the our joint knowledge of various ethnographies and what you know basically we've been trying to answer two questions. One is just how egalitarian in are various societies in terms of outcomes with respect to social capital, leadership, gender, uh, ritual status, reproduction. Uh, and then secondly, irrespective of the level of inequality in those things, just how egalitarian and motive are members of these societies. Uh, versus could you get relatively less inequality

in these societies via more selfish motives as well? That's a really important distinction. So there's a difference between the levels of equality or inequality you see in terms of outcomes, like who's getting the resources, who's reproducing more than whom. And there's also uh variation in terms of people's motives. So it could be that everyone has really hierarchical motivations. They're really motivated to get status and maintain status, but they're just blocked by various forces. Maybe people just um gang up on them whenever they try to gain sufficient status over other people. And so the motive is still there, but the outcomes might not be there. Is that what you're getting at? Right. And um the motives for status can also produce a lot of generosity, too.

Not just sort of you know self-aggrandizing overtly uh through aggression or whatever, but um uh other ways that have in the effect of actually leveling other kinds of inequality while boosting your own reputation. Yeah, interesting. Um so there's this popular idea um pioneered by Christopher Bem, this idea of a reverse dominance hierarchy. So the narrative there is that other primates have these linear dominance hierarchies where you know the alpha at the top picks on, exploits, bullies those at the bottom. And in humans, this changed. This sort of flipped on its head. So an alpha could no longer monopolize resources and mates because coalitions of betas and gammas would team up to take down the alpha.

And so instead of a normal dominance hierarchy, what you had is a reverse dominance hierarchy where those who were displaying the most domineering behaviors or attempting to monopolize resources would in fact sink to the bottom of the hierarchy because all of the other members of the society would gang up on them and bully them. Um so I see this this narrative a lot. Bem's work is very popular. Do you buy this narrative or would would you challenge parts of it? What how do you how do you think about this? Um yeah thanks for asking because I Bohm I I love his work. He was been a huge influence on me. I'm sorry, did I miss is it Bohm? Is that how it's pronounced? I actually don't know. Okay. I've never met him in person.

Um I've had it Bohm, but I don't know, yeah. Okay, maybe maybe regardless. I can't even I mean I have like three pronunciations for my last name, so who yeah, who knows? a lot of his work too. He was he did work with human populations and with primates. Um, and he synthesized a lot of that work in this really uh uh novel arguments about um status hierarchy and inequality and human motivations regarding status. Uh and so that concept of reverse dominance hierarchy, yeah, really resonates with me. Um Although I think the extent to which dominance is reversed, like those who would just bully others, uh, are pushed down by a coalition of group members. Um it's I think there's been there's been modeling work supporting this idea by Sergei

Gavrets and others that individuals are are motivated to intercede uh to prevent bullying because of the benefits to themselves of either avoiding future bullying or being a group that does not have resources controlled by bullies. Um and so very much, I think that's I there's across a lot of smaller scale societies, you see these normative emphases on humility, and um uh you see a constant kind of uh uh mockery of those that try and act with bravado to the point of as Bohm as cataloged sometimes uh expulsion from the group or even death. Um it hopefully we can talk a bit about gender here, but often a lot of the individuals responsible for um calling out bravado are women uh towards men. Um I can think of this you know great example of this one individual was expelled from his

campus might have been the Mbuti Central African foragers. This women wanted him out of the community because he was hunting too much. Right. And so that's an example not of um and I mentioned that because it's an example not of dominance per se, but of too overt an attempt to gain prestige. And this is this is where I think Bomb is locking. Is that the idea he was being he was showing off and being braggadocious about his hunting ability? That's interesting. Yeah. So that that's where I think Bohm's reverse dominance hierarchy is I like, but also I think it misses that uh prestige is this alternative. Some vote argue that dichotomy is oversold, but um you know developing a reputation for benefiting others as an avenue to status um does mean that there are uh

hierarchies not based entirely on dominance that can emerge. Um, but even prestige too is seen as a a means of gaining status, has its limits. Um and uh like that example. That's fascinating. I mean, I I'm I continue to be fascinated by this paradoxical nature of status, and I'm I'm continuing to, you know, I'm working on a theoretical paper on this. Um, but this idea that uh often the best way to achieve dominance is to rebel against dominance or at least create the narrative that that is what one is is attempting to do. So if if you gang up on a dominant, you know, would-be alpha, what you are doing is dominating that alpha, and you are doing the thing that you are apparently rebelling against.

The same thing goes with this, you know, uh norms uh promoting humility. If uh humility gets me status, then there's something kind of paradoxical about that, where s displaying my humility in fact makes me look better than other people. And so because we have to compete for status within this system of norms where overt status seeking is itself socially costly. It can lower our status. It creates a kind of volatility to our norms, such that once we all uh gain common knowledge of the fact that uh we're seeking status or that one particular individual is seeking status, It sort of uh rearranges the social hierarchy such that those who are most aggressively seeking status will now sink to the bottom or at least uh get lowered.

I'm I'm curious what you what you think about this idea that um the the the paradoxical nature of status hierarchy makes makes it kind of volatile and might generate you know cultural variation in in status symbols. Do you buy that idea? Do you think uh that's that's crazy or is there something there? No, I've and I've I've liked your writing. That's sort of the nuance you bring to these these topics or novel ideas with regard to the sort of signaling or anti-signaling, etc., involved in um status competition. Yeah. That uh you know you gotta be humble but not too humble. Um you gotta be a good hunter, but not too good. Um generous but not too generous. Um and so yeah, there's this you know, but that

sweet spot varies from society to society. And from and the the what you use to generate prestige varies from society to society, obvious obviously. And um so I think in these more Galitarian societies, uh where there's not a lot of wealth to accrue, um people are very interdependent, um that and displaying generosity, willingness to help others, uh is very key to people's survival and reproduction. That um, of course, that's a huge contributor to prestige, but to the extent you're overly uh generous, it's showing that maybe, oh, you think you're too good for the rest of us and don't need uh us. Um and so that then becomes a negative. Interesting. So yeah. There's this famous, you know, the uh paradigmatic example of the status

loving is called the the meat fight. Richard Lee was this researcher of the the Kung uh hunter gatherers in the Kalahari and for um it was Christmas and he said you know this is what I celebrate And uh he wanted to buy an ox for the community. Uh and he was told that it was disgusting, kind of gangriness, whatever they said, we wouldn't touch it. Um because it was too generous, too presumptive. And it would, in fact, that level of generosity creates a form of debt that's unpayable. Um people are interdependent, require others' aid, and but but it's uh if you can't reciprocate, um then you just you're just indebted. And um that creates a uh a situation that people don't like. That it it it's um uh limits their autonomy,

um which is I think that's an uh sort of a motive in addition to status that's central to egalitarianism and I think human behavior generally. Yeah, the actually I'm working on a paper called The Evolution of Autonomy. And Chris, we should talk about it. And I think, you know, one question then is have people but just been wrong about sort of the underlying principle or the North Star of human nature that it's not actually about egalitarian outcomes per se, but it's more of this combination of I want a reasonable enough amount of status. I want autonomy. I don't want to be coerced. Um, and then you combine that with something like a, you know, just reasonable welfare trade-offs. Like you said, you know, you have a better idea when you're with the chimane, what's going

on with the neighbors. The scenario where you have more than enough to eat and a neighbor's kid is dying of starvation just wouldn't happen, right in that kind of community because if you put a normal human who's not impaired in that kind of environmental ecology, who's getting the cues of that, they just, you know, that just doesn't that's not gonna happen. You're gonna say, okay, of course, I'm gonna give him food. Um so I kind of wonder sometimes if the motivation behind people wanting novel savage thing, the sort of thing that there's there's something I'm missing, or it would be better. I wonder if it's just the inability to articulate maybe something like it's not just the um equal outcomes, but there's something about,

you know, the structure of modern life that prevents or conversely enables terrible things like kids starving to death when there's more than enough food. Yeah. So part of my interest is understanding Galitarianism, but then also I'm interested in given my work with communities like the Chamani that have been undergoing change as they are more and more exposed to the market economy and why people come to tolerate inequality then, right? If it infringes on an individual autonomy or generates debt relationships and other, you know. and I think there's a lot of different answers, but you're, you know, in traditional smaller scale, more egalitarian societies, often people are, you know, highly interdependent of each other and have minimal reads of but means of buffering risk other

than investment in social relationships. So lack of private wealth or insurance to buffer risk is one arguably key reason why inequalities are remain low. Um So the idea there is is without a health insurance company, say, or a social safety net, um I have to mitigate the uh the the winds of fortune. You know, the if I come up short hunting one day every there's a famine, there's a natural disaster, there's a flood, you know, shit happens. And I need some way to insure against that. And if I don't have an insurance company to insure me against those uh catastrophic risks, then I need some other way to insure myself. And so the the w the the reasoning is that uh we form cooperative networks where we all

agree to help each other should someone suffer misfortune and that uh is mutually beneficial for all of us. I d uh is that is that sort of the the logic there? Definitely. Yeah. Uh you know and David's mentioning the kid that's starving you're you know, but it's probably your kid will be starving in a week because he didn't get that. Um So now that's not to say that there aren't average differences in say productivity and ability to produce food and if you're in a hunter-gatherer society, right? Or um and uh more mobile hunter-gatherer society. There are some we haven't discussed is there are hunter-gatherers that have formal coercive hierarchies, but that's a whole other story. Um But in the most more egalitarian mobile foragers, uh, yeah, there's there is variation

in productive ability and skill. And uh but yeah, but the best hunters still come home days without food or get sick and injured. And um uh so it's you know, gaining a reputation for generosity is important such that when you need it, you yourself are helped. Right. And um it also matters in that you know, in other domains, like getting social allies or being preferred as a mate, uh, also uh, you know, you benefit from being generous in those ways. Um such that uh you know the the levels of reproductive inequalities in sort of uh realized surviving offspring variation across individuals in even more egalitarian forgers is not that different from uh societies with more wealth, agricultural societies, um, so based on some work I did.

So um, but um yeah, but there's also, you know, people are enmeshed in this web of of cooperation, but they're, you know, it's not just sort of based on pure altruism or necessarily inequality aversion, but based on sort of risk minimization um or avoiding a reputation for singiness that will come back to hurt you in the future. Um or there are models that have been called tolerate scrounging, where like if you happen to have a lot at one time, there's less and less motive for you and keeping all everything you have as others demand it. Um so yeah. Uh and these the all these are reasons why we sort of, you know, there's not strong evidence that individuals these societies are sort of intrinsically uh inequality averse,

you know, and um but rather do so for these motives that ultimately have benefits for them, um, through giving, sharing, uh, leveling the status of others. Right. So the idea would be. Oh, sorry, David. Uh so just the idea would be that um one of the themes of this has been sort of being shutting up for a second and letting the the data speak for itself, um, you know, uh or like what's true, the adaptations. And so the idea would be that it's not that in egalitarian societies, I'm just saying what you've already said, but it's not that there's some intrinsic motivation uh that's angelic per se, but it's that, you know, even when I'm helping this starving kid, I mean, obviously that's a good thing.

And I'm motivated intrinsically to do that. But if we want more of that to happen in a large-scale social world, we should not um think that uh attributing a very altruistic motivation, as warm and fuzzy as that feels, if that's not the correct motivation or why somebody's doing that, or it's or it's more precisely described in other ways, then if we actually want to like have fewer starving children, we shouldn't just us we shouldn't just be patronizing towards that lovely event. We should actually be humble about it and actually ask in a very dispassionate way what's the best way to characterize what is that person doing, and how can we engage that psychology in future situations in a large-scale world where we don't want kids to

starve? And I think charities and organizations understand psychology in ways maybe with respect to our psychology of reciprocity and deservingness and interconnectedness, so that, you know, uh you don't want to say, hey, give $100 to help starving children. You want to say, hey, give $100 to help Rokia, this girl, right? Uh who needs your help. You put a face to it, an individual who is another agent with whom there can be relationship. Or you like, you know, you put those tiers of giving uh that communicate sort of status. Um but I think making the world more interdependent is al is always a good thing um with respect to willingness to cooperate. Um uh and but I you know one stumbling block is the extent to which you know there's this

so called deservingness heuristic, right? That we often won't give when we believe, even if somebody's needy, when we believe they're uh have put poor little minimal effort into rectifying their situation. They're lazy and irresponsible. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder and I wonder too, like, I mean, those are but I also wonder to what extent, and I I would hope people that have research on this. I mean, it's one thing if you're with that person and you see what they're doing, right? If they're their hunting partner and you see day-to-day what they're doing versus your you experience your your higher social class than somebody else, the variation you experience is somebody putting in minimal effort gets to like, you know, a hundred

units of capital, right? Or like, you know, physical capital. And I see somebody and they have two. So what is an what's a reasonable but probably incorrect inference for that evolved psychology is well, they're just lazy. But that's somebody who grew up in or is calibrated for this correlation, right? That may be invalid in a different environment. Even if it's physically proximate, it might be there's just a different, um, you know, there's different amount of social and uh physical capital across social class divides, for example. Yeah. Yeah. Um I was gonna say that in uh there's evidence in in more egalitarian smaller scale societies of you know purposely you know identifiably lazy individuals not receiving help.

Yeah. But I think we uh so there's maybe a reason for this heuristic, deservingness heuristic. Um but I think we the cues we use to identify deservingness in our large scale societies are not um aligned with actual deservingness. Uh we we underestimate the amount of luck that governs people's outcomes in their large scale society, especially with respect to wealth accrual and all the sort of things you need to gain status in society. It's heavily based on extensive human capital and money. Um if we're getting it wrong in modern societies, in terms of you know figuring out whether a recipient deserves help or not, whether they were lazy or not, whether they were irresponsible or not, do you find that we're more likely to get it right uh in a more

ancestral social ecology like like the Chimane? Yeah, just uh if you're living with a group of people and you observe them a lot often, um, you'll get to know uh who was failing due to luck versus um you know bad luck versus uh low effort. Um and as a result, I mean people are maybe are gonna avoid low effort more often. Sure. I mean I I I want to flesh out this this distinction between uh low effort versus bad luck, uh, because it's not obvious why uh such a distinction would would be an adaptive distinction to make. Um so uh the logic there, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that uh if if uh this behavior evolved to minimize risk such that if we're all equally vulnerable to this risk, we can all work together to uh insure each other against

this risk by helping each other out when we suffer it. Um, we all mutually benefit uh insofar as we can pay a small cost to deliver a large benefit. Assume that we're assuming that we're equally likely to receive those benefits and pay those costs. If the if the benefits are larger than the cost, then we all benefit and we all come out ahead in Darwinian terms. Um but the crucial assumption there is that we're all equally likely to uh suffer the risk. As soon as you take out that assumption, it no longer necessarily becomes adaptive to participate in this cooperative arrangement. So if it's entirely down to skill, say the only reason why some people have more than others is because they're better at, say, hunting or foraging, then the better hunters and

foragers do not necessarily come out ahead in Darwinian terms by sharing with the less productive hunters and foragers. And so this distinction between uh effort versus luck is a very uh sensible distinction to make if you're trying to calibrate altruistic behavior towards situations where it is likely to pay off in Darwinian terms, compared to situations where it is not likely to pay off. Do you do you buy that logic? Yeah, I mean, why do good hunters share? Uh is why should they do that if um they're doing generally better? And I think it it uh to the extent that good hunters themselves don't suffer similar levels of risk, even if they are slightly better hunters than the next person. Um there's there just in terms of risk reduction, there's less motive to engage in

sharing um or aiding those with less than them. Um uh regardless of, you know, whether those with less have were, you know, was a result of um bad luck or low effort. Um I don't know if that's part of what you're driving at. Uh that distinction doesn't matter if you have more or why share at all. Um, regardless of whether the person that has less is is a result of bad luck or low effort. Um in that case, you know, they're beyond risk reduction, they're there are just their benefits to status gain and developing a reputation through through signaling or for partner choice of your commitment to others. So that's one way out of that. Um so um can I can I push on one thing too? Just but there's also like kids and old people, right?

I mean, there's also this thing of like, I know how much a kid can do, I know how much like my grandparents can do. Um So there's presumably some understanding of, you know, it's not that the person who used to be a good hunter who's now old and can't hunt at their old level, it's not that they're unlucky for the last 20 years, right? It's that they've changed their competence has changed, right? And likewise for the kids for different reasons. How, you know, the idea of luck and laziness already assumes kind of accounting for those differences. How do you understand those differences being accounted for? Well, you you know, mentioned older people whose productivity declines are not necessarily

due to low effort, right? But change benefit other ways, right? Like like maybe that's part of the answer, right? As they're providing other things like alloparenting knowledge, skills, social skills, right? So it's it's multidimensional, but we're just we're using hunting as an example. So yeah, sorry. But while, you know, I think older people are often r receive respect, the oldest people um are often, you know, their s um social networks decline in size. Um, they ex from work we'd done with the Chimane found that older individuals can suffer increased anxiety and depression given their fears about their low productivity and l and decreasing value to others. Um so uh yeah, so their uh their ability to

engage in sharing based principally on reciprocity, you know, is declined. Um that's not to say they're not recipients of aid that's motivated for other by other reasons, um kinship, um signaling, whatever. Um so yeah, um I think that you know this is another misnomer that the oldest people in traditional societies are the most respected, highest status people. Older, but not the oldest, has been my experience. Uh in my reading in various ethnographies. I mean, there are exceptions where the the oldest, yeah, retain high levels of respect. But um I think as productivity wanes um and your your ability to be mobile wanes, then your your status declines. Um yeah, and these aren't, you know, the oldest of the old aren't leading community

meetings. They're not um in a lot of more traditional societies. Yeah. There there's also a a political dimension to this that I've been interested in lately, where this distinction between bad luck versus low effort or low productivity or whatever is also extremely politically relevant if you're if there are conflicts over who deserves resources and who doesn't. Um and uh your attributions about bad luck versus low effort can be hugely biased by your allegiances to the person in question. So if it's my brother or my ally and they uh have, you know, low access to resources, you know, not enough food, whatever, I'm gonna be more motivated to say it was bad luck. But if it was my enemy or my rival, then I'm gonna say, oh, he's lazy, he's irresponsible.

And so there are these political considerations as well that shift how you interpret the situation and how political coalitions can gain more resources for themselves while excluding rivals from valued resources by exploiting this part of our psychology. Do you do you buy this idea that that the this distinction between bad luck and low effort is is a political weapon? And do you see any examples of that in in the Chimane? I see examples of that every day in my life, I think. Wow. Yeah, yeah. Uh no, I I know I love uh you I I've enjoyed your recent pieces on coalitional kind of uh coalitional psychology driving our politics in a lot of ways and um yeah uh yeah certainly framing of deservingness based on uh alliances political

repercussions oh yeah i think that's in any the part of the politics of any society um and including the chimane uh i've done some work on alliances there um and uh you know who forms alliances with whom, and it's often based on past relationships and um who mutual enemies and things like that. And um sort of based on a triadic kind of understanding of the way that Dave himself has modeled these things too. Um we'll pay you after this, Chris. Yeah, I'm trying to realize this also occurred to me, I don't know, maybe this is sort of a left field, but um the philosopher sort of government uh uh political science uh uh Harvard professor Sandel, I think has written, among others, has discussed the idea that, you know, um everything is luck

uh in s in some ways, and that you know, you're born in the right place of the right genes. And so to talk about even low effort as as somehow not a product of luck. I mean, what isn't a product of luck? So it might be an extreme. It's part of his attack on meritocracy, and I wanted to claim, you know, who deserves what. And I think, you know, in these smaller scale more Galitarian societies, distribution is maybe um least meritocratic uh in the sense of like going towards those typically need because most people are need most of the time. Um and so um it's not just privileging those that, you know, are the best hardest workers get the most. Um I'm wondering if if maybe this luck versus low effort is

the wrong way to think of it. Because it's not necessarily luck per se. Really, the distinction that we should have evolved to care about from an evolutionary perspective is is there variation in susceptibility to this risk? So if there's no variation and we're all equally susceptible to it, then that's a that's a situation where reciprocal altruism is going to pay off. But if there is inequality in our susceptibility to this risk, then it uh uh it no longer pays pays off uh as much or at least as straightforwardly for the people who are at reduced susceptibility for the risk to give to the people who are higher susceptibility to the risk. So really what we should be f uh focusing on is uh uh variation in um

uh in uh vulnerability to this sh shortfall rather than luck per se. I mean it sort of translates to luck when you think about it but when you start to think about how genes themselves are a kind of luck, then the this logic starts to fall apart. And maybe maybe it's a more fruitful way to think about this in terms of variation and risk susceptibility. Do you think do you think that's a better way to think about it? Yeah. I I would think that wouldn't you predict where there's greater variation across individuals and there's susceptibility to risk, you'd expect more reciprocity because you'd want to especially then figure out who's gonna be more reliable partner based on um higher risk, uh lower risk profile, right?

Whereas if people have similar levels of risk, there's less need to um engage in reciprocity, direct reciprocity per se. Um there's also this complication. Sorry, Chris, I just like there's this complication too of like the the risk, risky things, like the distribution of high packets of high resource high value are just more distributed and just clumpier, right? Like in the world. Like error, we don't consider like air high value uh because it's just everywhere. I mean, unless you're you know in space and then it is actually a high variance thing. But um so so even the idea of sort of what um what what counts as high variance is not even just attached to an individual per se. I mean it can be, but it's also, you know, this is classically the idea of low variance

resources like the things you can just like dig up a tuber, those are not shared, but high variance things like meat um are right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yes, I'm I'm not so much thinking about the clumpiness of the resource. So just to give a concrete example, let's say uh uh we all are vulnerable to this problem of our homes collapsing. And let's just say for the sake of argument that that is entirely a product of how good of a craftsman you are and when you're building your home. If you're a good craftsman, your home's not going to collapse. If you're bad at building homes, if you're careless or or stupid or whatever, your home is more likely to collapse. Uh in that case, it doesn't necessarily benefit the good craftsman to help the

bad craftsman, right? But if your home collapsing is entirely uh a product of luck or a luck that we're all equally likely to experience, say, you know, a storm or bad weather conditions or or whatever, then it it's it creates the situation where where we want to create a reciprocal altruistic arrangement. Okay. Uh based on that anecdote, yes, I can see that see the logic there. Um although David uh in the person uh but but also maybe the home builder does build there and says, Hey, let me actually help you next time because then that other person did that's the that's the prestige, right? Where it's sort of like that person who's not very good at building homes. If like let's say I'm the incompetent home builder, I don't want my home to collapse on my

kid and hurt them. So it's actually I'm I'm I intrinsically value you because you've helped me in that I'm willing to. So you can also then as long as you helping me, the incompetent one, is conditional on me ratcheting up some benefit in return, then it becomes a reciprocity thing, right? Where where I'm I'm conferring more status to you, more benefits to you, I'm indebted to you, or I want to return in in maybe not in kind. Maybe there's things I'm better at than you, or maybe I can just help you out in other ways. Um it's exactly right that I think if you look just across the commodity, if you just hold constant and just say building houses, it's not in the best home builder's interest to help

the poor home builders. But if you add, there's actually multiple currencies uh to the world and you tr you're you're tracking whether or not the uh the indebtedness or reciprocity is is possible and happening, then you can see where that would open up and it would be uh really good for me to represent. You're actually better than me. Hey David, please help me build my home. That's awesome. And I'm super happy to do it because you can do better than I can do. You know, then you start to get this this market or this division of labor, right? Right. Yeah. No, I totally buy that. So the argument is um that direct reciprocity uh for for the specific good or service being provided. So that I help you with uh repair your home if it collapses, you help me repair my home if

it collapses. If my home is not going to collapse and yours is, then that arrangement doesn't benefit me at all. Right. But indirect reciprocity could still evolve where I help you repair your home and I get some other uh benefit in return maybe high status for being a good craftsman or or or whatever. So the argument applies to direct reciprocity rather than indirect reciprocity. And there's a lot of great work on how those different currencies matter more or less as the socioecology changes. Um so in in very mobile hunter-gatherers, uh actually there seems to be greater s um evidence of demand sharing, where you know you're sharing based upon diminishing returns to hoarding a resource that you've just got, just captured.

Single reciprocity is stronger where people are congregating in camps together for longer periods of time. uh as societies get more material wealth, the sort of signaling of personal ability becomes a much larger sort of motive than reciprocity as individual wealth diminishes uh the need to s insure against risk through social relationships, then you get a lot of sharing as sort of demonstration of skill uh or ability or whatever or competitiveness. Um Interesting. So yeah, the the way these different motives for sharing uh as they relate to risk shift with the the ecology in these kinds of ways. The ability to first of all the what's the nature of the risk is declining or going up and um how is that risk can it be mitigated through means other than social relationships.

And also what's the opportunity to develop reciprocity with particular people over time. Is there any work? Is there any work like there's been like this long history of political science that's sort of implicitly assumed things about this psychology? Is there any ethnographically informed political science from your perspective? Or is this what you the book that you need to write? Uh I mean, I don't I don't want to oversimplify and care or over characterize an entire field. I'm sure there is, but I mean, in your perspective, have you looked into this literature or talked to people? Uh so um the political science of smaller scale societies generally. Or just I mean, even you know, even just sort of people being like, well, let's like what

what is a how do we build a more just fair society? Um, you know, like that is often implicitly like the overriding goal of a lot of political theory. Oh, yeah. Um, and you know, a lot of that implicitly appeals to, well, what are the motivations of people or I mean what you're describing is it's complicated, right? Like what's the resource? What's the um and how do you so if there are people who want to um respect the complexity of it and understand how the system works, to then say, for example, like, you know, how do we encourage people to like create a society where people aren't starving or have all the medical care they need. Is there work that's sort of bridging those two areas, or is that not yet happening?

No, I think there are there are a number of political scientists that have um been interested in the work that like evolutionary anthropologists have done in in sort of evolutionary motives for for giving, and then have tried to leverage that to understand why um, you know, policies succeed or fail or institutions succeed or fail at a in a large-scale society setting. Like Michael Bank Peterson, you know, the somebody that you know we know, uh, that has commented on this kind of thing with regard to the sort of uh deserving that her d deservingness heuristic and people's views about welfare. Um I think uh one thing our institutions, this is something Joe Henrik has written a lot about is and done you know ex sort of experimental games in different societies to that he

argues are consistent with this point, is that we've generated institutions that increase trust among strangers. And that's one thing that we talk about the the generosity and its motives in terms of risk reduction or um to in terms of demand sharing or signaling in these smaller scale societies. But in the context of experiments, members of these societies are often the least likely to give to an anonymous other. uh you know mean in some ways we're at least with non uh anonymous strangers we may not meet that often. Uh in practice, we're more likely to uh be generous than our members of these more egalitarian societies. Um the idea is that like an anonymous other, um that's when you're growing up in a world

where you know everybody, then if it's an anonymous other, you're gonna have a low, you have no idea, yeah, it may be a low trust, whatever, but in in the the idea is that there's certain um institutions that do a better or worse job. I can say living in Northern Europe versus the US, Northern Europe does much better. Like I actually I'm like, I feel like part of my reverse culture shock is uh I I'm feeling a less trusty uh So I'm feeling that right now. I'm sort of recalibrating to US versus Northern Europe on that. Yeah, good example of evoked culture happening inside your head. Exactly. Yes, no, exactly. I'm like, yeah. we we often ask people how they got interested in evolutionary social sciences

um did you did you um have a uh we we've kind of quote unquote call these are people's origin stories because sometimes people had you know sort of a a journey to find it um for you how did you get into this Um, I was a history major at first in college. Uh and um, you know, I liked the classes, great teachers, and but I was you know, we're learning about the fall of you know um Constant Constantinople, whatever it becomes this, you know, then uh among other things, and it's like, well, why? Why do humans engage in warfare generally? Why are we so tied to symbols? And why do those motivate war? Uh, just to take an example. So extrapolating out those larger questions about human behavior um just seemed

missing from the history classes I was I was taking. Um and I'd also been interested in biology in high school, especially, and I was sort of unsure what direction I'd take in college and went the history route. And then one day I was with my roommate leafing through the course catalog and came across biological anthropology. And it was like primates and like Frank Marlowe, who'd worked with the Hadza, was uh part of the department there at the time. And um, you could do paleogenomics and all kinds of things that sort of collectively helped our tools to help us understand human origins and the evolution of our behavior and psychology. And I was like, wow, this is it. And then like I think I had read at the time was read or was reading Gun Germs and Steel,

the sort of that like gateway drug for a lot of people, uh, to this area by Jared Diamond and um and uh Steven Pinker, uh um how the mind works. So yeah. Um, so yeah, so then I switched to that as an undergrad. I wasn't sure I was gonna go to grad school. Uh I I started off looking into like environmental consulting kinds of jobs after I graduated from college, but I kept reading in the area. Um and then also because uh this is uh at least a story I tell myself, but Santa Barbara continued to be on my mind for a couple of reasons. One was that it was mentioned to me uh when I'd read, uh I think it was Matt Riley's Origins of Virtue for a course in college, and two being Cosmeties came up. I'm like, what this sort of you know, discussion of some of their work was just fascinating

to me. Um and they were at Santa Barbara. And then I also remember in high school at my guidance counselor's office, we had like VHS tapes that were promo videos for different colleges. And I remember the Santa Barbara one had people like on the beach coming in surfing. Yes. Uh so I was like check. Yeah. It doesn't, yeah, yeah. Good environment. Winter. Yeah. You're like, yeah, Boston. Yeah. So I was like, you know what? Let's apply there. And I um and uh I didn't know Mike Gervin uh really was just starting out there and but that was tended you know ended up being just such a benefit uh coming into the beginning of that major project he started with the Chimane. So that's where uh you know my sort of trajectory um is uh

yeah. Yeah. Wanting to know the big stories about humans and our, you know, wanting the bigger bigger explanations, despite the reductionism, that's sort of the the area which I uh the land in which I love to operate. Um I love the details too, but the the larger stories are more appealing to me. Yeah, it is a common thread I've noticed that people are constantly bringing up the need to ask why. Um why, why, why, why. I my daughter is at the stage of her development where she asks me why, why, why until I get down to like the basics of metaphysics and ontology. Uh but I think I I what I'm starting to see is that an evolutionary psychologist is someone who just never turned off that childhood part of themselves where they still just retain

this need to know why why and just drill down to the the basics. Um and and that's that's what I love about it. You know, it just it goes all the way down to, you know, the second law of thermodynamics, as you know, John Tuby uh insightfully wrote. It's you know, evolution is the only anti-entropic uh force uh that guides organisms toward adaptive complexity that that we know of. Um and uh it's a really deep and satisfying way of seeing the world. Um Yeah, I I've I think proximate questions are fantastic. I mean, in a sense, that's what evolutionary psychology does do, is answer approximate questions about mechanism, right? Um, but uh without the the larger motivating ultimate questions, you know, there's no spark

in it for me. Yeah. Totally. So cool. Yeah. So uh one last thing. I remember um we were we were having an email exchange about some of these ideas a while ago. I for I forget when it was, and you had mentioned this really interesting distinction between what you called superlative status and I forget what the alternative was. It was like uh not being so I guess it's the difference between being better than other people and not being worse than other people. Right. Um which is re I th I think of it as sort of offensive status versus defensive status. You know, like I'm I'm trying to be better than you versus I'm trying to defend myself from being a pariah. Um and so far as I'm aware, like there's not a lot of research on this distinction.

Uh and I think it's a really important one and uh of huge evolutionary significance, because I would expect the the defensive version of it to have exerted a stronger selection pressure on our ancestors than the offensive version of it. Um just because you know the slope of fitness, you know, it has diminishing returns. So if you're gonna go down the uh go go backwards, you're gonna have a steeper drop in fitness than if you go forward uh uh uh uh up the plateau of diminishing returns. So fitness costs should loom larger than fitness benefits. And you would expect people to be more paranoid about being seen as a bad person than they are motivated to be seen as a good person. And I think a lot of altruism uh psychologically is motivated by the fear of being seen as

a bad person, uh, compared to the uh positive desire to be seen as as morally superior. Um you know even uh the this uh so Peter Singer makes this this classic argument that um if you if you see a child drowning in a pond, uh would you wait in to to save the drowning child and ruin your fancy thousand dollar suit? And most people say, Yeah, of course. Uh, you know, the you can get a new suit, but you know, you it's worth it to save the child. But then he he poses the counterfactual why don't you donate a thousand dollars to Oxfam to save children uh from starvation or malaria or or whatever. Um and I think the reason why this argument is effective is because it makes us seem like the sociopath who would refuse to rescue the drowning child to save their

fancy suit. It's not that it motivates you to be a good person, is that it elicits this fear in you that you're a bad person, that you're that sociopath who doesn't save the child. And so I think this fear of being a bad person is really powerful psychologically. It's understudied. And I'm curious. So you have this paper measuring reproductive success and its correlation with status. So far as I'm aware, that paper doesn't measure the negative dimensions of status. It measures political influence, but it doesn't measure the extent to which you're a social pariah or whether you're excluded or whether you're the hunter who hunts too much and becomes a social outcast. But I would suspect that if you included that negative dimension of status, the correlation

with with fitness would would be much higher. Do you do you share that intuition? Yeah, I mean uh it's great you brought that up. I think I'm myself I've devoted too little attention to the sort of bottom half of the distribution or even the bottom 75% of the distribution of status as relative to the top 25%. Um and it's probably a bigger motive for us to avoid being at the bottom than it is necessarily to reach the top. Like, yeah, if we can reach the top, that's amazing. But definitely do not reach the bottom. That's that's strike out. Uh and um maybe that accords with sort of risk profiles where you know people are riskiest at the bottom and at the top, but most of the middle of the hierarchy people are more risk

averse because they don't want to slide down to the bottom. Yeah. Um, but uh yeah. Um I don't know. I think uh with regard to reproduction, um I know in modern industrial societies the relationship that still exists between like income and reproduction in men is almost entirely driven from lots of studies by childless men who just never reproduce. Interesting. So it's not driven by men at the top having a lot more kids, which there is a small effect of that still with respect to income, but nothing like the what drives that relationship is more the childless men at the bottom. In the societies like the smaller scale societies, like the Chimane, there's very few fewer men that strike out. I I think, and there is um uh, although that's still part

of the equation, I think there is a bigger signal of reproduction at the top end. um, in terms of those with more influence, more likely to be polygynous or marry surially, um, or have better child survival. Um but uh clear, yeah, I I would bet across all human societies, yeah, that striking out is the the the bigger motive. So I mean arguably our status psychology evolved more even to avoid the bottom than to hit the top, just as you're saying. But it's not something I've devoted much attention to and probably should more. So thanks thanks for bringing that up to me. Please do. It seems like a really underappreciated thing. Yeah. Um I wonder if there's developmental, I mean, because I keep thinking about like gym class

or school. You know, like that's such a, you know, any kid, when we were all kids, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but like, you know, that's that's like the super salient, um, just you know, not not being the the pariah or not being the kid that's picked on. And then the kid who is, you know, that's a real um you you've got to figure out you've got to be funny or you've got to figure out another way to survive. I mean, that's a really John Tube always said, you know, the the right way to think about human social life if you're not like Chris and working with um folks who have a more ecologically valid quote unquote existence. Um it's more like high school or junior high or elementary school, right?

You know? Yeah. Yeah. This made me think too. Oh go ahead. Oh go ahead. I was just thinking of the you know asymmetric war of attrition is sort of based on the you're gonna want to minimize the the cost of continued competition. And so it's better to sort of, you know, rather than potentially you know, make the best of a bad deal. Don't end up at the bottom, but don't necessarily shoot for the top if it's gonna it's gonna hurt you over the longer run. Uh cost that way of the benefits. Um, I think a lot of people will accept somewhat subordinate positions as long as they're not the very bottom in human societies. That's a really good point. Yeah, a lot of lot of people going along with uh very dominant uh

totalitarianism, for example, just because they're the second bottom rung, right? Where you know, like poor whites in the south or um people in you know Europe during the Third Reich coming in. And you know, if you're not if you're not the victim and you're still okay, you know, you'll go along with the regime, sort of is the idea. Yeah. Yeah, no, I find this really interesting. I I also suspect that there's interesting individual differences uh related to the question of how motivated you are to be at the top versus avoid being at the bottom. So I I have the intuition that if you're really concerned with being at the top and being better than other people, that you're kind of a dick. That like you're you're you're kind of a a a mean competitive person.

Whereas if you're primarily uh motivated by avoiding being at the bottom, you're not necessarily a bad person. You're just that's just kind of understandable. Um, so I that's another question that I'm curious about. And um I find that this comes up in discussions of the role of signaling in human behavior. So I am of the opinion that signaling plays a pervasive role in in human social life and is the explanation for a lot of our behaviors, even when we would not want to admit that it is the explanation for our behavior. But um I find that a lot of people are turned off by this uh because they see it as cynical. Yeah. Um, but I think the cynicism is coming from an interpretation that the signal is offensive

in nature, that the signal is to try to display my superiority to others. But I think a lot of the times the signal is defensive. Um, it's trying to prevent others from seeing you as worse or inferior to others. And as soon as you see these signaling motives as being really more about defensive motives than offensive motives, it becomes less cynical and it becomes more of a plausible uh uh theoretical framework from which to view human behavior that you know really it is a lot about signaling, but we just have to recognize that a lot of those signals are defensive in in nature. I think we we treat sort of punching down the same though, no matter where somebody is on the hierarchy, I think, right?

So even if it is defensive, if you're like second from the bottom hitting the bottom wrong to not get down to the bottom wrong, do we see that as bad as the person at the top punching down on the person at the bottom. You know, I think that's an interesting um put individual differences in the sort of propensity for for this that you raised. Um yeah. Uh I think um maybe things related to neuroticism, sort of personality variation, where we're gonna be much more focused on avoiding the bottom, which would preclude taking risks that might get us to the top. Yeah. Um or um Yeah. But I think that's I mean, and there's also an aspect of this where is if you're a male, uh and you know, we we know that you know uh variance in in

reproductive success is higher among males than females uh and likely was ancestrally. Um if you're if you see yourself as being at the bottom, as being doomed to uh reproductive oblivion, then you're in a really dangerous place for the rest of the people around you because you have nothing to lose. You know, you you can take dangerous risks, take other people down with you. Like from a Darwinian perspective, you know, you can you can run amok. Um and so I suspect a lot of the most vile um uh attacks we see are are from you know men with nothing to lose who who who see themselves as at the bottom or groups of of of people who see themselves as at the bottom and and and and don't see a way out from that position.

Those those people are gonna be really dangerous to society. Uh yeah, yeah. I think uh like Martin Daly, Margot Wilson's work on you know the male, what is it they call it, the young male syndrome. Yeah, right. But it's particularly young men in who are find themselves in positions of low status within a a high inequality uh hierarchy. Um and there's one recent work by this guy, uh Pat Barclay and Misha. I don't know, I forget his full name. Um, might have been a student with pad or a collaborator on sort of risk sensitivity with respect to stat status position um and its relationship to yeah um just what you're describing. Um or broader in a broader sense when you're you have sort of political

elites mobilizing that group of people uh and mobilizing their anger for their for their ends. Uh yes. Yep. Forming forming alliances with them. Yeah. Which is sticky completely on sure. Um Yeah, no, I I there's some other work uh I'm loosely familiar with it called last place aversion, where we have an aversion to being uh i uh in last place in a competition, much more so than any other position in in the totem pole. And I I I remember reading that uh they were looking at uh attitudes toward the minimum wage and it was people who were right above the minimum wage who opposed raising the minimum wage because it would it would put them in last place. Um so I I don't know if that paper I haven't looked into like the data analytics of it or

whether that holds up, but it's an interesting idea that this could potentially be uh you know explains some variation in in our political attitudes. Right. That it's not just the wealthiest who are opposed to welfare, but those given that our the most salient comparisons were those in our sort of local status net sort of social networks, uh status relevant social networks. Um but yeah, uh who's that? I know I think Michael Norton, Harvard Business School, and a c but he wasn't the premium author, uh did the f paper on this that uh those just above the poverty line, you see an uptick in um anti-welfare views because it's it's getting a hand out to the people right below them down the street. Yeah.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. No, I think it it it it really explains a lot about the dynamics of of political coalitions, particularly in the United States and why why we see this divide between uh ethnic uh subgroups of within the lower class, where you see you know low status uh white Americans pr uh uh predominantly shifting toward the Republican coalition and low status ethnic minorities pred uh uh predominantly shifting towards the Democratic coalition. I think um those status conflicts I think are are a major driver of of political alliances and uh and obviously political elites try to exploit that in various ways, often successfully. Well I think the whole immigration dialogue and debate in the US and in other countries

recently, but in the US uh that's been uh appealing to um a lot of minority communities, including the sort of Latino community that uh I know I have a lot of friends who uh Latino friends who are you know first second generation immigrants but see have some conservative views with respect to illegal immigrants um then might be shaped in part by this sort of um you know they don't get to sort of leapfrog me kind of view which is uh yeah so you know it's uh I think there are minority communities that are you know have the reasons similar to the theory we're articulating here for being anti um welfare to the lowest rungs on the ladder. Right. Yeah. When Chris, when you're at um when you're in with the Chimane versus you come back to

Virginia, what do you are there anything is there anything that's pops out to you? Like, you know, because like, you know, not all of us get to experience this. What is it like switching back and forth? And you know, is there what is it like? I think the main thing is supermarkets. I mean, holy crap. Like you know, assembling that much dense caloric stuff in one place that's like been produced all over the world. Yeah. Is you know, oh my god. Yeah. That's like I think is that's typically the big thing that gets me. Uh I'm very food motivated person. I think you know we all are. No too. We all are, but uh um yeah. It's food is everything. If you don't have food. Yeah. Good luck. Oh, this was interesting.

I did I had a um uh a student in in Bolivia who I've been sponsoring um came to the United States to be part of this workshop, this indigenous leadership workshop. And I saw he, you know, his Chimane and um uh he f got him a visa, he's able to come to the United States and I picked him up in DC. And I remember the first thing he thought when he saw coming here was he thought that we were uh our land was on fire because it was autumn and the the tree leaves were turning color. Interesting. Oh, that's so cool. And that was like so so coming back to just the the vegetation is yeah, you know, uh that's sort of what trees I always on the lookout. Amazon is like, you know, trees are not always your friends.

Um because of animals and insects and spines and poisons. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we have to have any wortz on, yeah. Yeah, and there are you know animals that live uh commensally with the tr ants and others of the trees that act as their defense mechanisms and yeah, uh it's more of like parts of the you know, being the Amazon, it's so much more and more surprises around the next corner of different animals and things and uh but you're right, you got to be in your toes. So did you have you had any interesting animal encounter stories? Oh, uh like living with bats in the hut out I would stay in. Um I came across jaguar footprints, never encountered one uh directly, thankfully. Uh came across a Python or not a python, um a raptor, like uh uh it's called a

bushmaster, highly venomous snake. Oof. Uh and uh Demon's face. Demon's face. Yeah, one of one of the many reasons I'm not cut out for field work. Yeah. I'm like a midpoint because I I'll go like backpacking and stuff, especially before I having children. But yeah, but yeah, no, no, it's that's a whole other level. Yeah. Yeah. But uh one of the more like dangerous things I was doing uh was part of this project we were measuring tree circumferences and species with um too many people who are cutting down trees to to for places to grow their crops. We're interested in sort of like how they expend energy over time in doing this and how often they take grass. And um uh and we had sort of heart rate monitors they were using, and I would

go in and measure tree circumferences, and then they were using um axes to chop these things, these trees down. But the older the chemani person, the more skilled they were. So they wouldn't just go after every tree with like much ismo, but like carefully go after this one tree, look around, look where the vines are connecting trees, go to another tree that seems like totally far away, cut that one. It would be sufficient to like bring all the trees down from just a minority of them cut because they're all connected through vines, right? But I'd be when I'd be following an older individual doing this that was more strategic, I wouldn't know where the trees were gonna come from when they started falling.

And you have to like get out of their way fast. Uh smarter was not harder. That's smarter than that. Indiana Jones here, you know, jumping away from falling trees and venomous. Well, I like that story, you know, it it signals my sort of yeah, I you know, med metal for being able to do that. But I mean m but also that it showcases the role of skill acquisition uh for them. Yeah, yeah. I love, I love that. I mean, yeah, I think every anthropologist has has I have I've talked to has a story like that where even the kids in the community will just be like, come on, like I think she knowy talked about that, you know, where it just like yeah, we're all I uh sometimes people say things like I don't know if this is still a thing that's said, but people say, like,

well, the human mind is more complicated than it needs to be for like hunter, gatherer, or foraging, like yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it's like, you have you what? Like, have you tried to like, you know, yeah, exactly. I mean, it's and I think that comes from this place of sort of this this great chain of cultural being, right? Where sort of it's like primitive and it's simple, and how how hard could it be? Um, and I just love that there's all these stories of Chris is trying to avoid trees falling on him, and the guys are like, come on, Chris. Yeah. You gotta you know, listen to the local people, especially those that have lived there a while. They know what's going on. Yeah. Um yeah. Well, the tree of time is about to uh fall on us.

We're approaching two hours now. Yeah, and we we always have one question, which is um, were there is there any question we should have asked you? Oh, I think we've covered a fair bit of ground. Um I knew you wanted to talk about egalitarianism in some way today. I think we hit that. I mean, we hit that, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um but no. Um my secret exploits at UCSB as a grad student. We didn't cover that. That's good. That's not true again. I mean we we we didn't really append your book. Yeah. We didn't really talk about leadership. I feel like that's a huge maybe we'll have to bring you on again and really get into leadership. Sure, sure. How we how and why we romanticize it. Um, how much does it matter are good questions, I think, to ask.

But yeah. Super cool. Um, but uh Chris, uh you are um so you're at at University of Richmond, Jepsen School of Leadership, and people can find you on your website and Yeah, Google Chris von Ruden. Uh I have my sort of school website. Also I have a Google site that I curate occasionally with like videos and publications and things up there. Awesome. And Chimane, people who are interested in finding more about Chimane, like what are there what resources are are for that? For the Chimane, um, again, they've been the subject of a lot of uh research, uh, everything from like their musical performance and musical cognition to uh you know health, a lot of work on health. And so if you Google the Chimane Health and Life History project, you'll see information.

Um, but uh there's lots of work done with the Chimane, including by the Chimani themselves, who have made some uh documentaries about their way of life that some of which you can find posted on like YouTube and oh cool and it it starts with a T Chamani T T-S-I-M-A-N-E. It's also been spelled C-H-I-M-A-N. Um but yeah very cool very cool um yeah David do you have anything else? No. I th I think uh that about does it. This was a really fun conversation. Thanks for for talking to us, Chris. Yeah, it was it it was great. Yeah, we'll have to have you back on for leadership or uh um for tree felling. Yeah. Totally yeah, totally happy to talk you through the the yeah scale of tree felling. Uh well, here we are at the end of the episode.

Thank you for listening. Uh if you like what you're hearing, uh please don't be shy. Uh tell people about it on social media. Uh shout it from the mountaintops. We're a new podcast. We're trying to build an audience and gain support for what we're doing. And where can people uh support us, Dave? Well they can support us emotionally however they want, but in terms of behaviorally they can sort of leave a good review. Um they can support us on Patreon. Um and yeah, just listening, liking, subscribing, and leaving reviews um, you know, that are neutral to positive is certainly helpful. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. If you feel that way, you know, if you feel like it's you feel negatively about it.

You know, I'll leave that discussion. Yeah. Yeah. You if you hate us, you can send us hate mail too. But you know. i would not maybe no maybe not hate mail no if you hate us just think about why you hate us and maybe think about something more productive you could do with your time yeah if you have nothing nice to say then don't say it at all i think that's a good rules to live by so but yeah you take that would take that with a grain of salt so but uh but yeah thanks for listening and we'll see you next week see ya