WEBVTT

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Welcome to Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast.

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I'm David Pinsov.

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I'm David Petrozowski.

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And what are we what are we even doing here?

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Um that's a good question.

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Maybe we should have an episode about that.

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Yeah, maybe.

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

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doing in people's ears?

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Yeah.

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Oh, I see.

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

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

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That's right.

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

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actual evolutionary psychologists.

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That's right.

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Okay, Dave, we have an awesome guest today.

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Uh we do.

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

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

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he does really cool work understanding inequality and status.

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And this was just a really fun episode.

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Yeah, this this was a blast.

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

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inequality.

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He also has an awesome name, Chris Von Ruden.

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

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It sounds pretty epic.

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

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You think I should change it?

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

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okay.

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The artist previously known as David Pensoff.

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Yeah.

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

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

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We'll ask him.

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All right.

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Without further ado, enjoy.

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Enjoy Chris Von Ruden.

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Uh welcome Chris Von Ruden.

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Good to see you.

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

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me, University of Richmond.

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Chris, how long have you been at Richmond now?

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2013 I arrived.

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Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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Leadership studies.

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

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

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

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Um uh what do what does that mean?

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

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

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

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And there's about 15 or so faculty.

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And they I'm the only anthropologist.

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There are uh well, there were like three psychologists.

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Now we just have one, two recently retired.

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

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

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studies, religious studies person.

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

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

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

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surrounding all those topics.

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

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

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

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Explicitly Darwinian, very few and far between.

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

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

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populations uh in Asia.

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

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

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interested in evolutionary psychology.

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

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some shared interests with them.

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

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

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Got it.

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

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confusion when you bring these ideas to bear?

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

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

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theory?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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uh yeah I don't know.

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

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

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sort uh assumed repercussions for Uh

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policy, which is you know, not you know.

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Um, so I don't know.

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I I always try with especially with students.

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

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reasons for my theoretical views.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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genetically determinist nor sort of social constructivist.

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

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else, right?

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

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

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

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We haven't actually covered that.

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It's still early days here.

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

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about it with maybe an example?

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

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individual physiology and behavior um reflects gene environment

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interactions.

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

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Tubi and Cosmedi is sort of evoked and transmitted distinction.

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

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uh recap of it?

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Sure.

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

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

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be what they call evoked culture.

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

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

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

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design.

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

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in uh physical aggressiveness or trust or other sort of

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psychological phenomenon uh phenomena vary uh in response by

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

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community.

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

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of mating competition tactics.

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

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transmitted culture, not a product of social learning.

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

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generate behavior in response to particular environments.

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Um right.

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

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

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

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content of what's being told to people.

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

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

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

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historically our sides have have seen.

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

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

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

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

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what the the that design is.

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Um, but yeah, is that fair, Chris?

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Like do you think that's the fair characterization?

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

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

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as environments shift.

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

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Who's done the work?

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

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Thomas Talhound.

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

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

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

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in collectivist kind of norms within and across societies.

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

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

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sub-area within evolutionary anthropology.

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

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has force in its own right.

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Um but it also can complement yeah.

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

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

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

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talk about and study scientifically.

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

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culture.

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

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environment is not what we're talking about.

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We're talking about something else.

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

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Right.

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

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populations based on the social learning.

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

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social learning, um uh teaching, instruction, etc.

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

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

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

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matter.

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

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

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of norms and institutions we create.

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

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

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

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

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climate um and work crops, uh the correlation between bad

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climate for growing crops and warfare is enormous historically.

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

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some people is sort of always there.

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

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

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

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

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you're when the when the climate gets worse.

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And so that would be a nice example of that.

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Yeah, the synergy between them.

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

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

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cultural uh mechanisms.

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

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

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

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came from in say parts of China.

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

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by none um that had this long lasting effects.

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Um so yeah.

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

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each other.

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

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

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

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other tribe.

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

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uh uh then upregulate your cooperation uh motivations.

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

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with environmental changes, but they can lag.

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

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

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

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

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

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from which it was useful.

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Is that the idea?

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Yeah, that's well said.

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Um I think also transmitted culture can uh generate sort

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

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socioecology.

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

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begin with.

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

00:16:56.760 --> 00:17:01.000
One is strategic in the sense of the vote culture, where it's sort of evolution to the

00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:05.370
strategy making or you know, strategizing, And then there's also sort of the individual

00:17:05.370 --> 00:17:11.370
agency where our ability to sort of think um about potential

00:17:11.530 --> 00:17:16.490
outcomes, potential technologies, potential norms, um counterfactually.

00:17:16.730 --> 00:17:22.650
Um and that could be a a potent source of what becomes a cultural transmission to the

00:17:22.650 --> 00:17:26.650
extent those certain people are more influential than others and getting groups to adopt

00:17:26.650 --> 00:17:27.210
their ideas.

00:17:27.640 --> 00:17:29.960
Yeah, I I think technology would be a good example.

00:17:30.120 --> 00:17:33.160
We're gonna have Christina Moy on in a few episodes.

00:17:33.960 --> 00:17:38.600
She she was uh, you know, part of the Rob Boyd um group of people.

00:17:38.840 --> 00:17:43.880
Um and Christina was really influential for me for realizing, you know, I'm I'm an

00:17:43.880 --> 00:17:49.160
adaptationist, not usually thinking about the importance of cultural, of

00:17:49.160 --> 00:17:50.440
transmitted culture.

00:17:50.600 --> 00:17:53.880
And I think the idea like the Rob Boyd idea of like canoes, right?

00:17:53.990 --> 00:17:58.230
Where or kayaks, where um it's individual sort of trial and error.

00:17:58.310 --> 00:18:02.790
Like you wanna, you want to stay dry and you want to move quickly over water, right?

00:18:02.950 --> 00:18:06.630
And there's just certain like trial and error stuff either within an individual or across

00:18:06.630 --> 00:18:07.510
individuals.

00:18:07.830 --> 00:18:13.190
But you know, hunting success, staying dry, staying warm, getting a seal or whatever you're

00:18:13.190 --> 00:18:19.030
hunting, fishing, that is sort of a trial and error dynamic that selects for

00:18:19.430 --> 00:18:24.780
kayak or canoe design that may be better than, certainly better than like what quote

00:18:24.860 --> 00:18:26.620
unquote you would have innately in your mind.

00:18:26.700 --> 00:18:30.140
Like we don't have a canoe or kayak building template in our mind.

00:18:30.300 --> 00:18:32.940
It might be better than what any person can do, right?

00:18:33.100 --> 00:18:38.460
Like we all know of intergenerational transmission of, you know, the way um

00:18:39.100 --> 00:18:43.340
uh airplanes, the first generation of airplanes, you know, the design is actually pretty

00:18:43.340 --> 00:18:45.580
similar to the Wright brothers did pretty well.

00:18:45.740 --> 00:18:51.090
But you know, the constant tweaks, you know, when I when I fly, it's not like Wilbur and

00:18:51.090 --> 00:18:52.290
Orville were flying, right?

00:18:52.370 --> 00:18:53.410
It's quite different.

00:18:53.570 --> 00:18:59.410
Um, and this idea that all of that trial and error accumulation

00:18:59.410 --> 00:19:05.170
of design in an artifact or technology would is is a different

00:19:05.170 --> 00:19:10.930
way to explain how complexity, emerging complexity, or like, you know, the phenotypic

00:19:11.250 --> 00:19:15.400
um The extended phenotype in Dawkins' terms, right?

00:19:15.480 --> 00:19:18.520
Like, where does that canoe or kayak design come from?

00:19:18.760 --> 00:19:24.040
The idea that it's transmitted culture, and that's an important thing to understand if you

00:19:24.040 --> 00:19:27.000
want to understand how a canoe ended up like that.

00:19:27.240 --> 00:19:31.080
Like I think Christina and Rob, I'm convinced by that that that's a really important thing

00:19:31.080 --> 00:19:31.800
to understand.

00:19:32.040 --> 00:19:37.960
It's all made possible by the by the evoked psychology and by the evolved phenotype,

00:19:38.040 --> 00:19:40.280
but it's in addition on top of that.

00:19:40.760 --> 00:19:44.730
And that last point I think is important because it, you know, being a graduate student

00:19:44.890 --> 00:19:50.330
UCSB and it had front stage to sort of ongoing battles between the sort of evolutionary

00:19:50.330 --> 00:19:56.330
psychology emphasis on psychological adaptation, specific psychological adaptation,

00:19:56.650 --> 00:20:02.490
and the sort of um UC Davis UCLA emphasis on

00:20:03.370 --> 00:20:09.240
social learning and cultural uh you know phenomena more generally

00:20:09.320 --> 00:20:10.920
sort of broad-based learning.

00:20:11.080 --> 00:20:14.120
Um but yet the the two are are quite compatible.

00:20:14.280 --> 00:20:17.480
Um in fact require each other in my view in a lot of ways.

00:20:17.720 --> 00:20:22.520
Um one person who I've liked who's who's created some synergy I think between them and also

00:20:22.520 --> 00:20:28.280
really centered sort of individual agency and counterfactual thinking and um is Manvir

00:20:28.440 --> 00:20:28.840
Singh.

00:20:29.240 --> 00:20:32.840
Some of his uh broader pieces on on culture.

00:20:33.590 --> 00:20:35.590
Um envy your own.

00:20:35.990 --> 00:20:36.550
Yeah, we'll have to have.

00:20:36.710 --> 00:20:37.670
He he does great stuff.

00:20:37.830 --> 00:20:43.190
I mean, the idea that he's interested in is to what extent uh culture is shaped by the

00:20:43.190 --> 00:20:48.790
self-interested motivations of the uh producers of the culture in terms of the benefits

00:20:48.790 --> 00:20:52.870
they might receive either from status or by trying to shape a social norm that might

00:20:52.870 --> 00:20:53.670
benefit them.

00:20:53.830 --> 00:20:58.950
Uh these kinds of uh bringing the the individual agent into the equation of culture, I

00:20:58.950 --> 00:21:01.590
think, is a really uh insightful way of of thinking about it.

00:21:01.840 --> 00:21:02.080
Yeah.

00:21:02.560 --> 00:21:02.800
Yeah.

00:21:02.880 --> 00:21:07.760
Chris, one before we move on, um uh let's let's who are you and what are you doing here?

00:21:08.240 --> 00:21:14.240
Let's let's do a little um because I don't think we've had any um uh Chimane

00:21:14.800 --> 00:21:16.480
folks on yet.

00:21:16.640 --> 00:21:22.160
So can you tell us a little bit about w what you what you study and who your

00:21:22.480 --> 00:21:25.840
study population is and yeah.

00:21:26.710 --> 00:21:27.270
Sure.

00:21:27.590 --> 00:21:33.590
So um I did my graduate work at Santa Barbara with Michael Gervin,

00:21:33.910 --> 00:21:39.350
who had recently started a a large project with a group of people in uh

00:21:39.510 --> 00:21:45.350
Blivion Amazon called the Chimane, um, with Hillary Kaplan, um,

00:21:45.590 --> 00:21:46.710
who is at New Mexico.

00:21:46.790 --> 00:21:49.660
He's now at Chapman in California.

00:21:50.940 --> 00:21:56.780
And the two had just started this large uh sort of medical

00:21:57.420 --> 00:22:01.580
demography project to understand human life history and aging with the Chimane.

00:22:01.900 --> 00:22:07.740
And as part of this project, they were bringing on uh PhDs and

00:22:07.740 --> 00:22:13.020
postdocs in anthropology to um go to communities,

00:22:13.260 --> 00:22:18.790
Chimane communities, and uh study sort of people's social behavior,

00:22:19.030 --> 00:22:24.470
social relationships, um, as it relates to demography, longevity,

00:22:24.790 --> 00:22:25.430
aging.

00:22:25.670 --> 00:22:31.030
Um uh since that project has just has had grown leaps and

00:22:31.030 --> 00:22:37.030
bounds, um knock on wood, it's been well funded by NIH um

00:22:37.670 --> 00:22:43.320
and uh has generated incredible insights into how things we

00:22:43.560 --> 00:22:49.160
might assume about human health and aging uh based on a lot of research with Western

00:22:49.240 --> 00:22:51.320
developed populations is not universal.

00:22:51.400 --> 00:22:56.520
And there's much we like learned about the diseases of so-called civilization from from

00:22:56.520 --> 00:22:59.080
studying and working with people like the Chimane.

00:22:59.480 --> 00:23:01.880
Um what what are some of the things we've learned?

00:23:02.670 --> 00:23:08.430
So the relative absence of cardiovascular disease, um asthmas,

00:23:09.070 --> 00:23:14.590
autoimmune disorders, um, and that uh

00:23:15.070 --> 00:23:19.790
you know there's uh uh people live to to late age.

00:23:19.950 --> 00:23:25.390
Um now there's a lot of uh uh mortality, but it's not driven by those, you know, uh

00:23:25.470 --> 00:23:30.520
cardiovascular diseases or cancers to the degree it is in other uh more developed

00:23:30.520 --> 00:23:31.160
populations.

00:23:31.560 --> 00:23:35.320
Um this is an interesting this is a common misconception I hear that people think that in

00:23:35.320 --> 00:23:38.840
ancestral times people didn't live much past 30 or whatever.

00:23:39.080 --> 00:23:41.000
This is a very common misconception.

00:23:41.240 --> 00:23:46.600
Um so uh you can correct me if I'm wrong, but a part of the reason this misconception

00:23:46.600 --> 00:23:50.600
arises is because if we're looking at average mortality, that doesn't take into account at

00:23:50.600 --> 00:23:51.560
what age the person dies.

00:23:51.640 --> 00:23:55.710
So it could be if you have a high child mortality rate that that could bring the average

00:23:55.710 --> 00:24:00.990
mortality down to a pretty low number, even if people are uh if they make it past childhood

00:24:01.070 --> 00:24:02.350
living to a quite old age.

00:24:02.430 --> 00:24:03.790
Is is that how you think about it?

00:24:04.110 --> 00:24:05.230
That's exactly how I think about it.

00:24:05.310 --> 00:24:08.270
You know, high childhood mortality will bring that average way down.

00:24:08.910 --> 00:24:13.070
And I think there's a more a there's higher age specific mortality, you know, across the

00:24:13.070 --> 00:24:18.110
lifespan uh in these populations, but still people are, you know, there are people living

00:24:18.110 --> 00:24:21.310
to their 80s, you know, 90s even.

00:24:21.680 --> 00:24:26.240
Um now, a lot of small scale societies like the Chimani that have been studied recently

00:24:26.320 --> 00:24:29.360
aren't, you know, this is probably a good point to make for a lot of other things we might

00:24:29.360 --> 00:24:29.920
discuss.

00:24:30.320 --> 00:24:33.360
Um, they aren't like, you know, living fossils, so to speak.

00:24:33.520 --> 00:24:39.200
And um uh but the sort of it ecology and

00:24:39.200 --> 00:24:44.960
demography and and uh aspects of their life help us better reconstruct the past

00:24:45.280 --> 00:24:50.970
um than if we say only studied uh people in the in larger scale developed societies.

00:24:51.050 --> 00:24:54.170
So I think that's I mean that's an important point to make that there are, you know, the

00:24:54.170 --> 00:25:00.170
Chimane have uh our interaction with the state level society have variable exposure

00:25:00.170 --> 00:25:02.810
to modern medicine, although fairly limited.

00:25:03.050 --> 00:25:06.490
Um they they also are horticulturalists.

00:25:06.650 --> 00:25:10.970
So they they do a lot of foraging, but some of the food they do produce through gardening.

00:25:12.090 --> 00:25:14.800
Yeah can you wanna I wanna Oh sorry, David.

00:25:14.880 --> 00:25:19.840
Um I w I wanted to briefly get into this uh cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disease

00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:23.280
point that you make, because I think this is something that will probably be of interest to

00:25:23.280 --> 00:25:28.080
our listeners, and then we can once we uh move past this, uh we can get on to more uh uh

00:25:28.160 --> 00:25:30.080
interesting topics in evolutionary psychology.

00:25:30.160 --> 00:25:35.600
But this idea that um these diseases are are problems of the modern world and they're not

00:25:35.600 --> 00:25:38.320
necessarily um uh ancestral diseases.

00:25:38.400 --> 00:25:42.730
So is the idea there that there's something about the modern diet, uh the our consumption

00:25:42.730 --> 00:25:47.050
of mass-produced foods that is causing higher rates of cardiovascular disease?

00:25:47.130 --> 00:25:51.610
Is it something about our hygienic practices that increase the prevalence of autoimmune

00:25:51.610 --> 00:25:51.930
disease?

00:25:52.010 --> 00:25:53.370
What is what is the story here?

00:25:54.170 --> 00:25:58.410
I mean, the simple story is diet and exercise.

00:25:58.650 --> 00:26:03.290
Um and the more interesting story involves a couple other things.

00:26:03.370 --> 00:26:07.880
I think well, first thing is that I know it's really interesting work by Herman Poncer and

00:26:07.880 --> 00:26:12.440
others, uh, in collaboration with some people that have worked with the Chimane, um, that

00:26:12.440 --> 00:26:17.320
implicate diet much more so than exercise in the sort of obesity,

00:26:17.480 --> 00:26:21.320
cardiovascular issues in the civilized world.

00:26:21.400 --> 00:26:25.480
Uh not civilized per se, no, but modern developed societies.

00:26:25.720 --> 00:26:26.200
Sure.

00:26:26.520 --> 00:26:32.190
Um and uh based on interesting work with so-called doubly

00:26:32.270 --> 00:26:37.950
labeled water, where you can look at uh metabolism um and uh

00:26:37.950 --> 00:26:41.790
compare rates of energetic uh expenditure across populations.

00:26:41.870 --> 00:26:46.910
And it yeah, the lot of things point to diet as being a potential uh uh larger player than

00:26:46.910 --> 00:26:48.510
necessarily exercise.

00:26:48.670 --> 00:26:53.550
Um but both the Chimone seem to do better on in terms of uh

00:26:54.110 --> 00:26:58.750
healthier diet, uh much more exercise per day.

00:26:58.880 --> 00:27:04.800
Uh but the other interesting thing is the potential role of the so-called um

00:27:04.960 --> 00:27:10.480
hygiene hypothesis or uh friendly friends or old friends or I don't know what the forget

00:27:10.480 --> 00:27:15.440
the moniker there is, but um certain kinds of of worms that are our immune systems evolve

00:27:15.440 --> 00:27:20.800
to anticipate uh and without exposure to uh misfire or or

00:27:20.800 --> 00:27:26.400
overfire with respect to minor issues and generates more frequent, constant kind of

00:27:26.400 --> 00:27:28.870
inflammation, autoimmune issues.

00:27:29.110 --> 00:27:33.590
And so there's some level of pathogen exposure, particular kinds of pathogen exposures,

00:27:34.070 --> 00:27:39.910
certain kinds of worms, especially that um may have protective effects in terms

00:27:39.910 --> 00:27:45.910
of cardiovascular disease and uh autoimmune disorders, um, while

00:27:45.910 --> 00:27:50.870
also having significant costs too, in terms of anemia and and other kind of effects on your

00:27:50.870 --> 00:27:52.470
your body over as you age.

00:27:52.630 --> 00:27:58.440
Um So before people don't rush out and start uh, you know, uh asking their kids

00:27:58.440 --> 00:28:04.360
to go uh roll around in the mud and uh eat garbage, um you're saying that there is a

00:28:04.360 --> 00:28:09.560
trade-off here where yes, we have greater medical and hygienic practices that uh reduce the

00:28:09.640 --> 00:28:15.000
uh incidence of uh pathogens during childhood, and that and one of the prices we pay for

00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:20.190
that is uh a greater prevalence of autoimmune diseases in late age, but it's a price worth

00:28:20.190 --> 00:28:24.590
paying because it reduces the incidence of childhood mortality that that is much higher in

00:28:24.590 --> 00:28:25.630
in these societies.

00:28:39.340 --> 00:28:39.900
why is that?

00:28:39.980 --> 00:28:41.820
They're not working in factories.

00:28:42.780 --> 00:28:45.420
Oh, pneumonias and um other things.

00:28:45.500 --> 00:28:49.340
And it's you're not getting access to antibiotics or other things regularly then.

00:28:49.740 --> 00:28:50.060
Yeah.

00:28:50.300 --> 00:28:51.420
Can you talk a little bit?

00:28:51.500 --> 00:28:55.900
Because I mean I mu mo I think people may not know at all what Chimane, what a village is

00:28:55.900 --> 00:28:57.420
like, or when you go to the field.

00:28:57.660 --> 00:29:01.740
Can you just sort of walk us through like what what is the level of access like?

00:29:01.900 --> 00:29:03.100
I mean, yeah.

00:29:03.820 --> 00:29:08.050
Part of the reason that it they became such a focus of study, and perhaps at this point,

00:29:08.210 --> 00:29:14.130
the most well-studied traditional smaller scale society on the planet in terms of number of

00:29:14.450 --> 00:29:18.210
people and research groups that have worked with them in the past couple decades.

00:29:18.690 --> 00:29:24.610
But their um avoided missionization uh early on in the sort of 17th,

00:29:24.770 --> 00:29:26.530
18th, 18th centuries.

00:29:26.690 --> 00:29:30.770
Um, said, you know, no thanks, retreated further into forest.

00:29:31.010 --> 00:29:36.880
Um, and it was also there in a part of the believing Amazon that wasn't, I guess, that

00:29:36.880 --> 00:29:42.320
lucrative in terms of rubber trade and other resource extraction, and so escaped a lot of

00:29:42.320 --> 00:29:47.680
the sort of um slavery, basically, that a lot of indigenous groups experienced as part of

00:29:47.680 --> 00:29:51.600
the rubber boom and uh in the 19th century.

00:29:51.970 --> 00:29:57.730
Um, and then it wasn't until the the 20th century, late 20th century, that roads were built

00:29:57.730 --> 00:30:00.290
to the region from La Paz, the capital of Bolivia.

00:30:00.450 --> 00:30:06.450
And that sort of opened up migration to the area and renewed missionization attempts by

00:30:06.450 --> 00:30:08.610
Cat Catholics and evangelicals.

00:30:08.770 --> 00:30:14.760
Um, and evangelicals were successful because they brought with them primary schools,

00:30:14.920 --> 00:30:17.960
a health clinic, built a radio station for the Chimane.

00:30:18.920 --> 00:30:24.920
They also started the first sort of Chimane council as sort of representative body of

00:30:24.920 --> 00:30:25.720
the Chimane.

00:30:25.880 --> 00:30:29.560
And this was in the late 80s, early 90s.

00:30:29.720 --> 00:30:34.950
The Chimane had had previously, you know, no formal sort of political organization, whether

00:30:34.950 --> 00:30:36.870
within or or between communities.

00:30:37.990 --> 00:30:43.270
They were and still to some extent are fairly mobile across communities.

00:30:43.510 --> 00:30:48.470
They'll move uh their social life is concentrated around extended families in which

00:30:48.470 --> 00:30:51.350
cooperation and production are concentrated.

00:30:51.750 --> 00:30:55.190
And extended families will congregate in communities, but then will also move to other

00:30:55.190 --> 00:31:00.840
communities where they might have relatives or um now more

00:31:00.840 --> 00:31:05.960
recently communities have become much more sort of of a political entity.

00:31:06.680 --> 00:31:10.680
You know, they're formally recognized, and people are part of this community or that

00:31:10.680 --> 00:31:14.040
community, and you'll have like soccer teams from one community or another.

00:31:14.120 --> 00:31:18.840
And now most communities have primary schools, some have secondary schools.

00:31:19.000 --> 00:31:24.070
Um, that really cements a greater sort of sedentism within particular communities.

00:31:24.230 --> 00:31:29.110
There are Chamani families that have become more urban dwelling and live in the sort of

00:31:29.110 --> 00:31:31.270
local market town called San Borja.

00:31:33.990 --> 00:31:39.830
And many Chamani, most Chamani now earn wage labor

00:31:39.990 --> 00:31:45.670
from various sources, participation in logging activities or working for ranchers, or

00:31:46.150 --> 00:31:51.740
and almost all Chamani make money selling horticultural goods in the market town.

00:31:52.380 --> 00:31:57.420
But all this change has been fairly rapid since really the introduction of roads in this

00:31:57.420 --> 00:31:58.540
1970s.

00:31:58.780 --> 00:32:02.140
So a lot of their traditional ways of life have been fairly well preserved.

00:32:02.540 --> 00:32:04.220
Almost everybody still speaks their language.

00:32:04.300 --> 00:32:07.260
I mean, that's starting to change, but that's been the case.

00:32:07.500 --> 00:32:13.260
Um and uh Hunter Hunter horticulturalists, hunter for what

00:32:13.500 --> 00:32:15.500
how would you characterize their subsistence, sir?

00:32:16.250 --> 00:32:21.290
like 65% or so of their calories, food calories comes from horticulture.

00:32:21.370 --> 00:32:27.290
So growing um rice, banana, yucca, it's like an underground starch,

00:32:27.850 --> 00:32:30.170
um, like a potato like thing.

00:32:30.410 --> 00:32:36.410
Um, and uh about 30 the most of

00:32:36.410 --> 00:32:39.450
the remainder comes from hunting uh and gathering.

00:32:39.530 --> 00:32:42.090
So they do a lot of fishing, so a lot of fish in their diet.

00:32:42.250 --> 00:32:44.570
They also hunt wild game in the forest.

00:32:44.810 --> 00:32:50.720
Um And so they're, you know, horticultural foragers, if you

00:32:50.720 --> 00:32:50.880
will.

00:32:50.960 --> 00:32:54.240
I'd emphasize more the horticulture, more calories come from horticulture.

00:32:54.560 --> 00:33:00.000
Um, it's not they don't use much technology in their um horticulture.

00:33:00.320 --> 00:33:05.280
Sort of why we distinguish it distinguish it from agriculture, as agriculture being more

00:33:05.280 --> 00:33:10.320
tool intensive, often using domesticated animals, uh plows, that kind of thing.

00:33:10.730 --> 00:33:12.330
It's a pretty riverine.

00:33:12.410 --> 00:33:15.290
Is it like a lot of c transportation historically was canoes?

00:33:15.370 --> 00:33:16.010
Is that correct?

00:33:16.090 --> 00:33:17.210
Like exactly, yeah.

00:33:17.450 --> 00:33:17.690
Yeah.

00:33:18.490 --> 00:33:22.810
Uh the river is the heart of the Shimade society.

00:33:22.970 --> 00:33:25.370
Traveling up to visit other communities.

00:33:25.610 --> 00:33:27.610
Um so yeah.

00:33:28.090 --> 00:33:32.250
There Chris, this might be apocryphal, and we can cut this if it turns out I completely

00:33:32.240 --> 00:33:33.360
confabulated this.

00:33:33.520 --> 00:33:37.360
But you told I think you you were the person and if it wasn't me, you, I'm sorry.

00:33:37.440 --> 00:33:41.040
But you told me I think you like you were a couple days upriver, which is the expression,

00:33:41.120 --> 00:33:45.840
you know, for like how far into the jungle you are and how far away from public

00:33:45.840 --> 00:33:46.720
transportation.

00:33:47.040 --> 00:33:52.480
And am I am I making this up that somebody told you that like Michael Jackson had died and

00:33:52.550 --> 00:33:54.630
you realize so can you tell me the story again?

00:33:54.710 --> 00:33:56.150
Okay, I you're shaking your head, yes.

00:33:56.230 --> 00:33:57.510
So I'm really glad I didn't make it up.

00:33:57.590 --> 00:33:58.790
Can you please tell me what the story is?

00:33:59.110 --> 00:33:59.910
It made an impact, I see.

00:34:00.230 --> 00:34:00.630
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:34:00.950 --> 00:34:02.070
Okay, can you so fill it in?

00:34:02.310 --> 00:34:03.430
Yeah, please fill it in.

00:34:03.510 --> 00:34:03.910
Yeah.

00:34:04.470 --> 00:34:10.310
Uh this is in a fairly remote community, and it's, you know, uh it's not like

00:34:10.310 --> 00:34:12.790
information or news gets there pretty quickly.

00:34:13.030 --> 00:34:17.080
Um, and I had been in that community for only about a week.

00:34:17.240 --> 00:34:21.400
And like I said, you know, it took me uh a couple of days to get there on a canoe from the

00:34:21.400 --> 00:34:23.000
market town, the San Borja.

00:34:23.480 --> 00:34:28.840
Um, and uh somebody says to me, Oh, hey, do you know Michael Jackson died?

00:34:29.080 --> 00:34:32.200
And first of all, I'm like, You know Michael Jackson?

00:34:32.280 --> 00:34:32.760
That's awesome.

00:34:32.920 --> 00:34:34.440
But secondly, no, he didn't die.

00:34:34.520 --> 00:34:39.960
Like, yeah, this is one of those things you just but uh it turns out uh he had died

00:34:39.960 --> 00:34:45.130
subsequent to my leaving in the canoe for this community, And this guy had got word of it.

00:34:45.210 --> 00:34:49.930
Uh, you know, this was about a week after I'd left, uh, just through word of mouth, people

00:34:49.930 --> 00:34:50.650
coming and going.

00:34:50.810 --> 00:34:54.250
It's all, you know, the world is small, uh, is the lesson.

00:34:54.570 --> 00:34:54.730
Yeah.

00:34:54.890 --> 00:34:57.450
That's be I mean, it's just such a beautiful thing, right?

00:34:57.530 --> 00:35:01.930
Like, so there's this guy who's like, you know, two days upriver or something, maybe not

00:35:01.930 --> 00:35:06.730
exactly, but in it it was clearly just through word of mouth transmission that this got to

00:35:06.730 --> 00:35:06.970
him.

00:35:07.340 --> 00:35:12.060
They're they're informing you of developments in Western culture that you weren't aware of.

00:35:13.660 --> 00:35:15.100
That's very funny.

00:35:16.220 --> 00:35:21.900
So so yeah, uh that I've been working with the Chimani since 2005.

00:35:23.020 --> 00:35:23.580
Um Yeah.

00:35:23.820 --> 00:35:29.340
And when you go, um, we had Sheena Lou Levy on uh who worked with uh uh Bayaka

00:35:29.820 --> 00:35:32.490
and um in Central Congo.

00:35:32.650 --> 00:35:35.770
When you go, what is the what are those conditions like?

00:35:35.930 --> 00:35:41.930
Are you living in a um yeah, like, you know, from from like lavish hotel

00:35:42.250 --> 00:35:45.210
to uh I don't know, what's the minimal thing?

00:35:45.370 --> 00:35:47.290
Like what what is it like when you're there?

00:35:48.250 --> 00:35:51.850
Um typically when I'm going to communities, I'm in a tent.

00:35:52.000 --> 00:35:55.120
Um, occasionally I've been in a tent inside a hut.

00:35:55.200 --> 00:35:58.480
So added layer of you know protection from the elements.

00:35:58.960 --> 00:36:04.320
Um and then uh I'll bring canned food and

00:36:04.960 --> 00:36:08.080
uh pasta and things like that with me.

00:36:08.320 --> 00:36:14.240
Uh I'll trade sugar and salt and fish hooks and other things for like f meat sometimes

00:36:14.400 --> 00:36:17.440
and and other v other things, vegetables.

00:36:17.840 --> 00:36:21.750
Um but uh yeah not not hotel.

00:36:21.990 --> 00:36:27.830
Uh and uh it's nice to sort of when I've been there to sort of live with the

00:36:27.910 --> 00:36:29.990
by the sunset and sunrise in a lot of ways.

00:36:30.310 --> 00:36:32.950
So I get up earlier, I go to bed earlier.

00:36:33.430 --> 00:36:37.030
Um do you miss it when you're not there?

00:36:37.190 --> 00:36:38.150
Or is it yeah?

00:36:38.470 --> 00:36:42.790
Uh there are things I the things I miss are like this things like the stars that are

00:36:43.030 --> 00:36:43.670
amazing.

00:36:44.310 --> 00:36:50.300
Um or uh just having especially this one community I've

00:36:50.300 --> 00:36:54.540
visited the most, getting to know people and going back and seeing them and how they're

00:36:54.540 --> 00:36:56.860
doing, catching up, is always really enjoyable.

00:36:57.100 --> 00:37:02.700
I think as I get older, tenting it out and the humidity and the insects, you know,

00:37:04.140 --> 00:37:05.740
sort of you know wears on me more.

00:37:05.980 --> 00:37:06.220
Yeah.

00:37:06.300 --> 00:37:09.420
I also imagine once you're a parent, you know, we're all three of us are parents, it's

00:37:09.420 --> 00:37:10.780
harder to be away too, yeah.

00:37:11.100 --> 00:37:11.660
Oh yeah.

00:37:12.030 --> 00:37:16.190
In fact, the most recent trip I did research related was in Namibia.

00:37:16.350 --> 00:37:20.030
Uh I was a little better living conditions.

00:37:20.350 --> 00:37:25.230
Um so I haven't been to Bolivia actually since uh the beginning of COVID.

00:37:26.190 --> 00:37:28.030
So it's been uh several years.

00:37:28.270 --> 00:37:28.750
Yeah.

00:37:29.550 --> 00:37:30.110
Yeah, cool.

00:37:30.270 --> 00:37:33.630
And I like, I mean, one of the things, and you can tell me more about this, is like, you

00:37:33.700 --> 00:37:37.540
know, the obviously anthropology, there's sort of a history of colonialism and, you know,

00:37:37.620 --> 00:37:41.780
or extraction, capitalists, like, you know, or missionaries coming in.

00:37:41.940 --> 00:37:47.700
Um, and uh we within even anthropology, my understanding is there's been a real change

00:37:47.700 --> 00:37:53.620
from uh us, you know, coming in and tell as opposed in and changing

00:37:53.620 --> 00:37:58.910
that to something more where the research is also done by other by the people in the

00:37:58.910 --> 00:37:59.710
community as well.

00:37:59.870 --> 00:38:04.270
And it's a much more of a um collaboration as well.

00:38:04.430 --> 00:38:07.550
Is that have has that happened in in the Chimane land?

00:38:08.510 --> 00:38:14.510
So the just in terms of well, reciprocity, which I think is important, that

00:38:14.670 --> 00:38:18.590
the larger medical project we had been discussing, you know, it's providing free medical

00:38:18.590 --> 00:38:23.070
care to the majority of the the Chimane, which is insane.

00:38:23.820 --> 00:38:29.020
but that's sort of in order to generate the the data that the project is is studying, it's

00:38:29.020 --> 00:38:33.340
part of the uh what you need to do, but it's also you know provides benefits.

00:38:33.660 --> 00:38:38.220
Um in my own personal work where I've veered off into studying social hierarchy and

00:38:38.220 --> 00:38:44.220
collective action and leadership, um I always uh work with uh communities I'm in

00:38:44.220 --> 00:38:49.980
to discuss my ideas and and inevitably tweak or change the way I am asking

00:38:49.980 --> 00:38:51.660
things or doing things.

00:38:51.980 --> 00:38:57.750
Um and so you just discuss the research project and your and your research interests and

00:38:57.750 --> 00:39:00.390
the questions you're interested in with the people you're studying.

00:39:00.790 --> 00:39:01.110
Yeah.

00:39:01.270 --> 00:39:05.110
Uh I'll do focus groups where I'll I'll ask say, hey, this is something I'm gonna be

00:39:05.110 --> 00:39:07.030
asking, or this is a topic I'm gonna be getting into.

00:39:07.270 --> 00:39:09.110
Uh what do you think about this or that?

00:39:09.270 --> 00:39:10.870
And they'll give me feedback.

00:39:11.110 --> 00:39:14.310
Um like if I'm asking about conflicts, right?

00:39:14.390 --> 00:39:18.710
They'll there's a ways to ask about it that will elicit better responses than other ways of

00:39:18.790 --> 00:39:19.110
asking.

00:39:19.190 --> 00:39:24.940
And if you just jump into your study, you know, you'll you won't get it right and you might

00:39:25.260 --> 00:39:26.620
just less quality information.

00:39:27.100 --> 00:39:31.420
Are they are they at all like uh hostile or turned off?

00:39:31.500 --> 00:39:35.260
Like because if someone was you know approaching me and my community and saying, I want to

00:39:35.260 --> 00:39:38.780
understand the social hierarchy, you know, who's at the top and who's at the bottom and

00:39:38.780 --> 00:39:41.740
your group, I would be like very uncomfortable by them doing that.

00:39:42.220 --> 00:39:45.740
I want to just you know, I want to learn about you know who's in conflict with whom and

00:39:45.740 --> 00:39:48.700
what the different you know squabbles are in your friend group.

00:39:48.780 --> 00:39:52.410
Like I would be a little reluctant to to sh share that information with them.

00:39:52.490 --> 00:39:53.690
I'd be like, why who are you?

00:39:53.770 --> 00:39:54.890
Why do you want this information?

00:39:55.050 --> 00:39:58.250
So is there any of that kind of response when you discuss this with them?

00:39:58.810 --> 00:40:02.490
Yeah, and I was very prepared to meet with a little success there on that basis.

00:40:02.650 --> 00:40:06.890
On the other hand, I had an inkling before I really jumped into that particular area of

00:40:06.890 --> 00:40:07.050
work.

00:40:07.130 --> 00:40:12.810
I was doing other things with the Chimane for months before digging into social

00:40:12.970 --> 00:40:15.210
hierarchy, social relationships.

00:40:15.530 --> 00:40:21.520
Um the that just common public conversations often centered around

00:40:21.520 --> 00:40:26.800
people's reputations um in front of the people that are being discussed.

00:40:26.880 --> 00:40:32.320
And it just seemed very people seem to be very comfortable uh discussing

00:40:32.720 --> 00:40:38.000
um, you know, status related topics in general, just in daily life.

00:40:38.240 --> 00:40:38.560
Really?

00:40:38.800 --> 00:40:40.350
Um yeah, I think so.

00:40:40.670 --> 00:40:40.990
Interesting.

00:40:41.150 --> 00:40:45.630
Do you find that that is a difference in with between between the cultures you study and

00:40:45.710 --> 00:40:46.590
say Western cultures?

00:40:46.750 --> 00:40:52.270
Is there more of a comfort with being overt and explicit about status relationships in the

00:40:52.270 --> 00:40:55.070
Chamane than among say Western cultures?

00:41:05.710 --> 00:41:11.660
Um where you're interacting with and know about the goings-on

00:41:11.820 --> 00:41:17.740
of the people living around you um fairly intimately in ways that like here in my

00:41:17.740 --> 00:41:22.060
house I don't know so much about what my neighbors are doing on a day-to-day basis.

00:41:22.380 --> 00:41:28.140
Um and so the the former I think creates a you know sometimes out

00:41:28.140 --> 00:41:32.750
of just the reality is you're observing and listening to what's happening around you.

00:41:32.830 --> 00:41:33.870
And so everybody just knows things.

00:41:33.950 --> 00:41:39.230
And also people gather and discuss what's going on more frequently as

00:41:39.230 --> 00:41:40.350
communities.

00:41:42.350 --> 00:41:48.190
I think also there this might relate to our discussion of egalitarianism, but people are

00:41:48.830 --> 00:41:54.260
uh very sort of, you know, not they don't defer to

00:41:54.260 --> 00:42:00.180
authority per se or to uh individual attempts to gain influence, but will

00:42:00.420 --> 00:42:05.860
laugh at it or will, you know, point out grievances quite

00:42:05.860 --> 00:42:09.700
readily, um just in common conversation.

00:42:09.940 --> 00:42:12.340
Um now to get angry is different.

00:42:12.500 --> 00:42:18.500
Uh that's sort of not seen as appropriate, but these topics I think are, you

00:42:18.500 --> 00:42:19.540
know, are common.

00:42:19.700 --> 00:42:23.950
Now they're maybe not common for somebody just walks into the community, but also if you've

00:42:23.950 --> 00:42:28.670
been there a little while, you know, it's there it's it's these are frequent topics of

00:42:28.670 --> 00:42:28.910
conversation.

00:42:29.230 --> 00:42:30.830
You're not a stranger anymore.

00:42:31.230 --> 00:42:32.430
Yeah, yeah.

00:42:33.230 --> 00:42:39.230
Um not wanting to be coerced, having autonomy, um, and egalitarianism.

00:42:39.390 --> 00:42:44.030
These were all things that you recently gave uh talk, and I was listening to, and I thought

00:42:44.030 --> 00:42:44.670
it was amazing.

00:42:44.750 --> 00:42:49.390
And I know Lita was suggesting you should write a book about egalitarianism.

00:42:49.790 --> 00:42:55.540
Um uh um because I feel like, you know, and correct me if I'm wrong, or you can sort of do

00:42:55.540 --> 00:42:59.140
a better job of summarizing what your perspective is, but you've been doing this long

00:42:59.140 --> 00:43:04.260
enough that you've sort of it seems like you've wrapped your head around this thing of

00:43:04.260 --> 00:43:05.220
egalitarianism.

00:43:05.380 --> 00:43:05.940
What is it?

00:43:06.100 --> 00:43:07.380
Why does it exist?

00:43:07.860 --> 00:43:12.340
Um and what what kind of thing is it a product of, and is it a good or bad thing?

00:43:12.580 --> 00:43:18.350
And it's it's it's a bit more complicated and nuanced than maybe uh the the sort of

00:43:18.350 --> 00:43:22.270
superficial thing would be sort of like, well, we currently live in a great income

00:43:22.270 --> 00:43:23.390
inequality.

00:43:23.630 --> 00:43:27.710
And obviously, there are examples of that that are horror horrible, you know, like rich

00:43:27.710 --> 00:43:32.030
people who don't need their money who are buying, you know, $50,000 baseball caps, and like

00:43:32.110 --> 00:43:34.110
there's kids dying because they can't get medicine.

00:43:34.190 --> 00:43:36.190
Like that's nobody thinks that's that's good.

00:43:36.270 --> 00:43:38.750
Or I hope most people don't think that's good.

00:43:38.990 --> 00:43:43.800
But but there are uh but there's so that's we can put that aside.

00:43:43.880 --> 00:43:49.240
But then there's this flip side of like a place where there's very, very little inequality.

00:43:49.400 --> 00:43:53.800
People, I think, sometimes think that's that sounds really good too.

00:43:54.120 --> 00:43:59.720
Um, and and I think you've looked at this continuum

00:44:00.200 --> 00:44:02.760
um and had thoughts about it.

00:44:02.920 --> 00:44:07.880
I'm just curious, sort of, I I don't have a specific question, but uh this is just sort of

00:44:07.880 --> 00:44:12.670
um uh pushing us over into that egalitarian thing you've been thinking about.

00:44:12.750 --> 00:44:16.030
And I don't have a good articulate way to put it, but yeah, please help me.

00:44:16.430 --> 00:44:22.350
No, I think you frame things uh that uh you know, we live in hierarchy or we live in

00:44:22.350 --> 00:44:25.390
societies with very pronounced hierarchies based on material wealth.

00:44:25.550 --> 00:44:31.470
Um and I think uh especially as there's more political and and

00:44:31.470 --> 00:44:36.830
general societal tension to levels of inequality, wealth and income inequality, there's uh

00:44:36.910 --> 00:44:42.800
you know inevitably uh people saying, hey, look, you know, human ancestors

00:44:42.800 --> 00:44:48.560
lived in more egalitarian kinds of societies, you know, why can't we just re-kindle those

00:44:48.560 --> 00:44:52.560
kind of, you know, sentiments, values, et cetera?

00:44:53.040 --> 00:44:58.960
Um and um and then you know, or even arguments that humans are sort of

00:44:58.960 --> 00:45:04.890
intrinsically pro-social, altruistic, other regarding inequality averse.

00:45:05.450 --> 00:45:05.850
Right.

00:45:06.010 --> 00:45:10.730
Um, and based upon our long evolution in presumably more egalitarian, smaller scale

00:45:10.890 --> 00:45:11.690
societies.

00:45:11.930 --> 00:45:17.210
And so we have the right motivations, we just gotta sort of push people in the right

00:45:17.210 --> 00:45:18.730
direction for us to realize those.

00:45:19.210 --> 00:45:22.490
We've been corrupted by civilization and capitalism and agriculture.

00:45:22.570 --> 00:45:23.770
All you know, that that narrative.

00:45:24.330 --> 00:45:28.330
We used to be, you know, peaceful and harmonious and and that all changed.

00:45:28.490 --> 00:45:28.890
Yeah.

00:45:29.740 --> 00:45:35.340
So um I think that that sort of noble savage trope gets

00:45:35.980 --> 00:45:38.140
you know gets resurrected all the time.

00:45:38.380 --> 00:45:44.140
It's age old philosophy know philosophers, Rousseau, Montaigne, to the

00:45:44.140 --> 00:45:50.140
present day continue to evoke this idea of the sort of noble savage egalitarianism

00:45:50.140 --> 00:45:53.260
and altruism and was our sort of natural state.

00:45:53.500 --> 00:45:59.210
Uh you see it in movies, um like avatar and what what have you.

00:46:00.890 --> 00:46:06.410
But uh but I think most anthropologists, if not all anthropologists, you know, would you

00:46:06.410 --> 00:46:08.890
know argue that the reality is much more complicated.

00:46:08.970 --> 00:46:14.490
There's interesting variation across smaller scale societies, that egalitarianism is not

00:46:14.490 --> 00:46:15.770
what you think it is.

00:46:16.810 --> 00:46:22.570
And so that talk you mentioned, Dave, that I gave uh is not me sort of like

00:46:22.960 --> 00:46:28.240
you know, introducing these revelations to anthropology, but rather just reflecting what

00:46:28.240 --> 00:46:29.120
people have long known.

00:46:29.280 --> 00:46:35.280
But yet this, I think, especially outside anthropology, uh, in in particular in

00:46:35.280 --> 00:46:41.280
in media and in certain certain places of academia, but not everywhere, that noble savage

00:46:41.280 --> 00:46:44.240
idea continues to rear its head.

00:46:45.550 --> 00:46:51.390
And a lot of my work that was focused on um status and reputation and leadership and

00:46:51.390 --> 00:46:56.750
hierarchy, you know, uh both my work with the Shimane and my reading of ethnographies and

00:46:56.750 --> 00:47:00.990
and of other smaller scale societies suggests to me that people are people and that yes,

00:47:01.070 --> 00:47:04.590
there are societies that are more and less egalitarian.

00:47:05.390 --> 00:47:10.190
But that's those are, you know, there's not any

00:47:10.980 --> 00:47:15.860
massive qualitative differences in the in human society with respect to things like

00:47:16.500 --> 00:47:22.340
status motives or um uh re motives for why we cooperate,

00:47:22.500 --> 00:47:28.180
or uh that the the environments can shape and influence

00:47:28.180 --> 00:47:31.540
those motives can f you know in interesting ways.

00:47:31.620 --> 00:47:36.340
Um can they can result in either more dampened inequalities or very heightened ones.

00:47:36.660 --> 00:47:42.510
Um so um so yeah, my own personal work and my understanding

00:47:42.510 --> 00:47:47.870
of broader ethnographic work on smaller scale societies is maybe, you know, uh

00:47:48.510 --> 00:47:53.870
seem like it'd be important to um do something

00:47:54.110 --> 00:48:00.110
regarding general kind of uh article, if not a book, for Lita's suggestion

00:48:00.190 --> 00:48:01.710
on egalitarianism.

00:48:02.030 --> 00:48:06.160
Um and uh I'm I've been working on this project recently with somebody who works for the

00:48:06.160 --> 00:48:10.080
Hadza, who are um one of the last remaining you know full-time hunter-gatherers, at least a

00:48:10.080 --> 00:48:13.040
good segment of their population still in Tanzania.

00:48:13.200 --> 00:48:15.520
Um his name is Duncan Stubert Hawkes.

00:48:15.760 --> 00:48:21.760
Um so that's been a great partnership to discuss egalitarianism and the our joint knowledge

00:48:21.760 --> 00:48:27.270
of various ethnographies and what you know basically we've been trying to answer two

00:48:27.270 --> 00:48:27.910
questions.

00:48:28.150 --> 00:48:34.150
One is just how egalitarian in are various societies in terms of outcomes with respect to

00:48:34.790 --> 00:48:40.710
social capital, leadership, gender, uh, ritual status,

00:48:40.950 --> 00:48:42.070
reproduction.

00:48:42.390 --> 00:48:47.910
Uh, and then secondly, irrespective of the level of inequality in those things, just how

00:48:47.910 --> 00:48:51.510
egalitarian and motive are members of these societies.

00:48:51.750 --> 00:48:57.700
Uh, versus could you get relatively less inequality

00:48:58.180 --> 00:49:01.540
in these societies via more selfish motives as well?

00:49:02.420 --> 00:49:03.700
That's a really important distinction.

00:49:03.860 --> 00:49:08.180
So there's a difference between the levels of equality or inequality you see in terms of

00:49:08.180 --> 00:49:12.100
outcomes, like who's getting the resources, who's reproducing more than whom.

00:49:12.260 --> 00:49:15.220
And there's also uh variation in terms of people's motives.

00:49:15.300 --> 00:49:18.980
So it could be that everyone has really hierarchical motivations.

00:49:19.140 --> 00:49:24.010
They're really motivated to get status and maintain status, but they're just blocked by

00:49:24.010 --> 00:49:24.970
various forces.

00:49:25.130 --> 00:49:31.050
Maybe people just um gang up on them whenever they try to gain sufficient status over other

00:49:31.050 --> 00:49:31.210
people.

00:49:31.370 --> 00:49:34.490
And so the motive is still there, but the outcomes might not be there.

00:49:34.650 --> 00:49:35.770
Is that what you're getting at?

00:49:36.250 --> 00:49:36.490
Right.

00:49:36.730 --> 00:49:42.090
And um the motives for status can also produce a lot of generosity, too.

00:49:42.970 --> 00:49:47.690
Not just sort of you know self-aggrandizing overtly uh through aggression or whatever, but

00:49:47.770 --> 00:49:53.060
um uh other ways that have in the effect of actually leveling other kinds of inequality

00:49:53.060 --> 00:49:54.900
while boosting your own reputation.

00:49:56.260 --> 00:49:57.620
Yeah, interesting.

00:49:57.940 --> 00:50:03.700
Um so there's this popular idea um pioneered by Christopher Bem, this idea of a

00:50:03.700 --> 00:50:05.620
reverse dominance hierarchy.

00:50:05.940 --> 00:50:10.420
So the narrative there is that other primates have these linear dominance hierarchies where

00:50:10.500 --> 00:50:15.150
you know the alpha at the top picks on, exploits, bullies those at the bottom.

00:50:15.710 --> 00:50:17.070
And in humans, this changed.

00:50:17.230 --> 00:50:18.430
This sort of flipped on its head.

00:50:18.590 --> 00:50:24.270
So an alpha could no longer monopolize resources and mates because coalitions of

00:50:24.270 --> 00:50:28.270
betas and gammas would team up to take down the alpha.

00:50:28.350 --> 00:50:32.830
And so instead of a normal dominance hierarchy, what you had is a reverse dominance

00:50:32.830 --> 00:50:37.860
hierarchy where those who were displaying the most domineering behaviors or attempting to

00:50:37.860 --> 00:50:42.740
monopolize resources would in fact sink to the bottom of the hierarchy because all of the

00:50:42.740 --> 00:50:46.500
other members of the society would gang up on them and bully them.

00:50:46.820 --> 00:50:48.900
Um so I see this this narrative a lot.

00:50:48.980 --> 00:50:50.260
Bem's work is very popular.

00:50:50.500 --> 00:50:53.540
Do you buy this narrative or would would you challenge parts of it?

00:50:53.620 --> 00:50:55.700
What how do you how do you think about this?

00:50:56.170 --> 00:50:59.690
Um yeah thanks for asking because I Bohm I I love his work.

00:50:59.770 --> 00:51:01.210
He was been a huge influence on me.

00:51:01.370 --> 00:51:02.650
I'm sorry, did I miss is it Bohm?

00:51:02.730 --> 00:51:03.450
Is that how it's pronounced?

00:51:03.690 --> 00:51:04.490
I actually don't know.

00:51:05.130 --> 00:51:05.290
Okay.

00:51:05.930 --> 00:51:07.290
I've never met him in person.

00:51:07.610 --> 00:51:09.930
Um I've had it Bohm, but I don't know, yeah.

00:51:10.250 --> 00:51:12.170
Okay, maybe maybe regardless.

00:51:12.490 --> 00:51:16.490
I can't even I mean I have like three pronunciations for my last name, so who yeah, who

00:51:16.570 --> 00:51:16.650
knows?

00:51:20.200 --> 00:51:21.240
a lot of his work too.

00:51:21.320 --> 00:51:25.320
He was he did work with human populations and with primates.

00:51:25.400 --> 00:51:31.400
Um, and he synthesized a lot of that work in this really uh uh novel arguments about

00:51:31.640 --> 00:51:35.960
um status hierarchy and inequality and human motivations regarding status.

00:51:36.360 --> 00:51:40.440
Uh and so that concept of reverse dominance hierarchy, yeah, really resonates with me.

00:51:40.760 --> 00:51:46.610
Um Although I think the extent to which dominance is reversed, like

00:51:46.610 --> 00:51:52.610
those who would just bully others, uh, are pushed down by a

00:51:52.770 --> 00:51:55.410
coalition of group members.

00:51:55.570 --> 00:51:59.810
Um it's I think there's been there's been modeling work supporting this idea by Sergei

00:51:59.810 --> 00:52:05.570
Gavrets and others that individuals are are motivated to intercede uh to prevent

00:52:05.570 --> 00:52:10.940
bullying because of the benefits to themselves of either avoiding future bullying or being

00:52:10.940 --> 00:52:14.060
a group that does not have resources controlled by bullies.

00:52:14.700 --> 00:52:20.700
Um and so very much, I think that's I there's across a lot of smaller scale societies,

00:52:20.780 --> 00:52:26.620
you see these normative emphases on humility, and um uh

00:52:26.780 --> 00:52:32.620
you see a constant kind of uh uh mockery of those that

00:52:32.620 --> 00:52:38.270
try and act with bravado to the point of as Bohm

00:52:38.430 --> 00:52:42.670
as cataloged sometimes uh expulsion from the group or even death.

00:52:43.070 --> 00:52:47.870
Um it hopefully we can talk a bit about gender here, but often a lot of the individuals

00:52:48.270 --> 00:52:53.230
responsible for um calling out bravado are women uh

00:52:53.790 --> 00:52:54.830
towards men.

00:52:55.070 --> 00:52:59.980
Um I can think of this you know great example of this one individual was expelled from his

00:52:59.980 --> 00:53:03.500
campus might have been the Mbuti Central African foragers.

00:53:04.060 --> 00:53:07.900
This women wanted him out of the community because he was hunting too much.

00:53:08.220 --> 00:53:08.620
Right.

00:53:08.700 --> 00:53:13.900
And so that's an example not of um and I mentioned that because it's an example not of

00:53:13.900 --> 00:53:19.020
dominance per se, but of too overt an attempt to gain prestige.

00:53:19.310 --> 00:53:21.550
And this is this is where I think Bomb is locking.

00:53:21.870 --> 00:53:26.190
Is that the idea he was being he was showing off and being braggadocious about his hunting

00:53:26.190 --> 00:53:26.510
ability?

00:53:26.590 --> 00:53:27.230
That's interesting.

00:53:27.710 --> 00:53:27.950
Yeah.

00:53:28.350 --> 00:53:32.670
So that that's where I think Bohm's reverse dominance hierarchy is I like, but also I think

00:53:32.670 --> 00:53:36.030
it misses that uh prestige is this alternative.

00:53:36.270 --> 00:53:42.270
Some vote argue that dichotomy is oversold, but um you know developing a reputation

00:53:42.270 --> 00:53:47.960
for benefiting others as an avenue to status um does mean that there are uh

00:53:48.200 --> 00:53:51.480
hierarchies not based entirely on dominance that can emerge.

00:53:51.560 --> 00:53:57.400
Um, but even prestige too is seen as a a means of gaining status, has its

00:53:57.400 --> 00:53:57.880
limits.

00:53:58.120 --> 00:54:01.640
Um and uh like that example.

00:54:02.280 --> 00:54:03.080
That's fascinating.

00:54:03.240 --> 00:54:09.160
I mean, I I'm I continue to be fascinated by this paradoxical nature of status,

00:54:09.320 --> 00:54:12.280
and I'm I'm continuing to, you know, I'm working on a theoretical paper on this.

00:54:12.440 --> 00:54:17.770
Um, but this idea that uh often the best way to achieve dominance is to rebel against

00:54:17.770 --> 00:54:21.930
dominance or at least create the narrative that that is what one is is attempting to do.

00:54:22.090 --> 00:54:26.570
So if if you gang up on a dominant, you know, would-be alpha, what you are doing is

00:54:26.570 --> 00:54:30.090
dominating that alpha, and you are doing the thing that you are apparently rebelling

00:54:30.090 --> 00:54:30.250
against.

00:54:30.410 --> 00:54:34.010
The same thing goes with this, you know, uh norms uh promoting humility.

00:54:34.170 --> 00:54:38.650
If uh humility gets me status, then there's something kind of paradoxical about that, where

00:54:38.730 --> 00:54:42.410
s displaying my humility in fact makes me look better than other people.

00:54:43.640 --> 00:54:49.560
And so because we have to compete for status within this system of

00:54:49.560 --> 00:54:54.520
norms where overt status seeking is itself socially costly.

00:54:54.600 --> 00:54:55.720
It can lower our status.

00:54:55.880 --> 00:55:01.560
It creates a kind of volatility to our norms, such that once we all uh gain common

00:55:01.560 --> 00:55:05.880
knowledge of the fact that uh we're seeking status or that one particular individual is

00:55:05.880 --> 00:55:11.830
seeking status, It sort of uh rearranges the social hierarchy such that those who are most

00:55:11.830 --> 00:55:16.310
aggressively seeking status will now sink to the bottom or at least uh get lowered.

00:55:16.470 --> 00:55:21.830
I'm I'm curious what you what you think about this idea that um the the the paradoxical

00:55:21.830 --> 00:55:25.750
nature of status hierarchy makes makes it kind of volatile and might generate you know

00:55:25.910 --> 00:55:27.910
cultural variation in in status symbols.

00:55:27.990 --> 00:55:28.870
Do you buy that idea?

00:55:28.950 --> 00:55:31.910
Do you think uh that's that's crazy or is there something there?

00:55:32.420 --> 00:55:34.020
No, I've and I've I've liked your writing.

00:55:34.100 --> 00:55:38.500
That's sort of the nuance you bring to these these topics or novel ideas with regard to the

00:55:38.500 --> 00:55:44.340
sort of signaling or anti-signaling, etc., involved in um status

00:55:44.340 --> 00:55:44.900
competition.

00:55:45.140 --> 00:55:45.700
Yeah.

00:55:46.020 --> 00:55:52.020
That uh you know you gotta be humble but not too humble.

00:55:52.660 --> 00:55:55.620
Um you gotta be a good hunter, but not too good.

00:55:56.260 --> 00:55:59.060
Um generous but not too generous.

00:55:59.780 --> 00:56:05.410
Um and so yeah, there's this you know, but that

00:56:05.410 --> 00:56:07.890
sweet spot varies from society to society.

00:56:08.130 --> 00:56:14.130
And from and the the what you use to generate prestige varies from society to society,

00:56:14.210 --> 00:56:15.090
obvious obviously.

00:56:15.170 --> 00:56:21.010
And um so I think in these more Galitarian societies, uh where

00:56:21.010 --> 00:56:26.610
there's not a lot of wealth to accrue, um people are very interdependent,

00:56:27.090 --> 00:56:33.020
um that and displaying generosity, willingness to help others,

00:56:33.180 --> 00:56:38.300
uh is very key to people's survival and reproduction.

00:56:38.700 --> 00:56:44.460
That um, of course, that's a huge contributor to prestige, but to the extent you're

00:56:44.460 --> 00:56:50.460
overly uh generous, it's showing that maybe, oh, you think you're too good for

00:56:50.460 --> 00:56:52.300
the rest of us and don't need uh us.

00:56:53.100 --> 00:56:58.460
Um and so that then becomes a negative.

00:56:59.130 --> 00:57:00.090
Interesting.

00:57:00.890 --> 00:57:02.330
So yeah.

00:57:03.690 --> 00:57:09.610
There's this famous, you know, the uh paradigmatic example of the status

00:57:09.770 --> 00:57:11.930
loving is called the the meat fight.

00:57:12.170 --> 00:57:18.090
Richard Lee was this researcher of the the Kung uh hunter gatherers in the Kalahari and

00:57:18.490 --> 00:57:24.340
for um it was Christmas and he said you know this is what I celebrate And uh he wanted to

00:57:24.340 --> 00:57:26.660
buy an ox for the community.

00:57:26.900 --> 00:57:31.460
Uh and he was told that it was disgusting, kind of gangriness, whatever they said, we

00:57:31.460 --> 00:57:32.500
wouldn't touch it.

00:57:32.660 --> 00:57:35.300
Um because it was too generous, too presumptive.

00:57:35.780 --> 00:57:41.540
And it would, in fact, that level of generosity creates a form of debt

00:57:41.540 --> 00:57:42.900
that's unpayable.

00:57:43.380 --> 00:57:49.220
Um people are interdependent, require others' aid, and but but it's uh if you can't

00:57:49.220 --> 00:57:53.830
reciprocate, um then you just you're just indebted.

00:57:54.070 --> 00:57:58.870
And um that creates a uh a situation that people don't like.

00:57:58.950 --> 00:58:04.710
That it it it's um uh limits their autonomy,

00:58:04.950 --> 00:58:10.470
um which is I think that's an uh sort of a motive in addition to status that's

00:58:10.470 --> 00:58:14.310
central to egalitarianism and I think human behavior generally.

00:58:15.120 --> 00:58:19.600
Yeah, the actually I'm working on a paper called The Evolution of Autonomy.

00:58:20.240 --> 00:58:22.480
And Chris, we should talk about it.

00:58:23.680 --> 00:58:29.680
And I think, you know, one question then is have people

00:58:29.760 --> 00:58:34.320
but just been wrong about sort of the underlying principle or the North Star of human

00:58:34.320 --> 00:58:40.160
nature that it's not actually about egalitarian outcomes per se, but it's more

00:58:40.160 --> 00:58:44.930
of this combination of I want a reasonable enough amount of status.

00:58:45.010 --> 00:58:45.970
I want autonomy.

00:58:46.130 --> 00:58:47.810
I don't want to be coerced.

00:58:47.890 --> 00:58:51.970
Um, and then you combine that with something like a, you know, just reasonable welfare

00:58:52.130 --> 00:58:52.690
trade-offs.

00:58:52.770 --> 00:58:57.090
Like you said, you know, you have a better idea when you're with the chimane, what's going

00:58:57.090 --> 00:58:58.130
on with the neighbors.

00:58:58.530 --> 00:59:04.210
The scenario where you have more than enough to eat and a neighbor's kid is

00:59:04.210 --> 00:59:10.160
dying of starvation just wouldn't happen, right in that kind of community because if

00:59:10.160 --> 00:59:16.080
you put a normal human who's not impaired in that kind of environmental ecology,

00:59:16.240 --> 00:59:22.000
who's getting the cues of that, they just, you know, that just doesn't that's not gonna

00:59:22.000 --> 00:59:22.240
happen.

00:59:22.320 --> 00:59:24.720
You're gonna say, okay, of course, I'm gonna give him food.

00:59:24.960 --> 00:59:30.000
Um so I kind of wonder sometimes if the motivation behind people wanting

00:59:31.050 --> 00:59:35.850
novel savage thing, the sort of thing that there's there's something I'm missing, or it

00:59:35.850 --> 00:59:36.810
would be better.

00:59:36.970 --> 00:59:41.930
I wonder if it's just the inability to articulate maybe something like

00:59:42.410 --> 00:59:48.170
it's not just the um equal outcomes, but there's something about,

00:59:48.250 --> 00:59:54.250
you know, the structure of modern life that prevents or conversely

00:59:54.250 --> 00:59:59.050
enables terrible things like kids starving to death when there's more than enough food.

01:00:00.300 --> 01:00:00.700
Yeah.

01:00:02.300 --> 01:00:06.140
So part of my interest is understanding Galitarianism, but then also I'm interested in

01:00:06.380 --> 01:00:10.780
given my work with communities like the Chamani that have been undergoing change as they

01:00:10.780 --> 01:00:16.300
are more and more exposed to the market economy and why people come to tolerate inequality

01:00:17.020 --> 01:00:17.740
then, right?

01:00:17.900 --> 01:00:23.660
If it infringes on an individual autonomy or generates debt

01:00:23.660 --> 01:00:25.580
relationships and other, you know.

01:00:28.690 --> 01:00:34.130
and I think there's a lot of different answers, but you're, you know, in traditional

01:00:34.210 --> 01:00:39.090
smaller scale, more egalitarian societies, often people are, you know, highly

01:00:39.090 --> 01:00:43.010
interdependent of each other and have minimal reads of but means of buffering risk other

01:00:43.010 --> 01:00:44.850
than investment in social relationships.

01:00:45.010 --> 01:00:50.530
So lack of private wealth or insurance to buffer risk is one arguably key reason

01:00:50.530 --> 01:00:54.210
why inequalities are remain low.

01:00:54.450 --> 01:01:00.320
Um So the idea there is is without a health insurance company, say, or

01:01:00.320 --> 01:01:06.320
a social safety net, um I have to mitigate the uh the the

01:01:06.320 --> 01:01:07.280
winds of fortune.

01:01:07.360 --> 01:01:11.920
You know, the if I come up short hunting one day every there's a famine, there's a natural

01:01:11.920 --> 01:01:14.880
disaster, there's a flood, you know, shit happens.

01:01:15.040 --> 01:01:17.200
And I need some way to insure against that.

01:01:17.280 --> 01:01:22.670
And if I don't have an insurance company to insure me against those uh catastrophic risks,

01:01:22.910 --> 01:01:24.750
then I need some other way to insure myself.

01:01:24.830 --> 01:01:30.590
And so the the w the the reasoning is that uh we form cooperative networks where we all

01:01:30.590 --> 01:01:35.150
agree to help each other should someone suffer misfortune and that uh is mutually

01:01:35.150 --> 01:01:36.990
beneficial for all of us.

01:01:37.230 --> 01:01:40.350
I d uh is that is that sort of the the logic there?

01:01:40.590 --> 01:01:41.070
Definitely.

01:01:41.230 --> 01:01:41.470
Yeah.

01:01:41.630 --> 01:01:44.910
Uh you know and David's mentioning the kid that's starving you're you know, but it's

01:01:44.990 --> 01:01:47.550
probably your kid will be starving in a week because he didn't get that.

01:01:48.350 --> 01:01:53.580
Um So now that's not to say that there aren't average differences in say

01:01:53.740 --> 01:01:58.540
productivity and ability to produce food and if you're in a hunter-gatherer society, right?

01:01:58.620 --> 01:02:02.860
Or um and uh more mobile hunter-gatherer society.

01:02:02.940 --> 01:02:06.940
There are some we haven't discussed is there are hunter-gatherers that have formal coercive

01:02:06.940 --> 01:02:09.020
hierarchies, but that's a whole other story.

01:02:09.500 --> 01:02:15.310
Um But in the most more egalitarian mobile foragers, uh, yeah, there's there is variation

01:02:15.310 --> 01:02:17.230
in productive ability and skill.

01:02:17.470 --> 01:02:22.110
And uh but yeah, but the best hunters still come home days without food or get sick and

01:02:22.110 --> 01:02:22.590
injured.

01:02:22.670 --> 01:02:28.590
And um uh so it's you know, gaining a reputation for generosity

01:02:28.590 --> 01:02:31.390
is important such that when you need it, you yourself are helped.

01:02:31.600 --> 01:02:31.920
Right.

01:02:32.080 --> 01:02:37.280
And um it also matters in that you know, in other domains, like getting social allies or

01:02:37.280 --> 01:02:42.560
being preferred as a mate, uh, also uh, you know, you benefit from being generous in those

01:02:42.560 --> 01:02:43.040
ways.

01:02:43.520 --> 01:02:49.040
Um such that uh you know the the levels of reproductive

01:02:49.040 --> 01:02:54.960
inequalities in sort of uh realized surviving offspring variation across individuals

01:02:55.200 --> 01:03:01.130
in even more egalitarian forgers is not that different from uh societies with more wealth,

01:03:01.290 --> 01:03:05.210
agricultural societies, um, so based on some work I did.

01:03:05.370 --> 01:03:11.210
So um, but um yeah, but there's also,

01:03:11.290 --> 01:03:17.130
you know, people are enmeshed in this web of of cooperation, but they're, you know, it's

01:03:17.130 --> 01:03:22.810
not just sort of based on pure altruism or necessarily inequality aversion,

01:03:22.890 --> 01:03:28.170
but based on sort of risk minimization um or

01:03:28.760 --> 01:03:32.920
avoiding a reputation for singiness that will come back to hurt you in the future.

01:03:33.080 --> 01:03:38.120
Um or there are models that have been called tolerate scrounging, where like if you happen

01:03:38.120 --> 01:03:43.400
to have a lot at one time, there's less and less motive for you and keeping all everything

01:03:43.400 --> 01:03:45.160
you have as others demand it.

01:03:45.400 --> 01:03:48.840
Um so yeah.

01:03:49.080 --> 01:03:54.790
Uh and these the all these are reasons why we sort of, you know, there's not strong

01:03:54.790 --> 01:03:59.990
evidence that individuals these societies are sort of intrinsically uh inequality averse,

01:04:00.390 --> 01:04:06.310
you know, and um but rather do so for these motives that ultimately have benefits for

01:04:06.310 --> 01:04:10.950
them, um, through giving, sharing, uh, leveling the status of others.

01:04:11.190 --> 01:04:11.350
Right.

01:04:11.640 --> 01:04:12.520
So the idea would be.

01:04:12.920 --> 01:04:13.640
Oh, sorry, David.

01:04:13.720 --> 01:04:19.640
Uh so just the idea would be that um one of the themes of this has been sort of being

01:04:20.760 --> 01:04:26.040
shutting up for a second and letting the the data speak for itself, um, you know, uh or

01:04:26.040 --> 01:04:27.960
like what's true, the adaptations.

01:04:28.120 --> 01:04:34.120
And so the idea would be that it's not that in egalitarian societies, I'm just saying what

01:04:34.120 --> 01:04:39.560
you've already said, but it's not that there's some intrinsic motivation uh that's

01:04:39.560 --> 01:04:45.490
angelic per se, but it's that, you know, even when I'm helping this starving kid, I mean,

01:04:45.570 --> 01:04:46.690
obviously that's a good thing.

01:04:46.770 --> 01:04:49.010
And I'm motivated intrinsically to do that.

01:04:49.170 --> 01:04:54.930
But if we want more of that to happen in a large-scale social world, we

01:04:54.930 --> 01:05:00.610
should not um think that uh attributing a

01:05:00.930 --> 01:05:06.930
very altruistic motivation, as warm and fuzzy as that feels, if

01:05:06.930 --> 01:05:12.620
that's not the correct motivation or why somebody's doing that, or

01:05:12.620 --> 01:05:17.260
it's or it's more precisely described in other ways, then if we actually want to like have

01:05:17.260 --> 01:05:22.860
fewer starving children, we shouldn't just us we shouldn't just be patronizing

01:05:22.860 --> 01:05:24.780
towards that lovely event.

01:05:24.940 --> 01:05:30.540
We should actually be humble about it and actually ask in a very dispassionate way

01:05:30.700 --> 01:05:36.590
what's the best way to characterize what is that person doing, and how can we engage that

01:05:36.590 --> 01:05:42.350
psychology in future situations in a large-scale world where we don't want kids to

01:05:42.350 --> 01:05:42.830
starve?

01:05:43.230 --> 01:05:48.510
And I think charities and organizations understand psychology in ways maybe

01:05:49.550 --> 01:05:54.350
with respect to our psychology of reciprocity and deservingness and

01:05:54.590 --> 01:06:00.110
interconnectedness, so that, you know, uh you don't want to say, hey, give

01:06:00.160 --> 01:06:02.080
$100 to help starving children.

01:06:02.240 --> 01:06:06.160
You want to say, hey, give $100 to help Rokia, this girl, right?

01:06:06.240 --> 01:06:07.680
Uh who needs your help.

01:06:07.840 --> 01:06:12.000
You put a face to it, an individual who is another agent with whom there can be

01:06:12.080 --> 01:06:13.040
relationship.

01:06:13.600 --> 01:06:19.440
Or you like, you know, you put those tiers of giving uh that communicate sort of status.

01:06:19.760 --> 01:06:25.590
Um but I think making the world more interdependent is al is always a

01:06:25.590 --> 01:06:30.710
good thing um with respect to willingness to cooperate.

01:06:30.870 --> 01:06:36.390
Um uh and but I you know one stumbling block is the extent to which you know there's this

01:06:36.390 --> 01:06:38.470
so called deservingness heuristic, right?

01:06:38.630 --> 01:06:44.310
That we often won't give when we believe, even if somebody's needy, when we believe they're

01:06:44.790 --> 01:06:48.710
uh have put poor little minimal effort into rectifying their situation.

01:06:49.240 --> 01:06:50.600
They're lazy and irresponsible.

01:06:50.840 --> 01:06:51.000
Right.

01:06:51.160 --> 01:06:51.400
Yeah.

01:06:51.480 --> 01:06:51.720
Yeah.

01:06:52.600 --> 01:06:57.480
And I wonder and I wonder too, like, I mean, those are but I also wonder to what extent,

01:06:57.640 --> 01:06:59.720
and I I would hope people that have research on this.

01:06:59.800 --> 01:07:03.560
I mean, it's one thing if you're with that person and you see what they're doing, right?

01:07:03.640 --> 01:07:09.080
If they're their hunting partner and you see day-to-day what they're doing versus your

01:07:09.560 --> 01:07:15.390
you experience your your higher social class than somebody else, the variation

01:07:15.390 --> 01:07:21.390
you experience is somebody putting in minimal effort gets to like, you know, a hundred

01:07:21.390 --> 01:07:23.630
units of capital, right?

01:07:23.710 --> 01:07:25.710
Or like, you know, physical capital.

01:07:25.870 --> 01:07:28.110
And I see somebody and they have two.

01:07:28.430 --> 01:07:34.190
So what is an what's a reasonable but probably incorrect inference for that

01:07:34.190 --> 01:07:36.590
evolved psychology is well, they're just lazy.

01:07:36.830 --> 01:07:42.190
But that's somebody who grew up in or is calibrated for this correlation, right?

01:07:42.350 --> 01:07:45.640
That may be invalid in a different environment.

01:07:45.800 --> 01:07:50.280
Even if it's physically proximate, it might be there's just a different, um, you know,

01:07:50.360 --> 01:07:56.280
there's different amount of social and uh physical capital across social class divides, for

01:07:56.280 --> 01:07:56.680
example.

01:07:57.080 --> 01:07:57.400
Yeah.

01:07:57.560 --> 01:07:58.040
Yeah.

01:07:58.280 --> 01:08:04.090
Um I was gonna say that in uh there's evidence in in more

01:08:04.090 --> 01:08:09.930
egalitarian smaller scale societies of you know purposely you know identifiably lazy

01:08:09.930 --> 01:08:12.250
individuals not receiving help.

01:08:12.330 --> 01:08:12.490
Yeah.

01:08:12.810 --> 01:08:18.490
But I think we uh so there's maybe a reason for this heuristic, deservingness heuristic.

01:08:18.730 --> 01:08:24.410
Um but I think we the cues we use to identify deservingness in our large scale

01:08:24.570 --> 01:08:29.210
societies are not um aligned with actual deservingness.

01:08:29.530 --> 01:08:35.300
Uh we we underestimate the amount of luck that governs people's outcomes in their large

01:08:35.380 --> 01:08:38.740
scale society, especially with respect to wealth accrual and all the sort of things you

01:08:38.740 --> 01:08:40.580
need to gain status in society.

01:08:40.660 --> 01:08:44.740
It's heavily based on extensive human capital and money.

01:08:44.980 --> 01:08:50.900
Um if we're getting it wrong in modern societies, in terms of you know figuring

01:08:50.900 --> 01:08:54.900
out whether a recipient deserves help or not, whether they were lazy or not, whether they

01:08:54.900 --> 01:09:00.790
were irresponsible or not, do you find that we're more likely to get it right uh in a more

01:09:00.790 --> 01:09:03.510
ancestral social ecology like like the Chimane?

01:09:04.310 --> 01:09:09.510
Yeah, just uh if you're living with a group of people and you observe them a lot often, um,

01:09:09.670 --> 01:09:15.350
you'll get to know uh who was failing due to luck versus

01:09:15.830 --> 01:09:19.750
um you know bad luck versus uh low effort.

01:09:19.910 --> 01:09:24.950
Um and as a result, I mean people are maybe are gonna avoid low effort more often.

01:09:25.430 --> 01:09:25.670
Sure.

01:09:25.750 --> 01:09:31.720
I mean I I I want to flesh out this this distinction between uh low effort versus bad luck,

01:09:31.880 --> 01:09:37.560
uh, because it's not obvious why uh such a distinction would would be an adaptive

01:09:37.560 --> 01:09:38.760
distinction to make.

01:09:39.080 --> 01:09:44.840
Um so uh the logic there, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that uh if

01:09:45.080 --> 01:09:50.890
if uh this behavior evolved to minimize risk such that if we're all

01:09:50.890 --> 01:09:56.090
equally vulnerable to this risk, we can all work together to uh insure each other against

01:09:56.090 --> 01:09:58.970
this risk by helping each other out when we suffer it.

01:09:59.050 --> 01:10:04.170
Um, we all mutually benefit uh insofar as we can pay a small cost to deliver a large

01:10:04.170 --> 01:10:04.650
benefit.

01:10:04.810 --> 01:10:08.730
Assume that we're assuming that we're equally likely to receive those benefits and pay

01:10:08.730 --> 01:10:09.290
those costs.

01:10:09.370 --> 01:10:12.890
If the if the benefits are larger than the cost, then we all benefit and we all come out

01:10:12.890 --> 01:10:14.570
ahead in Darwinian terms.

01:10:14.730 --> 01:10:20.460
Um but the crucial assumption there is that we're all equally likely to uh suffer the

01:10:20.460 --> 01:10:20.780
risk.

01:10:21.020 --> 01:10:25.740
As soon as you take out that assumption, it no longer necessarily becomes adaptive to

01:10:25.740 --> 01:10:27.500
participate in this cooperative arrangement.

01:10:27.660 --> 01:10:32.060
So if it's entirely down to skill, say the only reason why some people have more than

01:10:32.060 --> 01:10:36.700
others is because they're better at, say, hunting or foraging, then the better hunters and

01:10:36.700 --> 01:10:41.100
foragers do not necessarily come out ahead in Darwinian terms by sharing with the less

01:10:41.100 --> 01:10:43.180
productive hunters and foragers.

01:10:43.340 --> 01:10:49.170
And so this distinction between uh effort versus luck is a very uh sensible

01:10:49.170 --> 01:10:53.970
distinction to make if you're trying to calibrate altruistic behavior towards situations

01:10:53.970 --> 01:10:58.130
where it is likely to pay off in Darwinian terms, compared to situations where it is not

01:10:58.130 --> 01:10:59.170
likely to pay off.

01:10:59.410 --> 01:11:01.010
Do you do you buy that logic?

01:11:01.730 --> 01:11:05.010
Yeah, I mean, why do good hunters share?

01:11:05.250 --> 01:11:10.050
Uh is why should they do that if um they're doing generally better?

01:11:10.130 --> 01:11:15.820
And I think it it uh to the extent that good hunters themselves

01:11:15.820 --> 01:11:21.740
don't suffer similar levels of risk, even if they are slightly better hunters than

01:11:21.740 --> 01:11:22.860
the next person.

01:11:23.020 --> 01:11:28.540
Um there's there just in terms of risk reduction, there's less motive to engage in

01:11:28.540 --> 01:11:31.740
sharing um or aiding those with less than them.

01:11:32.140 --> 01:11:38.130
Um uh regardless of, you know, whether those with less

01:11:38.130 --> 01:11:43.010
have were, you know, was a result of um bad luck or low effort.

01:11:43.170 --> 01:11:46.690
Um I don't know if that's part of what you're driving at.

01:11:46.850 --> 01:11:50.290
Uh that distinction doesn't matter if you have more or why share at all.

01:11:50.450 --> 01:11:54.610
Um, regardless of whether the person that has less is is a result of bad luck or low

01:11:54.610 --> 01:11:55.250
effort.

01:11:55.490 --> 01:12:00.320
Um in that case, you know, they're beyond risk reduction, they're there are just their

01:12:00.400 --> 01:12:04.000
benefits to status gain and developing a reputation through through signaling or for

01:12:04.160 --> 01:12:07.120
partner choice of your commitment to others.

01:12:07.360 --> 01:12:09.040
So that's one way out of that.

01:12:09.280 --> 01:12:15.280
Um so um can I can I push

01:12:15.280 --> 01:12:16.000
on one thing too?

01:12:16.080 --> 01:12:18.400
Just but there's also like kids and old people, right?

01:12:18.480 --> 01:12:22.320
I mean, there's also this thing of like, I know how much a kid can do, I know how much like

01:12:22.400 --> 01:12:24.080
my grandparents can do.

01:12:24.400 --> 01:12:30.250
Um So there's presumably some understanding of, you know, it's not that the person who

01:12:30.250 --> 01:12:34.650
used to be a good hunter who's now old and can't hunt at their old level, it's not that

01:12:34.650 --> 01:12:38.410
they're unlucky for the last 20 years, right?

01:12:38.490 --> 01:12:42.010
It's that they've changed their competence has changed, right?

01:12:42.170 --> 01:12:45.050
And likewise for the kids for different reasons.

01:12:45.290 --> 01:12:50.650
How, you know, the idea of luck and laziness already

01:12:50.650 --> 01:12:53.820
assumes kind of accounting for those differences.

01:12:54.300 --> 01:12:57.820
How do you understand those differences being accounted for?

01:12:58.380 --> 01:13:03.500
Well, you you know, mentioned older people whose productivity declines are not necessarily

01:13:03.500 --> 01:13:05.260
due to low effort, right?

01:13:05.340 --> 01:13:07.820
But change benefit other ways, right?

01:13:07.900 --> 01:13:09.500
Like like maybe that's part of the answer, right?

01:13:09.660 --> 01:13:13.340
As they're providing other things like alloparenting knowledge, skills, social skills,

01:13:13.580 --> 01:13:13.740
right?

01:13:13.820 --> 01:13:17.980
So it's it's multidimensional, but we're just we're using hunting as an example.

01:13:18.140 --> 01:13:19.100
So yeah, sorry.

01:13:19.490 --> 01:13:25.010
But while, you know, I think older people are often r receive respect, the oldest people um

01:13:25.650 --> 01:13:31.170
are often, you know, their s um social networks decline in

01:13:31.170 --> 01:13:31.730
size.

01:13:31.890 --> 01:13:37.890
Um, they ex from work we'd done with the Chimane found that older individuals can suffer

01:13:37.890 --> 01:13:42.690
increased anxiety and depression given their fears about their low productivity and l and

01:13:42.690 --> 01:13:44.770
decreasing value to others.

01:13:45.410 --> 01:13:51.200
Um so uh yeah, so their uh their ability to

01:13:51.200 --> 01:13:55.600
engage in sharing based principally on reciprocity, you know, is declined.

01:13:55.840 --> 01:14:00.000
Um that's not to say they're not recipients of aid that's motivated for other by other

01:14:00.000 --> 01:14:05.280
reasons, um kinship, um signaling, whatever.

01:14:05.440 --> 01:14:11.440
Um so yeah, um I think that you know

01:14:11.680 --> 01:14:16.560
this is another misnomer that the oldest people in traditional societies are the most

01:14:16.790 --> 01:14:18.790
respected, highest status people.

01:14:19.110 --> 01:14:21.990
Older, but not the oldest, has been my experience.

01:14:22.070 --> 01:14:23.990
Uh in my reading in various ethnographies.

01:14:24.070 --> 01:14:28.070
I mean, there are exceptions where the the oldest, yeah, retain high levels of respect.

01:14:28.150 --> 01:14:33.910
But um I think as productivity wanes um and your

01:14:34.150 --> 01:14:38.710
your ability to be mobile wanes, then your your status declines.

01:14:38.950 --> 01:14:44.340
Um yeah, and these aren't, you know, the oldest of the old aren't leading community

01:14:44.340 --> 01:14:44.660
meetings.

01:14:44.740 --> 01:14:49.140
They're not um in a lot of more traditional societies.

01:14:49.540 --> 01:14:50.020
Yeah.

01:14:50.260 --> 01:14:55.060
There there's also a a political dimension to this that I've been interested in lately,

01:14:55.140 --> 01:15:00.180
where this distinction between bad luck versus low effort or low productivity or whatever

01:15:00.340 --> 01:15:04.260
is also extremely politically relevant if you're if there are conflicts over who deserves

01:15:04.260 --> 01:15:05.780
resources and who doesn't.

01:15:05.940 --> 01:15:11.930
Um and uh your attributions about bad luck versus low effort can be hugely biased by

01:15:11.930 --> 01:15:14.250
your allegiances to the person in question.

01:15:14.410 --> 01:15:19.770
So if it's my brother or my ally and they uh have, you know, low access to resources, you

01:15:19.770 --> 01:15:23.610
know, not enough food, whatever, I'm gonna be more motivated to say it was bad luck.

01:15:23.770 --> 01:15:28.170
But if it was my enemy or my rival, then I'm gonna say, oh, he's lazy, he's irresponsible.

01:15:28.330 --> 01:15:33.050
And so there are these political considerations as well that shift how you interpret the

01:15:33.050 --> 01:15:37.140
situation and how political coalitions can gain more resources for themselves while

01:15:37.140 --> 01:15:41.940
excluding rivals from valued resources by exploiting this part of our psychology.

01:15:42.180 --> 01:15:47.060
Do you do you buy this idea that that the this distinction between bad luck and low effort

01:15:47.060 --> 01:15:48.500
is is a political weapon?

01:15:48.580 --> 01:15:51.860
And do you see any examples of that in in the Chimane?

01:15:52.580 --> 01:15:54.740
I see examples of that every day in my life, I think.

01:15:55.060 --> 01:15:55.380
Wow.

01:15:57.220 --> 01:15:57.940
Yeah, yeah.

01:15:58.100 --> 01:16:03.380
Uh no, I I know I love uh you I I've enjoyed your recent pieces on coalitional kind of

01:16:04.030 --> 01:16:10.030
uh coalitional psychology driving our politics in a lot of ways and um yeah uh

01:16:10.110 --> 01:16:15.790
yeah certainly framing of deservingness based on uh alliances political

01:16:15.790 --> 01:16:21.150
repercussions oh yeah i think that's in any the part of the politics of any society um

01:16:21.950 --> 01:16:27.950
and including the chimane uh i've done some work on alliances there um and

01:16:28.190 --> 01:16:33.840
uh you know who forms alliances with whom, and it's often based on past

01:16:33.840 --> 01:16:38.400
relationships and um who mutual enemies and things like that.

01:16:38.480 --> 01:16:42.960
And um sort of based on a triadic kind of understanding of the way that Dave himself has

01:16:42.960 --> 01:16:44.400
modeled these things too.

01:16:45.040 --> 01:16:46.880
Um we'll pay you after this, Chris.

01:16:47.360 --> 01:16:53.360
Yeah, I'm trying to realize this also occurred to me, I don't know, maybe this is sort of

01:16:53.440 --> 01:16:59.390
a left field, but um the philosopher sort of government uh

01:16:59.790 --> 01:17:05.630
uh political science uh uh Harvard professor Sandel, I think has

01:17:05.630 --> 01:17:11.550
written, among others, has discussed the idea that, you know, um everything is luck

01:17:11.630 --> 01:17:15.710
uh in s in some ways, and that you know, you're born in the right place of the right genes.

01:17:15.790 --> 01:17:20.910
And so to talk about even low effort as as somehow not a product of luck.

01:17:21.230 --> 01:17:23.300
I mean, what isn't a product of luck?

01:17:23.380 --> 01:17:24.740
So it might be an extreme.

01:17:24.820 --> 01:17:29.380
It's part of his attack on meritocracy, and I wanted to claim, you know, who deserves what.

01:17:31.940 --> 01:17:36.900
And I think, you know, in these smaller scale more Galitarian societies,

01:17:37.220 --> 01:17:43.220
distribution is maybe um least meritocratic

01:17:43.430 --> 01:17:48.870
uh in the sense of like going towards those typically need because most people are need

01:17:49.270 --> 01:17:50.390
most of the time.

01:17:50.630 --> 01:17:56.390
Um and so um it's not just privileging those that, you know, are

01:17:56.550 --> 01:17:59.190
the best hardest workers get the most.

01:17:59.590 --> 01:18:05.590
Um I'm wondering if if maybe this luck versus low effort is

01:18:05.590 --> 01:18:07.620
the wrong way to think of it.

01:18:08.260 --> 01:18:11.540
Because it's not necessarily luck per se.

01:18:11.780 --> 01:18:15.460
Really, the distinction that we should have evolved to care about from an evolutionary

01:18:15.460 --> 01:18:20.580
perspective is is there variation in susceptibility to this risk?

01:18:20.820 --> 01:18:24.660
So if there's no variation and we're all equally susceptible to it, then that's a that's a

01:18:24.660 --> 01:18:27.300
situation where reciprocal altruism is going to pay off.

01:18:27.540 --> 01:18:33.220
But if there is inequality in our susceptibility to this risk, then it uh uh it no longer

01:18:33.220 --> 01:18:37.890
pays pays off uh as much or at least as straightforwardly for the people who are at reduced

01:18:37.890 --> 01:18:41.650
susceptibility for the risk to give to the people who are higher susceptibility to the

01:18:41.650 --> 01:18:41.890
risk.

01:18:42.130 --> 01:18:47.810
So really what we should be f uh focusing on is uh uh variation in um

01:18:48.050 --> 01:18:52.290
uh in uh vulnerability to this sh shortfall rather than luck per se.

01:18:52.450 --> 01:18:55.330
I mean it sort of translates to luck when you think about it but when you start to think

01:18:55.330 --> 01:19:00.180
about how genes themselves are a kind of luck, then the this logic starts to fall apart.

01:19:00.260 --> 01:19:04.980
And maybe maybe it's a more fruitful way to think about this in terms of variation and risk

01:19:04.980 --> 01:19:05.540
susceptibility.

01:19:05.620 --> 01:19:08.340
Do you think do you think that's a better way to think about it?

01:19:08.820 --> 01:19:09.060
Yeah.

01:19:09.300 --> 01:19:13.780
I I would think that wouldn't you predict where there's greater variation across

01:19:13.780 --> 01:19:19.230
individuals and there's susceptibility to risk, you'd expect more reciprocity because you'd

01:19:19.230 --> 01:19:24.990
want to especially then figure out who's gonna be more reliable partner based on um

01:19:25.150 --> 01:19:27.870
higher risk, uh lower risk profile, right?

01:19:28.030 --> 01:19:32.830
Whereas if people have similar levels of risk, there's less need to um

01:19:33.630 --> 01:19:37.950
engage in reciprocity, direct reciprocity per se.

01:19:38.270 --> 01:19:41.120
Um there's also this complication.

01:19:41.280 --> 01:19:46.800
Sorry, Chris, I just like there's this complication too of like the the risk, risky things,

01:19:46.880 --> 01:19:52.160
like the distribution of high packets of high resource high value are just more distributed

01:19:52.160 --> 01:19:53.680
and just clumpier, right?

01:19:53.840 --> 01:19:54.400
Like in the world.

01:19:54.560 --> 01:20:00.000
Like error, we don't consider like air high value uh because it's just everywhere.

01:20:00.160 --> 01:20:04.240
I mean, unless you're you know in space and then it is actually a high variance thing.

01:20:04.400 --> 01:20:10.070
But um so so even the idea of sort of what um what what

01:20:10.070 --> 01:20:14.070
counts as high variance is not even just attached to an individual per se.

01:20:14.150 --> 01:20:19.910
I mean it can be, but it's also, you know, this is classically the idea of low variance

01:20:20.070 --> 01:20:25.830
resources like the things you can just like dig up a tuber, those are not shared, but

01:20:25.830 --> 01:20:29.510
high variance things like meat um are right.

01:20:29.820 --> 01:20:30.300
That's right.

01:20:30.380 --> 01:20:30.620
Yeah.

01:20:30.860 --> 01:20:31.020
Yeah.

01:20:31.260 --> 01:20:34.300
I mean, yes, I'm I'm not so much thinking about the clumpiness of the resource.

01:20:34.380 --> 01:20:39.820
So just to give a concrete example, let's say uh uh we all are vulnerable to this problem

01:20:39.820 --> 01:20:41.180
of our homes collapsing.

01:20:41.340 --> 01:20:45.340
And let's just say for the sake of argument that that is entirely a product of how good of

01:20:45.340 --> 01:20:47.580
a craftsman you are and when you're building your home.

01:20:47.740 --> 01:20:49.740
If you're a good craftsman, your home's not going to collapse.

01:20:49.820 --> 01:20:53.980
If you're bad at building homes, if you're careless or or stupid or whatever, your home is

01:20:53.980 --> 01:20:55.260
more likely to collapse.

01:20:55.420 --> 01:21:01.250
Uh in that case, it doesn't necessarily benefit the good craftsman to help the

01:21:01.250 --> 01:21:03.090
bad craftsman, right?

01:21:03.490 --> 01:21:08.850
But if your home collapsing is entirely uh a product of luck or a luck that we're all

01:21:08.850 --> 01:21:13.090
equally likely to experience, say, you know, a storm or bad weather conditions or or

01:21:13.090 --> 01:21:17.890
whatever, then it it's it creates the situation where where we want to create a reciprocal

01:21:18.050 --> 01:21:20.290
altruistic arrangement.

01:21:21.020 --> 01:21:21.340
Okay.

01:21:21.740 --> 01:21:25.660
Uh based on that anecdote, yes, I can see that see the logic there.

01:21:25.820 --> 01:21:31.420
Um although David uh in the person uh but but also maybe the home

01:21:31.420 --> 01:21:35.580
builder does build there and says, Hey, let me actually help you next time because then

01:21:35.580 --> 01:21:40.220
that other person did that's the that's the prestige, right?

01:21:40.300 --> 01:21:43.740
Where it's sort of like that person who's not very good at building homes.

01:21:43.820 --> 01:21:47.420
If like let's say I'm the incompetent home builder, I don't want my home to collapse on my

01:21:47.420 --> 01:21:48.770
kid and hurt them.

01:21:49.010 --> 01:21:54.530
So it's actually I'm I'm I intrinsically value you because you've helped me in that

01:21:55.010 --> 01:21:55.730
I'm willing to.

01:21:55.890 --> 01:22:01.410
So you can also then as long as you helping me, the

01:22:01.410 --> 01:22:06.690
incompetent one, is conditional on me ratcheting up some benefit in return,

01:22:07.170 --> 01:22:09.730
then it becomes a reciprocity thing, right?

01:22:09.890 --> 01:22:15.420
Where where I'm I'm conferring more status to you, more benefits to you, I'm indebted to

01:22:15.420 --> 01:22:18.780
you, or I want to return in in maybe not in kind.

01:22:18.860 --> 01:22:23.260
Maybe there's things I'm better at than you, or maybe I can just help you out in other

01:22:23.260 --> 01:22:23.820
ways.

01:22:24.060 --> 01:22:29.740
Um it's exactly right that I think if you look just across the commodity, if you just hold

01:22:29.900 --> 01:22:34.780
constant and just say building houses, it's not in the best home builder's interest to help

01:22:34.780 --> 01:22:36.460
the poor home builders.

01:22:36.700 --> 01:22:42.510
But if you add, there's actually multiple currencies uh to the

01:22:42.510 --> 01:22:47.710
world and you tr you're you're tracking whether or not the uh the

01:22:47.710 --> 01:22:53.710
indebtedness or reciprocity is is possible and happening,

01:22:54.030 --> 01:22:59.550
then you can see where that would open up and it would be uh really good for me to

01:22:59.550 --> 01:23:00.030
represent.

01:23:00.110 --> 01:23:01.070
You're actually better than me.

01:23:01.230 --> 01:23:03.230
Hey David, please help me build my home.

01:23:03.310 --> 01:23:04.110
That's awesome.

01:23:04.640 --> 01:23:08.400
And I'm super happy to do it because you can do better than I can do.

01:23:08.560 --> 01:23:13.120
You know, then you start to get this this market or this division of labor, right?

01:23:13.440 --> 01:23:13.600
Right.

01:23:13.680 --> 01:23:13.920
Yeah.

01:23:14.000 --> 01:23:14.880
No, I totally buy that.

01:23:14.960 --> 01:23:20.960
So the argument is um that direct reciprocity uh for for the specific good

01:23:20.960 --> 01:23:22.160
or service being provided.

01:23:22.240 --> 01:23:26.880
So that I help you with uh repair your home if it collapses, you help me repair my home if

01:23:26.880 --> 01:23:27.520
it collapses.

01:23:27.680 --> 01:23:31.040
If my home is not going to collapse and yours is, then that arrangement doesn't benefit me

01:23:31.040 --> 01:23:31.200
at all.

01:23:31.600 --> 01:23:31.760
Right.

01:23:32.150 --> 01:23:36.230
But indirect reciprocity could still evolve where I help you repair your home and I get

01:23:36.230 --> 01:23:40.550
some other uh benefit in return maybe high status for being a good craftsman or or or

01:23:40.550 --> 01:23:40.870
whatever.

01:23:40.950 --> 01:23:45.270
So the argument applies to direct reciprocity rather than indirect reciprocity.

01:23:45.510 --> 01:23:49.910
And there's a lot of great work on how those different currencies matter more or less as

01:23:49.910 --> 01:23:51.590
the socioecology changes.

01:23:52.150 --> 01:23:58.150
Um so in in very mobile hunter-gatherers, uh actually there seems to be greater

01:23:58.150 --> 01:24:02.520
s um evidence of demand sharing,

01:24:04.200 --> 01:24:08.520
where you know you're sharing based upon diminishing returns to hoarding a resource that

01:24:08.520 --> 01:24:10.280
you've just got, just captured.

01:24:10.600 --> 01:24:15.560
Single reciprocity is stronger where people are congregating in camps together for longer

01:24:15.560 --> 01:24:16.440
periods of time.

01:24:25.210 --> 01:24:30.730
uh as societies get more material wealth, the sort of signaling of personal

01:24:30.890 --> 01:24:36.890
ability becomes a much larger sort of motive than reciprocity as individual

01:24:36.890 --> 01:24:42.570
wealth diminishes uh the need to s insure against risk through social

01:24:42.570 --> 01:24:48.570
relationships, then you get a lot of sharing as sort of demonstration of

01:24:48.570 --> 01:24:52.410
skill uh or ability or whatever or competitiveness.

01:24:52.730 --> 01:24:53.660
Um Interesting.

01:24:53.900 --> 01:24:59.740
So yeah, the the way these different motives for sharing uh as they relate to risk

01:24:59.900 --> 01:25:02.300
shift with the the ecology in these kinds of ways.

01:25:02.380 --> 01:25:06.380
The ability to first of all the what's the nature of the risk is declining or going up and

01:25:06.460 --> 01:25:10.620
um how is that risk can it be mitigated through means other than social relationships.

01:25:10.780 --> 01:25:14.780
And also what's the opportunity to develop reciprocity with particular people over time.

01:25:15.790 --> 01:25:16.670
Is there any work?

01:25:16.910 --> 01:25:21.550
Is there any work like there's been like this long history of political science that's sort

01:25:21.550 --> 01:25:25.070
of implicitly assumed things about this psychology?

01:25:25.310 --> 01:25:30.830
Is there any ethnographically informed political science from your perspective?

01:25:30.990 --> 01:25:33.470
Or is this what you the book that you need to write?

01:25:33.630 --> 01:25:37.950
Uh I mean, I don't I don't want to oversimplify and care or over characterize an entire

01:25:37.950 --> 01:25:38.190
field.

01:25:38.270 --> 01:25:42.270
I'm sure there is, but I mean, in your perspective, have you looked into this literature or

01:25:42.510 --> 01:25:43.630
talked to people?

01:25:44.360 --> 01:25:50.280
Uh so um the political science of smaller scale societies

01:25:50.360 --> 01:25:50.680
generally.

01:25:51.000 --> 01:25:55.080
Or just I mean, even you know, even just sort of people being like, well, let's like what

01:25:55.160 --> 01:25:58.280
what is a how do we build a more just fair society?

01:25:58.840 --> 01:26:04.840
Um, you know, like that is often implicitly like the overriding goal of a lot of political

01:26:04.840 --> 01:26:05.400
theory.

01:26:05.560 --> 01:26:06.040
Oh, yeah.

01:26:06.200 --> 01:26:11.490
Um, and you know, a lot of that implicitly appeals to, well, what are the motivations of

01:26:11.490 --> 01:26:14.290
people or I mean what you're describing is it's complicated, right?

01:26:14.370 --> 01:26:15.410
Like what's the resource?

01:26:15.570 --> 01:26:21.410
What's the um and how do you so if there are people who want to um respect the

01:26:21.410 --> 01:26:26.370
complexity of it and understand how the system works, to then say, for example, like, you

01:26:26.370 --> 01:26:31.200
know, how do we encourage people to like create a society where people aren't starving or

01:26:31.200 --> 01:26:32.960
have all the medical care they need.

01:26:33.920 --> 01:26:38.080
Is there work that's sort of bridging those two areas, or is that not yet happening?

01:26:38.640 --> 01:26:42.800
No, I think there are there are a number of political scientists that have um been

01:26:42.800 --> 01:26:47.520
interested in the work that like evolutionary anthropologists have done in in sort of

01:26:47.680 --> 01:26:53.510
evolutionary motives for for giving, and then have tried to leverage that to understand

01:26:53.750 --> 01:26:59.670
why um, you know, policies succeed or fail or institutions succeed or fail at a

01:26:59.750 --> 01:27:01.510
in a large-scale society setting.

01:27:01.990 --> 01:27:07.510
Like Michael Bank Peterson, you know, the somebody that you know we know, uh, that has

01:27:07.510 --> 01:27:11.830
commented on this kind of thing with regard to the sort of uh deserving that her d

01:27:11.990 --> 01:27:15.270
deservingness heuristic and people's views about welfare.

01:27:15.910 --> 01:27:21.860
Um I think uh one thing our institutions, this is something Joe Henrik has written a lot

01:27:21.860 --> 01:27:27.140
about is and done you know ex sort of experimental games in different societies to that he

01:27:27.140 --> 01:27:31.860
argues are consistent with this point, is that we've generated institutions that increase

01:27:31.940 --> 01:27:33.380
trust among strangers.

01:27:33.540 --> 01:27:39.140
And that's one thing that we talk about the the generosity and its motives in terms of risk

01:27:39.140 --> 01:27:45.050
reduction or um to in terms of demand sharing or signaling in these smaller

01:27:45.210 --> 01:27:46.090
scale societies.

01:27:46.250 --> 01:27:51.450
But in the context of experiments, members of these societies are often the least likely to

01:27:52.250 --> 01:27:53.850
give to an anonymous other.

01:28:09.700 --> 01:28:15.620
uh you know mean in some ways we're at least with non uh anonymous

01:28:15.620 --> 01:28:17.540
strangers we may not meet that often.

01:28:17.700 --> 01:28:23.300
Uh in practice, we're more likely to uh be generous than our members of these more

01:28:23.300 --> 01:28:24.500
egalitarian societies.

01:28:24.660 --> 01:28:30.340
Um the idea is that like an anonymous other, um that's when you're growing up in a world

01:28:30.340 --> 01:28:35.490
where you know everybody, then if it's an anonymous other, you're gonna have a low, you

01:28:35.490 --> 01:28:40.130
have no idea, yeah, it may be a low trust, whatever, but in in the the idea is that there's

01:28:40.130 --> 01:28:43.570
certain um institutions that do a better or worse job.

01:28:43.810 --> 01:28:48.130
I can say living in Northern Europe versus the US, Northern Europe does much better.

01:28:48.210 --> 01:28:53.890
Like I actually I'm like, I feel like part of my reverse culture shock is uh I I'm feeling

01:28:53.890 --> 01:28:59.620
a less trusty uh So

01:28:59.780 --> 01:29:00.820
I'm feeling that right now.

01:29:00.900 --> 01:29:04.980
I'm sort of recalibrating to US versus Northern Europe on that.

01:29:07.780 --> 01:29:10.660
Yeah, good example of evoked culture happening inside your head.

01:29:11.060 --> 01:29:11.300
Exactly.

01:29:11.380 --> 01:29:12.900
Yes, no, exactly.

01:29:13.060 --> 01:29:13.860
I'm like, yeah.

01:29:16.990 --> 01:29:22.750
we we often ask people how they got interested in evolutionary social sciences

01:29:23.470 --> 01:29:29.230
um did you did you um have a uh we we've kind of

01:29:29.390 --> 01:29:32.990
quote unquote call these are people's origin stories because sometimes people had you know

01:29:33.070 --> 01:29:38.350
sort of a a journey to find it um for you how did you get into this

01:29:39.500 --> 01:29:42.540
Um, I was a history major at first in college.

01:29:43.420 --> 01:29:49.260
Uh and um, you know, I liked the classes, great teachers, and but I was

01:29:49.420 --> 01:29:54.860
you know, we're learning about the fall of you know um Constant Constantinople, whatever it

01:29:54.860 --> 01:29:59.740
becomes this, you know, then uh among other things, and it's like, well, why?

01:30:00.030 --> 01:30:02.670
Why do humans engage in warfare generally?

01:30:02.830 --> 01:30:05.230
Why are we so tied to symbols?

01:30:05.550 --> 01:30:08.190
And why do those motivate war?

01:30:08.270 --> 01:30:09.310
Uh, just to take an example.

01:30:09.390 --> 01:30:14.990
So extrapolating out those larger questions about human behavior um just seemed

01:30:14.990 --> 01:30:18.510
missing from the history classes I was I was taking.

01:30:18.830 --> 01:30:24.600
Um and I'd also been interested in biology in high school, especially, and I was sort of

01:30:24.600 --> 01:30:27.240
unsure what direction I'd take in college and went the history route.

01:30:27.400 --> 01:30:31.800
And then one day I was with my roommate leafing through the course catalog and came across

01:30:31.800 --> 01:30:33.320
biological anthropology.

01:30:33.480 --> 01:30:39.160
And it was like primates and like Frank Marlowe, who'd worked with the Hadza, was uh part

01:30:39.160 --> 01:30:40.760
of the department there at the time.

01:30:40.920 --> 01:30:46.760
And um, you could do paleogenomics and all kinds of things

01:30:46.760 --> 01:30:52.730
that sort of collectively helped our tools to help us understand human origins and

01:30:52.730 --> 01:30:55.450
the evolution of our behavior and psychology.

01:30:56.730 --> 01:30:58.490
And I was like, wow, this is it.

01:30:58.650 --> 01:31:03.770
And then like I think I had read at the time was read or was reading Gun Germs and Steel,

01:31:03.850 --> 01:31:09.610
the sort of that like gateway drug for a lot of people, uh, to this area by Jared Diamond

01:31:09.690 --> 01:31:15.130
and um and uh Steven Pinker,

01:31:15.610 --> 01:31:18.410
uh um how the mind works.

01:31:18.820 --> 01:31:19.620
So yeah.

01:31:19.780 --> 01:31:23.620
Um, so yeah, so then I switched to that as an undergrad.

01:31:23.780 --> 01:31:25.700
I wasn't sure I was gonna go to grad school.

01:31:25.780 --> 01:31:29.540
Uh I I started off looking into like environmental consulting kinds of jobs after I

01:31:29.540 --> 01:31:34.180
graduated from college, but I kept reading in the area.

01:31:34.980 --> 01:31:40.890
Um and then also because uh this is uh at

01:31:40.890 --> 01:31:44.650
least a story I tell myself, but Santa Barbara continued to be on my mind for a couple of

01:31:44.650 --> 01:31:44.970
reasons.

01:31:45.210 --> 01:31:50.970
One was that it was mentioned to me uh when I'd read, uh I think it was Matt

01:31:50.970 --> 01:31:55.610
Riley's Origins of Virtue for a course in college, and two being Cosmeties came up.

01:31:55.690 --> 01:31:59.530
I'm like, what this sort of you know, discussion of some of their work was just fascinating

01:31:59.530 --> 01:32:00.090
to me.

01:32:00.330 --> 01:32:03.240
Um and they were at Santa Barbara.

01:32:03.320 --> 01:32:07.240
And then I also remember in high school at my guidance counselor's office, we had like VHS

01:32:07.240 --> 01:32:09.720
tapes that were promo videos for different colleges.

01:32:09.960 --> 01:32:14.280
And I remember the Santa Barbara one had people like on the beach coming in surfing.

01:32:14.440 --> 01:32:14.840
Yes.

01:32:15.080 --> 01:32:17.320
Uh so I was like check.

01:32:17.480 --> 01:32:17.560
Yeah.

01:32:17.720 --> 01:32:18.600
It doesn't, yeah, yeah.

01:32:19.080 --> 01:32:19.480
Good environment.

01:32:20.360 --> 01:32:20.680
Winter.

01:32:20.760 --> 01:32:20.920
Yeah.

01:32:21.000 --> 01:32:22.920
You're like, yeah, Boston.

01:32:23.000 --> 01:32:23.240
Yeah.

01:32:23.560 --> 01:32:24.360
So I was like, you know what?

01:32:24.440 --> 01:32:25.160
Let's apply there.

01:32:25.240 --> 01:32:30.950
And I um and uh I didn't know Mike Gervin uh really was just starting out there and

01:32:31.110 --> 01:32:35.510
but that was tended you know ended up being just such a benefit uh coming into the

01:32:35.510 --> 01:32:37.830
beginning of that major project he started with the Chimane.

01:32:38.550 --> 01:32:43.350
So that's where uh you know my sort of trajectory um is uh

01:32:44.070 --> 01:32:44.710
yeah.

01:32:44.950 --> 01:32:45.190
Yeah.

01:32:45.430 --> 01:32:49.430
Wanting to know the big stories about humans and our, you know, wanting the bigger bigger

01:32:49.590 --> 01:32:54.560
explanations, despite the reductionism, that's sort of the the area which I uh the land in

01:32:54.560 --> 01:32:55.520
which I love to operate.

01:32:55.600 --> 01:32:59.680
Um I love the details too, but the the larger stories are more appealing to me.

01:33:00.000 --> 01:33:05.520
Yeah, it is a common thread I've noticed that people are constantly bringing up the need to

01:33:05.520 --> 01:33:06.480
ask why.

01:33:06.640 --> 01:33:08.400
Um why, why, why, why.

01:33:08.480 --> 01:33:13.120
I my daughter is at the stage of her development where she asks me why, why, why until I

01:33:13.120 --> 01:33:16.080
get down to like the basics of metaphysics and ontology.

01:33:16.400 --> 01:33:22.070
Uh but I think I I what I'm starting to see is that an evolutionary psychologist is someone

01:33:22.070 --> 01:33:26.870
who just never turned off that childhood part of themselves where they still just retain

01:33:26.870 --> 01:33:30.790
this need to know why why and just drill down to the the basics.

01:33:31.030 --> 01:33:33.270
Um and and that's that's what I love about it.

01:33:33.350 --> 01:33:37.510
You know, it just it goes all the way down to, you know, the second law of thermodynamics,

01:33:37.590 --> 01:33:40.740
as you know, John Tuby uh insightfully wrote.

01:33:41.220 --> 01:33:46.740
It's you know, evolution is the only anti-entropic uh force uh that guides

01:33:46.740 --> 01:33:49.860
organisms toward adaptive complexity that that we know of.

01:33:50.020 --> 01:33:55.460
Um and uh it's a really deep and satisfying way of seeing the world.

01:33:55.860 --> 01:33:59.780
Um Yeah, I I've I think proximate questions are fantastic.

01:33:59.940 --> 01:34:03.210
I mean, in a sense, that's what evolutionary psychology does do, is answer approximate

01:34:03.210 --> 01:34:04.730
questions about mechanism, right?

01:34:05.370 --> 01:34:11.130
Um, but uh without the the larger motivating ultimate questions, you know, there's no spark

01:34:11.130 --> 01:34:11.850
in it for me.

01:34:12.090 --> 01:34:12.410
Yeah.

01:34:13.050 --> 01:34:13.850
Totally.

01:34:14.650 --> 01:34:15.450
So cool.

01:34:15.610 --> 01:34:16.010
Yeah.

01:34:16.330 --> 01:34:18.330
So uh one last thing.

01:34:18.490 --> 01:34:22.650
I remember um we were we were having an email exchange about some of these ideas a while

01:34:22.650 --> 01:34:22.810
ago.

01:34:22.890 --> 01:34:26.970
I for I forget when it was, and you had mentioned this really interesting distinction

01:34:27.290 --> 01:34:32.780
between what you called superlative status and I forget what the alternative was.

01:34:32.860 --> 01:34:37.900
It was like uh not being so I guess it's the difference between being better than other

01:34:37.900 --> 01:34:39.740
people and not being worse than other people.

01:34:39.980 --> 01:34:40.300
Right.

01:34:40.460 --> 01:34:46.220
Um which is re I th I think of it as sort of offensive status versus defensive status.

01:34:46.460 --> 01:34:49.740
You know, like I'm I'm trying to be better than you versus I'm trying to defend myself from

01:34:49.740 --> 01:34:50.780
being a pariah.

01:34:51.340 --> 01:34:56.940
Um and so far as I'm aware, like there's not a lot of research on this distinction.

01:34:57.180 --> 01:35:02.710
Uh and I think it's a really important one and uh of huge evolutionary significance,

01:35:02.870 --> 01:35:08.710
because I would expect the the defensive version of it to have exerted a stronger

01:35:08.710 --> 01:35:12.630
selection pressure on our ancestors than the offensive version of it.

01:35:12.790 --> 01:35:16.230
Um just because you know the slope of fitness, you know, it has diminishing returns.

01:35:16.310 --> 01:35:20.870
So if you're gonna go down the uh go go backwards, you're gonna have a steeper drop in

01:35:20.870 --> 01:35:25.680
fitness than if you go forward uh uh uh uh up the plateau of diminishing returns.

01:35:25.760 --> 01:35:28.640
So fitness costs should loom larger than fitness benefits.

01:35:28.960 --> 01:35:33.840
And you would expect people to be more paranoid about being seen as a bad person than they

01:35:33.840 --> 01:35:35.760
are motivated to be seen as a good person.

01:35:35.840 --> 01:35:40.720
And I think a lot of altruism uh psychologically is motivated by the fear of being seen as

01:35:40.720 --> 01:35:46.320
a bad person, uh, compared to the uh positive desire to be seen as as

01:35:46.320 --> 01:35:47.520
morally superior.

01:35:47.680 --> 01:35:53.470
Um you know even uh the this uh so Peter Singer makes this this classic argument that um if

01:35:53.470 --> 01:35:58.830
you if you see a child drowning in a pond, uh would you wait in to to save the drowning

01:35:58.830 --> 01:36:01.390
child and ruin your fancy thousand dollar suit?

01:36:01.550 --> 01:36:02.990
And most people say, Yeah, of course.

01:36:03.070 --> 01:36:06.430
Uh, you know, the you can get a new suit, but you know, you it's worth it to save the

01:36:06.430 --> 01:36:06.670
child.

01:36:06.750 --> 01:36:10.910
But then he he poses the counterfactual why don't you donate a thousand dollars to Oxfam to

01:36:10.910 --> 01:36:14.270
save children uh from starvation or malaria or or whatever.

01:36:14.670 --> 01:36:20.560
Um and I think the reason why this argument is effective is because it makes us

01:36:20.800 --> 01:36:26.800
seem like the sociopath who would refuse to rescue the drowning child to save their

01:36:26.800 --> 01:36:27.680
fancy suit.

01:36:28.400 --> 01:36:32.720
It's not that it motivates you to be a good person, is that it elicits this fear in you

01:36:32.720 --> 01:36:36.800
that you're a bad person, that you're that sociopath who doesn't save the child.

01:36:37.120 --> 01:36:42.350
And so I think this fear of being a bad person is really powerful psychologically.

01:36:42.430 --> 01:36:43.390
It's understudied.

01:36:43.550 --> 01:36:44.510
And I'm curious.

01:36:44.750 --> 01:36:50.110
So you have this paper measuring reproductive success and its correlation with status.

01:36:50.750 --> 01:36:55.070
So far as I'm aware, that paper doesn't measure the negative dimensions of status.

01:36:55.150 --> 01:36:59.870
It measures political influence, but it doesn't measure the extent to which you're a social

01:36:59.870 --> 01:37:03.870
pariah or whether you're excluded or whether you're the hunter who hunts too much and

01:37:04.030 --> 01:37:05.470
becomes a social outcast.

01:37:05.790 --> 01:37:10.300
But I would suspect that if you included that negative dimension of status, the correlation

01:37:10.300 --> 01:37:12.380
with with fitness would would be much higher.

01:37:12.540 --> 01:37:14.380
Do you do you share that intuition?

01:37:15.420 --> 01:37:18.220
Yeah, I mean uh it's great you brought that up.

01:37:18.300 --> 01:37:23.660
I think I'm myself I've devoted too little attention to the sort of bottom half of the

01:37:23.660 --> 01:37:28.860
distribution or even the bottom 75% of the distribution of status as relative to the top

01:37:28.860 --> 01:37:29.420
25%.

01:37:30.460 --> 01:37:36.060
Um and it's probably a bigger motive for us to avoid being at the

01:37:36.060 --> 01:37:38.790
bottom than it is necessarily to reach the top.

01:37:38.870 --> 01:37:40.550
Like, yeah, if we can reach the top, that's amazing.

01:37:40.710 --> 01:37:42.310
But definitely do not reach the bottom.

01:37:42.390 --> 01:37:44.230
That's that's strike out.

01:37:44.470 --> 01:37:50.390
Uh and um maybe that accords with sort of risk profiles where you know people are riskiest

01:37:50.550 --> 01:37:54.470
at the bottom and at the top, but most of the middle of the hierarchy people are more risk

01:37:54.470 --> 01:37:56.950
averse because they don't want to slide down to the bottom.

01:37:57.220 --> 01:37:57.620
Yeah.

01:37:57.860 --> 01:38:01.460
Um, but uh yeah.

01:38:01.700 --> 01:38:03.780
Um I don't know.

01:38:03.940 --> 01:38:09.380
I think uh with regard to reproduction, um I know in

01:38:09.380 --> 01:38:14.980
modern industrial societies the relationship that still exists between like income and

01:38:14.980 --> 01:38:20.020
reproduction in men is almost entirely driven from lots of studies by childless men who

01:38:20.020 --> 01:38:21.220
just never reproduce.

01:38:21.540 --> 01:38:22.500
Interesting.

01:38:22.850 --> 01:38:27.490
So it's not driven by men at the top having a lot more kids, which there is a small effect

01:38:27.490 --> 01:38:31.970
of that still with respect to income, but nothing like the what drives that relationship is

01:38:31.970 --> 01:38:33.890
more the childless men at the bottom.

01:38:34.130 --> 01:38:40.130
In the societies like the smaller scale societies, like the Chimane, there's very few fewer

01:38:40.130 --> 01:38:41.330
men that strike out.

01:38:41.410 --> 01:38:47.410
I I think, and there is um uh, although that's still part

01:38:47.410 --> 01:38:52.050
of the equation, I think there is a bigger signal of reproduction at the top end.

01:38:52.700 --> 01:38:57.820
um, in terms of those with more influence, more likely to be polygynous or marry surially,

01:38:58.140 --> 01:39:00.860
um, or have better child survival.

01:39:01.100 --> 01:39:06.940
Um but uh clear, yeah, I I would bet across all human societies, yeah,

01:39:07.100 --> 01:39:11.900
that striking out is the the the bigger motive.

01:39:12.060 --> 01:39:17.870
So I mean arguably our status psychology evolved more even to avoid the

01:39:17.870 --> 01:39:20.110
bottom than to hit the top, just as you're saying.

01:39:20.270 --> 01:39:23.310
But it's not something I've devoted much attention to and probably should more.

01:39:23.470 --> 01:39:25.390
So thanks thanks for bringing that up to me.

01:39:28.430 --> 01:39:28.830
Please do.

01:39:28.910 --> 01:39:31.630
It seems like a really underappreciated thing.

01:39:31.870 --> 01:39:32.190
Yeah.

01:39:32.430 --> 01:39:37.230
Um I wonder if there's developmental, I mean, because I keep thinking about like gym class

01:39:37.230 --> 01:39:37.710
or school.

01:39:37.790 --> 01:39:41.870
You know, like that's such a, you know, any kid, when we were all kids, I mean, correct me

01:39:41.870 --> 01:39:47.520
if I'm wrong, but like, you know, that's that's like the super salient,

01:39:47.760 --> 01:39:53.280
um, just you know, not not being the the pariah or not being the kid that's picked on.

01:39:53.440 --> 01:39:58.880
And then the kid who is, you know, that's a real um you you've got to figure out you've got

01:39:58.880 --> 01:40:02.480
to be funny or you've got to figure out another way to survive.

01:40:02.640 --> 01:40:07.200
I mean, that's a really John Tube always said, you know, the the right way to think about

01:40:07.200 --> 01:40:12.800
human social life if you're not like Chris and working with um folks who have a more

01:40:13.090 --> 01:40:15.970
ecologically valid quote unquote existence.

01:40:16.130 --> 01:40:19.810
Um it's more like high school or junior high or elementary school, right?

01:40:19.970 --> 01:40:20.370
You know?

01:40:20.930 --> 01:40:21.250
Yeah.

01:40:21.410 --> 01:40:22.050
Yeah.

01:40:23.170 --> 01:40:24.050
This made me think too.

01:40:24.130 --> 01:40:24.690
Oh go ahead.

01:40:24.930 --> 01:40:25.570
Oh go ahead.

01:40:26.610 --> 01:40:31.250
I was just thinking of the you know asymmetric war of attrition is sort of based on the

01:40:31.490 --> 01:40:36.050
you're gonna want to minimize the the cost of continued competition.

01:40:36.210 --> 01:40:40.960
And so it's better to sort of, you know, rather than potentially you know, make the best of

01:40:40.960 --> 01:40:41.520
a bad deal.

01:40:41.600 --> 01:40:44.800
Don't end up at the bottom, but don't necessarily shoot for the top if it's gonna it's

01:40:44.800 --> 01:40:46.320
gonna hurt you over the longer run.

01:40:46.400 --> 01:40:48.720
Uh cost that way of the benefits.

01:40:48.880 --> 01:40:54.080
Um, I think a lot of people will accept somewhat subordinate positions as long as they're

01:40:54.080 --> 01:40:57.360
not the very bottom in human societies.

01:40:57.760 --> 01:40:58.480
That's a really good point.

01:40:58.640 --> 01:41:03.950
Yeah, a lot of lot of people going along with uh very dominant uh

01:41:04.270 --> 01:41:08.110
totalitarianism, for example, just because they're the second bottom rung, right?

01:41:08.190 --> 01:41:14.110
Where you know, like poor whites in the south or um people in you know Europe during the

01:41:14.110 --> 01:41:15.390
Third Reich coming in.

01:41:15.550 --> 01:41:20.030
And you know, if you're not if you're not the victim and you're still okay, you know,

01:41:20.110 --> 01:41:23.470
you'll go along with the regime, sort of is the idea.

01:41:23.630 --> 01:41:24.270
Yeah.

01:41:24.960 --> 01:41:26.480
Yeah, no, I find this really interesting.

01:41:26.560 --> 01:41:32.080
I I also suspect that there's interesting individual differences uh related to the question

01:41:32.080 --> 01:41:36.000
of how motivated you are to be at the top versus avoid being at the bottom.

01:41:36.480 --> 01:41:40.480
So I I have the intuition that if you're really concerned with being at the top and being

01:41:40.480 --> 01:41:42.320
better than other people, that you're kind of a dick.

01:41:42.640 --> 01:41:46.240
That like you're you're you're kind of a a a mean competitive person.

01:41:46.400 --> 01:41:50.640
Whereas if you're primarily uh motivated by avoiding being at the bottom, you're not

01:41:50.640 --> 01:41:51.840
necessarily a bad person.

01:41:51.920 --> 01:41:53.760
You're just that's just kind of understandable.

01:41:54.050 --> 01:41:57.410
Um, so I that's another question that I'm curious about.

01:41:57.570 --> 01:42:03.330
And um I find that this comes up in discussions of the role of signaling in human behavior.

01:42:03.650 --> 01:42:08.050
So I am of the opinion that signaling plays a pervasive role in in human social life and is

01:42:08.050 --> 01:42:12.610
the explanation for a lot of our behaviors, even when we would not want to admit that it is

01:42:12.610 --> 01:42:14.530
the explanation for our behavior.

01:42:14.770 --> 01:42:19.330
But um I find that a lot of people are turned off by this uh because they see it as

01:42:19.330 --> 01:42:19.970
cynical.

01:42:20.120 --> 01:42:20.600
Yeah.

01:42:20.840 --> 01:42:26.120
Um, but I think the cynicism is coming from an interpretation that the signal is offensive

01:42:26.120 --> 01:42:30.440
in nature, that the signal is to try to display my superiority to others.

01:42:30.600 --> 01:42:33.560
But I think a lot of the times the signal is defensive.

01:42:33.640 --> 01:42:38.920
Um, it's trying to prevent others from seeing you as worse or inferior to others.

01:42:39.080 --> 01:42:43.480
And as soon as you see these signaling motives as being really more about defensive motives

01:42:43.480 --> 01:42:48.200
than offensive motives, it becomes less cynical and it becomes more of a plausible uh uh

01:42:48.390 --> 01:42:52.150
theoretical framework from which to view human behavior that you know really it is a lot

01:42:52.150 --> 01:42:55.910
about signaling, but we just have to recognize that a lot of those signals are defensive in

01:42:55.910 --> 01:42:56.790
in nature.

01:42:57.990 --> 01:43:01.670
I think we we treat sort of punching down the same though, no matter where somebody is on

01:43:01.670 --> 01:43:03.750
the hierarchy, I think, right?

01:43:03.910 --> 01:43:08.950
So even if it is defensive, if you're like second from the bottom hitting the bottom wrong

01:43:09.030 --> 01:43:13.590
to not get down to the bottom wrong, do we see that as bad as the person at the top

01:43:13.590 --> 01:43:15.480
punching down on the person at the bottom.

01:43:15.800 --> 01:43:21.400
You know, I think that's an interesting um put

01:43:21.560 --> 01:43:26.760
individual differences in the sort of propensity for for this that you raised.

01:43:26.920 --> 01:43:28.360
Um yeah.

01:43:28.840 --> 01:43:33.880
Uh I think um maybe things related to

01:43:34.440 --> 01:43:40.200
neuroticism, sort of personality variation, where we're gonna be much more focused on

01:43:40.200 --> 01:43:46.130
avoiding the bottom, which would preclude taking risks that might get us to the top.

01:43:46.530 --> 01:43:47.170
Yeah.

01:43:47.490 --> 01:43:51.090
Um or um Yeah.

01:43:51.330 --> 01:43:57.090
But I think that's I mean, and there's also an aspect of this where is

01:43:57.250 --> 01:44:02.930
if you're a male, uh and you know, we we know that you know uh variance in in

01:44:02.960 --> 01:44:07.520
reproductive success is higher among males than females uh and likely was ancestrally.

01:44:07.600 --> 01:44:13.200
Um if you're if you see yourself as being at the bottom, as being doomed to uh reproductive

01:44:13.200 --> 01:44:17.200
oblivion, then you're in a really dangerous place for the rest of the people around you

01:44:17.360 --> 01:44:18.560
because you have nothing to lose.

01:44:18.880 --> 01:44:21.920
You know, you you can take dangerous risks, take other people down with you.

01:44:22.080 --> 01:44:25.850
Like from a Darwinian perspective, you know, you can you can run amok.

01:44:26.250 --> 01:44:32.010
Um and so I suspect a lot of the most vile um uh attacks we see

01:44:32.250 --> 01:44:36.970
are are from you know men with nothing to lose who who who see themselves as at the bottom

01:44:37.130 --> 01:44:42.410
or groups of of of people who see themselves as at the bottom and and and and don't see a

01:44:42.410 --> 01:44:43.930
way out from that position.

01:44:44.250 --> 01:44:48.090
Those those people are gonna be really dangerous to society.

01:44:48.330 --> 01:44:49.530
Uh yeah, yeah.

01:44:49.800 --> 01:44:55.720
I think uh like Martin Daly, Margot Wilson's work on you know the male, what is it

01:44:55.800 --> 01:44:57.720
they call it, the young male syndrome.

01:44:57.800 --> 01:44:58.360
Yeah, right.

01:44:59.160 --> 01:45:04.760
But it's particularly young men in who are find themselves in positions of low status

01:45:04.760 --> 01:45:08.200
within a a high inequality uh hierarchy.

01:45:08.520 --> 01:45:13.080
Um and there's one recent work by this guy, uh Pat Barclay and Misha.

01:45:13.240 --> 01:45:15.050
I don't know, I forget his full name.

01:45:15.130 --> 01:45:19.930
Um, might have been a student with pad or a collaborator on sort of risk sensitivity with

01:45:19.930 --> 01:45:25.690
respect to stat status position um and its relationship to yeah

01:45:25.930 --> 01:45:28.090
um just what you're describing.

01:45:28.650 --> 01:45:34.410
Um or broader in a broader sense when you're you have sort of political

01:45:34.410 --> 01:45:40.360
elites mobilizing that group of people uh and mobilizing their anger for their for

01:45:40.360 --> 01:45:41.320
their ends.

01:45:41.640 --> 01:45:43.720
Uh yes.

01:45:43.960 --> 01:45:44.280
Yep.

01:45:44.680 --> 01:45:46.120
Forming forming alliances with them.

01:45:46.200 --> 01:45:46.360
Yeah.

01:45:46.840 --> 01:45:50.280
Which is sticky completely on sure.

01:45:50.600 --> 01:45:55.960
Um Yeah, no, I I there's some other work uh I'm loosely familiar with it called last place

01:45:56.200 --> 01:46:01.880
aversion, where we have an aversion to being uh i uh in last place in a competition,

01:46:02.040 --> 01:46:05.870
much more so than any other position in in the totem pole.

01:46:06.110 --> 01:46:11.630
And I I I remember reading that uh they were looking at uh attitudes toward the minimum

01:46:11.630 --> 01:46:16.270
wage and it was people who were right above the minimum wage who opposed raising the

01:46:16.270 --> 01:46:19.150
minimum wage because it would it would put them in last place.

01:46:19.790 --> 01:46:24.910
Um so I I don't know if that paper I haven't looked into like the data analytics of it or

01:46:24.910 --> 01:46:28.780
whether that holds up, but it's an interesting idea that this could potentially be uh you

01:46:28.780 --> 01:46:31.580
know explains some variation in in our political attitudes.

01:46:31.980 --> 01:46:32.220
Right.

01:46:32.300 --> 01:46:36.860
That it's not just the wealthiest who are opposed to welfare, but those given that our the

01:46:37.100 --> 01:46:42.140
most salient comparisons were those in our sort of local status net sort of social

01:46:42.220 --> 01:46:45.900
networks, uh status relevant social networks.

01:46:46.220 --> 01:46:49.020
Um but yeah, uh who's that?

01:46:49.180 --> 01:46:53.820
I know I think Michael Norton, Harvard Business School, and a c but he wasn't the premium

01:46:53.820 --> 01:46:59.670
author, uh did the f paper on this that uh those just above the poverty line,

01:46:59.830 --> 01:47:05.750
you see an uptick in um anti-welfare views because it's it's getting a hand out to the

01:47:05.750 --> 01:47:08.150
people right below them down the street.

01:47:09.030 --> 01:47:09.430
Yeah.

01:47:09.670 --> 01:47:11.190
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

01:47:11.510 --> 01:47:15.670
No, I think it it it it really explains a lot about the dynamics of of political

01:47:15.670 --> 01:47:20.940
coalitions, particularly in the United States and why why we see this divide between uh

01:47:21.180 --> 01:47:26.940
ethnic uh subgroups of within the lower class, where you see you know low status uh white

01:47:26.940 --> 01:47:30.940
Americans pr uh uh predominantly shifting toward the Republican coalition and low status

01:47:30.940 --> 01:47:34.940
ethnic minorities pred uh uh predominantly shifting towards the Democratic coalition.

01:47:35.180 --> 01:47:41.100
I think um those status conflicts I think are are a major driver of of political alliances

01:47:41.180 --> 01:47:45.740
and uh and obviously political elites try to exploit that in various ways, often

01:47:45.740 --> 01:47:46.460
successfully.

01:47:47.100 --> 01:47:52.290
Well I think the whole immigration dialogue and debate in the US and in other countries

01:47:52.290 --> 01:47:58.290
recently, but in the US uh that's been uh appealing to um

01:47:58.290 --> 01:48:04.130
a lot of minority communities, including the sort of Latino community that uh I know I have

01:48:04.210 --> 01:48:10.050
a lot of friends who uh Latino friends who are you know first second generation immigrants

01:48:10.130 --> 01:48:16.120
but see have some conservative views with respect to illegal immigrants um then might be

01:48:16.120 --> 01:48:21.720
shaped in part by this sort of um you know they don't get to sort of leapfrog me kind of

01:48:21.720 --> 01:48:26.760
view which is uh yeah so you know it's uh

01:48:27.640 --> 01:48:31.640
I think there are minority communities that are you know have the reasons similar to the

01:48:31.640 --> 01:48:37.570
theory we're articulating here for being anti um welfare to the lowest

01:48:37.570 --> 01:48:38.850
rungs on the ladder.

01:48:39.090 --> 01:48:39.410
Right.

01:48:39.970 --> 01:48:40.130
Yeah.

01:48:40.370 --> 01:48:46.290
When Chris, when you're at um when you're in with the Chimane versus you come back to

01:48:46.290 --> 01:48:52.210
Virginia, what do you are there anything is there anything that's pops out to you?

01:48:52.370 --> 01:48:56.530
Like, you know, because like, you know, not all of us get to experience this.

01:48:56.770 --> 01:48:58.770
What is it like switching back and forth?

01:48:58.930 --> 01:49:01.650
And you know, is there what is it like?

01:49:02.400 --> 01:49:04.800
I think the main thing is supermarkets.

01:49:06.080 --> 01:49:08.160
I mean, holy crap.

01:49:08.320 --> 01:49:14.320
Like you know, assembling that much dense caloric stuff in one place that's like

01:49:14.480 --> 01:49:15.920
been produced all over the world.

01:49:16.080 --> 01:49:16.400
Yeah.

01:49:16.560 --> 01:49:18.320
Is you know, oh my god.

01:49:18.480 --> 01:49:18.720
Yeah.

01:49:18.960 --> 01:49:23.120
That's like I think is that's typically the big thing that gets me.

01:49:24.070 --> 01:49:26.630
Uh I'm very food motivated person.

01:49:26.710 --> 01:49:27.990
I think you know we all are.

01:49:28.150 --> 01:49:28.470
No too.

01:49:28.630 --> 01:49:31.430
We all are, but uh um yeah.

01:49:31.910 --> 01:49:33.590
It's food is everything.

01:49:33.830 --> 01:49:35.270
If you don't have food.

01:49:36.310 --> 01:49:36.470
Yeah.

01:49:36.710 --> 01:49:36.950
Good luck.

01:49:37.190 --> 01:49:37.910
Oh, this was interesting.

01:49:38.070 --> 01:49:43.910
I did I had a um uh a student in in Bolivia who I've been

01:49:43.910 --> 01:49:47.440
sponsoring um came to the United States to be part of this workshop, this indigenous

01:49:47.440 --> 01:49:48.160
leadership workshop.

01:49:48.240 --> 01:49:54.080
And I saw he, you know, his Chimane and um uh

01:49:54.320 --> 01:49:58.560
he f got him a visa, he's able to come to the United States and I picked him up in DC.

01:49:58.640 --> 01:50:03.360
And I remember the first thing he thought when he saw coming here was he thought that we

01:50:03.360 --> 01:50:07.840
were uh our land was on fire because it was autumn and the the tree leaves were turning

01:50:07.920 --> 01:50:08.240
color.

01:50:08.560 --> 01:50:08.960
Interesting.

01:50:09.120 --> 01:50:09.920
Oh, that's so cool.

01:50:10.240 --> 01:50:15.190
And that was like so so coming back to just the the

01:50:15.430 --> 01:50:21.350
vegetation is yeah, you know, uh that's sort of what trees I always on

01:50:21.430 --> 01:50:21.750
the lookout.

01:50:22.070 --> 01:50:24.630
Amazon is like, you know, trees are not always your friends.

01:50:24.870 --> 01:50:29.830
Um because of animals and insects and spines and poisons.

01:50:30.790 --> 01:50:31.030
Yeah, yeah.

01:50:31.670 --> 01:50:33.430
Yeah, we have to have any wortz on, yeah.

01:50:33.750 --> 01:50:39.190
Yeah, and there are you know animals that live uh commensally with the tr ants and others

01:50:39.190 --> 01:50:44.580
of the trees that act as their defense mechanisms and yeah, uh it's more of

01:50:44.900 --> 01:50:49.780
like parts of the you know, being the Amazon, it's so much more and more surprises around

01:50:49.780 --> 01:50:53.780
the next corner of different animals and things and uh but you're right, you got to be in

01:50:53.860 --> 01:50:54.180
your toes.

01:50:54.260 --> 01:50:58.020
So did you have you had any interesting animal encounter stories?

01:50:59.300 --> 01:51:05.300
Oh, uh like living with bats in the hut out I

01:51:05.300 --> 01:51:06.340
would stay in.

01:51:06.580 --> 01:51:12.390
Um I came across jaguar footprints, never encountered one uh directly, thankfully.

01:51:12.550 --> 01:51:18.550
Uh came across a Python or not a python, um a raptor, like uh uh it's called a

01:51:18.550 --> 01:51:20.790
bushmaster, highly venomous snake.

01:51:21.350 --> 01:51:21.750
Oof.

01:51:22.230 --> 01:51:26.070
Uh and uh Demon's face.

01:51:26.470 --> 01:51:27.110
Demon's face.

01:51:27.430 --> 01:51:30.150
Yeah, one of one of the many reasons I'm not cut out for field work.

01:51:30.710 --> 01:51:30.950
Yeah.

01:51:31.190 --> 01:51:35.110
I'm like a midpoint because I I'll go like backpacking and stuff, especially before I

01:51:35.110 --> 01:51:35.750
having children.

01:51:35.830 --> 01:51:38.550
But yeah, but yeah, no, no, it's that's a whole other level.

01:51:38.630 --> 01:51:38.870
Yeah.

01:51:39.110 --> 01:51:39.750
Yeah.

01:51:40.060 --> 01:51:46.060
But uh one of the more like dangerous things I was doing uh was part of this project

01:51:46.140 --> 01:51:51.740
we were measuring tree circumferences and species with um too many people who are cutting

01:51:51.740 --> 01:51:54.700
down trees to to for places to grow their crops.

01:51:55.020 --> 01:52:00.220
We're interested in sort of like how they expend energy over time in doing this and how

01:52:00.460 --> 01:52:01.580
often they take grass.

01:52:02.140 --> 01:52:08.010
And um uh and we had sort of heart rate monitors they were using, and I would

01:52:08.010 --> 01:52:12.570
go in and measure tree circumferences, and then they were using um axes to chop these

01:52:12.570 --> 01:52:13.370
things, these trees down.

01:52:13.450 --> 01:52:16.090
But the older the chemani person, the more skilled they were.

01:52:16.170 --> 01:52:20.010
So they wouldn't just go after every tree with like much ismo, but like carefully go after

01:52:20.010 --> 01:52:24.490
this one tree, look around, look where the vines are connecting trees, go to another tree

01:52:24.490 --> 01:52:26.650
that seems like totally far away, cut that one.

01:52:26.810 --> 01:52:31.130
It would be sufficient to like bring all the trees down from just a minority of them cut

01:52:31.210 --> 01:52:33.610
because they're all connected through vines, right?

01:52:33.770 --> 01:52:38.240
But I'd be when I'd be following an older individual doing this that was more strategic, I

01:52:38.240 --> 01:52:40.720
wouldn't know where the trees were gonna come from when they started falling.

01:52:40.880 --> 01:52:43.760
And you have to like get out of their way fast.

01:52:44.000 --> 01:52:46.560
Uh smarter was not harder.

01:52:47.200 --> 01:52:48.320
That's smarter than that.

01:52:48.800 --> 01:52:52.880
Indiana Jones here, you know, jumping away from falling trees and venomous.

01:52:54.560 --> 01:52:59.360
Well, I like that story, you know, it it signals my sort of yeah, I you know, med metal for

01:52:59.360 --> 01:52:59.920
being able to do that.

01:53:00.000 --> 01:53:04.890
But I mean m but also that it showcases the role of skill acquisition uh for them.

01:53:05.610 --> 01:53:06.170
Yeah, yeah.

01:53:06.250 --> 01:53:07.210
I love, I love that.

01:53:07.290 --> 01:53:12.490
I mean, yeah, I think every anthropologist has has I have I've talked to has a story like

01:53:12.490 --> 01:53:16.250
that where even the kids in the community will just be like, come on, like I think she

01:53:16.490 --> 01:53:22.090
knowy talked about that, you know, where it just like yeah, we're all I uh sometimes people

01:53:22.090 --> 01:53:25.100
say things like I don't know if this is still a thing that's said, but people say, like,

01:53:25.260 --> 01:53:30.940
well, the human mind is more complicated than it needs to be for like hunter, gatherer, or

01:53:30.940 --> 01:53:32.860
foraging, like yeah, exactly.

01:53:33.020 --> 01:53:33.340
Exactly.

01:53:33.500 --> 01:53:35.580
And it's like, you have you what?

01:53:35.980 --> 01:53:39.740
Like, have you tried to like, you know, yeah, exactly.

01:53:39.820 --> 01:53:44.540
I mean, it's and I think that comes from this place of sort of this this great chain of

01:53:44.540 --> 01:53:45.580
cultural being, right?

01:53:45.740 --> 01:53:49.900
Where sort of it's like primitive and it's simple, and how how hard could it be?

01:53:50.140 --> 01:53:55.850
Um, and I just love that there's all these stories of Chris is trying to avoid trees

01:53:55.850 --> 01:53:58.810
falling on him, and the guys are like, come on, Chris.

01:54:00.250 --> 01:54:00.570
Yeah.

01:54:00.810 --> 01:54:04.090
You gotta you know, listen to the local people, especially those that have lived there a

01:54:04.090 --> 01:54:04.410
while.

01:54:04.570 --> 01:54:05.530
They know what's going on.

01:54:05.690 --> 01:54:06.250
Yeah.

01:54:06.490 --> 01:54:08.490
Um yeah.

01:54:09.850 --> 01:54:12.890
Well, the tree of time is about to uh fall on us.

01:54:12.970 --> 01:54:14.570
We're approaching two hours now.

01:54:14.810 --> 01:54:19.610
Yeah, and we we always have one question, which is um, were there is there any question we

01:54:19.610 --> 01:54:20.810
should have asked you?

01:54:22.010 --> 01:54:24.520
Oh, I think we've covered a fair bit of ground.

01:54:24.760 --> 01:54:28.360
Um I knew you wanted to talk about egalitarianism in some way today.

01:54:29.000 --> 01:54:29.480
I think we hit that.

01:54:29.560 --> 01:54:30.760
I mean, we hit that, yeah.

01:54:30.920 --> 01:54:31.720
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:54:31.880 --> 01:54:34.120
Um but no.

01:54:34.440 --> 01:54:38.440
Um my secret exploits at UCSB as a grad student.

01:54:38.840 --> 01:54:39.400
We didn't cover that.

01:54:39.640 --> 01:54:39.880
That's good.

01:54:39.960 --> 01:54:41.000
That's not true again.

01:54:41.320 --> 01:54:43.640
I mean we we we didn't really append your book.

01:54:43.720 --> 01:54:43.880
Yeah.

01:54:44.120 --> 01:54:45.320
We didn't really talk about leadership.

01:54:45.400 --> 01:54:48.520
I feel like that's a huge maybe we'll have to bring you on again and really get into

01:54:48.520 --> 01:54:49.080
leadership.

01:54:49.560 --> 01:54:50.440
Sure, sure.

01:54:51.290 --> 01:54:54.330
How we how and why we romanticize it.

01:54:54.410 --> 01:54:58.330
Um, how much does it matter are good questions, I think, to ask.

01:54:58.570 --> 01:54:59.610
But yeah.

01:55:01.130 --> 01:55:02.010
Super cool.

01:55:02.250 --> 01:55:08.170
Um, but uh Chris, uh you are um so you're at at

01:55:08.410 --> 01:55:12.730
University of Richmond, Jepsen School of Leadership, and people can find you on your

01:55:12.730 --> 01:55:16.420
website and Yeah, Google Chris von Ruden.

01:55:16.740 --> 01:55:18.980
Uh I have my sort of school website.

01:55:19.140 --> 01:55:24.180
Also I have a Google site that I curate occasionally with like videos and publications and

01:55:24.180 --> 01:55:24.900
things up there.

01:55:25.220 --> 01:55:25.460
Awesome.

01:55:25.700 --> 01:55:29.620
And Chimane, people who are interested in finding more about Chimane, like what are there

01:55:29.700 --> 01:55:31.460
what resources are are for that?

01:55:32.580 --> 01:55:38.230
For the Chimane, um, again, they've been the subject of a lot of uh research, uh,

01:55:38.470 --> 01:55:43.910
everything from like their musical performance and musical cognition

01:55:44.310 --> 01:55:46.790
to uh you know health, a lot of work on health.

01:55:46.950 --> 01:55:51.590
And so if you Google the Chimane Health and Life History project, you'll see information.

01:55:51.990 --> 01:55:57.270
Um, but uh there's lots of work done with the Chimane, including by the Chimani themselves,

01:55:57.350 --> 01:56:03.120
who have made some uh documentaries about their way of life that some of which you can find

01:56:03.120 --> 01:56:07.520
posted on like YouTube and oh cool and it it starts with a T Chamani T

01:56:07.840 --> 01:56:09.760
T-S-I-M-A-N-E.

01:56:10.160 --> 01:56:12.720
It's also been spelled C-H-I-M-A-N.

01:56:13.520 --> 01:56:19.200
Um but yeah very cool very cool um yeah David do you have

01:56:19.200 --> 01:56:20.000
anything else?

01:56:20.370 --> 01:56:20.690
No.

01:56:20.850 --> 01:56:22.530
I th I think uh that about does it.

01:56:22.930 --> 01:56:24.370
This was a really fun conversation.

01:56:24.450 --> 01:56:26.370
Thanks for for talking to us, Chris.

01:56:26.610 --> 01:56:27.890
Yeah, it was it it was great.

01:56:27.970 --> 01:56:32.930
Yeah, we'll have to have you back on for leadership or uh um for tree felling.

01:56:33.330 --> 01:56:33.570
Yeah.

01:56:33.890 --> 01:56:39.410
Totally yeah, totally happy to talk you through the the yeah scale of tree felling.

01:56:43.650 --> 01:56:46.450
Uh well, here we are at the end of the episode.

01:56:46.530 --> 01:56:47.570
Thank you for listening.

01:56:47.730 --> 01:56:51.540
Uh if you like what you're hearing, uh please don't be shy.

01:56:51.620 --> 01:56:54.100
Uh tell people about it on social media.

01:56:54.260 --> 01:56:56.020
Uh shout it from the mountaintops.

01:56:56.180 --> 01:56:57.220
We're a new podcast.

01:56:57.300 --> 01:57:00.100
We're trying to build an audience and gain support for what we're doing.

01:57:00.180 --> 01:57:02.980
And where can people uh support us, Dave?

01:57:03.460 --> 01:57:08.580
Well they can support us emotionally however they want, but in terms of behaviorally they

01:57:08.580 --> 01:57:10.340
can sort of leave a good review.

01:57:10.500 --> 01:57:12.900
Um they can support us on Patreon.

01:57:13.150 --> 01:57:19.150
Um and yeah, just listening, liking, subscribing, and leaving reviews um, you

01:57:19.150 --> 01:57:23.310
know, that are neutral to positive is certainly helpful.

01:57:24.190 --> 01:57:24.910
Absolutely.

01:57:25.070 --> 01:57:25.310
Yeah.

01:57:25.390 --> 01:57:25.630
All right.

01:57:25.870 --> 01:57:30.270
If you feel that way, you know, if you feel like it's you feel negatively about it.

01:57:31.150 --> 01:57:32.990
You know, I'll leave that discussion.

01:57:33.150 --> 01:57:33.230
Yeah.

01:57:33.390 --> 01:57:33.470
Yeah.

01:57:33.550 --> 01:57:35.390
You if you hate us, you can send us hate mail too.

01:57:35.790 --> 01:57:36.270
But you know.

01:57:36.680 --> 01:57:41.160
i would not maybe no maybe not hate mail no if you hate us just think about why you hate us

01:57:41.240 --> 01:57:44.600
and maybe think about something more productive you could do with your time yeah if you

01:57:44.600 --> 01:57:49.400
have nothing nice to say then don't say it at all i think that's a good rules to live by so

01:57:49.480 --> 01:57:54.520
but yeah you take that would take that with a grain of salt so but uh but yeah thanks for

01:57:54.520 --> 01:57:57.320
listening and we'll see you next week see ya