Revenge and Forgiveness with Mike McCullough
2026-04-21 12:00:00.000 +00:00

This is Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast. Parenthes. Actual evolutionary psychology by actual evolutionary psychologists. Dot dot dot. Enjoy. I don't know if the dots were necessary. Probably not. Today we have Mike McCullough, who is uh professor of psychology at UC San Diego. That's right. And uh this was a really fun, wide-ranging conversation where we just explored a lot of really interesting topics. Yeah, revenge, forgiveness, gratitude. Um, we talked a little bit about um the logic, the cost-benefit logic, respecting the cost-benefit logic of people feeling uh revengeful or angry, um, and also being a little bit in like a little bit of a um uh content alert, like abusive relationships, too.

Yeah, yeah. It took a dark turn in the middle of of the conversation. We talked about, you know, how sometimes evolutionary perspectives can lead you to a more tragic view of of the human condition and and the problems we're facing. And it's kind of humbling to think about how tough these problems are. Um we talked about impartiality a bit. Uh it was was a lot of fun. Yeah, it it was great. I love the conversations where we really just get to hear a world expert about a topic just um uh extemporaneously to pull a word, um, just talk about stuff. Uh, I also got to ask about a mystery I've always had, which is why does time heal all wounds? Uh and Mike McCullough was like the single person on earth to ask that question to.

He had like the best answer ever. It was a really great answer. So stick through to the end to hear his answer to that question because it's uh it's a fascinating answer. Yeah. Enjoy Michael and David and I talking about revenge forgiveness and uh other stuff. You study what among other things, revenge and forgiveness. Yeah. It may be a limitation of my ignor of my knowledge, but I don't know many people who study opposites in their topic of study. Is that unique to you, or is it typical in the study of revenge or forgiveness to study the opposed concept? Um I think I think probably there's some people who do it. You know, uh it's har it's hard for me to quite feel like I'm uh I understand um forgiveness that well if I don't

really kind of understand one of the you know it's it's like studying like a I don't know a little bit like studying a cure without fully understanding the natural natural history of the disease or something like that. Yeah. So yeah over the years I have done a fair bit of work on retaliation and some of the social factors that you know kind of promote it or inhibit it. And I think also, you know, on one view of forgiveness, I suppose it the whole point of it is to help you get a relationship back on track, short of you know, imposing this massive, you know, retaliatory harm on the other person. I mean, you know, and I yeah, so I I I to me they only kind of make sense together to study. Um and I also think that they're just like wide op both of them are like wide open research

fields. Do you do you view the are they are they opposites? 'Cause I I could imagine, you know, uh one opposite to forgiveness is not necessarily going out of your way to hurt the person who hurt you, but merely just severing ties with them, not talking to them, cutting off the relationship with them. That that could potentially be one end of the forgiveness spectrum. On one end, you've you're fully in a relationship with that person and you're continuing uh cooperating with them. And on the other end, you're just totally uh not dealing with them at all. Um and it seems like imposing actively imposing costs on the person is is a different question entirely. Do you or do you view do you buy that logic or or or do you view them as as real opposites?

Yeah, I I don't think they're opposites. I think, you know, it's you know, when you're when you're harmed by somebody, there's a number of ways you could deal with it. You could ignore it, you could um pretend like it didn't bother you, you could just overlook it, um, or you could, you know, withdraw from the relationship with the person, just sort of figuring like, well, what's the point of this? You know, if this person's gonna keep ridicul ridiculing me, you know, around my other friends, like why why would I bother with this? Or you could, you know, it's sort of like, I'm going to try to teach that person a lesson, you know, and you might, you know, try to harm them back, or, you know, ridicule them in response, or, you know, do something else that's, you know, designed

to harm them. Or, you know, you could just talk to them about it and, you know, express your feelings and kind of open your heart. And you know, I think all of those are designed in some way to try to get, you know, some kind of harm to stop happening to you. And um, you know, rip revenge is just, I think, probably kind of a sweet, one of a suite of responses you could have after a harm. So I do think forgiveness is not act actively in opposition to revenge. But you know, they certainly take the relationship in different directions. Um, one's one's probably gonna be, at least in the short term, not so great for the relationship, you know, and put it at further risk, you know, whereas forgiveness is

probably something that um you know is not going to is kind of gives you an antidote to antidote to that the way that revenge can lead to a sort of cycle of retaliate retaliation. Could could revenge even facilitate forgiveness? So if you punch me or insult me and I punch you back and insult you back, um fight it out, fight it out if we fight out. It could be that if we fight it out, that actually repairs our relationship in some sense that we're you know we're even now and I can you know let it go more effectively than if we weren't even. Uh is that possible? Uh maybe. I you know, I mean, I suppose you can imagine cases where that would work. I think on average that's unlikely to be to be satisfactory.

There's a fair bit of research. I think it's kind of old now, but it it suggests there's kind of this effect. In social psychology, we talk about actor observer effects. And the idea is that you really can't get under another person's skin and understand what motivates them. You can understand your own actions, but you have a hard time simulating other people's. So you can't know, you know, like if you ask me why I'm doing what I'm doing, I I'd probably give you like a, you know, a decent picture of like the situational forces acting on me. I'd be like, well, I'm just like, I don't know, um, you know, I I'm why am I late today? Well, it's like, you know, my kid asked me a question right as I was leaving, or, you know

the car would start or this or that. And I have like this full picture of like my like the forces acting on me. I'm I'm getting around to a point. But if I'm looking at your behavior, you know, I don't know all that. So I'm probably gonna make like a trait attribution for your behavior. Like man, Dave is so lazy, you know. You know, he's just like you know I was three minutes late to starting the recording and my German in my my German uh absorbed norms of being on punctual uh I was like this is horrible yeah so much sh shame you had so much shame happening um but I think that was your point I think that was your point yeah though you're circling around to uh insulting Dave. Okay. That wasn't yeah yeah but now I can for but now you can forgive me.

But now this is jumping back to David's point, which is now you can forgive me. Now that you've adequately shamed me socially, we can all get along. The the real point, Dave, is that my time is very, very valuable. Exactly. But I think there's a similar actor-observer effect in kind of trying to figure out the um the costs of a punishment you might inflict on somebody. It seems like we we rarely can fully understand the painfulness of other people's harms and the ways we hurt them. So we always we often minimize the amount of harm or damage we've done. We just can't, for the same reason, we certainly don't have access to other people's inner feelings. So we, you know, what what you might view as like

a retaliation that evens the scales. Probably the you know, the the risk the observer, or rather the the recipient of your, you know, your retaliation is going to think like you've just opened up a new wound. Like you didn't make things even, like you've just like harmed me. And um so I think it's hard to get the I think it's hard to get the titration right there a lot of times. But but you know, people do say I learned a lesson, you know, or they, you know, they they say, well, it was because of this harm that you know I realized that it, you know, punishments can sick can can act by as as punishers. Like, you know, if we think about just sort of like basic learning theory, you know, when you when you punish somebody, you're the presumption is, or maybe even by definition, you

know, in that in learning theory, it's a behavior that makes another behavior go down, or it's some stimulus, you know, some some feature of the environment that reduces the probability of a behavior in the future. So like by definition, it's its job is to get you to change your behavior. And so when like we punish each other, we punish our kids, we, you know, the criminal justice system punishes us. Uh maybe. Um we we think what we're doing is getting the behavior to go down through like learning principles. But a lot of times two punishments are, and I think this may be what you're hinting at, or you know, kind of flirting with David, is uh, you know, they can also be just communicative messages.

So I my my the point the point of punishing you isn't to like literally change your representation of the reinforcement schedule, you know, on some kind of implicit way, but it's instead to say, like, Mike is telling me that he doesn't approve of my behavior. And so the fact that he's willing to punish me tells me more about his mind and how much he disliked what I did to him. You know what I mean? So I think it may it it it it can have that effect, but maybe not just because we're even, but just because it sends a message about a special kind of message about my displeasure. So I don't know. I think the fact that we've we we tend to minimize the pain of the harms we cause other people and or overestimate

when we receive them ourselves, we sort of, I guess we can't overestimate our own pain, but we we give higher, we we we view it as more painful than the harmdoer does. You know, between that and this idea that maybe it's really about communication, I don't know that the scales ever get really balanced per se through through aggression um or you know or through retaliation. I yeah, so it it's a you can you can you retaliate just someone back to a détente? Yeah, of course you can. But you've you've really fundamentally changed how they understand the relationship, I think, most of the time. So it seems like there are if you go that route of of trying to get even, um, there's this big risk that you could get into a cycle of retaliation and retaliation and it just

escalates out of control because you're going to be biased to underestimate the cost that you inflicted, and you might think that you're even, but the other side might think that you're actually lopsided, and then uh they retaliate, and then they'll think that they're even, but you think something different, and then so on and so on, and things get out of control and you get into a Hatfield and McCoys situation. Um, so there, yeah, so there's that risk. Um, could it be that um if the revenge or the getting even is facilitated by impartial third parties, that this has a better chance of truly resolving the relationship. So maybe I might be biased in terms of how much punishment I think you deserve.

But let's say we bring in Dave as the third party and he is impartial and he uh you know listens to both of our sides and he d uh decides what is a fair so uh uh a solution or what is a fair um cost that I get to inflict on you uh after what you've done. Let's say you you know you stole one of my goats. You don't have any goats. You're gonna give me a cow instead. I don't know, whatever. I'm making but but I was thinking of a goat to I don't know what that means but we're gonna be we've talked to a lot of anthropologists who yeah hunter horticulturalist groups so that's right on the tip of our tongue stealing goats is a real problem. Right. But whatever the equivalent maybe two legs for a goat.

I don't know whatever it is but but Dave you know listens to both of our sides and he decides on you know what a what a fair compensation is for the harm that I've suffered that you that you have to deliver to me. If impartial third parties get involved in the conflict, uh does the getting even stand a better chance of of truly resolving the relationship? Or have you thought much about the role of third parties? I think third parties are very important. And I think a lot of the times that um we that that you know harms and counter harms and reconciliations and forgiveness happen out in the wild, are mediated by third parties, and at least third parties get involved. Um I think third parties have a very important role to play, which

is they, to the extent that they can represent themselves as impartial, then they put themselves in the position to articulate a broader set of ways in which the harm kind of cycles through the system, you know. So, you know, a third party can say, look, your little feud you're having here over here is bad for business. You know, I can't, you know, we can't open the saloon because of all the gunfights in the streets. So there's a way of articulating the harms that make it clear that the right or wrongness, the rightness and wrongness of the different parties is perhaps important to consider. But, you know, we know how this needs to end, which is that the overt behaviors need to stop and they're going to stop.

You know, we're going to bring the power of this, you know Leviathan or whatever down on you, but but this is this is going to stop. Um so I think you know from that point of view, just being able to articulate, look, you your your little feud here is bad for everybody. Um I think I think it has a way of potentially exerting kind of pressure on the two disputants to like get their get their act together. But the other thing, you're right. I mean, if you can, you know, generate something like moral rules that, you know, through a social contract, people have more or less agreed on, and then measure out offenses on that yardstick, um, I think it does um, you know, at least create some common knowledge that any like final retaliatory

harm, you know, like any punishment that's like, okay, you can, you know, you can yeah, you know, take this guy's goats. What was it? What was the goat? Was it goats and cows you were talking about? Yeah, you two I I said cow, but then I realized that that's probably not fair. So I substituted for two pigs. Two pigs. All right. Yeah. So you can I would do you think a goat. I will mediate this. I will mediate this. I'm happy to do it for you. Is a goat more valuable than pigs or a pig? I have no idea, but I'm guessing, yes. So yeah, so I guess please let us know if you know. Yeah, the comments are gonna be amazing. I can't. Exactly. Let me tell you. It depends on what you're doing. We're gonna go herders in the comments.

Like an encyclopedia of goat herbs. You do not want to make uh goat herders angry either. Yeah, so like maybe it's like, you know, maybe it's like I took your two pigs and so, you know, and I ate them. So now it's fair for you to give up for me to give up four of my goats or something like that. So you can maybe kind of say like, well that's that's going to be the last word because we have this higher order issue, which is like we're tired, we're tired of hearing you fight. We're tired of getting caught in the crossfire. you know, you this harm, you know, this harm you committed against this other group or this other family, it's like now everybody's mad at everybody. Like we just have to bring this to a stop.

So third parties disturb that function informally in lots of societies. Um I mean, Dave and Dave, you and I wrote a piece for a Target article um That who who was it that wrote It was Luke Lowaki. It was the Evolution of Peace BBS target article. You and I wrote it was very fun to do it with you. We did a commentary on it. Yeah. That's exactly right. And I think one of his main points is that third parties often do get involved in mediating peace between not only conflicting individuals, but also like you know, conflicting groups. And like the idea is here: like, look, this group has an interest in peace, you know, and you what you're doing is just not making anything better. You're making it way worse.

So, you know, we're gonna let let this offended party punish you, you know, or you're like, you're gonna go in the brig for a week or whatever, you know, whatever it happens to be. But I think the idea there is that that higher order third dispassionate third party kind of does impose the last word. Yeah. Okay. If I can just, I mean, I I'm restating what you're saying saying, Mike. Um, but but I think the whole point of punishment or revenge is that you, each agent is navigating this cost benefit landscape, as you've been saying. And the reason why I might punish you or seek revenge is to recalibrate you because I think you're going to be the source of additional costs, right? And so um like I'm not gonna do that if if if I don't think you're gonna be the uh source

of additional costs. So in so for your perspective, it's for all of us, I think like as parents is a good example, is like the ideal thing is to not punish somebody, but to sort of show them that look, actually it's not me that's gonna impose the cost given the behavior, but it's actually the world, right? Yeah. Sort of like it's not gonna depend on me. Like, you know, like if if we're a parent and we're like, you know, it's not that I as a parent am gonna imposing this cost, you know, and whenever I'm there, that's therefore the cost is happening. It's that when you're doing this, there's actually a cost to you just because of the structure of the world. And I want you to consider that and change what you're doing.

And so I think you know, for for all punishment and even for third party punishment, sort of the aim is to sort of the deep structure is presenting these costs. And I think some of them are idiosyncratic to the person, like, you know, I don't, you guys might take all my goats and maybe that's in your interests, but I I I don't want it to be, you know. So I want to make it seem like it's a structure of the world that it's bad for you to take my goats, right? And I'm gonna say something like, Well, we if we all took, you know. So I think it's really interesting to think about it from this like deep cost benefit structure. Um that uh that this all everything you're saying, I think really resolves down

to what we're trying to do is present an argument to this cost benefit analyzer in everybody's head that you should take this other path, which has a higher benefit to you. And we want to craft ones that are in our interest too. And I think punishment, as David was talking about it, bad punishment is where you just sort of impose a cost without showing an alternative, better option. And that's where you're just going to get retaliation, right? So smart punishment is where you say, oh, look, if you keep doing this thing, there's a cost, but then the alternative is much better. So that that's, you know, the carrot in the stick metaphor, I think, is is is a is apt because I think that that's part of that cost benefit psychology.

You can almost think of it as when someone's misbehaving or behaving in a way you don't like. You kind of disagree. you have like different maps of the world sort of you know and that's a good great way of putting it yeah exactly yeah yeah you know my you know my map of the the the world with you know with Dave and David in it might be like oh you know um you know I'm gonna tell some jokes in a group at Dave's expense or something like that and my map of the world's like that's the best payoffs for me you know whereas your you you know your map is like well, the best payoffs for me are having that not happen and they're having you change your behavior going into the future. Like so you're, you know, you're viewing that very much as the the pathway you should take.

And so like at this second order level, you're also saying, like, Mike, you need to be taking a different path. You don't, you don't, you don't have a full, you know, when you behave that way, it was pretty clear you don't have a full uh a more uh uh um a detailed enough map of the so of the social world you live in. Yeah. I really like that. Cause I like one of the themes of David's worldview that I've absorbed is sort of there's hidden these status games. And I love this idea that another thing in related is exactly what you're saying, Mike, is that part of the hidden world of social interaction is negotiating maps of the cost benefit landscape, sort of if if that's a way of putting it. Yeah.

Yeah. Like here's here's where you're plopped down and you you're you're not really you don't have enough of the kind of little hills and valleys in it that you really probably ought to have. Because some of them lead to you know they need potentially lead to some pretty bad little you know canyons. Yeah. And and and communicating that is interesting because for example, like in the context of a parent, at least from our biased perspective, we would like to think we are impartially conveying the structure, the reality of the world. But also communicating that can also be a threat in the sense of you're also saying, This is the one I would, this is the cost-benefit landscape I would like to see true.

I would like you to behave according to. And that hides two different things. One is a real assessment of the cost benefit landscape, but it also hides the one I would like. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Well, that's a that's a yeah. And and yeah, I mean, with parent-offspring conflict, you may have a different, you may want your kid to behave differently than the kid would want to behave. You know, you might want to want the kid to behave in a way that would impose fewer costs on uh his or her siblings or future siblings than that kid would would like. So you they might like to pursue a riskier life strategy that might potentially inflict costs on the family that you would uh not have an interest in in him pursuing, you know,

for example. So yeah, that's a great that's a great example. I mean that parent offspring conflict concept is so surprising. You know, some of the outcomes of that are just so wild. Um but yeah but in general they make you know it it certainly makes the point that I I want you to behave in ways that are are gonna be favorable to me. And for parents, that's that that certainly can be it could be against your immediate reproductive interests, actually, you know, in in a more direct ways. I'm gonna help you choose your friends because of the effects of those choices on my welfare, you know, like and the ones I might want that might be in my interest are potentially different from yours. So um, you know, I'm I'm thinking about a a family, an entire family, you know, in a way

you've that that's where the payoffs generated for me. It's like this larger context where you're just thinking, like, wow, she's really pretty, you know, or somewhere like, you know, he's wow, he's really good looking or something like that. So I like this. I never thought about it this way. Um of of of punishment really being uh I'm rewarding for that matter, you know, it's an attempt to help, you know, to the extent. I mean, I really I like Fiery Cushman's point about on this about punishment. You know, it it it isn't just changing, you know, you know, helping people to understand the schedule of reinforcement. And more deeply, it is about a communication and um about I did I'd like this and I like I

don't like that. But I think enriching this, you know, it's like, no, I want to explain to you what the structure of your social world is really like from from how I'm seeing it. Right. Yeah. I mean it it sort of ties into the DeScioli view of of morality where it basically revolves around third parties and the decisions they are likely to make uh in the wake of a of a social conflict with someone else, like whose side they're likely to take. Um you could think about a moral rule as as an expectation about what impartial third parties are likely to do in response to this action. You know, if I take your uh your goat, for example, I might have internalized an expectation that my community is going to side against me in that case and force me to give

up two of my pigs in r to compensate you, or whatever. Whatever the expectation is, that is sort of the moral, the moral rule. Uh, and because I know that that's how third parties are going to respond to this action. I might never undertake that action in the first place because I'll I'll you know compute the costs and benefits and I'll realize, you know, third parties are gonna make me give up two of my goats. I really love two of two to my pigs or whatever. I really love my pigs. It's not worth it for me to take your goat. Um and that could be a little, you know, David's conscience preventing me from from undertaking the action. Um and that, you know, it doesn't necessarily uh it's not actually necessarily the

calculation part is not necessarily conscious. I might just have a feeling that it's not right or I shouldn't do that. Uh but the underlying calculations might have to do with the expected uh behavior of third parties. Absolutely, yeah. Hey, I got a question for you. Um D Dave, you're married to a developmental psychologist, right? I am guilty of that. Yeah. So um maybe you are too, David. I don't know. David, who are you? Yeah. No, no, she she's she's not in academia, thank goodness. Okay. Well, so like is there any is there any that's healthy for that's good that's healthy for it. It sounds like you're gonna ask me about what research exists. I'm gonna get my uh I'm gonna about to type into Google here.

So so how you know, I know that children have a fair pretty pretty sophisticated set of like expectations about what the social world's going to be like, you know? Do you do you do you think that they have, I mean, is there any research or but you know, and and if you don't know of any, like what do you think? Do you think how how well do you think children at like the age of four or five, let's say, understand that they're that dispassionate parties are like really reliable uh for for not you know like that there's such a thing as a dispassionate third party you could you could you know you turn to to help fix a conflict and that person would be fair. Hmm that's a really good question because it it it combines a couple

different things that I think there is developmental research on. So one of them is there's a lot there are there is evidence that like more popular higher status kids are leaders in the social world with respect to uh negotiating conflicts like on the playground, right? Like some of my own work was informed by developmental work showing that um impartial third parties are sort of tolerated as resolvers of first-person conflict. So if you and David are kids on the playground, you'll sort of go along with a higher status um kid um uh I guess then I guess I'm that kid in this example. Um I get to be the nice that is playing. Um uh but you know, like but it's and I don't know if that's um an explicit acknowledgement of the validity of an impartial third party, but

at least the de facto action occurs. So that's at least one version of this answer. There's another one, which is um People like Paul Harris, long there's like a long sort of um history, well no super long, but of research on people being informed or uninformed. Uh um what's the word? Um, sort of testimonial or sources of evidence, right? Just sort of like this is what this object is called, or this is what we do, or this is good to eat or bad to eat. Um, and you can vary things like do they have the same cultural background, do they look like me, et cetera, et cetera. And there is work on that. Again, that's not that's not right on what you're describing. Um, I mean, uh my own guess is that uh kids should

not come prepared with all the details filled in because it really does depend on um what your well how third parties are gonna react. So I think the idea that third parties will react is important and there would be built-in stuff. But how they react might depend on your status and your power. And and it probably, I mean my my best guess is that again, just because I'm you know a parent right now, a lot of parenting psychology is probably or one aspect of parenting psychology is really representing how kids' behavior is going to be seen by their peers or especially by the rest of the world and care about that. And be and so like I think a lot of like teaching morals to kids, like according to based

on what David's saying, I think like the idea of like I have to teach my kids right from wrong, or like morality is part of like parenting tropes, is part of your job is the control system that's much more sensitive to the ambient third-party reactions to behaviors. And your job is to sort of in the same way it's to like keep them from falling off a cliff, it's to keep them from falling off a third-party reaction cliff as well. But I don't know. That that's a non-answer. I don't know. Yeah. No, it's I mean, I I feel like there's way too little work on the full concept of impartiality. I feel like there there's probably some really interesting stuff happening surrounding that question. I bet we have pretty sophisticated machinery for judging how impartial someone is likely to

be if we're in a conflict. Like if Dave, you and I are in a conflict, probably we're gonna have different preferences about who we want to mediate that conflict. I might say, nah, Mike is gonna be on your side. Mike, you're you've been friends with Mike for a long time. No, we gotta choose someone who's more impartial who's gonna be give us a fair and you might have different turns. I might go to, you know, someone else and be like, no, that that that person's not gonna uh give us a a fair ruling. Um so I feel like we probably uh have pretty sophisticated judgments of how uh impartial someone is likely to be. Um it might be cool to see if there's like we have we've we categorize people like in a who

said what paradigm based on their uh expected impartiality to particular sides of a conflict. And I bet it tracks a lot like you know, who we think is allied with who. You know, probably the the full concept of impartiality is someone who is either not an ally of either of the two disputants or uh equally loyal to both of the disputants. Um is connected to the generic third party structure of the world, the right, where it's sort of like they are the vehicle of how the rest of the world will react whether it's the physical or social world. Mike, did I answer your question or is there a better it is it do you is the question still stand on yeah? Like is there an aspect of like the child cognition that you're asking about that I didn't

I'm not sure if I had it well I no I I I I think so. I mean it wasn't a the best formed idea in the world but I just like you know when when you know, like maybe another way to put what I'm curious about is what are the features of a third party that from you know in the eyes of a five-year-old, you know, would say, like, no, you have to give that back, you know, like maybe there's some moral, you know, there's some ambiguity, there's some ambiguity about, well, no, like it, you know, it was left there overnight. We don't even know that he it's his. You know, I I found it, you know. Well, you know, like what gives what gives the third party in that child's eyes the standing to say, no, like you need to give it back?

Yeah, that's a great question. And I don't I don't know if there is research on that. So my answer to that would just be it's what it is for all of us, which is does that third party holds some potential for me of benefits or status in the sense of either they can convey them or they're a they they have an accurate picture of the world's larger status um or benefit structure such that I should believe them. So they're either an accurate messenger or they're actually a a provider of benefits. And otherwise, there's no um otherwise you would not expect an evolved system to but to listen to that. Yeah, that tracks for me. Yeah, I would expect, you know, the kid if if uh if I take the kid's crayons or whatever

and then the kid's best friend says, Give give me back those crayons, uh I'm probably gonna react differently than if like uh the teacher comes in and says give him back his crayons. Right. Uh because I I I view the teacher as being more impartial to the to the conflict than than the kid's best friend. And I might, you know, react differently in the future. Uh maybe if the kid's best friend isn't around, I'll take the crayons again. But if the teacher does it, maybe I'll I'll be less likely to do it. I don't know. Yeah, you think then that's oh yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. That's the key just there's a key distinction there that I I think is really interesting. Is like from the point of view of view of that little kid, is it's like I trust the teacher

to is it I trust the teacher to be impartial here, or is it I know this teacher can like impose huge sanctions on me? And I think they're the same thing. I actually think what it means to be impartial is the stand-in for they there's an army behind them. Uh it's not literally an army, but it's the world, they're act either accurate with respect to there will be costs, or or they can impose costs. And I think actually I think that's what interesting impartiality means, right? Like I think if you're a king, yeah, they're representative of the larger community. yeah, exactly. So so if you're king and there's only your fiefdom, and you don't believe that another peasant can collect enough peasant outrage to impose a

cost on you, you're not gonna believe that an impartial peasant is the conveyor of that you're gonna go along with him and call it impartial, You're gonna call it biased. It's like it's I think all you know this cynic it's slightly cynical, but this Darwinian view of that you'll consider an outcome fair to the extent that there's an army behind it. Um sort of the idea. Interesting. Yeah. Uh Mike, uh what what I've this has been really fun already. Um what what I heard you say in the beginning is that there's a cost-benefit logic to these constructs, and nobody was looking at them. Um, and that's sort of what we've been doing so far. Is that a description of sort of how your approach to doing social psychology or

psychology generally has been? Like we haven't had a lot of uh social psychology, evolutionary social psychologists on yet. And um, and I don't want to get too meta-science-y, but we can. Um, I like doing it, but it's more fun to, I think, for a lot of people to just do the science. But um, you know, one thing I as I think about what you do or what many social uh psychologists do who take an evolutionary approach is there's a long tradition of studying a construct, A or B or C, And there's really mysteries or Guardian knots that are really hard. And then, but if you come from this other evolutionary perspective, you just get these insights or a different way of approaching it. My understanding is you've done that a lot to your credit.

Is that a fairer um assessment? And is that sort of one way you think about sort of what your what your job has been to in in the context of integrating evolution and social psychology? Well, first of all, thank you for that. Um I, you know, I I don't I don't really feel like I have the standing to kind of characterize how social psychology operates in general. But I do feel like for me, a lot of the stuff I study, I just am working like I'm but I'm not a very complicated, complex thinker. I just kind of think like, well, people have incentives and they, you know, they are generally trying to follow those incentives. And the world, you know, has, you know, has these costs and benefits associated with different courses of action.

And a lot of what our kind of emotional hardware and sort of social cognition really is about is tracking those costs and benefits and trying to bring us closer to the benefits and you know further away from the costs. So yeah, like I guess I guess for me it's just like people are intuitive economists, you know. And I think that does that's probably shaped a lot of the topics I study and and and kind of how I think about them. So you know like you know, you could take something like I didn't take like something like forgiveness. Like when I started working on it, honestly, I was just interested in like how can we make the world less vengeful? Like, what can we do? You know, like just like what can we do with people in counseling who are hurting and they

can't get over some hurt from their child? Like that's really all I really cared about, you know. But the more I got into it, the more it just seemed like, you know, people weren't like again back to where we started. Like, I didn't feel like people were taking revenge very seriously. Like, my background's in counseling psychology. I don't know if you knew that or not, but oh, you know, I think I did, but I think I had forgotten that. Yeah, I think of you because you're so uh uh present in the social psychology and evolutionary social psychology community. I forget that, yeah. Yeah, I mean, so that's how I started was really just like how can we help people like really like make counseling better for people?

But what I realized in working on that was revenge was really viewed as this thing just to kind of be knocked out. Like you just want to get it out of people's scythe somehow because it's just like it's toxic, it's negative. And I I think it's really bad for people for the most part to be walking around with a grudge, you know. Um but what I think got shortchanged in that, and even what gets shortchanged in trying to get it out of people is like it's it's a re it's a response to calculations of costs and benefits, you know, and and it is it's it's people looking for a pathway to um um get the the the the the the costs to stop, you know, to keep to stop hemorrhaging costs because somebody else has harmed you in the past.

And I just found that very useful to think about. And it sounds like you guys like to go deep into the into theory and stuff like that. But I found this concept of the WTR, you know, welfare trade-off ratio. I've uh late, I found it fairly late, but I found like it was like really interesting, you know. Like, how do I get, you know, revenge being about like, I want you to value me differently, you know, and one of the ways I can well, revenge might be one way I can make that happen is you know, I can get you to stoping putting costs on me and and and start producing benefits. So I really just thought, like, yeah, cost and benefits is where it's at for understanding people and how they're trying to be social.

So, you know, I like to tell people like what I study why people are nice to each other and mean to each other. And, you know, but I I think I know really. uh I mean in a in a way that's not a non-glib way. I guess is what I'm trying to say is I I d I do think you get a lot of benefit from an evolutionary approach that's very sort of simple-mindedly says people have incentives and they're trying to follow them. Silly little insight, but I feel like I've gotten a lot of use out of it. Yeah. I mean, the other thing, it reminds me of we had Eddie Hagan on, and he talked about emotional pain. And the I think to your credit, you're saying the same thing. I think one way to put what you're saying, what you're saying is for me, um, this idea that

sort of revenge is a bad thing, we just want to get it out. It doesn't take seriously the it's the analogue of saying somebody's in pain. And you wouldn't just want to say, well, let's treat their pain. You'd want to know what's causing the pain. You know, and it's it's sort of it's it's wonderful to treat the pain and the cause. It's it's it's monstrous to treat the symptom and not even consider there's a cause, right? It's it's just it's kind of evil in a way, right? Or uh maybe that's too strong, but it's it it could be. Um I mean yeah, if you if you remove someone's cough when they have pneumonia, like that could kill them. That that is easier. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So I think like what it's another way of putting it is it's not just understanding, or it's

not just not being glib, it's that you're actually considering, you're respecting that this person's in a bad situation, or they're they're trying, they need more benefits, or there's real costs happening. And it's an acknowledgement that that's happening and and the the the that it makes sense why they're feeling this, whether or not that's the best way to approach it, it's your you're not pushing aside that there's actually something wrong. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So I just wanted to understand that really. Um and the I you know, I a fair bit of my work has been about forgiveness and revenge for sure. And I think it affects how I think about motive uh uh pro-social motivations. Um, gratitude is another topic I've talked about a little, you know, written about a little

bit. Um, been writing a little bit about envy. So I guess I do I'm interested in how people trade costs and benefits, And that's probably more than anything like the through line for my research over the past sort of couple decades or something like that. And is it that people are misperceiving why these emotions exist or what the functions are? And by doing so, we're harming making the world better? I mean, it sounds it sounds silly, but it, but is that I mean, I think that's is that fair? Yeah. Um I am I'm at this point pretty upstream of effort to like to develop techniques and stuff like that. Uh but I I do think there's just kind of a um a vantage point that you kind of miss if you don't

really take seriously the the idea that a lot of what we're doing in the social world is trying to just improve our lay. you know, have do I have a good position on the green to hit this ball or not? And, you know, gratitude is an attempt, for example, you know, it's an emotion that, you know, conceivably, the whole point of it is to say, like, you know, being be being being close to you is like a propitious little place to be. Like, you know, this is this is this is a relationship where I'm gonna be made better off for being in it and um what I want to do is deepen our friendship so that I can continue to get benefit from that and hopefully that'll be by you feeling like I've got some, you know, I I got some, I have some value to you.

You know, it's like it's all you know, like the wonderful thing about an emotion like this is you can like talk about like generally like it's probably, you know, I think mostly it feels pretty great. You know, which is like, um is it's it's yeah, good. I good. I'm glad it feels that way. I think the feeling of this telling us something really important about what's what's on offer, you know? And in general, I think that is gonna be to me best understood as in this again, this language of cost and benefits. Again, I'm pretty some ups, pretty simple person, but I think it's a it's a um uh well it's not a foolproof heuristic, I think it's a pretty good one for getting some purchase to a lot of different emotions and social behaviors.

I love that. That's uh like a hallmark card, gratitude. And then just we can put that on a Hallmark card and sell it. I think that's perfect. Can you imagine if you manage from you? Can you imagine if they're like there was an evolutionary psychology like um you know, uh company that just did just did greeting cards and um that there could be a small a very a very small business there could be a very small business there an offshoot of cards against humanity oh there you go yeah that's a there's a song reading cards against hum reading cards for humanity yeah wow wow wow wow we could keep we could stay here and riff on this for a long time I bet oh wow that that could raise money for all the gear for our podcast that'll be our side hustle We could we could we could fund some grad

students with that actually. Yeah. All right, we'll edit that out. Uh yeah. Well, I I wanted to ask you, Mike. I mean you you were sort of hinting at this that you don't necessarily want to just eliminate revenge or assume that revenge is always stupid or faulty or coming from um an irrational place. That often it's coming from real harms and you know, people, evolved creatures that they are, are just trying to do the b the best they can for themselves and their families. And if they're trying to get revenge on someone, they you know most of the time have a pretty good reason to be pursuing that strategy. And you have to understand that if you want to try to create peace in the world. You have to understand what people's reasons really are.

Um so I wanted to ask uh about the dark side of forgiveness. Um, because you know, we all know the dark side of punishment. Um, it's it's very visible uh to us. But the dark side of forgiveness is less visible. But like, say I'm in an abusive relationship and my partner is hitting me, like uh I could I might forgive my partner, and that might not be the best thing for me to do. That would be a case where forgiveness would be bad. It would be good for me to get out of that relationship. Um, if a kid's getting bullied on the playground, uh, you wouldn't necessarily want the kid to forgive the bullies because that's just gonna perpetuate the bullying. Um and so I I think too often psychologists slip into this view that like

bad emotions are always bad, uh, and they have they have no rationality to them, they have no reason behind them. We gotta get rid of shame, we gotta get rid of revenge, we gotta get rid of guilt, we gotta get rid of all all these negative emotions, get rid of suffering. Uh and that's just a wrong headed way of of viewing the situation. Um, do do you think there is a a dark side of of forgiveness and and and a way of taking it too far? Yeah, I do. I do think there's a way of taking taking it too far. And I do I do think there's a dark side. So you know I I I think of forgiveness probably as like the product of a system. And the system seems to want um access to benefits of a relationship um uh

short of imposing retaliatory harm on the you know so um ultimately what i'm trying to do is get the flow of costs and benefits back where i want it and so in forgiving i'm indicating my willingness to resume relating to you that harm sort of notwithstanding. So I I think okay. Here's something that's always I really don't have a good answer to, and I I haven't figured out for myself. I haven't figured out, and I I and I confess I haven't been particularly like consistent about this, I don't think, either. Now I've written about this stuff. So if forgiveness is really basically coming out of a system that wants to restore or preserve a favorable benefit-cost ratio associated with a relationship short of imposing retaliatory harm, then

what would be sad is if it's neither it's never neither good nor bad, but if decisions to exercise it in some relationships, in bad relationships, just says something very tough to accept about the forgiver situation position in that relationship. You know, like it you the example you use, you know, it's like if it was if it was somebody I didn't know, and it's like, you keep forgiving this person, you keep forgiving this person, you keep forgiving this person. Like one one response would be like, no, I truly am just willing to accept this, you know. Like I my love for this person exceeds this ridicule I have to get every, you know, you know, or whatever, this this verbal abuse or God forbid, you know, emotional

abuse, physical abuse. And so I'm going to continue to do that. One sad thing that I think is probably true a lot more is you say, like, well, what are the alternatives here? You know, you know, I, you know, I'm dependent on my partner for all these benefits that come my way and to leave those behind. maybe you're like in the long run, it'll be I'll be better off, but like in the short term, like, what? Like, where am I gonna live? You know, like, or you know, if I don't forgive and keep going on with the relationship, like the abuse will just get worse, you know. So, like, maybe over the long run, by not accepting this, not forgiving it, and just like cutting the relationship off. Yeah, you're right, maybe I'll be better off in a in two years or three years, but like I

gotta go through two or three years of things being really bad before that. You know, like I can't I can't afford to we can't afford for me to have the to to operate two households, you know, or like I can't, I couldn't possibly make it even like six months out there living apart from this person, you know. So again, I'm I'm genuinely right now here in this moment thinking this through and trying to come to some better, like more you know, rounded out way of thinking about it. But like maybe forgiveness just kind of is in that situation, and what it tells us is this person's again, this person's incentives are like this. Well, this person's incentives lead them towards something that from the

outside really doesn't look very attractive, you know, and looks like it's really unpleasant. And then you just have to say, well, that's a really that I I'm I'm really grieving for that person having to be it that to be in such dire circumstances, you know. um yeah yeah so you know you might it might be the kind of situation where you know when when we see uh you know like what looks like just like an irrational faithfulness to a terrible relationship you know it could be like yeah come on man snap out of it you know you gotta like you gotta adjust your attitude you gotta get out of this situation and so like what would the reluctance to do that be based on probably be based on like at least how that person locally is sees how

their incentive map looks. You know, we just kind of can't see. So yeah. Yeah. Oh no go ahead. Sorry. No please. I was just gonna say, yeah, and I think that like that would be the trope of the the mu the the clinical intervention that's effective and efficacious would be those situations where the person has really low self-esteem, which is just that they believe their market value in the social world is much lower than it is objectively. And that will happen for some people. But that's not every case, right? And so there's there may be other cases where the person is as adequately or accurately perceiving their situation. Um, and yeah, so yeah. Right. Interestingly, it seems like it's the I don't know if this is

true like in every state, but certainly in a lot of states, we have just it's like I I think the statutes have come to recognize that well, I think I think dates have um I don't want to pass a jet value judgment here, but um so I'm not sure I'm actually not sure. So if if the cops show up and have reason to suspect one partner has been battering the other, right? Physical battery, they can just make an arrest of who they believe to be the batterer, at least detain them. And I don't know if, you know, I don't know if charge them, but certainly arrest them. If they just themselves are convinced that there's a battery situation, even if the potential victim is saying, no, no, no, nothing like that happened, right?

Right, right. So I think that points to a very interesting situation where low, like, like suppose we have an intimate partner violence situation. At least that's what the police suspect. They show up to your house, it's been noisy and all that. The fact that the cops will make this judgment when the partner they believe to have been battered will not, I think really points to a kind of an understanding in the in the in an understanding in the law that um people individual people have incentives that will lead them to um deny harms that we we as the state really care about yeah Um, and I guess there's a value judgment there, which is that we as the state believe the totality of the interests of the world are

such that this the the the partner we perceive to be the batterer should be removed from this household. Even if you don't think that in this moment think that's the best course to take. Right. Yeah. So it's like it's this conflict there of, you know, um what the totality of the state views is the state's interests in this particular terrible situation. And like maybe also the timescale over which they think kind of those costs and benefits are going to kind of run, run out, run, percolate out versus those of the of the person who they suspect is getting battered, you know, who has a different, very different, probably is not thinking about the interest of the state. They're thinking about their own interests.

And they're much more thinking about now. They're thinking about right now. Like, what are gonna be the consequences of me saying, Yeah, yeah, my intimate partner has been beating me, you know, has been battering me, or you know, has been, you know, battering my kid. Like, what are the immediate consequences to me right now of telling you that as the cops. You know, I'm, you know, so they're thinking locally and they're thinking much more immediately than these, you know, representatives of the state are, which they're thinking about not just that couple of people, but also what's the state's interest in preventing intimate partner violence and every you know, and and the the safe, you know, the long-term safety of even this individual person.

So they're not probably thinking about the I don't know. Again, like this that that battered partner is seeing his or her life, you know, seeing their life from a very different perspective. And that's also recognized in the laws like you can't always understand what trust what's coming out of a partner's mouth, right? When they when you show up at their doorstep. Yeah. Especially like for, I mean, I also imagine like for when the state gets involved, it's these extreme tail-end distribution cases. And in those cases, it's like the classic, like, oh, what is it, like the Game of Thrones thing where like the guy imprisons the other guy and just grinds him down to the point where he's a the the victim of the abuse becomes the lapdog of the abuser

because the abuse creates the cycle of lowering the perceived value on the on the part of the abusee, abused person. So I imagine like there's an overrepresentation of if you are being abused and the state is involved, many times that perception of the from the abused person has been um corroded in the sense of like this the person who's been abusing them has been basically conferring or presenting a landscape, cost-benefit landscape of I'm the only one who will convey any benefits to you, you're worthless, you have no alternatives. And if you even try to get help, I'm going to punish you. And the state, I mean, this is the charitable interpretation interpretation of the state's um ignoring the abused person.

This is the charitable version, is that person is a readout of a situation where we haven't gotten involved and we are going to exert the costs on the abuser and we're gonna convey benefits on the abused person that the abused person doesn't perceive yet because we hadn't gotten involved yet. So I think that's like there is a charitable read of like ignoring that, at least in the beginning, you know, until the yeah. I think there is a charitable read. I I mean, and what I'm trying to communicate more than anything uh and work out of my own head is um it it's a situation in which um it is very, very difficult to know what the right call would be. Like if you're setting policy or something like that, what is what is the right what's the

right call to make? You know, because that is absolutely true. You know, this the the the the state does I mean the laws were put into place on the idea that it will be it's not like we're you know the idea that it will be better for you long term and that we have we can provide resources to keep you safe and help you thrive. Even even if even as this relationship erodes, and you know, and even as even you know, we can there there are ways to address this wrong, which we think is happening, that will provide benefits for you, make it a net gain for you. Um, on the premise that even through this initial really period of extreme risk, we're also going to be able to take care of you. So I I do, but but I think, you know, this is this is a tough judgment

call. And you know, it's it's why I I suspect you know the average police officer that shows up with the, you know, to deal with these complaints is a pretty sophisticated person, you know, who's done is does a pretty good job of reading nonverbals and threat assessments and safety assessments and, you know, they're they're out there, you know, we hope exercising a lot of wisdom and discernment about these things. Because and they know this stuff very well. Like, you know, relationships have you know of all sorts, you know, have real risks associated with them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it it uh it suggests I I feel like it uh in my many years of thinking from an evolutionary perspective, I feel like I'm continually led down this

path of more of just a tragic view of the human condition. Um, that a lot of the times the things that we point to as as as the major problems in our world, they're just really hard. And they're they're really hard for a reason. That the, you know, everyone involved is just a human being who's trying to do what's best for themselves and their family. And it's it's not always the case that someone is just wildly stupid and irrational. It's just when you get a world full of humans trying to do the best for themselves and their families, they just sometimes collide in ways that create, you know, bad outcomes. And um it it is it is sobering to take that perspective, just just really get clear on just how hard the problem is and how complicated it is, and how there are no quick

and easy fixes. And at best you can make marginal improvements with a thorough understanding of the situation, but that's often the best we can do. There's not going to be a magic bullet. We're not going to wave a magic wand and get rid of, you know, conflict between people, between groups. We can try to reduce it. We can try to mitigate it. We can try to create incentive structures that lessen its costs or channel it in better directions. But I think thinking about it in a more tragic way may be a better lens through which to see these issues. I David, I really re resonate with that. Um it it would I'm really glad no one ever asks me to set any policies of any kind because I I would be so paralyzed with with worrying about like the second order effects of

things and not really being able to anticipate people's incentives, you know, and how they would, you know, if we made this change to the rule system of rules in the university, like, you know, the the fact, you know, if the faculty policies and policies and procedures were changed in just this way, like what would be the total effects of this thing percolating through the system? Or I'm on this committee, it's called the Undergraduate Council, and we we approve. I teach at UC San Diego down the street from you. And we approve every curricular change in every department and every major and every program on campus that involves undergraduates. And like university committee work usually gets panned as being pretty unpleasant.

I love this committee. I love being on this committee because you get to see, you know, all of these little decisions that, you know individual departments are are making about us, you know, like a major, like, should we change the name of this, you know, this one major we give in the Department of Chemistry? And it's like, wow, this is going to affect thousands of students, you know, like, and you know, how how will it affect them? And how will it affect the universities, you know, the bottom line or our competitiveness with our, you know, with our competitors, or how will it affect them in the jobs, you know, in the in the job market when they graduate? And, you know, the you know, I'm not I'm not making

laws about, you know, how the police should intervene in, you know, disputes at in, you know, at people's doorsteps. I, you know, I'm just trying to decide whether, you know, help decide whether it's okay to change the name of this major, you know, um, you know, add a add an adjective to it or something, you know, in an ampersand or something like that. So um I I'm really all to say, David, I I agree with you. I think, you know, as I've gotten older, I think maybe I'm a little bit older than you guys, um, I've gotten more and more um just like humble, I think, about what at least you know, a naive person like me could actually accomplish in making policies for larger groups of people, you know.

Like I feel like for me personally, like I honestly, like I can't even see two steps ahead of my own life. Really, you know. Yeah. Really seriously, seriously. And um so I I do I do think I've gotten more of that like tragic view of human nature where you know it's like we should probably hold our convictions very, very lightly, you know, on a lot of things. Um, and I found myself saying a lot more like, I'm just not sure, you know, like how this is gonna work out. You know, so yeah, right. Yeah, you put you put a couple of million people together in San Diego County or, you know, a few hundred million people together in a single country. It's like, wow, um this one little change is like a trivial looking change but it's going

to affect hundreds of millions of people you know so yeah i'm i'm i'm sympathetic to that point and i do think you know what i do think it's it's consistent with an evolutionary view of of of human you know the mind and human social interaction i think i do think it's very consistent with that Yeah. It reminds me of um, like I keep thinking this thing of like, you know, somebody the trope is sort of like, no, no, no, I'm here to help. You know, and they're just like, no, no, no, I'm here to help. You know, and it's I think a lot of social science has that the the lure of the the TED talk, um is is it's the currency of there's a cheap way to get help, to provide help. We're the people who provide help.

This is what help is. You don't need to understand the problem or the situation. You don't have to invest in the social support of the abused mother. You don't have to help her, you know, get groceries cheaply or provide child care or make these sacrifices, right? Um we can we can make her feel less guilty and we can do it by doing X, Y, and Z, you know, like cheat codes in a video game. And I think um I yeah, yeah, everything you guys are saying, I just think I'm just thinking of somebody where it's the social scientists who just says, no, no, no, we're the ones who are here to help. And then, you know, the people who need help are like, okay, how? And like, no, no, no, we're here to help you, you know.

And and the extreme version is like, you know, we're here to help you and we're bombing you. You know, like it's the same thing. It's like we're imposing a cost on you, but we're here to help, you know? Right. It's that same mentality, but in a uh an academic setting, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and you know, on the other hand, like what's the alternative? You know, like to trying. And what's the alternative to trying to, you know, to improve these systems? Again, like just you just let them run and do do what they're gonna do. Meanwhile, people are you know continuing to get I don't know, this has gone dark. Uh yeah, I think this is a theme though in social science. I like I think there's like a Nick Cheater or somebody has a like a there's an I frame and

a S frame, but it's basically just this idea that like a lot of these social social psychologically framed problems are actually structural problems, right? Like the I think it's a different way to think about like psychology. I think like what you're describing was for a long time it was sort of like, well, if the content of somebody's psychology is X, the way to solve their problems is to just make the content of their psychology Y. It's a very clinical point, but it's actually like it's the behavior, you know, it's the it's the no, you have to change the situation, right? Like if if that's why their state is in that, you know, like it's the pain point, right? Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

We I often you know it to take it back to forgiveness, a lot of the therapies that I found wanting were basically about someone working on their own inner self, you know, like would you know, sort of like reframe the situation, you know, think more deeply about the benefits of having this person in your life, or or alternatively, like realize it's okay to not forgive everybody, you know. Um, but it's all like in the interior of your soul, you know. And the thing for me that I I found the most uh aggravating, I guess, was you know, the the the real levers of forgiveness that we don't talk about enough when we think about applied, like making the world a better place kind of thing is, you know, it's changed behavior on the bet on the part of the harmdoer, You know,

like that's the thing that gets people to forgive. You know, it's like explicit requests for forgiveness that get like paid out in really changed behavior, or you know, a commitment of it seems a commitment to changing behavior. Like, and that's what changes people's attitudes toward other people. And, you know, I guess when you don't have when that's just not possible, that's when you maybe focus much more on these intrapsychic or individual interventions. But, you know, if you can create situations that are conducive for the person who harmed you to be able to kind of own up to it and realize that, you know, um they don't have to deny it or justify it and that there won't be like horrible, as hard, you know, there won't

be consequences as horrible if they're willing to own up to their behavior. Then I think that's a more authentic way to make them last, like lasting forgiveness, real like forgiveness happen. Um, but you know, like harmdoers have a lot of incentives to not own up to what they've done wrong. And so that's that's a part that piece as well, you know. I'm, you know, like let's say I would really like I've harmed you and I'd really like to get our relationship, you know, get it get every get get ourselves together. Um, but you know, that in what does that involve? That involves me like acknowledging, yeah, I did actually do something that was really, you know, really terrible to you. I, you know, that really was, you know, like that was I really did insult you like in a

way that was like that was really tacky, you know, that was really insensitive. Um or um you know um I harmed you so badly that it would be appropriate for like third a third party to get involved, you know, like or you know I really I this thing I did to you, not only did it hurt you, but like I put other things, important things in my life at risk because I broke a law, you know, or I broke some kind of norm that's like a really toxic norm to break. So there's a lot of barriers to actually sometimes to an offender apologize, you know. Yeah, yeah. Um, but that is for sure, like of the things we know, like an acknowledgement of responsibility and kind of um an acknowledgement that that's not the person you want to be, and concrete evidence that you you are willing, you know,

that will back up this change of heart. Like those are the things that really promote forgiveness the best. Um, but there are like incentives on the part of the harmdoer to kind of avoid paying that price. Sometimes, you know. It raises the question of like apologies. What keeps them honest? We rely on a couple of different sources of evidence to figure out whether an apology or any other any apology is honest. And it's the same set of things we use to figure out whether any communication is honest, you know. And we probably turn to them in order of their the costliness of integrating them. So I can just rely on your words, you know, probably first and foremost. Let's say I don't know you at all, but you apologize for doing something to me.

You know, um you know, and if you seem sorry and contrite just with your words, that that's gonna go some distance, but obviously talk is cheap. So you might want to ask, like, well, what else is there to back that up? You know? So one thing I, you know, one thing I can look to is your history of your past behavior. And that's going to be better than, you know, if I don't know you at all, that's one thing. But if I've known you a long time, then I can use that as a kind of backfill to figure out, you know, given what I know about you, what's the likelihood this apology really marks, you know, a your intention to change your behavior. And if you're like, man, we've been friends for 20 years and this is just a blip, you know,

this is just a this is the first time this has ever happened, I'm probably going to be more likely to discount it, you know, and give you the benefit of the doubt. If third parties say like, no, no, no, like David's like, he's a mensch, you know, like if he did that, he was, he must have just been having a bad day, or something else had set him off. Or you didn't, you know, maybe you just didn't really quite understand his intentions properly. He wouldn't do that on purpose, you know. Um, so I would probably take that third party testimony into account, you know, um, and then obviously integrate it with other things I can know about you, you know, like how do you seem to treat other people? And so not just how you've treated me in the past and how you seem to treat other people,

but uh other people's testimony about you, and obviously nonverbals. Um, and that's gonna get, I think, weighted by a couple things, or yeah, in some way. We're gonna interact with a few other things to to to to know to make of that. One is just the cost, the potential risk I put myself in of By continuing the relationship with you. Like if the thing you did to me is such it put such a steep cost on me, you know, or it it would be correlated with that the risk that you'd be putting a very steep cost on me in the future, you know, that like let's say you show up to my, I don't know, I'm gonna If what you've done is serious enough that a second time of doing it would put me in an extreme risk, then I'm probably going to

just sort of treat the first one as like a really serious sign that we just can't be friends anymore. So I might have a zero tolerance policy for certain kinds of offenses that you might commit against me because it's just like I can't, you know, I can't, I won't tolerate that's happening a second time, So I'm probably gonna just like whether I believe you or not, is is gonna get multiplied against the, you know, the the the the severity of a the perceived harm. This might, you know, how you having it done it once might indicate there's a chance you do it again in the future. So I think we probably, like in general, for evolutionary reasons, probably have reasons to assume people tell us things that are accurate, you know.

So like I think we have a bias toward just like assuming communications are accurate. Um, and then we take in these cues. So, like, you know, you're probably like your baseline credulity is probably something above zero for all human communications. But then I'm going to take into account testimony, how you've treated me in the past, um, nonverbals, how other you've treated other people. And then also against that factor in, but what if, you know, if this ever did happen again, I would be ruined, or like this, it would just be not something I could tolerate. So I think it's probably some kind of calculus involving all those factors. Interesting. It suggests that the evolutionary way of thinking about signaling games is in many

ways too simple. That we often ask the question, what keeps a signal honest? And then we give an answer like, oh, it's costly signaling. And maybe the cost comes in the production of the signal. Maybe the cost comes later if you get punished for finding out to be if you find your if you're discovered to be lying. But the picture you're painting is much more sophisticated than that. It's not that there is like one straightforward cost that is produced with the signal or or later. It's really it's more of um an inference to the best explanation phenomenon where the recipient of the apology is weighing lots of different sources of evidence for many different aspects of the situation and of life in general, and and taking in as much

information as possible that is, you know, all the information that's relevant to this decision and and figuring out you know what is the best way to explain all of this data. And is the best explanation does that involve the person not doing this again, or does the explanation involve the person doing it again? Um, and in addition to that, like what what are the the costs of me being wrong? If the costs are too high of me being wrong, uh like then it's just not worth it. I shouldn't even make the calculation. Like if someone you know uh crossed a line uh that that uh is just too costly to be crossed again, then I might not even engage in the calculation. But if the transgression is more minor, then it's

it's really it's more of a almost scientific way of understanding the signal than it is a straightforward game theory of you know, was there a cost with the signal? Yeah. That's yeah, I th I think that's right. I I probably would uh um it it's tempting it's tempting to think about something like costly signaling theory and kind of because you think about signaling and then that's often where our minds go. But but I do I do think it's probably a little bit more useful to think of humans as you know testers of evidence and you know, collectors of evidence that are trying to in real time um just make inferences about how the world looks. And you know, in the case of, you know, just any decision, you know, you probably use this,

you know, decision theory and get more, you know, get as much, if not more, traction on it. You know, what are the costs of being wrong or the cost of being right? Base rate. You know, so what am I talking about? I'm talking about base rates, you know, I'm talking about cost and benefits, and then a a number of channels of information that you might bring together to even regression to the mean. If it was a blip, you can expect regression to the mean following the blip, right? Yes, exactly. Exactly. Um, so you know, and the and that that evidence from the past is not there's not just a base rate, but just like the evidence from the past accumulates to give you a very strong sense of what to expect in the future.

Yeah. So um, and then you know, I often think it's really helpful with with communication to think about um how we you know think of people as um very simply as like um multi um multimodal sensory um uh phenomena and you know we're we're giving off all these chan you know channels of data uh you know nonverbal and we look a certain way and we have our emotions in a certain way. And then we say things too. And then we're trying to look for some integrative, you know, um, you know, some make some sort of integrated interference about what's out there, you know, like so at night I wake up and it's like I can't see anything in the, you know, in the room, but so my sentiment, I probably focus more on what I can hear, you know, because I

just can't see that well. So I'm kind of doing more echolocation in the middle of the night than when I would during the day. But you know, we're trying to create whole pictures of people too, you know, in this same way. So some of these channels just probably exert like force majeure, right, over the others. You know, there's just certain things you say or you do where it's like they're just so overwhelming. They're like acts of God. Like I'm not even going to consider other kinds of information. Or you know, like the chance you would do this is like a hundredth of a bazillionth of a percent, but it would be so devastating that, like, I'm just not gonna do any calculus at all. It's just like it's so yeah, I I I think probably that way of thinking about

real-time decision making is probably really useful. It's a different level of analysis, obviously, right? I don't I don't think these I don't think these things are are um in in um in some sort of uh you know, zero sum competition with each other. Right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. No, I mean costly it's not that costly is wrong. It's just that um you can think of the cost as one piece of evidence that is being uh evaluated by the signal recipient, right? And the cost is just more evidence uh of the validity of the signal and then there might be other sources of evidence as well that that could factor into the recipient's decision. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And and and the one difference from a purely scientific perspective is that even the uh

evidence accumulation you would expect is an evolved cost-benefit decision. So, in other words, like people will only continue to collect information if you think that the information I'm going to get is going to change what I do. Right. So, like a good example, I mean, I have this wallowing paper, it's not submitted yet, but it's about like the evolved logic of like ignoring information, right? Um, and you know, something of like if if there's an I mean a good good trope would be like uh an abused spouse whose partner's cheating on her, for example. I don't she might not even want to know, just to, you know, uh, because it's not gonna change what she's gonna do. It might even signal she's willing to put up with a worse cost benefit logic if she if if

it becomes common knowledge she knows that you know this person is um imposing more costs on her than than is currently common knowledge right so there's there's like a logic to even um whether or not information is pursued or not um depending on cost and benefits yeah uh so are you saying that this is that that the search for the the very search for information is uh that I might avoid f looking for certain kinds of information because having it just like is is this an argument for like strategic ignorance? Is that what you're thinking? Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Hm. And it's uh it's also, I think it conveys the overlooked point that information search is itself costly.

Yeah, right. And a signal. And a signal too. And a signal as well. Yeah. Yeah. Which which is yeah, adds even more complexity to it. It's not I mean we we we tend to think, you know, oh simplistically that you know we the information just comes to us and we have the information and we make a decision. But no, acquiring the information is itself a decision that must also be evaluated with with the logic of costs and benefits. Yeah. Yeah Michael, don't worry I'm gonna start rummaging through your email. Don't worry. I one I I have a hard time finding them. So if you find anything good definitely I still can't get Gmail to do what I want it to do. Oh my god. A decade later. I love this. I I want to ask one other question about forgiveness.

And David, if you still have more, I but there's also this trope of like time for heals all wounds and like time uh helps forgive. I mean, I'm putting this in the worst, least poetic way of like time aids forgiveness. Like that's also a poor horrible card. Um But have you thought about why that is? That's that's one thing. Even when you and I were doing this forgiveness and revenge little thing, I was thinking this the time course of things I always find interesting. And especially as scientists, we we often neglect because it's hard to measure things across time. Have you thought about, or I'm just curious what you think about this notion that even independent of anything else we do, if if if I've done something wrong to you, and but it

just time elapses, it there's just this thing of like it's it's it's more okay. Um, and it it it seems to be correct. Maybe it's not. I don't know if I mean you might know of if there's evidence for this, but um, if it's true, why why is that true? Have you yeah, I'm curious what you think about that. Um about 15 years ago, I got really interested in this question. Oh, cool. And um I started oh the the the question the it was not really it's sort of like pre-scientific question, but I was wondering like is forgiveness sort of like forgetting? And you know, if you think over a long time course, you know, that single, because structurally it looks a little bit like something that would be kind of like like the

connection between forgetting and forgiving. There's an analogy there that's that seems good. There's a single punctate thing that happens, right? So you're in the lab and you see a you know a word pairing, you know, microphone and coffee cup, you know, like so the single event happens. And the question is, you know, can you, you know, for how long will will this will will that event, you know, continue to be something, that pairing be something that you can access, you know, that you can withdraw from long-term memory. And it's the same with kind of a harm, you know, like a harm happens to you. It's this, you know style this we can stylize there's a one day this thing happens to you somebody does this bad thing to you well that's the bad thing and how you know

it how how long will it have potency to continue to make you angry and angry and angry and vengeful and vengeful and vengeful so I got to thinking like well, the is does this analogy have anything like scientifically useful to it? And I thought one interesting thing to do would be simply to see if forgiving follows the psychophysical law that forget forgetting seems to follow. And we've known for well over a hundred years now that the likelihood of recalling an event decays down toward an asymptote. And so as time goes on, what's left becomes more and more stubborn. You know, the memory trace becomes more and more stubborn. And so I thought, well, maybe if forgiveness is kind of like this, and so what's going on

there? Well, what's going on is, you know, at the computational level with a memory, it's like in part, it's just like, you know, kind of a use it or lose it thing is part of it. Um, part of this is just buried under the accretion of a million different events. You know, I mean, my friend John Wickstead, my next door neighbor at work, says, you we'd actually don't forget anything. It's just that the interface, it's like it's always in there. Like literally, it's like not, you know, uh, I might be overstating a little bit, but you forgiving forgetting is not really what's going on. There's just interference. Right. So I was thinking like, well, maybe it's the same with forgiveness in a way, which

is like, you know, I harm somebody, you know, I harmed somebody on April 9, 2026, and there's no like reservoir of other new stuff sitting on top of it yet. It's just a raw thing that I'm thinking about actively. And so it's just, it's just, you know, it's inflamed and it's acute and it's very, very present in consciousness. but perhaps there's something kind of like interference which happens, which is just the accretion of the rest of your life comes in and it's more recent, and there's more back and forths in relationships, including in that relationship. So maybe you, you know, with it sort of every day goes by, you're sort of 1% less vengeful or 1% less hurt, 1% less sad or angry by the harm.

And so it's just taking away, taking away 1% a day, 1% a day, 1% a day. Yeah. And we found evidence, like in three, I think, very good longitudinal studies where we were measuring people day after day after day for a month or week after week after week for like 20 weeks, that forgiveness does obey this psychophysical law of um kind of like you're taking one percent a day of the pain away. You know, just like life is taking one percent of the pain away. And what's really cool is you know, people differ how much of that puck stuff's getting taken away every day. Right? So pe some people have very fast decays, you know, and other people it's like there's just virtually no decay at all. They just stay angry.

You know, so like so like you can characterize the kinds of people who like let's just call that that's maybe that's forgiveness. Maybe what we're seeing is like if that's the forgetting curve, maybe that's maybe, you know, and that's kind of how you would portray it as a memory person. Like, maybe that's kind of the forgetting curve, too. So that then becomes a parameter that describes people, you know. So like you're, you know, and then so you could say, like, there's forgivers, and what are they like? Well, we find well, you find they're they're high in agreeableness, and the harms tended to be less painful, and they were accompanied by apologies. So, so like there are features of people as persons, like I don't know, that you know,

features of you like at the trait level that seem to make you have like quick be qu a quicker forgiver, but also features of these relationships that help them to go away. But in general, on average, yeah, it's like, you know, whatever, a percent a day, half a percent a day, half a percent a day. And then you go out a year and you're like, yeah, I'm kind of over it. Yeah. I'm so glad I asked that question. You're like the best person on earth to answer that. So thank you. That was a fantastic answer. I'm all I'm the I'm both the the one person who wrote the paper and the one person who ran it. So I that's interesting. Um would you it seems to me that you you might also expect people who are more forgetful in

general or who have who are worse at remembering things in general to be more forgiving people just as a byproduct of the fact that they're more forgetful? Would would you expect that as well? Yeah, I that is so great. That is such a great question. Nobody's looked at it as far as I'm aware. Um and yeah, you can imagine just simply the it may be, it may be a different kind of like um it it the the the for the the analogy to forgetting could be like not just an analogy, but there could actually be some mechanistic relationship between the two. Um where um you know perhaps there are people who simply don't have very good ability. Like, I mean, maybe maybe it's like episodic memory, just like you just are incapable

of forming really strong emotion-lated episodic memories. So it very quickly like, I'm not a memory expert at all, but like I can I can imagine this may sound very ignorant, but like um, you know, maybe the emotions around a memory are for some people kind of disappear from them and it becomes more just like propositional knowledge or something like that. Whereas for other people, and and okay, maybe maybe it's like to the extent to which they activate affect, you know. So maybe for some people, it's just like as time happens, when you recall recover a memory, it simply doesn't um you know that semantic content doesn't make its way to uh you know systems that support emotional responses, you know, or vice versa.

You know, maybe there are people who you know when they recall the you know the episodic memory, it much more efficiently recruits negative, you know, the uh you know brain centers that support negative emotions. Um could be something like the like that, you know. Um I don't know the answer though. Uh um it it it I also don't think I we've done any work to look at like whether interventions actively it can you know speed along that decay process. Um yeah. I mean it's it suggests to me that if a memory is useful for whatever reason, like say, you know, there's lots of research showing that like victimhood narratives are very uh useful at mobilizing a group politically, right? And each side of the political spectrum has their own victimhood narratives.

Um Victimhood can be very good at coordinating a group to advance their interests. You know, there's that saying after 9-11, never forget. We should never forget this, right? And a lot, that's what a lot of groups will say in the wake of an atrocity that we we must never forget this. And often they commemorate it with rituals and they have, you know, uh they reflect on it year after year. Um so it suggests to me that um we in some cases may want to actively counteract the forgetting insofar as the the memory of the transgression uh has benefits to us um either in mobilizing the group or or for for some other purpose and we may have to you know um create rituals, uh create uh uh get into the habit of of of performing certain behaviors to keep the memory alive uh

and well. Um so that that's just another thought that that occurred to me that'd be interesting to look at. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, absolutely at the group level, this this gets um instantiated all the time at a cultural level. You know, we remember a time when some other ethno-cultural or political group um you know did that you know committed this atrocity against us or invaded us or broke a treaty, and we're gonna do what we can or you know, a feud between two families, you know. Um, this is like classic culture of honor type stuff where it's like a hundred years ago, you know, your grandfather this guy over there insulted your grandfather's first wife, you know, or something like that. And that's a way of keep you know, and and that's a way of keeping this grievance

green, you know, they're keeping this wound green, I think is how the Bible puts do not do not keep your wounds green, I think is what it says in the Bible somewhere, you know. But it's this idea of like keeping them, you know, keeping them, you know, um from I, you know, like let's continue let's continue to keep this grievance active as a way of, you know preventing ourselves from getting harmed again in the future, even though you weren't even alive when this act of aggression happened. They become kind of part of a national mythology. Yeah. And as an American living in Germany, Berlin for almost a decade, you know, it was really that was also striking on the other end, too, of like the collective guilt, for example, of

like the Third Reich, you know, like the parliament building where there's like literally a memorial to the murdered, you know, um, you know, Sinti, for example, you know, in uh what's that word? Um, the like the gypsies, like, you know, so sort of like yeah, so um uh or like you know, certain ethno-linguistic groups or whatever, you know, like literally on there, and you know, as an American, you're just sort of like this is it it was hard not to reflect on. There's clearly an acknowledgement of a collective guilt. Um, and for me at least, it was very contemporaneous with like, you know, a pretty functioning society. And so there's also this thing of, you know, countries that got over their skis, to put it

very mildly. Um, you know, like the memory of of imposing costs on others and accepting that, and then what that does, um you know the um so this is another area where i like this collective memory of not just being the victims but the the the perpetrators of costs um it's not all bad to remember um these things yeah absolutely what are our national or ethno linguistic uh you know or cultural myths uh you know like where do we get our identity from it's from the stories right You know, and you know how we try to we want to encourage our our you know our people to behave in ways that are consistent with the stories. So some of those stories are gonna be about you know protecting ourselves against being

harmed in the future, but they ought to be also about like how badly wrong we've gotten things sometimes in the past. Yeah, no, I mean for me at least, that was for me a lesson is that it's just like being a person, it's a it's a poor person who goes through life and thinks I've never harmed somebody. That's right. Not to be too political about it. And you can be a apartisan about this, but like from a collective or society or political perspective, the idea that the right way to have a political identity or s a national identity is that we've never done anything wrong might be questionable in the same way that would be questionable personally, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Right. Cool. Um I I wanted to ask about gratitude and well being, but we're also coming up on the end

here. So we always ask this question of like, do you is there something we should have asked you? Um, which is one question we is our only mandatory question. Um so I'll I'll uh I'll shut up for a second and let you think about that. Has anyone ever said said that that that yeah you should have asked me this? Oh yeah. We've given all answers, including I don't know, I'm sure, but I can't think of any uh specific responses. Um I need a second to think every possible reaction. Yeah, and some people just say, Nope, you I think we covered we covered it all. Yeah, we covered this great. There's no wrong answer. Yes. Yeah. I I mean I'm very I'm very content with the conversation we had. I I'm embarrassed.

I feel like I learned more from it um than than I gave you. I it was just so still it was just so stimulating. It was wonderful. I I love doing this exactly for this reason, but no, I mean I I I learned a ton. Um it's it's it's lovely. Um do you wait, we uh here is my question then. The closeout question is um some people we have on have interesting side gigs. Do you play music? Uh yes. Yes, I do. Yeah. Probably about that. Okay. Yeah, probably play too much, actually. Okay, no such thing. Can you tell us a little bit about that? We can always cut this out if you don't want to. Um yeah, I um I I play in two bands locally. One is a big um 9, 10, 11, 12 piece jazz fusion project. Do you know the band Snarky Puppy?

Do you ever heard of them? Yes. Yeah, it's kind of like a Snarky Puppy project. It's like an amazing rhythm section with like just I play bass and the guitar player's incredible and the keyboard player is just burning and the drummers amazing. And then it's like all and then when there's like a huge horn section and a percussionist, and this there's a cello player, and there's you know, it's just an amazing, amazing band. We'll put a link to the band. Are you guys on the camp or or Spotify? Are you guys uh Spotify? Yeah. And I mean, and app Apple Music and all that. They're called Star Sign. Awesome. And that's my that's actually my son's band. So I I play bass in his band and um he he he writes and scores everything.

Um so I just I can just kind of show up and I learn the tunes and show up and blow and have a great time. What kind of bass do you have? Um a number of bass. Okay, never mind. Uh it'll pose questions. Yeah. I I've got um I've got a nineteen seventy-six Ivanes um black eagle, which um a screaming eagle and um which is like definitely seen better days um i have a fender uh jazz bass um tobacco sunburst that with and then i have this exact same bass but with a fretless neck exact like the exact same bass with a fretless neck um i have a jazz i have a fender precision bass And then I recently bought a um Ken Smith burner 5, um which was like definitely like middle-aged guilty pleasure. If you look it up, you'll you'll understand why Corvette, yeah.

Yes. Yes. Can't play it, but I have one. Yeah. And then you said the other band is is what? I have a I have a band called Sweater Weather. Um I think that band's pretty much done now. You know, we were together four or five like bands come and go, you know. Um it's also we're also on Spotify. Um and but these days um mostly like I play with my kids' band and I go to a bunch of jam sessions around town to meet meet other musicians and that's awesome. It's lovely. It sounds great. And being your son's band, what a what a treat. What a it's a blast. It's a real blast. This is not a side hustle or a side gig. This is just pure pleasure for me. Wonderful. It's good to have those things. Well Mike, uh thank you so much for being on.

We really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. It was a real honor. David, I do not need to seek revenge on this episode. That's a dumb way to start this. Maybe we should start. I need to seek revenge on you for making that comment. You do, yes. That was way too try hard. Yeah. Okay. I forgive you. Okay. I forgive you. There we go. Um David, this was a um I don't even know. I hate outros. I'm so bad at them. Okay, you start. Uh support us, you know, go to Patreon, give us a channel. You think we need to keep saying that? I don't maybe maybe. Should we just not do the outros? Just cut them out? What do people think? Let us know in the comments. Yeah. Let us know if you think we should keep doing the outros uh or whether we should do that.

Well we should have something in the outros. Something? Like this. This is fun for me at least. Just just like a little, you know, debrief, but no call to support us. Uh I don't know. That's kinda I mean, that's interesting idea where we were like reflect on the conversation, like what went well, you know, stuff like that. So just just saying inane, stupid things as opposed to. Oh, where we just like banter. You know, like we can talk about reviving Charles Darwin, uh, for example. All right. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm done with that. That's uh you know, you decide, the listener, what kind of outro you want for evolutionary psychology. Choose your own outro. Did you ever grow up with those choose your own adventure books?

Oh, I love those. Yeah. There's not enough of that. I actually I think I talked to I forgive apologies to whoever um I've talked to about this, but I've often thought that that would be a great way to do a textbook where you think if you think X is true, turn to page whatever. If you think Y is true, turn to page whatever. I mean it you could turn and you know it could be virtual, but yeah. Oh, I love that. That's a really great idea. Yeah. And then you could sort of follow the logic of a theory or something, or follow the wrong idea. Yeah. Dave, that's a really great idea. Because that's often like how people think about complicated questions, is like, well, what if this is the answer? Oh no, that doesn't work.

What if this is the answer? Oh no, that doesn't work. Yeah, it's like science. Yeah. Yeah. It's it like it's a it um is a microcosm of how scientific thinking works and how it progresses. It's just going down the various paths and seeing what paths have dead ends and which paths don't. Exactly. I love that. Get on it, Dave. All right. Choose your own uh science adventure. Choose choose your own science advent choose your own science theoretical supposition. We're gonna have to work on the name. Yeah. Well, everybody, thank you for listening to this podcast. Uh which is not a choose your own adventure. Yes. It's just uh an adventure. I mean it's sort of it's an adventure. And you and you and you choose you chose it.

As George Carlin said, you could always change the channel. That's true. So it's an adventure that you chose. We there's a couple people but there's only one of them. There's a couple people who have um uh left comments where I really like we have wonderful comments, but there's at least one or two people who recurrently comment, especially I think on YouTube, that it's very clear. Like I just want to tell them just go, you can just change the channel, like go build some furniture or something. Like you don't need to troll on YouTube. Yeah. Life itself is a choose your own adventure, and you can choose a different adventure than perfect David. Yeah. That's that's the thing to end on. There we go.

Yeah. All right. Well, enjoy the choose your own adventure of your life and uh see you next week.