1
00:00:00,480 --> 00:00:03,040
David, this is a podcast with a tagline.

2
00:00:03,600 --> 00:00:06,800
And the tagline is Actual Evolutionary Psychology.

3
00:00:07,200 --> 00:00:09,760
By actual evolutionary psychologists.

4
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:11,840
And uh what is what is your name?

5
00:00:12,160 --> 00:00:18,160
Uh David Petrozowski, but I go by Dave because your name is David Pinsoff.

6
00:00:18,240 --> 00:00:19,680
I have the id, I'm the immature one.

7
00:00:19,920 --> 00:00:24,160
Yeah, and we're both David Ps, so um we have to distinguish ourselves somehow.

8
00:00:24,570 --> 00:00:24,890
Yeah.

9
00:00:25,130 --> 00:00:26,490
Anyway, uh, here we are.

10
00:00:26,650 --> 00:00:27,450
Enjoy

11
00:00:38,650 --> 00:00:41,530
David, uh, what does the word epistemic mean?

12
00:00:42,010 --> 00:00:44,890
Uh it means relating to knowledge.

13
00:00:45,210 --> 00:00:45,770
Mm.

14
00:00:46,010 --> 00:00:46,330
Good.

15
00:00:46,570 --> 00:00:50,170
Well, there's a reason why I'm asking that, because the person we're going to talk to today

16
00:00:50,170 --> 00:00:56,000
is Hugo Mercier, and he is at the Institut Jean Necureau

17
00:00:56,000 --> 00:00:56,960
in France.

18
00:00:57,760 --> 00:01:03,280
Uh yeah, where he works with the evolution and social cognition team and he does a lot on

19
00:01:03,280 --> 00:01:08,480
epistemic vigilance and why we believe certain things and also reasoning.

20
00:01:08,880 --> 00:01:09,360
That's right.

21
00:01:09,440 --> 00:01:14,640
Uh he's one of uh uh many people coming from the uh Paris School of Cultural Evolution, the

22
00:01:14,640 --> 00:01:17,760
the French School of Evolutionary Psychology, which I am a huge fan of.

23
00:01:17,840 --> 00:01:20,770
I think everyone coming out of that uh area is just fantastic.

24
00:01:20,850 --> 00:01:25,970
And he is leading the vanguard of people studying fascinating topics related to reasoning,

25
00:01:26,050 --> 00:01:29,250
epistemic vigilance, uh misinformation, belief.

26
00:01:29,490 --> 00:01:31,970
Uh we we get into all those topics and more.

27
00:01:32,290 --> 00:01:34,210
Yeah, this is a very dense episode.

28
00:01:34,370 --> 00:01:39,010
We we narrowed the timing down and we just got right into it the entire episode, and it was

29
00:01:39,010 --> 00:01:39,730
wonderful.

30
00:01:39,890 --> 00:01:44,930
And uh definitely encourage you to look up Hugo and his work and he has a couple books too.

31
00:01:45,320 --> 00:01:46,280
Yeah, wonderful books.

32
00:01:46,360 --> 00:01:50,440
Uh The Enigma of Reason is his first book about the evolutionary psychology of reasoning,

33
00:01:50,520 --> 00:01:56,520
and Not Born Yesterday about the evolutionary psychology of gullibility, or rather our

34
00:01:56,520 --> 00:01:59,080
not being gullible, our epistemic vigilance.

35
00:01:59,400 --> 00:01:59,560
Yeah.

36
00:01:59,640 --> 00:02:05,640
Well, and without further ado, today, um listen, enjoy Hugo and David and myself.

37
00:02:05,960 --> 00:02:11,800
Enjoy I'm just

38
00:02:11,880 --> 00:02:16,930
gonna say I'm just gonna turn off my YouTube on my phone, otherwise it's gonna interrupt

39
00:02:17,010 --> 00:02:17,730
the recording.

40
00:02:17,890 --> 00:02:18,770
I'm gonna do that.

41
00:02:18,850 --> 00:02:23,410
I'm gonna turn off those it's like an airplane where you have to turn off why if I'll be

42
00:02:23,490 --> 00:02:26,210
later than you have to turn off your put it on your plane setting.

43
00:02:26,290 --> 00:02:28,850
Everybody put your devices on a plane setting.

44
00:02:29,490 --> 00:02:30,210
Is that true?

45
00:02:30,370 --> 00:02:32,130
Like is that David do you know?

46
00:02:33,330 --> 00:02:36,370
Yeah that you actually have to turn off your your phone and stuff on an airplane?

47
00:02:36,450 --> 00:02:40,960
Yeah or or I mean w why wouldn't would you think they're just like messing with us?

48
00:02:42,880 --> 00:02:43,600
Yes and no.

49
00:02:43,680 --> 00:02:44,240
I don't know.

50
00:02:44,880 --> 00:02:45,680
I don't know.

51
00:02:46,560 --> 00:02:48,320
I don't think they're well, I don't know.

52
00:02:48,800 --> 00:02:49,760
Just doing it for no reason?

53
00:02:50,080 --> 00:02:54,000
Well, I there's sort of it's the principle of sort of like the one percent of the time

54
00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:57,920
where there's an issue, the 99% get turned off.

55
00:02:58,080 --> 00:02:58,400
I don't know.

56
00:02:58,720 --> 00:02:59,120
Yeah.

57
00:02:59,440 --> 00:02:59,920
Maybe.

58
00:03:00,630 --> 00:03:01,830
Well speaking of percentages.

59
00:03:02,230 --> 00:03:03,430
Yeah, this is a good idea.

60
00:03:05,750 --> 00:03:05,990
Exactly.

61
00:03:06,390 --> 00:03:07,670
We have shorter time today.

62
00:03:07,750 --> 00:03:10,070
So everyone's like, oh thank goodness, an hour and a half.

63
00:03:10,150 --> 00:03:10,550
Yeah.

64
00:03:11,110 --> 00:03:14,230
So we have the premier scholar of reasoning with us, Hugo Mercier.

65
00:03:14,310 --> 00:03:16,150
He has a wonderful book called The Enigma of Reason.

66
00:03:16,310 --> 00:03:17,670
We're talking about percentages.

67
00:03:17,910 --> 00:03:23,590
Uh percentages are a kind of reasoning or reasoning about, you know, how how much of X or Y

68
00:03:23,830 --> 00:03:26,390
remains after after some activity.

69
00:03:26,710 --> 00:03:32,540
Um so uh Hugo, um is reasoning

70
00:03:32,780 --> 00:03:37,820
a uh a solitary activity where we where we sit down in our chairs and we we think through a

71
00:03:37,820 --> 00:03:43,660
syllogism like if P then Q and then we we use that uh to make a better

72
00:03:43,660 --> 00:03:47,980
decision uh or is it something else?

73
00:03:48,700 --> 00:03:51,020
So so what you're describing does happen.

74
00:03:51,180 --> 00:03:53,660
Um you know it's it's been no it's been known to happen.

75
00:03:54,050 --> 00:03:57,730
But the the point that Dance Barber and I have been making in in a number of of

76
00:03:57,970 --> 00:04:01,250
publications is that we don't think that's what reasoning is for.

77
00:04:01,410 --> 00:04:07,330
So in in evolutionary terms, uh we've suggested that the function of of reason, of human

78
00:04:07,330 --> 00:04:11,970
reason, is not to to think about things on your own and to weigh the pros and cons and to

79
00:04:11,970 --> 00:04:16,850
try to to arrive at better decisions, but on the contrary, to reason with others, to

80
00:04:16,850 --> 00:04:19,330
exchange arguments, to exchange justifications.

81
00:04:19,650 --> 00:04:25,520
Um still because it's an evolutionary psychology podcast, it's important to specify that

82
00:04:25,520 --> 00:04:27,200
it's not a it doesn't have a group function.

83
00:04:27,280 --> 00:04:29,920
The goal isn't to get things better for everybody.

84
00:04:30,240 --> 00:04:35,440
The point is still purely individual, but instead of the point being to just reason better

85
00:04:35,440 --> 00:04:41,360
on your own, the point or the the points rather are both to convince others to

86
00:04:41,360 --> 00:04:45,680
change other people's minds and to have your mind changed when you should, so when when

87
00:04:45,680 --> 00:04:50,750
other people have good reasons um so you can change your mind and and adopt uh or you know

88
00:04:50,830 --> 00:04:52,670
at least move towards their views.

89
00:04:53,790 --> 00:04:55,550
So that that's a that's a crucial distinction.

90
00:04:55,710 --> 00:05:01,390
So you you mentioned that we we evolved to reason in groups, um, but uh reasoning did not

91
00:05:01,390 --> 00:05:03,070
evolve for the good of the group.

92
00:05:03,230 --> 00:05:08,030
It in fact evolved for the good of the individual and that the individual benefits by uh

93
00:05:08,030 --> 00:05:13,470
persuading uh the person they're arguing with or perhaps justifying their behavior to the

94
00:05:13,470 --> 00:05:17,220
person they're talking with and that you know gains them reputational benefits.

95
00:05:17,300 --> 00:05:22,020
Uh it might help them manipulate others uh to their own uh end.

96
00:05:22,820 --> 00:05:28,580
And um as a byproduct of everybody sort of pursuing their their individual self-interest

97
00:05:28,580 --> 00:05:32,740
and trying to persuade each other and justify themselves, uh sometimes what you get is an

98
00:05:32,740 --> 00:05:35,220
emergent outcome which is good for the group.

99
00:05:35,460 --> 00:05:40,930
So if everyone is is arguing their own case, um, then you get a kind of

100
00:05:40,930 --> 00:05:46,850
intellectual division of labor where uh a bunch of different views get people uh um

101
00:05:47,490 --> 00:05:50,930
fired up and and focused on the particular reasons for that view.

102
00:05:51,090 --> 00:05:55,250
And then you get uh a bunch you basically you get a bunch of different people working on

103
00:05:55,250 --> 00:05:59,170
justifications for different views and and the views that rise to the top, that succeed,

104
00:05:59,250 --> 00:06:03,660
that that prevail tend to be the ones that are more well justified, well reasoned.

105
00:06:03,740 --> 00:06:06,220
Is is that basically the the the claim you're making?

106
00:06:06,700 --> 00:06:07,820
Yeah, exactly.

107
00:06:07,900 --> 00:06:12,540
Um and and that's because on the one hand, so when you're producing arguments, when you're

108
00:06:12,540 --> 00:06:16,860
producing reasons, when you're reasoning in a more active manner, indeed your goal is to

109
00:06:16,860 --> 00:06:21,900
either uh when you're doing it live, kind of just you know to to persuade people to change

110
00:06:21,900 --> 00:06:25,980
their minds either about the conclusion you're trying to defend or at least about what they

111
00:06:25,980 --> 00:06:26,380
think of you.

112
00:06:26,460 --> 00:06:30,050
When you're justifying yourself, you you don't, you know, you want to to you want them to

113
00:06:30,050 --> 00:06:32,610
think that your your choices and your beliefs are rational.

114
00:06:33,090 --> 00:06:39,090
Um, but there's also the more kind of passive uh position, which is when you're evaluating

115
00:06:39,090 --> 00:06:41,810
other people's reasons and arguments and justifications.

116
00:06:41,970 --> 00:06:43,890
And then your goal is much more objective.

117
00:06:43,970 --> 00:06:48,450
The goal is really to figure out are these good reasons and should I change my mind on the

118
00:06:48,450 --> 00:06:49,650
basis of these reasons.

119
00:06:49,810 --> 00:06:54,610
And the two of them are really um completely necessary for group, uh for both for

120
00:06:54,610 --> 00:06:58,980
individuals, because you know, if if my goal was to convince others but they would never

121
00:06:58,980 --> 00:07:01,380
change their minds then obviously it would be pointless.

122
00:07:01,540 --> 00:07:06,180
Um but it's also how the kind of the the phenomenon you were describing of of groups ending

123
00:07:06,180 --> 00:07:11,460
up uh better off it's also th it's also thanks to that because people do change their minds

124
00:07:11,460 --> 00:07:13,460
when when they are confronted with good arguments.

125
00:07:13,780 --> 00:07:18,020
Yeah and we talked a little bit about proximate versus ultimate or sort of whether or not

126
00:07:18,020 --> 00:07:18,980
you're conscious of something.

127
00:07:19,220 --> 00:07:23,210
Hugo how do you think about this in the in the following sense?

128
00:07:23,370 --> 00:07:28,250
I'm sure a lot of people listening are like, I don't experience myself at all, sort of

129
00:07:28,250 --> 00:07:30,010
thinking, well, what's in it for me?

130
00:07:30,330 --> 00:07:35,130
Starting with that, and then sort of going through thinking and deciding whether or not to

131
00:07:35,130 --> 00:07:38,090
take some evidence or to to reach a conclusion.

132
00:07:38,250 --> 00:07:42,650
I mean, I think we all have the experience of doing that, of biased reasoning.

133
00:07:42,730 --> 00:07:47,690
But then we have the also the experience of for a lot of us most of the time not doing it.

134
00:07:47,920 --> 00:07:53,280
And is your argument that even that category, that second category of not consciously

135
00:07:53,280 --> 00:07:58,000
experiencing stuff, there's still this software that we're not even conscious of?

136
00:07:58,160 --> 00:07:59,120
Is that a fair character?

137
00:07:59,760 --> 00:08:00,080
Exactly.

138
00:08:00,160 --> 00:08:00,880
No, exactly.

139
00:08:00,960 --> 00:08:01,600
That's the point.

140
00:08:01,760 --> 00:08:06,320
So obviously, you know, no one is surprised that a lawyer or a politician, when they are

141
00:08:06,320 --> 00:08:12,080
practicing a speech or a plea, will be specifically looking for arguments that support

142
00:08:12,080 --> 00:08:14,800
their clients or their other cause or whatever else.

143
00:08:15,120 --> 00:08:20,030
And when that happens, even if they happen to stumble upon a counter argument, they won't

144
00:08:20,110 --> 00:08:21,630
at you know, they won't mention it.

145
00:08:21,710 --> 00:08:25,550
You know, they'll just only go for for the arguments that support whatever it is they want

146
00:08:25,550 --> 00:08:26,270
to support.

147
00:08:26,430 --> 00:08:28,750
And that's a very kind of strategic thing to do.

148
00:08:28,830 --> 00:08:31,310
And it's not the pure expression of reasoning.

149
00:08:31,390 --> 00:08:36,590
It involves other mechanisms that that will uh make it even more uh biased, or but in in

150
00:08:36,590 --> 00:08:38,190
that case in in a way that makes sense.

151
00:08:38,430 --> 00:08:41,950
No, the the the point we're trying to make is that even when we're reasoning in a

152
00:08:41,950 --> 00:08:47,060
completely you know kind of normal manner, the function of the mechanism is social.

153
00:08:47,380 --> 00:08:51,940
And obviously we're not aware of it in the same way as when we're you know when we're

154
00:08:51,940 --> 00:08:55,380
having sex, we're not aware of the fact that the function of this is to pass on our genes.

155
00:08:55,540 --> 00:09:00,820
I mean except maybe Elon Musk or you know a few people who really do it for that reason.

156
00:09:01,060 --> 00:09:06,660
But uh so it's the same obviously we're not supposed to have uh to have

157
00:09:06,660 --> 00:09:10,820
access to the uh kind of the ultimate functions of our our cognitive mechanisms.

158
00:09:11,170 --> 00:09:11,330
Yeah.

159
00:09:11,410 --> 00:09:12,850
Is there are there design features?

160
00:09:13,090 --> 00:09:16,850
Sorry, David, are there design so it just in the same way like having sex, right?

161
00:09:16,930 --> 00:09:22,690
It's sort of it's not just empty that the function of it is producing offspring.

162
00:09:22,770 --> 00:09:28,130
There's all kinds of design features about like who we find attractive that follow because

163
00:09:28,130 --> 00:09:28,850
that's the function.

164
00:09:29,010 --> 00:09:34,050
And so are have you discovered, are there attributes of reasoning that people might not

165
00:09:34,050 --> 00:09:38,960
know that our design features, because the function is argument, that might be different

166
00:09:38,960 --> 00:09:43,360
than the design features people might think if the function was just sort of impartial

167
00:09:43,760 --> 00:09:45,280
learning of the truth.

168
00:09:46,320 --> 00:09:47,040
That's a great question.

169
00:09:47,120 --> 00:09:47,680
Thank you.

170
00:09:47,920 --> 00:09:53,200
I think actually our theory mostly explains features of reasoning that were known but that

171
00:09:53,200 --> 00:09:56,720
were taken for granted and that should have been mysterious.

172
00:09:56,880 --> 00:10:01,090
So it is quite well known and quite well established in evolutionary psychology, sorry, in

173
00:10:01,810 --> 00:10:06,290
the psychology of reasoning and judgment and decision making that people have a

174
00:10:06,290 --> 00:10:08,370
confirmation bias or my side bias.

175
00:10:08,450 --> 00:10:13,170
So whenever you're you're reasoning about anything, uh whether you're on your own or or

176
00:10:13,330 --> 00:10:18,530
you're talking with others, um, you will spontaneously find overwhelmingly arguments that

177
00:10:18,530 --> 00:10:19,490
support your view.

178
00:10:19,740 --> 00:10:24,940
And just as a as an aside, one of the best experimental demonstrations of that is an

179
00:10:24,940 --> 00:10:29,900
experiment done by some um Swedish um psychologists using the the choice plainness

180
00:10:29,900 --> 00:10:30,540
paradigm.

181
00:10:30,780 --> 00:10:35,820
So in that experiment, uh people like the the experimenters pretend to be uh kind of

182
00:10:35,980 --> 00:10:38,540
holsters asking questions to people on the street.

183
00:10:38,700 --> 00:10:41,980
And they have a little clipboard with a a sheet full of questions.

184
00:10:42,220 --> 00:10:46,450
And the questions could be something like, you know, do you think like in the trade-off

185
00:10:46,450 --> 00:10:50,930
between security and and freedom to like fight terrorism, for instance, do you think that

186
00:10:50,930 --> 00:10:53,330
security or freedom matters the matters most?

187
00:10:53,650 --> 00:10:58,450
And people have a scale, you know, from like one, which means like I mostly care about

188
00:10:58,450 --> 00:11:03,090
security or seven, I mostly care about freedom, and they circle the number that that fits

189
00:11:03,090 --> 00:11:04,210
with their opinions.

190
00:11:04,450 --> 00:11:09,680
And they do that for a number of questions, And then they give the clipboard with a sheet

191
00:11:09,680 --> 00:11:15,440
back to the experimenter who uses a sleight of hand to actually to copy, to kind of

192
00:11:15,440 --> 00:11:19,920
glue onto the sheet a question that spells the opposite of the original question.

193
00:11:20,080 --> 00:11:24,160
So if the original question was, you know, I think that uh freedom matters more than

194
00:11:24,400 --> 00:11:28,880
safety, then the new question reads, I think that safety matters more than freedom.

195
00:11:29,150 --> 00:11:31,310
And so, but people's answers are the same.

196
00:11:31,390 --> 00:11:34,750
So if you've circled six the first time around, you still have a six that's circled.

197
00:11:34,830 --> 00:11:37,870
But now the six means the opposite of what it used to mean.

198
00:11:38,110 --> 00:11:41,230
And so, you know, they say, well, that tell people, look, you know, here is the questions

199
00:11:41,390 --> 00:11:41,630
back.

200
00:11:41,710 --> 00:11:44,110
Now I'm going to ask you to justify your opinions.

201
00:11:44,190 --> 00:11:45,070
You know, where do you think?

202
00:11:45,230 --> 00:11:47,070
What do you have that point of view?

203
00:11:47,230 --> 00:11:53,230
And what they found is that first of all, only like 5% of participants were

204
00:11:53,550 --> 00:11:55,310
realized that they had been tricked in that way.

205
00:11:55,390 --> 00:11:58,900
So like a very small number of participants realized.

206
00:11:59,220 --> 00:12:04,900
And of those participants who didn't realize so the the ability majority,

207
00:12:05,380 --> 00:12:10,820
these people were as able to produce arguments for the view that they had originally said

208
00:12:10,980 --> 00:12:13,460
was theirs as for the other view.

209
00:12:13,700 --> 00:12:14,820
So it's quite striking.

210
00:12:14,900 --> 00:12:18,660
And in that case we know it's it's purely a confirmation bias because it's not the case

211
00:12:18,660 --> 00:12:23,390
that people just have a lot of reasons that they would support freedom over safety or

212
00:12:23,390 --> 00:12:24,270
security.

213
00:12:24,750 --> 00:12:29,950
Um instead they just mix stuff on stuff up on the spot and they're equally able to mix

214
00:12:30,030 --> 00:12:31,790
stuff up per for for both views.

215
00:12:32,430 --> 00:12:35,710
So this is the kind of confirmation bias or my side bias.

216
00:12:36,110 --> 00:12:41,390
And if you if you thought that the function of reason was to help you come at better

217
00:12:41,390 --> 00:12:45,870
decisions on your own or or you know arrive at better beliefs, such a bias would be

218
00:12:45,870 --> 00:12:50,220
completely self-defeating, in the sense that you know you're you're thinking about things

219
00:12:50,300 --> 00:12:53,180
and you're trying to consider the pros and cons of various decisions.

220
00:12:53,500 --> 00:12:59,020
If whatever original intuition or feeling you have, you only find reasons supporting that,

221
00:12:59,260 --> 00:13:00,380
you will never change your mind.

222
00:13:00,460 --> 00:13:02,860
So if you start wrong, you will never get better.

223
00:13:03,100 --> 00:13:06,940
So that's really the opposite of what you'd want for a mechanism that is supposed to help

224
00:13:06,940 --> 00:13:11,660
you, you know, think uh things through and reevaluate your own opinions.

225
00:13:11,900 --> 00:13:16,150
So this this confirmation bias or my side bias, who, you know, whose existence has been

226
00:13:16,150 --> 00:13:19,990
known for a long time, for us it makes a lot of sense in the sense that when you're

227
00:13:19,990 --> 00:13:22,870
producing reasons, you want to convince other people.

228
00:13:23,270 --> 00:13:27,430
And so if you want to convince someone, obviously you want to find reasons for your point

229
00:13:27,430 --> 00:13:28,710
of view or against theirs.

230
00:13:28,790 --> 00:13:30,710
You don't want to do the, you know, you don't want to do the opposite.

231
00:13:30,790 --> 00:13:31,430
And it is hard.

232
00:13:31,510 --> 00:13:32,630
Like we can do it.

233
00:13:32,790 --> 00:13:34,140
But it's a really hard, you know.

234
00:13:34,220 --> 00:13:37,500
When you ask people, if you ask a hardcore Democrat, you know, can you think of good

235
00:13:37,500 --> 00:13:39,260
reasons where people may be voting for Trump?

236
00:13:39,420 --> 00:13:41,900
It's gonna be really hard for them as a rule.

237
00:13:42,140 --> 00:13:44,540
Um, it's possible, but it's it's a hard exercise.

238
00:13:44,700 --> 00:13:49,900
So that's one of the features uh of reason that that we think our theory can can account

239
00:13:49,900 --> 00:13:50,220
for.

240
00:13:52,460 --> 00:13:57,950
Um so you mentioned this uh very disturbing finding where um

241
00:13:58,270 --> 00:14:02,510
people will be tricked into thinking that they answered a survey the opposite way that they

242
00:14:02,510 --> 00:14:08,110
actually answered it, and then they will just basically make stuff up or or confabulate a

243
00:14:08,110 --> 00:14:13,230
justification or a reason why they chose that response, uh, even though they they in fact

244
00:14:13,230 --> 00:14:13,790
didn't.

245
00:14:14,110 --> 00:14:19,710
Um and uh what's disturbing about this is that it suggests that we might be doing this more

246
00:14:19,710 --> 00:14:20,590
or less all the time.

247
00:14:20,830 --> 00:14:26,420
Every time we we we we do something, um we um we start a

248
00:14:26,420 --> 00:14:30,420
podcast, we uh invite someone onto a podcast, we might confabulate a reason.

249
00:14:31,060 --> 00:14:34,020
So the reason we're starting this podcast is because we're interested in in you know

250
00:14:34,260 --> 00:14:36,980
reaching the truth and and spreading truth to the masses.

251
00:14:37,140 --> 00:14:42,660
Um that might be a kind of confabulation that uh Dave and I tell uh the exception though is

252
00:14:42,660 --> 00:14:44,420
that it's true in our case, but in everyone else's case.

253
00:14:44,500 --> 00:14:46,900
Um it's not true.

254
00:14:47,140 --> 00:14:51,870
Um so one question I have for you is a kind of uh game theoretic question.

255
00:14:52,030 --> 00:14:57,710
So if everyone is confabulating bullshit reasons for their for their

256
00:14:57,710 --> 00:15:00,750
behavior, more or less, and I am a fan of that word.

257
00:15:01,790 --> 00:15:06,270
Bullshit in the in this in the sense that the confabulation is not designed to accurately

258
00:15:06,270 --> 00:15:11,790
detect the underlying motives of the behavior, but it's designed to convey a positive

259
00:15:11,790 --> 00:15:17,790
impression, look competent or benevolent or whatever, maybe maybe fit the prevailing social

260
00:15:17,950 --> 00:15:18,590
norms.

261
00:15:19,220 --> 00:15:24,980
If that is the function of these justifications, why do we believe each

262
00:15:24,980 --> 00:15:26,180
other's justifications?

263
00:15:27,140 --> 00:15:31,780
Why don't we just say, uh, you know, Dave, you're telling me this the story for why you are

264
00:15:31,780 --> 00:15:32,660
interested in starting this podcast?

265
00:15:32,740 --> 00:15:34,100
When I say, Dave, you're full of shit.

266
00:15:34,260 --> 00:15:34,980
Why I don't believe you.

267
00:15:35,380 --> 00:15:38,500
It seems like much of our culture involves giving reasons for our behavior.

268
00:15:38,660 --> 00:15:43,690
And much of the time we're actually quite uh gullible for lack of a better word of people's

269
00:15:43,690 --> 00:15:44,410
justifications.

270
00:15:44,490 --> 00:15:49,770
And our culture is kind of made up of these, made up uh from these bullshit reasons for

271
00:15:49,770 --> 00:15:50,490
lack of a better term.

272
00:15:50,570 --> 00:15:56,410
So why uh why do we accept these reasons if they're coming from such a uh epistemically

273
00:15:56,410 --> 00:15:57,770
unreliable place?

274
00:15:58,490 --> 00:15:59,930
So thanks for the for the question.

275
00:16:00,170 --> 00:16:02,890
Um so I I don't think it's that unreliable.

276
00:16:03,050 --> 00:16:07,850
Um so first of all, obviously there has to be some simplification in the sense that

277
00:16:09,400 --> 00:16:15,000
our motives are necessarily complicated, and so it would be impossible to just

278
00:16:16,760 --> 00:16:20,440
express them in a in a simple way whenever we want someone asks us why we're doing

279
00:16:20,440 --> 00:16:21,080
something.

280
00:16:21,320 --> 00:16:27,000
But I do think that we're not that gullible and that if I if you gave people a really a

281
00:16:27,000 --> 00:16:31,400
motive that had nothing to do with your actual motives, most people would would call you up

282
00:16:31,400 --> 00:16:31,640
on it.

283
00:16:31,720 --> 00:16:32,920
And indeed most people do.

284
00:16:33,000 --> 00:16:37,960
And most of the justifications we give are actually decent justifications.

285
00:16:39,610 --> 00:16:44,890
The situation in which it's more likely to have justifications that are really

286
00:16:45,130 --> 00:16:47,690
made up is when they suit everybody.

287
00:16:47,850 --> 00:16:52,250
So usually when you have to justify something, it's because you're, you know, you expect

288
00:16:52,250 --> 00:16:55,770
that that someone else, either you can see someone else is judging you, they're asking you

289
00:16:56,090 --> 00:16:57,050
why did you do this?

290
00:16:57,210 --> 00:17:02,010
But most of the time we anticipate other people judging us, and we uh we give them reasons

291
00:17:02,010 --> 00:17:04,890
for what we've done to anticipate being being judged negatively.

292
00:17:04,970 --> 00:17:10,320
So if you, you know, if you if you do something, you know, you break the the law on the

293
00:17:10,320 --> 00:17:13,360
road or something, you know, you say, well, you know, I was, I was in a rush, or you know,

294
00:17:13,440 --> 00:17:14,400
I didn't see the car coming.

295
00:17:14,480 --> 00:17:19,280
So you're going to explain your behavior kind of in a preemptive manner.

296
00:17:22,080 --> 00:17:26,800
And so usually things work well because you have these other people to keep you in check.

297
00:17:26,880 --> 00:17:30,480
So then again if you say something that has nothing to do with reality or that is not

298
00:17:30,480 --> 00:17:35,790
plausible given your personality, given your context, uh, people won't accept it.

299
00:17:36,190 --> 00:17:41,870
But sometimes as a group of people or even as a society, we're happy to have

300
00:17:41,870 --> 00:17:46,750
justifications that are, you know, that we could present to someone else, or that, you

301
00:17:46,750 --> 00:17:49,550
know, we but we they never really get properly evaluated.

302
00:17:49,790 --> 00:17:54,030
And these are the ones uh for which it's kind of easier to get away with stuff that is that

303
00:17:54,030 --> 00:17:55,630
is less plausible.

304
00:17:55,870 --> 00:18:01,000
Um like to give you examples, like in you know, in in most or maybe every small scale

305
00:18:01,160 --> 00:18:06,920
society, people believe in uh in witches or in kind of some some form of supernatural

306
00:18:06,920 --> 00:18:11,080
entity that that causes uh many or kind of most misfortunes.

307
00:18:11,880 --> 00:18:16,600
And it's possible that people have good reasons for wanting to be able to blame a given

308
00:18:16,600 --> 00:18:18,920
individual for a given misfortune.

309
00:18:19,510 --> 00:18:23,190
And like it's not just one person, it's like the group as a whole is happy enough to

310
00:18:23,190 --> 00:18:26,950
converge on the idea that, well, you know, we don't have to all share the responsibility

311
00:18:26,950 --> 00:18:27,910
for that guy's misfortune.

312
00:18:27,990 --> 00:18:29,590
We're just gonna say it's that guy's fault.

313
00:18:29,750 --> 00:18:34,150
And except for that guy, um, everybody else is kind of happy to believe that.

314
00:18:34,310 --> 00:18:39,190
Um, and so they can make up justifications that from an outside perspective may might not

315
00:18:39,190 --> 00:18:40,150
be super convincing.

316
00:18:40,230 --> 00:18:45,340
But given that everybody is kind of looking for a justification, the threshold for or the

317
00:18:45,340 --> 00:18:46,940
criteria are kind of quite low.

318
00:18:47,020 --> 00:18:51,020
You don't need something super good because everybody just wants to have a justification.

319
00:18:51,180 --> 00:18:55,180
And that's the risk when you're when you're talking to people who who agree with you and

320
00:18:55,180 --> 00:18:58,540
you're finding reasons or or justifications for your views.

321
00:18:58,700 --> 00:19:00,620
They're not going to be critically evaluated.

322
00:19:00,700 --> 00:19:05,020
And so you can get away with stuff that wouldn't fly if you were actually talking to

323
00:19:05,020 --> 00:19:07,260
someone who would who would properly be critical of you.

324
00:19:07,670 --> 00:19:11,830
Yeah, another example might be that death by Phantasm in the Brenda Bowser episode.

325
00:19:11,910 --> 00:19:17,030
Uh, there's uh the, you know, in the the local ecology, there were groups of people from

326
00:19:17,030 --> 00:19:22,390
different areas all coming together to f decide how a horrendous murder what happened, and

327
00:19:22,390 --> 00:19:25,670
they all decided, the elders decided it was death by phantasm.

328
00:19:25,830 --> 00:19:29,110
And presumably they all agreed, and other people agreed.

329
00:19:29,350 --> 00:19:34,760
And that was an argument of uh, well, it's going to be high cost to like pin this on

330
00:19:34,760 --> 00:19:36,280
somebody and the retaliatory cost.

331
00:19:36,440 --> 00:19:40,760
So all individual minds are sort of thinking it's not worth the cost to like pin this on

332
00:19:40,760 --> 00:19:41,240
somebody.

333
00:19:41,400 --> 00:19:47,240
And so the evaluation of phantasm being plausible or not has nothing to do with whether or

334
00:19:47,240 --> 00:19:52,360
not a phantasm exists per se, but it's sort of like, do I agree with this for these other

335
00:19:52,360 --> 00:19:52,840
reasons?

336
00:19:53,080 --> 00:19:53,400
Right.

337
00:19:54,170 --> 00:19:57,930
Yeah, because I mean when you when we think, I mean, so I mean obviously you're you're

338
00:19:57,930 --> 00:20:02,570
right, David, that um, you know, the justifications we give, I mean, their function is to

339
00:20:02,650 --> 00:20:03,930
is to make us look good.

340
00:20:04,010 --> 00:20:08,250
So, you know, we we're gonna if we have a choice of different motives that we can pick as a

341
00:20:08,250 --> 00:20:11,450
reason, we're gonna try to pick the one that makes us look better.

342
00:20:11,610 --> 00:20:15,690
But let's say I, you know, I I had I hadn't showed up today to the podcast and you asked

343
00:20:15,690 --> 00:20:18,170
me, so why you know why didn't you log in?

344
00:20:18,330 --> 00:20:22,730
And I say, well, I was uh you know, I was saving a child's life somehow.

345
00:20:22,920 --> 00:20:26,680
Uh you know, you you know either you kinda you ask me for some details, you know what what

346
00:20:26,680 --> 00:20:29,320
the hell happened, but you're not going to just to take my word for it, like it's gonna

347
00:20:29,320 --> 00:20:29,880
look weird.

348
00:20:30,120 --> 00:20:33,080
Even though it's maybe the excuse I could give that could, you know, make me look weird.

349
00:20:33,240 --> 00:20:34,520
You probably would take your word for it.

350
00:20:35,960 --> 00:20:39,640
Honestly, no, it's interesting that you bring up that example 'cause I probably would take

351
00:20:39,640 --> 00:20:44,360
your word for it because if I did challenge your account, I would look hostile to you.

352
00:20:46,360 --> 00:20:47,800
I would look like I don't I don't trust you.

353
00:20:47,880 --> 00:20:48,200
Yeah.

354
00:20:48,850 --> 00:20:53,490
it's plausible that you know you would find out at some point or you know there was I can't

355
00:20:53,570 --> 00:20:56,690
you know if like yeah you know because you're on the other side of the world it you know

356
00:20:56,690 --> 00:21:00,690
it's it might fly but but if I were to say that to my to my co-workers like you know how

357
00:21:00,690 --> 00:21:04,370
did you like what happened and then you have to make stuff up that's complicated and you

358
00:21:04,370 --> 00:21:06,610
get caught in a lie and then you look really really bad.

359
00:21:06,850 --> 00:21:07,090
Yeah.

360
00:21:07,890 --> 00:21:11,890
And so in that case it's a bit extreme because it's a you know a complete complete lie.

361
00:21:12,050 --> 00:21:17,500
But you know, even if I if someone who is com is always late and they always say, Oh, you

362
00:21:17,500 --> 00:21:20,620
know, it's because I missed my train, blah blah blah, you know, if you know that person,

363
00:21:20,700 --> 00:21:21,660
you know it's bullshit.

364
00:21:21,740 --> 00:21:25,580
Like you know it's just that they're bad at keeping time and then they don't really care

365
00:21:25,580 --> 00:21:26,620
about some meetings.

366
00:21:26,860 --> 00:21:30,780
And so maybe as you are saying, socially you're not gonna challenge them, but you're still

367
00:21:30,780 --> 00:21:32,860
judging them as they should be judged.

368
00:21:33,350 --> 00:21:34,070
Yeah, that's a great point.

369
00:21:34,150 --> 00:21:39,430
So if if I could summarize the take, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, um, yes, we all

370
00:21:39,430 --> 00:21:43,350
have an incentive to kind of bullshit about the reasons why we do things to confabulate.

371
00:21:43,510 --> 00:21:48,470
Um, but usually people are pretty skeptical and pretty vigilant against this kind of

372
00:21:48,470 --> 00:21:53,590
bullshitting, and that forces us to come up with a reasonably uh compelling justification

373
00:21:53,590 --> 00:21:54,310
for why we did things.

374
00:21:54,390 --> 00:21:57,990
Because if it was too crazy and too implausible, people wouldn't believe us and they would

375
00:21:57,990 --> 00:22:00,310
judge us and we would uh have reputational costs.

376
00:22:00,710 --> 00:22:01,590
It would be worse, exactly.

377
00:22:01,670 --> 00:22:01,750
Yeah.

378
00:22:01,990 --> 00:22:02,630
It would be worse.

379
00:22:02,820 --> 00:22:08,820
But in some cases when everyone has the same biases or the same interests to come up with a

380
00:22:08,820 --> 00:22:09,780
particular justification.

381
00:22:09,940 --> 00:22:14,580
So for example, in the case of the Brenda Bowser episodes when everyone has a uh has a

382
00:22:14,580 --> 00:22:19,220
reason to not create a cycle of violence, uh, and everyone has a reason to maybe pin this

383
00:22:19,220 --> 00:22:23,540
on a phantasm, then you can get a kind of cooperative bullshitting where everyone is trying

384
00:22:23,540 --> 00:22:27,300
to tell a story that justifies a particular cour course of action that everyone has an

385
00:22:27,300 --> 00:22:28,180
interest in pursuing.

386
00:22:28,260 --> 00:22:31,250
And you can get this in political groups as well, where you get a kind of cooperative

387
00:22:31,250 --> 00:22:35,890
bullshitting where we where we come up with a story that justifies the agenda of our group.

388
00:22:36,130 --> 00:22:40,850
Maybe we spin a utopian narrative that if we pursue this objective, it's going to create a

389
00:22:40,850 --> 00:22:43,570
utopia on Earth and therefore it's it's worthwhile.

390
00:22:43,890 --> 00:22:48,690
And so and and that would be a different mechanism for for uh this kind of stuff.

391
00:22:49,090 --> 00:22:50,180
Yes, no, no, completely.

392
00:22:50,260 --> 00:22:55,780
And and and these kind of uh cultural productions are um are are very interesting.

393
00:22:56,020 --> 00:23:01,220
Um but as a rule given the the mechanism that generates them they're not really causally

394
00:23:01,220 --> 00:23:01,620
efficacious.

395
00:23:01,780 --> 00:23:04,500
Like if people want to do something in the first place and then they're going to you know

396
00:23:04,500 --> 00:23:07,860
confabulate some some justification that everybody's happy to accept.

397
00:23:08,180 --> 00:23:10,340
But it's the justification isn't why they're doing it.

398
00:23:10,420 --> 00:23:15,590
Like it's not as if yes you people were like at some point someone convinces them that

399
00:23:15,590 --> 00:23:18,390
witches exist and and and then they start seeing witches everywhere.

400
00:23:18,470 --> 00:23:21,990
It's like they're they're happy to believe that witches exist to a large extent.

401
00:23:22,310 --> 00:23:26,710
And and so then they're happy to accept the theory sort of that they that they do exist.

402
00:23:27,030 --> 00:23:27,270
Right.

403
00:23:27,430 --> 00:23:31,270
Because they all have a common interest in not being the one uh burned at the stake.

404
00:23:31,430 --> 00:23:36,390
And because they are all biased in that direction to not themselves be the witches, then

405
00:23:36,390 --> 00:23:39,430
they are happy to accept the reason why someone else is a witch.

406
00:23:39,800 --> 00:23:43,400
Yeah, actually in that case in particular, I mean we're kind of it's a bit of a tangent,

407
00:23:43,480 --> 00:23:49,240
but but Pascal Boyer has has uh has this interesting theory that a lot of these beliefs,

408
00:23:49,400 --> 00:23:53,640
like if you're if you're in a in in most societies in which people you know cooperate to to

409
00:23:53,640 --> 00:23:59,560
to some extent, so essentially all societies, um there's some uh informal burden

410
00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:01,560
to help people who suffer misfortunes.

411
00:24:01,640 --> 00:24:06,120
Like it's not clear exactly who the burden falls on and how how large the burden should be.

412
00:24:06,360 --> 00:24:09,530
But you know, even if in in our societies, if something really bad happens to your

413
00:24:09,530 --> 00:24:12,090
neighbor, you feel as if maybe you should do something to help.

414
00:24:12,330 --> 00:24:15,450
And it's not clear who should help and how much everybody should help.

415
00:24:15,530 --> 00:24:18,010
And so it's a bit of a it's not a great situation to be in.

416
00:24:18,090 --> 00:24:24,090
And most people are happy to to try to minimize the uh how much it how much it

417
00:24:24,090 --> 00:24:25,610
is perceived that they should help.

418
00:24:25,770 --> 00:24:29,690
And if you say either, well, you know, that person had a misfortune because they they

419
00:24:29,690 --> 00:24:31,610
violated a taboo, so then it's their fault.

420
00:24:31,690 --> 00:24:34,170
So no one really has to help because they brought it on themselves.

421
00:24:34,420 --> 00:24:40,420
or it's that guy who who you know who um uh bewitched them or you know um cast a spell or

422
00:24:40,420 --> 00:24:43,220
whatever, then that guy has to pay reparation.

423
00:24:43,380 --> 00:24:45,860
And so I don't have to do anything either.

424
00:24:46,180 --> 00:24:50,820
And what's nice with this is that actually in most societies, witches are not punished.

425
00:24:50,900 --> 00:24:54,100
Like you say, oh no, he's the witch, it's his fault, and then the guy has to apologize and

426
00:24:54,100 --> 00:24:59,710
do, you know, maybe help a bit the guy who suffered the misfortune, But the the punishment

427
00:24:59,710 --> 00:25:04,350
is really not commensurate with the accusation, like we know with the thing that the person

428
00:25:04,350 --> 00:25:05,150
is accused of.

429
00:25:05,310 --> 00:25:11,310
So just everybody is happy to have uh you know uh uh someone that they can put the the pin

430
00:25:11,310 --> 00:25:12,430
pin the blame on.

431
00:25:12,670 --> 00:25:16,270
And then once they have that, they don't really want to punish the person because that's

432
00:25:16,270 --> 00:25:16,670
not the point.

433
00:25:16,750 --> 00:25:20,670
The point is just to to so that everybody knows I'm not the one who has to help the guy who

434
00:25:20,670 --> 00:25:22,110
suffered the misfortune.

435
00:25:22,960 --> 00:25:23,280
Yeah.

436
00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:28,720
So yeah, in that case, the um the motive would be none of us want to actually pitch in to

437
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:29,440
help this guy.

438
00:25:29,520 --> 00:25:33,280
And this narrative helps us uh force someone else to help the guy.

439
00:25:33,760 --> 00:25:35,840
Yeah, and justify our are not helping them.

440
00:25:35,920 --> 00:25:37,680
Yeah or not helping them too much anyway.

441
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:43,040
It really sounds like, I mean, even in that example, like sort of words are uh really

442
00:25:43,200 --> 00:25:48,800
pretty um minimally effective in the following sense of like we're saying somebody caused

443
00:25:48,800 --> 00:25:54,350
their misfortune and that's just to prevent other people from sort of saying I should do

444
00:25:54,350 --> 00:25:54,910
something.

445
00:25:55,070 --> 00:26:00,830
Um, but then if you take seriously that this person caused the misfortune, the behavior

446
00:26:00,830 --> 00:26:02,830
should be, you know, we should really do something.

447
00:26:02,990 --> 00:26:05,470
But then people don't want to do that.

448
00:26:05,630 --> 00:26:10,190
So I mean it's a it's a real clear case of there's sort of an asymmetry with use of words,

449
00:26:10,270 --> 00:26:15,960
even that it's sort of coalitional in the sense of it's sort of defensive words are

450
00:26:16,120 --> 00:26:20,200
are sort of produced, but then when when it's sort of offensive and it's like, well, this

451
00:26:20,200 --> 00:26:23,320
involves having to actually do something, everyone's like, oh whatever, whatever, we'll

452
00:26:23,320 --> 00:26:24,600
just kind of let that slide.

453
00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:25,880
Yeah, exactly.

454
00:26:26,120 --> 00:26:26,360
Yeah.

455
00:26:26,680 --> 00:26:28,920
There there's a just oh sorry, David, go ahead.

456
00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:29,160
Yeah.

457
00:26:29,640 --> 00:26:32,520
So just well, one interesting thought that just occurred to me.

458
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:38,170
Do you think um the uh uh inability of us to detect our own

459
00:26:38,170 --> 00:26:40,810
biases is itself a design feature of this system.

460
00:26:41,050 --> 00:26:44,890
So you could imagine a system where uh you know we're in the middle of a of a witch hunt,

461
00:26:44,970 --> 00:26:49,050
and I'm perfectly aware that the only reason I'm accusing this person of witchcraft is to

462
00:26:49,050 --> 00:26:51,050
uh get him to help out and not me.

463
00:26:51,290 --> 00:26:55,850
If I'm aware of that, um, and maybe I'm explicit about that, well, that's going to really

464
00:26:55,850 --> 00:27:00,330
lower my chances of successfully accusing that guy of witchcraft if I say, Oh, I'm only

465
00:27:00,330 --> 00:27:01,690
doing this because I don't want to help.

466
00:27:01,850 --> 00:27:07,340
Um, and so it could it be that this inability to detect um the underlying

467
00:27:07,340 --> 00:27:12,940
motivations of our of our arguments, our underlying biases, um is itself a design feature

468
00:27:13,020 --> 00:27:16,780
and that if we were aware of them, perhaps it might leak out and it might make our

469
00:27:16,780 --> 00:27:17,980
arguments less convincing.

470
00:27:18,140 --> 00:27:22,300
If I'm in the middle of an argument with you and I uh am explicit about my biases and my

471
00:27:22,300 --> 00:27:25,900
underlying agenda, that's going to make you more vigilant and that's going to make you uh

472
00:27:25,980 --> 00:27:26,700
trust me less.

473
00:27:26,860 --> 00:27:31,890
So I have an incentive to try to frame my argument my my arguing and reasoning as a kind of

474
00:27:31,890 --> 00:27:35,570
disinterested, dispassionate truth seeking to increase the chances that you'll actually

475
00:27:35,570 --> 00:27:36,530
accept my arguments.

476
00:27:36,770 --> 00:27:37,970
What what do you think of that idea?

477
00:27:38,530 --> 00:27:44,290
Yeah, I mean I I don't think you need anything specifically designed to not do something

478
00:27:44,290 --> 00:27:46,610
that is cognitively tremendously hard in the first place.

479
00:27:46,770 --> 00:27:52,560
You just not you just there's no pressure for that mechanism you're describing to evolve.

480
00:27:52,720 --> 00:27:53,840
And so it doesn't evolve.

481
00:27:53,920 --> 00:27:56,480
You don't need specific pressure for it not to evolve in a way.

482
00:27:56,560 --> 00:28:00,480
You just you because it's a you know it's a very complex cognitive machinery, you need a

483
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:02,960
lot of positive pressure for the thing to evolve in the first place.

484
00:28:03,120 --> 00:28:07,280
So its absence doesn't need an explanation beyond that in a way.

485
00:28:07,680 --> 00:28:13,680
Um yeah, but you because you could also have imagined that it would be obviously like we

486
00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:17,330
have cognitive mechanisms that allow us to understand people's motives, like we have theory

487
00:28:17,330 --> 00:28:17,570
of mind.

488
00:28:17,650 --> 00:28:20,610
So, because it's really important for us to understand other people's motives.

489
00:28:20,850 --> 00:28:25,330
And you'd think we'd be more keen on training them to ourselves on you know onto ourselves,

490
00:28:25,410 --> 00:28:30,770
and we're not doing it that much, uh, which suggests that it's a lot of it is a problem of

491
00:28:30,850 --> 00:28:31,250
motivation.

492
00:28:31,330 --> 00:28:37,010
Like we're not, it's not something that evolutionarily would have helped people to you know

493
00:28:37,090 --> 00:28:39,090
to better understand themselves.

494
00:28:39,410 --> 00:28:43,280
Because you know, you're supposed to already your brain is wired to do the things that

495
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:44,320
aren't good for you in the first place.

496
00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:47,120
So understanding it isn't gonna help you by default.

497
00:28:47,680 --> 00:28:52,880
And just uh as a throwback or callback to another episode with depression in Ed Hagen, I

498
00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:56,480
mean, I think uh correct me if I'm wrong, but with the one area where people don't have

499
00:28:56,480 --> 00:29:00,160
confirmation biases as much is people who are depressed.

500
00:29:00,320 --> 00:29:00,560
Right.

501
00:29:00,720 --> 00:29:06,690
And the argument is that's a design feature for um essentially arguing

502
00:29:06,690 --> 00:29:11,570
that, well, however whatever settings we have in this brain are not working, uh, and we

503
00:29:11,570 --> 00:29:17,330
really need to evaluate things more objectively than the settings in this thing, uh in the

504
00:29:17,410 --> 00:29:19,410
in the current uh body envelope.

505
00:29:19,490 --> 00:29:24,050
And so that's one area where you actually do get sort of quote unquote less biased

506
00:29:24,050 --> 00:29:24,450
reasoning.

507
00:29:24,530 --> 00:29:26,370
Is that um I don't know.

508
00:29:26,450 --> 00:29:27,090
That's a good question.

509
00:29:27,170 --> 00:29:32,210
I don't know to what extent they would have less of this specific bias have I I've been

510
00:29:32,210 --> 00:29:37,560
describing in the sense that, you know for instance uh the bias this is my side bias or

511
00:29:37,560 --> 00:29:42,520
confirmation bias if I give you you know peep psychologists have a lot of these logical

512
00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:46,520
problems that tend to be tricky so the typical one is the bat and bowl so like you know

513
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:52,360
like a bat and a bowl cost one dollar and ten cents together the bat costs uh five uh the

514
00:29:52,360 --> 00:29:57,080
bat costs one dollar more than bat than the bowl how much does the bowl cost uh most people

515
00:29:57,080 --> 00:30:02,850
say ten cents the correct answer is five cents and um and when you give people that kind of

516
00:30:02,850 --> 00:30:07,730
problems, it's one of the one of the also very clean demonstration of a confirmation bias

517
00:30:07,810 --> 00:30:11,490
because you give them the problem, immediately they think that ten cents is the correct

518
00:30:11,490 --> 00:30:11,970
answer.

519
00:30:12,130 --> 00:30:16,770
And then if through uh you know eye tracking, think about protocols, whatever else, you

520
00:30:16,770 --> 00:30:20,850
figure out what people are thinking after they have they have had that initial intuition,

521
00:30:21,170 --> 00:30:23,490
overwhelmingly they're looking for reasons where they're right.

522
00:30:23,570 --> 00:30:25,330
So they have this confirmation bias.

523
00:30:25,620 --> 00:30:29,620
And I think that you know, whether you're depressed or super happy, you is going to be

524
00:30:29,620 --> 00:30:30,740
exactly the same.

525
00:30:30,900 --> 00:30:34,180
Uh, people who are depressed are not going to start thinking, oh, you know, maybe I'm

526
00:30:34,180 --> 00:30:34,660
completely wrong.

527
00:30:34,820 --> 00:30:37,380
What about five cents, or what about some other answer?

528
00:30:37,700 --> 00:30:42,500
So uh, I mean, obviously, the the differences that that Ed Hagen was talking about are are

529
00:30:42,500 --> 00:30:45,460
real, but I don't think they would affect that spot that particular bias.

530
00:30:45,540 --> 00:30:50,740
It's more generally, you know, how optimistic or how you know how able to kind of

531
00:30:50,740 --> 00:30:54,180
self-inflate you are rather than than this specific mechanism.

532
00:30:54,550 --> 00:30:54,790
Right.

533
00:30:54,870 --> 00:30:59,030
Or I mean, or what I mean, I think the argument and for the the people who argue that it

534
00:30:59,030 --> 00:31:03,510
happens is sort of uh, you know, if we're having a conversation and we're arguing who's

535
00:31:03,510 --> 00:31:08,630
right, I'm just more likely, if I'm depressed, to sort of think I'm less correct, right?

536
00:31:08,870 --> 00:31:10,790
I mean this is just individual differences, right?

537
00:31:11,270 --> 00:31:12,630
Yeah, no, possibly.

538
00:31:12,790 --> 00:31:18,710
I mean you want to like uh um so there aren't

539
00:31:18,980 --> 00:31:23,220
so when we talk about reasoning, for us there are two main functions.

540
00:31:23,380 --> 00:31:27,140
One is to exchange arguments because we want to change someone's mind about a given

541
00:31:27,140 --> 00:31:27,540
conclusion.

542
00:31:27,700 --> 00:31:32,260
Like let's say we want to, you know, we want to go for dinner together and we disagree

543
00:31:32,260 --> 00:31:36,340
about which restaurant to go to, and we might exchange arguments as to you know where we

544
00:31:36,340 --> 00:31:37,220
should be going.

545
00:31:37,540 --> 00:31:39,540
And the other function is to justify ourselves.

546
00:31:39,620 --> 00:31:42,980
So you know, do you when you if I you know if I've done something that you think might be

547
00:31:42,980 --> 00:31:46,100
stupid or I've picked a restaurant that you think was really bad, then I'm I'm just trying

548
00:31:46,100 --> 00:31:47,860
to justify and defend myself.

549
00:31:48,100 --> 00:31:54,030
And a lot of the discussions we have, even though it feels like in theory, they're about

550
00:31:54,030 --> 00:31:56,270
conviction, like they're about what is true.

551
00:31:56,750 --> 00:31:59,950
Like when you talk about politics, when you talk about culture, when you talk about a lot

552
00:31:59,950 --> 00:32:05,150
of this of these things, because the conclusions don't affect us at all in our behavior,

553
00:32:05,710 --> 00:32:07,870
I think they're mostly actually about reputation.

554
00:32:07,950 --> 00:32:11,470
So a lot of it when we talk about these things, it's a way of showing that we have coherent

555
00:32:11,470 --> 00:32:14,670
opinions, that we're well informed, that we have moral opinions.

556
00:32:14,940 --> 00:32:18,940
And so if you are less motivated to show people that you're smart and that you're more, you

557
00:32:18,940 --> 00:32:22,540
know, a good person, et cetera, because you are depressed, then you're going to give up

558
00:32:22,540 --> 00:32:23,420
more easily.

559
00:32:23,820 --> 00:32:27,980
But if it's something that affects you more directly in terms of a decision that you have

560
00:32:27,980 --> 00:32:33,180
to make, then maybe the difference may be less between someone who is depressed.

561
00:32:33,340 --> 00:32:34,780
But I just don't know enough about depression.

562
00:32:35,180 --> 00:32:39,660
Yeah, and I mean getting off the depression thing, because this is a really subtle point.

563
00:32:39,820 --> 00:32:42,140
And I think I just want to make sure that I've got it.

564
00:32:42,780 --> 00:32:46,090
So what you've talked about is sort of people hold views.

565
00:32:46,330 --> 00:32:52,330
And there's good reasons, or there's at least software reasons, evolve software reasons why

566
00:32:52,330 --> 00:32:55,530
people hold views or opinions or behave the way they do.

567
00:32:56,010 --> 00:33:01,050
And that is sort of silent machinery that's calculating what we've basically characterized

568
00:33:01,050 --> 00:33:05,050
as like individual interest or like extended individual interest.

569
00:33:05,290 --> 00:33:07,130
So view is the one element.

570
00:33:07,370 --> 00:33:09,290
The other element is confabulation.

571
00:33:09,440 --> 00:33:15,280
So confabulation is sort of a narrative about why this view exists.

572
00:33:15,760 --> 00:33:20,800
And what I'm hearing from you is that a lot of conversation and reasoning is about

573
00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:22,960
coordinating confabulation.

574
00:33:23,520 --> 00:33:23,840
Right.

575
00:33:24,080 --> 00:33:26,640
So it's sort of like, so let's use the example of the podcast.

576
00:33:26,720 --> 00:33:29,120
So David and I are like, let's have a podcast, right?

577
00:33:29,890 --> 00:33:34,530
Having the podcast and the and the idea of having the podcast is sort of the view.

578
00:33:34,690 --> 00:33:39,490
But then everything we talk about is sort of if I said, well, let's have a podcast because

579
00:33:39,570 --> 00:33:43,170
you know the sky is purple, David would be like, Well, that's a bad reason.

580
00:33:43,250 --> 00:33:44,210
That doesn't make any sense.

581
00:33:44,370 --> 00:33:49,490
And why he's doing that is because if we tell other people that he's going to realize,

582
00:33:49,650 --> 00:33:50,850
well, that's just a bad reason.

583
00:33:50,930 --> 00:33:52,930
And people are going to be like, Well, that's a stupid reason.

584
00:33:53,090 --> 00:33:54,050
Don't you shouldn't have a podcast?

585
00:33:54,130 --> 00:33:58,200
It's not a good justification for him doing it, for telling his wife why he's spending time

586
00:33:58,280 --> 00:34:01,160
or like other himself why he's spending time doing it.

587
00:34:01,320 --> 00:34:05,320
Um, but maybe we say, well, we want to like inform people, right?

588
00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:08,440
And now that doesn't include all the reasons why we're doing it.

589
00:34:08,520 --> 00:34:11,160
It might not even include the primary reasons why we're doing it.

590
00:34:11,240 --> 00:34:16,760
So the view is sort of hidden from us, but he's still selecting among the confabulations

591
00:34:17,080 --> 00:34:22,930
that sort of work for the function of the confabulation, which is sort of to have a good

592
00:34:22,930 --> 00:34:27,890
reason, a good enough reason, even if it doesn't exhaust all the reasons for the view.

593
00:34:28,130 --> 00:34:33,250
So in this view, the view and the confabulation are very different sort of games in a way.

594
00:34:33,330 --> 00:34:34,930
Is that a fair characterization?

595
00:34:35,410 --> 00:34:41,260
Yeah, no, no, it is, but um So the what matters, I guess, in

596
00:34:41,260 --> 00:34:42,940
these things is who the audience is.

597
00:34:43,020 --> 00:34:48,620
So if you and David are brainstorming justifications for the podcast, essentially you're

598
00:34:48,780 --> 00:34:50,300
both of you want to do a podcast.

599
00:34:50,540 --> 00:34:54,700
So you're just anticipating in the same way that if if you on your own they had had wanted

600
00:34:54,700 --> 00:34:57,820
to do a podcast, you could think on your own and say, you know, what am I gonna tell my

601
00:34:57,820 --> 00:34:57,980
wife?

602
00:34:58,140 --> 00:34:59,980
What am I gonna tell other people?

603
00:35:00,300 --> 00:35:01,660
And so you can do that on your own.

604
00:35:01,740 --> 00:35:06,250
And we do that a lot, like we spend a lot of our time anticipating potential disagreement

605
00:35:06,250 --> 00:35:10,490
or judge or negative judgments and and you know anticipate what we would say and you can

606
00:35:10,490 --> 00:35:14,410
also do that in groups you know if if you're if it's a collective decision but sometimes

607
00:35:14,410 --> 00:35:18,010
you're just you know you're you're talking with with David or with some someone else and

608
00:35:18,010 --> 00:35:21,770
you're just disagreeing over something and then you're trying to justify your views to that

609
00:35:21,770 --> 00:35:23,690
person because they happen to be disagreeing.

610
00:35:23,850 --> 00:35:29,530
And I still think it's it's the that latter thing is the most common in the sense that when

611
00:35:29,530 --> 00:35:33,700
you're in a social setting and you realize that someone disagrees with you, you have a

612
00:35:33,700 --> 00:35:37,700
natural, like it's very spontaneously you'll you'll you'll think of arguments for why

613
00:35:37,700 --> 00:35:40,100
you're right or justifications for your views.

614
00:35:40,260 --> 00:35:45,860
Whereas when you haven't been exposed yet to someone disagreeing, you know, we don't find,

615
00:35:45,940 --> 00:35:48,740
you know, most of the decisions we make, we don't struggle for justifications.

616
00:35:48,820 --> 00:35:51,700
We just, you know, if I bought this burn of cereal, I just bought this burn of cyril, no

617
00:35:51,700 --> 00:35:53,300
one's gonna bother me about it.

618
00:35:53,540 --> 00:35:58,790
Um So it's only when you anticipate having this potentially negative feedback that you that

619
00:35:58,790 --> 00:36:00,230
you start looking for it.

620
00:36:00,550 --> 00:36:03,830
And and and you don't always anticipate having such feedback.

621
00:36:03,910 --> 00:36:05,430
I mean, you know, fortunately.

622
00:36:06,470 --> 00:36:08,470
Yeah, it's a really interesting, complicated thing.

623
00:36:08,550 --> 00:36:11,590
I mean, I'm thinking also, like, for example, like let's imagine somebody who's like

624
00:36:11,590 --> 00:36:13,270
cartoonishly racist, right?

625
00:36:13,430 --> 00:36:17,110
Like a Nazi or somebody, or or it's like a white supremacist.

626
00:36:17,270 --> 00:36:21,190
And there's sort of this classic idea that's sort of like they might have views or like

627
00:36:21,190 --> 00:36:23,430
confabulation for holding their view.

628
00:36:23,740 --> 00:36:27,500
But then if you take the example of somebody who changes their mind and they're no longer a

629
00:36:27,500 --> 00:36:33,500
Nazi or a white supremacist, it's often they just have the experience of, you know, of

630
00:36:33,500 --> 00:36:37,100
people being everywhere the same, you're right.

631
00:36:37,420 --> 00:36:39,660
But that wasn't the part of the confabulation.

632
00:36:39,740 --> 00:36:43,820
And so they'll even have a confabulation for sort of why they've changed their view.

633
00:36:44,060 --> 00:36:49,050
But in fact, the deep reason why they were prejudiced or racist in the first place was sort

634
00:36:49,050 --> 00:36:53,050
of overridden by cues, but it was never part of the verbal narrative, right?

635
00:36:53,130 --> 00:36:56,170
It's just like they just get have a different experience.

636
00:36:56,410 --> 00:37:02,410
So again, I think it comes back to um that's another example where really the

637
00:37:02,570 --> 00:37:06,410
the real reasons why we're doing things and then the verbal narratives are sort of really

638
00:37:06,410 --> 00:37:08,970
two different independent streams almost.

639
00:37:09,640 --> 00:37:13,560
Yes, I mean then again, I mean, as we were saying earlier, they can't be completely

640
00:37:13,560 --> 00:37:14,120
detached.

641
00:37:14,200 --> 00:37:17,400
I mean, I at least, you know, as long as you get some social feedback.

642
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:20,760
Like if you're just completely in your head and you don't you don't talk about that

643
00:37:20,760 --> 00:37:25,720
specific justification to anybody, you can you can really kind of go off on a tangent, I

644
00:37:25,720 --> 00:37:26,120
guess.

645
00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:31,800
But as a rule, um, as we're saying, if you go if you veer too far off of something that's

646
00:37:31,880 --> 00:37:34,840
you know a bit like the truth, yeah, um, you're gonna have issues.

647
00:37:35,000 --> 00:37:38,830
But it's I mean, we think of it, you know, we're talking about it as if it's a bad thing,

648
00:37:38,910 --> 00:37:40,750
but that's also what you get, for instance, in mathematics.

649
00:37:40,910 --> 00:37:44,830
Like people have an intuition that a given uh conjecture is right, and then they work

650
00:37:44,910 --> 00:37:49,630
really, really hard on finding a theorem, and then they have the theorem, and that's and

651
00:37:49,630 --> 00:37:53,470
then you know, the reason why they know then that the the conjecture was actually correct.

652
00:37:53,710 --> 00:37:55,710
Sorry, they have the proof, so I know the theorem, they have the proof.

653
00:37:55,790 --> 00:37:57,550
So they work very hard on the proof.

654
00:37:58,030 --> 00:38:01,710
And the the reason why they thought the conjecture was correct with their intuition, their

655
00:38:01,710 --> 00:38:03,710
mathematical intuition that it would be correct.

656
00:38:03,950 --> 00:38:08,200
But then they have the proof that gives them the reason why it is actually, or you know, a

657
00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:11,320
reason there can be several proofs why why it is um actually correct.

658
00:38:11,480 --> 00:38:16,120
And and it's not bad, you know, in any normative sense.

659
00:38:16,200 --> 00:38:17,800
It's just the way kind of things are.

660
00:38:18,200 --> 00:38:20,360
Yeah, no, I think every all scientists have that.

661
00:38:20,520 --> 00:38:24,600
And I and then and I'll stop in a second, but I just want to push on this because I think

662
00:38:24,600 --> 00:38:26,680
it's a really subtle important thing.

663
00:38:26,760 --> 00:38:32,450
And there is a tension of like that confabulation track and the and the view track, they do

664
00:38:32,450 --> 00:38:33,570
have some correspondence.

665
00:38:33,650 --> 00:38:39,570
So, like in the racist example, like let's say that uh the white supremacist is

666
00:38:39,570 --> 00:38:45,250
sort of like actually, um, you know, people who look different from me are they're

667
00:38:45,250 --> 00:38:47,490
actually good, hardworking people, right?

668
00:38:48,050 --> 00:38:53,890
And that idea, um, that that narrative of like good and hardworking, like what

669
00:38:53,890 --> 00:38:59,600
that's not, you know, but but if that is sort of an accepted thing by somebody

670
00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:03,440
else, then that that is sort of approved, right?

671
00:39:03,520 --> 00:39:07,840
But if that white supremacist says that to like one of the other white supremacists who

672
00:39:07,840 --> 00:39:10,720
doesn't want that, they'll say, no, I don't agree with that.

673
00:39:10,960 --> 00:39:15,840
Now why they why they're against that group of people has nothing to do with hard work, how

674
00:39:15,840 --> 00:39:16,800
hardworking it is.

675
00:39:16,960 --> 00:39:22,770
So but it's sort of acceptance or rejection of the confabulation is the

676
00:39:22,770 --> 00:39:28,050
correspondence on behavior is just it's a cue of whether or not are we going to continue

677
00:39:28,050 --> 00:39:30,610
this behavior or change our behavior, right?

678
00:39:30,770 --> 00:39:35,570
Um, so it's like kids on the playground where they're like, Sally thinks the purple ball is

679
00:39:35,570 --> 00:39:36,850
the best thing and she's wrong.

680
00:39:37,010 --> 00:39:37,890
She's stupid, right?

681
00:39:37,970 --> 00:39:39,410
That's the purple ball sucks.

682
00:39:39,650 --> 00:39:41,250
We don't care about the purple ball.

683
00:39:41,410 --> 00:39:46,370
The reason why we care about talking about the purple ball is what we're gonna do to Sally.

684
00:39:46,610 --> 00:39:51,460
So I think just to push on this idea that they do have correspondence, the confabulation

685
00:39:51,460 --> 00:39:57,380
and the and the um view or the behavior, but it's it's one that's a linked one, right?

686
00:39:57,540 --> 00:39:58,900
Because it has to have something.

687
00:39:58,980 --> 00:40:04,580
Like if you say something, something crazy, and it has no mapping onto like, well, what

688
00:40:04,580 --> 00:40:09,220
real thing are you gonna do in as a result of this belief or value?

689
00:40:09,380 --> 00:40:10,820
I might go looking for that.

690
00:40:10,900 --> 00:40:13,140
But I think but it can still be indirect.

691
00:40:13,300 --> 00:40:15,460
Is that I I really know that's the right.

692
00:40:15,700 --> 00:40:21,550
I mean, the the like for instance the you know whenever there are uh ethnic

693
00:40:21,550 --> 00:40:26,590
riots and and ethnic groups kind of fight each other there are it's always preceded by

694
00:40:26,590 --> 00:40:30,430
rumors that the other ethnic groups the one that that is going to be attacked has committed

695
00:40:30,430 --> 00:40:33,710
some atrocity that you know they've poisoned the wells, they've raped women, they've killed

696
00:40:33,710 --> 00:40:34,430
children.

697
00:40:34,750 --> 00:40:39,360
And um and so these things are not they're not completely implausible.

698
00:40:39,440 --> 00:40:44,240
Like you know, people do do that in some cases, and they're clearly in the morally right

699
00:40:44,240 --> 00:40:44,560
direction.

700
00:40:44,640 --> 00:40:47,040
Like it's bad to you know poison wells, etc.

701
00:40:47,520 --> 00:40:52,080
Um, so it's just that we're because we're all looking for a justification, uh, we're

702
00:40:52,080 --> 00:40:55,920
willing to suspend belief a little bit, like something that's you know not super plausible,

703
00:40:56,080 --> 00:40:58,800
we're going to accept because we're all happy to do this.

704
00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:04,850
But it still has to be a morally valid argument and a premise that's um, you know, it can

705
00:41:04,850 --> 00:41:08,690
be a little bit far you can be far-fetched to some extent, but it given people's primary

706
00:41:08,690 --> 00:41:10,690
beliefs, it has to be somewhat coherent with that.

707
00:41:10,930 --> 00:41:11,490
Yeah, yeah.

708
00:41:11,810 --> 00:41:16,130
U I I I have a uh uh another interesting thought here.

709
00:41:16,370 --> 00:41:20,930
So we're talking about, you know, when confabulations work and justifying a behavior and

710
00:41:20,930 --> 00:41:21,650
when they don't.

711
00:41:21,810 --> 00:41:25,890
So if I give a confabulation that's wildly implausible for my behavior, like, you know, the

712
00:41:25,890 --> 00:41:27,810
sky is purple, that's not gonna work.

713
00:41:27,970 --> 00:41:33,420
If I give a confabulation that's more plausible and defensible, that that might work.

714
00:41:34,220 --> 00:41:37,580
But there's a third option that I want to explore with you and get your take on.

715
00:41:37,740 --> 00:41:43,580
I can give a confabulation that is so vague or unfalsifiable or

716
00:41:43,900 --> 00:41:48,620
unverifiable that you don't really know if it's correct, or you would have no way of going

717
00:41:48,620 --> 00:41:51,180
about figuring out whether it was correct or not.

718
00:41:51,340 --> 00:41:56,310
And it would be really hard for you to coordinate with other people to prove it as

719
00:41:56,310 --> 00:41:57,030
incorrect.

720
00:41:57,190 --> 00:42:01,750
So if I say, you know, I started this podcast because it was fulfilling, it made me happy.

721
00:42:01,910 --> 00:42:05,190
There's really no way you can verify that claim.

722
00:42:05,510 --> 00:42:10,470
And that may well be a design feature, and that may well explain why we justify so many of

723
00:42:10,470 --> 00:42:15,750
our behaviors in terms of this underlying uh I did it because it made me feel happy, it

724
00:42:15,750 --> 00:42:19,430
made me feel fulfilled, it was rewarding, it was meaningful, you know, I'm just pursuing it

725
00:42:19,590 --> 00:42:21,350
helped me express my authentic self.

726
00:42:21,510 --> 00:42:24,230
You know, these kinds of narratives are very hard to falsify.

727
00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:29,080
And they're so vague, it's it's kind of hard to know what they even mean exactly.

728
00:42:29,560 --> 00:42:35,320
But um and so that could be a third route where if we don't have um a plausible

729
00:42:35,400 --> 00:42:41,240
sounding justification that serves the social uh goal, we may start reaching for

730
00:42:41,240 --> 00:42:44,520
things that are just um hard to verify.

731
00:42:44,710 --> 00:42:49,750
Uh and that may well explain why sometimes our confabulations extend into sur

732
00:42:49,910 --> 00:42:54,790
supernatural domains like witchcraft or spirits, because those those domains are by their

733
00:42:54,790 --> 00:42:57,750
very nature uh hard to falsify and and verify.

734
00:42:57,910 --> 00:42:59,270
What what do you think about that idea?

735
00:42:59,750 --> 00:43:04,950
Yeah, no, com completely, but it only works for things that people want to believe in the

736
00:43:04,950 --> 00:43:05,270
first place.

737
00:43:05,430 --> 00:43:09,060
Like, you know, if if you want to convince Dave that you should be doing a podcast and the

738
00:43:09,060 --> 00:43:11,220
two of you want to do a podcast, it's always going to be fulfilling.

739
00:43:11,300 --> 00:43:13,060
You know, you're very happy with this, it's great.

740
00:43:13,380 --> 00:43:16,500
But if you want to convince someone who doesn't really want to do a podcast with you and

741
00:43:16,500 --> 00:43:19,140
you tell them, oh, you know, it's gonna be fulfilling, and they're like, you know what?

742
00:43:19,700 --> 00:43:24,100
So yeah, you know, it's not it's gonna work to the extent that you don't have to actually

743
00:43:24,100 --> 00:43:24,740
convince anybody.

744
00:43:24,820 --> 00:43:29,110
It's like if you need some kind of placeholder to say, Well, this is that sounds okay.

745
00:43:29,190 --> 00:43:33,670
And we're just all happy to have something this as a place we can point at as a

746
00:43:33,670 --> 00:43:34,710
justification.

747
00:43:35,030 --> 00:43:38,630
But if if you know if if your wife is thinking, well, you know, this is a really stupid

748
00:43:38,630 --> 00:43:41,830
decision, you need to do something that is more productive, whatever, and you tell her,

749
00:43:41,990 --> 00:43:45,510
well, no, but it's fulfilling, it's like, well, you know, it doesn't really pay the bills.

750
00:43:46,310 --> 00:43:50,230
So so it depends on on you know what your goal is.

751
00:43:50,310 --> 00:43:54,070
Like if the goal is just to create this narrat, this common narrative that maybe at some

752
00:43:54,070 --> 00:43:58,680
point we could present to others or we can just point at because in many cities in many

753
00:43:58,680 --> 00:44:02,680
cases people you know they're not gonna be you know if if i'm like a friend of yours like

754
00:44:02,920 --> 00:44:07,960
well you know you do whatever you want anyway so it's like you know whatever um but if you

755
00:44:07,960 --> 00:44:13,880
want to actually convince someone who has a stake um it's not gonna it's not gonna cut

756
00:44:13,880 --> 00:44:17,960
it and and it's true as well for you for not only convincing like let's say someone to do

757
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:23,130
another podcast but if I think that doing podcasts as a rule is like a waste of your time,

758
00:44:23,290 --> 00:44:27,610
and uh and I think that because you're doing a podcast, you know, you're being a bit silly,

759
00:44:28,170 --> 00:44:32,330
you telling me this isn't going to change my mind at all about the quality of your decision

760
00:44:32,330 --> 00:44:32,970
making.

761
00:44:33,290 --> 00:44:39,050
So, you know, it it can explain why these things exist culturally when you have a lot

762
00:44:39,050 --> 00:44:42,730
of people who want to have a justification for something they want to do in the first

763
00:44:42,730 --> 00:44:46,700
place, But it the prediction would be that they're not going to be convincing to anybody

764
00:44:46,700 --> 00:44:49,820
who doesn't really agree with that in the first in, you know, who do agree with the

765
00:44:49,820 --> 00:44:50,940
decision to start with.

766
00:44:51,340 --> 00:44:51,580
Right.

767
00:44:51,660 --> 00:44:52,220
That makes sense.

768
00:44:52,380 --> 00:44:56,940
So if we all share, you know, the religious belief, for example, or religious and we all

769
00:44:56,940 --> 00:45:00,540
want to justify this religious belief for whatever reason, then then those kinds of

770
00:45:00,540 --> 00:45:02,460
religious justifications will work on us.

771
00:45:02,540 --> 00:45:08,060
But when it comes to persuading other people that our God wants XYZ, it's not going to be

772
00:45:08,060 --> 00:45:08,780
convincing to them.

773
00:45:09,180 --> 00:45:09,340
Yeah.

774
00:45:09,660 --> 00:45:09,820
Yeah.

775
00:45:10,010 --> 00:45:11,130
And that explains why.

776
00:45:11,210 --> 00:45:14,490
I mean, people are like, oh, other people believe really weird stuff.

777
00:45:14,650 --> 00:45:19,450
It's a consequence of it's in their interest to have a narrative for why they're doing what

778
00:45:19,450 --> 00:45:19,850
they're doing.

779
00:45:19,930 --> 00:45:25,850
And when you experience you're outside of that group of people who that benefit um network,

780
00:45:26,090 --> 00:45:31,130
then you would just have that's this is a prediction of the theory, is that the reasons for

781
00:45:31,130 --> 00:45:36,650
people doing things will look weird to the extent that you are outside of the network of

782
00:45:36,650 --> 00:45:41,760
benefit from that network to the extent that there's confabulation around why people are

783
00:45:41,760 --> 00:45:42,640
doing what they're doing.

784
00:45:43,120 --> 00:45:48,080
Yes they're going to do quick because in a way they they haven't really uh passed the test

785
00:45:48,080 --> 00:45:53,120
of of being being you know being really criticized or evaluated by someone who disagrees

786
00:45:53,120 --> 00:45:53,360
with them.

787
00:45:53,520 --> 00:45:57,360
And so yeah I mean it's it's and that's the first thing we do.

788
00:45:57,440 --> 00:46:02,270
Like whenever you think about something um, you know, you're anticipating a disagreement,

789
00:46:02,350 --> 00:46:06,430
or even you're in a discussion, the first arguments that will pop into your mind will

790
00:46:06,430 --> 00:46:07,870
typically be relatively weak.

791
00:46:07,950 --> 00:46:11,230
They won't be terrible, like they can not not know when it's gonna say because something

792
00:46:11,310 --> 00:46:12,670
because the sky is purple.

793
00:46:12,910 --> 00:46:14,430
But they're gonna they're gonna be great.

794
00:46:14,510 --> 00:46:17,470
Like, you know, if you let's say you you know we disagree about whether we should go to the

795
00:46:17,470 --> 00:46:20,750
restaurant or which restaurant we should go to, and you tell me, Oh, we should go there,

796
00:46:20,830 --> 00:46:21,950
it's a it's a great restaurant.

797
00:46:22,110 --> 00:46:23,230
It's not a very good argument.

798
00:46:23,310 --> 00:46:26,670
Like obviously, if you're saying that we should go there, you think it's a it's a good

799
00:46:26,670 --> 00:46:28,600
restaurant, But it's fine.

800
00:46:28,760 --> 00:46:33,560
And in a in a conversational con in a conversational context, it makes sense to do it that

801
00:46:33,560 --> 00:46:37,000
way, in the sense that if I have weak preferences and that's enough to convince me because

802
00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:39,000
I don't really care, then you know, great.

803
00:46:39,240 --> 00:46:43,080
And if I disagree with you, I'm gonna tell you why I disagree, why I think that restaurant

804
00:46:43,080 --> 00:46:47,400
is bad or that other restaurant is better, and then you can address that specific argument.

805
00:46:47,720 --> 00:46:53,650
And so in a in a dialogic setting, it makes a lot of sense to be quite lazy about the the

806
00:46:53,650 --> 00:46:56,370
justifications we or the the arguments we produce.

807
00:46:56,530 --> 00:46:59,730
And it's only when we get pushback that we have to produce better stuff.

808
00:46:59,810 --> 00:47:02,690
And if you never get the pushback, then you know you stick with the stuff that's a bit

809
00:47:02,690 --> 00:47:03,090
lazy.

810
00:47:03,650 --> 00:47:08,210
So it sounds like I mean this is an argument that argument is a good thing to the extent

811
00:47:08,210 --> 00:47:13,970
that we ha want social institutions to produce accurate or rational or

812
00:47:13,970 --> 00:47:19,420
actually beneficial beliefs or behaviors that I mean I think this is like an argument for

813
00:47:19,420 --> 00:47:20,060
science, right?

814
00:47:20,220 --> 00:47:25,500
Is that um you the you falsif falsifiability like from a pauper

815
00:47:25,660 --> 00:47:31,340
perspective or just arguing for different theories um that the

816
00:47:31,500 --> 00:47:36,060
the things develop out of argument, out of disagreement.

817
00:47:36,940 --> 00:47:37,810
Yeah no, completely.

818
00:47:37,890 --> 00:47:40,770
I mean, you absolutely need disagreement to sharpen your arguments.

819
00:47:41,010 --> 00:47:43,650
That's how the quality of arguments increases.

820
00:47:43,730 --> 00:47:46,050
That's how you force people to have better data.

821
00:47:46,290 --> 00:47:51,170
Um, I mean, you know, if you take something like the history of clinical trials, in a way,

822
00:47:51,330 --> 00:47:56,290
the way clinical trial trials are run now is the outcome of a long history of arguments of

823
00:47:56,290 --> 00:47:59,250
someone saying, Well, you know, if you just give the drug to one guy and see whether it

824
00:47:59,250 --> 00:48:02,620
works, it's not we don't know whether it works because you know, you need you need maybe

825
00:48:02,620 --> 00:48:06,060
the guy just got better off his own accords, and then you have a control group, say, well,

826
00:48:06,140 --> 00:48:06,780
but maybe it's chance.

827
00:48:06,860 --> 00:48:09,260
I mean, you know, you don't have enough people, so then you have more people, and then you

828
00:48:09,260 --> 00:48:10,620
need the groups to be matched.

829
00:48:10,700 --> 00:48:13,260
And and it's just an extended argument.

830
00:48:13,340 --> 00:48:18,540
Uh that means that at the end you can you can have something that you're reasonably sure of

831
00:48:18,620 --> 00:48:22,380
because uh because you've increased the quality of the argument throughout this process of

832
00:48:22,380 --> 00:48:24,140
of kind of protracted argumentation.

833
00:48:24,830 --> 00:48:26,190
And is that what reasoning is?

834
00:48:26,270 --> 00:48:31,550
I mean, because I think as evolutionary psychologists, we don't think reasoning is a

835
00:48:31,550 --> 00:48:36,190
natural category in the mind, in the sense of like my visual system is reasoning about

836
00:48:36,190 --> 00:48:37,310
where you are, right?

837
00:48:37,470 --> 00:48:38,750
Um, in the scene.

838
00:48:38,830 --> 00:48:42,590
We don't really think of that in a folk psychological perspective as reasoning.

839
00:48:42,830 --> 00:48:47,870
Is is the folk category reasoning, I think the reality of this folk category is the third

840
00:48:47,950 --> 00:48:50,920
is a is a third person representation, right?

841
00:48:51,000 --> 00:48:53,320
Or it's a it's a it is a real representation.

842
00:48:53,480 --> 00:48:57,560
It's not a real category of actual scientific processing.

843
00:48:57,640 --> 00:49:03,640
It's like, but um uh but is is what is reasoning coherently?

844
00:49:03,720 --> 00:49:04,680
Is it is it this?

845
00:49:04,840 --> 00:49:08,440
Is it this process of anticipating arguments and finding counterarguments?

846
00:49:08,520 --> 00:49:09,880
Or how do you think about what the counterarguments is?

847
00:49:11,370 --> 00:49:12,410
so you're completely right.

848
00:49:12,490 --> 00:49:16,890
Like for us we we differentiate uh between inference in the broad term, which is what a lot

849
00:49:16,890 --> 00:49:18,250
of people just call reasoning.

850
00:49:18,730 --> 00:49:21,930
And which becomes a little bit counterintuitive because as you were saying, your your

851
00:49:22,010 --> 00:49:26,170
low-level visual processes perform inferences, maybe your retina performs inferences.

852
00:49:26,330 --> 00:49:29,690
And so it just becomes a bit weird to call that reasoning, just because that's not how we

853
00:49:29,690 --> 00:49:31,210
typically use the the term.

854
00:49:31,760 --> 00:49:33,040
But but but it doesn't matter.

855
00:49:33,120 --> 00:49:34,960
It's all just kind of kind of semantics.

856
00:49:35,520 --> 00:49:40,000
The reality we believe or we suggest is that you have many, many, you know, inference

857
00:49:40,240 --> 00:49:41,200
inferential mechanisms.

858
00:49:41,360 --> 00:49:46,080
You have, you know, many, many of these mechanisms that are each are dedicated to a given

859
00:49:46,080 --> 00:49:46,640
task.

860
00:49:46,880 --> 00:49:52,240
And one of these mechanisms, uh, its task happens to be finding and evaluating reasons.

861
00:49:52,480 --> 00:49:53,760
It's a very specific task.

862
00:49:53,840 --> 00:49:57,750
And you can imagine, and you have people who can talk and they can they have syntax, they

863
00:49:57,750 --> 00:50:01,590
have semantics, they have pragmatics, they can they can discuss things.

864
00:50:02,070 --> 00:50:06,310
But in theory, you could you could take out this reasoning ability and they couldn't really

865
00:50:06,310 --> 00:50:10,470
understand arguments, they couldn't really they would be or they would be really bad at it.

866
00:50:10,710 --> 00:50:15,270
Like because when you when you you know if I have a given view and I want to convince you

867
00:50:15,270 --> 00:50:17,880
of it, you need a mechanism that will give you that.

868
00:50:17,960 --> 00:50:19,640
Like it's really hard to find a good argument.

869
00:50:19,800 --> 00:50:24,680
Like if you even if you you you take a given thought of all the things that are kind of in

870
00:50:24,680 --> 00:50:28,520
the semantic space of that thought, the things that might be possibly relevant, many of

871
00:50:28,520 --> 00:50:30,280
them aren't going to be good arguments.

872
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:34,280
And so finding a good argument is just a cognitively or kind of computationally very hard

873
00:50:34,280 --> 00:50:38,120
task for which you need, if you want to do it well, you need dedicated machinery.

874
00:50:38,280 --> 00:50:42,270
Like obviously there's some kind of bootstrapping problem and at some point you can imagine

875
00:50:42,270 --> 00:50:47,790
that some of the using more general kind of mind reading or pragmatic

876
00:50:47,790 --> 00:50:50,270
abilities, you can get some of the way.

877
00:50:50,430 --> 00:50:54,430
But then because it's something we do a lot and we're have a stake at kind of being good

878
00:50:54,430 --> 00:50:59,390
at, presumably specific mechanisms would have evolved that just help us find and evaluate

879
00:50:59,390 --> 00:51:01,390
arguments in particular and reasons in particular.

880
00:51:01,700 --> 00:51:01,860
Right.

881
00:51:02,020 --> 00:51:07,060
And just as the example that David talked about with the podcast, sort of like fulfilling,

882
00:51:07,300 --> 00:51:07,620
right?

883
00:51:07,860 --> 00:51:12,180
That software would presumably sort of generate that as a candidate, sort of say, well,

884
00:51:12,260 --> 00:51:15,220
this would be good defensively for me, but it wouldn't convince my wife.

885
00:51:15,380 --> 00:51:16,980
It wouldn't convince a skeptic.

886
00:51:17,140 --> 00:51:19,860
There might be other things like, oh, spread science.

887
00:51:19,940 --> 00:51:20,980
That might convince my wife.

888
00:51:21,060 --> 00:51:22,420
That might convince a skeptic.

889
00:51:22,580 --> 00:51:28,350
And so the software is sort of churning candidates, calculating how will this be received

890
00:51:28,350 --> 00:51:30,430
to somebody who's on my side against me.

891
00:51:30,590 --> 00:51:35,950
And then the filter is sort of evaluating to what extent is it likely that the people who

892
00:51:35,950 --> 00:51:39,550
already agree with me are going to be the bottleneck for me actually doing this.

893
00:51:39,790 --> 00:51:42,270
So it that that that would be the kind of machinery you're talking about.

894
00:51:42,510 --> 00:51:43,150
Yeah, no, exactly.

895
00:51:43,230 --> 00:51:48,750
It's just that it's a make it's a mechanism that that uses a lot of social feedback at

896
00:51:48,750 --> 00:51:49,310
different scales.

897
00:51:49,470 --> 00:51:53,950
So the first at the at the very kind of local scale, as I was saying earlier, typically you

898
00:51:53,950 --> 00:51:58,280
start with some argument that is like it it is a good well-formed argument that makes sense

899
00:51:58,360 --> 00:52:02,280
but it doesn't have to be super super strong and then you bounce off of what the other

900
00:52:02,280 --> 00:52:06,440
person is is saying and disagreeing and way they disagree with you and so that you have

901
00:52:06,440 --> 00:52:12,200
this very kind of um live uh improvement in reasoning but then you also learn uh

902
00:52:12,280 --> 00:52:16,120
through experience so you know if you have a you know two children are are are two siblings

903
00:52:16,120 --> 00:52:18,920
are arguing over the toy and the mother said you know but you know what are you doing and

904
00:52:19,080 --> 00:52:23,590
when sell you know but I want it, and so well, you know, but your brother also wants it,

905
00:52:23,830 --> 00:52:26,710
and so then the next time they're well, I can't just say I want it because it's not a good

906
00:52:26,710 --> 00:52:26,790
argument.

907
00:52:26,950 --> 00:52:28,630
You know, that's the first thing that pops into your mind.

908
00:52:28,710 --> 00:52:31,910
But then they say, Well, I have to say, Well, actually, I had it first, or you know, he had

909
00:52:31,910 --> 00:52:33,430
it earlier, blah blah blah.

910
00:52:33,670 --> 00:52:38,150
And so you and that's that's what happens to us as as academics, like you submit a paper

911
00:52:38,230 --> 00:52:41,110
and you get knocked down by reviewer two because of blah blah blah.

912
00:52:41,190 --> 00:52:46,600
And the next time you try to anticipate, and you it's just it's something that we you know

913
00:52:46,680 --> 00:52:50,280
we're good at learning to do, but it's it's really hard to anticipate.

914
00:52:50,360 --> 00:52:52,120
It's not natural to have to really anticipate.

915
00:52:52,200 --> 00:52:56,120
You're just good at integrating social feedback rather than anticipating it.

916
00:52:56,360 --> 00:52:57,080
Yeah, that's interesting.

917
00:52:57,240 --> 00:53:02,520
I think even like good teachers or like the kids' example or comedians very explicitly will

918
00:53:02,520 --> 00:53:03,960
talk about when you shop material.

919
00:53:04,040 --> 00:53:06,360
And David, maybe even has experience, right?

920
00:53:06,520 --> 00:53:10,600
Of just you just you gotta at some point you just throw stuff out in the world and see how

921
00:53:10,600 --> 00:53:11,320
people respond.

922
00:53:11,400 --> 00:53:17,070
But then there's this machinery that's really effici e effective, efficient, effective at

923
00:53:17,150 --> 00:53:22,750
um uh at changing what you do in response to the

924
00:53:22,750 --> 00:53:23,630
feedback.

925
00:53:24,030 --> 00:53:24,590
Yes.

926
00:53:25,390 --> 00:53:25,630
Yeah.

927
00:53:25,790 --> 00:53:30,830
No, this this particular justification or or reasoning, this worked particularly well, give

928
00:53:30,990 --> 00:53:35,310
positively reinforce that, come up with those types of reasons again in the future and and

929
00:53:35,310 --> 00:53:38,750
you get this kind of learning of how to effectively reason or justify it.

930
00:53:38,910 --> 00:53:42,910
I want to uh sorry sorry so I'm so sorry, uh David I just just because I want to bone set

931
00:53:42,990 --> 00:53:43,940
up something there.

932
00:53:45,060 --> 00:53:48,500
It's really because it's true for all the things that we do well, like in a vision

933
00:53:48,580 --> 00:53:50,740
language, we think it's easy because we're so good at it.

934
00:53:50,820 --> 00:53:51,140
Oh, yes.

935
00:53:51,300 --> 00:53:54,740
And I think it's really it looks like obviously we find reasons, it's it's super easy.

936
00:53:54,900 --> 00:53:55,620
But it's really hard.

937
00:53:55,700 --> 00:54:00,420
And there's this example I love with with my my one of my kids who who said once he was

938
00:54:00,420 --> 00:54:01,700
very small, he didn't want to go to bed.

939
00:54:01,780 --> 00:54:03,940
He said, Oh, I don't want to go to bed because I'm too tired.

940
00:54:04,430 --> 00:54:05,950
Obviously, I've been there before.

941
00:54:07,950 --> 00:54:08,430
But he has to be a good thing.

942
00:54:08,590 --> 00:54:11,950
That's actually a good reason for like it's exactly like you know when when when you're

943
00:54:12,030 --> 00:54:17,070
when when a child says you know I I run when you have a general is the same, like you

944
00:54:17,070 --> 00:54:17,630
learn, okay.

945
00:54:17,710 --> 00:54:21,390
So I can say I'm too tired to as a reason for not doing something.

946
00:54:21,550 --> 00:54:25,150
Like he would never say, um, I want a blue toy because I'm too tired.

947
00:54:25,230 --> 00:54:27,070
That doesn't make sense, he would never have said that.

948
00:54:27,580 --> 00:54:32,220
But the general form of the argument, an action that I want to do, I can use I'm too tired

949
00:54:32,300 --> 00:54:32,940
as a as a reason.

950
00:54:33,020 --> 00:54:34,620
It just happens this one doesn't work.

951
00:54:34,940 --> 00:54:39,820
But you can see the he he to because I also obviously had never encountered that argument

952
00:54:39,820 --> 00:54:40,540
in his environment.

953
00:54:40,700 --> 00:54:42,140
No one had ever said that to him.

954
00:54:42,460 --> 00:54:46,300
And so that meant that when people had told him, you know, I can't don't want to do that

955
00:54:46,300 --> 00:54:50,060
because I'm too tired, or when he had tried that at another context, he had generalized

956
00:54:50,370 --> 00:54:53,570
that there's this thing that you can say, well, action I don't want to do, I can say I'm

957
00:54:53,570 --> 00:54:53,890
too tired.

958
00:54:53,970 --> 00:54:57,570
And then you had other generalized to the one situation in which it does, or one of the few

959
00:54:57,570 --> 00:54:58,930
situations in which it doesn't work.

960
00:54:59,170 --> 00:55:00,130
And so sorry, sorry David.

961
00:55:00,370 --> 00:55:00,450
Yeah.

962
00:55:00,530 --> 00:55:05,010
And that's a great just to also interrupt David, that's a great to just go off of Hugo

963
00:55:05,010 --> 00:55:09,250
here, that's a great example of why something like reinforcement learning and just learning

964
00:55:09,250 --> 00:55:14,770
in general is is not opposed to a very domain specific, you know, lots of

965
00:55:14,770 --> 00:55:17,330
computational machinery for an evolved function.

966
00:55:17,570 --> 00:55:22,400
It's that that kind of learning only works within this very narrow, already pre specified

967
00:55:22,400 --> 00:55:27,840
scope of exactly as you said, there's these category slots for things like, you know, state

968
00:55:27,840 --> 00:55:33,280
that's negative, excuse, um thing I do I don't want to do.

969
00:55:33,520 --> 00:55:38,000
And then it's within that that something like reinforcement learning can sort of operate,

970
00:55:38,080 --> 00:55:40,720
where if it's unconstrained, you just wouldn't do anything.

971
00:55:40,880 --> 00:55:43,110
So great, great That's a great point.

972
00:55:43,270 --> 00:55:45,510
No, I I it's it's a it's a beautiful example of this.

973
00:55:45,670 --> 00:55:50,550
You you reinforcement learning isn't just a magic wand you can wave that solves any

974
00:55:50,550 --> 00:55:52,310
computational problem that you have.

975
00:55:52,630 --> 00:55:56,950
You know, the system has to know what to reinforce and how specific or general the thing

976
00:55:56,950 --> 00:55:57,110
is.

977
00:55:57,270 --> 00:56:01,830
Am I reinforcing uh I'm too tired in general as a as an all purpose excuse?

978
00:56:01,910 --> 00:56:04,230
Am I only reinforcing that in a specific context?

979
00:56:04,390 --> 00:56:05,590
How specific is the context?

980
00:56:05,750 --> 00:56:07,670
The system needs to be able to solve these problems.

981
00:56:07,750 --> 00:56:11,670
And and and in order to do that, you need some some functional specialization.

982
00:56:11,920 --> 00:56:12,960
So it's a great point.

983
00:56:13,120 --> 00:56:18,720
Um so I ha I want to uh push back a little bit um on on the on the social interactionist

984
00:56:18,960 --> 00:56:19,360
reasoning.

985
00:56:19,440 --> 00:56:24,800
I want to sort of play the role of a critic um and uh give you a situation where it seems

986
00:56:24,800 --> 00:56:29,840
like what reasoning is doing is a purely solitary um uh rational process.

987
00:56:30,000 --> 00:56:34,490
So if I'm playing chess with you, I might you know think through all the different possible

988
00:56:34,490 --> 00:56:35,130
moves you might make.

989
00:56:35,210 --> 00:56:38,250
Well if I if I make this move then he'll he'll make this counter move and that's bad.

990
00:56:38,330 --> 00:56:42,010
But if I make this move and then this move and then this move and then this move, well he's

991
00:56:42,090 --> 00:56:43,450
he's gonna be really screwed if I do that.

992
00:56:43,530 --> 00:56:45,450
I'll be able to to fork him in this interesting way.

993
00:56:45,530 --> 00:56:48,650
So maybe maybe that's the best uh move uh path to take.

994
00:56:48,890 --> 00:56:53,850
So it it seems like when I'm doing that kind of reasoning, this kind of chess style

995
00:56:53,850 --> 00:56:58,580
reasoning, or we could even trans you know put this in in in in terms of like social chess

996
00:56:58,660 --> 00:57:02,180
is a is an expression that people use when they're social strategizing with one another,

997
00:57:02,340 --> 00:57:04,340
trying to outfox outfox each other.

998
00:57:04,580 --> 00:57:09,540
It seems like in that context, uh it really is serving an individual decision-making

999
00:57:09,540 --> 00:57:09,780
function.

1000
00:57:09,940 --> 00:57:14,340
The more I spend time you know reasoning up through the different moves, the better move

1001
00:57:14,340 --> 00:57:15,700
I'm going to make most of the time.

1002
00:57:15,780 --> 00:57:20,350
And it doesn't seem like I need to actually uh verbally tell anyone why I made that move.

1003
00:57:20,510 --> 00:57:23,790
Maybe I'll never tell anyone why I made that move, or I'll I'll never have to justify it to

1004
00:57:23,790 --> 00:57:24,110
anyone.

1005
00:57:24,510 --> 00:57:27,470
It doesn't seem like I need to convince anyone that that's the right path for me to take.

1006
00:57:27,550 --> 00:57:32,910
It's purely happening inside my head, and it seems like uh the purpose that it's serving is

1007
00:57:32,910 --> 00:57:34,110
to help me make a better move.

1008
00:57:34,270 --> 00:57:39,390
And so in that case, I I I kind of want to um uh say that yeah,

1009
00:57:39,710 --> 00:57:44,560
reasoning is serving this kind of folk function of helping me make personal better

1010
00:57:44,560 --> 00:57:45,200
decisions.

1011
00:57:45,360 --> 00:57:47,200
Um so what would you say to something like that?

1012
00:57:47,280 --> 00:57:51,040
Is there is there room for reasoning to serve this kind of function?

1013
00:57:51,120 --> 00:57:55,600
Or so the the way we would address that is just to say that it's not reasoning.

1014
00:57:55,760 --> 00:57:58,800
Like it's just a different cognitive like we call that reasoning because we're using kind

1015
00:57:58,800 --> 00:58:00,240
of folk categories.

1016
00:58:00,400 --> 00:58:04,720
But the cognitive mechanisms that you're using to to anticipate what you would what your

1017
00:58:04,720 --> 00:58:08,570
opponent would do at chess or or to take these kind of strategic decisions are just

1018
00:58:08,570 --> 00:58:12,490
different from the mechanisms that allow us to to find and evaluate reasons.

1019
00:58:12,890 --> 00:58:16,570
So we call that reasoning because introspectively we have the same kind of feeling of

1020
00:58:16,570 --> 00:58:21,530
effort or uh you know kind of that we're going through possibilities.

1021
00:58:21,770 --> 00:58:27,690
Um but we don't think we're reasoning in the more narrow sense that we're using in terms of

1022
00:58:27,690 --> 00:58:29,850
really kind of thinking through reasons.

1023
00:58:30,570 --> 00:58:35,480
And it's a very it's a subtle difference and and clearly it's important to draw it, so it's

1024
00:58:35,480 --> 00:58:40,280
good you you you drew the attention to that because we're not saying that this kind of of

1025
00:58:40,440 --> 00:58:45,320
inferential process, however we call it, we call it strategic reasoning or strategic or

1026
00:58:45,320 --> 00:58:48,680
something, uh, that it's not efficient or that people aren't good at it.

1027
00:58:49,000 --> 00:58:53,960
And it is indeed you would expect these sort of things to be purely individual because it's

1028
00:58:54,040 --> 00:58:58,760
it's uh it has a more in a way kind of a Machiavellian function rather than reasoning,

1029
00:58:58,840 --> 00:59:01,800
which works because you're exchanging reasons with others.

1030
00:59:02,550 --> 00:59:02,870
Okay.

1031
00:59:03,430 --> 00:59:07,830
So that would be some kind of like strategic inferences or or something like that, or I

1032
00:59:07,830 --> 00:59:12,630
would uh you know, I would or maybe like counterfactual thinking or something like that.

1033
00:59:12,790 --> 00:59:13,350
Uh-huh.

1034
00:59:13,590 --> 00:59:14,390
You know, interesting.

1035
00:59:15,030 --> 00:59:20,550
And just to like uh follow up on that, like for the um in my paper on difference detecting

1036
00:59:20,550 --> 00:59:25,110
mechanisms, um, which I'm late on the revisions for, so but and but should be coming out

1037
00:59:25,190 --> 00:59:25,910
any moment now.

1038
00:59:25,990 --> 00:59:31,860
Um, one of the arguments for why we there's thinking is a category Is for,

1039
00:59:32,100 --> 00:59:35,860
and this is sort of related to reasoning, and I think means it may be being used

1040
00:59:35,860 --> 00:59:41,860
interchangeably, is there needs to be a placeholder for I'm still processing or

1041
00:59:41,860 --> 00:59:46,980
you're still processing, and you haven't arrived yet at a representation or decision.

1042
00:59:47,140 --> 00:59:51,140
So for example, if somebody's like David's like, well, what do you want to have for lunch

1043
00:59:51,140 --> 00:59:51,700
today?

1044
00:59:52,020 --> 00:59:58,010
And I there needs to be software in me for representing, have I gone through the process of

1045
00:59:58,010 --> 01:00:00,890
arriving at an answer to David yet?

1046
01:00:01,210 --> 01:00:05,930
And if that system detects, no, I'm still calculating costs and benefits, I will say, well,

1047
01:00:06,010 --> 01:00:06,890
I'm thinking about it.

1048
01:00:07,050 --> 01:00:08,010
I need a minute.

1049
01:00:08,170 --> 01:00:13,690
And so there's sort of a representation of there can be a delay in an organism

1050
01:00:14,570 --> 01:00:19,290
at arriving at a thing it wants to do because it takes some time to process stuff.

1051
01:00:19,370 --> 01:00:22,780
And the same reason, like, why isn't David moving right now?

1052
01:00:22,860 --> 01:00:24,540
Well it's because he's or why isn't he talking?

1053
01:00:24,620 --> 01:00:26,620
He's thinking about what to say, right?

1054
01:00:26,780 --> 01:00:32,700
So that's a broader category than reasoning in this precise um mercier

1055
01:00:32,940 --> 01:00:38,700
uh um sense if that if that has to be yeah no that's a great point and and indeed it

1056
01:00:38,700 --> 01:00:43,020
does make sense that we would have such an intuitive category because it's really useful in

1057
01:00:43,020 --> 01:00:44,780
everyday life to to be able to talk about it.

1058
01:00:44,940 --> 01:00:50,830
So I I can't help but insert a a cute anecdote that that Dan uh Dan Sperber, my a advisor

1059
01:00:50,830 --> 01:00:55,390
and co-author on on all of this work, uh recant said when he was so his father was also an

1060
01:00:55,390 --> 01:00:59,630
an intellectual and when he was a child he would play around and and uh and his father

1061
01:00:59,630 --> 01:01:02,990
would be sitting on on his armchair, you know, with his eyes closed, doing nothing and and

1062
01:01:02,990 --> 01:01:05,950
his mother would tell him, you know, don't bother your father, he's working.

1063
01:01:06,670 --> 01:01:11,740
And as a child it's not intuitive that it's thinking can be a form of of work that's kind

1064
01:01:11,740 --> 01:01:12,380
of efficacious.

1065
01:01:12,860 --> 01:01:13,260
Exactly.

1066
01:01:13,420 --> 01:01:13,660
Yeah.

1067
01:01:13,900 --> 01:01:19,740
Um, to pivot a little bit, and this may be a segue, is so we've talked about people's

1068
01:01:19,740 --> 01:01:23,660
views being pretty good or behaviors.

1069
01:01:23,820 --> 01:01:25,580
There there being good reasons for that.

1070
01:01:25,660 --> 01:01:29,900
But then the confabulation sort of being confabulation, right?

1071
01:01:29,980 --> 01:01:35,740
And just good enough to sort of serve the needs of satisfying or convincing others.

1072
01:01:35,990 --> 01:01:41,830
You have other work that's about not being gullible and like not born yesterday, that

1073
01:01:41,830 --> 01:01:46,950
people hold good maybe beliefs is the

1074
01:01:46,950 --> 01:01:49,030
oversimplified version of that.

1075
01:01:49,590 --> 01:01:54,870
I'm sort of wondering if you can connect what we've just been talking about now to this

1076
01:01:54,870 --> 01:01:59,990
other idea of yours that I think has been controversial, and you can maybe tell it more

1077
01:01:59,990 --> 01:02:05,280
about this, um, or maybe even more clearly what the claim is, because you know, the idea

1078
01:02:05,280 --> 01:02:10,560
that sort of people are not gullible and hold good beliefs, justified beliefs.

1079
01:02:10,720 --> 01:02:14,400
Maybe this isn't the claim, but that's sort of I think what how people understand it.

1080
01:02:14,640 --> 01:02:19,760
It's sort of i it even it's it's slightly inconsistent, even in what we've been talking

1081
01:02:19,760 --> 01:02:23,520
about, which is that like people's behaviors and their views they might hold for good

1082
01:02:23,600 --> 01:02:25,360
evolved reasons, quote unquote.

1083
01:02:25,520 --> 01:02:31,430
But then the confabulations, it's it's satisfying or like it's good for science, or sort

1084
01:02:31,430 --> 01:02:34,630
of just will-o-wisp, maybe not very good.

1085
01:02:35,030 --> 01:02:40,470
How do you square that distinction with this other body of work

1086
01:02:40,790 --> 01:02:46,310
that's about people are really good at holding beliefs and hold beliefs that are sort of

1087
01:02:46,310 --> 01:02:47,270
good for them?

1088
01:02:47,880 --> 01:02:49,720
No, that that's that's a great question.

1089
01:02:49,960 --> 01:02:55,560
So the points uh I've been making in that book and that also kind of Dan and a bunch of

1090
01:02:55,560 --> 01:03:00,520
colleagues have been making in a in the paper on called Epistemic Vigilance is that people

1091
01:03:01,160 --> 01:03:06,920
have to have um mechanisms to evaluate communicated information because we can't just you

1092
01:03:06,920 --> 01:03:10,440
know take each other's word for it because we have conflicting or to some extent you know

1093
01:03:10,520 --> 01:03:14,040
we have non-perfectly overlapping incen incentives and interests.

1094
01:03:14,350 --> 01:03:19,870
So even when people you know close close to you tell you something, you can't just accept

1095
01:03:19,950 --> 01:03:24,270
that it's going to be in your best interest to uh you know to accept it.

1096
01:03:24,510 --> 01:03:30,510
Um and so we have to have cognitive mechanisms that allow us to evaluate what other

1097
01:03:30,510 --> 01:03:33,310
people are telling us and what they're communicating to us.

1098
01:03:33,950 --> 01:03:38,350
And I think that really applies as we're saying, and that's why I was pushing back a bit at

1099
01:03:38,350 --> 01:03:40,990
the beginning on David's point that people can just make stuff up.

1100
01:03:41,150 --> 01:03:45,800
So people can make stuff up, but other people, if they disagree with in the first place,

1101
01:03:45,880 --> 01:03:47,800
they will evaluate that critically.

1102
01:03:48,040 --> 01:03:53,080
And the exception to that in a way is when you agree with the conclusion that is that

1103
01:03:53,080 --> 01:03:56,360
people want to have a configulation or justification for.

1104
01:03:56,680 --> 01:03:58,920
And then you're happy to have one as well.

1105
01:03:59,160 --> 01:04:04,360
And so you know if if you know you're one of the people who is happy to have a scapegoat

1106
01:04:04,360 --> 01:04:10,210
who will be accused of of you know making someone suffer a misfortune, um, you're

1107
01:04:10,210 --> 01:04:13,810
happy to have this justification that actually, you know, that guy is a witch, and and to

1108
01:04:13,810 --> 01:04:15,170
have this whole belief system.

1109
01:04:15,490 --> 01:04:21,490
So it you become um much more um, I mean, cuddible is the wrong term, but it's because it's

1110
01:04:21,490 --> 01:04:25,090
kind of smart of you to accept these things, but you become more kind of laxer in your

1111
01:04:25,090 --> 01:04:27,170
criteria when you already accept the conclusion.

1112
01:04:27,250 --> 01:04:33,060
And it's true for you know, in general, if you if you accept a given conclusion, um you

1113
01:04:33,060 --> 01:04:36,100
know, you don't really care about the arguments because the arguments are not gonna make

1114
01:04:36,100 --> 01:04:36,900
you change your mind.

1115
01:04:36,980 --> 01:04:40,580
Um, they're just there that you could potentially reuse to try to convince other people.

1116
01:04:41,140 --> 01:04:45,860
So these two things are quite coherent, but it's it's also important then to stress that

1117
01:04:45,860 --> 01:04:48,100
when you do disagree, then you'll be much more critical.

1118
01:04:48,340 --> 01:04:52,340
And so, yeah, I mean, when you're the ethnographer and you, you know, especially can in in

1119
01:04:52,340 --> 01:04:55,780
earlier periods, and you arrive in these people and they believe in witches, you're like,

1120
01:04:55,860 --> 01:04:56,980
well, no, obviously there are no witches.

1121
01:04:57,060 --> 01:05:00,180
You're not all of a sudden convinced that there are witches.

1122
01:05:00,580 --> 01:05:05,810
Um so it, you know, these justifications only convince the people who have a motivation to

1123
01:05:05,810 --> 01:05:07,410
believe in them in in the first place.

1124
01:05:07,810 --> 01:05:07,970
Yeah.

1125
01:05:08,130 --> 01:05:13,650
And then the disagreement, or so that argument has has this claim of you know the not

1126
01:05:13,810 --> 01:05:18,130
born yesterday idea or the epistemic vigilance, has it ever has it been misunderstood?

1127
01:05:18,290 --> 01:05:23,730
Do people think you're making a broader claim, or in what way has it been misunderstood or

1128
01:05:23,730 --> 01:05:24,930
taken too far?

1129
01:05:26,080 --> 01:05:28,720
Yes, I mean I'm not sure because I'm taking it far enough.

1130
01:05:28,800 --> 01:05:31,200
I don't sure how many people have tried to take it further.

1131
01:05:31,360 --> 01:05:31,680
Yeah.

1132
01:05:31,920 --> 01:05:37,760
But um yeah, I mean I I don't mean to say that people are never wrong because obviously

1133
01:05:37,840 --> 01:05:38,880
they are sometimes.

1134
01:05:39,120 --> 01:05:43,280
The point I'm trying to make is that when people are wrong, usually it's not because of

1135
01:05:43,280 --> 01:05:43,920
communication.

1136
01:05:44,080 --> 01:05:46,320
Usually it's because their priors are wrong.

1137
01:05:46,560 --> 01:05:50,800
So if you ask people, uh you know, if you go to a small scale society and you ask them what

1138
01:05:50,800 --> 01:05:54,710
is the shape of the earth and maybe they're gonna mostly they're not gonna know but you

1139
01:05:54,710 --> 01:05:58,630
know maybe they're gonna tell you some weird narrative or that it's flat essentially

1140
01:05:58,710 --> 01:06:00,310
because that's what they're saying.

1141
01:06:00,710 --> 01:06:05,750
It's not because um you know they've been they've been brainwashed into thinking that it's

1142
01:06:05,750 --> 01:06:09,590
just because that's either what their senses are telling them or because they have a story

1143
01:06:09,590 --> 01:06:12,790
that allows them to justify something that that's important to them.

1144
01:06:13,030 --> 01:06:18,920
So it's not people are, you know, they have obviously they are wrong about some things, but

1145
01:06:18,920 --> 01:06:24,600
it's rarely it's rare that um mass communication or or communication more

1146
01:06:24,600 --> 01:06:28,600
generally is the is the cause of these of these mistaken beliefs.

1147
01:06:28,760 --> 01:06:34,600
Like it can or I mean to take another example, like you know, obviously if you're if you

1148
01:06:34,600 --> 01:06:39,310
grew up in a specific small scale society and you have really specific religious beliefs,

1149
01:06:39,390 --> 01:06:44,030
and you believe that this ancestor does that to these people for that reason, this is

1150
01:06:44,030 --> 01:06:47,870
heavily shaped by communication because you know you like the name of the ancestor, the

1151
01:06:47,870 --> 01:06:50,350
specific form that they take is specific to your culture.

1152
01:06:50,510 --> 01:06:53,310
So, in the same way as when you grew up speaking English, it's because you had, you know,

1153
01:06:53,390 --> 01:06:55,710
English-speaking uh peers and parents.

1154
01:06:55,870 --> 01:07:00,840
Um, but the fact that everybody speaks a language is, you know, the fact that everybody in

1155
01:07:00,840 --> 01:07:05,640
small-scale society and to some extent in other societies believes in these kind of

1156
01:07:05,720 --> 01:07:10,840
supernatural entities, it suggests that even if the specific details of any one of them is

1157
01:07:10,840 --> 01:07:16,680
due to communication, the broad form is there because people are pre-wired to

1158
01:07:16,680 --> 01:07:17,560
believe in this sort of thing.

1159
01:07:17,640 --> 01:07:21,880
So their priors for this sort of things existing, or the incentives for believing in this

1160
01:07:21,880 --> 01:07:23,880
sort of things are very high to start with.

1161
01:07:24,070 --> 01:07:29,750
And the culture gives you the specifics rather than the more fundamental ID.

1162
01:07:31,990 --> 01:07:32,950
Interesting.

1163
01:07:33,830 --> 01:07:39,590
So I want to um so there's a a wonderful uh key distinction you make in Notborn

1164
01:07:39,590 --> 01:07:45,430
Yesterday that helps you make sense of uh our epistemic vigilance or our skepticism

1165
01:07:45,430 --> 01:07:51,350
toward communicated information on the one hand, and the seemingly uh wide variety of

1166
01:07:51,350 --> 01:07:54,940
wacky beliefs that humans seem to fall prey to.

1167
01:07:55,260 --> 01:07:59,820
And the distinction you make is between intuitive beliefs and reflective beliefs.

1168
01:07:59,900 --> 01:08:05,660
So intuitive beliefs are the ones that are often they actually guide our behavior in

1169
01:08:05,900 --> 01:08:07,260
a real concrete sense.

1170
01:08:07,420 --> 01:08:11,820
So I intuitively believe that there's a coffee cup on the table, so I'm going to reach in

1171
01:08:11,820 --> 01:08:13,500
that direction to pick up the coffee cup.

1172
01:08:13,660 --> 01:08:18,060
My belief about where the coffee cup is is directly connected to my nervous system such

1173
01:08:18,060 --> 01:08:20,140
that I reach in a particular direction.

1174
01:08:20,460 --> 01:08:22,140
And that's an intuitive belief.

1175
01:08:22,590 --> 01:08:27,710
And then there's this different category called reflective belief that doesn't really guide

1176
01:08:27,710 --> 01:08:30,190
my behavior in the same way.

1177
01:08:30,350 --> 01:08:32,830
It's kind of uh functionally inert.

1178
01:08:33,230 --> 01:08:38,590
Um and and your argument, uh, you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that a lot of these

1179
01:08:38,590 --> 01:08:41,790
seemingly wacky beliefs are not actually intuitive beliefs.

1180
01:08:41,870 --> 01:08:45,550
They're not actually guiding people's behavior in a concrete way.

1181
01:08:45,710 --> 01:08:49,630
Um they're they're just kind of reflective beliefs, that they're they're serving social

1182
01:08:49,630 --> 01:08:54,740
functions and people don't really believe them deep down in a way that is actually guiding

1183
01:08:54,740 --> 01:08:55,540
their behavior.

1184
01:08:55,700 --> 01:09:01,300
Um so could you uh flesh out this this idea of of of you know w what what this difference

1185
01:09:01,300 --> 01:09:06,260
is between intuitive and reflective, why we would uh why the mind should be divided up in

1186
01:09:06,260 --> 01:09:10,500
this way and and and how we figure out, you know, whether to adopt something as an

1187
01:09:10,500 --> 01:09:12,580
intuitive belief versus a reflective belief.

1188
01:09:12,990 --> 01:09:13,230
Thanks.

1189
01:09:13,550 --> 01:09:14,270
That's a good question.

1190
01:09:14,350 --> 01:09:18,030
The first thing I said is all of that comes from Dana, who has a wonderful paper called

1191
01:09:18,030 --> 01:09:19,230
Intuitive and Reflexive Belief.

1192
01:09:19,310 --> 01:09:22,510
So all of this framework is really kind of his ideas than forever.

1193
01:09:24,430 --> 01:09:29,630
So by an illustration I like is the is the contrast between people who have actual

1194
01:09:29,630 --> 01:09:35,630
experiences of of conspiracies and and conspiracy conspiracy theorists, people who believe

1195
01:09:35,630 --> 01:09:37,070
in conspiracy theories.

1196
01:09:37,380 --> 01:09:41,620
And everything we know about people who have actually witnessed a conspiracy.

1197
01:09:41,700 --> 01:09:44,980
So you've seen your boss treading documents that are very compromising.

1198
01:09:45,140 --> 01:09:47,140
You've seen someone in your company do something bad.

1199
01:09:47,220 --> 01:09:50,100
You've seen someone in government do something extremely fishy.

1200
01:09:50,260 --> 01:09:53,140
And the behavior of these people is consistently to be afraid.

1201
01:10:00,340 --> 01:10:03,550
If you're in a bad country, you're gonna be afraid for your life.

1202
01:10:03,710 --> 01:10:08,110
Um, you're afraid to you know to jeopardize your social relationships if you say anything.

1203
01:10:08,350 --> 01:10:12,190
And so most people's reactions is to be, first of all, to be really scared, it's very

1204
01:10:12,190 --> 01:10:13,310
strong emotionally.

1205
01:10:13,390 --> 01:10:17,550
Um, and then you it's really hard, you don't say anything as a rule.

1206
01:10:17,790 --> 01:10:23,070
And that's the exact opposite of what most people who endorse conspiracy theories feel.

1207
01:10:23,150 --> 01:10:28,110
Like they're not, even if they believe that the CIA is powerful enough to pull off 9-11,

1208
01:10:28,270 --> 01:10:33,140
they're not afraid they're going to say that in public, which is quite inconsistent in the

1209
01:10:33,140 --> 01:10:37,940
sense that if the CIA was powerful enough to pull off 9-11, they could kill you quite

1210
01:10:37,940 --> 01:10:38,420
easily.

1211
01:10:38,660 --> 01:10:40,740
So you wouldn't want to actually say that.

1212
01:10:41,220 --> 01:10:44,980
So they don't have this, you know, they have some emotional reactions to these

1213
01:10:44,980 --> 01:10:49,380
conspiracies, but they're really muted compared to someone who would actually, who has seen

1214
01:10:49,380 --> 01:10:50,740
actual evidence.

1215
01:10:51,430 --> 01:10:54,150
But by contrast, they are very vocal.

1216
01:10:54,230 --> 01:10:57,910
Like a lot of them are really very vocal, which is then again the opposite of what you see

1217
01:10:57,910 --> 01:11:02,470
with someone who has formed an intuitive belief because they've seen actual evidence.

1218
01:11:02,710 --> 01:11:05,190
So you have really the these two causal pathways.

1219
01:11:05,350 --> 01:11:09,990
One is you actually see actual evidence, you form an intuitive belief that someone in your

1220
01:11:09,990 --> 01:11:13,510
company is a crook or that there's more widespread corruption in your company or in your

1221
01:11:13,510 --> 01:11:14,390
government.

1222
01:11:14,630 --> 01:11:19,350
And your reactions are really strong emotionally, and you're being very careful, versus

1223
01:11:19,350 --> 01:11:24,340
someone who has heard of something and they're happy to profess these views because it

1224
01:11:24,340 --> 01:11:29,300
allows them to justify the mistrust of government or for some other reasons, or they can

1225
01:11:29,300 --> 01:11:32,980
kind of score points to with people who are similarly inclined.

1226
01:11:33,220 --> 01:11:38,020
And you have these really two things that are completely um different in reactions.

1227
01:11:38,180 --> 01:11:42,020
And so the reason why we have intuitive beliefs is obvious is because you know they guide

1228
01:11:42,020 --> 01:11:42,820
our behavior in the world.

1229
01:11:42,900 --> 01:11:46,180
That's that's how we we know we can act adaptively.

1230
01:11:46,470 --> 01:11:51,510
And the reason why we were able to hold reflective beliefs is more subtle, obviously.

1231
01:11:51,910 --> 01:11:57,910
So the basic cognitive mechanisms that allow us to have beliefs that

1232
01:11:57,910 --> 01:12:03,030
are encapsulated, that are detached from the rest of our cognition, is that we have to have

1233
01:12:03,030 --> 01:12:05,990
that to entertain the idea that other people can be wrong.

1234
01:12:06,230 --> 01:12:10,950
So if you tell me something and I think you're wrong, I have to be able to think, well, you

1235
01:12:10,950 --> 01:12:16,520
know, um David thinks that without that thought affecting at all my behavior directly.

1236
01:12:16,600 --> 01:12:20,680
So it can affect my behavior in the sense that I can tell you you're wrong, or I can act in

1237
01:12:20,680 --> 01:12:24,120
a way that takes into account the fact that I think you have that belief.

1238
01:12:24,520 --> 01:12:28,200
But you know, if you if you think a given restaurant is great, but I think you're

1239
01:12:28,200 --> 01:12:31,480
completely wrong, I'm not just gonna go there because now I think it's great.

1240
01:12:31,800 --> 01:12:36,680
Um so we have to have that ability to separate some beliefs from the rest.

1241
01:12:37,970 --> 01:12:42,610
What's tricky with reflective beliefs is that on the one hand, they are held in that little

1242
01:12:42,610 --> 01:12:45,730
box in which we usually keep things that we think are false.

1243
01:12:46,050 --> 01:12:50,290
But the official attitude we have towards these beliefs is that we believe them.

1244
01:12:50,530 --> 01:12:54,770
And so it that's so that we know it's cognitively possible to have things that are

1245
01:12:54,770 --> 01:13:00,160
insulated because it has to be the case for us to be able to hold uh to think that other

1246
01:13:00,160 --> 01:13:05,200
people think things that are false or that we think are false.

1247
01:13:06,240 --> 01:13:11,840
And sometimes it just so happens that these beliefs can stay there even though

1248
01:13:12,480 --> 01:13:15,200
we supposedly have reasons to believe that they're true.

1249
01:13:15,440 --> 01:13:17,840
And it's not completely clear why they stay there.

1250
01:13:18,160 --> 01:13:23,770
So there are things so Dan's examples typically are things that we can't

1251
01:13:23,770 --> 01:13:24,410
understand.

1252
01:13:25,050 --> 01:13:30,490
So if you, you know, a child who accepts that you know something about the Holy

1253
01:13:30,490 --> 01:13:35,290
Trinity is mine, just you can't have an intuitive belief about the Holy Trinity because

1254
01:13:35,290 --> 01:13:36,570
your mind doesn't know what to do with it.

1255
01:13:36,650 --> 01:13:38,890
It's just not something that we evolved to deal with.

1256
01:13:39,130 --> 01:13:43,450
But something like a conspiracy, conspiracy theory, you know your mind knows what to do.

1257
01:13:43,530 --> 01:13:47,850
Like if you had actual evidence that of a con you have actual evidence of a conspiracy,

1258
01:13:47,930 --> 01:13:50,170
your mind knows exactly what to do with that information.

1259
01:13:50,580 --> 01:13:56,180
So it's not entirely clear why it's possible both for you to think you have enough

1260
01:13:56,180 --> 01:14:02,020
evidence to accept it, like you don't think it's false, um, but at the same time to not

1261
01:14:02,020 --> 01:14:03,300
act on that on that basis.

1262
01:14:03,460 --> 01:14:06,580
And I I don't really know actually, to be honest, why that happens.

1263
01:14:08,020 --> 01:14:08,980
Interesting.

1264
01:14:09,220 --> 01:14:15,070
Um so I mean the way I'm starting to think of it is that

1265
01:14:15,150 --> 01:14:20,830
um we draw all sorts of inferences about people based on their actions.

1266
01:14:21,070 --> 01:14:27,070
And and one category that we are eager to draw inferences uh about people toward is is the

1267
01:14:27,070 --> 01:14:28,030
category of belief.

1268
01:14:28,190 --> 01:14:32,270
So what you believe gives me a lot of inferences about your character, about your

1269
01:14:32,270 --> 01:14:36,510
personality, your your loyalties, your your commitments, uh, etc.

1270
01:14:36,960 --> 01:14:41,920
Um and what I've written about myself is that as soon as you have a Q based inference where

1271
01:14:41,920 --> 01:14:47,280
where everyone in a society is drawing an inference, you know, if X, then Y, well, that

1272
01:14:47,280 --> 01:14:51,040
creates a social incentive for everyone to transform that Q into a signal.

1273
01:14:51,280 --> 01:14:56,800
So if I start drawing the inference about you that if you believe that fetuses are people,

1274
01:14:56,880 --> 01:15:01,520
therefore you are a loyal Republican, well that gives you an incentive to uh

1275
01:15:01,680 --> 01:15:07,610
conspicuously uh signal uh that you believe fetuses are people to get me to think

1276
01:15:07,610 --> 01:15:09,690
that you're a committed Republican, right?

1277
01:15:10,010 --> 01:15:13,690
So as soon as you if you have a Q-based inference set up, that creates an incentive for it

1278
01:15:13,690 --> 01:15:16,410
to turn into a signal or an intentional signal.

1279
01:15:17,450 --> 01:15:21,770
And so I think what's going on with a lot of these reflective beliefs is it's just it's

1280
01:15:21,770 --> 01:15:25,210
just what happens when everyone draws the same inference, Q-based inferences about a

1281
01:15:25,210 --> 01:15:28,650
particular belief, and then all of a sudden it transforms into a signal.

1282
01:15:28,940 --> 01:15:32,780
So if if we, you know, if you believe in the Holy Trinity, you're a loyal member of the

1283
01:15:32,780 --> 01:15:33,020
group.

1284
01:15:33,180 --> 01:15:36,620
As soon as we all make that inference, it creates an incentive for everyone to try to

1285
01:15:36,620 --> 01:15:39,100
conspicuously signal that they believe in the Holy Trinity.

1286
01:15:39,260 --> 01:15:44,700
And in that case, uh it's it's not necessarily an intuitive belief.

1287
01:15:44,780 --> 01:15:45,900
It's a it's a social signal.

1288
01:15:45,980 --> 01:15:47,820
It's you could think of it as a pseudo-belief.

1289
01:15:47,900 --> 01:15:52,140
I'm trying to mimic the superficial properties of belief in order to get you to think

1290
01:15:52,140 --> 01:15:54,620
certain things about me, to think that I'm a loyal Christian.

1291
01:15:54,780 --> 01:15:58,460
You could think of it as more of a social strategy than a belief per se.

1292
01:15:58,950 --> 01:16:02,630
And so I think one way that these these kind of reflective beliefs can come about is

1293
01:16:02,630 --> 01:16:04,870
through kind of social signaling mechanisms.

1294
01:16:05,030 --> 01:16:09,590
And it's a pseudo-belief in the same way that pseudoscience is a mimicry of science.

1295
01:16:09,750 --> 01:16:14,550
Uh it's the same it it arises in the in the same way as any other kind of pseudo uh

1296
01:16:14,630 --> 01:16:19,430
process, where there are benefits to be had by mimicking a certain uh thing, and then this

1297
01:16:19,430 --> 01:16:23,270
happens in beliefs just as it happens in a a wide variety of of cases in our culture.

1298
01:16:23,510 --> 01:16:24,870
What do you think about that way of thinking about it?

1299
01:16:25,420 --> 01:16:29,180
Yeah, no, no, I think it's it's part of the answer in in many cases.

1300
01:16:29,740 --> 01:16:34,060
But so so for something to become culturally widespread, um, you have to have some

1301
01:16:34,060 --> 01:16:36,540
motivation to share it, and that's what you're describing.

1302
01:16:36,780 --> 01:16:37,260
Yeah.

1303
01:16:37,500 --> 01:16:41,420
But people still have to have some like at least at the at the beginning to kick off the

1304
01:16:41,420 --> 01:16:44,540
process, people have to have some motivation for accepting it as well.

1305
01:16:45,020 --> 01:16:50,310
And and so the mechanism still has to pass at least a

1306
01:16:50,310 --> 01:16:53,830
minimum threshold of epistemic vigilance.

1307
01:16:53,910 --> 01:16:59,590
And so, you know, conspiracy theories are, I mean, the ones that are the most popular are

1308
01:16:59,590 --> 01:17:01,750
are the ones that are the somewhat credible.

1309
01:17:01,830 --> 01:17:04,310
Like, you know, a lot of people believe Kennedy, there was something fishy.

1310
01:17:04,470 --> 01:17:08,870
And even if it turns out that it's ultimately false, you can see why that'd be kind of

1311
01:17:09,350 --> 01:17:11,590
broadly plausible for many reasons.

1312
01:17:11,760 --> 01:17:16,160
Whereas the people who hold the ones that you know that they thought the Queen of England

1313
01:17:16,160 --> 01:17:22,160
was a lizard person, these are people who these are vastly less popular and they only

1314
01:17:22,160 --> 01:17:27,200
spread in an audience of people who already believe things are a little bit crazy for most

1315
01:17:27,200 --> 01:17:27,520
people.

1316
01:17:28,080 --> 01:17:30,160
So you still need to explain.

1317
01:17:30,320 --> 01:17:35,360
So even if if there is this signaling component for the thing to become more spread and to

1318
01:17:35,360 --> 01:17:40,470
really entirely then then be able to fulfill its signaling component, people still need to

1319
01:17:40,470 --> 01:17:41,430
accept it in some way.

1320
01:17:41,590 --> 01:17:46,790
Like you know, you couldn't I mean if you take a population that has kind of normal priors,

1321
01:17:47,430 --> 01:17:51,110
you can't just decide, well now we're gonna all gonna signal that we believe the moon is

1322
01:17:51,110 --> 01:17:53,590
made of cheese because the thing is not going to spread in the first place.

1323
01:17:53,670 --> 01:17:58,230
So you still have to have some reason why people are accepting the thing at some point.

1324
01:17:58,900 --> 01:18:00,180
Yeah, no, absolutely.

1325
01:18:00,340 --> 01:18:05,380
Um yeah, there needs to be some way of keeping the signal um honest.

1326
01:18:05,700 --> 01:18:10,260
Um and it could be that you know only people who are actually committed to the group are

1327
01:18:10,260 --> 01:18:15,860
willing to send the signal because the uh that uh in effect alienates you from outgroups.

1328
01:18:16,100 --> 01:18:20,180
So if uh you know everyone in our group believes in the Trinity, everyone in the outgroup

1329
01:18:20,180 --> 01:18:21,220
rejects that belief.

1330
01:18:21,550 --> 01:18:25,230
merely by saying that merely by uttering that belief becomes a kind of costly signal

1331
01:18:25,310 --> 01:18:27,950
because I'm burning bridges with with the outgroup.

1332
01:18:28,190 --> 01:18:28,510
Right?

1333
01:18:28,670 --> 01:18:32,750
Um and so uh that that could be one way of of maintaining signal honesty.

1334
01:18:32,830 --> 01:18:34,910
Another way is maybe I pay some cost.

1335
01:18:35,070 --> 01:18:39,710
So uh if people who believe in Jesus are are you know go to these these rituals and make

1336
01:18:39,710 --> 01:18:44,510
these sacrifices, um maybe I maybe I I perform those rituals and make those sacrifices,

1337
01:18:44,590 --> 01:18:49,100
even if I don't truly believe in an intuitive level, uh the uh in in the particular God or

1338
01:18:49,100 --> 01:18:49,420
spirit.

1339
01:18:49,500 --> 01:18:53,740
If I'm making the sacrifices, that could uh maintain the honesty of the signal.

1340
01:18:53,900 --> 01:18:58,140
Uh and in other cases, maybe it is just a deceptive signal, just in the same way that

1341
01:18:58,140 --> 01:18:59,740
pseudoscience is a deceptive signal.

1342
01:18:59,820 --> 01:19:00,780
It's not really science.

1343
01:19:00,860 --> 01:19:03,340
Uh but just people just, you know, get get fooled.

1344
01:19:03,420 --> 01:19:04,780
Um it it happens.

1345
01:19:04,940 --> 01:19:09,420
Um and and you know maybe it'll the the the the trickery will will will persist for some

1346
01:19:09,420 --> 01:19:09,980
amount of time.

1347
01:19:10,140 --> 01:19:14,450
Maybe at some point people will discover it and the pseudoscientist will uh uh his

1348
01:19:14,450 --> 01:19:16,050
reputation will will collapse.

1349
01:19:16,130 --> 01:19:19,810
Uh and then a new pseudoscience will emerge that tries to mimic some other superficial

1350
01:19:19,810 --> 01:19:23,250
property of science, and you get this kind of arms race between deceivers and deceived.

1351
01:19:23,410 --> 01:19:26,770
So that's another path that these kinds of s of pseudo beliefs could take.

1352
01:19:26,930 --> 01:19:29,890
Um But yeah, that that's that's sort of how I'm I'm I'm thinking of it.

1353
01:19:29,970 --> 01:19:34,290
That either either it um it it remains a deceptive signal, in which case you get a kind of

1354
01:19:34,290 --> 01:19:39,490
arms race, and sometimes it persists and sometimes it doesn't, or it um it it has a kind of

1355
01:19:39,490 --> 01:19:43,660
bridge burning function, or it or it takes on some kind of cost uh that that makes the

1356
01:19:43,660 --> 01:19:44,780
signal persist.

1357
01:19:45,580 --> 01:19:45,740
Okay.

1358
01:19:45,980 --> 01:19:49,500
No, no, these are all interesting possibilities that must apply in some cases.

1359
01:19:49,740 --> 01:19:54,620
Like I'm just the the I guess the point I was trying to make is that it seems that if what

1360
01:19:54,620 --> 01:19:58,780
you're saying already takes for granted that the belief is widespread enough that it can be

1361
01:19:58,780 --> 01:19:59,980
used as a reliable signal.

1362
01:20:00,140 --> 01:20:04,970
Like, you know, you have to know that Republicans as a rule believe that fetuses are are

1363
01:20:05,450 --> 01:20:05,770
people.

1364
01:20:06,330 --> 01:20:09,610
Um but so why how did that belief become widespread in the first place?

1365
01:20:09,690 --> 01:20:13,850
Like people obviously in that case it's a it's a very and you can see why it's uh it's an

1366
01:20:13,850 --> 01:20:15,690
appealing belief, like it's not absurd.

1367
01:20:15,930 --> 01:20:21,050
Uh and and and so it has to have you know some some interesting

1368
01:20:21,050 --> 01:20:24,330
plausibility to spread uh to spread in the first place.

1369
01:20:25,260 --> 01:20:26,140
That is true.

1370
01:20:26,540 --> 01:20:28,780
Yeah, it cannot be totally insane.

1371
01:20:29,580 --> 01:20:34,060
But the reason why it might exist in the first place is because there's an abortion debate

1372
01:20:34,140 --> 01:20:37,500
and people are kind of trying to come up with justifications for their side of the issue.

1373
01:20:37,820 --> 01:20:41,500
And people who are coming up with a particular justification, well, that's going to set uh

1374
01:20:41,900 --> 01:20:45,260
license a pretty strong inference that you're on one side of that issue if you're making

1375
01:20:45,260 --> 01:20:46,300
those arguments.

1376
01:20:46,540 --> 01:20:50,060
Uh for the same way, uh for the same reason, you know, can a conspiracy theory.

1377
01:20:50,140 --> 01:20:56,030
Uh if I hate um the Democrats uh, and I think that the Democrats are part of some deep

1378
01:20:56,030 --> 01:21:01,390
state conspiracy, that you're you're liable to um make a pretty strong inference that I

1379
01:21:01,390 --> 01:21:03,790
hate the Democrats if I'm believing in this in this story.

1380
01:21:03,870 --> 01:21:04,110
Right.

1381
01:21:04,190 --> 01:21:08,350
And so that's another way I it could come across where um may maybe the belief doesn't

1382
01:21:08,350 --> 01:21:12,350
exist at all, but be merely because I'm positing this conspiracy theory that demonizes the

1383
01:21:12,350 --> 01:21:16,030
outgroup, that's going to cause you to make an inference about me that I hate the outgroup.

1384
01:21:16,110 --> 01:21:19,630
And maybe I'll anticipate that and that gives me a reason to come up with a conspiracy

1385
01:21:19,630 --> 01:21:21,310
theory uh in the first place.

1386
01:21:22,200 --> 01:21:22,840
Yeah.

1387
01:21:23,480 --> 01:21:26,440
Um, I know we're a little bit running a little on time here.

1388
01:21:26,600 --> 01:21:31,160
I want to um push on one thing that I think a lot of people are probably thinking, which is

1389
01:21:31,480 --> 01:21:34,440
there's this large category of sort of propaganda, right?

1390
01:21:34,520 --> 01:21:35,960
Or like advertising.

1391
01:21:36,120 --> 01:21:41,640
So something like, you know, smoking is makes me look cool or like sugar is reminds me of

1392
01:21:41,640 --> 01:21:43,000
like happy holiday things.

1393
01:21:43,080 --> 01:21:48,290
Like we know that, you know, like the history of like selling cigarettes or like corn and

1394
01:21:48,290 --> 01:21:52,450
sugar subsidies in the US, like whenever people have looked at this, it's sort of like

1395
01:21:52,450 --> 01:21:56,450
clear that um things are not healthy.

1396
01:21:56,610 --> 01:22:02,370
Um, yet people spend tons and tons of money to convince people to hold the

1397
01:22:02,370 --> 01:22:07,650
explicit belief, the reflective belief, that these things at least I have a positive

1398
01:22:07,650 --> 01:22:13,320
association with, because th there's a small set of people who directly

1399
01:22:13,320 --> 01:22:14,360
benefit, right?

1400
01:22:14,520 --> 01:22:20,360
And they're in a position to manipulate the the reflective beliefs

1401
01:22:20,360 --> 01:22:21,000
of people.

1402
01:22:21,400 --> 01:22:27,400
Um in those cases, how does this uh theory, and I'm imagining people sort of

1403
01:22:27,400 --> 01:22:33,090
have these examples in their head, how does this can you kind of walk us through how like

1404
01:22:33,170 --> 01:22:37,010
the this idea of like reflective or intuitive beliefs or that people aren't gullible?

1405
01:22:37,170 --> 01:22:37,890
How does this work?

1406
01:22:38,050 --> 01:22:41,410
Because I think the principle would apply, whether we're talking about a mass society or

1407
01:22:41,410 --> 01:22:43,250
even in a small-scale social world.

1408
01:22:43,410 --> 01:22:49,090
You know, for example, like, you know, I'm an old, I'm an old person and I want this stuff

1409
01:22:49,090 --> 01:22:53,020
in another group, and I convince the young guys to like be belligerent towards them.

1410
01:22:53,100 --> 01:22:54,380
It's not in their interest at all.

1411
01:22:54,460 --> 01:22:55,340
They might die, you know.

1412
01:22:55,420 --> 01:22:57,740
So I'm gonna send these guys off to war, basically.

1413
01:22:57,900 --> 01:23:02,220
You know, like this trope is common where I sort of try to convince people of beliefs and I

1414
01:23:02,220 --> 01:23:04,620
do sometimes that are not in their interest.

1415
01:23:04,940 --> 01:23:08,700
So I'm just I want to push on that just because I'm imagining people are thinking about

1416
01:23:08,700 --> 01:23:09,100
that too.

1417
01:23:09,420 --> 01:23:10,940
No, no, that's that's a that's a great point.

1418
01:23:11,020 --> 01:23:11,340
Thanks.

1419
01:23:11,500 --> 01:23:16,430
Um like on the whole, these things work because they tap into things that people want to do

1420
01:23:16,430 --> 01:23:17,310
in the first place.

1421
01:23:17,550 --> 01:23:22,350
So people, you know, like sugar for pretty obvious evolutionary reasons.

1422
01:23:22,510 --> 01:23:26,990
Um, people like nicotine for reasons that are less clear evolutionarily because it's not

1423
01:23:26,990 --> 01:23:27,870
really good for us.

1424
01:23:27,950 --> 01:23:31,230
But um but nicotine is uh you know has it's very nice.

1425
01:23:31,390 --> 01:23:32,670
I can't say it's a pesticide.

1426
01:23:35,470 --> 01:23:37,550
There's a good reason, there's like pretty clear, yeah, my reason.

1427
01:23:37,710 --> 01:23:41,200
Yeah, no, but that's so it's it's it's and even that like the the psychoactive effects of

1428
01:23:41,200 --> 01:23:44,480
nicotine are obviously very pleasant for for many people.

1429
01:23:44,880 --> 01:23:50,240
Um so what advertising can do then is uh first of all it can make you aware of a product

1430
01:23:50,240 --> 01:23:51,120
that you didn't know existed.

1431
01:23:51,280 --> 01:23:54,400
So if I've never heard of chocolate, maybe I see chocolate, it's like that looks

1432
01:23:54,640 --> 01:23:57,040
interesting, and maybe you try chocolate and you like it.

1433
01:23:57,360 --> 01:24:01,680
Um or it can give you justification for doing something, you know, if you say, Oh, you

1434
01:24:01,680 --> 01:24:05,040
know, there's a sale on on on you know chocolate, so I'm gonna buy chocolate because but

1435
01:24:05,040 --> 01:24:08,080
obviously you wanted to buy chocolate in the first place, you're just looking for a way of

1436
01:24:08,080 --> 01:24:12,210
justifying, you know to to yourself and to others that uh that you know it's fine to buy

1437
01:24:12,210 --> 01:24:15,090
chocolate even though it's not the healthiest of foods.

1438
01:24:15,330 --> 01:24:21,170
Um and to some extent the same is true for even sending young young men to to war like

1439
01:24:21,170 --> 01:24:26,850
the uh you know some young men to some extent want to show that they're brave

1440
01:24:27,010 --> 01:24:32,930
and uh and they want to do things like fighting and and you know you have uh and you

1441
01:24:32,930 --> 01:24:36,610
know young men will fight essentially I mean it's not always and obviously there's wide

1442
01:24:36,610 --> 01:24:42,460
variation across societies but in most societies uh young men have a tendency to to want to

1443
01:24:42,540 --> 01:24:47,980
to not to use violence more than other um demographics and it's one way that they can uh

1444
01:24:47,980 --> 01:24:53,660
they can show their physical uh prowess and so you're just capitalizing on something that's

1445
01:24:53,660 --> 01:24:56,940
already there and indeed I mean it would be much harder if you wanted to convince you know

1446
01:24:57,020 --> 01:25:01,100
older women to go to war it'd be a harder sell or if you want to convince everybody to

1447
01:25:01,100 --> 01:25:03,730
start you know eating kale.

1448
01:25:04,290 --> 01:25:09,490
I think you know we can see the failure of communication by the failure of health messages.

1449
01:25:09,650 --> 01:25:14,290
Like people still drink too much soda, they still eat too much bad food, they still not eat

1450
01:25:14,290 --> 01:25:19,490
enough vegetables after decades of being told that it's good or bad for us, respectively.

1451
01:25:19,810 --> 01:25:24,770
So if it was that easy to persuade people to eat or to you know do

1452
01:25:25,330 --> 01:25:30,780
things, the positive messages that are not completely failing, but that are not widely

1453
01:25:30,940 --> 01:25:35,420
successful, let's say, uh would be more successful by kind of by symmetry.

1454
01:25:36,940 --> 01:25:37,660
Yeah, interesting.

1455
01:25:37,740 --> 01:25:37,980
Yeah.

1456
01:25:38,060 --> 01:25:43,660
I mean it's uh uh um yeah I mean I guess one way of putting it is sort of

1457
01:25:43,900 --> 01:25:49,750
there at least the way I think about it is you know, there's people who are sort of

1458
01:25:49,750 --> 01:25:54,230
getting the short end of the stick, and they're sort of, they think they're sort of,

1459
01:25:54,390 --> 01:25:57,510
they're the victim of other people's sort of confabulations, right?

1460
01:25:57,670 --> 01:26:03,190
So sort of like, um, the way they might rationally prefer, like, do I want to go to war or

1461
01:26:03,190 --> 01:26:03,430
not?

1462
01:26:03,510 --> 01:26:05,190
But what's their view of war, right?

1463
01:26:05,270 --> 01:26:09,270
Or like, do I want um sugar versus something healthy?

1464
01:26:09,430 --> 01:26:13,270
But what's the what are the offerings presented to me and how expensive are they?

1465
01:26:13,540 --> 01:26:13,780
Right.

1466
01:26:13,940 --> 01:26:19,780
So sort of I think um I think when people say like people are gullible or duped or

1467
01:26:19,780 --> 01:26:24,420
are the victims of other people's beliefs, I suspect that it's that conflict of interest

1468
01:26:24,420 --> 01:26:27,300
thing where there's this small group of people who are sort of incentivized.

1469
01:26:29,220 --> 01:26:29,540
Yeah.

1470
01:26:30,020 --> 01:26:33,460
Like you disagree with the with these or you moralize these these people's choices.

1471
01:26:33,540 --> 01:26:37,540
So you think oh people are buying SUVs because they've been brainwashed by by automakers.

1472
01:26:37,620 --> 01:26:39,860
But no a lot of people just like SUVs.

1473
01:26:40,870 --> 01:26:46,870
Like most of the things that uh some people think uh you know have been pushed on us by

1474
01:26:46,870 --> 01:26:50,630
advertising are just things that let me push back on that because I don't I don't agree

1475
01:26:50,630 --> 01:26:50,870
with that.

1476
01:26:51,030 --> 01:26:55,190
So, like a good example is like when I go to Germany, uh fresh, healthy fruit and

1477
01:26:55,190 --> 01:26:57,270
vegetables are easy, people want them.

1478
01:26:57,430 --> 01:26:59,030
Um, there's not a lot of sugar and stuff.

1479
01:26:59,110 --> 01:27:02,790
Here in the US, sugar and corn are subsidized, everything is super sweet.

1480
01:27:03,030 --> 01:27:06,740
Every American I know who goes to Germany is like, this is great, and I like lose weight,

1481
01:27:06,820 --> 01:27:08,660
and they come back and they gain weight.

1482
01:27:08,820 --> 01:27:09,780
Nobody wants it.

1483
01:27:09,940 --> 01:27:15,780
But it's sort of in the it's just the the choice architecture because of uh lobbying

1484
01:27:15,940 --> 01:27:19,060
and um and ads and just sort of that.

1485
01:27:19,220 --> 01:27:25,010
So I think like that that to me would be a clear case of like it's not there are

1486
01:27:25,010 --> 01:27:30,050
different like stable norms where like, you know, people do if they're addicted to sugar in

1487
01:27:30,050 --> 01:27:33,890
refined flour, for example, like they'll just keep doing it.

1488
01:27:34,050 --> 01:27:38,930
But if they had a choice between the two, like a run that experiment anecdotally and like

1489
01:27:39,090 --> 01:27:40,050
people don't prefer it.

1490
01:27:40,130 --> 01:27:44,290
But if you were don't give them that choice, then they're just sort of stuck at this one

1491
01:27:44,290 --> 01:27:44,770
equilibrium.

1492
01:27:45,090 --> 01:27:45,330
Yes.

1493
01:27:45,410 --> 01:27:51,240
But what what works is manipulating the actual incentives and that is making making it

1494
01:27:51,240 --> 01:27:54,280
really available, making it cheap, making things the default option.

1495
01:27:54,840 --> 01:27:55,160
That works.

1496
01:27:55,320 --> 01:27:57,960
It's not you don't need advertising for people to buy MMs.

1497
01:27:58,040 --> 01:28:02,680
I mean you just need to you need to buy to make MMs available at every counter and to make

1498
01:28:02,680 --> 01:28:06,040
them cheap and people will spontaneously gravitate towards that.

1499
01:28:06,600 --> 01:28:07,320
Yeah maybe.

1500
01:28:07,400 --> 01:28:07,800
I don't know.

1501
01:28:07,880 --> 01:28:13,080
I don't because uh even as my like my you know uh having a child there are certain things

1502
01:28:13,080 --> 01:28:17,640
that you wouldn't know about like as you said like unless you advertise them.

1503
01:28:18,410 --> 01:28:23,290
But yeah, but but yes, the advertising has to be hooked up to like there being a lot of

1504
01:28:23,290 --> 01:28:23,290
people.

1505
01:28:23,930 --> 01:28:27,450
If you give your child ice cream, you don't need advertising.

1506
01:28:27,530 --> 01:28:30,090
They're gonna like most most children are gonna like ice cream.

1507
01:28:30,250 --> 01:28:30,410
Right.

1508
01:28:30,570 --> 01:28:32,010
Because it's just you know very, very good.

1509
01:28:32,170 --> 01:28:32,570
Yeah, yeah.

1510
01:28:32,810 --> 01:28:37,690
And uh if you give your most children are not going to like you know vegetables as you know

1511
01:28:37,770 --> 01:28:39,370
you should be in a good position to know.

1512
01:28:39,770 --> 01:28:42,250
Not because of your children, but because of of your wife.

1513
01:28:42,480 --> 01:28:45,760
uh, you know, they'll be a bit reluctant maybe at first to to to eat these kind of

1514
01:28:45,840 --> 01:28:46,240
products.

1515
01:28:46,320 --> 01:28:50,800
And and you know, I think it's rare the parent who's I mean it happens because you know

1516
01:28:50,960 --> 01:28:54,880
people have different tastes, but but as a rule, I think parents' experience is it's easier

1517
01:28:54,880 --> 01:28:57,200
to get their kids to eat ice cream than to eat broccoli.

1518
01:28:57,600 --> 01:29:00,560
Um and uh and that's just the way it is.

1519
01:29:00,640 --> 01:29:01,120
Yeah.

1520
01:29:01,600 --> 01:29:01,840
Right.

1521
01:29:02,000 --> 01:29:04,960
But it's interesting there's more ice cream ads than broccoli ads.

1522
01:29:05,150 --> 01:29:07,870
That's a separate and unpredicted outcome.

1523
01:29:08,350 --> 01:29:12,430
Yeah, that's that's partly because because there are different brands of ice cream.

1524
01:29:12,510 --> 01:29:14,430
There's only one people don't discriminate broccoli.

1525
01:29:14,670 --> 01:29:15,630
They're buy broccoli or not.

1526
01:29:15,710 --> 01:29:18,990
So no one making broccoli really has an incentive to say, well, you have to buy my to buy

1527
01:29:18,990 --> 01:29:19,710
my broccoli.

1528
01:29:19,870 --> 01:29:23,470
Whereas people who make and it's interesting because that's when ads have some they can

1529
01:29:23,470 --> 01:29:26,430
work because you have 10 brands of ice cream and they're all pretty much the same, they're

1530
01:29:26,430 --> 01:29:27,790
all pretty much the same price.

1531
01:29:28,030 --> 01:29:33,300
So your choice within the ice cream category, your choice can be somewhat influenced by ads

1532
01:29:33,380 --> 01:29:35,220
because you know they're all the same essentially.

1533
01:29:35,380 --> 01:29:39,220
Whereas the choice between ice cream and broccoli, that's not gonna be the ad, that's just

1534
01:29:39,220 --> 01:29:40,420
because the ice creams are better.

1535
01:29:40,740 --> 01:29:45,780
Yeah, that's that's a beautiful illustration of of your principle when you know you have no

1536
01:29:45,780 --> 01:29:49,700
strong reason or no strong prior to pick one ice cream over the other.

1537
01:29:49,860 --> 01:29:53,490
Uh that is precisely the case where arguments are gonna sway you one way or the other

1538
01:29:53,570 --> 01:29:55,170
because you don't really care what ice cream you buy.

1539
01:29:55,330 --> 01:29:57,810
And you know, maybe some ad will sway you to buy that ice cream.

1540
01:29:57,890 --> 01:29:59,650
But if you don't really care, you're not really being manipulated.

1541
01:29:59,730 --> 01:30:00,690
You're just, you know, whatever.

1542
01:30:00,850 --> 01:30:01,810
Doesn't it doesn't matter to you?

1543
01:30:01,970 --> 01:30:02,130
Yeah.

1544
01:30:02,370 --> 01:30:05,570
What the literature on advertising suggests is that if you don't like that ice cream, then

1545
01:30:05,570 --> 01:30:06,450
you're not going to buy it again.

1546
01:30:06,530 --> 01:30:08,610
Like it's not going to change your perceptions.

1547
01:30:08,770 --> 01:30:11,730
Maybe it's going to, you know, so and then if you do like it, then maybe you're stuck

1548
01:30:11,810 --> 01:30:12,930
buying that ice cream for a long time.

1549
01:30:13,010 --> 01:30:18,260
So it does, it can have some influence at the margin, but only for decisions that are from

1550
01:30:18,260 --> 01:30:21,620
the point from your point of view of the as a consumer, you know, it's like cook or Pepsi.

1551
01:30:21,780 --> 01:30:23,540
I mean, they're the same product at the same price.

1552
01:30:23,780 --> 01:30:26,900
From your from your perspective, it doesn't make any difference which one you pick, but

1553
01:30:26,900 --> 01:30:29,220
obviously from their perspective, it makes a huge difference.

1554
01:30:29,540 --> 01:30:29,700
Right.

1555
01:30:29,860 --> 01:30:30,580
It is scale.

1556
01:30:30,660 --> 01:30:34,020
So broccoli is advertised at the grocery store when there's a couple of different versions

1557
01:30:34,020 --> 01:30:35,220
of broccoli, for example.

1558
01:30:35,380 --> 01:30:35,540
Right.

1559
01:30:35,620 --> 01:30:35,780
Yeah.

1560
01:30:36,020 --> 01:30:36,260
Yeah.

1561
01:30:36,500 --> 01:30:39,860
Well, uh I I'll I'm gonna ask the question that Dave usually asks because I know we have to

1562
01:30:39,860 --> 01:30:40,420
wrap up.

1563
01:30:40,580 --> 01:30:44,260
Um, is is there anything that we should have asked you, Hugo?

1564
01:30:45,730 --> 01:30:48,450
No, I mean I think uh no it was great.

1565
01:30:48,530 --> 01:30:50,850
Uh no it was great, no no fantastic.

1566
01:30:51,010 --> 01:30:54,210
Um we didn't tell him to say that.

1567
01:30:56,290 --> 01:30:58,610
I actually I want I have a question that I wish I asked you.

1568
01:30:58,690 --> 01:31:00,130
I've been dying to ask you this the whole interview.

1569
01:31:00,530 --> 01:31:03,250
Okay, so we talked about intuitive and reflective beliefs.

1570
01:31:03,570 --> 01:31:08,660
If you had to guess just on an intuitive level, what percentage of our culture of our verb

1571
01:31:08,820 --> 01:31:14,260
verbally articulated beliefs, what percentage of them are actually uh intuitive beliefs

1572
01:31:14,260 --> 01:31:15,780
that guide our behavior?

1573
01:31:17,380 --> 01:31:17,620
Okay.

1574
01:31:18,020 --> 01:31:19,140
Bringing back to percentages.

1575
01:31:19,540 --> 01:31:20,500
Good good callback, David.

1576
01:31:20,740 --> 01:31:21,940
Yeah, back to percentages.

1577
01:31:22,660 --> 01:31:26,340
Obviously, a lot of culture is fiction, like especially in contemporary cultures, a lot of

1578
01:31:26,340 --> 01:31:29,540
culture is fiction, which by definition is not even a belief in the sense that you know

1579
01:31:29,620 --> 01:31:30,100
it's nothing you've got to do.

1580
01:31:30,340 --> 01:31:34,340
Let's say let's say exclude excluding uh excluding explicit fiction.

1581
01:31:36,890 --> 01:31:42,730
Well, I mean uh um are you saying Santa Claus is a real data?

1582
01:31:43,530 --> 01:31:47,370
Are you saying Santa Claus is a real I'm trying to think of broad categories.

1583
01:31:47,450 --> 01:31:48,170
Like if you explain it.

1584
01:31:48,330 --> 01:31:51,690
So there's like stuff we read in the news or you know, think pieces, you know, stuff we

1585
01:31:51,690 --> 01:31:53,130
talk about in everyday conversation.

1586
01:31:53,610 --> 01:31:55,690
Very little of that is intuitive, yeah.

1587
01:31:55,930 --> 01:31:57,210
I would say very, very little.

1588
01:31:57,370 --> 01:32:01,530
Either because it's too complex for you, like if you hear that there's something about a

1589
01:32:01,530 --> 01:32:06,040
trade treaty or something, it's or I mean the things that are intuitive, like if you hear

1590
01:32:06,040 --> 01:32:10,600
about uh you know there has been a an in you know a flood in in Myanmar or something or an

1591
01:32:10,600 --> 01:32:15,080
earthquake in Myanmar, you might have an intuitive grasp of that, but it's very fleeting

1592
01:32:15,080 --> 01:32:18,360
because you know you don't really care, and you know, five minutes later you've forgotten

1593
01:32:18,360 --> 01:32:19,000
about it.

1594
01:32:19,560 --> 01:32:25,320
So uh for things that are more durable, I would say the overwhelming majority

1595
01:32:25,400 --> 01:32:27,240
uh probably is is reflective.

1596
01:32:27,320 --> 01:32:31,070
And that's true, that's true for like most of science as well, like not only for for lay

1597
01:32:31,070 --> 01:32:35,630
people, but really most scientists our beliefs are reflective because either the format is

1598
01:32:35,630 --> 01:32:40,830
something that makes it impossible to be intuitive, uh, or because they don't really impact

1599
01:32:40,830 --> 01:32:42,030
directly our behavior.

1600
01:32:42,190 --> 01:32:47,310
So so yeah, something like I would say something like seventy thirty ballpark of that.

1601
01:32:47,710 --> 01:32:53,230
I would have to think harder about uh what um what

1602
01:32:53,960 --> 01:32:56,600
the beliefs are that we're talking about.

1603
01:32:57,240 --> 01:33:00,840
So I but yeah, a lot more than we'd think, I guess, would be reflective.

1604
01:33:00,920 --> 01:33:01,000
Yeah.

1605
01:33:01,240 --> 01:33:03,720
Well, yeah, that that is that is my intuition as well.

1606
01:33:03,880 --> 01:33:07,560
You know, I'm I'm thinking of writing a blog post called You Don't Believe Most of What You

1607
01:33:07,560 --> 01:33:08,040
Believe.

1608
01:33:09,960 --> 01:33:14,120
I mean you know when I believe in in like, you know, vaccination or relativity theory,

1609
01:33:14,200 --> 01:33:16,040
yeah, uh I actually I believe it.

1610
01:33:16,120 --> 01:33:19,470
Like it's not, you know, I have a critical attitude towards it and I would defend into

1611
01:33:19,630 --> 01:33:21,230
other people and I have reasons for it.

1612
01:33:21,470 --> 01:33:22,350
So it is a belief.

1613
01:33:22,430 --> 01:33:24,110
It's just not an intuitive belief.

1614
01:33:25,150 --> 01:33:25,470
Right.

1615
01:33:25,870 --> 01:33:29,230
It it reminds me of there's this quote, and we've already established that I don't remember

1616
01:33:29,230 --> 01:33:31,150
quotes well and quotes are of suspicion.

1617
01:33:31,310 --> 01:33:35,230
But it's just this thing of like, don't count on somebody to believe something that they're

1618
01:33:35,230 --> 01:33:36,590
career like making money.

1619
01:33:36,830 --> 01:33:38,430
I I why I'm terrible at the end of the yeah.

1620
01:33:38,590 --> 01:33:40,030
Yeah, if their paycheck depends on it as something.

1621
01:33:40,350 --> 01:33:40,590
Exactly.

1622
01:33:40,670 --> 01:33:40,830
Yes.

1623
01:33:40,990 --> 01:33:46,600
So it's sort of collectively, like very little of our epistemic landscape is

1624
01:33:46,600 --> 01:33:50,280
sort of things that our paycheck um depends on.

1625
01:33:50,360 --> 01:33:56,120
Or conversely, it's sort of like if I worried about the flood in Myanmar or if I worried

1626
01:33:56,120 --> 01:33:59,640
about, you know, all of these other things, it doesn't help me.

1627
01:33:59,720 --> 01:34:05,000
Like knowing how my iPhone is made and the conditions of those people, that actually hurts

1628
01:34:05,000 --> 01:34:09,610
me in the sense of it takes up time away from like, you know, feeding my feeding my family,

1629
01:34:09,690 --> 01:34:13,290
or you know, I might end up having to give up my phone, which I like.

1630
01:34:13,450 --> 01:34:19,130
So sort of for in a very selfish way, we have these very rich landscape of beliefs,

1631
01:34:19,290 --> 01:34:22,490
but not a lot of them have teeth, maybe as a way to put it.

1632
01:34:22,730 --> 01:34:23,290
No, no, no, no.

1633
01:34:23,370 --> 01:34:28,010
I mean, one way of thinking about that maybe is that usually there's a trade-off between

1634
01:34:29,480 --> 01:34:32,520
Um can between two forms of relevance.

1635
01:34:32,600 --> 01:34:36,520
Like most of the beliefs we have are relevant only to us.

1636
01:34:36,680 --> 01:34:41,080
Essentially, no one cares like you know everything I know about my work and my personal

1637
01:34:41,080 --> 01:34:41,400
life.

1638
01:34:41,480 --> 01:34:43,160
And I mean, you know, they're mostly relevant to me.

1639
01:34:43,240 --> 01:34:44,840
So they're not, they don't become cultural.

1640
01:34:44,920 --> 01:34:47,400
And they're mostly accurate and they're mostly intuitive.

1641
01:34:47,800 --> 01:34:53,690
But when you want to have beliefs that will be relevant to a lot of people, By definition

1642
01:34:53,770 --> 01:34:58,330
these beliefs can't be this kind of local relevant beliefs because no one cares.

1643
01:34:58,410 --> 01:35:00,970
Uh you're describing the podcast.

1644
01:35:02,730 --> 01:35:04,730
Well Sono is gonna explain that.

1645
01:35:05,130 --> 01:35:11,050
The um so to have something very very general, it has to be something

1646
01:35:11,050 --> 01:35:14,330
that's that you know it's gonna be really hard to have something that's very general and

1647
01:35:14,330 --> 01:35:17,610
very relevant to a lot of people, kind of by definition.

1648
01:35:18,180 --> 01:35:23,620
Um, so given that it's it's kind of bound to be the case that typically like I mean the the

1649
01:35:23,620 --> 01:35:27,860
exceptions would be things like, you know, if there is an an emergency, there's an

1650
01:35:27,860 --> 01:35:31,700
earthquake, and you're giving really practical information about what to do in case of

1651
01:35:31,860 --> 01:35:33,380
earthquake, of an earthquake.

1652
01:35:33,540 --> 01:35:37,060
And then you have the whole population who has that belief, well, if I if there the if

1653
01:35:37,060 --> 01:35:41,570
there's an earthquake, I have to do this, which is intuitive, because it so happens to be

1654
01:35:41,570 --> 01:35:45,490
something that can be widely shared and that is really kind of relevant locally to a lot of

1655
01:35:45,490 --> 01:35:45,650
people.

1656
01:35:45,730 --> 01:35:48,130
And it's really rare the beliefs that have these properties.

1657
01:35:48,370 --> 01:35:49,010
Yeah.

1658
01:35:50,050 --> 01:35:50,370
Cool.

1659
01:35:50,530 --> 01:35:54,850
That's why the weather channel has is always scary stuff because it it seeds the

1660
01:35:54,850 --> 01:35:57,090
epidemiological epistemic landscape.

1661
01:35:57,410 --> 01:36:00,370
Hugo, um, thank you so much for for joining us.

1662
01:36:00,690 --> 01:36:00,930
Thank you.

1663
01:36:01,410 --> 01:36:03,810
It was a very dense, efficient conversation.

1664
01:36:03,890 --> 01:36:04,450
It was lovely.

1665
01:36:04,530 --> 01:36:09,010
We'll have to have you back on for banter and hearing more about all the things that are,

1666
01:36:09,090 --> 01:36:11,960
you know, um extra scientific about you.

1667
01:36:12,760 --> 01:36:13,080
Yes.

1668
01:36:13,240 --> 01:36:13,480
Thank you.

1669
01:36:13,640 --> 01:36:14,120
Thank you very much.

1670
01:36:14,280 --> 01:36:17,720
Intuitively now I'm tempted to sign my emails to intuitively instead of sincerely.

1671
01:36:18,040 --> 01:36:19,160
Intuitively yours.

1672
01:36:19,480 --> 01:36:20,600
Intuitively yours.

1673
01:36:21,080 --> 01:36:22,920
I look for that in your greeting, David.

1674
01:36:23,000 --> 01:36:27,640
So but yeah Hugo, thank you so much for your time and for uh recording this in the evening

1675
01:36:27,640 --> 01:36:30,600
for you over in um on the other side of the globe.

1676
01:36:30,990 --> 01:36:33,630
Yeah, you have Frenchmen still at work at nearly eight.

1677
01:36:33,790 --> 01:36:34,110
My God.

1678
01:36:34,510 --> 01:36:34,990
Exactly.

1679
01:36:35,070 --> 01:36:35,310
Yes.

1680
01:36:35,390 --> 01:36:37,470
It's good.

1681
01:36:37,790 --> 01:36:39,230
Uh yeah, thank you again.

1682
01:36:39,310 --> 01:36:41,550
And uh yeah, we'll we'll talk soon.

1683
01:36:41,870 --> 01:36:42,510
That sounds good.

1684
01:36:42,590 --> 01:36:43,550
Thanks a lot.

1685
01:36:47,230 --> 01:36:50,830
Well David, people have a little bit of extra time in their day.

1686
01:36:51,160 --> 01:36:52,040
They certainly do.

1687
01:36:52,120 --> 01:36:56,520
And with that extra time, they can uh leave us a kind review or say something nice on

1688
01:36:56,520 --> 01:36:58,920
social media or even check us out on Patreon.

1689
01:36:59,240 --> 01:37:04,440
Yeah or go for a walk or you know help somebody with I don't know assemble their furniture

1690
01:37:04,520 --> 01:37:08,360
or clean their house or I don't know do something you've been putting off you know with

1691
01:37:08,360 --> 01:37:09,880
this half hour free of time.

1692
01:37:10,200 --> 01:37:11,960
Yeah that's also a nice thing you can do.

1693
01:37:12,170 --> 01:37:12,330
Yeah.

1694
01:37:12,490 --> 01:37:14,890
But but be thinking about us while you do those things.

1695
01:37:15,130 --> 01:37:15,450
Okay.

1696
01:37:15,690 --> 01:37:19,850
We still gotta get you those uh the that fanny pack David so please somebody send me yeah

1697
01:37:19,930 --> 01:37:23,530
I'm still in the market so if you if you have a fanny pack please send it my way I still

1698
01:37:23,530 --> 01:37:27,610
haven't gotten any i've been waiting we need t-shirts and stickers too we need more

1699
01:37:27,610 --> 01:37:31,450
stickers we we did hand out some stickers at HBus if anybody wants stickers let us know

1700
01:37:31,850 --> 01:37:35,210
yeah we're drowning in these stickers we ordered too many oh do you have stickers I ran out

1701
01:37:35,450 --> 01:37:39,770
I still have stickers left over really can you send okay well maybe if you come up okay all

1702
01:37:39,770 --> 01:37:41,980
right Just come to my house in Los Angeles.

1703
01:37:42,060 --> 01:37:42,700
I'll give you some stickers.

1704
01:37:42,860 --> 01:37:43,740
No, no, no, don't do that.

1705
01:37:43,820 --> 01:37:44,220
Don't do that.

1706
01:37:44,940 --> 01:37:45,580
A bad idea.

1707
01:37:45,740 --> 01:37:46,060
Okay.

1708
01:37:46,220 --> 01:37:47,980
Uh we'll we'll talk to you guys next week.

1709
01:37:48,220 --> 01:37:48,460
All right.

1710
01:37:48,620 --> 01:37:49,900
See you next week.