Reasoning and Epistemic Vigilance with Hugo Mercier
2025-12-09 13:00:00.000 +00:00

David, this is a podcast with a tagline. And the tagline is Actual Evolutionary Psychology. By actual evolutionary psychologists. And uh what is what is your name? Uh David Petrozowski, but I go by Dave because your name is David Pinsoff. I have the id, I'm the immature one. Yeah, and we're both David Ps, so um we have to distinguish ourselves somehow. Yeah. Anyway, uh, here we are. Enjoy David, uh, what does the word epistemic mean? Uh it means relating to knowledge. Mm. Good. Well, there's a reason why I'm asking that, because the person we're going to talk to today is Hugo Mercier, and he is at the Institut Jean Necureau in France. Uh yeah, where he works with the evolution and social cognition team and he does a lot on

epistemic vigilance and why we believe certain things and also reasoning. That's right. Uh he's one of uh uh many people coming from the uh Paris School of Cultural Evolution, the the French School of Evolutionary Psychology, which I am a huge fan of. I think everyone coming out of that uh area is just fantastic. And he is leading the vanguard of people studying fascinating topics related to reasoning, epistemic vigilance, uh misinformation, belief. Uh we we get into all those topics and more. Yeah, this is a very dense episode. We we narrowed the timing down and we just got right into it the entire episode, and it was wonderful. And uh definitely encourage you to look up Hugo and his work and he has a couple books too.

Yeah, wonderful books. Uh The Enigma of Reason is his first book about the evolutionary psychology of reasoning, and Not Born Yesterday about the evolutionary psychology of gullibility, or rather our not being gullible, our epistemic vigilance. Yeah. Well, and without further ado, today, um listen, enjoy Hugo and David and myself. Enjoy I'm just gonna say I'm just gonna turn off my YouTube on my phone, otherwise it's gonna interrupt the recording. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna turn off those it's like an airplane where you have to turn off why if I'll be later than you have to turn off your put it on your plane setting. Everybody put your devices on a plane setting. Is that true? Like is that David do you know?

Yeah that you actually have to turn off your your phone and stuff on an airplane? Yeah or or I mean w why wouldn't would you think they're just like messing with us? Yes and no. I don't know. I don't know. I don't think they're well, I don't know. Just doing it for no reason? Well, I there's sort of it's the principle of sort of like the one percent of the time where there's an issue, the 99% get turned off. I don't know. Yeah. Maybe. Well speaking of percentages. Yeah, this is a good idea. Exactly. We have shorter time today. So everyone's like, oh thank goodness, an hour and a half. Yeah. So we have the premier scholar of reasoning with us, Hugo Mercier. He has a wonderful book called The Enigma of Reason.

We're talking about percentages. Uh percentages are a kind of reasoning or reasoning about, you know, how how much of X or Y remains after after some activity. Um so uh Hugo, um is reasoning a uh a solitary activity where we where we sit down in our chairs and we we think through a syllogism like if P then Q and then we we use that uh to make a better decision uh or is it something else? So so what you're describing does happen. Um you know it's it's been no it's been known to happen. But the the point that Dance Barber and I have been making in in a number of of publications is that we don't think that's what reasoning is for. So in in evolutionary terms, uh we've suggested that the function of of reason, of human

reason, is not to to think about things on your own and to weigh the pros and cons and to try to to arrive at better decisions, but on the contrary, to reason with others, to exchange arguments, to exchange justifications. Um still because it's an evolutionary psychology podcast, it's important to specify that it's not a it doesn't have a group function. The goal isn't to get things better for everybody. The point is still purely individual, but instead of the point being to just reason better on your own, the point or the the points rather are both to convince others to change other people's minds and to have your mind changed when you should, so when when other people have good reasons um so you can change your mind and and adopt uh or you know

at least move towards their views. So that that's a that's a crucial distinction. So you you mentioned that we we evolved to reason in groups, um, but uh reasoning did not evolve for the good of the group. It in fact evolved for the good of the individual and that the individual benefits by uh persuading uh the person they're arguing with or perhaps justifying their behavior to the person they're talking with and that you know gains them reputational benefits. Uh it might help them manipulate others uh to their own uh end. And um as a byproduct of everybody sort of pursuing their their individual self-interest and trying to persuade each other and justify themselves, uh sometimes what you get is an

emergent outcome which is good for the group. So if everyone is is arguing their own case, um, then you get a kind of intellectual division of labor where uh a bunch of different views get people uh um fired up and and focused on the particular reasons for that view. And then you get uh a bunch you basically you get a bunch of different people working on justifications for different views and and the views that rise to the top, that succeed, that that prevail tend to be the ones that are more well justified, well reasoned. Is is that basically the the the claim you're making? Yeah, exactly. Um and and that's because on the one hand, so when you're producing arguments, when you're producing reasons, when you're reasoning in a more active manner, indeed your goal is to

either uh when you're doing it live, kind of just you know to to persuade people to change their minds either about the conclusion you're trying to defend or at least about what they think of you. When you're justifying yourself, you you don't, you know, you want to to you want them to think that your your choices and your beliefs are rational. Um, but there's also the more kind of passive uh position, which is when you're evaluating other people's reasons and arguments and justifications. And then your goal is much more objective. The goal is really to figure out are these good reasons and should I change my mind on the basis of these reasons. And the two of them are really um completely necessary for group, uh for both for

individuals, because you know, if if my goal was to convince others but they would never change their minds then obviously it would be pointless. Um but it's also how the kind of the the phenomenon you were describing of of groups ending up uh better off it's also th it's also thanks to that because people do change their minds when when they are confronted with good arguments. Yeah and we talked a little bit about proximate versus ultimate or sort of whether or not you're conscious of something. Hugo how do you think about this in the in the following sense? I'm sure a lot of people listening are like, I don't experience myself at all, sort of thinking, well, what's in it for me? Starting with that, and then sort of going through thinking and deciding whether or not to

take some evidence or to to reach a conclusion. I mean, I think we all have the experience of doing that, of biased reasoning. But then we have the also the experience of for a lot of us most of the time not doing it. And is your argument that even that category, that second category of not consciously experiencing stuff, there's still this software that we're not even conscious of? Is that a fair character? Exactly. No, exactly. That's the point. So obviously, you know, no one is surprised that a lawyer or a politician, when they are practicing a speech or a plea, will be specifically looking for arguments that support their clients or their other cause or whatever else. And when that happens, even if they happen to stumble upon a counter argument, they won't

at you know, they won't mention it. You know, they'll just only go for for the arguments that support whatever it is they want to support. And that's a very kind of strategic thing to do. And it's not the pure expression of reasoning. It involves other mechanisms that that will uh make it even more uh biased, or but in in that case in in a way that makes sense. No, the the the point we're trying to make is that even when we're reasoning in a completely you know kind of normal manner, the function of the mechanism is social. And obviously we're not aware of it in the same way as when we're you know when we're having sex, we're not aware of the fact that the function of this is to pass on our genes.

I mean except maybe Elon Musk or you know a few people who really do it for that reason. But uh so it's the same obviously we're not supposed to have uh to have access to the uh kind of the ultimate functions of our our cognitive mechanisms. Yeah. Is there are there design features? Sorry, David, are there design so it just in the same way like having sex, right? It's sort of it's not just empty that the function of it is producing offspring. There's all kinds of design features about like who we find attractive that follow because that's the function. And so are have you discovered, are there attributes of reasoning that people might not know that our design features, because the function is argument, that might be different

than the design features people might think if the function was just sort of impartial learning of the truth. That's a great question. Thank you. I think actually our theory mostly explains features of reasoning that were known but that were taken for granted and that should have been mysterious. So it is quite well known and quite well established in evolutionary psychology, sorry, in the psychology of reasoning and judgment and decision making that people have a confirmation bias or my side bias. So whenever you're you're reasoning about anything, uh whether you're on your own or or you're talking with others, um, you will spontaneously find overwhelmingly arguments that support your view. And just as a as an aside, one of the best experimental demonstrations of that is an

experiment done by some um Swedish um psychologists using the the choice plainness paradigm. So in that experiment, uh people like the the experimenters pretend to be uh kind of holsters asking questions to people on the street. And they have a little clipboard with a a sheet full of questions. And the questions could be something like, you know, do you think like in the trade-off between security and and freedom to like fight terrorism, for instance, do you think that security or freedom matters the matters most? And people have a scale, you know, from like one, which means like I mostly care about security or seven, I mostly care about freedom, and they circle the number that that fits with their opinions.

And they do that for a number of questions, And then they give the clipboard with a sheet back to the experimenter who uses a sleight of hand to actually to copy, to kind of glue onto the sheet a question that spells the opposite of the original question. So if the original question was, you know, I think that uh freedom matters more than safety, then the new question reads, I think that safety matters more than freedom. And so, but people's answers are the same. So if you've circled six the first time around, you still have a six that's circled. But now the six means the opposite of what it used to mean. And so, you know, they say, well, that tell people, look, you know, here is the questions

back. Now I'm going to ask you to justify your opinions. You know, where do you think? What do you have that point of view? And what they found is that first of all, only like 5% of participants were realized that they had been tricked in that way. So like a very small number of participants realized. And of those participants who didn't realize so the the ability majority, these people were as able to produce arguments for the view that they had originally said was theirs as for the other view. So it's quite striking. And in that case we know it's it's purely a confirmation bias because it's not the case that people just have a lot of reasons that they would support freedom over safety or security.

Um instead they just mix stuff on stuff up on the spot and they're equally able to mix stuff up per for for both views. So this is the kind of confirmation bias or my side bias. And if you if you thought that the function of reason was to help you come at better decisions on your own or or you know arrive at better beliefs, such a bias would be completely self-defeating, in the sense that you know you're you're thinking about things and you're trying to consider the pros and cons of various decisions. If whatever original intuition or feeling you have, you only find reasons supporting that, you will never change your mind. So if you start wrong, you will never get better. So that's really the opposite of what you'd want for a mechanism that is supposed to help

you, you know, think uh things through and reevaluate your own opinions. So this this confirmation bias or my side bias, who, you know, whose existence has been known for a long time, for us it makes a lot of sense in the sense that when you're producing reasons, you want to convince other people. And so if you want to convince someone, obviously you want to find reasons for your point of view or against theirs. You don't want to do the, you know, you don't want to do the opposite. And it is hard. Like we can do it. But it's a really hard, you know. When you ask people, if you ask a hardcore Democrat, you know, can you think of good reasons where people may be voting for Trump? It's gonna be really hard for them as a rule.

Um, it's possible, but it's it's a hard exercise. So that's one of the features uh of reason that that we think our theory can can account for. Um so you mentioned this uh very disturbing finding where um people will be tricked into thinking that they answered a survey the opposite way that they actually answered it, and then they will just basically make stuff up or or confabulate a justification or a reason why they chose that response, uh, even though they they in fact didn't. Um and uh what's disturbing about this is that it suggests that we might be doing this more or less all the time. Every time we we we we do something, um we um we start a podcast, we uh invite someone onto a podcast, we might confabulate a reason.

So the reason we're starting this podcast is because we're interested in in you know reaching the truth and and spreading truth to the masses. Um that might be a kind of confabulation that uh Dave and I tell uh the exception though is that it's true in our case, but in everyone else's case. Um it's not true. Um so one question I have for you is a kind of uh game theoretic question. So if everyone is confabulating bullshit reasons for their for their behavior, more or less, and I am a fan of that word. Bullshit in the in this in the sense that the confabulation is not designed to accurately detect the underlying motives of the behavior, but it's designed to convey a positive impression, look competent or benevolent or whatever, maybe maybe fit the prevailing social

norms. If that is the function of these justifications, why do we believe each other's justifications? Why don't we just say, uh, you know, Dave, you're telling me this the story for why you are interested in starting this podcast? When I say, Dave, you're full of shit. Why I don't believe you. It seems like much of our culture involves giving reasons for our behavior. And much of the time we're actually quite uh gullible for lack of a better word of people's justifications. And our culture is kind of made up of these, made up uh from these bullshit reasons for lack of a better term. So why uh why do we accept these reasons if they're coming from such a uh epistemically unreliable place? So thanks for the for the question.

Um so I I don't think it's that unreliable. Um so first of all, obviously there has to be some simplification in the sense that our motives are necessarily complicated, and so it would be impossible to just express them in a in a simple way whenever we want someone asks us why we're doing something. But I do think that we're not that gullible and that if I if you gave people a really a motive that had nothing to do with your actual motives, most people would would call you up on it. And indeed most people do. And most of the justifications we give are actually decent justifications. The situation in which it's more likely to have justifications that are really made up is when they suit everybody.

So usually when you have to justify something, it's because you're, you know, you expect that that someone else, either you can see someone else is judging you, they're asking you why did you do this? But most of the time we anticipate other people judging us, and we uh we give them reasons for what we've done to anticipate being being judged negatively. So if you, you know, if you if you do something, you know, you break the the law on the road or something, you know, you say, well, you know, I was, I was in a rush, or you know, I didn't see the car coming. So you're going to explain your behavior kind of in a preemptive manner. And so usually things work well because you have these other people to keep you in check.

So then again if you say something that has nothing to do with reality or that is not plausible given your personality, given your context, uh, people won't accept it. But sometimes as a group of people or even as a society, we're happy to have justifications that are, you know, that we could present to someone else, or that, you know, we but we they never really get properly evaluated. And these are the ones uh for which it's kind of easier to get away with stuff that is that is less plausible. Um like to give you examples, like in you know, in in most or maybe every small scale society, people believe in uh in witches or in kind of some some form of supernatural entity that that causes uh many or kind of most misfortunes.

And it's possible that people have good reasons for wanting to be able to blame a given individual for a given misfortune. And like it's not just one person, it's like the group as a whole is happy enough to converge on the idea that, well, you know, we don't have to all share the responsibility for that guy's misfortune. We're just gonna say it's that guy's fault. And except for that guy, um, everybody else is kind of happy to believe that. Um, and so they can make up justifications that from an outside perspective may might not be super convincing. But given that everybody is kind of looking for a justification, the threshold for or the criteria are kind of quite low. You don't need something super good because everybody just wants to have a justification.

And that's the risk when you're when you're talking to people who who agree with you and you're finding reasons or or justifications for your views. They're not going to be critically evaluated. And so you can get away with stuff that wouldn't fly if you were actually talking to someone who would who would properly be critical of you. Yeah, another example might be that death by Phantasm in the Brenda Bowser episode. Uh, there's uh the, you know, in the the local ecology, there were groups of people from different areas all coming together to f decide how a horrendous murder what happened, and they all decided, the elders decided it was death by phantasm. And presumably they all agreed, and other people agreed.

And that was an argument of uh, well, it's going to be high cost to like pin this on somebody and the retaliatory cost. So all individual minds are sort of thinking it's not worth the cost to like pin this on somebody. And so the evaluation of phantasm being plausible or not has nothing to do with whether or not a phantasm exists per se, but it's sort of like, do I agree with this for these other reasons? Right. Yeah, because I mean when you when we think, I mean, so I mean obviously you're you're right, David, that um, you know, the justifications we give, I mean, their function is to is to make us look good. So, you know, we we're gonna if we have a choice of different motives that we can pick as a

reason, we're gonna try to pick the one that makes us look better. But let's say I, you know, I I had I hadn't showed up today to the podcast and you asked me, so why you know why didn't you log in? And I say, well, I was uh you know, I was saving a child's life somehow. Uh you know, you you know either you kinda you ask me for some details, you know what what the hell happened, but you're not going to just to take my word for it, like it's gonna look weird. Even though it's maybe the excuse I could give that could, you know, make me look weird. You probably would take your word for it. Honestly, no, it's interesting that you bring up that example 'cause I probably would take your word for it because if I did challenge your account, I would look hostile to you.

I would look like I don't I don't trust you. Yeah. it's plausible that you know you would find out at some point or you know there was I can't you know if like yeah you know because you're on the other side of the world it you know it's it might fly but but if I were to say that to my to my co-workers like you know how did you like what happened and then you have to make stuff up that's complicated and you get caught in a lie and then you look really really bad. Yeah. And so in that case it's a bit extreme because it's a you know a complete complete lie. But you know, even if I if someone who is com is always late and they always say, Oh, you know, it's because I missed my train, blah blah blah, you know, if you know that person,

you know it's bullshit. Like you know it's just that they're bad at keeping time and then they don't really care about some meetings. And so maybe as you are saying, socially you're not gonna challenge them, but you're still judging them as they should be judged. Yeah, that's a great point. So if if I could summarize the take, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, um, yes, we all have an incentive to kind of bullshit about the reasons why we do things to confabulate. Um, but usually people are pretty skeptical and pretty vigilant against this kind of bullshitting, and that forces us to come up with a reasonably uh compelling justification for why we did things. Because if it was too crazy and too implausible, people wouldn't believe us and they would

judge us and we would uh have reputational costs. It would be worse, exactly. Yeah. It would be worse. But in some cases when everyone has the same biases or the same interests to come up with a particular justification. So for example, in the case of the Brenda Bowser episodes when everyone has a uh has a reason to not create a cycle of violence, uh, and everyone has a reason to maybe pin this on a phantasm, then you can get a kind of cooperative bullshitting where everyone is trying to tell a story that justifies a particular cour course of action that everyone has an interest in pursuing. And you can get this in political groups as well, where you get a kind of cooperative bullshitting where we where we come up with a story that justifies the agenda of our group.

Maybe we spin a utopian narrative that if we pursue this objective, it's going to create a utopia on Earth and therefore it's it's worthwhile. And so and and that would be a different mechanism for for uh this kind of stuff. Yes, no, no, completely. And and and these kind of uh cultural productions are um are are very interesting. Um but as a rule given the the mechanism that generates them they're not really causally efficacious. Like if people want to do something in the first place and then they're going to you know confabulate some some justification that everybody's happy to accept. But it's the justification isn't why they're doing it. Like it's not as if yes you people were like at some point someone convinces them that

witches exist and and and then they start seeing witches everywhere. It's like they're they're happy to believe that witches exist to a large extent. And and so then they're happy to accept the theory sort of that they that they do exist. Right. Because they all have a common interest in not being the one uh burned at the stake. And because they are all biased in that direction to not themselves be the witches, then they are happy to accept the reason why someone else is a witch. Yeah, actually in that case in particular, I mean we're kind of it's a bit of a tangent, but but Pascal Boyer has has uh has this interesting theory that a lot of these beliefs, like if you're if you're in a in in most societies in which people you know cooperate to to

to some extent, so essentially all societies, um there's some uh informal burden to help people who suffer misfortunes. Like it's not clear exactly who the burden falls on and how how large the burden should be. But you know, even if in in our societies, if something really bad happens to your neighbor, you feel as if maybe you should do something to help. And it's not clear who should help and how much everybody should help. And so it's a bit of a it's not a great situation to be in. And most people are happy to to try to minimize the uh how much it how much it is perceived that they should help. And if you say either, well, you know, that person had a misfortune because they they violated a taboo, so then it's their fault.

So no one really has to help because they brought it on themselves. or it's that guy who who you know who um uh bewitched them or you know um cast a spell or whatever, then that guy has to pay reparation. And so I don't have to do anything either. And what's nice with this is that actually in most societies, witches are not punished. Like you say, oh no, he's the witch, it's his fault, and then the guy has to apologize and do, you know, maybe help a bit the guy who suffered the misfortune, But the the punishment is really not commensurate with the accusation, like we know with the thing that the person is accused of. So just everybody is happy to have uh you know uh uh someone that they can put the the pin

pin the blame on. And then once they have that, they don't really want to punish the person because that's not the point. The point is just to to so that everybody knows I'm not the one who has to help the guy who suffered the misfortune. Yeah. So yeah, in that case, the um the motive would be none of us want to actually pitch in to help this guy. And this narrative helps us uh force someone else to help the guy. Yeah, and justify our are not helping them. Yeah or not helping them too much anyway. It really sounds like, I mean, even in that example, like sort of words are uh really pretty um minimally effective in the following sense of like we're saying somebody caused their misfortune and that's just to prevent other people from sort of saying I should do

something. Um, but then if you take seriously that this person caused the misfortune, the behavior should be, you know, we should really do something. But then people don't want to do that. So I mean it's a it's a real clear case of there's sort of an asymmetry with use of words, even that it's sort of coalitional in the sense of it's sort of defensive words are are sort of produced, but then when when it's sort of offensive and it's like, well, this involves having to actually do something, everyone's like, oh whatever, whatever, we'll just kind of let that slide. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There there's a just oh sorry, David, go ahead. Yeah. So just well, one interesting thought that just occurred to me.

Do you think um the uh uh inability of us to detect our own biases is itself a design feature of this system. So you could imagine a system where uh you know we're in the middle of a of a witch hunt, and I'm perfectly aware that the only reason I'm accusing this person of witchcraft is to uh get him to help out and not me. If I'm aware of that, um, and maybe I'm explicit about that, well, that's going to really lower my chances of successfully accusing that guy of witchcraft if I say, Oh, I'm only doing this because I don't want to help. Um, and so it could it be that this inability to detect um the underlying motivations of our of our arguments, our underlying biases, um is itself a design feature

and that if we were aware of them, perhaps it might leak out and it might make our arguments less convincing. If I'm in the middle of an argument with you and I uh am explicit about my biases and my underlying agenda, that's going to make you more vigilant and that's going to make you uh trust me less. So I have an incentive to try to frame my argument my my arguing and reasoning as a kind of disinterested, dispassionate truth seeking to increase the chances that you'll actually accept my arguments. What what do you think of that idea? Yeah, I mean I I don't think you need anything specifically designed to not do something that is cognitively tremendously hard in the first place. You just not you just there's no pressure for that mechanism you're describing to evolve.

And so it doesn't evolve. You don't need specific pressure for it not to evolve in a way. You just you because it's a you know it's a very complex cognitive machinery, you need a lot of positive pressure for the thing to evolve in the first place. So its absence doesn't need an explanation beyond that in a way. Um yeah, but you because you could also have imagined that it would be obviously like we have cognitive mechanisms that allow us to understand people's motives, like we have theory of mind. So, because it's really important for us to understand other people's motives. And you'd think we'd be more keen on training them to ourselves on you know onto ourselves, and we're not doing it that much, uh, which suggests that it's a lot of it is a problem of

motivation. Like we're not, it's not something that evolutionarily would have helped people to you know to better understand themselves. Because you know, you're supposed to already your brain is wired to do the things that aren't good for you in the first place. So understanding it isn't gonna help you by default. And just uh as a throwback or callback to another episode with depression in Ed Hagen, I mean, I think uh correct me if I'm wrong, but with the one area where people don't have confirmation biases as much is people who are depressed. Right. And the argument is that's a design feature for um essentially arguing that, well, however whatever settings we have in this brain are not working, uh, and we

really need to evaluate things more objectively than the settings in this thing, uh in the in the current uh body envelope. And so that's one area where you actually do get sort of quote unquote less biased reasoning. Is that um I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know to what extent they would have less of this specific bias have I I've been describing in the sense that, you know for instance uh the bias this is my side bias or confirmation bias if I give you you know peep psychologists have a lot of these logical problems that tend to be tricky so the typical one is the bat and bowl so like you know like a bat and a bowl cost one dollar and ten cents together the bat costs uh five uh the

bat costs one dollar more than bat than the bowl how much does the bowl cost uh most people say ten cents the correct answer is five cents and um and when you give people that kind of problems, it's one of the one of the also very clean demonstration of a confirmation bias because you give them the problem, immediately they think that ten cents is the correct answer. And then if through uh you know eye tracking, think about protocols, whatever else, you figure out what people are thinking after they have they have had that initial intuition, overwhelmingly they're looking for reasons where they're right. So they have this confirmation bias. And I think that you know, whether you're depressed or super happy, you is going to be

exactly the same. Uh, people who are depressed are not going to start thinking, oh, you know, maybe I'm completely wrong. What about five cents, or what about some other answer? So uh, I mean, obviously, the the differences that that Ed Hagen was talking about are are real, but I don't think they would affect that spot that particular bias. It's more generally, you know, how optimistic or how you know how able to kind of self-inflate you are rather than than this specific mechanism. Right. Or I mean, or what I mean, I think the argument and for the the people who argue that it happens is sort of uh, you know, if we're having a conversation and we're arguing who's right, I'm just more likely, if I'm depressed, to sort of think I'm less correct, right?

I mean this is just individual differences, right? Yeah, no, possibly. I mean you want to like uh um so there aren't so when we talk about reasoning, for us there are two main functions. One is to exchange arguments because we want to change someone's mind about a given conclusion. Like let's say we want to, you know, we want to go for dinner together and we disagree about which restaurant to go to, and we might exchange arguments as to you know where we should be going. And the other function is to justify ourselves. So you know, do you when you if I you know if I've done something that you think might be stupid or I've picked a restaurant that you think was really bad, then I'm I'm just trying

to justify and defend myself. And a lot of the discussions we have, even though it feels like in theory, they're about conviction, like they're about what is true. Like when you talk about politics, when you talk about culture, when you talk about a lot of this of these things, because the conclusions don't affect us at all in our behavior, I think they're mostly actually about reputation. So a lot of it when we talk about these things, it's a way of showing that we have coherent opinions, that we're well informed, that we have moral opinions. And so if you are less motivated to show people that you're smart and that you're more, you know, a good person, et cetera, because you are depressed, then you're going to give up

more easily. But if it's something that affects you more directly in terms of a decision that you have to make, then maybe the difference may be less between someone who is depressed. But I just don't know enough about depression. Yeah, and I mean getting off the depression thing, because this is a really subtle point. And I think I just want to make sure that I've got it. So what you've talked about is sort of people hold views. And there's good reasons, or there's at least software reasons, evolve software reasons why people hold views or opinions or behave the way they do. And that is sort of silent machinery that's calculating what we've basically characterized as like individual interest or like extended individual interest.

So view is the one element. The other element is confabulation. So confabulation is sort of a narrative about why this view exists. And what I'm hearing from you is that a lot of conversation and reasoning is about coordinating confabulation. Right. So it's sort of like, so let's use the example of the podcast. So David and I are like, let's have a podcast, right? Having the podcast and the and the idea of having the podcast is sort of the view. But then everything we talk about is sort of if I said, well, let's have a podcast because you know the sky is purple, David would be like, Well, that's a bad reason. That doesn't make any sense. And why he's doing that is because if we tell other people that he's going to realize,

well, that's just a bad reason. And people are going to be like, Well, that's a stupid reason. Don't you shouldn't have a podcast? It's not a good justification for him doing it, for telling his wife why he's spending time or like other himself why he's spending time doing it. Um, but maybe we say, well, we want to like inform people, right? And now that doesn't include all the reasons why we're doing it. It might not even include the primary reasons why we're doing it. So the view is sort of hidden from us, but he's still selecting among the confabulations that sort of work for the function of the confabulation, which is sort of to have a good reason, a good enough reason, even if it doesn't exhaust all the reasons for the view.

So in this view, the view and the confabulation are very different sort of games in a way. Is that a fair characterization? Yeah, no, no, it is, but um So the what matters, I guess, in these things is who the audience is. So if you and David are brainstorming justifications for the podcast, essentially you're both of you want to do a podcast. So you're just anticipating in the same way that if if you on your own they had had wanted to do a podcast, you could think on your own and say, you know, what am I gonna tell my wife? What am I gonna tell other people? And so you can do that on your own. And we do that a lot, like we spend a lot of our time anticipating potential disagreement or judge or negative judgments and and you know anticipate what we would say and you can

also do that in groups you know if if you're if it's a collective decision but sometimes you're just you know you're you're talking with with David or with some someone else and you're just disagreeing over something and then you're trying to justify your views to that person because they happen to be disagreeing. And I still think it's it's the that latter thing is the most common in the sense that when you're in a social setting and you realize that someone disagrees with you, you have a natural, like it's very spontaneously you'll you'll you'll think of arguments for why you're right or justifications for your views. Whereas when you haven't been exposed yet to someone disagreeing, you know, we don't find,

you know, most of the decisions we make, we don't struggle for justifications. We just, you know, if I bought this burn of cereal, I just bought this burn of cyril, no one's gonna bother me about it. Um So it's only when you anticipate having this potentially negative feedback that you that you start looking for it. And and and you don't always anticipate having such feedback. I mean, you know, fortunately. Yeah, it's a really interesting, complicated thing. I mean, I'm thinking also, like, for example, like let's imagine somebody who's like cartoonishly racist, right? Like a Nazi or somebody, or or it's like a white supremacist. And there's sort of this classic idea that's sort of like they might have views or like

confabulation for holding their view. But then if you take the example of somebody who changes their mind and they're no longer a Nazi or a white supremacist, it's often they just have the experience of, you know, of people being everywhere the same, you're right. But that wasn't the part of the confabulation. And so they'll even have a confabulation for sort of why they've changed their view. But in fact, the deep reason why they were prejudiced or racist in the first place was sort of overridden by cues, but it was never part of the verbal narrative, right? It's just like they just get have a different experience. So again, I think it comes back to um that's another example where really the

the real reasons why we're doing things and then the verbal narratives are sort of really two different independent streams almost. Yes, I mean then again, I mean, as we were saying earlier, they can't be completely detached. I mean, I at least, you know, as long as you get some social feedback. Like if you're just completely in your head and you don't you don't talk about that specific justification to anybody, you can you can really kind of go off on a tangent, I guess. But as a rule, um, as we're saying, if you go if you veer too far off of something that's you know a bit like the truth, yeah, um, you're gonna have issues. But it's I mean, we think of it, you know, we're talking about it as if it's a bad thing,

but that's also what you get, for instance, in mathematics. Like people have an intuition that a given uh conjecture is right, and then they work really, really hard on finding a theorem, and then they have the theorem, and that's and then you know, the reason why they know then that the the conjecture was actually correct. Sorry, they have the proof, so I know the theorem, they have the proof. So they work very hard on the proof. And the the reason why they thought the conjecture was correct with their intuition, their mathematical intuition that it would be correct. But then they have the proof that gives them the reason why it is actually, or you know, a reason there can be several proofs why why it is um actually correct.

And and it's not bad, you know, in any normative sense. It's just the way kind of things are. Yeah, no, I think every all scientists have that. And I and then and I'll stop in a second, but I just want to push on this because I think it's a really subtle important thing. And there is a tension of like that confabulation track and the and the view track, they do have some correspondence. So, like in the racist example, like let's say that uh the white supremacist is sort of like actually, um, you know, people who look different from me are they're actually good, hardworking people, right? And that idea, um, that that narrative of like good and hardworking, like what that's not, you know, but but if that is sort of an accepted thing by somebody

else, then that that is sort of approved, right? But if that white supremacist says that to like one of the other white supremacists who doesn't want that, they'll say, no, I don't agree with that. Now why they why they're against that group of people has nothing to do with hard work, how hardworking it is. So but it's sort of acceptance or rejection of the confabulation is the correspondence on behavior is just it's a cue of whether or not are we going to continue this behavior or change our behavior, right? Um, so it's like kids on the playground where they're like, Sally thinks the purple ball is the best thing and she's wrong. She's stupid, right? That's the purple ball sucks. We don't care about the purple ball.

The reason why we care about talking about the purple ball is what we're gonna do to Sally. So I think just to push on this idea that they do have correspondence, the confabulation and the and the um view or the behavior, but it's it's one that's a linked one, right? Because it has to have something. Like if you say something, something crazy, and it has no mapping onto like, well, what real thing are you gonna do in as a result of this belief or value? I might go looking for that. But I think but it can still be indirect. Is that I I really know that's the right. I mean, the the like for instance the you know whenever there are uh ethnic riots and and ethnic groups kind of fight each other there are it's always preceded by

rumors that the other ethnic groups the one that that is going to be attacked has committed some atrocity that you know they've poisoned the wells, they've raped women, they've killed children. And um and so these things are not they're not completely implausible. Like you know, people do do that in some cases, and they're clearly in the morally right direction. Like it's bad to you know poison wells, etc. Um, so it's just that we're because we're all looking for a justification, uh, we're willing to suspend belief a little bit, like something that's you know not super plausible, we're going to accept because we're all happy to do this. But it still has to be a morally valid argument and a premise that's um, you know, it can

be a little bit far you can be far-fetched to some extent, but it given people's primary beliefs, it has to be somewhat coherent with that. Yeah, yeah. U I I I have a uh uh another interesting thought here. So we're talking about, you know, when confabulations work and justifying a behavior and when they don't. So if I give a confabulation that's wildly implausible for my behavior, like, you know, the sky is purple, that's not gonna work. If I give a confabulation that's more plausible and defensible, that that might work. But there's a third option that I want to explore with you and get your take on. I can give a confabulation that is so vague or unfalsifiable or unverifiable that you don't really know if it's correct, or you would have no way of going

about figuring out whether it was correct or not. And it would be really hard for you to coordinate with other people to prove it as incorrect. So if I say, you know, I started this podcast because it was fulfilling, it made me happy. There's really no way you can verify that claim. And that may well be a design feature, and that may well explain why we justify so many of our behaviors in terms of this underlying uh I did it because it made me feel happy, it made me feel fulfilled, it was rewarding, it was meaningful, you know, I'm just pursuing it helped me express my authentic self. You know, these kinds of narratives are very hard to falsify. And they're so vague, it's it's kind of hard to know what they even mean exactly.

But um and so that could be a third route where if we don't have um a plausible sounding justification that serves the social uh goal, we may start reaching for things that are just um hard to verify. Uh and that may well explain why sometimes our confabulations extend into sur supernatural domains like witchcraft or spirits, because those those domains are by their very nature uh hard to falsify and and verify. What what do you think about that idea? Yeah, no, com completely, but it only works for things that people want to believe in the first place. Like, you know, if if you want to convince Dave that you should be doing a podcast and the two of you want to do a podcast, it's always going to be fulfilling.

You know, you're very happy with this, it's great. But if you want to convince someone who doesn't really want to do a podcast with you and you tell them, oh, you know, it's gonna be fulfilling, and they're like, you know what? So yeah, you know, it's not it's gonna work to the extent that you don't have to actually convince anybody. It's like if you need some kind of placeholder to say, Well, this is that sounds okay. And we're just all happy to have something this as a place we can point at as a justification. But if if you know if if your wife is thinking, well, you know, this is a really stupid decision, you need to do something that is more productive, whatever, and you tell her, well, no, but it's fulfilling, it's like, well, you know, it doesn't really pay the bills.

So so it depends on on you know what your goal is. Like if the goal is just to create this narrat, this common narrative that maybe at some point we could present to others or we can just point at because in many cities in many cases people you know they're not gonna be you know if if i'm like a friend of yours like well you know you do whatever you want anyway so it's like you know whatever um but if you want to actually convince someone who has a stake um it's not gonna it's not gonna cut it and and it's true as well for you for not only convincing like let's say someone to do another podcast but if I think that doing podcasts as a rule is like a waste of your time, and uh and I think that because you're doing a podcast, you know, you're being a bit silly,

you telling me this isn't going to change my mind at all about the quality of your decision making. So, you know, it it can explain why these things exist culturally when you have a lot of people who want to have a justification for something they want to do in the first place, But it the prediction would be that they're not going to be convincing to anybody who doesn't really agree with that in the first in, you know, who do agree with the decision to start with. Right. That makes sense. So if we all share, you know, the religious belief, for example, or religious and we all want to justify this religious belief for whatever reason, then then those kinds of religious justifications will work on us.

But when it comes to persuading other people that our God wants XYZ, it's not going to be convincing to them. Yeah. Yeah. And that explains why. I mean, people are like, oh, other people believe really weird stuff. It's a consequence of it's in their interest to have a narrative for why they're doing what they're doing. And when you experience you're outside of that group of people who that benefit um network, then you would just have that's this is a prediction of the theory, is that the reasons for people doing things will look weird to the extent that you are outside of the network of benefit from that network to the extent that there's confabulation around why people are doing what they're doing.

Yes they're going to do quick because in a way they they haven't really uh passed the test of of being being you know being really criticized or evaluated by someone who disagrees with them. And so yeah I mean it's it's and that's the first thing we do. Like whenever you think about something um, you know, you're anticipating a disagreement, or even you're in a discussion, the first arguments that will pop into your mind will typically be relatively weak. They won't be terrible, like they can not not know when it's gonna say because something because the sky is purple. But they're gonna they're gonna be great. Like, you know, if you let's say you you know we disagree about whether we should go to the

restaurant or which restaurant we should go to, and you tell me, Oh, we should go there, it's a it's a great restaurant. It's not a very good argument. Like obviously, if you're saying that we should go there, you think it's a it's a good restaurant, But it's fine. And in a in a conversational con in a conversational context, it makes sense to do it that way, in the sense that if I have weak preferences and that's enough to convince me because I don't really care, then you know, great. And if I disagree with you, I'm gonna tell you why I disagree, why I think that restaurant is bad or that other restaurant is better, and then you can address that specific argument. And so in a in a dialogic setting, it makes a lot of sense to be quite lazy about the the

justifications we or the the arguments we produce. And it's only when we get pushback that we have to produce better stuff. And if you never get the pushback, then you know you stick with the stuff that's a bit lazy. So it sounds like I mean this is an argument that argument is a good thing to the extent that we ha want social institutions to produce accurate or rational or actually beneficial beliefs or behaviors that I mean I think this is like an argument for science, right? Is that um you the you falsif falsifiability like from a pauper perspective or just arguing for different theories um that the the things develop out of argument, out of disagreement. Yeah no, completely. I mean, you absolutely need disagreement to sharpen your arguments.

That's how the quality of arguments increases. That's how you force people to have better data. Um, I mean, you know, if you take something like the history of clinical trials, in a way, the way clinical trial trials are run now is the outcome of a long history of arguments of someone saying, Well, you know, if you just give the drug to one guy and see whether it works, it's not we don't know whether it works because you know, you need you need maybe the guy just got better off his own accords, and then you have a control group, say, well, but maybe it's chance. I mean, you know, you don't have enough people, so then you have more people, and then you need the groups to be matched. And and it's just an extended argument.

Uh that means that at the end you can you can have something that you're reasonably sure of because uh because you've increased the quality of the argument throughout this process of of kind of protracted argumentation. And is that what reasoning is? I mean, because I think as evolutionary psychologists, we don't think reasoning is a natural category in the mind, in the sense of like my visual system is reasoning about where you are, right? Um, in the scene. We don't really think of that in a folk psychological perspective as reasoning. Is is the folk category reasoning, I think the reality of this folk category is the third is a is a third person representation, right? Or it's a it's a it is a real representation.

It's not a real category of actual scientific processing. It's like, but um uh but is is what is reasoning coherently? Is it is it this? Is it this process of anticipating arguments and finding counterarguments? Or how do you think about what the counterarguments is? so you're completely right. Like for us we we differentiate uh between inference in the broad term, which is what a lot of people just call reasoning. And which becomes a little bit counterintuitive because as you were saying, your your low-level visual processes perform inferences, maybe your retina performs inferences. And so it just becomes a bit weird to call that reasoning, just because that's not how we typically use the the term.

But but but it doesn't matter. It's all just kind of kind of semantics. The reality we believe or we suggest is that you have many, many, you know, inference inferential mechanisms. You have, you know, many, many of these mechanisms that are each are dedicated to a given task. And one of these mechanisms, uh, its task happens to be finding and evaluating reasons. It's a very specific task. And you can imagine, and you have people who can talk and they can they have syntax, they have semantics, they have pragmatics, they can they can discuss things. But in theory, you could you could take out this reasoning ability and they couldn't really understand arguments, they couldn't really they would be or they would be really bad at it.

Like because when you when you you know if I have a given view and I want to convince you of it, you need a mechanism that will give you that. Like it's really hard to find a good argument. Like if you even if you you you take a given thought of all the things that are kind of in the semantic space of that thought, the things that might be possibly relevant, many of them aren't going to be good arguments. And so finding a good argument is just a cognitively or kind of computationally very hard task for which you need, if you want to do it well, you need dedicated machinery. Like obviously there's some kind of bootstrapping problem and at some point you can imagine that some of the using more general kind of mind reading or pragmatic

abilities, you can get some of the way. But then because it's something we do a lot and we're have a stake at kind of being good at, presumably specific mechanisms would have evolved that just help us find and evaluate arguments in particular and reasons in particular. Right. And just as the example that David talked about with the podcast, sort of like fulfilling, right? That software would presumably sort of generate that as a candidate, sort of say, well, this would be good defensively for me, but it wouldn't convince my wife. It wouldn't convince a skeptic. There might be other things like, oh, spread science. That might convince my wife. That might convince a skeptic. And so the software is sort of churning candidates, calculating how will this be received

to somebody who's on my side against me. And then the filter is sort of evaluating to what extent is it likely that the people who already agree with me are going to be the bottleneck for me actually doing this. So it that that that would be the kind of machinery you're talking about. Yeah, no, exactly. It's just that it's a make it's a mechanism that that uses a lot of social feedback at different scales. So the first at the at the very kind of local scale, as I was saying earlier, typically you start with some argument that is like it it is a good well-formed argument that makes sense but it doesn't have to be super super strong and then you bounce off of what the other person is is saying and disagreeing and way they disagree with you and so that you have

this very kind of um live uh improvement in reasoning but then you also learn uh through experience so you know if you have a you know two children are are are two siblings are arguing over the toy and the mother said you know but you know what are you doing and when sell you know but I want it, and so well, you know, but your brother also wants it, and so then the next time they're well, I can't just say I want it because it's not a good argument. You know, that's the first thing that pops into your mind. But then they say, Well, I have to say, Well, actually, I had it first, or you know, he had it earlier, blah blah blah. And so you and that's that's what happens to us as as academics, like you submit a paper

and you get knocked down by reviewer two because of blah blah blah. And the next time you try to anticipate, and you it's just it's something that we you know we're good at learning to do, but it's it's really hard to anticipate. It's not natural to have to really anticipate. You're just good at integrating social feedback rather than anticipating it. Yeah, that's interesting. I think even like good teachers or like the kids' example or comedians very explicitly will talk about when you shop material. And David, maybe even has experience, right? Of just you just you gotta at some point you just throw stuff out in the world and see how people respond. But then there's this machinery that's really effici e effective, efficient, effective at

um uh at changing what you do in response to the feedback. Yes. Yeah. No, this this particular justification or or reasoning, this worked particularly well, give positively reinforce that, come up with those types of reasons again in the future and and you get this kind of learning of how to effectively reason or justify it. I want to uh sorry sorry so I'm so sorry, uh David I just just because I want to bone set up something there. It's really because it's true for all the things that we do well, like in a vision language, we think it's easy because we're so good at it. Oh, yes. And I think it's really it looks like obviously we find reasons, it's it's super easy. But it's really hard. And there's this example I love with with my my one of my kids who who said once he was

very small, he didn't want to go to bed. He said, Oh, I don't want to go to bed because I'm too tired. Obviously, I've been there before. But he has to be a good thing. That's actually a good reason for like it's exactly like you know when when when you're when when a child says you know I I run when you have a general is the same, like you learn, okay. So I can say I'm too tired to as a reason for not doing something. Like he would never say, um, I want a blue toy because I'm too tired. That doesn't make sense, he would never have said that. But the general form of the argument, an action that I want to do, I can use I'm too tired as a as a reason. It just happens this one doesn't work. But you can see the he he to because I also obviously had never encountered that argument

in his environment. No one had ever said that to him. And so that meant that when people had told him, you know, I can't don't want to do that because I'm too tired, or when he had tried that at another context, he had generalized that there's this thing that you can say, well, action I don't want to do, I can say I'm too tired. And then you had other generalized to the one situation in which it does, or one of the few situations in which it doesn't work. And so sorry, sorry David. Yeah. And that's a great just to also interrupt David, that's a great to just go off of Hugo here, that's a great example of why something like reinforcement learning and just learning in general is is not opposed to a very domain specific, you know, lots of

computational machinery for an evolved function. It's that that kind of learning only works within this very narrow, already pre specified scope of exactly as you said, there's these category slots for things like, you know, state that's negative, excuse, um thing I do I don't want to do. And then it's within that that something like reinforcement learning can sort of operate, where if it's unconstrained, you just wouldn't do anything. So great, great That's a great point. No, I I it's it's a it's a beautiful example of this. You you reinforcement learning isn't just a magic wand you can wave that solves any computational problem that you have. You know, the system has to know what to reinforce and how specific or general the thing

is. Am I reinforcing uh I'm too tired in general as a as an all purpose excuse? Am I only reinforcing that in a specific context? How specific is the context? The system needs to be able to solve these problems. And and and in order to do that, you need some some functional specialization. So it's a great point. Um so I ha I want to uh push back a little bit um on on the on the social interactionist reasoning. I want to sort of play the role of a critic um and uh give you a situation where it seems like what reasoning is doing is a purely solitary um uh rational process. So if I'm playing chess with you, I might you know think through all the different possible moves you might make. Well if I if I make this move then he'll he'll make this counter move and that's bad.

But if I make this move and then this move and then this move and then this move, well he's he's gonna be really screwed if I do that. I'll be able to to fork him in this interesting way. So maybe maybe that's the best uh move uh path to take. So it it seems like when I'm doing that kind of reasoning, this kind of chess style reasoning, or we could even trans you know put this in in in in terms of like social chess is a is an expression that people use when they're social strategizing with one another, trying to outfox outfox each other. It seems like in that context, uh it really is serving an individual decision-making function. The more I spend time you know reasoning up through the different moves, the better move

I'm going to make most of the time. And it doesn't seem like I need to actually uh verbally tell anyone why I made that move. Maybe I'll never tell anyone why I made that move, or I'll I'll never have to justify it to anyone. It doesn't seem like I need to convince anyone that that's the right path for me to take. It's purely happening inside my head, and it seems like uh the purpose that it's serving is to help me make a better move. And so in that case, I I I kind of want to um uh say that yeah, reasoning is serving this kind of folk function of helping me make personal better decisions. Um so what would you say to something like that? Is there is there room for reasoning to serve this kind of function?

Or so the the way we would address that is just to say that it's not reasoning. Like it's just a different cognitive like we call that reasoning because we're using kind of folk categories. But the cognitive mechanisms that you're using to to anticipate what you would what your opponent would do at chess or or to take these kind of strategic decisions are just different from the mechanisms that allow us to to find and evaluate reasons. So we call that reasoning because introspectively we have the same kind of feeling of effort or uh you know kind of that we're going through possibilities. Um but we don't think we're reasoning in the more narrow sense that we're using in terms of really kind of thinking through reasons.

And it's a very it's a subtle difference and and clearly it's important to draw it, so it's good you you you drew the attention to that because we're not saying that this kind of of inferential process, however we call it, we call it strategic reasoning or strategic or something, uh, that it's not efficient or that people aren't good at it. And it is indeed you would expect these sort of things to be purely individual because it's it's uh it has a more in a way kind of a Machiavellian function rather than reasoning, which works because you're exchanging reasons with others. Okay. So that would be some kind of like strategic inferences or or something like that, or I would uh you know, I would or maybe like counterfactual thinking or something like that.

Uh-huh. You know, interesting. And just to like uh follow up on that, like for the um in my paper on difference detecting mechanisms, um, which I'm late on the revisions for, so but and but should be coming out any moment now. Um, one of the arguments for why we there's thinking is a category Is for, and this is sort of related to reasoning, and I think means it may be being used interchangeably, is there needs to be a placeholder for I'm still processing or you're still processing, and you haven't arrived yet at a representation or decision. So for example, if somebody's like David's like, well, what do you want to have for lunch today? And I there needs to be software in me for representing, have I gone through the process of

arriving at an answer to David yet? And if that system detects, no, I'm still calculating costs and benefits, I will say, well, I'm thinking about it. I need a minute. And so there's sort of a representation of there can be a delay in an organism at arriving at a thing it wants to do because it takes some time to process stuff. And the same reason, like, why isn't David moving right now? Well it's because he's or why isn't he talking? He's thinking about what to say, right? So that's a broader category than reasoning in this precise um mercier uh um sense if that if that has to be yeah no that's a great point and and indeed it does make sense that we would have such an intuitive category because it's really useful in

everyday life to to be able to talk about it. So I I can't help but insert a a cute anecdote that that Dan uh Dan Sperber, my a advisor and co-author on on all of this work, uh recant said when he was so his father was also an an intellectual and when he was a child he would play around and and uh and his father would be sitting on on his armchair, you know, with his eyes closed, doing nothing and and his mother would tell him, you know, don't bother your father, he's working. And as a child it's not intuitive that it's thinking can be a form of of work that's kind of efficacious. Exactly. Yeah. Um, to pivot a little bit, and this may be a segue, is so we've talked about people's views being pretty good or behaviors.

There there being good reasons for that. But then the confabulation sort of being confabulation, right? And just good enough to sort of serve the needs of satisfying or convincing others. You have other work that's about not being gullible and like not born yesterday, that people hold good maybe beliefs is the oversimplified version of that. I'm sort of wondering if you can connect what we've just been talking about now to this other idea of yours that I think has been controversial, and you can maybe tell it more about this, um, or maybe even more clearly what the claim is, because you know, the idea that sort of people are not gullible and hold good beliefs, justified beliefs. Maybe this isn't the claim, but that's sort of I think what how people understand it.

It's sort of i it even it's it's slightly inconsistent, even in what we've been talking about, which is that like people's behaviors and their views they might hold for good evolved reasons, quote unquote. But then the confabulations, it's it's satisfying or like it's good for science, or sort of just will-o-wisp, maybe not very good. How do you square that distinction with this other body of work that's about people are really good at holding beliefs and hold beliefs that are sort of good for them? No, that that's that's a great question. So the points uh I've been making in that book and that also kind of Dan and a bunch of colleagues have been making in a in the paper on called Epistemic Vigilance is that people

have to have um mechanisms to evaluate communicated information because we can't just you know take each other's word for it because we have conflicting or to some extent you know we have non-perfectly overlapping incen incentives and interests. So even when people you know close close to you tell you something, you can't just accept that it's going to be in your best interest to uh you know to accept it. Um and so we have to have cognitive mechanisms that allow us to evaluate what other people are telling us and what they're communicating to us. And I think that really applies as we're saying, and that's why I was pushing back a bit at the beginning on David's point that people can just make stuff up.

So people can make stuff up, but other people, if they disagree with in the first place, they will evaluate that critically. And the exception to that in a way is when you agree with the conclusion that is that people want to have a configulation or justification for. And then you're happy to have one as well. And so you know if if you know you're one of the people who is happy to have a scapegoat who will be accused of of you know making someone suffer a misfortune, um, you're happy to have this justification that actually, you know, that guy is a witch, and and to have this whole belief system. So it you become um much more um, I mean, cuddible is the wrong term, but it's because it's kind of smart of you to accept these things, but you become more kind of laxer in your

criteria when you already accept the conclusion. And it's true for you know, in general, if you if you accept a given conclusion, um you know, you don't really care about the arguments because the arguments are not gonna make you change your mind. Um, they're just there that you could potentially reuse to try to convince other people. So these two things are quite coherent, but it's it's also important then to stress that when you do disagree, then you'll be much more critical. And so, yeah, I mean, when you're the ethnographer and you, you know, especially can in in earlier periods, and you arrive in these people and they believe in witches, you're like, well, no, obviously there are no witches.

You're not all of a sudden convinced that there are witches. Um so it, you know, these justifications only convince the people who have a motivation to believe in them in in the first place. Yeah. And then the disagreement, or so that argument has has this claim of you know the not born yesterday idea or the epistemic vigilance, has it ever has it been misunderstood? Do people think you're making a broader claim, or in what way has it been misunderstood or taken too far? Yes, I mean I'm not sure because I'm taking it far enough. I don't sure how many people have tried to take it further. Yeah. But um yeah, I mean I I don't mean to say that people are never wrong because obviously they are sometimes.

The point I'm trying to make is that when people are wrong, usually it's not because of communication. Usually it's because their priors are wrong. So if you ask people, uh you know, if you go to a small scale society and you ask them what is the shape of the earth and maybe they're gonna mostly they're not gonna know but you know maybe they're gonna tell you some weird narrative or that it's flat essentially because that's what they're saying. It's not because um you know they've been they've been brainwashed into thinking that it's just because that's either what their senses are telling them or because they have a story that allows them to justify something that that's important to them. So it's not people are, you know, they have obviously they are wrong about some things, but

it's rarely it's rare that um mass communication or or communication more generally is the is the cause of these of these mistaken beliefs. Like it can or I mean to take another example, like you know, obviously if you're if you grew up in a specific small scale society and you have really specific religious beliefs, and you believe that this ancestor does that to these people for that reason, this is heavily shaped by communication because you know you like the name of the ancestor, the specific form that they take is specific to your culture. So, in the same way as when you grew up speaking English, it's because you had, you know, English-speaking uh peers and parents. Um, but the fact that everybody speaks a language is, you know, the fact that everybody in

small-scale society and to some extent in other societies believes in these kind of supernatural entities, it suggests that even if the specific details of any one of them is due to communication, the broad form is there because people are pre-wired to believe in this sort of thing. So their priors for this sort of things existing, or the incentives for believing in this sort of things are very high to start with. And the culture gives you the specifics rather than the more fundamental ID. Interesting. So I want to um so there's a a wonderful uh key distinction you make in Notborn Yesterday that helps you make sense of uh our epistemic vigilance or our skepticism toward communicated information on the one hand, and the seemingly uh wide variety of

wacky beliefs that humans seem to fall prey to. And the distinction you make is between intuitive beliefs and reflective beliefs. So intuitive beliefs are the ones that are often they actually guide our behavior in a real concrete sense. So I intuitively believe that there's a coffee cup on the table, so I'm going to reach in that direction to pick up the coffee cup. My belief about where the coffee cup is is directly connected to my nervous system such that I reach in a particular direction. And that's an intuitive belief. And then there's this different category called reflective belief that doesn't really guide my behavior in the same way. It's kind of uh functionally inert. Um and and your argument, uh, you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that a lot of these

seemingly wacky beliefs are not actually intuitive beliefs. They're not actually guiding people's behavior in a concrete way. Um they're they're just kind of reflective beliefs, that they're they're serving social functions and people don't really believe them deep down in a way that is actually guiding their behavior. Um so could you uh flesh out this this idea of of of you know w what what this difference is between intuitive and reflective, why we would uh why the mind should be divided up in this way and and and how we figure out, you know, whether to adopt something as an intuitive belief versus a reflective belief. Thanks. That's a good question. The first thing I said is all of that comes from Dana, who has a wonderful paper called

Intuitive and Reflexive Belief. So all of this framework is really kind of his ideas than forever. So by an illustration I like is the is the contrast between people who have actual experiences of of conspiracies and and conspiracy conspiracy theorists, people who believe in conspiracy theories. And everything we know about people who have actually witnessed a conspiracy. So you've seen your boss treading documents that are very compromising. You've seen someone in your company do something bad. You've seen someone in government do something extremely fishy. And the behavior of these people is consistently to be afraid. If you're in a bad country, you're gonna be afraid for your life. Um, you're afraid to you know to jeopardize your social relationships if you say anything.

And so most people's reactions is to be, first of all, to be really scared, it's very strong emotionally. Um, and then you it's really hard, you don't say anything as a rule. And that's the exact opposite of what most people who endorse conspiracy theories feel. Like they're not, even if they believe that the CIA is powerful enough to pull off 9-11, they're not afraid they're going to say that in public, which is quite inconsistent in the sense that if the CIA was powerful enough to pull off 9-11, they could kill you quite easily. So you wouldn't want to actually say that. So they don't have this, you know, they have some emotional reactions to these conspiracies, but they're really muted compared to someone who would actually, who has seen

actual evidence. But by contrast, they are very vocal. Like a lot of them are really very vocal, which is then again the opposite of what you see with someone who has formed an intuitive belief because they've seen actual evidence. So you have really the these two causal pathways. One is you actually see actual evidence, you form an intuitive belief that someone in your company is a crook or that there's more widespread corruption in your company or in your government. And your reactions are really strong emotionally, and you're being very careful, versus someone who has heard of something and they're happy to profess these views because it allows them to justify the mistrust of government or for some other reasons, or they can

kind of score points to with people who are similarly inclined. And you have these really two things that are completely um different in reactions. And so the reason why we have intuitive beliefs is obvious is because you know they guide our behavior in the world. That's that's how we we know we can act adaptively. And the reason why we were able to hold reflective beliefs is more subtle, obviously. So the basic cognitive mechanisms that allow us to have beliefs that are encapsulated, that are detached from the rest of our cognition, is that we have to have that to entertain the idea that other people can be wrong. So if you tell me something and I think you're wrong, I have to be able to think, well, you

know, um David thinks that without that thought affecting at all my behavior directly. So it can affect my behavior in the sense that I can tell you you're wrong, or I can act in a way that takes into account the fact that I think you have that belief. But you know, if you if you think a given restaurant is great, but I think you're completely wrong, I'm not just gonna go there because now I think it's great. Um so we have to have that ability to separate some beliefs from the rest. What's tricky with reflective beliefs is that on the one hand, they are held in that little box in which we usually keep things that we think are false. But the official attitude we have towards these beliefs is that we believe them.

And so it that's so that we know it's cognitively possible to have things that are insulated because it has to be the case for us to be able to hold uh to think that other people think things that are false or that we think are false. And sometimes it just so happens that these beliefs can stay there even though we supposedly have reasons to believe that they're true. And it's not completely clear why they stay there. So there are things so Dan's examples typically are things that we can't understand. So if you, you know, a child who accepts that you know something about the Holy Trinity is mine, just you can't have an intuitive belief about the Holy Trinity because your mind doesn't know what to do with it.

It's just not something that we evolved to deal with. But something like a conspiracy, conspiracy theory, you know your mind knows what to do. Like if you had actual evidence that of a con you have actual evidence of a conspiracy, your mind knows exactly what to do with that information. So it's not entirely clear why it's possible both for you to think you have enough evidence to accept it, like you don't think it's false, um, but at the same time to not act on that on that basis. And I I don't really know actually, to be honest, why that happens. Interesting. Um so I mean the way I'm starting to think of it is that um we draw all sorts of inferences about people based on their actions. And and one category that we are eager to draw inferences uh about people toward is is the

category of belief. So what you believe gives me a lot of inferences about your character, about your personality, your your loyalties, your your commitments, uh, etc. Um and what I've written about myself is that as soon as you have a Q based inference where where everyone in a society is drawing an inference, you know, if X, then Y, well, that creates a social incentive for everyone to transform that Q into a signal. So if I start drawing the inference about you that if you believe that fetuses are people, therefore you are a loyal Republican, well that gives you an incentive to uh conspicuously uh signal uh that you believe fetuses are people to get me to think that you're a committed Republican, right?

So as soon as you if you have a Q-based inference set up, that creates an incentive for it to turn into a signal or an intentional signal. And so I think what's going on with a lot of these reflective beliefs is it's just it's just what happens when everyone draws the same inference, Q-based inferences about a particular belief, and then all of a sudden it transforms into a signal. So if if we, you know, if you believe in the Holy Trinity, you're a loyal member of the group. As soon as we all make that inference, it creates an incentive for everyone to try to conspicuously signal that they believe in the Holy Trinity. And in that case, uh it's it's not necessarily an intuitive belief. It's a it's a social signal.

It's you could think of it as a pseudo-belief. I'm trying to mimic the superficial properties of belief in order to get you to think certain things about me, to think that I'm a loyal Christian. You could think of it as more of a social strategy than a belief per se. And so I think one way that these these kind of reflective beliefs can come about is through kind of social signaling mechanisms. And it's a pseudo-belief in the same way that pseudoscience is a mimicry of science. Uh it's the same it it arises in the in the same way as any other kind of pseudo uh process, where there are benefits to be had by mimicking a certain uh thing, and then this happens in beliefs just as it happens in a a wide variety of of cases in our culture.

What do you think about that way of thinking about it? Yeah, no, no, I think it's it's part of the answer in in many cases. But so so for something to become culturally widespread, um, you have to have some motivation to share it, and that's what you're describing. Yeah. But people still have to have some like at least at the at the beginning to kick off the process, people have to have some motivation for accepting it as well. And and so the mechanism still has to pass at least a minimum threshold of epistemic vigilance. And so, you know, conspiracy theories are, I mean, the ones that are the most popular are are the ones that are the somewhat credible. Like, you know, a lot of people believe Kennedy, there was something fishy.

And even if it turns out that it's ultimately false, you can see why that'd be kind of broadly plausible for many reasons. Whereas the people who hold the ones that you know that they thought the Queen of England was a lizard person, these are people who these are vastly less popular and they only spread in an audience of people who already believe things are a little bit crazy for most people. So you still need to explain. So even if if there is this signaling component for the thing to become more spread and to really entirely then then be able to fulfill its signaling component, people still need to accept it in some way. Like you know, you couldn't I mean if you take a population that has kind of normal priors,

you can't just decide, well now we're gonna all gonna signal that we believe the moon is made of cheese because the thing is not going to spread in the first place. So you still have to have some reason why people are accepting the thing at some point. Yeah, no, absolutely. Um yeah, there needs to be some way of keeping the signal um honest. Um and it could be that you know only people who are actually committed to the group are willing to send the signal because the uh that uh in effect alienates you from outgroups. So if uh you know everyone in our group believes in the Trinity, everyone in the outgroup rejects that belief. merely by saying that merely by uttering that belief becomes a kind of costly signal

because I'm burning bridges with with the outgroup. Right? Um and so uh that that could be one way of of maintaining signal honesty. Another way is maybe I pay some cost. So uh if people who believe in Jesus are are you know go to these these rituals and make these sacrifices, um maybe I maybe I I perform those rituals and make those sacrifices, even if I don't truly believe in an intuitive level, uh the uh in in the particular God or spirit. If I'm making the sacrifices, that could uh maintain the honesty of the signal. Uh and in other cases, maybe it is just a deceptive signal, just in the same way that pseudoscience is a deceptive signal. It's not really science. Uh but just people just, you know, get get fooled.

Um it it happens. Um and and you know maybe it'll the the the the trickery will will will persist for some amount of time. Maybe at some point people will discover it and the pseudoscientist will uh uh his reputation will will collapse. Uh and then a new pseudoscience will emerge that tries to mimic some other superficial property of science, and you get this kind of arms race between deceivers and deceived. So that's another path that these kinds of s of pseudo beliefs could take. Um But yeah, that that's that's sort of how I'm I'm I'm thinking of it. That either either it um it it remains a deceptive signal, in which case you get a kind of arms race, and sometimes it persists and sometimes it doesn't, or it um it it has a kind of

bridge burning function, or it or it takes on some kind of cost uh that that makes the signal persist. Okay. No, no, these are all interesting possibilities that must apply in some cases. Like I'm just the the I guess the point I was trying to make is that it seems that if what you're saying already takes for granted that the belief is widespread enough that it can be used as a reliable signal. Like, you know, you have to know that Republicans as a rule believe that fetuses are are people. Um but so why how did that belief become widespread in the first place? Like people obviously in that case it's a it's a very and you can see why it's uh it's an appealing belief, like it's not absurd. Uh and and and so it has to have you know some some interesting

plausibility to spread uh to spread in the first place. That is true. Yeah, it cannot be totally insane. But the reason why it might exist in the first place is because there's an abortion debate and people are kind of trying to come up with justifications for their side of the issue. And people who are coming up with a particular justification, well, that's going to set uh license a pretty strong inference that you're on one side of that issue if you're making those arguments. Uh for the same way, uh for the same reason, you know, can a conspiracy theory. Uh if I hate um the Democrats uh, and I think that the Democrats are part of some deep state conspiracy, that you're you're liable to um make a pretty strong inference that I

hate the Democrats if I'm believing in this in this story. Right. And so that's another way I it could come across where um may maybe the belief doesn't exist at all, but be merely because I'm positing this conspiracy theory that demonizes the outgroup, that's going to cause you to make an inference about me that I hate the outgroup. And maybe I'll anticipate that and that gives me a reason to come up with a conspiracy theory uh in the first place. Yeah. Um, I know we're a little bit running a little on time here. I want to um push on one thing that I think a lot of people are probably thinking, which is there's this large category of sort of propaganda, right? Or like advertising. So something like, you know, smoking is makes me look cool or like sugar is reminds me of

like happy holiday things. Like we know that, you know, like the history of like selling cigarettes or like corn and sugar subsidies in the US, like whenever people have looked at this, it's sort of like clear that um things are not healthy. Um, yet people spend tons and tons of money to convince people to hold the explicit belief, the reflective belief, that these things at least I have a positive association with, because th there's a small set of people who directly benefit, right? And they're in a position to manipulate the the reflective beliefs of people. Um in those cases, how does this uh theory, and I'm imagining people sort of have these examples in their head, how does this can you kind of walk us through how like

the this idea of like reflective or intuitive beliefs or that people aren't gullible? How does this work? Because I think the principle would apply, whether we're talking about a mass society or even in a small-scale social world. You know, for example, like, you know, I'm an old, I'm an old person and I want this stuff in another group, and I convince the young guys to like be belligerent towards them. It's not in their interest at all. They might die, you know. So I'm gonna send these guys off to war, basically. You know, like this trope is common where I sort of try to convince people of beliefs and I do sometimes that are not in their interest. So I'm just I want to push on that just because I'm imagining people are thinking about

that too. No, no, that's that's a that's a great point. Thanks. Um like on the whole, these things work because they tap into things that people want to do in the first place. So people, you know, like sugar for pretty obvious evolutionary reasons. Um, people like nicotine for reasons that are less clear evolutionarily because it's not really good for us. But um but nicotine is uh you know has it's very nice. I can't say it's a pesticide. There's a good reason, there's like pretty clear, yeah, my reason. Yeah, no, but that's so it's it's it's and even that like the the psychoactive effects of nicotine are obviously very pleasant for for many people. Um so what advertising can do then is uh first of all it can make you aware of a product

that you didn't know existed. So if I've never heard of chocolate, maybe I see chocolate, it's like that looks interesting, and maybe you try chocolate and you like it. Um or it can give you justification for doing something, you know, if you say, Oh, you know, there's a sale on on on you know chocolate, so I'm gonna buy chocolate because but obviously you wanted to buy chocolate in the first place, you're just looking for a way of justifying, you know to to yourself and to others that uh that you know it's fine to buy chocolate even though it's not the healthiest of foods. Um and to some extent the same is true for even sending young young men to to war like the uh you know some young men to some extent want to show that they're brave

and uh and they want to do things like fighting and and you know you have uh and you know young men will fight essentially I mean it's not always and obviously there's wide variation across societies but in most societies uh young men have a tendency to to want to to not to use violence more than other um demographics and it's one way that they can uh they can show their physical uh prowess and so you're just capitalizing on something that's already there and indeed I mean it would be much harder if you wanted to convince you know older women to go to war it'd be a harder sell or if you want to convince everybody to start you know eating kale. I think you know we can see the failure of communication by the failure of health messages.

Like people still drink too much soda, they still eat too much bad food, they still not eat enough vegetables after decades of being told that it's good or bad for us, respectively. So if it was that easy to persuade people to eat or to you know do things, the positive messages that are not completely failing, but that are not widely successful, let's say, uh would be more successful by kind of by symmetry. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. I mean it's uh uh um yeah I mean I guess one way of putting it is sort of there at least the way I think about it is you know, there's people who are sort of getting the short end of the stick, and they're sort of, they think they're sort of, they're the victim of other people's sort of confabulations, right?

So sort of like, um, the way they might rationally prefer, like, do I want to go to war or not? But what's their view of war, right? Or like, do I want um sugar versus something healthy? But what's the what are the offerings presented to me and how expensive are they? Right. So sort of I think um I think when people say like people are gullible or duped or are the victims of other people's beliefs, I suspect that it's that conflict of interest thing where there's this small group of people who are sort of incentivized. Yeah. Like you disagree with the with these or you moralize these these people's choices. So you think oh people are buying SUVs because they've been brainwashed by by automakers.

But no a lot of people just like SUVs. Like most of the things that uh some people think uh you know have been pushed on us by advertising are just things that let me push back on that because I don't I don't agree with that. So, like a good example is like when I go to Germany, uh fresh, healthy fruit and vegetables are easy, people want them. Um, there's not a lot of sugar and stuff. Here in the US, sugar and corn are subsidized, everything is super sweet. Every American I know who goes to Germany is like, this is great, and I like lose weight, and they come back and they gain weight. Nobody wants it. But it's sort of in the it's just the the choice architecture because of uh lobbying and um and ads and just sort of that.

So I think like that that to me would be a clear case of like it's not there are different like stable norms where like, you know, people do if they're addicted to sugar in refined flour, for example, like they'll just keep doing it. But if they had a choice between the two, like a run that experiment anecdotally and like people don't prefer it. But if you were don't give them that choice, then they're just sort of stuck at this one equilibrium. Yes. But what what works is manipulating the actual incentives and that is making making it really available, making it cheap, making things the default option. That works. It's not you don't need advertising for people to buy MMs. I mean you just need to you need to buy to make MMs available at every counter and to make

them cheap and people will spontaneously gravitate towards that. Yeah maybe. I don't know. I don't because uh even as my like my you know uh having a child there are certain things that you wouldn't know about like as you said like unless you advertise them. But yeah, but but yes, the advertising has to be hooked up to like there being a lot of people. If you give your child ice cream, you don't need advertising. They're gonna like most most children are gonna like ice cream. Right. Because it's just you know very, very good. Yeah, yeah. And uh if you give your most children are not going to like you know vegetables as you know you should be in a good position to know. Not because of your children, but because of of your wife.

uh, you know, they'll be a bit reluctant maybe at first to to to eat these kind of products. And and you know, I think it's rare the parent who's I mean it happens because you know people have different tastes, but but as a rule, I think parents' experience is it's easier to get their kids to eat ice cream than to eat broccoli. Um and uh and that's just the way it is. Yeah. Right. But it's interesting there's more ice cream ads than broccoli ads. That's a separate and unpredicted outcome. Yeah, that's that's partly because because there are different brands of ice cream. There's only one people don't discriminate broccoli. They're buy broccoli or not. So no one making broccoli really has an incentive to say, well, you have to buy my to buy

my broccoli. Whereas people who make and it's interesting because that's when ads have some they can work because you have 10 brands of ice cream and they're all pretty much the same, they're all pretty much the same price. So your choice within the ice cream category, your choice can be somewhat influenced by ads because you know they're all the same essentially. Whereas the choice between ice cream and broccoli, that's not gonna be the ad, that's just because the ice creams are better. Yeah, that's that's a beautiful illustration of of your principle when you know you have no strong reason or no strong prior to pick one ice cream over the other. Uh that is precisely the case where arguments are gonna sway you one way or the other

because you don't really care what ice cream you buy. And you know, maybe some ad will sway you to buy that ice cream. But if you don't really care, you're not really being manipulated. You're just, you know, whatever. Doesn't it doesn't matter to you? Yeah. What the literature on advertising suggests is that if you don't like that ice cream, then you're not going to buy it again. Like it's not going to change your perceptions. Maybe it's going to, you know, so and then if you do like it, then maybe you're stuck buying that ice cream for a long time. So it does, it can have some influence at the margin, but only for decisions that are from the point from your point of view of the as a consumer, you know, it's like cook or Pepsi.

I mean, they're the same product at the same price. From your from your perspective, it doesn't make any difference which one you pick, but obviously from their perspective, it makes a huge difference. Right. It is scale. So broccoli is advertised at the grocery store when there's a couple of different versions of broccoli, for example. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, uh I I'll I'm gonna ask the question that Dave usually asks because I know we have to wrap up. Um, is is there anything that we should have asked you, Hugo? No, I mean I think uh no it was great. Uh no it was great, no no fantastic. Um we didn't tell him to say that. I actually I want I have a question that I wish I asked you. I've been dying to ask you this the whole interview.

Okay, so we talked about intuitive and reflective beliefs. If you had to guess just on an intuitive level, what percentage of our culture of our verb verbally articulated beliefs, what percentage of them are actually uh intuitive beliefs that guide our behavior? Okay. Bringing back to percentages. Good good callback, David. Yeah, back to percentages. Obviously, a lot of culture is fiction, like especially in contemporary cultures, a lot of culture is fiction, which by definition is not even a belief in the sense that you know it's nothing you've got to do. Let's say let's say exclude excluding uh excluding explicit fiction. Well, I mean uh um are you saying Santa Claus is a real data? Are you saying Santa Claus is a real I'm trying to think of broad categories.

Like if you explain it. So there's like stuff we read in the news or you know, think pieces, you know, stuff we talk about in everyday conversation. Very little of that is intuitive, yeah. I would say very, very little. Either because it's too complex for you, like if you hear that there's something about a trade treaty or something, it's or I mean the things that are intuitive, like if you hear about uh you know there has been a an in you know a flood in in Myanmar or something or an earthquake in Myanmar, you might have an intuitive grasp of that, but it's very fleeting because you know you don't really care, and you know, five minutes later you've forgotten about it. So uh for things that are more durable, I would say the overwhelming majority

uh probably is is reflective. And that's true, that's true for like most of science as well, like not only for for lay people, but really most scientists our beliefs are reflective because either the format is something that makes it impossible to be intuitive, uh, or because they don't really impact directly our behavior. So so yeah, something like I would say something like seventy thirty ballpark of that. I would have to think harder about uh what um what the beliefs are that we're talking about. So I but yeah, a lot more than we'd think, I guess, would be reflective. Yeah. Well, yeah, that that is that is my intuition as well. You know, I'm I'm thinking of writing a blog post called You Don't Believe Most of What You

Believe. I mean you know when I believe in in like, you know, vaccination or relativity theory, yeah, uh I actually I believe it. Like it's not, you know, I have a critical attitude towards it and I would defend into other people and I have reasons for it. So it is a belief. It's just not an intuitive belief. Right. It it reminds me of there's this quote, and we've already established that I don't remember quotes well and quotes are of suspicion. But it's just this thing of like, don't count on somebody to believe something that they're career like making money. I I why I'm terrible at the end of the yeah. Yeah, if their paycheck depends on it as something. Exactly. Yes. So it's sort of collectively, like very little of our epistemic landscape is

sort of things that our paycheck um depends on. Or conversely, it's sort of like if I worried about the flood in Myanmar or if I worried about, you know, all of these other things, it doesn't help me. Like knowing how my iPhone is made and the conditions of those people, that actually hurts me in the sense of it takes up time away from like, you know, feeding my feeding my family, or you know, I might end up having to give up my phone, which I like. So sort of for in a very selfish way, we have these very rich landscape of beliefs, but not a lot of them have teeth, maybe as a way to put it. No, no, no, no. I mean, one way of thinking about that maybe is that usually there's a trade-off between

Um can between two forms of relevance. Like most of the beliefs we have are relevant only to us. Essentially, no one cares like you know everything I know about my work and my personal life. And I mean, you know, they're mostly relevant to me. So they're not, they don't become cultural. And they're mostly accurate and they're mostly intuitive. But when you want to have beliefs that will be relevant to a lot of people, By definition these beliefs can't be this kind of local relevant beliefs because no one cares. Uh you're describing the podcast. Well Sono is gonna explain that. The um so to have something very very general, it has to be something that's that you know it's gonna be really hard to have something that's very general and

very relevant to a lot of people, kind of by definition. Um, so given that it's it's kind of bound to be the case that typically like I mean the the exceptions would be things like, you know, if there is an an emergency, there's an earthquake, and you're giving really practical information about what to do in case of earthquake, of an earthquake. And then you have the whole population who has that belief, well, if I if there the if there's an earthquake, I have to do this, which is intuitive, because it so happens to be something that can be widely shared and that is really kind of relevant locally to a lot of people. And it's really rare the beliefs that have these properties. Yeah. Cool. That's why the weather channel has is always scary stuff because it it seeds the

epidemiological epistemic landscape. Hugo, um, thank you so much for for joining us. Thank you. It was a very dense, efficient conversation. It was lovely. We'll have to have you back on for banter and hearing more about all the things that are, you know, um extra scientific about you. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Intuitively now I'm tempted to sign my emails to intuitively instead of sincerely. Intuitively yours. Intuitively yours. I look for that in your greeting, David. So but yeah Hugo, thank you so much for your time and for uh recording this in the evening for you over in um on the other side of the globe. Yeah, you have Frenchmen still at work at nearly eight. My God. Exactly. Yes.

It's good. Uh yeah, thank you again. And uh yeah, we'll we'll talk soon. That sounds good. Thanks a lot. Well David, people have a little bit of extra time in their day. They certainly do. And with that extra time, they can uh leave us a kind review or say something nice on social media or even check us out on Patreon. Yeah or go for a walk or you know help somebody with I don't know assemble their furniture or clean their house or I don't know do something you've been putting off you know with this half hour free of time. Yeah that's also a nice thing you can do. Yeah. But but be thinking about us while you do those things. Okay. We still gotta get you those uh the that fanny pack David so please somebody send me yeah

I'm still in the market so if you if you have a fanny pack please send it my way I still haven't gotten any i've been waiting we need t-shirts and stickers too we need more stickers we we did hand out some stickers at HBus if anybody wants stickers let us know yeah we're drowning in these stickers we ordered too many oh do you have stickers I ran out I still have stickers left over really can you send okay well maybe if you come up okay all right Just come to my house in Los Angeles. I'll give you some stickers. No, no, no, don't do that. Don't do that. A bad idea. Okay. Uh we'll we'll talk to you guys next week. All right. See you next week.