WEBVTT

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David, this is a podcast with a tagline.

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And the tagline is Actual Evolutionary Psychology.

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By actual evolutionary psychologists.

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And uh what is what is your name?

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Uh David Petrozowski, but I go by Dave because your name is David Pinsoff.

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I have the id, I'm the immature one.

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Yeah, and we're both David Ps, so um we have to distinguish ourselves somehow.

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Yeah.

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Anyway, uh, here we are.

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Enjoy

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David, uh, what does the word epistemic mean?

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Uh it means relating to knowledge.

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Mm.

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Good.

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Well, there's a reason why I'm asking that, because the person we're going to talk to today

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is Hugo Mercier, and he is at the Institut Jean Necureau

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in France.

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Uh yeah, where he works with the evolution and social cognition team and he does a lot on

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epistemic vigilance and why we believe certain things and also reasoning.

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That's right.

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Uh he's one of uh uh many people coming from the uh Paris School of Cultural Evolution, the

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the French School of Evolutionary Psychology, which I am a huge fan of.

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I think everyone coming out of that uh area is just fantastic.

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And he is leading the vanguard of people studying fascinating topics related to reasoning,

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epistemic vigilance, uh misinformation, belief.

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Uh we we get into all those topics and more.

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Yeah, this is a very dense episode.

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We we narrowed the timing down and we just got right into it the entire episode, and it was

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wonderful.

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And uh definitely encourage you to look up Hugo and his work and he has a couple books too.

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Yeah, wonderful books.

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Uh The Enigma of Reason is his first book about the evolutionary psychology of reasoning,

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and Not Born Yesterday about the evolutionary psychology of gullibility, or rather our

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not being gullible, our epistemic vigilance.

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Yeah.

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Well, and without further ado, today, um listen, enjoy Hugo and David and myself.

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Enjoy I'm just

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gonna say I'm just gonna turn off my YouTube on my phone, otherwise it's gonna interrupt

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the recording.

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I'm gonna do that.

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I'm gonna turn off those it's like an airplane where you have to turn off why if I'll be

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later than you have to turn off your put it on your plane setting.

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Everybody put your devices on a plane setting.

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Is that true?

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Like is that David do you know?

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Yeah that you actually have to turn off your your phone and stuff on an airplane?

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Yeah or or I mean w why wouldn't would you think they're just like messing with us?

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Yes and no.

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I don't know.

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I don't know.

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I don't think they're well, I don't know.

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Just doing it for no reason?

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Well, I there's sort of it's the principle of sort of like the one percent of the time

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where there's an issue, the 99% get turned off.

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I don't know.

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Yeah.

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Maybe.

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Well speaking of percentages.

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Yeah, this is a good idea.

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Exactly.

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We have shorter time today.

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So everyone's like, oh thank goodness, an hour and a half.

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Yeah.

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So we have the premier scholar of reasoning with us, Hugo Mercier.

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He has a wonderful book called The Enigma of Reason.

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We're talking about percentages.

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Uh percentages are a kind of reasoning or reasoning about, you know, how how much of X or Y

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remains after after some activity.

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Um so uh Hugo, um is reasoning

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a uh a solitary activity where we where we sit down in our chairs and we we think through a

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syllogism like if P then Q and then we we use that uh to make a better

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decision uh or is it something else?

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So so what you're describing does happen.

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Um you know it's it's been no it's been known to happen.

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But the the point that Dance Barber and I have been making in in a number of of

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publications is that we don't think that's what reasoning is for.

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So in in evolutionary terms, uh we've suggested that the function of of reason, of human

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reason, is not to to think about things on your own and to weigh the pros and cons and to

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try to to arrive at better decisions, but on the contrary, to reason with others, to

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exchange arguments, to exchange justifications.

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Um still because it's an evolutionary psychology podcast, it's important to specify that

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it's not a it doesn't have a group function.

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The goal isn't to get things better for everybody.

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The point is still purely individual, but instead of the point being to just reason better

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on your own, the point or the the points rather are both to convince others to

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change other people's minds and to have your mind changed when you should, so when when

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other people have good reasons um so you can change your mind and and adopt uh or you know

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at least move towards their views.

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So that that's a that's a crucial distinction.

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So you you mentioned that we we evolved to reason in groups, um, but uh reasoning did not

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evolve for the good of the group.

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It in fact evolved for the good of the individual and that the individual benefits by uh

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persuading uh the person they're arguing with or perhaps justifying their behavior to the

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person they're talking with and that you know gains them reputational benefits.

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Uh it might help them manipulate others uh to their own uh end.

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And um as a byproduct of everybody sort of pursuing their their individual self-interest

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and trying to persuade each other and justify themselves, uh sometimes what you get is an

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emergent outcome which is good for the group.

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So if everyone is is arguing their own case, um, then you get a kind of

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intellectual division of labor where uh a bunch of different views get people uh um

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fired up and and focused on the particular reasons for that view.

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And then you get uh a bunch you basically you get a bunch of different people working on

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justifications for different views and and the views that rise to the top, that succeed,

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that that prevail tend to be the ones that are more well justified, well reasoned.

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Is is that basically the the the claim you're making?

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Yeah, exactly.

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Um and and that's because on the one hand, so when you're producing arguments, when you're

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producing reasons, when you're reasoning in a more active manner, indeed your goal is to

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either uh when you're doing it live, kind of just you know to to persuade people to change

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their minds either about the conclusion you're trying to defend or at least about what they

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think of you.

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When you're justifying yourself, you you don't, you know, you want to to you want them to

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think that your your choices and your beliefs are rational.

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Um, but there's also the more kind of passive uh position, which is when you're evaluating

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other people's reasons and arguments and justifications.

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And then your goal is much more objective.

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The goal is really to figure out are these good reasons and should I change my mind on the

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basis of these reasons.

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And the two of them are really um completely necessary for group, uh for both for

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individuals, because you know, if if my goal was to convince others but they would never

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change their minds then obviously it would be pointless.

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Um but it's also how the kind of the the phenomenon you were describing of of groups ending

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up uh better off it's also th it's also thanks to that because people do change their minds

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when when they are confronted with good arguments.

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Yeah and we talked a little bit about proximate versus ultimate or sort of whether or not

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you're conscious of something.

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Hugo how do you think about this in the in the following sense?

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I'm sure a lot of people listening are like, I don't experience myself at all, sort of

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thinking, well, what's in it for me?

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Starting with that, and then sort of going through thinking and deciding whether or not to

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take some evidence or to to reach a conclusion.

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I mean, I think we all have the experience of doing that, of biased reasoning.

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But then we have the also the experience of for a lot of us most of the time not doing it.

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And is your argument that even that category, that second category of not consciously

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experiencing stuff, there's still this software that we're not even conscious of?

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Is that a fair character?

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Exactly.

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No, exactly.

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That's the point.

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So obviously, you know, no one is surprised that a lawyer or a politician, when they are

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practicing a speech or a plea, will be specifically looking for arguments that support

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their clients or their other cause or whatever else.

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And when that happens, even if they happen to stumble upon a counter argument, they won't

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at you know, they won't mention it.

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You know, they'll just only go for for the arguments that support whatever it is they want

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to support.

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And that's a very kind of strategic thing to do.

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And it's not the pure expression of reasoning.

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It involves other mechanisms that that will uh make it even more uh biased, or but in in

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that case in in a way that makes sense.

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No, the the the point we're trying to make is that even when we're reasoning in a

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completely you know kind of normal manner, the function of the mechanism is social.

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And obviously we're not aware of it in the same way as when we're you know when we're

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having sex, we're not aware of the fact that the function of this is to pass on our genes.

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I mean except maybe Elon Musk or you know a few people who really do it for that reason.

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But uh so it's the same obviously we're not supposed to have uh to have

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access to the uh kind of the ultimate functions of our our cognitive mechanisms.

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Yeah.

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Is there are there design features?

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Sorry, David, are there design so it just in the same way like having sex, right?

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It's sort of it's not just empty that the function of it is producing offspring.

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There's all kinds of design features about like who we find attractive that follow because

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that's the function.

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And so are have you discovered, are there attributes of reasoning that people might not

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know that our design features, because the function is argument, that might be different

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than the design features people might think if the function was just sort of impartial

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learning of the truth.

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That's a great question.

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Thank you.

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I think actually our theory mostly explains features of reasoning that were known but that

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were taken for granted and that should have been mysterious.

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So it is quite well known and quite well established in evolutionary psychology, sorry, in

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the psychology of reasoning and judgment and decision making that people have a

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confirmation bias or my side bias.

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So whenever you're you're reasoning about anything, uh whether you're on your own or or

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you're talking with others, um, you will spontaneously find overwhelmingly arguments that

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support your view.

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And just as a as an aside, one of the best experimental demonstrations of that is an

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experiment done by some um Swedish um psychologists using the the choice plainness

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paradigm.

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So in that experiment, uh people like the the experimenters pretend to be uh kind of

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holsters asking questions to people on the street.

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And they have a little clipboard with a a sheet full of questions.

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And the questions could be something like, you know, do you think like in the trade-off

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between security and and freedom to like fight terrorism, for instance, do you think that

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security or freedom matters the matters most?

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And people have a scale, you know, from like one, which means like I mostly care about

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security or seven, I mostly care about freedom, and they circle the number that that fits

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with their opinions.

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And they do that for a number of questions, And then they give the clipboard with a sheet

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back to the experimenter who uses a sleight of hand to actually to copy, to kind of

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glue onto the sheet a question that spells the opposite of the original question.

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So if the original question was, you know, I think that uh freedom matters more than

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safety, then the new question reads, I think that safety matters more than freedom.

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And so, but people's answers are the same.

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So if you've circled six the first time around, you still have a six that's circled.

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But now the six means the opposite of what it used to mean.

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And so, you know, they say, well, that tell people, look, you know, here is the questions

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back.

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Now I'm going to ask you to justify your opinions.

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You know, where do you think?

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What do you have that point of view?

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And what they found is that first of all, only like 5% of participants were

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realized that they had been tricked in that way.

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So like a very small number of participants realized.

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And of those participants who didn't realize so the the ability majority,

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these people were as able to produce arguments for the view that they had originally said

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was theirs as for the other view.

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So it's quite striking.

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And in that case we know it's it's purely a confirmation bias because it's not the case

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that people just have a lot of reasons that they would support freedom over safety or

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security.

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Um instead they just mix stuff on stuff up on the spot and they're equally able to mix

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stuff up per for for both views.

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So this is the kind of confirmation bias or my side bias.

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And if you if you thought that the function of reason was to help you come at better

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decisions on your own or or you know arrive at better beliefs, such a bias would be

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completely self-defeating, in the sense that you know you're you're thinking about things

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and you're trying to consider the pros and cons of various decisions.

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If whatever original intuition or feeling you have, you only find reasons supporting that,

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you will never change your mind.

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So if you start wrong, you will never get better.

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So that's really the opposite of what you'd want for a mechanism that is supposed to help

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you, you know, think uh things through and reevaluate your own opinions.

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So this this confirmation bias or my side bias, who, you know, whose existence has been

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known for a long time, for us it makes a lot of sense in the sense that when you're

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producing reasons, you want to convince other people.

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And so if you want to convince someone, obviously you want to find reasons for your point

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of view or against theirs.

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You don't want to do the, you know, you don't want to do the opposite.

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And it is hard.

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Like we can do it.

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But it's a really hard, you know.

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When you ask people, if you ask a hardcore Democrat, you know, can you think of good

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reasons where people may be voting for Trump?

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It's gonna be really hard for them as a rule.

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Um, it's possible, but it's it's a hard exercise.

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So that's one of the features uh of reason that that we think our theory can can account

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for.

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Um so you mentioned this uh very disturbing finding where um

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people will be tricked into thinking that they answered a survey the opposite way that they

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actually answered it, and then they will just basically make stuff up or or confabulate a

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justification or a reason why they chose that response, uh, even though they they in fact

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didn't.

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Um and uh what's disturbing about this is that it suggests that we might be doing this more

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or less all the time.

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Every time we we we we do something, um we um we start a

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podcast, we uh invite someone onto a podcast, we might confabulate a reason.

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So the reason we're starting this podcast is because we're interested in in you know

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reaching the truth and and spreading truth to the masses.

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Um that might be a kind of confabulation that uh Dave and I tell uh the exception though is

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that it's true in our case, but in everyone else's case.

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Um it's not true.

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Um so one question I have for you is a kind of uh game theoretic question.

00:14:52.030 --> 00:14:57.710
So if everyone is confabulating bullshit reasons for their for their

00:14:57.710 --> 00:15:00.750
behavior, more or less, and I am a fan of that word.

00:15:01.790 --> 00:15:06.270
Bullshit in the in this in the sense that the confabulation is not designed to accurately

00:15:06.270 --> 00:15:11.790
detect the underlying motives of the behavior, but it's designed to convey a positive

00:15:11.790 --> 00:15:17.790
impression, look competent or benevolent or whatever, maybe maybe fit the prevailing social

00:15:17.950 --> 00:15:18.590
norms.

00:15:19.220 --> 00:15:24.980
If that is the function of these justifications, why do we believe each

00:15:24.980 --> 00:15:26.180
other's justifications?

00:15:27.140 --> 00:15:31.780
Why don't we just say, uh, you know, Dave, you're telling me this the story for why you are

00:15:31.780 --> 00:15:32.660
interested in starting this podcast?

00:15:32.740 --> 00:15:34.100
When I say, Dave, you're full of shit.

00:15:34.260 --> 00:15:34.980
Why I don't believe you.

00:15:35.380 --> 00:15:38.500
It seems like much of our culture involves giving reasons for our behavior.

00:15:38.660 --> 00:15:43.690
And much of the time we're actually quite uh gullible for lack of a better word of people's

00:15:43.690 --> 00:15:44.410
justifications.

00:15:44.490 --> 00:15:49.770
And our culture is kind of made up of these, made up uh from these bullshit reasons for

00:15:49.770 --> 00:15:50.490
lack of a better term.

00:15:50.570 --> 00:15:56.410
So why uh why do we accept these reasons if they're coming from such a uh epistemically

00:15:56.410 --> 00:15:57.770
unreliable place?

00:15:58.490 --> 00:15:59.930
So thanks for the for the question.

00:16:00.170 --> 00:16:02.890
Um so I I don't think it's that unreliable.

00:16:03.050 --> 00:16:07.850
Um so first of all, obviously there has to be some simplification in the sense that

00:16:09.400 --> 00:16:15.000
our motives are necessarily complicated, and so it would be impossible to just

00:16:16.760 --> 00:16:20.440
express them in a in a simple way whenever we want someone asks us why we're doing

00:16:20.440 --> 00:16:21.080
something.

00:16:21.320 --> 00:16:27.000
But I do think that we're not that gullible and that if I if you gave people a really a

00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:31.400
motive that had nothing to do with your actual motives, most people would would call you up

00:16:31.400 --> 00:16:31.640
on it.

00:16:31.720 --> 00:16:32.920
And indeed most people do.

00:16:33.000 --> 00:16:37.960
And most of the justifications we give are actually decent justifications.

00:16:39.610 --> 00:16:44.890
The situation in which it's more likely to have justifications that are really

00:16:45.130 --> 00:16:47.690
made up is when they suit everybody.

00:16:47.850 --> 00:16:52.250
So usually when you have to justify something, it's because you're, you know, you expect

00:16:52.250 --> 00:16:55.770
that that someone else, either you can see someone else is judging you, they're asking you

00:16:56.090 --> 00:16:57.050
why did you do this?

00:16:57.210 --> 00:17:02.010
But most of the time we anticipate other people judging us, and we uh we give them reasons

00:17:02.010 --> 00:17:04.890
for what we've done to anticipate being being judged negatively.

00:17:04.970 --> 00:17:10.320
So if you, you know, if you if you do something, you know, you break the the law on the

00:17:10.320 --> 00:17:13.360
road or something, you know, you say, well, you know, I was, I was in a rush, or you know,

00:17:13.440 --> 00:17:14.400
I didn't see the car coming.

00:17:14.480 --> 00:17:19.280
So you're going to explain your behavior kind of in a preemptive manner.

00:17:22.080 --> 00:17:26.800
And so usually things work well because you have these other people to keep you in check.

00:17:26.880 --> 00:17:30.480
So then again if you say something that has nothing to do with reality or that is not

00:17:30.480 --> 00:17:35.790
plausible given your personality, given your context, uh, people won't accept it.

00:17:36.190 --> 00:17:41.870
But sometimes as a group of people or even as a society, we're happy to have

00:17:41.870 --> 00:17:46.750
justifications that are, you know, that we could present to someone else, or that, you

00:17:46.750 --> 00:17:49.550
know, we but we they never really get properly evaluated.

00:17:49.790 --> 00:17:54.030
And these are the ones uh for which it's kind of easier to get away with stuff that is that

00:17:54.030 --> 00:17:55.630
is less plausible.

00:17:55.870 --> 00:18:01.000
Um like to give you examples, like in you know, in in most or maybe every small scale

00:18:01.160 --> 00:18:06.920
society, people believe in uh in witches or in kind of some some form of supernatural

00:18:06.920 --> 00:18:11.080
entity that that causes uh many or kind of most misfortunes.

00:18:11.880 --> 00:18:16.600
And it's possible that people have good reasons for wanting to be able to blame a given

00:18:16.600 --> 00:18:18.920
individual for a given misfortune.

00:18:19.510 --> 00:18:23.190
And like it's not just one person, it's like the group as a whole is happy enough to

00:18:23.190 --> 00:18:26.950
converge on the idea that, well, you know, we don't have to all share the responsibility

00:18:26.950 --> 00:18:27.910
for that guy's misfortune.

00:18:27.990 --> 00:18:29.590
We're just gonna say it's that guy's fault.

00:18:29.750 --> 00:18:34.150
And except for that guy, um, everybody else is kind of happy to believe that.

00:18:34.310 --> 00:18:39.190
Um, and so they can make up justifications that from an outside perspective may might not

00:18:39.190 --> 00:18:40.150
be super convincing.

00:18:40.230 --> 00:18:45.340
But given that everybody is kind of looking for a justification, the threshold for or the

00:18:45.340 --> 00:18:46.940
criteria are kind of quite low.

00:18:47.020 --> 00:18:51.020
You don't need something super good because everybody just wants to have a justification.

00:18:51.180 --> 00:18:55.180
And that's the risk when you're when you're talking to people who who agree with you and

00:18:55.180 --> 00:18:58.540
you're finding reasons or or justifications for your views.

00:18:58.700 --> 00:19:00.620
They're not going to be critically evaluated.

00:19:00.700 --> 00:19:05.020
And so you can get away with stuff that wouldn't fly if you were actually talking to

00:19:05.020 --> 00:19:07.260
someone who would who would properly be critical of you.

00:19:07.670 --> 00:19:11.830
Yeah, another example might be that death by Phantasm in the Brenda Bowser episode.

00:19:11.910 --> 00:19:17.030
Uh, there's uh the, you know, in the the local ecology, there were groups of people from

00:19:17.030 --> 00:19:22.390
different areas all coming together to f decide how a horrendous murder what happened, and

00:19:22.390 --> 00:19:25.670
they all decided, the elders decided it was death by phantasm.

00:19:25.830 --> 00:19:29.110
And presumably they all agreed, and other people agreed.

00:19:29.350 --> 00:19:34.760
And that was an argument of uh, well, it's going to be high cost to like pin this on

00:19:34.760 --> 00:19:36.280
somebody and the retaliatory cost.

00:19:36.440 --> 00:19:40.760
So all individual minds are sort of thinking it's not worth the cost to like pin this on

00:19:40.760 --> 00:19:41.240
somebody.

00:19:41.400 --> 00:19:47.240
And so the evaluation of phantasm being plausible or not has nothing to do with whether or

00:19:47.240 --> 00:19:52.360
not a phantasm exists per se, but it's sort of like, do I agree with this for these other

00:19:52.360 --> 00:19:52.840
reasons?

00:19:53.080 --> 00:19:53.400
Right.

00:19:54.170 --> 00:19:57.930
Yeah, because I mean when you when we think, I mean, so I mean obviously you're you're

00:19:57.930 --> 00:20:02.570
right, David, that um, you know, the justifications we give, I mean, their function is to

00:20:02.650 --> 00:20:03.930
is to make us look good.

00:20:04.010 --> 00:20:08.250
So, you know, we we're gonna if we have a choice of different motives that we can pick as a

00:20:08.250 --> 00:20:11.450
reason, we're gonna try to pick the one that makes us look better.

00:20:11.610 --> 00:20:15.690
But let's say I, you know, I I had I hadn't showed up today to the podcast and you asked

00:20:15.690 --> 00:20:18.170
me, so why you know why didn't you log in?

00:20:18.330 --> 00:20:22.730
And I say, well, I was uh you know, I was saving a child's life somehow.

00:20:22.920 --> 00:20:26.680
Uh you know, you you know either you kinda you ask me for some details, you know what what

00:20:26.680 --> 00:20:29.320
the hell happened, but you're not going to just to take my word for it, like it's gonna

00:20:29.320 --> 00:20:29.880
look weird.

00:20:30.120 --> 00:20:33.080
Even though it's maybe the excuse I could give that could, you know, make me look weird.

00:20:33.240 --> 00:20:34.520
You probably would take your word for it.

00:20:35.960 --> 00:20:39.640
Honestly, no, it's interesting that you bring up that example 'cause I probably would take

00:20:39.640 --> 00:20:44.360
your word for it because if I did challenge your account, I would look hostile to you.

00:20:46.360 --> 00:20:47.800
I would look like I don't I don't trust you.

00:20:47.880 --> 00:20:48.200
Yeah.

00:20:48.850 --> 00:20:53.490
it's plausible that you know you would find out at some point or you know there was I can't

00:20:53.570 --> 00:20:56.690
you know if like yeah you know because you're on the other side of the world it you know

00:20:56.690 --> 00:21:00.690
it's it might fly but but if I were to say that to my to my co-workers like you know how

00:21:00.690 --> 00:21:04.370
did you like what happened and then you have to make stuff up that's complicated and you

00:21:04.370 --> 00:21:06.610
get caught in a lie and then you look really really bad.

00:21:06.850 --> 00:21:07.090
Yeah.

00:21:07.890 --> 00:21:11.890
And so in that case it's a bit extreme because it's a you know a complete complete lie.

00:21:12.050 --> 00:21:17.500
But you know, even if I if someone who is com is always late and they always say, Oh, you

00:21:17.500 --> 00:21:20.620
know, it's because I missed my train, blah blah blah, you know, if you know that person,

00:21:20.700 --> 00:21:21.660
you know it's bullshit.

00:21:21.740 --> 00:21:25.580
Like you know it's just that they're bad at keeping time and then they don't really care

00:21:25.580 --> 00:21:26.620
about some meetings.

00:21:26.860 --> 00:21:30.780
And so maybe as you are saying, socially you're not gonna challenge them, but you're still

00:21:30.780 --> 00:21:32.860
judging them as they should be judged.

00:21:33.350 --> 00:21:34.070
Yeah, that's a great point.

00:21:34.150 --> 00:21:39.430
So if if I could summarize the take, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, um, yes, we all

00:21:39.430 --> 00:21:43.350
have an incentive to kind of bullshit about the reasons why we do things to confabulate.

00:21:43.510 --> 00:21:48.470
Um, but usually people are pretty skeptical and pretty vigilant against this kind of

00:21:48.470 --> 00:21:53.590
bullshitting, and that forces us to come up with a reasonably uh compelling justification

00:21:53.590 --> 00:21:54.310
for why we did things.

00:21:54.390 --> 00:21:57.990
Because if it was too crazy and too implausible, people wouldn't believe us and they would

00:21:57.990 --> 00:22:00.310
judge us and we would uh have reputational costs.

00:22:00.710 --> 00:22:01.590
It would be worse, exactly.

00:22:01.670 --> 00:22:01.750
Yeah.

00:22:01.990 --> 00:22:02.630
It would be worse.

00:22:02.820 --> 00:22:08.820
But in some cases when everyone has the same biases or the same interests to come up with a

00:22:08.820 --> 00:22:09.780
particular justification.

00:22:09.940 --> 00:22:14.580
So for example, in the case of the Brenda Bowser episodes when everyone has a uh has a

00:22:14.580 --> 00:22:19.220
reason to not create a cycle of violence, uh, and everyone has a reason to maybe pin this

00:22:19.220 --> 00:22:23.540
on a phantasm, then you can get a kind of cooperative bullshitting where everyone is trying

00:22:23.540 --> 00:22:27.300
to tell a story that justifies a particular cour course of action that everyone has an

00:22:27.300 --> 00:22:28.180
interest in pursuing.

00:22:28.260 --> 00:22:31.250
And you can get this in political groups as well, where you get a kind of cooperative

00:22:31.250 --> 00:22:35.890
bullshitting where we where we come up with a story that justifies the agenda of our group.

00:22:36.130 --> 00:22:40.850
Maybe we spin a utopian narrative that if we pursue this objective, it's going to create a

00:22:40.850 --> 00:22:43.570
utopia on Earth and therefore it's it's worthwhile.

00:22:43.890 --> 00:22:48.690
And so and and that would be a different mechanism for for uh this kind of stuff.

00:22:49.090 --> 00:22:50.180
Yes, no, no, completely.

00:22:50.260 --> 00:22:55.780
And and and these kind of uh cultural productions are um are are very interesting.

00:22:56.020 --> 00:23:01.220
Um but as a rule given the the mechanism that generates them they're not really causally

00:23:01.220 --> 00:23:01.620
efficacious.

00:23:01.780 --> 00:23:04.500
Like if people want to do something in the first place and then they're going to you know

00:23:04.500 --> 00:23:07.860
confabulate some some justification that everybody's happy to accept.

00:23:08.180 --> 00:23:10.340
But it's the justification isn't why they're doing it.

00:23:10.420 --> 00:23:15.590
Like it's not as if yes you people were like at some point someone convinces them that

00:23:15.590 --> 00:23:18.390
witches exist and and and then they start seeing witches everywhere.

00:23:18.470 --> 00:23:21.990
It's like they're they're happy to believe that witches exist to a large extent.

00:23:22.310 --> 00:23:26.710
And and so then they're happy to accept the theory sort of that they that they do exist.

00:23:27.030 --> 00:23:27.270
Right.

00:23:27.430 --> 00:23:31.270
Because they all have a common interest in not being the one uh burned at the stake.

00:23:31.430 --> 00:23:36.390
And because they are all biased in that direction to not themselves be the witches, then

00:23:36.390 --> 00:23:39.430
they are happy to accept the reason why someone else is a witch.

00:23:39.800 --> 00:23:43.400
Yeah, actually in that case in particular, I mean we're kind of it's a bit of a tangent,

00:23:43.480 --> 00:23:49.240
but but Pascal Boyer has has uh has this interesting theory that a lot of these beliefs,

00:23:49.400 --> 00:23:53.640
like if you're if you're in a in in most societies in which people you know cooperate to to

00:23:53.640 --> 00:23:59.560
to some extent, so essentially all societies, um there's some uh informal burden

00:23:59.560 --> 00:24:01.560
to help people who suffer misfortunes.

00:24:01.640 --> 00:24:06.120
Like it's not clear exactly who the burden falls on and how how large the burden should be.

00:24:06.360 --> 00:24:09.530
But you know, even if in in our societies, if something really bad happens to your

00:24:09.530 --> 00:24:12.090
neighbor, you feel as if maybe you should do something to help.

00:24:12.330 --> 00:24:15.450
And it's not clear who should help and how much everybody should help.

00:24:15.530 --> 00:24:18.010
And so it's a bit of a it's not a great situation to be in.

00:24:18.090 --> 00:24:24.090
And most people are happy to to try to minimize the uh how much it how much it

00:24:24.090 --> 00:24:25.610
is perceived that they should help.

00:24:25.770 --> 00:24:29.690
And if you say either, well, you know, that person had a misfortune because they they

00:24:29.690 --> 00:24:31.610
violated a taboo, so then it's their fault.

00:24:31.690 --> 00:24:34.170
So no one really has to help because they brought it on themselves.

00:24:34.420 --> 00:24:40.420
or it's that guy who who you know who um uh bewitched them or you know um cast a spell or

00:24:40.420 --> 00:24:43.220
whatever, then that guy has to pay reparation.

00:24:43.380 --> 00:24:45.860
And so I don't have to do anything either.

00:24:46.180 --> 00:24:50.820
And what's nice with this is that actually in most societies, witches are not punished.

00:24:50.900 --> 00:24:54.100
Like you say, oh no, he's the witch, it's his fault, and then the guy has to apologize and

00:24:54.100 --> 00:24:59.710
do, you know, maybe help a bit the guy who suffered the misfortune, But the the punishment

00:24:59.710 --> 00:25:04.350
is really not commensurate with the accusation, like we know with the thing that the person

00:25:04.350 --> 00:25:05.150
is accused of.

00:25:05.310 --> 00:25:11.310
So just everybody is happy to have uh you know uh uh someone that they can put the the pin

00:25:11.310 --> 00:25:12.430
pin the blame on.

00:25:12.670 --> 00:25:16.270
And then once they have that, they don't really want to punish the person because that's

00:25:16.270 --> 00:25:16.670
not the point.

00:25:16.750 --> 00:25:20.670
The point is just to to so that everybody knows I'm not the one who has to help the guy who

00:25:20.670 --> 00:25:22.110
suffered the misfortune.

00:25:22.960 --> 00:25:23.280
Yeah.

00:25:23.440 --> 00:25:28.720
So yeah, in that case, the um the motive would be none of us want to actually pitch in to

00:25:28.720 --> 00:25:29.440
help this guy.

00:25:29.520 --> 00:25:33.280
And this narrative helps us uh force someone else to help the guy.

00:25:33.760 --> 00:25:35.840
Yeah, and justify our are not helping them.

00:25:35.920 --> 00:25:37.680
Yeah or not helping them too much anyway.

00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:43.040
It really sounds like, I mean, even in that example, like sort of words are uh really

00:25:43.200 --> 00:25:48.800
pretty um minimally effective in the following sense of like we're saying somebody caused

00:25:48.800 --> 00:25:54.350
their misfortune and that's just to prevent other people from sort of saying I should do

00:25:54.350 --> 00:25:54.910
something.

00:25:55.070 --> 00:26:00.830
Um, but then if you take seriously that this person caused the misfortune, the behavior

00:26:00.830 --> 00:26:02.830
should be, you know, we should really do something.

00:26:02.990 --> 00:26:05.470
But then people don't want to do that.

00:26:05.630 --> 00:26:10.190
So I mean it's a it's a real clear case of there's sort of an asymmetry with use of words,

00:26:10.270 --> 00:26:15.960
even that it's sort of coalitional in the sense of it's sort of defensive words are

00:26:16.120 --> 00:26:20.200
are sort of produced, but then when when it's sort of offensive and it's like, well, this

00:26:20.200 --> 00:26:23.320
involves having to actually do something, everyone's like, oh whatever, whatever, we'll

00:26:23.320 --> 00:26:24.600
just kind of let that slide.

00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:25.880
Yeah, exactly.

00:26:26.120 --> 00:26:26.360
Yeah.

00:26:26.680 --> 00:26:28.920
There there's a just oh sorry, David, go ahead.

00:26:29.000 --> 00:26:29.160
Yeah.

00:26:29.640 --> 00:26:32.520
So just well, one interesting thought that just occurred to me.

00:26:32.680 --> 00:26:38.170
Do you think um the uh uh inability of us to detect our own

00:26:38.170 --> 00:26:40.810
biases is itself a design feature of this system.

00:26:41.050 --> 00:26:44.890
So you could imagine a system where uh you know we're in the middle of a of a witch hunt,

00:26:44.970 --> 00:26:49.050
and I'm perfectly aware that the only reason I'm accusing this person of witchcraft is to

00:26:49.050 --> 00:26:51.050
uh get him to help out and not me.

00:26:51.290 --> 00:26:55.850
If I'm aware of that, um, and maybe I'm explicit about that, well, that's going to really

00:26:55.850 --> 00:27:00.330
lower my chances of successfully accusing that guy of witchcraft if I say, Oh, I'm only

00:27:00.330 --> 00:27:01.690
doing this because I don't want to help.

00:27:01.850 --> 00:27:07.340
Um, and so it could it be that this inability to detect um the underlying

00:27:07.340 --> 00:27:12.940
motivations of our of our arguments, our underlying biases, um is itself a design feature

00:27:13.020 --> 00:27:16.780
and that if we were aware of them, perhaps it might leak out and it might make our

00:27:16.780 --> 00:27:17.980
arguments less convincing.

00:27:18.140 --> 00:27:22.300
If I'm in the middle of an argument with you and I uh am explicit about my biases and my

00:27:22.300 --> 00:27:25.900
underlying agenda, that's going to make you more vigilant and that's going to make you uh

00:27:25.980 --> 00:27:26.700
trust me less.

00:27:26.860 --> 00:27:31.890
So I have an incentive to try to frame my argument my my arguing and reasoning as a kind of

00:27:31.890 --> 00:27:35.570
disinterested, dispassionate truth seeking to increase the chances that you'll actually

00:27:35.570 --> 00:27:36.530
accept my arguments.

00:27:36.770 --> 00:27:37.970
What what do you think of that idea?

00:27:38.530 --> 00:27:44.290
Yeah, I mean I I don't think you need anything specifically designed to not do something

00:27:44.290 --> 00:27:46.610
that is cognitively tremendously hard in the first place.

00:27:46.770 --> 00:27:52.560
You just not you just there's no pressure for that mechanism you're describing to evolve.

00:27:52.720 --> 00:27:53.840
And so it doesn't evolve.

00:27:53.920 --> 00:27:56.480
You don't need specific pressure for it not to evolve in a way.

00:27:56.560 --> 00:28:00.480
You just you because it's a you know it's a very complex cognitive machinery, you need a

00:28:00.480 --> 00:28:02.960
lot of positive pressure for the thing to evolve in the first place.

00:28:03.120 --> 00:28:07.280
So its absence doesn't need an explanation beyond that in a way.

00:28:07.680 --> 00:28:13.680
Um yeah, but you because you could also have imagined that it would be obviously like we

00:28:13.680 --> 00:28:17.330
have cognitive mechanisms that allow us to understand people's motives, like we have theory

00:28:17.330 --> 00:28:17.570
of mind.

00:28:17.650 --> 00:28:20.610
So, because it's really important for us to understand other people's motives.

00:28:20.850 --> 00:28:25.330
And you'd think we'd be more keen on training them to ourselves on you know onto ourselves,

00:28:25.410 --> 00:28:30.770
and we're not doing it that much, uh, which suggests that it's a lot of it is a problem of

00:28:30.850 --> 00:28:31.250
motivation.

00:28:31.330 --> 00:28:37.010
Like we're not, it's not something that evolutionarily would have helped people to you know

00:28:37.090 --> 00:28:39.090
to better understand themselves.

00:28:39.410 --> 00:28:43.280
Because you know, you're supposed to already your brain is wired to do the things that

00:28:43.280 --> 00:28:44.320
aren't good for you in the first place.

00:28:44.400 --> 00:28:47.120
So understanding it isn't gonna help you by default.

00:28:47.680 --> 00:28:52.880
And just uh as a throwback or callback to another episode with depression in Ed Hagen, I

00:28:52.880 --> 00:28:56.480
mean, I think uh correct me if I'm wrong, but with the one area where people don't have

00:28:56.480 --> 00:29:00.160
confirmation biases as much is people who are depressed.

00:29:00.320 --> 00:29:00.560
Right.

00:29:00.720 --> 00:29:06.690
And the argument is that's a design feature for um essentially arguing

00:29:06.690 --> 00:29:11.570
that, well, however whatever settings we have in this brain are not working, uh, and we

00:29:11.570 --> 00:29:17.330
really need to evaluate things more objectively than the settings in this thing, uh in the

00:29:17.410 --> 00:29:19.410
in the current uh body envelope.

00:29:19.490 --> 00:29:24.050
And so that's one area where you actually do get sort of quote unquote less biased

00:29:24.050 --> 00:29:24.450
reasoning.

00:29:24.530 --> 00:29:26.370
Is that um I don't know.

00:29:26.450 --> 00:29:27.090
That's a good question.

00:29:27.170 --> 00:29:32.210
I don't know to what extent they would have less of this specific bias have I I've been

00:29:32.210 --> 00:29:37.560
describing in the sense that, you know for instance uh the bias this is my side bias or

00:29:37.560 --> 00:29:42.520
confirmation bias if I give you you know peep psychologists have a lot of these logical

00:29:42.520 --> 00:29:46.520
problems that tend to be tricky so the typical one is the bat and bowl so like you know

00:29:46.600 --> 00:29:52.360
like a bat and a bowl cost one dollar and ten cents together the bat costs uh five uh the

00:29:52.360 --> 00:29:57.080
bat costs one dollar more than bat than the bowl how much does the bowl cost uh most people

00:29:57.080 --> 00:30:02.850
say ten cents the correct answer is five cents and um and when you give people that kind of

00:30:02.850 --> 00:30:07.730
problems, it's one of the one of the also very clean demonstration of a confirmation bias

00:30:07.810 --> 00:30:11.490
because you give them the problem, immediately they think that ten cents is the correct

00:30:11.490 --> 00:30:11.970
answer.

00:30:12.130 --> 00:30:16.770
And then if through uh you know eye tracking, think about protocols, whatever else, you

00:30:16.770 --> 00:30:20.850
figure out what people are thinking after they have they have had that initial intuition,

00:30:21.170 --> 00:30:23.490
overwhelmingly they're looking for reasons where they're right.

00:30:23.570 --> 00:30:25.330
So they have this confirmation bias.

00:30:25.620 --> 00:30:29.620
And I think that you know, whether you're depressed or super happy, you is going to be

00:30:29.620 --> 00:30:30.740
exactly the same.

00:30:30.900 --> 00:30:34.180
Uh, people who are depressed are not going to start thinking, oh, you know, maybe I'm

00:30:34.180 --> 00:30:34.660
completely wrong.

00:30:34.820 --> 00:30:37.380
What about five cents, or what about some other answer?

00:30:37.700 --> 00:30:42.500
So uh, I mean, obviously, the the differences that that Ed Hagen was talking about are are

00:30:42.500 --> 00:30:45.460
real, but I don't think they would affect that spot that particular bias.

00:30:45.540 --> 00:30:50.740
It's more generally, you know, how optimistic or how you know how able to kind of

00:30:50.740 --> 00:30:54.180
self-inflate you are rather than than this specific mechanism.

00:30:54.550 --> 00:30:54.790
Right.

00:30:54.870 --> 00:30:59.030
Or I mean, or what I mean, I think the argument and for the the people who argue that it

00:30:59.030 --> 00:31:03.510
happens is sort of uh, you know, if we're having a conversation and we're arguing who's

00:31:03.510 --> 00:31:08.630
right, I'm just more likely, if I'm depressed, to sort of think I'm less correct, right?

00:31:08.870 --> 00:31:10.790
I mean this is just individual differences, right?

00:31:11.270 --> 00:31:12.630
Yeah, no, possibly.

00:31:12.790 --> 00:31:18.710
I mean you want to like uh um so there aren't

00:31:18.980 --> 00:31:23.220
so when we talk about reasoning, for us there are two main functions.

00:31:23.380 --> 00:31:27.140
One is to exchange arguments because we want to change someone's mind about a given

00:31:27.140 --> 00:31:27.540
conclusion.

00:31:27.700 --> 00:31:32.260
Like let's say we want to, you know, we want to go for dinner together and we disagree

00:31:32.260 --> 00:31:36.340
about which restaurant to go to, and we might exchange arguments as to you know where we

00:31:36.340 --> 00:31:37.220
should be going.

00:31:37.540 --> 00:31:39.540
And the other function is to justify ourselves.

00:31:39.620 --> 00:31:42.980
So you know, do you when you if I you know if I've done something that you think might be

00:31:42.980 --> 00:31:46.100
stupid or I've picked a restaurant that you think was really bad, then I'm I'm just trying

00:31:46.100 --> 00:31:47.860
to justify and defend myself.

00:31:48.100 --> 00:31:54.030
And a lot of the discussions we have, even though it feels like in theory, they're about

00:31:54.030 --> 00:31:56.270
conviction, like they're about what is true.

00:31:56.750 --> 00:31:59.950
Like when you talk about politics, when you talk about culture, when you talk about a lot

00:31:59.950 --> 00:32:05.150
of this of these things, because the conclusions don't affect us at all in our behavior,

00:32:05.710 --> 00:32:07.870
I think they're mostly actually about reputation.

00:32:07.950 --> 00:32:11.470
So a lot of it when we talk about these things, it's a way of showing that we have coherent

00:32:11.470 --> 00:32:14.670
opinions, that we're well informed, that we have moral opinions.

00:32:14.940 --> 00:32:18.940
And so if you are less motivated to show people that you're smart and that you're more, you

00:32:18.940 --> 00:32:22.540
know, a good person, et cetera, because you are depressed, then you're going to give up

00:32:22.540 --> 00:32:23.420
more easily.

00:32:23.820 --> 00:32:27.980
But if it's something that affects you more directly in terms of a decision that you have

00:32:27.980 --> 00:32:33.180
to make, then maybe the difference may be less between someone who is depressed.

00:32:33.340 --> 00:32:34.780
But I just don't know enough about depression.

00:32:35.180 --> 00:32:39.660
Yeah, and I mean getting off the depression thing, because this is a really subtle point.

00:32:39.820 --> 00:32:42.140
And I think I just want to make sure that I've got it.

00:32:42.780 --> 00:32:46.090
So what you've talked about is sort of people hold views.

00:32:46.330 --> 00:32:52.330
And there's good reasons, or there's at least software reasons, evolve software reasons why

00:32:52.330 --> 00:32:55.530
people hold views or opinions or behave the way they do.

00:32:56.010 --> 00:33:01.050
And that is sort of silent machinery that's calculating what we've basically characterized

00:33:01.050 --> 00:33:05.050
as like individual interest or like extended individual interest.

00:33:05.290 --> 00:33:07.130
So view is the one element.

00:33:07.370 --> 00:33:09.290
The other element is confabulation.

00:33:09.440 --> 00:33:15.280
So confabulation is sort of a narrative about why this view exists.

00:33:15.760 --> 00:33:20.800
And what I'm hearing from you is that a lot of conversation and reasoning is about

00:33:20.800 --> 00:33:22.960
coordinating confabulation.

00:33:23.520 --> 00:33:23.840
Right.

00:33:24.080 --> 00:33:26.640
So it's sort of like, so let's use the example of the podcast.

00:33:26.720 --> 00:33:29.120
So David and I are like, let's have a podcast, right?

00:33:29.890 --> 00:33:34.530
Having the podcast and the and the idea of having the podcast is sort of the view.

00:33:34.690 --> 00:33:39.490
But then everything we talk about is sort of if I said, well, let's have a podcast because

00:33:39.570 --> 00:33:43.170
you know the sky is purple, David would be like, Well, that's a bad reason.

00:33:43.250 --> 00:33:44.210
That doesn't make any sense.

00:33:44.370 --> 00:33:49.490
And why he's doing that is because if we tell other people that he's going to realize,

00:33:49.650 --> 00:33:50.850
well, that's just a bad reason.

00:33:50.930 --> 00:33:52.930
And people are going to be like, Well, that's a stupid reason.

00:33:53.090 --> 00:33:54.050
Don't you shouldn't have a podcast?

00:33:54.130 --> 00:33:58.200
It's not a good justification for him doing it, for telling his wife why he's spending time

00:33:58.280 --> 00:34:01.160
or like other himself why he's spending time doing it.

00:34:01.320 --> 00:34:05.320
Um, but maybe we say, well, we want to like inform people, right?

00:34:05.640 --> 00:34:08.440
And now that doesn't include all the reasons why we're doing it.

00:34:08.520 --> 00:34:11.160
It might not even include the primary reasons why we're doing it.

00:34:11.240 --> 00:34:16.760
So the view is sort of hidden from us, but he's still selecting among the confabulations

00:34:17.080 --> 00:34:22.930
that sort of work for the function of the confabulation, which is sort of to have a good

00:34:22.930 --> 00:34:27.890
reason, a good enough reason, even if it doesn't exhaust all the reasons for the view.

00:34:28.130 --> 00:34:33.250
So in this view, the view and the confabulation are very different sort of games in a way.

00:34:33.330 --> 00:34:34.930
Is that a fair characterization?

00:34:35.410 --> 00:34:41.260
Yeah, no, no, it is, but um So the what matters, I guess, in

00:34:41.260 --> 00:34:42.940
these things is who the audience is.

00:34:43.020 --> 00:34:48.620
So if you and David are brainstorming justifications for the podcast, essentially you're

00:34:48.780 --> 00:34:50.300
both of you want to do a podcast.

00:34:50.540 --> 00:34:54.700
So you're just anticipating in the same way that if if you on your own they had had wanted

00:34:54.700 --> 00:34:57.820
to do a podcast, you could think on your own and say, you know, what am I gonna tell my

00:34:57.820 --> 00:34:57.980
wife?

00:34:58.140 --> 00:34:59.980
What am I gonna tell other people?

00:35:00.300 --> 00:35:01.660
And so you can do that on your own.

00:35:01.740 --> 00:35:06.250
And we do that a lot, like we spend a lot of our time anticipating potential disagreement

00:35:06.250 --> 00:35:10.490
or judge or negative judgments and and you know anticipate what we would say and you can

00:35:10.490 --> 00:35:14.410
also do that in groups you know if if you're if it's a collective decision but sometimes

00:35:14.410 --> 00:35:18.010
you're just you know you're you're talking with with David or with some someone else and

00:35:18.010 --> 00:35:21.770
you're just disagreeing over something and then you're trying to justify your views to that

00:35:21.770 --> 00:35:23.690
person because they happen to be disagreeing.

00:35:23.850 --> 00:35:29.530
And I still think it's it's the that latter thing is the most common in the sense that when

00:35:29.530 --> 00:35:33.700
you're in a social setting and you realize that someone disagrees with you, you have a

00:35:33.700 --> 00:35:37.700
natural, like it's very spontaneously you'll you'll you'll think of arguments for why

00:35:37.700 --> 00:35:40.100
you're right or justifications for your views.

00:35:40.260 --> 00:35:45.860
Whereas when you haven't been exposed yet to someone disagreeing, you know, we don't find,

00:35:45.940 --> 00:35:48.740
you know, most of the decisions we make, we don't struggle for justifications.

00:35:48.820 --> 00:35:51.700
We just, you know, if I bought this burn of cereal, I just bought this burn of cyril, no

00:35:51.700 --> 00:35:53.300
one's gonna bother me about it.

00:35:53.540 --> 00:35:58.790
Um So it's only when you anticipate having this potentially negative feedback that you that

00:35:58.790 --> 00:36:00.230
you start looking for it.

00:36:00.550 --> 00:36:03.830
And and and you don't always anticipate having such feedback.

00:36:03.910 --> 00:36:05.430
I mean, you know, fortunately.

00:36:06.470 --> 00:36:08.470
Yeah, it's a really interesting, complicated thing.

00:36:08.550 --> 00:36:11.590
I mean, I'm thinking also, like, for example, like let's imagine somebody who's like

00:36:11.590 --> 00:36:13.270
cartoonishly racist, right?

00:36:13.430 --> 00:36:17.110
Like a Nazi or somebody, or or it's like a white supremacist.

00:36:17.270 --> 00:36:21.190
And there's sort of this classic idea that's sort of like they might have views or like

00:36:21.190 --> 00:36:23.430
confabulation for holding their view.

00:36:23.740 --> 00:36:27.500
But then if you take the example of somebody who changes their mind and they're no longer a

00:36:27.500 --> 00:36:33.500
Nazi or a white supremacist, it's often they just have the experience of, you know, of

00:36:33.500 --> 00:36:37.100
people being everywhere the same, you're right.

00:36:37.420 --> 00:36:39.660
But that wasn't the part of the confabulation.

00:36:39.740 --> 00:36:43.820
And so they'll even have a confabulation for sort of why they've changed their view.

00:36:44.060 --> 00:36:49.050
But in fact, the deep reason why they were prejudiced or racist in the first place was sort

00:36:49.050 --> 00:36:53.050
of overridden by cues, but it was never part of the verbal narrative, right?

00:36:53.130 --> 00:36:56.170
It's just like they just get have a different experience.

00:36:56.410 --> 00:37:02.410
So again, I think it comes back to um that's another example where really the

00:37:02.570 --> 00:37:06.410
the real reasons why we're doing things and then the verbal narratives are sort of really

00:37:06.410 --> 00:37:08.970
two different independent streams almost.

00:37:09.640 --> 00:37:13.560
Yes, I mean then again, I mean, as we were saying earlier, they can't be completely

00:37:13.560 --> 00:37:14.120
detached.

00:37:14.200 --> 00:37:17.400
I mean, I at least, you know, as long as you get some social feedback.

00:37:17.480 --> 00:37:20.760
Like if you're just completely in your head and you don't you don't talk about that

00:37:20.760 --> 00:37:25.720
specific justification to anybody, you can you can really kind of go off on a tangent, I

00:37:25.720 --> 00:37:26.120
guess.

00:37:26.360 --> 00:37:31.800
But as a rule, um, as we're saying, if you go if you veer too far off of something that's

00:37:31.880 --> 00:37:34.840
you know a bit like the truth, yeah, um, you're gonna have issues.

00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:38.830
But it's I mean, we think of it, you know, we're talking about it as if it's a bad thing,

00:37:38.910 --> 00:37:40.750
but that's also what you get, for instance, in mathematics.

00:37:40.910 --> 00:37:44.830
Like people have an intuition that a given uh conjecture is right, and then they work

00:37:44.910 --> 00:37:49.630
really, really hard on finding a theorem, and then they have the theorem, and that's and

00:37:49.630 --> 00:37:53.470
then you know, the reason why they know then that the the conjecture was actually correct.

00:37:53.710 --> 00:37:55.710
Sorry, they have the proof, so I know the theorem, they have the proof.

00:37:55.790 --> 00:37:57.550
So they work very hard on the proof.

00:37:58.030 --> 00:38:01.710
And the the reason why they thought the conjecture was correct with their intuition, their

00:38:01.710 --> 00:38:03.710
mathematical intuition that it would be correct.

00:38:03.950 --> 00:38:08.200
But then they have the proof that gives them the reason why it is actually, or you know, a

00:38:08.200 --> 00:38:11.320
reason there can be several proofs why why it is um actually correct.

00:38:11.480 --> 00:38:16.120
And and it's not bad, you know, in any normative sense.

00:38:16.200 --> 00:38:17.800
It's just the way kind of things are.

00:38:18.200 --> 00:38:20.360
Yeah, no, I think every all scientists have that.

00:38:20.520 --> 00:38:24.600
And I and then and I'll stop in a second, but I just want to push on this because I think

00:38:24.600 --> 00:38:26.680
it's a really subtle important thing.

00:38:26.760 --> 00:38:32.450
And there is a tension of like that confabulation track and the and the view track, they do

00:38:32.450 --> 00:38:33.570
have some correspondence.

00:38:33.650 --> 00:38:39.570
So, like in the racist example, like let's say that uh the white supremacist is

00:38:39.570 --> 00:38:45.250
sort of like actually, um, you know, people who look different from me are they're

00:38:45.250 --> 00:38:47.490
actually good, hardworking people, right?

00:38:48.050 --> 00:38:53.890
And that idea, um, that that narrative of like good and hardworking, like what

00:38:53.890 --> 00:38:59.600
that's not, you know, but but if that is sort of an accepted thing by somebody

00:38:59.600 --> 00:39:03.440
else, then that that is sort of approved, right?

00:39:03.520 --> 00:39:07.840
But if that white supremacist says that to like one of the other white supremacists who

00:39:07.840 --> 00:39:10.720
doesn't want that, they'll say, no, I don't agree with that.

00:39:10.960 --> 00:39:15.840
Now why they why they're against that group of people has nothing to do with hard work, how

00:39:15.840 --> 00:39:16.800
hardworking it is.

00:39:16.960 --> 00:39:22.770
So but it's sort of acceptance or rejection of the confabulation is the

00:39:22.770 --> 00:39:28.050
correspondence on behavior is just it's a cue of whether or not are we going to continue

00:39:28.050 --> 00:39:30.610
this behavior or change our behavior, right?

00:39:30.770 --> 00:39:35.570
Um, so it's like kids on the playground where they're like, Sally thinks the purple ball is

00:39:35.570 --> 00:39:36.850
the best thing and she's wrong.

00:39:37.010 --> 00:39:37.890
She's stupid, right?

00:39:37.970 --> 00:39:39.410
That's the purple ball sucks.

00:39:39.650 --> 00:39:41.250
We don't care about the purple ball.

00:39:41.410 --> 00:39:46.370
The reason why we care about talking about the purple ball is what we're gonna do to Sally.

00:39:46.610 --> 00:39:51.460
So I think just to push on this idea that they do have correspondence, the confabulation

00:39:51.460 --> 00:39:57.380
and the and the um view or the behavior, but it's it's one that's a linked one, right?

00:39:57.540 --> 00:39:58.900
Because it has to have something.

00:39:58.980 --> 00:40:04.580
Like if you say something, something crazy, and it has no mapping onto like, well, what

00:40:04.580 --> 00:40:09.220
real thing are you gonna do in as a result of this belief or value?

00:40:09.380 --> 00:40:10.820
I might go looking for that.

00:40:10.900 --> 00:40:13.140
But I think but it can still be indirect.

00:40:13.300 --> 00:40:15.460
Is that I I really know that's the right.

00:40:15.700 --> 00:40:21.550
I mean, the the like for instance the you know whenever there are uh ethnic

00:40:21.550 --> 00:40:26.590
riots and and ethnic groups kind of fight each other there are it's always preceded by

00:40:26.590 --> 00:40:30.430
rumors that the other ethnic groups the one that that is going to be attacked has committed

00:40:30.430 --> 00:40:33.710
some atrocity that you know they've poisoned the wells, they've raped women, they've killed

00:40:33.710 --> 00:40:34.430
children.

00:40:34.750 --> 00:40:39.360
And um and so these things are not they're not completely implausible.

00:40:39.440 --> 00:40:44.240
Like you know, people do do that in some cases, and they're clearly in the morally right

00:40:44.240 --> 00:40:44.560
direction.

00:40:44.640 --> 00:40:47.040
Like it's bad to you know poison wells, etc.

00:40:47.520 --> 00:40:52.080
Um, so it's just that we're because we're all looking for a justification, uh, we're

00:40:52.080 --> 00:40:55.920
willing to suspend belief a little bit, like something that's you know not super plausible,

00:40:56.080 --> 00:40:58.800
we're going to accept because we're all happy to do this.

00:40:58.960 --> 00:41:04.850
But it still has to be a morally valid argument and a premise that's um, you know, it can

00:41:04.850 --> 00:41:08.690
be a little bit far you can be far-fetched to some extent, but it given people's primary

00:41:08.690 --> 00:41:10.690
beliefs, it has to be somewhat coherent with that.

00:41:10.930 --> 00:41:11.490
Yeah, yeah.

00:41:11.810 --> 00:41:16.130
U I I I have a uh uh another interesting thought here.

00:41:16.370 --> 00:41:20.930
So we're talking about, you know, when confabulations work and justifying a behavior and

00:41:20.930 --> 00:41:21.650
when they don't.

00:41:21.810 --> 00:41:25.890
So if I give a confabulation that's wildly implausible for my behavior, like, you know, the

00:41:25.890 --> 00:41:27.810
sky is purple, that's not gonna work.

00:41:27.970 --> 00:41:33.420
If I give a confabulation that's more plausible and defensible, that that might work.

00:41:34.220 --> 00:41:37.580
But there's a third option that I want to explore with you and get your take on.

00:41:37.740 --> 00:41:43.580
I can give a confabulation that is so vague or unfalsifiable or

00:41:43.900 --> 00:41:48.620
unverifiable that you don't really know if it's correct, or you would have no way of going

00:41:48.620 --> 00:41:51.180
about figuring out whether it was correct or not.

00:41:51.340 --> 00:41:56.310
And it would be really hard for you to coordinate with other people to prove it as

00:41:56.310 --> 00:41:57.030
incorrect.

00:41:57.190 --> 00:42:01.750
So if I say, you know, I started this podcast because it was fulfilling, it made me happy.

00:42:01.910 --> 00:42:05.190
There's really no way you can verify that claim.

00:42:05.510 --> 00:42:10.470
And that may well be a design feature, and that may well explain why we justify so many of

00:42:10.470 --> 00:42:15.750
our behaviors in terms of this underlying uh I did it because it made me feel happy, it

00:42:15.750 --> 00:42:19.430
made me feel fulfilled, it was rewarding, it was meaningful, you know, I'm just pursuing it

00:42:19.590 --> 00:42:21.350
helped me express my authentic self.

00:42:21.510 --> 00:42:24.230
You know, these kinds of narratives are very hard to falsify.

00:42:24.520 --> 00:42:29.080
And they're so vague, it's it's kind of hard to know what they even mean exactly.

00:42:29.560 --> 00:42:35.320
But um and so that could be a third route where if we don't have um a plausible

00:42:35.400 --> 00:42:41.240
sounding justification that serves the social uh goal, we may start reaching for

00:42:41.240 --> 00:42:44.520
things that are just um hard to verify.

00:42:44.710 --> 00:42:49.750
Uh and that may well explain why sometimes our confabulations extend into sur

00:42:49.910 --> 00:42:54.790
supernatural domains like witchcraft or spirits, because those those domains are by their

00:42:54.790 --> 00:42:57.750
very nature uh hard to falsify and and verify.

00:42:57.910 --> 00:42:59.270
What what do you think about that idea?

00:42:59.750 --> 00:43:04.950
Yeah, no, com completely, but it only works for things that people want to believe in the

00:43:04.950 --> 00:43:05.270
first place.

00:43:05.430 --> 00:43:09.060
Like, you know, if if you want to convince Dave that you should be doing a podcast and the

00:43:09.060 --> 00:43:11.220
two of you want to do a podcast, it's always going to be fulfilling.

00:43:11.300 --> 00:43:13.060
You know, you're very happy with this, it's great.

00:43:13.380 --> 00:43:16.500
But if you want to convince someone who doesn't really want to do a podcast with you and

00:43:16.500 --> 00:43:19.140
you tell them, oh, you know, it's gonna be fulfilling, and they're like, you know what?

00:43:19.700 --> 00:43:24.100
So yeah, you know, it's not it's gonna work to the extent that you don't have to actually

00:43:24.100 --> 00:43:24.740
convince anybody.

00:43:24.820 --> 00:43:29.110
It's like if you need some kind of placeholder to say, Well, this is that sounds okay.

00:43:29.190 --> 00:43:33.670
And we're just all happy to have something this as a place we can point at as a

00:43:33.670 --> 00:43:34.710
justification.

00:43:35.030 --> 00:43:38.630
But if if you know if if your wife is thinking, well, you know, this is a really stupid

00:43:38.630 --> 00:43:41.830
decision, you need to do something that is more productive, whatever, and you tell her,

00:43:41.990 --> 00:43:45.510
well, no, but it's fulfilling, it's like, well, you know, it doesn't really pay the bills.

00:43:46.310 --> 00:43:50.230
So so it depends on on you know what your goal is.

00:43:50.310 --> 00:43:54.070
Like if the goal is just to create this narrat, this common narrative that maybe at some

00:43:54.070 --> 00:43:58.680
point we could present to others or we can just point at because in many cities in many

00:43:58.680 --> 00:44:02.680
cases people you know they're not gonna be you know if if i'm like a friend of yours like

00:44:02.920 --> 00:44:07.960
well you know you do whatever you want anyway so it's like you know whatever um but if you

00:44:07.960 --> 00:44:13.880
want to actually convince someone who has a stake um it's not gonna it's not gonna cut

00:44:13.880 --> 00:44:17.960
it and and it's true as well for you for not only convincing like let's say someone to do

00:44:17.960 --> 00:44:23.130
another podcast but if I think that doing podcasts as a rule is like a waste of your time,

00:44:23.290 --> 00:44:27.610
and uh and I think that because you're doing a podcast, you know, you're being a bit silly,

00:44:28.170 --> 00:44:32.330
you telling me this isn't going to change my mind at all about the quality of your decision

00:44:32.330 --> 00:44:32.970
making.

00:44:33.290 --> 00:44:39.050
So, you know, it it can explain why these things exist culturally when you have a lot

00:44:39.050 --> 00:44:42.730
of people who want to have a justification for something they want to do in the first

00:44:42.730 --> 00:44:46.700
place, But it the prediction would be that they're not going to be convincing to anybody

00:44:46.700 --> 00:44:49.820
who doesn't really agree with that in the first in, you know, who do agree with the

00:44:49.820 --> 00:44:50.940
decision to start with.

00:44:51.340 --> 00:44:51.580
Right.

00:44:51.660 --> 00:44:52.220
That makes sense.

00:44:52.380 --> 00:44:56.940
So if we all share, you know, the religious belief, for example, or religious and we all

00:44:56.940 --> 00:45:00.540
want to justify this religious belief for whatever reason, then then those kinds of

00:45:00.540 --> 00:45:02.460
religious justifications will work on us.

00:45:02.540 --> 00:45:08.060
But when it comes to persuading other people that our God wants XYZ, it's not going to be

00:45:08.060 --> 00:45:08.780
convincing to them.

00:45:09.180 --> 00:45:09.340
Yeah.

00:45:09.660 --> 00:45:09.820
Yeah.

00:45:10.010 --> 00:45:11.130
And that explains why.

00:45:11.210 --> 00:45:14.490
I mean, people are like, oh, other people believe really weird stuff.

00:45:14.650 --> 00:45:19.450
It's a consequence of it's in their interest to have a narrative for why they're doing what

00:45:19.450 --> 00:45:19.850
they're doing.

00:45:19.930 --> 00:45:25.850
And when you experience you're outside of that group of people who that benefit um network,

00:45:26.090 --> 00:45:31.130
then you would just have that's this is a prediction of the theory, is that the reasons for

00:45:31.130 --> 00:45:36.650
people doing things will look weird to the extent that you are outside of the network of

00:45:36.650 --> 00:45:41.760
benefit from that network to the extent that there's confabulation around why people are

00:45:41.760 --> 00:45:42.640
doing what they're doing.

00:45:43.120 --> 00:45:48.080
Yes they're going to do quick because in a way they they haven't really uh passed the test

00:45:48.080 --> 00:45:53.120
of of being being you know being really criticized or evaluated by someone who disagrees

00:45:53.120 --> 00:45:53.360
with them.

00:45:53.520 --> 00:45:57.360
And so yeah I mean it's it's and that's the first thing we do.

00:45:57.440 --> 00:46:02.270
Like whenever you think about something um, you know, you're anticipating a disagreement,

00:46:02.350 --> 00:46:06.430
or even you're in a discussion, the first arguments that will pop into your mind will

00:46:06.430 --> 00:46:07.870
typically be relatively weak.

00:46:07.950 --> 00:46:11.230
They won't be terrible, like they can not not know when it's gonna say because something

00:46:11.310 --> 00:46:12.670
because the sky is purple.

00:46:12.910 --> 00:46:14.430
But they're gonna they're gonna be great.

00:46:14.510 --> 00:46:17.470
Like, you know, if you let's say you you know we disagree about whether we should go to the

00:46:17.470 --> 00:46:20.750
restaurant or which restaurant we should go to, and you tell me, Oh, we should go there,

00:46:20.830 --> 00:46:21.950
it's a it's a great restaurant.

00:46:22.110 --> 00:46:23.230
It's not a very good argument.

00:46:23.310 --> 00:46:26.670
Like obviously, if you're saying that we should go there, you think it's a it's a good

00:46:26.670 --> 00:46:28.600
restaurant, But it's fine.

00:46:28.760 --> 00:46:33.560
And in a in a conversational con in a conversational context, it makes sense to do it that

00:46:33.560 --> 00:46:37.000
way, in the sense that if I have weak preferences and that's enough to convince me because

00:46:37.000 --> 00:46:39.000
I don't really care, then you know, great.

00:46:39.240 --> 00:46:43.080
And if I disagree with you, I'm gonna tell you why I disagree, why I think that restaurant

00:46:43.080 --> 00:46:47.400
is bad or that other restaurant is better, and then you can address that specific argument.

00:46:47.720 --> 00:46:53.650
And so in a in a dialogic setting, it makes a lot of sense to be quite lazy about the the

00:46:53.650 --> 00:46:56.370
justifications we or the the arguments we produce.

00:46:56.530 --> 00:46:59.730
And it's only when we get pushback that we have to produce better stuff.

00:46:59.810 --> 00:47:02.690
And if you never get the pushback, then you know you stick with the stuff that's a bit

00:47:02.690 --> 00:47:03.090
lazy.

00:47:03.650 --> 00:47:08.210
So it sounds like I mean this is an argument that argument is a good thing to the extent

00:47:08.210 --> 00:47:13.970
that we ha want social institutions to produce accurate or rational or

00:47:13.970 --> 00:47:19.420
actually beneficial beliefs or behaviors that I mean I think this is like an argument for

00:47:19.420 --> 00:47:20.060
science, right?

00:47:20.220 --> 00:47:25.500
Is that um you the you falsif falsifiability like from a pauper

00:47:25.660 --> 00:47:31.340
perspective or just arguing for different theories um that the

00:47:31.500 --> 00:47:36.060
the things develop out of argument, out of disagreement.

00:47:36.940 --> 00:47:37.810
Yeah no, completely.

00:47:37.890 --> 00:47:40.770
I mean, you absolutely need disagreement to sharpen your arguments.

00:47:41.010 --> 00:47:43.650
That's how the quality of arguments increases.

00:47:43.730 --> 00:47:46.050
That's how you force people to have better data.

00:47:46.290 --> 00:47:51.170
Um, I mean, you know, if you take something like the history of clinical trials, in a way,

00:47:51.330 --> 00:47:56.290
the way clinical trial trials are run now is the outcome of a long history of arguments of

00:47:56.290 --> 00:47:59.250
someone saying, Well, you know, if you just give the drug to one guy and see whether it

00:47:59.250 --> 00:48:02.620
works, it's not we don't know whether it works because you know, you need you need maybe

00:48:02.620 --> 00:48:06.060
the guy just got better off his own accords, and then you have a control group, say, well,

00:48:06.140 --> 00:48:06.780
but maybe it's chance.

00:48:06.860 --> 00:48:09.260
I mean, you know, you don't have enough people, so then you have more people, and then you

00:48:09.260 --> 00:48:10.620
need the groups to be matched.

00:48:10.700 --> 00:48:13.260
And and it's just an extended argument.

00:48:13.340 --> 00:48:18.540
Uh that means that at the end you can you can have something that you're reasonably sure of

00:48:18.620 --> 00:48:22.380
because uh because you've increased the quality of the argument throughout this process of

00:48:22.380 --> 00:48:24.140
of kind of protracted argumentation.

00:48:24.830 --> 00:48:26.190
And is that what reasoning is?

00:48:26.270 --> 00:48:31.550
I mean, because I think as evolutionary psychologists, we don't think reasoning is a

00:48:31.550 --> 00:48:36.190
natural category in the mind, in the sense of like my visual system is reasoning about

00:48:36.190 --> 00:48:37.310
where you are, right?

00:48:37.470 --> 00:48:38.750
Um, in the scene.

00:48:38.830 --> 00:48:42.590
We don't really think of that in a folk psychological perspective as reasoning.

00:48:42.830 --> 00:48:47.870
Is is the folk category reasoning, I think the reality of this folk category is the third

00:48:47.950 --> 00:48:50.920
is a is a third person representation, right?

00:48:51.000 --> 00:48:53.320
Or it's a it's a it is a real representation.

00:48:53.480 --> 00:48:57.560
It's not a real category of actual scientific processing.

00:48:57.640 --> 00:49:03.640
It's like, but um uh but is is what is reasoning coherently?

00:49:03.720 --> 00:49:04.680
Is it is it this?

00:49:04.840 --> 00:49:08.440
Is it this process of anticipating arguments and finding counterarguments?

00:49:08.520 --> 00:49:09.880
Or how do you think about what the counterarguments is?

00:49:11.370 --> 00:49:12.410
so you're completely right.

00:49:12.490 --> 00:49:16.890
Like for us we we differentiate uh between inference in the broad term, which is what a lot

00:49:16.890 --> 00:49:18.250
of people just call reasoning.

00:49:18.730 --> 00:49:21.930
And which becomes a little bit counterintuitive because as you were saying, your your

00:49:22.010 --> 00:49:26.170
low-level visual processes perform inferences, maybe your retina performs inferences.

00:49:26.330 --> 00:49:29.690
And so it just becomes a bit weird to call that reasoning, just because that's not how we

00:49:29.690 --> 00:49:31.210
typically use the the term.

00:49:31.760 --> 00:49:33.040
But but but it doesn't matter.

00:49:33.120 --> 00:49:34.960
It's all just kind of kind of semantics.

00:49:35.520 --> 00:49:40.000
The reality we believe or we suggest is that you have many, many, you know, inference

00:49:40.240 --> 00:49:41.200
inferential mechanisms.

00:49:41.360 --> 00:49:46.080
You have, you know, many, many of these mechanisms that are each are dedicated to a given

00:49:46.080 --> 00:49:46.640
task.

00:49:46.880 --> 00:49:52.240
And one of these mechanisms, uh, its task happens to be finding and evaluating reasons.

00:49:52.480 --> 00:49:53.760
It's a very specific task.

00:49:53.840 --> 00:49:57.750
And you can imagine, and you have people who can talk and they can they have syntax, they

00:49:57.750 --> 00:50:01.590
have semantics, they have pragmatics, they can they can discuss things.

00:50:02.070 --> 00:50:06.310
But in theory, you could you could take out this reasoning ability and they couldn't really

00:50:06.310 --> 00:50:10.470
understand arguments, they couldn't really they would be or they would be really bad at it.

00:50:10.710 --> 00:50:15.270
Like because when you when you you know if I have a given view and I want to convince you

00:50:15.270 --> 00:50:17.880
of it, you need a mechanism that will give you that.

00:50:17.960 --> 00:50:19.640
Like it's really hard to find a good argument.

00:50:19.800 --> 00:50:24.680
Like if you even if you you you take a given thought of all the things that are kind of in

00:50:24.680 --> 00:50:28.520
the semantic space of that thought, the things that might be possibly relevant, many of

00:50:28.520 --> 00:50:30.280
them aren't going to be good arguments.

00:50:30.520 --> 00:50:34.280
And so finding a good argument is just a cognitively or kind of computationally very hard

00:50:34.280 --> 00:50:38.120
task for which you need, if you want to do it well, you need dedicated machinery.

00:50:38.280 --> 00:50:42.270
Like obviously there's some kind of bootstrapping problem and at some point you can imagine

00:50:42.270 --> 00:50:47.790
that some of the using more general kind of mind reading or pragmatic

00:50:47.790 --> 00:50:50.270
abilities, you can get some of the way.

00:50:50.430 --> 00:50:54.430
But then because it's something we do a lot and we're have a stake at kind of being good

00:50:54.430 --> 00:50:59.390
at, presumably specific mechanisms would have evolved that just help us find and evaluate

00:50:59.390 --> 00:51:01.390
arguments in particular and reasons in particular.

00:51:01.700 --> 00:51:01.860
Right.

00:51:02.020 --> 00:51:07.060
And just as the example that David talked about with the podcast, sort of like fulfilling,

00:51:07.300 --> 00:51:07.620
right?

00:51:07.860 --> 00:51:12.180
That software would presumably sort of generate that as a candidate, sort of say, well,

00:51:12.260 --> 00:51:15.220
this would be good defensively for me, but it wouldn't convince my wife.

00:51:15.380 --> 00:51:16.980
It wouldn't convince a skeptic.

00:51:17.140 --> 00:51:19.860
There might be other things like, oh, spread science.

00:51:19.940 --> 00:51:20.980
That might convince my wife.

00:51:21.060 --> 00:51:22.420
That might convince a skeptic.

00:51:22.580 --> 00:51:28.350
And so the software is sort of churning candidates, calculating how will this be received

00:51:28.350 --> 00:51:30.430
to somebody who's on my side against me.

00:51:30.590 --> 00:51:35.950
And then the filter is sort of evaluating to what extent is it likely that the people who

00:51:35.950 --> 00:51:39.550
already agree with me are going to be the bottleneck for me actually doing this.

00:51:39.790 --> 00:51:42.270
So it that that that would be the kind of machinery you're talking about.

00:51:42.510 --> 00:51:43.150
Yeah, no, exactly.

00:51:43.230 --> 00:51:48.750
It's just that it's a make it's a mechanism that that uses a lot of social feedback at

00:51:48.750 --> 00:51:49.310
different scales.

00:51:49.470 --> 00:51:53.950
So the first at the at the very kind of local scale, as I was saying earlier, typically you

00:51:53.950 --> 00:51:58.280
start with some argument that is like it it is a good well-formed argument that makes sense

00:51:58.360 --> 00:52:02.280
but it doesn't have to be super super strong and then you bounce off of what the other

00:52:02.280 --> 00:52:06.440
person is is saying and disagreeing and way they disagree with you and so that you have

00:52:06.440 --> 00:52:12.200
this very kind of um live uh improvement in reasoning but then you also learn uh

00:52:12.280 --> 00:52:16.120
through experience so you know if you have a you know two children are are are two siblings

00:52:16.120 --> 00:52:18.920
are arguing over the toy and the mother said you know but you know what are you doing and

00:52:19.080 --> 00:52:23.590
when sell you know but I want it, and so well, you know, but your brother also wants it,

00:52:23.830 --> 00:52:26.710
and so then the next time they're well, I can't just say I want it because it's not a good

00:52:26.710 --> 00:52:26.790
argument.

00:52:26.950 --> 00:52:28.630
You know, that's the first thing that pops into your mind.

00:52:28.710 --> 00:52:31.910
But then they say, Well, I have to say, Well, actually, I had it first, or you know, he had

00:52:31.910 --> 00:52:33.430
it earlier, blah blah blah.

00:52:33.670 --> 00:52:38.150
And so you and that's that's what happens to us as as academics, like you submit a paper

00:52:38.230 --> 00:52:41.110
and you get knocked down by reviewer two because of blah blah blah.

00:52:41.190 --> 00:52:46.600
And the next time you try to anticipate, and you it's just it's something that we you know

00:52:46.680 --> 00:52:50.280
we're good at learning to do, but it's it's really hard to anticipate.

00:52:50.360 --> 00:52:52.120
It's not natural to have to really anticipate.

00:52:52.200 --> 00:52:56.120
You're just good at integrating social feedback rather than anticipating it.

00:52:56.360 --> 00:52:57.080
Yeah, that's interesting.

00:52:57.240 --> 00:53:02.520
I think even like good teachers or like the kids' example or comedians very explicitly will

00:53:02.520 --> 00:53:03.960
talk about when you shop material.

00:53:04.040 --> 00:53:06.360
And David, maybe even has experience, right?

00:53:06.520 --> 00:53:10.600
Of just you just you gotta at some point you just throw stuff out in the world and see how

00:53:10.600 --> 00:53:11.320
people respond.

00:53:11.400 --> 00:53:17.070
But then there's this machinery that's really effici e effective, efficient, effective at

00:53:17.150 --> 00:53:22.750
um uh at changing what you do in response to the

00:53:22.750 --> 00:53:23.630
feedback.

00:53:24.030 --> 00:53:24.590
Yes.

00:53:25.390 --> 00:53:25.630
Yeah.

00:53:25.790 --> 00:53:30.830
No, this this particular justification or or reasoning, this worked particularly well, give

00:53:30.990 --> 00:53:35.310
positively reinforce that, come up with those types of reasons again in the future and and

00:53:35.310 --> 00:53:38.750
you get this kind of learning of how to effectively reason or justify it.

00:53:38.910 --> 00:53:42.910
I want to uh sorry sorry so I'm so sorry, uh David I just just because I want to bone set

00:53:42.990 --> 00:53:43.940
up something there.

00:53:45.060 --> 00:53:48.500
It's really because it's true for all the things that we do well, like in a vision

00:53:48.580 --> 00:53:50.740
language, we think it's easy because we're so good at it.

00:53:50.820 --> 00:53:51.140
Oh, yes.

00:53:51.300 --> 00:53:54.740
And I think it's really it looks like obviously we find reasons, it's it's super easy.

00:53:54.900 --> 00:53:55.620
But it's really hard.

00:53:55.700 --> 00:54:00.420
And there's this example I love with with my my one of my kids who who said once he was

00:54:00.420 --> 00:54:01.700
very small, he didn't want to go to bed.

00:54:01.780 --> 00:54:03.940
He said, Oh, I don't want to go to bed because I'm too tired.

00:54:04.430 --> 00:54:05.950
Obviously, I've been there before.

00:54:07.950 --> 00:54:08.430
But he has to be a good thing.

00:54:08.590 --> 00:54:11.950
That's actually a good reason for like it's exactly like you know when when when you're

00:54:12.030 --> 00:54:17.070
when when a child says you know I I run when you have a general is the same, like you

00:54:17.070 --> 00:54:17.630
learn, okay.

00:54:17.710 --> 00:54:21.390
So I can say I'm too tired to as a reason for not doing something.

00:54:21.550 --> 00:54:25.150
Like he would never say, um, I want a blue toy because I'm too tired.

00:54:25.230 --> 00:54:27.070
That doesn't make sense, he would never have said that.

00:54:27.580 --> 00:54:32.220
But the general form of the argument, an action that I want to do, I can use I'm too tired

00:54:32.300 --> 00:54:32.940
as a as a reason.

00:54:33.020 --> 00:54:34.620
It just happens this one doesn't work.

00:54:34.940 --> 00:54:39.820
But you can see the he he to because I also obviously had never encountered that argument

00:54:39.820 --> 00:54:40.540
in his environment.

00:54:40.700 --> 00:54:42.140
No one had ever said that to him.

00:54:42.460 --> 00:54:46.300
And so that meant that when people had told him, you know, I can't don't want to do that

00:54:46.300 --> 00:54:50.060
because I'm too tired, or when he had tried that at another context, he had generalized

00:54:50.370 --> 00:54:53.570
that there's this thing that you can say, well, action I don't want to do, I can say I'm

00:54:53.570 --> 00:54:53.890
too tired.

00:54:53.970 --> 00:54:57.570
And then you had other generalized to the one situation in which it does, or one of the few

00:54:57.570 --> 00:54:58.930
situations in which it doesn't work.

00:54:59.170 --> 00:55:00.130
And so sorry, sorry David.

00:55:00.370 --> 00:55:00.450
Yeah.

00:55:00.530 --> 00:55:05.010
And that's a great just to also interrupt David, that's a great to just go off of Hugo

00:55:05.010 --> 00:55:09.250
here, that's a great example of why something like reinforcement learning and just learning

00:55:09.250 --> 00:55:14.770
in general is is not opposed to a very domain specific, you know, lots of

00:55:14.770 --> 00:55:17.330
computational machinery for an evolved function.

00:55:17.570 --> 00:55:22.400
It's that that kind of learning only works within this very narrow, already pre specified

00:55:22.400 --> 00:55:27.840
scope of exactly as you said, there's these category slots for things like, you know, state

00:55:27.840 --> 00:55:33.280
that's negative, excuse, um thing I do I don't want to do.

00:55:33.520 --> 00:55:38.000
And then it's within that that something like reinforcement learning can sort of operate,

00:55:38.080 --> 00:55:40.720
where if it's unconstrained, you just wouldn't do anything.

00:55:40.880 --> 00:55:43.110
So great, great That's a great point.

00:55:43.270 --> 00:55:45.510
No, I I it's it's a it's a beautiful example of this.

00:55:45.670 --> 00:55:50.550
You you reinforcement learning isn't just a magic wand you can wave that solves any

00:55:50.550 --> 00:55:52.310
computational problem that you have.

00:55:52.630 --> 00:55:56.950
You know, the system has to know what to reinforce and how specific or general the thing

00:55:56.950 --> 00:55:57.110
is.

00:55:57.270 --> 00:56:01.830
Am I reinforcing uh I'm too tired in general as a as an all purpose excuse?

00:56:01.910 --> 00:56:04.230
Am I only reinforcing that in a specific context?

00:56:04.390 --> 00:56:05.590
How specific is the context?

00:56:05.750 --> 00:56:07.670
The system needs to be able to solve these problems.

00:56:07.750 --> 00:56:11.670
And and and in order to do that, you need some some functional specialization.

00:56:11.920 --> 00:56:12.960
So it's a great point.

00:56:13.120 --> 00:56:18.720
Um so I ha I want to uh push back a little bit um on on the on the social interactionist

00:56:18.960 --> 00:56:19.360
reasoning.

00:56:19.440 --> 00:56:24.800
I want to sort of play the role of a critic um and uh give you a situation where it seems

00:56:24.800 --> 00:56:29.840
like what reasoning is doing is a purely solitary um uh rational process.

00:56:30.000 --> 00:56:34.490
So if I'm playing chess with you, I might you know think through all the different possible

00:56:34.490 --> 00:56:35.130
moves you might make.

00:56:35.210 --> 00:56:38.250
Well if I if I make this move then he'll he'll make this counter move and that's bad.

00:56:38.330 --> 00:56:42.010
But if I make this move and then this move and then this move and then this move, well he's

00:56:42.090 --> 00:56:43.450
he's gonna be really screwed if I do that.

00:56:43.530 --> 00:56:45.450
I'll be able to to fork him in this interesting way.

00:56:45.530 --> 00:56:48.650
So maybe maybe that's the best uh move uh path to take.

00:56:48.890 --> 00:56:53.850
So it it seems like when I'm doing that kind of reasoning, this kind of chess style

00:56:53.850 --> 00:56:58.580
reasoning, or we could even trans you know put this in in in in terms of like social chess

00:56:58.660 --> 00:57:02.180
is a is an expression that people use when they're social strategizing with one another,

00:57:02.340 --> 00:57:04.340
trying to outfox outfox each other.

00:57:04.580 --> 00:57:09.540
It seems like in that context, uh it really is serving an individual decision-making

00:57:09.540 --> 00:57:09.780
function.

00:57:09.940 --> 00:57:14.340
The more I spend time you know reasoning up through the different moves, the better move

00:57:14.340 --> 00:57:15.700
I'm going to make most of the time.

00:57:15.780 --> 00:57:20.350
And it doesn't seem like I need to actually uh verbally tell anyone why I made that move.

00:57:20.510 --> 00:57:23.790
Maybe I'll never tell anyone why I made that move, or I'll I'll never have to justify it to

00:57:23.790 --> 00:57:24.110
anyone.

00:57:24.510 --> 00:57:27.470
It doesn't seem like I need to convince anyone that that's the right path for me to take.

00:57:27.550 --> 00:57:32.910
It's purely happening inside my head, and it seems like uh the purpose that it's serving is

00:57:32.910 --> 00:57:34.110
to help me make a better move.

00:57:34.270 --> 00:57:39.390
And so in that case, I I I kind of want to um uh say that yeah,

00:57:39.710 --> 00:57:44.560
reasoning is serving this kind of folk function of helping me make personal better

00:57:44.560 --> 00:57:45.200
decisions.

00:57:45.360 --> 00:57:47.200
Um so what would you say to something like that?

00:57:47.280 --> 00:57:51.040
Is there is there room for reasoning to serve this kind of function?

00:57:51.120 --> 00:57:55.600
Or so the the way we would address that is just to say that it's not reasoning.

00:57:55.760 --> 00:57:58.800
Like it's just a different cognitive like we call that reasoning because we're using kind

00:57:58.800 --> 00:58:00.240
of folk categories.

00:58:00.400 --> 00:58:04.720
But the cognitive mechanisms that you're using to to anticipate what you would what your

00:58:04.720 --> 00:58:08.570
opponent would do at chess or or to take these kind of strategic decisions are just

00:58:08.570 --> 00:58:12.490
different from the mechanisms that allow us to to find and evaluate reasons.

00:58:12.890 --> 00:58:16.570
So we call that reasoning because introspectively we have the same kind of feeling of

00:58:16.570 --> 00:58:21.530
effort or uh you know kind of that we're going through possibilities.

00:58:21.770 --> 00:58:27.690
Um but we don't think we're reasoning in the more narrow sense that we're using in terms of

00:58:27.690 --> 00:58:29.850
really kind of thinking through reasons.

00:58:30.570 --> 00:58:35.480
And it's a very it's a subtle difference and and clearly it's important to draw it, so it's

00:58:35.480 --> 00:58:40.280
good you you you drew the attention to that because we're not saying that this kind of of

00:58:40.440 --> 00:58:45.320
inferential process, however we call it, we call it strategic reasoning or strategic or

00:58:45.320 --> 00:58:48.680
something, uh, that it's not efficient or that people aren't good at it.

00:58:49.000 --> 00:58:53.960
And it is indeed you would expect these sort of things to be purely individual because it's

00:58:54.040 --> 00:58:58.760
it's uh it has a more in a way kind of a Machiavellian function rather than reasoning,

00:58:58.840 --> 00:59:01.800
which works because you're exchanging reasons with others.

00:59:02.550 --> 00:59:02.870
Okay.

00:59:03.430 --> 00:59:07.830
So that would be some kind of like strategic inferences or or something like that, or I

00:59:07.830 --> 00:59:12.630
would uh you know, I would or maybe like counterfactual thinking or something like that.

00:59:12.790 --> 00:59:13.350
Uh-huh.

00:59:13.590 --> 00:59:14.390
You know, interesting.

00:59:15.030 --> 00:59:20.550
And just to like uh follow up on that, like for the um in my paper on difference detecting

00:59:20.550 --> 00:59:25.110
mechanisms, um, which I'm late on the revisions for, so but and but should be coming out

00:59:25.190 --> 00:59:25.910
any moment now.

00:59:25.990 --> 00:59:31.860
Um, one of the arguments for why we there's thinking is a category Is for,

00:59:32.100 --> 00:59:35.860
and this is sort of related to reasoning, and I think means it may be being used

00:59:35.860 --> 00:59:41.860
interchangeably, is there needs to be a placeholder for I'm still processing or

00:59:41.860 --> 00:59:46.980
you're still processing, and you haven't arrived yet at a representation or decision.

00:59:47.140 --> 00:59:51.140
So for example, if somebody's like David's like, well, what do you want to have for lunch

00:59:51.140 --> 00:59:51.700
today?

00:59:52.020 --> 00:59:58.010
And I there needs to be software in me for representing, have I gone through the process of

00:59:58.010 --> 01:00:00.890
arriving at an answer to David yet?

01:00:01.210 --> 01:00:05.930
And if that system detects, no, I'm still calculating costs and benefits, I will say, well,

01:00:06.010 --> 01:00:06.890
I'm thinking about it.

01:00:07.050 --> 01:00:08.010
I need a minute.

01:00:08.170 --> 01:00:13.690
And so there's sort of a representation of there can be a delay in an organism

01:00:14.570 --> 01:00:19.290
at arriving at a thing it wants to do because it takes some time to process stuff.

01:00:19.370 --> 01:00:22.780
And the same reason, like, why isn't David moving right now?

01:00:22.860 --> 01:00:24.540
Well it's because he's or why isn't he talking?

01:00:24.620 --> 01:00:26.620
He's thinking about what to say, right?

01:00:26.780 --> 01:00:32.700
So that's a broader category than reasoning in this precise um mercier

01:00:32.940 --> 01:00:38.700
uh um sense if that if that has to be yeah no that's a great point and and indeed it

01:00:38.700 --> 01:00:43.020
does make sense that we would have such an intuitive category because it's really useful in

01:00:43.020 --> 01:00:44.780
everyday life to to be able to talk about it.

01:00:44.940 --> 01:00:50.830
So I I can't help but insert a a cute anecdote that that Dan uh Dan Sperber, my a advisor

01:00:50.830 --> 01:00:55.390
and co-author on on all of this work, uh recant said when he was so his father was also an

01:00:55.390 --> 01:00:59.630
an intellectual and when he was a child he would play around and and uh and his father

01:00:59.630 --> 01:01:02.990
would be sitting on on his armchair, you know, with his eyes closed, doing nothing and and

01:01:02.990 --> 01:01:05.950
his mother would tell him, you know, don't bother your father, he's working.

01:01:06.670 --> 01:01:11.740
And as a child it's not intuitive that it's thinking can be a form of of work that's kind

01:01:11.740 --> 01:01:12.380
of efficacious.

01:01:12.860 --> 01:01:13.260
Exactly.

01:01:13.420 --> 01:01:13.660
Yeah.

01:01:13.900 --> 01:01:19.740
Um, to pivot a little bit, and this may be a segue, is so we've talked about people's

01:01:19.740 --> 01:01:23.660
views being pretty good or behaviors.

01:01:23.820 --> 01:01:25.580
There there being good reasons for that.

01:01:25.660 --> 01:01:29.900
But then the confabulation sort of being confabulation, right?

01:01:29.980 --> 01:01:35.740
And just good enough to sort of serve the needs of satisfying or convincing others.

01:01:35.990 --> 01:01:41.830
You have other work that's about not being gullible and like not born yesterday, that

01:01:41.830 --> 01:01:46.950
people hold good maybe beliefs is the

01:01:46.950 --> 01:01:49.030
oversimplified version of that.

01:01:49.590 --> 01:01:54.870
I'm sort of wondering if you can connect what we've just been talking about now to this

01:01:54.870 --> 01:01:59.990
other idea of yours that I think has been controversial, and you can maybe tell it more

01:01:59.990 --> 01:02:05.280
about this, um, or maybe even more clearly what the claim is, because you know, the idea

01:02:05.280 --> 01:02:10.560
that sort of people are not gullible and hold good beliefs, justified beliefs.

01:02:10.720 --> 01:02:14.400
Maybe this isn't the claim, but that's sort of I think what how people understand it.

01:02:14.640 --> 01:02:19.760
It's sort of i it even it's it's slightly inconsistent, even in what we've been talking

01:02:19.760 --> 01:02:23.520
about, which is that like people's behaviors and their views they might hold for good

01:02:23.600 --> 01:02:25.360
evolved reasons, quote unquote.

01:02:25.520 --> 01:02:31.430
But then the confabulations, it's it's satisfying or like it's good for science, or sort

01:02:31.430 --> 01:02:34.630
of just will-o-wisp, maybe not very good.

01:02:35.030 --> 01:02:40.470
How do you square that distinction with this other body of work

01:02:40.790 --> 01:02:46.310
that's about people are really good at holding beliefs and hold beliefs that are sort of

01:02:46.310 --> 01:02:47.270
good for them?

01:02:47.880 --> 01:02:49.720
No, that that's that's a great question.

01:02:49.960 --> 01:02:55.560
So the points uh I've been making in that book and that also kind of Dan and a bunch of

01:02:55.560 --> 01:03:00.520
colleagues have been making in a in the paper on called Epistemic Vigilance is that people

01:03:01.160 --> 01:03:06.920
have to have um mechanisms to evaluate communicated information because we can't just you

01:03:06.920 --> 01:03:10.440
know take each other's word for it because we have conflicting or to some extent you know

01:03:10.520 --> 01:03:14.040
we have non-perfectly overlapping incen incentives and interests.

01:03:14.350 --> 01:03:19.870
So even when people you know close close to you tell you something, you can't just accept

01:03:19.950 --> 01:03:24.270
that it's going to be in your best interest to uh you know to accept it.

01:03:24.510 --> 01:03:30.510
Um and so we have to have cognitive mechanisms that allow us to evaluate what other

01:03:30.510 --> 01:03:33.310
people are telling us and what they're communicating to us.

01:03:33.950 --> 01:03:38.350
And I think that really applies as we're saying, and that's why I was pushing back a bit at

01:03:38.350 --> 01:03:40.990
the beginning on David's point that people can just make stuff up.

01:03:41.150 --> 01:03:45.800
So people can make stuff up, but other people, if they disagree with in the first place,

01:03:45.880 --> 01:03:47.800
they will evaluate that critically.

01:03:48.040 --> 01:03:53.080
And the exception to that in a way is when you agree with the conclusion that is that

01:03:53.080 --> 01:03:56.360
people want to have a configulation or justification for.

01:03:56.680 --> 01:03:58.920
And then you're happy to have one as well.

01:03:59.160 --> 01:04:04.360
And so you know if if you know you're one of the people who is happy to have a scapegoat

01:04:04.360 --> 01:04:10.210
who will be accused of of you know making someone suffer a misfortune, um, you're

01:04:10.210 --> 01:04:13.810
happy to have this justification that actually, you know, that guy is a witch, and and to

01:04:13.810 --> 01:04:15.170
have this whole belief system.

01:04:15.490 --> 01:04:21.490
So it you become um much more um, I mean, cuddible is the wrong term, but it's because it's

01:04:21.490 --> 01:04:25.090
kind of smart of you to accept these things, but you become more kind of laxer in your

01:04:25.090 --> 01:04:27.170
criteria when you already accept the conclusion.

01:04:27.250 --> 01:04:33.060
And it's true for you know, in general, if you if you accept a given conclusion, um you

01:04:33.060 --> 01:04:36.100
know, you don't really care about the arguments because the arguments are not gonna make

01:04:36.100 --> 01:04:36.900
you change your mind.

01:04:36.980 --> 01:04:40.580
Um, they're just there that you could potentially reuse to try to convince other people.

01:04:41.140 --> 01:04:45.860
So these two things are quite coherent, but it's it's also important then to stress that

01:04:45.860 --> 01:04:48.100
when you do disagree, then you'll be much more critical.

01:04:48.340 --> 01:04:52.340
And so, yeah, I mean, when you're the ethnographer and you, you know, especially can in in

01:04:52.340 --> 01:04:55.780
earlier periods, and you arrive in these people and they believe in witches, you're like,

01:04:55.860 --> 01:04:56.980
well, no, obviously there are no witches.

01:04:57.060 --> 01:05:00.180
You're not all of a sudden convinced that there are witches.

01:05:00.580 --> 01:05:05.810
Um so it, you know, these justifications only convince the people who have a motivation to

01:05:05.810 --> 01:05:07.410
believe in them in in the first place.

01:05:07.810 --> 01:05:07.970
Yeah.

01:05:08.130 --> 01:05:13.650
And then the disagreement, or so that argument has has this claim of you know the not

01:05:13.810 --> 01:05:18.130
born yesterday idea or the epistemic vigilance, has it ever has it been misunderstood?

01:05:18.290 --> 01:05:23.730
Do people think you're making a broader claim, or in what way has it been misunderstood or

01:05:23.730 --> 01:05:24.930
taken too far?

01:05:26.080 --> 01:05:28.720
Yes, I mean I'm not sure because I'm taking it far enough.

01:05:28.800 --> 01:05:31.200
I don't sure how many people have tried to take it further.

01:05:31.360 --> 01:05:31.680
Yeah.

01:05:31.920 --> 01:05:37.760
But um yeah, I mean I I don't mean to say that people are never wrong because obviously

01:05:37.840 --> 01:05:38.880
they are sometimes.

01:05:39.120 --> 01:05:43.280
The point I'm trying to make is that when people are wrong, usually it's not because of

01:05:43.280 --> 01:05:43.920
communication.

01:05:44.080 --> 01:05:46.320
Usually it's because their priors are wrong.

01:05:46.560 --> 01:05:50.800
So if you ask people, uh you know, if you go to a small scale society and you ask them what

01:05:50.800 --> 01:05:54.710
is the shape of the earth and maybe they're gonna mostly they're not gonna know but you

01:05:54.710 --> 01:05:58.630
know maybe they're gonna tell you some weird narrative or that it's flat essentially

01:05:58.710 --> 01:06:00.310
because that's what they're saying.

01:06:00.710 --> 01:06:05.750
It's not because um you know they've been they've been brainwashed into thinking that it's

01:06:05.750 --> 01:06:09.590
just because that's either what their senses are telling them or because they have a story

01:06:09.590 --> 01:06:12.790
that allows them to justify something that that's important to them.

01:06:13.030 --> 01:06:18.920
So it's not people are, you know, they have obviously they are wrong about some things, but

01:06:18.920 --> 01:06:24.600
it's rarely it's rare that um mass communication or or communication more

01:06:24.600 --> 01:06:28.600
generally is the is the cause of these of these mistaken beliefs.

01:06:28.760 --> 01:06:34.600
Like it can or I mean to take another example, like you know, obviously if you're if you

01:06:34.600 --> 01:06:39.310
grew up in a specific small scale society and you have really specific religious beliefs,

01:06:39.390 --> 01:06:44.030
and you believe that this ancestor does that to these people for that reason, this is

01:06:44.030 --> 01:06:47.870
heavily shaped by communication because you know you like the name of the ancestor, the

01:06:47.870 --> 01:06:50.350
specific form that they take is specific to your culture.

01:06:50.510 --> 01:06:53.310
So, in the same way as when you grew up speaking English, it's because you had, you know,

01:06:53.390 --> 01:06:55.710
English-speaking uh peers and parents.

01:06:55.870 --> 01:07:00.840
Um, but the fact that everybody speaks a language is, you know, the fact that everybody in

01:07:00.840 --> 01:07:05.640
small-scale society and to some extent in other societies believes in these kind of

01:07:05.720 --> 01:07:10.840
supernatural entities, it suggests that even if the specific details of any one of them is

01:07:10.840 --> 01:07:16.680
due to communication, the broad form is there because people are pre-wired to

01:07:16.680 --> 01:07:17.560
believe in this sort of thing.

01:07:17.640 --> 01:07:21.880
So their priors for this sort of things existing, or the incentives for believing in this

01:07:21.880 --> 01:07:23.880
sort of things are very high to start with.

01:07:24.070 --> 01:07:29.750
And the culture gives you the specifics rather than the more fundamental ID.

01:07:31.990 --> 01:07:32.950
Interesting.

01:07:33.830 --> 01:07:39.590
So I want to um so there's a a wonderful uh key distinction you make in Notborn

01:07:39.590 --> 01:07:45.430
Yesterday that helps you make sense of uh our epistemic vigilance or our skepticism

01:07:45.430 --> 01:07:51.350
toward communicated information on the one hand, and the seemingly uh wide variety of

01:07:51.350 --> 01:07:54.940
wacky beliefs that humans seem to fall prey to.

01:07:55.260 --> 01:07:59.820
And the distinction you make is between intuitive beliefs and reflective beliefs.

01:07:59.900 --> 01:08:05.660
So intuitive beliefs are the ones that are often they actually guide our behavior in

01:08:05.900 --> 01:08:07.260
a real concrete sense.

01:08:07.420 --> 01:08:11.820
So I intuitively believe that there's a coffee cup on the table, so I'm going to reach in

01:08:11.820 --> 01:08:13.500
that direction to pick up the coffee cup.

01:08:13.660 --> 01:08:18.060
My belief about where the coffee cup is is directly connected to my nervous system such

01:08:18.060 --> 01:08:20.140
that I reach in a particular direction.

01:08:20.460 --> 01:08:22.140
And that's an intuitive belief.

01:08:22.590 --> 01:08:27.710
And then there's this different category called reflective belief that doesn't really guide

01:08:27.710 --> 01:08:30.190
my behavior in the same way.

01:08:30.350 --> 01:08:32.830
It's kind of uh functionally inert.

01:08:33.230 --> 01:08:38.590
Um and and your argument, uh, you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that a lot of these

01:08:38.590 --> 01:08:41.790
seemingly wacky beliefs are not actually intuitive beliefs.

01:08:41.870 --> 01:08:45.550
They're not actually guiding people's behavior in a concrete way.

01:08:45.710 --> 01:08:49.630
Um they're they're just kind of reflective beliefs, that they're they're serving social

01:08:49.630 --> 01:08:54.740
functions and people don't really believe them deep down in a way that is actually guiding

01:08:54.740 --> 01:08:55.540
their behavior.

01:08:55.700 --> 01:09:01.300
Um so could you uh flesh out this this idea of of of you know w what what this difference

01:09:01.300 --> 01:09:06.260
is between intuitive and reflective, why we would uh why the mind should be divided up in

01:09:06.260 --> 01:09:10.500
this way and and and how we figure out, you know, whether to adopt something as an

01:09:10.500 --> 01:09:12.580
intuitive belief versus a reflective belief.

01:09:12.990 --> 01:09:13.230
Thanks.

01:09:13.550 --> 01:09:14.270
That's a good question.

01:09:14.350 --> 01:09:18.030
The first thing I said is all of that comes from Dana, who has a wonderful paper called

01:09:18.030 --> 01:09:19.230
Intuitive and Reflexive Belief.

01:09:19.310 --> 01:09:22.510
So all of this framework is really kind of his ideas than forever.

01:09:24.430 --> 01:09:29.630
So by an illustration I like is the is the contrast between people who have actual

01:09:29.630 --> 01:09:35.630
experiences of of conspiracies and and conspiracy conspiracy theorists, people who believe

01:09:35.630 --> 01:09:37.070
in conspiracy theories.

01:09:37.380 --> 01:09:41.620
And everything we know about people who have actually witnessed a conspiracy.

01:09:41.700 --> 01:09:44.980
So you've seen your boss treading documents that are very compromising.

01:09:45.140 --> 01:09:47.140
You've seen someone in your company do something bad.

01:09:47.220 --> 01:09:50.100
You've seen someone in government do something extremely fishy.

01:09:50.260 --> 01:09:53.140
And the behavior of these people is consistently to be afraid.

01:10:00.340 --> 01:10:03.550
If you're in a bad country, you're gonna be afraid for your life.

01:10:03.710 --> 01:10:08.110
Um, you're afraid to you know to jeopardize your social relationships if you say anything.

01:10:08.350 --> 01:10:12.190
And so most people's reactions is to be, first of all, to be really scared, it's very

01:10:12.190 --> 01:10:13.310
strong emotionally.

01:10:13.390 --> 01:10:17.550
Um, and then you it's really hard, you don't say anything as a rule.

01:10:17.790 --> 01:10:23.070
And that's the exact opposite of what most people who endorse conspiracy theories feel.

01:10:23.150 --> 01:10:28.110
Like they're not, even if they believe that the CIA is powerful enough to pull off 9-11,

01:10:28.270 --> 01:10:33.140
they're not afraid they're going to say that in public, which is quite inconsistent in the

01:10:33.140 --> 01:10:37.940
sense that if the CIA was powerful enough to pull off 9-11, they could kill you quite

01:10:37.940 --> 01:10:38.420
easily.

01:10:38.660 --> 01:10:40.740
So you wouldn't want to actually say that.

01:10:41.220 --> 01:10:44.980
So they don't have this, you know, they have some emotional reactions to these

01:10:44.980 --> 01:10:49.380
conspiracies, but they're really muted compared to someone who would actually, who has seen

01:10:49.380 --> 01:10:50.740
actual evidence.

01:10:51.430 --> 01:10:54.150
But by contrast, they are very vocal.

01:10:54.230 --> 01:10:57.910
Like a lot of them are really very vocal, which is then again the opposite of what you see

01:10:57.910 --> 01:11:02.470
with someone who has formed an intuitive belief because they've seen actual evidence.

01:11:02.710 --> 01:11:05.190
So you have really the these two causal pathways.

01:11:05.350 --> 01:11:09.990
One is you actually see actual evidence, you form an intuitive belief that someone in your

01:11:09.990 --> 01:11:13.510
company is a crook or that there's more widespread corruption in your company or in your

01:11:13.510 --> 01:11:14.390
government.

01:11:14.630 --> 01:11:19.350
And your reactions are really strong emotionally, and you're being very careful, versus

01:11:19.350 --> 01:11:24.340
someone who has heard of something and they're happy to profess these views because it

01:11:24.340 --> 01:11:29.300
allows them to justify the mistrust of government or for some other reasons, or they can

01:11:29.300 --> 01:11:32.980
kind of score points to with people who are similarly inclined.

01:11:33.220 --> 01:11:38.020
And you have these really two things that are completely um different in reactions.

01:11:38.180 --> 01:11:42.020
And so the reason why we have intuitive beliefs is obvious is because you know they guide

01:11:42.020 --> 01:11:42.820
our behavior in the world.

01:11:42.900 --> 01:11:46.180
That's that's how we we know we can act adaptively.

01:11:46.470 --> 01:11:51.510
And the reason why we were able to hold reflective beliefs is more subtle, obviously.

01:11:51.910 --> 01:11:57.910
So the basic cognitive mechanisms that allow us to have beliefs that

01:11:57.910 --> 01:12:03.030
are encapsulated, that are detached from the rest of our cognition, is that we have to have

01:12:03.030 --> 01:12:05.990
that to entertain the idea that other people can be wrong.

01:12:06.230 --> 01:12:10.950
So if you tell me something and I think you're wrong, I have to be able to think, well, you

01:12:10.950 --> 01:12:16.520
know, um David thinks that without that thought affecting at all my behavior directly.

01:12:16.600 --> 01:12:20.680
So it can affect my behavior in the sense that I can tell you you're wrong, or I can act in

01:12:20.680 --> 01:12:24.120
a way that takes into account the fact that I think you have that belief.

01:12:24.520 --> 01:12:28.200
But you know, if you if you think a given restaurant is great, but I think you're

01:12:28.200 --> 01:12:31.480
completely wrong, I'm not just gonna go there because now I think it's great.

01:12:31.800 --> 01:12:36.680
Um so we have to have that ability to separate some beliefs from the rest.

01:12:37.970 --> 01:12:42.610
What's tricky with reflective beliefs is that on the one hand, they are held in that little

01:12:42.610 --> 01:12:45.730
box in which we usually keep things that we think are false.

01:12:46.050 --> 01:12:50.290
But the official attitude we have towards these beliefs is that we believe them.

01:12:50.530 --> 01:12:54.770
And so it that's so that we know it's cognitively possible to have things that are

01:12:54.770 --> 01:13:00.160
insulated because it has to be the case for us to be able to hold uh to think that other

01:13:00.160 --> 01:13:05.200
people think things that are false or that we think are false.

01:13:06.240 --> 01:13:11.840
And sometimes it just so happens that these beliefs can stay there even though

01:13:12.480 --> 01:13:15.200
we supposedly have reasons to believe that they're true.

01:13:15.440 --> 01:13:17.840
And it's not completely clear why they stay there.

01:13:18.160 --> 01:13:23.770
So there are things so Dan's examples typically are things that we can't

01:13:23.770 --> 01:13:24.410
understand.

01:13:25.050 --> 01:13:30.490
So if you, you know, a child who accepts that you know something about the Holy

01:13:30.490 --> 01:13:35.290
Trinity is mine, just you can't have an intuitive belief about the Holy Trinity because

01:13:35.290 --> 01:13:36.570
your mind doesn't know what to do with it.

01:13:36.650 --> 01:13:38.890
It's just not something that we evolved to deal with.

01:13:39.130 --> 01:13:43.450
But something like a conspiracy, conspiracy theory, you know your mind knows what to do.

01:13:43.530 --> 01:13:47.850
Like if you had actual evidence that of a con you have actual evidence of a conspiracy,

01:13:47.930 --> 01:13:50.170
your mind knows exactly what to do with that information.

01:13:50.580 --> 01:13:56.180
So it's not entirely clear why it's possible both for you to think you have enough

01:13:56.180 --> 01:14:02.020
evidence to accept it, like you don't think it's false, um, but at the same time to not

01:14:02.020 --> 01:14:03.300
act on that on that basis.

01:14:03.460 --> 01:14:06.580
And I I don't really know actually, to be honest, why that happens.

01:14:08.020 --> 01:14:08.980
Interesting.

01:14:09.220 --> 01:14:15.070
Um so I mean the way I'm starting to think of it is that

01:14:15.150 --> 01:14:20.830
um we draw all sorts of inferences about people based on their actions.

01:14:21.070 --> 01:14:27.070
And and one category that we are eager to draw inferences uh about people toward is is the

01:14:27.070 --> 01:14:28.030
category of belief.

01:14:28.190 --> 01:14:32.270
So what you believe gives me a lot of inferences about your character, about your

01:14:32.270 --> 01:14:36.510
personality, your your loyalties, your your commitments, uh, etc.

01:14:36.960 --> 01:14:41.920
Um and what I've written about myself is that as soon as you have a Q based inference where

01:14:41.920 --> 01:14:47.280
where everyone in a society is drawing an inference, you know, if X, then Y, well, that

01:14:47.280 --> 01:14:51.040
creates a social incentive for everyone to transform that Q into a signal.

01:14:51.280 --> 01:14:56.800
So if I start drawing the inference about you that if you believe that fetuses are people,

01:14:56.880 --> 01:15:01.520
therefore you are a loyal Republican, well that gives you an incentive to uh

01:15:01.680 --> 01:15:07.610
conspicuously uh signal uh that you believe fetuses are people to get me to think

01:15:07.610 --> 01:15:09.690
that you're a committed Republican, right?

01:15:10.010 --> 01:15:13.690
So as soon as you if you have a Q-based inference set up, that creates an incentive for it

01:15:13.690 --> 01:15:16.410
to turn into a signal or an intentional signal.

01:15:17.450 --> 01:15:21.770
And so I think what's going on with a lot of these reflective beliefs is it's just it's

01:15:21.770 --> 01:15:25.210
just what happens when everyone draws the same inference, Q-based inferences about a

01:15:25.210 --> 01:15:28.650
particular belief, and then all of a sudden it transforms into a signal.

01:15:28.940 --> 01:15:32.780
So if if we, you know, if you believe in the Holy Trinity, you're a loyal member of the

01:15:32.780 --> 01:15:33.020
group.

01:15:33.180 --> 01:15:36.620
As soon as we all make that inference, it creates an incentive for everyone to try to

01:15:36.620 --> 01:15:39.100
conspicuously signal that they believe in the Holy Trinity.

01:15:39.260 --> 01:15:44.700
And in that case, uh it's it's not necessarily an intuitive belief.

01:15:44.780 --> 01:15:45.900
It's a it's a social signal.

01:15:45.980 --> 01:15:47.820
It's you could think of it as a pseudo-belief.

01:15:47.900 --> 01:15:52.140
I'm trying to mimic the superficial properties of belief in order to get you to think

01:15:52.140 --> 01:15:54.620
certain things about me, to think that I'm a loyal Christian.

01:15:54.780 --> 01:15:58.460
You could think of it as more of a social strategy than a belief per se.

01:15:58.950 --> 01:16:02.630
And so I think one way that these these kind of reflective beliefs can come about is

01:16:02.630 --> 01:16:04.870
through kind of social signaling mechanisms.

01:16:05.030 --> 01:16:09.590
And it's a pseudo-belief in the same way that pseudoscience is a mimicry of science.

01:16:09.750 --> 01:16:14.550
Uh it's the same it it arises in the in the same way as any other kind of pseudo uh

01:16:14.630 --> 01:16:19.430
process, where there are benefits to be had by mimicking a certain uh thing, and then this

01:16:19.430 --> 01:16:23.270
happens in beliefs just as it happens in a a wide variety of of cases in our culture.

01:16:23.510 --> 01:16:24.870
What do you think about that way of thinking about it?

01:16:25.420 --> 01:16:29.180
Yeah, no, no, I think it's it's part of the answer in in many cases.

01:16:29.740 --> 01:16:34.060
But so so for something to become culturally widespread, um, you have to have some

01:16:34.060 --> 01:16:36.540
motivation to share it, and that's what you're describing.

01:16:36.780 --> 01:16:37.260
Yeah.

01:16:37.500 --> 01:16:41.420
But people still have to have some like at least at the at the beginning to kick off the

01:16:41.420 --> 01:16:44.540
process, people have to have some motivation for accepting it as well.

01:16:45.020 --> 01:16:50.310
And and so the mechanism still has to pass at least a

01:16:50.310 --> 01:16:53.830
minimum threshold of epistemic vigilance.

01:16:53.910 --> 01:16:59.590
And so, you know, conspiracy theories are, I mean, the ones that are the most popular are

01:16:59.590 --> 01:17:01.750
are the ones that are the somewhat credible.

01:17:01.830 --> 01:17:04.310
Like, you know, a lot of people believe Kennedy, there was something fishy.

01:17:04.470 --> 01:17:08.870
And even if it turns out that it's ultimately false, you can see why that'd be kind of

01:17:09.350 --> 01:17:11.590
broadly plausible for many reasons.

01:17:11.760 --> 01:17:16.160
Whereas the people who hold the ones that you know that they thought the Queen of England

01:17:16.160 --> 01:17:22.160
was a lizard person, these are people who these are vastly less popular and they only

01:17:22.160 --> 01:17:27.200
spread in an audience of people who already believe things are a little bit crazy for most

01:17:27.200 --> 01:17:27.520
people.

01:17:28.080 --> 01:17:30.160
So you still need to explain.

01:17:30.320 --> 01:17:35.360
So even if if there is this signaling component for the thing to become more spread and to

01:17:35.360 --> 01:17:40.470
really entirely then then be able to fulfill its signaling component, people still need to

01:17:40.470 --> 01:17:41.430
accept it in some way.

01:17:41.590 --> 01:17:46.790
Like you know, you couldn't I mean if you take a population that has kind of normal priors,

01:17:47.430 --> 01:17:51.110
you can't just decide, well now we're gonna all gonna signal that we believe the moon is

01:17:51.110 --> 01:17:53.590
made of cheese because the thing is not going to spread in the first place.

01:17:53.670 --> 01:17:58.230
So you still have to have some reason why people are accepting the thing at some point.

01:17:58.900 --> 01:18:00.180
Yeah, no, absolutely.

01:18:00.340 --> 01:18:05.380
Um yeah, there needs to be some way of keeping the signal um honest.

01:18:05.700 --> 01:18:10.260
Um and it could be that you know only people who are actually committed to the group are

01:18:10.260 --> 01:18:15.860
willing to send the signal because the uh that uh in effect alienates you from outgroups.

01:18:16.100 --> 01:18:20.180
So if uh you know everyone in our group believes in the Trinity, everyone in the outgroup

01:18:20.180 --> 01:18:21.220
rejects that belief.

01:18:21.550 --> 01:18:25.230
merely by saying that merely by uttering that belief becomes a kind of costly signal

01:18:25.310 --> 01:18:27.950
because I'm burning bridges with with the outgroup.

01:18:28.190 --> 01:18:28.510
Right?

01:18:28.670 --> 01:18:32.750
Um and so uh that that could be one way of of maintaining signal honesty.

01:18:32.830 --> 01:18:34.910
Another way is maybe I pay some cost.

01:18:35.070 --> 01:18:39.710
So uh if people who believe in Jesus are are you know go to these these rituals and make

01:18:39.710 --> 01:18:44.510
these sacrifices, um maybe I maybe I I perform those rituals and make those sacrifices,

01:18:44.590 --> 01:18:49.100
even if I don't truly believe in an intuitive level, uh the uh in in the particular God or

01:18:49.100 --> 01:18:49.420
spirit.

01:18:49.500 --> 01:18:53.740
If I'm making the sacrifices, that could uh maintain the honesty of the signal.

01:18:53.900 --> 01:18:58.140
Uh and in other cases, maybe it is just a deceptive signal, just in the same way that

01:18:58.140 --> 01:18:59.740
pseudoscience is a deceptive signal.

01:18:59.820 --> 01:19:00.780
It's not really science.

01:19:00.860 --> 01:19:03.340
Uh but just people just, you know, get get fooled.

01:19:03.420 --> 01:19:04.780
Um it it happens.

01:19:04.940 --> 01:19:09.420
Um and and you know maybe it'll the the the the trickery will will will persist for some

01:19:09.420 --> 01:19:09.980
amount of time.

01:19:10.140 --> 01:19:14.450
Maybe at some point people will discover it and the pseudoscientist will uh uh his

01:19:14.450 --> 01:19:16.050
reputation will will collapse.

01:19:16.130 --> 01:19:19.810
Uh and then a new pseudoscience will emerge that tries to mimic some other superficial

01:19:19.810 --> 01:19:23.250
property of science, and you get this kind of arms race between deceivers and deceived.

01:19:23.410 --> 01:19:26.770
So that's another path that these kinds of s of pseudo beliefs could take.

01:19:26.930 --> 01:19:29.890
Um But yeah, that that's that's sort of how I'm I'm I'm thinking of it.

01:19:29.970 --> 01:19:34.290
That either either it um it it remains a deceptive signal, in which case you get a kind of

01:19:34.290 --> 01:19:39.490
arms race, and sometimes it persists and sometimes it doesn't, or it um it it has a kind of

01:19:39.490 --> 01:19:43.660
bridge burning function, or it or it takes on some kind of cost uh that that makes the

01:19:43.660 --> 01:19:44.780
signal persist.

01:19:45.580 --> 01:19:45.740
Okay.

01:19:45.980 --> 01:19:49.500
No, no, these are all interesting possibilities that must apply in some cases.

01:19:49.740 --> 01:19:54.620
Like I'm just the the I guess the point I was trying to make is that it seems that if what

01:19:54.620 --> 01:19:58.780
you're saying already takes for granted that the belief is widespread enough that it can be

01:19:58.780 --> 01:19:59.980
used as a reliable signal.

01:20:00.140 --> 01:20:04.970
Like, you know, you have to know that Republicans as a rule believe that fetuses are are

01:20:05.450 --> 01:20:05.770
people.

01:20:06.330 --> 01:20:09.610
Um but so why how did that belief become widespread in the first place?

01:20:09.690 --> 01:20:13.850
Like people obviously in that case it's a it's a very and you can see why it's uh it's an

01:20:13.850 --> 01:20:15.690
appealing belief, like it's not absurd.

01:20:15.930 --> 01:20:21.050
Uh and and and so it has to have you know some some interesting

01:20:21.050 --> 01:20:24.330
plausibility to spread uh to spread in the first place.

01:20:25.260 --> 01:20:26.140
That is true.

01:20:26.540 --> 01:20:28.780
Yeah, it cannot be totally insane.

01:20:29.580 --> 01:20:34.060
But the reason why it might exist in the first place is because there's an abortion debate

01:20:34.140 --> 01:20:37.500
and people are kind of trying to come up with justifications for their side of the issue.

01:20:37.820 --> 01:20:41.500
And people who are coming up with a particular justification, well, that's going to set uh

01:20:41.900 --> 01:20:45.260
license a pretty strong inference that you're on one side of that issue if you're making

01:20:45.260 --> 01:20:46.300
those arguments.

01:20:46.540 --> 01:20:50.060
Uh for the same way, uh for the same reason, you know, can a conspiracy theory.

01:20:50.140 --> 01:20:56.030
Uh if I hate um the Democrats uh, and I think that the Democrats are part of some deep

01:20:56.030 --> 01:21:01.390
state conspiracy, that you're you're liable to um make a pretty strong inference that I

01:21:01.390 --> 01:21:03.790
hate the Democrats if I'm believing in this in this story.

01:21:03.870 --> 01:21:04.110
Right.

01:21:04.190 --> 01:21:08.350
And so that's another way I it could come across where um may maybe the belief doesn't

01:21:08.350 --> 01:21:12.350
exist at all, but be merely because I'm positing this conspiracy theory that demonizes the

01:21:12.350 --> 01:21:16.030
outgroup, that's going to cause you to make an inference about me that I hate the outgroup.

01:21:16.110 --> 01:21:19.630
And maybe I'll anticipate that and that gives me a reason to come up with a conspiracy

01:21:19.630 --> 01:21:21.310
theory uh in the first place.

01:21:22.200 --> 01:21:22.840
Yeah.

01:21:23.480 --> 01:21:26.440
Um, I know we're a little bit running a little on time here.

01:21:26.600 --> 01:21:31.160
I want to um push on one thing that I think a lot of people are probably thinking, which is

01:21:31.480 --> 01:21:34.440
there's this large category of sort of propaganda, right?

01:21:34.520 --> 01:21:35.960
Or like advertising.

01:21:36.120 --> 01:21:41.640
So something like, you know, smoking is makes me look cool or like sugar is reminds me of

01:21:41.640 --> 01:21:43.000
like happy holiday things.

01:21:43.080 --> 01:21:48.290
Like we know that, you know, like the history of like selling cigarettes or like corn and

01:21:48.290 --> 01:21:52.450
sugar subsidies in the US, like whenever people have looked at this, it's sort of like

01:21:52.450 --> 01:21:56.450
clear that um things are not healthy.

01:21:56.610 --> 01:22:02.370
Um, yet people spend tons and tons of money to convince people to hold the

01:22:02.370 --> 01:22:07.650
explicit belief, the reflective belief, that these things at least I have a positive

01:22:07.650 --> 01:22:13.320
association with, because th there's a small set of people who directly

01:22:13.320 --> 01:22:14.360
benefit, right?

01:22:14.520 --> 01:22:20.360
And they're in a position to manipulate the the reflective beliefs

01:22:20.360 --> 01:22:21.000
of people.

01:22:21.400 --> 01:22:27.400
Um in those cases, how does this uh theory, and I'm imagining people sort of

01:22:27.400 --> 01:22:33.090
have these examples in their head, how does this can you kind of walk us through how like

01:22:33.170 --> 01:22:37.010
the this idea of like reflective or intuitive beliefs or that people aren't gullible?

01:22:37.170 --> 01:22:37.890
How does this work?

01:22:38.050 --> 01:22:41.410
Because I think the principle would apply, whether we're talking about a mass society or

01:22:41.410 --> 01:22:43.250
even in a small-scale social world.

01:22:43.410 --> 01:22:49.090
You know, for example, like, you know, I'm an old, I'm an old person and I want this stuff

01:22:49.090 --> 01:22:53.020
in another group, and I convince the young guys to like be belligerent towards them.

01:22:53.100 --> 01:22:54.380
It's not in their interest at all.

01:22:54.460 --> 01:22:55.340
They might die, you know.

01:22:55.420 --> 01:22:57.740
So I'm gonna send these guys off to war, basically.

01:22:57.900 --> 01:23:02.220
You know, like this trope is common where I sort of try to convince people of beliefs and I

01:23:02.220 --> 01:23:04.620
do sometimes that are not in their interest.

01:23:04.940 --> 01:23:08.700
So I'm just I want to push on that just because I'm imagining people are thinking about

01:23:08.700 --> 01:23:09.100
that too.

01:23:09.420 --> 01:23:10.940
No, no, that's that's a that's a great point.

01:23:11.020 --> 01:23:11.340
Thanks.

01:23:11.500 --> 01:23:16.430
Um like on the whole, these things work because they tap into things that people want to do

01:23:16.430 --> 01:23:17.310
in the first place.

01:23:17.550 --> 01:23:22.350
So people, you know, like sugar for pretty obvious evolutionary reasons.

01:23:22.510 --> 01:23:26.990
Um, people like nicotine for reasons that are less clear evolutionarily because it's not

01:23:26.990 --> 01:23:27.870
really good for us.

01:23:27.950 --> 01:23:31.230
But um but nicotine is uh you know has it's very nice.

01:23:31.390 --> 01:23:32.670
I can't say it's a pesticide.

01:23:35.470 --> 01:23:37.550
There's a good reason, there's like pretty clear, yeah, my reason.

01:23:37.710 --> 01:23:41.200
Yeah, no, but that's so it's it's it's and even that like the the psychoactive effects of

01:23:41.200 --> 01:23:44.480
nicotine are obviously very pleasant for for many people.

01:23:44.880 --> 01:23:50.240
Um so what advertising can do then is uh first of all it can make you aware of a product

01:23:50.240 --> 01:23:51.120
that you didn't know existed.

01:23:51.280 --> 01:23:54.400
So if I've never heard of chocolate, maybe I see chocolate, it's like that looks

01:23:54.640 --> 01:23:57.040
interesting, and maybe you try chocolate and you like it.

01:23:57.360 --> 01:24:01.680
Um or it can give you justification for doing something, you know, if you say, Oh, you

01:24:01.680 --> 01:24:05.040
know, there's a sale on on on you know chocolate, so I'm gonna buy chocolate because but

01:24:05.040 --> 01:24:08.080
obviously you wanted to buy chocolate in the first place, you're just looking for a way of

01:24:08.080 --> 01:24:12.210
justifying, you know to to yourself and to others that uh that you know it's fine to buy

01:24:12.210 --> 01:24:15.090
chocolate even though it's not the healthiest of foods.

01:24:15.330 --> 01:24:21.170
Um and to some extent the same is true for even sending young young men to to war like

01:24:21.170 --> 01:24:26.850
the uh you know some young men to some extent want to show that they're brave

01:24:27.010 --> 01:24:32.930
and uh and they want to do things like fighting and and you know you have uh and you

01:24:32.930 --> 01:24:36.610
know young men will fight essentially I mean it's not always and obviously there's wide

01:24:36.610 --> 01:24:42.460
variation across societies but in most societies uh young men have a tendency to to want to

01:24:42.540 --> 01:24:47.980
to not to use violence more than other um demographics and it's one way that they can uh

01:24:47.980 --> 01:24:53.660
they can show their physical uh prowess and so you're just capitalizing on something that's

01:24:53.660 --> 01:24:56.940
already there and indeed I mean it would be much harder if you wanted to convince you know

01:24:57.020 --> 01:25:01.100
older women to go to war it'd be a harder sell or if you want to convince everybody to

01:25:01.100 --> 01:25:03.730
start you know eating kale.

01:25:04.290 --> 01:25:09.490
I think you know we can see the failure of communication by the failure of health messages.

01:25:09.650 --> 01:25:14.290
Like people still drink too much soda, they still eat too much bad food, they still not eat

01:25:14.290 --> 01:25:19.490
enough vegetables after decades of being told that it's good or bad for us, respectively.

01:25:19.810 --> 01:25:24.770
So if it was that easy to persuade people to eat or to you know do

01:25:25.330 --> 01:25:30.780
things, the positive messages that are not completely failing, but that are not widely

01:25:30.940 --> 01:25:35.420
successful, let's say, uh would be more successful by kind of by symmetry.

01:25:36.940 --> 01:25:37.660
Yeah, interesting.

01:25:37.740 --> 01:25:37.980
Yeah.

01:25:38.060 --> 01:25:43.660
I mean it's uh uh um yeah I mean I guess one way of putting it is sort of

01:25:43.900 --> 01:25:49.750
there at least the way I think about it is you know, there's people who are sort of

01:25:49.750 --> 01:25:54.230
getting the short end of the stick, and they're sort of, they think they're sort of,

01:25:54.390 --> 01:25:57.510
they're the victim of other people's sort of confabulations, right?

01:25:57.670 --> 01:26:03.190
So sort of like, um, the way they might rationally prefer, like, do I want to go to war or

01:26:03.190 --> 01:26:03.430
not?

01:26:03.510 --> 01:26:05.190
But what's their view of war, right?

01:26:05.270 --> 01:26:09.270
Or like, do I want um sugar versus something healthy?

01:26:09.430 --> 01:26:13.270
But what's the what are the offerings presented to me and how expensive are they?

01:26:13.540 --> 01:26:13.780
Right.

01:26:13.940 --> 01:26:19.780
So sort of I think um I think when people say like people are gullible or duped or

01:26:19.780 --> 01:26:24.420
are the victims of other people's beliefs, I suspect that it's that conflict of interest

01:26:24.420 --> 01:26:27.300
thing where there's this small group of people who are sort of incentivized.

01:26:29.220 --> 01:26:29.540
Yeah.

01:26:30.020 --> 01:26:33.460
Like you disagree with the with these or you moralize these these people's choices.

01:26:33.540 --> 01:26:37.540
So you think oh people are buying SUVs because they've been brainwashed by by automakers.

01:26:37.620 --> 01:26:39.860
But no a lot of people just like SUVs.

01:26:40.870 --> 01:26:46.870
Like most of the things that uh some people think uh you know have been pushed on us by

01:26:46.870 --> 01:26:50.630
advertising are just things that let me push back on that because I don't I don't agree

01:26:50.630 --> 01:26:50.870
with that.

01:26:51.030 --> 01:26:55.190
So, like a good example is like when I go to Germany, uh fresh, healthy fruit and

01:26:55.190 --> 01:26:57.270
vegetables are easy, people want them.

01:26:57.430 --> 01:26:59.030
Um, there's not a lot of sugar and stuff.

01:26:59.110 --> 01:27:02.790
Here in the US, sugar and corn are subsidized, everything is super sweet.

01:27:03.030 --> 01:27:06.740
Every American I know who goes to Germany is like, this is great, and I like lose weight,

01:27:06.820 --> 01:27:08.660
and they come back and they gain weight.

01:27:08.820 --> 01:27:09.780
Nobody wants it.

01:27:09.940 --> 01:27:15.780
But it's sort of in the it's just the the choice architecture because of uh lobbying

01:27:15.940 --> 01:27:19.060
and um and ads and just sort of that.

01:27:19.220 --> 01:27:25.010
So I think like that that to me would be a clear case of like it's not there are

01:27:25.010 --> 01:27:30.050
different like stable norms where like, you know, people do if they're addicted to sugar in

01:27:30.050 --> 01:27:33.890
refined flour, for example, like they'll just keep doing it.

01:27:34.050 --> 01:27:38.930
But if they had a choice between the two, like a run that experiment anecdotally and like

01:27:39.090 --> 01:27:40.050
people don't prefer it.

01:27:40.130 --> 01:27:44.290
But if you were don't give them that choice, then they're just sort of stuck at this one

01:27:44.290 --> 01:27:44.770
equilibrium.

01:27:45.090 --> 01:27:45.330
Yes.

01:27:45.410 --> 01:27:51.240
But what what works is manipulating the actual incentives and that is making making it

01:27:51.240 --> 01:27:54.280
really available, making it cheap, making things the default option.

01:27:54.840 --> 01:27:55.160
That works.

01:27:55.320 --> 01:27:57.960
It's not you don't need advertising for people to buy MMs.

01:27:58.040 --> 01:28:02.680
I mean you just need to you need to buy to make MMs available at every counter and to make

01:28:02.680 --> 01:28:06.040
them cheap and people will spontaneously gravitate towards that.

01:28:06.600 --> 01:28:07.320
Yeah maybe.

01:28:07.400 --> 01:28:07.800
I don't know.

01:28:07.880 --> 01:28:13.080
I don't because uh even as my like my you know uh having a child there are certain things

01:28:13.080 --> 01:28:17.640
that you wouldn't know about like as you said like unless you advertise them.

01:28:18.410 --> 01:28:23.290
But yeah, but but yes, the advertising has to be hooked up to like there being a lot of

01:28:23.290 --> 01:28:23.290
people.

01:28:23.930 --> 01:28:27.450
If you give your child ice cream, you don't need advertising.

01:28:27.530 --> 01:28:30.090
They're gonna like most most children are gonna like ice cream.

01:28:30.250 --> 01:28:30.410
Right.

01:28:30.570 --> 01:28:32.010
Because it's just you know very, very good.

01:28:32.170 --> 01:28:32.570
Yeah, yeah.

01:28:32.810 --> 01:28:37.690
And uh if you give your most children are not going to like you know vegetables as you know

01:28:37.770 --> 01:28:39.370
you should be in a good position to know.

01:28:39.770 --> 01:28:42.250
Not because of your children, but because of of your wife.

01:28:42.480 --> 01:28:45.760
uh, you know, they'll be a bit reluctant maybe at first to to to eat these kind of

01:28:45.840 --> 01:28:46.240
products.

01:28:46.320 --> 01:28:50.800
And and you know, I think it's rare the parent who's I mean it happens because you know

01:28:50.960 --> 01:28:54.880
people have different tastes, but but as a rule, I think parents' experience is it's easier

01:28:54.880 --> 01:28:57.200
to get their kids to eat ice cream than to eat broccoli.

01:28:57.600 --> 01:29:00.560
Um and uh and that's just the way it is.

01:29:00.640 --> 01:29:01.120
Yeah.

01:29:01.600 --> 01:29:01.840
Right.

01:29:02.000 --> 01:29:04.960
But it's interesting there's more ice cream ads than broccoli ads.

01:29:05.150 --> 01:29:07.870
That's a separate and unpredicted outcome.

01:29:08.350 --> 01:29:12.430
Yeah, that's that's partly because because there are different brands of ice cream.

01:29:12.510 --> 01:29:14.430
There's only one people don't discriminate broccoli.

01:29:14.670 --> 01:29:15.630
They're buy broccoli or not.

01:29:15.710 --> 01:29:18.990
So no one making broccoli really has an incentive to say, well, you have to buy my to buy

01:29:18.990 --> 01:29:19.710
my broccoli.

01:29:19.870 --> 01:29:23.470
Whereas people who make and it's interesting because that's when ads have some they can

01:29:23.470 --> 01:29:26.430
work because you have 10 brands of ice cream and they're all pretty much the same, they're

01:29:26.430 --> 01:29:27.790
all pretty much the same price.

01:29:28.030 --> 01:29:33.300
So your choice within the ice cream category, your choice can be somewhat influenced by ads

01:29:33.380 --> 01:29:35.220
because you know they're all the same essentially.

01:29:35.380 --> 01:29:39.220
Whereas the choice between ice cream and broccoli, that's not gonna be the ad, that's just

01:29:39.220 --> 01:29:40.420
because the ice creams are better.

01:29:40.740 --> 01:29:45.780
Yeah, that's that's a beautiful illustration of of your principle when you know you have no

01:29:45.780 --> 01:29:49.700
strong reason or no strong prior to pick one ice cream over the other.

01:29:49.860 --> 01:29:53.490
Uh that is precisely the case where arguments are gonna sway you one way or the other

01:29:53.570 --> 01:29:55.170
because you don't really care what ice cream you buy.

01:29:55.330 --> 01:29:57.810
And you know, maybe some ad will sway you to buy that ice cream.

01:29:57.890 --> 01:29:59.650
But if you don't really care, you're not really being manipulated.

01:29:59.730 --> 01:30:00.690
You're just, you know, whatever.

01:30:00.850 --> 01:30:01.810
Doesn't it doesn't matter to you?

01:30:01.970 --> 01:30:02.130
Yeah.

01:30:02.370 --> 01:30:05.570
What the literature on advertising suggests is that if you don't like that ice cream, then

01:30:05.570 --> 01:30:06.450
you're not going to buy it again.

01:30:06.530 --> 01:30:08.610
Like it's not going to change your perceptions.

01:30:08.770 --> 01:30:11.730
Maybe it's going to, you know, so and then if you do like it, then maybe you're stuck

01:30:11.810 --> 01:30:12.930
buying that ice cream for a long time.

01:30:13.010 --> 01:30:18.260
So it does, it can have some influence at the margin, but only for decisions that are from

01:30:18.260 --> 01:30:21.620
the point from your point of view of the as a consumer, you know, it's like cook or Pepsi.

01:30:21.780 --> 01:30:23.540
I mean, they're the same product at the same price.

01:30:23.780 --> 01:30:26.900
From your from your perspective, it doesn't make any difference which one you pick, but

01:30:26.900 --> 01:30:29.220
obviously from their perspective, it makes a huge difference.

01:30:29.540 --> 01:30:29.700
Right.

01:30:29.860 --> 01:30:30.580
It is scale.

01:30:30.660 --> 01:30:34.020
So broccoli is advertised at the grocery store when there's a couple of different versions

01:30:34.020 --> 01:30:35.220
of broccoli, for example.

01:30:35.380 --> 01:30:35.540
Right.

01:30:35.620 --> 01:30:35.780
Yeah.

01:30:36.020 --> 01:30:36.260
Yeah.

01:30:36.500 --> 01:30:39.860
Well, uh I I'll I'm gonna ask the question that Dave usually asks because I know we have to

01:30:39.860 --> 01:30:40.420
wrap up.

01:30:40.580 --> 01:30:44.260
Um, is is there anything that we should have asked you, Hugo?

01:30:45.730 --> 01:30:48.450
No, I mean I think uh no it was great.

01:30:48.530 --> 01:30:50.850
Uh no it was great, no no fantastic.

01:30:51.010 --> 01:30:54.210
Um we didn't tell him to say that.

01:30:56.290 --> 01:30:58.610
I actually I want I have a question that I wish I asked you.

01:30:58.690 --> 01:31:00.130
I've been dying to ask you this the whole interview.

01:31:00.530 --> 01:31:03.250
Okay, so we talked about intuitive and reflective beliefs.

01:31:03.570 --> 01:31:08.660
If you had to guess just on an intuitive level, what percentage of our culture of our verb

01:31:08.820 --> 01:31:14.260
verbally articulated beliefs, what percentage of them are actually uh intuitive beliefs

01:31:14.260 --> 01:31:15.780
that guide our behavior?

01:31:17.380 --> 01:31:17.620
Okay.

01:31:18.020 --> 01:31:19.140
Bringing back to percentages.

01:31:19.540 --> 01:31:20.500
Good good callback, David.

01:31:20.740 --> 01:31:21.940
Yeah, back to percentages.

01:31:22.660 --> 01:31:26.340
Obviously, a lot of culture is fiction, like especially in contemporary cultures, a lot of

01:31:26.340 --> 01:31:29.540
culture is fiction, which by definition is not even a belief in the sense that you know

01:31:29.620 --> 01:31:30.100
it's nothing you've got to do.

01:31:30.340 --> 01:31:34.340
Let's say let's say exclude excluding uh excluding explicit fiction.

01:31:36.890 --> 01:31:42.730
Well, I mean uh um are you saying Santa Claus is a real data?

01:31:43.530 --> 01:31:47.370
Are you saying Santa Claus is a real I'm trying to think of broad categories.

01:31:47.450 --> 01:31:48.170
Like if you explain it.

01:31:48.330 --> 01:31:51.690
So there's like stuff we read in the news or you know, think pieces, you know, stuff we

01:31:51.690 --> 01:31:53.130
talk about in everyday conversation.

01:31:53.610 --> 01:31:55.690
Very little of that is intuitive, yeah.

01:31:55.930 --> 01:31:57.210
I would say very, very little.

01:31:57.370 --> 01:32:01.530
Either because it's too complex for you, like if you hear that there's something about a

01:32:01.530 --> 01:32:06.040
trade treaty or something, it's or I mean the things that are intuitive, like if you hear

01:32:06.040 --> 01:32:10.600
about uh you know there has been a an in you know a flood in in Myanmar or something or an

01:32:10.600 --> 01:32:15.080
earthquake in Myanmar, you might have an intuitive grasp of that, but it's very fleeting

01:32:15.080 --> 01:32:18.360
because you know you don't really care, and you know, five minutes later you've forgotten

01:32:18.360 --> 01:32:19.000
about it.

01:32:19.560 --> 01:32:25.320
So uh for things that are more durable, I would say the overwhelming majority

01:32:25.400 --> 01:32:27.240
uh probably is is reflective.

01:32:27.320 --> 01:32:31.070
And that's true, that's true for like most of science as well, like not only for for lay

01:32:31.070 --> 01:32:35.630
people, but really most scientists our beliefs are reflective because either the format is

01:32:35.630 --> 01:32:40.830
something that makes it impossible to be intuitive, uh, or because they don't really impact

01:32:40.830 --> 01:32:42.030
directly our behavior.

01:32:42.190 --> 01:32:47.310
So so yeah, something like I would say something like seventy thirty ballpark of that.

01:32:47.710 --> 01:32:53.230
I would have to think harder about uh what um what

01:32:53.960 --> 01:32:56.600
the beliefs are that we're talking about.

01:32:57.240 --> 01:33:00.840
So I but yeah, a lot more than we'd think, I guess, would be reflective.

01:33:00.920 --> 01:33:01.000
Yeah.

01:33:01.240 --> 01:33:03.720
Well, yeah, that that is that is my intuition as well.

01:33:03.880 --> 01:33:07.560
You know, I'm I'm thinking of writing a blog post called You Don't Believe Most of What You

01:33:07.560 --> 01:33:08.040
Believe.

01:33:09.960 --> 01:33:14.120
I mean you know when I believe in in like, you know, vaccination or relativity theory,

01:33:14.200 --> 01:33:16.040
yeah, uh I actually I believe it.

01:33:16.120 --> 01:33:19.470
Like it's not, you know, I have a critical attitude towards it and I would defend into

01:33:19.630 --> 01:33:21.230
other people and I have reasons for it.

01:33:21.470 --> 01:33:22.350
So it is a belief.

01:33:22.430 --> 01:33:24.110
It's just not an intuitive belief.

01:33:25.150 --> 01:33:25.470
Right.

01:33:25.870 --> 01:33:29.230
It it reminds me of there's this quote, and we've already established that I don't remember

01:33:29.230 --> 01:33:31.150
quotes well and quotes are of suspicion.

01:33:31.310 --> 01:33:35.230
But it's just this thing of like, don't count on somebody to believe something that they're

01:33:35.230 --> 01:33:36.590
career like making money.

01:33:36.830 --> 01:33:38.430
I I why I'm terrible at the end of the yeah.

01:33:38.590 --> 01:33:40.030
Yeah, if their paycheck depends on it as something.

01:33:40.350 --> 01:33:40.590
Exactly.

01:33:40.670 --> 01:33:40.830
Yes.

01:33:40.990 --> 01:33:46.600
So it's sort of collectively, like very little of our epistemic landscape is

01:33:46.600 --> 01:33:50.280
sort of things that our paycheck um depends on.

01:33:50.360 --> 01:33:56.120
Or conversely, it's sort of like if I worried about the flood in Myanmar or if I worried

01:33:56.120 --> 01:33:59.640
about, you know, all of these other things, it doesn't help me.

01:33:59.720 --> 01:34:05.000
Like knowing how my iPhone is made and the conditions of those people, that actually hurts

01:34:05.000 --> 01:34:09.610
me in the sense of it takes up time away from like, you know, feeding my feeding my family,

01:34:09.690 --> 01:34:13.290
or you know, I might end up having to give up my phone, which I like.

01:34:13.450 --> 01:34:19.130
So sort of for in a very selfish way, we have these very rich landscape of beliefs,

01:34:19.290 --> 01:34:22.490
but not a lot of them have teeth, maybe as a way to put it.

01:34:22.730 --> 01:34:23.290
No, no, no, no.

01:34:23.370 --> 01:34:28.010
I mean, one way of thinking about that maybe is that usually there's a trade-off between

01:34:29.480 --> 01:34:32.520
Um can between two forms of relevance.

01:34:32.600 --> 01:34:36.520
Like most of the beliefs we have are relevant only to us.

01:34:36.680 --> 01:34:41.080
Essentially, no one cares like you know everything I know about my work and my personal

01:34:41.080 --> 01:34:41.400
life.

01:34:41.480 --> 01:34:43.160
And I mean, you know, they're mostly relevant to me.

01:34:43.240 --> 01:34:44.840
So they're not, they don't become cultural.

01:34:44.920 --> 01:34:47.400
And they're mostly accurate and they're mostly intuitive.

01:34:47.800 --> 01:34:53.690
But when you want to have beliefs that will be relevant to a lot of people, By definition

01:34:53.770 --> 01:34:58.330
these beliefs can't be this kind of local relevant beliefs because no one cares.

01:34:58.410 --> 01:35:00.970
Uh you're describing the podcast.

01:35:02.730 --> 01:35:04.730
Well Sono is gonna explain that.

01:35:05.130 --> 01:35:11.050
The um so to have something very very general, it has to be something

01:35:11.050 --> 01:35:14.330
that's that you know it's gonna be really hard to have something that's very general and

01:35:14.330 --> 01:35:17.610
very relevant to a lot of people, kind of by definition.

01:35:18.180 --> 01:35:23.620
Um, so given that it's it's kind of bound to be the case that typically like I mean the the

01:35:23.620 --> 01:35:27.860
exceptions would be things like, you know, if there is an an emergency, there's an

01:35:27.860 --> 01:35:31.700
earthquake, and you're giving really practical information about what to do in case of

01:35:31.860 --> 01:35:33.380
earthquake, of an earthquake.

01:35:33.540 --> 01:35:37.060
And then you have the whole population who has that belief, well, if I if there the if

01:35:37.060 --> 01:35:41.570
there's an earthquake, I have to do this, which is intuitive, because it so happens to be

01:35:41.570 --> 01:35:45.490
something that can be widely shared and that is really kind of relevant locally to a lot of

01:35:45.490 --> 01:35:45.650
people.

01:35:45.730 --> 01:35:48.130
And it's really rare the beliefs that have these properties.

01:35:48.370 --> 01:35:49.010
Yeah.

01:35:50.050 --> 01:35:50.370
Cool.

01:35:50.530 --> 01:35:54.850
That's why the weather channel has is always scary stuff because it it seeds the

01:35:54.850 --> 01:35:57.090
epidemiological epistemic landscape.

01:35:57.410 --> 01:36:00.370
Hugo, um, thank you so much for for joining us.

01:36:00.690 --> 01:36:00.930
Thank you.

01:36:01.410 --> 01:36:03.810
It was a very dense, efficient conversation.

01:36:03.890 --> 01:36:04.450
It was lovely.

01:36:04.530 --> 01:36:09.010
We'll have to have you back on for banter and hearing more about all the things that are,

01:36:09.090 --> 01:36:11.960
you know, um extra scientific about you.

01:36:12.760 --> 01:36:13.080
Yes.

01:36:13.240 --> 01:36:13.480
Thank you.

01:36:13.640 --> 01:36:14.120
Thank you very much.

01:36:14.280 --> 01:36:17.720
Intuitively now I'm tempted to sign my emails to intuitively instead of sincerely.

01:36:18.040 --> 01:36:19.160
Intuitively yours.

01:36:19.480 --> 01:36:20.600
Intuitively yours.

01:36:21.080 --> 01:36:22.920
I look for that in your greeting, David.

01:36:23.000 --> 01:36:27.640
So but yeah Hugo, thank you so much for your time and for uh recording this in the evening

01:36:27.640 --> 01:36:30.600
for you over in um on the other side of the globe.

01:36:30.990 --> 01:36:33.630
Yeah, you have Frenchmen still at work at nearly eight.

01:36:33.790 --> 01:36:34.110
My God.

01:36:34.510 --> 01:36:34.990
Exactly.

01:36:35.070 --> 01:36:35.310
Yes.

01:36:35.390 --> 01:36:37.470
It's good.

01:36:37.790 --> 01:36:39.230
Uh yeah, thank you again.

01:36:39.310 --> 01:36:41.550
And uh yeah, we'll we'll talk soon.

01:36:41.870 --> 01:36:42.510
That sounds good.

01:36:42.590 --> 01:36:43.550
Thanks a lot.

01:36:47.230 --> 01:36:50.830
Well David, people have a little bit of extra time in their day.

01:36:51.160 --> 01:36:52.040
They certainly do.

01:36:52.120 --> 01:36:56.520
And with that extra time, they can uh leave us a kind review or say something nice on

01:36:56.520 --> 01:36:58.920
social media or even check us out on Patreon.

01:36:59.240 --> 01:37:04.440
Yeah or go for a walk or you know help somebody with I don't know assemble their furniture

01:37:04.520 --> 01:37:08.360
or clean their house or I don't know do something you've been putting off you know with

01:37:08.360 --> 01:37:09.880
this half hour free of time.

01:37:10.200 --> 01:37:11.960
Yeah that's also a nice thing you can do.

01:37:12.170 --> 01:37:12.330
Yeah.

01:37:12.490 --> 01:37:14.890
But but be thinking about us while you do those things.

01:37:15.130 --> 01:37:15.450
Okay.

01:37:15.690 --> 01:37:19.850
We still gotta get you those uh the that fanny pack David so please somebody send me yeah

01:37:19.930 --> 01:37:23.530
I'm still in the market so if you if you have a fanny pack please send it my way I still

01:37:23.530 --> 01:37:27.610
haven't gotten any i've been waiting we need t-shirts and stickers too we need more

01:37:27.610 --> 01:37:31.450
stickers we we did hand out some stickers at HBus if anybody wants stickers let us know

01:37:31.850 --> 01:37:35.210
yeah we're drowning in these stickers we ordered too many oh do you have stickers I ran out

01:37:35.450 --> 01:37:39.770
I still have stickers left over really can you send okay well maybe if you come up okay all

01:37:39.770 --> 01:37:41.980
right Just come to my house in Los Angeles.

01:37:42.060 --> 01:37:42.700
I'll give you some stickers.

01:37:42.860 --> 01:37:43.740
No, no, no, don't do that.

01:37:43.820 --> 01:37:44.220
Don't do that.

01:37:44.940 --> 01:37:45.580
A bad idea.

01:37:45.740 --> 01:37:46.060
Okay.

01:37:46.220 --> 01:37:47.980
Uh we'll we'll talk to you guys next week.

01:37:48.220 --> 01:37:48.460
All right.

01:37:48.620 --> 01:37:49.900
See you next week.