WEBVTT 00:00:00.320 --> 00:00:02.000 I'm David Petrozowski. 00:00:02.240 --> 00:00:03.280 You're David Pinsoff. 00:00:03.760 --> 00:00:04.240 That's correct. 00:00:04.320 --> 00:00:05.360 You stole my thunder. 00:00:05.440 --> 00:00:08.480 And this is Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast. 00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:10.560 Uh actual evolutionary psychology. 00:00:11.040 --> 00:00:15.120 By actual evolutionary psychologists, and You Stole My Thunder is a great name for 00:00:15.200 --> 00:00:15.680 podcasts. 00:00:15.760 --> 00:00:16.880 I don't know if there is one. 00:00:17.280 --> 00:00:18.960 Oh, the Thunder Steelers. 00:00:19.200 --> 00:00:20.640 No, you stole your band name? 00:00:20.880 --> 00:00:22.320 It should just be You Stole Thunder. 00:00:22.640 --> 00:00:23.280 That's a little clunkier. 00:00:23.440 --> 00:00:24.400 I prefer Thunder Steelers. 00:00:28.330 --> 00:00:30.810 Onto the on to the see you in a second, David. 00:00:31.210 --> 00:00:32.170 See you soon. 00:00:47.930 --> 00:00:52.970 Uh brilliant philosopher that we uh talked to about so many different interesting things. 00:00:53.130 --> 00:00:59.120 I think we started out talking about class and status and then I think uh we got r into a 00:00:59.120 --> 00:01:01.280 really juicy topic which was moral progress. 00:01:01.360 --> 00:01:01.440 Yeah. 00:01:02.800 --> 00:01:03.680 Moral progress exists. 00:01:03.760 --> 00:01:05.520 Is it yeah and I don't know. 00:01:05.600 --> 00:01:11.360 My take on it is I think with everything in this podcast is people are simultaneously 00:01:11.360 --> 00:01:13.040 horrible and wonderful. 00:01:13.280 --> 00:01:19.040 And almost nothing that we explicitly talk about is really what it is under the surface. 00:01:19.550 --> 00:01:22.110 I think I would sign on to that one hundred percent. 00:01:22.270 --> 00:01:27.230 Uh and I think, you know, that that is a perspective that I think evolutionary psychology 00:01:27.310 --> 00:01:30.030 um props up and and makes more plausible. 00:01:30.270 --> 00:01:33.470 And it's not a a very intuitive one that you would arrive at necessarily. 00:01:33.790 --> 00:01:35.390 Um which is what I like anyway. 00:01:35.710 --> 00:01:35.870 Yeah. 00:01:35.950 --> 00:01:40.510 If you if you if you think we're making moral progress, if you think we we haven't, if you 00:01:40.510 --> 00:01:46.040 think slavery is over or just state slavery has been exchanged for economic 00:01:46.040 --> 00:01:46.840 slavery. 00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:51.480 Um if you think that morality is a good thing or a bad thing or any of the above, I think 00:01:51.480 --> 00:01:53.640 this conversation will be interesting for you. 00:01:54.120 --> 00:01:54.440 Yes. 00:01:54.600 --> 00:01:56.440 Uh it was a really fun one. 00:01:56.680 --> 00:01:59.400 Uh listen to the end and uh yeah. 00:01:59.560 --> 00:02:00.440 Enjoy. 00:02:05.800 --> 00:02:08.360 Hanno, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. 00:02:08.760 --> 00:02:09.240 Me too. 00:02:09.750 --> 00:02:13.750 Uh number one, because I'm I'm a big fan of the discipline of philosophy. 00:02:13.830 --> 00:02:18.950 But number two is you are a shiny example of a philosopher that I think avoids one of the 00:02:18.950 --> 00:02:21.670 biggest pitfalls of philosophy, which is being boring. 00:02:21.830 --> 00:02:23.750 Um you are you are not boring. 00:02:24.790 --> 00:02:30.390 Um you pick really big, juicy, interesting topics like morality, moral 00:02:30.390 --> 00:02:31.030 progress. 00:02:31.190 --> 00:02:33.350 Um, how does moral progress happen? 00:02:33.590 --> 00:02:34.550 Has it happened? 00:02:34.710 --> 00:02:40.340 Uh social class and status, virtue signaling, um, you know, uh 00:02:40.580 --> 00:02:45.780 what evolution implies about the validity of our moral intuitions, whether there's such a 00:02:45.780 --> 00:02:47.860 thing as, you know, uh objective moral truths. 00:02:47.940 --> 00:02:51.460 I mean, these are all really fascinating questions, and you not only pick the most 00:02:51.460 --> 00:02:56.580 fascinating questions, but you write about them in a very clear, uh and and compelling, uh, 00:02:56.820 --> 00:02:57.700 interesting way. 00:02:57.860 --> 00:02:58.820 So I applaud you for that. 00:02:59.140 --> 00:02:59.300 Thank you. 00:02:59.460 --> 00:03:00.770 Yeah, I try not to be boring. 00:03:00.850 --> 00:03:04.450 I mean, much of philosophy is can can be kind of boring and overly technical. 00:03:04.610 --> 00:03:09.410 Uh there comes a point where you also once you've once you've gotten into one controversial 00:03:09.410 --> 00:03:13.490 topic or one controversy, you get addicted to to to fighting. 00:03:13.970 --> 00:03:14.130 Right. 00:03:14.290 --> 00:03:17.810 Uh and you get addicted to like, oh, this is more fun than just sort of being middle of the 00:03:17.810 --> 00:03:21.570 road and to so I'm I'm I'm very much like a pick your battles kind of guy, and I I and I'm 00:03:21.570 --> 00:03:25.010 happy for happy to be disagreed with and to disagree with people. 00:03:25.170 --> 00:03:26.210 And I really like this approach. 00:03:26.290 --> 00:03:31.480 I think this is from Tyler Cowan where he says um you have strong strong positions loosely 00:03:31.480 --> 00:03:32.120 held. 00:03:32.760 --> 00:03:33.000 Right? 00:03:33.160 --> 00:03:35.960 So you have like you know strong position, but I'm happy to give it up. 00:03:36.040 --> 00:03:39.480 Like, you know, if you if you tell me something and I'm like, oh, I guess I'm I believe 00:03:39.480 --> 00:03:40.040 that now. 00:03:40.280 --> 00:03:45.240 And I love I love to be in that space where I I feel comfortable to change my mind and 00:03:45.240 --> 00:03:47.720 update and uh and that's a lot of fun to me. 00:03:48.120 --> 00:03:52.760 Yeah, that's that's a very good way to approach intellectual life, I think, is to, you 00:03:52.760 --> 00:03:57.230 know, make strong claims and and really stand by them and give them a good run for their 00:03:57.230 --> 00:04:00.430 money but like be willing to change your mind and that's really actually it's easier said 00:04:00.430 --> 00:04:00.830 than done. 00:04:00.990 --> 00:04:04.750 It's hard to do because once you make a strong claim you sort of stake your social status 00:04:04.750 --> 00:04:06.910 on it and then when you walk back from it you kind of look bad. 00:04:06.990 --> 00:04:09.070 That's that's kind of a social incentive problem. 00:04:09.390 --> 00:04:10.350 So it's all aspirational. 00:04:10.430 --> 00:04:12.430 It's all aspirational but that's what I try to do. 00:04:12.670 --> 00:04:13.870 Yeah for sure. 00:04:14.110 --> 00:04:20.080 Um so I want to get into your work on social class, because this is a 00:04:20.080 --> 00:04:24.720 topic that Dave and I have talked about uh a few times on the podcast with different 00:04:24.720 --> 00:04:25.360 guests. 00:04:25.520 --> 00:04:30.000 Uh one time we talked we talked about it with with Keila Williams, another with uh Leo 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:35.680 Fettucci, who's done work on uh the morality of self control and indulgence, 00:04:35.840 --> 00:04:39.440 and we briefly touched on how that might be related to social class. 00:04:39.600 --> 00:04:42.720 Uh we've we've talked about it from a life history perspective. 00:04:42.960 --> 00:04:47.150 Yeah, we've also talked a little bit from like a meta science perspective too, like even 00:04:47.150 --> 00:04:53.070 the class of scientists and what topics people find interesting colors the way science 00:04:53.070 --> 00:04:53.470 is done. 00:04:53.630 --> 00:04:53.950 Yeah. 00:04:54.270 --> 00:04:54.750 Yeah. 00:04:55.230 --> 00:04:58.270 So I know you have a book on cla on social class. 00:04:58.510 --> 00:05:01.230 Uh I I there's not yet an English version of it, so I have not read it. 00:05:01.310 --> 00:05:05.310 And I'm excited to just learn about it and get your take on it because I think it's a 00:05:05.310 --> 00:05:06.030 fascinating topic. 00:05:06.110 --> 00:05:10.030 And I think you're approaching it in the right way by drawing on insights from signaling 00:05:10.030 --> 00:05:10.430 theory. 00:05:10.590 --> 00:05:13.310 And I think that is that is the right way to tackle this topic. 00:05:13.720 --> 00:05:19.320 Yeah, so I think I think social class is really at the you know, it's not the the explain 00:05:19.480 --> 00:05:23.960 all concept, but I think it does a lot of um interesting work and a lot of heavy lifting 00:05:24.040 --> 00:05:29.640 and understanding other phenomena, polarization, um, knowledge, uh um 00:05:29.880 --> 00:05:34.200 identity politics, you know, this this this this thing called wokeness and so on and so on. 00:05:34.360 --> 00:05:39.950 So many of these conflicts that we've all talked about a lot and read about a lot over the 00:05:39.950 --> 00:05:41.470 past five, ten, fifteen years. 00:05:41.630 --> 00:05:47.310 I think in many cases there there is at least a big part of it that's due to social class 00:05:47.310 --> 00:05:51.390 and socioeconomic status and the way that it makes people think and talk and interact and 00:05:51.390 --> 00:05:55.630 compete, and how it shapes people's views, and how it shapes society in general. 00:05:55.790 --> 00:06:01.380 So, political developments of recent years, I think many of them are really fundamentally 00:06:01.380 --> 00:06:06.180 about socioeconomic distinctions and how they are maintained, and social exclusion, and how 00:06:06.180 --> 00:06:11.300 people want to signal who they are to other people. 00:06:11.700 --> 00:06:17.380 And of course, you know, there are different ways of 00:06:17.380 --> 00:06:23.300 thinking about social exclusion and identity and marginalization and 00:06:23.590 --> 00:06:25.670 advantage and disadvantage. 00:06:25.830 --> 00:06:31.350 And a lot of that has happened under these labels of 00:06:31.350 --> 00:06:33.430 racism and sexism and ableism. 00:06:33.510 --> 00:06:34.950 And I think that's legitimate, right? 00:06:35.110 --> 00:06:40.310 That conversation needs to happen and had to happen and still will continue, and that's 00:06:40.310 --> 00:06:40.950 legit. 00:06:41.350 --> 00:06:45.350 But I think in many cases, people have sort of like had this suspicion that maybe 00:06:45.350 --> 00:06:50.960 socioeconomic status and class membership are really you know the core phenomenon that 00:06:50.960 --> 00:06:56.960 we're missing if we focus too much on um sexism, racism, and so on and so 00:06:56.960 --> 00:06:57.120 on. 00:06:57.200 --> 00:07:01.600 Uh and so that's kind of what I try to what I try to do in the in the book to really like 00:07:01.600 --> 00:07:07.120 look at everything morals and money and taste 00:07:07.440 --> 00:07:13.200 um and belonging uh through this lens of class distinctions and social 00:07:13.200 --> 00:07:13.760 signaling. 00:07:14.470 --> 00:07:15.750 Can I ask a clarifying question? 00:07:15.830 --> 00:07:17.190 Because I'm simple minded. 00:07:17.430 --> 00:07:22.790 So, from a very like first principles perspective, if you're a human being, you have 00:07:22.790 --> 00:07:25.350 evolved psychology for sort of two different things. 00:07:25.510 --> 00:07:27.670 One is who you're allied with. 00:07:27.830 --> 00:07:33.350 And then another one is how much stuff do you have and are you okay? 00:07:33.750 --> 00:07:37.510 And obviously these things relate because if you're allied with somebody who has a lot of 00:07:37.510 --> 00:07:40.470 resources, they might help you, and that's aspirational. 00:07:41.080 --> 00:07:47.080 But if we take as I take it, and this is my elementary version of understanding 00:07:47.080 --> 00:07:52.440 the evolutionary psychology of something like social class, there's those are roughly two 00:07:52.440 --> 00:07:58.120 different phenomena in the sense of everybody walking around sort of has an evaluator 00:07:58.280 --> 00:08:04.200 of, you know, am I worried about having enough food or if my kid gets sick, am I 00:08:04.200 --> 00:08:04.920 gonna be okay? 00:08:05.080 --> 00:08:06.710 And it might be misfiring, right? 00:08:06.870 --> 00:08:11.350 Like somebody who's very objectively wealthy might still worry about their kid getting 00:08:11.350 --> 00:08:14.470 sick, although maybe they, you know, they'll lose their house or something. 00:08:15.270 --> 00:08:20.870 And there's there's sort of within your group of people you see on a daily 00:08:20.870 --> 00:08:22.950 basis, that comparison. 00:08:23.110 --> 00:08:27.910 And then there's also like, I know that there's other people I don't see that often who are 00:08:29.040 --> 00:08:31.840 have much more stuff than me and much less stuff than me. 00:08:32.560 --> 00:08:36.320 Um so there's that kind of how much stuff do I have tracker? 00:08:36.560 --> 00:08:41.600 And then there's another part of it, which is um, who do I see on a regular basis? 00:08:41.840 --> 00:08:45.680 And then who do I aspire to be like? 00:08:46.160 --> 00:08:49.440 Um, and who do I want to signal that I'm sort of affiliated with? 00:08:49.600 --> 00:08:49.920 Yeah. 00:08:50.080 --> 00:08:55.790 Um And uh I think for most of our listeners, that 00:08:55.790 --> 00:08:59.710 would be a sort of rough take on where they're starting from. 00:09:00.110 --> 00:09:06.030 And so can you articulate um number one, if you would sort of agree with that 00:09:06.030 --> 00:09:09.630 as a rough take, or is that too simple, or do you depart from that? 00:09:09.790 --> 00:09:15.150 And then from there, what is uh the thesis of um 00:09:16.030 --> 00:09:21.980 uh um what David's talking about, if that's I mean, I mean, 00:09:22.060 --> 00:09:27.100 um, I'm not sure you agree with that or not, but I think a lot of evolutionary psychology 00:09:27.500 --> 00:09:31.580 and a lot of what makes it interesting is about finding these misfirings, right? 00:09:31.740 --> 00:09:37.740 A lot of evolutionary psychology is about identifying an old mind and how it's placed in a 00:09:37.740 --> 00:09:38.780 different environment, right? 00:09:38.860 --> 00:09:41.260 It's about these evolutionary hangovers. 00:09:41.500 --> 00:09:45.980 Uh it's about, you know, still craving sugar when the supermarket is full, and you know, 00:09:46.090 --> 00:09:51.930 that it's it's just, you know, um our life is 00:09:51.930 --> 00:09:54.650 full of evolutionary hangovers and misfirings. 00:09:54.810 --> 00:09:59.850 And status competition and the intensity with which we are motivated to engage in status 00:09:59.850 --> 00:10:03.530 comparison and status competition to an extent where it doesn't even really matter how 00:10:03.530 --> 00:10:04.570 wealthy you are, right? 00:10:04.650 --> 00:10:08.330 You can you can have a hundred billion in the bank and you still want to be heard and 00:10:08.330 --> 00:10:10.810 recognized, and you want to buy Twitter and so on and so on, right? 00:10:10.890 --> 00:10:14.170 Uh so that status competition, that anxiety just never goes away. 00:10:14.250 --> 00:10:18.580 And that's a kind of evolutionary hangover because it used to just not be possible until 00:10:18.580 --> 00:10:22.180 very recently to have durable wealth and security, right? 00:10:22.420 --> 00:10:25.940 You would always depend, it would always be much more elusive and much more fragile. 00:10:26.020 --> 00:10:30.500 And so it's just like pre-installed in our brains, in our psychology, to always worry about 00:10:30.500 --> 00:10:30.900 that, right? 00:10:30.980 --> 00:10:35.220 And it just, and it just never, never goes away because the circumstances that we that we 00:10:35.220 --> 00:10:38.660 find ourselves in now are so kind of recent and so unusual. 00:10:38.740 --> 00:10:43.430 And so our mind isn't really adapted to those circumstances so fully. 00:10:43.590 --> 00:10:47.910 And that's interesting, and it's it also explains why you find status competition and 00:10:47.910 --> 00:10:53.510 status anxiety and status motivations everywhere in all socioeconomic 00:10:53.510 --> 00:10:56.630 classes and groups and strata. 00:10:56.790 --> 00:11:00.790 So I think that's just like, you know, fundamentally a very useful way of looking at the 00:11:00.790 --> 00:11:05.220 mind in general, is you see that it does all these weird things, right? 00:11:05.380 --> 00:11:09.460 Like optical illusions are a little bit like that as well, because it's a it's a it's a 00:11:09.620 --> 00:11:14.900 it's a weird environment that we've placed this relatively old mind in. 00:11:14.980 --> 00:11:20.660 And it used to be super important to care about your own reputation because you can break 00:11:20.660 --> 00:11:23.220 your leg and you still need people to share food with you, right? 00:11:23.300 --> 00:11:27.700 You need to be like perceived as a as a as a as a good person, as someone who once they've 00:11:27.700 --> 00:11:31.460 recovered, they will be part of the gang again and they'll you know share with you. 00:11:31.620 --> 00:11:36.490 So we are intensely motivated to care about our own reputation just as a kind of insurance 00:11:36.490 --> 00:11:40.330 mechanism and a kind of survival mechanism, and that's still present. 00:11:40.570 --> 00:11:46.330 And also, we care about not just our own reputation and status and prestige, but 00:11:46.330 --> 00:11:49.290 also about um hanging out with people who have a lot of it. 00:11:49.450 --> 00:11:49.690 Right? 00:11:49.770 --> 00:11:55.130 We want to be around these people because we are we are a social, an intensely social, 00:11:55.450 --> 00:12:00.620 hyper-social Species or belong to a 00:12:00.620 --> 00:12:06.220 hypersocial species, and everything we know and everything we can do, so all our 00:12:06.220 --> 00:12:09.900 information and all our skills are downloaded from others. 00:12:10.140 --> 00:12:10.460 Right? 00:12:10.700 --> 00:12:13.980 Pretty much everything we can do is learned. 00:12:14.700 --> 00:12:19.100 It's learned from parents, from peers, from dead people. 00:12:19.260 --> 00:12:21.500 Most of it's learned from dead people, right? 00:12:21.820 --> 00:12:27.810 Um, downloaded from dead from this cultural reservoir that's been built up over you 00:12:27.810 --> 00:12:29.330 know dozens of generations. 00:12:29.490 --> 00:12:34.690 And so we care about learning from the best cook and the best storyteller and the best 00:12:34.690 --> 00:12:35.330 hunter. 00:12:35.810 --> 00:12:41.490 And that is also I think why we track prestige and status and reputation 00:12:41.810 --> 00:12:45.330 in others, because it'll it'll allow us to sort of get the best information and get the 00:12:45.330 --> 00:12:45.730 best skills. 00:12:46.050 --> 00:12:46.210 Yeah. 00:12:46.290 --> 00:12:50.610 So if I can just interject, so you're describing the the the rationale. 00:12:50.690 --> 00:12:51.490 I'm hearing two things. 00:12:51.570 --> 00:12:54.780 One is you're describing the rationale for you care about these things, which I think most 00:12:54.780 --> 00:12:57.420 of us and David and I, I think most listeners are on board with. 00:12:57.580 --> 00:13:01.980 But what I'm hearing from the first part is, and maybe this is you're getting to the 00:13:01.980 --> 00:13:07.740 thesis, is that um the this is a your argument is 00:13:07.900 --> 00:13:13.660 we should interrogate the degree to which our knee-jerk need for status 00:13:14.060 --> 00:13:16.700 actually makes sense given our objective situation. 00:13:16.860 --> 00:13:22.570 An analogy would be something where somebody who is bore grows up in extreme poverty and is 00:13:22.570 --> 00:13:24.810 just like hyper vigilant about food. 00:13:25.050 --> 00:13:30.730 And then they become wealthy as an adult, but other people around them see that person, 00:13:30.890 --> 00:13:34.970 care about that person, and see that their insecurity about food is having all kinds of 00:13:34.970 --> 00:13:36.330 negative knock on effects. 00:13:36.490 --> 00:13:40.410 Like they're not, they're just obsessed about it in a way that they don't need to be 00:13:40.410 --> 00:13:40.970 anymore. 00:13:41.210 --> 00:13:45.290 That's like an individual difference version of, I think, the evolutionary story, which is 00:13:45.290 --> 00:13:51.060 that as a if if as a species, we don't think about, um, if we don't think 00:13:51.060 --> 00:13:53.780 about, well, why do I care about this? 00:13:54.180 --> 00:13:55.380 Why am I doing this? 00:13:55.540 --> 00:13:57.060 Is this to make the world better? 00:13:57.220 --> 00:14:02.980 Or is this just satisfying some sugar craving status thing that is actually making the 00:14:02.980 --> 00:14:03.460 world worse? 00:14:03.620 --> 00:14:07.380 That's enslaving some kid across the world that I don't even know about. 00:14:07.540 --> 00:14:10.580 Um, it's not making the world better, my local community better. 00:14:10.740 --> 00:14:12.100 Is that the kind of argument? 00:14:12.260 --> 00:14:18.090 So it's sort of an argument that by understanding and interrogating the source 00:14:18.090 --> 00:14:24.010 of this desire or motivation, it's a way to check whether or not it makes sense under 00:14:24.010 --> 00:14:25.050 current circumstances. 00:14:25.450 --> 00:14:26.650 Yeah, it's always also that. 00:14:26.730 --> 00:14:30.490 So when it comes to so there are these individual differences in in how how intensely 00:14:30.490 --> 00:14:32.010 people may be motivated to care about that. 00:14:35.740 --> 00:14:36.140 I think. 00:14:36.220 --> 00:14:41.180 But then there are, you know, there there's a spectrum of how intense that desire is and 00:14:41.180 --> 00:14:44.620 how how how strongly that anxiety is felt. 00:14:44.780 --> 00:14:49.740 And then once you see or once you understand the sources of of these motivations and these 00:14:49.740 --> 00:14:55.740 desires, you can use that a little bit and to some extent as a tool for self reflection 00:14:55.820 --> 00:14:58.860 and think, oh, maybe I should I should relax about that a little bit more. 00:14:58.940 --> 00:15:04.830 Uh and it's and it's making my life needlessly difficult because I'm um I'm I'm 00:15:04.830 --> 00:15:10.670 so you know hung up on um getting ahead and uh and I'm so it it causes me 00:15:10.670 --> 00:15:16.430 so much stress and distraction uh and it makes me makes me engage in all these pointless 00:15:16.430 --> 00:15:19.550 activities simply because I want to keep up with the Joneses, right? 00:15:19.790 --> 00:15:25.790 Um and also this is socially also important because um I think you you talk you also talk 00:15:25.790 --> 00:15:29.950 about that a lot that's that status competition and status hierarchy is inherently zero 00:15:30.110 --> 00:15:31.120 sum, right? 00:15:31.360 --> 00:15:34.720 You can't grow the pie of status, so to speak. 00:15:34.880 --> 00:15:38.400 Uh it's just a relative positional ranking. 00:15:38.640 --> 00:15:44.400 So socially, it can it can be detrimental and it can be bad for society when 00:15:44.400 --> 00:15:47.040 you have extremely intense status competition. 00:15:47.120 --> 00:15:51.360 Because it it's it's it's just a mechanism that can't make everyone involved better off. 00:15:51.520 --> 00:15:55.280 Because in order for you to improve your status, you need to knock me down. 00:15:55.430 --> 00:15:58.950 And in order for me to improve my states, I need to knock someone else down. 00:15:59.110 --> 00:15:59.270 Yeah. 00:15:59.430 --> 00:16:05.350 Um and so socially it can be detrimental, it can be zero sum, or in fact, 00:16:05.430 --> 00:16:10.790 even negative sum when too many people t invest too too to too much work and and 00:16:10.790 --> 00:16:15.830 resources into um these activities, right? 00:16:15.910 --> 00:16:21.860 And you're just trying to trying to capture a greater market share, so to speak but but but 00:16:21.940 --> 00:16:27.220 but no actual growth uh is happening and and it and and no no it's not there's no general 00:16:27.220 --> 00:16:33.220 improvement in in social well being um across the board and so you're describing why we 00:16:33.220 --> 00:16:38.420 don't have ads on this podcast it's well it's exactly basically what ads do full time 00:16:38.900 --> 00:16:44.020 exactly well um um that that's correct uh that's uh so advertising is in a way non 00:16:44.180 --> 00:16:49.270 productive Um it's just about, you know, uh getting people to buy your your product rather 00:16:49.270 --> 00:16:50.950 than um rather than another. 00:16:51.590 --> 00:16:53.270 And it's just about getting ahead. 00:16:53.350 --> 00:16:55.350 And you're not you're not really making any stuff. 00:16:56.070 --> 00:17:00.950 Or if you are, I mean, but usually what the odds are is it's creating it's it's cues of a 00:17:00.950 --> 00:17:06.470 status scheme that are typically not necessarily the status game you would play if you 00:17:06.470 --> 00:17:08.390 weren't exposed to those cues. 00:17:09.360 --> 00:17:14.560 and it's creating a uh it's it's it's scientist it's stimuli force it's 00:17:14.960 --> 00:17:20.960 status game stimuli that one could argue much of is uh 00:17:21.520 --> 00:17:26.000 isn't adding any benefit to anybody except the producer of the ad, which is a signaling 00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:26.640 element, right? 00:17:26.720 --> 00:17:28.000 If it was in your interest you wouldn't need to sign. 00:17:28.800 --> 00:17:28.880 Yeah. 00:17:28.990 --> 00:17:29.390 Yeah, yeah. 00:17:29.470 --> 00:17:34.270 And again, I think this is how I think about society, or how how I how I came to think, or 00:17:34.270 --> 00:17:39.310 how I learned to think about society in general, is I see everything in terms of collective 00:17:39.310 --> 00:17:40.510 action problems now. 00:17:40.830 --> 00:17:41.150 Right? 00:17:41.310 --> 00:17:44.590 I see everything in terms of like fundamentally like that. 00:17:44.750 --> 00:17:48.590 So I sometimes like I sometimes say I I feel like I'm kind of I'm I'm a kind of left 00:17:48.590 --> 00:17:49.550 Hobbesian. 00:17:49.710 --> 00:17:55.070 Um I see the world like a Hobbesian, but I still think that it's worth thinking about, 00:17:55.230 --> 00:18:01.120 okay, I because I do think these sort of like broadly liberal progressive 00:18:01.120 --> 00:18:03.200 goals are often good ones, right? 00:18:03.440 --> 00:18:09.200 Improving people's lives, um trying to get more 00:18:09.520 --> 00:18:14.160 people join society in a way that benefits everyone, right? 00:18:14.560 --> 00:18:20.010 Not to harm people or discriminate against people on the basis of unchosen traits, right? 00:18:20.090 --> 00:18:22.970 I think these are broadly, it's very hard to implement them. 00:18:23.130 --> 00:18:26.330 It's very hard to think about like what's the best strategy of implementing. 00:18:26.410 --> 00:18:31.210 But I still think these are good ideas, good, good, good values and norms and principles 00:18:31.210 --> 00:18:35.610 that are characteristic of modern society, but they are just brought down and undermined 00:18:35.610 --> 00:18:40.250 the whole time by this nasty Hobbesianism that is just, you know, that we can't really get 00:18:40.330 --> 00:18:41.290 ever get rid of. 00:18:41.690 --> 00:18:47.530 And so that's how I kind of see the world, and that's how I approach 00:18:48.140 --> 00:18:52.540 ethics and political philosophy as a philosopher is to sort of like see this is really 00:18:52.540 --> 00:18:53.580 difficult, right? 00:18:53.740 --> 00:18:59.660 It's really difficult to get cooperation going and make it and arrange it in such a way 00:18:59.660 --> 00:19:01.180 that it's good for people. 00:19:01.740 --> 00:19:07.740 Um and status signaling and competition is part of that way 00:19:07.740 --> 00:19:12.930 of thinking, or sort of like downstream perhaps of that way of thinking, because I do think 00:19:12.930 --> 00:19:14.850 it is extremely recalcitrant. 00:19:14.930 --> 00:19:17.170 It is essentially not possible to really get rid of it. 00:19:17.330 --> 00:19:21.330 And there are evolutionary and strategic reasons for why that is the case. 00:19:21.490 --> 00:19:26.930 So I have kind of like pretty pessimistic thesis in this book, which is that we can't get 00:19:26.930 --> 00:19:27.650 rid of classes. 00:19:27.810 --> 00:19:30.770 We can't get rid of hierarchical groups. 00:19:31.650 --> 00:19:37.640 They are going to emerge if we have well if 00:19:37.640 --> 00:19:43.400 we have essentially a certain group size right I think I think a lot of it uh is also about 00:19:43.960 --> 00:19:49.800 um I think a lot of evolutionary psychology when it comes to cooperation is about is is if 00:19:49.800 --> 00:19:55.480 people think about how do how how did we and how do we scale up cooperation right so how 00:19:55.480 --> 00:20:01.240 did we move from tiny groups and we seem to be you know much of much of much of 00:20:01.240 --> 00:20:06.970 our psychology and and physiology seems to be evolved to deal 00:20:06.970 --> 00:20:08.890 with life in very small groups. 00:20:09.050 --> 00:20:11.930 And then the question is, how do you scale that up? 00:20:12.090 --> 00:20:13.690 How did we manage to scale that up? 00:20:13.850 --> 00:20:16.170 It's actually to some extent an unsolved problem. 00:20:16.330 --> 00:20:20.490 I mean, there are good ideas now around for how that worked and how it continues to work. 00:20:20.650 --> 00:20:24.490 Um, but that's that scalability of cooperation is really interesting to me. 00:20:24.570 --> 00:20:30.490 And I think also signaling is one of the mechanisms that contributed to allowing us to move 00:20:30.490 --> 00:20:36.340 from, you know, being this East African savannah dwelling creature to the kind 00:20:36.340 --> 00:20:38.340 of stuff that we do right now. 00:20:38.740 --> 00:20:40.340 And that's a fascinating question to me. 00:20:40.420 --> 00:20:43.060 How do how does how how how did that work and how does that work? 00:20:43.140 --> 00:20:48.100 And what are the forces that threaten it and undermine it and that can lead to regress? 00:20:48.420 --> 00:20:54.260 Um, and so I also think that basically scaling up cooperation is what's behind the 00:20:54.330 --> 00:20:56.650 thing that people call moral progress. 00:20:57.290 --> 00:21:02.250 You know, all these things about inclusion and the expanding circle and so on and so on, 00:21:02.330 --> 00:21:07.530 all that the the way I think about that is in terms of how did we scale up cooperation to 00:21:07.530 --> 00:21:12.730 have very large groups and what are the functional requirements that you need to satisfy in 00:21:12.730 --> 00:21:14.330 order to have these large groups? 00:21:14.700 --> 00:21:15.020 Hmm. 00:21:15.260 --> 00:21:17.900 So scaling up cooperation, I want to un unpack that a bit. 00:21:17.980 --> 00:21:23.900 So is it is it merely the idea that the pool of people that you are cooperating with or 00:21:23.900 --> 00:21:28.940 having mutually beneficial relationships with has expanded? 00:21:29.100 --> 00:21:34.860 Is that uh uh what you're saying that that we've been you know somehow uh learning or 00:21:34.860 --> 00:21:40.300 evolving to cooperate with a larger and larger pool of of individuals? 00:21:40.700 --> 00:21:42.060 Yeah, basically, yeah. 00:21:42.350 --> 00:21:42.670 Okay. 00:21:42.990 --> 00:21:43.630 Basically, yeah. 00:21:43.790 --> 00:21:48.590 It's it's uh and it's also yeah, well well i I think in in in in evolutionary psychology 00:21:48.750 --> 00:21:54.670 the the the basic puzzle is why do humans cooperate with 00:21:54.990 --> 00:21:55.870 strangers? 00:21:57.710 --> 00:21:59.470 Because we tend to do that. 00:21:59.790 --> 00:22:02.800 Relatively speaking, we are quite good at it, Right. 00:22:03.680 --> 00:22:09.520 Relatively speaking, we are maybe not fully, but pretty unique in how we do it 00:22:09.680 --> 00:22:14.080 and unique even that we do it. 00:22:14.320 --> 00:22:19.200 And that's an interesting question because we, you know, what we do today, you know, in 00:22:19.200 --> 00:22:24.400 this podcast, or or what what what I did today when I bought a pencil from for my for my 00:22:24.480 --> 00:22:27.680 for my for my daughters who just who are starting sixth grade tomorrow. 00:22:27.870 --> 00:22:32.990 Um, I'm cop I was cooperating with strangers and uh people I don't even know and then will 00:22:32.990 --> 00:22:34.190 never know and have never met. 00:22:34.270 --> 00:22:39.710 And that's fascinating to me how that works and what what what what institutional toolkit 00:22:39.710 --> 00:22:43.950 is required to make that happen because it can't be kinship, right? 00:22:44.110 --> 00:22:49.470 It can't be uh it can't be uh we understand the the the the the deep and tremendous 00:22:49.470 --> 00:22:55.230 importance of kinship for cooperation um and for the evolution of simple 00:22:55.230 --> 00:23:01.160 forms of altruism and and vicarious distress and sympathy and 00:23:01.160 --> 00:23:01.880 so on and so on. 00:23:01.960 --> 00:23:07.960 And we understand the role that simple forms of reciprocity have played for scaling that up 00:23:07.960 --> 00:23:08.600 a little further. 00:23:08.760 --> 00:23:13.480 But of course, you can't have a modern society of hundreds of millions of people 00:23:13.480 --> 00:23:15.480 cooperating that's based on kinship. 00:23:15.560 --> 00:23:17.000 And so that's also fascinating to me. 00:23:17.080 --> 00:23:19.400 Like how did that happen and why did it happen? 00:23:19.670 --> 00:23:20.230 Hmm. 00:23:20.470 --> 00:23:26.470 Yeah, it's interesting to me that um you you noted just the basic fact that everything 00:23:26.470 --> 00:23:32.470 around us is a product of cooperation, just immense um sets of of division of labor, you 00:23:32.470 --> 00:23:36.310 know, the computer I'm and and the microphone that I'm using probably have parts you know 00:23:36.390 --> 00:23:38.550 distributed all across the world. 00:23:38.710 --> 00:23:43.510 Uh you know, uh uh many, many different people cooperated and divided labor to produce the 00:23:43.510 --> 00:23:45.110 microphone for me. 00:23:45.270 --> 00:23:49.020 Um it's weird because it's a kind of cooperation that I'm not really aware of. 00:23:49.100 --> 00:23:53.580 You know, whereas most cooperation uh happens, you know, between people like I know the 00:23:53.580 --> 00:23:58.460 person that I'm interacting with, I I I have a sense of whether they're a good person or 00:23:58.460 --> 00:23:59.980 not, of their reputation. 00:24:00.140 --> 00:24:05.900 Um, whereas when it comes to just the basic um network of cooperation that underlies uh our 00:24:05.900 --> 00:24:10.450 global capitalist society, none of that is really conscious to me. 00:24:10.610 --> 00:24:15.410 Um it's sort of like kind of a kind of modularized cooperation where you know maybe the 00:24:15.410 --> 00:24:20.210 individual uh uh organizations that are distributed around the world are cooperating, and 00:24:20.210 --> 00:24:23.970 maybe you know the uh the the buyers and the sellers are cooperating, and and there are 00:24:23.970 --> 00:24:28.050 long chains of cooperation, and I'm on one end of the chain, and at each individual link in 00:24:28.050 --> 00:24:31.490 the chain, there's you know a pretty identifiable group of people who are cooperating. 00:24:31.570 --> 00:24:35.650 But with me, I'm just completely alienated from all of that, and all I get is the last link 00:24:35.650 --> 00:24:36.370 in that chain. 00:24:36.580 --> 00:24:36.900 Yeah. 00:24:37.540 --> 00:24:41.220 So I'm wondering if that if that might be part of it, where it's just like, I I don't even 00:24:41.220 --> 00:24:42.500 know how all this works. 00:24:43.060 --> 00:24:43.860 And I don't have to. 00:24:43.940 --> 00:24:49.140 And that's kind of the how the system works is that it it decomposes and modularizes 00:24:49.140 --> 00:24:53.780 cooperation such that I don't have to be a participant in all of it to benefit from it. 00:24:54.100 --> 00:24:54.260 Yeah. 00:24:54.340 --> 00:24:54.580 Yeah. 00:24:54.660 --> 00:24:59.060 So there's this there's this nice phrase from the from their um early 19th century 00:24:59.060 --> 00:25:02.020 philosopher uh Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. 00:25:02.180 --> 00:25:05.930 And Hegel had this had this idea of a cunning of reason, right? 00:25:06.570 --> 00:25:10.410 The cunning of reason was, of course, Hegel had this sort of completely inflated 00:25:10.650 --> 00:25:16.650 metaphysical idea that it's, you know, essentially, you know, the objective spirit, 00:25:16.730 --> 00:25:22.490 you know, so reason itself that is shaping human history and human behavior. 00:25:22.730 --> 00:25:26.410 Nowadays we don't really talk like that anymore or think like that anymore because we think 00:25:26.410 --> 00:25:32.250 it's much more random and much more uh and just not guided by this sort of almost 00:25:32.250 --> 00:25:34.940 divine the rational force. 00:25:35.020 --> 00:25:40.620 But the cunning of reason is still this idea that social structures and 00:25:40.620 --> 00:25:46.620 institutions and ways of cooperating don't really need the individuals 00:25:46.620 --> 00:25:49.420 involved in that to even understand it, right? 00:25:49.820 --> 00:25:53.980 It's sort of like these structures they reach through your intentions, and you're almost 00:25:53.980 --> 00:25:59.930 like fulfilling a purpose that you have no idea even exists, right? 00:26:00.010 --> 00:26:04.570 Um now again, I'm I'm not I'm I'm I I don't I don't endorse the very very strong 00:26:04.570 --> 00:26:09.450 teleological version that Hegel endorsed, which is very, very metaphysically bloated and 00:26:09.450 --> 00:26:11.610 sort of just not plausible anymore. 00:26:11.770 --> 00:26:16.810 But still, I think what we see is that human cooperation depends on these structures that 00:26:16.810 --> 00:26:21.180 people don't have to understand, don't even have to know about, right? 00:26:22.300 --> 00:26:27.900 And that we haven't understood very well until recently, and until we started to 00:26:28.140 --> 00:26:33.020 also talk about culture in terms of evolutionary 00:26:33.660 --> 00:26:34.620 forces, right? 00:26:34.700 --> 00:26:39.100 So we have we are cultural being when we have these institutions and these rules and these 00:26:39.100 --> 00:26:44.860 frameworks and this inherited cultural capital that makes a lot of 00:26:44.860 --> 00:26:48.790 things work whilst being totally opaque and intransparent to us. 00:26:48.870 --> 00:26:53.670 And that's sort of like the modernized, naturalized version, I think, of this Hegelian idea 00:26:53.670 --> 00:26:54.950 of a cunning of reason. 00:26:55.190 --> 00:26:59.510 Again, it's not like, you know, we're not we're not we're we're not marching towards the 00:26:59.510 --> 00:27:01.350 end of history, as Hegel thought. 00:27:01.590 --> 00:27:06.390 Um conveniently he thought that culminates in the Prussian state that he was uh that he was 00:27:06.390 --> 00:27:08.710 part of, that that's sort of like the best thing ever. 00:27:08.870 --> 00:27:09.110 Right? 00:27:09.190 --> 00:27:14.720 So d no one believes that anymore, but there's there is a it's a little bit analogous the 00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:19.520 way that nowadays people think about cultural evolution is that 00:27:20.160 --> 00:27:24.240 sometimes good stuff is happening and we don't even know how and we don't even know why. 00:27:24.320 --> 00:27:29.680 And we can participate in cooperation without even understanding how it works, how it came 00:27:29.680 --> 00:27:31.200 about, and it can still benefit us. 00:27:31.360 --> 00:27:33.760 It doesn't have to benefit us, sometimes it's also bad. 00:27:34.720 --> 00:27:40.070 But there's at least that potential for stuff to go right sometimes. 00:27:40.950 --> 00:27:46.950 Where do you think moral progress fits in on this continuum of stuff sort of happening in a 00:27:46.950 --> 00:27:51.350 distributed way where nobody's really aware of what's emerging? 00:27:51.430 --> 00:27:55.510 And it just kind of emerges spontaneously through the interactions of many individuals, 00:27:55.670 --> 00:27:59.990 just individually acting in their own self-interest, sort of in a Hayekian way where, you 00:27:59.990 --> 00:28:05.190 know, uh prices that send signals about supply and demand just sort of emerge spontaneously 00:28:05.190 --> 00:28:08.640 from everyone individually acting under their uh financial incentives. 00:28:08.800 --> 00:28:13.440 Uh is moral progress something like that where nobody really planned for it, nobody really 00:28:13.440 --> 00:28:17.360 intended it to happen, it's just kind of emerge with you know uh from all these 00:28:17.360 --> 00:28:18.960 interactions and these processes? 00:28:19.200 --> 00:28:25.120 Or is it more like we really set out to uh to improve our morality and 00:28:25.120 --> 00:28:29.040 we made a plan and we made it happen and everyone was fully aware of what was going on? 00:28:29.120 --> 00:28:31.520 So, like where where do you think moral progress fits in on that? 00:28:31.570 --> 00:28:31.650 that? 00:28:31.970 --> 00:28:36.530 I think it's mostly it's mostly one of these processes as well that is intransparent to us 00:28:36.530 --> 00:28:39.250 and just happens when it when it happens. 00:28:39.490 --> 00:28:40.770 Of course, there are exceptions. 00:28:40.850 --> 00:28:44.930 Like I think, for instance, like you know, women's rights, gay rights, these were conscious 00:28:44.930 --> 00:28:45.730 demands, right? 00:28:45.810 --> 00:28:47.490 And people organized for them. 00:28:47.650 --> 00:28:51.410 And people thought, yeah, we know these things are this is where we are headed, right? 00:28:51.570 --> 00:28:51.730 Yeah. 00:28:51.890 --> 00:28:56.850 You we can't really, you know, you you're in the 60s in the US and people just think like 00:28:57.010 --> 00:28:58.320 it's time, right? 00:28:58.480 --> 00:29:04.400 We can't have a society where you know just because of something a completely 00:29:04.400 --> 00:29:09.760 harmless attraction that is none no one no no one's business, where people you know suffer 00:29:09.760 --> 00:29:15.440 greatly, can't live openly, you know, can't form um companionships and partnerships and 00:29:15.440 --> 00:29:18.880 loving relationships and they need to be like secretive about it and so on and so on. 00:29:18.960 --> 00:29:22.710 And those are cases where people consciously said, we need to make this happen, right? 00:29:22.790 --> 00:29:25.110 And we need to march for it and we need to demand it. 00:29:25.190 --> 00:29:26.310 And here's why. 00:29:26.550 --> 00:29:29.670 And here are like consistency arguments, blah blah blah blah blah. 00:29:29.830 --> 00:29:35.670 But mostly I think it's driven by by these glacial forces of social 00:29:35.990 --> 00:29:41.590 change that is happening in a in a in a certain in a certain 00:29:41.590 --> 00:29:42.230 direction. 00:29:42.630 --> 00:29:48.380 Now, Moral progress is in many ways, I think, perhaps the 00:29:48.700 --> 00:29:53.740 core idea of the Enlightenment, of the Enlightenment tradition, because people, 00:29:54.860 --> 00:30:00.220 it's always an artificial way to pick a timing, but let's say you know 00:30:00.860 --> 00:30:03.580 mid-18th century, right? 00:30:03.820 --> 00:30:08.220 Where that really started, then 1800 plus and so on and so on. 00:30:09.090 --> 00:30:15.010 So the heyday of the Enlightenment, people thought that if only we keep doing 00:30:15.010 --> 00:30:19.970 what we're doing, if only we keep getting rid of superstition, 00:30:20.930 --> 00:30:21.250 right? 00:30:21.570 --> 00:30:24.290 And religious dogma and ignorance. 00:30:24.530 --> 00:30:29.250 And if only we keep getting rid of arbitrary rule and oppression. 00:30:29.410 --> 00:30:32.850 And if we just keep doing that, right, everything will be fine. 00:30:32.930 --> 00:30:35.940 And everything will just continue to improve, right? 00:30:36.180 --> 00:30:37.300 For everyone. 00:30:38.980 --> 00:30:44.980 Of course, I'm not denying silly or or or 00:30:45.220 --> 00:30:49.060 problematic views that many of these Enlightenment thinkers had, but by and large, I think 00:30:49.060 --> 00:30:50.100 that was the thought. 00:30:50.260 --> 00:30:56.020 Is that we if we keep doing science and technology and and and and um 00:30:57.690 --> 00:31:03.450 fairer and more just social institutions, everything is gonna 00:31:03.450 --> 00:31:04.570 only get better. 00:31:04.890 --> 00:31:10.730 And then, of course, that idea became immensely, 00:31:10.970 --> 00:31:13.050 well, immensely unpopular is one way of putting it. 00:31:13.210 --> 00:31:17.770 But it it was kind of catastrophically disconfirmed in the 20th century. 00:31:18.080 --> 00:31:18.480 Right? 00:31:18.640 --> 00:31:21.520 And so it fell extremely out of fashion. 00:31:21.600 --> 00:31:27.360 And and and um with with the the Second World War and the Holocaust and the 00:31:27.360 --> 00:31:33.360 nuclear bomb and all of these things, um, all the way up to Rwanda, if you wish, and 00:31:33.520 --> 00:31:34.880 or Bosnia, right? 00:31:35.040 --> 00:31:40.000 All of these things that happened in the 20th century um seem to just make 00:31:40.830 --> 00:31:46.750 you know s seem seem seem to to design to to to ridicule this 00:31:46.750 --> 00:31:52.190 idea that we are automatically marching into ever more improvement and ever more 00:31:52.190 --> 00:31:53.230 well-being, right? 00:31:53.470 --> 00:31:59.230 And there seem to be forces at play that even the you know, even the most advanced 00:31:59.230 --> 00:32:04.860 places in the world, like Central Europe at the time perhaps, or whatever, they they can 00:32:04.860 --> 00:32:10.540 regress enormously quickly into madness and into and 00:32:10.700 --> 00:32:13.900 into barbarism and into mass murder. 00:32:13.980 --> 00:32:19.980 And in fact, a kind of mass murder that harnesses the power of the Enlightenment, 00:32:20.060 --> 00:32:20.300 right? 00:32:20.460 --> 00:32:24.940 That was, I think, so striking to people at the time, is that you can have kind of 00:32:24.940 --> 00:32:27.980 bureaucratically, rationally organized genocide. 00:32:28.140 --> 00:32:32.610 So this isn't some this isn't some frenzy that that that that that that took, but this is 00:32:32.610 --> 00:32:38.370 like methodical years long, you know, with with accounting and the smartest people in the 00:32:38.370 --> 00:32:39.730 country running it, right? 00:32:39.810 --> 00:32:42.370 I think, and that was so shocking to people, I think. 00:32:42.530 --> 00:32:46.530 And so for the longest time, moral progress became kind of like a joke. 00:32:46.690 --> 00:32:49.330 And you could start with, well, of course, there isn't any. 00:32:49.650 --> 00:32:54.580 And then recently, this has been rehabilitated a little bit by these, you know, uh Hans 00:32:54.740 --> 00:32:58.740 Rossling and Pinker, who who who like wrote a couple of books. 00:32:58.820 --> 00:33:02.340 I have like a whole library full of them, that are all like, you know, things are better 00:33:02.340 --> 00:33:03.380 than you think, right? 00:33:03.540 --> 00:33:07.700 But of course, the New York Times isn't going to tell you every single day that another 00:33:07.780 --> 00:33:09.620 hundred thousand people escape poverty. 00:33:09.700 --> 00:33:11.060 So you never hear about it, right? 00:33:11.140 --> 00:33:16.420 You only hear about planes crashing, you don't hear about you know the the amazing 00:33:16.420 --> 00:33:18.820 functionality of aviation and so on and so on. 00:33:18.900 --> 00:33:23.630 And so uh we just we just we're just missing this potential for improvement. 00:33:23.790 --> 00:33:25.790 So that's been rehabilitated a little bit. 00:33:26.030 --> 00:33:30.110 There's been a lot of backlash to it, and it's and people thought you're just chilling for 00:33:30.110 --> 00:33:31.790 capitalism and for neoliberalism and so on. 00:33:31.950 --> 00:33:33.230 And this is actually not true. 00:33:33.710 --> 00:33:35.630 But I'm mostly on board with that story. 00:33:35.710 --> 00:33:41.470 And I think that while there's no guarantee that there will be moral progress, if you um 00:33:42.430 --> 00:33:48.360 think if you if you think about how we can create 00:33:48.360 --> 00:33:53.560 and sustain successful cooperation between ideally lots of people? 00:33:53.880 --> 00:33:56.680 That can be good for humanity. 00:33:56.840 --> 00:34:02.440 And it can be good, it's probably a good idea to not, you know, think that 00:34:02.440 --> 00:34:05.400 Germany and France must be eternal arch enemies. 00:34:05.560 --> 00:34:11.510 It's probably a good idea not to think about Japanese people as alien and 00:34:11.510 --> 00:34:16.550 weird and to sort of like you know to tear down these these these these boundaries and to 00:34:16.550 --> 00:34:22.150 enable large scale peaceful cooperation and trade and 00:34:22.150 --> 00:34:24.230 exchange of information and so on and so on. 00:34:24.310 --> 00:34:28.630 And I think when we allow that to happen and when we don't sabotage it, you know there are 00:34:28.790 --> 00:34:33.990 there are there are people pop up every now and then that almost seem like hellbent on 00:34:33.990 --> 00:34:37.960 sabotaging these these developments and these um these changes. 00:34:38.120 --> 00:34:40.040 If we don't sabotage it, that can be good for people. 00:34:40.120 --> 00:34:41.720 So that's kind of how I think about moral progress. 00:34:41.800 --> 00:34:47.400 It's not teleological, I think, in the sense of there's some like objective spirit puppet 00:34:47.400 --> 00:34:51.240 master that makes sure it's gonna be fine and we can we don't have to worry about it. 00:34:51.480 --> 00:34:57.320 Um it's it's it's it's it's a slow and frustrating process that 00:34:57.320 --> 00:35:02.970 takes decades and and centuries to unfold, but 00:35:03.130 --> 00:35:08.970 there is potential in human society, I think, to get on that gravy train 00:35:09.290 --> 00:35:13.450 of change in a good direction. 00:35:13.690 --> 00:35:19.450 And often that means, I think, getting more people enfranchised in these cooperative 00:35:19.450 --> 00:35:20.250 structures. 00:35:20.490 --> 00:35:26.480 It means On broadly egalitarian terms, we don't have to 00:35:26.480 --> 00:35:32.480 say that you know everyone is you know literally equal, but that's a way of thinking about 00:35:32.960 --> 00:35:38.480 human individuality and and and and and and humanity that is 00:35:38.480 --> 00:35:42.160 probably basically good, right? 00:35:42.320 --> 00:35:45.520 Where you don't demonize people because they look different or they have different cultures 00:35:45.600 --> 00:35:47.040 or different languages. 00:35:47.280 --> 00:35:53.110 Um and it also means that probably there's going to be 00:35:53.110 --> 00:35:59.030 uh a at least a slight bias in favor of more liberty and tolerance and um 00:35:59.030 --> 00:36:04.550 getting rid of weird arbitrary rules, 00:36:04.790 --> 00:36:05.110 right? 00:36:05.270 --> 00:36:10.790 That you know it's gonna be plot probably in the direction of pluralism and liberty 00:36:11.190 --> 00:36:15.680 and tolerance, because when you have a larger society, there's going to be more diversity, 00:36:15.760 --> 00:36:16.800 it's going to be more complexity. 00:36:16.880 --> 00:36:21.120 And if you want to keep that up, you can't have Protestants and Catholics hating each 00:36:21.120 --> 00:36:21.760 other, right? 00:36:22.160 --> 00:36:27.680 So there are these social developments that that people just thought, you know, after 00:36:27.840 --> 00:36:33.840 after 30 years of war between 1618 and 1648, people thought this is not 00:36:33.840 --> 00:36:34.080 good. 00:36:34.240 --> 00:36:34.720 Uh right. 00:36:34.880 --> 00:36:40.410 And we can't we can't really we can't really metaphysically resolve this conflict whether 00:36:40.410 --> 00:36:46.410 it's literally Jesus' blood that transub substantiates into the wine or something. 00:36:46.490 --> 00:36:47.770 I don't even know the theology of it. 00:36:47.930 --> 00:36:51.210 You know, we can't kill ourselves, we can't keep killing ourselves about these sorts of 00:36:51.210 --> 00:36:51.610 questions. 00:36:51.690 --> 00:36:53.130 We need to chill, right? 00:36:53.290 --> 00:36:59.210 And if we want to uh if we want to have a have a peaceful life 00:36:59.210 --> 00:37:04.920 and thrive in this in this you know valley of tears that is life, 00:37:05.160 --> 00:37:11.000 we need to we need to stop um engaging in the in the in these in these pointless 00:37:11.160 --> 00:37:13.640 arbitrary conflicts that make everyone worse off. 00:37:13.800 --> 00:37:18.920 And I think that so it it's it's been centuries of of of learning that probably we we want 00:37:18.920 --> 00:37:21.480 to head in in in in that direction. 00:37:21.640 --> 00:37:27.230 Which is why I'm I get so pissed off when when when these like territorial 00:37:27.470 --> 00:37:32.030 conflicts about like, you know, who should who should who which group should live in this 00:37:32.030 --> 00:37:35.070 swamp when they get like reanimated and so on. 00:37:35.230 --> 00:37:37.310 That that makes me that makes me mad. 00:37:38.750 --> 00:37:43.950 I I wanna dig into the question of the weird timing of this. 00:37:44.110 --> 00:37:47.790 Because you you told a story where people just kind of gradually learned that, like, hey, 00:37:47.870 --> 00:37:51.470 this makes everyone worse off, war sucks, this is all stupid. 00:37:51.550 --> 00:37:53.230 We gotta we should just stop this. 00:37:53.550 --> 00:37:59.400 Um but that picture doesn't really fit the empirical uh 00:37:59.640 --> 00:38:01.320 pattern that we see throughout the historic. 00:38:01.640 --> 00:38:05.080 It wasn't like gradually we just stopped doing war because we realized it was stupid. 00:38:05.160 --> 00:38:11.000 It was like we had millennia of just endless war and bloodshed and conquest and slavery. 00:38:11.080 --> 00:38:13.000 Uh and everyone was totally cool with this. 00:38:13.160 --> 00:38:16.360 Nobody like really questions that hey, maybe maybe we should stop doing this. 00:38:16.440 --> 00:38:18.280 This is kind of making everyone worse off. 00:38:18.440 --> 00:38:19.640 It was just this was just the norm. 00:38:19.720 --> 00:38:20.840 This was the way the world worked. 00:38:20.920 --> 00:38:26.750 And then all of a sudden you you see this huge spike uh around 19th, 20th century, where 00:38:26.750 --> 00:38:28.190 we started giving a shit. 00:38:28.350 --> 00:38:31.310 You know, we started saying, hey, this isn't cool. 00:38:31.550 --> 00:38:36.910 Uh uh war sucks, we should stop being racist and sexist, and slavery sucks. 00:38:37.070 --> 00:38:40.750 Like all these things happened uh very recently. 00:38:40.990 --> 00:38:41.310 Yeah. 00:38:41.470 --> 00:38:46.030 Um, and and not gradually, uh uh if you look at the the the vast sweep of human history. 00:38:46.110 --> 00:38:48.510 So, like, what how do you explain like the timing of it? 00:38:48.590 --> 00:38:49.630 Like, why then? 00:38:49.790 --> 00:38:52.670 And why so dramatically at that point in history? 00:38:52.940 --> 00:38:56.940 where you know, why did it take us so long to realize how how stupid this stuff was? 00:38:57.260 --> 00:39:00.860 Yeah, I mean it's that's a that's that's a that what one one of the huge questions that we 00:39:00.940 --> 00:39:04.460 uh wanna and you're right, the story I told is very false, right? 00:39:04.540 --> 00:39:07.660 Uh yeah in sort of like the timing and the empirical details. 00:39:07.820 --> 00:39:13.740 Um but so there's a couple I th I I do think that probably most 00:39:13.740 --> 00:39:19.570 people most of the time did hate this, even millennia ago and but they were kind of 00:39:19.570 --> 00:39:24.050 like you know also this is also a collective action problem where they couldn't you know uh 00:39:24.290 --> 00:39:30.290 resist um you know the the the the 00:39:30.290 --> 00:39:36.050 the the plans of Agamemnon to raid this city right they but they they were kind of forced 00:39:36.050 --> 00:39:40.130 to and they couldn't resist they couldn't organize against it it was supported culturally 00:39:40.130 --> 00:39:45.800 by certain values uh but it did but it but it benefited No one really. 00:39:46.120 --> 00:39:49.480 But these people just weren't hurt and they couldn't, and they couldn't, um, they didn't 00:39:49.480 --> 00:39:52.600 have the power to to to to to resist that. 00:39:52.760 --> 00:39:58.440 And also for the longest time, of course, um, we we had we we we hadn't understood and we 00:39:58.440 --> 00:40:03.080 only understand economic growth that it even that is even possible. 00:40:03.160 --> 00:40:04.680 It's a very recent thing, right? 00:40:04.760 --> 00:40:09.080 You see all these graphs on on our world in data, and you know, there's nothing, nothing, 00:40:09.160 --> 00:40:09.960 nothing, nothing, nothing. 00:40:10.040 --> 00:40:11.640 And then, like you said, very recently. 00:40:11.880 --> 00:40:17.650 So we had to kind of it's very past dependent and we had to kind of like at some point we 00:40:17.810 --> 00:40:23.650 we we locked into that potential a little bit, escaping the Malthusian trap 00:40:23.730 --> 00:40:27.810 and figuring out how can we have positive sum interactions between people. 00:40:27.890 --> 00:40:32.050 And for the longest time, if you wanted to get rich or grow your economy of of your city 00:40:32.130 --> 00:40:37.970 state or of your of your, I don't know, um, you had to just, you know, take it from someone 00:40:37.970 --> 00:40:38.610 else. 00:40:39.080 --> 00:40:39.640 Right? 00:40:40.280 --> 00:40:46.200 Uh and people just people just couldn't think of like how would you even how would 00:40:46.200 --> 00:40:51.160 you even, you know, distinguish yourself and become rich and powerful without taking 00:40:51.160 --> 00:40:52.280 resources from other people? 00:40:52.600 --> 00:40:55.960 Because it's just a you know, because re because resources are finite and they aren't 00:40:55.960 --> 00:40:56.760 making more of it. 00:40:56.920 --> 00:41:00.440 And we and and it's apparently it apparently it was very, very difficult for us to figure 00:41:00.440 --> 00:41:01.480 out that that's not true. 00:41:01.640 --> 00:41:07.090 And we can actually be enormously productive and make new stuff and create fridges and and 00:41:07.090 --> 00:41:11.330 uh and uh and airplanes and and and uh vaccines. 00:41:12.370 --> 00:41:17.570 Um now, of course, even after we discovered that, so you're totally right, even after we 00:41:17.570 --> 00:41:23.570 discovered that, people still didn't stop warring and and conquering and and and and 00:41:23.570 --> 00:41:26.040 all this madness. 00:41:26.440 --> 00:41:32.360 Because, of course, you know, group antagonism and group conflict is very easily 00:41:32.360 --> 00:41:32.920 activated. 00:41:33.000 --> 00:41:34.120 It's very old. 00:41:34.200 --> 00:41:39.240 Uh, and it's very, very easy to get people to hate each other on the basis of seemingly 00:41:39.240 --> 00:41:45.240 arbitrary characteristics like being French or German, or being white or black, or being, 00:41:45.320 --> 00:41:47.720 I don't know, Japanese or Chinese. 00:41:47.880 --> 00:41:53.290 Uh, it's just it's just very easy to to to get that hostility, uh, those 00:41:53.290 --> 00:41:55.290 hostility juices flowing. 00:41:56.330 --> 00:42:02.170 And so that's that that that's how I would say, yes, it's not like we 00:42:02.170 --> 00:42:03.690 learned this gradually. 00:42:03.930 --> 00:42:09.450 Um, I do think that for the 00:42:09.450 --> 00:42:15.210 longest time this was kind of an elite phenomenon that was at the expense of the 00:42:15.210 --> 00:42:16.570 majority of people. 00:42:17.290 --> 00:42:20.890 Um, warring and conquest and so on and so on. 00:42:21.520 --> 00:42:25.280 Um and human society 00:42:27.360 --> 00:42:33.360 at one point kind of in some places figured out that oh you know we can we can we 00:42:33.360 --> 00:42:39.360 can we can create these positive sum interactions between people and even then 00:42:39.520 --> 00:42:44.240 it was still difficult to make that work and to and to keep it around. 00:42:45.280 --> 00:42:50.350 And And then sort of the ultra 00:42:50.430 --> 00:42:56.190 optimistic way of telling this story is that just like after the 30 year war, in 00:42:56.190 --> 00:43:02.030 1648, in 1945, there was another moment where people like in the Western world kind of 00:43:02.030 --> 00:43:03.870 said, like, this is not good. 00:43:04.030 --> 00:43:09.870 We need to, you know, we can't we can't think about society and the world in terms of 00:43:10.460 --> 00:43:16.380 racial groups being being in conflict with each other over land and resources, 00:43:16.540 --> 00:43:16.780 right? 00:43:16.940 --> 00:43:21.580 Which was which was a very, very important part of Nazi ideology, is that you have these 00:43:21.580 --> 00:43:23.740 groups of people, these races, uh, right? 00:43:23.820 --> 00:43:27.260 And there's the Aryan race, and there's the Jewish race, and there's the black race, and 00:43:27.260 --> 00:43:27.900 blah blah blah. 00:43:28.060 --> 00:43:29.820 And they are in conflict with each other, right? 00:43:29.980 --> 00:43:34.460 And if you want the Aryan race to do well, it needs to come at the expense of the others, 00:43:34.700 --> 00:43:35.020 right? 00:43:35.660 --> 00:43:39.020 Um, and that was a bad idea. 00:43:41.890 --> 00:43:47.410 It became extremely popular, unfortunately, for um between 00:43:47.410 --> 00:43:48.850 33 and 45. 00:43:49.410 --> 00:43:53.490 And it's still something that is very popular and easily reactivated, right? 00:43:53.650 --> 00:43:56.450 To say that you know Canadians. 00:43:59.700 --> 00:44:03.860 But still, the ultra-optimistic version of telling this story would be that after this, 00:44:04.020 --> 00:44:09.940 after after this huge catastrophe, people started to think that we 00:44:09.940 --> 00:44:15.940 need to build some sort of global institution, ideally global institutional framework that 00:44:15.940 --> 00:44:21.940 will allow more positive sum interactions, economic 00:44:21.940 --> 00:44:26.740 growth, and more widely shared wealth and well-being to happen. 00:44:27.060 --> 00:44:30.970 And this has been at least unusually successful, I would say. 00:44:31.130 --> 00:44:35.770 You know, in historical comparison, this has been quite surprisingly successful. 00:44:36.650 --> 00:44:41.530 Very far from perfect, of course, and very far from guaranteed that it will continue to 00:44:41.530 --> 00:44:44.490 happen, but uh but that's kind of how I would tell the story. 00:44:44.650 --> 00:44:50.570 And I mean, bad ideas and bad rules and bad institutions can stick around for 00:44:50.570 --> 00:44:52.660 an enormously long amount of time. 00:44:52.820 --> 00:44:57.780 Like footbinding was took a thousand years, and it's and it's that and it's the most 00:44:57.780 --> 00:45:03.700 bizarre, cruelest, most pointless idea you can even think of, right? 00:45:03.780 --> 00:45:05.220 And it took a thousand years. 00:45:05.540 --> 00:45:10.260 Probably some pervert in China a thousand years ago loved it, right? 00:45:10.420 --> 00:45:11.620 Some powerful pervert. 00:45:11.700 --> 00:45:16.100 And it made it stick and it like and it flowed through society, and people started doing 00:45:16.100 --> 00:45:17.460 it, um, and so on and so on. 00:45:17.540 --> 00:45:22.110 But when you think about it, it is extremely bizarre to like disable your wife cruelly, or 00:45:22.110 --> 00:45:25.390 to to your daughter, you know, uh uh cruelly. 00:45:25.630 --> 00:45:31.550 Um uh and and and and it's possible for these kim the philosopher Kim 00:45:31.550 --> 00:45:35.070 Sterelny calls these snafu, situation normal, all fucked up. 00:45:35.630 --> 00:45:41.550 Um there are these snafus in in in human society that evolve and then 00:45:41.550 --> 00:45:42.750 they're hard to get rid of. 00:45:43.070 --> 00:45:45.870 Think of genital mutilation, right? 00:45:46.270 --> 00:45:52.220 You know, there are there are people you know, pretty big groups of groups in in in in 00:45:52.220 --> 00:45:58.140 in East Africa and in so pr broadly that region that that just you know cut off 00:45:58.140 --> 00:46:02.940 young girls clitoris with with dirty with like a shard or something, right? 00:46:03.020 --> 00:46:04.620 Or or a rusty knife. 00:46:05.020 --> 00:46:08.220 It's a it's a terrible idea, right? 00:46:08.300 --> 00:46:10.700 It's like the it's like the worst idea I've ever heard. 00:46:10.870 --> 00:46:16.870 uh but it's it it's kind of evolved as a mutation and it sticks around and then you have 00:46:16.950 --> 00:46:20.950 and people are locked in this phenomenon that christina bicchieri called pluralistic 00:46:20.950 --> 00:46:25.190 ignorance so everyone thinks that you know the neighbor wants it and the neighbor thinks 00:46:25.190 --> 00:46:29.670 that you want it uh and it becomes very very hard to get rid of and that's unfortunately 00:46:29.830 --> 00:46:34.950 also how society works and so you can have a lot of bad stuff that's sticking around and 00:46:34.950 --> 00:46:37.990 that's and that's and that once you get rid of it you think like what were you what were 00:46:37.990 --> 00:46:41.640 you thinking Um, and it's it's bizarre, cruel, and pointless. 00:46:42.120 --> 00:46:42.360 Yeah. 00:46:42.680 --> 00:46:47.720 We we at the beginning of this, we talked about having uh strong opinions weekly held. 00:46:47.960 --> 00:46:51.880 Um, I'd like to offer one here, which is well, I want you to hold them weekly. 00:46:51.960 --> 00:46:53.080 My opinions are I'm gonna start. 00:46:53.320 --> 00:46:54.920 I'm holding it weekly, that's exactly what I'm doing. 00:46:55.000 --> 00:46:55.800 I'm prefacing this. 00:46:55.880 --> 00:46:59.080 So um and I'm curious what David thinks about this as well, because you guys have thought 00:46:59.080 --> 00:46:59.640 about this more. 00:46:59.720 --> 00:47:04.840 So we've talked about recently there's sort of we we now understand these these moral 00:47:04.840 --> 00:47:05.480 goods. 00:47:05.720 --> 00:47:11.310 Um I'm curious what you both think about the idea that we haven't learned 00:47:11.310 --> 00:47:12.190 anything. 00:47:13.150 --> 00:47:18.270 But there are just externalities of just dynamics that 00:47:19.950 --> 00:47:20.910 have consequences. 00:47:21.070 --> 00:47:26.110 So for example, let's say that we just we live in a society with no refrigerators and then 00:47:26.110 --> 00:47:27.310 we have refrigerators. 00:47:27.470 --> 00:47:32.460 We all turn around and look at each other and say, hey, we have a lot more food, and it's 00:47:32.460 --> 00:47:36.860 buffered against uh you know time um heat and time and whatever. 00:47:37.100 --> 00:47:39.260 And so maybe we're all more cooperative, right? 00:47:39.340 --> 00:47:43.900 So we look around and we say, look, we're not fighting as much, but the mechanism of that 00:47:43.900 --> 00:47:45.420 is like a refrigerator, right? 00:47:45.980 --> 00:47:47.180 So there's two separate things. 00:47:47.340 --> 00:47:48.540 One is how did we get there? 00:47:48.700 --> 00:47:50.060 What's the mechanism? 00:47:50.300 --> 00:47:54.050 And then the other one is the observation or the mean, the outcome, right? 00:47:54.130 --> 00:47:55.250 Like, oh, we've, you know. 00:47:55.410 --> 00:48:01.410 And so my w the thesis I want to argue for is that moral progress is a is 00:48:01.410 --> 00:48:06.770 a is the equivalent of noticing we all have more time and food, where 00:48:07.410 --> 00:48:12.130 we're looking around and saying, hey, look, like it's really good that you know, these 00:48:12.130 --> 00:48:17.760 people who were oppressed are not, but the means to get there have been sort of opaque. 00:48:17.920 --> 00:48:23.760 And the idea is that, I mean, for example, the idea that, you know, we're not um having 00:48:23.760 --> 00:48:29.600 slaves or we're not taking stuff from people in order to make money, one argument 00:48:29.600 --> 00:48:30.720 is that's still happening. 00:48:30.800 --> 00:48:31.920 It's just more hidden now. 00:48:32.000 --> 00:48:34.160 It's more economic, it's more regional. 00:48:34.400 --> 00:48:39.310 You know, there's still economic slavery, there's still regional things like that. 00:48:39.470 --> 00:48:44.350 And so what used to be done by nation states is now done by you know nation states in 00:48:44.350 --> 00:48:46.590 collaboration with like corporations or something. 00:48:46.750 --> 00:48:52.670 Um and uh and so the idea is that we we haven't changed our 00:48:52.670 --> 00:48:57.550 moral insight, and now we're checking will this behavior 00:48:58.190 --> 00:49:03.630 produce these negative externalities of coercion or manipulation or enslavement? 00:49:03.790 --> 00:49:04.670 We're not doing that. 00:49:04.830 --> 00:49:08.780 We were just looking around and being like, hey, look, there's a lot of slavery that 00:49:08.780 --> 00:49:09.660 doesn't exist anymore. 00:49:09.740 --> 00:49:14.380 There's a lot of um indentured servitude that doesn't exist anymore, but we're not looking 00:49:14.380 --> 00:49:16.220 for it going forward either. 00:49:16.460 --> 00:49:19.340 It's just that other shit happened. 00:49:19.500 --> 00:49:23.020 Um, uh, and as a consequence of that, it's gotten better. 00:49:23.180 --> 00:49:27.340 So this is this is a thesis, and again, I don't think I entirely believe it, but it has 00:49:27.340 --> 00:49:28.300 implications, right? 00:49:28.460 --> 00:49:33.830 The thesis is that moral progress is an outcome, but it's not the means to get there. 00:49:33.990 --> 00:49:39.910 And we don't, in most cases, even if we want to get there, there's an opacity about how 00:49:39.910 --> 00:49:40.310 to get there. 00:49:40.390 --> 00:49:46.230 And it's often weird things like refrigerators, not we should all stand around aiming to 00:49:46.230 --> 00:49:49.270 have more peaceful interactions, if that makes sense. 00:49:49.510 --> 00:49:49.830 Yeah. 00:49:49.910 --> 00:49:50.310 Yeah. 00:49:50.470 --> 00:49:56.460 So I would I I'm I mean I would love I 00:49:56.460 --> 00:49:59.580 would love to disagree with more but but but I think I'm pretty happy with that. 00:49:59.660 --> 00:50:03.180 So so I so there is a sense in which people don't get better. 00:50:03.900 --> 00:50:04.460 Right? 00:50:04.700 --> 00:50:09.820 And so I I'm I'm happy to I'm I'm I'm I'm happy to call myself a materialist. 00:50:10.060 --> 00:50:15.420 Um you know I think these changes are driven by stuff, technology. 00:50:16.090 --> 00:50:21.690 I also think a lot about human cognition and human interaction in terms of 00:50:21.690 --> 00:50:23.930 offloading things into your environment. 00:50:24.170 --> 00:50:24.490 Right. 00:50:24.810 --> 00:50:26.890 And that's where we store the knowledge. 00:50:27.210 --> 00:50:33.050 And by it's kind of trivially true that each generation starts afresh, right? 00:50:33.210 --> 00:50:38.680 You you know, babies come, Babies are Neanderthals, right? 00:50:38.760 --> 00:50:39.800 They are cavemen. 00:50:40.840 --> 00:50:42.600 And they don't know anything. 00:50:43.640 --> 00:50:49.240 And if you get rid of the refrigerators and the and the washing machines and the and the 00:50:49.240 --> 00:50:54.440 courts that maintain the rule of law and so on and so on, you revert back like that. 00:50:55.240 --> 00:50:57.480 So if if that's what you mean, I'm I'm on I'm on board with that. 00:50:57.560 --> 00:50:59.640 So it's not it's just not in our brains. 00:50:59.800 --> 00:51:05.030 It's like p p it's it's it's it's all offloaded into the 00:51:05.350 --> 00:51:06.070 environment. 00:51:06.230 --> 00:51:10.470 But I think that's we as a human species, that's what we're all about, right? 00:51:10.710 --> 00:51:15.670 So there is this nice research in cultural evolutionary theory about how a lot of our 00:51:15.750 --> 00:51:21.670 basically, you know, a lot of our physiology and our anatomy 00:51:21.670 --> 00:51:26.920 has been shaped by the fact that we externalized cooking, We externalized digestion into 00:51:26.920 --> 00:51:27.400 cooking. 00:51:27.640 --> 00:51:27.960 Right? 00:51:28.120 --> 00:51:31.240 So we are we are these super effeminate apes, right? 00:51:31.320 --> 00:51:33.880 We are these super like gay apes, right? 00:51:34.120 --> 00:51:39.880 These golden retriever kind of creatures that are sort of super super uh uh uh um um 00:51:40.440 --> 00:51:45.560 uh uh naked and and and and and and soft and weak. 00:51:45.690 --> 00:51:47.530 Um very grassile. 00:51:47.770 --> 00:51:48.810 We're very grassile, yes. 00:51:49.130 --> 00:51:49.370 Exactly. 00:51:49.530 --> 00:51:52.730 It's like we are like the ballet dancers of uh of apes. 00:51:53.050 --> 00:51:53.610 Yeah, it's interesting. 00:51:54.010 --> 00:51:55.610 Yeah, Neotnus were cute. 00:51:55.770 --> 00:52:01.610 I I I I me I just ballet dancers are pretty uh probab probably 00:52:01.690 --> 00:52:04.490 there was some fighting between Neanderthals and our and our ancestors. 00:52:04.570 --> 00:52:08.980 And I just imagine, you know, because humans basically look like Neotinous chimps. 00:52:09.140 --> 00:52:09.300 Yeah. 00:52:09.460 --> 00:52:13.540 You know, because we um the Neanderthals would have been basically having to fight against, 00:52:13.620 --> 00:52:14.660 you know, big babies. 00:52:14.820 --> 00:52:16.900 Like like their enemies would have been cute to them. 00:52:16.980 --> 00:52:20.340 You know, those big babies outsmarted them. 00:52:20.660 --> 00:52:20.980 Oh yeah. 00:52:21.540 --> 00:52:22.900 I just find that a very funny image. 00:52:23.620 --> 00:52:25.380 That's why we love the underdog story, right? 00:52:25.620 --> 00:52:28.260 That's where we're the um yes exactly. 00:52:28.580 --> 00:52:29.140 Anyway, continue. 00:52:29.460 --> 00:52:29.620 Sorry. 00:52:29.780 --> 00:52:31.620 We are very very we are extremely cute. 00:52:32.050 --> 00:52:38.050 Um, and you know, with small, useless jaws, uh, and very slender figure and so on and so 00:52:38.050 --> 00:52:43.330 on, just because we we offloaded all of that into you know chopping things, fermenting 00:52:43.330 --> 00:52:46.930 things, cooking things, making them soft, digestible, blah blah blah. 00:52:47.090 --> 00:52:52.370 And and that that that's basically the paradigm of how I think about human corporation and 00:52:52.370 --> 00:52:53.330 institutions as well. 00:52:53.490 --> 00:52:58.000 We offload all of that into our environment. 00:52:58.160 --> 00:53:04.080 Um I mean in the case of cooking we literally become you know dependent on it yeah so um it 00:53:04.320 --> 00:53:09.840 is this is this because this goes back so far um that we can't really do without it anymore 00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:14.800 with that technique and and no one no one no one does without it there's the you know all 00:53:14.800 --> 00:53:20.610 human cultures do that and care about it enormously um and 00:53:22.050 --> 00:53:26.050 the rules and structures and institutions of cooperation, I think, are kind of like that. 00:53:26.210 --> 00:53:27.890 They are features of the environment. 00:53:27.970 --> 00:53:33.970 They are in our cities, they are in our roads, in our buildings, in our laws, 00:53:34.530 --> 00:53:38.610 um, um and and and and we offload things into our environment. 00:53:38.690 --> 00:53:39.970 And that's what makes us work. 00:53:40.130 --> 00:53:45.560 And we are um we are uh we are the extended mind kind of species right so in philosophy 00:53:45.640 --> 00:53:51.480 there's this extended mind hypothesis is that the you know we are extremely unique in 00:53:51.560 --> 00:53:56.600 in in in in in offloading knowledge and skills and and 00:53:56.600 --> 00:54:02.360 abilities into our environment and that scaffolds our behavior and and our 00:54:02.600 --> 00:54:06.920 and our and our society and so uh I mean tell me if I'm wrong but that seems to be a way of 00:54:06.920 --> 00:54:10.810 like agreeing with you that I think I think there is a sense in which hum you know each and 00:54:10.810 --> 00:54:14.170 every human doesn't become better, and each and every generation doesn't, in some sense, 00:54:14.330 --> 00:54:15.930 internally become better. 00:54:16.170 --> 00:54:22.090 Um, it's just hopefully an increasingly an increasing amount of good 00:54:22.090 --> 00:54:27.690 ideas get offloaded into the environment, and and then hopefully not too many of them get 00:54:27.690 --> 00:54:31.600 destroyed as we pass them on from generation to to generation. 00:54:31.760 --> 00:54:34.640 But if you do destroy them, it can be very hard to get them back. 00:54:35.360 --> 00:54:39.040 And it can take a very, very long time because, like you said, we don't really understand 00:54:39.040 --> 00:54:39.840 where it came from. 00:54:39.920 --> 00:54:41.920 We and we we and people didn't invent. 00:54:42.080 --> 00:54:48.080 I think there's actually a lot of serious research on how women's rights were aided by the 00:54:48.080 --> 00:54:49.120 washing machine. 00:54:49.360 --> 00:54:49.680 Right. 00:54:50.000 --> 00:54:53.590 But of course, the inventors of the washing machine, they couldn't care less about that. 00:54:54.550 --> 00:54:57.990 They were capitalist pigs that wanted to make money. 00:54:58.630 --> 00:55:04.550 But they it had this this this this side effect, like you said, of just like creating more 00:55:04.550 --> 00:55:06.630 food and time, so to speak. 00:55:06.710 --> 00:55:11.750 And then people start demanding, oh, uh by the way, you know, uh we should be we we should 00:55:11.830 --> 00:55:13.830 we we we we should we should be able to vote. 00:55:13.990 --> 00:55:19.760 Um and and people recognize like, yeah, that's probably after a lot of struggle and a lot 00:55:19.760 --> 00:55:24.000 of strife, people you know, some some amount of people recognizes that that's probably a 00:55:24.000 --> 00:55:25.680 defensible idea and so on and so on and so on. 00:55:26.000 --> 00:55:28.880 Um but that's that that's that's that I I agree with that. 00:55:29.040 --> 00:55:33.760 If moral progress happens, it happens almost entirely outside of our heads. 00:55:33.920 --> 00:55:37.520 And it's like externalizing our d digestive system. 00:55:37.680 --> 00:55:42.960 We've externalized cooperation into these structures and and institutions, and that's what 00:55:42.960 --> 00:55:43.600 makes them fly. 00:55:43.950 --> 00:55:44.830 Yeah, I agree with that. 00:55:44.910 --> 00:55:49.470 And I think to rephrase or to just paraphrase what you're saying to make sure I understand 00:55:49.470 --> 00:55:53.310 it, it's sort of that we're codependent as a species. 00:55:53.470 --> 00:55:57.630 We're the codes dependent species on the environment or the external structures. 00:55:58.030 --> 00:56:02.190 And that in in some sense, and I think this is even what you're saying, helps me clarify 00:56:02.270 --> 00:56:07.790 what I think my point was, is almost there's a tolerated scrounging sense of moral 00:56:07.790 --> 00:56:13.220 progress, which is it usually is the case that everybody wants more 00:56:13.220 --> 00:56:17.540 morality for themselves in the sense of more rights, less exploitation. 00:56:17.780 --> 00:56:18.100 Yeah. 00:56:18.340 --> 00:56:24.260 And if the circumstances allow it, people will say, All right, I'll give you more 00:56:24.340 --> 00:56:26.580 if it doesn't really blow back on me too much. 00:56:26.740 --> 00:56:32.260 So it's this tolerated scrounging idea of um I'll sort of I'm not 00:56:32.260 --> 00:56:33.770 gonna fight for it. 00:56:33.930 --> 00:56:37.690 I mean, I obviously there's wonderful exceptions and uh but I just mean it's a general 00:56:37.690 --> 00:56:38.410 dynamic. 00:56:38.650 --> 00:56:44.570 In aggregate, you'll if I'm okay and you're gonna get better, that's okay with me and 00:56:44.570 --> 00:56:49.850 I'll kind of tolerate and but but the means to it is this very ethereal, 00:56:50.090 --> 00:56:52.970 codependent, uh nonlinear thing. 00:56:53.130 --> 00:56:53.530 Yeah. 00:56:54.240 --> 00:56:54.400 Yeah. 00:56:54.640 --> 00:56:54.800 Yeah. 00:56:54.880 --> 00:56:58.320 And and and yeah, I I like this perspective a lot. 00:56:58.480 --> 00:57:03.120 Um you could think of it as a, you know, emergent moral progress or Hayekian moral progress 00:57:03.200 --> 00:57:05.520 where it's not anyone's, you know, it's not centrally planned. 00:57:05.600 --> 00:57:09.440 It just kind of emerges spontaneously through interactions and ecological changes. 00:57:09.600 --> 00:57:13.840 And we mentioned one of the biggest ecological changes, which was, you know, in the 00:57:13.840 --> 00:57:18.410 agricultural era, you know, uh it it really mattered, you know, how much land you had. 00:57:18.490 --> 00:57:23.290 You know, agriculturally productive land was the thing to have if you wanted to have 00:57:23.290 --> 00:57:24.250 resources, right? 00:57:24.570 --> 00:57:30.090 Uh and unfortunately, agriculturally productive land is a limited resource that can be 00:57:30.090 --> 00:57:35.370 monopolized and defended with a group of thugs with swords or spears or whatever. 00:57:35.610 --> 00:57:35.770 Yeah. 00:57:35.930 --> 00:57:39.530 And so the entire economic system was inherently zero sum. 00:57:39.770 --> 00:57:41.530 It was who had the land, right? 00:57:41.690 --> 00:57:41.930 Yeah. 00:57:42.170 --> 00:57:47.180 And uh eventually the value of productive land became so high that you know, whoever just 00:57:47.180 --> 00:57:51.660 happened to be sitting on the land, you know, uh a long time ago became the king and they 00:57:51.660 --> 00:57:54.780 just got to boss everyone around because they were sitting on the land, you know, a hundred 00:57:54.780 --> 00:57:55.740 years ago, right? 00:57:55.900 --> 00:57:56.220 Yeah. 00:57:56.380 --> 00:57:59.660 Um, and and and war just became about seizing land. 00:57:59.900 --> 00:58:00.140 Yeah. 00:58:00.300 --> 00:58:03.740 And and and and it was kind of inescapably zero sum just because of the nature of the 00:58:03.740 --> 00:58:06.700 ecology uh uh and and the economic system. 00:58:06.940 --> 00:58:12.830 But then gradually uh we began to create new resources that w uh moved 00:58:12.830 --> 00:58:16.110 above and beyond simply agriculturally productive land. 00:58:16.270 --> 00:58:20.110 We began to uh invent ideas about how to make the land more productive. 00:58:20.190 --> 00:58:23.870 You know, ideas aren't really monopolizable in the same way as a patch of land is. 00:58:24.030 --> 00:58:28.750 We began to invent new products and new goods and services, uh and the creation of those 00:58:28.750 --> 00:58:32.750 things could very much grow the pie for everyone without you know excluding other people 00:58:32.750 --> 00:58:33.070 from the pie. 00:58:33.310 --> 00:58:38.800 So there was just a a a massive change in the ecology and the economic structure 00:58:39.120 --> 00:58:42.640 that I I think is is underlying what we call moral progress. 00:58:42.800 --> 00:58:47.440 It just it you know the the the economy itself became less zero sum and the gains from 00:58:47.440 --> 00:58:50.800 cooperation and positive sum relationship just exploded. 00:58:50.960 --> 00:58:56.240 Um and and and what we call moral progress, I think, is is people gradually like adjusting 00:58:56.240 --> 00:59:02.080 to that new ecology and waking up to all of the past arbitrary, cruel practices 00:59:02.080 --> 00:59:05.760 that they had to live with, but but now all of a sudden became optional. 00:59:06.000 --> 00:59:06.240 Yeah. 00:59:06.400 --> 00:59:08.410 Uh and and you know, here we are. 00:59:08.650 --> 00:59:14.490 Yeah, and that's why that uh again that that's why it's so just frustrating to 00:59:15.930 --> 00:59:21.370 to see like you have the literally the lit literally literally the largest country in the 00:59:21.370 --> 00:59:27.210 world and the and its leaders say you know what we should be larger right 00:59:27.610 --> 00:59:33.530 uh and and that's so important that um it is worth sending a 00:59:33.530 --> 00:59:36.220 million young men to perish, Right? 00:59:36.780 --> 00:59:39.980 That makes me bad. 00:59:40.300 --> 00:59:40.620 Right? 00:59:40.860 --> 00:59:45.580 Because because it's it's it is obsolete. 00:59:46.380 --> 00:59:46.860 Right? 00:59:47.100 --> 00:59:52.860 This it's based on something where you realized maybe used to be 00:59:52.860 --> 00:59:56.460 true thousand years ago when that situation obtained that you described, right? 00:59:56.540 --> 00:59:57.980 Where you had to have the land. 00:59:58.220 --> 00:59:58.540 Yeah. 00:59:58.910 --> 01:00:04.750 But now you can just you know you can just share it and trade and and and and 01:00:04.830 --> 01:00:09.230 you know and and and that and this so this is literally sabotage, I think. 01:00:09.550 --> 01:00:15.310 Um uh sabotage of potential gains um with enormous costs um 01:00:15.470 --> 01:00:21.220 um for for some weird well historical obsession 01:00:21.540 --> 01:00:24.900 with Vlad the Impaler, or I don't even know. 01:00:25.060 --> 01:00:25.380 Right? 01:00:25.540 --> 01:00:28.900 Um, uh, that that makes me incredibly annoyed. 01:00:29.220 --> 01:00:33.460 Um because it's it's just we know that's not the way. 01:00:34.180 --> 01:00:34.500 Right? 01:00:34.660 --> 01:00:39.540 And it took such a long time, and like you said, it's so precarious and so unlikely to even 01:00:39.540 --> 01:00:41.540 realize that at all, right? 01:00:41.940 --> 01:00:47.550 Uh uh that now that we in principle at least 01:00:47.710 --> 01:00:49.630 have realized that that's possible. 01:00:49.710 --> 01:00:55.470 Um it's it's very very frustrating to to see these like group needless group conflicts 01:00:56.270 --> 01:01:01.070 reactivated and and for for for political gain for for 01:01:01.630 --> 01:01:07.390 votes um for financial gain for clicks um and for um 01:01:07.390 --> 01:01:11.390 weird obsessions um and it's it's 01:01:13.320 --> 01:01:18.840 And I think these ide these these insights and ideas and these institutions that make 01:01:19.640 --> 01:01:25.640 um positive some interactions that in principle can improve the well being of more and more 01:01:25.640 --> 01:01:30.760 people involved, it's it's these insights and institutions are really worth 01:01:30.760 --> 01:01:31.720 defending. 01:01:32.280 --> 01:01:35.800 And that is a sort of like 01:01:38.190 --> 01:01:43.950 Small p progressive point of view, in that sort of like it's like a long-term progressivism 01:01:44.030 --> 01:01:44.350 in that. 01:01:44.430 --> 01:01:47.630 It's like, let's think about it in terms of centuries, right? 01:01:47.710 --> 01:01:53.710 And you see that by and large, not killing each other on the basis 01:01:53.710 --> 01:01:59.070 of weird group conflicts is probably a good idea. 01:01:59.470 --> 01:02:05.310 Um and um and that is yeah, that is that is that is what moral progress largely consists 01:02:05.310 --> 01:02:11.080 in, and then all the rest of it kind of drops out that, you know, more it it's it's gonna 01:02:11.080 --> 01:02:15.560 be slightly more egalitarian because if you want to have larger groups, you know, there's 01:02:15.560 --> 01:02:20.120 gonna be pressure to admit people into this franchise on sort of equal terms, right? 01:02:20.280 --> 01:02:24.600 And it's gonna be in and uh treatment of children is gonna become better, treatment of 01:02:25.720 --> 01:02:31.610 minorities is gonna become better, frustratingly slow and imperfectly and with setbacks 01:02:31.690 --> 01:02:33.210 and and so on and so on and so on. 01:02:33.290 --> 01:02:37.370 But in principle, I think that's the functional dynamic, kind of like pulls in that 01:02:37.370 --> 01:02:37.690 direction. 01:02:37.930 --> 01:02:38.170 Hope. 01:02:38.330 --> 01:02:38.970 I hope. 01:02:39.370 --> 01:02:40.810 And I hope it'll continue to do so. 01:02:41.530 --> 01:02:45.770 It's almost like you're saying that like this this huge ecological and economic change and 01:02:45.770 --> 01:02:47.050 transformation that we've undergone. 01:02:47.130 --> 01:02:49.680 Like we're we're still sort of catching up to it. 01:02:49.840 --> 01:02:51.520 Like we still haven't quite fully adjusted. 01:02:51.680 --> 01:02:56.880 And we're still having cultural atavisms where we're uh acting as if we still lived in a 01:02:56.880 --> 01:03:01.120 world where the where land was a zero sum resource and you know, if whoever has the most 01:03:01.120 --> 01:03:01.760 land wins. 01:03:01.920 --> 01:03:06.320 You know, you could you could view, you know, the the recent war on Ukraine as a kind of 01:03:06.320 --> 01:03:10.800 cultural atavism where like Putin is acting, he's like a man from the 17th century that's 01:03:10.960 --> 01:03:15.920 that happens to be in the in the present era, and he's acting under the logic of a man from 01:03:15.920 --> 01:03:16.960 the 17th century. 01:03:17.210 --> 01:03:17.450 Yeah. 01:03:17.610 --> 01:03:18.970 Uh and he's just out of place. 01:03:19.050 --> 01:03:23.930 It's just kinda like he hasn't woken up to the fact that hey, um uh this we're no longer in 01:03:23.930 --> 01:03:25.610 a world where whoever has the most land wins. 01:03:25.850 --> 01:03:26.250 Yeah, yeah. 01:03:26.330 --> 01:03:30.090 You and I think you can you you can you you can view Israel Palestine as a very complicated 01:03:30.090 --> 01:03:33.690 issue, but in principle that's how I see this as like this should be happening. 01:03:33.850 --> 01:03:34.170 Yeah. 01:03:34.330 --> 01:03:34.650 Right? 01:03:34.810 --> 01:03:40.440 Uh um uh I mean, I don't think this this this you know part of the world is that 01:03:40.440 --> 01:03:44.920 desirable to begin with, but if you want it, right, you you could you could share it, 01:03:45.000 --> 01:03:45.240 right? 01:03:45.320 --> 01:03:50.360 You if you think about it long term, like um uh or or whatever, you know, we need 01:03:50.360 --> 01:03:50.840 Greenland. 01:03:50.920 --> 01:03:52.120 It's just so silly. 01:03:52.440 --> 01:03:52.840 Yeah. 01:03:54.200 --> 01:04:00.040 I I think there's a more pessimistic take on David's articulation though, which is 01:04:00.040 --> 01:04:04.520 that I like I agree that I get angry when people do this atavism. 01:04:05.000 --> 01:04:06.440 Let's get stuff. 01:04:07.330 --> 01:04:12.450 But on the idea that we haven't learned anything, or if we do, it's it's a it's a 01:04:12.450 --> 01:04:17.890 narrative of within the range that the circumstances are allowing, there's this 01:04:17.890 --> 01:04:19.490 tolerated moral progress. 01:04:19.810 --> 01:04:21.090 And I agree with that. 01:04:21.170 --> 01:04:23.170 I mean, uh as a person, of course I do. 01:04:23.250 --> 01:04:29.170 Like, of course, we should fight for um rights and uh moral progress, and 01:04:29.680 --> 01:04:35.200 within the range of what is explicitly representable and 01:04:35.200 --> 01:04:36.880 negotiable, it has huge effects. 01:04:36.960 --> 01:04:40.160 There's no, there's enormous history, historical record of that. 01:04:40.400 --> 01:04:45.920 But I think the argument would be the pessimistic one would be that it's no surprise that 01:04:45.920 --> 01:04:50.240 there's somebody who's always being like, let's just attack those guys, or like, let's get 01:04:50.240 --> 01:04:50.880 more land. 01:04:51.610 --> 01:04:54.410 because, like you said, people don't change. 01:04:54.490 --> 01:04:58.090 And people are just always throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks. 01:04:58.250 --> 01:04:58.490 Yeah. 01:04:58.650 --> 01:05:04.650 And the scary thing then is that no matter how much moral progress there is, it's 01:05:04.650 --> 01:05:07.850 not an inevitable improvement. 01:05:08.010 --> 01:05:11.370 It's just a description of what we've gotten to so far. 01:05:11.930 --> 01:05:17.600 It's not because we've it's it's a counterenlightenment argument, which is that it's great 01:05:17.600 --> 01:05:22.480 that people have these values and ideals, or as to put in David's language, it's ideology, 01:05:22.720 --> 01:05:27.120 but it's not that it's ideology then determines the future outcomes. 01:05:27.360 --> 01:05:32.560 It's that everybody's trying to get status, everybody's trying to get resources, and then 01:05:32.560 --> 01:05:35.040 there's this tolerated scrounging for morality. 01:05:35.200 --> 01:05:41.070 And that's a very different prognosis because then the argument is we 01:05:41.070 --> 01:05:46.350 assume that it's all gonna go away and we have to think carefully about which status 01:05:46.350 --> 01:05:51.710 schemes are gonna produce which externalities and which moral externalities, and that we 01:05:51.710 --> 01:05:54.110 haven't learned that it's bad to exploit people. 01:05:54.270 --> 01:05:58.880 We haven't learned that slavery is wrong, we we haven't learned that war is wrong. 01:05:58.960 --> 01:06:00.080 It just looks different. 01:06:00.240 --> 01:06:02.960 It's hidden, but we haven't learned anything. 01:06:03.040 --> 01:06:05.200 And I think that's a very different prognosis. 01:06:05.360 --> 01:06:10.720 It's a very pauper point, which is like the point of the social sciences is to study the 01:06:10.880 --> 01:06:14.080 unintended consequences of policies. 01:06:14.320 --> 01:06:18.880 Um, it's one that is sort of like we are all horrible and we're letting horrible things 01:06:18.880 --> 01:06:22.160 happen, and we only want to know insofar as it affects us. 01:06:22.320 --> 01:06:27.090 That's that I think is the most pessimistic view, that we haven't learned any moral 01:06:27.090 --> 01:06:29.810 progress, and we're just we just like to think we have. 01:06:29.970 --> 01:06:32.050 Yeah, there's a market to buy that idea. 01:06:32.210 --> 01:06:35.410 Um, I don't again, I don't know if I agree with that idea, but I think that's the most 01:06:35.410 --> 01:06:37.490 pessimistic um argument. 01:06:37.730 --> 01:06:42.050 And it's the one with the responsibility of saying everything we're doing, we should be 01:06:42.050 --> 01:06:46.050 kind of constantly checking for what externalities is what we're doing causing. 01:06:46.450 --> 01:06:46.850 Yeah, yeah. 01:06:46.930 --> 01:06:50.700 I mean, to some extent, it seems to me like we need to do like a minute of like in 01:06:50.700 --> 01:06:54.620 philosophy people sometimes say semantic ascent, where you sort of like let's talk about 01:06:54.620 --> 01:06:57.340 the word learning first, and then we can agree or disagree. 01:06:57.500 --> 01:06:57.820 Exactly. 01:06:57.900 --> 01:07:00.700 Um depends a little bit on what we mean by learning. 01:07:00.780 --> 01:07:04.380 Yeah, so I I I I yeah, and there is a there is a sense in which we haven't learned that 01:07:04.380 --> 01:07:05.180 slavery is bad. 01:07:05.260 --> 01:07:05.580 Yeah. 01:07:05.740 --> 01:07:07.820 Uh but but but there is another sense in which we have. 01:07:07.980 --> 01:07:08.060 Correct. 01:07:08.380 --> 01:07:14.380 Uh so you so yeah, uh, but but but in the in the first sense, I'm I'm happy to to to 01:07:14.460 --> 01:07:16.700 to to to totally concede that point to you. 01:07:17.020 --> 01:07:22.630 Um We have built an external environment and a new 01:07:22.630 --> 01:07:28.630 ecology that has allowed a thriving economy without 01:07:28.630 --> 01:07:29.350 slavery. 01:07:29.910 --> 01:07:35.910 I mean, I I like to I like to point out to people that Aristotle, he he he, 01:07:35.990 --> 01:07:41.990 you know, by seen by many as the greatest mind ever produced by 01:07:42.310 --> 01:07:43.320 by humanity. 01:07:43.560 --> 01:07:45.880 Maybe not by me, but it's a you know it's a strong contender. 01:07:46.280 --> 01:07:46.760 He was fine. 01:07:46.840 --> 01:07:47.320 He was fine. 01:07:48.680 --> 01:07:49.160 C plus. 01:07:49.880 --> 01:07:55.400 And and he he he you know his book on on human society uh and uh you know the 01:07:55.400 --> 01:08:01.320 politics it it's it's the f on the first page he says okay first of 01:08:01.320 --> 01:08:02.840 all you gotta have slaves. 01:08:03.000 --> 01:08:03.400 Yeah. 01:08:03.610 --> 01:08:03.930 Right? 01:08:04.490 --> 01:08:07.690 He couldn't even, you know, who who else is gonna do the labor? 01:08:07.930 --> 01:08:08.090 Yeah. 01:08:08.650 --> 01:08:12.090 There's just no concept, there's no understanding of um. 01:08:14.250 --> 01:08:18.650 And so we've we we've we've you know 01:08:18.890 --> 01:08:24.810 fortuitously stumbled upon a set of institutions that make slavery. 01:08:26.520 --> 01:08:28.520 not advantageous anymore. 01:08:28.760 --> 01:08:32.440 Um it's not a good way of running an economy. 01:08:32.600 --> 01:08:37.160 Again, it's it's it's good, it's good, you know, it it it it's advantageous for the slave 01:08:37.160 --> 01:08:38.360 owners, right? 01:08:38.520 --> 01:08:41.240 Uh for for the individual plantation owners. 01:08:41.400 --> 01:08:43.160 That was a good deal, right? 01:08:43.560 --> 01:08:49.080 Um, but it's overall not a good way of running a society and of making a society 01:08:49.470 --> 01:08:54.430 rich, and it's I mean, not even not not to not even to speak of, of course, of the slaves, 01:08:54.590 --> 01:08:54.910 right? 01:08:54.990 --> 01:08:56.910 Uh uh for whom it's not good. 01:08:57.230 --> 01:09:02.750 Um, but yeah, so in that second sense, we learned as a society that it's that 01:09:02.750 --> 01:09:08.110 it's a bad idea and that you shouldn't treat people like that. 01:09:08.270 --> 01:09:12.670 But yeah, I'm I'm I'm very much a sort of like the the owl of Minerva is starting its 01:09:12.670 --> 01:09:14.590 flight at dusk kind of person. 01:09:14.750 --> 01:09:18.750 So you have these material changes first, and then the intellectual grasping comes later, 01:09:18.940 --> 01:09:19.180 Right. 01:09:19.340 --> 01:09:22.860 And then you c and then you dress it up in in in in nice sounding terms. 01:09:22.940 --> 01:09:27.580 This is going to be, you know, very, very uh agreeable to you, David. 01:09:27.820 --> 01:09:31.500 You know, dress it up in these moral terms that, oh, you know, don't we all know? 01:09:31.580 --> 01:09:36.780 And so, but but much of that is sort of like epiphenomenal, perhaps, or or after-the-facts 01:09:36.860 --> 01:09:41.660 or rationalizations of stuff that already happened and that has now become easy for you to 01:09:41.660 --> 01:09:46.570 agree with, Still think these this is this is not to undermine these ideas, but uh but I 01:09:46.570 --> 01:09:52.330 think um I think the sort of like um the internal learning of these 01:09:52.330 --> 01:09:53.770 ideas is very flimsy. 01:09:54.010 --> 01:09:54.330 Yeah. 01:09:54.730 --> 01:09:56.410 And very and very revertible. 01:09:56.890 --> 01:09:57.450 It's interesting. 01:09:57.530 --> 01:10:03.370 There's a more optimistic spin you could put on this, where maybe uh on some level 01:10:03.450 --> 01:10:06.680 we always knew that slavery was abhorrent, right? 01:10:07.080 --> 01:10:12.920 Um and the very reason why we had all of these elaborate rationalizations and 01:10:12.920 --> 01:10:18.520 justifications and ideologies uh to make us more comfortable with slavery 01:10:18.760 --> 01:10:21.160 suggests that we were on some level uncomfortable with it. 01:10:21.320 --> 01:10:24.520 Like we wouldn't have needed all of these rationalizations. 01:10:24.950 --> 01:10:29.270 It would have just been the yeah, slavery, yeah, uh they they can do stuff for me. 01:10:29.350 --> 01:10:32.870 I can force them to do that with violence, and I'm just gonna do that because that's good 01:10:32.870 --> 01:10:35.190 for me and that sucks for them, and they're no different from me. 01:10:35.270 --> 01:10:38.790 But you know, I'm a selfish person and I'm just gonna exploit them and dominate them. 01:10:38.870 --> 01:10:41.670 And that's yeah, that could have been the way we talked about slavery, yeah. 01:10:41.910 --> 01:10:43.030 But it very much wasn't. 01:10:43.190 --> 01:10:47.670 There was this huge tapestry of uh of rationalizations, you know. 01:10:47.750 --> 01:10:53.000 In in you know, uh primarily it was rationalized in terms of war where you know 01:10:53.160 --> 01:10:55.160 slavery is better than dying. 01:10:55.320 --> 01:10:59.400 So it seems like, hey, it's a nice thing to do to give someone the option of being your 01:10:59.400 --> 01:11:00.440 slave as opposed to killing them. 01:11:00.680 --> 01:11:04.120 Oh, what a nice guy I am that I'm conquering this land and I'm, you know, letting these 01:11:04.120 --> 01:11:05.320 people live and be my slave. 01:11:05.480 --> 01:11:09.160 So like that that was like one rationalization that emerged and it was very common. 01:11:09.560 --> 01:11:13.960 And then eventually, once slavery became so productive agriculturally, we needed a new 01:11:13.960 --> 01:11:17.970 rationalization because we were no longer getting slavery or slaves from war. 01:11:18.130 --> 01:11:19.970 We were just going and taking them, right? 01:11:20.210 --> 01:11:21.650 To make us more more productive. 01:11:21.730 --> 01:11:23.010 And we need a new rationalization. 01:11:23.170 --> 01:11:27.890 And then emerged the the uh the the white supremacist rationalization of slavery, where 01:11:27.890 --> 01:11:32.610 they're they were savages, uh, they uh they um they they live in a very primitive, horrible 01:11:32.610 --> 01:11:32.930 lifestyle. 01:11:33.010 --> 01:11:36.050 We're doing them a favor, you know, they're they're inferior to us, and then you know, and 01:11:36.450 --> 01:11:39.330 when we're they're when they're serving us, they they're really they're living their best 01:11:39.330 --> 01:11:39.570 lives. 01:11:39.650 --> 01:11:43.170 So we're doing them a favor, and you know, a new set of rationalizations emerged. 01:11:43.320 --> 01:11:47.800 But the fact that at every step of the way we needed rationalizations suggests that we were 01:11:47.800 --> 01:11:49.240 uncomfortable with it, you know? 01:11:49.560 --> 01:11:53.880 And we were wort wary of other people judging us as being domineering assholes. 01:11:53.960 --> 01:11:57.480 And we needed some kind of story to tell them for us to look good. 01:11:57.720 --> 01:11:58.120 Right? 01:11:58.360 --> 01:12:03.160 And so what happened was that just the material incentives and the and and the game 01:12:03.240 --> 01:12:09.170 theoretic equilibria changed to a point where slavery no longer made 01:12:09.170 --> 01:12:10.210 economic sense. 01:12:10.770 --> 01:12:16.210 It was no longer sustainable to have this apparatus of of slavery underway. 01:12:16.370 --> 01:12:21.250 And all of a sudden like the discomfort that had been there the whole time just started to 01:12:21.250 --> 01:12:21.490 win. 01:12:21.810 --> 01:12:24.210 And then the rationalizations started to lose. 01:12:24.450 --> 01:12:24.770 Yeah. 01:12:26.050 --> 01:12:28.610 So maybe that's a more optimistic spin on it. 01:12:29.090 --> 01:12:29.570 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:12:29.650 --> 01:12:29.970 That's great. 01:12:30.130 --> 01:12:30.450 That's great. 01:12:30.530 --> 01:12:36.520 And I also think that often when we look at practices uh from the past, they seem 01:12:36.520 --> 01:12:39.480 abhorrent to us, but they are really just intermediate stages. 01:12:39.800 --> 01:12:40.120 Right. 01:12:40.280 --> 01:12:45.400 So often you have this example that's mentioned that, you know, um in 01:12:45.400 --> 01:12:51.000 biblical times, uh an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and then people say, Oh, how 01:12:51.000 --> 01:12:52.680 cruel uh that is. 01:12:52.840 --> 01:12:58.070 They shouldn't you know, um what a what a what what a what a what a what a vengeful way to 01:12:58.070 --> 01:13:00.630 think about justice and punishment and so on and so on. 01:13:00.790 --> 01:13:06.550 But really this was huge progress compared to you know just you know 01:13:07.270 --> 01:13:11.510 ultraviolent feuding between groups of people. 01:13:11.670 --> 01:13:17.590 It was it was some taming of a village for it was it was exactly against a 01:13:17.590 --> 01:13:18.470 village for an eye. 01:13:18.860 --> 01:13:19.100 Exactly. 01:13:19.180 --> 01:13:24.780 And so Philip Kitcher has this nice example where there used to be a rule in 01:13:25.260 --> 01:13:30.540 one of these tribes from Mesopotamia, I believe, that but that's you know, if if if if if 01:13:30.540 --> 01:13:34.300 you rape my daughter, I as a matter of justice, I get to rape your daughter. 01:13:34.540 --> 01:13:34.860 Right? 01:13:35.420 --> 01:13:40.060 It was just kind of like this is kind of symmetrical in a in a weird primitive way, right? 01:13:40.140 --> 01:13:43.350 There's something equal about that. 01:13:43.430 --> 01:13:49.350 But it's a very, very primitive and and I I wouldn't 01:13:49.350 --> 01:13:54.390 say childish, but arithmetic way of thinking about 01:13:54.870 --> 01:13:55.430 justice. 01:13:55.670 --> 01:13:55.830 Right? 01:13:55.910 --> 01:13:58.150 It's sort of like you do the same thing to them. 01:13:58.470 --> 01:13:59.110 Right? 01:13:59.350 --> 01:14:03.750 Um and and that was replaced by rules that were somewhat better. 01:14:03.910 --> 01:14:09.820 But more progress is this thing that you know happens you know, cumulatively, and 01:14:09.820 --> 01:14:13.020 you can't you can't build a you can't build an engine right away. 01:14:13.180 --> 01:14:18.060 First you need a wheel, and then you need, you know, gears, and you know, you need to you 01:14:18.060 --> 01:14:20.220 need to you know build it up over over time. 01:14:20.300 --> 01:14:26.140 And so you can't have, you know, fully progressive egalitarian world right away, even 01:14:26.140 --> 01:14:30.060 if some of the dispositions you already have, they were kind of already there, right? 01:14:30.220 --> 01:14:34.690 Everyone has some aversion to causing suffering, like a little bit at least, right? 01:14:34.770 --> 01:14:35.090 Yeah. 01:14:35.170 --> 01:14:39.490 Um, that can be that can be recruited for good ends, but it can also be overridden. 01:14:39.970 --> 01:14:45.810 Um, and then maybe people said, you know, slavery is fine because for the longest time, 01:14:45.970 --> 01:14:49.810 when you won the war, you kill all the men and you rape all the women, right? 01:14:50.050 --> 01:14:52.610 That's what that used to be the thing that people that people do. 01:14:53.090 --> 01:14:56.200 When you when you win against a group, all the men get killed, right? 01:14:56.520 --> 01:15:01.240 So it could it could have felt humane at the time to think like, oh no, um, you know, we we 01:15:01.320 --> 01:15:03.480 could we we're just gonna you know make them work for us. 01:15:03.720 --> 01:15:09.640 And and um and so people came up with these rationalizations that made it 01:15:09.720 --> 01:15:12.440 mal made it palatable um to them. 01:15:12.600 --> 01:15:17.160 And also people try to just be a little bit better than than than than than they used to be 01:15:17.240 --> 01:15:19.170 or than their parents used to be, right? 01:15:20.450 --> 01:15:23.170 We don't really strive to be morally optimal. 01:15:23.890 --> 01:15:28.450 We strive to be morally slightly better than average. 01:15:28.770 --> 01:15:29.090 Yeah. 01:15:29.330 --> 01:15:29.730 Right? 01:15:30.530 --> 01:15:34.850 And and and then that and that that's what then that's what you get when you when you when 01:15:34.850 --> 01:15:38.450 you have that motivation is like my parents used to kill everyone, so I'm just gonna keep 01:15:38.450 --> 01:15:39.330 them round as slaves. 01:15:39.410 --> 01:15:42.450 And you convince yourself that you're really good and noble and peaceful. 01:15:42.610 --> 01:15:47.810 And so I think that can also um happen and what and which which which but it I mean 01:15:49.100 --> 01:15:53.180 I I'm very far from defending slavery, but when you when you look at it this long term, 01:15:53.260 --> 01:15:56.780 it's sort of like it makes it it makes it understandable how the how how it could have 01:15:56.780 --> 01:15:57.420 developed like that. 01:15:57.820 --> 01:16:00.300 Or seen as pro it could have been seen as moral progress. 01:16:00.540 --> 01:16:00.700 Yeah. 01:16:01.180 --> 01:16:02.460 Which is also another point. 01:16:02.700 --> 01:16:02.780 Right. 01:16:02.940 --> 01:16:07.980 Like which is also like we shouldn't think about moral progress as being uh pure in this 01:16:07.980 --> 01:16:09.100 sense either, right? 01:16:09.580 --> 01:16:12.460 Like, you know, it might have it very well could have been moral progress. 01:16:12.780 --> 01:16:18.450 As you've nicely uh there there's an argument that slavery was viewed as moral 01:16:18.450 --> 01:16:20.290 progress compared to what preceded it. 01:16:20.850 --> 01:16:21.010 Yeah. 01:16:21.330 --> 01:16:21.810 It's interesting. 01:16:21.890 --> 01:16:26.130 Yeah, that ties back to your your point you were making about status as fundamentally zero 01:16:26.210 --> 01:16:31.650 sum and in comparison to other people, and such that when I rise, just someone else has to 01:16:31.650 --> 01:16:32.930 fall in the social hierarchy. 01:16:33.170 --> 01:16:36.850 But when you once you start thinking about virtue itself as a kind of status, you know, 01:16:37.010 --> 01:16:41.260 morality, you know, obviously, you know, how good of a person, how virtuous I am is a huge 01:16:41.260 --> 01:16:42.460 part of my social status. 01:16:42.620 --> 01:16:42.780 Yeah. 01:16:42.940 --> 01:16:43.100 Right. 01:16:43.340 --> 01:16:46.780 And so if status zero sum, then virtue must be zero sum too. 01:16:46.940 --> 01:16:51.900 And so that helps explain why we don't, you know, strive to be the best possible person in 01:16:51.900 --> 01:16:54.620 an absolute sense, but just a little bit better than average, a little bit better than the 01:16:54.620 --> 01:16:55.100 competition. 01:16:55.260 --> 01:16:58.140 I don't want to be a great person, I just want to be better than you, you know. 01:16:58.460 --> 01:17:03.900 Um and so if you view morality in that context, then you know it starts to make sense. 01:17:04.220 --> 01:17:09.830 Like, you know, i i yeah, um, you know, in in an age where conquest was the norm, um, yeah, 01:17:09.990 --> 01:17:13.990 slavery would is an awful thing, but but it doesn't matter how objectively awful it is. 01:17:14.070 --> 01:17:16.550 What just matters is that I'm less awful than my social competitors. 01:17:16.790 --> 01:17:20.950 And if I'm the nice guy who doesn't kill the people I conquer and I let them work for me, 01:17:21.110 --> 01:17:23.830 well then I'm a little bit better than my social competitors, right? 01:17:23.910 --> 01:17:24.870 And I win out a little bit. 01:17:24.950 --> 01:17:28.550 And then all of a sudden that becomes the new social norm and the new equilibrium, such 01:17:28.550 --> 01:17:30.950 that if you violate it, you look worse than other people. 01:17:31.640 --> 01:17:35.960 And so you can get this ratcheting effect with moral progress, where like, you know, some 01:17:35.960 --> 01:17:39.640 person gets uh virtue status for doing something that's like a little bit better than 01:17:39.640 --> 01:17:40.200 everyone else. 01:17:40.280 --> 01:17:41.560 And then that becomes the new norm. 01:17:41.640 --> 01:17:44.440 And then the new person comes along and they can get more status by doing something that's 01:17:44.440 --> 01:17:45.720 a little bit better than everyone else. 01:17:45.880 --> 01:17:50.520 And once this keeps going over and over again, you can get something that looks like moral 01:17:50.520 --> 01:17:50.920 progress. 01:17:51.160 --> 01:17:51.400 Right. 01:17:51.480 --> 01:17:56.130 And so that might be another uh engine behind this where you have these status games and 01:17:56.130 --> 01:17:59.490 these new equilibria emerge, uh these new reputational equilibria. 01:17:59.730 --> 01:18:04.290 Uh, and then as soon as they're established, there there become new social rewards for uh 01:18:04.290 --> 01:18:06.690 uh pushing the equilibria up a little bit further. 01:18:06.930 --> 01:18:07.090 Yeah. 01:18:07.250 --> 01:18:07.410 Yeah. 01:18:07.970 --> 01:18:08.690 I like that a lot. 01:18:08.770 --> 01:18:11.890 And I also think there's this nested, it's all about coordination, right? 01:18:12.050 --> 01:18:15.890 So there's always social commentators that are way ahead. 01:18:16.050 --> 01:18:19.810 So this thing about, you know, slavery is inherently bad. 01:18:19.890 --> 01:18:23.380 Um, and every people have known it always, and it's it's in there, right? 01:18:23.540 --> 01:18:24.420 Like baked in. 01:18:24.660 --> 01:18:28.820 And there might be an argument that there were always people saying, look, slavery is bad, 01:18:28.980 --> 01:18:32.820 and other people listening, but people didn't know how to coordinate around that, right? 01:18:33.380 --> 01:18:38.340 Um, and so I think what I don't think like thought leaders is anything new either. 01:18:38.580 --> 01:18:44.020 I think there's always people who are articulating possible future 01:18:44.020 --> 01:18:45.940 coordination games. 01:18:46.980 --> 01:18:50.740 And then they're offering them, and some of them are like, slavery's bad. 01:18:50.900 --> 01:18:53.770 Some of them are like, hey, maybe we should go back to that. 01:18:53.930 --> 01:18:59.050 Some people are like, you know, so there's there's always different um coordination games. 01:18:59.130 --> 01:19:04.570 And I think they're always there, but then it's the the slower, larger things of 01:19:05.130 --> 01:19:10.970 now we can all coordinate around um as like the the every a larger set of people can all 01:19:10.970 --> 01:19:15.860 coordinate around this thing because some external thing in the sociology or the 01:19:15.860 --> 01:19:19.860 environment has changed and um and then you can kind of get that. 01:19:19.940 --> 01:19:25.700 So so I like this idea of um there's it's coordination as you're saying, 01:19:25.860 --> 01:19:31.380 David, um and the the vanguard of the coordination is just different 01:19:31.700 --> 01:19:36.990 ideas about what status games or coordinations we might like to try out. 01:19:37.310 --> 01:19:37.550 Yeah. 01:19:45.870 --> 01:19:51.710 Um there that there is a way of making 01:19:51.710 --> 01:19:54.350 these points work against moral relativism. 01:19:55.790 --> 01:20:01.140 So I think that moral 01:20:01.140 --> 01:20:07.060 relativists often point to really surprisingly deep disagreements 01:20:07.060 --> 01:20:12.900 between cultures or historical eras to support the idea that we have 01:20:12.900 --> 01:20:14.820 fundamentally divergent values. 01:20:17.300 --> 01:20:23.050 And so first of all, I think a lot of this was kind of Made 01:20:23.050 --> 01:20:27.530 possible because anthropologists they don't want to return from their field trip and say 01:20:27.530 --> 01:20:29.450 these people are kind of the same, right? 01:20:29.530 --> 01:20:33.850 And so they and they say you're not gonna believe you're not gonna believe how these people 01:20:33.850 --> 01:20:34.170 live. 01:20:34.330 --> 01:20:34.570 Yeah. 01:20:34.890 --> 01:20:40.730 And of course, this also partly because people wanted to be culturally tolerant and embrace 01:20:40.730 --> 01:20:42.410 diversity and so on and so on. 01:20:42.570 --> 01:20:48.400 Um, but also when you look at moral relativists, The examples for these deep 01:20:48.400 --> 01:20:53.600 disagreements that they give, they are usually, you know, 200 years ago we believed slavery 01:20:53.600 --> 01:20:54.240 was fine. 01:20:54.480 --> 01:20:58.640 Or in Middle America, in Mesoamerica, they believed human sacrifice was fine. 01:20:58.800 --> 01:21:02.160 Or in China, they believed foot binding was fine. 01:21:02.240 --> 01:21:06.800 Or in East Africa, they believed female genital mutilation is fine. 01:21:07.520 --> 01:21:09.840 And so on and so on and so on. 01:21:10.240 --> 01:21:15.390 But what I what I think we could we can notice about these types of 01:21:15.390 --> 01:21:20.430 examples is that you can always ask, well, who's the we that thought these things were 01:21:20.430 --> 01:21:20.910 fine, right? 01:21:21.070 --> 01:21:23.150 The slaves didn't think that was fine, right? 01:21:23.310 --> 01:21:27.630 Presumably, these young girls they didn't agree to being mutilated. 01:21:27.710 --> 01:21:33.710 Um, the women didn't plausibly agree to being being bandaged and and and abused. 01:21:34.020 --> 01:21:39.700 Um, these people that were, you know, in in in in in in in the Aztec Empire that were 01:21:39.860 --> 01:21:43.700 whose hearts were cut out, or you know, children that were roasted over the fire because 01:21:43.700 --> 01:21:46.820 their tears would placate the weather god or something, right? 01:21:47.060 --> 01:21:49.780 They didn't you know agree to that. 01:21:49.860 --> 01:21:52.500 So it's often like, who's the we in these in these stories? 01:21:52.660 --> 01:21:56.970 And we often know that probably, probably the vast majority of people at the time we just 01:21:56.970 --> 01:21:57.930 never hear about them. 01:21:58.170 --> 01:21:58.410 Right? 01:21:58.890 --> 01:21:59.770 Of of course not. 01:22:00.090 --> 01:22:01.130 They are totally invisible. 01:22:01.210 --> 01:22:02.650 We never get to hear their views. 01:22:02.730 --> 01:22:04.490 They're not writing anything down. 01:22:04.650 --> 01:22:10.330 And it's I think really the vast majority of examples that are 01:22:10.330 --> 01:22:15.770 supposed to support this moral relativism are almost always examples of 01:22:15.840 --> 01:22:20.880 elites helping themselves towards you know abuse or cruelty or something, right? 01:22:21.120 --> 01:22:27.040 And it's not like some monolithic culture that in the American South made everyone 01:22:27.040 --> 01:22:28.560 believe that slavery was fine. 01:22:29.040 --> 01:22:31.120 Most people didn't have slaves, right? 01:22:31.360 --> 01:22:34.400 And again, the slaves, you don't you're not counting them. 01:22:34.560 --> 01:22:39.440 Uh that that that that that that that that doesn't really make so of of course there are 01:22:39.440 --> 01:22:45.310 different different ways of living and different priorities, and surely, surely many 01:22:45.310 --> 01:22:50.830 people in in 19th century Iran had different values and and 01:22:51.470 --> 01:22:56.750 and moral ideas than we do or whatever. 01:22:56.910 --> 01:23:02.670 But I think it's often this radic these radical disagreements are often um you know not 01:23:02.670 --> 01:23:08.280 monolithic cultures believing something, but small groups in a society being weird 01:23:08.680 --> 01:23:11.800 or being oppressive and cruel and exploitative. 01:23:12.200 --> 01:23:16.520 And it's and it's and it's and it's uh I found it useful to sort of like you know listen to 01:23:16.520 --> 01:23:19.960 the examples that are supposed to support moral relativism very carefully because they 01:23:19.960 --> 01:23:23.800 often are kind of like that: human sacrifice, footbinding, and slavery. 01:23:23.960 --> 01:23:27.800 Um, and when it's close enough to us, all of a sudden this argument doesn't work anymore, 01:23:27.880 --> 01:23:28.040 right? 01:23:28.120 --> 01:23:33.560 So we wouldn't say Germans believed 70 years ago that you can just kill the Jews, right? 01:23:34.330 --> 01:23:37.690 because we know that that's not a monolithic thing, um, at the time. 01:23:37.770 --> 01:23:41.210 And it would and we were like, What do you mean that we people don't use that example to 01:23:41.210 --> 01:23:46.650 support relativism because it's obviously reminds people of no no no, this was you know, 01:23:46.890 --> 01:23:52.410 this was you know, they they they had they had to violently enable 01:23:52.410 --> 01:23:57.770 themselves to um to do that against against a la at least a large group of people that that 01:23:57.850 --> 01:24:02.330 that that were you know very much against it, not to speak of even the victors. 01:24:02.570 --> 01:24:04.200 Yeah, it's interesting. 01:24:04.280 --> 01:24:06.440 You know, I I I really like this argument. 01:24:06.520 --> 01:24:11.480 Um, you could even push it further by saying, yeah, uh the people who were subject to the 01:24:11.480 --> 01:24:16.280 oppression uh obviously didn't think the their oppression was morally great. 01:24:16.360 --> 01:24:20.120 Um and we don't hear from them because history is written by the elites and by the people 01:24:20.120 --> 01:24:21.640 who were enacting the oppression. 01:24:21.800 --> 01:24:26.470 Uh but you could take it even further and say that it's plausible that even the elites 01:24:26.470 --> 01:24:28.550 didn't really think that what they were doing was right. 01:24:29.190 --> 01:24:33.110 Because all all we have from the history books is all the rationalizations that the elites 01:24:33.110 --> 01:24:33.990 wrote down. 01:24:34.230 --> 01:24:34.710 Right. 01:24:35.030 --> 01:24:36.470 And the excuses they could. 01:24:36.790 --> 01:24:37.990 Yeah, all the excuses, right. 01:24:38.310 --> 01:24:41.270 And so when we look at those, like, whoa, they must have thought this was really virtuous. 01:24:41.430 --> 01:24:44.710 But you could take it as evidence for the opposite, actually, that the reason they needed 01:24:44.710 --> 01:24:50.310 to work so hard to write down these elaborate, fanciful justifications was precisely 01:24:50.310 --> 01:24:52.340 because on some level they were not okay with it. 01:24:52.500 --> 01:24:55.460 Or they felt that other people would view them as as cruel monsters. 01:24:55.700 --> 01:25:00.660 And so you could take that a as as evidence itself that um that that maybe the elites 01:25:00.660 --> 01:25:04.900 weren't really even that okay with it and and that the reason they had to work so hard to 01:25:04.900 --> 01:25:07.540 come up with these ideologies, I think, is evidence of that. 01:25:07.780 --> 01:25:08.020 Yeah. 01:25:08.180 --> 01:25:11.300 Um they were they they were like confessing. 01:25:11.570 --> 01:25:12.210 Yeah. 01:25:12.610 --> 01:25:13.250 Right. 01:25:14.850 --> 01:25:19.730 So like them, you you you sit down, you write into your diary and to all these things that 01:25:19.810 --> 01:25:21.250 like really bother you about yourself. 01:25:21.410 --> 01:25:21.650 Right. 01:25:21.810 --> 01:25:25.810 And that you it's impossible to see like you know historiography and and and all these 01:25:25.810 --> 01:25:29.730 epics as kind of like, you know, people feel really bad about the things they did and so 01:25:29.730 --> 01:25:32.370 they had the ne the psychological need to like cope. 01:25:32.780 --> 01:25:33.020 Right. 01:25:33.340 --> 01:25:34.300 It it makes me think. 01:25:34.380 --> 01:25:37.580 I mean, there's there's a concept that just came to my mind that nobody's thought about 01:25:37.660 --> 01:25:42.140 that that I'm aware of, which is rationalization cost, where some things are just harder to 01:25:42.140 --> 01:25:43.820 rationalize than others. 01:25:44.060 --> 01:25:48.860 And I think you know, the more just flagrantly absurdly cruel and unusual a certain 01:25:48.860 --> 01:25:53.020 practice is, the harder you need to work to come up with it with a good ideology and 01:25:53.020 --> 01:25:54.300 rationalization for it. 01:25:54.570 --> 01:25:58.090 Like if you want to do a Holocaust, boy, do you need an elaborate ideology. 01:25:58.330 --> 01:26:03.850 Boy, do you need to work really hard to make that make some kind of superficial ethical 01:26:03.850 --> 01:26:04.330 sense. 01:26:04.490 --> 01:26:08.250 Whereas some things just have a very low rationalization cost because, you know, they they 01:26:08.250 --> 01:26:08.890 look pretty good. 01:26:09.050 --> 01:26:09.210 Yeah. 01:26:09.850 --> 01:26:10.730 They don't make you look bad. 01:26:11.610 --> 01:26:17.210 And so what we could be seeing in the history of moral progress is just an abandonment of 01:26:17.210 --> 01:26:19.900 things with just a really high rationalization cost, right? 01:26:20.060 --> 01:26:23.900 And just the cost just became too high and it was just unsustainable and the thing 01:26:23.900 --> 01:26:24.620 collapsed. 01:26:24.700 --> 01:26:28.060 And it's just we've just been moving toward things with just lower rationalization costs 01:26:28.140 --> 01:26:32.620 that are just easier to justify, to easier to do and feel good about yourself and convince 01:26:32.620 --> 01:26:33.820 other people that you're a good person. 01:26:33.980 --> 01:26:36.540 We've just gone more toward those types of things. 01:26:36.700 --> 01:26:39.020 Um I'm curious what do you think of that? 01:26:39.180 --> 01:26:40.140 I'm just having this idea right now. 01:26:40.380 --> 01:26:42.860 This is this is this is starting to sound pretty Hegelian, right? 01:26:42.940 --> 01:26:47.100 I mean, it's just like the you know, the flip side of that is just you know, we we we we we 01:26:47.100 --> 01:26:50.470 started doing more and more things that are just like justifiable. 01:26:50.710 --> 01:26:50.950 Yeah. 01:26:51.110 --> 01:26:54.310 Or don't even stand in need of um justify. 01:26:54.470 --> 01:26:59.110 So this would be a kind of picture where sort of like reason kind of asserts itself in in 01:26:59.110 --> 01:27:03.910 history because on some level maybe people realize like I'm being I'm being I'm being so 01:27:03.910 --> 01:27:04.230 bad. 01:27:04.550 --> 01:27:08.950 And so I need to I need to you know rationalize it and and work really hard to make it to 01:27:08.950 --> 01:27:12.920 make it make it psychologically tolerable to me and people around me. 01:27:13.160 --> 01:27:18.120 And indeed you see that you see that you see when when when regimes and we when we've 01:27:18.120 --> 01:27:23.240 mentioned all of these cases, the Nazis and and and you know Rwanda and and all these 01:27:23.240 --> 01:27:26.120 conflicts, it it people talk about it a lot, right? 01:27:26.200 --> 01:27:30.200 They talk about it and they because they have this need to constantly repeat to themselves, 01:27:30.360 --> 01:27:31.000 this is fine. 01:27:31.160 --> 01:27:33.400 Here's here here are my reasons and so on and so on. 01:27:33.480 --> 01:27:39.320 And and you need you have a very high demo for ideology and for and for um uh 01:27:39.480 --> 01:27:40.760 embellishment. 01:27:41.210 --> 01:27:43.530 um of of of what you do. 01:27:44.330 --> 01:27:47.530 It paints a darker picture of the history of intellectuals as well. 01:27:47.770 --> 01:27:52.490 Cause it suggests that a lot of what intellectuals do is they're trying to uh market these 01:27:52.490 --> 01:27:56.410 rationalizations for for people and they're trying to provide the intellectual uh 01:27:56.570 --> 01:28:01.370 justifications for you know doing these horrible things that people have self interested 01:28:01.370 --> 01:28:05.680 reasons to do right I think that's I think I'm I I think that's right. 01:28:06.000 --> 01:28:06.640 I think that's right. 01:28:06.880 --> 01:28:07.840 I think that's right. 01:28:09.120 --> 01:28:14.080 I mean for I mean uh um philosoph Western philosophy was founded by slave owners right 01:28:14.240 --> 01:28:20.000 Plato had slaves Aristotle had slaves yeah um and the the 01:28:21.600 --> 01:28:27.600 well if you go back further I think that societies that that can afford a group of people 01:28:27.600 --> 01:28:30.090 who are professional intellectuals right? 01:28:30.250 --> 01:28:36.090 And and and and and and priests and so on and so on, like a priest caste which then 01:28:36.090 --> 01:28:38.810 develops into philosophy and so on. 01:28:39.130 --> 01:28:44.970 People who just sort of like deal deal in ideas mostly they are gonna 01:28:44.970 --> 01:28:50.810 be employed by the by the powerful and much of what they what they do and what they're 01:28:50.810 --> 01:28:53.850 expected to do is to justify why all of this is good and right. 01:28:54.090 --> 01:28:55.050 And this is what they did. 01:28:55.210 --> 01:29:00.280 This is what what political philosophers did for them for the longest time and still kind 01:29:00.280 --> 01:29:00.600 of do. 01:29:00.760 --> 01:29:04.440 I mean, there is this libertarian philosopher that I really like, Michael Humer. 01:29:04.600 --> 01:29:08.120 And see, he says all all these political philosophers, they all have Stockholm syndrome. 01:29:08.280 --> 01:29:13.320 They're all justifying, you know, they all say, oh, you know, the guy who abducted me is 01:29:13.320 --> 01:29:14.360 kind of nice. 01:29:14.680 --> 01:29:15.080 Right. 01:29:15.560 --> 01:29:17.400 And that's what political philosophers do often. 01:29:17.480 --> 01:29:22.530 They try to come up with a rationale for why, you know state authority is 01:29:23.010 --> 01:29:28.370 fine uh and why and why the state can do to you what it um what it does. 01:29:28.530 --> 01:29:34.290 And I'm I do think modern states are much preferable to um uh 01:29:34.450 --> 01:29:38.450 to what what was around in the past, but there is a there there that's it's an interesting 01:29:38.530 --> 01:29:40.130 like provocative way of looking at it. 01:29:40.370 --> 01:29:45.330 Interesting is that really really you know philosophers and and political philosophers are 01:29:45.650 --> 01:29:51.540 largely uh behave affirmatively towards the 01:29:51.540 --> 01:29:52.260 powerful. 01:29:52.660 --> 01:29:52.820 Right? 01:29:53.140 --> 01:29:54.660 You could yeah, I mean you could yeah. 01:29:54.820 --> 01:29:59.780 You could think of the state itself, you know, as a system of organized coercion of people 01:29:59.780 --> 01:30:03.140 getting together to force people to do things that they would be disinclined to do, that 01:30:03.220 --> 01:30:06.900 like that itself is a thing with high rationalization costs, right? 01:30:07.060 --> 01:30:07.300 Yeah. 01:30:07.460 --> 01:30:09.620 Uh you need to figure out a way to make that look good. 01:30:09.780 --> 01:30:10.100 Yeah. 01:30:10.420 --> 01:30:14.740 And you could think of a lot of political philosophy as rising to the the demands of those 01:30:14.740 --> 01:30:15.990 rationalization costs. 01:30:16.390 --> 01:30:19.030 And you know, maybe, you know, maybe it can be justified at the end of the day. 01:30:19.350 --> 01:30:20.150 You know, who knows? 01:30:20.230 --> 01:30:21.350 I'm not a political philosopher. 01:30:21.750 --> 01:30:23.830 But it's still it's still something that needs a justification. 01:30:23.990 --> 01:30:28.310 If I'm just gonna go up to you and put a gun to your head and ask, you know, you gotta do 01:30:28.310 --> 01:30:31.270 what I say, or I'm gonna take your stuff, or I'm gonna kidnap you. 01:30:31.350 --> 01:30:36.390 Like that that's a icky thing to do, and I need like a really good story to tell before I 01:30:36.390 --> 01:30:36.870 do it, you know. 01:30:36.950 --> 01:30:37.190 Yeah. 01:30:37.750 --> 01:30:43.350 So these these are these are my small like libertarian inclinations that that no one in 01:30:43.350 --> 01:30:44.710 Europe shares at all. 01:30:45.080 --> 01:30:45.400 Right? 01:30:45.640 --> 01:30:50.040 So this is just so this is just like a like a way of looking at the state in politics that 01:30:50.040 --> 01:30:55.880 is just d doesn't work in in uh in Europe for some reason. 01:30:55.960 --> 01:30:59.160 Uh it's it's just like, you know, the sort of like sc state skepticism. 01:30:59.240 --> 01:31:03.640 I'm not and I'm again I'm not I'm not really full blown libertarian or anything. 01:31:03.800 --> 01:31:09.710 But I like that kind of thought as just like a like a like a like a a critical 01:31:10.030 --> 01:31:15.310 sting somewhere in in in my ideology, just like is this even really I don't know. 01:31:15.390 --> 01:31:16.350 I'm not so sure. 01:31:16.590 --> 01:31:16.830 Yeah. 01:31:17.230 --> 01:31:18.190 But even I love this. 01:31:18.270 --> 01:31:23.310 This is a BBS paper, which is the public intellectual as the provider of rationalization 01:31:23.310 --> 01:31:25.070 costs for the powerful and elite. 01:31:25.310 --> 01:31:26.590 This is your guest paper. 01:31:26.910 --> 01:31:27.550 Let's do it. 01:31:27.780 --> 01:31:28.260 That's great. 01:31:28.420 --> 01:31:28.820 Sounds great. 01:31:28.900 --> 01:31:30.260 I mean, we should get Dan Williams on it. 01:31:30.340 --> 01:31:31.700 I'm basically ripping off Dan Williams. 01:31:31.860 --> 01:31:35.060 He has a wonderful paper called uh The Marketplace of Rationalization. 01:31:35.380 --> 01:31:35.780 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:31:35.860 --> 01:31:36.100 It's great. 01:31:36.180 --> 01:31:36.340 Yeah. 01:31:36.660 --> 01:31:41.060 But this explains there's this whole genre of like there's um like these books like 01:31:41.060 --> 01:31:42.100 Sapiens, right? 01:31:42.180 --> 01:31:45.060 Or like these books, I can't say that 'cause it's like it's this garbage book. 01:31:45.140 --> 01:31:49.300 Like it's just it gets all the anthropology wrong, but it's like wildly popular, you know, 01:31:49.380 --> 01:31:54.250 like it's made like lots of money and there's always these these intellectual books. 01:31:54.410 --> 01:31:56.970 And the argument, I mean, this is even this is not my argument. 01:31:57.050 --> 01:32:00.810 There's many people just making this argument, is this is just telling people a story, 01:32:01.050 --> 01:32:06.410 largely people who are doing already doing some status game, some of which is probably 01:32:06.410 --> 01:32:07.850 good, some of which is not so good. 01:32:07.930 --> 01:32:09.290 And it's just justifying that. 01:32:09.370 --> 01:32:10.970 It's giving it the rationalization. 01:32:11.130 --> 01:32:11.370 Yeah. 01:32:11.610 --> 01:32:17.130 So I think like a lot of consuming politics, consuming media, consuming people making 01:32:17.130 --> 01:32:20.810 arguments, moral arguments is shopping for rationalizations. 01:32:21.050 --> 01:32:22.250 David and I really like this. 01:32:22.420 --> 01:32:24.100 It's all propaganda all the way down. 01:32:24.500 --> 01:32:25.620 Everything is bullshit. 01:32:27.860 --> 01:32:29.060 I've heard that somewhere. 01:32:29.220 --> 01:32:29.780 Yeah. 01:32:30.260 --> 01:32:32.260 Well, Hanno, uh, this is wonderful. 01:32:32.420 --> 01:32:38.420 Um uh in the very brief closing time, if people are more interested in your 01:32:38.420 --> 01:32:41.460 work based on this conversation, where would you point them? 01:32:43.590 --> 01:32:44.550 Um or not. 01:32:44.790 --> 01:32:46.470 Yeah, I I I have this article. 01:32:46.550 --> 01:32:51.510 So I have this article com coming out that's called Conspicuous Compunction, which is a 01:32:51.510 --> 01:32:52.310 great title. 01:32:56.870 --> 01:33:00.790 David is gonna is gonna be one of the commentators uh of that, and I'm excited to uh and 01:33:00.790 --> 01:33:04.230 curious to hear what you uh what what um you have to say about that. 01:33:04.310 --> 01:33:09.270 So that would be some uh something uh and I have a couple of like shorter articles in 01:33:09.270 --> 01:33:14.340 English uh about this, um, why it's hard to get rid of class structures and class society. 01:33:15.220 --> 01:33:19.860 And there are also YouTube videos where I present these ideas in English. 01:33:20.260 --> 01:33:25.460 For instance, I recently went to Australia to the so-called Festival of Dangerous Ideas. 01:33:26.740 --> 01:33:31.460 And it sounds pretentious and stupid, but the dangerous idea that I was presenting was, you 01:33:31.460 --> 01:33:34.580 know, class structures are very hard to get rid of, surprisingly hard to get rid of, and 01:33:34.580 --> 01:33:36.020 you underestimate the problem. 01:33:36.610 --> 01:33:40.210 And so this this this is going to be on YouTube if you want to if you want to check it out 01:33:40.530 --> 01:33:40.930 a little bit. 01:33:41.010 --> 01:33:46.770 And then hopefully the class book, which was really uh, you know, did really well in in 01:33:46.850 --> 01:33:47.890 uh in Germany. 01:33:48.050 --> 01:33:51.090 I hope that that's that's gonna come out in English at some point. 01:33:51.570 --> 01:33:55.010 It'll be interesting to see how having lived in Germany for 10 years. 01:33:55.170 --> 01:33:58.290 I feel like there's more acceptance of class. 01:33:58.530 --> 01:34:04.130 Uh class is a bit of a third rail in the US, and the the joke is always that nobody's poor 01:34:04.700 --> 01:34:06.940 uh because they're about to be rich. 01:34:07.020 --> 01:34:10.060 So yeah, yeah, it's all it's a nation of temporarily embarrassed millionaires. 01:34:10.460 --> 01:34:11.020 Exactly. 01:34:11.180 --> 01:34:11.900 Exactly. 01:34:13.260 --> 01:34:13.900 All right. 01:34:14.220 --> 01:34:14.700 All right. 01:34:14.860 --> 01:34:20.620 Well, this was a r uh a huge treat for uh for everyone, I I assume, but especially me. 01:34:20.700 --> 01:34:21.820 Uh this I just had a blast. 01:34:21.900 --> 01:34:22.380 This flew by. 01:34:22.460 --> 01:34:23.900 So thanks so much for for coming on, Anno. 01:34:24.140 --> 01:34:24.300 Thanks. 01:34:24.380 --> 01:34:25.020 It was a lot of fun. 01:34:25.180 --> 01:34:26.380 Thanks for having me. 01:34:31.390 --> 01:34:35.550 David, we are uh we're as the expression goes, we're getting back on the horse, we're 01:34:35.550 --> 01:34:36.910 getting our episodes back out. 01:34:37.070 --> 01:34:38.830 I don't know if these are gonna be weekly. 01:34:38.910 --> 01:34:40.990 I think we might need a summer caveat. 01:34:41.310 --> 01:34:44.750 Um of Yeah, we summer really screwed us both. 01:34:44.990 --> 01:34:47.230 I gotta say, David, jury duty really got us. 01:34:47.390 --> 01:34:49.310 We have jury duty got us, yeah. 01:34:49.390 --> 01:34:51.630 It was a whole perfect storm of different different things. 01:34:51.710 --> 01:34:52.030 That's okay. 01:34:52.590 --> 01:34:53.310 Yeah, it happens. 01:34:53.550 --> 01:34:53.790 Yeah. 01:34:53.870 --> 01:34:58.110 So um, but just let you we're letting you know we're we're getting back on the horse, as 01:34:58.110 --> 01:34:58.510 they say. 01:34:59.300 --> 01:34:59.860 Exactly. 01:34:59.940 --> 01:35:02.500 And it's it's a good, vigorous horse. 01:35:02.740 --> 01:35:05.700 It's a pr a proud steed, valiant stallion. 01:35:05.940 --> 01:35:06.260 All right. 01:35:08.100 --> 01:35:08.980 Yeah, I like it too. 01:35:09.540 --> 01:35:09.860 Okay. 01:35:10.020 --> 01:35:13.780 Um uh usual Patreon, social media. 01:35:14.100 --> 01:35:15.860 Um I don't know. 01:35:16.020 --> 01:35:16.980 Uh we do need to be able to do that. 01:35:17.140 --> 01:35:18.020 Leave us a kind review. 01:35:18.820 --> 01:35:19.780 We should start getting shirts. 01:35:19.860 --> 01:35:20.660 Then there's a shirt cut. 01:35:21.060 --> 01:35:23.460 Would you would you actually wear an evolutionary psychology of the podcast? 01:35:23.860 --> 01:35:27.220 No, but if there was like ex things we've said on the shirt, I might. 01:35:27.590 --> 01:35:28.550 Oh, like quotes? 01:35:28.870 --> 01:35:30.070 Like Valiant Stallion? 01:35:30.390 --> 01:35:33.110 Well, tolerated scrounging of morality or something. 01:35:33.270 --> 01:35:33.590 I don't know. 01:35:33.750 --> 01:35:35.910 That's maybe a little esoteric. 01:35:35.990 --> 01:35:36.870 That's a little pretentious. 01:35:37.270 --> 01:35:40.310 Tell you what, listener, if there are any quotes that stuck with you that you think would 01:35:40.310 --> 01:35:41.750 be cool on a t shirt, let us know. 01:35:41.910 --> 01:35:42.550 Send us an email. 01:35:42.870 --> 01:35:43.030 Yeah. 01:35:43.270 --> 01:35:44.710 Or like taking things out of context. 01:35:45.190 --> 01:35:45.270 Yeah. 01:35:45.350 --> 01:35:51.080 So yeah, if you could take us out of context in the most humiliating, uh uh Reputationally 01:35:51.080 --> 01:35:54.520 damaging way, that would be uh yeah. 01:35:54.840 --> 01:35:57.320 Anyway, enjoy the rest of your week. 01:35:57.480 --> 01:36:02.680 Um take it easy and and you know, try to put progress. 01:36:02.760 --> 01:36:03.480 Yeah, be kind. 01:36:03.880 --> 01:36:06.680 In your in your own uh small P way. 01:36:07.080 --> 01:36:09.160 Don't start a new moral movement. 01:36:09.320 --> 01:36:12.600 Um unless you know you're like doing a religious cult. 01:36:13.080 --> 01:36:15.960 Maybe just inch inch the thing forward just a little bit, you know. 01:36:16.120 --> 01:36:17.990 Just go go the extra mile. 01:36:18.230 --> 01:36:18.470 Yeah. 01:36:18.550 --> 01:36:18.790 Yeah. 01:36:19.030 --> 01:36:19.190 Good. 01:36:19.270 --> 01:36:19.510 Yeah. 01:36:19.750 --> 01:36:20.310 Not mile. 01:36:20.390 --> 01:36:23.030 Maybe go the extra, you know, tenth of a mile. 01:36:23.350 --> 01:36:27.030 Uh, can we do it in in non-weird fraction units? 01:36:27.190 --> 01:36:30.230 Maybe uh oh the couple meters, like 400 meters. 01:36:30.470 --> 01:36:31.110 Meters, sure. 01:36:31.190 --> 01:36:36.710 Yeah, say living in Germany and then coming back to the US and I'm like installing 01:36:36.710 --> 01:36:37.430 furniture. 01:36:37.590 --> 01:36:42.550 It's insane to use fractions in a base 12 for a length. 01:36:42.790 --> 01:36:45.080 I mean, I get Fahrenheit versus Celsius. 01:36:45.160 --> 01:36:48.680 Like Celsius is less like graded, like for normal temperatures. 01:36:48.840 --> 01:36:54.600 But my God, like uh three, six, I mean, literally like 01:36:54.600 --> 01:37:00.600 measuring things that are like fractions of an eighth or sixteenth, and then it's a base 01:37:00.600 --> 01:37:01.240 12. 01:37:01.480 --> 01:37:05.960 You have to do addition and fractions instead of just being like, oh yeah, now this thing 01:37:05.960 --> 01:37:09.640 is like 47 point 47 centimeters and four millimeters. 01:37:09.720 --> 01:37:11.630 Like we are hurting ourselves. 01:37:11.870 --> 01:37:13.950 Those of us in this weird system. 01:37:14.270 --> 01:37:19.070 The rest of the world, of course you know, and you can just it's one more thing to wag your 01:37:19.070 --> 01:37:20.990 finger at us about US. 01:37:21.230 --> 01:37:21.710 Yeah. 01:37:21.950 --> 01:37:22.510 And England. 01:37:22.830 --> 01:37:23.150 All right. 01:37:23.310 --> 01:37:23.950 Anyway anyway. 01:37:24.510 --> 01:37:27.310 That was that's my how to get that out there. 01:37:27.470 --> 01:37:30.430 Um if somebody could do something about that, please let us know. 01:37:30.590 --> 01:37:34.430 Let's uh let's let's adopt the metric system for at least some things. 01:37:34.910 --> 01:37:37.790 Evolutionary psychology the podcast is pro metric system. 01:37:38.030 --> 01:37:38.910 For some things. 01:37:39.220 --> 01:37:39.940 For some things. 01:37:40.180 --> 01:37:40.820 Or anti? 01:37:41.140 --> 01:37:42.500 I don't know where we s where we come out of this. 01:37:42.740 --> 01:37:44.100 Uh for lengths for sure. 01:37:44.260 --> 01:37:45.700 Volume two, like what is a pint? 01:37:45.860 --> 01:37:47.140 Do you even know what a pint is? 01:37:47.380 --> 01:37:48.820 I mean, well, a pint is easy because of the phone. 01:37:48.980 --> 01:37:49.540 I know it's a beer. 01:37:49.620 --> 01:37:50.260 I know it's something that's a drink. 01:37:50.500 --> 01:37:54.580 It's only because of that, but like a port and a g in a bushel. 01:37:54.820 --> 01:37:56.340 I mean, my God, what is this? 01:37:56.420 --> 01:37:57.380 It's insane. 01:37:57.700 --> 01:37:58.900 We gotta clean this shit up. 01:37:58.980 --> 01:38:02.660 This is we we need we just shut the whole thing down and figure out what the hell is 01:38:02.660 --> 01:38:02.820 happening. 01:38:03.140 --> 01:38:07.700 Our next episode is just gonna be our opinion on various metrics. 01:38:08.190 --> 01:38:10.990 Yeah, we should just have just a c a list of a kvetching podcast. 01:38:11.230 --> 01:38:11.550 Yes, exactly. 01:38:14.190 --> 01:38:14.510 Exactly. 01:38:14.590 --> 01:38:14.990 What is this? 01:38:15.070 --> 01:38:16.750 Uh what was the Seinfeld thing? 01:38:16.830 --> 01:38:21.150 It was um uh the festive it's uh where you just complain airings of grievances. 01:38:21.390 --> 01:38:22.750 Oh the airing of grievances, yes. 01:38:22.990 --> 01:38:24.510 We we should have an airing of grievances. 01:38:24.670 --> 01:38:30.190 Maybe many podcasts are just the they're just synonyms for the airing of grievances. 01:38:31.870 --> 01:38:33.230 The airing of grievances. 01:38:33.390 --> 01:38:33.630 Okay. 01:38:33.870 --> 01:38:39.720 Well on that note, uh enjoy your week and um you know, use the metric system if you're 01:38:39.720 --> 01:38:41.240 gonna measure something this week. 01:38:41.560 --> 01:38:42.040 Mm-hmm. 01:38:42.200 --> 01:38:42.920 Take care.