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We're David Pinsov and David Petrozki.

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This is Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast Actual Evolutionary Psychology

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by Actual Evolutionary Psychologists.

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David, good to see you.

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Good to see you too, my friend.

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We are on episode three.

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We are Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast.

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Third time is The Charm.

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This episode, we neither interview Dave or David, but we start getting

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into what is evolutionary psychology and where we end up in this episode is largely

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talking about the bad of evolutionary psychology and the ways that it's been misused

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and abused and also um really kind of together really

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uh you know stumble into some of the problematic areas and misunderstandings of

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our discipline.

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Yes.

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Um this one uh goes into controversial territory.

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I think we try to get to the bottom of why evolutionary psychology has gotten under

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people's skin, why it has uh evoked such a backlash historically, uh

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we get into topics such as, you know, uh feminism and sexism.

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Um we we go into some uh dangerous waters.

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Yeah, and I and I appreciate one thing we do in this, David, is that um I I

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genuinely think that we are um trying to do this in a way that is

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respects what should be respected in this debate and and doesn't, you know, we're not

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gonna suffer foolish, cynical well cynical is the wrong word, but um people who are sort of

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being um parasitic or trolling.

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But I think, you know, this is a an honest and sincere discussion about some of these

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issues.

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Um and uh and I think, you know, I think we did okay.

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Um it's not the last word, but I think, you know, it was a open, honest discussion.

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We disagreed um at some points, but I feel like um uh I feel

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good about the discussion.

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Yeah, no, me too.

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I think it will be uh enlightening for people to uh get into this area and to

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and to sort of have some perspective about where the controversy is coming from and and how

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we might move past it.

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All right, we're going.

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So uh so David, um good to see you.

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Good to see you too, my friend.

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Uh today we're going to talk about evolutionary psychology.

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Yes.

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What it what it is, um, and uh maybe why people, um,

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to what extent people do and don't understand it.

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Um, and uh all things sort of around evolutionary psychology or what it

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means to you.

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Yeah, what it means to us, why it matters, why you should care.

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Or not.

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Yeah, maybe you don't care.

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But if you're listening, probably you care at least a little bit.

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Good.

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Um, so to start out, um, what what what is evolutionary psychology?

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How do you how do you think about it or or here?

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Let me let me change the let me break that up into two questions.

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One is what do you think is sort of the the generally accepted idea of what it is?

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And then number two, how do you think about it?

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Yes.

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So th there's a big difference between those two things.

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And I think that's part of why we wanted to do this podcast was to better get at the

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difference between those two things and sort of give you the legit version of of Ev Psych

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as distinguishable from the uh popular version of it.

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We are as j I think George Carlin once said, uh you know, something about he was in this is

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why I'm not a professional comedian.

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He said something about, you know, I am a professional comedian, unlike the comedians you

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usually encounter in your day-to-day, you know, life.

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So we are professional evolutionary psychologists.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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We are professionals.

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We we publish in peer-reviewed journals.

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Um so what is evolutionary psych?

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Well, let's start with the popular conception of it.

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Um, here is my understanding of the popular conception of it.

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Um, it's basically like uh you hear the David Attenborough voiceover on the on the

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Planet Earth episode, or you're watching National Geographic or Discovery Channel and you

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hear some person talking about how the male is performing a courtship display to attract a

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female, uh or you know, the uh the animal is trying to uh escape the the

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predator, or you know.

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These kinds of sex and death related animalistic uh

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ideas and basically applying that to humans.

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So human men perform courtship displays uh to try to attract a

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mate.

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Um, and you know, humans are hardwired to escape the predator, to flee from

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the tiger or the lion.

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And a lot of the times this is sort of mixed in with a Fred Flintstone uh version of human

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history where we're dumb cavemen with clubs.

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And so a lot of pop F Psyche is like, oh, uh we make these

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mistakes because we have these dumb cavemen intuitions that, you know,

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might have made sense when we were cavemen, but now they're they're stupid and we need to

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rise above that stupidity.

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That's that's another side of the of the popular version of it.

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Do you think that's about right?

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Do you anything else you want to add?

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Yeah, no, I think that I think that's good.

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Yeah.

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I I also think even in Morse, and I think to be f to say, I thought I think that you also

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encounter that in uh professional uh research circles,

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not just sort of what you what you might find on YouTube.

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I think there are other things, and we may or may not talk get into this, which is um

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there's the uh there's the sort of are you a behavioral

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scientist?

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Is that your job?

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And do you do you understand or use evolutionary psychology?

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And then there's also sort of, do you are you uh an interested um

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outsider?

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Um, and uh and how do you use it?

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And I think in both there's sort of a continuum of sort of cynical use, idealized

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use, understands it, doesn't understand it, um, almost maybe as a two by two.

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Um, so I think uh so I think there's a lot of possible things to talk about, but I think

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what you just described is a good um is a good description of uh of sort of

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the general idea.

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I remember when I came first came across evolutionary psychology, this was when I was an

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undergrad.

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Um I I didn't like it at first because I understood it as basically just

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assigning things to instincts.

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So I didn't know anything about it, but my reaction was very negative.

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And it was just, and I think I even at the time, uh Steve Pinker's language instinct book

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was just out.

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Um and I um I was like, oh, well, this is just silly because it's just labeling something

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we already know about, but calling it an instinct.

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Um that was my first reaction.

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And so I actually have a very warm spot in my heart for anybody who hates evolutionary

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psychology and they don't know anything about it.

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Whenever I hear that, I'm like, that's awesome.

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Tell me more.

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I want to hear more about it.

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Um, when I was at the Mox Planck um in Berlin, um, uh uh, a good friend of mine who turned

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out to be a good friend of mine when I first moved there.

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Um, the first thing he said to me was like, Oh, really nice to meet you is very warm in a

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personal.

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He's like, I hate evolutionary psychology.

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And I sat down tonight next to him.

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I was like genuinely happy.

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I was like, Great, tell me about why you hate it.

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And you know, after about an hour of conversation, we realized we didn't disagree at all.

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Um, he didn't he hadn't misunderstood it reasonably enough based on what he had

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experienced.

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Um and yeah, I think that is part of why we're doing this and part of why um I

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uh I do have a soft spot in in my heart for people who who think they might hate it.

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And maybe they do, and maybe they don't actually.

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Yeah.

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I mean, I too hate the mangled popular version of it.

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So at least we hate I you know we have that in common with with our critics.

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Yeah.

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You know, their their caricatured version of it is, you know, is pretty dumb and awful.

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Yeah.

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Um, there's a lot of layers here, and it's almost overwhelming um to sort of unpack things.

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Um, but but how do you think of what do you think it actually is?

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Hmm.

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Um I think of it as a simple combination

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between uh Darwin's theory of evolution, um

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perhaps combined with the Neo-Darwinian synthesis, um, pioneered by Richard Dawkins

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and uh William Hamilton and John Maynard Smith, which sort of popularize this Gene Zi view

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view of evolution.

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So it's basically just you know evolutionary logic, evolutionary thinking, um combined with

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the computational theory of mind.

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Or in other words, you know, cognitive science.

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The mind is an information processing device.

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It takes information as input, it processes it, and it uses it to regulate behavior in

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complicated ways.

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It's a machine, a mechanical device.

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We can talk more about our folk engineering systems.

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That's those are you know that they are part of the mind.

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I think we ought to understand the mind in the way that we understand tools and

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machines.

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I think that is the most useful way of understanding the mind.

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So yeah, it's just combining the fact that minds are physical computational systems uh with

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the idea that they are products of the evolutionary process.

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So that's very different than what people misunderstand about it.

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And I think we can unpack sort of the modern synthesis, the genes I view.

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And I know that there, you know, the genes I view has sort of been treated lately as sort

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of an outdated.

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There's this like idea of like the disco ball problem, which is sort of you read sort of

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really up-to-date um arguments in um in the evolutionary social

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sciences about you know this genes I view maybe being somewhat out of date.

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And I have thoughts about that and I'm interested to hear what you think about that.

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But before and also then the computational theory mine, these are all sort of minefields.

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Yes.

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And and in fact I think it's no accident that there's still um controversy and

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misunderstanding surrounding evolutionary psychology because it's sort of this combination

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of many things that are misunderstood or not generally

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part of curricula in training for psychologists or anthropologists,

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and also certainly not part of accepted sort of common

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common sense knowledge outside of the public, right?

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Or in the in the public.

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So I don't think it's any accident.

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The cartoonish version, the Fred Funstone version.

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I also like calling it Annie Wirtz and I sometimes call it the diorama model, where you go

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to like a natural history museum and there's sort of a diorama, you know, of like, you

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know, two people and they're hunting, you know, and uh what is in our evolutionary history

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like, you know, it's this very simplified sort of cartoonish view, right?

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Um like like it's a diorama.

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Um that diorama model, um, the the

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relationship between that and sort of uh when we go to our conference, like Human

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Behavior and Evolution Conference, or there's other conferences like in uh EB, um, or

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there's like anthropology conferences, there's or there's regional conferences.

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When you actually talk to people who are doing evolutionary psychology on a day-to-day

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basis and who are professionals in it, and we're a part of that crowd of people?

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Do you um what is your thought on sort of their their

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relationship to this misunderstanding, um, this sort of diorama model misunderstanding?

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So, how how widespread is the Fred Flintstone version of it, even among

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professional evolutionary psychologists?

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I mean, that's one way of interpreting the question, or another one is sort of uh, you

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know, do you think that the the popular outside understanding is something that uh

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is it, you know, understood and known and are people annoyed by that um in

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your experience?

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Or is it something where people generally feel like, oh, you know, people kind of

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understand what we're doing?

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Or um yeah, just like for people who don't know, who don't go to the conferences, like what

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um what is the how would you like kind of judge the the

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temperature on the street in terms of like if you're an evolutionary psychologist and

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you're like, oh yeah, no, what do pe what do people mostly think about what we do?

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Um do you think people understand it?

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Absolutely not.

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Yeah, I I don't think I can't remember a single interaction I've had with a lay person

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where I mentioned evolutionary psychology or said that I do evolutionary psychology and had

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them instantly get what I was talking about in a way without flaws or or

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caricatures or or anything like that.

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And that's because like it's objectively hard to wrap your head around.

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Like these are cut like the genes I view of evolution, the computational theory of mind,

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these are not simple ideas.

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These are nuanced, complicated topics that require a lot of elaboration and explanation.

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And it's not easy for a lay person to just get them automatically.

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It takes a lot of time and thought to really wrap your head around this way of thinking.

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And so we resort to the things that are easier to understand.

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So like sex and death are easy to understand.

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And ironically, I think we're so interested in sex and death because of our evolutionary

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history.

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And we can, you know, talk about our information acquisition adaptations and how they're

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sensitive to things like sex and death.

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Um, but a lot of people think of Evpsy as, oh, it's everything is about sex or everything

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is about survival.

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Uh, and we can explain anything we do in the modern world by telling some

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story about cavemen having sex or killing each other.

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Uh, and and that's how to understand it.

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And and along with that, there there are these uh political uh undertones as well that you

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that you see that you that a lot of people see it as a way of of rationalizing

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conservative traditional gender roles.

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That's that's a thing I hear a lot.

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That it's it's a it's a way of saying, oh, you know, uh men and women were different uh

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when when we were cavemen, therefore um you know women shouldn't be allowed to

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uh hold positions of power.

241
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Um that's another popular uh misunderstanding I see a lot.

242
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Um so the complexity and nuance of the field is sort of filtered through number one,

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what we find titillating, which is sex and death, uh and number two are

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political preconceptions and and where the uh the the battle lines are drawn in in the

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existing culture wars.

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And so when uh Ev Psyche, the complexity of it is filtered through you know through those

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two prisms, uh you get a very distorted understanding of of what it's all about.

248
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What what what do you think that's really um nice, a nice summary from that I also would

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would agree with that assessment um from my perspective um in my in my own experience.

250
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Um when people have this idea about sort of the David uh the the

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Attenborough um um I almost said Richard Attenborough, David Attenborough.

252
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Uh um uh when people have that idea, that's sort of the approach to

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people.

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Um I know people, it's not just a misunderstanding, and the politics point gets to this,

255
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which is there's also an emotional reaction to the idea.

256
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Um, and I wonder what you what you think that emotional reaction typically is.

257
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Like, I mean, obviously, superficially, there's sort of I even remember feeling it, right?

258
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I remember feeling sort of like annoyed at this idea.

259
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It's hard to sort of unpack what I was experiencing when I when I misunderstood it.

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But yeah, I think there's there's a lot of sort of there's the psychology of

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not of not understanding evolutionary psychology.

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And there's the psychology of sort of why we would be designed to have adaptations

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that would find these ideas, particularly as they're misunderstood, particularly as the

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initial representations that haven't been trained to sort of correct for this natural way

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of thinking.

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That initial state, I'm curious, sort of how you think about or how

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you would unpack that.

268
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That, you know, why is it easy to think that it

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rationalizes gender roles, or why why is it that some people

270
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are attracted to it who don't understand it, or people disagree with it who don't

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understand it.

272
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Um, and uh and but it plays out in certain ways.

273
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Like what do you think that that is?

274
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Yeah.

275
00:17:34,050 --> 00:17:39,490
Well, I think um the best way to understand it is probably in terms of uh

276
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Dance Berber's cultural attractor theory.

277
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Um so Dance Berber is a very cool evolutionary psychologist slash cultural anthropologist

278
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who's interested in in understanding uh cultural dynamics from an evolutionary perspective.

279
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Um and he has this idea that um when we pass information uh

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on to another person, the processes involved in uh transmitting that information

281
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uh uh faithfully to the other person are actually extraordinarily complicated, and we

282
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cannot take them for granted.

283
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Um so it's easy to see how complicated this is when you play a game of telephone, and what

284
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you whisper into someone's ear uh ends up getting lost in translation or mangled.

285
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And by the time it gets to the end of the chain, what you initially whispered into the

286
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person's ear is completely different and distorted.

287
00:18:30,410 --> 00:18:35,690
Um and that just goes to show how hard this problem is of getting a piece of information or

288
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a representation from my head into your head, right?

289
00:18:38,570 --> 00:18:42,090
There are plenty of things that can go wrong uh in that process.

290
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And we have evolved adaptations um for, in many ways, triangulating on on what the other

291
00:18:48,020 --> 00:18:51,380
person's intentions are, what they likely meant, what the most plausible way of

292
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interpreting what they said was.

293
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And and um we have lots of mechanisms that are at play when we

294
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uh transmit an idea to one another and and we have to understand those

295
00:19:04,820 --> 00:19:06,660
mechanisms if we want to understand culture.

296
00:19:06,820 --> 00:19:09,700
And so he has this idea of of a cultural attractor.

297
00:19:09,850 --> 00:19:14,170
So when you play a game of telephone, um, or you tell a story to someone, let's say you

298
00:19:14,330 --> 00:19:20,250
tell, you know, a fairy tale, um, and uh as that fairy tale gets passed on

299
00:19:20,250 --> 00:19:24,010
from person to person, it's likely to change and evolve in various ways.

300
00:19:24,170 --> 00:19:29,690
Um so maybe when you originally told the story, uh the protagonist wasn't a particularly

301
00:19:29,690 --> 00:19:34,250
good person, but as it passes from person to person, the protagonist becomes sort of a

302
00:19:34,250 --> 00:19:36,920
morally exemplary and virtuous and innocent person.

303
00:19:37,080 --> 00:19:40,680
So that would be an attractor of the innocent, virtuous protagonist.

304
00:19:41,480 --> 00:19:45,000
Maybe when I first told you the story, it didn't really have a happy ending.

305
00:19:45,080 --> 00:19:49,960
It kind of ended with a question mark or with, you know, uh people being sad and

306
00:19:49,960 --> 00:19:50,920
disappointed.

307
00:19:51,160 --> 00:19:57,160
Um and maybe in you know progressive tra uh transmissions of the story, uh

308
00:19:57,320 --> 00:19:59,240
the ending got happier and happier.

309
00:19:59,410 --> 00:20:03,970
And then it it sort of migrated toward this story of a virtuous protagonist with a happy

310
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ending.

311
00:20:04,450 --> 00:20:08,130
And so these are things that that Sperber would call cultural attractors.

312
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That as we pass ideas from head to head, certain ideas are just going to be more stable,

313
00:20:14,370 --> 00:20:18,050
uh, are going to be more likely to pop up because of what we're innately interested in,

314
00:20:18,210 --> 00:20:22,450
what we're more likely to remember, what we find more intuitive or less intuitive.

315
00:20:22,700 --> 00:20:26,940
Uh, and this perspective is a really helpful way of understanding culture and why certain

316
00:20:26,940 --> 00:20:29,340
ideas are sticky and others aren't.

317
00:20:29,660 --> 00:20:35,340
So I think that um evolutionary psychology is a a part of culture.

318
00:20:35,500 --> 00:20:38,060
It is a set of ideas, a set of representations.

319
00:20:38,380 --> 00:20:42,860
And there are cultural attractors surrounding the idea of evolutionary psychology, just as

320
00:20:42,860 --> 00:20:48,690
there are cultural attractors surrounding any idea Uh and I think

321
00:20:48,690 --> 00:20:53,410
those attractors revolve around things we innately find interesting, like sex and death.

322
00:20:53,650 --> 00:20:59,570
Um they revolve around uh things like politics and you know what side of the

323
00:20:59,570 --> 00:21:00,690
culture war you're on.

324
00:21:00,850 --> 00:21:03,170
We find those things innately interesting.

325
00:21:04,130 --> 00:21:09,250
Um it often gets oversimplified into things that are uh

326
00:21:09,490 --> 00:21:12,370
intuitive um and easy to grasp.

327
00:21:12,610 --> 00:21:14,290
So uh oh, we're just monkeys.

328
00:21:14,420 --> 00:21:16,020
Okay, that's what that's what it means.

329
00:21:16,180 --> 00:21:19,940
Or um we don't really have free will, we're just we're just these robots.

330
00:21:20,340 --> 00:21:24,500
Uh that's another uh uh simplifying way of of understanding it.

331
00:21:24,580 --> 00:21:28,660
So we we carve the world into you know plants and animals and and tools.

332
00:21:28,740 --> 00:21:32,900
Uh and oh evolutionary psychology says we're tools, and that means we don't have free will.

333
00:21:33,300 --> 00:21:38,590
Um so it it it not only filters through um what we innately find interesting and it filters

334
00:21:38,590 --> 00:21:42,350
through our politics, but it also filters through what we find uh intuitive and sort of

335
00:21:42,350 --> 00:21:47,950
these simplistic dichotomies of you know learned versus uh biological, uh freely

336
00:21:47,950 --> 00:21:51,710
chosen versus determined, or uh nature versus nurture.

337
00:21:51,870 --> 00:21:57,150
And so that's another way that um evolutionary psychology gets uh distorted.

338
00:21:58,110 --> 00:21:58,750
Would you buy all that?

339
00:21:59,070 --> 00:21:59,950
Yeah, no, for sure.

340
00:22:00,110 --> 00:22:05,940
And I mean I think that there's um I think for me,

341
00:22:06,100 --> 00:22:11,140
the reason why I really like evolutionary psychology to sort of hop around a little bit is

342
00:22:11,140 --> 00:22:16,740
that um it's a way to uh answer engineering questions about social

343
00:22:17,060 --> 00:22:17,460
things.

344
00:22:17,620 --> 00:22:18,340
Um right.

345
00:22:18,660 --> 00:22:24,420
So um what a what a system is for is really helpful for reverse

346
00:22:24,420 --> 00:22:25,690
engineering it, right?

347
00:22:25,770 --> 00:22:30,170
Like if if aliens, like classically, if you took like aliens and they had never seen a car

348
00:22:30,170 --> 00:22:36,010
before and you and they were just given a car, um, they wouldn't know what parts

349
00:22:36,010 --> 00:22:41,130
of the car were for, or they really wouldn't be know how to carve up the car, right?

350
00:22:41,370 --> 00:22:47,290
Um and you could imagine sort of a science of the car in our aliens world where

351
00:22:47,370 --> 00:22:53,360
you know it's just sort of in a showroom and what um what's important about the car is

352
00:22:53,360 --> 00:22:54,160
not clear.

353
00:22:54,240 --> 00:22:58,160
Um so you can imagine there's like they have a science of like how to, if you hit it with

354
00:22:58,160 --> 00:23:02,320
this, what kind of sound is made, you know, and you could just all the parts, right?

355
00:23:02,480 --> 00:23:06,960
Um there's an infinite ways, uh infinite number of ways to car sort of carve up the car.

356
00:23:07,040 --> 00:23:11,760
Um we have a theory of the red red cars do this and the blue cars do this, and you know,

357
00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:14,080
you get distracted by irrelevant features.

358
00:23:14,400 --> 00:23:14,720
Exactly.

359
00:23:14,800 --> 00:23:18,640
Everything, sort everything by is it bigger than a toaster, smaller than a toaster, right?

360
00:23:18,770 --> 00:23:20,290
Like is it magnetic or not?

361
00:23:20,450 --> 00:23:23,410
There's a million ways to carve something up that have nothing to do with like reverse

362
00:23:23,410 --> 00:23:24,450
engineering how it works.

363
00:23:24,610 --> 00:23:27,970
But of course if you know what a car is for, if you understand like well, what here's what

364
00:23:27,970 --> 00:23:29,730
roughly a person is, the person needs to sit.

365
00:23:29,810 --> 00:23:33,250
The function of it is like terrestrial motion with like inputs from the driver.

366
00:23:33,410 --> 00:23:34,450
Well what is a driver like?

367
00:23:34,610 --> 00:23:38,130
Well they have hands and feet and you know you have a rough idea about like what

368
00:23:38,130 --> 00:23:41,890
terrestrial locomotion requires all of a sudden you kind of understand well maybe you know

369
00:23:41,970 --> 00:23:46,920
the tires are touching the ground and there's something for driving the thing forward and

370
00:23:46,920 --> 00:23:48,840
for taking driver inputs in.

371
00:23:48,920 --> 00:23:54,920
And then all of a sudden those functions uh color your perception of that thing and what

372
00:23:54,920 --> 00:23:56,120
counts as important and not.

373
00:23:56,200 --> 00:23:59,240
And all of a sudden colors or maybe if it's magnetic or not doesn't matter.

374
00:23:59,400 --> 00:24:05,160
It might, if it is, like for example, it might be matter that the brake caliper um is

375
00:24:05,160 --> 00:24:10,680
magnetic because it's what holds the like friction um the the the pad to like you know the

376
00:24:11,090 --> 00:24:12,690
somewhere in the in the brake pad, right?

377
00:24:12,770 --> 00:24:13,090
Whatever.

378
00:24:13,250 --> 00:24:16,370
But I'm not gonna nerd out on car hydraulics.

379
00:24:16,450 --> 00:24:21,730
But point is that, you know, um what features are important um are are

380
00:24:21,730 --> 00:24:26,450
determined by the function, not just sort of random intuition.

381
00:24:26,690 --> 00:24:31,170
Um and in areas of psychology that have been successful, function has sort of been

382
00:24:31,170 --> 00:24:32,530
intuitive, like vision.

383
00:24:32,690 --> 00:24:36,900
So the the function of vision is sort of uh determining what is where.

384
00:24:37,140 --> 00:24:38,660
Um, and it wasn't always like that.

385
00:24:38,820 --> 00:24:43,460
For a long time, vision was actually um sort of a grab bag of here's weird things your

386
00:24:43,460 --> 00:24:45,380
visual system does, like here's an illusion.

387
00:24:45,460 --> 00:24:50,820
Um, but once vision became this idea of like what it's for, um the a lot of progress was

388
00:24:50,820 --> 00:24:51,140
made.

389
00:24:51,300 --> 00:24:55,060
For me, I'm interested in like things like social groups or social emotions, right?

390
00:24:55,460 --> 00:25:01,430
And it's really hard to think about well, how do you think about, well, why do we have why

391
00:25:01,430 --> 00:25:02,790
do we join groups in the first place?

392
00:25:03,030 --> 00:25:07,510
You can say something well, like, well, maybe people are just like joining groups feels

393
00:25:07,510 --> 00:25:10,310
good and we're motivated to feel to join groups.

394
00:25:10,550 --> 00:25:15,110
Um it's like, okay, well um well why and how, right?

395
00:25:15,270 --> 00:25:17,580
So if what kinds of groups?

396
00:25:17,740 --> 00:25:18,300
What is a group?

397
00:25:18,540 --> 00:25:21,020
Yeah, well, and and why does it feel good to join a group?

398
00:25:21,100 --> 00:25:24,700
And what does what do what what does that predict and what kind of groups exactly?

399
00:25:24,860 --> 00:25:29,740
And so um and so if you don't have an evolutionary approach, and I remember having this

400
00:25:29,820 --> 00:25:33,020
even as an undergrad, it was sort of terrifying because I'd be like, Well, I don't know.

401
00:25:33,180 --> 00:25:34,540
And so somebody must know.

402
00:25:34,620 --> 00:25:40,220
And so you sort of look for ideas or theories, and usually it's something like a construct,

403
00:25:40,380 --> 00:25:44,700
and it's you know, a construct like self esteem, and maybe there's like a thing you can

404
00:25:44,700 --> 00:25:50,350
measure, like maybe social class, or like people feeling like secure or insecure,

405
00:25:50,670 --> 00:25:56,030
or um uh you know, something that's measurable and sort of a construct that

406
00:25:56,350 --> 00:25:57,790
varies along continuum.

407
00:25:57,870 --> 00:26:00,190
And then you see, like, is there a relationship between these two things?

408
00:26:00,270 --> 00:26:02,270
And you're just like, I don't know, this is the way to proceed.

409
00:26:02,350 --> 00:26:05,070
I, you know, maybe this is the way to study groups.

410
00:26:05,230 --> 00:26:09,540
Um, but if you if you ask the question, it was like, well, let's unpack why are people

411
00:26:09,620 --> 00:26:10,660
motivated to join groups?

412
00:26:10,740 --> 00:26:11,700
What does that even mean?

413
00:26:11,860 --> 00:26:16,980
And you have this idea that under underlying that sort of what I would argue is sort of a

414
00:26:16,980 --> 00:26:22,820
vanilla statement of like joining a group feels good, is you have this idea of like,

415
00:26:22,980 --> 00:26:28,740
well, below all of that is we're organisms that have to make a living.

416
00:26:28,900 --> 00:26:34,770
And you know, organisms need social support, there's resources, uh, individuals

417
00:26:34,770 --> 00:26:38,690
can like gang up on you, there's differences in loyalty.

418
00:26:38,850 --> 00:26:42,370
Some people will take your side when it matters, some people won't.

419
00:26:42,530 --> 00:26:47,970
Um, and if you just sort of think about like just very simple but really important things

420
00:26:47,970 --> 00:26:52,930
about human existence or an organism's existence, all of a sudden the idea of well, what

421
00:26:52,930 --> 00:26:58,840
counts as a group, there's it gets filled, it gets populated with much more

422
00:26:58,840 --> 00:27:01,640
interesting things, like things about who do I trust?

423
00:27:01,800 --> 00:27:04,120
Who do I believe will come to my aid?

424
00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:06,040
Um, what is my security?

425
00:27:06,200 --> 00:27:06,920
What's my power?

426
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:07,720
What's my status?

427
00:27:07,880 --> 00:27:08,680
Am I being threatened?

428
00:27:08,760 --> 00:27:09,800
Do I have enough stuff?

429
00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:13,880
Is there somebody coercion exerting coercion over me?

430
00:27:14,120 --> 00:27:17,560
It's a very rich um way to think.

431
00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:22,040
And it gives you ideas immediately beyond this like very vanilla thing of like people are

432
00:27:22,040 --> 00:27:23,560
motivated to join groups.

433
00:27:24,130 --> 00:27:29,970
I was at a conference in Geneva last December with international human

434
00:27:29,970 --> 00:27:30,610
rights lawyers.

435
00:27:30,930 --> 00:27:31,970
A really interesting conversation.

436
00:27:32,130 --> 00:27:33,730
We'll talk about that maybe another time.

437
00:27:33,890 --> 00:27:36,770
But one of the people there studied armed groups.

438
00:27:36,930 --> 00:27:42,850
And what he found was that the time when armed groups are most likely to break up

439
00:27:42,850 --> 00:27:44,530
is when they succeed.

440
00:27:45,020 --> 00:27:48,700
Um, which is not a prediction that you would make if you just had this idea of like, you

441
00:27:48,700 --> 00:27:50,540
know, join groups that make you feel good, right?

442
00:27:50,620 --> 00:27:55,580
But if the idea is sort of once a group has succeeded in their goals, then there's this

443
00:27:55,580 --> 00:28:00,460
issue of sort of you have the stuff that you've been working for, and then all of a sudden

444
00:28:00,620 --> 00:28:05,900
the uh you don't need to be unified, you know, because the in fact un unification could

445
00:28:05,900 --> 00:28:07,180
actually be counterproductive.

446
00:28:07,420 --> 00:28:10,060
As we know, the revolution devours its children.

447
00:28:10,140 --> 00:28:15,010
And once you achieve the goal that the group set out to achieve, uh, you're now faced with

448
00:28:15,010 --> 00:28:19,090
a different problem, which is how to divide the spoils of war or how to distribute the

449
00:28:19,090 --> 00:28:20,210
power that was seized.

450
00:28:20,450 --> 00:28:24,530
And that and the solution to that problem is often not unifying, but dividing.

451
00:28:24,850 --> 00:28:25,330
Exactly.

452
00:28:25,410 --> 00:28:26,210
Yes, exactly.

453
00:28:26,370 --> 00:28:29,970
Or at least uh left unchecked or unacknowledged.

454
00:28:30,210 --> 00:28:31,490
It it it definitely is.

455
00:28:31,570 --> 00:28:32,610
And so that's right.

456
00:28:32,690 --> 00:28:34,050
And that's exactly what he finds.

457
00:28:34,210 --> 00:28:40,180
So um, but that's an example of from the perspective of it's not just this

458
00:28:40,180 --> 00:28:45,700
bland statement of like the person is motivated to like groups.

459
00:28:45,940 --> 00:28:51,300
It's it's this, there is this really rich um

460
00:28:52,260 --> 00:28:58,180
real life consequence infused dynamic that's causing

461
00:28:59,010 --> 00:29:00,770
Psychological relationships.

462
00:29:00,850 --> 00:29:06,130
The I like groups, or like I feel good when I join a group, it's very much couched in this

463
00:29:06,130 --> 00:29:10,770
sort of folk psychological language and what I really find

464
00:29:11,650 --> 00:29:13,970
invaluable from an evolutionary perspective.

465
00:29:14,210 --> 00:29:19,810
And for me, what I what I think an evolutionary approach is, is it's

466
00:29:19,810 --> 00:29:25,220
constantly taking Folk psychological descriptions, including my own experience.

467
00:29:25,300 --> 00:29:29,060
I'm not saying like other people are folk psychological, I'm not, but like going around and

468
00:29:29,060 --> 00:29:31,780
just being like, you know, I love my son to death.

469
00:29:31,940 --> 00:29:34,820
I am, you know, I'm nervous in this situation.

470
00:29:35,300 --> 00:29:41,140
Um uh it really would feel good right now to like post this on social media or like, look,

471
00:29:41,220 --> 00:29:46,820
this person is doing this thing, um, or people are saying like this group exists.

472
00:29:47,170 --> 00:29:51,970
it's taking all of those things that humans do all the time and translating it into

473
00:29:52,930 --> 00:29:58,930
what software would have been selected for, given these

474
00:29:58,930 --> 00:30:03,730
real-world dynamics that we can be confident are reliably occurring.

475
00:30:03,970 --> 00:30:09,330
Like not like esoteric things, like simple, basic, everyday things.

476
00:30:11,010 --> 00:30:16,300
Given a world in which an organism needs software to deal with these kinds of things.

477
00:30:16,460 --> 00:30:20,300
How can we think about this phenomenon as being produced by that software?

478
00:30:20,540 --> 00:30:25,900
And how does that give us purchase into sort of seeing that software beyond

479
00:30:26,140 --> 00:30:29,660
behind this phenomenon?

480
00:30:29,900 --> 00:30:35,740
So for me, what I love about it is it's really a way to think almost like

481
00:30:35,740 --> 00:30:39,290
we're squishy robots, and you can think about the software.

482
00:30:39,370 --> 00:30:44,490
And the in the for me, the benefit of thinking about the software is exactly the

483
00:30:44,490 --> 00:30:46,650
opposite of what we talked about.

484
00:30:46,730 --> 00:30:52,730
The misunderstanding was the point of the software and the point of software in

485
00:30:52,730 --> 00:30:58,490
general, or any sort of contingency rule, is that it enables

486
00:30:58,490 --> 00:30:59,530
flexibility.

487
00:31:00,620 --> 00:31:06,300
It is, if you look at anywhere in the world, there are certain laws or

488
00:31:06,300 --> 00:31:11,980
rules that enable flexibility, that enable things to be complicated and not random or

489
00:31:11,980 --> 00:31:13,100
entropic.

490
00:31:13,740 --> 00:31:19,580
And I think the great insight of evolutionary psychology is that

491
00:31:20,220 --> 00:31:25,260
relationships in the world, this idea of differential reproductive success, which is the

492
00:31:25,260 --> 00:31:29,970
Darwinian notion of variation in gene

493
00:31:29,970 --> 00:31:35,490
frequencies yoked to variation in the design

494
00:31:35,810 --> 00:31:41,730
that is reliably developing by virtue of those genes, how

495
00:31:41,890 --> 00:31:46,850
those designs do in the environment, do they differentially reproduce or not?

496
00:31:47,090 --> 00:31:52,610
Changes those gene frequencies such that the designs that fit well and that do

497
00:31:52,930 --> 00:31:58,580
well in uh in an environment that differentially re uh are

498
00:31:58,580 --> 00:32:03,860
differentially successful, differential reproductive success, that's the kind of software

499
00:32:03,860 --> 00:32:09,700
we're allowed to expect, that it's well designed and and dovetailed to these features of

500
00:32:09,700 --> 00:32:10,340
the environment.

501
00:32:10,500 --> 00:32:15,940
And so um that idea then is that um

502
00:32:16,180 --> 00:32:21,330
it's not that we there's part of us that's sort of the evolved part and the other part that

503
00:32:21,330 --> 00:32:24,210
isn't the monkey or the caveman inside us.

504
00:32:24,610 --> 00:32:25,010
That's right.

505
00:32:25,090 --> 00:32:26,610
The part of me I can't control.

506
00:32:26,850 --> 00:32:32,530
The idea is that all of you is an evolved thing, and everything, even the aspirational

507
00:32:32,530 --> 00:32:38,210
parts, even the parts of me that say no, I don't agree that that's just all there is to me.

508
00:32:38,370 --> 00:32:43,410
There's another part of me, and I have autonomy, I can have goals, I can think about

509
00:32:43,410 --> 00:32:43,810
things.

510
00:32:44,050 --> 00:32:48,700
The argument is that's all evolved software too, and in fact, what you would expect for for

511
00:32:48,700 --> 00:32:49,500
an evolved system.

512
00:32:49,660 --> 00:32:55,660
And I think this is the this is almost where the the misunderstanding happens often

513
00:32:55,820 --> 00:33:00,780
is people want to put a boundary around the evolved part of you,

514
00:33:01,980 --> 00:33:03,180
which is makes sense.

515
00:33:03,260 --> 00:33:07,180
I mean, you know, there's a sense in which, you know, like I'm not hunting and gathering,

516
00:33:07,420 --> 00:33:07,660
right?

517
00:33:07,820 --> 00:33:10,620
Um, my life is different than a hunter-gatherer life.

518
00:33:10,780 --> 00:33:16,750
And so unless you have this idea about I am my software,

519
00:33:16,910 --> 00:33:22,750
and my software was designed by evolution, that's a weird way to

520
00:33:22,750 --> 00:33:22,990
think.

521
00:33:23,150 --> 00:33:28,270
And even what it means, the full entailment of that take a while to understand.

522
00:33:28,510 --> 00:33:33,150
Um, without that, it's really hard to connect up your own personal experience with an

523
00:33:33,150 --> 00:33:34,190
evolutionary approach.

524
00:33:34,270 --> 00:33:38,990
And I think that that's one of the reasons why it's it's so it's so difficult.

525
00:33:39,710 --> 00:33:41,220
Yeah, absolutely.

526
00:33:41,380 --> 00:33:47,380
Um another aspect of this confusion I think comes from

527
00:33:47,380 --> 00:33:50,180
viewing fitness as a dichotomy.

528
00:33:51,300 --> 00:33:53,060
So you're either alive or dead.

529
00:33:53,300 --> 00:33:57,940
And our adaptations are uh designed to keep us from dying.

530
00:33:58,420 --> 00:34:03,070
And so you you see this in some simplistic theories of group psychology, for example, like

531
00:34:03,070 --> 00:34:05,710
we we want to avoid getting killed by a rival group.

532
00:34:06,030 --> 00:34:09,550
And surely, you know, that that was a selection pressure for us, no doubt.

533
00:34:09,790 --> 00:34:15,390
Um, but if you think in terms of fitness increments, something that couldn't

534
00:34:15,550 --> 00:34:21,550
increase your fitness probabilistically, um, there's a whole continuum that uh

535
00:34:21,710 --> 00:34:24,680
natural selection can move you uh along.

536
00:34:24,920 --> 00:34:26,920
So it's not merely alive or dead.

537
00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:29,240
It's well, how healthy are you?

538
00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:31,240
How much social support do you have?

539
00:34:31,400 --> 00:34:34,360
Do you have people who are ready to take your side in conflicts?

540
00:34:34,520 --> 00:34:38,120
Do you have people who are ready to help you out if you get sick or injured?

541
00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:43,960
Um, do you have uh a network of of friends who will who will you know give you

542
00:34:44,360 --> 00:34:45,320
important information?

543
00:34:46,130 --> 00:34:49,090
Um, are you uh formidable?

544
00:34:49,250 --> 00:34:53,810
Are you likely to prevail in uh uh again against other people in conflicts?

545
00:34:53,970 --> 00:34:55,730
Um, is your group formidable?

546
00:34:55,810 --> 00:34:58,450
Is your group cohesive and well coordinated?

547
00:34:58,610 --> 00:35:01,890
Do you have uh skills that others value?

548
00:35:02,050 --> 00:35:07,810
Uh and are you irreplaceable uh to other members of your group, such that if you were sick

549
00:35:07,810 --> 00:35:12,530
or injured, they would have a reason to keep you alive, uh independent of any favors you

550
00:35:12,530 --> 00:35:14,080
might give for them?

551
00:35:14,640 --> 00:35:19,280
Um, what about uh your uh attractiveness on the mating market?

552
00:35:19,440 --> 00:35:20,720
What about your kin?

553
00:35:20,880 --> 00:35:23,520
Your brothers and sisters, your parents, your children?

554
00:35:23,680 --> 00:35:24,640
How healthy are they?

555
00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:26,000
How well supported are they?

556
00:35:26,240 --> 00:35:28,560
How uh valued are they?

557
00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:32,640
Are they, you know, learning skills that will make them irreplaceable to the group?

558
00:35:33,120 --> 00:35:39,040
These are a whole array of rich and subtle questions, uh, the answer to which

559
00:35:39,040 --> 00:35:44,690
would would make a huge difference uh in in your uh biological fitness,

560
00:35:45,090 --> 00:35:45,410
right?

561
00:35:46,530 --> 00:35:51,730
So it's not merely that like a single gene will keep you from dying.

562
00:35:51,890 --> 00:35:53,410
That's that's the wrong way to think about it.

563
00:35:53,490 --> 00:35:59,170
It's that a a single gene might nudge you a little bit uh further along this this fitness

564
00:35:59,250 --> 00:36:05,250
promoting continuum, that it might make you a little bit more likely uh to choose an

565
00:36:05,250 --> 00:36:07,890
ally who will uh choose you in return.

566
00:36:08,130 --> 00:36:13,660
It might make you a little bit uh less likely to be ganged up on by a

567
00:36:13,660 --> 00:36:14,460
rival group.

568
00:36:14,540 --> 00:36:19,340
Uh and these are just tiny probabilistic changes uh that are that are being selected for

569
00:36:19,420 --> 00:36:24,300
that add up over time and create a complex adaptation and a complex group psychology and

570
00:36:24,300 --> 00:36:28,380
psychology of loyalty and backstabbing and you know conspiratorial thinking and all all

571
00:36:28,380 --> 00:36:31,660
this stuff comes into existence gradually piece by piece.

572
00:36:31,980 --> 00:36:37,610
But we have to understand it as coming into existence piece by piece and not, you know, I'm

573
00:36:37,610 --> 00:36:41,290
gonna die and I have this adaptation that's gonna keep me from dying.

574
00:36:41,450 --> 00:36:42,650
It's not that simple.

575
00:36:42,810 --> 00:36:48,730
And evolution is is rarely that simple uh because uh genes have

576
00:36:48,730 --> 00:36:49,690
tiny effects.

577
00:36:49,930 --> 00:36:52,970
This is something we've known in genetics for a really long time.

578
00:36:53,290 --> 00:36:58,730
Um, there's not gonna be a single gene that uh keeps you uh from from dying.

579
00:36:58,810 --> 00:37:04,330
Uh it's just going to change the way you think and the way you feel uh in subtle ways.

580
00:37:04,620 --> 00:37:10,140
And over time, those subtle changes can add up and uh create something like a

581
00:37:10,140 --> 00:37:15,900
complex emotional system or a complex motivational system or a a a complex set of

582
00:37:15,900 --> 00:37:21,500
intuitions about groups and group membership and whose whose side you're on, uh etc.

583
00:37:22,540 --> 00:37:23,260
Yeah, that's right.

584
00:37:23,420 --> 00:37:27,340
And thinking about genes across bodies um and time too.

585
00:37:27,500 --> 00:37:33,050
So thinking and even about design, it's sort of what design would would uh designs extend

586
00:37:33,050 --> 00:37:33,690
across bodies.

587
00:37:33,850 --> 00:37:38,490
A good example of that is, I mean, there's there's more additional sophisticated ideas

588
00:37:38,490 --> 00:37:44,250
about what causes senescence, but a really simple and apparently still correct idea is that

589
00:37:46,250 --> 00:37:52,090
prior to reproductive age, if something uh if there's some attribute that

590
00:37:52,090 --> 00:37:58,020
causes death, that's going to be a really strong selection pressure because if you die

591
00:37:58,020 --> 00:38:02,900
before you reproduce, then you know, David, both you and I have ancestors

592
00:38:03,700 --> 00:38:08,980
stretching back since the dawn of time, since the dawn of life, um, who have successfully

593
00:38:08,980 --> 00:38:12,660
survived and reproduced up and through um reproductive age.

594
00:38:12,820 --> 00:38:16,020
That's we're we're very lucky um where we wouldn't be here.

595
00:38:16,180 --> 00:38:21,780
Um and uh so if there's something that causes death prior to

596
00:38:22,670 --> 00:38:26,030
reaching reproductive age, that's a very strong selection pressure.

597
00:38:26,190 --> 00:38:28,270
If that exists, that'll just be selected out.

598
00:38:28,430 --> 00:38:34,350
But if there are things that accumulate after reproductive age, um, and in particular,

599
00:38:34,430 --> 00:38:38,830
if there's a trade-off between the two where something keeps you alive prior to

600
00:38:38,830 --> 00:38:44,270
reproductive age, but it might cause problems like post-reproductive age, um,

601
00:38:44,590 --> 00:38:47,630
those things are going to be less strongly selected.

602
00:38:47,790 --> 00:38:53,360
In other words, from the perspective of natural selection, um, the

603
00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:59,280
less so after you've successfully reproduced, if your investment in the next generation

604
00:38:59,440 --> 00:39:05,040
is less and less, uh then natural selection doesn't sort of see you and

605
00:39:05,200 --> 00:39:08,800
doesn't care about you or keep you, it doesn't maintain you.

606
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:14,800
Um because uh, you know, reproduction can be exponential, and reproduction is always cares

607
00:39:14,800 --> 00:39:18,800
more about the next generation than the than the past one if it's going to choose between

608
00:39:18,800 --> 00:39:19,360
the two.

609
00:39:19,600 --> 00:39:25,550
Um And uh and so the idea is that the reason why we wear out and the reason why

610
00:39:25,550 --> 00:39:31,470
we um uh why we die is because there's a massive drop-off in the

611
00:39:31,470 --> 00:39:37,470
selection pressures to keep us around um after our sort of actuarial contribution

612
00:39:37,470 --> 00:39:39,710
to reproduction in the next generation.

613
00:39:39,870 --> 00:39:45,580
And so um so that's that's a nice example of uh

614
00:39:46,060 --> 00:39:51,020
the the engineering attention to keeping you alive differs

615
00:39:51,020 --> 00:39:56,940
dramatically prior to reproductive age and post-reproductive age and reproductive age

616
00:39:57,100 --> 00:40:00,780
because parenting for a highly investing species like humans.

617
00:40:00,860 --> 00:40:05,190
But but that's it's this is the other thing I really like about an evolutionary approach is

618
00:40:05,190 --> 00:40:09,190
that things that just sort of seem seem like an act of God or just the way things

619
00:40:09,190 --> 00:40:12,870
necessarily are, that you that sort of take for granted.

620
00:40:13,110 --> 00:40:17,190
Um uh you can sort of ask a deeper why question.

621
00:40:17,270 --> 00:40:19,350
Um, for example, like why do we die?

622
00:40:19,430 --> 00:40:19,590
Yeah.

623
00:40:19,830 --> 00:40:19,990
Yeah.

624
00:40:20,150 --> 00:40:21,350
Why do why do we age?

625
00:40:21,510 --> 00:40:21,830
Yeah.

626
00:40:21,990 --> 00:40:25,680
Uh from a naive uh Darwinian perspective, it might seem puzzling.

627
00:40:25,840 --> 00:40:27,920
You know, why why wouldn't we evolve to live forever?

628
00:40:28,000 --> 00:40:28,160
Yeah.

629
00:40:28,400 --> 00:40:29,360
Wouldn't that be even better?

630
00:40:29,840 --> 00:40:30,880
It would be super adaptive, yeah.

631
00:40:30,960 --> 00:40:31,440
Or would it be a good idea?

632
00:40:31,600 --> 00:40:32,320
Yeah, super adaptive.

633
00:40:32,480 --> 00:40:32,560
Yeah.

634
00:40:32,880 --> 00:40:33,360
Totally.

635
00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:37,440
But um, you know, once you move past the naive Darwinian thinking and get into the

636
00:40:37,440 --> 00:40:42,720
nitty-gritty of how evolution works from the genes I view, um these

637
00:40:43,200 --> 00:40:45,600
age-old mysteries begin to dissolve.

638
00:40:47,490 --> 00:40:53,330
Um when uh when we talked about people use it to rationalize political stuff um

639
00:40:53,570 --> 00:40:57,570
or people not liking it, what I mean, what do you think is going on with that?

640
00:40:58,690 --> 00:41:04,210
Oh, I mean, I I have a whole paper on uh political beliefs as

641
00:41:04,210 --> 00:41:08,210
rationalizations for coalitional interests.

642
00:41:08,450 --> 00:41:14,280
Um yeah, I mean, I think we have political conflicts uh uh

643
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:15,720
surrounding feminism.

644
00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:18,760
It's a hot button culture war issue.

645
00:41:18,920 --> 00:41:24,600
Um and one of the tactics that um feminists have used to advance their cause is to argue

646
00:41:24,920 --> 00:41:29,720
for uh social constructionism, that that men and women aren't really different, that if

647
00:41:29,720 --> 00:41:32,280
they are different, then they're socialized to be different.

648
00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:38,280
And any differences we see um are a result of patriarchal socialization, therefore

649
00:41:38,360 --> 00:41:42,630
they're unjust, and we should fight uh against them and fight for gender equality.

650
00:41:42,790 --> 00:41:48,310
And so there's a whole uh slew of beliefs that I think are well designed to mobilizing

651
00:41:48,310 --> 00:41:53,190
support for the feminist cause and opposition uh to their political opponents.

652
00:41:53,350 --> 00:41:57,270
Um and we can debate whether those beliefs are correct or not, and how correct they are and

653
00:41:57,270 --> 00:41:58,870
where they might be right and where they might might be wrong.

654
00:41:58,950 --> 00:42:03,990
But I ultimately think that is uh the purpose of those beliefs, is that they are uh tactics

655
00:42:03,990 --> 00:42:07,510
for mobilizing support uh for one side of a conflict.

656
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:13,720
And the problem is that a lot of evolutionary psychology runs right into that culture

657
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:15,240
war conflict.

658
00:42:16,280 --> 00:42:22,200
It starts to uh present some ideas that, hey, maybe men and women are different

659
00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:27,320
uh for evolutionary reasons, and maybe not everything about them is socially constructed.

660
00:42:27,560 --> 00:42:33,240
Um, maybe there are some explanations for gender differences um that don't involve

661
00:42:33,270 --> 00:42:37,350
patriarchal socialization, but involve our evolutionary heritage.

662
00:42:37,750 --> 00:42:43,750
Um, and once evolutionary psychology starts to interject with those kinds of ideas, well,

663
00:42:43,830 --> 00:42:48,230
we're we're primed to see the world as uh you're either with us or you're against us.

664
00:42:48,390 --> 00:42:53,350
And if you don't share our ideas, and if you don't share our uh uh political uh

665
00:42:53,510 --> 00:42:57,510
mobilization tactics, well, that's a cue that we use that you're not with us, that you're

666
00:42:57,510 --> 00:42:58,950
an enemy, you're on the other side.

667
00:42:59,110 --> 00:43:03,840
Uh and I don't think that evolutionary psychologists intended to elicit this inference.

668
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:07,600
I think most evolutionary psychologists that I know are strong feminists.

669
00:43:08,800 --> 00:43:14,800
But because their ideas sort of activated these Q-based inference systems of are you on my

670
00:43:14,800 --> 00:43:19,120
side or are you not, they sort of got inadvertently categorized as being on the other side

671
00:43:19,280 --> 00:43:24,560
because they were uh challenging some of the prevailing ideas uh coming out of feminism.

672
00:43:24,690 --> 00:43:28,530
And if you're and if you disagree with our ideas and with our political mobilization

673
00:43:28,530 --> 00:43:32,370
tactics, that's a sign that you're on the other side and you're against us and you're our

674
00:43:32,370 --> 00:43:34,770
political enemy and we must destroy you.

675
00:43:35,170 --> 00:43:36,530
That's sort of how I understand it.

676
00:43:36,610 --> 00:43:37,410
Do you buy that?

677
00:43:37,730 --> 00:43:37,970
Yeah.

678
00:43:38,290 --> 00:43:38,530
Yeah.

679
00:43:38,610 --> 00:43:40,450
Well, I and I want to uh have a follow-up.

680
00:43:40,770 --> 00:43:43,810
So in the converse, then do you think the converse is true?

681
00:43:43,970 --> 00:43:49,660
And I mean, so this idea that sort of people who are um who

682
00:43:49,980 --> 00:43:54,620
are conservative in the US sense of the word, um, which is different than sort of a

683
00:43:54,620 --> 00:43:56,780
historical or international view of conservatism.

684
00:43:56,860 --> 00:44:02,620
But um uh and uh and maybe people who are interested in preserving patriarchy

685
00:44:02,780 --> 00:44:05,180
um seem attracted to this idea.

686
00:44:05,340 --> 00:44:06,940
Do you think that that's fair?

687
00:44:07,580 --> 00:44:09,020
Uh in in some ways, yes.

688
00:44:09,180 --> 00:44:10,300
So they they are an art.

689
00:44:10,540 --> 00:44:16,540
They're attracted to it uh insofar as it justifies the traditional gender hierarchy that

690
00:44:16,700 --> 00:44:17,900
that they're advocating for.

691
00:44:18,460 --> 00:44:23,850
Uh But the problem is that you need to believe in evolution and and and cold Darwinian

692
00:44:23,850 --> 00:44:24,730
thinking to get there.

693
00:44:25,130 --> 00:44:29,130
And they're often opposed to Darwinian thinking and evolutionary thinking for religious

694
00:44:29,130 --> 00:44:29,690
reasons.

695
00:44:30,250 --> 00:44:33,210
So yes and no, they're partly on board with it and partly not.

696
00:44:33,610 --> 00:44:37,450
They like it for the traditional gender role reasons, but don't like it for the

697
00:44:37,450 --> 00:44:38,970
evolutionary reasons.

698
00:44:39,050 --> 00:44:43,850
Aaron Powell So for the part that they do get on board, and so what we're so the argument

699
00:44:43,850 --> 00:44:48,400
is that um, you know, and again, you know, there's the professional understanding, but

700
00:44:48,400 --> 00:44:50,080
we're not talking about that yet.

701
00:44:50,800 --> 00:44:56,160
Um, people who are interested who argue, you know, look, women until very

702
00:44:56,160 --> 00:44:58,960
recently had very few rights.

703
00:44:59,120 --> 00:45:02,320
The bargaining power socially has been low.

704
00:45:02,480 --> 00:45:04,080
Um, I mean, it's ridiculous.

705
00:45:04,240 --> 00:45:09,670
Like, you know, the the the recency with which if you if you watch um

706
00:45:10,150 --> 00:45:15,510
um videos in the sixties or seventies or eighties or nineties right um you know it's the

707
00:45:15,590 --> 00:45:21,190
the sexism the ambient sexism and the laws are are are insane right um

708
00:45:21,830 --> 00:45:27,670
uh the arguments for equal treatment being taken seriously like that's the history of

709
00:45:27,670 --> 00:45:33,430
that is very clear there's a long clear history of people um with with

710
00:45:33,980 --> 00:45:39,660
not not doing well in the um the competition for status and power

711
00:45:39,820 --> 00:45:43,100
or being granted even an equal seat at the table.

712
00:45:43,260 --> 00:45:48,940
Um those people and the people who want that to continue, right, are

713
00:45:48,940 --> 00:45:51,500
both accepting sort of a premise.

714
00:45:52,060 --> 00:45:57,900
It sounds like that this idea that there's an evolved psychology

715
00:45:58,060 --> 00:46:03,650
um generally and then specifically um that there's sort of

716
00:46:03,810 --> 00:46:09,810
um uh sex based design differences in human psychology is

717
00:46:09,810 --> 00:46:12,850
consistent with sort of one side versus the other.

718
00:46:13,410 --> 00:46:18,450
Um number one, and and this is a big question, number one, like why do you think that is?

719
00:46:18,610 --> 00:46:21,170
Um like why do people think that that's true?

720
00:46:21,330 --> 00:46:24,930
And then number two, if it isn't true, why isn't it true?

721
00:46:25,400 --> 00:46:25,800
Yeah.

722
00:46:26,120 --> 00:46:28,440
So I don't think this is unique to feminism.

723
00:46:28,600 --> 00:46:33,800
I think any time there is an intergroup conflict over status or resources or power or

724
00:46:33,960 --> 00:46:38,760
something like that, um, the group that has more status or resources or power will

725
00:46:38,760 --> 00:46:43,800
invariably try to justify uh that advantage in terms of in uh

726
00:46:43,960 --> 00:46:45,080
superiority.

727
00:46:45,240 --> 00:46:49,240
Um so the reason we have more power and status and resources because we're just innately

728
00:46:49,240 --> 00:46:49,640
superior.

729
00:46:49,720 --> 00:46:53,930
We're smarter, we're wiser, um, we're more virtuous, whatever.

730
00:46:54,010 --> 00:46:57,850
And the uh it's God's will, it's the divine right of kings.

731
00:46:57,930 --> 00:47:03,770
There's always some kind of of uh justifying narrative uh behind it.

732
00:47:04,090 --> 00:47:09,450
Um and naturally the people who have less power and status and resources will uh try to

733
00:47:09,450 --> 00:47:10,570
challenge that narrative.

734
00:47:10,810 --> 00:47:16,730
And so uh where the power ends up lying is going to depend in large part

735
00:47:16,730 --> 00:47:21,420
on how plausible uh each disputant finds the narrative, right?

736
00:47:21,500 --> 00:47:24,860
Because the narrative is a is a kind of coordination device.

737
00:47:25,100 --> 00:47:30,780
If we all agree that we're innately superior to them, um, then there's no

738
00:47:30,780 --> 00:47:33,020
reason to oppose the social hierarchy.

739
00:47:33,100 --> 00:47:36,300
There's no reason to expect other people to oppose the social hierarchy.

740
00:47:36,460 --> 00:47:40,700
There's no reason to expect other people to expect other people to oppose the social

741
00:47:40,700 --> 00:47:41,420
hierarchy.

742
00:47:41,500 --> 00:47:45,740
We we need to coordinate and create common knowledge for collective action.

743
00:47:46,310 --> 00:47:50,630
And one of the ways that we do that is by creating a shared narrative.

744
00:47:51,110 --> 00:47:54,790
And so a big part of politics is just a battle over narratives.

745
00:47:55,030 --> 00:47:57,590
What narrative are we going to collectively share?

746
00:47:57,670 --> 00:48:01,510
And what kinds of social arrangements is that narrative going to justify?

747
00:48:01,910 --> 00:48:06,310
So these narratives are hugely politically important.

748
00:48:07,860 --> 00:48:13,780
different groups rise or fall uh in direct proportion to how many people buy

749
00:48:13,940 --> 00:48:15,220
the narrative.

750
00:48:16,260 --> 00:48:22,260
So that is the context in which um evolutionary psychology enters

751
00:48:22,260 --> 00:48:23,060
the picture.

752
00:48:23,300 --> 00:48:28,900
And because with us or against us is a dichotomy, um,

753
00:48:29,380 --> 00:48:35,270
and we're looking for any reason at all to suspect you of of being the enemy or or of being

754
00:48:35,270 --> 00:48:40,870
against us because of this kind of uh smoke alarm principle where you know we're biased to

755
00:48:40,870 --> 00:48:42,550
uh make the less costly error.

756
00:48:42,710 --> 00:48:47,670
Like it's much much less costly for us to assume someone is an enemy even when they aren't,

757
00:48:47,830 --> 00:48:49,910
than to miss a real enemy when they're really there.

758
00:48:50,070 --> 00:48:55,910
So we're biased to sort of see the world in conspiratorial ways and uh uh overperceive uh

759
00:48:56,070 --> 00:48:57,670
people being out to get us.

760
00:48:58,150 --> 00:49:03,560
And so uh any deviation from the narrative, even if it's a mild one, even if it's a

761
00:49:03,560 --> 00:49:09,240
relatively subtle deviation from the narrative, um gets filtered through our

762
00:49:09,240 --> 00:49:12,680
coalitional psychology as this person's against us.

763
00:49:12,920 --> 00:49:18,680
If they don't cross every uh T and dot every I on our political narrative,

764
00:49:18,840 --> 00:49:20,280
then they're an enemy.

765
00:49:20,920 --> 00:49:26,610
Um it's not, oh, they agree with us 90%, or they agree with us on most of these things, or

766
00:49:26,610 --> 00:49:29,090
they have this subtle objection to this particular detail.

767
00:49:29,330 --> 00:49:32,850
If they don't accept the whole narrative, then they're not with us.

768
00:49:32,930 --> 00:49:38,850
And I think that uh explains why evolutionary psychology um got

769
00:49:38,850 --> 00:49:42,210
categorized as being on one side of this political conflict.

770
00:49:42,370 --> 00:49:47,170
Um it's not because uh like uh yeah, I I I think, you know, certain evolutionary ideas do

771
00:49:47,170 --> 00:49:49,410
challenge certain parts of feminism.

772
00:49:49,860 --> 00:49:54,100
But I don't think that uh it is incompatible with feminism.

773
00:49:54,180 --> 00:49:58,340
And I think that the the things that it challenges about feminism are relatively subtle and

774
00:49:58,340 --> 00:50:03,540
require a lot of uh uh debate and discussion to really, you know, nail down the details.

775
00:50:03,700 --> 00:50:08,420
Uh but because it's any kind of deviation at all from the shared narrative, it elicits this

776
00:50:08,420 --> 00:50:09,780
reaction of you're not with us.

777
00:50:10,420 --> 00:50:11,940
In in yeah, that's great.

778
00:50:12,020 --> 00:50:13,870
And I appreciate that that subtle point.

779
00:50:14,030 --> 00:50:19,310
And I mean I'm happy to unpack this with you, but I'm just wondering like what is that if

780
00:50:19,310 --> 00:50:24,510
you take all that and accept that, it leaves us with the question as, Well, what are those

781
00:50:24,510 --> 00:50:28,590
things that are apparently incompatible or maybe not?

782
00:50:28,750 --> 00:50:30,590
Um, why do people think they are?

783
00:50:30,830 --> 00:50:32,110
Both sides think they are.

784
00:50:32,270 --> 00:50:33,710
What are those things?

785
00:50:34,920 --> 00:50:38,280
Well, um let's let's wade into the minefield then.

786
00:50:38,440 --> 00:50:38,760
Yeah.

787
00:50:39,640 --> 00:50:44,920
Um so there's this issue of, you know, women in positions of power.

788
00:50:45,320 --> 00:50:50,200
Um men tend to be overrepresented among CEOs, for example.

789
00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:55,250
Um one way to explain this is this is because of discrimination against women, that they're

790
00:50:55,250 --> 00:51:00,850
uh uh expected to do poorly, or they're expected to be irrational, or or we praise men more

791
00:51:00,850 --> 00:51:02,930
than we praise women, or or something like that.

792
00:51:03,170 --> 00:51:09,170
Another explanation is that um men are uh more motivated

793
00:51:09,170 --> 00:51:15,090
to seek status and resources than women because uh status and resources is a

794
00:51:15,090 --> 00:51:20,780
greater ticket to mating success uh uh among men than it is among women.

795
00:51:20,940 --> 00:51:25,660
And there's plenty of evidence to suggest that that is true, that women tend to prioritize

796
00:51:25,660 --> 00:51:30,860
uh status and power and resources among men more than women do so sorry, more than men do

797
00:51:30,860 --> 00:51:31,900
among women.

798
00:51:32,140 --> 00:51:37,820
Um if uh status competition uh throughout our evolutionary history resulted in

799
00:51:37,820 --> 00:51:42,140
differential reproductive success among high status men relative to low status men, which

800
00:51:42,140 --> 00:51:47,980
seems pretty clear that it likely was, then uh men would have a a pretty powerful

801
00:51:47,980 --> 00:51:49,150
status psychology.

802
00:51:49,310 --> 00:51:52,270
This isn't to say that women don't have a status psychology, but it's going to be slightly

803
00:51:52,270 --> 00:51:52,830
different.

804
00:51:52,990 --> 00:51:58,830
Um and this could uh explain the overrepresentation uh of men among uh, you know,

805
00:51:58,990 --> 00:52:04,190
say CEOs, or maybe it it explains their overrepresentation among sort of riskier

806
00:52:04,990 --> 00:52:06,270
uh jobs.

807
00:52:06,430 --> 00:52:10,580
Um there there's a whole other literature on greater uh risk risk-seeking among men because

808
00:52:10,580 --> 00:52:15,300
there's uh more variation in reproductive success among men, so they've evolved to pursue

809
00:52:15,300 --> 00:52:18,900
riskier strategies on the off-chance that they might hit the jackpot.

810
00:52:19,300 --> 00:52:24,740
Um, it explains uh why men are more aggressive and more violent in competing for uh status

811
00:52:24,740 --> 00:52:25,860
and resources.

812
00:52:26,100 --> 00:52:29,620
Um maybe this could explain uh that phenomenon.

813
00:52:29,700 --> 00:52:32,820
And if that's true, then all of a sudden it's no longer an injustice that we need to

814
00:52:32,820 --> 00:52:35,150
rectify, it's just how the world works.

815
00:52:35,470 --> 00:52:39,630
Or take the gap among women in STEM.

816
00:52:40,910 --> 00:52:46,430
So there are very large empirical differences between men and women

817
00:52:47,310 --> 00:52:50,030
in terms of their interest in people versus things.

818
00:52:51,230 --> 00:52:56,960
And this is related to stuff like where you are on the autism spectrum, but roughly men

819
00:52:56,960 --> 00:53:01,440
tend to be more interested in mechanical systems than women, and women tend to be more

820
00:53:01,440 --> 00:53:05,520
interested in people and their inner lives and thoughts and feelings than men are.

821
00:53:05,920 --> 00:53:07,760
It's a pretty large gender difference.

822
00:53:07,920 --> 00:53:10,160
I think it's like a standard deviation difference.

823
00:53:11,120 --> 00:53:14,960
And that could explain why men are overrepresented in STEM.

824
00:53:15,280 --> 00:53:19,120
That they're just they just find this stuff more uh innately interesting.

825
00:53:19,200 --> 00:53:21,840
They're more interested in mechanical systems than women.

826
00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:27,710
Um and and it's just a a a basic outcome of different uh

827
00:53:27,950 --> 00:53:33,710
uh temperaments, different predispositions between men and women, and it's not an injustice

828
00:53:33,710 --> 00:53:34,670
we need to rectify.

829
00:53:34,830 --> 00:53:36,110
Uh it's just the way things are.

830
00:53:36,350 --> 00:53:40,430
And so the truth or falsehood of these stories, and I I'm not taking a stand on on these

831
00:53:40,430 --> 00:53:40,670
stories.

832
00:53:40,750 --> 00:53:45,390
I'm just saying, you know, uh these these are possibilities that we need to uh evaluate and

833
00:53:45,390 --> 00:53:48,990
and look at the evidence for them and look at the arguments and and and try to you know get

834
00:53:48,990 --> 00:53:50,590
as close as we can to the truth.

835
00:53:50,750 --> 00:53:56,280
But these narratives matter, and that whether we accept either narrative as as true is

836
00:53:56,280 --> 00:54:01,240
going to determine whether we push for, you know, getting more women into STEM or

837
00:54:03,240 --> 00:54:08,360
policies that uh um prevent discrimination against women, say.

838
00:54:08,600 --> 00:54:11,320
Um these have real tangible political implications.

839
00:54:12,120 --> 00:54:14,280
Um Yeah.

840
00:54:14,600 --> 00:54:14,760
Yeah.

841
00:54:15,250 --> 00:54:15,570
What do you think?

842
00:54:15,890 --> 00:54:16,770
Did I step on a mine there?

843
00:54:17,010 --> 00:54:18,610
Yeah, no, you did, but that's okay.

844
00:54:18,770 --> 00:54:21,730
Um because we're gonna we're gonna keep unpacking this.

845
00:54:21,890 --> 00:54:25,730
I mean, one of the things you said, and I appreciate what you're saying, and I think that

846
00:54:25,730 --> 00:54:31,250
that's you know a genuine um um you know honest

847
00:54:31,250 --> 00:54:32,690
assessment of it.

848
00:54:33,090 --> 00:54:38,530
Um one thing, you know, in a lot of these discussions, um,

849
00:54:38,690 --> 00:54:43,460
especially when there's sort of been a group of people who have been in power and other

850
00:54:43,460 --> 00:54:48,020
people who haven't, and that's you know, throughout history, and and there's a clear recent

851
00:54:48,020 --> 00:54:50,260
history of that for many groups of uh people.

852
00:54:50,500 --> 00:54:56,420
There's a tension between sort of and and be well, I don't want

853
00:54:56,420 --> 00:55:00,980
to form too complex a sentence, but basically, there's a tension between um

854
00:55:01,620 --> 00:55:07,300
accepting the values of the dominant group and

855
00:55:07,300 --> 00:55:12,950
wanting to meet that and rise to those values as opposed to rejecting those

856
00:55:12,950 --> 00:55:13,590
values.

857
00:55:13,830 --> 00:55:19,670
And in some sense, that those things are the valued things is a consequence of the the

858
00:55:19,670 --> 00:55:23,190
nature or the characteristics of the group that has been dominant.

859
00:55:23,430 --> 00:55:28,790
And this is a tension, this was a very explicit tension in the civil rights movement.

860
00:55:28,870 --> 00:55:33,080
This is a very explicit tension in the women's rights movement.

861
00:55:33,480 --> 00:55:39,320
Um, throughout history, um, there's sort of the idea, you know, boiled down

862
00:55:39,320 --> 00:55:42,440
to the group that has been dominant over us.

863
00:55:43,800 --> 00:55:48,360
Do we want to accept the premise that all the things that they think are good are do we

864
00:55:48,360 --> 00:55:49,240
want to agree with that?

865
00:55:49,400 --> 00:55:49,640
Right?

866
00:55:49,800 --> 00:55:51,480
Is that is that is that true?

867
00:55:51,880 --> 00:55:52,120
Yeah.

868
00:55:52,280 --> 00:55:58,150
Um, and for some things, uh, maybe yes, because you know, like having like healthy food

869
00:55:58,150 --> 00:56:02,310
and safe homes and protected kids, you know, that's pretty universal.

870
00:56:02,630 --> 00:56:08,630
Um, but sort of, you know, other attributes are sort of um are

871
00:56:08,630 --> 00:56:12,470
sort of spin-offs of sort of the the problem in the first place, right?

872
00:56:12,630 --> 00:56:17,990
Like that what counts as a high status, high power position means that you don't think

873
00:56:17,990 --> 00:56:19,110
about your family, right?

874
00:56:19,270 --> 00:56:24,760
And because, you know, historically, if that's men, um it's not

875
00:56:25,400 --> 00:56:30,040
variability in men's motivation to care for children is higher than women's.

876
00:56:30,200 --> 00:56:32,440
Um assume let's assume that.

877
00:56:32,520 --> 00:56:36,840
And so yeah, um, so sort of the idea that what a workplace looks like and what an

878
00:56:36,840 --> 00:56:40,520
acceptable workplace looks like is one that doesn't have kids in it or that doesn't have

879
00:56:40,920 --> 00:56:42,120
parenting in it.

880
00:56:42,760 --> 00:56:47,560
Um that that is that's not just a concept, that's not an act of God.

881
00:56:47,640 --> 00:56:50,520
That's a consequence of who, which group was in power.

882
00:56:50,650 --> 00:56:51,450
Um, right.

883
00:56:52,010 --> 00:56:55,290
Um, and so I think that relates then.

884
00:56:55,450 --> 00:57:01,210
That's my preface to this this thing you said, which is um, and I think it this does

885
00:57:01,210 --> 00:57:05,610
speak to what people often think, and I do want to challenge it a little bit.

886
00:57:05,690 --> 00:57:08,730
I'm not saying you think this, I want to we're we're exploring this together.

887
00:57:08,810 --> 00:57:10,010
I want to be clear.

888
00:57:10,170 --> 00:57:15,880
Um, is this idea that um so if there's more women

889
00:57:16,040 --> 00:57:22,040
there's more men than women in positions of power um uh or if

890
00:57:22,440 --> 00:57:28,200
um or or women's representation in stem for example because of interest in mechanical

891
00:57:28,200 --> 00:57:33,960
versus social things then and in this this expression that it's not an injustice that's

892
00:57:33,960 --> 00:57:39,550
just sort of how the world works I think that that's I think that that's what people think,

893
00:57:39,630 --> 00:57:41,550
and I think that's the inference they draw.

894
00:57:41,710 --> 00:57:47,630
But I do worry that that runs this risk of it

895
00:57:48,670 --> 00:57:52,830
there's a set of inferences there that I think are not spoken.

896
00:57:52,910 --> 00:57:56,190
And I and I'm I would push back on it and challenge it a little bit.

897
00:57:56,270 --> 00:58:01,070
And it relates to this thing that I just said about the the sort of standards.

898
00:58:01,230 --> 00:58:06,860
So for example, STEM The idea that men

899
00:58:07,020 --> 00:58:12,860
versus women, their representation in STEM is different because interest in

900
00:58:12,860 --> 00:58:15,180
mechanical versus social things.

901
00:58:15,340 --> 00:58:17,980
Um, let's let's accept that that's true.

902
00:58:18,060 --> 00:58:23,980
Like let's not, you know, uh things can be factually correct and in in it,

903
00:58:24,060 --> 00:58:25,980
let's let's assume that that's true.

904
00:58:26,210 --> 00:58:31,570
Um, on average, there's still the issue of um

905
00:58:31,810 --> 00:58:37,730
there's ways to be a really good scientist that engages and appeals to

906
00:58:37,730 --> 00:58:39,890
being interested in social things.

907
00:58:40,690 --> 00:58:46,210
Uh and there's there's a way to be a scientist that engages an interest in mechanical

908
00:58:46,210 --> 00:58:46,610
things.

909
00:58:46,850 --> 00:58:52,130
And you know, you and I know people who um from all walks of life, just the individual

910
00:58:52,130 --> 00:58:55,200
differences, they really like different things like that.

911
00:58:55,280 --> 00:58:59,440
And yet, and I think for me, I love thinking about social things from a mechanical

912
00:58:59,440 --> 00:58:59,760
perspective.

913
00:58:59,920 --> 00:59:01,680
Like actually marrying those two is really weird.

914
00:59:01,760 --> 00:59:04,480
And I actually think that that's what I love about evolutionary psychology.

915
00:59:04,720 --> 00:59:10,720
But that's also why, you know, I think there's a lot of people who like marrying

916
00:59:10,720 --> 00:59:12,000
those two things together.

917
00:59:12,160 --> 00:59:17,790
Um, and and so, but I but I would say that if there's more

918
00:59:18,110 --> 00:59:23,790
men than women in in in science, um the question then is is that

919
00:59:23,790 --> 00:59:29,310
science is that is that a consequence of um is that an

920
00:59:29,310 --> 00:59:34,510
objective feature of sort of what who makes the best scientist for that topic

921
00:59:35,150 --> 00:59:40,240
versus um That's a consequence of the

922
00:59:40,880 --> 00:59:46,320
evolved psychological differences in the human beings that have been granted

923
00:59:46,320 --> 00:59:52,080
status to do that science and generate the research questions and talk about

924
00:59:52,080 --> 00:59:53,040
what exists.

925
00:59:53,440 --> 00:59:58,790
Are those is that bias in that organism

926
00:59:58,950 --> 01:00:04,550
evolves psychology first, and then consequently, the science itself is a reflection of

927
01:00:05,030 --> 01:00:06,630
those differences.

928
01:00:07,270 --> 01:00:13,270
Um, and so I I do think there's an argument that um it might be an

929
01:00:13,270 --> 01:00:19,190
injustice, and it's not how the world works, because it it it it assumes that the current

930
01:00:19,190 --> 01:00:24,920
distribution Is a consequence of the of the best way to do science as opposed

931
01:00:24,920 --> 01:00:30,520
to um saying, well, how would if you had a

932
01:00:30,520 --> 01:00:36,040
science that uh anybody could do, uh anybody could

933
01:00:36,280 --> 01:00:40,520
anybody could do it no matter what their social class was or what they look like or their

934
01:00:40,520 --> 01:00:46,280
social bargaining power in an ideal world, how different would the content of the

935
01:00:46,280 --> 01:00:52,170
science be um For um compared to what it

936
01:00:52,170 --> 01:00:52,490
is now.

937
01:00:52,730 --> 01:00:55,690
And let me give you an example of this that I think is true.

938
01:00:55,930 --> 01:01:01,850
That is the flip side of this, which is that academia

939
01:01:01,850 --> 01:01:03,290
is deeply classist.

940
01:01:05,050 --> 01:01:10,650
There's not a lot of people that come from working class backgrounds in

941
01:01:10,650 --> 01:01:11,770
academia.

942
01:01:12,540 --> 01:01:18,220
you know and I think some of that is uh that's not always true but um

943
01:01:18,460 --> 01:01:24,300
uh but it's in historically it was less true I think but that's very few

944
01:01:24,300 --> 01:01:28,460
people who don't you know have parents who are college graduates or have graduate degrees

945
01:01:28,540 --> 01:01:31,340
or or you know that's right the first yeah yeah that's right.

946
01:01:31,500 --> 01:01:36,690
And so one question to ask is sort of um The ways in which

947
01:01:37,010 --> 01:01:42,050
class issues or social justice issues or anything gets framed,

948
01:01:43,010 --> 01:01:44,290
is that a consequence?

949
01:01:44,450 --> 01:01:48,690
Like, how would that be different if more human brains that experienced

950
01:01:50,530 --> 01:01:52,610
deprivation social class based?

951
01:01:52,690 --> 01:01:57,890
I mean, I'm not saying, you know, obviously there's lots of people interested in, you know,

952
01:01:58,050 --> 01:02:03,980
uh women's rights or black rights or you know multinational conflict or

953
01:02:04,060 --> 01:02:05,980
or things who have experienced these horrible things.

954
01:02:06,060 --> 01:02:12,060
I'm not suggesting right that, but um but it's an example of there might be a

955
01:02:12,060 --> 01:02:17,100
biased perspective in the science that's a consequence of sort of the li the life the life

956
01:02:17,100 --> 01:02:19,980
experiences of uh of the scientists.

957
01:02:20,140 --> 01:02:26,010
And I think um so that's I that I want to just put that idea out that um that it

958
01:02:26,010 --> 01:02:31,130
may not it may be an injustice in the sense of um

959
01:02:31,770 --> 01:02:37,530
uh running the experiment to see is this distribution what we would

960
01:02:37,530 --> 01:02:43,290
expect to see for people who are interested in uh pursuing what they find

961
01:02:43,290 --> 01:02:44,090
interesting.

962
01:02:44,540 --> 01:02:45,580
Yeah, no, totally.

963
01:02:45,740 --> 01:02:49,420
I I I I fully agree that there is a case to be made there.

964
01:02:49,900 --> 01:02:55,180
Um, but I think that case is different from the case that has conventionally been made.

965
01:02:55,340 --> 01:03:01,340
Uh and because of that difference, um, it it's hard to convince people that, you

966
01:03:01,340 --> 01:03:05,660
know, evolutionary psychology is on the side of feminism or is compatible with with

967
01:03:05,660 --> 01:03:06,220
feminism.

968
01:03:06,460 --> 01:03:09,020
So it took you a long time to spell out that argument.

969
01:03:09,180 --> 01:03:14,490
Um and often uh people don't have the patience to sit there and hear those uh

970
01:03:14,490 --> 01:03:16,650
alternative arguments for feminism.

971
01:03:16,810 --> 01:03:21,290
Um instead, they have the conventional argument for feminism, which is men and women are

972
01:03:21,290 --> 01:03:25,290
equal, any difference is a result of discrimination, therefore we see differences,

973
01:03:25,450 --> 01:03:28,330
therefore, that's um an injustice.

974
01:03:28,490 --> 01:03:32,410
That's the conventional way of understanding the political situation.

975
01:03:32,490 --> 01:03:37,370
And insofar as you depart from that conventional understanding, uh you're going to get uh

976
01:03:37,450 --> 01:03:40,980
uh rightly or wrongly categorized as being on the other side.

977
01:03:41,140 --> 01:03:44,900
And it could be that you don't take that that conventional understanding and you have a

978
01:03:44,900 --> 01:03:46,020
different argument for feminism.

979
01:03:46,180 --> 01:03:49,700
And there are different arguments you could make, and and many of them are likely valid and

980
01:03:49,700 --> 01:03:50,340
plausible.

981
01:03:50,420 --> 01:03:53,940
Uh but insofar as you are making a different argument from the conventional argument, you

982
01:03:53,940 --> 01:03:58,420
run this risk of of being uh categorized as being on the other side.

983
01:03:59,380 --> 01:03:59,860
Interesting.

984
01:04:00,100 --> 01:04:04,820
Yeah, I wonder, I do wonder the assumption that sort of people

985
01:04:06,770 --> 01:04:10,610
People have to be equal or the same.

986
01:04:10,770 --> 01:04:16,530
Um, and if it's not, I I do I know people say people say that

987
01:04:16,770 --> 01:04:21,090
it would be interesting to sort of look at that and and sort of poke on that empirically.

988
01:04:21,170 --> 01:04:25,490
Maybe we can find somebody who who does this professionally and and see what they think

989
01:04:25,490 --> 01:04:26,130
about that.

990
01:04:26,290 --> 01:04:31,540
Um the the people who use Ev

991
01:04:31,700 --> 01:04:36,100
PSYC to sort of further these ideas, and there are, if you look on YouTube, I mean, I think

992
01:04:36,100 --> 01:04:42,100
one of the reasons why for me I started, I wanted to do this podcast was, you know, I was

993
01:04:42,100 --> 01:04:44,900
talking to lots of colleagues in Ev Psyche.

994
01:04:45,140 --> 01:04:49,620
Um, and and a lot of people were saying, you know, if you really look on YouTube or

995
01:04:49,620 --> 01:04:51,780
podcasts, it's really horrible what's out there.

996
01:04:51,860 --> 01:04:53,700
And I was like, well, how bad can it be?

997
01:04:54,020 --> 01:04:59,930
And so I looked one day, and the very first thing that came

998
01:04:59,930 --> 01:05:05,210
up was, and I'm not gonna mention um whose podcast this was, but you people can look it up

999
01:05:05,210 --> 01:05:05,770
if they want.

1000
01:05:05,930 --> 01:05:11,370
But uh the title of the type of the episode was Kamala Harris is a lobotomized

1001
01:05:11,370 --> 01:05:12,250
communist.

1002
01:05:13,050 --> 01:05:18,560
Um, and that was one of the first uh um uh podcasts that came up and and

1003
01:05:19,200 --> 01:05:21,200
so this came up after searching for evolutionary psychologists.

1004
01:05:21,280 --> 01:05:22,000
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1005
01:05:22,160 --> 01:05:22,480
Oh wow.

1006
01:05:22,560 --> 01:05:22,720
Whatever.

1007
01:05:23,040 --> 01:05:24,480
Yeah, that was one of the yeah, exactly.

1008
01:05:24,560 --> 01:05:28,080
And I mean, and I actually listened to it because I was like, well, I find this really

1009
01:05:28,320 --> 01:05:32,480
offensive, but like, you know, I'm an evolutionary psychologist about my finding something

1010
01:05:32,480 --> 01:05:32,880
offensive.

1011
01:05:32,960 --> 01:05:36,400
And I I am a student of of the David Pinsoff et al.

1012
01:05:36,560 --> 01:05:42,240
argument, which is that um my own political opinions and my own sort of like

1013
01:05:42,240 --> 01:05:45,630
feeling like something is morally reprehensible.

1014
01:05:45,790 --> 01:05:50,670
I mean, there are, of course, there's you know, real morally reprehensible things, but um

1015
01:05:50,910 --> 01:05:53,310
in clear lines, but sort of something like that.

1016
01:05:53,390 --> 01:05:54,430
I was like, oh, that's horrible.

1017
01:05:54,510 --> 01:05:56,190
But like, let's see, what's the argument, right?

1018
01:05:56,430 --> 01:06:02,270
And I mean, it was basically something like um uh the idea was uh

1019
01:06:03,310 --> 01:06:08,260
groceries are expensive, people sort of feel taken advantage of.

1020
01:06:08,500 --> 01:06:14,020
And if you um and so Kamala Harris was interested in sort of um

1021
01:06:14,340 --> 01:06:19,700
some policies that would address that concern, and the perspective of the person was sort

1022
01:06:19,700 --> 01:06:23,460
of like, well, that runs counter to all of human nature.

1023
01:06:23,700 --> 01:06:29,410
Uh, because you know, people by nature are sort of uh competitive, they don't want

1024
01:06:29,410 --> 01:06:30,450
equal outcomes.

1025
01:06:30,610 --> 01:06:35,490
And so if you force people uh to sort of um

1026
01:06:36,050 --> 01:06:41,330
equal outcomes, then you're gonna have um, you know, uh Lenin

1027
01:06:41,490 --> 01:06:46,930
style um disorder and chaos, and you're running completely

1028
01:06:46,930 --> 01:06:51,250
contrary to to human nature, um, was sort of the the idea.

1029
01:06:51,490 --> 01:06:56,140
Um And uh and I found that

1030
01:06:57,100 --> 01:07:02,860
historically, but also just evolutionary psychologically super reductive and pretty lazy,

1031
01:07:03,020 --> 01:07:03,900
frankly.

1032
01:07:04,220 --> 01:07:10,220
Um and I think for me, what I'm always struck

1033
01:07:10,220 --> 01:07:15,630
with is um is how one-dimensional a lot of these narratives are.

1034
01:07:15,870 --> 01:07:20,910
Where it's the sort of thing of, you know, if men, men are more interested in sexual

1035
01:07:20,910 --> 01:07:26,750
variety than women, you know, um, if that's uh just given differences in selection

1036
01:07:26,750 --> 01:07:27,310
pressures.

1037
01:07:27,470 --> 01:07:30,270
Um and so part of the mating psychology is that.

1038
01:07:30,350 --> 01:07:32,350
And then and then it's sort of dot dot dot.

1039
01:07:32,510 --> 01:07:38,110
Therefore, you know, we can excuse or justify or explain or

1040
01:07:38,110 --> 01:07:43,160
understand why there's nothing to be done about these other the these outcomes in life

1041
01:07:43,320 --> 01:07:49,160
right that that people take issue with um reasonably enough or not

1042
01:07:49,320 --> 01:07:53,880
depending on what what it is um but but again that that's sort of it's really

1043
01:07:53,880 --> 01:07:59,880
unidimensional be and it comes back to this diorama model I think which is looking at this

1044
01:07:59,880 --> 01:08:05,000
outcome you're saying well look over evolutionary time I think this was like a recurring

1045
01:08:05,000 --> 01:08:10,610
dynamic right um For example, let's assume that over evolutionary time there was

1046
01:08:10,610 --> 01:08:11,810
domestic abuse, right?

1047
01:08:11,890 --> 01:08:14,690
I mean, chimps actually do a lot of this.

1048
01:08:14,770 --> 01:08:18,450
Um, it's not something people like to talk about because there's concerns about, you know,

1049
01:08:18,690 --> 01:08:19,650
protecting chimps.

1050
01:08:19,730 --> 01:08:23,650
And if people find out there's a lot of domestic abuse among chimps in natural

1051
01:08:23,650 --> 01:08:28,240
environments, people might not like that reasonably enough, but um, but it's true.

1052
01:08:28,320 --> 01:08:29,360
Um it does happen.

1053
01:08:29,520 --> 01:08:34,480
And so um, this idea, this naturalistic fallacy, that sort of this idea that something

1054
01:08:34,480 --> 01:08:39,680
happens, therefore it's inevitable, again, I think it's sort of this this unidimensional

1055
01:08:39,680 --> 01:08:39,840
thing.

1056
01:08:39,920 --> 01:08:42,080
And it's because you're not thinking about the software.

1057
01:08:42,480 --> 01:08:42,640
Yeah.

1058
01:08:42,880 --> 01:08:48,480
So so let's say, for example, that um let's stipulate that uh

1059
01:08:48,640 --> 01:08:53,680
the value of sexual variety as a representation is higher in men than it is in women.

1060
01:08:54,130 --> 01:08:56,610
I think there's good empirical evidence for that.

1061
01:08:57,650 --> 01:09:01,970
If you take that, if you take that claim and somebody says, well, look, at the level of the

1062
01:09:01,970 --> 01:09:04,290
software, that representation is there.

1063
01:09:05,330 --> 01:09:06,850
That's a claim about the software.

1064
01:09:06,930 --> 01:09:08,850
It's not a claim about the inevitability.

1065
01:09:09,330 --> 01:09:12,450
It's not of any outcome or any even any behavior.

1066
01:09:12,610 --> 01:09:16,770
And it's it's framed in a way where, in the way you and I naturally think, but I think in

1067
01:09:16,770 --> 01:09:21,810
the way many people, especially who are not trained in this approach, they don't think, is

1068
01:09:21,810 --> 01:09:25,580
that there's hundreds of thousands, if not millions, if not trillions.

1069
01:09:25,740 --> 01:09:29,100
I mean, what my iPhone does in a second is like a trillion things at once to take a photo.

1070
01:09:29,180 --> 01:09:32,460
So we don't have to worry about like how many process processes there are.

1071
01:09:32,540 --> 01:09:34,300
There can be any number as many as we need.

1072
01:09:34,380 --> 01:09:35,340
There's a lot.

1073
01:09:38,220 --> 01:09:39,740
There's a lot of stuff going on.

1074
01:09:39,820 --> 01:09:41,180
There's a lot of representations.

1075
01:09:41,340 --> 01:09:47,190
So even in a romantic relationship, um maybe sexual variety is a

1076
01:09:47,190 --> 01:09:52,870
higher is valued higher in men than women, but there's all kinds of other things going on.

1077
01:09:53,030 --> 01:09:59,030
There's also um am I what kind of relationship there's just what kind of relationship

1078
01:09:59,030 --> 01:10:00,710
am I in with this person?

1079
01:10:01,190 --> 01:10:04,230
Um what uh do they trust me?

1080
01:10:04,470 --> 01:10:06,790
What do I get out of this relationship?

1081
01:10:06,950 --> 01:10:08,870
What are they counting on me for?

1082
01:10:09,110 --> 01:10:11,510
Am I trying to exploit them or not?

1083
01:10:11,670 --> 01:10:17,500
Um There's there's counter-detection of exploitation in the partner.

1084
01:10:17,900 --> 01:10:21,500
There's a lot of um what are the things that we need to do?

1085
01:10:21,660 --> 01:10:24,300
Is this going to be a betrayal of the relationship?

1086
01:10:24,620 --> 01:10:30,300
Um uh there's just a ton of things that are all evolved things

1087
01:10:30,540 --> 01:10:36,110
that all have selection pressures for them that are really important

1088
01:10:36,430 --> 01:10:40,990
for fitness and that would be part of our software.

1089
01:10:41,630 --> 01:10:47,150
And if you just sort of take one representation out of context and say,

1090
01:10:47,790 --> 01:10:51,470
on average, just this sort of representation is here,

1091
01:10:54,110 --> 01:10:59,150
you can kind of see how people, if they're not thinking about all the other software and

1092
01:10:59,150 --> 01:11:03,940
all the other reasons, all the other countervailing software, Um

1093
01:11:04,900 --> 01:11:09,220
it it if you just talk about um

1094
01:11:10,980 --> 01:11:16,180
if you just talk about the one bit of software, it sort of essentializes it or it almost

1095
01:11:16,180 --> 01:11:21,140
metonymizes to to pull a word, you know, metonymy uh the part for the whole.

1096
01:11:21,380 --> 01:11:21,620
Right.

1097
01:11:21,780 --> 01:11:27,570
Um it sort of it sort of it does that to and it it in it

1098
01:11:27,810 --> 01:11:31,570
it is essentially it's overly reductive or essentialistic.

1099
01:11:31,810 --> 01:11:35,490
It's the same, the same thing, and I'll I'll shut up in a second, but the same thing with

1100
01:11:35,490 --> 01:11:41,250
the podcast, which is this idea that um, you know, communism, quote unquote, and

1101
01:11:41,250 --> 01:11:46,930
usually, I mean, that's a that's a there's been a lot of um uh propaganda

1102
01:11:46,930 --> 01:11:50,380
related to the idea of communism um over over time.

1103
01:11:50,540 --> 01:11:52,140
And I mean, I'm not a communist.

1104
01:11:52,220 --> 01:11:58,220
And I was living in Berlin and I understand what a communist regime, not personally, but

1105
01:11:58,300 --> 01:11:59,980
you know, I saw a lot of the consequences of that.

1106
01:12:00,140 --> 01:12:05,820
But this idea that sort of caring about social well-being

1107
01:12:05,820 --> 01:12:11,470
among other people, or that intrinsic um that people only are

1108
01:12:11,470 --> 01:12:17,310
interested in exploiting one another, um, or any any sense of sort of a dynamic of

1109
01:12:17,310 --> 01:12:22,190
equality or checking exploitation runs counter to human nature.

1110
01:12:22,510 --> 01:12:28,510
That idea was implicit in why Kamala Harris is a lobotomized communist, right?

1111
01:12:28,750 --> 01:12:33,660
Um but but actually if you look, and one of the people we should have on here is Chris von

1112
01:12:33,820 --> 01:12:39,580
Ruthen, um who studies egalitarian societies, there's a lot of complicated software in

1113
01:12:39,580 --> 01:12:39,820
people.

1114
01:12:39,980 --> 01:12:45,660
And what even um um Alan Fiske s finds is that there's all there's

1115
01:12:45,660 --> 01:12:49,740
different kinds of um uh sort of um

1116
01:12:50,690 --> 01:12:56,530
reciprocal relationships or status relationships that are sort of stable and

1117
01:12:56,530 --> 01:12:58,530
modes of representing relationships.

1118
01:12:58,930 --> 01:13:03,090
So sort of things where there's a market or or there's a quality.

1119
01:13:03,730 --> 01:13:08,050
These are sort of all different kinds of representations and they hold under different

1120
01:13:08,050 --> 01:13:09,410
circumstances for different reasons.

1121
01:13:09,490 --> 01:13:11,650
And there's costs and benefits to each.

1122
01:13:16,780 --> 01:13:20,940
or even for like the women being, you know, pursuing power thing.

1123
01:13:21,020 --> 01:13:26,540
I think all these things sort of they they talk about a narrow representation in the

1124
01:13:26,540 --> 01:13:27,660
evolved system.

1125
01:13:28,700 --> 01:13:34,220
And then there's a long, often implicit logical chain leading to,

1126
01:13:34,700 --> 01:13:38,050
well, therefore, there's nothing to be done about this thing.

1127
01:13:38,130 --> 01:13:41,330
And for me at least, that's where I would push back.

1128
01:13:41,650 --> 01:13:46,850
And I think it's an overly reductionistic um approach,

1129
01:13:47,490 --> 01:13:53,250
which is um looking at any outcome in the world and seeing it as

1130
01:13:53,250 --> 01:13:54,210
inevitable.

1131
01:13:58,770 --> 01:14:00,770
And things are pretty complicated.

1132
01:14:01,880 --> 01:14:06,600
And I mean, even looking, and one of the benefits of an evolutionary approach too is I

1133
01:14:06,600 --> 01:14:12,360
think looking across cultures, because I, you know, I

1134
01:14:12,360 --> 01:14:16,040
mentioned one of the first episodes that, you know, I grew up in a very religious

1135
01:14:16,200 --> 01:14:21,720
fundamentalist um upbringing, and discovering that there were things that were very similar

1136
01:14:21,720 --> 01:14:27,160
to what I experienced in hunter gather groups, where there was like possession, um, and you

1137
01:14:27,160 --> 01:14:30,920
know, basically the hunter gatherer equivalent of like speaking in tongues.

1138
01:14:31,070 --> 01:14:35,710
Um, you know, that was really compelling for me because I thought, oh, well, that this is

1139
01:14:35,710 --> 01:14:38,030
like more of a human universal thing, right?

1140
01:14:38,190 --> 01:14:39,470
But there's also differences.

1141
01:14:39,550 --> 01:14:45,550
Like there's there's um there's evidence of like people being gay or transgender

1142
01:14:45,550 --> 01:14:50,430
in the um um um anthropological literature and people

1143
01:14:51,390 --> 01:14:54,750
don't react immediately with violence against those people.

1144
01:14:54,830 --> 01:14:59,080
You know, they're people they know and they're just like, you know, that's different, uh,

1145
01:14:59,240 --> 01:15:01,800
interesting, and they um in many cases they don't care.

1146
01:15:01,880 --> 01:15:07,640
And so I think seeing cultural variation is sort of baked into the um

1147
01:15:08,120 --> 01:15:13,800
evolutionary social sciences in this way of uh it's with this

1148
01:15:13,800 --> 01:15:19,480
political, a political class that's interested in divisive issues and

1149
01:15:19,800 --> 01:15:22,760
is looking for a market of ideas that are divisive.

1150
01:15:23,000 --> 01:15:28,990
Without that, there are just certain outcomes that that aren't uh that don't have the same

1151
01:15:28,990 --> 01:15:30,750
energy that that they have for us.

1152
01:15:30,910 --> 01:15:34,510
And so um actually I don't know what my point was.

1153
01:15:34,590 --> 01:15:36,270
I mean I've been rambling.

1154
01:15:36,350 --> 01:15:36,830
I'll shut up.

1155
01:15:37,630 --> 01:15:39,470
Let me say what I think your point was.

1156
01:15:39,710 --> 01:15:40,190
Okay, good.

1157
01:15:40,670 --> 01:15:45,950
Uh I think your point was that if you focus on any particular

1158
01:15:45,950 --> 01:15:51,420
adaptation while blacking out everything else, um, and use

1159
01:15:52,060 --> 01:15:57,980
that spotlight understanding of one particular part of us to uh form moral

1160
01:15:57,980 --> 01:16:02,700
and political arguments, you're inevitably going to have bad moral and political arguments

1161
01:16:02,860 --> 01:16:04,460
because humans are complicated.

1162
01:16:04,540 --> 01:16:07,260
We have many different interacting parts.

1163
01:16:07,340 --> 01:16:12,220
Um and if you focus on one part and isolate it and ignore all the other stuff, uh, you're

1164
01:16:12,220 --> 01:16:17,650
gonna have an impoverished understanding of what humans are like and and what the best ways

1165
01:16:17,650 --> 01:16:20,050
are to arrange humans in political systems.

1166
01:16:20,290 --> 01:16:24,530
The mistake would sort of be like zooming in on the bladder and saying we evolved to empty

1167
01:16:24,530 --> 01:16:29,170
our bladders, therefore we shouldn't have toilets because we need to empty our bladders and

1168
01:16:29,170 --> 01:16:31,250
we should just walk around with adult diapers.

1169
01:16:31,730 --> 01:16:35,410
Obviously, that argument is fallacious because we have, you know, lots of competing

1170
01:16:35,410 --> 01:16:35,890
motivations.

1171
01:16:35,970 --> 01:16:40,620
The urge to empty our bladder is one of many motivations that uh filters up the processing

1172
01:16:40,620 --> 01:16:41,580
hierarchy into our brain.

1173
01:16:41,660 --> 01:16:42,700
It makes it into consciousness.

1174
01:16:42,860 --> 01:16:47,500
And we can weigh that motivation against other motivations, like uh whether there's a clean

1175
01:16:47,500 --> 01:16:52,300
bathroom around us, you know, how far away we are from home, um, et cetera, et cetera.

1176
01:16:52,620 --> 01:16:58,620
So uh focusing on one adaptation uh while ignoring all the other ones

1177
01:16:58,620 --> 01:17:00,030
is is is bad.

1178
01:17:00,830 --> 01:17:05,150
We need to understand the fact that um adaptations don't uh exist in a vacuum.

1179
01:17:05,310 --> 01:17:10,430
They often evolve in tandem alongside other adaptations, and they evolve to fit well with

1180
01:17:10,510 --> 01:17:12,110
uh other adaptations.

1181
01:17:12,750 --> 01:17:18,750
Um and the other uh flaw in that line of reasoning is that it's sort of this

1182
01:17:18,750 --> 01:17:24,360
puppeteer model of uh human behavior, where there's sort of uh a one-to-one

1183
01:17:24,520 --> 01:17:29,640
mapping between gene and behavior or gene and outcome, where the genes just directly pull

1184
01:17:29,640 --> 01:17:31,080
the strings of your behavior.

1185
01:17:31,240 --> 01:17:36,200
They directly make you do something, and there's no intervening layer between the gene and

1186
01:17:36,200 --> 01:17:37,560
the outcome, right?

1187
01:17:38,120 --> 01:17:43,910
Um this is sort of the mistake that um early sociobiologists made

1188
01:17:44,070 --> 01:17:50,070
is that they they uh they focused on behaviors and genes for behaviors, uh, as if

1189
01:17:50,070 --> 01:17:53,110
there was no intervening layer between the gene and the behavior.

1190
01:17:53,350 --> 01:17:59,350
Um this was uh the insight that Leda Cosmodies and John Tubies had John Tubi had when they

1191
01:17:59,350 --> 01:18:04,790
uh uh developed evolutionary psychology, is that we need to focus on the intervening layer.

1192
01:18:04,950 --> 01:18:10,720
There's all this stuff that happens in between the gene and the behavior that is

1193
01:18:10,720 --> 01:18:12,400
extraordinarily complicated.

1194
01:18:12,560 --> 01:18:15,920
And that is the stuff that we need to understand.

1195
01:18:16,320 --> 01:18:21,760
You can have a gene that increases a motivation by a small amount.

1196
01:18:21,920 --> 01:18:27,760
You can have a gene that uh increases uh the likelihood uh that you might

1197
01:18:27,760 --> 01:18:33,650
form a particular conclusion about um a set of facts, but the genes are

1198
01:18:33,650 --> 01:18:35,810
not pulling the strings of your behavior directly.

1199
01:18:35,970 --> 01:18:41,090
What they're doing is they're shaping your motivations and predispositions and intuitions

1200
01:18:41,090 --> 01:18:46,210
in a way that might tilt you toward behaving uh in some ways in some contexts.

1201
01:18:46,450 --> 01:18:50,530
Um, but it's not a one-to-one deterministic mapping.

1202
01:18:50,850 --> 01:18:56,200
There's this whole uh layer of intervening stuff, And a lot of that, I think, is what

1203
01:18:56,200 --> 01:18:57,160
consciousness is for.

1204
01:18:57,320 --> 01:19:03,240
So we have tons of different systems in our head, different uh motives that are competing

1205
01:19:03,320 --> 01:19:05,960
uh to guide our behavior at any moment in time.

1206
01:19:06,120 --> 01:19:08,520
And we need some way of adjudicating between all of them.

1207
01:19:08,760 --> 01:19:12,440
You know, do I uh go home to go to the bathroom or do I hold it?

1208
01:19:12,600 --> 01:19:18,520
Um, do I say the thing that I want to say, or do I uh suppress it and say the nice

1209
01:19:18,600 --> 01:19:20,280
sounding thing instead?

1210
01:19:20,440 --> 01:19:23,080
Um I think this is what consciousness is for.

1211
01:19:23,160 --> 01:19:25,330
This is why we have consciousness.

1212
01:19:26,210 --> 01:19:30,850
So the the one of the most popular theories of consciousness is called the global workspace

1213
01:19:30,850 --> 01:19:35,890
model, where we have all of these different um systems in the head that evolve to serve

1214
01:19:35,890 --> 01:19:36,770
different purposes.

1215
01:19:37,090 --> 01:19:42,050
We have different motivations, different urges and long-term desires, different plans and

1216
01:19:42,050 --> 01:19:43,570
expectations and intuitions.

1217
01:19:43,730 --> 01:19:46,850
And all of this stuff just sort of dumps into this global workspace.

1218
01:19:47,010 --> 01:19:51,890
And the global workspace is the part of the mind where everything dumps into, and we need

1219
01:19:51,890 --> 01:19:53,260
to figure out what to actually do.

1220
01:19:53,420 --> 01:19:54,780
We only have one body, right?

1221
01:19:54,940 --> 01:19:56,460
We can only do one thing at a time.

1222
01:19:56,620 --> 01:19:59,500
We can only pursue one course of action at a time.

1223
01:19:59,740 --> 01:20:02,780
How do we figure out what to do next?

1224
01:20:03,260 --> 01:20:08,380
Um, and so that I think is probably is is is the best theory of consciousness that I've

1225
01:20:08,380 --> 01:20:09,580
heard so far.

1226
01:20:09,740 --> 01:20:14,590
Um, and once we understand that our minds work this way, that we have this uh this global

1227
01:20:14,590 --> 01:20:16,350
workspace that everything dumps into.

1228
01:20:16,590 --> 01:20:21,950
Uh you get away from this idea that there's a one-to-one mapping between, oh, men uh want

1229
01:20:21,950 --> 01:20:25,230
to have sex with lots of women, therefore they're inevitably going to have sex with lots of

1230
01:20:25,230 --> 01:20:25,470
women.

1231
01:20:25,630 --> 01:20:27,870
Well, no, that's not the only adaptation in men's head.

1232
01:20:28,030 --> 01:20:33,150
They have all sorts of other motivations and agendas and priorities and considerations that

1233
01:20:33,150 --> 01:20:37,300
are uh duking it out uh in the in the theater of their conscious awareness.

1234
01:20:37,460 --> 01:20:39,940
Uh and we need to understand how all that stuff works.

1235
01:20:40,100 --> 01:20:46,100
We can't focus on one part tiny part of it in isolation and expect to have uh a coherent

1236
01:20:46,180 --> 01:20:50,180
uh uh uh moral understanding uh uh to emerge from it.

1237
01:20:50,820 --> 01:20:51,860
Yeah that's right.

1238
01:20:52,020 --> 01:20:53,140
Um very good.

1239
01:20:53,220 --> 01:20:58,990
And I think um and I would add to that that there's this additional thing in addition to

1240
01:20:58,990 --> 01:21:00,430
misunderstanding and isolating.

1241
01:21:00,510 --> 01:21:02,350
Thank you for articulating my point.

1242
01:21:02,510 --> 01:21:08,270
Um is there's also then this additional idea beyond this essentializing

1243
01:21:08,270 --> 01:21:14,190
or unitizing the adaptations, which again are not

1244
01:21:14,190 --> 01:21:18,430
just motivation settings, but also making motivations possible, decision making possible,

1245
01:21:18,510 --> 01:21:18,910
etc.

1246
01:21:19,230 --> 01:21:24,030
Is that um there's also the thing of beyond

1247
01:21:24,980 --> 01:21:30,340
psychology, there is this thing of well, what is the structure of these social

1248
01:21:30,580 --> 01:21:31,220
institutions?

1249
01:21:31,860 --> 01:21:37,300
It comes back to the spurber idea of what are the representations in people's

1250
01:21:37,300 --> 01:21:38,180
heads.

1251
01:21:38,740 --> 01:21:40,660
What does psychology look like?

1252
01:21:40,820 --> 01:21:45,780
What does science look like as a consequence of a historical process of evolved organisms

1253
01:21:45,780 --> 01:21:48,740
in a status game, in a status competition?

1254
01:21:49,510 --> 01:21:54,950
I'm sure you and I, and any psychologist or anybody in any status scheme has a

1255
01:21:54,950 --> 01:22:00,150
criticism of the current state of it and thinks it would be better in a different form

1256
01:22:00,710 --> 01:22:02,230
for various reasons.

1257
01:22:02,470 --> 01:22:03,350
I certainly do.

1258
01:22:03,430 --> 01:22:04,950
I I think you do too.

1259
01:22:05,110 --> 01:22:11,110
Um, and uh and but but that's the third point I would make too, which is that

1260
01:22:11,800 --> 01:22:17,320
when people look at the status quo, they're arguing that the

1261
01:22:17,320 --> 01:22:23,000
current form of what a science looks like, um, what uh

1262
01:22:23,160 --> 01:22:28,040
what the power distribution in society looks like, the expectation of what a scientist is,

1263
01:22:28,200 --> 01:22:33,080
how I interact with the scientist, the kinds of questions that are rational, the kinds of

1264
01:22:33,410 --> 01:22:37,650
concerns that are the right concerns, the right concerns that we're allowed to talk about

1265
01:22:37,730 --> 01:22:41,970
that we're not allowed to talk about, that matter or don't matter,

1266
01:22:43,730 --> 01:22:45,970
those things are not an act of God.

1267
01:22:46,050 --> 01:22:48,690
Those are a consequence of the particular status schemes.

1268
01:22:48,770 --> 01:22:53,650
And so the argument would be that the

1269
01:22:54,920 --> 01:23:00,280
leaving aside the misunderstanding of evolutionary psychology, the argument is that no

1270
01:23:00,920 --> 01:23:06,520
single adaptation or structure of an adaptation is a complete story of why the status

1271
01:23:06,520 --> 01:23:11,160
scheme has produced a science that looks like it does, or a society that looks the way it

1272
01:23:11,160 --> 01:23:11,560
does.

1273
01:23:11,800 --> 01:23:16,280
It's a complicated answer to even if you knew everything about the individual psychologies,

1274
01:23:16,360 --> 01:23:18,040
there's a dynamic of how they interact.

1275
01:23:18,120 --> 01:23:22,490
And that's why anthropology and sociology just doesn't reduce to psychology.

1276
01:23:22,650 --> 01:23:26,970
Even if we knew everything about the software and the mind, we would still have these other

1277
01:23:27,290 --> 01:23:30,490
systems or these other sciences to study these things.

1278
01:23:30,650 --> 01:23:36,650
And so I think the analog or the analogy for me would be something like um women

1279
01:23:36,650 --> 01:23:40,810
in men's proportions are different in clothing, generally speaking.

1280
01:23:42,330 --> 01:23:47,450
If you have a history where all the clothing has been designed for men

1281
01:23:48,140 --> 01:23:54,140
And uh and then you women start trying on clothing and they're like, well, it doesn't

1282
01:23:54,140 --> 01:23:55,260
fit you, right?

1283
01:23:55,420 --> 01:23:56,380
There's two choices.

1284
01:23:56,540 --> 01:23:59,340
You can say, well, women shouldn't wear clothing, right?

1285
01:23:59,580 --> 01:24:05,020
Or, well, there's men differences between men and women, and um we should design,

1286
01:24:05,420 --> 01:24:08,140
we shouldn't assume clothing is what men's clothing is.

1287
01:24:08,300 --> 01:24:13,850
We should assume that you know clothing is different for men and women and and make it

1288
01:24:13,850 --> 01:24:14,490
differently.

1289
01:24:14,650 --> 01:24:20,330
And I think that's that is the argument for something like,

1290
01:24:20,650 --> 01:24:23,770
well, women in leadership or women in science, right?

1291
01:24:24,010 --> 01:24:29,770
Which is uh there hasn't in this signal detection perspective or this error management

1292
01:24:29,770 --> 01:24:35,370
perspective, there might be a world where the ideal distribution

1293
01:24:35,690 --> 01:24:41,680
of different kinds of people isn't equal in these different fields or

1294
01:24:41,680 --> 01:24:43,040
in these different careers.

1295
01:24:43,200 --> 01:24:48,720
That might very well be the case, but the idea is that uh we're

1296
01:24:48,720 --> 01:24:54,320
nowhere near letting that experiment be run, given the

1297
01:24:54,640 --> 01:24:59,600
uh recent history and ongoing history with uh with

1298
01:24:59,600 --> 01:25:04,720
restricting um people and keeping um uh

1299
01:25:05,310 --> 01:25:11,070
valid and important perspectives from in these evolved psychologies that that are

1300
01:25:11,230 --> 01:25:16,510
that have different social bargaining power come from different um walks of life um

1301
01:25:17,150 --> 01:25:22,590
you know the I think that's the argument is that um that there's um

1302
01:25:23,710 --> 01:25:29,550
that uh the uh the distribution based on these status schemes is

1303
01:25:29,630 --> 01:25:35,320
is coloring um what the science is and that's not inevitable Um,

1304
01:25:35,480 --> 01:25:36,120
yeah.

1305
01:25:37,320 --> 01:25:37,800
Totally.

1306
01:25:38,040 --> 01:25:40,040
Yeah, no, I I I buy all of that.

1307
01:25:40,600 --> 01:25:45,720
Um so I mean, we already talked about the political

1308
01:25:46,040 --> 01:25:50,840
implications of evolutionary psychology and how they're often distorted and oversimplified

1309
01:25:50,920 --> 01:25:56,040
and used by both sides, uh, sometimes uh dishonestly.

1310
01:25:56,120 --> 01:26:01,640
Uh certainly we have some people abusing uh evolutionary psychology on YouTube and drawing

1311
01:26:01,640 --> 01:26:06,330
uh bad uh implications from it and making bad arguments uh from it.

1312
01:26:06,810 --> 01:26:12,810
Um why else should evolutionary psychology matter beyond you

1313
01:26:12,810 --> 01:26:17,930
know how it might inform our political debates and and color the way we talk about

1314
01:26:17,930 --> 01:26:19,290
political issues?

1315
01:26:19,450 --> 01:26:22,250
Um why else should should people care?

1316
01:26:22,650 --> 01:26:23,850
Yeah, that's a good question.

1317
01:26:24,090 --> 01:26:29,240
I mean I think one of the things and and I don't, you know I think it's

1318
01:26:29,240 --> 01:26:32,840
inconvenient for almost everybody that people are complicated.

1319
01:26:33,000 --> 01:26:37,880
Um and I think, you know, if you look at the history of

1320
01:26:41,000 --> 01:26:47,000
of even an individual person growing up, myself or watching my son, or um, or if

1321
01:26:47,000 --> 01:26:51,160
you watch the history of social interaction,

1322
01:26:53,170 --> 01:26:59,170
It's it's very easy to be aware of our own concerns and what we want and

1323
01:26:59,170 --> 01:27:00,130
care about.

1324
01:27:00,450 --> 01:27:06,210
Um, but it's uh it would be easier and

1325
01:27:06,210 --> 01:27:12,210
it's sometimes a a challenge to sort of grant all the rights

1326
01:27:12,210 --> 01:27:14,450
that we want to other people, you know.

1327
01:27:14,690 --> 01:27:20,540
And uh, and I think um and I think that that very natural feeling

1328
01:27:20,540 --> 01:27:25,660
of wanting other people to be simpler than us

1329
01:27:26,460 --> 01:27:32,380
in in an effort to sort of um move

1330
01:27:32,380 --> 01:27:37,340
through the world in a in a in as way in a way that is as beneficial to us as possible.

1331
01:27:37,580 --> 01:27:42,070
Um That's not a mature way to go through the world.

1332
01:27:42,150 --> 01:27:47,830
And that's not, you know, the Rawlsian way in this sense of what's moral is to sort of say

1333
01:27:47,830 --> 01:27:52,390
the rules or you know, the golden rule of sort of what applies for me should apply to you,

1334
01:27:52,470 --> 01:27:55,510
and I should hold myself to the same standards as I hold you.

1335
01:27:55,830 --> 01:28:01,350
And I think why we should care about evolutionary psychology is in that

1336
01:28:01,350 --> 01:28:07,260
effort to sort of treat people with the full dignity and complexity that

1337
01:28:07,260 --> 01:28:08,300
they embody.

1338
01:28:08,700 --> 01:28:10,460
And even ourselves.

1339
01:28:10,700 --> 01:28:15,820
Um, you know, there are things about our nature

1340
01:28:16,780 --> 01:28:18,460
that are intrinsic.

1341
01:28:18,620 --> 01:28:24,460
We we are evolved organisms that uh intrinsically value certain things,

1342
01:28:24,620 --> 01:28:29,740
that need certain things, that like and prefer certain things over other things.

1343
01:28:30,140 --> 01:28:35,770
And I think in in the sort of like very honest self

1344
01:28:36,410 --> 01:28:42,330
discovery that every person goes through as they grow up, or as every

1345
01:28:42,330 --> 01:28:47,690
sort of institution or culture goes through as they figure out, you know, what have we done

1346
01:28:47,690 --> 01:28:50,410
that's been good or bad or ignored for now?

1347
01:28:50,650 --> 01:28:53,290
Um, or every relationship.

1348
01:28:53,610 --> 01:28:57,130
An honest assessment of sort of what do we need?

1349
01:28:57,610 --> 01:29:00,810
How can we exist well in life?

1350
01:29:01,210 --> 01:29:06,600
Um if there is a human nature and you ignore that about

1351
01:29:06,600 --> 01:29:12,360
yourself, about a somebody else that you're in a relationship with, about people at a

1352
01:29:12,360 --> 01:29:15,720
social level, then you're gonna make mistakes.

1353
01:29:15,960 --> 01:29:21,320
Um acknowledging how people are and what they need and what

1354
01:29:21,880 --> 01:29:26,590
um you know, we bought guinea pigs for my son just recently.

1355
01:29:26,750 --> 01:29:32,190
And you know, honestly, like the best descriptions of like how to care for a pet is a

1356
01:29:32,190 --> 01:29:36,270
description of what its natural environment is, you know, like what is its natural ecology,

1357
01:29:36,350 --> 01:29:38,510
what is its software built around?

1358
01:29:38,750 --> 01:29:39,070
Yeah.

1359
01:29:39,230 --> 01:29:44,990
Um, and you know, as far as a user guide guide to yourself as

1360
01:29:44,990 --> 01:29:50,120
a person, yourself as a human being, um, you know,

1361
01:29:50,440 --> 01:29:56,280
understanding that the things that I worry about or

1362
01:29:56,280 --> 01:30:01,800
the things that I think about sometimes

1363
01:30:02,760 --> 01:30:08,670
are genuine mistakes in the sense of I understand them for

1364
01:30:08,670 --> 01:30:11,390
what they are and I see them from an evolutionary perspective.

1365
01:30:11,470 --> 01:30:16,350
And I'm like, oh wow, that's my that's human nature in its terrible form, right?

1366
01:30:16,430 --> 01:30:20,990
Like vilifying an outgroup that doesn't really exist, being um

1367
01:30:22,830 --> 01:30:26,750
a hypocrite, you know, holding myself to a different standard than other people.

1368
01:30:27,150 --> 01:30:31,310
But you can still under identify and understand that and understand why it would evolve and

1369
01:30:31,310 --> 01:30:34,190
not feel like, oh, there's something wrong with me that I think that way.

1370
01:30:34,350 --> 01:30:39,080
And I'm glad that I have these other adaptations for representing that that's possible and

1371
01:30:39,080 --> 01:30:40,440
maybe correcting that.

1372
01:30:40,600 --> 01:30:46,360
Um, and then there are other things that are just sort of like, you know, um, I I

1373
01:30:46,360 --> 01:30:50,920
really like walking around and being in nature and like I'm annoyed when I have to drive

1374
01:30:50,920 --> 01:30:51,400
everywhere.

1375
01:30:51,560 --> 01:30:55,160
And there's nothing wrong with me that I feel that way.

1376
01:30:55,390 --> 01:30:58,190
that's just part of like the way I'm built, right?

1377
01:30:58,430 --> 01:31:03,230
Um and and understanding that too, and sort of and sort of saying, well, look, maybe it's

1378
01:31:03,230 --> 01:31:09,230
that we shouldn't have social planning or or um physical planning of infrastructure

1379
01:31:09,230 --> 01:31:11,630
that's like built around what people like.

1380
01:31:11,790 --> 01:31:16,430
I mean, there's other considerations too, like people like to not exert calories um and

1381
01:31:16,430 --> 01:31:18,510
sweat and bike or like get hit by cars.

1382
01:31:18,590 --> 01:31:20,030
So you know, there's all kinds of things.

1383
01:31:20,190 --> 01:31:26,180
But um, but I for me, that's I think beyond the benefit, the scientific benefits

1384
01:31:26,180 --> 01:31:31,060
of having a theory of function or the underlying software.

1385
01:31:31,300 --> 01:31:37,140
For me, the thing that I find most um fundamentally important

1386
01:31:37,140 --> 01:31:42,980
about an evolutionary approach is it's an entire window into the fact that

1387
01:31:42,980 --> 01:31:48,010
people are complicated and it's a way to populate that with ideas.

1388
01:31:48,090 --> 01:31:50,570
And some of them might be wrong, some might be over reductive.

1389
01:31:50,650 --> 01:31:56,490
I'm sure everything I think about how I work from a software level perspective is

1390
01:31:56,490 --> 01:31:57,930
too simple and wrong.

1391
01:31:58,490 --> 01:32:02,090
But it's less simple and wrong than the stuff that came before me.

1392
01:32:02,330 --> 01:32:08,330
Um and and I think uh for me, that's the

1393
01:32:08,330 --> 01:32:14,300
humility and the benefit of an evolutionary approach is you the

1394
01:32:15,100 --> 01:32:18,220
I describe this one one time to people.

1395
01:32:19,100 --> 01:32:25,100
And I just there's like this metaphor of sort of you imagine this room full

1396
01:32:25,100 --> 01:32:27,900
of people who are not saying anything.

1397
01:32:28,140 --> 01:32:31,660
And they're just quiet and they're sort of waiting there for somebody to like ask them a

1398
01:32:31,660 --> 01:32:31,900
question.

1399
01:32:31,980 --> 01:32:35,580
And then this like really loud group of people comes in and they're all like shouting and

1400
01:32:35,580 --> 01:32:38,380
yelling or whatever, and they're arguing with each other.

1401
01:32:39,350 --> 01:32:44,150
And I kind of think that quite group of people are our adaptations, and the loud yelling

1402
01:32:44,150 --> 01:32:45,990
group of people are scientists.

1403
01:32:46,870 --> 01:32:52,550
And we have these adaptations that exist in us, that have existed in us since

1404
01:32:52,550 --> 01:32:55,190
60,000 years ago or however long.

1405
01:32:55,350 --> 01:32:58,550
We're just now starting to do a science of psychology.

1406
01:32:59,430 --> 01:33:04,070
And people often have very strong opinions about how we work.

1407
01:33:05,200 --> 01:33:06,880
And you know, B.F.

1408
01:33:07,040 --> 01:33:12,160
Skinner, James Watson, Franz Bentano, David Hume, uh,

1409
01:33:12,320 --> 01:33:15,840
Aristotle, Plato, they all had an evolved psychology.

1410
01:33:15,920 --> 01:33:18,640
They had all the adaptations that you and I have.

1411
01:33:19,040 --> 01:33:21,920
And those adaptations are just sitting in there quietly.

1412
01:33:22,080 --> 01:33:26,320
And our students, two or three generations from now, have all these adaptations, they're

1413
01:33:26,320 --> 01:33:27,520
just sitting there quietly.

1414
01:33:27,840 --> 01:33:32,170
Our job is to like shut up and start asking them questions, right?

1415
01:33:32,250 --> 01:33:36,250
Is to like not play a status game as much as possible.

1416
01:33:36,330 --> 01:33:41,770
It's not, you know, but just but to just sort of be humble and say, look, we're complicated

1417
01:33:41,770 --> 01:33:42,730
organisms.

1418
01:33:43,210 --> 01:33:44,490
How do we work?

1419
01:33:44,730 --> 01:33:48,730
But adaptation, let me start talking to you and asking you how you work.

1420
01:33:49,760 --> 01:33:55,440
And for me, that is like sort of the overriding metaphor of what evolutionary psychology

1421
01:33:55,440 --> 01:33:55,600
is.

1422
01:33:55,680 --> 01:34:01,520
It's a it's a humility about how complicated we are, that we don't understand a lot about

1423
01:34:01,520 --> 01:34:02,480
who we are.

1424
01:34:03,280 --> 01:34:08,560
And the a lot of the unnecessary pain and

1425
01:34:08,560 --> 01:34:12,560
discomfort of life sometimes is inevitable.

1426
01:34:12,720 --> 01:34:18,410
People have conflicts of interest, certainly, but if you don't understand um how

1427
01:34:18,410 --> 01:34:22,890
people work, it's gonna you're gonna be more likely to to make these mistakes.

1428
01:34:22,970 --> 01:34:25,370
And so that's that's for me why you should care about it.

1429
01:34:25,530 --> 01:34:26,730
But I'll shut up now.

1430
01:34:27,210 --> 01:34:28,010
What do you think?

1431
01:34:29,050 --> 01:34:32,330
Um I totally buy all that.

1432
01:34:32,410 --> 01:34:38,200
I mean what I'm hearing from you is that it uh is is useful

1433
01:34:38,200 --> 01:34:39,400
for two reasons.

1434
01:34:39,560 --> 01:34:45,160
Uh one is creating a sense of humility, uh, not only about your own

1435
01:34:45,160 --> 01:34:51,080
flaws and limitations, but about how complicated humans are and how uh poorly equipped we

1436
01:34:51,080 --> 01:34:55,560
are to truly understand them in all in all their richness and complexity.

1437
01:34:55,960 --> 01:34:57,320
Um that's part of it.

1438
01:34:57,400 --> 01:35:03,330
And the other part of it is that evolutionary psychology gives us a better understanding of

1439
01:35:03,330 --> 01:35:07,890
what our needs are, of what is actually most important to us.

1440
01:35:08,050 --> 01:35:10,770
Um and that isn't always apparent.

1441
01:35:11,010 --> 01:35:17,010
Uh we often lack a lot of insight into what's going on uh downstairs in

1442
01:35:17,010 --> 01:35:19,010
the basement of unconsciousness.

1443
01:35:19,410 --> 01:35:25,170
Um and bringing some of that to light can be

1444
01:35:25,170 --> 01:35:25,890
helpful.

1445
01:35:26,050 --> 01:35:31,000
Um, you know, that you you made, you know, the smaller point of we have this desire to be

1446
01:35:31,000 --> 01:35:33,960
around nature and to be around beautiful things.

1447
01:35:34,120 --> 01:35:39,560
Um, you know, that's that's one small part of the story that we can tell about what our

1448
01:35:39,560 --> 01:35:41,400
needs are as animals.

1449
01:35:41,640 --> 01:35:45,800
Um but there are other parts uh that that come to light as well.

1450
01:35:46,120 --> 01:35:50,600
Um I think you know, people are people talk about the the loneliness epidemic.

1451
01:35:50,680 --> 01:35:54,040
I'm not sure how much of that is empirically substantiated or not.

1452
01:35:54,200 --> 01:35:59,630
Uh, but I do think that uh human beings have a need to form meaningful

1453
01:35:59,630 --> 01:36:01,230
relationships with one another.

1454
01:36:01,390 --> 01:36:04,270
Um, and not just shallow or superficial relationships.

1455
01:36:04,350 --> 01:36:09,470
We I think we have an evolved psychology for differentiating between the shallow uh and the

1456
01:36:09,470 --> 01:36:14,190
meaningful, uh, between the fair weather friend and the deep friend who truly cares about

1457
01:36:14,190 --> 01:36:18,880
you, because those distinctions were of critical importance uh for our ancestors' survival

1458
01:36:18,880 --> 01:36:20,160
and and reproduction.

1459
01:36:20,400 --> 01:36:23,840
Um being able to tell the difference between someone who's going to be really there for you

1460
01:36:23,840 --> 01:36:28,480
and have your back and take care of you and someone uh who is not and who's going to stab

1461
01:36:28,480 --> 01:36:31,840
you in the back or betray you or abandon you.

1462
01:36:32,080 --> 01:36:37,280
Um these are hugely important distinctions that the mind evolved to

1463
01:36:37,600 --> 01:36:42,000
process and think about and obsess about in certain ways.

1464
01:36:42,560 --> 01:36:47,970
And I think in many ways the modern environment that we live in, our our wild,

1465
01:36:48,210 --> 01:36:53,650
weird world, deprives us of these needs because our

1466
01:36:53,650 --> 01:36:59,010
society is built on shallow, superficial, contingent

1467
01:36:59,010 --> 01:36:59,890
relationships.

1468
01:37:00,210 --> 01:37:06,100
The modern economy is built out of trade, out of trading X for

1469
01:37:06,100 --> 01:37:08,500
Y on a contingent basis.

1470
01:37:08,580 --> 01:37:14,500
Uh and a trading or reciprocity relationship is very different from the kind

1471
01:37:14,500 --> 01:37:19,700
of deep, meaningful relationship that we evolved to crave as social animals.

1472
01:37:19,940 --> 01:37:25,860
Someone who is only going to help me if I can give them something in return is going to be

1473
01:37:26,100 --> 01:37:30,870
uh much worse for my fitness than someone who truly cares about me and will help me

1474
01:37:30,950 --> 01:37:34,390
regardless of whether I can reciprocate.

1475
01:37:34,630 --> 01:37:40,310
And we evolved to be uh much more motivated to seek the latter kind of social partner than

1476
01:37:40,310 --> 01:37:41,590
the former kind of social partner.

1477
01:37:41,750 --> 01:37:46,870
And when we are embedded in a society of those kinds of shallow contingent exchange

1478
01:37:46,870 --> 01:37:52,860
relationships, these quid pro quos, and that's all we see throughout our day-to-day life.

1479
01:37:52,940 --> 01:37:57,980
Most of what we do, you know, we we we we go to work and we engage in explicit quid pro

1480
01:37:57,980 --> 01:37:59,580
quos with our employer.

1481
01:37:59,900 --> 01:38:05,260
Um everything that we get to enjoy, our wonderful standard standard of living, the cars we

1482
01:38:05,260 --> 01:38:11,180
drive, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, has all been brought to us via shallow

1483
01:38:11,340 --> 01:38:14,780
contingent exchange relationships.

1484
01:38:15,340 --> 01:38:20,810
And so in many ways, we are living in a

1485
01:38:20,810 --> 01:38:23,210
shallow, meaningless social environment.

1486
01:38:23,370 --> 01:38:28,970
And I think part of our minds know this and they crave for something better, for something

1487
01:38:28,970 --> 01:38:29,770
deeper.

1488
01:38:30,090 --> 01:38:36,010
Um, I uh many, many times uh these instincts and motives

1489
01:38:36,010 --> 01:38:41,610
will lead people to join cults because there are many people out there who take advantage

1490
01:38:41,610 --> 01:38:47,210
of this part of our psychology and use it uh for self aggrandizing purposes.

1491
01:38:47,690 --> 01:38:52,380
Um Sometimes they form religious groups, sometimes they, you know, channel it into

1492
01:38:52,380 --> 01:38:53,500
political activism.

1493
01:38:54,140 --> 01:38:58,860
Um, we need these kinds of deep, meaningful relationships where we're intrinsically

1494
01:38:58,860 --> 01:39:01,580
valuable to one another and irreplaceable to one another.

1495
01:39:01,740 --> 01:39:05,500
Uh and the modern environment is just not fulfilling that need right now.

1496
01:39:05,660 --> 01:39:07,820
It is it is failing to serve us there.

1497
01:39:07,980 --> 01:39:13,290
Um, and I think taking an evolutionary perspective

1498
01:39:13,850 --> 01:39:15,130
helps us to see that.

1499
01:39:15,290 --> 01:39:20,810
And it helps us to think about how we can design our societies to better fulfill those

1500
01:39:20,810 --> 01:39:26,410
needs of ours and what the consequences might be for people when those needs are being

1501
01:39:26,410 --> 01:39:28,250
chronically unsatisfied.

1502
01:39:30,090 --> 01:39:32,170
So, yeah, that's the needs part.

1503
01:39:32,400 --> 01:39:35,360
The humility part is also huge.

1504
01:39:35,760 --> 01:39:39,840
Uh, and I see it as a huge corrective um in the social sciences.

1505
01:39:40,000 --> 01:39:45,040
I feel like the social sciences have taken a bad turn in terms of viewing humans as stupid

1506
01:39:45,040 --> 01:39:45,920
and irrational.

1507
01:39:46,720 --> 01:39:51,600
That, you know, if you look at psychology textbooks, it's it's a collection of biases and

1508
01:39:51,600 --> 01:39:52,560
errors.

1509
01:39:53,030 --> 01:39:55,910
Uh, you know, these are all the ways that we're dumb.

1510
01:39:56,150 --> 01:40:00,790
These are all the ways that we're oversimplifying the world and making ourselves miserable

1511
01:40:00,870 --> 01:40:03,110
and not serving ourselves.

1512
01:40:03,350 --> 01:40:09,030
Um, here are a bunch of tips and tricks to, you know, live a better life or find

1513
01:40:09,030 --> 01:40:11,110
happiness or whatever.

1514
01:40:12,630 --> 01:40:17,110
And here are all the ways uh that we're gullible and biased in the political sphere.

1515
01:40:17,510 --> 01:40:22,640
Here are all the ways in which we're vulnerable to misinformation uh and in group uh

1516
01:40:22,960 --> 01:40:25,360
superiority bias and motivated reasoning.

1517
01:40:25,520 --> 01:40:29,840
Uh and and usually these are often framed as everyone else uh is vulnerable to these

1518
01:40:29,840 --> 01:40:31,280
biases, but not me.

1519
01:40:31,920 --> 01:40:36,320
Um but if you take an evolutionary approach, you start to realize that people aren't stupid

1520
01:40:36,480 --> 01:40:38,080
and people aren't gullible either.

1521
01:40:38,240 --> 01:40:42,800
There's a there's a wonderful uh recent book by uh Hugo Mercier called Not Born Yesterday,

1522
01:40:42,960 --> 01:40:47,830
where he bas he systematically debunks this myth that humans are gullible dupes.

1523
01:40:47,990 --> 01:40:52,790
And he actually provides a lot of striking evidence for the opposite: that we're quite

1524
01:40:52,790 --> 01:40:58,790
vigilant and skeptical and distrustful of people when we uh don't think that they're on

1525
01:40:58,790 --> 01:41:01,270
our side or they have our best interests at heart.

1526
01:41:01,430 --> 01:41:07,030
Uh and that explains a whole uh wealth of uh behavioral

1527
01:41:07,030 --> 01:41:07,990
phenomena.

1528
01:41:08,230 --> 01:41:13,140
Um And you only would have arrived at that insight if you took an evolutionary perspective.

1529
01:41:13,780 --> 01:41:18,500
If you started thinking through the basic game theoretic logic of how does communication

1530
01:41:18,500 --> 01:41:18,900
evolve?

1531
01:41:19,060 --> 01:41:23,620
Well, it evolves when it's mutually beneficial to both communicators, when it uh increases

1532
01:41:23,620 --> 01:41:24,980
both of their fitness.

1533
01:41:25,300 --> 01:41:30,500
And communication cannot be beneficial if I'm being lied to or deceived or manipulated or

1534
01:41:30,500 --> 01:41:31,140
exploited.

1535
01:41:31,300 --> 01:41:37,060
You would expect a very strong selection pressure for people to be vigilant and skeptical

1536
01:41:37,250 --> 01:41:38,690
and distrustful of people.

1537
01:41:38,850 --> 01:41:43,330
And you would expect an aversion to being deceived and manipulated and exploited.

1538
01:41:43,410 --> 01:41:46,690
And you would expect the psychology to be sensitive about a whole host of factors.

1539
01:41:46,770 --> 01:41:48,290
Like how how loyal is this person?

1540
01:41:48,450 --> 01:41:50,050
Are they on my side or the other side?

1541
01:41:50,210 --> 01:41:52,370
Do they have my best interests at heart?

1542
01:41:52,530 --> 01:41:54,690
Is this information going to be useful to me?

1543
01:41:54,850 --> 01:41:56,770
Is it going to be useful in mobilizing our group?

1544
01:41:56,930 --> 01:42:01,020
Is it going to signal that I uh uh am on the right side of this issue?

1545
01:42:01,180 --> 01:42:03,580
Is it going to signal that I'm a good person to other people?

1546
01:42:03,820 --> 01:42:07,660
All of these considerations are at play when we consume information and transmit

1547
01:42:07,660 --> 01:42:08,300
information.

1548
01:42:08,540 --> 01:42:12,620
And uh without taking an evolutionary perspective, you'd be vulnerable to this myth that

1549
01:42:12,620 --> 01:42:17,180
humans are gullible dupes and social scientists are are smart and not gullible.

1550
01:42:17,260 --> 01:42:22,140
Uh and uh therefore um psychologists are superior to the masses.

1551
01:42:22,380 --> 01:42:26,830
Um I think humans are much smarter than we make them out to be.

1552
01:42:27,310 --> 01:42:32,030
The mere fact that we exist, that all of our ancestors successfully survived and

1553
01:42:32,030 --> 01:42:37,150
reproduced, suggests that we have a kind of deep rationality within us, the kind of

1554
01:42:37,150 --> 01:42:42,110
rationality that it took to survive and reproduce in harsh environments again and again.

1555
01:42:42,350 --> 01:42:48,110
So our default assumption when approaching the human mind and approaching uh the

1556
01:42:48,270 --> 01:42:54,100
the complexity that uh you know behind our eyes is to ask

1557
01:42:54,100 --> 01:42:57,620
ourselves, what what are the functions?

1558
01:42:57,780 --> 01:42:58,820
What are the purposes?

1559
01:42:59,060 --> 01:43:01,300
How is this smart and strategic?

1560
01:43:01,620 --> 01:43:04,020
Not how is this stupid and broken?

1561
01:43:04,420 --> 01:43:10,420
And I think once we ask the question of how is this a strategic, well designed

1562
01:43:10,420 --> 01:43:11,140
adaptation?

1563
01:43:11,300 --> 01:43:16,770
How is this serving the interest of the person or the genes that constructed it,

1564
01:43:17,890 --> 01:43:22,850
we have a much better and more productive set of questions to ask and a much more

1565
01:43:22,850 --> 01:43:27,090
productive research program when we begin with that question than when we begin with a

1566
01:43:27,090 --> 01:43:32,370
smug, dismissive people are stupid, people are gullible, I'm smarter than them attitude.

1567
01:43:33,090 --> 01:43:38,340
Yeah, and you can, I mean, uh one sees that in the history of sort of

1568
01:43:38,340 --> 01:43:40,740
intellectual um thinking.

1569
01:43:41,220 --> 01:43:47,220
Um so Edward Bernay's early 20th century um you know started the era the the field

1570
01:43:47,220 --> 01:43:52,740
of propaganda um which turned into um um which turned into

1571
01:43:53,620 --> 01:43:58,850
um public relations um and very important public

1572
01:43:59,010 --> 01:44:04,690
intellectuals like Walter Lippmann, who was also the person who started the um the

1573
01:44:04,690 --> 01:44:06,610
concept of stereotyping.

1574
01:44:06,690 --> 01:44:08,530
Um he coined that term as well.

1575
01:44:08,610 --> 01:44:12,210
He was a um very important, influential person.

1576
01:44:12,530 --> 01:44:18,500
If you read Bernays or Walter Lippmann, I mean it is very explicitly we're the smart

1577
01:44:18,500 --> 01:44:23,940
ones, and uh the masses are stupid, and we have to make the decisions for them.

1578
01:44:24,020 --> 01:44:28,340
And there is a vein of very deep paternalism

1579
01:44:29,700 --> 01:44:34,740
throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century, social sciences.

1580
01:44:34,900 --> 01:44:36,260
And and that's right.

1581
01:44:36,420 --> 01:44:42,100
And I think that this idea of thinking, well, how are people, even

1582
01:44:42,210 --> 01:44:46,690
ourselves, how is what's coming up into in us not simple but complicated?

1583
01:44:46,770 --> 01:44:47,730
And how is it smart?

1584
01:44:47,890 --> 01:44:49,570
It doesn't necessarily mean that it's the right thing.

1585
01:44:49,650 --> 01:44:51,250
Even like what I experience, right?

1586
01:44:51,330 --> 01:44:54,850
Of like, you know, oh man, I really want to click on the social media post, but I know I'm

1587
01:44:54,850 --> 01:44:58,210
feeding the algorithm that's going to produce an outcome that is bad.

1588
01:44:58,370 --> 01:45:01,170
You know, like I'm selecting this and I don't want to do that.

1589
01:45:01,410 --> 01:45:05,340
But it's not treating me as myself as like, oh, I'm bad or simple or stupid.

1590
01:45:05,420 --> 01:45:10,220
It's that there's a there's a there's a smartness to this and there's a complexity to this,

1591
01:45:10,300 --> 01:45:11,980
and you have to respect that.

1592
01:45:12,220 --> 01:45:15,020
Um and no, I think that's exactly right.

1593
01:45:15,180 --> 01:45:21,020
Um, and I do think that um I also think there's this thing of

1594
01:45:21,100 --> 01:45:26,990
you know, the it comes back to this idea that if it evolved, Um, or if it's

1595
01:45:26,990 --> 01:45:32,030
a part of our evolved, this this isolated thing, like um it's it's bad.

1596
01:45:32,270 --> 01:45:36,430
I do think is also uh I don't think it's a universal thing, right?

1597
01:45:36,510 --> 01:45:41,150
I also think it there's a historical social um context to that too.

1598
01:45:41,230 --> 01:45:45,470
And I think, you know, especially in the US, which is very um

1599
01:45:46,110 --> 01:45:51,710
overrepresented for historical reasons um in science, especially behavioral

1600
01:45:51,710 --> 01:45:52,590
sciences.

1601
01:45:52,830 --> 01:45:56,800
Um, and there's an interesting history about that too.

1602
01:45:58,240 --> 01:46:03,280
Thank you, Nazis, for running for lots of things, including uh the

1603
01:46:03,600 --> 01:46:06,720
integration of uh of the ethologists.

1604
01:46:06,800 --> 01:46:11,120
So the ethologists were doing quite well um in in Europe.

1605
01:46:11,360 --> 01:46:17,360
And then um uh you know the the Third Reich took over and knocked, you know,

1606
01:46:17,440 --> 01:46:22,560
um sort of took over and ate a lot of scientific progress in the behavioral sciences.

1607
01:46:22,720 --> 01:46:28,630
Um but uh but this idea that sort of like evolved things are bad or part

1608
01:46:28,630 --> 01:46:34,550
of human nature is bad, I mean, I think has very like, you know, a lot of roots in

1609
01:46:34,550 --> 01:46:39,750
sort of puritanical and Calvinist thinking that this country was founded on.

1610
01:46:39,910 --> 01:46:44,230
Um, and I also I do think that that still colors some of this narrative too.

1611
01:46:44,390 --> 01:46:50,310
I do think that it's not an act of God, per uh pardon the pun, but um, and that uh

1612
01:46:50,550 --> 01:46:56,460
and this comes back to sort of like it's it's okay If there's an evolved part of you that

1613
01:46:56,460 --> 01:46:57,740
needs something, right?

1614
01:46:57,900 --> 01:47:01,980
It's not okay if it like involves, well, I need to like, you know, dominate myself over

1615
01:47:01,980 --> 01:47:03,740
people or like, you know, exploit people.

1616
01:47:03,900 --> 01:47:04,940
Well, that's not okay.

1617
01:47:05,020 --> 01:47:10,140
I mean, or it's okay in the sense of you can acknowledge why it's there, but then um, you

1618
01:47:10,140 --> 01:47:15,820
know, use the fact that there are other adaptations with other logics to sort of check it

1619
01:47:15,900 --> 01:47:18,060
um or understand why it would exist.

1620
01:47:18,470 --> 01:47:24,390
But I think this um, but having this narrative of like, well, we are all moral hypocrites,

1621
01:47:24,630 --> 01:47:24,950
right?

1622
01:47:25,190 --> 01:47:30,470
That we all have this tendency to sort of um uh um

1623
01:47:30,790 --> 01:47:36,710
essentialize and outgroup or exploit people, um, you know, it's complicated,

1624
01:47:36,870 --> 01:47:39,990
it's not stupid, but it's still not ideal, right?

1625
01:47:40,150 --> 01:47:41,670
I think, I think that's right.

1626
01:47:41,750 --> 01:47:47,600
I think it comes back to what we talked about, which is this idea that if we're simple, and

1627
01:47:47,600 --> 01:47:53,600
this idea that um you know and even well intended ideas that

1628
01:47:53,680 --> 01:47:59,600
you know I if your vocabulary is I want

1629
01:47:59,680 --> 01:48:04,240
things to be equal and I see inequality and I don't think that's good

1630
01:48:05,440 --> 01:48:10,870
in my experience if you actually unpack and you talk to people who say that that is that's

1631
01:48:10,870 --> 01:48:13,430
a consequence of a lack of vocabulary.

1632
01:48:13,510 --> 01:48:17,670
It's not a typical thing to sort of like differentiate between like social level outcomes

1633
01:48:17,670 --> 01:48:22,310
and individual psychological outcomes, let alone that there's lots of adaptations in our

1634
01:48:22,310 --> 01:48:25,750
heads that are a consequence of lots of different calculations, right?

1635
01:48:26,070 --> 01:48:31,510
And so I I this is where I think having a richer

1636
01:48:31,510 --> 01:48:36,800
vocabulary of we are composed of lots of complicated adaptations.

1637
01:48:37,280 --> 01:48:43,120
Just because they are evolved doesn't mean that they're morally suspect or that

1638
01:48:43,120 --> 01:48:46,880
we should ignore that part of us.

1639
01:48:48,080 --> 01:48:50,560
And it doesn't mean that they're stupid or smart.

1640
01:48:50,720 --> 01:48:55,200
I mean, they're not stupid in the sense of they're not stupid in the sense of they're so

1641
01:48:55,200 --> 01:48:56,400
dumb they wouldn't work.

1642
01:48:56,560 --> 01:48:59,840
They're not so stupid that other people need to make the decisions for me.

1643
01:48:59,920 --> 01:49:05,290
And I think that's what you were saying before is that this sort of the that people are

1644
01:49:05,290 --> 01:49:10,090
stupid and need to be herded and we're gonna do the hurting.

1645
01:49:10,250 --> 01:49:15,850
You know, I think that that does not um do justice to the dignity and

1646
01:49:15,850 --> 01:49:20,010
autonomy of people and it doesn't respect them.

1647
01:49:20,410 --> 01:49:22,730
Um and and that's right.

1648
01:49:22,810 --> 01:49:28,400
And I think that that is one of the the things that gets lost um in this both

1649
01:49:28,400 --> 01:49:33,840
sides back and forth sort of culture wars that we started with.

1650
01:49:34,640 --> 01:49:35,280
Yeah.

1651
01:49:37,440 --> 01:49:39,120
Well, we have a few minutes left.

1652
01:49:39,360 --> 01:49:40,000
Yeah.

1653
01:49:41,840 --> 01:49:47,760
One question I'm curious about from you is how bullish are you

1654
01:49:47,760 --> 01:49:49,810
on evolutionary psychology?

1655
01:49:49,970 --> 01:49:51,730
I mean, there there's a whole continuum here.

1656
01:49:51,890 --> 01:49:56,210
You know, on one end of the not very bullish continuum is just, oh, it's just a useful

1657
01:49:56,210 --> 01:49:57,250
perspective to have.

1658
01:49:57,410 --> 01:50:00,930
Um, I think, you know, it's helpful to for people to take an evolutionary perspective from

1659
01:50:00,930 --> 01:50:01,730
time to time.

1660
01:50:01,970 --> 01:50:04,210
Um, it can help you ask the right questions.

1661
01:50:04,290 --> 01:50:09,330
And on the other end of the continuum is the social sciences need to be evolutionary.

1662
01:50:09,410 --> 01:50:15,400
This needs to be at the heart of everything we do that has to do with the

1663
01:50:15,400 --> 01:50:16,600
study of human behavior.

1664
01:50:16,760 --> 01:50:21,560
We need to f couch every debate in terms of evolutionary logic.

1665
01:50:21,720 --> 01:50:27,320
It needs to be the meta-theory that subsumes psychology, anthropology, sociology, political

1666
01:50:27,320 --> 01:50:30,440
science, culture, even philosophy.

1667
01:50:30,840 --> 01:50:33,320
Where are you on the bullishness continuum?

1668
01:50:34,520 --> 01:50:37,560
That's a good question because for me, um

1669
01:50:40,290 --> 01:50:42,450
Here's here's my short answer.

1670
01:50:42,690 --> 01:50:48,050
Um I think evolutionary

1671
01:50:48,050 --> 01:50:51,570
psychology and I've heard other people say this.

1672
01:50:51,730 --> 01:50:56,130
I think evolutionary psychology in an ideal world puts itself out of a job.

1673
01:50:56,530 --> 01:51:02,450
Because what evolutionary psychology is, in essence, is saying is taking a an

1674
01:51:02,450 --> 01:51:08,380
approach in a existing approach to humans that had historically been lacking

1675
01:51:08,460 --> 01:51:10,220
an evolutionary lens.

1676
01:51:10,380 --> 01:51:14,540
And to take that evolutionary lens requires all the things we talked about earlier, which

1677
01:51:14,540 --> 01:51:18,540
is understanding human behavior is a result of design.

1678
01:51:18,700 --> 01:51:20,220
Design is different than behavior.

1679
01:51:20,380 --> 01:51:22,140
Design is different than an individual.

1680
01:51:22,220 --> 01:51:24,540
It's the continuity across generations.

1681
01:51:24,700 --> 01:51:29,420
What counts as design is a meshing of

1682
01:51:30,130 --> 01:51:35,170
software and invariant features of the environment and the dynamics of what counts as a

1683
01:51:35,170 --> 01:51:37,650
good outcome or good as differential reproductive success.

1684
01:51:37,730 --> 01:51:41,010
That all sounds like jargon, but it's really crucial for understanding.

1685
01:51:41,170 --> 01:51:46,610
There's like a bunch of little systems in us that are designed around what would lead to

1686
01:51:46,610 --> 01:51:51,250
the survival and reproduction of that software in a natural environment.

1687
01:51:52,540 --> 01:51:58,300
That idea that humans are composed of lots of software that's for

1688
01:51:58,300 --> 01:52:04,220
solving real-world problems according to the logic of natural selection and not some other

1689
01:52:04,220 --> 01:52:10,220
logic of just feeling good or just being duped into what everybody says around you or

1690
01:52:10,220 --> 01:52:12,380
any other infinite number of things.

1691
01:52:13,770 --> 01:52:19,450
I think that philosophy, psychology, anthropology, all the behavioral human

1692
01:52:19,450 --> 01:52:25,130
behavioral sciences, thinking about humans in general, I think it's really hard

1693
01:52:25,770 --> 01:52:31,370
to argue that anybody who hasn't gone through that way of

1694
01:52:31,370 --> 01:52:32,010
thinking.

1695
01:52:33,690 --> 01:52:34,890
That was a negative.

1696
01:52:34,970 --> 01:52:37,130
So let me let me rephrase that.

1697
01:52:37,370 --> 01:52:43,220
I think anybody who has gone through that way of thinking comes out the other

1698
01:52:43,220 --> 01:52:49,060
end and is a better and more sophisticated consumer of any human thought

1699
01:52:49,060 --> 01:52:50,580
than any human has.

1700
01:52:51,860 --> 01:52:57,300
I believe that an organizing principle of all sciences,

1701
01:52:57,540 --> 01:53:03,540
including like, you know, physics, where we're like, well, why was a certain level of

1702
01:53:03,540 --> 01:53:07,620
physics intuitive for people and then all of a sudden it became unintuitive, right?

1703
01:53:07,910 --> 01:53:13,830
Um, and new why did Newtonian forces, why were those sort of weird and didn't

1704
01:53:13,830 --> 01:53:14,310
make sense?

1705
01:53:14,390 --> 01:53:19,990
And why is quantum physics and relativity like super strange to the point where nobody

1706
01:53:19,990 --> 01:53:22,310
actually like intuitively understands that?

1707
01:53:22,710 --> 01:53:28,630
Um why uh um why that is is

1708
01:53:28,700 --> 01:53:33,500
a consequence of the fact that we evolved a folk physics and we evolved a physics for a

1709
01:53:33,500 --> 01:53:35,100
certain scale and range of things.

1710
01:53:35,180 --> 01:53:39,980
And so I think even all sciences, let alone all sort of human thinking,

1711
01:53:40,460 --> 01:53:44,620
benefits from this particular approach and is organized by it.

1712
01:53:44,780 --> 01:53:50,730
So I think as a um as a addition to

1713
01:53:50,970 --> 01:53:56,730
and part of our collective cultural knowledge, I am very

1714
01:53:56,730 --> 01:54:02,250
bullish about evolutionary psychology in the sense of I do believe

1715
01:54:02,890 --> 01:54:08,170
that many issues that have seemed like mysteries

1716
01:54:09,050 --> 01:54:14,600
resolve if you understand that everything humans are doing is an output of evolved software

1717
01:54:14,600 --> 01:54:17,080
that's designed for ancestral environments.

1718
01:54:17,320 --> 01:54:19,240
And I think it's revolutionary.

1719
01:54:19,320 --> 01:54:24,760
And I think that the percentage of that revolution that is underway is still under 1%.

1720
01:54:25,960 --> 01:54:27,240
There's much more to do.

1721
01:54:27,400 --> 01:54:29,800
So in that respect, I'm extremely bullish.

1722
01:54:30,200 --> 01:54:35,720
The alternative answer, though, or the another way to answer it is

1723
01:54:36,760 --> 01:54:42,490
um day to day, do I think that everybody

1724
01:54:42,490 --> 01:54:48,330
should take an evolutionary approach and that it's the only right way to do things?

1725
01:54:49,050 --> 01:54:52,650
Um, I don't think that that's true.

1726
01:54:52,810 --> 01:54:58,250
Um, because um, I do think that there's, for example, certain

1727
01:54:58,250 --> 01:55:03,450
areas of psychology where the function, the intuitive function, you don't really need

1728
01:55:03,690 --> 01:55:06,660
thinking about selection pressures to do that.

1729
01:55:08,020 --> 01:55:12,420
I still think design mindedness is helpful, but I don't think you need design mindedness

1730
01:55:12,420 --> 01:55:13,380
from an evolution perspective.

1731
01:55:13,460 --> 01:55:16,340
Although we could have a whole argument about whether or not you can really be design

1732
01:55:16,420 --> 01:55:18,420
minded if you don't take an evolutionary approach.

1733
01:55:19,380 --> 01:55:25,140
But I think for things like motor control or vision, and I mean, I'm not even sure I agree

1734
01:55:25,140 --> 01:55:28,500
with this, but I think there's an argument for you don't need to take an evolutionary

1735
01:55:28,500 --> 01:55:32,180
approach because you can sort of be design minded without that.

1736
01:55:32,900 --> 01:55:35,890
There's also an argument you don't need to be design-minded either, right?

1737
01:55:35,970 --> 01:55:39,730
There's people who, you know, it's important to do science collectively without that.

1738
01:55:39,890 --> 01:55:45,890
So science is a large uh inter enterprise with lots of

1739
01:55:45,890 --> 01:55:48,210
different people all doing different roles.

1740
01:55:48,370 --> 01:55:54,050
And so in that respect, I don't think everybody should be taking an evolutionary approach.

1741
01:55:54,210 --> 01:55:58,530
And I think there should be a plurality of them in any case, because who knows?

1742
01:55:58,690 --> 01:56:01,410
And I'm sure we're all wrong for sure.

1743
01:56:01,650 --> 01:56:07,160
Um uh and I look forward to you know hearing the next the next better things,

1744
01:56:07,400 --> 01:56:13,400
but um but in terms of like can we do without it from a

1745
01:56:13,400 --> 01:56:18,520
uh cultural institutional perspective, can the conceptual insights be

1746
01:56:18,520 --> 01:56:19,720
jettisoned?

1747
01:56:19,960 --> 01:56:20,760
I don't think so.

1748
01:56:20,920 --> 01:56:23,240
I think in that respect it's invaluable.

1749
01:56:23,880 --> 01:56:24,520
Yeah.

1750
01:56:24,990 --> 01:56:26,830
Um, well, I agree with you.

1751
01:56:26,910 --> 01:56:29,230
I'm about as bullish as you are.

1752
01:56:29,390 --> 01:56:35,150
Um, I think that it ought to be the meta theory of social science in

1753
01:56:35,150 --> 01:56:35,790
general.

1754
01:56:35,950 --> 01:56:41,550
Um, given that humans are animals and products of the Darwinian process, um,

1755
01:56:41,710 --> 01:56:47,470
I see no way in which we could actually understand humans and human nature without

1756
01:56:47,470 --> 01:56:52,560
thinking about evolution, without thinking about the actual process that produced us.

1757
01:56:52,800 --> 01:56:58,560
That it seems uh wacky on its face that we could develop a complete

1758
01:56:58,560 --> 01:57:04,000
understanding of who we are while completely ignoring the actual process that

1759
01:57:04,000 --> 01:57:04,960
produced us.

1760
01:57:05,520 --> 01:57:11,520
I think evolutionary thinking should be part and parcel of all of our investigations into

1761
01:57:11,520 --> 01:57:14,080
human psychology and behavior and culture.

1762
01:57:14,320 --> 01:57:20,320
Um and insofar as it is not a part of those questions, we are invariably going to

1763
01:57:20,320 --> 01:57:24,690
stray down blind alleys and go in wrong directions.

1764
01:57:24,930 --> 01:57:30,850
I think evolutionary thinking is crucial for evaluating the plausibility

1765
01:57:30,850 --> 01:57:34,770
of hypotheses and theories before we even begin the process of testing them.

1766
01:57:35,010 --> 01:57:38,850
When you think about humanity, there are an infinite number of hypotheses and theories you

1767
01:57:38,850 --> 01:57:39,810
could generate.

1768
01:57:40,610 --> 01:57:43,890
And the vast majority of them are going to be wrong-headed.

1769
01:57:44,740 --> 01:57:50,420
What evolutionary thinking helps you do is it helps you assess, well, which of these

1770
01:57:50,420 --> 01:57:52,180
ideas is actually plausible?

1771
01:57:53,060 --> 01:57:56,420
Which of these questions is actually a good productive question?

1772
01:57:56,660 --> 01:58:00,980
Which of these theories about human mental life are worth investigating?

1773
01:58:01,140 --> 01:58:05,060
Which of these functions make sense from a Darwinian perspective?

1774
01:58:05,220 --> 01:58:09,910
It helps you ask the right questions and develop the right theories, and that's invaluable

1775
01:58:09,910 --> 01:58:14,070
in a field where there are an infinite number of theories you could potentially dream up.

1776
01:58:14,630 --> 01:58:17,510
So I agree with you that we should be bullish about it.

1777
01:58:17,670 --> 01:58:22,470
I think also it uh should subsume much of philosophy.

1778
01:58:22,630 --> 01:58:26,470
I mean, you've written about um the the interplay between evolutionary psychology and

1779
01:58:26,470 --> 01:58:28,070
philosophy, you know, the question of free will.

1780
01:58:28,230 --> 01:58:33,180
Ultimately, the whole free will debate is an output of our psychological adaptations, of

1781
01:58:33,180 --> 01:58:38,940
our intuitions about how to uh carve the world into people and inanimate objects

1782
01:58:39,100 --> 01:58:40,780
and mechanical systems.

1783
01:58:41,020 --> 01:58:46,300
Um, and we cannot understand the free will debate and the conflicting intuitions that are

1784
01:58:46,300 --> 01:58:49,100
at play without doing good evolutionary psychology.

1785
01:58:49,260 --> 01:58:53,180
I think the same is true with philosophical debates about morality, what the nature of

1786
01:58:53,180 --> 01:58:57,900
morality is, the same is true with debates about consciousness, how consciousness arises

1787
01:58:57,900 --> 01:58:59,740
from mere brain activity.

1788
01:59:00,150 --> 01:59:05,110
all of these philosophical debates ultimately derive from evolved psychological systems

1789
01:59:05,110 --> 01:59:07,350
that produce conflicting intuitions in us.

1790
01:59:07,590 --> 01:59:12,310
And we need to understand where those intuitions come from and how they work before we can

1791
01:59:12,310 --> 01:59:17,110
even begin to answer the question of which intuitions we should rely on and which

1792
01:59:17,110 --> 01:59:18,630
intuitions are correct.

1793
01:59:18,870 --> 01:59:23,590
We need to learn about where those intuitions come from and how they work before we can

1794
01:59:23,590 --> 01:59:25,830
begin to make real philosophical progress.

1795
01:59:26,070 --> 01:59:30,940
So I think that evolutionary thinking is indispensable not only for social science, but

1796
01:59:30,940 --> 01:59:32,300
also for philosophy.

1797
01:59:32,780 --> 01:59:37,020
I'm very bullish on the importance of evolutionary thinking.

1798
01:59:37,340 --> 01:59:39,740
I'm not so bullish on the type of evolutionary thinking.

1799
01:59:39,820 --> 01:59:43,580
We could have debates about whether we want to be, you know, cultural evolutionists or

1800
01:59:43,580 --> 01:59:47,580
biological evolutionists, or whether we want to be Sperber-style cultural evolutionists or

1801
01:59:47,580 --> 01:59:51,980
Heinrich-style cultural evolutionists, or whether how modular we want to be, whether

1802
01:59:52,140 --> 01:59:56,130
modularity makes sense, whether how adaptationist we want to be, you know, how how just how

1803
01:59:56,130 --> 01:59:57,810
good of an engineering system is natural selection.

1804
01:59:57,890 --> 02:00:00,130
We can have these debates and I'm I'm happy to have them.

1805
02:00:00,370 --> 02:00:04,290
But they need to be uh under the umbrella of evolutionary thinking itself.

1806
02:00:04,450 --> 02:00:09,970
Um and that to me is the only way to gain r real progress and make real insight

1807
02:00:10,290 --> 02:00:14,290
into how humans work and the the human condition itself.

1808
02:00:14,610 --> 02:00:18,690
And I think our shared bullishness on this topic is the reason why we're here.

1809
02:00:18,770 --> 02:00:20,450
It's the reason we're having this conversation.

1810
02:00:20,610 --> 02:00:23,400
It's the reason we wanted to start this podcast.

1811
02:00:23,560 --> 02:00:27,560
And I think that's about as good as end good as good as an ending to this episode as we

1812
02:00:27,560 --> 02:00:28,440
could possibly ask for.

1813
02:00:28,520 --> 02:00:29,240
What do you think?

1814
02:00:29,880 --> 02:00:30,440
Sounds good.

1815
02:00:30,520 --> 02:00:30,760
Yeah.

1816
02:00:30,840 --> 02:00:36,440
We should just talk to the adaptations silently awaiting us in the party that were

1817
02:00:36,680 --> 02:00:40,360
uh running around screaming uh not talking to them.

1818
02:00:40,520 --> 02:00:46,050
We should just talk to them and talk to people who haven't been listened to.

1819
02:00:50,370 --> 02:00:54,610
All right, we've finished another episode of Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast.

1820
02:00:54,770 --> 02:00:56,290
Thank you for listening.

1821
02:00:56,610 --> 02:01:02,210
If you like what you're hearing, please subscribe, uh, leave a good comment, or feel free

1822
02:01:02,210 --> 02:01:04,450
to support us on Patreon if you can.

1823
02:01:04,610 --> 02:01:06,370
If you can't, no problem.

1824
02:01:06,850 --> 02:01:09,730
And David, we're we're gonna keep doing this, yeah?

1825
02:01:10,040 --> 02:01:15,800
yeah every week you'll get one of these podcasts so please subscribe amazing um

1826
02:01:15,960 --> 02:01:21,880
so david we'll we'll see you you know a couple days yeah yeah sounds good okay see you

1827
02:01:21,880 --> 02:01:23,800
next week until next time bye