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This is Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast.

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Uh I am co-host David Petrozuski.

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Almost forgot your last name there.

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Well, it wouldn't be it wouldn't be that difficult to forget my last name.

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Um I was gonna well it doesn't matter.

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I was gonna say David Pinsoff, but then I had already said my I'm so I yeah.

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So you're David Pinsoff.

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I'm David Petrozowski.

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And this is Actual Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast, Actual Evolutionary Psychology.

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By Actual Evolutionary Psychologists.

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Enjoy

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David, today we have a wonderful guest, Patrick Durkey.

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Patrick does work confronting our folk intuitions about constructs like personality, for

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example.

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So he's done work with people like Aaron Lukashewski confronting the idea that as

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psychologists had sort of traditionally assumed personality was just there existing in the

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mind, he's been doing work kind of thinking about well, what would an adaptationist

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approach to this be?

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And very much in the Michael Graziano point of sometimes the first step is the wrong step,

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and assuming naively that the intuitive constructs like personality exist in the mind is

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sort of the wrong step.

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And so this is a lovely example of confronting what is personality, or what else do we talk

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about?

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Status, like what is status?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I mean, you m you might think uh naively that status is a simple thing, and status seeking

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and status hierarchies are a simple thing.

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But in this episode, we really delve into the unfathomable complexity of what

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status is and how it touches on virtually every aspect of our lives, how it interacts with

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our personalities, um, how we look for niches to fill in our social world, and how social

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ecologies can affect our status seeking strategies and how you know moral progress can

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change what status games we play.

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Um, we even get into inspiration and what it means to be inspired to pursue a

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particular endeavor.

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Uh, this was a really fun, uh, wide-ranging conversation.

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I think you like it a lot.

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It was an inspirational episode, and we even get into like what our emotions or

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personality.

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What is personality from the perspective of like is personality sort of in a weird way the

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opposite of what free will is?

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Like I like this very cool thing that we're getting into.

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So by drilling down into the mechanistic details of the adaptations, we're also sort of

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making the familiar strange to use that lovely quote that John Alita used that was a quote

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from William James.

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So this is a lovely, inspiring, um, and and and nicely strange

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episode with Patrick Durkey.

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Agreed.

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Enjoy.

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Patrick Durkey, it's lovely to have you here.

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Um you are an expert in status, in personality,

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uh in different types of status and how personality traits might affect status acquisition

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and how good you are at seeking status.

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Um why don't we begin at the beginning and just try to define what status is.

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What exactly are we talking about?

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Oh Jesus, starting with or personality.

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The hardest possible problem, I guess.

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Generally, that's or justice or truth, whichever one is easiest.

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Reality.

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Yeah.

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Well, I think if you like look in the literature, like the definition of status that I

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think you'd see most often is something like the average kind of differences in attention,

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deference, control over resources, basically, that people have within a group.

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Okay.

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And yeah, I think that generally, like that's kind of the definition I've I've been working

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with.

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Um, but maybe just because that's the definition that is out there in the literature.

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Okay.

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I think like really what like I've been trying to work towards is more like, yeah, what

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is status like within the mind in a computational sense, or is status

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even a thing in the mind per se, or is it an emergent kind of thing that comes out of the

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computation is going on in the mind and what those computations actually look like, I

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guess.

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Hmm.

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So if if people pay attention to me and listen to what I say, and if I tell them to do

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things and they listen to me and they do it, and I have lots of stuff, then by your

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definition and by the definition in the academic literature, I have high status.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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Um, and it seems to me that we also kind of need an explanation for why all

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those things go together, because in theory they could be decoupled.

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It could be that I have lots of stuff, but nobody listens to me or cares what I have to

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say.

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Um, it could be that everyone obeys my every command, but I'm very poor.

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Um so uh why do you think these things go together?

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Um I guess they the behavioral outputs like deference, attention, like might be

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outputs of of similar systems or the same system that depend on the same inputs, I suppose,

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is one.

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And one of those inputs might be something like yeah, resource holding potential, which is

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you know, from the animal like ecology literature, like then organisms

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ability to take or defend resources from other organisms and oh and

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also willingness to to do that.

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Right.

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Okay.

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So the so I maybe, you know, if you have lots of stuff, maybe I'll listen to you because

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you have the power to give me some of that stuff.

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Uh and I'll obey your command because if I do, then then maybe you'll share your stuff with

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me.

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And if I'm rude to you or I don't listen to you, uh, then you're not gonna share your stuff

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with me.

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Is that and so uh are there different types of status?

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Uh because I know a lot a lot of people in the literature think there are different types

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of status.

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Where do you fall uh in that debate?

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Yeah, I mean in the literature, you know, the biggest kind of popular distinction is

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between dominance on the one hand and prestige as different forms or

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different strategies or different routes to attaining status.

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And so, like, yeah, it gets a little dicey for me anyway, because I think really there's

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like one stat there's status.

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And they're I view dominance as prestige as different routes or different strategies to

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attaining status, at least that's in the literature.

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Um, but you I think it's also probably possible to think about these as completely like

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distinct forms of status.

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Um and maybe they're not even leading to the same outcome as like having status as an

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outcome of these things.

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And I think that that's contributed to a lot of confusion maybe in literature and in my own

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mind about like what what it is we're actually talking about when we're talking about

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status and the role of dominance and prestige in human

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status hierarchies.

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Um I've been thinking a bit about status myself.

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Um and I kind of want to run a definition by you, or at least how I'm thinking about it and

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see if you agree with me or not.

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Yeah.

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Um so I've been thinking about status as uh common knowledge of a

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person's relative value as a social partner and its downstream consequences

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on uh coalitions and alliances.

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Um, so this doesn't really assume that much because we already should have systems in

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the mind for evaluating uh the value of different social partners.

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Given that we are in a marketplace of partners, we're shopping around for potential

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friends, for potential mates, uh, for potential people to lead us in uh joint

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activities.

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Uh, we have some choice about who we're going to collaborate with.

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And in order to make good choices in that marketplace, we need to have some way of

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computing the value of different choices.

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Right.

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Um, and so if someone is just really valuable as a social partner, then it benefits me to

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pay attention to them and to try to uh be nice to them and form a relationship with them

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just because they're higher value.

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Um, and then the common knowledge of it uh is important because uh if I think you're really

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awesome but everyone else thinks you suck, well then you're not actually very awesome

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because a big part of your awesomeness is uh common knowledge of that awesomeness.

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Because um uh if you have lots of people who will take your side or

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cooperate with you, you're gonna be a much more valuable partner.

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But if everybody hates you and I'm the only one on your side, that's gonna be really bad

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for me.

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Um so uh it's not just your value, it's also we all need to know that everyone knows that

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you're awesome or that you're superior as a social partner.

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Uh and once we all have common knowledge that you are a really good social partner, well,

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it benefits us all to take your side in conflicts.

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Um and to try to form political alliances with you.

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Uh if there's some sort of political conflict where you're going to benefit and someone

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else is going to pay a cost, uh if you're the better partner, then it benefits everyone

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else to take your side.

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And if I know that everyone's going to take your side, then that benefits me even more if

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I'm going to take your side because I'm going to be in the majority.

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And so when there's common knowledge of your superior value, that creates a strong

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political incentive for all of us to have your back, to take your side, to oppose

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your enemies and support your friends.

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And to avoid ganging up on you and and gang up on your rivals, say, or

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to imitate you to try to signal our loyalty to you.

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Uh so that's how I'm thinking of it.

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It's common knowledge of a person's relative social value and its political implications.

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What do you what do you think about that way of thinking of it?

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Aaron Powell Yeah, I like that a lot.

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I think it's closely aligned with like how, for example, Aaron Luchesky and I have kind of

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talked about it too, which is kind of thinking about it like status is

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or like your representation of somebody's status in your social world is kind of capturing

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like your assessment of the collective like welfare trade-off ratios that people

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have towards that person.

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Where but I like the way you put it too just recognizing somebody's like relative social

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value as a cooperator or something like that.

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Um and yeah, because again, that helps you, like you said, to kind of figure out like what

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are some good strategic alliances to make, what who should I support in conflict, um, who

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should I defer to because they have XYZ people backing them up and that sort of thing.

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And that's very similar to, for example, like when I took a class with with John Patton

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back in the day, like right at the beginning of when I was getting into evolutionary

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psychology, it's very similar to how he viewed status as well as this kind of like

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marker of who's got the coalitional support behind them and who has more coalitional

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support.

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And again, that and that really does tie in with the biological literature in a lot of

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ways, just with more individuals when it comes down to resource holding potential.

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It's if things came down to a in a conflict over a resource or a decision,

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um, who has more resource holding potential in order to win that that

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conflict.

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And it the thing that makes it trickier in humans, or apparently seemingly trickier in

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humans, is that the way you get more people on your side in the conflict is not by forcing

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them, probably, to fight for you.

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Maybe that works in some situations, but probably an easier thing is to have people just

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genuinely want you around and want you to continue to exist and

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want you to have things your way, either because that benefits them or because they

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actually value so value you so highly that they just want you to have uh things a certain

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way.

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Uh that's yeah.

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Oh go ahead, David.

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Um I was just gonna maybe segue into where personality fits into this

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picture.

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Um do some personality traits lend themselves to status seeking

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or higher status?

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Um do we seek status in different ways based on our personality?

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Uh what do you think is the role between personality and status?

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Yeah, so I think it might help, yeah, to kind of back up into still stay in the maybe

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the status realm a little bit and figure out, yeah.

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So if you want to know like what personality traits might be useful for getting status,

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navigating style status hierarchies, maybe we should make a little bit more explicit, like

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what well, how do you get status in the first place?

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Like, what is the currency of status?

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I think, and which we've already kind of been talking about a little bit with this like

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dominance versus prestige distinction and figuring out like what is status.

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So I guess if we were gonna work with like this definition that status is like this

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collective recognition of basically other people valuing you and being willing to

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come to your defense or your aid over in a conflict,

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then we have to figure out like how do you get people to increase their valuation of you is

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the key there.

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Just going back like to the logic of costs and benefits, right?

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That's something we've talked a lot a lot about.

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Is it should be generating benefits for people.

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So either you're really good at generating benefits for people, or at least you're willing

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and and or you're willing to try to do those things.

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So this is actually a like a to be comment at one of my talks like as my first year of a

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PhD student.

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I was talking about some of my status work and talking about yeah like generating benefits

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versus generating costs.

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And he was basically like well shouldn't you split these into like ability and willingness

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to do these things?

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Cause maybe they don't always go together.

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You can be able to generate costs, but I mean able to yeah, able to inflict costs or able

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to generate benefits, but you're not particularly like willing to do any of those things.

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And that really changes the kind of calculus for me as a potential victim or beneficiary

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of those said costs or benefits.

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To know, you know, are you willing to impose costs on me?

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Or are you just able to?

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Are you willing to generate benefits?

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Do you specifically want to generate benefits for me?

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Or are you just able to to do that?

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And also I would imagine if it's obligatory, like which is a weird way to think, but sort

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of just there's some things where I can't control it or you can take advantage of it.

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So if I just am really good at doing something, um, just for example, no, but yeah, like

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you know, like I don't know, like I'm I can build really good wells or something, uh

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something dumb example like that, but then you benefit, it's an externality, but I can't

240
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monopolize it, then my willingness doesn't matter in that context.

241
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Yeah.

242
00:14:42,460 --> 00:14:43,260
Yeah, exactly.

243
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And so it's it is like separable.

244
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They don't always have to go together.

245
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You don't have to be both able and willing, but both of those are aspects of the decision

246
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about like how much status or how much uh of another person value you.

247
00:14:54,700 --> 00:15:00,110
Um that's a really interesting point, Dave, that the there is an aspect of be of

248
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benefiting from someone that is independent of willingness.

249
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Like you could just benefit me by accident, you know?

250
00:15:06,990 --> 00:15:07,070
Yeah.

251
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Just by uh for example, building a well that maybe you're just building the well because

252
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you personally want water.

253
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Uh well, as soon as you build that well, um, it's available for me to use as well.

254
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And so you may hate me and you may not care about me at all, but you your mere ability to

255
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build the well is a benefit to me in the same way that you know a a tree's existence is a

256
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benefit to me if I can sit in its shade.

257
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Uh the tree doesn't actually care about me, but its its existence uh is beneficial to me.

258
00:15:35,440 --> 00:15:39,040
So that's another aspect that you can think of as willingness, ability, and the

259
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externalities of the person's activities.

260
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Yeah, I I even wonder like some famous people sort of sometimes complain about people

261
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feeling or like feeling like people don't actually care about them.

262
00:15:49,890 --> 00:15:54,130
Um, and I wonder if that's like an example of this psychology where you're like, like if

263
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I'm buddies with Harrison Ford, I'm walking down the street, I get status just by virtue of

264
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like being around him, right?

265
00:16:01,090 --> 00:16:05,490
From me as the hanger on, I'm just sort of looking at it as like I'm using Harrison Ford to

266
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get some status because just the knowledge that like I have a picture with him or I'm just

267
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next to him gives me status.

268
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Harrison Ford can't sort of control that.

269
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Um, right.

270
00:16:15,140 --> 00:16:20,660
And so I think that that expression that um that people aren't actually

271
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interested in me, um, because they're using me to get status in some other way suggests

272
00:16:26,500 --> 00:16:30,500
like that there's the psychology assessing whether it's obligatory or not.

273
00:16:31,150 --> 00:16:32,990
So it uh it's really complicated.

274
00:16:33,390 --> 00:16:33,550
Yeah.

275
00:16:33,790 --> 00:16:38,750
Willingness, ability, externality, these these are hard problems for the mind to solve.

276
00:16:38,910 --> 00:16:44,830
Um because it's not clear, you know, just by looking at someone's behavior, listening to

277
00:16:44,830 --> 00:16:49,310
what they say, it's not clear how to carve that up into things they can do, things they're

278
00:16:49,310 --> 00:16:53,230
willing to do, things that are just happening by accident as an externality or as a

279
00:16:53,230 --> 00:16:55,310
byproduct of their activities.

280
00:16:56,060 --> 00:17:00,780
Do you have any inkling about how we solve these problems of how we figure figure out like

281
00:17:01,020 --> 00:17:06,700
who's capable of conferring benefits or who's willing or or whose uh

282
00:17:06,700 --> 00:17:08,700
activities are beneficial to us?

283
00:17:09,180 --> 00:17:14,300
Yeah, I think at like a certainly a a rough kind of level, it's something I've been

284
00:17:14,300 --> 00:17:14,700
thinking about.

285
00:17:14,780 --> 00:17:19,630
But I also like recognize like something I came to recently and doing some, I guess I call

286
00:17:19,630 --> 00:17:23,870
them agent-based models, like trying to figure out how an agent figure out like what things

287
00:17:23,870 --> 00:17:28,990
increase status, like what things like how much how important is cost infliction versus

288
00:17:28,990 --> 00:17:32,510
benefit generation in getting status in my local community.

289
00:17:32,670 --> 00:17:38,110
And at least in the models that I've been working with, like I have to already imbue the

290
00:17:38,110 --> 00:17:41,600
agent with an idea of benefit versus cost.

291
00:17:41,760 --> 00:17:45,040
And obviously I have no idea how how that really works.

292
00:17:45,360 --> 00:17:49,440
Like how do we know whether something is is a benefit or or a cost?

293
00:17:49,600 --> 00:17:53,040
Like I guess Daniel Sneeser's work touches on the value.

294
00:17:53,120 --> 00:17:55,680
How do you figure out what the value of things are?

295
00:17:55,920 --> 00:18:01,390
And maybe some of that is over deep evolutionary time you can get some good priors

296
00:18:01,710 --> 00:18:03,390
going about certain things.

297
00:18:03,550 --> 00:18:08,750
But a lot of things related to status, I think are pretty culturally variable or variable

298
00:18:08,750 --> 00:18:14,750
across contexts or across time, about their relative usefulness or their relative

299
00:18:14,750 --> 00:18:16,910
cost or benefit potential.

300
00:18:17,230 --> 00:18:21,390
And so it it would require, yeah, an agent to kind of figure out through an organism to

301
00:18:21,390 --> 00:18:26,760
figure out throughout development and like what are the relative values of different acts

302
00:18:26,760 --> 00:18:29,480
or characteristics or events?

303
00:18:29,640 --> 00:18:33,320
Like what events should I want to happen versus not want to happen?

304
00:18:33,480 --> 00:18:38,200
What are some characteristics that would be good to cultivate or skills that would be good

305
00:18:38,200 --> 00:18:38,760
to learn?

306
00:18:38,920 --> 00:18:43,400
Or what are some actions that are are good to do for status versus not good to do for

307
00:18:43,400 --> 00:18:43,880
status?

308
00:18:44,090 --> 00:18:49,610
So kind of the way I'm putting it together now is yeah, trying to say like if an agent is

309
00:18:49,610 --> 00:18:55,370
born in with some like rough, maybe some rough priors, that costs and benefits are

310
00:18:55,370 --> 00:19:01,210
a core dimension or two dimensions of accruing status in your local,

311
00:19:01,370 --> 00:19:06,650
in your local social world, then how do you just figure out the relative importance of

312
00:19:06,650 --> 00:19:06,970
each?

313
00:19:07,130 --> 00:19:12,490
Yeah, like of all the things you could do, what's like the rank ordering of things that

314
00:19:12,490 --> 00:19:16,980
would be good for generating benefits and then what's like the rank order of things that

315
00:19:16,980 --> 00:19:22,500
would be good for inflicting costs or characteristics that would allow me to uh inflict

316
00:19:22,500 --> 00:19:28,100
costs versus generate benefits and then using those things try to basically

317
00:19:28,100 --> 00:19:33,940
bootstrap your way to an idea of what what is the status value of these things like if I

318
00:19:33,940 --> 00:19:38,900
were to do this act versus this act, how can I get a rank ordering of what skills would be

319
00:19:38,900 --> 00:19:43,750
good to cultivate or what events should I seek out or avoid and that that kind of stuff.

320
00:19:43,830 --> 00:19:48,710
And at least in like, you know, my little cartoonish simulator world, you can kind of do

321
00:19:48,710 --> 00:19:53,990
this from some early observations, like throughout development, you can get a sense of when

322
00:19:53,990 --> 00:19:59,430
people have done this thing, either maybe I get through communications or gossip or

323
00:19:59,430 --> 00:20:03,270
whatever between other people, or just from observations of people's emotional reactions.

324
00:20:03,430 --> 00:20:06,870
You can maybe assign like that seems like more of a cost than this thing.

325
00:20:07,110 --> 00:20:09,910
People didn't like this as much as this thing, that kind of thing.

326
00:20:10,230 --> 00:20:15,700
And from there, you can kind of correlate, okay, what's like the like the value of these

327
00:20:15,700 --> 00:20:19,540
things with the status that I see out there in the world.

328
00:20:20,020 --> 00:20:24,580
And once you have that kind of correlation, then you can for a given act that you haven't

329
00:20:24,740 --> 00:20:30,020
maybe you haven't seen the the status value of hunting a particular animal or something.

330
00:20:30,100 --> 00:20:30,500
You don't know.

331
00:20:30,580 --> 00:20:35,860
It's an empty slot in your mind, but you you know how much people like that thing or don't

332
00:20:35,860 --> 00:20:37,460
like the taste of it or whatever.

333
00:20:37,620 --> 00:20:42,790
Then you can use your predictive model that you've generated about like the lay of the land

334
00:20:42,870 --> 00:20:47,830
in terms of what's the association between value and status or benefit generation and

335
00:20:47,830 --> 00:20:53,030
status to like get an estimate of the status impact or the status value of hunting that

336
00:20:53,030 --> 00:20:55,270
thing that you've haven't hunted before.

337
00:20:55,510 --> 00:21:00,070
And if that is a higher status value than maybe alternative things that you could hunt or

338
00:21:00,070 --> 00:21:04,070
alternative actions you could take, then that's a pretty good way to kind of figure out

339
00:21:04,070 --> 00:21:06,150
what should I do to try and increase my status.

340
00:21:06,950 --> 00:21:12,480
It's it seems like a a really important and underappreciated subsidiary problem is

341
00:21:12,480 --> 00:21:18,480
knowing what uh courses of action are even uh likely to achieve your goals.

342
00:21:18,640 --> 00:21:24,560
So like maybe I figure out that being a great basketball player is gonna get me lots

343
00:21:24,560 --> 00:21:25,200
of status.

344
00:21:25,600 --> 00:21:29,840
But whether I am capable of becoming a good basketball player is itself another problem I

345
00:21:29,840 --> 00:21:30,550
need to figure out.

346
00:21:30,710 --> 00:21:34,630
Maybe I'm never going to be a good basketball player and it's a waste of time and energy

347
00:21:34,630 --> 00:21:35,350
for me to try.

348
00:21:35,510 --> 00:21:37,430
Maybe I should try to do something else instead.

349
00:21:37,590 --> 00:21:42,230
So in addition to computing the value of being a basketball player, I need to estimate my

350
00:21:42,230 --> 00:21:47,350
own capability or my own likelihood of actually achieving that goal or how achievable or in

351
00:21:47,350 --> 00:21:49,030
control that thing is.

352
00:21:49,270 --> 00:21:54,040
Maybe the things that give me high status or give people high status are completely out of

353
00:21:54,040 --> 00:21:54,600
my control.

354
00:21:54,840 --> 00:21:56,360
In which case, we know what do I do then?

355
00:21:56,440 --> 00:21:57,960
Or maybe it's totally in my control.

356
00:21:58,120 --> 00:22:01,240
Uh and and I'm, you know, I stand a really good chance of being a good basketball player

357
00:22:01,320 --> 00:22:02,680
and I should really invest in this.

358
00:22:02,840 --> 00:22:05,800
Um and so that that to me is another interesting problem.

359
00:22:05,880 --> 00:22:11,800
And I suspect um our the emotion of inspiration might have uh evolved to

360
00:22:11,870 --> 00:22:12,670
solve that problem.

361
00:22:12,750 --> 00:22:17,630
That if there's a really high likelihood that investing time and energy into this activity

362
00:22:17,630 --> 00:22:22,030
is going to pay off in the long term in terms of my status, I should feel really inspired

363
00:22:22,030 --> 00:22:24,830
and energized to invest in that activity.

364
00:22:24,990 --> 00:22:29,710
But if if there's nothing I can do to become uh a good basketball player, I should feel the

365
00:22:29,710 --> 00:22:30,670
opposite of inspired.

366
00:22:30,750 --> 00:22:31,630
I should feel depressed.

367
00:22:31,710 --> 00:22:36,590
Or I should I should withdraw from that activity and look for other more inspiring uh uh

368
00:22:36,590 --> 00:22:37,310
investments.

369
00:22:37,470 --> 00:22:39,310
Uh, do you do you buy that way of thinking?

370
00:22:39,710 --> 00:22:40,400
Yeah, I like that.

371
00:22:40,480 --> 00:22:45,440
That's kind of like a direction I was kind of hoping to head next after like trying to lay

372
00:22:45,440 --> 00:22:50,480
out some groundwork for how the mind might solve the problem of just like what contributes

373
00:22:50,480 --> 00:22:51,280
to status?

374
00:22:51,520 --> 00:22:55,120
What are the things an organ an individual in my group or me could do?

375
00:22:55,280 --> 00:22:58,720
Or if somebody did this thing, how much status are they likely to get?

376
00:22:58,960 --> 00:23:04,080
And then from there figure out, okay, now how do I, as an individual, navigate the status

377
00:23:04,080 --> 00:23:04,880
hierarchy?

378
00:23:04,960 --> 00:23:07,650
Um, what would be s a good thing for me to try to do?

379
00:23:07,730 --> 00:23:10,930
Because yeah, obviously there's some things that maybe wouldn't be a good route for you,

380
00:23:11,010 --> 00:23:11,490
like you said.

381
00:23:11,730 --> 00:23:15,730
Yeah, and I've kind of been thinking I haven't thought about inspiration per se, but I have

382
00:23:15,890 --> 00:23:19,250
one project that has been like languishing for far too long.

383
00:23:19,490 --> 00:23:25,410
It is I've been trying to like work out a distinction between two emotion programs

384
00:23:25,410 --> 00:23:27,410
for navigating hierarchies.

385
00:23:27,570 --> 00:23:33,480
I'm not gonna say the names of the emotions uh Because because yeah, I just feel like the

386
00:23:33,480 --> 00:23:37,320
the language, the full terminology of emotions can get in the way sometimes here.

387
00:23:37,480 --> 00:23:42,520
But basically, I think there's one like emotion program that is basically just trying to

388
00:23:42,520 --> 00:23:48,360
figure out who has status and coordinates behavior in an appropriate

389
00:23:48,360 --> 00:23:48,600
way.

390
00:23:48,760 --> 00:23:53,160
You know, like don't get into con unnecessary conflicts with people who have higher status

391
00:23:53,240 --> 00:23:56,710
or you know, show deference, whatever, just by tracking who has status.

392
00:23:56,790 --> 00:24:01,110
Like the input is just somebody else's status or a status increasing characteristic that

393
00:24:01,110 --> 00:24:01,830
somebody has.

394
00:24:02,070 --> 00:24:06,070
It gets activated and you do appropriate behaviors, you know, the rough sketch of it.

395
00:24:06,230 --> 00:24:10,550
But there's another one kind of going along with what you're talking about, which is

396
00:24:10,550 --> 00:24:12,870
figuring, okay, like how do I get status?

397
00:24:13,030 --> 00:24:18,790
How do I learn the skills and characteristics that will allow me to get

398
00:24:18,790 --> 00:24:19,350
status?

399
00:24:19,640 --> 00:24:24,120
And there I think there's another emotion program which tracks other dimensions in addition

400
00:24:24,120 --> 00:24:26,440
to like, does this person have status?

401
00:24:26,760 --> 00:24:32,600
On top of that, it's also, yeah, like, is this does this person have status in the

402
00:24:32,600 --> 00:24:37,400
domain or in an area that I am trying to get status in?

403
00:24:37,960 --> 00:24:42,600
So if I'm an academic, you know, are they also an academic?

404
00:24:42,910 --> 00:24:47,310
And also it's tracking things like, yeah, is this a skill that is, I don't know,

405
00:24:47,470 --> 00:24:50,350
cultivatable or practicable or something like that?

406
00:24:50,510 --> 00:24:55,710
You know, um, something that you could work on to improve versus oh that they're just tall

407
00:24:55,790 --> 00:24:58,430
and that get like, you know, that's not something you change.

408
00:24:58,670 --> 00:25:04,670
Um, and so there I think that's like the beginnings of a new kind of set of

409
00:25:04,670 --> 00:25:10,440
inputs and a new set of outputs that are designed to maybe try to emulate that

410
00:25:10,440 --> 00:25:16,200
person, learn from that person, you know, seek closeness to that person.

411
00:25:16,440 --> 00:25:21,880
And I think that's more of like uh yeah, a different kind of strategy for cultivating those

412
00:25:21,880 --> 00:25:25,640
skills, finding basically like role models or people to emulate.

413
00:25:25,880 --> 00:25:31,480
And then just to go another step, because in that realm, if you're just based on those two

414
00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:37,410
inputs of um, you know, this person maybe is getting status or they

415
00:25:37,410 --> 00:25:43,170
have status, and they have skill in an area that I'm trying to get status in, basically.

416
00:25:43,410 --> 00:25:47,330
Then you could also run into this problem where you don't want to necessarily be emulating

417
00:25:47,330 --> 00:25:48,450
competitors.

418
00:25:49,330 --> 00:25:53,810
Or you don't want to maybe you can't like buddy buddy up with competitors, or maybe it

419
00:25:53,810 --> 00:25:57,570
would be like it would hurt your status to acknowledge that they have status.

420
00:25:58,220 --> 00:26:02,300
Um and in that case, I think then you also need to have this other input being tracked,

421
00:26:02,380 --> 00:26:03,980
which is like, is this a competitor?

422
00:26:04,140 --> 00:26:10,060
And maybe there's lots of cues to that, like age or uh yeah, I don't

423
00:26:10,060 --> 00:26:11,900
know, age is one I'm thinking of right now.

424
00:26:11,980 --> 00:26:13,420
Uh but I don't can't think of others.

425
00:26:13,660 --> 00:26:15,180
Age, gender, that kind of stuff.

426
00:26:15,260 --> 00:26:18,700
Maybe or just like the nature of the thing, right?

427
00:26:18,890 --> 00:26:22,490
Where it's sort of like if you're a really good musician and I'm a good musician, but we

428
00:26:22,490 --> 00:26:26,890
play different instruments, just a stupid example, versus we play the same instrument and

429
00:26:26,890 --> 00:26:28,730
the kind of music we play is just rival.

430
00:26:28,970 --> 00:26:32,650
Like like you can there's only one lead guitar, you know, and that's what I want to do and

431
00:26:32,650 --> 00:26:33,290
that's what you do.

432
00:26:33,370 --> 00:26:33,530
Yeah.

433
00:26:33,770 --> 00:26:34,010
Yeah.

434
00:26:34,570 --> 00:26:35,130
For sure.

435
00:26:35,450 --> 00:26:35,610
Yeah.

436
00:26:35,690 --> 00:26:39,850
And so I think those there's like those three kinds of I don't know if they need to be

437
00:26:39,850 --> 00:26:44,720
entirely separate emotion programs, but the I think they can be they lead to different

438
00:26:44,720 --> 00:26:49,840
outputs and they track some at different inputs, even if they have overlapping inputs.

439
00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:54,800
And I think, yeah, the way I've been thinking about it is like they're kind of what folk

440
00:26:54,960 --> 00:26:59,600
terminology of like respect versus admiration might be.

441
00:26:59,760 --> 00:27:04,560
Like respect is kind of like that baseline one that's just tracking like what do who has

442
00:27:04,560 --> 00:27:05,200
status?

443
00:27:05,440 --> 00:27:10,400
What are did you do something that's status worthy of like you know, respect, whatever?

444
00:27:10,790 --> 00:27:14,150
And then admiration, like who do I emulate?

445
00:27:14,390 --> 00:27:19,670
Um, and then maybe envy is more like that other one of like this you're competing in the

446
00:27:19,670 --> 00:27:24,550
same in the same area and you need a different set of of outputs in order to solve that

447
00:27:24,550 --> 00:27:24,790
problem.

448
00:27:25,110 --> 00:27:26,150
Yeah, I I like this.

449
00:27:26,230 --> 00:27:30,790
What what you're both saying is like this idea of status as a learning problem is super

450
00:27:30,790 --> 00:27:31,110
cool.

451
00:27:31,350 --> 00:27:33,990
And David, I love this idea of um inspiration.

452
00:27:34,230 --> 00:27:38,310
I just looked up like what are inspiring movies, and one of them, the top on the list, is

453
00:27:38,310 --> 00:27:38,870
Rudy.

454
00:27:38,940 --> 00:27:43,020
And if anybody doesn't know the story of Rudy, you know, it's like this kid who's like

455
00:27:43,020 --> 00:27:48,060
small, doesn't think he's going to make it on college Notre Dame football, which is like

456
00:27:48,060 --> 00:27:50,380
the storied prestigious thing.

457
00:27:50,620 --> 00:27:52,620
He just works really, really hard at it.

458
00:27:52,780 --> 00:27:57,900
And just by virtue of being the underdog, it's this inspirational story of the underdog by

459
00:27:57,900 --> 00:28:03,790
means that are not traditional or were opaque and doesn't have like he's not strong, you

460
00:28:03,790 --> 00:28:06,830
know, like an underdog story is not like, well, my dad's a senator.

461
00:28:06,910 --> 00:28:11,950
I'm, you know, six foot five and, you know, super muscular and, you know, and like an and

462
00:28:11,950 --> 00:28:14,110
I'm look and I'm playing on the Notre Dame football.

463
00:28:14,190 --> 00:28:18,750
Like that's a terrible movie, you know, but this is like he's he's a janitor, you know, and

464
00:28:18,750 --> 00:28:23,900
he's like, you know, cleaning the stands, but he loves this the team and his heart is in

465
00:28:23,900 --> 00:28:28,060
it, and he wants to be affiliated with the group.

466
00:28:28,140 --> 00:28:31,260
Um, and there's no guy, like you know, there's no guile.

467
00:28:31,500 --> 00:28:34,780
It's all just sort of I love the team, and he doesn't want his own status.

468
00:28:34,860 --> 00:28:37,100
And this is an inspirational story.

469
00:28:37,260 --> 00:28:43,180
Um, it suggests that the means, there's a system that always keeps

470
00:28:43,180 --> 00:28:45,260
the outcomes there that we might want.

471
00:28:45,340 --> 00:28:51,170
Like, you know, I I watch somebody I learn that uh being uh

472
00:28:51,410 --> 00:28:57,170
winning a fight is a good thing but I might be small you know and I can't

473
00:28:57,170 --> 00:29:02,210
actually do the same thing like I can't win the fight like the big guy I just saw it would

474
00:29:02,210 --> 00:29:06,610
be a bad design to dump that as being a good thing even if I don't think I can do that now

475
00:29:06,770 --> 00:29:11,660
because maybe if I team up with four other small guys, we can still do it.

476
00:29:11,740 --> 00:29:11,980
Right.

477
00:29:12,140 --> 00:29:17,260
So I think like there's this really interesting, complicated compositional structure where

478
00:29:17,260 --> 00:29:21,020
there's sort of what are the expected reasonable means?

479
00:29:21,420 --> 00:29:23,820
What are the ones that I can probabilistically do?

480
00:29:23,900 --> 00:29:28,220
But then there's like some outcomes where it's like unlikely, but there's always interest

481
00:29:28,220 --> 00:29:33,740
and attention on if I discover unsurprising means, means that I didn't see,

482
00:29:34,090 --> 00:29:34,810
attend to that.

483
00:29:34,890 --> 00:29:39,130
And I think that's what like movies like Rudy or underdog movies in general, I think like

484
00:29:39,210 --> 00:29:45,050
why people watch them is because it's providing the input of this is an outcome that

485
00:29:45,050 --> 00:29:46,010
people would want.

486
00:29:46,650 --> 00:29:51,610
But I'm there's a there's a scenario here of it's surprising given what the can

487
00:29:51,610 --> 00:29:54,250
preconditions are that this outcome happened.

488
00:29:55,520 --> 00:29:55,840
Yeah.

489
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:56,320
Yeah.

490
00:29:56,720 --> 00:30:02,400
And a lot of like like the motivational self-help industry is about trying to

491
00:30:02,400 --> 00:30:07,040
inspire people and making them think that they're more capable of achieving high status

492
00:30:07,040 --> 00:30:08,560
than they might have thought.

493
00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:14,160
Um and it's an interesting question why we're so vulnerable to to being uh

494
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:18,310
misled about those like because a lot of people just really are you know, probably not

495
00:30:18,310 --> 00:30:18,870
gonna make it.

496
00:30:18,950 --> 00:30:21,830
Like not everyone can be a rock star, not everyone can play for the NBA.

497
00:30:22,150 --> 00:30:25,670
Like, you know, uh, you know, we we like to tell people, Oh, you can you can achieve your

498
00:30:25,670 --> 00:30:27,910
dreams, but like not everyone can achieve their dreams.

499
00:30:27,990 --> 00:30:29,270
That's the sad fact of reality.

500
00:30:29,350 --> 00:30:31,510
But but but we love to hear that we can.

501
00:30:31,750 --> 00:30:32,630
Like w why?

502
00:30:32,790 --> 00:30:34,470
It seems like um we should be skeptical.

503
00:30:34,550 --> 00:30:38,150
We should want to you know know the truth about, you know, what our chances are and you

504
00:30:38,150 --> 00:30:41,590
know, you know, pursue activities where we have a good chance and abandon them when we

505
00:30:41,590 --> 00:30:42,390
don't have a good chance.

506
00:30:42,470 --> 00:30:46,780
But it seems like we we w we have these kind of we're prone to these kinds of delusions

507
00:30:46,940 --> 00:30:50,220
where we where we think we can be the best but we we actually can.

508
00:30:50,380 --> 00:30:53,500
That seems maladaptive, I I think it seems it's kind of mysterious.

509
00:30:53,580 --> 00:30:53,820
I don't know.

510
00:30:54,060 --> 00:30:58,300
It's it's like the Red Bull phenomenon where it's sort of like it even like there's a whole

511
00:30:58,300 --> 00:30:59,660
category of advertising, right?

512
00:30:59,740 --> 00:31:03,900
Which is sort of like you're a kid and you're like, this is an amazing like mountain biker

513
00:31:03,980 --> 00:31:07,820
and he drinks Red Bull and it's like that has nothing to do, you know, but you're a kid and

514
00:31:07,820 --> 00:31:09,260
you're like this is a high status thing.

515
00:31:09,340 --> 00:31:13,500
Like he's an awesome skateboarder or he's like, you know, or somebody's a really good

516
00:31:13,500 --> 00:31:14,140
singer.

517
00:31:14,530 --> 00:31:15,810
what shoes do they wear?

518
00:31:15,970 --> 00:31:20,930
You know, like it doesn't matter, but the fact that there's leakage um of these things, um,

519
00:31:21,170 --> 00:31:22,530
which yeah, is interesting.

520
00:31:22,610 --> 00:31:26,530
And I mean, I obviously like I think there's probably I mean Patrick, you've probably

521
00:31:26,530 --> 00:31:28,930
thought about like this kind of thing.

522
00:31:29,010 --> 00:31:29,890
Like I what do you think?

523
00:31:29,970 --> 00:31:33,890
Is it like that the world is causally opaque and there's sort of an error erring on the

524
00:31:33,890 --> 00:31:36,130
side of you don't know if the shoes matter.

525
00:31:36,290 --> 00:31:38,580
So if you can get them, why not?

526
00:31:38,900 --> 00:31:39,140
Yeah.

527
00:31:39,300 --> 00:31:41,860
There's a couple things like, yeah, in those those threads.

528
00:31:41,940 --> 00:31:46,260
Like one is like, yeah, like why are we so do we seem gullible to be like, oh yeah, I can

529
00:31:46,260 --> 00:31:47,380
attain like a lot of status.

530
00:31:47,460 --> 00:31:48,500
I can be a big shot.

531
00:31:48,740 --> 00:31:52,180
And like that, yeah, I guess I don't know how like culturally widespread that is.

532
00:31:52,260 --> 00:31:58,180
So that might be like a really just like a one of our quirks in the in the like the Western

533
00:31:58,180 --> 00:31:58,420
world.

534
00:31:58,500 --> 00:31:59,060
I don't know.

535
00:31:59,300 --> 00:32:05,130
But also if it's if it is really uh like a more culturally widespread

536
00:32:05,130 --> 00:32:08,970
thing then you know the first thing that comes to mind is like some kind of like if you you

537
00:32:08,970 --> 00:32:13,050
know you shoot for the stars at least you'll land a long on the moon or whatever kind of

538
00:32:13,050 --> 00:32:17,930
kind of thing like a a little bit of an error management maybe approach um to be like well

539
00:32:18,090 --> 00:32:24,010
you have to really like be trying for the top to hopefully that you land somewhere else

540
00:32:24,220 --> 00:32:25,900
um in order to be motivated.

541
00:32:26,060 --> 00:32:27,420
That's like one potential thing.

542
00:32:27,580 --> 00:32:30,940
But then even as I'm saying it, I'm like, I could see that backfiring pretty hard.

543
00:32:31,100 --> 00:32:34,540
You know, people are just like, Yeah, that person really thinks they're hot shit, like

544
00:32:34,700 --> 00:32:35,580
they're not.

545
00:32:35,900 --> 00:32:39,580
And yeah, so I I I do think that's an interesting problem to to try and unpack.

546
00:32:39,660 --> 00:32:43,900
And I I don't have a a good answer for that one right now.

547
00:32:44,140 --> 00:32:49,890
Um, but then as f yeah, as far as like that phenomenon of like why the hell can

548
00:32:50,130 --> 00:32:55,570
pro athletes or you know other high status people basically like be used to advertise

549
00:32:55,730 --> 00:33:00,050
things that aren't actually like crucial to this success most likely.

550
00:33:01,250 --> 00:33:02,610
Like it's causally irrelevant.

551
00:33:02,690 --> 00:33:04,450
Like, yeah, it's it's along for the ride.

552
00:33:04,530 --> 00:33:04,690
Yeah.

553
00:33:04,930 --> 00:33:05,170
Yeah.

554
00:33:05,410 --> 00:33:09,490
And that's kind of one of those problems that led me to think a little bit more about like,

555
00:33:09,570 --> 00:33:15,540
yeah, like what kinds of what problem is our mind trying to solve or capable of

556
00:33:15,540 --> 00:33:19,860
solving when we're when we're trying to tackle this problem of how do I get status?

557
00:33:20,180 --> 00:33:25,620
Because yeah, the world is causally opaque, and this is a pretty wicked like

558
00:33:25,940 --> 00:33:31,700
computational problem, like as a as a field, or I across all

559
00:33:31,780 --> 00:33:36,980
science, like the figuring out causes is is like one of the most difficult problems.

560
00:33:37,450 --> 00:33:42,970
Um and in psycho psychology, we do a pretty uh crappy job of it.

561
00:33:43,210 --> 00:33:46,090
Um and it is pretty crazy when you think about it.

562
00:33:46,170 --> 00:33:50,330
Like we have, you know, thousands of researchers working over decades trying to figure out

563
00:33:50,330 --> 00:33:53,050
this problem of like what is the cause of success?

564
00:33:53,210 --> 00:33:55,450
Like that's the holy grail of the social sciences.

565
00:33:55,610 --> 00:33:59,690
Like, what causes the desirable outcomes that we're all seeking in life?

566
00:33:59,930 --> 00:34:04,090
And we've thrown so much time and money and manpower at this problem, and we still haven't

567
00:34:04,090 --> 00:34:04,490
figured it out.

568
00:34:04,570 --> 00:34:06,170
We're still confused as all hell.

569
00:34:06,440 --> 00:34:10,840
And yet, in order to survive and reproduce, our minds have to solve this problem.

570
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:16,920
They have to figure out what is the causal process for getting

571
00:34:16,920 --> 00:34:18,360
status and resources.

572
00:34:18,600 --> 00:34:22,440
Because if our, you know, if if the mind didn't figure that out, well, we, you know, our

573
00:34:22,440 --> 00:34:25,720
minds are not going to be descended from the minds that failed to figure that out.

574
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:28,760
We're going to be descended from the minds that figured out that problem.

575
00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:33,210
And so it suggests that our minds might actually be better at this, or our our intuitions

576
00:34:33,210 --> 00:34:38,090
might actually be better than this than um legions of social scientists with uh millions of

577
00:34:38,090 --> 00:34:40,010
dollars uh to spend.

578
00:34:40,250 --> 00:34:43,930
Um yeah, I think that's definitely possible.

579
00:34:44,090 --> 00:34:48,330
Like I think that it's possible that our mind might have evolved to actually get at the

580
00:34:48,330 --> 00:34:50,250
causal effects of these things.

581
00:34:50,490 --> 00:34:53,130
That's one thing I'm trying to work out now.

582
00:34:53,210 --> 00:34:58,620
It's like the pretty early stages of this project, but trying to see like uh because in

583
00:34:58,620 --> 00:35:03,180
data science, right, there's this distinction between getting at causes, getting at causal

584
00:35:03,180 --> 00:35:07,180
effects, versus getting a really good predictive model of outcomes.

585
00:35:07,420 --> 00:35:11,420
And they're oftentimes, or most of the time, those models won't be the same.

586
00:35:11,580 --> 00:35:14,540
Like a good causal model that gives you like a good causal effect.

587
00:35:14,700 --> 00:35:18,700
What's the effect of buying the shoe on my status?

588
00:35:19,530 --> 00:35:24,970
that to get that model, that causal effect estimate correct, your statistical model or your

589
00:35:24,970 --> 00:35:29,930
model of of the world will be pretty different than just a giant like predictive model of

590
00:35:29,930 --> 00:35:30,570
status.

591
00:35:31,130 --> 00:35:36,090
And because of in data science, at least the way statistics work, you know, a good

592
00:35:36,090 --> 00:35:40,090
predictive model can have totally biased causal effects.

593
00:35:40,410 --> 00:35:43,370
And they would be totally wrong if you were to take them at face value.

594
00:35:43,450 --> 00:35:48,280
But it can help you really well predict an outcome that you want to predict.

595
00:35:48,520 --> 00:35:48,840
I see.

596
00:35:48,920 --> 00:35:53,160
So for example, like let's say great white shark attacks are always on the fore in my mind.

597
00:35:53,240 --> 00:35:57,000
So just like if you're like, well, are they selling ice cream that day?

598
00:35:57,240 --> 00:35:59,640
And maybe that like correlates really well.

599
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:03,160
So it's really predictive of whether or not, because like, for example, that's like when

600
00:36:03,160 --> 00:36:04,600
the sharks are, when it's weather's warm.

601
00:36:04,680 --> 00:36:06,600
When weather's warm, people buy ice cream.

602
00:36:06,760 --> 00:36:12,210
So, like, probabilistically, predictively, it's really good to put in the model, but it has

603
00:36:12,210 --> 00:36:13,730
no effect causally.

604
00:36:13,890 --> 00:36:17,810
Like the person selling ice cream and buying ice cream is no causal relation, but it's just

605
00:36:17,890 --> 00:36:18,930
it's a good predictor.

606
00:36:19,650 --> 00:36:24,130
Because it could be, especially if you for some reason, you know, you you can't observe how

607
00:36:24,130 --> 00:36:26,530
many people there are on the beach that day.

608
00:36:26,770 --> 00:36:26,930
Exactly.

609
00:36:27,010 --> 00:36:32,290
So that's your information about that, then that's going to help you give get a good

610
00:36:32,290 --> 00:36:33,090
predictive model.

611
00:36:33,250 --> 00:36:37,810
But then yeah, like increasing or de artificially decreasing the number of ice cream sales,

612
00:36:37,970 --> 00:36:43,400
closing the ice cream shop will change the Exactly.

613
00:36:43,480 --> 00:36:47,560
So yeah, we know that when people buy more when there's a really high number of ice cream

614
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:49,160
cones sold, there's shark attacks.

615
00:36:49,240 --> 00:36:53,320
So we should prevent shark attacks by reducing, we should stop people buying ice cream.

616
00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:54,520
And that that's silly.

617
00:36:54,600 --> 00:36:54,920
But yeah.

618
00:36:55,160 --> 00:36:55,400
Yeah.

619
00:36:55,640 --> 00:36:55,960
Yeah.

620
00:36:56,200 --> 00:37:01,720
But uh like the thing that kind of what I'm trying to get out of this project is to look at

621
00:37:01,800 --> 00:37:07,730
like w in under what circumstances, under what like causal structures of the world

622
00:37:07,970 --> 00:37:11,410
will a predictive model be like good enough?

623
00:37:11,570 --> 00:37:14,130
Like because that's what like that's what we're really looking for, right?

624
00:37:14,210 --> 00:37:18,050
We're looking for like what might be good enough to work for an organism.

625
00:37:18,210 --> 00:37:19,650
It might not be the most optimal thing.

626
00:37:19,810 --> 00:37:24,050
Like I agree, the most optimal thing would be like a good causal model or some magical

627
00:37:24,050 --> 00:37:26,290
system that figures out the causal structure of the world.

628
00:37:26,450 --> 00:37:31,890
And for some problems, that might be totally feasible to do, but for other problems, it

629
00:37:31,890 --> 00:37:34,460
might it might not be feasible to do that.

630
00:37:34,620 --> 00:37:38,860
And I kind of this I'm working on some simulations now, which hopefully I'll talk about at

631
00:37:38,860 --> 00:37:44,780
HBest this year, which is kind of showing that at least under some circumstances

632
00:37:45,900 --> 00:37:51,340
which might look similar to how at least I think of the causal structure of status, like a

633
00:37:51,340 --> 00:37:55,650
predictive model could be pretty decent, could get you pretty far.

634
00:37:56,050 --> 00:38:00,770
And if if we have like these mechanisms that are kind of just following predictive models,

635
00:38:00,930 --> 00:38:05,570
then you might actually expect that people will just pick up on these erroneous cues and

636
00:38:05,570 --> 00:38:06,050
use them.

637
00:38:06,130 --> 00:38:08,050
Like what shoes do people wear?

638
00:38:08,210 --> 00:38:10,530
You know, what watch do they do they wear?

639
00:38:10,690 --> 00:38:13,490
That that that kind of stuff that isn't actually causally relevant.

640
00:38:13,730 --> 00:38:18,130
But it's just because you have this predictive model, it's gonna pick up on those things.

641
00:38:18,450 --> 00:38:24,200
And maybe that's like an an an outcome of the something weird about

642
00:38:24,200 --> 00:38:29,160
our our world or something that there are the all these like extra erroneous cues that

643
00:38:29,160 --> 00:38:31,320
actually like aren't part of the causal structure.

644
00:38:31,480 --> 00:38:33,960
Uh, but yeah, that's another kind of empirical question, I guess.

645
00:38:34,360 --> 00:38:38,280
Yeah, can we make it concrete just so like you know, just so sort of like uh there's an

646
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:41,560
example, like let's say the this problem of learning.

647
00:38:41,720 --> 00:38:47,720
I'm a kid and I see somebody fishing, and they get a lot of fish, a lot

648
00:38:47,720 --> 00:38:51,240
more than I've ever seen before, and everyone's really happy about that.

649
00:38:52,050 --> 00:38:54,770
Um, so that's like the event.

650
00:38:55,730 --> 00:39:00,850
And there's lots of things, lots of ways to carve that event up.

651
00:39:01,010 --> 00:39:06,930
And is the idea sort of what you're saying that um there might be privileged categories.

652
00:39:07,090 --> 00:39:12,930
So, like the lesson I could draw from that is like providing people with a lot of fish

653
00:39:12,930 --> 00:39:18,610
is a good thing, or providing people with a lot of resources is a good thing, or um things

654
00:39:18,610 --> 00:39:23,360
that are hard to catch that people like is a good thing.

655
00:39:23,760 --> 00:39:25,120
You know, that's one issue.

656
00:39:25,280 --> 00:39:28,080
Another issue is like, well, how do they catch a lot of fish?

657
00:39:28,320 --> 00:39:31,760
Like I could try to fish there another day when they're not there.

658
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:36,560
I might look at all the things they're using, like the physical accoutrements, and then say

659
00:39:36,800 --> 00:39:37,680
copy what they do.

660
00:39:37,760 --> 00:39:43,750
And maybe that's where like the sneakers and the watch kind of parasitize on because

661
00:39:43,750 --> 00:39:45,910
we're sort of like, I don't know why they caught a lot of fish.

662
00:39:46,070 --> 00:39:47,990
If I did, I wouldn't catch a lot of fish myself.

663
00:39:48,070 --> 00:39:48,790
So I don't know.

664
00:39:48,950 --> 00:39:51,670
So maybe I should just emulate everything.

665
00:39:51,750 --> 00:39:53,430
So I'm gonna wear the same, you know.

666
00:39:53,590 --> 00:39:57,750
So like I'm gonna wear the same shirt color, even though I don't know if that's relevant.

667
00:39:57,910 --> 00:39:59,910
So I'm gonna overimitate in a way.

668
00:40:00,150 --> 00:40:06,120
So is the idea that there's these sort of pre-privileged structures that are part

669
00:40:06,120 --> 00:40:07,240
of the predictive model.

670
00:40:07,320 --> 00:40:08,440
Is that sort of what you're saying?

671
00:40:08,520 --> 00:40:11,240
In the in the context of this sort of fishing example?

672
00:40:11,640 --> 00:40:11,960
Yeah.

673
00:40:12,120 --> 00:40:13,560
Like for the fishing example, right?

674
00:40:13,640 --> 00:40:19,080
Like I'm just gonna imagine there's like it's cold weather that day.

675
00:40:19,400 --> 00:40:23,640
And I don't know if this is true about fish, but let's say when it's cold, like the fish

676
00:40:23,640 --> 00:40:28,040
are more active, they're like near the surface or something, they're hungrier, whatever.

677
00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:33,870
And when it's cold, people are more like want to wear a jacket or wear some fur or

678
00:40:33,870 --> 00:40:34,510
something, you know.

679
00:40:34,670 --> 00:40:40,670
And so you have this confound of of weather that's leading to this new cue of

680
00:40:40,750 --> 00:40:44,910
like, what is this fisher who's who's going to catch more fish than usual?

681
00:40:45,070 --> 00:40:49,470
Like, oh, he's wearing something different than typical, or well, you know, whatever, and

682
00:40:49,470 --> 00:40:50,510
he catches more fish.

683
00:40:50,670 --> 00:40:52,910
And so you have the confound there, the weather.

684
00:40:52,990 --> 00:40:58,960
So you don't if you if you don't have a pre-built system that like kind of removes

685
00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:04,800
or holds constant weather in figuring this stuff out um or controls for it basically

686
00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:10,800
like you're you won't be able to you might mis uh apply the correlation between like the

687
00:41:10,800 --> 00:41:16,800
sweater wearing and the fish as a causal effect, thinking that you can wear a sweater and

688
00:41:16,800 --> 00:41:19,040
that's gonna let you get more fish.

689
00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:19,520
Right.

690
00:41:19,840 --> 00:41:20,400
Right.

691
00:41:22,090 --> 00:41:22,410
yeah.

692
00:41:22,650 --> 00:41:25,530
And then Hume's problem of induction, right?

693
00:41:25,610 --> 00:41:30,730
Like every time that you see, and this is like famously like uh philosophically in language

694
00:41:30,730 --> 00:41:35,130
learning, that any one instance, there's an infinite number of things you could sort of

695
00:41:35,130 --> 00:41:36,730
learn from that instance.

696
00:41:36,970 --> 00:41:40,810
Like the person was successful because it was a Tuesday, the person was successful because

697
00:41:40,810 --> 00:41:43,850
they were wearing a fur coat, the person was successful because it was a Tuesday and they

698
00:41:43,850 --> 00:41:45,930
were wearing a fur coat, like all kinds of crazy stuff.

699
00:41:46,090 --> 00:41:52,040
And what you're saying is without some built-in ways of narrowing that down in

700
00:41:52,040 --> 00:41:57,560
this context of learning about status or maybe status inner inner inter

701
00:41:58,360 --> 00:42:04,280
um interpenetrated with uh like event cognition, you know.

702
00:42:04,360 --> 00:42:08,760
So sort of like what leads to catching fish, or what are the things that plausibly might do

703
00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:09,160
that?

704
00:42:09,400 --> 00:42:12,120
Without that, it's you're really out of luck.

705
00:42:12,600 --> 00:42:12,840
Yeah.

706
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:17,890
And obviously, that's like a whole nother like research area people I'm sure are are

707
00:42:17,890 --> 00:42:22,930
looking into and and like but the status problem is that there's like hundreds of things

708
00:42:22,930 --> 00:42:27,810
that people are doing and even figuring out like you know which of those things actually

709
00:42:27,810 --> 00:42:31,890
change their status is is another like a level of that problem.

710
00:42:32,450 --> 00:42:38,340
Um and so yeah again this is like um really early in trying to even like define

711
00:42:38,340 --> 00:42:41,380
like this problem in like little statistical models.

712
00:42:41,540 --> 00:42:47,460
Uh so I don't know how much more I can really say about it, but it it like

713
00:42:47,540 --> 00:42:52,660
it seems like there will be some problems that are intractable, like you can't solve them

714
00:42:52,660 --> 00:42:56,020
as an organism with your experiences.

715
00:42:56,500 --> 00:43:01,140
Um, especially if you can't do the interventions yourself because they're too costly or

716
00:43:01,140 --> 00:43:04,420
they're too inefficient, like you would have to do, you know, hundreds of these

717
00:43:04,420 --> 00:43:07,620
interventions yourself to really know the causal effect or whatever.

718
00:43:08,030 --> 00:43:13,470
And in that case, like the you know, the better than nothing system to

719
00:43:13,630 --> 00:43:18,990
evolve might be a just a prediction model that makes some mistakes, but it's right often

720
00:43:18,990 --> 00:43:24,590
enough in getting the relative, like it might be wrong for every actual causal effect,

721
00:43:24,830 --> 00:43:29,790
but about figuring out the relative which things tend to be better than other things out of

722
00:43:29,790 --> 00:43:34,990
a hundred things, it could be useful for getting like a rough estimate of that

723
00:43:35,760 --> 00:43:38,080
And helping you rank order that in your head.

724
00:43:38,640 --> 00:43:44,320
I think considerable insight can be made here by dividing this into two

725
00:43:44,320 --> 00:43:47,040
different problems that are intimately related.

726
00:43:47,120 --> 00:43:49,200
So the first problem is just how do I get status?

727
00:43:49,280 --> 00:43:52,000
How do I intervene on the world to get status?

728
00:43:52,160 --> 00:43:54,400
And with that, uh uh prediction is not enough.

729
00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:55,360
I need causality.

730
00:43:55,440 --> 00:44:00,010
I need to know what causal processes are going to increase my status.

731
00:44:00,330 --> 00:44:03,850
But there is a second problem that I think is too often overlooked and is extremely

732
00:44:03,850 --> 00:44:05,850
important, and that is a coordination problem.

733
00:44:06,010 --> 00:44:11,530
And that is how do I reach agreement with my community about who is high status and who is

734
00:44:11,530 --> 00:44:12,250
low status?

735
00:44:12,570 --> 00:44:17,370
And for that problem, I don't necessarily need to know the causal structure of the world to

736
00:44:17,370 --> 00:44:18,330
solve that problem.

737
00:44:18,440 --> 00:44:22,120
I just need to know how to predict who people are going to listen to and pay attention to,

738
00:44:22,280 --> 00:44:25,480
who people are going to side with and who they're not going to side with.

739
00:44:25,800 --> 00:44:28,040
And for that, correlation is enough.

740
00:44:28,200 --> 00:44:34,120
If people who wear fancy suits and use big words are high status, uh, it doesn't matter

741
00:44:34,120 --> 00:44:36,920
if the fancy suits or the big words cause the high status.

742
00:44:37,080 --> 00:44:41,890
As long as everyone thinks that everyone else thinks that those are high status traits,

743
00:44:42,370 --> 00:44:46,610
then it benefits me to go along with the group and assuming that these are high status

744
00:44:46,610 --> 00:44:47,010
things.

745
00:44:47,490 --> 00:44:50,850
And as soon as you have that coordination that we've all coordinated on, the people who use

746
00:44:50,850 --> 00:44:54,370
big words, the people who wear fancy clothes, these people are high status.

747
00:44:54,610 --> 00:44:59,570
Well, all of a sudden, I can take advantage of that by imitating those high status words,

748
00:44:59,650 --> 00:45:03,730
by wearing the fancy clothes and tricking other people into thinking that I'm high status

749
00:45:03,730 --> 00:45:07,170
because they've already coordinated on the fact that that thing is high status.

750
00:45:07,490 --> 00:45:08,050
Right.

751
00:45:08,420 --> 00:45:14,420
Um and so it it may be it's it may be not merely that um uh the

752
00:45:14,420 --> 00:45:18,980
causal problem is is too hard to solve and therefore we just settle for the the you know

753
00:45:19,060 --> 00:45:19,860
the correlates.

754
00:45:20,260 --> 00:45:25,620
It may be that the correlates in some cases are enough because of this important aspect of

755
00:45:25,620 --> 00:45:28,580
coordination uh that is at the at the heart of it.

756
00:45:28,740 --> 00:45:33,070
And and when you have when coordination enters the picture, you can have um a

757
00:45:33,070 --> 00:45:37,150
self-fulfilling process where people are high status for being high status, where they

758
00:45:37,150 --> 00:45:40,110
don't actually have any special ability to generate benefits.

759
00:45:40,270 --> 00:45:44,830
But because everyone thinks that everyone else thinks that they have those abilities, they

760
00:45:44,830 --> 00:45:45,870
have high status.

761
00:45:46,110 --> 00:45:50,670
And and in cases like that, the status bubble can burst uh once we all gain common

762
00:45:50,670 --> 00:45:53,860
knowledge that the person isn't all they're cracked up to be.

763
00:45:54,100 --> 00:45:58,820
And so um I I think it's another aspect where where coordination, common knowledge, is a

764
00:45:58,820 --> 00:46:03,780
really uh overlooked and important part of the of the process here with with status.

765
00:46:04,100 --> 00:46:04,260
Yeah.

766
00:46:04,580 --> 00:46:06,580
Yeah, I like that that extension.

767
00:46:06,740 --> 00:46:10,500
Like I have been thinking about it as a yeah, there are like these purely predictive

768
00:46:10,580 --> 00:46:14,630
problems, or could be purely predictive problems, which is just like, oh, of my peer group

769
00:46:14,710 --> 00:46:18,790
without knowing anything about causal structure of status, can I predict who's gonna be sta

770
00:46:19,030 --> 00:46:19,990
higher status in the future?

771
00:46:20,150 --> 00:46:22,390
Like that's just a good predictive model to have.

772
00:46:22,630 --> 00:46:27,110
And so there, yeah, you but then uh also the causal structure stuff, which is like what can

773
00:46:27,110 --> 00:46:27,430
I do?

774
00:46:27,590 --> 00:46:29,990
How do I intervene on the world to get status?

775
00:46:30,150 --> 00:46:35,260
Um, but I hadn't that thought too much about this, like the self-fulfilling prophecy on top

776
00:46:35,260 --> 00:46:40,460
of the predictive models then becomes part of the causal structure of the world,

777
00:46:40,700 --> 00:46:41,340
actually.

778
00:46:41,820 --> 00:46:43,900
And I I like that, I like that take.

779
00:46:44,540 --> 00:46:44,860
Yeah.

780
00:46:44,940 --> 00:46:49,580
And then of course you're kind of like the coordination games that we play when we're

781
00:46:49,580 --> 00:46:53,820
competing for status, you know, they change a lot and they fall apart.

782
00:46:53,900 --> 00:46:58,090
Uh when it becomes common knowledge that we are competing for status.

783
00:46:58,330 --> 00:46:59,770
Um yeah, cool.

784
00:47:00,010 --> 00:47:04,650
Yeah, I'll definitely have to think, yeah, what happens at like the I guess that's like the

785
00:47:04,650 --> 00:47:10,570
second order effects of having these prediction models working and trying to predict what

786
00:47:10,570 --> 00:47:13,770
other people think about this the hierarchy and stuff like that.

787
00:47:13,850 --> 00:47:15,050
I I'll I like that.

788
00:47:15,290 --> 00:47:15,450
Yeah.

789
00:47:15,530 --> 00:47:17,450
And homage to Catalonia, George L.

790
00:47:17,610 --> 00:47:23,240
Orwell, it's his story about joining uh the Franco uh fighting against the fascists in

791
00:47:23,240 --> 00:47:29,080
Spain in 1930s and he's with the anarchists and the um but he talks about when he moves to

792
00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:34,200
when he goes to Spain in the beginning um because it's sort of like a a class based

793
00:47:34,200 --> 00:47:40,120
revolution uh he was wearing like a suit and a tie and a collar and

794
00:47:40,120 --> 00:47:43,800
he's on the train to Spain and everyone's like you can't wear that like you're gonna be

795
00:47:43,800 --> 00:47:49,650
like ostracized Um, and so like he he quickly picks up on like that the local

796
00:47:49,650 --> 00:47:55,570
ecology is like the more working class you look, the higher status you're granted.

797
00:47:55,810 --> 00:48:00,530
And then months later, when he's actually like fleeing Spain after the um he like fights in

798
00:48:00,530 --> 00:48:05,410
the war and sort of the the class-based revolution didn't pan out, it flips again.

799
00:48:05,490 --> 00:48:10,290
And now he actually escapes and isn't even questioned on the train out of Spain by sort of

800
00:48:10,290 --> 00:48:13,340
dressing up and looking kind of bougie bougie bougie.

801
00:48:13,660 --> 00:48:18,780
Um, and so like that was an example of it's exactly this thing of what

802
00:48:18,780 --> 00:48:22,620
counts as given status completely flipped.

803
00:48:22,780 --> 00:48:26,780
And he was able to sort of from the local ecology pick that up and it flipped like within

804
00:48:26,780 --> 00:48:28,700
the course of a year or something like that.

805
00:48:29,100 --> 00:48:29,740
Yeah.

806
00:48:29,980 --> 00:48:35,900
And my example that I often think of of with this is at least from my memory of the

807
00:48:35,900 --> 00:48:40,190
COVID 19 like early days pandemic, which could be could be flawed, and this isn't like a

808
00:48:40,190 --> 00:48:41,550
value judgment or anything.

809
00:48:41,710 --> 00:48:47,070
But I just remember early on the the narrative was you know uh

810
00:48:47,390 --> 00:48:53,230
N95 masks were scarce, and so you know, we should be saving those for

811
00:48:53,390 --> 00:48:54,830
healthcare workers.

812
00:48:55,310 --> 00:49:00,030
And and so yeah, I think like implicitly maybe I was like, if I saw somebody wearing an N95

813
00:49:00,030 --> 00:49:03,870
mask, maybe I might have thought they were a little selfish or or something like that, you

814
00:49:03,870 --> 00:49:04,030
know.

815
00:49:04,510 --> 00:49:09,280
But then later on, as uh I don't know, supply chains or whatever caught up with those d

816
00:49:09,440 --> 00:49:13,920
those demands, you know, it became like people should be wearing an N95 mask.

817
00:49:14,000 --> 00:49:15,040
And they're totally flipped.

818
00:49:15,120 --> 00:49:17,520
Then if you're not wearing one, I'm like, what are you doing?

819
00:49:17,600 --> 00:49:19,520
Don't you know like those cloth masks?

820
00:49:19,680 --> 00:49:21,760
Maybe they don't do maybe they don't do like anything at all.

821
00:49:21,840 --> 00:49:23,600
I don't know, whatever I thought at the time.

822
00:49:23,760 --> 00:49:26,880
But but yeah, you can see those kinds of dynamics changing all the time.

823
00:49:26,960 --> 00:49:31,840
The the value of the same action changes not just in our lifetimes, but yeah, over weeks or

824
00:49:31,840 --> 00:49:34,170
months or yeah, minutes.

825
00:49:35,690 --> 00:49:37,290
Yeah, this is this is awesome.

826
00:49:37,370 --> 00:49:39,210
And I can imagine too, like it's a weird question.

827
00:49:39,450 --> 00:49:40,570
Again, it's instinct blindness.

828
00:49:40,650 --> 00:49:43,370
We're sort of like obviously like high status, that's obvious.

829
00:49:43,450 --> 00:49:45,370
Like, why would we even need to study that?

830
00:49:45,610 --> 00:49:48,730
I think it's really to your credit, but I imagine it's difficult.

831
00:49:48,890 --> 00:49:52,890
Um, and I don't know what the reception of this work has been outside of Evan Evolutionary

832
00:49:52,970 --> 00:49:55,930
Approach, but like one of the things taking an evolutionary approach or cognitive science

833
00:49:55,930 --> 00:49:59,210
approach gives you is this outs kicking you out of your instinct blindness.

834
00:49:59,290 --> 00:50:04,780
But this really strikes me as like uh something that hasn't been studied outside of like a

835
00:50:04,780 --> 00:50:06,300
very narrow set of people.

836
00:50:07,180 --> 00:50:08,540
Status like I don't know.

837
00:50:08,620 --> 00:50:10,940
There's not a cognitive science of status, is there?

838
00:50:11,260 --> 00:50:13,580
Yeah, it's big in social psychology for sure.

839
00:50:13,740 --> 00:50:17,580
Um especially looking at more like surface level things of like, yeah, what what

840
00:50:17,580 --> 00:50:19,900
personality characteristics are associated with status.

841
00:50:19,980 --> 00:50:24,380
And but it's not so much, at least in in my view, it's not so much of like how does status

842
00:50:24,380 --> 00:50:27,010
work at a deep like kind of computational level?

843
00:50:27,170 --> 00:50:31,810
How do we given that this navigating status hierarchies is probably like a fundamental

844
00:50:31,810 --> 00:50:33,410
problem that our ancestors had to solve?

845
00:50:33,570 --> 00:50:34,850
Like, how do you solve this?

846
00:50:35,010 --> 00:50:38,690
Because it's not like it's not like every other adaptive problem, it's not like the problem

847
00:50:38,690 --> 00:50:39,410
of finding mates.

848
00:50:39,490 --> 00:50:41,330
I don't think it's it's it's different.

849
00:50:41,410 --> 00:50:45,810
So you need different machinery to to solve that, even if it helps you find mates and stuff

850
00:50:45,890 --> 00:50:46,450
like that, right?

851
00:50:46,770 --> 00:50:52,340
And and to also just clarify, like, you're not thinking about this from the perspective of

852
00:50:52,660 --> 00:50:57,140
status seeking the way we usually think about it in a folk way, which is I think like a lot

853
00:50:57,140 --> 00:50:59,540
of people are like, oh, there's somebody who's just trying to seek status.

854
00:50:59,620 --> 00:51:05,460
They're not actually like interested in like their job or like their mate, or they're not

855
00:51:05,460 --> 00:51:06,260
serious.

856
00:51:06,420 --> 00:51:08,100
They're really in it for the status.

857
00:51:08,180 --> 00:51:12,900
And I mean, I think that is a real evolved entry, but I think you're you're talking about

858
00:51:12,900 --> 00:51:18,250
just no below the surface, there's just evolve software for

859
00:51:19,050 --> 00:51:24,970
you look out and you're like, okay, I gotta eat, I gotta have like social support.

860
00:51:25,290 --> 00:51:27,770
How can I not be an asshole?

861
00:51:28,010 --> 00:51:29,130
What do people like?

862
00:51:29,210 --> 00:51:34,810
And what can I do so that I have support and that people don't think I'm an asshole?

863
00:51:34,970 --> 00:51:39,370
So I think like a lot of bad things get thrown under the rubric of like status seeking, but

864
00:51:39,370 --> 00:51:43,380
I imagine a lot of good things, like as just kids learn up of like when you're mean, other

865
00:51:43,380 --> 00:51:44,740
pu kids don't want to play with you.

866
00:51:44,820 --> 00:51:49,860
Like that's part of figuring out like what to invest in for status.

867
00:51:50,020 --> 00:51:52,020
And I don't think it often gets framed that way.

868
00:51:52,100 --> 00:51:54,020
Is that consistent with how you're thinking about it?

869
00:51:54,100 --> 00:51:59,460
Like that yeah, that caveat that it's not the folk category status seeking.

870
00:51:59,700 --> 00:51:59,860
Yeah.

871
00:52:00,100 --> 00:52:04,980
If in fact I think I've in my head, at least like implicitly, maybe not explicitly, like

872
00:52:05,220 --> 00:52:09,290
pretty much framed it as just like you're just trying not to lose status.

873
00:52:09,370 --> 00:52:10,410
You're not trying to go down.

874
00:52:10,570 --> 00:52:15,290
Like many people might not really care that much about the going up and up and up and up,

875
00:52:15,370 --> 00:52:19,530
like becoming like the you know, top of the hierarchy or whatever.

876
00:52:19,770 --> 00:52:25,610
But I would wager that like nobody is like, yeah, like I want to go down in status, like

877
00:52:25,850 --> 00:52:26,650
nobody.

878
00:52:26,970 --> 00:52:29,690
And so I think that's really what it's more about.

879
00:52:29,770 --> 00:52:35,640
It's about like avoiding the problems of that come with yeah, losing social support, uh

880
00:52:35,720 --> 00:52:41,720
like ostracism and yeah, defensive and the conflict, and about yeah, mediating these kind

881
00:52:41,720 --> 00:52:42,120
of conflicts.

882
00:52:42,200 --> 00:52:46,440
So, I mean, that's one of the hypotheses from the animal literature about like what is what

883
00:52:46,440 --> 00:52:51,400
are hierarchies before, you know, what if hierarchies have a function, what is it?

884
00:52:51,480 --> 00:52:56,600
And it's to maybe stabilize like intergroup conflict over resources.

885
00:52:56,840 --> 00:53:00,650
And so if you're pushing, you know, I don't think many people are just gonna keep pushing

886
00:53:00,650 --> 00:53:06,010
and pushing like for uh I think this probably well calibrated to kind of figure out like

887
00:53:06,090 --> 00:53:10,250
what seems reasonable and just don't wanna be losing status 'cause that's where, you know,

888
00:53:10,330 --> 00:53:13,130
you'll lose you'll get a lot of costs, I guess.

889
00:53:13,450 --> 00:53:13,690
Yeah.

890
00:53:13,850 --> 00:53:14,730
No, that's a great point.

891
00:53:14,810 --> 00:53:20,140
I think um the folk concept of status, I think, ties much more to

892
00:53:21,100 --> 00:53:27,020
the offensive version of status or the being superior to others rather than uh the

893
00:53:27,020 --> 00:53:29,180
avoidance of being inferior.

894
00:53:29,420 --> 00:53:35,420
And I think that's why we often see status seekers as assholes, is because it's much more

895
00:53:35,420 --> 00:53:39,020
of a threat to me if you're trying to be better than me, if you're trying to outdo me.

896
00:53:39,180 --> 00:53:43,260
Because if you're trying to outdo me, then my status is going to fall uh as a result of

897
00:53:43,260 --> 00:53:43,900
your pursuit.

898
00:53:44,060 --> 00:53:47,470
But if you're just trying to avoid looking worse than me, You're just trying to avoid

899
00:53:47,470 --> 00:53:49,150
getting ostracized or ganged up on.

900
00:53:49,230 --> 00:53:50,350
That's much less of a threat to me.

901
00:53:50,430 --> 00:53:53,390
And it's, you know, more understandable and sympathetic.

902
00:53:53,630 --> 00:53:59,470
And so the problem is that our folk concept of status is mainly framed in terms

903
00:53:59,470 --> 00:54:00,590
of superiority.

904
00:54:00,750 --> 00:54:06,670
And that's why we often lose status for overtly seeking status, is

905
00:54:06,670 --> 00:54:11,600
because people interpret it as a threat to them and they interpret it as uh as as a kind of

906
00:54:11,600 --> 00:54:16,000
selfishness, because if I'm trying to be better than you or to others, then that benefits

907
00:54:16,000 --> 00:54:20,640
me and it hurts others, and the benefit to me is smaller than the cost to others, and so

908
00:54:20,640 --> 00:54:23,120
that gets framed as a kind of selfishness.

909
00:54:23,360 --> 00:54:29,200
Um and that uh unfortunately, um because you can lose status for overtly seeking

910
00:54:29,200 --> 00:54:33,670
status, that creates a kind of you know volatility where if we all gain common knowledge

911
00:54:33,670 --> 00:54:36,950
that that we're all just trying to be better than each other, then we all look worse than

912
00:54:36,950 --> 00:54:37,510
each other.

913
00:54:37,590 --> 00:54:40,230
Uh, and we have to do something else to gain status.

914
00:54:40,310 --> 00:54:43,590
Or at least I've I've written a lot about that, and I think that might underlie a lot of

915
00:54:43,590 --> 00:54:46,950
the the arbitrariness and volatility of our of our status symbols.

916
00:54:47,030 --> 00:54:51,750
And I can get you know status for for these weird random things like powdered wigs or you

917
00:54:51,750 --> 00:54:55,910
know uh wearing a certain type of clothing, you know, baggy clothing versus you know

918
00:54:56,070 --> 00:54:57,270
tight-fitting clothing.

919
00:54:57,430 --> 00:55:00,150
Um What's weird about powdered wigs, David?

920
00:55:01,060 --> 00:55:01,780
Well, it's interesting.

921
00:55:01,860 --> 00:55:02,740
I was reading about this.

922
00:55:04,580 --> 00:55:06,580
It is I find powdered wigs so funny.

923
00:55:06,660 --> 00:55:12,420
It's it's I mean, I think the fact that we find them funny is like it's it's the remnants

924
00:55:12,420 --> 00:55:13,620
of that status game collapsing.

925
00:55:13,780 --> 00:55:17,860
I think status games collapse once we realize that they're just funny, that they're just

926
00:55:17,860 --> 00:55:18,340
ridiculous.

927
00:55:18,980 --> 00:55:21,220
Um, you know, as historians have written about this with dueling.

928
00:55:21,300 --> 00:55:24,470
Like dueling used to be taken very seriously, but now we just find it funny.

929
00:55:24,630 --> 00:55:25,750
Like it's just kind of hilarious.

930
00:55:25,990 --> 00:55:27,670
The Looney Tunes like engage in dueling.

931
00:55:27,750 --> 00:55:30,790
It's just a it's just a macho pissing contest that's like this stupid thing.

932
00:55:31,030 --> 00:55:32,870
But like at the time, people took it very seriously.

933
00:55:32,950 --> 00:55:37,270
And if you were to laugh at it, that would be uh a huge, you know, hugely taboo.

934
00:55:37,350 --> 00:55:40,550
Um, and so I think these status games collapse when we all just realize that they're

935
00:55:40,550 --> 00:55:42,070
ridiculous pissing contests.

936
00:55:42,310 --> 00:55:46,070
And probably many of our current status games are likely to collapse at some point in the

937
00:55:46,070 --> 00:55:49,800
future when we realize that they're ridiculous pissing contests.

938
00:55:49,960 --> 00:55:55,960
Um, and uh predicting which status games are likely to be stable and persistent to

939
00:55:55,960 --> 00:55:59,560
the future versus which ones are likely to collapse, I think that is also part of the

940
00:55:59,560 --> 00:56:01,240
adaptive problem of inspiration.

941
00:56:01,400 --> 00:56:06,360
It's not merely um, you know, what kinds of status um uh are likely to pay off or or are

942
00:56:06,360 --> 00:56:07,480
worth investing in.

943
00:56:07,720 --> 00:56:11,480
It's also like, is this status game going to be stable into the future or is it gonna turn

944
00:56:11,480 --> 00:56:15,370
into a laughing stock next year or in five years, right?

945
00:56:15,450 --> 00:56:20,410
It's it's gonna suck if I try to invest in being good at dueling, if dueling is just gonna

946
00:56:20,410 --> 00:56:23,210
be funny and stupid uh next year, right?

947
00:56:23,610 --> 00:56:29,210
Um, and so I think another part of inspiration is is the status game around something

948
00:56:29,370 --> 00:56:32,170
that isn't uh framed as status?

949
00:56:32,330 --> 00:56:36,010
Like is it is it the pursuit of something higher and noble or altruistic?

950
00:56:36,090 --> 00:56:39,290
Uh and that is a cue that it's gonna be stable into the future.

951
00:56:39,450 --> 00:56:45,320
And so I think what inspires us is a person who um invests a lot of time and energy

952
00:56:45,320 --> 00:56:50,760
into a status game without caring about status, and then gets showered with status.

953
00:56:50,840 --> 00:56:51,240
Right.

954
00:56:51,400 --> 00:56:52,600
That's really inspiring.

955
00:56:53,000 --> 00:56:54,360
Because it suggests that yeah.

956
00:56:54,760 --> 00:56:56,360
Yeah, or shows us like how to do it.

957
00:56:56,520 --> 00:56:58,280
Or like it's like you can do it too.

958
00:56:58,360 --> 00:57:02,840
Or like you see a avenue of like, you know, a great teacher, a book inspired me.

959
00:57:03,080 --> 00:57:04,760
And your claim is the readout.

960
00:57:04,840 --> 00:57:10,680
That's the readout of I see a path towards doing this thing that has these positive

961
00:57:10,680 --> 00:57:11,880
attributes.

962
00:57:12,280 --> 00:57:12,760
Right.

963
00:57:13,070 --> 00:57:14,030
Exactly.

964
00:57:14,430 --> 00:57:20,110
Um so yeah, no, that's I've I've been just thinking about this this stuff a lot

965
00:57:20,110 --> 00:57:20,750
lately.

966
00:57:20,910 --> 00:57:25,870
Um and I I think inspiration is a really interesting topic that's underappreciated

967
00:57:26,990 --> 00:57:27,950
evolutionary science.

968
00:57:28,350 --> 00:57:34,000
Yeah, especially if it like as a way of separating it from maybe admiration and envy and

969
00:57:34,000 --> 00:57:40,000
and respect, even though it's maybe a hierarchy navigating emotion, like yeah, the the

970
00:57:40,000 --> 00:57:42,320
outputs might not involve emulating people.

971
00:57:42,400 --> 00:57:46,000
They're just like a motivation to do a particular thing.

972
00:57:46,400 --> 00:57:47,280
Or yeah.

973
00:57:47,520 --> 00:57:47,840
Yeah.

974
00:57:48,160 --> 00:57:48,320
Yeah.

975
00:57:48,400 --> 00:57:50,400
A teacher inspired me, a book inspired me.

976
00:57:50,480 --> 00:57:50,880
I like that.

977
00:57:50,960 --> 00:57:56,880
Like that explains that that it's all I I I like this what you're both saying is and again,

978
00:57:56,960 --> 00:58:02,910
it's very counter instinct blindness where it's it's it's the deep structure of is

979
00:58:02,910 --> 00:58:06,030
this a way to make a living in the world?

980
00:58:06,190 --> 00:58:08,910
Sort of, you know, and I think like people recognize that at some level.

981
00:58:09,070 --> 00:58:13,390
Like you kind of have to be like, I want to do something that excites me, that inspires me.

982
00:58:13,550 --> 00:58:19,550
And I think what people mean by that is they detect a possibility of doing well and

983
00:58:19,550 --> 00:58:25,080
being able to do well such that there will be rewards greater than

984
00:58:25,400 --> 00:58:28,520
the default expected rewards, right?

985
00:58:28,680 --> 00:58:33,480
Like it's sort of this thing of like, oh, I discovered something that I might be better at

986
00:58:33,480 --> 00:58:39,240
than m most people or that I thought, and then I might get more out of than most people or

987
00:58:39,240 --> 00:58:40,200
that I thought.

988
00:58:40,920 --> 00:58:42,760
If you really reduce it down.

989
00:58:43,320 --> 00:58:43,560
Yeah.

990
00:58:43,720 --> 00:58:45,000
Yeah, that's interesting.

991
00:58:45,630 --> 00:58:50,750
And I think another cue to you know this status game being worth investing in, um, and

992
00:58:50,750 --> 00:58:55,550
being stable over the long run is has it been stable in centuries past?

993
00:58:55,710 --> 00:58:58,750
Have my ancestors been playing this status game for generations?

994
00:58:58,990 --> 00:59:00,830
If so, that's a really good one to invest in.

995
00:59:00,910 --> 00:59:04,830
Because you know, if it's lasted for generations, then it's not going to become a laughing

996
00:59:04,830 --> 00:59:05,710
stock next year.

997
00:59:06,000 --> 00:59:06,240
Right.

998
00:59:06,640 --> 00:59:08,160
Uh and so that should be inspiring.

999
00:59:08,240 --> 00:59:12,240
If if I'm doing the same thing that, you know, my ancestors have done for generation after

1000
00:59:12,240 --> 00:59:16,560
generation, you know, um uh it still gets to me.

1001
00:59:16,640 --> 00:59:20,960
I was watching Moana with my daughter, and there's this scene where sh where uh Moana

1002
00:59:21,040 --> 00:59:24,720
discovers that her ancestors were explorers for generations, and you know, the whole movie

1003
00:59:24,880 --> 00:59:28,080
they were telling her that she shouldn't go out and explore because it's too dangerous, and

1004
00:59:28,080 --> 00:59:31,440
then she realized that the things that she really wants to do, like her ancestors have been

1005
00:59:31,440 --> 00:59:32,400
doing it for generations.

1006
00:59:32,480 --> 00:59:35,200
It was really beautiful, like it moves me when I when I see that.

1007
00:59:35,360 --> 00:59:41,130
Um and um so I I think another part of it, you know, is is doing something that has

1008
00:59:41,130 --> 00:59:44,810
been done um for for many generations into the past.

1009
00:59:45,130 --> 00:59:49,450
Um anyway, I'm I'm just uh going off on on my thinking on this topic but I'm curious.

1010
00:59:49,770 --> 00:59:54,650
I like that especially as like a like a storytelling, cultural storytelling as a kind of

1011
00:59:54,650 --> 01:00:00,340
way of you know, teaching or helping our status navigation systems learn what

1012
01:00:00,340 --> 01:00:03,780
are good status games that are worth coordinating around.

1013
01:00:04,020 --> 01:00:08,980
Because I mean and there might even be, yeah, some cultural evolution to that too, where

1014
01:00:08,980 --> 01:00:14,500
you're like, yeah, like we don't want our next generations coordinating over stupid

1015
01:00:14,500 --> 01:00:20,430
status games that lead to conflict or harm our our culture or our group.

1016
01:00:20,590 --> 01:00:25,150
And so kind of like I don't know, inoculating them or yeah, trying to get that implanted in

1017
01:00:25,150 --> 01:00:30,110
them early on, kind of like with storytelling about what your ancestors have done could be

1018
01:00:30,110 --> 01:00:34,670
like one of those kind of cultural technologies to help prevent some of these like

1019
01:00:34,990 --> 01:00:40,830
pointless status games and try to push them towards ones that like s seem

1020
01:00:40,830 --> 01:00:45,150
to have been beneficial generation after generation kind of thing.

1021
01:00:45,620 --> 01:00:45,860
Yeah.

1022
01:00:46,020 --> 01:00:50,340
I mean no no one gets inspired about wearing baggy pants because those are going to go out

1023
01:00:50,340 --> 01:00:52,500
of style uh in a few years anyway.

1024
01:00:52,660 --> 01:00:56,660
But people might get inspired about like wearing the religious garb of their ancestors that

1025
01:00:56,660 --> 01:00:59,220
the their ancestors have been wearing for for generations.

1026
01:01:00,180 --> 01:01:05,700
I mean there is on the baggy pants thing right like this is going to be embarrassing to to

1027
01:01:05,700 --> 01:01:10,670
admit, but like I think you know, as somebody I grew up wearing like really tight skinny

1028
01:01:10,670 --> 01:01:11,230
jeans, right?

1029
01:01:11,310 --> 01:01:11,390
Yeah.

1030
01:01:11,550 --> 01:01:16,590
And I used to put on like baggy pants or whatever, like I got bought a pair of pants from

1031
01:01:16,590 --> 01:01:17,710
somebody by somebody else or whatever.

1032
01:01:17,790 --> 01:01:20,430
And I'd be like, the aesthetics of these are like I hated them.

1033
01:01:20,510 --> 01:01:22,270
They were they were all wrong and stuff.

1034
01:01:22,510 --> 01:01:28,430
And since that trend has changed, like the aesthetic sensibility that

1035
01:01:28,430 --> 01:01:30,440
I have has changed.

1036
01:01:30,520 --> 01:01:33,480
And I I like the baggy silhouette.

1037
01:01:33,800 --> 01:01:37,400
Now something that I would have felt totally uncomfortable in before.

1038
01:01:37,560 --> 01:01:43,560
So yeah, like I even though even knowing that it will change, I was still inspired by that.

1039
01:01:43,640 --> 01:01:48,440
You could view that as inspired by that new aesthetic to enjoy it.

1040
01:01:49,240 --> 01:01:52,690
And embarrassingly, like I've got some wide pants on.

1041
01:01:52,850 --> 01:01:53,650
Like you know.

1042
01:01:53,890 --> 01:01:54,210
Yeah.

1043
01:01:54,370 --> 01:01:59,090
I mean, it's all it's kind of embarrassing to like look at the silly things that people

1044
01:01:59,090 --> 01:02:00,850
used to wear in in previous genera.

1045
01:02:01,010 --> 01:02:04,290
I know sometimes like when I look at pictures of people wearing bell bottoms in the 70s,

1046
01:02:04,370 --> 01:02:05,490
like they're so ridiculous.

1047
01:02:05,570 --> 01:02:07,730
Like I can't believe people thought that was cool.

1048
01:02:07,810 --> 01:02:08,690
And and yet people did.

1049
01:02:08,850 --> 01:02:13,010
I'm sure at the time, like it felt like really cool, but now it's not cool.

1050
01:02:13,250 --> 01:02:14,400
Um yeah.

1051
01:02:14,560 --> 01:02:19,200
I our our sense of aesthetics is so interestingly blended with with status and hard to

1052
01:02:19,200 --> 01:02:20,960
tease apart from status.

1053
01:02:21,440 --> 01:02:25,040
Yeah, I feel like you all talked about this maybe on like another episode.

1054
01:02:25,280 --> 01:02:29,360
Yeah, and I I feel like if I'm remembering your kind of intuition of the explanation,

1055
01:02:29,440 --> 01:02:29,600
right?

1056
01:02:29,680 --> 01:02:30,720
I think I think I liked it.

1057
01:02:30,800 --> 01:02:36,350
It's like then in a sense, like keeping up with these like changing aesthetics is

1058
01:02:36,830 --> 01:02:42,830
oh yeah it was David it was David's wife saying that you've lost it is yeah it yeah it is

1059
01:02:43,070 --> 01:02:48,750
it is kind of like there's a skill like it is maybe showing like that you're I don't know

1060
01:02:48,910 --> 01:02:52,270
still trying to impress somebody or you're trying to be relevant.

1061
01:02:52,430 --> 01:02:55,950
I'm not saying this is necessarily the thing that you should be striving for, but it is

1062
01:02:55,950 --> 01:03:00,510
communicating maybe something if you're still trying to keep up with some trends even if

1063
01:03:00,510 --> 01:03:02,830
they are things that will collapse soon.

1064
01:03:03,460 --> 01:03:06,340
That you're sa socially savvy enough to be aware of the trends.

1065
01:03:06,660 --> 01:03:10,900
Because they're often pretty subtle and hard to you know notice um and pick up on.

1066
01:03:11,060 --> 01:03:14,740
And if you can pick up on those trends, then you're going to be pretty socially competent.

1067
01:03:14,900 --> 01:03:19,300
And picking up on other subtle cues and avoiding embarrassing yourself, like that's that's

1068
01:03:19,300 --> 01:03:20,020
a good skill to have.

1069
01:03:20,100 --> 01:03:23,220
I think it's it's a kind of social coordination ability.

1070
01:03:23,460 --> 01:03:25,300
Um that's another dimension of status.

1071
01:03:25,670 --> 01:03:25,830
Yeah.

1072
01:03:25,910 --> 01:03:31,670
And I think a lot of stuff uh is explained by understanding this issue that it's about the

1073
01:03:31,670 --> 01:03:34,310
audience and that there may not be a uniform audience.

1074
01:03:34,390 --> 01:03:40,390
So like kids are signaling and negotiating status with themselves at some level.

1075
01:03:40,550 --> 01:03:44,630
So, you know, like the like the old man, like these kids in their baggy pants, you know,

1076
01:03:44,710 --> 01:03:46,150
it's like and the kids don't care.

1077
01:03:46,310 --> 01:03:50,800
The kids are doing stuff to piss off the older adults, or they or the older adults just

1078
01:03:50,800 --> 01:03:53,040
like it's not part of their status scheme.

1079
01:03:53,200 --> 01:03:58,880
Um, and so I I think the idea that this is all about status

1080
01:03:59,360 --> 01:04:05,200
is with respect to an audience, and that audience may or may not be as many

1081
01:04:05,200 --> 01:04:06,640
people as possible, right?

1082
01:04:07,040 --> 01:04:10,880
Um, and I this also comes back to this definition because the definition is like sort of

1083
01:04:11,120 --> 01:04:14,410
how do others listen to you or defer to you?

1084
01:04:14,650 --> 01:04:16,090
And there's two paths to do that.

1085
01:04:16,250 --> 01:04:21,530
One is everybody, but another one is you really commit to like a narrow subset.

1086
01:04:21,850 --> 01:04:22,090
Right.

1087
01:04:22,250 --> 01:04:26,890
So you can imagine sort of like I'm generally like well respected, like take it back to Pat

1088
01:04:27,050 --> 01:04:30,330
and like Kanambo, like in the village, and everybody listens to me.

1089
01:04:30,730 --> 01:04:36,420
Or maybe like, you know, I'm just really like I'm a very partisan person and

1090
01:04:36,420 --> 01:04:41,460
like the the this particular group, like half of them hate me, but the other half really

1091
01:04:41,460 --> 01:04:41,860
like me.

1092
01:04:42,020 --> 01:04:43,780
Those are two different ways of having status.

1093
01:04:43,940 --> 01:04:48,900
One averages out to zero, but but still might be pursued, you know.

1094
01:04:48,980 --> 01:04:51,060
And I think like, have you thought about that too?

1095
01:04:51,220 --> 01:04:57,130
Like how status um it's not it's not

1096
01:04:57,130 --> 01:05:01,370
maybe universal uh in the sense of who the audience is for either.

1097
01:05:01,530 --> 01:05:02,010
Mm-hmm.

1098
01:05:02,570 --> 01:05:07,610
Yeah, I mean I I I think this is kind of also in line with with what you're saying, but

1099
01:05:07,610 --> 01:05:13,610
yeah, like as far as you know, we're talking about like value to some number

1100
01:05:13,610 --> 01:05:19,360
of other people and ultimately those other people, the people who you're trying

1101
01:05:19,360 --> 01:05:24,160
to be valuable to, or to have them have a high welfare trade-off ratio so that they'll back

1102
01:05:24,160 --> 01:05:30,080
you in a conflict, like that group, I think only needs to

1103
01:05:30,080 --> 01:05:34,800
be as big as or the right people

1104
01:05:36,790 --> 01:05:40,950
to be stronger than the opposing coalition.

1105
01:05:41,830 --> 01:05:47,510
And in some cases, probably in a lot of cases, for like at least ancestral contexts of

1106
01:05:47,510 --> 01:05:50,950
human human groups, like you probably just want the most people.

1107
01:05:51,270 --> 01:05:57,190
But especially in I don't know, our world, if there's one group of people that has a lot of

1108
01:05:57,190 --> 01:06:01,350
guns, and the other group people, and the rest of people don't really have a lot of guns,

1109
01:06:01,510 --> 01:06:06,720
you can pretty easily have more resource holding potential by just trying to get those

1110
01:06:06,720 --> 01:06:11,840
people who have a lot of guns to really like you and want to defend you, you know, even if

1111
01:06:11,840 --> 01:06:14,080
there are way more people in the other group.

1112
01:06:14,320 --> 01:06:14,640
Right.

1113
01:06:15,040 --> 01:06:19,440
So I think there probably is some of this, like you can or like more simply, right?

1114
01:06:19,520 --> 01:06:25,280
If there's like a few warriors and a bunch of people who are not warriors, they

1115
01:06:25,280 --> 01:06:31,280
don't fight, then like mono monopolizing the warrior group can get you status,

1116
01:06:31,360 --> 01:06:37,350
even if as a whole, the rest of the group doesn't value any value you and wouldn't come to

1117
01:06:37,350 --> 01:06:42,470
your aid in a conflict, as long as you at the group, the inter, like, yeah, your little

1118
01:06:42,470 --> 01:06:48,070
coalitional level, you have more power, then I think that can be a stable way of of

1119
01:06:48,070 --> 01:06:52,310
getting status by you know dominating another group.

1120
01:06:52,470 --> 01:06:57,270
But really the way you're getting these group of people to come to your aid is probably

1121
01:06:57,270 --> 01:06:58,870
through benefit generation.

1122
01:07:00,560 --> 01:07:03,680
For them, for for the for the stronger coalition.

1123
01:07:03,840 --> 01:07:04,080
Yeah.

1124
01:07:04,400 --> 01:07:08,320
And that's why I think like defining groups, which is something that like obviously, you

1125
01:07:08,320 --> 01:07:12,960
know, you're working on for me, like I got to kind of that point and I was like, I don't

1126
01:07:12,960 --> 01:07:14,080
know what a group is.

1127
01:07:14,720 --> 01:07:18,080
So I don't know how to define like yeah, these things.

1128
01:07:18,240 --> 01:07:22,160
And I think that's we need a definition of how do we carve up these different groups, how

1129
01:07:22,160 --> 01:07:26,210
do we know like who is our coalition versus the other coalitions.

1130
01:07:26,610 --> 01:07:26,690
Yeah.

1131
01:07:26,770 --> 01:07:29,650
And and yeah, I think it's an inference within that software.

1132
01:07:29,810 --> 01:07:32,610
Like I don't yeah, I don't think it's like a thing out in the world.

1133
01:07:32,690 --> 01:07:33,090
Yeah.

1134
01:07:33,490 --> 01:07:33,810
Yeah.

1135
01:07:33,970 --> 01:07:38,530
I mean, let me add another layer of complication to this already hugely complicated mess,

1136
01:07:38,690 --> 01:07:42,210
where you know it's hard enough to figure out what the status landscape is now.

1137
01:07:42,290 --> 01:07:44,370
And that's an important part of the adaptive problem.

1138
01:07:44,530 --> 01:07:49,560
But another hugely important part of the adaptive problem is forecasting what the status

1139
01:07:49,560 --> 01:07:52,280
landscape is likely going to be in the future.

1140
01:07:52,440 --> 01:07:56,760
So it may be that the people with the guns have all the status, or at least they they have

1141
01:07:56,760 --> 01:07:59,080
all the power now because they have guns and we don't.

1142
01:07:59,400 --> 01:08:04,280
But um, if I can forecast that that situation is actually precarious, because those people

1143
01:08:04,280 --> 01:08:09,870
with guns are actually resented by everyone in the community, And they're viewed as

1144
01:08:09,870 --> 01:08:11,310
predatory and selfish.

1145
01:08:11,390 --> 01:08:12,750
And there's an uprising of people.

1146
01:08:12,830 --> 01:08:16,350
And though they're small now, they seem to have morality on their side.

1147
01:08:16,430 --> 01:08:19,550
And morality is itself a kind of focal point for coordination.

1148
01:08:19,710 --> 01:08:25,150
And so it might be better off for me teaming up with the band of rebels who right now are

1149
01:08:25,150 --> 01:08:26,910
weaker and right now have lower status.

1150
01:08:27,070 --> 01:08:31,630
But because they have the moral high ground, I can forecast that the status landscape is

1151
01:08:31,630 --> 01:08:35,550
going to change if I team up with these people who have the moral high ground.

1152
01:08:35,950 --> 01:08:41,360
And so that adds another aspect of this of choosing the status game that is that has more

1153
01:08:41,360 --> 01:08:46,880
moral gravity, um, because that is a good sign that that status game is going to grow and

1154
01:08:46,880 --> 01:08:52,880
be more stable into the future than ones that um are more fragile, are more um, you know,

1155
01:08:53,120 --> 01:08:58,240
selfish seeming, are more likely to collapse, um, etcetera.

1156
01:08:58,670 --> 01:09:02,350
Of course, so you now get now you gotta throw morality into the whole picture, which is its

1157
01:09:02,510 --> 01:09:04,510
old you know whole nother complicated mess.

1158
01:09:04,670 --> 01:09:04,990
Yeah.

1159
01:09:05,310 --> 01:09:05,950
Yeah.

1160
01:09:06,350 --> 01:09:06,590
Yeah.

1161
01:09:06,670 --> 01:09:07,070
I mean it's a lot of things.

1162
01:09:07,230 --> 01:09:12,670
What sucks is that it's like the status is just connected to literally every issue in the

1163
01:09:12,670 --> 01:09:13,790
evolutionary social sciences.

1164
01:09:14,190 --> 01:09:18,750
It reminds me again, this is the to be quote of like everything, the the canonical example

1165
01:09:18,750 --> 01:09:23,310
of evolutionary psychology is high school social dynamics, which is you know, it's also

1166
01:09:23,310 --> 01:09:27,460
this thing of like the the trope of like the high schooler who peaks during high school,

1167
01:09:27,620 --> 01:09:30,980
you know, where you're sort of like, Well, what what genre of kid am I gonna be?

1168
01:09:31,140 --> 01:09:36,740
Am I gonna be like a a nerd, you know, a theater kid, a music kid, a jock, or you know,

1169
01:09:36,980 --> 01:09:42,020
popular, or and you know, you can imagine at some level there's machinery for sort of being

1170
01:09:42,020 --> 01:09:44,420
like, you know, what are my proclivities?

1171
01:09:44,500 --> 01:09:46,180
But then, like, what's future-proofing this?

1172
01:09:46,260 --> 01:09:50,890
And you know, that the the kind of trope of, you know, oh man, high school was like the

1173
01:09:50,890 --> 01:09:51,290
best thing.

1174
01:09:51,450 --> 01:09:55,690
And then, you know, the person whose life is sort of terrible and low status after high

1175
01:09:55,690 --> 01:09:56,170
school.

1176
01:09:56,410 --> 01:10:01,290
It's sort of we we sort of laugh about that, but I think it's the readout of the system of

1177
01:10:01,290 --> 01:10:06,970
like, oh, they kind of either were a victim or judged incorrectly about how

1178
01:10:06,970 --> 01:10:08,810
future-proof the status game was.

1179
01:10:08,890 --> 01:10:12,650
You know, they thought like, you know, being the captain of the football team and being

1180
01:10:12,650 --> 01:10:18,000
kind of a bully and like, you know, dating the the pretty girl was the way to get status,

1181
01:10:18,160 --> 01:10:18,880
and that worked.

1182
01:10:18,960 --> 01:10:24,480
But then, like, the nerd who was didn't have a lot of status and maybe got picked on in

1183
01:10:24,480 --> 01:10:29,040
high school was like, Well, I'm really smart and like I'm gonna be fine once high school's

1184
01:10:29,040 --> 01:10:33,200
over, you know, and like has a really good job and has a good life, but then like has high

1185
01:10:33,200 --> 01:10:37,280
status, quote unquote, according to other metrics.

1186
01:10:37,520 --> 01:10:42,850
Um, you know, I think seeing that as as a trope, I think is a readout of this sort of like

1187
01:10:43,090 --> 01:10:47,170
issue you're talking about, David, which is sort of like you can be wrong about which

1188
01:10:47,170 --> 01:10:52,050
status scheme you sort of uh tie your fortunes to.

1189
01:10:52,610 --> 01:10:52,930
Yeah.

1190
01:10:53,330 --> 01:10:57,170
I I I think this this ties in a lot to moral progress as well.

1191
01:10:57,410 --> 01:11:00,960
Cause a lot of a lot of moral discourse is about, you know, you know, in the next

1192
01:11:00,960 --> 01:11:05,440
generation, our forebears are going to look back at us and and see that we were barbaric

1193
01:11:05,440 --> 01:11:08,320
for, say, eating factory farmed meat or something like that.

1194
01:11:08,480 --> 01:11:12,960
And a big part of you know the moral discourse game is finding issues that our forebears

1195
01:11:13,120 --> 01:11:15,440
are going to look back at us and condemn.

1196
01:11:15,600 --> 01:11:20,000
And if we can find that now, then that's that's a forecast of the future status landscape.

1197
01:11:20,080 --> 01:11:23,210
And that is a good investment to invest if invest in now.

1198
01:11:23,290 --> 01:11:27,450
So if I see that, you know, this eating factory farm meat business, this isn't looking

1199
01:11:27,450 --> 01:11:27,610
good.

1200
01:11:27,850 --> 01:11:32,250
This this status game is gonna is gonna collapse pretty soon, and and the vegans are gonna

1201
01:11:32,250 --> 01:11:34,330
end up looking morally superior to everyone else.

1202
01:11:34,410 --> 01:11:37,370
So I better get in on this veganism business now.

1203
01:11:37,450 --> 01:11:41,930
Um and I'm making kind of a moral status game forecast for the future.

1204
01:11:42,090 --> 01:11:46,170
Um and I think you know that might be part of this as well.

1205
01:11:46,250 --> 01:11:51,720
Um but before we get too wishy-washy into abstract theoretical stuff, I want to anchor us

1206
01:11:51,720 --> 01:11:55,880
into empirical stuff, which you've done a lot of really cool empirical stuff, Patrick.

1207
01:11:56,120 --> 01:12:02,040
Um so um you've done work on how good people are at

1208
01:12:02,040 --> 01:12:05,480
figuring out what is going to get them status and what isn't.

1209
01:12:05,640 --> 01:12:09,320
So could you talk about your work on on that question and how how good are people at

1210
01:12:09,320 --> 01:12:10,760
figuring this stuff out?

1211
01:12:11,270 --> 01:12:14,950
Yeah, I was just gonna say this sounds like a good segue into like the personality stuff.

1212
01:12:15,030 --> 01:12:18,950
Now we're talking about yeah, like all these differences and how well people are predicting

1213
01:12:18,950 --> 01:12:23,750
future status games versus yeah, predicting all these things about status, right?

1214
01:12:24,230 --> 01:12:28,550
Yeah, that's basically like so after doing or not after, but while doing the status kind of

1215
01:12:28,550 --> 01:12:32,310
stuff, learning, trying to learn more about like how do these mechanisms work at like a

1216
01:12:32,310 --> 01:12:34,780
species typical level, yeah.

1217
01:12:34,860 --> 01:12:39,420
I kind of got sucked into like thinking about the individual differences in these things,

1218
01:12:39,660 --> 01:12:43,260
because there's so many spaces for these individual differences to creep in.

1219
01:12:43,420 --> 01:12:47,900
Like, you know, we've hinted at a whole bunch of different little systems in the mind that

1220
01:12:47,900 --> 01:12:51,980
all design are designed to like pick up on certain inputs and produce certain outputs or

1221
01:12:51,980 --> 01:12:53,500
estimate different things.

1222
01:12:53,820 --> 01:12:58,860
And any like differences there in any of those systems that creep in for whatever reason,

1223
01:12:59,020 --> 01:13:04,890
either due to differences in developmental calibration or genetic noise or you

1224
01:13:04,890 --> 01:13:10,810
know facultative calibration, whatever, like um they can produce differences in

1225
01:13:10,810 --> 01:13:11,130
behavior.

1226
01:13:11,210 --> 01:13:12,970
Like that's kind of the whole thing that we're talking about.

1227
01:13:13,050 --> 01:13:16,650
Is like, are you going to pursue becoming a football player or an academic?

1228
01:13:16,890 --> 01:13:22,890
Like somewhere your mind uh estimated one to be a better strategy than the

1229
01:13:22,890 --> 01:13:23,450
other, maybe.

1230
01:13:23,610 --> 01:13:28,970
And maybe that was incorrect or or something, but it led to differences in behavior, a

1231
01:13:28,970 --> 01:13:34,300
choice, that then will lead to other aspects of your everyday behaviors changing too, and

1232
01:13:34,300 --> 01:13:38,140
the way you think and feel will be changing too over time.

1233
01:13:38,300 --> 01:13:44,220
And so, really, like I think these kinds of things, obviously not just hierarchy navigation

1234
01:13:44,220 --> 01:13:48,620
mechanisms, all the psychological mechanisms in our head and individual differences

1235
01:13:48,620 --> 01:13:54,530
therein, like are the true personality

1236
01:13:54,530 --> 01:13:56,050
generators, so to speak.

1237
01:13:56,130 --> 01:14:01,170
Like these are the things that produce differences in behavior that over time accumulate

1238
01:14:01,170 --> 01:14:06,690
into these, you know, tendencies or dispositions, uh,

1239
01:14:06,930 --> 01:14:11,810
average differences in thoughts, feelings, and behavior, which is like what personality is,

1240
01:14:11,970 --> 01:14:15,220
according to personality psychologists.

1241
01:14:15,540 --> 01:14:21,300
And yeah, so I started to just think about like how does differences in our ability

1242
01:14:21,300 --> 01:14:25,860
to estimate the status impacts of different things, like how might that play into

1243
01:14:26,500 --> 01:14:27,460
personality?

1244
01:14:27,940 --> 01:14:32,500
And I this this is kind of like a first pass of trying to figure out like, can I measure

1245
01:14:32,500 --> 01:14:32,900
these things?

1246
01:14:33,060 --> 01:14:36,420
Can I measure differences in this like accuracy of the system?

1247
01:14:36,660 --> 01:14:37,940
What would that look like?

1248
01:14:38,180 --> 01:14:43,610
And then can I tie those parameters to broader traits

1249
01:14:44,410 --> 01:14:50,170
like motivations um and hexaco traits is kind of where I was at there.

1250
01:14:50,330 --> 01:14:56,170
And I I didn't make really big predictions beforehand, uh in part just because I view

1251
01:14:56,170 --> 01:14:58,330
this work kind of as ex exploratory.

1252
01:14:58,490 --> 01:15:03,610
Like I think the the theory is there in the thinking that there are psychological

1253
01:15:03,610 --> 01:15:08,520
mechanisms that pay attention to these inputs and these outputs and individual differences

1254
01:15:08,680 --> 01:15:13,560
and how people map these inputs to outputs will lead to behavioral differences.

1255
01:15:13,640 --> 01:15:17,000
And sometimes those behavioral differences might be obvious, but I think there's going to

1256
01:15:17,000 --> 01:15:23,000
be a lot of like non-intuitive ways in which our personality terminology, like the

1257
01:15:23,000 --> 01:15:28,120
words that we use to describe people, which is what like our personality scales are

1258
01:15:28,120 --> 01:15:34,070
ultimately tapping into, they're gonna map onto those things in non obvious ways.

1259
01:15:34,230 --> 01:15:38,550
Uh so that's kind of why I view this as exploratory, even though I think it's fundamentally

1260
01:15:38,550 --> 01:15:40,150
rooted in in theory.

1261
01:15:40,870 --> 01:15:46,790
Um and yeah, basically, like what we found is people who are better at or at least

1262
01:15:46,790 --> 01:15:52,710
have a closer assessment of the impact, status impacts to what other people say tend

1263
01:15:52,870 --> 01:15:55,830
to be themselves like more motivated to get status.

1264
01:15:55,910 --> 01:15:57,190
They're more status driven.

1265
01:15:57,350 --> 01:16:00,880
And of course you can imagine different like causal structures at play here.

1266
01:16:00,960 --> 01:16:05,920
Like it could be somewhere in your head there's a a motivational there, there's a

1267
01:16:05,920 --> 01:16:11,840
motivation somehow representing how much you pay attention to status cr status

1268
01:16:11,840 --> 01:16:12,480
information.

1269
01:16:12,720 --> 01:16:17,040
And because you pay attention to more status information, that leads to more accurate

1270
01:16:17,040 --> 01:16:17,920
estimates.

1271
01:16:18,320 --> 01:16:20,720
And then that's why they're correlated.

1272
01:16:21,230 --> 01:16:26,830
Or it could be maybe there's some other reasons why some people's status impact assessment

1273
01:16:26,830 --> 01:16:28,830
systems or whatever are more accurate.

1274
01:16:29,070 --> 01:16:32,750
And then as you're going through life, you know, you're getting feedback.

1275
01:16:32,910 --> 01:16:36,670
Like if you have a really accurate one, you're probably going to be rewarded more often

1276
01:16:36,670 --> 01:16:37,310
with status.

1277
01:16:37,390 --> 01:16:43,320
And so it kind of feeds this motivation for status, versus if you're

1278
01:16:43,320 --> 01:16:46,360
inaccurate a lot of times, maybe you don't get that feedback.

1279
01:16:46,440 --> 01:16:49,960
And so you you actually learn that maybe status seeking is not a good strategy for me.

1280
01:16:50,120 --> 01:16:52,200
So you kind of don't have that motivation as strong.

1281
01:16:52,440 --> 01:16:54,920
So and it could be both or you know, whatever.

1282
01:16:55,000 --> 01:16:58,600
But I think there's multiple causal pathways that could lead to that.

1283
01:16:58,840 --> 01:16:59,960
Um yeah.

1284
01:17:00,200 --> 01:17:03,400
And then I was just gonna ask a clarifying question.

1285
01:17:03,480 --> 01:17:06,760
How did you measure uh accuracy of assessment?

1286
01:17:07,170 --> 01:17:07,410
Yeah.

1287
01:17:07,490 --> 01:17:13,410
So basically we have like these lists of acts, characteristics, and events, like 240,

1288
01:17:13,490 --> 01:17:16,210
whatever things that you could do or somebody else could do.

1289
01:17:16,530 --> 01:17:21,970
And you know, in this in this research, we're basically asking like a large group of people

1290
01:17:22,130 --> 01:17:27,170
if somebody did this thing, would this increase or decrease their status in your eyes?

1291
01:17:27,330 --> 01:17:32,370
Or sometimes it's in the eyes of others in your community, whatever the exact prompt is.

1292
01:17:32,720 --> 01:17:36,640
So we use that or I use that as like the kind of criterion.

1293
01:17:36,800 --> 01:17:40,160
So that's like as close to the ground truth as I think I'm going to get.

1294
01:17:40,240 --> 01:17:42,640
And there's all kinds of issues with that, of course.

1295
01:17:42,720 --> 01:17:44,960
Uh, but it's a way of estimating kind of the ground truth.

1296
01:17:45,040 --> 01:17:48,480
What's the average status impact across different groups, let's say.

1297
01:17:48,720 --> 01:17:52,480
And then I ask another group of people who are like the main subjects.

1298
01:17:52,720 --> 01:17:55,210
They go in and I give them the same things.

1299
01:17:55,290 --> 01:17:59,210
And I say, like, if this were if you did this thing or it happened to you, like what do you

1300
01:17:59,210 --> 01:18:01,050
think would happen to your status?

1301
01:18:01,530 --> 01:18:07,290
And then you can basically, like, in a sense, get a sense of like what is the

1302
01:18:07,290 --> 01:18:10,730
difference between the criteria and each person's estimate.

1303
01:18:10,970 --> 01:18:12,970
And you can get a couple of different parameters.

1304
01:18:13,050 --> 01:18:18,040
Like, one is do they tend to overestimate how beneficial things are?

1305
01:18:18,520 --> 01:18:21,160
Do they tend to underestimate how beneficial things are?

1306
01:18:21,320 --> 01:18:22,600
That's one parameter.

1307
01:18:22,840 --> 01:18:25,000
Kind of like, yeah, a continuum.

1308
01:18:25,160 --> 01:18:29,240
And then the another parameter is like, do they have the rank ordering right?

1309
01:18:29,320 --> 01:18:34,280
Like how well correlated is their estimate of the world with the, you know, the objective

1310
01:18:34,280 --> 01:18:35,240
criterion.

1311
01:18:35,990 --> 01:18:41,430
And so with those two, you can kind of treat them as different parameters that index like

1312
01:18:41,430 --> 01:18:42,790
the accuracy of the system.

1313
01:18:42,870 --> 01:18:45,590
Or that's how I've been treating these parameters anyway.

1314
01:18:45,750 --> 01:18:50,870
So you could be like have a really good rank ordering of things, a good correlation between

1315
01:18:50,870 --> 01:18:54,870
what you think and what most people think, but you just tend to think that things tend to

1316
01:18:54,870 --> 01:18:59,400
be better than average, or you could tend to think that they're worse.

1317
01:18:59,560 --> 01:19:05,000
Or you could have just like a you know, almost like messed up rank ordering of what things

1318
01:19:05,000 --> 01:19:05,320
are better.

1319
01:19:05,400 --> 01:19:11,000
You think this is like, you know, being good at basketball is better than being good at uh

1320
01:19:11,640 --> 01:19:12,440
something else.

1321
01:19:12,760 --> 01:19:16,280
I have no examples, but yeah, it could be totally flipped or whatever.

1322
01:19:16,570 --> 01:19:22,410
And so basically I find that people who are have a better like rank ordering, a more true

1323
01:19:22,410 --> 01:19:26,810
rank ordering or a rank ordering that corresponds more to other like the average rank

1324
01:19:26,810 --> 01:19:30,890
ordering of people tend to have higher motivations for status.

1325
01:19:31,130 --> 01:19:35,210
And they also tend to think that things are better for status than they are.

1326
01:19:35,770 --> 01:19:38,810
So they overestimate the status benefits of of acts.

1327
01:19:39,450 --> 01:19:43,370
But it's still but the relative rank ordering about like which things are better than other

1328
01:19:43,370 --> 01:19:44,730
things, they're still good at.

1329
01:19:45,640 --> 01:19:48,600
So it's like in a way, it's like they're not inaccurate.

1330
01:19:48,680 --> 01:19:52,600
They just kind of think like everything just seems better to them, you know?

1331
01:19:52,920 --> 01:19:53,480
Hmm.

1332
01:19:53,880 --> 01:19:54,200
Interesting.

1333
01:19:54,280 --> 01:19:56,760
And how are you how you're measuring status motivations?

1334
01:19:57,160 --> 01:20:00,760
That one's just like the standard kind of I used a couple different self-report scales.

1335
01:20:01,000 --> 01:20:06,920
Like there's uh Kenrick has one in the fundamental uh motives, and then

1336
01:20:06,920 --> 01:20:11,000
there's another one, I forget the the author, but they're like the standard kind of like

1337
01:20:11,270 --> 01:20:15,510
self-report, personality type uh motivation questions.

1338
01:20:16,150 --> 01:20:16,630
Interesting.

1339
01:20:17,030 --> 01:20:22,950
Because if if I recall, it seems uh I think that status motivation,

1340
01:20:23,030 --> 01:20:28,230
depending on how you measure it, is correlated with like dark triad traits like narcissism,

1341
01:20:28,390 --> 01:20:31,590
manipulativeness, um, psychopathy.

1342
01:20:31,910 --> 01:20:33,830
Um, is that correct?

1343
01:20:34,480 --> 01:20:36,320
It probably depends on on how you measure it.

1344
01:20:36,400 --> 01:20:39,680
I don't remember off the top of my head what the correl because I do have like honesty

1345
01:20:39,840 --> 01:20:41,840
humility in the in this study.

1346
01:20:42,320 --> 01:20:45,120
I don't remember exactly what the correlation was.

1347
01:20:45,520 --> 01:20:46,480
But it yeah.

1348
01:20:46,640 --> 01:20:51,120
It probably depends on exactly the wording of like what goes into those status motivation

1349
01:20:51,120 --> 01:20:51,520
questionnaires.

1350
01:20:51,760 --> 01:20:55,600
Is it like I want to be better than other people, I want to be superior, I like to be in

1351
01:20:55,600 --> 01:20:56,080
charge.

1352
01:20:56,320 --> 01:21:01,070
Or is it like I want others to value me and like you know, uh that kind of stuff.

1353
01:21:01,470 --> 01:21:06,510
So because because yeah, like I do have the honesty humility scale, and that was another

1354
01:21:06,510 --> 01:21:12,350
finding from that basically that study is that people who are low on honest

1355
01:21:12,510 --> 01:21:17,870
humility, meaning like people who probably it that would correlate with the dark triad.

1356
01:21:18,030 --> 01:21:21,390
If you're low on honesty humility, you'd be higher on dark triad traits because they're

1357
01:21:21,470 --> 01:21:23,390
like, you know, super highly correlated.

1358
01:21:23,790 --> 01:21:29,580
Um, they actually tended to be like less accurate in the rank ordering of things.

1359
01:21:29,820 --> 01:21:34,460
So they tended to think that things mattered more for status than they actually did, but

1360
01:21:34,460 --> 01:21:39,500
they were less accurate about what those things were exactly.

1361
01:21:39,820 --> 01:21:44,540
So you know, the story that I can kind of think about in my head or my way of interpret

1362
01:21:44,780 --> 01:21:49,900
interpreting this is like, you know, your motive, you you think things are better for

1363
01:21:49,900 --> 01:21:55,170
status than they are, and the things that you think are better for status are are actually

1364
01:21:55,170 --> 01:21:56,530
not better than some other things.

1365
01:21:56,610 --> 01:22:02,610
So maybe things like trying to be assertive or uh trying to be trying to always

1366
01:22:02,610 --> 01:22:06,450
get your way or show that you're better than other people, like you might think that those

1367
01:22:06,450 --> 01:22:09,330
are good, but they're most people think that they're not good.

1368
01:22:09,490 --> 01:22:14,050
And so you do behaviors that other people interpret as being like

1369
01:22:14,050 --> 01:22:19,890
Machiavellian or you know not humble, you know, and

1370
01:22:19,890 --> 01:22:25,300
that filters into your your story of what your personality is.

1371
01:22:25,860 --> 01:22:26,420
Basically.

1372
01:22:26,980 --> 01:22:31,780
So it suggests that assholes might be just bad at status seeking.

1373
01:22:31,860 --> 01:22:34,500
They might not realize that being an asshole is low status.

1374
01:22:35,700 --> 01:22:40,580
Yeah, I think some I think that might be some of what of what's going on here and we have

1375
01:22:40,580 --> 01:22:46,020
an another study not looking at status things, but I think assholes, people, people that

1376
01:22:46,020 --> 01:22:49,470
either other people think of assholes and then might think of themselves as assholes

1377
01:22:49,550 --> 01:22:54,510
because other people think of them as assholes, like they might just be less accurate at

1378
01:22:55,310 --> 01:23:01,230
estimating these important social things uh that go factor into these decisions and

1379
01:23:01,230 --> 01:23:06,670
behaviors and things people say, and that influences that how people how much people think

1380
01:23:06,670 --> 01:23:07,950
they're an asshole, you know?

1381
01:23:08,110 --> 01:23:13,080
Uh to to defend assholes, which I don't want to do, but just from a purely scientific

1382
01:23:13,080 --> 01:23:16,520
perspective, it's sort of, I think there could be an argument that it's sort of similar to

1383
01:23:16,520 --> 01:23:21,880
like being a criminal, which is sort of if you ask people like, would it be good to like

1384
01:23:21,880 --> 01:23:22,520
rob somebody?

1385
01:23:22,680 --> 01:23:24,040
Everyone would be like, That's terrible.

1386
01:23:24,280 --> 01:23:25,000
Don't do it.

1387
01:23:25,240 --> 01:23:30,200
But the the problem is you get the benefit from doing it to one person, you know.

1388
01:23:30,360 --> 01:23:36,290
So like it might be a thing of uh somebody is like I think a thing is very common

1389
01:23:36,530 --> 01:23:42,130
is women who sort of seem vulnerable, and like some asshole dude is like really

1390
01:23:42,210 --> 01:23:44,610
manipulative or controlling of her.

1391
01:23:45,250 --> 01:23:50,930
Most people would say that that's a bad thing, but the benefits that

1392
01:23:50,930 --> 01:23:56,680
guy's getting are sort of flowing through her, and is he's sort of protecting himself from

1393
01:23:56,680 --> 01:23:58,360
like the the rest of the social world.

1394
01:23:58,520 --> 01:24:04,200
So, in other words, like he's he's in he's a strategy getting a benefit from

1395
01:24:04,440 --> 01:24:10,440
one particular person, even though most people would argue what he's doing is wrong.

1396
01:24:10,520 --> 01:24:16,280
And that's where like the crime metaphor comes in, where it's sort of like the costs aren't

1397
01:24:16,280 --> 01:24:17,800
always what everybody thinks.

1398
01:24:17,960 --> 01:24:22,840
It might just be you're this this asshole is still getting a benefit because the way that

1399
01:24:22,840 --> 01:24:26,610
they can exploit a small subset of the population.

1400
01:24:27,490 --> 01:24:32,050
Or like in their group like their group of people, their peers, like the status game

1401
01:24:32,050 --> 01:24:37,170
they're playing is actually that like you have maybe it is like you need to control, you

1402
01:24:37,170 --> 01:24:39,570
know, your spouse or whatever, or it is that you need to control it.

1403
01:24:39,730 --> 01:24:43,170
You're just you're uh you're things to be cool, you know, that's it.

1404
01:24:43,490 --> 01:24:48,960
You're in some sort of um uh um you know, I don't know, what what are these uh

1405
01:24:48,960 --> 01:24:53,200
pickup artists, you know, or like your that's your that's your status community, right?

1406
01:24:53,360 --> 01:24:55,120
And so you're just that's what you're doing.

1407
01:24:55,200 --> 01:24:55,600
Yeah.

1408
01:24:56,000 --> 01:24:56,240
Yeah.

1409
01:24:56,400 --> 01:25:00,560
And that's where I think my like the way I've empirically tried to do this anyway, it

1410
01:25:00,560 --> 01:25:05,600
breaks down because it really I think we need to be at the level of like individual groups.

1411
01:25:05,760 --> 01:25:06,000
Right.

1412
01:25:06,240 --> 01:25:10,480
And the people in those groups and define the status criteria within those groups because a

1413
01:25:10,480 --> 01:25:15,930
lot of what my work might be capturing is just deviations from like the average,

1414
01:25:16,090 --> 01:25:17,450
whatever the average group is.

1415
01:25:17,530 --> 01:25:22,490
So it's kind of not the exact comparison I want to be making, you know, but just trying to

1416
01:25:22,490 --> 01:25:25,210
delineate like how how do what do I model this?

1417
01:25:25,370 --> 01:25:29,370
Because that's kind of where I'm trying to see my work or where I see my work heading is

1418
01:25:31,450 --> 01:25:36,570
with individual differences, trying to like model the actual parameters within these

1419
01:25:36,570 --> 01:25:38,250
psychological mechanisms.

1420
01:25:38,540 --> 01:25:44,540
and you like getting an estimate, for example, of like uh how well is your

1421
01:25:44,540 --> 01:25:50,140
situation detector for devaluation functioning?

1422
01:25:51,180 --> 01:25:54,300
And then, you know, what is your set point for devaluation?

1423
01:25:54,380 --> 01:25:58,060
What's your threshold for how much you'll tolerate be being devaluated?

1424
01:25:58,220 --> 01:26:03,810
And then, like, what behaviors do you view as being having high utility for

1425
01:26:03,810 --> 01:26:06,530
solving the problem of being devaluated?

1426
01:26:06,690 --> 01:26:10,930
Like all of that within the shame s shame system, those could be different parameters.

1427
01:26:11,570 --> 01:26:17,090
And I want to be able to measure those parameters somehow and then link them to the these

1428
01:26:17,090 --> 01:26:23,090
traditional lexical concepts in personality to try and give us an explanatory account

1429
01:26:23,090 --> 01:26:28,920
of what these lexical descriptive uh dimensions are, like the big five and

1430
01:26:29,080 --> 01:26:29,960
hexaco.

1431
01:26:30,920 --> 01:26:35,400
So, so to get so personality, because we're we're starting in on this, but I want to just

1432
01:26:35,400 --> 01:26:37,000
make sure it's clear for everybody.

1433
01:26:37,240 --> 01:26:43,240
So, one idea is that in a world where there are no differences between people,

1434
01:26:43,480 --> 01:26:48,760
there's sort of just state-dependent paths where you just happen to be exposed to comic

1435
01:26:48,760 --> 01:26:54,550
books, and David gets exposed to jokes and I get exposed to bike riding and

1436
01:26:54,870 --> 01:27:00,870
we um we just start down the path of maybe this is a status

1437
01:27:00,870 --> 01:27:06,310
game we'd like to pursue and the mystery of

1438
01:27:06,630 --> 01:27:11,990
personality is why are there stable differences or correlated differences

1439
01:27:12,310 --> 01:27:14,230
among individuals?

1440
01:27:14,710 --> 01:27:19,780
And I guess the idea is that at some level that's driven by

1441
01:27:20,580 --> 01:27:25,860
a commitment to a particular strategy and an assessment of the cost of switching?

1442
01:27:25,940 --> 01:27:31,540
So, for example, if you're down the path of comic books or bicycles or telling

1443
01:27:31,540 --> 01:27:36,420
jokes, every moment you spend investing in that,

1444
01:27:37,110 --> 01:27:42,870
there's more of a switch cost and an opportunity cost to switch to the next thing all SQL.

1445
01:27:42,950 --> 01:27:48,710
So even on a world where there's no differences or proclivities, just by simply being

1446
01:27:48,710 --> 01:27:53,670
exposed to like one kind of status game versus another, you might get just by virtue of

1447
01:27:53,670 --> 01:27:58,230
this evolved design of calculating what are the switch costs, you might start to get stable

1448
01:27:58,230 --> 01:27:58,710
differences.

1449
01:27:58,870 --> 01:28:03,460
But then in addition to that, and what I just said is oversimplified, you get this extra

1450
01:28:03,460 --> 01:28:09,220
thing of there's an assessment of is this body envelope good at riding

1451
01:28:09,220 --> 01:28:11,700
bikes versus telling jokes versus comic books?

1452
01:28:11,780 --> 01:28:14,100
I mean, it's a dumb example, but you get the idea.

1453
01:28:14,340 --> 01:28:20,020
And then that kind of somehow you sort of feel out

1454
01:28:20,500 --> 01:28:26,020
how am I doing if I invest five units of effort in each three of these things, how many,

1455
01:28:26,180 --> 01:28:30,230
how many cues of success or status do I get?

1456
01:28:30,390 --> 01:28:32,630
And maybe that also affects things.

1457
01:28:32,870 --> 01:28:34,550
So is that the way you're thinking about it?

1458
01:28:34,710 --> 01:28:40,390
Is that really what personality is or the stable differences

1459
01:28:40,390 --> 01:28:41,030
between people?

1460
01:28:41,190 --> 01:28:44,950
And we haven't talked about like the personality types yet, because we can talk about that

1461
01:28:44,950 --> 01:28:45,430
in a second.

1462
01:28:45,510 --> 01:28:51,460
But is this the idea that there's sort of an underlying sort of contingency rules in human

1463
01:28:51,460 --> 01:28:56,900
beings and that leads them to invest in certain activities or

1464
01:28:57,220 --> 01:28:58,500
have certain goals.

1465
01:28:58,580 --> 01:29:02,420
And that is in a weird way that's part of personality.

1466
01:29:02,580 --> 01:29:03,940
Is that the claim?

1467
01:29:04,500 --> 01:29:07,780
Yeah, I think that's part of the part of the claim anyway.

1468
01:29:08,340 --> 01:29:14,190
But really like I think mm the claim that I'm making, and I I think the like people that

1469
01:29:14,190 --> 01:29:19,470
I've worked with on this also would agree with this is any any psychological system that

1470
01:29:19,470 --> 01:29:25,230
we're talking about, whether it's shame or you know the status impact estimation system

1471
01:29:25,470 --> 01:29:31,470
or your plant learning systems, um all of these things, you know, if

1472
01:29:31,470 --> 01:29:37,240
we think about them like bits of code, they have more or less maybe some separable pieces.

1473
01:29:37,400 --> 01:29:41,960
So like I like I've been thinking a lot about emotions for this because I like how there's

1474
01:29:41,960 --> 01:29:43,080
these different pieces.

1475
01:29:43,240 --> 01:29:48,440
And in particular, I like this like cybernetic view, which is slightly different from like

1476
01:29:48,440 --> 01:29:53,720
the typical view, but or the way we frame things typically in the evolutionary

1477
01:29:53,720 --> 01:29:54,840
psychological sciences.

1478
01:29:55,000 --> 01:29:56,040
But I don't think it's at odds.

1479
01:29:56,120 --> 01:29:59,160
I think it's just like maybe a helpful analogy for this example.

1480
01:29:59,400 --> 01:30:02,360
So like imagine just a thermostat, right?

1481
01:30:02,510 --> 01:30:07,390
So a thermostat in a house, it has a few different components to it that allows it to do

1482
01:30:07,390 --> 01:30:07,950
its job.

1483
01:30:08,190 --> 01:30:14,110
Like one of those components is a uh like basically a temperature detector, like a

1484
01:30:14,110 --> 01:30:15,310
thermometer or whatever.

1485
01:30:15,390 --> 01:30:18,270
And that allows it to detect the ambient temperature.

1486
01:30:18,590 --> 01:30:24,030
And then there's also a set point, which is like the internal setting of like what the

1487
01:30:24,030 --> 01:30:27,470
temperature should be set by the user or whatever.

1488
01:30:27,960 --> 01:30:33,560
And basically the job of this comparator is to try using the ambient temperature index

1489
01:30:33,960 --> 01:30:36,520
to determine is that above or below it, right?

1490
01:30:36,760 --> 01:30:42,120
And then depending on whether it's above or below it, it will turn on uh like the air

1491
01:30:42,120 --> 01:30:42,600
conditioning.

1492
01:30:42,680 --> 01:30:46,280
It will do some kind of output or they call it a control element.

1493
01:30:47,080 --> 01:30:51,480
And so if the temperature is higher than it ought to be, higher than the set point, then

1494
01:30:51,480 --> 01:30:56,350
you turn on the control element and it should blow the cold air, not the hot air.

1495
01:30:56,510 --> 01:30:58,750
But if it's lower, it should blow the hot air, right?

1496
01:30:59,070 --> 01:31:04,990
So that's the way, like the species typical thermometer, that's the way it works.

1497
01:31:05,470 --> 01:31:11,470
But I think in the in the biological world, probably even in like the like machine-made

1498
01:31:11,470 --> 01:31:14,750
world, there are problems that can creep into any point of those systems.

1499
01:31:14,990 --> 01:31:20,020
Your ambient temperature detectant thing could be inaccurate.

1500
01:31:20,180 --> 01:31:24,740
It could think it's two degrees hotter than it is always, or it could just be like kind of

1501
01:31:24,740 --> 01:31:27,220
like randomly, unreliably wrong.

1502
01:31:27,460 --> 01:31:31,460
And that, whatever that is, it's going to feed to the comparator.

1503
01:31:31,620 --> 01:31:34,980
And the comparator could also be different from thermostat to thermostat.

1504
01:31:35,140 --> 01:31:39,620
Some might have the desired temperature 78, some is 76, so on.

1505
01:31:40,070 --> 01:31:45,110
And so both of those things, if they're different, which they could, you know, be different

1506
01:31:45,110 --> 01:31:49,510
in different combinations across different thermostats or across different people, they're

1507
01:31:49,510 --> 01:31:53,910
going to lead to different behaviors in the thermostat, whereby like some thermostats

1508
01:31:53,990 --> 01:31:56,150
you're going to be like, why is that thermostat going on all the time?

1509
01:31:56,310 --> 01:31:58,870
Or why does it never go on at the times we need it to?

1510
01:31:59,030 --> 01:32:03,910
Um, and you might be make some judgments or describe that thermostat in different ways, or

1511
01:32:03,910 --> 01:32:07,430
just be like, I don't know, my house is too hot, or my house is too cold, or it's never the

1512
01:32:07,430 --> 01:32:08,870
right temperature, or whatever.

1513
01:32:09,140 --> 01:32:13,780
And I think that those folk judgments of like my thermostat isn't working correctly, or

1514
01:32:13,780 --> 01:32:15,780
it's like always too hot or too cold.

1515
01:32:15,940 --> 01:32:20,580
It those that's kind of like personality, the concepts of personality that we have.

1516
01:32:20,900 --> 01:32:26,420
And then really, like I think if the if personality was a thing, like a real thing,

1517
01:32:26,820 --> 01:32:32,340
at the functional level, it would be the differences in those set in those

1518
01:32:32,340 --> 01:32:34,180
components of the system.

1519
01:32:35,070 --> 01:32:39,710
And so I think for things like emotions, for example, using that thermostat example, like

1520
01:32:39,870 --> 01:32:45,070
you have situation detectors that are looking for and integrating cues of adaptive

1521
01:32:45,070 --> 01:32:45,470
problems.

1522
01:32:45,550 --> 01:32:48,670
Like what's the probability that I'm being devalued right now?

1523
01:32:48,990 --> 01:32:54,430
That feeds to some comparator, like a set point of like what is an acceptable amount of

1524
01:32:54,430 --> 01:32:55,070
devaluation.

1525
01:32:55,150 --> 01:33:00,190
Like maybe for most people that's zero, but there could be some fluctuation in there due to

1526
01:33:00,190 --> 01:33:02,670
genetic noise or who knows what, you know.

1527
01:33:02,910 --> 01:33:08,800
And then that's gonna turn on the control elements that do stuff to fix the

1528
01:33:08,800 --> 01:33:10,160
devaluation, right?

1529
01:33:10,640 --> 01:33:15,520
And then just to complicate that that one component a little bit more is like obviously we

1530
01:33:15,520 --> 01:33:18,560
have more than just like turn on the hot air, turn on the cold air.

1531
01:33:18,720 --> 01:33:23,680
You know, there's maybe there's like run away, there's lie, cover things up,

1532
01:33:24,350 --> 01:33:26,830
fight people, like draw attention to yourself.

1533
01:33:26,910 --> 01:33:28,110
Don't draw attention to yourself.

1534
01:33:28,270 --> 01:33:34,270
This menu of control elements that themselves have some utility assigned

1535
01:33:34,270 --> 01:33:39,470
to them, maybe that you've learned throughout development or have some strong priors for,

1536
01:33:39,550 --> 01:33:40,590
or whatever.

1537
01:33:40,830 --> 01:33:45,870
Um, and individual differences in those settings, in tandem with the individual differences

1538
01:33:45,950 --> 01:33:50,780
in the set points and the uh the situation detecting

1539
01:33:50,780 --> 01:33:54,460
mechanisms, like they're going to lead to differences in behavior.

1540
01:33:54,540 --> 01:33:58,940
It might be strategic, but it could just be like there's a ton of differences out there in

1541
01:33:58,940 --> 01:33:59,260
the world.

1542
01:33:59,420 --> 01:34:00,540
It's maybe random.

1543
01:34:00,700 --> 01:34:03,340
Maybe they don't even really go together that much.

1544
01:34:03,820 --> 01:34:08,700
And it's helpful for me as somebody interacting with a bunch of other thermostats or

1545
01:34:08,700 --> 01:34:14,130
whatever to know what these differences tend to look like and just be able to describe them

1546
01:34:14,130 --> 01:34:19,090
to other people and make predictions about like which thermostat I want in my house or you

1547
01:34:19,090 --> 01:34:22,930
know which person I'd want to cooperate with, or you know, who's going to be good at this

1548
01:34:23,010 --> 01:34:23,570
or not that.

1549
01:34:23,730 --> 01:34:27,730
And I think that's what the difference detecting you know mechanisms are trying to do is

1550
01:34:27,730 --> 01:34:33,490
label label things about people, recognize things about people conspecifics

1551
01:34:33,650 --> 01:34:38,450
that is good to know for decisions about who to cooperate with, who to mate with, et

1552
01:34:38,450 --> 01:34:39,010
cetera.

1553
01:34:39,360 --> 01:34:45,280
And because like obviously that was an oversimplified example of like how our psychological

1554
01:34:45,280 --> 01:34:47,440
mechanisms would work using the thermostat example.

1555
01:34:47,520 --> 01:34:52,320
But like already, that's a lot to try and track for I I would think for a brain.

1556
01:34:52,400 --> 01:34:57,600
So like if you just have some summary variable that's like this thermostat is often wrong

1557
01:34:57,600 --> 01:35:02,720
in this way, that could be enough to let you f make these decisions without having to know

1558
01:35:02,720 --> 01:35:06,000
exactly like where in that system things are wrong.

1559
01:35:08,830 --> 01:35:12,030
So so what is a uh a niche?

1560
01:35:12,350 --> 01:35:18,350
What is niche diversity and how do niches contribute to personality

1561
01:35:18,350 --> 01:35:18,990
variation?

1562
01:35:19,550 --> 01:35:20,190
Yeah.

1563
01:35:21,150 --> 01:35:25,230
Um well defining a niche is I think harder than I I gave it credit for.

1564
01:35:25,390 --> 01:35:27,390
And this isn't my work, I I would say.

1565
01:35:27,470 --> 01:35:33,280
Like this is, you know, uh Aaron Lukachewski, Mike Gervin, and and and

1566
01:35:33,280 --> 01:35:36,720
Chris von Ruden push who pushed this stuff forward.

1567
01:35:36,800 --> 01:35:40,160
I just came along as a grad student and was like, look, I found this data, like, let's do

1568
01:35:40,160 --> 01:35:40,880
it again.

1569
01:35:41,120 --> 01:35:46,880
Uh and I do think that this work needs to be pushed on still quite a bit, but I guess the

1570
01:35:46,880 --> 01:35:52,850
definition of a niche is like some segment of the social world that that

1571
01:35:52,930 --> 01:35:56,450
that you're living in, that you make your living in.

1572
01:35:56,690 --> 01:36:00,610
And it's the way in which you make your living within the within the social world.

1573
01:36:00,930 --> 01:36:06,770
So like some birds they look for seeds on the ground, some dig for worms, some burrow

1574
01:36:06,770 --> 01:36:07,250
into trees.

1575
01:36:07,330 --> 01:36:08,450
Like those are different niches.

1576
01:36:08,850 --> 01:36:13,820
They have different affordances and different things that would be useful for doing well in

1577
01:36:13,820 --> 01:36:16,060
that niche versus not doing well.

1578
01:36:16,380 --> 01:36:21,580
They basically evoke different kinds of behaviors depending on what niche you're in.

1579
01:36:22,140 --> 01:36:27,260
And because of that, they're going to lead to different traits being prominent in some

1580
01:36:27,260 --> 01:36:28,780
niches versus others.

1581
01:36:29,820 --> 01:36:35,740
So if you know, if you're in a world, let's say you're a bouncer at a club, like what are

1582
01:36:35,740 --> 01:36:41,210
some traits that you think would be helpful for you to do your job to make money there?

1583
01:36:41,930 --> 01:36:42,570
Yeah.

1584
01:36:43,370 --> 01:36:47,770
It'd be like, I don't know, maybe being a little disagreeable, being strong and scary.

1585
01:36:48,010 --> 01:36:48,410
Yeah.

1586
01:36:48,650 --> 01:36:53,770
You know, being good with people, maybe, or versus a banker, like maybe you just have to be

1587
01:36:53,770 --> 01:36:59,210
really detail oriented or not get bored very easily or something like that, you know?

1588
01:36:59,370 --> 01:37:04,140
And so they're of course different people select into these things too, but then you're

1589
01:37:04,140 --> 01:37:07,580
still rewarded differently in these different niches for different behaviors.

1590
01:37:07,820 --> 01:37:07,980
Right.

1591
01:37:08,140 --> 01:37:13,020
And so the the argument is that this, depending on the niches people go into, especially if

1592
01:37:13,020 --> 01:37:18,220
people were to sort randomly into niches, then once you go into a niche, you get pulled in

1593
01:37:18,220 --> 01:37:19,500
these different directions.

1594
01:37:19,740 --> 01:37:24,940
So like before I became an academic, maybe I didn't think all that deeply or spend all that

1595
01:37:24,940 --> 01:37:28,700
much time reading, you know, of two kind of academic papers.

1596
01:37:28,860 --> 01:37:31,870
But now then once I went into that niche, then I spent more time doing that.

1597
01:37:31,950 --> 01:37:36,670
So it changed my behaviors, it changed my thoughts, how I feel about doing these things.

1598
01:37:37,150 --> 01:37:40,270
And so that kind of pulls people's traits in different directions.

1599
01:37:41,790 --> 01:37:46,670
So at like a simple kind of level, descriptive level, like that's what we would expect to

1600
01:37:46,670 --> 01:37:50,430
happen if people respond to the incentives of niches, which I think is kind of

1601
01:37:50,430 --> 01:37:53,150
uncontroversial that people respond to incentives.

1602
01:37:54,900 --> 01:38:00,900
And the the cool insight of of that work uh is that just with that

1603
01:38:00,900 --> 01:38:06,740
simple process happening across different populations, if

1604
01:38:06,740 --> 01:38:12,020
populations have more niches that are more unique, more different from one another,

1605
01:38:13,620 --> 01:38:18,290
then you're gonna get more types of people, basically is is the take the takeaway that

1606
01:38:18,290 --> 01:38:22,690
you're gonna get more personality dimensions, more different combinations of traits that go

1607
01:38:22,690 --> 01:38:24,930
together in more different ways.

1608
01:38:25,330 --> 01:38:30,930
And you know, there's simulations backing that up by Paul Smaldino, um, and then a couple

1609
01:38:31,090 --> 01:38:35,730
empirical studies like at the country level, kind of giving some support for uh

1610
01:38:35,810 --> 01:38:41,720
correlations that you would expect to find if these processes were actually

1611
01:38:41,720 --> 01:38:44,440
operating on human personality.

1612
01:38:44,840 --> 01:38:50,760
And so the takeaway from this is that like these dominant personality models, like the big

1613
01:38:50,760 --> 01:38:55,560
five hexco, these kind of low-dimensional models of personality, like they're not

1614
01:38:55,560 --> 01:38:58,920
necessarily going to be human nature.

1615
01:38:59,080 --> 01:39:02,040
Like they're not the human personality structure.

1616
01:39:02,120 --> 01:39:07,410
They're an emergent phenomenon that comes out of the way the human psychology were, where

1617
01:39:07,410 --> 01:39:10,770
even if it was so simple, all it does is respond to incentives.

1618
01:39:11,890 --> 01:39:15,330
That interacting with environments, different environments will produce different

1619
01:39:15,330 --> 01:39:20,130
combinations of traits, which then look like more or less personality dimensions, depending

1620
01:39:20,130 --> 01:39:22,530
on how many different niches there are.

1621
01:39:22,850 --> 01:39:27,090
And so it's kind of pushing back against like the dominant view in psychology, which has

1622
01:39:27,090 --> 01:39:32,290
become the dominant view since like the 80s, that the big five is what is what it is.

1623
01:39:32,370 --> 01:39:36,610
Like that is human personality, and it's the same more or less everywhere.

1624
01:39:37,080 --> 01:39:39,080
and that somehow it's in us.

1625
01:39:39,240 --> 01:39:44,040
Like Costa McCray, like the biggest proponents of the five-factor model of personality.

1626
01:39:44,200 --> 01:39:48,760
Like, I don't think it's uncharitable to say that they literally think there are like basic

1627
01:39:48,760 --> 01:39:53,240
biological dimensions that correspond to extroversion and neuroticism and conscientiousness

1628
01:39:53,320 --> 01:39:55,160
and openness and agreeableness.

1629
01:39:55,400 --> 01:40:00,810
Um, whereas this view says, no, there's nothing resembling the big five in our

1630
01:40:00,810 --> 01:40:01,770
biology.

1631
01:40:02,010 --> 01:40:07,850
There's a whole bunch of little machines doing different tasks to solve different adaptive

1632
01:40:08,090 --> 01:40:08,730
problems.

1633
01:40:09,290 --> 01:40:11,210
And we should figure out what those things are.

1634
01:40:11,450 --> 01:40:16,250
But but they might produce patterns of behavior that look like the big five, and we need to

1635
01:40:16,250 --> 01:40:17,450
figure out maybe why.

1636
01:40:17,610 --> 01:40:19,370
Why did that why does that get produced?

1637
01:40:19,450 --> 01:40:22,410
You know, part of the story might be this niche thing.

1638
01:40:22,730 --> 01:40:23,930
Uh, but that's interesting.

1639
01:40:24,300 --> 01:40:25,180
might be another story.

1640
01:40:25,260 --> 01:40:31,260
Like I should point out, like uh Matt Zefferman, he has been doing some simulations related

1641
01:40:31,260 --> 01:40:37,020
to this niche, uh kind of contradicting this uh niche diversity

1642
01:40:37,020 --> 01:40:42,060
viewpoint, highly highlighting that some of what we find, or maybe even entirely what we

1643
01:40:42,060 --> 01:40:47,980
find, could itself be a a measurement artifact of the of the problem with exporting, you

1644
01:40:47,980 --> 01:40:53,510
know, these personality inventories developed for a particular population, like

1645
01:40:53,670 --> 01:40:59,350
in you know, US, European populations, to other places, you

1646
01:40:59,430 --> 01:41:04,470
you're artificially like deflating the amount of uh personality variation that you see in

1647
01:41:04,470 --> 01:41:05,030
these places.

1648
01:41:05,110 --> 01:41:09,270
So that's totally uh I I looking at a simulation is like I think it's a convincing,

1649
01:41:09,510 --> 01:41:10,550
convincing argument.

1650
01:41:10,710 --> 01:41:13,190
And it's something we need to do a lot more work to tease apart.

1651
01:41:13,270 --> 01:41:17,590
But I think the strength of the the niche diversity hypothesis and I mean Masswork is like

1652
01:41:17,750 --> 01:41:20,710
personality structure probably doesn't look exactly the same everywhere.

1653
01:41:20,920 --> 01:41:25,880
And there's no reason to expect that it should, because different minds will interact

1654
01:41:25,880 --> 01:41:30,200
differently, or even a universal the universal human mind interacting with different

1655
01:41:30,200 --> 01:41:33,880
environmental contexts and cultural contexts will produce different patterns of

1656
01:41:33,880 --> 01:41:39,800
covariation, which is what defines personality structure currently

1657
01:41:39,800 --> 01:41:41,560
in personality science.

1658
01:41:41,800 --> 01:41:43,410
Like this is a whole different discussion.

1659
01:41:43,570 --> 01:41:47,650
Like that probably shouldn't be how we define personality structure, maybe.

1660
01:41:47,730 --> 01:41:53,170
If we're looking for some like something more like deep part of human nature, we shouldn't

1661
01:41:53,170 --> 01:41:57,890
be relying on like how do things tend to covary and how do we describe those covariations

1662
01:41:57,970 --> 01:42:00,130
with our adjectives out there in the world.

1663
01:42:00,370 --> 01:42:04,900
Maybe we should be thinking more about like what is the the design of the human mind?

1664
01:42:05,060 --> 01:42:06,180
What parameters are in there?

1665
01:42:06,340 --> 01:42:11,540
What parameters might have correlations among them or have causal dependencies on one

1666
01:42:11,540 --> 01:42:17,060
another that creates these different patterns of covariation that we see out there

1667
01:42:17,300 --> 01:42:20,340
at the level of observable behavior?

1668
01:42:23,060 --> 01:42:24,020
Very cool stuff.

1669
01:42:25,050 --> 01:42:30,410
Yeah, I mean it suggests to me that we're too quick to reify

1670
01:42:30,410 --> 01:42:36,170
personality dis uh differences that um exist in our particular cultural

1671
01:42:36,170 --> 01:42:42,170
context but need not exist in the same way that if we were to go into a a jungle

1672
01:42:42,170 --> 01:42:47,290
and try to map the the variation in turn and in subsistence strategies of all the different

1673
01:42:47,290 --> 01:42:52,940
animals in that jungle, and maybe we have a nocturnal diurnal dimension or like specializes

1674
01:42:52,940 --> 01:42:57,020
in eating fruit versus leaves versus other versus bugs dimension.

1675
01:42:57,180 --> 01:43:01,020
And we say this these are the only dimensions by which animals vary.

1676
01:43:01,420 --> 01:43:06,700
Well, uh, if we go into the Arctic or into a desert, uh, our map of the variation is gonna

1677
01:43:06,700 --> 01:43:07,420
be completely different.

1678
01:43:07,580 --> 01:43:07,900
Right.

1679
01:43:08,380 --> 01:43:13,740
It's not that these are uh inherent differences that all animals need to have, it depends

1680
01:43:13,740 --> 01:43:18,460
on that particular ecology and what types of affordances are available to the different

1681
01:43:18,550 --> 01:43:19,190
animals there.

1682
01:43:19,350 --> 01:43:24,630
And I think the same is true of our cultural ecology, that there are different

1683
01:43:24,630 --> 01:43:27,030
opportunities for different types of people.

1684
01:43:27,270 --> 01:43:28,870
And that leads to covariance.

1685
01:43:29,110 --> 01:43:34,390
So, like in an environment where I can make a lot of money as a bouncer, you know, uh

1686
01:43:34,950 --> 01:43:40,710
physical strength and toughness and uh willingness to use force,

1687
01:43:40,870 --> 01:43:44,560
like those things are going to intercorrelate on a questionnaire.

1688
01:43:44,800 --> 01:43:50,800
Uh, but if I'm in a place where uh uh a bouncer does not exist as an occupation, um

1689
01:43:51,200 --> 01:43:55,280
or w you know, in a place where if I'm strong, maybe that's going to enable me to be a

1690
01:43:55,280 --> 01:43:55,920
better hunter.

1691
01:43:56,000 --> 01:44:01,520
And there's a norm that hunters have to share uh their meat, well then in that environment,

1692
01:44:01,600 --> 01:44:03,920
maybe strength will correlate with generosity.

1693
01:44:04,160 --> 01:44:04,640
Right.

1694
01:44:04,880 --> 01:44:09,970
Uh and that's you know, uh that doesn't necessarily mean that um there's an inherent

1695
01:44:09,970 --> 01:44:13,250
connection between strength and generosity on the one hand and strength and, you know,

1696
01:44:13,410 --> 01:44:15,010
toughness and meanness on the other hand.

1697
01:44:15,170 --> 01:44:20,770
This is just dependent on uh the affordances in the environment and what opportunities are

1698
01:44:20,770 --> 01:44:23,650
available to different types of people.

1699
01:44:24,770 --> 01:44:25,090
Yeah.

1700
01:44:25,410 --> 01:44:29,170
I think that's a big part of the story of personality structure for sure.

1701
01:44:29,570 --> 01:44:29,810
Yeah.

1702
01:44:30,120 --> 01:44:34,600
I mean and it could be that the just one quick thing, like and it could be that there still

1703
01:44:34,600 --> 01:44:38,280
is heritable variation in things like extroversion, openness, whatever.

1704
01:44:38,680 --> 01:44:39,400
Well we know that it is.

1705
01:44:39,640 --> 01:44:39,720
Yeah.

1706
01:44:39,880 --> 01:44:40,040
Yeah.

1707
01:44:41,400 --> 01:44:41,480
Yeah.

1708
01:44:41,880 --> 01:44:42,200
Sure.

1709
01:44:42,280 --> 01:44:43,960
And that could, you know, tip the scales.

1710
01:44:44,040 --> 01:44:48,520
Like if I'm deciding what niche to pursue to to fill or what status game to play, like if

1711
01:44:48,520 --> 01:44:53,750
I'm naturally a little more, say smart, maybe I'll I'll go into this particular niche.

1712
01:44:53,830 --> 01:44:57,590
Or if I'm naturally a little more physically strong, maybe I'll go into this niche, or I'm

1713
01:44:57,670 --> 01:45:03,110
naturally a little more extroverted and socially adept, maybe I'll go into this niche.

1714
01:45:03,590 --> 01:45:07,590
So you'd still expect individual differences to matter and sort of pushing you into one

1715
01:45:07,590 --> 01:45:10,710
niche or another that you might have a comparative advantage in.

1716
01:45:11,190 --> 01:45:13,030
Um so that that still makes sense.

1717
01:45:13,110 --> 01:45:17,430
But you know, once you enter that niche, it's going to create um a feedback loop where I

1718
01:45:17,500 --> 01:45:23,180
continue to cultivate those traits and and that's going to cause uh different types of of

1719
01:45:23,180 --> 01:45:23,900
covariation.

1720
01:45:24,140 --> 01:45:28,860
So maybe in an an initial maybe initially I'm like just a tiny bit more extroverted than

1721
01:45:28,860 --> 01:45:29,260
average.

1722
01:45:29,340 --> 01:45:34,940
But if I go into um say uh marketing or or or uh or a field that or

1723
01:45:34,940 --> 01:45:39,100
networking, uh that's going to increase my extroversion even more because I I've

1724
01:45:39,100 --> 01:45:40,220
specialized in that niche.

1725
01:45:40,300 --> 01:45:44,860
And so what began as a very tiny difference uh uh gets magnified into a much larger

1726
01:45:44,860 --> 01:45:47,850
difference as I uh continue to invest in that niche.

1727
01:45:48,090 --> 01:45:50,170
Um but anyway, you were gonna say something, Dave.

1728
01:45:50,890 --> 01:45:54,170
Uh oh, Patrick, do you want to respond to that before I go on to something?

1729
01:45:54,570 --> 01:45:58,570
No, I mean I do think like even I think the behavioral genetics research backs this up.

1730
01:45:58,730 --> 01:46:04,570
Like a large chunk of personality variation in the population can be attributed to

1731
01:46:04,650 --> 01:46:06,090
like truly like random.

1732
01:46:06,330 --> 01:46:08,330
Like they don't, it's the non-shared environment.

1733
01:46:08,410 --> 01:46:09,690
It's the gloomy paradox.

1734
01:46:09,770 --> 01:46:10,570
We don't know what it is.

1735
01:46:10,730 --> 01:46:12,330
It's just like randomness.

1736
01:46:12,490 --> 01:46:12,650
Yeah.

1737
01:46:12,890 --> 01:46:18,740
And then uh a big chunk of it is some genetic, you know, proclivities,

1738
01:46:19,060 --> 01:46:21,940
or at least of just having genes in c in common, right?

1739
01:46:22,100 --> 01:46:25,860
But that doesn't mean that that like there are extroversion genes or whatever, of course,

1740
01:46:25,940 --> 01:46:26,180
right?

1741
01:46:26,260 --> 01:46:31,380
Like the something being heritable doesn't make it or attribute to genetics doesn't make it

1742
01:46:31,540 --> 01:46:33,060
like a a real entity.

1743
01:46:33,460 --> 01:46:37,620
Um and then for personnel, it's like the the shared environment is super tiny.

1744
01:46:37,700 --> 01:46:41,540
So I think a lot of it is like these small proclivities that maybe push you a little bit in

1745
01:46:41,540 --> 01:46:47,190
one direction, And then just like the snowballing effect of like a lot of non-shared kind

1746
01:46:47,190 --> 01:46:51,030
of things adding up over time uh as a result of that.

1747
01:46:52,150 --> 01:46:52,550
Yeah.

1748
01:46:52,870 --> 01:46:57,910
Do you think my question was gonna be, do you think like so with the big five, like uh uh

1749
01:46:58,070 --> 01:47:01,190
uh extra version, you should probably go through just for audience members who don't know

1750
01:47:01,270 --> 01:47:05,510
like what the big five or hexico things are, which you could just like list what they are.

1751
01:47:05,750 --> 01:47:08,980
But do you is this an accident?

1752
01:47:09,380 --> 01:47:15,300
Like in the sense of are there other um common dimensions of variation

1753
01:47:15,620 --> 01:47:19,060
that just haven't been stumbled upon?

1754
01:47:19,460 --> 01:47:25,220
Um or or have they been stumbled upon because they

1755
01:47:25,540 --> 01:47:30,740
are the most reliable dimensions of variation, whether or not they correspond to like the

1756
01:47:30,740 --> 01:47:33,860
little machines, like in the same way, like I think the computer metaphor, which like I

1757
01:47:33,860 --> 01:47:39,010
know the Aaron, you know, so like just imagine laptops, like some laptops are heavier or

1758
01:47:39,010 --> 01:47:41,810
lighter, some laptops are hotter or cooler.

1759
01:47:42,050 --> 01:47:47,570
You can imagine like those that are deep dimensions of variation that are pretty orthogonal

1760
01:47:47,570 --> 01:47:52,370
to, or like, you know, some may be faster, slower, or whatever, louder, or you know, so

1761
01:47:52,370 --> 01:47:57,300
they're very indirectly related to the function, but they're pretty stable differences.

1762
01:47:57,460 --> 01:48:01,700
And if you thought, well, the way that the laptop works is heaviness or lightness or

1763
01:48:01,700 --> 01:48:03,220
fastness, you'd be wrong.

1764
01:48:03,380 --> 01:48:03,540
Yeah.

1765
01:48:03,780 --> 01:48:06,660
But you can see why those attributes hang together.

1766
01:48:06,980 --> 01:48:12,900
Is that sort of um can you connect up this laptop metaphor to how you're thinking

1767
01:48:12,900 --> 01:48:14,260
about personality?

1768
01:48:14,420 --> 01:48:15,940
And then this, and then the related question.

1769
01:48:16,020 --> 01:48:20,980
Sorry, this is a complicated one, is just then what is is the question of like

1770
01:48:21,890 --> 01:48:25,170
are what's up with these big five?

1771
01:48:25,250 --> 01:48:29,410
And are there really big twelve and we haven't found the other seven or no one bothered to

1772
01:48:29,410 --> 01:48:29,730
look for them?

1773
01:48:29,890 --> 01:48:30,930
Or what do you think about that?

1774
01:48:31,170 --> 01:48:31,570
Yeah, yeah.

1775
01:48:31,650 --> 01:48:34,690
I'll take the that question first about like where how do we get here?

1776
01:48:34,770 --> 01:48:36,210
Are these useful?

1777
01:48:36,690 --> 01:48:42,690
Um and I I think like okay, so the history of this stuff is right, like Gordon Alport and

1778
01:48:42,690 --> 01:48:46,690
whoever like looked in the dictionary, got a bunch of words that people used to describe

1779
01:48:46,690 --> 01:48:49,860
people's tendencies, and then took those words.

1780
01:48:49,940 --> 01:48:53,940
And over decades, researchers gave these all these different adjectives and asked people

1781
01:48:54,180 --> 01:48:57,620
how much does this describe you, or how much does it describe your best friend, or we all

1782
01:48:57,700 --> 01:48:58,340
that stuff.

1783
01:48:58,580 --> 01:49:00,580
So, like hundreds, thousands of words.

1784
01:49:00,740 --> 01:49:04,180
I want to say like 4,000 or 6,000 words or something like that.

1785
01:49:04,500 --> 01:49:08,980
All these ratings, from those ratings, they can get the correlations among all these

1786
01:49:08,980 --> 01:49:14,260
adjectives, and they boil them down with factor analysis or principal components analysis

1787
01:49:14,580 --> 01:49:17,060
into some lower number of dimensions.

1788
01:49:17,590 --> 01:49:22,230
And I think the first one, yeah, let's say something like 16, but then they found some

1789
01:49:22,230 --> 01:49:28,150
mistakes and then like literally decades of people redoing this, like all through the 50s,

1790
01:49:28,310 --> 01:49:29,750
60s to the 80s.

1791
01:49:29,830 --> 01:49:32,870
People were doing this and debating over personality structure.

1792
01:49:33,110 --> 01:49:35,670
And it they kept converging as I understand it.

1793
01:49:35,750 --> 01:49:39,990
And you can look back and see they just keep finding something like the big five, which is

1794
01:49:40,150 --> 01:49:46,100
uh extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, neuroticism, and

1795
01:49:46,100 --> 01:49:47,380
conscientiousness.

1796
01:49:47,620 --> 01:49:53,460
And those describe the patterns of correlations that they that they found in those

1797
01:49:53,460 --> 01:49:55,380
6,000 adjectives, right?

1798
01:49:55,620 --> 01:49:59,300
So it's a useful summary of all these different ways that people vary.

1799
01:50:00,100 --> 01:50:02,180
And I don't think that's a mistake.

1800
01:50:03,030 --> 01:50:05,510
Although the hexaco does highlight that.

1801
01:50:05,750 --> 01:50:11,590
Because the the hexaco, the difference there is just like in 2000 or whatever, they went

1802
01:50:11,590 --> 01:50:12,550
back to the dictionary.

1803
01:50:12,630 --> 01:50:13,350
They started over.

1804
01:50:13,510 --> 01:50:17,590
And they added just some words that weren't that were excluded from like the original

1805
01:50:17,590 --> 01:50:21,190
lexical approaches because they didn't want words that had to do with like moral valuation

1806
01:50:21,430 --> 01:50:25,030
moral evaluations to be considered for personality.

1807
01:50:25,270 --> 01:50:29,600
And as I understand it, you know, the hexago folks, they included those words, redid

1808
01:50:29,600 --> 01:50:32,800
everything again, and lo and behold, they get another dimension that basically has to do

1809
01:50:32,800 --> 01:50:33,680
with like morals.

1810
01:50:34,160 --> 01:50:35,360
How big of an asshole you are.

1811
01:50:36,080 --> 01:50:36,160
Yeah.

1812
01:50:36,240 --> 01:50:37,120
So it's like, okay, yeah.

1813
01:50:37,200 --> 01:50:39,360
So anything that we didn't include is not going to be there.

1814
01:50:39,440 --> 01:50:44,720
If we included things like physical characteristics in that original word count, which some

1815
01:50:44,720 --> 01:50:48,480
European personality psychologists probably would have wanted to do, or intelligence, like

1816
01:50:48,560 --> 01:50:50,240
there's nothing about intelligence in there.

1817
01:50:50,320 --> 01:50:52,480
Yeah, then we're missing those dimensions too.

1818
01:50:52,910 --> 01:50:57,150
And the point is that they're as useful as they're gonna be for describing all the words

1819
01:50:57,150 --> 01:51:01,230
that you wanted to dis that you included as being worthy of describing in the first place.

1820
01:51:01,550 --> 01:51:01,870
I see.

1821
01:51:02,110 --> 01:51:05,790
And coordinated, musical, funny, those aren't all left out.

1822
01:51:06,030 --> 01:51:07,230
Yeah, they're they're not really in there.

1823
01:51:07,310 --> 01:51:10,990
Like they've no doubt they're gonna correlate with some of the big five anyway.

1824
01:51:11,310 --> 01:51:16,110
But but uh yeah, I think these things are it just solves it solved the problem of like

1825
01:51:17,140 --> 01:51:20,020
uh coordination for personality psychology.

1826
01:51:20,100 --> 01:51:22,180
What traits are we gonna coordinate about studying?

1827
01:51:22,340 --> 01:51:26,020
Because everybody originally was like studying their own random personality traits, give

1828
01:51:26,020 --> 01:51:27,460
them their own random names.

1829
01:51:27,700 --> 01:51:31,700
And at least this way we have some random names that everybody agrees on, and like we're

1830
01:51:31,700 --> 01:51:33,220
gonna study those things.

1831
01:51:33,540 --> 01:51:39,140
And the the problem, if which there is a problem with this stuff, is I think the sleight of

1832
01:51:39,140 --> 01:51:44,910
hand of reification, circular reasoning, which uh some people uh

1833
01:51:45,230 --> 01:51:48,830
Simon Bogue, I think, has a really cool paper called like verbal magic.

1834
01:51:48,990 --> 01:51:54,510
And it's this combination of circular reasoning and and reification where I think the field

1835
01:51:54,590 --> 01:52:00,510
like to do the slide of hand, maybe completely unaware, but where it's just like

1836
01:52:00,590 --> 01:52:06,430
these things which were originally descriptive constructs became the explanatory construct.

1837
01:52:06,590 --> 01:52:11,740
They're the they they stand in place of like learning about what are the actual underlying

1838
01:52:11,740 --> 01:52:12,060
mechanisms.

1839
01:52:12,220 --> 01:52:14,620
So it's like it's it's going back to your computer analogy.

1840
01:52:14,780 --> 01:52:18,780
It's like saying, Oh, we learned like the most important ways that computers are different

1841
01:52:18,780 --> 01:52:24,300
from one another is that they differ in speed and functionality and size and

1842
01:52:24,300 --> 01:52:26,060
clarity of the screen.

1843
01:52:26,220 --> 01:52:29,420
And therefore, like I know how to make the best computer.

1844
01:52:29,660 --> 01:52:30,700
Like I know how to do it.

1845
01:52:30,860 --> 01:52:35,690
And then you know, you sit down and you're like, Okay, I gotta just imbue this computer

1846
01:52:35,690 --> 01:52:37,770
with speed and all these things.

1847
01:52:38,010 --> 01:52:39,130
But you don't actually know how to do it.

1848
01:52:39,530 --> 01:52:40,010
Yeah, exactly.

1849
01:52:40,490 --> 01:52:41,770
You got no idea how to do it.

1850
01:52:41,930 --> 01:52:46,650
And if you wanted to do that, you would need to understand like mechanistically how the

1851
01:52:46,650 --> 01:52:52,570
things on the computer contribute to these emergent qualities of speed and

1852
01:52:52,570 --> 01:52:57,210
functionality and size and clarity of the screen and and all these things.

1853
01:52:57,440 --> 01:52:59,920
Um, and I think that's where we're we're at right now.

1854
01:53:00,080 --> 01:53:06,080
Like we have a like a consumer guide to personality of like what are the main things

1855
01:53:06,080 --> 01:53:11,520
that people that humans are paying attention to and labeling about other people, at least

1856
01:53:11,520 --> 01:53:13,040
in the Western world.

1857
01:53:13,280 --> 01:53:17,680
Uh and then, but we don't have a good idea of like what are the underlying mechanisms

1858
01:53:17,680 --> 01:53:23,680
driving those things, or how do those underlying mechanisms produce different

1859
01:53:23,850 --> 01:53:27,610
dimensions that people care about in other cultural contexts.

1860
01:53:29,690 --> 01:53:29,930
Yeah.

1861
01:53:30,170 --> 01:53:33,930
There's also a meta science thing I've did I've noticed when I wrote the difference

1862
01:53:33,930 --> 01:53:38,650
detecting paper, and maybe this happens in personality too, which is you also fight the

1863
01:53:38,650 --> 01:53:39,050
data.

1864
01:53:39,290 --> 01:53:41,130
We have data and therefore it's real.

1865
01:53:41,290 --> 01:53:41,450
Yeah.

1866
01:53:41,690 --> 01:53:47,290
Which is that if you have a ton of data for these personality characteristics, that

1867
01:53:47,290 --> 01:53:53,220
magic uh inference of this is a real thing, that sort of it's not

1868
01:53:53,220 --> 01:53:57,220
warranted in the same way you could say I have a ton of data that like some computers are

1869
01:53:57,220 --> 01:53:58,340
faster and slower.

1870
01:53:58,500 --> 01:54:02,340
But that doesn't warrant the claim that like faster and slower is like how the machine

1871
01:54:02,340 --> 01:54:02,740
works.

1872
01:54:02,900 --> 01:54:03,140
Yeah.

1873
01:54:03,300 --> 01:54:06,900
But people use that all the time to be like, of course, we've got tons of data.

1874
01:54:06,980 --> 01:54:09,380
Like, look, people vary on, like, we have a ton of data.

1875
01:54:09,460 --> 01:54:11,460
Like, how can you say it's not a mechanism?

1876
01:54:11,780 --> 01:54:12,660
Yeah, totally.

1877
01:54:12,820 --> 01:54:18,050
And I think there's actually a paper by uh Costa and McRae called like four, I don't know

1878
01:54:18,050 --> 01:54:21,730
if it's four ways or five ways, the big five are basic, where they're basically saying,

1879
01:54:21,810 --> 01:54:23,970
like, this is all the evidence that these are real things.

1880
01:54:24,130 --> 01:54:25,090
Like it's heritable.

1881
01:54:25,170 --> 01:54:26,850
We got all this cross-cultural stuff.

1882
01:54:27,170 --> 01:54:31,250
And like I I feel like a paper needs to be written that just goes because none of them are

1883
01:54:31,250 --> 01:54:33,970
actually reasons to believe that those are real things.

1884
01:54:34,130 --> 01:54:38,770
They're just convincing at an intu at like a in intuitive level, like, oh yeah, this must

1885
01:54:38,770 --> 01:54:39,490
be like thing.

1886
01:54:39,570 --> 01:54:43,490
You think of things are heritable, or there's lots of genetics supporting that that it's a

1887
01:54:43,490 --> 01:54:43,890
real thing.

1888
01:54:44,050 --> 01:54:49,120
But no, like educational attainment is is heritable, but like there isn't a educational

1889
01:54:49,120 --> 01:54:50,480
attainment entertainment.

1890
01:54:52,160 --> 01:54:52,320
Yeah.

1891
01:54:52,400 --> 01:54:55,040
There's no weight is not a mechanism in a computer.

1892
01:54:55,200 --> 01:54:58,400
Like it's just it's a weird category mistake, you know.

1893
01:54:58,480 --> 01:55:02,320
It's just but it yeah, it's real in a different way than you mean it, and you're meaning

1894
01:55:02,320 --> 01:55:04,720
real in a very specific way that doesn't follow.

1895
01:55:05,040 --> 01:55:05,200
Yeah.

1896
01:55:05,360 --> 01:55:07,040
That's actually something I kind of wanted to ask you.

1897
01:55:07,200 --> 01:55:13,070
Like I was listening to the the podcast about free will, and um if I can, you know,

1898
01:55:13,230 --> 01:55:16,590
briefly summarize it, which hopefully this is right.

1899
01:55:16,910 --> 01:55:22,510
You have two like your your explanation of what free will is as a concept,

1900
01:55:22,670 --> 01:55:28,350
anyway, is that it's a it's like the placeholder or it's a marker of things that are

1901
01:55:28,350 --> 01:55:32,190
levers that I could pull on or could be pulled on in order to change somebody's behavior.

1902
01:55:32,510 --> 01:55:33,790
Yeah, that's how David put it actually.

1903
01:55:34,270 --> 01:55:34,670
Is that fair?

1904
01:55:34,830 --> 01:55:37,550
So yeah, that's that was David's characterization, which I thought was lovely.

1905
01:55:37,630 --> 01:55:37,710
Yeah.

1906
01:55:37,950 --> 01:55:38,110
Yeah.

1907
01:55:38,340 --> 01:55:38,580
Cool.

1908
01:55:38,660 --> 01:55:38,820
Yeah.

1909
01:55:38,900 --> 01:55:42,580
And so that got me because I was like, oh, I like, yeah, what is free will as a concept?

1910
01:55:42,740 --> 01:55:44,340
What is like personality as a concept?

1911
01:55:44,500 --> 01:55:45,300
Why do we have that?

1912
01:55:45,620 --> 01:55:49,540
And kind of like I I don't know if this is right, but my intuition is like almost like the

1913
01:55:49,540 --> 01:55:50,180
flip side of that.

1914
01:55:50,260 --> 01:55:55,300
It's kind of like the things, if there's an equation of behavior, like free will is some of

1915
01:55:55,300 --> 01:55:57,060
the variables that are open to be changed.

1916
01:55:57,140 --> 01:56:00,260
You can put in a different number there, convince somebody to put a different number there.

1917
01:56:00,420 --> 01:56:06,020
But personality as a concept, not like the individual personality dimensions, it's like a

1918
01:56:06,130 --> 01:56:09,250
recognition of the things in there that are less able to be changed.

1919
01:56:09,410 --> 01:56:13,090
I'm not going to say like totally unable to be changed, but it's like more like the

1920
01:56:13,090 --> 01:56:18,130
constants in the equation or things that would take longer to to change than just like

1921
01:56:18,130 --> 01:56:21,650
trying to, you know, change their minds, so to speak, or or whatever.

1922
01:56:21,970 --> 01:56:22,530
That's awesome.

1923
01:56:22,690 --> 01:56:23,170
I like that.

1924
01:56:23,330 --> 01:56:27,890
And maybe like the I'm sure you thought like maybe then also like, you know, like uh sex

1925
01:56:28,130 --> 01:56:30,760
morph or age morphs would also go into that, right?

1926
01:56:30,920 --> 01:56:35,240
Where it's sort of like you're not gonna convince a baby to start walking, you know, or

1927
01:56:35,320 --> 01:56:38,360
like, yeah, or I'm not gonna convince a grumpy person to be cheerful.

1928
01:56:38,440 --> 01:56:39,240
That's that's awesome.

1929
01:56:39,320 --> 01:56:39,720
I love that.

1930
01:56:39,800 --> 01:56:40,520
That's really cool.

1931
01:56:40,840 --> 01:56:41,080
Yeah.

1932
01:56:41,240 --> 01:56:44,760
So I was like, yeah, I've never even thought about like what what is it, what is it as a

1933
01:56:44,760 --> 01:56:45,080
concept?

1934
01:56:45,160 --> 01:56:45,800
What is this even for?

1935
01:56:45,880 --> 01:56:46,520
Yeah, why do we have to do that?

1936
01:56:46,680 --> 01:56:50,440
Yeah, why would an evolved organism think personality exists and why would it have that

1937
01:56:50,440 --> 01:56:51,320
intuitive entry?

1938
01:56:51,480 --> 01:56:53,080
But that's a really uh that's awesome.

1939
01:56:53,160 --> 01:56:56,280
That's like a really clear functional reason why it would.

1940
01:56:57,230 --> 01:57:02,270
I love this because it's a good it's a good psychology of psychology, which it it explains

1941
01:57:02,270 --> 01:57:08,190
why personality psychologists were less interested in uh physical variation and say

1942
01:57:08,350 --> 01:57:10,350
variation in intelligence, right?

1943
01:57:10,590 --> 01:57:14,670
Uh because these are physical, if I'm taller or shorter, or stronger, or weaker, or

1944
01:57:14,670 --> 01:57:18,750
healthier, or sicker, or whatever, those aren't levers that I can really pull, right?

1945
01:57:19,060 --> 01:57:23,220
Um and so it it's natural that when when we're thinking about personality, we're focusing

1946
01:57:23,220 --> 01:57:26,020
on the stuff that we can't we can change, um, right?

1947
01:57:26,180 --> 01:57:27,700
Are the the levers that we can pull.

1948
01:57:27,780 --> 01:57:29,700
So we're not gonna be interested in in physical stuff.

1949
01:57:29,780 --> 01:57:33,140
We're not gonna be interested in, you know, how quick witted or dim witted you are because

1950
01:57:33,140 --> 01:57:34,660
that seems like it's harder to control.

1951
01:57:34,820 --> 01:57:38,180
We're just gonna focus on the stuff that that or actually no, I'm am I getting it

1952
01:57:38,180 --> 01:57:38,420
backwards?

1953
01:57:38,900 --> 01:57:41,540
I think it's a little bit backwards, but but not completely.

1954
01:57:41,700 --> 01:57:46,970
Like I think it's it's a marker of what things are less changeable than the levers you

1955
01:57:46,970 --> 01:57:51,130
could pull on in like an everyday interaction to change to get you to behave differently?

1956
01:57:51,370 --> 01:57:52,650
Or like change the incentives.

1957
01:57:52,730 --> 01:57:58,250
Like incentives can just be changed, I think, you know, or like I could try to change a

1958
01:57:58,250 --> 01:58:02,890
belief that you have, that would then pretty in if I can change your belief like in the

1959
01:58:02,890 --> 01:58:04,810
moment, it will have an impact on your behavior.

1960
01:58:05,050 --> 01:58:09,520
Whereas I think personality is a stand-in for the things that are like less able to be

1961
01:58:09,520 --> 01:58:09,840
changed.

1962
01:58:10,160 --> 01:58:13,920
Maybe not totally unchangeable, but just a little bit more fixed.

1963
01:58:14,080 --> 01:58:20,080
Like for example, how accurate your thermostat detection ambient temperature is,

1964
01:58:20,160 --> 01:58:21,200
or the the set point.

1965
01:58:21,280 --> 01:58:23,200
Like maybe those are just a little bit harder to change.

1966
01:58:23,280 --> 01:58:26,880
And as a human navigating the world, it's helpful to know that there are some things out

1967
01:58:26,880 --> 01:58:28,560
there that are a little bit more fixed.

1968
01:58:28,720 --> 01:58:33,360
And so if I'm gonna try to change somebody's behavior, it narrows the space of like what

1969
01:58:33,360 --> 01:58:36,670
should I be trying to poke on in order to change their behavior.

1970
01:58:36,830 --> 01:58:42,110
I should poke on the free will things, you know, not the God and then to your point, like

1971
01:58:42,270 --> 01:58:46,270
it highlights some of this like the folk differences, the psychology of psychology.

1972
01:58:46,510 --> 01:58:50,830
European personality psychologists included back in the day, from what I understand,

1973
01:58:50,990 --> 01:58:56,110
intelligence was part of personality, height, physical stature, muscularity, athleticism,

1974
01:58:56,190 --> 01:58:58,030
these are personality traits for them.

1975
01:58:58,430 --> 01:59:02,350
It's the American school, like Gordon Alport, I think, who kind of excluded that kind of

1976
01:59:02,350 --> 01:59:02,510
stuff.

1977
01:59:02,670 --> 01:59:07,980
So these folk intuitions about what counts as personality is itself like

1978
01:59:08,220 --> 01:59:13,980
baked into our concepts of personality, or or no, our science of personality and our yeah,

1979
01:59:14,060 --> 01:59:14,700
what we count.

1980
01:59:14,860 --> 01:59:15,900
And it's possible, yeah.

1981
01:59:15,980 --> 01:59:21,820
Like your height is less changeable than maybe some of your anger pronenessness, but

1982
01:59:22,380 --> 01:59:25,100
maybe weight isn't or musculature isn't, you know.

1983
01:59:25,180 --> 01:59:25,740
So anyway.

1984
01:59:26,470 --> 01:59:26,950
That's interesting.

1985
01:59:27,110 --> 01:59:32,950
So i it it it then would predict that domains of human variation that we intuitively think

1986
01:59:33,110 --> 01:59:38,790
that we can change very easily, that those domains would be less likely to be considered

1987
01:59:38,790 --> 01:59:41,190
personality traits, quote unquote.

1988
01:59:41,430 --> 01:59:45,830
I'm trying to think of a of a good example of something that we think can be easily

1989
01:59:45,830 --> 01:59:46,310
changed.

1990
01:59:46,550 --> 01:59:52,480
I don't know, like um uh your willingness

1991
01:59:52,480 --> 01:59:55,280
to um make me a hot dog, right?

1992
01:59:55,600 --> 02:00:00,400
Um that totally depends on my um whether I can give you ten dollars to to make me the hot

1993
02:00:00,400 --> 02:00:02,640
dog if you're a hot dog stand or whatever.

1994
02:00:02,800 --> 02:00:05,520
It's totally uh in my power to control, right?

1995
02:00:05,680 --> 02:00:07,120
Uh that's not a personality trait.

1996
02:00:07,280 --> 02:00:11,120
The fact that you that you have a hot dog stand is not a part of your personality, right?

1997
02:00:11,520 --> 02:00:15,630
Um so I don't know, maybe maybe th that's a uh one way of thinking about it.

1998
02:00:15,790 --> 02:00:20,510
The the stuff that is easy to to manipulate through, say, money, through you know,

1999
02:00:20,750 --> 02:00:24,030
reciprocity, that those things will not be viewed as personality traits.

2000
02:00:24,350 --> 02:00:28,030
Um whereas people that can't things that can't be changed so easily, those will be more

2001
02:00:28,030 --> 02:00:29,790
likely to be viewed as personality traits.

2002
02:00:30,190 --> 02:00:30,670
Yeah, yeah.

2003
02:00:30,910 --> 02:00:35,520
Or like in in that in that equation of how likely I am to make you a hot dog, or like will

2004
02:00:35,520 --> 02:00:36,560
I make you a hot dog, right?

2005
02:00:36,640 --> 02:00:38,800
Like there's some things that go into that equation.

2006
02:00:38,880 --> 02:00:44,080
Like one of them is the incentive structure to motivate me, and and the other part is maybe

2007
02:00:44,080 --> 02:00:49,040
some aspect of like how much I like helping people in general.

2008
02:00:49,280 --> 02:00:53,440
And so like depending on that how much I like helping people, which maybe is a little

2009
02:00:53,440 --> 02:00:59,250
harder to change, let's say, you know, like then you for you it'd be helpful to know like

2010
02:00:59,330 --> 02:01:03,330
kind of where I stand on that personality trait of being willing to help people in order to

2011
02:01:03,330 --> 02:01:07,490
know how much you need to offer me or whether it's even possible to offer me enough to make

2012
02:01:07,490 --> 02:01:09,010
you a hot dog, you know.

2013
02:01:09,650 --> 02:01:14,610
So it's like a it helps, I think it could help guide decisions if you have these little

2014
02:01:14,610 --> 02:01:20,420
kind of placeholders in this these equations of like other people's behavior to to

2015
02:01:20,420 --> 02:01:25,300
figure out like what what are the levers I can pull on, how strong do I need to pull on

2016
02:01:25,300 --> 02:01:29,780
those levers for different people out there out there in the world.

2017
02:01:30,100 --> 02:01:30,420
Yeah.

2018
02:01:30,660 --> 02:01:36,100
And I like that like emotions too might be different or another part or in between where

2019
02:01:36,100 --> 02:01:41,220
it's sort of so personality is sort of differences, but then there's also emotions which

2020
02:01:41,220 --> 02:01:45,140
are sort of universal and common but also really dictate behavior.

2021
02:01:45,370 --> 02:01:49,610
Um, so you know, it might be like, well, you have a particular plan about hot dogs, and

2022
02:01:49,690 --> 02:01:53,530
like, you know, that's right, like really easy to push on the hot dog serving lever.

2023
02:01:53,690 --> 02:01:59,370
Um, but then like, you know, if you see something that's objectively scary, like a

2024
02:01:59,370 --> 02:02:05,370
explosion or somebody gets killed, for example, there's things that like whether we intend

2025
02:02:05,370 --> 02:02:11,130
it or not, or plan it or not, our evolved psychology sort of takes over of like we're in a

2026
02:02:11,200 --> 02:02:15,840
dangerous situation and we can predict our behavior, other people's behavior is like we're

2027
02:02:15,840 --> 02:02:17,520
having this emotion of fear.

2028
02:02:17,760 --> 02:02:22,640
And it's independent of like the that that's sort of like a universal lever.

2029
02:02:22,720 --> 02:02:24,160
But then there's individual differences.

2030
02:02:24,240 --> 02:02:30,000
Like maybe Patrick is like deathly afraid of like snails and he sees a snail

2031
02:02:30,240 --> 02:02:31,520
and he like runs away.

2032
02:02:31,600 --> 02:02:35,760
And he, you know, but David, you and I would only run away if like we saw somebody killed,

2033
02:02:35,840 --> 02:02:36,160
you know.

2034
02:02:36,320 --> 02:02:41,110
And so so we can then we know that like that's like a personality difference attached to

2035
02:02:41,110 --> 02:02:42,070
this universal.

2036
02:02:42,470 --> 02:02:47,350
So I like this idea that it's all kind of compositional predicting behavior or

2037
02:02:47,350 --> 02:02:51,590
interventions on future behavior, get to get back to the interventionism.

2038
02:02:52,150 --> 02:02:57,750
Um so yeah, I like personality fitting within that or emotions fitting in that and why we

2039
02:02:57,750 --> 02:03:00,310
would have these entries or and then also like free will.

2040
02:03:00,390 --> 02:03:01,190
Like it's the planning.

2041
02:03:01,350 --> 02:03:03,420
Like I this is a really that's cool.

2042
02:03:03,500 --> 02:03:04,140
I hadn't thought of that.

2043
02:03:04,220 --> 02:03:05,740
And I I like that kind of thing.

2044
02:03:05,900 --> 02:03:09,660
Yeah, like you can almost kind of try to figure out like what are all these personality

2045
02:03:09,660 --> 02:03:12,300
concepts or things that personality psychologists are studying.

2046
02:03:12,380 --> 02:03:12,460
Yeah.

2047
02:03:12,620 --> 02:03:14,060
Like how did we even create these things?

2048
02:03:14,140 --> 02:03:16,700
Why would we create these things with our evolved psychology?

2049
02:03:16,860 --> 02:03:18,300
And I like the emotions one too.

2050
02:03:18,460 --> 02:03:22,620
Like somebody I don't know who actually wrote this, but somebody once, an economist, was

2051
02:03:22,620 --> 02:03:25,420
explaining like a game theoretic model of anger to me.

2052
02:03:25,580 --> 02:03:31,370
And it was basically like the argument was something like anger is almost like a

2053
02:03:31,450 --> 02:03:35,450
well, it's similar to Aaron Cells in this bargaining tactic, but it's it's like I'm in this

2054
02:03:35,450 --> 02:03:36,170
new mode now.

2055
02:03:36,330 --> 02:03:36,490
Yeah.

2056
02:03:36,730 --> 02:03:38,010
The me that you know is gone.

2057
02:03:38,250 --> 02:03:38,490
Exactly.

2058
02:03:38,730 --> 02:03:40,570
And you're you're arguing with this thing now.

2059
02:03:40,650 --> 02:03:40,730
Yeah.

2060
02:03:41,050 --> 02:03:42,250
So you have to satisfy this thing.

2061
02:03:42,810 --> 02:03:43,370
Yeah, bargaining.

2062
02:03:43,770 --> 02:03:49,050
And having an emotion concept, maybe it like allows us to deal to navigate that and yeah,

2063
02:03:49,210 --> 02:03:54,140
either use that or exploit it or navigate other people having those emotions, something

2064
02:03:54,140 --> 02:03:54,380
like that.

2065
02:03:54,700 --> 02:03:59,660
Yeah, there's a classic paper Hirschlife or Emotions of Guarantee as guaranteers of threats

2066
02:03:59,660 --> 02:04:00,940
and promises or something like that.

2067
02:04:01,100 --> 02:04:01,340
Okay.

2068
02:04:01,580 --> 02:04:02,860
From like the 80s or something.

2069
02:04:03,020 --> 02:04:03,500
Sorry, yeah.

2070
02:04:03,580 --> 02:04:03,740
Yeah.

2071
02:04:04,060 --> 02:04:04,300
Yeah.

2072
02:04:04,540 --> 02:04:10,540
But I think you could see this stuff like in like in personality, there's I'm not super

2073
02:04:10,540 --> 02:04:14,060
infamiliar with this debate, but I know that there are some personality researchers like

2074
02:04:14,300 --> 02:04:18,540
who differ in whether they think motivations should be included in the definition of

2075
02:04:18,540 --> 02:04:19,820
personality or not.

2076
02:04:20,150 --> 02:04:24,470
And I think this is again where like our folk psychology psychology is coming into play.

2077
02:04:24,790 --> 02:04:29,590
If you feel like your motivations are like the things that you can pull on, change

2078
02:04:29,590 --> 02:04:33,750
somebody's motivation in a given moment, versus you feel like motivations are more like

2079
02:04:33,750 --> 02:04:35,350
these basic drives.

2080
02:04:35,590 --> 02:04:40,360
So depending on which one you think is like what people mean by motivations, then you're

2081
02:04:40,360 --> 02:04:44,040
gonna be more or less likely to want to include that in the definition of personality.

2082
02:04:44,200 --> 02:04:48,920
And at least these debates, or maybe we don't need to be having these debates, it's just

2083
02:04:48,920 --> 02:04:54,200
like trying to figure out exactly what the thing is that we're trying to talk about in the

2084
02:04:54,200 --> 02:04:54,680
first place.

2085
02:04:55,080 --> 02:05:00,360
Yeah, like the essence of the nature, like somebody's lazy versus industrious versus um

2086
02:05:00,680 --> 02:05:03,960
stingy versus lecherous versus gluttonous, like this.

2087
02:05:04,040 --> 02:05:06,840
It feels very old-timey to have those be personality traits.

2088
02:05:06,920 --> 02:05:12,650
But as you said, maybe that's it's predicated on like there's some essence essential human

2089
02:05:12,650 --> 02:05:14,890
nature that if we include it, it's right.

2090
02:05:14,970 --> 02:05:17,930
And if we don't include it, it's wrong, as opposed to the right way to think about it,

2091
02:05:18,010 --> 02:05:22,250
which is these are all like difference detecting systems.

2092
02:05:22,330 --> 02:05:23,850
And there's no right or wrong.

2093
02:05:23,930 --> 02:05:25,850
It's just we have these.

2094
02:05:26,010 --> 02:05:26,250
Yeah.

2095
02:05:26,730 --> 02:05:31,040
It it also maps onto our our discourse, like the way we talk about these traits.

2096
02:05:31,200 --> 02:05:37,040
Like if I say Dave is lazy and that's why he's not uh showing up to the podcasts, you might

2097
02:05:37,040 --> 02:05:39,600
say, no, he's not lazy, he's just not sufficiently motivated.

2098
02:05:39,680 --> 02:05:42,480
You're not giving him a good enough reason to show up to these podcasts.

2099
02:05:42,560 --> 02:05:45,680
You know, maybe maybe it's your fault, or maybe it's it's it's the listener's fault.

2100
02:05:45,760 --> 02:05:48,880
They're not you know being generous enough on our Patreon page, and that's why he's not

2101
02:05:48,880 --> 02:05:49,120
showing up.

2102
02:05:49,280 --> 02:05:53,200
It's not that he's inherently lazy, it's just the situation that he's in.

2103
02:05:53,440 --> 02:05:58,080
And so the relative importance of the situation versus Dave's innate characteristic is

2104
02:05:58,080 --> 02:06:02,930
going to determine whether Dave is quote unquote lazy or judged by us to be lazy.

2105
02:06:03,090 --> 02:06:06,690
It's going to depend on the relative influence of different factors in determining his

2106
02:06:06,690 --> 02:06:07,010
behavior.

2107
02:06:07,090 --> 02:06:11,730
And a lot of our gossip, I think, is trying to pin down whether a person is inherently

2108
02:06:11,730 --> 02:06:17,730
smart or lazy or shy or uh uh nervous or whatever, or or whether it's

2109
02:06:17,730 --> 02:06:21,250
just a a product of the specific situation that they happen to be in.

2110
02:06:22,140 --> 02:06:22,380
Yeah.

2111
02:06:22,700 --> 02:06:23,340
That's really cool.

2112
02:06:23,580 --> 02:06:25,420
Is is is the personality literature.

2113
02:06:25,500 --> 02:06:26,780
I mean, David, that's so lovely.

2114
02:06:26,860 --> 02:06:31,020
Is the is the personality literature Patrick acknowledging that all this is for predicting

2115
02:06:31,020 --> 02:06:31,660
behavior?

2116
02:06:31,900 --> 02:06:35,820
Is that or is that not a part of the I mean it's probably acknowledged in there, but I

2117
02:06:35,820 --> 02:06:38,620
wouldn't say it's the main take on what's going on.

2118
02:06:38,780 --> 02:06:42,860
Like it's if anything, like the closest you're gonna get to that is just like recognition

2119
02:06:42,860 --> 02:06:44,940
that it's descriptions of behavior.

2120
02:06:45,150 --> 02:06:45,550
I see.

2121
02:06:46,190 --> 02:06:51,470
Like the social cognitive theories of personality, for example, and thinking like Fleason.

2122
02:06:51,550 --> 02:06:55,710
And like they recognize that like these traits that we talk about as traits, like they're

2123
02:06:55,710 --> 02:06:58,190
descriptive summaries of behavior.

2124
02:06:58,350 --> 02:07:02,270
And there's a trait, what they call trait explanatory side of things.

2125
02:07:02,510 --> 02:07:08,190
But like maybe this is too harsh, but I think they're like basically agnostic andor lost

2126
02:07:08,190 --> 02:07:09,870
about what those things are.

2127
02:07:10,080 --> 02:07:14,240
Whereas that's the value I think the adaptationist evolutionary approach brings, is it

2128
02:07:14,240 --> 02:07:19,600
tells us like what should we expect the things are that are explaining the personality

2129
02:07:19,600 --> 02:07:21,920
traits in the descriptive sense that we see.

2130
02:07:22,080 --> 02:07:25,040
Because it tells us, well, there should be things in the head that solve all these

2131
02:07:25,040 --> 02:07:28,320
different problems, and we can get a sense of how they might work and what their different

2132
02:07:28,320 --> 02:07:32,960
parameters are by doing a task analysis of those things and figuring out how to robot solve

2133
02:07:32,960 --> 02:07:33,200
that.

2134
02:07:33,360 --> 02:07:37,280
And then you go and try to do that empirically and test, measure those little things, those

2135
02:07:37,280 --> 02:07:43,110
parameters, and see if they do indeed link up to these descriptive uh labels that we give

2136
02:07:43,110 --> 02:07:45,110
to people's personality traits.

2137
02:07:45,350 --> 02:07:49,990
Uh but so much of the field, especially because like so many people who use personality

2138
02:07:49,990 --> 02:07:53,110
scales, they're not they wouldn't, they probably wouldn't identify as personality

2139
02:07:53,110 --> 02:07:53,670
psychologists.

2140
02:07:53,830 --> 02:07:58,310
They're just like using them because I don't know, correlations, p-values, whatever.

2141
02:07:58,470 --> 02:08:02,390
And like it's just implicit in the way everybody thinks about these things and writes about

2142
02:08:02,390 --> 02:08:05,430
them that they're that they're somehow causing things.

2143
02:08:05,780 --> 02:08:09,540
but these descriptive things can't cause much.

2144
02:08:09,700 --> 02:08:14,340
Like they they can probably have caused some things, maybe, like, but they're not I don't

2145
02:08:14,340 --> 02:08:17,540
think they're the main causes of behavior because they're not real.

2146
02:08:17,860 --> 02:08:23,700
They're you know, they're abstract summaries of average tendencies, so right, yeah,

2147
02:08:23,940 --> 02:08:24,180
right.

2148
02:08:24,340 --> 02:08:29,270
Like the faster computers uh can do the do this thing better.

2149
02:08:29,750 --> 02:08:30,230
That might just be a good idea.

2150
02:08:30,470 --> 02:08:35,110
It'll predict too it'll predict buying prices and stuff like that.

2151
02:08:35,350 --> 02:08:36,070
But yeah.

2152
02:08:36,230 --> 02:08:40,790
You don't want to mistake that for being causally relevant for like the performance itself.

2153
02:08:41,110 --> 02:08:41,590
Right.

2154
02:08:41,990 --> 02:08:42,230
Right.

2155
02:08:42,390 --> 02:08:46,710
Maybe one day we'll build a super fast computer that's faster than any computer before and

2156
02:08:46,790 --> 02:08:47,670
will take over the world.

2157
02:08:47,830 --> 02:08:51,510
I feel like that's a lot of the the um the arguments you hear about AI because it's

2158
02:08:51,510 --> 02:08:51,910
reified.

2159
02:08:52,310 --> 02:08:53,270
It's gonna be so fast.

2160
02:08:53,430 --> 02:08:53,830
Yeah, exactly.

2161
02:08:54,070 --> 02:08:58,740
It's gonna be so fast, it's gonna hit the threshold of fast so fast that it's gonna become

2162
02:08:58,740 --> 02:08:59,460
human like.

2163
02:08:59,700 --> 02:09:00,260
Yeah, exactly.

2164
02:09:00,660 --> 02:09:02,740
That's actually the the the base logic of it.

2165
02:09:02,820 --> 02:09:03,620
Yes, exactly.

2166
02:09:03,780 --> 02:09:08,100
The base logic is it's gonna get so fast it's gonna become exactly like a human.

2167
02:09:08,500 --> 02:09:08,660
Right.

2168
02:09:08,820 --> 02:09:13,220
It's the the exact same thing where we're reifying intelligence as a real thing when um

2169
02:09:13,300 --> 02:09:15,140
it's all it's a whole bunch of different things.

2170
02:09:15,220 --> 02:09:18,420
And then we extrapolate that into like, oh, if we build an AI, it's gonna be super

2171
02:09:18,420 --> 02:09:21,940
intelligent and it's gonna do all the things that we can do, but better, it's just gonna be

2172
02:09:21,940 --> 02:09:24,590
like a wish-granting genie that can do anything.

2173
02:09:24,910 --> 02:09:25,230
Yeah.

2174
02:09:25,630 --> 02:09:26,110
Um anyway.

2175
02:09:26,510 --> 02:09:30,190
Although even without that, I've seen some arguments about like even just if we were to

2176
02:09:30,190 --> 02:09:34,670
increase like the speed of things by a lot or and it could make copies of itself, you don't

2177
02:09:34,670 --> 02:09:35,870
even need superintelligence.

2178
02:09:35,950 --> 02:09:38,030
It but it could very it could take over the world.

2179
02:09:38,110 --> 02:09:42,670
It could you know with just in increases in speed and productivity that go along with that,

2180
02:09:42,830 --> 02:09:48,140
like somebody could use that to do a lot, a lot more, have huge impacts on the world, even

2181
02:09:48,140 --> 02:09:49,660
without the computer being super intelligent.

2182
02:09:49,980 --> 02:09:50,300
Oh yeah.

2183
02:09:50,620 --> 02:09:51,180
No, exactly.

2184
02:09:51,420 --> 02:09:52,220
Yeah, no, no, no.

2185
02:09:52,300 --> 02:09:57,180
I mean, I think the the I well, I mean, David's point, I think, right, is like we should be

2186
02:09:57,180 --> 02:10:03,100
worried about any technology for for the usual reasons of like humans using it to like

2187
02:10:03,340 --> 02:10:09,170
coerce others and take stuff from them or hurt them, uh, and wield it that way,

2188
02:10:09,330 --> 02:10:14,690
as opposed to like that there's some magical spirit that's all of a sudden gonna become

2189
02:10:14,930 --> 02:10:17,730
curiously like a human but a superhuman.

2190
02:10:17,810 --> 02:10:18,530
Um yeah.

2191
02:10:18,690 --> 02:10:19,170
Yeah.

2192
02:10:19,410 --> 02:10:19,650
Yeah.

2193
02:10:19,810 --> 02:10:20,450
Yeah.

2194
02:10:21,250 --> 02:10:24,130
Uh Patrick, should we have asked you anything?

2195
02:10:24,850 --> 02:10:25,250
Yeah.

2196
02:10:25,490 --> 02:10:28,850
I mean, I did actually because I watched this or I listened to this, I did actually come

2197
02:10:28,850 --> 02:10:29,570
prepared with one.

2198
02:10:29,650 --> 02:10:34,530
It's not really a ask me something, but it's just like a hobby horse I want to get on for a

2199
02:10:34,530 --> 02:10:34,770
second.

2200
02:10:35,650 --> 02:10:38,400
So I said I don't know.

2201
02:10:38,560 --> 02:10:40,640
Ask me how I feel about posters.

2202
02:10:40,800 --> 02:10:41,440
Yeah.

2203
02:10:41,920 --> 02:10:45,680
Posters like in a dorm room or posters on a scientific conference at a scientific

2204
02:10:45,680 --> 02:10:46,080
conference.

2205
02:10:46,320 --> 02:10:50,720
Uh Patrick, how do you feel about posters at a scientific conference if I got the question

2206
02:10:50,720 --> 02:10:50,880
right?

2207
02:10:51,200 --> 02:10:51,760
Yeah, yeah.

2208
02:10:51,920 --> 02:10:56,880
I think that we need to stop printing out fancy posters and going through all jumping

2209
02:10:56,880 --> 02:10:57,760
through all these hoops.

2210
02:10:57,920 --> 02:11:00,990
Just put up some pieces of paper, five pieces of paper.

2211
02:11:01,230 --> 02:11:01,710
I've seen that.

2212
02:11:02,190 --> 02:11:03,630
When I say formatted, I do this.

2213
02:11:03,870 --> 02:11:04,030
Okay.

2214
02:11:04,270 --> 02:11:06,350
Yeah, because I'm just like, why are we doing all this?

2215
02:11:06,510 --> 02:11:09,470
Like, we don't need to have this extra random veneer.

2216
02:11:09,710 --> 02:11:11,390
Like it can be just as legible.

2217
02:11:11,550 --> 02:11:15,230
Don't need to jump through, carry a giant tube around on a plane.

2218
02:11:15,390 --> 02:11:18,670
In part because like I'm lazy, I don't want to do a big poster.

2219
02:11:19,070 --> 02:11:22,240
And and so I also don't like standing out.

2220
02:11:22,320 --> 02:11:26,640
So I'd rather just everybody, you know, got get got on board with printing out pieces of

2221
02:11:26,640 --> 02:11:27,120
paper.

2222
02:11:27,600 --> 02:11:28,480
You heard it here first.

2223
02:11:28,800 --> 02:11:29,840
This is very tractable.

2224
02:11:29,920 --> 02:11:30,960
I I think this is very important.

2225
02:11:31,040 --> 02:11:31,680
I think it's tractable.

2226
02:11:31,840 --> 02:11:35,040
It's the lowest costs for students and universities.

2227
02:11:35,440 --> 02:11:40,400
But seeing then, Patrick, if we adopted this, it would be less of a compelling status

2228
02:11:40,400 --> 02:11:40,720
signal.

2229
02:11:41,040 --> 02:11:41,920
I know, I know, yeah.

2230
02:11:42,160 --> 02:11:46,560
It wouldn't be it would be less costly of a signal, and then I couldn't use it to judge

2231
02:11:46,560 --> 02:11:50,650
people based on you know how much time and energy they've put into it and then what do

2232
02:11:50,650 --> 02:11:55,690
people I mean, because some people put them back up in their walls and like

2233
02:11:56,650 --> 02:11:58,090
I mean if you really want to do it, fine.

2234
02:11:58,170 --> 02:11:59,290
If you're gonna put them up somewhere.

2235
02:11:59,450 --> 02:12:02,330
I've never put a poster up anywhere after it goes in the trash.

2236
02:12:02,570 --> 02:12:06,570
Uh but they used to print cloth ones and you could use it like as a tablecloth.

2237
02:12:06,650 --> 02:12:10,330
I mean, a lot of it is like provisional data often, you know, so it's not even like the

2238
02:12:10,330 --> 02:12:11,450
final word on the thing.

2239
02:12:11,530 --> 02:12:11,850
Yeah.

2240
02:12:12,170 --> 02:12:13,770
Yeah, I just mean I don't know.

2241
02:12:14,040 --> 02:12:14,600
I like this.

2242
02:12:14,760 --> 02:12:14,920
Okay.

2243
02:12:15,080 --> 02:12:16,360
So yeah, you heard it here first.

2244
02:12:16,520 --> 02:12:21,880
If you can so no sh what's the what's the like one sentence summary as like just no

2245
02:12:21,880 --> 02:12:22,440
posters?

2246
02:12:22,680 --> 02:12:24,840
Basically do a data blitz presentation.

2247
02:12:25,240 --> 02:12:26,360
Put a bunch of graphs and tables.

2248
02:12:26,600 --> 02:12:26,920
Put them up.

2249
02:12:27,000 --> 02:12:27,320
No words.

2250
02:12:30,600 --> 02:12:31,880
It can still be nice and aesthetic.

2251
02:12:32,120 --> 02:12:34,520
It just we don't need to, you know, go to the phone.

2252
02:12:34,760 --> 02:12:38,600
If you're gonna put words on a put on a poster, I might as well just read a paper, right?

2253
02:12:39,160 --> 02:12:44,110
Yeah, you know some nice headers, you know, some headers and headers and captions on the on

2254
02:12:44,110 --> 02:12:44,510
the figures.

2255
02:12:44,590 --> 02:12:48,750
And then if I have questions about what the figures mean and what the charts mean, I can

2256
02:12:48,750 --> 02:12:52,270
ask the person and the person's right there and they can tell me in their own words what is

2257
02:12:52,270 --> 02:12:52,750
happening.

2258
02:12:52,910 --> 02:12:53,070
Right.

2259
02:12:54,430 --> 02:12:58,350
I'm not sort of me just like awkwardly standing there and reading a paragraph that I was

2260
02:12:58,430 --> 02:13:02,110
like when I could have just read that paragraph in the privacy of my own home on my own

2261
02:13:02,110 --> 02:13:02,190
time.

2262
02:13:02,350 --> 02:13:02,670
Yeah, yeah.

2263
02:13:03,070 --> 02:13:05,790
I mean I'm not even getting into that side of the poster stuff that I'm gonna do.

2264
02:13:05,900 --> 02:13:07,420
the social, the awkward social interaction.

2265
02:13:07,660 --> 02:13:08,380
I'm gonna stand that way.

2266
02:13:08,540 --> 02:13:09,980
I just mean just like the poster itself.

2267
02:13:12,780 --> 02:13:15,660
Yeah, we gotta think of better ways of of communicating.

2268
02:13:15,980 --> 02:13:17,900
Honestly, an interpretive dance would be better.

2269
02:13:18,060 --> 02:13:20,860
Maybe we should have poetry slams for our for our projects.

2270
02:13:21,020 --> 02:13:23,500
It would be more effective, I think, more memorable songs.

2271
02:13:24,220 --> 02:13:25,980
That can't be turned into a status game, right?

2272
02:13:26,300 --> 02:13:30,860
There used to be an HBES, um, the human behavior evolutionary society back in the day, and

2273
02:13:30,860 --> 02:13:33,100
I was a young graduate student while this was still happening.

2274
02:13:33,180 --> 02:13:38,650
It was so um not um attended it was like there were not many people going to it

2275
02:13:38,810 --> 02:13:44,650
early days that it wasn't very um competitive to get in and

2276
02:13:44,650 --> 02:13:50,650
there would literally always be one or two posters done by I mean to just put

2277
02:13:50,650 --> 02:13:56,330
it like bluntly like crazy people where there'd be like glowing like chakras coming around

2278
02:13:56,490 --> 02:13:56,730
people.

2279
02:13:56,970 --> 02:14:00,570
And so there was always, you know, like they were kind of referred to as like tinfoil hat

2280
02:14:00,730 --> 02:14:05,580
like it would just be like this really weird like you know the seventh dimension harmonics

2281
02:14:05,580 --> 02:14:09,900
are causing people to like act selfishly and then there was just like a so david it

2282
02:14:09,900 --> 02:14:15,020
reminded me of your just all pictures because those were often those posters stood out

2283
02:14:15,020 --> 02:14:20,940
because they had usually very strange graphics um almost religious like um and you

2284
02:14:21,020 --> 02:14:25,650
you know you could usually tell because either it'd be a hundred point font or a one point

2285
02:14:25,890 --> 02:14:31,170
font, um, you know, with four words or ten thousand words on the poster and really

2286
02:14:31,330 --> 02:14:34,850
interesting, um, really interesting pictures.

2287
02:14:35,010 --> 02:14:35,490
Yeah.

2288
02:14:35,810 --> 02:14:36,450
Yeah.

2289
02:14:37,250 --> 02:14:41,570
Maybe we haven't quite figured out the optimal way to have research conferences.

2290
02:14:41,730 --> 02:14:45,250
Maybe this is the best we can do is the poster PowerPoint format.

2291
02:14:45,490 --> 02:14:46,050
I don't know.

2292
02:14:46,260 --> 02:14:46,580
Yeah.

2293
02:14:46,740 --> 02:14:47,060
Yeah.

2294
02:14:47,700 --> 02:14:48,580
That's all I'm asking.

2295
02:14:48,820 --> 02:14:50,340
Yeah, I think that's reasonable.

2296
02:14:50,820 --> 02:14:56,500
And to just make it a meta science point while we're on it, is uh as a

2297
02:14:56,500 --> 02:15:02,500
PSA, like glossy, well published like really highly produced things are

2298
02:15:02,500 --> 02:15:05,460
not uh a good proxy for truth either.

2299
02:15:05,700 --> 02:15:05,940
Right.

2300
02:15:06,420 --> 02:15:10,020
Like somebody writing something on cardboard, yeah, like that's one issue.

2301
02:15:10,100 --> 02:15:15,650
But like some of my favorite papers, like John Patton papers, are like low, low production

2302
02:15:15,650 --> 02:15:18,850
quality, you know, old school, black and white.

2303
02:15:18,930 --> 02:15:22,130
And then like, you know, there's a lot of journals now that have like really pretty

2304
02:15:22,130 --> 02:15:24,850
pictures, but that doesn't mean that it's better science.

2305
02:15:25,170 --> 02:15:26,050
Absolutely.

2306
02:15:26,290 --> 02:15:26,930
Yeah.

2307
02:15:27,490 --> 02:15:28,690
So yeah, we're doing it.

2308
02:15:29,010 --> 02:15:34,440
We should just hand draw hand drawn uh eight and a half by eleven.

2309
02:15:36,280 --> 02:15:42,280
I don't know about that, but it rewards people with good legible writing, so and

2310
02:15:42,280 --> 02:15:42,520
drawing.

2311
02:15:42,840 --> 02:15:43,000
Right.

2312
02:15:43,160 --> 02:15:47,800
And if you're starting a podcast, don't bother editing it and putting high in high

2313
02:15:47,800 --> 02:15:50,840
production values or exactly it's really self serving.

2314
02:15:51,560 --> 02:15:52,120
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2315
02:15:52,440 --> 02:15:57,480
The real podcasts, you know, don't edit anything out, and they just do real talk and they

2316
02:15:57,480 --> 02:16:02,270
include all the ums and uhs and mistakes and they're boring sometimes.

2317
02:16:02,430 --> 02:16:03,070
They're boring sometimes.

2318
02:16:03,310 --> 02:16:04,670
There's no show notes.

2319
02:16:04,990 --> 02:16:05,470
Mm-hmm.

2320
02:16:05,710 --> 02:16:05,950
Yeah.

2321
02:16:06,590 --> 02:16:07,870
Those are the best kinds of podcasts.

2322
02:16:08,110 --> 02:16:08,750
Yes, exactly.

2323
02:16:09,070 --> 02:16:11,630
We should give a lot of status to those kinds of podcasts.

2324
02:16:12,030 --> 02:16:12,750
A lot of funding.

2325
02:16:12,830 --> 02:16:15,230
More funding is needed, as Daniel Speaker would say.

2326
02:16:15,390 --> 02:16:15,710
Yes.

2327
02:16:15,950 --> 02:16:19,790
Well, Patrick, um uh what are you what what are you working on really quickly next?

2328
02:16:19,950 --> 02:16:21,710
What's your next big thing?

2329
02:16:22,460 --> 02:16:27,980
Uh all these things still probably mainly trying to tie these parameters of emotions that I

2330
02:16:27,980 --> 02:16:33,020
was kind of talking about, like situation detecting algorithm differences and set point

2331
02:16:33,180 --> 02:16:36,300
differences to these broader personality traits.

2332
02:16:36,540 --> 02:16:40,700
And then the other one is kind of this more meta question that we kind of hinted at here.

2333
02:16:41,180 --> 02:16:46,690
Uh trying to differentiate between, yeah, these more prediction based subtasks of adaptive

2334
02:16:46,690 --> 02:16:51,250
problems, like the one uh that that David kind of mentioned, of like just trying to predict

2335
02:16:51,410 --> 02:16:56,850
like who among my peers is gonna get status, or predict who will my peers tend to think is

2336
02:16:56,850 --> 02:17:01,410
worthy of status, versus the causal side of things, which is how do I intervene on the

2337
02:17:01,410 --> 02:17:06,130
world or how can the world be intervened on in order to bring about certain changes?

2338
02:17:06,290 --> 02:17:12,180
And I think figuring out like the space of adaptive like the complexity

2339
02:17:12,180 --> 02:17:16,820
of different adaptive problems and what kinds of cognitive machinery could solve those

2340
02:17:16,820 --> 02:17:16,980
problems.

2341
02:17:17,060 --> 02:17:21,860
That's kind of like something I'm excited about, but also like honestly slowly, slow, very

2342
02:17:21,860 --> 02:17:23,220
slowly getting into that.

2343
02:17:23,300 --> 02:17:26,180
But yeah, anybody's interested in those things, like reach out.

2344
02:17:26,260 --> 02:17:28,180
I'd love to talk and and chat.

2345
02:17:28,580 --> 02:17:28,980
Cool.

2346
02:17:29,190 --> 02:17:29,590
All right.

2347
02:17:29,750 --> 02:17:31,110
Well, thanks so much for being on.

2348
02:17:31,190 --> 02:17:31,830
We really appreciate it.

2349
02:17:31,910 --> 02:17:32,470
It's great talking to you.

2350
02:17:32,630 --> 02:17:33,190
Thanks for having me.

2351
02:17:33,430 --> 02:17:33,590
Yeah.

2352
02:17:33,670 --> 02:17:33,910
Yep.

2353
02:17:33,990 --> 02:17:34,150
Yeah.

2354
02:17:34,310 --> 02:17:35,830
And thanks for doing the podcast.

2355
02:17:36,630 --> 02:17:38,150
Thank you for coming on.

2356
02:17:38,630 --> 02:17:39,190
All right.

2357
02:17:40,710 --> 02:17:42,150
David, you're still here.

2358
02:17:42,470 --> 02:17:43,110
I'm still here.

2359
02:17:43,190 --> 02:17:43,750
Are you still here?

2360
02:17:43,910 --> 02:17:45,350
I am still let me check.

2361
02:17:45,430 --> 02:17:46,390
Oh, yep, still here.

2362
02:17:46,470 --> 02:17:46,630
Okay.

2363
02:17:46,790 --> 02:17:47,990
Uh and you're still here.

2364
02:17:48,230 --> 02:17:53,350
So um if you liked the episode, please subscribe.

2365
02:17:53,580 --> 02:17:59,180
Um, you can click like, you can make comments on social media, um, preferably

2366
02:17:59,340 --> 02:18:00,380
neutral to good.

2367
02:18:00,460 --> 02:18:02,300
And you know, we're on Patreon.

2368
02:18:02,540 --> 02:18:02,860
Yeah.

2369
02:18:03,100 --> 02:18:04,380
Call a friend.

2370
02:18:04,940 --> 02:18:10,940
Yeah, neutral third party, disinterested, shout it in the streets, buy David a fanny

2371
02:18:10,940 --> 02:18:12,140
pack, send him French fries.

2372
02:18:12,300 --> 02:18:15,020
I think that's almost shouted from a mountaintop.

2373
02:18:15,260 --> 02:18:17,340
Um, yell it to people on the street.

2374
02:18:17,420 --> 02:18:23,110
Don't do anything, be kind to yourself, give yourself some time and space,

2375
02:18:23,270 --> 02:18:24,150
take care of yourself.

2376
02:18:24,310 --> 02:18:25,990
I think these are drugs.

2377
02:18:26,070 --> 02:18:26,310
Yeah.

2378
02:18:26,950 --> 02:18:27,270
Yeah.

2379
02:18:27,350 --> 02:18:30,870
Um well and it depends on the drug and what the context is, but yeah.

2380
02:18:31,190 --> 02:18:31,750
Yeah, yeah.

2381
02:18:33,510 --> 02:18:34,950
Don't be arrogant.

2382
02:18:35,030 --> 02:18:37,030
If you think you're arrogant, you're probably not.

2383
02:18:37,190 --> 02:18:38,470
If you don't, you probably are.

2384
02:18:38,630 --> 02:18:40,870
I think these are all things we've covered in outros.

2385
02:18:41,350 --> 02:18:41,670
Yep.

2386
02:18:41,750 --> 02:18:42,630
Yeah, maybe take it.

2387
02:18:42,870 --> 02:18:43,270
Anything new?

2388
02:18:43,350 --> 02:18:45,030
Anything new, Fanny Pack?

2389
02:18:45,910 --> 02:18:47,820
Uh no, not really.

2390
02:18:48,380 --> 02:18:49,340
French fries.

2391
02:18:50,140 --> 02:18:50,460
Okay.

2392
02:18:51,420 --> 02:18:52,300
Uh I don't know.

2393
02:18:52,460 --> 02:18:53,740
Watch Star Wars again.

2394
02:18:54,140 --> 02:18:55,260
The old ones or the new ones?

2395
02:18:55,500 --> 02:18:55,820
The old ones.

2396
02:18:55,980 --> 02:18:56,460
The OG.

2397
02:18:56,860 --> 02:18:57,260
Yeah, they're good.

2398
02:18:57,420 --> 02:18:58,140
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

2399
02:18:58,300 --> 02:18:58,540
Okay.

2400
02:18:58,620 --> 02:18:58,860
Yeah.

2401
02:18:59,420 --> 02:18:59,980
All right.

2402
02:19:00,300 --> 02:19:00,860
Uh good.

2403
02:19:01,180 --> 02:19:02,540
Well, see you next week, David.

2404
02:19:02,700 --> 02:19:04,380
Yep, see you next week.