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Welcome.

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Okay, you start.

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Uh well uh welcome.

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I you said welcome, so I figure I should do the same thing.

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Uh I'm David Pensov and uh I'm here with uh Dave Petrozowski.

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And what is this?

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What are we even doing here?

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Uh this is uh a podcast.

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Okay.

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Uh what what what is it called?

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Uh let me look it up.

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Well, actually, I don't know.

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Okay, oh, it's evolutionary psychology.

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Oh, it's evolutionary psychology, the podcast.

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Okay.

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Ah, that's what it is.

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Okay.

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And the tagline is actual evolutionary psychology by actual evolutionary psychologists.

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They must be around here somewhere.

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Yep.

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I think one of them might be in this episode.

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Okay.

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Well, enjoy.

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David, good to see you.

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Good to see you too, Dave.

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We have an awesome guest with us today.

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We have uh Michael Monkrief, who is a scholar of international law, who has

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done field research in war-torn Croatia.

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Uh, we talk about so many fascinating topics.

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We talk about terrorism, interstate violence, uh, even drag queens.

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We do.

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Uh uh Yeah.

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And uh Michael has just incredible, fascinating stories across a wide range of human

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experiences, uh, works a lot with international um hu humanitarian

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lawyers uh in dealing with international armed conflict and terrorism.

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Um is a really wide ranging, interesting and important um person, and we just

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loved having him on.

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It was a lot of fun.

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I think you'll have a great time listening to it.

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Enjoy.

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So I found the record button.

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So we are now recording.

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Michael.

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Michael and David.

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Good good to see you.

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Good to see you.

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Uh Michael, today we have Michael uh Moncree.

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Wait, did I say it right?

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Michael Moncrief.

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Yeah, yeah, you got it.

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Okay, great.

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I'm done.

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David, take over.

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Okay.

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Uh Michael, you uh have been working uh

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in the same vicinity as as the UN, is that correct?

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Yeah, yeah.

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Conjunction with with the UN and with international diplomacy?

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Yeah, so so I've been working on a project in Geneva.

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And when you're working on a project in Geneva, it's very hard not to constantly run into

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the international community when it comes to issues like human rights and international

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law.

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So yeah, so so formalistically, no, uh, but we've been doing a lot of uh discussions, a lot

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of round tables, um, a lot of back and forth with uh folks from the UN and also the Red

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Cross.

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So it's kind of it's kind of one big uh incestual community out there with with

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international law, international policy.

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Uh so yeah, so it's it's it's been uh a great opportunity out there.

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I had a chance to oh sorry, go ahead, David.

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I just wanted to ask the question.

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Uh are you the only evolutionary psychologist in the international law,

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international uh relations space?

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As far as I know, there there I'm sure there's some of us lurking out there.

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But no, that as far as I know, yeah, and and you can definitely feel that when, you know,

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we're in meetings uh with folks from the UN and that, that there's there's very little EP

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voice uh coming through in those meetings.

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So, but it's a really exciting opportunity because then you, you know, something kind of

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kind of simplistic ideas from EP can be really useful because you can say, hey, what about

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this?

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And it's like, wow, we never we never thought about that before.

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I'll give you, I can give you one quick example.

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I was um I was on a call that was uh discussing why militant

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groups uh refuse to comply sometimes with international law, with international

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humanitarian law, which is the law of war.

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And so the speaker was talking about religion and how religion might play a role.

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And just a simple question like, well, what what do you think is the fundamental

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motivational differences between these collectives?

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And it kind of, you know, then you hit a silence.

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And so it's interesting too because like on that side, they don't really talk about

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motivational things in international law.

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There's been a lot of people that have said, oh, we'd love to pursue some of those ideas,

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uh, but but no one's really thinking that way yet.

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So yeah, so some some simple things that in the in the kind of the perspective that

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evolutionary psychologists take, take for granted oftentimes are just really useful for

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for thinking through those things.

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So that that's pretty that's pretty mind-boggling to me that a group of people who are

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trying to understand and predict and put a stop to

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terrorism, militant groups, uh violence, um, that they are essentially blind

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to the motivations behind it.

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Yeah.

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I mean, I think it's still very, very prevalent kind of a standard social model, right?

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So um this idea that learning is a plays a big role in in militant groups is is

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definitely apparent from some of like uh the ICRC, the Red Cross, um, their

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kind of strategies towards getting groups to comply with uh international humanitarian law

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are oftentimes based on education.

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So a lot of how can we talk to these groups?

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Um and and there's some there's some hints of ideas about incentives in there.

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Um however, you know, which is kind of more of an institutional type approach.

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But for the most part, it's it's still maybe if we if we talk to them the right way, if we

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communicate this information in the right way, then we can get these armed actors to comply

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with international law.

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So rather than a big misunderstanding, in other words, they just a

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big misunderity when it comes to like

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how best to approach it and and so so I wouldn't say that they're that they're that bad as

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thinking like oh all we have to do is is teach them in a classroom and they'll they'll

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behave better.

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Um however I do think that there's still a bit of a hint of like oh if we can just convince

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them that uh you know civilians if they protect them then uh they'll get benefits for

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instance um at the negotiation table.

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And first of all like you kind of start with this idea that every group wants to negotiate,

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which I think is also implicit in a lot of this stuff, especially with terrorism that I've

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been working on.

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It's kind of this implicit thing, like terrorism is always for bargaining when um there

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might just be you know purely other uh other reasons, such as the destruction or or

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depowering of other groups.

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So yeah, so there's so there's a lot to unpack there, a lot that's not uh been really

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discussed yet in the literature.

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Well, um, uh ideology.

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So you and and we'll eventually get to uh who you are.

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Uh um, but but I'm really happy we're just like launching into this.

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Um so David has this paper on sort of ideologies and political ideologies.

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And um the idea is that um, I mean, David can do a better job than me, but that political

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ideologies are largely confabulation for some underlying sort of alliance thing.

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And this is sort of one example of what one of the things we've talked about in this

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podcast so far, one of the themes has been that people, there's sort of

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strategic reasons underlying systems.

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Um, and for really important things like what you're talking about already that we're sort

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of launching into, you know, you really study groups in conflict, really important life or

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death decisions, and you're talking to people in these rooms.

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I mean, you and I was in a room with you where they drafted part of the Geneva Convention

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talking to international humanitarian law.

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IHL, I got it right.

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There's a lot of answer.

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My God.

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It's IHL and International Human Rights Law, IHRL.

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We're currently under IHRL, but if there was an armed conflict, we'd be under IHL.

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So hey, I I I I've been practicing.

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I feel like I'm spreading the good word of international law.

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So I'm doing my part.

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international law is really interesting.

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Actually, since I went to that thing, I've been like learning a lot about it.

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And it's it's very important um with like lots of life or death consequences for like

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millions of people.

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So it's actually really good that somebody's doing the science.

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So thank you for doing it.

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But anyway, um back to the the point about um confabulation in

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ideology.

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One question for you, Michael, is um one of the things, like I said,

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there's been sort of a theme for this uh podcast, and I think it's just a theme of EpSec in

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general, is there's sort of you have to be humble and respect why people are doing

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things.

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And there's sort of this history, especially in social sciences, of sort of patronizing to

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the people on the ground making decisions.

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And, you know, I think David's argument about political ideology

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and other arguments too.

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And I'm curious if you agree with this, Michael, is and I'm curious like how this plays out

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for you, the particular range of experiences you're having in the people you're talking to.

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But the this idea that sort of like, well, people are sort of dumb or naive.

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We need to tell them what to do, as opposed to like understand and sort of be an

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anthropologist about like, well, why are they doing this thing?

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And then figuring out from there what's the next step, as opposed to going in assuming that

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it's simple or it's learning or it's ideology, as opposed to like there's just this basic

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evolved psychology that has like basic needs and people are roughly reasonable, even when

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they do terrible things.

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Like Yeah, I have I have so much to say on this that it would it it could take days.

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But I think I've seen it in both areas that I've worked in.

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So I've worked in counterterrorism now for um probably almost a decade.

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And then before that, working on ethnic violence.

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And you see it in both of these areas.

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So uh with with terrorism uh and radicalization particularly, um

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you see that there's this constant debate about ideology and what role, and it's coming

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back again.

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So and it's actually a really hot debate in the field right now.

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So earlier models of radicalization were heavily ideological based.

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Like, you know, the focus there was on changing the message if you wanted to prevent

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someone from radicalizing or counteracting those messages and things.

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And a lot of the models of radicalization kind of put ideology at the core of this.

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And then you start to see problems along the way.

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More recently, there's been this idea of what the people have called like salad bar

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ideology, where you're getting these strange mix of like far-right actors kind of

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adopting positions that Islamists would would adopt, kind of neo-Jihadist positions.

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And all of a sudden, the folks in this field were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's happening

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here?

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This doesn't make sense.

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And so then you you have kind of this drifting away of idea from ideology and people

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saying, well, maybe ideology doesn't matter at all.

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And there's also kind of a problem there because then it diminishes it so much to a point

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where it's like, okay, then what why is it always there?

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Why is it always coming back?

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So you have to account for it somehow.

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Um and and that's where the coalition building really, I think, and I align with you,

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David, a lot on this.

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But so now there's another pushback.

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Just last week, there was an article out by a terrorism radicalization scholar in

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the UK writing on behalf of the UK government saying, no, no, we really have to take

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ideology seriously.

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Look, it's a it's a core driver of these behaviors.

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And so my take on this from what I've done in radicalization is that

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indeed it's more fundamental uh motivations that are kick starting this process.

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And and you can even tell this from like basic things in the literature, like people that

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radicalize oftentimes are really ignorant of the things that they're talking about until

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they get to a later stage when they actually start to adopt the ideology of the

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group.

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Um so so the question is what what are those things doing?

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And I think that's a good thing.

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So just to clarify, yeah.

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Sorry, uh so just to interject a bit.

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So what you're saying is that commitment to the group uh precedes

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ideology.

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That people are often committed to the group before they fully understand the doctrine or

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or the or the beliefs justifying the group's existence.

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Yeah, it seems like uh this is kind of generally how it goes.

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The person ha is in some type of usually depressed state, right?

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So that there's something that their their life's not quite going the way that they want it

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to.

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And this is what like early descriptive models of radicalization always showed.

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And then they start looking for what explains that that state that they're in.

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And oftentimes then they're in in kind of our modern day uh ecology, social ecologies, you

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have all this information about ideologies and that.

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And I I like to think of them as like expla explanation packages.

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Explain, you know, so it's like the the the person hits upon these things and says, Oh,

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that that's that's a good explanation for what I'm I'm I'm experiencing, and that aligns

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with me.

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And it helps them identify, so it has a coordinational element, I think, you know, helps

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them, and this is much of your work, helps them identify those actors that are on their

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side and that see the world the same way.

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It helps them justify and explain to others, and I think that that's a really important

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role that's like still under researched is like I have a very strong feeling that hitting

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upon the right justifications greenlights a lot of those harmful um behaviors.

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So um so I think but but the but the fact is yeah these have uh these lower the cost of

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00:13:54,330 --> 00:13:59,050
action and increase the benefits of action, but I don't think that they're the the core um

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uh kind of organizational functional thing that's happening during radicalization.

243
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So they're not they're not the prime they play a role, certainly.

244
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Yeah, exactly.

245
00:14:13,340 --> 00:14:14,940
So that's a really good question.

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So I I uh start my talk by usually recently by saying no one really

247
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knows.

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Um so and there's in fact a whole literature on what is radicalization, and uh it's really

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messy.

250
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Essentially, it's radicalization has been defined as, and it has an ideology kind of in the

251
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common definition, is the adoption of an ideology that prepares uh individuals for

252
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collective action towards violence.

253
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So it's this uh changing of ideas, of ideologies and beliefs uh in favor of a group

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toward collective action is kind of the the first kind of um idea.

255
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But the the fact is that there's more written on no one knows what this is.

256
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So um uh myself and a colleague, we looked at it from a slightly different perspective and

257
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we tried to see like what's actually happening because what is really clear is that there

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is like a functional change.

259
00:15:06,440 --> 00:15:12,360
So there's a systematic change in um perception, in uh memory,

260
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in planning, all these different things that are kind of systematic throughout those

261
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individuals you look at.

262
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So there must be some kind of orchestrational organizing process for this.

263
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And you know, if you look towards the EP literature and John and Lita's work, you see, you

264
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know, that emotions play a prime role here.

265
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And so me and my colleague looked at this and we said, what could be playing the prime

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role?

267
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And we went through many different examples of different types of things, and we finally

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settled on envy as this emotional system that we think if you look at the envy literature

269
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that's out there, it matches very, very tightly with what with what's happening uh during

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radicalization as far as all these different um changes that the person's going through.

271
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And it it matches the very essence of of kind of radicalization, which is this depressed

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state.

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You have a depressed status individual uh looking at the world around them and saying,

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okay, how can I, how can I eliminate my competition?

275
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What can I do to bring them down to my level?

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And then, you know, motivating the actions to do so, whether those are, you know, really

277
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violent actions or whether that's joining a militant organization to support them in doing

278
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violent actions.

279
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But when we kind of conceptualize radicalization, we actually used more of a game theoretic

280
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approach, which is just looking at how do people think about their relationships with

281
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others?

282
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And we see that that's also changing.

283
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And so there's kind of two things: there's like a risk preference change where it's like we

284
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have to do this now.

285
00:16:35,340 --> 00:16:40,220
Uh, everyone should join us because if we don't do this thing now, then we're all gonna

286
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we're not gonna be here tomorrow.

287
00:16:41,580 --> 00:16:46,700
So there's an action preference, this risk uh taking on really risky actions that have to

288
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be done now.

289
00:16:47,740 --> 00:16:52,610
Um, and there's also um kind of changes in how they see others, So they see their social

290
00:16:52,610 --> 00:16:53,650
interactions as changing.

291
00:16:53,810 --> 00:16:57,730
Those that aren't participating are seen as like free riding or skirting.

292
00:16:58,050 --> 00:17:01,410
Whereas those that are signing up with them, there's a lot of gratitude flowing towards

293
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those individuals.

294
00:17:02,050 --> 00:17:06,210
And so what's really interesting here is we think that kind of game theoretically, what

295
00:17:06,210 --> 00:17:09,410
they're what they're trying to advertise is that they're playing this really weird

296
00:17:09,410 --> 00:17:13,330
game-theoretic game that's so weird that they actually it's not studied very much because

297
00:17:13,330 --> 00:17:17,570
it the only optimal outcome is cooperation, which is the harmony game.

298
00:17:17,820 --> 00:17:22,540
And so what you're seeing here is like ever these agents are acting as if they're playing

299
00:17:22,540 --> 00:17:25,900
this ultra cooperative game that usually only happens, like, let's say, if your group's

300
00:17:25,900 --> 00:17:30,300
being attacked in a real warfare, you'd all the you know the best coordinational thing is

301
00:17:30,300 --> 00:17:31,660
to come together and defend yourself.

302
00:17:31,820 --> 00:17:35,100
And that's kind of how they're they're talking about all these uh situations.

303
00:17:35,260 --> 00:17:37,260
So I'll stop there because I can I could go on.

304
00:17:37,580 --> 00:17:43,510
Yeah, it it sounds like I mean, I'm imagining obviously all this science starts with

305
00:17:43,910 --> 00:17:46,230
a lot of assumptions or imagined scenarios.

306
00:17:46,310 --> 00:17:51,670
And what I'm hearing is this this is sort of all of these concepts are built for sort of

307
00:17:51,670 --> 00:17:57,430
some kid on the internet who sort of you know is living in like somewhere, some

308
00:17:57,590 --> 00:18:03,110
somewhere uh sort of relatively anonymous,

309
00:18:03,430 --> 00:18:08,390
goes online and gets radicalized and like does some violent event.

310
00:18:08,720 --> 00:18:14,160
That's a different scenario than state-level violence or conflict.

311
00:18:14,240 --> 00:18:19,920
And I know you looked at that too in your uh really interesting like

312
00:18:20,160 --> 00:18:22,720
history of being a researcher of violence.

313
00:18:22,800 --> 00:18:28,640
And I know you looked at like ethnic conflict in uh Central Europe.

314
00:18:28,880 --> 00:18:34,730
Um, I'm curious, uh, maybe and this is a segue sort of into you uh too

315
00:18:34,810 --> 00:18:39,050
um because i think you know we we I I love how we just like delved right into the content.

316
00:18:39,290 --> 00:18:44,170
But um so you've been you have experiences studying ethnic violence too.

317
00:18:44,330 --> 00:18:48,810
Can you talk a little bit about that and maybe either go right into that or like how did

318
00:18:48,810 --> 00:18:49,850
you arrive there?

319
00:18:50,010 --> 00:18:54,170
I mean you've told me crazy stories that maybe you know if you feel comfortable repeating

320
00:18:54,170 --> 00:19:00,000
or not um but how how did you get into like how do how do you find yourself studying

321
00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:04,160
ethnic conflict uh in a way that you know you're really kind of there?

322
00:19:05,200 --> 00:19:10,000
Yeah, um so so my early my my early passions were really um

323
00:19:10,960 --> 00:19:16,720
on uh religion, uh evolution of religion, uh evolution of morality that kind of comes

324
00:19:16,720 --> 00:19:19,440
along with that territory, uh, and conflict.

325
00:19:19,670 --> 00:19:24,070
And so those are kind of all married together during periods of ethnic conflict.

326
00:19:24,710 --> 00:19:30,550
And so, yeah, so I was in uh grad school, I I was gravitating towards these

327
00:19:30,550 --> 00:19:31,190
areas.

328
00:19:31,430 --> 00:19:36,070
And um as I was moving towards that direction, I was particularly really interested in like

329
00:19:36,070 --> 00:19:40,390
what happens to people's moral reasoning during periods of rising ethnic conflict.

330
00:19:40,630 --> 00:19:46,470
Um and so uh the former Yugoslavia provided like a really beautiful um kind of social,

331
00:19:46,710 --> 00:19:52,460
uh natural social experiment to to go do interviews and to do uh cognitive experiments out

332
00:19:52,460 --> 00:19:52,620
there.

333
00:19:52,940 --> 00:19:53,420
When was this?

334
00:19:53,580 --> 00:19:58,460
Um to ch uh so this would be uh two oh my gosh, a decade ago, which is which is wild.

335
00:19:58,700 --> 00:20:03,820
Uh so yeah, so uh about twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen I was out in uh along the coast of

336
00:20:03,820 --> 00:20:08,780
Croatia and also in the uh kind of rural villages that uh are from the coast towards

337
00:20:08,780 --> 00:20:09,180
Bosnia.

338
00:20:09,260 --> 00:20:11,340
So Zadar to Benkovetsk.

339
00:20:11,900 --> 00:20:17,490
And um yeah, and so what we were really interested in is uh and inspired by too, which I

340
00:20:17,490 --> 00:20:21,730
I've I've been teaching a class and I tell my students, and I think uh David, we talked

341
00:20:21,730 --> 00:20:26,290
about this when I saw you about how like coordination is such a an incredible thing, but no

342
00:20:26,290 --> 00:20:27,410
one notices it's there.

343
00:20:27,490 --> 00:20:33,330
And I mean th I there's been beautiful research here uh by Thomas and Pinker and and

344
00:20:33,330 --> 00:20:34,130
their crew.

345
00:20:34,640 --> 00:20:38,880
And I I saw I think Pinker's working on a new book to come out this fall that's also

346
00:20:38,880 --> 00:20:39,760
dealing with coordination.

347
00:20:39,840 --> 00:20:41,200
So I'm super excited about that.

348
00:20:41,680 --> 00:20:44,320
But um but it's one of those things that we just take for granted.

349
00:20:44,480 --> 00:20:47,920
And it's and I I I was kind of beating my students over the head with it recently.

350
00:20:48,080 --> 00:20:48,800
Yeah, what were you going to say?

351
00:20:48,960 --> 00:20:49,120
Yes.

352
00:20:49,280 --> 00:20:53,520
Uh I I think it might be worthwhile for people who might not be privy to this stuff what

353
00:20:53,520 --> 00:20:59,440
coordination means, uh, what what common knowledge means, why why this

354
00:20:59,440 --> 00:21:02,160
is the water we swim, why, why it's underrated.

355
00:21:02,750 --> 00:21:03,070
Yeah.

356
00:21:03,310 --> 00:21:05,710
So I think I'll start with why it's underrated.

357
00:21:05,870 --> 00:21:10,270
It comes so naturally to us that it's just like we're completely blind to the fact that

358
00:21:10,270 --> 00:21:12,350
this is what's happening around us all the time.

359
00:21:12,590 --> 00:21:18,190
Um but the simplest kind of uh coordinational game is just trying to uh align

360
00:21:18,190 --> 00:21:21,550
individuals towards the same goal, and and that's it.

361
00:21:21,710 --> 00:21:27,390
That I mean, you're trying to uh achieve a state of kind of common knowledge, which is this

362
00:21:27,390 --> 00:21:33,180
idea that, you know, I know that this other person knows that I'm willing to engage in this

363
00:21:33,180 --> 00:21:36,940
action, and vice versa, kind of uh odd in infinitum.

364
00:21:37,180 --> 00:21:42,780
And I'll give you like a great example of this that I love using in my classes, is um the

365
00:21:42,780 --> 00:21:44,940
fall of the Soviet Union in Poland.

366
00:21:45,180 --> 00:21:50,060
So there's this great video, it's very short online, where this guy is discussing how uh

367
00:21:50,310 --> 00:21:54,150
they would go around and put these radio transponders from Radio Free Europe throughout

368
00:21:54,150 --> 00:21:55,190
people's homes.

369
00:21:55,990 --> 00:22:00,230
And they wouldn't tell those individuals that they had these transponders or not because

370
00:22:00,230 --> 00:22:01,990
they wanted them to have deniability.

371
00:22:02,230 --> 00:22:05,510
So they would kind of hide them in people's homes and everything.

372
00:22:05,590 --> 00:22:10,550
And so one night, you know, all these people were f were frustrated and fed up with the

373
00:22:10,550 --> 00:22:10,870
system.

374
00:22:11,110 --> 00:22:17,100
And one night um they said, hey, if everyone listening would go on to their lights and

375
00:22:17,100 --> 00:22:18,460
flick them on and off.

376
00:22:18,620 --> 00:22:22,700
And so what happened is you saw all these lights flicking on and off throughout the city.

377
00:22:22,780 --> 00:22:26,060
And within a couple days after, you you had these mass protests and everything.

378
00:22:26,140 --> 00:22:31,420
And what it did was everyone had their kind of private knowledge uh to themselves, but they

379
00:22:31,420 --> 00:22:37,330
didn't know that everyone else also had the same inclination to let let's get rid of this

380
00:22:37,330 --> 00:22:37,970
government.

381
00:22:38,130 --> 00:22:42,850
Um, until you you saw these kind of coordinational signals out there, which helps everyone

382
00:22:42,850 --> 00:22:46,930
kind of converge and provides that recursive knowledge state of, oh, I know that they know

383
00:22:47,010 --> 00:22:48,290
that I know, and vice versa.

384
00:22:48,690 --> 00:22:49,250
That's fascinating.

385
00:22:49,490 --> 00:22:53,570
So so this was mere this was turning on and off one's lights.

386
00:22:53,890 --> 00:22:54,050
Yeah.

387
00:22:54,450 --> 00:22:55,810
This served as a signal.

388
00:22:56,210 --> 00:22:59,490
This served as a signal that I am unhappy with the regime.

389
00:22:59,960 --> 00:23:00,760
And I'm not alone.

390
00:23:00,920 --> 00:23:01,800
And it's that other people.

391
00:23:02,600 --> 00:23:02,680
Yeah.

392
00:23:02,840 --> 00:23:07,240
And this is why, and this is I mean, Michael, you might know this history better, but like

393
00:23:07,320 --> 00:23:12,760
my when I teach like uh even intro-syc, it's sort of like one of the reasons why like

394
00:23:12,760 --> 00:23:18,520
dictators crack down on protests that are seen even very small is this concern that it it

395
00:23:18,520 --> 00:23:23,560
can create common knowledge of if everybody's miserable but isolated, nobody knows how many

396
00:23:23,560 --> 00:23:24,200
of us there are.

397
00:23:24,360 --> 00:23:28,520
But the second that other people say oh there's other people like even the classic Solomon

398
00:23:28,520 --> 00:23:34,490
Ash studies, which actually do replicate, as I understand, this thing of, you

399
00:23:34,490 --> 00:23:38,570
know, so they show people, they bring people into this room, and there's just like three

400
00:23:38,570 --> 00:23:42,330
lines, and one of them is obviously like shorter than the other ones.

401
00:23:42,650 --> 00:23:48,650
And the the people who are participating in the study think all of the people sitting next

402
00:23:48,650 --> 00:23:54,330
to them are all participants, but they're actually in in in cahoots uh with the

403
00:23:54,330 --> 00:23:55,530
experimenter.

404
00:23:55,930 --> 00:23:58,250
And they say the wrong line.

405
00:23:58,520 --> 00:24:01,480
And the question is, what will the actual participant do?

406
00:24:01,640 --> 00:24:02,760
Will they conform?

407
00:24:03,320 --> 00:24:07,400
And sort of remarkable levels of conformity one gets.

408
00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:11,480
I mean, it's not 100%, but it's still like pretty high, you know, it's like 30% or

409
00:24:11,480 --> 00:24:12,280
something, even more.

410
00:24:12,440 --> 00:24:18,360
And then depending on on, but you don't get conformity if at least just one

411
00:24:18,360 --> 00:24:20,470
other person doesn't agree.

412
00:24:20,630 --> 00:24:24,630
So and it doesn't, you know, it's so it's really just the fact that I'm alone versus

413
00:24:24,630 --> 00:24:25,590
everybody else.

414
00:24:25,830 --> 00:24:29,750
And if you have at least one other person, that makes a huge difference.

415
00:24:29,830 --> 00:24:31,590
It's like the dam is broken.

416
00:24:32,950 --> 00:24:37,670
Do you do you think that the flicking on and off of the light, do you think the seeming

417
00:24:37,670 --> 00:24:43,350
disconnect from the content of I'm unhappy with the regime is a feature and not a bug, in

418
00:24:43,350 --> 00:24:47,350
the sense that if you're trying to coordinate with other people that you're uh opposed to

419
00:24:47,350 --> 00:24:53,060
the regime, um It is very risky for you to say that out loud in a conspicuous way.

420
00:24:53,220 --> 00:24:54,180
I hate the regime.

421
00:24:54,340 --> 00:24:56,900
You might get imprisoned or executed as a dissident.

422
00:24:57,620 --> 00:25:02,740
So people have to somehow find a way to coordinate and create common knowledge that they're

423
00:25:02,740 --> 00:25:07,940
on the same team against the regime without those signals getting picked up on by the

424
00:25:07,940 --> 00:25:08,500
authorities.

425
00:25:08,660 --> 00:25:13,270
And so the beauty of this signal of turning on and off one's lights uh i is that its

426
00:25:13,430 --> 00:25:18,550
disconnect from the content is is a design feature and that it makes it difficult for the

427
00:25:18,550 --> 00:25:20,870
authorities to to catch on to what is being done.

428
00:25:21,110 --> 00:25:22,710
Would would you agree with that assessment?

429
00:25:23,270 --> 00:25:24,070
Yeah, absolutely.

430
00:25:24,230 --> 00:25:30,230
And I mean, um this is this is just a really cool example because it it really gets

431
00:25:30,230 --> 00:25:32,070
you to to to to conceive of this.

432
00:25:32,230 --> 00:25:35,350
But there's all sorts of interesting things in this area that are done with cost and

433
00:25:35,350 --> 00:25:38,460
benefits, how those influence individuals.

434
00:25:38,620 --> 00:25:43,500
Even something as simple as, I know there's some research like sharing the same locality or

435
00:25:43,500 --> 00:25:47,900
accent can actually shift your ability to coordinate a bit better.

436
00:25:47,980 --> 00:25:53,660
And also people that are in relationships very long periods of time have

437
00:25:53,900 --> 00:25:57,100
much greater ease of coordination with tasks than that.

438
00:25:57,180 --> 00:26:01,650
So it's a really cool thing that our mind is is picking up here, but I I totally agree with

439
00:26:01,650 --> 00:26:06,930
you uh that yeah, indeed, it's it's it's because uh there's that ability still for

440
00:26:06,930 --> 00:26:09,970
plausible deniability uh that comes into this.

441
00:26:10,050 --> 00:26:15,730
Uh and and so you know, Pinker's work where uh this kind of underlies a lot of things, like

442
00:26:15,810 --> 00:26:18,770
you know, he always talks about would you like to come up and see my etchings?

443
00:26:19,170 --> 00:26:21,250
And of course, this kind of indirect speech.

444
00:26:21,490 --> 00:26:21,730
Yeah.

445
00:26:22,130 --> 00:26:26,690
So so there's I mean it, but it it's it's so pervasive that my students in my uh a recent

446
00:26:26,720 --> 00:26:30,560
uh political science class that I taught, I kind of I I didn't realize but I was kind of

447
00:26:30,560 --> 00:26:34,320
beating them over the head with it every every couple classes because I was like, guys,

448
00:26:34,400 --> 00:26:36,960
look, this is a coordinational s like issue right here.

449
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:39,440
Like, all right, all right, coordination again.

450
00:26:39,600 --> 00:26:44,000
Um but it but it's really it's really fascinating because like our entire global economy

451
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:45,440
works off coordination.

452
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:49,360
Um you know that's why when when people talk about cryptocurrencies, people are like, well

453
00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:50,560
there's no there's no value there.

454
00:26:50,640 --> 00:26:55,030
What's you know and it's really hard to explain to people that coordinational value is a

455
00:26:55,030 --> 00:26:55,910
value in itself.

456
00:26:55,990 --> 00:26:59,670
And so you know, Hardin did a bunch of work here where he showed that you know there's

457
00:26:59,670 --> 00:27:04,950
exchange value from coordination, that there's uh you know collective power that comes from

458
00:27:04,950 --> 00:27:05,590
coordination.

459
00:27:05,670 --> 00:27:10,950
So all these things are like crucially important, uh, particularly in in this the startup

460
00:27:10,950 --> 00:27:15,830
of uh mass conflict, is it's really a coordinational thing, and then it becomes more of a

461
00:27:15,830 --> 00:27:17,670
cooperative endeavor as it builds.

462
00:27:17,910 --> 00:27:19,190
Um but yeah.

463
00:27:19,640 --> 00:27:23,160
But we got we are distracted from the light flicking to Croatia.

464
00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:23,800
Yeah.

465
00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:25,320
I got distracted.

466
00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:26,520
No, it's great.

467
00:27:26,680 --> 00:27:27,160
No, no, no.

468
00:27:27,240 --> 00:27:28,040
It's it's really great.

469
00:27:28,120 --> 00:27:31,720
I mean, this is also one of the reasons why we're doing this podcast is to just get uh

470
00:27:31,960 --> 00:27:37,080
people a feel of what it's like, what people just like discussing science is like, and this

471
00:27:37,080 --> 00:27:39,080
is uh what it is like.

472
00:27:39,320 --> 00:27:43,240
But I want to get us back so get us back to Croatia and and what you're doing there and

473
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:45,170
what you're experiencing, Yeah.

474
00:27:45,330 --> 00:27:50,610
So so in Croatia what I was really looking for is um you know, so there's there's some uh

475
00:27:50,690 --> 00:27:56,370
theories of morality uh that um that put coordination as as kind of a centerpiece.

476
00:27:56,530 --> 00:28:01,250
Um so it's this idea that, you know, I'm I'm willing to give up certain behaviors as so

477
00:28:01,250 --> 00:28:03,970
long as other people coordinate on those same actions.

478
00:28:04,290 --> 00:28:07,970
Um and in in doing so we all, you know, kind of benefit.

479
00:28:08,050 --> 00:28:13,900
We we we might give up and maybe we'll be, you know, uh a bit uh um hypocritical at at

480
00:28:13,900 --> 00:28:19,660
times, but we we kind of give up um we take on some cost for for kind of a wider

481
00:28:19,660 --> 00:28:20,140
benefit.

482
00:28:20,380 --> 00:28:23,580
So this so there's without getting too much into it, there's all these coordinational

483
00:28:23,580 --> 00:28:24,300
theories of morality.

484
00:28:24,380 --> 00:28:29,180
And so what we were looking at in in in you know the former Yugoslav is could there be

485
00:28:29,180 --> 00:28:29,580
differences?

486
00:28:29,740 --> 00:28:33,980
What you oftentimes see with ethnic violence in particular is that it tends to start in

487
00:28:33,980 --> 00:28:37,570
rural communities and move to more urban environments.

488
00:28:37,730 --> 00:28:41,810
And I'm not talking about like massively urban environments, but urban environments of a

489
00:28:41,810 --> 00:28:44,610
couple hundred thousand, hundred thousand people a lot of times.

490
00:28:44,690 --> 00:28:50,210
But it really starts in oftentimes the initial kind of sparks start in rural

491
00:28:50,210 --> 00:28:50,850
communities.

492
00:28:51,010 --> 00:28:54,690
And so we were thinking, you know, one of the things that you have is a difference between

493
00:28:54,930 --> 00:28:59,960
rural and urban communities is this heightened sense of pre-existing coordination.

494
00:29:00,120 --> 00:29:05,000
So people um have frequent encounters with each other, they know each other very, very

495
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:07,480
well, they spy on each other, they gossip.

496
00:29:07,880 --> 00:29:10,280
So that there's a lot of expectations there.

497
00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:14,760
And so we were wondering, uh indeed you see these moral differences too, right?

498
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:20,440
Where there's moral m higher moral condemnation um in in kind of rural communities versus

499
00:29:20,440 --> 00:29:21,320
these urban communities.

500
00:29:21,480 --> 00:29:24,190
So we were looking at does coordination play a role?

501
00:29:24,350 --> 00:29:28,830
And we we kind of operationalize that as what do you think your neighbor would do in this

502
00:29:28,830 --> 00:29:29,390
circumstance?

503
00:29:29,550 --> 00:29:31,150
How would they think about this?

504
00:29:31,310 --> 00:29:34,430
And you know, urban environments, people don't know their neighbors as much.

505
00:29:34,590 --> 00:29:38,910
Or they, you know, they might have a few pools of people, their work colleagues, their

506
00:29:39,470 --> 00:29:43,710
friends, but it's not these extensive networks that exist, uh, these impicated kind of

507
00:29:43,710 --> 00:29:45,790
overlapping networks that exist in these rural communities.

508
00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:46,280
Yeah.

509
00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:51,240
And so you're going to so you so like you're actually going to these communities and

510
00:29:51,240 --> 00:29:52,680
talking to people face to face.

511
00:29:52,840 --> 00:29:53,480
Is that right?

512
00:29:54,040 --> 00:29:54,360
Yeah.

513
00:29:54,520 --> 00:29:59,240
And so yeah, so we spent a lot of time uh in the urban and rural communities doing

514
00:29:59,240 --> 00:29:59,640
interviews.

515
00:29:59,720 --> 00:30:01,480
We did about 60, I think, interviews.

516
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:06,680
Um this is about the history of this conflict that they had just gone through relatively

517
00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:07,240
recently.

518
00:30:07,790 --> 00:30:08,590
Yeah, yeah.

519
00:30:08,750 --> 00:30:13,070
So I mean the the conflict officially ended in nineteen ninety five.

520
00:30:13,150 --> 00:30:19,150
Um however uh you know, as with any conflict it lingers and the the the after effects

521
00:30:19,150 --> 00:30:20,110
linger for a very long time.

522
00:30:20,270 --> 00:30:24,510
And the I mean the memories are still extremely fresh in all those regions if you go down

523
00:30:24,510 --> 00:30:27,630
there, uh especially to rural communities that were the hardest hit.

524
00:30:27,870 --> 00:30:32,520
Um, you know, the memories were yesterday of of losing a loved one or of of losing your

525
00:30:32,520 --> 00:30:37,480
home or et cetera et cetera these terrible things uh and can just just just to like I mean

526
00:30:37,640 --> 00:30:43,640
just like the the human experience I mean in a rural community is it that there

527
00:30:43,640 --> 00:30:48,200
were people that they knew or it was like people that were distant but that came that were

528
00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:53,960
actually doing the harm to them both um so yeah so uh

529
00:30:54,120 --> 00:31:00,070
there were there were some kind of the early initiation in that region was uh some

530
00:31:00,310 --> 00:31:04,870
um kind of paramilitants from Serbia that came in and started stirring up trouble.

531
00:31:05,030 --> 00:31:10,710
But once the war got fully on way, uh underway, it was very much like uh you know, when

532
00:31:10,710 --> 00:31:14,950
talking with participants, it was it was like, Oh, I you know, I knew these these this

533
00:31:14,950 --> 00:31:19,750
group of guys since you know I was I was uh I knew them since they were children.

534
00:31:19,910 --> 00:31:24,780
And now they're you know, and and then um you know, one interview in particular, I remember

535
00:31:24,780 --> 00:31:30,700
she said, you know, this particular uh group uh would come to her and they

536
00:31:30,700 --> 00:31:35,020
would show up at her house and demand things, demand that she cook for them.

537
00:31:35,180 --> 00:31:39,660
Um and and and then they ended up actually um killing her husband in the end.

538
00:31:40,140 --> 00:31:44,380
And so so yeah, so there was a lot it was a lot of personal relationships with these

539
00:31:44,380 --> 00:31:44,540
people.

540
00:31:44,620 --> 00:31:49,670
And that that also is why it's so uh in particular in every ethnic conflict, it's so

541
00:31:49,670 --> 00:31:53,430
striking like how personal these relationships can be and how quickly they can, like the

542
00:31:53,430 --> 00:31:54,630
moral sphere shrinks.

543
00:31:54,790 --> 00:31:57,830
And so what we were doing is looking at what role does coordination play?

544
00:31:57,990 --> 00:32:02,950
If you have heightened coordination in these places, could you necessarily shift to a new

545
00:32:02,950 --> 00:32:07,750
sort of set of kind of moral uh rules uh very quickly, which you have more difficulty doing

546
00:32:07,750 --> 00:32:12,790
in in an urban environment or a less coordinated, uh pre-existing coordinated environment.

547
00:32:13,030 --> 00:32:18,960
Um And so we think uh part of that parts a a part of plays a partial role, excuse

548
00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:22,720
me, in this shift towards violence that you see um in those communities.

549
00:32:22,880 --> 00:32:27,040
So we were looking at that and also some of the the narratives and looking at you know the

550
00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:32,240
the field of coalitional psychology is quite uh new still, and this is 10 years ago.

551
00:32:32,400 --> 00:32:37,760
Um and so we were looking at do these narratives uh support some of the initial predictions

552
00:32:37,840 --> 00:32:40,880
uh from the field of uh you know coalitional psychology with an EP?

553
00:32:41,230 --> 00:32:42,270
What was that like?

554
00:32:42,430 --> 00:32:44,670
Because you know, we had an anthropologist.

555
00:32:44,830 --> 00:32:48,510
Actually, and I we can maybe know about your background, because I don't know if you're it

556
00:32:48,510 --> 00:32:51,150
was it was in anthropology or psychology or both.

557
00:32:51,630 --> 00:32:56,670
Yeah, I was in uh psychology early on and I worked doing like cognition and experiments

558
00:32:56,670 --> 00:33:02,110
with um human robotic interactions and like these very technical experimental uh

559
00:33:02,110 --> 00:33:02,750
designs.

560
00:33:02,830 --> 00:33:05,950
And then I went to anthropology, social anthropology later on.

561
00:33:06,190 --> 00:33:10,220
Yeah, because I mean you're you're what was that like just like either scientifically or

562
00:33:10,220 --> 00:33:13,660
personally to like go to this place, hear these stories.

563
00:33:14,300 --> 00:33:16,300
Um and this is not an abstraction.

564
00:33:16,460 --> 00:33:18,060
And I mean there's two ways to think about it.

565
00:33:18,220 --> 00:33:23,900
One is um, you know, one thing I like about

566
00:33:23,900 --> 00:33:29,740
Evpsy is that I feel like it it it sort of rises to meet all the wonderful and horrible

567
00:33:29,740 --> 00:33:31,820
things humans are capable of, right?

568
00:33:31,900 --> 00:33:35,590
Like it's not sort of bullshitty to to to genuflect towards David.

569
00:33:35,750 --> 00:33:41,350
Like it's just sort of like the as good or bad or mundane or out, you know,

570
00:33:41,510 --> 00:33:46,390
remarkable in both good and bad ways people ever get, you know, I think like there's

571
00:33:46,470 --> 00:33:49,670
there's sort of evolutionarily informed theories of that.

572
00:33:49,830 --> 00:33:55,620
So um one one question was sort of like even though that's true, Did it

573
00:33:55,620 --> 00:33:57,700
feel like, oh wow, like this is real?

574
00:33:57,860 --> 00:34:03,380
This is like real people had horrible experiences, and like the science isn't adequate to

575
00:34:03,380 --> 00:34:08,500
meet the richness and horror of these experiences, um, or not?

576
00:34:08,660 --> 00:34:10,660
Maybe you were like, Oh no, this all fits whatever.

577
00:34:10,820 --> 00:34:15,300
And then the other question is so that's a scientific question, and then the the personal

578
00:34:15,300 --> 00:34:20,950
question was sort of like, I don't, I mean, not everybody gets to experience that, And

579
00:34:21,110 --> 00:34:24,710
I don't know if that changes you or the way you think.

580
00:34:24,870 --> 00:34:27,990
And it I don't know if you carry that experience forward.

581
00:34:28,150 --> 00:34:30,470
I would imagine it's got to have an impact on you.

582
00:34:30,550 --> 00:34:35,350
I'm just curious how that has changed you as a person or scientifically.

583
00:34:35,750 --> 00:34:36,150
Yeah.

584
00:34:36,310 --> 00:34:37,990
Um, I think so.

585
00:34:38,070 --> 00:34:41,190
I'll I'll try to address there's so many things that come to mind.

586
00:34:41,430 --> 00:34:47,220
So the first one, and it's a very um mundane one, is when you

587
00:34:47,220 --> 00:34:51,620
take you know, the first time you go to some rural community and you have like you've been

588
00:34:51,620 --> 00:34:55,540
working on this research for for you know over a year now.

589
00:34:55,700 --> 00:34:59,940
You've got all these excellent translations of like the best, you know, you try to look for

590
00:34:59,940 --> 00:35:03,860
the best measures, and one of the ones that I was using was this measure of ethnic

591
00:35:03,860 --> 00:35:04,740
affiliation.

592
00:35:05,300 --> 00:35:10,180
And and it was supposed to be like the best one used in the world, uh, you know, thousands

593
00:35:10,180 --> 00:35:11,860
of articles published on it.

594
00:35:12,020 --> 00:35:17,090
And um take it to this rural community and and the people are filling it out around a

595
00:35:17,090 --> 00:35:19,730
kitchen table, and the one just starts laughing.

596
00:35:20,050 --> 00:35:22,290
And she's like, What the hell does this even mean?

597
00:35:22,450 --> 00:35:23,250
This is so stupid.

598
00:35:23,810 --> 00:35:25,410
And then they're all talking about it.

599
00:35:25,570 --> 00:35:28,210
And they're all like mocking the the scale.

600
00:35:28,370 --> 00:35:31,010
And when you look at it and you you you're looking at it from their perspective, you're

601
00:35:31,010 --> 00:35:32,050
like, Yeah, this doesn't match.

602
00:35:32,130 --> 00:35:33,650
This doesn't, this doesn't work here.

603
00:35:33,810 --> 00:35:37,570
So I think from a very like though that was the initial thing that was like, Oh, the

604
00:35:37,570 --> 00:35:42,290
benefit of doing field work is, you know, you you see, does this work, does it not?

605
00:35:43,010 --> 00:35:48,620
And then as far as the what was really interesting is when we first arrived, we we were

606
00:35:48,620 --> 00:35:51,900
starting to kind of organize interviews, and it took it took a long time.

607
00:35:52,060 --> 00:35:53,340
I was there almost a year.

608
00:35:53,580 --> 00:35:59,340
It took a long time to get from our early kind of gatekeepers in these

609
00:35:59,340 --> 00:36:03,820
communities to actually speaking with people that had been really, really affected by the

610
00:36:03,820 --> 00:36:04,060
war.

611
00:36:04,540 --> 00:36:08,620
And that only came towards probably the end of the of the time that I was there.

612
00:36:08,850 --> 00:36:14,050
And that's when it was like all of the most horrific uh stories and

613
00:36:14,210 --> 00:36:17,090
experiences were kind of uh put together at once.

614
00:36:17,250 --> 00:36:20,850
Um, and I remember uh in one particular interview it was very, very difficult.

615
00:36:20,930 --> 00:36:26,770
It was a lady that um, you know, had just experienced every hardship of the war, lost

616
00:36:26,770 --> 00:36:32,370
her husband, uh, lost her um her brother and her nephew in front of her, had

617
00:36:32,530 --> 00:36:36,930
watched that happen, went went to uh testify for for war crimes.

618
00:36:38,460 --> 00:36:42,620
And just listening to her experience and also having a colleague of mine just break down

619
00:36:42,620 --> 00:36:42,940
crying.

620
00:36:47,580 --> 00:36:51,420
And that yeah, that of obviously like will always last with me.

621
00:36:51,500 --> 00:36:55,980
And it and it it shows you the, you know, you don't always see the the importance of social

622
00:36:55,980 --> 00:36:58,620
science research because it's so disconnected.

623
00:36:59,100 --> 00:37:03,420
And you you really hope to make some type of impact, even if it's really, really tiny.

624
00:37:03,650 --> 00:37:06,050
So th those those experiences were definitely.

625
00:37:06,210 --> 00:37:10,610
And it was during that time too where what was really kind of bizarre to me is toward the

626
00:37:10,610 --> 00:37:16,450
end of the time I was out there was when um here in Orlando, where I'm at right now, was

627
00:37:16,450 --> 00:37:22,450
the uh the Pulse nightclub uh kind of massacre uh that killed almost 50 individuals.

628
00:37:22,690 --> 00:37:27,810
And uh a lot of my friends worked there as as bartenders and other and so I came back to

629
00:37:27,810 --> 00:37:33,620
Orlando after um for a short visit, and I was meeting people that had been there that night

630
00:37:33,620 --> 00:37:37,060
and listening to their stories, and I was like, oh my God, this sounds just like what I've

631
00:37:37,060 --> 00:37:38,740
been listening to in Croatia.

632
00:37:39,060 --> 00:37:44,180
Um and so there's a there's also a lot of um similarities in that regard, you know, and

633
00:37:44,180 --> 00:37:49,220
that that really hit home because I was like, wow, it really uh even reinforced, gave me

634
00:37:49,220 --> 00:37:52,420
even a different perspective on the people I was talking to out there and really living

635
00:37:52,420 --> 00:37:56,020
through uh in a much fresher way, you know, what what they had been through.

636
00:37:56,260 --> 00:38:01,810
So yeah, so I mean uh that kind of work is is really and it also just teaches you so much

637
00:38:01,970 --> 00:38:06,690
being in a place, you get a you get this you know, you you understand why the great uh

638
00:38:06,690 --> 00:38:11,250
ethnographers uh were so interesting for the data that they produce, because it's like you

639
00:38:11,330 --> 00:38:13,490
you get such an experience of being in a place.

640
00:38:13,730 --> 00:38:18,050
You get to understand the the quirks and the nuances and how people socially organize and

641
00:38:18,290 --> 00:38:22,530
that that you just can't get through, you know, reading or you know, or trying to

642
00:38:22,530 --> 00:38:24,210
hypothesize your way through that.

643
00:38:24,370 --> 00:38:30,300
So um one of the themes of this has been also like listening to people who haven't

644
00:38:30,300 --> 00:38:31,260
been heard.

645
00:38:31,500 --> 00:38:37,260
Um and I feel like that's sort of m uh a a a common thing through your uh

646
00:38:37,420 --> 00:38:38,460
through some of your work.

647
00:38:38,540 --> 00:38:43,900
I remember you you also told me there's like you've done research on like stonewall or you

648
00:38:43,980 --> 00:38:47,990
is it have you done research on stonewall or was this just things you looked at?

649
00:38:48,230 --> 00:38:54,150
No, no, so uh so I did I did a bunch uh I did uh one article that uh has done really

650
00:38:54,150 --> 00:39:00,150
well and it was on the uh uh the kind of the natural emergence of the drag queen phenomenon

651
00:39:00,310 --> 00:39:02,070
and and what led to that.

652
00:39:02,230 --> 00:39:08,150
And it was just like the right type of social constraints in the gay community um that

653
00:39:08,150 --> 00:39:13,500
we think kind of led to the opening up of this pathway towards status building, And that

654
00:39:13,500 --> 00:39:19,260
was one way of adopting this really aggressive outward persona that was like walking

655
00:39:19,260 --> 00:39:19,900
through the streets.

656
00:39:20,060 --> 00:39:25,980
We're talking like 1930s, 1940s, 1950s in women's clothing, and and

657
00:39:25,980 --> 00:39:30,940
uh you know, standing up and and being so formidable as a take-on that challenge.

658
00:39:31,020 --> 00:39:36,630
And a lot of these individuals uh in its early history were really um kind of down and out

659
00:39:36,630 --> 00:39:38,070
characters in the gay community.

660
00:39:38,310 --> 00:39:42,550
They either were living on the streets, had very little money, they were kicked out of

661
00:39:42,550 --> 00:39:47,510
their families' homes, etc., detached from their social connections, you know, had very

662
00:39:47,510 --> 00:39:51,190
little money, little uh little kind of attractiveness.

663
00:39:51,510 --> 00:39:57,030
So that was one way of adopting this persona and becoming this

664
00:39:57,080 --> 00:40:01,480
fighter for for these communities was one way to build status if you were good enough.

665
00:40:01,560 --> 00:40:06,040
Uh and that's we think is kind of what the the initiation, which again ties back into

666
00:40:06,200 --> 00:40:08,040
Stonewall and everything there.

667
00:40:08,280 --> 00:40:11,880
Um yeah, so so it was a really fascinating uh history in that regard.

668
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:16,120
So the idea is that, and I think this is I'm just parroting what you've told me in the

669
00:40:16,120 --> 00:40:21,110
past, but the idea is that it was such a high cost thing to do.

670
00:40:21,510 --> 00:40:27,510
Um, but it was it was sort of um you are willing to uh these these people

671
00:40:27,510 --> 00:40:30,470
who were down and out did this thing.

672
00:40:30,710 --> 00:40:36,630
It was sort of a um uh th they they sort of uh v basically proverbial

673
00:40:36,710 --> 00:40:40,150
put a target on their back for the group in some sense.

674
00:40:40,230 --> 00:40:41,280
Is that correct?

675
00:40:41,680 --> 00:40:41,920
Yeah.

676
00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:44,640
And it's uh it's funny actually how it came about.

677
00:40:44,800 --> 00:40:49,840
Um I was uh my colleague, uh a good friend of mine, uh Matthew Martinez, he was working on

678
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:55,760
his dissertation work, and uh he was looking at uh these uh self harm

679
00:40:55,760 --> 00:40:57,600
practices around the world.

680
00:40:57,680 --> 00:41:01,760
Um, particularly, he was looking in Mauritius at the time, and but but really kind of

681
00:41:01,760 --> 00:41:02,320
globally.

682
00:41:02,560 --> 00:41:07,510
You see in particular social environments that there's these practices like Typusum, which

683
00:41:07,510 --> 00:41:11,750
is in Mauritius, where people will put hooks in their backs and like be pulled down the

684
00:41:11,750 --> 00:41:12,070
street.

685
00:41:12,150 --> 00:41:16,310
In fact, so bad it got it it it kind of ratcheted up over time that the government had to

686
00:41:16,310 --> 00:41:19,590
put uh kibosh on some of the more extreme practices.

687
00:41:19,830 --> 00:41:25,430
But they uh he was working on um a model of that, which is a costly signaling model, which

688
00:41:25,430 --> 00:41:31,270
suggests that hey, these are low status individuals by doing these really um uh kind of

689
00:41:31,270 --> 00:41:37,100
grotesque uh but formidable enhancing displays to others that they can gain some type of

690
00:41:37,100 --> 00:41:39,100
uh status and credit in the community.

691
00:41:39,340 --> 00:41:43,100
And as we were we were in a meeting about it, and I was like, wow, this really reminds me

692
00:41:43,100 --> 00:41:44,140
of drag queens.

693
00:41:44,460 --> 00:41:48,620
And it was like from that moment where we were like, oh, wait a second, you know, what

694
00:41:48,700 --> 00:41:50,860
let's see what we can go and do with this.

695
00:41:51,100 --> 00:41:55,820
And indeed, when you start to map out, it was right when the pressure on the gay community

696
00:41:55,820 --> 00:41:59,260
was building, um, is when you see the emergence of these individuals.

697
00:41:59,340 --> 00:42:03,810
And they always are kind of coming from this this lower status position.

698
00:42:03,970 --> 00:42:06,130
And then uh only a few really make it.

699
00:42:06,210 --> 00:42:09,330
Even today within that community, it's hyper competitive.

700
00:42:09,570 --> 00:42:13,090
Um, and they which I I I'll say one one side note.

701
00:42:13,250 --> 00:42:16,850
I wouldn't say that the dynamics of today are the same thing that our paper describes.

702
00:42:16,930 --> 00:42:21,170
I think now it's become much more of a theatrics and much more of a a competitive element

703
00:42:21,170 --> 00:42:25,090
that's a taken on, which is kind of cool because it's cultural evolution at work right

704
00:42:25,090 --> 00:42:25,410
there.

705
00:42:26,180 --> 00:42:31,780
But uh but yeah, but when it really started to emerge, you know, 1950s, 1960s, one of the

706
00:42:31,780 --> 00:42:36,900
earliest ethnographic accounts was from a University of Michigan um grad student, I think

707
00:42:36,900 --> 00:42:40,580
she was at the time, where she went around with uh drag queen through the streets of

708
00:42:40,580 --> 00:42:41,140
Detroit.

709
00:42:41,220 --> 00:42:44,820
And she wouldn't, she said in one part of the book that she didn't want to walk near her

710
00:42:44,900 --> 00:42:48,180
because she thought she was going to get you know the crap beat out of her.

711
00:42:48,420 --> 00:42:54,310
So you can see like the intense uh pressure and violence that was put towards these

712
00:42:54,310 --> 00:42:54,710
individuals.

713
00:42:54,790 --> 00:43:00,550
And by doing so, and also it's still part of the persona today, which is to be fierce, to

714
00:43:00,550 --> 00:43:02,150
be uh aggressive in that.

715
00:43:02,390 --> 00:43:07,270
But it's really interesting how that that pathway kind of emerged from these just exact

716
00:43:07,270 --> 00:43:08,550
social uh constraints.

717
00:43:08,710 --> 00:43:11,350
And also note that these individuals just couldn't leave.

718
00:43:11,430 --> 00:43:15,660
Like, you know, the community, once you join it during those periods like you had no other

719
00:43:15,660 --> 00:43:19,820
social status um opportunities outside that because if you're you know if you're gay you

720
00:43:19,820 --> 00:43:23,660
can't obviously unless you're gonna go back in the closet, you know, succeed in other

721
00:43:23,660 --> 00:43:24,060
places.

722
00:43:24,220 --> 00:43:28,540
Uh so yeah, so it's the just the r the right kind of constraints that can emerge and and

723
00:43:28,620 --> 00:43:31,100
you know make these pathways towards status emerge.

724
00:43:31,420 --> 00:43:36,570
It's a really lovely example of looking at phenomena in the world from this

725
00:43:36,570 --> 00:43:37,530
perspective.

726
00:43:37,770 --> 00:43:43,610
And like to your credit, Michael, figuring out sort of how can I deduce

727
00:43:43,690 --> 00:43:49,610
sort of what's going on in a way that is uh explanatory, call you know, and and just

728
00:43:49,610 --> 00:43:54,570
lovely in the sense of, Oh, yeah, no, I see the deep elements of adaptations, cognitive

729
00:43:54,570 --> 00:43:59,370
mechanisms, human nature, however we want to talk about it, in this phenomenon to like as a

730
00:43:59,370 --> 00:44:01,050
one way to understand it.

731
00:44:01,720 --> 00:44:02,280
Yeah, yeah.

732
00:44:02,360 --> 00:44:05,800
And I think the the one thing that you know is interesting is you see the proximate

733
00:44:05,800 --> 00:44:06,840
psychology working.

734
00:44:07,000 --> 00:44:08,840
Like there's no fitness payoff here.

735
00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:09,080
Right.

736
00:44:09,400 --> 00:44:12,760
Um and so um so that's also really interesting.

737
00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:15,800
Because a lot of the other things that we tend to think of as status enhancing, we tend to

738
00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:18,520
think of, oh, you can measure the reproductive payoff at the end.

739
00:44:18,680 --> 00:44:22,440
Um but here, you know, it's the system is the proximate psychology is working.

740
00:44:22,520 --> 00:44:25,320
Uh and and so that's detached from that ultimate outcome.

741
00:44:25,720 --> 00:44:27,400
Yeah, super cool.

742
00:44:28,450 --> 00:44:33,890
So I wanna uh ask you a question that we've asked all uh I think all of our guests.

743
00:44:34,130 --> 00:44:39,890
Um so uh you're in this field of coalitional psychology, ethnic

744
00:44:39,890 --> 00:44:42,290
conflict, terrorism, wh whatever you want to call it.

745
00:44:42,530 --> 00:44:46,530
Um so we got a bit of your origin story there.

746
00:44:46,850 --> 00:44:52,540
Uh but we didn't get your origin story for why you think that evolutionary

747
00:44:52,540 --> 00:44:54,700
reasoning is useful here as a lens.

748
00:44:54,940 --> 00:45:00,940
So what f brought you into the realm of evolutionary psychology, evolutionary thinking,

749
00:45:01,100 --> 00:45:06,860
out of all the perspectives to take on these incredibly important issues, why choose the

750
00:45:06,860 --> 00:45:08,460
evolutionary perspective?

751
00:45:09,550 --> 00:45:15,150
Um okay, so so diving back into my former life, uh so

752
00:45:15,470 --> 00:45:21,470
I before I got into psychology or anything, I um from from very young age, I was

753
00:45:21,470 --> 00:45:25,550
about twelve, thirteen at the time, I started working like this is the weird part about

754
00:45:25,550 --> 00:45:26,750
growing up in Florida, right?

755
00:45:26,910 --> 00:45:28,990
You know, you see like the Tiger King and everything.

756
00:45:29,150 --> 00:45:31,870
That was kind of like part of my life when I was younger.

757
00:45:32,110 --> 00:45:37,740
So I worked uh at a lot of zoos and aquariums and uh with wildlife uh

758
00:45:37,740 --> 00:45:42,300
organizations when I was young, volunteering at first, and then when I was 14 I got my

759
00:45:42,300 --> 00:45:44,220
first positions as an employee.

760
00:45:44,380 --> 00:45:50,380
Um and kind of I had this whole career before um going into the social sciences of

761
00:45:50,380 --> 00:45:55,980
working with uh sh oh my gosh, uh sharks, dolphins, alligators, snakes,

762
00:45:56,220 --> 00:45:57,500
birds of prey.

763
00:45:57,660 --> 00:46:02,550
Um and so it was really from those kind of biological

764
00:46:03,190 --> 00:46:07,670
origins that I was really interested in, like, oh, well, you know, what drives animal

765
00:46:07,670 --> 00:46:08,550
behavior?

766
00:46:09,030 --> 00:46:14,950
And um and over that kind of naturally over time, um, I think

767
00:46:15,030 --> 00:46:17,750
you know, when you especially when you're going through high school and then uh you know

768
00:46:17,910 --> 00:46:21,880
early college years, you start to think more uh about people around you.

769
00:46:21,960 --> 00:46:24,120
And you're like, okay, why do these people behave that way?

770
00:46:24,280 --> 00:46:28,280
So I think like the earliest influences on my thinking in this way were like Eo Wilson's

771
00:46:28,360 --> 00:46:31,960
like early, early works and everything, and then of course Lita and John's.

772
00:46:32,200 --> 00:46:37,640
Um and and the one thing that I was when I got into more in psychology, the initial thing

773
00:46:37,640 --> 00:46:39,640
was like, okay, but why?

774
00:46:39,960 --> 00:46:44,840
Like I was so frustrated by this why question, which is like, you know, I I remember taking

775
00:46:44,840 --> 00:46:50,250
a personality theory course and kind of memorizing the 30-sum

776
00:46:50,570 --> 00:46:51,690
theories of personality.

777
00:46:51,770 --> 00:46:56,890
And I was always like, but why, like, why did why, even if any of these are correct, which

778
00:46:56,970 --> 00:46:59,530
you know, I have a lot of skepticism.

779
00:47:00,010 --> 00:47:01,370
Um, why?

780
00:47:01,530 --> 00:47:04,090
Like there was always that why, that nagging why question.

781
00:47:04,170 --> 00:47:09,610
And I think that's when, like, um, yeah, I mean, all you know, all the greats, bus, um,

782
00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:20,520
And it finally provided uh really satisfying answers to that why question.

783
00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:25,000
And now I'm like, now now that I've been working in this framework for so many you know,

784
00:47:25,160 --> 00:47:31,080
many years, I I can't imagine not having that that foundational

785
00:47:31,240 --> 00:47:36,890
piece because it's always like where I start any question is um even

786
00:47:36,970 --> 00:47:40,170
something that's that's very like I'll give you a quick example.

787
00:47:40,250 --> 00:47:46,250
I've been working on um this issue of in um that they're worried

788
00:47:46,250 --> 00:47:51,130
about in human rights law, which is this shifting towards uh more responsive policing

789
00:47:51,130 --> 00:47:53,770
activities and counterterrorism, towards more preemptive.

790
00:47:54,090 --> 00:47:57,930
Uh what they call like the pre crime space, and the in the they they uh have these

791
00:47:57,930 --> 00:48:02,410
administrative measures that are very common now and throughout Europe, the UK, France, um,

792
00:48:02,650 --> 00:48:07,140
even Switzerland's adopted them now, which is essentially like pre-crime measures, like if

793
00:48:07,140 --> 00:48:12,980
they suspect you of potentially becoming a terrorist or affiliating with anyone

794
00:48:12,980 --> 00:48:18,420
that's suspicious, they can uh the executive can put these

795
00:48:18,420 --> 00:48:19,940
restrictions on you.

796
00:48:20,100 --> 00:48:24,900
And because oftentimes the human rights issue comes up here, is because they're executive

797
00:48:24,970 --> 00:48:29,930
uh orders and not judicial ones, there's no recourse for getting these taken away.

798
00:48:30,010 --> 00:48:32,490
That's that's very satisfying in most uh circumstances.

799
00:48:32,650 --> 00:48:35,690
Anyways, so so you know, I was given this kind of topic.

800
00:48:35,850 --> 00:48:38,330
We want to see why is this shifting this way?

801
00:48:38,490 --> 00:48:42,810
Why is there more and so immediately I kind of you know go back to the evolutionary

802
00:48:42,810 --> 00:48:45,610
perspective and I say, okay, well, what kind of threat does this present?

803
00:48:45,820 --> 00:48:48,460
And I think terrorism in particular presents a very interesting thing.

804
00:48:48,540 --> 00:48:53,500
Like I have a paper that talks about this, is that I think it's uh what the mind is keen to

805
00:48:53,500 --> 00:48:58,220
detect here, and it's using cues to detect it, is something that is really an all-out, all

806
00:48:58,300 --> 00:49:00,220
or nothing coalitional threat.

807
00:49:00,380 --> 00:49:05,100
And that's the kind of thing that these actors hit upon those cues, even though they're

808
00:49:05,100 --> 00:49:07,740
sometimes single or just a small group of actors.

809
00:49:07,980 --> 00:49:11,980
If you can do these things that signal to others that you're going to come for the whole

810
00:49:11,980 --> 00:49:14,990
collective, Like you're going to indiscriminately target them.

811
00:49:15,310 --> 00:49:19,550
You're going to do so with stealth and all these other things and not, you know, announce

812
00:49:19,550 --> 00:49:20,910
when you're when you're going to do these things.

813
00:49:20,990 --> 00:49:25,710
If you don't target the bargaining aggression wing, like the military, but you target the

814
00:49:25,710 --> 00:49:26,110
civilians.

815
00:49:26,590 --> 00:49:30,270
All these cues that traditionally throughout human history would have indicated that there

816
00:49:30,270 --> 00:49:32,350
was another group coming to eliminate your group.

817
00:49:32,510 --> 00:49:35,230
So you better be on high alert and you better.

818
00:49:35,390 --> 00:49:37,870
And what you see is all these downstream responses, right?

819
00:49:37,950 --> 00:49:40,350
These precautionary responses that we would expect.

820
00:49:40,620 --> 00:49:43,340
And so that was kind of the perspective I started taking there.

821
00:49:43,500 --> 00:49:46,300
And I have some experimental data that I haven't published yet.

822
00:49:46,540 --> 00:49:48,140
I'm a bit bad backlogged.

823
00:49:48,300 --> 00:49:53,260
But essentially, what I was able to show is indeed when you present these cues to people

824
00:49:53,260 --> 00:49:58,780
that show that this is an uh you kind of manipulate little features of these cues, you can

825
00:49:58,780 --> 00:50:03,820
uh get people much more willing to take precautionary responses and approve of

826
00:50:03,820 --> 00:50:09,580
administrative actions rather than wanting to wait and investigate and do these things,

827
00:50:09,740 --> 00:50:13,190
which has ultimately, if you want to tie it back to policy, has these really important

828
00:50:13,190 --> 00:50:15,910
ramifications for human rights and things like that.

829
00:50:16,070 --> 00:50:21,350
So sometimes highlighting those things can help people think through the problem uh

830
00:50:21,590 --> 00:50:23,510
easier and how to combat it.

831
00:50:23,750 --> 00:50:27,590
And also just knowing the foundational psychology there, what's causing that to be to be

832
00:50:27,590 --> 00:50:28,390
the case.

833
00:50:28,550 --> 00:50:33,480
So without evolutionary psychology, I I yeah definitely couldn't I couldn't you know think

834
00:50:33,480 --> 00:50:37,800
in that regard and I think that's what I think John Tube said it uh you know something

835
00:50:37,800 --> 00:50:42,280
about having superpowers uh with EP and I really think that I think you know you can be in

836
00:50:42,280 --> 00:50:46,760
a room with a bunch of people but if they don't um they don't have at least a flavor of

837
00:50:46,760 --> 00:50:52,760
that perspective um there's then there's easy low-hanging fruit to to go after to say

838
00:50:52,840 --> 00:50:55,560
hey look guys there there's a bigger picture here.

839
00:50:57,110 --> 00:51:03,110
Um, I wanna uh chime in on that bit about terrorism, because that

840
00:51:03,110 --> 00:51:04,870
really piques my interest.

841
00:51:04,950 --> 00:51:06,870
I'm sure it piques a lot of people's interests.

842
00:51:07,110 --> 00:51:12,470
Uh terrorism is extremely uh evocative to the human mind.

843
00:51:12,550 --> 00:51:17,430
Uh we can't stop paying attention to it as a society, despite the fact that objectively

844
00:51:17,510 --> 00:51:21,750
terrorism does not pose a very significant threat to us as individuals.

845
00:51:21,910 --> 00:51:27,340
The number of people who die from car accidents or heart attacks or you know any other

846
00:51:27,340 --> 00:51:30,700
cause of deaths you go through, terrorism is going to be at the bottom of the list.

847
00:51:30,940 --> 00:51:36,780
And yet the outsized emotional response it has on us is enormously

848
00:51:36,780 --> 00:51:37,580
influential.

849
00:51:37,980 --> 00:51:43,260
I mean it it was uh the main cause are arguably of uh the Iraq war.

850
00:51:43,580 --> 00:51:47,980
Um this was you know extremely expensive both in time and resources.

851
00:51:48,140 --> 00:51:53,910
Um one of the biggest uh foreign policy blunders uh in a in a long time,

852
00:51:53,990 --> 00:51:59,990
uh arguably, um, all caused by uh a terrorist attack which claimed the lives

853
00:51:59,990 --> 00:52:03,590
of you know far fewer people than than most other causes of death.

854
00:52:03,910 --> 00:52:09,910
So is is your argument that our outsized response to terrorism

855
00:52:09,910 --> 00:52:12,310
is a kind of evolutionary mismatch?

856
00:52:12,550 --> 00:52:18,380
That in ancestral environments, uh seeing these kinds of attacks, this kinds of dam this

857
00:52:18,380 --> 00:52:23,340
kind of damage, uh would have been a reliable cue of a coalitional threat that we needed to

858
00:52:23,340 --> 00:52:29,260
take action against uh as soon as possible and as uh uh uh swiftly and and aggressively as

859
00:52:29,260 --> 00:52:29,820
possible.

860
00:52:29,980 --> 00:52:35,900
Um but in the modern environment, when we live in these mass societies, these cues are

861
00:52:35,900 --> 00:52:37,260
no longer accurate.

862
00:52:37,500 --> 00:52:43,310
That uh that um we're responding uh uh to these attacks uh with our Stone

863
00:52:43,310 --> 00:52:47,390
Age minds um when we sh when we should be responding with our modern minds.

864
00:52:47,550 --> 00:52:49,790
Is that the argument or or is it something else?

865
00:52:50,430 --> 00:52:52,750
No, no, I think uh uh very much so.

866
00:52:52,910 --> 00:52:58,110
Um I think that there's uh I'm always a bit hesitant to to to I don't know why.

867
00:52:58,190 --> 00:53:02,670
There there's something that I think it's because it's used so often, that mismatch idea,

868
00:53:02,750 --> 00:53:06,040
that I tend to be a little precautious when I like go as far as that.

869
00:53:06,120 --> 00:53:07,320
But yeah, in a sense.

870
00:53:07,800 --> 00:53:09,640
But I think there's a lot more to be said here.

871
00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:14,200
So it's funny that that paper of mine is like the least read.

872
00:53:14,360 --> 00:53:18,920
And I think I I I was I think I told you both at some point that I was joking that I think

873
00:53:18,920 --> 00:53:24,920
I wrote it for myself because uh the the the folks in the terrorism field um they see

874
00:53:24,920 --> 00:53:29,400
the the evolutionary psych side and I think they get a little uh turned off by it.

875
00:53:29,630 --> 00:53:33,950
And the folks in Evolutionary Psych don't know the full range of the argument that's

876
00:53:33,950 --> 00:53:39,790
happening in the field of terrorism to really know the nuance of what I'm trying to talk

877
00:53:39,790 --> 00:53:40,110
to.

878
00:53:40,670 --> 00:53:42,030
So just a couple things with that.

879
00:53:42,190 --> 00:53:47,710
I think that what's really interesting is you see that all, and this has been a debate now

880
00:53:48,510 --> 00:53:53,820
pre-9-11, where there's never a satisfying definition of terrorism.

881
00:53:53,980 --> 00:53:58,540
And so this is like a big debate in all in the legal field and the policy field.

882
00:53:58,700 --> 00:54:03,180
And essentially everyone's like, we somebody will say, well, this is the definitive

883
00:54:03,180 --> 00:54:06,140
definition, and someone will say, no, it's not, because it doesn't include this, and you

884
00:54:06,140 --> 00:54:07,740
know, and it goes back and forth.

885
00:54:07,980 --> 00:54:13,900
Um, and so one of the things that I was trying to show there, um, which everything kind

886
00:54:13,900 --> 00:54:19,850
of comes together in this picture, is the fact that um if these are kind

887
00:54:19,850 --> 00:54:21,610
of representational systems, right?

888
00:54:21,770 --> 00:54:25,290
And individuals have different social positions.

889
00:54:26,090 --> 00:54:31,770
And so for instance, this is always the old saying, you know, one person's freedom

890
00:54:31,770 --> 00:54:36,410
fighters, another's terrorist kind of thing, which is crude, but it kind of gets you this

891
00:54:36,410 --> 00:54:41,290
idea that the different uh positions, social positions of the agents doing the evaluation

892
00:54:41,290 --> 00:54:44,570
will matter a lot to whether those systems are triggered or not.

893
00:54:44,890 --> 00:54:50,600
And so if one of the things I think is that there's a lot of representational

894
00:54:50,680 --> 00:54:51,400
mismatch.

895
00:54:51,560 --> 00:54:56,680
There's there's not a very high degree of uh coordination amongst minds when it comes to

896
00:54:56,680 --> 00:55:01,160
what is terrorism, um, because some acts hit on certain cues.

897
00:55:01,240 --> 00:55:06,200
Also, you have the social position of the person doing the evaluation, um, and then another

898
00:55:06,280 --> 00:55:09,160
uh number of other things that I kind of talk about in the article.

899
00:55:09,240 --> 00:55:14,170
Um, But there's this mismatch, and I think that that's probably one of the reasons why it's

900
00:55:14,170 --> 00:55:15,930
because terrorism hits on certain cues.

901
00:55:16,010 --> 00:55:20,330
And actually, when you ask people in experiments, is this terrorism or not?

902
00:55:20,650 --> 00:55:24,330
People do, when you give them a bunch of cues, they actually say, Oh, yeah, that's

903
00:55:24,330 --> 00:55:25,450
definitely terrorism.

904
00:55:25,610 --> 00:55:30,570
And when you degrade those cues, they're much less likely to say that that's terrorism.

905
00:55:30,650 --> 00:55:33,290
They might say, oh, that's mass shooting and things like that.

906
00:55:33,780 --> 00:55:38,420
So there is something interesting going on that you can see that's like this representation

907
00:55:38,420 --> 00:55:39,860
thing that's happening.

908
00:55:41,140 --> 00:55:46,580
And so yeah, so there's but but then also it comes together with the precautionary idea,

909
00:55:46,660 --> 00:55:51,220
too, is that once those things are hit upon, then you get this full-blown precautionary

910
00:55:51,220 --> 00:55:51,780
response.

911
00:55:51,940 --> 00:55:56,980
So it kind of brings together a number of elements, which is the representation thing, why

912
00:55:56,980 --> 00:56:01,540
we lack a good solid definition, which by the way, when I was finishing the paper, I said,

913
00:56:01,700 --> 00:56:07,190
well, if this is much closer to uh what's happening with something like genocide, there

914
00:56:07,190 --> 00:56:11,990
should be less arguments about genocide because it's properly hitting a lot of these cues.

915
00:56:12,070 --> 00:56:15,510
And indeed, when you go look, there's much less argumentation about a definition of

916
00:56:15,510 --> 00:56:16,230
genocide.

917
00:56:16,390 --> 00:56:20,070
There's still arguments about what constitutes or doesn't, and what politics, and that's

918
00:56:20,150 --> 00:56:23,590
again comes down to the political agent that's doing that evaluation.

919
00:56:23,910 --> 00:56:29,640
But but uh but uh terrorism has a much uh much more uh much more

920
00:56:29,640 --> 00:56:31,400
ambiguity in this regard.

921
00:56:31,640 --> 00:56:37,000
Um so yeah so I think that that's kind of it's it's uh it's definitely that was a uh a a

922
00:56:37,000 --> 00:56:38,120
really fun paper to work on.

923
00:56:38,200 --> 00:56:40,920
But it again it's kind of like in between these fields.

924
00:56:41,080 --> 00:56:43,080
Um so so that's where I was with that.

925
00:56:43,480 --> 00:56:47,000
One one uh just to to follow up on the mismatch idea.

926
00:56:47,080 --> 00:56:53,070
Um actually um uh Michael since you invited me to the this thing with

927
00:56:53,070 --> 00:56:58,190
the international human rights law, I've sort of been looking as an amateur into this.

928
00:56:58,430 --> 00:57:02,430
One thing I found was I'm really interested in conflict and war.

929
00:57:02,670 --> 00:57:08,510
Um, and I realized in sort of I've I feel like I've been humbled reading

930
00:57:08,510 --> 00:57:12,110
through the expert analysis of these things.

931
00:57:12,270 --> 00:57:16,750
Um, one thing I found was there's something called the Watson Institute at Brown

932
00:57:16,750 --> 00:57:19,950
University, and they're trying to assess the costs of war.

933
00:57:20,240 --> 00:57:25,920
And to me, this was, I didn't realize this that um, so for example, um, just a conservative

934
00:57:25,920 --> 00:57:31,520
estimate is that displaced people since the nine-ele since 9-11, uh,

935
00:57:31,760 --> 00:57:37,760
because of wars in um Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Philippines, Libya, and

936
00:57:37,760 --> 00:57:40,960
Syria is uh the estimate is 37 million people.

937
00:57:42,690 --> 00:57:46,690
And in that displacement, both internal and external.

938
00:57:47,250 --> 00:57:53,170
A conservative estimate of the death toll could be about four and a half to four

939
00:57:53,170 --> 00:57:58,770
point seven million and uh especially um children.

940
00:57:59,010 --> 00:58:04,880
Um and so uh and this is you know uh this is the

941
00:58:04,880 --> 00:58:09,040
results of a reaction to this horrific event, right?

942
00:58:09,200 --> 00:58:14,160
But I think like in the sense of the importance of understanding the

943
00:58:14,160 --> 00:58:18,640
psychology, um, and this is not a partisan issue.

944
00:58:18,720 --> 00:58:24,400
I mean, the there's this book, the the um Afghanistan papers, um, you know, people

945
00:58:24,560 --> 00:58:30,230
even within the within the military, I know I I personally know people who served in these

946
00:58:30,230 --> 00:58:33,670
wars, you know, um they're friends of mine, they're relatives of mine.

947
00:58:33,910 --> 00:58:39,510
Um many of them were like, well, you know, with like with Afghanistan being a good example

948
00:58:39,510 --> 00:58:41,110
of like what the hell are we doing there?

949
00:58:41,270 --> 00:58:42,230
They don't, you know.

950
00:58:42,390 --> 00:58:47,910
Um the the psychology of under s of wanting retribution, retaliation,

951
00:58:48,710 --> 00:58:54,580
and the consequences of it, uh it's it's it's just interesting to think

952
00:58:54,580 --> 00:59:00,420
about how our evolved psychology um you know it feels good to sort of

953
00:59:00,420 --> 00:59:06,100
like not treat 9-11 like a uh a police as something where we should just find the

954
00:59:06,100 --> 00:59:11,140
individuals who did it um and this might lead into some of this idea about like what groups

955
00:59:11,140 --> 00:59:15,860
are doing and the projection of group identities in in international conflict but

956
00:59:16,250 --> 00:59:22,170
regardless, you know, of all these bad things, there's just this incredible amount

957
00:59:22,170 --> 00:59:27,770
of human suffering is done um because of of our

958
00:59:27,770 --> 00:59:31,290
evolved psychology and I think understanding it better.

959
00:59:31,770 --> 00:59:35,210
Like these numbers I was just shocked about.

960
00:59:35,290 --> 00:59:38,170
And I hadn't come across them before.

961
00:59:38,890 --> 00:59:39,130
Yeah.

962
00:59:39,210 --> 00:59:43,290
And it's I mean to to kind of add to what you're saying there, you know, those like and and

963
00:59:43,290 --> 00:59:48,880
what David was saying, um when you when you look at actual warfare numbers that are

964
00:59:48,880 --> 00:59:51,040
astronomical compared to terrorism.

965
00:59:51,280 --> 00:59:51,440
Yeah.

966
00:59:51,680 --> 00:59:56,480
Um and and I say this being currently on the job market, so I'm trying not to downplay my

967
00:59:56,640 --> 00:59:57,920
my uh hopeful next job.

968
00:59:58,000 --> 01:00:03,600
But but really, I mean there there was a great book by uh Mueller and Stewart that runs the

969
01:00:03,600 --> 01:00:09,280
numbers um and does a really good job of showing like um in this regard how terrorism is

970
01:00:09,280 --> 01:00:15,050
really, really minuscule uh compared to to other um even risks, you know,

971
01:00:15,130 --> 01:00:18,810
that we take for granted every day, it's it's a very, very low number, but it

972
01:00:18,810 --> 01:00:24,010
overwhelmingly, disproportionately uh evokes these really strong emotions.

973
01:00:24,090 --> 01:00:29,610
Uh and and so as you were saying, David, I think understanding uh that

974
01:00:29,610 --> 01:00:35,610
retaliatory mindset and and where what is triggering that and and also

975
01:00:35,610 --> 01:00:40,010
having safeguards in place, and this is really comes down to a policy thing, which is

976
01:00:40,010 --> 01:00:41,530
really, really difficult to do.

977
01:00:42,180 --> 01:00:48,180
But the problem after 9-11 was that there was that hair trigger response to do something

978
01:00:48,260 --> 01:00:53,460
and a strong political response, which was totally reasonable from kind of an evolved

979
01:00:53,460 --> 01:00:54,900
perspective, like of course.

980
01:00:55,620 --> 01:01:01,300
However, you know, in that regard, all these sweeping legislation pieces have gone into,

981
01:01:01,780 --> 01:01:07,380
especially in the Western world, that were never really thought that

982
01:01:08,250 --> 01:01:09,050
heavily about.

983
01:01:09,130 --> 01:01:12,410
So you get a lot of laws overlapping with other laws.

984
01:01:12,570 --> 01:01:17,290
You have all these in international humanitarian law dealing with the law of warfare.

985
01:01:18,010 --> 01:01:23,850
You see this huge issue when the Bush administration decided to declare

986
01:01:23,850 --> 01:01:27,690
terrorist groups as organized armed groups under international law.

987
01:01:27,770 --> 01:01:32,640
So thus kind of triggering this whole new legal framework where instead of using a police

988
01:01:32,640 --> 01:01:37,760
framework for going after these individuals, you could now use a targeted approach.

989
01:01:38,240 --> 01:01:43,920
And what's kind of happened in the legal field since then is that they've been trying to

990
01:01:44,080 --> 01:01:48,960
figure out what to do with that because it became a new legal reality for them.

991
01:01:49,360 --> 01:01:54,930
And it's really, in the recent years, really sent the field into uh and now we're even

992
01:01:54,930 --> 01:01:58,930
getting into murkier waters when we're dealing with uh, you know, more cyber terrorism.

993
01:01:59,090 --> 01:02:02,210
Um, what they're preparing for now is you know war in space.

994
01:02:02,370 --> 01:02:08,370
Uh so these are even even you know uh gonna be looking less and less like traditional wars

995
01:02:08,370 --> 01:02:13,090
used to look, like World War I, World War II, and preceding wars, where it's very clear on

996
01:02:13,090 --> 01:02:14,450
the battlefield who's who.

997
01:02:15,040 --> 01:02:20,480
And so this raises a whole like plethora of new problems for international

998
01:02:20,720 --> 01:02:26,080
law, which in my position, I think can really only be

999
01:02:26,080 --> 01:02:32,080
satisfactorily resolved if you take if you start to understand the psychology behind these

1000
01:02:32,080 --> 01:02:32,240
things.

1001
01:02:32,400 --> 01:02:37,280
Why do people coordinate around certain laws when other ones just poof, you can put as many

1002
01:02:37,280 --> 01:02:39,920
laws in place as you want, no one's going to follow it.

1003
01:02:40,080 --> 01:02:44,810
And especially at the international legal state, you know, at that arena, you're dealing

1004
01:02:44,810 --> 01:02:50,410
with purely coordinational problems because there is no third party to police it.

1005
01:02:50,570 --> 01:02:56,330
Um so it's not like domestic law where you know you you have at least some semblance of a

1006
01:02:56,330 --> 01:03:00,250
court system and all these things that can hold people to account and a monitor and

1007
01:03:00,250 --> 01:03:01,690
sanction behavior there.

1008
01:03:01,930 --> 01:03:05,930
It's really based upon coordination games and who's willing to push.

1009
01:03:06,010 --> 01:03:10,090
Um and so now, you know, there's this new debate going on in international law, which is

1010
01:03:10,090 --> 01:03:12,800
like, is it worth, you know, have we failed?

1011
01:03:12,960 --> 01:03:14,960
Has the international legal framework failed?

1012
01:03:15,040 --> 01:03:18,800
And now you have a lot of debate about that, from both sides, obviously.

1013
01:03:19,120 --> 01:03:24,400
Um but I think, yeah, it's it's getting us into a new area where we need to um I think as

1014
01:03:24,400 --> 01:03:29,040
far as my perspective, a lot of um I was talking to a friend of mine that that's an

1015
01:03:29,040 --> 01:03:32,470
international lawyer, and I said, you know, actually, if you're interested, because he was

1016
01:03:32,470 --> 01:03:36,310
talking to me about what areas should he study up on to become to have more of a social

1017
01:03:36,310 --> 01:03:36,870
science background.

1018
01:03:36,950 --> 01:03:38,870
And I said, a lot of this is game theory.

1019
01:03:39,030 --> 01:03:43,350
A lot of this is actually, you know, looking at how actors coordinate and when

1020
01:03:43,350 --> 01:03:45,830
discordination or miscoordination occurs.

1021
01:03:45,990 --> 01:03:51,190
Um, and so there's some really interesting things that that need to be um almost there

1022
01:03:51,190 --> 01:03:55,590
needs to be an emerging field now, which is the social sciences integrating with uh

1023
01:03:55,590 --> 01:03:58,390
international law if it's going to survive, I think.

1024
01:04:00,440 --> 01:04:06,200
discouraging to um I mean I remember sitting in the room of the international

1025
01:04:06,200 --> 01:04:12,120
human rights lawyers and like them laughing about uh how much you

1026
01:04:12,120 --> 01:04:18,120
know powerful countries just ignore uh you know the ICRC or the ICC

1027
01:04:18,200 --> 01:04:24,200
or any of these acronyms that are sort of you know um does is that discouraging for you

1028
01:04:24,360 --> 01:04:29,550
or um I mean, me

1029
01:04:30,830 --> 01:04:31,950
huh, that's interesting.

1030
01:04:32,110 --> 01:04:34,590
And not for me personally, and I'm trying to think why.

1031
01:04:34,830 --> 01:04:37,710
I think it's because I see the broader game.

1032
01:04:37,870 --> 01:04:41,710
And I think it's like it's just like any other social interaction.

1033
01:04:41,870 --> 01:04:47,640
And this is another thing too that I think is is oftentimes uh diminished when

1034
01:04:47,800 --> 01:04:53,160
speaking in an IR international relations type perspective is that these individuals are

1035
01:04:53,160 --> 01:04:56,040
decision makers, just like when we study human psychology.

1036
01:04:56,120 --> 01:05:00,840
And I think that there's always this disconnect, especially amongst many political

1037
01:05:00,840 --> 01:05:03,400
scientists, many international relations scholars.

1038
01:05:03,480 --> 01:05:06,200
I just saw a piece, I haven't read it yet, but I saw the abstract, it looked really

1039
01:05:06,200 --> 01:05:10,840
interesting, just came out a week or two ago, that is applying EP to international

1040
01:05:10,840 --> 01:05:11,160
relations.

1041
01:05:11,240 --> 01:05:12,840
So I'm looking forward to reading that.

1042
01:05:13,080 --> 01:05:19,070
But I think there's this idea that because it's states interacting, that there's some

1043
01:05:19,310 --> 01:05:25,230
there's something that's um so uh what is the word I'm looking for, so divergent from

1044
01:05:25,550 --> 01:05:30,510
emergent, an emergent phenomenon that can't be reduced at all, when a lot of the same

1045
01:05:30,510 --> 01:05:34,910
things you see with world leaders, I mean, just is coming down to human psychology.

1046
01:05:35,070 --> 01:05:40,270
Um so I so I guess I stay positive when I think that maybe this coordinational

1047
01:05:40,350 --> 01:05:46,220
configuration that we have now is not uh the most optimal given what we face

1048
01:05:46,220 --> 01:05:46,940
coming up.

1049
01:05:47,100 --> 01:05:49,820
However, does that mean that there can't be another solution?

1050
01:05:49,980 --> 01:05:50,780
I I don't think so.

1051
01:05:50,860 --> 01:05:55,580
I think I think that there are ways of crafting it uh in such a way where there can be more

1052
01:05:55,580 --> 01:05:57,420
optimal solutions along the way.

1053
01:05:57,580 --> 01:06:02,140
So I don't think um, you know, throwing out kind of the baby with the bathwater uh is

1054
01:06:02,140 --> 01:06:02,540
correct.

1055
01:06:02,620 --> 01:06:08,380
It just needs um needs a different perspective, needs um uh fresh perspectives as well.

1056
01:06:08,460 --> 01:06:14,070
Um, because if you know this legal system was really developed at a different time.

1057
01:06:15,190 --> 01:06:20,470
The you know, the earliest ideas here were coming out of the Great World Wars and

1058
01:06:20,870 --> 01:06:26,790
looking at how states coordinate and how you know different actors uh what what role do

1059
01:06:26,790 --> 01:06:27,110
they play?

1060
01:06:27,270 --> 01:06:31,510
And it was only until the kind of the more modern period where you had this notion of non

1061
01:06:31,590 --> 01:06:36,950
international armed conflicts that's become now the the priority uh mainly of the field,

1062
01:06:37,110 --> 01:06:42,070
which is all these armed actors that are popping out like in Syria and other other domains,

1063
01:06:42,480 --> 01:06:46,560
where you know the the the the folks looking into these conflict situations can't tell

1064
01:06:46,560 --> 01:06:52,000
who's who and so now their their very clean kind of legal system that they once had is is

1065
01:06:52,080 --> 01:06:55,840
you know facing a lot of challenges and the question is how do they how do they cope with

1066
01:06:55,840 --> 01:06:59,840
those challenges and then everyone kind of presents their own logic behind what you know

1067
01:07:00,000 --> 01:07:02,160
what's a new way of kind of going about this.

1068
01:07:03,070 --> 01:07:08,190
But a lot of it kind of spins in circles without this kind of outside input from social

1069
01:07:08,190 --> 01:07:08,670
scientists.

1070
01:07:08,750 --> 01:07:14,350
And I think it was at that meeting where we had even a political scientist say, all my

1071
01:07:14,350 --> 01:07:19,630
years of working in conflict, I've never been invited to talk to anyone in international

1072
01:07:19,630 --> 01:07:20,110
law.

1073
01:07:20,270 --> 01:07:23,310
And so I think that like right there is really interesting.

1074
01:07:23,630 --> 01:07:29,550
How there's such a disconnect that, you know, you don't get that back and forth a lot

1075
01:07:29,550 --> 01:07:30,510
of times.

1076
01:07:31,180 --> 01:07:33,100
So I'm I'm hopeful.

1077
01:07:33,180 --> 01:07:35,340
I don't know what is your perspective, both of yours.

1078
01:07:35,500 --> 01:07:38,940
I mean, maybe, maybe I'm I'm I'm tend to be more of an optimistic person.

1079
01:07:39,020 --> 01:07:43,020
So that's why I think I can deal with uh with terrorism and conflict more.

1080
01:07:43,180 --> 01:07:47,820
But yeah, I mean I think for me at least, since I was invited to this thing, I've been sort

1081
01:07:47,820 --> 01:07:53,660
of shocked at um, you know, uh the degree to which I I'm

1082
01:07:53,820 --> 01:07:57,020
I'm I am like a very like I'm an American.

1083
01:07:57,180 --> 01:08:01,550
I grew up, you know, like I I I am not a very partisan person.

1084
01:08:01,870 --> 01:08:06,110
And I sort of knew, you know, like the US had sort of, you know, like, you know, installed

1085
01:08:06,110 --> 01:08:08,910
the, you know, like things in Iran and things like that.

1086
01:08:08,990 --> 01:08:13,630
You know, like, you know, um, so I knew like we had sort of a patchy record.

1087
01:08:13,790 --> 01:08:19,550
Um, but just sort of looking at the the literature of um

1088
01:08:20,190 --> 01:08:25,150
when you have international humanitarian law, which is just reasonable things that like if

1089
01:08:25,150 --> 01:08:30,380
you look at like Q research or other things like you know, for example, the US population

1090
01:08:30,380 --> 01:08:36,300
is overwhelmingly nonpartisanly supportive of like, you know, not attacking civilians or

1091
01:08:36,300 --> 01:08:41,660
not providing arms to groups that like attack civilians, you know, in in uh regardless of

1092
01:08:41,660 --> 01:08:43,740
like the particulars of the situation.

1093
01:08:43,980 --> 01:08:49,660
Um but yet um this kind of thing across administrations, different administrations,

1094
01:08:49,820 --> 01:08:53,260
different political administrations, different sides, it's not a partisan thing.

1095
01:08:53,340 --> 01:08:55,260
This this this these things just happen.

1096
01:08:55,420 --> 01:09:01,130
Um I'm just sort of I'm still personally sort of just realizing that

1097
01:09:01,930 --> 01:09:07,450
the numbers of people affected are huge by sort of state action.

1098
01:09:08,250 --> 01:09:13,930
And for me, I'm like thinking a lot about um, you know, we're not getting the

1099
01:09:13,930 --> 01:09:17,530
evolved cues of, for example, like all these displaced people or all the kids.

1100
01:09:17,770 --> 01:09:22,330
Like I was reading a conservative estimate is like for every person killed in a war,

1101
01:09:22,410 --> 01:09:27,500
there's at least four non-combatants killed, just sort of like actuarially, just because of

1102
01:09:27,500 --> 01:09:31,820
like disease, famine, displacement, um, et cetera.

1103
01:09:32,540 --> 01:09:38,460
And um again, if you like ask people on the street, like what do they think

1104
01:09:38,460 --> 01:09:38,940
about that?

1105
01:09:39,100 --> 01:09:44,780
Um, they're they're the public is sort of right, but like uh countries, like our own

1106
01:09:44,780 --> 01:09:49,130
country and other countries, uh, whether we've consider those countries good countries or

1107
01:09:49,130 --> 01:09:54,170
bad guys, it's sort of a universal thing where I think countries and states are doing

1108
01:09:54,170 --> 01:09:59,370
things that most of their their citizens don't agree with.

1109
01:09:59,610 --> 01:10:04,090
And for me at least, I'm just sort of, I don't know if I'm optimistic or pessimistic, but

1110
01:10:04,090 --> 01:10:06,970
I've been thinking a lot about why that is.

1111
01:10:07,450 --> 01:10:13,450
Um, and for example, like that we're not getting the evolved cues of all these people

1112
01:10:13,450 --> 01:10:14,010
affected.

1113
01:10:14,170 --> 01:10:19,580
You know, like I didn't, I had no idea there were that many people impacted in in our

1114
01:10:19,580 --> 01:10:21,740
attack of Afghanistan, for example.

1115
01:10:21,820 --> 01:10:25,980
Um and I'm not saying that I mean the Taliban was is horrible, right?

1116
01:10:26,060 --> 01:10:31,900
Um, but uh and and there's no but, but and um uh the

1117
01:10:32,460 --> 01:10:38,300
the experience of seeing people of impacted or knowing that people are impacted would have

1118
01:10:38,300 --> 01:10:39,900
been part of our evolutionary history.

1119
01:10:39,980 --> 01:10:45,270
Like if if somebody attacked us and did this horrible thing, we would

1120
01:10:45,270 --> 01:10:51,030
retaliate, but we would also sort of know the cue how much our retaliation impacted other

1121
01:10:51,030 --> 01:10:51,270
people.

1122
01:10:51,430 --> 01:10:53,670
And there's sort of a natural check on that.

1123
01:10:53,830 --> 01:10:59,110
Um, and I'm just sort of I'm just sort of wondering aloud right now, stumbling around,

1124
01:10:59,190 --> 01:11:04,790
thinking about this issue a lot of the consequences of these sort of feel-good

1125
01:11:04,790 --> 01:11:05,590
retaliations.

1126
01:11:05,750 --> 01:11:07,270
Number one, are they rational?

1127
01:11:07,520 --> 01:11:10,160
Do they actually make us safe or are they effective?

1128
01:11:10,480 --> 01:11:13,760
And that's that's an issue that's independent of even the science.

1129
01:11:13,920 --> 01:11:19,520
And then the second issue is just sort of morally is that the right thing to do?

1130
01:11:19,600 --> 01:11:24,800
And how can the science inform sort of minimizing the moral horrors that that are that are

1131
01:11:24,800 --> 01:11:25,360
happening?

1132
01:11:25,840 --> 01:11:27,360
I'll just I'll say one quick thing.

1133
01:11:27,440 --> 01:11:33,440
Uh I think it's it's always a debate that swirls in my head: is uh, for instance, how do

1134
01:11:33,440 --> 01:11:38,670
you deal with um a threat that is truly a predatory actor in the modern world.

1135
01:11:38,830 --> 01:11:41,470
Because in the modern world what do you mean by by predatory?

1136
01:11:41,550 --> 01:11:42,830
Just Oh, uh yeah.

1137
01:11:42,910 --> 01:11:48,910
So so if you you know, this is going into Aaron Sell's work, um and Lopez's work

1138
01:11:49,070 --> 01:11:51,150
and uh Landers and all these folks.

1139
01:11:51,310 --> 01:11:56,030
Uh so the so this idea of, you know, if it's uh kind of the function of of hate is what

1140
01:11:56,030 --> 01:11:56,910
they've been looking at.

1141
01:11:57,100 --> 01:12:02,380
And really that's, you know, to the the goal there is to

1142
01:12:02,380 --> 01:12:08,220
eliminate your uh the individual or the group if um that kind of

1143
01:12:08,540 --> 01:12:12,620
their existence um is negative for your your fitness.

1144
01:12:12,860 --> 01:12:18,140
Uh and so in that sense, and that there's some really uh I I have a book chapter coming out

1145
01:12:18,220 --> 01:12:21,020
which is looking at radicalization as predatory aggression.

1146
01:12:21,100 --> 01:12:25,630
And in envy and hatred is kind of organizing emotional systems there.

1147
01:12:25,870 --> 01:12:31,870
On the other hand, you have more bargaining aggression, which is more limited

1148
01:12:31,870 --> 01:12:32,350
aggression.

1149
01:12:32,430 --> 01:12:38,430
And this is as far as militaries go in Western societies, this is generally what most

1150
01:12:38,430 --> 01:12:40,990
people think about our aggression, is that it's limited.

1151
01:12:41,150 --> 01:12:45,550
We're going to use these as tactical things, strategic things to get something to concede

1152
01:12:45,550 --> 01:12:51,260
resources or land or political concessions.

1153
01:12:51,500 --> 01:12:55,980
Um and then there's a very different uh kind of state of mind that comes with those those

1154
01:12:55,980 --> 01:12:57,020
two different systems.

1155
01:12:57,100 --> 01:13:01,980
And so the question is when you're when you're uh you know a modern state um being

1156
01:13:01,980 --> 01:13:05,900
aggressed by a predatory actor, uh how do you respond?

1157
01:13:06,060 --> 01:13:11,650
Because on the one side, if you respond too weakly, um then that encourages further

1158
01:13:11,650 --> 01:13:12,530
aggression.

1159
01:13:13,650 --> 01:13:18,050
But of course, we we tie our hands under international law and for very good reasons.

1160
01:13:18,130 --> 01:13:23,250
I'm not saying uh for ethical, wonderful reasons, we tie our hands to a lot of this.

1161
01:13:23,490 --> 01:13:29,250
Um and then when when actors do kind of predatorily re-engage, um,

1162
01:13:29,330 --> 01:13:34,130
you know, there there's this backlash, and then obviously you have this massive cost of

1163
01:13:34,130 --> 01:13:37,010
lives that occurs oftentimes with that aggression.

1164
01:13:37,170 --> 01:13:41,860
And so it's um it's very interesting to me to think through like how do you most

1165
01:13:41,940 --> 01:13:47,300
effectively respond to an actor uh like a terrorist uh organization.

1166
01:13:47,540 --> 01:13:53,540
Um but do so um, you know, I guess it's it's kind of the walk softly and carry a

1167
01:13:53,540 --> 01:13:55,300
big stick kind of ideology, I guess.

1168
01:13:55,460 --> 01:13:57,700
But um but yeah, how do you balance that?

1169
01:13:57,780 --> 01:13:59,860
And it's easier said than done, I think a lot of times.

1170
01:14:00,190 --> 01:14:00,350
Yeah.

1171
01:14:00,430 --> 01:14:01,790
And David, I know you want to say something.

1172
01:14:01,870 --> 01:14:03,070
I just want to follow up really quick.

1173
01:14:03,470 --> 01:14:08,190
One thing I've noticed in looking at this too is it seems like there's also obviously the

1174
01:14:08,190 --> 01:14:11,630
people who are in charge are often political politicians.

1175
01:14:11,790 --> 01:14:15,630
And there's a common knowledge issue of I don't want to look weak.

1176
01:14:15,790 --> 01:14:20,910
So for example, even if objectively I'm going to make more

1177
01:14:20,910 --> 01:14:25,020
terrorists by doing this really strong reaction.

1178
01:14:25,260 --> 01:14:30,940
I'm worried about people l uh looking looking weak to

1179
01:14:30,940 --> 01:14:35,900
constituents, and not only constituents, but there's another group of people who want my

1180
01:14:35,900 --> 01:14:37,340
position as a politician.

1181
01:14:37,420 --> 01:14:42,940
And they are incentivized to say, hey, look, he's being weak, Dave's being weak, because

1182
01:14:42,940 --> 01:14:46,140
he's not attacking these people who attacked us.

1183
01:14:46,300 --> 01:14:51,810
And so I am registering this of like, I need to survive in my, I want my position.

1184
01:14:52,050 --> 01:14:55,810
There are people who are coming for me who are saying I'm weak.

1185
01:14:55,970 --> 01:15:01,890
And so you can even see how people, even if every agent is sort of well-intended,

1186
01:15:01,970 --> 01:15:03,970
which is probably not the case, right?

1187
01:15:04,050 --> 01:15:09,970
Um, but but even if they are, how that sort of just dynamic leads to a situation

1188
01:15:09,970 --> 01:15:15,760
that favors Erring on the side of satisfying the appetites, for example, of

1189
01:15:15,760 --> 01:15:21,360
revenge, especially if we're not getting all the cues of the consequences

1190
01:15:22,000 --> 01:15:23,040
of that revenge.

1191
01:15:23,120 --> 01:15:28,240
And so I think it's a really important dynamic to understand

1192
01:15:29,600 --> 01:15:35,520
for everyone if we're gonna sort of address address this, because there may

1193
01:15:35,520 --> 01:15:41,250
be some real errors made because of the sort of institutional

1194
01:15:41,250 --> 01:15:43,890
or structural monsters we've created.

1195
01:15:44,130 --> 01:15:45,170
Um yeah.

1196
01:15:45,730 --> 01:15:46,610
Absolutely.

1197
01:15:47,810 --> 01:15:53,810
So you you made this uh really crucial and underappreciated distinction between

1198
01:15:53,810 --> 01:15:57,970
predatory aggression and bargaining aggression.

1199
01:15:58,210 --> 01:16:04,180
Um the way I see it is it's the difference between aggression as a means to an end, so as

1200
01:16:04,180 --> 01:16:10,100
a means to get treated better, to get a better deal, to get some territory, to

1201
01:16:10,100 --> 01:16:16,020
get some resource, uh whatever, versus aggression as

1202
01:16:16,020 --> 01:16:17,860
the end in and of itself.

1203
01:16:18,020 --> 01:16:23,460
The goal is is to destroy the benefit that the attacker receives from the

1204
01:16:23,460 --> 01:16:28,470
aggression is the destruction or the disempowerment of the enemy itself.

1205
01:16:30,230 --> 01:16:35,990
And unfortunately, I think it is very easy to confuse those two

1206
01:16:35,990 --> 01:16:41,030
types of aggression because you're not really, it's really hard to tell the difference when

1207
01:16:41,030 --> 01:16:42,470
you're on the receiving end of it.

1208
01:16:42,630 --> 01:16:47,670
If people are dying and things are being destroyed, it's hard to know what the motive

1209
01:16:47,670 --> 01:16:49,510
behind that destruction was.

1210
01:16:50,120 --> 01:16:54,520
But knowing the motive behind it is actually crucial for responding in the right way

1211
01:16:54,680 --> 01:17:00,600
because uh uh confusing predatory aggression for bargaining aggression could be extremely

1212
01:17:00,600 --> 01:17:02,120
counterproductive.

1213
01:17:02,280 --> 01:17:08,040
Um and vice versa, confusing um bargaining aggression for predatory

1214
01:17:08,040 --> 01:17:11,400
aggression could be extremely disastrous as well.

1215
01:17:11,720 --> 01:17:16,920
Um do you see this confusion being made in the international

1216
01:17:17,730 --> 01:17:18,370
arena?

1217
01:17:18,530 --> 01:17:19,650
Is this a danger?

1218
01:17:19,730 --> 01:17:23,970
Uh and how how can we avoid uh making this mistake?

1219
01:17:24,130 --> 01:17:27,810
And what is the best way to respond to each of these types of aggression?

1220
01:17:28,530 --> 01:17:30,610
Yeah, I mean, yes, definitely.

1221
01:17:30,690 --> 01:17:35,410
There's definitely um a confusion of these uh of these different types, and that I mean

1222
01:17:35,490 --> 01:17:41,010
that is a um not only from EP, but you know, the idea of predatory aggression is is a bit

1223
01:17:41,010 --> 01:17:41,330
wider.

1224
01:17:41,410 --> 01:17:45,010
There's been um other studies in other fields that have have looked.

1225
01:17:45,090 --> 01:17:50,980
Um There's you know different uh neurosignatures of these different disassociated

1226
01:17:50,980 --> 01:17:51,380
systems.

1227
01:17:51,540 --> 01:17:56,980
So we know, I mean, there's a rich literature here in EP and also outside of EP on uh these

1228
01:17:56,980 --> 01:17:58,020
different systems.

1229
01:17:58,260 --> 01:18:03,220
Um I'll do I'll give you an example of when it can go wrong, is in my own field of

1230
01:18:03,220 --> 01:18:04,020
terrorism.

1231
01:18:04,260 --> 01:18:10,260
And so there's this tendency in the literature to look at radicalized actors as

1232
01:18:10,580 --> 01:18:14,570
doing it in response for retaliatory reasons.

1233
01:18:14,730 --> 01:18:19,850
And so a lot of the idea here is that radicalization is what they say is a grievance-based

1234
01:18:19,850 --> 01:18:20,330
thing.

1235
01:18:20,570 --> 01:18:25,930
So people radicalize because something's been done to them by the state, by their local

1236
01:18:25,930 --> 01:18:26,650
community.

1237
01:18:26,970 --> 01:18:30,490
And so most of the models that are out there are very much reactive models.

1238
01:18:30,570 --> 01:18:34,810
And so me and my colleague, what we did was we said, no, no, we we need to start looking at

1239
01:18:34,810 --> 01:18:35,690
this a little bit differently.

1240
01:18:35,850 --> 01:18:41,280
In fact, some of this, uh, first of all, is accepting the fact that aggression is good from

1241
01:18:41,280 --> 01:18:42,800
an evolutionary perspective.

1242
01:18:42,960 --> 01:18:48,560
Not meaning for us, for ethics, but the sense of that

1243
01:18:48,560 --> 01:18:52,400
aggression can be a really beneficial thing for certain actors.

1244
01:18:52,720 --> 01:18:57,200
And so when you start to take this other perspective, what we've started to do is trying to

1245
01:18:57,200 --> 01:19:02,480
shift the perspective of no, this isn't what radicalizing people are radicalizing is not in

1246
01:19:02,480 --> 01:19:03,600
response, oftentimes.

1247
01:19:03,760 --> 01:19:07,590
They might give you those when you ask them why they've radicalized.

1248
01:19:07,670 --> 01:19:12,390
Um and we think that might be part of the system to to kind of look for excuses and

1249
01:19:12,390 --> 01:19:13,030
justifications.

1250
01:19:13,350 --> 01:19:15,110
That's fascinating to Yeah.

1251
01:19:29,190 --> 01:19:32,380
Um does that make sense to you?

1252
01:19:32,460 --> 01:19:36,780
Because if they're not aware that of your predatory intentions, they might try to make

1253
01:19:36,780 --> 01:19:41,980
concessions to you, uh and that's good for you, and then you'll just keep on attacking

1254
01:19:41,980 --> 01:19:42,220
them.

1255
01:19:42,380 --> 01:19:43,660
Um yeah.

1256
01:19:45,500 --> 01:19:45,820
Yeah.

1257
01:19:46,140 --> 01:19:50,940
Oh, not only that, but and this is Anthony Lopez's point, and we should have him on, is

1258
01:19:50,940 --> 01:19:56,670
that uh leaders, the they're the group that is doing the aggression is not a

1259
01:19:56,670 --> 01:19:57,790
unitary thing either.

1260
01:19:57,950 --> 01:20:03,710
And so there can be times where there is a small number of people whose interest is

1261
01:20:04,190 --> 01:20:08,830
the aggression for their own benefit.

1262
01:20:09,150 --> 01:20:13,630
So in some sense, they are being predatory, but most people are not

1263
01:20:14,430 --> 01:20:15,230
predatory.

1264
01:20:15,390 --> 01:20:20,660
And so they'll often, this is Anthony has this paper, Making My Problem Our Problem, where

1265
01:20:20,660 --> 01:20:26,340
the point is to sort of spin this narrative of the group I want to be predatory towards, if

1266
01:20:26,340 --> 01:20:32,020
I'm the leader, I tell my people who I want to support my interest in

1267
01:20:32,020 --> 01:20:35,060
aggressing, they're attacking us.

1268
01:20:35,380 --> 01:20:40,660
So you're basically you're uh coalescing support for my aggressive

1269
01:20:40,660 --> 01:20:46,470
endeavors to um to support me by framing

1270
01:20:46,470 --> 01:20:52,310
it as this is a case of um retaliatory aggression.

1271
01:20:52,470 --> 01:20:58,470
And you actually see this at every scale of social um interaction where there

1272
01:20:58,470 --> 01:21:03,110
are agents who are who are differentially benefiting, and you see this even

1273
01:21:03,110 --> 01:21:06,390
cross-culturally in small-scale social groups.

1274
01:21:06,550 --> 01:21:10,740
There are just a subset of agents who will benefit from a raid, for example, or from

1275
01:21:10,740 --> 01:21:14,020
intergroup conflict, and then the other people who will not.

1276
01:21:14,340 --> 01:21:20,180
And their job, the people who will benefit to be belligerent, is to figure out a way to

1277
01:21:20,180 --> 01:21:26,020
frame or encourage the people to at least go along with it, be okay with it, treat it

1278
01:21:26,020 --> 01:21:28,020
as yes, we are all attacking them.

1279
01:21:28,180 --> 01:21:33,300
So I just want to say like that, even in some sense, that even further complicates the

1280
01:21:33,300 --> 01:21:38,660
predatory versus retaliatory aggression, because it can literally be the case that the same

1281
01:21:38,660 --> 01:21:44,230
set of people on the same side who are throwing the same spears or dropping the same

1282
01:21:44,230 --> 01:21:50,070
bombs are actually in one head it's irretaliatory in another head it's predatory

1283
01:21:50,710 --> 01:21:56,550
yeah and I think uh I'll I'll say here is that I think for so many years um

1284
01:21:56,710 --> 01:22:02,460
the researchers that have been talking to radicalized folks have been assuming that the

1285
01:22:02,460 --> 01:22:07,260
reasons and justifications that they're providing for their actions are the cause of those

1286
01:22:07,260 --> 01:22:07,900
actions.

1287
01:22:08,780 --> 01:22:14,700
And so we we we would like to, you know, we wanted to uh go further, and I think

1288
01:22:14,700 --> 01:22:17,100
this is a direction for future research.

1289
01:22:17,420 --> 01:22:22,860
But also, you know, our pres our position is that envy is driving a lot of that home-based

1290
01:22:22,890 --> 01:22:23,850
radicalization.

1291
01:22:23,930 --> 01:22:26,650
That is kind of the focus, core focus of that literature.

1292
01:22:27,210 --> 01:22:32,890
And we think one of the things, the downstream things that Envy does is it searches for

1293
01:22:32,890 --> 01:22:37,530
these reasons and excuses and justifications to mask itself as well.

1294
01:22:38,010 --> 01:22:43,690
So you said, you know, you're advertising towards the victims, and that might be one

1295
01:22:43,900 --> 01:22:47,900
group as a predatory actor to advertise to to say, no, no, no, you know, I'm going to stop

1296
01:22:47,900 --> 01:22:50,060
if you guys just let up a little bit.

1297
01:22:50,220 --> 01:22:54,300
Um, and there's also you're advertising towards those others, like you're saying, uh, Dave,

1298
01:22:54,460 --> 01:22:56,220
on your own side.

1299
01:22:56,380 --> 01:22:59,980
And I think this plays such a critical role when you're seeing like ethnic violence start

1300
01:22:59,980 --> 01:23:00,140
up.

1301
01:23:00,220 --> 01:23:05,340
It's these predatory actors that are the first to move, and they get a lot of pleasure out

1302
01:23:05,340 --> 01:23:05,580
of this.

1303
01:23:05,740 --> 01:23:09,820
Is another thing that that hasn't been discussed really much, is that you see across the

1304
01:23:09,820 --> 01:23:14,270
radicalization literatures that excitement, joy, a thrill.

1305
01:23:14,510 --> 01:23:20,350
And everyone kind of they've they've appreciated the fact that it's there, but why is it

1306
01:23:20,350 --> 01:23:20,590
there?

1307
01:23:20,750 --> 01:23:26,270
And and it's like, I think it's really getting back down uh to some of the the research

1308
01:23:26,270 --> 01:23:31,150
that they've uh suggested with uh negative association values and how that can invert cost

1309
01:23:31,230 --> 01:23:34,030
and benefits um in the minds of those actors.

1310
01:23:34,190 --> 01:23:40,160
So suddenly you and you heaving out cost and destroying your enemy is really

1311
01:23:40,160 --> 01:23:43,840
pleasureful, probably you know, close to sexually pleasureful.

1312
01:23:43,920 --> 01:23:45,440
Um, and that's where you get these weird.

1313
01:23:45,840 --> 01:23:50,320
And so one of the things that's never been discussed is like, why what is the one thing I

1314
01:23:50,320 --> 01:23:52,800
always ask uh when I before I give a talk?

1315
01:23:53,040 --> 01:23:56,720
Is like, what's the one thing that's really peculiar about radicalized people?

1316
01:23:56,880 --> 01:24:02,400
And it's funny, is members, I've given this talk uh in DC amongst policymakers and that,

1317
01:24:02,480 --> 01:24:05,010
and they immediately hit on it, and my mom hits on it.

1318
01:24:05,170 --> 01:24:08,690
But the people studying radicalization, they like they can't, they're like, oh, what is it?

1319
01:24:08,770 --> 01:24:09,410
What is it?

1320
01:24:09,570 --> 01:24:14,050
Um, but it's really this idea of like, oh, that person looks crazy.

1321
01:24:14,290 --> 01:24:20,210
Like, like if a if a person goes and um, you know, commits a mass shooting

1322
01:24:20,210 --> 01:24:25,170
at an elementary school, or or any of these, you know, a lot of these radicalized actors,

1323
01:24:25,330 --> 01:24:30,210
the initial reaction to people is they can't wrap their head around why that actor would do

1324
01:24:30,210 --> 01:24:31,570
that type of thing.

1325
01:24:31,810 --> 01:24:36,720
Um, and so I think that there's a lot to be said here about this inversion of costs and

1326
01:24:36,720 --> 01:24:40,080
benefits, that radicalization, that's part of that process.

1327
01:24:40,160 --> 01:24:44,720
And that's that's part of that process that that envy in in that case of domestic

1328
01:24:44,720 --> 01:24:50,160
radicalization is trans kind of um moving the agent towards those actions that feel really

1329
01:24:50,160 --> 01:24:56,160
pleasureful and exciting and thrilling in order to eliminate or you know depower their

1330
01:24:56,160 --> 01:24:57,520
their adversaries.

1331
01:24:58,990 --> 01:25:04,990
Would you think would you say that um the international relations

1332
01:25:04,990 --> 01:25:10,830
community uh is of the perspective that terrorism is generally

1333
01:25:10,830 --> 01:25:15,310
motivated by grievance, by retaliation, by bargaining aggression, whatever you want to call

1334
01:25:15,310 --> 01:25:15,550
it?

1335
01:25:15,790 --> 01:25:21,310
And do you find yourself in the minority position arguing that no, this is not

1336
01:25:21,470 --> 01:25:26,430
retaliatory, grievance-based bargaining, whatever you want to call it, but this is actually

1337
01:25:26,430 --> 01:25:27,710
uh predatory?

1338
01:25:28,220 --> 01:25:28,620
Yes.

1339
01:25:28,780 --> 01:25:29,660
Yeah, 100%.

1340
01:25:30,220 --> 01:25:34,060
Um I and I and it starts to resolve a lot of the issues.

1341
01:25:34,220 --> 01:25:39,980
In fact, you know, the main kind of stream definition of terrorism is uh something

1342
01:25:39,980 --> 01:25:41,660
that's religious or political.

1343
01:25:41,900 --> 01:25:46,940
And it it it it's uh I I'm not gonna verbatim get it, but it essentially it's framed as

1344
01:25:46,940 --> 01:25:47,900
bargaining aggression.

1345
01:25:47,980 --> 01:25:51,210
It's to get political, some type of political gains, right?

1346
01:25:51,370 --> 01:25:55,850
And that's kind of the mainstream view of literally what it defines terrorism.

1347
01:25:56,010 --> 01:26:00,890
Um, so you I've seen just recently someone online saying, oh, they're not using the word

1348
01:26:00,890 --> 01:26:06,330
terrorism correctly, because that person's not, in in in our verbiage, not using bargaining

1349
01:26:06,330 --> 01:26:11,290
aggression, which in my mind is is completely the opposite of what I think these folks are

1350
01:26:11,290 --> 01:26:17,160
doing, but it doesn't to to kind of the economical mind or the our own rationality, that

1351
01:26:17,160 --> 01:26:21,160
doesn't make sense, like unless you take into consideration this inversion of some costs

1352
01:26:21,160 --> 01:26:22,120
and benefits.

1353
01:26:22,360 --> 01:26:25,480
Um, because you know it would just be befuddling.

1354
01:26:25,720 --> 01:26:28,920
Like, why are that why why would someone give up their own life?

1355
01:26:29,080 --> 01:26:34,280
You know, and it doesn't seem to quite make sense unless it's for a broader political uh

1356
01:26:34,250 --> 01:26:34,890
agenda.

1357
01:26:35,050 --> 01:26:39,290
Then it's suddenly like you see the cost benefits and it matches your own intuitions about

1358
01:26:39,290 --> 01:26:40,330
costs and benefits.

1359
01:26:40,490 --> 01:26:43,050
And then it's like, oh, that must be what's happening here.

1360
01:26:43,210 --> 01:26:47,690
And that's not to say that anger, you know, bargaining aggression and predatory aggression

1361
01:26:47,690 --> 01:26:48,730
can't coactivate.

1362
01:26:48,890 --> 01:26:52,410
So there might, oh, and then within a terrorist organization, this is not to say that

1363
01:26:52,410 --> 01:26:53,930
everyone's radicalized.

1364
01:26:54,570 --> 01:26:59,210
Some agents might be there for other reasons, for you know, self interest or numerous other

1365
01:26:59,210 --> 01:27:02,740
things, and this is what we see in warfare all the time is that you have, you know, kind of

1366
01:27:02,740 --> 01:27:08,260
the radicalized actors that start the conflict, and then the next in line that suddenly the

1367
01:27:08,420 --> 01:27:11,060
in the social environment shifts the costs and benefits.

1368
01:27:11,220 --> 01:27:14,500
Costs start to rise of not joining, the benefits of joining start to.

1369
01:27:14,660 --> 01:27:20,180
And that just that also that that idea that that flow of cost-benefits can really have such

1370
01:27:20,180 --> 01:27:25,300
a strong influence on behavior is also a bit underappreciated.

1371
01:27:26,820 --> 01:27:31,370
Oftentimes you you you get this intuition that, oh God, there's got to be something more,

1372
01:27:31,450 --> 01:27:31,690
right?

1373
01:27:31,770 --> 01:27:36,250
Like it can't be that selfish or that's that shallow of a psychology.

1374
01:27:36,410 --> 01:27:39,930
There has to be some moralistic thing or there has to be something else driving these

1375
01:27:39,930 --> 01:27:40,170
people.

1376
01:27:40,330 --> 01:27:45,130
And I think when when you shift cost benefits, people will look for the the reasons and

1377
01:27:45,130 --> 01:27:46,890
justifications for those actions.

1378
01:27:47,050 --> 01:27:51,690
Um and that's oftentimes that, you know, this is like a Tamur Quran type situation where

1379
01:27:51,690 --> 01:27:56,720
these shifting costs and benefits of in his regard, you know, ethnification, but you see

1380
01:27:56,720 --> 01:28:00,160
this shift, and then more and more people bandwagon and get on board.

1381
01:28:00,320 --> 01:28:03,760
And even the ones that aren't truly on board that will always have a problem with the

1382
01:28:03,760 --> 01:28:07,840
aggression, they can't do otherwise because to do so would be to kill, you know, be killed

1383
01:28:07,840 --> 01:28:08,640
yourself.

1384
01:28:09,120 --> 01:28:14,960
Do you think, just to uh to ask a clarification question, do you think that the predatory

1385
01:28:14,960 --> 01:28:20,960
versus bargaining aggression thing is actually that distinction

1386
01:28:21,200 --> 01:28:25,690
versus it's more of a almost proximate ultimate thing of

1387
01:28:26,250 --> 01:28:32,090
predatory is people who are either certain that they're going to have to in

1388
01:28:32,090 --> 01:28:33,530
just exert a high cost.

1389
01:28:33,610 --> 01:28:39,610
And it actually is for an all for bargaining, but it's just that um the bargaining is

1390
01:28:39,610 --> 01:28:40,490
so distant.

1391
01:28:40,650 --> 01:28:44,010
It just looks like it's just destroy everything.

1392
01:28:44,330 --> 01:28:50,220
But in fact it it it ultimately is is that and I'm just to be like devil's advocate, is

1393
01:28:50,220 --> 01:28:52,140
that um I'm sure you've thought of this.

1394
01:28:52,220 --> 01:28:56,940
Like, what would you say to somebody or that thought um that it is in fact it is all

1395
01:28:56,940 --> 01:28:57,980
bargaining aggression?

1396
01:28:58,060 --> 01:29:03,660
It's just the severity of it makes the extreme version of bargaining

1397
01:29:03,980 --> 01:29:09,740
aggression indistinguishable from just this berserk flip to

1398
01:29:09,900 --> 01:29:10,620
destruction.

1399
01:29:10,860 --> 01:29:16,570
I mean, I I understand the point of just extermination, Like I'm,

1400
01:29:16,810 --> 01:29:20,410
you know, like like that is that is different than bargaining for better treatment.

1401
01:29:20,490 --> 01:29:25,610
Like if it's a if it's an interest to just have this entity destroyed.

1402
01:29:25,770 --> 01:29:28,410
And maybe that's ultimately the difference.

1403
01:29:28,890 --> 01:29:34,890
But I'm just thinking, like again, in this cartoonish way, if you look at somebody

1404
01:29:34,890 --> 01:29:38,090
who is willing to blow themselves up on a bus, right?

1405
01:29:38,640 --> 01:29:44,160
The question is so clearly they're they're saying the benefit of destroying

1406
01:29:44,160 --> 01:29:47,520
destruction is is is just intrinsic.

1407
01:29:47,840 --> 01:29:50,080
But the question is, is that psychology?

1408
01:29:50,320 --> 01:29:56,240
Because ultimately that destruction in that local case is a larger scale bargaining

1409
01:29:56,240 --> 01:29:57,120
issue.

1410
01:29:57,760 --> 01:29:59,200
Does that make sense?

1411
01:29:59,920 --> 01:30:05,530
Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on it it depends on too, because this is the

1412
01:30:05,530 --> 01:30:08,650
perspective that a lot of people have taken is the altruistic perspective.

1413
01:30:08,810 --> 01:30:12,250
Um so this idea that you know these individuals are doing these things on behalf of a

1414
01:30:12,250 --> 01:30:14,250
greater good for their collective.

1415
01:30:14,570 --> 01:30:20,570
Um I I don't, you know, in that in that regard I I find some of it

1416
01:30:20,570 --> 01:30:20,970
difficult.

1417
01:30:21,130 --> 01:30:25,050
You you also have the collective action problem that kind of pops up there, which if you

1418
01:30:25,050 --> 01:30:29,760
take more of the predatory actor route, you you can bypass that fundamental problem pretty

1419
01:30:29,760 --> 01:30:29,920
easily.

1420
01:30:30,240 --> 01:30:30,640
That's interesting.

1421
01:30:30,720 --> 01:30:33,280
Yeah, so let's let's unpack that a bit, uh, because that's a really interesting thought

1422
01:30:33,280 --> 01:30:34,320
that hadn't occurred to me.

1423
01:30:34,560 --> 01:30:40,320
So there is a collective action problem if if the goal is to benefit the entire group, and

1424
01:30:40,320 --> 01:30:44,240
that each individual has an interest of getting the benefits of the collective action

1425
01:30:44,240 --> 01:30:46,080
without incurring the costs themselves.

1426
01:30:46,160 --> 01:30:47,920
So you have this free rider problem.

1427
01:30:48,160 --> 01:30:53,330
Um So if the if the goal is to benefit the group, uh it's hard to create the kind of

1428
01:30:53,330 --> 01:30:57,010
selective incentives to mobilize the group toward the collective action.

1429
01:30:57,170 --> 01:31:01,650
And insofar as any individual is willing to make a huge sacrifice for the benefit of the

1430
01:31:01,650 --> 01:31:06,370
group, like say committing suicide, um, that's really puzzling to explain.

1431
01:31:06,610 --> 01:31:11,880
Um on the other hand, if it is predatory and um there

1432
01:31:12,440 --> 01:31:17,880
and each individual gets a direct benefit uh from the costs inflicted on the

1433
01:31:17,880 --> 01:31:23,800
enemy, then it's no longer so much of a collective action problem uh because any

1434
01:31:23,800 --> 01:31:29,480
amount of destruction on the enemy uh uh is perceived as a benefit to everyone in the group

1435
01:31:29,480 --> 01:31:29,960
automatically.

1436
01:31:30,040 --> 01:31:35,000
So it's not really so much of a sacrifice at all if if you're getting this immediate payoff

1437
01:31:35,000 --> 01:31:40,550
of of you Yeah, absolutely.

1438
01:31:40,710 --> 01:31:44,310
And and again going back to the kind of the mismatch idea, that might be playing a role

1439
01:31:44,310 --> 01:31:47,670
here as well, is what are the cues that are kind of calibrating these different systems.

1440
01:31:47,910 --> 01:31:50,470
But also, David, I would say that or Dave, sorry.

1441
01:31:50,790 --> 01:31:56,780
I would say that uh I uh I think I I start, you know how to

1442
01:31:56,860 --> 01:31:57,180
say this.

1443
01:31:57,340 --> 01:32:01,420
I think we've spliced things in such a way because we didn't have a functional perspective

1444
01:32:01,420 --> 01:32:02,220
for so long.

1445
01:32:02,780 --> 01:32:07,580
That now when I'm when I'm starting to look, I I think actually I'm getting ready like for

1446
01:32:07,580 --> 01:32:12,540
the next papers, getting more away even from the concept of envy because it confuses the

1447
01:32:12,540 --> 01:32:13,420
heck out of everyone.

1448
01:32:13,500 --> 01:32:17,180
Uh, because people, A, come to it with kind of their own preconceived notion of what is

1449
01:32:17,180 --> 01:32:17,740
envy.

1450
01:32:17,900 --> 01:32:22,370
Um, B, uh, they come to it with like, oh, I've experienced NBV before.

1451
01:32:22,450 --> 01:32:26,530
There's no way that, you know, my desire for this something that someone else has could

1452
01:32:26,530 --> 01:32:27,490
drive me to do this.

1453
01:32:27,970 --> 01:32:32,450
Um, there's also just like we're not sure where the boundaries of that system are, and it's

1454
01:32:32,450 --> 01:32:33,730
very, very confusing.

1455
01:32:33,890 --> 01:32:39,890
Um and what I'm seeing more and more in my mind is kind of like in the virtual reality

1456
01:32:39,890 --> 01:32:43,170
system that is my mind, is like this cost benefit landscape.

1457
01:32:43,250 --> 01:32:43,330
Yeah.

1458
01:32:43,490 --> 01:32:47,800
And those individual actors in that cost benefit landscape, and what are the systems that

1459
01:32:47,800 --> 01:32:51,320
are detecting and what are the cues that they're using to detect when those costs and

1460
01:32:51,320 --> 01:32:53,080
benefits are shifting in such a way.

1461
01:32:53,320 --> 01:32:53,560
Right.

1462
01:32:54,440 --> 01:32:58,040
This isn't really addressing your question because like I don't have a good answer yet.

1463
01:32:58,360 --> 01:32:58,520
Yeah.

1464
01:32:58,680 --> 01:33:00,520
Well do you guys have any any ideas there?

1465
01:33:00,760 --> 01:33:02,600
Well even like I think Aaron Blackwell had a paper.

1466
01:33:02,680 --> 01:33:07,800
I don't know if it's out or whatever, but like even like suicide bombers, you know, the the

1467
01:33:07,880 --> 01:33:13,690
the cost of them doing that clearly, like the entities that want them

1468
01:33:13,690 --> 01:33:18,890
to do that, there's all kinds of social structures of like your family will be financially

1469
01:33:18,890 --> 01:33:19,610
better off.

1470
01:33:19,770 --> 01:33:23,690
And if you like look at the data, like it's clearly that there's a manipulation of the cost

1471
01:33:23,770 --> 01:33:29,770
benefit landscape even for um something as sort of uh crazy

1472
01:33:29,770 --> 01:33:34,650
and irrational as suicide bombing, the to even, you know, because the person is still at

1473
01:33:34,650 --> 01:33:38,250
the end of the day, it's like, you know, I'm I'm incurring the cost, and the person next to

1474
01:33:38,250 --> 01:33:38,970
me is not.

1475
01:33:39,130 --> 01:33:44,880
And so there's all kinds of um things around trying to get around that

1476
01:33:44,880 --> 01:33:48,800
issue of the evolved psychology sort of saying, wait a minute, what am I doing?

1477
01:33:48,960 --> 01:33:49,840
Don't do this.

1478
01:33:50,080 --> 01:33:55,120
And in there's all of this institutional structure to push people towards.

1479
01:33:55,280 --> 01:34:00,880
So it's in Aaron's data, Aaron Blackwell's data was, you know, people with a lot of family.

1480
01:34:01,040 --> 01:34:06,370
Um, so there's lots of siblings, they're uh really, it's it's the difference between sort

1481
01:34:06,370 --> 01:34:10,850
of the family being taken care of and not uh the financial support if they do it.

1482
01:34:11,010 --> 01:34:16,530
Um so you know you can really see how there just there's a lot of social structure sorting

1483
01:34:16,690 --> 01:34:20,770
throwing as many benefits to that individual as possible.

1484
01:34:21,010 --> 01:34:23,970
And even then, most many don't, right?

1485
01:34:24,130 --> 01:34:30,130
And even then, there's even just things of like uh making it so the handler

1486
01:34:30,130 --> 01:34:35,200
of the person has more control than the person themselves over like actually getting them

1487
01:34:35,200 --> 01:34:40,480
to do that because it's really hard to get a human being to like try to kill themselves,

1488
01:34:40,560 --> 01:34:44,720
and especially when there's ecologically valid, like evolutionarily recurrent cues in that.

1489
01:34:44,800 --> 01:34:44,960
Yeah.

1490
01:34:45,360 --> 01:34:49,520
I think I think this is a fundamental problem too that comes along with this is that we can

1491
01:34:49,520 --> 01:34:54,240
look across like a conflict setting and we see all these people engaging in violence and

1492
01:34:54,240 --> 01:34:55,920
behaving very similarly.

1493
01:34:56,000 --> 01:34:59,120
Like this gets back to your point about how do we distinguish between bargaining and

1494
01:34:59,120 --> 01:35:00,720
predatory aggression and all these things.

1495
01:35:00,880 --> 01:35:05,310
And the one circumstance, you know, this person might be doing it because they uh are

1496
01:35:05,470 --> 01:35:10,030
trying to protect their family, um, whereas the other one is doing it because in the end he

1497
01:35:10,030 --> 01:35:11,870
knows that he'll get a better payoff.

1498
01:35:12,030 --> 01:35:16,190
And oftentimes, like in ethnic violence, what you see very definitively, it's like it's

1499
01:35:16,190 --> 01:35:17,310
actually a very small proportion.

1500
01:35:17,390 --> 01:35:21,470
I think in uh in the new paper I have coming out, it's like I I think looking back at that

1501
01:35:21,470 --> 01:35:25,710
data, it's about 16% of the adult male population, then just we're right around there.

1502
01:35:25,950 --> 01:35:30,360
That is the first active starters in Rwanda and Yugoslavia.

1503
01:35:30,760 --> 01:35:34,600
Um that and and they have a very particular profile.

1504
01:35:34,680 --> 01:35:39,000
They're generally young, kind of the age of radicalized actors in in domestic settings.

1505
01:35:39,160 --> 01:35:40,440
Um they have a lot to gain.

1506
01:35:40,600 --> 01:35:43,320
They have very low social connections with the community.

1507
01:35:43,480 --> 01:35:47,880
Um and and yeah, so you see like the cost benefit is different for those actors.

1508
01:35:47,960 --> 01:35:53,030
So if you look across the conflict, and all you see is everyone engaging in violence.

1509
01:35:53,110 --> 01:35:56,150
How do you parse the motivational systems of those different individuals?

1510
01:35:56,310 --> 01:36:00,070
And how can you ever address how to prevent the violence if you're just kind of saying, oh,

1511
01:36:00,150 --> 01:36:02,230
that clearly like this is all the same?

1512
01:36:02,390 --> 01:36:08,230
Um, and we have that even within the uh more localized setting like terrorism in a domestic

1513
01:36:08,390 --> 01:36:13,270
uh setting, where again, like those actors that are part of terrorist organizations, and

1514
01:36:13,270 --> 01:36:15,990
we're starting to get uh better better uh data here.

1515
01:36:16,150 --> 01:36:19,760
Um, and some folks in the Netherlands are doing really good work here to look at what's the

1516
01:36:19,760 --> 01:36:24,400
difference between those that are engaged in terrorist organizations that commit violence

1517
01:36:24,400 --> 01:36:25,920
versus those that don't.

1518
01:36:26,560 --> 01:36:31,920
And so I think we're starting with the EP perspective is really, really important because

1519
01:36:31,920 --> 01:36:36,960
we're starting, then we can start to get to the level of granularity that we need where

1520
01:36:36,960 --> 01:36:40,960
it's like, why are these different actors acting this way?

1521
01:36:41,120 --> 01:36:43,710
And they might be quite radically different.

1522
01:36:43,870 --> 01:36:49,230
And then, you know, into this, I I I um I'm still, you know, I love uh Nancy

1523
01:36:49,230 --> 01:36:51,870
Cartwright's work on philosophy of science.

1524
01:36:51,950 --> 01:36:54,030
And she talks a lot about inus conditions.

1525
01:36:54,110 --> 01:36:59,550
I don't know if you all have ever um, but um essentially I'll I won't try to to repeat it,

1526
01:36:59,630 --> 01:37:04,990
but it's it's a great example of of conditions of causality where, for instance, you can

1527
01:37:04,990 --> 01:37:09,550
have a condition, but unless it has some other supporting thing, it will never happen.

1528
01:37:09,720 --> 01:37:14,600
Um, and so it's trying to bring complexity and the complex systems idea back into causality

1529
01:37:14,600 --> 01:37:14,760
here.

1530
01:37:14,840 --> 01:37:18,360
So you might have someone that's radicalized to the point of to violence, but there's

1531
01:37:18,360 --> 01:37:22,200
something just the opportunity is not there, or there's some missing piece.

1532
01:37:22,360 --> 01:37:26,680
So again, that's even a comp more complicating factor of how do you parse that psychology?

1533
01:37:26,840 --> 01:37:30,200
Because that person might never act, even though they are true, you know, truly

1534
01:37:30,200 --> 01:37:32,680
radicalized, whatever that might mean in this sense.

1535
01:37:33,030 --> 01:37:33,510
Yeah.

1536
01:37:33,830 --> 01:37:39,590
Um to to kind of uh to uh turn this around, is there

1537
01:37:39,590 --> 01:37:45,350
anything that um kind of universally undoes

1538
01:37:45,350 --> 01:37:45,750
violence?

1539
01:37:45,910 --> 01:37:51,030
Like I know you told me uh anecdotes about, you know, sort of people in some sense or one

1540
01:37:51,030 --> 01:37:56,630
way or another sort of reminding them of of of their humanity um and that occasionally

1541
01:37:56,630 --> 01:37:56,950
works.

1542
01:37:57,190 --> 01:38:02,980
Is that too sort of um glib and trite and you know I think people have this intuitive

1543
01:38:02,980 --> 01:38:07,220
idea right uh to just sort of turn this around from like we're talking about violence is

1544
01:38:07,220 --> 01:38:10,420
there is there at least some hope or like how do you think about that?

1545
01:38:10,580 --> 01:38:14,340
Yeah no I mean I I clearly see it.

1546
01:38:14,500 --> 01:38:19,780
I mean you know a lot of people say um there's this issue of low numbers in

1547
01:38:19,780 --> 01:38:24,390
radicalization where it's like for they're so disproportional.

1548
01:38:24,550 --> 01:38:28,790
And I the number of people that radicalize compared to those that could radicalize but

1549
01:38:28,790 --> 01:38:29,270
don't.

1550
01:38:29,510 --> 01:38:34,870
And I think there you're just you're looking at all of you know, we don't really we live in

1551
01:38:34,950 --> 01:38:38,310
c in in a social world that's very non zero sum.

1552
01:38:38,790 --> 01:38:43,910
And I think that's a really good thing because it helps constrain, you know, violent

1553
01:38:43,910 --> 01:38:44,310
action.

1554
01:38:44,550 --> 01:38:50,380
Um indeed, like um uh you know, the the other work on

1555
01:38:50,380 --> 01:38:55,180
institutionalism and how that can support peace is also another great piece of this that I

1556
01:38:55,180 --> 01:38:56,780
think is really important to consider.

1557
01:38:57,260 --> 01:38:59,180
Um, but dang, there was something else that is.

1558
01:38:59,660 --> 01:39:03,100
Well I was just asking, I'm like even even I mean the anecdote you told me about Croatia,

1559
01:39:03,180 --> 01:39:04,860
like Oh, that's the one I was getting to.

1560
01:39:05,020 --> 01:39:05,420
Yeah, yes.

1561
01:39:06,140 --> 01:39:07,900
So this is the one that still sticks with me.

1562
01:39:07,980 --> 01:39:08,300
Yeah.

1563
01:39:08,460 --> 01:39:11,830
Um among so so many of these things.

1564
01:39:11,990 --> 01:39:17,430
Um but this one uh was was a victim of violence and um

1565
01:39:18,710 --> 01:39:24,630
she was essentially she was with her family, her family was murdered in front of her.

1566
01:39:24,950 --> 01:39:30,950
She was laying on the ground um for uh in a they were trying to flee a

1567
01:39:30,950 --> 01:39:32,550
wars war zone area.

1568
01:39:32,630 --> 01:39:37,190
Uh they didn't quite make it, they were intercepted um by the by military.

1569
01:39:37,590 --> 01:39:42,780
And um she was laying on the ground and one of the

1570
01:39:43,900 --> 01:39:47,340
she was laying there for hours and and she thought they were gonna leave her for dead.

1571
01:39:47,420 --> 01:39:52,140
And one of the the soldiers came over and said to her, How do you wanna die?

1572
01:39:52,380 --> 01:39:56,780
And he he had a bunch of knives and he was like, Do you want to die by and she looked at

1573
01:39:56,780 --> 01:40:02,140
him and she said, Well, I hope that your mother has the same option or something along

1574
01:40:02,140 --> 01:40:02,860
those lines.

1575
01:40:03,100 --> 01:40:05,740
And he he kind of dropped and and left.

1576
01:40:05,900 --> 01:40:10,630
And that's how eventually they left her behind and she was able to get help and and get out

1577
01:40:10,630 --> 01:40:10,790
of there.

1578
01:40:11,110 --> 01:40:14,230
And she told you this, like, this is a person you met, told you this story.

1579
01:40:14,710 --> 01:40:14,950
Yes.

1580
01:40:15,590 --> 01:40:19,590
And and and so so w what's happening there?

1581
01:40:19,750 --> 01:40:25,110
That's a really fascinating uh there's something really uh quite profound that's

1582
01:40:25,110 --> 01:40:26,150
happening there.

1583
01:40:26,310 --> 01:40:31,910
Um as far as you know, uh kind of appealing to the better better angels of uh of our

1584
01:40:31,910 --> 01:40:32,550
nature.

1585
01:40:32,790 --> 01:40:38,700
Um, but I think there's so many things that we don't know yet as far as how

1586
01:40:38,700 --> 01:40:41,340
can we short circuit uh violent actors?

1587
01:40:41,420 --> 01:40:47,180
Like how how can we think in more um more intuitive ways, better

1588
01:40:47,180 --> 01:40:52,220
ways of of of doing so it with radicalization stuff, for instance, if it is envy, one of

1589
01:40:52,220 --> 01:40:56,860
the things that the envy system likes to do is put off its um it put its blame on other

1590
01:40:56,860 --> 01:40:57,100
people.

1591
01:40:57,310 --> 01:41:01,470
And what you see is in that literature, the folks that have been dealing with radicalized

1592
01:41:01,710 --> 01:41:07,070
individuals trying to get them to de-radicalize, is uh one of the core focuses is cognitive

1593
01:41:07,070 --> 01:41:12,430
behavioral therapy, which is getting the person to take responsibility for their position

1594
01:41:12,430 --> 01:41:13,710
in the social world and that.

1595
01:41:13,870 --> 01:41:19,060
So it's it's like disrupting the natural tendency of those systems to

1596
01:41:19,060 --> 01:41:23,540
operate, it might be as simple as that in order to revert.

1597
01:41:23,780 --> 01:41:26,820
So it's not about, you know, it's not about education, it's not about these other things,

1598
01:41:26,900 --> 01:41:32,820
but really having actual effects on on these cognitive systems that

1599
01:41:32,820 --> 01:41:37,060
are, you know, raising the costs, you know, lowering the benefits, all these different

1600
01:41:37,060 --> 01:41:41,780
things that I think are, you know, have really profound effects, and sometimes for very low

1601
01:41:41,780 --> 01:41:42,100
cost.

1602
01:41:42,340 --> 01:41:46,420
So um so yeah, I think that that that's a really optimistic uh thing.

1603
01:41:46,850 --> 01:41:51,250
That that particular event, I mean, you've you I mean uh since you told me that I've

1604
01:41:51,250 --> 01:41:53,410
thought about it often and you clearly do too.

1605
01:41:53,730 --> 01:41:55,970
Is that what is your take on what happened there?

1606
01:41:56,130 --> 01:42:00,290
Is it that the person it it sort of shifted them out of group-based thinking and I'm just

1607
01:42:00,290 --> 01:42:04,850
like, I am it just made it, I'm an individual doing this thing to this person.

1608
01:42:05,250 --> 01:42:06,930
Is that yeah?

1609
01:42:07,090 --> 01:42:10,130
I mean, I I I you know I thought about it a lot.

1610
01:42:10,210 --> 01:42:14,300
Yeah, and it's hard to say exactly, but it's something along those lines.

1611
01:42:14,460 --> 01:42:19,980
It's something it's something about reorienting, um kind of

1612
01:42:19,980 --> 01:42:21,420
disrupting the play.

1613
01:42:21,900 --> 01:42:25,420
Play for for technical term.

1614
01:42:25,500 --> 01:42:26,300
No, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1615
01:42:26,700 --> 01:42:30,860
Yeah, uh disrupting the narrative or the the the script that's being run.

1616
01:42:31,100 --> 01:42:31,260
Yeah.

1617
01:42:31,580 --> 01:42:36,690
Um and you know, and a lot of these things, the one thing that a lot of the uh very rarely

1618
01:42:36,690 --> 01:42:39,090
saw it spoken about in the text.

1619
01:42:39,330 --> 01:42:41,810
Most of these people that are doing these things are drunk.

1620
01:42:41,970 --> 01:42:47,890
Um most of them are so it takes a lot uh for a lot of these people to do these

1621
01:42:47,890 --> 01:42:49,170
really violent things.

1622
01:42:49,410 --> 01:42:53,570
Um and so one of the things I kept hearing over and over is every time these this group of

1623
01:42:53,570 --> 01:42:57,730
guys came around, they you know, they would get drunk first, and then they would do these

1624
01:42:57,730 --> 01:42:59,010
really horrible things.

1625
01:42:59,250 --> 01:43:05,000
Um so yeah, so I think even in the even in that circumstance, there's still like there's

1626
01:43:05,000 --> 01:43:09,720
this, you know, the different parts of our cognition that if you can find a way to appeal

1627
01:43:09,720 --> 01:43:15,640
to those, um you know, uh I'm I'm thinking of other examples from areas

1628
01:43:15,720 --> 01:43:18,040
um, but they're all really in poor taste.

1629
01:43:18,200 --> 01:43:23,240
But I think like, you know, uh, you know, if if you're it's the same idea like if you've

1630
01:43:23,240 --> 01:43:29,210
you know if uh you you're having sex and and your family walks in, suddenly that system

1631
01:43:29,210 --> 01:43:30,890
is is interrupted very quickly.

1632
01:43:31,130 --> 01:43:31,290
Right.

1633
01:43:31,370 --> 01:43:33,210
Um, and this other I mean that's a very poor.

1634
01:43:33,610 --> 01:43:36,810
Yeah, no, but it's a it's a good no, no, no, but no, but it's a very, it's very clear

1635
01:43:36,810 --> 01:43:37,530
example, right?

1636
01:43:37,610 --> 01:43:42,810
Of just and we and David and I talked about this in a previous episode of there's sometimes

1637
01:43:42,810 --> 01:43:48,170
uh an uh uh an attempt to sort of essentialize the inevitability of any outcome.

1638
01:43:48,410 --> 01:43:52,780
This is often, you know, just this is what came up in the context of sort of straw man

1639
01:43:52,940 --> 01:43:56,620
arguments against an evolutionary approach, where it's sort of it justifies like, you know,

1640
01:43:56,940 --> 01:43:58,620
infidelity in men or something, right?

1641
01:43:58,780 --> 01:44:03,340
And the idea, like what we talked about, is, you know, even if sexual variety is more about

1642
01:44:03,340 --> 01:44:07,100
positively valued in a male phenotype, there's other adaptations that play too.

1643
01:44:07,260 --> 01:44:10,060
And the thing that you just talked about is another example of that, right?

1644
01:44:10,140 --> 01:44:15,900
That there's there are other adaptations guiding other kinds of motivations and this

1645
01:44:15,900 --> 01:44:21,370
anecdote with this, you know, this this extremely I don't even know how to describe it.

1646
01:44:21,450 --> 01:44:25,210
I think it's stupid to try, I mean, to or to to to provide an adjective to it.

1647
01:44:25,370 --> 01:44:31,370
This anecdote um it it it shows the power of uh there are

1648
01:44:31,370 --> 01:44:37,130
multiple adaptations in this soldier, and she engaged another one and it changed what he

1649
01:44:37,130 --> 01:44:37,290
did.

1650
01:44:37,450 --> 01:44:37,770
Yeah.

1651
01:44:38,170 --> 01:44:38,490
Yeah.

1652
01:44:38,650 --> 01:44:38,890
Yeah.

1653
01:44:39,060 --> 01:44:42,660
And and you know, and we always think yeah, we always think it takes so much.

1654
01:44:42,900 --> 01:44:48,580
But maybe if we do uh maybe if we can figure this out more, then we can we can find these

1655
01:44:48,580 --> 01:44:53,300
lower cost uh solutions to to these really grand problems that we know that we face with

1656
01:44:53,300 --> 01:44:55,060
violence and and global conflict.

1657
01:44:55,380 --> 01:44:55,620
Yeah.

1658
01:44:55,860 --> 01:45:01,620
Um one question we often ask guests is is I think we've done it for everyone, is uh is

1659
01:45:01,620 --> 01:45:03,620
there something we should have asked you?

1660
01:45:05,810 --> 01:45:11,650
and then there's and I really and then it gets people uh uh um I I yeah people are

1661
01:45:11,810 --> 01:45:17,490
s don't know what to say and so I I usually fill the the time for a moment but David and I

1662
01:45:17,490 --> 01:45:18,930
need to work on our banter too.

1663
01:45:19,010 --> 01:45:22,610
Um we haven't yet this is not a good episode well also too when you're talking about

1664
01:45:22,610 --> 01:45:27,250
violence and conflict it's hard to have like silly banter on the side yeah yeah yeah um I

1665
01:45:27,250 --> 01:45:31,640
actually I face this a lot with presentations I give because back in the day when I was

1666
01:45:31,640 --> 01:45:36,360
working on morality and that it you know, you can put silly cartoons and you can put images

1667
01:45:36,360 --> 01:45:36,760
and things.

1668
01:45:36,840 --> 01:45:37,000
Right.

1669
01:45:37,160 --> 01:45:39,160
And now it just feels, you know, it feels so wrong.

1670
01:45:39,320 --> 01:45:43,480
And to so, you know, t to to make light of it that you try to steer completely away from

1671
01:45:43,480 --> 01:45:43,640
it.

1672
01:45:43,720 --> 01:45:48,280
But then you know those meetings where you're only like a conflict research meeting is can

1673
01:45:48,280 --> 01:45:49,000
be very dark.

1674
01:45:49,080 --> 01:45:49,720
Uh yeah.

1675
01:45:49,960 --> 01:45:53,960
But I would uh I think the only, you know, the only other thing that the other area of my

1676
01:45:53,960 --> 01:45:58,280
research that I've been working on is really like the more the policy stuff.

1677
01:45:58,520 --> 01:46:03,930
Um, you know, which which uh we've had a lot of luck working with uh international

1678
01:46:03,930 --> 01:46:04,570
lawyers.

1679
01:46:04,730 --> 01:46:08,650
Uh we've dabbled a bit on this with you know the ICRC and the UN.

1680
01:46:08,890 --> 01:46:13,770
And um, but I think that there's there's some really interesting stuff there that that is

1681
01:46:14,090 --> 01:46:18,010
um that social scientists are not really yet involved with.

1682
01:46:18,170 --> 01:46:23,640
Like, so for instance, um there's a lot of social scientists that are studying how

1683
01:46:24,600 --> 01:46:28,040
courtroom biases appear and what those look like.

1684
01:46:28,360 --> 01:46:33,480
So there's this whole literature, like which is a legal empirical literature that's based

1685
01:46:33,480 --> 01:46:34,520
out of Cornell.

1686
01:46:35,000 --> 01:46:40,440
However, there's not really social scientists looking at theorizing and

1687
01:46:40,440 --> 01:46:46,440
applying that to or running experiments that would be applicable

1688
01:46:46,440 --> 01:46:50,600
to legal issues outside of these very kind of constrained areas.

1689
01:46:50,760 --> 01:46:55,810
So I think that there's like so much ripe fruit there for social scientists to explore.

1690
01:46:55,890 --> 01:47:00,690
And a lot of lawyers that are very, very keen, uh, particularly a lot of them come from a

1691
01:47:00,690 --> 01:47:06,210
background in philosophy or social science, uh, or they they they many of the ones that

1692
01:47:06,210 --> 01:47:10,690
I've met love love learning and love talking about the social sciences.

1693
01:47:10,770 --> 01:47:16,530
So I think for social scientists um and in policy as well, um, we were I was just talking

1694
01:47:16,530 --> 01:47:22,280
with some colleagues um up at uh in Liverpool about this disconnect

1695
01:47:22,360 --> 01:47:27,880
also between what policymakers on that side, what they want, and what social scientists

1696
01:47:27,880 --> 01:47:28,360
provide.

1697
01:47:28,520 --> 01:47:31,640
And we're kind of we're we're both working in the dark.

1698
01:47:31,800 --> 01:47:35,960
So we do as social scientists, we research what we're passionate about oftentimes, and then

1699
01:47:35,960 --> 01:47:39,800
sometimes what our grant money comes from, which we may have differing levels of passion

1700
01:47:39,800 --> 01:47:40,120
about.

1701
01:47:40,520 --> 01:47:46,510
But on the policy side, a lot of times they have um you know questions that they want

1702
01:47:46,510 --> 01:47:49,150
answered, which we're kind of working in two different realms.

1703
01:47:49,230 --> 01:47:53,550
And besides like the occasional thing, like uh the EU might put up funding for certain

1704
01:47:53,550 --> 01:47:55,150
projects that are of policy relevance.

1705
01:47:55,310 --> 01:48:00,910
But besides that, there's very little connection between um practitioners, policymakers,

1706
01:48:01,070 --> 01:48:02,670
lawyers, and the social sciences.

1707
01:48:02,830 --> 01:48:08,240
And so I think um, you know, we we just started talking recently about how can we how can

1708
01:48:08,240 --> 01:48:11,840
we start thinking about solutions where it's like hey we really need answers in this

1709
01:48:11,840 --> 01:48:15,760
particular question or this thing that we're really dealing with um so that social

1710
01:48:15,760 --> 01:48:21,520
scientists can be more um that the relevance of the research is is more aligned with what's

1711
01:48:21,600 --> 01:48:22,960
what you know what's needed out there.

1712
01:48:23,280 --> 01:48:28,880
So is what you're saying that the this the connection between basic research

1713
01:48:29,370 --> 01:48:34,730
and the applied part, where there are people literally doing things like sentencing people

1714
01:48:34,730 --> 01:48:39,450
to death, making decisions about life and death, or just legal policy in general, that has

1715
01:48:39,450 --> 01:48:40,570
huge impacts.

1716
01:48:40,890 --> 01:48:46,330
The people who are doing the practical work are ready and willing and able and want

1717
01:48:46,650 --> 01:48:52,330
scientific input, but there's not currently enough dialogue or connection

1718
01:48:52,330 --> 01:48:55,530
between scientists and these applied people.

1719
01:48:55,930 --> 01:49:01,620
And therefore, even the questions that scientists are asking are not informed

1720
01:49:01,860 --> 01:49:05,700
by that there's this need, for example.

1721
01:49:05,860 --> 01:49:09,220
Um, and maybe also is that a fair characterization?

1722
01:49:09,780 --> 01:49:13,940
Yeah, I mean I just I just saw a colleague in the Netherlands the other day, and he said it

1723
01:49:13,940 --> 01:49:19,150
perfectly when he he works a lot with policymakers, and he said, uh, you know, I always

1724
01:49:19,150 --> 01:49:24,350
feel a bit half-hearted when I end my article and I try to draw policy conclusions from it.

1725
01:49:24,590 --> 01:49:29,630
Because if unless you're doing the research with the policy goal in mind, uh, then you're

1726
01:49:29,630 --> 01:49:32,830
just kind of saying, oh, this could apply in this way or that way.

1727
01:49:32,990 --> 01:49:36,750
Uh so so yeah, so the the the alignment doesn't really exist.

1728
01:49:36,830 --> 01:49:38,910
And it's a very p p peculiar thing.

1729
01:49:39,070 --> 01:49:42,750
I mean, granted, I don't want to give up all my freedom on research, but it's it's a

1730
01:49:42,750 --> 01:49:47,060
peculiar thing that there isn't much you know more of an alignment when most social

1731
01:49:47,140 --> 01:49:48,820
scientists are working for the public good.

1732
01:49:48,980 --> 01:49:54,580
And so so I think that there's something to be hopefully in the future to be uh

1733
01:49:54,820 --> 01:49:55,620
improved there.

1734
01:49:56,100 --> 01:49:57,060
Yeah, that that's right.

1735
01:49:57,140 --> 01:50:03,140
And and even I mean I I have met behavioral scientists who

1736
01:50:03,140 --> 01:50:05,860
are basically like, I don't know what to study.

1737
01:50:06,260 --> 01:50:06,500
Yeah.

1738
01:50:06,660 --> 01:50:06,820
Yeah.

1739
01:50:07,060 --> 01:50:07,700
No, that's true.

1740
01:50:07,940 --> 01:50:13,670
So I mean really it's it's really a tragedy in that respect of you've got really people

1741
01:50:13,670 --> 01:50:19,430
who really are doing real things that need answers to questions and they're not coordinated

1742
01:50:19,430 --> 01:50:23,030
or hooked up to people who have the means to answer those questions.

1743
01:50:23,350 --> 01:50:27,910
Um, and there's no there's nobody sort of like with the job.

1744
01:50:27,990 --> 01:50:29,670
It's like there's like a matchmaking problem.

1745
01:50:29,830 --> 01:50:35,640
We need like something like a matchmaking service that is hooking up applied and

1746
01:50:35,640 --> 01:50:40,520
basically we need a we need a tinder where you just say exactly swiping science tinder

1747
01:50:41,800 --> 01:50:46,920
uh um but but we come full circle to coordination issues and miscoordination in this regard

1748
01:50:48,440 --> 01:50:54,200
it's a queens exactly yes exactly um uh Michael where

1749
01:50:54,200 --> 01:50:57,210
can people find you right now Oh gosh.

1750
01:50:57,370 --> 01:51:02,650
Well, um I just started uh recently having my own website, so michaelmontgrief.com.

1751
01:51:02,730 --> 01:51:07,290
Uh so that links to all my other pages and profiles and that it's under construction, but

1752
01:51:07,290 --> 01:51:08,730
hopefully it will be improving.

1753
01:51:08,970 --> 01:51:10,970
Um yeah, so that's probably the best way at this point.

1754
01:51:11,370 --> 01:51:11,770
Okay, great.

1755
01:51:11,930 --> 01:51:16,970
And uh we don't usually do plugs on this, but I will say, like, if you are if what Michael

1756
01:51:16,970 --> 01:51:22,440
is saying uh whenever we post this publicly, um if if this interest this

1757
01:51:22,440 --> 01:51:27,480
research seems interesting or important to you, please also reach out to Michael if you're

1758
01:51:27,480 --> 01:51:30,280
interested in supporting this research.

1759
01:51:30,840 --> 01:51:36,120
Because like anything else, that doesn't fit squarely in a

1760
01:51:36,120 --> 01:51:38,280
pre-existing institutional structure.

1761
01:51:38,440 --> 01:51:44,250
I mean, the exact problem you're just described is part of uh the

1762
01:51:44,250 --> 01:51:49,850
reason why this kind of work doesn't exist is because there's not uh you know support

1763
01:51:50,170 --> 01:51:51,290
for this kind of work.

1764
01:51:51,450 --> 01:51:56,170
And so if anybody who's listening thinks it's important or useful or knows somebody who can

1765
01:51:56,170 --> 01:51:58,570
support it, um please reach out to Michael directly.

1766
01:51:58,890 --> 01:51:59,130
Thank you.

1767
01:51:59,210 --> 01:52:00,090
I will second that.

1768
01:52:00,250 --> 01:52:00,570
Yeah.

1769
01:52:01,770 --> 01:52:03,770
Um thank you so much for having me.

1770
01:52:04,090 --> 01:52:08,650
Yeah, no, it was a pleasure um and uh really appreciate you doing this work.

1771
01:52:08,810 --> 01:52:14,220
And I hope more um more people join you um doing this

1772
01:52:14,220 --> 01:52:18,540
bridging sort of social science and policy and law.

1773
01:52:18,620 --> 01:52:20,540
Um and we're actually gonna have some folks on.

1774
01:52:20,700 --> 01:52:25,740
I think one of our next guests will be Deb Lieberman, who is I love one of the other um

1775
01:52:26,060 --> 01:52:26,380
people.

1776
01:52:26,540 --> 01:52:30,060
I mean, honestly of the two, I I don't know, you and Deb, can you think of anyone else

1777
01:52:30,060 --> 01:52:31,740
who's sort of bridging EP and law?

1778
01:52:31,820 --> 01:52:33,500
I mean, I guess there's a few other folks.

1779
01:52:33,890 --> 01:52:35,650
Yeah, I think I think yeah, definitely.

1780
01:52:35,730 --> 01:52:37,250
I think that there's a handful of other things.

1781
01:52:37,490 --> 01:52:38,130
Yeah, maybe we should have to do that.

1782
01:52:38,370 --> 01:52:38,850
Of course, Keila.

1783
01:52:39,090 --> 01:52:39,490
Yeah, yeah.

1784
01:52:39,650 --> 01:52:39,890
Yeah.

1785
01:52:40,770 --> 01:52:42,050
Jamie's best friend.

1786
01:52:42,130 --> 01:52:47,730
Um but Michael, you know, uh yeah, thank you so much.

1787
01:52:47,810 --> 01:52:53,410
Um it was it was great to have you and uh wish you all the best luck for this um

1788
01:52:53,730 --> 01:52:54,930
really important work.

1789
01:52:55,240 --> 01:52:55,560
Thank you.

1790
01:52:55,720 --> 01:52:56,360
Thank you so much.

1791
01:53:00,920 --> 01:53:01,400
All right.

1792
01:53:01,640 --> 01:53:04,600
David, we have completed another episode.

1793
01:53:05,160 --> 01:53:06,040
Yes, we did.

1794
01:53:06,120 --> 01:53:07,880
Uh it was a a really good one.

1795
01:53:07,960 --> 01:53:11,400
Uh and if you agree that it was a good one, um, don't be shy about it.

1796
01:53:11,560 --> 01:53:16,760
Tell people on social media, tell a friend, leave us a kind review, support us on Patreon.

1797
01:53:17,430 --> 01:53:18,550
Um yeah.

1798
01:53:18,870 --> 01:53:24,470
Yeah, and we uh we really appreciate people uh you know talking about us on social media.

1799
01:53:24,710 --> 01:53:29,910
And uh please, you know, if we're if you like what we're doing, please tell a friend um

1800
01:53:29,990 --> 01:53:34,230
who's somebody who might be interested or somebody who might hate evolutionary psychology.

1801
01:53:34,390 --> 01:53:38,310
Um we'd love to have people listening who might be critics and we'd love to hear from

1802
01:53:38,310 --> 01:53:39,750
people and what they think.

1803
01:53:40,230 --> 01:53:40,950
Absolutely.

1804
01:53:41,140 --> 01:53:42,100
We'll see you next week.

1805
01:53:42,260 --> 01:53:42,740
Sounds good.

1806
01:53:42,820 --> 01:53:44,180
See you next week, David.