Terrorism, Drag Queens, and International Humanitarian Law with Michael Moncrieff
2025-07-08 12:00:00.000 +00:00

Welcome. Okay, you start. Uh well uh welcome. I you said welcome, so I figure I should do the same thing. Uh I'm David Pensov and uh I'm here with uh Dave Petrozowski. And what is this? What are we even doing here? Uh this is uh a podcast. Okay. Uh what what what is it called? Uh let me look it up. Well, actually, I don't know. Okay, oh, it's evolutionary psychology. Oh, it's evolutionary psychology, the podcast. Okay. Ah, that's what it is. Okay. And the tagline is actual evolutionary psychology by actual evolutionary psychologists. They must be around here somewhere. Yep. I think one of them might be in this episode. Okay. Well, enjoy. David, good to see you. Good to see you too, Dave. We have an awesome guest with us today.

We have uh Michael Monkrief, who is a scholar of international law, who has done field research in war-torn Croatia. Uh, we talk about so many fascinating topics. We talk about terrorism, interstate violence, uh, even drag queens. We do. Uh uh Yeah. And uh Michael has just incredible, fascinating stories across a wide range of human experiences, uh, works a lot with international um hu humanitarian lawyers uh in dealing with international armed conflict and terrorism. Um is a really wide ranging, interesting and important um person, and we just loved having him on. It was a lot of fun. I think you'll have a great time listening to it. Enjoy. So I found the record button. So we are now recording.

Michael. Michael and David. Good good to see you. Good to see you. Uh Michael, today we have Michael uh Moncree. Wait, did I say it right? Michael Moncrief. Yeah, yeah, you got it. Okay, great. I'm done. David, take over. Okay. Uh Michael, you uh have been working uh in the same vicinity as as the UN, is that correct? Yeah, yeah. Conjunction with with the UN and with international diplomacy? Yeah, so so I've been working on a project in Geneva. And when you're working on a project in Geneva, it's very hard not to constantly run into the international community when it comes to issues like human rights and international law. So yeah, so so formalistically, no, uh, but we've been doing a lot of uh discussions, a lot

of round tables, um, a lot of back and forth with uh folks from the UN and also the Red Cross. So it's kind of it's kind of one big uh incestual community out there with with international law, international policy. Uh so yeah, so it's it's it's been uh a great opportunity out there. I had a chance to oh sorry, go ahead, David. I just wanted to ask the question. Uh are you the only evolutionary psychologist in the international law, international uh relations space? As far as I know, there there I'm sure there's some of us lurking out there. But no, that as far as I know, yeah, and and you can definitely feel that when, you know, we're in meetings uh with folks from the UN and that, that there's there's very little EP

voice uh coming through in those meetings. So, but it's a really exciting opportunity because then you, you know, something kind of kind of simplistic ideas from EP can be really useful because you can say, hey, what about this? And it's like, wow, we never we never thought about that before. I'll give you, I can give you one quick example. I was um I was on a call that was uh discussing why militant groups uh refuse to comply sometimes with international law, with international humanitarian law, which is the law of war. And so the speaker was talking about religion and how religion might play a role. And just a simple question like, well, what what do you think is the fundamental motivational differences between these collectives?

And it kind of, you know, then you hit a silence. And so it's interesting too because like on that side, they don't really talk about motivational things in international law. There's been a lot of people that have said, oh, we'd love to pursue some of those ideas, uh, but but no one's really thinking that way yet. So yeah, so some some simple things that in the in the kind of the perspective that evolutionary psychologists take, take for granted oftentimes are just really useful for for thinking through those things. So that that's pretty that's pretty mind-boggling to me that a group of people who are trying to understand and predict and put a stop to terrorism, militant groups, uh violence, um, that they are essentially blind

to the motivations behind it. Yeah. I mean, I think it's still very, very prevalent kind of a standard social model, right? So um this idea that learning is a plays a big role in in militant groups is is definitely apparent from some of like uh the ICRC, the Red Cross, um, their kind of strategies towards getting groups to comply with uh international humanitarian law are oftentimes based on education. So a lot of how can we talk to these groups? Um and and there's some there's some hints of ideas about incentives in there. Um however, you know, which is kind of more of an institutional type approach. But for the most part, it's it's still maybe if we if we talk to them the right way, if we communicate this information in the right way, then we can get these armed actors to comply

with international law. So rather than a big misunderstanding, in other words, they just a big misunderity when it comes to like how best to approach it and and so so I wouldn't say that they're that they're that bad as thinking like oh all we have to do is is teach them in a classroom and they'll they'll behave better. Um however I do think that there's still a bit of a hint of like oh if we can just convince them that uh you know civilians if they protect them then uh they'll get benefits for instance um at the negotiation table. And first of all like you kind of start with this idea that every group wants to negotiate, which I think is also implicit in a lot of this stuff, especially with terrorism that I've

been working on. It's kind of this implicit thing, like terrorism is always for bargaining when um there might just be you know purely other uh other reasons, such as the destruction or or depowering of other groups. So yeah, so there's so there's a lot to unpack there, a lot that's not uh been really discussed yet in the literature. Well, um, uh ideology. So you and and we'll eventually get to uh who you are. Uh um, but but I'm really happy we're just like launching into this. Um so David has this paper on sort of ideologies and political ideologies. And um the idea is that um, I mean, David can do a better job than me, but that political ideologies are largely confabulation for some underlying sort of alliance thing.

And this is sort of one example of what one of the things we've talked about in this podcast so far, one of the themes has been that people, there's sort of strategic reasons underlying systems. Um, and for really important things like what you're talking about already that we're sort of launching into, you know, you really study groups in conflict, really important life or death decisions, and you're talking to people in these rooms. I mean, you and I was in a room with you where they drafted part of the Geneva Convention talking to international humanitarian law. IHL, I got it right. There's a lot of answer. My God. It's IHL and International Human Rights Law, IHRL. We're currently under IHRL, but if there was an armed conflict, we'd be under IHL.

So hey, I I I I've been practicing. I feel like I'm spreading the good word of international law. So I'm doing my part. international law is really interesting. Actually, since I went to that thing, I've been like learning a lot about it. And it's it's very important um with like lots of life or death consequences for like millions of people. So it's actually really good that somebody's doing the science. So thank you for doing it. But anyway, um back to the the point about um confabulation in ideology. One question for you, Michael, is um one of the things, like I said, there's been sort of a theme for this uh podcast, and I think it's just a theme of EpSec in general, is there's sort of you have to be humble and respect why people are doing

things. And there's sort of this history, especially in social sciences, of sort of patronizing to the people on the ground making decisions. And, you know, I think David's argument about political ideology and other arguments too. And I'm curious if you agree with this, Michael, is and I'm curious like how this plays out for you, the particular range of experiences you're having in the people you're talking to. But the this idea that sort of like, well, people are sort of dumb or naive. We need to tell them what to do, as opposed to like understand and sort of be an anthropologist about like, well, why are they doing this thing? And then figuring out from there what's the next step, as opposed to going in assuming that

it's simple or it's learning or it's ideology, as opposed to like there's just this basic evolved psychology that has like basic needs and people are roughly reasonable, even when they do terrible things. Like Yeah, I have I have so much to say on this that it would it it could take days. But I think I've seen it in both areas that I've worked in. So I've worked in counterterrorism now for um probably almost a decade. And then before that, working on ethnic violence. And you see it in both of these areas. So uh with with terrorism uh and radicalization particularly, um you see that there's this constant debate about ideology and what role, and it's coming back again. So and it's actually a really hot debate in the field right now.

So earlier models of radicalization were heavily ideological based. Like, you know, the focus there was on changing the message if you wanted to prevent someone from radicalizing or counteracting those messages and things. And a lot of the models of radicalization kind of put ideology at the core of this. And then you start to see problems along the way. More recently, there's been this idea of what the people have called like salad bar ideology, where you're getting these strange mix of like far-right actors kind of adopting positions that Islamists would would adopt, kind of neo-Jihadist positions. And all of a sudden, the folks in this field were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's happening here?

This doesn't make sense. And so then you you have kind of this drifting away of idea from ideology and people saying, well, maybe ideology doesn't matter at all. And there's also kind of a problem there because then it diminishes it so much to a point where it's like, okay, then what why is it always there? Why is it always coming back? So you have to account for it somehow. Um and and that's where the coalition building really, I think, and I align with you, David, a lot on this. But so now there's another pushback. Just last week, there was an article out by a terrorism radicalization scholar in the UK writing on behalf of the UK government saying, no, no, we really have to take ideology seriously.

Look, it's a it's a core driver of these behaviors. And so my take on this from what I've done in radicalization is that indeed it's more fundamental uh motivations that are kick starting this process. And and you can even tell this from like basic things in the literature, like people that radicalize oftentimes are really ignorant of the things that they're talking about until they get to a later stage when they actually start to adopt the ideology of the group. Um so so the question is what what are those things doing? And I think that's a good thing. So just to clarify, yeah. Sorry, uh so just to interject a bit. So what you're saying is that commitment to the group uh precedes ideology. That people are often committed to the group before they fully understand the doctrine or

or the or the beliefs justifying the group's existence. Yeah, it seems like uh this is kind of generally how it goes. The person ha is in some type of usually depressed state, right? So that there's something that their their life's not quite going the way that they want it to. And this is what like early descriptive models of radicalization always showed. And then they start looking for what explains that that state that they're in. And oftentimes then they're in in kind of our modern day uh ecology, social ecologies, you have all this information about ideologies and that. And I I like to think of them as like expla explanation packages. Explain, you know, so it's like the the the person hits upon these things and says, Oh,

that that's that's a good explanation for what I'm I'm I'm experiencing, and that aligns with me. And it helps them identify, so it has a coordinational element, I think, you know, helps them, and this is much of your work, helps them identify those actors that are on their side and that see the world the same way. It helps them justify and explain to others, and I think that that's a really important role that's like still under researched is like I have a very strong feeling that hitting upon the right justifications greenlights a lot of those harmful um behaviors. So um so I think but but the but the fact is yeah these have uh these lower the cost of action and increase the benefits of action, but I don't think that they're the the core um

uh kind of organizational functional thing that's happening during radicalization. So they're not they're not the prime they play a role, certainly. Yeah, exactly. So that's a really good question. So I I uh start my talk by usually recently by saying no one really knows. Um so and there's in fact a whole literature on what is radicalization, and uh it's really messy. Essentially, it's radicalization has been defined as, and it has an ideology kind of in the common definition, is the adoption of an ideology that prepares uh individuals for collective action towards violence. So it's this uh changing of ideas, of ideologies and beliefs uh in favor of a group toward collective action is kind of the the first kind of um idea.

But the the fact is that there's more written on no one knows what this is. So um uh myself and a colleague, we looked at it from a slightly different perspective and we tried to see like what's actually happening because what is really clear is that there is like a functional change. So there's a systematic change in um perception, in uh memory, in planning, all these different things that are kind of systematic throughout those individuals you look at. So there must be some kind of orchestrational organizing process for this. And you know, if you look towards the EP literature and John and Lita's work, you see, you know, that emotions play a prime role here. And so me and my colleague looked at this and we said, what could be playing the prime

role? And we went through many different examples of different types of things, and we finally settled on envy as this emotional system that we think if you look at the envy literature that's out there, it matches very, very tightly with what with what's happening uh during radicalization as far as all these different um changes that the person's going through. And it it matches the very essence of of kind of radicalization, which is this depressed state. You have a depressed status individual uh looking at the world around them and saying, okay, how can I, how can I eliminate my competition? What can I do to bring them down to my level? And then, you know, motivating the actions to do so, whether those are, you know, really

violent actions or whether that's joining a militant organization to support them in doing violent actions. But when we kind of conceptualize radicalization, we actually used more of a game theoretic approach, which is just looking at how do people think about their relationships with others? And we see that that's also changing. And so there's kind of two things: there's like a risk preference change where it's like we have to do this now. Uh, everyone should join us because if we don't do this thing now, then we're all gonna we're not gonna be here tomorrow. So there's an action preference, this risk uh taking on really risky actions that have to be done now. Um, and there's also um kind of changes in how they see others, So they see their social

interactions as changing. Those that aren't participating are seen as like free riding or skirting. Whereas those that are signing up with them, there's a lot of gratitude flowing towards those individuals. And so what's really interesting here is we think that kind of game theoretically, what they're what they're trying to advertise is that they're playing this really weird game-theoretic game that's so weird that they actually it's not studied very much because it the only optimal outcome is cooperation, which is the harmony game. And so what you're seeing here is like ever these agents are acting as if they're playing this ultra cooperative game that usually only happens, like, let's say, if your group's

being attacked in a real warfare, you'd all the you know the best coordinational thing is to come together and defend yourself. And that's kind of how they're they're talking about all these uh situations. So I'll stop there because I can I could go on. Yeah, it it sounds like I mean, I'm imagining obviously all this science starts with a lot of assumptions or imagined scenarios. And what I'm hearing is this this is sort of all of these concepts are built for sort of some kid on the internet who sort of you know is living in like somewhere, some somewhere uh sort of relatively anonymous, goes online and gets radicalized and like does some violent event. That's a different scenario than state-level violence or conflict.

And I know you looked at that too in your uh really interesting like history of being a researcher of violence. And I know you looked at like ethnic conflict in uh Central Europe. Um, I'm curious, uh, maybe and this is a segue sort of into you uh too um because i think you know we we I I love how we just like delved right into the content. But um so you've been you have experiences studying ethnic violence too. Can you talk a little bit about that and maybe either go right into that or like how did you arrive there? I mean you've told me crazy stories that maybe you know if you feel comfortable repeating or not um but how how did you get into like how do how do you find yourself studying ethnic conflict uh in a way that you know you're really kind of there?

Yeah, um so so my early my my early passions were really um on uh religion, uh evolution of religion, uh evolution of morality that kind of comes along with that territory, uh, and conflict. And so those are kind of all married together during periods of ethnic conflict. And so, yeah, so I was in uh grad school, I I was gravitating towards these areas. And um as I was moving towards that direction, I was particularly really interested in like what happens to people's moral reasoning during periods of rising ethnic conflict. Um and so uh the former Yugoslavia provided like a really beautiful um kind of social, uh natural social experiment to to go do interviews and to do uh cognitive experiments out

there. When was this? Um to ch uh so this would be uh two oh my gosh, a decade ago, which is which is wild. Uh so yeah, so uh about twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen I was out in uh along the coast of Croatia and also in the uh kind of rural villages that uh are from the coast towards Bosnia. So Zadar to Benkovetsk. And um yeah, and so what we were really interested in is uh and inspired by too, which I I've I've been teaching a class and I tell my students, and I think uh David, we talked about this when I saw you about how like coordination is such a an incredible thing, but no one notices it's there. And I mean th I there's been beautiful research here uh by Thomas and Pinker and and their crew.

And I I saw I think Pinker's working on a new book to come out this fall that's also dealing with coordination. So I'm super excited about that. But um but it's one of those things that we just take for granted. And it's and I I I was kind of beating my students over the head with it recently. Yeah, what were you going to say? Yes. Uh I I think it might be worthwhile for people who might not be privy to this stuff what coordination means, uh, what what common knowledge means, why why this is the water we swim, why, why it's underrated. Yeah. So I think I'll start with why it's underrated. It comes so naturally to us that it's just like we're completely blind to the fact that this is what's happening around us all the time.

Um but the simplest kind of uh coordinational game is just trying to uh align individuals towards the same goal, and and that's it. That I mean, you're trying to uh achieve a state of kind of common knowledge, which is this idea that, you know, I know that this other person knows that I'm willing to engage in this action, and vice versa, kind of uh odd in infinitum. And I'll give you like a great example of this that I love using in my classes, is um the fall of the Soviet Union in Poland. So there's this great video, it's very short online, where this guy is discussing how uh they would go around and put these radio transponders from Radio Free Europe throughout people's homes. And they wouldn't tell those individuals that they had these transponders or not because

they wanted them to have deniability. So they would kind of hide them in people's homes and everything. And so one night, you know, all these people were f were frustrated and fed up with the system. And one night um they said, hey, if everyone listening would go on to their lights and flick them on and off. And so what happened is you saw all these lights flicking on and off throughout the city. And within a couple days after, you you had these mass protests and everything. And what it did was everyone had their kind of private knowledge uh to themselves, but they didn't know that everyone else also had the same inclination to let let's get rid of this government. Um, until you you saw these kind of coordinational signals out there, which helps everyone

kind of converge and provides that recursive knowledge state of, oh, I know that they know that I know, and vice versa. That's fascinating. So so this was mere this was turning on and off one's lights. Yeah. This served as a signal. This served as a signal that I am unhappy with the regime. And I'm not alone. And it's that other people. Yeah. And this is why, and this is I mean, Michael, you might know this history better, but like my when I teach like uh even intro-syc, it's sort of like one of the reasons why like dictators crack down on protests that are seen even very small is this concern that it it can create common knowledge of if everybody's miserable but isolated, nobody knows how many

of us there are. But the second that other people say oh there's other people like even the classic Solomon Ash studies, which actually do replicate, as I understand, this thing of, you know, so they show people, they bring people into this room, and there's just like three lines, and one of them is obviously like shorter than the other ones. And the the people who are participating in the study think all of the people sitting next to them are all participants, but they're actually in in in cahoots uh with the experimenter. And they say the wrong line. And the question is, what will the actual participant do? Will they conform? And sort of remarkable levels of conformity one gets. I mean, it's not 100%, but it's still like pretty high, you know, it's like 30% or

something, even more. And then depending on on, but you don't get conformity if at least just one other person doesn't agree. So and it doesn't, you know, it's so it's really just the fact that I'm alone versus everybody else. And if you have at least one other person, that makes a huge difference. It's like the dam is broken. Do you do you think that the flicking on and off of the light, do you think the seeming disconnect from the content of I'm unhappy with the regime is a feature and not a bug, in the sense that if you're trying to coordinate with other people that you're uh opposed to the regime, um It is very risky for you to say that out loud in a conspicuous way. I hate the regime. You might get imprisoned or executed as a dissident.

So people have to somehow find a way to coordinate and create common knowledge that they're on the same team against the regime without those signals getting picked up on by the authorities. And so the beauty of this signal of turning on and off one's lights uh i is that its disconnect from the content is is a design feature and that it makes it difficult for the authorities to to catch on to what is being done. Would would you agree with that assessment? Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, um this is this is just a really cool example because it it really gets you to to to to conceive of this. But there's all sorts of interesting things in this area that are done with cost and benefits, how those influence individuals.

Even something as simple as, I know there's some research like sharing the same locality or accent can actually shift your ability to coordinate a bit better. And also people that are in relationships very long periods of time have much greater ease of coordination with tasks than that. So it's a really cool thing that our mind is is picking up here, but I I totally agree with you uh that yeah, indeed, it's it's it's because uh there's that ability still for plausible deniability uh that comes into this. Uh and and so you know, Pinker's work where uh this kind of underlies a lot of things, like you know, he always talks about would you like to come up and see my etchings? And of course, this kind of indirect speech.

Yeah. So so there's I mean it, but it it's it's so pervasive that my students in my uh a recent uh political science class that I taught, I kind of I I didn't realize but I was kind of beating them over the head with it every every couple classes because I was like, guys, look, this is a coordinational s like issue right here. Like, all right, all right, coordination again. Um but it but it's really it's really fascinating because like our entire global economy works off coordination. Um you know that's why when when people talk about cryptocurrencies, people are like, well there's no there's no value there. What's you know and it's really hard to explain to people that coordinational value is a

value in itself. And so you know, Hardin did a bunch of work here where he showed that you know there's exchange value from coordination, that there's uh you know collective power that comes from coordination. So all these things are like crucially important, uh, particularly in in this the startup of uh mass conflict, is it's really a coordinational thing, and then it becomes more of a cooperative endeavor as it builds. Um but yeah. But we got we are distracted from the light flicking to Croatia. Yeah. I got distracted. No, it's great. No, no, no. It's it's really great. I mean, this is also one of the reasons why we're doing this podcast is to just get uh people a feel of what it's like, what people just like discussing science is like, and this

is uh what it is like. But I want to get us back so get us back to Croatia and and what you're doing there and what you're experiencing, Yeah. So so in Croatia what I was really looking for is um you know, so there's there's some uh theories of morality uh that um that put coordination as as kind of a centerpiece. Um so it's this idea that, you know, I'm I'm willing to give up certain behaviors as so long as other people coordinate on those same actions. Um and in in doing so we all, you know, kind of benefit. We we we might give up and maybe we'll be, you know, uh a bit uh um hypocritical at at times, but we we kind of give up um we take on some cost for for kind of a wider benefit. So this so there's without getting too much into it, there's all these coordinational

theories of morality. And so what we were looking at in in in you know the former Yugoslav is could there be differences? What you oftentimes see with ethnic violence in particular is that it tends to start in rural communities and move to more urban environments. And I'm not talking about like massively urban environments, but urban environments of a couple hundred thousand, hundred thousand people a lot of times. But it really starts in oftentimes the initial kind of sparks start in rural communities. And so we were thinking, you know, one of the things that you have is a difference between rural and urban communities is this heightened sense of pre-existing coordination. So people um have frequent encounters with each other, they know each other very, very

well, they spy on each other, they gossip. So that there's a lot of expectations there. And so we were wondering, uh indeed you see these moral differences too, right? Where there's moral m higher moral condemnation um in in kind of rural communities versus these urban communities. So we were looking at does coordination play a role? And we we kind of operationalize that as what do you think your neighbor would do in this circumstance? How would they think about this? And you know, urban environments, people don't know their neighbors as much. Or they, you know, they might have a few pools of people, their work colleagues, their friends, but it's not these extensive networks that exist, uh, these impicated kind of

overlapping networks that exist in these rural communities. Yeah. And so you're going to so you so like you're actually going to these communities and talking to people face to face. Is that right? Yeah. And so yeah, so we spent a lot of time uh in the urban and rural communities doing interviews. We did about 60, I think, interviews. Um this is about the history of this conflict that they had just gone through relatively recently. Yeah, yeah. So I mean the the conflict officially ended in nineteen ninety five. Um however uh you know, as with any conflict it lingers and the the the after effects linger for a very long time. And the I mean the memories are still extremely fresh in all those regions if you go down

there, uh especially to rural communities that were the hardest hit. Um, you know, the memories were yesterday of of losing a loved one or of of losing your home or et cetera et cetera these terrible things uh and can just just just to like I mean just like the the human experience I mean in a rural community is it that there were people that they knew or it was like people that were distant but that came that were actually doing the harm to them both um so yeah so uh there were there were some kind of the early initiation in that region was uh some um kind of paramilitants from Serbia that came in and started stirring up trouble. But once the war got fully on way, uh underway, it was very much like uh you know, when

talking with participants, it was it was like, Oh, I you know, I knew these these this group of guys since you know I was I was uh I knew them since they were children. And now they're you know, and and then um you know, one interview in particular, I remember she said, you know, this particular uh group uh would come to her and they would show up at her house and demand things, demand that she cook for them. Um and and and then they ended up actually um killing her husband in the end. And so so yeah, so there was a lot it was a lot of personal relationships with these people. And that that also is why it's so uh in particular in every ethnic conflict, it's so striking like how personal these relationships can be and how quickly they can, like the

moral sphere shrinks. And so what we were doing is looking at what role does coordination play? If you have heightened coordination in these places, could you necessarily shift to a new sort of set of kind of moral uh rules uh very quickly, which you have more difficulty doing in in an urban environment or a less coordinated, uh pre-existing coordinated environment. Um And so we think uh part of that parts a a part of plays a partial role, excuse me, in this shift towards violence that you see um in those communities. So we were looking at that and also some of the the narratives and looking at you know the the field of coalitional psychology is quite uh new still, and this is 10 years ago. Um and so we were looking at do these narratives uh support some of the initial predictions

uh from the field of uh you know coalitional psychology with an EP? What was that like? Because you know, we had an anthropologist. Actually, and I we can maybe know about your background, because I don't know if you're it was it was in anthropology or psychology or both. Yeah, I was in uh psychology early on and I worked doing like cognition and experiments with um human robotic interactions and like these very technical experimental uh designs. And then I went to anthropology, social anthropology later on. Yeah, because I mean you're you're what was that like just like either scientifically or personally to like go to this place, hear these stories. Um and this is not an abstraction. And I mean there's two ways to think about it.

One is um, you know, one thing I like about Evpsy is that I feel like it it it sort of rises to meet all the wonderful and horrible things humans are capable of, right? Like it's not sort of bullshitty to to to genuflect towards David. Like it's just sort of like the as good or bad or mundane or out, you know, remarkable in both good and bad ways people ever get, you know, I think like there's there's sort of evolutionarily informed theories of that. So um one one question was sort of like even though that's true, Did it feel like, oh wow, like this is real? This is like real people had horrible experiences, and like the science isn't adequate to meet the richness and horror of these experiences, um, or not?

Maybe you were like, Oh no, this all fits whatever. And then the other question is so that's a scientific question, and then the the personal question was sort of like, I don't, I mean, not everybody gets to experience that, And I don't know if that changes you or the way you think. And it I don't know if you carry that experience forward. I would imagine it's got to have an impact on you. I'm just curious how that has changed you as a person or scientifically. Yeah. Um, I think so. I'll I'll try to address there's so many things that come to mind. So the first one, and it's a very um mundane one, is when you take you know, the first time you go to some rural community and you have like you've been

working on this research for for you know over a year now. You've got all these excellent translations of like the best, you know, you try to look for the best measures, and one of the ones that I was using was this measure of ethnic affiliation. And and it was supposed to be like the best one used in the world, uh, you know, thousands of articles published on it. And um take it to this rural community and and the people are filling it out around a kitchen table, and the one just starts laughing. And she's like, What the hell does this even mean? This is so stupid. And then they're all talking about it. And they're all like mocking the the scale. And when you look at it and you you you're looking at it from their perspective, you're

like, Yeah, this doesn't match. This doesn't, this doesn't work here. So I think from a very like though that was the initial thing that was like, Oh, the benefit of doing field work is, you know, you you see, does this work, does it not? And then as far as the what was really interesting is when we first arrived, we we were starting to kind of organize interviews, and it took it took a long time. I was there almost a year. It took a long time to get from our early kind of gatekeepers in these communities to actually speaking with people that had been really, really affected by the war. And that only came towards probably the end of the of the time that I was there. And that's when it was like all of the most horrific uh stories and

experiences were kind of uh put together at once. Um, and I remember uh in one particular interview it was very, very difficult. It was a lady that um, you know, had just experienced every hardship of the war, lost her husband, uh, lost her um her brother and her nephew in front of her, had watched that happen, went went to uh testify for for war crimes. And just listening to her experience and also having a colleague of mine just break down crying. And that yeah, that of obviously like will always last with me. And it and it it shows you the, you know, you don't always see the the importance of social science research because it's so disconnected. And you you really hope to make some type of impact, even if it's really, really tiny.

So th those those experiences were definitely. And it was during that time too where what was really kind of bizarre to me is toward the end of the time I was out there was when um here in Orlando, where I'm at right now, was the uh the Pulse nightclub uh kind of massacre uh that killed almost 50 individuals. And uh a lot of my friends worked there as as bartenders and other and so I came back to Orlando after um for a short visit, and I was meeting people that had been there that night and listening to their stories, and I was like, oh my God, this sounds just like what I've been listening to in Croatia. Um and so there's a there's also a lot of um similarities in that regard, you know, and that that really hit home because I was like, wow, it really uh even reinforced, gave me

even a different perspective on the people I was talking to out there and really living through uh in a much fresher way, you know, what what they had been through. So yeah, so I mean uh that kind of work is is really and it also just teaches you so much being in a place, you get a you get this you know, you you understand why the great uh ethnographers uh were so interesting for the data that they produce, because it's like you you get such an experience of being in a place. You get to understand the the quirks and the nuances and how people socially organize and that that you just can't get through, you know, reading or you know, or trying to hypothesize your way through that. So um one of the themes of this has been also like listening to people who haven't

been heard. Um and I feel like that's sort of m uh a a a common thing through your uh through some of your work. I remember you you also told me there's like you've done research on like stonewall or you is it have you done research on stonewall or was this just things you looked at? No, no, so uh so I did I did a bunch uh I did uh one article that uh has done really well and it was on the uh uh the kind of the natural emergence of the drag queen phenomenon and and what led to that. And it was just like the right type of social constraints in the gay community um that we think kind of led to the opening up of this pathway towards status building, And that was one way of adopting this really aggressive outward persona that was like walking

through the streets. We're talking like 1930s, 1940s, 1950s in women's clothing, and and uh you know, standing up and and being so formidable as a take-on that challenge. And a lot of these individuals uh in its early history were really um kind of down and out characters in the gay community. They either were living on the streets, had very little money, they were kicked out of their families' homes, etc., detached from their social connections, you know, had very little money, little uh little kind of attractiveness. So that was one way of adopting this persona and becoming this fighter for for these communities was one way to build status if you were good enough. Uh and that's we think is kind of what the the initiation, which again ties back into

Stonewall and everything there. Um yeah, so so it was a really fascinating uh history in that regard. So the idea is that, and I think this is I'm just parroting what you've told me in the past, but the idea is that it was such a high cost thing to do. Um, but it was it was sort of um you are willing to uh these these people who were down and out did this thing. It was sort of a um uh th they they sort of uh v basically proverbial put a target on their back for the group in some sense. Is that correct? Yeah. And it's uh it's funny actually how it came about. Um I was uh my colleague, uh a good friend of mine, uh Matthew Martinez, he was working on his dissertation work, and uh he was looking at uh these uh self harm

practices around the world. Um, particularly, he was looking in Mauritius at the time, and but but really kind of globally. You see in particular social environments that there's these practices like Typusum, which is in Mauritius, where people will put hooks in their backs and like be pulled down the street. In fact, so bad it got it it it kind of ratcheted up over time that the government had to put uh kibosh on some of the more extreme practices. But they uh he was working on um a model of that, which is a costly signaling model, which suggests that hey, these are low status individuals by doing these really um uh kind of grotesque uh but formidable enhancing displays to others that they can gain some type of

uh status and credit in the community. And as we were we were in a meeting about it, and I was like, wow, this really reminds me of drag queens. And it was like from that moment where we were like, oh, wait a second, you know, what let's see what we can go and do with this. And indeed, when you start to map out, it was right when the pressure on the gay community was building, um, is when you see the emergence of these individuals. And they always are kind of coming from this this lower status position. And then uh only a few really make it. Even today within that community, it's hyper competitive. Um, and they which I I I'll say one one side note. I wouldn't say that the dynamics of today are the same thing that our paper describes.

I think now it's become much more of a theatrics and much more of a a competitive element that's a taken on, which is kind of cool because it's cultural evolution at work right there. But uh but yeah, but when it really started to emerge, you know, 1950s, 1960s, one of the earliest ethnographic accounts was from a University of Michigan um grad student, I think she was at the time, where she went around with uh drag queen through the streets of Detroit. And she wouldn't, she said in one part of the book that she didn't want to walk near her because she thought she was going to get you know the crap beat out of her. So you can see like the intense uh pressure and violence that was put towards these

individuals. And by doing so, and also it's still part of the persona today, which is to be fierce, to be uh aggressive in that. But it's really interesting how that that pathway kind of emerged from these just exact social uh constraints. And also note that these individuals just couldn't leave. Like, you know, the community, once you join it during those periods like you had no other social status um opportunities outside that because if you're you know if you're gay you can't obviously unless you're gonna go back in the closet, you know, succeed in other places. Uh so yeah, so it's the just the r the right kind of constraints that can emerge and and you know make these pathways towards status emerge.

It's a really lovely example of looking at phenomena in the world from this perspective. And like to your credit, Michael, figuring out sort of how can I deduce sort of what's going on in a way that is uh explanatory, call you know, and and just lovely in the sense of, Oh, yeah, no, I see the deep elements of adaptations, cognitive mechanisms, human nature, however we want to talk about it, in this phenomenon to like as a one way to understand it. Yeah, yeah. And I think the the one thing that you know is interesting is you see the proximate psychology working. Like there's no fitness payoff here. Right. Um and so um so that's also really interesting. Because a lot of the other things that we tend to think of as status enhancing, we tend to

think of, oh, you can measure the reproductive payoff at the end. Um but here, you know, it's the system is the proximate psychology is working. Uh and and so that's detached from that ultimate outcome. Yeah, super cool. So I wanna uh ask you a question that we've asked all uh I think all of our guests. Um so uh you're in this field of coalitional psychology, ethnic conflict, terrorism, wh whatever you want to call it. Um so we got a bit of your origin story there. Uh but we didn't get your origin story for why you think that evolutionary reasoning is useful here as a lens. So what f brought you into the realm of evolutionary psychology, evolutionary thinking, out of all the perspectives to take on these incredibly important issues, why choose the

evolutionary perspective? Um okay, so so diving back into my former life, uh so I before I got into psychology or anything, I um from from very young age, I was about twelve, thirteen at the time, I started working like this is the weird part about growing up in Florida, right? You know, you see like the Tiger King and everything. That was kind of like part of my life when I was younger. So I worked uh at a lot of zoos and aquariums and uh with wildlife uh organizations when I was young, volunteering at first, and then when I was 14 I got my first positions as an employee. Um and kind of I had this whole career before um going into the social sciences of working with uh sh oh my gosh, uh sharks, dolphins, alligators, snakes,

birds of prey. Um and so it was really from those kind of biological origins that I was really interested in, like, oh, well, you know, what drives animal behavior? And um and over that kind of naturally over time, um, I think you know, when you especially when you're going through high school and then uh you know early college years, you start to think more uh about people around you. And you're like, okay, why do these people behave that way? So I think like the earliest influences on my thinking in this way were like Eo Wilson's like early, early works and everything, and then of course Lita and John's. Um and and the one thing that I was when I got into more in psychology, the initial thing

was like, okay, but why? Like I was so frustrated by this why question, which is like, you know, I I remember taking a personality theory course and kind of memorizing the 30-sum theories of personality. And I was always like, but why, like, why did why, even if any of these are correct, which you know, I have a lot of skepticism. Um, why? Like there was always that why, that nagging why question. And I think that's when, like, um, yeah, I mean, all you know, all the greats, bus, um, And it finally provided uh really satisfying answers to that why question. And now I'm like, now now that I've been working in this framework for so many you know, many years, I I can't imagine not having that that foundational

piece because it's always like where I start any question is um even something that's that's very like I'll give you a quick example. I've been working on um this issue of in um that they're worried about in human rights law, which is this shifting towards uh more responsive policing activities and counterterrorism, towards more preemptive. Uh what they call like the pre crime space, and the in the they they uh have these administrative measures that are very common now and throughout Europe, the UK, France, um, even Switzerland's adopted them now, which is essentially like pre-crime measures, like if they suspect you of potentially becoming a terrorist or affiliating with anyone that's suspicious, they can uh the executive can put these

restrictions on you. And because oftentimes the human rights issue comes up here, is because they're executive uh orders and not judicial ones, there's no recourse for getting these taken away. That's that's very satisfying in most uh circumstances. Anyways, so so you know, I was given this kind of topic. We want to see why is this shifting this way? Why is there more and so immediately I kind of you know go back to the evolutionary perspective and I say, okay, well, what kind of threat does this present? And I think terrorism in particular presents a very interesting thing. Like I have a paper that talks about this, is that I think it's uh what the mind is keen to detect here, and it's using cues to detect it, is something that is really an all-out, all

or nothing coalitional threat. And that's the kind of thing that these actors hit upon those cues, even though they're sometimes single or just a small group of actors. If you can do these things that signal to others that you're going to come for the whole collective, Like you're going to indiscriminately target them. You're going to do so with stealth and all these other things and not, you know, announce when you're when you're going to do these things. If you don't target the bargaining aggression wing, like the military, but you target the civilians. All these cues that traditionally throughout human history would have indicated that there was another group coming to eliminate your group.

So you better be on high alert and you better. And what you see is all these downstream responses, right? These precautionary responses that we would expect. And so that was kind of the perspective I started taking there. And I have some experimental data that I haven't published yet. I'm a bit bad backlogged. But essentially, what I was able to show is indeed when you present these cues to people that show that this is an uh you kind of manipulate little features of these cues, you can uh get people much more willing to take precautionary responses and approve of administrative actions rather than wanting to wait and investigate and do these things, which has ultimately, if you want to tie it back to policy, has these really important

ramifications for human rights and things like that. So sometimes highlighting those things can help people think through the problem uh easier and how to combat it. And also just knowing the foundational psychology there, what's causing that to be to be the case. So without evolutionary psychology, I I yeah definitely couldn't I couldn't you know think in that regard and I think that's what I think John Tube said it uh you know something about having superpowers uh with EP and I really think that I think you know you can be in a room with a bunch of people but if they don't um they don't have at least a flavor of that perspective um there's then there's easy low-hanging fruit to to go after to say

hey look guys there there's a bigger picture here. Um, I wanna uh chime in on that bit about terrorism, because that really piques my interest. I'm sure it piques a lot of people's interests. Uh terrorism is extremely uh evocative to the human mind. Uh we can't stop paying attention to it as a society, despite the fact that objectively terrorism does not pose a very significant threat to us as individuals. The number of people who die from car accidents or heart attacks or you know any other cause of deaths you go through, terrorism is going to be at the bottom of the list. And yet the outsized emotional response it has on us is enormously influential. I mean it it was uh the main cause are arguably of uh the Iraq war.

Um this was you know extremely expensive both in time and resources. Um one of the biggest uh foreign policy blunders uh in a in a long time, uh arguably, um, all caused by uh a terrorist attack which claimed the lives of you know far fewer people than than most other causes of death. So is is your argument that our outsized response to terrorism is a kind of evolutionary mismatch? That in ancestral environments, uh seeing these kinds of attacks, this kinds of dam this kind of damage, uh would have been a reliable cue of a coalitional threat that we needed to take action against uh as soon as possible and as uh uh uh swiftly and and aggressively as possible. Um but in the modern environment, when we live in these mass societies, these cues are

no longer accurate. That uh that um we're responding uh uh to these attacks uh with our Stone Age minds um when we sh when we should be responding with our modern minds. Is that the argument or or is it something else? No, no, I think uh uh very much so. Um I think that there's uh I'm always a bit hesitant to to to I don't know why. There there's something that I think it's because it's used so often, that mismatch idea, that I tend to be a little precautious when I like go as far as that. But yeah, in a sense. But I think there's a lot more to be said here. So it's funny that that paper of mine is like the least read. And I think I I I was I think I told you both at some point that I was joking that I think

I wrote it for myself because uh the the the folks in the terrorism field um they see the the evolutionary psych side and I think they get a little uh turned off by it. And the folks in Evolutionary Psych don't know the full range of the argument that's happening in the field of terrorism to really know the nuance of what I'm trying to talk to. So just a couple things with that. I think that what's really interesting is you see that all, and this has been a debate now pre-9-11, where there's never a satisfying definition of terrorism. And so this is like a big debate in all in the legal field and the policy field. And essentially everyone's like, we somebody will say, well, this is the definitive

definition, and someone will say, no, it's not, because it doesn't include this, and you know, and it goes back and forth. Um, and so one of the things that I was trying to show there, um, which everything kind of comes together in this picture, is the fact that um if these are kind of representational systems, right? And individuals have different social positions. And so for instance, this is always the old saying, you know, one person's freedom fighters, another's terrorist kind of thing, which is crude, but it kind of gets you this idea that the different uh positions, social positions of the agents doing the evaluation will matter a lot to whether those systems are triggered or not. And so if one of the things I think is that there's a lot of representational

mismatch. There's there's not a very high degree of uh coordination amongst minds when it comes to what is terrorism, um, because some acts hit on certain cues. Also, you have the social position of the person doing the evaluation, um, and then another uh number of other things that I kind of talk about in the article. Um, But there's this mismatch, and I think that that's probably one of the reasons why it's because terrorism hits on certain cues. And actually, when you ask people in experiments, is this terrorism or not? People do, when you give them a bunch of cues, they actually say, Oh, yeah, that's definitely terrorism. And when you degrade those cues, they're much less likely to say that that's terrorism.

They might say, oh, that's mass shooting and things like that. So there is something interesting going on that you can see that's like this representation thing that's happening. And so yeah, so there's but but then also it comes together with the precautionary idea, too, is that once those things are hit upon, then you get this full-blown precautionary response. So it kind of brings together a number of elements, which is the representation thing, why we lack a good solid definition, which by the way, when I was finishing the paper, I said, well, if this is much closer to uh what's happening with something like genocide, there should be less arguments about genocide because it's properly hitting a lot of these cues.

And indeed, when you go look, there's much less argumentation about a definition of genocide. There's still arguments about what constitutes or doesn't, and what politics, and that's again comes down to the political agent that's doing that evaluation. But but uh but uh terrorism has a much uh much more uh much more ambiguity in this regard. 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 really fun paper to work on. But it again it's kind of like in between these fields. Um so so that's where I was with that. One one uh just to to follow up on the mismatch idea. Um actually um uh Michael since you invited me to the this thing with the international human rights law, I've sort of been looking as an amateur into this.

One thing I found was I'm really interested in conflict and war. Um, and I realized in sort of I've I feel like I've been humbled reading through the expert analysis of these things. Um, one thing I found was there's something called the Watson Institute at Brown University, and they're trying to assess the costs of war. And to me, this was, I didn't realize this that um, so for example, um, just a conservative estimate is that displaced people since the nine-ele since 9-11, uh, because of wars in um Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Philippines, Libya, and Syria is uh the estimate is 37 million people. And in that displacement, both internal and external. A conservative estimate of the death toll could be about four and a half to four

point seven million and uh especially um children. Um and so uh and this is you know uh this is the results of a reaction to this horrific event, right? But I think like in the sense of the importance of understanding the psychology, um, and this is not a partisan issue. I mean, the there's this book, the the um Afghanistan papers, um, you know, people even within the within the military, I know I I personally know people who served in these wars, you know, um they're friends of mine, they're relatives of mine. Um many of them were like, well, you know, with like with Afghanistan being a good example of like what the hell are we doing there? They don't, you know. Um the the psychology of under s of wanting retribution, retaliation,

and the consequences of it, uh it's it's it's just interesting to think about how our evolved psychology um you know it feels good to sort of like not treat 9-11 like a uh a police as something where we should just find the individuals who did it um and this might lead into some of this idea about like what groups are doing and the projection of group identities in in international conflict but regardless, you know, of all these bad things, there's just this incredible amount of human suffering is done um because of of our evolved psychology and I think understanding it better. Like these numbers I was just shocked about. And I hadn't come across them before. Yeah. And it's I mean to to kind of add to what you're saying there, you know, those like and and

what David was saying, um when you when you look at actual warfare numbers that are astronomical compared to terrorism. Yeah. Um and and I say this being currently on the job market, so I'm trying not to downplay my my uh hopeful next job. But but really, I mean there there was a great book by uh Mueller and Stewart that runs the numbers um and does a really good job of showing like um in this regard how terrorism is really, really minuscule uh compared to to other um even risks, you know, that we take for granted every day, it's it's a very, very low number, but it overwhelmingly, disproportionately uh evokes these really strong emotions. Uh and and so as you were saying, David, I think understanding uh that

retaliatory mindset and and where what is triggering that and and also having safeguards in place, and this is really comes down to a policy thing, which is really, really difficult to do. But the problem after 9-11 was that there was that hair trigger response to do something and a strong political response, which was totally reasonable from kind of an evolved perspective, like of course. However, you know, in that regard, all these sweeping legislation pieces have gone into, especially in the Western world, that were never really thought that heavily about. So you get a lot of laws overlapping with other laws. You have all these in international humanitarian law dealing with the law of warfare.

You see this huge issue when the Bush administration decided to declare terrorist groups as organized armed groups under international law. So thus kind of triggering this whole new legal framework where instead of using a police framework for going after these individuals, you could now use a targeted approach. And what's kind of happened in the legal field since then is that they've been trying to figure out what to do with that because it became a new legal reality for them. And it's really, in the recent years, really sent the field into uh and now we're even getting into murkier waters when we're dealing with uh, you know, more cyber terrorism. Um, what they're preparing for now is you know war in space.

Uh so these are even even you know uh gonna be looking less and less like traditional wars used to look, like World War I, World War II, and preceding wars, where it's very clear on the battlefield who's who. And so this raises a whole like plethora of new problems for international law, which in my position, I think can really only be satisfactorily resolved if you take if you start to understand the psychology behind these things. Why do people coordinate around certain laws when other ones just poof, you can put as many laws in place as you want, no one's going to follow it. And especially at the international legal state, you know, at that arena, you're dealing with purely coordinational problems because there is no third party to police it.

Um so it's not like domestic law where you know you you have at least some semblance of a court system and all these things that can hold people to account and a monitor and sanction behavior there. It's really based upon coordination games and who's willing to push. Um and so now, you know, there's this new debate going on in international law, which is like, is it worth, you know, have we failed? Has the international legal framework failed? And now you have a lot of debate about that, from both sides, obviously. Um but I think, yeah, it's it's getting us into a new area where we need to um I think as far as my perspective, a lot of um I was talking to a friend of mine that that's an international lawyer, and I said, you know, actually, if you're interested, because he was

talking to me about what areas should he study up on to become to have more of a social science background. And I said, a lot of this is game theory. A lot of this is actually, you know, looking at how actors coordinate and when discordination or miscoordination occurs. Um, and so there's some really interesting things that that need to be um almost there needs to be an emerging field now, which is the social sciences integrating with uh international law if it's going to survive, I think. discouraging to um I mean I remember sitting in the room of the international human rights lawyers and like them laughing about uh how much you know powerful countries just ignore uh you know the ICRC or the ICC

or any of these acronyms that are sort of you know um does is that discouraging for you or um I mean, me huh, that's interesting. And not for me personally, and I'm trying to think why. I think it's because I see the broader game. And I think it's like it's just like any other social interaction. And this is another thing too that I think is is oftentimes uh diminished when speaking in an IR international relations type perspective is that these individuals are decision makers, just like when we study human psychology. And I think that there's always this disconnect, especially amongst many political scientists, many international relations scholars. I just saw a piece, I haven't read it yet, but I saw the abstract, it looked really

interesting, just came out a week or two ago, that is applying EP to international relations. So I'm looking forward to reading that. But I think there's this idea that because it's states interacting, that there's some there's something that's um so uh what is the word I'm looking for, so divergent from emergent, an emergent phenomenon that can't be reduced at all, when a lot of the same things you see with world leaders, I mean, just is coming down to human psychology. Um so I so I guess I stay positive when I think that maybe this coordinational configuration that we have now is not uh the most optimal given what we face coming up. However, does that mean that there can't be another solution?

I I don't think so. I think I think that there are ways of crafting it uh in such a way where there can be more optimal solutions along the way. So I don't think um, you know, throwing out kind of the baby with the bathwater uh is correct. It just needs um needs a different perspective, needs um uh fresh perspectives as well. Um, because if you know this legal system was really developed at a different time. The you know, the earliest ideas here were coming out of the Great World Wars and looking at how states coordinate and how you know different actors uh what what role do they play? And it was only until the kind of the more modern period where you had this notion of non international armed conflicts that's become now the the priority uh mainly of the field,

which is all these armed actors that are popping out like in Syria and other other domains, where you know the the the the folks looking into these conflict situations can't tell who's who and so now their their very clean kind of legal system that they once had is is you know facing a lot of challenges and the question is how do they how do they cope with those challenges and then everyone kind of presents their own logic behind what you know what's a new way of kind of going about this. But a lot of it kind of spins in circles without this kind of outside input from social scientists. And I think it was at that meeting where we had even a political scientist say, all my years of working in conflict, I've never been invited to talk to anyone in international

law. And so I think that like right there is really interesting. How there's such a disconnect that, you know, you don't get that back and forth a lot of times. So I'm I'm hopeful. I don't know what is your perspective, both of yours. I mean, maybe, maybe I'm I'm I'm tend to be more of an optimistic person. So that's why I think I can deal with uh with terrorism and conflict more. But yeah, I mean I think for me at least, since I was invited to this thing, I've been sort of shocked at um, you know, uh the degree to which I I'm I'm I am like a very like I'm an American. I grew up, you know, like I I I am not a very partisan person. And I sort of knew, you know, like the US had sort of, you know, like, you know, installed

the, you know, like things in Iran and things like that. You know, like, you know, um, so I knew like we had sort of a patchy record. Um, but just sort of looking at the the literature of um when you have international humanitarian law, which is just reasonable things that like if you look at like Q research or other things like you know, for example, the US population is overwhelmingly nonpartisanly supportive of like, you know, not attacking civilians or not providing arms to groups that like attack civilians, you know, in in uh regardless of like the particulars of the situation. Um but yet um this kind of thing across administrations, different administrations, different political administrations, different sides, it's not a partisan thing.

This this this these things just happen. Um I'm just sort of I'm still personally sort of just realizing that the numbers of people affected are huge by sort of state action. And for me, I'm like thinking a lot about um, you know, we're not getting the evolved cues of, for example, like all these displaced people or all the kids. Like I was reading a conservative estimate is like for every person killed in a war, there's at least four non-combatants killed, just sort of like actuarially, just because of like disease, famine, displacement, um, et cetera. And um again, if you like ask people on the street, like what do they think about that? Um, they're they're the public is sort of right, but like uh countries, like our own

country and other countries, uh, whether we've consider those countries good countries or bad guys, it's sort of a universal thing where I think countries and states are doing things that most of their their citizens don't agree with. And for me at least, I'm just sort of, I don't know if I'm optimistic or pessimistic, but I've been thinking a lot about why that is. Um, and for example, like that we're not getting the evolved cues of all these people affected. You know, like I didn't, I had no idea there were that many people impacted in in our attack of Afghanistan, for example. Um and I'm not saying that I mean the Taliban was is horrible, right? Um, but uh and and there's no but, but and um uh the

the experience of seeing people of impacted or knowing that people are impacted would have been part of our evolutionary history. Like if if somebody attacked us and did this horrible thing, we would retaliate, but we would also sort of know the cue how much our retaliation impacted other people. And there's sort of a natural check on that. Um, and I'm just sort of I'm just sort of wondering aloud right now, stumbling around, thinking about this issue a lot of the consequences of these sort of feel-good retaliations. Number one, are they rational? Do they actually make us safe or are they effective? And that's that's an issue that's independent of even the science. And then the second issue is just sort of morally is that the right thing to do?

And how can the science inform sort of minimizing the moral horrors that that are that are happening? I'll just I'll say one quick thing. Uh I think it's it's always a debate that swirls in my head: is uh, for instance, how do you deal with um a threat that is truly a predatory actor in the modern world. Because in the modern world what do you mean by by predatory? Just Oh, uh yeah. So so if you you know, this is going into Aaron Sell's work, um and Lopez's work and uh Landers and all these folks. Uh so the so this idea of, you know, if it's uh kind of the function of of hate is what they've been looking at. And really that's, you know, to the the goal there is to eliminate your uh the individual or the group if um that kind of

their existence um is negative for your your fitness. Uh and so in that sense, and that there's some really uh I I have a book chapter coming out which is looking at radicalization as predatory aggression. And in envy and hatred is kind of organizing emotional systems there. On the other hand, you have more bargaining aggression, which is more limited aggression. And this is as far as militaries go in Western societies, this is generally what most people think about our aggression, is that it's limited. We're going to use these as tactical things, strategic things to get something to concede resources or land or political concessions. Um and then there's a very different uh kind of state of mind that comes with those those

two different systems. And so the question is when you're when you're uh you know a modern state um being aggressed by a predatory actor, uh how do you respond? Because on the one side, if you respond too weakly, um then that encourages further aggression. But of course, we we tie our hands under international law and for very good reasons. I'm not saying uh for ethical, wonderful reasons, we tie our hands to a lot of this. Um and then when when actors do kind of predatorily re-engage, um, you know, there there's this backlash, and then obviously you have this massive cost of lives that occurs oftentimes with that aggression. And so it's um it's very interesting to me to think through like how do you most

effectively respond to an actor uh like a terrorist uh organization. Um but do so um, you know, I guess it's it's kind of the walk softly and carry a big stick kind of ideology, I guess. But um but yeah, how do you balance that? And it's easier said than done, I think a lot of times. Yeah. And David, I know you want to say something. I just want to follow up really quick. One thing I've noticed in looking at this too is it seems like there's also obviously the people who are in charge are often political politicians. And there's a common knowledge issue of I don't want to look weak. So for example, even if objectively I'm going to make more terrorists by doing this really strong reaction. I'm worried about people l uh looking looking weak to

constituents, and not only constituents, but there's another group of people who want my position as a politician. And they are incentivized to say, hey, look, he's being weak, Dave's being weak, because he's not attacking these people who attacked us. And so I am registering this of like, I need to survive in my, I want my position. There are people who are coming for me who are saying I'm weak. And so you can even see how people, even if every agent is sort of well-intended, which is probably not the case, right? Um, but but even if they are, how that sort of just dynamic leads to a situation that favors Erring on the side of satisfying the appetites, for example, of revenge, especially if we're not getting all the cues of the consequences

of that revenge. And so I think it's a really important dynamic to understand for everyone if we're gonna sort of address address this, because there may be some real errors made because of the sort of institutional or structural monsters we've created. Um yeah. Absolutely. So you you made this uh really crucial and underappreciated distinction between predatory aggression and bargaining aggression. Um the way I see it is it's the difference between aggression as a means to an end, so as a means to get treated better, to get a better deal, to get some territory, to get some resource, uh whatever, versus aggression as the end in and of itself. The goal is is to destroy the benefit that the attacker receives from the

aggression is the destruction or the disempowerment of the enemy itself. And unfortunately, I think it is very easy to confuse those two types of aggression because you're not really, it's really hard to tell the difference when you're on the receiving end of it. If people are dying and things are being destroyed, it's hard to know what the motive behind that destruction was. But knowing the motive behind it is actually crucial for responding in the right way because uh uh confusing predatory aggression for bargaining aggression could be extremely counterproductive. Um and vice versa, confusing um bargaining aggression for predatory aggression could be extremely disastrous as well. Um do you see this confusion being made in the international

arena? Is this a danger? Uh and how how can we avoid uh making this mistake? And what is the best way to respond to each of these types of aggression? Yeah, I mean, yes, definitely. There's definitely um a confusion of these uh of these different types, and that I mean that is a um not only from EP, but you know, the idea of predatory aggression is is a bit wider. There's been um other studies in other fields that have have looked. Um There's you know different uh neurosignatures of these different disassociated systems. So we know, I mean, there's a rich literature here in EP and also outside of EP on uh these different systems. Um I'll do I'll give you an example of when it can go wrong, is in my own field of

terrorism. And so there's this tendency in the literature to look at radicalized actors as doing it in response for retaliatory reasons. And so a lot of the idea here is that radicalization is what they say is a grievance-based thing. So people radicalize because something's been done to them by the state, by their local community. And so most of the models that are out there are very much reactive models. And so me and my colleague, what we did was we said, no, no, we we need to start looking at this a little bit differently. In fact, some of this, uh, first of all, is accepting the fact that aggression is good from an evolutionary perspective. Not meaning for us, for ethics, but the sense of that

aggression can be a really beneficial thing for certain actors. And so when you start to take this other perspective, what we've started to do is trying to shift the perspective of no, this isn't what radicalizing people are radicalizing is not in response, oftentimes. They might give you those when you ask them why they've radicalized. Um and we think that might be part of the system to to kind of look for excuses and justifications. That's fascinating to Yeah. Um does that make sense to you? Because if they're not aware that of your predatory intentions, they might try to make concessions to you, uh and that's good for you, and then you'll just keep on attacking them. Um yeah. Yeah. Oh, not only that, but and this is Anthony Lopez's point, and we should have him on, is

that uh leaders, the they're the group that is doing the aggression is not a unitary thing either. And so there can be times where there is a small number of people whose interest is the aggression for their own benefit. So in some sense, they are being predatory, but most people are not predatory. And so they'll often, this is Anthony has this paper, Making My Problem Our Problem, where the point is to sort of spin this narrative of the group I want to be predatory towards, if I'm the leader, I tell my people who I want to support my interest in aggressing, they're attacking us. So you're basically you're uh coalescing support for my aggressive endeavors to um to support me by framing it as this is a case of um retaliatory aggression.

And you actually see this at every scale of social um interaction where there are agents who are who are differentially benefiting, and you see this even cross-culturally in small-scale social groups. There are just a subset of agents who will benefit from a raid, for example, or from intergroup conflict, and then the other people who will not. And their job, the people who will benefit to be belligerent, is to figure out a way to frame or encourage the people to at least go along with it, be okay with it, treat it as yes, we are all attacking them. So I just want to say like that, even in some sense, that even further complicates the predatory versus retaliatory aggression, because it can literally be the case that the same

set of people on the same side who are throwing the same spears or dropping the same bombs are actually in one head it's irretaliatory in another head it's predatory yeah and I think uh I'll I'll say here is that I think for so many years um the researchers that have been talking to radicalized folks have been assuming that the reasons and justifications that they're providing for their actions are the cause of those actions. And so we we we would like to, you know, we wanted to uh go further, and I think this is a direction for future research. But also, you know, our pres our position is that envy is driving a lot of that home-based radicalization. That is kind of the focus, core focus of that literature.

And we think one of the things, the downstream things that Envy does is it searches for these reasons and excuses and justifications to mask itself as well. So you said, you know, you're advertising towards the victims, and that might be one group as a predatory actor to advertise to to say, no, no, no, you know, I'm going to stop if you guys just let up a little bit. Um, and there's also you're advertising towards those others, like you're saying, uh, Dave, on your own side. And I think this plays such a critical role when you're seeing like ethnic violence start up. It's these predatory actors that are the first to move, and they get a lot of pleasure out of this. Is another thing that that hasn't been discussed really much, is that you see across the

radicalization literatures that excitement, joy, a thrill. And everyone kind of they've they've appreciated the fact that it's there, but why is it there? And and it's like, I think it's really getting back down uh to some of the the research that they've uh suggested with uh negative association values and how that can invert cost and benefits um in the minds of those actors. So suddenly you and you heaving out cost and destroying your enemy is really pleasureful, probably you know, close to sexually pleasureful. Um, and that's where you get these weird. And so one of the things that's never been discussed is like, why what is the one thing I always ask uh when I before I give a talk? Is like, what's the one thing that's really peculiar about radicalized people?

And it's funny, is members, I've given this talk uh in DC amongst policymakers and that, and they immediately hit on it, and my mom hits on it. But the people studying radicalization, they like they can't, they're like, oh, what is it? What is it? Um, but it's really this idea of like, oh, that person looks crazy. Like, like if a if a person goes and um, you know, commits a mass shooting at an elementary school, or or any of these, you know, a lot of these radicalized actors, the initial reaction to people is they can't wrap their head around why that actor would do that type of thing. Um, and so I think that there's a lot to be said here about this inversion of costs and benefits, that radicalization, that's part of that process.

And that's that's part of that process that that envy in in that case of domestic radicalization is trans kind of um moving the agent towards those actions that feel really pleasureful and exciting and thrilling in order to eliminate or you know depower their their adversaries. Would you think would you say that um the international relations community uh is of the perspective that terrorism is generally motivated by grievance, by retaliation, by bargaining aggression, whatever you want to call it? And do you find yourself in the minority position arguing that no, this is not retaliatory, grievance-based bargaining, whatever you want to call it, but this is actually uh predatory? Yes. Yeah, 100%.

Um I and I and it starts to resolve a lot of the issues. In fact, you know, the main kind of stream definition of terrorism is uh something that's religious or political. And it it it it's uh I I'm not gonna verbatim get it, but it essentially it's framed as bargaining aggression. It's to get political, some type of political gains, right? And that's kind of the mainstream view of literally what it defines terrorism. Um, so you I've seen just recently someone online saying, oh, they're not using the word terrorism correctly, because that person's not, in in in our verbiage, not using bargaining aggression, which in my mind is is completely the opposite of what I think these folks are doing, but it doesn't to to kind of the economical mind or the our own rationality, that

doesn't make sense, like unless you take into consideration this inversion of some costs and benefits. Um, because you know it would just be befuddling. Like, why are that why why would someone give up their own life? You know, and it doesn't seem to quite make sense unless it's for a broader political uh agenda. Then it's suddenly like you see the cost benefits and it matches your own intuitions about costs and benefits. And then it's like, oh, that must be what's happening here. And that's not to say that anger, you know, bargaining aggression and predatory aggression can't coactivate. So there might, oh, and then within a terrorist organization, this is not to say that everyone's radicalized.

Some agents might be there for other reasons, for you know, self interest or numerous other things, and this is what we see in warfare all the time is that you have, you know, kind of the radicalized actors that start the conflict, and then the next in line that suddenly the in the social environment shifts the costs and benefits. Costs start to rise of not joining, the benefits of joining start to. And that just that also that that idea that that flow of cost-benefits can really have such a strong influence on behavior is also a bit underappreciated. Oftentimes you you you get this intuition that, oh God, there's got to be something more, right? Like it can't be that selfish or that's that shallow of a psychology.

There has to be some moralistic thing or there has to be something else driving these people. And I think when when you shift cost benefits, people will look for the the reasons and justifications for those actions. Um and that's oftentimes that, you know, this is like a Tamur Quran type situation where these shifting costs and benefits of in his regard, you know, ethnification, but you see this shift, and then more and more people bandwagon and get on board. And even the ones that aren't truly on board that will always have a problem with the aggression, they can't do otherwise because to do so would be to kill, you know, be killed yourself. Do you think, just to uh to ask a clarification question, do you think that the predatory

versus bargaining aggression thing is actually that distinction versus it's more of a almost proximate ultimate thing of predatory is people who are either certain that they're going to have to in just exert a high cost. And it actually is for an all for bargaining, but it's just that um the bargaining is so distant. It just looks like it's just destroy everything. But in fact it it it ultimately is is that and I'm just to be like devil's advocate, is that um I'm sure you've thought of this. Like, what would you say to somebody or that thought um that it is in fact it is all bargaining aggression? It's just the severity of it makes the extreme version of bargaining aggression indistinguishable from just this berserk flip to

destruction. I mean, I I understand the point of just extermination, Like I'm, you know, like like that is that is different than bargaining for better treatment. Like if it's a if it's an interest to just have this entity destroyed. And maybe that's ultimately the difference. But I'm just thinking, like again, in this cartoonish way, if you look at somebody who is willing to blow themselves up on a bus, right? The question is so clearly they're they're saying the benefit of destroying destruction is is is just intrinsic. But the question is, is that psychology? Because ultimately that destruction in that local case is a larger scale bargaining issue. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on it it depends on too, because this is the

perspective that a lot of people have taken is the altruistic perspective. Um so this idea that you know these individuals are doing these things on behalf of a greater good for their collective. Um I I don't, you know, in that in that regard I I find some of it difficult. You you also have the collective action problem that kind of pops up there, which if you take more of the predatory actor route, you you can bypass that fundamental problem pretty easily. That's interesting. Yeah, so let's let's unpack that a bit, uh, because that's a really interesting thought that hadn't occurred to me. So there is a collective action problem if if the goal is to benefit the entire group, and that each individual has an interest of getting the benefits of the collective action

without incurring the costs themselves. So you have this free rider problem. Um So if the if the goal is to benefit the group, uh it's hard to create the kind of selective incentives to mobilize the group toward the collective action. And insofar as any individual is willing to make a huge sacrifice for the benefit of the group, like say committing suicide, um, that's really puzzling to explain. Um on the other hand, if it is predatory and um there and each individual gets a direct benefit uh from the costs inflicted on the enemy, then it's no longer so much of a collective action problem uh because any amount of destruction on the enemy uh uh is perceived as a benefit to everyone in the group

automatically. So it's not really so much of a sacrifice at all if if you're getting this immediate payoff of of you Yeah, absolutely. And and again going back to the kind of the mismatch idea, that might be playing a role here as well, is what are the cues that are kind of calibrating these different systems. But also, David, I would say that or Dave, sorry. I would say that uh I uh I think I I start, you know how to say this. I think we've spliced things in such a way because we didn't have a functional perspective for so long. That now when I'm when I'm starting to look, I I think actually I'm getting ready like for the next papers, getting more away even from the concept of envy because it confuses the

heck out of everyone. Uh, because people, A, come to it with kind of their own preconceived notion of what is envy. Um, B, uh, they come to it with like, oh, I've experienced NBV before. There's no way that, you know, my desire for this something that someone else has could drive me to do this. Um, there's also just like we're not sure where the boundaries of that system are, and it's very, very confusing. Um and what I'm seeing more and more in my mind is kind of like in the virtual reality system that is my mind, is like this cost benefit landscape. Yeah. And those individual actors in that cost benefit landscape, and what are the systems that are detecting and what are the cues that they're using to detect when those costs and

benefits are shifting in such a way. Right. This isn't really addressing your question because like I don't have a good answer yet. Yeah. Well do you guys have any any ideas there? Well even like I think Aaron Blackwell had a paper. I don't know if it's out or whatever, but like even like suicide bombers, you know, the the the cost of them doing that clearly, like the entities that want them to do that, there's all kinds of social structures of like your family will be financially better off. And if you like look at the data, like it's clearly that there's a manipulation of the cost benefit landscape even for um something as sort of uh crazy and irrational as suicide bombing, the to even, you know, because the person is still at

the end of the day, it's like, you know, I'm I'm incurring the cost, and the person next to me is not. And so there's all kinds of um things around trying to get around that issue of the evolved psychology sort of saying, wait a minute, what am I doing? Don't do this. And in there's all of this institutional structure to push people towards. So it's in Aaron's data, Aaron Blackwell's data was, you know, people with a lot of family. Um, so there's lots of siblings, they're uh really, it's it's the difference between sort of the family being taken care of and not uh the financial support if they do it. Um so you know you can really see how there just there's a lot of social structure sorting throwing as many benefits to that individual as possible.

And even then, most many don't, right? And even then, there's even just things of like uh making it so the handler of the person has more control than the person themselves over like actually getting them to do that because it's really hard to get a human being to like try to kill themselves, and especially when there's ecologically valid, like evolutionarily recurrent cues in that. Yeah. I think I think this is a fundamental problem too that comes along with this is that we can look across like a conflict setting and we see all these people engaging in violence and behaving very similarly. Like this gets back to your point about how do we distinguish between bargaining and predatory aggression and all these things.

And the one circumstance, you know, this person might be doing it because they uh are trying to protect their family, um, whereas the other one is doing it because in the end he knows that he'll get a better payoff. And oftentimes, like in ethnic violence, what you see very definitively, it's like it's actually a very small proportion. I think in uh in the new paper I have coming out, it's like I I think looking back at that data, it's about 16% of the adult male population, then just we're right around there. That is the first active starters in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. Um that and and they have a very particular profile. They're generally young, kind of the age of radicalized actors in in domestic settings.

Um they have a lot to gain. They have very low social connections with the community. Um and and yeah, so you see like the cost benefit is different for those actors. So if you look across the conflict, and all you see is everyone engaging in violence. How do you parse the motivational systems of those different individuals? And how can you ever address how to prevent the violence if you're just kind of saying, oh, that clearly like this is all the same? Um, and we have that even within the uh more localized setting like terrorism in a domestic uh setting, where again, like those actors that are part of terrorist organizations, and we're starting to get uh better better uh data here. Um, and some folks in the Netherlands are doing really good work here to look at what's the

difference between those that are engaged in terrorist organizations that commit violence versus those that don't. And so I think we're starting with the EP perspective is really, really important because we're starting, then we can start to get to the level of granularity that we need where it's like, why are these different actors acting this way? And they might be quite radically different. And then, you know, into this, I I I um I'm still, you know, I love uh Nancy Cartwright's work on philosophy of science. And she talks a lot about inus conditions. I don't know if you all have ever um, but um essentially I'll I won't try to to repeat it, but it's it's a great example of of conditions of causality where, for instance, you can

have a condition, but unless it has some other supporting thing, it will never happen. Um, and so it's trying to bring complexity and the complex systems idea back into causality here. So you might have someone that's radicalized to the point of to violence, but there's something just the opportunity is not there, or there's some missing piece. So again, that's even a comp more complicating factor of how do you parse that psychology? Because that person might never act, even though they are true, you know, truly radicalized, whatever that might mean in this sense. Yeah. Um to to kind of uh to uh turn this around, is there anything that um kind of universally undoes violence? Like I know you told me uh anecdotes about, you know, sort of people in some sense or one

way or another sort of reminding them of of of their humanity um and that occasionally works. Is that too sort of um glib and trite and you know I think people have this intuitive idea right uh to just sort of turn this around from like we're talking about violence is there is there at least some hope or like how do you think about that? Yeah no I mean I I clearly see it. I mean you know a lot of people say um there's this issue of low numbers in radicalization where it's like for they're so disproportional. And I the number of people that radicalize compared to those that could radicalize but don't. And I think there you're just you're looking at all of you know, we don't really we live in c in in a social world that's very non zero sum.

And I think that's a really good thing because it helps constrain, you know, violent action. Um indeed, like um uh you know, the the other work on institutionalism and how that can support peace is also another great piece of this that I think is really important to consider. Um, but dang, there was something else that is. Well I was just asking, I'm like even even I mean the anecdote you told me about Croatia, like Oh, that's the one I was getting to. Yeah, yes. So this is the one that still sticks with me. Yeah. Um among so so many of these things. Um but this one uh was was a victim of violence and um she was essentially she was with her family, her family was murdered in front of her. She was laying on the ground um for uh in a they were trying to flee a

wars war zone area. Uh they didn't quite make it, they were intercepted um by the by military. And um she was laying on the ground and one of the she was laying there for hours and and she thought they were gonna leave her for dead. And one of the the soldiers came over and said to her, How do you wanna die? And he he had a bunch of knives and he was like, Do you want to die by and she looked at him and she said, Well, I hope that your mother has the same option or something along those lines. And he he kind of dropped and and left. And that's how eventually they left her behind and she was able to get help and and get out of there. And she told you this, like, this is a person you met, told you this story.

Yes. And and and so so w what's happening there? That's a really fascinating uh there's something really uh quite profound that's happening there. Um as far as you know, uh kind of appealing to the better better angels of uh of our nature. Um, but I think there's so many things that we don't know yet as far as how can we short circuit uh violent actors? Like how how can we think in more um more intuitive ways, better ways of of of doing so it with radicalization stuff, for instance, if it is envy, one of the things that the envy system likes to do is put off its um it put its blame on other people. And what you see is in that literature, the folks that have been dealing with radicalized individuals trying to get them to de-radicalize, is uh one of the core focuses is cognitive

behavioral therapy, which is getting the person to take responsibility for their position in the social world and that. So it's it's like disrupting the natural tendency of those systems to operate, it might be as simple as that in order to revert. So it's not about, you know, it's not about education, it's not about these other things, but really having actual effects on on these cognitive systems that are, you know, raising the costs, you know, lowering the benefits, all these different things that I think are, you know, have really profound effects, and sometimes for very low cost. So um so yeah, I think that that that's a really optimistic uh thing. That that particular event, I mean, you've you I mean uh since you told me that I've

thought about it often and you clearly do too. Is that what is your take on what happened there? Is it that the person it it sort of shifted them out of group-based thinking and I'm just like, I am it just made it, I'm an individual doing this thing to this person. Is that yeah? I mean, I I I you know I thought about it a lot. Yeah, and it's hard to say exactly, but it's something along those lines. It's something it's something about reorienting, um kind of disrupting the play. Play for for technical term. No, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, uh disrupting the narrative or the the the script that's being run. Yeah. Um and you know, and a lot of these things, the one thing that a lot of the uh very rarely

saw it spoken about in the text. Most of these people that are doing these things are drunk. Um most of them are so it takes a lot uh for a lot of these people to do these really violent things. Um and so one of the things I kept hearing over and over is every time these this group of guys came around, they you know, they would get drunk first, and then they would do these really horrible things. Um so yeah, so I think even in the even in that circumstance, there's still like there's this, you know, the different parts of our cognition that if you can find a way to appeal to those, um you know, uh I'm I'm thinking of other examples from areas um, but they're all really in poor taste. But I think like, you know, uh, you know, if if you're it's the same idea like if you've

you know if uh you you're having sex and and your family walks in, suddenly that system is is interrupted very quickly. Right. Um, and this other I mean that's a very poor. Yeah, no, but it's a it's a good no, no, no, but no, but it's a very, it's very clear example, right? Of just and we and David and I talked about this in a previous episode of there's sometimes uh an uh uh an attempt to sort of essentialize the inevitability of any outcome. This is often, you know, just this is what came up in the context of sort of straw man arguments against an evolutionary approach, where it's sort of it justifies like, you know, infidelity in men or something, right? And the idea, like what we talked about, is, you know, even if sexual variety is more about

positively valued in a male phenotype, there's other adaptations that play too. And the thing that you just talked about is another example of that, right? That there's there are other adaptations guiding other kinds of motivations and this anecdote with this, you know, this this extremely I don't even know how to describe it. I think it's stupid to try, I mean, to or to to to provide an adjective to it. This anecdote um it it it shows the power of uh there are multiple adaptations in this soldier, and she engaged another one and it changed what he did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and you know, and we always think yeah, we always think it takes so much. But maybe if we do uh maybe if we can figure this out more, then we can we can find these

lower cost uh solutions to to these really grand problems that we know that we face with violence and and global conflict. Yeah. Um one question we often ask guests is is I think we've done it for everyone, is uh is there something we should have asked you? and then there's and I really and then it gets people uh uh um I I yeah people are s don't know what to say and so I I usually fill the the time for a moment but David and I need to work on our banter too. Um we haven't yet this is not a good episode well also too when you're talking about violence and conflict it's hard to have like silly banter on the side yeah yeah yeah um I actually I face this a lot with presentations I give because back in the day when I was

working on morality and that it you know, you can put silly cartoons and you can put images and things. Right. And now it just feels, you know, it feels so wrong. And to so, you know, t to to make light of it that you try to steer completely away from it. But then you know those meetings where you're only like a conflict research meeting is can be very dark. Uh yeah. But I would uh I think the only, you know, the only other thing that the other area of my research that I've been working on is really like the more the policy stuff. Um, you know, which which uh we've had a lot of luck working with uh international lawyers. Uh we've dabbled a bit on this with you know the ICRC and the UN. And um, but I think that there's there's some really interesting stuff there that that is

um that social scientists are not really yet involved with. Like, so for instance, um there's a lot of social scientists that are studying how courtroom biases appear and what those look like. So there's this whole literature, like which is a legal empirical literature that's based out of Cornell. However, there's not really social scientists looking at theorizing and applying that to or running experiments that would be applicable to legal issues outside of these very kind of constrained areas. So I think that there's like so much ripe fruit there for social scientists to explore. And a lot of lawyers that are very, very keen, uh, particularly a lot of them come from a background in philosophy or social science, uh, or they they they many of the ones that

I've met love love learning and love talking about the social sciences. So I think for social scientists um and in policy as well, um, we were I was just talking with some colleagues um up at uh in Liverpool about this disconnect also between what policymakers on that side, what they want, and what social scientists provide. And we're kind of we're we're both working in the dark. So we do as social scientists, we research what we're passionate about oftentimes, and then sometimes what our grant money comes from, which we may have differing levels of passion about. But on the policy side, a lot of times they have um you know questions that they want answered, which we're kind of working in two different realms.

And besides like the occasional thing, like uh the EU might put up funding for certain projects that are of policy relevance. But besides that, there's very little connection between um practitioners, policymakers, lawyers, and the social sciences. And so I think um, you know, we we just started talking recently about how can we how can we start thinking about solutions where it's like hey we really need answers in this particular question or this thing that we're really dealing with um so that social scientists can be more um that the relevance of the research is is more aligned with what's what you know what's needed out there. So is what you're saying that the this the connection between basic research

and the applied part, where there are people literally doing things like sentencing people to death, making decisions about life and death, or just legal policy in general, that has huge impacts. The people who are doing the practical work are ready and willing and able and want scientific input, but there's not currently enough dialogue or connection between scientists and these applied people. And therefore, even the questions that scientists are asking are not informed by that there's this need, for example. Um, and maybe also is that a fair characterization? Yeah, I mean I just I just saw a colleague in the Netherlands the other day, and he said it perfectly when he he works a lot with policymakers, and he said, uh, you know, I always

feel a bit half-hearted when I end my article and I try to draw policy conclusions from it. Because if unless you're doing the research with the policy goal in mind, uh, then you're just kind of saying, oh, this could apply in this way or that way. Uh so so yeah, so the the the alignment doesn't really exist. And it's a very p p peculiar thing. I mean, granted, I don't want to give up all my freedom on research, but it's it's a peculiar thing that there isn't much you know more of an alignment when most social scientists are working for the public good. And so so I think that there's something to be hopefully in the future to be uh improved there. Yeah, that that's right. And and even I mean I I have met behavioral scientists who

are basically like, I don't know what to study. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's true. So I mean really it's it's really a tragedy in that respect of you've got really people who really are doing real things that need answers to questions and they're not coordinated or hooked up to people who have the means to answer those questions. Um, and there's no there's nobody sort of like with the job. It's like there's like a matchmaking problem. We need like something like a matchmaking service that is hooking up applied and basically we need a we need a tinder where you just say exactly swiping science tinder uh um but but we come full circle to coordination issues and miscoordination in this regard it's a queens exactly yes exactly um uh Michael where

can people find you right now Oh gosh. Well, um I just started uh recently having my own website, so michaelmontgrief.com. Uh so that links to all my other pages and profiles and that it's under construction, but hopefully it will be improving. Um yeah, so that's probably the best way at this point. Okay, great. And uh we don't usually do plugs on this, but I will say, like, if you are if what Michael is saying uh whenever we post this publicly, um if if this interest this research seems interesting or important to you, please also reach out to Michael if you're interested in supporting this research. Because like anything else, that doesn't fit squarely in a pre-existing institutional structure.

I mean, the exact problem you're just described is part of uh the reason why this kind of work doesn't exist is because there's not uh you know support for this kind of work. And so if anybody who's listening thinks it's important or useful or knows somebody who can support it, um please reach out to Michael directly. Thank you. I will second that. Yeah. Um thank you so much for having me. Yeah, no, it was a pleasure um and uh really appreciate you doing this work. And I hope more um more people join you um doing this bridging sort of social science and policy and law. Um and we're actually gonna have some folks on. I think one of our next guests will be Deb Lieberman, who is I love one of the other um

people. I mean, honestly of the two, I I don't know, you and Deb, can you think of anyone else who's sort of bridging EP and law? I mean, I guess there's a few other folks. Yeah, I think I think yeah, definitely. I think that there's a handful of other things. Yeah, maybe we should have to do that. Of course, Keila. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Jamie's best friend. Um but Michael, you know, uh yeah, thank you so much. Um it was it was great to have you and uh wish you all the best luck for this um really important work. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. David, we have completed another episode. Yes, we did. Uh it was a a really good one. Uh and if you agree that it was a good one, um, don't be shy about it.

Tell people on social media, tell a friend, leave us a kind review, support us on Patreon. Um yeah. Yeah, and we uh we really appreciate people uh you know talking about us on social media. And uh please, you know, if we're if you like what we're doing, please tell a friend um who's somebody who might be interested or somebody who might hate evolutionary psychology. Um we'd love to have people listening who might be critics and we'd love to hear from people and what they think. Absolutely. We'll see you next week. Sounds good. See you next week, David.