WEBVTT 00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:02.400 This is Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast. 00:00:02.720 --> 00:00:04.160 Actual Evolutionary Psychology. 00:00:04.400 --> 00:00:06.640 By actual evolutionary psychologists. 00:00:12.400 --> 00:00:14.080 We didn't introduce our names. 00:00:14.320 --> 00:00:16.160 Was that Yeah, sometimes we leave that out. 00:00:16.240 --> 00:00:17.520 It's kinda I don't know. 00:00:17.840 --> 00:00:18.960 Do you want to say your name? 00:00:19.200 --> 00:00:20.480 Oh, I'm David Pinsaff. 00:00:20.720 --> 00:00:21.280 I'm David. 00:00:21.650 --> 00:00:23.650 well, I always say David Petruzki, which is correct. 00:00:23.810 --> 00:00:27.570 I mean that's what's on my driver's license, but I should say Dave Petrozowski because 00:00:27.810 --> 00:00:28.690 that's our different things. 00:00:28.930 --> 00:00:29.090 Probably. 00:00:29.250 --> 00:00:32.690 I think the reason we sometimes leave this out is because they're not like an ideal or 00:00:32.690 --> 00:00:34.210 obvious place to put our names. 00:00:34.370 --> 00:00:35.170 Like where should we put it? 00:00:35.330 --> 00:00:36.610 Like at the very beginning? 00:00:36.930 --> 00:00:38.050 But then how do we segue? 00:00:38.850 --> 00:00:39.810 Or the middle? 00:00:40.050 --> 00:00:40.370 Yeah. 00:00:40.850 --> 00:00:42.450 Do we do it after evolutionary cycles? 00:00:43.010 --> 00:00:43.730 This is pretty good. 00:00:43.970 --> 00:00:44.760 At the at the way end? 00:00:45.160 --> 00:00:45.880 This meta thing. 00:00:45.960 --> 00:00:47.640 No, we're just discussing where to put it. 00:00:47.720 --> 00:00:52.280 Um we should just be scientists about it in parametrically very I mean we should keep 00:00:52.280 --> 00:00:55.720 sentences whole, but otherwise we can put it at the beginning, middle, and end. 00:00:56.440 --> 00:00:58.440 Why don't we have our audience vote on it? 00:00:58.520 --> 00:01:00.680 Send us your opinions about where you think we should put our names. 00:01:01.080 --> 00:01:01.640 What are the options? 00:01:02.920 --> 00:01:06.200 Well, at the very beginning, before the name of the podcast and the tagline. 00:01:06.520 --> 00:01:10.850 We could put it in between the name of the podcast and the tagline, or we could put it at 00:01:10.850 --> 00:01:12.050 the end after the tagline. 00:01:12.370 --> 00:01:15.890 Or we have a long pause in the middle of the tagline and we could put it in between there, 00:01:15.970 --> 00:01:17.970 but that feels like an M-dash situation. 00:01:18.770 --> 00:01:23.010 Actual evolutionary psychologist meaning me dated pins off and like put it like in the 00:01:23.010 --> 00:01:23.570 middle of the tagline. 00:01:23.970 --> 00:01:25.650 That's like such an academic writing. 00:01:25.730 --> 00:01:27.490 Like that's that's my bad writing habit. 00:01:27.570 --> 00:01:31.970 I've become a better writer, but I still have such a I really want to just put a I want to 00:01:31.970 --> 00:01:37.250 put a whole clause in between us in just sandwich those sentences, just onion layers. 00:01:37.600 --> 00:01:39.440 All right, let's shut up and get to my pretty music. 00:01:39.680 --> 00:01:40.480 Okay, here we go. 00:01:40.640 --> 00:01:41.440 Enjoy. 00:01:58.320 --> 00:02:04.190 Um you, me, and Madveer saying Yes, Vir Singh, uh, 00:02:04.350 --> 00:02:10.270 excellent scholar, uh, really doing cutting-edge, uh awesome work at the intersection of 00:02:10.270 --> 00:02:14.270 anthropology and cognitive science and uh evolutionary theory. 00:02:14.430 --> 00:02:17.630 Um we covered so many interesting topics in this. 00:02:17.710 --> 00:02:23.710 Um we talked about shamanism, why shamanism uh appears in so many cultures around the world 00:02:23.790 --> 00:02:28.510 and why it's so psychologically compelling and attractive to the human mind. 00:02:28.830 --> 00:02:34.660 Um we talked a lot about um magical thinking like sympathetic magic, divination, and 00:02:34.740 --> 00:02:35.780 and what's going on there. 00:02:35.940 --> 00:02:41.700 Are these practices uh uh quote unquote stupid or irrational? 00:02:41.860 --> 00:02:43.780 Or are they serving some other function? 00:02:43.940 --> 00:02:49.140 Are they cognitive byproducts of um of the way our minds work? 00:02:49.220 --> 00:02:51.540 Or do they reflect a kind of error management logic? 00:02:51.780 --> 00:02:53.060 We get into all that stuff. 00:02:53.550 --> 00:02:53.710 Yeah. 00:02:53.790 --> 00:02:59.710 As a group psychologist, I've always wanted to talk to Monvier and Luke Gowaki about their 00:02:59.710 --> 00:03:05.230 recent work arguing that the social scale of ancestral environments or the EEA 00:03:05.470 --> 00:03:11.390 involves larger scale social communities than you might ordinarily think or 00:03:11.390 --> 00:03:16.800 people sort of thought in a sort of simple way from a in the 00:03:16.800 --> 00:03:22.000 EEA from sort of a diorama model perspective of the savannah. 00:03:23.040 --> 00:03:27.280 I got a chance to ask Man Veer um about that, which was lovely as well. 00:03:27.840 --> 00:03:28.080 Yeah. 00:03:28.640 --> 00:03:29.600 Very fun conversation. 00:03:29.680 --> 00:03:35.040 And yeah, uh this idea that the EEA was broader and more variable than we think, then it's 00:03:35.040 --> 00:03:40.160 not just this picture of the small scale egalitarian hunter-gatherer band, I think, is a 00:03:40.160 --> 00:03:46.000 major advance in our evolutionary thinking and should be continued to uh to be 00:03:46.090 --> 00:03:49.530 reflected on by evolutionary psychologists and scholars. 00:03:49.850 --> 00:03:54.970 And Manveer had a great background uh during the episode. 00:03:55.050 --> 00:03:58.330 If you were only listening on the acoustic modality, go check it out. 00:03:58.410 --> 00:04:02.730 He had Australian, was it Paleolithic megafauna? 00:04:02.890 --> 00:04:04.650 Was that am I remembering that correctly? 00:04:04.970 --> 00:04:05.370 That's right. 00:04:05.450 --> 00:04:06.890 He had a really great background. 00:04:07.130 --> 00:04:07.690 Yeah, yeah. 00:04:07.850 --> 00:04:11.260 And we talked a little bit about Ice Age uh creatures. 00:04:11.580 --> 00:04:11.820 Yes. 00:04:11.980 --> 00:04:16.860 And he's writing a book about mythology on the topic of Ice Age creatures. 00:04:17.260 --> 00:04:18.460 Yes, that's right. 00:04:18.700 --> 00:04:19.740 So get excited for that. 00:04:19.820 --> 00:04:21.580 It's gonna be a banger, I'm sure. 00:04:21.980 --> 00:04:22.460 Yeah. 00:04:22.700 --> 00:04:25.900 Um and uh anything else, David? 00:04:26.300 --> 00:04:28.220 No, I think that about that about does it. 00:04:28.460 --> 00:04:28.700 Okay. 00:04:28.860 --> 00:04:33.580 Well, uh enjoy Manvere and uh yeah, look for the megafauna. 00:04:34.130 --> 00:04:34.690 Look for them. 00:04:34.850 --> 00:04:35.650 Enjoy. 00:04:39.010 --> 00:04:43.570 Man Veer, we're really happy to have you here and and chat with you uh about all your 00:04:43.570 --> 00:04:46.450 interesting uh research interests uh and field work. 00:04:46.850 --> 00:04:49.410 Uh I have to interrupt before we even proceed. 00:04:49.570 --> 00:04:50.370 I'm really sorry. 00:04:50.530 --> 00:04:52.450 Um a terrible podcast co-host. 00:04:52.690 --> 00:04:57.330 Man Veer, can you explain your beautiful background, assuming you can see it yourself? 00:04:57.410 --> 00:04:57.570 Yes. 00:04:57.890 --> 00:04:58.610 Yes, yes, yes. 00:04:58.690 --> 00:05:00.610 This is place to see in Australia. 00:05:01.060 --> 00:05:03.620 Um so these are like places in megafauna. 00:05:03.940 --> 00:05:06.580 So we have the giant short faced kangaroo. 00:05:06.660 --> 00:05:07.860 We have diprotodon. 00:05:08.020 --> 00:05:10.020 It's like a giant wombat. 00:05:10.580 --> 00:05:15.540 Um yeah, yeah, I I I I have I'm kind of enchanted. 00:05:18.260 --> 00:05:19.060 To some degree. 00:05:20.020 --> 00:05:23.670 Yeah, I'm enchanted by the by the world of the megafauna. 00:05:23.750 --> 00:05:26.390 So what is not to be enchanted by? 00:05:26.470 --> 00:05:31.830 Um you you are in a good way a child who who didn't grow up like our children who love 00:05:31.830 --> 00:05:33.670 dinosaurs and are like, This is amazing. 00:05:33.750 --> 00:05:34.790 It is amazing, right? 00:05:34.870 --> 00:05:35.590 Uh it is. 00:05:35.670 --> 00:05:35.830 Yeah. 00:05:36.070 --> 00:05:39.830 I mean we have uh I I live close to the La Brea tar pits and I take my daughter there all 00:05:39.830 --> 00:05:40.070 the time. 00:05:40.150 --> 00:05:40.550 She loves it. 00:05:40.710 --> 00:05:45.830 But what's wild is just like these huge animals that coexisted with our ancestors. 00:05:45.990 --> 00:05:51.460 I remember see the the one exhibit was um an ice age bear that stood t literally 12 feet 00:05:51.460 --> 00:05:51.620 tall. 00:05:51.940 --> 00:05:53.220 Was this a cave bear? 00:05:53.620 --> 00:05:54.660 Just an Ice Age bear. 00:05:54.900 --> 00:05:55.300 Oh, okay. 00:05:55.380 --> 00:05:56.580 It wasn't specifically a cave. 00:05:56.740 --> 00:05:56.980 I don't know. 00:05:57.300 --> 00:06:01.940 And there was a taxidermy exhibit where you actually look up and see this bear standing 12 00:06:01.940 --> 00:06:06.900 feet tall, and imagining what it must have been like for our ancestors to have to contend 00:06:06.900 --> 00:06:09.140 with that in their environment is just wild. 00:06:09.380 --> 00:06:09.620 Yes. 00:06:10.100 --> 00:06:14.260 I'm gonna interrupt both of you again because this is a John Tubi story and it's worth 00:06:14.260 --> 00:06:14.580 saying. 00:06:14.820 --> 00:06:20.650 John Tubi is is he would tell undergraduates that you might think things are difficult, but 00:06:20.650 --> 00:06:23.130 your ancestors dealt with these 12-foot bears. 00:06:23.210 --> 00:06:24.730 Like you are more resilient. 00:06:24.890 --> 00:06:29.210 Your your nature is more uh resilient than you think. 00:06:29.370 --> 00:06:32.010 You your ancestors successfully dealt with this stuff. 00:06:32.090 --> 00:06:34.090 You can deal with what you're dealing with. 00:06:34.890 --> 00:06:36.810 Not in a minimizing way, but in an empowering. 00:06:37.370 --> 00:06:39.370 It put puts our bullshit in perspective. 00:06:39.770 --> 00:06:40.090 Correct. 00:06:41.180 --> 00:06:43.180 So Monvirt that's wonderful. 00:06:43.420 --> 00:06:48.780 Um uh yeah, there's eucalyptus all over here in in is it also in Davis? 'Cause in Southern 00:06:48.780 --> 00:06:54.140 California they the the settlers uh planted eucalyptus, which wasn't great because it's 00:06:54.140 --> 00:06:58.140 like fi firebombs, you know, like during the There's a lot of eucalyptus here. 00:06:58.380 --> 00:06:59.180 Are is there a lot there? 00:06:59.260 --> 00:06:59.660 Yeah, yeah. 00:06:59.740 --> 00:07:04.300 Are are there any megafauna aside from well, koalas are not megafauna unless were there 00:07:04.300 --> 00:07:05.980 giant koalas, do you know? 00:07:07.340 --> 00:07:08.890 Um I don't know. 00:07:09.050 --> 00:07:09.370 I don't know. 00:07:09.450 --> 00:07:13.130 But I think diprotodon, I think wombats and koalas are nice. 00:07:13.450 --> 00:07:14.010 Related. 00:07:14.090 --> 00:07:14.250 Okay. 00:07:16.170 --> 00:07:17.130 I mean there must have been. 00:07:17.450 --> 00:07:20.570 Yeah, because I'm just wondering, like, if there's like the interesting thing, like the 00:07:20.570 --> 00:07:24.970 avocado seed, and there's a giant ground sloth that could pass that pit, right? 00:07:25.050 --> 00:07:27.690 Because like, you know, seeds are for dispersal. 00:07:27.850 --> 00:07:32.500 Um, so the idea that there had to be something that could actually pass the pit of an 00:07:32.500 --> 00:07:34.420 avocado suggests a giant ground slot. 00:07:34.500 --> 00:07:39.540 So I was just wondering if there's any co-evolved megafauna in Australia for that have like 00:07:39.540 --> 00:07:41.700 weird plant relationships like that. 00:07:42.100 --> 00:07:43.060 Oh, I'm sure there are. 00:07:43.220 --> 00:07:43.700 I don't know. 00:07:43.860 --> 00:07:45.380 I don't know exactly. 00:07:45.700 --> 00:07:47.700 Have you seen this thing on a separate note? 00:07:47.780 --> 00:07:53.780 I think there are trees in the British Isles that there's a hypothesis that they're 00:07:53.780 --> 00:07:56.580 adapted to regularly being toppled over by elephants. 00:07:56.950 --> 00:07:58.310 No, that's fantastic. 00:07:58.870 --> 00:07:59.430 Or something like that. 00:07:59.910 --> 00:08:01.510 Or being brushed up against by elephants. 00:08:01.670 --> 00:08:02.150 Something like that. 00:08:02.390 --> 00:08:02.630 Wow. 00:08:03.190 --> 00:08:06.230 What what is the the counter response to that selection pressure? 00:08:06.470 --> 00:08:07.830 How do they deal with that? 00:08:08.230 --> 00:08:10.070 You mean in their can like in a modern world? 00:08:10.310 --> 00:08:10.390 Yeah. 00:08:10.790 --> 00:08:11.830 Or what are you asking? 00:08:11.990 --> 00:08:14.630 What's the design feature that suggests that they're designed to be brushed up? 00:08:15.110 --> 00:08:15.590 Oh, oh. 00:08:15.830 --> 00:08:16.390 I'm not sure. 00:08:16.470 --> 00:08:17.190 I'm not sure. 00:08:17.430 --> 00:08:18.550 And that's a good question. 00:08:19.110 --> 00:08:19.590 Interesting. 00:08:19.940 --> 00:08:23.220 Maybe like uh sharp branches or something. 00:08:25.460 --> 00:08:30.660 Or maybe like um I wonder if the uh uh they're they kind of break easily, but maybe it 00:08:30.660 --> 00:08:32.100 doesn't yeah, I'm not sure. 00:08:32.180 --> 00:08:32.500 I'm not sure. 00:08:32.900 --> 00:08:37.300 Oh, that they can they can withstand uh bran branches breaking better than other trees or 00:08:37.300 --> 00:08:37.620 something like that. 00:08:37.780 --> 00:08:38.660 Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. 00:08:38.900 --> 00:08:39.220 Interesting. 00:08:39.620 --> 00:08:43.940 There's a I think there's an argument that black bears are more docile than they should be 00:08:44.020 --> 00:08:45.940 given their relative formidability. 00:08:46.100 --> 00:08:51.450 And it's because especially at least in North America, They co-evolved with saber-tooth 00:08:52.010 --> 00:08:55.770 uh tiger cats and much bigger formidable animals. 00:08:55.850 --> 00:08:56.890 So we are actually very lucky. 00:08:57.050 --> 00:09:02.090 I mean, we killed off the grizzlies here in the continental US or southern or anyway, but 00:09:02.170 --> 00:09:06.090 uh but I think that's the argument is that they're more meek than they probably should be, 00:09:06.170 --> 00:09:07.690 and we're kind of grateful for that. 00:09:07.770 --> 00:09:10.170 But that's an EA holdover as well. 00:09:10.860 --> 00:09:11.420 Interesting. 00:09:11.740 --> 00:09:11.980 Interesting. 00:09:12.700 --> 00:09:13.420 Anyway, this is great. 00:09:13.580 --> 00:09:15.020 Anyway, Bonvier, thanks for coming. 00:09:15.180 --> 00:09:15.820 Uh this is great. 00:09:17.100 --> 00:09:22.300 I mean, it's it's good to start, you know, in broad strokes with the EEA as a concept with 00:09:22.300 --> 00:09:26.380 the ancestral selection pressures that's shaped human psychology. 00:09:26.460 --> 00:09:31.340 Um, and one of the most interesting things to emerge from these ancestral selection 00:09:31.340 --> 00:09:37.340 pressures is the practice of shamanism, which I know you've written um a beautiful 00:09:37.340 --> 00:09:39.130 book about called shamanism. 00:09:39.210 --> 00:09:40.330 I recommend that everyone read it. 00:09:40.410 --> 00:09:41.770 It's a wonderful book. 00:09:42.810 --> 00:09:48.330 And um a a priori, it seems like kind of a strange thing that would 00:09:48.330 --> 00:09:51.290 emerge from ancestral selection pressures. 00:09:51.850 --> 00:09:57.450 Shamanic practices these um elaborate rituals, um going 00:09:57.690 --> 00:10:03.540 into trances, taking uh hallucinogenic substances, um uh healing 00:10:03.540 --> 00:10:08.900 people or putting on ritualistic performances that suggest that some illness has been 00:10:08.900 --> 00:10:12.100 healed or some misfortune has been remedied. 00:10:12.980 --> 00:10:18.660 For me personally, when I think about these practices and how widespread how 00:10:18.660 --> 00:10:24.660 widespread and ubiquitous they are, I find myself very puzzled because I myself, 00:10:24.900 --> 00:10:30.820 as a uh Western science-minded atheist, um cannot wrap my head around 00:10:31.190 --> 00:10:35.670 why people um buy into this and why they aren't more skeptical. 00:10:35.990 --> 00:10:41.030 And I'm curious if if you share that mindset when approaching, or if you shared it in the 00:10:41.030 --> 00:10:46.230 past and and approach this topic with a kind of um uh uh 00:10:46.470 --> 00:10:52.320 bafflement or or at least curiosity as to as to how people could um overcome their 00:10:52.320 --> 00:10:54.400 skepticism and epistemic vigilance. 00:10:54.560 --> 00:11:00.560 And I'm curious is if um as you've studied shamanism more closely, um if that 00:11:00.560 --> 00:11:06.400 mindset has changed and now you you can begin to see um how and why people uh entertain 00:11:06.400 --> 00:11:08.480 these ideas and find them compelling. 00:11:09.200 --> 00:11:12.550 Yeah, there's a lot packaged into that question. 00:11:12.790 --> 00:11:17.030 Um and and there's a there's a lot to talk about. 00:11:17.270 --> 00:11:23.270 So yeah, one of the basic questions that I confronted in 00:11:23.270 --> 00:11:28.870 starting to think about shamanism was the one of why should people 00:11:29.750 --> 00:11:33.590 um pay other experts or specialists to engage in these practices? 00:11:33.750 --> 00:11:39.360 Why are we predisposed to rely on on practices or techniques that that by many 00:11:39.360 --> 00:11:43.600 measures seem to have no effect on their stated purpose. 00:11:43.760 --> 00:11:48.240 You know, you I I I promise to attack babies in a neighboring group, to change the weather, 00:11:48.400 --> 00:11:50.480 to divine the location of animals. 00:11:51.040 --> 00:11:56.800 Um as far as we know, these these kinds of promises, um, these these practitioners or 00:11:56.800 --> 00:12:00.400 specialists don't actually have the capacity to necessarily ensure those. 00:12:00.480 --> 00:12:04.400 Um, and in the book, I I review some evidence for why I think that's the case. 00:12:04.640 --> 00:12:10.370 Um so honestly, at the at the foundation, what I think 00:12:10.370 --> 00:12:15.570 is really important is a kind of error management or uh a a a 00:12:15.570 --> 00:12:20.770 bet-hedging psychology, um, which has been used to understand superstition and magic and 00:12:20.770 --> 00:12:21.970 ritual more generally. 00:12:22.130 --> 00:12:27.730 Um, and so, you know, I think shamanism is is a really intricate or 00:12:27.730 --> 00:12:33.170 elaborate manifestation, but we can start with something as simple as why do sports players 00:12:33.170 --> 00:12:39.140 uh wear the same whatever boxers or sports 00:12:39.140 --> 00:12:40.900 trucks or whatever they're called socks. 00:12:41.700 --> 00:12:44.820 Yeah, or have they have their lucky job strap or whate whatever. 00:12:45.060 --> 00:12:45.300 Yeah, yeah. 00:12:45.460 --> 00:12:47.700 Why do they cross lines and dirt? 00:12:47.860 --> 00:12:51.700 Why do people who are about to take a big exam um wear certain amulets? 00:12:51.780 --> 00:12:56.980 You know, there there are many manifestations, many forms of superstition, magic, ritual 00:12:56.980 --> 00:13:00.180 that we find even in contemporary Western societies. 00:13:00.900 --> 00:13:06.510 And I think a really powerful theoretical lens for 00:13:06.670 --> 00:13:09.470 explaining that has been a kind of error management psychology. 00:13:09.710 --> 00:13:14.190 That as people are evaluating causal relationships or 00:13:15.790 --> 00:13:20.430 choosing different interventions to act on the world in instrumental ways, there are two 00:13:20.430 --> 00:13:22.350 kinds of uh errors they can confront. 00:13:22.430 --> 00:13:28.000 They can either have false positives, so they can um they can think there's a relationship 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:29.760 when there isn't one, or they can have a miss. 00:13:29.840 --> 00:13:34.320 They can fail to discern a useful relationship when there actually is one. 00:13:34.480 --> 00:13:40.400 Um, and uh as a lot of evolutionary psychology or some work in evolutionary psychology, 00:13:40.480 --> 00:13:44.640 people like Mart Marty Hazleton have have shown, but also as has been explored in things 00:13:44.640 --> 00:13:50.480 like signal detection theory, um or um you know the the the the 00:13:50.480 --> 00:13:56.250 body of theory about uh air management more broadly, um uh when 00:13:56.250 --> 00:14:02.250 there is an asymmetry of costs um associated with with two kinds of errors, 00:14:02.410 --> 00:14:07.930 uh you want to uh you know, natural selection will favor uh setting the 00:14:07.930 --> 00:14:10.650 threshold in a way that minimizes the more costly error. 00:14:10.810 --> 00:14:14.810 Um and so I don't know what's going on over there. 00:14:15.130 --> 00:14:19.850 Okay, if you can't see there's an incredible light show happening in that mirror's 00:14:20.970 --> 00:14:22.170 zoom did something very interesting. 00:14:22.330 --> 00:14:22.490 Yeah. 00:14:22.980 --> 00:14:26.180 And we're just transformed into something supernatural. 00:14:26.500 --> 00:14:32.420 So so the the example that comes up a lot is is a um a a smoke detector, a a fire alarm. 00:14:32.580 --> 00:14:37.700 Um and so yeah, you're going to you're gonna set the threshold sufficiently low that it's 00:14:37.700 --> 00:14:40.180 going to uh go off more than it should be. 00:14:40.260 --> 00:14:43.940 It's gonna go off when people are like smoking marijuana in their dorms or when someone's 00:14:43.940 --> 00:14:45.780 cooking some veggies and they start to burn. 00:14:45.860 --> 00:14:50.450 Um, But you're willing to take these costs, these false alarms, because it means the 00:14:50.450 --> 00:14:54.130 threshold is sufficiently low that you're going to minimize the cost of these costly 00:14:54.370 --> 00:14:54.930 misses. 00:14:55.010 --> 00:14:58.370 That even every time there is a fire, you're hopefully going to capture it. 00:14:58.770 --> 00:15:04.770 And so the argument is that magic fundamentally is the product of a 00:15:04.770 --> 00:15:05.490 similar psychology. 00:15:05.650 --> 00:15:10.620 And you can actually this this theory, this approach, an error management uh explanation of 00:15:10.620 --> 00:15:14.220 magic makes all kinds of predictions about the contexts in which people shouldn't should 00:15:14.220 --> 00:15:19.820 use magic so they should use magic in contexts where that are um where there are uh high 00:15:19.820 --> 00:15:25.420 stakes so what we're what you might think of as very fitness relevant in in um in in high 00:15:25.580 --> 00:15:31.410 stakes ways um contexts in which um individuals have have 00:15:31.410 --> 00:15:34.530 minimal control in contexts that that resolve randomly in their favor. 00:15:34.610 --> 00:15:40.450 And you can actually make a prediction that as the likelihood of the outcome happening 00:15:40.450 --> 00:15:43.570 goes low, the potential benefit should should become larger. 00:15:43.650 --> 00:15:45.570 You should have this compensatory effect. 00:15:46.690 --> 00:15:50.610 And these are these are really well uh borne out. 00:15:50.770 --> 00:15:53.700 So um decades of research on magic and superstition. 00:15:53.860 --> 00:15:54.340 Oh yeah, Dave. 00:15:54.660 --> 00:15:58.180 Can I just poke is that because the ex you're are you talking about something where the 00:15:58.180 --> 00:16:02.740 expected value is held constant such that the more variable it is, the higher the benefit 00:16:02.740 --> 00:16:02.900 is? 00:16:02.980 --> 00:16:05.140 Or can you just uh elaborate on that last point? 00:16:05.300 --> 00:16:08.740 I didn't quite follow why that would be Yeah. 00:16:08.820 --> 00:16:09.940 Well maybe maybe I'm mistaken. 00:16:10.020 --> 00:16:13.140 But yeah I'm thinking it's it's an expected expected benefit kind of thing. 00:16:13.570 --> 00:16:14.050 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:16:14.130 --> 00:16:14.210 Yeah. 00:16:14.530 --> 00:16:19.730 So I guess we should actually think it should accounting for the cost of the intervention. 00:16:19.970 --> 00:16:21.970 Um, good. 00:16:22.130 --> 00:16:26.450 So the cost benefit is constant, but the expected value, so like a low probability but very 00:16:26.450 --> 00:16:31.650 high benefit thing versus a lower variability or more probable thing that's a lower 00:16:31.650 --> 00:16:34.690 benefit, these might have the same expected value value. 00:16:34.770 --> 00:16:35.810 Okay, yes, yes, yes. 00:16:36.130 --> 00:16:36.450 I'm with you. 00:16:36.530 --> 00:16:36.610 Good. 00:16:36.690 --> 00:16:37.010 Good good. 00:16:37.250 --> 00:16:37.330 Okay. 00:16:37.410 --> 00:16:38.930 And and this is controlling for cost. 00:16:39.140 --> 00:16:39.700 Yeah, cool. 00:16:39.780 --> 00:16:39.860 Okay. 00:16:40.180 --> 00:16:45.620 Um so I I wanna chime in and and say why, you know, I I do f I find this logic 00:16:45.620 --> 00:16:50.660 compelling, I find the error management framework compelling, but I still don't find I I 00:16:50.660 --> 00:16:55.700 find that this doesn't quite scratch the itch for me in terms of satisfying my 00:16:55.700 --> 00:16:59.780 curiosity about why people believe uh this stuff. 00:16:59.940 --> 00:17:05.790 Because I can I can understand the error management logic, but it doesn't make it seem to 00:17:05.790 --> 00:17:11.710 me plausible that the particular causal relationship in question is at play. 00:17:11.950 --> 00:17:17.790 So, yes, um, insofar as errors are inevitable, we would expect natural selection to um 00:17:18.030 --> 00:17:20.990 uh favor the less costly error. 00:17:21.470 --> 00:17:26.270 Um, but also we would expect natural selection to minimize error in general, right? 00:17:26.480 --> 00:17:28.560 Insofar as there is any kind of cost. 00:17:28.720 --> 00:17:34.320 And one way to minimize error in general is to ground one's 00:17:34.320 --> 00:17:40.240 causal models on plausible regularities or folk ontologies, right? 00:17:40.480 --> 00:17:46.320 And so it seems to me that there is a plausible causal connection between, say, the 00:17:46.320 --> 00:17:49.050 type of bat that I use if I'm playing baseball. 00:17:49.210 --> 00:17:52.970 Say, you know, maybe maybe I'm more likely to hit the ball if the if the bat is lighter, 00:17:53.050 --> 00:17:53.530 let's say. 00:17:53.690 --> 00:17:58.250 Maybe I'm more likely to hit the ball if I'm standing a little uh closer to the base, 00:17:58.490 --> 00:17:58.810 right? 00:17:59.370 --> 00:18:03.690 These are plausible, these have plausible causal connections to the outcome of interest to 00:18:03.690 --> 00:18:04.890 me, which is hitting the ball. 00:18:05.370 --> 00:18:10.410 Whereas what jock strap I'm wearing, that just does not seem to have any kind of plausible 00:18:10.490 --> 00:18:14.600 causal mechanism that could increase the likelihood that I would hit the ball. 00:18:14.760 --> 00:18:20.440 And so it still seems odd to me that people would favor these explanations without a 00:18:20.440 --> 00:18:22.600 plausible causal mechanism at play. 00:18:22.680 --> 00:18:28.440 And ways that seem to violate our folk ontologies in a certain way. 00:18:28.680 --> 00:18:34.600 Usually we have folk physics, we have intuitions about how objects interact with each 00:18:34.600 --> 00:18:40.430 other, about how objects can't be in two places at once, about how if one thing is going to 00:18:40.430 --> 00:18:42.750 impinge upon another object, it has to make contact. 00:18:42.910 --> 00:18:44.270 We have all these intuitions. 00:18:44.430 --> 00:18:49.950 And it seems like uh there just doesn't seem to be a connection between, say, a 00:18:49.950 --> 00:18:52.750 jockstrap and and me hitting a home run. 00:18:52.910 --> 00:18:58.590 So I'm still my itch has not quite been scratched as to why people find these uh 00:18:58.830 --> 00:19:00.350 explanations compelling. 00:19:00.750 --> 00:19:00.830 Okay. 00:19:01.870 --> 00:19:05.150 Sorry, there's sorry, there's there's one more, there's one more uh part of it. 00:19:05.420 --> 00:19:11.340 Even if we accept the error management logic, um that um it is less costly to 00:19:11.340 --> 00:19:16.860 say wear the jock strap than to miss out on a potentially valuable causal relationship. 00:19:17.020 --> 00:19:22.540 Even if we buy that, that doesn't necessarily imply that that I need to 00:19:22.540 --> 00:19:28.250 sincerely believe that the jockstrap causes um the the the home run hitting, let's say. 00:19:28.410 --> 00:19:28.570 Right. 00:19:28.730 --> 00:19:33.690 I could just I could just think, you know, it probably it doesn't have any effect at all. 00:19:33.850 --> 00:19:37.610 But I'm just gonna wear it anyway because on the off chance that it does have an effect, 00:19:37.770 --> 00:19:41.850 um, it'll you know, that's you know, the the benefit is so large that it's still worth it 00:19:41.850 --> 00:19:44.730 for me to wear the jack strap, even though probably it doesn't do anything. 00:19:44.970 --> 00:19:47.920 Usually that's not how people talk about their superstitions. 00:19:48.080 --> 00:19:52.960 Usually they they have a sincere belief that it does have a causal connection, or at least 00:19:52.960 --> 00:19:55.440 that a causal connection is very significantly likely. 00:19:55.600 --> 00:19:59.360 So those are the two um areas that I would push back on in terms of this explanation. 00:19:59.440 --> 00:20:04.640 So why is the belief sincere um as opposed to say a low probability? 00:20:05.120 --> 00:20:10.960 Um and uh why do why are uh implausible or um 00:20:11.280 --> 00:20:15.200 folk ontologically unlikely causal relationships favored? 00:20:15.570 --> 00:20:16.210 Okay, awesome. 00:20:16.290 --> 00:20:16.530 Yeah. 00:20:16.610 --> 00:20:19.730 So let's maybe let's address the the second and then we can come back to the first. 00:20:19.810 --> 00:20:22.130 My my microphone is like blinking in and out of existence. 00:20:22.610 --> 00:20:23.010 Fantastic. 00:20:23.090 --> 00:20:25.650 It's so it's so on point for this conversation. 00:20:26.210 --> 00:20:29.570 Um okay, so for the second, I I think you're totally right. 00:20:29.730 --> 00:20:35.650 And in in fact, the empirical literature, the empirical evidence 00:20:35.730 --> 00:20:41.100 to my understanding, is not that people will profess um 00:20:41.340 --> 00:20:43.500 sincere and absolute belief in these superstitions. 00:20:43.660 --> 00:20:48.060 So the example that that I'm thinking about, which I I um touch upon in the book, is 00:20:48.060 --> 00:20:53.820 there's a study where people survey baseball players in Japan and the United States about 00:20:53.820 --> 00:20:54.860 their various superstitions. 00:20:54.940 --> 00:21:00.060 And, you know, they do jock straps, they're marking X's in the the dirt, whatever. 00:21:00.220 --> 00:21:03.130 Um a number of these other interventions. 00:21:03.210 --> 00:21:06.650 Um, and they actually asked them about their perceived efficacy. 00:21:06.890 --> 00:21:11.930 And um, although I I forget the exact number, it's like 75% or 80% of players engage in 00:21:11.930 --> 00:21:16.570 these superstitions, their uh evaluation for the efficacy is something like it's something 00:21:16.570 --> 00:21:20.730 between like almost never has an impact and maybe hasn't, or and maybe sometimes has an 00:21:20.730 --> 00:21:21.050 impact. 00:21:22.570 --> 00:21:28.280 And and that we should look at the paper, or or someone can look at the paper. 00:21:28.360 --> 00:21:30.920 Um, so so it's not necessarily do you believe in this? 00:21:31.000 --> 00:21:33.640 Yes, no, but it's like how effective do you think this actually is? 00:21:33.720 --> 00:21:36.440 And people's evaluation of the efficacy is is pretty low. 00:21:36.520 --> 00:21:41.960 Um and so I mentioned that to say that that um uh at least in the Western 00:21:42.760 --> 00:21:48.360 in this context, and kind of a weird context, um, people are not professing 00:21:49.370 --> 00:21:51.850 what we might call sincere absolute belief in this. 00:21:52.090 --> 00:21:55.770 In the in context where people are going to shamans, and one thing I talk about in my book 00:21:55.770 --> 00:22:01.130 is that I also think there's often there isn't an uh what there is, 00:22:02.890 --> 00:22:06.970 you know, ethnographically speaking, is there seems to be some faith that there are shamans 00:22:06.970 --> 00:22:08.570 somewhere who have these capacities. 00:22:08.730 --> 00:22:13.240 Um, but there is actually a constantly a lot of skepticism about individual practitioners. 00:22:13.400 --> 00:22:17.320 Some people have have skepticism about many practitioners or or all of the shamans who 00:22:17.320 --> 00:22:18.200 exist right now. 00:22:18.280 --> 00:22:23.640 Um, and so I think people go to shamans often without 00:22:23.640 --> 00:22:27.720 necessarily expecting them totally to to to work. 00:22:27.880 --> 00:22:29.880 Um so so that's the your second point. 00:22:30.040 --> 00:22:34.530 Your first point is a really interesting one and something that I have been thinking about 00:22:34.530 --> 00:22:37.490 a lot with one of my PhD students. 00:22:37.890 --> 00:22:39.250 We're thinking about. 00:22:39.650 --> 00:22:42.370 So are you familiar with the idea of sympathetic magic? 00:22:43.730 --> 00:22:45.330 Why don't you um I can go through it? 00:22:45.650 --> 00:22:45.890 Define it. 00:22:45.970 --> 00:22:46.210 Define it. 00:22:46.290 --> 00:22:46.370 Yeah. 00:22:46.610 --> 00:22:46.690 Yeah. 00:22:46.770 --> 00:22:51.570 So sympathetic magic is the basic principle that we find in a lot of magical practices as 00:22:51.570 --> 00:22:54.130 they occur across societies that like affects like. 00:22:54.370 --> 00:22:59.410 And there are two principles of sympathetic magic that are kind of codified in the 00:22:59.620 --> 00:23:00.980 anthropological literature. 00:23:01.140 --> 00:23:06.740 One is this idea of contagion that um something that touches something else, uh things that 00:23:06.740 --> 00:23:10.020 that touch end up impacting each other uh for a long time. 00:23:10.180 --> 00:23:13.940 So I can take one of your hairs and I can do magic on it and it will affect you. 00:23:14.100 --> 00:23:18.900 You can step in the dirt and I can you know affect w your footprint and it it'll affect 00:23:18.900 --> 00:23:19.140 you. 00:23:19.380 --> 00:23:23.170 Um The other one is uh similarity. 00:23:23.330 --> 00:23:29.010 Um, and this is more like that, like effects like the the quintessential example is the um 00:23:29.250 --> 00:23:32.610 the voodoo doll that uh or an effigy. 00:23:32.850 --> 00:23:37.330 I can make something that resembles something else, and I I can uh uh act on it and it will 00:23:37.330 --> 00:23:38.130 affect the target. 00:23:38.290 --> 00:23:42.290 Or, you know, I want to make rainfall, and so I sprinkle water on a little thing that 00:23:42.290 --> 00:23:43.570 resembles my house. 00:23:43.890 --> 00:23:49.700 Um and um There's this question of why 00:23:49.700 --> 00:23:55.300 is sympathetic magic, why are similarity and contagion so culturally sticky, and we might 00:23:55.300 --> 00:23:56.740 even say cognitively sticky? 00:23:56.820 --> 00:24:01.540 What is predisposing humans everywhere to so reliably gravitate towards these practices? 00:24:01.700 --> 00:24:04.980 And one hypothesis is actually kind of in accordance with what you're saying. 00:24:05.140 --> 00:24:10.500 Um maybe humans are endowed with particular causal 00:24:10.500 --> 00:24:11.220 intuitions. 00:24:11.380 --> 00:24:16.210 You know, we in in trying to map a causal structural of the world, uh, we are especially 00:24:16.210 --> 00:24:21.570 attentive, or or we are apt to suspect that things that touch end up imposing or are 00:24:21.570 --> 00:24:26.050 affecting each other, um, or somehow that things that that resemble each other have some 00:24:26.050 --> 00:24:28.930 kind of causal relationship or causal association. 00:24:29.090 --> 00:24:32.610 Um, and that predisposes us to favor those forms of magic. 00:24:32.770 --> 00:24:37.170 Now, that actually raises the question of why people should be endowed with predispositions 00:24:37.170 --> 00:24:41.420 that make them uh gravitate towards these causal relationships because it is not actually 00:24:41.420 --> 00:24:46.060 the fact that acting on things that resemble each other means that that they're they're 00:24:46.060 --> 00:24:46.860 affected. 00:24:47.100 --> 00:24:52.780 Um but but it's it's just to say that that I think at least one approach or one hypothesis 00:24:52.780 --> 00:24:57.100 is that yes, forms of magic that actually do accord with some kind of folk ontology of of 00:24:57.100 --> 00:24:58.700 causality are favored. 00:24:59.020 --> 00:25:04.780 Um now I've had actually pushback, and and my PhD student has has made me 00:25:06.630 --> 00:25:12.390 Uh uh a bit more skeptical or or a bit more open to the to the 00:25:12.390 --> 00:25:15.510 possibility that this isn't the case, that this isn't actually the best way to explain 00:25:15.510 --> 00:25:16.710 sympathetic magic. 00:25:16.870 --> 00:25:22.070 Um, and what she has really been arguing to me in a really interesting way from engaging 00:25:22.070 --> 00:25:28.070 with people in computational cognitive science is that um epistemic vigilance may 00:25:28.070 --> 00:25:34.040 apply to information that's coming from social others, um, but maybe it doesn't apply 00:25:34.040 --> 00:25:39.400 as much to us mapping out causal relationships or or or ways of intervening on the world 00:25:39.480 --> 00:25:44.440 that maybe in fact people are are quite yes, we're we're we're we're skeptical and careful 00:25:44.440 --> 00:25:48.520 of when when confronted with information by you know presented from from people who are 00:25:48.520 --> 00:25:49.800 maybe attempting to deceive us. 00:25:49.880 --> 00:25:54.360 But when actually trying to discern how what's affecting uh other things in the world, yes, 00:25:54.440 --> 00:25:58.040 we might have some folk physics, but we might actually be much more epistemically 00:25:58.040 --> 00:25:59.960 promiscuous or or open. 00:26:02.030 --> 00:26:07.630 Which which I find interesting and and goes against maybe some of the the things that I've 00:26:07.630 --> 00:26:12.910 really been been invited to think about or or ways that I've I've I've really thought about 00:26:12.990 --> 00:26:16.430 how humans get information and evaluate information from the world. 00:26:17.230 --> 00:26:20.350 But yeah, those are those are just some thoughts for your for your first question. 00:26:20.510 --> 00:26:24.190 Now actually going from your first question to shamanism, the interesting thing about 00:26:24.190 --> 00:26:29.300 shamanism is that shamans are not, you know, giving people jock straps and saying that this 00:26:29.300 --> 00:26:35.300 will affect your um your your your baseball playing um they are actually really 00:26:35.940 --> 00:26:41.700 acting within people's folk ontologies people's models of the world um and so 00:26:42.020 --> 00:26:46.580 uh what shamans almost overwhelmingly do is that they um 00:26:47.790 --> 00:26:53.710 uh provide some service or promise to to uh produce some desired outcome by engaging 00:26:53.710 --> 00:26:59.150 with unseen agents that are believed to to oversee or be related to the outcome that that 00:26:59.150 --> 00:27:00.190 you're interested in. 00:27:00.270 --> 00:27:04.830 Um so you believe that you're sick because a witch has harmed you the shaman will attack 00:27:04.830 --> 00:27:10.510 that witch you believe that um yeah you're you're sick because a a a a particular 00:27:10.510 --> 00:27:15.360 ghost um attacked you, or because your soul was lost somewhere, they'll call back your 00:27:15.360 --> 00:27:15.600 soul. 00:27:15.680 --> 00:27:18.480 You want rain, they'll engage with some kind of rain goddess. 00:27:18.640 --> 00:27:24.480 Um, and so so uh yeah, if we think about y'all might be 00:27:24.480 --> 00:27:30.000 familiar with model free and model-based learning, this idea that um when people are um 00:27:31.040 --> 00:27:35.520 learning or evaluating actions, they both use kind of expected costs and benefits, but also 00:27:35.520 --> 00:27:36.800 simulated models of the world. 00:27:36.880 --> 00:27:40.350 And I think to understand shamanism, it kind of helps to think about both that there's an 00:27:40.350 --> 00:27:46.030 error management way in which people um just um uh 00:27:46.670 --> 00:27:51.310 are using expected reward in ways that minimize costly errors, but then they're also 00:27:51.310 --> 00:27:54.990 actually evaluating practices within their own models of of reality. 00:27:55.150 --> 00:27:59.870 I mean, that then raises the question or begs the question of why do people believe that 00:27:59.870 --> 00:28:05.820 gods, ghosts, spirits, witches uh are involved in the outcomes that that they're 00:28:05.820 --> 00:28:11.740 interested in, but um but I do think shamans are are actually tapping into 00:28:11.740 --> 00:28:14.780 people's folk ontologies of causality, if that makes sense. 00:28:15.340 --> 00:28:15.820 For sure. 00:28:15.980 --> 00:28:16.220 Yeah. 00:28:16.300 --> 00:28:19.180 I mean, what what do you think about this way of thinking about it? 00:28:19.340 --> 00:28:25.020 So this the sympathetic magic stuff doesn't really make sense in terms of folk 00:28:25.180 --> 00:28:25.740 physics. 00:28:25.980 --> 00:28:30.610 So if I if I water a model of a miniature model of my house. 00:28:30.770 --> 00:28:35.410 There's not really a physical mechanism that could link that to the rain, to real rain 00:28:35.730 --> 00:28:37.410 raining on my house, right? 00:28:39.490 --> 00:28:45.090 But in the social world, that relationship might actually make 00:28:45.410 --> 00:28:45.970 sense. 00:28:46.210 --> 00:28:51.920 So if I attack or burn an image of you or a statue of you, 00:28:52.080 --> 00:28:55.120 that really does suggest some animus toward you. 00:28:55.360 --> 00:28:59.760 How I uh interact with something that is similar to you or symbolically represents you 00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:03.520 really could tell you important information about my allegiances. 00:29:03.680 --> 00:29:08.000 If I burn the American flag, for instance, uh, that might tell you something really 00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:11.280 important about my uh coalitional allegiances. 00:29:11.440 --> 00:29:16.800 So while sympathetic magic doesn't really make sense in terms of uh folk physics, it might 00:29:16.800 --> 00:29:19.230 make a kind of social sense, right? 00:29:19.390 --> 00:29:25.390 And insofar as the sympathetic magic ritual is a social ritual designed to affect 00:29:25.550 --> 00:29:31.550 um the actions of supernatural agents, um maybe it could be seen 00:29:31.550 --> 00:29:37.070 as a kind of intentional signal or communicative uh gesture toward um uh another 00:29:37.070 --> 00:29:40.750 supernatural agent as opposed to a physical mechanism. 00:29:41.150 --> 00:29:46.750 In other words, that the the the logic of social life and symbolism and communication is 00:29:46.750 --> 00:29:51.200 being um brought into the domain of physics where it doesn't belong. 00:29:51.440 --> 00:29:53.440 Do you buy that way of thinking of this? 00:29:54.800 --> 00:30:00.320 So so then would you say that um sympathetic magic as it's used for non-social 00:30:00.400 --> 00:30:04.400 instrumental ends, hunting magic, for example, is like a kluge byproduct? 00:30:04.560 --> 00:30:05.680 Is that the account? 00:30:06.160 --> 00:30:06.400 Yeah. 00:30:06.480 --> 00:30:10.640 So I would I would suspect, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, that that maybe the model 00:30:10.640 --> 00:30:15.510 that's that's uh that people have in their head is that there's some agent, some 00:30:15.510 --> 00:30:20.630 supernatural agent that is causally responsible for whether I succeed in this hunt or not. 00:30:20.950 --> 00:30:26.390 And if I make some kind of communicative or symbolic gesture that this agent would 00:30:26.390 --> 00:30:29.670 understand, then that might help me succeed in this hunt. 00:30:29.910 --> 00:30:35.350 So it's not so much that um the symbolic act is causally related to the to the success of 00:30:35.350 --> 00:30:39.910 the hunt in a way that a billiard ball is related to the movement of another billiard ball. 00:30:39.990 --> 00:30:45.900 Uh it's that the ritual is a symbolic gesture or a social gesture or communicative 00:30:45.900 --> 00:30:47.740 act to an imagined agent. 00:30:48.220 --> 00:30:48.380 Yeah. 00:30:48.700 --> 00:30:50.380 Just to interrupt, it's like a storyboard. 00:30:50.540 --> 00:30:51.980 It's the function of storyboarding. 00:30:52.060 --> 00:30:57.180 So it's sort of storyboarding for the future to spirits as opposed to storyboarding so we 00:30:57.180 --> 00:30:59.180 can all make a movie. 00:31:00.300 --> 00:31:05.340 So that would that would predict that that these rituals would coincide with some belief in 00:31:05.340 --> 00:31:09.730 a supernatural agent, and you would rarely, if ever, see these kinds of rituals in the 00:31:09.730 --> 00:31:14.450 absence of any belief about a spirit or or a or s or a supernatural agent. 00:31:14.930 --> 00:31:16.850 Yeah, I the thing I struggle with. 00:31:17.250 --> 00:31:18.370 So it's an interesting account. 00:31:18.450 --> 00:31:22.130 The thing I struggle with is that it it does seem like sympathetic magic. 00:31:22.370 --> 00:31:27.330 So so I do think like the the practitioners of sympathetic magic also often do hold beliefs 00:31:27.330 --> 00:31:28.850 in supernatural agents. 00:31:30.130 --> 00:31:34.530 When they're engaging in it, it doesn't seem like they often necessarily 00:31:36.930 --> 00:31:40.820 are invoking those supernatural agents, are trying to communicate with them. 00:31:41.220 --> 00:31:47.220 They do seem like actions devoid of these kinds of supernatural 00:31:47.220 --> 00:31:48.100 third parties. 00:31:48.740 --> 00:31:53.220 You know, you might you might argue back, well, that doesn't necessarily mean that they 00:31:53.220 --> 00:31:54.900 don't represent them as being there. 00:31:55.140 --> 00:31:59.300 Um yeah, I I I'll say that uh it's an interesting account. 00:31:59.460 --> 00:32:03.430 I am a little skeptical, but But it's interesting. 00:32:05.350 --> 00:32:10.150 Is that response sort of, I think, for for many listeners, presumably their more similar 00:32:10.150 --> 00:32:15.510 experience would be something like if you're in church, there's sort of a right way to do a 00:32:15.510 --> 00:32:16.310 ritual. 00:32:16.550 --> 00:32:21.430 But we're not thinking like, oh, where is God in the building such that he's or Jesus or 00:32:21.430 --> 00:32:23.750 the Holy Spirit such that he's watching us right now? 00:32:23.910 --> 00:32:27.510 Is that the sort of flavor of what your response was? 00:32:27.590 --> 00:32:33.120 Is that if it's true, if David's storyboarding account is true, the 00:32:33.120 --> 00:32:38.800 proximate experience, at least on the ground, isn't 00:32:39.040 --> 00:32:43.520 really explicit awareness of the agent in the same way that I just described for most 00:32:43.520 --> 00:32:44.720 people's experience of church. 00:32:44.880 --> 00:32:47.040 Is that a fair characteristic? 00:32:47.360 --> 00:32:51.600 Yeah, you're saying if I wanted to buttress the account against the response that people 00:32:51.600 --> 00:32:57.310 aren't invoking it, one response might be that just as people are maybe 00:32:57.310 --> 00:33:01.310 without awareness but still feeling watched in church or something. 00:33:01.710 --> 00:33:07.390 Yeah, or or maybe just uh I think I was just sort of many people aren't familiar with the 00:33:07.550 --> 00:33:12.670 the ethnographic or cross-cultural uh work that you are. 00:33:12.830 --> 00:33:18.750 And so I'm just sort of trying to imagine a more mundane for listeners and for myself even 00:33:18.910 --> 00:33:24.060 experience that's very similar that I think you could see it both ways, right? 00:33:24.140 --> 00:33:27.420 Like you can argue that there's this weird ritual we do in church. 00:33:27.580 --> 00:33:29.660 And if some kid is like, Well, why do we do this? 00:33:29.740 --> 00:33:32.220 It's because, well, honey, because God is watching us. 00:33:32.460 --> 00:33:36.060 But nobody's like, you know, like looking around, being like, Where is God? 00:33:36.220 --> 00:33:39.980 Or, you know, I mean But so I'll say like the difference I think. 00:33:40.060 --> 00:33:42.780 So I'll give you an example just uh uh in Mentui. 00:33:43.350 --> 00:33:48.230 so I I have for many years worked off the west coast of Sumatra in the Mintawe Islands. 00:33:48.310 --> 00:33:50.630 And as a part of my work, we built a small house. 00:33:50.710 --> 00:33:55.910 And whenever you build a house, you have to engage in a lot of magic to um protect it. 00:33:56.070 --> 00:34:01.910 Um and so you plant plants outside in the front, some of which um promise good and some of 00:34:01.910 --> 00:34:03.110 which deter bad. 00:34:03.270 --> 00:34:08.720 Um and so the plants that deter bad, there's one that um one of these plants that when you 00:34:08.720 --> 00:34:10.160 touch it, it kind of closes. 00:34:10.320 --> 00:34:13.600 There's another plant that is very twisty. 00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:19.520 And there's a lot of sympathetic causality invoked that when the evil comes or 00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.000 bad things come, these deter it in in very many ways. 00:34:25.120 --> 00:34:30.970 And so I when they're planting it and and thinking about this, uh uh 00:34:31.370 --> 00:34:37.130 the sense is more that this there's some kind of causal relationship here than there 00:34:37.130 --> 00:34:42.010 is some kind of it's not even like they say that God is watching or spirits are watching, 00:34:42.090 --> 00:34:43.770 but they don't know they're not aware of them. 00:34:43.930 --> 00:34:48.970 It's it's it's really kind of detached from the discussion about supernatural agents, if 00:34:48.970 --> 00:34:49.450 that's clear. 00:34:49.900 --> 00:34:50.940 Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. 00:34:51.100 --> 00:34:56.940 I mean, I yeah, it and this is maybe my question too is that it might be also that magic 00:34:56.940 --> 00:35:00.780 or shamanism or rituals are s are a very heterogeneous class. 00:35:00.940 --> 00:35:02.700 And in fact, both things might be right. 00:35:03.180 --> 00:35:03.900 Yes, yes, yes. 00:35:04.060 --> 00:35:06.700 No, no, I think they are a very heterogeneous class. 00:35:06.780 --> 00:35:09.660 And I think you can have different mechanistic experiences. 00:35:09.980 --> 00:35:14.460 Did Clark Clark had uh some talks, and I don't know, hi Clark, if you're listening, um, on 00:35:14.460 --> 00:35:15.180 hunting magic. 00:35:15.470 --> 00:35:15.870 I remember that. 00:35:16.030 --> 00:35:17.390 Uh in his argument. 00:35:17.870 --> 00:35:19.470 Yeah, and I think I don't know if it's published. 00:35:19.550 --> 00:35:21.550 I know he has this cool volume. 00:35:21.790 --> 00:35:23.710 Um, we can listen back to our episode. 00:35:23.790 --> 00:35:25.630 I think he talked about it when we interviewed him. 00:35:25.870 --> 00:35:31.070 But his argument was that um hunting magic in Monvere, you might know even better than me, 00:35:31.150 --> 00:35:32.430 um, if you remember more. 00:35:32.510 --> 00:35:38.030 But essentially it's sort of self-mental technology um of uh 00:35:38.670 --> 00:35:44.350 having a routine, just like meditation is it's a technology of um 00:35:45.720 --> 00:35:51.240 providing inputs to your own information processing system to, for example, de-stress, 00:35:51.720 --> 00:35:53.400 focus, attend. 00:35:54.200 --> 00:35:56.760 And those things can work, right? 00:35:57.000 --> 00:36:02.840 Like if you're too worried about performing, like you know, if you're on a sports 00:36:02.840 --> 00:36:08.550 team, then you might systems might be engaged that actually are counterproductive to peak 00:36:08.550 --> 00:36:09.110 performance. 00:36:09.270 --> 00:36:14.950 And it might be some rituals like goalies wiping the mistake off the off the goalpost 00:36:15.190 --> 00:36:20.950 is is a way to ritualize getting in a certain information processing state. 00:36:21.030 --> 00:36:26.950 And I think Clark's argument was that some of hunting magic was like this, where it was 00:36:26.950 --> 00:36:32.310 a way to calibrate which systems within the phenotype are sort of turned on and how much 00:36:32.390 --> 00:36:38.360 and which ones aren't, and to get in that reliable state that apparently is fairly well 00:36:38.360 --> 00:36:42.200 attuned for, you know, for example, noticing prey animals or something. 00:36:42.680 --> 00:36:44.760 Monvir, I'm curious what you think about that. 00:36:44.920 --> 00:36:46.280 Is that a different account? 00:36:46.440 --> 00:36:49.400 Is that a different account for a different part of the elephant, so to speak? 00:36:49.640 --> 00:36:50.840 Pardon the the pun. 00:36:51.240 --> 00:36:54.120 Um or or or am I getting it wrong? 00:36:54.200 --> 00:36:55.640 What do what are your thoughts about that? 00:36:55.720 --> 00:36:55.960 Yeah. 00:36:56.360 --> 00:37:00.570 Yeah, so I don't remember the exact account, but what you said does does vaguely accord 00:37:00.570 --> 00:37:01.610 with what I what I remember. 00:37:01.690 --> 00:37:05.530 So I um I I trust that that's like a solid representation. 00:37:05.770 --> 00:37:11.690 Um yeah, so I would say there's a there's a whole class of explanations of magic uh 00:37:11.770 --> 00:37:16.890 uh that also are empirically borne out to some degree that argue for what we might call 00:37:17.130 --> 00:37:18.330 intrinsic benefits. 00:37:18.490 --> 00:37:22.810 Um so there's also a bunch of literature, including some experimental work, showing that um 00:37:22.890 --> 00:37:28.520 people who are engage in magic or rituals or superstitions also um uh 00:37:29.240 --> 00:37:33.800 it it functions to reduce stress or anxiety and you can measure that in physiological 00:37:33.800 --> 00:37:33.960 measures. 00:37:34.360 --> 00:37:34.840 Yeah totally. 00:37:36.120 --> 00:37:41.640 Um yeah uh I think that's all plausible. 00:37:41.800 --> 00:37:43.880 I think it's plausible that it has those effects. 00:37:44.120 --> 00:37:50.120 Um I I'm honestly I tend to be a little skeptical that those are the 00:37:51.890 --> 00:37:55.890 that is the function of magic, or that is the driving effect, that is the effect of magic 00:37:55.890 --> 00:37:58.690 that that contributes to its existence in the first place. 00:37:59.010 --> 00:38:04.930 Um now, yeah, I guess I maybe I'm so stuck in in kind of 00:38:04.930 --> 00:38:10.450 an error management point of view, but I find really, really compelling it's the the 00:38:10.450 --> 00:38:16.000 capacity of an error management approach or an approach that simply like trusts the 00:38:16.000 --> 00:38:22.000 instrumental ends that people are are ex explicating for explaining just the differentials 00:38:22.000 --> 00:38:25.840 and costs and benefits, the contexts in which people are engaging in magic. 00:38:26.000 --> 00:38:31.280 I just think that approach has been so predictively powerful for explaining so much of the 00:38:31.280 --> 00:38:35.120 the context in which people are are using magic, just how how they think about it. 00:38:35.280 --> 00:38:40.480 And it it what I find also kind of compelling and and you know I I don't necessarily think 00:38:40.480 --> 00:38:46.010 we should always trust people's word for it, but it's it's an approach where it it like is 00:38:46.010 --> 00:38:49.690 pretty rigorous and sophisticated about the kinds of predictions it's making and it also 00:38:49.690 --> 00:38:53.770 totally accords with how people actually explicate their thought processes. 00:38:53.850 --> 00:38:57.690 You know, I am trying to use this practice because I want to have this objective on the 00:38:57.690 --> 00:38:58.010 world. 00:38:58.650 --> 00:39:03.770 So I I I think of these intrinsic benefits, this this whole class of intrinsic benefits as 00:39:03.770 --> 00:39:09.690 potentially epiphenomenal, but not necessarily I'm I'm I'm sometimes I'm I'm 00:39:09.690 --> 00:39:15.660 skeptical that if you want to understand why humans engage in magic, like that is the the 00:39:15.660 --> 00:39:16.300 place to start. 00:39:16.620 --> 00:39:17.900 Yeah, that's totally fair. 00:39:18.060 --> 00:39:23.500 I think I'm channeling you when I say this, which we had Pascal Boy on recently, 00:39:25.020 --> 00:39:26.460 what did I say, on recently. 00:39:26.620 --> 00:39:32.460 And he was saying how your work and other people's work have moved him towards thinking 00:39:32.460 --> 00:39:38.450 not just about the consumers of epistemic, uh, you know, 00:39:38.530 --> 00:39:44.050 almost memes to kind of put it, to give it a gloss, you know, consumers of ideas 00:39:44.370 --> 00:39:49.650 or representations, but also the logic of the producers. 00:39:49.810 --> 00:39:53.730 And so one other thing, and I think your work you know has focused on this, is then there's 00:39:53.730 --> 00:39:58.770 also this issue that we haven't really talked about yet, which is we've talked about why 00:39:58.850 --> 00:40:01.560 would consumers consume shamanism. 00:40:01.720 --> 00:40:06.120 But then there's also the question of well, why would there be people who produce 00:40:06.120 --> 00:40:06.840 shamanism? 00:40:06.920 --> 00:40:12.280 And it strikes me as there might be a lot of benefits to being seen as a shaman. 00:40:12.440 --> 00:40:17.160 I mean, I think you gotta you gotta win them over, and that's that ain't easy, right? 00:40:17.320 --> 00:40:18.440 So could you talk? 00:40:18.520 --> 00:40:23.080 Have have you thought, you know, this is one of your themes of your work as I take it. 00:40:23.240 --> 00:40:29.070 So can you talk a little bit about the production end of shamanism and um to what 00:40:29.070 --> 00:40:33.710 extent, if our conversation has been largely about the consumer end, what is there to say 00:40:33.710 --> 00:40:36.510 or know about the production and how have you been thinking about that? 00:40:36.990 --> 00:40:37.310 For sure. 00:40:37.390 --> 00:40:41.550 I mean, I think the question is like, yeah, we we've talked a little, let's say we we are 00:40:42.510 --> 00:40:48.110 taking a bet hedging or error management approach where people are engaging in magic 00:40:48.110 --> 00:40:51.870 because they want to influence outcomes in the world that are self-serving. 00:40:52.030 --> 00:40:54.350 Um how then do you get from that to shamanism? 00:40:54.430 --> 00:40:59.640 How do you get from that to practitioners entering non-ordinary states, you know, healing 00:40:59.640 --> 00:41:00.840 people, et cetera, et cetera? 00:41:01.000 --> 00:41:06.520 And I really think you you need to think about there being an entire class of producers who 00:41:06.520 --> 00:41:10.600 are competing amongst themselves to provide these benefits or provide these services for 00:41:10.600 --> 00:41:11.000 benefits. 00:41:11.080 --> 00:41:16.280 I think then it actually really aids us to honestly use like a market analogy. 00:41:16.650 --> 00:41:21.450 Um, and so yeah, what I think is really critical is that once you have people who are 00:41:21.450 --> 00:41:27.210 willing to to pay small costs or or or costs relative to the expected benefit to have these 00:41:27.210 --> 00:41:32.650 outcomes, then you have sp other specialists competing amongst themselves to provide these 00:41:32.650 --> 00:41:33.370 services. 00:41:33.610 --> 00:41:38.650 Um and those specialists will uh you 00:41:39.100 --> 00:41:43.500 Invest in these practices to the extent that they can expect benefits. 00:41:43.580 --> 00:41:49.500 The elaboration of those practices will track the potential for the for the consumers to 00:41:49.660 --> 00:41:50.220 pay for them. 00:41:50.300 --> 00:41:55.980 And so for outcomes like death and illness, you can have really, really elaborate practices 00:41:55.980 --> 00:41:58.860 where consumers are willing to invest quite a bit. 00:41:59.420 --> 00:42:02.940 Producers are incentivized to invest a lot to reap those benefits. 00:42:04.620 --> 00:42:10.470 I think shamanism inherently requires uh a species that is social enough where you can have 00:42:10.470 --> 00:42:11.910 people trading services. 00:42:12.310 --> 00:42:12.550 Yeah. 00:42:12.790 --> 00:42:17.350 I wonder too, to channel David a little bit, it once something becomes common knowledge. 00:42:17.510 --> 00:42:23.510 So I'm just imagining, let's suppose that somebody's child was sick 00:42:23.670 --> 00:42:25.990 and they took their child to some shaman. 00:42:26.630 --> 00:42:30.870 And whether or not it worked, they tried, right? 00:42:31.120 --> 00:42:35.920 And then my child becomes sick, and people are like, Well, did you go to the shaman? 00:42:36.000 --> 00:42:37.760 You know, and my child's not better yet. 00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:43.680 It kind of looks like, and even to my own representation, I'm not doing everything I can 00:42:43.920 --> 00:42:45.680 for my child, and that sucks. 00:42:45.840 --> 00:42:46.160 Right. 00:42:46.480 --> 00:42:52.160 So I think this this common knowledge thing, once you kind of get it going, um 00:42:52.560 --> 00:42:57.810 uh that that's another thing too, where it's like, well, you know, why would it why would 00:42:57.810 --> 00:43:02.130 David have taken his child, even if it didn't work, he did something about it. 00:43:02.370 --> 00:43:07.570 You know, so I think there's you can you can imagine with all these caveats of there's 00:43:07.570 --> 00:43:12.850 competition, you can see how these things could sort of build on each other once they're 00:43:12.850 --> 00:43:13.810 established. 00:43:14.610 --> 00:43:20.240 Yeah, I really like that um argument, David, and something I've been thinking about um 00:43:20.400 --> 00:43:26.080 in terms of how low efficacy actions can actually um convey more 00:43:26.400 --> 00:43:31.040 information to recipients as a signal than high probability actions. 00:43:31.520 --> 00:43:37.120 Because if I'm investing a huge amount of time and energy to do something that only shifts 00:43:37.120 --> 00:43:42.670 the probability of say helping my child or my wife or my friend by a tiny amount, 00:43:42.830 --> 00:43:46.350 then that shows that I really care about their welfare. 00:43:46.750 --> 00:43:51.310 Whereas if I do something that's very cheap and that um with a hundred percent likelihood 00:43:51.310 --> 00:43:57.150 of helping them, um, you know, I uh I don't know, I I I quickly do the Heimlich any anyone 00:43:57.150 --> 00:44:00.590 would do the Heimlich manumer if they knew how to do it and someone was choking, even a 00:44:00.590 --> 00:44:04.030 total stranger, right? 'Cause that has, you know, really high efficacy. 00:44:04.420 --> 00:44:05.780 were thirsty give them water. 00:44:05.860 --> 00:44:05.940 Yeah. 00:44:06.500 --> 00:44:06.660 Exactly. 00:44:06.740 --> 00:44:09.140 If you're in the canteen and someone's thirsty, you give them water. 00:44:09.460 --> 00:44:13.860 Even if you even if you don't know the person, it doesn't send a strong signal of of 00:44:13.860 --> 00:44:18.980 loyalty and and toward that individual as doing something that a doing a low probability 00:44:18.980 --> 00:44:19.860 action does. 00:44:20.100 --> 00:44:24.900 So if I if I spend a lot of time and effort doing a ritual to say cure your your illness 00:44:24.980 --> 00:44:28.980 and it has a very small chance of working, that sends a stronger signal that I care about 00:44:28.980 --> 00:44:32.660 you than if I than if I'm your doctor and if I do something that's actually effective, 00:44:32.830 --> 00:44:32.990 right? 00:44:33.150 --> 00:44:35.230 Or if I prescribe you a medication, say. 00:44:35.470 --> 00:44:41.470 And so it may be that um the the low efficacy is actually a feature, not a bug, and 00:44:41.470 --> 00:44:43.870 that they're sending stronger social signals. 00:44:44.350 --> 00:44:44.670 Yikes. 00:44:44.910 --> 00:44:48.750 Yeah, I would say, of course, that I think like for if my child is sick, we would expect 00:44:48.750 --> 00:44:52.110 people to first prioritize those kinds of outcomes that would maximize the benefit. 00:44:52.990 --> 00:44:57.860 And so like and because there are also opportunity costs for interventions, you know, I can 00:44:58.500 --> 00:45:02.660 even w with the mentality, I can spend time going to the clinic, I can go get herbs, I can 00:45:02.660 --> 00:45:06.500 call a shaman, I can, you know, massage my child, I can do any number of things. 00:45:06.660 --> 00:45:12.100 So I definitely think this might shift it, move some stuff around, but I do think the 00:45:12.100 --> 00:45:15.940 driving thing immediately, especially if my child has an illness that seems dire, would be 00:45:15.940 --> 00:45:18.580 to maximize expected benefit first. 00:45:18.890 --> 00:45:19.290 of course. 00:45:19.450 --> 00:45:19.690 Yeah. 00:45:20.010 --> 00:45:20.250 Yeah. 00:45:20.330 --> 00:45:25.130 But within the cost-benefit calculus is what people are going to infer about me based on 00:45:25.130 --> 00:45:26.090 the actions I take. 00:45:26.250 --> 00:45:31.770 How good of a father am I if I don't do anything to help my child, if I don't take them to 00:45:31.770 --> 00:45:34.170 the shaman, if I don't perform the rituals? 00:45:34.330 --> 00:45:39.130 What are people going to infer about my level of parental investment in the child? 00:45:39.320 --> 00:45:39.640 right? 00:45:39.880 --> 00:45:44.680 And so in addition to the direct, I I obviously would want to help the child and do 00:45:44.680 --> 00:45:46.680 whatever I can to make sure that they're better. 00:45:46.840 --> 00:45:51.800 But in addition to those costs and benefits, there are the added social and reputational 00:45:51.800 --> 00:45:52.600 costs and benefits. 00:45:52.680 --> 00:45:56.600 And I think that's part of the calculus and that that might be part of the mechanism that 00:45:56.600 --> 00:46:00.760 drives these actions toward low efficacy rituals. 00:46:02.110 --> 00:46:02.510 Yeah. 00:46:02.670 --> 00:46:08.670 Or David, then also might this is related, it's not an alternative, but it 00:46:08.670 --> 00:46:14.430 also might explain coordination of what the rituals are, in the sense of if 00:46:14.430 --> 00:46:19.150 you just do something because you're desperate and nothing else has worked, per what Monvir 00:46:19.310 --> 00:46:23.550 said is you're gonna go with efficacy, but you're trying everything, and then you start 00:46:23.550 --> 00:46:28.190 going to the low probability, higher cost things, but you still it's a high cost, like your 00:46:28.190 --> 00:46:30.030 kid's sick, so you'll do it. 00:46:30.240 --> 00:46:30.640 Yeah. 00:46:30.880 --> 00:46:35.040 But you do that one thing because there are, you know, you can only do one thing and 00:46:35.040 --> 00:46:36.960 there's opportunity cost, as Monvier said. 00:46:37.120 --> 00:46:42.480 If I'm the social learner and I look at you, I don't know everything that's going into your 00:46:42.480 --> 00:46:47.280 calculation, but I'm like, well, if David did it, there probably was some reason for why he 00:46:47.280 --> 00:46:47.760 did it. 00:46:47.920 --> 00:46:53.830 And so if if among all the other low probability things, I'll probably just do what 00:46:53.830 --> 00:46:57.510 David did because why would he have gone through all that effort if there wasn't some 00:46:57.510 --> 00:46:59.750 chance it might work, even if it was low? 00:46:59.990 --> 00:47:05.430 So you could imagine, even in the absence of a shaman coordinating information about what 00:47:05.430 --> 00:47:10.710 the ritual is, whatever you just land on, David, if your kid gets sick before mine, I might 00:47:10.710 --> 00:47:16.710 just copy you because I might just it's just, you know, it's just social learning where 00:47:16.710 --> 00:47:20.630 I just assume you found out something that I didn't have access to. 00:47:22.140 --> 00:47:23.500 Yeah, that might be part of it too. 00:47:23.580 --> 00:47:27.820 I mean, so another thing that I think might be driving this is, you know, we're not so much 00:47:27.820 --> 00:47:31.740 interested in in people's reputation in an absolute sense, but in a relative sense. 00:47:31.980 --> 00:47:37.660 We want to know who is relatively more loyal to me or to the community uh than than other 00:47:37.660 --> 00:47:42.380 people, where loyalty is a continuous dimension, where I could be well, I could care more 00:47:42.380 --> 00:47:44.140 about the group than you, say. 00:47:44.460 --> 00:47:49.500 And so if there is a low probability ritual that we can perform to benefit the group, say a 00:47:49.500 --> 00:47:55.430 rain dance, um, and everyone is participating in that raindance but me, that sends a 00:47:55.430 --> 00:47:58.870 signal that I don't care about the group as much as everyone else. 00:47:59.030 --> 00:48:01.670 And that all of a sudden paints a target on my back. 00:48:01.830 --> 00:48:07.270 And so once there emerges, once there once uh common knowledge of a low 00:48:07.270 --> 00:48:11.910 efficacy way to benefit the group emerges, it takes on a life of its own and suddenly 00:48:11.910 --> 00:48:17.510 everyone is sort of forced to engage in that low efficacy activity, lest they pay a social 00:48:17.510 --> 00:48:23.360 price for looking less uh altruistic or less loyal than everyone else in the group. 00:48:23.520 --> 00:48:27.120 And all of a sudden it becomes a kind of tragedy of the commons or prisoner prisoners' 00:48:27.200 --> 00:48:32.320 dilemma, where we all benefit from not doing the wasteful thing, but individually we pay a 00:48:32.320 --> 00:48:34.320 price if any of us decides not to. 00:48:34.480 --> 00:48:38.400 And so it just kind of continues and stabilizes, even though it's not really effective, 00:48:38.560 --> 00:48:42.960 it's stabilizing uh uh um for social reputational reasons. 00:48:44.320 --> 00:48:45.520 Yeah, that's interesting. 00:48:45.680 --> 00:48:51.050 Can uh maybe I I I 00:48:52.330 --> 00:48:56.570 just kind of more more generally, sometimes I and maybe this is something for us to talk 00:48:56.570 --> 00:49:01.370 about, I'm sometimes skeptical of the ext- I think we can have our intuitions about the 00:49:01.370 --> 00:49:06.170 signaling value of behavior from weird contexts with a not a lot of anonymous interactions 00:49:06.170 --> 00:49:12.160 in very very fluid partner markets and infer those or extrapolate those to 00:49:12.160 --> 00:49:13.120 small-scale societies. 00:49:13.280 --> 00:49:18.800 But I I am sometimes skeptical because in small-scale societies, 00:49:18.960 --> 00:49:21.440 relationships and behaviors are much more contextual. 00:49:21.520 --> 00:49:27.280 They're related to very long histories of interaction, how, you know, how I 00:49:27.280 --> 00:49:33.030 interact with someone is partly informed by some trait that they have, 00:49:33.190 --> 00:49:37.590 some enduring trait, but I think is m much more strongly shaped by the history of 00:49:37.590 --> 00:49:38.070 interaction. 00:49:38.150 --> 00:49:41.750 And that's just to say that I think sometimes I think we can be quick to extrapolate 00:49:41.910 --> 00:49:43.990 signaling benefits to to other contexts. 00:49:44.070 --> 00:49:49.350 But my own experience s has very in many in ways that often have really surprised me about 00:49:49.350 --> 00:49:53.990 the ways that people actually do not extrapolate so much information from how people 00:49:53.990 --> 00:49:57.510 interact with other people towards how they're going to interact with themselves. 00:49:57.920 --> 00:50:03.280 But wouldn't wouldn't one just to sell to be devil's advocate for David's position is 00:50:03.440 --> 00:50:04.960 wouldn't it just shift from then? 00:50:05.120 --> 00:50:08.720 I'm not making a character inference maybe as strongly, but I'm just thinking David's 00:50:08.800 --> 00:50:09.440 making a mistake. 00:50:09.520 --> 00:50:14.080 So for example, it's just that I know David's a good guy, but boy, his kid's sick and he's 00:50:14.080 --> 00:50:14.560 not doing this. 00:50:14.640 --> 00:50:16.240 So I don't think he doesn't care about his kid. 00:50:16.320 --> 00:50:19.840 I think he's making a mistake, though, because I believe this intervention does work. 00:50:20.080 --> 00:50:23.120 I think he's got his cost-benefit calculus wrong in this decision. 00:50:23.200 --> 00:50:25.040 I might go over and be like, David, come on, man. 00:50:25.120 --> 00:50:26.000 I think you should do this. 00:50:26.190 --> 00:50:30.270 It worked for Bob down the street, which is another way it may work, right? 00:50:30.350 --> 00:50:33.390 If it's random, it's going to work every once in a while, or it's going to look like it's 00:50:33.390 --> 00:50:34.270 going to work every once in a while. 00:50:34.350 --> 00:50:36.990 And then there's the one person in the village who's like, this worked for me, you should 00:50:36.990 --> 00:50:37.470 do it too. 00:50:37.630 --> 00:50:39.950 Cause, you know, it was just luck of the draw. 00:50:40.110 --> 00:50:44.910 But I mean, that might be a way to salvage this even uh thing where it's not, I'm 00:50:44.910 --> 00:50:49.630 abandoning David or changing drastically how I think about him, but it's more just I think 00:50:49.630 --> 00:50:53.470 he's making a bad decision in this situation because I think it he should do it. 00:50:53.630 --> 00:50:55.710 And he's he's doing a bad thing. 00:50:55.900 --> 00:51:01.180 Um, you know, that that kind of inference would still exist even in this model that 00:51:01.180 --> 00:51:03.740 David's um accounting for, I think. 00:51:04.220 --> 00:51:08.060 Yeah, you could you could pay a cost to to either your moral reputation or your 00:51:08.060 --> 00:51:12.460 intellectual uh reputation by not participating in in a group ritual. 00:51:12.620 --> 00:51:14.620 Yeah, that that could also be a play. 00:51:14.780 --> 00:51:15.020 Yeah. 00:51:15.340 --> 00:51:16.940 Yeah, like it doesn't have to be long term. 00:51:17.020 --> 00:51:21.990 Like it's not like I'm I'm doing this calculus of like, do I abandon who do I fluidly 00:51:21.990 --> 00:51:23.430 choose, as you said, Man Veer? 00:51:23.590 --> 00:51:27.270 But it could just be like more generally, what kind of inferences do I make about how he 00:51:27.270 --> 00:51:31.190 will behave towards me based on how he is behaving in this other context? 00:51:31.510 --> 00:51:32.550 Yeah, that might be it. 00:51:32.630 --> 00:51:38.630 Or like a more a more uh a more or another version would be I know David's a good 00:51:38.630 --> 00:51:43.110 guy, but I think he's making a mistake now, and that's still important for me and has 00:51:43.110 --> 00:51:47.510 fitness consequences for him, and I care about him, or it has fitness consequences for me, 00:51:47.590 --> 00:51:48.390 his welfare. 00:51:48.630 --> 00:51:54.240 So even if it doesn't change those It's wait, is that still a signaling account? 00:51:54.720 --> 00:51:55.200 I don't know. 00:51:55.360 --> 00:51:58.000 I I think there's also I don't want to centralize signaling. 00:51:58.080 --> 00:52:02.640 I don't actually know what where a signal it you're making an inference, right? 00:52:02.720 --> 00:52:06.960 You're you're you're saying, look, but you're making an inference doing making there's 00:52:07.040 --> 00:52:08.800 there's some costs. 00:52:09.200 --> 00:52:14.880 Um it's indicative of he's taking a stance towards how he's gonna deal with his sick 00:52:14.880 --> 00:52:15.520 child. 00:52:15.840 --> 00:52:21.590 And I'm making inferences about that and assessing what the effects are on him, on me, on 00:52:21.590 --> 00:52:22.710 everyone else. 00:52:22.950 --> 00:52:28.710 And those inferences in one case might be uh very broad in a weird society. 00:52:28.870 --> 00:52:34.070 They might be more narrow in the sense of, you know, David and I in a small scale society, 00:52:34.150 --> 00:52:38.230 we're locked in in terms of what I think of his character, how much we interact. 00:52:38.390 --> 00:52:42.150 But I might be like, dude, you're making a big mistake because your kid's going to still be 00:52:42.150 --> 00:52:45.510 sick and it's going to affect you and I because you can't go hunting when your kid's sick, 00:52:45.590 --> 00:52:47.510 and I need to eat, and my kids need to eat. 00:52:47.670 --> 00:52:50.780 Um, so I don't know if that's signaling, but yeah. 00:52:51.580 --> 00:52:56.780 I think it it would be signaling insofar as the inferences are anticipated by the actor and 00:52:56.780 --> 00:52:58.060 factored into their behavior. 00:52:58.460 --> 00:53:04.140 It seems like signaling insofar as Dave's inference about David then 00:53:04.140 --> 00:53:10.060 impacts how Dave interacts with David and David and anticipating that benefit changes his 00:53:10.060 --> 00:53:10.540 behavior. 00:53:10.860 --> 00:53:11.020 Right. 00:53:11.980 --> 00:53:15.660 Yes, that would that would be a yeah, that would be an intentional signal as opposed to an 00:53:15.660 --> 00:53:16.330 evolved signal. 00:53:16.570 --> 00:53:16.970 Yeah, right. 00:53:17.050 --> 00:53:18.170 That would be an intentional signal. 00:53:18.490 --> 00:53:23.610 Um but yeah I don't I'm not trying to like I know in like Q versus signal like I I'm not 00:53:23.930 --> 00:53:25.450 right now I'm not so worried about it. 00:53:25.530 --> 00:53:31.130 I think I mean for me at least the argument would be that I could see many mechanisms 00:53:31.290 --> 00:53:36.940 whereby the inference that David is not doing this thing is 00:53:36.940 --> 00:53:42.380 perceived as a cost, and there's motivation on the part of me, for example, in this 00:53:42.380 --> 00:53:46.860 example to go over to David and be like, hey man, you should do this ritual. 00:53:47.980 --> 00:53:48.540 Yeah. 00:53:48.860 --> 00:53:51.820 And cues have a way of becoming signals in our in our species. 00:53:51.900 --> 00:53:55.420 So even if you if you as soon as you point out that something is a cue, it has a way of 00:53:55.420 --> 00:53:59.260 transforming into a a signal as soon as people gain common knowledge of that. 00:53:59.420 --> 00:54:05.310 Um in Manvir, I wanted to shift a little bit to uh and we can come 00:54:05.310 --> 00:54:09.950 back to shamanism too, but I also wanted to talk a little bit about, and this comes back to 00:54:09.950 --> 00:54:11.550 your background, the EA. 00:54:11.950 --> 00:54:17.550 Um, you and other people have argued that the scale of social interaction 00:54:18.750 --> 00:54:23.710 for human groups may have been much more variable and might have included much larger 00:54:23.870 --> 00:54:24.510 scale. 00:54:24.750 --> 00:54:30.500 Um I don't I don't know what word to use, but social structures for lack of a better word. 00:54:30.740 --> 00:54:36.660 So to just contextualize this, the background is as evolutionary psychology 00:54:36.660 --> 00:54:42.260 grew up, there was very much an argument that we evolved for a small-scale social world of 00:54:42.260 --> 00:54:48.260 face-to-face interaction, and that the design features in the mind are for this 00:54:48.420 --> 00:54:52.660 vanished world coming from a scientific, modern, weird perspective. 00:54:53.510 --> 00:54:56.070 I've seen you give talks about this. 00:54:56.230 --> 00:54:58.870 Can you talk a little bit about that work as well? 00:54:59.030 --> 00:55:03.510 Because you know, in what what should people know about that? 00:55:03.590 --> 00:55:07.270 And then maybe we can have some discussion about that point as well. 00:55:07.750 --> 00:55:08.630 For sure, for sure. 00:55:08.790 --> 00:55:09.190 Yeah. 00:55:09.430 --> 00:55:15.190 So I think that there has long been a sense, 00:55:15.830 --> 00:55:21.680 both among academics and in the popular conversation, the popular 00:55:21.680 --> 00:55:27.600 consciousness, that um humans spent most of our evolutionary history in relatively 00:55:27.600 --> 00:55:28.480 small scale societies. 00:55:28.560 --> 00:55:34.560 And and when people often sketch that out, it's like small, relatively egalitarian, mobile 00:55:34.560 --> 00:55:35.200 bands. 00:55:35.760 --> 00:55:41.680 There's this discussion of the magic number of 25 um bands of 25, but they could be fluid 00:55:41.680 --> 00:55:44.960 enough that people are moving around within some kind of ethnolinguistic group. 00:55:45.040 --> 00:55:50.550 Um they're mobile, there's often a sense that uh they live in dry, open, 00:55:50.790 --> 00:55:56.630 arid habitats, um, which was for a long time a pretty dominant model 00:55:57.270 --> 00:56:00.630 of the um of the Plaistocene. 00:56:01.030 --> 00:56:06.790 Um and so that has ended up impacting, you know, 00:56:06.950 --> 00:56:11.430 how we think about how social organization has transformed throughout history, how we think 00:56:11.430 --> 00:56:15.560 about um the environments in which humans evolved, which kinds of societies we think 00:56:15.560 --> 00:56:19.960 provide the best models for making inferences about human history, which societies we 00:56:20.200 --> 00:56:25.400 researched, you know, studying small, mobile, relatively egalitarian groups like the Hadza 00:56:25.560 --> 00:56:30.840 or the Agta or the Aceh versus societies that are sedentary, that have larger societies 00:56:30.920 --> 00:56:32.840 that have institutionalized hierarchy. 00:56:33.000 --> 00:56:38.680 Um, and so an argument that I and Luke Lowacki have made, and we are uh you can say part of 00:56:38.680 --> 00:56:43.000 a larger conversation or a larger set of scholars who are pushing against it, is that um 00:56:43.210 --> 00:56:46.970 based on what we know now, we should be much more open to the hypothesis that there was 00:56:46.970 --> 00:56:52.330 much more social diversity, that groups, um, residential groups could be in the hundreds, 00:56:52.410 --> 00:56:58.010 maybe even the low thousands, that um you uh had 00:56:58.010 --> 00:57:03.130 semisetism, that you had hierarchy and potentially institutionalized hierarchy or very 00:57:03.130 --> 00:57:04.490 formal hierarchy. 00:57:05.420 --> 00:57:09.740 You had large-scale cooperation, people, you know, hundreds of people potentially 00:57:09.740 --> 00:57:11.980 cooperating on projects. 00:57:13.740 --> 00:57:19.020 Another thing that we have argued is that there has probably been cultivation and maybe 00:57:19.020 --> 00:57:23.180 even incipient domestication, but that's not something we necessarily have to cover today. 00:57:23.580 --> 00:57:28.970 And as a result, we should rethink the kinds of broad trajectory stories we tell about 00:57:28.970 --> 00:57:29.530 human history. 00:57:29.610 --> 00:57:35.370 We should rethink the societies in which humans necessarily evolved and and the all the 00:57:35.370 --> 00:57:38.010 inferences we make then about evolved psychology. 00:57:38.090 --> 00:57:41.930 And we should revisit the kinds of societies in the contemporary world that we think 00:57:41.930 --> 00:57:45.210 provide the best models for human evolutionary history. 00:57:46.330 --> 00:57:50.570 I can go a little bit into the evidence for why we m make that argument. 00:57:51.760 --> 00:57:52.720 Should I do that? 00:57:53.040 --> 00:57:57.600 I I well maybe like one or one or two examples. 00:57:57.680 --> 00:57:57.920 Yeah. 00:57:58.320 --> 00:57:58.560 Yeah. 00:57:58.640 --> 00:58:04.480 Well, I mean the basic story is that um we now appreciate or or the basic story is that 00:58:04.480 --> 00:58:09.920 when human groups, including uh non-agricultural societies, live in environments with 00:58:09.920 --> 00:58:14.400 dense, rich, reliable resources, especially aquatic environments or places with aquatic 00:58:14.400 --> 00:58:19.770 resources, um They make larger, sedentary, more 00:58:19.770 --> 00:58:20.810 hierarchical societies. 00:58:20.890 --> 00:58:26.890 So the Pacific Northwest, parts of New Guinea, here in California, Florida, and then 00:58:26.970 --> 00:58:29.210 many places before agriculturalists got there. 00:58:29.370 --> 00:58:35.210 Japan, Scandinavia, the really rich parts of China, the 00:58:35.210 --> 00:58:39.960 Nile, the southern African coast, many of these places exhibit these features. 00:58:40.040 --> 00:58:43.720 And I think there has just been, there have been a number of paradigm shifts since the 00:58:43.720 --> 00:58:49.160 1960s when this generalized forager model or the nomadic style was institutionalized 00:58:49.640 --> 00:58:55.320 or articulated that I think now lead us to question that as a general model for 00:58:55.320 --> 00:58:59.650 hunter-gatherers and especially for hunter or for hunter-gatherers in the past, and and 00:58:59.650 --> 00:59:01.250 definitely for hunter-gatherers more generally. 00:59:01.330 --> 00:59:05.010 And and I one thing that I think is really important or relevant to this conversation, 00:59:05.090 --> 00:59:10.210 especially in thinking about evolutionary psychology, is that in the 1960s, you have, you 00:59:10.210 --> 00:59:13.330 know, some researchers, you have a number of researchers who are studying hunter-gatherers, 00:59:13.410 --> 00:59:17.890 but you have a big project, the Harvard Kalahari Project, which uh involves Richard Lee and 00:59:17.890 --> 00:59:18.770 Irv Devor. 00:59:19.880 --> 00:59:25.480 They come, they coordinate the 1960 conference, the Man the Hunter conference, at which you 00:59:25.480 --> 00:59:28.200 have for the first time hunter-gatherer specialists coming from everywhere. 00:59:28.360 --> 00:59:32.200 There is some articulation of variation in hunter-gatherer societies, even then. 00:59:32.360 --> 00:59:37.560 But you have a formalization of the generalized forager model or the nomadic style in a 00:59:37.560 --> 00:59:43.400 chapter written by Leon DeVore, great scholars, but but that honestly, and I think we all 00:59:43.400 --> 00:59:49.230 do this to some degree, uses the Kung as kind of a stand-in for for human history. 00:59:49.310 --> 00:59:53.870 And they have already been articulating, you know, arguing that the Kung provide a great 00:59:53.870 --> 00:59:56.590 model for human history to justify their project. 00:59:56.750 --> 01:00:01.470 And then you have evolutionary psychology really develop in the shadow or in the literal 01:00:01.470 --> 01:00:03.230 living room of Irv Devore. 01:00:03.310 --> 01:00:09.230 You have uh Tubi and Cosmodese meet in Irv Devore's living room at a um Simeon seminar, 01:00:09.310 --> 01:00:09.950 I I believe. 01:00:10.350 --> 01:00:16.080 Um you have a number of those other, you know, you have um and although he's not 01:00:16.080 --> 01:00:20.160 explicitly speaking it just as like a foundational evolutionary psychologist, you have Bob 01:00:20.160 --> 01:00:23.840 Trivers who's spending all of his uh evenings in Herve Devore's living room. 01:00:24.080 --> 01:00:28.720 You have this figure who uh has been so critical, so important in establishing what 01:00:28.720 --> 01:00:32.080 hunter-gatherer societies looked like, and especially what they've looked like for a 01:00:32.080 --> 01:00:32.720 hundred thousand years. 01:00:32.800 --> 01:00:38.160 And by no coincidence, you also have this field really strongly developing in his uh 01:00:38.320 --> 01:00:39.520 literal orbit. 01:00:39.760 --> 01:00:42.590 Um Yeah. 01:00:43.390 --> 01:00:49.230 Um what what one oh yeah uh David, you know, I just think it's it's a beautiful example 01:00:49.230 --> 01:00:54.350 of um the field of evolutionary psychology advancing uh and and you making a major 01:00:54.350 --> 01:01:00.030 contribution to the overall uh theoretical framework uh by which we we do research. 01:01:00.190 --> 01:01:04.830 Because you know, as we know, the ancestral environment uh is a hugely important concept 01:01:04.830 --> 01:01:08.350 for developing theories about the human cognitive phenotype. 01:01:08.510 --> 01:01:12.740 And insofar as we are wrong about what the ancestral environment was like, what the 01:01:12.740 --> 01:01:17.620 ancestral selection pressures were like, we are going, our theories about the phenotype are 01:01:17.620 --> 01:01:18.420 going to be wrong. 01:01:18.740 --> 01:01:24.500 And so making sure that we have an accurate picture of what kinds of 01:01:24.500 --> 01:01:30.260 dimensions existed and what the variation was like on those dimensions is going to help us 01:01:30.260 --> 01:01:34.750 develop a better, more precise, more rigorous theories. 01:01:34.910 --> 01:01:39.070 And I think it's it's a it's a really great example of science moving forward and 01:01:39.390 --> 01:01:45.390 challenging a lot of different hypotheses that exist in the field that are that 01:01:45.390 --> 01:01:51.070 are based on this premise that the ancestral environment was necessarily small scale and 01:01:51.070 --> 01:01:52.190 egalitarian. 01:01:52.350 --> 01:01:57.960 Um I think now we need to begin entertaining the hypothesis that actually there may have 01:01:57.960 --> 01:02:03.640 been selection pressure for large-scale cooperation, for large-scale social hierarchy. 01:02:03.800 --> 01:02:07.080 And we can begin to investigate what that psychology might look like. 01:02:07.240 --> 01:02:13.080 And certainly it won't be a rigid context-insensitive psychology, because we know that 01:02:13.080 --> 01:02:15.400 not all societies were uh were like this. 01:02:15.560 --> 01:02:16.760 There was substantial variation. 01:02:16.840 --> 01:02:22.520 So we would expect a context-sensitive psychology that can adjust um behavioral strategies 01:02:22.520 --> 01:02:28.510 based But I any anyway, I just want to um compliment you on really 01:02:28.750 --> 01:02:32.910 a wonderful paper that I think has uh advanced the field uh significantly. 01:02:33.790 --> 01:02:34.510 Thanks, David. 01:02:34.590 --> 01:02:35.150 Yeah, thank you. 01:02:35.470 --> 01:02:40.670 And I wanted to and I wanted to ask a question, which is to what extent do you think 01:02:42.270 --> 01:02:48.120 there is a substantial implication for people like me who are psychologists, who are fans 01:02:48.120 --> 01:02:53.720 of ethnography or anthropology and love reading it and love keeping up to date. 01:02:53.960 --> 01:02:55.800 And I can see two models. 01:02:55.960 --> 01:03:00.520 One, and I think an analogy with food might be relevant, which is sort of like, you know, 01:03:00.760 --> 01:03:05.320 as an evolutionary psychologist, really interested in the psychology. 01:03:05.560 --> 01:03:09.960 If I think about food, I think, well, the EEA of food was variable, right? 01:03:10.360 --> 01:03:16.030 And I suspect like a modern environment is probably a range of the variation for most of 01:03:16.030 --> 01:03:20.590 us, because we most of us aren't starving for long periods of time, at least involuntarily, 01:03:20.910 --> 01:03:21.870 fortunately. 01:03:22.910 --> 01:03:28.590 But I can understand, you know, that there's sort of a intuitive range of sort of the level 01:03:28.590 --> 01:03:29.790 of resources. 01:03:30.030 --> 01:03:33.390 And I sorry, I have sort of a picture of the EEA. 01:03:33.870 --> 01:03:39.560 Um and there's there's a version where I can have my picture of the EEA of food 01:03:39.560 --> 01:03:43.480 psychology and do studies on the psychology of food and be right. 01:03:43.880 --> 01:03:48.680 There's another version though where I've completely missed a feature of the ancestral 01:03:48.680 --> 01:03:49.480 environment. 01:03:49.720 --> 01:03:54.440 And in fact, there was more variability to the point where it's almost qualitative, that 01:03:54.520 --> 01:03:57.800 like there's something wrong about the way I'm thinking about the design. 01:03:58.280 --> 01:04:04.270 Now shift over to groups where I have this idea, like, you know, one of my day jobs is 01:04:04.270 --> 01:04:05.390 being a group psychologist. 01:04:05.470 --> 01:04:10.510 And I do have this idea that I'm thinking, you know, what any one individual's social 01:04:10.590 --> 01:04:14.350 existences in groups is sort of uh probabilistic. 01:04:14.430 --> 01:04:18.270 They're gonna have some very direct, interpersonal. 01:04:18.430 --> 01:04:20.270 There's gonna be some more abstract ones. 01:04:20.350 --> 01:04:26.060 I almost think about it as like a probability cloud coming up on your work, hearing that 01:04:26.060 --> 01:04:30.780 there might have been selection for even larger scale social interaction than we have 01:04:30.780 --> 01:04:36.620 imagined, I have been unclear in my own mind where to place my 01:04:36.780 --> 01:04:41.660 so far intuition about, you know, in and maybe it's unanswerable, but I'm just curious: 01:04:41.740 --> 01:04:47.610 like, what's your do you suspect if I am imagining an EEA of 01:04:47.610 --> 01:04:53.210 relatively small scale, like as you said, 25 or like the Dunbar 250 or 01:04:53.210 --> 01:04:53.690 something. 01:04:54.490 --> 01:04:59.450 And I'm thinking about all the design features for that kind of a world versus the one 01:04:59.450 --> 01:05:00.650 you're describing. 01:05:01.130 --> 01:05:04.170 Am I or people like me, are we missing something? 01:05:04.410 --> 01:05:06.010 Or are we not there yet? 01:05:06.090 --> 01:05:10.490 Because there still hasn't been a lot of fleshing out of what the design features would be 01:05:10.570 --> 01:05:16.540 even for the 250 world, let alone the 250,000 world or the 25,000 world. 01:05:17.020 --> 01:05:17.180 Yeah. 01:05:17.260 --> 01:05:20.860 So the question is what's at stake intellectually for our models of psychology? 01:05:21.980 --> 01:05:23.260 That's much more concisely said. 01:05:23.420 --> 01:05:25.100 We can cut out the other 15 minutes. 01:05:26.620 --> 01:05:30.460 No, I mean I I I can articulate it because it's just something I've I've wondered to 01:05:30.460 --> 01:05:30.780 myself. 01:05:31.180 --> 01:05:34.380 Um so in the paper, we gestured a couple of things. 01:05:34.620 --> 01:05:40.460 Um I mean, the the very ear easy, not necessarily super easy, but clear example is is a 01:05:40.550 --> 01:05:45.990 lot of the discussion about hierarchy and and the evolution of of of um of 01:05:46.310 --> 01:05:47.750 humans' dominance psychology. 01:05:47.830 --> 01:05:53.590 And you know, there's one approach that says that um efforts to dominate were uh 01:05:53.910 --> 01:05:58.310 very strongly curbed, even to the point of execution. 01:05:58.550 --> 01:06:03.980 Um you know, I think the thing to to interrupt myself for a moment, I think the thing that 01:06:03.980 --> 01:06:08.380 evolutionary psychologists have had to contend with is on the one hand that they are 01:06:08.380 --> 01:06:12.540 building a model or often working with a model of the human past as small-scale, relatively 01:06:12.540 --> 01:06:14.220 egalitarian, mobile bands. 01:06:14.300 --> 01:06:18.380 And on the other hand, that we live in this society where we have a president and we have, 01:06:18.460 --> 01:06:21.180 you know, school bullies and gangs and whatnot. 01:06:21.420 --> 01:06:24.060 And you uh fundamentally have to reconcile them. 01:06:24.140 --> 01:06:30.110 And so um, if I were to um argue against myself that there are stakes here, I would 01:06:30.110 --> 01:06:33.790 say, well, from the for for a very long time we've had to, we've had to deal with this, 01:06:33.950 --> 01:06:37.550 with this discrepancy um and we've had to account for variation. 01:06:38.030 --> 01:06:43.870 Um so so I I I want to acknowledge that and say that I think like psychologists and 01:06:43.870 --> 01:06:46.590 evolutionary psychologists in particular have for a very long time. 01:06:46.750 --> 01:06:50.220 It's not like they're working with a species that they only think lives in small, 01:06:50.300 --> 01:06:51.500 relatively egalitarian bands. 01:06:51.580 --> 01:06:55.500 They're working with a species that shows incredible variation and their their theories 01:06:55.500 --> 01:06:56.620 have to contend with that. 01:06:57.420 --> 01:07:03.100 On the other hand, uh I, you know, when I look at some of the the research on 01:07:03.340 --> 01:07:08.300 how has human morality evolved and and the critical role of egalitarianism in that, or how 01:07:08.300 --> 01:07:12.780 has social psychology evolved and the critical role of egalitarianism in that, or um 01:07:15.570 --> 01:07:20.210 you know, how how the kinds of arguments people make about the evolution of dominant 01:07:20.210 --> 01:07:20.610 psychology. 01:07:20.770 --> 01:07:24.610 Again, just to focus on this one example, I do see a uh quite a discrepancy over there 01:07:24.690 --> 01:07:29.890 where there's often a a very strong emphasis on egalitarianism being this really critical 01:07:29.890 --> 01:07:32.690 shaper of human moral psychology, of pro-so-so psychology. 01:07:32.770 --> 01:07:37.010 You can just look at the number of papers that have cited um Chris Bohm's book or Chris 01:07:37.010 --> 01:07:40.530 Bohm's classic 1993 reverse dominance hierarchy paper. 01:07:41.660 --> 01:07:47.340 So that's less about our models of how human psychology works and more our models of where 01:07:47.340 --> 01:07:49.180 human psychology has come from. 01:07:50.860 --> 01:07:56.780 Another context, though, that we mention in the paper is what is often taking us this 01:07:56.780 --> 01:08:02.430 fundamental question in evolutionary approaches to behavior: how can an organism 01:08:02.670 --> 01:08:08.110 adapted to or that that spent its evolutionary history in very small groups then live in 01:08:08.110 --> 01:08:10.590 large complex societies as they exist today? 01:08:11.710 --> 01:08:16.830 And my own view is that that's actually the the the puzzle is misstated. 01:08:16.910 --> 01:08:20.350 The way that I think about human evolutionary history is not that we lived in these tiny 01:08:20.350 --> 01:08:22.670 bands and now we live in these large scale societies. 01:08:22.750 --> 01:08:25.550 It's that we have been incredibly variable. 01:08:25.710 --> 01:08:31.140 In fact, we evolved the critical period of human evolution, you know, the last 2.5 million 01:08:31.140 --> 01:08:35.700 years, when you find this explosion in brain growth is arguably one of the most 01:08:35.700 --> 01:08:40.660 climatically volatile periods with you know incredible climatic fluctuations that have 01:08:40.660 --> 01:08:43.380 occurred in the evolutionary history of mammals. 01:08:43.700 --> 01:08:49.060 And so we are, in many ways, a species that is fundamentally adapted, I would say, less to 01:08:49.390 --> 01:08:51.790 dry arid plains than constant volatility. 01:08:51.870 --> 01:08:54.110 This is the variability selection hypothesis. 01:08:54.190 --> 01:08:58.910 Um, and so what is really notable about the the last 10,000 years is that we have left the 01:08:58.910 --> 01:09:04.510 incredible volatility of the ice age and we have entered a period of incredible stability 01:09:04.510 --> 01:09:06.590 and been able to accumulate these efforts in a way. 01:09:06.670 --> 01:09:12.590 And so I think the puzzle gets gets we kind of shift how we view the puzzle, not 01:09:13.040 --> 01:09:18.000 you know, tiny mobile bands, but but instead a species that has adapted to variability and 01:09:18.000 --> 01:09:23.920 and contended with variability, suddenly put in a period of of like very nice 01:09:23.920 --> 01:09:26.480 temperateness for twelve thousand years. 01:09:26.560 --> 01:09:27.520 Yeah if that makes sense. 01:09:27.760 --> 01:09:28.320 Yeah, it does. 01:09:28.480 --> 01:09:28.640 Yeah. 01:09:28.960 --> 01:09:34.160 And uh I I think it's um actually uh it gives an important insight about 01:09:34.570 --> 01:09:37.530 why the human brain is so big. 01:09:37.690 --> 01:09:43.130 Because if the ancestral environment was very stable and very predictable, such that there 01:09:43.130 --> 01:09:48.010 were the same types of foods that were available in every possible ancestral environment, 01:09:48.170 --> 01:09:53.370 the same type of climate, the same type of ecology, the same type of social environment. 01:09:53.930 --> 01:09:59.720 If that was true, there would be no need for a large brain to make 01:09:59.720 --> 01:10:04.840 context-sensitive evaluations of what's going on in the physical and social environment and 01:10:04.840 --> 01:10:06.280 respond strategically. 01:10:06.440 --> 01:10:10.440 Because if everything is predictable and everything is stable, you can just develop a very 01:10:10.440 --> 01:10:15.640 predictable, stable uh adaptation uh in response to that feature of the environment. 01:10:15.800 --> 01:10:21.170 But if the environment is volatile and variable, then 01:10:21.650 --> 01:10:27.170 the selection pressures favor a context-sensitive psychology that can adapt to whatever the 01:10:27.170 --> 01:10:32.930 circumstances are and learn the relevant contingencies and deploy the optimal 01:10:32.930 --> 01:10:36.530 or quasi-optimal strategies given those conditions. 01:10:36.770 --> 01:10:41.840 And that I think is a more insightful explanation of of human brain evolution. 01:10:42.000 --> 01:10:47.680 That uh we're not so much adapted to a specific EEA, uh, but to a very uncertain 01:10:47.680 --> 01:10:48.960 range of possibilities. 01:10:49.120 --> 01:10:54.560 And the reason why our brains are so big is to figure out what kind of environment we 01:10:54.560 --> 01:10:59.040 actually are in and how can we best make a living in that environment. 01:10:59.200 --> 01:11:04.250 Um I think yeah yeah totally agree totally agree I mean that's increasingly how I how I 01:11:04.250 --> 01:11:08.730 also think about it and uh something that I've really appreciated is this just to use one 01:11:08.730 --> 01:11:12.170 example this shift in how we think about the evolution of the human diet and the human 01:11:12.170 --> 01:11:12.570 niche. 01:11:12.730 --> 01:11:16.330 You know, I I think for a long time it's this idea that humans are omnivores. 01:11:16.730 --> 01:11:21.290 Um but there that has shifted because we don't actually look like a lot of omnivores. 01:11:21.370 --> 01:11:25.050 You look at a raccoon, I'm not eating garbage, you know, I'm not eating like little bits of 01:11:25.050 --> 01:11:25.450 eggs. 01:11:25.690 --> 01:11:29.160 Um Instead, it's this idea that humans are generalist specialists. 01:11:29.240 --> 01:11:32.840 We look like specialists, and yet we look like the specialists in every environment. 01:11:33.080 --> 01:11:38.680 We eat whales, we eat honey, we dig up tubers, we are hunting meat, we are getting um, you 01:11:38.680 --> 01:11:40.440 know, lots of fruit or whatever. 01:11:40.680 --> 01:11:46.600 Um and it's it's it's that we're very we're we're specialized at um 01:11:47.240 --> 01:11:49.000 adapting quickly to new environments. 01:11:49.160 --> 01:11:52.840 And you know, there are arguments that this is this is a manifestation of culture, but I 01:11:52.840 --> 01:11:54.680 honestly think it goes it goes deeper than that. 01:11:54.760 --> 01:12:00.530 You look at um Neanderthals had lived at the edge of the Arctic for tens of thousands of 01:12:00.530 --> 01:12:00.690 years. 01:12:00.770 --> 01:12:05.570 Homo sapiens comes in and within 10,000 years is already b into the Arctic. 01:12:05.810 --> 01:12:11.810 Um I guess that's not a great ar argument against culture or about culture, but um 01:12:11.890 --> 01:12:17.250 the the point is that I think um, yeah, I I I I I think humans are are 01:12:17.250 --> 01:12:23.100 incredible at um being versatile and at um specializing in 01:12:23.100 --> 01:12:26.060 new environments and and learning about their new environments and learning different ways 01:12:26.060 --> 01:12:27.980 to intervene in their environments to do well. 01:12:28.700 --> 01:12:32.300 And I think that's a product of us having evolved in such volatile of during the 01:12:32.300 --> 01:12:33.100 Pleistocene. 01:12:33.340 --> 01:12:39.180 And and there there's an argument that many African species um I mean humans are are an 01:12:39.180 --> 01:12:42.700 extreme example or or homo has been an extreme example and we can think about it. 01:12:42.860 --> 01:12:47.390 But then in many African species you've actually seen an uh adaptation for greater 01:12:47.390 --> 01:12:53.310 variability throughout the Pleistocene, that that um the ancestors of hippos um were you 01:12:53.310 --> 01:12:58.670 know less variably able to to move between aquatic and non-aquatic environments, that that 01:12:58.670 --> 01:13:02.670 uh the ancestors of warthogs were much more specialized and different from modern warthogs, 01:13:02.750 --> 01:13:06.510 which can actually uh contend with many environments just because of how climatically 01:13:06.510 --> 01:13:08.910 volatile the world, including Africa, was. 01:13:09.340 --> 01:13:09.900 That's awesome. 01:13:09.980 --> 01:13:11.820 We should put all those animals on a t-shirt. 01:13:11.900 --> 01:13:12.620 That's fantastic. 01:13:12.860 --> 01:13:15.260 Do you view the extractive foraging account? 01:13:15.500 --> 01:13:19.180 This idea that, you know, why we have big brains is also because, as you said, we're 01:13:19.180 --> 01:13:25.100 generalist about real specializing in the context-dependent extractive foraging. 01:13:25.260 --> 01:13:29.260 Do you view variability and extractive foraging accounts as rival or complementary? 01:13:29.900 --> 01:13:30.220 No, no. 01:13:30.300 --> 01:13:32.620 I would say no, no, no, no, no, no. 01:13:32.700 --> 01:13:38.030 I I see I see kind of like extracting foraging as a mechanism toward 01:13:38.590 --> 01:13:39.550 contending with variability. 01:13:39.790 --> 01:13:40.510 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:13:40.590 --> 01:13:40.830 Yeah. 01:13:41.070 --> 01:13:41.310 Yeah. 01:13:41.550 --> 01:13:46.830 So just for for just to uh say it out loud for everyone listening, the idea is that 01:13:46.830 --> 01:13:51.470 extractive foraging is that there's resources in the environment, but there's a high sort 01:13:51.470 --> 01:13:55.310 of search or handling cost or knowledge cost to get them. 01:13:55.870 --> 01:14:01.620 And we are really good at doing that, but lots of different places using lots of different 01:14:01.620 --> 01:14:02.020 methods. 01:14:02.180 --> 01:14:08.100 And so there's this idea that um part of needing a big brain too is to have 01:14:08.100 --> 01:14:12.820 models about what that process is to extract those resources and make a living in that 01:14:12.820 --> 01:14:17.460 environment, both food, shelter, you know, just getting around being comfortable. 01:14:17.860 --> 01:14:18.340 Totally. 01:14:18.500 --> 01:14:18.820 Yeah. 01:14:18.980 --> 01:14:24.570 Um yeah, if if the but i the resources in question require lots of knowledge and 01:14:24.570 --> 01:14:29.770 specialization, uh in a in a way that is radically opposite to, say, eating a eucalyptus 01:14:29.770 --> 01:14:31.610 leaf that is abundant in your environment. 01:14:31.850 --> 01:14:35.690 You don't need to do any processing, you don't need to there they're very low search costs, 01:14:35.850 --> 01:14:37.770 the leaves are right there, they're abundant. 01:14:37.930 --> 01:14:43.050 Um that is not the type of selection pressure that would lead to a complex uh um psychology 01:14:43.290 --> 01:14:47.050 forging psychology and and um food learning psychology. 01:14:47.520 --> 01:14:49.600 Did you just insult koala bears? 01:14:49.920 --> 01:14:50.880 I think I did, actually. 01:14:51.120 --> 01:14:52.240 Sorry, koalas. 01:14:55.920 --> 01:14:58.000 But also to link this back with No value. 01:14:58.160 --> 01:14:58.880 No value judgment. 01:14:59.440 --> 01:15:03.520 To further link this to the to the thing about variable social organization, one way that I 01:15:03.520 --> 01:15:08.720 think about it is that humans were not only living in 01:15:09.310 --> 01:15:12.670 arid open habitats, they were living in a variety of environments. 01:15:12.750 --> 01:15:15.070 And that was, I imagine this kind of cyclical thing. 01:15:15.150 --> 01:15:16.350 The environment is very variable. 01:15:16.510 --> 01:15:21.790 Humans or Homo, ancestral Homo becomes better adapted to living in more environments. 01:15:21.870 --> 01:15:27.470 And then can can, and we know this, the range expansion of Homo expands, it starts to adapt 01:15:27.550 --> 01:15:30.750 to new environments, including aquatic environments. 01:15:30.830 --> 01:15:33.470 It can start to extract very high value resources. 01:15:33.630 --> 01:15:38.040 And that ends up just because of the ways in which ecology shapes social organization, 01:15:38.120 --> 01:15:43.160 leading to more social diversity and and favoring a selection on a more socially 01:15:43.480 --> 01:15:48.440 variable or a psychology that is prepared for more social variation. 01:15:48.840 --> 01:15:49.320 Yeah, absolutely. 01:15:49.480 --> 01:15:55.480 And so insofar as as the resources um that people are subsisting on vary and the strategies 01:15:55.480 --> 01:16:00.330 and the properties of those resources vary, then the social threats and opportunities are 01:16:00.330 --> 01:16:02.330 going to vary along with the ecology. 01:16:03.370 --> 01:16:06.970 Some resources are easier to loot, to store, to hide. 01:16:07.690 --> 01:16:10.330 And that has social implications, right? 01:16:10.890 --> 01:16:16.330 Certain environments have different opportunities for aggression, predation, 01:16:17.130 --> 01:16:18.730 weaponry, poisoning. 01:16:19.050 --> 01:16:22.090 All these are features of the ecology that can affect the social world. 01:16:22.250 --> 01:16:26.090 And so there's an intimate link between both the social structure and the ecology and the 01:16:26.090 --> 01:16:27.640 way that people make a living. 01:16:27.800 --> 01:16:32.440 So yeah, we would expect not only a sensitive psychology to the structure of the physical 01:16:32.440 --> 01:16:35.640 world, but also uh to the social world. 01:16:36.680 --> 01:16:38.440 Nothing's new under the sun. 01:16:38.920 --> 01:16:39.160 Yeah. 01:16:39.480 --> 01:16:41.480 In a certain level of abstraction. 01:16:42.680 --> 01:16:43.800 Yeah, for sure. 01:16:44.120 --> 01:16:48.360 Um Monvir, we're we're we're kind of running and uh towards our end here. 01:16:48.440 --> 01:16:50.920 Um, is there anything that we should have asked you? 01:16:52.360 --> 01:16:58.310 Um or that you would have liked to, or you would like to mention something exciting that 01:16:58.310 --> 01:17:04.070 you're currently doing, or that students or people who want to look at your work, or 01:17:04.230 --> 01:17:09.030 um, you know, just what is there something people might want to know that they might not 01:17:09.030 --> 01:17:09.270 know? 01:17:09.750 --> 01:17:14.630 Well, uh so uh this is unrelated to our conversation really, but I'm currently working on a 01:17:14.630 --> 01:17:18.870 book on early Indo-European mythology that I think will be awesome and people should 01:17:18.870 --> 01:17:21.510 definitely check out when it's out. 01:17:21.900 --> 01:17:27.260 But otherwise I mean I've also a lot of what we've talked about, the Ice Age, Variability 01:17:27.260 --> 01:17:31.660 and Social Organization, Generalists, Specialists, is something that I've also been trying 01:17:31.660 --> 01:17:34.460 to package into a book, but that's a a slower project. 01:17:34.940 --> 01:17:37.420 How do you do the research on the mythology? 01:17:38.380 --> 01:17:41.980 Yeah, well so the the story of this book, do you all maybe we can take like two minutes 01:17:42.060 --> 01:17:45.030 about do you all know much about early Indo-European mythology? 01:17:45.270 --> 01:17:45.590 No, no. 01:17:46.390 --> 01:17:47.830 I know at least two books worth. 01:17:48.070 --> 01:17:48.790 No, I know nothing. 01:17:49.030 --> 01:17:49.190 Okay. 01:17:49.510 --> 01:17:52.870 Well, and so maybe you're familiar with the Indo-European language family. 01:17:52.950 --> 01:17:54.550 So this is these are languages. 01:17:54.710 --> 01:18:00.630 Um, so languages from the from Sanskrit to Icelandic, many languages are 01:18:00.630 --> 01:18:02.070 part of a single language family. 01:18:02.150 --> 01:18:07.830 So um there's all the Baltic languages, the Slavic languages, the Italic languages, so the 01:18:07.830 --> 01:18:12.720 Romance languages, the Celtic languages, the Germanic languages, and then also Iranian 01:18:12.880 --> 01:18:16.720 languages and these North Indian languages that derive from Sanskrit are all part of a 01:18:16.720 --> 01:18:17.520 single language family. 01:18:17.600 --> 01:18:21.280 They all derive from a single language called Proto-Indo-European. 01:18:21.360 --> 01:18:23.200 This is the Indo-European language family. 01:18:23.600 --> 01:18:29.440 Proto-Indo-European was probably spoken above the in the Eurasian steppe about 5,000 01:18:29.440 --> 01:18:29.920 years ago. 01:18:30.240 --> 01:18:32.960 And so there are linguistic relatives across these languages. 01:18:33.120 --> 01:18:39.050 My name, Munvir, the Mun, shares the etymology with words like remember or 01:18:39.050 --> 01:18:39.290 mind. 01:18:39.930 --> 01:18:45.210 Um it can invoke like the mind or the soul, and then the vir shares uh 01:18:45.210 --> 01:18:49.610 etymology with words like virile or werewolf or world. 01:18:49.770 --> 01:18:53.930 Um, and it um can mean like strong man, brave. 01:18:54.330 --> 01:18:59.610 Um but just as as words share origins, uh, so do mythologies. 01:18:59.690 --> 01:19:01.610 And one example is the sky father. 01:19:01.850 --> 01:19:07.050 So in Greek you have Zeus Pater, uh in uh um 01:19:07.780 --> 01:19:13.780 Latin, you have Jupiter, Jupiter in Old Sanskrit, you have Dyaus Pitr, and people 01:19:13.780 --> 01:19:18.900 have been able to reconstruct these mythological figures that are behind Greek, Norse, 01:19:19.300 --> 01:19:22.740 Roman, uh, Old Indian, Ancient Iranian mythology. 01:19:22.900 --> 01:19:24.580 There's kind of a progenitor mythology. 01:19:24.660 --> 01:19:27.780 So my book is trying to retell these mythologies. 01:19:27.860 --> 01:19:32.770 So every chapter is like me in vivid prose retelling one of these reconstructed myths along 01:19:32.770 --> 01:19:34.210 with some scholarly attestations. 01:19:34.290 --> 01:19:38.050 So how scholars know that these particular figures, and you can do it partly based on 01:19:38.290 --> 01:19:39.330 similarities in text. 01:19:39.410 --> 01:19:43.810 So for example, we know that many of these, uh, or we're pretty sure that that there was an 01:19:43.810 --> 01:19:49.250 ancestral tale of a thunder god who slew a serpent, a 01:19:49.250 --> 01:19:54.480 brash-bearded thunder god who liked to drink a lot, that then manifests as like Zeus and 01:19:54.480 --> 01:20:00.400 Typhon, as Thor and the Midgard Serpent, as um Indra and And Vrithra. 01:20:00.560 --> 01:20:06.400 So anyway, it's a yeah I'm I'm drawing on a lot of scholarship and it's it's just like a 01:20:06.400 --> 01:20:07.840 a fun project. 01:20:08.160 --> 01:20:08.800 So that's awesome. 01:20:09.120 --> 01:20:10.480 Let's green light that movie too. 01:20:10.720 --> 01:20:12.640 Yeah I really wanna I'm excited to read it. 01:20:12.720 --> 01:20:18.720 Do you have any um thesis or argument about um what function these myths are serving or why 01:20:18.720 --> 01:20:23.360 they have the properties they do or is it more of a descriptive um historical uh 01:20:23.550 --> 01:20:24.590 anthropological project. 01:20:24.990 --> 01:20:27.390 It's more of a descriptive historical anthropological project. 01:20:27.470 --> 01:20:31.230 There are a a number of theories about what these myths were serving. 01:20:31.310 --> 01:20:34.590 But the thing is that as these myths so the two things. 01:20:34.750 --> 01:20:40.110 One is that even what we call the Proto-Indo-Europeans, that's a a thousand-year period and 01:20:40.110 --> 01:20:42.350 they're over a long expanse. 01:20:42.430 --> 01:20:45.790 And I I'm sure that these myths were doing different things in different places. 01:20:45.950 --> 01:20:49.480 And you know, to come back to the producer-consumer conversation at the outset. 01:20:49.640 --> 01:20:52.520 Um, you know, there's a lot of conversation about what is the function of myth? 01:20:52.600 --> 01:20:53.640 Why do people tell myths? 01:20:53.720 --> 01:20:59.080 And I think it's sometimes to justify or um yeah, 01:20:59.240 --> 01:21:03.480 justify some kind of social arrangement, but it can also be to praise a leader. 01:21:03.560 --> 01:21:05.960 It could also be just for pure entertainment. 01:21:06.120 --> 01:21:09.400 Um it can be, yeah, I think there are many functions. 01:21:09.560 --> 01:21:14.050 And I think just even in the ancestral like early Indo-European society, they probably 01:21:14.050 --> 01:21:15.250 served a number of functions. 01:21:15.330 --> 01:21:18.370 And that was especially the case as it diversified. 01:21:19.490 --> 01:21:24.290 And so, yeah, it's more of a honestly, it's like my my own feeling is that for two 01:21:24.290 --> 01:21:30.210 centuries, scholars have been these like really very detail-oriented, very careful 01:21:30.370 --> 01:21:33.330 scholars working with comparative evidence have reconstructed these things. 01:21:33.410 --> 01:21:39.010 And it's this incredibly rich imaginative world that has all of these, it's both uncanny in 01:21:39.080 --> 01:21:42.360 its familiarity, but also really rich and and new. 01:21:42.440 --> 01:21:46.600 Um but it's locked in scholarly tones and and it's a world that I think is incredibly cool. 01:21:46.680 --> 01:21:50.600 So I my book is really more of like it's it's like a paternity leave project. 01:21:50.680 --> 01:21:55.880 It's it's just like a an excuse to to share this this really cool scholarship, these 01:21:55.880 --> 01:21:58.520 incredible stories with a with a a broader audience. 01:21:58.840 --> 01:21:59.080 Cool. 01:21:59.240 --> 01:22:04.680 So I I I I would imagine um the the storytelling that you might be doing for your your 01:22:04.680 --> 01:22:10.330 children as well might um be a a happy uh synthesis with with sure yeah yeah my 01:22:10.330 --> 01:22:14.730 daughter's at the age where she's like every like hour like tell me a story and then it's 01:22:14.730 --> 01:22:18.650 like actually but some of these stories are are you know it's like a primal giant was 01:22:18.650 --> 01:22:22.890 massacred and his body was used to create the world is not necessarily like the happiest 01:22:22.890 --> 01:22:23.050 story. 01:22:23.370 --> 01:22:23.770 That's true. 01:22:23.850 --> 01:22:27.050 My daughter would be into that story, but perhaps not all children. 01:22:27.690 --> 01:22:29.450 Although Germanic uh right? 01:22:29.530 --> 01:22:30.650 Yeah you're you're fine. 01:22:30.730 --> 01:22:30.810 Yeah. 01:22:30.970 --> 01:22:32.090 Hansel and Renault, yeah. 01:22:32.400 --> 01:22:33.680 Well, brother's grim. 01:22:33.760 --> 01:22:35.120 It's it's grim, is correct. 01:22:35.360 --> 01:22:35.680 It is grim. 01:22:35.840 --> 01:22:36.320 Yeah, no. 01:22:36.400 --> 01:22:38.880 I mean, yeah, the stories were much more violent back back in the day. 01:22:38.960 --> 01:22:42.960 I don't know what happened, but uh just like the playgrounds. 01:22:43.120 --> 01:22:45.280 Um Monvir, this has been wonderful. 01:22:45.440 --> 01:22:50.240 Uh, you know, we'll we'll put show notes to your website and and things like that. 01:22:50.400 --> 01:22:56.250 But um but just as you said, you know, um the book is sort of a window into a cool 01:22:56.250 --> 01:22:57.210 scholarship. 01:22:57.450 --> 01:22:58.730 We're trying to do the same thing. 01:22:58.890 --> 01:23:00.730 And it's been wonderful to have you on. 01:23:00.970 --> 01:23:05.930 And um, you know, I think w one of our goals of having this podcast has been to just 01:23:05.930 --> 01:23:11.530 highlight cool work that's showing that evolutionary behavioral sciences are not stale and 01:23:11.530 --> 01:23:13.290 there's things happening. 01:23:13.370 --> 01:23:15.530 And I think your work is an excellent example of that. 01:23:15.690 --> 01:23:17.690 So thanks for doing that and thank you for being on. 01:23:18.090 --> 01:23:18.330 Yeah. 01:23:18.410 --> 01:23:20.970 Thank you so much for having me and for doing this project. 01:23:21.050 --> 01:23:23.930 It's it's um both are are deeply appreciated. 01:23:24.010 --> 01:23:25.130 And this was a lot of fun. 01:23:25.460 --> 01:23:25.700 Cool. 01:23:25.940 --> 01:23:26.500 Thank you so much. 01:23:27.540 --> 01:23:32.740 And uh and if you weren't uh in a visual format, do check out Monvere's background um on 01:23:32.740 --> 01:23:33.380 the YouTube channel. 01:23:34.020 --> 01:23:34.980 It is visually stunning. 01:23:35.060 --> 01:23:38.500 I I I will attend I I kinda wanna have that wallpaper in my home. 01:23:38.580 --> 01:23:39.780 It's just beautiful. 01:23:40.020 --> 01:23:40.740 Yeah, yeah. 01:23:40.900 --> 01:23:42.260 I love I love paleo art. 01:23:42.500 --> 01:23:46.180 I love I mean, just as I love like mythical reconstruction, I love people who have like 01:23:46.340 --> 01:23:50.610 really put a lot of time into trying to figure out what Lost Worlds look like. 01:23:50.690 --> 01:23:55.010 Um and so uh Monveer Coffee Table Book, uh Paleo uh Worlds. 01:23:55.250 --> 01:24:00.130 Okay next book after the after the mythology one, Coffee Table and Paleo Worlds. 01:24:00.210 --> 01:24:00.290 Yeah. 01:24:00.690 --> 01:24:01.730 I would totally buy that. 01:24:02.050 --> 01:24:02.690 All right, good. 01:24:02.930 --> 01:24:03.090 All right. 01:24:03.330 --> 01:24:04.450 Monveer, thank you so much. 01:24:04.690 --> 01:24:05.730 Yeah, thank you, boo. 01:24:09.890 --> 01:24:10.690 Well, here you are. 01:24:10.770 --> 01:24:14.690 You listened to another episode of Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast, this time with 01:24:14.930 --> 01:24:15.970 Manver Singh. 01:24:16.120 --> 01:24:20.520 We referred back to some of our greatest hits, like the the one with Pascal Boyer. 01:24:20.920 --> 01:24:25.480 Uh what can the listener do to support uh what they're hearing, Dave? 01:24:25.960 --> 01:24:31.720 Well, uh we have a Patreon account and we all we have David, both you and I have 01:24:31.720 --> 01:24:35.160 children and presumably we're gonna have to put them through college. 01:24:35.240 --> 01:24:36.600 So That's true. 01:24:36.920 --> 01:24:38.590 You know, I'm just putting it out there. 01:24:38.910 --> 01:24:44.350 Yeah, so if you want to support our reproductive success, uh you know, throw in some money 01:24:44.350 --> 01:24:45.070 on the Patreon too. 01:24:45.950 --> 01:24:46.350 Yes, exactly. 01:24:46.510 --> 01:24:47.550 Yeah, that's one way to do it. 01:24:47.710 --> 01:24:48.110 Yes. 01:24:48.670 --> 01:24:50.030 That's probably the easiest way to do it. 01:24:50.750 --> 01:24:51.470 The best way. 01:24:55.470 --> 01:24:57.870 It's the uh the most ethical way to do it. 01:24:58.190 --> 01:25:03.940 And um uh on that note, boom boom, um anything else 01:25:04.020 --> 01:25:04.660 people should know? 01:25:04.740 --> 01:25:10.740 Well, I mean we really do need um just just contact us and volunteer yourself to be 01:25:10.740 --> 01:25:14.980 on this podcast if you're an evolutionary behavioral scientist. 01:25:15.060 --> 01:25:19.780 Uh we've actually uh the summer is very difficult um scheduling people and we've had 01:25:19.780 --> 01:25:20.980 wonderful guests. 01:25:21.170 --> 01:25:25.250 Um, but if we've contacted you and you haven't gotten back to us, please get back to us. 01:25:25.330 --> 01:25:28.290 And if we haven't gotten back to you, apologies. 01:25:28.370 --> 01:25:30.210 And I think I'm going to edit all of that out. 01:25:30.690 --> 01:25:31.090 Oh no. 01:25:31.170 --> 01:25:33.890 I mean, it's totally like, yeah, the summer's been a little hazier. 01:25:34.050 --> 01:25:35.890 I feel like, yeah, people have been a little flakier. 01:25:35.970 --> 01:25:38.530 It's been a little harder to schedule stuff. 01:25:38.690 --> 01:25:42.210 So uh apologies for the patchiness of this summer. 01:25:42.530 --> 01:25:45.250 I think it'll it'll get better when things cool down. 01:25:45.650 --> 01:25:49.100 Yeah, I mean I I mean jury duty was a big was a big one. 01:25:49.500 --> 01:25:50.380 Yeah that was a big one. 01:25:50.540 --> 01:25:52.060 I just moved into a new house. 01:25:52.380 --> 01:25:55.420 It's uh it's been a really chaotic summer so far. 01:25:55.820 --> 01:25:59.660 There's not full time um school during summers. 01:25:59.820 --> 01:26:01.420 People are traveling. 01:26:01.900 --> 01:26:07.890 Um you know there's there's a lot of first world problems during the summer. 01:26:08.210 --> 01:26:09.570 Lots of first world problems. 01:26:09.650 --> 01:26:12.610 So um So you should really donate on Patreon to see. 01:26:13.010 --> 01:26:13.170 Right. 01:26:13.250 --> 01:26:15.650 We need your support to help us with our first world problems. 01:26:15.890 --> 01:26:18.690 David, has anybody sent you a fanny pack with french fries? 01:26:19.090 --> 01:26:22.050 No, I'm still waiting on the fanny pack with the french fries inside it. 01:26:22.290 --> 01:26:26.130 We also have to get to uh get to France with Pascal. 01:26:26.920 --> 01:26:28.040 Yes, that too. 01:26:28.200 --> 01:26:28.920 That would be great. 01:26:29.160 --> 01:26:29.640 Yeah, you can't. 01:26:29.880 --> 01:26:30.680 You know, it's so hot. 01:26:30.760 --> 01:26:35.800 I feel like the heat would probably preserve the French fries at the optimal temperature. 01:26:36.200 --> 01:26:41.720 Oh good uh good uh topical because it's hot in in in Europe right now. 01:26:42.120 --> 01:26:45.800 It's also hot it's yeah it's it's hot you know in most places. 01:26:46.040 --> 01:26:46.600 Yeah. 01:26:46.970 --> 01:26:49.050 Santa Barbara's pretty moderate. 01:26:49.450 --> 01:26:51.770 Except maybe the southern hemisphere, not not so hot there. 01:26:52.090 --> 01:26:53.690 Doesn't the seasons work differently there. 01:26:53.850 --> 01:26:54.090 Yeah. 01:26:54.250 --> 01:26:55.290 Hi, Australia. 01:26:55.530 --> 01:27:00.410 We should have um we there's some Australian folks and New Zealand folks we should have on. 01:27:00.810 --> 01:27:01.690 Yeah, we really should. 01:27:01.770 --> 01:27:03.690 We have have we had any Australians on? 01:27:04.090 --> 01:27:05.770 Uh no, nor New Zealanders. 01:27:05.850 --> 01:27:08.730 I think the time difference is quite a challenge, but that's true. 01:27:08.810 --> 01:27:10.090 It's a really big time difference. 01:27:10.330 --> 01:27:10.650 Yeah. 01:27:10.810 --> 01:27:13.450 But but we know who you are and we're thinking about you. 01:27:13.740 --> 01:27:15.660 Yeah, don't be afraid to invite yourself on. 01:27:15.980 --> 01:27:17.580 Uh we love it when when people do that. 01:27:17.820 --> 01:27:18.060 Okay. 01:27:18.220 --> 01:27:21.340 So maybe we can we can have a kangaroo on as well. 01:27:21.580 --> 01:27:22.780 Yeah, that would be great. 01:27:23.180 --> 01:27:23.420 Yeah. 01:27:23.580 --> 01:27:23.900 Okay. 01:27:24.140 --> 01:27:26.940 Anyway, thank you for bearing with us. 01:27:27.100 --> 01:27:30.700 Uh we'll see you either next week or following week. 01:27:30.860 --> 01:27:33.420 And enjoy the rest of your summer. 01:27:33.500 --> 01:27:39.500 Or if you're listening later, enjoy whatever season it is and um do something 01:27:39.500 --> 01:27:40.860 for yourself this week. 01:27:41.100 --> 01:27:41.420 Yep. 01:27:41.580 --> 01:27:42.620 Take it easy. 01:27:42.870 --> 01:27:46.070 Do something ethical though, not unethical for yourself. 01:27:46.310 --> 01:27:47.190 Yeah, do something nice. 01:27:47.430 --> 01:27:49.430 Yes, that's a good better way to put it. 01:27:49.590 --> 01:27:50.150 Yeah. 01:27:50.390 --> 01:27:50.710 Okay. 01:27:50.950 --> 01:27:51.110 Cool. 01:27:51.350 --> 01:27:52.390 On that note, okay. 01:27:52.470 --> 01:27:52.870 Bye, David. 01:27:52.950 --> 01:27:53.270 I'll see you. 01:27:53.430 --> 01:27:54.150 See you next week.