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David, this is Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast.

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Who are you?

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I'm David Pinsoff.

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And I am David or Dave Petrozowski.

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And uh what do we do in this podcast?

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Well, we uh are actual evolutionary psychologists and we talk to actual evolutionary

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psychologists who do actual evolutionary psychology.

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That sounds actually pretty fun.

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Yeah, it is.

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Enjoy.

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Hey Dave.

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David, good to see you.

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We have with us a veteran evolutionary psychologist, Deborah Lieberman, who is the

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editor of the premier journal in the evolutionary social sciences, evolution and human

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behavior, working on the textbook for evolutionary psychology.

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She is a fascinating scholar, uh, with incredibly interesting ideas.

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Uh, we get into all sorts of topics.

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We get into disgust, disease, pathogens, covet nineteen, uh how the

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pandemic changed our perspectives on human nature.

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Uh it's I like yeah, I like how we uh address earlier in an

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episode you were wondering what is disgust doing in morality.

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And I feel like Deb just really hits that nail on the head.

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Yeah.

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This this one was a really fun conversation.

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Uh I think I think you'll love it.

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Enjoy.

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So I I think I successfully found the recording button.

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So um today we have Deb Lieberman, Dr.

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Deb Lieberman, University of Miami, graduate of the Center for Evolutionary Psychology.

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Deb, you and I, I think, overlapped for a year at the CP.

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You know, my sense of time is awful.

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And so I I just know you were there.

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How long?

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Yeah.

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I don't know either, but I feel like uh you were a bridge to many people who I did not

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overlap with.

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Um but uh and I think between the two of us, I think we we we captured a lot of people and

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we're going to have other people on.

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But it's good to see you.

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We've already been talking before we even started about a bunch of cool stuff you're

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working on and new projects.

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But one question we wanted to, and we we sort of start with often is

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some people have origin stories in science, almost everybody in

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evolutionary psychology, evolutionary behavioral sciences has an origin story.

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Yeah, me me personally, uh, I got bit by a radioactive evolutionary psychologist.

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Yes.

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Um, and and you're now

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working on um uh the screenplay for that with with with somebody else in LA to

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uh uh to sell the rights to that.

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But uh but Deb, I actually I don't I know I have a couple stories in my head about you

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getting like physically to Santa Barbara that are crazy stories, but I don't know if I know

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I don't I don't know if you I know your origin story.

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Um the origin story.

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I have you know how far back do you want to go?

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We both everybody yeah we David and I literally started from our childhoods.

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Okay, 'cause I was gonna start with my bot mitzvah.

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Awesome.

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Mosletov, let's do it.

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Play it on us.

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Yes.

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No, I uh I'm I've always been interested in the materialistic explanations for things.

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So um I'm only kind of joking, but if in um in Hebrew school, I would ask I was told that

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you said like the twelve names of God that you would like combust or something.

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So every week I'd ask for another one.

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So I'm really empiricist.

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So I just uh, but I was very interested in the physical stuff.

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Um, I in it was really undergrad that started everything.

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So I was off to med school, uh, interested in being a neurosurgeon.

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And then I took a course by David Sloan Wilson entitled Evolution in Human Behavior.

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It was a senior graduate, you know, cross-listed course at Binghamton.

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And it sounded so interesting.

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It was in the biology department talking about humans, and I was like, this is exactly what

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I'm interested in.

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And I sat in that class, I learned a lot.

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I said very little because I was so intimidated, but I learned about game theory.

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We read uh the adapted mind and homicide.

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And so it was um It was a through the looking glass kind of moment that

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you won't, you know, you're lucky if you get one.

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So I've had a few being at the CEP.

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But from that class, you know, what's funny is when I first learned about evolutionary

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psychology, I thought everyone, all the interesting questions had been answered.

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Like I'm gonna go to grad school, but why?

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Like they seem to have nailed it.

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And so I it ends up that the human behavior and evolution society meeting uh was planned

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to be at Binghamton that summer.

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So kind of the stars aligned.

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And I helped out with that.

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I got to meet a lot of people.

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I saw um oh where'd he go?

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David left.

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That's okay.

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We'll do that.

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Did I bend him?

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There's something you said.

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Well occasionally, uh who knows?

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David maybe had to get some groceries or coffee or something.

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We'll we'll we'll he'll come back.

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Would you like me to continue though?

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He's gonna miss part of the story.

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And so but I'll continue.

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Uh we'll fill him in later.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Or if you want me to Oh he's right back.

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Yeah, we can Hey.

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Hey, sorry, I don't know what happened there.

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That's okay.

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Inter internet just randomly cut out.

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You might be a superhero and you went and did something at Lightning.

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Neptune.

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You're back from Neptune.

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Welcome back.

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Yes.

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Good to be back.

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You're not even winded.

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So Um So I I will I will make a long story very short.

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Um, but basically, David Sloan Wilson was I said, I want to go to uh grad school.

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Actually, there is a little bit more.

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I wanted to go to grad school, and at the time, where do you go?

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And so obviously I had the book in my hand, and I was like, John Anita, I was like,

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clearly, these are the two people I want to work with.

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I had homicide in my hand.

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I'm like, Canada?

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Like, I don't know if I'm allowed to leave the country.

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So I I put that down.

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And then we had read a little bit about um in the adaptive mind.

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There was some stuff by Kenrick, Um, and my sister was at ASU.

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So I was like, hey, it's you, sure, why not?

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I applied to ASU and accidentally must have checked off the wrong box.

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I got a free ride to the in the biochemistry program because I was a biochemistry major,

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not a psychology.

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But they when they said major, I was like biochemistry.

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So apparently that was what they thought uh I was going for.

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Um and then I applied to New Mexico to work with

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Thornhill.

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He took a different student.

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Um, you know what I'm blanking Paul Andrews.

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He took.

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No, I I applied to New Mexico.

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I still haven't heard back from them.

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Well, actually, I applied to the University of Michigan to work with David Buss.

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I still haven't gotten accepted or rejected from them.

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I'll have to check in with these folks, yeah.

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But uh, but I got accepted to Santa Barbara and it was it was the happiest day of my life.

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It was well, one of them.

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And so it was really, it was just a an incredible opportunity.

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Um, and so it's crazy the path.

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But yeah, so that's my origin story.

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Yeah.

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What do you think um when you were in medical school and what you were you were reading

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about homicide and the adapted mind, do you do you have an articulation or have you thought

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about like what it is that you were wanting to find that you found in that stuff?

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Uh in terms of the shift from medical school to grad school.

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Or just there's something about, I mean, look for both David and I and almost everyone we

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talked to, you know, there's something about this that appeals to us.

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And some of it it may not even be we're not aware of.

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Like, do you have an idea of what that is for you?

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Like what's yeah.

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I do actually.

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So um there were there were two things.

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So uh I had so from David Sloan Wilson's office, I hung out in the biology department.

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So I would go over to the biology professors next door, one was studying spiders, but I

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would go talk to him and he'd be like, Why are you talking to me about humans?

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And then I go talk to another biologist, like, Why are you talking to me about humans?

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And I'm like, Wait a minute, I'm confused.

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And then I went to the anthropology department, and they're like, why are you talking to me

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about biology?

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I was like, oh, so you know what kind of anthropology department or whatever uh office I

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landed in.

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And then I was like, well, maybe I should like take a psych course.

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And I remember signing up for biological psychology.

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That seemed to be that like that would be the crossover.

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And I I think I lasted all of like a lecture, half a lecture.

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I was like, this is boring.

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And so um, So I quickly learned that it was very controversial.

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And so you know me.

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I'm like, hey, you know, there's a controversy.

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There's a lot of people on that side.

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There seems to be a real few people on this side, and they're really, really smart.

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And I'm kind of agreeing with them.

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And I'm not gonna like, so chances are I'm gonna like what's happening over here.

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So I was like, put me in coach, you know.

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So I saw a controversy and I just kind of ran straight into that.

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But the other thing I've asked myself was um I remember sitting with all the textbooks on

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my bed, like GR, you know, MCAT GRE time.

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And I it was at that moment I asked myself, you know, in 10 years, I'm gonna

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pretend like that I am a neurosurgeon.

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I am rich.

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I've got my ski house.

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I've got my Porsche Targa.

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I've got everything I want.

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Would I look back and regret not having, you know, tried to become a professor and

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effective researcher and teacher like David Sol Nilson.

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And I said, yeah, I think I would.

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And I said, okay, now imagine 10 years, you're a full professor, you're driving your

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Prius.

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Sorry.

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You know, like, you know, just kind of like making do and you know, doing your thing.

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Do you think you'd look back and regret not having, you know, a large bank account and the

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ability to kind of do all these things?

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And I was like, nope.

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So the bow of you know poverty was taken, I guess, right there.

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Um but uh but so th those are two big things.

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The idea that it was controversial and I didn't know whether I could do it.

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Like becoming a writer and a researcher, that was the hard part.

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Becoming a mechanic and sawing open a brain and fixing things and you know, like that's

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easy.

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That's just you need a manual and can memorize stuff, but how do you actually push science

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forward.

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That was challenging.

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Yeah.

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It's I I one of the things I think that's like a theme of EbSych is it's like courageous

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because like we're doing things that are uncertain.

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Like especially when you're exploring new areas.

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And it really takes a lot of courage.

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Like we've both David and I talked about and I'll speak for myself like one of the things

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that appealed to me about John Alita was it was not just controversial, but it was

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courageous about what was true, regardless of what other people thought about it, or

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maybe didn't even understand it, or was off their radar.

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Um, and that was really exciting.

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And like, I don't know, like being at the CP during that time, it was very special because

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it really felt like we were sort of on the frontier of science.

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Did you feel that?

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I mean, yeah, I felt like it was us against the world.

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And I think I think there are times I think there are

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times that we could have probably been advised a little bit better to not be so combative.

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Right.

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I I I think they'd argue they didn't advise us to be combative, but yet I like what was I

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feel like the culture I grew up in was like, you know, on guard.

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You know, like get ready.

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And so I feel like martial arts should have been part of our training as well.

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Um But it's but I would say, but here's what I found exciting.

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And at the time, it took a while to learn, which is what are what are the issues, what are

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the debates?

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And then what are some really good arguments to address it?

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And what are people likely to say?

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And what are some good responses?

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And it's only been recently that I can do all this calmly without like my hair going, you

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know, lighting on fire.

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But it's uh because it at first it's like, you know, you know, you're coming at me and you

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know, don't take a shot at my science and this is so important and you don't know anything

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and move over.

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Um, but it was good to have a it could it felt good to have a team.

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00:12:38,710 --> 00:12:40,310
It was more like a family.

244
00:12:40,710 --> 00:12:41,350
Yeah, yeah.

245
00:12:41,510 --> 00:12:45,900
I mean one of the things I don't know in uh uh David, I'm sorry.

246
00:12:46,220 --> 00:12:50,300
Well, one of the things I remember Deb, I think the first time I met you, and we can cut

247
00:12:50,300 --> 00:12:51,100
this out if you want.

248
00:12:51,180 --> 00:12:53,660
It's not, I mean, was depending on what you're about to say.

249
00:12:53,900 --> 00:12:55,340
Yeah, yeah, I'll let you, you'll hear it.

250
00:12:55,420 --> 00:13:01,180
Um I was so I was like a very you know you were already at the CP and I was an

251
00:13:01,180 --> 00:13:06,860
early grad student and I was very nervous and we all as you know Deb and um David I think

252
00:13:06,860 --> 00:13:10,860
you know this too is like what a lot of John Alita's students would do is go to their house

253
00:13:10,860 --> 00:13:11,980
to like work, right?

254
00:13:12,060 --> 00:13:13,900
Because they were writing always in their house.

255
00:13:14,910 --> 00:13:18,270
And I just open a can of worms for Deb.

256
00:13:19,390 --> 00:13:22,350
And then uh so I'm very nervous.

257
00:13:22,670 --> 00:13:26,670
And uh I go and Deb is there and Lita's there.

258
00:13:26,830 --> 00:13:32,430
Um, but when I get to the house, neither Deb nor Lita

259
00:13:32,750 --> 00:13:33,230
are there.

260
00:13:33,470 --> 00:13:34,750
John lets me in.

261
00:13:34,910 --> 00:13:40,780
And then um Deb is coming down the stairs with with

262
00:13:40,860 --> 00:13:42,940
uh with Lita's daughter.

263
00:13:43,020 --> 00:13:48,860
Um, and Lita's daughter at the time is pretty young, and um they're both um doing

264
00:13:48,940 --> 00:13:51,020
quote unquote reconnaissance with Lita.

265
00:13:51,180 --> 00:13:56,780
So immediately I'm sort of like Deb is playing with with Nike, and it's wonderful

266
00:13:57,420 --> 00:13:59,420
because it's it's like a family, right?

267
00:13:59,500 --> 00:14:02,860
Like it's like you're visiting somebody's house and like there's like aloe parenting

268
00:14:02,860 --> 00:14:03,340
happening.

269
00:14:03,500 --> 00:14:09,430
And then um Lita starts talking to me about science once she comes down.

270
00:14:09,590 --> 00:14:13,270
And Nike, there's this game barrel full of monkeys.

271
00:14:13,590 --> 00:14:16,790
And she's dumping that over Lita's head as Lita's talking to me.

272
00:14:16,870 --> 00:14:22,230
And like with parenting brain, she's like just ignoring it as as they're doing that.

273
00:14:22,390 --> 00:14:26,230
And it that always stuck with me, Deb, like you doing reconnaissance with Nike.

274
00:14:27,030 --> 00:14:30,340
But what I love about that is like it really felt like a family.

275
00:14:30,420 --> 00:14:34,500
And it was just this, it was just this like we're comfortable in our science.

276
00:14:34,660 --> 00:14:40,660
And part of our science is people being organisms and like, you know, parenting and that

277
00:14:40,660 --> 00:14:41,460
kind of thing.

278
00:14:41,620 --> 00:14:45,220
That that's sort of like baked into, of course, that's just part of us.

279
00:14:45,300 --> 00:14:47,300
And then we're also doing like really cool science.

280
00:14:47,460 --> 00:14:48,900
And I wasn't nervous after that.

281
00:14:49,140 --> 00:14:54,490
But Deb, that was like you, you helped me like be like that that was like a real moment for

282
00:14:54,490 --> 00:14:59,850
me of like, oh yeah, no, these are like good people really doing science to the point where

283
00:14:59,850 --> 00:15:03,450
they're like playing with their kids while we're doing science.

284
00:15:03,770 --> 00:15:05,610
Yeah, yeah, no, for sure.

285
00:15:05,850 --> 00:15:09,290
And for the record, Nike's still someone I'd I'd enjoy doing reconnaissance with.

286
00:15:11,050 --> 00:15:12,250
No, totally, yes, yes.

287
00:15:12,570 --> 00:15:16,490
Oh, well, this is making me think that the evolutionary psychology story isn't in the

288
00:15:16,490 --> 00:15:20,810
Marvel universe, but it's uh it's a kind of sitcom, you know, where everyone's hanging out

289
00:15:20,890 --> 00:15:25,400
and Lita and John's house, and you know, the kid has her cute one-liners.

290
00:15:25,960 --> 00:15:28,760
Maybe it's a kind of like full house vibe.

291
00:15:29,400 --> 00:15:33,960
Um you know, I guess it's like it it's it isn't like Marvel.

292
00:15:34,040 --> 00:15:34,840
So I would agree with that.

293
00:15:34,920 --> 00:15:37,480
But I'm I'm not sure that I'm happy with the full house.

294
00:15:38,200 --> 00:15:41,560
Now that you've said that, I'm gonna have to think about something a little bit different.

295
00:15:41,720 --> 00:15:44,680
But uh Brady Bunch.

296
00:15:44,840 --> 00:15:50,630
Um it's uh it it was it was it was unique and it was

297
00:15:50,630 --> 00:15:53,990
special and um and I enjoy it.

298
00:15:54,070 --> 00:15:58,230
And even though my first job was to Hawaii, uh people were like, oh my god, you must have

299
00:15:58,230 --> 00:15:58,630
loved it.

300
00:15:58,790 --> 00:16:03,430
I actually got a bit depressed because just leaving the mothership, I was like, oh my God,

301
00:16:03,590 --> 00:16:05,030
like this is awful.

302
00:16:05,270 --> 00:16:10,950
And um, you know, being there at the same time, I was ready, definitely ready to go uh

303
00:16:11,110 --> 00:16:14,310
and to and to branch out, uh leave the nest.

304
00:16:14,470 --> 00:16:20,120
Uh, but it was it was sad because you had a what you didn't know was how little support you

305
00:16:20,280 --> 00:16:25,080
have out there and uh how lonely, how intellectually lonely it can be.

306
00:16:25,240 --> 00:16:31,000
So uh but it's it's it's funny how technology and even things like this have

307
00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:33,400
made life far more enjoyable.

308
00:16:33,800 --> 00:16:34,920
Yeah, yeah.

309
00:16:36,040 --> 00:16:41,710
So uh as a leader in the field who sort of began, you know, in the

310
00:16:41,710 --> 00:16:47,630
literal home of Leda Cosmones and John Tuby, uh how do you think

311
00:16:47,790 --> 00:16:48,910
the field has changed?

312
00:16:49,070 --> 00:16:50,510
The public's impression of it has changed.

313
00:16:50,590 --> 00:16:54,430
You mentioned there was a spirit of combativeness, us against the world.

314
00:16:54,670 --> 00:16:58,430
Do you think the temperature is still that high or has it come down a bit?

315
00:16:58,590 --> 00:17:03,150
How has the vibe changed regarding evolutionary psychology since you began?

316
00:17:04,120 --> 00:17:07,320
I would say the temperature has come down quite a bit.

317
00:17:07,560 --> 00:17:10,360
Um, and I'm I'm really happy about that.

318
00:17:10,600 --> 00:17:16,360
So it's what was it uh was it Gould who talked about the three

319
00:17:16,360 --> 00:17:21,000
stages of science and you know, kind of like it's it's garbage and then it's it's not

320
00:17:21,000 --> 00:17:23,160
important, and yeah, we knew it all along.

321
00:17:23,480 --> 00:17:27,210
Um I think we're still in the like we're

322
00:17:27,210 --> 00:17:29,690
2.25.

323
00:17:30,090 --> 00:17:34,250
Like I don't think it's like it's not quite halfway to you know we've known it all along.

324
00:17:34,490 --> 00:17:37,290
But it's it's just kind of like yeah it just doesn't really matter.

325
00:17:37,370 --> 00:17:41,770
Like I but I think that people see that it doesn't matter because they don't know how to do

326
00:17:41,770 --> 00:17:41,930
it.

327
00:17:42,090 --> 00:17:43,290
They don't know the science of it.

328
00:17:43,450 --> 00:17:49,370
They just and so it's like I can't I don't have the I I I'm smart enough to know that

329
00:17:49,370 --> 00:17:54,560
it matters but I but I don't know how to actually apply it to my particular field or

330
00:17:54,560 --> 00:17:54,960
science.

331
00:17:55,040 --> 00:17:56,880
And I and so it actually is a skill.

332
00:17:56,960 --> 00:18:00,960
It's a skill set and set of tools, and there's ways of doing it wrong.

333
00:18:01,200 --> 00:18:07,200
And uh and that's also now, you know, I think that I think the field is quite healthy

334
00:18:07,200 --> 00:18:13,090
in its teenage years, um, but I think that

335
00:18:13,970 --> 00:18:17,970
I would love to see better training across the board.

336
00:18:18,210 --> 00:18:21,810
I don't necessarily know how that happens.

337
00:18:22,050 --> 00:18:27,730
So part of it is I'm writing this textbook as one effort to kind of uh provide at least

338
00:18:27,730 --> 00:18:33,730
another reference for it that hits on a lot of the cognitive science that I think

339
00:18:33,730 --> 00:18:35,890
is missing from the field.

340
00:18:37,300 --> 00:18:40,820
I also so I think it's I think the field is doing great.

341
00:18:41,060 --> 00:18:44,260
I am excited about the different areas it's going in.

342
00:18:44,500 --> 00:18:46,980
I think that there's a lot more room to grow.

343
00:18:47,220 --> 00:18:50,980
So I mean development should be an area.

344
00:18:51,140 --> 00:18:56,820
I mean it's it's come a long way but I think that there the idea that there are no that

345
00:18:56,820 --> 00:19:02,350
there's so few places you could go to study evolutionary psychology uh with a developmental

346
00:19:02,350 --> 00:19:06,990
psychologist other than uh UCSB, uh Yale, a couple of other places, right?

347
00:19:07,070 --> 00:19:10,270
So it's um it's very limited.

348
00:19:10,350 --> 00:19:15,310
But then you talk about political science, the clinical side of things, which is super

349
00:19:15,310 --> 00:19:15,630
important.

350
00:19:16,350 --> 00:19:22,340
Um I can I mean I think that a lot of the social sciences uh that there's a lot of

351
00:19:22,340 --> 00:19:23,780
room to grow, I guess.

352
00:19:23,940 --> 00:19:25,620
And so, but I think it's hopeful.

353
00:19:25,780 --> 00:19:31,060
I think more and more people when they hear evolutionary psychology, the disgust face,

354
00:19:31,300 --> 00:19:33,300
it's only slight.

355
00:19:33,540 --> 00:19:38,660
It's not like, you know, it's not like you, you know, like they have to walk away from you

356
00:19:38,660 --> 00:19:39,380
anymore.

357
00:19:39,620 --> 00:19:42,020
It's not like I can't be seen with you.

358
00:19:42,180 --> 00:19:45,850
Now it's a huh, hmm, I don't know.

359
00:19:46,810 --> 00:19:48,810
So uh and I'll take that any day.

360
00:19:48,890 --> 00:19:51,210
So I so I'm actually quite hopeful.

361
00:19:51,450 --> 00:19:56,650
Plus, you know, the emotions and all the great work that's being done on the emotions, it's

362
00:19:56,650 --> 00:20:01,210
such an easy way to start to introduce the field that people are like, oh well that makes

363
00:20:01,210 --> 00:20:02,170
really great sense.

364
00:20:02,410 --> 00:20:08,240
Um and so I think that's a a great vehicle to start to begin conversations and

365
00:20:08,240 --> 00:20:10,720
introduce the many areas, you know.

366
00:20:10,880 --> 00:20:16,720
And so in any case, my general idea, my general take is that the field is it's come

367
00:20:16,720 --> 00:20:17,040
far.

368
00:20:17,440 --> 00:20:23,200
I think that there's there's scattershot, you know, always,

369
00:20:23,520 --> 00:20:26,160
but by and large I think I think we're doing quite well.

370
00:20:26,320 --> 00:20:32,010
I'm just I get concerned about the future in terms of number

371
00:20:32,010 --> 00:20:35,290
of people training the number of people.

372
00:20:35,610 --> 00:20:40,730
And so I I mean my my university, you know, they haven't replaced key

373
00:20:40,730 --> 00:20:46,010
evolutionary people who um and that every turn they refuse to even, you know,

374
00:20:46,250 --> 00:20:46,890
engage.

375
00:20:47,130 --> 00:20:52,330
And so that it's hard to have a lab of, you know, a person with you know, just one person

376
00:20:52,330 --> 00:20:54,170
taking on graduate students.

377
00:20:54,330 --> 00:20:59,300
So maybe we can come up with ways of working together across multiple kind of solo

378
00:20:59,940 --> 00:21:05,540
sites to help kind of put together graduate programs and and and collect collect graduate

379
00:21:05,540 --> 00:21:06,580
students to train.

380
00:21:07,220 --> 00:21:07,540
Yeah.

381
00:21:07,700 --> 00:21:13,540
Th there's there's a a bit of a a decline in the reproductive success of the field in terms

382
00:21:13,540 --> 00:21:19,490
of training uh professors uh to occupy key positions uh uh around

383
00:21:19,490 --> 00:21:25,490
the world who who have this perspective and can in turn train new scholars in it and you

384
00:21:25,490 --> 00:21:28,530
know leave more descendants uh intellectually.

385
00:21:29,250 --> 00:21:29,810
Yeah.

386
00:21:30,210 --> 00:21:36,210
And yeah Deb, one thing I'm hearing you say too is that and I think David and I have talked

387
00:21:36,210 --> 00:21:41,780
about this with with past people on is that the early first generation, like the

388
00:21:41,780 --> 00:21:47,620
Martin and Margot and Homicide or John and Lita, it was sort of uh they had to fight for

389
00:21:47,780 --> 00:21:50,980
it was existential, like it was proof of concept.

390
00:21:51,380 --> 00:21:55,940
But now, sort of currently it's well, how do you actually do it?

391
00:21:56,020 --> 00:22:01,380
So if you're already past the point of acceptance or at least curiosity and you're not

392
00:22:01,380 --> 00:22:04,930
immediately running away, um, how do you do it well?

393
00:22:05,170 --> 00:22:08,290
Do things like task analysis or the cognitive part.

394
00:22:08,530 --> 00:22:13,090
Is that it sounds like that's something you're sort of focusing on with your textbook?

395
00:22:13,890 --> 00:22:14,290
Yes.

396
00:22:14,450 --> 00:22:19,010
I don't think that any of the current textbooks have done a good job introducing the

397
00:22:19,010 --> 00:22:20,850
evolutionary cognitive science.

398
00:22:21,010 --> 00:22:22,850
So how do how do how do you do it?

399
00:22:22,930 --> 00:22:28,820
Like what what is it what are the what are the questions we ask in terms of the algorithms

400
00:22:28,900 --> 00:22:33,940
you know the information processing structure like really in the weeds I know but to me

401
00:22:34,020 --> 00:22:38,900
it's like you gotta go there in order to zoom back out and have a better handle on macro

402
00:22:38,900 --> 00:22:40,180
behaviors and patterns.

403
00:22:40,500 --> 00:22:46,100
Yeah when I when I teach you Evpsych actually this after I talk about Lita's waste and

404
00:22:46,260 --> 00:22:52,070
task I actually talk about your um Kin detection and disgust and

405
00:22:52,070 --> 00:22:53,510
incest avoidance work.

406
00:22:53,830 --> 00:22:57,670
And I think, I mean, if you if you if you'd like, we can always talk a little bit about

407
00:22:57,670 --> 00:22:57,830
that.

408
00:22:57,910 --> 00:23:03,110
Because I, you know, the people who are listening, there's presumably a large range of

409
00:23:03,110 --> 00:23:08,150
people, people who know us, or and then people who don't know anything about us or this.

410
00:23:08,710 --> 00:23:09,990
And I think it's really cool work.

411
00:23:10,070 --> 00:23:14,310
For me, what I like about it is it is very much at that software level, right?

412
00:23:14,390 --> 00:23:20,280
Where it's sort of you're taking modern people who, for them sort of incest

413
00:23:20,280 --> 00:23:24,840
is something that's like they read about in Greek mythology, or it's sort of this thing,

414
00:23:24,920 --> 00:23:27,480
you know, that you just hear about fictively.

415
00:23:27,640 --> 00:23:30,200
It doesn't feel like a day-to-day concern, right?

416
00:23:30,360 --> 00:23:35,000
Um, but yet thankfully, yeah, no, exactly.

417
00:23:35,160 --> 00:23:41,160
Um but but it's a it but it's a really good example of and even kinship, I think sometimes

418
00:23:41,240 --> 00:23:46,990
when people hear kinship, especially for like high SES academics,

419
00:23:47,150 --> 00:23:52,590
it feels like very um, you know, oh, that's like what people growing up in places where

420
00:23:52,590 --> 00:23:56,190
they're still around their family, like kin, you know, it just sounds like kind of yokal y,

421
00:23:56,350 --> 00:23:56,510
right?

422
00:23:56,590 --> 00:24:00,750
It's sort of like um and and I've I've I've like I've detected that.

423
00:24:00,910 --> 00:24:06,750
Like it it doesn't feel um it doesn't feel sort of like high status or high

424
00:24:06,750 --> 00:24:08,990
class to talk about kinship or incest, right?

425
00:24:09,070 --> 00:24:14,520
Like it's just sort of this um um but what I love about this work is

426
00:24:14,760 --> 00:24:20,680
your work is that um it's it's not something people would intuitively think would be

427
00:24:20,680 --> 00:24:25,560
part of their day to day thinking, but it's so powerful and you're getting like this

428
00:24:25,560 --> 00:24:27,400
beautiful results.

429
00:24:27,640 --> 00:24:33,640
Um and so like I I actually think oftentimes as much as Lita's waste and selection task

430
00:24:33,640 --> 00:24:37,400
work, which we actually haven't talked about yet, and we can talk about another time, but I

431
00:24:37,400 --> 00:24:42,090
actually think your work will sort of always be really important in that initial work.

432
00:24:42,170 --> 00:24:47,050
I mean and obviously a lot of your work since then, but I think it's one of the things that

433
00:24:47,050 --> 00:24:50,730
gets people thinking the right way at this software level.

434
00:24:51,210 --> 00:24:52,010
I I think so.

435
00:24:52,250 --> 00:24:57,450
I mean I just asking the question of, you know, how do you know who your close relatives

436
00:24:57,450 --> 00:24:57,610
are?

437
00:24:57,770 --> 00:25:02,090
So you're right, there are a lot of people who might be listening who haven't uh you know,

438
00:25:02,340 --> 00:25:07,140
haven't heard about this this research but so i offer the question like how do you know who

439
00:25:07,140 --> 00:25:12,980
your genetic relatives are like how did you come to figure it out and you

440
00:25:12,980 --> 00:25:18,180
ask a class of students this and they're like oh you're told and I was like yeah but other

441
00:25:18,180 --> 00:25:23,860
animals figure it out and they don't have language you know and they're like okay and so

442
00:25:24,020 --> 00:25:29,700
you know you smell them well that's not exactly how humans seem to uh

443
00:25:30,070 --> 00:25:31,750
to snip out relatives.

444
00:25:31,910 --> 00:25:36,390
Um and so that then they're kind of some of them get stumped to like, oh, you know, you

445
00:25:36,390 --> 00:25:38,150
know them from early on and this and that.

446
00:25:38,230 --> 00:25:41,590
So they're we start to kind of very quickly narrow in on the possibilities.

447
00:25:41,750 --> 00:25:44,870
But you can see that it's it's just something they haven't really thought about.

448
00:25:45,030 --> 00:25:49,830
So but the idea that uh the two cues that we've at least found that

449
00:25:50,390 --> 00:25:56,380
influence and affect how you uh whether you categorize someone as a sibling is whether you

450
00:25:56,380 --> 00:26:01,660
saw the woman who breastfed you caring for and you know giving birth to and and

451
00:26:01,660 --> 00:26:06,060
breastfeeding another young uh young infant that has a that infant has a very good

452
00:26:06,060 --> 00:26:07,660
probability of being your sibling.

453
00:26:07,820 --> 00:26:10,540
But then if but that that's only good for younger siblings.

454
00:26:10,700 --> 00:26:15,970
How do you know of the array of kids out there who's possibly an older sibling and that

455
00:26:15,970 --> 00:26:18,850
also tracks parental investment, but it's over the long haul.

456
00:26:18,930 --> 00:26:24,290
So, who else are my parents investing in throughout the period of childhood dependency?

457
00:26:24,450 --> 00:26:27,250
And so, also known as co-residency duration.

458
00:26:27,490 --> 00:26:33,490
And so those two cues really predict how your estimate of relatedness and not

459
00:26:33,490 --> 00:26:39,090
only how gross you find them as a sexual partner in general, but also how nice you are

460
00:26:39,410 --> 00:26:40,050
in general.

461
00:26:40,210 --> 00:26:42,690
And I'd say in general for a variety of reasons.

462
00:26:42,850 --> 00:26:45,410
So I think that these systems aren't foolproof.

463
00:26:45,580 --> 00:26:51,500
and I think that there are factors that can push them around and situations that would

464
00:26:51,500 --> 00:26:56,060
cause some people to find a close genetic relative potentially more attractive under

465
00:26:56,060 --> 00:26:58,620
certain circumstances than other circumstances.

466
00:26:59,260 --> 00:27:04,140
But by and large, cultural universal is this inbreeding avoidance system that allows us to

467
00:27:04,140 --> 00:27:05,100
detect kin.

468
00:27:05,580 --> 00:27:10,470
And that what I like about what I like about the incest avoidance stuff is not only does it

469
00:27:10,470 --> 00:27:15,030
really get into like you can map it out in terms of inputs, how things get integrated,

470
00:27:15,110 --> 00:27:18,870
because a lot of stuff has to get integrated, but you gotta figure out what and then go and

471
00:27:18,870 --> 00:27:19,270
test it.

472
00:27:19,350 --> 00:27:22,470
And then the emotion of disgust to regulate the aversion.

473
00:27:22,630 --> 00:27:28,240
But then it also allows you to to figure out how does this, how does this kind of get

474
00:27:28,320 --> 00:27:33,840
um get displayed in the array of culture, cultural variations in terms of the taboo?

475
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:39,520
So from this one psychological system, you then get a cultural, uh, a

476
00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:43,280
cultural set of norms that can vary.

477
00:27:43,520 --> 00:27:49,520
Um and what I so what I like about this particular example is you can take it

478
00:27:49,520 --> 00:27:52,480
through each of its different kinds of questions.

479
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:55,470
So what is you know what are the selection pressures?

480
00:27:55,550 --> 00:27:56,670
Like why does it exist?

481
00:27:56,830 --> 00:27:58,670
How does it work in terms of the programming?

482
00:27:58,830 --> 00:27:59,950
How does it develop?

483
00:28:00,110 --> 00:28:01,470
How does it break down?

484
00:28:01,630 --> 00:28:06,830
What are the neural kind of uh you know the neural regions or the you know where is it

485
00:28:06,830 --> 00:28:09,150
actually seated in the brain?

486
00:28:09,470 --> 00:28:13,070
How does it get displayed and reflected in culture and so forth.

487
00:28:13,150 --> 00:28:17,820
And so you can actually take it through all of the different levels of analysis and answer

488
00:28:17,820 --> 00:28:19,100
questions at each level.

489
00:28:19,260 --> 00:28:23,900
Uh, you know, I think that it's each question is pretty much one academic's life's work,

490
00:28:24,060 --> 00:28:27,420
but at the same time, it's just I think we could do this with everything.

491
00:28:27,580 --> 00:28:32,940
Uh I mean that's the idea of being able to map the human mind um and culture.

492
00:28:33,420 --> 00:28:38,990
So Uh I'm interested in that last part

493
00:28:39,310 --> 00:28:42,350
of the causal model, the culture part.

494
00:28:42,830 --> 00:28:47,390
Um, because simply doing the task analysis of how do I figure out who my genetic relatives

495
00:28:47,390 --> 00:28:53,230
are, how to I uh uh be nice to my relatives and avoid having sex with

496
00:28:53,230 --> 00:28:53,470
them.

497
00:28:53,630 --> 00:28:56,510
Um that all makes sense from an evolutionary perspective.

498
00:28:56,670 --> 00:29:02,100
You wanna um help people who probabilistically share the genes for helping kin.

499
00:29:02,180 --> 00:29:07,620
Uh you want to avoid uh reproducing uh with genetic relatives to avoid, you know, the the

500
00:29:07,620 --> 00:29:09,300
costs of inbreeding.

501
00:29:10,100 --> 00:29:14,420
Um, but the moral part of the equation isn't to me as obvious.

502
00:29:14,500 --> 00:29:19,940
And I still think that's kind of a live area of research and a mysterious aspect of this

503
00:29:19,940 --> 00:29:25,410
psychology, which is it's not merely that I'm grossed out by having sex with genetic

504
00:29:25,410 --> 00:29:26,290
relatives.

505
00:29:26,450 --> 00:29:30,930
Um, I'm also inclined to judge it as morally wrong.

506
00:29:31,090 --> 00:29:36,770
Um, and cultures around the world have judged it as morally wrong and have had various

507
00:29:36,770 --> 00:29:39,410
taboos uh and rules against it.

508
00:29:39,650 --> 00:29:43,890
Um and so what I'm curious about, and may you don't need to have the final answer to this

509
00:29:43,890 --> 00:29:44,050
question.

510
00:29:44,130 --> 00:29:47,650
I still think it's an interesting area of research and and lots of questions remain here,

511
00:29:47,730 --> 00:29:53,620
but but what drives me uh to the point of I'm grossed out by having sex

512
00:29:53,620 --> 00:29:59,060
with my relatives, I won't do it myself, to this is unethical, this is morally wrong, I'm

513
00:29:59,060 --> 00:30:02,180
going to punish, condemn, or shun other people who do it.

514
00:30:02,340 --> 00:30:06,100
What how do you explain the the the bridge between those two points?

515
00:30:07,140 --> 00:30:09,780
Um well, I think it's a great question.

516
00:30:09,940 --> 00:30:14,820
And I um I do have an answer, whether it's the answer, it's a whole different story.

517
00:30:14,900 --> 00:30:16,420
So I'll I'll leave that to you.

518
00:30:16,740 --> 00:30:22,530
Um so we have a natural inbreeding aversion.

519
00:30:22,770 --> 00:30:28,770
And so our value of close relatives registers as a

520
00:30:29,010 --> 00:30:30,610
an intense disgust.

521
00:30:30,850 --> 00:30:35,970
And I think that disgust is an interesting emotion because it becomes now

522
00:30:35,970 --> 00:30:40,610
available to a psychology that's looking for

523
00:30:42,300 --> 00:30:46,220
Behaviors that others are doing that are of low value.

524
00:30:46,780 --> 00:30:47,420
Why?

525
00:30:47,900 --> 00:30:53,580
Because we are evil humans and we form coalitions

526
00:30:53,820 --> 00:30:59,260
and we are interested in protecting scarce resources, so we form

527
00:30:59,260 --> 00:31:05,250
coalitions, determine which groups have the lowest leverage, and go after them

528
00:31:05,250 --> 00:31:10,610
to prevent them from taking and acquiring and and defending those resources.

529
00:31:11,410 --> 00:31:14,610
And who do we want to do that to?

530
00:31:14,770 --> 00:31:18,610
Well we don't want to do it to people we cooperate with and people we find valuable and so

531
00:31:18,610 --> 00:31:19,090
forth.

532
00:31:19,410 --> 00:31:23,570
We do that to the people we find and do things of low value.

533
00:31:23,810 --> 00:31:29,420
And so disgust just happens to be one of those emotions that signals it's like a really,

534
00:31:29,500 --> 00:31:34,140
really, really loud bell to the kind of coalitional system to say, you know, we've got a

535
00:31:34,140 --> 00:31:35,100
winner here.

536
00:31:35,340 --> 00:31:39,500
You know, we've got something that's registered as extremely low social value.

537
00:31:39,820 --> 00:31:44,620
Is this a potential coordination point for how to get, you know, to rally the troops in

538
00:31:44,620 --> 00:31:50,510
order to go after people who do this, who think that, um, in order to marginalize

539
00:31:50,510 --> 00:31:53,870
them and exploit them and pr and kill them and, you know, whatever.

540
00:31:53,950 --> 00:31:59,150
I mean, like I I think it's a very dark side of human nature, but um so it's funny that it

541
00:31:59,230 --> 00:32:00,750
it's all labeled as morality.

542
00:32:00,830 --> 00:32:06,110
But I just uh um that's a whole other fun see I like controversy.

543
00:32:06,190 --> 00:32:08,670
So this is like naturally where I'm preaching to the choir.

544
00:32:08,750 --> 00:32:08,830
Yeah.

545
00:32:08,910 --> 00:32:13,480
I've I have a blog post called Morality is not nice, where I I I write about the the dark

546
00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:14,280
sides of morality.

547
00:32:14,360 --> 00:32:19,080
And I think they uh it is if you just look at you know the anthropological record, the

548
00:32:19,080 --> 00:32:24,920
historical record, um, and even just recent psychology studies, like it it is becoming

549
00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:29,640
increasingly clear that morality is a very dark force uh in humanity.

550
00:32:29,880 --> 00:32:35,640
Uh I get yeah, words like this is good, this is bad, you know, like make me very nervous.

551
00:32:35,720 --> 00:32:37,480
It's like who are you trying to coordinate?

552
00:32:37,560 --> 00:32:38,600
Like what's going on?

553
00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:39,800
Like, hold on.

554
00:32:40,040 --> 00:32:45,110
But but but by and large, I mean, so I I I mean, I'd like to leave aside the question as to

555
00:32:45,110 --> 00:32:49,190
whether there are like certain ethical laws and moral law.

556
00:32:49,430 --> 00:32:54,870
Like I'd like to put that aside for a second and just focus on how it is disgust ends up

557
00:32:54,870 --> 00:32:57,510
informing and coloring our sense of morality.

558
00:32:57,670 --> 00:33:01,190
Like there might be there, I think there are other aspects of morality that are worth

559
00:33:01,190 --> 00:33:06,960
talking about, but in terms of how disgust colors it, my sense is that it just there's it

560
00:33:07,120 --> 00:33:07,920
does no good.

561
00:33:08,080 --> 00:33:12,160
And there are folks who think that, you know, listen, disgust is a moral compass.

562
00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:16,880
So Leon Cass, disgust is a moral compass and we need to use it in order to guide, you know,

563
00:33:16,960 --> 00:33:18,320
our moral decision making.

564
00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:21,680
But Martha Nussbaum basically said no, you know, that's uh the wrong thing.

565
00:33:21,840 --> 00:33:27,520
And Carlton Patrick and I, we both also have said, you know, disgust is not the answer to

566
00:33:27,600 --> 00:33:30,720
uh our our our our norms and legal systems.

567
00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:32,610
Uh At least that's my opinion.

568
00:33:32,770 --> 00:33:38,370
What should be is a whole other fun story, but uh disgust, I would argue, should not be

569
00:33:38,370 --> 00:33:38,690
there.

570
00:33:38,930 --> 00:33:41,650
Um, but in any case, so how does it get in there?

571
00:33:41,810 --> 00:33:47,650
Low social value, which makes it just available to systems sifting for groups to go

572
00:33:47,650 --> 00:33:51,810
after, uh, to marginalize and to outcompete for resources.

573
00:33:51,970 --> 00:33:57,650
Um, it's an get them before they get us mentality, and disgust is used in that effort.

574
00:33:58,340 --> 00:33:58,900
The idea.

575
00:33:59,060 --> 00:34:00,420
Oh, sorry, David, go ahead.

576
00:34:00,820 --> 00:34:06,820
Uh I'm wondering if an additional aspect of it is the contamination logic of

577
00:34:06,820 --> 00:34:07,540
disgust.

578
00:34:07,780 --> 00:34:12,740
So uh if you're trying to avoid things uh that have that are contaminated or that are are

579
00:34:12,980 --> 00:34:17,780
you know have pathogens uh on them, uh you not only want to avoid the thing itself, you

580
00:34:17,780 --> 00:34:20,770
want to avoid anything that has come into contact with that thing.

581
00:34:20,930 --> 00:34:26,930
You know, uh even a tiny droplet of fecal matter uh could uh uh ruin an entire meal.

582
00:34:27,090 --> 00:34:31,410
So it's not really the quantity of the contamination, it's the contamination itself.

583
00:34:31,490 --> 00:34:36,770
Uh and if I'm sick, you not only want to avoid contact with me, you want to avoid contact

584
00:34:36,770 --> 00:34:39,490
with other people who've been in contact with me.

585
00:34:39,650 --> 00:34:45,440
Um so if I elicit disgust, I'm going to have a

586
00:34:45,440 --> 00:34:51,440
hard time mobilizing allies to my side because people will not only not

587
00:34:51,440 --> 00:34:55,280
want to associate with me, they're going to not want to associate with other people who are

588
00:34:55,280 --> 00:34:56,560
associated with me.

589
00:34:56,720 --> 00:35:02,160
And so because disgust elicits this contamination psychology, it makes it particularly

590
00:35:02,160 --> 00:35:04,000
useful for rallying coalitions.

591
00:35:04,160 --> 00:35:10,080
Because if I can elicit disgust about you as a target, I'm not only motivating

592
00:35:11,290 --> 00:35:17,130
Avoidance of you, but I'm uh depriving you of the ability to mobilize

593
00:35:17,130 --> 00:35:18,650
allies in response.

594
00:35:18,810 --> 00:35:22,570
Uh whereas with other emotions, you know, if if you elicit anger, maybe your allies will

595
00:35:22,570 --> 00:35:25,530
come to your side and try to justify uh your transgressions.

596
00:35:25,610 --> 00:35:30,250
But if you elicit disgust, that's really cutting off all of your means of social support in

597
00:35:30,250 --> 00:35:34,730
a way that's really useful for me if I'm trying to rally a winning coalition against you.

598
00:35:34,890 --> 00:35:36,090
Do you buy that logic?

599
00:35:36,570 --> 00:35:36,890
I do.

600
00:35:36,970 --> 00:35:38,090
I think there's something to that.

601
00:35:38,170 --> 00:35:41,820
I mean, I think the psychology, if you're sick, it's a very different psychology of me

602
00:35:41,820 --> 00:35:42,380
dealing with you.

603
00:35:42,460 --> 00:35:42,700
Right.

604
00:35:43,100 --> 00:35:47,660
It's not a coalitional, it's not the moral social value side of things.

605
00:35:47,820 --> 00:35:53,020
I mean, it is the social value, but it's it's more of directly transmission of you know

606
00:35:53,180 --> 00:35:55,180
pathogens that I'm concerned about.

607
00:35:55,340 --> 00:36:01,260
But when it starts to get used at the coalitional group level, team level, I think

608
00:36:01,260 --> 00:36:04,620
that disgust is sticky and it is dangerous.

609
00:36:04,780 --> 00:36:10,670
Like that anger, listen, the thing with anger is if I'm angry with you, I'm

610
00:36:10,670 --> 00:36:14,430
angry with you because I'm trying to change your way and how you value me.

611
00:36:14,510 --> 00:36:16,030
And that's the whole function of it, right?

612
00:36:16,110 --> 00:36:18,270
So improve the way you value me now.

613
00:36:18,910 --> 00:36:23,630
So but with disgust, it's I I doesn't you can do whatever you want.

614
00:36:24,030 --> 00:36:26,270
It's like, you know, say whatever you want.

615
00:36:26,350 --> 00:36:30,740
You know, there's no amount of social value that's all that, you know, well, I don't know

616
00:36:30,740 --> 00:36:33,620
that that's the case, but it would be very interesting to find out how much social value

617
00:36:33,620 --> 00:36:37,940
you need to bring to the table to erase disgust, like what what actually bleaches out

618
00:36:37,940 --> 00:36:40,500
disgust, how much goodness and value.

619
00:36:40,580 --> 00:36:44,100
Um it's kind of hard to get out the stain of disgust.

620
00:36:44,180 --> 00:36:48,020
Like with anger, it's very easy to, you know, alleviate someone's anger, just apologize.

621
00:36:48,180 --> 00:36:52,690
To apologize, you know, make amends, you know, you know, help help them out, whatever you

622
00:36:52,690 --> 00:36:55,570
need to do to make sure that they know that you're not going to behave that way in the

623
00:36:55,570 --> 00:36:55,730
future.

624
00:36:55,810 --> 00:37:00,690
But with disgust, there's really not much you can do to, you know, you just kind of have to

625
00:37:00,690 --> 00:37:02,850
hope that people forget about it, you know?

626
00:37:03,250 --> 00:37:04,050
Take a shower.

627
00:37:04,370 --> 00:37:06,290
Yeah, take a shower, but like even that, I don't know.

628
00:37:06,370 --> 00:37:07,730
It's like it's hard to wash off, you know.

629
00:37:08,130 --> 00:37:08,770
No, no, no, of course.

630
00:37:08,850 --> 00:37:09,090
Yeah, yeah.

631
00:37:09,250 --> 00:37:11,090
It's a physical thing in denotable.

632
00:37:11,890 --> 00:37:11,970
Yeah.

633
00:37:12,210 --> 00:37:16,610
I find what's very interesting is if you go back in just like even in Hollywood, we're all

634
00:37:16,610 --> 00:37:20,500
like some interesting stories, although I have and an out and that I just brought that up.

635
00:37:20,580 --> 00:37:21,860
I I just remembered something.

636
00:37:22,020 --> 00:37:27,300
So but a lot of the stories that we talk about over time, like people like run into

637
00:37:27,300 --> 00:37:27,540
problems.

638
00:37:27,700 --> 00:37:30,020
Like Rob Lowe, he had he had some problems.

639
00:37:30,100 --> 00:37:34,580
Like he had some problems back in the day taking and but he's great now.

640
00:37:34,660 --> 00:37:36,180
Like he's like love now.

641
00:37:36,260 --> 00:37:38,820
And it's like that amount of time took the stink off.

642
00:37:39,060 --> 00:37:39,300
Right.

643
00:37:39,780 --> 00:37:44,260
So some things are manageable uh over time.

644
00:37:44,450 --> 00:37:46,050
There's one that's not.

645
00:37:46,290 --> 00:37:52,210
So have you heard about what is his name is Arnie Army Hammer, the guy who um

646
00:37:53,330 --> 00:37:55,330
it's a great movie, Man from Uncle.

647
00:37:55,410 --> 00:38:00,210
But then I I heard that he like likes to eat people.

648
00:38:00,850 --> 00:38:03,010
Like he didn't you hear about this?

649
00:38:03,170 --> 00:38:05,570
No I think I think one of you should look it up right now.

650
00:38:05,650 --> 00:38:11,640
But basically but if you um why am I why am I forgetting the

651
00:38:11,640 --> 00:38:12,120
name for this?

652
00:38:12,280 --> 00:38:12,840
What's it called?

653
00:38:13,080 --> 00:38:13,960
Cannibalism.

654
00:38:14,280 --> 00:38:14,920
Thank you.

655
00:38:15,240 --> 00:38:19,640
So yeah, he like said something favorable about cannibalism or something.

656
00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:20,360
Oh wow.

657
00:38:20,520 --> 00:38:24,600
So he does he so he said something he doesn't actually eat people, but he said something

658
00:38:24,600 --> 00:38:26,760
favorable about it or he actually does eat people.

659
00:38:27,160 --> 00:38:27,640
You know what?

660
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:29,320
I do not know the answer to that.

661
00:38:29,400 --> 00:38:33,000
I'm I'm I mean that itself is an interesting psychological phenomenon that the the

662
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:36,760
distinction between you know verbally approving of something and actually engaging in

663
00:38:36,760 --> 00:38:39,610
something is so often easily conflated.

664
00:38:40,250 --> 00:38:45,290
Uh well all all I have to say is that he got caught in the

665
00:38:45,290 --> 00:38:50,970
crosshairs of um exactly I'm just looking it up

666
00:38:51,210 --> 00:38:55,370
of you know of this d highly disgusting kind of behavior.

667
00:38:56,090 --> 00:39:02,080
And I when I heard about it, I mean I was I I guess because I'm me, I

668
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:05,840
laughed because I was just like it's odd.

669
00:39:06,400 --> 00:39:08,640
Of course, there's a human out there that does this, right?

670
00:39:08,720 --> 00:39:12,560
But the idea is like I also laughed because I was like, there's no coming back from this.

671
00:39:14,080 --> 00:39:17,360
Like, there are some things that you could do that cross the moral boundaries.

672
00:39:17,600 --> 00:39:23,280
Yeah, there's certain things you do that just can't know no amount amount of cleansing time

673
00:39:23,840 --> 00:39:25,120
or showers.

674
00:39:26,850 --> 00:39:27,410
Yeah.

675
00:39:27,890 --> 00:39:28,210
Okay.

676
00:39:28,370 --> 00:39:29,890
That's so so super interesting.

677
00:39:29,970 --> 00:39:35,890
I mean, like it it makes this point that disgust is really uh a powerful

678
00:39:36,130 --> 00:39:37,330
social weapon.

679
00:39:37,570 --> 00:39:43,090
That because there are so many ways to uh alleviate people's anger via apologies, making

680
00:39:43,090 --> 00:39:49,040
amends, concessions, whatever, but there's basically no way to alleviate disgust once it's

681
00:39:49,040 --> 00:39:49,520
been activated.

682
00:39:49,600 --> 00:39:51,120
Or it's it's really hard to do.

683
00:39:51,280 --> 00:39:57,040
Um, it's a much more potent and powerful social weapon to wield against your enemies.

684
00:39:57,280 --> 00:40:00,720
Um so I I I just find that really, really interesting.

685
00:40:00,960 --> 00:40:03,200
Um anyway, you were gonna say something, Dave?

686
00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:04,480
Well, I don't know.

687
00:40:04,560 --> 00:40:06,240
Uh Deb, what were you gonna say?

688
00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:12,850
Um well, so one of the things that uh that Carlton and I tried to map out

689
00:40:12,930 --> 00:40:18,850
was the ways that disgust is used um by the moral psycho by moral

690
00:40:18,850 --> 00:40:19,490
psychology.

691
00:40:19,650 --> 00:40:23,090
And uh we came up with three different ways it seems to be used.

692
00:40:23,170 --> 00:40:28,770
So first it it is a kind of internal register of what I find

693
00:40:28,770 --> 00:40:32,850
disgusting and therefore what norms wouldn't be costly for me to back.

694
00:40:33,090 --> 00:40:33,250
Right.

695
00:40:33,410 --> 00:40:39,260
So if people were if I didn't like stewed tomatoes, um, if I didn't like foie gras,

696
00:40:39,340 --> 00:40:39,500
right?

697
00:40:39,580 --> 00:40:41,500
Because California went after foie gras, right?

698
00:40:41,580 --> 00:40:46,380
So if I didn't like foie gras and they and and that those rules, I would have been like, I

699
00:40:46,540 --> 00:40:48,380
back it 100%, doesn't affect me.

700
00:40:48,460 --> 00:40:49,740
I'm on board, right?

701
00:40:49,900 --> 00:40:54,540
And so it just tells you kind of the kinds of things that are that are less cost costly to

702
00:40:54,540 --> 00:40:54,700
back.

703
00:40:54,780 --> 00:40:55,740
So that's one thing.

704
00:40:55,980 --> 00:40:59,340
Disgust also uh you can take other people's temperature, right?

705
00:40:59,420 --> 00:41:04,300
In terms of you hear disgust and you now know what kind of moral um

706
00:41:05,270 --> 00:41:09,830
uh moral campaigns they're likely to initiate and back and so forth.

707
00:41:09,990 --> 00:41:15,750
But third and perhaps most important, given now this new landscape of coalitions that can

708
00:41:15,750 --> 00:41:21,510
form, disgust can be used and strategically in order to say, I'm with you, not

709
00:41:21,510 --> 00:41:22,070
against you.

710
00:41:22,150 --> 00:41:22,470
Right.

711
00:41:22,630 --> 00:41:28,070
So um, you know, I can use the language of disgust to show my allegiance to the current

712
00:41:28,070 --> 00:41:29,110
group and so forth.

713
00:41:29,190 --> 00:41:31,590
And so they were like the enemy.

714
00:41:31,830 --> 00:41:33,350
Disgust at the enemy group you mean.

715
00:41:33,740 --> 00:41:34,140
That's right.

716
00:41:34,220 --> 00:41:38,780
I mean listen, when I was coming up through high school and college, you know, there were a

717
00:41:38,780 --> 00:41:44,060
lot of senators who were not heterosexual, but were railing against, you know, gay unions.

718
00:41:44,220 --> 00:41:46,620
And then you discover, oh my God, they're gay.

719
00:41:46,780 --> 00:41:51,020
It's and so it's just but they would come out like with such disgust language.

720
00:41:51,180 --> 00:41:52,380
And it's like, but why?

721
00:41:52,540 --> 00:41:55,100
And it's almost like, don't look over here, look over there.

722
00:41:55,340 --> 00:42:01,050
And so this kind, I mean just classic um that classic strategy.

723
00:42:01,130 --> 00:42:05,690
But in any case, so I find disgust is very useful in order to kind of show allegiance to

724
00:42:05,690 --> 00:42:06,490
one's uh.

725
00:42:07,050 --> 00:42:08,170
I mean, do you bring it bringing it back?

726
00:42:08,250 --> 00:42:12,970
I mean, do you think the reason why it is such a good way to signal one's allegiances is

727
00:42:13,130 --> 00:42:17,210
number one, when you're disgusted toward someone, you're also disgusted toward anything

728
00:42:17,210 --> 00:42:18,570
associated with that someone.

729
00:42:18,730 --> 00:42:22,330
And so if you're trying to signal your allegiances, it's good to signal that they're my

730
00:42:22,330 --> 00:42:25,610
enemy and anyone who has allied with them is my enemy.

731
00:42:25,770 --> 00:42:31,420
Uh and the other reason why it's a particularly good uh signal of allegiance is that um is

732
00:42:31,580 --> 00:42:35,100
precisely the reason we just talked about, which is that it's very hard to uh alleviate

733
00:42:35,100 --> 00:42:37,020
other people's disgust once it's been activated.

734
00:42:37,180 --> 00:42:41,740
Or if I if I say I'm angry with Deb, you know, there are things you can do to uh win me

735
00:42:41,740 --> 00:42:42,620
over and apologize.

736
00:42:42,780 --> 00:42:47,340
But if I say I'm disgusted with Deb, there's very little that Deb can do to uh change that.

737
00:42:47,420 --> 00:42:51,660
And so that's a much more effective way of signaling my enmity toward Deb if I say I'm

738
00:42:51,660 --> 00:42:54,140
disgusted with her than if I say I'm mad at her.

739
00:42:56,750 --> 00:42:57,630
Do you buy that?

740
00:42:57,870 --> 00:42:58,270
I agree.

741
00:42:58,350 --> 00:42:59,230
You know what's interesting.

742
00:42:59,390 --> 00:43:00,030
I do buy that.

743
00:43:00,110 --> 00:43:04,670
I I think that it's also who's motivated to use disgust language?

744
00:43:04,830 --> 00:43:10,270
Like if you have, if you are someone in the social hierarchy who's got very low leverage

745
00:43:10,510 --> 00:43:14,430
and you're not trying to convince anyone, like you, you're not, you're not, who are you

746
00:43:14,430 --> 00:43:18,510
gonna convince that you're very you're less likely to use the moral language?

747
00:43:18,670 --> 00:43:22,430
But if you feel that you there's a there's something to be gained for you or you're there's

748
00:43:22,430 --> 00:43:27,220
an interest in you and being you're like you're gonna start spouting stuff and getting to

749
00:43:27,220 --> 00:43:30,980
kind of I always think about Othello like turning all the chips next to you you know the

750
00:43:30,980 --> 00:43:36,820
same color and so I guess that um I I find it

751
00:43:37,140 --> 00:43:42,660
what I find in would would find interesting in this area would be studies on

752
00:43:42,660 --> 00:43:48,340
who's motivated to use discussed language and does that correlate with for instance some of

753
00:43:48,340 --> 00:43:53,990
Aaron Cell's you know like indices of um leverage um social leverage and power

754
00:43:54,150 --> 00:43:59,430
so that that it would be interesting to kind of or who's in the hub of a social network um

755
00:44:00,230 --> 00:44:05,510
so and as anyway difference too like i mean i remember when i moved to berlin i sort of did

756
00:44:05,510 --> 00:44:09,830
a deep dive into like third reich history because i was like this is a weird crazy history

757
00:44:10,150 --> 00:44:15,990
interesting and um and like by all accounts like Hitler was a I

758
00:44:15,990 --> 00:44:21,980
mean just a lot of attributes can be applied to him obviously but he was just like he was

759
00:44:21,980 --> 00:44:27,580
just oozing with like moral condemnation, even when he was just a a a

760
00:44:27,580 --> 00:44:31,500
lonely person, you know, with no social support.

761
00:44:31,580 --> 00:44:36,540
So you can just imagine just an individual difference too, of just there are some people

762
00:44:36,860 --> 00:44:42,140
who are just carving up the world with moralization and

763
00:44:42,140 --> 00:44:42,940
disgust.

764
00:44:43,180 --> 00:44:48,150
Many of them never succeed from a coalitional perspective.

765
00:44:48,390 --> 00:44:49,430
I'm not saying he succeeded.

766
00:44:49,510 --> 00:44:55,030
I mean, but obviously from a from like coordinating people, he was quite successful,

767
00:44:55,110 --> 00:44:56,390
unfortunately, for a while.

768
00:44:56,870 --> 00:45:01,270
But it but yeah, you can just you can see that it's it's it's almost like you know there's

769
00:45:01,430 --> 00:45:06,070
there is just part of that expression of moralization.

770
00:45:06,550 --> 00:45:12,400
Um it's just it that individual, that phenotype, then interacting with

771
00:45:12,400 --> 00:45:16,640
cultural dynamics or social dynamics, being in the right place at the right time is just

772
00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:22,160
like, oh no, yeah, it's just a fountain of what's the moral outrage, what's the

773
00:45:22,160 --> 00:45:27,120
disgust narrative and the right one at the right place, it just sort of fits.

774
00:45:28,320 --> 00:45:28,960
No, it does.

775
00:45:29,120 --> 00:45:30,160
I think there's a lot of stuff.

776
00:45:30,320 --> 00:45:33,610
I mean, I've been um I've been reading a lot of Churchill recently.

777
00:45:33,690 --> 00:45:36,650
And so I've I've been enjoying that history as well.

778
00:45:36,890 --> 00:45:42,730
And I will say, like, you know, short, you know, unattractive.

779
00:45:43,530 --> 00:45:48,650
And, you know, um not very formidable looking, you know,

780
00:45:49,370 --> 00:45:52,490
dark triad narcissist psychopath, like

781
00:45:55,210 --> 00:45:55,930
Napoleon complex.

782
00:45:56,010 --> 00:45:56,170
Yeah.

783
00:45:57,610 --> 00:46:02,960
So it's just I find it very interesting uh because it's not just it's not just all the

784
00:46:02,960 --> 00:46:03,680
factors of that.

785
00:46:03,760 --> 00:46:08,880
Like you have to actually, I think, get into like who this person is and their psychology

786
00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:13,600
and if it's off, you know, like is it on is it on the tail ends of any one of these

787
00:46:13,600 --> 00:46:15,760
continuums that are important to to assess?

788
00:46:15,840 --> 00:46:20,770
And I think that um that's certainly that's certainly important when looking at

789
00:46:20,770 --> 00:46:22,370
personalities and and leaders.

790
00:46:22,690 --> 00:46:22,850
Right.

791
00:46:23,010 --> 00:46:23,170
Yeah.

792
00:46:23,250 --> 00:46:24,690
I I I really like that idea, Dave.

793
00:46:24,770 --> 00:46:29,570
I I I would be very curious to look empirically if this individual difference dimension of,

794
00:46:29,650 --> 00:46:33,970
you know, proneness toward moralizing, if that correlates with, you know, leadership

795
00:46:33,970 --> 00:46:35,810
ambitions or political ambitions.

796
00:46:35,970 --> 00:46:40,370
Cause I would imagine that people who are really prone to carving up the world into good

797
00:46:40,370 --> 00:46:45,200
and evil are especially likely to seek uh positions of leadership and and and political

798
00:46:45,200 --> 00:46:49,680
power because one of the functions of leadership itself is to solve coordination problems.

799
00:46:49,840 --> 00:46:53,760
And one of the coordination problems that we're constantly trying to solve as coalitional

800
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:56,320
primates is who are we going to gang up on?

801
00:46:56,480 --> 00:47:00,000
Who are we going to exploit, exclude from resources, and dominate?

802
00:47:00,160 --> 00:47:04,240
And that is an extremely challenging coordination problem because the possibility the

803
00:47:04,240 --> 00:47:07,040
combinatorial possibilities are enormous.

804
00:47:07,200 --> 00:47:11,670
J If you just look in, you know, the uh I was actually I'm working on a Game 3 paper on

805
00:47:11,670 --> 00:47:12,150
alliances.

806
00:47:12,230 --> 00:47:16,470
And if you just look in like a group of five, and the number of possible alliances that

807
00:47:16,470 --> 00:47:19,830
could be formed in a group of five is like 625.

808
00:47:20,070 --> 00:47:25,110
It's it's so the the combinatorial possibilities of what alliances we can form and whom we

809
00:47:25,110 --> 00:47:27,110
can gain up on are enormous.

810
00:47:27,350 --> 00:47:32,950
And so what groups are constantly trying to look for is a way to collapse the space of all

811
00:47:32,950 --> 00:47:36,390
possible alliances down to a manageable number.

812
00:47:36,740 --> 00:47:41,620
And uh what I think one of the big functions of leadership is to help groups do that, is to

813
00:47:41,620 --> 00:47:43,860
collapse that space down to imagin manageable number.

814
00:47:43,940 --> 00:47:48,340
And the way to do that, the most powerful way to do that is with morality and with disgust.

815
00:47:48,500 --> 00:47:54,100
And so I think it's no coincidence that um people with leadership ambitions are prone to

816
00:47:54,100 --> 00:47:59,060
carving the world into good and evil, because that is precisely the service that coalitions

817
00:47:59,060 --> 00:48:00,900
uh need to be uh provided.

818
00:48:01,790 --> 00:48:06,110
Yeah, like what Deb said, it's sort of like people are coordinating evaluations, right?

819
00:48:06,350 --> 00:48:11,390
Like that's sort of what that phenotype is doing or what that design is doing.

820
00:48:12,590 --> 00:48:15,390
Yeah, no, it's it's an I I love this topic.

821
00:48:15,470 --> 00:48:20,670
I mean, I know it's definitely the third rail, but uh it's it's certainly one that I think

822
00:48:20,670 --> 00:48:24,560
is uh it's important to know about the dark side of who we are.

823
00:48:24,640 --> 00:48:28,880
Um the third railness itself is part of the psychology, right?

824
00:48:29,200 --> 00:48:32,720
You know, if you go if you study this topic and and you violate certain norms about

825
00:48:32,720 --> 00:48:38,160
discussing it, you yourself elicit disgust and taboo and coalitions forming against you,

826
00:48:38,240 --> 00:48:41,600
which which is a kind of interesting irony about this topic.

827
00:48:41,840 --> 00:48:42,610
Um Yeah.

828
00:48:42,690 --> 00:48:46,610
And one of our themes for this podcast has turned into like humility, right?

829
00:48:46,850 --> 00:48:51,810
About that the superficial take on something, the sort of like pat pat somebody on the

830
00:48:51,810 --> 00:48:55,330
head, well, yeah, no, of course it's simple, it's associationism, or like, you know, who

831
00:48:55,330 --> 00:49:00,610
cares about kids or hunter-gatherers or like, you know, all these aspects of life, or like,

832
00:49:00,690 --> 00:49:02,210
you know, these don't matter.

833
00:49:02,370 --> 00:49:04,530
Um actually they really do.

834
00:49:04,770 --> 00:49:10,320
And and like just taking a pause and being like, actually, what is morality?

835
00:49:10,480 --> 00:49:12,080
Uh is it all good?

836
00:49:12,160 --> 00:49:18,080
Um, like, you know, that's not that's not like um it's a it's a virtue of of

837
00:49:18,080 --> 00:49:23,200
like Deb your work that that it's doing that, even if it does come with this cost, as

838
00:49:23,200 --> 00:49:24,160
David's saying.

839
00:49:24,720 --> 00:49:26,880
I'll just keep smiling and waving.

840
00:49:27,600 --> 00:49:30,230
Like there'll be less discuss, but more value, right?

841
00:49:30,310 --> 00:49:33,110
So the editorship and then the the textbook.

842
00:49:34,310 --> 00:49:35,910
I'll keep doing service.

843
00:49:36,870 --> 00:49:40,630
Um well actually one one thing we had Michael Moncrof on Minecraft.

844
00:49:40,790 --> 00:49:42,390
I keep uh Michael, I'm sorry, your name.

845
00:49:42,470 --> 00:49:45,830
I like I know I always say it's the opposite of what I think and so yeah, I know.

846
00:49:46,070 --> 00:49:51,820
But Michael does um of of psych and law And we were we were talking about there's not a lot

847
00:49:51,820 --> 00:49:54,060
of people who do that intersection as well.

848
00:49:54,220 --> 00:49:59,900
But you, you know, you're you're the sort of one of the, and probably the in my mind, you

849
00:49:59,900 --> 00:50:01,260
know, person doing that.

850
00:50:01,500 --> 00:50:05,900
Can you talk a little bit about either in the context of the incest?

851
00:50:05,980 --> 00:50:10,380
I mean, because work or just the the work that you've done at that intersection, because

852
00:50:10,380 --> 00:50:16,060
it's so important and it's a really good example of real people, real stakes, real

853
00:50:16,390 --> 00:50:20,870
terrible stories, or like, you know, just horrible things that were sort of unnecessary if

854
00:50:20,870 --> 00:50:23,830
you take a more sophisticated scientific view of people.

855
00:50:25,670 --> 00:50:26,710
Um, yes.

856
00:50:26,870 --> 00:50:29,190
So I was thinking while you were talking, so I apologize.

857
00:50:29,270 --> 00:50:30,790
So I'm actually doing work with Keela.

858
00:50:31,110 --> 00:50:33,990
So Keila Williams and I are doing some work at the intersection.

859
00:50:34,070 --> 00:50:39,270
So there's, I would say that there are three people who are uh more directly in that space.

860
00:50:39,350 --> 00:50:42,680
So you have Owen Jones, who's been doing a lot of that work, right?

861
00:50:42,840 --> 00:50:46,600
And so, and then Carlton, my student Carlton Patrick, uh ECF.

862
00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:49,080
And then uh at Hamilton, you've got Keela Williams.

863
00:50:49,240 --> 00:50:51,000
And so, but there's a few others.

864
00:50:51,080 --> 00:50:55,000
So at ASU, there's Jess Salerno, although she's kind of more from the social psych uh

865
00:50:55,000 --> 00:50:55,560
tradition.

866
00:50:55,720 --> 00:51:00,120
And so, but she's but she's another person doing some some interesting work, uh, to be

867
00:51:00,120 --> 00:51:00,760
sure.

868
00:51:01,160 --> 00:51:06,570
So Keila and I are have been very interested in how you take the Ash style

869
00:51:06,570 --> 00:51:07,690
paradigm, right?

870
00:51:07,770 --> 00:51:13,210
And bring people around a table, and you just see how disgust starts to, you know, work its

871
00:51:13,450 --> 00:51:19,290
magic, you know, in influencing or extra influencing the way people respond and coordinate.

872
00:51:19,450 --> 00:51:25,450
So the question is: even in a jury setting, does disgust help coordinate people against

873
00:51:25,450 --> 00:51:29,290
things that might not necessarily even be disgusting or immoral?

874
00:51:29,760 --> 00:51:32,320
So that's one of the questions that we're asking there.

875
00:51:34,720 --> 00:51:38,080
So you're actually studying juror jurors?

876
00:51:39,600 --> 00:51:43,040
Right now it's just undergraduates who are serving.

877
00:51:43,120 --> 00:51:46,800
And it's it's a lot of the work that Keela and her team at Hamilton have been doing.

878
00:51:47,120 --> 00:51:50,320
So that's um so that's kind of in progress.

879
00:51:50,560 --> 00:51:56,310
And but you know, getting out there to try and examine how so I

880
00:51:56,470 --> 00:52:01,830
I tr wanted to do a test of judges uh at some point.

881
00:52:01,990 --> 00:52:07,670
So one of the earlier findings on the disgust stuff or the inbreeding avoidance was

882
00:52:07,990 --> 00:52:12,390
we had a measure of how so it's really hard to get variation when you ask people how

883
00:52:12,390 --> 00:52:15,350
disgusting is it to kiss your brother and sister, all this stuff, right?

884
00:52:15,430 --> 00:52:16,790
So there's less variation.

885
00:52:16,870 --> 00:52:22,700
So we removed it and kind of went towards a morality like how if how how morally wrong do

886
00:52:22,700 --> 00:52:24,380
you find these behaviors?

887
00:52:24,460 --> 00:52:28,460
But now you're not asking about a particular opposite sex sibling.

888
00:52:28,620 --> 00:52:34,380
And so what we did is we basically looked at how activated your entire

889
00:52:34,380 --> 00:52:37,340
disgust psychology is towards siblings.

890
00:52:37,900 --> 00:52:42,780
So if you have no if you are um okay well if you're heterosexual and you're a female and

891
00:52:42,780 --> 00:52:43,980
you have no brothers, right?

892
00:52:44,140 --> 00:52:49,330
And so the idea that you don't have very that would be me, which is allows me to study this

893
00:52:49,330 --> 00:52:51,090
stuff and smile and laugh.

894
00:52:52,370 --> 00:52:53,970
Do you have an opposite sex sibling?

895
00:52:54,210 --> 00:52:55,730
Uh I I have two sisters.

896
00:52:55,810 --> 00:52:55,970
Yeah.

897
00:52:56,210 --> 00:52:57,570
I have a sister too, yeah.

898
00:52:58,690 --> 00:52:59,010
Okay.

899
00:52:59,410 --> 00:53:01,570
Um shall I continue?

900
00:53:01,810 --> 00:53:02,210
Please.

901
00:53:06,210 --> 00:53:06,530
Okay.

902
00:53:06,690 --> 00:53:12,690
So anyway, so but it ends up that your you the so if they are older siblings, the total

903
00:53:12,690 --> 00:53:16,820
duration of co-residence with all of them would actually kind of uh give a better good

904
00:53:17,140 --> 00:53:19,460
index of how overall grossed out you are.

905
00:53:19,620 --> 00:53:23,620
So if you had one sibling, you live them for older siblings 10 years versus two older

906
00:53:23,620 --> 00:53:28,740
siblings you live with combined 20 years, you'd expect a little bit more grossed outness

907
00:53:28,740 --> 00:53:33,140
for the person who had a total of 20 years of living with opposite sex siblings.

908
00:53:33,380 --> 00:53:39,300
And so that's exactly what we found: the idea that how morally wrong you found incest in

909
00:53:39,300 --> 00:53:44,690
general was predicted by how grossed out the level of disgust that you develop towards your

910
00:53:44,690 --> 00:53:46,210
own family members.

911
00:53:46,610 --> 00:53:52,210
And while it would be just an extension into a different realm, I was always very curious,

912
00:53:52,290 --> 00:53:56,290
like, could I get a bunch of judges to fill out this questionnaire?

913
00:53:56,530 --> 00:54:01,900
Because I would then be very curious about, you know, I don't know how often you it has

914
00:54:01,900 --> 00:54:02,300
happened.

915
00:54:02,380 --> 00:54:08,380
I've been called and you know provided uh expert testimony and discuss things, but

916
00:54:08,940 --> 00:54:09,900
it's rare.

917
00:54:10,060 --> 00:54:15,980
But when judges do come across cases of incest or abuse within the family, the question

918
00:54:15,980 --> 00:54:20,380
then is, which is obviously far more common than just incest, but you have

919
00:54:21,580 --> 00:54:27,500
does the sexual aversion that's activated in the judges or the people making decisions

920
00:54:27,750 --> 00:54:31,910
influence at all uh the outcomes and the sentencing and so forth.

921
00:54:32,150 --> 00:54:37,510
Um so that's always that was always been an interesting question as to how our psychology

922
00:54:37,670 --> 00:54:40,630
um kind of gets into the legal system.

923
00:54:40,790 --> 00:54:45,190
I started this work with uh John Lene a long time ago, but we I don't think we ever

924
00:54:45,190 --> 00:54:47,270
finished it and or got enough data.

925
00:54:47,350 --> 00:54:49,430
And so that was that was a long time ago.

926
00:54:49,910 --> 00:54:52,630
But that's an interesting question that I've always wanted to answer.

927
00:54:53,100 --> 00:54:58,060
For for those cases where you were called in, um, did you, and you I mean you definitely

928
00:54:58,060 --> 00:55:03,900
don't have to go into specifics, um uh, but did you feel like there were there

929
00:55:03,980 --> 00:55:09,660
was there sort of a naive realism or naivety about the psychology that,

930
00:55:09,740 --> 00:55:15,260
you know, did you feel like, boy, it's a good thing I'm here to tell these people and to

931
00:55:15,260 --> 00:55:17,100
disabuse them of this idea?

932
00:55:17,260 --> 00:55:21,330
So for example, like, you know, if they were re people were reared apart, there's nothing

933
00:55:21,330 --> 00:55:22,450
wrong with them per se.

934
00:55:22,530 --> 00:55:28,530
It's just they don't have this evolutionarily valid cue of co-residents, or or was

935
00:55:28,530 --> 00:55:29,330
it more complicated?

936
00:55:29,410 --> 00:55:33,330
Like, did you get a sense that like, you know, the lawyers or the judges were doing, doing

937
00:55:33,330 --> 00:55:38,290
okay, or really the science needed to be informed or to be in there.

938
00:55:38,370 --> 00:55:41,250
The law needed to be informed by the science much more than it was.

939
00:55:42,210 --> 00:55:48,120
So one of the first cases that I was asked to write a brief for

940
00:55:48,440 --> 00:55:54,200
was uh a brother and sister had met each other during adulthood

941
00:55:54,360 --> 00:56:00,200
um and then realized that they were siblings and but they had fallen in love, had had

942
00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:01,400
kids actually.

943
00:56:01,560 --> 00:56:06,920
Um one of them wasn't as healthy as the other others, but um but there you go.

944
00:56:07,000 --> 00:56:11,960
That can happen anyway, just by luck of the the draw, so to speak, but more common, more

945
00:56:11,960 --> 00:56:13,720
probable with inbreeding.

946
00:56:14,750 --> 00:56:18,030
and so he they he was jailed because of it.

947
00:56:18,430 --> 00:56:21,230
And so uh kids were taken away.

948
00:56:21,470 --> 00:56:25,950
And so one of the lawyers on the case was like, you need to be able to explain this to the

949
00:56:25,950 --> 00:56:28,030
judge, saying, you know, they didn't grow up together.

950
00:56:28,110 --> 00:56:29,150
There's no disgust.

951
00:56:29,470 --> 00:56:33,150
And so, you know, what crime has been really committed here?

952
00:56:33,470 --> 00:56:37,950
And um, so I wrote this and I never heard back.

953
00:56:38,260 --> 00:56:43,300
Um, and then it was a long time, like years after I had seen the name of the lawyer, or I'd

954
00:56:43,300 --> 00:56:44,740
looked but gotten curious what happened.

955
00:56:44,900 --> 00:56:48,900
I emailed him and said after that, after the case, it didn't, we didn't get get anywhere.

956
00:56:49,060 --> 00:56:51,220
Like he's still in jail or was in jail.

957
00:56:51,380 --> 00:56:52,900
And the lawyer quit.

958
00:56:53,060 --> 00:56:55,620
He like got so upset about like the system.

959
00:56:55,940 --> 00:56:58,820
Um, because you had two like decent human beings.

960
00:56:58,900 --> 00:57:04,050
And I mean, imagine someone knocking on your door and uh you and you know, I know it's not

961
00:57:04,050 --> 00:57:09,730
gonna happen, but like like, oh, you and Annie end up being sister, you know, like you'd be

962
00:57:09,730 --> 00:57:10,530
like, What?

963
00:57:13,170 --> 00:57:14,690
It wouldn't change how you felt about her.

964
00:57:14,770 --> 00:57:18,850
It might you might like say, like, maybe we shouldn't have any more kids, you know, like

965
00:57:19,010 --> 00:57:24,160
maybe we should hold here, but like it wouldn't change how like laws don't change and that

966
00:57:24,160 --> 00:57:28,160
kind of explicit knowledge doesn't change necessarily how you feel about someone.

967
00:57:28,240 --> 00:57:32,320
I mean, the laws against homosexuality didn't change how, you know, gay men felt about one

968
00:57:32,320 --> 00:57:32,960
another.

969
00:57:33,200 --> 00:57:38,960
And so the so but it's just to me it's always been it's like I'm like the poster child for,

970
00:57:39,040 --> 00:57:41,440
you know, legalizing adult inside.

971
00:57:41,760 --> 00:57:46,400
But it's at the same time, I guess I just wanna be the the poster child for legalizing uh

972
00:57:46,480 --> 00:57:49,360
sexual decisions among d uh consenting adults.

973
00:57:49,600 --> 00:57:54,390
And um and I think that it's a very interesting uh

974
00:57:55,590 --> 00:57:56,390
that was interesting.

975
00:57:56,550 --> 00:58:00,630
The other two cases actually, one was grandparents who were very concerned about their

976
00:58:00,630 --> 00:58:03,590
grandkids who were being abused by a father, a stepfather.

977
00:58:03,750 --> 00:58:07,590
And so they had read something of mine and they just wanted to understand what was going

978
00:58:07,590 --> 00:58:07,830
on.

979
00:58:07,990 --> 00:58:13,910
And then another guy was from from the UK and and was wondering

980
00:58:13,910 --> 00:58:19,760
if there was something wrong with him because he had read my stuff and then had was

981
00:58:19,920 --> 00:58:21,760
was sent away for boarding school.

982
00:58:21,840 --> 00:58:25,920
But in the meantime, their parents, his parents have had another child, never really

983
00:58:26,080 --> 00:58:27,200
interacted with her.

984
00:58:27,440 --> 00:58:30,400
He comes home and there's like a kind of cute girl.

985
00:58:32,240 --> 00:58:36,080
And he's like, you know, is it wrong of me to have these thoughts?

986
00:58:36,160 --> 00:58:39,200
And I was like, listen, I don't want to deal in right and wrong.

987
00:58:39,280 --> 00:58:40,640
I really don't like those words.

988
00:58:40,720 --> 00:58:44,630
But I can tell you at least one explanation for what might be happening.

989
00:58:44,870 --> 00:58:46,230
Like you never really know.

990
00:58:46,390 --> 00:58:51,350
But like, here's one possibility in terms of the aversion that likely didn't develop.

991
00:58:51,590 --> 00:58:55,350
Um, you know, you weren't she to your mind, she's effectively a stranger.

992
00:58:55,430 --> 00:58:59,990
You're evaluating her as you would any other uh female of that age.

993
00:59:00,070 --> 00:59:03,430
And so, in any case, those are the kinds of things.

994
00:59:04,070 --> 00:59:09,100
But I have found that talking to people and walking them back from the ledge like that guy

995
00:59:09,340 --> 00:59:12,860
just kind of was like, okay, there's nothing wrong with me, but here's the situation, and

996
00:59:12,860 --> 00:59:15,020
now here's how I can move forward making decisions.

997
00:59:15,260 --> 00:59:18,940
The grandparents who were concerned about their grandkids, I was like, you know, there's

998
00:59:18,940 --> 00:59:23,980
abuse, you know, yeah, the you the daughter, you yeah, things probably need to happen fast.

999
00:59:24,140 --> 00:59:25,980
So I wasn't part of any legal case there.

1000
00:59:26,060 --> 00:59:30,460
And then the guy who was jailed for, you know, being in love and having marrying his

1001
00:59:30,460 --> 00:59:30,700
sister.

1002
00:59:30,780 --> 00:59:35,890
I don't know if they got married, but um, but certainly having kids with a sister, that's

1003
00:59:35,970 --> 00:59:37,970
that's that stings.

1004
00:59:38,530 --> 00:59:39,650
Yeah, it's pretty tragic.

1005
00:59:39,730 --> 00:59:43,970
I mean, you think about the what is just from an objective perspective, you understand the

1006
00:59:43,970 --> 00:59:47,570
function of the disgust from a biological perspective.

1007
00:59:47,730 --> 00:59:47,970
Yeah.

1008
00:59:48,210 --> 00:59:54,130
Um and I mean, what what is your understanding of the the legal thing as sort of if if or

1009
00:59:54,370 --> 01:00:00,080
making it illegal, aside from the the the the moralization of it, is the idea that if

1010
01:00:00,080 --> 01:00:03,280
people are doing this, there's something wrong with them and they need state or

1011
01:00:03,280 --> 01:00:04,800
institutional intervention.

1012
01:00:05,040 --> 01:00:10,320
Like, is that why would it be, you know, like is that in the law?

1013
01:00:10,480 --> 01:00:11,520
Is there some explanation?

1014
01:00:11,680 --> 01:00:13,360
Have you talked to lawyers about that?

1015
01:00:13,680 --> 01:00:14,400
I don't think there's.

1016
01:00:14,480 --> 01:00:17,360
I think it's just a general, it messes up the family system.

1017
01:00:17,600 --> 01:00:20,560
But I don't understand, like, but you know, I'm not sure.

1018
01:00:20,720 --> 01:00:24,240
They don't need a moral argument over and above the disgust itself.

1019
01:00:24,640 --> 01:00:25,600
No, you don't.

1020
01:00:25,760 --> 01:00:29,490
And so, but the thing is, it's like, but one could come up with the argument, it's like,

1021
01:00:29,650 --> 01:00:31,490
but you're all more genetically related.

1022
01:00:31,570 --> 01:00:32,530
You're like a beehive.

1023
01:00:32,610 --> 01:00:34,290
Like, shouldn't that bring you closer together?

1024
01:00:35,170 --> 01:00:37,490
Taking the kids away also breaks up the family system.

1025
01:00:37,570 --> 01:00:37,890
Yeah.

1026
01:00:38,290 --> 01:00:38,530
Yeah.

1027
01:00:38,610 --> 01:00:44,370
No, listen, I think that um here here was the here was the more here was the argument that

1028
01:00:44,850 --> 01:00:49,890
that I that I uh asked Carlton if it was okay to to put in the book, which is this

1029
01:00:50,930 --> 01:00:54,690
whether or not there's reasons to outlaw that type of union.

1030
01:00:55,250 --> 01:00:56,530
Put that one aside.

1031
01:00:56,720 --> 01:01:02,400
But you can't use the genetic abnormalities in children as the reason for it, like the

1032
01:01:02,400 --> 01:01:06,880
increased chance of having kids that are gonna have problems because we let a lot of other

1033
01:01:06,880 --> 01:01:07,760
people reproduce.

1034
01:01:07,920 --> 01:01:09,840
And so that's a slippery slope, right?

1035
01:01:10,000 --> 01:01:13,840
So women over 50 are reproducing, and that's an increased chance of autism and a whole

1036
01:01:13,840 --> 01:01:15,120
bunch of other abnormalities.

1037
01:01:15,280 --> 01:01:19,600
And it's like, you know, what so what where are you gonna where are you gonna stop that?

1038
01:01:19,760 --> 01:01:23,040
So that to me is is a very, very bad argument, right?

1039
01:01:23,120 --> 01:01:25,600
That's that's starting to open a can of worms.

1040
01:01:25,760 --> 01:01:31,530
So um, but then the question is as a society, what do we feel are

1041
01:01:31,770 --> 01:01:37,770
rules that people will would want to adhere to, uh, want to respect, uh,

1042
01:01:37,850 --> 01:01:41,690
but the question is why are we instantiated, like why are we putting them in place?

1043
01:01:41,770 --> 01:01:47,770
And and I just think that if discussed as part of the equation, not saying it shouldn't

1044
01:01:47,770 --> 01:01:51,260
be, but we should take a careful look at it.

1045
01:01:51,580 --> 01:01:51,820
Right.

1046
01:01:51,980 --> 01:01:57,980
It's not a good uh moral compass in the quote unquote moral

1047
01:01:57,980 --> 01:02:01,500
sort of it's not a good uh objective compass.

1048
01:02:01,740 --> 01:02:06,380
Um no, it's not so I can I to share with you a funny story about disgust.

1049
01:02:06,540 --> 01:02:12,190
Um so the development of this kind of moral system is really interesting.

1050
01:02:12,270 --> 01:02:18,030
Like when kids start turning on their that moral psychology, like seven, eight kind of

1051
01:02:18,030 --> 01:02:22,430
thing, like they're just like suddenly it's an interesting, like they're a social member.

1052
01:02:22,590 --> 01:02:26,830
And now they probably for you know out hunting and foraging and helping.

1053
01:02:26,910 --> 01:02:29,150
And so now it's like they can be responsible for stuff.

1054
01:02:29,230 --> 01:02:31,950
But it's very interesting how this kind of starts to turn on.

1055
01:02:32,110 --> 01:02:37,960
And I remember my my son, um he was I used to make

1056
01:02:37,960 --> 01:02:42,040
him eggs and I used to I grew up having jelly on my eggs.

1057
01:02:42,440 --> 01:02:46,440
You might all find that disgusting or or ketchup or something, whatever jelly or ketchup.

1058
01:02:46,680 --> 01:02:47,720
Yeah, ketchup's great thing.

1059
01:02:47,880 --> 01:02:48,200
Yeah, yeah.

1060
01:02:48,600 --> 01:02:49,240
I like it on eggs.

1061
01:02:49,480 --> 01:02:51,320
My son loves ketchup on his eggs, yeah.

1062
01:02:51,720 --> 01:02:54,840
But it might have been maybe it was ketchup, but maybe it was jelly.

1063
01:02:54,920 --> 01:02:55,320
I don't know.

1064
01:02:55,480 --> 01:02:58,120
But it ends up jelly and eggs actually turn eggs green.

1065
01:02:58,280 --> 01:02:59,560
So your green eggs and ham.

1066
01:02:59,880 --> 01:03:03,160
But I so maybe I had some, but it was probably ketchup, doesn't matter.

1067
01:03:03,240 --> 01:03:09,090
But my son had a friend over coming over, and I am eating eggs with something

1068
01:03:09,090 --> 01:03:11,410
that's not typically at the table with eggs.

1069
01:03:11,570 --> 01:03:14,210
Like I forget if it's jelly or ketchup, it doesn't matter.

1070
01:03:14,450 --> 01:03:20,210
And out of nowhere, in front of this new friend, my son goes, Mom, that's so disgusting.

1071
01:03:20,370 --> 01:03:24,690
And I I was like, I I didn't know which direction to run in, like being proud, being like,

1072
01:03:24,850 --> 01:03:25,250
what's that?

1073
01:03:25,330 --> 01:03:25,970
Like data?

1074
01:03:26,130 --> 01:03:29,090
Like it's like new kid.

1075
01:03:29,250 --> 01:03:32,900
And I just was basically like, why you like it too?

1076
01:03:39,300 --> 01:03:43,300
So I was like, if I'm going down, you're coming down with me, kid.

1077
01:03:44,260 --> 01:03:48,580
But it was, but the idea that it was just very interesting, like something that was

1078
01:03:48,580 --> 01:03:49,300
abnormal.

1079
01:03:49,460 --> 01:03:53,220
So that he had to point out, like, I don't do that.

1080
01:03:53,540 --> 01:03:55,380
Like, that's disgusting.

1081
01:03:55,620 --> 01:04:01,470
Um, and so I think every time I hear those terms, I'm always very cautious or I kind of

1082
01:04:01,470 --> 01:04:05,790
bring it to the surface, like, you know, well, why is that disgusting and why why can't I

1083
01:04:05,790 --> 01:04:06,190
do it?

1084
01:04:06,430 --> 01:04:08,030
Like, you know, like Yeah.

1085
01:04:08,190 --> 01:04:09,390
You know, anyway.

1086
01:04:10,670 --> 01:04:11,790
Really interesting.

1087
01:04:11,950 --> 01:04:12,590
Yeah.

1088
01:04:14,110 --> 01:04:15,710
So Where do you want to go?

1089
01:04:16,190 --> 01:04:16,590
All right.

1090
01:04:16,830 --> 01:04:18,670
I I got a direction we could go.

1091
01:04:19,070 --> 01:04:24,940
So uh As you know, uh, we recently, a few years ago, came out of a

1092
01:04:24,940 --> 01:04:27,260
huge global pandemic.

1093
01:04:28,860 --> 01:04:29,500
I didn't hear about this, Tom.

1094
01:04:31,740 --> 01:04:33,100
I must have woke up.

1095
01:04:34,700 --> 01:04:40,300
Um so here is a really good example of

1096
01:04:40,540 --> 01:04:45,980
uh an environmental stimulus with with huge relevance to

1097
01:04:45,980 --> 01:04:47,180
evolutionary psychology.

1098
01:04:47,340 --> 01:04:48,860
It happened before our eyes.

1099
01:04:49,100 --> 01:04:54,630
Um coming out of this experience, what do you think we

1100
01:04:54,630 --> 01:04:56,950
learned from it as psychologists?

1101
01:04:57,110 --> 01:05:01,270
I mean, we obviously we learned a lot of things about ourselves and about our you know

1102
01:05:01,510 --> 01:05:06,550
capacity to you know be indoors and be away from uh social life.

1103
01:05:06,710 --> 01:05:12,540
Uh but you would think that this would be a good natural experiment to study

1104
01:05:12,620 --> 01:05:15,340
you know responses to pathogens in real time.

1105
01:05:15,500 --> 01:05:19,020
Uh what do you think uh you learned from this experience?

1106
01:05:19,180 --> 01:05:22,700
What did the evolutionary psychology uh community learn from it?

1107
01:05:22,860 --> 01:05:25,580
Uh has there any been any interesting data coming out of it?

1108
01:05:25,660 --> 01:05:30,540
So what what's your take on this I have takes at many levels.

1109
01:05:30,700 --> 01:05:36,460
So at the scientific level, I th I've found it very interesting to kind of look at

1110
01:05:37,980 --> 01:05:40,140
some of the effects of COVID.

1111
01:05:40,370 --> 01:05:45,890
But I will also say that I wasn't impressed by much of the data in terms of like

1112
01:05:46,130 --> 01:05:51,970
how like I I don't know that I saw anything that convinced me

1113
01:05:52,290 --> 01:05:55,650
that the pandemic caused

1114
01:05:58,850 --> 01:06:01,730
shifts in disgust sensitivity across the board.

1115
01:06:01,890 --> 01:06:06,370
Like I don't think that I but but that said um

1116
01:06:09,700 --> 01:06:14,900
people were across the board, I think, more reactive uh to

1117
01:06:15,140 --> 01:06:20,980
everything and just on a heightened sensitivity to every type

1118
01:06:20,980 --> 01:06:21,780
of fear.

1119
01:06:22,020 --> 01:06:28,020
So I mean, like, so I I don't at EHB

1120
01:06:28,100 --> 01:06:31,620
we got tons of papers about COVID and disgust.

1121
01:06:31,860 --> 01:06:37,590
And so I my memory of things is basically

1122
01:06:38,390 --> 01:06:43,750
an average of all those papers, and many of them just didn't really weren't all that great.

1123
01:06:43,910 --> 01:06:48,630
So if there are some really good studies out there that showed how disgust kind of really

1124
01:06:48,630 --> 01:06:51,030
did move push things around.

1125
01:06:51,270 --> 01:06:55,510
So at Cornell, you have um David Pizarro, right?

1126
01:06:55,590 --> 01:06:59,990
Who's done these great things about you put you put a fart spray or you do things that

1127
01:06:59,990 --> 01:07:02,550
disgust people and it pushes people's morality around.

1128
01:07:02,630 --> 01:07:06,020
But it's like it's not really that big an effect.

1129
01:07:06,180 --> 01:07:11,940
It's not like I cause you to be disgusted and then like you're gonna pick up all the signs

1130
01:07:12,020 --> 01:07:12,980
and start marching.

1131
01:07:13,140 --> 01:07:18,420
Like that's it's not like that, but it it does, it does push on the gas ever so slightly.

1132
01:07:18,580 --> 01:07:23,620
So yeah, so from a scientific point of view, I think we found that it pushes things ever so

1133
01:07:23,620 --> 01:07:24,340
slightly.

1134
01:07:24,660 --> 01:07:30,500
More jarring to me during COVID was the coalitional stuff

1135
01:07:31,060 --> 01:07:35,290
and just how just how

1136
01:07:36,970 --> 01:07:38,250
nasty people got.

1137
01:07:38,970 --> 01:07:44,250
So it actually people were nastier, but then to their own group, they were nicer.

1138
01:07:44,410 --> 01:07:46,570
Like I think you saw both things happening.

1139
01:07:47,850 --> 01:07:52,570
At least that that was my sense that I just sensed that there was a lot of, a lot more kind

1140
01:07:52,570 --> 01:07:57,450
of just just the rhetoric, just I couldn't even watch the news.

1141
01:07:57,530 --> 01:07:58,410
It was awful, right?

1142
01:07:58,490 --> 01:08:04,480
And then, but then of the people in your social circle, like bonds were forged, they

1143
01:08:04,480 --> 01:08:08,960
were strengthened, they were, you know, some relationships were you cleaned out some

1144
01:08:08,960 --> 01:08:13,360
relationships that perhaps you know you got good information that they were no longer there

1145
01:08:13,360 --> 01:08:15,520
for you during times of actual need.

1146
01:08:16,240 --> 01:08:19,040
So I I I see it as like both things happened.

1147
01:08:19,120 --> 01:08:24,560
Like social bonds strengthened in if you had them because if you didn't then I think you

1148
01:08:24,560 --> 01:08:25,520
were in trouble.

1149
01:08:26,240 --> 01:08:31,230
And then but also I think that the coalitional aspects of what is this?

1150
01:08:31,390 --> 01:08:32,270
How dangerous is it?

1151
01:08:32,430 --> 01:08:33,630
Where did it come from?

1152
01:08:33,790 --> 01:08:35,550
You know, can it really spread?

1153
01:08:35,710 --> 01:08:39,710
And then, you know, the personal freedom stuff, you know, is always that's something that's

1154
01:08:39,710 --> 01:08:41,550
that that bugged a lot of people.

1155
01:08:41,870 --> 01:08:46,110
So it was a disaster.

1156
01:08:46,270 --> 01:08:48,270
I I'm impressed we came out of it.

1157
01:08:49,710 --> 01:08:50,910
Yeah, I think it I think it affected everything.

1158
01:08:52,940 --> 01:08:55,420
It it affected everybody and everything.

1159
01:08:55,580 --> 01:08:59,260
And and I I will say, like, it was it was scary.

1160
01:08:59,580 --> 01:09:00,780
It was really scary.

1161
01:09:00,860 --> 01:09:05,580
I remember thinking at the beginning of the pandemic, like, we need to get another fridge.

1162
01:09:05,820 --> 01:09:08,780
We need to go like get meat and start freezing it.

1163
01:09:09,020 --> 01:09:12,300
And you know, my husband at the time was like, What is wrong with you?

1164
01:09:12,460 --> 01:09:18,270
I'm like, human nature like watch out like the everything's gonna be gone

1165
01:09:18,510 --> 01:09:24,030
like have you seen have you seen apocalypse movies yeah I was so scared

1166
01:09:24,430 --> 01:09:28,670
just thinking about how bad it could get and you know I'm in Florida and like you know it

1167
01:09:28,670 --> 01:09:34,430
could go off the rails really fast here and so it I was it really made me think about

1168
01:09:34,510 --> 01:09:40,100
like oh my gosh this is like this is the wild west, this event, like, we know, like hunker

1169
01:09:40,100 --> 01:09:40,340
down.

1170
01:09:40,420 --> 01:09:41,780
Where are our like kin?

1171
01:09:41,860 --> 01:09:42,900
Where are our weapons?

1172
01:09:43,060 --> 01:09:44,420
Like, where's our food?

1173
01:09:44,580 --> 01:09:47,460
Um, and it really, it really put my mind.

1174
01:09:47,620 --> 01:09:49,860
I mean, maybe that's where the female mind goes.

1175
01:09:49,940 --> 01:09:52,180
And he was just like, you're off your rocker.

1176
01:09:52,500 --> 01:09:57,700
And so um maybe I was, but I it certainly I got nervous.

1177
01:09:57,860 --> 01:09:59,700
I got very nervous initially.

1178
01:10:00,020 --> 01:10:02,590
Um, but in any case, yeah.

1179
01:10:02,750 --> 01:10:04,430
Well w what what do you think?

1180
01:10:05,710 --> 01:10:06,750
I mean, I I I don't know.

1181
01:10:06,910 --> 01:10:11,390
I mean I I I remember so I mean so my my take on it.

1182
01:10:11,630 --> 01:10:16,110
So I mean I was looking at it through the lens of my theoretical preconceptions.

1183
01:10:16,270 --> 01:10:19,950
Uh and so as you know, I have this paper uh in Psychinquary called The Alliance Theory of

1184
01:10:19,950 --> 01:10:21,230
Political Belief Systems.

1185
01:10:21,390 --> 01:10:26,120
And the argument there is that uh political ideologies don't really emerge from these

1186
01:10:26,120 --> 01:10:30,680
deep-seated individual differences and core values that are posited by a lot of

1187
01:10:30,680 --> 01:10:31,160
psychologists.

1188
01:10:31,240 --> 01:10:36,040
So there's a lot of work from by, you know, Jonathan Haidt and his collaborators arguing

1189
01:10:36,040 --> 01:10:41,480
that uh one of the key bases of conservatism is disgust, that conservatives are higher in

1190
01:10:41,480 --> 01:10:42,440
disgust sensitivity.

1191
01:10:42,600 --> 01:10:47,480
They're more sensitive to contamination and pollution and purity, uh, and and it's all

1192
01:10:47,480 --> 01:10:50,440
stemming from this disease psychology.

1193
01:10:50,600 --> 01:10:54,430
Uh And so for me, like a big prediction of that approach is that you would expect

1194
01:10:54,430 --> 01:10:58,910
conservatives to be the ones who would be really up in arms about the the pandemic, wanting

1195
01:10:58,910 --> 01:11:01,790
to shut things down, wanting to be the conservative ones.

1196
01:11:01,950 --> 01:11:03,310
And yet the opposite happened.

1197
01:11:03,470 --> 01:11:06,910
And for me, that was a huge victory for my theoretical approach.

1198
01:11:07,150 --> 01:11:11,470
Uh which suggests that these kinds of political opinions are about uh shifting alliances

1199
01:11:11,470 --> 01:11:16,350
and the and the strategic interest interests of each each coalition, uh, which uh can at at

1200
01:11:16,350 --> 01:11:20,270
times be be uh random and can shift around unpredictably.

1201
01:11:20,520 --> 01:11:25,720
I think w you know the parties could have easily taken uh uh opposing stances depending on

1202
01:11:25,720 --> 01:11:29,960
who who was in office at the time that the pandemic started and and what positions they

1203
01:11:29,960 --> 01:11:30,840
happened to take.

1204
01:11:31,000 --> 01:11:32,600
Uh, you know, people follow the leader.

1205
01:11:32,760 --> 01:11:38,520
So I think we the uh the polarization around this issue could have easily been

1206
01:11:38,520 --> 01:11:39,240
flipped.

1207
01:11:39,400 --> 01:11:45,320
Um and so for me it was a big victory uh for for Alliance theory and that no one was was

1208
01:11:45,570 --> 01:11:49,170
everyone was predicting that conservatives would be on one end of this issue and they were

1209
01:11:49,170 --> 01:11:50,770
on the opposite end of this issue.

1210
01:11:51,010 --> 01:11:53,250
Um so that was that was what I took away from it.

1211
01:11:53,410 --> 01:11:58,930
But uh I I also remember I was pretty surprised I saw what what what is what is what are

1212
01:11:58,930 --> 01:12:04,610
some of the explanations or the pushback that you've gotten, like well, what you

1213
01:12:04,610 --> 01:12:10,300
saw was actually because like what what did you hear that was in that

1214
01:12:10,300 --> 01:12:11,820
tried to contradict your findings?

1215
01:12:11,980 --> 01:12:12,460
I agree with you.

1216
01:12:12,540 --> 01:12:13,900
I I think your findings are beautiful.

1217
01:12:14,060 --> 01:12:15,580
Like I I think that's perfect.

1218
01:12:15,820 --> 01:12:17,740
But what did people say against it?

1219
01:12:17,900 --> 01:12:23,580
Like to say, oh well, actually, you're wrong because uh I haven't actually uh

1220
01:12:23,740 --> 01:12:26,860
mostly I've I've I've found that people just kind of surrender.

1221
01:12:28,060 --> 01:12:33,980
They're just like, yeah, that that uh I haven't

1222
01:12:34,140 --> 01:12:37,970
yeah, it's really hard to like You are charming.

1223
01:12:39,890 --> 01:12:41,970
People are like, I'm so tired from COVID.

1224
01:12:42,130 --> 01:12:44,130
It was just like, yeah, no, I we Yeah, no.

1225
01:12:44,290 --> 01:12:47,970
It's a pretty hard case to make that like, yeah, conservatism is all about disease and

1226
01:12:47,970 --> 01:12:52,930
contamination purity, but yeah, they they're the ones who are, you know,

1227
01:12:53,170 --> 01:12:59,100
avoiding vaccines and wanting to be, you know, more out there you know out there

1228
01:12:59,100 --> 01:13:03,740
in in the midst of a pandemic yeah it's just really hard to square that circle I haven't

1229
01:13:03,740 --> 01:13:09,740
seen anyone do a convincing uh uh case for it um so well we don't

1230
01:13:09,820 --> 01:13:13,500
we don't include data that doesn't um support our theory

1231
01:13:16,300 --> 01:13:21,630
it's the not my what is that the um Douglas Adams that's the not it's someone problem

1232
01:13:21,790 --> 01:13:26,510
cloaking device where it just sort of puts it just is a cloaking device where it just

1233
01:13:26,510 --> 01:13:28,910
creates some it's someone else's problem, right?

1234
01:13:29,070 --> 01:13:33,310
So things that are inconsistent with the way you think, you just kind of don't see it.

1235
01:13:33,470 --> 01:13:39,150
So that was the the conceit of the invisibility cloaking device in Douglas Adams.

1236
01:13:39,710 --> 01:13:42,910
True, but so David, but the thing is is that well, whatever, I can't say David.

1237
01:13:42,990 --> 01:13:47,710
Um and so we've been going with I'm Dave and and David is David, just for clarity.

1238
01:13:47,790 --> 01:13:47,950
Yeah.

1239
01:13:48,110 --> 01:13:53,660
Two So David, the uh the but the thing is you still see I s you still see reports about,

1240
01:13:53,740 --> 01:13:59,100
you know, disgust sensitivity and political spectrum, you know, and it's like so apparently

1241
01:13:59,260 --> 01:14:03,820
the the um so now I know who's gonna be a reviewer on all those papers, thank you.

1242
01:14:05,020 --> 01:14:05,500
Oh no.

1243
01:14:06,060 --> 01:14:07,580
Uh yeah, no, that's there.

1244
01:14:07,660 --> 01:14:09,100
No, so I have a story about that.

1245
01:14:09,260 --> 01:14:12,700
Um so I think most of that is driven by sexual disgust.

1246
01:14:12,890 --> 01:14:17,210
And sexual disgust in turn is a marker of one's reproductive strategy.

1247
01:14:17,370 --> 01:14:22,010
So if you're pursuing a particular kind of monogamous, committed, high fertility, uh

1248
01:14:22,410 --> 01:14:27,130
traditionally gender division of labor reproductive strategy, um, which is more common

1249
01:14:27,130 --> 01:14:31,530
among social conservatives than social liberals, um, sexual disgust and disgust toward

1250
01:14:31,530 --> 01:14:35,690
promiscuity and short-term sexual relationships, that is a fundamental part of that

1251
01:14:35,690 --> 01:14:36,970
reproductive strategy.

1252
01:14:37,050 --> 01:14:41,720
Uh, and that is a fundamental part of the uh uh conservative political coalition.

1253
01:14:41,880 --> 01:14:45,400
I think that is I think we should we ought to think of people pursuing that reproductive

1254
01:14:45,400 --> 01:14:50,680
strategy as an interest group, um, as a a voting block within the Republican Party that is

1255
01:14:50,680 --> 01:14:51,960
driving uh policy.

1256
01:14:52,120 --> 01:14:55,720
And so that's the story I would tell there, that it's really just sexual disgust that the

1257
01:14:55,800 --> 01:14:57,960
that these correlations are are picking up on.

1258
01:14:58,440 --> 01:15:01,880
And insofar as as you know baiting strategies are correlated with other kinds of disgust,

1259
01:15:01,960 --> 01:15:05,560
which you would expect them to be, you know, if if you are more grossed out in general and

1260
01:15:05,560 --> 01:15:09,160
more, you know, you think you're more vulnerable to disease in general, well, you know, a

1261
01:15:09,160 --> 01:15:11,550
big transmitter of diseases is sex.

1262
01:15:11,710 --> 01:15:14,190
So you're gonna, you know, want to be less promiscuous.

1263
01:15:14,350 --> 01:15:18,670
So I think it's all it's all connected to uh mating strategies, reproductive strategies,

1264
01:15:18,750 --> 01:15:20,750
and that would be the story I'd tell about it.

1265
01:15:21,710 --> 01:15:22,670
I like that.

1266
01:15:23,550 --> 01:15:24,430
Super cool.

1267
01:15:24,670 --> 01:15:30,510
Um, Deb, you mentioned EHB evolution human behavior, which is one of, if not the, the

1268
01:15:30,880 --> 01:15:36,160
preeminent flagship journal of evolutionary psychology, also evolutionary behavioral

1269
01:15:36,160 --> 01:15:36,400
sciences.

1270
01:15:36,560 --> 01:15:42,560
There are other journals, but EHB is very much the really

1271
01:15:43,120 --> 01:15:46,400
in many ways the home, the home of HBES, the Human Behavior Evolution Society.

1272
01:15:46,800 --> 01:15:47,600
It's the journal.

1273
01:15:47,840 --> 01:15:50,000
You have been the editor for how long now?

1274
01:15:50,480 --> 01:15:51,040
A long time.

1275
01:15:52,560 --> 01:15:53,520
I'm coming to the end.

1276
01:15:55,120 --> 01:16:00,850
I'm curious, you know, You that's a unique perspective that not

1277
01:16:00,850 --> 01:16:01,810
many people get.

1278
01:16:01,890 --> 01:16:07,490
Um, it gives you some perspective sort of on the process of a journal and what that's like.

1279
01:16:07,650 --> 01:16:09,410
And not everybody gets a chance to do that.

1280
01:16:09,570 --> 01:16:15,010
It gets you a sense of um the trajectory of people trying to

1281
01:16:15,010 --> 01:16:17,170
publish at this journal.

1282
01:16:17,410 --> 01:16:21,730
Um, there's actually, I can think of several questions, right?

1283
01:16:21,810 --> 01:16:26,700
Like, like, but uh but I think, you know, one of the things we've talked about in this

1284
01:16:26,860 --> 01:16:32,540
whatever the this podcast is is how DevSec is going or how the evolutionary

1285
01:16:32,620 --> 01:16:33,740
brainhavel sciences are going.

1286
01:16:33,900 --> 01:16:36,700
We talked about that earlier in the and when we were talking.

1287
01:16:37,020 --> 01:16:42,860
Um your experience as being the editor, are there certain things

1288
01:16:42,860 --> 01:16:47,830
that you feel like as you send your minding down that you've been reflecting on or that you

1289
01:16:47,830 --> 01:16:52,150
think are are useful or interesting for people who don't have that perspective to know that

1290
01:16:52,150 --> 01:16:54,710
we wouldn't know or maybe even wouldn't wouldn't know to ask?

1291
01:16:54,950 --> 01:16:59,750
Like are you are you looking and being like, wow, I can't believe all these people who do X

1292
01:16:59,750 --> 01:17:01,270
are trying to like publish here.

1293
01:17:01,510 --> 01:17:05,430
I've really noticed a change in this or you know is there anything like that?

1294
01:17:06,470 --> 01:17:10,870
Um no is fine.

1295
01:17:11,910 --> 01:17:12,550
Yeah.

1296
01:17:14,700 --> 01:17:19,500
There are certain like hot topics that keep kind of coming at EHB.

1297
01:17:19,740 --> 01:17:20,700
So um

1298
01:17:26,140 --> 01:17:31,180
but as with any particular topic, like there's there's like the meat, right?

1299
01:17:31,340 --> 01:17:37,340
And so, and then once the main finding has been found, and there's then there's

1300
01:17:37,340 --> 01:17:41,180
a lot of n plus one studies that kind of just you know, I'm doing I'm replicating.

1301
01:17:41,260 --> 01:17:43,260
So replications are of course always valuable.

1302
01:17:44,790 --> 01:17:50,550
And so in general, I've been very pleased with the quality that's been

1303
01:17:50,550 --> 01:17:52,150
submitted to EHB.

1304
01:17:52,710 --> 01:17:58,550
I I would like to see more work

1305
01:17:58,550 --> 01:18:00,310
from anthropologists, you know.

1306
01:18:00,470 --> 01:18:05,430
And so I had a couple special issues that I hoped would spark some of that initially.

1307
01:18:05,510 --> 01:18:10,600
So there was that weird um twenty years since that weird paper was published that uh

1308
01:18:11,800 --> 01:18:17,800
that Corinne and uh Joe and uh Aura and Norwin Zion, they had all uh come in to

1309
01:18:17,800 --> 01:18:18,440
guest edit.

1310
01:18:18,520 --> 01:18:21,320
And that was one of the most successful special issues.

1311
01:18:21,480 --> 01:18:25,160
I mean, that's one of the reasons why our impact factor skyrocketed.

1312
01:18:25,560 --> 01:18:31,560
Um and so then but then we had um Aaron Lukashewski, he did a whole bunch

1313
01:18:31,560 --> 01:18:37,410
of, you know, from the field special issues that also were really wildly successful but

1314
01:18:37,410 --> 01:18:43,410
i i have been going out to i've been going out to the areas that i

1315
01:18:43,410 --> 01:18:49,170
find interesting and um trying to you know market and add

1316
01:18:49,410 --> 01:18:55,250
like you want to do something here and would you organize something and so forth and so i

1317
01:18:55,250 --> 01:19:00,180
mean that's what's led to what's coming up in terms of the number of special issues So I'm

1318
01:19:00,180 --> 01:19:03,620
going to tell you because I'd like to advertise all of them so that people know what's

1319
01:19:03,620 --> 01:19:09,620
coming up, which is so we have a special issue on uh friendship uh that Jamie Krems

1320
01:19:09,780 --> 01:19:11,060
is is organizing.

1321
01:19:11,220 --> 01:19:15,380
There's one that's focusing on Latin America research, so all the evolution, uh

1322
01:19:15,620 --> 01:19:20,020
evolutionary behavioral science that's coming out of uh Latin, not all of it, but a lot of

1323
01:19:20,020 --> 01:19:25,940
it that's coming out of Latin America, South America, and then um there's also

1324
01:19:27,110 --> 01:19:31,510
One on cognitive development that I'm extremely happy about, and I'm looking forward to

1325
01:19:31,590 --> 01:19:34,710
because that's an area that we desperately need more of.

1326
01:19:34,950 --> 01:19:40,870
Um, there was there's one on I put out a call for like personality and clinical

1327
01:19:40,950 --> 01:19:46,790
kind of individual differences, clinical aspects, um, just to kind of see what was

1328
01:19:46,790 --> 01:19:47,430
out there.

1329
01:19:47,750 --> 01:19:53,480
It's it's not a huge collection of papers, but there's been a lot of

1330
01:19:53,480 --> 01:19:58,280
interesting papers on dark triad, psychopathy, uh, and so forth.

1331
01:19:58,520 --> 01:20:03,240
I have another one on singlehood uh that's being put together.

1332
01:20:03,480 --> 01:20:05,560
Um we'll see we'll see where that goes.

1333
01:20:05,720 --> 01:20:09,880
Uh that was the proposal, so I'm also very interested in what people would propose.

1334
01:20:10,200 --> 01:20:16,030
And then my goal really as the editor was to start more conversations and to

1335
01:20:16,030 --> 01:20:19,470
get people engaged in talking back and forth.

1336
01:20:19,710 --> 01:20:25,150
So there's a great new paper on the evolution of culture and

1337
01:20:25,470 --> 01:20:28,670
or what cultural evolution means and what it means to study culture.

1338
01:20:28,830 --> 01:20:30,990
And so I was hoping that we have a nice back and forth.

1339
01:20:31,070 --> 01:20:35,790
And so it's just a matter of whether the main players actually want to engage and start

1340
01:20:35,950 --> 01:20:37,070
start the dialogue, right?

1341
01:20:37,150 --> 01:20:39,230
Because if everyone's saying the same thing, it's not fun.

1342
01:20:39,310 --> 01:20:42,990
But for future generations, it's really nice to kind of see where the disagreement is.

1343
01:20:43,150 --> 01:20:48,840
So in a BB BBS style format, you know, having these conversations, I think, is

1344
01:20:49,080 --> 01:20:49,640
a lot of fun.

1345
01:20:49,800 --> 01:20:52,040
There was just one about war, the evolution of war.

1346
01:20:52,120 --> 01:20:57,160
Like, is it a social construct that's based on the need for modern resources, or is it more

1347
01:20:57,160 --> 01:21:02,760
of a or uh just a function of like modern nation states or whatever, uh, versus more of a

1348
01:21:02,760 --> 01:21:04,280
deep psychological history?

1349
01:21:04,520 --> 01:21:10,200
And so actually, um, Lita just republished the evolution, uh, the cognitive

1350
01:21:10,200 --> 01:21:11,320
foundations of war.

1351
01:21:11,560 --> 01:21:12,280
Did I say that right?

1352
01:21:12,520 --> 01:21:14,370
And so great paper.

1353
01:21:14,610 --> 01:21:17,010
And so that'll be part of that as well.

1354
01:21:17,170 --> 01:21:21,570
So there's kind of a nice chunk of papers now talking about and debating about the

1355
01:21:21,730 --> 01:21:25,250
psychology of war and warfare and team psychology.

1356
01:21:25,410 --> 01:21:27,570
So that's actually really exciting.

1357
01:21:27,730 --> 01:21:32,690
So truth, that's been the that's been the great part about being an editor is just being

1358
01:21:32,690 --> 01:21:35,650
saying, you know, what areas do we need more of?

1359
01:21:36,180 --> 01:21:42,100
So I I think that I mean I'm all ears in terms of like what what

1360
01:21:42,100 --> 01:21:42,660
could we do?

1361
01:21:42,980 --> 01:21:45,380
And especially now that they're doing virtual special issues.

1362
01:21:45,460 --> 01:21:47,060
So what would be interesting?

1363
01:21:47,700 --> 01:21:52,820
You know, I think that the application, so application of evolutionary psychology is

1364
01:21:52,820 --> 01:21:54,020
something we haven't yet talked about.

1365
01:21:54,180 --> 01:21:59,890
Well you have we have in terms of the legal stuff, but um but one of the things that for

1366
01:21:59,890 --> 01:22:05,250
instance I have found really impressive with some social psychologists, particularly uh Bob

1367
01:22:05,250 --> 01:22:06,530
Cialdini, right?

1368
01:22:06,610 --> 01:22:09,730
So he has he has a model of full psychology, right?

1369
01:22:09,810 --> 01:22:13,090
So you go out there, you look out in the world, what's going on, bring it into the lab,

1370
01:22:13,170 --> 01:22:16,690
studying it, study it, put it back in the real world, see how it performs.

1371
01:22:16,930 --> 01:22:18,850
And it's really a great model.

1372
01:22:18,930 --> 01:22:23,980
Um, I know it's difficult because we tend to be in the weeds, like can't take a WTR ratio

1373
01:22:23,980 --> 01:22:28,220
out like you know and like take it for a spin in the real world but the question is can we

1374
01:22:28,220 --> 01:22:34,140
come up with strategies and research programs that allow us to

1375
01:22:34,140 --> 01:22:40,060
be slightly more applied and then do and and I think that's

1376
01:22:40,060 --> 01:22:44,030
the next step of things because then it's like oh, it matters, right?

1377
01:22:44,110 --> 01:22:48,990
So I think that takes us into level three of, oh, we knew it all along and we do been doing

1378
01:22:48,990 --> 01:22:49,710
it all along.

1379
01:22:49,950 --> 01:22:52,670
And so I think that's where that would be important.

1380
01:22:52,830 --> 01:22:57,070
And I think that there are areas that need evolutionary psychology.

1381
01:22:57,230 --> 01:23:03,150
So leadership and other types of uh even kind of adding evolutionary tones into the

1382
01:23:03,150 --> 01:23:07,240
social influence literature, I think, uh is is important.

1383
01:23:07,480 --> 01:23:12,920
So um, but taking that model of full psychology and looking at how we can actually get out

1384
01:23:12,920 --> 01:23:15,560
there into the real world, um, I think is important.

1385
01:23:15,720 --> 01:23:20,440
Obviously, evolutionary medicine is doing all, you know, and evolutionary psychiatry, but

1386
01:23:20,440 --> 01:23:23,560
where how are people getting trained in those areas?

1387
01:23:25,400 --> 01:23:26,280
Really cool.

1388
01:23:26,440 --> 01:23:26,920
Yeah.

1389
01:23:27,160 --> 01:23:33,030
Um So in my opinion, uh

1390
01:23:33,270 --> 01:23:38,390
Evolution and Human Behavior is the best evolutionary social science journal uh in

1391
01:23:38,390 --> 01:23:38,870
existence.

1392
01:23:39,270 --> 01:23:42,310
I'll I'll pay you double pay you later, uh David.

1393
01:23:43,750 --> 01:23:47,990
Um it's the one that I think has it puts out the highest quality stuff.

1394
01:23:48,230 --> 01:23:52,470
Um I I won't name names, but I'm occasionally embarrassed uh by some of the stuff that

1395
01:23:52,470 --> 01:23:56,420
comes out and uh some of the other Evo Psych journals.

1396
01:23:56,580 --> 01:24:00,740
Um, I consider evolution human behavior to be a cut a cut above the rest.

1397
01:24:00,980 --> 01:24:03,060
Um get really good reviews.

1398
01:24:03,140 --> 01:24:06,100
I always know at EHB I'm gonna get good reviews.

1399
01:24:07,380 --> 01:24:08,500
Yeah, totally.

1400
01:24:08,740 --> 01:24:10,420
Um we try, it's hard.

1401
01:24:10,500 --> 01:24:11,540
People say no a lot.

1402
01:24:12,580 --> 01:24:13,140
Yeah.

1403
01:24:13,300 --> 01:24:17,380
Um I'm curious at you know how you have done it.

1404
01:24:17,460 --> 01:24:22,930
Like what what has your strategy been for maintaining quality control and making sure that

1405
01:24:22,930 --> 01:24:27,810
you don't publish garbage uh and and just maintaining the integrity and reputation of of

1406
01:24:27,810 --> 01:24:30,130
the journal because it doesn't seem like an easy thing to do.

1407
01:24:30,290 --> 01:24:31,570
How do you do it?

1408
01:24:33,410 --> 01:24:38,850
Um so I think the main answer is that

1409
01:24:41,970 --> 01:24:43,410
it's actually a good question.

1410
01:24:43,650 --> 01:24:44,450
And um

1411
01:24:49,580 --> 01:24:52,300
Two balancing questions I ask myself.

1412
01:24:52,620 --> 01:24:58,060
One is, does this push our knowledge in this area forward in a

1413
01:24:58,060 --> 01:24:59,340
substantial way?

1414
01:24:59,740 --> 01:25:05,660
Or enough so that it it rounds out something that is, you know,

1415
01:25:05,740 --> 01:25:08,700
that I think people would find in interesting.

1416
01:25:09,340 --> 01:25:13,930
I get I get nervous about uh poorly designed studies.

1417
01:25:14,330 --> 01:25:20,090
And truth be told, a lot of papers get rejected because A,

1418
01:25:20,170 --> 01:25:21,690
they're not evolutionary.

1419
01:25:22,490 --> 01:25:28,250
B the there's no rationale for the hypotheses,

1420
01:25:28,410 --> 01:25:34,380
and or the rationale is is incorrect, um, or it's been outdated in the sense of

1421
01:25:34,380 --> 01:25:37,420
that's been a controversy that's already been established and we've already solved it.

1422
01:25:37,580 --> 01:25:41,580
So you don't there's this this there's no basis for this particular hypothesis.

1423
01:25:41,820 --> 01:25:47,500
Um every now and then I'll get a paper that says I've got a new theory of human nature.

1424
01:25:47,740 --> 01:25:49,180
Let me tell you about it.

1425
01:25:49,340 --> 01:25:54,140
And so oh I have I have a good file drawer of special papers.

1426
01:25:54,780 --> 01:25:59,410
Or there are figures of uh this used to happen at the this used to happen at the conference

1427
01:25:59,490 --> 01:25:59,810
too.

1428
01:25:59,890 --> 01:26:04,530
There would just always be there'd always be a poster of sort of like glowing chakras.

1429
01:26:04,690 --> 01:26:10,290
Um that doesn't happen anymore, but the early days when when there were let me tell you, I

1430
01:26:10,290 --> 01:26:14,610
look over my shoulder uh now more than I ever used to.

1431
01:26:15,570 --> 01:26:18,610
Like, I don't know who's taking their medication this morning or not.

1432
01:26:18,690 --> 01:26:22,130
So anyway, but the thing is like there's also a lot of people like reinventing the wheel,

1433
01:26:22,210 --> 01:26:26,020
like evolutionary psychology that those Santa Barbarians think that they figured out.

1434
01:26:26,100 --> 01:26:26,740
That's all crap.

1435
01:26:26,820 --> 01:26:27,700
I've got a new theory.

1436
01:26:27,780 --> 01:26:31,300
And I'm like, oh, that looks exactly like what I learned.

1437
01:26:31,460 --> 01:26:33,860
And so I I enjoy those.

1438
01:26:33,940 --> 01:26:39,220
Um, and so, but I I'm just happy we've all kind of you know triangulated onto the same

1439
01:26:39,220 --> 01:26:39,860
ideas.

1440
01:26:40,100 --> 01:26:44,340
Uh but here's here's actually really where I balance it all out.

1441
01:26:44,420 --> 01:26:49,940
So I I I'm an adaptationist, and so and I am, and so I realize

1442
01:26:49,940 --> 01:26:53,690
that's There's an adaptationist running the journal.

1443
01:26:53,770 --> 01:26:59,690
So I am very concerned about having things that contribute to understanding the design

1444
01:26:59,690 --> 01:27:00,490
of the mind.

1445
01:27:00,730 --> 01:27:04,970
Every now and then there'll be a paper that I think, ooh, it's not adaptationist, but boy,

1446
01:27:05,050 --> 01:27:05,690
is this cool.

1447
01:27:05,850 --> 01:27:07,210
Like it's kind of cool stuff.

1448
01:27:07,370 --> 01:27:10,490
And I will send it out for review as something like extra.

1449
01:27:10,650 --> 01:27:14,730
And so typically reviewers are like, what is this?

1450
01:27:14,890 --> 01:27:15,050
No.

1451
01:27:15,210 --> 01:27:18,330
And so, and then it's usually a decision where I decide whether it goes in or not.

1452
01:27:18,410 --> 01:27:20,810
And sometimes I've decided yes, and sometimes no.

1453
01:27:21,400 --> 01:27:26,920
Ultimately, I think about the history of science and I think about I

1454
01:27:27,400 --> 01:27:33,320
the gatekeeper, I am the gatekeeper of some sort, but let the history of science,

1455
01:27:33,400 --> 01:27:34,920
you know, sort it all out.

1456
01:27:35,080 --> 01:27:39,320
So if papers come in that, you know, every now and then there's one that's only

1457
01:27:39,320 --> 01:27:45,190
incrementally or might have, you know, one study with only 40 people in it, like, but it

1458
01:27:45,190 --> 01:27:45,990
was done really well.

1459
01:27:46,150 --> 01:27:49,430
Like, let the history of science figure out whether or not that's something that's gonna

1460
01:27:49,430 --> 01:27:52,230
actually um, you know, move forward or not.

1461
01:27:52,390 --> 01:27:58,390
So I I am very cautious because I realize I'm biased in terms of my view on the

1462
01:27:58,390 --> 01:27:58,630
world.

1463
01:27:58,870 --> 01:28:00,870
By biased, I mean discerning.

1464
01:28:01,110 --> 01:28:06,390
You know, like I'm I I'm discerning in terms of what I think um, you know,

1465
01:28:06,630 --> 01:28:09,510
contributes to to cognitive science in that in that way.

1466
01:28:09,670 --> 01:28:13,860
So, you know, like there's a lot of research you haven't seen in the journal.

1467
01:28:13,940 --> 01:28:17,220
Like, when was the last time you saw a facial resemblance paper?

1468
01:28:17,620 --> 01:28:18,660
Like, yeah.

1469
01:28:18,820 --> 01:28:21,860
And so I'm not saying facial resemblance isn't interesting.

1470
01:28:22,020 --> 01:28:26,820
I'm just saying that I I think that the idea as a kinship system, it's just wrong.

1471
01:28:26,980 --> 01:28:29,540
It's it's wrong, and there's good reason why it's wrong.

1472
01:28:29,700 --> 01:28:32,820
And uh, and then so and I'll write a paper as to why it's wrong.

1473
01:28:32,900 --> 01:28:36,820
And so I just don't think it's a good kinship cue.

1474
01:28:37,470 --> 01:28:42,110
And I have not been convinced of any of the data that are explained otherwise.

1475
01:28:42,350 --> 01:28:48,270
And I just I feel I just don't like if I thought something was so like history theory is

1476
01:28:48,270 --> 01:28:49,950
another interesting like topic.

1477
01:28:50,110 --> 01:28:53,870
Like that seems to have taken over the journal in some respect.

1478
01:28:54,110 --> 01:28:58,110
And I I don't, I mean, as a as a scientist,

1479
01:29:00,030 --> 01:29:03,840
listen, as evolutionary psychologist, I think, isn't that what I do?

1480
01:29:04,000 --> 01:29:06,800
Like I just I don't know very confused about life history theory.

1481
01:29:06,880 --> 01:29:08,960
I think to myself I'm an adaptationist.

1482
01:29:09,040 --> 01:29:11,600
I'm concerned about how it develops and how it calibrates.

1483
01:29:11,760 --> 01:29:12,800
Isn't that what this is?

1484
01:29:12,960 --> 01:29:17,760
Like, so I I get I get a little bit confused, but I realize there's a vernacular out there,

1485
01:29:17,920 --> 01:29:19,520
there's people having a conversation.

1486
01:29:19,680 --> 01:29:24,470
So life history theory gets its, you know, gets its papers out there and there's a whole

1487
01:29:24,470 --> 01:29:29,270
special issue out there right on life history theory that dealt with a lot of the debates I

1488
01:29:29,270 --> 01:29:34,950
don't know how much more we need on life history theory right so in in terms of those types

1489
01:29:34,950 --> 01:29:40,710
of conditions and I and until someone starts and I've almost like added up to here with it

1490
01:29:40,790 --> 01:29:45,350
so until someone actually gives me a model of what the hell they're talking about like I'm

1491
01:29:45,350 --> 01:29:49,430
just like I've let you guys play around enough like hasn't someone come up with a model

1492
01:29:49,750 --> 01:29:55,660
like what is this that we're talking about I and so that's and so I get I I if I can't

1493
01:29:55,660 --> 01:30:00,780
imagine a model, that's kind of one of my litmus tests of like, you know,

1494
01:30:01,580 --> 01:30:03,100
is this is this a thing?

1495
01:30:03,260 --> 01:30:04,860
Is there is there there there?

1496
01:30:04,940 --> 01:30:10,940
You know, and so but again, I would say if either of you stepped into the

1497
01:30:10,940 --> 01:30:16,730
role as editor, it's not that difficult to see the kinds of papers that

1498
01:30:16,730 --> 01:30:20,490
are, you know, even I mean, like there's certain ones that you're just like, you know,

1499
01:30:20,570 --> 01:30:21,690
that's not off topic.

1500
01:30:21,770 --> 01:30:24,330
That's just it's just not even wrong.

1501
01:30:24,490 --> 01:30:28,330
And so, and then there's some ones that are like, it's good, but there's problems with it.

1502
01:30:28,490 --> 01:30:31,050
And I guess this is I this is what I wanted to say.

1503
01:30:32,570 --> 01:30:38,520
I'm getting older and so I'm getting softer in my older age, but I I believe that

1504
01:30:38,520 --> 01:30:44,520
there are a lot of papers that are valuable and they might not have gotten

1505
01:30:44,520 --> 01:30:47,640
it all right, but they've gotten a lot of it right.

1506
01:30:47,800 --> 01:30:51,640
And that's why I say the history of science will start to kind of shape all of it up.

1507
01:30:51,800 --> 01:30:56,680
Meta-analyses and other techniques and other AI functions that have yet to been be born,

1508
01:30:56,760 --> 01:30:59,320
you know, we'll try to kind of sift through all this stuff.

1509
01:30:59,510 --> 01:31:04,230
But so long as it's been done in good faith and actually done well and can be replicated,

1510
01:31:04,390 --> 01:31:08,310
like I even if there's a little theoretical, like I wouldn't have written it like that, but

1511
01:31:08,310 --> 01:31:09,830
and I would have come up with this hypothesis.

1512
01:31:09,910 --> 01:31:14,710
And there's not like, you know, so long as they include nods to those kinds of things, I

1513
01:31:14,710 --> 01:31:18,150
tend to be very happy with getting people's hard work out there.

1514
01:31:18,310 --> 01:31:23,830
And so I I see it as a gatekeeper, but also promoting the next generation of scientists,

1515
01:31:23,910 --> 01:31:24,150
right?

1516
01:31:24,310 --> 01:31:29,560
So making sure that there's publications that are getting junior scholars jobs.

1517
01:31:30,440 --> 01:31:36,120
What do you think is the challenge for not our generation

1518
01:31:36,120 --> 01:31:41,800
collectively, but those young junior evolutionary psychologists or people who

1519
01:31:41,800 --> 01:31:45,560
maybe are outside or adjacent who are going into it?

1520
01:31:45,960 --> 01:31:51,720
If you if you had to say something to them, um, or like what do you think their

1521
01:31:52,040 --> 01:31:54,360
their mission is in their cohort?

1522
01:31:57,410 --> 01:32:03,330
I would like to see greater engagement with this

1523
01:32:03,330 --> 01:32:06,450
the information processing side of things.

1524
01:32:06,770 --> 01:32:10,290
I think a lot of good evolutionary psychology gets done without it.

1525
01:32:10,530 --> 01:32:14,450
I think better evolutionary psychology can get done with it.

1526
01:32:14,690 --> 01:32:19,090
Um I don't know if that's just because that's what I like.

1527
01:32:19,170 --> 01:32:20,450
So it's very possible.

1528
01:32:20,690 --> 01:32:24,900
So and I I fully admit that and very I'm very self-aware.

1529
01:32:24,980 --> 01:32:30,340
So I just want to like I fully understand that I again I have these uh biases.

1530
01:32:30,660 --> 01:32:36,100
But the next generation of scientists, of evolutionary psychologists,

1531
01:32:37,220 --> 01:32:40,900
it's really critical they understand the level of cognitive program.

1532
01:32:41,780 --> 01:32:44,980
And that that's real, that's where that's what's important.

1533
01:32:45,970 --> 01:32:51,650
My goal at EHB is to potentially try and publish some of the greatest hits

1534
01:32:51,650 --> 01:32:52,290
again.

1535
01:32:52,690 --> 01:32:56,050
So the war paper, you know, so I'm looking for everything.

1536
01:32:56,370 --> 01:33:00,850
I'm trying, I'm digging through drawers, like, you know, other like we have if there's an

1537
01:33:00,850 --> 01:33:06,690
anniversary coming up of a particular paper, like I would love to have um I would

1538
01:33:06,690 --> 01:33:12,400
love to have a discussion between, and I'm hoping this paper by uh Nicholas Bombard

1539
01:33:12,640 --> 01:33:18,400
um is actually um on culture in instigates a conversation

1540
01:33:18,400 --> 01:33:24,160
about culture because I think that would be a great back and forth between like Rob

1541
01:33:24,320 --> 01:33:30,240
Boyd, Pete Richardson, and Lita and Pascal, like and you know, and and so being able

1542
01:33:30,240 --> 01:33:31,920
to have that conversation.

1543
01:33:33,440 --> 01:33:39,110
The thing that frustrates me a lot is why haven't we

1544
01:33:39,110 --> 01:33:42,790
moved past this learning and culture speak?

1545
01:33:44,150 --> 01:33:46,310
I couldn't be more frustrated by it.

1546
01:33:46,470 --> 01:33:49,750
Like I like it's due to culture.

1547
01:33:49,830 --> 01:33:52,470
I just want to be like, I don't know what that means.

1548
01:33:52,550 --> 01:33:56,310
Like, I don't know what, like, give me like flush that out.

1549
01:33:56,390 --> 01:33:58,150
Like at all?

1550
01:33:58,630 --> 01:34:04,280
Like, like, and I I I what's more more importantly, like I'm I'm more

1551
01:34:04,280 --> 01:34:10,120
frustrated with people being rude to me for for for for you know for

1552
01:34:10,120 --> 01:34:16,120
actually asking that question uh of you know saying like what like I'm I'm on board, like

1553
01:34:16,200 --> 01:34:20,040
I understand I I get what you say culture is, but that isn't that something to be

1554
01:34:20,040 --> 01:34:20,600
explained?

1555
01:34:20,760 --> 01:34:25,320
That's not an explanatory, you know, that's not powerful as an explanatory force.

1556
01:34:25,480 --> 01:34:26,920
That's to be explained.

1557
01:34:27,320 --> 01:34:33,290
Um and that's and I I I would like if I if one breakthrough for the field would be to say,

1558
01:34:33,370 --> 01:34:38,890
you know, we are the field, evolutionary psychology is the field of culture and learning.

1559
01:34:38,970 --> 01:34:41,450
And we specify how all that happens.

1560
01:34:41,690 --> 01:34:46,090
Like, you know, I adopt all their language and start using it.

1561
01:34:46,250 --> 01:34:52,010
It's like they forget the adapted mind, you know, psychology and the generation of what?

1562
01:34:52,620 --> 01:34:54,140
You know, like culture.

1563
01:34:54,940 --> 01:34:55,340
Exactly.

1564
01:34:55,500 --> 01:34:59,660
And it's like, I I'm frustrated when people are like, you don't consider culture.

1565
01:34:59,740 --> 01:35:02,540
It's like, no, we're the science of culture.

1566
01:35:03,580 --> 01:35:08,540
And that's what I'd like to see people take, but from a cognitive science perspective.

1567
01:35:08,780 --> 01:35:11,180
So that's what that's what I'd like to see far more of.

1568
01:35:11,260 --> 01:35:13,980
So that I think there's a lot of room to grow there.

1569
01:35:15,260 --> 01:35:17,980
And I'd love to see it spread into anthropology.

1570
01:35:18,090 --> 01:35:23,610
I'd like to see us take back anthropology and actually have a real science of anthropology.

1571
01:35:23,850 --> 01:35:28,650
Um yeah, we've had we've actually I've been struck with because you know the way we've been

1572
01:35:28,890 --> 01:35:33,370
or uh you know David and I have been doing this is just inviting interesting, fun people

1573
01:35:33,450 --> 01:35:38,970
that especially people who um are either well known like yourself or maybe even some people

1574
01:35:38,970 --> 01:35:44,360
who are we're less well known, especially for people who are not, you know, um monetizing

1575
01:35:44,360 --> 01:35:46,920
EP on the on the internets or things like that.

1576
01:35:47,000 --> 01:35:49,640
You know, in a lot of people, hey don't fault people for monetizing.

1577
01:35:49,960 --> 01:35:51,240
You cannot fault people for monetizing.

1578
01:35:51,720 --> 01:35:55,560
Joint please uh we might have a Patreon by the time this comes out.

1579
01:35:55,640 --> 01:35:58,040
So um or better, you know, uh no for sure.

1580
01:35:58,200 --> 01:35:59,640
No, no, not a faulting at all.

1581
01:35:59,800 --> 01:36:05,720
But I mean what I mean by that is um my point is uh we've had a lot of anthropologists

1582
01:36:05,720 --> 01:36:05,960
on.

1583
01:36:05,990 --> 01:36:10,870
you know, like I've been struck with how much, and maybe this is uh, you know, part of you

1584
01:36:10,870 --> 01:36:15,190
know, John Tuby was in an anthro department, the CP was in an anthro building.

1585
01:36:15,350 --> 01:36:18,630
Um, so much I was an anthro minor, you know.

1586
01:36:18,870 --> 01:36:23,190
If you look down in the CP, in the same way as UCLA, David, right?

1587
01:36:23,270 --> 01:36:27,590
I mean, you were talking about you know, it's just anthropsy, anthropsy, sociology,

1588
01:36:27,670 --> 01:36:28,230
communication.

1589
01:36:28,390 --> 01:36:32,680
I mean, it's just it's really in the water and you really lose something in depth.

1590
01:36:32,760 --> 01:36:36,840
I mean, I I talked about this a little bit before, but you know, I I have been after I left

1591
01:36:36,840 --> 01:36:38,760
UCSB, I was other places.

1592
01:36:38,920 --> 01:36:44,680
And if I was in a psych area department where there was not anthro, people would just say

1593
01:36:44,680 --> 01:36:47,240
things and I'd be like, oh, I became the amateur anthropologist.

1594
01:36:47,400 --> 01:36:51,240
Or I'd be like, no, actually, there's a culture where this isn't true, right?

1595
01:36:51,320 --> 01:36:54,760
Like you're not getting at human nature, you're not getting at the level of the underlying

1596
01:36:54,760 --> 01:36:55,160
design.

1597
01:36:55,400 --> 01:36:58,840
You're so very particular to a particular culture.

1598
01:36:59,000 --> 01:37:04,850
Um so uh so yeah no there's been a lot of to have anthro connected I think is even

1599
01:37:04,850 --> 01:37:09,730
showing up in this um in even what we're doing here more than I even realized.

1600
01:37:10,370 --> 01:37:11,330
Well that's that's good.

1601
01:37:11,410 --> 01:37:14,530
I mean I was uh I've been reading a lot of Tubi's edge pieces.

1602
01:37:14,770 --> 01:37:19,730
Um and but this those are bangers they're all bangers yeah I know I made a little booklet

1603
01:37:19,730 --> 01:37:21,570
of them and so they're they're fantastic.

1604
01:37:21,730 --> 01:37:27,420
Yeah and so it's the idea that you know looking you're not looking at the right layer.

1605
01:37:27,500 --> 01:37:31,740
So the right layer and the universe universality is going to happen at the layer of the

1606
01:37:31,740 --> 01:37:33,180
cognitive programs, right?

1607
01:37:33,340 --> 01:37:35,580
Not at the layer of whatever is manifest.

1608
01:37:35,740 --> 01:37:40,060
And so Yeah, such a deep, deep principle, that layer of invariance.

1609
01:37:40,220 --> 01:37:43,980
Dave and I talked about that uh one of the episodes, just like understanding what it is.

1610
01:37:44,060 --> 01:37:49,970
That's such a deep d insight that I think John put so

1611
01:37:49,970 --> 01:37:51,250
well what you just said.

1612
01:37:51,570 --> 01:37:56,530
It's so easy to say, but and it sounds kind of jargony, but that you have to capture the

1613
01:37:56,530 --> 01:38:01,810
right layer, the right level to find the the

1614
01:38:02,610 --> 01:38:03,250
principle.

1615
01:38:05,170 --> 01:38:09,250
But to get there, you need to consider biology and physics.

1616
01:38:09,330 --> 01:38:14,130
And you know, it's like, and I I just I would love to see the social sciences slightly more

1617
01:38:14,130 --> 01:38:16,080
well well-versed in those areas.

1618
01:38:16,240 --> 01:38:19,040
And I don't mean I don't mean any type of like reductionism.

1619
01:38:19,200 --> 01:38:19,600
I don't.

1620
01:38:19,760 --> 01:38:23,440
I think that there's a lot of things to be studied at all different levels of organization.

1621
01:38:23,680 --> 01:38:26,480
But I think appreci how could it hurt?

1622
01:38:26,640 --> 01:38:26,960
Right.

1623
01:38:27,120 --> 01:38:32,880
And so in any case, I think that's one of the things I like most about EpSec is the

1624
01:38:32,880 --> 01:38:34,240
physics of it.

1625
01:38:35,850 --> 01:38:40,010
And that that was something I'm always, you know, John even said he wanted to be or thought

1626
01:38:40,010 --> 01:38:41,130
about doing physics.

1627
01:38:41,210 --> 01:38:42,250
Um, I think.

1628
01:38:42,410 --> 01:38:44,410
Um, I don't know, you tell me, Deb.

1629
01:38:44,650 --> 01:38:50,650
Um you guys did a you did a um uh a sort of tribute thing for John

1630
01:38:50,890 --> 01:38:52,410
in EHB, is that right?

1631
01:38:52,650 --> 01:38:54,010
I think I can, yeah.

1632
01:38:54,330 --> 01:38:54,890
Yeah.

1633
01:38:55,130 --> 01:39:00,810
Um Yeah, no, it was a um I tried to I tried to coin, I don't know if it's gonna take, but

1634
01:39:00,970 --> 01:39:06,660
kind of the modern cognitive synthesis right which is what I'd like to think of EP as right

1635
01:39:06,740 --> 01:39:10,740
so it's not the modern synthesis it's not the cognitive revolution but it kind of joins the

1636
01:39:10,740 --> 01:39:16,340
two into the next big thing so that's modern cognitive synthesis you start using that term

1637
01:39:16,660 --> 01:39:22,340
yeah modern cognitive synthesis I'll say it a lot um was there anything in the course of

1638
01:39:22,340 --> 01:39:28,230
doing that um you know, uh you know, John passing away, we've been reflecting on

1639
01:39:28,230 --> 01:39:29,270
a lot about that.

1640
01:39:29,750 --> 01:39:35,510
Was there anything in in the course of doing that special issue

1641
01:39:36,070 --> 01:39:37,830
that sort of surprised you?

1642
01:39:37,910 --> 01:39:42,710
Or there was there anything that sort of stood out that either was like, oh yeah, no,

1643
01:39:42,790 --> 01:39:47,840
that's John, and that's something I want to like embody going forward.

1644
01:39:47,920 --> 01:39:51,200
Like, for example, for my, I mean, you know, I think this is normal when somebody passes

1645
01:39:51,200 --> 01:39:51,440
away.

1646
01:39:51,600 --> 01:39:57,520
You think about like, okay, there's a whole in the universe, their shape, and what do what

1647
01:39:58,320 --> 01:40:02,640
there's certain things about them that need to continue, and what in my measly way can I

1648
01:40:02,640 --> 01:40:02,800
do?

1649
01:40:02,880 --> 01:40:04,320
Like, you know, that's something I thought about.

1650
01:40:04,400 --> 01:40:05,120
I've been thinking about.

1651
01:40:05,360 --> 01:40:06,800
And what did you come up with?

1652
01:40:08,010 --> 01:40:13,850
um you know uh ultimately it's that it's the it's theory first

1653
01:40:14,010 --> 01:40:18,650
adaptationism you know of just sort of like when I sit down with a decision about like what

1654
01:40:18,650 --> 01:40:23,930
paper to write you know it's sort of how would John start this paper or how would he think

1655
01:40:23,930 --> 01:40:29,610
about this uh and maybe write it W W J D what would John do?

1656
01:40:30,410 --> 01:40:34,650
Maybe maybe edit the complexity of the sentence down a little bit more towards how Lita

1657
01:40:34,730 --> 01:40:39,140
would would would do um But I I like to think, you know,

1658
01:40:40,740 --> 01:40:45,380
I I heard on the YouTube video like Marvin Minsky talked about like he had uh a couple

1659
01:40:45,620 --> 01:40:51,380
people in his head, um, like um when he would write a paper, like he would sort of

1660
01:40:51,380 --> 01:40:52,340
channel different people.

1661
01:40:52,420 --> 01:40:56,580
Like what he learned, he said what he learned from working with people, like very famous

1662
01:40:56,580 --> 01:40:58,500
people, um, was how they fought.

1663
01:40:58,660 --> 01:41:02,470
And so when he writes something, he'd like, well, you know, how would um how would this,

1664
01:41:02,550 --> 01:41:06,150
how would Isaac Asimov write this, you know, or or people like that.

1665
01:41:06,310 --> 01:41:11,110
Um, and for me, like I have a Tubi, you know, like what would Tubi write here?

1666
01:41:11,190 --> 01:41:12,870
Or how would he think about this?

1667
01:41:13,030 --> 01:41:14,950
Um, for for for my part.

1668
01:41:15,030 --> 01:41:20,950
And I think that for me, that is the as as David kind of laughed about one episode or a

1669
01:41:20,950 --> 01:41:22,870
couple ago, you know, start with the Big Bang first.

1670
01:41:23,110 --> 01:41:28,800
Like I think one of the things for me, listening to John, and I watched some videos again

1671
01:41:28,800 --> 01:41:31,360
after he passed away just to like listen to him.

1672
01:41:31,600 --> 01:41:37,600
Um it's really the for me at least, the main, the huge distinction

1673
01:41:37,840 --> 01:41:43,680
was without Eve Psych and before and John really did this thing, was you don't

1674
01:41:43,680 --> 01:41:49,600
accept the uh built-in assumptions of the world that are delivered by our folk

1675
01:41:49,760 --> 01:41:50,320
psychology.

1676
01:41:50,480 --> 01:41:55,970
So something is intrinsically beautiful, you know, like no, you're not allowed to think

1677
01:41:55,970 --> 01:41:56,130
that.

1678
01:41:56,210 --> 01:42:00,050
You have to start replicator dynamics because there's no such thing as beauty.

1679
01:42:00,370 --> 01:42:01,810
You have to build beauty.

1680
01:42:02,050 --> 01:42:03,650
Beauty has to be explained.

1681
01:42:03,730 --> 01:42:05,650
It's just like you said what you said about culture.

1682
01:42:05,810 --> 01:42:10,850
And so for me, what John really did was just

1683
01:42:10,850 --> 01:42:16,260
eviscerate the idea that you can have a good science that

1684
01:42:16,580 --> 01:42:22,180
starts assuming that beauty is intrinsic and doesn't need an explanation and doesn't even

1685
01:42:22,180 --> 01:42:23,220
need a definition.

1686
01:42:23,540 --> 01:42:29,140
It's just obvious, you know, and that idea that you have to take everything, you have to

1687
01:42:29,140 --> 01:42:35,060
deconstruct every psychological essentialistic idea to

1688
01:42:35,390 --> 01:42:41,390
replicate our dynamics to a to a relationship out in the world and build it

1689
01:42:41,390 --> 01:42:42,270
up that way.

1690
01:42:42,590 --> 01:42:48,030
For me, that's that's what John was embodied, I think.

1691
01:42:48,110 --> 01:42:49,710
Like that's that's my two cents.

1692
01:42:49,870 --> 01:42:50,510
Yeah.

1693
01:42:51,550 --> 01:42:57,390
You know, Brad Duchesne, who was in the lab maybe before you got there, he um he said

1694
01:42:57,390 --> 01:43:02,860
something in if you can imagine I actually rema read his comprehensive exams in this second

1695
01:43:03,500 --> 01:43:06,300
so because they all got kind of passed down.

1696
01:43:06,540 --> 01:43:10,860
But he made he had a great saying um that I think embodies a lot of Jean.

1697
01:43:10,940 --> 01:43:14,300
He said, you know, there's no such thing as a computational free lunch.

1698
01:43:14,700 --> 01:43:17,340
And I I remember that.

1699
01:43:17,660 --> 01:43:21,570
It's a great saying, but the idea that there's nothing comes for free here.

1700
01:43:21,810 --> 01:43:27,650
And so if you're not specifying how it happens, then you've missed something

1701
01:43:27,810 --> 01:43:29,570
and/or something's incomplete.

1702
01:43:29,730 --> 01:43:35,090
And so I was working on the disgust stuff with Josh Hyber for a while.

1703
01:43:35,330 --> 01:43:39,250
And we had you know the three functions of disgust, and we talked about at that point in

1704
01:43:39,250 --> 01:43:42,130
time it was you know pathogen, sexual, and moral.

1705
01:43:42,380 --> 01:43:47,100
And I'll tell you that paper actually was two-thirds done for a very long time because

1706
01:43:47,260 --> 01:43:49,100
pathogen disgust, sexual disgust.

1707
01:43:49,180 --> 01:43:52,940
It was very clear as to I I hadn't started modeling anything, but it was very clear, at

1708
01:43:52,940 --> 01:43:54,940
least in my head, how one possibly could.

1709
01:43:55,180 --> 01:43:59,420
But the moral disgust, I was like, I don't even know, I don't even know where what to

1710
01:43:59,420 --> 01:43:59,740
begin.

1711
01:43:59,820 --> 01:44:05,260
You know, like this is and then Carlton and I got a book, the book deal to write objection.

1712
01:44:05,500 --> 01:44:07,350
And then we started off.

1713
01:44:07,430 --> 01:44:10,310
And there was actually a whole different book before the one that came out.

1714
01:44:10,470 --> 01:44:13,350
It was the basically pathogen, sexual, and moral.

1715
01:44:13,670 --> 01:44:15,910
And then we started to write all of it.

1716
01:44:15,990 --> 01:44:20,150
And I got to the moral section and I was like, well, first off, first off, I realized

1717
01:44:20,230 --> 01:44:24,150
pathogen, sexual, that wasn't exactly the sex stuff worked, but it was more the pathogen

1718
01:44:24,310 --> 01:44:24,790
was the eating.

1719
01:44:24,950 --> 01:44:28,070
Yeah, it's food psychology and contact psychology.

1720
01:44:28,230 --> 01:44:31,910
But then when you start to write about the moral disgust, I was like in the same like

1721
01:44:31,990 --> 01:44:37,000
nitty-gritty information processing way, and thinking about like how I would build it.

1722
01:44:38,120 --> 01:44:40,280
I I came to a complete blank.

1723
01:44:40,360 --> 01:44:41,400
I was like moral disgust.

1724
01:44:41,480 --> 01:44:43,960
I was like, I don't even know, I don't even know what the inputs are.

1725
01:44:44,120 --> 01:44:47,560
Like I don't even know what the external inputs are in order to kind of generate this moral

1726
01:44:47,560 --> 01:44:47,800
disgust.

1727
01:44:47,880 --> 01:44:50,040
I was like, I'm thinking about this all wrong.

1728
01:44:50,280 --> 01:44:55,000
And so then I just kind of and so and that's when I read their groups in mind paper.

1729
01:44:56,050 --> 01:45:01,890
and uh and that's yeah and that started me off as on a completely different that's that's

1730
01:45:01,890 --> 01:45:07,810
such a great paper like that's the key that's like the key to the universe and so um but I

1731
01:45:07,810 --> 01:45:12,050
would say that's what got me thinking a lot about social value and these moral projects and

1732
01:45:12,050 --> 01:45:14,370
how disgust can kind of get in there that way.

1733
01:45:14,770 --> 01:45:20,610
But from but with John, listen, I mean I it's you asked me about the EHP

1734
01:45:20,610 --> 01:45:21,170
special issue.

1735
01:45:21,330 --> 01:45:22,740
I'll be honest with you.

1736
01:45:23,460 --> 01:45:25,220
I I I'm like amnesic.

1737
01:45:25,460 --> 01:45:27,700
I I I think it was so traumat it was traumatic.

1738
01:45:27,780 --> 01:45:28,900
It was emotionally stressful.

1739
01:45:29,300 --> 01:45:31,060
Had a lot of other stuff going on in my world.

1740
01:45:31,140 --> 01:45:36,420
And I but I I just I just don't it's like losing a parent.

1741
01:45:36,500 --> 01:45:42,500
It's like how do you it's it it was it was substantial, it was profound,

1742
01:45:42,660 --> 01:45:44,580
and it's like I can't, I still can't believe it.

1743
01:45:44,740 --> 01:45:48,670
Like I just I didn't really get to talk to him except at conferences, but I knew he was out

1744
01:45:48,670 --> 01:45:48,830
at work.

1745
01:45:48,910 --> 01:45:50,910
So I'm in my mind I'm like, he's still working somewhere.

1746
01:45:51,790 --> 01:45:53,070
We'll see that book someday.

1747
01:45:53,710 --> 01:45:57,390
So um but it's uh but it's it's really sad.

1748
01:45:57,470 --> 01:46:03,390
But for me, I think the tradition that I, you know, just it it is the the

1749
01:46:03,390 --> 01:46:04,110
physics of it.

1750
01:46:04,190 --> 01:46:04,430
Right.

1751
01:46:04,590 --> 01:46:10,360
So really kind of breaking things down in in terms of not

1752
01:46:10,440 --> 01:46:16,360
like not assuming any, not not assuming anything, assuming nothingness.

1753
01:46:16,520 --> 01:46:19,320
And so that's how I but that's how I come to altruism too.

1754
01:46:19,400 --> 01:46:21,160
Like we're not killing and eating each other.

1755
01:46:21,320 --> 01:46:24,680
So let's start instead of like morality is cooperation.

1756
01:46:24,840 --> 01:46:26,760
I want to start with, I don't want to start there.

1757
01:46:26,920 --> 01:46:30,040
I want to start with how come we're not killing and eating each other?

1758
01:46:30,200 --> 01:46:34,200
Like I'd rather start there and kind of come from a very different angle.

1759
01:46:34,280 --> 01:46:40,090
And I think that his perspective allowed us to kind of you know uh entertain that

1760
01:46:40,090 --> 01:46:44,730
stuff but his idea of entertain all hypotheses right and start from all angles I think was

1761
01:46:44,730 --> 01:46:49,770
also something that was uh that was pretty critical but it's it's just it's it's super sad.

1762
01:46:49,930 --> 01:46:55,930
But then you know listen there's with you have Don Simons, Don Brown, Knapp, you

1763
01:46:55,930 --> 01:46:58,170
know, and then more recently Helen Fisher.

1764
01:46:58,330 --> 01:47:03,280
Yeah, it's just a lot of a lot of folks, you know, from the general area.

1765
01:47:03,520 --> 01:47:09,440
So I think traditions need to how do we we're at a new stage of like,

1766
01:47:09,600 --> 01:47:14,080
oh my gosh, like there's a lot of ideas and suddenly now like there's people who are not

1767
01:47:14,080 --> 01:47:19,600
around to discuss them with how do we make sure that they get memorialized and catalogued

1768
01:47:19,680 --> 01:47:21,040
so that they can be taught.

1769
01:47:21,280 --> 01:47:24,880
I think that's new for our field right now, that this is kind of what's happening.

1770
01:47:25,120 --> 01:47:28,150
So the idea of this podcast is fantastic.

1771
01:47:28,390 --> 01:47:34,230
Um, and so, and David, I know you have your, you know, everything is bullshit, uh, which is

1772
01:47:34,230 --> 01:47:34,790
fantastic.

1773
01:47:34,870 --> 01:47:39,350
But the idea that these ideas are living on in a variety of different ways, you know, and

1774
01:47:39,350 --> 01:47:43,430
so being more creative and doing things like this, I think is is going to be great.

1775
01:47:43,510 --> 01:47:47,750
And there are other folks doing podcasts, interviewing people from evolutionary psych, but

1776
01:47:47,830 --> 01:47:51,750
you know, bringing doing this, I think, is a is a great service for the for the field and

1777
01:47:51,750 --> 01:47:54,310
for students who are actually gonna get to hear from from folks.

1778
01:47:54,580 --> 01:47:56,100
Yeah, it's it's strange to think.

1779
01:47:56,180 --> 01:48:01,220
I know John had what it he had something everything we know think is right is wrong or

1780
01:48:01,220 --> 01:48:05,060
something to that effect on uh on his computer.

1781
01:48:05,620 --> 01:48:07,140
Feels like that every now and then.

1782
01:48:08,260 --> 01:48:14,180
Hey man, everything is bullshit is just uh echoing that uh yeah exactly exactly um uh

1783
01:48:14,340 --> 01:48:20,100
and the other one I remember was um that the truth like every generation of scientists like

1784
01:48:20,180 --> 01:48:26,030
the truth resides w way further out than any you know, fight

1785
01:48:26,030 --> 01:48:27,310
in science typically is.

1786
01:48:27,390 --> 01:48:29,950
So there's usually like two sides to a scientific debate.

1787
01:48:30,030 --> 01:48:32,990
And usually the argument is, well, truth is somewhere in the middle.

1788
01:48:33,150 --> 01:48:38,990
And, you know, I'm not putting it eloquently, but the idea is that actually reality is so

1789
01:48:38,990 --> 01:48:42,110
far outside the bounds of what either side is arguing.

1790
01:48:42,590 --> 01:48:48,560
And that was another thing that, you know, John, he just always had that wry smile

1791
01:48:48,640 --> 01:48:52,800
of sort of, you know, I think whenever he sort of saw that, you know, there'd be like a

1792
01:48:52,800 --> 01:48:56,640
student presenting something and there'd be a debate, and then John would just sort of have

1793
01:48:56,640 --> 01:49:02,160
his wry smile and and sort of proceed physics first to say why, in fact,

1794
01:49:02,320 --> 01:49:08,320
probably the whole debate um doesn't capture in a nice way, like not in a deflationary

1795
01:49:08,320 --> 01:49:13,120
way at all, but just sort of like, no, in fact, you know, the reality is way further out

1796
01:49:13,120 --> 01:49:14,320
than we than we think.

1797
01:49:16,530 --> 01:49:19,730
Yeah, I think he will be missed.

1798
01:49:19,890 --> 01:49:20,850
He will be missed.

1799
01:49:21,250 --> 01:49:26,450
So no, but the edge, the edge stories are, you know, stories literally from the edge.

1800
01:49:26,610 --> 01:49:30,130
I think it's it's great because that's him raw.

1801
01:49:30,290 --> 01:49:32,370
That's that's no peer review, you know.

1802
01:49:32,530 --> 01:49:35,730
It's no Lita, like you know, you can't say it that way.

1803
01:49:36,210 --> 01:49:38,530
It's just pure raw, you know, John.

1804
01:49:39,300 --> 01:49:39,540
Yeah.

1805
01:49:39,940 --> 01:49:42,420
You get the raw, you know, you get those those lists.

1806
01:49:42,500 --> 01:49:47,540
My favorite part of the the Tubi Cosmide's writing is they'll have a list of examples to

1807
01:49:47,540 --> 01:49:52,740
illustrate a point, and the list will always go on five times longer than you expect it to.

1808
01:49:54,820 --> 01:49:57,620
And you see that especially in his his edge pieces.

1809
01:49:57,860 --> 01:50:03,270
He just um just the deliciously long winding lists of

1810
01:50:03,270 --> 01:50:04,310
examples.

1811
01:50:04,710 --> 01:50:08,550
Uh that's something that I've tried to emulate a bit uh in in my writing.

1812
01:50:08,790 --> 01:50:10,070
But I I was always the lists.

1813
01:50:10,150 --> 01:50:13,750
Yeah, I've always been a fan of that that rhetorical technique.

1814
01:50:13,910 --> 01:50:16,230
Um No, it's good.

1815
01:50:16,390 --> 01:50:19,990
I think the one trap we all have to be careful about is not writing exactly like him.

1816
01:50:20,150 --> 01:50:23,270
Like I think you need to write for like, you know, mere mortals.

1817
01:50:24,150 --> 01:50:24,870
That is true.

1818
01:50:25,200 --> 01:50:30,240
I personally love the his writing and and but I definitely recognize that it's not for

1819
01:50:30,240 --> 01:50:30,800
everyone.

1820
01:50:30,880 --> 01:50:33,280
Uh and a lot of people are alienated by it.

1821
01:50:33,520 --> 01:50:39,200
Um there's not a lot of colorful uh ticks style figures uh in the in

1822
01:50:39,200 --> 01:50:40,400
those uh papers.

1823
01:50:40,560 --> 01:50:42,400
There it's a lot of black and white text, you know.

1824
01:50:42,480 --> 01:50:44,560
It's not a crazy no, it's it's meaty.

1825
01:50:44,640 --> 01:50:45,440
It's all meat.

1826
01:50:45,520 --> 01:50:47,760
And so uh but I I appreciate that.

1827
01:50:47,920 --> 01:50:53,830
You know, one area that I think would be really interesting, Vita actually uh was the

1828
01:50:53,830 --> 01:50:54,390
author of it.

1829
01:50:54,470 --> 01:50:58,870
And I I think it was in the internal regulatory variables paper.

1830
01:50:59,350 --> 01:51:03,910
She talks about consciousness as a data, as a data format.

1831
01:51:04,630 --> 01:51:08,550
And so I mean, she's busy doing a whole bunch of other stuff.

1832
01:51:08,710 --> 01:51:13,540
The idea of asking her, hey, do you mind writing that up as like a that bigger you know

1833
01:51:13,700 --> 01:51:19,540
piece, but I would love to see at EHP like someone

1834
01:51:19,540 --> 01:51:25,540
tackle you know consciousness um as what does it mean that consciousness

1835
01:51:25,540 --> 01:51:26,660
is a data format?

1836
01:51:26,820 --> 01:51:32,100
Like that's just like that's really kind of a cool sort of, you know, like there's certain

1837
01:51:32,100 --> 01:51:36,690
things that uh that are required to be

1838
01:51:38,210 --> 01:51:38,850
noticed.

1839
01:51:39,010 --> 01:51:39,410
I don't know.

1840
01:51:39,490 --> 01:51:41,250
It's I it's it's very interesting.

1841
01:51:41,410 --> 01:51:43,330
And so I I would love to see that.

1842
01:51:43,490 --> 01:51:46,850
But then Dave, you are tackling free will.

1843
01:51:46,930 --> 01:51:47,970
Is that do I have that right?

1844
01:51:48,210 --> 01:51:53,890
Yeah we actually I just wrote the response to the uh reviews um at Psych

1845
01:51:54,050 --> 01:51:54,370
Review.

1846
01:51:54,450 --> 01:51:59,730
We'll see what happens with it, but um because there were I don't mind negative reviews,

1847
01:51:59,810 --> 01:52:04,920
but those were the negative reviews were were actually like i inaccurate, right?

1848
01:52:05,000 --> 01:52:11,000
So it was it was a pretty um uh that's what you that's what you get for

1849
01:52:11,000 --> 01:52:11,800
not going to EHB.

1850
01:52:12,120 --> 01:52:13,160
No, exactly, exactly.

1851
01:52:13,240 --> 01:52:15,160
I d I'm actually writing an EHB.

1852
01:52:15,320 --> 01:52:19,560
Um uh it's I'm actually writing a a paper for EHB right now.

1853
01:52:19,720 --> 01:52:23,000
So um the title is The Evolution of Autonomy.

1854
01:52:23,240 --> 01:52:25,850
So Ooh looking forward to reading that one.

1855
01:52:26,250 --> 01:52:29,370
Uh speaking of consciousness, I'm also I'm I'm taking a crack at it.

1856
01:52:29,610 --> 01:52:30,570
I have an uh I have a paper.

1857
01:52:32,090 --> 01:52:33,530
By being conscious first and foremost.

1858
01:52:33,610 --> 01:52:38,170
Uh although occasionally I like to be un unconscious in the evening if if I can manage with

1859
01:52:38,170 --> 01:52:38,730
my daughter.

1860
01:52:38,890 --> 01:52:42,170
Um but uh sleep is hard to see by it is.

1861
01:52:42,250 --> 01:52:44,570
Uh but yeah, no, I got an outline, I got a theory.

1862
01:52:44,650 --> 01:52:47,450
Um I got maybe twenty cent twenty percent of the paper written.

1863
01:52:48,090 --> 01:52:48,570
That's great.

1864
01:52:48,970 --> 01:52:50,170
Yeah, so I you know.

1865
01:52:50,490 --> 01:52:51,530
I look forward to it.

1866
01:52:51,760 --> 01:52:55,760
Well then then I see this this is this is the fun part about it.

1867
01:52:55,840 --> 01:53:01,120
And so having fun with ideas and I think entertain floating things and seeing where they

1868
01:53:01,120 --> 01:53:01,360
go.

1869
01:53:01,600 --> 01:53:05,040
I have no problem with EHB publishing all theoretical stuff.

1870
01:53:05,200 --> 01:53:10,480
Like it doesn't need to be like as long as it's good and interesting, like there's no

1871
01:53:10,480 --> 01:53:10,800
limit.

1872
01:53:10,960 --> 01:53:12,160
People are always like, Can I write it?

1873
01:53:12,320 --> 01:53:13,520
Is it okay if it's theoretical?

1874
01:53:13,600 --> 01:53:15,430
I'm like, it's great.

1875
01:53:15,590 --> 01:53:16,470
It's fantastic.

1876
01:53:16,630 --> 01:53:19,110
Like, you know, like this is this is the theory journal.

1877
01:53:19,190 --> 01:53:24,470
Like we should be, um, we should be making sure we pin down a lot of stuff uh solidly here.

1878
01:53:24,630 --> 01:53:26,230
So I I find that interesting.

1879
01:53:26,390 --> 01:53:31,750
But in terms of the I'm just curious, Dave, what you think about I so I I've been very

1880
01:53:31,750 --> 01:53:32,230
interested.

1881
01:53:32,310 --> 01:53:37,030
So obviously in the morality stuff, but will and responsibility, like

1882
01:53:37,880 --> 01:53:42,600
terms, like responsibility and blame, just to take two.

1883
01:53:42,760 --> 01:53:43,320
Yeah.

1884
01:53:43,560 --> 01:53:49,400
Like if it's the case that there's cause and effect in the universe, and

1885
01:53:49,400 --> 01:53:55,400
if it's the case that you couldn't have done otherwise, like you just all lined

1886
01:53:55,400 --> 01:53:57,960
up, like cause and effect, like you just wind up toy.

1887
01:53:58,040 --> 01:53:59,640
Bring there you go, there's Deb.

1888
01:53:59,960 --> 01:54:02,360
And so you can predict what she's gonna do in an hour.

1889
01:54:02,680 --> 01:54:03,160
That would be me.

1890
01:54:03,320 --> 01:54:04,600
I'm talking about myself in the third person.

1891
01:54:05,320 --> 01:54:10,050
And so I would say, where did these terms come from?

1892
01:54:10,370 --> 01:54:15,650
And if that had to fit them into my framework about what I thought morality was and social

1893
01:54:15,650 --> 01:54:21,570
value and coordination points and all this stuff, then they're really just ways of allowing

1894
01:54:21,570 --> 01:54:23,250
people to easily coordinate.

1895
01:54:23,490 --> 01:54:29,330
Um, it's just, I mean, so what would it mean to say that

1896
01:54:29,970 --> 01:54:35,940
a person who does something wrong couldn't have done otherwise because the universe

1897
01:54:35,940 --> 01:54:39,620
was set in motion and Adam A affected Adam B.

1898
01:54:40,260 --> 01:54:46,180
Like you know, like in in in a in a exactly causal sense, yeah.

1899
01:54:46,660 --> 01:54:49,860
Then you can't blame anyone for anything.

1900
01:54:50,260 --> 01:54:53,220
And responsibility is bogus and weird.

1901
01:54:53,540 --> 01:54:59,460
But because we seek and are thirsty for ways to figure out

1902
01:54:59,470 --> 01:55:05,390
how to go after people, that these are fantastic terms that hook into the psychology of

1903
01:55:05,630 --> 01:55:10,750
you're responsible, that's blame, this, you know, like, and so, but I guess I'm wondering

1904
01:55:10,830 --> 01:55:13,310
like, is that what those words are?

1905
01:55:13,550 --> 01:55:15,470
Just easy coordination points.

1906
01:55:15,950 --> 01:55:21,630
Yeah, I think, I mean, yes, um I think there's uh an additional thing, which is that um

1907
01:55:21,870 --> 01:55:26,590
it's about intervention and what can be intervened upon in particular ways.

1908
01:55:26,750 --> 01:55:32,280
So for example, um, if I'm treating you not well, Deb, my welfare trade-off

1909
01:55:32,360 --> 01:55:34,440
ratio is too low for you.

1910
01:55:35,560 --> 01:55:36,680
That's one scenario.

1911
01:55:36,840 --> 01:55:41,160
Another scenario, a good example, a counterexample is something like I have a broken bone,

1912
01:55:41,320 --> 01:55:42,360
let's say, right?

1913
01:55:43,720 --> 01:55:49,320
There are things, Deb, that you can do to me to

1914
01:55:49,320 --> 01:55:53,320
try to change my welfare trade-off ratio with respect to you.

1915
01:55:53,480 --> 01:55:58,690
So for example, you can talk to me, communicate in any number of ways, you know,

1916
01:55:59,170 --> 01:56:00,210
punch them in the face.

1917
01:56:01,650 --> 01:56:02,050
Exactly.

1918
01:56:02,210 --> 01:56:06,930
You can we could uh you can either impose costs or or upregulate cooperation or say, hey,

1919
01:56:07,010 --> 01:56:08,530
like I'm a more valuable partner, whatever.

1920
01:56:08,610 --> 01:56:13,570
You can you can talk to me, you can try to convince me, you can do all kinds of things um

1921
01:56:13,810 --> 01:56:17,810
to change the setting in my head that is my welfare trade-off ratio with respect to you.

1922
01:56:17,890 --> 01:56:21,890
And then if you do that, that will change my behavior and the outcomes for you going

1923
01:56:21,890 --> 01:56:22,370
forward.

1924
01:56:22,690 --> 01:56:23,010
Okay.

1925
01:56:23,250 --> 01:56:25,890
None of those apply to the broken bone.

1926
01:56:26,260 --> 01:56:30,260
So no matter what you try to do, I mean, assuming I'm doing everything that will heal my

1927
01:56:30,260 --> 01:56:33,940
broken bone as quickly as possible, there's nothing you can do to convince me, for example,

1928
01:56:34,020 --> 01:56:35,620
to heal my broken bone, right?

1929
01:56:35,780 --> 01:56:38,500
I can't convince myself, right, to like heal my broken bone.

1930
01:56:38,580 --> 01:56:39,540
It's just going to take time.

1931
01:56:39,700 --> 01:56:45,380
It's not within the purview precisely of like my planning and motivational systems to be

1932
01:56:45,380 --> 01:56:51,310
able to do anything about the speed at which my bone heals, you know, leaving aside

1933
01:56:51,310 --> 01:56:55,070
these things of like, you know, don't walk on it, put it in a cast or a doctor, whatever.

1934
01:56:55,310 --> 01:57:00,510
And the idea is then that even though it's true that everything is sort of causally the

1935
01:57:00,510 --> 01:57:06,510
full nexus of causal determinism or things going forward, we have evolved

1936
01:57:06,510 --> 01:57:11,950
entries for the kinds of things that if we do intervene upon,

1937
01:57:12,740 --> 01:57:14,180
we can change outcomes.

1938
01:57:14,420 --> 01:57:19,620
And so, for example, what it means that somebody is responsible, or we're blaming them,

1939
01:57:19,940 --> 01:57:24,660
we're communicating an attempt to intervene upon them

1940
01:57:25,700 --> 01:57:31,380
such that we're either communicating to the person uh it's an attempt to actually change,

1941
01:57:31,460 --> 01:57:35,060
for example, motivation, planning, goal weights, et cetera, for the future.

1942
01:57:35,780 --> 01:57:36,100
Why?

1943
01:57:36,260 --> 01:57:37,540
Doesn't my anger do that?

1944
01:57:37,700 --> 01:57:42,340
Well, I guess I'm wondering what's what what what does it do above and beyond my anger?

1945
01:57:43,790 --> 01:57:49,470
Um well, in this case, it's just that what the entry is for is an evaluation of, like, for

1946
01:57:49,470 --> 01:57:52,430
example, is the person responsible or not?

1947
01:57:52,750 --> 01:57:58,270
Um, which is which is a which can come into anger, it could come into coalitional things,

1948
01:57:58,430 --> 01:58:04,260
but it's part of uh the evaluation of whether or not, for

1949
01:58:04,260 --> 01:58:08,660
example, you're making a claim about if you're saying, I mean, there's a difference between

1950
01:58:08,660 --> 01:58:10,580
the representation and like saying something out loud.

1951
01:58:10,660 --> 01:58:14,660
But if you're saying, like, Dave, no, you're responsible, you're treating me badly, you're

1952
01:58:14,660 --> 01:58:17,620
responsible for it, it's doing a couple things.

1953
01:58:17,780 --> 01:58:23,460
One is it's um telling me I'm I'm not doing this, treating you well.

1954
01:58:23,540 --> 01:58:27,380
And so that that has the effect of like the anger thing, right?

1955
01:58:27,700 --> 01:58:29,380
You're trying to recalibrate that too.

1956
01:58:29,540 --> 01:58:35,530
But it's also a claim about it's not falling into the broken bone um category

1957
01:58:35,690 --> 01:58:41,450
and that might be a a if you're saying it out loud then that's also that gets into this

1958
01:58:41,450 --> 01:58:46,570
coalitional thing right where um and and this is where you have groups of people who differ

1959
01:58:46,570 --> 01:58:52,330
in sort of saying like should we are are people who commit crimes responsible meaning

1960
01:58:52,540 --> 01:58:57,820
is it efficacious or moral to use punishment to intervene upon them to try to change how

1961
01:58:57,820 --> 01:58:59,580
they're behaving going forward, you know?

1962
01:58:59,740 --> 01:59:05,180
And so, um, so the the attribution that somebody's responsible

1963
01:59:05,420 --> 01:59:11,260
entails certain implicit often consequences, like we should

1964
01:59:11,260 --> 01:59:16,950
punish them or do something different um as them as an individual as opposed to like social

1965
01:59:16,950 --> 01:59:20,950
thing right like so change social institutions so there's people who aren't desperate

1966
01:59:20,950 --> 01:59:26,390
enough to rob people versus you have to punish somebody severely so they don't punish or

1967
01:59:26,390 --> 01:59:28,150
they don't um rob again.

1968
01:59:28,310 --> 01:59:33,750
Um does it answer the question I mean it's the reason why there's that entry the claim in

1969
01:59:33,750 --> 01:59:39,590
the paper is the reason why something like responsibility or will um has to do

1970
01:59:39,590 --> 01:59:45,300
with the attribution of where the uh a leverage

1971
01:59:45,300 --> 01:59:48,420
point in changing that outcome exists.

1972
01:59:48,580 --> 01:59:53,860
And there's strong selection pressures on, or there would be selection pressures to sort of

1973
01:59:53,860 --> 01:59:59,380
note the WTR kinds of things that you can intervene upon by

1974
01:59:59,380 --> 02:00:05,220
planning and deliberation and things, motivation versus things like broken bones,

1975
02:00:05,380 --> 02:00:06,260
roughly speaking.

1976
02:00:07,850 --> 02:00:12,490
I am gonna have to be further convinced because I I guess I I see what you're saying.

1977
02:00:12,570 --> 02:00:12,730
Yeah.

1978
02:00:12,890 --> 02:00:18,170
And I just I guess what I'm thinking is I don't care about your rehabilitation.

1979
02:00:18,730 --> 02:00:22,170
I don't think I don't think blame and responsibility are for your rehabilitation.

1980
02:00:22,330 --> 02:00:27,530
I just think it's it's for my usage to coordinate people to come after you.

1981
02:00:27,690 --> 02:00:32,330
Like and if you're responsible and then we can get rid of you and ship you off to an

1982
02:00:32,330 --> 02:00:32,970
island.

1983
02:00:33,960 --> 02:00:35,480
there's no rehabilitation there.

1984
02:00:35,560 --> 02:00:41,000
There's no chance of like I so I I but I do wonder I do wonder the extra the extra thing

1985
02:00:41,000 --> 02:00:41,640
that you're talking about.

1986
02:00:41,720 --> 02:00:46,920
We agree in terms of it's a coordination thing, but the idea that it's a mechanism that

1987
02:00:46,920 --> 02:00:52,440
then says it's for your readjustment, your re education.

1988
02:00:52,840 --> 02:00:54,520
Yeah, I I mean I think I don't disagree.

1989
02:00:57,430 --> 02:01:03,350
a larger the the the attribution that the agent is responsible is the is the full

1990
02:01:03,350 --> 02:01:08,150
subset but then you know that might apply to you like your child and you know your child

1991
02:01:08,390 --> 02:01:14,230
the planning and assessment systems that led your child to get injured the attribution

1992
02:01:14,310 --> 02:01:18,070
they are responsible for getting hurt as opposed to it was an accident or somebody else did

1993
02:01:18,070 --> 02:01:23,840
it to them then evokes in you the hey, by the way, you know, the causal

1994
02:01:23,840 --> 02:01:24,320
chain of things.

1995
02:01:24,560 --> 02:01:27,440
You should you should have paid attention to this, pay attention to it more.

1996
02:01:27,680 --> 02:01:33,360
There's another part of that then diagram then is not your child, but also like people that

1997
02:01:33,360 --> 02:01:39,120
you already are in a coalitional um antipathy with, and then you can use it

1998
02:01:39,120 --> 02:01:39,920
exactly in this way.

1999
02:01:40,000 --> 02:01:45,280
So I don't disagree that one of the outcomes of the responsibility

2000
02:01:45,280 --> 02:01:49,530
attribution can be alliance alliance e.

2001
02:01:49,610 --> 02:01:53,050
And in fact, the other way around, where if you're already interested in having an

2002
02:01:53,050 --> 02:01:58,970
alliance, uh go aga go after these people, there's an appetite for, just like

2003
02:01:58,970 --> 02:02:03,370
there's an appetite for disgust, to even hallucinate disgust, it's to hallucinate

2004
02:02:03,370 --> 02:02:04,890
responsibility or blame, right?

2005
02:02:04,970 --> 02:02:09,770
To in order to for then to be a basis of ganging up on them.

2006
02:02:10,010 --> 02:02:11,530
So um so no, I don't think it's a good thing.

2007
02:02:14,570 --> 02:02:20,320
So what what led to blame and responsibility is a way to pinpoint

2008
02:02:20,320 --> 02:02:21,440
causality.

2009
02:02:21,920 --> 02:02:26,960
Well I think cause in like a tube way to highlight causality is just the um

2010
02:02:27,760 --> 02:02:33,360
it's a what the mind is doing is highlighting a leverage point in changing

2011
02:02:33,360 --> 02:02:34,240
behavior.

2012
02:02:34,480 --> 02:02:37,520
It's not the full nexus of of causation.

2013
02:02:37,760 --> 02:02:43,670
So you know, when if I if I pick up a cup and pour it over, we

2014
02:02:43,670 --> 02:02:47,750
focus on like, you know, pour the pour the water out or the coffee out.

2015
02:02:47,990 --> 02:02:53,750
The thing that will change that happening again is convincing me and my planning and

2016
02:02:53,750 --> 02:02:58,710
representational systems not to do that, not to like, you know, um uh you know,

2017
02:02:59,030 --> 02:03:01,750
boycott the person who made the mug or see.

2018
02:03:01,830 --> 02:03:06,630
I see it as you pour something over the mic and you cause it, you cause the mic to get wet.

2019
02:03:06,800 --> 02:03:07,120
Yeah.

2020
02:03:07,440 --> 02:03:09,200
And there that's all there is to it.

2021
02:03:09,360 --> 02:03:10,560
That's all there is to it.

2022
02:03:10,800 --> 02:03:12,720
You bring in a third party.

2023
02:03:13,040 --> 02:03:16,720
He's responsible for ruining that.

2024
02:03:17,040 --> 02:03:20,640
Like I I'm I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna have I'm gonna think about what you're saying.

2025
02:03:20,880 --> 02:03:26,400
But my point is is that why what what else what else do why what's

2026
02:03:26,640 --> 02:03:29,040
why the extra colorful language?

2027
02:03:29,280 --> 02:03:30,640
I guess is all I'm saying.

2028
02:03:30,880 --> 02:03:36,310
It seems to be interesting, colorful language rather than this is what happened.

2029
02:03:36,550 --> 02:03:38,550
Like let me explain to you the cause and event.

2030
02:03:38,630 --> 02:03:40,950
Like you did this and then this is what happened.

2031
02:03:41,110 --> 02:03:44,150
Like and and so don't do that again.

2032
02:03:44,470 --> 02:03:44,790
Right.

2033
02:03:44,950 --> 02:03:49,990
Why why this extra layer of is it it does it does it come for free?

2034
02:03:50,150 --> 02:03:50,950
Is it just extra?

2035
02:03:51,030 --> 02:03:51,830
Are they synonyms?

2036
02:03:51,910 --> 02:03:52,150
I don't know.

2037
02:03:52,310 --> 02:03:53,830
That's I guess my that's what I see.

2038
02:03:53,990 --> 02:03:54,230
I see.

2039
02:03:55,030 --> 02:03:56,870
I think that's yeah, no, no, I see what you're saying.

2040
02:03:56,950 --> 02:03:57,270
Yeah, yeah.

2041
02:03:57,680 --> 02:03:58,960
Very deep into the weeds.

2042
02:03:59,760 --> 02:04:00,400
No, it's fun.

2043
02:04:00,480 --> 02:04:01,040
It's fun to think about.

2044
02:04:01,280 --> 02:04:03,680
I mean, it's almost co-opting this language of ownership.

2045
02:04:03,840 --> 02:04:08,960
Like to be responsible for an action is almost to own the action as a possession in the

2046
02:04:08,960 --> 02:04:13,840
same way that, you know, if I uh have, you know, I I'm responsible for the behavior of my

2047
02:04:13,840 --> 02:04:14,000
dog.

2048
02:04:14,160 --> 02:04:16,160
If my dog bites you, I'm responsible.

2049
02:04:16,320 --> 02:04:17,360
I own the dog.

2050
02:04:17,520 --> 02:04:21,440
Um, and so I'm you know I should be held responsible if the dog bites you.

2051
02:04:21,680 --> 02:04:27,310
Um and it's almost like applying that ownership psychology to the behavior itself.

2052
02:04:29,630 --> 02:04:34,910
The way I'm thinking of it and translating your ideas in my head, Dave, is just to have

2053
02:04:34,910 --> 02:04:39,950
free will and to be responsible for my actions is just to be responsive to incentives.

2054
02:04:41,230 --> 02:04:45,470
And if I am responsive to incentives, then it makes sense to incentivize me.

2055
02:04:45,550 --> 02:04:48,910
It makes sense to offer rewards and punishments to change my behavior.

2056
02:04:48,990 --> 02:04:53,760
And if I'm not responsive to incentives, if I'm just behaving compulsively or helplessly or

2057
02:04:53,760 --> 02:04:58,080
under the influence of a drug or or someone who has a gun to my head, then it makes no

2058
02:04:58,080 --> 02:05:01,280
sense to offer rewards and punishments because they're going to have no influence on me.

2059
02:05:01,440 --> 02:05:05,760
So what it means to be free and responsible is it is to be the type of agent that is

2060
02:05:05,760 --> 02:05:09,920
sensitive to the types of rewards and punishments that other can others can offer.

2061
02:05:10,000 --> 02:05:12,000
Um is that basically what what you're saying, Dave?

2062
02:05:12,240 --> 02:05:15,840
Yeah, I mean, it's it's there's actually a definition of free will that is reasons

2063
02:05:16,080 --> 02:05:16,800
responsiveness.

2064
02:05:16,880 --> 02:05:22,530
And the idea is, I mean, the the paper, the core idea is that why free will,

2065
02:05:22,850 --> 02:05:25,730
what free will is, is sort of a representational entry.

2066
02:05:25,810 --> 02:05:28,130
It's not an objective feature of the world.

2067
02:05:28,210 --> 02:05:33,730
And it's a representational entry that's basically assessing to what extent what we're

2068
02:05:33,730 --> 02:05:38,290
calling an intentional intervention, which is sort of appealing to motivations, goals,

2069
02:05:38,530 --> 02:05:43,970
desires, those kinds of things, either in you or in a third party is effective.

2070
02:05:44,050 --> 02:05:49,520
So the degree to which an intentional intervention is effective, that is what the free will

2071
02:05:49,520 --> 02:05:50,000
representation.

2072
02:05:50,240 --> 02:05:54,000
I mean, I don't think in the evolved system it's it's like tagged as the free will system.

2073
02:05:54,080 --> 02:05:58,720
But I think when people talk about free will, in large part it's a result of that system

2074
02:05:59,280 --> 02:06:03,680
and that representation of the efficacy of intentional interventions for yourself and

2075
02:06:03,680 --> 02:06:04,080
others.

2076
02:06:04,160 --> 02:06:10,080
And a concomitant of that, or one way to explain why reason's responsiveness

2077
02:06:10,480 --> 02:06:14,320
is part of the theorizing and the debate about free will, is exactly what you've said,

2078
02:06:14,480 --> 02:06:20,130
which is that if um if i'm doing something uh

2079
02:06:20,290 --> 02:06:25,890
i have free will about it if i have reasons for doing it and if you can change the reasons

2080
02:06:25,890 --> 02:06:31,490
for why i'm doing something like let's say i have a certain political ideology and um the

2081
02:06:31,490 --> 02:06:37,090
reason why i have it is for a certain reason x and you say actually if you're really

2082
02:06:37,090 --> 02:06:43,060
interested in x you should have this other political i ideology right um to the degree that

2083
02:06:43,060 --> 02:06:47,940
I am right that I'm choosing political ideology because of X, I should be able to, you

2084
02:06:47,940 --> 02:06:48,900
should be able to change my mind.

2085
02:06:48,980 --> 02:06:49,220
Right.

2086
02:06:49,300 --> 02:06:53,220
And so that's the idea that in a in I can, I'm free to change that.

2087
02:06:53,380 --> 02:06:54,900
And I can even change my own, you know.

2088
02:06:54,980 --> 02:07:00,340
If I say I really care about X, um, like let's say I'm devoted to my government um and I'm

2089
02:07:00,340 --> 02:07:01,620
free to choose to do that.

2090
02:07:01,780 --> 02:07:05,220
And then somebody convinces me my government isn't good.

2091
02:07:05,460 --> 02:07:11,390
If I if I still feel like, oh, for some reason I still can't, you know, be be disloyal

2092
02:07:11,390 --> 02:07:11,950
to my government.

2093
02:07:12,030 --> 02:07:13,870
I mean, I don't experience myself as free.

2094
02:07:13,950 --> 02:07:16,910
Like there's something compelling me that isn't me, right?

2095
02:07:17,070 --> 02:07:17,630
Within me.

2096
02:07:17,790 --> 02:07:23,070
Or like, you know, my own deliberation, motivation, reasoning systems are not

2097
02:07:23,950 --> 02:07:27,710
under the control of this motivation system that's sort of autonomous from me.

2098
02:07:27,790 --> 02:07:32,110
And it's just compelling me to be like loyal to my government, even though I don't want to

2099
02:07:32,110 --> 02:07:35,920
be, meaning like the I, meaning like these planning and motivational systems.

2100
02:07:36,160 --> 02:07:41,920
So um so yeah, reasons responsiveness, the idea behind why that is coming up

2101
02:07:41,920 --> 02:07:47,520
in free will, and that's not our idea about reasons responsiveness, but it's that it's it's

2102
02:07:47,520 --> 02:07:51,920
ultimately informing it's what it's because it's about this adaptation for assessing this

2103
02:07:51,920 --> 02:07:55,200
efficacy of intentional interventions, if that makes sense.

2104
02:07:55,520 --> 02:08:01,030
I I just want to I'm gonna throw at the same time I totally agree with Deb that this

2105
02:08:01,030 --> 02:08:03,750
psychology is often co-opted and exploited by coalitions.

2106
02:08:04,070 --> 02:08:04,550
Oh totally.

2107
02:08:04,870 --> 02:08:05,030
Yeah.

2108
02:08:05,190 --> 02:08:05,430
Yeah.

2109
02:08:05,750 --> 02:08:10,870
I well I actually I just in the spirit of entertaining all hypotheses here, my particular,

2110
02:08:11,190 --> 02:08:16,630
I mean like I'm having a hard time moving off the position of the more parsimonious

2111
02:08:16,630 --> 02:08:21,830
explanation of I need in order to coordinate people,

2112
02:08:22,710 --> 02:08:25,430
I need to have them enter the matrix.

2113
02:08:25,860 --> 02:08:29,140
And the matrix is everyone gets to choose.

2114
02:08:29,380 --> 02:08:34,420
And if we all agree everyone gets to choose, then anyone can be gone after.

2115
02:08:34,740 --> 02:08:40,660
Because I have to make sure that I get away from as far away from the idea that

2116
02:08:40,660 --> 02:08:46,660
of a causal physics in order to ensure that I have every

2117
02:08:46,660 --> 02:08:48,260
right to be able to go after everyone.

2118
02:08:48,340 --> 02:08:54,190
And free will is the motherlode of like it just basically says you could have

2119
02:08:54,190 --> 02:08:58,670
chosen otherwise, and that is anything goes now.

2120
02:08:58,830 --> 02:09:03,710
And so the idea, as soon as I can get everyone to agree that everyone can choose,

2121
02:09:04,750 --> 02:09:05,230
that's it.

2122
02:09:05,470 --> 02:09:05,790
Interesting.

2123
02:09:06,110 --> 02:09:09,790
Then then my coordination, then the coordination psychology takes off, right?

2124
02:09:09,950 --> 02:09:13,820
Because then it's as if as soon as you're like, well you couldn't choose.

2125
02:09:14,060 --> 02:09:19,180
And so that's an interesting part, like, you know, people don't like people who wanna rail

2126
02:09:19,180 --> 02:09:24,460
against gays, they don't like to hear like they couldn't choose that, just like you didn't

2127
02:09:24,460 --> 02:09:26,060
choose heterosexuality, right?

2128
02:09:26,140 --> 02:09:28,220
They don't they're like, Man, I don't like that argument.

2129
02:09:29,340 --> 02:09:34,700
And so I I mean, but the idea like they couldn't choose, and it's like that prevents them

2130
02:09:34,700 --> 02:09:35,740
from coordinating.

2131
02:09:35,820 --> 02:09:35,900
Yeah.

2132
02:09:36,540 --> 02:09:38,670
So and and I just I find that interesting.

2133
02:09:38,910 --> 02:09:42,110
So, anyway, so that's that's my only that was that's where I come to free will.

2134
02:09:42,190 --> 02:09:48,190
I know it's a very lovely, cheery side of free will, but I see it as

2135
02:09:48,190 --> 02:09:50,430
the requirement for coordination.

2136
02:09:50,750 --> 02:09:51,950
Yeah, cool.

2137
02:09:52,190 --> 02:09:57,870
So anyway, it's almost like a god uh it's like a God of the gaps argument where like people

2138
02:09:57,870 --> 02:10:02,500
try to put God into any uh area of scientific inquiry that we don't yet understand.

2139
02:10:02,580 --> 02:10:03,220
Oh, God did it.

2140
02:10:03,380 --> 02:10:06,980
And as soon as we understand it, then they they find a different gap to sneak God in.

2141
02:10:07,220 --> 02:10:11,140
It's almost like what you're saying is um if we're trying to coordinate a coalition against

2142
02:10:11,140 --> 02:10:16,820
someone, there are all these causal stories we could tell to uh uh cancel the uh the

2143
02:10:17,060 --> 02:10:19,300
the justification for attacking that person.

2144
02:10:19,540 --> 02:10:24,410
Um and we're looking for some gap to fit the justification into.

2145
02:10:24,730 --> 02:10:29,850
And that gap is free will, just as y you know, w it's it's this area outside of causal

2146
02:10:29,850 --> 02:10:34,250
determinism that we can that's uncorruptible and that we can use that as a as a

2147
02:10:34,250 --> 02:10:37,530
coordination point um for for going after this person.

2148
02:10:37,690 --> 02:10:38,890
Is that basically what you're saying?

2149
02:10:39,290 --> 02:10:40,090
Yeah, pretty much.

2150
02:10:40,250 --> 02:10:43,680
Like I like in order to coordinate, it's like, let's see, disgust gonna work.

2151
02:10:43,760 --> 02:10:46,000
All right, maybe not here, although it works everywhere.

2152
02:10:46,160 --> 02:10:48,960
Anger, maybe fear, like you go down your list of stuff.

2153
02:10:49,040 --> 02:10:52,800
And I think that just free will is one of those things that allows you to it's just like,

2154
02:10:52,880 --> 02:10:54,640
you know, you could choose.

2155
02:10:55,440 --> 02:11:01,040
It's like it's like the ultimate it's it was it's the ultimate kind of uh, you know,

2156
02:11:01,280 --> 02:11:02,720
lightning rod, you know.

2157
02:11:03,040 --> 02:11:04,160
It's the conversation stopper.

2158
02:11:04,320 --> 02:11:06,240
It's the God did it, you know, be you know?

2159
02:11:06,480 --> 02:11:06,800
Yeah.

2160
02:11:07,040 --> 02:11:07,200
Yeah.

2161
02:11:07,390 --> 02:11:08,350
No, I think it's interesting.

2162
02:11:08,590 --> 02:11:09,870
Well, I I really look forward.

2163
02:11:10,030 --> 02:11:12,110
We haven't had a lot of that kind of conversation.

2164
02:11:12,190 --> 02:11:16,350
That's a topic that just has not been in any journal for a while.

2165
02:11:16,430 --> 02:11:18,830
It's going to be exciting to see what happens.

2166
02:11:18,990 --> 02:11:22,910
And so uh, and hopefully some philosophers will chime in too.

2167
02:11:23,070 --> 02:11:24,430
Too bad Dennett's not around.

2168
02:11:24,670 --> 02:11:27,710
Yeah, Christian Liszt has some great work, and we we actually talked to him.

2169
02:11:27,790 --> 02:11:30,750
We had went back and forth a lot, and he's a big fan of this work.

2170
02:11:30,830 --> 02:11:31,950
So I look forward to it.

2171
02:11:32,030 --> 02:11:35,630
And I'm looking forward to, I know you know David is one of the other people doing this,

2172
02:11:35,710 --> 02:11:39,280
um, is sort of the evolutionary psychology of philosophy of mind.

2173
02:11:39,440 --> 02:11:45,360
Like I really think that the fact that all of philosophy and

2174
02:11:45,360 --> 02:11:51,360
most like a lot of philosophy is predicated on ideas prior to the

2175
02:11:51,360 --> 02:11:56,960
notion of how information gets into phenotypes over multiple

2176
02:11:56,960 --> 02:11:57,520
generations.

2177
02:11:57,680 --> 02:12:03,520
So a lot of it was sort of stuck with like, what what does a blank slate,

2178
02:12:03,870 --> 02:12:07,230
what can a blank slate know by the time it dies, right?

2179
02:12:07,310 --> 02:12:09,150
Like just with an individual lifespan.

2180
02:12:09,310 --> 02:12:15,310
And so if you read like even um Hume, for example, a lot of the ideas of

2181
02:12:15,310 --> 02:12:21,230
Hume, if you actually read association not as a within lifespan

2182
02:12:21,230 --> 02:12:26,350
time, but but sort of this idea of over multiple generations, it's actually like of psych,

2183
02:12:26,590 --> 02:12:26,830
right?

2184
02:12:27,390 --> 02:12:32,600
So in other words, like there's a lot of prior to Darwin without

2185
02:12:32,600 --> 02:12:38,600
understanding how historical time can show up in organisms, there's a lot

2186
02:12:38,600 --> 02:12:44,520
of ideas that once you just add that, oh no, multi differential reproductive success is how

2187
02:12:44,520 --> 02:12:47,800
structure gets into the individual phenotype.

2188
02:12:48,280 --> 02:12:52,440
I think a lot of philosophical issues sort of change.

2189
02:12:52,520 --> 02:12:58,040
And I think there's this enormous um um thing still to be done of

2190
02:12:58,120 --> 02:13:04,090
sort of um integrating evolutionary psychology with philosophy of mind, not just for

2191
02:13:04,090 --> 02:13:09,530
like feckless uh bookkeeping reasons either, but like there's tons of studies

2192
02:13:11,770 --> 02:13:16,010
that are predicated on, like, for example, there's all these LeBay studies on free will.

2193
02:13:16,090 --> 02:13:20,250
And one of the things we point out in our paper is like these might all just be for

2194
02:13:20,250 --> 02:13:20,890
nothing.

2195
02:13:20,970 --> 02:13:22,250
Um, for example.

2196
02:13:22,410 --> 02:13:26,730
So it's like, you know, more money than you or I or all three of us have ever gotten, and

2197
02:13:26,730 --> 02:13:32,620
grants have been spent on the neurocognitive activity prior to a decision for this label

2198
02:13:32,620 --> 02:13:35,420
study, and it might not be for any good reason, right?

2199
02:13:35,580 --> 02:13:40,300
So these have important theoretical implications or like empirical implications too.

2200
02:13:40,380 --> 02:13:42,780
So I look forward to that as a new area.

2201
02:13:43,340 --> 02:13:43,900
Absolutely.

2202
02:13:44,220 --> 02:13:45,340
Can I can I ask?

2203
02:13:45,500 --> 02:13:49,020
I know that we're probably going to need to wrap up soon, but I just want to ask the two of

2204
02:13:49,020 --> 02:13:52,250
you, like where you see the field of EbSight going.

2205
02:13:52,410 --> 02:13:55,930
Like, what are you most excited about in addition to the things you just talked about?

2206
02:13:58,010 --> 02:14:03,850
Uh I would echo I would echo Dave's uh I would echo Dave's excitement about um

2207
02:14:03,850 --> 02:14:08,170
using evolutionary psychology to shed light on philosophy and philosophy of mind.

2208
02:14:08,250 --> 02:14:12,890
I see a large part of the discipline of philosophy as you know uh making arguments that

2209
02:14:12,890 --> 02:14:18,760
appeal to intuitions, uh where while the philosophers are uh in the dark about the origins

2210
02:14:18,760 --> 02:14:19,960
of those intuitions.

2211
02:14:20,040 --> 02:14:25,320
Uh and I think the the best way to do philosophy is to figure out where those intuitions

2212
02:14:25,320 --> 02:14:25,960
come from.

2213
02:14:26,120 --> 02:14:31,400
Uh and only then can we say whether we should uh you know trust these intuitions or but not

2214
02:14:31,400 --> 02:14:32,280
these ones, right?

2215
02:14:32,360 --> 02:14:36,280
We need to actually do some good evolutionary psychology to figure out uh where these

2216
02:14:36,280 --> 02:14:37,480
intuitions are coming from.

2217
02:14:37,560 --> 02:14:41,960
Um there's an interesting uh so I'm I'm bringing this into the the study of consciousness,

2218
02:14:42,040 --> 02:14:42,600
for example.

2219
02:14:42,760 --> 02:14:47,810
Uh the philosopher David Chalmers uh talks about the hard problem of consciousness, which

2220
02:14:47,810 --> 02:14:51,250
is how does consciousness arise from mere brain activity?

2221
02:14:51,570 --> 02:14:57,010
Um, and he also talks about the meta problem of consciousness, which is why does it seem

2222
02:14:57,010 --> 02:14:58,210
like there's a hard problem?

2223
02:14:58,370 --> 02:15:03,090
Why do we have these intuitions that brain activity and consciousness are fundamentally

2224
02:15:03,090 --> 02:15:04,050
different things?

2225
02:15:04,530 --> 02:15:09,090
And so I think the way to solve the hard problem is to first solve the meta problem.

2226
02:15:09,570 --> 02:15:15,460
Um, and I think that is true of uh all if not you know most or or

2227
02:15:15,460 --> 02:15:20,580
all of philosophical problems, uh that we need to first translate them into meta problems

2228
02:15:20,580 --> 02:15:23,620
and solve them, and then we can begin to solve the actual problem.

2229
02:15:24,020 --> 02:15:29,620
Um so I'm excited about uh you know Dave's work, the evolutionary psychology of

2230
02:15:29,620 --> 02:15:34,420
psychology, the evolutionary psychology of philosophy and our philosophical intuitions.

2231
02:15:34,910 --> 02:15:40,190
I would love to see the field do more mathematical modeling and more and more game theory.

2232
02:15:40,350 --> 02:15:45,870
I know uh we we had Dan Conroy Beam and Bean on, and he was uh you know he's an evangelist

2233
02:15:45,870 --> 02:15:50,430
for for more math modeling in the field, and I think he's right, and we need to uh do more

2234
02:15:50,430 --> 02:15:51,070
of that.

2235
02:15:51,550 --> 02:15:54,430
Um what else am I excited about?

2236
02:15:54,670 --> 02:15:58,030
Um those are those are the two big ones.

2237
02:15:58,240 --> 02:16:03,280
Um I I I want I want evolutionary psychology to take over uh in addition to philosophy, I

2238
02:16:03,280 --> 02:16:05,040
want it to take over political science.

2239
02:16:05,280 --> 02:16:10,000
Um there are there are too few uh evolutionary uh minded people in in political science.

2240
02:16:10,160 --> 02:16:11,040
I'm trying to change that.

2241
02:16:11,120 --> 02:16:14,880
I tried to change that with my paper uh on on the alliance theory of political belief

2242
02:16:14,880 --> 02:16:17,440
systems, but I think there's much more work to be done there.

2243
02:16:18,000 --> 02:16:20,240
Do you go to any A SI um conferences?

2244
02:16:20,400 --> 02:16:25,450
Like is that something that you're may I've been I was invited to a couple of them I

2245
02:16:25,450 --> 02:16:30,810
ultimately decided not to go but I I'm maybe maybe I'll try to uh go there and uh and you

2246
02:16:30,810 --> 02:16:36,730
know spread the good word of uh of what what what would John do um but

2247
02:16:38,170 --> 02:16:43,770
uh yeah I'm excited about that I think uh economics I think we we should

2248
02:16:43,780 --> 02:16:47,300
bring more evolutionary psychology into economics.

2249
02:16:47,700 --> 02:16:53,620
Uh consumer behavior, rationality, you know, uh uh there, I

2250
02:16:53,620 --> 02:16:54,660
mean the sky's the limit.

2251
02:16:54,820 --> 02:17:00,100
Anything that stems from a human is ultimately within the the purview of evolutionary

2252
02:17:00,100 --> 02:17:00,580
psychology.

2253
02:17:00,740 --> 02:17:03,780
Humans are animals, they're products of the Darwinian process.

2254
02:17:03,940 --> 02:17:09,690
Anything that comes out of a human has to be uh subject to uh evolutionary psychological

2255
02:17:09,690 --> 02:17:10,250
reasoning.

2256
02:17:10,330 --> 02:17:15,210
I mean people people talk about it as as reduction reductionism or reductionism gone too

2257
02:17:15,210 --> 02:17:15,450
far.

2258
02:17:15,610 --> 02:17:17,290
I don't view it as reduction at all.

2259
02:17:17,450 --> 02:17:19,050
It's it we're already animals.

2260
02:17:19,210 --> 02:17:20,810
Like that there's no reducing.

2261
02:17:20,970 --> 02:17:25,610
Like the human mind already is an evolved organ that's been shaped by natural selection.

2262
02:17:25,690 --> 02:17:27,370
There's no reducing to do, right?

2263
02:17:27,530 --> 02:17:28,730
It's all there on the surface.

2264
02:17:28,890 --> 02:17:32,010
We just gotta, you know, take the right lens to view it.

2265
02:17:32,340 --> 02:17:38,020
Um if we change their vocabulary from reduction, if someone if anyone says that to you, I

2266
02:17:38,260 --> 02:17:40,180
say that sounds like you're denying it.

2267
02:17:40,500 --> 02:17:42,660
I think that's that's how you kind of get them off that.

2268
02:17:42,740 --> 02:17:42,980
Right.

2269
02:17:43,140 --> 02:17:47,300
So it's like, are you denying that there's a because I think that's all that we I need to

2270
02:17:47,300 --> 02:17:47,620
ask.

2271
02:17:47,780 --> 02:17:50,100
And then like, well, no, like well me neither.

2272
02:17:50,180 --> 02:17:51,140
So we're on the same page.

2273
02:17:51,220 --> 02:17:52,260
It matters.

2274
02:17:53,780 --> 02:17:58,430
So no I think the political science, Casey Klofstadt is here at UM.

2275
02:17:58,510 --> 02:18:02,350
Uh, and he's a he's one of the very few political scientists, I think, that has and well,

2276
02:18:02,430 --> 02:18:04,270
in addition to Michael Bang Peterson, sir.

2277
02:18:04,350 --> 02:18:04,910
Michael Bang Person.

2278
02:18:05,070 --> 02:18:05,790
Yeah, he's knighted.

2279
02:18:05,870 --> 02:18:09,550
We've never had a knight on um, unless you're knighted, Deb.

2280
02:18:10,110 --> 02:18:12,270
I um are can women be knighted?

2281
02:18:12,350 --> 02:18:13,310
Is that a strange question?

2282
02:18:13,550 --> 02:18:15,150
That's not a that's a very good question.

2283
02:18:15,310 --> 02:18:16,990
And if not, that's a problem.

2284
02:18:17,390 --> 02:18:20,110
What could we be if not knighted?

2285
02:18:23,140 --> 02:18:24,420
Somebody's gonna have to Google that.

2286
02:18:29,540 --> 02:18:31,380
Don't think I'm not gonna ask as soon as we get it.

2287
02:18:33,380 --> 02:18:33,540
Yeah.

2288
02:18:33,700 --> 02:18:34,340
Okay, sorry.

2289
02:18:34,500 --> 02:18:34,740
Yes.

2290
02:18:34,980 --> 02:18:36,260
Um have no titles.

2291
02:18:36,340 --> 02:18:36,500
Yeah.

2292
02:18:36,820 --> 02:18:39,140
Those are great, those are all great directions.

2293
02:18:39,300 --> 02:18:45,060
And so uh, you know, in the like I said, I'm stepping down from EHB in

2294
02:18:45,140 --> 02:18:49,300
uh I think I have like another year and a half or something like that.

2295
02:18:49,570 --> 02:18:53,330
I think it's technically two years, but in a year and a half, I think I'm gonna have to

2296
02:18:53,330 --> 02:18:55,970
bring someone else on to at least help train them up.

2297
02:18:56,130 --> 02:18:59,090
Although it's like like I said, it's not, it's not that hard.

2298
02:18:59,330 --> 02:19:01,890
Um it's just time, a lot of time.

2299
02:19:02,050 --> 02:19:07,890
And so uh but if you in the meantime in the next 18 months you want to put something

2300
02:19:07,890 --> 02:19:13,730
together on this philosophy, political science, economics, even a hodgepodge of ideas

2301
02:19:13,890 --> 02:19:19,200
or evolution evolutionary psychology into the future, like, you know, please take me up on

2302
02:19:19,200 --> 02:19:19,760
that offer.

2303
02:19:19,840 --> 02:19:25,600
I'm concerned that the next whoever takes it over after is is not going to take the time to

2304
02:19:25,680 --> 02:19:28,400
to do some of these special um features.

2305
02:19:28,560 --> 02:19:33,840
And so I really want to kind of um take full advantage while I am while I'm doing it.

2306
02:19:33,920 --> 02:19:38,160
So if you if you if you have any ideas, I I really am all ears.

2307
02:19:38,400 --> 02:19:43,670
But again, even bringing people in who might not get it right,

2308
02:19:44,950 --> 02:19:49,190
bringing them in for the conversation and have the have it be a conversation, or picking

2309
02:19:49,190 --> 02:19:52,710
one person in the field of philosophy or economics or political science.

2310
02:19:52,870 --> 02:19:57,270
Let's write a paper and let's go back and forth, have some commentary just to kind of see

2311
02:19:57,270 --> 02:20:02,950
whether or not there's any um there's anything that we can take from it and any any

2312
02:20:03,110 --> 02:20:08,940
anything that can be used, you know, for re programs of research or

2313
02:20:08,940 --> 02:20:10,060
future work or whatever.

2314
02:20:10,140 --> 02:20:11,100
So think about it.

2315
02:20:11,260 --> 02:20:15,420
And also pass it along to other people that on the, you know, that you find are saying some

2316
02:20:15,420 --> 02:20:19,180
interesting stuff who might not be exactly evolutionary, but are interested in learning.

2317
02:20:19,580 --> 02:20:19,900
Awesome.

2318
02:20:20,060 --> 02:20:22,540
How about start keep the conversation going?

2319
02:20:23,420 --> 02:20:29,180
We have uh one question we usually ask towards the end, um, sometimes as a stumper, which

2320
02:20:29,180 --> 02:20:31,980
is uh, is there anything we should have asked you?

2321
02:20:35,070 --> 02:20:38,270
I think we went from like one end to the other.

2322
02:20:38,750 --> 02:20:41,950
I mean we covered uh we covered a wide range of related free will.

2323
02:20:42,270 --> 02:20:44,990
Yes, you actually there is something you should have asked me.

2324
02:20:45,230 --> 02:20:46,910
You didn't ask me about tears.

2325
02:20:48,350 --> 02:20:49,710
Tell us about tears.

2326
02:20:50,190 --> 02:20:50,510
No.

2327
02:20:51,950 --> 02:20:52,830
Oh, you're gonna make tears.

2328
02:20:55,980 --> 02:20:59,180
Um have you had Daniel on here?

2329
02:20:59,260 --> 02:21:00,940
Uh we we plan to.

2330
02:21:01,100 --> 02:21:01,580
We plan to.

2331
02:21:01,900 --> 02:21:02,060
Yeah.

2332
02:21:02,220 --> 02:21:04,060
But uh no, the dance newser's great.

2333
02:21:04,140 --> 02:21:04,380
Yeah.

2334
02:21:04,780 --> 02:21:09,180
Well, I'll tell you I'll tell you one of the what I mean, this is why being at EHBU is so

2335
02:21:09,180 --> 02:21:15,020
fun, is because uh Asmir uh Gorsanin, I don't know how to pronounce his last name, so I

2336
02:21:15,020 --> 02:21:18,940
apologize for messing that up, but he he's done a lot of work on tears and he was talking

2337
02:21:18,940 --> 02:21:24,550
about how emotions, um, having adding tears to emotions makes them a little bit easier to

2338
02:21:24,550 --> 02:21:25,510
recognize and so forth.

2339
02:21:25,590 --> 02:21:30,790
But I was reading through his paper and it dawned on me like this is WTR.

2340
02:21:30,950 --> 02:21:34,630
Like it was just like I it struck me over the head, and I'm like, but I have no time to do

2341
02:21:34,630 --> 02:21:34,790
it.

2342
02:21:34,870 --> 02:21:39,510
So I like, Daniel, like you want to start a project because he's so good at thinking about

2343
02:21:39,510 --> 02:21:41,590
stuff and putting stuff together and writing stuff up.

2344
02:21:41,750 --> 02:21:45,120
And so, but basically, the idea is that, you know, what are tears?

2345
02:21:45,280 --> 02:21:49,440
You know, we kind of never really had an evolutionary idea of what tears were, but it's

2346
02:21:49,440 --> 02:21:53,920
like the it's it's the opposite of the scream and the yell, which can be used for good and

2347
02:21:53,920 --> 02:21:58,240
bad, but tears can be the kind of signal positive and negative sorts of things.

2348
02:21:58,400 --> 02:22:04,240
But the question is tears do seem to be a signal of either value or

2349
02:22:04,240 --> 02:22:08,240
benefit kind of thing, depending on the particular uh context.

2350
02:22:08,400 --> 02:22:10,160
So it's just an amplitude.

2351
02:22:10,320 --> 02:22:14,470
Um it it's an it's the amplifier for the low leveraged.

2352
02:22:14,630 --> 02:22:15,270
Isn't that awful?

2353
02:22:15,510 --> 02:22:16,230
But I think that's true.

2354
02:22:16,630 --> 02:22:17,030
Interesting.

2355
02:22:17,830 --> 02:22:22,870
That's a really nice example of taking a really an an obvious thing and not accepting we

2356
02:22:22,870 --> 02:22:26,390
don't know about it and trying to push on what's up with tears.

2357
02:22:26,950 --> 02:22:27,110
Yeah.

2358
02:22:27,510 --> 02:22:32,070
So the idea is that everything ranges from negative to positive value for me

2359
02:22:32,150 --> 02:22:33,190
psychologically.

2360
02:22:33,350 --> 02:22:39,030
And what tears are is signaling uh the tails of that distribution, the two extremes, either

2361
02:22:39,030 --> 02:22:41,920
extreme positive value or extreme negative value.

2362
02:22:42,000 --> 02:22:43,120
Is that the idea?

2363
02:22:43,440 --> 02:22:43,760
Yes.

2364
02:22:43,920 --> 02:22:49,840
But it's only it's it's not, it's, but it's communicating, you're imposing a lot of costs

2365
02:22:49,840 --> 02:22:50,400
on me.

2366
02:22:51,200 --> 02:22:56,640
And I don't have the physical leverage as, you know, or you know, the formidability, the

2367
02:22:56,640 --> 02:23:01,680
attractiveness, or the status or whatever, in order to kind of convince you to stop.

2368
02:23:01,760 --> 02:23:05,730
And so it's basically a signal of, you know, don't hurt me more.

2369
02:23:05,890 --> 02:23:07,330
Like I and I, it's intense.

2370
02:23:07,410 --> 02:23:11,570
Like you've intent, like otherwise, if I'm big and I'm and I can bop you over the head, I'm

2371
02:23:11,570 --> 02:23:12,530
not gonna use tears.

2372
02:23:12,690 --> 02:23:16,770
I'm gonna use my I'm gonna scream, I'm gonna use my permidability and I'm gonna deny you

2373
02:23:16,770 --> 02:23:17,490
benefits and all that.

2374
02:23:17,810 --> 02:23:19,170
So impose costs.

2375
02:23:19,410 --> 02:23:25,170
So I would say that the lower leverage person who is kind of caught in a situation um that

2376
02:23:25,410 --> 02:23:28,450
tears communicate the imposition of costs.

2377
02:23:28,690 --> 02:23:34,100
And I also think that on the positive side of things, you know, the

2378
02:23:34,100 --> 02:23:40,100
intense happy ingratitude sorts of things also tend to be done

2379
02:23:40,420 --> 02:23:45,140
by, I'll have to think about the the similar kind of um

2380
02:23:46,740 --> 02:23:52,340
the similar explanation in terms of the lower leveraged, but it does seem to be that, you

2381
02:23:52,340 --> 02:23:58,090
know, you don't you have it does seem to be that people of lower leverage, by which I will

2382
02:23:58,090 --> 02:24:04,090
define as smaller arm like circumference or something like this have small

2383
02:24:04,090 --> 02:24:09,690
arms kids you know they're gonna be more likely to weep at the positive right

2384
02:24:09,850 --> 02:24:15,690
and so and I would say as a so if you've

2385
02:24:15,690 --> 02:24:21,530
ever seen a very like strong man like begin to cry

2386
02:24:21,610 --> 02:24:27,420
like or or or like tear up it is it's it means it like it's either it's

2387
02:24:27,420 --> 02:24:30,380
really on the tail ends of either good or bad and it's substantial.

2388
02:24:30,540 --> 02:24:32,940
Like it's something things are extremely bad.

2389
02:24:33,100 --> 02:24:34,540
Like or extremely good.

2390
02:24:35,020 --> 02:24:41,020
But my point is that, you know, but the idea that, you know, weepiness is a kind of thing

2391
02:24:41,020 --> 02:24:43,660
for the is typically left for the lower leverage.

2392
02:24:43,740 --> 02:24:49,420
So you really have to be out leveraged and uh in order to make a very

2393
02:24:49,420 --> 02:24:55,290
large formidable beast so it's the i the the interaction of extreme value and

2394
02:24:55,290 --> 02:24:59,770
low leverage i think so i think that's exactly interesting so if you're writing fiction i

2395
02:24:59,770 --> 02:25:03,610
can't help but oh sorry david go ahead i was just gonna say like if you're writing fiction

2396
02:25:03,690 --> 02:25:08,890
a king crying would be would be interesting but a little kid crying would not be and it's

2397
02:25:08,890 --> 02:25:13,130
social emotions right so it's not like your hamburger really disgusts you and you're gonna

2398
02:25:13,130 --> 02:25:18,170
cry right it's not it's not the so it's even disgust you can partition out when to expect

2399
02:25:18,170 --> 02:25:23,900
it so social disgust you know versus a pathogen disgust that is um, you know, like a

2400
02:25:23,900 --> 02:25:24,460
hamburger.

2401
02:25:24,540 --> 02:25:28,620
Like you're not gonna, even though it could be intense, like it that would be like satire,

2402
02:25:28,780 --> 02:25:32,060
like seeing someone cry at their hamburger, right?

2403
02:25:32,220 --> 02:25:37,740
And so it could be that your parent didn't value you enough to make you the hot dog.

2404
02:25:37,900 --> 02:25:41,660
Like that could be why you're crying about the hamburger, but it's not the right.

2405
02:25:41,740 --> 02:25:42,940
So uh it's interesting.

2406
02:25:43,020 --> 02:25:44,620
Yeah, no, it's definitely communicative.

2407
02:25:44,700 --> 02:25:46,670
And I I can't help but ask this this question.

2408
02:25:46,750 --> 02:25:52,590
I know we ha we're we have to wrap up, but I'm uh I have uh fun an inkling of of suspicion

2409
02:25:52,590 --> 02:25:53,630
here of the story.

2410
02:25:53,870 --> 02:25:56,030
So um you're crying.

2411
02:25:56,190 --> 02:25:58,510
So I'm let's say I'm hurting you in in some way.

2412
02:25:58,590 --> 02:26:04,350
Uh may maybe I'm I'm bad mouthing how horrible evolution in human behavior is and how much

2413
02:26:04,350 --> 02:26:06,270
of a terrible job you've done with it over the years.

2414
02:26:06,430 --> 02:26:08,180
Uh and you're and you're weeping, right?

2415
02:26:08,580 --> 02:26:09,540
Probably not, but go ahead.

2416
02:26:10,980 --> 02:26:11,780
No, you probably wouldn't.

2417
02:26:11,940 --> 02:26:13,940
You're you're one of the ballsiest people I know.

2418
02:26:14,260 --> 02:26:14,900
I'd try.

2419
02:26:15,300 --> 02:26:16,420
You're more formidable than me.

2420
02:26:16,580 --> 02:26:18,020
I I'd probably be the one weeping.

2421
02:26:18,180 --> 02:26:24,100
Um so so you're you're weeping and uh and and uh the the tears make me stop and

2422
02:26:24,260 --> 02:26:25,860
and apologize, right?

2423
02:26:26,260 --> 02:26:26,580
Why?

2424
02:26:26,740 --> 02:26:27,780
Why should that work?

2425
02:26:28,020 --> 02:26:33,940
Like what what they do What reason do I

2426
02:26:33,940 --> 02:26:37,590
have as the signal recipient to respond to that signal.

2427
02:26:37,910 --> 02:26:40,310
Uh to the extent that you value my welfare at all.

2428
02:26:40,470 --> 02:26:43,030
So you won't care if you don't value my welfare at all.

2429
02:26:43,190 --> 02:26:43,430
Right.

2430
02:26:43,510 --> 02:26:47,590
So I actually, so I like to go very far out on the ledges, and this is not where I want to

2431
02:26:47,590 --> 02:26:47,830
end it.

2432
02:26:47,910 --> 02:26:49,430
So we'll bring it back to probably something positive.

2433
02:26:49,510 --> 02:26:54,390
But I was I you think about the like the the uh I was watching Black Mirror.

2434
02:26:54,470 --> 02:26:58,710
So you think about these crazy people who are like doing such awful things, but like the

2435
02:26:59,000 --> 02:27:05,000
the BTK, like the crazy killers who like get these girls and then like they do awful

2436
02:27:05,000 --> 02:27:07,080
things and they kill them, like these girls are crying.

2437
02:27:07,160 --> 02:27:09,160
Like they they're probably like everything's funny.

2438
02:27:09,480 --> 02:27:10,360
I don't even care.

2439
02:27:10,520 --> 02:27:10,760
Right.

2440
02:27:10,920 --> 02:27:12,760
So the tears aren't doing anything.

2441
02:27:12,920 --> 02:27:18,760
So like if I don't have any empathy or idea of your welfare or any, you know, I

2442
02:27:18,760 --> 02:27:21,800
don't care about your your, you know, it's to me, it's funny.

2443
02:27:22,200 --> 02:27:25,960
You know, it's like strange, that's a strange kind of reaction to be having.

2444
02:27:26,120 --> 02:27:27,640
Like you think I care.

2445
02:27:27,870 --> 02:27:30,830
Like, you know, like um and so that's gross.

2446
02:27:30,910 --> 02:27:31,070
Yeah.

2447
02:27:31,230 --> 02:27:31,710
I know, I know.

2448
02:27:32,190 --> 02:27:35,550
No, no, but I'm saying like that's an example of morality, disgust right there.

2449
02:27:35,630 --> 02:27:40,910
I just felt the the verse, the the use of morality using disgust and morality.

2450
02:27:40,990 --> 02:27:41,710
But no, that's right.

2451
02:27:41,790 --> 02:27:42,190
Yeah, yeah.

2452
02:27:42,670 --> 02:27:42,990
I see.

2453
02:27:43,070 --> 02:27:43,950
So it's a okay.

2454
02:27:44,030 --> 02:27:48,270
So it's a signal of the m the magnitude of the harm I'm inflicting you that I might not

2455
02:27:48,270 --> 02:27:49,390
have been aware of.

2456
02:27:49,470 --> 02:27:52,750
And it's really only gonna work on me insofar as I do value your welfare.

2457
02:27:52,910 --> 02:27:54,270
And if I don't, the tears aren't gonna work.

2458
02:27:54,510 --> 02:27:54,990
That's right.

2459
02:27:55,390 --> 02:27:55,710
Okay.

2460
02:27:56,350 --> 02:27:57,150
Interesting.

2461
02:27:57,390 --> 02:27:57,710
Cool.

2462
02:27:58,100 --> 02:28:02,900
So I mean, I mean, and that would be like if you ever saw your enemy crying, it's like hee

2463
02:28:02,980 --> 02:28:03,380
hee hee.

2464
02:28:03,620 --> 02:28:07,540
You know, it's not you know, it's like not that I've ever done that.

2465
02:28:08,260 --> 02:28:09,700
Yeah, here let me let me let me lick them.

2466
02:28:09,780 --> 02:28:11,940
Ooh, taste those sweet tears.

2467
02:28:12,260 --> 02:28:16,660
So yeah, like like the mugs of in the tears about engineering psychotic.

2468
02:28:17,700 --> 02:28:20,100
We should sell those for speaking of monetizing.

2469
02:28:20,500 --> 02:28:21,540
We'd make a lot of money.

2470
02:28:21,620 --> 02:28:21,780
Yeah.

2471
02:28:22,020 --> 02:28:25,060
I mean you talked at the beginning of the episode about you you had you fantasize about

2472
02:28:25,060 --> 02:28:27,330
having the ski chalet and the Porsche.

2473
02:28:27,410 --> 02:28:28,290
Maybe this is your ticket.

2474
02:28:28,530 --> 02:28:29,250
Good throwback to you.

2475
02:28:29,330 --> 02:28:30,290
I mean, I'm writing a textbook.

2476
02:28:30,370 --> 02:28:31,170
Isn't that the way you do it?

2477
02:28:31,330 --> 02:28:31,490
Yeah.

2478
02:28:31,650 --> 02:28:31,890
Yeah.

2479
02:28:32,290 --> 02:28:33,010
Well, I hope so.

2480
02:28:33,090 --> 02:28:33,570
That would be great.

2481
02:28:33,650 --> 02:28:37,090
You know, it would be great if you can reflect on your life and you got the Porsche and the

2482
02:28:37,090 --> 02:28:40,690
Ski Chalet and the sweet evolutionary psychology gig together.

2483
02:28:40,770 --> 02:28:44,450
That would be plus I'm starting up a separate business that will hopefully bring in the

2484
02:28:44,450 --> 02:28:45,970
money and all the funding for our research.

2485
02:28:46,050 --> 02:28:48,700
So that's no regrets.

2486
02:28:50,060 --> 02:28:52,140
That's not that's wonderful.

2487
02:28:52,300 --> 02:28:53,900
Yeah, we'll see you at H Mess.

2488
02:28:54,140 --> 02:28:59,580
Um, one thing John Tuby always said was that as important as any of his theory papers, as

2489
02:28:59,580 --> 02:29:04,140
good as they were, as long as they were were good, as as important as those were, the most

2490
02:29:04,140 --> 02:29:05,980
important thing he produced was students.

2491
02:29:06,220 --> 02:29:11,750
And Deb, you are one of those students and we uh that's like a a way of saying thank you

2492
02:29:11,750 --> 02:29:17,750
for existing your work has been incredibly important um and the field would not be what it

2493
02:29:17,750 --> 02:29:22,230
is if you did not exist so thank you for everything you've done and all your service to the

2494
02:29:22,230 --> 02:29:22,630
field.

2495
02:29:22,870 --> 02:29:23,270
Thank you.

2496
02:29:23,590 --> 02:29:25,430
Well listen I I couldn't be more grateful.

2497
02:29:25,590 --> 02:29:29,430
I mean how lucky are we that we get to do this so quite a life.

2498
02:29:29,590 --> 02:29:31,270
Um so thank you for having me on.

2499
02:29:31,350 --> 02:29:32,550
It's been it's been a pleasure.

2500
02:29:32,630 --> 02:29:33,910
We should do this every week.

2501
02:29:34,300 --> 02:29:35,020
This was so fun.

2502
02:29:35,100 --> 02:29:35,260
Yeah.

2503
02:29:35,500 --> 02:29:35,580
Yeah.

2504
02:29:35,660 --> 02:29:36,220
We're trying to do that.

2505
02:29:36,540 --> 02:29:36,940
We'll have you back.

2506
02:29:37,020 --> 02:29:37,180
I'm sure.

2507
02:29:37,500 --> 02:29:38,700
We'll definitely have you back.

2508
02:29:42,220 --> 02:29:47,900
David, uh, we finished up another episode and um we haven't had

2509
02:29:47,900 --> 02:29:49,180
enough reviews.

2510
02:29:49,260 --> 02:29:53,420
Um, so we're encouraging people to um submit content.

2511
02:29:53,660 --> 02:29:57,820
Um, even mention, you know, like what you would like to have on the um Yeah.

2512
02:29:58,050 --> 02:30:03,810
Uh if you have any ideas for topics, for bits, for people to bring on, anything

2513
02:30:03,810 --> 02:30:09,810
you'd like us to do in an episode, if you, you know, want me to to sing uh I will always

2514
02:30:09,810 --> 02:30:12,050
love you, um, I'm happy to do that.

2515
02:30:12,210 --> 02:30:14,610
Just, you know, give us some feedback.

2516
02:30:14,930 --> 02:30:17,250
Um I didn't know you oh yeah, you sing.

2517
02:30:17,330 --> 02:30:18,130
I didn't know that.

2518
02:30:18,450 --> 02:30:21,090
Yeah, I'm I'm actually a a really great singer.

2519
02:30:21,410 --> 02:30:23,250
Is that a joke or is uh for real?

2520
02:30:23,640 --> 02:30:25,080
No, but you you do sing.

2521
02:30:25,160 --> 02:30:26,200
You are a singer, aren't you?

2522
02:30:26,360 --> 02:30:27,640
Like you did the music for this.

2523
02:30:27,960 --> 02:30:28,600
That's true.

2524
02:30:28,760 --> 02:30:30,920
But that was not s singing.

2525
02:30:31,000 --> 02:30:33,160
That was that was synthetic instruments.

2526
02:30:33,400 --> 02:30:37,160
But do you don't you when you were in another band, were you the singer in the band?

2527
02:30:37,480 --> 02:30:38,360
I was not the singer.

2528
02:30:38,440 --> 02:30:40,280
I actually don't have a very good voice.

2529
02:30:40,600 --> 02:30:46,520
Um I can maybe muster a a a tune, but it's uh

2530
02:30:47,530 --> 02:30:53,450
if we get if we get uh when we reach a thousand dollars a month, David will sing

2531
02:30:53,930 --> 02:30:55,050
yeah Patreon.

2532
02:30:55,690 --> 02:30:56,170
Totally.

2533
02:30:56,330 --> 02:30:57,690
That's a great incentive for you.

2534
02:30:57,930 --> 02:31:03,530
If if we make a thousand if we get ten whatever you want ten thousand, I will sing, and you

2535
02:31:03,530 --> 02:31:04,970
really don't want that to happen.

2536
02:31:05,690 --> 02:31:08,410
I think we may have just disincentivized our listeners.

2537
02:31:10,060 --> 02:31:11,420
I'm confused about how this works.

2538
02:31:11,580 --> 02:31:13,100
So you want a good thing to happen.

2539
02:31:14,060 --> 02:31:15,980
I'm confusing the carrot for the stick.

2540
02:31:16,060 --> 02:31:16,220
Okay.

2541
02:31:16,300 --> 02:31:16,940
Uh yeah.

2542
02:31:17,020 --> 02:31:18,700
That's no, no, that's the thing.

2543
02:31:18,860 --> 02:31:21,820
If you don't give on Patreon, I'll start singing.

2544
02:31:21,900 --> 02:31:23,180
That's that's the there.

2545
02:31:23,420 --> 02:31:23,900
There you go.

2546
02:31:24,220 --> 02:31:24,380
Okay.

2547
02:31:24,460 --> 02:31:26,060
Now we got now the incentives right.

2548
02:31:26,300 --> 02:31:26,540
Okay, good.

2549
02:31:26,780 --> 02:31:26,940
Okay.

2550
02:31:27,180 --> 02:31:28,780
Now I understand how coordination works.

2551
02:31:28,940 --> 02:31:29,420
Okay, good.

2552
02:31:29,820 --> 02:31:31,390
Um got it.

2553
02:31:31,470 --> 02:31:34,510
Um well thanks for listening, and uh we'll see you next week.

2554
02:31:34,670 --> 02:31:35,550
Bye David.

2555
02:31:35,950 --> 02:31:36,350
Bye