WEBVTT

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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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It was more like a family.

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Yeah, yeah.

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I mean one of the things I don't know in uh uh David, I'm sorry.

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Well, one of the things I remember Deb, I think the first time I met you, and we can cut

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this out if you want.

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It's not, I mean, was depending on what you're about to say.

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Yeah, yeah, I'll let you, you'll hear it.

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Um I was so I was like a very you know you were already at the CP and I was an

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early grad student and I was very nervous and we all as you know Deb and um David I think

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you know this too is like what a lot of John Alita's students would do is go to their house

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to like work, right?

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Because they were writing always in their house.

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And I just open a can of worms for Deb.

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And then uh so I'm very nervous.

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And uh I go and Deb is there and Lita's there.

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Um, but when I get to the house, neither Deb nor Lita

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are there.

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John lets me in.

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And then um Deb is coming down the stairs with with

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uh with Lita's daughter.

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Um, and Lita's daughter at the time is pretty young, and um they're both um doing

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quote unquote reconnaissance with Lita.

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

00:13:57.420 --> 00:13:59.420
because it's it's like a family, right?

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

00:14:02.860 --> 00:14:03.340
happening.

00:14:03.500 --> 00:14:09.430
And then um Lita starts talking to me about science once she comes down.

00:14:09.590 --> 00:14:13.270
And Nike, there's this game barrel full of monkeys.

00:14:13.590 --> 00:14:16.790
And she's dumping that over Lita's head as Lita's talking to me.

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.

00:14:22.390 --> 00:14:26.230
And it that always stuck with me, Deb, like you doing reconnaissance with Nike.

00:14:27.030 --> 00:14:30.340
But what I love about that is like it really felt like a family.

00:14:30.420 --> 00:14:34.500
And it was just this, it was just this like we're comfortable in our science.

00:14:34.660 --> 00:14:40.660
And part of our science is people being organisms and like, you know, parenting and that

00:14:40.660 --> 00:14:41.460
kind of thing.

00:14:41.620 --> 00:14:45.220
That that's sort of like baked into, of course, that's just part of us.

00:14:45.300 --> 00:14:47.300
And then we're also doing like really cool science.

00:14:47.460 --> 00:14:48.900
And I wasn't nervous after that.

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

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

00:14:59.850 --> 00:15:03.450
they're like playing with their kids while we're doing science.

00:15:03.770 --> 00:15:05.610
Yeah, yeah, no, for sure.

00:15:05.850 --> 00:15:09.290
And for the record, Nike's still someone I'd I'd enjoy doing reconnaissance with.

00:15:11.050 --> 00:15:12.250
No, totally, yes, yes.

00:15:12.570 --> 00:15:16.490
Oh, well, this is making me think that the evolutionary psychology story isn't in the

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

00:15:20.890 --> 00:15:25.400
and Lita and John's house, and you know, the kid has her cute one-liners.

00:15:25.960 --> 00:15:28.760
Maybe it's a kind of like full house vibe.

00:15:29.400 --> 00:15:33.960
Um you know, I guess it's like it it's it isn't like Marvel.

00:15:34.040 --> 00:15:34.840
So I would agree with that.

00:15:34.920 --> 00:15:37.480
But I'm I'm not sure that I'm happy with the full house.

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.

00:15:41.720 --> 00:15:44.680
But uh Brady Bunch.

00:15:44.840 --> 00:15:50.630
Um it's uh it it was it was it was unique and it was

00:15:50.630 --> 00:15:53.990
special and um and I enjoy it.

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

00:15:58.230 --> 00:15:58.630
loved it.

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,

00:16:03.590 --> 00:16:05.030
like this is awful.

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

00:16:11.110 --> 00:16:14.310
and to and to branch out, uh leave the nest.

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

00:16:20.280 --> 00:16:25.080
have out there and uh how lonely, how intellectually lonely it can be.

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

00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:33.400
made life far more enjoyable.

00:16:33.800 --> 00:16:34.920
Yeah, yeah.

00:16:36.040 --> 00:16:41.710
So uh as a leader in the field who sort of began, you know, in the

00:16:41.710 --> 00:16:47.630
literal home of Leda Cosmones and John Tuby, uh how do you think

00:16:47.790 --> 00:16:48.910
the field has changed?

00:16:49.070 --> 00:16:50.510
The public's impression of it has changed.

00:16:50.590 --> 00:16:54.430
You mentioned there was a spirit of combativeness, us against the world.

00:16:54.670 --> 00:16:58.430
Do you think the temperature is still that high or has it come down a bit?

00:16:58.590 --> 00:17:03.150
How has the vibe changed regarding evolutionary psychology since you began?

00:17:04.120 --> 00:17:07.320
I would say the temperature has come down quite a bit.

00:17:07.560 --> 00:17:10.360
Um, and I'm I'm really happy about that.

00:17:10.600 --> 00:17:16.360
So it's what was it uh was it Gould who talked about the three

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

00:17:21.000 --> 00:17:23.160
important, and yeah, we knew it all along.

00:17:23.480 --> 00:17:27.210
Um I think we're still in the like we're

00:17:27.210 --> 00:17:29.690
2.25.

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.

00:17:34.490 --> 00:17:37.290
But it's it's just kind of like yeah it just doesn't really matter.

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

00:17:41.770 --> 00:17:41.930
it.

00:17:42.090 --> 00:17:43.290
They don't know the science of it.

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

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

00:17:54.560 --> 00:17:54.960
science.

00:17:55.040 --> 00:17:56.880
And I and so it actually is a skill.

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.

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

00:18:07.200 --> 00:18:13.090
in its teenage years, um, but I think that

00:18:13.970 --> 00:18:17.970
I would love to see better training across the board.

00:18:18.210 --> 00:18:21.810
I don't necessarily know how that happens.

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

00:18:27.730 --> 00:18:33.730
another reference for it that hits on a lot of the cognitive science that I think

00:18:33.730 --> 00:18:35.890
is missing from the field.

00:18:37.300 --> 00:18:40.820
I also so I think it's I think the field is doing great.

00:18:41.060 --> 00:18:44.260
I am excited about the different areas it's going in.

00:18:44.500 --> 00:18:46.980
I think that there's a lot more room to grow.

00:18:47.220 --> 00:18:50.980
So I mean development should be an area.

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

00:18:56.820 --> 00:19:02.350
there's so few places you could go to study evolutionary psychology uh with a developmental

00:19:02.350 --> 00:19:06.990
psychologist other than uh UCSB, uh Yale, a couple of other places, right?

00:19:07.070 --> 00:19:10.270
So it's um it's very limited.

00:19:10.350 --> 00:19:15.310
But then you talk about political science, the clinical side of things, which is super

00:19:15.310 --> 00:19:15.630
important.

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

00:19:22.340 --> 00:19:23.780
room to grow, I guess.

00:19:23.940 --> 00:19:25.620
And so, but I think it's hopeful.

00:19:25.780 --> 00:19:31.060
I think more and more people when they hear evolutionary psychology, the disgust face,

00:19:31.300 --> 00:19:33.300
it's only slight.

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

00:19:38.660 --> 00:19:39.380
anymore.

00:19:39.620 --> 00:19:42.020
It's not like I can't be seen with you.

00:19:42.180 --> 00:19:45.850
Now it's a huh, hmm, I don't know.

00:19:46.810 --> 00:19:48.810
So uh and I'll take that any day.

00:19:48.890 --> 00:19:51.210
So I so I'm actually quite hopeful.

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

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

00:20:01.210 --> 00:20:02.170
really great sense.

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

00:20:08.240 --> 00:20:10.720
introduce the many areas, you know.

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

00:20:16.720 --> 00:20:17.040
far.

00:20:17.440 --> 00:20:23.200
I think that there's there's scattershot, you know, always,

00:20:23.520 --> 00:20:26.160
but by and large I think I think we're doing quite well.

00:20:26.320 --> 00:20:32.010
I'm just I get concerned about the future in terms of number

00:20:32.010 --> 00:20:35.290
of people training the number of people.

00:20:35.610 --> 00:20:40.730
And so I I mean my my university, you know, they haven't replaced key

00:20:40.730 --> 00:20:46.010
evolutionary people who um and that every turn they refuse to even, you know,

00:20:46.250 --> 00:20:46.890
engage.

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

00:20:52.330 --> 00:20:54.170
taking on graduate students.

00:20:54.330 --> 00:20:59.300
So maybe we can come up with ways of working together across multiple kind of solo

00:20:59.940 --> 00:21:05.540
sites to help kind of put together graduate programs and and and collect collect graduate

00:21:05.540 --> 00:21:06.580
students to train.

00:21:07.220 --> 00:21:07.540
Yeah.

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

00:21:13.540 --> 00:21:19.490
of training uh professors uh to occupy key positions uh uh around

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

00:21:25.490 --> 00:21:28.530
know leave more descendants uh intellectually.

00:21:29.250 --> 00:21:29.810
Yeah.

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

00:21:36.210 --> 00:21:41.780
about this with with past people on is that the early first generation, like the

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

00:21:47.780 --> 00:21:50.980
it was existential, like it was proof of concept.

00:21:51.380 --> 00:21:55.940
But now, sort of currently it's well, how do you actually do it?

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

00:22:01.380 --> 00:22:04.930
immediately running away, um, how do you do it well?

00:22:05.170 --> 00:22:08.290
Do things like task analysis or the cognitive part.

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?

00:22:13.890 --> 00:22:14.290
Yes.

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

00:22:19.010 --> 00:22:20.850
evolutionary cognitive science.

00:22:21.010 --> 00:22:22.850
So how do how do how do you do it?

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

00:22:28.900 --> 00:22:33.940
you know the information processing structure like really in the weeds I know but to me

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

00:22:38.900 --> 00:22:40.180
behaviors and patterns.

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

00:22:46.260 --> 00:22:52.070
task I actually talk about your um Kin detection and disgust and

00:22:52.070 --> 00:22:53.510
incest avoidance work.

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

00:22:57.670 --> 00:22:57.830
that.

00:22:57.910 --> 00:23:03.110
Because I, you know, the people who are listening, there's presumably a large range of

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.

00:23:08.710 --> 00:23:09.990
And I think it's really cool work.

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?

00:23:14.390 --> 00:23:20.280
Where it's sort of you're taking modern people who, for them sort of incest

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,

00:23:24.920 --> 00:23:27.480
you know, that you just hear about fictively.

00:23:27.640 --> 00:23:30.200
It doesn't feel like a day-to-day concern, right?

00:23:30.360 --> 00:23:35.000
Um, but yet thankfully, yeah, no, exactly.

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

00:23:41.240 --> 00:23:46.990
when people hear kinship, especially for like high SES academics,

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

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,

00:23:56.350 --> 00:23:56.510
right?

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.

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

00:24:06.750 --> 00:24:08.990
class to talk about kinship or incest, right?

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

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

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

00:24:25.560 --> 00:24:27.400
beautiful results.

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

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

00:24:37.400 --> 00:24:42.090
actually think your work will sort of always be really important in that initial work.

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

00:24:47.050 --> 00:24:50.730
gets people thinking the right way at this software level.

00:24:51.210 --> 00:24:52.010
I I think so.

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

00:24:57.450 --> 00:24:57.610
are?

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,

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

00:25:07.140 --> 00:25:12.980
your genetic relatives are like how did you come to figure it out and you

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

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

00:25:24.020 --> 00:25:29.700
you know you smell them well that's not exactly how humans seem to uh

00:25:30.070 --> 00:25:31.750
to snip out relatives.

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

00:25:36.390 --> 00:25:38.150
know them from early on and this and that.

00:25:38.230 --> 00:25:41.590
So they're we start to kind of very quickly narrow in on the possibilities.

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.

00:25:45.030 --> 00:25:49.830
So but the idea that uh the two cues that we've at least found that

00:25:50.390 --> 00:25:56.380
influence and affect how you uh whether you categorize someone as a sibling is whether you

00:25:56.380 --> 00:26:01.660
saw the woman who breastfed you caring for and you know giving birth to and and

00:26:01.660 --> 00:26:06.060
breastfeeding another young uh young infant that has a that infant has a very good

00:26:06.060 --> 00:26:07.660
probability of being your sibling.

00:26:07.820 --> 00:26:10.540
But then if but that that's only good for younger siblings.

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

00:26:15.970 --> 00:26:18.850
also tracks parental investment, but it's over the long haul.

00:26:18.930 --> 00:26:24.290
So, who else are my parents investing in throughout the period of childhood dependency?

00:26:24.450 --> 00:26:27.250
And so, also known as co-residency duration.

00:26:27.490 --> 00:26:33.490
And so those two cues really predict how your estimate of relatedness and not

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

00:26:39.410 --> 00:26:40.050
in general.

00:26:40.210 --> 00:26:42.690
And I'd say in general for a variety of reasons.

00:26:42.850 --> 00:26:45.410
So I think that these systems aren't foolproof.

00:26:45.580 --> 00:26:51.500
and I think that there are factors that can push them around and situations that would

00:26:51.500 --> 00:26:56.060
cause some people to find a close genetic relative potentially more attractive under

00:26:56.060 --> 00:26:58.620
certain circumstances than other circumstances.

00:26:59.260 --> 00:27:04.140
But by and large, cultural universal is this inbreeding avoidance system that allows us to

00:27:04.140 --> 00:27:05.100
detect kin.

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

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,

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

00:27:18.870 --> 00:27:19.270
test it.

00:27:19.350 --> 00:27:22.470
And then the emotion of disgust to regulate the aversion.

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

00:27:28.320 --> 00:27:33.840
um get displayed in the array of culture, cultural variations in terms of the taboo?

00:27:34.000 --> 00:27:39.520
So from this one psychological system, you then get a cultural, uh, a

00:27:39.520 --> 00:27:43.280
cultural set of norms that can vary.

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

00:27:49.520 --> 00:27:52.480
through each of its different kinds of questions.

00:27:52.880 --> 00:27:55.470
So what is you know what are the selection pressures?

00:27:55.550 --> 00:27:56.670
Like why does it exist?

00:27:56.830 --> 00:27:58.670
How does it work in terms of the programming?

00:27:58.830 --> 00:27:59.950
How does it develop?

00:28:00.110 --> 00:28:01.470
How does it break down?

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

00:28:06.830 --> 00:28:09.150
actually seated in the brain?

00:28:09.470 --> 00:28:13.070
How does it get displayed and reflected in culture and so forth.

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

00:28:17.820 --> 00:28:19.100
questions at each level.

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,

00:28:24.060 --> 00:28:27.420
but at the same time, it's just I think we could do this with everything.

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.

00:28:33.420 --> 00:28:38.990
So Uh I'm interested in that last part

00:28:39.310 --> 00:28:42.350
of the causal model, the culture part.

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

00:28:47.390 --> 00:28:53.230
are, how to I uh uh be nice to my relatives and avoid having sex with

00:28:53.230 --> 00:28:53.470
them.

00:28:53.630 --> 00:28:56.510
Um that all makes sense from an evolutionary perspective.

00:28:56.670 --> 00:29:02.100
You wanna um help people who probabilistically share the genes for helping kin.

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

00:29:07.620 --> 00:29:09.300
costs of inbreeding.

00:29:10.100 --> 00:29:14.420
Um, but the moral part of the equation isn't to me as obvious.

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

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

00:29:25.410 --> 00:29:26.290
relatives.

00:29:26.450 --> 00:29:30.930
Um, I'm also inclined to judge it as morally wrong.

00:29:31.090 --> 00:29:36.770
Um, and cultures around the world have judged it as morally wrong and have had various

00:29:36.770 --> 00:29:39.410
taboos uh and rules against it.

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

00:29:43.890 --> 00:29:44.050
question.

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,

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

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

00:29:59.060 --> 00:30:02.180
going to punish, condemn, or shun other people who do it.

00:30:02.340 --> 00:30:06.100
What how do you explain the the the bridge between those two points?

00:30:07.140 --> 00:30:09.780
Um well, I think it's a great question.

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.

00:30:14.900 --> 00:30:16.420
So I'll I'll leave that to you.

00:30:16.740 --> 00:30:22.530
Um so we have a natural inbreeding aversion.

00:30:22.770 --> 00:30:28.770
And so our value of close relatives registers as a

00:30:29.010 --> 00:30:30.610
an intense disgust.

00:30:30.850 --> 00:30:35.970
And I think that disgust is an interesting emotion because it becomes now

00:30:35.970 --> 00:30:40.610
available to a psychology that's looking for

00:30:42.300 --> 00:30:46.220
Behaviors that others are doing that are of low value.

00:30:46.780 --> 00:30:47.420
Why?

00:30:47.900 --> 00:30:53.580
Because we are evil humans and we form coalitions

00:30:53.820 --> 00:30:59.260
and we are interested in protecting scarce resources, so we form

00:30:59.260 --> 00:31:05.250
coalitions, determine which groups have the lowest leverage, and go after them

00:31:05.250 --> 00:31:10.610
to prevent them from taking and acquiring and and defending those resources.

00:31:11.410 --> 00:31:14.610
And who do we want to do that to?

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

00:31:18.610 --> 00:31:19.090
forth.

00:31:19.410 --> 00:31:23.570
We do that to the people we find and do things of low value.

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,

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

00:31:34.140 --> 00:31:35.100
winner here.

00:31:35.340 --> 00:31:39.500
You know, we've got something that's registered as extremely low social value.

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

00:31:44.620 --> 00:31:50.510
order to go after people who do this, who think that, um, in order to marginalize

00:31:50.510 --> 00:31:53.870
them and exploit them and pr and kill them and, you know, whatever.

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

00:31:59.230 --> 00:32:00.750
it's all labeled as morality.

00:32:00.830 --> 00:32:06.110
But I just uh um that's a whole other fun see I like controversy.

00:32:06.190 --> 00:32:08.670
So this is like naturally where I'm preaching to the choir.

00:32:08.750 --> 00:32:08.830
Yeah.

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

00:32:13.480 --> 00:32:14.280
sides of morality.

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

00:32:19.080 --> 00:32:24.920
historical record, um, and even just recent psychology studies, like it it is becoming

00:32:24.920 --> 00:32:29.640
increasingly clear that morality is a very dark force uh in humanity.

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.

00:32:35.720 --> 00:32:37.480
It's like who are you trying to coordinate?

00:32:37.560 --> 00:32:38.600
Like what's going on?

00:32:38.760 --> 00:32:39.800
Like, hold on.

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

00:32:45.110 --> 00:32:49.190
whether there are like certain ethical laws and moral law.

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

00:32:54.870 --> 00:32:57.510
informing and coloring our sense of morality.

00:32:57.670 --> 00:33:01.190
Like there might be there, I think there are other aspects of morality that are worth

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

00:33:07.120 --> 00:33:07.920
does no good.

00:33:08.080 --> 00:33:12.160
And there are folks who think that, you know, listen, disgust is a moral compass.

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,

00:33:16.960 --> 00:33:18.320
our moral decision making.

00:33:18.400 --> 00:33:21.680
But Martha Nussbaum basically said no, you know, that's uh the wrong thing.

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

00:33:27.600 --> 00:33:30.720
uh our our our our norms and legal systems.

00:33:30.880 --> 00:33:32.610
Uh At least that's my opinion.

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

00:33:38.370 --> 00:33:38.690
there.

00:33:38.930 --> 00:33:41.650
Um, but in any case, so how does it get in there?

00:33:41.810 --> 00:33:47.650
Low social value, which makes it just available to systems sifting for groups to go

00:33:47.650 --> 00:33:51.810
after, uh, to marginalize and to outcompete for resources.

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.

00:33:58.340 --> 00:33:58.900
The idea.

00:33:59.060 --> 00:34:00.420
Oh, sorry, David, go ahead.

00:34:00.820 --> 00:34:06.820
Uh I'm wondering if an additional aspect of it is the contamination logic of

00:34:06.820 --> 00:34:07.540
disgust.

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

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

00:34:17.780 --> 00:34:20.770
want to avoid anything that has come into contact with that thing.

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.

00:34:27.090 --> 00:34:31.410
So it's not really the quantity of the contamination, it's the contamination itself.

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

00:34:36.770 --> 00:34:39.490
with other people who've been in contact with me.

00:34:39.650 --> 00:34:45.440
Um so if I elicit disgust, I'm going to have a

00:34:45.440 --> 00:34:51.440
hard time mobilizing allies to my side because people will not only not

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

00:34:55.280 --> 00:34:56.560
associated with me.

00:34:56.720 --> 00:35:02.160
And so because disgust elicits this contamination psychology, it makes it particularly

00:35:02.160 --> 00:35:04.000
useful for rallying coalitions.

00:35:04.160 --> 00:35:10.080
Because if I can elicit disgust about you as a target, I'm not only motivating

00:35:11.290 --> 00:35:17.130
Avoidance of you, but I'm uh depriving you of the ability to mobilize

00:35:17.130 --> 00:35:18.650
allies in response.

00:35:18.810 --> 00:35:22.570
Uh whereas with other emotions, you know, if if you elicit anger, maybe your allies will

00:35:22.570 --> 00:35:25.530
come to your side and try to justify uh your transgressions.

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

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.

00:35:34.890 --> 00:35:36.090
Do you buy that logic?

00:35:36.570 --> 00:35:36.890
I do.

00:35:36.970 --> 00:35:38.090
I think there's something to that.

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

00:35:41.820 --> 00:35:42.380
dealing with you.

00:35:42.460 --> 00:35:42.700
Right.

00:35:43.100 --> 00:35:47.660
It's not a coalitional, it's not the moral social value side of things.

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

00:35:53.180 --> 00:35:55.180
pathogens that I'm concerned about.

00:35:55.340 --> 00:36:01.260
But when it starts to get used at the coalitional group level, team level, I think

00:36:01.260 --> 00:36:04.620
that disgust is sticky and it is dangerous.

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

00:36:10.670 --> 00:36:14.430
angry with you because I'm trying to change your way and how you value me.

00:36:14.510 --> 00:36:16.030
And that's the whole function of it, right?

00:36:16.110 --> 00:36:18.270
So improve the way you value me now.

00:36:18.910 --> 00:36:23.630
So but with disgust, it's I I doesn't you can do whatever you want.

00:36:24.030 --> 00:36:26.270
It's like, you know, say whatever you want.

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

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

00:36:33.620 --> 00:36:37.940
you need to bring to the table to erase disgust, like what what actually bleaches out

00:36:37.940 --> 00:36:40.500
disgust, how much goodness and value.

00:36:40.580 --> 00:36:44.100
Um it's kind of hard to get out the stain of disgust.

00:36:44.180 --> 00:36:48.020
Like with anger, it's very easy to, you know, alleviate someone's anger, just apologize.

00:36:48.180 --> 00:36:52.690
To apologize, you know, make amends, you know, you know, help help them out, whatever you

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

00:36:55.570 --> 00:36:55.730
future.

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

00:37:00.690 --> 00:37:02.850
hope that people forget about it, you know?

00:37:03.250 --> 00:37:04.050
Take a shower.

00:37:04.370 --> 00:37:06.290
Yeah, take a shower, but like even that, I don't know.

00:37:06.370 --> 00:37:07.730
It's like it's hard to wash off, you know.

00:37:08.130 --> 00:37:08.770
No, no, no, of course.

00:37:08.850 --> 00:37:09.090
Yeah, yeah.

00:37:09.250 --> 00:37:11.090
It's a physical thing in denotable.

00:37:11.890 --> 00:37:11.970
Yeah.

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

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.

00:37:20.580 --> 00:37:21.860
I I just remembered something.

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

00:37:27.300 --> 00:37:27.540
problems.

00:37:27.700 --> 00:37:30.020
Like Rob Lowe, he had he had some problems.

00:37:30.100 --> 00:37:34.580
Like he had some problems back in the day taking and but he's great now.

00:37:34.660 --> 00:37:36.180
Like he's like love now.

00:37:36.260 --> 00:37:38.820
And it's like that amount of time took the stink off.

00:37:39.060 --> 00:37:39.300
Right.

00:37:39.780 --> 00:37:44.260
So some things are manageable uh over time.

00:37:44.450 --> 00:37:46.050
There's one that's not.

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

00:37:53.330 --> 00:37:55.330
it's a great movie, Man from Uncle.

00:37:55.410 --> 00:38:00.210
But then I I heard that he like likes to eat people.

00:38:00.850 --> 00:38:03.010
Like he didn't you hear about this?

00:38:03.170 --> 00:38:05.570
No I think I think one of you should look it up right now.

00:38:05.650 --> 00:38:11.640
But basically but if you um why am I why am I forgetting the

00:38:11.640 --> 00:38:12.120
name for this?

00:38:12.280 --> 00:38:12.840
What's it called?

00:38:13.080 --> 00:38:13.960
Cannibalism.

00:38:14.280 --> 00:38:14.920
Thank you.

00:38:15.240 --> 00:38:19.640
So yeah, he like said something favorable about cannibalism or something.

00:38:19.960 --> 00:38:20.360
Oh wow.

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

00:38:24.600 --> 00:38:26.760
favorable about it or he actually does eat people.

00:38:27.160 --> 00:38:27.640
You know what?

00:38:27.800 --> 00:38:29.320
I do not know the answer to that.

00:38:29.400 --> 00:38:33.000
I'm I'm I mean that itself is an interesting psychological phenomenon that the the

00:38:33.000 --> 00:38:36.760
distinction between you know verbally approving of something and actually engaging in

00:38:36.760 --> 00:38:39.610
something is so often easily conflated.

00:38:40.250 --> 00:38:45.290
Uh well all all I have to say is that he got caught in the

00:38:45.290 --> 00:38:50.970
crosshairs of um exactly I'm just looking it up

00:38:51.210 --> 00:38:55.370
of you know of this d highly disgusting kind of behavior.

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

00:39:02.080 --> 00:39:05.840
laughed because I was just like it's odd.

00:39:06.400 --> 00:39:08.640
Of course, there's a human out there that does this, right?

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.

00:39:14.080 --> 00:39:17.360
Like, there are some things that you could do that cross the moral boundaries.

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

00:39:23.840 --> 00:39:25.120
or showers.

00:39:26.850 --> 00:39:27.410
Yeah.

00:39:27.890 --> 00:39:28.210
Okay.

00:39:28.370 --> 00:39:29.890
That's so so super interesting.

00:39:29.970 --> 00:39:35.890
I mean, like it it makes this point that disgust is really uh a powerful

00:39:36.130 --> 00:39:37.330
social weapon.

00:39:37.570 --> 00:39:43.090
That because there are so many ways to uh alleviate people's anger via apologies, making

00:39:43.090 --> 00:39:49.040
amends, concessions, whatever, but there's basically no way to alleviate disgust once it's

00:39:49.040 --> 00:39:49.520
been activated.

00:39:49.600 --> 00:39:51.120
Or it's it's really hard to do.

00:39:51.280 --> 00:39:57.040
Um, it's a much more potent and powerful social weapon to wield against your enemies.

00:39:57.280 --> 00:40:00.720
Um so I I I just find that really, really interesting.

00:40:00.960 --> 00:40:03.200
Um anyway, you were gonna say something, Dave?

00:40:04.000 --> 00:40:04.480
Well, I don't know.

00:40:04.560 --> 00:40:06.240
Uh Deb, what were you gonna say?

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

00:40:12.930 --> 00:40:18.850
was the ways that disgust is used um by the moral psycho by moral

00:40:18.850 --> 00:40:19.490
psychology.

00:40:19.650 --> 00:40:23.090
And uh we came up with three different ways it seems to be used.

00:40:23.170 --> 00:40:28.770
So first it it is a kind of internal register of what I find

00:40:28.770 --> 00:40:32.850
disgusting and therefore what norms wouldn't be costly for me to back.

00:40:33.090 --> 00:40:33.250
Right.

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,

00:40:39.340 --> 00:40:39.500
right?

00:40:39.580 --> 00:40:41.500
Because California went after foie gras, right?

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

00:40:46.540 --> 00:40:48.380
back it 100%, doesn't affect me.

00:40:48.460 --> 00:40:49.740
I'm on board, right?

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

00:40:54.540 --> 00:40:54.700
back.

00:40:54.780 --> 00:40:55.740
So that's one thing.

00:40:55.980 --> 00:40:59.340
Disgust also uh you can take other people's temperature, right?

00:40:59.420 --> 00:41:04.300
In terms of you hear disgust and you now know what kind of moral um

00:41:05.270 --> 00:41:09.830
uh moral campaigns they're likely to initiate and back and so forth.

00:41:09.990 --> 00:41:15.750
But third and perhaps most important, given now this new landscape of coalitions that can

00:41:15.750 --> 00:41:21.510
form, disgust can be used and strategically in order to say, I'm with you, not

00:41:21.510 --> 00:41:22.070
against you.

00:41:22.150 --> 00:41:22.470
Right.

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

00:41:28.070 --> 00:41:29.110
group and so forth.

00:41:29.190 --> 00:41:31.590
And so they were like the enemy.

00:41:31.830 --> 00:41:33.350
Disgust at the enemy group you mean.

00:41:33.740 --> 00:41:34.140
That's right.

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

00:41:38.780 --> 00:41:44.060
lot of senators who were not heterosexual, but were railing against, you know, gay unions.

00:41:44.220 --> 00:41:46.620
And then you discover, oh my God, they're gay.

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.

00:41:51.180 --> 00:41:52.380
And it's like, but why?

00:41:52.540 --> 00:41:55.100
And it's almost like, don't look over here, look over there.

00:41:55.340 --> 00:42:01.050
And so this kind, I mean just classic um that classic strategy.

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

00:42:05.690 --> 00:42:06.490
one's uh.

00:42:07.050 --> 00:42:08.170
I mean, do you bring it bringing it back?

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

00:42:13.130 --> 00:42:17.210
number one, when you're disgusted toward someone, you're also disgusted toward anything

00:42:17.210 --> 00:42:18.570
associated with that someone.

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

00:42:22.330 --> 00:42:25.610
enemy and anyone who has allied with them is my enemy.

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

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

00:42:35.100 --> 00:42:37.020
other people's disgust once it's been activated.

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

00:42:41.740 --> 00:42:42.620
over and apologize.

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.

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

00:42:51.660 --> 00:42:54.140
disgusted with her than if I say I'm mad at her.

00:42:56.750 --> 00:42:57.630
Do you buy that?

00:42:57.870 --> 00:42:58.270
I agree.

00:42:58.350 --> 00:42:59.230
You know what's interesting.

00:42:59.390 --> 00:43:00.030
I do buy that.

00:43:00.110 --> 00:43:04.670
I I think that it's also who's motivated to use disgust language?

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

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

00:43:14.430 --> 00:43:18.510
gonna convince that you're very you're less likely to use the moral language?

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

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

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

00:43:30.980 --> 00:43:36.820
same color and so I guess that um I I find it

00:43:37.140 --> 00:43:42.660
what I find in would would find interesting in this area would be studies on

00:43:42.660 --> 00:43:48.340
who's motivated to use discussed language and does that correlate with for instance some of

00:43:48.340 --> 00:43:53.990
Aaron Cell's you know like indices of um leverage um social leverage and power

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

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

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

00:44:10.150 --> 00:44:15.990
interesting and um and like by all accounts like Hitler was a I

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

00:44:21.980 --> 00:44:27.580
just oozing with like moral condemnation, even when he was just a a a

00:44:27.580 --> 00:44:31.500
lonely person, you know, with no social support.

00:44:31.580 --> 00:44:36.540
So you can just imagine just an individual difference too, of just there are some people

00:44:36.860 --> 00:44:42.140
who are just carving up the world with moralization and

00:44:42.140 --> 00:44:42.940
disgust.

00:44:43.180 --> 00:44:48.150
Many of them never succeed from a coalitional perspective.

00:44:48.390 --> 00:44:49.430
I'm not saying he succeeded.

00:44:49.510 --> 00:44:55.030
I mean, but obviously from a from like coordinating people, he was quite successful,

00:44:55.110 --> 00:44:56.390
unfortunately, for a while.

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

00:45:01.430 --> 00:45:06.070
there is just part of that expression of moralization.

00:45:06.550 --> 00:45:12.400
Um it's just it that individual, that phenotype, then interacting with

00:45:12.400 --> 00:45:16.640
cultural dynamics or social dynamics, being in the right place at the right time is just

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

00:45:22.160 --> 00:45:27.120
disgust narrative and the right one at the right place, it just sort of fits.

00:45:28.320 --> 00:45:28.960
No, it does.

00:45:29.120 --> 00:45:30.160
I think there's a lot of stuff.

00:45:30.320 --> 00:45:33.610
I mean, I've been um I've been reading a lot of Churchill recently.

00:45:33.690 --> 00:45:36.650
And so I've I've been enjoying that history as well.

00:45:36.890 --> 00:45:42.730
And I will say, like, you know, short, you know, unattractive.

00:45:43.530 --> 00:45:48.650
And, you know, um not very formidable looking, you know,

00:45:49.370 --> 00:45:52.490
dark triad narcissist psychopath, like

00:45:55.210 --> 00:45:55.930
Napoleon complex.

00:45:56.010 --> 00:45:56.170
Yeah.

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

00:46:02.960 --> 00:46:03.680
factors of that.

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

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

00:46:13.600 --> 00:46:15.760
continuums that are important to to assess?

00:46:15.840 --> 00:46:20.770
And I think that um that's certainly that's certainly important when looking at

00:46:20.770 --> 00:46:22.370
personalities and and leaders.

00:46:22.690 --> 00:46:22.850
Right.

00:46:23.010 --> 00:46:23.170
Yeah.

00:46:23.250 --> 00:46:24.690
I I I really like that idea, Dave.

00:46:24.770 --> 00:46:29.570
I I I would be very curious to look empirically if this individual difference dimension of,

00:46:29.650 --> 00:46:33.970
you know, proneness toward moralizing, if that correlates with, you know, leadership

00:46:33.970 --> 00:46:35.810
ambitions or political ambitions.

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

00:46:40.370 --> 00:46:45.200
and evil are especially likely to seek uh positions of leadership and and and political

00:46:45.200 --> 00:46:49.680
power because one of the functions of leadership itself is to solve coordination problems.

00:46:49.840 --> 00:46:53.760
And one of the coordination problems that we're constantly trying to solve as coalitional

00:46:53.760 --> 00:46:56.320
primates is who are we going to gang up on?

00:46:56.480 --> 00:47:00.000
Who are we going to exploit, exclude from resources, and dominate?

00:47:00.160 --> 00:47:04.240
And that is an extremely challenging coordination problem because the possibility the

00:47:04.240 --> 00:47:07.040
combinatorial possibilities are enormous.

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

00:47:11.670 --> 00:47:12.150
alliances.

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

00:47:16.470 --> 00:47:19.830
could be formed in a group of five is like 625.

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

00:47:25.110 --> 00:47:27.110
can gain up on are enormous.

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

00:47:32.950 --> 00:47:36.390
possible alliances down to a manageable number.

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

00:47:41.620 --> 00:47:43.860
collapse that space down to imagin manageable number.

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.

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

00:47:54.100 --> 00:47:59.060
carving the world into good and evil, because that is precisely the service that coalitions

00:47:59.060 --> 00:48:00.900
uh need to be uh provided.

00:48:01.790 --> 00:48:06.110
Yeah, like what Deb said, it's sort of like people are coordinating evaluations, right?

00:48:06.350 --> 00:48:11.390
Like that's sort of what that phenotype is doing or what that design is doing.

00:48:12.590 --> 00:48:15.390
Yeah, no, it's it's an I I love this topic.

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

00:48:20.670 --> 00:48:24.560
is uh it's important to know about the dark side of who we are.

00:48:24.640 --> 00:48:28.880
Um the third railness itself is part of the psychology, right?

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

00:48:32.720 --> 00:48:38.160
discussing it, you yourself elicit disgust and taboo and coalitions forming against you,

00:48:38.240 --> 00:48:41.600
which which is a kind of interesting irony about this topic.

00:48:41.840 --> 00:48:42.610
Um Yeah.

00:48:42.690 --> 00:48:46.610
And one of our themes for this podcast has turned into like humility, right?

00:48:46.850 --> 00:48:51.810
About that the superficial take on something, the sort of like pat pat somebody on the

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

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,

00:49:00.690 --> 00:49:02.210
you know, these don't matter.

00:49:02.370 --> 00:49:04.530
Um actually they really do.

00:49:04.770 --> 00:49:10.320
And and like just taking a pause and being like, actually, what is morality?

00:49:10.480 --> 00:49:12.080
Uh is it all good?

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

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

00:49:23.200 --> 00:49:24.160
David's saying.

00:49:24.720 --> 00:49:26.880
I'll just keep smiling and waving.

00:49:27.600 --> 00:49:30.230
Like there'll be less discuss, but more value, right?

00:49:30.310 --> 00:49:33.110
So the editorship and then the the textbook.

00:49:34.310 --> 00:49:35.910
I'll keep doing service.

00:49:36.870 --> 00:49:40.630
Um well actually one one thing we had Michael Moncrof on Minecraft.

00:49:40.790 --> 00:49:42.390
I keep uh Michael, I'm sorry, your name.

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.

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

00:49:51.820 --> 00:49:54.060
of people who do that intersection as well.

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

00:49:59.900 --> 00:50:01.260
know, person doing that.

00:50:01.500 --> 00:50:05.900
Can you talk a little bit about either in the context of the incest?

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

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

00:50:16.390 --> 00:50:20.870
terrible stories, or like, you know, just horrible things that were sort of unnecessary if

00:50:20.870 --> 00:50:23.830
you take a more sophisticated scientific view of people.

00:50:25.670 --> 00:50:26.710
Um, yes.

00:50:26.870 --> 00:50:29.190
So I was thinking while you were talking, so I apologize.

00:50:29.270 --> 00:50:30.790
So I'm actually doing work with Keela.

00:50:31.110 --> 00:50:33.990
So Keila Williams and I are doing some work at the intersection.

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.

00:50:39.350 --> 00:50:42.680
So you have Owen Jones, who's been doing a lot of that work, right?

00:50:42.840 --> 00:50:46.600
And so, and then Carlton, my student Carlton Patrick, uh ECF.

00:50:46.680 --> 00:50:49.080
And then uh at Hamilton, you've got Keela Williams.

00:50:49.240 --> 00:50:51.000
And so, but there's a few others.

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

00:50:55.000 --> 00:50:55.560
tradition.

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

00:51:00.120 --> 00:51:00.760
sure.

00:51:01.160 --> 00:51:06.570
So Keila and I are have been very interested in how you take the Ash style

00:51:06.570 --> 00:51:07.690
paradigm, right?

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

00:51:13.450 --> 00:51:19.290
magic, you know, in influencing or extra influencing the way people respond and coordinate.

00:51:19.450 --> 00:51:25.450
So the question is: even in a jury setting, does disgust help coordinate people against

00:51:25.450 --> 00:51:29.290
things that might not necessarily even be disgusting or immoral?

00:51:29.760 --> 00:51:32.320
So that's one of the questions that we're asking there.

00:51:34.720 --> 00:51:38.080
So you're actually studying juror jurors?

00:51:39.600 --> 00:51:43.040
Right now it's just undergraduates who are serving.

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.

00:51:47.120 --> 00:51:50.320
So that's um so that's kind of in progress.

00:51:50.560 --> 00:51:56.310
And but you know, getting out there to try and examine how so I

00:51:56.470 --> 00:52:01.830
I tr wanted to do a test of judges uh at some point.

00:52:01.990 --> 00:52:07.670
So one of the earlier findings on the disgust stuff or the inbreeding avoidance was

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

00:52:12.390 --> 00:52:15.350
disgusting is it to kiss your brother and sister, all this stuff, right?

00:52:15.430 --> 00:52:16.790
So there's less variation.

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

00:52:22.700 --> 00:52:24.380
you find these behaviors?

00:52:24.460 --> 00:52:28.460
But now you're not asking about a particular opposite sex sibling.

00:52:28.620 --> 00:52:34.380
And so what we did is we basically looked at how activated your entire

00:52:34.380 --> 00:52:37.340
disgust psychology is towards siblings.

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

00:52:42.780 --> 00:52:43.980
you have no brothers, right?

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

00:52:49.330 --> 00:52:51.090
stuff and smile and laugh.

00:52:52.370 --> 00:52:53.970
Do you have an opposite sex sibling?

00:52:54.210 --> 00:52:55.730
Uh I I have two sisters.

00:52:55.810 --> 00:52:55.970
Yeah.

00:52:56.210 --> 00:52:57.570
I have a sister too, yeah.

00:52:58.690 --> 00:52:59.010
Okay.

00:52:59.410 --> 00:53:01.570
Um shall I continue?

00:53:01.810 --> 00:53:02.210
Please.

00:53:06.210 --> 00:53:06.530
Okay.

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

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

00:53:17.140 --> 00:53:19.460
index of how overall grossed out you are.

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

00:53:23.620 --> 00:53:28.740
siblings you live with combined 20 years, you'd expect a little bit more grossed outness

00:53:28.740 --> 00:53:33.140
for the person who had a total of 20 years of living with opposite sex siblings.

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

00:53:39.300 --> 00:53:44.690
general was predicted by how grossed out the level of disgust that you develop towards your

00:53:44.690 --> 00:53:46.210
own family members.

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,

00:53:52.290 --> 00:53:56.290
like, could I get a bunch of judges to fill out this questionnaire?

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

00:54:01.900 --> 00:54:02.300
happened.

00:54:02.380 --> 00:54:08.380
I've been called and you know provided uh expert testimony and discuss things, but

00:54:08.940 --> 00:54:09.900
it's rare.

00:54:10.060 --> 00:54:15.980
But when judges do come across cases of incest or abuse within the family, the question

00:54:15.980 --> 00:54:20.380
then is, which is obviously far more common than just incest, but you have

00:54:21.580 --> 00:54:27.500
does the sexual aversion that's activated in the judges or the people making decisions

00:54:27.750 --> 00:54:31.910
influence at all uh the outcomes and the sentencing and so forth.

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

00:54:37.670 --> 00:54:40.630
um kind of gets into the legal system.

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

00:54:45.190 --> 00:54:47.270
finished it and or got enough data.

00:54:47.350 --> 00:54:49.430
And so that was that was a long time ago.

00:54:49.910 --> 00:54:52.630
But that's an interesting question that I've always wanted to answer.

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

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

00:55:03.980 --> 00:55:09.660
was there sort of a naive realism or naivety about the psychology that,

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

00:55:15.260 --> 00:55:17.100
disabuse them of this idea?

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

00:55:21.330 --> 00:55:22.450
wrong with them per se.

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

00:55:28.530 --> 00:55:29.330
it more complicated?

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

00:55:33.330 --> 00:55:38.290
okay, or really the science needed to be informed or to be in there.

00:55:38.370 --> 00:55:41.250
The law needed to be informed by the science much more than it was.

00:55:42.210 --> 00:55:48.120
So one of the first cases that I was asked to write a brief for

00:55:48.440 --> 00:55:54.200
was uh a brother and sister had met each other during adulthood

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

00:56:00.200 --> 00:56:01.400
kids actually.

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.

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

00:56:11.960 --> 00:56:13.720
probable with inbreeding.

00:56:14.750 --> 00:56:18.030
and so he they he was jailed because of it.

00:56:18.430 --> 00:56:21.230
And so uh kids were taken away.

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

00:56:25.950 --> 00:56:28.030
judge, saying, you know, they didn't grow up together.

00:56:28.110 --> 00:56:29.150
There's no disgust.

00:56:29.470 --> 00:56:33.150
And so, you know, what crime has been really committed here?

00:56:33.470 --> 00:56:37.950
And um, so I wrote this and I never heard back.

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

00:56:43.300 --> 00:56:44.740
looked but gotten curious what happened.

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.

00:56:49.060 --> 00:56:51.220
Like he's still in jail or was in jail.

00:56:51.380 --> 00:56:52.900
And the lawyer quit.

00:56:53.060 --> 00:56:55.620
He like got so upset about like the system.

00:56:55.940 --> 00:56:58.820
Um, because you had two like decent human beings.

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

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

00:57:09.730 --> 00:57:10.530
like, What?

00:57:13.170 --> 00:57:14.690
It wouldn't change how you felt about her.

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

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

00:57:24.160 --> 00:57:28.160
kind of explicit knowledge doesn't change necessarily how you feel about someone.

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

00:57:32.320 --> 00:57:32.960
another.

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,

00:57:39.040 --> 00:57:41.440
you know, legalizing adult inside.

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

00:57:46.480 --> 00:57:49.360
sexual decisions among d uh consenting adults.

00:57:49.600 --> 00:57:54.390
And um and I think that it's a very interesting uh

00:57:55.590 --> 00:57:56.390
that was interesting.

00:57:56.550 --> 00:58:00.630
The other two cases actually, one was grandparents who were very concerned about their

00:58:00.630 --> 00:58:03.590
grandkids who were being abused by a father, a stepfather.

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

00:58:07.590 --> 00:58:07.830
on.

00:58:07.990 --> 00:58:13.910
And then another guy was from from the UK and and was wondering

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

00:58:19.920 --> 00:58:21.760
was sent away for boarding school.

00:58:21.840 --> 00:58:25.920
But in the meantime, their parents, his parents have had another child, never really

00:58:26.080 --> 00:58:27.200
interacted with her.

00:58:27.440 --> 00:58:30.400
He comes home and there's like a kind of cute girl.

00:58:32.240 --> 00:58:36.080
And he's like, you know, is it wrong of me to have these thoughts?

00:58:36.160 --> 00:58:39.200
And I was like, listen, I don't want to deal in right and wrong.

00:58:39.280 --> 00:58:40.640
I really don't like those words.

00:58:40.720 --> 00:58:44.630
But I can tell you at least one explanation for what might be happening.

00:58:44.870 --> 00:58:46.230
Like you never really know.

00:58:46.390 --> 00:58:51.350
But like, here's one possibility in terms of the aversion that likely didn't develop.

00:58:51.590 --> 00:58:55.350
Um, you know, you weren't she to your mind, she's effectively a stranger.

00:58:55.430 --> 00:58:59.990
You're evaluating her as you would any other uh female of that age.

00:59:00.070 --> 00:59:03.430
And so, in any case, those are the kinds of things.

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

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

00:59:12.860 --> 00:59:15.020
now here's how I can move forward making decisions.

00:59:15.260 --> 00:59:18.940
The grandparents who were concerned about their grandkids, I was like, you know, there's

00:59:18.940 --> 00:59:23.980
abuse, you know, yeah, the you the daughter, you yeah, things probably need to happen fast.

00:59:24.140 --> 00:59:25.980
So I wasn't part of any legal case there.

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

00:59:30.460 --> 00:59:30.700
sister.

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

00:59:35.970 --> 00:59:37.970
that's that stings.

00:59:38.530 --> 00:59:39.650
Yeah, it's pretty tragic.

00:59:39.730 --> 00:59:43.970
I mean, you think about the what is just from an objective perspective, you understand the

00:59:43.970 --> 00:59:47.570
function of the disgust from a biological perspective.

00:59:47.730 --> 00:59:47.970
Yeah.

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

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

01:00:00.080 --> 01:00:03.280
people are doing this, there's something wrong with them and they need state or

01:00:03.280 --> 01:00:04.800
institutional intervention.

01:00:05.040 --> 01:00:10.320
Like, is that why would it be, you know, like is that in the law?

01:00:10.480 --> 01:00:11.520
Is there some explanation?

01:00:11.680 --> 01:00:13.360
Have you talked to lawyers about that?

01:00:13.680 --> 01:00:14.400
I don't think there's.

01:00:14.480 --> 01:00:17.360
I think it's just a general, it messes up the family system.

01:00:17.600 --> 01:00:20.560
But I don't understand, like, but you know, I'm not sure.

01:00:20.720 --> 01:00:24.240
They don't need a moral argument over and above the disgust itself.

01:00:24.640 --> 01:00:25.600
No, you don't.

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,

01:00:29.650 --> 01:00:31.490
but you're all more genetically related.

01:00:31.570 --> 01:00:32.530
You're like a beehive.

01:00:32.610 --> 01:00:34.290
Like, shouldn't that bring you closer together?

01:00:35.170 --> 01:00:37.490
Taking the kids away also breaks up the family system.

01:00:37.570 --> 01:00:37.890
Yeah.

01:00:38.290 --> 01:00:38.530
Yeah.

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

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

01:00:50.930 --> 01:00:54.690
whether or not there's reasons to outlaw that type of union.

01:00:55.250 --> 01:00:56.530
Put that one aside.

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

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

01:01:06.880 --> 01:01:07.760
people reproduce.

01:01:07.920 --> 01:01:09.840
And so that's a slippery slope, right?

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

01:01:13.840 --> 01:01:15.120
bunch of other abnormalities.

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?

01:01:19.760 --> 01:01:23.040
So that to me is is a very, very bad argument, right?

01:01:23.120 --> 01:01:25.600
That's that's starting to open a can of worms.

01:01:25.760 --> 01:01:31.530
So um, but then the question is as a society, what do we feel are

01:01:31.770 --> 01:01:37.770
rules that people will would want to adhere to, uh, want to respect, uh,

01:01:37.850 --> 01:01:41.690
but the question is why are we instantiated, like why are we putting them in place?

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

01:01:47.770 --> 01:01:51.260
be, but we should take a careful look at it.

01:01:51.580 --> 01:01:51.820
Right.

01:01:51.980 --> 01:01:57.980
It's not a good uh moral compass in the quote unquote moral

01:01:57.980 --> 01:02:01.500
sort of it's not a good uh objective compass.

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.

01:02:06.540 --> 01:02:12.190
Um so the development of this kind of moral system is really interesting.

01:02:12.270 --> 01:02:18.030
Like when kids start turning on their that moral psychology, like seven, eight kind of

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.

01:02:22.590 --> 01:02:26.830
And now they probably for you know out hunting and foraging and helping.

01:02:26.910 --> 01:02:29.150
And so now it's like they can be responsible for stuff.

01:02:29.230 --> 01:02:31.950
But it's very interesting how this kind of starts to turn on.

01:02:32.110 --> 01:02:37.960
And I remember my my son, um he was I used to make

01:02:37.960 --> 01:02:42.040
him eggs and I used to I grew up having jelly on my eggs.

01:02:42.440 --> 01:02:46.440
You might all find that disgusting or or ketchup or something, whatever jelly or ketchup.

01:02:46.680 --> 01:02:47.720
Yeah, ketchup's great thing.

01:02:47.880 --> 01:02:48.200
Yeah, yeah.

01:02:48.600 --> 01:02:49.240
I like it on eggs.

01:02:49.480 --> 01:02:51.320
My son loves ketchup on his eggs, yeah.

01:02:51.720 --> 01:02:54.840
But it might have been maybe it was ketchup, but maybe it was jelly.

01:02:54.920 --> 01:02:55.320
I don't know.

01:02:55.480 --> 01:02:58.120
But it ends up jelly and eggs actually turn eggs green.

01:02:58.280 --> 01:02:59.560
So your green eggs and ham.

01:02:59.880 --> 01:03:03.160
But I so maybe I had some, but it was probably ketchup, doesn't matter.

01:03:03.240 --> 01:03:09.090
But my son had a friend over coming over, and I am eating eggs with something

01:03:09.090 --> 01:03:11.410
that's not typically at the table with eggs.

01:03:11.570 --> 01:03:14.210
Like I forget if it's jelly or ketchup, it doesn't matter.

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.

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,

01:03:24.850 --> 01:03:25.250
what's that?

01:03:25.330 --> 01:03:25.970
Like data?

01:03:26.130 --> 01:03:29.090
Like it's like new kid.

01:03:29.250 --> 01:03:32.900
And I just was basically like, why you like it too?

01:03:39.300 --> 01:03:43.300
So I was like, if I'm going down, you're coming down with me, kid.

01:03:44.260 --> 01:03:48.580
But it was, but the idea that it was just very interesting, like something that was

01:03:48.580 --> 01:03:49.300
abnormal.

01:03:49.460 --> 01:03:53.220
So that he had to point out, like, I don't do that.

01:03:53.540 --> 01:03:55.380
Like, that's disgusting.

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

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

01:04:05.790 --> 01:04:06.190
do it?

01:04:06.430 --> 01:04:08.030
Like, you know, like Yeah.

01:04:08.190 --> 01:04:09.390
You know, anyway.

01:04:10.670 --> 01:04:11.790
Really interesting.

01:04:11.950 --> 01:04:12.590
Yeah.

01:04:14.110 --> 01:04:15.710
So Where do you want to go?

01:04:16.190 --> 01:04:16.590
All right.

01:04:16.830 --> 01:04:18.670
I I got a direction we could go.

01:04:19.070 --> 01:04:24.940
So uh As you know, uh, we recently, a few years ago, came out of a

01:04:24.940 --> 01:04:27.260
huge global pandemic.

01:04:28.860 --> 01:04:29.500
I didn't hear about this, Tom.

01:04:31.740 --> 01:04:33.100
I must have woke up.

01:04:34.700 --> 01:04:40.300
Um so here is a really good example of

01:04:40.540 --> 01:04:45.980
uh an environmental stimulus with with huge relevance to

01:04:45.980 --> 01:04:47.180
evolutionary psychology.

01:04:47.340 --> 01:04:48.860
It happened before our eyes.

01:04:49.100 --> 01:04:54.630
Um coming out of this experience, what do you think we

01:04:54.630 --> 01:04:56.950
learned from it as psychologists?

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

01:05:01.510 --> 01:05:06.550
capacity to you know be indoors and be away from uh social life.

01:05:06.710 --> 01:05:12.540
Uh but you would think that this would be a good natural experiment to study

01:05:12.620 --> 01:05:15.340
you know responses to pathogens in real time.

01:05:15.500 --> 01:05:19.020
Uh what do you think uh you learned from this experience?

01:05:19.180 --> 01:05:22.700
What did the evolutionary psychology uh community learn from it?

01:05:22.860 --> 01:05:25.580
Uh has there any been any interesting data coming out of it?

01:05:25.660 --> 01:05:30.540
So what what's your take on this I have takes at many levels.

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

01:05:37.980 --> 01:05:40.140
some of the effects of COVID.

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

01:05:46.130 --> 01:05:51.970
how like I I don't know that I saw anything that convinced me

01:05:52.290 --> 01:05:55.650
that the pandemic caused

01:05:58.850 --> 01:06:01.730
shifts in disgust sensitivity across the board.

01:06:01.890 --> 01:06:06.370
Like I don't think that I but but that said um

01:06:09.700 --> 01:06:14.900
people were across the board, I think, more reactive uh to

01:06:15.140 --> 01:06:20.980
everything and just on a heightened sensitivity to every type

01:06:20.980 --> 01:06:21.780
of fear.

01:06:22.020 --> 01:06:28.020
So I mean, like, so I I don't at EHB

01:06:28.100 --> 01:06:31.620
we got tons of papers about COVID and disgust.

01:06:31.860 --> 01:06:37.590
And so I my memory of things is basically

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.

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

01:06:48.630 --> 01:06:51.030
did move push things around.

01:06:51.270 --> 01:06:55.510
So at Cornell, you have um David Pizarro, right?

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

01:06:59.990 --> 01:07:02.550
disgust people and it pushes people's morality around.

01:07:02.630 --> 01:07:06.020
But it's like it's not really that big an effect.

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

01:07:12.020 --> 01:07:12.980
and start marching.

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.

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

01:07:23.620 --> 01:07:24.340
slightly.

01:07:24.660 --> 01:07:30.500
More jarring to me during COVID was the coalitional stuff

01:07:31.060 --> 01:07:35.290
and just how just how

01:07:36.970 --> 01:07:38.250
nasty people got.

01:07:38.970 --> 01:07:44.250
So it actually people were nastier, but then to their own group, they were nicer.

01:07:44.410 --> 01:07:46.570
Like I think you saw both things happening.

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

01:07:52.570 --> 01:07:57.450
of just just the rhetoric, just I couldn't even watch the news.

01:07:57.530 --> 01:07:58.410
It was awful, right?

01:07:58.490 --> 01:08:04.480
And then, but then of the people in your social circle, like bonds were forged, they

01:08:04.480 --> 01:08:08.960
were strengthened, they were, you know, some relationships were you cleaned out some

01:08:08.960 --> 01:08:13.360
relationships that perhaps you know you got good information that they were no longer there

01:08:13.360 --> 01:08:15.520
for you during times of actual need.

01:08:16.240 --> 01:08:19.040
So I I I see it as like both things happened.

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

01:08:24.560 --> 01:08:25.520
were in trouble.

01:08:26.240 --> 01:08:31.230
And then but also I think that the coalitional aspects of what is this?

01:08:31.390 --> 01:08:32.270
How dangerous is it?

01:08:32.430 --> 01:08:33.630
Where did it come from?

01:08:33.790 --> 01:08:35.550
You know, can it really spread?

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

01:08:39.710 --> 01:08:41.550
that that bugged a lot of people.

01:08:41.870 --> 01:08:46.110
So it was a disaster.

01:08:46.270 --> 01:08:48.270
I I'm impressed we came out of it.

01:08:49.710 --> 01:08:50.910
Yeah, I think it I think it affected everything.

01:08:52.940 --> 01:08:55.420
It it affected everybody and everything.

01:08:55.580 --> 01:08:59.260
And and I I will say, like, it was it was scary.

01:08:59.580 --> 01:09:00.780
It was really scary.

01:09:00.860 --> 01:09:05.580
I remember thinking at the beginning of the pandemic, like, we need to get another fridge.

01:09:05.820 --> 01:09:08.780
We need to go like get meat and start freezing it.

01:09:09.020 --> 01:09:12.300
And you know, my husband at the time was like, What is wrong with you?

01:09:12.460 --> 01:09:18.270
I'm like, human nature like watch out like the everything's gonna be gone

01:09:18.510 --> 01:09:24.030
like have you seen have you seen apocalypse movies yeah I was so scared

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

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

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

01:09:40.100 --> 01:09:40.340
down.

01:09:40.420 --> 01:09:41.780
Where are our like kin?

01:09:41.860 --> 01:09:42.900
Where are our weapons?

01:09:43.060 --> 01:09:44.420
Like, where's our food?

01:09:44.580 --> 01:09:47.460
Um, and it really, it really put my mind.

01:09:47.620 --> 01:09:49.860
I mean, maybe that's where the female mind goes.

01:09:49.940 --> 01:09:52.180
And he was just like, you're off your rocker.

01:09:52.500 --> 01:09:57.700
And so um maybe I was, but I it certainly I got nervous.

01:09:57.860 --> 01:09:59.700
I got very nervous initially.

01:10:00.020 --> 01:10:02.590
Um, but in any case, yeah.

01:10:02.750 --> 01:10:04.430
Well w what what do you think?

01:10:05.710 --> 01:10:06.750
I mean, I I I don't know.

01:10:06.910 --> 01:10:11.390
I mean I I I remember so I mean so my my take on it.

01:10:11.630 --> 01:10:16.110
So I mean I was looking at it through the lens of my theoretical preconceptions.

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

01:10:19.950 --> 01:10:21.230
Political Belief Systems.

01:10:21.390 --> 01:10:26.120
And the argument there is that uh political ideologies don't really emerge from these

01:10:26.120 --> 01:10:30.680
deep-seated individual differences and core values that are posited by a lot of

01:10:30.680 --> 01:10:31.160
psychologists.

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

01:10:36.040 --> 01:10:41.480
that uh one of the key bases of conservatism is disgust, that conservatives are higher in

01:10:41.480 --> 01:10:42.440
disgust sensitivity.

01:10:42.600 --> 01:10:47.480
They're more sensitive to contamination and pollution and purity, uh, and and it's all

01:10:47.480 --> 01:10:50.440
stemming from this disease psychology.

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

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

01:10:58.910 --> 01:11:01.790
to shut things down, wanting to be the conservative ones.

01:11:01.950 --> 01:11:03.310
And yet the opposite happened.

01:11:03.470 --> 01:11:06.910
And for me, that was a huge victory for my theoretical approach.

01:11:07.150 --> 01:11:11.470
Uh which suggests that these kinds of political opinions are about uh shifting alliances

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

01:11:16.350 --> 01:11:20.270
times be be uh random and can shift around unpredictably.

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

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

01:11:29.960 --> 01:11:30.840
happened to take.

01:11:31.000 --> 01:11:32.600
Uh, you know, people follow the leader.

01:11:32.760 --> 01:11:38.520
So I think we the uh the polarization around this issue could have easily been

01:11:38.520 --> 01:11:39.240
flipped.

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

01:11:45.570 --> 01:11:49.170
everyone was predicting that conservatives would be on one end of this issue and they were

01:11:49.170 --> 01:11:50.770
on the opposite end of this issue.

01:11:51.010 --> 01:11:53.250
Um so that was that was what I took away from it.

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

01:11:58.930 --> 01:12:04.610
some of the explanations or the pushback that you've gotten, like well, what you

01:12:04.610 --> 01:12:10.300
saw was actually because like what what did you hear that was in that

01:12:10.300 --> 01:12:11.820
tried to contradict your findings?

01:12:11.980 --> 01:12:12.460
I agree with you.

01:12:12.540 --> 01:12:13.900
I I think your findings are beautiful.

01:12:14.060 --> 01:12:15.580
Like I I think that's perfect.

01:12:15.820 --> 01:12:17.740
But what did people say against it?

01:12:17.900 --> 01:12:23.580
Like to say, oh well, actually, you're wrong because uh I haven't actually uh

01:12:23.740 --> 01:12:26.860
mostly I've I've I've found that people just kind of surrender.

01:12:28.060 --> 01:12:33.980
They're just like, yeah, that that uh I haven't

01:12:34.140 --> 01:12:37.970
yeah, it's really hard to like You are charming.

01:12:39.890 --> 01:12:41.970
People are like, I'm so tired from COVID.

01:12:42.130 --> 01:12:44.130
It was just like, yeah, no, I we Yeah, no.

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

01:12:47.970 --> 01:12:52.930
contamination purity, but yeah, they they're the ones who are, you know,

01:12:53.170 --> 01:12:59.100
avoiding vaccines and wanting to be, you know, more out there you know out there

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

01:13:03.740 --> 01:13:09.740
seen anyone do a convincing uh uh case for it um so well we don't

01:13:09.820 --> 01:13:13.500
we don't include data that doesn't um support our theory

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

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

01:13:26.510 --> 01:13:28.910
creates some it's someone else's problem, right?

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.

01:13:33.470 --> 01:13:39.150
So that was the the conceit of the invisibility cloaking device in Douglas Adams.

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.

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.

01:13:47.790 --> 01:13:47.950
Yeah.

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,

01:13:53.740 --> 01:13:59.100
you know, disgust sensitivity and political spectrum, you know, and it's like so apparently

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.

01:14:05.020 --> 01:14:05.500
Oh no.

01:14:06.060 --> 01:14:07.580
Uh yeah, no, that's there.

01:14:07.660 --> 01:14:09.100
No, so I have a story about that.

01:14:09.260 --> 01:14:12.700
Um so I think most of that is driven by sexual disgust.

01:14:12.890 --> 01:14:17.210
And sexual disgust in turn is a marker of one's reproductive strategy.

01:14:17.370 --> 01:14:22.010
So if you're pursuing a particular kind of monogamous, committed, high fertility, uh

01:14:22.410 --> 01:14:27.130
traditionally gender division of labor reproductive strategy, um, which is more common

01:14:27.130 --> 01:14:31.530
among social conservatives than social liberals, um, sexual disgust and disgust toward

01:14:31.530 --> 01:14:35.690
promiscuity and short-term sexual relationships, that is a fundamental part of that

01:14:35.690 --> 01:14:36.970
reproductive strategy.

01:14:37.050 --> 01:14:41.720
Uh, and that is a fundamental part of the uh uh conservative political coalition.

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

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

01:14:50.680 --> 01:14:51.960
driving uh policy.

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

01:14:55.800 --> 01:14:57.960
that these correlations are are picking up on.

01:14:58.440 --> 01:15:01.880
And insofar as as you know baiting strategies are correlated with other kinds of disgust,

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

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

01:15:09.160 --> 01:15:11.550
big transmitter of diseases is sex.

01:15:11.710 --> 01:15:14.190
So you're gonna, you know, want to be less promiscuous.

01:15:14.350 --> 01:15:18.670
So I think it's all it's all connected to uh mating strategies, reproductive strategies,

01:15:18.750 --> 01:15:20.750
and that would be the story I'd tell about it.

01:15:21.710 --> 01:15:22.670
I like that.

01:15:23.550 --> 01:15:24.430
Super cool.

01:15:24.670 --> 01:15:30.510
Um, Deb, you mentioned EHB evolution human behavior, which is one of, if not the, the

01:15:30.880 --> 01:15:36.160
preeminent flagship journal of evolutionary psychology, also evolutionary behavioral

01:15:36.160 --> 01:15:36.400
sciences.

01:15:36.560 --> 01:15:42.560
There are other journals, but EHB is very much the really

01:15:43.120 --> 01:15:46.400
in many ways the home, the home of HBES, the Human Behavior Evolution Society.

01:15:46.800 --> 01:15:47.600
It's the journal.

01:15:47.840 --> 01:15:50.000
You have been the editor for how long now?

01:15:50.480 --> 01:15:51.040
A long time.

01:15:52.560 --> 01:15:53.520
I'm coming to the end.

01:15:55.120 --> 01:16:00.850
I'm curious, you know, You that's a unique perspective that not

01:16:00.850 --> 01:16:01.810
many people get.

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.

01:16:07.650 --> 01:16:09.410
And not everybody gets a chance to do that.

01:16:09.570 --> 01:16:15.010
It gets you a sense of um the trajectory of people trying to

01:16:15.010 --> 01:16:17.170
publish at this journal.

01:16:17.410 --> 01:16:21.730
Um, there's actually, I can think of several questions, right?

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

01:16:26.860 --> 01:16:32.540
whatever the this podcast is is how DevSec is going or how the evolutionary

01:16:32.620 --> 01:16:33.740
brainhavel sciences are going.

01:16:33.900 --> 01:16:36.700
We talked about that earlier in the and when we were talking.

01:16:37.020 --> 01:16:42.860
Um your experience as being the editor, are there certain things

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

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

01:16:52.150 --> 01:16:54.710
we wouldn't know or maybe even wouldn't wouldn't know to ask?

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

01:16:59.750 --> 01:17:01.270
are trying to like publish here.

01:17:01.510 --> 01:17:05.430
I've really noticed a change in this or you know is there anything like that?

01:17:06.470 --> 01:17:10.870
Um no is fine.

01:17:11.910 --> 01:17:12.550
Yeah.

01:17:14.700 --> 01:17:19.500
There are certain like hot topics that keep kind of coming at EHB.

01:17:19.740 --> 01:17:20.700
So um

01:17:26.140 --> 01:17:31.180
but as with any particular topic, like there's there's like the meat, right?

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

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.

01:17:41.260 --> 01:17:43.260
So replications are of course always valuable.

01:17:44.790 --> 01:17:50.550
And so in general, I've been very pleased with the quality that's been

01:17:50.550 --> 01:17:52.150
submitted to EHB.

01:17:52.710 --> 01:17:58.550
I I would like to see more work

01:17:58.550 --> 01:18:00.310
from anthropologists, you know.

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.

01:18:05.510 --> 01:18:10.600
So there was that weird um twenty years since that weird paper was published that uh

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

01:18:17.800 --> 01:18:18.440
guest edit.

01:18:18.520 --> 01:18:21.320
And that was one of the most successful special issues.

01:18:21.480 --> 01:18:25.160
I mean, that's one of the reasons why our impact factor skyrocketed.

01:18:25.560 --> 01:18:31.560
Um and so then but then we had um Aaron Lukashewski, he did a whole bunch

01:18:31.560 --> 01:18:37.410
of, you know, from the field special issues that also were really wildly successful but

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

01:18:43.410 --> 01:18:49.170
find interesting and um trying to you know market and add

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

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

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

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

01:19:09.780 --> 01:19:11.060
is is organizing.

01:19:11.220 --> 01:19:15.380
There's one that's focusing on Latin America research, so all the evolution, uh

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

01:19:20.020 --> 01:19:25.940
it that's coming out of Latin America, South America, and then um there's also

01:19:27.110 --> 01:19:31.510
One on cognitive development that I'm extremely happy about, and I'm looking forward to

01:19:31.590 --> 01:19:34.710
because that's an area that we desperately need more of.

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

01:19:40.950 --> 01:19:46.790
kind of individual differences, clinical aspects, um, just to kind of see what was

01:19:46.790 --> 01:19:47.430
out there.

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

01:19:53.480 --> 01:19:58.280
interesting papers on dark triad, psychopathy, uh, and so forth.

01:19:58.520 --> 01:20:03.240
I have another one on singlehood uh that's being put together.

01:20:03.480 --> 01:20:05.560
Um we'll see we'll see where that goes.

01:20:05.720 --> 01:20:09.880
Uh that was the proposal, so I'm also very interested in what people would propose.

01:20:10.200 --> 01:20:16.030
And then my goal really as the editor was to start more conversations and to

01:20:16.030 --> 01:20:19.470
get people engaged in talking back and forth.

01:20:19.710 --> 01:20:25.150
So there's a great new paper on the evolution of culture and

01:20:25.470 --> 01:20:28.670
or what cultural evolution means and what it means to study culture.

01:20:28.830 --> 01:20:30.990
And so I was hoping that we have a nice back and forth.

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

01:20:35.950 --> 01:20:37.070
start the dialogue, right?

01:20:37.150 --> 01:20:39.230
Because if everyone's saying the same thing, it's not fun.

01:20:39.310 --> 01:20:42.990
But for future generations, it's really nice to kind of see where the disagreement is.

01:20:43.150 --> 01:20:48.840
So in a BB BBS style format, you know, having these conversations, I think, is

01:20:49.080 --> 01:20:49.640
a lot of fun.

01:20:49.800 --> 01:20:52.040
There was just one about war, the evolution of war.

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

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

01:21:02.760 --> 01:21:04.280
deep psychological history?

01:21:04.520 --> 01:21:10.200
And so actually, um, Lita just republished the evolution, uh, the cognitive

01:21:10.200 --> 01:21:11.320
foundations of war.

01:21:11.560 --> 01:21:12.280
Did I say that right?

01:21:12.520 --> 01:21:14.370
And so great paper.

01:21:14.610 --> 01:21:17.010
And so that'll be part of that as well.

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

01:21:21.730 --> 01:21:25.250
psychology of war and warfare and team psychology.

01:21:25.410 --> 01:21:27.570
So that's actually really exciting.

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

01:21:32.690 --> 01:21:35.650
saying, you know, what areas do we need more of?

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

01:21:42.100 --> 01:21:42.660
could we do?

01:21:42.980 --> 01:21:45.380
And especially now that they're doing virtual special issues.

01:21:45.460 --> 01:21:47.060
So what would be interesting?

01:21:47.700 --> 01:21:52.820
You know, I think that the application, so application of evolutionary psychology is

01:21:52.820 --> 01:21:54.020
something we haven't yet talked about.

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

01:21:59.890 --> 01:22:05.250
instance I have found really impressive with some social psychologists, particularly uh Bob

01:22:05.250 --> 01:22:06.530
Cialdini, right?

01:22:06.610 --> 01:22:09.730
So he has he has a model of full psychology, right?

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,

01:22:13.170 --> 01:22:16.690
studying it, study it, put it back in the real world, see how it performs.

01:22:16.930 --> 01:22:18.850
And it's really a great model.

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

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

01:22:28.220 --> 01:22:34.140
come up with strategies and research programs that allow us to

01:22:34.140 --> 01:22:40.060
be slightly more applied and then do and and I think that's

01:22:40.060 --> 01:22:44.030
the next step of things because then it's like oh, it matters, right?

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

01:22:48.990 --> 01:22:49.710
it all along.

01:22:49.950 --> 01:22:52.670
And so I think that's where that would be important.

01:22:52.830 --> 01:22:57.070
And I think that there are areas that need evolutionary psychology.

01:22:57.230 --> 01:23:03.150
So leadership and other types of uh even kind of adding evolutionary tones into the

01:23:03.150 --> 01:23:07.240
social influence literature, I think, uh is is important.

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

01:23:12.920 --> 01:23:15.560
there into the real world, um, I think is important.

01:23:15.720 --> 01:23:20.440
Obviously, evolutionary medicine is doing all, you know, and evolutionary psychiatry, but

01:23:20.440 --> 01:23:23.560
where how are people getting trained in those areas?

01:23:25.400 --> 01:23:26.280
Really cool.

01:23:26.440 --> 01:23:26.920
Yeah.

01:23:27.160 --> 01:23:33.030
Um So in my opinion, uh

01:23:33.270 --> 01:23:38.390
Evolution and Human Behavior is the best evolutionary social science journal uh in

01:23:38.390 --> 01:23:38.870
existence.

01:23:39.270 --> 01:23:42.310
I'll I'll pay you double pay you later, uh David.

01:23:43.750 --> 01:23:47.990
Um it's the one that I think has it puts out the highest quality stuff.

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

01:23:52.470 --> 01:23:56.420
comes out and uh some of the other Evo Psych journals.

01:23:56.580 --> 01:24:00.740
Um, I consider evolution human behavior to be a cut a cut above the rest.

01:24:00.980 --> 01:24:03.060
Um get really good reviews.

01:24:03.140 --> 01:24:06.100
I always know at EHB I'm gonna get good reviews.

01:24:07.380 --> 01:24:08.500
Yeah, totally.

01:24:08.740 --> 01:24:10.420
Um we try, it's hard.

01:24:10.500 --> 01:24:11.540
People say no a lot.

01:24:12.580 --> 01:24:13.140
Yeah.

01:24:13.300 --> 01:24:17.380
Um I'm curious at you know how you have done it.

01:24:17.460 --> 01:24:22.930
Like what what has your strategy been for maintaining quality control and making sure that

01:24:22.930 --> 01:24:27.810
you don't publish garbage uh and and just maintaining the integrity and reputation of of

01:24:27.810 --> 01:24:30.130
the journal because it doesn't seem like an easy thing to do.

01:24:30.290 --> 01:24:31.570
How do you do it?

01:24:33.410 --> 01:24:38.850
Um so I think the main answer is that

01:24:41.970 --> 01:24:43.410
it's actually a good question.

01:24:43.650 --> 01:24:44.450
And um

01:24:49.580 --> 01:24:52.300
Two balancing questions I ask myself.

01:24:52.620 --> 01:24:58.060
One is, does this push our knowledge in this area forward in a

01:24:58.060 --> 01:24:59.340
substantial way?

01:24:59.740 --> 01:25:05.660
Or enough so that it it rounds out something that is, you know,

01:25:05.740 --> 01:25:08.700
that I think people would find in interesting.

01:25:09.340 --> 01:25:13.930
I get I get nervous about uh poorly designed studies.

01:25:14.330 --> 01:25:20.090
And truth be told, a lot of papers get rejected because A,

01:25:20.170 --> 01:25:21.690
they're not evolutionary.

01:25:22.490 --> 01:25:28.250
B the there's no rationale for the hypotheses,

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

01:25:34.380 --> 01:25:37.420
that's been a controversy that's already been established and we've already solved it.

01:25:37.580 --> 01:25:41.580
So you don't there's this this there's no basis for this particular hypothesis.

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.

01:25:47.740 --> 01:25:49.180
Let me tell you about it.

01:25:49.340 --> 01:25:54.140
And so oh I have I have a good file drawer of special papers.

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

01:25:59.490 --> 01:25:59.810
too.

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.

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

01:26:10.290 --> 01:26:14.610
look over my shoulder uh now more than I ever used to.

01:26:15.570 --> 01:26:18.610
Like, I don't know who's taking their medication this morning or not.

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,

01:26:22.210 --> 01:26:26.020
like evolutionary psychology that those Santa Barbarians think that they figured out.

01:26:26.100 --> 01:26:26.740
That's all crap.

01:26:26.820 --> 01:26:27.700
I've got a new theory.

01:26:27.780 --> 01:26:31.300
And I'm like, oh, that looks exactly like what I learned.

01:26:31.460 --> 01:26:33.860
And so I I enjoy those.

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

01:26:39.220 --> 01:26:39.860
ideas.

01:26:40.100 --> 01:26:44.340
Uh but here's here's actually really where I balance it all out.

01:26:44.420 --> 01:26:49.940
So I I I'm an adaptationist, and so and I am, and so I realize

01:26:49.940 --> 01:26:53.690
that's There's an adaptationist running the journal.

01:26:53.770 --> 01:26:59.690
So I am very concerned about having things that contribute to understanding the design

01:26:59.690 --> 01:27:00.490
of the mind.

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,

01:27:05.050 --> 01:27:05.690
is this cool.

01:27:05.850 --> 01:27:07.210
Like it's kind of cool stuff.

01:27:07.370 --> 01:27:10.490
And I will send it out for review as something like extra.

01:27:10.650 --> 01:27:14.730
And so typically reviewers are like, what is this?

01:27:14.890 --> 01:27:15.050
No.

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.

01:27:18.410 --> 01:27:20.810
And sometimes I've decided yes, and sometimes no.

01:27:21.400 --> 01:27:26.920
Ultimately, I think about the history of science and I think about I

01:27:27.400 --> 01:27:33.320
the gatekeeper, I am the gatekeeper of some sort, but let the history of science,

01:27:33.400 --> 01:27:34.920
you know, sort it all out.

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

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

01:27:45.190 --> 01:27:45.990
was done really well.

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

01:27:49.430 --> 01:27:52.230
actually um, you know, move forward or not.

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

01:27:58.390 --> 01:27:58.630
world.

01:27:58.870 --> 01:28:00.870
By biased, I mean discerning.

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,

01:28:06.630 --> 01:28:09.510
contributes to to cognitive science in that in that way.

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.

01:28:13.940 --> 01:28:17.220
Like, when was the last time you saw a facial resemblance paper?

01:28:17.620 --> 01:28:18.660
Like, yeah.

01:28:18.820 --> 01:28:21.860
And so I'm not saying facial resemblance isn't interesting.

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.

01:28:26.980 --> 01:28:29.540
It's it's wrong, and there's good reason why it's wrong.

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.

01:28:32.900 --> 01:28:36.820
And so I just don't think it's a good kinship cue.

01:28:37.470 --> 01:28:42.110
And I have not been convinced of any of the data that are explained otherwise.

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

01:28:48.270 --> 01:28:49.950
another interesting like topic.

01:28:50.110 --> 01:28:53.870
Like that seems to have taken over the journal in some respect.

01:28:54.110 --> 01:28:58.110
And I I don't, I mean, as a as a scientist,

01:29:00.030 --> 01:29:03.840
listen, as evolutionary psychologist, I think, isn't that what I do?

01:29:04.000 --> 01:29:06.800
Like I just I don't know very confused about life history theory.

01:29:06.880 --> 01:29:08.960
I think to myself I'm an adaptationist.

01:29:09.040 --> 01:29:11.600
I'm concerned about how it develops and how it calibrates.

01:29:11.760 --> 01:29:12.800
Isn't that what this is?

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,

01:29:17.920 --> 01:29:19.520
there's people having a conversation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:29:55.660 --> 01:30:00.780
imagine a model, that's kind of one of my litmus tests of like, you know,

01:30:01.580 --> 01:30:03.100
is this is this a thing?

01:30:03.260 --> 01:30:04.860
Is there is there there there?

01:30:04.940 --> 01:30:10.940
You know, and so but again, I would say if either of you stepped into the

01:30:10.940 --> 01:30:16.730
role as editor, it's not that difficult to see the kinds of papers that

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,

01:30:20.570 --> 01:30:21.690
that's not off topic.

01:30:21.770 --> 01:30:24.330
That's just it's just not even wrong.

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.

01:30:28.490 --> 01:30:31.050
And I guess this is I this is what I wanted to say.

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

01:30:38.520 --> 01:30:44.520
there are a lot of papers that are valuable and they might not have gotten

01:30:44.520 --> 01:30:47.640
it all right, but they've gotten a lot of it right.

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.

01:30:51.800 --> 01:30:56.680
Meta-analyses and other techniques and other AI functions that have yet to been be born,

01:30:56.760 --> 01:30:59.320
you know, we'll try to kind of sift through all this stuff.

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,

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

01:31:08.310 --> 01:31:09.830
and I would have come up with this hypothesis.

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

01:31:14.710 --> 01:31:18.150
tend to be very happy with getting people's hard work out there.

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,

01:31:23.910 --> 01:31:24.150
right?

01:31:24.310 --> 01:31:29.560
So making sure that there's publications that are getting junior scholars jobs.

01:31:30.440 --> 01:31:36.120
What do you think is the challenge for not our generation

01:31:36.120 --> 01:31:41.800
collectively, but those young junior evolutionary psychologists or people who

01:31:41.800 --> 01:31:45.560
maybe are outside or adjacent who are going into it?

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

01:31:52.040 --> 01:31:54.360
their mission is in their cohort?

01:31:57.410 --> 01:32:03.330
I would like to see greater engagement with this

01:32:03.330 --> 01:32:06.450
the information processing side of things.

01:32:06.770 --> 01:32:10.290
I think a lot of good evolutionary psychology gets done without it.

01:32:10.530 --> 01:32:14.450
I think better evolutionary psychology can get done with it.

01:32:14.690 --> 01:32:19.090
Um I don't know if that's just because that's what I like.

01:32:19.170 --> 01:32:20.450
So it's very possible.

01:32:20.690 --> 01:32:24.900
So and I I fully admit that and very I'm very self-aware.

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.

01:32:30.660 --> 01:32:36.100
But the next generation of scientists, of evolutionary psychologists,

01:32:37.220 --> 01:32:40.900
it's really critical they understand the level of cognitive program.

01:32:41.780 --> 01:32:44.980
And that that's real, that's where that's what's important.

01:32:45.970 --> 01:32:51.650
My goal at EHB is to potentially try and publish some of the greatest hits

01:32:51.650 --> 01:32:52.290
again.

01:32:52.690 --> 01:32:56.050
So the war paper, you know, so I'm looking for everything.

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

01:33:00.850 --> 01:33:06.690
anniversary coming up of a particular paper, like I would love to have um I would

01:33:06.690 --> 01:33:12.400
love to have a discussion between, and I'm hoping this paper by uh Nicholas Bombard

01:33:12.640 --> 01:33:18.400
um is actually um on culture in instigates a conversation

01:33:18.400 --> 01:33:24.160
about culture because I think that would be a great back and forth between like Rob

01:33:24.320 --> 01:33:30.240
Boyd, Pete Richardson, and Lita and Pascal, like and you know, and and so being able

01:33:30.240 --> 01:33:31.920
to have that conversation.

01:33:33.440 --> 01:33:39.110
The thing that frustrates me a lot is why haven't we

01:33:39.110 --> 01:33:42.790
moved past this learning and culture speak?

01:33:44.150 --> 01:33:46.310
I couldn't be more frustrated by it.

01:33:46.470 --> 01:33:49.750
Like I like it's due to culture.

01:33:49.830 --> 01:33:52.470
I just want to be like, I don't know what that means.

01:33:52.550 --> 01:33:56.310
Like, I don't know what, like, give me like flush that out.

01:33:56.390 --> 01:33:58.150
Like at all?

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

01:34:04.280 --> 01:34:10.120
frustrated with people being rude to me for for for for you know for

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

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

01:34:20.040 --> 01:34:20.600
explained?

01:34:20.760 --> 01:34:25.320
That's not an explanatory, you know, that's not powerful as an explanatory force.

01:34:25.480 --> 01:34:26.920
That's to be explained.

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,

01:34:33.370 --> 01:34:38.890
you know, we are the field, evolutionary psychology is the field of culture and learning.

01:34:38.970 --> 01:34:41.450
And we specify how all that happens.

01:34:41.690 --> 01:34:46.090
Like, you know, I adopt all their language and start using it.

01:34:46.250 --> 01:34:52.010
It's like they forget the adapted mind, you know, psychology and the generation of what?

01:34:52.620 --> 01:34:54.140
You know, like culture.

01:34:54.940 --> 01:34:55.340
Exactly.

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.

01:34:59.740 --> 01:35:02.540
It's like, no, we're the science of culture.

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.

01:35:08.780 --> 01:35:11.180
So that's what that's what I'd like to see far more of.

01:35:11.260 --> 01:35:13.980
So that I think there's a lot of room to grow there.

01:35:15.260 --> 01:35:17.980
And I'd love to see it spread into anthropology.

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.

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

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

01:35:33.450 --> 01:35:38.970
that especially people who um are either well known like yourself or maybe even some people

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

01:35:44.360 --> 01:35:46.920
EP on the on the internets or things like that.

01:35:47.000 --> 01:35:49.640
You know, in a lot of people, hey don't fault people for monetizing.

01:35:49.960 --> 01:35:51.240
You cannot fault people for monetizing.

01:35:51.720 --> 01:35:55.560
Joint please uh we might have a Patreon by the time this comes out.

01:35:55.640 --> 01:35:58.040
So um or better, you know, uh no for sure.

01:35:58.200 --> 01:35:59.640
No, no, not a faulting at all.

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

01:36:05.720 --> 01:36:05.960
on.

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

01:36:10.870 --> 01:36:15.190
know, John Tuby was in an anthro department, the CP was in an anthro building.

01:36:15.350 --> 01:36:18.630
Um, so much I was an anthro minor, you know.

01:36:18.870 --> 01:36:23.190
If you look down in the CP, in the same way as UCLA, David, right?

01:36:23.270 --> 01:36:27.590
I mean, you were talking about you know, it's just anthropsy, anthropsy, sociology,

01:36:27.670 --> 01:36:28.230
communication.

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.

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

01:36:36.840 --> 01:36:38.760
UCSB, I was other places.

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

01:36:44.680 --> 01:36:47.240
things and I'd be like, oh, I became the amateur anthropologist.

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?

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

01:36:54.760 --> 01:36:55.160
design.

01:36:55.400 --> 01:36:58.840
You're so very particular to a particular culture.

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

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.

01:37:10.370 --> 01:37:11.330
Well that's that's good.

01:37:11.410 --> 01:37:14.530
I mean I was uh I've been reading a lot of Tubi's edge pieces.

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

01:37:19.730 --> 01:37:21.570
of them and so they're they're fantastic.

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.

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

01:37:31.740 --> 01:37:33.180
cognitive programs, right?

01:37:33.340 --> 01:37:35.580
Not at the layer of whatever is manifest.

01:37:35.740 --> 01:37:40.060
And so Yeah, such a deep, deep principle, that layer of invariance.

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.

01:37:44.060 --> 01:37:49.970
That's such a deep d insight that I think John put so

01:37:49.970 --> 01:37:51.250
well what you just said.

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

01:37:56.530 --> 01:38:01.810
right layer, the right level to find the the

01:38:02.610 --> 01:38:03.250
principle.

01:38:05.170 --> 01:38:09.250
But to get there, you need to consider biology and physics.

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

01:38:14.130 --> 01:38:16.080
well well-versed in those areas.

01:38:16.240 --> 01:38:19.040
And I don't mean I don't mean any type of like reductionism.

01:38:19.200 --> 01:38:19.600
I don't.

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.

01:38:23.680 --> 01:38:26.480
But I think appreci how could it hurt?

01:38:26.640 --> 01:38:26.960
Right.

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

01:38:32.880 --> 01:38:34.240
physics of it.

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

01:38:40.010 --> 01:38:41.130
about doing physics.

01:38:41.210 --> 01:38:42.250
Um, I think.

01:38:42.410 --> 01:38:44.410
Um, I don't know, you tell me, Deb.

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

01:38:50.890 --> 01:38:52.410
in EHB, is that right?

01:38:52.650 --> 01:38:54.010
I think I can, yeah.

01:38:54.330 --> 01:38:54.890
Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

01:39:22.340 --> 01:39:28.230
doing that um you know, uh you know, John passing away, we've been reflecting on

01:39:28.230 --> 01:39:29.270
a lot about that.

01:39:29.750 --> 01:39:35.510
Was there anything in in the course of doing that special issue

01:39:36.070 --> 01:39:37.830
that sort of surprised you?

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,

01:39:42.790 --> 01:39:47.840
that's John, and that's something I want to like embody going forward.

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

01:39:51.200 --> 01:39:51.440
away.

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

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

01:40:02.640 --> 01:40:02.800
do?

01:40:02.880 --> 01:40:04.320
Like, you know, that's something I thought about.

01:40:04.400 --> 01:40:05.120
I've been thinking about.

01:40:05.360 --> 01:40:06.800
And what did you come up with?

01:40:08.010 --> 01:40:13.850
um you know uh ultimately it's that it's the it's theory first

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

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

01:40:23.930 --> 01:40:29.610
about this uh and maybe write it W W J D what would John do?

01:40:30.410 --> 01:40:34.650
Maybe maybe edit the complexity of the sentence down a little bit more towards how Lita

01:40:34.730 --> 01:40:39.140
would would would do um But I I like to think, you know,

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

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

01:40:51.380 --> 01:40:52.340
channel different people.

01:40:52.420 --> 01:40:56.580
Like what he learned, he said what he learned from working with people, like very famous

01:40:56.580 --> 01:40:58.500
people, um, was how they fought.

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,

01:41:02.550 --> 01:41:06.150
how would Isaac Asimov write this, you know, or or people like that.

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?

01:41:11.190 --> 01:41:12.870
Or how would he think about this?

01:41:13.030 --> 01:41:14.950
Um, for for for my part.

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

01:41:20.950 --> 01:41:22.870
couple ago, you know, start with the Big Bang first.

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

01:41:28.800 --> 01:41:31.360
after he passed away just to like listen to him.

01:41:31.600 --> 01:41:37.600
Um it's really the for me at least, the main, the huge distinction

01:41:37.840 --> 01:41:43.680
was without Eve Psych and before and John really did this thing, was you don't

01:41:43.680 --> 01:41:49.600
accept the uh built-in assumptions of the world that are delivered by our folk

01:41:49.760 --> 01:41:50.320
psychology.

01:41:50.480 --> 01:41:55.970
So something is intrinsically beautiful, you know, like no, you're not allowed to think

01:41:55.970 --> 01:41:56.130
that.

01:41:56.210 --> 01:42:00.050
You have to start replicator dynamics because there's no such thing as beauty.

01:42:00.370 --> 01:42:01.810
You have to build beauty.

01:42:02.050 --> 01:42:03.650
Beauty has to be explained.

01:42:03.730 --> 01:42:05.650
It's just like you said what you said about culture.

01:42:05.810 --> 01:42:10.850
And so for me, what John really did was just

01:42:10.850 --> 01:42:16.260
eviscerate the idea that you can have a good science that

01:42:16.580 --> 01:42:22.180
starts assuming that beauty is intrinsic and doesn't need an explanation and doesn't even

01:42:22.180 --> 01:42:23.220
need a definition.

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

01:42:29.140 --> 01:42:35.060
deconstruct every psychological essentialistic idea to

01:42:35.390 --> 01:42:41.390
replicate our dynamics to a to a relationship out in the world and build it

01:42:41.390 --> 01:42:42.270
up that way.

01:42:42.590 --> 01:42:48.030
For me, that's that's what John was embodied, I think.

01:42:48.110 --> 01:42:49.710
Like that's that's my two cents.

01:42:49.870 --> 01:42:50.510
Yeah.

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

01:42:57.390 --> 01:43:02.860
something in if you can imagine I actually rema read his comprehensive exams in this second

01:43:03.500 --> 01:43:06.300
so because they all got kind of passed down.

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.

01:43:10.940 --> 01:43:14.300
He said, you know, there's no such thing as a computational free lunch.

01:43:14.700 --> 01:43:17.340
And I I remember that.

01:43:17.660 --> 01:43:21.570
It's a great saying, but the idea that there's nothing comes for free here.

01:43:21.810 --> 01:43:27.650
And so if you're not specifying how it happens, then you've missed something

01:43:27.810 --> 01:43:29.570
and/or something's incomplete.

01:43:29.730 --> 01:43:35.090
And so I was working on the disgust stuff with Josh Hyber for a while.

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

01:43:39.250 --> 01:43:42.130
time it was you know pathogen, sexual, and moral.

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

01:43:47.260 --> 01:43:49.100
pathogen disgust, sexual disgust.

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

01:43:52.940 --> 01:43:54.940
least in my head, how one possibly could.

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

01:43:59.420 --> 01:43:59.740
begin.

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.

01:44:05.500 --> 01:44:07.350
And then we started off.

01:44:07.430 --> 01:44:10.310
And there was actually a whole different book before the one that came out.

01:44:10.470 --> 01:44:13.350
It was the basically pathogen, sexual, and moral.

01:44:13.670 --> 01:44:15.910
And then we started to write all of it.

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

01:44:20.230 --> 01:44:24.150
pathogen, sexual, that wasn't exactly the sex stuff worked, but it was more the pathogen

01:44:24.310 --> 01:44:24.790
was the eating.

01:44:24.950 --> 01:44:28.070
Yeah, it's food psychology and contact psychology.

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

01:44:31.990 --> 01:44:37.000
nitty-gritty information processing way, and thinking about like how I would build it.

01:44:38.120 --> 01:44:40.280
I I came to a complete blank.

01:44:40.360 --> 01:44:41.400
I was like moral disgust.

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.

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

01:44:47.560 --> 01:44:47.800
disgust.

01:44:47.880 --> 01:44:50.040
I was like, I'm thinking about this all wrong.

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.

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

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

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

01:45:12.050 --> 01:45:14.370
how disgust can kind of get in there that way.

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

01:45:20.610 --> 01:45:21.170
special issue.

01:45:21.330 --> 01:45:22.740
I'll be honest with you.

01:45:23.460 --> 01:45:25.220
I I I'm like amnesic.

01:45:25.460 --> 01:45:27.700
I I I think it was so traumat it was traumatic.

01:45:27.780 --> 01:45:28.900
It was emotionally stressful.

01:45:29.300 --> 01:45:31.060
Had a lot of other stuff going on in my world.

01:45:31.140 --> 01:45:36.420
And I but I I just I just don't it's like losing a parent.

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,

01:45:42.660 --> 01:45:44.580
and it's like I can't, I still can't believe it.

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

01:45:48.670 --> 01:45:48.830
at work.

01:45:48.910 --> 01:45:50.910
So I'm in my mind I'm like, he's still working somewhere.

01:45:51.790 --> 01:45:53.070
We'll see that book someday.

01:45:53.710 --> 01:45:57.390
So um but it's uh but it's it's really sad.

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

01:46:03.390 --> 01:46:04.110
physics of it.

01:46:04.190 --> 01:46:04.430
Right.

01:46:04.590 --> 01:46:10.360
So really kind of breaking things down in in terms of not

01:46:10.440 --> 01:46:16.360
like not assuming any, not not assuming anything, assuming nothingness.

01:46:16.520 --> 01:46:19.320
And so that's how I but that's how I come to altruism too.

01:46:19.400 --> 01:46:21.160
Like we're not killing and eating each other.

01:46:21.320 --> 01:46:24.680
So let's start instead of like morality is cooperation.

01:46:24.840 --> 01:46:26.760
I want to start with, I don't want to start there.

01:46:26.920 --> 01:46:30.040
I want to start with how come we're not killing and eating each other?

01:46:30.200 --> 01:46:34.200
Like I'd rather start there and kind of come from a very different angle.

01:46:34.280 --> 01:46:40.090
And I think that his perspective allowed us to kind of you know uh entertain that

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

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.

01:46:49.930 --> 01:46:55.930
But then you know listen there's with you have Don Simons, Don Brown, Knapp, you

01:46:55.930 --> 01:46:58.170
know, and then more recently Helen Fisher.

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.

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,

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

01:47:14.080 --> 01:47:19.600
around to discuss them with how do we make sure that they get memorialized and catalogued

01:47:19.680 --> 01:47:21.040
so that they can be taught.

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.

01:47:25.120 --> 01:47:28.150
So the idea of this podcast is fantastic.

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

01:47:34.230 --> 01:47:34.790
fantastic.

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

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.

01:47:43.510 --> 01:47:47.750
And there are other folks doing podcasts, interviewing people from evolutionary psych, but

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

01:47:51.750 --> 01:47:54.310
for students who are actually gonna get to hear from from folks.

01:47:54.580 --> 01:47:56.100
Yeah, it's it's strange to think.

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

01:48:01.220 --> 01:48:05.060
something to that effect on uh on his computer.

01:48:05.620 --> 01:48:07.140
Feels like that every now and then.

01:48:08.260 --> 01:48:14.180
Hey man, everything is bullshit is just uh echoing that uh yeah exactly exactly um uh

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

01:48:20.180 --> 01:48:26.030
the truth resides w way further out than any you know, fight

01:48:26.030 --> 01:48:27.310
in science typically is.

01:48:27.390 --> 01:48:29.950
So there's usually like two sides to a scientific debate.

01:48:30.030 --> 01:48:32.990
And usually the argument is, well, truth is somewhere in the middle.

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

01:48:38.990 --> 01:48:42.110
far outside the bounds of what either side is arguing.

01:48:42.590 --> 01:48:48.560
And that was another thing that, you know, John, he just always had that wry smile

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

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

01:48:56.640 --> 01:49:02.160
his wry smile and and sort of proceed physics first to say why, in fact,

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

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

01:49:13.120 --> 01:49:14.320
than we than we think.

01:49:16.530 --> 01:49:19.730
Yeah, I think he will be missed.

01:49:19.890 --> 01:49:20.850
He will be missed.

01:49:21.250 --> 01:49:26.450
So no, but the edge, the edge stories are, you know, stories literally from the edge.

01:49:26.610 --> 01:49:30.130
I think it's it's great because that's him raw.

01:49:30.290 --> 01:49:32.370
That's that's no peer review, you know.

01:49:32.530 --> 01:49:35.730
It's no Lita, like you know, you can't say it that way.

01:49:36.210 --> 01:49:38.530
It's just pure raw, you know, John.

01:49:39.300 --> 01:49:39.540
Yeah.

01:49:39.940 --> 01:49:42.420
You get the raw, you know, you get those those lists.

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

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.

01:49:54.820 --> 01:49:57.620
And you see that especially in his his edge pieces.

01:49:57.860 --> 01:50:03.270
He just um just the deliciously long winding lists of

01:50:03.270 --> 01:50:04.310
examples.

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.

01:50:08.790 --> 01:50:10.070
But I I was always the lists.

01:50:10.150 --> 01:50:13.750
Yeah, I've always been a fan of that that rhetorical technique.

01:50:13.910 --> 01:50:16.230
Um No, it's good.

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.

01:50:20.150 --> 01:50:23.270
Like I think you need to write for like, you know, mere mortals.

01:50:24.150 --> 01:50:24.870
That is true.

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

01:50:30.240 --> 01:50:30.800
everyone.

01:50:30.880 --> 01:50:33.280
Uh and a lot of people are alienated by it.

01:50:33.520 --> 01:50:39.200
Um there's not a lot of colorful uh ticks style figures uh in the in

01:50:39.200 --> 01:50:40.400
those uh papers.

01:50:40.560 --> 01:50:42.400
There it's a lot of black and white text, you know.

01:50:42.480 --> 01:50:44.560
It's not a crazy no, it's it's meaty.

01:50:44.640 --> 01:50:45.440
It's all meat.

01:50:45.520 --> 01:50:47.760
And so uh but I I appreciate that.

01:50:47.920 --> 01:50:53.830
You know, one area that I think would be really interesting, Vita actually uh was the

01:50:53.830 --> 01:50:54.390
author of it.

01:50:54.470 --> 01:50:58.870
And I I think it was in the internal regulatory variables paper.

01:50:59.350 --> 01:51:03.910
She talks about consciousness as a data, as a data format.

01:51:04.630 --> 01:51:08.550
And so I mean, she's busy doing a whole bunch of other stuff.

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

01:51:13.700 --> 01:51:19.540
piece, but I would love to see at EHP like someone

01:51:19.540 --> 01:51:25.540
tackle you know consciousness um as what does it mean that consciousness

01:51:25.540 --> 01:51:26.660
is a data format?

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

01:51:32.100 --> 01:51:36.690
things that uh that are required to be

01:51:38.210 --> 01:51:38.850
noticed.

01:51:39.010 --> 01:51:39.410
I don't know.

01:51:39.490 --> 01:51:41.250
It's I it's it's very interesting.

01:51:41.410 --> 01:51:43.330
And so I I would love to see that.

01:51:43.490 --> 01:51:46.850
But then Dave, you are tackling free will.

01:51:46.930 --> 01:51:47.970
Is that do I have that right?

01:51:48.210 --> 01:51:53.890
Yeah we actually I just wrote the response to the uh reviews um at Psych

01:51:54.050 --> 01:51:54.370
Review.

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,

01:51:59.810 --> 01:52:04.920
but those were the negative reviews were were actually like i inaccurate, right?

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

01:52:11.000 --> 01:52:11.800
not going to EHB.

01:52:12.120 --> 01:52:13.160
No, exactly, exactly.

01:52:13.240 --> 01:52:15.160
I d I'm actually writing an EHB.

01:52:15.320 --> 01:52:19.560
Um uh it's I'm actually writing a a paper for EHB right now.

01:52:19.720 --> 01:52:23.000
So um the title is The Evolution of Autonomy.

01:52:23.240 --> 01:52:25.850
So Ooh looking forward to reading that one.

01:52:26.250 --> 01:52:29.370
Uh speaking of consciousness, I'm also I'm I'm taking a crack at it.

01:52:29.610 --> 01:52:30.570
I have an uh I have a paper.

01:52:32.090 --> 01:52:33.530
By being conscious first and foremost.

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

01:52:38.170 --> 01:52:38.730
my daughter.

01:52:38.890 --> 01:52:42.170
Um but uh sleep is hard to see by it is.

01:52:42.250 --> 01:52:44.570
Uh but yeah, no, I got an outline, I got a theory.

01:52:44.650 --> 01:52:47.450
Um I got maybe twenty cent twenty percent of the paper written.

01:52:48.090 --> 01:52:48.570
That's great.

01:52:48.970 --> 01:52:50.170
Yeah, so I you know.

01:52:50.490 --> 01:52:51.530
I look forward to it.

01:52:51.760 --> 01:52:55.760
Well then then I see this this is this is the fun part about it.

01:52:55.840 --> 01:53:01.120
And so having fun with ideas and I think entertain floating things and seeing where they

01:53:01.120 --> 01:53:01.360
go.

01:53:01.600 --> 01:53:05.040
I have no problem with EHB publishing all theoretical stuff.

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

01:53:10.480 --> 01:53:10.800
limit.

01:53:10.960 --> 01:53:12.160
People are always like, Can I write it?

01:53:12.320 --> 01:53:13.520
Is it okay if it's theoretical?

01:53:13.600 --> 01:53:15.430
I'm like, it's great.

01:53:15.590 --> 01:53:16.470
It's fantastic.

01:53:16.630 --> 01:53:19.110
Like, you know, like this is this is the theory journal.

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.

01:53:24.630 --> 01:53:26.230
So I I find that interesting.

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

01:53:31.750 --> 01:53:32.230
interested.

01:53:32.310 --> 01:53:37.030
So obviously in the morality stuff, but will and responsibility, like

01:53:37.880 --> 01:53:42.600
terms, like responsibility and blame, just to take two.

01:53:42.760 --> 01:53:43.320
Yeah.

01:53:43.560 --> 01:53:49.400
Like if it's the case that there's cause and effect in the universe, and

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

01:53:55.400 --> 01:53:57.960
up, like cause and effect, like you just wind up toy.

01:53:58.040 --> 01:53:59.640
Bring there you go, there's Deb.

01:53:59.960 --> 01:54:02.360
And so you can predict what she's gonna do in an hour.

01:54:02.680 --> 01:54:03.160
That would be me.

01:54:03.320 --> 01:54:04.600
I'm talking about myself in the third person.

01:54:05.320 --> 01:54:10.050
And so I would say, where did these terms come from?

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

01:54:15.650 --> 01:54:21.570
value and coordination points and all this stuff, then they're really just ways of allowing

01:54:21.570 --> 01:54:23.250
people to easily coordinate.

01:54:23.490 --> 01:54:29.330
Um, it's just, I mean, so what would it mean to say that

01:54:29.970 --> 01:54:35.940
a person who does something wrong couldn't have done otherwise because the universe

01:54:35.940 --> 01:54:39.620
was set in motion and Adam A affected Adam B.

01:54:40.260 --> 01:54:46.180
Like you know, like in in in a in a exactly causal sense, yeah.

01:54:46.660 --> 01:54:49.860
Then you can't blame anyone for anything.

01:54:50.260 --> 01:54:53.220
And responsibility is bogus and weird.

01:54:53.540 --> 01:54:59.460
But because we seek and are thirsty for ways to figure out

01:54:59.470 --> 01:55:05.390
how to go after people, that these are fantastic terms that hook into the psychology of

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

01:55:10.830 --> 01:55:13.310
like, is that what those words are?

01:55:13.550 --> 01:55:15.470
Just easy coordination points.

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

01:55:21.870 --> 01:55:26.590
it's about intervention and what can be intervened upon in particular ways.

01:55:26.750 --> 01:55:32.280
So for example, um, if I'm treating you not well, Deb, my welfare trade-off

01:55:32.360 --> 01:55:34.440
ratio is too low for you.

01:55:35.560 --> 01:55:36.680
That's one scenario.

01:55:36.840 --> 01:55:41.160
Another scenario, a good example, a counterexample is something like I have a broken bone,

01:55:41.320 --> 01:55:42.360
let's say, right?

01:55:43.720 --> 01:55:49.320
There are things, Deb, that you can do to me to

01:55:49.320 --> 01:55:53.320
try to change my welfare trade-off ratio with respect to you.

01:55:53.480 --> 01:55:58.690
So for example, you can talk to me, communicate in any number of ways, you know,

01:55:59.170 --> 01:56:00.210
punch them in the face.

01:56:01.650 --> 01:56:02.050
Exactly.

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,

01:56:07.010 --> 01:56:08.530
like I'm a more valuable partner, whatever.

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

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.

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

01:56:21.890 --> 01:56:22.370
forward.

01:56:22.690 --> 01:56:23.010
Okay.

01:56:23.250 --> 01:56:25.890
None of those apply to the broken bone.

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

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,

01:56:34.020 --> 01:56:35.620
to heal my broken bone, right?

01:56:35.780 --> 01:56:38.500
I can't convince myself, right, to like heal my broken bone.

01:56:38.580 --> 01:56:39.540
It's just going to take time.

01:56:39.700 --> 01:56:45.380
It's not within the purview precisely of like my planning and motivational systems to be

01:56:45.380 --> 01:56:51.310
able to do anything about the speed at which my bone heals, you know, leaving aside

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.

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

01:57:00.510 --> 01:57:06.510
full nexus of causal determinism or things going forward, we have evolved

01:57:06.510 --> 01:57:11.950
entries for the kinds of things that if we do intervene upon,

01:57:12.740 --> 01:57:14.180
we can change outcomes.

01:57:14.420 --> 01:57:19.620
And so, for example, what it means that somebody is responsible, or we're blaming them,

01:57:19.940 --> 01:57:24.660
we're communicating an attempt to intervene upon them

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,

01:57:31.460 --> 01:57:35.060
for example, motivation, planning, goal weights, et cetera, for the future.

01:57:35.780 --> 01:57:36.100
Why?

01:57:36.260 --> 01:57:37.540
Doesn't my anger do that?

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?

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

01:57:49.470 --> 01:57:52.430
example, is the person responsible or not?

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,

01:57:58.430 --> 01:58:04.260
but it's part of uh the evaluation of whether or not, for

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

01:58:08.660 --> 01:58:10.580
the representation and like saying something out loud.

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

01:58:14.660 --> 01:58:17.620
responsible for it, it's doing a couple things.

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.

01:58:23.540 --> 01:58:27.380
And so that that has the effect of like the anger thing, right?

01:58:27.700 --> 01:58:29.380
You're trying to recalibrate that too.

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

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

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

01:58:46.570 --> 01:58:52.330
in sort of saying like should we are are people who commit crimes responsible meaning

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

01:58:57.820 --> 01:58:59.580
they're behaving going forward, you know?

01:58:59.740 --> 01:59:05.180
And so, um, so the the attribution that somebody's responsible

01:59:05.420 --> 01:59:11.260
entails certain implicit often consequences, like we should

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

01:59:16.950 --> 01:59:20.950
thing right like so change social institutions so there's people who aren't desperate

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

01:59:26.390 --> 01:59:28.150
they don't um rob again.

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

01:59:33.750 --> 01:59:39.590
the paper is the reason why something like responsibility or will um has to do

01:59:39.590 --> 01:59:45.300
with the attribution of where the uh a leverage

01:59:45.300 --> 01:59:48.420
point in changing that outcome exists.

01:59:48.580 --> 01:59:53.860
And there's strong selection pressures on, or there would be selection pressures to sort of

01:59:53.860 --> 01:59:59.380
note the WTR kinds of things that you can intervene upon by

01:59:59.380 --> 02:00:05.220
planning and deliberation and things, motivation versus things like broken bones,

02:00:05.380 --> 02:00:06.260
roughly speaking.

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.

02:00:12.570 --> 02:00:12.730
Yeah.

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.

02:00:18.730 --> 02:00:22.170
I don't think I don't think blame and responsibility are for your rehabilitation.

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.

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

02:00:32.330 --> 02:00:32.970
island.

02:00:33.960 --> 02:00:35.480
there's no rehabilitation there.

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

02:00:41.000 --> 02:00:41.640
that you're talking about.

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

02:00:46.920 --> 02:00:52.440
then says it's for your readjustment, your re education.

02:00:52.840 --> 02:00:54.520
Yeah, I I mean I think I don't disagree.

02:00:57.430 --> 02:01:03.350
a larger the the the attribution that the agent is responsible is the is the full

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

02:01:08.390 --> 02:01:14.230
the planning and assessment systems that led your child to get injured the attribution

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

02:01:18.070 --> 02:01:23.840
it to them then evokes in you the hey, by the way, you know, the causal

02:01:23.840 --> 02:01:24.320
chain of things.

02:01:24.560 --> 02:01:27.440
You should you should have paid attention to this, pay attention to it more.

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

02:01:33.360 --> 02:01:39.120
you already are in a coalitional um antipathy with, and then you can use it

02:01:39.120 --> 02:01:39.920
exactly in this way.

02:01:40.000 --> 02:01:45.280
So I don't disagree that one of the outcomes of the responsibility

02:01:45.280 --> 02:01:49.530
attribution can be alliance alliance e.

02:01:49.610 --> 02:01:53.050
And in fact, the other way around, where if you're already interested in having an

02:01:53.050 --> 02:01:58.970
alliance, uh go aga go after these people, there's an appetite for, just like

02:01:58.970 --> 02:02:03.370
there's an appetite for disgust, to even hallucinate disgust, it's to hallucinate

02:02:03.370 --> 02:02:04.890
responsibility or blame, right?

02:02:04.970 --> 02:02:09.770
To in order to for then to be a basis of ganging up on them.

02:02:10.010 --> 02:02:11.530
So um so no, I don't think it's a good thing.

02:02:14.570 --> 02:02:20.320
So what what led to blame and responsibility is a way to pinpoint

02:02:20.320 --> 02:02:21.440
causality.

02:02:21.920 --> 02:02:26.960
Well I think cause in like a tube way to highlight causality is just the um

02:02:27.760 --> 02:02:33.360
it's a what the mind is doing is highlighting a leverage point in changing

02:02:33.360 --> 02:02:34.240
behavior.

02:02:34.480 --> 02:02:37.520
It's not the full nexus of of causation.

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

02:02:43.670 --> 02:02:47.750
focus on like, you know, pour the pour the water out or the coffee out.

02:02:47.990 --> 02:02:53.750
The thing that will change that happening again is convincing me and my planning and

02:02:53.750 --> 02:02:58.710
representational systems not to do that, not to like, you know, um uh you know,

02:02:59.030 --> 02:03:01.750
boycott the person who made the mug or see.

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.

02:03:06.800 --> 02:03:07.120
Yeah.

02:03:07.440 --> 02:03:09.200
And there that's all there is to it.

02:03:09.360 --> 02:03:10.560
That's all there is to it.

02:03:10.800 --> 02:03:12.720
You bring in a third party.

02:03:13.040 --> 02:03:16.720
He's responsible for ruining that.

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.

02:03:20.880 --> 02:03:26.400
But my point is is that why what what else what else do why what's

02:03:26.640 --> 02:03:29.040
why the extra colorful language?

02:03:29.280 --> 02:03:30.640
I guess is all I'm saying.

02:03:30.880 --> 02:03:36.310
It seems to be interesting, colorful language rather than this is what happened.

02:03:36.550 --> 02:03:38.550
Like let me explain to you the cause and event.

02:03:38.630 --> 02:03:40.950
Like you did this and then this is what happened.

02:03:41.110 --> 02:03:44.150
Like and and so don't do that again.

02:03:44.470 --> 02:03:44.790
Right.

02:03:44.950 --> 02:03:49.990
Why why this extra layer of is it it does it does it come for free?

02:03:50.150 --> 02:03:50.950
Is it just extra?

02:03:51.030 --> 02:03:51.830
Are they synonyms?

02:03:51.910 --> 02:03:52.150
I don't know.

02:03:52.310 --> 02:03:53.830
That's I guess my that's what I see.

02:03:53.990 --> 02:03:54.230
I see.

02:03:55.030 --> 02:03:56.870
I think that's yeah, no, no, I see what you're saying.

02:03:56.950 --> 02:03:57.270
Yeah, yeah.

02:03:57.680 --> 02:03:58.960
Very deep into the weeds.

02:03:59.760 --> 02:04:00.400
No, it's fun.

02:04:00.480 --> 02:04:01.040
It's fun to think about.

02:04:01.280 --> 02:04:03.680
I mean, it's almost co-opting this language of ownership.

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

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

02:04:13.840 --> 02:04:14.000
dog.

02:04:14.160 --> 02:04:16.160
If my dog bites you, I'm responsible.

02:04:16.320 --> 02:04:17.360
I own the dog.

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.

02:04:21.680 --> 02:04:27.310
Um and it's almost like applying that ownership psychology to the behavior itself.

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

02:04:34.910 --> 02:04:39.950
free will and to be responsible for my actions is just to be responsive to incentives.

02:04:41.230 --> 02:04:45.470
And if I am responsive to incentives, then it makes sense to incentivize me.

02:04:45.550 --> 02:04:48.910
It makes sense to offer rewards and punishments to change my behavior.

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

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

02:04:58.080 --> 02:05:01.280
sense to offer rewards and punishments because they're going to have no influence on me.

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

02:05:05.760 --> 02:05:09.920
sensitive to the types of rewards and punishments that other can others can offer.

02:05:10.000 --> 02:05:12.000
Um is that basically what what you're saying, Dave?

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

02:05:16.080 --> 02:05:16.800
responsiveness.

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,

02:05:22.850 --> 02:05:25.730
what free will is, is sort of a representational entry.

02:05:25.810 --> 02:05:28.130
It's not an objective feature of the world.

02:05:28.210 --> 02:05:33.730
And it's a representational entry that's basically assessing to what extent what we're

02:05:33.730 --> 02:05:38.290
calling an intentional intervention, which is sort of appealing to motivations, goals,

02:05:38.530 --> 02:05:43.970
desires, those kinds of things, either in you or in a third party is effective.

02:05:44.050 --> 02:05:49.520
So the degree to which an intentional intervention is effective, that is what the free will

02:05:49.520 --> 02:05:50.000
representation.

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.

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

02:05:59.280 --> 02:06:03.680
and that representation of the efficacy of intentional interventions for yourself and

02:06:03.680 --> 02:06:04.080
others.

02:06:04.160 --> 02:06:10.080
And a concomitant of that, or one way to explain why reason's responsiveness

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,

02:06:14.480 --> 02:06:20.130
which is that if um if i'm doing something uh

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

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

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

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

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

02:06:47.940 --> 02:06:48.900
should be able to change my mind.

02:06:48.980 --> 02:06:49.220
Right.

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.

02:06:53.380 --> 02:06:54.900
And I can even change my own, you know.

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

02:07:00.340 --> 02:07:01.620
free to choose to do that.

02:07:01.780 --> 02:07:05.220
And then somebody convinces me my government isn't good.

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

02:07:11.390 --> 02:07:11.950
to my government.

02:07:12.030 --> 02:07:13.870
I mean, I don't experience myself as free.

02:07:13.950 --> 02:07:16.910
Like there's something compelling me that isn't me, right?

02:07:17.070 --> 02:07:17.630
Within me.

02:07:17.790 --> 02:07:23.070
Or like, you know, my own deliberation, motivation, reasoning systems are not

02:07:23.950 --> 02:07:27.710
under the control of this motivation system that's sort of autonomous from me.

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

02:07:32.110 --> 02:07:35.920
be, meaning like the I, meaning like these planning and motivational systems.

02:07:36.160 --> 02:07:41.920
So um so yeah, reasons responsiveness, the idea behind why that is coming up

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

02:07:47.520 --> 02:07:51.920
ultimately informing it's what it's because it's about this adaptation for assessing this

02:07:51.920 --> 02:07:55.200
efficacy of intentional interventions, if that makes sense.

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

02:08:01.030 --> 02:08:03.750
psychology is often co-opted and exploited by coalitions.

02:08:04.070 --> 02:08:04.550
Oh totally.

02:08:04.870 --> 02:08:05.030
Yeah.

02:08:05.190 --> 02:08:05.430
Yeah.

02:08:05.750 --> 02:08:10.870
I well I actually I just in the spirit of entertaining all hypotheses here, my particular,

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

02:08:16.630 --> 02:08:21.830
explanation of I need in order to coordinate people,

02:08:22.710 --> 02:08:25.430
I need to have them enter the matrix.

02:08:25.860 --> 02:08:29.140
And the matrix is everyone gets to choose.

02:08:29.380 --> 02:08:34.420
And if we all agree everyone gets to choose, then anyone can be gone after.

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

02:08:40.660 --> 02:08:46.660
of a causal physics in order to ensure that I have every

02:08:46.660 --> 02:08:48.260
right to be able to go after everyone.

02:08:48.340 --> 02:08:54.190
And free will is the motherlode of like it just basically says you could have

02:08:54.190 --> 02:08:58.670
chosen otherwise, and that is anything goes now.

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,

02:09:04.750 --> 02:09:05.230
that's it.

02:09:05.470 --> 02:09:05.790
Interesting.

02:09:06.110 --> 02:09:09.790
Then then my coordination, then the coordination psychology takes off, right?

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.

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

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

02:09:24.460 --> 02:09:26.060
choose heterosexuality, right?

02:09:26.140 --> 02:09:28.220
They don't they're like, Man, I don't like that argument.

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

02:09:34.700 --> 02:09:35.740
from coordinating.

02:09:35.820 --> 02:09:35.900
Yeah.

02:09:36.540 --> 02:09:38.670
So and and I just I find that interesting.

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.

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

02:09:48.190 --> 02:09:50.430
the requirement for coordination.

02:09:50.750 --> 02:09:51.950
Yeah, cool.

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

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.

02:10:02.580 --> 02:10:03.220
Oh, God did it.

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.

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

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

02:10:17.060 --> 02:10:19.300
the justification for attacking that person.

02:10:19.540 --> 02:10:24.410
Um and we're looking for some gap to fit the justification into.

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

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

02:10:34.250 --> 02:10:37.530
coordination point um for for going after this person.

02:10:37.690 --> 02:10:38.890
Is that basically what you're saying?

02:10:39.290 --> 02:10:40.090
Yeah, pretty much.

02:10:40.250 --> 02:10:43.680
Like I like in order to coordinate, it's like, let's see, disgust gonna work.

02:10:43.760 --> 02:10:46.000
All right, maybe not here, although it works everywhere.

02:10:46.160 --> 02:10:48.960
Anger, maybe fear, like you go down your list of stuff.

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,

02:10:52.880 --> 02:10:54.640
you know, you could choose.

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,

02:11:01.280 --> 02:11:02.720
lightning rod, you know.

02:11:03.040 --> 02:11:04.160
It's the conversation stopper.

02:11:04.320 --> 02:11:06.240
It's the God did it, you know, be you know?

02:11:06.480 --> 02:11:06.800
Yeah.

02:11:07.040 --> 02:11:07.200
Yeah.

02:11:07.390 --> 02:11:08.350
No, I think it's interesting.

02:11:08.590 --> 02:11:09.870
Well, I I really look forward.

02:11:10.030 --> 02:11:12.110
We haven't had a lot of that kind of conversation.

02:11:12.190 --> 02:11:16.350
That's a topic that just has not been in any journal for a while.

02:11:16.430 --> 02:11:18.830
It's going to be exciting to see what happens.

02:11:18.990 --> 02:11:22.910
And so uh, and hopefully some philosophers will chime in too.

02:11:23.070 --> 02:11:24.430
Too bad Dennett's not around.

02:11:24.670 --> 02:11:27.710
Yeah, Christian Liszt has some great work, and we we actually talked to him.

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.

02:11:30.830 --> 02:11:31.950
So I look forward to it.

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,

02:11:35.710 --> 02:11:39.280
um, is sort of the evolutionary psychology of philosophy of mind.

02:11:39.440 --> 02:11:45.360
Like I really think that the fact that all of philosophy and

02:11:45.360 --> 02:11:51.360
most like a lot of philosophy is predicated on ideas prior to the

02:11:51.360 --> 02:11:56.960
notion of how information gets into phenotypes over multiple

02:11:56.960 --> 02:11:57.520
generations.

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,

02:12:03.870 --> 02:12:07.230
what can a blank slate know by the time it dies, right?

02:12:07.310 --> 02:12:09.150
Like just with an individual lifespan.

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

02:12:15.310 --> 02:12:21.230
Hume, if you actually read association not as a within lifespan

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,

02:12:26.590 --> 02:12:26.830
right?

02:12:27.390 --> 02:12:32.600
So in other words, like there's a lot of prior to Darwin without

02:12:32.600 --> 02:12:38.600
understanding how historical time can show up in organisms, there's a lot

02:12:38.600 --> 02:12:44.520
of ideas that once you just add that, oh no, multi differential reproductive success is how

02:12:44.520 --> 02:12:47.800
structure gets into the individual phenotype.

02:12:48.280 --> 02:12:52.440
I think a lot of philosophical issues sort of change.

02:12:52.520 --> 02:12:58.040
And I think there's this enormous um um thing still to be done of

02:12:58.120 --> 02:13:04.090
sort of um integrating evolutionary psychology with philosophy of mind, not just for

02:13:04.090 --> 02:13:09.530
like feckless uh bookkeeping reasons either, but like there's tons of studies

02:13:11.770 --> 02:13:16.010
that are predicated on, like, for example, there's all these LeBay studies on free will.

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

02:13:20.250 --> 02:13:20.890
nothing.

02:13:20.970 --> 02:13:22.250
Um, for example.

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

02:13:26.730 --> 02:13:32.620
grants have been spent on the neurocognitive activity prior to a decision for this label

02:13:32.620 --> 02:13:35.420
study, and it might not be for any good reason, right?

02:13:35.580 --> 02:13:40.300
So these have important theoretical implications or like empirical implications too.

02:13:40.380 --> 02:13:42.780
So I look forward to that as a new area.

02:13:43.340 --> 02:13:43.900
Absolutely.

02:13:44.220 --> 02:13:45.340
Can I can I ask?

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

02:13:49.020 --> 02:13:52.250
you, like where you see the field of EbSight going.

02:13:52.410 --> 02:13:55.930
Like, what are you most excited about in addition to the things you just talked about?

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

02:14:03.850 --> 02:14:08.170
using evolutionary psychology to shed light on philosophy and philosophy of mind.

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

02:14:12.890 --> 02:14:18.760
appeal to intuitions, uh where while the philosophers are uh in the dark about the origins

02:14:18.760 --> 02:14:19.960
of those intuitions.

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

02:14:25.320 --> 02:14:25.960
come from.

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

02:14:31.400 --> 02:14:32.280
these ones, right?

02:14:32.360 --> 02:14:36.280
We need to actually do some good evolutionary psychology to figure out uh where these

02:14:36.280 --> 02:14:37.480
intuitions are coming from.

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,

02:14:42.040 --> 02:14:42.600
for example.

02:14:42.760 --> 02:14:47.810
Uh the philosopher David Chalmers uh talks about the hard problem of consciousness, which

02:14:47.810 --> 02:14:51.250
is how does consciousness arise from mere brain activity?

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

02:14:57.010 --> 02:14:58.210
like there's a hard problem?

02:14:58.370 --> 02:15:03.090
Why do we have these intuitions that brain activity and consciousness are fundamentally

02:15:03.090 --> 02:15:04.050
different things?

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.

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

02:15:15.460 --> 02:15:20.580
all of philosophical problems, uh that we need to first translate them into meta problems

02:15:20.580 --> 02:15:23.620
and solve them, and then we can begin to solve the actual problem.

02:15:24.020 --> 02:15:29.620
Um so I'm excited about uh you know Dave's work, the evolutionary psychology of

02:15:29.620 --> 02:15:34.420
psychology, the evolutionary psychology of philosophy and our philosophical intuitions.

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.

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

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

02:15:50.430 --> 02:15:51.070
of that.

02:15:51.550 --> 02:15:54.430
Um what else am I excited about?

02:15:54.670 --> 02:15:58.030
Um those are those are the two big ones.

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

02:16:03.280 --> 02:16:05.040
want it to take over political science.

02:16:05.280 --> 02:16:10.000
Um there are there are too few uh evolutionary uh minded people in in political science.

02:16:10.160 --> 02:16:11.040
I'm trying to change that.

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

02:16:14.880 --> 02:16:17.440
systems, but I think there's much more work to be done there.

02:16:18.000 --> 02:16:20.240
Do you go to any A SI um conferences?

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

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

02:16:30.810 --> 02:16:36.730
know spread the good word of uh of what what what would John do um but

02:16:38.170 --> 02:16:43.770
uh yeah I'm excited about that I think uh economics I think we we should

02:16:43.780 --> 02:16:47.300
bring more evolutionary psychology into economics.

02:16:47.700 --> 02:16:53.620
Uh consumer behavior, rationality, you know, uh uh there, I

02:16:53.620 --> 02:16:54.660
mean the sky's the limit.

02:16:54.820 --> 02:17:00.100
Anything that stems from a human is ultimately within the the purview of evolutionary

02:17:00.100 --> 02:17:00.580
psychology.

02:17:00.740 --> 02:17:03.780
Humans are animals, they're products of the Darwinian process.

02:17:03.940 --> 02:17:09.690
Anything that comes out of a human has to be uh subject to uh evolutionary psychological

02:17:09.690 --> 02:17:10.250
reasoning.

02:17:10.330 --> 02:17:15.210
I mean people people talk about it as as reduction reductionism or reductionism gone too

02:17:15.210 --> 02:17:15.450
far.

02:17:15.610 --> 02:17:17.290
I don't view it as reduction at all.

02:17:17.450 --> 02:17:19.050
It's it we're already animals.

02:17:19.210 --> 02:17:20.810
Like that there's no reducing.

02:17:20.970 --> 02:17:25.610
Like the human mind already is an evolved organ that's been shaped by natural selection.

02:17:25.690 --> 02:17:27.370
There's no reducing to do, right?

02:17:27.530 --> 02:17:28.730
It's all there on the surface.

02:17:28.890 --> 02:17:32.010
We just gotta, you know, take the right lens to view it.

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

02:17:38.260 --> 02:17:40.180
say that sounds like you're denying it.

02:17:40.500 --> 02:17:42.660
I think that's that's how you kind of get them off that.

02:17:42.740 --> 02:17:42.980
Right.

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

02:17:47.300 --> 02:17:47.620
ask.

02:17:47.780 --> 02:17:50.100
And then like, well, no, like well me neither.

02:17:50.180 --> 02:17:51.140
So we're on the same page.

02:17:51.220 --> 02:17:52.260
It matters.

02:17:53.780 --> 02:17:58.430
So no I think the political science, Casey Klofstadt is here at UM.

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,

02:18:02.430 --> 02:18:04.270
in addition to Michael Bang Peterson, sir.

02:18:04.350 --> 02:18:04.910
Michael Bang Person.

02:18:05.070 --> 02:18:05.790
Yeah, he's knighted.

02:18:05.870 --> 02:18:09.550
We've never had a knight on um, unless you're knighted, Deb.

02:18:10.110 --> 02:18:12.270
I um are can women be knighted?

02:18:12.350 --> 02:18:13.310
Is that a strange question?

02:18:13.550 --> 02:18:15.150
That's not a that's a very good question.

02:18:15.310 --> 02:18:16.990
And if not, that's a problem.

02:18:17.390 --> 02:18:20.110
What could we be if not knighted?

02:18:23.140 --> 02:18:24.420
Somebody's gonna have to Google that.

02:18:29.540 --> 02:18:31.380
Don't think I'm not gonna ask as soon as we get it.

02:18:33.380 --> 02:18:33.540
Yeah.

02:18:33.700 --> 02:18:34.340
Okay, sorry.

02:18:34.500 --> 02:18:34.740
Yes.

02:18:34.980 --> 02:18:36.260
Um have no titles.

02:18:36.340 --> 02:18:36.500
Yeah.

02:18:36.820 --> 02:18:39.140
Those are great, those are all great directions.

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

02:18:45.140 --> 02:18:49.300
uh I think I have like another year and a half or something like that.

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

02:18:53.330 --> 02:18:55.970
bring someone else on to at least help train them up.

02:18:56.130 --> 02:18:59.090
Although it's like like I said, it's not, it's not that hard.

02:18:59.330 --> 02:19:01.890
Um it's just time, a lot of time.

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

02:19:07.890 --> 02:19:13.730
together on this philosophy, political science, economics, even a hodgepodge of ideas

02:19:13.890 --> 02:19:19.200
or evolution evolutionary psychology into the future, like, you know, please take me up on

02:19:19.200 --> 02:19:19.760
that offer.

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

02:19:25.680 --> 02:19:28.400
to do some of these special um features.

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.

02:19:33.920 --> 02:19:38.160
So if you if you if you have any ideas, I I really am all ears.

02:19:38.400 --> 02:19:43.670
But again, even bringing people in who might not get it right,

02:19:44.950 --> 02:19:49.190
bringing them in for the conversation and have the have it be a conversation, or picking

02:19:49.190 --> 02:19:52.710
one person in the field of philosophy or economics or political science.

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

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

02:20:03.110 --> 02:20:08.940
anything that can be used, you know, for re programs of research or

02:20:08.940 --> 02:20:10.060
future work or whatever.

02:20:10.140 --> 02:20:11.100
So think about it.

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

02:20:15.420 --> 02:20:19.180
interesting stuff who might not be exactly evolutionary, but are interested in learning.

02:20:19.580 --> 02:20:19.900
Awesome.

02:20:20.060 --> 02:20:22.540
How about start keep the conversation going?

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

02:20:29.180 --> 02:20:31.980
is uh, is there anything we should have asked you?

02:20:35.070 --> 02:20:38.270
I think we went from like one end to the other.

02:20:38.750 --> 02:20:41.950
I mean we covered uh we covered a wide range of related free will.

02:20:42.270 --> 02:20:44.990
Yes, you actually there is something you should have asked me.

02:20:45.230 --> 02:20:46.910
You didn't ask me about tears.

02:20:48.350 --> 02:20:49.710
Tell us about tears.

02:20:50.190 --> 02:20:50.510
No.

02:20:51.950 --> 02:20:52.830
Oh, you're gonna make tears.

02:20:55.980 --> 02:20:59.180
Um have you had Daniel on here?

02:20:59.260 --> 02:21:00.940
Uh we we plan to.

02:21:01.100 --> 02:21:01.580
We plan to.

02:21:01.900 --> 02:21:02.060
Yeah.

02:21:02.220 --> 02:21:04.060
But uh no, the dance newser's great.

02:21:04.140 --> 02:21:04.380
Yeah.

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

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

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

02:21:18.940 --> 02:21:24.550
about how emotions, um, having adding tears to emotions makes them a little bit easier to

02:21:24.550 --> 02:21:25.510
recognize and so forth.

02:21:25.590 --> 02:21:30.790
But I was reading through his paper and it dawned on me like this is WTR.

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

02:21:34.630 --> 02:21:34.790
it.

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

02:21:39.510 --> 02:21:41.590
stuff and putting stuff together and writing stuff up.

02:21:41.750 --> 02:21:45.120
And so, but basically, the idea is that, you know, what are tears?

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

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

02:21:53.920 --> 02:21:58.240
bad, but tears can be the kind of signal positive and negative sorts of things.

02:21:58.400 --> 02:22:04.240
But the question is tears do seem to be a signal of either value or

02:22:04.240 --> 02:22:08.240
benefit kind of thing, depending on the particular uh context.

02:22:08.400 --> 02:22:10.160
So it's just an amplitude.

02:22:10.320 --> 02:22:14.470
Um it it's an it's the amplifier for the low leveraged.

02:22:14.630 --> 02:22:15.270
Isn't that awful?

02:22:15.510 --> 02:22:16.230
But I think that's true.

02:22:16.630 --> 02:22:17.030
Interesting.

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

02:22:22.870 --> 02:22:26.390
don't know about it and trying to push on what's up with tears.

02:22:26.950 --> 02:22:27.110
Yeah.

02:22:27.510 --> 02:22:32.070
So the idea is that everything ranges from negative to positive value for me

02:22:32.150 --> 02:22:33.190
psychologically.

02:22:33.350 --> 02:22:39.030
And what tears are is signaling uh the tails of that distribution, the two extremes, either

02:22:39.030 --> 02:22:41.920
extreme positive value or extreme negative value.

02:22:42.000 --> 02:22:43.120
Is that the idea?

02:22:43.440 --> 02:22:43.760
Yes.

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

02:22:49.840 --> 02:22:50.400
on me.

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

02:22:56.640 --> 02:23:01.680
attractiveness, or the status or whatever, in order to kind of convince you to stop.

02:23:01.760 --> 02:23:05.730
And so it's basically a signal of, you know, don't hurt me more.

02:23:05.890 --> 02:23:07.330
Like I and I, it's intense.

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

02:23:11.570 --> 02:23:12.530
not gonna use tears.

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

02:23:16.770 --> 02:23:17.490
benefits and all that.

02:23:17.810 --> 02:23:19.170
So impose costs.

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

02:23:25.410 --> 02:23:28.450
tears communicate the imposition of costs.

02:23:28.690 --> 02:23:34.100
And I also think that on the positive side of things, you know, the

02:23:34.100 --> 02:23:40.100
intense happy ingratitude sorts of things also tend to be done

02:23:40.420 --> 02:23:45.140
by, I'll have to think about the the similar kind of um

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

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

02:23:58.090 --> 02:24:04.090
define as smaller arm like circumference or something like this have small

02:24:04.090 --> 02:24:09.690
arms kids you know they're gonna be more likely to weep at the positive right

02:24:09.850 --> 02:24:15.690
and so and I would say as a so if you've

02:24:15.690 --> 02:24:21.530
ever seen a very like strong man like begin to cry

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

02:24:27.420 --> 02:24:30.380
really on the tail ends of either good or bad and it's substantial.

02:24:30.540 --> 02:24:32.940
Like it's something things are extremely bad.

02:24:33.100 --> 02:24:34.540
Like or extremely good.

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

02:24:41.020 --> 02:24:43.660
for the is typically left for the lower leverage.

02:24:43.740 --> 02:24:49.420
So you really have to be out leveraged and uh in order to make a very

02:24:49.420 --> 02:24:55.290
large formidable beast so it's the i the the interaction of extreme value and

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

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

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

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

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

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

02:25:23.900 --> 02:25:24.460
hamburger.

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,

02:25:28.780 --> 02:25:32.060
like seeing someone cry at their hamburger, right?

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.

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.

02:25:41.740 --> 02:25:42.940
So uh it's interesting.

02:25:43.020 --> 02:25:44.620
Yeah, no, it's definitely communicative.

02:25:44.700 --> 02:25:46.670
And I I can't help but ask this this question.

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

02:25:52.590 --> 02:25:53.630
here of the story.

02:25:53.870 --> 02:25:56.030
So um you're crying.

02:25:56.190 --> 02:25:58.510
So I'm let's say I'm hurting you in in some way.

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

02:26:04.350 --> 02:26:06.270
of a terrible job you've done with it over the years.

02:26:06.430 --> 02:26:08.180
Uh and you're and you're weeping, right?

02:26:08.580 --> 02:26:09.540
Probably not, but go ahead.

02:26:10.980 --> 02:26:11.780
No, you probably wouldn't.

02:26:11.940 --> 02:26:13.940
You're you're one of the ballsiest people I know.

02:26:14.260 --> 02:26:14.900
I'd try.

02:26:15.300 --> 02:26:16.420
You're more formidable than me.

02:26:16.580 --> 02:26:18.020
I I'd probably be the one weeping.

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

02:26:24.260 --> 02:26:25.860
and apologize, right?

02:26:26.260 --> 02:26:26.580
Why?

02:26:26.740 --> 02:26:27.780
Why should that work?

02:26:28.020 --> 02:26:33.940
Like what what they do What reason do I

02:26:33.940 --> 02:26:37.590
have as the signal recipient to respond to that signal.

02:26:37.910 --> 02:26:40.310
Uh to the extent that you value my welfare at all.

02:26:40.470 --> 02:26:43.030
So you won't care if you don't value my welfare at all.

02:26:43.190 --> 02:26:43.430
Right.

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

02:26:47.590 --> 02:26:47.830
end it.

02:26:47.910 --> 02:26:49.430
So we'll bring it back to probably something positive.

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.

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

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

02:27:05.000 --> 02:27:07.080
things and they kill them, like these girls are crying.

02:27:07.160 --> 02:27:09.160
Like they they're probably like everything's funny.

02:27:09.480 --> 02:27:10.360
I don't even care.

02:27:10.520 --> 02:27:10.760
Right.

02:27:10.920 --> 02:27:12.760
So the tears aren't doing anything.

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

02:27:18.760 --> 02:27:21.800
don't care about your your, you know, it's to me, it's funny.

02:27:22.200 --> 02:27:25.960
You know, it's like strange, that's a strange kind of reaction to be having.

02:27:26.120 --> 02:27:27.640
Like you think I care.

02:27:27.870 --> 02:27:30.830
Like, you know, like um and so that's gross.

02:27:30.910 --> 02:27:31.070
Yeah.

02:27:31.230 --> 02:27:31.710
I know, I know.

02:27:32.190 --> 02:27:35.550
No, no, but I'm saying like that's an example of morality, disgust right there.

02:27:35.630 --> 02:27:40.910
I just felt the the verse, the the use of morality using disgust and morality.

02:27:40.990 --> 02:27:41.710
But no, that's right.

02:27:41.790 --> 02:27:42.190
Yeah, yeah.

02:27:42.670 --> 02:27:42.990
I see.

02:27:43.070 --> 02:27:43.950
So it's a okay.

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

02:27:48.270 --> 02:27:49.390
have been aware of.

02:27:49.470 --> 02:27:52.750
And it's really only gonna work on me insofar as I do value your welfare.

02:27:52.910 --> 02:27:54.270
And if I don't, the tears aren't gonna work.

02:27:54.510 --> 02:27:54.990
That's right.

02:27:55.390 --> 02:27:55.710
Okay.

02:27:56.350 --> 02:27:57.150
Interesting.

02:27:57.390 --> 02:27:57.710
Cool.

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

02:28:02.980 --> 02:28:03.380
hee hee.

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.

02:28:08.260 --> 02:28:09.700
Yeah, here let me let me let me lick them.

02:28:09.780 --> 02:28:11.940
Ooh, taste those sweet tears.

02:28:12.260 --> 02:28:16.660
So yeah, like like the mugs of in the tears about engineering psychotic.

02:28:17.700 --> 02:28:20.100
We should sell those for speaking of monetizing.

02:28:20.500 --> 02:28:21.540
We'd make a lot of money.

02:28:21.620 --> 02:28:21.780
Yeah.

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

02:28:25.060 --> 02:28:27.330
having the ski chalet and the Porsche.

02:28:27.410 --> 02:28:28.290
Maybe this is your ticket.

02:28:28.530 --> 02:28:29.250
Good throwback to you.

02:28:29.330 --> 02:28:30.290
I mean, I'm writing a textbook.

02:28:30.370 --> 02:28:31.170
Isn't that the way you do it?

02:28:31.330 --> 02:28:31.490
Yeah.

02:28:31.650 --> 02:28:31.890
Yeah.

02:28:32.290 --> 02:28:33.010
Well, I hope so.

02:28:33.090 --> 02:28:33.570
That would be great.

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

02:28:37.090 --> 02:28:40.690
Ski Chalet and the sweet evolutionary psychology gig together.

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

02:28:44.450 --> 02:28:45.970
money and all the funding for our research.

02:28:46.050 --> 02:28:48.700
So that's no regrets.

02:28:50.060 --> 02:28:52.140
That's not that's wonderful.

02:28:52.300 --> 02:28:53.900
Yeah, we'll see you at H Mess.

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

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

02:29:04.140 --> 02:29:05.980
important thing he produced was students.

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

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

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

02:29:22.230 --> 02:29:22.630
field.

02:29:22.870 --> 02:29:23.270
Thank you.

02:29:23.590 --> 02:29:25.430
Well listen I I couldn't be more grateful.

02:29:25.590 --> 02:29:29.430
I mean how lucky are we that we get to do this so quite a life.

02:29:29.590 --> 02:29:31.270
Um so thank you for having me on.

02:29:31.350 --> 02:29:32.550
It's been it's been a pleasure.

02:29:32.630 --> 02:29:33.910
We should do this every week.

02:29:34.300 --> 02:29:35.020
This was so fun.

02:29:35.100 --> 02:29:35.260
Yeah.

02:29:35.500 --> 02:29:35.580
Yeah.

02:29:35.660 --> 02:29:36.220
We're trying to do that.

02:29:36.540 --> 02:29:36.940
We'll have you back.

02:29:37.020 --> 02:29:37.180
I'm sure.

02:29:37.500 --> 02:29:38.700
We'll definitely have you back.

02:29:42.220 --> 02:29:47.900
David, uh, we finished up another episode and um we haven't had

02:29:47.900 --> 02:29:49.180
enough reviews.

02:29:49.260 --> 02:29:53.420
Um, so we're encouraging people to um submit content.

02:29:53.660 --> 02:29:57.820
Um, even mention, you know, like what you would like to have on the um Yeah.

02:29:58.050 --> 02:30:03.810
Uh if you have any ideas for topics, for bits, for people to bring on, anything

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

02:30:09.810 --> 02:30:12.050
love you, um, I'm happy to do that.

02:30:12.210 --> 02:30:14.610
Just, you know, give us some feedback.

02:30:14.930 --> 02:30:17.250
Um I didn't know you oh yeah, you sing.

02:30:17.330 --> 02:30:18.130
I didn't know that.

02:30:18.450 --> 02:30:21.090
Yeah, I'm I'm actually a a really great singer.

02:30:21.410 --> 02:30:23.250
Is that a joke or is uh for real?

02:30:23.640 --> 02:30:25.080
No, but you you do sing.

02:30:25.160 --> 02:30:26.200
You are a singer, aren't you?

02:30:26.360 --> 02:30:27.640
Like you did the music for this.

02:30:27.960 --> 02:30:28.600
That's true.

02:30:28.760 --> 02:30:30.920
But that was not s singing.

02:30:31.000 --> 02:30:33.160
That was that was synthetic instruments.

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?

02:30:37.480 --> 02:30:38.360
I was not the singer.

02:30:38.440 --> 02:30:40.280
I actually don't have a very good voice.

02:30:40.600 --> 02:30:46.520
Um I can maybe muster a a a tune, but it's uh

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

02:30:53.930 --> 02:30:55.050
yeah Patreon.

02:30:55.690 --> 02:30:56.170
Totally.

02:30:56.330 --> 02:30:57.690
That's a great incentive for you.

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

02:31:03.530 --> 02:31:04.970
really don't want that to happen.

02:31:05.690 --> 02:31:08.410
I think we may have just disincentivized our listeners.

02:31:10.060 --> 02:31:11.420
I'm confused about how this works.

02:31:11.580 --> 02:31:13.100
So you want a good thing to happen.

02:31:14.060 --> 02:31:15.980
I'm confusing the carrot for the stick.

02:31:16.060 --> 02:31:16.220
Okay.

02:31:16.300 --> 02:31:16.940
Uh yeah.

02:31:17.020 --> 02:31:18.700
That's no, no, that's the thing.

02:31:18.860 --> 02:31:21.820
If you don't give on Patreon, I'll start singing.

02:31:21.900 --> 02:31:23.180
That's that's the there.

02:31:23.420 --> 02:31:23.900
There you go.

02:31:24.220 --> 02:31:24.380
Okay.

02:31:24.460 --> 02:31:26.060
Now we got now the incentives right.

02:31:26.300 --> 02:31:26.540
Okay, good.

02:31:26.780 --> 02:31:26.940
Okay.

02:31:27.180 --> 02:31:28.780
Now I understand how coordination works.

02:31:28.940 --> 02:31:29.420
Okay, good.

02:31:29.820 --> 02:31:31.390
Um got it.

02:31:31.470 --> 02:31:34.510
Um well thanks for listening, and uh we'll see you next week.

02:31:34.670 --> 02:31:35.550
Bye David.

02:31:35.950 --> 02:31:36.350
Bye