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Welcome.

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Wait, can we do the tagline first?

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Sure.

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Actual evolutionary.

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No, it doesn't make any sense to start with a tagline.

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Yeah, I think you'd start with the title.

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And then maybe title uh name.

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So what's the APA format?

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It's uh d author uh I think it's title names.

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Well, running head, but what is a running head?

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What what nonsense is that?

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And why are that is really ridiculous?

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I don't like the image of a running head.

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It's it's very grotesque and macabre.

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Uh yeah.

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We should bring class.

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Imagine like a head with like two two little legs.

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Yeah, it's really gross.

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Okay.

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Um not anyway.

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Um I'm David Petrozowski.

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This I'm talking to David Pinsoff, and we're here because we are on

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a podcast that you apparently clicked on.

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Yes.

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And that podcast is called Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast.

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Which is sort of redundant because we already know it's a podcast.

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That's true.

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We should just call it Evolutionary Psychology.

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Well, we don't want to claim to be like all of evolutionary psychology.

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Here's the thing you if you don't know that it's a podcast, then you just saw evolutionary

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psychology window it's a podcast, but once you're already in a podcast venue, it's

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redundant.

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There's no optimal way, there's no optimization.

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Well, I think we hit it right by putting it in parentheses.

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Oh that's true.

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Yes, we did demote it by putting it in parentheses.

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Okay.

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Yeah.

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So it's not yeah.

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The demotion was correct.

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Yeah, we made the right choice there.

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Okay.

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Uh anyway, hopefully you made the right choice by listening to this and uh continue

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listening.

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Enjoy the music.

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Today we have Leo Fettucci.

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David Leo is in the enviable place of living in France.

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Yes.

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Living in France.

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Where is he?

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Uh he is at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, one of the uh best places to

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do evolutionary social science, in my opinion.

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Uh the people in in France who are doing evolutionary social science are just uh uh blowing

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me away.

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So we we recently had Magnifique très magnifique, uh we had Hugo Mercier on, he was

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awesome, and we have uh Leo Fettucci.

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Uh and he is um a up-and-coming young scholar.

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I believe he's the youngest person we've had on on the podcast thus far.

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First postdoc, yep.

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First postdoctoral researcher.

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He's just doing really fascinating stuff on uh morality, cooperation, uh the

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psychology of self-control and delayed gratification, and and why we might moralize that,

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like why it's seen as virtuous to delay gratification and temptation and exhibit

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temperance.

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Really fascinating stuff.

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We get into all of that and more.

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It was a really fun conversation.

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Yeah, I've always been curious why people care about all these things that we care about.

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And if you're curious too, then this might be an episode for you.

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Absolutely.

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And I have a hard time delaying gratification when it comes to French cuisine.

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I I stuff my face with fine cheeses and uh well while you're while you're while

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you're while you've got that mental image let's not delay your gratification of listening

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to this episode and let's get going.

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Enjoy.

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David would you like to do the honors?

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Yes.

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Hello, Leo Fettucci.

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It is great to see you.

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Uh, we're really excited to talk to you.

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Hello.

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Thank you.

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So you are at, I think, one of the greatest places to study evolutionary social science.

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And where is that, uh Leo?

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Oh, I mean, that's nice actually for the uh for the institute and the department.

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So it's the Institute for Advanced Studies in Toulouse.

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It's kind of a weird uh department or institute where there are many, many different uh

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disciplines uh brought together, often in an evolutionary perspective.

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So there are anthropologists, psychologists, evolutionary biologists, but also uh people

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who are not that much actually in an evolutionary perspective, uh like economists and

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political scientists.

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And it's basically the goal is to break down discipline boundaries into a

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unified science of human behavior, blah blah blah.

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So of course this is close to what we try to do and I think you guys are trying to do

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too.

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So yeah it's it's quite cool.

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Yeah it sounds weird in a good way.

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Weird in a interdisciplinary some of the most cutting edge stuff in evolutionary psychology

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that I'm personally most excited about.

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I uh you know I I'm a fan of French food.

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I think it's better than um uh American food.

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I'm a fan of French music.

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Uh I th I I find it better than American music, and I I think the same is true of

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evolutionary psychology.

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I don't think so for evolutionary psychology.

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But yeah, thank you.

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Uh the um uh I don't even know what I was gonna say.

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Something about Freedom Prize, but I'll just exactly uh that might be a good uh segue

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actually into a question for you.

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So uh speaking of freedom fries or French fries, uh if I just uncontrollably

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just guzzle down a huge plate of French fries, you might make certain inferences about my

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character, my even my moral character, how trustworthy I am, you know, whether I'm a good

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person.

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That's kind of a weird inference to make.

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What what's the connection between, you know, guzzling down French fries

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So what's what do you think is going on there?

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Okay, yeah, so I see where you're going.

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So it's related to uh yeah.

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Um it's related to a question that has puzzled me, but for a more general question, which

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is about the cognitive architecture and adaptive function of moral judgment in general, but

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like in the space of how we explain human moral judgment, there is a a a tiny part of the

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moral domain that is that seems particularly weird because it's it's apparently not related

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to what we straightforwardly associate to like the adaptive function of reciprocal

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cooperation or this kind of stuff.

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And it's this kind of puritan what we've called puritanical moral judgment.

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So it's related to John Haidt's idea about uh purity, uh moral values, etc.

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And one type of moral judgment that people make in this kind of domain is that if you

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indulge too much in pleasure, like uncontrollably indulge in your in your french fries or

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or also drugs or or any kind of behavior that we intuitively uh characterize

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as hedonistic or whatever the false concept.

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In many societies people seem to think that this kind of behavior is is wrong, although

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it's a behavior that is harmless to other people.

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So this is a classical puzzle in moral psychology, as you as you mentioned, it's uh it's

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it's quite puzzling.

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And so, what we've tried to argue is that in fact, so many people argue that uh

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these kinds of moralizations of apparently harmless behavior cannot be explained by regular

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cognitive adaptations for reciprocal cooperation or even cooperation in general.

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Rather, to explain them, you need to mention other adaptive challenges that have explained

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separate uh cognitive adaptations.

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Sometimes people talk about disgust, the idea that uh glutony, for example, in the case you

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mentioned, is like it would would trigger disgust.

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And this is because we would have these feelings of aversion, of disgust, that we find them

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uh immoral.

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And what we try to do is to try to tie back uh this like purity type violation that

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is kind of harmless behavior into the standard uh approach to human moral

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cognition.

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And and the idea is that um In fact, when you indulge too much in bodily pleasure, this

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has a relation to self-control, self-control being the ability to uh resist temptation for

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immediate rewards in favor of long-term goals.

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And it it happens to be so that uh conditional cooperation or

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reciprocal cooperation or how however you want to call it is a delay of gratification

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problem because like ultimately at the ultimate evolutionary level, it's literally a

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behavior that requires to resist or to forgo the immediate benefit of cheating.

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Like in the prisoner's dilemma, payoff matrix, really, you cannot make uh cooperation

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evolve if it's only one shot.

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Like in the prison, cheating pays more than cooperative.

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It's only because of the repetition of the game, because of the of the of the long-term

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social interactions or the long-term effects on your reputation that your behavior in the

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prison uh carries, uh, that you can get an evolutionary benefit

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back from resisting this temptation of cheating.

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And so, in the same way that cheating uh requires uh delaying gratification, uh

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so because cheating requires delaying gratification, people should have a psychological

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mechanism for uh making inferences or social inferences based on the fact that people who

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are in general more indulging or less self control or less able to um delay

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gratification are less trustworthy cooperation partner.

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Now, I mean maybe maybe I can stop there, but like people often interpret

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the th uh the so my theory of puritanism as being just this, but I don't think in fact we

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don't argue in the paper that it's about uh inference of trustworthiness.

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I think that the so is more more complicated, but um I mean if you want me to get into this

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or happy to so so um yeah let me just see if I can summarize the logic.

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Exactly.

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So um so in order for us to mutually benefit from cooperation, uh

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I have to delay a lot of uh pleasures.

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Say I see a candy bar sticking out of your pocket, I have to resist the impulse to just

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grab it.

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You know, if I'm in a marriage and I see an attractive partner who might be interested, I

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have to delay the or I have to uh suppress the urge to uh flirt with or cheat on on

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my partner.

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Um if uh if I see an opportunity to um to to kill someone or

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to hurt someone you know in the in the in the moment that might immediately benefit me, or

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if I see an opportunity to lie to like get extra stuff, I have to suppress the impulse to

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do that.

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And the reason why I would suppress the impulse in all of those cases is for some long-term

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benefit that would ultimately outweigh the present benefit that I'd take.

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So if I value my marriage, the value of being in a healthy long-term marriage outweighs the

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benefit I'd get from immediately cheating.

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If I see you, the value of our friendship, our long-term friendship, outweighs the benefit

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I'd get from snatching the candy bar out of your pocket.

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You know, the the value of cultivating a reputation as an honest person uh outweighs the

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benefit of lying in the moment to get extra stuff.

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So all of these examples of of cooperation have this common thread where I need to suppress

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the urge to get this immediate benefit in order to get this long term benefit.

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Um is that a fair summary of of the of the of the general idea?

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Yeah, the generality is that is that cooperation is the delay, I mean, the the missing link

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between uh harmless indulgence and reciprocal cooperation is delay of gratification.

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Both kinds of behavior uh imply a delay of gratification.

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Now, I don't think that you can get, and this actually speaks to the more deep nature of

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moral judgment in the human mind.

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I don't think that you can get from the simple idea that people infer uh from your

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indulging behavior that you're a non trustworthy person because you're a uh uh a non self

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controlled person, that the behaviour is immoral.

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Uh because it doesn't explain what people what people in many societies uh uh uh don't

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don't only like um avoid uh glutons on the cooperation market,

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they also want them to stop from indulging.

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It's a scene.

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And as anything in many puritanical societies, people want to control it in the sense of

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stopping the behavior itself.

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So that's why in the theory, uh I had this weird part that was originally a weird

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part to me, which is the idea that in fact people believe that there should be a causal

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effect of your indulgence on your own capacity in the future to restrain your impulses.

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For example, in many puritanical cultures, what you find is folk psychological beliefs that

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uh if you indulge too much in sex or food or masturbation or drugs, then you will become in

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the future less able to resist these kind of temptations.

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And so because it makes you a more impulsive person, it has a causal impact on your ability

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to honor your pro-social obligations in the future.

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And so just as having a gun in your pocket, you can think it's immoral if it

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increases the probability that you will shoot me, a harmful behavior.

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Then enacting a behavior that's increasing that increases the probability that you will

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cheat, for example, by uh degrading your character, which means making you more

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impulsive, uh, is immoral because it increases the probability of cheating, not because it

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signals uh that you have diagnostic threats of people who cheat.

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Doesn't that make sense?

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Yes, it does make sense.

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So we're we're trying to explain two things.

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You know, one thing is why we might draw inferences about someone if they're gluttonous or

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if they're impulsive or if they are are bad at delaying gratification.

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But that's um a separate question from why we actually in some societies have rules that

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punish people for engaging in self contr uh in you know impulsive behavior.

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So there in in many societies that you know there were you know strong moral rules against

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masturbation.

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Uh I believe gluttony was one of the seven deadly sins.

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Exactly.

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So we're so we're not merely avoiding and distrusting people who display a lack of

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self-control, we're actively punishing them and creating rules and institutions that

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inflict costs on them.

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And that's another thing that needs to be explained.

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And the idea, um uh your idea for explaining that is that we have this folk

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belief that if you um the more you uh indulge in your impulses, indulge in bodily

239
00:14:03,210 --> 00:14:07,690
pleasures, you know, eat the French fries, masturbate, uh, etc.

240
00:14:07,930 --> 00:14:12,650
etc., the more likely you are to defect in cooperative interactions, the more likely you

241
00:14:12,650 --> 00:14:16,570
are to cheat on a spouse, to cheat in a deal, etc., etc.

242
00:14:16,890 --> 00:14:17,690
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

243
00:14:17,850 --> 00:14:18,170
Exactly.

244
00:14:18,330 --> 00:14:18,570
Exactly.

245
00:14:19,130 --> 00:14:25,020
Uh can I can and and so I wanna poke on the the

246
00:14:25,020 --> 00:14:27,820
folk belief thing to make sure I understand.

247
00:14:27,980 --> 00:14:33,980
Um so my understanding of sort of uh the best adaptationist

248
00:14:33,980 --> 00:14:39,660
account of this of moral stuff is sort of people look out in the world and they're always

249
00:14:39,660 --> 00:14:42,710
doing this very David Pinsoff Pinsophian.

250
00:14:42,790 --> 00:14:43,510
Is that the adjective?

251
00:14:43,670 --> 00:14:44,310
Pinsofian.

252
00:14:44,470 --> 00:14:45,270
I believe it is the adjective.

253
00:14:45,350 --> 00:14:45,430
Yes.

254
00:14:45,670 --> 00:14:46,150
I want to make it.

255
00:14:46,710 --> 00:14:47,830
Let's make Pinsafian a thing.

256
00:14:48,070 --> 00:14:48,470
All right, great.

257
00:14:48,630 --> 00:14:49,030
I like it.

258
00:14:49,110 --> 00:14:49,910
It sounds really nice.

259
00:14:50,070 --> 00:14:55,670
Um so so in the pin on the Pinsofian view, there's sort of these mechanisms whirling in the

260
00:14:55,670 --> 00:15:01,430
background that are sort of looking around and saying, um, I want to enforce norms

261
00:15:01,430 --> 00:15:06,880
that are beneficial to me, and that sort of carve up the world or produce externalities

262
00:15:06,880 --> 00:15:07,920
that benefit me.

263
00:15:08,160 --> 00:15:13,280
So just to make it very concrete, like just a stupid example, like let's say I hate

264
00:15:13,280 --> 00:15:15,120
driving, which I personally do.

265
00:15:15,280 --> 00:15:21,200
Um, and everything that sort of is a habit of people that leads to walking

266
00:15:21,200 --> 00:15:23,200
or riding their bike, I'm like, that's awesome.

267
00:15:23,440 --> 00:15:28,720
But anything that leads to like selecting for cars or just people driving cars or like fast

268
00:15:28,720 --> 00:15:31,130
food restaurants, I'm like, these are morally bad.

269
00:15:31,210 --> 00:15:32,970
I'm like outraged about that, right?

270
00:15:33,050 --> 00:15:35,050
I have like this mild thing going on in my head all the time.

271
00:15:35,210 --> 00:15:35,610
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

272
00:15:36,650 --> 00:15:42,330
And so my question is, is that theory the the is is what

273
00:15:42,330 --> 00:15:48,170
you're proposing uh uh falling within that, but it's solving a more

274
00:15:48,170 --> 00:15:53,680
specific mystery that are that was existing within this worldview or is what you're saying

275
00:15:53,680 --> 00:15:54,960
different than this worldview?

276
00:15:55,040 --> 00:15:55,360
Yeah.

277
00:15:55,920 --> 00:15:56,560
It's different.

278
00:15:56,720 --> 00:16:01,520
And thank you for that question because it's always the uh I mean it's I think the deep

279
00:16:01,520 --> 00:16:07,280
question uh especially when I talk to Santa Barbara people, I mean from this kind of uh

280
00:16:07,680 --> 00:16:09,520
No anybody from Santa Barbara will have discussion.

281
00:16:09,760 --> 00:16:14,000
Okay, yes the sophisticated French revolutionary psychologist compared to the Santa

282
00:16:14,080 --> 00:16:14,480
Barbarians.

283
00:16:14,560 --> 00:16:14,640
Yes.

284
00:16:14,880 --> 00:16:15,360
Yes exactly.

285
00:16:15,600 --> 00:16:20,350
No not not sophisticated, but like on this on this topic, this is uh this is a a regular

286
00:16:20,350 --> 00:16:24,910
conversation between the the French the French and the great and the Santa.

287
00:16:25,950 --> 00:16:27,310
Yeah, so let me yeah, I want to understand.

288
00:16:27,390 --> 00:16:28,830
So yeah, civilizes.

289
00:16:29,630 --> 00:16:31,790
No no no no no, that's not at all what I wanted to suggest.

290
00:16:32,110 --> 00:16:32,910
We're we're just gonna be able to do that.

291
00:16:33,870 --> 00:16:34,750
Fituchian?

292
00:16:35,070 --> 00:16:35,870
Fetucian.

293
00:16:36,430 --> 00:16:38,750
Pituccian's a lovely oh that sounds nice.

294
00:16:38,830 --> 00:16:38,990
Yeah.

295
00:16:39,390 --> 00:16:41,310
Petra Zussian, boy, that's horrible.

296
00:16:41,470 --> 00:16:45,790
Boy, like really Yeah, how how do you put the MJ's name is hor

297
00:16:58,380 --> 00:16:58,700
Yeah, yeah.

298
00:16:58,780 --> 00:17:04,300
I mean, I completely agree, and I'm sure that exists that people try to push uh norms uh

299
00:17:04,380 --> 00:17:07,830
and moral judgments that benefit their own self-interest.

300
00:17:08,230 --> 00:17:09,910
That seems completely obvious to me.

301
00:17:09,990 --> 00:17:11,990
I completely I'm completely on board with that.

302
00:17:13,030 --> 00:17:18,950
It's just that the thing that I'm trying to explain is not why people push

303
00:17:18,950 --> 00:17:24,630
self-interestedly like principles, but rather like the cognitive logic of moral judgment in

304
00:17:24,630 --> 00:17:25,190
the human mind.

305
00:17:25,270 --> 00:17:29,590
So why is it that people think that some behavior are morally wrong?

306
00:17:29,830 --> 00:17:35,660
Sometimes, I completely agree, they will uh say or even think that

307
00:17:35,660 --> 00:17:41,020
what is morally wrong is stuff, or they will be predisposed to think that what is morally

308
00:17:41,020 --> 00:17:43,500
wrong are stuff that violate their own interest.

309
00:17:44,060 --> 00:17:49,820
But um uh so what we think

310
00:17:50,060 --> 00:17:55,420
is the the the content of what is morally wrong in the human mind, in like the perspective

311
00:17:55,420 --> 00:18:00,670
that was that is basically uh developed by Baumard, André, and me and other people is the

312
00:18:00,670 --> 00:18:04,830
is the idea that what is morally wrong is what is what violates a principles of mutual

313
00:18:04,830 --> 00:18:10,830
benefits in the precise sense of what is morally wrong is uh the behavior such that if

314
00:18:10,830 --> 00:18:15,070
everyone did it on rough approximation, then everyone would be worse off.

315
00:18:15,310 --> 00:18:18,270
This is basically the principle of collective action and reciprocal cooperation.

316
00:18:18,440 --> 00:18:20,920
So the idea is more that we have a social contract.

317
00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:25,720
I'm competing a social contract when I'm making a puritanical moral judgment, which is if

318
00:18:25,720 --> 00:18:31,720
we all lived in a society or if we all behaved in such a way that we indulge in pleasures

319
00:18:31,720 --> 00:18:37,720
so as to make us uh worse persons in the sense of persons less able to uh

320
00:18:37,720 --> 00:18:41,770
resist temptations, uh then we would all be worse off.

321
00:18:41,850 --> 00:18:47,130
So we have a reciprocal duty, we literally have a moral duty to control our base or base uh

322
00:18:47,130 --> 00:18:52,010
impulses because like this is the necessary condition for us to have an orderly, peaceful

323
00:18:52,010 --> 00:18:53,130
society or whatever.

324
00:18:53,610 --> 00:18:59,610
Uh and and this is the uh uh yeah so basically uh one one of the arguments I I I often uh

325
00:18:59,610 --> 00:19:05,050
uh uh give uh when I get the self-interest approach it's it's it's the following is that

326
00:19:05,050 --> 00:19:10,900
for people to benefit of the very fact of saying that something is morally

327
00:19:10,900 --> 00:19:15,220
wrong uh in order to manipulate the behaviour of other people in a way that benefits their

328
00:19:15,220 --> 00:19:16,180
own sinf interest.

329
00:19:16,500 --> 00:19:21,460
The fact of saying morally wrong instead of I don't like when you do this and and I will uh

330
00:19:21,540 --> 00:19:24,740
and I'm threatening you has to be some additional benefit.

331
00:19:24,820 --> 00:19:26,100
Otherwise people wouldn't use it.

332
00:19:26,180 --> 00:19:31,970
You know, it's the whole signaler uh uh dokings and Krebs stuff, like for a signal

333
00:19:31,970 --> 00:19:36,770
to be to have a manipulative effect in the first place, it has to be uh received in the

334
00:19:36,770 --> 00:19:37,650
mind of the receiver.

335
00:19:37,730 --> 00:19:43,090
So in the same way that so the the receiver has to somehow benefit to receive the signal,

336
00:19:43,250 --> 00:19:44,690
otherwise the signal is not listened.

337
00:19:45,090 --> 00:19:51,010
So for me to benefit from the very fact of strategically manipulating people by saying

338
00:19:51,010 --> 00:19:56,240
what you're doing is morally wrong, it has to tap at least sometime into a

339
00:19:56,480 --> 00:20:02,400
cognitive system that interprets this message as actually what you're doing is violating

340
00:20:02,400 --> 00:20:03,120
the public good.

341
00:20:03,200 --> 00:20:07,840
And so you now you deserve to be punished because you're you're doing something that is

342
00:20:07,840 --> 00:20:09,280
wrong that will damage your reputation.

343
00:20:13,440 --> 00:20:17,710
So what you're doing is violating mutual benefits instead of just my own interest.

344
00:20:17,790 --> 00:20:21,950
Because people have already psychological adaptation for like bargaining for self-interest.

345
00:20:22,350 --> 00:20:27,070
Why uh they they would need a new type of mental representation that is moral

346
00:20:27,070 --> 00:20:27,630
representation.

347
00:20:27,790 --> 00:20:32,750
So uh I need about right and wrong, and not and not and not uh what I like and dislike.

348
00:20:33,790 --> 00:20:34,350
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

349
00:20:34,430 --> 00:20:34,510
Okay.

350
00:20:34,590 --> 00:20:36,350
So I think let me let me make sure I understand.

351
00:20:36,510 --> 00:20:42,260
Because so I think I I think what I was articulating assumed what you said explicitly,

352
00:20:42,340 --> 00:20:43,540
which is always a bad thing.

353
00:20:43,700 --> 00:20:45,540
So in it's excellent that you said it.

354
00:20:45,700 --> 00:20:51,700
So the idea is that if you have machinery for sort of what is in interest for me, all

355
00:20:51,700 --> 00:20:57,700
the things that are uh in my interest, only a subset of them will anybody else care about.

356
00:20:57,860 --> 00:20:58,100
Right.

357
00:20:58,340 --> 00:21:01,990
Like there's just other things, there's just certain things that like I want to do, but

358
00:21:02,070 --> 00:21:03,990
like that's and then everybody has that.

359
00:21:04,070 --> 00:21:05,910
And and that actually should be represented.

360
00:21:06,070 --> 00:21:10,550
Now there's another of subset of everything that's in my interest that at least like one

361
00:21:10,550 --> 00:21:13,110
other person, like maybe David, would go along with, but nobody else.

362
00:21:13,190 --> 00:21:13,910
Thanks, David.

363
00:21:14,070 --> 00:21:18,790
Um but then there's others that sort of more and more people might go along.

364
00:21:18,870 --> 00:21:23,510
And there should be machinery for representing these this triage of sort of how many others

365
00:21:23,510 --> 00:21:25,030
are likely to go along with it.

366
00:21:25,190 --> 00:21:30,400
And I think um what you're describing is that the moral system

367
00:21:31,360 --> 00:21:37,280
has the design of distinguishing between those categories and what we quote unquote

368
00:21:37,360 --> 00:21:43,360
call as sort of moral things or ideas or suggestions, or when

369
00:21:43,360 --> 00:21:48,640
I'm motivated out of moral outrage, it's the expression of the calculation

370
00:21:49,280 --> 00:21:55,030
that it's not only roughly in my interest, according to the mechanisms, But

371
00:21:55,030 --> 00:22:00,950
it's also that there's there's a good chance that others will or maybe already have sort of

372
00:22:00,950 --> 00:22:04,070
expressed that they might go along with it too.

373
00:22:04,310 --> 00:22:05,990
Um that's what you're saying.

374
00:22:06,470 --> 00:22:08,390
That's a great uh uh point.

375
00:22:08,550 --> 00:22:13,910
So it's all I think it's all so I if I understood correctly I think it it's related to what

376
00:22:13,910 --> 00:22:19,480
I'm saying but like DIG is not only that what okay, so maybe now we should go into

377
00:22:19,640 --> 00:22:24,120
what uh we think or I think is the the the adaptive function of the moral system.

378
00:22:24,280 --> 00:22:27,560
Sure, yeah, it's to it's to because like we are going into that.

379
00:22:27,720 --> 00:22:33,400
So um to answer your point, the the the design of the

380
00:22:33,400 --> 00:22:39,400
moral system is not uh made to detect what would be in other people's interests too.

381
00:22:39,480 --> 00:22:43,670
So it's not made to detect common interests, so there is a distinction in like uh

382
00:22:43,750 --> 00:22:47,750
evolutionary biology of cooperation between like broadly two types of cooperation.

383
00:22:47,990 --> 00:22:52,230
One is like common interest, mutualism, by product cooperation or whatever, and the other

384
00:22:52,230 --> 00:22:56,470
is really a reciprocity, conditional cooperation, collective action, whatever.

385
00:22:56,630 --> 00:23:02,230
The main difference is that by by product cooperation or common interest, uh so I mean any

386
00:23:02,230 --> 00:23:06,630
cooperative behaviour, that is behaviour that benefits another individual, but that is uh

387
00:23:06,950 --> 00:23:10,520
already in the immediate act in the actor's immediate self-interest.

388
00:23:10,600 --> 00:23:14,600
So behavior that benefits others, uh, but without a free rider problem.

389
00:23:14,680 --> 00:23:18,600
It's just by by doing what is straightforwardly in my own self-interest, I'm also

390
00:23:18,600 --> 00:23:20,040
benefiting others.

391
00:23:20,200 --> 00:23:26,040
Uh but but this is different from the logic of conditional cooperation or whatever, where

392
00:23:26,200 --> 00:23:31,240
you I benefit from my cooperative, my own cooperative behavior, only to the extent that it

393
00:23:31,240 --> 00:23:36,600
triggers in the recipient on or other people a conditional response that benefits me.

394
00:23:36,810 --> 00:23:40,250
And this is where the free rider problems uh comes in.

395
00:23:40,490 --> 00:23:45,770
And to us, the Parisians, the

396
00:23:46,170 --> 00:23:51,770
moral cognition is an adaptation to detect what would be the social contracts, uh,

397
00:23:52,410 --> 00:23:58,410
these the mutually beneficial social contracts that would all benefit us if we all paid

398
00:23:58,410 --> 00:24:01,610
the cost, the short-term cost of uh cooperating.

399
00:24:01,770 --> 00:24:07,200
So if we take an example, like if we all uh I don't know, uh pay our taxes, then we have a

400
00:24:07,200 --> 00:24:08,720
big public good and we can benefit.

401
00:24:08,800 --> 00:24:10,000
But there is an incentive to cheat.

402
00:24:10,080 --> 00:24:13,920
And what is morally wrong is to cheat, that is to take the benefits of others' cooperation

403
00:24:13,920 --> 00:24:16,720
without paying the cost of cooperating in return.

404
00:24:16,880 --> 00:24:22,720
Uh, but that is different from just uh uh morally prescribing what is in

405
00:24:22,720 --> 00:24:27,920
my own interest and also happen to be as the byproduct also in other people's direct

406
00:24:27,920 --> 00:24:28,400
interests.

407
00:24:28,560 --> 00:24:32,720
Because even for this kind of adaptive problem, you don't need a new type of mental

408
00:24:32,720 --> 00:24:33,280
representation.

409
00:24:33,360 --> 00:24:34,560
You just need we want.

410
00:24:35,210 --> 00:24:41,210
uh we want uh mechanism uh or we like but not we ought

411
00:24:41,690 --> 00:24:46,170
right it doesn't explain there's no there's no prediction in the in the first category the

412
00:24:46,170 --> 00:24:51,450
non-public good there's no uh selection or explanation for a design that has a

413
00:24:51,450 --> 00:24:57,130
punitive enforcement uh structure and it's precisely because free

414
00:24:57,130 --> 00:25:02,900
riding is possible that that you're getting this um that you're you're basically

415
00:25:02,900 --> 00:25:08,740
asking uh people to accept that there will be some cost contingent on them

416
00:25:08,740 --> 00:25:09,540
not doing it.

417
00:25:09,700 --> 00:25:15,460
Um, and it's precisely for this second free rider um uh um free

418
00:25:15,460 --> 00:25:19,540
rider uh sensitive or vulnerable to free riding is the is the correct phrase.

419
00:25:19,700 --> 00:25:24,900
It's vulnerable to free riding and that explains the design features of morality that

420
00:25:24,900 --> 00:25:26,340
otherwise are a mystery.

421
00:25:26,660 --> 00:25:28,340
Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly.

422
00:25:28,470 --> 00:25:34,310
I mean, I think people thank you.

423
00:25:34,710 --> 00:25:35,990
Okay, cool.

424
00:25:36,230 --> 00:25:42,070
Um so uh now that we have this framework of morality in place, and I think it's useful to

425
00:25:42,230 --> 00:25:44,550
think about it in terms of the game theory of it.

426
00:25:44,630 --> 00:25:48,310
So think of the the mutualism that you're describing, this would be something like a stag

427
00:25:48,310 --> 00:25:54,260
hunt or coordination game where um w you know it uh acting in each other's interests is

428
00:25:54,260 --> 00:25:58,420
not a matter of punishing freer riders, just a matter of uh just all of us just recognizing

429
00:25:58,420 --> 00:26:01,780
what is in our interests and doing exactly it's more of a coordination problem.

430
00:26:02,420 --> 00:26:06,100
Whereas uh the thing is driving on the right side right driving all on this right side of

431
00:26:06,100 --> 00:26:10,100
the road exactly it's not in my interest at all to diverge from what either of you are

432
00:26:10,100 --> 00:26:10,420
doing.

433
00:26:10,580 --> 00:26:14,180
It's just that we all we all are better off if we all coordinate.

434
00:26:14,490 --> 00:26:14,650
Yeah.

435
00:26:14,810 --> 00:26:14,970
Exactly.

436
00:26:15,370 --> 00:26:18,650
If we all speak the same language and use the same sounds to mean the same things, we all

437
00:26:18,650 --> 00:26:19,610
mutually benefit from that.

438
00:26:19,770 --> 00:26:22,330
That's not moral, it's just a coordination problem, right?

439
00:26:22,570 --> 00:26:27,930
Um, but the the other domain uh is something like a prisoner's dilemma or a public goods

440
00:26:27,930 --> 00:26:33,690
game, where we might all benefit if people uh uh refrain from defecting or free riding.

441
00:26:33,770 --> 00:26:36,410
And and that's where the moral emotions come in.

442
00:26:36,650 --> 00:26:37,290
Cool.

443
00:26:38,020 --> 00:26:43,860
Um, and so and and so that is where the the idea of self-control being a signal of one's

444
00:26:43,860 --> 00:26:46,900
uh cooperative potential or one's value as a cooperative partner.

445
00:26:47,060 --> 00:26:51,220
The more self-control I have, the the the better I am at resisting those short-term

446
00:26:51,220 --> 00:26:55,300
temptations, the more likely I am to cooperate with you in prisoners' dilemmas, the more

447
00:26:55,300 --> 00:26:59,460
likely I am to invest in the public good in a public goods game because I'm gonna be able

448
00:26:59,460 --> 00:27:04,420
to um resist that temptation to cheat in the prisoner's dilemma or free ride in the public

449
00:27:04,420 --> 00:27:05,220
goods game.

450
00:27:05,460 --> 00:27:06,420
Yeah, exactly.

451
00:27:07,010 --> 00:27:07,570
Cool.

452
00:27:07,970 --> 00:27:13,730
Um and there's this additional logic where if I do things um that indulge my short-term

453
00:27:13,730 --> 00:27:18,130
pleasures, then that um is going to make me more likely to indulge short-term pleasures in

454
00:27:18,130 --> 00:27:22,210
the future and more likely to defect or free ride in cooperative interactions.

455
00:27:22,610 --> 00:27:22,930
Okay.

456
00:27:23,330 --> 00:27:23,570
Cool.

457
00:27:24,290 --> 00:27:25,010
Yeah, and sorry, yeah.

458
00:27:25,170 --> 00:27:29,490
Yeah, sorry, just to just to uh uh finish the summary

459
00:27:31,300 --> 00:27:36,980
The final idea actually is that the fact that each of us refrains, even in private, of

460
00:27:36,980 --> 00:27:39,940
indulging in bodily pleasures, is itself a public good.

461
00:27:42,820 --> 00:27:48,500
So if we all uh if we all are you know are well practiced in our ability to uh

462
00:27:48,500 --> 00:27:53,460
suppress our impulses and delay gratifications, if we all practice that ability uh uh and

463
00:27:53,460 --> 00:27:58,210
together, then we will all become better at um delaying gratification and we will all

464
00:27:58,210 --> 00:27:59,250
become better at cooperating.

465
00:27:59,330 --> 00:28:03,250
And that will benefit us all if we're all better at cooperating, we're all more willing to

466
00:28:03,250 --> 00:28:04,130
suppress our yes.

467
00:28:04,370 --> 00:28:04,610
Exactly.

468
00:28:04,770 --> 00:28:08,530
And so that that's how in the end the fact of indulging is a form of cheating.

469
00:28:08,610 --> 00:28:13,890
You're cheating on other people's efforts to become more disciplined persons uh that will

470
00:28:13,890 --> 00:28:17,970
make up for a more uh uh efficient cooperative society.

471
00:28:20,020 --> 00:28:20,260
Okay.

472
00:28:20,420 --> 00:28:26,180
So my question here, now that we've covered all this, is how might you begin to

473
00:28:26,180 --> 00:28:30,580
think about the pretty large variation that we see in these kinds of moral norms?

474
00:28:30,740 --> 00:28:34,260
So certainly, you know, in the past we had, you know, gluttony was a seven deadly sin,

475
00:28:34,500 --> 00:28:36,820
masturbation has been moralized in many societies.

476
00:28:36,980 --> 00:28:40,580
But now, like, it's not really a big deal if you masturbate or if you eat a plate of French

477
00:28:40,580 --> 00:28:44,370
fries or whatever, it's like, you know, I I mean, maybe we might make, you know, some

478
00:28:44,370 --> 00:28:48,210
subtle social judgment, but there's no like moral rule against it or anything like that.

479
00:28:48,370 --> 00:28:53,970
It seems like in um, at least in weird societies, uh, we're pretty permissive about, you

480
00:28:53,970 --> 00:28:58,690
know, people doing impulsive things, uh, you know, indulging their bodily pleasures.

481
00:28:58,850 --> 00:29:02,130
Whereas in other societies they're really puritanical, uh, and they're you know, these

482
00:29:02,130 --> 00:29:03,330
strong puritanical moral courts.

483
00:29:03,410 --> 00:29:04,930
So how where do the differences come from?

484
00:29:05,010 --> 00:29:06,450
Why why is there such strong variation?

485
00:29:06,610 --> 00:29:10,370
If if your logic is right, wouldn't we expect to see this kind of puritanical morality

486
00:29:10,370 --> 00:29:10,770
everywhere?

487
00:29:11,320 --> 00:29:13,000
Yeah, no, no, that's a great question.

488
00:29:13,080 --> 00:29:15,240
Um I don't think I have a definite answer.

489
00:29:15,400 --> 00:29:21,240
So um uh broadly, this this view of moral

490
00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:27,080
cognition as just an adaptation for detecting the set of possible uh collective

491
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:32,920
action that we can undertake if we if we all pay the cost, uh some cost, uh

492
00:29:33,530 --> 00:29:39,290
surely will be super sensitive to context because like the the costs and

493
00:29:39,290 --> 00:29:43,610
benefits of different behavior and so the collective benefit the collective costs and

494
00:29:43,610 --> 00:29:47,850
benefits of different behavior will depend on the payoffs on the material payoffs that will

495
00:29:47,850 --> 00:29:53,290
depend a lot of the context and so from this it follows the general possibility that the

496
00:29:53,290 --> 00:29:58,160
moral judgment will vary a lot across contexts and so it it completely accommodates uh the

497
00:29:58,160 --> 00:29:59,680
very fact of moral variation.

498
00:29:59,840 --> 00:30:04,320
Now, as to explaining the logic of moral variation, in particular in the plenary technical

499
00:30:04,480 --> 00:30:05,040
domain.

500
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:08,560
So, what I have argued in the paper, I'm I'm not sure it's true, honestly.

501
00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:12,160
Uh I think we need more data, is um something like this.

502
00:30:13,280 --> 00:30:19,040
Uh so we like it seems to be the case that these folk

503
00:30:19,200 --> 00:30:24,370
psychological beliefs themselves, that the more you indulge in pleasure, uh, the more

504
00:30:24,450 --> 00:30:29,090
addict, the more of an addict you will, an uncontrollable addict you will become.

505
00:30:29,250 --> 00:30:32,450
Uh seems to decrease in modern societies.

506
00:30:33,730 --> 00:30:39,250
Possibly because like people are, I mean, we know that with uh with uh economic modernity,

507
00:30:39,330 --> 00:30:44,210
people are becoming less impulsive, less uh more self-controlled, uh more patient.

508
00:30:44,290 --> 00:30:46,690
So there's a lot of cross-cultural data on that.

509
00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:51,320
Uh and so the I yeah, one possibility that I have in mind is that as people get less and

510
00:30:51,320 --> 00:30:57,160
less impulsive, it appears as less and less a collective action that is worth it to

511
00:30:57,400 --> 00:31:02,360
to restrain ourselves, given that we won't become addict in any in any case.

512
00:31:02,520 --> 00:31:03,400
You see what I mean?

513
00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:05,480
Like uh indulge in your French prize.

514
00:31:05,560 --> 00:31:07,240
I know you will be reliable tomorrow.

515
00:31:07,400 --> 00:31:08,120
You see what I mean?

516
00:31:08,280 --> 00:31:10,770
That's why I I interesting.

517
00:31:12,130 --> 00:31:17,810
So an analogy might be like if we're all like constantly being hunted by predators, we

518
00:31:17,810 --> 00:31:21,490
might be really nervous and uptight about people doing anything that might make them

519
00:31:21,490 --> 00:31:23,730
vulnerable by making loud noises or whatever.

520
00:31:23,890 --> 00:31:27,090
But if we live in a really safe environment where there are no predators at all, we're not

521
00:31:27,090 --> 00:31:28,850
gonna be as vigilant and we're not gonna care as much.

522
00:31:29,010 --> 00:31:33,010
So th analogously, if we live in an environment where people have really low self-control

523
00:31:33,090 --> 00:31:37,240
and it's really threatening to social stability, uh, we're gonna be really uptight about,

524
00:31:37,320 --> 00:31:38,760
you know, displays of low self control.

525
00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:42,760
But if we live in a society where we're all really actually well practiced at delaying

526
00:31:42,760 --> 00:31:46,760
gratification and having self control, where our you know we have the the very fact that we

527
00:31:46,760 --> 00:31:50,520
have such a prosperous and well functioning society is a byproduct of the fact that we're

528
00:31:50,520 --> 00:31:55,400
so good at delaying gratification, then we're not gonna be as uptight about displays of low

529
00:31:55,400 --> 00:31:58,600
self control because we we already know that we have the situation under control.

530
00:31:58,870 --> 00:32:04,710
Is that basically it's it's a contract that is not mutually beneficial uh

531
00:32:04,870 --> 00:32:10,870
anymore because the cost I would have to pay by uh refraining from indulgence

532
00:32:11,030 --> 00:32:16,950
uh is is so it's the same, but uh compared to the or but

533
00:32:17,030 --> 00:32:22,150
but the benefit that we get from uh an increased level of cooperation would not be worth

534
00:32:22,380 --> 00:32:24,860
the the the cost that we have to pay.

535
00:32:25,020 --> 00:32:25,900
That would be the idea.

536
00:32:26,060 --> 00:32:30,940
While I don't know in medieval Europe, where everyone is drunk all the time and drinking is

537
00:32:30,940 --> 00:32:36,380
a huge social problem, then of course uh people think that drinking uh is a deadly sin.

538
00:32:36,540 --> 00:32:41,580
I mean, uh actually it's part of the it does it doesn't tell this paradox this paradoxical

539
00:32:41,580 --> 00:32:47,580
prediction, which is that societies in that are lower in self-control moralize low

540
00:32:47,580 --> 00:32:50,860
self-control more societies that are higher in self-control.

541
00:32:51,270 --> 00:32:52,870
Yeah, I would love to touch this position.

542
00:32:52,950 --> 00:32:56,550
I'm looking for ways to I think like descriptively we find it.

543
00:32:56,630 --> 00:33:02,230
I mean more britannical societies are also uh in general uh societies that are less uh

544
00:33:02,230 --> 00:33:06,710
economically uh developed and are also poorer, and we know that these societies also have

545
00:33:06,710 --> 00:33:09,430
lower trust and lower uh patience.

546
00:33:09,670 --> 00:33:13,680
Uh uh but now everything correlates with everything, you know.

547
00:33:13,760 --> 00:33:18,720
Uh so I don't know, but like and it might also expect that the more I perceive that other

548
00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:24,080
people in my social environment are low in self control, the more I should moralize self

549
00:33:24,160 --> 00:33:24,240
control.

550
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:25,280
So yeah, yeah.

551
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:26,960
So it's something I'm yeah, yeah.

552
00:33:27,120 --> 00:33:29,120
I don't know if people I yeah, no, sorry.

553
00:33:29,360 --> 00:33:30,400
Oh no, go ahead.

554
00:33:31,280 --> 00:33:35,280
No, no, it's just uh then there's a subtlety that I I don't know uh how to deal with, which

555
00:33:35,280 --> 00:33:39,970
is like is it that uh is it you perceive I mean, I don't know how people form these false

556
00:33:39,970 --> 00:33:40,770
psychological beliefs.

557
00:33:40,850 --> 00:33:46,690
Is it by because they observe uh other people being uh impulsive and also being cheaters?

558
00:33:47,170 --> 00:33:52,530
Because these correlations seem to exist, but it doesn't seem to be objectively true that

559
00:33:52,610 --> 00:33:57,650
uh that the more you in that that training your self control will make you more self

560
00:33:57,730 --> 00:33:58,850
control, apparently.

561
00:33:59,020 --> 00:34:00,060
Like in the right.

562
00:34:00,300 --> 00:34:00,700
There doesn't.

563
00:34:00,940 --> 00:34:04,540
I mean, as far as I'm aware, there's no correlation between like masturbation frequency and

564
00:34:04,620 --> 00:34:08,380
and you know it freak a probability of like cheating on a spouse or something like that.

565
00:34:08,540 --> 00:34:10,300
As far as I'm aware, the correlation doesn't exist.

566
00:34:10,540 --> 00:34:11,020
Yeah, exactly.

567
00:34:11,580 --> 00:34:16,460
The idea of a unitary thing of self-control is sort of confusing uh it's the spaceholder.

568
00:34:16,620 --> 00:34:20,220
It's a placeholder that's very quote unquote more domain general than it looks like.

569
00:34:20,460 --> 00:34:20,540
Right.

570
00:34:20,620 --> 00:34:21,580
And it might even be the opposite.

571
00:34:21,660 --> 00:34:25,100
You know, you m it might be that you know, the uh if you're if you're if you masturbate,

572
00:34:25,180 --> 00:34:28,140
for example, you're less likely to cheat on your spouse because you're you know you you're

573
00:34:28,430 --> 00:34:32,670
you're controlling your desires more and and and and allowing them an outlet in in some

574
00:34:32,670 --> 00:34:33,150
other way.

575
00:34:34,190 --> 00:34:40,190
Yeah let me uh let me poke on um I feel like I'm being slightly devil's advocate in this

576
00:34:40,190 --> 00:34:46,110
uh context which is great um but uh so I wonder so like let me make this concrete

577
00:34:46,190 --> 00:34:50,400
um which is so like if we're all starving like let's imagine, like, you know, we're like

578
00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:54,560
the rugby team that crashed on the top of a mountain, we're gonna really, we're really

579
00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:58,800
hungry, we're gonna moralize gluttony for obvious reasons, right?

580
00:34:59,600 --> 00:35:05,600
Um uh and and so like why the self control in that context about

581
00:35:05,600 --> 00:35:08,320
that thing really matters, it makes complete sense, right?

582
00:35:08,480 --> 00:35:11,760
Not that it's trivial, it's still, you know, there's software that's required.

583
00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:17,360
But I wonder if like the the idea of sort of like in a modern market economy

584
00:35:17,920 --> 00:35:22,810
that like one account is that like people's self-control is just better.

585
00:35:23,210 --> 00:35:29,210
But another one is that the norms themselves sort of get selected in a dynamic way.

586
00:35:29,370 --> 00:35:31,930
So let me just like make the following example.

587
00:35:32,090 --> 00:35:37,850
Um, which is let's imagine that we're like shipbuilders and we have uh this

588
00:35:38,010 --> 00:35:42,960
is a Rob Boyd point, like the world is opaque and complicated, and we might have

589
00:35:42,960 --> 00:35:43,680
superstitions.

590
00:35:43,760 --> 00:35:48,240
Like, let's imagine we have a superstition that if somebody wears purple on the ship, then

591
00:35:48,240 --> 00:35:50,800
it's bad luck, and like the ship will sink.

592
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:56,080
And if we're a small group of people, we don't really test that idea.

593
00:35:56,320 --> 00:35:58,960
And so it's just exists in our world.

594
00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:05,070
Now, if you imagine that all of a sudden we're in a context where we're trading with and

595
00:36:05,070 --> 00:36:10,830
interacting with a lot of people, that idea, that sort of folk knowledge of like purple

596
00:36:10,830 --> 00:36:15,230
equals bad luck, if all of a sudden we're encountering lots and lots of boats and lots and

597
00:36:15,230 --> 00:36:18,910
lots of people, and all of a sudden it's like before I even know what happens, I'm like

598
00:36:18,910 --> 00:36:23,710
talking to somebody who's crossed the ocean and they're all wearing purple, just just out

599
00:36:23,710 --> 00:36:24,750
of pure random.

600
00:36:24,990 --> 00:36:30,360
All of a sudden, it's sort of this thing of the world itself has sort of tested that folk

601
00:36:30,680 --> 00:36:33,080
linkage and it's violated it.

602
00:36:33,320 --> 00:36:38,520
And so one other alternative is that, just to like follow the analog, is that

603
00:36:39,160 --> 00:36:44,680
if David eats a lot of French fries, sorry, David, in a small-scale social world, uh it's

604
00:36:44,760 --> 00:36:47,610
it might just be equivalent to like the purple thing, right?

605
00:36:47,690 --> 00:36:52,650
Where it's just sort of like it, it's sticky with respect to my moralization for the same

606
00:36:52,650 --> 00:36:55,930
reason if we were actually starving, you know, it like it makes sense.

607
00:36:56,170 --> 00:37:01,130
But in a modern environment, it's it's sort of like all of a sudden I encounter somebody

608
00:37:01,130 --> 00:37:04,490
who's just eaten a huge plate of French fries, but they're bringing me an iPad, you know,

609
00:37:04,650 --> 00:37:05,770
quote unquote, right?

610
00:37:05,930 --> 00:37:11,850
Like the the world got so big that like the world tested to see does that element of

611
00:37:11,850 --> 00:37:13,770
self-control actually matter?

612
00:37:14,140 --> 00:37:19,900
And it feels like a lot of things that people moralize, like every generation, they're

613
00:37:19,900 --> 00:37:25,260
sort of like, you know, like being gay or being uh just being weird in a way, right?

614
00:37:25,500 --> 00:37:31,100
Like it's when people encounter, oh, there's other people that actually can be this way

615
00:37:31,340 --> 00:37:36,220
who benefit me, who I can trade with, who are completely fine.

616
00:37:36,380 --> 00:37:39,580
The world didn't catch into flames, like this feels like a trope.

617
00:37:39,740 --> 00:37:44,990
And so I wonder if like in addition to maybe people are more so there's more

618
00:37:44,990 --> 00:37:50,590
self-control, it's actually that there's sort of like almost epid epidemiological selection

619
00:37:50,750 --> 00:37:56,590
on just sort of which which things get moralized simply out of this sort of

620
00:37:56,590 --> 00:38:00,990
like in a large-scale social world, the ones that don't really count eventually get

621
00:38:00,990 --> 00:38:01,710
selected out.

622
00:38:01,790 --> 00:38:06,110
But our evolved psychology is constantly churning out the ones that are thinkable, like

623
00:38:06,110 --> 00:38:11,480
sex, like food, which really shouldn't matter for a modern technological economy.

624
00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:12,600
Do you buy that?

625
00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:14,120
And is that a different account?

626
00:38:14,280 --> 00:38:15,240
Or what what do you think about it?

627
00:38:15,560 --> 00:38:15,960
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

628
00:38:16,040 --> 00:38:17,320
No, no, it is a different account.

629
00:38:17,400 --> 00:38:18,200
I mean, it's very interesting.

630
00:38:18,280 --> 00:38:23,160
I think uh so yeah, so yeah, so there are many things to answer.

631
00:38:23,240 --> 00:38:28,040
Uh so first, uh first, it seems to me that uh so when I was thinking of the false

632
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:32,090
psychological belief, I'm thinking of the false psychological beliefs about the effect of

633
00:38:32,090 --> 00:38:35,290
the behavior on your on your um on your traits.

634
00:38:35,450 --> 00:38:39,690
That is, if you indulge, you become less self-controlled.

635
00:38:40,570 --> 00:38:42,810
This seems to be false.

636
00:38:43,530 --> 00:38:47,210
I mean, at least some things are addictive, right?

637
00:38:47,290 --> 00:38:51,610
Like for drugs, I think it's true that the more you take drugs, the less able to resist

638
00:38:51,610 --> 00:38:52,250
drugs you are.

639
00:38:52,650 --> 00:38:57,370
Now, the fact that it generalizes to other domains, uh, this doesn't seem to be clear.

640
00:38:57,560 --> 00:39:02,040
Um but but the correlation between uh the fact that people believe that there is a

641
00:39:02,040 --> 00:39:06,200
correlation between the fact that you're more impulsive and the fact that you will cheat

642
00:39:06,200 --> 00:39:10,680
more seems to be true, even I mean we've taken tested it actually with Daniel Dental.

643
00:39:10,760 --> 00:39:15,000
And people when we present people who indulge, people do uh answer that they they they

644
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:20,290
think they are more likely uh to cheat their partner if they had the chance to um to slack

645
00:39:20,290 --> 00:39:26,050
off and do and let others uh do their part of the work to uh to uh not repay debts uh some

646
00:39:26,290 --> 00:39:32,210
some stuff like that so uh yeah so

647
00:39:32,290 --> 00:39:36,610
so if i adapt what you were saying uh i i so i need to adapt what you were saying to the

648
00:39:36,610 --> 00:39:42,610
the fo the theory about the the dynamic of self-control uh i mean how how self control i

649
00:39:42,690 --> 00:39:48,660
become given my behavior so the idea is that have more evidence that this is

650
00:39:48,660 --> 00:39:51,540
false, maybe in in everyday life.

651
00:39:51,700 --> 00:39:52,100
Maybe.

652
00:39:53,220 --> 00:39:54,100
Maybe.

653
00:39:55,700 --> 00:39:57,540
But it's just you encounter a lot of people.

654
00:39:57,620 --> 00:40:02,020
I mean, in medieval Christianity, in medieval France, people still do encounter a lot of

655
00:40:02,020 --> 00:40:02,740
people, right?

656
00:40:03,220 --> 00:40:09,060
So I mean, I don't know, I'm speculating, but uh it it seems a bit different to me

657
00:40:09,060 --> 00:40:14,930
than a pure uh taboo like superstition like if i if i go uh

658
00:40:15,250 --> 00:40:21,010
if i uh wear this pair of of uh of uh of boots then uh something

659
00:40:21,010 --> 00:40:26,530
bad will happen even that actually does does does even persist in in modern states it's I

660
00:40:26,530 --> 00:40:32,050
mean like people uh still have superstitions yeah I I mean I don't know I'm sorry.

661
00:40:32,450 --> 00:40:34,530
I don't know that's great that's super fun to think about.

662
00:40:34,610 --> 00:40:40,560
Yeah yeah no and in fact in fact what you suggest I think is uh is part of

663
00:40:40,640 --> 00:40:46,480
uh so so sometimes people take what uh what i argue as just trying to explain the whole of

664
00:40:46,480 --> 00:40:50,320
purity of the purity domain as it was carved by moral psychology.

665
00:40:50,480 --> 00:40:51,920
I don't think this this argument does.

666
00:40:52,000 --> 00:40:56,080
I think it does really just for the puritanical puritanical stuff that is really right

667
00:40:56,320 --> 00:40:56,800
pleasure.

668
00:40:56,960 --> 00:40:57,040
Right.

669
00:40:57,360 --> 00:40:58,720
The fact that pleasure is a problem.

670
00:40:58,880 --> 00:40:59,040
Yeah.

671
00:40:59,120 --> 00:41:00,870
Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah.

672
00:41:03,350 --> 00:41:09,270
The purple or the weird purple shirt of the purpose of stuff or any apparently uh arbitrary

673
00:41:09,270 --> 00:41:09,750
uh norm.

674
00:41:10,230 --> 00:41:14,790
Which in fact for the taboos, uh the the superstitious like taboos, I think your your your

675
00:41:14,790 --> 00:41:18,630
account is completely uh uh uh I see completely uh probable.

676
00:41:18,710 --> 00:41:22,880
I mean I think what happens in small scale cities is that often people believe that there

677
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:28,800
are dramatic consequences to I don't know uh uh walking down uh walking um I don't know

678
00:41:28,880 --> 00:41:30,640
uh touching that kind of tree.

679
00:41:30,720 --> 00:41:34,240
And if dramatic consequences happen, including to other people, then it's immoral.

680
00:41:34,320 --> 00:41:37,680
But you don't need the self-control uh medician to the same thing.

681
00:41:37,760 --> 00:41:39,600
You need this only if the problem is pleasure.

682
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:40,880
Yeah, yeah, that's great.

683
00:41:41,120 --> 00:41:45,040
This is a good just for as a quick aside and then but like this is a good example of like

684
00:41:45,120 --> 00:41:50,190
real time, like even in science, there there can be c confusion or misunderstanding or

685
00:41:50,190 --> 00:41:54,750
people even arguing past each other because there's lack of our ability to sort of

686
00:41:54,750 --> 00:41:58,590
coordinate about which slice of reality we're trying to explain.

687
00:41:58,830 --> 00:42:03,870
So I'm really glad we're having this conversation and that's a lovely microcosm of you.

688
00:42:04,190 --> 00:42:10,190
Uh um it's it's an important uh reminder to sort of try to to try to figure out

689
00:42:10,190 --> 00:42:12,190
what the the slice of the pie you're figuring out.

690
00:42:12,270 --> 00:42:13,230
So thank you very much, Leo.

691
00:42:13,310 --> 00:42:13,630
Sorry, Dave.

692
00:42:13,870 --> 00:42:14,430
No, no, thank you.

693
00:42:14,590 --> 00:42:14,830
Thank you.

694
00:42:14,990 --> 00:42:15,940
Uh yeah.

695
00:42:16,100 --> 00:42:22,100
So I guess the broader question that that we're getting at is um let's suppose for the sake

696
00:42:22,100 --> 00:42:26,020
of argument that this this all all this puritanical morality, this business about

697
00:42:26,020 --> 00:42:29,620
self-control and it relating to cooperation, let's just assume for the sake of argument

698
00:42:29,700 --> 00:42:34,020
that it's all just an elaborate superstition, that it's not actually true, that there's

699
00:42:34,020 --> 00:42:39,940
actually no correlation between um your ability to delay gratification in a food context

700
00:42:39,940 --> 00:42:44,610
or a masturbation context or whatever, and your your cooperative uh potential, your your

701
00:42:44,690 --> 00:42:46,450
ability to cooperate in prisoners' dilemmas.

702
00:42:46,530 --> 00:42:50,530
Let's say that, you know, indulging in bodily pleasures has no effect on your future

703
00:42:50,530 --> 00:42:52,850
ability to cooperate in social dilemmas.

704
00:42:53,090 --> 00:42:55,170
Let's just assume that it's all bullshit, right?

705
00:42:55,490 --> 00:42:59,970
Is your theory compatible with that possibility or does it require that there's some act

706
00:43:00,130 --> 00:43:01,330
objective truth to it?

707
00:43:01,730 --> 00:43:03,010
No, that's a great question.

708
00:43:03,250 --> 00:43:08,720
Uh the theory doesn't need that, but then it's unsatisfactory that people just believe

709
00:43:08,720 --> 00:43:09,200
bullshit.

710
00:43:09,360 --> 00:43:14,800
Because as an evolutionary psychologist like you, I like to believe that uh what people

711
00:43:14,800 --> 00:43:19,280
think is not too far from reality because the mind wouldn't be designed in such a way that

712
00:43:19,440 --> 00:43:25,440
of making huge mistakes, except in in cases that uh are also interesting, which is like

713
00:43:25,440 --> 00:43:30,770
adaptive misbelief or byproduct of otherwise adaptive mechanisms, superstition being one of

714
00:43:30,770 --> 00:43:35,490
them, as as as uh as uh as uh Dave uh put forward.

715
00:43:35,650 --> 00:43:36,930
But yeah, the theory is compatible.

716
00:43:37,090 --> 00:43:42,690
The theory is compatible with just the theory just states uh when whenever people

717
00:43:42,690 --> 00:43:48,610
moralize uh harmless body pleasure is because they hold the folk psychological belief

718
00:43:48,770 --> 00:43:54,580
that this behavior has an indirect uh social cost, uh which is the increased

719
00:43:54,580 --> 00:44:00,100
probability of cheating that this uh private behavior will have

720
00:44:00,420 --> 00:44:02,740
by altering your character or whatever.

721
00:44:02,900 --> 00:44:08,100
Or at least the prototypical cases in human cultural story like the the the seven deadly

722
00:44:08,100 --> 00:44:10,180
sins, uh yeah.

723
00:44:10,420 --> 00:44:12,420
Are about are about this kind of bullish.

724
00:44:12,900 --> 00:44:18,740
I I wanna I wanna float a a possibility um by you, which is that it may be that

725
00:44:19,370 --> 00:44:23,450
that the the the ideology of of Puritanism is is totally false.

726
00:44:23,610 --> 00:44:28,570
Um but there's something about it that that it makes it kind of self-fulfilling.

727
00:44:28,970 --> 00:44:34,650
Um and that um if I moralize anything that imposes a cost on people, so

728
00:44:34,730 --> 00:44:40,410
let's say I have to like fast for a few days, you know, uh every every uh year or every

729
00:44:40,410 --> 00:44:41,290
month or whatever.

730
00:44:41,450 --> 00:44:44,890
Uh and and and uh we all have the belief that if you if you do the fasting then you're a

731
00:44:44,890 --> 00:44:48,280
really good person and you're going to be prioritized as you know a marriage partner, as a

732
00:44:48,280 --> 00:44:49,560
long-term cooperation partner.

733
00:44:49,720 --> 00:44:52,520
And that's really costly, obviously, with withholding food.

734
00:44:54,040 --> 00:44:59,880
And uh as as a you know, we've created an institution where the only

735
00:44:59,880 --> 00:45:04,120
people who are willing to pay those costs who are willing to fast are by definition the

736
00:45:04,120 --> 00:45:07,960
people who prioritize their uh long-term reputation uh in this community.

737
00:45:08,120 --> 00:45:11,560
And the people who are unwilling to pay those costs are people who do not prioritize their

738
00:45:11,560 --> 00:45:13,850
long-term reputation in this community.

739
00:45:14,090 --> 00:45:19,450
So there's something about norms that inf that inflict short-term costs on people uh that

740
00:45:19,530 --> 00:45:23,210
that automatically become self-sustaining, right?

741
00:45:23,850 --> 00:45:28,890
And so it might be that any norm that it that inflicts a cost on people becomes a reliable

742
00:45:28,890 --> 00:45:33,930
signal of moral character because it's a costly signal and because it uh it communicates

743
00:45:33,930 --> 00:45:36,650
the person how much the person values their reputation in that community.

744
00:45:37,040 --> 00:45:39,200
Yeah, that's a Sosus uh thing.

745
00:45:39,360 --> 00:45:40,640
I think Sosis had this.

746
00:45:40,720 --> 00:45:44,640
And uh he's saying it's like Fight Club, where like you can't even get into Fight Club

747
00:45:44,640 --> 00:45:48,480
unless you stand out on the rain on the porch for uh for a day.

748
00:45:48,720 --> 00:45:49,600
David, that's great.

749
00:45:49,680 --> 00:45:50,000
I love that.

750
00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:51,760
Yeah, that's a great yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

751
00:45:51,840 --> 00:45:54,160
It's really uh yeah, yeah.

752
00:45:54,400 --> 00:45:56,880
It's really the costly signaling uh alternative.

753
00:45:57,360 --> 00:46:03,010
It's just that costly signaling is more uh uh the reason I I I uh uh I

754
00:46:03,170 --> 00:46:08,850
uh came to the self control ID is that the costly signaling ID doesn't seem it it's

755
00:46:09,010 --> 00:46:12,370
it's more like it could be any cost that you incur.

756
00:46:12,530 --> 00:46:18,450
It doesn't explain the specific uh uh focus and even obsession, it

757
00:46:18,450 --> 00:46:20,930
seems, of puritanical cultures with pleasure.

758
00:46:21,460 --> 00:46:25,540
I mean it's really like uh then sex and and and you know the what is pleasure?

759
00:46:25,700 --> 00:46:26,740
Pleasure is just a benefit, right?

760
00:46:26,980 --> 00:46:29,140
I know withholding that benefit is a cost by definition.

761
00:46:29,380 --> 00:46:29,620
That's true.

762
00:46:29,940 --> 00:46:31,380
That's true, that's true, that's true, that's true.

763
00:46:31,620 --> 00:46:32,340
But like, yeah, yeah.

764
00:46:32,420 --> 00:46:33,300
No, that's true, that's true.

765
00:46:33,460 --> 00:46:34,180
Yeah, it's good, David.

766
00:46:34,340 --> 00:46:38,660
I also want to like maybe there's a subtle prediction too, which is um, and maybe this can

767
00:46:38,820 --> 00:46:44,370
maybe I'm Leo, maybe you've thought about this, which is so uh broadly speaking, this sort

768
00:46:44,370 --> 00:46:50,370
of like, well, I want people who are sort of have self control and to not like sort of take

769
00:46:50,370 --> 00:46:51,650
short term benefits.

770
00:46:51,890 --> 00:46:57,650
But if you think about um from an evolved perspective, I actually shouldn't want that for

771
00:46:57,650 --> 00:46:58,210
myself.

772
00:46:58,450 --> 00:47:01,330
And to a discounted degree, I might not want that.

773
00:47:01,650 --> 00:47:03,410
And I can qualify that in a second.

774
00:47:03,570 --> 00:47:07,970
I might not want that for like my close partner or my kids or something, or people I'm like

775
00:47:07,970 --> 00:47:09,570
biased, quote unquote, towards, right?

776
00:47:09,650 --> 00:47:13,860
There's sort of like these like scales of sort of like how much I care about their

777
00:47:13,860 --> 00:47:19,220
intrinsic welfare versus then I just want them to be good

778
00:47:19,220 --> 00:47:21,620
citizens because I'm going to interact with them.

779
00:47:21,780 --> 00:47:27,620
And so I wonder if something like, you know, do I care if my best friend or

780
00:47:27,620 --> 00:47:32,980
my partner or my child is gluttonous or taking short-term benefits,

781
00:47:33,780 --> 00:47:35,940
the um versus not.

782
00:47:36,530 --> 00:47:42,050
Um I wonder if like looking at those sort of closer people, or myself

783
00:47:42,290 --> 00:47:48,130
even, um, I wonder if looking at that case sort of teases apart some of these things.

784
00:47:48,370 --> 00:47:53,970
Now, of course, there's this issue of if my like let's say for my example, my child,

785
00:47:54,450 --> 00:47:59,330
I don't want them to be seen as a bad cooperation partner by the world, right?

786
00:47:59,410 --> 00:48:01,970
So there are social signaling costs.

787
00:48:02,290 --> 00:48:05,520
Um so it's it's a complicated prediction.

788
00:48:05,840 --> 00:48:07,040
But I feel like I don't know.

789
00:48:07,120 --> 00:48:11,360
Have you thought about that as like looking at these cases where we're not talking about

790
00:48:11,360 --> 00:48:17,040
strangers, but we're talking about these like, you know, the the sort of gluttony and

791
00:48:17,040 --> 00:48:23,040
self the the non-disciplinary, the non-discipline, like non-puritanical, non-stoic

792
00:48:23,040 --> 00:48:24,160
indulgences?

793
00:48:24,480 --> 00:48:28,800
How do people feel about those for themselves and other pe and people like that they're

794
00:48:28,800 --> 00:48:30,320
really close to, quote unquote?

795
00:48:30,480 --> 00:48:30,640
Yeah.

796
00:48:30,960 --> 00:48:33,360
And does that tell us something about the design?

797
00:48:33,770 --> 00:48:34,810
Yeah, that's a good question.

798
00:48:34,970 --> 00:48:36,650
Honestly, I never thought about that.

799
00:48:37,850 --> 00:48:39,210
No, it's a good question.

800
00:48:39,290 --> 00:48:39,930
Yeah.

801
00:48:42,090 --> 00:48:43,050
I need to digest.

802
00:48:43,530 --> 00:48:45,690
Yeah, no, it's I mean, because you can see it either way, right?

803
00:48:45,770 --> 00:48:49,930
Like you can kind of see it as like, I want, like of all the people in the world, I want

804
00:48:49,930 --> 00:48:55,930
myself and like my reproductive partner or like my kids to just like take the goods,

805
00:48:56,010 --> 00:48:57,610
like not disconnect the future.

806
00:48:58,010 --> 00:49:02,250
But on the other hand, there is also the issue of even though I want that, more than I

807
00:49:02,250 --> 00:49:07,740
want, I want them to do it more than other people, but I still also want them to look to

808
00:49:07,740 --> 00:49:12,380
other people like they're like they're they are following the norm.

809
00:49:12,540 --> 00:49:12,780
Right.

810
00:49:12,860 --> 00:49:18,860
And so maybe maybe that sort of hypocrisy, quote unquote, maybe maybe there's sort of

811
00:49:18,860 --> 00:49:19,820
design features for that.

812
00:49:19,980 --> 00:49:25,890
Because you really um you know uh for you know if we're all starving

813
00:49:25,890 --> 00:49:31,810
on the on the on the top of the mountain after the airplane crash you know like if my kid

814
00:49:31,810 --> 00:49:37,570
eats the food uh I'm fine with that but if another kid eats the food and it's not my kid

815
00:49:37,650 --> 00:49:40,050
and my kid's more hungry I'm really upset about that.

816
00:49:40,370 --> 00:49:45,570
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah completely it's just that um I'm trying to disentangle while

817
00:49:45,570 --> 00:49:49,650
thinking about it the again what I want and what I think is wrong.

818
00:49:52,560 --> 00:49:52,960
Yeah.

819
00:49:53,200 --> 00:49:57,840
I mean we also talked yeah, we also talked to Daniel about like self-conscious emotions,

820
00:49:57,920 --> 00:50:00,240
which is sort of the function of them, right?

821
00:50:00,480 --> 00:50:06,160
Is to sort of is to represent if I do this, how will others

822
00:50:06,160 --> 00:50:06,880
view this?

823
00:50:07,200 --> 00:50:11,840
And I think that this is a really the self-conscious emotion adaptations, I think, are

824
00:50:11,840 --> 00:50:17,040
really important for this, which is it's not only like what will if I eat this plate of

825
00:50:17,040 --> 00:50:22,350
French fries, Um, you know, what what are all the what's the list of costs, what's the list

826
00:50:22,350 --> 00:50:24,350
of benefits and the machinery is just going?

827
00:50:24,590 --> 00:50:30,510
And yeah, if if you if you and David are gonna, you know, think really badly of me, then

828
00:50:30,590 --> 00:50:32,830
um that's gonna go in the cost list.

829
00:50:32,910 --> 00:50:33,070
Yeah.

830
00:50:33,310 --> 00:50:33,790
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

831
00:50:33,870 --> 00:50:38,590
And even actually, so I I would distinguish a further so there there is like what I like,

832
00:50:38,820 --> 00:50:44,260
what personally I would like, how I would look uh in the minds of others if I did that,

833
00:50:44,340 --> 00:50:45,620
which is the shame function.

834
00:50:45,700 --> 00:50:47,860
I mean the shame uh what feeds into shame.

835
00:50:48,020 --> 00:50:51,540
And to me, what I'm most interested in is really moral judgment, which is another thing,

836
00:50:51,620 --> 00:50:56,980
which is what I think is wrong, even if I do it, uh which feeds guilt.

837
00:50:57,380 --> 00:51:03,220
Uh and and it can be the case that I do something uh which I think is not

838
00:51:03,220 --> 00:51:07,730
wrong, uh but other people think uh that I did something wrong and so I look bad.

839
00:51:07,890 --> 00:51:08,610
This is what I mean.

840
00:51:08,690 --> 00:51:12,770
But it's it's uh uh interest it's important, functionally important and approximately

841
00:51:12,850 --> 00:51:17,410
important when we think about the logic of moral judgment in the human mind to really uh uh

842
00:51:17,650 --> 00:51:21,970
talk only about this particular type of mental representation that's not my representation

843
00:51:21,970 --> 00:51:25,890
of my reputational value or whatever, but really what I think is wrong or not, which

844
00:51:25,890 --> 00:51:30,300
ultimately of course serves the uh the reputational function of being a trust for uh

845
00:51:30,300 --> 00:51:33,340
cooperative partner but seems to be approximately dissociated.

846
00:51:33,580 --> 00:51:38,220
Actually I think Daniel has worked has worked uh where where they precisely show that you

847
00:51:38,220 --> 00:51:43,820
can um not do something wrong but when you get cues that uh people want to

848
00:51:43,820 --> 00:51:48,300
socially exclude you that you have a low social value or reputational value then shame is

849
00:51:48,300 --> 00:51:52,220
triggered while you still have hold the belief that you did nothing wrong.

850
00:51:52,300 --> 00:51:58,170
So it it seems that the two systems the system that uh uh uh computes

851
00:51:58,170 --> 00:52:03,290
what we owe to each other, what what I deserve to receive and and what I should or uh do or

852
00:52:03,290 --> 00:52:07,770
not and what is right and wrong, is is cognitively distinct from another system that is

853
00:52:07,770 --> 00:52:11,290
computing the the the the the benefits that I get from it.

854
00:52:11,450 --> 00:52:12,410
Does that make sense?

855
00:52:12,730 --> 00:52:13,130
Yeah yeah.

856
00:52:13,290 --> 00:52:13,450
Yeah.

857
00:52:14,090 --> 00:52:19,820
Uh yeah yeah it ties back to again to this this game theoretic distinction between the you

858
00:52:19,820 --> 00:52:25,100
know coordination for mutual benefit and cooperating in a prisoner's dilemma or public good

859
00:52:25,100 --> 00:52:25,420
game.

860
00:52:25,580 --> 00:52:30,460
So if I do something that shows that I'm a bad partner in coordination games, so if I use

861
00:52:30,460 --> 00:52:34,940
words improperly and say stupid things and communicate poorly, I might feel shame about

862
00:52:34,940 --> 00:52:38,460
that because people are going to judge me as a bad conversation partner, right?

863
00:52:38,540 --> 00:52:41,810
But I'm not gonna feel guilt because it's not it's not a moral failing, right?

864
00:52:41,970 --> 00:52:46,050
It's gonna damage my reputation, but I haven't defected in a prisoner's dilemma or or or

865
00:52:46,050 --> 00:52:46,770
anything like that.

866
00:52:46,930 --> 00:52:51,970
So it's really guilt and other moral emotions come online when uh when we're in situations

867
00:52:51,970 --> 00:52:54,930
that are analogous to the prisoner's dilemma or the public goods game.

868
00:52:55,090 --> 00:52:59,170
And not just uh reputational damage in general or reputational damage as a coordination

869
00:52:59,170 --> 00:52:59,410
partner.

870
00:52:59,490 --> 00:53:02,770
It's in particular reputational damage as a cooperation partner.

871
00:53:03,570 --> 00:53:06,290
Yeah, and and yeah, yeah, yeah, completely.

872
00:53:06,500 --> 00:53:07,860
And and yeah, completely.

873
00:53:08,180 --> 00:53:13,300
And the function of guilt, just to review, is different or the output of guilt is is

874
00:53:13,300 --> 00:53:16,500
approach and reparative according to the Exactly.

875
00:53:16,980 --> 00:53:17,300
Yeah.

876
00:53:17,540 --> 00:53:17,940
Exactly.

877
00:53:18,020 --> 00:53:23,380
The the I mean all it seems that all the design features of guilt are there, uh perfectly

878
00:53:23,380 --> 00:53:28,500
well designed to repair your moral validation, that is to compensate the gap between what

879
00:53:28,500 --> 00:53:34,330
uh you owed to other and what you have actually given them uh guilt, detects that gap

880
00:53:34,410 --> 00:53:40,330
and and and give you the motivation to really uh restore justice by giving people what they

881
00:53:40,330 --> 00:53:44,010
deserved in the first place and that you didn't give them in the first place.

882
00:53:44,250 --> 00:53:46,330
I mean many people disagree with that.

883
00:53:47,050 --> 00:53:48,170
That's why I'm gonna do that.

884
00:53:48,330 --> 00:53:52,810
So th this is a nice segue into something that I know you've thought a lot about recently,

885
00:53:53,050 --> 00:53:54,570
which is punishment.

886
00:53:54,810 --> 00:54:00,400
Um And uh why why we punish, uh, why we inflict costs on

887
00:54:00,400 --> 00:54:01,520
wrongdoers.

888
00:54:01,680 --> 00:54:04,880
Um and what's interesting, you have a very different perspective on this.

889
00:54:04,960 --> 00:54:08,640
So it might, from a naive perspective, it might think that you know the reason we punish is

890
00:54:08,640 --> 00:54:09,600
to deter.

891
00:54:09,920 --> 00:54:14,320
Um I punish you so you don't do that thing again, so you don't mistreat me or you don't

892
00:54:14,320 --> 00:54:16,000
mistreat my friends again.

893
00:54:16,240 --> 00:54:18,240
And that seems very intuitive.

894
00:54:18,400 --> 00:54:21,040
Um uh that that's that's the function of of punishment.

895
00:54:21,200 --> 00:54:26,750
But you but you have um a slightly different perspective on on what punishment is for and

896
00:54:26,750 --> 00:54:32,350
and how it evolved and it relates to this um uh contractualist theory of morality that I

897
00:54:32,350 --> 00:54:34,670
know is is popular among you uh Parisians.

898
00:54:34,830 --> 00:54:37,550
Um so if you could but but only among Parisians.

899
00:54:37,950 --> 00:54:38,990
Only among Parisians.

900
00:54:39,550 --> 00:54:41,070
No I'm I'm I'm partial to it as well.

901
00:54:41,150 --> 00:54:42,990
I think it's it's uh it's insightful.

902
00:54:43,150 --> 00:54:47,950
Um so so what how are you thinking about uh punishment uh and and how does it differ from

903
00:54:47,950 --> 00:54:49,550
the more intuitive view of punishment?

904
00:54:49,950 --> 00:54:54,240
Yeah yeah no that I I mean yeah, that that's really something I'm struggling uh with uh

905
00:54:54,240 --> 00:54:54,560
now.

906
00:54:54,800 --> 00:55:00,720
So um so yeah, so the the the the question I'm trying to so on the

907
00:55:00,720 --> 00:55:06,000
theory side, the question I'm trying to answer uh right now is uh and that uh we've already

908
00:55:06,000 --> 00:55:11,760
talked about uh sometimes with David is uh not why so it's not exactly again why we punish.

909
00:55:11,840 --> 00:55:16,880
So why is it that people enact the behavior of if inflicting costs on cost inflictors or

910
00:55:16,880 --> 00:55:18,000
cheaters or whatever?

911
00:55:18,170 --> 00:55:22,810
because I do believe that there is a very good evolutionary function of deterrence that is

912
00:55:22,810 --> 00:55:23,370
uh here.

913
00:55:23,690 --> 00:55:29,290
So uh, or at least dyadic deterrence, like more in the in the really Santa Barbara light

914
00:55:29,290 --> 00:55:32,490
stuff, less of the norm enforcement uh boyed uh view.

915
00:55:32,650 --> 00:55:37,690
Uh so I do think that the function of revenge is to deter future uh cost infliction toward

916
00:55:37,770 --> 00:55:38,730
uh towards yourself.

917
00:55:38,810 --> 00:55:40,090
I mean, I'm totally sold.

918
00:55:40,410 --> 00:55:46,100
Uh Um what again seems puzzling to me is the future of the

919
00:55:46,100 --> 00:55:51,380
moral judgment of punishment, which is something uh of the moral judgment that is often

920
00:55:51,380 --> 00:55:57,220
baked into uh uh people's intuition about when you deserve you morally deserve to suffer or

921
00:55:57,220 --> 00:55:57,380
not.

922
00:55:57,460 --> 00:56:00,580
It can be the case that I punish you, but that you don't deserve it.

923
00:56:00,820 --> 00:56:01,060
Right?

924
00:56:01,220 --> 00:56:06,770
If I punish you for doing something that is uh not immoral, uh, I will deter that behavior.

925
00:56:06,850 --> 00:56:12,050
You will be less likely to do that behavior to me, even though you had the right to do it.

926
00:56:12,210 --> 00:56:17,010
Uh but yet people have very fine-grained intuition about the fact that you didn't deserve

927
00:56:17,010 --> 00:56:17,170
it.

928
00:56:17,330 --> 00:56:22,530
And it's not about only about whether uh enacting a deserved or undeserved punishment, it's

929
00:56:22,530 --> 00:56:28,050
even a very quantitative, fine-grained uh uh intuition because uh if uh you um

930
00:56:28,290 --> 00:56:34,080
you steal uh an apple from me and I kill you, I'm sure that nobody will steal an

931
00:56:34,080 --> 00:56:36,480
apple from me again, but it's morally wrong to do so.

932
00:56:36,560 --> 00:56:42,240
I don't have the right to punish you disproportionately compared to the compared to the

933
00:56:42,560 --> 00:56:47,520
to the your what is often called in the punishment literature in moral philosophy but also

934
00:56:47,520 --> 00:56:49,120
in moral psychology, your just dessert.

935
00:56:49,280 --> 00:56:54,080
So uh what I'm trying to explain is what is the cognitive grammar and corresponding

936
00:56:54,080 --> 00:56:57,920
adaptive function of this puzzling mortal representation of just desserts.

937
00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:02,590
That is the quantity of cost, the precise quantity of cost that moral violators morally

938
00:57:02,590 --> 00:57:08,510
deserve to receive uh in order to restore justice or to restore balance or or or this kind

939
00:57:08,510 --> 00:57:14,190
of so the this this speaks to uh an old debate in moral philosophy uh in the philosophy of

940
00:57:14,190 --> 00:57:17,630
law and the philosophy of punishment between like what is often called like the

941
00:57:17,630 --> 00:57:21,470
consequentialist account of of punishment in moral philosophy according to which the

942
00:57:21,470 --> 00:57:22,830
function of punishment is to deter.

943
00:57:23,070 --> 00:57:28,900
So the justification of punishing people is only uh forward looking in the sense of uh

944
00:57:29,060 --> 00:57:34,820
rooted in the future benefits that this will generate by uh uh uh disincentivizing

945
00:57:34,820 --> 00:57:40,420
future uh violations versus uh retributivist accounts of uh punishment

946
00:57:40,580 --> 00:57:44,020
rooted in like the SDs of count and and much later.

947
00:57:44,180 --> 00:57:49,910
Uh the idea that uh we pun the justification to punishment is just

948
00:57:49,910 --> 00:57:52,150
to give offenders what they deserve.

949
00:57:52,310 --> 00:57:56,150
By the very fact that they have committed a moral violation, that they have uh taken

950
00:57:56,150 --> 00:58:02,150
benefits from other people, uh uh they morally deserve in order to pay their debt, that

951
00:58:02,150 --> 00:58:06,710
is, to inflict a cost that is proportionate to the cost they have inflicted, and to

952
00:58:06,780 --> 00:58:11,980
evolutionary psychologists, the and what what we find in the social psychology literature

953
00:58:11,980 --> 00:58:13,740
is that people are more intuitive retributivists.

954
00:58:13,820 --> 00:58:18,700
That is, uh, when they think of uh uh the the what punishment should be prescribed, they

955
00:58:18,700 --> 00:58:24,540
think in terms of just deserve that is balance, uh proportionality, uh uh they think it's

956
00:58:24,540 --> 00:58:29,340
immoral to go too far in punishment compared to the violation, etc.

957
00:58:29,660 --> 00:58:34,220
And they don't think to think to they don't think seem to think that much into in in a

958
00:58:34,220 --> 00:58:35,420
deterrenced way.

959
00:58:35,690 --> 00:58:41,210
So this is a puzzle for an evolutionary psychologist because the form doesn't seem to

960
00:58:41,210 --> 00:58:42,010
follow the function.

961
00:58:42,250 --> 00:58:46,650
The function of punishment in all of the evolutionary social sciences deterrence.

962
00:58:46,730 --> 00:58:52,730
And yet the cognitive design doesn't seem to be sensitive to deterrence relevant cues, or

963
00:58:52,730 --> 00:58:54,170
it is, but not completely.

964
00:58:54,410 --> 00:59:00,010
And the the the and in and many uh features don't seem, yeah, don't seem to follow

965
00:59:00,170 --> 00:59:05,900
many features like uh uh proportionality, the fact that uh that it's it's about justice,

966
00:59:05,980 --> 00:59:10,300
like in the same very same way that uh we think about distributive justice, punishment is

967
00:59:10,300 --> 00:59:11,500
about retributive justice.

968
00:59:11,660 --> 00:59:15,660
So the idea that uh the by inflicting a proportionate cost on you when you have inflicting

969
00:59:15,660 --> 00:59:21,340
a cost and restoring uh justice in the same way that uh if you uh have done more work in

970
00:59:21,340 --> 00:59:25,340
our collective action by giving you more benefits and restoring justice because you deserve

971
00:59:25,340 --> 00:59:25,580
more.

972
00:59:25,740 --> 00:59:29,660
So, all these features, these precise cognitive features of the moral psychology of

973
00:59:29,750 --> 00:59:33,510
punishment don't seem to straightforwardly follow from the uh standard evolutionary

974
00:59:33,590 --> 00:59:33,990
rationals.

975
00:59:34,070 --> 00:59:35,830
And so that's the puzzle I'm trying to solve.

976
00:59:35,990 --> 00:59:40,870
And the the so the the the the the reason why I'm trying to bring this new theory of the

977
00:59:40,870 --> 00:59:45,350
moral psychology of punishment is not simply that I want to propose a new theory, but I I

978
00:59:45,350 --> 00:59:49,270
generally think there is a puzzle in the moral psychology of punishment that has not been

979
00:59:49,430 --> 00:59:52,070
addressed by the evolutionary literacy.

980
00:59:52,300 --> 00:59:52,540
Yeah.

981
00:59:52,620 --> 00:59:54,380
That's so you want to yeah.

982
00:59:54,460 --> 00:59:55,020
Sorry, go ahead.

983
00:59:55,180 --> 00:59:55,580
Oh no, yeah.

984
00:59:55,660 --> 00:59:55,900
So go.

985
00:59:56,140 --> 00:59:56,220
Yeah.

986
00:59:56,300 --> 01:00:00,860
So what is the how does so there is I love this that it's a lovely example, just to be meta

987
01:00:01,020 --> 01:00:06,940
for a second, of this is an example of taking the design features you would expect given a

988
01:00:06,940 --> 01:00:09,420
function and looking at this phenomenon in the world.

989
01:00:09,500 --> 01:00:13,500
And you're seeing it's a lovely example of the testability of how making design

990
01:00:13,500 --> 01:00:14,220
predictions.

991
01:00:14,390 --> 01:00:20,230
and we have this thing, uh moral um uh this moral um system or the

992
01:00:20,230 --> 01:00:24,710
moral phenomena is better way to put it um and you're saying look it's not it doesn't have

993
01:00:24,710 --> 01:00:30,550
the design features for um the forward looking uh deterrence and it really seems

994
01:00:30,550 --> 01:00:35,990
uh ret r retributive so what's going on so yeah so what's the solution for why it's more

995
01:00:35,990 --> 01:00:40,630
retributive than deterrence I don't think uh I mean I'm not sure it's true it's a it's I'm

996
01:00:40,630 --> 01:00:40,870
trying.

997
01:00:41,110 --> 01:00:45,860
Yeah Yeah, exactly.

998
01:00:45,940 --> 01:00:47,700
So the the basic idea is the following.

999
01:00:47,780 --> 01:00:52,500
So again, uh we need to go back to the so the basic idea we try to spoil it, spoil it and

1000
01:00:52,500 --> 01:00:55,220
then elaborate on it, and it's counterintuitive at the first time.

1001
01:00:55,300 --> 01:01:00,180
It's like it's uh for our moral psychology, punishment in the sense of an infliction of

1002
01:01:00,180 --> 01:01:06,100
costs after uh uh cheating behavior is uh a form of compensation to the victim.

1003
01:01:06,260 --> 01:01:09,140
So when uh and I will I will explain that.

1004
01:01:09,430 --> 01:01:14,550
So i let me go back to uh uh what is an injustice in general for the mind.

1005
01:01:14,710 --> 01:01:18,790
So cheating in general is perceived approximately as uh an injustice.

1006
01:01:19,030 --> 01:01:24,390
Cheating is a behaviour that gives uh if I'm copyright with David and I give David five

1007
01:01:24,390 --> 01:01:30,310
euros while his he deserves ten, uh uh I create an injustice in the world that is

1008
01:01:30,390 --> 01:01:31,270
of five euros.

1009
01:01:31,350 --> 01:01:36,800
Like there is a gap between what David owes, uh what I owe to David, what David deserves,

1010
01:01:36,880 --> 01:01:38,880
and uh what I have actually given him.

1011
01:01:39,040 --> 01:01:42,560
And by this very fact, this creates literally a moral debt.

1012
01:01:42,720 --> 01:01:48,080
That is that now for our moral psychology, the five missing euros are literally the debts

1013
01:01:48,080 --> 01:01:53,930
that uh I owe David if I am to restore justice, that is to wash away the

1014
01:01:53,930 --> 01:01:54,650
moral wrong.

1015
01:01:54,810 --> 01:02:00,730
That is to restore a relationship to a distribution of costs and benefits that ought

1016
01:02:00,810 --> 01:02:05,690
to be in the first place, because it was mutually beneficial, and that wasn't.

1017
01:02:07,050 --> 01:02:12,970
In any moral violation or cheating behavior, there is a moral debt from the offender to the

1018
01:02:12,970 --> 01:02:13,610
victim.

1019
01:02:14,020 --> 01:02:19,780
Now, a straightforward way in which humans uh deal with that in order to restore justice is

1020
01:02:19,780 --> 01:02:20,820
material compensation.

1021
01:02:20,980 --> 01:02:26,660
If I give back the 10 euros and maybe a bit more, uh, we feel that uh justice is restored.

1022
01:02:26,740 --> 01:02:32,340
That is that uh David has got back what he originally deserved in the first place.

1023
01:02:32,420 --> 01:02:36,980
And accordingly, justice institutions across human societies, and we've we've done work

1024
01:02:36,980 --> 01:02:41,810
with um Manjia Singh and many other people uh trying to look at the justice systems of

1025
01:02:41,810 --> 01:02:46,290
small scale, even small scale politically decentralized societies, compensatory justice is

1026
01:02:46,290 --> 01:02:49,570
absolutely central to the justice systems of human societies.

1027
01:02:49,730 --> 01:02:53,090
A straightforward way to deal with wrongdoing is not punishment, actually, it's

1028
01:02:53,090 --> 01:02:53,970
compensation.

1029
01:02:54,770 --> 01:02:59,810
But another way to deal with punishment is uh to deal with a moral violation is punishment.

1030
01:03:00,050 --> 01:03:05,250
Hence what I'm trying to argue is that this notion of just desert is just uh uh

1031
01:03:05,490 --> 01:03:11,440
compensation of this uh moral debt, but in another

1032
01:03:11,440 --> 01:03:17,360
currency, which is the any benefit that I can I can get, that they that David can get

1033
01:03:17,440 --> 01:03:18,960
uh from harming me.

1034
01:03:19,200 --> 01:03:25,120
Uh in in social life, there are many uh uh social inter uh contexts in which the

1035
01:03:25,120 --> 01:03:28,400
very fact of harming others is uh is ultimately a benefit to you.

1036
01:03:28,560 --> 01:03:34,090
For example, if we are uh competitors with David and David inflicts a cost on me, by this

1037
01:03:34,090 --> 01:03:38,810
very fact, ultimately speaking, David, David is extracting a benefit from me.

1038
01:03:38,970 --> 01:03:44,730
So for David to be compensated of the benefits I owed him in the first

1039
01:03:44,730 --> 01:03:49,850
place, one solution is for me to give David a pig, but another solution is for David to

1040
01:03:49,850 --> 01:03:54,970
compensate himself by harming me, that is by extracting benefits, uh ultimate benefit, by

1041
01:03:54,970 --> 01:03:56,890
the very simple fact of harming me.

1042
01:03:57,210 --> 01:04:03,060
But and one of these benefits that David can take from me by harming me is

1043
01:04:03,060 --> 01:04:06,740
not only like, for example, cost infliction in a competitive interaction, it can be also

1044
01:04:06,740 --> 01:04:07,540
deterrent.

1045
01:04:08,100 --> 01:04:13,940
So by by by by by um by signaling to other people that he's not the kind of person uh

1046
01:04:13,940 --> 01:04:16,100
who can be easily exploited.

1047
01:04:16,340 --> 01:04:22,100
There is a deterrent element to it, but the the quantity of costs that David is

1048
01:04:22,100 --> 01:04:27,540
morally allowed to inflict on me uh after uh my my uh

1049
01:04:27,540 --> 01:04:33,370
cheating uh to him is constrained by this backward looking logic of the

1050
01:04:33,850 --> 01:04:39,290
quantity of benefits I owed him in the first place, and that he is now allowed to

1051
01:04:39,290 --> 01:04:41,610
extract back to cost infliction.

1052
01:04:41,770 --> 01:04:42,650
Does that make sense?

1053
01:04:42,810 --> 01:04:48,650
To praise it another way that is much less simple, is that uh this notion of just

1054
01:04:48,970 --> 01:04:53,450
there, the quantity of cost that the offender deserves to receive in order for justice to

1055
01:04:53,450 --> 01:04:58,490
be restored is just uh uh um uh

1056
01:05:00,320 --> 01:05:04,000
a benefit extraction through cost infliction that is computed distributively.

1057
01:05:04,160 --> 01:05:08,640
Basically the distributive computation that that are the core of our moral psychology,

1058
01:05:08,720 --> 01:05:12,320
which is about calculating what we owe to each other, what is the quantity of benefit that

1059
01:05:12,320 --> 01:05:16,240
you deserve and I deserve, and how much uh so what we owe to each other.

1060
01:05:16,400 --> 01:05:21,030
The cost that we infoke on each other after moralation, after moral violation, are also

1061
01:05:21,030 --> 01:05:22,310
computed distributively.

1062
01:05:22,470 --> 01:05:26,630
And so the amount of cost that you are allowed to inflict on me after a moral violation is

1063
01:05:26,630 --> 01:05:29,670
proportionate to the cost uh I have inflicted on you.

1064
01:05:30,390 --> 01:05:36,390
For the this very same logic that the the the quantity of pigs you allow to take back

1065
01:05:36,390 --> 01:05:41,590
uh from me by through material compensation after a moral violation is proportional to the

1066
01:05:41,590 --> 01:05:43,030
number of pigs I've taken you.

1067
01:05:43,110 --> 01:05:47,080
Otherwise, you're if you're taking too much, you're simply violating mutual benefit or

1068
01:05:47,080 --> 01:05:48,440
justice in the other direction.

1069
01:05:48,520 --> 01:05:54,440
You're creating a new offense the other way around by taking too much, and that is taking

1070
01:05:54,440 --> 01:05:55,720
more than you deserved.

1071
01:05:55,880 --> 01:05:56,760
Does that make sense?

1072
01:05:56,920 --> 01:05:58,840
It's always a mess to explain.

1073
01:05:59,240 --> 01:06:04,680
I mean, I think a concrete example would be like let's say that we all are pig farmers, and

1074
01:06:04,920 --> 01:06:10,690
um and you take um one of my pigs, but you end up taking a hundred

1075
01:06:10,690 --> 01:06:12,290
from all of us, right?

1076
01:06:12,850 --> 01:06:18,610
Now if I took the if I took um that many from you,

1077
01:06:19,410 --> 01:06:25,330
um, then uh, you know, I was I had a cost of one, but I'm taking a hundred

1078
01:06:25,330 --> 01:06:25,810
from you.

1079
01:06:26,050 --> 01:06:31,200
And if everybody did that, you know, you would be it would be really, you know something uh

1080
01:06:31,360 --> 01:06:37,280
like you would you would be in negative things right um now but if i was sort of acting on

1081
01:06:37,280 --> 01:06:43,120
the if i was like sort of the uh given the the role of sort of punishment seeker

1082
01:06:43,280 --> 01:06:47,920
i'm i might take more than one but it's not because of me idiosyncratically but i'm sort of

1083
01:06:47,920 --> 01:06:52,400
representing that for everyone but but everybody sort of agreed to that so i think the

1084
01:06:52,400 --> 01:06:57,040
intuition that sort of what i'm allowed to do as an individual because of the cost incurred

1085
01:06:57,040 --> 01:07:02,530
in me versus um versus that the costs were inflicted on the whole community.

1086
01:07:02,690 --> 01:07:08,370
And I'm not allowed to sort of free ride on the retribution of

1087
01:07:10,130 --> 01:07:11,330
the whole community.

1088
01:07:11,570 --> 01:07:15,330
The fact that that's true even is sort of an acknowledgement of this design feature.

1089
01:07:15,490 --> 01:07:21,180
That sort of if David's another pig farmer, if I don't, if if he's not benefiting and

1090
01:07:21,180 --> 01:07:25,340
getting a pig back either, you know what I'm what I'm doing as a punisher is actually

1091
01:07:25,340 --> 01:07:28,780
screwing him over too, and he's not gonna Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1092
01:07:28,860 --> 01:07:29,980
Uh so completely.

1093
01:07:30,380 --> 01:07:36,220
And uh so one way I try to to to put it for

1094
01:07:36,220 --> 01:07:41,980
people to have the intuition too is just it even if you say only to the d the dyadic case,

1095
01:07:42,110 --> 01:07:46,270
uh, where there is no and it's it's basically the logic of an eye for an eye.

1096
01:07:46,350 --> 01:07:52,350
So uh uh student uh researchers on honor cultures, for example, or or revenge cultures,

1097
01:07:52,430 --> 01:07:57,710
they they say exactly that that uh um uh taking your eye after you took mine

1098
01:07:58,670 --> 01:08:04,590
is is a form of compensation that is not with money or cattle, but that is with the benefit

1099
01:08:04,590 --> 01:08:08,120
I get from uh uh being CR, basically.

1100
01:08:08,360 --> 01:08:13,000
So having the reputation of someone who is not easily exploited, which is a deterrence

1101
01:08:13,000 --> 01:08:13,400
rationale.

1102
01:08:13,480 --> 01:08:19,320
I do think the deterrence rationale is true that that people have benefited from harming

1103
01:08:19,320 --> 01:08:24,040
others after moral violations, because and the benefit they get is that they get a

1104
01:08:24,040 --> 01:08:26,440
reputational capital of someone who is not easily exploitable.

1105
01:08:26,520 --> 01:08:28,200
Basically, they deter your aggression.

1106
01:08:28,360 --> 01:08:33,190
But the amount of the deterrence benefit that you are allowed to take from me is

1107
01:08:33,190 --> 01:08:36,070
constrained by how much you are allowed to take in the first place.

1108
01:08:36,150 --> 01:08:40,630
And how much you are allowed to take from me in the first place is constrained by the debt

1109
01:08:40,630 --> 01:08:42,230
that uh you you have to.

1110
01:08:42,470 --> 01:08:47,990
I mean if I stole you one pig and I and I take 100 pig, clearly it's immoral in the same

1111
01:08:47,990 --> 01:08:53,750
way that if uh uh you I uh um uh you I take one pig from you

1112
01:08:53,750 --> 01:08:56,440
and you kill me, it's too much.

1113
01:09:02,200 --> 01:09:07,960
I think what you're arguing is that you're we're sort of reframing the logic of

1114
01:09:07,960 --> 01:09:12,280
punishment and deterrence from one that is focused on the perpetrator to one that is

1115
01:09:12,280 --> 01:09:13,720
focused on the victim.

1116
01:09:14,040 --> 01:09:14,200
Yes.

1117
01:09:14,280 --> 01:09:20,210
Um so the purpose of punishment um you know is not focused on hurting

1118
01:09:20,210 --> 01:09:25,570
or or deterring the perpetrator so much as making things right for the victim.

1119
01:09:25,730 --> 01:09:30,770
The victim has incurred a huge cost and what can we do to make that right, to to to make

1120
01:09:30,770 --> 01:09:36,610
them uh uh well off again or or or where they were before the the transgression turned out.

1121
01:09:36,850 --> 01:09:37,090
Exactly.

1122
01:09:38,370 --> 01:09:44,220
So one way to do that is to um provide benefits to the victim to make them whole again.

1123
01:09:44,380 --> 01:09:49,740
Uh another way to do that is to uh hurt or deter the perpetrator so that they're less

1124
01:09:49,740 --> 01:09:52,940
likely to harm uh the victim again in the future.

1125
01:09:53,260 --> 01:09:57,180
So to sort of satisfy the the victim's uh anger.

1126
01:09:57,660 --> 01:10:03,470
Um and uh those are two equally uh viable routes to uh uh satisfying

1127
01:10:03,470 --> 01:10:05,710
the victim and making them whole again.

1128
01:10:05,870 --> 01:10:10,510
Um and you could kill two birds with one stone by having the perpetrator uh themselves

1129
01:10:10,510 --> 01:10:11,470
benefit the victim.

1130
01:10:12,110 --> 01:10:15,550
So it not only deters the perpetrator, it also provides benefits to the victim.

1131
01:10:15,630 --> 01:10:20,030
And that's the ideal way that conflicts are restored uh in in in the wake of

1132
01:10:20,030 --> 01:10:20,510
transgressions.

1133
01:10:20,590 --> 01:10:23,470
And this is how conflicts are usually restored in small-scale societies.

1134
01:10:23,550 --> 01:10:26,110
This is what your work with uh Manvir Singh.

1135
01:10:26,270 --> 01:10:31,200
Um So it it entails a lot of really interesting

1136
01:10:31,360 --> 01:10:37,280
predictions, which is that the desire to or the morality

1137
01:10:37,280 --> 01:10:42,720
of punishing the victim should very much depend on how the victim feels toward the

1138
01:10:42,720 --> 01:10:43,680
perpetrator.

1139
01:10:43,920 --> 01:10:49,600
If the the victim is really angry uh and vengeful toward the perpetrator, then then

1140
01:10:49,600 --> 01:10:52,080
punishing the perpetrator is going to seem more just.

1141
01:10:52,240 --> 01:10:57,470
But if the victim is actually not very vengeful and not uh and and has forgiven the

1142
01:10:57,470 --> 01:11:02,270
perpetrator, let's say, then all of a sudden punishing the perpetrator becomes less just

1143
01:11:02,510 --> 01:11:04,910
because it's not actually benefiting the victim in any way.

1144
01:11:05,470 --> 01:11:05,870
Yeah, yeah.

1145
01:11:06,110 --> 01:11:09,870
And and the same thing goes where um, you know, uh if the if the victim themselves is

1146
01:11:09,870 --> 01:11:14,350
allowed to inflict the punishment such that they personally benefit from deterring the

1147
01:11:14,350 --> 01:11:18,830
perpetrator from harming them in the future, that's going to be seen as more just or it's

1148
01:11:18,830 --> 01:11:23,760
going to be more satisfying for the victim than if if the perpetrator just faces uh a cost

1149
01:11:23,920 --> 01:11:24,800
anonymously.

1150
01:11:24,880 --> 01:11:29,920
Um so let's say, you know, if if you take my eye, um I get to personally take your eye

1151
01:11:29,920 --> 01:11:30,880
back, right?

1152
01:11:31,280 --> 01:11:36,960
Um, that's much better for me than if you just randomly get, you know, uh uh struck by

1153
01:11:36,960 --> 01:11:38,400
lightning in your eye, right?

1154
01:11:38,560 --> 01:11:42,240
That's gonna be less satisfying to me than if I personally get to take your eye, right?

1155
01:11:42,560 --> 01:11:47,600
And so uh what should be just is that the the perpetrator should know that the cost was

1156
01:11:47,600 --> 01:11:49,470
coming from the victim themselves.

1157
01:11:49,630 --> 01:11:52,590
And so that they are deterred in particular from harming the victim again.

1158
01:11:52,670 --> 01:11:52,750
Yeah.

1159
01:11:52,910 --> 01:11:54,350
As opposed to the general community.

1160
01:11:54,590 --> 01:11:57,150
So it's benefiting the victim in particular.

1161
01:11:57,470 --> 01:11:58,190
That's really interesting.

1162
01:11:58,590 --> 01:11:58,750
Yeah.

1163
01:11:58,830 --> 01:12:03,550
And that and that's a real trope in sort of modern legal things, you know, where somebody's

1164
01:12:03,630 --> 01:12:07,630
like, I wanna like, you know, hurt this person and the legal system is like, no, no, no.

1165
01:12:07,950 --> 01:12:09,710
No, we we're gonna do it.

1166
01:12:09,790 --> 01:12:13,390
And it's the conflict of interest, and that's exactly for exactly the reason David just

1167
01:12:13,390 --> 01:12:13,630
said.

1168
01:12:14,100 --> 01:12:20,100
And there there actually are cases where the victim's family uh gets to decide

1169
01:12:20,100 --> 01:12:24,180
whether the the perpetrator uh gets a life in prison sentence or a death sentence.

1170
01:12:24,420 --> 01:12:28,020
In fact, I believe this happened in the case of Matthew Shepard, who was murdered.

1171
01:12:28,100 --> 01:12:33,380
Um uh Matthew Shepard's parents knew that uh he was um anti-death penalty, and so they

1172
01:12:33,380 --> 01:12:37,450
actually made the decision that the the perpetrator should get a a life in prison sentence

1173
01:12:37,530 --> 01:12:38,970
as opposed to a death sentence.

1174
01:12:39,210 --> 01:12:44,330
And so these decisions can sometimes be left to the victim or the victim's family as

1175
01:12:44,330 --> 01:12:45,210
opposed to the state.

1176
01:12:45,610 --> 01:12:45,690
Yeah.

1177
01:12:45,770 --> 01:12:50,810
And the argument, David, is that that that sort of feels good and it's empowering because

1178
01:12:51,370 --> 01:12:57,050
it's creating common knowledge that the victim, or in this case, the extended

1179
01:12:57,050 --> 01:13:02,330
interests of the victim, because the victim is now dead, um, are sort of uh calling the

1180
01:13:02,330 --> 01:13:04,090
shots, quote unquote.

1181
01:13:04,650 --> 01:13:05,050
Yes.

1182
01:13:05,290 --> 01:13:05,530
Yes.

1183
01:13:05,680 --> 01:13:06,160
Yeah, exactly.

1184
01:13:09,760 --> 01:13:15,760
Important thing about this is that uh the victim still uh doesn't

1185
01:13:15,760 --> 01:13:17,360
have the right to go too far.

1186
01:13:17,600 --> 01:13:23,440
Moral cognition is computing what is objectively uh the the amount

1187
01:13:23,440 --> 01:13:28,830
of benefits that the victim is allowed to take back in order for justice to be restored.

1188
01:13:29,150 --> 01:13:34,110
But if she wants to take back more than this, for example, I don't know, prescribe a death

1189
01:13:34,110 --> 01:13:39,550
penalty for someone who just stole their car, we judge that it's an excessive claim.

1190
01:13:39,630 --> 01:13:44,590
And it's in this fine-grained feature of judgment of judgment that I'm that I'm uh that I'm

1191
01:13:44,590 --> 01:13:49,630
trying to explain, it's an excessive claim because it's disproportionate to the debt uh

1192
01:13:49,780 --> 01:13:52,580
That is to the quantity of benefit that they were allowed to receive.

1193
01:13:52,740 --> 01:13:53,620
You see what I mean?

1194
01:13:54,180 --> 01:13:57,460
And this and this actually might be the exception that proves the rule, because I like

1195
01:13:57,460 --> 01:13:58,180
that, Leo.

1196
01:13:58,260 --> 01:14:02,420
And I think there's exceptions to that, but it's for the same reason you're arguing, which

1197
01:14:02,420 --> 01:14:08,420
is, for example, when it is excessive, or what counts as excessive depends on

1198
01:14:08,580 --> 01:14:09,380
such community.

1199
01:14:09,540 --> 01:14:13,060
So, for example, quote unquote, if there's an out group, that's sort of outside of our

1200
01:14:13,060 --> 01:14:16,740
quote unquote moral boundary, which is actually the tautological thing.

1201
01:14:16,820 --> 01:14:21,930
Because, like, so if there's a group of people whose interests we're not interested in, and

1202
01:14:21,930 --> 01:14:25,850
we're especially not worried about them reciprocating conflict.

1203
01:14:26,010 --> 01:14:31,050
Then it might be the rule that if you steal a melon from me and it's not one of our group

1204
01:14:31,050 --> 01:14:34,250
members who stole the melon, but an outgroup member, we're allowed to like kill them.

1205
01:14:34,490 --> 01:14:34,970
No limit.

1206
01:14:35,450 --> 01:14:37,450
And everyone is like, that's the moral.

1207
01:14:37,690 --> 01:14:43,690
And so that that shows you that what gets counts counts as moral moralized, or

1208
01:14:43,690 --> 01:14:49,100
what counts as the fair or overgo going too far, is a

1209
01:14:49,100 --> 01:14:55,100
consequence of social agreement about sort of who we are, right?

1210
01:14:55,180 --> 01:14:58,620
And so, like, yeah, I don't want to get killed because I steal your melon, right?

1211
01:14:58,700 --> 01:15:02,700
Like, or like, you know, I have to deal with the person who stole the melon again today and

1212
01:15:02,700 --> 01:15:03,740
the next day, the next day.

1213
01:15:03,900 --> 01:15:05,740
But in the out group, no, I don't, right?

1214
01:15:05,820 --> 01:15:07,020
So I don't care about them.

1215
01:15:07,260 --> 01:15:12,940
So like it's like we so I think this also makes the the explains sort of this quote unquote

1216
01:15:13,100 --> 01:15:18,450
moral circle or sort of what's what seems like an excessive just

1217
01:15:18,450 --> 01:15:24,210
dessert really is in the eye of the beholder and specifically it's with within these

1218
01:15:24,450 --> 01:15:30,370
like clines of sort of is this a group that we are all roughly speaking going to

1219
01:15:30,370 --> 01:15:36,210
have future interactions with and we care about um because it's in our interest to versus

1220
01:15:36,210 --> 01:15:41,400
not and then in that case you would expect just dessert to look very different for out

1221
01:15:41,400 --> 01:15:44,760
groups or people we don't care uh we don't see or interact with.

1222
01:15:45,240 --> 01:15:45,720
Completely.

1223
01:15:45,800 --> 01:15:46,040
Yeah.

1224
01:15:46,120 --> 01:15:46,520
Yeah yeah.

1225
01:15:46,680 --> 01:15:52,440
So for for for there to be a limitation to the quantity of punishment that is allowed to be

1226
01:15:52,440 --> 01:15:55,400
uh enacted, there needs to be a moral contract in the first place.

1227
01:15:55,480 --> 01:16:00,520
If there's no moral contract, then the spontaneous play of a of the of the victim self

1228
01:16:00,600 --> 01:16:05,480
interest has no boundaries and you can if if uh as a group we are attacked by a group with

1229
01:16:05,480 --> 01:16:09,640
whom we have absolutely no moral contract, then all is fair in love and war, let's say.

1230
01:16:09,870 --> 01:16:10,030
yeah.

1231
01:16:10,270 --> 01:16:10,510
Yeah.

1232
01:16:10,750 --> 01:16:16,590
It does it also suggests a a prediction that um if it's about restoring the victim

1233
01:16:16,750 --> 01:16:20,670
rather than punishing the perpetrator, and there are two ways to restore the victim, one is

1234
01:16:20,670 --> 01:16:25,070
to benefit the victim and one is to uh harm the perpetrator and and thus deter them from

1235
01:16:25,070 --> 01:16:25,790
harming the victim.

1236
01:16:26,350 --> 01:16:31,780
Um if we uh as a society prevent the victim from getting any benefits, as in the case with

1237
01:16:31,780 --> 01:16:32,660
a criminal trial.

1238
01:16:32,900 --> 01:16:37,380
So in a criminal trial as opposed to a you know a civil or tort trial, um, the victim

1239
01:16:37,380 --> 01:16:38,340
doesn't benefit at all.

1240
01:16:38,500 --> 01:16:41,060
It's just a matter of how much the the perpetrator is getting punished.

1241
01:16:41,300 --> 01:16:45,460
Whereas if it's a tort trial, then the victim is actually getting compensated uh for the

1242
01:16:45,460 --> 01:16:45,700
harm.

1243
01:16:46,340 --> 01:16:52,310
Um and so if the only way that the victim can be benefited um from the the ordeal

1244
01:16:52,310 --> 01:16:56,950
is harm and being inflicted on the perpetrator, then you might expect more harm to be

1245
01:16:56,950 --> 01:17:00,550
delivered to the perpetrator because they aren't able to get benefits in any other

1246
01:17:00,550 --> 01:17:00,950
currency.

1247
01:17:01,030 --> 01:17:05,430
The only currency they can get is how badly the uh the perpetrator suffers.

1248
01:17:05,590 --> 01:17:10,070
So if so in in the case of a criminal trial, you might expect uh a greater retributive

1249
01:17:10,070 --> 01:17:12,710
response because that's the only way that the victim can benefit at all.

1250
01:17:12,940 --> 01:17:13,180
Right.

1251
01:17:13,500 --> 01:17:18,220
Whereas in a tort trial, if the victim is compensated, you might not expect a lot of, you

1252
01:17:18,220 --> 01:17:21,420
know, a lot of harm that needs to become to the perpetrator because the victim is made

1253
01:17:21,420 --> 01:17:21,660
whole.

1254
01:17:21,740 --> 01:17:25,420
You know, if a if if if a company, you know, you know, makes a product that makes a person

1255
01:17:25,420 --> 01:17:28,620
sick or injures that person, if they compensate the person, the company's fine.

1256
01:17:28,700 --> 01:17:32,300
Like you don't need to inflict additional costs on the company to really make them suffer.

1257
01:17:32,460 --> 01:17:36,270
As long as the victim is fairly compensated, we have the intuition that, you know, justice

1258
01:17:36,270 --> 01:17:37,390
has been served and that's fine.

1259
01:17:37,550 --> 01:17:41,790
But if the victim is unable to be compensated because it's a criminal trial, then the only

1260
01:17:41,790 --> 01:17:46,270
way to actually restore the victim, uh, is to make the perpetrator suffer, then you're

1261
01:17:46,270 --> 01:17:51,630
gonna uh get more sadism uh and more cruelty in criminal trials uh toward the

1262
01:17:51,630 --> 01:17:52,430
perpetrator.

1263
01:17:52,590 --> 01:17:57,390
Um and so it may be that when you when you cut off one route to restoring the victim, it

1264
01:17:57,390 --> 01:18:01,640
forces you to to invest more heavily in the That's great.

1265
01:18:01,800 --> 01:18:02,360
That's awesome.

1266
01:18:02,600 --> 01:18:08,200
Actually, this is a so we are trying to develop a project with Manvia Singh where we try to

1267
01:18:08,200 --> 01:18:08,680
test that.

1268
01:18:24,680 --> 01:18:30,630
Is it the case that if I punish you, then you're then if

1269
01:18:31,190 --> 01:18:37,190
the offender is punished, then the victim is not entitled anymore to compensation.

1270
01:18:38,310 --> 01:18:44,230
If punishment is really a form of compensation, then the fact of punishing should dissolve

1271
01:18:44,230 --> 01:18:48,390
the moral right of the victim to compensation, because they they have already been

1272
01:18:48,390 --> 01:18:52,700
compensation in the currency of the harm, of the benefit they get from the harm to the to

1273
01:18:52,700 --> 01:18:53,340
the offender.

1274
01:18:53,500 --> 01:18:58,300
And I never thought about the the the fact that you mentioned, which is that sometimes uh

1275
01:18:59,100 --> 01:19:02,940
so that the criminal injustice system actually cuts the the very possibility of

1276
01:19:02,940 --> 01:19:05,340
compensation and maybe that's why it's it's so punitive.

1277
01:19:05,580 --> 01:19:09,820
I I only thought about the fact that maybe it's why people are are are unsatisfied with it

1278
01:19:09,900 --> 01:19:11,900
because like it forgets about the victim.

1279
01:19:12,060 --> 01:19:15,670
Often people say, you know, it's only um the victim is not restored.

1280
01:19:15,830 --> 01:19:20,070
That that's what the whole uh restorative justice movement is about, saying like the people

1281
01:19:20,310 --> 01:19:26,070
we forget about the victim in criminal trials and we just impose costs uh on on on

1282
01:19:26,070 --> 01:19:26,710
offenders.

1283
01:19:26,790 --> 01:19:27,190
But yeah.

1284
01:19:27,590 --> 01:19:27,830
Right.

1285
01:19:27,910 --> 01:19:32,390
And if you if you go back to like the history of of you know conflict resolution and and

1286
01:19:32,470 --> 01:19:33,110
and legal systems.

1287
01:19:33,190 --> 01:19:36,950
So I'm I'm reading a really interesting book now, I'll I'll send it to you later called

1288
01:19:37,110 --> 01:19:41,430
Common Law, Liberalism and the Evolution of Common Law, which is basically tort law, you

1289
01:19:41,430 --> 01:19:43,020
know, compensating the victim.

1290
01:19:43,180 --> 01:19:47,020
Uh and it's transitioned into criminal law, which is you know uh you know cry uh it's a

1291
01:19:47,020 --> 01:19:49,900
basically a crime against the person versus a crime against the state.

1292
01:19:50,140 --> 01:19:55,500
Um and in you know uh in medieval Europe, the main way that people resolved conflicts was

1293
01:19:55,500 --> 01:19:56,380
through tort law.

1294
01:19:56,460 --> 01:20:02,290
Uh and then gradually um the king realized that uh the king could get money from uh the

1295
01:20:02,290 --> 01:20:06,850
perpetrator by framing it as a conflict against the state versus a conflict against the

1296
01:20:06,850 --> 01:20:07,170
victim.

1297
01:20:07,330 --> 01:20:10,770
And gradually it was replaced with criminal law where the the victim was no longer

1298
01:20:10,770 --> 01:20:15,730
compensated and all of the money went to the king, basically, in terms in the form of

1299
01:20:15,730 --> 01:20:16,130
fines.

1300
01:20:16,370 --> 01:20:21,490
And it basically became a way for the state or for the king to basically profit from uh

1301
01:20:21,650 --> 01:20:23,890
conflicts happening in in the community.

1302
01:20:24,050 --> 01:20:28,960
Um and uh it it evolved into what is now the the the criminal law institution, but it's

1303
01:20:28,960 --> 01:20:31,600
actually a kind of unnatural way of resolving conflicts.

1304
01:20:31,680 --> 01:20:35,360
The the more natural way is what you see in small scale societies and what you see in tort

1305
01:20:35,360 --> 01:20:38,720
law, which is where the victim is is compensated and it's very much centered on on

1306
01:20:38,720 --> 01:20:40,160
repairing and restoring the victim.

1307
01:20:40,480 --> 01:20:40,720
Yeah.

1308
01:20:40,800 --> 01:20:45,840
I was gonna say why don't we work compensate victims along with pun like it it actually

1309
01:20:45,840 --> 01:20:46,560
doesn't make any sense.

1310
01:20:47,120 --> 01:20:47,680
It doesn't, yeah.

1311
01:20:47,970 --> 01:20:50,370
It's because it evolved from this kind of parasitical.

1312
01:20:50,930 --> 01:20:51,570
Criminal law.

1313
01:20:51,810 --> 01:20:52,050
Yeah.

1314
01:20:54,450 --> 01:20:58,290
It's uh because like I mean, yeah, concretely, it's sort of like if you're speeding on the

1315
01:20:58,290 --> 01:21:01,490
highway and you get fined, you should actually.

1316
01:21:01,650 --> 01:21:05,650
I mean, I guess the argument well, if you're speeding on the highway, David, let's just

1317
01:21:05,650 --> 01:21:08,290
say, you know, and Leo and I are next to you.

1318
01:21:08,530 --> 01:21:11,570
Your money, if and if you get fined, the money should go to us.

1319
01:21:11,730 --> 01:21:14,450
Maybe the person who caught you, because you know, they have to do something too.

1320
01:21:14,610 --> 01:21:19,280
But like this idea that sort of it just goes to the king right is sort of silly yeah yeah

1321
01:21:19,440 --> 01:21:23,760
totally it's a it's a really interesting the other thing that I think is interesting um

1322
01:21:24,080 --> 01:21:29,040
because you know as Leo as you said like the the the retribution versus forward or

1323
01:21:29,040 --> 01:21:33,360
deterrence looking is sort of also a approximate ultimate confusion right because

1324
01:21:33,520 --> 01:21:36,480
ultimately like it's it's kind of a little bit of wolf.

1325
01:21:37,170 --> 01:21:43,170
and I like this bringing back to groups thing where sort of who is the victim also

1326
01:21:43,330 --> 01:21:46,210
matter or is is different depending on the situation.

1327
01:21:46,370 --> 01:21:52,290
So for example, if if David, if David steals the pig from me and we're all

1328
01:21:52,290 --> 01:21:58,210
in the same group, you're not the victim per se, Leo, especially to the degree that like I

1329
01:21:58,210 --> 01:21:59,890
did something to David, right?

1330
01:22:00,480 --> 01:22:06,320
But if uh if David steals the pig because you and I, Leo, are a group member, wear the

1331
01:22:06,400 --> 01:22:11,120
purple shirts, and David hates the purple shirts, then now all of a sudden you're

1332
01:22:11,120 --> 01:22:13,680
calculating, well, he could have done that to me.

1333
01:22:13,920 --> 01:22:14,160
Yeah.

1334
01:22:14,400 --> 01:22:18,320
So in some sense, you are probabilistically the victim too.

1335
01:22:18,560 --> 01:22:24,480
And so the idea that sort of the the amount of just deserts that we feel,

1336
01:22:24,720 --> 01:22:29,250
um, and whether or not like why somebody like did a crime.

1337
01:22:29,410 --> 01:22:35,250
So we had um um Keela Williams on, and this idea of sort of like, you know, did somebody

1338
01:22:35,250 --> 01:22:35,890
do something?

1339
01:22:35,970 --> 01:22:37,650
Like, let's say somebody kills somebody.

1340
01:22:37,890 --> 01:22:40,610
Is it because they were just the fourth person to walk by?

1341
01:22:40,930 --> 01:22:43,330
We really want to punish that person.

1342
01:22:43,570 --> 01:22:47,410
And the idea is that that's because probabilistically we're all victims.

1343
01:22:47,570 --> 01:22:52,940
It's just that we're victims, we were possible victims who got lucky that we weren't the

1344
01:22:52,940 --> 01:22:53,740
fourth person.

1345
01:22:54,460 --> 01:22:58,060
But if the reason why that person killed somebody was because you know they had a

1346
01:22:58,060 --> 01:23:01,500
long-standing relationship, and you know, we all know we don't have that kind of

1347
01:23:01,500 --> 01:23:02,060
relationship.

1348
01:23:02,300 --> 01:23:03,100
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1349
01:23:03,340 --> 01:23:07,820
It it really narrows down that like that that's diagnosed diagnostic, that that person

1350
01:23:07,820 --> 01:23:09,100
would hurt us per se.

1351
01:23:09,340 --> 01:23:14,970
And so I really like this idea of um that what counts even as a just

1352
01:23:14,970 --> 01:23:18,650
dessert is a function of sort of who the victim is.

1353
01:23:19,210 --> 01:23:23,050
And in some sense, we become the victim like a terrorist attack.

1354
01:23:23,130 --> 01:23:26,730
You know, like we were all attacked, this like trope or like a group based attack.

1355
01:23:27,050 --> 01:23:32,490
Um, and that would suggest then that the just dessert for responding is much higher

1356
01:23:33,050 --> 01:23:33,530
as well.

1357
01:23:33,690 --> 01:23:38,650
And it's because we're sort of all victims, because we're all sort of calculating um, you

1358
01:23:38,650 --> 01:23:42,340
know, that this the from a social signaling perspective, exactly.

1359
01:23:42,500 --> 01:23:48,180
It's sort of like if David successfully steals the pig from me, but we're both purple

1360
01:23:48,260 --> 01:23:53,300
shirted Leo, it's show it signals to the world that you are also exploitable.

1361
01:23:53,460 --> 01:23:58,420
If you and I don't punish David, um, it actually puts you in a worse situation because

1362
01:23:58,500 --> 01:24:00,500
everyone knows you're a purple shirt too.

1363
01:24:00,740 --> 01:24:06,550
And this is showing that like look, purple shirts are willing and able to be exploited or

1364
01:24:06,550 --> 01:24:07,350
have their pig.

1365
01:24:08,390 --> 01:24:13,510
Um so you should really care about like making sure that the world knows that when you

1366
01:24:13,510 --> 01:24:16,150
steal a purple shirt's pig was super weird example.

1367
01:24:16,310 --> 01:24:21,190
When you steal a purple p you know a pig's uh a purple shirt a pig uh um pig from a purple

1368
01:24:21,190 --> 01:24:23,990
shirt, it's gonna be punished, right?

1369
01:24:24,230 --> 01:24:25,110
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1370
01:24:25,270 --> 01:24:30,870
Actually even more harm has been done in the world exactly when you when you do a

1371
01:24:31,110 --> 01:24:36,340
a violation that is that is harming the the reputation of of several uh the deterrent

1372
01:24:36,500 --> 01:24:40,900
reputation of several individuals and not only the proportionate response is higher.

1373
01:24:40,980 --> 01:24:41,060
Yeah.

1374
01:24:41,300 --> 01:24:41,460
Exactly.

1375
01:24:41,540 --> 01:24:42,660
So yeah, predicts very much.

1376
01:24:43,300 --> 01:24:46,740
It explains why hate crimes are punished more severely than individual crimes.

1377
01:24:47,220 --> 01:24:48,580
It's a crime against an entire group.

1378
01:24:48,820 --> 01:24:51,540
It threatens the entire group versus a specific individual.

1379
01:24:51,940 --> 01:24:52,820
Yeah, that's that's really good.

1380
01:24:52,900 --> 01:24:56,260
Yeah, and that's why there's a search for what's the motive.

1381
01:24:56,650 --> 01:25:01,050
Uh, which is sort of always always sort of like it's a very instinct blindness thing where

1382
01:25:01,050 --> 01:25:02,490
it seems obvious why that is.

1383
01:25:02,730 --> 01:25:07,930
But I think this this is actually the causal teeth for it, is that it's actually asking

1384
01:25:08,090 --> 01:25:13,930
what kind of cost who who are the reputational um uh yeah, from a social

1385
01:25:14,090 --> 01:25:16,650
signal perspective, who what's the class of victims?

1386
01:25:17,050 --> 01:25:17,930
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1387
01:25:18,090 --> 01:25:19,210
Yeah, that's really good, David.

1388
01:25:19,290 --> 01:25:19,930
Yeah, I like that.

1389
01:25:20,650 --> 01:25:21,600
Yeah, that's really interesting.

1390
01:25:21,680 --> 01:25:24,880
Actually, I think it's it relates to what you were saying, David, about the I mean the

1391
01:25:24,880 --> 01:25:27,520
question you were asking about uh criminal justice.

1392
01:25:27,600 --> 01:25:32,800
So the way I was thinking of criminal justice is is that for certain behaviour, uh why why

1393
01:25:32,800 --> 01:25:34,960
do we have civil and criminal justice?

1394
01:25:35,200 --> 01:25:35,920
Like it's real.

1395
01:25:36,400 --> 01:25:36,560
Yeah.

1396
01:25:37,600 --> 01:25:37,840
Yeah.

1397
01:25:37,920 --> 01:25:40,480
And and and because the king, the king had to get paid.

1398
01:25:40,640 --> 01:25:40,800
Yeah.

1399
01:25:41,520 --> 01:25:45,390
Yeah, yeah, but even even in modern societies, we still have that.

1400
01:25:45,550 --> 01:25:50,430
And they often say, so I I I I'm not I'm not a legal scientist, I don't know, I don't know

1401
01:25:50,430 --> 01:25:53,790
anything about law, but I think I got that, I'm not sure.

1402
01:25:53,950 --> 01:25:55,470
Uh please correct me.

1403
01:25:55,630 --> 01:26:00,270
Uh is that they seem to make the distinction between uh, as you said, a tort and a crime,

1404
01:26:00,350 --> 01:26:06,350
and a tort being uh uh uh in our language of evolutionary social scientists, I was framing

1405
01:26:06,350 --> 01:26:11,260
it as cheating behavior in a dyadic reciprocal interaction where they think.

1406
01:26:11,500 --> 01:26:15,740
And I was framing uh understanding the crime as a cheating behavior in a collective action.

1407
01:26:15,820 --> 01:26:17,500
Yes that does many victims.

1408
01:26:17,660 --> 01:26:21,660
And so you know they say a crime is a tort uh tort against society.

1409
01:26:21,980 --> 01:26:25,660
Uh uh so there are behavior that violates the interest not only of one particular

1410
01:26:25,660 --> 01:26:29,020
individual, but all of the individual in the nation or the social contract.

1411
01:26:29,100 --> 01:26:32,460
And so it's the society, so that is all of the all of us that respond.

1412
01:26:32,770 --> 01:26:37,970
And anyway, so this relates to I I was just making that connection in my mind with what you

1413
01:26:37,970 --> 01:26:43,970
just said, Dave, about the that the fact that certain violations have uh more than

1414
01:26:43,970 --> 01:26:49,010
one victim and how this implies stuff about the justice response.

1415
01:26:49,330 --> 01:26:49,570
Right.

1416
01:26:49,650 --> 01:26:49,810
Yeah.

1417
01:26:50,290 --> 01:26:50,530
Yeah.

1418
01:26:50,610 --> 01:26:52,610
And that circles back to the morality thing, right?

1419
01:26:52,690 --> 01:26:57,170
Like I mean the argument that sort of morality is this sort of thing of like, hey, we've

1420
01:26:57,170 --> 01:26:58,290
all been harmed.

1421
01:26:58,450 --> 01:27:02,640
You know, it's it's essentially an implicit claim of like it this wasn't just, you know,

1422
01:27:02,800 --> 01:27:05,760
this eating French fries thing isn't just harming me.

1423
01:27:05,840 --> 01:27:06,880
It's harming all of us.

1424
01:27:07,040 --> 01:27:11,040
Hey, everybody look at this thing and say this is bad and let's do something about it.

1425
01:27:13,360 --> 01:27:13,600
Yeah.

1426
01:27:13,680 --> 01:27:14,240
Yeah.

1427
01:27:15,360 --> 01:27:16,400
Very cool stuff.

1428
01:27:16,480 --> 01:27:20,230
Um so we're we're approaching the end of of our time.

1429
01:27:20,390 --> 01:27:24,070
We didn't even get a chance to talk about uh religion and mutual policing, which is a

1430
01:27:24,070 --> 01:27:24,310
shame.

1431
01:27:24,390 --> 01:27:24,470
Yeah.

1432
01:27:24,870 --> 01:27:25,830
Because I wanted to talk about that.

1433
01:27:25,910 --> 01:27:27,430
It's a super fun topic.

1434
01:27:27,510 --> 01:27:31,670
Uh, but another thing I wanted to talk, I wanted to run by um a pet hypothesis of mine

1435
01:27:31,670 --> 01:27:34,390
about uh elite status signaling and see what you think of it.

1436
01:27:34,630 --> 01:27:34,870
All right.

1437
01:27:35,030 --> 01:27:35,110
Okay.

1438
01:27:35,510 --> 01:27:39,350
So um so there's this idea of like quote unquote highbrow art.

1439
01:27:39,960 --> 01:27:43,160
So there's the uh fine dining versus McDonald's.

1440
01:27:43,320 --> 01:27:49,320
There's you know uh uh the the Russian novel um Shakespeare um versus

1441
01:27:49,400 --> 01:27:54,760
you know uh trashy airport novel, or there's you know a you know seven hour black and white

1442
01:27:54,840 --> 01:28:00,120
uh film about a collapse of a you know uh farming collective in post-communist Hungary

1443
01:28:00,280 --> 01:28:05,880
versus um you know reality TV or you know um uh you know

1444
01:28:06,280 --> 01:28:10,250
the latest dumb you Marvel movie or whatever, right?

1445
01:28:10,410 --> 01:28:10,730
Yeah.

1446
01:28:11,130 --> 01:28:15,130
And some of these forms of art are considered higher status or classier.

1447
01:28:15,370 --> 01:28:21,050
And it might be that insofar as self-control correlates with social status, and you know,

1448
01:28:21,210 --> 01:28:24,890
and it's irrelevant why the correlation exists, but let's assume for the sake of argument

1449
01:28:24,970 --> 01:28:29,530
that it does exist, that higher status people tend to have more self-control, or at least

1450
01:28:29,530 --> 01:28:34,410
self-control has for whatever reason become a cue of high status, then you then you might

1451
01:28:34,410 --> 01:28:40,360
expect people to signal their self control via the types of art that they consume.

1452
01:28:40,520 --> 01:28:46,120
So, insofar as something requires uh a suppression of impulses, if I can sit through a

1453
01:28:46,120 --> 01:28:51,560
seven hour black and white film and suppress my urge to get out of there and and and you

1454
01:28:51,560 --> 01:28:56,120
know, suppress the urge to um quell my boredom, then that must mean that I have a lot of

1455
01:28:56,120 --> 01:28:58,440
self control and I'm and I'm really high status.

1456
01:28:58,680 --> 01:29:03,850
Or if I can um look at uh a painting that looks hideous, but like sort of have the set

1457
01:29:04,090 --> 01:29:09,050
suppress my my urge to to walk away or look at something else and try to find the beauty in

1458
01:29:09,050 --> 01:29:11,130
it, then that suggests a kind of self-control.

1459
01:29:11,210 --> 01:29:15,450
That there's something about elite art or highbrow art where it requires you to suppress

1460
01:29:15,450 --> 01:29:18,570
some kind of impulse um in order to appreciate it.

1461
01:29:18,650 --> 01:29:21,370
And that's what makes it classy, that's what makes it high status.

1462
01:29:21,530 --> 01:29:26,680
It's not the uh instant gratification or uh of the reality TV or the or the Big Mac.

1463
01:29:27,160 --> 01:29:29,400
It's not an an indulgence of bodily pleasure.

1464
01:29:29,480 --> 01:29:33,560
It actually takes some kind of refinement, it takes some cost, it takes some investment in

1465
01:29:33,560 --> 01:29:37,960
in terms of like learning, you know, the old English if you're reading a Shakespeare play,

1466
01:29:38,120 --> 01:29:42,280
or learning the historical context if you're watching a black and white movie.

1467
01:29:42,520 --> 01:29:43,800
All these things require costs.

1468
01:29:43,880 --> 01:29:48,610
And it is and insofar as the cost re insofar as the art requires you to incur costs to

1469
01:29:48,610 --> 01:29:52,770
appreciate it, it is seen as more highbrow uh because it's a signal of self-control.

1470
01:29:52,850 --> 01:29:54,130
What what do you think about that theory?

1471
01:29:54,530 --> 01:29:55,890
No, I I love that theory.

1472
01:29:56,050 --> 01:29:57,970
I mean uh I would love it to be true.

1473
01:29:58,050 --> 01:30:03,730
The only the the So yeah, so I thought it was actually true, and I was thinking, I think

1474
01:30:03,730 --> 01:30:08,930
it's the case, but only insofar as self-control also cues

1475
01:30:09,090 --> 01:30:09,890
competence.

1476
01:30:10,600 --> 01:30:16,600
It doesn't seem to me that uh that the the kind of status related

1477
01:30:16,600 --> 01:30:22,440
inference that we make about some people having more sophisticated uh

1478
01:30:22,760 --> 01:30:27,080
cultural consumption than others is about trustworthiness.

1479
01:30:27,240 --> 01:30:32,120
That that doesn't seem to be what is at stake when people despise um

1480
01:30:33,000 --> 01:30:37,030
uh uh T V reality is what I mean.

1481
01:30:37,350 --> 01:30:37,510
Yeah.

1482
01:30:37,750 --> 01:30:41,670
Uh in rather they seem to say that these people are dumb.

1483
01:30:42,310 --> 01:30:46,150
These people say I see.

1484
01:30:46,390 --> 01:30:51,270
What seems to be like and and so there are there are two dimensions I mean allegedly there

1485
01:30:51,270 --> 01:30:55,190
are two dimensions of of person perception, of social perception, trustworthiness and

1486
01:30:55,190 --> 01:30:55,590
competence.

1487
01:30:55,840 --> 01:30:59,200
Competence means your ability to extract benefit from the environment and trustworthiness,

1488
01:30:59,280 --> 01:31:01,520
how much you're willing to give benefits to others.

1489
01:31:01,680 --> 01:31:06,080
My argument on puritanism was really focused on the trustworthiness dimension, uh, that is

1490
01:31:06,160 --> 01:31:07,680
your ability to resist cheating.

1491
01:31:07,840 --> 01:31:13,520
It seems to me that in in this kind of uh social distinction, uh status-related inference

1492
01:31:13,520 --> 01:31:16,880
for based on cultural consumption, people are really making inference about competence,

1493
01:31:16,960 --> 01:31:21,360
that is how smart people are, how sophisticated people are, but which also relates to

1494
01:31:21,360 --> 01:31:21,920
self-control.

1495
01:31:22,080 --> 01:31:27,810
I mean, um, self-control signals uh your ability to to do more productive stuff uh in the

1496
01:31:27,810 --> 01:31:33,730
world independently of your uh uh willingness to uh uh repay debt

1497
01:31:33,730 --> 01:31:37,330
or or or help others in uh in cooperative interactions.

1498
01:31:37,570 --> 01:31:39,810
So I I I I I love what you're saying.

1499
01:31:39,970 --> 01:31:44,050
Ma it's just that what I s what seems to be the most plausible route in this particular

1500
01:31:44,050 --> 01:31:49,650
case is not the cooperation uh self-control relationship, but rather more the other

1501
01:31:49,650 --> 01:31:53,640
relationship that seemed to exist between self-control and uh competence.

1502
01:31:53,960 --> 01:31:54,600
Does that make sense?

1503
01:31:54,680 --> 01:31:55,320
And what do you think?

1504
01:31:55,640 --> 01:31:56,280
Yes, yes.

1505
01:31:56,360 --> 01:31:57,080
No, I buy that.

1506
01:31:57,160 --> 01:31:58,280
No, I think that's probably part of it too.

1507
01:31:58,360 --> 01:32:01,880
I mean, it'd be interesting to study this empirically and like you know, give a vignette

1508
01:32:01,960 --> 01:32:06,760
about someone who watches reality TV or or or whatever, and see what kind of inferences

1509
01:32:06,760 --> 01:32:08,040
people make about that person.

1510
01:32:08,200 --> 01:32:10,840
Uh I would agree that yeah, you'd probably make the inference that they're dumb, but like

1511
01:32:11,000 --> 01:32:13,240
maybe you'd also make the inference that they're low status.

1512
01:32:13,400 --> 01:32:15,720
Um, but what is low stay use?

1513
01:32:15,960 --> 01:32:19,000
I mean, that's your topic, but uh yeah, what is yeah.

1514
01:32:19,080 --> 01:32:19,670
Oh, yeah.

1515
01:32:19,910 --> 01:32:23,510
Yeah, what is what is what is status but you know, perceived confidence comp competence,

1516
01:32:23,590 --> 01:32:23,670
right?

1517
01:32:23,990 --> 01:32:29,590
I mean, so I'm not saying it's necessarily a moral signal, but more of a status

1518
01:32:30,070 --> 01:32:30,550
signal.

1519
01:32:30,630 --> 01:32:32,230
Uh maybe qu quasi moral.

1520
01:32:32,310 --> 01:32:33,910
Like there's a bit of a moral flavor to it.

1521
01:32:34,310 --> 01:32:38,470
Like it's almost seen as more virtuous to like watch the black and white French film than

1522
01:32:38,550 --> 01:32:44,320
you know, watch the dying film like yeah yeah and this is a throwback to Keela Williams.

1523
01:32:44,400 --> 01:32:46,480
This is like we should have Keila and you on together.

1524
01:32:46,640 --> 01:32:51,200
Um because also the the the her idea of sort of or the the that idea coming out of their

1525
01:32:51,200 --> 01:32:56,720
labs is this idea of like ecology stereotypes and sort of discounting the future.

1526
01:32:57,120 --> 01:33:02,960
And this actually feels like a very similar um um expression of the same idea which is just

1527
01:33:02,960 --> 01:33:08,790
sort of that there's the her idea and you know Steve Neuberg's idea and other people's

1528
01:33:08,790 --> 01:33:14,150
ideas that there's sort of machinery for tracking to what degree people are

1529
01:33:14,310 --> 01:33:16,550
calibrated to discount the future.

1530
01:33:16,790 --> 01:33:20,230
Um and it might be a blanket thing, but it might even be very specific, right?

1531
01:33:20,310 --> 01:33:25,830
Like, like, you know, David might discount the future um when we're at home.

1532
01:33:26,160 --> 01:33:30,800
uh and like throw things around and it pisses me off, you know, like like, you know, for

1533
01:33:30,800 --> 01:33:35,120
example, um uh but uh so but I don't, right?

1534
01:33:35,200 --> 01:33:38,480
And that's just sort of like a distinction and a difference, and I might moralize that

1535
01:33:38,560 --> 01:33:41,120
like, oh, you're just you're being a slob, right?

1536
01:33:41,280 --> 01:33:46,400
Um, and then the f to then it goes the the full gamut to like, you know, David's boring

1537
01:33:46,400 --> 01:33:51,920
book example, um, where it's sort of showing that I'm I'm singling I'm the kind of person

1538
01:33:51,920 --> 01:33:57,910
who is uh not discounting the future at all, Um, you know, and we're all PhDs

1539
01:33:58,070 --> 01:34:02,710
like super uber in this category, um, right, uh, of that.

1540
01:34:02,950 --> 01:34:08,710
And so um, yeah, that feels similar to this, um, to this, and that's really my point,

1541
01:34:08,870 --> 01:34:10,870
is just yeah, it's connection.

1542
01:34:11,430 --> 01:34:11,990
Yeah.

1543
01:34:12,390 --> 01:34:17,830
Yeah, it's it's it's a weird you know fusion of status and intelligence and competence and

1544
01:34:17,830 --> 01:34:22,760
self-control and virtue that's sort of fuse together in sort of elite and highbrow culture.

1545
01:34:23,240 --> 01:34:24,600
It would be really interesting to look at empirically.

1546
01:34:24,920 --> 01:34:25,000
Yeah.

1547
01:34:25,080 --> 01:34:29,160
And I mean I think we were even arguing that in that episode that sort of status is sort of

1548
01:34:29,160 --> 01:34:33,240
maybe just the confabulated word for these other dimensions, right?

1549
01:34:33,400 --> 01:34:38,600
Like I don't think we have whatever word like signaling high status or highbrow.

1550
01:34:38,840 --> 01:34:44,840
I don't think like there's very much like a if you told a robot that they'd be like,

1551
01:34:45,000 --> 01:34:45,960
what the hell are you talking about?

1552
01:34:46,120 --> 01:34:49,160
Like we haven't cashed it out computationally or an evolutionary perspective.

1553
01:34:49,640 --> 01:34:54,190
But I think when people talk about like status, in I think competence is like I think you

1554
01:34:54,190 --> 01:34:58,430
can, like Leah, like you said, like competence can be very much like, you know, can you do

1555
01:34:58,430 --> 01:34:59,070
this thing?

1556
01:34:59,310 --> 01:35:02,270
Um but general competence, I don't know, right?

1557
01:35:02,350 --> 01:35:07,710
And like I I don't know, in like general status, um like I I do feel like there's some work

1558
01:35:07,710 --> 01:35:11,230
to do to sort of unpack what does high status mean or high brow.

1559
01:35:11,310 --> 01:35:12,990
And I think you guys are exactly right.

1560
01:35:13,070 --> 01:35:17,420
Um but it's a good example of like that's still a really big place of instinct blindness.

1561
01:35:17,500 --> 01:35:21,980
Like there's tons of work and concern about like social status differences, social class

1562
01:35:21,980 --> 01:35:26,460
differences, and people looking down on lower classes, quote unquote.

1563
01:35:26,700 --> 01:35:30,940
Um, and uh it would be it, yeah, this seems like a really important thing to unpack.

1564
01:35:31,020 --> 01:35:33,580
And I I suspect what you're studying as part of that.

1565
01:35:33,740 --> 01:35:34,380
Yeah.

1566
01:35:34,940 --> 01:35:35,340
Yeah.

1567
01:35:35,660 --> 01:35:36,380
Totally.

1568
01:35:36,570 --> 01:35:38,170
Well Yeah, yeah, uh yeah.

1569
01:35:38,330 --> 01:35:43,530
I I would love to know what status is uh once you figure out uh Yeah.

1570
01:35:43,690 --> 01:35:47,370
I mean uh I mean honestly I think I think what we're talking about is is class more than

1571
01:35:47,370 --> 01:35:47,690
status.

1572
01:35:47,770 --> 01:35:51,530
I think there are actually probably relevant differences between class and status.

1573
01:35:51,850 --> 01:35:55,770
I and and and class may may relate to these uh ecology stereotypes that we talked about on

1574
01:35:55,770 --> 01:36:00,860
the Keila Williams episode where class is you know if if you're if you grow up in a

1575
01:36:00,860 --> 01:36:04,460
privileged versus, you know, unpredictable and threatening environment, it's gonna lead to

1576
01:36:04,460 --> 01:36:08,140
different, you know, uh abilities to delay gratifications, different, you know, time

1577
01:36:08,140 --> 01:36:11,500
horizons and willingness to di you know discount the future.

1578
01:36:11,660 --> 01:36:15,420
Um and that stuff might be what we're thinking about when we think about class.

1579
01:36:15,500 --> 01:36:18,060
But that it might act but status might actually be a different thing.

1580
01:36:18,220 --> 01:36:20,860
Um and so it makes it even more complicated.

1581
01:36:21,020 --> 01:36:24,700
And and power is a different thing, and these these are very related but also but but

1582
01:36:24,700 --> 01:36:28,410
potentially separable and you know, very subtle and complicated.

1583
01:36:28,650 --> 01:36:30,490
Uh just a complete aside, David.

1584
01:36:30,650 --> 01:36:34,890
Uh, I feel like class, I mean, maybe I'm wrong and maybe I'm not reading the right things,

1585
01:36:35,130 --> 01:36:39,770
but like there is sort of like academic propaganda or intelligentsia propaganda.

1586
01:36:39,850 --> 01:36:44,650
I feel like class, maybe it's because of marks or something, but I feel like class doesn't

1587
01:36:44,650 --> 01:36:47,370
come up as often as you would think it would.

1588
01:36:47,850 --> 01:36:48,650
Is that true?

1589
01:36:48,810 --> 01:36:52,890
And is that because it's in nobody's interest to bring it up?

1590
01:36:54,410 --> 01:36:56,360
Yeah, It very well could be.

1591
01:36:56,440 --> 01:36:56,680
Yeah.

1592
01:36:56,760 --> 01:37:02,440
No, I think honestly, I I I think class differences are kind of the water that we swim in

1593
01:37:02,440 --> 01:37:04,520
as, you know, classy elite people.

1594
01:37:04,680 --> 01:37:04,760
Yeah.

1595
01:37:05,000 --> 01:37:08,520
Uh and I think it's a lot of the underlying uh cause of populism.

1596
01:37:08,600 --> 01:37:12,280
And it's part of why we can't understand where it's coming from as elites, because what it

1597
01:37:12,280 --> 01:37:16,310
is is it's resentment and hostility toward our class of people.

1598
01:37:16,630 --> 01:37:16,950
Right.

1599
01:37:17,190 --> 01:37:20,870
Um and and we can't understand that because it's it's the our class is you know, it's the

1600
01:37:20,870 --> 01:37:22,150
water we swim in, right?

1601
01:37:22,310 --> 01:37:26,310
But we can understand people who are outside of that and who see it and who resent it and

1602
01:37:26,310 --> 01:37:27,270
view it as a threat.

1603
01:37:27,430 --> 01:37:31,270
And I think that's a big part of what um you know uh populism is.

1604
01:37:31,590 --> 01:37:31,830
Right.

1605
01:37:31,990 --> 01:37:32,630
Um yeah.

1606
01:37:32,950 --> 01:37:38,860
And so and we're incentivized to um uh to not uh land on high versus

1607
01:37:38,860 --> 01:37:43,500
low class or having resources and not, but to do something that's an orthogonal category.

1608
01:37:43,580 --> 01:37:49,500
So say, look, there's other high resource people that differ than me in another dimension,

1609
01:37:49,660 --> 01:37:55,580
and I'm my evolved psychology should pick out that because it won't land on me.

1610
01:37:55,740 --> 01:38:00,530
So I want to distinguish if I'm high, if I have high resources, I don't want the narrative

1611
01:38:00,530 --> 01:38:02,210
to be high versus low resources.

1612
01:38:02,290 --> 01:38:08,290
I'm incentivized to consume propaganda that's about uh the high resource

1613
01:38:08,290 --> 01:38:09,810
people who are unlike me.

1614
01:38:10,130 --> 01:38:12,450
Yes, now now you're thinking a Pensafian way.

1615
01:38:12,850 --> 01:38:13,810
Pensophian, yes.

1616
01:38:14,370 --> 01:38:15,090
Yeah, okay.

1617
01:38:15,810 --> 01:38:16,770
Cool, cool, cool.

1618
01:38:16,930 --> 01:38:17,090
Yeah.

1619
01:38:17,250 --> 01:38:20,210
Uh Leo, is there anything that we should have asked you?

1620
01:38:20,770 --> 01:38:21,250
Whoa.

1621
01:38:22,020 --> 01:38:23,860
Uh no, I don't think so.

1622
01:38:24,340 --> 01:38:24,900
I don't think so.

1623
01:38:25,220 --> 01:38:27,380
Well, actually, let me listen, let me ask you something.

1624
01:38:27,540 --> 01:38:32,100
Where so I think you might be one of the first postdocs that we've interviewed.

1625
01:38:32,420 --> 01:38:36,580
Is it true that you're a postdoc and that you're looking for a job?

1626
01:38:36,980 --> 01:38:37,380
Yes.

1627
01:38:37,620 --> 01:38:37,940
Okay.

1628
01:38:38,180 --> 01:38:39,220
Yes, I am.

1629
01:38:39,540 --> 01:38:40,020
Okay, good.

1630
01:38:40,180 --> 01:38:45,780
So if you're listening to this and you uh and you like what you hear, um uh

1631
01:38:46,020 --> 01:38:48,580
Leo is uh looking for a job.

1632
01:38:49,030 --> 01:38:49,510
Exactly.

1633
01:38:49,830 --> 01:38:50,870
I'm looking for a job.

1634
01:38:50,950 --> 01:38:51,750
And thank you so much.

1635
01:38:51,910 --> 01:38:53,510
I mean, I'm honored to be the first one.

1636
01:38:53,750 --> 01:38:56,550
Yeah, well, and yeah, yeah.

1637
01:38:56,630 --> 01:39:00,390
And one related question is what are you working on now, or what do you plan to work on in

1638
01:39:00,390 --> 01:39:02,070
the next like little bit?

1639
01:39:02,310 --> 01:39:05,270
Um, just just briefly, uh Yeah, yeah.

1640
01:39:05,430 --> 01:39:10,630
So I'm increasingly thinking about the so I'm trying to finish this punishment stuff, but

1641
01:39:10,710 --> 01:39:15,030
like but the more the next idea I'm more interested about is like the moral psychology of

1642
01:39:15,030 --> 01:39:15,750
authority.

1643
01:39:15,990 --> 01:39:21,240
So when is it that so applying these same contractualist ideas to when is it that we that

1644
01:39:21,240 --> 01:39:27,240
people uh think that you have a duty to obey uh that leaders

1645
01:39:27,240 --> 01:39:32,760
have a right to command again these uh these uh moral judgment follow a very fine grained

1646
01:39:32,760 --> 01:39:37,240
logic like uh if you're my superior that's there are some things you can ask from me but

1647
01:39:37,240 --> 01:39:42,530
other things would be excessive or immoral to ask from me so we are I'm basically trying to

1648
01:39:42,530 --> 01:39:47,170
apply this uh this idea of like the co contractualist uh benefits in the in the authority

1649
01:39:47,330 --> 01:39:51,890
relationship itself while most previous ideas in moral psychology have been about

1650
01:39:51,890 --> 01:39:55,490
dominance, uh games, this kind of thing.

1651
01:39:55,570 --> 01:39:57,330
I think it's all about reciprocity.

1652
01:39:58,370 --> 01:40:03,330
That's a really fascinating and understudied question, the psychology of authority and when

1653
01:40:03,330 --> 01:40:05,890
we th view authority as legitimate.

1654
01:40:06,080 --> 01:40:08,400
and I'll I'll probably send you other books on that topic.

1655
01:40:08,720 --> 01:40:12,960
Oh yeah, the most who I mean I I I I'm so happy you are saying this because I completely

1656
01:40:13,200 --> 01:40:13,680
completely agree.

1657
01:40:14,160 --> 01:40:17,840
I like that too because it's a it goes in the direction of uh the the theme of what you're

1658
01:40:17,840 --> 01:40:22,560
doing is also shifting the sh perspective because a lot of that dominance work is about the

1659
01:40:22,560 --> 01:40:24,400
aggressor, but you're talking about the victim again.

1660
01:40:24,480 --> 01:40:28,960
Or sort of like or the people who might be the recipients of the authority and saying when

1661
01:40:29,040 --> 01:40:32,960
is it when do they decide it's okay and when do they decide it's not.

1662
01:40:33,120 --> 01:40:33,360
Yeah.

1663
01:40:33,770 --> 01:40:38,170
Yeah yeah yeah and uh yeah yeah again the the theme is is is a bit always the same is like

1664
01:40:38,250 --> 01:40:44,170
uh we have good theories of uh when we people will submit and other people dominate

1665
01:40:44,330 --> 01:40:48,970
but we we don't have good theories of when it's a moral duty to submit and morally right to

1666
01:40:48,970 --> 01:40:54,810
command or when it's morally wrong to disobey uh uh or even morally obligatory to

1667
01:40:54,810 --> 01:41:00,250
disobey so we don't have good theories of the of the moral representations that are somehow

1668
01:41:00,300 --> 01:41:05,980
uh somewhat disconnected from the uh proximate and ultimate logic of people's actual

1669
01:41:05,980 --> 01:41:06,540
behaviors.

1670
01:41:06,700 --> 01:41:07,420
So yeah, anyway.

1671
01:41:07,740 --> 01:41:10,140
Ooh, well, I just that just really uh one quick question.

1672
01:41:10,220 --> 01:41:14,380
We had Deb Lieberman on Deb Lieberman's studies moral psychology.

1673
01:41:14,460 --> 01:41:18,700
And she we we talked a lot about how sort of the dark side of morality.

1674
01:41:18,860 --> 01:41:24,350
Um maybe this is too uh facile and too blanket of a question, but like after you're

1675
01:41:24,350 --> 01:41:29,950
thinking about all of this, do you think that like morality are you is it that if

1676
01:41:29,950 --> 01:41:33,870
something's moral and you don't know anything more about it, it could be good or bad from

1677
01:41:33,870 --> 01:41:38,590
like a uh our or like as complicated of a God's eye perspective as we have?

1678
01:41:38,750 --> 01:41:43,950
Like or or are you sort of if it's if we as organisms are moralizing it, it probably means

1679
01:41:43,950 --> 01:41:48,920
it's a bad thing and morals our moral psychology is generally bad or general or moral

1680
01:41:48,920 --> 01:41:49,960
psychology is generally good.

1681
01:41:50,360 --> 01:41:55,320
Like, I think most people who don't who aren't evolutionary psychologists maybe or would

1682
01:41:55,320 --> 01:41:57,560
just say, like, oh, our moral psychology is good.

1683
01:41:57,640 --> 01:41:58,600
Of course it is.

1684
01:41:59,000 --> 01:42:03,000
Except for people who know about like history and international relations, like, you know,

1685
01:42:03,080 --> 01:42:03,720
in lots of moral.

1686
01:42:04,120 --> 01:42:07,880
And so many historians or social scientists might say our moral psychology is bad.

1687
01:42:07,960 --> 01:42:12,410
I think when you take an evolutionary perspective, I think people fall down all kinds of

1688
01:42:12,410 --> 01:42:17,690
continua of sort of you know depending on what you study where do you or maybe there's no

1689
01:42:17,690 --> 01:42:18,170
right answer.

1690
01:42:18,330 --> 01:42:19,610
Like I yeah what do you think?

1691
01:42:19,930 --> 01:42:25,210
Yeah no I'm sure there's no right answer but like uh so my my my impression when I I think

1692
01:42:25,210 --> 01:42:29,930
about this uh dark side of morality ID is that often it's just behavior that we judge

1693
01:42:29,930 --> 01:42:32,490
morally wrong but because of our moral psychology.

1694
01:42:32,730 --> 01:42:37,240
Yes exactly it's It's just that there are moral, there are moral disagreements because the

1695
01:42:37,400 --> 01:42:39,960
cognitive algorithm is sensitive to input parameter.

1696
01:42:40,120 --> 01:42:45,080
And so people will have a different moral judgment depending on the input that they have.

1697
01:42:45,320 --> 01:42:49,480
And when they look at uh history and they see horrible moral norms, they say, Oh, that

1698
01:42:49,480 --> 01:42:50,920
means that morality is not good.

1699
01:42:51,160 --> 01:42:56,600
But what uh what you're saying is moral is that your morality is good.

1700
01:42:56,680 --> 01:43:01,010
So by definition, uh it's just that there are moral moral disagreements, yeah and we have

1701
01:43:01,010 --> 01:43:05,170
to explain there are more there is moral variation we have to explain it I don't see how it

1702
01:43:05,170 --> 01:43:10,290
could be the case that uh morality is not good right uh from the perspective of the guy who

1703
01:43:10,450 --> 01:43:11,810
describes what morality is.

1704
01:43:12,130 --> 01:43:15,730
Right, right right yeah yeah so I like that it's obviously the answer is it's morality all

1705
01:43:15,730 --> 01:43:19,890
the way down it's morality all the way down there there's a there's a a non there's a

1706
01:43:19,890 --> 01:43:24,930
non-contradictory way you could think about it where you could say that most of morality

1707
01:43:24,930 --> 01:43:29,840
and moral discourse and moral practice is in large part net harmful to people.

1708
01:43:30,000 --> 01:43:34,480
It it leads to exploitation, domination, and rationalization of oppression in all sorts of

1709
01:43:34,480 --> 01:43:34,960
ways.

1710
01:43:35,200 --> 01:43:41,200
Um and uh you could say m um morality in general for the most part is, you know, net

1711
01:43:41,200 --> 01:43:42,960
negative in terms of its consequences.

1712
01:43:43,040 --> 01:43:46,320
Uh except for of course the moral judgment I'm making about that very thing.

1713
01:43:46,880 --> 01:43:47,440
Yeah, exactly.

1714
01:43:47,600 --> 01:43:47,760
Yeah.

1715
01:43:48,080 --> 01:43:48,960
Yeah, yeah, I agree.

1716
01:43:49,510 --> 01:43:50,550
I'm more on the good side.

1717
01:43:50,710 --> 01:43:56,470
I'm more on the on the so to answer the question without escaping it now that that

1718
01:43:56,470 --> 01:43:59,510
David has that road.

1719
01:43:59,670 --> 01:43:59,830
Yeah.

1720
01:43:59,910 --> 01:44:00,870
I'm more on the good side.

1721
01:44:01,110 --> 01:44:05,430
Yeah, but maybe we can agree that like I think, and this is again sort of the value of

1722
01:44:05,430 --> 01:44:10,070
taking an evolutionary approach, is that the idea that's because something is entrained by

1723
01:44:10,070 --> 01:44:11,510
our moral psychology, right?

1724
01:44:11,660 --> 01:44:15,260
And I think maybe this is like people, listeners are often like, What what lesson can I

1725
01:44:15,260 --> 01:44:15,820
take from this?

1726
01:44:15,980 --> 01:44:20,540
And Leo, you can tell me if you agree with this, is that I think one of the big lessons

1727
01:44:20,540 --> 01:44:25,820
from evolutionary psychology of moral psychology is that just because something feels

1728
01:44:25,820 --> 01:44:31,340
moralized to you, that's not data that it's actually a good thing

1729
01:44:31,570 --> 01:44:32,130
per se.

1730
01:44:32,290 --> 01:44:38,210
It might be, but just because you feel morally strong about something doesn't automatically

1731
01:44:38,210 --> 01:44:43,250
mean that it that what the content of you of that moral belief, it doesn't necessarily mean

1732
01:44:43,250 --> 01:44:48,690
that it's good from the perspective of if I sat down and thought through the

1733
01:44:48,690 --> 01:44:49,650
consequences of it.

1734
01:44:49,810 --> 01:44:50,130
Yeah.

1735
01:44:50,290 --> 01:44:56,100
You know, it I think that's I think that's fair to say it's not that it's yeah, I

1736
01:44:56,100 --> 01:44:56,660
completely agree.

1737
01:44:56,820 --> 01:45:00,660
But just as uh to me, it's like I I'm seeing morality uh a bit like uh I don't know,

1738
01:45:00,740 --> 01:45:01,700
intuitive physics.

1739
01:45:01,860 --> 01:45:02,260
Yeah.

1740
01:45:03,060 --> 01:45:07,780
Uh yeah so in a way you can say intuitive physics is false, but like it's pretty good.

1741
01:45:08,020 --> 01:45:08,580
No, exactly.

1742
01:45:08,900 --> 01:45:09,220
It's pretty good.

1743
01:45:09,380 --> 01:45:12,820
It's really a nerdy it's really a nerdy thing to say it's false if you're doing modern

1744
01:45:12,820 --> 01:45:16,740
physics, you could say most folk physics is bad and we should try to candidate in favor of

1745
01:45:16,740 --> 01:45:17,220
modern physics.

1746
01:45:17,540 --> 01:45:21,330
You could say a similar thing about you know morality, you know, most morality and most

1747
01:45:21,330 --> 01:45:25,570
folk morality is bad, but we we should abandon it in favor of like, you know, uh cost

1748
01:45:25,650 --> 01:45:28,210
benefit analysis and institutional design and stuff like that, you know.

1749
01:45:28,370 --> 01:45:28,850
Yeah, exactly.

1750
01:45:29,170 --> 01:45:32,690
I agree with that's yeah, and this comes back to like we've had we David and I have had

1751
01:45:32,690 --> 01:45:35,810
this come up when we talked about like is intuitive psychology wrong or right?

1752
01:45:36,050 --> 01:45:38,450
Or I think we even had this earlier in this conversation.

1753
01:45:38,610 --> 01:45:42,770
It comes back to like what's the swath of hu of reality you're imagining.

1754
01:45:42,930 --> 01:45:48,660
And if I'm imagining all the bad things that moral psychology does, because most of

1755
01:45:48,660 --> 01:45:53,140
the moral entrepreneurship that I see on social media is bad.

1756
01:45:53,380 --> 01:45:56,820
I might say all of more most of our moral psychology is bad.

1757
01:45:56,980 --> 01:45:59,700
And if that's what I'm imagining, it makes sense that I'm saying that.

1758
01:45:59,780 --> 01:46:03,780
But if somebody's imagining, well, you know, like, you know, the reason why like we aren't

1759
01:46:03,780 --> 01:46:08,020
just like all killing each other all the time is because we all thought about like it's not

1760
01:46:08,020 --> 01:46:08,740
moral to do that.

1761
01:46:08,820 --> 01:46:11,220
And if that's what you're imagining, then our moral psychology is good.

1762
01:46:11,300 --> 01:46:12,820
And there's really not a fact of the matter.

1763
01:46:12,900 --> 01:46:15,380
It's just like what you're what class of the world you're imagining.

1764
01:46:15,540 --> 01:46:16,580
So I think that's Yeah, yeah.

1765
01:46:17,190 --> 01:46:20,790
That's the problem with morality is that unlike with physics, there is no objective, I

1766
01:46:20,790 --> 01:46:25,350
mean, yeah, philosophical debates I don't want to enter too into, but let's imagine that

1767
01:46:25,510 --> 01:46:27,910
let's imagine there is no more objective moral truth.

1768
01:46:28,310 --> 01:46:31,590
Then what does it mean to have it objectively morally right?

1769
01:46:31,670 --> 01:46:37,430
I think it's just like taking the good inputs, having the inputs right, and

1770
01:46:37,430 --> 01:46:39,110
then all you have is the computation.

1771
01:46:39,190 --> 01:46:42,710
I mean the universal computation of the human mind to know if something is right or wrong.

1772
01:46:42,790 --> 01:46:43,350
You see what I mean?

1773
01:46:43,510 --> 01:46:47,190
So then I think that there's still a difference between intuitivity and intuitive uh uh

1774
01:46:47,200 --> 01:46:51,680
moral judgment or morality, that's in that that's all we have in a specific.

1775
01:46:52,160 --> 01:46:57,200
There's an intrinsic conflict of interest in uh costs and benefits that don't exist in

1776
01:46:57,200 --> 01:46:58,560
physics, right?

1777
01:46:58,720 --> 01:47:00,320
Like uh that's true, yeah.

1778
01:47:00,480 --> 01:47:05,440
So uh recognizing that it's a coordination, the ultimate grammar of it is coordination, and

1779
01:47:05,440 --> 01:47:10,690
it's also about people's costs and benefits, and accepting that I might I think just being

1780
01:47:10,690 --> 01:47:14,130
honest about like what are the costs and benefits I'm trying to get, what are the costs and

1781
01:47:14,130 --> 01:47:17,490
benefits another person is, and then just trying to have a discussion about that.

1782
01:47:17,890 --> 01:47:21,010
Of course, a lot of the rhetoric is designed to obscure that, right?

1783
01:47:21,170 --> 01:47:23,410
That's that's another Pinsafian point.

1784
01:47:23,490 --> 01:47:26,610
Like I don't wanna but I think that's the the way forward.

1785
01:47:26,770 --> 01:47:27,410
But yeah.

1786
01:47:29,090 --> 01:47:29,730
Cool.

1787
01:47:29,940 --> 01:47:31,140
Well, what a fun conversation.

1788
01:47:32,020 --> 01:47:32,660
We gotta have you back.

1789
01:47:32,740 --> 01:47:36,020
Maybe we should do like a religion episode with with Leo and maybe someone else.

1790
01:47:36,180 --> 01:47:36,500
Oh yeah.

1791
01:47:36,820 --> 01:47:37,460
Because it's really good.

1792
01:47:39,860 --> 01:47:41,860
I'm happy to talk about uh about anything.

1793
01:47:41,940 --> 01:47:42,660
I mean, thank you so much.

1794
01:47:42,740 --> 01:47:43,380
It was so fun.

1795
01:47:43,460 --> 01:47:44,500
Uh it was so cool.

1796
01:47:44,580 --> 01:47:44,980
Thank you so much.

1797
01:47:45,380 --> 01:47:46,180
Yeah, time flew by.

1798
01:47:46,260 --> 01:47:46,500
Thank you.

1799
01:47:46,660 --> 01:47:47,060
Yeah, yeah.

1800
01:47:47,540 --> 01:47:48,420
Thanks so much, man.

1801
01:47:53,780 --> 01:47:54,580
Is that a good French accent?

1802
01:47:54,820 --> 01:47:56,260
Je Paul and Petit for France.

1803
01:47:56,580 --> 01:47:56,740
Yeah.

1804
01:47:56,900 --> 01:47:57,940
I I don't know.

1805
01:47:58,020 --> 01:47:58,900
I'm not, yeah.

1806
01:47:59,330 --> 01:47:59,650
Yeah.

1807
01:47:59,810 --> 01:48:05,090
Uh in any case, uh if you enjoyed that episode, uh you can do a lot of things to express

1808
01:48:05,090 --> 01:48:05,730
your joy.

1809
01:48:05,810 --> 01:48:09,650
Uh you can leave us a kind review, you can visit us on Patreon and support us there.

1810
01:48:09,810 --> 01:48:11,730
You can say nice things about us on social media.

1811
01:48:11,810 --> 01:48:16,450
Uh you can even send us an email if you want if you have ideas for topics or guests.

1812
01:48:16,610 --> 01:48:18,610
Uh have some have some french fries.

1813
01:48:18,850 --> 01:48:20,770
But uh organic French fries.

1814
01:48:20,930 --> 01:48:22,770
Don't uh pesticides are a problem.

1815
01:48:23,010 --> 01:48:25,010
So please get some organic potatoes.

1816
01:48:25,090 --> 01:48:27,570
Maybe make your own or Ooh, homemade french fries.

1817
01:48:27,810 --> 01:48:28,980
That would be that would be nice.

1818
01:48:29,220 --> 01:48:29,460
Yeah.

1819
01:48:29,620 --> 01:48:29,940
Yeah.

1820
01:48:30,100 --> 01:48:31,540
Uh and there's you know with French fries.

1821
01:48:32,180 --> 01:48:33,380
Send some French fries to us.

1822
01:48:33,620 --> 01:48:34,900
Yeah, send it in the mail.

1823
01:48:35,220 --> 01:48:39,860
That would be nothing like getting uh French fries on the mail.

1824
01:48:40,100 --> 01:48:45,940
I wonder how often that happens that I mean it it feels like an old nobody sends anything

1825
01:48:45,940 --> 01:48:46,740
in the mail anymore.

1826
01:48:47,060 --> 01:48:47,540
It's true.

1827
01:48:47,620 --> 01:48:52,100
Yeah I wouldn't I wonder how you could actually like don't people there's a there's a

1828
01:48:52,180 --> 01:48:56,100
there's a there's this thing about people sending a coconut in the mail with just a stamp

1829
01:48:56,100 --> 01:48:56,420
or something.

1830
01:48:56,660 --> 01:49:01,750
I feel like well if you figure out how to transport French fries.

1831
01:49:01,910 --> 01:49:05,190
Uh if you can get us french fries, we'll be very impressed.

1832
01:49:05,430 --> 01:49:05,830
Yeah.

1833
01:49:05,910 --> 01:49:06,710
Uh you know what?

1834
01:49:06,790 --> 01:49:11,030
We'll we'll uh we'll have you on the podcast and we'll just ask all about how you're if you

1835
01:49:11,030 --> 01:49:13,670
bring us french fries, we will have you on the podcast 100%.

1836
01:49:14,310 --> 01:49:15,830
That's our guarantee.

1837
01:49:16,550 --> 01:49:16,790
All right.

1838
01:49:17,750 --> 01:49:20,150
Enjoy and uh we'll see you next week.

1839
01:49:20,420 --> 01:49:21,140
See you next week.